Alexa was created ill-prepared for this. Molech did not teach her to hear the unspoken, or feel the quiet heartbreak. She was not meant to shed tears, or hold the grieving, or fold the hurt into her arms where she can whisper quiet words. It's gonna be okay, Dolce. We're gonna get through this, Dolce. Things will get better, Dolce.

Every word, a dagger through herself. Every word a lie.

Quietly, she rocks, back and forth.

She's hurting them. She's hurting them, and she can't stop, and she's hurting herself.

She's going to have this conversation over and over again. Which would be easier to do--no, that's a fucking lie, every one will be harder than the last--if she knew what she could even say.

Rocking. Holding him, she realizes, like a comrade she's never going to see again. Like a fallen comrade, still warm, but going oh so cold. A comrade, soon in the ground, never to be talked to again, because after this point, they will be dead, and she will be gone.

"I didn't want to come on this trip, initially."  She has no idea what she's saying. No plan, no perfect sentence planned out. She doesn't know where this goes, but... She looks up at the warm face under the hoodie, and dares to hope.  Maybe it will be alright. Eventually.

"I had no choice," she hesitantly continues, and buries her face in the wool. She's hurting you, she's hurting her, and maybe if she can hug hard enough, she can say sorry enough. "Redana--you know."

"But Hades--he offered a wish. And I still didn't want to be here. But I at least had an idea. A hope that--maybe, if the stars aligned, and the gods were willing, and we survived--maybe, just maybe, I could be my own. That I could be something other than what I was.

"And now I... I am. Somehow. 

"I was sure, beyond doubt, that only an act of the gods could change me."

No, it was them. All of them, telling her, over and over again, that it was okay to be herself.

"But now that I can be who I am... I don't want to lose that."

She squeezes him tighter. Never is an awfully long time to lose a friend.

"Given the option of crossing the rift--maybe losing all of that progress, of losing all of my memories, of losing things I can never get back--or staying here..."

Gods, she's going to lose them.

She's quiet, rocking, holding him in her arms, listening to the hurt she's doing and wishing she could stop.

"... You know, Dolce, I don't think you've ever told me what your wish was. I know what Vasilia wants. And Dany's probably horrifically noble and self-sacrificing. But you? What waits for you, if you decide to cross? Is it worth it?"