Disclaimer: I do not own, nor claim to own any characters pertaining to the 2007-2008 TV series 'Moonlight'. All recognisable characters and texts belong to Ron Koslow and Trevor Munson. (Oh, but do I wish; this show would have received multiple seasons on my account).

Author's Note: So... it has been a while. I think I first uploaded the very original almost ten years ago now. Holy Moses. In any case, for almost a decade this story has refused to leave my mind, and I feel better placed to re-upload and re-write, and all that technical malarkey. Hopefully I will feel better about the nagging of Robin (whom used to be called Molly, I do believe - I did happen upon all the old .doc files some time ago). If any of you are still here, I applaud you - and I've missed you.

It was like a light switch – the sudden return of my senses – altogether and all at once. I jolted forwards, hitting my head against something hard and feeling a crisp plastic against the tip of my nose; the air, very suddenly, tasted stale, and the darkness I had taken for my room became an immediate threat once my body realised I was trapped inside something. Immediately the only sound I could register was my own heart thundering against my ribcage; with that, I began to breathe erratically. I pushed against the plastic covering hard, hitting my fist against whatever box I was confined to. It felt cold, despite the stale heat of my breath; the bag, to call it what it was, lifted and fell in time to my chest.

"Help!" Screaming was the only other option I had, but already I could feel the tightness in my chest; I was running out of air. I couldn't think appropriately, and the only instinct I had was to get out of the bag, to get out of the box. The harder I hit against the cold walls the worse the tightness became. "Please help me!" I cried, my voice trailing as water began to pool in the corners of my eyes; the dark too became restricting.

In that very moment where I felt the haze grow over my eyes and the fog grow thicker, there was a rumbling as I moved backwards. "Please, get me out of here!"

"Easy!" A male voice accompanied the sound of a zip being pulled down, and all of a sudden there was light, and air, and equally as suddenly the world tilted viciously to its side as I fell and landed on the cold ground with a defiant thud.

It was also at that precise moment I realised I was wearing absolutely nothing.

Both hands sought to cover myself; I brought my knees to my chest and pushed myself back against a cabinet – everything felt cold, sharp, raw against my bare skin. The male in question looked at me in utter bewilderment before scrambling off to the side and coming back with a long white lab coat. He gingerly approached and handed it to me. Something close to recognition flashed like a camera light before my eyes, yet it was gone before I could fully capitalise on it. Hastily I donned the lab coat and pulled it closer over me, not trusting the strength in my knees to hold me upright. My heart was still ricocheting; the sound in my ears numbed slightly by the sudden burst of senses.

Where was I? What had happened? Was I in a body bag?

The man was still speechless, which gave me more time to scrutinise both him and my surroundings. My stomach, however, had other plans; whenever I made move to shift my gaze or my limbs, it turned several times like a spinning wheel and I swallowed heavily to stop the bile rushing to my throat. "Thank you," I croaked out, tugging at the scratchy material. With my head pounding, all I wanted to do was close my eyes, but the fear of confinement had very quickly been replaced by that of the unknown – not only had I woken in a body bag; I was in a morgue, and I had absolutely no recollection of how I got there. "Where am I?" My voice was raspy, but he heard all the same; he flurried himself to grab a file attached to the end of the table I had been laying on.

"Los Angeles," he responded, his eyes darting quickly between the pieces of paper he clutched and myself. I knew I should naturally be feeling self-conscious, but I was terrified, and all the energy I had was spent on my brain trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together – and to unveil just why this man was startlingly familiar. However, the moment he spoke, my stomach dropped. The lump grew larger in my throat and my hands stretched and recoiled with uneasy haste.

"No," I shook my head, clinging again to the coat. "No, I'm not. That's impossible. You're wrong." The pounding was becoming worse; the noise in the back of my head louder. The lights were too bright. I trembled, graduating fast in to unbearable shivers. My stomach knotted again, this time with comprehendible severity. I heaved.

The man very quickly grabbed me a makeshift sick bowl. He seemed to sniff at the air as he handed it, leaning in perhaps a little too close without breaking eye contact. The air stilled for no more than a second before he was back to hovering. "You're a Jane Doe." He was still clinging to those notes; desperately, I reached out for answers, but with each infliction upon my vocal chords the bile threatened to rise higher.

"Robin," I gasped, clutching the bowl to my chest. "My name is Robin!" I closed my eyes, desperate to numb the pounding above my eyes. My throat burned. "Who are you? Where am I? Please tell me this is not real." I could think of no-one who would play such a cruel trick, and indeed if they had, how they would have carried it out. With my eyes closed I could see the rain cascading over the windshield and the wipers working overtime to clear the screen. There was a rush of traffic to my right, and a blinding flash from roadworks somewhere ahead. Traffic was slow, but I had been heading home – I knew I was going home. So how…

The thought made the lump well and I heaved again; I detested throwing up, least of all before others, but I felt stripped of all dignity and self-preservation, sat on the cold ground with nothing but a lab coat to hide my honour.

"You're in a morgue… I work in the morgue. You shouldn't be alive. You came in –"

He did not get to finish. Despite the familiarity of this man, the one who waltzed in to the room as if it were commonplace was even more so. Though my vision was blurry, the dark soft waves and distinctive long black coat sent my heart racing once more.

"Hey, Mick," he barely glanced at his friend, though it took very little time for the newcomer to see me, too.

"Guillermo, what –"

God, he even sounded like him.

There must have been an accident. I must have been unconscious. Yet the reality was staring me very intensely in the face, and the sickness swirling in my stomach was too paralysing to be false. I never had dreams like this. I had never been a deep sleeper, and even if there had been an accident…

"She just woke up. Screaming, from one of the units, but by rights she should be dead. She's been in there hours. Came in earlier today."

Mick was looking at me now, and I knew he could hear my heart racing. I flushed from embarrassment that was very quickly overturned by something else. The claustrophobia I had inherited as a child reared itself like a terrifying monster; clumsily I scrambled to my feet and pushed my way past the stone golems staring with open mouths and made my way unwieldly through the door. My hair stuck fast to my face as I made my way to the hallway; I could hear voices trailing behind me, but my only goal was the outdoors. It was strange, that before I could never have imagined running mostly unclothed through any building, be it morgue or otherwise, but least of all bursting through a door right shoulder first to be greeted with the dusky, half-hidden moonlight on to an alleyway at the edge of a busy street.

The noises were alarming; cars driving, people hollering from a local at the opposite end, the inconsistent passing of bass from somewhere far off. Lights from murky, unattended streetlamps flashed unreliably. The sick bowl fell to the floor and the thud, though the quietest sound in comparison, grounded everything else.

Or normal enough – the people… the characters in there. Their names, their faces. The God-damned clothes they were wearing.

"Oh God, please…" I felt the tears stinging my eyes as I turned frantically in circles. I didn't know where to go. I didn't know how to get out. My head knew precisely where I was, but it also knew it was impossible. My body screaming and the pounding in my head recognised without any uncertainty I was not dreaming, yet it felt horribly out of place.

I grabbed at the lab coat, pushing myself against the far brick wall opposite the door just as someone came out of it. No, not someone – some ones.

"Robin… that's your name, isn't it?" Mick extended his hand, though it was intended, or so I assumed, as a comforting gesture and not as a 'please take this now'. I did not know if I would have, though a small part of my mind that was not consumed with the cold and the sickness thought that possibly if I grabbed his hand the rest of the world would vanish. I needed it to. The young girl who had spent many hours watching and re-watching their faces on screen felt a strange ease of comfort and shameful excitement; the adult, nine years older, was stubbornly grounded in reality. She was a newly qualified teacher, not a dead girl. Not a character.

I barely moved; it was not my intention to be rude, but the sight of his face and the closeness the two exhibited towards me was making my mind race and my heart pound desperately against my chest. It was going to break out, I was absolutely sure of it.

"Robin, just take a deep breath and come with me. We can figure this out. We can help you. Just come inside, and we'll find your things and get you home." He was being kind, but it was not going to be that simple. I didn't even know where home was here. Home was some five thousand miles away. My little apartment, my friends, my students. None of them were here. Mick stepped closer. Guillermo stood by the door, his own eyes never leaving mine. I couldn't keep still. The world was getting smaller with each second that went past faster than I had time to breathe.

His voice and my name were the last things I heard.