//------------------------------// // 440: Consequences // Story: Thirty-Minute Pony Stories // by Silvernis //------------------------------// 440: CONSEQUENCES “Please, don’t,” I beg. “I—I don’t want to.” “You need to see, Minuette,” says Time Turner. His voice is quiet, but cold. So cold. It hurts, but not as much as the disappointment on his face does. I shake my head, and my tail lashes. “No! It doesn’t matter now! It didn’t happen now! I reversed everything!” “You need to see,” he says. “Your actions have consequences, and you need to see that.” He spears me with his cold, disappointed gaze and holds out a hoof. I shake my head again. I can feel tears starting to prick my eyes. “Minuette,” he says. His voice is soft, but it has a cold, hard edge. I know he’ll drag me kicking and screaming if he has to. Trembling, I lift a hoof and press it against his, and suddenly we’re walking through time. The world stretches out around us and becomes a mad smear of light and color, like a fresh painting left out in the rain. I feel sick. I want to stop, to go back to my Ponyville where Lyra is still happy and untouched, but my hoof is glued to Time Turner’s. He keeps walking, walking through the past and the present and the future. This is his talent. He’s a walker. A traveler. I don’t know how he does it, but I know when we’re going, and I feel sick. Time Turner makes a sharp turn, pulling me with him, and suddenly the light and color squeeze back together. We’re in Ponyville again, but it’s not my Ponyville. The timeline is prickly and different, and I feel sick. He drops my hoof and starts walking down the moonlit street. I don’t want to follow him, but I do it anyway. The street is empty, and our hoofsteps are horribly loud. The houses on either side watch me, their darkened windows like black, baleful eyes. I cringe and sniffle and lower my head so I don’t have to see them. It’s not like I really need to see where I’m going. I’ve walked this street so many times and stopped to stare at this house here on the left, this cute little two-storey house with the lovingly-tended patch of garden. I could find my way here blindfolded. The door is unlocked, just like I left it, and Time Turner slips inside, silent as a ghost. I feel sick, but I follow him. We find the stairs and go up to the hall, the hall that leads to her bedroom. The bedroom door at the end is open, just like I left it. I know what’s down there, and I feel sick, and I don’t want to go, but my legs keep jerking and moving and I’m walking down the hall. Then I’m at the doorway. My legs suddenly lock up, and I shake my head. “Please, don’t make me do this,” I beg—no, not beg—whine. I’m whining like a petulant foal. Time Turner is already in the room, looking. He turns back to me, and his face makes me shudder. “You need to see, Minuette,” he says. His voice is quiet and cold. I don’t want to, and I feel sick, like I’m going to vomit my wicked heart right out of my chest, but I take a heaving, gasping breath, close my eyes, and stumble into the room. I hold the breath for a moment, then let it out and force open my eyes. She’s lying on her side on her bed, just like I left her. Her beautiful golden eyes are glazed and vacant, and they barely flicker as they see me. Her mane and tail are rumpled and ragged. Her minty green coat and her horn are smeared with drool and other things that I don’t want to remember but do anyway. Beneath the mess, I can see the bruises, big and blue-black and ugly. I can see the bite marks all down her ears and neck and across the golden lyre on her flank. I can see the sticky ribbons of half-dried blood running from between her back legs. I remember how she tasted, how she whimpered as she tried to push me away. Suddenly I’m crying. Sobbing. I fall to the floor and shake like a pathetic newborn covered in slimy filth, and the tears burn as they run down my cheeks. I cover my face with my hooves, but I can still see her. I’ll always be able to see her. “You did this, Minuette,” Time Turner says. His voice is an icy razor that cuts me open and spills out the monster wriggling inside of me. “You did this to her. This is what happens when you think you’re above the rules. This is what happens when you lose control.” “But I fixed it!” I wail, half-choking on my own tears and snot. “I reversed it! It never happened!” “Does that make it all right?” He’s shouting now, banging a forehoof on the floor. “Does that make what happened here all right? Does that make what you did to this poor broken pony all right?” It doesn’t. Of course it doesn’t. I’ve always known that, but I see it now. I see it with more horrible clarity than I’ve ever seen it before. I see it in Lyra’s empty eyes, her battered body. I see it on my hooves, the hooves I used to hold her down while I took what I wanted for so long. No matter how far I rewind time to erase my sins, these hooves will never be clean. “No,” I whisper. “No,” agrees Time Turner softly, and then, to my complete shock, he settles to his haunches beside be and pulls me into his forelegs. Before I can stop myself, I’m crying into his chest like a foal. “I’m sorry,” I eventually manage to mumble. “I’m so sorry.” It’s so pitiful, so pathetic, so utterly inadequate, but it’s all I can say. He pats my messy mane, his hoof gentle. “I know. There are always consequences, Minuette. Having the ability to control time doesn’t give us free reign to do whatever we want, to give in to our baser urges. We can still hurt ponies when we’re cruel and greedy and irresponsible. We can hurt them terribly, and we aren’t any less guilty of our sins just because we can wave our hooves and make it so none of it ever happened.” He sighs and shakes his head. “This … this wasn’t the way I’d hoped for you to learn this lesson, Minuette, but I think you have finally learned it.” I nod wordlessly. There aren’t any more words. “Well, then. Let’s head home.” Time Turner gets to his hooves and helps me up. We both look at Lyra once more, and then Time Turner holds out a hoof. I take it, and then we’re walking through time again. I don’t feel sick anymore. I just feel empty.