Though their prior interactions could hardly be labelled as warm, the Quinn siblings often shared a camaraderie in their unique brand of coldness. Gavin could relax around his sister.

He is not relaxed now.

Lulu Flint enters not the office of her brother, but of a Rocket underboss, and the cutting stare she's greeted with will certainly distinguish the two. The breadth of silence between her question and the anticipation of his answer is one wrought with tension.

"Yes." When he is angry, Gavin never yells. There is a flat, icy quality to his tone; Lulu has heard it before, though from a much younger man, when her brother would engage in verbal spar with their parents. It is not often directed at her. "I don't suppose your drinks with Councilman Silph have anything to do with that?"

He inclines his head sharply in her direction. Though he could be indicating anything on her person, there's little doubt he means the red-purple bruise on her neck.

"I know who he is."

Attempts to placate Gavin are futile; he has glimpsed a crack in his sister's armor of confidence. That's the problem, having grown up together: they know each other too well. It's how she can peer past his own front and see no sympathy lurking there.

"If you've a plan so daring it involves fucking a member of the Hoenn Council, you ought to have discussed it with me first." Gavin had no desire to moderate her sex life. Honestly, the less he thought about it, the better. But he hadn't expected her to bed FERNANDO SILPH. Of all people. "Especially that one. Arceus, Saoirse." He's been making a conscious effort to refer to her by her new name, but he drops that in his frustration.

"Have you gotten any information, yet?" he challenges. His gaze pins her, unwavering. "How much has he gotten out of you?"

"Bullshit," Gavin fires back. "Brain like yours, and you expect me to believe you can't think? You haven't gotten anything, have you?"

A note of derision slips into his tone; he feels vindicated in his ire when she can't come up with a valid response.

"It's my concern when it concerns me." Had he noticed the hickey before she'd revealed her companionship with Silph, Gavin would have thought nothing of it. Perhaps foolishly, he would have expected his sister to have sense. "You're putting yourself in danger. That puts me in danger, and Rocket in turn. I warned you, Saoirse—"

His tone sharpens with an implied threat from a conversation they'd had months ago. It felt like they'd been different people, then. Rocket can protect you. I can protect you, but you've got to promise me you'll be careful.

"You're sloppy when you're drunk," he accuses, for he believes everyone is. It's why he hates to indulge past the barest hint of a buzz. "Who's to say something didn't slip out? How much do you remember?"

His hands are folded on the desk, thumbnail digging hard against the flesh of his palm.

"Dramatic?" Gavin sneers. "Do you think Silph is a fool? I doubt you fucked him with your clothes on." His lips are curled in evident disgust. "That gang of yours branded you specifically so people would know exactly who you worked for."

In his anger, any notions of sympathy for her predicament with the Dragons are discarded. He had not missed her comment about his interest in her life, and it's left him bitter.

"You shouldn't drink at all, if these are the kinds of decisions you make."

Perhaps it should wound him, to hear his sister disparage him so. Gavin is not hurt. Gavin is furious, listening to her tirade in stony silence with a gaze that never falters, not once.

It isn't until the last of the words leave her that Gavin deigns to speak, in a tone that offers no sympathy.

"Don't blame me for your mistakes."

Where did she get off being jealous of their parents treatment of him? That Saoirse had never known what went on behind closed doors is lost to him in his fury. She had seen only their watchful gaze, heard only the praise they sung in polite company — when he'd been hospitalized with a bloodied, broken arm, they'd told his sweet little sister that he'd tripped. The coffee table being replaced had likely seemed an unrelated incident in her young mind, but Cillian had been the one to sweep up broken, blood-smeared glass with his functional arm as their parents stared him down in disgust.

He'd only been sixteen.

"I turned you away to fucking protect you, Saoirse. You think I haven't killed for Rocket? I've done a lot worse." His lips form a soundless snarl, but his voice remains frighteningly level. "I didn't know you'd be foolish enough to fall in with the Dragons, instead. You're smart enough I tend to forget you have no sense."

Should she try to interrupt, or talk over him, he continues regardless of what she has to say. He'd waited patiently for her tirade, and now he would present his own.

"And what did I do, when you finally reached out? I took you in. I took you in even though it puts me in danger, even though I knew they'd come after you, and you still find a way to spit in my face."

He listens to her rant, lips pressing together in distaste at her sarcasm. He huffs a sharp almost-laugh when she defends against his accusations of ingratitude.

"Believe what you like." The words are cold, his amber eyes burning with defiance. "We had a deal, and I've upheld my end of the bargain. You are the one taking unnecessary risks. If you put Rocket in danger, we cannot help you." Her new position had more pull than that of a mere grunt, and it was no longer considered strange for Rocket to extend a helping hand to their Head Scientist — but that hand would be snatched away just as quick if it put the body at risk. "If you're quite done blaming me for everything that goes wrong in your life, then tell me how we can."

Her perception of him is neither wrong nor right. He is no longer Cillian Quinn, but neither has he given himself so wholly to this new identity to forget the one person of worth from a troubled past. Their parents had raised them cold, and Rocket had hardened him.

His own fury seems to have abated, though it is not replaced by anything warm. He stares at her as she sneers at him, seemingly unimpressed by her own.

"Not thirty seconds ago, you were complaining that I never help you," he says, canting his head. Blond hair falls into amber eyes, a visual remnant of what Quinn is left in him. His accent long since replaced by the mask. Yet in speaking with his sister, certain words find their Galarian edge unintentionally. "I warned you about Rocket, and you didn't listen. I'm warning you about Silph, now. He's not a man to toy with, and certainly not when you're piss drunk and not thinking straight."