They ran towards me, and before I could fall over, RJ was putting her hooves against my chest, steadying me, and stopping me in my wobbly tracks.
“Shy! Dammit girl! You’re bleeding again!” she said as she looked me over, eyes creased in worry.
I could barely even think, tears pouring down my cheeks, I didn’t even care I was bleeding. I just cared that I had to be close to RJ, I had to be close to my friends.
“I don’t care!” I admitted, voice high and close to a sob. “Please don’t leave me!”
RJ looked almost scared, but she looked me in the eyes and spoke gently. Firmly.
“We ain’t leaving you, darlin’,” she promised. “But you’ll be leavin’ us, if y’all don’t sit.”
Trying to get my breath, trying to think straight, I decided that I believed her. How could I not believe her. She was RJ. She was my friend. She smiled, like she knew that everything would work out.
My head drooped. My heart slowed just a fraction, and I was able to nod. My hind legs gave out, and I sat on the grass, trembling and slick with sweat.
I heard a sharp intake of breath and looked up to see Raritony, grimacing as she looked me over. I was clearly not in good shape, which made my frantic run all the more idiotic, now that I had stopped enough to think.
“That looks bad.”
“It ain’t good, get an EMT?
“May’s on it.”
I tried to stop crying, I really did, but the tears kept flowing as Raritony put a hoof on my back. She carefully and softly ran it down my back to calm me, pretty much petting me. It worked, the tears started to abate.
When RJ put a hoof against the red blotch on my bandages though, I recoiled. In part from the stinging and in part from the realization that I’d made everything a thousand times worse by being an emotional idiot.
“Stop that,” she chided, gently but with a voice full of worry. “We don’t want you getting worse. And you wouldn’t be bleeding again if you had just sat still on that stretcher. What possessed you to try tearing after us, Shy?”
I leaned back against the pressure, knowing she was just trying to help.
“You were leaving me,” I mumbled, knowing it was a lie, knowing it was emotion and panic and adrenaline all tearing me up inside, and had nothing to do with them walking to an SUV.
“We were what?” Raritony asked, incredulous and sounding darn near horrified.
A large shape crouched next to me, and Tim’s chiding voice shook me out of my daze.
“Okay, this is the exact opposite of what I wanted you to do.”
I ducked my head a little more and mumbled my apologies as he moved to be in my line of sight, smiling a little.
“You have to be careful.”
He was reassuring me. Getting me to worry about my own state instead of being left behind. It was working.
His hands moved swiftly, unwrapping the bandages around my stomach and then applying something cool to the cut to slow the bleeding before rewrapping me with fresh gauze.
“Is she going to be okay?” Rarity asked, aghast at the sight of my tiny and largely unimportant wound.
“Yeah,” RJ affirmed.
“And she’ll stay okay if she doesn’t go over-exerting herself. Again,” he explained as he got in my line of sight again.
He was worried but I felt foolish and guilty as hell, so if he’d told me that I needed to lay down in some mud and think about what I’d done, I would have. Naturally, I let my mane fall in front of my face a little more to hide.
RJ promised they would keep me in line, putting a hoof to my shoulder, which I appreciated far more than I should have. I really just wanted to hug her, but I felt far too miserable and angry with myself. He put his arms under the front and back of my midsection and looked in my eyes, making sure I was ready before lifting me and placing me onto a nearby stretcher.
“Now, stay put until we get you moved. If you need to move, take it easy. And, don’t use your wings- you’re a high speed shuffler, at best, right now.”
I nodded, and he sighed. I wasn’t being cooperative or grateful enough, and I knew it. I wanted them to all give up on me, and leave me to wallow in my mistakes. It felt like I’d deserve it. But if I actually saw RJ walking away again I didn’t know what I would do.
“We got this,” RJ said as she stepped up next to me, like a guard almost, in her firm declaration.
“Good, I have a lot more ponies to get to.”
I had been occupying him, when other ponies were in need. Not very kind at all.
“Then you should do that, good sir,” Raritony said. “We can ensure our friend is tended to.”
He left, and I curled up a little tighter, the tears once again starting to flow. I just kept messing up. Making mistake after mistake, and all my friends could do was take care of me. I had to be better than this, I just had to.
I could feel a little nudge against my side and I almost thought it was one of my dogs, until I looked and saw May Belle, looking up at me with the biggest most honest smile I’d ever seen.
“It’s okay, Erishy,” She said, nuzzling my shoulder. “It’s okay. You don’t have to cry.”
“B-bu-but I didn’t- I didn’t-” didn’t think? Didn’t do anything worthwhile? Didn’t know how in the world I was going to be anything but a blubbering mess for the rest of time?
I couldn’t figure out how to finish the words, or breathe, or anything, so I just said what I felt.
“I’m so sorry!” I cried out as I tried to hug May but almost knocked her to the grass.
I felt Rares running her hoof through my mane gently, and RJ reared up to look at me over the edge of the stretcher. She looked so worried.
“Shy? Shy, there’s no need for apologies here. Just talk to us. What’s goin’ on darlin’? Why’d you think we were leavin’ you?”
She was being so soft, so caring, and I didn’t deserve it at all. I tried to focus on the question though. Why would I think they were leaving. Well, clearly because they should leave me behind.
“I wasn’t…” I paused for a moment, trying to rub the tears out of my eyes, sniffling as I tried to breathe. “I wasn’t strong enough. I let all of you down, so you were leaving me.”
I sniffled as the tears threatened to return at just saying those words out loud. “You were leaving me behind.”
She put her hooves over mine and slowly tugged, until I slid a little closer, so I was staring right into her eyes. Her smile was honest to the core, soft, and so understanding. She knew I’d been scared, and she wasn’t mad.
“Aw Shy, we weren’t doing anything of the sort.”
It was like she’d pulled the drain plug on my panic, and so easily it flowed away from me in a steady stream.
“But I saw you talking to the CIA, and you were all about to get in the car away from me, and-”
“And you let your imagination get away from you, darling,” Raritony said. “Like we’d ever leave you behind. We were merely making arrangements for our exit. You’re our friend, Erishy. We would never leave you.”
“I…” I was panicking and basically a scared animal flying blind, but I couldn’t say that.
“I…” I am so uncertain over my own value and importance that, despite having adored myself in the past as Erica, I still couldn’t see myself as special, but I couldn’t say that.
“I know that,” I concluded as I looked into her eyes, wishing I could speak the right words to convey the hole that I’d been nurturing in my heart for the last dozen years in two different lives.
“I do, but… But I was so helpless, and you had to save me, and you’ve merged so-”
“And none of that means we would ever leave you behind,” RJ interrupted thankfully, with iron in her voice. She would not waver.
I frowned. I shouldn’t have done any of this. I should have stayed calm, and I shouldn’t have been so emotional. Now, my friends were hurt because of me.
“Remember the dragon?”
When I looked back up from rubbing my eyes yet again, RJ was grinning, she looked so pure, so happy.
“You… Do you mean Spike?” I asked, trying to sort through memories as quickly as I could to catch up with the change in topic.
“Nah. I mean the big one. The one that was smoking up the whole town all on account of his nap,” she explained.
I froze for a moment before nodding, frowning a little at the odd sensation of both being dragged up a mountain and watching me being dragged up the mountain at the same time.
“I do. Two different ways, too. That’s still weird,” I admitted.
“Yeah, well, I only remember the one way,” she said tenderly as she pet my hoof to calm me. “Did I leave you at the bottom of the mountain?”
I shook my head, tilting it a little as I looked away. Of course not. Of course she wouldn’t leave.
“And has anything changed between us?” she asked. “Anything that would lessen our friendship in any way?”
I prodded the stretcher’s padding a little with my hoof, compulsively coming up with excuses.
“The merge might have-”
“Might’ve, but it didn’t,” she asserted without any hesitation. “I’m still your friend. Anything else?”
I was actually running out of excuses, which was simultaneously nerve wracking and quite happy. I was being forced to admit that things were ok.
I bit my lip, there was still one thing nagging at me.
“You looked shaken by what I could do with the gun,” I finally said.
“That I was,” she admitted. “But it doesn’t change that I’m still your friend.” She smiled, all sweet southern charm and unflappable honesty. “Are you noticing a trend here, sugarcube?”
I felt my cheeks get a little hot as I ducked my head and smiled. “I’m still your friend.”
“Got it in one. I didn’t leave you then, and I ain’t leaving you now,” she reassured me, and I believed her.
“Seconded,” Raritony said as she laid a hoof on the back of my neck.
“Third!” May added with so much energy I almost jumped, having forgotten she was there.
I scooted a little more and put my forelegs around RJ’s neck, laying my head in her mane, my nose against the back of her element. In relaxing, I sighed, letting some of the pain go with my breath.
“I wish I were strong like you, Rae Jay. You didn’t get kidnapped.”
She snorted, shaking her head slightly as Rarity laughed though tried to cover her mouth.
I was a bit surprised, lifting my head to look between them. “What? Did I- What’s funny?”
“Darling,” Rarity said sweetly as she smiled and resumed the stroking of my mane with one hoof. “If you think you’re the only pony to get foalnapped, you are gravely mistaken.”
That couldn’t be possible. Rarity? Kidnapped? She’d been there with the CIA agent to free everypony!
“What?” I finally asked, half stunned.
“I was spirited away quite a few times in my travels,” she elaborated. “Practically passed about like an old dress amongst friends, until I was left here.”
“And I got shot full of horse tranqs, then dumped in a dirty hotel room,” AJ added with the casual tone of mentioning that she’d been by Sugarcube Corner the other day.
We were all wounded, shook up, messed up little ponies, weren’t we? Even though they’d looked like heroes.
“But you’re- I mean-” I pointed to RJ. “You came in all tough and brash, and you-” I gestured to Raritony. “You were using a magical shield to protect us!”
“True,” Raritony nodded in agreement. “But one action-role does not an action-mare make. Sometimes life makes a damsel out of you, and as often as you try to save yourself, sometimes you need a knight.”
“She’s right!” May piped up. “I’m the one who had to rescue Rae Jay!” She grinned impishly at me. “So does that make me your goddamn knight, hayseed?”
I still felt like I had to reboot my brain every time May swore, but it was becoming somewhat endearing to me.
“Sure you are,” RJ chuckled as she mussed up May’s mane with a playful smile. “You have my eternal thanks, Sir Swears-A-Lot.”
“Oh, so that’s how it turned into a bird’s nest,” Raritony said with a raised eyebrow and a ‘big sister knows best’ nature that left no doubt in my mind that Rarity was still very much a tidy and proper lady when she wanted to be. “Get over here, sis. I cannot have your mane looking like Discord and Rainbow’s bastard offspring.”
With a roll of her eyes, May trotted around me on the stretcher and sat down to let Raritony tend to her mane. As she did, I tried not to start crying all over again. This time not because something was wrong, but because my friends were here. Taking care of me, calming me, and being themselves. It felt a little bit like home.
“We all got hoodwinked, Shy,” RJ told me as she squeezed my hoof and I looked back towards her with a shaky smile. “That ain’t anyone’s fault but the assholes who did it to us. You weren’t weak. You weren’t weak. At. All.” She squirmed up onto the stretcher and wrapped me up in a big tight hug. “Surviving what you did makes you as strong as any pony I’ve ever met.”
Nate walked up to the group, and then put a hand on the edge of the stretcher.
I couldn't take my eyes off of him. It was odd. I wasn’t expecting him to do anything unusual, but I just felt… More attentive, more focused when I looked at him. He looked into my eyes and smiled as he spoke softly.
“That you are alive, after what you’ve faced, speaks volumes. I wish I could have been as tough and strong as you.”
The words washed over me, and despite my usual reaction to such praise, I couldn’t disbelieve or doubt them. I was incapable of it. I simply accepted them, and in doing so I found that if those words were true, than so much of my pain was a bit lighter. A bit easier to push away.
“See?” RJ said as she nuzzled my cheek. “You’re tougher’n you know.”
When Nate looked to RJ, I felt like I should too, and as I did things felt a little more uncertain. I wasn’t hurting, but I felt a little more nervous.
I scuffed my hoof on the stretcher, and leaned against RJ as I tried to steady my breathing.
“Okay,” I said quietly. “B… But you’ll all stay with me so I don’t have to be strong alone, right?”
“Sure thing, sugarcube,” RJ said as she ran a hoof through my mane reassuringly.
“Of course, darling,” Raritony said just as firmly.
“You’re the best foalsitter ever, I’m totally sticking by you,” May chimed in, surprising me that she’d think I was that good of a foalsitter.
Nate chuckled, and let go of the stretcher and straightening a little. “I... will have to bow out,” he said.
“Really?” I looked back to him with a little concern, but that same reassurance came back when I looked at him. I wiped the last of my tears from my eyes.
“Sorry, my dear, but I have a lot of work to do. Ponies to help, opportunities to seize. I have a lot of work ahead of me now. And…” He flexed a bandaged hand. “I get to look forward to it. I wouldn’t be here if you and your friends hadn’t come along.” He smiled awkwardly at all of us. “So... thank you. For saving my life.”
My cheeks reddened as I realized I was actually part of that. I had helped save him.
“Thanks for bein’ a stand-up guy, Nate,” RJ said as she held out a hoof, which Nate shook.
“Thanks for coming to the rescue,” he said before looking to me.
I sat up a little taller.
“Thank you for listening to me,” I said as he and I shared a smile.
“And the same to you,” he said, nodding. His smile turned cheeky. “Now go on and save the world- doctor’s orders.”
He turned back to the crowd, and the bubblegum pink filly raised up her forehooves. Crouching down, Nate picked up the little pony, then disappeared into the bustle of EMTs, FBI agents, and ponies.
I relaxed against RJ’s side, and I could feel as Rares started tending to my mane like she’d worked on May’s.
It put me at ease, my breathing becoming easy, and the future feeling ever brighter.
Quiet together, we watched the storm of activity rage around us, the terror of the day fading into weariness. But the future held so much unknown. At least I knew that I’d face it by the side of my friends.