It had only been a half hour since Twilight had woken to the sound of birdsong.
It had only been minutes since she had walked outside and beheld the clear skies above with a smile on her face and a heart full of hope for a good day.
It felt like an eternity ago, however, as she looked at the crowd of ponies surrounding Sugarcube Corner. The expressions on their faces ran the gamut from shocked to horrified to angry, but there was a trace of disbelief and sadness in all of them. The air was tense, and as she looked closer, they were all keeping their distance from the bakery.
Floating a little ways behind the crowd was Rainbow Dash, who looked completely shell-shocked. Twilight bit her lip and walked over to her.
“Rainbow? What’s wrong? What’s going on?”
Rainbow Dash’s ears snapped to attention, but it took her a minute to actually turn and face Twilight. Her eyes darted rapidly between Twilight, the bakery, and the open sky above. She sighed as her gaze finally settled on Twilight.
“It’s… It’s Pinkie. It’s really bad. It’s really bad, Twilight.”
Twilight gasped, eyes widening. “Oh my gosh, is she okay?”
Rainbow winced. “She’s uh… She’s fine? I mean, she uh…” Rainbow chewed the inside of her cheek. Her wings started beating faster and her breathing sped up. “I can’t do this. You need to see for yourself, Twilight. I… I gotta go.”
And before Twilight could get another word in, Rainbow Dash shot away through the sky.
Twilight’s attention drifted back to the crowd. The ponies in it had all stopped their conversations, turning to look at her. Their faces were full of either pity or despair. Twilight frowned, and felt her heart sink.
No one said a word as she pushed past them. Even if somepony had, she would have simply ignored them.
It didn’t take long for her to reach the perimeter of guardsponies surrounding the building. When she got close to the gap between two of them, they flared out their wings to block her. Frowning, she flared her own wings, and the guards hesitated.
“Princess, I mean no disrespect, but please trust me, you shouldn’t see this,” the guard to her left said.
She glared at the guard. “If—” Her voice cracked. She took a deep breath and tried again. “If you truly mean no disrespect, you will stand down like I am ordering you to.”
Although she could tell they still wanted to stop her, they knew it was ultimately their duty to follow the orders of the Princesses of Equestria, and, as such, they lowered their wings. She lowered her own wings and nodded tersely before stepping past.
It was only at this point that she realized just how badly she was tunnel visioning as she finally noticed Mr. and Mrs. Cake sitting outside of the bakery. Mrs. Cake was sobbing, her eyes clenched shut, leaning on her husband as if he was a life preserver and she was adrift at sea. For his part, Mr. Cake just stared at the ground numbly, his head hanging like it weighed a ton. A mare, who she recognized as a social worker thanks to her uniform, sat across from them.
A quick glance around showed that another social worker was with the twins, who were all smiles and giggles as they played and babbled excitedly, without a care in the world. Some bitter, sad little part of Twilight felt a flash of jealousy towards them for managing to retain any sense of joy.
Twilight shook her head to chase that pathetic feeling away. Steeling herself, she walked past the Cakes and their children into the bakery.
Inside, she was greeted by the sight of Pinkie Pie wearing hoofcuffs. Guards stood behind the pink mare, spears in their hooves, as if they considered Pinkie Pie a threat.
Twilight simply stood there, dumbstruck, her brain shutting down at the sight before her. She didn’t know what to even think, let alone what to say.
Pinkie Pie looked up from the ground and smiled. She raised a foreleg and waved excitedly at her, the metal links between the cuffs rattling frantically with the movement.
"Hiya, Twilight!" Pinkie exclaimed.
Twilight blinked. Her brain still felt like it was rebooting, but words spilled out of her mouth anyways. "Pinkie Pie? What's going on? Why are you in hoofcuffs?"
Pinkie gigglesnorted, and Twilight felt her skin crawl. "Because I did something bad, silly!" She furrowed her brow thoughtfully. "Well, many somethings, really." That unmistakable grin of hers sprang back onto her face. "You can go look at my works if you want! I'm really proud of them."
Twilight opened her mouth, but she hesitated. Her brain had seemingly caught back up to the situation at hoof, and the reactions of everypony she had seen stuck out in stark clarity. Her brain started connecting those with Rainbow’s words as well as Pinkie’s own, and she felt her gut fill with lead.
Finally, she asked, "What... what did you do, Pinkie?"
“Jeez, Twilight, I know I’m good at talking and all, but you’re being silly now!” Pinkie Pie rolled her eyes. "Just go down to the basement! It'll speak for itself."
Twilight gulped, her throat suddenly dry and tight. She turned away from Pinkie, unable to meet the mare’s grinning face anymore, and nervously walked towards the cellar doors. Two unicorn guards stood in front of the closed doors, horns aglow as they cast a shield over it. Part of Twilight, the part that had grown tired of being stopped so many times today, considered simply teleporting past them. Ultimately, she chose to follow protocol, more for her own sake than anything else.
Twilight cleared her throat. "Excuse me, sirs, but I need to go down there."
The guards glanced at each other nervously. "Princess Twilight, I really don't think you should..." one started to say, but trailed off. He grimaced and looked down, turning a little green.
His companion continued for him, "It's horrible down there, Princess. It’s our duty to protect the Princesses of Equestria; you know we can't stop you if you tell us to stand aside, but I strongly advise you to reconsider, for your own sake."
The lead in Twilight’s stomach had solidified; a horrible, awful, oppressive weight in the pit of her gut. She wanted to listen to them. She wanted to run back to her castle and bury her head in her pillows and pretend it was all a bad dream and that Pinkie hadn't done anything wrong, that she would wake up and walk over to Sugarcube Corner and everything would be fine, and her best friend wouldn’t be sitting there in hoofcuffs and everything would be fine.
No. Twilight clenched her eyes shut as she felt tears well in them. Nothing would be fine ever again, and it was dangerous to pretend otherwise. She needed to snuff out whatever foalish hopes she had left. She had to know what Pinkie had done.
"I have to know," Twilight forced out, opening her eyes again. One of the guards opened his mouth, and Twilight shook her head. “No. I… I need to see.”
The guard who had opened his mouth looked to the side as he dropped his portion of the shield spell and said nothing.
The other guard nodded. “I understand.” The glow on his horn disappeared, and so did the shield. He bowed his head in resignation. “And, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
Twilight nodded at both of them, and opened the doors with her magic. She staggered back as a wave of putrid odor flooded the room. The guard who had looked a little sick earlier ran outside; behind her, Twilight could hear Pinkie Pie giggling again.
The awful stench was overwhelming. It completely enveloped her, practically seeping into her pores, every breath taking more of it into her lungs. There was no escape from it.
One time, back when Twilight had still lived in Canterlot, Spike had taken a couple of weeks off from being her assistant to spend time with her mom and dad. During that time, Twilight had exclusively eaten with the Princess or at restaurants. When Spike had returned and opened the refrigerator, the smell of rot was absolutely awful.
The smell of rot coming from the cellar was so, so much worse.
Before she could lose her nerve, she lit her horn and began descending the steps. The first few steps looked perfectly normal. After those, however, she started seeing little streaks and specks of rusty brown, at first just a few here or there, but the more steps she took, the more there were. After a certain point, it almost looked like a monochrome Fetllock painting. When she reached the bottom, another color finally joined the macabre painting: red.
Twilight eyes watered and she gagged; she had thought that she had adjusted to the smell on the stairs, but the cellar proved her wrong.
The smell wasn’t even close to being the worst part.
Floor to ceiling, wall to wall, there were blood spatters and streaks, both fresh and stained. Several carcases hung from meat hooks, a few of them clearly having once been ponies. There were chains and shackles connected to tables and support beams covered in scratches and gouges, and knives on trays and others scattered around, and finally her stomach gave out.
Her vision was spinning, her legs were weak, and the world was crumbling around her. All that kept her standing was the viscera on the ground, but it hardly seemed real anymore. The only thing that was real was the spray of vomit sitting on the floor.
It was all that was real.
Twilight coughed and choked and gasped for air, staring dumbly at the floor as everything but the vomit spatter disappeared. She frantically looked around, and saw that she was on a bench in an empty train car, the greenery passing by her window telling her she was on the line to Canterlot. She breathed a sigh of relief, but wracked her dazed and confused mind for the reason she was here. Alone.
Slowly, memories of requesting the train car be cleared came back to her; as they did, so too did the memory of why she was going to Canterlot: to speak with Pinkie before her execution. Her short-lived relief crushed, Twilight sobbed and curled in on herself like a stupid foal, vomit and snot and tears dribbling down her face.
Her waking nightmare had ended, but everything in it had still happened. It would never truly be over.
Twilight was glad no one was around to see this, but she also couldn’t help but wish she had accepted her friends’ offers to come with her. She could use any amount of comfort right now.
Canterlot was a stark departure from the somber air of mourning surrounding Ponyville. Locals buzzed with disdain that their great city would play host to the final hours of one of the worst criminals Equestria had seen in centuries. Newsponies kept flooding off of trains, turning a horrible event into a spectacle to get the perfect headline and picture combination to sell the most newspapers.
Twilight stumbled through the streets, numbly letting the world pass her by, taking everything in but not fully processing it. The crowds parted around her, as if she was disgusting, tainted by the mere fact Pinkie was her friend.
Maybe she was tainted. She didn’t really know anymore.
She attempted to stand up straight and regal, to not let it bother her, but all it did was make it more obvious how fragile she was; she felt as if she was made of glass and one wrong step would leave her shattered forever.
She pretended not to notice when some of the crowd began to follow her, but she did increase her pace slightly. Once she reached the castle, she said nothing to the guards, pretending not to see the pity on their faces. She did sigh with relief when she saw that the guards were blocking the ponies who had followed her from entering the Castle Grounds.
Her relief was short lived, though, as the castle hallways turned out to be far worse than the streets. The nobles did not even attempt to hide their disdain; in fact, she was pretty sure several of them purposefully began talking louder when she passed.
“How horrific is it that one of the supposed champions of Equestria is a mass murderer?”
“Well, what can you expect from a country hick, really? It was a mistake on Princess Celestia’s part to ever give them that power.”
“Her friends must have known, too; really, how could they not?”
“Every single one of them must be complicit, including Princess Twilight.”
Tears stung in Twilight’s eyes, blurring her vision, and her head filled with static as she tried to ignore them and everything else around her.
Twilight saw blobs approaching her, pink and white and dark blue. For some reason, this seemed significant, but she didn’t understand why. She heard voices, but they were muffled, as if she were underwater. One of them grew louder, but it just made her head hurt; she couldn’t understand it, and so she just kept walking.
Suddenly, her limbs were locked into place and she gasped with fright. Thrashing did nothing; straining did nothing. So she lashed out like a frightened animal in the jaws of a predator, pushing raw, unfocused magic against the force holding her. The pressure released and she was free.
Deep breaths cleared her head, while a quick wipe with her hooves brought her blurry vision back into focus. Her breath caught at the sight before her.
Luna was on the ground, her horn smoking, eyes clenched shut as she winced in pain. At either side of her were Celestia and Cadance, who looked at Twilight with disappointment and concern, respectively. Twilight tried to think of something, anything to say. Even if they would understand why she had done it, that didn’t mean the pain would magically go away. All thoughts fled her mind as Luna’s eyelids opened, slowly at first, and then shot open when she saw Twilight.
Luna looked at her with fear.
Twilight could take disappointment and concern, but this? No. She couldn’t take it. She backed away, her wide eyes never leaving Luna’s gaze, even as she rapidly shook her head. She babbled and stammered apologies into incoherent mush and yelped when she backed herself into a wall. The walls were closing in around her and she hyperventilated as her eyes darted around.
“Twilight.”
She wasn’t sure who said it. She wasn’t sure what tone they had used. It didn’t matter. She did the only thing she could do and ran. She ran as far as she could, as fast as she could, not caring about whether her route made sense or not. It couldn’t last forever, though, and eventually she collapsed against a wall and wept.
Twilight wasn’t sure how long she lay there; it could have been hours, or it could have been just minutes. She couldn’t look at the position of the sun—that would just remind her of Celestia’s disappointment—and there were no clocks in the castle hallways.
Twilight pressed her hooves against the floor and forced her legs to straighten, putting all of her will into standing back up. She took a deep breath once she did so, and grimaced as she had to fight back a sob. She closed her eyes, picked up the shattered pieces of herself, and shoved them back together like a hastily completed puzzle.
Her eyes opened, and she glanced around to gather her bearings. It looked like she hadn’t actually gone too far off course. Having successfully reoriented herself, she set off towards the dungeons.
As she made her way into the depths of the castle the long, cold stone stairwells and hallways bore down on her. She had expected an abrupt change between the warmth and opulence of the more frequented areas of the castle above and the stark utilitarianism of where she was now, but there hadn’t been one. It had been a gradual thing, a steady building of darkness.
The weight of it all was unbearably oppressive.
After what seemed like an eternity, she finally reached the bottom. Her friend would be in one of the cells here. Was Pinkie her friend anymore? She still occupied that space in Twilight’s shattered heart, but did she deserve it? She turned to look for her, and spotted her to the right of the stairs.
Twilight stared at the imprisoned mare; Pinkie was smiling brightly, as if nothing was wrong. Twilight walked over to her cell. Pinkie was sitting on the cobblestone floor, humming some song Twilight was certain she recognized.
Pinkie Pie looked up, and her eyes brightened. “Oh, it’s Twilight! Hi Twilight!” Pinkie exclaimed. She craned her neck and looked past Twilight. “Are the other girls with you?”
Twilight shook her head. “No, no, it’s just me. They wanted to come with me, but I… I needed to do this alone.”
“Yeah, that’s fair. So, how ya doing?” She looked Twilight in the eyes, and her gaze turned empathetic. “Aw, don’t feel bad, Twilight; this was bound to happen eventually, after all!” She shook her cuffs and giggled. “Get it? Because I’m bound right here!”
Twilight opened her mouth, but she struggled to find words. Despite everything, Pinkie was still as carefree as ever, and she couldn’t wrap her head around that.
“Why?” she finally said.
“Same reason I do anything, Twilight. Because it’s fun!” She tapped her chin with a hoof. “I mean, it definitely isn’t fun for anypony else, but you’ve gotta be selfish sometimes, you know? Just like Rarity always says, self-care is important!”
“How could you possibly find that fun?” Twilight pleaded, tears welling up in her eyes.
Pinkie smiled. “Ooooh, that’s a good question! It’s kinda like when you lecture somepony after they get something wrong, or Rainbow beats somepony in a race; it’s like, you know you’re better than those other ponies, but you’ve still gotta prove it to them sometimes.
“Plus, once you try meat, hay just seems so bland and boring! That sure doesn’t hurt either.”
“How—” She coughed; her mouth felt so dry all of a sudden, as if she was lost in the desert. “How can you treat this like—like that! This isn’t that simple!”
Pinkie tilted her head. “What do you mean, Twilight? Of course it’s that simple!”
Twilight looked away. She had to; if she kept looking at Pinkie Pie she would fall apart again, and she couldn’t do that; she wasn’t sure she’d be able to pick up the pieces this time.
Eyes tracing the lines in the stone wall behind Pinkie, Twilight realized the worst part of it all. Pinkie wasn’t crazy—as she had learned many moons ago, just because she was strange didn’t mean there wasn’t a rational core of thought there—nor was there any sudden change that Twilight could blame this all on. This was the same mare she had always known, and Twilight was just burdened with new knowledge about her. She understood now that she could never truly and fully know anypony.
Twilight looked back down at Pinkie, a mare who was simultaneously one of her best friends, and a complete stranger she had never met before.
Tone completely flat, all strength having fled her, she asked, "Do you regret any of it, Pinkie?"
Pinkie Pie gigglesnorted. "Of course I do, silly! I mean, how could I forget to use that meat before it went bad? What a waste!"