"I want a world where people can get the justice they deserve." It's childish, just a feeble hope, but it's something he feels burn so strongly in his chest that he worries it might choke him

"If we turn into the people who hurt us, we're no better than hypocrites who spit on our own beliefs."

A soft sigh. Chu-e glances down, at his lap, and some of the previous... front sloughs off his shoulders. The mask, already mostly off, drops, as he sinks into the chair.

"What happened in the Lab?"

"When the world is ours, we'll make it so."

If all bent beneath Rocket's power, there would be no laws but their own. They could shape the world in their own image. Such power calls to him like the flame to a moth.

He sobers at the mention of the labs.

So he doesn't remember.

"You came to ask me about your Poipole. Then you got a bit — weird, about Beckett being made admin." Gavin grimaces apologetically at the phrasing. "You didn't remember that we'd talked about it, and you got really upset when I tried to explain. Then your nose started bleeding, and—"

Gavin's breath trembles on an inhale as he reaches up a hand to brush the mark on his throat.

"You — it went for me, I think." There's an almost hysterical bubble of laughter. "Kind of — kissed me, but not really, more like it was trying to stick a needle down my throat. Had your hand around my neck."

His nose wrinkles some at the mention of 'kiss'. It was a similar feeling like if someone told him he had tongued his brother.

But, more serious matters.

"I remember asking you about the Poipole. I think I got upset, but it gets fuzzy. Then I came to, I was on the ground. Bloody, with your Sandslash over me."

He glances down, studies his hands.

"It think something... bit.... Beckett, too. He said it was like a mosquito bite."

Idly, his fingers go for his own throat, trace the column of it.

Reluctantly, Gavin allows himself to remember.

The taste of iron in his mouth, the thrumming of his heartbeat, the anger that he'd felt that was not entirely his own. Necrozma had spoken through Chu-e, GIVE IT BACK.

"You thought I attacked you," he realizes, belated.

He hadn't thought of how it looked, at the time. He'd been thinking of that damned creature in the wormhole, how he wasn't going to give an inch to this thing that had already taken so much. He'd been worried that Chu-e wasn't Chu-e anymore.

"You pulled out a knife, told me to give it back, came at me. I sent out Sandslash to protect myself but it didn't get to do anything; you dropped before you got too close. Like it suddenly lost its control or something."

"I did."

Is admitted between them. That's what had hurt the worst. After coming to, thinking back, even with the gaps in his memory he had been so sure that had been what happened. It was a trust broken and shattered in his chest.

He picks at his pants idly, plucking imaginary fuzz and dust from the fabric.

"Gavin." Is started again, quite. "When I'm... if I'm ever not me anymore, will you remember me for who I am and not... what I became?"

It was a deep seeded fear, even before Necrozma. With his illness, before It took hold, he was still expecting his decline to be slow and eventually... not to be himself. Just a husk. The mind dying before the body.

It's easier to accept, now that he's had days to process.

His throat closes up around his first attempt to respond, but the empathy is in his eyes and in the furrow of his brow. It's clear what his answer will be even before he swallows, manages to speak.

"Course I will, Chu-e."

It's something he loathes to think about but has been forced to confront far too often since Necrozma's dark influence has seeped into Choi's mind. It felt as if the slow decline of his illness was simply being replaced by the rapid infestation of it.

"I was mad when you confronted me, but it wasn't really you. I know that."

"It might get to a point that you can't tell one from the other." His doctors had told him about that. There would be a point in between, before he was just a confused body. That, of course, was not a diagnosis on Necrozma, but...

It was weird how they had so many overlaps, wasn't it?

"Why do you think it wants that stone so bad?"

He doesn't want to lose his friend. Not like this.

But it's seeming less and less likely that they'll find some miracle cure in time, and so Gavin is forced to confront the grim reality of his counterpart's inevitable decline. His expression pinches, pained.

"I'll remember the before. No matter what. I promise."

His chest hurts and it takes a moment to focus on the question.

"I think maybe it's a part of it, somehow. Or it was, anyway."

"Thank you." And he means it. Even if things are rocky, will probably get worse, there is a fragile sincerity in his voice.

Chu-e couldn't stay mad at Cillian Quinn. Didn't want to be upset with him. But, it seemed like in the future he might break his own heart over the other man.

"I just can't understand what it could do with it? If I got my hands on it, would it make me... eat it? Why would that even help anything? It's not, like... an energy source or anything."

He nods, quietly accepting.

When the subject shifts to Necrozma, Gavin shakes his head.

"I'm not sure. Only indication I have of what it wants is what I've told you."

His eyes widen slightly with a memory.

"Oh! It happened before, with the Zangoose in the alley. You grabbed my arm, and it pricked me."

Gavin looks concerned.

"Do you know how many others it's got? If we've anything in common?"

Chu-e tries to think back but shakes his head.

"It did? I don't really.... I couldn't say for sure. I don't know it happens."

He raised a hand to his chin, turning over the last few interactions he's had since the Zangoose incident,

"I guess... you... Theo... oh, at the Star Tournament. I shook Silph's hand and scratched him, somehow. I didn't think anything of it... and Zac, a few days ago. He gave me a hug and something poked him."

Gavin nods when Zac is mentioned, at the word poke.

"Feels a bit like being pricked with a needle."

He's dealt with a lot of that, lately, on account of all the tests they've been running. It's barely painful but the implications are what worry him.

"Felt a bit more like being stabbed in the tongue, the second time."

There's a flicker of discomfort as he once again runs his tongue along the top of his mouth.

Another wrinkle of the nose.

"Gav, you're a very handsome man, but I don't wanna think about how I've had a tongue down your throat, even if I don't remember it."

At least Cillian Quinn knew that, if he really wanted, he could hold that over Chu-e in some type of teasing.

"Did you feel anything after? Or did it just... bite you for no reason?"