Chapter Text
He never saw it coming.
One moment, he was curled up inside his worn-out tent, nestled deep in a dense forest, clutching at the few precious hours of sleep he ever allowed himself. Out here, hidden far from cities and towns, he had hoped to stay invisible just another shadow among the trees, forgotten by the world.
The next moment, his world exploded into chaos.
Harsh lights. Heavy boots crunching leaves. Shouted commands. Four Interpol agents closed in, surrounding him with mechanical precision, their badges glinting like blades under the moonlight.
“So… this is it,” Silver thought grimly, his heartbeat roaring in his ears.
Silver the infamous runaway, the elusive son of Giovanni, the ruthless leader of Team Rocket was finally cornered. And justice, in its cold and clinical form, had come for him.
His rap sheet was long for someone so young: petty thefts, vandalism, intimidation, extortion of prize money from other trainers sometimes demanding far more than what was agreed upon before the battle. And the worst of them all: two confirmed counts of Pokémon theft including one from Johto‘s own premier Academics Professor Elm.
Ten years in juvenile detention. That’s what the whispers had predicted, maybe more if the courts chose to make an example of him. Being Giovanni’s son didn’t earn him leniency it only made him more dangerous in their eyes. So he was brought to Goldenrod juvenile jail for Pretrial detention.
The only thing that truly hurt cut deeper than the cold metal around his wrists or the barked orders of the Interpol agents was the thought of losing them.
His Pokémon.
Weavile. Crobat. Gengar. Alakazam. Magneton. Feraligatr.
His team. His family.
But two of them he couldn’t forget hadn’t started out as his.
Totodile now Feraligatr and Sneasel now Weavile had been stolen.
He was younger then. Angry. Hungry. Alone. The world had taken everything from him, and in return, he had taken what he thought he needed. No excuses, no justifications. Just a cold, sharp moment of choice and he’d made it.
But over time, something had changed. What started as an act of selfishness had turned into something far more complicated. He had trained them, bled for them, protected them. They had become more than stolen assets, they had become part of him.
Did they resent him for how it began? He didn’t know. They never turned on him. Never abandoned him. Weavile, in particular, had grown into a fierce, loyal partner more loyal than he felt he deserved.
And now, he might lose them all.
They’d be seized, rehomed or worst put down as if they were just property in a legal file. The thought made something inside him twist painfully.
He wasn’t afraid for himself. Prison didn’t scare him not anymore. What haunted him was the image of his Pokémon, waiting for someone else to decide their fate.
As the agents guided him through the night, that was the only thing Silver truly mourned.
Not his freedom.
Not his future.
But the bonds he was about to lose and the lives he might have broken in trying to save his own.
They threw him into solitary confinement.
The room was small, sterile, and silent. Concrete walls boxed him in, the air stale and cold. There was a bed a thin yoga mat stretched over a rusting metal slab and a toilet in the corner. A single table was bolted to the floor, a notebook and pen placed neatly atop it, like a quiet dare to reflect.
There was only one mercy: a small window.
It was narrow, barely wide enough for his hand to pass through, and too high to see anything but the sky. But it was there. Sometimes, a sliver of light would crawl down the wall as if trying to reach him. It gave him no sense of time only a reminder that somewhere beyond these walls, the world still turned.
In the silence, Silver began to think.
Not about escape. Not about revenge. But about the path that led him here.