some kind of magic (by rustandgolddust)

There are things that go deeper than love. He is the only person who has broken through that barrier she erects around herself to keep the world out, a barrier she erects because she is afraid others will see through to that centre of her, which she believes is cold, dry, stiff and unlovable. She knows her own virtues - integrity, honesty, loyalty, duty - she is not modest about her worth, but these are nothing in comparison to her secret fear that she is, at heart, incapable of loving and being loved.

She doesn’t want unconditional love, which is all I can offer, she wants to be made other than what she is. Only he has broken through her carapace, and sometimes she still cannot understand why, why he bothers, why anyone would bother. Except that she senses that she brings him a tenuous kind of peace, that it is only with her that the restlessness that afflicts him like a fever can take wing. He is the only one, wary though he is of people, who has let her in. He has made himself vulnerable to her, and she is grateful.

In a sudden moment of clarity, she sees what she can do, what she must do. She steps across the road and gets in the car.