~I really thought you were going to do better this time…~
Those damned words! Ki felt rage surge into his sluggish brain, “YOU, you sent me here! You took everything from me!”
~Yes, I did. A long time ago, and many times. And yet here you are lying unconscious in a hospital bed, laid low by your own hand once again. How many times are we going to dance this little dance before you admit some agency in your own fate?~
Ki found himself drifting on a hospital bed in a sea of hard cider, the nausea fighting it’s way into his subconscious. Pinkie Pie gave him a disapproving little side glance as she back-stroked past.
“You really did it this time,” the pink mare shook her head and tsked, “I tried my best, but you just don’t want to be in a good place. I’m sorry, but I could never ship with a dirty OC like you.”
And in a flurry of dolphin noises Pinkie swam off playfully into the sunset.
Ki sulked dejectedly as he floated along. To his left, he saw a changeling looking lost and alone floating by on a bit of flotsam that looked like it might be the seat of a train.
“You’re not the human I thought I remembered,” the changeling said in a sad buzzy little voice, and for some reason the accusation ripped him in half, “It’s ironic, really, the way you float. Is that why you can’t see the way you sink the world around you? You were supposed to find me!”
And the seat and the changeling sank beneath the frothy waves and were gone. Ki reached out helplessly, he tried to swim down, but the changeling was right. He just floated as the world sank around him.
“One more on the house!” he heard the cheerful voice of Berry Punch and realized the the sea, and the whole world had always been the inside of a cider barrel. As the bar-mare pulled the tap the whirlpool formed, drawing the lonely, dejected human to his doom.
“It’s easier not knowing really,” he could hear his friend’s sad voice over a telephone, “I know it’s horrible to say, but…”
“I understand,” he could hear his brother’s reply, “I feel the same way sometimes. He’s gone. And we’ll never know what happened, but in a lot of ways it’s easier than just watching his never ending quest to destroy himself. It IS horrible, but I think you may be right. Maybe it is easier this way…”
And then the voices faded as he was drawn into the abyss of foam and alcohol. And he was alone at the bottom of it all. A part of his mind thought he should drown, that he deserved to drown, but that was only one small piece of consciousness that fled quickly before the tide of guilt. The words were right. In the end he did this to himself. Over and over, he just wanted it to stop just like he always did. He just wanted this hellish train to hurry up and get to where everyone knew it was always going.
~And what if I had sent you to New York?~
“No,” the human shrank back into a ball, tugging at his hair, suddenly in an observation cell in a hospital’s psychiatric ward. They had taken everything from him. Even his pants. Dignity was for winners, “Don’t send me there… please…”
~Why not? It’s where you asked to go, after-all. You made me out to be a monster for not giving you what you asked for. Why shouldn’t I give you what you swore you wanted?~
“I know Ki,” her voice came in over an intercom in the ceiling, “I know how you feel, and I… don’t not feel the same way… but we’re both broken people. We’re better off with the way things are, than with a relationship that we both know is going to become toxic.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” Ki demanded, slamming his fists helplessly into the reinforced plexiglass window. Outside Pinkamena watched him with sad eyes.
“Dammit! answer me!” his voice echoed off the walls, outside the sad pink pony slowly faded into nothing.
“This isn’t real! It’s a dream!” he pounded the walls helplessly, watching as human orderlies shuffled human patients through the hallway outside, “I’m not back here! Goddammit, don’t send me back here! Please!”
-=-=-=-=-
“Why isn’t he awake yet?” Pinkie looked worried, her eye’s moist, her cheeks puffy from crying all night, “Jake woke up hours ago!”
“The other human vomited most of the alcohol out, it never had a chance to process into his system,” the doctor explained calmly, “You’re friend is suffering from an acute case of alcohol poisoning. Right now his body’s shut itself down so it can save energy to fight the poison. There’s not much we can do really at this point, but try to keep him comfortable and hope his system can recover.”
“He can do it!” Pinkie sobbed, “He’s a mohawkian! He’s… he’s my friend! He can’t die! Not because of a stupid bet I made with Dashie!”
“Come on, Pinkie, visiting hours are almost over,” Twilight draped a wing over her friend and led her out into the hall, “They’ll send word if anything changes. He’s going to be alright.”
“Do you really believe that?” the pink pony asked sadly, her mane laying straight and limp.
“I do,” Twilight nodded, hoping she wasn’t lying, “He just needs time. I promise, Pinkie, he’s going to wake up and he’s going to be alright.”
-=-=-=-=-
Rainbow Dash shuffled nervously into the hospital room. Uncertainty wasn’t a thing the bombastic colorful mare was known for, but it ate at the pit of her stomach none the less.
“Hey,Jake,” she said nervously to the miserable looking human who was trying desperately to avoid eye contact, silently she thought, “He hates me now. How could anypony blame him?”
“I blew it,” Jake said in a hollow voice, “I had my big chance to be awesome, and I blew it.”
“What?” Dash replied incredulously, “No, don’t say that… don’t think that! That’s totally not what happened. Like, at all!”
“All I had to do was hold my cider!” Jake insisted bitterly, “Instead I puked on the most awesome pony in Equestria! How can that not be, ‘I blew it’.”
“Because! You! Didn’t!” Rainbow huffed and then fell into a little sulk, “I did. I was a lousy friend. At least three times you told me you didn’t want to do it anymore. But I couldn’t lose to Pinkie Pie. So I...I played you.”
“What? No Dash,” Jake shook his head, “You’re a great friend! You’re the element of loyalty! I should have been better. I should have been able to keep up!”
“Don’t you get it?” Rainbow snapped, “I used you. I played off your crush just so I could win a bet, and it almost got you… you could have been…”
‘
“Dash...” Jake just stopped as it all sank in, Rainbow Dash had used his feelings… he wanted to be mad, furious, and bitter, but at the same time he wanted to tell her that it was okay, that he was okay, then he remembered, “What about Ki? Is he...” the words dried up in his throat, at the cyan mare’s pained expression.
“He hasn’t woke up,” Dash closed her eyes, “The doctor’s don’t know if he ever will. They said his best chance is in the first 48 hours. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. That was almost you in that coma. Vomiting is what saved you. It pushed the alcohol out. I was so mad about that last night, but if my being embarrassed in front of everypony is the price I have to pay to keep a world with Jake in it… it’s no less than I deserve… I’m the one who gets to be sorry this time Jake.”
Rainbow Dash never cried, because Rainbow Dash is way too cool to ever cry. Jake and Rainbow Dash certainly did not spend the visiting hours discussing how they felt about what had happened, because both the pony and the humay were far too cool to ever just sit around a hospital room talking about their feelings. If you ever doubted, you would need only ask either, and they would be happy to tell you as much.
Pinkie Pie left her friend to rest, perchance to dream. She promised to come back every day until he woke up, but it wasn’t a promise she was able to keep. She had her own destiny, and it had never been to follow behind the insane and self-destructive antics of a broken human. She would return from Our Town to find that her Mohawked human friend had simply disappeared. Nopony on the hospital staff could quite account for what had happened, and in the end offered the less than helpful suggestion that perhaps he had simply gotten up and wandered off (Equestrian security being what it was, it wasn’t an impossible idea).
As for Z-978, Whatserface, and Gary the Goat…
That’s another story.
The End?