Punch Your Feelings: 1

                He’s not afraid of the plague.

                                Not really.

No that’s something semi tangible. Something he can touch, that he knows smarter minds than his are examining from every angle and looking to address. To halt, if not to heal.

                He’s not afraid of the plague.

                He’s afraid of the shadows.

                He’s afraid of the separation.

                He’s afraid of the loss.

                Just not the plague.

                He is furious at the plague.

 

He burns energy at an impromptu arrangement that passes as a training ground, kicking, striking, and even stabbing the dummy with his horn until it bleeds out in a rush of sawdust and straw. Then he stomps on the straw and dust until his joints ache from the vibration of his hooves striking crystal and he’s forced to stop or risk putting himself up in medical time out with a splintered hoof.

 

He can afford rage. He can’t afford to take time off. Not when ponies need him. Not when there’s literally anything he can do to avoid feeling helpless. Besides, he’s fine. He’s healthy… unlike Brave Storm, and that just makes him…

…Makes him…

He’s not sure what it makes him. It’s not the kind of pain he knows Gold Standard will be in when he hears his girlfriend is locked in Quarantine in the snow blasted hinterland that is the Crystal Empire. It hurts, but it’s a throbbing, hurt someone because he’s hurting kind of hurt that’s as much rage as it is anything else and he absolutely cannot afford to share that with people who DESERVE to be having these kinds of feelings, like Gold, or Brave’s adopted brother. He’s just her fellow knight, the kid who came up through the ranks amazed by her feats of strength and courage and hoping he’d be half what she had the… HAS the potential to be.

                He pauses, panting, muscles shivering as he catches his breath, fights back the urge to cry or start hitting things again. It’s not helped by the memory of the desperate, exhausted faces and forced cheer inside the quarantine zone. There were whole families there. He hates it.

                When his breath is finally steady again, he summons a shaky spell and starts trying to desperately scoop the guts of the training dummy back into its body. It’s an entirely hopeless task, he did far too well obliterate something unable to fight back.

                He should check up on Star Atlas. He should check on Brave, he should do… something. Probably apologize to the pages who are going to have to figure out if his handiwork is salvageable or only fit to be clipped apart and used as patches.

Brave probably could have snapped it neatly off the post.  He wondered if she would have if their positions were reversed.

He really hopes not to find out.