"It was afraid of me," came her reluctant, infuriated answer. Shoulders hunched forward as her dark hair fell over her eyes, shrouding the full nature of her expression from view. "It wanted to stop me from becoming..."[break][break]

Her hands stretched out in front of her, open and grasping at nothing. They were paler than they had ever been, as if she had not labored in the sunlight for as many hours as her gardens once demanded of her. Forbidden power had leeched that spark of life from her, the way she had leeched it from the very Petalburg Woods that Cillian named aloud.[break][break]

"It wanted to stop us," she corrected herself suddenly, and her voice had gained a new timbre, a resounding finality to its words. "It mocked us with visions of things we knew we could never be."[break][break]

There was no hiding the resentment that coated each syllable that crawled its way out of her mouth, nor was there any way to mistake how her eyes flashed with wounded rage at whatever memory had been dredged up in this recollection.[break][break]

She sneered at the unseen creature, and whatever part of her had once been beautiful twisted into something strange and unrecognizable.[break][break]

"Such a weak, fragile deity. It was right to be afraid."

[attr="class","ooc"] Cillian Quinn[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"They die as easily as men, too."

[break]

Her lips curled upwards, smirking with self-satisfaction, as a dark laugh bubbled out of her. The flower that had been tormented at her bedside had begun to fade into rotting peat, forgotten and abandoned.[break][break]

The smile, however, became something a bit more pensive as he asked his other question. Her head tilted to the side, black tresses shimmering with the movement, as she regarded him with an expression that seemed as calculating as it did confounded.[break][break]

An eyebrow arched, questioning.[break][break]

"We don't know what you mean. We are who we are."

[attr="class","ooc"] Cillian Quinn[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

She did not resume her upright posture as she continued to view him at an angle, propping her chin on her hand. Fingers idly tapped her chin, irritable.[break][break]

"What a boring little game, this 'before-and-after.' There is only the now, Harbinger. What's done is done."

[break]

Abruptly, she moved to depart her bed, her white shift falling over body with an unflattering looseness as she stood before him. The white of her clothing seemed all too bright against the paleness of her skin; it made the red of her lips and the carmine glow of her eyes seem all the more vivid, and the ebony of her hair all the starker, for their contrast.[break][break]

"You hold power here, do you not? Free us."

[break]

She looked at him expectantly.

[attr="class","ooc"] Cillian Quinn[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

They did not believe him.[break][break]

Those who caged them had never allowed such straightforward means of escape. Captivity meant the presence of a captor; a closed door meant the promise of a lock and key; power meant the inevitably envy of those who sought to steal what little you had gained.[break][break]

"Is it really so simple, here? To take what it is we want, and expect no retaliation in return?"

[break]

She walked with the strangeness of someone who had never once learned to stand -- graceless, but with a wariness that kept her grounded. Hands latched themselves on the border rail of the wall, red eyes focusing on each step forward with viciously sharp intent.[break][break]

How long had she been left here in repose? Some part of her felt like it had withered, too. She could feel her mortality with a keenness she'd never known before, even as she felt so alive with the essence of divinity imbued in her bones.[break][break]

Avatarship was a strange, unholy thing. It tricked fragile vessels into thinking themselves mighty as gods.[break][break]

"Do you lie to us?" she asked him suddenly, swiveling her head towards him with a hawkish mien. At this close proximity, he could see the sunken lines buried beneath her eyes, the exposed angles of her sallow cheekbones -- signs that she had denied her own humanity in more ways than one.[break][break]

When had she last eaten? When had she last slept?[break][break]

"We hope not. Lying would be most unwise."

[attr="class","ooc"] Cillian Quinn[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

Silence descended with all the weight of a guillotine. Elisabeth clicked her tongue, the threat in Cillian Quinn's sharpened words resulting in a sharpness of her own; autumnal gold ringed her red eyes, like an ochre rot, as they narrowed in at his statement.[break][break]

The doctor frozen in the doorway looked from the disheveled patient to the underboss that stood before her, fretting before ultimately deciding to step aside and return to the submarine's halls.[break][break]

Elisabeth's mouth curled up as a laugh crawled out of her, somehow drawn forth by the visage of the fleeing woman. "You're right," she said, her hand curling into a fist on the handrail. "What have we to fear, really? We are free in this place."[break][break]

How difficult it was to make sense of this maelstrom of emotions that stormed inside of her, a tumult of wild memories that all competed for her attention. There had been a time she was not free; there had been a time she held no power except in name; there had been a time that all who claimed to love her despised her.[break][break]

How much of then was now? How much of now would become like back then?[break][break]

She wavered in the threshold of the doorway, staring out at the world beyond this tiny, insignificant hospital room. What waits for us out there, a voice seemed to hum inside of her, thrilling with anticipation. What shall we ruin?[break][break]

Elisabeth took a single step forward, and whatever resistance she expected to her exit did not come. The laughter became louder, almost manic, as she shook her head in disbelief. Her smile widened, like the scimitar of a crescent moon.[break][break]

"No, we are more than free. We are the rulers, are we not, Harbinger? It is everyone else who is caged."

[attr="class","ooc"] Cillian Quinn[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"Ah. This is a logic we understand."

[break]

To be desired for power made sense. To see her as what she was -- to see her power for what it could be -- had been what had tempered her resolve. She could not unfeel the way that others' eyes had taken in what she had become, confusion and horror alike betraying their revulsion at the patron that she had accepted.[break][break]

"But we are powerful, aren't we, Elisabeth? We are a Ruination embodied."

[break]

These thoughts, silent as they were, reflected in the way her carmine eyes seemed to light up with sudden knowledge. Another step took her into the hallway, her posture straightening as the parts of her that had once been trained in grace remembered their place. A regal carriage held her as she let a hand rest against the doorway, her last tether to this purgatory of a room.[break][break]

"Then let us fly freely, Harbinger, lest we let false rules bind us. Come."

[break]

She languidly gestured towards him, her thin, white fingers almost spidery in how they curled in on themselves.[break][break]

"There is yet much to be done."

[attr="class","ooc"] Cillian Quinn[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]