Silence descended, save for the rise and fall of the waves all around them.[break][break]

Stoic and poised, she didn't move a muscle or utter a single word at his challenge; all she did was gaze through him, searching for a man who no longer existed.[break][break]

That man had smiled at her with a youthful confidence she'd desperately wanted to bottle for herself--despite the guilt that ate her up inside, knowing she would cut him down for daring to share that vulnerability with her.[break][break]

There had been no reason to pursue her, save for whatever delusions of grandeur he'd dreamed up for them and the future he'd envisioned them sharing. It had only ever been a dream, and the reality had been a nightmare on Mt. Chimney complete with the death of the region's greatest hope.[break][break]

She'd never wanted his devotion. It had never been love she'd felt for him. But envy? That had gnawed at her from the inside, changing its shape into a strange and grasping desire. They were alike, but in one significant way, they'd never been the same. He believed in himself in a way she never would.[break][break]

Yet he'd believed in her, if only for a single brief and shining moment, on these very sands. She'd been dizzy with that validation, unearned though it was.[break][break]

"Not here," she said finally, shaking her head. Her voice was a low whisper, eyes averting his with the cowardice she'd forever been unable to shake. "If I kill you, Matty, it won't be here."[break][break]

It was the closest thing to an apology she'd ever given him, before she'd turn to her Butterfree for the inevitable TELEPORT that would follow.

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

[attr="class","pkmn"]

His words hit their mark, his insult another knife carelessly thrust into her back while she fled him for what felt like the thousandth time.[break][break]

If she'd been different -- if she'd been the person THEO BECKETT and declan walsh wanted her to be -- would MATIAS SILPH still have been waiting for her?[break][break]

Tie up a man with the strings of his own pathetic desires, cocoon him in the bliss of the release he thinks he craves, and when you sink your Ariados fangs into his neck he'll thank you for it.[break][break]

Was it really that easy, to feel nothing? To cut out all the emotions that made you human?[break][break]

Alone at last, she leaned against the wall of her little Sootopolis apartment, its cramped interior cluttered and dim. This place seemed far more suited to a hoarder than to a woman who commanded any great power in Rocket's hierarchy, or to a woman who didn't care for the state of the life she lived.[break][break]

It wasn't a sanctuary like her cottage had been, but just another place to run from.[break][break]

"What's wrong with me," she sighed out, her Butterfree hovering worriedly over her. A hand anxiously waved the Bug-type away, retreating to her room. "I had no reason to go to Lilycove in the first place."[break][break]

But Mauville had been denied to her, hadn't it? And she hadn't known where else to go.[break][break]

Tapu Fini had followed her here, too, ignored as it was in the aftermath by the woman it had chosen to bless. The Guardian of the Seas continued to observe her, filing away minute details about its Avatar for later.[break][break]

Celebi had been right on one particular point: all things cycled. No part of nature could escape this certain fate, not the tides and surely not the mortals who sought to defy destiny at every turn.[break][break]

Elisabeth Fiorelli was no more immune to that inevitability than MATIAS SILPH.[break][break]

One cycle had ended, so that another one could begin in the ashes of the last.

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

[attr="class","pkmn"]