A/N: So I thought I'd try my hand at an Autor fic. The premise for this fic was sparked by something Thyme in Her Eyes said in a review to my story "Grace" about Rue's name. A big, belated thanks to her.

Summary: Autor works through a broken heart the only way he knows how, with dictionaries.

Disclaimer: I do not own Princess Tutu or any quoted or cited material.

And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

--Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

The memory of her, the wine-red eyes, the black silk hair haunts him like the title of a book he can't quite remember but wants to, desperately.

Rue, Autor says the name he has overheard in the empty chattering of other ballet students . Rue he sighs reverently in his mind and looks for it in the musty pages of forgotten books because looking upon her in the flesh is almost too much. His heart feels it will burst from longing whenever he catches even a glimpse of her. He will offer it to her again, he dreams, and this time she will accept.

He finds glimpses of her everywhere. In ancient bestiaries, he learns that only rue alone of all plants is impervious to the deadly breath of the basilisk, which causes all vegetation to wilt and stones to crack. Only rue alone can withstand…and all the rest of the words are meaningless. O beloved, he thinks. Only Rue, he thinks.

From there, he turns to books of medicinal lore, hoping to catch a glance of her again and finds in her place delicate illustrations of small looping silver leaves. Rue, the yellowed pages whisper to him, an herb of remembrance, of warding and healing. The bitterness of the leaves…what does he care for the rest? O love, remember he sighs.

In dictionaries of dead languages he embraces her, Rue derived from reuo - to set free, because this herb is so efficacious in various diseases. And he holds the knowledge close to himself, close to his heart and wishes, O heart, never set me free.

But most of all, he seeks her in lines of poetry, holding her in his arms in meter and rhyme. "With rue my heart is laden," yes that is it, that is exactly it. He echoes the line to himself, not caring for the rest of the poem. Context no longer matters, the words that follow no longer matter because she is the only context, her name the only word in the world, and theirs is the only story he wishes to read. O, my very own rose-lipt maiden, he sighs in the chambers of his heart over and over again and forgets all the rest (1)

Rue rue rue his heart cries and he loses himself in the strange pleasing pain of love.

He learns much later, when all is over and she is as beyond his grasp as a character from a book, just what role she played in Drosselmeyer's fairytale. He sets aside Fakir's manuscript, feeling utterly utterly lost, as if the words he has been reading his whole life have meant something else entirely and no one had ever told him. She has her prince, a fairytale prince and there is no possible way he can ever hope to compete…

"But what's her real name?" he asks, his voice still numb from shock, betrayal.

"Whose?"

"The raven princess," Autor snaps, impatient with Fakir's obtuseness. "The human girl spirited away by the monster raven, and renamed Kraehe in his own image and then Rue in her own. What's her true name?"

"What does that matter?" Fakir snaps back, impatient now in his own right. "I wanted your opinion on the ending, not on the parts Drosselmeyer wrote--"

But Autor is no longer listening, he no longer cares for the rest. If she is not Rue, who is the girl he has been searching for in dictionaries and volumes of poetry, on faded parchment and freshly printed paper? If she is not all the lines and passages he has committed to his heart searching for Rue, who is she?

"A princess under a spell," he breathes in wonder.

"What are you going on about? Forget it. I'll finish it on my own." Fakir snatches the manuscript back and stalks from the room.

Autor has no time for him now.

If he can just uncover her real name, he is sure, she will step out of the story she has entered and become a real girl, not a princess beyond his grasp. When he finds her true name, she will leave behind fairytales and return to the real world. Like a spell broken with a magic word just at the edge of reality and memory.

It is an impossible task, a part of him whispers, but he has performed impossible tasks before, unearthed all the stories written on Goldcrown Town itself when no one else even thought to look. Town records, genealogies, dictionaries--surely his heart will know when he glances at her true name--he will scour them all and find her, his own rose-lipt maiden.

It is an impossible task, a part of him whispers, like writing. Elusive as all the ideas that seem to escape him when he wants to put them on paper, shadows refusing to be caged.

He takes down the first volume of the dictionary.

(1) This is a line from a poem by A.E. Housman:

With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.

By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade