A/N: a rewrite of an old fic

"I could have been a cashier, you know."

As two of the most wanted men in Hoenn's history, Archie and Maxie should have immediately split up and disappeared.

Their entire lives had to be rethought and reorganized. They had to figure out what they would make of their teams and goals all while dodging authorities and over-zealous trainers. And that didn't even touch on the seemingly endless damage that had to be undone.

The last place they should have been was on the cliff face of Sootopolis. And, yet, they'd been there for hours. Silently, up until that point, they watched the waves crash against the protective shell

"What the hell are you talking about?" Archie asked.

"Back when I was in college, I mean," Maxie said, and exhaled the smoke of his latest cigarette. "When I was first recruited, I'd just put in an application to be a cashier at the campus bookstore." He shrugged, hollowly. "It didn't pay much, but it would have been enough to keep me fed and housed. The research job paid a little better, at least on paper, and it was definitely more exciting.."

"Well, you got that."

"Mm…. I've been trying to figure out when everything started to slide. And I think… I think that was it." He looked over, "What about you?"

Archie scratched his chin and leaned back against the rock face. "I crewed on fishing boats until I couldn't take it anymore. Ran outta money pretty fast, cause crewing didn't pay much, so I took a guard gig."

Maxie watched him, curiously. "What would you have done if you didn't-"

"I'd have just taken another job, Max," Archie said, firmly. "I needed to eat. It ain't nothing profound."

"I know that," he said just as defiantly. "I only mean it would have been so easy for us to never have met. Today probably would have been like any other day." He took a deep breath. The air was still sticky and warm even though the fire had gone out long before.

"Yup." A few more waves hit the rocks below before he added, "But there were also a bunch'a times we could have stopped after that. Like when we were digging up all those books."

Maxie's mouth tugged up slightly at the memory. "Or that trip to Granite Cave we almost didn't go on."

"Took a lotta time and energy to carve out a base and stuff it full'a people in uniform." He flicked a pebble off the ledge "We could'a decided we were too old for that before we actually were."

"Stopping at any of those points still would have left us as unemployed fugitives without much to look forward to," Maxie pointed out.

"Rather that than some deckhand who never had anything but shore leave to look forward to," Archie scoffed. "Though I bet you would have been some big shot at Devon or something if we hadn't..."

"If I hadn't."

They fell back into silence for a while. The heat began to subside as the day moved from afternoon to evening. They only noticed the slight dip because they were feeling for it.

"So how far back would you go?" Archie finally asked. "If you could."

Maxie lolled his head to the side to give him an exhausted look. "Are we honestly doing this?"

"Oh, come on." He gave Maxie's arm a soft whap. "Say you had one'a those pokemon who can change time or grant wishes or whatever. What would you change?"

Maxie scoffed and went back to his cigarette. But, after a long while, he said, "I would slap the books I'd found in the lab out of my hands. Then, when everything fell apart the first time, we could have drifted off as aimlessly as everyone else."

Archie laughed through his nose. "You would just find something else to obsess over."

"Most likely," Maxie admitted with the slightest smirk. "But there's a chance it wouldn't have been this. And that's what matters."

"Hm, yeah." He sighed. "Well, it's neither here nor there. We've got a lotta work to do and we've wasted enough time."

"I have a lot of work to do,'' Maxie said, pointedly. "This is my mess."

"You have whatever help Aqua can give you." He scowled, and held up a warning finger, when Maxie opened his mouth to protest. "And if you ask me why, when I know you'd have been the first one out there with a mop bucket and calling me an idiot if things had turned out different, I'm going to shove you down the hill."

His mouth shut and finally twisted upwards. "I would have, too."

Archie smirked and elbowed him. "We're stuck together. Always have been."

Maxie took a long while to extinguish the cigarette as he thought. "You know… if we did combine resources, we'd be able to do more now than we ever have."

"Yeah," he said with a thoughtful nod. "We really could."

"Maybe we could finally do something good like we'd always talked about."

"Be amazing, wouldn't it?" He said, wistfully.

Maxine put the spent cigarette back into the case. "It would."

It sounded, and almost felt, so easy as they sat there on the cliff.

They may have been well-stocked, but the logistical issues would be stifling. And that didn't even touch that their philosophical differences hadn't been the start, or at times even the largest, of the things that made them fight.

That they were no longer trying to re-sculpt the planet meant nothing if Maxie continued to be distant, Archie continued to womanize, and neither could figure out how to bring up much of anything without it devolving into a screaming match.

Things would fall apart again just as easily as they seemed to be drifting back together.

"We don't…" Maxie swallowed as he assembled his thoughts. "We could always just communicate through the administrators… if we needed to." He offered a slightly hopeful look. "I think they get along."

"They seem to, yeah." Archie, with trepidation, returned the expression. "But it's gonna work out this time."

"Definitely."

Their heads moved, ever so slightly, towards one another. They waited there a while to see if the other one was bold enough to take initiative.

They'd broken up for valid reasons. Exceedingly, and extensively, valid reasons. But, at the same time, they'd also been young and impulsive. The other one had to know that, right?

The waves continued to crash below, and Maxie was the first to pull back.

He turned to take a pokeball off of his belt. "We'll be setting to work on cleanup in the morning. But I do believe that I'll need about a week to get everything ready for the merger," he said as he released his Crobat. "I'll send for you, and we'll get this all sorted out then."

Archie leaned back against the rock with an expression that was absolutely about the amount of work ahead. "Probably need at least that, myself."

Maxie stood up with more of a grunt than he'd have liked. "Where do you think you'll be?"

"Same old place."

Maxie nodded as he stood and grabbed onto the Pokemon's foot. "Until then."

"Yeah."

Archie watched on as the pair steadily pulled away. And, only once they were almost out of sight did he allow himself to swear, sigh, and collect himself.

The first step was always the hardest, but he'd managed worse things in his life. And who knew? Depending on what someone saw as the real end goal, it might have already been out of the way.

The only direction left was forward.

Archie summoned his Crobat and left Sootopolis behind him.