Something feels off.

Yet Gavin answers the call, for he is nothing if not loyal.

He raps his knuckles on the door as a courtesy warning before opening it, expecting it as usual to be unlocked. He isn't disappointed.

"What's up?"

Miasma wisps around him, and he doesn't step further into the room. He doesn't close the door, though he normally would in case this were confidential.

Chu-e Choi

The door opens. Chu-e doesn't answer right away.

He opens his mouth, takes a gasping breath as if to find the words, think about how vocal cords rub together to form sound that are understood by humans.

He snaps his mouth back closed, clears his throat, sits up straight. His hands are placed flat down on his desk, shoulders back, head straight.

"Have a seat." Still, like a predator. It's a shame the lights are so low that Cillian Quinn might not be able to see more than the sheen of his eyes.

There is a part of him — the part that had been battered, broken, and re-forged in Kanto's flames — that almost obeys on instinct.

Gavin blinks, and he does not move.

"I'm fine where I am."

His heart thunders against his ribcage and he can feel her anger flooding through his veins. The clash of fear and fury is dizzying, makes him feel sick to his stomach. Miasma continues to spread like smoke, curling where it meets resistance.

Chu-e Choi

Chu-e lifts his arms to knit his fingers together, elbows resting on his desk. The miasma curls and the hearts thuds in the ribcage, like how a lion might feel a shot of adrenaline before sinking her fangs into an antelope. He leans forward, better into the light of the door, and crystal shines back, stark in Chu-e's hollowed out eyes.

Not the whole thing, like the horrible display that Cillian Quinn had seen, but the iris. Chu-e's blue replaced with shifting black crystal that is focused on Lugia's Chosen and him alone.

"Please, take a seat..." A pause, thinking, trying to remember "Merlino." And it would almost seem pleased if he could feel pleased at all. His voice is light and pleasant, like how Chu-e talks to those who don't know what kind of man he is, how much blood is on his hands.

A crystal black tip of tongue wets his lower lip, black crystal teeth glint in the light when he speaks.

"I would like to have a little chat with you."

Merlino.

A confirmation. He isn't talking to Chu-e.

Fight? He'd lose.
Flight? He's done enough running.

A deep pull of breath to shut out the thunder of her thoughts so intent upon overwhelming his own and Gavin stares down the monster they'd faced in the wormhole, now wearing the mask of his best friend.

"I can chat from here."

Grief threatens. Was last time he'd talked to Chu-e the last time?

He won't ask. Don't give it that power.

"What do you want?"

Chu-e Choi

He smiles and it's sweet and it's kind and just like every smile Chu-e had given to Cillian Quinn when the man made him laugh. The crinkle of his eyes is the same, the one dimple on his right side, the pull of his cheeks. What is not the same is the terrible spikes of black teeth that looked more at home in the mouth of a shark.

"I would like back the piece of me you stole." Calm, almost gentle, like how a teacher might talk to a small child trying to sneak an extra cookie. They were still in trouble, of course, but it was not angry or with a promise of violence. "A proposal to benefit us both."

He tilts his head like Chu-e might have and it is all wrong. Something pretending to be a person.

Gavin does not smile. Gavin is not sweet.

Gavin blinks, and in his eyes blazes a fury that's been saved up over a lifetime of holding his tongue, of playing nice, of biding his time.

"I'd like my friend back."

For all his fire, Gavin's anger is like ice: cold, sharp.

He carries the fragment on him. Always. Can it sense its missing piece?

"You tried to kill me. Think I've forgotten that, do you?"

They have not forgotten.

Chu-e Choi

Cillian Quinn is spitting fire at stone. Chu-e simply keeps up the smile, easy, amused, as if Gavin is both below him and being silly. A temper tantrum instead of the raw anger and hate. He even laughs, a quick giggle, just like Chu-e, only it is hollow and wrong.

"When you eat a steak, do you worry if the cow forgives you?" It is almost worded like a genuine question. As if Chu-e actually cares about Gavin's answer or what he thinks.

"Don't be petulant." The trash can, full of the blackened puke, is kicked over to roll at Gavin's feet, let him see the mess as it spills on the floor. "He's getting sick because you're being selfish."

It doesn't help its case.

With every word, the fire in Gavin's blood is fanned. His fingers tremble not from fear — though that pitiful, weak part of him is still afraid — but from a combined rage his body can hardly contain.

"I don't try to negotiate with my dinner."

An accusation of petulance brings a snarl to Gavin's lips.

"He's getting sick because you're feeding off him, parasite."

It is only the vague hope that his friend is still somewhere behind those crystalline teeth and onyx eyes that keeps Gavin from attempting to finish what they'd started a year ago.

Chu-e Choi

"You do." Chu-e does not elaborate, though, thinking the Pokemon that trainers like Cillian Quinn as similar to what he is offering now. Only in this case, Gavin is the pokemon and he is the one who controls him, in his eyes. It is only made worse by the uncanny valley stretch of skin smiling over his skull, how the eyes bore into him with unrestrained hunger.

"When he tried to consume my body he made his choice." So sure, definitive, as if Chu-e had ever had any idea what all this would lead to. As if he could ever begin to guess that trying to make Gavin laugh would start this horrible chain of events.

"We both want the same thing: to keep this body functioning. I can ensure it does not expire before we're done with it if you agree to my terms."

That was no choice.

But he doesn't argue. He's beginning to realise there's no point.

"What the fuck do you mean, 'before we're done with it'?"

He is losing control of his anger, miasma choking the room.

Yet the grief chokes, too, the promise of sustaining his friend's life beginning to strangle like weeds in his thoughts.

It's lying to him. But what if it isn't?

"I want you to let him go."

Chu-e Choi

"I want to eat. I'm hungry." Simple. Easy. He was not lying to Cillian Quinn. Not that it would be obvious even if he was like this.

"You want him for companionship and safety. You are a social animal and need this body to provide those functions." Just as simple if it made any sense. Broken down to the most base of what they were. Why they were brothers.

Warped into something else. Gavin needed Chu-e to ensure his own power. An ally. If Chu-e died, a vacancy would be left open. It could easily be another Dominic. Or worse, someone who actively worked against him. That is how it was viewed. Not the bond, the care, the time spent together.

That was just chemicals to trick the brain of a lesser species to ensure survival.

"If I leave, the body dies. It is already past the time it should have perished, after all. Or had you not noticed?"

And then Chu-e stood. It was slow and methodical, the chair pushed in, a hand trailing over his desk as he stepped around it. Chu-e did not come closer than that, but he was growing impatient.

A hand was outstretched, blacked with crystal up to the wrist, sharp and dead.

"It has been for the body's consideration I have been so patient. I will not ask again. Give me my body part and make a deal with me. Or, I feed on you and take myself back by force."

Gavin is shaking.

Kill it.

But there's no hurting the monster without hurting Chu-e, too.

He's dying. How can you not see it?

Because he doesn't want to see.

An animalistic sound somewhere between a growl and a laugh bubbles up in Gavin's throat, scraping rough against its edges.

"Touch me and die, parasite." Miasma swirls even in the stillness of the air, dancing like a candle in the breeze. "If we're going to make a deal, I've got my own stipulations."

He pulls the fragment from his pocket, its surface marked with the pattern of Chu-e's teeth.

"Lugia is off-limits. I am off limits. Rocket is off-limits."

We are not prey. Never again.

"You need that body to live as much as it needs you. And that body belongs to Rocket."

It disgusts him, to reduce his friend to such base elements. But he was reasoning with something alien, and must put his terms into words it will understand.

Long, pale fingers stand out stark against the black that devours light.

"There are sources of food among the enemies of Rocket. Do you understand?"

Chu-e Choi