She melted into his embrace, a smile blossoming unbidden as his words tickled the sensitive skin of her neck. "I wanted to give you something worth coming home to," she murmured, failing to stifle the fondness in that simple greeting.[break][break]

Pepin beamed up at them both, little tail wagging as he patiently waited to be pet, and the sight of him drew another laugh out of her.[break][break]

"I think I've tied my hands a bit, though." She turned her palms over, revealing sugar-dusted fingers in apology to the man at her side. "It's been awhile since I've done something like this."[break][break]

That time lost felt longer than it was. Her apartment in Sootopolis had been a cold, abandoned place: dim, cramped, and as poorly cared for as its owner. She couldn't remember wanting to cook or bake anything since... since she lived in Petalburg, really. [break][break]

Baking had been an enjoyable way to pass the time. It had given her a silent satisfaction to be skilled in things that made others so happy, and that joy had bubbled up inside of her in an attempt to answer for a decade starved of any and all affirmation.[break][break]

Had that been why she'd done this now, then? To make him happy? The finished crepes cooling on the skillet wafted notes of vanilla and strawberry as she considered them, and considered what making them meant in the first place.[break][break]

"I missed you," she admitted quietly, leaning her head of golden hair against him. "I missed... this."

[attr="class","ooc"] BARNABY FINCH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

He took her sugared fingers into his mouth, and that sensual warmth spread out from her fingertips throughout her whole body. It elicited the softest sigh from her lips as his own brushed against her knuckle.[break][break]

"Barnaby," she began, but any small desire to prolong the inevitable vanished as he buried his face in her golden hair. His words murmured against her neck, intimate with proximity and implication, and she felt herself falter. "I didn't mean for it to be," she said instead, the sound of her own apology surprising her. "I didn't mean for... any of what happened."[break][break]

She'd assumed he'd hated her after he'd seen her transformation that day. She'd wanted to avoid him, to give him distance, lest he reveal what she feared most of all: that he resented her, the way everyone did, for not being the person he'd wanted her to be.[break][break]

Resisting him had always been difficult, though, even in the beginning. At a certain point, she'd given up on trying.[break][break]

"But everything feels lighter now," she said softly, turning his face up to meet her own. "I feel lighter now."[break][break]

When she gazed at him, her emerald eyes lacked all the paranoia and fearfulness that had haunted them in recent months. That unseen sinister presence had released its hold on her, and this left her unguarded as she smiled at him, the faintest flush on her face revealing a shyness that she'd thought had fled her a lifetime ago.[break][break]

"I missed you," she whispered again, and this time, she kissed him to show her tenderness of feeling.

[attr="class","ooc"] BARNABY FINCH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

Elisabeth didn't know what they were to one another -- only that a terrible fear gripped her every time she dared to question what he meant to her, and what she meant to him.[break][break]

To be wanted was enough. Needing more than that was a steep cliff she'd learned not to fall from ever again, she told herself.[break][break]

She knew better.[break][break]

But when he kissed her back, and as her body was pinned by his against his kitchen counter, familiar emotions rekindled despite herself. A heady rush of exhilaration overtook her as she pulled him close, all of her hungry for whatever touch he'd allow her.[break][break]

The sound of his voice sent the shiver of anticipation thrilling through her as she smiled up at him, unable to stop herself from radiating the joy that even this small show of affection had awakened in her.[break][break]

"Why don't you show me how much you missed me," she asked him lowly, her hands roaming from his long dark hair to stake claim on other places frustratingly denied by clothing. "And I'll return your feelings with my own."[break][break]

A playfulness entered her tone and her movements that had not existed during the haze of desperation and agony that had characterized her the last time she'd met with him here.[break][break]

As the hours waned between them, spent lost in one another's arms, it wasn't an escape from the darkness she wanted from him.[break][break]

She wanted to bask in the light of all that he was to her.

[attr="class","ooc"] BARNABY FINCH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

How quickly she'd forgotten what his touch did to her.[break][break]

He silenced any lingering doubts and fears with each kiss, forgiving all her faults as he worshipped her on the altar of his bed.[break][break]

He whispered all those same sweet nothings that men always did, but his forked tongue had disarmed her of those readied defenses long ago. The way his body responded to her own left her helpless to his designs, drunk on the impossibility that anyone could care for her after knowing all the monstrous things she'd done.[break][break]

People like her weren't meant to be this happy. Addiction was an inheritance written in her blood, and he gave her the oblivion she craved.[break][break]

"Your florist?" she teased him, a feminine laugh fluttering through her. A dizzy sensation overcame her as his fingers caressed her long blonde hair, aching for even this brief gesture of kindness from him. "Somehow I don't mind when it's you who says that."[break][break]

How far away all the dark thoughts were when she was with him like this, resting comfortably against his chest as it rose and fell with the rhythm of his breathing. What a foolish mistake it had been, to delude herself into thinking that she could ever rely on him as a source of comfort and nothing more.[break][break]

But did she think it was love? Elisabeth had no real understanding of that elusive emotion, in truth; she was like a child who'd only known its pale imitations, and determined the two to be one and the same.[break][break]

Love, to her, had always been the whirlwind of a premature spring doomed by winter frost, destined to wither and die on its first bloom. Love was unconditional compassion beyond measure -- a surrendering of the self wholly and completely to another person -- come what may, whether it be cruelty or kindness.[break][break]

That was how she had loved before, at least. It blinded her. It was why she feared it so desperately.[break][break]

That kind of love had almost killed her, once.[break][break]

"Mm." The fog of their bliss began to fade, ever so slightly, as he coaxed her to dwell on more discomfiting topics. She closed her eyes, memories of that accursed October day waiting for her in the darkness. "I... I told the beast no," she said, almost timidly, as she nestled closer to him. "It told me to kill the councilman the way I'd killed the man who'd ruined me, and to kill part of myself with him. But I said no."[break][break]

I didn't want to become empty again, a small plea in her silently added.[break][break]

She bit her lip, tensing slightly as if fearing that shadow might emerge from the dark corners of the room at being hinted at aloud. When no such figure emerged, her body relaxed once more.[break][break]

"Tapu Fini stood by me," she added, audibly bemused by that unexpected loyalty. "She saved me, I think. From the beast, and from myself."[break][break]

The rest of the story didn't come out all at once. Small pieces built a larger picture here and there, interrupted by questions he might voice or brief uncertainties that might delay her answering.[break][break]

She curled into the cradle of his arms as she spoke, unable to meet his gaze for most of her explanation.[break][break]

"I plan to tell Walsh," she finished, and only then did she look up at him. "About Fini. About Silph. About everything it'd be best for him to know, except for... Except for anything that might hurt me. Or you."[break][break]

Nothing of Wo-chien's disdain for her. Nothing of how long she'd held onto the secret of her dual Avatarship. Nothing of her uncertainty on how to manage Tapu Fini. Nothing of her terrible fear of whatever it was she'd unleashed on that island, and whether or not the repercussions of that choice might haunt her still.[break][break]

"You're the only person I can trust," she admitted finally, the soft-spoken confession somehow more vulnerable than she'd expected it to be. "You always have been."

[attr="class","ooc"] BARNABY FINCH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

There had been walls between them before, their thorns carefully guarding her soft heart against such honeyed lies as these. He'd met a freshly cynical widow who'd known better than to love men like him: a woman who'd sworn to never give into this song-and-dance again.[break][break]

But that first kiss in the Petalburg Woods had damned her to this fate years ago. She'd betrayed her secret desires to a man who couldn't be trusted with the knowledge.[break][break]

A blissful sigh escaped her as his lips pressed against her brow, distracting her from any power the past had over her. She smiled back at him shyly, sinking deeper into this wonderful sense of warmth and complacency he'd cocooned her in. She felt she could die of happiness in this moment, should all the world end here and now.[break][break]

Why were you ever afraid of this, she chided herself as those cobalt blue eyes patiently gazed upon her, brimming with depths of unearned kindness. Why did you think he would abandon you, like all the others?[break][break]

Her heart thumped unsteadily in her chest the more he spoke, each unprompted promise of devotion stirring complicated feelings that flooded her with so such unspeakable joy, it terrified her.[break][break]

"I don't want to burden you," she heard herself say suddenly. "I don't want to only come to you when I don't feel human."[break][break]

Her arms reached for him, causing little Pepin to squeak slightly out of their way, as Elisabeth wrapped herself around a man whose lies comforted her more than any truth had ever soothed her troubled heart.[break][break]

"It's more than that," she insisted, her emerald eyes meeting his guilelessly. "You mean more than that to me. Barnaby, I--"[break][break]

"--love you."

[break]

Those forbidden final two words died before they could be given dangerous life, and she froze, hovering over him in mimicry of that springtime day where the wind had swept rose petals in her loose blonde hair.[break][break]

A distinctly separate fear had gripped her then, but its primal origin was no different than that of the fear that gripped her now.[break][break]

"I don't want to hurt you," she whispered instead, and again her heart pounded, this time weighted down by a heavy conscience.[break][break]

Perhaps he'd understand that these two confessions, for her, were one and the same.

[attr="class","ooc"] BARNABY FINCH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"It seems our feelings are mutual, then."

[break]

Elation and terror flashed in her eyes, both emotions stripped naked before him as he pulled her in. How easily he smiled at her as he confessed such things. How comfortably he wrapped her in his embrace, despite knowing the truth of the woman she was.[break][break]

Was this forgiveness, then? Was this absolution for all the times her heart had wronged or been wronged by another? Or was this just another punishment in disguise?[break][break]

He tilted her chin up to face him, and those disjointed thoughts faded as he forced her to recall a different man, one whom she had no desire to revisit given the weight of this newfound revelation.[break][break]

But as she was slowly beginning to realize, she could never deny BARNABY FINCH anything.[break][break]

"Tapu Fini views FERNANDO SILPH as her possession," she said, musing on the day she'd met the deity on the coast of Sootopolis. "She is a vindictive being, and that trait is what binds us together."[break][break]

Elisabeth understood this emotion, she thought, though not quite the way the deity did. But in a fundamental way, she understood her behavior.[break][break]

"I believe she's punishing him for leaving her," she concluded, brushing a strand of hair out from his face. His cobalt blue eyes captivated her the longer she stared into them, gently encouraging her to continue. "She wants him to suffer for abandoning her. Death will not help her accomplish that end, I think."[break][break]

But somehow, I will, came a nagging thought, one that became all the more unsettling the longer she dwelled on it. I'm meant to be her instrument of torture, as her Avatar.[break][break]

Though she didn't fully comprehend how.[break][break]

"Why? Are you worried for me?" she asked him, attempting to sound playful. The sincerity of the question belied its levity, however; the idea of hurting him in any way distressed her more deeply than she wanted to admit.[break][break]

She wanted to spare him of any and all pain, this included.

[attr="class","ooc"] BARNABY FINCH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]