"And yet, he very well could have," she interrupted, glaring at him with a school teacher's disapproval. "You aren't invincible, Jayden -- far from it. Our Avatarships leave us vulnerable more than most."[break][break]

The criticism jumped out of her before she could think to hold it back, revealing more of herself than she'd initially intended upon entering this room. It left her all the more irritable, and she keep her gaze away from him, lest he catch a glimpse of her own self-rebuke.[break][break]

The stench of burning flesh still lingered with such hateful persistence.[break][break]

"Did you ask him to do this to you?" she asked, realizing this changed her stance somewhat. "Or was it on Beckett's orders that this happened?"[break][break]

He certainly spoke like a raving masochist.

[attr="class","ooc"] jayden cross

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"So, now that you've been pushed to the brink, what happens now?" she asked him tartly. "Have you transcended whatever mortal weakness you were hoping to purge?"[break][break]

Anger flared up in her, boiling over suddenly at the realization he had willingly invited calamity upon himself. Had he no survival instinct at all? Was he this callous with his own body and his own mind, inviting disaster in so long as it had a familiar face?[break][break]

"Was it worth the potential loss of your life? Tell me what you gained from this little macabre experiment."[break][break]

They'd have to hold her down kicking and screaming to agree to the same.

[attr="class","ooc"] jayden cross

[attr="class","pkmn"]

She blinked in open surprise at this revelation, momentarily speechless, before words gracelessly returned to her.[break][break]

"I don't understand. Why should he hate you?" she blurted out, confused more than anything else.[break][break]

Had THEO BECKETT truly hated jayden cross? She'd never thought so. He'd seemed so indignant that day in the Cave of Origin -- him and Cillian Quinn both -- when she'd been willing to kill Chien-Pao's chosen. Her standing among her fellow underbosses had plummeted that day, their frosty regard persisting even now.[break][break]

Had she been wrong to mistake that as fondness for Jayden? Was it only anger at her overstepping the bounds of Walsh's orders?[break][break]

She stepped forward, placing a hand gingerly on his shoulder.[break][break]

"Listen to me," she said, sternly but kindly. There was a wildness in her eyes. "Don't listen to them, listen to me. You will be drawn to the sources of hatred that inflame you most. You will. Over and over again. But as much as they empower your patron, they will weaken you in other ways."[break][break]

She could still remember the sobbing creature that Wo-chien had reduced her to, pushed to the brink of insanity by her mutual grudges for FERNANDO SILPH and freya morningstar. That memory haunted her nightmares even now, whispering at the grim fate she could have known.[break][break]

"You mustn't feed your Ruinous Beast blindly. They are gluttonous beings, and they have no care for you. Mind that they don't trample you in their greed."

[attr="class","ooc"] jayden cross

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"I care about what that Ruinous Beast wants to take from you," she said, uncaring that any deity of their three might overhear her blasphemy. "Some things, when lost, don't come back to us. I think you know that, Cross."[break][break]

One unloved child recognized another.[break][break]

What Elisabeth Fiorelli wanted from Rocket wasn't what THEO BECKETT and Cillian Quinn wanted. It wasn't even what BARNABY FINCH or Zev Harcourt wanted, either.[break][break]

She just wanted a swamp to sink deeper and deeper into, until nothing good of her was left to mourn.[break][break]

It was why Wo-chien had chosen her. It knew the depths to which she'd plunge.[break][break]

"Your father is dead, but whatever crimes he may have committed, you survived them. Don't let anyone take that life from you. Not Beckett. Not Chien-Pao. Not even me."[break][break]

Her hand squeezed his shoulder once more before releasing him, returning to her side as if nothing so intimate had occurred between them. Perhaps some of the residual frost that chilled him had transferred to her; she seemed almost statuesque as she regarded him now, a stone-faced Madonna imparting a strange juxtaposition of judgment and mercy.[break][break]

"I don't care what the details are. If you value all the sacrifices you've made until now, then don't squander them. Don't let your mind become someone else's."[break][break]

Once you let the devil in, you never knew which thoughts were truly your own.[break][break]

That had been true for her long before Wo-chien claimed her.

[attr="class","ooc"] jayden cross

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"Good. I'd be disappointed if you acted otherwise."[break][break]

She smiled a thin, cat-like smile, letting the emptiness of the hospital room fill the silence for a time. If he understood this, then all was well. So long as he possessed his own willpower, so long as he still fought, all was well.[break][break]

"But I see I have nothing to worry about."[break][break]

Turning back to the door of the hospital room, she began to make her move to depart, the sensation of frost ebbing away the further she walked from him.[break][break]

"We'll see one another again, Admin Cross. Soon."[break][break]

Whether or not they wanted to, their Ruinous Avatarships would ensure it -- tangling their threads as much as PENELOPE LIVY would tangle fate, later, in a prison none of them ever anticipated finding themselves in.

[attr="class","ooc"] jayden cross

[attr="class","pkmn"]