A very quick AN to say: main character death is mentioned (multiple times) but the character doesn't ACTUALLY die. It's still very dark at times. And I don't own Rizzoli & Isles

CHAPTER ONE: BRAVERY, DETERMINATION, STUPIDITY.

"I really like it when a bad dream doesn't scare you...it inspires you instead." ~Fwah Storm

At five, Jane Rizzoli had her first nightmare. She remembered waking to her own screams - her Ma's face staring down at her, nervous, her brothers cowering behind Ma's legs, peeking out timidly at this unfamiliar scene. Ashamed to have put those looks on their faces, she resolved to never scream out again. After that night, she never did.

At ten, she rolled off her bed during the night, banging her elbow on her bedside table as she swung at imaginary assailants. By the morning, it was a vivid purple, swollen, and unable to be moved. She'd had to put it in a sling for a week, but she shrugged it off, saying she must have injured it during basketball and it swelled up since she didn't ice it. Nobody noticed the other bruises and scratches from other nights, accumulated while fighting in her sleep, because it wasn't unusual for Jane to sport multiple injuries at once. With time, she moved less and stayed under more calmly, and the marks faded.

It was at twelve when she realized her dreams weren't normal. She didn't wake it cold sweats after them, didn't want to snuggle with her parents, and never cried herself back to sleep. If anything, she arose peacefully, content. But when her friends told her about dreams of kissing the football star or of their 'nightmares' of attending class naked, she wondered why her dreams were never that way.

From the beginning, even at five, her dreams had been dark. She dreamt of tragedy: her family being kidnapped, her friends being killed, people being tortured, herself being chased because she had stopped a murderer. She dreamt of violence and death - others', but just as often her own. She would watch as she was murdered, as she took her last breath, and she'd wake in the morning and keep going like nothing had happened in the night.

At fifteen, she recognized the pattern. She'd started dying a lot more in her dreams as she got older - throwing herself in front of bullets meant for others, attracting the bad guys' attention so captives could escape, trading her life for theirs. She'd watch as she took her last breath, and her dream self's last action was always a smile, permanently frozen by death. She woke happier in the morning after those dreams. It was the ones where she failed that haunted her. She'd get trapped in loops within the dream, getting SO CLOSE to saving everyone only to watch as the others died anyway. And the dream would restart, Jane trapped in an endless cycle, armed with her new knowledge but making yet another fatal mistake.

Those loops haunted her. They made her calculate all day what she should have done differently, how to beat the dream, how she could sacrifice herself for the cause. Those were the dreams when she'd have to cover up dark circles, shake off teachers' concerns, hit her friends who dared to remark on her complexion. But all the while, she calculated how to sacrifice for the cause. She wanted to sacrifice for the case.

Because she never could win without dying herself. She'd learned to accept that. And she realized that all she wanted for her life was to die with meaning.

She considered the military but knew that as a woman she'd never see as much of the front lines as she wanted - needed - to be truly useful. She didn't think she'd be challenged enough as an enlist and she wasn't ready to wait for the four years of college to start as an officer.

She realized it one day when a cop ran by her on the street, hand reaching for his holster - she should be a cop. She'd be a target for bad guys, a woman in uniform. She'd be able to save people and take criminals off the street. And if she made detective, which Jane knew she could, she'd get into some dangerous situations, especially in a city like Boston. She made her decision. She was going to join the BPD.

Her dreams shifted to drug rings and terrorist attacks and shootouts, the largest possible incidents for cops. In her dreams, she'd save them all, and the dream would continue: she saw the honorable funeral, the stories of how many lives she saved, of how even in death she thought of others, and her life was good. She'd wake with a smile on her face.

It took a year on the service before she first feared for her life. She had been working for Vice undercover as a prostitute on a case, and they finally had a suspect. That meant they needed her to keep him "engaged", as her superior officer called it, as they moved into position. She'd taken him to an alley, and she'd kissed him, buying time. He'd pushed her against the brick wall, hard, bruising her back, but Jane had bit back the hiss of pain. His eyes flared with anger at her defiance, and he'd kiss her as his hand closed around her throat, squeezing, growing tighter as time went on.

Jane had had a moment of panic, before she realized - she had to hold on for long enough for her team to get there, couldn't let him get away, do this to any other girls. She'd stolen gasps of air when she could through the compression and willed her vision to hold on a little longer.

She passed out at the moment when her partner arrived, hitting him with a punch that sent him spiraling.

The department had called it bravery. Her partner called it determination. Her mother called it stupidity.

She dreamt for months of how it could have gone differently.

Author's Note: This story is fully written (two scenes need to be revised, but otherwise it's completed), which means I'll be uploading chapters very quickly. Hopefully you guys will like it! Please review if you can - it means the world to me, since this is the only way I'll improve - constructive praise and criticism! I understand this might not be a popular story in this fandom, but her dreams are very close to my heart, so please be sensitive about your reviews. THANK YOU. :)