Sunset Shimmer Goes to Hell

by scifipony

"I am Having a Very Bad Day!"

Sunset Shimmer

Disjointed events are a sure sign of being aware in a dream.

I coughed as a titanic thud reverberated through my chest in the cloudy dusk. It was as if a wagon full with flour sacks had collided with a lorry full with bags of beans. Yet, I focused on a silvery finial that skipped across the dirt toward my hooves. It had a point, a thick waist, and a skinnier edge that looked fractured. Intrigued by the shiny thing, I picked it up.

Sometime later, I trotted up a narrow stair. Midday sun blazed on my back. The air felt sticky. My ticking clock had expired; I was desperate to hurry, but unable to move faster. I had somewhere to be. I felt in my bones that a clock ticked on relentlessly. I could hear it. I could see the ticking gears chock and turn relentlessly in my imagination. Frustration almost woke me up, but then from the top of the twelfth stairway I'd climbed—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12—I saw a square mirror embedded in the side of the restriction zone wall.

My heart skipped.

Standing before it, I had a wad of straw kindling tied with flexible sticks. I levitated the metal spike.

Tick tock, Sunset, tick tock!

I struck the spike against the sulfury brimstone mirror frame in order to shower sparks on my kindling. No sparks, not even a one—but instantly the mirror cleared from reflective to transparent. A vista grew bright across its face, showing gleaming Canterlot with its unique spires, onion domes, and waterfalls. In the distance rose Canterlot Castle and in the foreground stood modern white and lavender buildings with blue and gold lines providing details of hearts and stars. The pegasus-eye view sighted down Alicorn Way and a huge crevasse that ran ruler-straight down the cobblestone road from the V gashed into the Canterlot mountain cliff at the east end of Palisades Park.

As suddenly as the reflecting glass became a window, I stood against an intense gale that whipped my mane across my eyes and beat my tail against my side, inward toward the mirror. Stones and pebbles pelted me, vacuumed up by the wind. One slapped my flank. I reflexively bucked, lost my grip, and sailed hooves over hindquarters through the portal.

I fell or I flew. It felt the same. I had no will; I flailed, but could not wake. I was a self-aware toy posed and manipulated by a foal I could not see, even as I tumbled and spun toward Canterlot mountain. The wind of the passage blew my mane and whistled, pushing back my ears. My growing hysteria should have woken me, but some part of me also knew I flew where I needed to go. I needed help I could find only in Canterlot.

It was a dream for in it the sun dropped toward the east, the sky became briefly rosy with dawn, then dark with night and stars that wheeled backward like comets as the moon raced through the sky toward the red of the previous sunset and became the old tired day. As a rejuvenated afternoon raced toward noon, I reached the city and my progress slowed. The woodsy Palisades Park zipped by high above my head, individual trees whizzing by loudly in syncopated gusts, followed by the warehouses of Cliffside whooshing and whooshing by, then the townhouses of downtown, blocks of them separated by cross streets and parkways that all made their own distinctive winds sounds in passing—all from the low perspective of the rift the runty foal had cleaved toward Tartarus. I gasped and cringed, seeing the jagged rock of the crevasse passing by. Were I to veer into it, it would rip me into bits of bloody bone and skin.

Still slowing, the breached double wall of the castle bailey wall barreled past, followed by the sundered solarium, and finally the cracked limestone brick of the Luna Tower.

I stopped like a sticky ball thrown into an elastic net to oscillate upside-down in front of the opposite end of Twilit's Tartarus Gate. The time confusion didn't stop. Though flares of spell shapes and gusts of blue-white magic flew from the suspended purple foal's aura as Celestia battled them with her sun-bright horn, bricks and stones flew from the jumbled mess strewn on the floor to attack the guards only to be batted away to stick into their proper place in a wall, arch, or overhead. Unicorn mages pulled apart the tower that, were it not happening in a dream, they ought to have been rebuilding.

Like an unwinding clock, the pendulum beat of the backward events ground to a halt. Nothing moved, except me. I peddled my legs and floated upright. Rocks stood suspended midair. Energy hung like sheer draperies stretched between ponies. A cold seeped in, like an encroaching in-between of a teleport. As the timeless moment stretched, I prepared Teleport when waking would have been the better choice.

Funny. I seemed to understand Teleport better and saw a two-ended daisy-like flower bloom in my head—the spell shape.

After a frightening minute, time renewed itself without preamble, zipping forward doing what my oscillating entrance from Tartarus had undone. Fate had become real and destiny manifest. The royal guard fended off brick and stone with magic, shod hooves, and the intervention of armor breastplates. The Collegiate of Mages restored the tower walls, inside and out. Princess Celestia called the energies of the magic pulse and pushed the bright magic storm back into the tiny magical foal until her spotlight eyes dimmed and the lightning crackles dissipated. The gate disappeared. The last ambient spells dissolved with pops like soap bubbles.

Time slowed toward normal speed. I could not follow Princess Celestia's high-pitched rapid orders, but I saw rubble pushed back and the dragon restored to hatchling size in a rainbow tornado of an age spell to sit in the shambles of its straw nest within a splintered wood cart. Princess Celestia deftly cast an illusion that masked the broken walls, made the cracked floor look newly waxed, and gave the rafters under the shadowed balcony above a freshly painted look. Even the broken windows gleamed. I nodded, oddly pleased. The illusionist Queen of Cliffside had taught her student much about illusion-casting in the year following their battle.

The chaos of the east tower faded into a nightmarish memory.

The foal floated in the Princess' magic even as the Princess restored sparkle pony's parents from a potted palm and a fern to flesh and blood. They whinnied in unison.

The chilling sound nearly woke me then and there.

In quick zipping moments, the proctors rushed in. The foal woke and noticed her cutie mark. She and her parents jumped up and down, then everypony rushed out. In an apocalyptic instant, the tower transformed from illusory perfection to devastation.

Time slowed from fast toward normal. A team of hard-hat unicorns raised a scaffold and propped beams against broken walls. They departed and the sun lowered toward the horizon.

I drifted to the floor. Unlike most of my dreams, my sense being present in the moment returned with my weight. Salty dust floated in the air, illuminated in shafts of afternoon sun through the cracks. Devastation smelled like lightning after a storm and charred wood. The newly cut pine beam shoring ticked ominously. I stood fascinated. It was a dream, after all. I watched at the dust motes dance and play.

I should wake up, I thought.

Then: Why?

Then: Oh, no. I need help!

I found myself running across the ramparts of the castle, my hooves thundering so loud that my ears began to rang, galloping toward the inner keep along what seemed like endless paths of marble and travertine stone. On and on.

Then, without transition or the required seven flights of stairs, I found myself careening through the royal audience hall, screaming. As I skidded, trying to stop, I at first thought the room was empty. I spun around and spotted its sole occupant. I threw my momentum into a spring and galloped again. As I crossed the length of the hall, Princess Celestia sprang from her throne, her wings flared.

I need help!

Gasping for breath, heart speeding, I shouted for her to help me. All that came out was frustrating gibberish as I slid to a halt ten pony-lengths before her. My ears still rang loudly. I may as well have been deaf. It was a totally unmitigated nightmare.

I so needed to wake up!

The Princess approached, ears forward, her mouth moving but I could not hear her. Anger made her purple irises narrow and her jaw muscles bunch up. Guards materialized from nowhere and galloped toward me. I reared and shoved a spell-shape at them, sweeping them aside with a shield spell. When the Princess tried to bind me and muffle my pleas with a transform of Levitation, I reacted. Still rearing, I caught her in my magic and shoved with my front hooves.

She skidded back, sparks flying from her horseshoes all the way back until she hit the carpet runner from her throne. She responded by pushing me down.

I could cancel spells. She'd just taught me that trick. I flexed my shoulders and it felt as if I were tied with a rope. With the gesture, I mentally caught the weak spots in at the interface between tetrahedral shapes in the spell binding. Her whole construct snapped and shot away in shreds. I yelled that she had to help.

She shot another spell at me.

I reflected it upward with Shield, causing banners and flags hung near the ceiling to crack and tear and come tumbling down. The broken wood should have clattered on the floor, but for me it made no noise.

I had to make Princess Celestia listen.

I grabbed for her.

Another pony's spell knocked me aside, sending me sliding across the marble on my left side.

Frustrated, still on my side, I grabbed for Celestia's wings and with all the force I had expended lifting the titan, I spun her like a doll into the air.

Suddenly I remembered... In Tartarus, I had levitated the titan. And thrown him at Cerberus. What? Why?

To free me from the burden because…

Because the titan had crushed...

I choked on a sob, not remembering but knowing I'd forgotten something essential.

A piece of Cerberus's collar had broken off. It was how I'd made the gate open.

I'd fought for help to save…

My heart seized up. With a gasp and a shriek, I woke from my nightmare, eyes so open they hurt. Jumping upright, I screamed, "Brandywine!"

Ponies yelled at me. Princess Celestia shouted my name. I looked up. I had actually flung her upward; it wasn't a dream. I had caught her and was shaking her like a dog's toy.

What in Tartarus was I doing!?

I instantly lowered the princess and set her gently on her hooves, dropping my shield, blushing, instantly contrite, unable to look at anything but the black-veined white marble floor. As the enormity of what I'd done sank in, I lay down as submissively as I could, shuddering. I heard an echo of my gibberish words in my head.

Cerberus is running in the grim glimmering starlight toward Ponyville.

What did that even mean?

"Sorrysorrysorrysorrysorry…" I mumbled because I could get nothing else out.

I had gone gibbering mad.

I shook bodily, hyperventilating. My hearing had certainly returned. I heard a crowd of guards, their armor clanking, grumbling.

I had to explain. Somehow, I got out, "I was in Tartarus! Brandywine!"

I looked at the princess who approached encased in a bubble of her golden magic, spell after spell triggering to make layers, one at least causing the marble titles to go crump as she anchored each hoof as she walked. Her royal guard—ponies and a pair of griffons wearing heavily dented armor, faces in a couple cases visibly bruised, and one with a broken rear leg held to his side—cordoned me off with spears, steel tipped and razor sharp, hoof-lengths from my body. City constables stood at the far away front entrance to the hall, shoving back a milling gawking murmuring public of pastel ponies that had come to petition the princess about what could only be perceived as an attack on the capital. Hundreds of eyes, a glittering sea of multicolored gems, had seen me go mad.

Gulping, as the princess towered above me, I continued, "He was attacked by an inmate. He's bleeding to death! No! No! I've got to help him. What am I doing here?"

The white alicorn, who had become my mother for all intents and purposes, glared, her right eye ticking. She looked exceptionally tired, as well she should have been having contained the magic storm that had damaged Canterlot. She asked, skeptically, "Tartarus?"

I launched into a story that sounded like the worst of foalish excuses I could spout as I spoke. "Twilit's gate broke Tartarus. The monsters are loose. We were searching for Wolf Run when a house-sized octopus-antelope chimera attacked and—" I moaned, again in tears, "—because I couldn't cast Force correctly I couldn't save him. The thing crushed him. He's bleeding. He's dying!"

Gasping and crying at the same time, I moaned some more and made to cover my face with my forelegs.

I hit something with my knee.

Levitating above the marble, I found the bit of kindling I had gathered to create my fire magic and the finial from my dream. I had held on to them throughout my attack. Though I didn't remember seeing the monstrous dog, I had no doubt it was a piece broken off Cerberus' collar.

Cerberus is running in the ... light toward Ponyville.

I looked up at the princess and cried, "Ponyville. Cerberus is loose! Tartarus is unprotected..."

I ran out of steam under her withering purple-eyed gaze. I'd never seen her like that, even when I'd pulled off all the feathers on her right wing and had even tried to pull her wings from their sockets.

In a whisper, I breathed, "I'm not lying!" I dropped the stuff. The spike clanked on the floor. I unconsciously started rolling the key to the Tartarus gate with my hoof because I was aware of the distant snickers and jokes of the public that had come to hear their princess reassure them after the chaos that had rocked Canterlot today.

Had it all been a dream? Was the broken steel spike something I'd grabbed to make my story seem real? It felt very much like the alternate reality young foals were supposedly prone to creating. Had I never gone to Tartarus? Maybe I had found props and made up a story, trying to get attention—to assure mama didn't lavish it on a new baby sister.

It sounded like that type of story. It even made sense. The problem was it wasn't true (except the attention part). I looked back at my flank, now adorned with a brand-new red-yellow yin-yang solar cutie mark.

Proof. Proof that something had happened.

To my enduring shame, I whined, "I was too there."

I was. I had been. And Brandywine was bleeding and broken! He had asked me to save him and I had abandoned him!

Princess Celestia flared her wings and compressed her lips. She snapped an order. "Bring me sergeant Wolf Run. And back off with the spears."

Notably, she didn't drop her magic shields.

I stood slowly, stared at by a hundred unhappy ponies, shaking, debating in my head what I remembered, the sounds of Brandywine's bones cracking, and the agony of his screams, my willingness to edge into dark magic and kill to save him at the price of my soul. He would die and it would be my fault if—

A stallion called, "Your Majesty!"

The guard made way for a trotting mauve stallion. The sergeant, in a perfect red uniform, bowed deeply, one leg extended. "My liege!" he said.

The princess told him to rise.

I said, "We tried to find you, but you weren't anywhere in Tartarus."

He looked down with calm green eyes. He said, "The gate opened in Central City. It would have been the place to look."

I blinked at him, speechless.

Celestia asked, "Did you find any problems in Tartarus? Were the restriction zones working?"

"According to the rainbow crows, all zones were functioning nominally."

"But, but—" I sputtered. "The crows couldn't be bothered with doing their job—"

"Sunset Shimmer. The Rainbow Crows are some of the most honorable creatures in any world. Do not disparage—"

"You can't see through their eyes?"

Shocked, she gave me a look that crystalized into belief—for an instant. "An issue because of a rogue Tartarus gate, which has since been dispelled. And while I think it's great that you've found a good book to help you with a prank, this prank has gone on far too long!"

"Cerberus! He's loose."

The Princess' violet eyes met the sergeant's green ones. He said, "Despite the report the crows gave me, I granted a deputy pegasus inmate leave to fly to confirm the integrity of the gate. Tartarus was so peaceful that I even found a few minutes to visit with my wife." His lips mouthed, Still crazy. "Apparently Cerberus was napping."

Tears ran down my cheeks. "B-but B-b-brandywine, your son, is crushed and bleeding. We have to help him."

Wolf Run breathed deeply. He looked solemnly to the princess. "He hasn't returned, yet."

Celestia stopped with her mouth open, about to say something to me. She looked at the stallion.

He said, "It's probably a prank."

I cried, "You, me, Brandywine— We were all in the gate tunnel together!"

"Yes, and I used your fire magic to send myself through the out-of-spec gate into Tartarus and to push you back home. Princess. Brandywine is upset because you assigned the Tartarus recon to me. The lad has not yet learned to trust. These two have obviously colluded." He sighed. "No doubt, the colt has run away again."

"No! No, Wolf Run, you're wrong!"

"Sunset Shimmer!" Princess Celestia shouted and stomped a hoof. My jaw reflexively shut, my teeth clacking. The guard reflexively stepped back. The faraway crowd went silent. "You will cease this prank, now."

"But it's not—"

"You will stop. If you say one more word about this or continue this disruption while Equestria demands my attention, I will send you home to Flowing Waters with instructions to keep you there."

Brandywine! Brandywine! A flood of tears turned my world into a wet wash of prismatic color.

"I am training you to serve a purpose, to help Equestria—"

But…

The princess continued relentlessly. "—but your attitude makes me think I may have chosen wrong."

She doesn't love me.

And no wonder. I thought only of myself. I ruined the lives of the ponies around me. The colt I loved would die because of my inability to see past myself.

Crack. Like that, I was broken.

I heard the laughter of the palace audience crammed into the entrance way. They'd witnessed the well deserved dressing down of Celestia's protégé who had once had the hubris to think she could become Celestia's first crown princess and had acted as if it were already so.

They did not know the truth. Only Brandywine's dead body would provide that.

He was...

Abandoned...

Monsters running amok...

And there was nothing I could do about it! I rolled the fragment of Cerberus' collar below my hoof. It felt cold. It was a key to a gate to Tartarus. It represented a mockery of an opportunity to return though a gate that no longer existed.

I screamed so furiously that the guards flinched. Celestia stepped back. My voice echoed back at me from an audience hall again suddenly silenced.

I picked up the spike and threw it with all my might. The missile struck a four-story stained glass window and shattered it. As the colored glass rendition of prancing ponies and stars disintegrated, tinkling down, a thought hit me.

Throwing stones.

I could have thrown stones at the titan!

Mistakes. So many mistakes! The worst—I couldn't even get the one pony I thought had loved me to help me.

Trust? Friendship?

Without power? Worthless!

I screamed. I wanted to be anywhere but here. Anywhere but here!

The world went black as a shock of crackling lightning wrapped itself about my body, lifting every hair in every follicle, letting inside the incredible frost of in-between. I knew the in-between place, the dead zone. Brandywine had taken me there enough times. In less than a heartbeat, before my irises could fully react, sunlight bathed me. The crack of air sucked into the vacuum bubble created by Teleport exploded about my ears. My weight pushed me down against—

Cobblestones.

The wheels of a coach-and-four bus screeched. The metal rims threw sparks as the four Clydesdale ponies veered the long yellow-painted wagon aside. Reflexively, I threw my magic between me and the oncoming vehicle.

This should have been where nothing happened and my magic ceased to work when I needed it most. This should have been where my brain exploded doing a half-imagined spell. This is where I should have been trampled then run over and had all my bones broken to match my shattered heart.

Instead, the bus and the ponies pulling it found themselves shoved left onto the sidewalk, shoved into each other, and yelling in outrage as the bus tilted and tried to fall over. Passing me, managing to brake, the team brought the rig to a halt on two wheels. They twisted the wagon traces and jerked the tack in unison, and the bus righted itself with a bang of overworked springs as I looked around. Some desperate hybrid of Levitation and Shield had pushed aside a small vegetable wagon and a postal van, and all the ponies on the storefront side of the street. Many had hit the glass and I heard those sick bangs in my memory. Some had hit a wall and slumped in confusion. A dozen pedestrians on the park side scrambled upright, having been bowled over. Ahead I saw the portcullis to the east entrance to Canterlot Castle. A white stallion in full brass royal guard armor galloped toward me; he did not look happy at my stunt.

I had landed in the middle of Castle Way.

Could I do nothing right? I could suddenly intuit Teleport and reflexively save my worthless self with an adhoc shield spell, but could I throw Force the one time it would have mattered? I reared, legs peddling and screamed, "Why was I even born!"

I might be edging on insanity, but nopony was going to humiliate me except me. The guard—his name was Chrysanthemum I think—yelled at me to stand down and bank my magic as he leapt to tackle what must have looked like a truly mad pony. I had had the few seconds for me to hitch my magic around the directionality mnemonic for Teleport, to see the two headed daisy spell form and bloom, and to imagine the sidewalk at the corner of Ponyville and Alicorn.

I did not humiliate myself. Possibly I overreached myself. I remembered the Collegiate of Mages arguing that some spells were a request to the universe. I stepped out of in-between, my fur steaming with frost on a corner and on the sidewalk, only a block away. Around me, shocked ponies jumped out of my way. Traffic stopped, too. I looked over my shoulder and could see the snarled traffic and commotion on Castle Way.

Only high-level unicorns mastered Teleport. Besides a score of professors at the university and a few teachers at school, and the Princess herself, I knew no one else who had.

I was so incredibly good at useless things!

With a scream, I teleported twice more until I realized my subconscious direction: Cliffside.

Cliffside was my real home. A place of low expectations where the burnt out and damaged went. I soon trotted down Elm. Having returned during the evening rush had the benefit of the warehouse district having shutdown and the homeless returning to their encampments.

The sudden disappearance of the sun, without a proper dusk or any twilight, testified to Celestia's anger and pique. To Tartarus with her. She was as damaged as I was; worse, she was blind to it.

The smell of a garbage fire brought fond memories of home, support, and companionship and gave me a beacon that saved me from wandering for more than ten minutes. Today's encampment was past General Firefly Parkway in an alley off Cedar.

I stopped at the entrance to the alleyway. My emotions had cooled and I felt the presentiment of something that might melt the iceberg in my heart. The homeless camps were the only home I knew growing up. A dozen ragged ponies worked setting up tents. A few tended a barrel fire to toast bits of scrounged bread and vegetables on sticks while caramelizing some hay. More and more faces looked at me. Few looked familiar. I noticed a golden stallion, the Duke's fallen uncle. I smiled and trotted in.

"Well, isn't she a real cutie?"

I halted and looked to the shadows to see the stallion who had the audacity to address me. Another, to the opposite side, my right, said, "You look like you could use a strong guy to keep you warm at night, sweet filly."

I rounded on him. The red stallion sported a dirty ragged blond mane cut like a serrated knife. In the firelight, I saw the healed scars of a dozen hoof fights. "What did you say?"

His hooves clattered against the pavement as he shoved off from the brick wall he had leaned against and approached. "I'd love to keep you warm tonight." His green eyes sparkled with the same intent telegraphed by his crooked grin.

I ground my teeth, thinking, Newbies! They'd slunk from society after my reign had ended. I wasn't queen here any more. I had enough problems.

His buddy behind me wolf-whistled and said, "Sweet Celestia! This one's as fiery as her mane looks."

I shouted, "That's it!"

I reared in the face the unicorn who'd wanted to keep me warm. As he flinched, I grabbed him in my magic and turned to find a lime green white-maned pegasus, his wings already in a power stroke thanks to his shocked flight response. I snatched him up, too, but only by the wings. Still rearing, I spun the ridiculously light pair—considering what I'd levitated this afternoon. The thought of the titan's remembered weight made me even angrier. I shoved them against the wall of the windowless brick building hard enough to stun. I heard the grunt of the breath struck from their lungs. "I am having a very bad day!"

"My Queen," a calm elder voice said beside me. Deer Tracks, Duke Pure Snow's uncle, was as close to a father figure or advisor as I'd had before Celestia's intervention. "Please, dear heart." In my head, I heard Brandywine's voice echo in my head, saying, "Strong magic doesn't give you the right to hurt ponies." I could feel a ghost hoof reaching for my horn.

I almost screamed, but then I took a deep breath. I could do only what I could do.

And, right. I was not a monster. I knew what monsters were. They had octopus tentacles and alicorn wings.

I sighed, but nevertheless grinned. "You, Red. If I ever see you again, I will tear out your horn by its root. And Limey, I'll pull off your wings. I nearly pulled off Celestia's. You are not as powerful as she is!"

Proper PR, that's the key to real power and peaceable relations.

I nevertheless dragged the two ponies down the wall, scuffing their fur on the way down. Both were already shaking when I placed them on their hooves. Red galloped from the alley and Limey shot upwards, though he struck the opposite wall in his haste, knocking free a puff of little green feathers. Recovering from the tumble, he flapped away over the building, yelling, "You're mental!"

Following him with my eyes, I shouted back, "And don't you forget it Stink Feather!"

A hoof touched my shoulder. Deer Track's.

I took a deep breath as I looked at the old stallion, expecting the rebuke I deserved. Instead, I saw his pale blue eyes and gentle smile. I remembered. I had always been surprised how he managed to defuse my foalish rages and helped me firmly guide the homeless of Cliffside into peaceful coexistence with themselves and the constabulary. He was a rock to bank my fire, a calm in the middle of my raging storm.

He said, "I may never get used to hearing you talking like any other mare."

Flowing Waters and Celestia, and her handlers, had convinced me not to visit my subjects in Cliffside after Celestia had tamed me. I had bowed to her authority. Deer Tracks had accepted Celestia's offer for help and a position in the castle, but after a week it was obvious there was a reason he had joined the ranks of the homeless. My memory in words from that time is poor, but I remember something to the effect that there were things nopony wanted to remember. I hadn't seen him since.

I huffed. "I can barely remember before I didn't know how to speak, only that life had seemed a whole lot simpler back then."

"Yours is a fine voice. It suits you."

I started blinking as my eyes began to burn. I looked around. The few ponies I remembered from three years ago went about their tasks with food or bedding. The dozen newbies stared wide-eyed.

Deer Tracks add, "You will always be the Queen of Cliffside to me."

That did it.

Snap! The weight of undeserved respect added to the heartache of losing Brandywine, knowing he was dying somewhere in Tartarus and I could do nothing to help him, together with Celestia's betrayal, crushed me like a walnut under-hoof. Tears washed down my cheeks and in an instant, I felt a drop at the end of my nose while I heard my voice wailing in pain. Had the unicorn stallion not leaned against me and helped keep me upright with his weak magic, I would have collapsed in a heap.

He led me to the closest raggedy sofa and eased me down, where I lay sobbing for who knew how long, relating the events in the castle and this afternoon in Tartarus, and the psychotic break I'd experienced after finding the ink-stained deputy and the centaur he held prisoner. So much had gone wrong. Limey was right. I was mental. And I was broken.

Behind my closed eyes, I began to imagine Brandywine as a distant ghost looking down at me, shaking his head—when the smell of tea intruded on my pity party.

It had to be pretty strong, considering my sinuses were dripping. The smell was nothing to compare with the fine darjeeling Celestia would put in a perfect porcelain tea kettle when she shared an afternoon conversation with me. This had a strong tang of steeped caramelized hay and second-use common tea scavenged from a friendly cafe's back stoop.

Ambrosia. A remembered act of comforting kindness shared with an inarticulate foal when the nights had been wintery cold and her coat hadn't yet grown thick enough yet for the season.

I snuffled grossly and wiped my nose with the knee of my right leg. I took a deep breath—and started hiccoughing. I felt like a foal, a completely spent foal. Since the time I had looked down from the balcony on Twilit Sparkle to the time I teleported away from Celestia, more than a day had passed with me mostly on high alert. I began to shake in addition to hiccoughing. I finally had to hold my breath as I whisked away the tears with my magic. Before me stood Deer Tracks with a tin cup with a horizontal handle held in his teeth, patiently watching. All his drinking made his casting of Levitation rather too wonky to be reliable enough to hold a full cup of liquid.

As the last spasm faded, I thought about how ridiculous I was, acting like a foal now but having always acted as if I were grown up, until today. I managed a weak chuckle and Deer Tracks grinned. The problem was— I didn't fit anywhere. I did my best, and time and again ponies or events proved it wasn't enough. Could I be forgiven even if I failed? Could I forgive myself?

"If—" Mucus stuck in my throat and I spent a few moments hacking and sniffing, feeling even more ridiculous. Finally, "If you were left behind, injured, and the pony you sent to get help never returned, could you forgive that pony even if it wasn't her fault?"

He mumbled something, jiggling the cup. When I grabbed it in my magic, he said, "If it wasn't her fault, I believe I could get over it." I smelled the cheap liquor on his breath as he talked, then brought the cup near.

Of course, Brandywine might already be dead. Unfortunately, I suddenly believed in ghosts.

I sniffed the cup. He'd poured something in with the hobo tea. That sparked a memory of me with the flu and a similar tea that at least made me not ache so much. "What did you put in here?"

"Sometimes a touch of brandy wine is the best medicine."

I started blinking. My eyes began to burn. Can you imagine this: for some unfathomable reason some crazy parents had gone and named their golden-brown foal after a some sort of gold-brown liquor. Why would anypony do something so stupid?

I said, "He may never know one way or the other." There was no reason that Wolf Run would lie about his son. The only explanation was that Brandywine was lost in an alternate Tartarus. The best I could hope was that Celestia was right, that it was all a delusion, and that Brandywine would show up tomorrow in class and not actually be the first pony to consider me a friend.

Some friend I was. I really didn't understand the concept.

Deer Tracks sagely said nothing. I sipped the hot tea that steamed and warmed my nose. I looked at him as I tasted the strong mediciny component of the amber liquid under the mix of street light, moon light, and fire light.

Brandy wine.

It suddenly all made sense and I understood Deer Tracks. He had said that there were things he didn't want to remember.

I so didn't want to remember the last 36 hours. I knew I would forever love Brandywine, but for the sake of my sanity, I so did not want to remember him either. I felt stricken like Jewel in Lula McDoddle's Don't Die, My Love, when Low Mulberry died of a incurable disease that even love couldn't cure, except I hadn't learned anything! I didn't want to remember Brandywine when his father would come asking questions and would believe I was making up stories of his son's disappearance and lying to him. I didn't want to remember the pain of my magic not working at the critical moment. I didn't want to remember failing everypony.

Including myself.

And enough with the stupid romance novels! They did nothing but tear me apart. Never again. So done with that.

Deer Tracks wore a tidy little golden-brown vest with odd streaks of dirt that made it look like some design, but it wasn't. Something square bulged in the pocket that he wore the vest to provide. I levitated out a pewter flask and swished the contents.

"Does this really help you forget?"

He sighed. "Some ghosts need to be washed away."

The tea cup clanked when I put it down on a packing crate table. You never threw away something a pony of no means gave you. You didn't. You didn't take, either, unless you wanted to fight. I asked, "May I?"

He nodded, but said, "It's a solution only for the irreversibly bad things."

As I unscrewed the cap on a chain, and the top clicked against the side, I said, "I've been a bad pony."

I coughed, choked once. The fumes burnt my throat and my sinuses. I persisted. The heat seeped to all parts of my body, like oil dripped into a pond to foul the entire surface with a prismatic sheen. I drank the entire flask.

Strangely, I felt tingly all over. The skin on my face felt like it wasn't mine. Very strange. Not so bad, really. The warmth enveloped me like the embrace of the mother or father I should have had, had they not thrown me away like last week's trash. When I looked around, I didn't see Brandywine's ghost. I couldn't even remember who ruled the place I lived in. Maybe I just didn't care.

I gasped. Brandy wine was my cuteceañera present!

I passed out. It felt good to forget.

Author's Note:

But that's not all, ponies! Sunset has some explaining to do in the epilogue. One. Last. Chapter....