Her lips are for drinking coffee and her eyes are for staring into Machia's. Her skin, in all its varying states of marking and disrepair, is an engine whereby the heat of her body may be discerned from the sweat on top of it. Her breath is for gasping - first the desperate panting of a cornered and tortured animal, and then the slower more reverent 'oh' of a hiker observing an unexpected sunrise. 

In short, that is what Madeleine Cross is worth. That is what she's for. She is only vaguely aware of the fingers disappearing toward zero, and only when the hand lowers completely does it cross her mind that there is a challenge for her to fail. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, -1, -2, -3...

Her face turns redder. Her heart ceases to race, but simply flutters instead. Why won't her body work right? Why won't her brain? All of that was awful but she's still Autumn Wolves Can't Won't Chorus. So what is? Why is? This... feeling? She sips coffee with undignified desperation and shrinks away from the aggressive face held much too close to hers. 

"...Ah. I knew it. The moment where it switches to kindness really is the hardest part. That was a total failure. I'm sorry."

She's still there. Machia is still there. Even the coffee is still there, which is somehow the most intense thing to realize of the lot. Steam is hissing off of several parts of her body as cubegel repairs her poor abused torso but all she can focus on is the light and delightfully fruity notes of the drink still held as if in offer, as if she were worth this beautiful treat prepared in the exact way she prefers it. It's a specialty cultivar, even, and the longer she considers that the more of her brain seems scrambled.

Was. Um. Was anybody speaking just now?

"In, in, in my... defense," she stammers, "I, I only messed up that bad because of you. If it had been, uh, a-another face, I, er. I wouldn't have failed. Your eyes are just so... or, no, it's really your smell? N-no, I mean! I don't! I don't... know. It doesn't matter. You're the one Taowu will use against me, if it comes to that. So you're the one I have to overcome."

She sighs, a noise that is three quarters sniffle. Uncountable minutes of condensed pain she endured as a crystal song all creep across her now, all at once felt as phantoms in the form of rapid healing. 

"I can't, uh. D-do that again. Right now. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Please. Hold me. I'm at my limit..."