[FIN] Not So Strong Now

[lZAYA ORlHARA]

Izaya walked into the fitness training room with his head low and his eyes downcast. Something was clearly on his mind and he had hoped to lose himself in exercising so as not to dwell on it. Whatever it was, that something kept him from realizing he was interrupting a Rocket's workout session in progress until he was already inside. Upon finally noticing the agent working out, Izaya's eyes got very wide and he opened his mouth.

"Ah - sumimasen - er, excuse me," he said quickly, getting momentarily tongue-tied in his rush to turn around and leave. "Sorry to intrude."  

[insidiousEnigma]

Zacharie wasn't a particularly active person. He didn't find much enjoyment in working out and doing strenuous activities outside of what was needed for gardening...but if he let his parkour or capoeira skills deteriorate simply because he was lazy Jerome and Andre would kill him.

...Not literally but he'd never hear the end of it.

So the Agent found his way down to the gym alone to run through the basic warmup routine that Andre had taught him. He moved rhythmically through the movements to the beat of the song playing through the headphones nestled comfortably over his ears. The bass was easily heard over the sounds of his slightly labored breaths and it seemed like he hadn't noticed the new body in the room until he moved into the Ginga and raised his head. He visibly startled but reached up to pull his headphones down around his neck all the same. "Izaya." He panted around a smile as he rose to his full height. "I didn't see you there."  

[lZAYA ORlHARA]

A forced smile tightened the older man's lips as he flapped a hand at Zacharie. "Oh no, don't mind me. I was just leaving," he said, barely aware that his face was becoming somewhat pink. "You go back to...your little dance routine."

He could find somewhere else to exercise. Somewhere alone and quiet because while he craved a distraction from his thoughts, company wasn't exactly what he'd had in mind. Least of all Zacharie's company. Memories from the Valentine's Day Ball flashed through his head and he had to avert his gaze in embarrassment.  

[insidiousEnigma]

Zacharie couldn't help but frown. He thought that perhaps they had been getting a little closer...what with the excitement that the older man had greeted him with at the Valentine's party. "You don't have to leave." He blurted out before reaching for the small towel draped over his water bottle. "I mean...I wouldn't mind if you stayed." He added quietly before busying himself with wiping the sweat from his face and the back of his neck. "I'd enjoy the company." He smiled a bit, unsure if Izaya would take the invitation or mock him for it.  

[lZAYA ORlHARA]

The informant hesitated. He himself had sweat beginning to bead on his brow though he hadn't even begun to start exercising. Eventually he sat down on a bench off to the side, though he looked like he was fighting the impulse to get up and flee at any second.

"About...about the ball," he began, staring very hard at the ground by his feet. "I think it would be best for the both of us if you forgot that ever happened. Perhaps you already did; I don't know. But, um...my pokemon drugged me, you see, so I really wasn't myself at the time." He reached up to scratch the back of his neck. "I just thought you should know."  

[insidiousEnigma]

The purple-haired boy felt an odd weight settle in the pit of his stomach. He wasn't sure why he felt it but it was there none the less. "Oh," He said slowly as he reached for his water bottle. "I see." His pokemon had drugged him? Why would it do that to its trainer? Well...Izaya wasn't the nicest to his pokemon but still! That seemed a bit extreme.

"Are you alright? It didn't hurt you, did it?" That's what it must have been, concern. "I had thought you seemed a bit...off." But he had really thought...

That was fine though. It didn't change anything for Zacharie.  

[lZAYA ORlHARA]

The man began to shake his head but then stopped to reconsider. Finally he gave a broken laugh. "It...he probably..." Izaya stopped for several painful seconds, evidently having trouble finding the right words to communicate. "...It probably ended up being more detrimental to him than me, after all was said and done," the man in the trainee uniform answered, still wearing that tight smile. The corners of his mouth were twitching uncontrollably, however.

He swallowed hard before continuing, fiddling with his hands. "I was upset from all that had happened prior, you know, with Faleen gone and some stuff with KO and this new trainee named Gaia and then finding out I could understand bug types...so I'm pretty sure he was just trying to help." Izaya stopped, took a deep breath, and continued. "...I'd...you can speak to psychic types, correct? Heh, I'd offer to let you ask him why he did it yourself, but..." He forced out another laugh, but this one sounded suspiciously like it was part disguised sob.

"...Well, they couldn't very well allow a traitor to keep around a pokemon that would sabotage its own trainer, now, could they?" When he looked up at Zacharie again, his eyes were wet and shining, the rims very red. He must have realized how he looked, however, because he stopped trying to smile and quickly looked back down. "I...I really should be going..."  

[insidiousEnigma]

Zacharie lowered his water bottle back onto the floor to give the other his full attention. Whatever had happened had clearly upset Izaya, you didn't need to be good at reading people to see that. "Izaya..." He took a step towards the older man before pausing. He knew that the other didn't want his pity, he had said so before in the forest...but if the higher ups did what he was fairly certain they did he couldn't help the swell of sadness. He couldn't imagine what it would feel like to lose one of his pokemon.

He was at a loss.

The Agent wanted to comfort the other...but was unsure of how to go about doing so. He took another small step forward. "You...don't have to leave." He murmured, eyes wide and uncertain when faced with such a sad expression. "I could leave, or...or I could just go back to what I was doing?" He offered, "I'm here...if you'd like me to be that is."  

[lZAYA ORlHARA]

He sat there a minute, still staring at the ground and barely breathing as he absorbed what Zacharie said. Then he put his head in his hands.

"I just...I don't understand," he choked, his voice muffled. "Why does it hurt this much? It's not supposed to hurt this much; he's just a stupid pokemon after all. Just a stupid, stupid pokemon!" Izaya's hands went from his face to his hair where he clutched at it in exasperation.

Still staring at the ground, he began speaking very fast and all in a rush like he had to get it out or he would explode. "He did this to himself; he knew better than to try drugging me! Worse than that, he dragged Psyche into it too - Psyche, who's practically an ignorant child who knows nothing about what's going on. He - they - those idiots - "

His voice hitched and he took a shuddering breath before speaking again. When he did, it was hardly more than a frantic whimper. "I don't...I just...it's not fair! They tricked me! I thought because they were pokemon, just pokemon, just pocket monsters to be used as tools, I thought it would be okay to trust them because you have to trust your team, don't you?

"And this is Team Rocket and I thought I could at least start by learning to trust pokemon if not people; that maybe I could start redeeming myself and maybe at least partially start paying back the debt I owe to Aila and Faleen that I could never hope to fully repay...but now..." He shook his head. "What am I supposed to do now? I'm done. Finished. Every time I finally think I've gotten back on my feet, the rug gets pulled right back out from under me..."  

[insidiousEnigma]

Gingerly and a bit on edge, Zacharie took a seat next to the distressed man. He kept his gaze on the floor between his feet as if taking interest in the lacing of his sneakers but every once and a while he couldn't help but glance at the other. He knew that if he were in Izaya's position he wouldn't want someone to stare at him but he couldn't just not look at him the entire time.

"The way that you and I regard pokemon are very different..." He started slowly, clasping his hands together thoughtfully. "But it sounds like, in your own way, you had a connection to those pokemon." What that connection was he didn't know, but he must have felt something for the pokemon if he was clearly so upset. "You're right though, being a team takes a certain amount of trust and you said yourself that you're fairly certain that he was trying to help you." He paused, trying to gather his thoughts so he could maybe be of at least a little help. "Whether you want to accept it or not, pokemon have thoughts and feelings of their own and doing what he did was his choice."

The Agent reached up as if he were going to touch the others shoulder before hesitating and letting his hand drop back down to his lap. "What you do now is keep going." He said softly with a slight shrug. "And you keep trying...you can at least do that and no one can expect more. You can't let setbacks keep you down, Izaya."  

[lZAYA ORlHARA]

Doubling over, Izaya put his head between his knees, his fingers still digging into his scalp. A barely audible murmur escaped his lips. "I can't...I can't keep doing this...not strong enough..."

At Zacharie's advice, the older man jumped to his feet and faced the agent. "Setbacks?" he repeated, tense. "Setbacks? Getting demoted is a setback. Losing a battle is a setback." As his heart began to race and his body to tremble, Izaya's breaths came hard and fast. He thought he might have been close to hyperventilating but at that moment, he just didn't care.

"Having someone die protecting you is something else entirely. Do have any inkling of what that's like, of never being able to tell them exactly what you thought of their final stupid, unwanted act of defiance?!" His volume began to rise as he spoke faster and more hysterically. "Let me tell you something, Zachie-chan. Missing a deadline is a setback. Letting your partner down is a setback.

"Being considered such a lost cause that you're labeled a traitor to the organization you've devoted years of your life to is not. Becoming such a threat that the only way you're allowed to live is as a living human experiment is not. Causing someone to choke up their own blood to keep themselves from killing you is not. Finding out that everything you ever thought about pokemon is wrong IS NOT. Making the few idiots stupid enough to care about you bring about their own self-destruction in their attempts to make you feel better IS NOT! It's not exactly easy to just get up and keep going when every damn move you make becomes counter-productive to your goals!"  

[insidiousEnigma]

Zacharie visibly startled at the sudden outburst.
It took all of his self control not to clasp his hands over his ears. He was past that sort of childish behavior and no matter how anxious Izaya's tone made him, he wouldn't just block out what the other had to say.

That's not what friends did.

"I don't." He admitted, "I have no idea what that must feel like." The Agent took a deep breath before standing so he was eye to eye with the irate man. "I can't imagine what you must be feeling and I don't think I ever could unless it happened to me so I will speak as someone who is on the outside looking in." His gaze hardened as he met the others and in that moment he probably never looked more like his brother, but he needed to get his point across. "Those are setbacks, 'a reversal or check in progress'. They're meant to impede your growth it's your job to fight against them and keep going, no matter how many life throws at you." The teen frowned deeply, "Do you think that person died to protect just so you could wallow in your sadness? I highly doubt it and it's like spitting in their face to let the opportunity they gave their life to give you and just use it as an excuse not to move on. If you would just let people help you then maybe you wouldn't have ended up in the position you're in now but you are the one that got yourself here. Not all problems can be solved by yourself and while you're so busy trying to scare everyone off you're simultaneously making things harder for yourself. You need to grow the hell up and know when it's time to ask for help and actually accept the help that's offered."  

[lZAYA ORlHARA]

Upon being confronted with Zacharie's hardened gaze, Izaya froze, deflated, and then seemed to just sink where he stood. His legs gave way from under him and he put his arms out to keep himself propped sitting up, staring at the backs of his hands pressed palms-down against the floor.

"But I...I don't..." He reached a hand up to brush the back of it against his cheek and sniffed. "...I don't want anyone else to get hurt...because of me..."  

[insidiousEnigma]

Zacharie was just as startled by the man's descent to the floor as he was by his sudden standing and he stared down at the Grunt for a moment before running his hand through his hair. He grimaced a bit at the tacky, drying sweat but slowly crouched beside the older man. "I can understand that desire, Izaya." He said softly and it was the first thing that he could fully relate to. "Nobody wants their friends...or people they have attachments to, to get hurt. But it's not entirely your decision to make...have you ever thought that maybe your current choices are hurting the people that care about you?" He asked, letting his hands drape limply over his bent knees.  

[lZAYA ORlHARA]

"I wasn't supposed to have attachments, though," he moaned. "I don't know how this happened. I did my best...I...If you don't have attachments, you can't get hurt, so how did this happen? I still don't get it..." He stared ahead unseeingly, his features contorted in an expression of anguish and disbelief.

Zacharie was right about one thing, though, at least. His current choices were hurting the people that cared about him. What bothered him the most was that he cared about those people being hurt. He wasn't supposed to care. What had happened to him?

All he could think of was that it started back with Aila and her forcing her final act of friendship on him. It had poisoned him; made him unable to reject the notion that he had really meant something to her and, somehow, vice versa.

But wait. His eyes widened in realization. If Trainee Gaia was the former Agent Aila, maybe he could somehow reverse all this. He had previously feared that he would never be able to repay the girl for having saved his life, but now maybe he could. If he did that, maybe he could pull all this attachment stuff behind him and go back to how he used to be. It was so much easier only having to worry about oneself. Even better was the fact that she didn't seem to remember him as Aila and therefore didn't consider him a friend, so after repaying the debt he owed her, he could sever ties with her cleanly and completely.

"...You're absolutely right, Zachie-chan," Izaya said, regaining some of his usual composure as he sniffed again and got to his feet. "I need to stop feeling sorry for myself and start doing something about it." He took deep breaths to try to calm himself further. "And I think you just gave me an idea as to what I can do about it."