"Would I?" He shakes his head. "Masks slip."

That was the thing about pretending: you could only do it for so long. The lens through which Gavin views the world is coloured dark, and he cannot imagine a world in which Elisabeth could have lived happily ever after.

She tends a quaint flower shop, but beneath that shop brews bitter poison. The beauty of her garden cannot mask the ugliness beneath. It shouldn't have to.

"I am much happier without mine."

He did not have to pretend that he would ever be good.

"Only you could say for certain."

He can sense her return to melancholy, the night's earlier cheer fading beneath grim speculation. He does not resist the shift in mood. When she toasts him with her sly smile, he returns a tight-lipped smile of his own.

How much was the alcohol, and how much Elisabeth Fiorelli's true desire to embrace her darkness?

"The world is not kind," he says at last, "so why should we be? A few drops in the ocean won't change the tides."

He was not yet Rocket when he learned of life's cruelties.

Even in the silence of the bar, Gavin must strain to catch her softened words.

She's staring at him as if she's one of the few to truly see him for what he was: no monster, only a man whose monstrous deeds have lengthened his shadow and given it claws and teeth and terror. Still uncomfortably human beneath it all.

So when she appreciates his kindness, she is not appreciating a mask. Kindness did not make him good; not in the ways that his crimes made him evil. It simply was, like many other parts of the multifaceted individual that was, in reality, Cillian Quinn. His compassion toward her is every bit as genuine as his brutality toward those he'd name enemy.

He reaches for her hand, slow and unbelievably gentle, to envelope it with his scarred palm.

"It's all right to crave kindness." The gold metal of his wedding ring shines in the low light. Tempest Quinn was always kind to him. "It doesn't make you a contradiction."

That such a simple gesture might be interpreted by another as one of advance does not occur to Gavin — he reaches for her not as a man seeking affection but as a friend offering comfort. What love had had for Elisabeth was strictly platonic, but no less enduring than the love he had for his husband.

He doesn't expect to shatter her.

He especially does not expect her tears.

Yet as he'd learned not from his family, who viewed such displays of emotion as repulsive signs of weakness, but from the husband who'd seen him at his worst and offered not judgement but comfort, he does not shrink away.

Her fingers tighten around his own, and he tightens his grip in exchange. Still loose enough to break, should she change her mind, but strong enough to serve as the anchor she so desperately needed.

"It's all right," he soothes, his deep voice brought lower from its softness. "You're all right."

Gavin allows Elisabeth to endure the collapse with dignity, only the anchor of his scarred hand and the gentle brush of his thumb across her skin reminding her of his presence. When at one point the bartender draws too close, Gavin dismisses them with a shake of his head. Elisabeth, drowning in her grief, did not need witnesses.

Tempest Quinn would tell him there was no shame in tears, but he knew all too well the crushing weight of self-hatred. You could lie to the world, but never to yourself.

He sits with her, slowly sipping at his drink as the ice cubes melt, until at last she breaks the fragile silence.

"No need to thank me."

That's what friends are for.

Elisabeth laughs, and Gavin laughs with her, the sound of their chorus echoing in the empty bar.

"Did you think I was going to let you walk out of here alone?" He shakes his head. "Here I thought I'd earned some trust. I'm sober enough; I'll make sure you're seen home safe."

Another man might've been attempting to deceive a beautiful young woman, lure her elsewhere in her vulnerability. Gavin is not that man. He stands smoothly and offers a polite nod to the bartender, steadying Elisabeth with a light touch on her arm and inviting her, without words, to lean against him.

"There's a taxi service not far from here."

"Nonsense." Though he conceals his accent, a hint of it slips through with the word. A Pidgeot flutters down to hook its talons into the rungs of the flying taxi, and Gavin helps Elisabeth into the cab. A Zoroark's ILLUSION conceals the blond of his hair and the amber of his eyes. "I said I'd see you home. I don't think you live here."

He pretends to examine the taxi as if genuinely considering that she might, flashing the driver an easy smile.

"To the floristry outside Petalburg, thank you."