Preface: this is a work of fiction. I am not claiming to have lived through these events, nor am I claiming them to be factual. Also, for clarity's sake, the parts in italics are the flashbacks, the shadows of the past bleeding through. I hope you enjoy this tale, and I hope that I have brought a little awareness to a very real problem.

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The walking wounded

If you are reading this, then I am dead or dying. Don't be mad or sad or angry, this was my choice, my life to take. Wouldn't be the first by my hooves... Ever since I came back, ponies have treated me differently. To my parents, I want to give a big fuck you for throwing me out like that. I needed you, and you weren't there. Well, look where we are now. I hope it was worth it to you. Every time I close my eyes, I can see the dead and dying. I can't even go to the fucking market without seeing this shit. Nopony understands, nopony cares. They all look at me like I'm a bug, an insect... I see them talking about shoes, or fucking clothes, and I just want to shake them and scream. How can they worry about trivial shit like that when there are colts like Twitch gettin' killed out there? But I'm the fuckin' weird one. Every night since I've been back, I've had to drink myself into oblivion just to sleep, to sleep through the nightmares. On the good nights, I drink until I can't even dream, and I finally feel at rest. So you know what? Fuck the world that made me like this. Fuck the ponies who made others fight and die for their selfish purposes, who tore apart families and threw away lives. Fuck you mom, and fuck you dad, for not helping me when I needed you. Its too late for that now, you made your choice and so have I. Half a bottle of pain pills and a bottle of Applejack Daniel's, and I'm going to ride this screaming nightmare straight into the ground. Maybe I'll find Sarge or Twitch over there. All I know is that I can't take these nightmares anymore.

Goodbye, and fuck you.

-Blaze

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There was darkness all around, a feeling of absolute nothingness so overwhelming that it left no doubts. I was dead. Finally, blessedly dead. There were no screams here, no images of death all around. Ahead, there was a light, closing at a high rate of speed. For the first time in years, I wasn't afraid of it, that it might be a carriage-borne improvised explosive device, or CBIED. I'd seen what one of those could do, and I knew why they were called the haymaker. They deserved every ounce of fear they got. And yet, here I was; at ease. When the light swallowed me up, I felt what might have been happiness, the first time in years. Blinded by the glare for a moment, I found myself standing in an elevator. I had no sooner figured it out than the elevator screeched to a lurching halt, throwing me against the side. I barely had time to scramble to my hooves before the elevator lurched and sunk, again slamming me to the floor. There was a loud and drawn out scream, the sound of tortured metal. A loud pop and a clang, and the lift lurched downward a meter or two, coming to a jarring stop. With a sound like an explosion, the floor dropped out from under me as the darkness closed in once more.

Chaos reigned. There was a light, as bright as the sun, beaming at my eyes. All around me there was the sound of alarms going off, shrill noises blending together. Everywhere I looked there was movement, numerous voices shouting over one another as they scurried to and fro. Light blues and whites all around me, blurring together as they moved. And then the pain hit me. I was burning alive from within, the worst pain I'd ever felt tearing at my gut. I realized that I was screaming in pain, though I didn't feel the sounds coming from my throat. All there was, all that I was, was pain. I thrashed in agony, desperate to throw off the creatures that were attacking me. Wires and tubes snaked from all parts of me, whipping around like snakes as I writhed. I caught one of the shapes with a solid punch, sending it crashing unconscious to the ground without so much as a whimper. Next thing I knew, the shapes were on top of me, trying to pin my arms and legs down. I struggled with all my might, feeling for a moment as if I might be triumphant, before reinforcements arrived. A clamor had gone up, and scores of colorful shapes swarmed me and pinned me down. I thrashed and roared in pain and anger, but I was held fast by the masses. Another blinding pain bloomed in my neck, and blackness spread from it, sending me once more down into a dreamless sleep. The last thing I heard as I faded out was somepony calling for a nurse. And with that, I was gone.

I came back to the light like I was surfacing from the bottom of the ocean. I could hear muddled sounds and see the faint glow of something far overhead, but that was all. Gradually, the details came back to me. I heard a female's voice clearly, though I couldn't put the words together in a way that made sense. I was in a hospital, staring up at the light overhead. To my left, there was a rhythmic beeping. The pain in my gut had lessened significantly, but it was still there and far from pleasant. I was alive, and it pissed me off.

I'd failed the one, simple task I'd given myself, and I was furious. More than that, I was ashamed and disappointed in myself. For the months that I'd been back, I'd been building up my courage to do this, trying to convince myself that this was the way to go. This was all I had to do, and I'd be free of the pain and the nightmares. And I'd failed. Next time, it would be nothing but me, a bottle of Daniel's, and a shotgun. I'd tried to go another route, to spare some poor bastard the trouble of cleaning it up, but fuck it. I wasn't going to fuck it up a second time. As soon as I got home, I was going to do it right. I tried to get up, intent on seizing my motivation to march home and finish the job, only to find myself strapped down. I began to thrash against the straps, grunting in frustration. The beeping began to pick up its pace as I struggled, and in a moment, a nurse arrived. I asked her to unstrap me, to which she simply smiled. I was about to start yelling at her in a most profane way when she walked over to the beeping machine. She pressed a button and was answered by a beep, and I could feel the coolness begin to spread from my IV as my eyelids grew heavy. As she walked out, she turned to me with a sad smile.

"Sweet dreams."

And then, there was blackness. When I woke next, the feelings of self-loathing and rage that had been driving me, holding me up, had all vanished. I felt almost empty inside, and this emptiness didn't matter to me at all. I felt wrong inside, as if nothing mattered to me at all and it was okay for it not to. The hours slipped by with barely any notice from me, the only indicator of time's passage being the arrival of meals. Each meal came with a different nurse, one who smiled at me and made small talk about how I had an accident of some sort, telling me I was very lucky to have made it. I could remember that something big had happened recently, and that I was in the hospital because of it, but everything in my mind was an indistinct mass of swirling fog. Something about the word "accident" struck me as wrong, but I couldn't focus on what it was long enough to find out. It came to me a few days later, as I ate my meal and grudgingly indulged the nurse in small talk. I was being drugged, and it was this that had been fogging up my mind. They were sedating me, trying to keep me calm. I should have been furious, screaming and flipping tables, but I wasn't. I couldn't get angry over this violation, as much as I wanted to. That is, I couldn't get angry yet.

That day, I stopped taking my medication, hiding it under my napkin and throwing it away when the nurse left. Within a few hours, I could feel the fog lifting as my mind emerged from its sleep. The plan went well for the first four meals, until my plan hit a snag. A snag in the form of a nurse who refused to back down.

"Hello, Mister Blaze. How are you feeling today?" She would ask me, sporting an annoyingly chipper grin that I wanted nothing more than to wipe off her face. I knew that I never would, though; my mother had raised me better.

My response was always the same, always dripping with barely restrained contempt. "I'm still stuck here, nurse. How do you think I'm feeling?"

"You should be happy you're still here. You had a terrible accident" came her rote reply, concluding our ritual introduction and signalling her to start on about something else. Usually, this came in the form of "lovely weather we're having, isn't it?"

And so on and so forth, this inane crap would drag on for what seemed like hours as the nurse watched me eat. When I was finished eating, they'd take the tray and leave, plunging me once more into blissful silence. As maddening as the silence sometimes was, the nurses were generally worse. This nurse, nurse Candlelight, was the worst. Always going on with her questions about me and my family, even after I'd told her time and time again that I had no family. Unmarried, no kids, and had been kicked out by my parents, and yet she insisted on asking the same fucking questions over and over again. I shoveled food into my mouth as fast as I could, just to get away from her that much sooner. Today, however, was not my day. When nurse Candle-butt turned away, I quickly scooped the pills under my napkin, picking up my cup to act like I was swallowing them. As she turned around I was lifting my cup, and that was when it all fell apart. My napkin got stuck to the cup as a drop of water adhered the two, lifting it up just far enough to show off the pills stashed beneath.

Raising an eyebrow, she inquired. "Blaze, what's that? There, beneath your napkin."

"Nothing, nurse. Just the wrapper from my straw." I was lying through my teeth, and she knew it. Nurse Candle-ass flipped a switch and became nurse Hard-ass in a blink.

"Don't you lie to me, Blaze. You and I both know what's under the napkin. Why aren't you taking your pills?"

"Why? Because I don't want to be a Luna-damned zombie, that's why."

"We give you this medication for a reason, and you aren't qualified to say you don't need it. So, take your medicine." Her soft voice belied the edge of steel her words had taken on. I, however, refused to be cowed by words, and in my ire I overestimated my authority.

"What? No, fuck off. I'm not going to be a zombie just so you can feel better about my health. I am a grown stallion, a retired member of the Royal Guard, and I think I am capable of taking care of my own damned self, so-"

Nurse Candlelight cut me off with a cold stare. "Oh, really, Blaze? Taking care of yourself? Buck, that's how you got here in the first place. Obviously, you can't."

"What do you know? What do you know about pain, about loss? The shit I went through over there doesn't just go away, and there isn't any-fucking-pony in this town who knows what that's like."

"Timber Blaze, you are a selfish and inconsiderate ass. I may not have been to Saddle Arabia, but you aren't the only pony who has scars from the war. My brother fought the same fight that you did. Only, he didn't come back."

That was the first time I'd heard my first name being used in longer that I could recall, which threw off my guard. What she'd said next hit home like a sledgehammer to the chest, and served as a poignant reminder of the body count. Shocked and ashamed, I said nothing. For the last couple days, I had almost hated this mare for asking me questions I didn't want to answer. I still was not fond of her at all, but I had slightly more respect for her. Noting my lack of a response, she filled the silence.

"I thought as much. Now, are you going to take your medications or not?"

"Negative. I will not be a zombie." I refused to submit to this mare, to allow myself to become a zombie.

"Okay, Blaze. Look at it this way. You can take the medication on your own, or we can add it to your IV. Your choice." My overestimation of my authority was quickly overturned by the mare with a steel blue glare.

I could feel myself getting angry again at the stupidity of this exchange. "Nurse, this is ridiculous. Why should I take medicine that makes me feel like an empty shell?"

"The pink one is for anxiety, the white one is to help repair your liver, which is somehow still functional, and the purple one is an antidepressant, but it sort of numbs everything. The only one I won't stand here and watch you take is the purple one, but I will not let you skip the others. You can either take the two on your own, or I can get the whole bouquet put into your IV. Your call."

This mare was right back to pissing me off, and it was made worse by the fact that there was nothing I could do about it. I might not have been strapped down to the bed anymore, but the door locked from the other side and my window didn't open. I was stuck here until they decided I was fit to be released. Vowing to do whatever necessary to get the hell out of this asylum, I grudgingly nodded. In one fell swoop, I took up and swallowed down the two pills, leaving the purple one untouched. Covering it back with my napkin, I looked at nurse Candlelight expectantly. She simply smiled at me and took the plate, walking away. In a moment, I was alone once more.

The next week passed in the same manner, with nurse Candlelight appearing more and more frequently as the days went on. She'd always ask about my family, about my past, and about my life in general, but stayed away from anything during my deployments. And each time she asked, I would tell her the same thing. My dad owned several lumber mills, my mom was heir to a large carriage company, and I had no siblings to speak of. I was seeing somepony when I enlisted, but she was nothing but a memory now. Considering that I was only twenty three, there wasn't much to say about my life. As a matter of fact, that was it; that was the summary of my entire life story. Yet every day that she came by, she would ask those same questions. Some days, heavily muscled aides would take me out of my room and escort me down a hall and around a few corners. After passing through a few security doors, they would have me sit down with a therapist, who tried in vain again and again to get to the bottom of my depression. Try as they might, I wouldn't say what was on my mind; I couldn't.

How was I supposed to tell somepony what I saw in my mind's eye? That whenever I was around a group of ponies, I imagined their body parts scattered across the pavement? Or that I avoided carriages like the plague, fearful of a haymaker? How about the way that the shadows always seemed to move, making me jump at nothing, others looking at me like I'm diseased? There was no way to explain this to anypony who had never been there. This stalemate went on for several days before the shrink dropped the ultimatum. I wouldn't be released until the shrink was sure that I wouldn't just go home and end myself as soon as I was set loose. Faced with no other alternative, I grudgingly accepted that I had to tell the doctor something to get her off my case. Once I started, I couldn't stop, and I found myself revealing to her things I never thought I would tell anybody. In the end, I wound up telling her about the visions, the ghosts of memory that refused to die and eventually pushed me over the edge.

The worst days were when the past bled through, lending the present a darker hue. My breaking point had come as one of these suffusions, as the shadows of the past fell upon the present, casting a nightmare tint over the world. I was beginning to discern the differences now, able to recognize the way the shadows were a little off from the rest of the world.

I'd been walking through the market on a warm spring day, one of the few times that I'd felt something even close to happiness in the months I'd been in this town. Merchants haggled with customers, the clouds floated carelessly across the sky, and there was laughter coming from across the square. The breeze carried the scent of trash...the scent of baked goods, not trash. I could feel the panic in me begin to rise as the memories threatened to break through. I looked for a way out of the market, a way to escape before the panic took hold. The streets were packed with ponies, their colorful shemahgs darting this way and that. The market stalls crowded the sides of the street, creating narrow passages and choke points. I began to push my way through the crowd, earning several angry grunts in marabic. The mud brick walls seemed to be closing in, funneling me. My heart beat began to spike as the yelling in marabic intensified. A nearby mosque began to toll its bells. The blazing desert sun beat down upon me, the dusty breeze carrying the scent of trash to my nostrils.

The ponies dropped to their knees as they turned to the mosque. Nearby, the sound of a wagon traversing the cobblestone echoed like the staccato bark of gunfire splitting the air. Ponies began to drop in spurts of blood and dust as the rounds tore at flesh and stone alike. As the screams rose from the injured and dying, I dove behind the nearest cover, a fruit stand. Less cover than concealment, it should at least catch the ricochets as I planned my escape. I located an alley across the street, one that would provide better cover and possible exfiltration routes. Why had I not scouted this out and made a plan before now? Where the hell was my weapon, my armor? Or, for that matter, my squad? The chatter of the machine gun died as they reloaded, and I sprinted across the open ground of the kill zone, shoulder checking anypony in my way. I heard the snap of rounds chewing at the ground behind me, and I leaped into the alley and rolled to a stop. Angry voices rose from behind me, the murderers refusing to let a survivor escape. I heard hooves closing in, and I turned and sprinted away.

I leaped over trashcans, barrelling around corners blindly as the voices echoed off of the walls around me. I turned another corner and spied the open air beyond, pouring on more speed as I tried to get out of the line of fire before my pursuers rounded the corner. A loud clatter arose from behind me, a mixture of a trashcan being kicked over and the chatter of an automatic weapon. Ahead of me, two bucks moved in to block my path, having heard the commotion coming from the alley. I hoped that the bullets flying past me would strike these two idiots before I did, saving me the precious seconds it would take to get around them. No such luck.

I tackled the smaller one at full speed, sending him sprawling into the street with a shocked look on his face. I was pretty sure I'd gotten a mild sprain in my shoulder from that, but I didn't feel it yet. I kicked blindly out at the pony behind me, feeling my buck connect solidly with the pony. I rolled to my hooves and began to sprint away as fast as I could, feeling my old shoulder injury begin to flare. I needed to escape fast, or I wouldn't be escaping at all. Ahead of me, a mare shrieked in fright.

The desert village disappeared in the blink of an eye, the small town of Fetlock taking its place as the flashback faded. All around me, I heard nervous whispering and a pitiful moan. My heart filled with dread as I turned to the ponies I'd just blitzed through. The one I'd tackled, a young buck with a deep blue coat, was lying on his side and cradling his shoulder. He was the one moaning in pain. Lying at the mouth of the alley where he'd fallen was the other buck, a slightly older pony with a light orange coat. He was not moving, lying in a puddle of his own blood that streamed from his shattered nose. Beside him, a mare stood in shock as she looked down at the unconscious form. Silence reigned in the street, broken only by the moan of the injured buck and a choking sound coming from the mare by the alley. Then the screaming started.