No soft touch of hand on wool. No comfort sought in the tactile sensations of friendship. No pleasure or allure in the chiming of a bell or in sharing an old drink again. No comforting touch. No reassurances.

No.

"Why do this to yourself, Dolce? You didn't have your shit together on that side and you don't over here either. None of us do, it's all the same. What, like remembering every vivid detail of all the times I tried to plot your death is some great treat for me. Give me a break."

Bella sighs. She rolls over onto her stomach and rests her chin in the crook of her elbow so she can glare properly at her friend. Above her head, her tail flicks irritably back and forth. The signal for agitation: only the tired slack across the rest of her body keeps her from looking like she is ready to pounce.

"Everything I remember is a punishment. It got put back in my brain so I would have to keep living with myself instead of getting to run away into that stupid wall of meat that called herself Mosaic. There's no answers in it. I'm not [i]lucky[/i]. I'm not fortunate to 'have Gaia to aim at', I was just desperate enough to see the Rift and think, 'yeah that's better than keeping like this'. It -- do you --" 

She takes several deep sniffs of the air, and snarls. It's all the same. He still smells the same, that frustratingly incomplete scent and total lack of guile that renders him incapable of reading all the cues he needs to have in order to fit in where he belongs. Which is the problem. Which is the [i]point[/i].

A hand sinks into the wool. There is no comfort sought there, only substance.

"...Right. It's not fair of me. Is that the point you were making? I'm sorry. You and I have never had a juicy tell-all sort of relationship. So you're gonna have to take it with a grain of salt when I tell you that as far as I know you didn't have a wish that you could have said out loud before the crossing. So if you don't have one now, that's just more of the same to me. You're still broken, Dolce. That's why you left, because there wasn't anything for you back there."

She uses him as a lever to push herself back onto her feet. Her palm on his skull is enough to knock him over, but when she rises she pulls him back up with her. When she lets go she shakes her head, and watches him with the closest approximation to gentleness she can manage at the moment.

"I'm not... I'm not telling you to fuck off. I'm telling you to trust the idiot heart that whispered my name to a monster that wanted to drink your blood. I'm telling you to trust whatever voice inside you that made you think you had to thank me for what I did to Sanalessa. I'm not telling you a story. I'm telling you that when you realize who that knife is really for... you'll know what your wish was. What it's always been."