...I've always wondered how the story would go if the main character DID turn out to be the trainer who abandoned his gardevoir. I thought about it for a while and I decided it would probably even more depressing than the original ending.

So, um. Enjoy.

Jack suddenly felt very, very tired.

His short-lived battle with the alakazam's team had long since ended, stopped by a graceful ninetales who'd charged in at just the right moment. He wished it hadn't; the fighting had been a welcome distraction from the knowledge he'd come here to gain, and the physical exhaustion always made him feel oddly alive.

But now there was only his mental exhaustion, and he wanted nothing more than to bury his face into the veil of dread that hung over him and hide from the truth forever. It was easier than the inevitable -- listening to growled confirmations of what he already knew and having to face all the friends he'd betrayed -- but it wouldn't save him. Lifting his heavy gaze from the ground, the charmander found himself frozen by the rouge glare aimed his way and whimpered.

"I am afraid," the ninetales said gruffly, her usually melodic voice tainted with accusation and spite, "that you are the human who betrayed your gardevoir. But your being turned into a pokemon has no connection with the recent natural disasters that are being inflicted upon the world, and your destruction is unnecessary." She peered at him through her narrowed eyes, flattening her ears back against her head. "For the most part."

The sound of her voice faded from his ears; words were nothing but noise now, bearing no more significance than the sounds of pebbles shuffling beneath his feet as he turned away. His head lowered slowly as he felt the guilt stinging in his eyes, not wanting to let the others see his tears; if he was a monster, then he wished to be a strong one.

Jack's chest rose and fell rapidly as his adrenaline died down, muscles tense under bleeding orange scales. Despite the fact that his will to even stay awake was quickly waning, he felt disappointed that the fainted piloswine before him didn't put up a better fight. It had certainly looked powerful, but in the end... The charmander snorted, breath fogging in the icy air, dismissing the other pokemon and beginning to continue his trek through the dungeon.

"You knew, didn't you?"

The charmander's breathing suddenly hitched as his trance was broken. The entire room, and even the piloswine he'd just defeated, suddenly seemed unfamiliar to him now that his autopilot had halted. Fixating his eyes decisively on the ground, he nodded. "Yes."

He didn't need to see the bulbasaur's tears to know they were there. "I...I thought you couldn't remember your life as a human..."

"I couldn't." The frozen snow beneath his feet sent shivers through his body, and he relished in the numbness the cold brought. "But I still knew."

"Why didn't you..."

"I couldn't tell you. You didn't deserve having to know your best friend's a monster."

A pregnant silence hung heavy in the air, thick with the feeling of betrayal. Briefly Jack hoped for a massive snowstorm to pass through and break the tension -- perhaps it would trap them in the dungeon, and they would have to work together to get out, and then they would have a heart-to-heart talk and they would realize, in the end, that the truth didn't really have to change anything after all and they could still come out of this whole mess with their friendship intact after and...

And the snow continued to fall calmly in fat, harmless flakes that tickled his snout and made the flame on his tail sizzle, and the bulbasaur's stony silence told him everything he needed to know.

The journey home was long, and the numbing effects of Mt. Freeze's chilling winds still tingled in his body long after the snowstorms had ended.