Gloria crushes Chairman Rose in both battle and conversation, always getting the last word in a way that Hop has never been able to. He only tells Rose off to set the record straight, and then he runs out after Lee. Not far behind him, Gloria races out of the room and its unnatural, blood-red light. She heaves as if she'd been the one fighting. Her dark eyes are wild and she clutches her galvantula's pokéball with white knuckles. Hop wants to say something to ground her, to bring her back down to earth, but that's not his place.

"He's fucking insane," Gloria mutters under her breath. "Bloody insane bastard." Hop is sure she doesn't realize how loud she says it. Usually, he'd tease her for cursing, but he thinks about her pokémon and the response dies on his tongue.

"Let me—heal them up for you," he says, gesturing at her bag, the sphere clasped between her hands. Gloria looks up and her eyes soften when they meet his, as if he wouldn't understand what it feels like to hurt or to anger. She pushes her fringe out of her eyes and smiles like she means it.

"I've potions and all, you know," she says, letting out her injured pokémon, one by one. They all look so tired. Hop tries not to shudder. Pokémon battles aren't usually so brutal, not this much red. Chairman Rose had done a number on them—of course on Hop's too, but Gloria's pokémon came out this time looking like they'd been through the war. He worries that they feel like it, too.

Hop takes a potion from his backpack and kneels down on the glass tile. He feels the cold creep up his spine instead of in his knees. First, he reaches to take one of Galvantula's legs, its muscle almost purple beneath the yellow fur. It hisses in pain at the first spray of the potion but doesn't jerk away. In the corner of his eye, Gloria winces. He won't say anything.

She begins, careful in a way she's never been, "I could take care of it fine." Galvantula looks at her curiously, and she grins, all teeth, reassuring.

"Naw, it's okay," Hop says brightly, to all of them. He can do this much. His voice cracks, but he knows she won't mention it. Some things they refuse to say to each other.

Galvantula's wounds slowly close up and fade as he tends to them. The flesh almost sews itself together, till he can barely see the marks at all. He wonders if it feels the pain still. His hands shake when he cleans up the gashes on its head, but Galvantula nuzzles into his palms and chirps. He shakes less when he moves to the claw marks on Sandaconda's tail, the ones with the most dried blood around them. He tries not to cringe when it whines.

Gloria shifts her weight to her heels, watching. He's seen her sit next to her pokémon after official battles, but this time she's standing pole-straight. Her knees are locked like they'll buckle if she gives herself any bit of leeway. "You're a good nurse," she jokes.

The way she looks at her pokémon's faded bruises is like an open wound. He thinks of how she had looked while battling Chairman Rose, like she was walking the edge of the world, barely balancing. She had been trembling then—or maybe he had been the trembling one. It doesn't matter. She had made it out, anyhow.

"Well, I've gotten used to it, losing so much," he says, trying to keep his voice light. "The potions really come in handy." She doesn't say anything. He doesn't want to look at her face. The rest of her pokémon aren't quite as beat-up as Sandaconda and Galvantula, so that's easier on everyone. He grits his teeth and doesn't look too closely at the discolored patches of skin on Inteleon.

"You've always been good at this, though," Gloria says. Voice raw. He finishes spraying Inteleon's electric burns and, for some reason, looks at Gloria's hands. She won't stop clenching and unclenching them. He turns away.

Hop won't speak to that, deciding to focus instead on how her appletun growls at the sitrus berry he offers it. "C'mon," he says gently. It takes the berry after some coaxing on his part and then brightens up.

Gloria laughs. "Look at you, mate," she says. "She never would take one in all the time I've been with her."

She's implying something and he would rather not parse it. "A first for everything, yeah?"

"S'pose so."

Finally, Gloria crouches down next to him. Her healthy pokémon gather round as he applies the potion to Rapidash's bruises. It's the last one, but Hop takes his time. Appletun nips at his hand in thanks and then sits before Gloria, and she cradles its head in her palms. She looks worn out, thin at her rough edges, eyes dark in more ways than he can count. "It's been rough, hasn't it?"

"Been rougher for you lot, I'd think." Rapidash stands, no longer hurt. Hop stands with it and combs his fingers through its mane even though he knows grooming isn't part of first-aid. Rapidash whinnies but doesn't buck him away, so he figures he can do a few things all right. "You've been doing so much, and today it was your chance to battle Lee, and—and then—" He pauses. "You're the one who beat Chairman Rose," he says finally.

He feels her eyes on him. "Not that. You know, the whole, your slump." Is it pity? He'd expect it from anyone else, but it's not quite that. It's not only that.

"I'm over it," he says, meaning it. Finally, he looks down at her. Gloria's eyes are soft, and the red floodlights from the main room paint her scarlet. Appletun burbles something in her arms and she shushes it gently.

"I'm sorry I couldn't let you win, Hop," she says, standing up and placing Appletun on the floor. He holds his tongue and doesn't even flinch at the edge of tightness in his throat, busying himself with her pokémon even though they're all healed.

"Don't be!" he says, more loudly than he has to. "'S not your job, after all. I'm not giving up." He schools his expression into what it needs to be.

Here. This thing he's finally realized. Gloria's stronger than he had thought, so strong he can barely call himself her rival. Even when she's bleeding out and falling to pieces, she's greater than he is. It's not even about the battles. It's everything else. Gloria stands tall when he falls to his knees.

"I'm still sorry."

He wishes that would make it easier. What is there to say? Gloria recalls her pokémon in silence and then they are totally alone in this interlude of space. It's like a battle, everyone gone but them, except it's not. He stands before her as he always has.

She meets his gaze with a half-smile, her shoulders squared. "What next?" Her brown eyes almost look like blood, if he stares too long.

Hop grins like he always will. "You ready to go up?" She nods and he laughs. "As expected from the future Champion. Let's go, mate."