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Memories.

Blurred, fuzzy, distorted images, separate one moment, blending together the next; it’s all coming back to me now. Kind of. A year and a half passes me by in the blink of an eye, so much of it a slow burn of emotions, leading up to a marvellous crescendo, only to go dark for the last few hours. And in that short span of time, something terrible had happened — something irreversible. Something I’d give anything to change.

He continues staring at me, wide-eyed, lips apart, as desperate as the day I rescued him from his car. But the world isn’t spinning around us, so now I can truly appreciate just how terrified he seems, my foreboding words hanging in the air like the pendulum of a massive clocktower ready to strike twelve. We’re just waiting for time to start again.

And then it does; he screams.

With his mouth agape and features stretched as far as they’ll go, like a startled cat and just as spry, he springs back in a shrill, raspy shriek, yanking the blanket close as he scrambles away.

A piercing tingle like needles peppering the skin fizzles down my neck and back, and my wings, legs, tail and ears all tense up, wrenching me forward with wide eyes, a hoof raised to silence him. “What’re you doing?!” I hiss through grit teeth, resting an elbow on the mattress and leaning over as far as I can go. “Do you want the whole damn building to hear us?!”

He doesn’t seem to hear me properly and continues backing away, as distraught as ever. Until, however, he runs out of bed to scoot across, and his screaming comes to a sudden, choked end when the ground falls from underneath him. He flops back, one arm flailing for something to grasp, the other keeping the blanket close, and then disappears over the edge with a sharp, pained, winded grunt, his legs slumping on the now barren mattress.

With panicked strings tugging at my chest, I leap up and scamper across the bed to peer down at him, wings unfurled in case he’d hurt himself and I’d need to find help fast.

But no; he lies on the upper part of his back, the blanket covering his lower body while a hand nurses his forehead — no injury that I can see, just dazed and dizzy. His eyes are squeezed shut and he pants through his nose, whimpering with each shaken breath.

“Are you okay?”

His face scrunches up even more, probably trying to block me out as much as he’s able. “No,” he croaks, more likely to himself than to me. “No, no, no, no, no…”

My wings slowly glide back into place against my sides as some of my nerves are eased, but I feel like shrinking away, despite everything I’ve told myself to get from the bathroom to here. My tail tucks in as far as it will go, and my ears fold back, and my legs, flanks and neck tense up, but I refuse to budge. I’ve made it this far. We’re having that talk. “I’m afraid so.”

“NO!” he barks, shooting a finger and glaring at me directly, practically horrified. “Don’t you say anything!”

A perfectly understandable reaction, but it surprises me and makes me feel like I’m being accused of something, and I take a step back from the edge like there’s an icy spear aimed at my heart. “Calm down, Philip.”

“What did I just say?!”

I shut my mouth.

He continues glaring for a few seconds longer, before a new headache visibly wracks his head and his eyes loll back, and he slumps against the floor again. This time, he presses both hands to his temples and grimaces in agony, groaning. “Fuck me…”

Now every fibre of my being is practically screeching for me to cut my losses and book it, because that’s exactly what I’ve done, and if this is his reaction, what use is having a civil discussion about it? Who was I kidding? What’s there to discuss? What use would it serve? How could I have expected, let alone hoped, that he’d ever be open to discussing something so… lurid?

I feel naked. I am, technically, and most ponies go about their day without a single item of clothing or a second thought, and it’s so widely accepted that we just… let it be. Frankly, most every species does, in some capacity — not nearly as phobic of their own bodies as he is — but I feel naked. Exposed, vulnerable, like all the fur and hair had vanished and everypony for miles in every direction is watching me, if not in disgust then as an absolute joke.

Look at her, Fleetfoot the Wonderbolt, the mare who seduced an alien, and went all the fucking way with him. No washing that stain out, is there? She’s his now, just as he is hers, all because she got weak in the knees at a few kind words and the same company anypony else could provide. So much for that ironclad resolve everypony said she has — apparently, she knows herself as well as any old stranger would: not at all.

Merciful Sisters, this is won’t end well.

“Tell me we didn’t…” he mumbles, eyes still shut and voice shaky. “Please, please… tell me we didn’t just…”

There’s a pit forming in my stomach, sucking up all my innards and leaving only the rotten parts behind. My gaze shies away from him and my teeth clench behind my lips. “I wish I could lie to you.”

“Don’t give me that!” he snaps, scowling at me for a second, but his headache appears to be similar to mine, not liking any sudden movements or loud noises, and he slumps back and closes his eyes once more. “Just… yes or no, did we or didn’t we?”

I sigh, and my breath feels putrid. “Yes. We did.”

“GOD…!”

Another sharp response that cuts as deep as all the others — that icy spear is breaking the skin. “Philip, please, if you don’t keep your voice down, somepony’s going to—”

“What, they haven’t heard already?!”

“They will if you don’t shut up.”

His mouth slowly closes, and his eyes slowly open, still in a deep, resentful frown… and for the first time in the past year and a half, I can’t tell if it’s directed at the situation, or me.

But I can’t focus on that right now, and I look down at him properly. We need to get our stories straight. He needs to know this wasn’t supposed to happen. “Do you remember anything?”

His frown slowly deepens — just a tad, but enough to notice. “No,” he answers, bitter and decisive. “Should I?”

My gaze hardens. “Don’t go there,” I warn, secretly thankful I now have something else to feel that isn’t distress. “You know me, I know you, so we both know neither of us wanted this.”

“Then what’re you doing in my room, in my bed, telling me we—”

“Because I don’t know how we got here. The last thing I remember is us drinking on the roof of that bar on the foreshore, and then… nothing. Complete blank.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes,” I snarl. “I’d never do that to anypony, and especially not you. And I wouldn’t be dumb enough to stick around ‘til morning and hope you’re okay with how everything turned out. Trust me, I’ve heard enough horror stories to know what not to do with the ponies you care about.”

He doesn’t reply, staring at me resolutely instead.

“I didn’t want this. I sure as heck know you didn’t either. Not this soon, at least, and if it never happened at all, that would’ve been fine. But somehow, we’re here, and we did… that. And I feel horrible about it. Really, you don’t know how much I wish I could turn back the clock.”

His lips part and brows curl in an offended, disturbed sneer. “You feel horrible?”

“I do.”

“Try me on for size. Oh, wait, you did.”

I draw my head back and blink, staring at him in shock like he’d slapped me on the cheek. Hard. I can’t even summon the decency to feel ashamed at how objectively true his words are. “I told you, Philip,” I say almost breathlessly, “I didn’t want this to happen.”

“Yeah, sure, but that doesn’t change the fact, and you’re not the only one affected, are you?”

I pause, and my own brows knit together in confusion. “Where’s this coming from.”

“It’s coming from…! Gah!” He's shimmying on his back, away from the bed, and drags the blanket free from the mattress as he sits up and fashions himself a hooded cloak, careful to let nothing private show. “Do you seriously not understand what this means for me?!”

I blink again. I wouldn’t presume to know.

He begins to say something, but something chokes him up, and his gaze slowly lowers, and just as slowly fades from outrage to despair. His chest heaves with every breath; the panic is returning, and with a creeping vengeance.

I feel like interrupting would be the right move, but I can’t bring myself to do so — still too stunned, I suppose, and there’s that morbid sense of curiosity that I can never fully squash.

“…I fucked a horse,” he mutters to himself, barely louder than a whisper. And then his voice grows unsteady and his teeth start chattering. “I fucked a fucking horse…”

This time, it doesn’t feel like a hard slap so much as it does… a weight. A giant weight pressing into me from everywhere and nowhere at once, yet causing me no discernible pain.

Those words…

Maybe I expected something like them, or should’ve, but actually hearing them…

I’m not Fleetfoot.

I’m not his closest friend, or even a just friend. Barely an acquaintance.

What I am matters to him, not who. Not a year and a half of shared memories. Not when I saved him from falling to his death. Not when I met him in hospital. Not when I spent almost two whole weeks at Princess Twilight’s, slowly finding myself enjoying his company. Not those letters I craved. Not when we met again at the Lunar Bean and he said he missed my voice, lisp and all. Not when those meetups became a weekly thing. Not when I told him in private just how much he means to me. Not when he forgave me just last night for screwing up his entire life.

No, none of it matters — it’s all just dust in the wind. The real obstacle was staring me in the face when I looked in the bathroom mirror, and I didn’t have the heart to see it until now.

I’m a horse. Another species. Not really a… person, in his eyes — practically an animal.

A thing.

A blue and white, purple-eyed, cartoonishly proportioned biological impossibility. His words, when I asked him to compare me to the average pony-pony on his Earth.

Why’d I let myself think he’d ever consider me anything more than a sideshow gag?

He peers off to his right from behind upturned brows and sees his clothes scattered across the floor, and his despairing grimace deepens. “Oh my god, I did…”

Again, the weights crunch down on me, but now a solid punch in the gut has been added to the mix, and I feel my hindlegs growing weak, and my tail clamps down as the internal ache flares up. I did this to him. Me. Nopony else. Nopony I can turn to and nopony I can ditch the burden on. Just me and me alone, and whatever impulses led me to abandon all decency.

“I… I think I need…” He shifts onto his knees beneath the blanket’s veil, then unsteadily rises to his feet, slightly hunched, as if he were old and frail, and his bones would shatter at the slightest touch. “I think I need a shower…”

How defeatedly he says that… it tears apart what little of my insides are left. My hindlegs buckle and I flop to the mattress on my rear, mouth drooping open as I absently watch him slowly, tentatively shuffle his way across the carpet, muttering and cursing under his breath.

He bends low and carefully picks up his shirt and tucks it under his arm beneath the makeshift cloak, then looks about. “Where are my pants?” He swings about and scans left and right. “Where are they?”

I don’t dare speak. I’ve nothing helpful to say, and he might not want to hear my voice anymore. I can only watch on with a growing sense of disgrace.

“God fucking damn it,” he hisses, swinging back and continuing his walk of shame to the bathroom, so agonizingly heartbreaking to see, then closes and locks the door behind him. “Why’s my underwear in here?!”

I squeeze my eyes shut and grit my teeth, turning in place and slamming my head snout-first into the pillows where I let out the raspy moan of a stifled scream. This couldn’t have gone worse. Lashing out at me would’ve been better; at least then I’d have the chance to fight back. But this — seeing him so… wounded, so… damaged… not only in terms of trust, but broken down to simple phrases and mutters, thinking out loud as if I didn’t exist, or wasn’t worth acknowledging…

I did this. Me. And no matter how many times I headbutt and punch the pillows, wishing I could but never daring to shout my lungs out, that ache in my thighs and deeper inside doesn’t go away. It reaches into my chest with a vicelike grip and never lets go, not because it won’t, but because it can’t. It’s a part of me now, like a scar, or a phantom limb.

And the worst part is, he’s right; just because I say I wish it didn’t happen doesn’t change and will never change the fact that it did.

I was the one with the crush.

I was the one he trusted most.

I was the one who…

I did this. And that’s all there is to it.

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I found his shorts at the foot of the living room couch, and my clothes and saddlebags not far away. They paint a picture I really, really, really don’t want to imagine, but memories tend to resurface at the most inopportune times, and it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s not.

I wasn’t myself. He wasn’t himself either. That’s the only solace I can find in this whole situation. We just got caught up in the moment — a moment that shouldn’t have happened. A moment I let happen, because I couldn’t control some stupid urge I haven’t felt in seventeen years.

But the stain won’t wash out. The scar won’t heal. The damage has been done, and that’s all I can think about as I sit in the armchair and sip my coffee, staring at the sofa like it’s a manticore holding his stinger to my throat, telling me to act natural. I’m trying as best I can, but it’s not good enough. The ache is fading, but the burden remains as painful as ever.

He’s been in the bathroom for about half an hour now. The crying stopped ten minutes in. The water switched off five minutes ago; he’s drying himself off, or standing about and gathering his wits. I know I did the same. Now I can only wait for him to follow suit, and dread his arrival.

Thinking this would end well was a fool’s hope. The longer I hang around, the more uninviting the air becomes — thick, heavy, cold, though I’m warm enough with anguish that I don’t feel a chill. No doubt I overstayed my welcome the second I woke him up.

Then why won’t I leave?

What do I expect to happen? That his time in the shower would’ve done him any good and he’ll have calmed down? After an initial reaction like that?

There’s always a chance.

Sure. A big, fat, morbidly obese chance on life support.

But still a chance.

For what? For a relationship? A friendship? How could either of those even be a remote possibility after a bombshell as colossal and earth-shattering as this? I’m a horse. He’s not. In his world, we’re never meant to mix, and that’s all that matters. A taboo like that doesn’t vanish overnight.

It did, though.

So what?! That wasn’t us — it came from out of nowhere!

Are you sure about that?

Yes! I know myself better than anypony else. I wouldn’t… do that. Not to him. Not unless…

Unless…?

…No, I’m not finishing that thought. It’s a dangerous thought — it assumes too much. And if he really did feel anything for me, I’m sure he’d say so. I let him know how I felt about him, so he’d very easily return the favour, wouldn’t he?

…Right?

The door opens. There’s a pause — a stillness in the air as I wait for whatever comes next; he’s probably seen his shorts folded on the carpet where I left them, and after a beat, I hear the drop of a towel and the rustle of clothes sliding over skin.

One gesture of goodwill down.

The towel’s picked back up and thrown aside — presumably into the bathroom — and then the lights and fan are switched off. He walks out from the short hallway and enters the joint space of the kitchen and lounge, but comes to a halt when he sees me in the far corner to his right. His hair’s frazzled and still somewhat damp, and his dark grey shirt and flaxen pants are wrinkled from a night of improper storage. He does his best to hide the surprise, fear and indignation behind a stoic mask, but his form’s grown sloppy, and we’ve known each other long enough to read the fine print.

I’m not yet brave enough to break the silence, though.

He turns to his right, marching into the kitchen, heading for the cabinet with the cups and mugs, but stops when he spies a glass of apple juice on the counter beside his helmet. He frowns, pointing to it, then looks at me from the corner of his eye. “What’s this?”

I blink, brows creasing in confusion.

“You bed me and then make me breakfast?”

I blink again, harder this time. “Excuse me?”

His lips pucker and he looks away, turning his back to me with his hands on his hips, then paces over to the fridge and takes out a carton of apple juice — the very same I’d used. “What’re you still doing here?” he grumbles, unscrewing the cap and taking a swig.

One gesture down, another rejected. Shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up. Again. “We need to talk,” I say, my voice low, trying as best I can to not take offence. I’m in no mood to downplay how wretched this has made me feel, but I have to remind myself he objectively has it worse. Even though that ache hasn’t completely gone away.

When you compare suffering, nopony wins.

“We need to talk,” he scoffs to himself, then returns to me. “What’s there to talk about? You got what you wanted, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t want this. How many times do I need to say it?”

“None. The deed’s done. Good day.”

A tug at my core, like talons sinking into my chest and holding fast. My teeth grit. “I’m not going anywhere, Philip.”

“Why not?”

“Because we need to talk.”

“About what?” he snaps, taking half a step closer. “You told me you weren’t after that, and it’d be okay if I never felt the same way about you, or any other pony. I believed you. Next thing I know, I’m waking up with a wicked hangover, an aching crotch, a feather in my mouth, and you telling me we…”

I quietly gulp.

He continues frowning at me for a little longer, struggling with himself to find the words. And then he looks away again and huffs. “I trusted you to keep that crush of yours in check. This crosses the line by a longshot. You’re a pony, and not even the real kind. And you’re a friend, somehow, and it was on my birthday — my birthday.”

“I’m sorry, Philip.”

“Sorry,” he echoes, mumbling, closing his eyes as he bows his head into a waiting palm. “A simple apology isn't going to cut it. No way, no how.”

“I know.”

“Obviously not, or you wouldn’t be here.” He looks up at me again, scowling now. “Do you know what they’d do to me if people on my Earth found out about this? Bloody hell, what my family would say? It’s over. All of it. No point in going back now, is there? Not with this stain on my reputation.”

A stain.

It’s the truth, but hearing him say it aloud…

It hurts. Badly.

That icy spear has found its mark.

“Philip, please… I understand what—”

“No, you don’t,” he growls. “How could you? What do you know what it’s like to have the world you’ve known suddenly disappear? You’re not the one who nearly fell to his death. You’re not the one who was lied to for a full year by two horse demigods. No; you’re the little pony who stole my one chance of being accepted back home, if I’m ever allowed to go.”

My eyes widen. My jaw drops. The spear skewers my heart and twists.

“You want to turn back the clock? Fine by me. About two years should do.”

And then it runs right through me, a chill, from my chest to all my extremities; head, ears, neck, withers, back, wings, legs, hooves, croup, tail… everything. Colder than a blizzard in the north, and just as desolate. I feel as alone and defenceless as a bird lost in a gale, and the hostile winds are building here.

I’m not welcome.

I should go.

Leave.

Away.

I need to get away.

With an instinctual urgency and shallow breaths, I hop down from the armchair and trot for the door, the coffee mug spilling from my grasp. The latch comes free, I pull the handle, and then I’m out into the hallway, trotting still. A canter. A gallop. Into the air, down the spiralling staircase, through the lobby, outside. There were shouts — ponies reciting the rules — but they’re distant now, all behind, so far below.

I’m going home.

Nopony can hear me sobbing there.

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