Rosaline - The woman with whom Romeo is infatuated at the beginning of the play. Rosaline never appears onstage, but it is said by other characters that she is very beautiful. When Juliet appears, Rosaline is forgotten.
Sometimes she looks at him and wonders how she got here, what she did to deserve this family, these people who care about her and want her to be happy. What she did to deserve this man, her husband, who loves her wholly and unconditionally, and despite all of her flaws, this man who she loves so fiercely and fully that it sometimes scares her. What she did to deserve this wonderful life.
Sometimes he catches her wondering, and he smothers her fear in kisses, and his perpetual good mood spreads out and wraps warmly around her, and she feels cherished and special and loved and happy. But sometimes she can't think of a reason, and that's when the terror seizes her. He's just too good to be true, too lovely and kind and funny and bright and perfect for someone as cold and hard and jaded as she. There's no way he could care about her the same way she does about him, no way he could care about her. What does she have to offer him, besides her looks? What could he possibly want from her, besides her body?
Those are dark times.
But he always stays with her. Even when she's driving herself crazy with worries and insecurities, even when she's trying to push him away for fear of losing him, even when she's trying to hurt him for fear of him hurting her first and worst, he stays with her. He holds her close and tells her everything she needs to hear, and sometimes she even believes him.
She's so frightened that she'll lose it all. It's all just too good to be true, and she's scared stiff that someday she'll wake up and it'll fade, a dream on waking, a hope half-dreamt and quickly buried. It's happened to her before. She's been so lucky in the past, had everything she could possibly want and so much hope for the future, only to have it ripped cruelly out from under her.
She hated the world for a long time after that. She hated everyone and wanted nothing more than to cause hurt like she'd been hurt. She kept them all at arm's length, knowing that if she let them close enough they'd only leave her or betray her or hurt her some other way. Knowing that it would break her if they did. She built herself up into a marble goddess so no one would notice the cracks.
And then he gave her a chance to feel something other than helplessness and terror and hate. When she met him, he was dying, life slipping from between his grasping fingers. And she was the only one who had the power to destroy him – or to save him. She nearly destroyed him. It would have been so easy, just to take what she wanted, what she needed, without ever having to let him close enough to reach her heart. Without ever letting her walls crumble. Without ever taking a chance of letting someone else touch her.
And that was when she realized she was becoming the man who had killed her.
She tries, now, to let the man she loves, loves with all of her cold and mangled heart, see her in all of her flawed and terrible beauty. She tries to see beyond her fears and let him underneath her marble skin, behind her marble walls. There are no secrets between them, not anymore. She tells him everything, and she listens, really listens, to whatever he has to say. She tries her hardest to think of him first and to make him feel the way he makes her feel. Because she knows she'll never be able to repay him for what he's done for her. She'll never be able to show him how much he really means to her.
But she can damn well try.