Chapter Text
Adam couldn’t stop thinking about how he had ended up here. Which, he might as well. He was the only one who was ever going to. He was the only one who was ever going to think about himself, period.
He had to laugh at the clusterfuck. If he didn’t laugh, he’d cry, and he’d already lost enough without throwing what was left of his dignity down the shitter. Because he still had his dignity. He did.
Dignity aside, the rest of his possessions were as followed:
A shitty leather wallet that was barely holding itself together.
The fifty waterlogged pokedollars residing in said wallet.
A pair of mud-covered shoes. He also had his shirt and pants, which were equally filthy, but those were less important. He could handle walking around with his dick out. He couldn’t handle walking over rocks and twigs and fuck knew what else for Arceus knew how many miles.
A belt that didn’t boast a single fucking pokeball, thus rendering it effectively worthless. It was staying there anyway.
A tattered jacket bearing a torn and stained Team Rocket logo, not that that meant shit anymore.
A lifetime of memories that were now his and his alone.
It was enough. It was more than enough. Who the fuck needed identification or Pokemon or friends or allies or transportation or shelter or equipment? Pussies, that was who! Fifty pokedollars were all that he needed to climb back to the top of the world.
He just needed to get out of the rain first.
Adam pushed his hair back. It stayed put for about ten seconds before flopping back down, sending water dripping into his eyes once more. He pushed it back again with a vicious snarl. Rather than pulling his hand back, he kept it pressed against his hair and turned it onto its side to serve as a temporary visor.
It did jack shit to help him. The rain might as well have been a fucking wall with how hard it was falling. He could only see the grass stretching out immediately in front of him and some vague shapes in the distance. There were trees. Some sort of sign, telling him that he was on route whatever the fuck, leading to the town of who gives a shit. A squat, square figure loomed a little ways behind that. After some rancid squinting, he identified it as…
A house.
Adam stared. He felt the rain pounding on him, the sodden clothes clinging to his skin, and the angry ache of his empty stomach. His hand drifted down to his belt to brush his fingers over the big fat nothing to be found there. He glanced at the tall patches of grass lining the pathway, trying to see if he could make out anything stirring within. Finally, he looked back at the house.
He looked away with a disdainful scoff a moment later.
Adam wasn’t a fucking moron. He could have gone to a shelter if he felt like begging for charity. Fortunately, he still had his dignity, which meant that he wasn’t going to beg for help from some bleeding-heart auntie like a broken little piece of shit, let alone knock on some stranger’s door because he couldn’t handle a little rain. It was just water, for fuck’s sake! It would stop soon enough. After that…
Fifty Pokedollars. Figure some shit out. Get revenge. Get back to the top of the world.
Make the world look at him again.
From square one.
With nothing.
With no one.
Adam dropped his hand and trudged forward into the rain.
He made it all of one step before a beam of light cut through the dim. “Hey!” called a voice that made his every muscle tense. “Are you okay!?”
“Fuck,” Adam hissed, the word coming out garbled past teeth clenched so hard that it felt like they could shatter into splinters. Which, they might as fucking well, right? It wasn't like his day was already bad enough. His torment wouldn't be complete without making him deal with the most irritating bitch in existence.
At least she wouldn't know who he was. He'd tell her to fuck off, she'd give her token save the world and help the helpless protest, he'd shatter her spun glass heart into a million pieces, and they'd never see each other again.
But first, he had to deal with the dipshit of a girl running toward him. “Do you want to come inside? You shouldn't be out in the rain like this.”
“Then what the fuck are you doing?” Adam snarled, turning around to face Charlie fucking Morningstar.
The bitch staggered a step back, eyes going wide. Her grip on her garish pink umbrella was so tight that her knuckles had gone white. It was pretty fucking gratifying to see, honestly. She didn't know who he was, but she still–
Charlie's face hardened. She turned her flashlight off and tucked it in her pocket to reach for one of the pokeballs at her side.
Adam frowned. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“You aren't the one who should be asking that,” Charlie growled. “What are you doing here, Adam?”
Adam felt the rain pouring down on him. He felt his wet clothes sticking to his skin. He felt the weight that had lodged itself in his chest shudder and expand until it threatened to shatter his ribcage.
“You know who I am?” he asked.
Charlie drew her hand away from her belt, face falling into a confused frown. “What do you mean?”
Adam didn't mean to lurch forward. He didn't choose to grab the girl he so utterly despised by the shoulders. It happened regardless, and once he felt the solidness of her form, he couldn't bring himself to pull away. “You remember me?”
Something stronger rose up to overshadow Charlie's confusion. It should have been hatred. That was their relationship, after all. They fucking hated each other. What he saw instead was raw, bleeding concern. “Why wouldn't I?” She looked him up and down like she was properly seeing him for the first time. “Adam, what happened to you?”
His only response was to wrap his arms around his mortal enemy with a ragged sob.
Charlie didn't hesitate to embrace him.
*
The lake spirits looked like absolute pussies. The fact that the things were legendaries only made them all the more hilariously pathetic. At a glance, they weren't the sort of thing that Adam would ever waste his time with. If he was going to go through the effort of catching a legendary, it would be Ho-Oh or Darkrai or some shit, something that objectively and indisputably fucked.
Some shit couldn't be decided at a glance. She taught him that. Her intelligence, her diligence, the tenacity that made her shine so bright he couldn't help but make her his partner; it pushed him to become more of a badass than he already was. Thus, when the wet fetus trio showed signs of activity, things went down differently than they would have a few years ago. Badass Adam would have looked at those pussy Pokémon and written them off. Ultra badass Adam considered writing them off, but decided to do some research and see what the fuckers could do first.
As it turned out, the hideous little bastards could control emotions, knowledge, and willpower. Which meant that they could do a lot. “Help them rule the world” levels of a lot.
Adam didn't mean that in the mustache-twirling evil villain way or whatever shit Morningstar probably imagined. Bitch was blinded by her sugarplum fairy delusions and the stick up her ass regarding Team Rocket. Which… he and Lute had a great ride as admins, but at the end of the day, Rocket was about money and power and fun. Capturing the lake spirits was about money, power, fun, and the opportunity to actually change things. That was the beating heart of the matter. He and Lute were going to rule the world so they could fix things.
Wipe crime out of existence. Not the Rockets, obviously, but the thieves and druggies and prostitutes and all that shit? The scumbags that the league had been so amazingly stupidly forgiving toward? Something would be done about them. They hadn't decided exactly what it would be yet, but once they were able to control basically everything about a person's being, they'd have a lot of options.
The people associated with them, too. Their kids, their friends, their partners; they'd all be dropped down to the bottom of the pot. No more journeys or ladder climbing or any of that crap. They'd get to work basic jobs in their shitty little towns while actual good people monitored them. If they went too far out of line… Again, when you had Pokémon that let you turn someone into a tailor-made someone else entirely, you had options.
Speaking of Pokémon. The best ones would go to the best people. No more of that friendship and luck bullshit. They were going to get stricter about what Pokémon could be seriously trained, too. Vermin Pokémon were vermin and shouldn't be allowed in the leagues. Apart from the legendaries and ghost types were freaks that shouldn't be allowed. The whole system was going to be refurbished.
It was a the most brilliant vision that they'd ever fucking conceived of. They weren't stupid enough to think that it would be easy to pull off. For one thing, they'd need to catch three legendaries. For another, there was the chance that the little fucks wouldn't want to work with them, which meant they'd have to apply a little more pressure than was strictly advised to use on Pokémon. They couldn't have cared less. All of the blood, sweat, and tears would be worth it in the end.
It would have been worth it if it worked.
If it worked, he wouldn't have been sitting at Charlie fucking Morningstar's kitchen table with a towel draped over his shoulders, staring dully down into a cup of sweet smelling yellow tea, while she yammered on the phone with someone in the other room.
Charlie returned to the kitchen at some point. He didn't know how long it had been. He didn't give a fuck how long it had been. She wasn't there, then she was, offering him a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, but was practically bleeding with effort nonetheless. “Sorry about that,” she said. “I had to check in with. Someone. About. Something.”
Adam meant to glare at her and bite out a scathing comment. What he managed was something that probably made him look like a dead fish and a flat, “I'm not some mangy stray you pulled in from the streets, you know. I'm not gonna keel over if you leave me alone for five minutes.”
Charlie's smile stiffened and strained. “I know, Adam,” she said, an unmissable undertone of ice threading itself through her words. “I am. Well aware.”
No shit she was. The burn scars peeking up from under the collar of her shirt were a testament to that. He'd managed to catch a glimpse of the damage lingering on her shitty mansion through the haze of the rain. How he didn't recognize it from the get-go he had no fucking idea. That was without getting into whatever permanent injuries had been done to her and her shitty little friend squad's Pokémon, which…
He should count himself lucky that none of their Pokémon were anywhere to be seen.
All in all, Charlie Morningstar had some good fucking reasons to know that he wasn't some kicked puppy.
So why the fuck was she still looking at him like he was a stray? A stray who she expected to bite if given half the chance and didn't trust as far as she could throw him, but a stray nonetheless.
Why had she let him in?
What was he supposed to do?
It should be easy to ask her. Open his mouth, say the words, and be done with this shit. It was something that Adam, Team Rocket’s most feared admin, would have been able to do without breaking a sweat. He’d fucking clock anyone who so much as implied that it’d be hard for him.
But he wasn’t Adam, Team Rocket’s most feared admin anymore. He was Adam, homeless nobody.
Adam the Team Rocket admin had laughed in Charlie’s face as he set out to raze everything she held near to the ground.
Adam the homeless nobody found himself looking away when faced with her reluctant but bleeding compassion.
“Everyone else is off meeting with a professor in the next town over, so it’s just us for now,” Charlie said.
He supposed that he should have been grateful to her for taking the psionic damage of being the first to speak. He should have been grateful to her in general. That wasn’t something that he was saying because he felt like his brain had been scrambled and dropped into a deep fryer, it was…
Nope. Rewind. Scratch that. It was more proof that his brain had been scrambled and dropped into a deep fryer. It might have been the objective truth that Adam’s life had gone so hilariously wrong that he should have been grateful to Charlie, but usually he’d have too much pride to admit it. That was the sort of shit that wasn’t supposed to be anywhere close to being acknowledged.
Now?
Might as well. He already wanted to jump into a void. Might as well give himself a reason to get a running start.
It didn’t mean that he was going to thank her. What was the point? He didn’t have any plans on sticking around this love-and-hugs shithole. Adam may be a homeless loser for the time being, but it wasn’t like he was going to stay that was. Besides, Charlie was going to kick him out when she’d done whatever the fuck it was that she needed to do to feel like a good person. The least he could do for himself was hold onto what few scraps of pride he had left.
“I stayed behind to take care of Razzle,” Charlie continued, apparently not yet content with her latest voyage into unsolicited charity. “He’s been really sick lately. I think he’s starting to improve, but…”
Adam hummed in acknowledgement.
For all of the effort that Charlie put into maintaining a warm and fuzzy space, she had a pretty shitty table. Adam dragged his index finger over the surface, scraping up a layer of grimey varnish in the process.
“Do you remember Razzle, Adam?”
He shrugged. “Should I?”
“He’s been sick since your partner killed Dazzle, so I should say so.”
His finger pressed down a little too hard, lodging a splinter beneath his nail. He yanked his hand back with a soft hiss.
That was right. Morningstar had a better table before. It wasn’t anything too fancy, but the black curving wire had been pretty. Sturdy, too. Adam’s Tyranitar had looked like he had to put effort into smashing it to bits.
“They were the deerlings, right?” he muttered, looking down at his finger. Blood was welling up from his nailbed where the splinted had pierced it. The thing was wedged in deep enough that it’d be a bitch to get out.
“Gogoats. They were Gogoats, Adam.”
“Hm.”
He brought his injured finger up to his mouth. His attempt to bite the splinter out resulted in him tearing off a filmy shred of nerve in the process. He scowled as he dropped his hand back down to his side, surreptitiously wiping the blood coating his finger off on the side of his pants.
“You aren’t even going to say you’re sorry?”
He had to look at her to tell her no. Looking at her was supposed to go hand in hand with intimidating her. A gleefully vicious grin, confidence that told her she was about to be absolutely obliterated, that was the sort of shit that he was supposed to be hitting her with. Instead, he just stared at her blankly, which might have been another word for tiredly.
Charlie wasn’t scowling. It was something worse than that. He didn’t know how it was worse, since anything sort of a scowl or glare or scathing hatred was pussy bullshit, but he was. There was a frigid look to her. She was angry, yeah, but she also looked…
Damning?
Disappointed?
Confident?
Whatever. Who cared? Not him.
“What does it matter? It’s not like it’ll change anything.” Adam said. He was trying for casual and dismissive and ending up with… not that. But he wasn’t sad or cowering, so that was still points in his favor.
Charlie didn’t look moved.
He didn’t expect her to be. He didn’t give a shit about how she felt or thought. This was just a short stop on his way to pulling himself together. She’d reach the end of her compassion or he’d get tired of her bullshit, he’d walk out the front door, and then he’d be gone.
Away.
Like he had never existed at all.
“Do you really want to try that right now?” Charlie asked.
Adam grinned at her. It wasn’t as sharp as he wanted it to be. She didn’t cower away the way she would have before. At least there was a bite to his voice when he said, “Ooh, someone’s getting condescending. What happened to kindness making the world go ‘round?”
There was the scowl he was looking for. It was accompanied by a stiffening of her shoulders and strain of her neck, all of the signs of someone making an active effort to hold herself back. Someone who was actively being affected by someone else.
“Are you seriously saying I’m not being kind to you? After everything you did?” she asked. It sounded like she was struggling not to shout.
Good. He wanted more of that. He’d need more of that.
Adam started to lean back, only to be stopped by an ache in his back. He managed to keep his grin in place as he jerked upright. “Shit, here I thought you were supposed to be polite. Most people don’t call passive aggression kind, babe.”
Charlie crossed her arms over her chest, sugarplum and sparkles face hardening until it could pass as stony. “I am being kind. I’m not being nice. After everything you’ve done, you can’t expect anyone to be nice to you if you don’t apologize.”
Adam scoffed. “Fuck that. If that’s how it’s gonna be, I don’t need you to be–”
“You can’t stay here unless you apologize, either.”
Adam stiffened. He tried to say that he didn’t need to stay at her shitty sanctuary, but when he opened his mouth, no words came out.
The stone of Charlie’s expression softened back to her usual putty. “It doesn’t need to be hard, Adam,” she said. “Just say you’re sorry. But if you need to build up to it, maybe tell me what happened first?”
“I don’t know where to start,” he pathetically admitted.
“Well, how about the beginning?”