"Doctor, it's been two months. I'm sure you've had plenty of time for somepony to perform scanning spells. Is she ever going to wake up?" Twilight Sparkle kept her voice down as she spoke. It was after hospital visiting hours by far, and most patients were asleep, but being a princess came with its own visiting privileges - namely, she could go where she wanted, when she wanted, as far as ponies in general were concerned.
"I... I don't know, Princess." The pale pegasus shuffled nervously. "We have a report from Doctor Caduceus's clinic in Ponyville, from before she was transferred here. It's like she's in a coma, except that her mind is exceptionally active, almost as though she were fully awake. Doctor Mori's scans reproduced the report perfectly."
"Okay, that's great, but what does it mean?" Twilight didn't like to push ponies for information, but she hadn't had a lot of time for medical research since assuming the full extent of her royal duties a few weeks before... the incident. She could have helped out herself, she was sure, if she weren't so busy helping her former mentor govern Equestria.
"Well, according to my study, there are two possibilities. One is that she suffers from Locked-In Syndrome. To simplify, the patient's body is essentially comatose, but her mind is fully aware and her senses are receptive, meaning she could be listening to us even now. In that case, it's been too long for her prognosis to be good." The doctor shuffled again. "Alternatively, she could be somehow trapped in a lucid dream, judging by her level of brain activity. That would probably be a magically-induced state, not something psychological or medical science can understand right now, so you'd know more about the possibility of recovery than me."
"Which is her primary diagnosis?"
"Locked-In Syndrome, but..." The doctor's voice trailed off. Twilight frowned into the darkness.
"But, what? Is there some kind of problem?"
"She's not showing any sign of the kinds of brain damage normally associated with the syndrome. If it were my decision, she would be diagnosed with an unspecified enforced lucid dream state and transferred to magical specialists. But you know how the medical system can be with anypony who's not a unicorn..." Twilight rubbed her forehead with a hoof.
"Yes, I understand. I thought my legislation would help with - " The princess cut herself off. "If you can, please see if you can find any further evidence for your diagnosis. As you know, this case has my personal oversight. If you need my ear, just send a note to Spike at the library, and I'll be here as soon as I can. Okay?"
"Yes, Your Highness." Twilight restrained herself from so much as rolling her eyes. Ponies weren't going to stop addressing her as royalty, and she'd learned that worrying about it only made her more stressed.
"I know my way out," the alicorn said, heading for the door. "I'll see what I can do for her on my end."
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
"The same thing we do every day," Babs said.
"Try to get our cutie marks!" Applebloom had been taking speech lessons from my big sister, and her accent was nearly gone.
"Well, good luck with that, girls," I told the pair. I was drawn away by an unfamiliar sense of urgency. I could go Crusading any time, ever since... "I have to see the doctor again."
"Since when do you see a doctor, Sweetie Belle?" Applebloom asked. Her question fell in sync with my own nagging feeling that something wasn't quite right. Something had changed without asking me.
"I'm not sure, but I'm going to find out. See you two later, okay?" Not feeling like walking through snow as deep as I was tall, I waved a hoof, and the scene swirled. I had been standing by the door of the Cutie Mark Crusaders Clubhouse, but it became the door of Doctor Caduceus's clinic. I walked past the pink nurse at the front desk, heading straight back to one of the patient rooms. I knew my way around, and I was a big filly. I didn't need a nurse to escort me anywhere.
I stepped inside a small, sterile white room, and sat down to wait. That was how it worked, right? It must have been, because there was a knock on the door almost immediately. The doctor, a middle-aged grey pegasus with an open-scroll cutie mark, stepped in and shut the door behind her, giving me a cheerful greeting.
It was... wrong.
"You're not Doctor Caduceus." She shook her head.
"I am Doctor Dusty Scrolls. Caduceus is on leave today." She set down the file folder she'd been carrying on her back. "You are Sweetie Belle, correct? Rarity's sister?"
"We do not use that name here," I hissed. The air in the room dropped far below freezing, and frost began to form across... everything. How dared she bring back the one word I had forbidden?!
"My apologies. I shall not speak that name here again." The room warmed and began to thaw, though she seemed entirely unaffected by the changes. She must have been a very, very calm pony... or had she not even noticed? I paused the world for a moment to think. First a pony I didn't recognize showed up, then she broke the law by mentioning that name, and she followed up by failing to react at all to my anger.
And she didn't freeze along with the rest of the world. I realized she had been flipping through her charts, watching me intently the whole time.
"You're not - "
"No. I am not under your power, not even here." She paused, then her form glowed a soft white and flowed into another shape, one much more familiar. "Perhaps I should not have attempted to blend in this time."
"Princess Luna?" I blinked twice, and changed the scenery several times to make sure this wasn't a fluke. It wasn't. The midnight-blue alicorn gave me a small, indulgent smile, before returning to her initial solemn expression.
"Hello, Sweetie Belle. I've been watching you for some time now, but I had not been informed your condition was quite so... dire." I blinked once again. My condition? What condition? I didn't have -
Darkness.
"You really shouldn't have done that, darling." A voice full of warmth, kindness, love, generosity. A voice that lingered, haunting my nightmares when I tried to rest.
"No! Stop it, stop it, stop it!" I screamed, returning us to Ponyville. Every building shook with the power of my voice, but my visitor remained unflappable. The torment was gone. I wasn't trapped anymore. I got on just fine, so long as I stayed away from the Carousel Boutique. There was something wrong about that place. I stammered a little as I told the princess, "D-don't ever do th-that again."
"I am sorry, Sweetie. You appear to be protecting yourself from certain memories here. It must end." Her expression saddened, and buildings raced past. I recognized the one that stopped in front of us, and immediately banished it.
It didn't go away. I immediately knew: she was stopping me.
"Let go!" I ordered. Princess Luna did not react, though her eyes seemed fixed on me. "I can't have this place. Let go."
"Will you trust me?" What?!
"Why should I trust you?! Ever since you came here, you've caused nothing but trouble! You've spoken her name, you've broken my laws, and you've tried to scare me! You - "
"I am here to help you, Sweetie Belle, and Princess Twilight Sparkle asked this of me as a personal favor." Luna had cut me off, and I fumed indignantly. Who did she think she was? This place was mine, and my word was law. "You know why Diamond Tiara - and she who shall not be named - are not in your Ponyville. You pick and choose memories and make a goddess of yourself, child, and an angry one when anything challenges your power.
"I know this feeling intimately, Sweetie Belle. I was made a monster by it." She seemed unable to look at me directly as she made the admission. "I try to speak of it little, but though much of Equestria still seems to believe so, I did not appear from nowhere. I was Nightmare Moon."
"Wait, really? I thought that was just a Nightmare Night prank," I said. The alicorn shook her head, and everything I knew about Nightmare Moon flashed through my mind at once. Daddy reading me the old mare's tale; Mommy saying Nightmare Moon would get me if I didn't brush my teeth before bed every night; Nightmare Moon herself appearing at the Summer Sun Celebration more than a year ago.
"Power and anger made a madmare of me. I struck down those who challenged or merely disagreed with me. I tried to control everything." Her expression fell deeper and deeper into shame the more she spoke, until at last she had to turn her head away entirely, staring into the grass by the path. "I hated and resented my sister, and I tried to destroy the world because of her." Abruptly, she fixed a stern look on me, straight in the eyes. "I cannot permit others to share my madness. You must come with me, Sweetie Belle, before you succumb as I did."
The Boutique began to stir, with a long, deep groan, and I froze. A chill ran through me, and I whimpered involuntarily.
"No. No, no, no. You have to leave now. You're waking it up." Luna turned, and gave the growing building a critical once-over before shaking her head.
"No, child. I am waking you. This, no matter how dark and angry it may appear, is yours - and your doing. Come, and I will guide you." The princess extended a wing, drawing me close as the monstrous Boutique began to creep towards us. The place roared, but she cried out over the din with ease. "Swallow us, thou foul thing! Do what thou must, and fulfill thy purpose!"
"What?! No! I don't want to be eaten!" I screamed, waving a hoof wildly for a change to some other scene, any other. Nothing happened - she had trapped me in one place, and the strength of her wing alone was such that I could not pull away. The Boutique, stretched to gargantuan and grotesque proportions, loomed over us. Luna seemed unperturbed, but as the whole thing began to crash down upon us, I screamed again - this time without words. My eyes screwing shut and my face in my hooves, I curled up in a defensive ball to die.
Nothing happened. When nothing continued to happen, I finally risked a look up at the silenced beast.
There was no beast, just a ceiling. Its arches and diamond patterns were too familiar, but it wasn't trying to eat me anymore. Slowly, I pulled myself to my hooves. The place almost appeared normal, if it weren't for the kitchen being the only room.
"Drink your milk, Sweetie." Her voice, once sweet, roared in my ears with each word. I could feel it again: the nameless one jamming a funnel all the way into my throat. Once again I had to swallow or be drowned, and I started to cry.
"Mo, aahp! Aah uuuhpf! Oowa, ehhp!" I had meant to call for the princess to help me, but she was gone. My body started to slow down, and my legs froze in place. Milk sloshed around me, surging towards a door that wasn't there before; its tide carried me away, flowing out of the kitchen and upstairs to her craft room.
She was there, standing next to a crystalline statue that used to be the school bully, Diamond Tiara. I whimpered.
"Please, not again. Don't do this to me again." The milk had gone, but its replacement was far worse. I couldn't bear to look at her as I cried.
Then, I couldn't cry. My vision filled with gemstone patterns, and became dark. I was thrust back into an endless void of sensationlessness. I could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing, smell nothing. It wasn't that nothing was there - it was that I had no senses at all.
Except this time, a pinprick of white beckoned to me. It was so small, or so far away, or... something, but it was there, hanging in the emptiness like the first star of evening. I found myself drifting towards it - or it drifted towards me, I wasn't sure - and it grew. It had been no larger than the head of a pin, but it grew to a pea, then a marble. Larger and larger it grew, and faster and faster I was sucked towards it, falling through the nothing until I could see nothing but the bright white. For a second time, I was swallowed whole.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
I woke up. It wasn't a clean transition, as it had been for as long as I dared to remember. Instead, my head was all fuzzy, and there was a bright light in my eyes. I groaned and waved a hoof in its direction; it dimmed, letting me wake up more comfortably. I poked my dry lips with my equally-parched tongue, and groaned again. I needed water, and sat up -
I fell back into bed, my breath knocked out of me by a flash of gray and a pain in my chest. Somepony had hopped up on my bed and was straddling me.
"Well, look who's finally awake," hissed a too-familiar voice. I grimaced, forcing out words as I tried to catch my breath.
"Get... off me... Silver Spoon."