All James could remember was the pain. The sharp, stinging, stabbing, injecting pain. He remembered screaming for help, but no one came. He remembered crying for hours…maybe even days. All he saw was darkness until the doctor came around. Then he was hooked to machines and covered in wires. He remembered wanting to die, but regretting the thought as his mind drifted to Jessie. Jessie had escaped and he knew that she would come for him. She was the strongest person he had ever known, and he knew she would die before she would let him…but he was terrified that is exactly what would happen. He knew that he was bait for her to come here. Giovanni would do anything to ensure Jessie was finally eliminated.
It had been 45 days since James had been taken captive by Giovanni's grunts at the Team Rocket Headquarters. He had hardly been fed, and was bruised from everything they had done to him. He hardly recognized himself in the tiny shattered mirror in the corner of his cell. His chains were heavy around his ankles and blisters formed under their rough metal clasps. James put his head in his hands and pulled out a clump of dirty lavender hair. Tears formed in his eyes as they did most days. He reached for the scraps of paper and pencil he had fashioned out of a piece of old charcoal. James began scribbling away furiously in an attempt to silence the terror in his mind. He was trying to keep a journal, but he was mostly writing as if he were speaking directly to Jessie. James had a half life without her. All he wanted was to be able to hear the sound of her voice. His heart physically ached for his partner to just be in the same room with him again. He knew that he depended on her for a lot, but he never realized how much he truly needed her. Jessie had been the only constant in his life, and sometimes she was the only thing that kept him going. Even on those cold, awful missions where it was raining and they had no shelter, at least James had someone to hold when the night air became unbearable…but it was more than just that. Jessie kept him on his toes in many ways. She didn't let him slack off when things got hard. She didn't let him wallow in self pity when something stupid happened or when he messed things up. Jessie held him up to her nearly impossible standards, and somehow he was able to meet them. James felt his lower lip shaking and his shoulders trembling as he threw down his writing. "I am such a fool…a cowardly fool. I waited too long to tell her and now I am probably never going to see her again." He felt hot tears stream down his face as reality smacked him. He was absolutely in love with Jessie. He had been from the day he met her all those years ago at Pokemon Tech. He had hid it from her all this time, never thinking he would have a chance in hell to be with her. Now he only wished he had been braver.
The cell door slid open, jolting James back to reality. Two beefy looking grunts walked in and told him to stand up. James did as he was told and they unlocked his chains for the first time in months. James almost smiled with excitement as the rusty metal shackles fell to the floor with a clatter. He was about to ask what was going on, when Giovanni walked in. "No" James felt his insides turn liquid. "He doesn't ever come down here unless its for…" James saw a sickening grin spread across Giovanni's face as he nodded to the grunts and said "do it." Before James could react, a thick, sharp needle was lodged into his neck. James yelped with pain, but soon the feeling began to subside. His vision became blurry and he couldn't seem to move. Just before his world went black, he heard Giovanni say loud and clear: "this will get that bitch here. Take him to the experimentation room."
Now all James could see was a fuzzy gray emptiness, kind of like when he left the TV on after unplugging his video games. He knew it wasn't quite right…but he wasn't sure how to make it go away. He remembered someone restraining him and Giovanni in his face. James remembered him saying that he would make sure that he would never see Jessie again. James wanted to yell, to scream, to do something to tell Jessie to run and not come after him. He tried to move…but then someone held him back and injected a long needle into his neck. He remembered his world went black, his body went numb, and his hearing was fuzzy…fuzzy, but still functioning.
James could recall being thrown down on a cold metal table of some sort and two evil men laughing around him. He could have sworn he also heard Jessie. She was there in the room with him. She was talking to him and trying to get him to wake up. He tried as hard as he could to speak, to move, to respond…but he couldn't. He couldn't see her, he couldn't feel her, but he could hear her. He knew she was there and then he knew she took him somewhere else. He knew they were trying to escape and that they were in trouble. He also heard Jessie say that she didn't want to die without telling him that she loved him. That was clear as day. He heard her and his heart had swelled. He loved her too...but he couldn't respond. There was an explosion and then silence. Deafening silence.
Once Arbok reached the safe haven with Jessie and him on its back, he had slipped into a deep sleep as the drugs began to finally wear off. He slept as Jessie awoke and cried over him. He heard everything that she said, but it felt more like a dream than before. He could have sworn that Jessie had touched his hands as he slowly regained feeling in his body. He remembered feeling what must have been her tear stained cheeks as she sobbed about failing him. He remembered her talking to Wheezing and telling it to go find Meowth. He also remembered feeling a gentle caress across his waist just after that. He remembered that it felt like 1000 fireworks on the Fourth of July. As James came out of his drugged state and into a more natural sleep state, he could have sworn that he felt thin, strong arms wrapped around his waist and shoulders and someone's head resting on his chest. James wanted to shake awake and reach out, but his body took over and pulled him back into a deep sleep. He hoped that Jessie was still there. She hadn't spoken in awhile. It couldn't be her lying with him…could it? Maybe it was just some blankets and pillows. Maybe he was in a hospital bed and a nurse was attending to him. His brain became cloudy and sleep overtook him. "Oh my love" he thought in search of Jessie, "don't be gone long."