Life was good. Varik had rarely been so content, pleasing Jaina at night, reading her books, training with her soldiers, and learning her ships by day. If the goal of settling her with child remained out of his grasp, he was patient. Just three months was not nearly long enough to plant the seeds of doubt in his mind, to cause concern. It would happen, in due time.

He had settled firmly and without difficulty into his new position. Certainly, it was consort...again, but there was a gulf in sanity and disposition between his previous benefactor and his current one, so much that it didn't quite feel like he was even repeating himself. What he had with Jaina was different. Milder. Healthier. It didn't tear him apart, tear him up, as Ner'zhul had. Finally, finally, he served someone who was steadfast, even keeled, whose goals didn't give him nightmares while he slept. But that was the problem... lately, there had been nightmares again. He'd hoped he'd left those behind him in Draenor, and the first two and a half months here had brought him peaceful nights.

But no more.

He jerked awake, shifting Jaina, who had fallen asleep with her head on his arm. He held himself completely still, trying to calm his ragged breathing, his thundering heart, and not wake her.

"I know you're awake." She stated firmly into the darkness, and he sighed, sitting up.

"I..."

"Now it's my turn to tell you to hold your apologies." She stood up, lighting a single candle. Somehow, it made the room smaller, more intimate, safer. "Do you often have nightmares?"

"Depends on what's going on. I just don't understand why they're picking up now, after nothing."

She stared into the candle flame, then began to blow slowly on it to create smoke. He watched it flow, knot in the air. "Are they always just dreams?"

"No. Not always. Yours have been..."

She nodded, pensive. "Mine have been escalating. Yours start again. Tell me about the last ones of these that you had."

He felt suddenly cold, although the night was balmy, and he left the bed...seeking the fresh air and grounding reality of the balcony. "I had a series of nightmares like this before Teron Gorefiend opened his portals, I saw Ner'zhul taken in the Nether." And this one held the same warning, bated weight. Except now, he was cut off from the sources he would have normally used to try to comprehend it... the only shamans around were draenei. He was not used to trying to use his own abilities to grasp his flashes of insight, it had not come to him as intuitive, and there had been no one to train him. Every person around him that might have been able to had been a fallen shaman, a newly fledged warlock...and he'd never been able to grasp either concept. The spirits did not speak to him, and the demon servitors that gave a warlock power would not answer his calls.

She walked up behind him, wrapping an arm around his waist as she insinuated herself under his arm. He agreeably rested it over her shoulders, pulling her close to his side. "Be careful, Jaina." He whispered, all too well aware that he'd said that before, to no avail. "Something is coming."

The last time he'd tried that, he'd gotten his jaw dislocated, but her response was to rest her forehead against his chest, her hand against his belly. "I will be." She promised. "As long as you promise the same."

He chuckled. "Don't worry about me, Jaina. I have retreat down to a fine art." He'd been one of the first to withdraw from Khaz Modan, headed south across Thandol. One of the first to break and head solidly towards the Dark Portal, back for Draenor. Those actions had saved so many, held together Ner'zhul's army, given them enough so that they could put things back together again... and for that, he'd been painted a coward many times over. "I was a part of every single successful Horde withdrawal in the war." Not exactly anything to be proud of, but it was the truth.

"Really?"

"Absolutely." He raked his fingers into his hair. "I've run away before, Jaina. If I can't win, I'll do it again. I stand as long as I can, but that's it. I've long since come to peace with that, and the taunts that come with it."

"So, you've had these before, and they've been valid." She seemed perfectly willing to let what he'd just said drop like a brick and lay there unnoted and unremarked upon. "I will take that into consideration, then. It just underscores what I already know."

"Which is?" That he was a coward? Or...

"Something is coming." She proved it was the latter, talking a firm hold on his braid and giving it a slight pull. "Come back to bed, Varik. Try to get some more sleep."

"That's not supposed to be a tether." He noted, following her anyway.

"You grow it long enough to use it as such." She teased softly, leading him back to her bed. "Twice as long as mine."

That was so, but he'd never given it much attention. It was more common for males to have longer hair...at least it had been. Most of the men here had short cropped hair, close, like a peon's, while most women in Theramore grew it long. But there was no way in hell he was going to shear his short...he refused.

He settled back into his spot in bed, making a thickly contented sound when she curled up against him. He would not sleep. He knew better, but he'd just have to make the best of it. And he'd been in much worse 'making the best of it' situations.

However, he was wrong. It was as if the fact that he'd said it, and that she had bothered to listen, was all that it needed, and he slipped back into a calm, peaceful sleep.