//------------------------------// // Chapter Nine: Therapy // Story: A Draconequus's Destiny // by TheOnlySaneDraconequus //------------------------------// Chapter Nine: Therapy The day after I pulled my disappearing act, I went back. I didn’t go anywhere the Changeling Hive, and I couldn’t just wander around in space forever. I didn’t want to be around anything more sentient than a tree, so I went back to my realm. I figured it was better to go crazy from loneliness than … I had told Twilight I’d be back in a week. A week came and went, then another, and I was still holed up inside. I wasn’t on a first name basis with any of the gods, but I was frantically praying no one would visit me. It wasn’t to be. In the middle of the third week, in the late afternoon, a familiar voice cried out the password, and Twilight and Spike stepped through the portal. They stopped dead in their tracks in the middle of the sidewalk, and their eyes went wide. “Whoa!” said Spike. “What happened? This place looks horrible!” It was true. The left half of the house that looked like a wreck normally was even worse than before. It had finally gotten a paint job, but that was because it was covered in graffiti. Instead of a few holes in the windows, all the windows were missing, except for shards of broken glass in the frames. The beams on the porch had warped, and everything was covered in dust and three-foot cobwebs. Thick, thorny, dead vines had sprouted up from the ground, and were tearing into the walls. The dead lawn was covered in litter, and the dead oak tree had a large crack in the trunk and was missing a few branches. The side of the sky on that side of the house was normally a starry night, but now it was just a thick dark fog. The right side of the house was still brightly painted, but it had a thin layer of dust as well. The sunny side of the sky had sullen grey clouds drifting through it instead of the normal fluffy white ones. The right side of the lawn still had greenery, but that was because ivy and kudzu were slowly choking the life out of all the other plants. “I - I don’t know Spike,” said Twilight in a worried tone. She trotted up to the door, and pulled the doorbell. Instead of chiming, it let out a screech. There wasn’t any answer. She knocked on the door a few times. “Secundus?” she called. There still wasn’t any answer. She tried the doorknob, and pushed the door open. All the lights in the house were off, and from inside the house, all you could see out the windows was fog. Spike nervously followed Twilight in. Something crunched under her hoof. She lit up her horn, and saw wrappers for different kinds of soap littering the floor, reminding her of Autumn leaves. “Secundus?” Twilight called louder. “Oh. Hey guys.” I said from behind her. She and Spike turned and looked at me. “You look awful!” said Spike. “Thank you,” I said without any emotion. “I mean, you look like all of Tartarus ran you over in a cart, then backed up slowly!” “I’ve been a bit under the weather lately,” I muttered. Twilight gestured at the fifty soap bar wrappers strewn across the floor. “What is this?” I shrugged. “So I’ve washed my paws a few times. So what?” Twilight tried to change the subject. “Everypony’s doing pretty well, since … you know.” She coughed. “Even Sombra’s doing alright, he’s not as much trouble as we thought he might be. He is the biggest pain in the flank I’ve ever had to deal with, and his attitude is pure misery to be around, but … he seems to be accepting it.” She gave me a smile. “Princess Celestia was talking about giving you a medal for the way you handled things.” The room got noticeably darker. “I don’t want a medal for it,” I growled lowly. Twilight looked at me with mild surprise. “You handled things very well. Better than we would have. You saved Equestria for crying out loud! Why wouldn’t you accept at least a medal for that?” “BECAUSE I WANTED TO KILL HIM!” I roared. “Can you wrap your brilliantly gifted mind around that concept? I. Wanted. To. Kill. Him.” I started to pace the room. “I looked it up, and I asked the Spirit of Death. Do you know how many murders have been committed on your entire planet in the last hundred-and-fifty years? None! Oh, sure, there are muggings, robbery, specism, villainy, somepony trying to overthrow Equestria about once a month, but sentient beings don’t kill one another! If I hadn’t stopped myself twice, I would have killed him, and I would have ENJOYED IT.” A cold wind swept through the room, and the entire house began to shake. “I don’t want any recognition for that, so let it go.” I wrapped my arms around myself, and started to shake. Twilight’s eyes never left me, but she said, “Spike? Take a letter, and send it to Thorax. Tell him his coltfriend desperately needs to talk to somepony, and he’s not to let him wriggle out of it.” “ – not to let him wriggle out of it.” Spike said as he finished writing. I dashed forward and clapped my paws over the flames, but it was already sent. I clenched and unclenched a fist, and the house shook again, this time more violently. Twilight knew better than to touch me to get my attention, so she cleared her throat instead. She then sighed. “From what Discord’s told me about his realm, this place is tied to you, and to your emotions, right?” I nodded. “So, the reason this place looks so horrible and is shaking like an earthquake is because that’s how you actually feel, isn’t it?” I nodded. “It’s strong enough to warp your realm this much?” I nodded again. “What’s with all the soap?” I held my paws out for inspection. “Blood. Can’t get it out.” I said quickly. “Secundus, you didn’t actually hurt anypony!” “Doesn’t matter.” Twilight looked at me with concern. “I could tell you were the most upset I’ve ever seen you, which is honestly saying something, but … I had no idea you were having this bad a breakdown. If I’d know I wouldn’t have come here to ask this, but, I need a favor.” “What?” I asked in a dangerous tone. “It’s Sombra.” I growled/clicked in the back of my throat, and things began to drop off of the shelves in the house. “He needs help, he’s got some kind of illness I’ve never seen before.” “Dammit, Sparkle, I’m a Draconequus, not a doctor!” I snickered a bit after that. Twilight raised a brow. “What’s funny?” “Sorry, I know that was random even for me, but joking helps keep my moods more stable. Which, admittedly, isn’t all that stable, but I’ll take what I can get at this point. I was serious, though. I’ve got maybe a middle schooler’s understanding of pony biology, and for magical illnesses, you need a specialist. What can I do?” “It’s not a magical illness, trust me, I checked. Also, he says it’s your fault.” I stood up straighter. The knick-knacks and books flew back to their places. “Well, you should have said so.” I shoved the two of them unceremoniously through a portal back to Twilight’s castle, following right after. Starlight Glimmer ran downstairs to see us. “Twilight, thank goodness, he’s-” “AAARRRGHH!” came from upstairs. “I’m not an expert, but that doesn’t sound good.” I said. I took the stairs two at a time, kept an ear out, and rounded the corner into Sombra’s room. He was curled up in bed, sweating profusely, shaking all over, with his teeth clenched. His coat looked a quarter of a shade lighter, and his mane wasn’t writhing around as much, but he was sick. He cracked open an eye, and his usual mist flowed from it. “Abomination,” he growled when he saw me. “Uh, hi. I-” he sprang up, and bit me. Hard. “Ouch! OK, I know this is just karma kicking in, but will you stop biting me?!” He flopped back into bed. “This is your fault!” he snarled at me. “You broke me! I’d be fine if I could just use my magic, but you took it away and you broke me!” “What are you talking about? I didn’t do anything to you that would do this, I-” Something clicked into place. “Oh. Good Lord. It is my fault. How long have you been feeling like this?” I asked quickly. “Since a week after you broke me. It just keeps getting worse.” He shuddered, and curled into a tighter ball. “Yeah, it does that. I’d recognize this in any universe.” “What is it?!” Twilight snapped. I sighed. “Drug withdrawal. This is why the Standard Book of Spells has the warning ‘do not use dark magic’ in red ink in all caps. Although, they usually only put the warning after the spell. The stuff’s addictive, sometimes fatally.” “How did you know what it was so quickly?” asked Starlight. “We had the doctor look at him, and he was mystified!” I chose my words carefully. “My world didn’t have magic, but I’ve … seen … people … go through something very similar.” Before she could ask what I meant, I said, “Right. I’m imposing a quarantine, nopony including me, is to use magic of any kind within forty feet of him. When you go through this, you latch onto whatever you can to make it stop, so he can’t be around magic. I’ll also need … a chalkboard, a lot of water for him, a … chess set, something for a late lunch that’ll keep if he doesn’t want to eat, and a lot of books, the more esoteric the better. Can you get all of that?” “On it!” Spike said, dashing out of the room. A few minutes later he returned, bearing a huge stack of books. “Esoteric means not a lot of ponies know about it, right?” I nodded. “Well, you’re in luck then. We’ve got way too many of those. I’ll have to make a couple of trips for the rest of the stuff.” He somehow managed to find everything I’d asked for. I went out of the room, grabbed one of Twilight’s “comfy” chairs, and set it by the bed. “Secundus, what are you doing?” asked Twilight in a worried tone. “Staying with him. It’s really important to have someone with you during the first part of this, to make sure you don’t relapse if nothing else. I mean, he can’t relapse, because he can’t use Dark Magic at the moment, but he needs someone here.” “Anypony but you!” Sombra shouted, “I swear, I’ll-” “Kill me, yes you said,” I snapped. “but right now, I’m the only one in this place who knows what this is and what to do about it, so I’m all you’ve got! You don’t have to like it, and neither do I.” “Secundus, are you sure?” asked Starlight. “Mmm-hmm. Get out.” “What?” “I need privacy, and he needs rest. Whether he’ll actually get some is up to him.” “Why is Dark Magic affecting him this badly? Others have used it, and they didn’t go through this.” “Because they only used it for simple things like transmogrification, for a short time. A week at most. He used it for everything, for three years straight. It got to the point he’s practically made of the stuff.” “How come you seem to know so much about him? We hardly know anything about him!” exclaimed Twilight. “I’ll tell you later, now will you please leave us alone?” Everypony heard my tone, and quickly scattered. Sombra looked at me, and growled lowly. “Get out,” he hissed lowly. I folded my arms. “I’m twice your size, and I could throw you about six feet. Make me.” Sombra then lunged up, and once again bit me, hard enough to draw blood this time. He spat it out. “GAAAAK! Your blood tastes horrible!” “Just because it is bright blue does not make it a Slurpee! I know you love being dark, brooding, angsty, and evil, but I also know you don’t actually drink blood.” Sombra squinted at me. “How do you know so much about me? I could have sworn I saw you once, when I was a colt, for half a second.” I sighed. “I’d really rather not talk about it to anypony. When my ‘family’ finds out, I am so dead. I hate to think what they’re going to do to me.” Sombra grinned. “I could hear the quotation marks around the word family. Why is that?” “I’m a Draconequus, but I’m an adopted Draconequus. It’s complicated, like the rest of my life.” I sat down. “So, if this is anything like what I - witnessed,” I said, “you’ll want to replace what you’re addicted to with something positive that can replace it long-term.” “Like what,” Sombra sneered, “The ‘magic of friendship?’ Got any rainbow puppies with soulful eyes while you’re at it?” “Friendship is actually pretty valuable, believe it or not. This is a problem with magic, not with drugs…” I blinked. “Say, can you juggle?” Sombra seemed taken aback. “No, why?” I stood up. “Be right back. Don’t go anywhere.” “I don’t exactly have a choice here!” he called after me. I made a quick trip to the local joke shop, before heading back to Sombra’s room. I held up ten juggling balls. “This is just a theory, but it might work. I want you to juggle, but with your magic, not your hooves. You still can levitate, so it should be easy!” “I AM NOT A PREFORMING SEAL!” Sombra bellowed. I ignored that. “You do it like this.” Twenty seconds later, all the balls dropped to the ground. “… only better,” I finished. I pawed them over to Sombra. He glared at them with utter contempt. “I am sixty-seven percent sure that this will help you feel better, and that’s as certain as I ever get, so will you lower your standards and just try it?!” He sighed, and took five balls in each hoof. His horn lit up with its sickly green aura. The balls started to levitate, and he began to juggle, moving his hooves to catch the balls as he levitated them. After about a minute, he dropped them, and growled in annoyance. “Why exactly am I demeaning myself like this?” “I think if you replace Dark Magic with Harmony Magic, it’ll help cut the addiction. Right now, all you can do with Harmony Magic is levitation so it’s best if you do lots of really complicated levitation. It’s just a working theory, but isn’t it worth it if it helps you stop going through this as badly?” He sighed, and nodded dejectedly. He then started again. As he worked with it, he got better at it. Pretty soon he was showing off, with an evil grin on his muzzle. For just a split second, the concentrated evil stopped flowing from his eyes, but it was just a trick of the light. He then started to genuinely smile, and even started to enjoy it. When he was done, he caught them all in one hoof, balancing them carefully in a stack. “Ha! Beat that, you lowly abomination!” He then set the balls on the side table. I smirked. “I can’t juggle even remotely that well, nice form. How you feeling?” I asked nonchalantly. He blinked. “Better, actually. The hornache’s gone down quite a bit.” He held out a foreleg, and glanced at it. “My hooves aren’t shaking either. How did you know that would help?” “… … experience … I’m glad it worked. I’m still worried that you’ll try to overthrow Equestria, again, but I’m going to let you have your regular unicorn harmony magic back. Slowly. I don’t trust you anywhere near as far as I could throw you.” I glanced at a plate of peanut butter crackers Spike had left us. “Even for me this isn’t an ideal lunch, and I’m not a King, but are you hungry at all?” He nodded. He practically inhaled even the plate itself, but I did manage to sneak one for myself. He then sighed. “I’m exhausted. All I did was juggle, why am I worn out?” “You’re resetting yourself, believe me, that uses up a lot of energy.” He nodded. “Could I have just a little glass of water?” I snickered. “What’s funny about that?” “Nothing, just … something I saw once.” I went downstairs, and got him the water, which he downed in one gulp. He then noticed something. “Your chest is glowing.” “What?” I asked. He pointed with a hoof. “Over your heart, well where I assume your heart is, you abomination, there’s a spidery glowing line of light.” I rubbed the spot distractedly. “Oh, yeah.” “Why is it doing that? It’s very strange.” “It … just means I’m keeping my side of a promise, nothing more. I was hoping the scar would have healed by now, but it’s taking its sweet time about it.” “So, you teach supposed villains how to juggle because it just popped into your head, you find perfectly ordinary statements funny, and you are perfectly fine with being bioluminescent. Are you always this random?” “If I can help it, yes.” I then thought about something. “Just out of curiosity, how am I even talking to you now? From what I understand, when you first met Twilight and her friends, everything but your horn was vaporized.” Sombra grinned evilly. “They should have vaporized the horn too. Besides, there are entire branches of magic devoted to cheating death.” I shrugged. “Fair enough. I’ll let you rest now, and check up on you later.” He settled back into bed. I walked out of the room, and shut the door behind me. Twilight, Starlight, and Spike were standing with their ears to where the door had been. “You could at least try to be subtle about it,” I said in a tired tone. “What happened?” asked Starlight. Before I could answer, Twilight said, “Unless your voices have gone down an octave, was he laughing?” I nodded. “He may be evil, but he does have a sense of humor. It’s been known to happen.” Twilight got an excited expression. “Are the two of you becoming friends, because that would be perfect!” “Absolutely not!” I snarled. “I still want to kill him, and he thinks I am the most annoying pest he has ever had to put up with, which I probably am. That’s not the basis of a friendship, that’s … a brief period of mutual tolerance. That’s about all we can manage, so don’t expect us to ride off into the sunset together. He tried to imprison and hurt my loved ones, I will never be friends with him! I just want to help him with this … and anyway it’s my fault he’s going through this in the first place. It’s misplaced, unwarranted sympathy, not friendship. “I’ve figured something out: if he uses Harmony Magic, it helps cut down the symptoms. I still don’t want anypony else using magic around him, because he’ll try to latch onto it, but I do want him to use as much Harmony Magic as he is willing and able to use. All he can do is levitation, but even that makes a difference.” Twilight nodded. “On it. Why don’t you go home?” “I don’t want to go back to the Hive, I feel bad enough already without Thorax seeing me like this.” “So go to your realm and rest up.” “I don’t actually need-” Twilight cut me off. “You may not need physical rest, but from what I saw earlier, you’re completely worn out emotionally. I order you to go somewhere and rest.” “Technically, I was never made an Equestrian citizen, I just live here, so I don’t have to recognize your authority. I’ll go back and rest, I promise. I’ll check on Sombra in a few days, write me if there’s any major change.” I disappeared back to my realm. I gave a tired smile when I noticed it had straightened itself up slightly, which meant I was feeling a bit better. I then found a couch, and magiced myself to sleep. The very next day, something I had been dreading happened. I was trying to weed the overgrown garden, when I heard a certain Changeling speak the passcode. I disappeared inside as a reflex. After stepping through the portal, Thorax walked up, and loudly knocked on the door. “Sec?” he said in a slightly angry tone, “I know you’re in there! Are you coming out, or am I coming in to find you?!” “Please don’t, I just mopped the floor.” Thorax jumped, and turned around to see me on the lawn behind him. “Where in Equestria have you been?! Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?!! Three weeks, three weeks without knowing where you are, what you’re doing, or if you’re remotely ok. The only reason I’m here now is because Twilight wrote me and told me you were here instead of hiding on some moon somewhere. Why didn’t you come home?!!” I sighed. “I … thought it best to not be around anything alive. It was stupid, but it made sense at the time. We’re here together now, so let me have it.” Thorax sighed too. “I just did. That’s as angry as I can get right now.” He chuckled, “You’re a mess emotionally, have you talked to anyling?” “Cheater. No, I haven’t.” Thorax smiled. “I thought you wouldn’t have.” He held up a steaming thermos he had brought with him. “I brought golden flower tea!” I laughed. “You know, if that whole ‘Ruler of the Changeling Kingdom’ thing doesn’t work out for you, you would make a really good therapist.” I looked through the open doorway. “Let’s go to the library, I always feel safe in a library.” Thorax wiped his hooves on the mat. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said in a puzzled tone. “That’s not what I’m worried about,” I said as I tried to find the right door on the second floor. “Then what did you mean about feeling safe?” “I know you won’t hurt me, I’m worried about it being the other way around.” “Oh,” was all Thorax replied. We sat down at a study table in the middle of my bigger-on-the-inside library. Thorax smiled. “So, I know this is definitely a cliché, but … how do you feel?” In one quick motion I put a protective helmet on his head that was designed to leave his horn and antlers free. Thorax blinked. “Uh, why did you do that?” “Because if you’re thrown against a concrete wall at the speed of a moving bullet train, your exoskeleton will break in several places, and you don’t have my healing rate.” I started tying padding onto him. “All I asked was how you’re feeling, not do you want to play hockey!” “I know. I’m getting there. Is this too tight? I’m bad with knots.” Thorax groaned. “No, Sec, it’s fine. What are you doing?!” “I’ve got something to show you. This way.” I led him out of the library, and downstairs, then down two flights of stairs. We came to a vault door, which I opened. We went inside. “You have a bunker in your basement?” Thorax asked with shock. “In one of the basements, yes,” I said distractedly. “It’s a reverse bunker, it’s designed to keep something in, not keep things out.” I came to a small safe on the far wall. I reached into a bucket, and pulled on some rubber gloves. I unlocked the safe. “Three to the right, four to the left, four-fifty,” I muttered. I then reached into the safe with the air of someone holding the core of a nuclear reactor. I pulled out a large mason jar, the size of a pitcher of lemonade. Inside was a cloud of inky black smoke, with flashes of red lightning coming out of it at random. It changed shape and writhed randomly, banging against its prison. It was also hissing like an entire nest of snakes. Thorax grabbed his horn, and screamed. “What is that?!” he shouted. “Oh, sorry, I should have told you to turn your empathy off. You asked how I’m feeling, this is it.” I set the jar on the floor. “This is pure, undiluted, homicidal anger. It’s been … growing for a while, I hadn’t really noticed.” Thorax’s jaw was practically on the floor. “You’ve had that inside of you?!” I nodded. “For how long?!” I sighed. “On and off for … a while. The Sombra incident just made it explode. I’d been feeling it before then, but didn’t notice it was quite this bad.” I gave a twisted, semi-crazed smile. “I’ve always been good at bottling my feelings, and sometimes they wind up becoming cancerous like this.” Thorax didn’t know what to reply to that. He asked, “Why do you keep an emotion in a jar, in a safe, in a bunker?” “You know what I said about hitting the wall at a couple of hundred miles an hour?” he nodded. “The lid of the jar slipped for about a second, and that’s what happened to me. The only reason I’m not dead is I’m immortal. That and cartoon physics. Now do you get why I’m being over-dramatic? If this got out, it would probably kill somepony of its own accord. Although, I think it would hurt me before anyone else. I’m … not overly fond of myself a lot of the time. I actually don’t think it would hurt you at all, but I’m worried I will hurt you, which is why I’ve been avoiding everyone for weeks.” Thorax thought for a few seconds. He then said, “You do know that it’s extremely unhealthy to bottle things up, right?” I nodded. “I’ve got thirteen years’ experience doing so, so yes.” I picked up the jar, and gave it a shake. My anger snarled loudly. “Actually, I haven’t bottled this, literally or metaphorically, even though it’s in a jar. I’m still definitely feeling this, I’ve just … compartmentalized it a bit until I can figure out what to do with it. How to let it out without actually hurting somepony like I want to. I know that setting it to one side in my mind is only slightly healthier than bottling it, but for right now, it’s the best I can do.” “No, it’s not healthy. You really need to work on this. For right now, can you put it back in the safe? I don’t like the way it’s looking at me.” I examined the jar. “Actually, I can do something a lot better than that, but you’ll regret it.” I shoved Thorax out of the bunker, slamming the door behind him. There was a long, drawn-out growl, and then a slamming sound. “GAAARRH!” I yelled. I then opened the door, with my eyes narrowed to slits, and my teeth bared. “Library,” I managed to get out. “What happened?!” Thorax asked. “Put … it back,” my speaking wasn’t very good at the moment, but I wasn’t thinking in words at all. As we walked down the hall, random objects flew off their shelves, and broke against my head. “Secundus!!” Thorax yelled. “I’m … not doing it … on purpose … but … I … am,” I said through clenched teeth. When we got to the library, I collapsed into a couch, and every light in the house went out. Thorax settled into an armchair across from me. “Well, someling’s seen way too many ghost movies,” Thorax joked. “Ironically, I’ve never seen a ghost movie like that in my lives.” My head wasn’t hurting as badly, and I was thinking more like a person than an animal. I snapped my fingers, and the lights came back on. I snapped my fingers, and Thorax’s helmet and padding disappeared. “Sorry about that, when I’m very upset, I’m more like an animal than a person. This is the most upset I’ve ever been.” I then rushed forward, and grabbed Thorax, giving him a thorough sniff all over. “Uh, what?” Thorax said, his mind blanking he was so confused. I smelled him one last time, and sat back in the couch. “I … like the way you smell,” I muttered lowly. “It helps me relax. Believe me, I think it’s weird too.” “OK then.” Thorax said in a worried tone. He then found the thermos he’d brought. “Where do you keep your c-” I held up two mugs. “ups?” he finished. He poured the tea. We sat in silence for a minute, I was clearing my head, and was trying to think what to say. I took a long drink of tea. “This is amazing! What did you say it’s called?” “Golden Flower tea,” Thorax said with a smile. “It’s a plant that grows underground. I think it’s good too.” He set his mug down. “So, what do you mean you ‘put it back?’” “I … unboxed it. In my mind. I’m feeling the whole thing right now, that’s why I pulled my usual rabid routine, and why there was a bit of poltergeist activity.” Thorax examined himself. “I seem to be undevoured at the moment,” he said wryly. I sighed. “You’re not who I’m mad at. I’m actually glad you’re here. My acting like a dog aside, you really make a difference. I should have come home right away, and maybe this wouldn’t have been as bad. I’m certainly good at being stupid that way.” “Well, I’m here now.” Thorax said. “Something tells me you don’t exactly want to discuss this in Feelings Forum.” I let out a shriek of laughter. “I … know you don’t like to talk about things like this, that you prefer to bottle them up, but will you at least talk to me?” I nodded. “How long has this been going on?” “Short, long, or very long-term?” I asked. “There’s an answer for each.” Thorax rolled his eyes. “Lay down and get comfortable, ok?” I did. Thorax levitated over a legal pad and a pen, the pen ready to write. “So!” he said in a horrible Austrian accent, with an evil grin, “Tell me more about zis dezire you feel for your mozzer!” I threw a book at him, which he dodged spectacularly well. “Thhhooorrraaaxxx!!!” I yelled. He laughed. “I’m joking, I’m joking! I hope I’m not that bad a therapist.” He threw the pen and paper over his shoulder. “So,” he said with a warm smile, “where do you want to start?”