A flicker of uncertainty entered her gaze, taken aback by this abrupt shift in his questioning.[break][break]

This would be easier if she had lied to him and said she loved him, or so she told herself; this would be simpler, too, if her face didn't reveal her emotions so fully and so suddenly, her hesitance unveiled for him without her conscious consent.[break][break]

"Wouldn't it frighten you?" she said at length, and she wrapped the blanket tighter about herself as she moved to the opposite end of the couch. "Given who you are. Given what this is."[break][break]

If he wanted this to be real, his disappointment would be so much more painful in the aftermath.[break][break]

If he'd accepted the alliance she'd offered him, it would just be the sting of being outwitted, nothing more.[break][break]

"Shouldn't I hold some fear?"

[attr="class","ooc"] MATIAS SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

”It’s not your monstrosity that causes me concern,” she disagreed, struggling to articulate herself. It was the opposite, really. If he were nothing but some horrible, soulless person without any speck of humanity to him, doing this would be effortless. It was what made the string of affairs she had in Kalos so efficient.[break][break]

He was a monster, yes. But the problem was witnessing the person beneath the monster.[break][break]

"Don’t you think it was unwise, to choose me?" she questioned him, unable to stop herself. "You don’t realize, I think, the person that I am. Or you pretend not to notice, maybe."[break][break]

Often, he seemed much more… naive to her. About the world, about people. It didn’t make sense to her, considering the gulf of life experience between them. People had wronged him, too. He had every opportunity to learn most people weren’t what they seemed.[break][break]

Nonetheless, she felt that distinction between them as keenly as he felt her own lack of strength on the battlefield.[break][break]

"What happens if you’re wrong about me? What if I’m the monster?"

[attr="class","ooc"] MATIAS SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

He knew enough to understand the fundamental reasons his pursuit was a poorly-considered one. Her rank in Rocket, her infamy in the region, even the very nature of her Avatarships all made her someone others could point to as an objectively negative influence on him as an Elite Four.[break][break]

But none of this made her a danger to him, MATIAS SILPH, specifically.[break][break]

"I poisoned the only man I ever loved," she said simply, and the statement came out cold and unfeeling, no remorse breathed into its being.[break][break]

There was no anger left anymore, either, and no ache of guilt or melancholy. This was only a fact, and one that had lessened in its power over her as the world proved to be crueler and stranger than that manor in Kalos had been for ten years.[break][break]

"He died slowly and painfully, and I watched him rot into an early grave."[break][break]

"I listened to him apologize for all the ways he wronged me. I let him tell me he loved me, and I told him I loved him, too."[break][break]

"I lied to him with all my body, mind, and soul, waiting for the moment that he would die and all those things would finally become my own again."[break][break]

She let the confession settle in the air between them, taking as much space as it warranted, and held Matias's hand in both of her own.[break][break]

He had not wronged her the same way that man had. No one had.[break][break]

At some point, she'd learned to respond to love by hurting others before they could hurt you.[break][break]

"You should tell the League I am manipulating you," she instructed him quietly, leaving him with this peculiar guilt-induced kindness. "You should blame Tapu Fini or my Nihilego for the things that invite your surveillance. It will be easier for you, if you do."

[attr="class","ooc"] MATIAS SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"...What?"[break][break]

She froze like a Deerling caught in headlights at his first question, unable to process this change in his expression. How had he gotten the impression she cared about him? Hadn't she explicitly stated otherwise?[break][break]

If he died, didn't that make her life easier? She wouldn't have to play games like this and skirt between what Rocket wanted and what an unstable Avatar wanted from her, either. Back she'd go to the safety of solitude and the comforting tension of existing in Rocket as one cog among many in the machine, no confounding interplay of emotion and expectation to exhaust herself upon.[break][break]

Then again, she hadn't let Matias die either, had she? That was in itself a form of care, she supposed.[break][break]

Or a cowardice, depending.[break][break]

Precious time passed as she contemplated an impossible answer to an impossible riddle, until Matias decided to answer for her, taking her blatant confusion as evidence of the one thing he wanted most from her.[break][break]

"I love you too, florist."

[break]

Abruptly she dropped his hand as if it had caught afire, shrinking back from him with an alarm that read plainly on her face.[break][break]

"What on earth gives you that impression?" she blurted out, still reeling from the shock of how he'd misread her.[break][break]

It would be easier, in retrospect, if she simply played along with these assumptions.[break][break]

Like him, she was too stubborn to do anything but choose the more difficult of the two choices presented to her.

[attr="class","ooc"] MATIAS SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

There were no words for the breadth of his arrogance.[break][break]

He believed every word of his absurd allegations, smug and self-satisfied with the knowledge that she, somehow despite all evidence to the contrary, was desperately in love with him.[break][break]

She'd been in love before, she told herself. She'd know how it felt if she was. The besotted blindness to the faults of another, the selfless promise to give up all she had and ever was for them, the anxious desire to please another at the cost of her own happiness -- these were all feelings she recognized as the terror of giving someone else too much power over you.[break][break]

She had sworn off such things. And besides, if she were in love with anyone, wouldn't it be...?[break][break]

"No one knows you better than I do. It took you long enough to realize that."

[break]

"You don't know anything about my life outside of you," she snapped at him fiercely, fury welling within her as he erupted into laughter. "You think because you understand one part of me you know me better than anyone else ever could?"[break][break]

The flush of her startlement became red-hot with anger as she shoved him aside.[break][break]

"Your narcissism is astonishing."

[attr="class","ooc"] MATIAS SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"I swear, you can be so..."[break][break]

She turned her back to him, arms crossed as an irritated scoff escaped her lips. Was this the fate he'd doomed them to, then? That the only people capable of loving them were people who suffered the way they suffered?[break][break]

It wasn't that she wanted love, but if she did, that seemed so cruelly limiting. Were they nothing but their suffering, in the end? Was that all that defined who they were, or who they could love?[break][break]

The blanket was pulled tighter around herself as her frustration died out into a resigned sigh, tired of fighting him.[break][break]

"Think what you want, Matias. You always do."

[attr="class","ooc"] MATIAS SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"Have it your way, then."[break][break]

She allowed him to kiss her, turning her cheek slightly to remind him she could do otherwise, if she chose. Though all of this had spiraled out of control some time ago, and in the end, she was the only one to blame for it.[break][break]

Hadn't she been the one to accept this complication in their alliance, after initially refuting him at every turn? And what had she done it for, in the end? A failed assassination attempt on a man she increasingly wasn't sure she even wanted to kill in the first place.[break][break]

The first domino had set off too many others into motion, and once it had fallen, that domino couldn't go back to being unturned.[break][break]

But she was used to this, experiencing passions that existed in that space that was neither fully love nor hate. She spoke that language better than the soft-spoken nothings expected to be whispered between lovers, each eager to lie more prettily than the other.[break][break]

Elisabeth understood spite. There was an honesty to it that love always seemed to lack.[break][break]

"I doubt there will be room for us both, though," she continued, glancing up at him dubiously. "Your ego alone won't fit through the door."

[attr="class","ooc"] MATIAS SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]