Dixie felt so cold. Sleepily, he turned over and reached out his hand, feeling the empty bed next to him. "Stan…?" he muttered, cracking his eyes open slightly. As he thought, Stanislaus was gone. Groggily, Dixie sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. As the haze of sleep left his mind, Dixie suddenly became aware of someone standing beside the bed. He turned his face to look. "Stanis—oh!"

Beside him, Gaius grinned and pulled back one arm. "Rise an' shine, kiddo," he said, punching Dixie squarely in the face. Dixie's nose cracked and he cried out in pain, cupping his hands over it as blood drizzled down out of his nostrils thickly. As Gaius made to throw another punch, Dixie rolled out of the bed and attempted to flee. The bed sheets entangled his legs and he fell hard on the ground. Gaius hauled him up by the arm and slammed him hard against the wall, prompting him to cry out again.

"Oh, stop screamin' and be a man," said Gaius, pulling a switchblade out of his pocket as he pressed Dixie hard against the wall. Dixie thrashed about, trying to free himself, his gaze shifting to his clothes, lying in a crumpled pile on the other side of the room. Gaius narrowed his eyes. "If you're plannin' to make a dash over there for your belt, get your pokemon, you shouldn't bother. I took them before you woke up. Your pokemon are now my pokemon."

Dixie threw up one of his legs, kicking Gaius in the groin. The older boy grunted and half staggered back, his grip on Dixie loosening for a moment. Dixie took the opportunity to break away. He sprinted for the door as Gaius swung his knife at him, slashing him across the back, but only cutting him superficially. He ran to the door and pulled it open, only to come face-to-face with a snarling granbull. With a frightened yelp, Dixie slammed the door closed again and turned toward the window. Dodging Gaius' attempt to catch him, he ran to it and made to open it, but outside Quenelle and a houndoom were standing guard.

Gaius grabbed Dixie roughly by the neck and slammed him, face-first, against the wall. The older boy pressed his body against Dixie, pinning him roughly, and held his knife flat against Dixie's throat. "I told you, didn't I?" he snarled, pressing harder against Dixie to the point it was getting hard to the Rocket to breathe. "I told you I'd kill you if you ever hurt a hair on my baby brother's head, and that's just what I'm gonna do."

"P-please—"

"Shut up," said Gaius, slamming Dixie's head into the wall. Dixie began to tremble and sob. "Stop that. Have some pride; die like a man."

"But I don't want to die!" said Dixie through his tears.

"Well that's really not up to you, is it?" said Gaius, pressing the blade of his knife a little harder against Dixie's throat. Gaius smirked as Dixie quivered beneath him. He slid the knife away from Dixie's throat, tracing a slow path with the point of it all the way down Dixie's body to the outside of his thigh. "There were two of you, attacked Arden. Who was the other one, hm?"

Dixie, still wracked with sobs, said nothing. Gaius plunged the tip of the knife into the muscular part of his leg, and he cried out. "See what happens when you don't cooperate?" said Gaius. "Now let's hear it—his name, where I can find him."

"N-no."

Gaius pushed the knife all the way into Dixie's leg. The young Rocket howled with pain. "St-stanislaus!" he said, when he was able to say anything at all. "His name is Wolf Stanislaus!"

"And where could I find this Wolf Stanislaus?" asked Gaius, twisting the blade a little bit.

"I d—I don't know! H-he was here, bu-but he left!"

"Left for where?"

"I don't know!" said Dixie, still crying. "He j-just asked some questions abou—oh, god! Arden!"

"What?" said Gaius, scowling and twisting the knife some more. "What about him?"

"I th-think he's gone to find Arden!"

"Shit," said Gaius, pulling his switchblade from Dixie's leg with a spurt of blood. "I have to get to Cinnabar and protect him—he'd better still be there."

Releasing Dixie, he rushed to the door, calling back hastily. "This isn't the last of this, kiddo," he said as he opened the door and rushed past the granbull outside. "Adolphus, quickly." The granbull turned and rushed away after him.

Naked and trembling, covered in his own blood and tears, Dixie sank to the floor. His entire body was a quivering mass of agony and humiliation. He was disgusted with himself for being so weak, for giving in to Gaius so easily, and for giving in to Stanislaus so easily. He was disgusted with himself for everything. He picked up the bed sheet from the ground and began to wrap it around his leg as a makeshift bandage. Sniffing away the last of his tears, he watched as he bled through it, staining the white bandage dark red. 'Oh well,' he thought. 'It was unclean to begin with.'

And there he was, alone—only his self-loathing to keep him company.

He hadn't been alone since the day he'd gotten Nathair.

He didn't like being alone.

Alone.

No one to care.

The silence.

He was drowning in it; the silence was wrapped around his throat and pouring thickly into his lungs.

Alone.

Without realizing it, Dixie had begun to cry anew. Every part of him was pain—his face, his leg, his throat, his arms, his ribs. His soul. He was weak and he was pathetic. Not only one, but two people he loved were in trouble. Because of him, they were in trouble. And all he could to was to sit and weep like a child and let it go on while there was the distinct possibility one of them would be killed. Maybe both of them. And yet there he was, doing nothing.

"I don't want this," he mumbled into the emptiness. "I don't want to be someone who lets people he loves get hurt."

Bracing himself against the wall, Dixie stood. A pain shot through his thigh, causing him to collapse and cry out. "N-no," he said, staggering to his feet once more. He gritted his teeth against the pain until it dulled somewhat. "No. I want to be someone who protects the people I love—whether or not they love me."

He moved carefully to his clothes and got dressed. It was as Gaius claimed; he had taken Dixie's pokemon. Solemnly, Dixie buckled his belt around his waist, noting how it had never felt so light as it did now. Bracing himself against whatever he could to support himself, he left the bedroom and went to the set of drawers where he knew Stanislaus kept his extra pokemon. Dixie also knew he kept another pokemon, which was not his, there, in its own drawer.

Kneeling down with great difficulty, Dixie opened the drawer. The pokeball rolled into view, atop a bunch of envelopes, made to accompany cute stationary. In the looping, delicate hand of a woman, 'Wolfie' had been scrawled across the fronts of most of them, right beside the faded imprint of a woman's lips in cherry-colored lipstick. Dixie clipped the pokeball to his belt and closed the drawer. It was the first time he'd seen the letters, and he tried not to care about them. After taking a few more pokeballs from another drawer, he staggered out the door.

A/N: I'm sorry that the chapters have become such downers--this one in particular. I'm thinking the next poll I'll have to put up on my profile will be something along the lines of 'which chapter of this story is most depressing?' ...sorry, again.