Darkness, then voices. Her head is swimming, her stomach churning. Why was he so sadistic as to make her feel even that? As she thinks of Lasombra, it feels even worse.
She can't seem to open her eyes, but she hears her friends' voices, dimly, can barely process them.
"Is this blood? Who else got hit?"
"I'm fine, anyone else? Where'd this blood come from?"
"Is it hers?"
"How could it be?"
She drifts off again, and remembers things. Some things. Bits and pieces, loose images.
A pony bursts through a train door. It's grey and has no cutie mark. It opens its mouth, wider than she can by far, and reveals rows of teeth like a shark's.
She's pulling her balloon. All around her is a silver light, not like Equestria's sunlight (or Earth's), but there's a cloudless blue sky above her, and she's flying towards a green shore above an ocean of rainbow-colored light.
There's ice, a whole room made of it, and in the center, a giant clear block, but at its heart is only darkness. She feels fear, and desperation, then suddenly she is overwhelmed with love. There's an inexplicable odor of apples.
Her flank hurts. So does her horn. So do her wings - another unfair thing, she can't even use them! She can't remember ever feeling pain like this.
She's wearing a white dress, walking through the streets of Canterlot, smiling and waving, of course. There's a pony next to her, walking very close, flank to flank. She can feel the body heat. She's not looking there, though, because more ponies than she's ever seen line the street, cheering for them. There are cannons on the tops of all the towers, but they're Pinkie's kind, every one, and the air is filled with confetti and streamers and balloons and the sound and smell of gunpowder.
She sees Applejack smiling at her. She's wearing a necklace on a silvery chain, with a charm Twilight can't make out dangling against her chest.
She sees Celestia wrapped in a tendril of darkness, her wings pinned, dragged into a chasm. Celestia's hooves drag deep furrows in the earth on the edge. She hears a voice cry out, rough and raw, then realizes it's her own.
There's some kind of cloth wrapped tightly around her barrel. She feels a hand on her hoof. The strange texture of a human's nearly hairless skin, the many soft points of contact of the digits, is unmistakable. She's lying on what feel like simple sheets, and feels the slightly thin and rough cloth of another draped over her back. They're not unpleasant, but nothing like Rarity's silks, or even her own bedsheets in the library, or her castle. The one she remembers as hers, in any case. Her head hurts, though due to injury or at the tangled mess of her own memories, she isn't sure.
She feels like she could open her eyes, and shifts. She hears a scratchy voice, and her head swims, thinking of Rainbow Dash, and then of Rachel, before remembering the hand, and settling on the latter.
"Hey there, tough girl."
Twilight coughs and opens her eyes. They feel out of practice at it. She's in a homey-looking room, wood-framed walls with faded wallpaper. Sunlight streams in through the windows, darkened and tinted green by leaves. The air is heavy and moist, but not quite unpleasantly so, and smells of summer and growth. It reminds her of Applejack's room at Sweet Apple Acres. There's a saline drip next to the bed, though she isn't currently hooked into it.
She's in quite a bit of pain, particularly on her flank where the tight cloth - a bandage, of course, she's waking up now - sits.
"Hey yourself," she says, "glad you're okay. The others?"
"They're fine. We still don't know who tried to take you down, but he was definitely going for you. Lasombra was right behind us out of the courtroom, so it wasn't him. But since it happened in Boston proper, my department and I aren't involved. Well, they talked to me as a witness, but you know what I mean."
"Thank Celestia," Twilight nods. Her voice is cracked from disuse, and she feels like she hasn't had a drink ever, in her entire life, so she reconsiders her followup, "...water?"
Rachel chuckles and hands her a glass. She takes it up in her magic and takes a long drink. It feels easy, natural, in a way it hasn't since - she corrects her train of thought - ever. She nearly drops the glass in surprise. Then some of the memory-images from her long sleep return to her, and she does drop it. It spins as it falls, and the rest of the water describes an elegant arc across her chest and RD's blouse. She catches it just before the human does, and just before it hits the hard wood floor.
"I...what's happening to me," Twilight gasps. Rachel frowns at her.
"Well, what happened to you is we dug three bullets out of you," she says, "but the only thing that seems to be happening to you now is getting wet."
"Rachel, I remember things. Things I shouldn't. Things that weren't on the show. And my magic's working better."
"Funny," Rachel says, "we'd noticed something strange too. Like, the reason you've got a bandage on.'
"Well, you said I was shot, was I leaking oil or something?"
"No, you were bleeding."
Twilight purses her lips.
"That doesn't make any sense, I can't imagine even Lasombra would have given me fake blood."
"It's real blood," Rachel says, "but we think you did that, not Lasombra. Before you got us out of there with that crazy magic stuff, you got hit pretty bad. We showed up at the bar, but you were out cold. Fiona did what she could but you were leaking something that looked like antifreeze and of course she's a doctor, not an engineer. We got you in my car, we were getting ready to take you to MIT. Alanna wanted to call Lasombra, and the rest of us might have let her, none of us had any idea what to do. Then when we were driving, you stopped leaking whatever it was and started bleeding on us. We popped open that panel and it was...nothing like it was before, it was weird and gross. There were wires and lights still, but half of it had turned to muscle and bone and stuff.
"None of us knew what to make of it, but it was changing even as we watched, so we slammed the panel shut and Fiona started putting on bandages, and we brought you here. This is AJ's parents' farm, out in the Western part of the state, a few hundred miles from the city. Their neighbor keeps horses, so we thought their doctor might be able to help. He wasn't here when we got you out, so it took a few days before he could examine you. Fiona did what she could and by a few days in she couldn't even find the button for the panel anymore. When the horse doctor got back and took a look, he said you were basically a tiny horse. Well, you've got a handful of extra organs, a horn, and wings, obviously, plus your weirdly shaped head and huge brain, but you know. Not a machine, anyway."
"Wait, what? You're saying I'm a pony again? How long have I been out?"
"A few weeks. It's early August now. You still remember what happened though, right? I mean, you did't like, turn into pony-you and forget everything that happened when you were robot-you?"
"No, I remember it all. Otherwise I'd be asking who you were. But I don't understand. My magic got better and I turned myself into a creature with it? So am I still fake, I just made myself a better fake? Are all these other memories I'm getting just...me kidding myself? I just want to know if I'm really me or not! I was getting used to being a fake..."
Rachel puts a hand on her hoof.
"Really?"
"Not really," Twilight looks down and frowns, "It's the strangest feeling, remembering all these things, being myself, but knowing it isn't real. Well, suspecting, now, I guess. But knowing that I was made to think that as some kind of plaything..." she shudders and goes silent for a minute, then looks up at Rachel and speaks very softly again.
"Did you know I was uh, anatomically accurate? Robot me, that is. I checked after I found out."
"I will kill him." Rachel says, flat.
"He was clearly really into accuracy," Twilight says, still barely above a whisper, "so I hope it was just that. But...it's not like I remember, and in the show, it's all just blank. I mean, it's a kids cartoon. I wonder if I'll ever remember one way or another."
"Do you want to?"
"Yes," Twilight doesn't hesitate. "Maybe I'd regret it if I did but...it's a thing to know."
"Yeah, you do seem to be all about that," Rachel smiles a little. "So you're remembering stuff about Equestria, and your life there? Stuff that wasn't in the show?"
"Yeah! It's really exciting." Twilight thinks a bit more, and a particular memory stands out.
"Hey, Applejack and Rainbow Dash totally weren't dating! He put that in because he ships them! He's the worst! How could he do that to AJ?" She feels angrier than she'd have expected.
"To AJ? What about to Rainbow? Or, you know, to you? You seem madder about this than about...anything else." Rachel raises her eyebrow.
"Well, at least Rainbow's actually into mares, I don't think Applejack is. And all the memories he gave me were equally fake," Twilight replies, "but I don't really know, she just came to mind first. I guess maybe I am remembering something...real?" She feels a sudden warmth at the thought that maybe her friends aren't all just fictional characters on a cartoon show, after all.
"Look," RD says, shifting awkwardly, "you were nice enough not to say it, but we all watched the whole series while you were out. Including the movie where you went through that mirror into a weird human world. There was something going on here the whole time. I mean, first there's your magic - Lasombra said it was all electromagnetic but you were lifting plastic trays, and those rocks on the roof, let alone however you protected the rest of us from those bullets and got us out-"
"It was a pretty simple shield spell, and a group teleport, nothing revolutionary."
"I get that's true for princesses in magic pony land, but here on Earth those are not things anyone or anything can do. Alanna and Fiona did a lot of research into the physics of it and there isn't any. What Lasombra was talking about was a parlor trick - you should have been able to pull specific small metal stuff directly towards you, very quickly, and get it stuck to your horn. That's it. Anything beyond that? Lasombra's a really smart creep, but that's magic.
"But okay, to you it's normal. But that's not really what I was saying. I was talking about the movie. We were sitting there watching it, the five of us. And you must have seen it. Our names, our choices in life, our personalities...it's like how you met all your friends in that human world once you arrived. Just a little less like your world. Hell, Lasombra's a domineering asshole and his name sounds a lot like that jerk king of the crystal empire - also a domineering asshole. You're way smarter than I am, probably smarter than any of us. You must've seen it."
Twilight looks down at her hooves.
"Of course I did," she whispers, "but at first I thought it was wishful thinking. Then I didn't want to freak you out. And then it turned out I'd been programmed, so I just sort of assumed I'd been made to think about people like that."
"Well," Rachel pulls her chin up and looks her in the eyes, "we all see it too. And somehow you're not a machine anymore. I'd have to be a moron to think there was nothing strange going on. None of us think you're a fake anymore. I don't think you should either. You're real Princess Twilight Sparkle to us."
Twilight smiles. "Thanks, Rachel."
"You're the one who broke all the laws of physics to get here," RD rolls her eyes, "no need to thank me. But now you're here, what's your plan?"
"I...I have no idea," Twilight sighs. Her wings flare out involuntarily, and on feeling it, her eyes widen and she smiles.
"My muscles are weak from all this rest," she says, "but I guess I really am back, wings and all. I think the first thing I want to do is fly."