Channeling Bella For A Bit- She Must Be Terrified When Doey Snaps At Her Because What If It Means He

Channeling Bella for a bit- she must be terrified when Doey snaps at her because what if it means he doesn't like her anymore? What if he's bored of carrying her around and hearing her problems? If she gets taken off this project she'll go back to the work yard where no one wants to talk to her. The scientists might even consider her defective and just terminate her! What can she do, how can she make things better when the only thing she can do is talk? Is she even worth talking to anymore? It's going to be a long, painful silence until He decides to talk again.

I'm just gonna put what @squidling2005 put in the tags on this post as well:

And I am just going to grin very very loudly because I have clearly done something right here where people are going "Oh no???" from both sides of the fence ehehe. I was so worried that interaction would feel very one-sided, so the sheer relief I feel knowing that both sides make sense... and both of you are completely on the money. Before a sort of system, understanding is worked out it is a long and drawn out thing.

Neither of them know how to make the first move here. Bella is hyper aware of how much her entire situation hinges on him caring, if she makes him upset and he decides to stop caring anymore, she's toast. Course... somehow, the scariest part of that thought was the idea that he wouldn't want to be her friend anymore. It felt...realer, made her stomach hurt and her throat clench. He was a bit weird but he was also so nice and even though it was her fault the scientists could make him do all those things he didn’t want to, he never got mad at her for it… she pushed too hard, she could barely remember how to be a friend and she messed it all up.

Doey meanwhile is drowning under his own guilt, quite literally pressing himself as far into the corner as he can. He’s not bad they just made him wrong! He couldn’t help his head got so loud! And and and and- and he almost bit her, if he bit her she would probably die wouldn’t she? He hadn’t ever bitten anything living before but he knew very confidently she wouldn't survive… but even if she didn’t she would never like him again. She would be smart not to, why would you be friends with someone who hurt you… so he curls up as tight as he can and stays as far away as he can. Ofc this only can last so long, Doey is given a small (very small) amount of leniency with his form shifting but soon Bella is getting zapped and he has to pull himself back in shape.

I think at first they handle it by pretending nothing happened, they sit quietly at opposite ends of the room until he gets shuffled off to his containment cell for the night, then the next morning when reunited for work they just pretend the whole situation hadn’t even happened. They’re both kids, they don’t know what they’re doing, so they assume if they don’t talk about it then they can pretend it didn’t happen- until it happens again, and it’s worse. They end up sitting in silence for a while… but I think he makes the first move

Afterwards, while it doesn’t go perfect because they both lack the ability to truly explain how they feel and both are incredibly hesitant to admit their true thoughts, the pair of them manage to establish some understanding. Sometimes his head gets very, very loud, and when it happens he has to sit very quietly until it goes away. He didn’t mean to yell or bite, he didn’t mean to scare, he doesn’t want her to be scared of him. He promises he won’t do it again, he will, he will be much better!!

And Bella cries, or as close to crying as she can get in this body, because she didn’t mean to make him upset and she was so so afraid he didn’t like her anymore. And of course he is immediately insisting, desperately so, that he still likes her, that he was never mad at her!!! He’s not capable of crying anymore physically, but he has memories of the sounds, he can make those still. They manage to bumble their way through the idea that sometimes he gets very mad at nothing and yells at everything. Once again, it’s not perfect, no one feels great, but there is a sense of understanding.

Lucas helps a lot, for as loud and goofy as he is he clearly understands what is happening a lot better than both of them combined. Kids are observant, even if they don’t fully understand what they are observing, but both Lucas and Bella learn the signs of when he needed space. Were they older, more experienced, I am sure a way to actually help him through these moments could have been figured out, but the best they can do is just let them pass by.

Hopefully this comic text hybrid makes sense and is alright!! I had some ideas I didn’t know how to type, and some I couldn’t quite draw haha!