Better than yesterday doesn't mean good, but Gavin will take what he can get. She's well enough to talk, and apparently well enough to chide him on his sleeping habits.

His lip twitches, fond.

"Tried to stop in earlier, but you were asleep. Didn't want to wake you." He has a feeling the Luxray might've bitten his hand off if he'd tried, besides. "I'm all right, though, promise."

Dark bags under his eyes betray the lie: he has barely slept since the excursion, kept up at night worrying not only about his life upended but about the child laid up in the medical wing.

She beckons him closer, and Gavin leans in.

Such a childish gesture, the extended pinky held out like an offering, but Rocket has taken much from this child. Gavin's read her file, knows the circumstances under which she'd been taken under their wing. He will not rob her of this.

"Okay," he says, a quiver of suppressed laughter in his voice. "Deal. But you've just exposed yourself, you know. Lucky I already knew." He winks. He'd instructed the medical personnel to keep him posted.

"I wasn't hurt," he tells her, and it's not strictly a lie. His scars are in the mind, weariness settling in his bones as Lugia's corrupt power surges through its vessel without care for its limits. But Lugia had chosen wisely, for its avatar bore the burden without complaint. He yawns against a closed fist, then loops his finger with Eris Halla's.

His lip quirks. Her innocence is heartbreaking, made more so by the knowledge that Rocket would see it robbed from her. How long, he wonders, before she knows the truth?

"Lugia is all right." His voice, deep, carries warmth. "It's tired, too."

There are memories trapped between the pages she turns, and the underboss is patient as she finds the right ones. A fondness stirs in his chest, in the places Rocket has not reached. It reminds him of when Chu-e Choi had offered to make onigiri for the shadowed legend, of the traces of humanity that even their most menacing possessed. Gavin, with an eye for detail, does not miss the legend's little crown.

"I think Lugia appreciates that." He's not sure, if he's honest, but a white lie won't hurt. Lugia's influence on him is dormant, recovering from the strain they'd both been through. He does know: "It didn't mean to hurt you, no. We're both glad you're getting better."

Her words hit him harder than an unexpected punch; it's not often he's lost for words, but there's a long time before he speaks.

He'd thought she was ignorant of their villainy.

"I don't know what Yveltal wanted." Warmth has fled his tone. He sounds not just his age but older, now, like Eris Halla has burdened him with Rocket's weight. Breath leaves him slow. "It attacked, and we defended."

It was more than that, though. Can Lugia really feel anything? Did Rocket do that?

"Rocket helped Lugia. We weren't the ones to shadow it, no."

Gavin sits down in a chair near the bed, grave.

Vermillion. It's where she's from, he recalls.

There is a sick sense of relief to know that he'd not been responsible — not directly. He had taken lives, had seen Rocket take cities, but not hers.

He wonders if he knows the one who had.

"No. They shouldn't have."

Orders are orders. Rocket wasn't like that any more. It's what he tells himself so he can sleep at night, so their faces don't swim before the eye of his mind. They had moved on from the brutality and violence that had ravaged Kanto. But it won't bring them back.

Gavin doesn't cry. After all this time, he's not sure he remembers how. But when the child reaches to wrap her arms around him, she slips past the barriers that would have seen others pushed away and envelopes his sturdy frame. He is so stunned that he does not react, not at first, but to release the breath he'd instinctively held. Beneath her touch, she'd feel it shiver in his lungs.

You have been kind to me where others have not.
'You're a nice person.'

But to be kind to some and not to others, to be nice in the eyes of one whose innocence was robbed too soon—

"That doesn't mean I'm good, Eris. Rocket are not good." His chest hurts. He had buried his humanity in defense of such pain, but it splinters anew and digs at his heart. "But we'll protect you, now." It's all that he can offer.

'You didn't do it without reason.'
No, he didn't, but that—
'Kill him or I kill you.'
—that didn't matter, did it?
'If you were bad, you wouldn't have felt guilt.'

Somehow, this pain was worse than the conditioning that Rocket's put him through. Guilt was an agony like no other; it slips past the defenses he's set up like a sucker punch to the stomach.

She doesn't let go, and Gavin slowly shifts his arms to embrace her in return. His eyes are dry, but he's trembling with the force of suppressed emotions built up over years. Survive, no matter the cost. His jaw is clenched so tight it hurts. He had always thought the cost might be his humanity, that one day he will wake and feel nothing but hollow. It's worse than that. The cost is this, pain without penance, nowhere to go but deeper into the grave he'd dug himself. We won't just kill you—

Her weight shifts, and Gavin allows her to retract. She takes his hand in both of hers — it's scarred, a deep cut into his palm and a line along his index finger that serve as pale reminders of misdeeds.

"You've grown up too fast." It's said with a sigh; his fingers curl around one of her small hands, squeeze. "I'm sorry."