"Isn't that what opting for communication instead of violence is? You doing something nice for me."

Or had he misread the situation? It wouldn't surprise him. Stress and lack of sleep dulled the mind. That was to say anything of the -

Nevermind.

"Please, you think I'm staying here for Lex?" he's tempted to bite his tongue. It's the smart thing to do. But since coming to Hoenn, Killian's made nothing but dumb choices.

Why stop now?

"If I left, she'd followed. And you always have a choice." words borrowed from someone else. "But yeah, you're right. Rocket is a means to an end." Deoxys, Avatars - power.

They are why he stayed.

"Rocket has to be willing to change for anything I do to matter." he eyed the pack of cigarettes on his lap. "It doesn't feel like it wants to."

Cillian Quinn

"Oh." Gavin seems genuinely surprised. "I mean, I'm trying to do it for everyone, but I see your point."

He'd been thinking of the bigger picture, Rocket as an organization rather than Gavin himself as an underboss and a person.

He had, in fact, thought Killian Decker was staying for Lex.

"She'd follow, but it would put a target on both your backs. I figured you stayed to keep both of you safe."

He shrugs. Apparently, he'd been mistaken.

Huffs, dry, at the last comment.

"Changes slow, but it's still changing. Imagine you never met Silas, but surely you've heard the stories. What it was like in Kanto, what we used to do to our own."

"I'm sure you'd try and hunt us down."

Try being the operative word. Killian had given running a lot of thought. The world was vast and filled with far-off locations. Rocket could spend a lifetime searching for them and find nothing. But he didn't want to run. Not when his curiosity had yet to be satisfied by what Hoenn had to offer.

"Cowards run. I'm no coward."

Killian nodded and opened his pack of cigarettes. Pulling one of the cancerous sticks free, he held it between his fingers, reluctant to bring it to his lips.

"I'm aware. Chu-e Choi's shared a few stories with me during our lessons." and he'd been as unphased then as he was now.

"Rocket's old guard doesn't scare me." outside of Lex, Killian had nothing for Rocket to take. The admin was truly alone in this world.

"That might make me foolish, but it's the truth."

Cillian Quinn

"We'd try," he confirms, putting equal stress on the word, "and maybe we wouldn't succeed, but no one wants to run for the rest of their life. Rocket doesn't forget a grudge. You've seen the list."

The list of traitors, defectors, and other detractors. A hit list.

@archon. Raziel Beckett. People he'd trained with, fought with, bled with. People he'd liked, that he was now expected to execute on sight.

A distant memory flirts at the edge of his thoughts. Good, you didn't run.

It had been cowardice that had made him stay.

"I can only imagine what he's teaching you. Hope I never have to find out."

His scars are numerous; on his exposed forearms alone, a myriad of marks to hint at a history. His right forearm looks like it might've been mangled by a canine, perhaps more than once.

"You don't have to fear them if you work with me. I am old guard. The only one I fear is Declan Walsh."

Scars itch, but Calem Pollet isn't here to challenge his words.

"There's no catch. Not from me."

A warning or a threat, it doesn't matter. Killian's response is silence regardless.

The cigarette filter is rolled around in thought. Fingers crush the bead hidden inside the butt. The satisfying crunch that follows enough for him to lift the cigarette to his mouth. Held in place between slightly parted lips, Killian eyed the scars on Gavin's arms.

"I wish I could believe you."

Faded, blue hues meet with gold. Beyond his denim windows lays a genuine want to take Gavin at his word.

"But you've already broken my trust. What's to stop you from doing it again?"

Nothing.

Cillian Quinn

"Nothing."

He could snap at any time and become the monster that some in Rocket feared him to be. No one was more aware of that pressing fact than Gavin himself.

"But if I intended to break your trust, I wouldn't invite you into my home."

Killian had all but said it himself — he didn't know much about Gavin. Just as the admin's blue eyes reflect his emotions, the wide windows and bright, open spaces of the Sootopolis abode hint to a side of Rocket's underboss he'd sooner keep hidden. Show them your soft side and they'd draw the blade to sharpen it.

His cigarette has burned down to its filter and he's noticed how slow Killian Decker had been in removing his own from its packaging, how he traps it between his lips without lighting it.

"You trying to quit? I can hold off, we can go to another room."

He gestures to the ashtray in explanation; nothing's harder when you're quitting than smelling the smoke in the air.

"Exactly, nothing."

The chuckle that follows is involuntary. As is the lighting of his cigarette and deep inhale of smoke. He blows it slowly from his lips, head tilted upward so as to assault Gavin with the cloud.

"Really? Because I would." he admits coldly.

There was no betterter way to shatter someone's trust than to make them think they had yours.

"Huh?"

Killian pulled the cigarette away from his lip, frowning. "Shit. I hadn't even noticed." and yet he doesn't put it out.

"I was - I am, but the stress makes it hard. I'm sure you can relate."

He took another hit, leaning back to enjoy the rush, shoulders relaxing.

"The scars on your arms. What happened?"

Cillian Quinn

"I'm a rather private person."

It's why Rocket knew almost nothing about their underboss.

It's his turn to laugh, deep and rich and rough against his smoke-scarred throat. "I can certainly relate. I've tried to quit twice in the last year."

Cinders in the ashtray suggest how well that's been going.

He's surprised by the direct nature of the question; there's an immediate shift, his expression gone stiff and cold. Then, with conscious effort, he forces himself to relax. He extends his right arm, first. On closer inspection, the pattern of scars suggests that he may have been bitten more than once.

"One of Kanto's enforcers had an Arcanine that liked to use my arm as a chew toy," he says, dry. "That's how Rocket used to deal with insubordination, slip-ups, you name it."

His left forearm features faded ink, an old attempt to cover its scars.

"Most of these ones aren't from Rocket," he admits. "Got thrown into a table during a fight."

Memories of his father are bitter on his tongue.

He opens his left palm, displays the wicked scar that cuts across it.

"I was part of the operation that took Pallet. We got the town but they collapsed the Pokemon Center before we could take it. This was my punishment."

And, for a bonus, he pulls his shirt away from his shoulder to show a stab wound.

"This was from our very own Chu-e Choi. I didn't answer his questions correctly."

Ever the observant one, when rigidness clasp hold of Gavin and the blonde's eyes turn to ice, Killian took note. Smoke poured from the admin's lips. Ears wide open to hear the tale told in a bitter tone.

Scars etched into flesh are exhibits at a museum. Reluctantly put on display for Killian to inspect. He does so in silence. Features stoic in the face of a harrowing recollection. Sympathy for others died inside of him long ago. It had too. You couldn't collect secrets, exploit them when needed and not become numb.

Killian feigns empathy nonetheless, eventually. A deep frown curled the muscles of his mouth.

"You people are fucked up." but he's beginning to see the picture. The image of Gavin's life that led him to be the man sitting before him today. A once blurry painting became that much crisper inside Killian's mind.

He leaned forward, ashing his cigarette and smooshing it inside the ashtray.

"Rocket for torturing you into obedience, and you for choosing to remain loyal."

Cillian Quinn

"Maybe so."

Like Killian Decker's frown, the smile that curls Gavin's lips is nothing more than a movement of muscle. Humorless, devoid of any warmth or feeling.

"I chose to survive. Now, I'm choosing to help the rest of them."

Not everyone had chosen Rocket and those who had weren't always properly informed of what they were getting into. He wanted to see them safe. Unlike Killian, Gavin's never managed to truly wall off his capacity for empathy.

Perhaps that made him more fucked up than any of them.

"They're my family, now. Not the ones that tortured me, at least not the ones who enjoyed it. But the ones who didn't have a choice."

"I don't see what you're doing as help."

It's not the first time Killian's admitted this, but unlike in his office, there's more conviction to his words. After everything that's happened. The time to present himself as a neutral outsider has passed.

Whether he liked it or not, he chose to entrench himself in Rocket politics. To be a part of this...family, as Gavin put it. That word. Family. The way it lingers in his thoughts, haunting, turns the leftover taste of smoke in his mouth stale.

Lex is his only family. But does she have to be?

"Family doesn't hurt each other."

He thinks of his mother. How she'd been before the drugs and the gambling left her limp on the couch. It curls his fingers tightly, chills his spine like a Froslass has breathed against his neck.

"Let's say I wanted to make Rocket better." it's a big if, but one that's not out of the question.

"Then this," he motioned between the two of them, "Needs to change."

Cillian Quinn

Family doesn't hurt each other.

Gavin's laugh is not mocking but it is dry, humourless, with a heavy weight behind it.

"Don't they?"

Mine did.

In that, he knows, he's not alone. Plenty of Rockets with blood ties within and without had been hurt by the ones who'd raised them.

"I don't want to hurt them. I'd just rather see them hurt than dead."

But he'd expressed, already, a willingness to explore the alternatives. He doesn't waste breathe repeating himself because Killian Decker has already heard him once. Instead, he asks,

"And what do you mean by 'this'?"

He copies the gesture, cants his head.

"The good ones don't."

Isn't that what Gavin wanted to be? A good family. Something better than whatever fucked one he'd had.

"Even if you're the one hurting them?" the brief pause given for Gaven to answer wasn't enough time to speak. "Actually, don't answer that. I already know what you're going to say." he'd said it in Killian's office.

Yes.

A toxic answer. The kind you only gave after suffering years of abuse. Killian wasn't the one to try and unpack that. Not when things between them were so tense even an Aegislash couldn't slice through it.

"I mean us, our relationship." Killian stated plainly. "Do me a favor and don't act like you're not aware that I dislike you." Gavin's position and power necessitated civil behavior on Killian's part. If Gavin had neither, nothing would stop him from wringing the man's neck with the strength of a Machamp.

"But I don't want to hate you. When we first met, I thought, maybe, we could get along. Be friends."

Cillian Quinn