Loose Ends

"So the reason I'm... what I am, is because --"

"I did it," she says, still refusing to look at me when she says it. "I -- I turned you into a pony. I mean, it took all of us -- the Elements, I mean -- but I was the one who figured it out. There was this spell that -- you know Starswirl the Bearded? Um, no, of course you -- well anyway, he tried to create a spell to transform himself, it was in this book you see, but it wasn't complete, and when I first used it..."

We're back in Ponyville, and I'm on a dirt path heading out to Sweet Apple Acres. Apparently, that's where they found me after the Doctor -- sorry, the changeling -- tried to kill me. The smell of apples is weirdly familiar, though I don't remember having specifically noticed it before. Of course, I'd been busy dying when I was here the first time, so apples probably hadn't been my top priority.

I'm walking side by side with one of Equestria's princesses, Twilight Sparkle. A pair of armored unicorn guards pace us maybe fifty feet behind, watching me closely. And, I now know why that weird purple color keeps flashing through my head. It's not just the color of Twilight's coat, but also of her magic, which she'd used abundantly to keep me from dying. The color seems oddly vibrant to me now, as though her magic has become part of me -- which, based on what she's saying, it probably has. She's still talking about the spell, all nerves and worry, because she's the one who took my human body away from me. It was her magic that had --

"Saved me," I interrupt her as she rambles on about the spell, forcing the thought through my lips before I say something else entirely. "You saved me, you know that. None of you had ever seen anything like -- like what I was."

She peers tentatively over at me, her face still screwed into a concerned expression. "No. We had no idea what you were. All we knew was that you could talk, and you were hurt -- Walker, there was so much blood," she said, wincing. "We had to try to save you, but nobody knew how. If you'd been a griffon or a minotaur we could have found a book or something, or if you'd been a different animal then Fluttershy might have --"

"I understand," I interrupt again, a bit more gruffly than I mean to. "You've got nothing to apologize for. I owe you my life, all of you."

"You're still angry about it, though," she says. "I can tell."

I grit my teeth. "Look. I have..."

I don't have time for this right now.

"I'm not angry at you, Twilight," I say, stopping in the road and turning to her; her guards tense briefly, but relax when it's clear all I'm doing is talking. "I had a lot of things up in the air when this happened. Personal things. And now I don't know if I'll... if I can ever..."

"I never meant to do this to you," she says, pain evident on her face. "I wanted to help you, not hurt you."

Deep down I know that, but she's right. I'm angry. I'm damned angry, even dangerously angry. Eventually, I'm going to have to deal with that anger head on. But this... this princess, this weird, self-conscious purple alicorn -- she kept me alive when she could have let me die. She and her friends took a chance they didn't have to take on me, and I owe it to her to be honest with myself.

And if I have to be honest with myself, then I have to admit that the reason I'm angry has nothing to do with being a little pony, and everything to do with being a lousy person.

I take a long breath and let it out.

"You're a sweet girl, you know that?" I say, smiling faintly. "But you can't fix everything. I screwed things up all on my own, in my own world, a long time before I ever met you. I was selfish, and I waited a long time before I tried to set things right. Maybe I waited too long. Maybe I'll never set them right."

She tries to speak up, but I cut her off before she can get going. "It doesn't matter. It's not important right now. What's important is your people, princess. What's important is a changeling with a quantum tunneling device. I'll manage my personal problems when this is all over with. If we're still friends then, I'll let you watch over me while I get messy drunk. You guys get messy drunk here, don't you?"

She giggles, part surprise and part nervous energy. "Sweet Apple Acres makes a mean hard cider."

"Then you owe me the first round when this is done."

For the first time since I've seen her, she smiles at me.

"Control," I say hesitantly, flicking my long brown ears in annoyance. The only piece of equipment I'd been able to recover so far was my wireless headset, which Nurse Redheart had kept for me at the hospital. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't exactly fit in my ear anymore, so one of Twilight's friends, a stylish white mare with a long purple mane, had attempted to attach it to a jauntily cut strip of off-white fabric. The fabric loops around the base of my ears well enough, but the headpiece keeps sagging when I let my ears relax, and then it tickles the fuzz on the inside of my ears something fierce.

It looks ridiculous, but so do I, and we both have jobs to do. I just hope the damned thing is picking up my voice.

I look over to the pony at my left: Twilight and I had picked him up when we got to the farm, and I got a chance to thank the fellow who'd found me. Big Macintosh is a tall, sturdy stallion with a thick red coat of fur, a sliced green apple on his flank and an amiable smile, and he's just escorted us to the field where he'd found me. The unicorn guards, still silent, take up positions behind us as I turn to Mac.

"You sure this is the place, Mac?" I ask him. The scent of apples is thick enough, but there's no sign of the exit portal anywhere.

"Eyup," he finally says, glancing from side to side and nodding.

I nod in return and clear my voice. I appreciate men of few words, and I appreciate them even more when they've saved my life. "Control, this is Walker. Over."

Static. Not sure what I'd expected. Even if there'd been an open portal, I was pretty sure I'd have had to step through to establish a connection. Without a portal --

"Walker? Agent Walker?"

Well I'll be damned. Luck hasn't completely abandoned me after all.

"Control, I copy. This is Agent Walker, over?"

"Agent Walker, this is Control, where the hell have you been?"

"I've been injured, Control. Doctor Wechsler stole the quantum --"

"We know about the theft, Agent. Wechsler is one of five team leads who've stolen their own work and disappeared from a secure top-secret research facility without leaving a trace. Do you have any idea where they've gone?"

My eyes widen a bit. Five missing top secret projects? "I have a good idea, Control. Go to Wechsler's facility and re-open the quantum portal; you should be able to create a tunnel large enough to send in reinforcements. I have a secure staging ground and the cooperation of --"

"Negative, Agent. Wechsler's modifications to the tunneling device have been sabotaged. We've been able to re-establish the tunnel, but only at the wave-particle scale. Matter portaling is not an option. Agent, are you saying you're on the other side?"

I grit my teeth again. "Confirmed, Control. I am on the other side of the quantum tunnel."

"Give us your GPS location," comes the voice. "We'll send a team."

"Negative, Control," I reply, my gut twisting as I say it. "The tunnel does not end at a terrestrial coordinate."

There's a moment of silence before they reply this time. "Agent, please repeat?"

"Repeating: the quantum tunnel does not exit at a terrestrial coordinate. Control, if you can't get that portal open, there's no way in hell you're getting a team here."

And there's no way I'll ever see home again. Not Jackie, not Annie, not the house, none of it. It's all gone.

Without warning, reality shifts; something in my face twitches in a way it shouldn't, a pain shoots across every nerve ending in my body, and though I'm trained in pain tolerance techniques, the only thing I manage to do is turn what should have been a scream into a bare-toothed growl. My legs collapse under me and I fall as my vision turns --

-- purple?

"Twilight!" I manage from between clenched teeth. "What the hell --"

"Oh no," I can hear her say, though her voice is strangely muffled. "I was afraid -- " and then sternly, as an order: "Get the Apples. Do it!"

"Agent Walker?" comes the voice from my headset, faintly. The headset had to have fallen off, so I ignore it, focusing on the only two things I can manage - managing the intense pain, and Twilight.

Or maybe I can't, I realize, as I hear the sound of galloping hooves, running off.

"Princess," I grit, trying to call after her. "Twilight, what's --"

"I'm right here," she breathes, her lips very near my ear, a hoof tenderly touching my body, as if testing it. "Breathe, Walker, just breathe. Your transfiguration matrix... I had to guess at it because you're not a pony. It's become unstable," she says, her hoof finally coming to rest on my chest, giving me an anchor, a center of calm I can focus on.

"Meaning?" I rasp, my voice unsteady and quivering.

"I... I think you'll be okay," she says, her voice steady despite a hint of worry, "but --"

Suddenly, the pain stops - simply stops, without a flash or a bang or even a hint that a moment before I'd been in excruciating pain. My eyes clear abruptly, and I see Twilight's face, full of concern, hovering inches away from my own.

I take in a breath, slowly and cautiously, and I watch her watching me. There's concern there, no question, concern and guilt and a bit of shame, but there's something else there too, something a little more than concern. Something I half-remember, like the details of a dream after you wake up. Something I've missed for so long I'd almost forgot it existed.

Unconsciously, reflexively, I start to raise my hand to her cheek. She doesn't turn away, even though her eyes widen a bit, but I stop suddenly, halfway there, when I realize what I'm raising is actually a hand. My hand. My human hand.

"Twilight!" comes an alarmed voice, yelling over the sound of thundering hooves, and within a moment there are five faces hovering over me instead of one -- in addition to Twilight, Mac's there with a worried frown, an elderly older mare squints down at me, a youngster with a red ribbon in her mane stares at me with wide eyes, and a strong chestnut mare, her long flaxen mane tied into a pony tail. In the confusion I drop my hand, and Twilight and I both look away, her to the approaching herd, me to... well, my hand, obviously.

"He's okay," Twilight says, smoothly turning to speak to them as I flex my fingers. "He'll be fine. It's just that... the transformation spell I used was designed for ponies. I guessed at a few things, and I must have guessed wrong at one or two details. He's experiencing a transfluctuation."

"Shoot Twilight, I can't even repeat that word, let alone know what it means," came the same voice; I looked up, briefly, to see that the speaker was the chestnut mare next to Mac with a flaxen mane and a cowboy's hat -- an irony I couldn't help but grin at, even as I turned my attention back to my hand. Which was connected to an arm, a real, human arm -- my arm, right down to the long scar from the knife fight I'd had eight years ago.

"It means..." she looked to me again, a trace of a blush across her cheeks as she spoke. "His shape isn't stable. Intense emotions can destabilize his transformation matrix."

I blink, looking down at the rest of my body -- my glorious, normal human body, and I draw in a breath sharply. "Is this what we wanted? Does it mean --"

"No," she says, shaking her head sadly and again refusing to meet my gaze. "I'm sorry, Walker. It's only temporary, and because the aetheric matrix is misaligned, you're using up a lot of your own energy to compensate when this happens. It'll tire you out fast, and when you fall asleep, your matrix will just reset."

"How fast? How long can I stay awake?" I ask, stifling a yawn.

"It depends," she says. "With practice you might be able to hold your original shape for an hour, maybe even two, but right now --"

I don't hear the rest. I remember a faint memory of being carried, and then nothing else as I fell into a deep, beautiful, peaceful sleep.