I Hope The Eldritch Horror Learns My Name (And Other Good Ideas): I Hope The Eldritch Horror Learns My Name

“Stop handing your business card to passing monstrosities,” Hermann says.

Chapter warnings: Realistic depictions of neurological, physical, and bureaucratic trauma. War. Grief. Death. Mental illness. Regular illness.

Text iteration: Midnight.

Additional notes: This was stitched together from Designations and Aftermath outtakes. This series of scenes was too direct, in a way, too detailed to make it into the main story. For all that I’m about taking canonical (or canon-adjacent) trauma seriously, I do shy back from things at times. But this little sequence is one I’ve returned to, and this is probably my best effort at doing a good job with it.

I Hope the Eldritch Horror Learns My Name

The night is dark and quiet.

Fear gnaws its way out from its spawning place in the marrow of Hermann’s bones. Knee and shoulder, femur and spine. He’s cold.

“Sorry,” Newton whispers.

The word pierces. Hermann doesn’t reply. He can’t. All his senses are attuned to the street ahead. To the door behind, to the dark shop fronts and dark Hong Kong alleys where he imagines prowling and shadowy forms, employed by the PPDC, by world governments, by Hannibal Chau’s criminal syndicate.

The taxi arrives. That’s first. That’s all that matters.

“Sorry.” Newton leans into him, every muscle trembling.

A thousand half-formed stories that might explain his colleague’s appearance—red eyes, hair full of glue, sloppily dressed in the most boring articles of clothing he owns—rise and flit and fall away, each less plausible than the last. Exhausted, grief-stricken, drunk. Anything will work, as long as no one sees his eyes. 

His eyes are a problem.

“Sorry,” Newton says, as if in response.

Sunglasses. They need sunglasses, this whole cursed plan will fail without them. Newton won’t make it through airport security like this. His eyes are a vicious, unnatural red, the kind of red that might be threatening his vision. They’re streaming. He can’t keep them open. Hermann hadn’t thought to pack sunglasses—why would he? It’s night.

He’ll need to purchase them. Between sunglasses and their PPDC IDs, which include international pre-check validation chips for frequent travel, the odds against getting Newton out of the country aren’t insurmountable. A little goodwill from the average airport employee after the closing of the Breach isn’t too much to hope for, surely. The odds of outrunning the PPDC’s lumbering bureaucracy before the start of the Hong Kong business day aren’t insurmountable.

Their taxi slides into view.

“Sorry,” Newton says. 

Hermann clenches his jaw and screws up his resolve. “Be silent,” he hisses at Newton. “Shut up. Do NOT speak. Don’t say a word, Newton. Get in this cab and say NOTHING. Not one word. Do you understand?”

Newton makes a sound like something vital has cracked inside him.

Hermann reflects that later, all of this will touch him. Now, it can’t. There’s no room for emotional upset in his plans. No room for chance. No room for anything but technical precision on a challenging and ever-changing game board.

Hermann suspects that eye irritation and weeping are not mutually exclusive, and that both are at play. Hermann pulls a handkerchief from his pocket, wipes Newton’s face and makes sure his glasses are well-seated.

The taxi pulls to the curb. Hermann opens the door and manhandles him into position, shoving him down, protecting his head, sliding in beside him. Hermann tells the driver their destination, then pulls Newton against him.

“Close your eyes,” Hermann murmurs. In the dark and close quarters, he can’t tell if Newton follows his instructions.

“He okay?” the driver asks.

“Yes,” Hermann says without elaboration.

The ride to the airport doesn’t take long at this time of night. Hermann doesn’t yet have tickets; he’ll be satisfied with literally any American city inside the Coastal Wall. Hawaii is not an option. He’d prefer California. Seattle or Portland would be acceptable. His mind churns through possibilities. 

The cab drops them at the International Departures Terminal. Much as he feels terrible doing it, he gives Newton the shoulder bag, fastening it across his chest. It’s not heavy, but it leaves Hermann free to help him, and it gives Newton a slightly more functional appearance. The man isn’t walking well at all, but with a bag he looks fatigued, struggling under a weight. 

The first thing Hermann does is buy Newton a pair of sunglasses. He exchanges them for the man’s glasses, pocketing the latter for safekeeping. The effect is better.

He plans to leave the man sitting near the Arrivals board while he buys their tickets, but even this small separation is beyond him. He settles Newton in a seat, walks three steps, and goes back for him. 

Strange as it must look, Newton sits at his feet while he purchases tickets at a kiosk, scans their passports, prints their boarding passes. 

They make it through security, the single agent spending no more than a few seconds scanning their pre-checked badges. They pass through a conventional metal detector; thank god nothing else is required. Newton is only able to follow the simplest of directions. 

Already slow, unsteady, and poorly coordinated, Newton’s gait falters as they near their destination. Once and then again he nearly falls, stumbling, his knees buckling. Hermann pulls him into a men’s room before something catastrophic happens. He drags him to the handicapped stall and presses him against the wall. He pulls Newton’s sunglasses off to find his eyes half-closed. His countenance has a glazed quality. Hermann’s seen this expression before; he’s intimately acquainted with the danger it represents.

The man is trying so very hard. The insight is piercing.

Hermann nearly loses his resolve. His eyes prick, his throat closes—but no. He pulls himself together. Hermann will weep later. If there is a later. 

“Newton,” he hisses. “Wake up.”

Newton’s eyes widen. He licks his lips and swallows.

Hermann realizes he has no idea how long it’s been since his colleague has had water. Food.

It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but getting him on that plane.

“You owe me this.” Hermann forces Newton’s jaw up and locks their gazes. “You owe me this. Newton.” His fingers dig into his colleague’s chin. “All of this is your fault. All of it. If you pass out inside this men’s room I will flay you alive with the edge of your long-lost trigonometry textbook. Do not test me. Do you understand?”

His strategy works. Too well.

Newton begins hyperventilating, and this time, the crying is unmistakable.

Hermann shifts his tone. “Do not breathe so fast.” He presses their foreheads together. “You will be fine. You will be fine.”

They board the plane. Hermann guides Newton to his seat and pushes him into it. Newton collapses, his muscles unable to control his descent. The man hasn’t spoken since they were outside the Shatterdome. Since Hermann said those awful things to him.

Gently, he tips Newton’s head back and pulls the bottle of eyedrops out of his pocket. Shielding the other man with his body, he removes Newton’s shades. The other man twitches sharply. The light must be painful.

“Shhh.” The sound is as soothing as he can make it. The man is trembling. He has not stopped trembling since Hermann pulled him off that gurney in the Shatterdome. What that means, Hermann can’t guess. He hopes it’s simply reactive, a result of terror, stress, and low blood sugar. Newton’s eyes are half lidded, unfocused. There’s nothing in his face to indicate he understands where he is, what he’s seeing.

“Relax,” Hermann says, holding Newton’s head, forcing one eye open, then the other, depositing the drops. Newton doesn’t move. He wipes Newton’s face with a handkerchief, then replaces the sunglasses. He sits, buckles Newton’s seatbelt, then his own. He wraps an arm about Newton and guides the man’s head onto his shoulder.

“Well done,” he murmurs. “Rest now.”

After only a few seconds, with a shocking suddenness, all tension leaves the other man’s body. His head lolls, nearly falling forward before Hermann repositions him. Hermann has a brief moment of unreasoning terror before he feels the rise and fall of Newton’s breathing. The man has lost what little hold on consciousness he had, but that’s all right. It’s a miracle he held on as long as he did.

Shortly, the plane will be taking off.

Hermann, now, is the one who’s trembling. He’s not built for stakes like these, or, rather, such stakes were supposed to fall away when the countdown clock stopped. He shuts his eyes and wills himself not to cry. He tries not to think too hard about what he has just asked Newton to do. It may be the most impressive act of human willpower he’s ever witnessed.

Does the man know what’s happening? Does he understand why Hermann is asking so much of him? His grasp on his surroundings seems tenuous at best. What have they done to him? It must have involved drifting, it must have, or something equally invasive. Is he drugged? Does he have brain damage? He seems terribly traumatized. Terribly. And yet how he tried. How he has always tried. Hermann feels an intolerable tenderness for the man; it is too acute to bear. 

He should have done more. 

He should have done it sooner. 

Through boarding and takeoff his mind lingers on Newton’s disorganized apologizing. The man seems to believe all of this to be his fault—that somehow he has wronged Hermann. Of course he thinks that. 

Hasn’t Hermann been consistently sending that message for years? Counting on the man’s arrogance and narcissism to be depthless? Some kind of impenetrable armor that would protect them both? They are no such thing.

Upon arrival in San Francisco they’re detained in customs. Hermann feels near the end of his resources. Unbelievably, he is relying on his father to get them through this, his father, who does not particularly care for him, with whom he has not spoken for five years.

He’s astonished he has not already been arrested.

What are the chances that, if they are separated, Newton will remain outside of PPDC custody for any length of time?

Slim.

There are now, however, people aware of his situation who might advocate on his behalf. Hermann has exchanged two emails with a UCSF neurologist, who, it seems, has been apprised of the situation by Hermann’s father. She may be able to prevent any further “collaboration” between Newton and the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. Ms. Mori too might take some action.

“Mmm.” Newton, skeptical, sways in his chair. “Sh’we maybe go somewhere else?”

Hermann steadies him. “Do you know where we are?”

“Mmm,” Newton says again, “myeah.”

Doubtful.

Hermann lets him go, watching him carefully. He’s beginning to believe that the man will have genuine, lasting neurologic consequences from whatever was done to him. He can’t reliably string a sentence together. 

It’s upsetting.

Even if he drifted shortly before Hermann rescued him, it’s been nearly twenty-four hours now. Why is he so disoriented? Why the slurred speech, why these slow, uncoordinated movements? The man can’t hold on to where he is, to what’s happening. At least he’s less distressed than he was in Hong Kong, in that he’s not actively weeping. 

That’s something.

Hermann is well aware there is a camera on the wall behind his head. He’d very much like to coach Newton through what to say should they be separated, but that unblinking lens gives him pause. How might they use such footage? It’s too risky.

In any case, Hermann doubts the other man can hold anything in his head long enough for it to make a difference. 

“Sorry,” Newton says, returning to the one thing he seems to be able to hold in his mind.

“Newton, please do not apologize.”

“But—” Newton’s voice cracks, “I—”

“Stop!”

He stops.

Hermann feels a rush of guilt and unease. This is radically unlike Newton. The man should not be this suggestible. The same thing had happened, Hermann realizes, at the airport. He’d told Newton on no uncertain terms to stop speaking and he had. The man hadn’t said a single word until he’d regained consciousness after sleeping through hours of their flight.

“Newton,” he says. “Say something.”

“I’m sorry, I—” the man starts listing in his chair, as though concomitant sitting and speaking are proving too difficult for him.

“Stop apologizing,” Hermann says, gently this time. “Tell me how you feel.”

Newton considers this. “Not good,” is what he comes up with.

Hermann reaches over and lifts the man’s sunglasses, Newton flinches but Hermann grabs his chin. “Look at me,” he says. “Focus.” The man tries, but he can’t force his eyes open under these lights. At least he’s more aware than he’d been in Hong Kong. Hermann slides the sunglasses back into place and lets him go.

He wants to ask Newton basic questions regarding orientation—where he is, what they’re doing, the year, the president—but again, thinking of that camera, he stays silent. He has known this man for a decade. He has made a study of his idiosyncrasies. He should be able to suss out some detail via a more circumspect route.

“What are you thinking about?” Hermann asks him.

“Lovecraft,” Newton says.

Right. While explainable, this is unlikely to help Hermann. 

“How do you feel?” Hermann does his best to normalize his tone.

Newton makes a distressed sound. “So impersonal.”

His words are forlorn and unhappy and exhausted. And the critique is fair. Of course Hermann is impersonal. Impersonal and cruel, more calculating machine than—

But, “Inaccurate,” Newton continues.

This sounds less like commentary on Hermann.

“Are you—” Hermann pauses, casting back in their conversation, “—critiquing H.P. Lovecraft?”

Newton swallows, licks chapped lips, and for a moment summons a specter of the arrogance Hermann so loves. “Can you think of anyone more qualified?”

“No,” Hermann admits.

“I, for example,” Newton slurs, “hope the Eldritch Horror learns my name. And I think most people are like me.”

“Most people are not like you.” Hermann merely intends to correct the record, but there’s a gentleness in his tone that has begun to melt the icy competence he’s put between himself and all that’s happened. “Ridiculous man. Stop handing your business card to passing monstrosities.”

“Sorry,” Newton whispers.

Hermann shuts his eyes. Controls his expression. Takes a breath. “Are you tired?”

“Myeah?” Newton is on the verge of tears, perhaps because Hermann had been unable to control the distress in his own voice.

“Of course you are,” Hermann murmurs. “Stand up.” 

He can’t do it without significant assistance. Why? Hermann has to pull him to his feet, help him sit on the table in the room, and then lie down. Hermann supports his head, easing him back. Newton makes a pained sound, and briefly starts to put up a fight against lying down. Hermann freezes, uncertain. Before he can decide how to proceed, Newton collapses back. Thank God Hermann still has a hand beneath the man’s head. Newton makes a pitiful sound in the back of his throat. He’s breathing rapidly, and there is a fine sheen of sweat on his face. 

“Are you hurt?” Hermann asks, aghast he hadn’t thought to check. 

Newton considers this. “Myeah,” he decides.

“Where?” Hermann demands.

“Where?” Newton echoes, as though not following.

The man isn’t moving. Again, why? His position on the table is awkward but he’s making no effort to shift. Could he be injured? Might this explain why the man’s brain is functioning so poorly? If he’s bleeding internally or—

The despair Hermann feels is crushing. It is, he’s certain, taking years off his life.

He runs a hand over Newton’s nearest arm, assessing the structural integrity of bone—

“Stop.” Newton pants shallowly, still but for the fine tremor that will not dissipate.

Hermann freezes, one hand on the man’s arm, the other beneath his head, trying to understand. Now that he’s thinking critically, he recalls helping Newton dress in the Hong Kong Shatterdome. He would have noticed if the man had been injured, but—he is, he must be. Hermann has never seen him in such obvious pain. “What is hurting you?” Hermann demands.

Newton doesn’t answer, but his breathing slows. He still hasn’t moved.

Hermann gives him a moment, then asks again, “Newton, what’s hurting you?”

“Nothing,” Newton replies.

Hermann, frustrated, digs a thumb into Newton’s bicep. The muscle feels overly toned. Pathologically so, perhaps.

Newton makes a distressed noise.

“This hurts you,” Hermann says. “Why?”

“Lactic acid,” Newton replies.

Hermann has the odd mental feeling of reaching into someone else’s memory, like slipping a hand into a pocket not his own.

“Overuse?” Hermann asks, unsure. Certainly the man had overexerted himself a week ago, on the day the world didn’t end, but—

“Myeah,” Newton confirms, “I had, like, a lot of seizures.”

“You what?” Hermann breathes.

“Mmm,” Newton says. “My eyes are liquid. Everyone’s are, but mine especially.”

Hermann presses gently with a thumb against the muscles of the man’s neck, and he whimpers but doesn’t try to pull away. This, perhaps, is why the man hasn’t been fighting Hermann; why he’s been so resistant to move, so strangely still. He lets up on the pressure slowly, and then very carefully slides his hand from beneath the man’s head.

“Newton,” Hermann says, insistent. “How many seizures did you have?”

“Herm’nn I don’t know.” Upset, Newton tries to sit, gets nowhere without help, grimaces in pain, collapses back to the table, panting. “I’m sorry—”

“Shhh,” Hermann interrupts him. “I know. You have told me.” 

He opens his shoulder bag and pulls out Newton’s voice recorder.

“Why don’t you dictate a letter to Ms. Mori?” Hermann suggests, handing it to him, trying to distract him and potentially learn something at the same time. “Why don’t you tell her everything that happened to you?”

“Kay,” Newton says. 

Hermann learns almost nothing useful from Newton’s wandering ‘letter.’ At least it distracts the man enough that he stops apologizing. He continues to make nonsensical comments about his eyes until Hermann finally realizes that his eyes must be hurting him. He checks his watch, accounts for time differences and realizes he’s two hours late on eyedrop administration.

I am the one who is sorry, Newton, he thinks, wiping the excess liquid away from Newton’s eyes with his thumb.

Newton very nearly loses consciousness in the hotel lobby. In the elevator. As they walk down the hall to their room. Dr. McClure had recommended hospitalization for this very reason, but, given she hadn’t insisted, Hermann had elected to manage on his own.

He may elect nothing else for the rest of his life. 

For the hotel, he chooses something huge, anonymizing, high end, before San Francisco property values had plummeted. He pays in cash and gives his father’s name.

Newton, he browbeats into staying mostly silent and mostly conscious. What had looked like a third wind in Dr. McClure’s office vanishes by the time Hermann gets him out of their autonomous cab. He sits with Newton on a bench, in a cold and misting rain, trying to force the man into a semblance of alertness.

He doesn’t need a miracle, he’s already had several. He just needs five more minutes.

“Newton.” Hermann keeps himself sharp, like the cool gray of the day. “Focus. Make an effort. Wake up. Talk to me.”

“I’m having some problems,” Newton informs him, more slur than words. 

“We just need to go inside, check into this hotel, and then you can lie down,” Hermann promises.

Newton looks at him like a biologist fresh from a face-down drag through Hell. “You seem tired,” he says.

“Astute as usual.” Hermann decides that two tangential sentences in a row are as good as he’ll likely get, and hauls the man to his feet. “It looks like I’m abducting you, Newton. If someone calls the police I will be so upset. Walk.”

Newton makes it halfway across the lobby before stumbling. Hermann yanks him upright before he falls. “We did not make it this far,” he hisses, not needing to feign his quiet rage, “for you to pass out in the hotel lobby.”

“But there’s so much walking,” Newton says.

This opening window of lucidity paradoxically fills Hermann with dread. He looks at Newton, more certain than ever that the man is about to collapse. He’s breathing hard, his color is terrible, Hermann should have put him in a hospital—this is just the last mistake in a long series of them.

“I know,” Hermann says.

“What if we just stop here?” Newton asks. So reasonable. 

“We cannot stop here,” Hermann says. “We are literally in the hotel. Do NOT lose consciousness.”

“Do you think that’s a possibility?” Newton asks, vague and dream-like, as though discussing some theoretical eventuality that has no bearing on his current circumstances.  

“No.” Hermann digs his fingers into Newton’s arm and the man makes a pained sound that Hermann is certain will haunt him for the rest of his life. “It is not. Keep going.” 

Newton tries to sit down in the elevator. Hermann shoves him against the back wall, pins him there, and pulls his sunglasses from his face. “They left me,” Newton whispers, window of lucidity closed again. His eyes are unfocused, red rimmed, half rolled back.

“Damn you, Newton Geiszler,” Hermann whispers in German, shoving the man against the back wall of the elevator, shaking him, wringing, hopefully another few minutes of consciousness from the man. “You had better not be talking about kaiju.”

Two more minutes, he begs Newton silently. Don’t make me drag you down this hall. There is a difference between sleeping and collapsing, and you, sir, are skirting that line.  

Newton makes it all the way into the room and to the bed before finally crumpling face down atop the covers. Hermann sits beside him, his body afire with fatigue and weariness and overstimulation. His resolve breaks and he wishes desperately that Newton were awake, if only for a few seconds, so he might spend even a handful of words telling the man that he’s done well, that the worst is over now, that it’s all right if he rests. 

“Newton,” he whispers, placing his hand on the man’s back. “Can you hear me?”

Nothing.

“All right,” he says, his vision blurring with tears. Using the man’s blazer as leverage, he pulls him onto the bed and straightens his limbs.

Newton moans weakly, in obvious pain at the shift in position. “I know,” Hermann murmurs in German, the words as soothing as he can make them. “I’m well aware that you’ve been pushed past all—” he can’t continue, not even in German.

He removes the pillows from the bed and sits beside Newton, eyedrops in hand. He lifts Newton’s right eyelid, dismayed by what appears to be significant worsening over the past several hours.

Newton twitches when Hermann administers the drops. “Shh,”

Hermann says, wiping the man’s eyes, smoothing, to the extent it’s possible, his hair. “No one makes an effort quite like you do,” he whispers, cupping Newton’s cheek. “You poor thing.” He runs a thumb along Newton’s cheekbone. “I couldn’t have done it, if our positions had been reversed.”

Hermann manipulates the man’s body as gently as possible, turning him onto his side, positioning him as Dr. McClure had done for his impromptu nap on the exam table. 

There is much that must still be accomplished—but Hermann cannot help it. He lies down next to the man, and curls around his back. Newton, pliant, puts up no resistance as Hermann pulls him close. For the first time in nearly thirty-six hours Hermann feels himself relax. His eyes prick and burn. He rests his cheek against the back of Newton’s neck and listens to the man breathe.

There is so much to do, but his head aches, his thoughts blur. 

He does not mean to do so, but he falls asleep.

He wakes to Newton screaming, thrashing wildly, and dear God, Hermann wouldn’t have believed the man had the energy left to fuel any such expenditure. Newton’s back arches against him, the scream is long and ragged, followed by a sobbing breath. Hermann tightens his grip on the man, pinning his upper body.

“Newton,” he says as gently as possible given the man’s semiconscious struggling. “You’re fine. You’re with me, we’re in San Francisco. You are fine, everything is fine. You had a nightmare.”

Or something worse.

Slowly, Newton relaxes, but Hermann feels tremors all through his body. He’s covered in a cold sweat. Shivering, maybe?

Hermann holds him close. He doesn’t think the man has really woken. He’s said nothing, made no attempt to shift his position.  

Into his mind comes a thought he can’t shake. If Newton falls ill now, Hermann feels certain it will kill him.

Hermann sits and looks at his watch.

Three hours gone.

Sleeping was, perhaps, a reasonable use of Hermann’s time, as he feels appreciably sharper, but Newton cannot be left this way. 

Hermann turns the man onto his back.

The man’s eyes open, but slide shut almost as quickly.

Hermann feels his forehead with the back of his hand. No fever. Not yet. Thank God for small miracles. “Open your eyes,” Hermann says.

Again, Newton cracks his eyelids, but can’t hold them open.

“Are you going to remember this?” Hermann searches the man’s face. “Who can say, hmm?”

Hermann goes to the wall, turns the thermostat up by several degrees, then opens the bathroom door and begins to run the shower, maximum heat. It is not overly cold in their room, but it isn’t warm, not yet. The air is dry.

“You’re a mess, Dr. Geiszler.” Hermann touches Newton’s hair, stiff with glue. “Quite literally. So let’s see what can be done, shall we?” he murmurs.

Hermann unbuttons Newton’s shirt, beginning at the collar. He drags the shirt tails free of the man’s jeans, undoes the buttons at his wrists, and tries to peel Newton’s shirt and blazer off in one piece. He tries to draw Newton’s right arm out of the clothing it’s trapped in, but Newton makes a particularly pitiful sound, his eyebrows draw together. Again his eyelids open, but his gaze is unfocused. After considering the problem, Hermann comes up with a topologically sound solution that will cause Newton minimal discomfort. He drags the clothing down by the sleeves, pulling it down toward the man’s hips, and eventually works it free from beneath him. The jeans are easier. 

The room has warmed as Hermann locates an ice bucket, fills it with warm water, and draws a bar of soap through the water a few times. Bucket and towel in hand, he returns to Newton. Nothing can be easily done about the man’s hair at the moment. Judging the water to have cooled sufficiently and the room to have warmed sufficiently, Hermann begins. He starts with the man’s face, removing the adhesive residue at his temples left behind after his EEG, wiping very gently beneath and around his eyes. He moves to the man’s neck, feeling the cords of taut musculature that must be hurting him. He presses gently with the warm cloth, and Newton moans, his eyelids fluttering open. He winces in the light. Hermann reaches for the sunglasses on the nightstand and slides them into place.

“Are you awake?” Hermann asks.

“Mmm,” Newton replies ambiguously.

“Try to relax,” Hermann says. “I expect this to help.” He rewarms the hand towel and runs it gently over the muscles in Newton’s neck. The other man’s breathing catches, but he doesn’t protest. Hermann continues, working his way down Newton’s body, then turning him over and working his way back up. Dr. McClure had told Hermann that Newton would be sore for several days. That his bloodwork showed signs of muscle damage. Everything contracts, she had said, but stronger muscles win out over weaker, and when that happens you get small tears in the muscle fibers. Based on Hermann’s assessment, the worst of it seems to be in the man’s neck, chest, abdominals and quads.

Once Newton is cleaned up, Hermann positions him once more on his back, applying gentle pressure to each muscle group with the warm water. It might simply be his imagination, but Newton begins to look more comfortable. Whether this is helping the man is anyone’s guess, but eventually he stops trembling.

“I will never put you through something like this again, Newton.” Hermann presses gently beneath the man’s collarbone, holding pressure with his thumb until he feels the muscle begin to relax. “I promise you that.”