Chapter 1
Sunlight, that was the first thing Thea noticed as she slowly woke up. There was sunlight falling on her face, almost directly into her eyes. She groaned and placed a leg over her head, trying to block out the light. It was too early to be awake, but the ground she was laying on was to uncomfortable to get back to sleep.
Lifting her head, she looked around before picked her glasses up off the ground and putting them back on her nose. She found that she was lying in a grass covered clearing, tall trees in on every side and the distant sound of running water coming from in front of her. There was a fine layer of dew covering everything, including herself, which made everything just damp enough to be annoying.
It took a few moments for her to remember why she was sleeping outside. How she had started walking in the Everfree Forest the afternoon before, and just kept walking until she couldn’t stand anymore, dropping where she stood.
Rising onto all fours, the earth pony looked back the way she had come, trying to see if there was a path, or a trail, or some way back, but there was nothing. Looking forward only showed her that the clearing was bisected by a steep ravine, with a stream running through the bottom of it. It had to have been a hundred-foot drop to the water.
She couldn’t go forward, and she couldn’t go back.
Not that it mattered anyways, nothing mattered. Thea dropped back down onto the damp grass, trying to ignore it as it soaked into her tan pelt. It wouldn’t be that hard to just stay where she was, she had already been there overnight, another day wouldn’t matter.
Closing her eyes tightly, she let out a sigh, her black tail flicking slowly from side to side against her flank. Without thinking she took a bite of the grass, chewing it slowly at the back of her mouth. It wasn’t exactly the best sort of grass, and she never cared all that much for grazing, but it would do in a pinch. Of course, she hadn’t brought any food with her when she had come out here. She hadn’t brought anything, or even told anypony where she was going.
Thea kept chewing, starting to feel tears pricking at the corner of her eyes. With a snort she tried to ignore them, knowing that it wasn’t going to get much further than that. It was very rare for her to cry at all—and it was never for herself. It was always because of other ponies, or movies, or stories, but never herself... no matter how much she wanted to.
She let out a sigh, pressing her foreleg closer to her face as her ears pressed down hard into her hair, trying to block out the rest of the outside world. The Everfree was pretty in the morning, but she didn’t want to see something pretty, in fact she didn’t want to see anything at all.
Except that was a lie, and she knew it. There were any number of things she wanted to see, but just didn’t have the energy or care to do so. It frustrated her, how what she wanted and what she could make herself do were so far apart. It wasn’t like it wasn’t possible, thousands of ponies had done the same thing, but she couldn’t get up the energy because of how bad she felt… which made her feel worse.
It was a self-defeating cycle, but she didn’t know how to break free of it for more than a few weeks. It was hard to keep her chin up and have a smile on her face when she felt so miserable, but being happy was what was expected of her. If she let ponies knew how she was really feeling they would get mad at her, and that was the last thing she wanted. It wasn’t their fault, she always got so defense when she felt bad, and it just rubbed ponies the wrong way.
She hated making other ponies mad. It just caused more trouble than it was worth.
Taking another bite of grass, she forced herself to ignore the bland flavor. She had to eat, no matter how much she didn’t care about it.
Finally, she pulled her leg away from her face and allowed her eyes to crack open. The sun had risen above the trees, and seemed overly bright. She could hear animals moving deep in the forest, but for the moment they were staying well away from her.
“Are you alright?” a pony asked from behind her.
Thea let out a sigh. The voice didn’t belong to Fluttershy or Zecora, so she had no idea who had stumbled upon her. “I’m doing fine,” she replied, keeping her voice monotone.
The owner of the voice tisked. “You are not a very good liar,” she said.
A moment later Thea heard the sound of hooves whisking against the grass, but it was the only sound the other pony made as she walked. There was grace to her, whomever she was. Maybe it was someone Rarity knew, but then what would they be doing this deep in the Everfree?
“No pony wants to hear otherwise,” Thea muttered.
“Now that’s not true. I wouldn’t have asked if I hadn’t wanted to hear the truth,” the other pony replied. Her voice was soft and caring, and it was the real sort of caring, not the fake kind the Mayor used when she wanted something. “So, I will ask again. Are you alright?”
Dropping her head down she let out a puff of air through her nose. “No, I’m not alright. I’m feeling miserable and sorry for myself.”
“And what has caused you to feel like that?” the mare asked. Thea could feel her lowering herself to the ground to lay next to her.
“Nothing,” she muttered.
The owner of the voice sounded a bit perplexed. “Nothing caused this?”
Thea nodded. “Yes, nothing. There is no reason for me to feel the way I do. I’m not alone, I have a wonderful mare that I live with. I have a few friends, including Discord of all ponies. My work is good and I’m doing the job I always wanted to do. Yet I can’t help but feel like I’m the greatest failure in Equestria.”
“Somepony who is friends with Discord can hardly be called a failure.”
That made her laugh, but it a short-clipped laugh that lasted only a moment. “It’s a weird sort of friendship, but we have some common interests that few others share,” Thea let out a sigh. “But I know all of this. I know how I should feel, yet I can’t help how I do feel. What’s worse is the disconnect between the two makes me feel that much worse.”
A moment later she felt something warm and soft draping over her back, it made her jump in surprise but she didn’t push it away. It could only have been a wing, which meant that her uninvited guest was a pegasus. That would explain how she had arrived so quietly.
“I understand, it’s hard to get by when your mind is fighting itself. It hurts in ways that have no physical pain, yet can be just as debilitating. I wish there was an easy answer for you, unfortunately it’s a great challenge to solve.”
That wasn’t what she had expected to hear. Most ponies just told her to mare up and get over it, or that she should just pretend like she was happy until she was. No pony had ever just accepted that how she felt might have been something real.
“You do have one great benefit that other ponies may not,” the interloper continued. “You have your friends. Friends you are close too and care about you. You can try and hide how you feel, but they still worry about you.”
Shaking her head again, Thea dropped it onto the grass. “I wish I could see that. Sometimes it feels like all I’m doing is hurting my friends whenever they interact with me. Like I’m one of these monsters that seem to run rampant over the countryside.”
“But you’re not a monster,” the other mare said, a hint of worry in her voice.
“Sometimes, I wish I was,” Thea replied with a sigh. “It would make things easier. Celestia could just banish me to Tartarus, then the only pony I would be hurting would be myself.”
The mare let out another small tisk. “I would never do something like that,” she said.
Thea snorted. “Of course you wouldn’t, but then you’re not Celestia.”
In the silence of the clearing she could hear the mare stifling a small laugh, trying to cover it with a cough. “Are you so sure about that?”
Lifting her head, she turned to look at the mare and scold her for playing games, the words catching in her throat as she found herself nose to nose with Princess Celestia herself. The princess was looking down at Thea, a hint of a frown on her face, which was reflected in her bright violet eyes.
Thea managed to let out a squeak as she tried to say something, anything, but no other sound came out. Most ponies never thought they would see the princess up close, let alone to be nose to nose with her. It was more than she could process and it made her head spin. All she could do was look up at Celestia, blinking dumbly with her mouth hanging open.
The princess reached out with her golden magic, gently cupping the bottom of Thea’s jaw and pushing it closed. “You have me at a disadvantage as we have not been introduced.”
Gulping, she took in a sharp breath, shaking her head to get her mind unstuck. “Um… It’s Thea Princess. Thea Winters.”
The princess smiled down at the mare. “Thea Winters… yes, Twilight has spoken about you in her letters.”
“What?! But… but why? I’m not one of her friends.”
Celestia put her wing back around Thea’s back. “You may not be her friend, but she knows you just like she knows most of Ponyville. She had some very nice things to say about you, including how much you love books and always made sure to return them on time. She also said you are a writer and that she liked some of your work.”
“Really?” A blush washing over Thea’s face as she looked away from the princess, her glasses sliding down her nose.
“Really.”
Closing her eyes, she let out a sigh and pushed her glasses back into place with the edge of her hoof. “I… I don’t know how I feel about that. I never expected that you, of all ponies, would ever hear about my silly little stories.”
Celestia smiled. “And why shouldn’t I know of them?”
“Because I’m a nopony! I’m just a dumb mare trying to write and never getting published,” she protested.
“But you never give up, do you? You keep writing because it’s your calling, your dream, your special talent,” Celestia said, glancing back at the mark emblazoned on the earth ponies flank.
Thea wanted to protest, or to say anything at all, but she couldn’t find the words. Instead she dropped her chin against her chest and let out a long sigh while flicking her tail to cover her cutie mark from view. She wanted to explain herself, about how silly her writing was, and how much she just wanted to give up… yet she never did. She kept trying ever though no one ever seemed to care about it.
After a few moments of silence, Celestia spoke again. “You said that Discord is one of your friends, how did that come about?”
“It’s just… when he was rampaging over Ponyville he turned me into ivy, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Once he was reformed, I managed to work up the courage to ask him to change me again. Since then he’s made me all sorts of things. Furniture, trees, other types of ponies, a griffon, a hydra, a statue and even a draconequus,” Thea said, a hint of a smile playing over her face.
“Oh my, you’ve been quite the menagerie. He has teased me with much the same idea, though little has come of it. Maybe I should take him up on the offer to be his personal clown for a few days…” Celestia hummed softly to herself then nodded as if she had made a decision. “What was your favorite thing to be?”
Thea had to think about that for a few moments. “Well, I like being different plants, the warmth of the sun feels very nice and it kind of tickles. It was a lot of fun being a hydra, I was absolutely huge and had eight heads, my mind in all of them at the same time. He had to rewire my brain to deal with it so I was far more of a hydra then I was pony. Even becoming a statue was interesting, though I’m not sure I would do that again.”
The princess nodded as the mare spoke. “Did you like being those things more than being a pony?”
It seemed like such an innocent question, but to Thea it felt like it was extremely important. The frown returned to her face as she looked down at her hooves, then back up at the princess. “I’m not sure… some days I think I would rather be anything but myself, even a statue. Other days I would never dream of it.”
The princess nodded, a neutral look on her face as he stared down at Thea, then slowly turned her to look at the cliff a dozen feet away. “Is that why you came here? To be anything but yourself?”
With a sigh, Thea turned away from Celestia. “I don’t know why I came here. I just went, I went as far as I could go and this is where I stopped. But that’s not what you’re asking, is it? You’re asking if I come into the Everfree to kill myself… and I don’t know. It’s something that has always been in the back of my mind. Some days are better than others, but it’s always there eating away at me. A lot of the time it does seem like it would be the best solution, no matter how much pain and anger it would cause. It would just be better for everypony if I was gone.”
“You seem quite worried about how you make other ponies feel, but you don’t seem to put the same weight on what you feel.”
Thea shrugged. “That’s because I don’t like hurting other ponies.”
The princess leaned down, turning Thea’s head with her magic until they were nose to nose. “And what of yourself, are you allowed to be hurt?”
She didn’t answer the question, she couldn’t.
Celestia sat back up, pulling her wing tightly against the other mare. “I see, you feel other ponies shouldn’t be hurt, but you accept it for yourself. You don’t feel you’re worth the same as those you care about, so you allow yourself to be in pain even though you don’t deserve it.”
Thea couldn’t help but let out a scoff, and even though she tried to bite it back it still escaped her throat.
“Yet you feel as if you do deserve it. Why? Why do you feel that you deserve to be in pain?”
The tears were trying to come again, picking at Thea’s eyes. She took in a gulp of air to fight it back, doing everything she could to keep her eyes dry. “Because I hurt my friends,” she finally answered, her voice almost a whisper. “It doesn’t matter what I do, or why. I keep hurting them. I can’t stand to see the pain I cause, it’s just too much. I’m a monster,” she admitted. “I’m a monster who causes nothing but pain.”
Celestia leaned down and nuzzled Thea’s neck. “That’s the second time you’ve said that, but I don’t see you as a monster, or that you’ve ever done anything to earn that label.”
“You don’t know that,” she replied, pulling away from the princess.
With a sigh Celestia shook her head, her hair fluttering around her ears and horn. “If you were truly the monster that you believe yourself to be, I would have heard of you from more than Twilight’s letters. No pony seems to hate you like you feel you deserve to be hated. It worries me just how poorly you hold yourself, you’re better than that.”
Thea clenched her jaw as anger flared in her chest. There it was, the same thing that everypony said to her, throwing her feelings away like they were as worthless as she was. She tried to calm herself before she did something she regretted, at least not without some thought put towards it. “Princess… you don’t know me, and you’re not close enough to know anything about me. I know what I am, and I know what I’ve done to other ponies. You can’t change that by saying pretty words. Words aren’t going to help, they have never helped, they have never done anything but hurt like they always hurt.”
Silence fell over the clearing, only the sound of the forest around them filling in the void. It lasted for what seemed like hours, or maybe seconds, but it was drawn out a line taffy. “My little pony, what happened to you to injure you so deeply?” Celestia finally asked.
“I’m not injured,” she snapped, glaring up at Celestia.
“And that is a lie. Even if you do not want to accept that fact, I can see it in your eyes and your words. Something terrible happened to you, something that hurt you in ways that aren’t easily visible and left no physical scars,” she leaned down until she was once again nose to nose with Thea, the tip of her horn resting above her head.
“If they aren’t visible, they can’t be healed,” Thea replied.
“That is far from the truth, and you know that.”
Thea glared at the princess for a few moments before turning away, allowing her glasses to slide down to the tip of her muzzle. “Go away princess. Just… leave. Leave me alone. You can’t help me, no pony can help me,” she muttered.
Celestia shook her head. “I simply cannot agree with you on that sentiment, and I suspect your marefriend would feel the same way. You’ve been hurt, and so badly that you feel like you have earned the pain. That somehow whatever terrible thing happened in your past is something you deserved, which is not true. I know nothing that you have done to have earned you the pain you suffer and I do not understand why you feel that you must keep this pain inside of you. I do understand that you do feel this way and that you feel that somehow it’s reasonable, I just don’t know why.”
Slowly Thea shook her head, letting her glasses fall from her face, only the chain kept them from landing in the grass. “You don’t understand princess! I know it’s not reasonable, I know that it’s stupid and I’m hurting myself. It’s just so overwhelming, it beats me down over and over again, and I can’t do anything to stop it. Every time I feel like I’m getting better, every time I think I have it under control, it comes back to hurt me again! To crush my emotions and tell me how worthless I am, and to make me believe that it’s all my fault.”
Celestia frowned and gently picked up the glasses with her magic, returning them to the mare’s nose. “If it was another pony doing that, it would be abuse.”
“But it’s not another pony, it’s my own head,” she said with a grunt of frustration, reaching up and slamming her temple with the edge of her hoof, using so much force it caused her to rock to the side. “I can’t run away because I’m doing it to myself. Because whatever happens, I’m causing my own pain, and no matter how much I know it’s not true I still feel like I have earned it. Don’t you understand princess? If I did this to another pony I would be in prison, yet because I do it to myself nopony cares! I’m a monster, I’m a horrid monster that hurts everyone she cares about, including myself!” the words echoed around the clearing, as tears started to run down her cheeks.
“I care,” Celestia whispered in response.
“You don’t know me enough to care,” Thea snapped, then with a jolt stood up onto her hooves, pushing the large wing away and marching forward. “You don’t know anything about me, how could you?”
Celestia rose to her hooves, but otherwise stayed where she was, watching the other mare as she moved closer to shear drop at the edge of the ravine. “I don’t have to know you to care about you. You’re right, if you did this to somepony else it would be a crime, but harming only yourself is not. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get help. Even when a pony goes to prison, we give them help so they don’t have to return. There are ponies who know how to help you through this. You don’t have to do this alone.”
Shaking her head, Thea came to a stop, her hoofs only a few inches away from the edge of the cliff. “I think it might be too late for that,” she said, looking down at the step drop to the stream below.
“It’s never too late,” the princess replied.
Silence returned to the clearing, descending on both of them like a thunderhead. Thea could feel the weight of it on her back, trying to press her to the ground. She could also feel the eyes of the princess on her, waiting for her to do something, to say something. Finally, she found the words. “Maybe I should… maybe it would be better if I was just gone,” she said.
“Know this then, Thea Winters,” Celestia said, her voice suddenly carrying the firm tone of authority that every pony expected from her. “If you do this, if you throw yourself of that ledge I… will do nothing. It pains me to say it, but I will not stop you and I will not save you. I will return your remains to your loved ones so they at least know what has happened to you, but I will not stop you.”
Thea looked down over the edge of the cliff. It was a hundred-foot drop, enough to kill her if she landed head first on the jagged rocks at the bottom. Even her natural earth pony strength wouldn’t save her from that. “Am I not worth saving?”
“Of course you worth saving! Everypony is worth saving no matter who they are. Even Discord was worth saving,” Celestia answered. “But this is your choice, and I will not stop you from making it, even if I believe that is wrong. I promise you; I will not tell anypony what happened here. They will think it was a terrible accident, nothing more. It will be tragic, but it won’t hurt them as much as knowing the truth.”
She let out a strangled laugh that became a sob halfway through as she took a half-step back away from the edge. “I can’t even hurt myself without hurting the ones I love. How useless am I?”
“You’re not useless at all.”
Thea wanted to protest that, but couldn’t find the energy. She lowered her head down and whimpered softly. “Why are you still here princess? Why are you still listening to me?”
Celestia didn’t even hesitate. “Because I care about you Thea, I care about you and I don’t want to see you in pain.”
She looked back over her shoulder at Celestia, the princess looking so hopeful that she had gotten through to Thea. Pain, it was all pain in her life, everywhere she looked, everything she did. It was all pain. Slowly she shook her head, looking away from princess. “I don’t know how to be anything else,” she said.
Then she threw herself off the cliff.
The ground fell away from her, her mane and tail wiping behind her as she fell towards the ground, the ground which seemed so distant now. Closing her eyes tightly she held her breath, the wind whirling around her, pulling at her body as she fell faster and faster. There were only moments left.
Yet those moment seemed to last a lifetime, everything pulling back and slowing down. Her life didn’t flash before her eyes, but instead It was Sparkleworks’ face. Her perfect blue eyes, her orange fur and glittery pink hair. She was everything Thea wanted out of life, to have such a perfect mare by her side. It could have been fixed, somehow it could have been made better. She should have gotten help, found a professional and begged for help, even if it cost all of her bits. She should have found a better way. In that final moment, all she felt was regret from what she had done.
Just as suddenly as it started, the fall came to an end… but it wasn’t because of the ground. Instead Thea felt a strange warmth all around her body, hugging every fiber of her being. Opening her eyes, she saw the ground only a dozen feet below her, and falling further away. There was a golden glow of magic around her, holding her tightly in its grasp as it lifted her back up to the top of the cliff.
Celestia was standing at the edge, wings spread out wide and her horn glowing with magic as she lifted Thea back to solid ground. When it faded away Thea collapsed onto the grass, tears starting to roll down her face as she finally started to cry.
“I thought you wouldn’t save me,” she said between sobs.
“If I had told the truth, you would simply have waited until I was gone,” the princess replied.
Thea nodded and closed her eyes. “I’m glad for that. I need real help, I think… I think I need to be someplace where I can’t hurt myself.”
Leaning down, Celestia gently nuzzled her again. “If you wish, I can take you somewhere where they can help you.”
“Yes,” she gasped out the word. “Please. I need help, I need a lot of help,” she whispered, the words coming easier than she thought they would.
“Then I will take you to the best mental hospital in Canterlot, and you will be given the best possible care,” Celestia said and nuzzled again, her magic glowing around her. “Shall we go?”
Thea threw herself against the princess, burying her face into her the soft fur of her chest. “Please.”
Celestia nodded, and summoned her magic, the gold light washing down over both ponies before they vanished in a flash. There was nothing left behind other than a few stray feathers drifting slowly towards the glass.