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// Chapter 12: Nothing Lasts Forever 
// Story: Falling Down 
// by RoccoRoccs 
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Bright lights filled my vision as I woke back to the world of the living. I don't remember much passed Rose tackling me, I remember being so over whelmed with joy that I was crying, but apart from the euphoria, I was lost. My brain was a conglomerate of fractured memories, each more checkered than the last in terms of clarity. I remember seeing Rose, I remember the endless sea of gray, I can recall a few snippets of conversations between Click and Clack when they came to see me in the recovery ward. But beyond that, I truly was lost. 

The lights, though very bright, still seemed to find a way to be blurry to what was left of my faculties. I was moving, ever so slightly, but I was moving nonetheless. I could hear things even, it was as if somepony was speaking to me but their words were gargled and muted. What was going on? Was I dead and had still yet to fully wake? Was I in the Stable? Did I actually make it, or was I still wondering the abyss lost in delirium? 


"Chance? Can you hear me, Chance?" A buck seemed to say, but I was still very groggy as my hearing came back to me. I nodded my head to the blurry figure and tried to focus in on him, but it was like I was looking through some opaque plastic.

"Good! GOOD! Ok, Now I am going to take the protective covers from your eyes now. Try not to open them fully until they have had a chance to adjust." He said. Slowly, I felt tape being pulled from my face and muzzle. I tried to hold still as it ripped hair from hide, but it was... difficult. "Now then, tell me what you see?"

I was staring at a sea green buck with blond mane and tail. I was that I was in a recovery ward as I had suspected and I could see nothing but grey outside of that. Beside my bed held all manners of things in terms of equipment, various machines and apparatuses were stacked in the corner, looking to be freshly disconnected. To my other side sat a easy chair with a table next to it. It looked to have had somepony sleeping in it judging by the small stack of books and blanket draped over the seat. Had Rose been here the whole time? How long had I been out? I tried to open my mouth to speak, but the words came out as more of a chirp than an actual sound.

"H-how... Long..." I started but failed to finish. I looked up to the buck with sad eyes that I could not communicate with him and hoped he knew what I would want to know.  

"How long have you been out? About three days now. I have to say that you are lucky you made it here when you did. I doubt that you would have made it much longer out there." He said as he passed me a cup of liquid and urged me to drink.

"Three days? How bad was I?" That's what I needed, water! Oh how I have never felt something so nice on my lips before!

"Pretty bad... You had..." He started reaching for the chart at the foot of my bed. "Radiation poisoning, two broken ribs, broken nose, some internal bleeding from a lacerated spleen, ruptured blood vessels in the face, hooves and right eye..." He said as he turned the page. "Bleeding stomach ulcers from said radiation poisoning, ruptured ear drum, sever lacerations to the legs and torso, several impact injuries such as hematomas that had to be drained and a missing wing, though I suspect that was an old injury." He said with a sniff.

"Wow... Just... wow." I said in disbelief. 

"Wow in deed... the fact that you even made it here is a miracle. I don't know what kept you going kid, but I can only hope that we all can find a little of it to get us through this." He said as he looked to the door that was opening. 

Tired and weary, Rose trotted through the door with her head hung low from exhaustion. She looked terrible, as I expect she would if she had been sleeping in a chair for as long as I had been out. I wanted to run to her right then, but despite the magic of healing potions and modern medicine, I was still too weak to raise up a hoof, rather than my entire body.

"Rose!" I shouted in excitement. I guess she had been expecting me to be asleep because the coffee she had been holding was now all over the doctor. 

"Chance! You're awake!" she shouted back as she ran to the bed and very promptly climbed inside the railing with me. "They said... They said you might not wake..."

"Hey... I'm here, aren't I? Wouldn't miss the chance to be with you for the world."

"Well..." The doctor said, closing his notebook with a satisfying thump. "I do believe you are in good hooves now, I'll let you get some rest." He said as he trotted through the door. "Oh, just one more thing. I know you two are happy to see each other again and all, but try to not over exert yourself, Chance. Just because we have magic that can heal, doesn't mean we have magic that can replace your energy levels safely. Ok?"

The two of us held one another for hours it felt like. Mean, my hooves falling asleep at the pads, her, face buried into my chest listening to my heart beat away like a drum. At the time I had no clue that I had been injured so severely, I just thought I was over reacting to a bloody nose, but broken bones? Radiation poisoning? Internal bleeding? How on earth did I make it the near forty miles to hope from our house? Even with taking the most direct route, I should have died long ago back in ponyville. 

I guess all those years of suicide attempts had tempered my body to high levels of stress that others could not handle? Was it the fact that even though the world around me had become an obliterated landscape of fire and destruction, I was already used to it from years of self torture? Maybe that or... something else saw me through all this. Maybe, just maybe I had a little help from somepony from beyond. I'm not one to believe in such things, I'm a fairly logical pony about stuff like that, but even I was perplexed by my own stamina. 

"Does it hurt?" Rose whispered.

"No. Nothing hurts anymore. Well, maybe knowing what all was wrong with me at the time... but-"

"No silly... Your wing. Does it hurt for me to be laying on you like this?" Rose asked politely. 

"What are you talking about..." I said with a laugh. I had been missing my wing for so long that honestly until somepony said something, I totally forget that i'm missing most of the time. "Rose, My wing is on the other side."

"No dummy, your NEW wing." What on earth was wrong with her, I didn't have a new OH MY GOODNESS I HAVE TWO WINGS!? "WHAT!?" I shouted and I leaned forward to see for myself. Sure enough, I had two full wings! What in the world!

"The doctors asked me about you missing a wing and I told them that you had lost it long ago, but they insisted that they wanted to try and graft a new one for you."

"I have... two wings..." I said, near hyper ventilating.

"Chance, I didn't know what to tell them! I swear! I know you still miss you family and you wore you injuries as reminders but, I didn't know what to do! They made it sound that you owed them as much to try it for fixing you up in such bad shape!"

"I... Have... TWO, not one, two... wings..." I said, searching for that familiar anger than I had been expecting to emerge, but i didn't. I was... happy? I couldn't be happy about this, I was still morning the loss of my family, my missing wing was something of a reminder... But had I confused it? Had it been a reminder of my family or a reminder of what happened to me?

"Oh Chance... Please forgive me!" Rose cried into my chest once more. I couldn't think of a single thing to say, so I just hugged her. "You're not... mad at me?"

"No, hun. I'm not mad." I said with a smile. "If anything, I feel better. It was my passed that was hurting me all those years, maybe it's time I moved on from it. I will always miss Lolly and the kids, but they are in here, not out there somewhere." I said tapping my chest. I felt her relax a bit more into me and squeeze me a bit tighter, thank goodness, crisis averted.

"So, what now?" She asked as the two of us laid in my hospital bed.

"Now what? We are under ground, nothing can hurt us here, right? I guess we adapt."

"Don't play coy with me... You and I both know what you are thinking about." 

"Well... I mean if we take it easy and you close the blinds..." A hoof jabbed me in the chest, followed by a flood of apologies, followed by... the look. "Ow! What!?"

"You mean to tell me, you are not even remotely worried about Cherry..." Rose said, looking rather upset with me.

"What do you mean-" My face fell flat. I had forgotten her! Oh dear Luna! The poor girl! She and her family was out there all alone in all of this and I was just lying here in comfort the whole time. I'm sure I made the right choice by coming here first, by the sounds of it I had nearly died right at the doorstep. But Had I remember for even a moment after I got to hope to run to her, I would have. I was so obsessed with knowing that Rose was safe that I ran right to her. "I was so worried about you that I came straight here... Oh no, the poor girl!" I said in horror.

"Good answer... But Chance, I know she means the world to you, you have to go and get her!"

"Rose... hunny... We are in a Stable. The fact that I got let in is a miracle. Me getting back out again is never going to happen." I said, partly broken hearted, but also kind of relieved. I wanted nothing to do with that hell outside after what all I had seen.

"Don't be so sure about that..." A voice said from the doorway. Limestone... I had guessed she picked this location as her own personal stable. I guess I was right. "This turn of events has left us... rather unprepared to say the least. We had known of a Zebra threat for quite sometime prior to hiring you on, but we had not anticipated their actions being so swift."

"Madam... Isn't this, you know, confidential?" I said, motioning to Rose.

"Nothing is confidential when there is nopony to leak it to, director. We had been preparing this stable for over a year after it had been built. We stripped out the Stable-Tec monitoring equipment and created something a little more... home like. But, I'm afraid that much of what we had planned to bring in was not due until next week. It has left us with a crippled system to say the least."

"So you have half a stable..."

"Barely, yes." She replied as she took a seat near my bedside.

"So what does this have to do with my friend, Cherry?" I asked.

"Nopony here has seen the outside since the bombs have fallen. Nopony here truly wants to. But you, you have. You have already given us valuable data just from your pipbuck's geo locator. Unfortunately for us, most of it was grim to say the least. We suspect that levels above fifty feet will have settled out to little if any radiation, making it safe for-"

"Somepony with wings... I get it." I flapped my new wing... My cursed remedy that was now looking more and more like a mutual bribe.

"Yes. Chance, you have to understand that you being here is an oddity. There are few if any other Pegasi in any of the ground based stables. Your injury is what landed you in this very stable rather than one in Cloudsdale."

"What does that have to do with anything!?" I shouted. Now I was pissed. They fixed me up, fed me and now wanted to send me right back out there. Sure I could find Cherry, but now it was at the gain of a somepony else.

"Chance... Cloudsdale was bombed at the same time as Cottonwood. The Stable up there never stood a chance." Limestone replied somberly. I sat back in my seat. I knew ponies who were destine to go into that stable, friends even, old friends but friends nonetheless. I was being faced with an option of fall in line or suffer the consequences, With Limestone the overmare of this Stable, I was sure to have hell to pay if I did not at least try.

"What do I have to do..." I said burying my hooves in my face.

"You and a few others will be granted selective access to the Stable. Your role in this Stable will be to search and gather intel about the surrounding damage to the area. If you find resources that could be useful to us, you will be required to report them back to me personally. We do not need much in the way of tech, but our food supplies are very limited and we have no way of sustaining the aquaponics department with out seeds."

"So you want me to go back out there, to the world that nearly killed me in a single day, to bring you seeds..." I said flatly. You would think that I would have a more interesting mission given that they sowed a freaking wing on me so I could fly again.

"Yes, but not just that..." She said as she stood for the door. "It is no surprise to you I'm sure that we all are in a position of bewilderment over what happened. Equestria retaliated as soon as the first detonation happened, firing everything we had in equal mass towards Zebrica. Thanks to your work we were able to deduce that they had acquired the mega spell tech from the MOP and we too were able to come up with something of our... own design, in the event of of course. That being said, we suspect that if there are any forces to the south that survived, they might get the idea to come snooping."

"So counter recon. Tell me, what about the fact that everything is Rad soaked and will be for quite sometime? If there is a team that is going out daily, what makes you think that they themselves are not being exposed?"

"Exposure is compulsory with the duty, but we have taken steps to minimize exposure. Radiation suits that are built more for expeditions rather than short term exposure, re breathing units that we have scavenged and re-engineered for long term use, we even have a new IV usage Rad-x that can prevent exposure for up to 24 hours. Precautions have been taken-"

"But are still highly risky to exposing everypony in the stable!" 

"Yes, well. At the moment we are doing what we can to survive. Chances of us making it more than a year without the supplies we need are null. Chance, if there was anypony else out there that could do this, we would ask them, but you are it. Now, if you decided to accept my proposal, I could be persuaded to grant access to the Stable to your... friend and her family. As well as resources, it turns out that we are actually under populated as well. We are designed to operate at between 200 and 450 ponies." 

"And how many do we have now?"

"171 of the original 350 designated ponies made it to the Stable. Since then we have lost another twelve to exposure prior to making it here... You were nearly lucky 13. You can see Click and Clack at the gate if you decide to lend us a hoof... Luna knows we need it." She said as she trotted out the door and down the hallway.

I laid there in silence. Of all the thing I had thought of that I could do in a Stable, going outside was the very last thing on the list. Hell, it wasn't even on the list! Door's close and STAY closed in Stables. I should know, I spent nearly a year researching Stable-Tec and their subsidiary for any signs of a threat. If anypony knows Stable rules, it's me. So to think that the doors would not only open again, but do so several times throughout the day was madness to me.

It would expose everypony here to Radiation, various forms of industrial fallout, contagions that could have mutated and Celestia only knows what else. In the book of bad ideas, this was on the cover. Sure a cold is no big deal... out there. But down here a simple cold can and will infect and entire Stable population making way for increasing levels of severity. I was against the idea, I hated it even, but not just for political reasons. Oh no, I had plenty of my own reasons to worry. 

As she had said before, I had seen what was out there and knew what to expect. Chances are that the scavenging teams had not seen passed Hope and had possibly been ordered away from Ponyville entirely. I had seen it and I wanted nothing more to do with it. But still, that old prideful feeling of helping out wanted me to go. As much as I hated it, I already knew what was going to happen the moment I got out of this bed. If not for everypony else's sake, then for Rose and her alone. She was part of what saved me from myself and I had sworn to protect her the moment she said I love you to me. 

Not to mention that Cherry was still out there and I had made a promise to her that if something bad happened, I would know what to do. As far as my brain could figure, that either meant come check on her or stay away. Seeing as staying away was going to drive me insane, I had to go with checking in on her. I mean, she would expect me to, wouldn't she? The whole damn world exploded, surely she would be waiting for me to come around to say hi. 


"What are you going to do?" Rose asked as she curled up next to me.

"Oh... probably something stupid." I said as I tried to relax for a bit longer.

"You're going back out there, aren't you?" She asked with a broken tone.

"I don't think I have a choice. The Stable needs supplies and apparently other ponies. The Stable does include you and I after all... Without food we won't make it a year." 

"I don't wan't you to go... I just got you back." Rose cried back to me.

"Rose, I love you, you know that right?"

"Yeah... I know."

"Then let me do this. I don't like it or want to do it. But the sooner that this all comes to an end, the sooner we can both relax."

"What if you get hurt again!? Or-or... What if something worse happens!?" She howled. 

"Then we cross that bridge when we get there. But I know this much, if I can get back here little more than dead once, I think I can do it again. Besides, I won't be alone." I said with a smug smile.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, I have a small plan that might get me in trouble a bit, but for now, let's just call it insurance."

The two of us enjoy our time together more than usual. Call it the chances of never seeing one another again or just that desperate desire to not let go, but whatever it was it was as if we were one. At one point I could swear I felt our hearts beat as one, both pounding away waiting for the other one to take a break. I didn't want to leave, she didn't want me to leave, but we both knew it was going to happen at some point.

Nothing lasts forever, nothing. The bombs have shown us all as much.