Caramel goggled in shock. “You...but...I...hang on just a second – you were involved in that accident too?!?” he blurted out. “But...why did you never tell me?!”
“You never asked,” said Lucky simply. “Yes, I would have mentioned it myself – and in retrospect, I probably should have done in the first place – but when you told me you were from Manehattan a few weeks ago, I decided against it in case I struck a nerve with you.”
“But how did you manage to make it out unscathed? Surely those two walkways would have flattened anypony caught beneath them!”
Lucky shook his head in reply. “Not necessarily. I may have been severely injured, but it wasn't permanent, and it certainly wasn't fatal.”
A long, awkward silence ensued as Caramel took in the grey stallion's words. It seemed almost impossible for him to believe that Lucky Clover of all ponies had been involved in such an horrific accident – he had no visible scars or amputated limbs, he sounded perfectly normal, he never seemed to limp when walking...it was almost as if he was making it up. And yet, when he looked into the older pony's eyes, he could see a grave seriousness in them, which told him quite clearly that this was no joke.
“So...what happened?” he stammered at last.
“Well, it was like this,” began Lucky; “an uncle of mine who actually works in Manehattan as a playwright at Bridleway was due to put on a musical that August based on the life and times of Princess Luna, and me being his favourite nephew and all, he invited me personally to come and see the performance. He even went as far as to send me a free ticket. Of course I was more than happy to come and join him, so three weeks later, I headed up to Manehattan on the overnight train from Canterlot, arriving at around midday the following day. My aunt and uncle usually came down to see me in Ponyville rather than the other way round, so apart from Bridleway, I didn't really know Manehattan all that well. On the way to my uncle's penthouse, right on the other side of town from the station, I stopped at the new mall to get myself a snack and some coffee and to ask for directions.
“But just as I had left the café and was passing underneath the walkways, I heard a loud popping noise from above. It was so startling that I just stopped in my tracks and looked up, wondering what in the hay could have happened just then – but it never dawned on me for one moment that it was the walkways. If it had, I would have made a run for it; but instead I just stood there, confused and alarmed, looking all around me for the source of the noise. Then somepony shouted a warning from nearby. I turned to look at him, and the next thing I knew, there was a loud crashing noise as the walkways fell down right on top of me and several other ponies. I think some of the rubble must have struck me on the head, because everything suddenly went blank at that point, and I immediately lost consciousness.”
Caramel could only recoil in horror as he imagined what Lucky might have seen and heard at the time. And there he had thought it had been bad enough just to witness the collapse! “So...what then? How did you escape?”
“I didn't,” answered Lucky gravely. “When I regained my senses, I found that part of the lower walkway had pretty much pinned me down to the floor. Both my hind legs had been torn free from their sockets and were bent right against my sides, so as you can imagine, I was in a great deal of agony.”
“Yeah, not something I really want to be thinking about,” replied Caramel, visibly disturbed.
“As if that wasn't enough, the water pipes had burst, and water was pouring into the lobby at an alarming rate. Within......I dunno, something like half an hour, 45 minutes, it had flooded the lobby to such an extent that I could barely keep my muzzle above the level of the water. All the while, I had been desperately shouting for help in the hopes that somepony would be able to get me out of there; but I must have been buried a bit too deep for anypony to hear me clearly, because nopony answered,” went on Lucky. “But just as I was about to become submerged, I heard a faint shattering noise from outside. You can imagine how relieved I was when I noticed the water levels starting to drop; a few minutes too many, and I might have drowned.
“The hours passed, and still nopony responded to my calls. All I could do was lie there for what seemed like decades, trying to breathe as gently as I could for fear of inhaling dust from all the rubble around me, and all the while wondering if I'd ever make it alive.”
“But obviously you did, didn't you?” asked Caramel anxiously.
“Obviously,” affirmed Lucky, “but it was a pretty close call, I can tell you that much.”
“Why? What happened?”
“It was probably sometime around ten o'clock that I heard banging noises above me,” continued Lucky. “I couldn't quite work out what it was all about at first, but after a few seconds, I suddenly realised that somepony must be using a jack-hammer on the debris under which I was trapped. I began yelling out for help once again, this time a lot more frantically, but that jack-hammer was making such a noise that once again, nopony heard me. Eventually, the noise became a lot louder, and as I looked back, I could see the blade piercing through the rubble, just a few inches above my back. I was absolutely terrified at this point – any minute now, they would go at the rubble again, and then I'd be so horribly injured that I'd never see the light of day again.
“I braced myself for the immense pain of death I would inevitably feel – but once again, I more than managed to live up to my name. Just as they were preparing for another run, I yelled out for the umpteenth time, and then somepony shouted, 'Stop! There's somepony alive under there!' At that point, the jack-hammer stopped altogether, and the pony who had been operating it called down to me, asking if I was okay.
“Aside from my dislocated legs, my back had been broken, and both my kidneys were in a bad state, so as soon as I had been freed, they wasted no time rushing me to the nearest hospital. Apparently the doctors weren't sure I would survive the night, but they did everything they could for me all the same. Thankfully, of course, it all paid off – I just managed to make it through my emergency surgery, and was in a stable condition after only a few weeks in the intensive care unit. I needed a lot of physical therapy before I was able to go home,” the grey-coated stallion finished with a wry smile, “but by the time it was all over and done with three months later, I had made a complete recovery, so nopony would have ever known that I'd been so badly injured if it hadn't been for me telling them.”
By the time Lucky had come to the end of the story, Caramel could only gaze at him in amazement. Even now he could scarcely believe that anypony could make it out of such an horrific disaster as this without so much as a scar to remind them of their harrowing and thoroughly traumatic experience. And yet, having lost his mother to a nursing home and his best friend to the throes of death, here he was reunited with a survivor of the very same disaster – and despite having suffered a broken back and two dislocated hind legs all at the same time, he had miraculously recovered to the point where he didn't have a single injury left over. “Wow,” he admired. “You really are Lucky, aren't you?”
“Yeah, I suppose you could say that,” agreed Lucky modestly. “Still, it was just as well that I called out at the right moment, otherwise I might have been killed. As it was, I was an absolute physical wreck by the time they lifted me out.”
“I can imagine that,” sympathised Caramel. “If it had been me, I would have had enough nightmares to last me a lifetime.”
Lucky nodded solemnly. “I think anypony would have done,” he mused. “Matter of fact, I myself couldn't get those images out of my head for weeks on end, and for a while, I couldn't help feeling a sense of grief for all the two hundred and seventy-four ponies less fortunate than I. It's kind of like...'Why isn't it me dying instead of spending all this time recovering in a hospital bed?' - that sort of thing.”
The younger stallion sighed unhappily. “I know how that feels.”
“Big difference with me is that I moved on from all that,” Lucky pointed out. “After a few weeks in the intensive care unit, I came to realise that the best thing one can really do in such a scenario is to just let it go. If other ponies are dead, they're dead, and there's not really a lot we can do about that. Anyway,” he added, “after a further few days of contemplation, I decided then and there that it was high time I just accepted that this was how it was meant to be and put the past behind me.”
“Like I did, huh?” asked Caramel.
“No, Caramel,” retorted Lucky firmly, “not like you did. You actually took the whole 'put the past behind you' thing a little too far and tried to run away from it altogether. You can't keep doing that, you know – no matter where you go or how you get there, it's always going to catch up with you, just like it is now.”
“I......I don't understand.”
“Well, let me give it to you straight, pal; you're taking a liking to a foalhood friend of yours – heck, you may even be falling in love with her, the way you'd been talking just then...”
Caramel blushed madly. Could his feelings really be running that deep?
“...but you're letting the memories of that disaster control your every emotion. Not only are you afraid of something similar happening to her – you're trying to go down a route which you think might make things better for everypony when in fact it's bound to break a few hearts,” concluded Lucky. “It's okay for you to try and forget about anything bad that's happened to you, but you need to try and learn from it as well, otherwise you'll be spending the rest of your days as a loner and a miser with not a single bit of love and care in your heart.”
Only then did Caramel finally realise how selfish he had been. Here he had a huge circle of friends who looked out for him on a daily basis, who would probably have been most dismayed or angered to see his feelings hurt in any way, and yet, before Lucky had regaled him with his own experience of that terrible shopping mall tragedy on Bridleway, he had been thinking of turning his back on what he had always known to be the best thing that had ever happened to him so far. But what really stung was that he had probably had a similar effect on at least one pony back home; for while he had virtually been long forgotten in Manehattan, his father, a pony who had rarely ever taken part in his own son's life, was probably a broken stallion by now, constantly sitting alone in his living room, silently crying for the loss of not one, but two members of his family. As the cruel, horrifying truth bore in on him, the young stallion felt tears starting to flood his eyes. What had he been thinking, abandoning what little family he had left as if they were of no importance to him?
Seeing the look of hurt, shame and guilt on his friend's face, Lucky softened his expression and rested a hoof on Caramel's withers. “I know how much it hurts to see somepony taken away from you like that,” he said gently, “but that's life, unfortunately. Life is full of meetings and partings. Whether or not you do decide to make friends with anypony, the time will come when you have to say goodbye to them for good. Doesn't matter whether it's me, or Applejack – or even the Doctor, for that matter – there always comes a time when we have to leave the land of the living.”
Caramel stayed silent.
“Like I said, Caramel, it's not good to run away from your past, but it's not good to dwell on it either. So perhaps you may have lost two ponies who were very close to you, but how do you think they'd feel if you lived anything but a full and happy life? How would they feel if you were permanently lumbered with guilt at not having confessed your feelings to the mare of your dreams?” Lucky paused to let Caramel take in his every word. “I know you're scared of losing Applejack, but if you don't get it off your chest, you'll have it stuck in there forever.”
“I know,” sighed Caramel, brushing his tears aside. “I just wish I'd realised it sooner – then I wouldn't have experienced such grief when she left Manehattan. Brooklyn Dodger once assured me I'd see her again someday, but...”
“And you are, Caramel,” interrupted Lucky softly. “You're seeing her every day, dawn till dusk, so you've plenty of opportunity to reveal all to her. But like I said, it has to be done, or else it'll haunt you for the rest of your days. Besides, I'm sure this is what this Brooklyn Dodger would have wanted – wouldn't you agree?”
Caramel paused again. In his head, he could hear the voices of Brooklyn and his mother softly willing him on;
“Go after her, Caramel. You know you love her.”
“C'mon, Caramel old buddy – you can do this.”
“It's what you came all this way for, my son.”
“Go get 'em, pal, show this gal how much ya care for her.”
Finally, the tan-furred stallion nodded bravely. “You're right, Lucky,” he conceded. “I've let my past control me for way too long. It's time for me to pony up and face my fears – starting with how I feel for Applejack.”
Lucky smiled and patted Caramel on his shoulder. “That's the spirit!” he encouraged heartily.