"Momma? Momma!! Momma..."
"I-It's c-cold."
"No. Please God...no."
"Ngghhh..."
It hurt.
I may not have always been the one to patch up every poor soul that got tattered and torn on the field, but it was my reality. No matter how many shattered bodies I tried to heal, no matter how many lives I tried to save in the aftermath, they all seemed to die under my hooves. No matter how many I tried to save, it never got easier.
It hurt.
There was a time when dealing with the dead and the dying was not my reality. I remember it so well it might as well have been yesterday. The warm, calm breeze passing by the house over the fields of wheat. The sun would stand clear and beautiful over the flowing waves of amber, the one solitary tree in the middle of it standing out like a welcoming brother, waiting for when my brother and I would hike to it, resting in the hammocks we'd set in it's lower branches.
I remembered it all so well, as if it were just yesterday. I remembered everything. I remembered it like a dream from the night before only to wake into a nightmare, hearing the dying screams of friends I'd known as the ground tore itself under the barrage of artillery shells and machine gun fire. I remembered it, and wished that the dreams were the reality. But wishes are just that: wishes.
"It's cold, so...cold."
Last night I hurt myself, just to see if I could still feel. The blade tore at my flesh like a welcoming friend, soft droplets of blood dripping to the floor as the surgical tool slipped from my grasp. I shuddered with the pain, both hurt and happy at the same time. I stood up smiling, starting to chuckle giddily as I sewed the gaping wound back into a single flowing line. It hurt, yes, but it reminded me that I still was. The pain was my identity.
There was a time when I coped with my pain. I coped with my pain through hatred, a burning hatred for those that created the pain I saw on the field every day. As an army surgeon, I didn't get the luxury of dying on the field. Instead I got to watch from afar as people whom I had just eaten and laughed with that very morning were blown to pieces. Well, most of them. The less fortunate came back with missing limbs and bloody, dripping bullet holes where the ammunition was too cool to properly cauterize the wound in the first place like a proper tracer round would.
I'd try and patch them up, but over time I grew used enough to the signs to know when they'd live or die. Those that came to me were far too often in the latter. So many times of trying to dress wounds that wouldn't heal, trying to save a poor soul that no longer had the means of survival. It was sick, in its own right. Death didn't care.
Pain.
Pain cannot drive us. It can guide us, lead us, motivate us, but in the end it is nothing but a feeling. Hatred, however, is more lasting. And it was in hatred that I had adopted the means necessary to continue my work, no longer trying to save lives so much as to bring out the best in Celestia's soldiers. Every day, new bodies would come in for me to give care and attention to, not because I felt concerned anymore so much as that I wanted as many troops on the field to die killing the ponies I had grown to hate, and unless they were in shape, that would never happen.
I became a monster, and that monster I became, I remained for years.
I remained that monster until two months ago, when I finally had the chance to go behind enemy lines to see their own camps. It was a rare opportunity, and one that I knew would give me the chance to sate my own hatred. I even tucked a pistol onto my person so that the first chance I got would be accompanied by a dead pony. A dead pony, just like all the dead ponies that they'd created. I was in a prison of my own making.
I was ready to kill, oh so very ready. But when I got there, I saw something which I'd have never expected. Many of the ponies we saw as we walked into their camp were glaring at us. At first I thought it was because they were evil, hating us for what we are and what we believed. I thought so at first, until I saw the bodies.
They moved their corpses methodically, dumping them into the pits that they dug up, not having the time nor capacity for a decent burial. There were soldiers around with gaping wounds, some even missing limbs. There was a sad look in the eyes of everypony who failed to find solace in hatred, and it was then that I knew.
They were just like us.
It was with that that I learned something new. They were just like us, not evil, not some demonic horde of hateful, spiteful beasts. They were just ponies, just like us. They had dreams, hopes, families, and wishes, just like us. And just like us, they were torn tattered and scarred, beaten and broken beyond recognition both mentally and physically. The foe that we'd spent so many countless lives in the trenches battling was nothing but ourselves.
Why do we fight like this? What can possibly be gained by needlessly shattering each others dreams against the wall? So many ponies had died, and the only thing that continued to drive the newbloods was hope: hope that they were somehow doing right. It was only a matter of time before they found out the truth. We were nothing but two groups of innocent ponies killing one another to sate the little tantrums that the Royal Sisters threw at each other. They argued and we died for it. Such was the price of war.
The Rebellion, Celestia's beautiful empire, the screams of the dying, the waking nightmare as so many ponies died, was all in vain. In the grand scheme of things, the only thing being achieved here was Pain. Everyone lost in the end, everyone that ever lived. Everyone, but Pain.
