No peace for the weary

A/N: I'm really surprised at how popular this is. I honestly did not expect nearly the amount of favorites as I got. So thank you  to all who favorited this story, I really appreciate it.

The first time someone experiences death it is quite often traumatic and will forever change said persons life in many ways which may not choose to manifest themselves for quite some time. While some people find it easy to see death and feel nothing, it seems that Rainbow Dash was not in this category.

A wave of emotions cascaded over Rainbow as she looked at this...killer. He had saved her, he had helped her, he had been nice to her. But he was also a killer. Dash felt a mixture of sorrow, fear, relief and confusion. Messiah took note of her obvious discomfort at witnessing death and decided he had to say something.

“Believe me when I say that If i had not...dispatched those men, they would have killed us both.”

“But you didn't say anything! You just killed them! How do you even know they would hurt us!” Tears were starting to form in the corners of her large magenta eyes.

Messiah pointed at their uniforms. “They have Hutu military uniforms. That means they are the bad guys.” He said blatantly. Not only that, but they also had weapons.” He completed his point by lightly kicking one of the soviet rifles that now lay on the grass.

“I don't care! Killing is never right!”

“Well it seems the universe hates you then.” Rainbow shot Messiah a confused glance.

“You're in Africa. This is the land that people have been fighting and killing each other over for centuries.”

Dash just looked away from Messiah. Here he was rationalizing murder! In Equestria he would be locked up for life! Here he was saying that killing was commonplace here, but it doesn't change anything! Killing is never okay. Dash just really wanted to go home, to be done with all of this violence.

“Listen..” He said as he placed a warm hand on Dash's shoulder. “Killing is not right, I get that. But when it comes to either me and you dying or someone else, I am going to choose the other guys. I...and now you live in a cold, harsh world. I won't lie to you, you'll probably see more of this as we try to leave this godforsaken country. Just listen to me, and we'll make it through this okay?” There was no point in lying to the pony, he might as well just say it like it is.

Rainbow just sighed and slowly nodded her head.

“Now come on, lets get that wing all fixed up.” Messiah said reaching for his first aid kit.

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After a few hours, Messiah had managed to more-or-less fix Dash's wing. He had removed the shrapnel, cleaned the wound and stitched it up. It would have gone well, had it not been for the combination of a lack of aesthetic, and the extreme sensitivity of a Pegasus' wings.

Needless to say that Rainbow was not exactly happy, or quiet during the procedure.

“I hate you, I hope you realize that.”

“You say that now, but if i wouldn't have fixed your wing, it would have gotten infected and it would have had to been amputated. I have a sneaking suspicion that's something you would want to avoid.”

Rainbow was visibly shocked at the apparent danger she had been in of loosing her wing. She then grabbed her wing and held it close to her chest, stroking it. A pang of guilt struck his heart as he saw how terrified the pony was of loosing her wing.

“So where are we going now?” She said, still stroking her wounded wing.

“Well, the original extraction point is about ten miles that way” He said pointing east. “ But we were supposed to meet them there about...” He checked his watch “Ten hours ago, so I doubt that option is still viable.” Messiah then sat in thought for a minute, trying to think of a place he could go. “ I suppose we could try to get to Kigali. We might be able to find a car or truck or...something there.”

“How far is this place?”

“Hard to tell, but if we leave now we should make it in a few days.”

“Sounds good. Not like I can really decide on where we go.”

Rainbow jumped on Messiah's back once again. Her leg was seriously sprained, possibly even  fractured, and there was nothing Messiah could do about that. He was only good with lacerations and gunshot wounds. Anything beyond that and he was like a monkey trying to hot-wire a car. Besides it's not like he really cared, she weighed next to nothing and it was kind of cute how she would nuzzle into his neck when she fell asleep.

“So how old are you?” Dash asked trying to find out more about her saviour.

“I'm twenty seven. But I've only been living for five years.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well before i did...this” He said gesturing to his rifle. “ I was going nowhere in life. I had finished university and was looking to live a comfortable life until I eventualy died as a senile old bedridden man.”  A slight smirk was slapped across his face. “ While I was looking for work, I found myself with quite a bit of time on my hands, so i started to do some research on the world that I live in.” He took a deep breath. “After a few days of research I was disgusted. I knew there were problems in the world but I never knew the extent or the severity of them. And the worst part was that no one cared. No one cared about the genocides, the famines, the poverty or the disease infested slums that ravage our planet.” Messiah was spitting the words now. His anger and disdain for the apathy of man was easily visible to his equine compatriot.

“So one day I just got up and said ' fuck it'. If no one else was going to help these people, that I would have to do it. No I was not stupid. I knew there would be no way I could do it alone. So i looked around and lo and behold, I discovered The Order.”

Dash shot him a curious glance.

“The Order were a group of people, from all walks of life, who felt the way I did. We took matters into our own hands. We had the money, weapons and resources to help people who needed to be helped. Thats where I met my squad...” His voice trailed off a bit as sorrow laced the words the spoke.

“For five years we travelled across the world, doing what had to be done. We killed rebel leaders in Sudan. Assassinated the president of Syria. Freed countless villages from the grips of warlords. Then we came here and, well you know what happened....”

Rainbow nodded her head acknowledging the loss Messiah had suffered in this land.

“My life was a waste before I joined the order. It was such a waste that I no longer consider it a part of my life. My life started the day I joined the order. The purpose of life is a life with a purpose. And my life has only had purpose for five years. Hence I have only lived for five years.” He concluded with a fake smile. The memories of his dead friends were going to haunt him for a lifetime. The memories of every life he took haunted him, but he had learned to suppress those memories.

The death of his comrades was still too fresh of a wound to properly tuck away into his mind, and it would be for some time.

Dash was quiet for a moment. “I'm fifteen.”

Messiah genuinely smiled at her statement.

“Hey do you like music?”

“What kind of question is that? Everyone likes music.” Dash said

“Granted, but something tells me that my music is very different from yours.”

Some incredibly dark songs came to Messiah's mind almost immediately. While his friends were all metal heads, Messiah had always liked rap. Not the rap about the money and the women. But the rap about deep philosophical issues and social and human injustice. The rapper Immortal Technique came to his mind almost immediately.

“Do you guys have rap in Equestria?”

“Yeah, it's mostly a unicorn thing though.”

“Well when we get to somewhere safe, there is some rap I HAVE to show you.” He said putting over emphasis on the word have.

There a a brief silence between the duo before they started chatting again. Rainbow explained to Messiah that the two princesses controlled the sun and the moon. Messiah just laughed at her. He proceeded to explain to her that the moon orbited the earth and that the earth orbited the sun. Rainbow laughed at his explanation and a heated debate ensued. By the end of it, both were mentally spent and had shouted a bit more that they had liked.

Before long, they day had turned sour and clouds were covering the sky. Messiah really wanted to reach some shelter before a downpour started but he was out of luck. The torrential rain battered both the human and pony.

“I hate the rain...” He said as he wiped water from his face. He soon realized that his hand had a strange substance on it. He turned his palm to face him and he was met with a camouflage palm.

“Dammit.” He mumbled as he turned his face to the sky in an attempt to get all of the facepaint of of him. It really was not going to do much good considering he had a bright cyan pony with a rainbow mare on his back.

Messiah spotted the treeline of the dense jungle and made a a beeline towards it. While tree's were not the best cover, the thick canopy would fare much better than anything else he could find at the moment.

As he sprinted towards the treeline he could feel Rainbow tighten her grasp on his neck. Thunder erupted right above them and it caused Rainbow to jump a bit. Messiah let out a very quiet chuckle.

When Messiah finally reached the Jungle, the sight took his breath away. In front of him was a world of green, untouched by man. The trees had vines crawling up their sides. It was almost impossible to see the ground as there were ferns and bushes everywhere. It was truly beautiful. This is how the world should look. He thought as the observed the pristine landscape.

As the two kept marching they noticed a distinct lack of rain. It seems that the Jungle canopy did a surprisingly effective job at keeping most, if not all of the rain away from the pair. Messiah decided it was now time to start  looking for some place to make camp, it was getting dark and both Messiah and Rainbow needed some sleep.

The two walked through the vegetation for about an hour until Messiah found a decent spot to make camp. It was a small dirt clearing that still had enough tree cover to protect the two from most of rain.

Seeing as how a fire would be nice, Messiah set out to try and find some wood that was not too wet to light.

As Rainbow sat alone in the clearing, she started to analyze the situation she had found herself in. Why was this guy helping her? What did he have to gain from this? She had seen him kill mercilessly but here he was, going the extra mile to help something that was not even from his world. Dash decided she would confront Messiah when he returned.

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How is it possible that all of this wood is wet?! Messiah was seriously starting to get frustrated. The humidity in the Jungle made it so that nearly all of the wood was nearly unusable to burn without some form of fuel. The rain that fell through the holes in the canopy really wasn't helping either.

After searching for about another fifteen minutes, Messiah hung his head in defeat. Mother nature, you win this round. He had some flares he could use to give them some light but a chemical burn simply was not the same as the warm glow of a fire.

Messiah returned to the pitiful camp site in resignation. “ Sorry Rainbow, no fire tonight.”

She was quiet for a moment before finally asking “ Why are you doing all of this?”

He recoiled a bit at Rainbow's question.

“I'm sorry?”

She towards Messiah with a dead serious face “ Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me? I'm not even from this place and you've done everything to help me.”

Messiah mulled over what she had said for a few moments before deciding on what to say.

“Well, I'm not heartless. I found you hurt and scared so i helped. It's what any decent person would do. And after getting to know you, I thought that maybe we could be friends.” Messiah had a warm, friendly smile on his face.

Dash had looked at his eyes the entire time and saw truth in his eyes. He really did like her and he barely knew her.

To Messiah, Rainbow represented the innocence that he had lost at such a young age. He had grown up to porn, rap and internet snuff films. At fifteen years old, young Messiah was more Jaded than his grandfather had been after a war and a long, hard life. Rainbow as none of that. She was young and innocent and had been thrown into one of the worst situations in the world. Messiah truly did like her.

While messiah was still looking at Dash, she got up and hugged Messiah and very quietly said “ Thanks...”

Messiah just smiled rested against a nearby tree. Rainbow just curled up in the clearing and tried to sleep. She was resting her head on her tail but she still looked very uncomfortable as she keep fidgeting and trying to find a comfortable way to sleep on dirt. Messiah knew from experience that she would not find one.

“Hey.” He called out, Rainbow looked up and saw him motion for here to come over to him. She obliged and once she got there, Messiah promptly gestured for her to rest on his lap. Once again Rainbow complied and she soon felt herself slipping into sleep resting her head on Messiah's warm and relatively soft lap.

Messiah just enjoyed the feeling of having something so young and innocent resting on him and he soon felt himself falling asleep.

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When Messiah awoke the next morning there were two things he noticed right away. The first was that there was a distinct lack of a certain cyan pony on his lap. The other being several men had surrounded him and were all pointing weapons at his face.

“You just can't win out here...” He grumbled.

As Messiah went to grab for his weapon, he soon realized his holster was empty. He looked up to see one of the men smiling sadistically.

That was the moment the butt stock of a rifle had the pleasure of making a particularly painful acquaintance with the back of Messiah's skull.