His wounds ached.

Howard Slayte had never been a warrior. He was no great battler, capable of commanding the field with the deftness of Navy or Cillian Quinn. He was a historian, a pencil pusher who sat the chair of Rocket Admin, ordering atrocities from far away even as he held onto the small scrap of honor that he kept for himself. Rocket was full of too many giants, and thus Howard hid in the shadows, content to study his histories.

Yet wise men studied history, strong men wrote it.

So Howard had tried to be strong. He failed, and all he had left to show from it was a slew of frostbite wounds from constant exposure to Regice, several scrapes from the Giant Chasm, and a twitching left hand that still shook. Whether from muscle damage or fear, he didn't know.

Howard Slayte was not strong.

Yet that battle echoed in his mind. The one with Isaac Merlo. Isaac had been strong. He knew people. He knew... everything. He had been in Rocket for a long time, before his defection. Maybe he could understand what Howard had to say. He trusted Eris Halla, he trusted in the fact that Isaac was a good man.

Even if Howard was not.

It hadn't been hard to find the address. It had been hard to hike there. He was in pain, but every step forward had been a worthy atonement. Step by agonizing step, he walked towards the building that had once been Underboss Fiorelli's personal heaven and hell.

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

His fist slammed against the door. Strong at first, but weaker with every strike.

"Isaac! It's Howard!" Howard's voice was hoarse. He had ruminated on this decision for a long time, but it was time to make a small rebellion against Necrozma's chosen. He would make a stand against ■■■.

He had to.

---

Isaac Merlo

Isaac Merlo had no normal. He was anything but normal.

Nobody who walked away from Cillian Quinn and lived to tell the tale was normal. Nobody caught Suicune's eye, purged the forest's corruption, and got to proclaim themselves normal. Nobody who had been cracked, broken, and shattered in thousand places got to proclaim themselves as anything but utterly abnormal.

No, the miracle wasn't that Isaac had been chosen. The miracle wasn't that he had escaped Rocket.

It was a miracle that he had been able to pull himself back together.

"Something warm. I can't feel anything." Even his voice was frozen, cracked. Kyurem had chilled him to his bone. Regice had frozen him solid. There was no feeling. Only cold. Only fear. His constant companions ever since that island, ever since he met Isaac. Ever since ■■■ (Zev Harcourt) made his ascension.

Ever since he had been given that fucking golem. He was a purveyor of all eras, but had been stuck with the coldest, the cruelest, and the most unforgiving.

He took a seat on the couch. That too, felt cold, despite Isaac just lounging on it.

"This place burned down. I didn't know it was being rebuilt." He didn't actually know how Elisabeth had razed this monument to the ground, but he knew that it was likely emotional, violent, and far too overreactive. Destroying this place wouldn't make the memories tied to it disappear.

Elisabeth had cursed the earth, and the earth remembered.

Memories. The lifeblood of history.

"When I was in college, there was a rumor of a witch in the woods who sold the most beautiful flowers. It was said that giving a bouquet to someone you loved bound you both." Howard smiled without mirth. "I thought this place was a myth. My fiancée believed in it, though."

He looked up at the Liberator.

"Turning dreams into reality, Isaac?"

---

Isaac Merlo

"Lis?" Elisabeth Fiorelli . He had never heard of someone talk about her so casually. It was his first and only glimpse into the idea that Team Rocket had once been full of normal people. Normal people who had been scorned by the world in different ways, with nowhere left to turn but the side of crime.

Hatred, rage, scorn. These were emotions that filled the hollowed vessels that made up the hearts of each member of Rocket. It was a delicious vintage to sup upon, yet it was hardly nourishing. Rocket was broken, each of them. The longer this war went on, the more fanatic they would become.

Howard resisted the allure, but the battle with Kyurem had stained him bloody. He had lost his composure, and waged a personal war alongside Shred . A mistake, and likely his first step into becoming a monster.

Yet Isaac had stepped away. How had he done that? Where had that courage come from? Howard wanted that. Courage tasted far sweeter than fear.

"Every person is fundamentally selfish. Even people who save others do it, in part, for the satisfaction of being a hero. It's a far sweeter sound than being called a monster." He allowed himself to be guided to the fire, where he immediately began to steam. He had been given medical aid by Laurence Whateley following the battle, but his wounds ached. "You, foremost among the dead and the living, deserve to be self-centered."

He stared at the fire for a spell. He tried to utter a slew of words, but they were frozen to his tongue. Instead, he focused on the building. The monument to Elisabeth's life. It had been beautiful, before being burned down in a fit of rage. The potential in her life, snuffed out in an instant.

All that was left was a monument to grudges. Yet perhaps Isaac could turn it into something greater. If anyone could, it was him.

"I have not." Howard turned to the younger man. "Tell me about it."

His single eye focused in on Isaac, rapt with attention.

---

Isaac Merlo

"I could never afford to eat out. When you eat at a bar, you're paying for the experience. Experience doesn't fill a belly."

Ah, but it was a delight to feast and indulge upon spectacle. It was what made life worth living, beyond the tedium of everyday life. People did not simply thrive upon food and drink, but connections and new experiences. Isaac's bonds in Rocket were poisoned and noxious, but they had been bonds, formed from comradery and teamwork.

As poisoned as they were, they had been genuine, once. Yet there was one bond that Howard and Isaac both shared that was dark and twisted, forged from dark crystal as black as pitch.

■■■. No, that wasn't it. His name was ■■■. He tried again. ■■■.

He still couldn't say it.

"What connects both of these places, besides you?" Howard smiled mirthlessly. "Maybe you're the key. Don't come by my place. I don't want it vanishing overnight too."

Silence followed. He stared at the fire. His clothes steamed some more, and he felt his missing eyeball twitch. It always did that when he was stressed. Phantom pains never fully left, emotional or physical. Leaving Rocket had likely left Isaac the same, though Howard would never feel that himself.

He was Rocket's.

"History agrees with you. I do not." Howard looked at his hand and clenched it. There was always that moment of satisfaction before victory. When a soldier killed another, there was always that brief spark of satisfaction and pride in their own skill. That was primal. It was unfair. Yet it was real, human.

What rose people above beasts was they they could feel ashamed of such things. Yet there was an idealism to Isaac Merlo that Howard admired more and more. He was a good man who had risen above the system that had confined him. He was a liberator of himself and of others.

He'd tell Isaac what he knew. That way he could wash his hands of the pain of knowing about the owner of Howling at the Moon. He could return to normal, and not have to wake up every night, screaming of dark crystals.

"Isaac." His eye bore into the younger man. "Can you keep a secret? Promise me."

---

Isaac Merlo

The comment of Isaac being cursed caused Howard's eye to widen. He tilted back his head and let out a roaring laugh. Isaac was cursed, yes, but it was all just so funny. They were both cursed by circumstance and that would never change, but that word in particular was too hilarious not to laugh at.

Fate laughed at everyone in the end.

"I can think of someone far more Cursed than you." Howard said, vestiges of mirth still on his face. "Sorry to say.

jayden cross came to mind.

After taking a second to catch his breath, Howard sighed and stared at the fire. Warmth. How long had it been since he felt that? Not physical warmth, but emotional warmth. Chatting by the fire was one of life's greatest luxuries, and Howard hadn't experienced it since his promotion. All he saw now were cold glares from colleagues and worried expressions from grunts.

They looked at him like he had changed, like his rank defined him. His colleagues likely whispered behind his back, talking about how he shamed their position by virtue of filling a seat as admin. BARNABY FINCH , fern delaney , and jayden cross had to despise him. A disloyal coward filling the seat of admin? Oh, how he mocked them.

That had to be what they thought.

When he joined Rocket, he thought that his troubles would be behind him. He wouldn't want for money again. He could simply sell artifacts and dig up fossils, and never work with his colleagues. It had been a boyhood dream to be an archaeologist, and he had become one. Now, he didn't know what he was.

"Isaac..." He swallowed.

When did that boy die, he wondered? When he had joined Rocket? When he had taken up the mantle of admin? When he shot that girl out of the sky? When he blasted his best friend? When he was younger, he had wanted to be like Bailey Cooper. Somewhere along the way, he had become Cillian Quinn instead.

It was Howard Slayte that had soiled Team Rocket, not the other way around.

"I'm from Rocket."

An admission. Honesty. As the words fled his lips, he felt more liberated than ever before.

---

Isaac Merlo

Admin Fox.

Who had given him that name? There had been a day where a nameless face had called him that, and it had stuck. Why? Did Walsh give it to him as a joke? As a mockery of Remiel Calcifet and everything that the prince had stood for? Did it amuse the boss to bestow a name onto someone so stark a contrast from the one who held it before?

No. Howard didn't remember when, but he was sure that he had given himself that name for a purpose.

"You knew." His voice was soft, nary a whisper. "You knew."

The cup stayed in Isaac's hands as Howard wiped his functioning eye free of tears. When his face was still wet, he frowned and tapped his face. There were tears coming from the other socket.

Those, he wiped too.

"It wasn't a particularly good disguise. I thought I was good at hiding my emotions, but you..." He took the cup and squeezed to near breaking. "I wanted to believe in you, in what you are. I guess that made me loosen the mask."

He really did want to believe in Isaac, in the dream that a man tied to Rocket could finally leave. He wanted it to be true, and maybe it was. Maybe an ordinary member of Rocket could escape into the night, and put this nightmare behind them.

Yet the shadows were lengthening. The door that Isaac had taken was shut to him, now. An admin could not leave Rocket. Never.

What Isaac represented was beautiful because it could not be attained.

"Burger Kingler." Howard's smile was distant, as if he was smiling at something a million miles away. "I had forgotten about that. It was so random, yet deliberate. The universe wanted something to happen there, but I shut the door in its face."

His face paled as he remembered. 'Plaguing his life' as an apt description, but it had been Isaac's pain for far longer. Soon, it'd stretch far beyond the two of them.

"This was a mistake. He'll find out."

---

Isaac Merlo

"Cillian Quinn? That'd be easy, wouldn't it? I can understand him. He speaks the language mankind has been uttering since time immemorial: blood and loyalty." A universal language, it didn't matter which region you went to, it was universal. Kanto had learned that lesson most recently. Howard stared at the fire.

"It's not him."

It'd be easier if it was. Cillian's motivations were human. He simply wanted what was best for Rocket. It made him an unstoppable force of conviction, but it made him remarkably easy to predict. As long as you stood out of his way, you could avoid being trampled. A storm was a storm, but a weather vane could predict whichever way the winds would turn.

But what did you do when the storm was otherworldly? Eldritch? Impossible? How did you run from that?

By not being noticed. It was a trick that nobody realized worked yet, but Howard had learned to accept that Rocket was full of the selfish, the mad, and the deluded. There were a few exceptions, like Naomi Sato and Amor Rose, but for the most part? Mad.

Madness was a necessity for Rocket to dance to the song of Zev Harcourt.

No, don't think about it. Think of him as ■■■. Less to think about, less for him to notice. It was best to remain hidden, to remain safe and secure, even at the cost of another. If that made him a coward, fine. It made him an alive coward.

"I cannot say, but..." Howard trailed off. There was an opportunity here, if he was bold enough to take it. Did he dare place his chips on Isaac Merlo, a person who babbled on about ideals that he himself could not fully realize?

The answer was immediate. Yes.

"There will be an expedition soon." Howard said, drinking deeply from his mug of hot chocolate. "You're familiar with that new cave network near Oldale?"

---

Isaac Merlo