She couldn't stop shaking, even when she closed the door behind her. Her skin still felt cold and clammy from the rain, and when she shivered, she told herself it had everything to do with that and nothing to do with MATIAS SILPH.[break][break]

He didn't know anything.[break][break]

He didn't know anything that mattered about her. He didn't know anything at all about BARNABY FINCH. Nothing he said about her could be born from anything true and real.[break][break]

As she dressed herself in dry clothes, the Red Shard fell out of her pocket, clattering to her bedroom floor. She picked it up and stared into its mysterious jewelled facets, spun from Darkrai's nightmares into a false dream made tangible and real.[break][break]

She slipped it into her purse unseen, closing it to hide the instrument of her betrayal from prying eyes.[break][break]

When she returned to the living area, MATIAS SILPH predictably was still loitering in her home, making himself comfortable. His comment about them took her aback slightly, and as he continued, she felt her arms wind tighter and tighter about herself.[break][break]

"What am I supposed to say to that?" she said finally, all of her as guarded as a wall of briars and thorns.

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

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"I could ask you the same," she argued, all the more agitated as she stalked off to her couch, her back turned to him as she seated herself. "What do I have that Eva Morales and PENELOPE LIVY don't?"[break][break]

If he wanted a drink, he would continue to go thirsty. Drinks were for guests, and he was an intruder.[break][break]

That was right. He'd barged in uninvited. He wasn't owed anything, much less her most private and intimate thoughts.[break][break]

"Has it occurred to you he doesn't break into my home unannounced and make wild demands? That he respects my wishes, possibly?"[break][break]

In the heat of the moment, she briefly forgot the origins of her peculiar friendship with BARNABY FINCH. That, in fact, he had barged into her cottage on more than one occasion and stolen her time against her will as both 'Bee' and the loathed reporter who insisted on getting on her last nerve.[break][break]

Both men had trampled her boundaries many times over. The difference was she'd started welcoming one of them to do so.[break][break]

She swung a leg back and forth restlessly, biting her cheek as she busied herself staring at the ceiling.[break][break]

"If I answer, will you leave?"

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

[attr="class","pkmn"]

Fingers absently ran through her golden hair as she searched for something to say.[break][break]

Everything about MATIAS SILPH always had to be so difficult.[break][break]

Back on that island, hadn't he ranted about how she must love someone else -- someone more handsome or more powerful than him? She rolled her eyes lightly at the thought, her head leaning against her hand as she sighed.[break][break]

How little this man understood her, and how little he grasped at what it was she truly wanted from the world.[break][break]

"Everyone wants something, Bee. Even me."

[break]

That confession had been made to BARNABY FINCH so long ago now, it felt like she'd been a different person. Each time they'd encountered one another in the Petalburg Woods, she'd changed, becoming kind only to turn cruel. She'd welcomed him into her arms, only for him to be forced to witness her transformation by that Ruinous Beast's hands.[break][break]

For all that she'd tried to push the admin away, he'd stayed by her side when no one else had. When trapped in another world for two decades, he'd accepted her when no one else would; she might not recall the exact nature of that bond, but she remembered the trust invoked by it all the same.[break][break]

"When I'm with him, I feel like... nothing has changed, even though everything has."[break][break]

She closed her eyes, unable to face him as her voice lowered. In the end, it was more selfish than that.[break][break]

"I feel like I'm still enough. Even if it's a lie."

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

[attr="class","pkmn"]

He shouldn't have asked questions he didn't want the answers to. He'd invited his own disappointment.[break][break]

And because of that, of course he wouldn't leave. She'd somehow been naive enough to believe, for a moment, he might actually do so.[break][break]

"It's not about being good enough," she started to say, then stopped. Something told her he didn't want her to speak.[break][break]

Even without looking at him, she could sense the shift in mood. The tension became thick and palpable between them, suffocating in the ensuing silence. She folded her legs under herself as she did her best to ignore the resentment she'd undoubtedly awakened in him, knowing she only had her honesty to blame.[break][break]

Didn't he know this much by now? All she did was ruin everything she touched, long before Wo-chien had claimed her.[break][break]

She was destined to ruin him, too. She'd accepted that fate.[break][break]

"It's not... With you, I just... I feel..."[break][break]

Speech became a clumsy, inarticulate thing, fumbling as she struggled to explain feelings she herself didn't quite understand.[break][break]

"You confuse me," she managed at last, sounding both baffled and frustrated by the admission. "Nothing you do ever makes sense to me."

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

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"You shouldn't love me," she blurted out, turning to fix him with a bewildered look. "You have no reason to."[break][break]

MATIAS SILPH had whirled into her life unexpectedly and uninvited, much like his arrival into her home now. He'd decided he wanted her, without ever truly knowing her enough to know that she was what he truly wanted--only that he refused to take no for an answer.[break][break]

When Wo-chien had revealed all the darkness lurking inside her, and she'd unveiled her affiliation with Team Rocket, he'd acted as if nothing had changed. If anything, he became more relentless as he pursued a secret agreement between them both.[break][break]

Though in retrospect, it had never been about the agreement for him. He'd been too persistent about pushing it beyond the confines of a mutually beneficial alliance.[break][break]

He'd wanted her. He still wanted her. And yet, he had no good reason to want something so detrimental to his own well-being.[break][break]

She found herself becoming susceptible to that weakness in him the moment she'd made the mistake of finding solace in him, their mutual insanity giving her the excuse to forgive herself in part for her own wrongdoings.[break][break]

It had been selfish of her to use him in that way. It was still selfish of her to use him that way now.[break][break]

"So yes, you confuse me," she said softly. "Because you should hate me, and you don't."

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

[attr="class","pkmn"]

Guilt. Fear. Trepidation. Familiarity. Uncertainty.[break][break]

Regret.[break][break]

She swallowed back her answers, unsure how to make sense of her own conflicting reactions. Her face hid away behind a curtain of golden hair as she turned her back on him, shoulders falling.[break][break]

What was she supposed to mean to him? What did he want her to say?[break][break]

"I'm going to disappoint you," died unspoken on her tongue.[break][break]

He asked too much of her. He always did.[break][break]

She forced herself to delve deeper into the murk of emotion, sifting through it for something she could unearth that wouldn't hurt him further. The more she did so, the more uncomfortable the knot of feelings became to untangle, unraveling into patterns she didn't care to examine too closely.[break][break]

"Do you remember when I asked you about your relationship to Groudon," she asked him suddenly. "How when my hands reached for you, my thoughts and feelings linked to yours?"[break][break]

A beat passed, like a grain of sand slipping through an hourglass, before she continued.[break][break]

"You understood me, for a moment. And I understood you. It felt like we really saw one another, for the first time."

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

[attr="class","pkmn"]

She resisted this truth: that he'd understood the ugliest part of her, and not judged her for it.[break][break]

Had that been what she'd been searching for in him? She couldn't make sense of her own actions, looking back. Sometimes it felt as if she'd just chased an impulse without thinking, and other times, she simply didn't want to think too deeply about what it was that led her back to him, time after time.[break][break]

Fear? Obligation? Curiosity?[break][break]

Or lingering empathy for him, its presence insidious and unwanted.[break][break]

"You don't have to lie to me, you know."[break][break]

I know what I am.[break][break]

Standing up unsteadied her. All of her was wearied with sudden exhaustion, as if the wrong shuddering breath would be enough to make her collapse. She pushed through that instinct, forcing herself to face him properly. There was a sadness in her smile.[break][break]

"But it's kind of you. You're often kinder than I expect you to be."

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

[attr="class","pkmn"]