//------------------------------//
// Time Takes Healing 
// Story: Cryo-7 
// by Metal Pony Fan 
//------------------------------//

Mac opened his eyes to a dim light, warm and soft.  A candle, he would have guessed, if not for the lack of flicker.  Also warm and soft, was the thin blanket draped over him, and the face resting on his outstretched hoof.

"Shy?"  His foggy mind recalled things said to him.  He was told to keep going.  They were almost there.  That he survived.  That he had to be strong.  None of it made sense.

They were in what seemed like an apartment.  There was carpet and furniture, a kitchen, and doors to other rooms.  He wasn't sure why.  But, she was there, the rest didn't matter.  He lifted his other hoof, finding his body as slow and numb as his thoughts.  It was enough though.  He could still move.  He could still run his heavy hoof through her hair.

And he did just that.  She stirred, looking up with a tear stained face.  "Mac?"

"Somethin' wrong, Sugarcube?"  Mac tried to smile, but it came out as little more than a twitch.

She shook her head, mane falling over her red eye.

He brushed it back, away from her face.  "Don't ya dare," he had to take a break from the exertion, letting his hoof fall to the mattress, "don't ya dare cover them pretty eyes.  Either of 'em."  He shifted slightly, groaning at the unpleasant sensations his body returned, aching, pulling, stiffness, but no real pain.  He could only assume the medicine dulling his head was doing the same thing to his nerve endings.  "What happened?  Ah feel like Ah've been run over by a train."

"You... hurt."  She stared at the floor for a moment.  "Sssafe, now."

Mac watched her, memories coming back to him.  "Then why aren't ya'll happier?  Somepony tried ta shoot me, and Ah'm still around.  Can't ya smile none fer that?"

She gasped, pulling back from the bed, horrified at the request.  How could he want her to smile?  She didn't deserve to be happy after what she did, whether she was forced into it or not.  With a sigh, she shook her head, reminding herself that he didn't know.

If he did, he wouldn't want her to smile.  He wouldn't want her in the same room with him.  Who would?

Mac propped himself up, a far more painful and tiring experience than he was expecting.  "Shy, what happened?"

She breathed in, straightening up as she steeled herself for whatever may come from her words.  "I... killed him."  She turned around, not wanting to see his face.  He may have been able to overlook that she looked like a monster, but nopony could ignore that she had truly become one.

"Shy?"  Mac didn't trust his ears at first.  But then she started for the door.  "Shy!"  He tried to follow her, but his legs refused to hold his weight.  As soon as his body left the bed, it crashed to the floor, refusing his commands.

Fluttershy stopped at the door, glancing back.  Her desire to leave didn't fight her desire to help for long.  She ran back to him, quietly saying, "no, no, back in bed.  Don't... care about me.  I-"

Mac reached up when she got close, lunging for her with what little strength he had left.  He hooked his hoof around her and his weight brought them both crashing down.

She tried to squirm free without pushing against him.  She tried not to touch him at all, lest she hurt him further.  But he was on top of her, and not loosening his grip.  His hoof was around her, and his head was pressed into the side of her neck and he... was whispering something?

"I love ya, Shy, ya know that, right?"

"No!"  She squirmed harder than ever.  "Mac, I'm a-"

He shifted his body, catching a hoof to the face and jamming his own leg into her mouth as a gag.  She bit down by reflex, burying her fangs into flesh and fur.  Mac winced in pain, and shifted his weight one last time, pinning her there.  "Shy," he said in a weary voice, "the next word outta that mouth better not be, 'monster.'  Ya ain't one!  If ya killed somepony, it was 'cause ya had no choice, Ah know ya that much at least."  She stopped struggling, and he relaxed slightly.  "He tried ta kill me, Shy.  And Ah tried ta kill him.  He had a gun up ta Berry's neck, and Ah tried ta shoot him."  Mac was out of breath already, and he rested his head against her.  "He tried ta kill all of us.  You, me, our friends, our futures."  With a groan, he lifted himself back up.  "Ya remember the promise we made?"

She tried to nod, and Mac hissed in pain.  They shared a glance, then slowly worked together to unimpale Mac's leg.  The stallion let himself fall on his side, clutching his bleeding leg.

Fluttershy got up, and pulled the sheets off the bed, tearing a strip off one of them.  "Remember," she told him, nodding as she wrapped his leg.  "Dreamed of it.  Alwaysss hoped... to sssee you again.  Keep our promissse."  Using the the rest of the sheet, she wiped his blood off her face.  She looked down at the rag in disgust and anger before shoving the putrid thing at him, showing him the blood, and making sure he saw there was still more on her face.  "You want foalsss with thiss?!"  She threw the rag across the room with a snarl.  "I don't," she said simply.

Mac laid on the ground, too exhausted to chase her as she started for the door again.  Whatever he was given was wearing off, and he was starting to feel small, random pains all over his body.  "Then, he really did kill them?"

Fluttershy paused at the door.  "Who?" she asked without looking back.

"Our foals," Mac answered.

"No."  Fluttershy shook her head as she opened the door, wincing at the bright light in the corridor beyond.  "I did."

She slipped out before Mac could say anything else.





Only to be bowled over by a pink cannonball that had been galloping down the hallway at full speed.

"You're up!" Berry shouted happily, hugging the dazed pegasus as they lay sprawled on their backs in the middle of the hall.  "I was so worried," the earth pony continued, making no attempt to move from her spot on the floor.  "You were all unconscious for so long, and there was nothing I could do to help, so I went ahead and checked out the shuttle, and it's going to be down for a while, so I went to check on the big ship, and it's still full of monsters, so I went to check on you again, and you weren't in medical, so I asked Radio, and he said you were keeping an eye on Mac, so I came here!"  She let go of Fluttershy, then thought better of it, giving her another hug.  "Did I mention, I'm glad you're ok?"

There was a loud, annoyed sigh from down the hall.  "Berry?" Radio limped over, favoring his left rear leg.  "I thought I told you to take it easy?  That they would be resting?"

The pink pony rolled to her hooves with ease.  "But she was up walking around, and I got excited."

"That's not a good reason!"  The colt sat down, leaning on his right side.  "Dang, this hurts.  What if it had been the big guy, huh?  He just got out of surgery, and a hit like that could have put him right back in."

"But it wasn't him," Berry pointed out.

Fluttershy picked herself up off the ground, seemingly unnoticed.  But once she was standing, Berry spun around and trapped her in another hug.  "By the way, thanks for killing the big, mean, meanypants before he could kill everyone I care about."

Radio dragged his hoof down his face.  "I told you not to bring that up!"

The earth pony frowned at him.  "You tell me not to do a lot of things."

He threw his hooves up.  "And, yet, you still do them!"

"Because I lose track of them all!"  Berry sat down and crossed her hooves.  "And about not biting wires, how else am I supposed to get the insulation off, huh?  Did you even think about that?"

Radio shrugged.  "Wire strippers?"

Berry's face fell into awestruck silence.  "They make those?"

"Of course they do.  I'll go find a pair when I've recovered from getting stabbed in the flank."  With a sigh, he looked past Berry, at the crying vampony wiping at her face.  "So, Ms. Fluttershy, I know we haven't talked much, but Ribbon told me about what happened outside of the operating room.  She said you were pretty upset about what happened."  He didn't know what to say, so he asked himself how Astral would handle this.  He took a deep breath and let it out as a snort.  "Good."

Fluttershy was too surprised to react.  He was the first pony that didn't try to brush away what she did.  The first who didn't try to explain it away.

"You just killed somepony," the colt continued.  "I don't care how you justify that, it's still a horrible thing.  It has to be eating at you.  I can't imagine doing what you did, and not wanting to vomit every time I remembered what happened."

"Radio?"  Berry asked in shock.  "What are you saying?"

"Shut up!"  The colt stood up with a pained grunt.  "She knows what she did.  She made her choice.  And now she has to live with the consequences.  There's only one thing she could have done that could possibly be worse than what she did."  Radio marched towards the shell-shocked pegasus, limping the entire way.  "If you did nothing," he shouted, "and passed out while the enemy was still alive, he would have taken that gun of his and blown your brains out.  Astral would have been next.  Then, maybe Twilight, caught off-guard, after finding the mutilated corpses of two of her friends." Radio pointed of into the distance.  "Then, when that ship comes crashing towards the station, no one is there to stop it," he moved his hoof to his chest, "and me, my sister, Berry, Mac, James, Growl, that pinto dude, and everypony on this station are vaporized.  All because you didn't have the guts to be called a monster!"  They stood nose to nose at this point, Radio glaring, and Fluttershy snarling.  "Well guess what, you are, and we're alive, so, thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you, and get used to it!"

Radio stared up into those feral eyes, and couldn't help but feel like he made a terrible mistake.  Still, he pressed forward.  "When I was young, I hit a rough patch in my life.  While all the other foals were worried about going through puberty, a lot of the modifications to my genetic structure were just starting to take hold.  School was hell.  I was different, and I knew it.  Everypony else who knew it made sure I wouldn't forget it.  I was in constant pain, physical, emotional, social.  I started acting out.  I stole.  I vandalized.  I started so many fights.  My dad didn't know what to do."

Fluttershy's snarling slowly faded as the colt's words grew quieter.

"One day, after a really bad fight, I went to my dad.  I was worried.  I put an older colt in the hospital, and it felt good.  He hit me so many times before, that being able to hit him back made me so happy.  Standing over him, watching the blood bubble from lips as he tried to surrender, I laughed.  And it terrified me.  How could I take that much pleasure in another pony's suffering?  How could I do something so terrible, and not feel bad about it?  I told dad what happened, and the only advice he could give me was, 'son, if you're worried you might be a sociopath, you aren't one.'"  Radio nodded slowly.  "Then he had me professionally evaluated by the best shrinks on Furia.  That decision was kinda out of his hooves though.  Everything was from that point forward.  I was taken out of school, put under constant surveillance, tutored safely away from other kids, given routine physical and psychological exams, and my training regimen went into overdrive.  If I was going to be an aggressive monster, the military decided I was going to be a productive one.  My dad did what he could to help me, but he had Ribbon to worry about as well.  I never went back to school.  I was given the best tutors around, and access to everything I asked for, everything except friends, or freedom.  I was a monster, something to keep in a cage.  And for years, I accepted that.  Because I believed it.  And, I don't know, maybe I still believe it, but I don't like it, and I want to change it, and, I, um...  I don't..."

Radio was out of breath by the time he stopped talking.  He shrank back as he realized just how much he said.  That wasn't the grand speech he wanted, that was a shame-fueled confession.  "So, yeah," he muttered, glancing back and forth between Berry and Fluttershy, unable to read the expressions on either face, "that's the real me.  Violent, nasty, and I try to help ponies to make up for it, like life is some great transaction and I can wipe out my sins like I'm paying my bills."  He looked back at Fluttershy.  She didn't look angry anymore.  Radio couldn't tell what emotion she was trying to express, but she was thinking again.  "The point is, us monsters, maybe we aren't supposed to be happy, but we can do a damn good job of protecting those who are."

Her hoof moved faster than any Radio had ever seen.  She slapped him across the face with a speed even Ribbon couldn't match.  "Don't say that," she demanded.  "Berry told me... told me... you ssaved Sssevuss."  She took a moment to collect herself before speaking again.  "You... Rainbow's son..."  Fluttershy hugged him.  "Not monsster.  Never monsster."

She released him, and grabbed Berry before she could react.  "Both you... glad you are ssafe."  She marched back to the door, and let out a sad sigh.  "All that mattersss."

Radio rubbed his jaw as she slipped through and the door slid shut behind her.  "Man, she doesn't pull her punches."

Berry shrugged.  "At least she's talking a lot.  Cathy said that would help."

Radio looked over.  "How are you so damn positive all the time?"

"But she's all better now!"

"No she isn't.  Pulling a page out of the Astral playbook helped, I think, but... Ooh, think about the big guy, he came out of surgery alright, right?"  Radio gestured to his flank.  "Well, we wouldn't have had to stab me in the cutie mark for bone marrow if he was all better now, would we?  They've both taken the first steps towards getting better, but the rest is going to take time."

Berry chewed it over a little.  "Granpa said the same thing, that healing takes time."

"See," the colt smiled proudly, "I'm right then."

The pink mare looked down.  "Then he never woke up."

Radio shut his mouth so fast his teeth clicked together.  "Sorry," he muttered quietly, "I have a talent for saying the worst things at the worst time."

Berry shrugged.  "I don't know," she said quietly, "what you said to Fluttershy wasn't too bad."  She started to walk away from the door, down the hall towards the rest of the temporary quarters assigned to the crew of the Philomena.  "But, you could have been nicer."

Radio watched her walk away, her previous energy sapped away by a few thoughtless words.  She slipped through the third door down the hall, leaving the colt sitting alone in the hall.  "Augh!"  He furiously tore at his mane with both front hooves.  "Why the hell is it so hard to just talk to ponies?!"

A security guard poked his head around the corner.  "Is everything alright over-  Oh."  He shrugged and turned around.  "It's just you."

Radio stared in confusion as the guard left.  "What?"







Fluttershy stood there, eyes clenched shut, in the darkness just inside the door.  Mac watched her from where he had fallen on the floor.  What little light the dim wall sconces provided caught the tears building in her eyes.  The fake candle light gave the first tear to fall a flaming citrine gleam until it soaked into the carpet below.

He wanted to move to her side, but he didn't have the strength to turn that desire into action.  He settled for stretching one hoof out across the floor, getting just a little closer.  "Yer back," he said quietly.

"I..."  She made no move to leave the doorway.  She didn't even try to look up at the pony talking to her.  She sat there, eyes closed tight to stem the tide of tears threatening to escape.  "I don't know...  I don't underssstand...  Easssier when wass alone."

"Ya ain't alone anymore, Shy."  Mac noticed the change in her speech.  She wasn't focusing on her words as much, and it made her voice sound so much more like he remembered.  The patterns were still off, some of the sounds a tiny bit wrong as she held her mouth too open to accommodate her fangs and slightly forked tongue.  He would be used to it in no time.  "That ain't gonna change."  With a sigh, he continued, "When Ah was still on the ship, Ah would wake up from stasis every ten years.  Didn't ever seem all that long had passed ta me.  All Ah felt was like wakin' up in the mornin', just without any dreams ta remember.  Must'a spent two years doin' that, realizin' that every few weeks, centuries had gone by."  He held out his hoof, motioning her, but she barely moved.  "It was easy," he continued.  "Ah'd wake up, check the scanners, check the maintenance logs, check the computers, check the connection to the other ships, walk around and visit everypony, then freeze myself back up."

"One day, ah woke up, and there was no computer ta greet me.  There was a small room, some furniture, and sunlight comin' through the window."  Mac took a deep breath.  "Ah cried when Ah saw that.  It was a sunset, first one Ah seen in two years.  Maybe more.  Since that evenin' Twilight woke me up, everythin' has been different.  Ah've been thrown into a world where everythin' around me is more believable if Ah close mah eyes and just call it magic.  Ah don't know what anythin' is.  Ah don't know what anythin' does.  Ah couldn't even open a door without help.  Ah feel like a buckin' cave pony, and Ah don't like it."

The stallion shook his head as it rested on the floor.  "And the worst of it is that everythin' seems ta wanna kill me.  That nurse bops me on the head with a wrench.  Ah almost have a heart attack when that unicorn Twi's blackmailin' stepped off into thin air and it was really a forcefield.  Ah'm taken hostage durin' a political negotiation.  Ah'm tricked into fightin' a robot.  Ah'm released as a hostage, only ta fight another robot.  Then there were monsters, big, ugly things twice as tall as either a' us."

"And Ah'd do it all again."  Mac fought to get his hooves under him.  He succeeded only in making enough noise to make Fluttershy glance down in concern.  "Cause Ah got ta see you after all that."  Mac gave up on righting himself, and took a few breaths to recover from the exertion.  "Ah'd even go through everythin' that happened on the Philomena, gettin' stabbed, shot, everythin', all over again, 'cause Ah still get ta see ya.  And one day, Ah'll get ta see everypony.  Mah family, mah friends, everypony from Ponyville.  And so'll you."

Fluttershy shook her head.  "Not ready.  Can't... throw myssself into thisss.  Not like you."  She looked down at her body, the uneven fur more noticeable than ever in the dim light.  "Never had to sssee.  Think about change.  Thought I ssstill sssame.  And told to not worry.  By ev...ever-pony.  By you."

"And Ah thought Ah was doin' the right thing."  Now that her eyes were open, Mac reached to her again, but her reaction was the opposite of what he wanted.  She backed away from him.  "Ah'm sorry, Shy.  Ah know ya care about how ya look, but Ah don't.  Ah know ya care how much ya changed, but Ah don't.  Ah know ya care that ya had ta kill that fella that shot me, but Ah don't.  All Ah care is that yer alive, and safe."

"How can you... sssay that?"  Fluttershy started pacing in front of the door.  "Nopony caresss?  I killed!  Killed sssomepony."

"No, Shy.  We care about you.  It's affecting ya pretty bad, and we care about that, but we ain't about ta hate ya fer what you did."

"I do!"  She cried.  "You don't know!  Don't know... what itss like!"

"What if Ah did?" Mac demanded.  "Would ya listen ta me?  Would ya stop pacin' and sit next ta me?  Would ya stop feelin' bad about somethin' ya can't change and try ta think about what yer gonna do from now on?"

She stopped pacing, full attention on the stallion on the floor.  "Mac?"

"It was before we left Equestria," he said quietly, "back before Twi 'n me broke up.  Folks were still gettin' used to the idea a' leavin', and some didn't know how ta take it.  Ah was helpin' Twi with an inspection on Cryo-4, tryin' ta find out what was goin' on with some a' the lights.  We found this unicorn in the upper levels, messin' with the conduits."  Mac shook his head slowly.  "He was probably a bit younger'n me at the time.  The guard that was with us tried ta pull him out of the access tube, but it turned into a fight.  The unicorn got hold a' the guard's spear, and he charged at Twilight.  Ah stepped in, and he tried ta get past me, but Ah slammed into him, and he hit the railing."

Mac felt something drape itself across his shoulder, and he realized that he had closed his eyes.  When he opened them, and looked up, Fluttershy was standing behind him, leaning over, wing stretched out.  "We were on level thirty-eight, and the rail gave way.  Twi tried to catch him with magic, and so did some mechanics below us, but he was usin' some sort a' artifact to hide his magic, and it kept the spells from workin'."  The stallion sighed.  "Ah remember him screamin', and then it just stopped.  We went ta look fer him, but he wasn't at the the bottom.  At first, we thought he managed ta teleport himself away, but the guards found him a few levels up.  Took two hours, but they found him.  Must 'a hit somethin' on the way down, Ah guess."

Mac felt a weight settle behind him.  The wing wrapped him like a blanket, and he felt the chin come to rest on his neck.  The stallion closed his eyes again.  "So, ya see, Shy, Ah know what ya did.  Ah know how hard it is.  No pony should ever be able ta kill another, and not hurt 'cause of it.  But ya gotta think about the reason ya did it, or it's gonna eat ya up like a worm in a rotten apple.  Ah protected, Twilight, and you protected Astral.  That's what ya gotta focus on."

Fluttershy made a small noise, one that Mac took to be an agreement of sorts.  At the very least, he hoped it was.  He was worn out.  He could feel the fog of impending sleep settling on him, payback for his recent bursts of activity in this weakened state.

He sighed as he tried to focus on the pony behind him, as he tried to stave off slumber for a little while longer.  "Are ya better now?"

He felt the movement of her reply before she added a voicing, "no."

As his eyes closed, Mac amended his question.  "Are ya gonna be?"

The wing was joined by a hoof, draping over the stallion's chest.  "Maybe."