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[attr="class","aurelie"]

[attr="class","aurelie_body"]At first, the only thing that registered with Aurelie was the voice. Cheerful and teasing in tone, it was one she knew well, from moments happy and sad, lively or weary, loud or peaceful. A moment later, she heard the thump of boots landing on the rock behind her as he walked up toward her, and a smile broke across her face.

Just when she was most bored, of course he'd come to relieve her of the tedium. They were comrades, after all! They were on the same team, the same side. (Something in Aurelie's mind nagged at her at this thought, something about a mind-boggling message on her Rocket comms, but the memory slipped away from her like a droplet of mercury when she mentally tried to grasp at it.)

Turning around, she slid the sunglasses down her face and waved hello at the familiar figure. "Isaac!" she exclaimed by way of greeting. "Hey! Thanks for coming...to..."

Her voice faltered and trailed off when she really beheld him, her eye widening in surprise. Isaac looked different, somehow. There was his hair, of course, which was dark now where it had been blond. And he looked like he'd been hitting the weight room even more diligently than before too.

But it was more than just a shift in hair color or an increase in musculature. There was something subtly but distinctly different about his bearing and posture, the light in his eye, and the way he smiled fondly at his Dhelmise. Aurelie eyed him with unabashed curiosity, trying to figure out what had changed in the young man she considered a close friend, even a brother figure.

He seems...less confused? she thought perplexedly. More centered, somehow? More... Her mind flailed for the right word. Strangely, all she could come up with was radiant, and she wasn't sure why.

"Isaac, your...your hair!" she exclaimed laughingly. "What did you do to your hair? And why?"

And then that elusive memory that kept slipping away from her suddenly emerged into full clarity, and Aurelie's smile wavered and slipped as the word defected swam into focus. A chill suddenly ran down her spine. But she hesitated, and waited for Isaac's answer, wondering if it would explain things.

[attr="class","cred"]VEL OF PIXEL PERFECT

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[attr="class","aurelie"]

[attr="class","aurelie_body"]Aurelie chuckled at Isaac's casual response about his new hairstyle, though it came out sounding more strained and awkward than it normally would have. Everything about this situation was awkward. It felt so strange being uncertain and distrustful all of a sudden around Isaac, of all people—Isaac, whom she'd taught to play tabletop roleplaying games, who'd taught her to scare off thugs using words rather than wallops.

"Well, it looks nice on you," she responded sincerely, her smile fading. "Living on the edge seems to have done some good things for you."

Her lips curved in a humorless, half-hearted smile when he expressed his surprise at seeing her here. "I could say the same about you," she replied, looking from him to his Dhelmise with unwonted wariness. "I thought you'd come to relieve me, but I'm not so sure if that's what you planned."

Not if what she remembered from the Rocket bulletin was true. Maybe he was planning to trick the person guarding the water into thinking they were being relieved and then attack them when their guard was down, she thought grimly. But he didn't do it. Was it...because he saw it was me?

Clenching her jaw, she forcibly stifled the inconvenient gust of warm affection that surged through her at this thought. Her knuckles whitened as Aurelie curled her hands into fists at her sides.

Finally, the tension became too much for her to bear. "Is it true, Isaac?" she burst out, raising her chin and meeting his gaze uncompromisingly. "Did you really..."

Desert. Defect. Turn your coat. Abandon us. Turn your back on us. Betray us. Take out our eye and leave us bleeding and crying on the ground, wondering how you could possibly do this to us...

"…leave?" Aurelie finished, her voice dropping into a low, disbelieving murmur.

[attr="class","cred"]VEL OF PIXEL PERFECT

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[attr="class","aurelie"]

[attr="class","aurelie_body"]When she was seven years old, Aurelie had once slipped and fallen out of a tree she'd been climbing, landing hard on her stomach. She'd only been about five feet up, but her body had been much smaller and more fragile. To this day, she could still remember the shocking pain of the impact and the way the air suddenly whooshed out of her body, leaving her struggling to breathe, move, or even think.

That was how she felt now, when Isaac confirmed—without saying yes, to be sure, but still confirmed all the same–what he'd done. He spoke on, describing, explaining, recounting, dredging up past memories and events, promising. But his voice was only a fading drone in Aurelie's mind, compared to the rapidly rising roar of anger and hurt that beat against her eardrums, threatening to drown out all other sound.

She'd known for a while that Isaac had no love for Rocket as an organization. And she vaguely recalled seeing Caleb suddenly being whisked away into thin air by a masked Rocket member when they'd all awoken in front of the Ancient Tomb. Even in her mist of fury, Aurelie dimly guessed what Isaac must have done in response.

But there was ever a part of her that remembered what she'd thought of as her little brother's betrayal. Could never let go of it, even if she sometimes wanted to. Was reminded of it every time she looked in a mirror.

And this...this shattering change of heart from Isaac, this switching of sides to go from comrade to enemy... Little brothers, Aurelie thought wildly, feeling like laughing and crying and screaming all at once. They always hurt you and reject you and break your heart. The thought ripped through her like the shards of red-hot metal had torn through her face, leaving her feeling hollow and aching and reaching instinctively to cover her remaining eye.

And just like before, the greater her pain grew, the hotter Aurelie's rage burned.

Isaac had stepped away from her toward the edge of the promontory, as if sensing and backing away from the heat of her emotions. He dared her to push him over the edge into the waters below. She clenched her jaw and took two steps toward him, extending her hand.

Roughly, Aurelie grabbed the sleeve of his shirt and jerked him back onto safe footing. Then, giving him no chance to respond, her expression never changing, she balled her other hand into a fist and slammed it into his gut. She could hear the breath suddenly rush out of his body at the blow.

Almost immediately, treacherous tears of remorse sprang to her eye. What am I doing? Aurelie thought, her rage ebbing with the stinging of her knuckles against Isaac's stomach. Even with his newly dark hair heightening the resemblance, this wasn't 'Tate; it was Isaac. But Isaac was League now, too. What am I even supposed to do?

"I'm sorry," she whispered, "but I'm also not sorry. Now, talk. Tell me your reasons."

[attr="class","cred"]VEL OF PIXEL PERFECT

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[attr="class","textbox"]The North Wind itself rushed from Isaac's gut as Aurelie buried her fist in it. He doubled over, only the hand on his sleeve sparing him from the cruel fate that lurked below. His heels found purchase on safe ground, and against all odds a pained smile spread across his face.[break][break]

"I'm just glad that wasn't a knife."[break][break]

With how Isaac spoke, it was as if he was afraid this conversation might be his last. With the rage Aurelie felt in the wake of his betrayal, with the hatred Rocket spewed in the wake of his absence, with the risk to his life even being here provided, it was all too understandable.[break][break]

"Galar gave me hope we could just . . . move past this all, y'know? It was proof of everything we'd griped about. That without this war, Hoenn and its people would be capable of so much. I thought, at least for one night, I could lay down and dream of a world where none of this mattered."[break][break]

"Then the second, the second we were out of there, Rocket took Caleb Harcourt away. A hero. A king. Proof that we were better than this. Gone, just like that. As if those 20 years, and everything they gave us, meant nothing." Perhaps they had meant nothing. Perhaps they were a dream. Wasn't everything in life, until someone dared to reach out and take it?[break][break]

"It took a month for me to find him. A month of torture, breaking him down until there was damn near nothing left. My Ralts was a telepath, y'know. He could feel what Caleb was thinking. That he wasn't good enough. That there was nothing left for him to live for. That he didn't deserve to go on another day. That he should just die and spare himself the torment."[break][break]

"When I finally saw him, he was naked. Beaten. Haunted. They took someone so proud, kind, and loving, who just wanted to make up for his past, and they did unspeakable things to him- Isaac's fist clenched. A flash of red seemed to dance across his body. And if it wasn't for me? That would have been his fate. A withered shell of a man, some abused plaything.[break][break]

"I didn't betray Rocket. I didn't stab anyone in the back during some big battle, or run to the League to spill a bunch of secrets. All I did was slap a toy out of an admin's hand and say 'that's a human being.' And do you wanna know what I got for all of that?"[break][break]

Isaac practically tore his shirt open. The particularly brutal scar on his stomach was particularly noticeable. However, if Aurelie looked closely, she would notice patches of slight discoloration all across his body. Finally, with a part of his feathered hair, Isaac revealed what seemed to be a circular burn scar atop his forehead.[break][break]

"Cillian Quinn paid me a visit. He slaughtered my Pokemon, put me through a world of pain, and would have shot me clean through the head. It's a miracle I'm even alive right now. All because I wanted to end a single man's torture."[break][break]

[attr="class","aurelie"]

[attr="class","aurelie_body"]All tides rise and fall with the gravitational forces of the moon, and Aurelie's rage waxed and ebbed in response to the lunar pull of Isaac's presence in much the same way. Remorse came quickly in the wake of her reckless punch to his gut. Seeing his pained smile, she unthinkingly reached out the very same hand toward him, sudden guilt furrowing her previously cold, bleak expression.

"I'm sorry," she whispered again, helplessly. It was always like this when her temper receded and the consequences of her wrath became clear, and worse now because it was Isaac on the receiving end. "It would never have been a knife, but I'm sorry about even this!"

But any apologies she had to offer were drowned out by the flood of explanations and stories pouring forth from Isaac's lips. She snorted faintly at the mention of memory-Galar and Isaac's idealistic hopes that it would make them all better people afterward, which Aurelie had doubted even back in Galar. But she had to admit, she hadn't expected Caleb Harcourt to get kidnapped mere minutes after they all came to, either.

The more he described Caleb's imprisonment and torture, the more her grim façade broke, with winces and grimaces flickering across her face. Idly, Aurelie wondered who had been torturing him. Then she remembered the demanding harshness in Zev Harcourt's voice at the mere hint she might have once met his brother and drew in a shuddering breath, guessing he surely had a part in Caleb's torment.

Horror broke in her like a cresting wave when Isaac finally revealed the bullet scar he'd received from Cillian Quinn. On one hand, looking at him, Aurelie wondered, How did you even survive that? On the other hand, though, she also thought, Yes, but...well, what else did you expect him to do?

By now, her anger had dwindled to low tide, drained by the heart-wrenching revelations that Isaac had shared with her. She shook her head and swallowed hard. It took a while for her to find her voice.

"I...I see," Aurelie faltered finally, biting her lip and looking away toward the glittering water below. "I...I guess I can't really...blame you for what you did, now that I know the full story. I suppose."

Perhaps it was a lapse of Aurelie's allegiance to say something like that, but it was the truth. Besides, she was already failing them by not simply cutting Isaac's throat or pushing him into the sea. She wasn't sure yet if what he told her should have an effect yet on her overall loyalty to Rocket—but for now, she was at least ready to absolve Isaac himself of further condemnations.

"I don't think I could have done what you did," she admitted honestly. "I don't have your courage, or audacity, or whatever you want to call it, and I don't think I could love anyone as much as you love Caleb. Not the way I am right now.

"But...I can understand. There's a certain nobility in what you did, even if it was crazy and rash. And Arceus knows, you've already been punished a lot for it already."

She sighed and crossed her arms. "So, what now? I punched you already. Are you going to arrest me now?"

[attr="class","cred"]VEL OF PIXEL PERFECT

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[attr="class","textbox"]"You can."[break][break]

What hurt more? Knowing that you harbored anger towards someone you loved? Or that same person telling you that you had every right to hold it?[break][break]

"No matter what I do, people are gonna blame me. For everyone in the League that's giving me a new home, there's someone that'll hate my guts 'til the day I die. Rocket's got people that understand and people that want my head on a spike. I walked a hell of a line, and now I'm paying the price for it."[break][break]

There was no perfect happy ending on the horizon. Not for anyone who set a foot on the sub. One way or another, Isaac was always doomed to head down this path. All his fearful attempts at softening the landing did was delay the inevitable.[break][break]

"You've got plenty of love in your heart, y'know." How was it that, out of everything Aurelie said, that was what he honed in on? Clearly, Caleb wasn't the only one he so fervently admired. "You don't have to show it the same way I do. But you've always made me feel cared for. It's why I avoided you for so long, if I'm being honest."[break][break]

"I couldn't handle the idea of you hating me for this."[break][break]

The "worst" had taken the form of a punch to the gut that Aurelie immediately apologized for. It was clear that Isaac's deepest, darkest fears wouldn't come to pass. Nevertheless, there was a bashfulness to his smile at his admission. Even after facing down an underboss and bonding with a legend, it was clear Isaac would always see himself as the youngster of the two.[break][break]

"Arrest you," Isaac repeated, the words feeling like poison against his tongue. "I don't know if I could do that, even if I wanted to. You're too . . . you, damnit."[break][break]

Instead, he offered a hand her way. "But I meant it when I said I could relieve you of duty."[break][break]

"Think about it, Aurie. We both know Walsh is full of it. You, me, Rubes. We were all talking about how stupid this whole thing was. And now he's even got you shipped off to war, no matter how much you tried to keep your head down." The worst case scenario danced through Isaac's head. What if it wasn't him who found her? What if she'd gotten hurt? Killed? "This shouldn't be your fight."[break][break]

"And it doesn't have to be." Wonder shined in Isaac's eyes, voice swelling with hope. "Things're different now. They've got an amnesty program spinning up. It's not just me. There's plenty of us, grunts and admins alike. They keep us safe, and as long as we stay on the straight and narrow they give us what we need to take our lives back."[break][break]

Remiel Calcifet. Rowan Wrynn. CIAN MAHER. Johanna Joy. Eris Halla. In a sense, even Caleb Harcourt. Name after name, face after face, came flashing into Isaac's mind. How many more were there that he didn't even know about? How many more were there who were just waiting for the right moment to join them? How many were there in the League's uppermost echelons who sympathized, who knew the best way to stop Rocket was by breaking their chains?[break][break]

"We're not alone. We don't have to be."

[attr="class","aurelie"]

[attr="class","aurelie_body"]Strangely, the more Isaac spoke to her about love in her heart, hope, amnesty, redemption, and not being alone, the more Aurelie's expression darkened and her lips set into a thin line. The brighter and more animated his face became, the more silent and withdrawn she grew. A coldness descended on her as Isaac's enthusiasm swelled, an alienated antiphony to his soaring cadenza of wonder.

That coldness, subtle though it was—betrayed only by the narrowing of her single eye and the rigidity in her stance—was an incongruous sight in itself on someone who normally wore all her emotions on her sleeve. In contrast to the taut, red-hot anger that had suffused Aurelie a few moments ago, a different kind of tension, bleak and grim, radiated from her now. Where one hand had been extended toward him in concern, now both arms were crossed solidly in front, and her jaw was clenched.

Finally, at Isaac's last heartfelt declaration, Aurelie shook her head and looked away from him. "Don't," she said, softly but firmly. "Don't ask me, Isaac. Don't try to save me. Don't sell me on anything. Don't preach to me. Just...don't."

You don't know me, she wanted to tell him, not in a shout but in a whisper. You think you do, but you don't. Not well enough.

You don't know that I chose to join Rocket, not because I had no other choice or didn't think I could fit in anywhere else. You don't know about the people I've killed, or robbed, or lied to, not because Rocket forced me to but simply because they asked and I did it.

You don't know that I came here not because they "shipped me off" or drafted me or forced me into this, but because I was curious. I was interested. And I wasn't averse to pounding a few heads or holding a knife to a few throats to find out.

Perhaps it was stupid of her to refuse what she thought he was offering. No doubt there was something wrong with her to cling to the darkness she had chosen instead of the brightness that he spoke of. But Aurelie could only be who she was, just as Isaac was only being who he was.

More gently, she added, "All this..." She gestured at him, at herself, and at the sea around them. "...has been enough already for one day. For me, at least. And, well, I can only imagine what you've been through. So...don't ask anything more of me."

Aurelie sighed, a long, deep, shuddering sigh that seemed to release some of the tension in her. She looked back at Isaac and tried to smile. "Especially when so much has changed about you. Are you...okay now? Are they still coming after you?

"And...how did you survive that bullet? How is it possible it's already healed so well?" she asked, with mounting curiosity. She couldn't imagine that this change in factions—and the devastating fallout afterward—could have happened all that long ago, yet the scar he'd showed her looked so cleanly knitted, and Isaac himself seemed to positively glow with health and vitality. "Is there more to the story, or is my eye just playing tricks on me?"

[attr="class","cred"]VEL OF PIXEL PERFECT

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[attr="class","textbox"]The coldness was impossible for Isaac to miss. It was such a contrast from the warmth Aurelie showered him in before. This was exactly what he had feared. The greatest cost of leaving Rocket wasn't the attempts on his life. It was being separated from the love of those he held most dear.[break][break]

For all his practice at poker faces, the pain in his eyes was undeniable.[break][break]

He refused to let the hurt win. He refused to let his smile drop. Instead, where pain flashed across his gaze, understanding took its place. "There's only one thing I could ever ask of you," he said, his voice as firm and strong as it was soft and gentle. "Just know that, if you ever need me, I'll be there."[break][break]

There'd be no further pushing of the issue. All he could do for now was open the door. Whether Aurelie chose to take it or not would be all up to her. Only then could he help her through.[break][break]

Maybe Rowan Wrynn had the right idea of it all this time.[break][break]

As Aurelie asked if he was okay, the dam broke. Isaac couldn't help but laugh a little, the question so simple and yet so impossible that it almost hurt to think about. "Oh, Aurie," he said, the pain he'd tried to hold back now dripping from his voice. "I've never been okay. But this is both the most and least okay I've ever been."[break][break]

"They're always going to be coming after me, you know." It almost astounded Isaac that Aurelie had asked that question. Was she truly that in the dark? Or was this just the same denial from earlier taking a new form? "As far as they care, it's them or me. And that's not going to change until one of us is in the ground."[break][break]

"But it's not that big of a change, you know. I signed my life away the second I set foot on that sub. We all did."[break][break]

If Aurelie was expecting a silver lining to these clouds, she wouldn't find it in Isaac's penultimate answer. "The bullet wound was dumb luck," he admitted. "Echo pulled together what little strength he had. Staved off death just long enough to warp me to safety. The last thing I felt was that bullet touching my forehead. A split second later and, well . . . I think you get the picture."[break][break]

"The rest was thanks to the help of a League medic. Put me back together again and then some." Perhaps Aurelie would notice the lack of the eyepatch. Perhaps she'd notice that, rather than its previous color, the iris of his restored eye had turned a vivid pink. "Not for a lack of trying. My interrogation, Dewford Gym, even the damn hospital . . . Rocket's been trying their damndest to break me back down."[break][break]

"Bad news for them. Takes a lot more than that to kill me."

[attr="class","aurelie"]

[attr="class","aurelie_body"]Isaac had always been perceptive—far more so than Aurelie herself, as she'd be the first to admit. He immediately registered the new distance that loomed between them in the wake of his defection from Rocket. It took her a little longer to notice the flicker of pain that flashed across his face in response, but the sight tugged at her heart when she did notice.

She didn't have it in her to forgive him, still. Certainly not now, and perhaps not ever. But she did take Isaac's hand and smile gently when he relented and reassured her that he would there for her. Aurelie knew with bone-deep certainty that he would keep his word, too.

When he laughed and said he'd never been okay, she instinctively reached out to hug him. She did draw back when he said rather sharply that Rocket would always be coming after him. They don't always, not with everyone, Aurelie thought with some asperity, but she forbore from saying it aloud while he kept talking.

Look at Johanna Joy, who's now a well-known Gym leader, she couldn't help thinking, all the same. Look at Remiel Calcifet, who was a Rocket admin, for Arceus' sake! Neither of them seem to be living in fear of Zev sneaking up behind them and slitting their throats in the dark.

Isaac might say that some of them had been only minor grunts, barely a blip on Rocket's overall radar, but then, he had been a grunt too. Of course, Isaac had always been an exceptional grunt. So, perhaps that was why Rocket wasn't going to let him go easily. Why they were still relentlessly trying to break his spirit and destroy his existence with brimstone, hellfire, and all manner of blood-soaked vindictiveness.

She sighed and winced at his account of his survival from the bullet wound. "I'm sorry to hear about your poor...was it your Ralts? Echo?" she said quietly, pursing her lips as she tried to recall his Pokemon. "But those League medics do phenomenal work, I must say. You look stronger and brighter than ever."

Finally, looking toward his face, Aurelie narrowed her eye and brought up the Cufant in the room—only a Cufant, compared to the Copperajah that had been his defection, but still. Even she had the manners not to bring up painful injuries or physical deficiencies, most of the time. But Isaac's eye...she had been wondering.

"By the way, did you lose your eyepatch at some point while getting here? Either to this island, or just to this collection of rocks where I'm sitting?" she asked curiously. She still thought his eye must be injured, not realizing it was possible to restore it. "I...I had thought you had lost your eye entirely, but I... Well. Anyway."

She began rummaging through her pockets. "I always carry a spare eyepatch or two with me, if you want to borrow one." Her lips twisted wryly. "I'll be sure not to lend you the one with the big red R on it."

[attr="class","cred"]VEL OF PIXEL PERFECT

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[attr="class","textbox"]"Echo, yeah." Isaac sighed softly, his eyes finally wandering away from Aurelie's. How could he look her in the eye when this pain, tempered as it was, still weighed on him? "And Buffaloman. Pandora. Hearth. Sanford. I was the only one to make it."[break][break]

Cillian Quinn had been merciless. Not only had Isaac seen his Pokemon die before his eyes, but he was forced to face their own shambling bodies. That Celebi had made him relive it all again, more moments later, would have sounded like a cruel joke to anyone else. To Isaac, it had been the only shred of peace he'd gotten about their fates.[break][break]

"I still wish I could have done more for them. But they insisted. And they died for it.[break][break]

As Aurelie asked about his eye, he blinked it rapidly. Right! He had two of those now! If he was being honest, he was still getting used to it. He had to throw his eyepatches out to avoid putting one on every morning, and when trying to focus over long distances he found himself squeezing his new eye shut on reflex.[break][break]

"You're right," he admitted. "Those League medics sure do some phenomenal work." Isaac couldn't imagine how Aurelie would react. This kind of thing was impossible. Even a prosthetic replacement would require technology beyond their wildest dreams. Yet, here he stood, two eyed and in the flesh.[break][break]

Hope bled into Isaac's voice. For the first time since Aurelie's rejection, he'd perked back up into his old self. "If you could, would y-" he started, only to bite down on his tongue. His face was a hot blush. "Ugh. I shouldn't ask. I know this kinda thing's really, really personal."[break][break]

". . . I'm gonna miss the way we used to match . . ."[break][break]

Somehow, that small, pain-filled voice didn't sound like it was describing eyepatches.