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"In the thousand years you've lived since being resurrected," she asks, "have you ever been involved with anyone?"

"Everyone is a baby to me," the wolf replies gruffly. "It would be far too strange."

She nods just once.

The staid woman reflects on it. Although it makes perfect sense, it's horrendously unfair. Of all the differing legends where an immortal chooses or earns immortality, this isolation was thrust upon him.

He did not agree to it. No higher power even gave him warning.

Though she was sure, had he heard such an invitation, he would have taken it.

Still.

Having to watch any form of companion he made grow old and die.

She didn't want to ask how that felt.

She could hardly picture it.

Perhaps it was for the best he didn't form any stronger attachments.

Aside from the maturity factor, surely his heart wouldn't have been able to take the many lifetimes of losing a spouse.

She suppressed a shudder.

He may be superpowered, but that , that would be pure torment.

So, he is left with only his current level of dissatisfaction.

Would he ever admit it?

If the quiet canine wanted to remain silent in the face of things best unspoken, she would let him.

"Cruelty upon cruelty is heaped upon your shoulders," the impromptu ruler of the city says, just as flat as usual but with a distinct undercurrent of sympathy.

"And you, 'mayor'?" The canine says the word sardonically. She was not elected. She asserted herself, and the beastmen submitted to her steely and cold self-assuredness the way a large Mastiff might submit to a tiny human woman half his weight because she spoke with authority and stared him down.

The furless, bare rodent had never been in a real fight in her life, and yet, even surrounded by heavyweight, fanged, horned, and even naturally armored beastmen, because of her origins, she did not flinch whatsoever at the idea of pain.

She was free.

That thought was the sweetest antidote to any suffering she might ever have to endure.

So she tilted her head up, and silently dared any tall, wide brute to try to throw his weight around.

At a deep level, unsure of why a mere woman like her could give them that kind of look , unlike any smaller species or lady they had ever come across, they would back up.

The sheer force of her personality secured her position.

She had gathered from Michiru that some of her initial experiences in Anima city had given her the impression that beastwomen suffered more than human women.

And the pink soft-skinned animal could not look the child in the eye and deny it, no matter how straight she kept her face.

So she just deftly avoided the topic.

Beastmen were wild.

The population of Anima city, as she kept careful tabs on its census, clearly displayed a lean towards men. Beastwomen would often rather take their chances with humans.

She did not begrudge them that decision whatsoever.

But she herself, she would stare them down, and if need be, get back up with the same leathery determination and defiance should she ever be knocked to the ground.

If they saw pain did not faze her, she thought shrewdly, they would most likely stop thinking they could manipulate her with the threat of it.

She had kept herself safe partially through associating with Shirou, because he was undisputedly the top dog of the place. But her own personal form of feigning and intimidation did not go misplaced, either.

A good thump of her cane, to make them wonder if it was a good bludgeon.

A quick flash of unnervingly long incisors in her normally flat demeanor.

Even *ordinary * rodents could chew through concrete.

Teeth evolved to crack the toughest shelled nuts ever devised by survival-driven protective plant parents.

They would just as easily go through bone.

Whether they were consciously aware of the knowledge or not, the animals instinctively picked up on the intent in her eyes. A strong hyena jaw's job was to splinter bone, but her teeth could pick up the gruesome hobby.

Even the immortal, godlike predator sometimes wavered under her imposing red stare, though she was quite confident that the break in his usual inexpressiveness had nothing to do with her particularly, and everything to do with the fact that her eyes had seen firsthand what he had done.

Even in his closest bond . . .

. . . he could not feel at ease. At home.

It was marred.

"I apologize," he said contritely at her long silence. "You do not have to answer the question."

He hadn't been glued to her side all her life. She could have had short term relationships. He didn't seem particularly keen to know. It was just a natural response to her own questioning.

"Married to the job," she said, equally as simple as his response.

He too, nodded just once.

Everyone is a baby to me. It would be far too strange.

"And I'm sure I seem like even more of a child, given you met me as one."

His voice does this funny little lurch at the subtle implication in her statement.

He could leave it be. He could ignore it. The clever woman has given him plenty of berth to do so.

"Rose, you are the most capable person in this whole city," the cool colored canine said, not sentimentally, but as a plain statement of fact. "And humans like to boast they are more rational than beastmen, my hotblooded brethren, but I'd like to see them debate you, or outdo your civil engineering."

It's not an acknowledgement. She knows that.

"Don't you dare ever feel inferior to me," the wolf growls slightly.

It's still not an acknowledgement.

But she accepts the praise for what it is.

She briefly feels as if she's standing on the edge of a cliff.

She is so, so horribly tired of watching him suffer at a distance.

She breathes shallowly.

"I'm not asking one single thing of you," she says, barely audible. "And I never will."

He was immortal. That was the long and the short of it. If she wanted to inflict suffering on him, she could manage that in much more brutish ways.

No, in this, she would accept his reluctance based on any grounds, death, or discomfort of association because of their shared history.

She could be strong and staid this way, too.

She could put her duty and debt to him as a person over any idle thoughts.

She could turn her eye to other mortals.

If the need arose.

"But. The next time you get yourself ninety-nine percent slaughtered," the icy and assertive animal said, "I expect you to let me cradle you while you're in pain. Is that understood?" The leader stated it as a general might give orders to a soldier.

"Yes ma'am."