"You may want to slow down."

Amber eyes scan the scene, taking in the opened cabinet and the liquor bottles.

"I know you've witnessed something traumatic, but that doesn't make you immune to alcohol poisoning. Unless you're trying to die, in which case there are far quicker methods."

He's not the best at dealing with trauma. His own, others, it matters little. But he'd gone searching for Rowan Wrynn after they'd squared away the situation with Ozaki because he knew that his brother would not be handling it well.

Gavin sits on the edge of a table.

"Thought you might need to talk."

"Until you're in the med bay getting your stomach pumped, sure."

Speaking of his stomach, Rowan empties its contents into the sink and Gavin politely averts his gaze as his brother retches over the sound of running water. He returns it only when Rowan speaks.

Surprisingly, it's sympathy that shows in his expression.

"This is going to sound awful, but it gets easier." He remembers laying on the bathroom tile of his Saffron apartment with the room spinning overhead. Waking up drenched in sweat, shaking, from nightmares that felt all too real. "Gonna fucking suck until it does, though. Sorry you had to see it."

"Rowan."

Gavin sighs, steps away from the table to sit down on the floor across from his brother. There's an intensity to his gaze that he does his best to soften as he looks at him.

"You think I was calm the first time this shit happened to me? They made me do it myself." He glances down at his hands, runs a finger over a small scar on the index finger of his left. "Couldn't sleep right for months. Kept picturing his face every time I closed my eyes."

Thirteen years, and he's all but forgotten the finer details. What colour had his eyes been? Had he said anything, or just let it happen?

"We don't cut out the weak links in the chain anymore. We strengthen them. Rocket's your family now. Maybe a bit more literal than intended — but we'll look out for you. Only thing you could do wrong is turning on us like Ozaki did."

"Yeah," he admits, without hesitating. "Still am."

Scooting back a little so as to give Rowan more space, he pulls a pack of cigarettes from his blazer and lights one up. He tilts his head to blow the smoke away from his brother's face, then looks back at him.

"You smoke? It's fine if you don't. Anyway — I've already crossed almost every line I drew in the sand. I'd say Rocket made me a monster but I'm the one who pulled the trigger, so I guess that's on me."

He shrugs. He's uncertain how to deal with the tears and thus chooses to leave them unacknowledged.

"Do I seem like a husk to you? You can be honest."

He takes another puff of his cigarette, tilting his head back.

As expected, Gavin extends the pack of cigarettes toward Rowan. He offers his lighter, as well, and pockets both it and the smokes afterward.

"Because I cared more about my own survival than what it would cost to ensure it."

Blunt, but truthful.

He grimaces at the mention of happiness.

"Is anyone in Hoenn happy?" He scoffs. "I have people I care about and the power to protect them as well as myself. That's good enough for me."

His muscles tense at the mention of his fear.

Fear is a weakness, and weakness gets you killed. Only in Rocket, his father's words would have been the mantra to lead him to his grave. Fear of Rocket, of Beckett and Blackwell and now Declan Walsh, was the only thing that had kept him alive.

He glances away, using an exhale of cigarette smoke as an excuse. His stomach twists uncomfortably. When he looks back, there is no hint of it in his gaze.

Impulse makes him want to protest angrily at the notion that he'd somehow gotten off on Ozaki's suffering, but he forces himself to evaluate Rowan's point of view. How it must've looked to see him mocking a woman before he'd ended her life.

"No, Rowan, I didn't enjoy it. I never do."

He scrubs at his face with a hand.

"No more than I'd enjoy it if you turned traitor, or Oscar, or Alexandra."

Here, in quiet vulnerability, he doesn't use their surnames. Here he's thinking not of his subordinates but of his team.

"By reminding myself that it was her choice."

There were other murders, other actions not so easily dismissed as the responsibility of others. Those were the ones that haunted him in the small hours of the night, that woke him from sleep with the memory of burning cities.

He lives with those only because he does not want to die.

"Ozaki knew what it would mean for her if she was caught. She still leaked the information. She put your lives in danger as well as her own. If I feel sorry for anything, it's for her Pokemon — but I needed her to break."