Again. She is thrown violently back in time to the grand halls of Tellus [i]again[/i]. Every breath, every halting step, and every frantic flicker of her eyes only confirms what her heart is desperately wishing was true. That she is back. That she is home. That she is loved.

There are fingers playing on her jaw. They feel cool and soothing against the heat of her skin as they brush up her face in one direction and then flutter back down in the other. The skin that touches hers is roughened by months of work aboard a derelict space ship, but the texture excites her. Up and down, up and down. Skotia pulls a shivering breath from Bella's lips.

There is breath against her neck, hot and steaming and perfumed. Her nose tingles. Her brain tells her she smells mint. Her eyes flutter in helpless pleasure. And then she feels lips. And then teeth, the tingle and pressure of tiny, gentle nibbles on her skin. Too delicate to be possessive, this is an act of worship.

There is lightning racing through her body. Every touch, every squeeze, every teasing weight pressed into the softness of her body sends columns of surging pleasure racing from the tips of her ears down to her toes. She is not strong, here in the night darkened embrace of her home. She is better than strong. She is [i]wanted.[/i] There's a hand working at the plunging line of her dress and pawing greedily at her breast from underneath the fabric, and another pleasuring her jaw. The weight of an entire person giving all of themselves just to attend her own delight, trusting in the strength of her arms to keep him from falling to the floor even as he spends every effort turning her legs to jelly. 

There is a honeyed tongue speaking words to fill her heart, words to fill her mind, words to make her heart tremble with desperation. And then that tongue slides up the length of her neck and across her face, all the way to her lips. She feels the warmth and the wet spreading everywhere at once. It consumes her.

She is home. She is dreaming, don't wake her up. She's home and these hands belong to Her and this voice belongs to Her and these kisses are Her kisses and these whispers are Her whispers and it must be true, it must, because everything is right. The hardness of those muscles is exactly what she remembers and the slightness of the body is right too and she smells it, she can't have but she swears she does, she does, she [i]does[/i], the sharp aroma of her Princess' sweat just barely not covering the floral sweetness of her perfume. She is home. Loved. Wanted. Loved. Loved. Loved! Greedy, possessive fingers squeeze her until the noises start, and among the moans, her confession:

"Re, Reda! Redana..."

Bella shifts. She has to, if her dress is going to come off. That tiny motion tugs her skirt across her garter, and presses the vial against her thigh. And that little bit of pressure turns her moan into a scream. Her muscles freeze to adamantine hardness in the space of a single breath. Her mouth closes and her teeth clench through the drool still dribbling out her lips. She reaches. Down in the deepest core of her body, she feels the spark. Her hand trembles as she reaches for Skotia's, even now holding him aloft. But she does reach for him. She takes his hand, and pulls it off of her. Her next sniff catches the acrid stench of cigarette smoke.

And she screams.

Stone floor cracks under her heels where she plants her feet. Her spine straightens and then arches over backward in pain and in power as she tosses her head back and shrieks with the kind of foul primacy that could scare a beast like the Eater of Worlds into hiding. She howls in a horrible, shrill pitch which echoes through the halls and shatters every illusion of where she is and what she has to do. Nobody could miss her, not in all the planet. The noise she makes will haunt the dreams of hundreds of Azura tonight. Maybe more. But who cares? Fuck them. Fuck everything. Fuck--

"Aphrodite!!"

Bella crushes the head of a serpent statue with enough moss and grass grown over it in that way of reclaimed garden fixtures that it must have survived the bombardment of Empress Nero all those hundreds of years ago, and must have thought it had outlasted danger forever. It could not survive Bella. Her lungs fill with the name of the god of love, and she spills it through every corner of the Satrap's domain. Her voice is venom to crack stone, shatter glass, wilt flowers, rust spears, crumble warriors into dust. It's not enough. She throws Skotia away from her with a gentleness that belies all the rest of her crackling aura, and her deadly eyes.

"You bastard! You old twisted fuck!" she screams through a cracking voice and a face already filling with tears, "What do you want from me? What else can I give you?! What gets to be mine? What? WHAT?"

Her claws tear down a wall that looks too much like his face. Bella seethes. She hisses and shudders and pulls at the air around her face, held from touching herself as if by some invisible force. Her howls are cut short by sniffling gasps, this ragged, feral thing in fancy clothes that belong on people. That were put there by a hand that knows her better than herself. The Auspex shows that hand slipping away from her into shadows forever, and her ELF cuts through the night like a sword.

"I gave you my whole life! Every last fucking day of it! Fuck you! Fuck you and Apollo both! What was the point of stringing me this far along just to drop me on Artemis' fucking hit list, you miserable wrinkled bastard? Fuck you! I'm not going out pining like some horny useless slut! Let! Me! GO! If you think..."

The night cracks. It splinters along a thousand fractal lines spinning along a web of power with Bella at its center. And with a swipe of her claws she shatters the cloak of darkness into nothing, and the Endless Azure Skies come rushing back into view. Bella trembles with the effort of containing the rush of power trying to tear her body to pieces. 

"Just try and stop me from protecting my family tonight. I'll kill you too, god or no."