"You too, huh?"

Orion would've enlisted sooner if it had been an option. There'd been no greater day in his life when he'd graduated high school and told his parents he was moving out. They'd tried to stop him, first with empty promises and then with threats, until finally they'd laid down the law: if he left, he was gone for good. He'd never looked back.

Similar to Tam, he leaves out the details.

"Not 'there's a barrier around the region and the world is ending' levels of chaotic, I'd imagine." His lip quirks with the dry humour. He tries not to think about the impending end of the world. "I can't imagine missing calm... but I mean, I grew up here, so..." He chuckles, shaking his head.

Tam's smile, fleeting though it was, serves to take the edge off any earlier hostility. Orion reflexively mirrors the gesture, equally brief but no less genuine.

"Me neither." His space aligns more with an organized chaos; he knew where everything was in his home, but an outsider would have trouble sorting through the clutter. What Tam says next catches Orion's attention in full. "I didn't know you were a ranger back in Unova."

Honestly, he didn't know much about Tam's ranger history at all. He'd been Slateport's captain when Orion met him and it's hard to divorce him from the role. They'd all been rookies once, though.

"Is it much different over there?"

Hoenn had a reputation for being a chaotic mess. Fitting, then, that the file room is currently a reflection of that.

The steadiness of Tam Fawley's tone is exactly what Orion does find reassuring. It's not filled with the softness of false pity or the hard edge of disdain — it simply is.

When Tam tells him this is temporary, Orion believes him, because Tam's never lied to him before.

He doesn't expect an offer of help. After a brief hesitation during which his overactive mind jumps to a premature conclusion of being patronized, he dismisses that thought as ridiculous and nods acceptance.

"... thanks."

It's going to be a long day, but at least he'll have company.

Need.

The word slips past the cracks in simmering anger and settles as confusion in his thoughts. It shows momentarily in the way his brow furrows.

He hasn't forgotten the warehouse. The sheer desperation and fear in the captain's voice like he'd thought the worst had happened. It had been overshadowed by the anger, by the fact that Tam had ignored Orion afterward and not checked in on him during his week of leave, but the memory returns now with a nagging sense of clarity. He'd assumed that Tam was benching him out of anger, spite, rebuke.

It occurs to him now that it might be concern.

"Okay," he says, softer. He's averted his gaze, staring at a misplaced file without really seeing it. "Just... just as long as it's not forever."

I don't think I could handle another demotion.

Hate is a strong word, but Tam's certainly not winning himself any favours with the answer provided.

"And how long is that going to be?"

He can't look at the captain, instead forcing himself to focus on the daunting task of organization. He's angry, yes, but more than that, he's hurt. It feels like his life is falling apart all over again, the despair of depression magnifying even the slightest inconvenience.

He can't stop himself from firing off a bitter, "Do you think the Pokémon carry guns, now?"

All of them.

It sinks in, then. See, Tam's responsible for who goes where and who does what, so the decision to send out all the rookies on patrol and keep Orion busy with clerical duty had been a deliberate choice.

Green eyes narrow, a look of reproach shot toward his captain. "What, is this some kind of punishment? I got shot at, Tam, isn't that punishment enough?" He's been stuck in recovery for a week, bored out of his mind. Surely that was sufficient. "How long until you let me get back on patrols?"

Sullen and sulking as he might be, he still crosses the threshold into the file room as ordered. It's much larger than the one he'd been used to at Fortree's HQ when he was still a rookie, intimidating in its immensity.

Orion smiles at Clover when she rouses herself from her bed, scratching her behind the ears when she pads over to greet him. Altair offers a greeting of his own, bending his shaggy head to bump his nose against the smaller canine's.

Orion's smile dies immediately at the words.

"Wh ⁠— Tam."

He gets up abruptly to follow the captain, exasperation clear in both tone and the sharp movement of his hand as he gestures.

"I'm injured, I'm not crippled." He fails to see the other potential reasons for this tedious assignment. "File room is rookie duty. Make one of them do it."

It did need reorganizing.

Have I? He doubts it, though perhaps Caleb Harcourt has missed his drinking buddy and Calliope Marks has missed her partner in crime. Still, it's not like they'd be missing much without him around. He imagines it's the calmest week Tam's had since he hired Orion on.

"Could be worse," he agrees. "Glad it's not."

The sentiment is genuine, if stilted in Orion's usual awkward manner. He didn't regret his own decisions so much as the fallout from them — a loss of crucial supplies, Tam getting hurt. Mostly the latter. He's spent the whole week thinking about what could've gone better. If he'd brought Mizar, with DAMP, if he'd thought of another way to disarm the gun... but he hadn't, and here they are.

He's a mixture of curious and apprehensive when Tam speaks next. "What needs doing?"

"Fine," is reflexive, spoken so quickly after the question has passed Tam Fawley's lips that it's obvious no real thought was given. He's not used to people asking because they care; he's used to them asking because it's polite, used to the immediate shift in mood if he answers with anything that isn't 'fine' or 'good'. They expect him to OK, and if he's not OK they expect him to lie, because that's just what people do.

Not Tam. After a beat, Orion registers the fact that Tam never asks, not unless it's important.

Looking briefly uncomfortable, he amends, "Sore. Tired. But I don't get dizzy any more when I stand up too fast, and I got the all clear from medical to return to work."

His leg hurts when he exerts himself too hard, pulling at stitches, but he tells himself he'll just take it easy. His left arm, all titanium and artificial nerves, has the barest hint of a scratch where the bullet had impacted metal. His shoulder had ached for the first few days from the force of the impact wrenching muscle, but now he can't feel a thing. Maybe there were some perks to being, as @nikita had put it, 'part machine'.

"Are you doing OK?"

Orion, too, only ever asks when he wants the truth.

Orion had wanted to avoid the hospital in the aftermath of the botched warehouse job, but Tam Fawley had insisted. That turned out to be fortunate; he did have a concussion, and the wounds sustained from shrapnel on his back and thigh had needed stitches. Didn't make him any less grumpy about the whole thing. Hospitals stressed him out.

He'd been given a mandatory week off in which to recover, forced to let the other employees at the ranch take over all the difficult tasks lest he make things worse for himself. Hearing loss in his left ear has yet to fade. But he's relieved to be back to work, even if he's dreading the inevitable conversation with Tam. They hadn't left off on the best of notes.

He's not two minutes into his shift when he's summoned to the captain's office.

He's not expecting anything good.

Not even Clover is awake to soothe his nerves, so it falls to Altair to lay his head against Orion's thigh when the cadet sits down, the Absol's warm red eyes blinking up at him. Orion cards his fingers through the Disaster Pokémon's fur.

He lets Tam break the silence, because he can't think what to say.

I'm your captain, Tam reminds him, as if he needs reminding of the fact that his job is in the other's hands — he bites his tongue around bitter retort. Tam has been incredibly patient with his attitude, but testing him now is too reckless even by Orion's pitifully low standards.

Take your own damn advice.

As the adrenaline fades, the pain informs Orion of injuries he wasn't aware he'd sustained. There's a sharp ache near the base of his spine and his head has started to pound. Probably have a concussion. He should say something to Tam.

He doesn't.

He gets back to work in brooding silence, instead.

Orion flinches at the expletive; he'd have cringed away from the raw fury if not for Tam's hand still twisted in the collar of his shirt. The urge for violence is clear in the captain's tone, and Orion half expects that Tam will punch him.

He doesn't.

He scolds some more, as if trying to shame the incompetence from the disgraced cadet, then speaks so softly that Orion has to strain to catch the words through still-ringing ears.

The significance of the addition, to me, is not missed.

Orion doesn't yell. For all Tam's anger, such emotion doesn't exist in a vacuum: it comes from somewhere, even if Orion doesn't know where. He can't yell at him after that. But there's a certain heated intensity, a passion as he at last retaliates.

"You remember what you said to me, after you nearly fuckin' died?" It's rhetorical; he barrels on without pause. "I don't want everyone else to be in danger. I don't give a fuck what happens to me, Tam, but I give a fuck about the rest of you."

It hadn't been a suicide attempt: it had been an instinct to protect that saw him lunge for the weapon.

"If I were trying to die, I could've just stood still."

Until today, until this very moment, Orion has taken Tam Fawley's unflinching calm for granted. Tam hasn't gotten upset when Orion has snapped at him. He hasn't gotten upset when Orion's messed up on a job. Hell, he hadn't even been all that upset when he'd had to bail Orion out of jail.

So when the Captain all but grabs him by the throat, Orion's alarmed enough to freeze up. He doesn't know what to expect, but Tam merely yanks him to his feet before going in for a verbal kill.

He barely processes the words beyond Tam is angry.

When faced with anger, with shouting, there are two general responses from his brain: rise to the bait with anger of his own, or collapse under the pressure. He's leaning toward the latter. He can't be mad at Tam, even when Tam is calling him stupid, because to see the other man so emotive is rare enough to know he's hit a different kind of nerve.

He doesn't know what to say that will make the situation better, so it's a long moment before he says anything at all.

"I panicked," he says at last, his voice very soft where Tam's had been harsh, loud. He doesn't look away. "I saw him reach for the gun and I just — reacted."

With recklessness, rather than self-preservation, because these days Orion's life means little and less.