Chapter Text
A girl stood on the last stones of a broken bridge. Light coalesced around her, shining from golden eyes and the long pale hair floating around her in a halo. Short horns grew from her head, breaking into small points as they swept back.
The wind carried whispers, too soft to understand, shushing through his ears like a thousand falling pages. A shout cut through the rest, as sharp as the curved spear lying by her feet. A man in armor raced toward her despite the long gap between them. A grotesque snarling mask hid his face. He leaped impossibly high, sword glinting. His scream echoed through the remains of her home.
Betrayer.
The sword drove through her to the hilt. Wind wrenched the man from his feet and flung him aside. He smashed against stone walls, bones and armor cracking. He did not rise again.
Blood stained her beautiful dress black. More spluttered from her cherry lips and stained her snowy skin.
This was not the path she was promised. Nor was it the promise her presence required. It was all the more precious for being a path she chose, however briefly she could.
Shaking fingers gripped the sword’s handle. A horrible sound came from her wound as she pulled the blade free. It clattered to the ground. The girl fell after it, crawling to the dying, horned man behind her.
“With the blood they have spilled, I shall grant their rain,” she told him, taking his clawed hand in her bloodied palms. Her hand was so small beside his. “Wait for me in the stars, - - -.”
Her voice gave way to the sound of paper being slapped aside.
He tried to open his eyes. This wasn’t for him, wasn’t part of his existence, he could feel it in his bones. His eyes rolled and slid closed without permission.
His name. Someone called his name, the demanding shape of it fading in and out.
The girl collapsed against her lover. Crimson spread around them, edged in the gold fire overtaking her skin. The liquid shivered and rose in countless small drops. She opened her glowing mouth—
Atsushi shot upright. He grabbed his chest, yukata slipping down his shoulder, hairline soaked with sweat and blood loud in his ears.
Smoke drifted over his futon, serpentine and stark against the ornate sliding door.
That was not his closet’s door. It absolutely was not the door to his dorm, either.
Atsushi flailed out of the nest of someone else’s blankets, falling from the bed’s raised wooden platform. He froze on hands and knees, listening hard, but no one came to investigate.
He sat back on his heels, bare toes digging into chilled wood. The room was old and strangely laid out. One wall was made of stone, the window large and the glass dirty. Two were solid wood, with latticed paper allowing light and air to filter in along the top. A desk was built right into one corner. Other than that desk, the futon, and Atsushi, the room was barren.
“Hello?”
He cringed at the echo, ears ringing.
When no one replied, he got to his feet. How had he gotten here? How long had he been here? The fact he couldn’t answer either of those was bad—What would Kunikida say to do next? Probably figure out what the last thing he remembered was. Atsushi thought hard, turning to take in the room again, but he didn’t know. He’d been at the agency. And then he’d been at the library. And then he’d been walking…
And then there was a girl behind his eyes.
A dream, or something else? Atsushi ran his tongue over his teeth. There wasn’t any strange taste, just the usual cotton-mouth of a nightmare. He checked his nails and his balance and would’ve checked his eyes if he’d been able to, but the desk proved entirely empty of mirrors or even pens.
He didn’t think his thinking was impaired, but now that it was a genuine concern, how was he supposed to know what was normal and what wasn’t? Tanizaki and Dazai hadn’t been very clear on what impaired meant, either. He wasn’t strangely happy, and his head didn’t seem to be floating, but… he shook his head. If they’d drugged him to get him here, he couldn’t tell.
Atsushi tiptoed to the door. Once again, he listened, ear light against the shoji. Then, carefully, he eased the door along its hidden track and stuck his head outside.
A dark corridor stretched in both directions, the walls made of a light wood.
“Hello,” he called again, anxiety curling beneath his skin. “Is anyone there?”
Air rushed out from behind him, murmuring like water over rocks. Atsushi spun.
The soft light filtering through the room shifted. Dust rolled, gathering in long streaks. Words. There were words shimmering in the light.
The stolen princess awoke…
A thousand whispers read the words in overlapping voices.
…troubled dreams clung as the morning’s dew…
Atsushi darted forward, flailing his hands to scatter the words. Then he threw himself from the room and slammed the door shut. Neither words nor voices followed him out.
The outside of the sliding door wasn’t right. Strong black lines swept across the opaque fusuma panel, joining the traditional landscape stretching across all the other panels that made up the wall. Atsushi looked left and right. They were identical but he swore he could smell something cooking a long ways off. Breathing deep, Atsushi followed his nose, stopping every few feet to slide open a panel and peek into the room beyond.
Most were empty. Soon, however, shifting the panels began to change the path he took, opening the corridor into a larger living area. It took some time to figure out which configuration of panels brought him closer to the wonderful aroma taunting his poor belly.
A low table was lavishly set for breakfast. Steam curled above rounded bowls of rice, alongside miso soup, a plate of vegetables and tofu, another plate with fish, something that looked like it was pickled and two more plates heaped with things he didn’t recognize. His stomach growled loudly.
Atsushi wrapped his hands around his gut and called out, “Hello? Is anyone there? I’m, um, kind of hungry, you see, so if it’s alright with you…”
No one answered. He did another loop around the open space, shifting panels around to expand it further. Whoever cooked and carried so much food to the dining area had to be nearby. But all he could smell was food. He hadn’t heard a single footstep or sliding panel, either. The trays must have beaten him in by a few minutes at best, with how hot they were, how could someone disappear so fast?
“I have a lot of questions, and I’d really appreciate you coming out to explain some things to me. I mean, did you need help with something? You could have just come down to the agency, you know. My coworkers are all pretty talented.”
Atsushi chewed on his thumbnail. It was hard to think with so much food next to him. His mouth was watering crazily.
“It’s a little rude to bring me here and then put out food but not sit with me,” Atsushi announced.
This time, he took the silence as a tacit invitation, dropping onto the closest cushion and murmuring a thank you as he reached for the finely made chopsticks. It was as delicious as it smelled. He forced himself to eat slowly and politely, keeping both an eye and an ear out as he cleared one tray completely. He wasn’t rude enough to eat his host’s tray, as tempting as it was.
Instead, Atsushi sat back and cradled a cup of tea in his gloved hands. There wasn’t any sugar, yet when he risked a sip it was perfectly sweetened.
“Thank you,” he said loudly. “That was a wonderful meal. I hope you enjoy yours, as well. Or not, I guess, since you’re letting it go cold.”
One side of the room was brighter than the rest. Curious, Atsushi drained his tea and slid aside a panel he hadn’t noticed before.
Sunlight spilled across the engawa. More shoji doors marched along the edge, each made of a single rectangular pane of glass in the center, surrounded by small white squares. Through the glass, a path made of stones and moss wandered into lush greenery.
A breeze tousled his hair. Voices moaned unintelligibly. He tensed and turned slowly toward the table.
…once again, the lord did not come to dine with her. If this was her duty, she had not expected it to be such a lonely affair…
Atsushi squinted. The words didn’t seem harmful, though he couldn’t make sense of them at all. “What lord? Wait, are you saying I’m her? The princess? No, sorry, that was silly of me, wasn’t it? Does this ‘princess’ need help or…?”
The words didn’t answer, dissolving as readily as they’d formed.
“Okay,” he muttered under his breath, prodding a panel aside. “That’s definitely not very helpful.”
Wandering around inside wasn’t getting him anywhere. Maybe whoever made breakfast was out in the garden, and that’s why they didn’t hear him calling. It was as good an idea as any, so Atsushi stepped off the engawa, grateful for his boots.
Had he been sleeping in those? He couldn’t remember, but he was wearing them now, so obviously he must’ve had them on before. When he found his host, he’d have to apologize.
He stopped, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun. Or maybe he didn’t owe an apology, since whoever put him in that bed had left his shoes on in the first place.
The garden was as confusing as the inside of the house, paths splitting off every handful of feet. He tried to stick to the widest path so he could retrace his steps easier, having to backtrack more than once when he was too distracted by the garden to realize the stones beneath his boots changed.
There was just so much to appreciate. Everything managed to straddle the line of wild and curated, and there were so many colors in all directions, he didn’t know where to look. Flowers and trees and statues and lanterns and hanging bells… he lost himself for a while on the edge of a deep stream, watching fat carp glide through the water below his toes.
Beyond the stream, the path brought him to an ancient tree with drooping branches and leaves of the richest, darkest purple he’d ever seen. The branches swayed lightly, casting dappled light over the stone table tucked beneath its canopy. Two deep blue ceramic cups sat on the table. They looked like tiny pieces of the sky.
“Is anyone here?” He didn’t expect a response, but it was annoying to continue being so obviously ignored. He tried a few more times, raising his voice. Then he ducked under the hanging branches and picked up a cup. It was warm to the touch. “Are we playing hide and seek? Can we play a different game, instead? Maybe one where you tell me what’s going on. I’m pretty tired of this one, if I’m honest.”
The leaves rustled around him.
Atsushi groaned. “This again?”
Beside him, words etched themselves against thin air.
…She savored her tea, recalling her mother’s prophecy...
“Prophecy? Like, telling the future?”
He wanted to scoff and call the words’ bluff, but since learning he could turn into a tiger there didn’t seem to be anything too farfetched to believe anymore. What was a little foresight against cloth that could cut through whatever it felt like?
“Okay. Did you want to tell me about this, uh, prophecy…? Or maybe the girl and her mom?”
He waited a moment and then sighed with his whole body, slumping slightly. “Of course not. Okay, well, I’m all done playing now, thanks. I have an actual job and a lot of things to do that aren’t this, so I guess I’ll keep looking for a way home. I need to let Kyouka-chan know I’m alright, she’s probably noticed I didn’t make it back on time again.” He put the cup back down and double checked his pants pockets on the off chance he’d somehow not noticed his cell before now. “Crap, you took my bag too, didn’t you?”
Atsushi twisted, looking around like it would materialize before him. Part of the reason he’d gone to the library was to make sense of some files, which meant those files were still in his bag. Oh, he was going to get such a lecture when he got back—well. Only if he showed up without it. He’d just have to find it before he left. And his cell phone, those were expensive.
The mere thought of trying to replace his poor secondhand phone made him shiver.
Two identical paths led in the rough direction he’d come from. Since no one was with him to help choose or play rock-paper-scissors, Atsushi did a quick round of eeny meenie miny moe and set off. He’d gone hardly more than a dozen feet before he realized he’d chosen wrong. None of the flowers blooming along the edges were familiar and he couldn’t smell water anymore. But when he turned back to take the right trail, there was no second path leading from the table beneath the tree. Atsushi shoved at a manicured hedge where he thought the trail should be, getting himself scratched up both arms and across his face—for nothing. There was no hidden path on the other side. Instead, he found himself inside a little alcove with a tiny shrine carved from a stump.
A frustrated growl leaked free. “Fine! Back the other way, I guess.”
The remaining path grew less and less well kept. Atsushi shrank from the growing shadows on either side, the trees seeming to loom overhead. The stepping stones gave way to a thicker, springier moss, indented slightly in the middle as though something large and round dragged itself down the path often. Just as he was debating once more turning tail, a stretch of tightly packed rocks broke through the shadows.
“A wall!”
Atsushi bounded through the greenery. He could climb to the top and get a better view of the land and the house. If he could figure out where he was, or even just how to get out…
The thought died when he broke free of the last hanging vines, and found the remains of a great wooden gate. The curved roof was intact, streaked with jagged black marks, like lightning coursed through the wood rather than igniting it. One door hung properly, held in place by an enormous metal pole. The second door was splintered into a dozen chunks strewn across the stone entranceway.
Whatever destroyed it came from outside.
He swallowed. The wide, flat stones of the new trail curved out of sight. When he picked his way through the debris, he found himself at the top of a steep slope. Trees grew thickly in every direction.
One thing was for sure: he was not in the city, which made getting back much more complicated. It also raised the risk of getting lost in the woods and ending up in an even worse situation. He did not want to relive his experiences after the orphanage threw him out.
“As long as I stick to the road I’ll be able to get back,” Atsushi mumbled, chewing on his thumbnail.
Choice made, he began to walk. And then walked quite a bit more. The path—a road, really, with how wide it was now—meandered back and forth, presumably to make the passage easier than going straight up or down. It must not be used often, though, since the forest was trying to swallow it whole. Many of the huge gray stones were broken. Bushes and flowers and even trees as tall Atsushi grew out of those cracks, roots snaking across the stones to cling to the forest itself.
Eventually, the road straightened out and spilled him into some kind of courtyard: a big paved square with crumbling walls. He could see where buildings used to stand, both from the rubble and the younger vegetation overtaking certain spots.
Whatever was going on here was definitely beyond his pay grade. They should’ve taken Dazai or Ranpo. Or, possibly, not kidnapped anyone at all and actually approached the agency the right way to have an actual case opened, because he had no idea what was going on. Other than how it was probably bad. Definitely bad, Atsushi correct himself, for him specifically.
“Okay, I’m here,” he announced, looking around. “You took the other path away because this is where you wanted me to go, right?” Then he stopped and wrinkled his nose. “I feel like I sound crazy, but I’ve said worse things out loud, probably.”
And no one could hear him anyway, so it didn’t matter.
Atsushi stepped through another gate, giant doors hanging wide open, and found himself on a bridge. His wrists began to itch with fear, heart tripping faster behind his too-tight ribs. As though in a trance, he stepped onto the bridge, body slow and purposeful as it approached the shattered edge.
A bridge to nowhere.
His pulse thundered behind his jaw. The gap between his section and the next was so large he wasn’t sure he could leap it, even if he shifted entirely into the tiger. It didn’t look very stable either, leaning heavily to one side. Both stone and wood bore old scorch marks.
Beyond the far end of the bridge, all Atsushi could see were more trees. Their leaves blurred together into a brilliantly green blanket.
That didn’t feel right, but he wasn’t sure why.
The wind curled around him from behind.
…A dragon’s sacrifice…
The image of another bridge overlapped the one he stood on, phantom sections filling in some of the missing pieces. The wind shifted, caressing his face, holding the longer sections of his hair aloft.
Distant green gave way to orange and red. The forest burned on both sides, but she stood tall. Shouts echoed and golden light bounced from a blade, presenting an unknown, unpredicted choice.
…long had she known what was written in her future…the blessing in her blood…
Atsushi blinked. The ghostly image disappeared. Something wet trickled down his face. He touched it, confused when his fingertips showed clear water rather than a smeared red.
For the first time, he looked down beyond his toes.
Water. Far, far below, much lower than it should be, though he didn’t know how he knew that, either, just that the sight made another tear slip free.
Dizzy, Atsushi turned away.
For the first time, he could see the mountain he’d walked down. And it was a mountain, soaring high into the deep blue sky. At the tallest point, a castle loomed even higher, sharp spires determined to pierce through to the heavens themselves. The longer he stared, the more the castle seemed to shift. Huge stained-glass windows glittered, giving the castle countless eyes without an ounce of mercy. The spires grew taller and more pointed, the stone darker and dirtier, and his breath more and more shallow.
A slithering black shadow tore over the teeth biting into the sky. It moved almost too fast to see, rushing across swaying treetops. Back and forth, back-and-forth, snaking straight for the bridge.
For him.
Fear gripped him by the throat. His spine creaked as he forced himself to look up.
A dragon as dark as midnight arrowed through the sky. Huge pronged horns swept back from its head. Two long whiskers writhed as it opened its cavernous maw. The creature roared, shaking the trees.
Atsushi covered his ears, jerked back—and fell.
Air rushed past, voicing the scream he couldn’t in millions of voices. Too late, he stretched out a hand. The bridge grew smaller and smaller.
He was going to die. Even if the tiger’s power could undo the damage of the fall, the impact would surely knock him unconscious. Water would fill his mouth and his lungs and drown him before he ever opened his eyes. He was going to die. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to leave them, the people he’d begun to love. Atsushi kept reaching for the distant bridge.
He didn’t want to go.
The air around him shook with the dragon’s roar. A sinuous body flashed past the distant bridge. Three clawed toes stretched out, carving him from free fall so suddenly his body hurt.
Stunned, Atsushi dangled from the beast’s strange fist. Claws dug and pinched at him as he curled himself as small as he could manage, scrabbling to clutch the creature’s toes. His hands were so small and pale against the black scales. Atsushi looked up, following the tendons of the creature’s wrist all the way to the beast’s underside.
Crimson lines flickered over the black scales. They didn’t hurt, even when they surged under his palms.
The dragon flew past the bridge and up the mountain. At the peak, the castle no longer held even a memory of the orphanage. It towered above the greenery, white and serene with six layers of curved roofs. They circled the building twice before Atsushi realized the beast was looking for a place to land.
“Hey,” he shouted at loudly as he could. The wind stole his voice, whipping his hair into his mouth. He slapped at the strong digits holding him captive, but the beast took no notice. “Hey! I don’t think—Ohhh no no no!“
The dragon’s spine rippled and the paw holding Atsushi drew in close to the body. The beast dove, snout slicing through cold air, intent on the open space beside the fortress. Atsushi held onto the beast for all he was worth and screamed. The ground hurtled upward.
The creature curled into itself, long neck and head tucked over Atsushi. He squeezed his eyes shut.
A furious noise nearly deafened him. The dragon’s grip disappeared.
Atsushi hit the ground hard. He cried out as his arm snapped, the sharp pain whiting out the sensation of his body bouncing and rolling to a stop near the building’s wide steps. He lay there until the agony in his arm faded and his squashed lungs remembered how to expand. Then, moving much like an old man, he slowly got his hands beneath himself and pushed up onto his knees.
The groan he heard came from the side.
Atsushi looked up and his jaw dropped wide open.
Across the lawn, a man lay in a black heap, angled away. A tree bowed over him, the trunk fractured from absorbing his momentum. The man grunted and shoved himself onto his hands and knees in a mirror of Atsushi, though he kept his head low.
A tail poked from beneath his long coat, thick and black, with a long wispy tuft of reddish-gold fur at the tip. His chest expanded, and the man—the dragon—staggered to his feet.
Burnt-gold horns rose from short black hair. They were much smaller in this form, reduced to three prongs on either side, with the blunted points tinting closer to red.
Atsushi rushed to stand. “Are you okay?”
The man whirled, nearly falling again when his tail moved. Atsushi found himself staring into dark silver eyes lined with red.
“Oh,” he breathed, awestruck. “It really is you.”
“Who else would it be,” Akutagawa spit. He sneered, licking at his lip with a distinctly too-long tongue. “As though any of your idiotic detectives could have caught you.”
The tail and horns threw off his balance. Atsushi let him take his time stalking towards him. Akutagawa’s scowl deepened and his tail began to thrash behind him.
“And just what did you think you were doing, weretiger?” Akutagawa grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him close. The pretty red eyeliner he thought Akutagawa wore turned out to be a delicate swoop of scales. “It’s your fault we’re in this cursed ability. Do not think for a moment I will permit you to avoid responsibility by something so trivial as dying.”
“Thank you for saving me,” Atsushi murmured. He wrapped a hand around Akutagawa’s wrist, rubbing his thumb at another patch of tiny scales. They were so soft and warm to the touch.
Akutagawa shivered and stepped back abruptly, flexing his hand. Curved claws tipped each finger, the skin blackened to the first knuckle, as though he’d dipped them all in ink. He watched Akutagawa bring a hand up to cover his mouth, palm out, and then the weight of Akutagawa’s announcement hit.
“Wait, this is an ability? You’re serious?” He bent over, hand on his knees. “Oh, good. Okay. I’m not crazy.”
Akutagawa sighed. Claws scraped over Atsushi’s head as the dragon-man yanked him upright by his hair. “You cannot possibly be so stupid you did not even realize you were no longer in Yokohama.”
“Hey, I knew that much! And I was investigating because a bunch of weird stuff keeps happening! What if I’d just been kidnapped like a normal person and not,” his hands sketched out the frustration he’d been boiling in ever since waking up. “You know, normal for us?”
Akutagawa scoffed and shook him, seemingly just to make him yelp before letting him go. His teeth were much sharper than a human’s should be.
“If I’m in an ability, then how did you find me, anyway?”
A feathery eyebrow arched. “I read the book, imbecile. Presumably that is how you also found yourself here.”
“No, I meant, how did you even know I was in an ability—wait. Wait, book?”
Akutagawa held up a hand. “Calm yourself. This is not like The Book. According to your smug little man-child detective, this is self-contained.”
“Do you have any idea how little that narrows down which person you’re talking about?”
“Kyouka grew alarmed when you did not return at the proper time. Are you such a child she must keep track of your comings and goings so meticulously?” He didn’t give Atsushi a chance to do more than make an affronted sound. “I was summoned to be interrogated as to your potential whereabouts.”
Akutagawa stepped back in, bringing them nearly nose to nose. “And why do your detectives believe I would have such useless information, weretiger?”
“Uh.” Was it his imagination, or was he having to look up, properly up, at Akutagawa all of a sudden? “Probably because we do kind of end up spending a lot of time together lately? I mean, you told them I went to the library, didn’t you? And I bet you knew I was heading toward that bench we like.”
Irritation flashed across Akutagawa’s features. “I found your bag,” he admitted in a little growl. “Were you walking and reading? How have you survived this long if you’re so oblivious to your surroundings?”
“Sorry I worried you, and Kyouka, and the others. But I don’t understand why you’re a dragon in here. Where did you even show up? I was in a bed. Oh! And there’s been these really creepy words that keep popping up, have you seen them? Oh my god, wait a minute.”
Akutagawa blinked at him, mouth curled slightly in amusement. The longer sections of his hair swayed by his cheeks. He was definitely taller by at least a head and Atsushi was absolutely not pointing it out.
“You said we’re inside a book, right? The library book I was reading. That’s what the words are, they’re telling the story! And you’re the dragon lord who kidnapped the princess!”
Akutagawa reared back, the faint smile on his face wiped clean. “How like you to cast me as the villain in any world, weretiger.”
“No, shut up, I’m not calling you names. I mean literally, that’s the only dragon in the story, the one who rules over storms and rain, specifically. At least, I think. And the words keep talking about a lord and a stolen princess, and well.”
Atsushi stretched up onto his tiptoes, putting a hand on Akutagawa’s chest for balance. He ran a hand over the antlers jutting out of Akutagawa’s thick hair. “You’re definitely a dragon.”
The heart under Atsushi’s palm tripped over itself. It felt like it took forever for Atsushi to settle back onto his heels so he could pull his hand back.
“And what,” Akutagawa murmured, voice made darker with the dragon’s underlying growl, “are you in this ridiculous tale, weretiger?”
“I—I’m the princess. I’m the sacrifice, hoping to be saved.”
Akutagawa reared back, clawed hand flying up to hide his mouth as he laughed.
“Hey!” Atsushi slugged him in the shoulder. Then he had to shake his hand out, since dragon-Akutagawa was apparently made out of much hardier stuff than regular-Akutagawa.
“The princess,” Akutagawa nearly wheezed. “You? Weretiger, you are many things, but weak and meekly awaiting rescue are not among those attributes. What drivel do you read? This sounds like Higuchi and Tachihara’s romance novels.”
Atsushi opened and closed his mouth, flustered. “How do you know what’s in the romance novels, huh? You read them too, don’t you?”
Akutagawa shrugged. “Or, weretiger, they discuss them. Loudly, and at length, and in my hearing.”
“Sure, let’s say I believe that. I have a different question for you.”
Atsushi wandered back to the castle, pressing one of the sliding panels out of the way so he could sit on the engawa. Akutagawa swept his clawed hand out in a sarcastic ‘go on,’ motion.
“You came to rescue me.” He waited a beat, meeting Akutagawa’s suddenly narrow gaze. “That makes you my prince, or my knight, or whoever rescues the princess in this ridiculous romance. So why are you the dragon-lord?”
Stiffly, Akutagawa grit, “This is the form Rashomon assumed the moment I materialized in this horrible place. Why are you a pathetic wretch of a perpetual victim?”
“I have no idea.” He let his feet hang, kicking them idly back and forth as he considered that, attention drifting down to the neat squares of stone lining the fortress. “But that’s got to be what I am, right? I woke up here. All the words are talking about a princess and how sad she is and something about her foretold destiny, or whatever. She sounds lonely.”
Akutagawa walked in close, until Atsushi had no choice but to look up at him. “You are a tiger,” he said, firm and sure. “Show me.”
It seemed silly, but it was obviously important to Akutagawa. Atsushi sat up and put his hands between them, concentrating. It felt like it took longer than it should, but his own claws began to emerge from his fingertips.
Akutagawa tapped them with his own and impulsively, Atsushi tangled their hands together. Akutagawa allowed him a moment to inspect their claws, comparing them, before he held the tiger’s up before Atsushi’s eyes.
“Remember what these are capable of, foolish weretiger. You have never accepted your fate without a fight; this obnoxious ability will be no different.”
Heat rushed to Atsushi’s face. The wind returned, gently ruffling through Akutagawa’s hair. Between his horns, the story-ability wrote:
…how could she not love him for all that he is?