---

"I'd not have been able to focus elsewhere."

The words had been downed in the man's martini glass, but Elisabeth heard them all the same. She placed her own drink on the counter, considering its implications in silence.

They had both been drinking too much. Perhaps this was the point when it would be wise to stop.

"Only if that is the definition -- being understood for all that you are -- I think only one person in the world embodies it for me."

And how strange it was, for that person to be the most wanted terrorist in all of Hoenn: Cillian Quinn. Someone she had allowed into her utmost confidence because of blood spilled on both their hands.

No matter how delicate and unstained they seemed now, here, in this quaint little bar.

"I think there are some things that are better left misunderstood, is all. There's a danger in giving the wrong person too much of you."

As the jazz music swelled around them, Elisabeth rested her chin on her hands, turning to Callan with a somewhat wistful expression.

He seemed like a decent enough person.

Neither he nor his Unovan daughter should have to worry about a crime syndicate. So delicately, she diverted the subject to something safer.

"So tell me. How do you know DEREK HOFFMAN? Speed dating?" she asked instead with a brightening smile, allowing the conversation space to lighten, to breathe.

Social ✿ Outfit ✿ Callan Young

---

"I hope so, too."

Given that Cillian Quinn was one of the most wanted men in Hoenn, that hope strained more than most sentiments.

"It sounds like you've both had quite a shift in circumstances since then. Gym leaders both, and in your case, sudden fame," she replied, gracefully descending from the bar stool. The Shaymin mewled up at her indignantly, and she lifted the small, wriggling hedgehog onto her shoulder. "You seem to be taking to it well, though. Dangerous work or no."

Something she was familiar with, albeit in a different setting, with a different sort of danger.

At his invitation, she glanced over at him paying for their tab with some amusement. "Are you so eager to prolong the cynicism of my company?" she asked, then laughed. Instead of answering, she simply kept his pace as they departed into the newly-fallen night. The lanterns from before seemed all the brighter for it, and the sea breeze had cooled down the lingering heat of the day.

"How's Cathrine Fisher?" she asked nonchalantly.

Social ✿ Outfit ✿ Callan Young

---

"Pokémon battles make me think of my father." The admission came out suddenly, something unexpected as Elisabeth glanced skyward. The stars had begun twinkling overhead, far-away in their distant beauty. "He loved chess, and games of strategy. Battling was one manifestation of that, for him. He taught me most of what I know."

Though she'd learned from Rowan Wrynn, and Rocket, how to view it as more than that. As a means of achieving victory, no matter the personal cost.

A breathless laugh swept away such thoughts as she confided, "I'm terribly competitive, actually. I got that from my father, too."

Conversation was something Elisabeth enjoyed, too, for her own reasons. Perhaps it was in part that similar impulse which drove her in battle -- to calculate the odds of something, to understand the battlefield around you for what it was. This, though, was a part of her that felt older.

Some clandestine part of herself that wished to understand the people around her, as a way of making herself feel less alone.

"Perhaps not. Then again, I'm not someone who hides." Her gaze turned to his, face illuminated by the festival lanterns. "Where I live and work are one and the same. If you need flowers, you know where to find me."

Elisabeth didn't imagine he would, though. He was busy enough with two professions, as was she. Even if Callan only knew of the one.

The lighthouse was coming into view as they continued along the street, its beacon of white light banishing what remained of the darkness. Elisabeth didn't mind being aimless, allowing her curiosity to follow him wherever it was he intended to take them.

It wasn't as if she had any plans that were being delayed.

"That's a shame. You two seemed well suited," she replied, glancing up at the tower on the shore. "She's a writer, I believe? I hope it's going well for her."

At his follow-up question, however, her expression contorted with something between a scoff and a sneer. "BARNABY FINCH? Whatever gave you that impression?" she asked, whipping about to face him as her Shaymin yelped in surprise at the suddenness of the motion. "Let me be perfectly clear. It was Martín del Mar who made the mistake of inviting his company that day, not me."

A thousand simmering resentments sprung up to the fore, which Elisabeth bit back with fierce restraint. Instead she focused on the statement prior to this ludicrous insinuation, breathing out the tension in her shoulders as she did so.

"Some people are more suited to being alone. I suspect I'm one of them." The wind had caught her braid in its grasp, teasing out a strand of hair that she tucked behind her ear. "I don't know if that answers your question, though, exactly."

Social ✿ Outfit ✿ Callan Young

---

Listening to Callan wax poetic about his feelings about Pokémon and battling made for a relaxing stroll in the summer night air. The bonds between Pokemon and trainer were something she had thought of herself, sometimes, though it was a part of her mind she had learned to shut off and compartmentalize as needed.

Smuggling cargo-loads of Pokémon on behalf of Rocket had never been her favored pastime, but it was a necessary one to pay your dues. As was the knowledge that in a life or death situation, her life came before that of her Pokémon always.

Those things were easier to forget day-to-day in her own flower shop, working alongside her Pokémon in her gardens. Her fondness for them was allowed to flourish there.

Her fondness was permitted there in general, she supposed.

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

This, however, drew out a sudden laugh of disbelief as Elisabeth raised an eyebrow. "Oh?" she said, the sneer darkening her expression. "Is that what I seem like to you, then? Someone who chases fame, in HNN reporters and elsewhere?"

Her tongue cut its foes swiftly and sharply, and had for years now.

Usually before she could think to stop herself.

Kindness admonished her more than most things. She could meet mocking blows and cruelty with a parry and riposte, but sincerity found the vulnerability in her defenses; Elisabeth wrapped her arms around herself, looking away as the seething hate in her words dissipated with the unexpected question that he posed to her, now.

"No," she said finally, the single word simultaneously deflated and spoken with the full weight of conviction behind it. "No, it doesn't frighten me. I think I find the opposite more upsetting, to tell you the truth. I trust my own company. I can't say I'd feel the same of anyone else's."

She turned to face him, her own emerald gaze pensive. "I don't think it's the same for you, is it? You put too much value on being loved."

It hadn't been intended to come out critically, but the implication slipped in subconsciously nonetheless.

Social ✿ Outfit ✿ Callan Young

---

The way Callan looked at Elisabeth, in this moment, sparked some silent warning in her. A familiar voice that rumbled low like distant thunder whispered cruelly in her mind: "Watch how you talk to people, Lisa. You'll give them the wrong impression."

She loathed how right that man had been about her, always.

When the musician turned his gaze to the sea instead, Elisabeth released a breath she didn't realize she had been holding. The way the blonde held herself spoke of something statuesque, stoic and unmoving, as she listened to him.

Callan was more of an optimist than she was.

"The past is strange," she said, watching the moon's rays dance on the smooth expanse of sea. Wailords crested the waves, sleek and glistening with seawater. "I think you and I... differ... in our approach to it."

Elisabeth ran from her former life in Kalos, burning it completely to the ground. She buried her pain in the deepest corners of her mind, where it could crawl out in nightmares, or lash out suddenly in fear. All it took was a single unexpected touch to awaken that primal, defensive instinct in her, turning her into a punishing thicket of thorns and briars.

"There's something to be said for accepting who you are," Elisabeth conceded to his point, then frowned. "It has been my experience that the person life turns us into, isn't always the person we'd like to be."

The Shaymin on her shoulder yawned softly in the wake of that confession, and the florist petted the Pokémon gently before turning to view the festival lights behind her.

Had sunset really been that long ago?

"It's getting late, and the shop opens early tomorrow," she said, voice hushed in the night air. "We've taken enough of your time, I think."

Social ✿ Outfit ✿ Callan Young

---

"I don't think some of us ever stop running, Callan," she said, a distance to the words as she smiled. "At least it's something to do, hm?"

Perhaps she hated herself. Perhaps she didn't. It was difficult to know how Elisabeth felt about the reflection in the mirror, most days.

So she tried not to think about it for too long.

As they approached the partygoers nearby, Callan's fame once more brought attention to them both. Her Shaymin squeaked in surprise as slurred voices asked for autographs, and Elisabeth turned to him to give her farewells before departing.

"Thank you for the company," she started to say, before she stared dumbly at the ketchup packet in his extended hand. His explanation only confused her further. "How did you even know about...?"

And then Elisabeth's frown steepened, her green eyes narrowing.

That wild-haired woman from the mainstage, skyler dross. How many people had she told about this?!

"My. How generous of you," Elisabeth said flatly, closing his hand around the packet as she rejected the offer. "I'm afraid you'll find more use for it, however, than I will. Have a good night, Callan."

With all the elusive grace of a Misdreavus vanishing into the ether, Elisabeth slipped into the growing crowd unseen, navigating her way to one of the taxis stationed there.

In mere moments, she was gone, nothing left to suggest she had ever been at Splashfest in the first place.

Social ✿ Outfit ✿ Callan Young