WARNING: This chapter contains a graphic depiction of a panic attack.

Big MacIntosh kicked the door shut behind him, and resisted the urge to lock Flim in.

Cleaning and re-organizing the barn was a dirty, boring, drudgerous task, something that usually fell on his broad shoulders, and he was more than happy to pass it off to their guest. It would keep him occupied for the rest of the day, and make it easier to keep an eye on him. He was beginning to suspect that Flim was up to something; once he'd arrived home from the market---at least half an hour late---Big MacIntosh had lost track of him for nearly twenty minutes, and when he finally tracked him down, he was in the river again with a stupid grin on his face. That was his third bath of the day. Either he had some strange aversion to getting sweaty, or he was up to no good. Instinct told him it was the latter.

A flash of green from the barn windows drew his attention, and Mac sighed. How many times did he have to tell him before it got through his head? No magic meant no magic, not even when his back was turned. Oh well... he'd prepared for this eventuality.

He sucked his teeth in irritation as he climbed the stairs to his bedroom. As soon as he'd found out who the foal's sire was, he'd begun his preparations, which included procuring a horn ring, just in case. That little errand had been unpleasant but necessary; he'd had to endure twenty minutes of Pokey's flirting just to get a top-of-the-line model.

Oh well, he thought with a wry grin, At least he gave me a discount.

And it was indeed a good brand. It had been imbued with a spell that assured the only pony who could remove it would be the one who had put it on the unicorn in the first place. (Pokey had insisted on a demonstration). The irony of using a magically-enhanced item to prevent spellcasting wasn't lost on him, but now wasn't the time for a philosophical debate. He just needed Flim to follow the damn rules for once. He had nothing against unicorns personally, but the sight of Flim struggling to carry the heavy slop bucket had lifted his sour spirits to no end.

He's never done an honest day's work in his life, he thought as he nudged open his bedside dresser. Once I get this ring on him, he'll---

It was gone.

He stared at the empty space, blinking, as if that would make it reappear. It had been there the last time he checked, and now...

He went through my stuff?!

The headache that was curling around his brain began to pound in his forehead. Unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable. He didn't know how or when Flim had done it, but somehow that bastard had gone behind his back and rifled through his belongings!

The floor shook with his pounding hoofsteps as he made his way to the guest bedroom, grinding his molars together. Had Applejack told him about the horn ring? That was the only explanation that made sense... otherwise, how could he have known it was there?!

Maybe he didn't know it was there. Maybe he waited 'til I was asleep, and then pawed through my bedroom 'cause that's jes' the kinda pony he is. Dammit, I'm never gonna hear the end of it if he found Smarty Pants.

Last night was still bugging him. He had been right outside Flim's door! How could he have snuck by? Normally something as minor as a creaky floorboard could wake him up, but for some reason he managed to sleep through a whole night of his sister, one door down, having wild, screaming se---

He clamped that thought away as hard as he could.

He slammed the door open and went stomping into the room. Flim hadn't bothered to make the bed, and the few things he'd brought with him were scattered about, including the hat he'd neglected to put on this morning. It only took a few minutes to rip the place apart, and after nothing turned up, he slumped back to his haunches, panting.

He could be carryin' it in one a'his pockets... He wiped the back of his mouth. He's in BIG fucking trouble when I find it!

As he turned his head to leave, something caught his eye. On the bedside dresser was a collection of small pill-bottles.

Big MacIntosh picked one of them up, shaking the tiny capsules inside. As he turned the bottle over in his hooves, he glanced to the dresser, eyeing the mini-pharmacy that was stashed there. He recalled dragging an unconscious Flim out of his hotel room, and remembered how he'd had the presence of mind to shove all of his medication in his pockets before doing so. He hadn't thought much of it at the time, but...

The memory of that train ride came washing over him: Flim, on his back, his eyes rolled up in their sockets, gibbering broken pleas through frothy lips; having to shoo away the crowd of gawkers as he rubbed his hoof up and down the unicorn's chest, talking to him evenly and quietly until the storm had passed through his brain. It was like nothing he'd ever seen before, and he hoped he'd never have to see it again. If merely witnessing a panic attack was frightening, well, he couldn't begin to imagine what living with that would be like.

He put the bottle down and picked up another one. This was the one he'd asked for on the train; two of these babies had knocked him out cold for the rest of the ride. Big MacIntosh felt himself reluctantly smile when he remembered how he'd had to repeatedly shrug Flim's head off his shoulder. Applejack was right---he did drool in his sleep.

So the bottle he was holding contained the meds for his panic attacks; that must mean the others were for the bleeding disorder. Now, he was a farmer, not a doctor, but even he knew that a condition like hemophilia could be a crippling disability. Little colts were supposed to be able to run around wild and free, scraping their knees and bruising their shins and laughing it off, no harm done. They shouldn't have to be saddled with something like that.

Mac shook his head as the unwanted memories came back with a sudden, stinging pain. No colt should have to grow up knowing there was something wrong with him.

At least I could fight back when I got bullied, he thought with a sinking feeling in his gut. Flim an' Flam didn't have that option.

He passed the bottle from hoof to hoof as he ruminated. He'd always been brought up to be honest and upfront, but... if he hadn't had the physical strength to defend himself, a loving family to support him, and just enough income to fund the years of therapy, could he have ended up like the FlimFlam brothers? If push came to shove, would he have resorted to scheming and conniving just to get by?

And was that just a twinge of pity he'd felt?

A bright yellow sticker on the side of the bottle caught his eye. Whatever Flim was taking must have been pretty hardcore, considering how many warning labels came with his medication.

WARNING! May cause extreme drowsiness! one sticker read. He rolled it to the left, which revealed another warning, this time in red: DO NOT CONSUME WITH ALCOHOL.

And on the very back of the pill-jar was a smaller label that read SIDE EFFECTS INCLUDE: loss of consciousness, numbness in extremities, bitter metallic taste in the mouth.

Something clicked in his head, and the sympathy he'd felt welling up inside him suddenly melted away.

He licked his lips, and, yes, there was still a trace of that taste in his mouth.

The pieces fell together with a nasty snap, and the plastic bottle cracked into splinters under his grip. Big MacIntosh threw his head back and screamed "YOU! FUCKING! LITTLE! SHIT!!!"

Flim was halfway through organizing the farm equipment when the barn door smashed open.

"YOU!"

"You too," he answered easily without breaking his spell. "Look, I know what you're going to say. You said 'no magic', and---"

"You drugged me," Big Mac snarled.

His eyebrows raised a little, but he kept a pretty straight face. "...Did I?"

"I knew something was wrong last night! I knew it!" He was approaching slowly, and Flim nervously glanced over his shoulder. Getting around this behemoth wasn't an option, but there was a small door at the back of the barn; he couldn't teleport, but experience had made him quite adept at running away.

"That's an awfully big jump to conclusions, don't you think? After all, you did stay up the previous night tracking me down---you were probably just tired---"

"And the taste in my mouth? Can y'explain that?" Before letting him answer, he added "And don't bother with the 'stress' bullshit! I ain't fallin' fer that twice!"

A quick calculation, and Flim decided there was more distance between him and his potential cause of death than him and the door. He still had the equipment suspended in the air; he could drop it between them and make a run for it. Just in case, he braced his back legs, ready for a sprint. "Well, maybe I just wanted you to calm the fuck down! You should be thanking me---most stallions in my situation would have used a tranquilizer dart! Or a lead pipe!"

"An' some stallions in yer situation would use the drugs on my sister, too! Is that what you did? Is that why she couldn't explain why you ended up in her bed?!"

"Hey!" Flim shouted, baring his teeth. "That is way out of line, even for you!"

"Answer the question!"

"For the second fucking time, NO, I didn't rape her! Why is that so hard for you to understand?"

"You really want me t'answer that?"

He hadn't realized he'd been backing up until his rump hit a support beam. "Look, genius, if she was drugged, how could she have tied me up?"

Big MacIntosh didn't respond, but Flim could tell by the look on his face that he hadn't considered that part. It also seemed like he really didn't want to consider that part too carefully.

"You want the truth? She drugged me."

"I don't believe that fer a second."

"I can prove it. I know you own a horn ring."

That made him freeze like a slap to the face. "...What?"

"You own a horn ring," he repeated as he regained some of his confidence. "And it's probably still in Applejack's room. Go and look if you don't believe me! She slipped something into the drink she brought me. Initially I thought it was just to get back at me for, uh, you, but.... well, you do remember me saying I woke up tied to her bed?"

Mac's twisted expression assured him that, yes, unfortunately, he did remember.

"Now, I normally don't do bondage 'til at least the fifth date, but when Applejack swiped that ring from your room, I didn't have much of a choice." He paused with a half-grin. "Not that I minded. It's not like it was a cock ring."

This time he could taste bile in the back of his mouth. "Ugh!"

Flim laughed, watching him recoil and shudder with disgust. "It's about time you faced up to the facts, big guy. One, your 'baby sister' is old enough to make her own decisions, and has been for awhile, and she's not your property!"

That actually made him take a step backwards.

"Two, whether you like it or not, you have a unicorn working for you, which means I'm going to use magic. Three"---he knew he was pushing it by this point---"The fact that you even have a horn ring makes me think you like unicorns a lot more than you're letting on. Come on, don't be shy! You enjoyed that kiss, didn't you?"

"THAT DOES IT!" He began scraping the ground with a hind hoof, ready to charge. "I'm-a break that horn clean off, and you got one guess where it's gonna end up!"

He looked up at the equipment he still had hovering in the air above him, then turned back to Big MacIntosh. "Tell you what," he said with a smirk. "I think I'll stop using my magic right... about..."

It suddenly hit him what Flim was going to do, and he blurted "No, wait!!"

"...NOW!"

Laughing, Flim let his magic crackle away, and the equipment all came crashing down around him. Big Mac flinched at the sound of hundreds of bits' worth of damage, but there was nothing he could do---it all happened so fast. As shocked as he was, he was already calculating how much work Flim would have to do to pay off this stunt.

The horrified look on Mac's face just kicked his grin up a notch, and he started to cackle. He knew he'd pay for this, but it was worth it!

Of course, had he known there was a sickle right above him, he probably would have reconsidered.

Amid the clattering and banging, some sudden, icy feeling snapped him back to reality. All he felt at first was a cold slice across his side... and then the coldness began to spread outwards, until he was shivering all over.

What the...?

He looked at the stallion in the doorway, fully expecting fury---but Mac was staring slack-jawed, not in his eyes, but somewhere to his left. Confused, Flim tried to take a step forward, but had to stop when he noticed how leaden his legs felt. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.

Flim looked down, and he realized, with a sickening smack of disgust, that he was standing in a warm, spreading puddle.

I pissed myself?!

No... no, wait. That wasn't the colour of piss. It was a dark, brackish red.

Raising his hoof to his ribs, Flim carefully pressed at the area that had gone numb. His hoof brushed against his hide, and... it took him a few long moments to figure out what exactly was happening. Terror jolted up his spine when he realized that he wasn't touching the side of his body.

He was touching inside his body.

"Sweet Celestia," Big MacIntosh whispered.

Flim pulled his hoof away with a wet slurp, and felt a shudder go through him. He looked down. The sickle had sliced him open when it fell, and now there was a huge, wet wound in his side, pouting open like a mouth. And it was gushing blood.

He jerked his head back up. "H-Help," he mumbled.

They made eye contact, and Mac, for a split-second, looked as shocked as him. Then, it happened---something Flim was horribly familiar with, but something he could never accurately describe to anypony else: Mac's face began to warp as if it was a wet, dripping painting, and once the smearing stopped, all Flim could see was a horrid distortion of the stallion standing before him, leaving just a huge, gaping mouth where his face should be. All of reality seemed to be tilted, refracted; it took him a few seconds, but the tight pounding in his chest made him realize what was happening.

"No," his hissed through his clenched throat. "N-not now----!"

His legs buckled and he slumped to the dirt floor, muddying his knees with his own blood. Even the veins in his eyeballs were throbbing, and every alarm in his system began to fire. Saliva pooled out of his open mouth as his lungs spasmed, sucking in tiny gulps of oxygen. He moved his foreleg to wipe at his face, but that just made the blood spurt faster, ramming his heart up into his throat.

His cheek hit the dirt just as the black stars began to appear, swimming around his peripheral vision. He knew from experience he had about twenty seconds before he was blind... and, at this rate, maybe ten minutes before he bled out.

Big MacIntosh was nervously shifting his weight from one hoof to another, but snapped to attention when Flim screamed "PLEASE! HELP ME!"

He was already in motion when the unicorn's neck began twitching, banging his head against the ground. A panic attack wasn't lethal, but blood loss was, and it was coming out at an astounding rate. He had no medical training, but he remembered an old trick Granny had taught him---he grabbed a rake in his mouth, swept it around the corners of the hayloft, then let it clatter by Flim's side.

"C-c-c-cobwe-we-webs," he stammered, placing a hoof on the side of Flim's head to keep him from smashing himself into a concussion.

"Wha? What?!"

"Cobwebs," he repeated. He pulled the grey, sticky mass off the tines of the rake and, after rolling him over, pressed it into the wound. "Slows down the b-bleeding." It would also probably give him an infection, but they could deal with that later. Right now, he had to get him to a hospital, and fast. The bleeding had already slowed from a gush to a trickle, but the webs would only hold that off for so long.

With a heave, he loaded Flim onto his back. "Hang on!"

Applejack whistled as she trotted through the orchard. That little romp in the root cellar had put a spring in her step, and she'd long recovered from her crying jag. She could barely believe the new side of Flim she was seeing! He'd even asked her what her Ma's name was, assuming she intended to pass it on. It surprised her that he was okay letting her name the foal, but she hadn't settled on one yet---after all, that snide remark at dinner hadn't been serious. She knew that hearing that name could make Granny cry, and she wasn't about to saddle a foal with that.

She had decided to find wherever Flim had gotten off to so she could ask him what his mother's name was. There was no harm in asking. She knew she'd get an earful from Big MacIntosh about even considering naming her firstborn after a whore, but so long as it wasn't a cliched hooker name like Kandie or Sweet Cream, it wouldn't be so wrong, would it? Flim might be touched. Their daughter would never know her paternal grandmother, but---

A ripple of emotion went through her when she realized her foal actually would never know any of her grandparents.

Oh well. Nothing could be done about that. She'd have a great-grandmother, anyway.

Where had he gotten off to? He'd sensed she needed a moment to herself, so he'd left her in the cellar, saying he was going to have another bath so that Big Mac wouldn't smell the sex on him. That had been nearly an hour ago. She suspected her brother would get him to re-organize the barn, since he'd been putting off doing it himself for awhile now. Aside from cleaning the outhouse, it was his least favourite chore.

Then she frowned, remembering that Flim had left the broken jam jar for her to clean up. He might have a soft side, but he was still a bit of a prick sometimes.

He wants t'help raise her 'together'... but how are we gonna do that? He travels! she mused to herself as she crested the hill. Maybe he can come on the weekends. But that'll be hard on everypony. Apple Bloom's talked about how much Scootaloo hates having to go from her Mom's to her Meema's...

She really needed to talk to him about this.

As she came into view of the barn, her legs froze in place. That was odd... the door was wide open. It wasn't the right time of day for the cows to be inside, but even so, they had a rule about keeping it closed. Applejack approached it slowly. She wasn't sure if she believed in feminine intuition, but something was telling her this wasn't right.

She was a few feet from the door when she noticed a trail of hoofprints leading outside. Red hoofprints. Very few things in nature would leave a colour like that, and she knew they didn't keep any ketchup in the barn! That could only mean one thing...

"Oh, Celestia," she whispered as she made her way inside. What had happened here? It looked like a war zone! Bales of hay had been scattered, and the equipment was all over the place, smashed and dented as if dropped by a tornado. In the middle of it all was a distressingly-huge pool of blood.

Years ago, in an incident Ponyville would rather forget, a drunk had injured himself while stumbling through a window on the outskirts of town; they'd found his body the next morning in a puddle of blood. He had exsanguinated, having lacerated an artery shortly before passing out. Applejack remembered the photo in the newspaper, and how enormous the bloodstain was---the one on the floor looked to be a third that size, so it wasn't lethal... but it couldn't have been good. Lying at its edge was a bloodied sickle, but she couldn't tell if it had been stained from proximity, or from being used as a weapon.

She glanced back at the hoofprints. Their size meant they had to be her brother's, and the distance between them showed he'd taken off at a gallop. This didn't make sense---Mac knew his way around the more dangerous equipment better than anypony. He would have to be drunk as a lord to injure himself with a sickle, and it was only one in the afternoon. Now, he wasn't above occasionally staggering home in the wee hours of the morning, usually singing at the top of his lungs, but it was completely unlike him to get loaded during the day, and he certainly wouldn't trash the barn.

Then her ears flattened. Oh no. What if he'd finally lost his temper and gone at Flim with the sickle? A fight would explain the mess. Then again... there was only one set of bloodied hoofprints. Even if Flim had fallen, he would have had to leave at least a few tracks, right? She knew he was good at running and dodging, and he'd have magic on his side to help in a fight, but she still didn't feel too reassured.

"Holy cow! What happened in here?!"

She glanced up to see Apple Bloom at the doorway, her jaw hanging open. As quickly as she could, Applejack clapped her hoof over her sister's eyes. "Don't look!"

"Aw, c'mon, Applejack! I seen blood before!"

"Go get Granny," she said as she shooed her outside. "Tell her I'm goin' to the hospital."

"The hospital? Why? Is somethin' wrong with the baby?"

"No, the baby's fine. I-I think Big Mac hurt himself."

"Wait, that's his blood?" She tried to get another peek over Applejack's shoulder. "I thought that was from one of the cows."

Oh, no. Not the livestock-mutilation paranoia again. "I don't care what Rainbow Dash told ya, Apple Bloom, but the chupacabra ain't real."

Her sister shot her that look she was growing to hate. "The chupacabra eats goats. That's what his name means, Applejack."

"I don't have time fer this!" she shouted. "Yer brother could be really hurt! Now, do as I say and go---"

She heard him before she saw him. Big Mac's breathing was so loud and ragged it covered the sound of his shuffling hoofbeat, and when he got close enough for her to get a better look at him, she realized why: his sides were frothy with sweat, as if he'd come back from running a marathon.

Apple Bloom was already charging toward him. "Big Mac! Big Mac! What happened? We saw the blood!"

Without making eye contact with her, he held up a hoof, and she skidded to a halt. They knew what that gesture meant---he couldn't quite speak yet. When he sat down to catch his breath, Applejack sent her sister off to fetch a glass of water and plunked herself down next to him.

"Are y'okay?"

He shook his head.

Avoiding the sweat, she began running a hoof over his side. He didn't appear to be injured. She moved her hoof to his belly, checking to see if there was a wound she hadn't seen when he was standing. "Hurt at all?"

"Nope."

His bangs were so drenched they were sticking to his forehead, and she gently brushed them back. He still hadn't looked at her, opting instead to stare wide-eyed at the ground. "You look like you seen a ghost!"

"Close."

Before she could press on, Apple Bloom came running back with, thoughtfully, a whole pitcher of lemonade, some of which had spilled into her mane. Mac snatched it up and downed it in two gulps.

"Is that blood?" she asked, looking at Applejack's hoof.

She had been absent-mindedly rubbing his shoulder, and paying more attention to his face than to where they were touching. When she saw what Apple Bloom had noticed, she nearly threw up; his coat colour had disguised it, but her orange hoof was now streaked with red. "Mac, yer... covered in blood!"

"Eeyup."

"Oh my gosh! Are ya hurt?" Apple Bloom darted around to his front, trying to catch his eye. "What happened? Why didntcha stay at the hospital?!"

"Apple Bloom, that's too many questions at once. Let him answer the first one."

He finally looked up. "It ain't mine."

He didn't bother to elaborate.

The silence was suddenly broken by Applejack's ear-shattering screech as she threw herself on him. Even though Apple Bloom frantically tried to pry her off, she just kept pummeling him with her balled-up hooves.

"You did it, you bastard!" she screamed. "You finally did it! You killed him, didntcha? YOU FUCKING KILLED HIM!!"

Big MacIntosh had seen the attack coming, and simply braced his shoulder against her onslaught. "Nope," he answered.

"Yes you did! You, you killed him, you killed him, you... you..."

Her voice cracked into sobs, and she fell back onto her haunches, weeping. Apple Bloom was slowly backing away on shaky legs; it's not like she'd never heard her sister cuss before, but this kind of outburst was unsettling. She'd had the sense to take the pitcher with her, lest it end up smashed over his head.

Applejack turned her teary eyes up to meet his. "Why, Mac? Why?"

"I didn't kill him," he said with a sigh. "Y'ain't gonna believe this, but I saved his damned life."

Author's Notes:

You know when you're trying to pull a prank on someone but you screw it up and end up hurting yourself really badly? No? Does that only happen to me?

Well, kind of a shorter chapter, but I wanted to get this up before my trip---I'm going up North to visit relatives, and probably won't have Internet access for nearly two weeks. I hope I survive.