Dearest Beloved

by BlackRoseRaven

All Is Dust

Chapter Fourteen: All Is Dust
~BlackRoseRaven

Everything was light. It glowed all around him, suffusing him, blinding him. Swallowing him whole. It was so much more frightening than being gripped in the darkness: at least the shadows hid you, concealed you. The light left you naked, and vulnerable: the light revealed your every flaw, revealed all the things you wanted to stay hidden forever.
It scared him, but all the same, he kept moving forward. He couldn't see her, but he could feel her there: she was both beside him, and ahead of him. She was waiting for him, and she was guiding him, helping him to find the way, supporting him, and stopping him from turning back.
And Horses of Heaven, almost every part of him wanted to do at this point was turn and run away. But there was a small but ferocious voice, telling him to go forward, telling him to make things right, telling him that it was time to make amends.
He lowered his head, but still squinted against the light, still kept himself moving forward towards wherever the mare was leading him. For once in his life, he fought the urge to close his eyes, to bow his head, to turn away; for once in his life, he moved forward instead of allowing himself to be held back. Out of every truth he'd come to realize, after all, the biggest about himself was this: he was the only pony who had ever held himself back.
The light swelled for a moment, and then suddenly it didn't so much diminish as objects seemed to emerge from that sea of brightness, filling in the world around him and leaving him standing in a familiar, sunny world he knew all too well.
Canterlot: majestic, beautiful, and entirely devoid of life; nothing more than a dream in this bent reality, and yet it was still Canterlot down to the last detail, from the towers that scratched the blue sky above the cracks in the cobblestone beneath his hooves. Even the smells in the air, of perfumes and flowers and baked goods...
Ah, not entirely, he thought, as he caught another scent on the wind: brine. A reminder that as real as the world was, it still floated within the sea of untethered reality. A subtle hint that things weren't over yet: there was still this one last test.
And then what? Was he just supposed to leave and go home? Would the Vorpal magically make everything better? Would he be vomited out of the Alignment? Or would he be trapped here, forever, unable to leave or escape...
That last wouldn't be so bad. Not if he was here with her.
He looked up, and he saw her standing in the distance, smiling at him faintly, and even though she murmured the words, it was like she was right beside him as she said: “Maybe that's not what I want, though.”
Part of him wanted to take that in the worst possible way. But he knew what she meant: the reason he wanted to run away, to get angry, was because he often felt so much like a foal compared to her. So lesser than she had always been. But that wasn't her fault: that was his own, for not rising to his own expectations, for expecting the world, somehow, to always pick him up and put things in place for him.
If he wanted to live his life as fully as possible, then he had to actually live. He couldn't just depend on the world to take him where he thought he wanted to go. He had to work for things, fight for what he cared about, and face, at times, failure, even when he tried his best.
Even when he gave everything he had, he had to realize that sometimes things just weren't going to work out.
Last Call strode towards the mare, but she always seemed to keep a short distance away from him, whether she walked away or not. Canterlot passed around him, but he paid little attention to it: it would never be as alluring, or beautiful, or as important as his wife was to him. He had eyes only for her.
He heard something slither in the shadows behind him, but he didn't look back, as his mare cautioned: “Be careful. There are still dangerous things here. There was something else that woke up along with the Kiz... something they disturbed. Something that hates both them and us.”
“Something that wants to use us to destroy them. And the Kiz are aware of it, but... not. Because like we can't understand them, they can't understand it. Happenstance... he was the closest to knowing what it was.” Last Call didn't know how he knew that: he just knew it was right. Maybe that knowledge stemmed from the fact that he had been the closest to Happenstance for most of the night; maybe it had bled into him from Toadsfall, who had been infested by the evil.
“Why were we all brought here? I still don't understand that.” Last Call said honestly, and his mare smiled, and maybe, just maybe, he managed to get a little closer to her.
“I don't know, either. I think that it was because there are other ghosts here, other... dead. The ones the Kiz weren't interested in... they were either consumed, or they vanished. I hope they're back home. I always like Rainy Days.” She smiled a little, glancing down as she murmured: “I wish I could have helped them, though, or even said goodbye. But it took a while to understand that... what had happened.”
“Yeah.” Last Call said quietly, looking down for a moment, and when he looked back up, she was closer, and he realized where they were heading, where these streets were leading to: in the distance, he could see the building towering over them all, the stallion licking his lips before he whispered: “I'm so scared of this.”
“I am too. But I love you. And you love me, I know that, too. It's time now, Last Call. It's time to settle things.” the mare said gently, and Last Call nodded briefly as he looked away, taking a slow, uneasy breath.
“I know. I know it has to be done. I just... I wish that it was easier. I wish that...” He quieted, then smiled faintly as he halted and looked down at the street for a moment, whispering: “No. I need to stop focusing on what I wish would happen, and just deal with what's going on right now. I need to... accept.”
“Yes.” the mare said softly, and he looked up, and there she was, right in front of him. As beautiful as the day they'd met, he thought, even in spite of the signs of age, from that hint of gray in her mane, to the beginnings of wrinkles across her face: laugh lines, more than worry marks, he thought. After all the hell he put her through, how had she always been able to find the time to laugh so much?
She touched his face, and he pressed against her hoof before she smiled at him and said quietly: “Please, Last Call. Just a little further. For me.”
“You don't have to ask. You never should have had to in the past, either.” Last Call said softly, and she smiled again before she slipped backwards, and he followed in her wake, striding slowly even as she seemed to glide ahead over the street, in the direction of the hospital.
She entered the building fearlessly through the sliding doors, but he lingered for a few moments, studying its cold, sterile face. It was a huge, unwelcoming, blocky structure: he hated it. He couldn't think of a single happy thing that had happened here: this was where his wife had been when she had miscarried. This was where he had been taken after trying to kill himself. The emergency room he knew every detail of from all the times he had ended up there: from binges, from getting beaten up, from long nights filled with busy crowds.
This was where his wife had been taken first, where her body had lain, before the other ponies had come and... well, apparently they hadn't cremated her, after all. They had stolen her body and buried a jar of ashes: had it been some other pony? Or had it been nothing but burnt cinders and an empty coffin?
Not that it must have been very hard for them to pass off, either way. He had just kept moaning and whimpering that it was too hard to take care of the preparations. Her friends in Canterlot had seen to everything themselves. They had both been orphans, after all: her parents had died years ago, and he had never really known his. Dad ran away; Mom loved the bottle more than him.
Still, that didn't feel like his ultimate failure: as bad as it had been, if he'd given her a better life, then he never would have had to worry about what happened to her in death, would he? The body was nothing more than a set of clothes, a husk that was merely cast off at the end of the day. The spirit escaped, and went... where?
He didn't know. But if one thing had come from this, he had come to believe that things were more complicated than just life, and death. There was so much in between: there was a transference of states that he couldn't even hope to begin to understand, let alone explain.
Last Call studied the front of the hospital for a few more moments before he approached and strode through into the lobby. The doors slammed shut behind him, but he had a feeling they weren't trying to keep him in: rather, as they shivered and something skittered against it, he felt like they were trying to keep something out.
“The fear, the pain, the suffering caused as a side-effect of the Kiz's bending in reality, it attracts... evil things. Be careful.” warned his wife, and Last Call nodded slowly before he looked around the lobby, shivering a little before his eyes settled on the open doors of the elevator.
As he headed towards them, he couldn't help but ask: “Why is it that the Kiz only cause bad things to happen to us, if they don't mean us any harm?”
“Because they're curious. Because when ponies are happy, they aren't as interesting as when they're... challenged. And, to be entirely fair to the Kiz, it's our emotions, our lashing out that creates the Residue and calls up the Ichor. It's not their fault that... most of us are a little broken. Most of us find it easier to focus on the negatives, rather than the positives.”
Last Call nodded briefly as he entered the elevator, before he frowned uneasily as the doors closed and the elevator trembled before it began to descend. He automatically looked up, but before he could ask, the mare answered: “There's nothing above to learn from. You have to go into the darkness, first, to be ready to examine yourself in the light.”
Last Call looked down, remaining silent until the elevator stopped, and the doors dinged open on a shadowy, murky hallway. He smelled must and rust and seawater, the stallion chewing on his lip for a moment as he gazed into the shadows beyond before he took a slow breath and stepped out of the elevator.
The doors dinged shut behind him, closing off the little light that the elevator had cast into the hall, leaving him in just a deep, empty dimness. He reached up to click his flashlight on, but it seemed like the light could only stretch out for a foot or so beyond his face before it was swallowed up by the hungry shadows. It seemed endless.
All the same, he made himself move forward through the darkness. It felt like he spent an hour, slogging through the shadows, before he finally glanced back over his shoulder, and stared in disbelief as he found himself looking at a solid stone wall that had crept up behind him, blocking his exit completely. He shuddered a little, then turned his eyes back ahead, and there in front of him was a door.
But wasn't that what he wanted, in a strange way? No way back, only a way forward. He needed to keep his mind clear, or this broken reality was going to best him.
He pushed through the door, and shivered as he found himself standing in a morgue. The lockers were all closed and sealed tightly, although slime and muck dripped from several of them, and the flickering lamps hanging from the ceiling did little to provide any comfort or light. They were just bright enough to let him see the centre of the room, where four bodybags lay on cold metal gurneys.
Last Call approached the first in line silently, studying it for a few moments: it was the only bag that was soaked in slime, leaking mug from its tattered, stained seams. Last Call hesitated for a moment, and then he reached up and nervously unzipped it. He shivered a little as he pulled the top back and saw Toadsfall, frozen in a snarl, eyes wide and terrified, drooling slime from his jaws as his skin seemed to writhe, like things were crawling inside of him; like even in death, he was still a hive for evil.
“Aggression is not confidence. Violence is not strength. He thought he was a king, but... this is his reward.” The mare's voice fell silent, and then she murmured: “But I never hated him. In spite of everything he did, to you, to us, to me. I felt sorry for him.”
“He tried to rape you.” Last Call said, remembering things that he did not want to remember. But how could he selfishly block that out because it made him uncomfortable, when for her... was I really always that bad?
“It's natural. More natural than you think. Keep it to yourself, deal with your own issues... talk to me, but only about the things I can fix. And it wasn't so bad, not really, but I was lucky, of course. I was lucky.” She quieted, then murmured: “It looked... like someone had hit him there, repeatedly. Left him deformed. I was drugged. It's funny what you feel bad about: I don't remember what I said to him, but it hurt him. He just slapped me around instead. And I think he might have cried. And then he left me in the bathroom and I fell asleep in the stall and... everyone knew, but no one wanted to do anything against the boss. But I was okay. It was a good sleep. He never really bothered me again.”
“I should have protected you. And you could have spoken up... I should have spoken up for you.” Last Call murmured, as he studied Toadsfall, and yet even as he talked, he saw what his mare was talking about. Teeth bared to hide the way his eyes widened; muscles frozen in flex, head jutted out to hide the splay of his hooves, the trembles he imagined had run through those limbs. What a strange, sad creature he was, Last Call thought: made out of lies, twisted and broken. Monsters were rarely born; they were made.
“It's okay. It all worked out, in the end.” the mare murmured, and Last Call nodded briefly before he shifted away from the table. There was nothing he could do or say now, as he moved to the next gurney, studying the bodybag there before he grasped the zipper and opened it.
It didn't look like a pony: it took Last Call a moment to realize it was the plasticky, ruined body of Happenstance. He hesitantly grasped it, but even that flesh felt like not-flesh, as the mare murmured: “Returned in shame, to where he came from. He became too much like us. Or too much like the worst of us, because that's what's the easiest to find. You don't see the good ponies because good ponies don't demand attention like bad ones do. Good ponies keep things going the way they should be. The bad ones invite chaos, and chaos is much more interesting... but much more short-lived. He thought ponies were made of evil because he twisted everything around him into doing evil or his bidding so easily: he failed to understand that every pony is made of a thousand different things. It's not about what you make a pony do. It's about what you bring to the surface inside them. Like you, Call... a lesser stallion would have run away by now, but...”
“I'm not good. I'm not... I don't think I'm much better than Happenstance or Toad, really. I just had a different goal to reach. I was chasing someone who... made me a better person.” Last Call murmured, and his wife gave a small laugh, and he closed his eyes as it tinkled through his mind like music.
“You're better than you think you are.” she said, and there was silence for a moment as Last Call studied Happenstance's discarded remains, before he finally shifted to the next in line.
He opened it, and looked at Lectern, frozen, dead, afraid. He hadn't known the stallion, but now he understood, at least, why he had been so angry at the diner. That maybe he wasn't a good pony: he had been twisted by his experiences, seduced in the end by the old, false texts that Happenstance had slipped to him. Manipulated and coerced; wasn't that the story of all their lives, though? One way or another, you were forced to make decisions, each and every day. There was no stopping, no slowing down: you either moved forward, or you didn't.
The stallion studied Lectern for a few more moments, then he gently closed the bodybag as he murmured: “Sorry.”
He didn't know what else to say, so he moved to the last bodybag, studying it for a few moments before he took a slow breath and carefully opened it. He looked silently down at the pony inside, and then he reached down and gently stroked a bit of mane away from his wife's face before he whispered: “I thought I never could have faced this. And I still don't know if I can, or even worse, if I can live out life without you. It seems like too much. It seems impossible. I love you so much, Faith. But I regret, more than I can begin to express, the fact I wasn't there for you when you needed me. I wasn't there for you at the end. I missed all those moments, all those goodbyes. I'm so sorry.”
“It's okay.” she murmured: not from the body on the table, but all around him. He closed his eyes, trembling for a moment as he leaned over the gurney, before he grimaced a bit as he felt a shifting before he looked down in surprise to see the body had simply vanished, and he was leaning on an empty metal table.
All the other corpses were gone, too: Last Call studied the empty room for a moment, before he glanced up as there was a faint beeping behind him. He turned around and was unsurprised, somehow, to see an elevator waiting for him, soft music humming out of the car... was that the song he had written for her, all those years ago?
Last Call rubbed slowly at his face, then he started forward, heading into the elevator car. The doors closed quietly behind him, and then the elevator began to rise, Last Call taking a slow breath before he asked quietly: “Where do I go now? What do I do? I just want to see you again.”
There was no answer, but Last Call hadn't expected one. He knew that he couldn't depend on her to lead him everywhere by the hoof, as much as he wanted her to. He had to realize that he was responsible for his own life, and he had to walk his own path, as little as he wanted to. He couldn't continue to wallow in misery and despair: for better or worse, it was time to move forward.
He didn't want to move on without her. But he didn't want to piss on her memory any more than he already had, either. Maybe if he could just find a way to be a better person...
The doors opened with a ding, and Last Call stepped out onto the roof of the hospital. He glanced back, but the elevator was already gone: it was just empty space behind him.
Here he stood, beneath a sunny sky, on warm summer's day, in the middle of a crowded city. Here he stood, facing his wife as she leaned over the railing that encircled the hospital roof, gazing out over the beauty and majesty of Canterlot.
Here he stood in a place it was impossible for him to have reached, years ago from the night he had set out, with a mare who had died. And that was without taking into account everything that had happened to him: the broken bones, the pain, the loss of friend and foe alike...
“Am I dead?” he asked, as he approached his wife, and the mare smiled faintly over her shoulder at him before she shook her head, returning her eyes out over the city.
“Not yet.” she answered, and he nodded as he leaned on the railing beside her. He looked at her, then followed her eyes, gazing into the distance: the skies were a beautiful painted gold and crimson, not a single cloud crossing that threshold between their world and whatever stretched beyond.
They just stood together, side-by-side, for the longest time, until Last Call looked over at her and whispered: “I don't want you to go.”
She smiled faintly, turning towards him with a soft sigh before she murmured: “I don't want to, either. But I have to. You understand that, don't you?”
“I do. And I hate it. And I'm sorry, at the same time, because I don't want you to leave, feeling guilty. I don't want...” Last Call struggled for a moment to find the words, and then he lowered his head and laughed faintly, shaking his head before he closed his eyes as he whispered: “It's not fair. I fought all this way for you. I came here to save you. I... you're here, and yet I can't do a goddamn thing. I failed you, again. And I hate myself for it. I don't even want to say 'at least I tried,' or beg or scream or cry... I just... I hate it.”
The mare nodded to him, looking at him silently for a few moments before she reached up and gently took his face between her hooves, and they looked at each other for a few moments before she said softly: “Sometimes you can do everything right, and it all still turns out wrong. I know you've learned that by now. It's not your fault; you're trying hard to be a good person. A better person than you were. I won't pretend you didn't have your faults, Call, but... I could always see the real you, deep down inside there. You could be a huge jerk to everyone. But...”
She lowered her head, then she leaned forwards, embracing him tightly, burying her face against his neck. “You loved me. I never, ever doubted that. You were always a pessimist and a jerk and sometimes you yelled when I wish you would have just talked and sometimes you ran away when I wished you stayed but... you loved me, and I felt that love, and knew that love.”
“I did. I always loved you. And I'm sorry for-”
“There's no time left to be sorry. There's no need for apologies anymore, either. I just... I just want one thing from you, that's all.” the mare said quietly, as she rose her head and smiled faintly into his eyes, and the stallion swallowed thickly as he leaned back a bit, grasping her shoulders as they studied each other before she whispered: “I need you to let me go.”
The stallion breathed softly, and his mare, his lover, his wife smiled up at him faintly before she said quietly: “You're all that holds me here, to this world. That anchors my spirit. I'm not full of rage or fear like these other ghosts... only love, for you. But I need you to... to let me go now. I've never asked this before, and I'm... I'm scared, but I want to go out there, on my own. I want to see what's beyond. I want to... I want to have an adventure. And I want to know you love me, you trust me enough that... when the time comes, we'll be together again. But it's time for me to go. We have to be apart, just for a little while.”
“I don't want to. I'm scared. I'm...” Last Call swallowed thickly, and then he slowly closed his eyes, taking a shuddering breath as he lowered his head. She kissed his face silently, and Last Call laughed weakly before he whispered: “I don't want this to have been for nothing.”
“It's not for nothing. You came all this way for me and I love you for it, more than I ever have before. I'll never forget it, or you, Last Call. But you can't be happy like this, and neither can I. Even if we escape, I'll just be a shadow... I don't want to be your shadow, a ghost. I want to be free. I want you to be free. That's... all we can do for each other. I want you to be free.” the mare murmured, and when Last Call opened his eyes, he realized that she was crying, tears rolling down her cheeks even as she smiled for him, smiled like she always did when something was hard, but she wanted him to be happy, she wanted him to...
Last Call embraced her fiercely, hugging her as tightly as he dared, and she clutched into him, trembling, as he whispered: “Don't. No. This isn't about me. This is about you. This is about what you need. I love you, Faith. I love you so damn much... but I understand. I'm so sorry. I just... I wish I could apologize for everything I did wrong.”
“I don't care about that, though. I only think about what you did right, and how happy you made me... and that you came for me. And that... now...”
Faithful Heart leaned back, and Last Call looked at her for a moment before he leaned forwards, kissing her. Their lips met, briefly, almost chaste and yet tender, loving, like the kiss of their wedding day, when they had kissed in front of all those ponies, like their first kiss lived anew...
And then it parted, and Last Call felt her pulling away, and it took all his strength of will not to clutch her in, to crush her against him, to catch her and stop her and pull her close...
Last Call clenched his eyes shut as his forelegs opened wide, letting her pull away, and then he fell forward on his knees with a gasp as the cold air ripped against him and thunder rumbled in the distance. His teary eyes opened, and he stared down at the mountaintop under his hooves before he gave a pained howl, slamming a hoof into the ground as he trembled violently before he let out a weak, broken sob.
All for nothing, he wanted to think.
It was all useless, he wanted to lament.
He wanted to scream and cry and shriek and temper tantrum.
He wanted a drink.
But instead, he forced himself to take a rattling breath, to remember his promise before he looked up, and blinked slowly, lethargically, before he shuddered a bit as he saw the Vorpal.
There wasn't really any pain, though, as he shifted back onto his rump, sitting back and only looking at the unknowable thing. Knowing it was unknowable and impossible somehow made it easier to take, easier to look at, easier to... almost understand, and he already felt so much pain and heartache that when its alien voice asked a flurry of images what he was doing, he barely felt the additional pressure to his mind.
He shook his head, waved a front hoof weakly, and then he said finally: “The only thing I can do, I guess. Saving her. Setting her free. Letting her go. But not for me. For her... do you understand that?”
It didn't. It was confused. Curious. Strangely... empathetic, he thought. Child's drawings again; was that all it was, a child? Was this why it had been sent out beyond the stars, because these ageless and formless things were the youngest of their infinite and unknowable lot, so they were sent out, to understand, to gather knowledge, to bring home...
Oh who the hell knew? Who cared? Last Call looked up almost with defiance at the Vorpal as he rubbed his face slowly, before he whispered: “I love her. If you can't understand love and the things it makes you do, the ways it makes you both better yourself and hurt yourself for someone else, then we are as alien to you as you are to us, and you'll never, ever understand us. Get lost. I'm not your lab rat.”
The thing was surprised.
It contemplated for a moment, and limbs and claws and tentacles stretched out from that mass, both threatening and thoughtful.
And then, suddenly, it stretched back into itself, then produced something else. Something that Last Call recognized very well, as it set it gently down in front of him, and he stared at it for a moment before the thing prompted him with an image, a voice, a whisper of memory it had shared from... her.
Last Call bit his lip, then he reached out and picked up the beaten acoustic guitar, whispering: “I usually charge for a performance, you know. Or at least you should buy me a drink, but... I don't think... I don't think I'll be drinking much anymore.”
Last Call closed his eyes, and then he took a slow breath before he began to play. His hooves stuttered a little at first, but then found their rhythm as naturally, as easily as ever, and soon after he picked up the words; his voice barely quavering in spite of the sobs that had shook him only moments ago, his face smoothing out even with the fresh trails of tears staining his cheeks:

His eyes closed, he leaned forward on instinct, and it was there; his mouth found the harmonica as naturally as if he had put it on himself before the performance, playing a brief few bars across it before he leaned back, smiling faintly to himself as he continued:

Last Call played a last few lines on the harmonica as his hooves strummed the song to a close, and then he lowered his head as he took a slow breath before he laughed faintly and opened his eyes.
And here he was. Alone on the mountaintop, with nothing but a guitar in his lap, the sun beginning to rise in the distance, and all traces of the Vorpal and the long night he had just lived through gone and faded away.
“I know it's not a great song, but it's not that bad. You didn't have to leave yet.” he murmured, before he glanced over his shoulder as he heard a quiet laugh.
He studied Silent Wish, who smiled faintly at him as she walked up behind him and gently touched his shoulder. He nodded to her once, and she nodded back, looking at him for a few moments before she said softly: “The Alignment has ended. Soon, I'll be gone, back in the space between spaces. But your wife is...”
“She's moved on. I... I'm glad. I guess I did what I set out to do.” Last Call glanced down at the guitar in his lap, before he reached up and absently touched the harmonica on the bars around his neck, chewing on his lip for a moment before he asked almost impulsively: “Don't you want to move on, too?”
“There are still things I have to do, for better or worse.” The filly shrugged a bit, then she smiled a little up at Last Call, saying finally: “But I'm glad you made it out okay. I'm glad the Vorpal... you convinced him to try something different. He saw you let go of something you loved. So he tried to let go of something that... I wouldn't say he loved either of you, but he was interested in you... and in her. So he tried letting go. It... must have been hard.”
“For everyone.” Last Call murmured, and then he shook his head before he straightened a little, rubbing absently at his face as he looked off into the distance, gazing silently at the brightening horizon. “I didn't make it out alone. I have you to thank.”
There was no answer, and when Last Call looked to the side, he couldn't help but smile faintly as he saw that the filly was gone. He hesitated for a moment, then simply nodded once before he looked down at the guitar in his hooves.
He strummed on it gently, then glanced up as he heard something; shouting, he thought. Calling out. He only looked curiously towards the edge of the mountain in the distance from his position on the far side of the bowl, until eventually, shapes emerged over the rim: ponies, he thought. He waved at them, but made no move to get up.
The Sheriff approached with several other large ponies, looking at Last Call with confusion as they drew in close. Sheriff Steel began to open his mouth, glaring at him angrily, but Last Call cut him off by saying simply: “My wife is dead.”
The sheriff closed his mouth as he and the other ponies came to a halt, and Last Call chewed on his lip for a moment before he looked back at the ruins of the ranger station in the distance, saying finally: “I think you'll find everything you need in there. It was... Toad, mostly. He and some crazy friends of his.”
“I think you better tell me what the hell happened here. We have a lot of disappearances reported: Mr. Happenstance never returned to his room last night, Mr. Toadsfall is missing, and we found that asshole friend of yours beaten up and at the bottom of the mountain. He'll be lucky if he wakes up.” Sheriff Steel growled, but then he frowned as Last Call gave a weak, relieved laugh, rubbing slowly at his face.
“Goddamn, Furor.” he whispered: and he had the feeling – or maybe it was just a hope – that he might not be in as bad a shape as he seemed. He'd seen what happened when Furor actually took a beating, after all. “That's one good thing to come out of this, at least.”
“You're not making sense-”
“Just... send your boys ahead. I'm not going anywhere. I'm not running anymore.” Last Call answered, and Steel frowned at him before he grudgingly nodded, gesturing sharply at two of the large stallions he'd brought with him: not deputies, just boys from town.
Steel turned his eyes back towards Last Call, and Call looked down at the guitar in his hooves before he strummed the strings, then looked up and asked finally: “Can I play you a song?”

The official report said that Toadsfall and Lectern had run some sort of suicide cult in the mountains. They found dead bodies and notes from the funeral homes and hospitals they had been shipped out of, which led to several arrests... not that Last Call really kept up with it all. He couldn't say he was sorry that Toadsfall was being demonized, but he felt bad about Lectern being reported as some kind of manipulative, schizophrenic psychopath. Lectern had honestly been trying to help.
He had just been misled. They all had been, really. But the stories were grisly: corpses that had been sold for crazed rituals involving sacrifices of the dead to pagan gods and fairytale monsters. A lot of the stories omitted or only mentioned offhoof that these sacrifices were meant for protection from evil things, but it was difficult to swallow, either way. There were a lot of ponies angry about the desecration of the bodies, and shocked at just how many were coming out of the mountain above. It was like every time they thought they cleared them out, they found more; Last Call wondered if that was an effect of the Kiz and the bending of reality, if perhaps up there, things were still a little bent and twisted.
And admittedly, when the ponies had come to inform him they had found his wife's remains, it had been terribly hard not to be a little upset. But he had reminded himself of what he had gone through, what they all had gone through during the Alignment... and in the end, he had been strangely thankful for it. For the chance to have a second funeral for her. To a chance to say goodbye again. For the private little farewell he was able to hold, in a special little plot they made for her and a few others in the national park she'd loved so much, in the shadow of the mountain he had climbed to find her... no, that they had climbed together, really. He never would have managed it without her, or Silent Wish, or all the others who had helped him reach that strange place beyond time and space.
Still, it could have been worse. Steel had kept a sharp eye on him for a while, but then finally grudgingly let him off the hook. Whether he still thought Last Call and Furor were involved didn't matter: they stoically backed-up each other's stories, and the newspapers already had their headlines. The fact Toadsfall and Lectern and a bunch of other ponies had vanished only made it sweeter, and meant that they had plenty of ponies to share the blame without having to waste time or effort on making any arrests.
Last Call felt that Steel didn't care about making the arrest, though, as much as he did about finding out what had really happened. But Last Call was aware that talking about it would just make him sound crazy and would probably give Steel a reason to arrest him and hold him accountable for what had happened. Even thinking about it made him feel crazy, after all.
Now, Last Call was back home. The first few days had been terribly hard: his wife's presence was everywhere, but she was gone, long gone, and it took a lot of adjusting. Finally, he'd stopped crying and pitying himself long enough to clean up some of the mess he'd made, had gotten easier. He started talking to her again, but this time, with the awareness that he couldn't bring her back. That an open door was nothing more than a door blown open by a draft, or that he'd forgotten he'd left ajar.
And eventually, being in her presence, feeling it all around him in this house they'd built together... it started to help, not hurt. He remembered the good times.
He remembered their last moments together, how she'd wished him well, how she'd sent him to live. How ultimately, she forgave him... even though she had also acted like there was nothing to forgive.
Last Call was going to be a better stallion. Better, not smarter or stronger, just better. That was all he needed to do. He was determined not to disappoint her, and to live his life to the fullest. To experience all the things he wanted to, to chase his dreams, like he'd forgotten to do because life had gotten so... easy, and repetitive, and he'd fallen into himself and let himself become the kind of person he'd always hated.
But she had reminded him who he really was. More than that, who he could be, if he was only willing to try a little.
Last Call was going to be that stallion, one way or another.
Maybe he wouldn't do everything right. Maybe, even if he did, something terrible would happen. Maybe there were other things still out there, waiting to trip him up, even hunting him, hounding him, eager to hurt him... but he wouldn't let any of it stop him.
He'd be patient. He'd be good. He would take care of himself, and be the stallion his Faithful Heart had believed that he could be. That was the least that he could do for her: be the stallion that she had always seen in him, live life to the fullest, and never, ever turn his back on her and who she had been, or being the stallion she had wanted him to be.
And one day, they would be together, again.