It had been a long, long day. Normally Meowth would still be up, chattering their ears off about the next plan, but after having been cat-napped by a Pokemon hunter, among other things, he was tired out, curled up and gently snoring through a little cat-nap.

Between Meowth's snores, and the odd snort from an also slumbering Wobbuffet, it wasn't so quiet as to call the night "silent". Still, no words had been exchanged for a very large number of minutes. James had seen Jessie throw a small bouquet of daisies over the edge and into the night sky, but that had to have been at least 25 minutes ago.

He cursed the sound of his own footsteps creaking as he stepped across the hot air balloon's basket to approach her. Holding his breath, he turned his head to see that he hadn't woken up Wobbuffet or Meowth. Letting out a small sigh of relief, he continued his tiptoeing over to Jessie, cautiously putting a hand on her shoulder.

She let out a soft "hmm?" as she turned, facing him, but not shaking off his embrace.

"Everything alright, Jess?"

"Yeah." she seemed distant, distracted. "Yeah, James. Everything's fine. Long day, that's all."

He nodded a few times, before reaching the hand that wasn't on her shoulder behind him to scratch his neck awkwardly, finally spitting out what had been on his mind for hours. "Were...were you really ready to leave Team Rocket? For love?"

"I thought I was." she sighed dejectedly. "But clearly I wasn't ready to make that kind of commitment." she smiled wryly, eyes gleaming with a hint of the mischievousness he knew so well. James smiled, happy that the old Jessie, his Jessie, was breaking through again.

"I guess that makes sense." he slowly started dragging his thumb back and forth across her shoulder, a motion she'd stated before that she found comforting. "I guess...I guess I was just a little...confused."

"You were confused?" Jessie's tone was somehow both snide and jovial. "I was the one who thought I was leaving Team Rocket to marry a man who was clearly in love with someone else just a few hours ago."

"I know." James' voice was low and subdued, even for him. "I just thought that, maybe you already loved...Team Rocket?"

"Of course I do." she rolled her eyes. "That's why I came back."

Grabbing her chin and slowly turning it towards him, his voice was more assertive as he simply said "Jess."

But that was all it took for it to click. Suddenly, Jessie understood what James had been trying to ask, and it was setting off all kinds of internal alarm bells. She tore her eyes away from his just long enough to peak back at the Pokemon, assuring that Wobbuffet, and more importantly, Meowth, were still asleep, so they wouldn't hear her horribly embarrassing admission of "Of course I love...Team Rocket. I just never thought that….Team Rocket...could love me back. Not in the way I wanted. Not like Dr. White."

"Of course...Team Rocket...loves you, Jessie. Even if you are constantly having to remind that all you were doing was 'fooling around'." he used airquotes around the words, letting out a chuckle as he did so. "But you know that...the organization...has been in love with you. It has been this whole time. You've been loved, Jessie."

"I hope...Team Rocket...knows," she glanced down, a little teary eyed, but then looked back up into James' eyes, laughing slightly, "that it was never just fooling around. I've always cared very deeply for...the organization."

"How long are we going to keep this up?" he chuckled, leaning forward and down just slightly, resting his forehead against hers.

"I am not going to be the first one to break and say it." Jessie asserted, playfully enough to know let James know her feelings were genuine, but with enough conviction to make it clear that she wasn't about to drop the game.

Leaning back with an overly dramatic sigh, James resigned. "Fine, I'll be the one to give up." he rolled his eyes, before bringing his face next to hers again, noses laying against each other, "I love you, Jess. You're an enormously stubborn pain in the ass, but you're my enormously stubborn pain in the ass."

"Oh how romantic." she taunted dryly. Luckily for James, she clearly hadn't been that annoyed by the slight dig, because she was the one to close the distance between their lips.

With a smirk, he teased "Well I couldn't have been that bad if you were still willing to kiss me."

"James, we are bad, remember?" she raised an eyebrow.

Bringing an arm around her waist, and leaning the side of his head against her own as they looked out into the night sky, he sighed, "That's what makes this so beautiful. You don't have to choose between Team Rocket and love. You can have both. You can have it all."

"Is finally capturing that twerp's Pikachu included in 'it all'?" she sighed, partially wistfully, and partially pure exhaustion.

"I sure hope so."