A/N: This is set right after Robert comes to Columbia.

It feels like dying.

Or at least, what you imagine dying must feel like. It's like having your identity, your soul washed away, falling endlessly through space and whatever you dream is true to you when you wake up.

When you wake up she's always next to you, yourself/your sister/your lover or whatever else she might have been in your last vision.

She says things sometimes, maybe tries to stop your blood loss, but nothing can ever penetrate the haze that you're in.

You might have spent days like this already, in and out and in and out of consciousness like an ocean's waves beating you into a rock repeatedly, eroding away your memories until you don't know what's real anymore.

Sometimes you don't remember her name.

Sometimes you don't remember your own name.

And you bleed and you dream and it just doesn't stop until it does.

It does stop, at least the blackouts, and she's pulling you into an upright position and you feel horrible, hearing muffled and vision blurry, and you think maybe you'll vomit, but you don't. She talks, you don't understand, maybe she says your name.

You can hear concern, though, so much concern, and you don't even know who she is, but she's beautiful. Beautiful and you feel a surge of possessiveness whenever you see her but you don't know why and she just keeps talking but it doesn't matter, and she'll likely never see that it doesn't matter.

You black out sitting up, and you fall forwards into her arms.

This time the dream is about whispers through the walls, and her name floats through your consciousness and it's Rosalind. Rosalind, like in the Shakespeare play, it's a lovely name but she has so many identities shifting and shimmering back and forth that you can't pick any single one out.

You see things as they truly are in this dream, you see things across time, and she's in every single plane of your realities stretched out in front of you. You see your own future, frustration and guilt and love, and you see her future—and it's just love, just loving you.

When you wake again you feel enlightened, but then the dream vaporizes like it never existed, like every important dream does, and all that remains is her name.

Language makes sense again, but she's speaking so quickly and so abrasively about your 'condition' and things you don't care about that you start to fall away again—you're sure what she's saying is fascinating, but not now, not right now.

She stops eventually, stops and sits next to you and puts a cloth to your face, and you keep trying to say something but it's only when she pulls the blood-soaked cloth away that you remember how to speak, and your tongue feels swollen and you sound drunk but you still speak.

You say that Rosalind is a beautiful name, and she smiles but tries to hide it—but she did smile and you know it.

You start to fall into this pattern for an unknown span of time—you wake up, feel sick, she talks and you bleed, you say something, and she pretends not to enjoy it before you pass out again.

So it goes, an unbroken circle, until it finally all ends and you can function again.

And she's you with a prettier name, and you will stay together forever.

A/N: All feedback is appreciated.