The wind whipped around Princess Luna, ruffling her fur, her mane, her tail, and her feathers as she flew across the night sky. Wild, in his spirit form, produced nothing but a cloud of black and red moving just slightly ahead of her in perfect silence. The two didn’t speak - there was no need to speak nor desire to do so from Wild’s side.

Luna wanted to be angry at her sister, and, in some way, she was - her sister had needlessly hurt Wild. Luna knew it was all to protect her, that it could be justified because spirits often did worse - the biggest example was the Spirit of Chaos, Discord, who had immeasurable power and did not concern themself with such things as caring about how their actions impacted others. They sowed chaos, that was what they did, and they marveled in it.

Luna couldn’t fault Celestia for going through with questioning Wild under the influence of the Truth Spell. In the end, Wild came out in one piece, even though it did not make what was done to him any better.

Luna should have known it was a mistake leaving herself out of the security arrangements. At the time, not too long after her return, she justified it with the fact that she didn’t spend much time at the Canterlot Royal Castle, and when she did, it was with her sister, so there was no need for the security spells to be connected to her. The castle was never really her home, after all. However, now she knew the folly of her decision. When Wild was detected, Luna was closer to him, and she would have gotten to him before Celestia, and everything would have turned out alright.

Sometimes, Luna wished Starswirl had completed his time-travel spell if only Luna could go back in time and prevent the mistakes she had made from ever happening in the first place. However, such was not reality, and the danger of a paradox was far too great to ignore just for the sake of her own selfishness. She had made her choices, had experienced the consequences, and she could only go forward after having learned from them in one way or another.

Luna looked at Wild again, taking in his form as he blurred across the dark, star-filled skies. He had suffered the consequences for her actions or inactions, and she wished people she cared about would simply not be affected by her own stupidity. Alas, that was not the way of reality, and she could only do her best to fix it after the fact.

Had she been ready for an attack during the wedding of her niece, Wild and many others would not have been hurt. She knew it was only luck that no one suffered permanent injuries or death, although she suspected the mental toll was greater than one could see. Equestria was supposed to be safe, and it had been safe for a long time... until Luna returned, and now it appeared every being that wished Equestria and its denizens harm was coming out. She knew not what would come in the future, but she knew something was going to happen, and she would be prepared if she had anything to say about it.

Had Luna not tried to push further before Wild was ready, he would not have run away, would not have gotten into the clutches of the Nightmare. Had she not been a coward, she would have dealt with the Nightmare before they could even think of sinking their claws into anyone else. Had Luna never bought into their promises, the last thousand years would not pass for Celestia without her sister by her side.

Luna had done much despite her relatively short life - and a thousand years on the moon were now a blink of nothingness among her memories. Perhaps she was chronologically old, yet she had not grown, had not changed over the many centuries that passed between her banishment and her return. Her mind was still occupied by those she had known from the past while Celestia had known thousands of ponies that had come and gone throughout her extremely long life.

Luna recognized Celestia, yet she was entirely different. Less haughty, more serene, and far more distant than ever before even if it didn’t appear so on the surface. Luna wished she had seen her big sister grow, she wished she had had the chance to grow alongside her, to learn to stand together no matter what, yet...

Luna’s actions had consequences, and everything she had ever done came with a price attached, a price others paid, and a price that was always heavy. Had she been less composed, she would aim her eyes at the sky and beg to learn an answer to one simply question.

Why me?

She glanced at Wild again, wondering if he was asking himself the same question even if for different reasons. Life had been extremely unfair to him, kicking him down again and again, yet all she could see was a person who was striving to be better and to find their own happiness. Perhaps Luna and Wild were no different in regards to how the world seemed to want to squash them time and time again.

Luna wondered what Wild would be like in five years, a decade, two, half a century. Would he have a chance to live a long life? Through adversity, one could gain alicornhood, and to Luna, he looked like one of the very few who could achieve it in their relatively short lifetime, earning himself a much longer life to, perhaps, live it far more fully than he would have ever been able to otherwise.

Wild had already discovered something Luna didn’t believe many ponies could do - being an untethered spirit. With proper training, she knew, it was possible for ponies - and not just ponies - to achieve astral projection, yet Wild’s ability was beyond that. It was no projection - it was him in his entirety as far as anything non-physical was concerned. Perhaps it was his circumstances of having traveled between words that led him to learn it, yet there certainly was skill involved, considering that he gained a talent mark for the feat. Or perhaps it had something to do with what happened between he was violently torn from his body and when he returned to it. Luna didn’t know and she wasn’t about to ask.

Luna wished she could let Wild know precisely what she hoped for him, how ready she was to support him no matter where his path took him in this life. He needed guidance as well, and she was ready and willing to provide, to help him achieve his happiness, yet she also knew she must not push before Wild was ready. She had made a mistake once, and this time it wouldn’t take more for her to learn from it.

However, just because she could avoid repeating one mistake, didn’t mean she wouldn’t make more, and her shortsightedness had cost Wild a piece of whatever innocence had remained in him. For Celestia, the ruler of the country, one of the most powerful people alive - physically, politically, and magically - to have hurt him... he, undoubtedly, would not forget it no matter what apologies she could give. Luna wished she knew exactly what happened so that she could fix it.

Unfortunately, many things would never become truly whole again once broken, and Luna knew precisely what it meant.

***

Wild was silent throughout the flight, wishing he could feel what Luna felt when she soared in the skies. However, Wild didn’t have wings and never would, so he would only be able to fly outside his body.

He could look down and not fear that he would plummet to his death. From this high up, everything beneath was so impossibly tiny, and everything looked far closer than it was in reality. Wild, before now, had never had the chance to experience real heights. He had climbed trees, was on roofs of low buildings, but he had never been in flight, never been up high almost among the low Equestrian clouds. However, he was in no mood to truly appreciate what he was seeing.

Wild and Luna landed in a small clearing not far from the Royal Orphanage. He inhaled deeply - or, at least, made internal motions that resembled it and almost felt like it. There was a question burning within him even as he knew the answer.

“Life hates me,” he revealed the answer, sharing it with Luna.

“Why... do you think so?” she slowly asked, looking at him with worry and concern. He didn’t need her worry, yet he couldn’t bring himself to say so.

“Since I came here, I... things happened to me,” he replied instead, slowly growing bolder with revealing what had been bothering him for a while, “Bad things. I learned that, no matter where, life hates me and wants me suffer.”

Unbeknownst to Wild, Luna could sympathize, and she desired to reveal her own thoughts on it, yet she knew he wasn’t yet finished.

“Maybe... maybe it is what I deserve,” Wild claimed, looking into her eyes, “For who I am.”

Luna did her best not to let it show on her face how much it hurt to hear. She wished she could hug him right here and right now, but she knew it would not be enough. She didn’t go with Wild expecting to have a therapy session with him, and so she wasn’t prepared. However, he needed her now, and she had to help him. She just needed to find out exactly how.

“Contrary to what many think, most things do not happen to us for any reason,” she began, “They simply happen. There is no sort of system that decides who ought to be punished and who ought to be rewarded according to any kind of rules. Good things don’t always happen to people who are thought of as ‘good’, and bad things don’t always happen to people who are considered ‘bad’.”

“How can you know that?” Wild asked, “Magic is real. It can make things... different. And I thought it did not exist. I thought spirits did not exist, or ghosts, or magical ponies, or... many other things. How can you know there are no rules, no system?”

“Many people around the world tried to find out the rules for thousands of years yet have not succeeded,” Luna replied, “There is no consistency to what kind of things happen to what kind of people.”

“Some people are above the rules,” Wild said, venom in his voice, “Some people... make rules, and they choose who has to follow the rules and who does not. It does not need to be consistent. It just needs to be.”

Luna knew he was right, and he spoke again before she could figure out what to say.

“I deserve what I get,” he declared, “For... who I am. Or was. All of us deserve it. All of us humans. That is who I was before I became a pony - a human,” he paused for a moment as if to take a breath, but he didn’t need it. Were he in his body, there would have been a small tremble in his limbs, and his heart would have been beating fast, hammering in his chest, “Our world is awful. Our world is disgusting. We are killing it. What happens to us is a punishment for how... for how evil we are.”

Luna had hoped to learn more about where Wild came from, but not like this. Not when he spoke with so much hatred in his voice, how much self-loathing was there dripping off of him.

“You do not know who we are,” he continued, “We can destroy ourselves and the entire world in minutes. We made a... thing that explodes. Not with explosive powder but with a, a thing that poisons if you stand near it. We made many of those things, enough to destroy all seven billion of us. Seven billion. Gone in just a few minutes, wiped. We are capable of this.”

“Magic is capable of great destruction as well,” Luna said, “If all unicorns came together with the intent to destroy the world, they would be able to. My sister, if she ever decided that we must die in a fiery inferno, would be able to do that.”

“But she doesn’t, and magic can create,” Wild retorted, “Humans can’t create nearly as much as we can destroy. We can wipe ourselves off the face of the planet, but we can’t create new life. If someone dies, they die, leaving no ghost, nothing. When they are gone, they are gone and can’t be returned. Time and time again, we destroy and we kill. We had two world wars where tens of millions died for nothing but ambitions of those hungry for power, who did not fight in those wars themselves.

“You don’t know our history, Princess Luna, you don’t know the evil we are capable of. We pollute where we live, we destroy everything in our way for selfish reasons, we kill for fun, and many of us enjoy causing pain without reason and without any rules or restrictions.”

“And you believe you must be punished for what you have not done?” Luna asked.

“I am capable of doing it all too,” Wild countered, “I can kill - and I killed.”

“You killed those who deserved it.”

“And I tortured them first,” he finally admitted, not looking at her but knowing that her eyes widened at it, “I tortured them because they tortured me, and I enjoyed it. And I wish they did not have to die quickly, I wish I had more time to inflict everything they have ever inflicted on me and then more until they were begging me for death, begging me for release, until they knew I was the one who decided their life,” he looked at Luna, “We humans are like that. We like causing pain. I killed those who deserved it, but can you say I will never kill an innocent?

“Let me tell you something. The Changeling Invasion? It would barely be newsworthy there. Our invasions leave thousands dead, hundreds of thousands homeless and displaced. If humans invaded instead of changelings, the Royal Orphanage would be rubble, your sister would be dead, and at least half the population of Equestria would be wiped.”

Luna didn’t want to believe it, but the utter conviction in Wild’s voice was impossible to ignore. She knew and she reminded herself that he was biased, but he was not lying to her, and so she had to take what he said seriously.

“Changelings invaded for a reason, but humans can invade for no reason at all,” he continued, “Or we can make up a reason, destroy everything, and then say that ‘oops, we should not have done that because the reason was not real’ and leave. And... you know, maybe I am not the only human here. If I came here, someone else could. Maybe even now, someone is planning to take over, to bring more humans here, to destroy all that you have built. To raze your fields, to turn your cities into rubble, to turn your rivers poisonous, to turn the air into toxic fog, to rape those who remain and to bury those that they would kill in unmarked mass graves.

“I am a human. I do not want to do any of it to any of you. I never want to do it,” his voice turned desperate, “I like it here, I love it here, but... but I know who I am. I know what I can do. I know it’s in my nature. Life pushing me down is the way I am... restrained. As long as I am focused on surviving it all, I can’t think of taking it all for myself.”

“Wild, you’re not defined by what species you were born as,” Luna insisted, “If you don’t want to do something that you say your species does, then don’t do it. They have no power over you.”

“If they came here... they would make me,” Wild said, his voice defeated.

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Luna assured him, “I promise you I will do my best to not let it happen. We ponies know what it is to be hunted, and we know how to resist and how to win.

“Wild, you must realize that destruction is not exclusive to your species. We have frozen our ancient homeland, and no one has been able to live there ever since. One day, maybe we would be able to return it to how it was, but we destroyed it. Cities and villages, all gone, buried under snow and ice. I don’t know what kind of destruction your species can do, but I assure you, we can cause a catastrophe of enormous magnitude if we ever wished to.

“Wild, you are not evil. Certainly not because you were born to your species. Your birth circumstances do not decide who you are. You decide who you are, who you want to be.”

Wild stood in place, silently, and Luna didn’t know whether he was accepting her words or if he was doing his best to ignore them and instead punish himself for things not under his control.

“I have known many who were born to those who had done great evils,” she continued, “But they were not defined by their parents. They made their own path. Many of them decided to make amends in place of their parents. If how we were born decided who we are, would it have been possible? Yes, where we are born, to which family we belong at first, it all influences us. But we are not those who came before us. Each and every single one of us is their own person. You are your own person. Please, Wild, ask yourself this - who do you want to be?”

“...I... I don’t know,” he admitted, “I... I will be back in a moment.”

With that, he flew away, and Luna patiently waited, knowing he would return. Minutes passed, and she had to stop herself from following Wild - he would come back. True to his words, a short while later, Luna heard hoof steps. She turned her head and saw Wild making his way to her, now back in his body. As he turned his head, she glimpsed a shine on his face under his eyes.

He stopped in front of her and sat down. He tapped his front hoof against the ground, his whole body slumped, a stark contrast to the stillness of his spirit.

“I don’t know what to do,” he rasped, “Everything is... I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Tears dropped from his face, and then he lunged at Luna and cried. She embraced him, expecting it, and felt him shudder.

“I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know,” he whimpered quietly, “I just want... I just want... to be left alone. To be peaceful. I don’t want to hurt, not, not... not like that. I am sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Luna gently stroked his back using her magic, “Wild, it is alright. Let it out.”

“Why do those things h-happen to me?” he sobbed, “I... I died, and I thought... maybe things w-would change. I want them to c-change. B-but... I am still a, a human.”

“Who you are is who you decide to be,” Luna told him, “No one can decide it for you, certainly not people you do not even know who simply share your species.”

“I want to b-be good...” he admitted, “I am tired of pain. I just want... I just want... rest. Peace,” he raised his head, separating from the embrace just enough to be able to look in Luna’s eyes, “I wish I could forget everything and be... a new person. Without... without what I remember,” he looked away, “But I know it is not possible. I have to... I have to do with what I have.”

“You don’t have to be alone in this.”

“I don’t know how you can help me...” he said, “You are... you shouldn’t spend your time on me. It is a waste.”

“It is not a waste,” Luna denied, “You will never be a waste. No one is a waste.”

“Why do I h-have to be the way I am?” Wild asked once more, “I... I am tired.”

“I will help you, I promise. You deserve to have happiness.”

Wild didn’t know if he truly believed it, but... perhaps he could try. However, he had a question he dreaded to ask.

“I...” he swallowed, “I told you I tortured,” and he could not say anymore.

“You tortured those who tortured you?”

“...Yes.”

“It was well within your rights as their victim,” Luna told him, “If the law is powerless, if you had no one to turn to... you did what you had to do. I cannot fault you for wanting to harm them, to return at least a part of the pain that they have inflicted on you.”

“But I can’t return it. It’s still there.”

“It is,” Luna nodded, “But they are dead. They can no longer hurt you.”

“And I must not let them control me anymore. They can’t make me.”

“They can’t. And I will help you move past it. Not to forget, not to forgive. But to accept what happened, and then look to the future.”

“I... I don’t have a future.”

“You will find one,” Luna said with conviction, “Not everyone knows where they want to be and what they want to do. Many do not know it even deep in their old age. But you will not be thrown aside. You will not be rejected.”

“...Thank you,” Wild said quietly, “I... you... no one has cared about me for... for a long time.”

“I do,” Luna squeezed him gently, “I care about you. I want you to be happy. I will help you. You just have to ask.

“...Okay. I will. Somehow.”

“I thank you for your trust,” Luna said, “I hope to continue not to disappoint you, Wild. Even if I may misstep sometimes, I hope you understand that I do not wish you harm.”

“I know,” Wild nodded, “I... I don’t... I won’t share everything.”

“As is your right.”

“But... you are helping me,” he swallowed, “And... I... I need to talk about it. I need to, to move... past. To move on. Because I want it. I want to live.”

“And I will do my best to help you get the life you want,” Luna assured him, “Now, come. You are tired, and I think sleep would do you well. Everything else can be left for later. I am not going away anywhere, and there are more ponies who would do their best to help you if you just ask.”

“...I don’t know who to ask.”

“It is my fault you don’t know,” Luna admitted, “By tomorrow, I will have a list of ponies sent to you, and I assure you that each and every one of them is extremely well-qualified for what they do and will do their best to help you with anything you may need help with, no matter how trivial you may think your issues are.”

“And... what about the ghost?”

“Tomorrow,” Luna insisted, “You should get some rest. It was a trying night for you. If you allow, I will watch over your dreams to make sure you have a restful sleep.”

“...Alright,” Wild nodded, and the two separated, “Thank you.”

Luna led Wild back to the Royal Orphanage, where he returned to his dorm, fell on the bed, and was asleep the moment his head hit the pillow. As promised, his dreams did not bring distress, and so he slept.

Author's Note

One may notice that I'm not writing Discord as a he in this story. I don't think someone like Discord would stick to any gender or sex in particular.

And now Luna knows the depths of Wild's self-loathing and what reasons he has for it. Misanthropy is just par for the course. I personally once shared his opinion when I was very depressed, but I no longer do. We are capable of inflicting grave evil on others, don't take me wrong, but we are also capable of doing good. I do emphasize with people who come to hate humanity, and it's not an easy thing to go away from.