There are two doors in the dream realm, and they both say Rose. She's not sure which to pick, or which is which, and when she approaches them, they blur together and then slide apart, as if she's suddenly had double vision. She used to be able to tell them apart-at some point they've become indistinguishable. Her hand slides through the right side, and the left side is no better, but there are two doorknobs in the middle that feel solid enough, so she picks the first one she reached and throws herself through the door. It sends a chill through her veins and when she bursts into her dreams, she feels like she's been soaked by the rain and there's water in her shoes that squelches when she walks and turns her toes to ice.

The scenes before her interact in a way she knows they shouldn't. Her childhood Tae Kwon Do instructor wears a Huntsclan uniform and threatens her when she loses a sparring match. The Hunstman's dragon skull, ill-fitting, flickers between two figures. The Huntsman and her father shimmer and fade in and out of view, and she can't tell which is which from moment to moment. What used to be a crisp Huntsclan training room in one door has melded into a ballet studio with dragon pelts lining the walls and unicorn horns grafted to the barre. Nothing is where it should be, and it's all distorted, as if she's walked into a bowl of gelatin rather than her dream door.

The images haunt her through the next day, burned into the back of her eyelids. Trying to focus on school becomes useless after the first twenty minutes, and she starts to think she's turning into Jake because the only thing keeping her from running to the bathroom and screaming into the toilet is making fun of the professor in her head. It's cruel; this man is no Rotwood. It occurs to her distantly that hurt people hurt people, but the thought is unhelpful. She's only hurting because she hurt people in the first place.

"Hey," he says, his voice distorted by the phone and groggy with sleep. "How's my favorite girl?"

Rose smiles, despite herself. "I'm okay. I've been exploring the dream realm."

"You're not avoiding sleepovers again, are you?"

"Jake, I have two roommates. I can't avoid sleepovers."

"You're pretty creative. Gramps thinks doing drills in the middle of the night and keeping me up until it's time to go to class is funny." He sighs heavily.

"Oh, I'm sorry. You should get some sleep."

"Nah. I have to be up in 20 minutes anyway. You wanna talk?"

"I feel like I've lived twice." She slouches into her chair. "Except it's kind of hard to remember which life was which sometimes.

"Wait, really? I guess I never really thought about what that would be like."

"I thought it would get better, but it's not. It just keeps getting worse."

Jake sighs heavily. "I'm sorry, babe. I could hang with you, help you sort it out? I know you haven't wanted to meet in your dream, but-"

"No. I mean, it's okay. I have to work through this myself."

In later years, she thinks turning him down when maybe her mind was still salvageable was one of her worst mistakes.

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Zero. She's nestled in her mother's arms, birthmark red and angry on one wrist. The Huntsman fizzles in and out, one moment taking her away, the next putting her back and backing out of the room with the same purposeful stride as he'd walked forward. It's like a skipping tape on rewind.

One. For a moment there's a chocolate cake with a Minnie Mouse face, and Rose wears a bright pink bow in her hair. Remy is next to her, bow in her mouth and frosting on her nose. The moment vanishes suddenly, leaving a blackness that's almost palpable. A wail echoes in the black emptiness, and it goes on for an eternity. Returning to the scene with the cake and the bow hurts Rose's eyes, and the contrast puts a heavy feeling in her stomach.

Two. Dad gently turns her over in a somersault on a thick, foam pad, protecting her little neck with his large hand and suspending her as she turns over, and then she's falling into a foam pit that shifts to black and red foam blocks, and where there used to be Mom to catch her there is now no one. She tumbles into the dark, alone.

Three. Four. Five. Six. The years march on, each turning to chaos and radio static.

Thirteen. The flickering is greatest here. She sees the moment from her old life when she entered the Huntsman's office and saw herself on the screen, feels the way her heart had dropped and her stomach flip flopped. She'd made a horrible mess of things, letting herself fall for her enemy, letting herself become attached first to him and then to parents she'd never met. For better or worse, she had to fix it.

Rose watches herself, seeing the gears turning inside shimmering blue eyes made dull by the fuzz of the memory.

"I wish Rose was never taken by the Huntsclan!"

"I wish for the destruction of all Huntsclan."

"Jake, let me go. I'll be okay." Shattering skulls and breaking gargoyles burst apart, sending shards of rock and crystal towards her. They bounce off of her with a sharp sting, surprisingly not embedding in her skin. For a moment, everything is still and perfectly clear. Rose feels herself as she was in the moment, resigned, ready to die, begging for her life to stop, and then that panic. Dylan. 23. She has sinned, and nothing is okay. Her promise to Jake has already been broken because she can never be okay again, cannot die this way, cannot take all those innocent people, babies, children, with her. And then a scream. An anguished, awful scream that splits the world apart and echoes through all of her dreams, startling her awake.

It echoes in her head, whatever it was that she had ripped from Jake's soul, and it's harrowing enough that she seriously considers swallowing sleeping pills until she can't think. It's a new memory that should be buried back in her brain where it belongs. Her roommates stir, but they do not wake with her sudden restlessness, and she's thankful for small favors.

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The anniversary of that day, that day that she murdered thousands upon thousands of people, passes without note for the rest of the world. October 10. The tenth of October. 10/10. She's gone home for the weekend, an almost unbearably high expense for getting away from everything. Rising from bed in the morning is immediately followed by her return to bed, and she pulls the pillows and blankets over her head as if she hopes to hide from some truth flowing around the room like a fall breeze.

"Mom, I'm sick."

"What's wrong? You were fine last night." Her mom rushes to the side of the bed and bends over her forehead, resting one hand on it as she rubs Rose's back with the other hand. "You don't have a fever."

"I'm going to throw up." Which might be true, actually.

She can feel more than she can see her mom's jaw tighten and her lips purse with worry. "Is it jet lag? You had a long flight."

Nodding furiously into her pillow, Rose burrows further into bed. "Can you bring me a trash can?"

"Of course, honey."

Rose clenches and unclenches her fists around a sheet, waiting for all of them to leave, go to work, go shopping, anything. Please just go so I can scream. It takes both of her parents an unreasonable amount of time to go to work, what with them popping in to check on her about twelve times between them. The Huntsman wouldn't badger me like this. Of course he wouldn't. He would have sent you out in the field anyway and punished you if you'd vomited on his dragon skin.

Mom leaves her with frantic worry, a cup of orange juice, and some dry crackers. "Make sure to stay hydrated. I'll try to come home early and make some soup. Stay a few extra days; you can do your courses online, can't you? We can go dress shopping when you feel better."

"It's okay. I'll be fine."

With a last touch of Rose's hair, her mother leaves her to an empty apartment and the hollow echoes inside her head.

"Your landing was unacceptable."

"Yes, Master."

"A broken ankle out in the field is a death sentence."

"Yes, Master."

"Run it again."

She jogged to the opposite side of the training room, a gymnastics space they were borrowing, ostensibly. The floor mat stretched in front of her, and she grips her staff firmly in both hands before breaking into a sprint. A dragon target loomed before her, and she pushed off the ground with all the power and finesse that had gotten her here in the first place. Curling her body sharply, she sprang on to her hands and pushed off again into a flip, and at the apex she pushed her staff away from her body. Green energy shot from the tip and struck the target above her, dead center on its underbelly.

And then she was coming down, bringing her arm back in and pinning the staff to her chest. She stretched out her feet, ready to land steadily, solidly, flawlessly. Then a crack. The pain followed a moment later as she was pushed off course and forced into a hapless tumble on the mat. Her head bounced off the ground and her shoulder popped, pulling a strangled cry from her throat.

"You shot me," she gasped, struggling to stand before the Huntsman could close the distance between them.

"You should have been able to dodge. You think dragons won't be breathing fire at you?"

"You shot me," she whispered.

"Run it again."

"I need a medic."

"You're nine years old. That's old enough to see the medic when you're finished. Not before."

She ran it again, but this time, when she landed perfectly, having dodged another blast, it was not the Huntsman looking back at her, but herself.

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Jake doesn't comment on it, but she can feel that he knows in the tightness of his hugs that night in their dreams. When they stir, and his face begins to fade in and out as their sleep lightens, he leaves her with a few words.

"I'm so happy you came back to me."

And that was that.

And then she realizes that the night she remembers as horrible, gut wrenching, unbearable, weighted with tons upon tons of lives that she threw away is the night he remembers as the night he lost her. For him, the magnitude will fade over the years as their relationship either strengthens or slips from their grasp. For her, it will live inside her like an insatiable tapeworm, until her body collapses into the dark pit of her soul.

Well, there's not much to say then, is there?

"Thank you for giving me my parents." Because she is thankful, at least, for that.

"It was the least I could do." Because he's always loved her, always wanted nothing more than for her to be happy (with admittedly some conflict when it interferes with them being together, she tries not to think).

He wraps her up in another embrace, and they hold each other until her morning alarm begins to blare and break through the peace.

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A/N: I wanted this chapter to be longer, but sometimes the things you need to say are covered in fewer words than you'd like.

One of the things that I often think would happen in this relationship is that Jake, as much as he loves and adores Rose, has always been pretty obsessed with them being together. And while I don't think he would try to force it if she came out and said she didn't love him, I don't know that I think he's ever been especially sensitive to how she feels about it. The show very much presents their relationship as something he wants while the things Rose wants seem to be minimized in light of the Romeo-Juliet thing they have going on. This doesn't necessarily reflect poorly on Jake, but I posit that it's a prime breeding ground for resentment.

Finally, S, thank you for such a detailed review! I'm glad you mentioned that Jake would be looking for her, because that's something I really struggled with while trying to decide what path this story would take. After arguing with myself for a bazillion hours though, I went this way because I think things change a lot between being a teenager in love and being almost forty with three kids who do still need to be parented, no matter how much he might want to chase her down again. I think it's the next chapter where I get into that a little bit, and bring in Rose's parents in the present, so that should be fun after I get it all fleshed out. To your other point, there is definitely an endgame. I knew whether or not Rose and Jake would work things out when I started this (but I won't spoil that!), but the thing that has been less certain is how Rose will reach a decision, how Jake will respond, and what factors I need to bring in to make that happen believably. It's changed a lot in the last few years (have I been working on this for four years already?!). Anyway, thank you so much for reading and reviewing! I really appreciate your support.