A/N: You can consider this a continuation of shattered.

Ren

I rolled a die on my desk. Three. I rolled it again and got a five. So my bet was on 3:50. Not bad. That gave me about fifty more minutes until Nora needed to wake up.

I liked to roll dice and pretend the numbers I got meant something. It was calming and a rough sense of the future was nice. It helped me think about as much as shuffling cards did. Which was a lot, but at three in the morning, there wasn't much anyone could do. Not even the jug of coffee in front of me could calm me down.

Nora was sleeping. This was good. She didn't sleep very well. Most days she would need me to sleep beside her, so she could try and control her semblance. When I didn't sleep, she'd have strange dreams and wake up calling for me. When we were younger, I couldn't decipher if she was narcoleptic or an insomniac. I've now decided that she's both.

Two hours, a new record. By now she would've woken up wondering where I was or at least crying. This was peaceful, a welcome change from the normal mumblings. That would be my cue to wake her up before she started screaming. It wouldn't be very smart to wake up Pyrrha and Jaune.

Nora

I was in the hallway. Ren wasn't here. He wasn't sleeping. I was alone. Panic.

Ren wasn't sleeping. I had to wake up right now. I started to run. I knew this hallway. I ran and I ran. The exit was somewhere here. It was too dark to see where I was going. I was too afraid to turn. The only thing I could do was keep running forward. Sooner or later, I would reach the next checkpoint.

There was a light up ahead. That was different, and it was a good sign. I reached behind me for Magnhild, but she wasn't there. Okay, that was a bad sign, but this was a dream. One out of two wasn't a bad start. She was bound to be around somewhere. I ran faster.

The light was actually a four-squared window. It was bright outside, the midday sun shining through. Ren was standing on a plane of grass, his back to me. He turned to look at me when I started banging on the window. There was no way he could have heard me. I was at least three floors up and he burning something on the ground: Magnhild.

Ren

It was 3:20. I had roughly 30 minutes left before Nora would wake up. I was halfway through my history paper for Dr. Oobleck and almost done with highlighting Nora's notes for Defensive Weaponry. She tended to sleep a lot during class. Narcoleptic and all that.

I'd have to start making breakfast soon too. Everyone liked pancakes which made things easy, but that didn't seem like a good long-term plan for the rest of our years at school. We'd been having it too often and their sugar levels just weren't right. Jaune needed more meat and Nora could do with less maple syrup. Maybe bacon and omelets. That would hold a lot more protein and I could sneak some vegetables into Nora's portion without much problem.

When we were younger, all the teachers believed that maybe our thoughts were linked. The other kids made fun of her, saying she was going to end up being the monster's bride. Turns out Nora could project her thoughts into other people's minds. While it was useful in combat to send quick messages, it made her dreams turn into a roller-coaster of emotions.

If I was asleep at the same time she was, the likelihood of her having a good dream went up. We would be in the forest and end up making rugs to sell to Jaune or something. At worst, we'd end up being partners forever and she'd be throwing tiny bits of cake at my wedding with some faceless humanoid robot. Either way, the dreams were strange but not too alarming. If it turned ugly, I would try to wake her up from the other side. It was fine, just a little draining since it felt too real. My body would wake up the next day exhausted more or less.

It's on nights where she's sleeping alone that I should be scared. On nights like these, her dreams became a maze for her to walk out of.

Nora

I woke up. Ren was sitting at his desk. There were two in the room: One for Jaune and Pyrrha, and one for Ren and me, but I never used it, so Ren put all his stuff inside. It was very neat. He normally sat there to work on homework.

"Ren?"

"Yes?" He didn't turn around, but the sound of his voice calmed the storm in my mind. I already felt a little better.

"I had a nightmare. I was in the hallway. It was dark. I didn't know where to go. I didn't see you and I didn't have Magnhild. I was so scared. You…Why didn't you sleep?"

"Because I'm sick of you."

I started to laugh before I realized what he said. I sucked in a deep breath. "Ha, what?" I reached for his arm but he moved out of my grasp. He never liked anyone touching him but he couldn't really mean that. He couldn't really be sick of me.

"Shut up."

I didn't say anything. I wasn't obeying him. I just couldn't think of anything to say. I normally didn't listen to anything Ren had to say anyway. He didn't say very much, but he said every word was important which means nothing he said was REALLY important.

"You're annoying. It's always the same dreams. You always have the same nightmares. I'm tired Nora. I don't want to deal with you anymore. Take care of you own nightmares and leave me alone."

Ren

I sighed. 3:45. I had five minutes maximum.

I walked quietly over to her bed. Hers was right next to mine, with a shelf in between the four, separating her from Pyrrha. My bed was next to the wall, which wasn't a bad formation. It gave me some breathing room, but I could reach over to her if need be. This was one of those nights when this was important. She was sweating. It was starting. She was mumbling too. Incoherent gibberish, most of it. However, she also said my name sometimes.

I sat on the side of her bed, her head in my lap. Had it been anyone else, this sort of position would have made me uncomfortable. However, I was the closest thing to family that Nora had left. More accurately, she was akin to my helpless younger cousin that no one wanted.

Her mumbling got a little louder, not enough to wake anyone up, but it was a warning. I didn't have much time left.

She would start off in the hallway. This happened in every one of her nightmares. The hallway would always be the beginning. It was one she had walked in when she was a child. She was actually quite wealthy before her house burned down, or so she tells me. She could be lying but I'll never know. It was the next part the dream that could be problematic. Sometimes, it would be me dying, or she'll dream about her parents. If it was a really bad dream she'd be in Signal when were still kids. Those were some of her worst memories.

However, even that part would end. It was in the last part of the dream that I'll have to wake up. She's going to dream about a strange situation in which the two of us would be in a coma. We're older, nearly thirty. We lose a fight to a stampede of Goliaths and she ends up in a cycle of dreams while I try waking her up from her coma. When I fail, I leave her all alone and travel the world in search of reprieve from the guilt and disappointment.

I've never understood this last part. She'd never even seen a Goliath except in books but she could describe them to even the smallest minute detail. It's all a little bit impossible.

3:50. I start to shake her. "Nora."

Nora

I really do wake up this time. I'm sure of it. Ren's hair is normal. Just a tiny strand of pink. The room is dark, but there's a little bit of a sunlit sky outside. I hate these dreams.

"Ren?" He nodded a little. His hand on my forehead. It was cold. He probably didn't sleep at all. "I had that nightmare. Why didn't you sleep?"

"I can't always wake you up when we sleep."

"But I don't have them when you sleep with me. If you slept, we wouldn't have this problem to begin with." I was being a brat and I knew it. But Ren had the patience of a saint. He wouldn't mind me being a little bratty. He would forgive me. He always forgave me.

"You do. You forget when you wake up. Go back to sleep Nora. I'll sleep with you this time. We'll talk when you wake up. We have to leave in a few hours for our mission."

"Okay." He moved back to his own bed. It looked perfectly made and cold. That must be nice. His pink eyes watched me, waiting for me to fall asleep. "Ren?"

"Hmm…"

"Will you get sick of me someday? And not care about me anymore?"

He was silent for a minute, and the silence dragged. It felt a lot longer than a minute. The entire day could've passed in that minute with all that it held and unnerved. "I'm already sick of you. You never listen, and you always do what I don't want you to do, but I still care."

"So you're not going to leave me?"

He sighed. "No, Nora. I'm not going to leave you. But I am going to sleep, and you should too. I'll make you bacon and eggs in the morning."

"No. I want pancakes."

"You're getting bacon and eggs."

I could feel myself smiling as I drifted off to sleep.

A/N: Next chapter will be the last one. If you have any requests, I'd appreciate the ideas.