They monitored her in shifts. Twilight tried to power through on coffee, but Spike forced her to go upstairs. She slept fitfully on the couch, returning to the lab as soon as she had energy to open her eyes. Every waking moment she spent by Rarity's side. Every resting moment, Spike watched the machines and took detailed notes about every fluctuation and pattern.
It seemed like forever, before anything changed.
"TWILIGHT!"
At the sound of Spike’s voice, her eyes flew open. She rolled off the couch clumsily, tangled in a too-small blanket. Precious seconds elapsed as she fought with it, then she extricated herself and dashed down the stairs.
Spike was nearly buried in wires and readouts. He passed her a sheet. "Look, her vitals are fluctuating. I think she's coming out of it."
Twilight worked around the hodge-podge maze of hastily-repurposed monitoring equipment. She watched Rarity's chest rising and falling, faster and more uneven now. Eyelids fluttered under the brim of the helmet. Magic pulsed, frustrated and random.
Suddenly Rarity's eyes shot wide open. She gasped, deep and hoarse, then tumbled forward out of the chair.
Twilight barely moved in time, catching Rarity before she hit the floor headfirst. They tumbled together, Rarity panting and heaving, eyes wide in panic.
"Rarity! Rarity!" Twilight tried to get in front of her face. "Look at me, look, you're okay, you're safe, you're safe."
Rarity's breathing stabilized, her eyes focused on Twilight as she seemed to come back to reality. Foggy and shaky, she glanced down and stared at her own hooves. A few moments later, she looked around the room, taking in the equipment and nearly-forgotten magical construct. Her gaze lingered.
"Rarity?" Twilight prompted softly.
Tired and panicked eyes came back to meet Twilight's own. They warmed with recognition. A faint hint of a smile crossed her lips. Then she spoke.
"Water, please."
They sat in the kitchen in silence for a while. Rarity chewed on a piece of plain bread and sipped a small glass of water gently. Her magic was wobbly. Twilight sat across the table, tension radiating off her in waves. Spike leaned against the wall, trying and failing to look like the calm, collected one.
Rarity looked between them. She seemed caught between bemusement and exhaustion. "You both look worried."
"What happened?" Twilight prodded softly. "Where did you go?"
"I'm not sure… How long was I out?"
"Three days," Spike said.
Rarity's eyes widened slightly. She shook her head. "I'm so sorry. I didn't plan to."
"What do you mean?"
Another bite of bread. Rarity didn't answer immediately. When she swallowed, she looked up at Twilight. "I need to go back."
"WHAT!?"
Rarity held up a hoof in a placating gesture. "I know, I know. I can't explain yet. I barely understand it myself, but… I promised."
Twilight's face contorted with confusion. "What do you mean?"
"Just…" Rarity sighed and closed her eyes. "Trust me. Please."
It took several minutes of arguing, but Rarity insisted and finally Twilight relented. They returned to the basement, and Rarity took her place in the chair.
"You're sure about this? Spike asked, holding the helmet. Twilight hovered a few steps away, torn between anger and fear.
Rarity nodded. "I'll be right back this time, I promise."
Spike puffed out a calming breath, and placed the helmet back onto Rarity's head.
Rarity's breathing dropped, the magic in the room flared and pulsed again.
Twilight's heart beat in her chest like it would burst.
Less than a minute later, Rarity's eyelids fluttered. She inhaled deeply, and lifted the helm off with her own magic. Spike took it, setting it carefully on the workbench.
Twilight stepped closer, hesitantly. "Well? What now?"
Rarity smiled gently. "Now, I need to sleep. Then, I need a quill and some parchment."
Rarity slept in their bed for the better part of twelve hours, barely moving. At first Twilight refused to do anything but pace and fret, but at Spike's insistence finally relented and laid down as well. She fell asleep nearly instantly, but tossed and turned under the covers.
Spike could feel himself barely hanging on to the edge of wakefulness as well. It wasn't lack of sleep so much as mental and physical exhaustion. But knowing someone had to do the dutiful thing, he consumed a terrifying amount of sugared gemstones and steeped some quadruple-strength tea. He worked at cleaning up the lab, tidied the library, and reassured their worried friends they'd have answers soon. He even fielded some inquiries from Rarity's customers, most of whom accepted the answer that she'd been ill with a stomach bug and would be back at the boutique soon.
Rarity woke first. Spike heard her stirring in the late afternoon, but refrained from going upstairs to check. A few minutes later her hooves sounded on the staircase, and she wandered into the living room. Spike waved silently and motioned to the end table by the sofa, where a quill and parchment sat out. She smiled thankfully, picked up the quill with her magic, and seemed to start sketching or writing.
It didn't take long for Twilight to follow. She rushed down the stairs a little quicker, but slowed when she saw Rarity. Twilight took a seat on one of the other chairs.
Spike stifled a yawn, and placed a few small plates of fruit on the coffee table. He sat in another chair.
Nopony spoke for a while. The only sound was Rarity's quill on paper.
Twilight eventually broke the silence. "So, are we going to talk about what happened?"
Rarity sighed, but kept going. "It is… difficult," she said. "I'm still trying to collect my thoughts and come to terms with it."
"Maybe start at the beginning?" Spike prompted.
"That's just it," she said. "I don't remember the beginning. I vaguely remember going in, but after that… it's like I started over."
"Started over?"
"Like I forgot everything. I wasn't even in my own body anymore."
Twilight leaned forward. "Were you in any body?" Her eyes gleamed.
"Well, I perceived being in a body of a sort," Rarity said, catching on quickly. "But it was a different body. I had to learn to use it again, how to move and walk. I didn't have this or these," she said, motioning to her horn and wiggling her hooves. "I couldn't even talk, or at least approximate what would pass for talking here."
"You're talking about walking and moving," Spike said. "Like you went somewhere."
"Were you in a physical place?" Twilight asked. "Your body didn't leave the lab, like teleport or anything."
"Again, I perceived it, but it was like a waking dream," Rarity said. "I was living an experience of sorts, but from somewhere outside, if that makes any sense."
"What was it like?" Twilight pressed. "Was it… interactive?"
Rarity nodded. "It was. Eventually my senses, such as they were, adapted to the place. I remember touching things, going to other places, and learning. But…" She squeezed her eyes shut, as if in pain. "But it's so foggy. Like another life."
She paused, thoughtfully. "I think I lived another life."
"What do you mean?" Spike asked.
Rarity's eyes sharpened, and her voice grew more confident. "You know how you grow up, but you don't remember growing up? You just wake up one day, you're the sum total of your experiences, and your memories are just markers along the way?"
Twilight nodded, but didn't speak.
"Well, I have those memories," Rarity continued. "Those… milestones from when I was a foal, and then a filly, and then a young mare, and up to now. But I have another set now, and they're different but the feeling is the same."
"What's the clearest one?"
Rarity looked away, and her face changed. It was just a bit too long before she replied. "I don't know."
Twilight's eyes narrowed but she didn't push. "Okay, can you tell me more about the place? What else was there?"
"It was…" Rarity's brow furrowed. "It was like here in many ways, I suppose. But different. I couldn't use magic, that was the main difference. But the creatures there — "
"Creatures?" Spike interrupted, earning a glare from Twilight.
Rarity nodded. "Creatures, yes. They lived like we do, they moved and spoke." She caught Twilight's skeptical expression. "Or at least, that was my perception, I suppose…"
Twilight tapped a hoof. "I wonder if that was just your brain interpreting the magical particle clusters as creatures because there was no other way you could comprehend them." She pondered for a moment. "Did they seem… intelligent in any way?"
"I think so?" Rarity replied. "At least as intelligent as you and I, but more than that they had… emotions."
"What kind of emotions?"
"Oh, all of them. Love, anger, hate, joy, but most of all…" Rarity paused, and took a deep breath. "Fear. I felt so much fear from them."
"Fear of what?" Twilight asked.
It was a long moment before Rarity replied, but when she did, her eyes were clear and her voice was sure. "You."
Twilight blinked. "Me?"
"Yes." Rarity sighed and stretched. The quill continued scratching. "You see, it was a long time before I remembered who I was. Before I was something other than what I became in that place. But when I did, things started to make sense. Like they're making sense now."
Rarity's words started coming quicker, more confident. "For that long time, all I understood about it was a vague fear of something. But when I started to become aware of my otherness, the bridge I stood on between our place and that one. I remembered you both back here, though I didn't perceive you as 'Twilight and Spike'. The creatures knew you as something else, something that came into their reality and frightened them, that changed their world in inexplicable ways. But I made the connection.
"I knew you didn't mean to frighten them. You wanted to help, to guide, but all you could convey were crude, sweeping generalities. Some of them tried to follow your guidance, and some rejected it. They fought each other over which was right. They…" she gulped. "They killed each other, Twilight."
Twilight was sitting stock-still, her face a mask of something between horror and confusion.
Spike cleared his throat. "Um, Rarity… how long were you in this place?"
A shudder passed through her shoulders, but Rarity took a deep breath. "Thirty of their years. Give or take."
Twilight gasped.
Rarity's quill kept moving over parchment as she spoke. "When I understood what was happening, it became my goal to try and help them understand. I tried to stop them. Tried to show them a better way, what you really wanted to teach them. Some of them listened to me. Most didn't."
Her voice started breaking. "It all happened so fast at the end. They refused to hear me. They said I was dangerous, that I couldn't be allowed to continue. They took me and — " Rarity choked on the words.
"That's it," Twilight said, standing. "I've heard enough."
Spike started. "What do you mean?"
"I mean this experiment is over," Twilight replied, her voice sharp with barely-contained anger. "I don't know what I was trying to accomplish with this, I don't know why you dreamed what you did, but something is wrong here. I was just too blind with ambition to see the danger in the power I was playing with." She started for the door. "I'm going to dismantle the construct."
"NO!" Rarity lept from the sofa and physically grabbed Twilight. The quill and parchment fluttered to the floor, ink spilling. "You can't!"
"Why not?" Twilight snapped. "What happened, Rarity? What did they do to you?"
"They… they didn't understand, Twilight," Rarity pleaded, tears welling in her eyes. "They didn't know what they were doing. And I promised them… that's why I had to go back, I promised…"
"Rarity?" Spike asked from behind them. "What are these?"
He held up the parchment so Twilight could see. Some of the pages were covered in dense scrawl. Others held rough sketches. The top page was the most detailed though, and on it were drawn two faces.
Or at least what passed for faces. The proportions were wrong. The eyes were too close together, the snouts flattened and thin. The ears were in the wrong place and rounded instead of peaked. It was grotesque by pony standards, almost deformed. But still, Twilight could see that one seemed male, and one seemed female.
Rarity swallowed. "My… my parents." She pointed at one with a trembling hoof, then the other. "My father, Yossef… and my mother, Mariam."
She looked back up at the incredulous eyes staring down at her. "I told them I'd be back, Twilight. I promised I'd save them all… from you."