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'Elisabeth,' he'd called her, and her gaze slid away, a subtle shift entering her posture as her arms wrapped around herself protectively in reply.[break][break]

Titles and formalities served as barriers in the world they had both left behind. To cast one aside was a proverbial step closer to another person -- a breaching of another's defenses, with the expectation you would not find yourself in hostile territory.[break][break]

"Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace," she recited the Galarian passage back, "Yet grace must still look so."[break][break]

Was this to be her epithet, then? A tale of tragedy and betrayal, with hands forever blemished by sin? A faint laugh escaped from her lips at the notion, and at the audacity of the question he'd presented to her after.[break][break]

"I want what everyone else wants, I suppose," was her mild reply.[break][break]

A photograph of her had graced the Kalosian newspapers after her husband's death, veiled in black lace so as to shroud her dry eyes from view. Long, loose golden curls had fallen down her back, careless and lacking artful presentation, as she'd descended the steps of a church neither of them had ever frequented. Sinners knew better.[break][break]

Elisabeth stood now as a pale imitation of that infamous portrait, this time her face exposed to reveal an enigmatic expression that concealed her true intent as well as any widow's lace. A hardness manifested itself in her, as if her features were sculpted of alabaster stone.[break][break]

Still, she felt the touch of his lingering stare, assessing her like any work of art. Reflexively, her head tilted towards him once more, this time analyzing him through a curtain of golden hair that fell over her eyes. In their reflection, a mirrored sea wildly churned with ambition.[break][break]

"Why do you ask, Admin Calcifet? Is your chessboard in need of a Dark Queen?"[break][break]

Her emerald eyes narrowed for a moment, flitting over his own features in return, before her lips curved into a mocking smile.[break][break]

"Or do you suppose I'm seeking a White Knight for my own?"

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Rumours in Kalos had painted Elisabeth Fiorelli as a seductress.[break][break]

A girl of nineteen had lured a seemingly untouchable man to his ruin, destroying his legacy with a fatal allure that promised to ruin other men like him. Her body was a beautiful weapon, and by all accounts, she seemed to have learned how to wield it expertly. She'd been no saint, and her adultery was an oft whispered-of thing, if not a confirmed one.[break][break]

And yet. Such stories from observers held small grains of truth, but hers had never been her own to tell.[break][break]

The closer Remiel Calcifet drew to her, the more the fire in her eyes began to dim at his approach. As his hand brushed the golden hair from her face, her own breathing slowed, his face suddenly replaced by countless others in her mind. In this moment as his skin met hers, she changed in front of him seemingly in an instant. Gone was the mockery and sneering venom that had earned her the moniker of the Black Widow of Kalos, and in its stead, visible pain was reflected in the depths of her emerald eyes.[break][break]

This wasn't Kalos, and she was no longer a woman desperate to hurt her tormentor in the cruelest way she knew how.[break][break]

The only person left for Elisabeth to hurt was herself.[break][break]

"Far be it from me, Crown Prince," Elisabeth said in a low murmur, steel entering her voice as a hand slowly moved to brush his aside, "to hand yet another thing to you on a silver platter."[break][break]

The porcelain mask returned in all its hardness. Whatever fleeting vulnerability had been revealed to him evaporated as her expression turned blank, reverting to the stoicism that characterised her most often in her role as a Rocket admin. Elisabeth took a purposeful step back from him, and in this small distance, an unseen gulf widened between them that spanned the length of an ocean.[break][break]

"You asked what I want," she said suddenly, and it was as if she was speaking not to him, but to herself. Once more her arms wrapped around her like vines, tight and unrelenting in their defensive hold.[break][break]

"I want to wake up one day, and no longer be wanting."

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How differently they understood the cost of desire.[break][break]

Elisabeth's eyes fixed themselves to the emptiness beyond the submarine's window, unfocused on whatever shadows the night promised them. His scoff did not go unheard, nor the footsteps that moved to ascend the lounge steps to depart. Titles returned with the cold, distant safety of formality, and with it a slight untensing manifested in her posture.[break][break]

His withdrawal was expected, really. The closer people drew to her, the further they got pushed away.[break][break]

"Is that right?" she said finally, and a soft laugh left her lips as she turned to see his receding figure. "Those who have no wants are dead inside? I'd always imagined it as a sort of peace, instead."[break][break]

What Elisabeth wanted felt cruelly unattainable: a nameless void of yearning that sought to sate a decade's thirst for power, for control, for vengeance. She didn't know how to slake this hateful want. Killing its point of origin had been a brief and fleeting release, nothing more.[break][break]

"I think it depends on what you want, in the end. And what in the world has the power to grant it, if anything or anyone at all possesses the means."[break][break]

It was why the treasonous escape he'd taunted her with felt like a lie, even now.

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