Uris’s eyes darted open as he sat up on the couch, jolting from the dream. “FUCK!” He screamed, nearly falling onto the floor. He sucked in a few deep breaths, shaking his head and fighting down the urge to cry. “Fucking nightmares,” he groaned, brushing aside a bunch of empty beer cans from the couch cushion to join their brethren on the floor. He sat up and moaned, his heart racing. His hands ran down his face, brushing through the week-old stubble and the deep bags under his eyes as he grimaced. At least the nightmares had been easing off: that had been the first one he’d had in a few days, which was better than when they’d haunted him every time he’d closed his eyes. So…hooray for progress?

Groaning audibly, he brushed a few cans to the side and limped to the bathroom, hobbling right past the cane leaning against the wall and reaching for another can of beer from the box on the floor along the way. Making his way into the little bathroom, he grabbed the orange canister beside the sink and popped a few of the pills inside into his mouth. As his hand dropped, the pills sliding down his throat dry, he studied himself in the mirror. He figured he didn’t look too bad for a guy that hadn’t slept right in weeks. Sure, the five-o-clock shadow on his face was now growing into a full-on hobo beard, and his eyes had been bloodshot for weeks, but he just needed a shave and a shower and he’d be right as rain. Thing was, he didn’t feel much like either. No, he figured he was just gonna hobble back to the couch, turn on ‘Springer’ and drink until he passed out again. Or maybe…

He made his way back to the kitchen and grabbed the little DVD off the counter: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, The Friendship Express. Though he’d only bought it a couple weeks before, a few scratches had already appeared in the disc’s otherwise pristine surface. He sighed again. He knew spending all his time between support group meetings watching a little girls’ cartoon, fantasizing about what could never be and drinking himself unconscious could not be the best way to deal with the guilt, but at the moment, he was a little far beyond caring.

He leaned back and popped the beer open as the now-familiar theme song carried itself into his ears. “I used to wonder what friendship could be…” he mumbled in time with the song before downing his first sip, all ready to settle in for yet another night of drinking and ponies. He even made a little game for himself to get drunk as fast as possible: one drink every time Twilight cracked open a book, two whenever Rarity did something unspeakably girly, and three when Fluttershy…

When Fluttershy…

Sorry doesn’t bring back the dead, Uris…

He pressed his fingers into his eye sockets until he saw little sparks jump in his vision, then promptly downed half the beer in one chug. He knew he couldn’t go on like this, but what else could he do? He just couldn’t walk around outside with the images of those men dancing around in his head…

The clatter of the mail slot interrupted his thoughts. A wide grin cracked his face. He could have kissed the mailman right then and there, as unwelcome as a kiss from a stranger that hadn’t shaved or showered in a few days and smelt like cheap beer would be. Bounding over the couch with manic enthusiasm, the pilot scooped the mail up off the floor and immediately set to shuffling through it. “Bill, bill, bill, charity…” he mumbled, tossing the usual junk aside, and then two envelopes stood out to him: one from Walter Reed Hospital, the other without any return address, but addressed in an unmistakably elegant cursive.

Setting the rest aside, he tore into the envelope from Walter Reed, immediately finding a postcard with the phrase “Wish you were here!” cheerfully proclaimed from the front. Smiling and shaking his head, Uris turned the card over to find a quick blurb, written in squat, block letters:

Hey Captain’s boy,

Just keeping you and the Cap up to date on this end. The docs say my treatment’s going well, and it looks like I’m gonna be out of here in a few months, though my face is gonna have a lot more character to it. But hey, chicks dig scars, right? Especially war scars! Shit, when I get out of here, I’m gonna get myself so much pussy my dick’ll probably fall off! Don’t tell your old man I said that.

So yeah, looking forward to the healing process. But hey, when I’m out, we’re all going for beers, alright? Your treat!

-Miller

Uris smiled and shook his head at the SEAL leader’s coarse language. It was nice to know he was doing alright. Maybe now his ghost would stop haunting his dreams. Laying the postcard gently on the table, he gingerly picked up the other envelope. Slowly, as if he were performing a delicate operation, the pilot cracked the seal and pulled the letter out. The paper was coarser than what he was used to, but that just meant it was definitely one of hers. He smiled as he unfolded it and began to read:

Dear Mr. Uris,

Hi, how are you? I just wanted to check up on you and make sure you were alright. Things are going well here in Equestria: Twilight’s brother (she’s my friend, the Element of Magic, remember?) just got a huge awards ceremony for fending off a dragon single-hoofed, and the bird’s eggs outside my window finally hatched. All in all, things couldn’t be better. You should stop by sometime! I think you would like Equestria.

Anyway, I wanted to check on how you were doing. I know last time you said you were having some pretty bad nightmares about your friends. You should know that you shouldn’t feel guilty, and I hope one day you trust me enough to confide in me what exactly happened. I’m here for you, Mr. Uris. I just want you to know that you shouldn’t give up, no matter how bad things look, because tomorrow is always a new day. Oh gosh, I wish Twilight was writing this, she is so much better at writing inspirational speeches!

Just know that you’ve got at least one pony in Equestria who cares about you, and that she wants you to keep living your life. After all, isn’t that what your friends would have wanted?

Thank you for being my friend,

Fluttershy

Uris’s eyes misted over as he looked over the elegant little curves in her handwriting (or hoofwriting, as the case may be). Carefully folding the paper back up, he gently laid it and the envelope on the counter, weighing them down with a jar of beans from the cupboard to be safe. Once he pulled his shit together, he resolved that he was gonna write a response letter. Censored to make sure nothing awakened those latent memories ticking away in her head, just waiting to come rushing through and subject her to the same hell he was suffering through right now…

He paused and rubbed at his temples. That kind of thinking wasn’t going to help anybody, goddammit! Worrying about that bullcrap was just gonna pile up on his mind, and he had enough going on up there as it was. Besides, he really didn’t have anything to worry about: Celestia herself proofread every single message he sent, just to make sure. He just needed to clear his head. And Fluttershy’s message gave him something: he had one pony in Equestria who cared about him.

Grabbing his coat, he scooped up his cane and shoved a couple breath mints into his mouth, hoping that would keep the cops from thinking he was some kind of vagrant. Smiling hopefully for the first time in weeks, the pilot hobbled out the door. Fluttershy was right: it was time to live his life. “Watch your assholes, world, ‘cause here comes Peter Uris,” he mumbled as he made his way to the elevator.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Uris should’ve just stayed on the fucking couch and watched “My Little-goddamned-Pony”.

The moment he took a step outside, the scents and sounds of the city assaulted him: a police siren somewhere far off, some asshole yelling at his neighbor’s dog, the sewer in the dark alleyway he was walking through, the grease in the sleazy hot dog cart he was walking away from. Well, okay, maybe the hot dog cart wasn’t so bad. Hell, the kielbasa with sauerkraut in his hand tasted pretty damn good. Of course, that didn’t do much for the fact that it was probably gonna give him salmonella…

The pilot shook his head and slapped himself a few times to make sure the thought stayed away. Getting misanthropic now was not going to help anyone, least of all him. He’d been to enough support groups and army-sponsored shrinks to know that. Still, it was hard not to fall into that line of thinking, especially in New York. Not to say that he hated his home: he loved his city, loved it so much he went to war for it! He just needed to focus on the bright side of things, like the wonderful, steamy taste of the meat sliding down his throat as he tore off another chunk of it.

A scream interrupted his thoughts, and he sighed in exasperation. As if it wasn’t hard enough to look on the bright side, now he had to listen to some poor girl a few blocks away getting assaulted!? In fact, there it was again! Another piercing scream echoed off into the night. Jeez, she was screaming her head off, although this next scream told him she was much closer than he thought, probably right around the corner. Thing was, the way she was going it sounded like…

“…Like a rape,” he gasped, the kielbasa dropping into a puddle from his hands. Suddenly, he wasn’t that hungry at all, especially not for some high schooler’s dick joke. He limped as fast as he could, rounding a corner and approaching one last alleyway. His stomach practically dropped into his cheap snekaers at what he saw: a young woman, mid-twenties probably, in a long coat and skirt, her long, flowing hair and bottle-rim glasses framed by a flickering street lamp. She was pressed against a wall by some thug in a black hoodie, a switchblade in his hand. Her hands grasped the brickwork of the wall behind her, her fingertips scrabbling for purchase, as if just squeezing hard enough would convince the wall to just let her phase right through it and escape the thug in front of her.

“C’mon, honey,” he heard the thug hiss in a vaguely British accent, a gloved hand reaching up to unbutton her coat as the blade twirled through a golden lock of her hair. “You knew you’d hafta pay a toll eventually if you wanted t’keep walkin’ in these parts, especially with a pretty face like that.”

“No, please…” the woman whimpered, her glasses coated in tears. “I…I just saw a bird hurt and I-I thought…”

“HEY!” Uris screamed. Both sets of eyes turned on him, and immediately the pilot was taken aback by the thug’s face. A chin so pointed it practically qualified as a weapon all on its own, covered in a little gray soul patch at its tip. The thug had a pair of piercing eyes that almost looked mismatched, as if one reddish pupil were larger than the other. The result of some bar fight gone bad, it had to be. Yet something seemed awfully familiar about the thug, as if Uris had seen him before, but there was no way that could be right! At any rate, the prick snarled and revealed two rows of the most unbelievably mismatched teeth the pilot had ever seen, some poking sideways out of the gum, others missing altogether, and even an incisor that almost looked like a fang. The thug released his grip on the woman, letting her slide along the wall to collapse on the pavement in a quivering mess of tears. The knife gleamed in his hand as he advanced. In his eyes, this was just some cripple that needed to be put in his place.

“You got somethin’ you wanna say t’me?” The thug asked, drawing a thumb over the edge of his blade and licking away the blood that crept through the leather gloves.

“Yeah,” the pilot whipped up his cane like a sword and pointed it at the advancing mugger. “Leave right now, and I’ll consider only kicking a few of your ugly-ass teeth down your throat.”

The thug snarled and dove at the pilot. It was an untrained and predictably desperate grab by a man that had no idea what he was fucking with. Something animal-like inside the pilot ignited with glee at the sight. Uris was pissed. He wasn’t some little cripple in an alleyway; he was a trained, badassed motherfucker of the United States Armed Forces! His family had fought damn hard for this country, dove through the pits of hell to keep it safe, and this little punk thought he could go toe to toe with him!?

Screaming with rage, the pilot sidestepped the attack, which had been so obvious the attacker might as well have strapped a flashing neon sign to his chest that announced “I’M A’ TRY TO STAB YA!” He followed the dodge up by sending his fist into the little bastard’s groin. A dirty move, he knew, but he also knew that nobody ever remembered the losers in a fight, especially the clean ones. The punk howled and dropped to his knees, but kept his hold on the knife. Uris fixed that by whaling on his hand until his grip went loose, then snatched the blade away.

“All the shit I went through,” he grumbled, bringing his good leg up in a kick to the thug’s ribs which elicited a pain-filled howl. “Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve been through, and you think you can fuck with me just like that!? JUST!” His cane whipped down on the back of the punk’s head. “LIKE!” He followed the cane hit up with another kick, this time aimed at the side of his face. “THAT!?”

“WAIT!” A soft voice cried from the alley. The pilot paused and looked up. In the rush of the fight, he’d almost forgotten why he was fighting in the first place. The girl looked up at him with big, wide eyes, absolute fear still visible in them despite the fog on her coating her glasses. “D-DON’T!” She begged, those big, wonderfully green eyes looking down at his hand.

His eyes followed hers, and to his surprise he found the knife there, blade extended. He didn’t even remember picking it up. This…this he could remember. This was only too familiar. He had been in uniform that time, though, and there was more blood, not just the trickle piddling out of the punk’s mouth and swirling with the dirty puddle at his feet. There was much more then, all over him, soaking his pants and staining his hands…

His body seizing, he tossed the knife away as if it were a spider that had leapt on him, letting it clatter into a dumpster. By that time, the thug had already scrambled to his feet and lit off down some darkened alleyway, disappearing into the shadows faster than he could see. Uris considered going after him, but with his leg he knew he didn’t have a chance at catching up. Besides, the woman might need help. He turned away from the alley the thug had slinked into and took a few steps towards her.

“Go get ‘em, hero boy,” a voice cackled from the darkness behind him.

“What!?” He whirled around, but again only saw darkness. Shaking his head, he turned back to the woman and knelt by her side. She had curled up in a little ball by then, hugging her knees to her chest like a little girl being sent to the corner in grammar school.

“Miss?” He asked, reaching a hand out to her shoulder. “Uh…miss, you okay there?”

“Y-yes, I-I just, I’m fine.” She whispered, pulling away from his touch. It was an obvious lie: he could still see the tears cascading down her cheeks. Sighing, he plopped down in the grime beside her, deciding to wait out the tears. To his surprise, she promptly threw her arms around him and began to bawl, soaking his shoulder. Unsure of what to do he embraced her, letting her go until the tears ran out and she was just a quivering mess breathing into his jacket, snot and saliva mixing together in the cloth.

“Better?” He asked.

“Yes, thank you,” she sniffled. “Th-thank you so much, if you hadn’t come along I don’t know what would’ve happened, I-I…if you hadn’t come along, Mister…”

“Uris,” he said releasing his arm around her and extending a hand. “Peter Uris. I live in the building around the corner.”

“Mr. Uris,” she smiled up at him through the tears, pulling her glasses off. “Oh God, my glasses…” she huffed, trailing off with a shivering breath.

“Here, lemme…” he reached for the frames, pausing once he got a good look at her without them. A single, golden lock hung down over one of her eyes as she turned to him, and her eyes…oh my God, he’d only ever seen eyes that big and that bright one other place, though these were green and those others had been blue. “Fluttershy!?” He gasped.

“I-I’m sorry, what?”

“Nothing!” He said, quickly polishing the glasses off with a shirt sleeve and handing them back, all the while trying to keep his cheeks from reddening. “Okay, there we go.”

“Th-thank you again, mister,” she smiled weakly again, and his heart stopped. It was just like HER smile, all tiny and bashful, but still hopeful, as if she were admiring him from afar but just too shy to come out and say it. He barely even noticed when the woman extended her hand. “Samantha.”

“What? Oh, right!” He quickly extended his hand and grinned. “Nice t’meet you, Miss Samantha. Mind if I ask what a pretty li’l thing like you is doin’ in a dump like this?”

He inwardly cringed at the old cliché, but she just smiled and nodded, probably more out of gratitude for his actions earlier than for any sort of appreciation for his wit. “I work with the local animal shelter. I-I just thought I heard a bird in trouble down here and was just searching for it when that…man approached me and took out that knife.”

“Wait, you wondered down a darkened alleyway, in Queens, in the middle of the night, because you thought a bird might be in trouble?”

“Um…” she blushed cutely, adjusting her glasses. “Yes.”

He just shook his head, looking up at the night sky and thanking whoever might be looking down on him. He stood and extended a hand. “Can you walk?”

“Um, sure,” she replied, gladly accepting. Her grip was surprisingly strong, and he could feel the beginnings of callouses on her palms. Samantha had a hidden strength to her, just like somepony he happened to know. “Now Mister Uris, you aren’t hurt anywhere, are you?”

“Oh no, absolutely not, though I did drop my kielbasa on my way over here.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“So, how about you buy me another one!” He grinned, and then quickly realized his mistake when he saw the confused look on her face. “Or…I mean…I’ll buy you one!”

“I-I’m vegetarian.”

Of course you are, he thought, mentally facepalming. “It doesn’t have to be kielbasa, though! W-we can go someplace where they serve…they serve…uh…”

“Mr. Uris?”

“Yeah?”

“A-are you asking me out on a date?”

“Oy, I am really out of practice with this,” he sighed, face-palming for real this time and grinning bashfully. “But yeah, whaddya say?”

She smiled and wrapped her hand around his, allowing her to lean against his shoulder as the pair walked back out of the alleyway, his cane tapping against the pavement. “I say yes,” she whispered.