"...It's stupid, isn't it? To kill someone for something they didn't do." Her face crumpled a bit as she laughed, something in her voice breaking with the hollow sound. "I don't think someone like you can know what it feels like, to bind yourself to the wrong person."[break][break]

Her breath hitched in her throat like a knife. Suddenly looking at Matias felt impossible, and her hands flew to her eyes seconds too late as she fought back a wave of emotion that surged so violently, she felt powerless to stop it.[break][break]

"You should hear the things he's done to other women," she managed to say, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand. "They're not my stories to repeat, but... I could have been one of them, Matias."[break][break]

I would have been one of them, a tiny, despairing voice in her insisted, stabbing her with self-rebuke over and over. I was stupid enough to be the next.[break][break]

And hadn't she become just like him, in her quest to understand that evil?[break][break]

"I can't live like that again. I couldn't. I just." She shook her head back and forth, golden hair tousled to and fro, as the words spilled helplessly out of her. "I don't know. It felt like, something I had to face. Something I had to do."[break][break]

As if she'd had no choice.[break][break]

She tried to breathe, and every breath felt agonizing, smothered tight against her chest. Her hands fell to her sides, and her tear-streaked face turned to him, raw and exposed in the moonlight.[break][break]

"I don't know what I was looking for. I don't know if I found it, either. But... I don't want to look for it anymore."[break][break]

That thorn embedded in her mind had been removed with Wo-chien's distance from her, allowing the gaping wound to finally attempt to heal.

[attr="class","ooc"] MATIAS SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"I think I just wanted to punish him," she confessed quietly, and maybe it was the way he didn't push her further that let her lean her head against his shoulder, exhausted by this unwanted mental toll. "I always have a way of punishing myself instead, I guess."[break][break]

Matias was the wrong person to rely on, too. But he was here, and for now, that was enough.[break][break]

It felt like she had precious little control over herself these days. What had been bitterness, despair, and rage had changed seemingly overnight into a wider range of feeling, from the lightness of knowing joy again to this purging of catharsis now.[break][break]

"I don't know why you care," she continued, and that thought could come off callous, though she didn't seem to realize it. "You two never seemed close."[break][break]

She'd never had siblings, but she understood family loyalty well enough.

[attr="class","ooc"] MATIAS SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

What an odd way to discover they were alike. Even when people spoke on their behalf, they didn't trust their intentions.[break][break]

This current moment was no exception. Even as she relied on Matias now for some semblance of comfort, Elisabeth wasn't sure how much she trusted him, either.[break][break]

The rain started slowly; the downpour came quickly. A light drizzle first misted the air, clouding up the night sky as the moonlight vanished behind a slow-rolling bank of fog. Elisabeth blinked back raindrops as she looked upwards, watching the world shift from the stillness of midnight to the tumult of a fast-approaching storm.[break][break]

"Come here," she urged, pulling him into the cramped warmth of the small boat's interior. She shouldn't have been surprised by the quality of the vessel; he was a Silph, after all, and likely had some access to that family's resources. "Likely not a good day for sailing," she commented, staring out the window as a choppy surface manifested on once-calm waves.[break][break]

Elisabeth shivered again despite herself, removing her drenched jacket before she began to wring out her wet hair. Emerald eyes slid towards him, curious.[break][break]

"You never mentioned why you wanted us to travel by sea," she opened, waiting for an explanation.

[attr="class","ooc"] MATIAS SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

Elisabeth braced herself for the clammy touch of his hands, only to be reminded again that heat radiated from every part of him, warming her from the cold of the wind and rain.[break][break]

"You said you wanted me to trust you," she reminded him, her own hand gently alighting on his forearm. "So I'm trying." An impossible ask, really, but one she was willing to perform for him. If her own vulnerability was to be collateral in that exchange, so be it.[break][break]

Worse men had known worse things about her, or so she told herself.[break][break]

As Elisabeth studied his face, however, a tiny frown pulled at the corners of her mouth as she debated voicing her true thoughts aloud. Trust went both ways, she decided.[break][break]

"There's something you're not telling me, though," she said finally, a question in her eyes. "What is it?"[break][break]

Outside, the storm raged, the low-rumbling of crashing waves threatening to rock against the boat. Suddenly the water surged, and abruptly Elisabeth found herself thrust into his arms, clinging to him as gravity spun.

[attr="class","ooc"] MATIAS SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"Kyogre is on the loose."[break][break]

She blinked, processing this information and the implied absence of a much-loathed captain of the high seas. It was enough to distract her from their intimate proximity, the wheels of her mind filing this away as something worth mentioning to declan walsh later.[break][break]

"I suspect your patron has opinions on that," she said, wondering if this was a releasing of a shackle for him, or a warning that his own deity might face the same eventual fate. "But why me? Rayquaza's Avatar would be the more suitable partner for such a thing."[break][break]

Well. Unless...[break][break]

"How badly did you hurt her?" she asked him abruptly, and there was no accusation in her tone. Just curiosity. "Was there someone else?"[break][break]

It made sense, Elisabeth reasoned. PENELOPE LIVY had looked at her that day in the flower shop as if she was a Seviper, slithering in the shadows to snatch unsuspecting prey.[break][break]

That knee-jerk reaction to Matias's presence near her made the pieces click together. Some woman, somewhere, was likely to blame for whatever ruin his engagement had faced.[break][break]

"You don't have to name them, if so," she reassured him. "Just a simple 'yes' or 'no' will suffice."

[attr="class","ooc"] MATIAS SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"I see," she said, as if nothing in this confession surprised her. She couldn't fault anyone for infidelity, exactly; her own marriage had been rife with it on both sides, hers fueled by a venomous spite that she couldn't shake even now.[break][break]

Maybe that was why agreeing to this arrangement with Matias had come more easily to her than she'd expected. She was used to justifying things like this, to achieve her own private vendettas.[break][break]

Did I sleep with him to spite his brother as much as anything else, she caught herself questioning, but ultimately, she decided it didn't matter. She'd already made her bed, literally and metaphorically, and now had to lie in it.[break][break]

"You can tell people it was me who stole you from Eva Morales, you know," she offered, meeting his gaze. "The League already thinks I was out to seduce Silph men for intelligence. Why not confirm their fears? I benefit from the notoriety, and you can protect..." She let the words drift off, allowing his mind to fill in the blank she refused to guess at aloud. "Well. You can protect your secrets," she finished simply.[break][break]

It couldn't change her status quo for the worse. If the League wanted to call her a whore, she might as well be one who destroyed an alliance between two of the League's most powerful Avatars, she supposed.[break][break]

Speaking of.[break][break]

"Is there no way to control Kyogre? Is killing it the only way?"[break][break]

Distantly, she recalled the Blue Shard that Velmos had gifted declan walsh, but said nothing.

[attr="class","ooc"] MATIAS SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"Which leaves you at an impasse," she finished. Rocket wouldn't surrender its Blue Shard to the League, and she didn't intend to change that outcome. Killing Kyogre didn't seem the answer, though, either. A balance was needed in Hoenn with Groudon and Kyogre kept in check by Rayquaza so that neither overpowered the other.[break][break]

An uneasy feeling told her the utopia that Matias dreamed of wasn't a utopia in reality. Voicing that seemed unwise, however.[break][break]

"I don't suppose it matters, either way," she said to herself as much as him. "Some things are out of our control."[break][break]

The boat's rocking slowly righted itself, adjusting to the steadying waves. Only then did Elisabeth register just how close she and the Elite Four had become, a tiny flicker of alarm sputtering back into existence as her heartbeat started to pound frantically in her chest. It suddenly brought to mind another situation like this one, embracing him in a lava-filled cavern where the slightest misstep could spell disaster at his hands.[break][break]

Strangely, she didn't have that same sense of self-preservation this time. Here in this damp, dim-lit place, he'd become a source of comfort, instead.[break][break]

Her heartbeat slowed with this odd realization, the tension in her body fading as quickly as it came. Without meaning to, she'd relaxed into his arms, basking in the warmth of him.[break][break]

"You can let go now, you know," she reminded him softly, voice muffled from where he'd pulled her into his embrace. You can let go, too, she also reminded herself, but it startled her to realize that she didn't want to.[break][break]

Something she failed to hide from him as she glanced upwards, emerald eyes expressing something to him they'd never had before.[break][break]

And though it wasn't the love he wanted from her, it was something just as human. Something born of familiarity and safety.

[attr="class","ooc"] MATIAS SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]