"You. Rocket. The future."

Eris Halla is young but smart. He doesn't feel the need to elaborate.

"The path you're on doesn't end well."

Eris holds out one of her skipping stones and Gavin lets it nestle against the crook of his palm, staring out over the ocean waves for a long moment before he flicks his wrist forward to send it skipping.

Or, rather, sinking.

He's never learned how to skip them.

"I don't want to see you hurt, but it's my job to keep Rocket's secrets. To keep Rocket safe. Do you understand the position that puts me in, Eris?"

A long pause saturated in melancholy is broken by another splash as a rock Gavin plucks from the beach meets a similar fate to the last. Sinking, drowning.

"I would," he agrees, "but that doesn't mean I'd want to."

Survive. No matter the cost.

How many lives had it cost him, so far?

It chills him to realise he's lost count.

"To help her recover her memories would only hurt her further, Eris." A sharp note of warning in his tone. No threat, just caution. "She is safer in the dark."

He bristles, visibly, at the mention of MATIAS SILPH.

"If you stay with Rocket, we can protect you. But only if you stay."

And was that where Eris Halla would be most comfortable?

You're just like him.

She can't realise the significance of those words, the way they prickle cold down his spine. She's certainly speaking of someone else, but it's the phantom of Silas Blackwell that's summoned to Gavin's thoughts.

Fortunate, then, that Eris Halla's unexpected follow-up startles him out of them.

"What?"

Whatever he'd expected, it wasn't for her to tell him how to skip a rock.

His lip twitches, the ghost of a smile suppressed by the memories that haunt him.

"Never learned how."

But he'll learn now, with her help. He plucks another stone from the beach, flatter than the last, and pinches it softly between his fingers before flicking his wrist like he's a kid again, throwing a frisbee for his cousin's Yamper. Young, carefree, innocent.

It skips, twice, before it sinks. Not great, but better.

"Yes," he says, when she asks of dangers. "It's dangerous everywhere, Eris."

"It's not about cutting them off," he says, shaking his head. "It's about saying too much. Lot of Rockets have friends in the League, but they're a hell of a lot less friendly once you tell 'em what we do."

Most of them looked at Rocket and saw irredeemable criminals, nothing more.

Gavin looked at Rocket and saw his friends, his family, the people he cared about more than anything in this world. He looked at them and saw his future, indefinite.

"It's not a dumb idea," he says, after a pause. "At least, not when it comes to keeping people out that don't want to get involved. No one should be forced into this fight, one way or another."

He's spent his entire life trying to regain the agency that's been taken from him by others.

Eris Halla's hand is so small on his. She's so young.

"I've got your back, Eris. I won't promise you'll never get hurt — but I promise I'll do what I can."

He takes her hand, squeezes gently.

In the wake of their daunting conversation, the solemn threat makes him chuckle, soft. The stone fits against his palm, and he flicks it toward the water. Just one skip, this time.

"Guess I'd better start practising."

His gaze shifts toward where their boat bobs atop the water, the sun sitting low on the horizon and bathing it with golden hues.

"I think it's time for us to go home."

Eris Halla