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[attr="class","skulltitle"]導通抵抗

[attr="class","skullbody"]"Gee, I wonder whose fault that was." Isaac didn't know where Knuckles was right now, but he knew she could pick up the sudden influx of sass in his aura. Aura sensitivity could be a curse as much as it could be a blessing; being guilted by someone you couldn't even see was a prime example of that. "Here's some good advice. If you're gonna get checked into the hospital, don't let a Pokemon write the chart."[break][break]

Still, she didn't bring up charts so he could be her sassy little gremlin. She brought them up so she could know what was wrong. "Order of most bad to least bad? Bunch of cuts and bruises I'll walk off in a week. Some bad ankle burns and tears from gunfire; the sicko of a sniper I was fighting tried to saw through my damn leg with bullets. The eye, of course. If I'm lucky, it might be salvageable? But . . ."[break][break]

Isaac's voice trailed off, and a heavy sigh followed. "Kiryu didn't make it. She tried to protect me. She tried to be something greater than herself to make it happen. And the same thing that made us strong together also made her vulnerable. It was a freak accident. It was a one in a million chance. But she gave her life for me. And now I need to do everything in my power to make sure that sacrifice was worth it."[break][break]

That choking sob broke Isaac's heart. He took the hand that she gave him and used it to guide her forward, bringing her towards him so that he could hold her close. He tried to feather a hand through her hair. The first time, he just kinda bonked his fingertips against the side of her skull, but took advantage of being in somewhat the right position to start properly stroking her hair. "It's okay. I know this is hard for you. It . . . it sucks. It's gonna suck for a while. And I know this wasn't the news you were hoping to hear when I came back home. At all."[break][break]

She offered to let him move in with her. Isaac knew she would. She offered to throw away what she had, move to an in between point so he was closer to his job and had more space. He knew he couldn't let her do that. "You live in a paradise. You wake up over a bakery and walk through the flowers to go to work in the world's most beautiful garden. You're not throwing that away."[break][break]

He sighed, holding Cygne a little bit closer. "Besides, I . . . I think I'm gonna need a lot more time. Before I'm ready." Vulnerability was hard, especially for someone like Isaac. To not have a place to process that vulnerability by his lonesome, even if born from the best of intentions, terrified him. "Gotta get through this hospital stay, for one. And after?"[break][break]

He looked up to the harsh, fluorescent lights, closed his eyes, and let himself pretend. "I'm gonna need to do a lot of soul-searching under the stars."

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[attr="class","skulltitle"]導通抵抗

[attr="class","skullbody"]The smile on her face lacked any semblance of joy. Isaac knew that he had given the "wrong" answer. Yet, while in the moment hit hurt, he could only imagine how the alternative would go. What kind of boyfriend would he be if he promised Cygne their dream life together, only to disappear on her time and time again?[break][break]

"Hey," he assured her, that soft smile on his face and that 'I had an idea' spark in his eye. "Don't say it like it's some kinda goodbye. Not a moment's gonna pass where Echo's Pokeball isn't on me. That means you so much as say the word, and I'll be right by your side. No ifs, ands, or buts." With Isaac having already explored most of the Hoenn region, and Echo capable of teleporting, he could be anywhere at anytime. He was amazed it hadn't revolutionized the economy, but between the effort it took to warp a single time and the relative scarcity of teleporting Pokemon, it probably all added up.[break][break]

Yet as important as it was to him, Cygne's smile wasn't the only one that Isaac needed to protect today. Ash's turn to relive the events of Mt. Pyre had come, and the account was heartbreaking. That tragically familiar numbness set into his facial expression, and the pain in his voice was palpable. For a second, Isaac was acutely aware of how close he had come to losing Ashley forever. If he didn't call Ash's bluff at great personal cost, and stormed away in a huff . . .[break][break]

He was glad to stay, when all was said and done. But was it? One of Ash's points made Isaac realize that they hadn't shared the true story.[break][break]

"Trust me, man. I didn't come out the other side okay, either." The room was already quiet enough to hear a pin drop. Now it was practically silent. "Kiryu was dead. Knuckles was panicked. Half my team was on the edge of fainting. And once I was dragged away, I didn't even know where you were. The battlefield was behind me. The League's encampment was ahead of me. I felt trapped. And far as I knew, that sniper was gonna be back to kill me at any moment."[break][break]

"There were only two thoughts on my mind. One, get out. Two, destroy anything that'd stop me."[break][break]

If anyone knew how bad Isaac was at harboring murderous thoughts, it'd by Cygne and Ash. For him of all people to admit that, with such a mix of desperation and venom in his voice, must have been shocking. "I almost made it up the mountain, if you believe it. Was half-ready to reduce the primal point to rubble, just to keep running. Far as I knew, there was no other way off that island."[break][break]

"And there she was." Isaac sighed, a slight smile spreading across his face. "annalise henderson. Hoenn's Head Ranger, as you might know her. My old co-op partner, as I do. It wasn't some big thing. Our goals lined up, once. So we worked together, once. But . . . it meant I knew her, y'know? She was just some rookie. A nice one. Genuine. Far as Rangers go, she was the real deal."[break][break]

He laughed a little. "It wasn't even that she recognized me. I was wearing that shitty war face still. She had no clue who I was at first. But being Head didn't change a thing. Even with us being kill on sight, she tried to hold me back instead. Words, at first. She didn't take out a Pokemon until I refused to budge. And even then, she tried going non-lethal."[break][break]

"I smashed her Pokemon to the ground without a moment's hesitation. I was desperate, and afraid, and a part of me wanted to make her hurt as badly as I'd been. A Volcarona. A rarity, a powerhouse. And my Pokemon left it a twitching, smashed-up mess, embedded in the stone of Mt. Pyre." He wasn't boasting about his strength. If anything, he sounded haunted.[break][break]

"Turns out, there's no joy to be found in hurting someone you know. Hell, there's no joy to be found in hurting anyone. I looked down at that Volcarona, and all I could see was Kiryu, chest heaving as she breathed her last. Zev Harcourt would've told me to harden my heart. End it while I could. Shit, I'm sure Cillian Quinn would've, too. Anyone would've. We were at war. It was kill or be killed. But . . ."[break][break]

He sighed, and with it let go of the tension wound into every muscle of his body. "I couldn't." Just like he couldn't with Josh Devlin. Just like he couldn't on that first mission with Zev, all those months ago. "I left her a potion, to make sure it didn't die. And then I ran. Towards the mountain. Towards the Primal Point. Towards what I thought was my destiny."[break][break]

"You know what happens if I scale that peak? I hit the Primal Point once, maybe, if I'm lucky. And then every League official, ranger, and volunteer in a 5-mile radius reduces me to a smoking crater. I don't do a damn thing to help Rocket in the grand scheme of things. All I do is throw my life away. The life that Kiryu died to ensure I'd keep. Would I be rejoining her in death? Or would I just be spitting in the face of her ultimate sacrifice? Arceus, she'd be so ashamed . . ."[break][break]

Right. Right. He was a little off the rails now. He shook his head, snapped himself out of his agony, and tried to focus back on what mattered. "Anna could've shot me in the back, spat on the mercy I showed her, took advantage of my hesitation to wipe me off the map. But . . . she didn't. She stayed. She spoke with me. And she warned me that, at the rate I was going, I'd just be throwing my life away." He laughed a little. Admitting he was saved by a Ranger. Maybe for a Rocket, that should've felt pathetic. But Isaac's gratitude was sincere. "I'm sure she just wanted me out of there. But she was right."[break][break]

"It's funny, in a way. It all came down to the right person, in the right place, at the right time, saying all the right things. Anything changes, and I might not even be here right now. If I was, it wouldn't be with a clean conscience."[break][break]

What was the point of this whole ramble? As he shifted to face Ashley, a soft smile on his face, maybe everything would become clear. "I'd been given a gift I can't even begin to value. My life. My soul. My future. And then I saw you, just as ready to throw it all away as I was. How could I have walked away? How could I have let that happen? How could I not step in, make myself do something, anything, to prevent it?"[break][break]

"Neither of us were okay. Neither of us are going to be for a long, long time. But if my back was to a wall, and I had to sacrifice something?" That mix of tears and blood rolled down Isaac's cheek once more, as if calling attention to the enormity of his choice. "I'm glad I made the one I did."[break][break]

"I'm glad you're still here."

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[attr="class","skulltitle"]導通抵抗

[attr="class","skullbody"]Isaac instinctively opened his mouth. He wanted to protest. From the jump, he never liked being called a good person. It felt like a label he would never live up to. It felt like he had already proven himself unworthy by harboring such malicious intent on Mt. Pyre in the first place. It felt like the kind of hope he'd long given up on, after years of being told he'd never amount to anything more than a weight dragging others down.[break][break]

Then he realized he'd taken a knife to the eye and didn't care, because it meant he'd saved a life.[break][break]

Okay. Yeah. Maybe he earned a few boyscout points, however begrudgingly accepted. "Alright, alright, alright. You guys win. I'll accept this one, alright?" A cheeky smirk spread across his face. "But next time you guys wanna go calling me a good person, I'd better have lost another body part to earn it first. Deal?" Oh, Isaac. You tsundere.[break][break]

Well, he was a tsundere for himself, that is. For Cygne, he was nothing short of unironically mushy. As she took his hand, Isaac clasped hers within his. He raised her fingers to his lips, brushing against them in a featherlight touch before planting a soft kiss on her knuckle. He then moved their clasped hands closer to him, gently guiding her hand towards his heart.[break][break]

Perhaps as it rested there, she'd be able to notice his heart hammering away at his chest. For all his lack of regrets, for all this mission went as well as it could have, for all he tried to convince the others that he could handle this, it wasn't going to be that easy. He was going to need time. Tenderness, when loneliness was too much to bear. Space, when he needed to be alone with his vulnerabilities. Trial and error, both in navigating his newfound disability, the tempest of his emotions, and even the inherent instability of the healing process.[break][break]

It was messy. It was painful. It could be real contradictory and frustrating. But in some ways, healing could be just as agonizing as pain. It was all the more reason why Isaac couldn't wish what he had endured onto his worst enemy. Even at the lowest point of his grief, it as unthinkable.[break][break]

"Turns out, war's the stupidest game of 'em all. Who knew?" Isaac asked. He blinked a few times, as if processing what he had just said, and then he burst into laughter. "Fuck, I sound like one of those PSAs. You know the ones. Those awful ones at the end of an 80s cartoon?" He'd say "kill me", but. Too soon.[break][break]

A part of him hoped Cygne would never even be in the position to have this happen to her. But there was no stopping her, and he didn't have any more right to stop her than she did to stop him. Instead, he just squeezed her hand that little bit tighter, let it rest against his chest a little bit closer. "Thank you, Cyg. For everything."[break][break]

Doordash? Oh, hell yes. "No hospital food? It's a dream come true!" he cheered. "Chalk another one up in the Everything column. But, uh. One request?"[break][break]

"Can we get Paldean food?"

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