Dixie leaned against Stanislaus. "What's wrong?" asked Stanislaus.

"Nothing, nothing," mumbled Dixie. "It's just hurting a bit to stand, now. My leg got hurt."

"How hurt?"

"It's alright," said Dixie.

"Strip down, let me see," said Stanislaus, furrowing his eyebrows. Dixie unzipped his uniform and let it fall to the floor. His makeshift bandage had been soaked through with blood, and Stanislaus knelt to take a look as Dixie held onto his shoulders to steady himself. Pulling off his gloves, Stanislaus gingerly touched the bandage. "What's this?"

"It's the sheet from your bed," said Dixie.

Stanislaus made a sour look. "You wrapped that around your open wound?" he said. "You'll get an infection that way."

"I didn't know if you had any proper bandages around, it was the only thing in reach…"

Stanislaus unwrapped the bed sheet from Dixie's leg and set it aside. He reached into a pouch on his belt and pulled out a small first aid kit. "Still, you could've tried to something that hadn't just been covered with sweat and spit and whatnot… It's a good thing I've got alcohol in here," he said. He opened the bottle and, pouring some of the contents onto a clean cloth, began to rub at the wound. He glanced up, briefly, at the dragonite who was watching them from a distance. "About him…"

"I'm sorry," said Dixie, wincing as Stanislaus cleaned his wound. "All my pokemon were gone so I took some of yours…"

"If you have him, then you saw the letters?"

"Yes," said Dixie. "I didn't read them, though."

"Do you want to know who sent them?"

Dixie hesitated. "No."

"Are you just saying that?"

"…yes."

Stanislaus put the alcohol and cloth back in his first aid kit and pulled out some gauze. "They were from a woman I used to know," he said. "The dragonite belonged to her, as well."

"I see," said Dixie.

"Her name was Sevim," Stanislaus went on quietly. "She was someone I met when I was a little kid, and she was the one who brought me into Team Rocket. She was a person with a beautiful heart who cared deeply about everyone. She sent me letters all the time when she was away from the base. I loved her very dearly, but I was never in a position to tell her so… And then she died. That was a number of years before we met."

"Oh, I see…"

Stanislaus looked up at him and smiled. "Do you remember when we met, Dixie?" he asked. "I might've just passed you by, then, except that you reminded me of her. The way you hugged that pokemon to yourself like it was the most important thing in the world… it was the sort of thing she would've done. You speak like her, too—you always say things in the kindest way possible. You even look like her, a little… Your noses were the same. The same straight, symmetrical nose. Though, I suppose not any more."

Dixie touched his bloodied and broken and readjusted nose lightly, frowning.

"I guess if I had to say," Stanislaus continued. "The only reason I noticed you, to begin with, was because of your resemblance to Sevim. She'd died years before we met, and all the love I had for her, unreleased, had turned into poison in my heart. Every thing which drew me to you was what reminded me of her. You're very similar. Most of the time, I look at you and think of her. But you're not her. And every now and then it hits me that you're never going to be, and I get angry and my heart fills up with bile.

"I love you for being like her, and I hate you for the fact that you're different from her, as well. I get angry because… because it's almost like being teased. It's as though some higher power made someone who I would love more than anything else, and then purposely tore them away from me before I was ever able to tell them. And then, that power gave me someone else who was the same in so many ways, but then, to drive home the point that I would never get to see the person I love most ever again, made you different in that many more ways. Just so that every time I forget you're not her, you remind me. And I get so angry. Something like that's not fair, is it? That's what I think. It's not fair. You should either be completely like her or you should be completely different. Anything else is too painful."

Dixie wasn't sure what he should say. Finally, he settled on, "I'm sorry."

"It's not like it's your fault," mumbled Stanislaus as he finished putting the clean bandages on his lover's wound. He stood up slowly and Dixie pulled his uniform back on. "I just felt that it was something you might like to know. Or, rather, that I might like to say."

"Do you feel better having said it?"

"Not in the least."

Arden emerged on the stairs, holding up Dixie's pokeballs. "I got them back," he announced proudly.

Stanislaus glanced back over his shoulder at the boy. "Have you been crying? Your face is all red…"

Handing the balls to Dixie, Arden said, "Gaius told me to give you both his apologies. For trying to kill you, I guess. I don't know. It seems like the sort of thing you should apologize for in person, but I guess he was busy."

Dixie clipped the pokeballs to his belt. "I'm just glad everyone's safe," he said.

"That Gaius character, his pokemon were impressive," said Stanislaus. "He was an interesting sort of person, I think."

Arden made a sort of noncommittal mumble and turned to leave. "Eh—Arden," said Dixie quickly. He turned back around.

"Yes?"

"I was thinking about Mahogany town a bit—I'm sorry about that, by the way," said Dixie. "I was thinking about what you said then. That you didn't want to join Team Rocket because you didn't want to be a bad person. I was wondering, then, if… if I'm a bad person?"

Arden rubbed the back of his neck and looked away. "Jeez, I dunno," he mumbled. "I mean… I just don't know that. You helped me a lot, and it didn't seem like it. But then it turned out you just wanted to make me join Team Rocket. I dunno—I mean, I barely know you at all, right? You don't seem like a bad person, but at the same time… you're a Rocket. I don't know—I don't know."

Dixie lowered his face. "I see."

"I don't think it's right to say that the very fact he's in Team Rocket makes Dixie a bad person," said Stanislaus, narrowing his eye at Arden. "Some of us never had a choice. For some of us, the only choice for survival was not pretty and clean."

Arden looked up at him. "No, I guess not," he said. "But if you don't like being in Team Rocket—either of you—why don't you just quit?"

"Eh, well…" said Dixie, scratching his chin. "It's just not a very valid option… I mean, a criminal organization isn't like a department store—you can't just give them your two weeks notice and expect them to just let you go."

"Even if it were, for my own part I was practically raised by Team Rocket," said Stanislaus. "Up and leaving would be rather ungrateful, wouldn't it? And it's not as though either of us has skills in other areas."

"Then you're resigned to that life," said Arden with a shrug. He looked to Dixie. "And if that's the case, that it's the only choice that you have, does it matter if you're a bad person because of it?"

"I think it does."

"Well good and bad are sort of meaningless, aren't they, if they weren't your choices to begin with?" said Arden. He turned away. "I have to go—my pokemon are waiting for me outside. I'll be seein' ya."

Dixie frowned and watched him go. As the boy reached the stairs Dixie called out, "Arden! Wait up!" Arden paused as Dixie limped over to him, and the two descended the stairs together, with Bruno following behind them.

Stanislaus watched them go silently, feeling very hollowed out. After a while he stuck his hand in his pockets and looked toward the clear blue sky and the glimmering ocean outside of the busted shell of a building. "So you lied to me then, Dixie," he said quietly, into the vast emptiness. "You do love him more than me."

He bit his bottom lip until the urge to cry had left him completely. "Good for you," he whispered. "We're no good for one another anyway…"

He knew that was true, but he wondered why it didn't seem to help at all.