Hammering at the door, then a pause, listening. Then hammering again until footsteps blundered up.
The door swung back. Derpy’s head peered out, wings ruffled. She looked down at the doorstep, then gave a small start.
“Ruby?” she said, weakly. “What are you doing outside in the middle of the night?”
Whereupon Ruby cracked. Even against all experience, she hadn’t dared expect Derpy to be anything but furious. Ruby had been too terrified of her life.
She dissolved gasping, weeping, and collapsing into Derpy’s shocked legs and chest. Two years’ worth of silence gushed through the breach.
“Ruby!” Derpy’s free leg clutched her close, and Ruby shuddered against the firm grip. “What’s wrong?”
The words took ages to come. Ruby didn’t know what to do. All she knew was that she’d need to build a new life all over again, and she didn’t know where else to go.
Forcefully, Ruby spoke over her own whining, voice broken and wailing. “I don’t want to go back! Please let me stay here! Please, please, please, please, please!”
“Did something happen, Ruby?”
“I don’t want to –” Ruby started to hiccup between the sobs “– live there anymore! I wanna – go home! I can’t – stay there an– another minute!”
Gently, Derpy shushed her, wrapping her in wings softer than eiderdown but stronger than steel. Ruby clung onto the pegasus like grim death. She barely registered the yawn upstairs or the familiar voice of Dinky mumbling, “What’s going on, Mom?”
“Dinky, you should be asleep, shouldn’t you?” said Derpy.
“Wait. Why’s Ruby here?”
“She’s just a little upset, that’s all. Don’t fuss over her, Dinky. Give her some space.”
Someone shut the door. Ruby sensed movement around her, and then she was on a sofa in the next room, still protected by the feathery bubble that Derpy made around her. Something would go wrong, she knew it, but it wasn’t happening right this second and she snuggled deeper while she still could.
The bubble resonated under Derpy’s cuddly tones. “Do you want anything? Maybe we can help.”
Ruby shook her head, burying herself deeper, hiding as much as possible. Merely knowing Dinky was there made it burn a hundred times worse.
If there was one thing Derpy was good at, it was patience. Ruby took a while just to steady her own breathing.
“That’s a good girl.” Derpy soothed her with a reassuring squeeze.
“I’m sorry,” said Ruby.
“Don’t be sorry. Although I am a little confused…”
Ruby curled up; she’d never been so comfortable before. “Can I stay here, please?”
“Aw, why do you want to stay here? Won’t Berry and Piña be worrying about you?”
“I don’t want to go back!” Fear spiked in her chest.
“Now, now, no one’s going to make you do anything you don’t want to, OK? But what happened? Did they do anything to you –?”
“No!” A completely different fear: Ruby’s brain scrambled itself trying to understand it.
“Keep calm, there’s a good girl. Nice, steady breaths, OK?”
If anything, Derpy’s niceness reached through the comfort and stung. It was all wrong. Why was it all wrong!? No matter what Ruby did, it always seemed wrong! So much wrongness smacked her that she felt the weeping sobs trickling back.
It was Dinky who spoke up. “Berry would never do anything nasty to her. She loves Ruby.”
The sobs burst through; Ruby had to curl up tight enough to squeeze her lungs, in a confused attempt to stifle them. No amount of Derpy’s shushes and soothings stemmed the tide.
Over her shaking head, Ruby heard her speak to Dinky. “Dinky, I’ll have to fetch Berry. She needs her family.”
“OK. I could wake up Ammy –”
“Ammy’s sleeping. You’ll have to stay here and look after Ruby. Try not to upset her, please?”
“Why would I upset her!?”
“I mean don’t pester her with questions or anything. I know you, Dinky, but this isn’t the time for that sort of smarty thing. Poor girl’s been through too much already: how would you feel?”
“Well… I guess, but you really want to leave us alone?”
“Oh. You don’t think that’s a good idea?”
“She likes you. How about you stay here and I fetch Berry?”
“You can’t go outside! It’s cold! Besides, Berry’s going to need help. A grown-up should go.”
“Then let’s wake up Ammy!”
“She’s had a long day. That wouldn’t be fair on her, Dinky.”
“Why don’t we take Ruby with us, then? We gotta do something!”
Right on cue, the doorbell rang. Through the bubble of feathers, Ruby felt Derpy stiffen. A moment later, Dinky must have peeked through a curtain, because next thing she knew, Dinky’s little hoofsteps drew back.
“It’s Berry,” she whispered.
Ruby clung on tighter. She didn’t want the wings to uncurl.
Carefully, Derpy unwound and left her hugging herself on the sofa. “I’ll go and talk to her. Ruby, don’t worry. We’re going to help you one way or another. Dinky, stay here.”
“Yes, Mom.”
“I’m sorry,” repeated Ruby to her hooves.
She heard Derpy move away and the muffled sounds of hooves in the main hall. It hadn’t been much wider than her own, but it had been far cleaner: she knew Dinky’s older sister never let anything get dirty for long. Rumour had it the whole house was under such a strict cleaning regimen that dirt threw itself out of the house rather than fall victim to it. Whereas Berry rarely tidied up at home. That was somehow always Ruby’s job.
She heard the door open.
She heard Berry’s voice, defeated. “Ruby’s here, isn’t she?”
“Berry… you’re crying…”
“Oh, it’s nothing, it’s nothing.”
Ruby’s heart crumpled like sand. She realized she was going back to that place. Hastily, she wiped her own cheeks free of tears.
Nearby, Berry gave a laugh so weak it could have been a strangled gasp. “I figured she’d run off here. Who else looks good next to me?”
“Berry, she’s very upset.”
Another weak laugh. “I figured.”
“Come on, clean yourself up, now…”
As soon as she heard approaching hoofsteps, Ruby straightened up on the sofa, trying not to notice how nice and well-furnished the living room was. She concentrated on Dinky as though her sanity hung in the balance. Dinky smiled back weakly, strangely dishevelled with her haystack bedhead and reddened, sleepless eyes.
But it was only Derpy, who poked her head around the door. “Let’s sort this out, Ruby. Don’t worry, I’ll be right here.”
Hopeless. She was going back. Ruby had no life to go back to. Not after this.
Dead inside, she shuffled off the sofa and kept her head firmly down as she was ushered into the hall. Up ahead, she heard Berry give a faint cry, but she refused to look up, in case she saw the nightmare once more.
“Ruby…” Berry’s voice was pained but trying hard not to be. “Dreams that bad, huh?”
“Bad dreams?” repeated Derpy.
“Yeah.” A sniff. “She’s been having bad dreams for a while. Never this bad, though.”
“Did she say what they were? Maybe there’s a clue there.”
“Sharp as ever, eh, Derpy?” A laugh that died halfway through. “Ruby told me a few nights back there was this zombie thing in them, but –”
“Zombie?” said Derpy, and indeed there was something sharp in her tone.
Someway behind, Ruby heard the creak of someone sidling upstairs as stealthily as possible.
“That’s what she said.” Berry paused. “Going back to bed, Dinky?”
“Er…” Dinky dripped with innocence. “Yeah, yeah, so tired, gotta get ready for school tomorrow…”
Except it was the weekend tomorrow.
“Dinky,” sighed Derpy.
Weakly: “Y-yes, Mom?”
“Please tell me this has nothing to do with those comics I found under your bed yesterday.”
“Comics?” Dinky’s guilt hid about as well as an apple behind a pencil. Everyone knew she had one weakness, and Derpy didn’t even need to get mad. She could do with a disappointed sigh what most ponies couldn’t with a full trial and lots of righteous shouting.
“Yes,” said Derpy. “Comics.”
Ruby heard Dinky’s conscience wrestle with the rest of her. It was the sound of a foal furiously trying not to speak and furiously trying to say something to solve it all at once, and it came out as a humming, stifled moan.
“They were zombie comics,” continued Derpy. “And I’m guessing you took them to school to show to other foals, even though you shouldn’t, Dinky, that’s wrong.”
Panicky, Dinky blurted out, “I didn’t mean anything by it! It was just a bit of fun! No one complained about it! I didn’t know!”
“Dinky.” Another sigh of disappointment. In some ways, Derpy was ruthless.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t want this!”
“Don’t say sorry to me. You should say sorry to Ruby for giving her nightmares. Go on.”
Despite her own misery, some of Ruby’s heart cooked on Dinky’s behalf. To have to walk back her own daring was the height of Dinky-esque shame. She at least afforded Dinky the dignity of not watching, but kept staring at the smoothly shined floorboards.
In a tiny, tiny voice, Dinky mumbled, “Sorry, Ruby.”
“Mmm,” Ruby hummed. She didn’t dare say anything more.
“There,” said Derpy, sounding like her usual slow, angelic self again. “Now that’s that.”
Only… Ruby’s heart knew it was nothing of the sort.
“I hope you’ve learned something important about caring for others’ feelings, Dinky.”
“Yes, Mom. S-sorry, Mom. I mean it. I promise.”
“Go up to bed now. That’s a good girl.”
Deep down, some part of Ruby should’ve at least giggled at Dinky’s humiliation. Nice as Dinky could be for company, her quietly smug know-it-all attitude sometimes got on her nerves. Yet as Dinky’s hoofsteps disappeared upstairs, Ruby didn’t feel anything toward her, good or bad. It would be like fussing over a puddle with a tidal wave looming overhead.
And right now, she’d have traded everything to be Dinky.
Derpy spoke: “I’m so, so sorry about this, Berry –”
“Oh, nonsense,” said Berry, who’d recovered some of her cheer. “Life’s certainly a lot more interesting with Dinker the Thinker around.”
“If I’d know what she was doing sooner, I’d have stopped it. Poor Ruby…”
“Yeah, well, you know. Apart from the timing being wrong, that’s all sorted out then, isn’t it?”
Ruby knew what she meant. The nightmares had plagued her long before Dinky’s stupid zombie comics had come along, giving them a new shape. But Derpy, for all her love, wasn’t the sort to decipher sentences like that.
Clearing her throat, Berry shuffled uncomfortably. “We’d better get back. No sense staying up all night.”
“Maybe I can help?” said Derpy.
“No really, it’s fine –”
“Wait right here.”
They heard wings flap away, then wings flap back again. When Derpy returned, she nudged Ruby and said, “Here, take this.”
Ruby looked up. Beaming at her, Derpy held out something shiny in her hooves.
Gingerly, Ruby took it. The gemstone levitated under her magic, and the facets caught what little light there was in strange twinkles.
“A nightlight!” cooed Derpy, clapping her hooves together. “Ammy used to sleep with it all the time, but she’s too old now. It’ll give you good dreams.”
“Oh,” croaked Ruby – her throat tightened itself. “OK.”
After a while, Berry said, “I think that’s a thanks.”
“Sleep well, Ruby.”
Uncertainly, Ruby mumbled something she herself couldn’t decipher. The result was a garbled thanks, acknowledgement, and moan.
She didn’t deserve the parting hug she got: her soul knew so.
“You’re one of a kind, Derpy,” said Berry.
Derpy straightened up. “And you sleep well too, Berry.”
Berry made the same uncertain mumbling noise. Eventually, she said, “Time we were getting back. Don’t wave us off, Derpy.”
The door shut behind them.
Both of them stood on the welcome mat. Ruby took a long time to look up at Berry, and was surprised to find her looking away. Both of them, embarrassed.
Berry’s mouth trembled over the words, her eyes squeezed in pain, her neck sinews sticking out under the intense effort.
The sight was more than Ruby could bear. “I’m sorry,” she whined.
Berry shook her head, still not looking at her. “No, no, you have nothing to be sorry for.” She closed her eyes briefly to brace herself; the trembling stopped. “I could never be mad at you, Ruby.”
Still without looking, Berry lowered her head and half-nudged, half-nuzzled Ruby’s own.
“I understand, I really do. You lost your mom and dad… and I lost my aunt and uncle. But we’re more than just cousins now. We don’t need to lose anyone else, OK?”
Ruby was too ashamed to watch. They walked home in a poor attempt at silence: for all her attempts to suppress it, Berry gasped and wept the whole way.
They took so long to get in because Berry kept dropping the key and cursing. Ruby wondered if she could even see it through the blurriness.
Berry burst in first. Ruby sleepwalked in after her, dead all over again. Nothing had mattered. Nothing had changed. And now she walked right back to her prison.
She was too dead to move. Groggily, she heard Berry clattering in the kitchen, where the door was open and the light was on. Bottles clinked, throat guzzled, and in between came the grouching and whimpering of an overgrown foal muttering about how much life sucked as a grown-up.
Ruby, as ever, shut the front door for her.
Then she hung back. Going back to bed seemed too much for her.
She also noticed, out of the corner of her eye, the living room remained a mess of untouched paper plates, stinky food, and a board game that hadn’t been put away yet.
The complaining in the kitchen fell silent for several minutes as Berry heaved her brain out of the pit and crawled her way back to the here and now. Her head poked round the door.
“Ruby,” she said nervously, as though she were the one about to be told off, “can we talk for a second? Please?”
Ruby didn’t think. She just walked in.
Berry lay defeated on a chair opposite, nursing a couple of bottles on the table. She gestured to the other chair and then poured Ruby a drink before sucking the neck of yet a third bottle.
She surfaced briefly. “Have a drink.”
Wondering where this was going, Ruby plucked the glass and sipped. Orange squash. Berry’s own bottles definitely didn’t contain anything that unexciting. Barely had she finished the glass – for now, the only thing she could do with any confidence – when Berry topped it up again.
“Have another drink.” Another round of gulping.
Just as Ruby brought the glass to her lips, she spotted the trickle escaping down Berry’s chin. She stopped drinking. She lowered the glass. She pushed it away. She never took her eyes off the disgusting trickle the whole time.
Drinking her problems away was too… Berry.
Between gulps, Berry noticed. She too stopped. She too put the drinks down – on the sideboard in her case, out of the way.
They sat at the kitchen table for a long, terrible silence.
However Ruby felt, Berry looked far more wretched. Every now and then, she kept running a hoof through her frumpy mane, wiping her face clean of whatever kept befouling it, and flexing her lips as though dying for a bottle. For the first time, Ruby saw the veins jaundicing her eyes.
Suddenly, Berry reached her breaking point. Her voice shook worse than the trembles she got if she went without a drink for too long.
“I know I’m not perfect,” she croaked. “I don’t blame you, Ruby. You don’t deserve this. I just want you to know you’ve done nothing wrong, OK?”
Ruby withdrew into herself. Only now did she notice she still held the nightlight.
“I loved your mom and dad. They were a great team, you know? We always had so much fun together. None of this cheap Barnyard Bargains discount junk. Real parties. We made so many friends here in Ponyville. And they were more than aunt and uncle to me. They were the best friends I ever had.”
Ruby withdrew so deeply into herself that she’d never speak again. Feelings condensed and forced into a corner, one where they couldn’t break out and sting her.
Opposite, it didn’t help when Berry had to stifle a sob; the drinks were turning her maudlin. “I lost my dad too. Ponyville was different back then. Less safe. When he died, that all but killed my mom. Now she doesn’t go anywhere, she doesn’t do anything, she doesn’t say anything like you are right now, and that kills me, it really does, to see her that way, to see YOU that way –”
And Ruby clutched the nightlight tighter.
“You’re not alone, Ruby,” said Berry, getting barely a grip on herself. “I know how much it hurts.” She gave a hollow laugh. “Mom used to say, ‘Don’t cry. Perhaps it’s for the best. It’s just the kiss of destiny.’”
Rage.
Ruby shouted at Berry, “DESTINY SUCKS!”
At least Berry stopped trembling.
Sensing she’d gone too far, Ruby withdrew into herself again, surfacing only to mumble, “I want ‘destiny’ to stop kissing me. Destiny sucks.”
“Yeah,” said Berry shakily. “Yeah, it does.”
Ruby reached for the drink after all, then hesitated, then pushed it away. To her shame, it tipped over and spilled onto the tabletop. Both of them got up to clean it, noticed the other, sat down again, and simply watched in misery as the orange lifeblood dribbled onto the tiles.
Groaning, Berry ran her hooves over her face again, shifting the frumpy fringe out of her eyes. The hairs were damp.
“And I don’t have a solution,” she said as if they hadn’t been interrupted. “I’m sorry, Ruby. I never thought it’d be like this.”
“Wish I was like Piña.” Ruby hugged herself, grunting moodily. “She doesn’t worry about anything.”
Berry hummed in doubt. “You think? If only you knew what she was like behind closed doors…”
“Oh.” Well, this was news to Ruby. “But she’s so happy and d– and she doesn’t care.” Anything was better than telling Berry her sister was “dumb”.
Perhaps Berry sensed what she’d really meant, perhaps the talk was going in an unwelcome direction. Either way, Berry when she spoke was an unexpected ice cube in a warm cocktail.
“She cares.”
“Sorry,” mumbled Ruby.
“I’ve heard enough sorries tonight.” Berry fetched a bottle, glugged it in one go, then dropped it onto the table and ignored it when it rolled onto the floor. Her forelimbs gripped each other as though to assure themselves they weren’t alone. “You think you’re the only one who’s got problems?”
“Sorry.”
They met eye for eye. Both of them quailed. This was going about as well as a bad joke to a seething audience.
To Ruby’s shame, Berry started weeping again. “And I don’t have any solutions. I’m sorry, Ruby. I wish I did. But I can’t tell you what you want –”
“I want my mom and dad.”
Berry’s heaving breath, her shameful wipe of her eyes, her fidgeting hooves. “I know. I wish I could tell you something else, I swear, but when all’s said and done: I’m all you’ve got left.”
“I know.” Ruby wished she had said nothing. She wished tonight would just disappear and all this would never have happened by the time she woke up again. Normal life sounded like the best Hearth’s Warming gift ever.
“You can be happy again, Ruby. I’m your best chance. Please give me a chance. I promise we can make this work.”
“I want to go to bed now.” She remembered herself. “Please.”
The silence was like waiting for someone to die.
After a lot of sniffing, Berry quavered, “All right. All right…”
She slipped out of her seat alongside Ruby. Without a word, they traipsed through the hall, up the stairs, through the door. Ruby led the way; she felt the hot, slightly stinky breath of Berry down her neck, didn’t give in to her sudden urge to run, and wondered if this was how a pony ended up later in hospital. Everyone she’d known end up there had started by acting as though the world had destroyed their lives.
Ruby clambered onto the bed, pretending not to notice the blankets on the floor. When Berry pulled them up to her chin, for a moment it felt… nice.
Carefully, Berry eased the nightlight gemstone out of Ruby’s grip. She disappeared from view, but then the rainbow hues clung to the walls. Bright yellows like midsummer suns, bright blues like a crystalline ocean, bright greens like a rich growth of meadow grass, bright reds –
– like blood.
Too bright.
Berry did something – tapped it, by the sound of the twang – and the lights softened. The red became a humble blush on the wall.
Ruby yawned, preparing for sleep.
“Derpy’s a crazy one, all right,” said Berry, and some of the cheer came back to her. “But this just might work.”
“Berry –” Ruby froze; the word had tasted strange on her tongue. She usually tried not to call her cousin anything.
“So,” said Berry, bravely grinning. “Zombies, huh?”
“They scare me,” Ruby confessed. She really didn’t want to talk to anyone about her dreams, much less a grown-up. She knew they’d scoff at her or tell her zombies didn’t exist and she was being silly –
“Well, they’re definitely not pretty.”
Suspicious, Ruby scanned her face for any sign of mockery.
Berry continued, “Between you and me, I’m terrified of suits.”
“What?”
“Scare me to death.”
“You’re joking, aren’t you?” More nervously, Ruby added, “Aren’t you?” Clothes-based fears were a new one to her, but she owed Berry for responding to the zombie thing better than she’d hoped.
Berry shrugged. “Not all suits. I had bad dreams once. Stallions in suits came up to my door and told me they were taking away everything I loved.”
“Like… stealing it?”
“Worse. Like it wasn’t really mine anymore. They had papers saying so.”
“Was I in your dream?”
Berry shuddered. “Yes.”
And in a rare flash of insight, Ruby realized prying would only make things worse. It was the sort of thing Dinky would’ve done, but Ruby had her own ideas.
Tenderly, Berry stroked Ruby’s mane into something less frumpy than her own. Ruby felt her eyes closing, as though they felt safe to let their guard down again.
“Nutty, isn’t it?” Berry gave another hiccup of a laugh. “But dreams don’t have to make sense, right? Only… there’s always that bit of our minds that believes them anyway. It’s like an animal you can’t train no matter how hard you try.”
“Your dream doesn’t sound nutty,” whispered Ruby. The dancing of the lights drained away all the darkness at the back of her thoughts, letting them sink properly into the pillow, but there was one hard thought left that she couldn’t dislodge.
It was still there when Berry kissed her forehead.
It was still there when Berry wished her goodnight.
It was still there when Berry began closing the door.
Ruby sat up at once. “Berry?”
Berry stopped. “Yeah?”
“That zombie dream I had…”
“Yeah?”
But Ruby couldn’t speak. She knew what she had to say. It just didn’t feel like something that should be said.
“I’m scared,” she said, as a replacement.
“Aw, don’t be scared. I’m sure that dumb zombie’s no match for someone as fast and as smart as –”
“It was you.”
The thought was dislodged. Or so she thought. In the sudden stiffness, it stabbed back into place and wedged itself deeper.
Berry’s face… struggled. Nothing about the twitches and briefly frozen muscles told Ruby whether she was thoughtful, or offended, or horrified, or simply overwhelmed.
“Me?” she repeated, in a blank tone.
Ruby recovered at once. “I’m sorry –”
“I wish you’d stop bloomin’ saying that.” And thankfully, Berry’s next move was a hiccup of a laugh again, and somehow the noise did what the desperate confession had failed to do. Ruby’s mind was free.
Then she saw Berry’s next face. It was pained.
Only for a second. Berry was getting better at hiding it.
Thinking fast, Ruby said, “I think my blanket’s on too tight.”
“Oh, right.”
Berry bustled back in and smoothed the creases down, folded the near edge, fluffed up the pillow, and generally set Ruby’s mind at ease. They closed eyes. Ruby tingled as Berry’s forehead pressed into her eyelids and lips brushed her cheek. For a moment, though, Berry’s breath of rotten fruit ruined it, and Ruby briefly imagined a future of more bottles and more frantic guzzling.
When Berry spoke, her voice drowned in unshed tears. “It’s horrible, isn’t it? But please remember, Ruby: whatever we’ve been through, no matter how bad, at the end of the day we’re both survivors. That’s got to be worth something on its own.”
Ruby closed her eyes as the door slid shut, and then pretended not to hear Berry thump downstairs. Towards the bottles. The emptiness never fully went away.
For tonight, she had no one else. She just felt briefly at home. And for tonight, that was worth one dreamless sleep.
She squirmed and winced on the pillow.
For tonight.
There would be other nights.
Beyond the shifting colours, Ruby sensed the emptiness kept at bay. But it watched her hungrily with white eyes.
Waited.
Lifeless.
And like her, refusing to die.