"Belle? Can you hear me? Are you alright?" Rogers called down to the mare. Belle gave no reaction to his words, but he could see from the faint rise and fall of her chest that she was at least alive. Rogers found he couldn't tear his eyes away from the cracked and blackened stump where her horn had once been, but he finally broke free when the shattered tree interior groaned in a tone he didn't like.
"Belle? Can you move? If so, reach out and see if you can grab my hand," Rogers instructed her as he lay on his stomach and held his hand down for the mare. "I think if you stand on your hind legs you might be able to reach. Come on Belle, the whole place is about to come down."
This time his words gained the Captain a reaction from the mare. Belle slowly moved her eyes to glance at the Captain, before she slightly shook her head and lowered it back down onto the wood outcropping once more. She then closed her eyes, refusing to so much as glance at the Captain despite he pleas.
"Belle, for the love of all that is holy, give me your hoof," Rogers asked once more, this time with gritted teeth. The tree support groaned again, getting the Captain to look at the ceiling before glancing at the area around him. Upon spying a vine that was half trapped under some rubble, he grabbed the vine before using a piece of debris to anchor it into the ground.
Holding onto the vine with both hands the Captain then began to rappel down the side of the pit, reaching the outcropping where Belle lay within a matter of moments. "Belle, we need to get our of here! Tirek and Sombra have captured the Crusaders and we're the only ones that can save them!"
"Then go. Save them," she whispered in a pained voice before turning away from the Captain. "Just leave me here."
"I can't do that Belle. I'm getting you out of here," Rogers grunted as he swung towards her, trying to wrap one of his arms around her waist. The moment he touched her she kicked at him with her back legs, breaking his grip. But she didn't have the strength to even stand, so her kicks barely phased the Captain at all.
"Leave me. Let me die," Belle practically begged the Captain, who narrowed his eyes at her words.
"As I said Belle. I can't do that."
"Yes you can. I'd only slow you down," she whispered, her words barely audible over the sounds of the base caving in around them. "I wasn't strong enough to save my friends when Sombra and Tirek attacked, so what makes you think I can help them now?"
"I don't care. You're coming with me." Rogers didn't wait to see if she would argue. Instead he swung over and tucked her under one of his arms. He then focused his full attention onto the climb back up, which taxed him greatly due to the pain that sought to bring his body down. Even though he only had one arm available to him, he managed to pull both himself and the limp mare back onto solid ground. Ground which then cracked under his feet as he stepped on it.
"Time to go," he muttered to himself before sprinting towards the exit. He thanked his good fortune when he found that the way he had entered had not fully collapsed yet, though he did have to shoulder his way past many boulders that sought to block his path. Rogers grunted as he muscled one of the stones out of the way. It then rolled down the stairs behind them, which collapsed under the weight of the rock.
'Glad that wasn't us,' Rogers thought as he sprinted towards the exit, bursting forth out of the base...and into the forest that burned like the fires of hell. Smoke began to swirl around the pair while Rogers took in what was happening, covering his mouth with his arm before glancing around for a way out. Only one clear path revealed itself and that was the way the Captain ran.
'Of course, Tirek and Sombra would destroy an entire ecosystem just to make a point,' Rogers thought with disdain as he raced through ash and fire, pitying the animals that fled from their homes just as he fled from his base. He didn't know for how long he ran, only that he finally decided to stop once the both of them were free of the ash and flames. Rogers let out a sigh while he glanced around to find that he had run the both of them into an open field that was covered entirely in the black ash that he had first discovered on his arrival.
"Perfect place for a break," he sighed with exhaustion as he sat down in the ash, laying the still limp Belle onto the ground next to him. Rogers then slid his mask off of his face before resting his arms on his knees, gazing off into the distance at that inferno that sought to consume everything before its path. For an hour he sat alone in silence, half of him mourning the loss of every life that was trapped within that forest, while the other half of him waited to see if Belle would speak first.
"Belle..." he finally began after his patience had run dry, casting his gaze down onto the mare who had yet to move. "You have to know that none of this is your fault. There was nothing that you could have done to-" A scream of absolute wrath broke Belle's silence, and with tears breaking free of her will she howled at the sky while slamming her hooves into the ash.
"Of course there was nothing I could do! That's how I ended up in that situation in the first place," Belle screamed into the ash as she clamped her teeth together, agony and wrath making her body shake. "Because I was powerless, because I couldn't save the day when others needed me to!...Because I'm nothing more than a pony with a talent that means nothing in the face of the Three."
She then broke into a sob that she tried her best to make silent, yet with eyes that were as somber as the mare Rogers watched as Belle cried silently into the ground. He waited until the sobs had finally gone dry and her body had stopped shaking before he placed a hand on her shoulder, yet she pulled away from his touch almost as if his hand had burned her.
"Belle, those two are two of the most evil and powerful creatures in this land. You were lucky to make it out alive," Rogers tried to comfort her, but his words seemed to wound her far greater than the actual injuries that had been inflicted upon her.
"You don't understand...you know nothing," she seethed back as she closed her eyes and looked away.
"Then please, help me to understand. Help me to see why."
"Ever since that day...ever since Equestria fell and the Ambassadors of Harmony were killed, I have devoted every fiber of my being into being powerful enough, so that when the day came that I needed to fight those that killed the ones I loved, I would succeed," she spat into the ash, talking as much to it as she actually was the Captain. "And then Sombra and Tirek show up in my home, kidnap my friends and destroy the place. It was finally my chance. My chance to avenge my world. The chance to kill the villains that had taken everything from me...the chance to prove that I had what it took to be a hero like my sister..."
"And I was crushed. Sombra dealt with me no differently than a master deals with a rookie. And once I had been completely decimated he snapped my horn off of my head and tossed me down into that pit, just to show that he could," Belle revealed, tears breaking free from her control once more as they tumbled down her face. "Its was only because of that broken piece of bark that I survived. But there was nothing I could do. Everything that I had spent my life training for...and it all amounted to nothing."
Rogers found his lips had been shut after hearing Belle's eruption, not sure what he could say to her that would be of any comfort. So once again he rose up and walked over to the mare, sitting down beside her while he placed a hand upon her shoulder once more. This time Belle didn't leap away. She didn't give any reaction whatsoever.
"You should have let me die back there--die being crushed in the very place that I had failed to protect," Belle told the Captain, who continued to look at her with both pain and pity. "Because even though you saved my life, it didn't change anything. My magic is gone. My friends are captured...and I am just as useless now as I was when the world died."
Rogers lowered his head while the mare buried her head into her hooves again. Then he slowly raised it once more, having reached a decision that he realized he should have made ages ago. "Belle...I know the pain you're going through. I know how it feels to be powerless as a child. To be unable to defeat those that constantly beat you down. To be powerless in the face of evil."
"No you don't," she spat back. "You're a hero. You've said it yourself, you've saved your world over a dozen different times. You don't how it feels to be powerless, as the world and everyone you loved died around you. You don't know-"
"What it's like to lose my family? Belle, my mother died of disease before my very eyes when I was a kid. To watch the world be destroyed around me? One of the most evil men of human history nearly wiped out the world when I was no more than twenty. I've been in the situation you're in right now so many times. Beat down to practically nothing while a mad tyrant holds the world in his hands, while placing his boot on your chest." Then Rogers turned Belle so she was looking into his eyes. "But when you are at your lowest is when you must fight the hardest. That's when you always get up. That's something my mother taught me that I never forgot."
"So I know things look bad now, and I know that we've been beaten down as far as we believe we can go. But it's time to get back up. to keep on fighting," Rogers told her as he began to walk off towards where he believed Ponyville to be. "Because there are lives out there that need to be saved. And if I know anything about the heroes that you once adored...including your sister...it's that they would have kept fighting, no matter the odds. That they would do anything to keep you all safe...as will I."
"Rarity. My sister's name was Rarity." Rogers brought all thoughts of heading out to a halt as he turned to look back at Belle, who had slowly gotten up to her hooves. "And she was the Ambassador that had been at the Crystal Empire the day the world fell. She was the one who wasn't there when the world had needed Harmony," Belle revealed in a near whisper. "She was the only member of Harmony that we knew had been killed. Because Sombra showed the whole world the day he took the Empire. He killed my sister."
"And I know my friends told you what happened on that day, but they didn't tell you everything that happened with us. Because when the Ambassadors were at their lowest and all seemed lost...I tried to take my sister's place. I tried to be the element that they were missing. I thought I could...be the hero she was." Belle then looked away from the Captain with both tears and disgust in her eyes, unable to bring herself to face him. "It didn't work. And because of my desire to be the hero my sister was, Twilight was captured saving me instead of stopping Tirek. Everything that happened...is because of me."
"And that's...the reason I hated you so much. Because you were what I failed to be. A hero. The pony...when everything is at its worst and the world is on the brink of being destroyed...you prevail. That's why I hated you. Because you are what we needed. I'm just the mare that failed all she cared about." Belle hung her head in shame once more, expecting the Captain to be disgusted with her or simply walk away. What she was not expecting was for him to gently place his arms around her and pull her into a hug.
"Belle...I wasn't always like this. Powerful. Strong. At one time I was one of the weakest men on the planet, probably weaker than the average pony," Rogers revealed to Belle, who lifted her eyes to look at the Captain. "But I continued to try and fight against the evil that threatened my world, even when everyone else said that I couldn't."
"But then a man came to me--one of the most noble and kind men that had ever lived. And he said that he wanted me to be the subject in a test of his, to make the ultimate soldier. The process could very well have killed me; that could have ended my life before I had the chance to change the world. But I took it anyway. And do you know why?" he asked her, waiting until she shook her head before he continued. "Because he needed me. Because I was the only one who had the heart needed, to be what he wanted."
"I'm telling you this so you know that it's not the strength of the man nor his destiny that makes him a hero. It's his heart. When he chooses to fight against evil only to be beaten down time and time again, just to get back up. And I see that in all the Crusaders. And in you. The rest of the world gave into the Three or joined them. You refused. Your friends were captured by Sombra and Tirek. You chose to fight. That shows me that you have the potential to be the hero you want to be."
"Hero? Cap, I-"
"And you haven't failed yet. Are you're friends still alive? Is the Crusade dead? Has the world been destroyed?" Rogers asked her, waiting until she had slowly shaken her head at each answer before speaking once more. "Then this fight isn't over. And that means you're not done yet. Those ponies need a hero to save them, but honestly I don't think I can do it alone. Will you help me?"
"But...without my magic...?"
"I'm still a hero even without my shield. Thor is still a hero even without his hammer. It is not the tools that made us who were are, but the fact that we fight even in the face of overwhelming odds. Your magic was a tool, Belle. But the ponies don't need the magic, they need you." A smile then spread across the Captain's face that Belle did not know that he could make. "And Tirek and Sombra made a mistake in leaving you alive. Because a hero only stops when he's dead. And even if he's killed, he walks it off."
"So, I ask you once more. Are you going to lay there, finally defeated by the evil that took your land? Or are you going to do what your sister would have done? Will you stand up?" Rogers then turned to walk away, but a small giggle from Belle caused him to turn back around.
"You're going the wrong way. Canterlot is this way," Belle informed him with a smirk that made a smile break out on the Captain's face. "I swear, what kind of hero doesn't know where he's going?"
"That's why there's two of us. So that we can back each other up when one makes a mistake," Rogers replied before he began to race off in the direction where Belle had pointed him. Belle mustered what strength she could to chase after the Captain, who slowed enough so that she could keep up with him. "Now come on Belle, we have a world to go save."
"Sweetie Belle," Belle said from beside the Captain as the pair ran. "That's my full name. Sweetie Belle."
"Alright then, Sweetie Belle, listen and listen good. Because I've been formulating a couple plans that I may put into play when we reach Canterlot," Rogers informed her as he reached up and slipped the mask back over his face. "But the most important part of them is what happens when we reach Tirek. Because when we do..."
"I will be the one to face him."