Pony On

It was a normal day in the Williams household. The parents, Matt and Samantha, were lazing on the couch as their youngest son and daughter, Amy and Stanley, sat watching some new cartoon on the medium-sized television screen. Katie and Alex, the two teenagers of the house, were nowhere to be found. Katie was probably out with friends again, most likely playing that new Mario game around Sarah's house. Alex was upstairs as usual, if Matt guessed right. Working on a new experiment, or making something artistic, depending on his mood.

Speaking of Alex, a thump from outside the room signaled his abrupt, and probably short, arrival downstairs. Samantha winced and hissed lightly, but Matt held onto her shoulder and she calmed immediately. "Relax, he knows better than anyone what his body can take."

Samantha hummed an agreement, but the effect was ruined by her scowl. "I know, but what if he slips or something? I hate having to rush him to-"

"Just getting some food and I'll be gone," came Alex's voice from the kitchen behind them, cutting off his mother's rants before they truly began. Matt sent a silent but thankful prayer to the heavens.

"Mind getting drinks for the kids, champ?" he returned quickly, then opened his mouth again as his wife did the same. "Also stop jumping down the stairs, your mother's brain can't handle the extra blood-flow."

"No promises about the jumping, but I'll get the drinks." Matt knew that was the best he'd get from his son after so many conversations on the same matter, so he just sighed audibly and waited.

Five minutes later saw the grey-haired, grey-eyed seventeen-year-old on his back in the living room, drinks supported on a plate by his raised leg. "Sorry, I tripped or something. Help?"

Samantha groaned and picked up two of the drinks while Matt grabbed the other two. Alex sighed and lowered his leg, wincing slightly as it clicked, though he made no other sign of noticing the noise. His mother's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Alex, it's getting worse. You should be upstairs, not-"

"Wait, what's getting worse?" the boy interrupted innocently, breaking the momentum of the woman's anger. Unfortunately, that backfired as she saw through the ruse with practiced ease.

"Your attitude, for one, young man! This isn't just a regular illness that you can shrug off in a few days, It's going to affect your entire life, and might even end it!" The brunette shook off her husband's arm and stood up, grappling Alex under the arms and hauling him onto his feet with surprising grace. "You're getting lighter each day, your limbs keeping locking up and clicking, your hair's going grey already, I just d-don't understand why!"

Alex rolled his eyes as she burst into tears, pulling her into a hug and awkwardly patting her on the back. "Relax, mum, I've almost got the cure figured out, alright? I just need a few days to perfect it, that's all." Samantha nodded blearily through her tears, smiling sadly at her first born, her worries somewhat abated by the calming words.

The words felt hollow to Alex, though. He'd been working on a cure, but the illness was nothing like he'd ever seen. He was a solver of scientific mysteries, and he was about to be murdered by an illness that disobeyed every single science he'd studied. Hah, what a way to go.

Whatever it was couldn't even be called a disease. It wasn't caused by anything apparent, rather it seemed like his body was tearing itself apart, trying to adapt to some change in the surroundings. Except nothing had changed in the surroundings.

Except...

"I'll be going now, I just had an epiphany." With that, Alex let go of his mother, nodded to his father with a smirk and left the room.

Boom.

"I'm okay!"

Alex groaned as he searched his kid sister's bedroom for... Aha, there it was. That strange gem he'd found months ago and given to Amy. He hadn't seen it before, but that had been just before his joints had started clicking.

Honestly, he should really remember to think in all four dimensions. Thinking backwards in time had been the answer to so many issues, like why the universe wasn't made of antimatter (answer:the universe was actually a bi-verse), that it was ridiculous for him to not have thought back before his symptoms had started showing.

The gem was pure white and actually quite large, about as big as those plastic tubs of ketchup you get at fast food places. It felt strangely light though, not even as heavy as a marble, but the way the light reflected told him that it wasn't made of glass. He stumbled to his bedroom slash office, cursing his failing body all the way, and tested it under a quark microscope of his own design.

"Hmm. Not made from quarks, that's a start. Plenty of particles all over the place, smaller than quarks and not as regular. Don't seem to be forming any structures, so probably stable when isolated." Still looking at the screen, Alex hesitantly tapped the gem with a pencil, raising an eyebrow when the particles rippled in reply. Strangely enough, the material returned to its previous arrangement in a matter of seconds.

Four hours of study later, Alex threw down his pencil. There was no way to properly interact with the material, which meant no way to reverse whatever it had caused. He was back to square one, with only twenty minutes until midnight.

According to his best guesses, let left him with just over four hours until his inevitable death. Four hours to wrap things up.

Alex picked up a pen and began writing once more.

ARTICLE I: Funeral Expenses.

Gliding down the steep staircase despite the aching of his legs, Alex headed to the front door with as little noise as possible. Unfortunately, his father had ears like... something with good ears. He wasn't really feeling up to using similes at the moment.

"Hey champ, you going out?"

Alex sighed, glad that his father didn't seem to oppose his leaving. "Yeah, just dropping off a letter to another doctor, I wanna get another opinion on the finished cure."

His dad replied in a stern tone. "Just remember to take-"

"-the wheelchair, I know dad, I've been doing it for weeks now!" What the rest of his family didn't know was that Alex literally couldn't stand for more than five minutes by this point. He really felt terrible for not letting them know how bad the illness really was, but they'd understand when he was gone, right?

...

Right?

The dying teen picked up the light-weight wheelchair and headed outside, closing the door behind him before collapsing into the seat. In his hands were three pieces of paper. Two were letters, and one was his final will.

As Alex lay on his back in the dark, he reflected on his life, or what little he could actually remember. It was mostly just snippets - Accidentally shouting too loud in maths class; sitting in his aunt Tracy's house with Katie, waiting for his mother to come back with twin babies; coming home with a massive grin and a scar on his elbow from a bike accident - that sort of thing. It was a nostalgic moment, but it also passed far too quickly before he ran out of memories.

What happened to the ice skating trip? The jet skiing? Those times he just sat downstairs with the rest of his family, watching his favourite movie of all time, WALL-E? Where had all those memories gone?

Oh right. He'd forgotten.

It was strange to think that he'd ever done anything other than sit in his bedroom, tinkering with microscopes and test tubes, figuring out the basic mechanics of a bi-verse that loved to prove him wrong.

Maybe the illness had been Fate's way of saying, 'Get your ass downstairs and bond with your family!' But no, he'd wasted those precious weeks searching for a cure. Cancer had taken over seventy years to just guarantee an eighty-percent survival rate, and he assumed he could tackle an entirely new illness in a month? It had been sheer idiocy to even contemplate his success.

Oh well. It was all the past now, just like his life would be within the next... Three hours, according to his watch, which he now removed along with the rest of his clothing, pulling on some loose pyjamas.

No regrets.

Alex crept down the hall, spotting the door he wanted to his right. He silently pulled on the handle and push the door open, barely flinching when the hinges gave a squeak. Katie was a heavy sleeper, and he doubted a plane crash could wake her if she was clipped by the wings.

Sitting down on the floor next to his fourteen-year-old sister's bed, Alex caught his breath after a few minutes and stood up, budging the quilt over so he could see her face as she slept. "Goodnight, Katie."

He ghosted out of the room as silently as he came in. The next twenty minutes would see him inside his parents' bedroom, and another ten with his five-year-old twin siblings.

At two in the morning, Alex returned to his own bed, staring up at where his ceiling would be if it weren't for the dark. The darkness slowly shifted into a dull grey, then back to the regular black as he stared.

"No regrets."

And this time, if only for a minute or two, he could actually believe it.