Sleep had come easy to him tonight. Restful for the first portion before things took a turn for the all too frequent worst. He never could control dreams, only be glad when the bad ones were few and far between.

The acrid scent of smoke was what started it. The disadvantage to that was having two nightmares that started with smoke. It was the sounds that differentiated the two. One went from smoke to the sound of steel on steel, sword on sword. The other went from smoke to explosions and gunfire. Two sets of memories locked in his head from hundreds of years and continents apart.

The thing the two had in common: deaths that he had tried to help prevent. Deaths he had been unable to prevent. This nightmare was slightly different. Somehow it started with the smell of smoke before the explosions. Two of them, the lead and trail vehicles exploding one after the other. The sound of screams and the smell of burning flesh. Thankfully it didn’t last much past that, a jerk of motion as Ryan sat bolt upright in bed, wiping sweat from his brow.

Calm. It was one thing his therapists had told him was he needed a way to get back to center, to calm the terrors he sometimes woke with. So it was he got dressed in loose shorts, running shoes, and a tshirt before gathering up his prized sword. Hundreds of years and a past life of ownership. It wasn’t used to fight with anymore, but for practice it could be.