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Jean jerks awake with a start, grasping at snow and frozen leaves, her heart pounding. The remnants of the nightmare leave her shaky and charged with adrenaline, but the details are already fading. The clarity they leave behind is uneasy, and the branches overhead are silver and dark against the sky, familiar shapes made foreign by the scattering of moonlight. Just for a moment, she has no idea where she is. Then she feels the weight of an aura she knows, humming at the borders of consciousness, and brittle calm shifts into something steadier.
Clare is leaning back against the flat of her blade, alert and watching her closely, and Jean feels a pang of guilt. She ought to be the one keeping watch, and letting the one who saved her sleep. But Clare had laughed when she said so – I'll have all the time I need for sleeping soon enough – and Jean had let it go, reluctant to look too closely at the certainty beneath the joke.
Now, Jean lies still, eyes half-closed, and tries to look as though there had been and is no cause for worry in her shallow breathing, the heartrate not quite under her command. Clare isn't having it.
“You have dreams,” she says. Not a question.
“Yes,” Jean says. She sits, brushing leaves from her uniform, and tries to call her thoughts back to order. “Do you?” She doesn't need to say nightmares. They both know.
“No,” Clare says. “Not that I remember.” Jean doesn't think it's forced, or that she's lying, but she does dream. Jean has seen her in sleep, all the small ways the body betrays the mind: the twitch of a muscle, the rapid flicker of eyelids and the tension in her jaw. She remembers wanting to pull her close when she dreams like that, brush the hair back from her brow and hold her through the worst of it until she sleeps easy again. And she remembers staying where she is, knowing how unwise it is to get too close to a sleeping warrior too quickly.
But Clare isn't sleeping now, and Jean moves to sit beside her, uncertain whether she's seeking comfort or offering it. After a while, Clare shifts away from the sword to relax against her shoulder, and Jean feels the last remnants of her own nightmare fall into nothing. It's hard to hold on to the memory of pain when she's there, warm and close, and Jean wants to trace the line of her jaw and bend down to meet her in a kiss.
Amusement flickers in Clare's aura and the corners of her mouth, and something deeper than amusement, sweet as the air before a storm.
“Distractible,” she murmurs, and Jean can't deny it. But this isn't the time. Clare has spent too long traveling without cease, restless and driven, and tiredness hangs in a haze about her. A fine pair we are, she thinks with an indulgent smile. Always chasing down our own fears. She doesn't let herself wonder what they'll do if they ever catch them.
“You sleep,” she says. “I'll take the watch for a while.”
I'll keep you safe, is what she means. Nothing will touch you. Not yoma. Not awakened. Not dreams or fears.
That's a useless promise in the long run and she knows it, but all they do is useless in the long run, and all that means is that it isn't the future that matters. And tonight, when Clare's breathing finally slows and evens, there's no trace of tension in her body. If she dreams, it's peaceful. When she wakes, dawn light golden on her face, there are no shadows beneath her eyes.
It's enough, Jean tells herself, and in that moment it's true. It's enough. There's nothing else she needs.