Wild was lying in bed, wide awake. No matter which position he took, no matter how he organized the sheets and the pillows, sleep refused to come to him. His room was the perfect temperature, his body was clean and fresh after a shower, and he could feel physical tiredness, yet something was simply not right.

The descarring ointment he applied as instructed didn’t feel like anything at all past the first few minutes. There was no burning, no itching, no pain, nothing. It was safe to say that the ointment wasn’t the source of his discomfort.

In truth, what worried him enough to prevent him from sleeping had nothing to do with his body but with his mind. He remembered how he pulled himself together as a spirit, how he thought there was so much to do and so many things to live for, and yet... all these possibilities, they were, if he were honest to himself, a bit too much. He was at the crossroads with many directions in front of him, yet taking a single step towards any of them seemed impossible, as if his hooves were frozen in place and he couldn't move no matter how much he wanted to.

Wild flew out of his body, deciding that he couldn’t focus on the physical if he was to solve the mental. Subtle tension present in his body until now was gone and, from what Wild could see, it immediately went to sleep. Looking at his own body not through his own eyes was an odd experience, so he turned away and focused inwards. His own thoughts became sharper, clearer, and the absence of any true sensation was freeing in a way he couldn’t describe.

He flew through the window, heading outside. This night, a rain was scheduled, and he hoped to fall asleep to its sounds, although now it was clear no such thing would happen until he figured certain things out. As he floated there in the air, droplets of water went straight through him as if he wasn't there, and he didn’t feel any of them. The air was nice and fresh, the smell of moist earth and fallen leaves permeating it. It was dark, yet Wild didn’t need physical eyes to perceive his surroundings, as odd as they were when seen through his not-eyes. He took a moment to note just how fascinated a scientist would be if this possibility was theirs and not his. For Wild, this state, while interesting, was not something he intended to really marvel at. Not because he lacked curiosity but, perhaps, because there was some... fear. He decided to put it away and address it later - or never.

Not feeling wet under the rain, not having to blink his eyes to see clearly, not tasting the raindrops on his tongue, it was... a different sort of experience. No distracting physical sensations, only his mere spiritual presence. In fact, there was a sense that had gone away completely - the awareness of his body. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew how it was supposed to be, and to not feel the weight of his body, to not feel his own skin, it was... he couldn’t describe it if he tried. He thought that perhaps it should have been maddening, distressing, but a part of him also knew that it was how it was supposed to be. After all, why would he feel bodily sensations when he didn’t have a body at all?

There he was, not even standing, not sitting, not lying down, but just being. He felt the phantom sensation of breathing in, then he breathed out without air traveling through his lungs. The wind went past him without resistance, without even brushing past him - there was no touch whatsoever.

There was a pony shape in the dark clouds. He looked closer and saw that it was a pegasus, an adult pegasus, and they were walking all around the cloud before rearing up, and...

BANG

A lightning flashed and it thundered, not quite as loudly as Wild expected. For just a single moment, everything sharpened, shadows stretching with clearly defined edges for an instant before everything was dark again.

More lightning strikes followed from elsewhere, growing more and more distant until there was a noticeable delay between when the light flashed and when the thunder sounded, now just a distant rumble instead of a sharp bang.

The droning noise of the rain returned, and Wild sunk into a meditation. There was only him, his very being, the only thing that was of him that he was aware of. With a pang, he thought about how much he missed his parents. They guided him the best they could, he knew, and despite their efforts going to waste, he couldn’t forget all that they had done for him. He was a problematic child, yet they didn’t throw him away, didn’t abandon him, and there would forever be a sense of gratitude for that.

However, his parents weren’t there anymore. The closest people to him were gone, unrecoverable. He, however, remained, and he would have to live with what life gave to him. It was true that he no longer wanted to die - the escape into nothingness was no longer guaranteed, and now that he knew souls existed... he feared that there would yet be another life, perhaps even an afterlife - in truth, what could happen next was so far out of his knowledge it wasn't even funny. He didn’t know where souls went after death, he didn’t know where they came from, and this lack of knowledge made him... tense. Perhaps it would be best if he didn't tempt fate with another ill-thought attempt at ridding of his own life.

The appointment with Luna that he would have to go to was both a blessing and a curse. So far, things had gone... as smoothly as they could be expected to, perhaps. He had told her some things about himself, and she accepted them. She didn’t look at him in disgust, and that was important. He could trust her with more now, he felt, although he wasn’t sure what he would tell her next. Undoubtedly, she would want to know more about his own past, and yet he couldn’t stop feeling anxious about his own future. The past, the present, and the future were all intertwined, after all, and it was unclear how to untangle the knot he had found himself in.

However, Luna would remain ever-distant because of who she was. She was a princess, a ruler of a country first and foremost. Wild didn’t believe he would ever be her priority, not like he was to his parents. However, he couldn’t drop his own problems on others either - it would be unfair to them. He had known Precision and Swingblade the longest out of all the ponies he had met, but he could see both of them weren’t yet mature enough - and, hopefully, would never have to be - in order to handle who and what he was. He very much doubted they would ever want to hear about it. Swift Strike was out of consideration as well - he was a good trainer, but Wild had no other relationship with him and, likely, never would. Artful was nice, but Wild felt ill at the thought of exposing his own trauma to someone like him. It would hurt Artful tremendously, he just knew that.

He realized that who he wanted, who he needed, were his parents. They would at least listen, he knew, and they would help him in every way that they could. Perhaps they, likewise, would accept that he was a sadist. As long as he didn’t hurt innocent people, it had to be fine. Safer, of course, would be to never tell them. Either way, the point was moot - they were dead.

Wild knew that what he needed was proper guidance from someone who cared, from someone who placed him first. Yet whom could he demand such a thing from?

He was an adult now. When he was a kid, the prospect of having to find a job, of having to find a way to live all by himself was distant, somewhere in the far future. He had never gotten around to discussing what he wanted to do when he grew up. Of course, as a kid, he had some dreams - to be a knight. That, he knew, was... perhaps not impossible - Equestria was ruled by princesses, after all - but it was still a childish dream stemming from the shining yet decidedly fake images of fair knights that lived by codes of honor, sworn to protect the innocent. He didn’t think he could live that way even if it was somehow possible.

He remembered he was the one his family turned to when there were computer problems. However, he couldn’t make a living out of that - his knowledge of computers was limited by how to clean them, how to replace parts like a processor, memory, storage, or a video card, and how to assemble them. Aside from that, he had yet to see anything resembling a computer in Equestria. If any existed, they likely took entire rooms just like the computers of the past had once been back on Earth.

Wild knew he was... perhaps not bad at survival. After all, he only faced death because he made it happen, not because something outside of his control killed him. However, who would ever want to learn how to survive in a city when one had nothing? It was not a situation he could see ponies ever facing. He tried to picture Swingblade huddling under a bridge, hoping that the cops wouldn’t notice him from the road, and he couldn’t. He tried to see Precision digging through the trash in order to find a half-eaten pack of chips to stave off the hunger for just a bit longer, and he couldn’t. He tried to picture Lina... well, there was only one way she would end up being in his situation - dead.

Wild didn’t want to face homelessness again, yet it appeared this would be his only option once he inevitably aged out of the Royal Orphanage. He had yet to see any adults there aside from the staff and the caretakers, so there had to be some sort of a cutoff age. In truth, he should have been kicked out already, considering that he was an adult in all but body, and even then he didn’t see much difference between how he looked and how the adult stallions he had seen so far looked. He shouldn’t have been among all those kids in the first place, it was only by mistake that he was placed with them.

At least now he had magic. At least he could stay awake while his body was asleep. With just these two abilities alone, he would be able to survive far easier than before. Telekinesis was extremely useful by itself, and he knew he could do teleportation, although he had yet to attempt to do it again consciously. Being able to separate from his body meant he could watch over it while it rested, to never be suddenly woken up ever again. Of course, there was also his ability to read certain thoughts, and that would have been a tremendous boon. He would have... he would have known to avoid people who would harm him. He would have never been... defiled, dehumanized, made into a thing.

He would, perhaps, grow to be thankful of these abilities he now had, but he was resentful towards them - where were they when he was going hungry out on the street? Where were they when he was beaten and bloodied? Where were they when he had to endure rape time and time again? He would have done so much, he would have avoided so much, all if only he had had what he now had.

Black rage rose up in Wild, a scorching all-consuming fire. Why did it all had to happen to him? He now knew it would have been possible for things to have gone differently, so why didn’t they? Why did he have to go through any of it and why did he have to survive? He had tried, oh he had tried to die, but life would not let him go. Not once but twice had he lived, had faced the end and yet came out of it alive both times, against all odds and reason.

It was unfair. The Changeling Invasion ruined the illusion of peace, and he hated the changelings responsible for that, hated them with a passion, and he wanted them hurt for what they have taken away from him. He had thought that he could have forgotten his past, let it lay buried, that he could perhaps be a living ghost, existing yet not living, experiencing neither happiness nor sorrow, and yet...

Wild was now awake and aware of all that was happening. He had tried to bury his past, but it was still there, it could not be ignored. The Changeling Invasion reminded him that his life was not in his control, and the Nightmare solidified that fact.

He wasn’t an innocent, he knew. He had killed, he had hurt, violently, tremendously - he had tortured. Perhaps that was what he deserved. Perhaps every bad thing that had ever happened to him was because of him, of who and what he was.

Despite it all, he desired to live in peace. That was all he ever truly wanted, that was the only thing he desired. And yet, why was it so impossible for him to be at peace? Why did he have to go through everything that he did? He thought his death would be the end of it all, but no, he had to go on, had to be reborn, had to endure an attack, had to go against evil spirits, had to remember everything that made him who he was, and he hated it.

If he still had fists, they would be painfully clenched. If he were in his body there and then, his eyes would have been squeezed shut, holding the tears at bay, and his body would have been as stiff as a stone statute.

Nothing was fair, nothing was going how he wanted, everything was wrong. He hated it, he hated it, he despised it.

Was it too much for him to ask to just... be alone, by himself, undisturbed by anyone or anything? This world with colorful ponies and beautiful nature everywhere gave him a promise, a false promise he clung to without knowing it was false, without knowing it could be false. The Changeling Invasion had shown him that he was not safe. The Nightmare had shown him that his very soul could be ripped away. Ripped away and then put back together, and he did it. He could have let go and yet he refused, believing that he could perhaps live a life that he knew he didn’t deserve.

Was he destined for this forever, to have something so tantalizing within his sight yet never be able to reach it, always reminded of this inability? Was it his penance of some kind? Even as a part of him argued that it was what he deserved, another roared at it, spewing hateful words of denial.

He did not ask for it. He had not wanted to live on. He did not want to suffer so much for the sake of some beings’ lust for power or outright mindless evil. That changeling princess, whoever she was, why did she attack the defenseless, why did she try to rip his mind apart? Even if he perhaps deserved the pain, no one else around him did. Was it his presence that caused it? Was it he who was at fault for everything going so wrong?

He hated it and he could do nothing about it.

For a long while, he simply felt this hatred, his burning rage at the unfairness of the world, of everything. What wouldn’t he give to take the place of Precision or Swingblade or Artful or even Lina. They had a future. They had friends. They could have what he wanted. They could live a life, not merely existence. He would, in a blink, without hesitation, trade all his abilities just to be a regular person.

However, his pleas would remain unheard and his wishes would not be fulfilled. Even if he screamed them into the night, all they could do was disappear into the all-consuming noise of the rain.

A series of lightning strikes flashed again, one after the other in an organized queue courtesy of the weather scheduling efforts of the pegasi. Wild’s tumultuous thoughts could have perhaps been reflected by a natural thunder back on Earth, but the organized efficiency of the weather in Equestria was an entirely different thing, and so Wild found himself winding down from his rage as if the water falling from the sky washed it away.

The past, he knew, could not be changed. Thinking of what could have been was useless. Crying about not having what he could have had was a waste. Everything that he was, he was stuck with.

Wild didn’t know what it was like to truly make decisions for himself, and he was perhaps finally coming around to understanding it. Survival wasn’t about making choices. Even revenge, to a degree, wasn’t about making choices. Death and the way he achieved it was not a decision that truly belonged to him either.

In the end, it was all about what he felt he needed to do. It was not about choice at all. Survival was a need. Revenge was a need. Death was, too, a need. When one needs something, there is no choice but to get it.

Wild, as he stood there disembodied, realized it. Perhaps, at some level, he had always known it, but now, when he had time to think, when there was nothing but his own mind, nothing but his very soul, he could see what he had been blind to before, purposefully or not. He had looked inwards, and he had seen the truth as it was.

The prospect of making an actual choice, of operating on something other than need, was both exciting in a way that he hadn’t felt in a long time yet also very anxious in a way that he was very familiar with. However, there was one thing he wanted very much to know - how to make a choice. What did it even mean to make a choice when one had a choice? Could anyone teach him or did he have to learn it by himself somehow?

Wild released a phantom sigh, imagining how a cloud of vapor would emerge from his mouth with it. Was it even cold enough for this? He couldn’t tell.

This night, perhaps, resulted in a resolution - Wild needed to make a choice - not only that, but multiple choices, over and over again, for as long as he continued to live. Life, after all, was full of choices, new ones emerging every single day. Wild could no longer allow himself to simply follow the events and react to them when they affected him, even if the choices he needed to make next were a direct result of the events outside of his control.

However, he could delay that for just a little longer. He retreated from the outside, returning to his body, and finally fell asleep completely.

Until he woke up, he wouldn’t have to choose anything, and he would take relief in that for as long as he could without shame or guilt.

Author's Note

Taking a lot of time to think, beating yourself up and all, it's all pretty familiar to me, I did it all the time when I had depression. I would probably be depressed less if I had amazing magic power and the ability to just let my body rest while I did stuff around as a spirit.

I have decided to change when I post chapters. Instead of around 6 in the morning when I usually go to sleep, I will now post Fimfiction chapters at 3 in the afternoon, just in time for a Boosty chapter to be released. Well, that's my time, which is 4 hours after Moscow time, and I'm now a bit too lazy to look up what it is in any of the standard times.