Trust in me

Just in me

Shut your eyes

And trust in me

"Open your eyes!" he had yelled over the wind, holding onto her by the collar of her shirt and the crook of his cane.

"I can't! I'm scared!" she could remember crying back – and she was. So, terribly frightened. She should have known what his response would be though.

"Just trust me!"

She did trust him. So much more than was probably reasonable considering the short amount of time she had known him, but then, she felt like she had known him so much longer than that. Opening her eyes, Haru almost lost her breath at the beauty of the world below her, even as she knew she was currently rushing to meet it.

"I think I could learn to like this!" Of course, the instant Toto and all his friends came to her rescue, she knew she loved it. Walking down a spiral of beautiful black crows was a memory she would treasure. Even Muta couldn't dampen her mood at that moment.

You can sleep

Safe and sound

Knowing I

Am around

"If you ever need us, you will always know how to find us again, and the Bureau's doors will be open for you, be it day or night," he said, stroking her cheek tenderly.

Another memory to treasure. She'd make sure to stop by and talk to Muta at least once a week – with cake of course, since she had quickly learned that he was more amenable to any request with bribery, and disliked trivialities.

Haru had spent many pages in her diary and sketchbook on the Baron, sometimes asking of her pages what advice he might give her on a matter that was bothering her, sometimes just recalling that day, or rather night, that she had been fortunate enough to spend in his company.

Slip into silent slumber

Sail on a silver mist

Slowly and surely your senses

Will cease to resist

It had been almost ten years now, and Haru still dreamt of Baron, and the way he had made her dance in the Cat Kingdom. Some days, when she woke up from that dream, she wondered if it hadn't all been a dream in the first place, an elaborate fantasy conjured by her own mind. Those days, she would go back to the crossroads and find Muta, and talk for a while, reminding herself that it was real. Really real and had happened to her.

Even if it hadn't been real, that wouldn't have changed the way she wrote in her diary, asking it what Baron might do about a situation she was dealing with in her workplace. Neither would it have changed the way she compared every man that propositioned her with the genteel ways of the noble feline, ultimately turning the man down.

Until one man walked into her office. He looked like a human version of the Baron, though his clothes were slightly more casual. It was the same lovely ginger hair, the same soul-penetrating green eyes, he even had the same voice, and Haru couldn't help but wonder what was going on.

"Miss Haru, I hope you won't think me presumptuous, but I've spent the better part of a decade finding the right spell so that we could talk like this and I was wondering –"

"Baron…" Haru sighed his name out, interrupting what the man had to say, fainting in her chair and sliding down.

It was him, and he had come to see her. Her mind couldn't cope with that so quickly.

Trust in me

Just in me

Shut your eyes

And trust in me

Haru opened her eyes and saw his looking down at her intently, a worried crease in his handsome brow.

"I'm either not dreaming," she said, "or I'm having one of the best dreams of my life."

"Trust me, Haru, it's not a dream. I've put in far too much effort for this to be anything less than reality," Baron said, leaning in and tentatively brushing his lips against hers.

Haru closed her eyes, as she had done all those years ago, trusted him. It wasn't a dream.