Chu-e is quiet as he catches his breath, the crying forced into silence through years of practice. You did not let others know you cried or your tears would be used against you, after all.

Cillian Quinn's comfort if nice, welcome, even if the proximity just reminds him of how hungry he is. It feels almost like he's snuggling a steak and the feeling disgusts him. This was his friend.

"Do you think we can ever be good people again?" Had he asked Gavin this before? He can't remember. There is something all consuming about Rocket, about what it makes you. Chu-e used to be a good person, once, and then it made him into something bad. Took away pieces of himself that, only now as a sick and dying man, he felt comfortable enough to reclaim.

He hated some of the things he had to do.

Fuck that therapist for making him grow a conscious.

Honesty. So often the hardest pill to swallow.

"No, I don't."

He's thought about it, too. All those nights staying up talking to Emma about where Rocket was headed, where he was headed. All of the walls he'd built in Kanto crumbling in the absence of Theo, of Pollet to reinforce them with terror and command. Until there was nothing left of those defenses but ruins, cracks in those walls to let reality slip through.

Monster. Murderer. Irredeemable.

No, they will never be good.

"But I think we can be better," he adds, soft. "Than we were."

Chu-e Choi

The answer is not the one he wants to hear. But, Chu-e is fickle, and he knows that no matter how Cillian Quinn answered, it would have been the wrong one. It was just like when he had that chat with Lulu Flint.

"I'm tired of hurting people." But it was built into what he was now. That's something that no one who hadn't been in Kanto Rocket would never understand. You adapted or you died, but what was left over of you was so much worse.

There was an old story his dad had told him growing up. That if a dog tasted chicken blood, you would have to either give the dog away or put it down, since it couldn't be trusted with the chickens anymore. No matter how you trained it, it would just keep killing the chickens. He ruined, couldn't be trusted, but didn't know anything else.

He wondered what it would have been like if he hadn't tasted blood. When Chu-e told Eris Halla he wanted to be a baker growing up, it was the truth. Would he have worked in some quaint little bakery in Sinnoh? His life, every day, rising with the loaves? It feels so foreign to think about. Like it should be in another universe.

"I think I got broke twice, Gav." And he laughs and a watery smile lifts his cheeks but both are without humor. "I can't be a normal person anymore cause of Rocket. But lately, I think something's made me not too good at being a Rocket, either. I'm not useful to anyone, anymore."

"I know."

What else can he say? So long as they're with Rocket, they will always need to hurt. Their victims wouldn't always be deserving of that hurt. Gavin accepts it as a part of the job but Chu-e... he doesn't need to hear the old Rocket lecture, not now.

"That's bullshit," he says without venom. "You've been plenty good for Rocket. Look at everything you've been doing with M.A.G.M.A. You've helped me with my studies of shadow Pokémon. You were there for Sootopolis."

He's glad that he wasn't close to Chu-e during that op, lest he have been the victim in Balder Schwartz's stead. But he keeps this to himself.

"And people feel like they can go to you. They don't feel like that for me, not most of them. They're scared of me, and that's — that's what I need to be, for Rocket, but not you."

Chu-e Choi

"I don't want people to get treated like we did, Gav." It just seems easy. Some people might not understand how Kanto Rocket was, but Cillian Quinn did. Chu-e didn't want it to return to that. People like THEO BECKETT might see this version of Rocket as lacking teeth, but he was wrong. This Rocket was much different than Kanto Rocket, kinder in it's own way, but that kindness was sharper than any blade that fear could have forged. It was a poison, a nasty trick that old guard would have to accept if they wanted to succeed.

But Chu-e didn't want to think about that.

"I'm so hungry, too, Gav." His stomach clenched and gurgled as if reacting to the mention. "Sometimes I eat till I puke, but I'm still hungry. I hate this." Chu-e's grip on Gavin tightens, frustration there. Then a sigh, a very quiet admission. "I also keep... losing time. It's happening more frequently. I think whatever is going to happen, it's coming to a head soon."

There's a somber pause as Kanto fills the air around them.

"They won't. We'll make sure of it."

Horrific as his time in their ruined region had been, Gavin was one of the luckier ones. What had been broken beneath tyranny had been forged into something stronger, sharper. He had been resilient enough to survive.

Were Kanto's doctrines to pervade Hoenn, most would crumble.

His friends. His family.

Chu-e's staunch presence throughout their reimagining of Rocket has been taken for granted. The reminder is like ice in Gavin's veins, a ripple of fear snaking through him as his friend mentions the insatiable hunger of the parasite within him.

Instinct screams at Gavin to pull away. He clutches tighter, instead.

I don't want to lose him. I'm not ready to lose him.

But what can he do?

"I'm with you, Chu-e. No matter what."

Chu-e Choi

"I visited my doctor recently. He said I'm getting better." Chu-e smiles but the look on his face, the tear tracks that are turning faintly grey and hard like the crystal in the air, tell a different story. "That's not possible." He gives a shaky sigh, pulls away. Rubs his face and sniffs. Keeps the quiet between them, oppressive and thick.

"If...." Chu-e won't look at Cillian Quinn. Ashamed with himself for sinking so low. But, as every time, even if Chu-e is at his wit's end he's always been good at crawling out of holes of self pity. Sometimes he just needed to cry on a friend before he could start clawing at the walls. "If I got shower, will you heat up something for me? Anything." His kitchen tended to be crammed full of food at any given time. Gavin was sure to be able to whip together something.

Better.

It should be a good thing. From the look on Chu-e's face and the twist in the pit of Gavin's stomach, he knows that it's not.

He doesn't know what to say, so opts for silence.

Though his friend won't look at him as he struggles through his heavy emotions, Gavin doesn't look away. He forces himself to face the ugly reality of it all, to push aside the echoes of his parents telling him to quit your sniveling and the thoughts of a dark basement with a locked door. Chu-e is not Gavin and Gavin is not his parents. He will be better than them.

When Chu-e finally breaks the silence, it would be like watching Gavin surface from a daydream. He blinks, startles, then focuses.

"Yeah, 'course. Whatever you want, mate."

Muscles stiff from sitting still ache in protest as he gets to his feet.

Chu-e Choi