[How quickly she delves straight into the heart of the matter. Cutting through bone and sinew and piecing into what he truly felt -- how simultaneously frustrating and disconcerting, how keen Rosalind could be. He should be impressed, he would be impressed, if hearing it did not feel as if it exposed some kind of vulnerability in him. Like hands tearing open his rib cage to show his beating heart within.

There's no sound at all for a long moment, just a stillness, not even the rhythm of his breath.]

I should think that I'd prefer that you keep it, so that I can experience what commiseration must feel like, after all these long years.

[It's worded as if it must be a joke, and yet one might parse something more serious in it than that. She's right, that no one else has experienced even a sliver of what he's gone through. That those from Eos would look at him with disdain and hate -- rightfully so -- but also assume that they know what kind of person he is; that is the fastest track to getting under his skin, because they don't know. How could they? They didn't understand.

Rosalind has glimpsed at what ails him, even if it were not the full brunt of he experience. In some ways, this bothers him in ways he didn't expect. And in some ways, he rather enjoys that she may suffer in some similar manner as he.]

My days of healing are long gone, my dear. [The flame in his hand comes back to life, casting its odd shadows again.] My role isn't to save anyone these days. I merely wonder if you understand just what it is you've taken into you, what lives under your skin now. And I'm jealous, admittedly, that you could free yourself from it on a whim.

[Where he cannot.]