The Silver Bullet

by Snowball

17 - Star

I’ll never give you the privilege of telling your mistress for sure what happened that night. Did she beg me for it? Did she weep at my hooves once the hopelessness set in, weep with joy? On both counts, both of them. What sort of face did those two have, I wonder?

I see things differently from you. I see potential, and beauty. The monster held no regard for her gifts. The light shunned her for existing, and she could never fall into the crowd ever again, but she gained something from it. Time. Time is oh, so precious. One second lost is one second closer, but some wrong, some broken part of her mind cried out at time. That disgusted me most of all.

Faces are just faces, and you can choose to gaze elsewhere. She cried from loneliness, but she had us. Me and Clair, two ponies with a gentle touch a love of talking. A musician, and a restaurateur. A unicorn and a pegasus, who lived their lives like any other. We awoke at night, slept in day. We were what she stood to gain, but she closed out everything.

She shut out us along with her pain, and our frantic pounding on that door sounded no different from each other to her freakish, superior ear. On the other hoof…

Well, just use your imagination. Little shit.

On the other hoof, I could see the potential, the beauty, of her gift. I got the creature talking long ago, when our friendship began budding then. Poor thing was in pieces, slowly losing her normal life to the so-called curse.

The park, that's what it was. Where my story began, if you recall. It almost slipped my mind, that tidbit. It's so much smaller than it was back then. Waves of concrete crashed and crushed the little urban glade to what it is now. When I first moved here as a filly, the park wasn't even one in name! Just a particularly lovely field in the midst of town.

The first time Fluttershy opened up to me was such a gloomy afternoon. We were neck deep in it by then. Got our Palace District all sorted out by the suits, got our smothered demographics and money polluting the air between us, and took so much space to lay our roots. Rather, to pile more shit, but aren't we a sentimental race? If the palace was Equestria’s new jewel, then you could say we brushed aside so much more to give it room.

Her Highness called a town meeting that day. I didn't go, obviously, mainly to relish in the disturbing tranquility in this town. You'd see everything swept and straightened, carriages parked nice and neat on the side of the road, the grounds clear. The last of the 'helpers' had returned to the palace, their duty fulfilled with all haste.

So I peeked from the garbage can. Yes, that was my hiding spot! I could just toss the garbage out on the sidewalk and they'd not question it.

All was clear. My favorite bench was just a stone's throw away, but there she was, fouling it up. I say that now, of course. I was a doe-eyed young lady at the time, believe it or not. The first thing I noticed was her intense shakes. The girl hugged herself and spoke to herself, but made nary a sound. My heart woulda snapped in two were I not, well, me.

Still, when you stumble upon such a pathetic display, something drives you to put it out of its misery. I approached the clearly torn up filly, too absorbed to notice. I snatched what I could from the air.

“Not… fair, it’s not. W-why did you have to go and… and…” What interrupted her was a fit of gasps, the kind you’d hear from someone nearly drowned. Her face was so pale. That’s saying a lot, considering her kind. Only twice did I see her this pale in my life. This particular instance was far more sickening.

“Are you alright?” I spoke. I didn’t put the effort into taming my volume, so the girl nearly jumped outta her own skin.

You ever seen a bird die? I watched a house sparrow die once, when I was a kid. I had a fight with the folks and ran out to our tool shed. The fight? I don’t really remember what it was about. Once in a blue moon, I’d just reminisce. Every time I came back to this one memory, the reasons, the setup, just changed. Whatever we fought over, it made sense to the me of that time. Bias, bias and more bias. Do think about that one.

That bird’s wing dragged in the dirt. Tiny as it was, it just left the faintest marks on the dry dirt. When I approached, it tried to fly. It tried its damndest. All I saw, all I heard was its marginal wings flapping against the blades of grass. Like leafing through paper. I couldn’t see its eyes, and it had just enough white down on its belly that I could see it flopping around. It made a warpath, inch by inch. I scooped up the creature in my magic, and did what I could.

That was that.

Every day I visited that shed thereafter, not a single trace of it was left. I pondered just forgetting what I saw, what I did, but… no. There’s only one like it, one memory like that. That one bird had a witness, one life no lesser than any other, she’d say.

So, Fluttershy moved just like that bird when I startled her. That girl’s frayed nerves are notorious, are they not? I half expected her to react in surprise, and she did. Her limbs were lifeless, however. Her frightened eyes snapped up to mine, but that’s not what she was looking at, oh no. Her emotions had her by the throat, and did what they pleased with her body. Her flinches, her breaths, all not her own.

“W-who are you?” she croaked. The girl wiped her eyes. “Lyra?”

“Forget that!” I cried. “Are you hurt? Did something happen?”

She blinked at me.

Sunken eyes.

There, I’m sitting down like a good girl again.

“Um, sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just, I heard some bad news. That’s all.” She waved me away. So, I took her hoof in mine.

“Don’t try to pull that crap, Fluttershy,” I said with my best edge. I didn’t anticipate her, of all ponies, to hold my hoof back like that. She wouldn’t let go, damn her.

“I…” She let her mouth hang open. Still struck speechless, in a way. Violently, she shook her head and she pulled me close. Buried her face in my chest. It stunned me, oh yeah. But I could hear her heart that day. ‘A pony, a real pony! She’s holding me, holding me right now!’ And for dear life, she held.

It took her awhile to recompose. The meeting hadn’t adjourned by then, so the silence still deafened. For wont of something to pass the time, I stroked her mane. Soft, warm, lovely. I could see all of her, feel her and taste her in my arms. We weren’t so… well, close at the time. Acquaintances. I held her grace in esteem, and whatever she held in return, I couldn’t say. Maybe because I was a loner. Because I was detached. She could confide in someone like that, and feel safe. Safe from loss.

“How could she?” Fluttershy whispered to me.

I didn’t feel the need to respond. Her heart pattered in her chest, bouncing against my thigh upon which she reclined. Breaths rapid, trembling jaw.

“She’s ruining everything! She ruined my home, the home of my friends. She’s filled it with all this noise, this ugliness, with strangers. She’s taking it all for herself. She took my future, my peace and…

“And I love her like a sister.”

I left an unspoken question hanging in the air. We both knew what it was.

“I couldn’t bear to see her again, so soon.”

I chuckled, tense as a rope around your neck. My own odd response stayed her muscles for the moment, and she listened. “I don’t rightly know what’s going on,” I said. “But it already sounds like you’ve forgiven her.”

“No!” she shouted. It took all my strength to keep her in my arms, but that rage fought hard with what little it had left. “I can’t forgive something like this!”

Fluttershy elbowed my ribs, hard. My I clenched my eyes to fight back the cry of pain, and I quickly pulled the both of us to the ground. It took magic and muscle to pin her down, by Luna. I coasted on adrenaline to fight down her sudden strength, diminished as it was even. “So what, huh?” I returned in equal measure. “If you stop being angry, you won’t have anything else left, is that it?”

“Nothing, n-nothing at all,” she wailed. “There’s nothing anyone c-can do, that worthless, vile, oblivious alicorn even.”

I nuzzled her ear as she spoke. “Go on, go on!”

She snorted in response, staring straight ahead. “Privileged, soft-hooved, optimistic, pampered, inept, retarded, ugly, conniving, heartless…”

That girl vented some nasty shit in the moment. It’s all a blur. The longer she growled out these aimless insults, the calmer she became. I didn’t even notice when we laid side by side, holding each other close. It wasn’t amour, exactly. If desperation drove her, loneliness drove me. I don’t beg for no scraps, but when it falls into your lap, I say, go for it.

I brushed her mane aside. Her eyes of glass stared back, again looking at anything but me. The longer her and I connected, the colder my lungs and throat felt. Voices swam from down distant streets. Minnows fighting their way to the zenith of our ears, losing life and luster in the peeling rapids. Clouds receding, the now setting sun crowned her, in a way, atop that hill. The weakest little glow from her eyes punctured the shadow on her face, I realized.

I nudged her once, nudged her twice and thrice. But she didn’t move! I said her name, pulled away from her. She didn’t move still. I brandished my magic, a lovely shade of gold, and scooped up the pegasus onto my back. Never again will I repeat such a favor, carrying dead weight like that, ‘specially not at this age. Still, the urgency empowered younger me, to spirit away this maiden. No danger loomed, but it didn’t stop my pep, break my stride.

As I rounded a corner, I heard a call.

“Fluttershy! Please, wait!” Distant call, it was. I almost turned back, really. However, I had the monster’s interests at heart, and I ran. If I knew then what was going on, I woulda stayed. I woulda made amends between the two. Fluttershy wouldn’t be alone, and no one would have suffered. That one fleeting moment of hope. We all have those in life, don’t we?

Don’t misunderstand. If all we have left are regrets in the end, then that one moment is all I have. Nothing more.

Naturally, I wanted to take her to my apartment, and I did get to the street it was on. The idea… didn’t quite sit well with younger me. You could take it the wrong way, and all that. So I made a left into a formerly filthy alleyway. There was this little nook, for utility pipes or something, that I nestled her down in, and I waited.

In hindsight, it was her way of showing her little secret. I stayed with her like that until nightfall, still not a single word from that poor husk. It got to the point where I needed my magic to even see my hoof in front of my face.

“Lyra,” she whispered.

And she turned her head. The light, it caught her face just right. Just. Fucking. Right.

So sunken were her eyes, that the whites became black pits. My attention rocked her nerves, and she gasped soundlessly, knowing that she now had her own witness. The furs on her face became etched shading on a bronze place, swishing unnaturally against the light I cast on her, swishing at the edges of her face.

And the red, bloody red light. Damn her, she looked to the ground. The red light streamed down her cheeks.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said to me. But she didn’t know that a thousand ticks chomped down on the bottom of my heart, climbing over one another and raining back down in their frenzied riot, dragging it down and wasting it away along with their disgusting selves.

So demure. She fanned her leathery wing in front of her face at last, waving away whatever hooks that snared my eyelids and kept my head up.

...

T-thank you, for the cup of water. So, um, I asked her what happened. She told me it was long ago. One little mistake, and they all just forgot it. No harm done, she said. She grew old with her friends, at least for a little while, but then she felt great. Felt better than great.

“I had to wait for Dashie to catch up when we flew to lunch together once,” she told me, so solemn.

Her eyes were lovely in my light, I realized. The shock, it never quite faded, but it stirred something in me. Whenever she spoke, or moved, or sang, something ran deeper in it. Though she’d outlive her friends, outlive me and everyone she knew, she sang like it was her last song. I had a taste of her, too. She fell into me with a gentle push. Not pleasure or pain, but warmth. That’s what she stole from me.

I lay awake for three nights, thinking and thinking some more. My back’s temper tantrum cooled off in that time, fortunately.

I think you’re a horrible listener, that’s what. Younger me wasn’t a spry lass, you moron. She was the me before she touched the heart of an alicorn. Knocked on that last door, stared into the abyss. Whatever turn of phrase suits you.

Take two ponies. They’re both dead meat. Say they both fell from the catwalks above some deathtrap bullshit that qualifies for pegasus ingenuity. Your left pony, they’re saying their prayers. The right, they’re reminiscing. Lefty could be begging for salvation, righty could be drawing a blank. Before their fetlocks reach the metal maws a-waiting for them, they have just one thing on their minds, one last thing.

Lefty is me, and Righty could be anyone else. They have hope, they die with hope. They don’t give in, and they die with the given. They didn’t look down, but up. They chose to ignore wait awaited. Who would you rather walk away from that, to pull through? The one who’ll live with their head down again, like nothing changed?

Or me?

You would never know what happened that night, if it weren’t for me. That monster wouldn’t be put out of her misery like she wanted, if she didn’t show me those truths so long ago. No other pony was up to it.

Hear me, loud and clear. Twilight!

You are a true Princess. I wouldn’t trade you for the world. You have your life ahead of you, and I don’t. My last hurrah, it was all of this! I hope I showed you the truth, too.

And I hope that you won’t ever forget me.