Prompt: "It's just a dream!", requested by theragingartist

She was already dead-asleep when Shiro crept into her small and dark room. Locking the door behind him with his back heavily lending against the white metal he took a deep breath, grateful. He was up too late, discussing and negotiating peace with a planet's council that Allura had been fighting for some times.

The sovereign was too proud to accept the Paladins' helps against Zarkon whose soldiers slowly had been breaching their territories. So proud that Allura actually shrieked in frustration at them after several days of no progression made. Coran had to pull her back and abruptly replaced her with Shiro, his air of battle-hardened confidence finally quietening the council. For Allura who needed a breath of fresh air, it was enough of a hole for her to jump in and hammered her points way home.

But it was still slow-going, chipping away the sovereign and their council's prides.

He was exhausted.

Peeking at a small mound huddling against the chilled wall, Shiro sighed. Kagome spent much of her time tending to the planet's refugees and barely slept since their arrival a mere week before. It took Hunk to convince her to rest, with promises of generous amount of desserts, and she, reluctantly, agreed. She was so tired that Hunk had to carry her back to her room, and even passed out promptly in his arms.

Shiro would deny that he was just a touch jealous when he got the wind of it.

He was grateful, instead, when he was asked, being eyed on by his fellow comrades.

Rubbing his forehead, Shiro hummed. Staring at that bare spot on the healer's bed, he rolled his shoulders and began to unzip his shirt. Shiro didn't think to change out to his pajama pants, being tired as he was. His jeans was not the most comfortable clothing to sleep in, but he'll make due. Arranging his boots against that little crook between a desk and the walls (by the gods it still bothered him not to remove his shoes upon the entry of their dorms, immediately), Shiro checked his shirts on their usual spot and hummed with satisfaction.

Circling his prosthesis in the air, Shiro gave a soft pat on Kagome's lax shoulder. His way of letting her know he was here, unconscious or no. She twitched, just a slight, but he got his response.

Pulling down the cover, Shiro settled his scarred body onto the small bed and gathered Kagome's tiny body against his chest. Nosing into her hair he sighed, already feeling the dark chaos in his head slowing and quietening. Tightening his arms around her form and tucking themselves together under the blanket, he was grateful for his healer and for everything that she did for him.

It was a buried secret Shiro kept from everyone, that he was fine

He was not fine.

The battles he fought. The men he killed, just to live and survive. The arm he witnessed he lost, as some ill-formed prize for being a powerful warrior. The pain that still inflamed what remained of his arm. The blood he had stained his hands.

They all crumbled together into his head and made him to relive every bit of it, to relive all that he suffered into a boiling ball of pain.

He screamed silently to himself every night, every since his beginning as the Black Lion's chosen Paladin, and wept and trembled like a fragile babe. Shiro kept his nightmares to himself, and suffered alone. He tried his damnest to be fine, to look fine. To pretend.

He wasn't fine. There was a small part of him desperate for anyone to notice his pain. His suffering. To help him.

But no one ever noticed. All they see is a strong man, a survivor, and saw nothing else.

That was, until they, no, he, rescued his healer. The one who suffered for too many years on that slave ship, tending to every one of the promising warriors and the reigning Champion. Kagome.

She noticed.

She noticed, long before her feet even touched upon the land of the Castle of the Lions. She asked these very words: Are you fine? when her voice told him she knew he wasn't fine.

Shiro never replied. He instead chose to focus on introducing her properly to his friends and the princess and her attendant, his heart happy having his healer back to his side. That night he woke to her breasts, the very similar way she tended to his wounds back then.

It was his only comfort to these terrible memories, his nightmares.

Her very presence soothed his battered soul, he believed.

He woke to her invading his space, just to calm the calamity that nested and took roots deep into his mind. It happened so often that she suggested to share the bed together.

It was a suggestion that would have fluster a mere boy, by these words alone. But he knew better. Kagome never intended it in that way, even though deep within he hoped. She was his only remedy.

So, he accepted, with no second thought or lingering doubt.

Nightmares became fewer and he breathed easier. The size of her bed never bothered him, as it brought him closer to Kagome. Even if it was purely physical, it was enough for him.

Her soft breathing lulled him to sleep, the darkness' grips on his soul loosening. The gentle rises and falls of her body and her soft perfume gave him that comforting weight of sanity he sorely needed. He gripped on them like a madman, unconsciously registering every one of her twitches and murmurings.

Somehow it never occurred to Shiro that these little signs were something far worse than they seemed.

Their legs tangling in sleep, it took a long-stained whimper to wake him. Shiro squeezed his eyes and blearily blinked them awake, his eyes seeing nothing but utter blackness. "Kagome?" He murmured.

Shiro must've slept for an hour then, he absently mused. He toggled on a weak light from his mechanical arm so to see better, to check on his bed partner. What he saw, and felt, was alarming.

"Kagome?" He recognized the tension in her arms, drawing into a defensive cross over her chest and almost to her neck. Under his light shined him her tears streaking on her face and her brows drawn tight together. He caught some bit of red dribbling from her skin where her nails clawed into. Shiro palmed at her sweat-damped bicep, lightly shaking her, "Kagome?!"

How the hell did he miss all of this?!

"No, no no!" She flinched at his touches, "Don't hurt…" her voice faded to stressed whimpering and muffled sobbing, with her body rocking.

Throwing off the blanket Shiro pressed a hand underneath her ribs and saddled partially over her frame, his shaking and patting becoming insistent, "Kagome, wake up!" The desperation pitched his voice, with panic enriching his words.

She wouldn't respond, drowning into the hell her mind produced.

"Nar-" Kagome gasped, her eyes moving underneath her tensed eyelids seeing what Shiro couldn't see, "No! Naraku, no more!" Somewhere in her crazed muttering and cries, Shiro caught a familiar name that inflamed his heart.

Her Galra keeper.

Shiro had no idea who this Naraku is, but his heart burned hotter with hate. Familiar with the nature of nightmares Kagome had to be dreaming of everyone who harmed her and those she loved. He never wanted her to suffer.

Not anymore.

"Kagome, please, wake up!" Shiro bellowed into her ear.

Her fear-blanketed eyes shot open to his pleas but saw nothing. But, Shiro hoped, her dreams were interrupted enough for her not to see a thing. Not thinking twice Shiro grabbed her off the mattress and pulled her into a tight embrace, "Kagome, Kagome," he chanted her name, not knowing what else to do, "You're okay, you're okay. You're safe, Kagome."

Realization settled and Kagome sobbed wordlessly into Shiro's shoulder, her body slacking in defeat.

"It's just a dream." He remembered saying through his tears, though both knew their nightmares were anything but.

She wasn't fine either.