A/N A Briar-centric fic set before Will of the Empress, and after the events mentioned in WotE and Melting Stones about the war in Gyongxe, Yanjing. Thanks to Sweet Sassy Sarah for beta'ing and encouraging.
"They never tell you some things," Briar said bitterly. "They tell you mages have wonderful power and they learn all kinds of secrets. Nobody ever mentions that some secrets you don't ever want to learn."
"All you can do is learn good to balance the bad," Rosethorn told him. "Learn and do all the good within your reach. Then, if you wake in a sweat, you have something to set against the dream."
Street Magic. Page 291.
He had woken up gasping for breath and drenched in sweat from a nightmare more than once in his life. He was familiar with the bottom-of-his-stomach dread. He expected that his breath would come in quick gasps and that his hands would jump to his knives. He knew that the fight would begin— to keep from opening his lids just one more time to check and make sure that the nightmares were not there; that no rats were waiting to chew on him while he slept, that Winding Circle was not a cruel joke played on him by the officials of the docks, that Rosethorn was still in Discipline and not in a gardener's dream-garden somewhere down the road past death, that those bodies he had found in the desert weren't standing around his bed….
Even with all he knew about nightmares, the ones after Gyongxe were more than he ever expected. The thing was, during everything that had happened in that gods-damned place he was so exhausted and so terrified and so numbed that he slept fine, when he was able to find time to sleep. His first nightmare came only when they finally got away from it and he had time to think rather than act on instinct.
He dreamed of what he had seen, but, worse, he dreamed of what he had done and of what could have been done. All the pain he had witnessed replayed itself in his mind. After the nightmare was all over and he finally was let go from sleep, he realized he was standing outside his bedroll with his knife out against Rosethorn, who was trying to talk him out of a nightmare in which the horrors had refused to let him believe that he was awake. Evvy sat on her bedroll, her street-face on. She was too skinny and grown up, even for her.
He cried in front of her that one time. In the nights that followed, he buried his face in Rosethorn's shoulder and refused to make a sound.
She always slept between him and Evvy, after that first night, and he tried to move himself as far away from his teacher and student as he could. He was only easy with himself when they slept at the few inns they thought were safe and he insisted on separate rooms. The nightmares were worse those nights, and he cried alone, but they were safe and he didn't care about himself enough to care that it was killing him. He lied when Evvy asked if he slept well.
He almost didn't go to sleep the first time they had to sleep bunched into a tiny room, hiding from soldiers, because he was terrified that he would hurt them while he fought with his demons. He didn't sleep with his knives anymore. The nightmares of Rosethorn dead from pox, dead in a cell somewhere in Gyongxe, dead in the fighting were replaced with her dead with his knife in her when he woke up, adding itself into the rest of his sleeping terrors.
But, the nightmares never came that night, when he was sleeping close enough to feel Rosethorn roll over on the floor beside him and to hear Evvy's breathing. His hope was shattered when they came back the night after (and the night after and the night after and the night after), until they slept close again and Briar latched onto the idea because he was dying and Rosethorn couldn't stop watching him, and Evvy looked at his teacher for permission before she spoke to him.
They needed him to get them out of this mess, with Rosethorn's power nearly used up and Evvy hurt by the soldiers and the loss of her pets and he couldn't save them if he was so tired the world went fuzzy and black around the edges of his vision. He was tired from lack of sleep, but more than that he was tired of what was in his mind and that scared Rosethorn more than anything else.
The fact that she could not hide that she was scared was what scared him the most.
He charmed the first girl who looked at him under her lashes in the first town they stopped in, when they finally crossed the border. He felt like a pig for using her, but he slept the night through because he could feel when she rolled over and he could hear her breathe and somehow that kept Gyongxe away. He charmed someone else every night after that, because he hadn't done enough— hadn't learned enough— good things to have something to set against these dreams, and because he couldn't bear having the nightmares after he had been free of them. Slowly, he was able to function during the day and Evvy started smiling and being a pest again and Rosethorn snapped at him for the first time in too long and he felt like himself, except that there were monsters in his head that he couldn't be left alone with.
They sat in the garden of Discipline, shredded bedroll around them as she tried to hug his fight away, but it was not ever that easy. He could not hold back from her, because she had monsters in her head, too, but he would protect the girls from Gyongxe.
Even if it killed him.