Chapter Sixteen
It is best not to think about how things could have turned out, especially when there was nothing that could be done to change the result. It is not like one could preserve an instance of their life and revisit it after the fact to do something differently.
“Surgical bullet wounds” was no hyperbole. The slender barreled pistol fired 10 mm rounds and did so with such power that the small caliber rounds could penetrate an unarmored target and exit the other side. Falcon Wing was careful to take the weapon and any ammo the gray mare might have had on her as a preventive measure. He wasn’t going to pull a gun on another pony if he could help it and nopony was going to happen across such a weapon and its ammunition passing through the street.
Falcon was thankful that the caramel mare’s mother wasn’t shot through the head, or attempting to revive her would have been for nothing. Luckily the bullet fired went into and through her chest cavity, grazing her heart and no doubt causing all sorts of complications in her body. It was no means painless and Falcon was sure the unconscious mare felt great suffering before slipping into shock, but this grievous wound was survivable. There would be no bullet to worry about. Falcon Wing had the power of magical science in a bottle!
He propped the light gray mare’s head up, opened her mouth and gingerly poured a newly opened health potion down her throat. All his previous guilt about stealing from raiders? Gone. He wasn’t using his pilfered goods on himself to make sure he made it through this hell. He was using it to help others, and that made it okay in some twist of logic and morality.
He would have to thank Klaxon for doing such a good job packing his supplies. Speaking of which, he’d have to ask about the note he found in his saddlebags after. “Plug goggles into any spell matrix terminal” What the hell?
Caramel -- Falcon’s unspoken nickname for the young mare because she had yet to tell him her name -- glanced between the door and the hooded colt who became an impromptu medic. They had retreated to a building just across the street from the incident, locked the door and Falcon wasted no extra time getting to work. In hindsight, locking the door really did not do anything. The building used to be a pharmacy -– there was that hatred for irony again -- and it had a large, broken display window letting the gloomy light from outside shine in on black and white tiled flooring.
Falcon and his patient were behind the counter and Caramel was lookout, hiding in a dark corner. On the wall where the counter extended out from was the sad yellow mare, the image posted above them. It was if the pink maned elder with gray in her hair was looking down at the red colt’s efforts and it was breaking her heart.
“Okay…that should do it…” Falcon thought, backing away from the injured mare to inspect his hoofwork. Magical bandages wrapped around her upper torso, a small red circle forming on either side where the bullet wounds were. “They are like targets for where her heart is… all the shooter had to do is -- NOPE, not thinking about that. Bad Falcon Wing, very, very bad.”
The old mare stirred. Falcon Wing felt a strange sensation in his chest. Anxiousness? Anticipation? “Hope,” he realized with a small smile. It was only as large as he’d dare let himself smile. The Wasteland was so very good at making ponies frown and cry.
The light gray pony groaned. Hoofsteps, rapid ones ensued. Caramel slid to a stop at Falcon’s side. He cringed. Sound itself felt like his arch nemesis… which is to be expected because of his emphasis on stealth. Still, he couldn’t blame the young mare for her reaction.
“Alana…?” the off-white mare asked weakly. “Mother?” Alana replied tenderly, leaning close. The reaction the off white mare had left much to be desired.
“Oh my sweet Luna, you are a raider!” she cried out, her wide green eyes pouring tears. Falcon’s semblance of a smile was gone in a split second.
“No, no, no!” he said, bristling. Between the mare’s echoing shrieks and the fact she thought her daughter was a raider, the wingless Pegasus’ thoughts were everywhere.
“Oh merciful Celestia, who the hell are you!?” she cried out, scrambling away from Falcon Wing and swiftly hitting the wall. She was sobbing and gasping for breath, a hoof held over her chest. In an instant her breaths had become shallow and labored. Falcon Wing recoiled in horror. She was having heart complications! She shock was too much for her still mending heart! She was about to DIE and he didn’t know what to DO!
Alana was at her mother’s side, holding her and weeping. Falcon shut eyes as tight as he could and stamped his hoof into a tile, wishing it had shattered underhoof but it hadn’t. All he had to show for his anger, frustration and immense sadness was an echoing clop. Tears began trickling down his cheek and snout. “Maybe I should have spent all the time I had reading apprenticing with Dr. Patchenfix! Maybe then I would be worth a damn in this situation!” his mind roared at him.
In time the rasping of shallow breaths stopped. Only the sound of crying remained. Falcon never even got to know her name. He only saw her cutie mark, three dark gray streaks running across her thighs.
On the outskirts of Hope again, Falcon looked down at his hoofwork with Alana standing beside him. In the irradiated soil another pony was laid to rest, a large rock used as the marker. Alana carved in the words with a combat knife Falcon loaned her. He really had to thank Klaxon for packing his bags.
“Fogchaser, victim of a fragile heart”
Falcon scuffed at the ground with his right hoof, head hung low, the hood pulled forth further so that it was practically resting on his snout. Another pony he helped put in the ground. At least he did it before she was a skeleton.
“It isn’t your fault” he heard Alana say. He looked up to her. She was looking off into the distance, the deadened landscape rolling out in all directions, past the distant buildings, dipping and rising in the perpetual gloom. It depressed Falcon Wing that her eyes wandered to the bleak horizon after she paid her final respects to her mother.
Maybe if he had taken off the hood, she would have calmed down…
“You jumped in to fight a raider and help wayward strangers. What happened after, you couldn’t have done anything about. You didn’t know Fogchaser, about her condition…” Alana said, still looking off into the wide wilds yonder.
“Condition?” Falcon asked, doing his best to not sound downtrodden. She nodded and her gaze lowered to the ground. It came off like she was trying to avoid looking at him. Another wave of hurt. Ow.
“She was always tense and easily startled. A heart condition she had since she was a foal,” Alana explained, lifting a hoof to wipe the last of her tears away.
“Out of every possible place to shoot, the bitch had to shoot Fogchaser in the chest!" Falcon thought, feeling a surge of anger within his core. His hatred of irony was all but absolute now. It was no wonder Alana shot the gray raider. Was there anything ironic about getting shot through the head?
Oh right, she was shot with her own gun. Fitting. Irony was somewhat redeemed in the red colt’s eye. Somewhat.
The caramel mare sighed. “I blame myself, really. I should have taken this disgusting thing off as soon as I got the chance, but I was so scared and nervous…” Her expression darkened as she looked at the brown and black leather armor. As much as he hated what it represented, Falcon had to disagree. “Some armor is better than nothing, Alana…” Falcon Wing said, addressing her by name for the first time. She gave him an odd look, one that conveyed both uneasiness and pain. Right… she hadn’t told him her name; it was kind of weird that he found out from her mother just before she died…
That -- and the fact he was telling her that wearing raider armor was a better alternative to going bareback. While true in theory, he remembered his own actions during that fight. Had she even moved an inch he would have assumed she was an enemy based on her barding. And he fought with his hooves, he didn’t even want to consider what an armed pony would do. Imagining bouts of misfortune for tactical purposes was Steiner’s specialty.
“…On second thought, forget I said anything. Let’s talk about something more pressing,” said the wingless Pegasus. Alana looked at the grave one last time, touched a hoof on the stone then nodded. “Where were you headed, before… things… happened...?” Falcon asked, cursing in his thoughts. “I am so bad at this.”
“Mother and I… were trying to get out of Hope. Slavers had attacked our compound a few days ago. We escaped and were taking refuge amongst the rubble, hoping they would move on and we could find our way to another settlement… New Appleoosa or Junction R-7 maybe,” Alana answered. Falcon did not know a thing about those places. “Well, we made it out didn’t we? Left that place behind?” she asked. She forced a smile onto her face. Falcon wanted to scream. He desperately needed a mattress to vent into.
“I am so…so unbelievably sorry --”
“Are we really going to go through this again?” the caramel mare said, sighing thereafter. “I already said it wasn’t your fault-“
“It wasn’t yours either damn it, but I just can’t help it! It was just so sad…to watch… to know I was there unable to do anything to help…!” he exclaimed, his voice much louder than he had intended. Alana was stunned. The fiery anger extinguished when he saw her expression, replaced with a spine tingling chill. Falcon drooped, hanging his head. Where were those mattresses when they were most needed?
“Why were you heading into Hope, if I may ask, stranger?” Alana said a short while later. Falcon Wing was thankful for the second attempt to change the subject. He raised his head to look at her.
“I was… it was probably stupid but… did you know ponies by the names of Klaxon and Steiner? I was… I guess I wanted to see where they came from.”
“They are alive!?” Alana asked, her expression brightening greatly with a squee. “I haven’t seen them since I was a filly!”
“That’s a yes then,” the red colt thought. That meant that the previous home of his friends had fallen to slavers just a few days ago, when he left on his quest of do good. Fuck irony.
“They are going through a tough time right now but, yes. They are still alive. They live around Ponyville though… bit of an unpleasant place if I do say so myself,” Falcon said, trying not to linger on the revelation.
“Hope might not be too different after the slavers…” Alana replied.
“Don’t remind me,” Falcon Wing said. There went his plan for the day. Or not.
Without warning he shoved his face into a saddlebag and pulled out the slender barreled pistol, putting it down at Alana’s hooves. He then fished out five clips of 10 mm bullets. “Take this, get yourself to somewhere safe. New Appleoosa or R-7, whichever would be safer for you.”
“You save a lady, bury her mother and then send her on her way? You are very strange, stranger” said the caramel mare.
“The name is Falcon Wing. And it’s for your own good,” the red colt replied.
“How so?” Alana inquired.
“Because I’m going in there and freeing those slaves. They might have took your home days ago, but they didn’t leave, and now that I know this, like hell if I’ll let them without a fight!”
Alana contemplated this for a short while and then said “I want to help. Those are my friends and acquaintances in there, waiting to be shipped off to who knows where!”
Falcon regarded her strangely. “I have no plan. This might be suicide,” he admitted. “Are you sure you want to commit?”
“You want me to leave you without returning the favor, after you jumped in all so heroically to fight off that slaver?” Alana said teasingly before adding with a lot more seriousness in her tone “I already told you, I know the ponies captured. I want to help them.”
“Right then,” Falcon replied. This was going to happen.