This story is a sequel to When the Man Comes Around

The ninth story in The Journey of Graves.

Graves is gone, departed for parts unknown without so much as a backwards glance. A quick farewell and a cold goodbye is all the marshal left before severing every tie he ever had to Ponyville, including those with Rarity.

Why? He's a soldier and it was obvious he'd one day have to leave. But the way he left, so abruptly, even callously... it just doesn't seem right. Could it be that there's something more to his departure than meets the eye? Or are thoughts like that merely fancy and wishful thinking? To find the truth, Rarity and the girls start down a long, winding road that will hopefully bring the grey eyed soldier back. Hopefully.

Rainbow Dash is many things. Awesome, radical, amazing, and at least twenty percent cooler than any other pony in Equestria.

She is also lost, lonely and uncertain. Not that anypony else would know.

During the day she is everything everypony expects her to be: she is fast, daring, and adventurous, but when the sun goes down, she is left alone with her thoughts. Tired of simply yearning for something more, she sets out on a night of soul searching and stumbles onto a friend in need, and maybe, underneath the vanilla twilight, she finds something more.

All of Equestria is united in celebration for the return of their beloved Princess Nightmare Moon. But when Celestia and everypony else recieve her she's skeletally starved, filthy, and very nearly dead. Meanwhile, while everypony's eye is turned, a lusty Blueblood pursues Twilight Sparkle, intent on adding her bloodline to his own so his family might step closer to godhood. (Alternate Universe, there never was a Princess Luna)

She was once a great mare, the pride of Equestria's rulers.
The sole wielder of the element of magic...
Now but a shell of her former self after just one tragic night... and the long months that followed.

Because what would it be like to have your closest friend violently taken away from you?
Even after a full year with no sign of him, would it ever seem possible that he would ever be seen again, or that he was even alive?

Twilight Sparkle, with the help of her friends, attempts to rebuild her life from the ground up after a full year of dwelling in the past, and trying to find any trace of her former assistant.
Spike's gone, but does Twilight have what it takes to bring herself back from the same void?

"YOU ARE NOT THE REAL PINKIE PIE!"
"You probably shouldn't even exist."
"You're only a clone, you don't HAVE any feelings!"

Who was she to believe? She was barely a day old, and already she'd seen the disappearance of her mirror images, all but her. Was she just a clone? A disposable unfeeling analog?
What would happen if she became her own pony? If she became real?

Is it possible for one of the Pinkie's, the only copy left behind, to develop? To become an entirely different pony to the one that she was modelled after?

Oh, and before I forget, thanks to the amazing WerewolfNobody for the (At one point) cover art!
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The past can be a great teacher, or so the theory goes. Twilight means to put the phrase to the test and see if there are any lessons on friendship she might have missed that took place between her friends in the years before she arrived. Making up for lost time is hard work!