“If I can’t be happy, after all I sacrificed, why should you when you sacrificed nothing?”
“Pinkie? Seriously, this isn’t funny.”
Rainbow Dash’s hooves echoed off the walls. She had been expecting the clatter of Sugarcube Corner’s afternoon preparations and the perpetual cheery humming of a pink pony. Without those noises, the café was downright eerie.
“Pinkie Pie?”
She rounded the door that led out to the shop front. It, too, was empty. Her unease grew. This wasn’t right. The lunch rush should be over and the booths occupied by regular customers who nursed cups of coffee as they pored through the job section of the newspaper while harried mothers grabbed a few blissful moments of peace while foals slept in their strollers. There was not so much as a speck of pastry in any of the display cases, the percolator stood empty and the door sign had been turned to ‘closed’.
“This is a prank, isn’t it? Ha ha, you got me. You can jump out and I’ll totally pretend to be scared and then we can get to baking cupcakes like you said. Unless you didn’t mean it when you said you needed my help today? Pinkie Pie? Was this all just a ruse to get me over here so you could pull a prank on me?” Dash frowned. “Or a surprise party for my half-birthiversary?”
Still nopony replied.
Dash stomped a hoof. “Celestia damn it!”
She hated when ponies managed to prank her. Her pride zinged and old embarrassment welled up with memories of Mare Do Well’s fluttering cape and her friends’ faces smeared in rainbow cookie. Incidents like those always left her smiling on the outside but inwardly reeling for days. She was not eager for another such experience.
“Screw this. I’m outta here.”
Trotting purposefully back to the service door she had used to get in, she was halted by a sudden clang of metal. She looked around – was Pinkie about to yell ‘gotcha’?
Her eyes rounded as they beheld, not the kitchen she expected, but a large atrium. It stretched so far above that the metal pipes lining the walls disappeared into darkness before they reached wherever the ceiling lay.
“What… the hay?”
Industrial noises assaulted her ears. Had they just appeared or had she somehow been hearing them all along and somehow tuned them out? They felt far too familiar to have just started randomly. Then again, she had randomly just found an unfamiliar room where Sugarcube Corner kitchen should be. Something screwy was definitely going on here.
“Twilight, if this is another one of your spells gone wrong and messing up the town…”
She had not completely forgotten what it was like to bear Fluttershy’s cutie mark. Slivers of memory slipped through sometimes: a rabbit’s paw striking her cheek; aching regret while clumsily trying to deliver stillborn kittens; rope against her wings as a bear grappled her into a cauldron. She suspected none of her friends had forgotten either but all cared too much about Twilight to tell her. Dash knew that even now Rarity sometimes still woke from nightmares of accidentally striking ponies with a rogue lightning-bolt.
Giggling lanced through her thoughts.
“Pinkie?”
Dash crept forward, realised what she was doing and drew herself up tall.
“Pinkie Pie?”
The giggle came again but now she heard a rasp in it that had never adorned Pinkie Pie’s high voice. This voice sat scratchily between high and low tones, as if the speaker had worn it out either yelling or smoking. The echo lent to it by the room’s large size did nothing to help Dash identify its owner.
Her wings flared. “Who’s there? What have you done with Pinkie Pie? Did you do this to Sugarcube Corner?”
This time the voice came from behind her. “You’re not in Sugarcube Corner, Dashie.”
Dash whirled. Pinkie’s nickname but not Pinkie’s voice. What the heck was this?
“You’re all confused, aren’t you? How pathetic. You rotted your brain as well as your wings by living on the ground?”
Dash’s joints ached from holding her wings rigid. Damn it, she hated getting older. “Show yourself!”
That giggle again, now from a different direction. It sounded like broken glass shaken inside a metal tube. “Are you sure it’s me you want to see, Dashie?”
Something in the way the voice leaned on the nickname made Dash’s neck prickle. “If you’ve hurt Pinkie, I swear I’ll –”
“You’ll what?” snarled the voice, all humour gone. It was directly above her now. How the heck was the owner moving so fast around such a huge room? “Cry like a little bitch over a worthless earth pony?”
“Show yourself!”
“You really are pathetic.” The voice reverberated from Dash’s left. “How do you even live with yourself?”
She spun around to be confronted with an enormous metal machine she could have sworn was not there before. It loomed like a giant rotting mouth, spiked teeth held wide to the distant ceiling. Dash stared. The razor edges of those teeth were streaked with red. Tufts of blue and orange fur clung to them. A cheery apron dangled off one, fabric saturated with gore.
Dash’s gorge rose. She tasted bile.
“Though I suppose earth ponies are useful for one thing: the same thing as all worthless ponies and failures.”
“D… Dashie?”
Dash jerked her head up so fast she heard vertebrae crunch. A pegasus with jet black fur hovered over the machine. Just as with the industrial noises, Dash heard the pony’s wings clearly now but could not remember them starting to beat. Nor did she have the wherewithal to question this further strangeness, for sagging from the pegasus’s grip was a familiar pink pony. Pinkie’s face was mottled with bruises, her left eye swollen shut. Her towering mane flopped around her face and all four of her legs bent at impossible angles. It was sickening to see.
“Dashie… h-help…”
Pinkie’s plea became a yelp as the black pegasus tossed her effortlessly at the machine. It roared to life, teeth rotating on rollers, shredding the last of the bloody apron. A rubber chicken shrieked as it, too, was chewed up.
“No!” Dash took off. The distance was not too far and she was fast enough. She could catch Pinkie before –
Something cannoned into her from a completely different direction. She rocketed back, caught off guard. She twisted, trying to buck off her attacker, but her hind hooves pedalled uselessly in the air. Strong forelegs held her throat. Dash stared up into eyes so filled with hate, it took her a moment to realise the other pegasus’s fur was not black but covered in an all-over bodysuit.
Pinkie’s cry cut off abruptly. The machine thundered. Over the hateful pegasus’s shoulder, Dash saw red liquid and pink fur erupt into the air. A chunk of sugary-pink tail wafted through the air like a carnival balloon released by an incautious foal
“PINKIE!” Dash screamed.
“Pathetic,” growled the other pegasus.
Eyes locked on the awfulness she had been unable to prevent, Dash realised too late they were headed straight for the hard metal floor.
“Bye, Dashie.”
Impact.
Dash sat up with a gasp. She had flown to the ceiling before she realised her wings were moving. Below her, Applejack startled awake so hard she fell out of bed.
“What the – oof!” One orange hoof grabbed the edge of the mattress and levered herself into a sitting position. “Rainbow? Wassamatta?”
Dash struggled for air. Her body tingled with the memory of hitting the floor. She tried to regulate her breathing likeshe taught new recruits before they braved the Dizzitron.
“Sugarcube?” Applejack’s frown became concerned. “Talk to me. What’s wrong?”
Dash looked around. Same familiar bedroom. Same Sweet Apple Acres. Same patchwork bedspread. Same everything she was used to. She hovered back down to the bed.
“Nothing. Nightmare,” she answered, hating the tremor in her voice.
“Another one?”
“It’s no big deal.”
“No big deal?” Applejack arched an eyebrow. “You remember I was once the Element of Honesty, right?”
Dash sighed, offering a foreleg to help her back into bed. “It felt real but it was just a nightmare.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
Usually Dash could not remember the contents of her nightmares aside from a vague sense of being glad to leave them behind but tonight she recalled those hate-filled eyes with crystal clarity. She shook her head. “Not really.”
Applejack stared at her for a moment. “This one really gave you the willies didn’t it?”
Dash looked away. “Don’t poke fun.”
“Wasn’t gonna.” Applejack slid a hoof around her shoulders and pulled her closer. “Ain’t nopony who’s brave all the time, sweetheart. You’re entitled to be upset by a bad dream. Sometimes our own brains are our worst enemies because they know exactly what’ll rattle us most. Remember how we was all fiddle-dee-dee when the Tantabus tortured us with stuff that scared us? Nopony judged you then, did they?”
Dash wriggled uncomfortably. She had told few ponies the true nature of her ‘cute flowers’ nightmare. This time, however, her dream was disturbing in an entirely different way. She could not forget how vibrantly her sleeping mind had conjured Pinkie Pie’s death. What did it say about her that she could picture it so vividly?
“You’ve been stressed at work lately,” Applejack went on. “Might be you’re so tough for so long in your waking hours, your brain shoved all your stress into your dreams for you to process what you’re worried about.”
Was she worried something bad might happen to Pinkie and her family? She hadn’t seen them for the past few weeks but they’d both been so busy …
“Maybe.”
“Would you like to try sleepin’ again? Or would you prefer we head downstairs an’ I make us some apple tea to settle your nerves?”
“We got any hard cider left?”
“Not at three in the morning we don’t.”
“I guess tea is good then. But you don’t need to get up. You need your sleep after making all that zap apple jam–”
“Hush.” Applejack leaned over to kiss her forehead. “If my wife had a nightmare that freaked her out, I ain’t gonna leave her to stew on it by herself. Plus, you know I don’t trust you alone in my kitchen.”
“Sugar Belle says it’s her kitchen.”
Applejack sniffed dismissively. “C’mon.”
The rest of the night passed with the two mares downing cup after cup of tea until dawn. Big Mac and Sugar Belle appeared, surprised to find their spot at the kitchen table already occupied. A tussle ensued over who got to make Bright Bramley’s breakfast. Rainbow Dash took comfort from the familiarity of Applejack and Sugar Belle politely reminding the other that She Was Queen of This Kitchen Y’Hear. Eventually the colt’s mother was victorious, throwing together crepes in less time than Dash took to finish her mug.
“Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal was plenty good enough for his dad an’ aunties while we was growin’ up,” Applejack grumbled under her breath, provoking Dash to reach beneath the table and give her wife’s leg a reassuring squeeze. Applejack returned it and they fell to talking about their plans for the day.
“Twilight wants us to speak with her student before we have our Council of Friendship meetin’,” Applejack said. “Sumthin’ about Luster Dawn not believin’ friendship is worth a whit if’n you can learn it all from books.”
“Sounds familiar.” Dash downed the last of her tea. Her nightmare-inspired uneasiness had subsided and though the harshest recollections still lurked, most of the dream had faded, as all dreams are wont to do when faced with the waking world. “When does she want us in Canterlot?”
“Around 3 o’clock or so. We can get the midday train. Plenty of time to mosey on over to the castle from the station.” Applejack squinted out of the window. “Also gives me time to fix that busted water chute before we leave. I’ve been meanin’ to do it for a while.”
“I can do that.”
“Can you do it right?”
Rainbow Dash pouted. “Why do you always say that when I offer to do chores for you?”
“Because you can barely do your own chores around here without me needin’ to follow after you fixin’ what you did wrong.”
“Ow. Harsh.”
“Aw, I didn’t mean it to come out that way, hun.” Applejack’s brow creased in regret. “Sorry. I phrased that poorly. Lack of sleep sharpened my tongue a mite, I reckon. An’ don’t you go feelin’ guilty over that! You told me to go back to bed an’ I said no.”
Dash’s wings clamped firmer to her sides. She stared into her empty mug. “Still, let me help? I think… I need to keep busy this morning before we head off. Keep my brain occupied.”
Applejack studied her for a moment, then swivelled in her chair. “Sugar Belle, you still plannin’ to make stuff for the school bake sale today?”
“Sure am,” Sugar Belle replied from the stove. “It’s my kitchen after all.”
Dash could practically hear Applejack’s teeth grind but she kept her voice pleasant. “Could Dash help?”
That made Sugar Belle turn. “Rainbow Dash? Wants to help me bake?” She did not infuse her tone with much credence.
“It’s not that I want to–”
“Sure she does,” Applejack cut Dash off. “We’re set to catch the midday train but until then she’d love to help bake some treats for Bright Bramley’s school. Wouldn’t you, sweetheart?”
Rainbow Dash resisted the urge to raise her middle pinfeather at her beloved wife, whose smug grin was so infectious it made her want to kiss it right off her face. “Sure, honeybunch.”
“We’re going to be late!”
“We ain’t gonna be late.”
“We’re going to miss our train!”
“We ain’t gonna miss the train.”
They were indeed late but thankfully the Equestrian National Rail Service was dependably awful and the delayed locomotive sat waiting as if just for them in Ponyville Station. Applejack and Rainbow Dash bustled aboard, their arguing playful and their smiles genuine.
“If you’d let me help you fix the water chute you would have been done sooner.”
“You were the one who didn’t wanna leave ‘til you’d beaten your record for how many pears you could core an’ mash in an hour.”
“That’s different!”
Eventually, the train departed and they settled in for the familiar monthly journey to see their friends. Applejack tucked the basket of goodies Sugar Belle had made for them under her seat, stifling a yawn.
“You should nap,” said Dash. “So you’re rested and can enjoy it when we see the others.”
“I’m fine,” Applejack replied, voice distorted by another yawn.
“Excuse me, which Element were you again?”
She smiled and rolled her eyes. “Maybe forty winks might be a nice idea. Can I use you for a pillow?”
“Always.” Dash opened her wing and allowed her wife to snuggle against her side before pressing the wing back down in a firm embrace to stop her falling off the seat. “Just don’t snore.”
“I don’t snore.”
“Element of Lying.”
“Heh.”
Soon enough, Applejack’s breathing lengthened and Dash felt her body relax. Applejack carried so much tension in her frame it was a wonder she was as agile as she continued to be as they entered middle-age. On a whim, Dash inhaled the scent of her; apples and earth and a bit of sweat underneath it all. It was a smell she was intimately familiar with and one she never tired of. Sometimes she wondered what her life might have been like had she not plucked up the courage to ask her best friend on that first date so long ago. No iteration of her life where she and Applejack were not a couple appealed to her. She loved being a Wonderbolt but she had matured enough that she recognised her job would be hollow if it was the only thing she valued in her life. Love was where true meaning resided.
As her mind wandered back to days long gone, when she and Applejack were muddling their way through the transition from friends to lovers, Dash’s blinks got longer. Finally her eyes closed and did not reopen. Her wing stayed protectively around her wife but the rest of her body relaxed and her head flopped back, allowing a loud snore to reverberate around the train carriage.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
She jolted awake.
“You married a stinking earth pony? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
That voice. She recognised that voice. Images she had tried to tamp down surged to the forefront of her mind: Pinkie’s broken legs, the spray of red, a machine stuffed with rolling spikes.
This is just a dream. I must have fallen asleep.
Her seat disappeared from under her and she went sprawling. It was so sudden that she had no time to brace herself and lost her grip on Applejack.
“I mean, I knew you were pathetic but this?”
Dash scrambled to her hooves. All around her stretched metal flooring and tangles of grimy pipes. The rumble in her ears was no longer that of the train but an industrial scraping and whirring. She felt it vibrating through her legs, strangely real for a dream. Maybe this was a lucid dream, like when Princess Luna had come into their nightmares and they had known things weren’t real and been able to interact with them differently.
I’m dreaming. This is my dream. So I control things here. And I want to see my wife.
“But you don’t control things here, you stupid whore.”
A punch snapped Dash’s head around. She felt it; felt the cold metal of the floor when she landed on it. Stupid lucid dreams.
“You were never meant to exist. I can’t believe you exist.”
Dash struggled to get up but another punch laid her low. She caught sight of a black-clad leg before it drove into her midriff. All air whooshed from her lungs. The pain felt too damn real. She curled around it, tasting bile.
“Pathetic. You don’t deserve happiness.”
Another kick. She used her wings to roll away, only to have her attacker jump and land hard on one. Dash screamed. She could not help it. Dream or not, she felt the bones break. The other pony stamped again and again, grinding and crunching the delicate feathers into mangled clumps.
“If I can’t be happy, after all I sacrificed, why should you be when you sacrificed nothing?”
Through her own pulse in her ears, Dash heard a horribly wet crunch and Applejack’s cry.
“Nothing except your pride as a pegasus.”
She opened her eyes to see the same bodysuited pony as before flapping upwards, holding Applejack under her forelegs so that her hind legs dangled in empty air. Applejack’s face was a mess from an obviously broken snout. Blood and spit decorated one of the pegasus’s forehooves.
“N-no…” Dash rasped.
Up and up the pegasus flew. Dash opened her wings to give chase. Agony radiated across her back. Her wings felt like they had been set on fire. Pain made her legs boneless. She fell to her knees.
This isn’t real! she thought desperately. This isn’t real, this isn’t real, this isn’t real. I don’t want to see this – wake up! Wake up!
Dash could see Applejack’s wide, terrified eyes getting further and further away.
“Rainb-”
The word became a shriek as the other pegasus powered towards the floor at impossible speed. Dash reached out but in what felt like a heartbeat they had made a full descent. The other pegasus let go and pulled out of the dive. Applejack smashed into the floor at full velocity, body erupting in a spray of viscera, bone fragments and blood. Dash’s ears resounded with a boom that had colours ignited in an ever-expanding ring that crashed into her like a freight train.
Dash’s scream ushered her back into the waking world.
“Sugarcube! Sweetheart! RAINBOW!”
Somepony was shaking her. Dash reflexively grabbed their forelegs, gripping them tight. She stared up into Applejack’s eyes; worried but not wide with terror. Dash’s scream shuddered into a scratchy whisper.
“You’re all right…”
“I’m fine! It’s you I’m worried about,” said Applejack. “You were screamin’ so loud an’ I kept callin’ your name an’ shakin’ you but you wouldn’t wake up!” She bit her lower lip, glancing around at the empty carriage. “Another nightmare?”
Dash inhaled and let it out slowly. She was safe. Applejack was safe; not smashed to pieces on a metal floor but here, safe and warm and alive. “Yes.”
“Sugarcube, that wasn’t like any normal nightmare I ever saw you have. Maybe… we oughta let Twilight take a look at you when we get to Canterlot.”
Dash winced. “Twilight’s too busy for stuff like that. I’ll be fine, honest. It was just a bad dream.”
“A dream where I died?”
She froze. “How did you–”
“You were screamin’ my name, beggin’ someone to leave me alone an’ not kill me,” Applejack said softly. “Then you started cryin’ an’ wailin’ for it not to be true and for me to be alive again.”
Dash dropped her gaze. She realised she was still holding tight to Applejack’s forelegs, as if she might go spinning off back into the nightmare if she let go. “Someone… I couldn’t see their face… they hurt you. Picked you up and threw you at the ground from so high up that you… They broke my wings so I couldn’t … c-couldn’t s-save you.” On impulse she flexed her reassuringly unbroken wings.
Applejack wiggled a foreleg free to cup Dash’s cheek. “That sounds awful.”
“It… it was.” Dash swallowed. “Really awful. I saw… everything. And last night… it was Pinkie Pie. And I think… Cheese Sandwich, Lil’ Cheese and the Cakes.”
Applejack frowned. “I really do think we need to talk to Twilight. She’s smarter than a whip, even if she does spend all her big brain princessin’ now. With that eidetic memory of hers, I bet she’d still remember those books on psychology she used to read back when she was a unicorn an’ thought she was gonna be a shrink.”
Dash squirmed, uncomfortable with the idea of bothering Twilight over a couple of bad dreams when they only saw each other for a few hours once a month. Yet the image of Applejack hitting the ground, spine rupturing from her back, internal organs spraying around her … A shudder ran through her. It had felt too, too real. She never wanted to have another dream like that again. If Twilight could help with that request…
“Yeah. Okay. But… after we talk to Luster Dawn, okay? If we’re supposed to reassure the kid to help Twilight keep her on the right track, I don’t think this would help.”
“Okay. But Rainbow – mrrf!” Applejack’s words were swallowed by the kiss Dash pressed on her. It was a desperate, aching sort of kiss: the kind powered by fear, love, desperation and everything in between. I’m scared, the kiss said without words. I’m scared, I’m confused and I need you in my corner right now.
“I love you Applejack,” Dash whispered urgently. “I love you so much.”
“I love you too.” Applejack sounded a little confused.
Nonetheless, when Dash burrowed against her in a tight hug and didn’t want to talk more, she simply wrapped her forelegs around her wife and allowed them to complete the train journey in tense silence.
“Wowee! That sure was fun!” Pinkie Pie hopped along the street, cartwheeling to express her joy. “I can’t remember the last time we had a singalong like that!”
“I believe it was Bright Bramley’s Cuteceañera, darling.” Rarity lifted her eyes as Pinkie’s cartwheel turned into a double-flip over their heads. “And do stop jumping about like that; you’re making me quite dizzy.”
“Sorry.” Pinkie returned to a basic bounce. “I’m just so happy! It felt like old times again: all of us here in Ponyville, singing about friendship being super special awesome.”
“It did feel pretty good,” Applejack agreed.
“Even if ponies did keep staring at us,” Fluttershy added. “But I think that was because we’re with the princess, not because we were singing.”
“Ponyvillians are used to seeing me in town,” Twilight protested.
Spike laughed. “When you were four feet shorter, maybe.”
She frowned. “I guess I have been cooped up in Canterlot Castle away from my citizens for a while. When even was the last time we had a Friendship Council anywhere else? Maybe it’s a good thing bringing Luster Dawn to Ponyville happened today. We should try to get together in different places more often.”
“I like that idea,” Fluttershy smiled. “Discord and I just put a new wing on his pocket dimension. I’d love for you all to see it.”
Her friends gave varying degrees of pinched smiles. Discord’s dimension was a headache-inducing place and, even if he had been reformed for many years, there was always risk involved in crossing into it that none of them liked taking. Travelling between dimension of reality was powerful magic with powerful consequences if it went wrong. It didn’t seem right that he could just snap his fingers and do it in a flash. Dash remembered how the last time she and Applejack crossed over for afternoon tea, Discord closed the door on her midriff for a joke and she had been genuinely concerned it would chop her in two until he stopped, laughing all the while. She could only imagine what pranks he might pull if all of them crossed over at once.
“Ooh! Ooh!” Pinkie effervesced like a shaken-up bottle of soda. “How about we hold today’s meeting in Sugarcube Corner? I can close early. I’m sure Pound and Pumpkin would love the afternoon off and Lil’ Cheese always likes spending quality time with his daddy.”
“Daddy!” Lil’ Cheese emerged from his mother’s tail in a shower of confetti. “Can we go to the park and fly kites?”
“Sure, baby.” Pinkie nuzzled her son. “How about it, guys?”
“Well after you promised him already, how can we say no?” Dash’s tone was sharper than intended. “I mean, sure, sounds like a great idea.” She caught Applejack giving her a look and trotted faster. “C’mon, guys.”
In next to no time Pound, Pumpkin, Cheese Sandwich and Lil’ Cheese had been dispatched, the sign flipped to ‘closed’ and Sugarcube Corner rang with the voices of six ponies and one dragon. Twilight tried unsuccessfully to fit into a booth, whereupon Pinkie dragged chairs to a table in the middle of the floor and insisted everyone sit and chat while she ‘rustled up some treats’.
“This is nice,” Fluttershy said contentedly.
“Yeah.” Dash looked around, voice flat as a shadow. “Nice.”
She couldn’t help it; her memories of this place had been tainted by her dream. She had not thought it possible but now wherever she looked she expected to see the cheery little café stretching away into dark, pipe-filled metal. It made her twitchy.
“Rainbow Dash?”
She realised Rarity had been speaking to her. “huh?”
“I said you seem a little jumpy, darling. Is everything all right?”
“Oh. Yeah. Just… not been sleeping well lately.” Dash shrugged. There was no point worrying everyone, especially not before she and Applejack had a chance to speak with Twilight in private. “Work stress. You know how it is.”
“Oh, I most assuredly do!”
Rarity blossomed into a story about Yak-Yakistan to which Dash only half listened. She felt Applejack take her hoof under the table and returned her reassuring squeeze. They would take Twilight aside and ask her advice before she and Spike departed back to Canterlot, that squeeze said. Dash was once again grateful that she and her wife could say so much to each other without needing to speak out loud.
“Uh, could someone give me a hoof for a sec?” Pinkie’s voice echoed from the kitchen. “I got my mane caught in the mixer and I’d really like to not cut it off if I can help it but the muffins need to come out of the oven before they burn.”
“I’ll go.” Rarity rose from her seat. “I’m sure I’ve bored you all to tears with my chatter already. I should let somepony else have a turn.”
“Not at all, Rarity!” Fluttershy objected. “We love hearing your stories.”
“You remain an endearingly awful liar, Fluttershy, and I adore you for it. I’ll go lend a horn to poor Pinkie. Rainbow, darling, why don’t you share what’s been happening at your work? I know venting about Yak-Yakistani trade paperwork made me feel better just now.” She trotted away.
“Yes, Rainbow.” Twilight smiled across the table. “How are the new recruits at the Wonderbolt Academy doing? Do you have any you think might someday be good enough for the team?”
Dash hesitated. While she had indeed been busy at work, it was not the source of her current stress and she wasn’t sure how to get past that without outright lying. Her pause stretched until it was downright uncomfortable. “Um …”
The clang of metal reverberated from the kitchen, followed by a wet tearing noise and a scream.
Dash’s pupils shrank to pinpricks. Before she could think, she was in motion, wings beating like a hummingbird’s as she powered across the café and through the door behind the counter. Her head was filled with Pinkie Pie’s exposed ribs being sucked down into rolling spikes; the wet tearing of flesh; the clang of metal against bloodied metal; wing beats as fast and strong as her own pushing her away from saving her friend –
“Not again!”
She collided with the black-bodysuited pony and punched it to the ground, away from Pinkie Pie. She kept lashing out, making sure the hateful pony was down. She would not let it happen. She would not let that pony hurt Pinkie!
“Not again! Not again! Not again!”
“Dashie! Stop it! Please stop! You’re hurting her!”
Dash came back to herself in a bright flash of clarity. She was not in the metal room. There was no machine full of spiked rollers. Nor was there a bodysuited pegasus. There was just her, standing in Sugarcube Corner’s kitchen, Pinkie Pie hanging off her raised foreleg, while beneath her –
Dash stumbled back, aghast. Rarity had been knocked out by that first unexpected punch, or she would certainly have used her magic to stop Dash beating her face and neck so horribly. The gleam of bone showed through reddened fur where her broken cheekbone poked through. Dash looked down. She had left red hoofprints from where Rarity lay to the corner where she now sank down in a heap.
“Twiliiiight!” Pinkie yelled. “Help! Use your magic! Please!”
The rest of their friends galloped into the room, equally appalled. Twilight immediately crouched next to Rarity, horn glowing with soft purple-gold light that fizzled into her wounds and started healing them. Fluttershy and Spike pulled Pinkie back, slipping a little in spilled batter from the bowl that had fallen to the floor when Rarity telekinetically extracted Pinkie’s mane from the mixer with too much force. That must have been source of the noise and provoked Rarity’s scream when some got on her expensive cloak. Such a simple explanation; yet in that moment Dash had been convinced the black-suited pegasus was here…
Applejack looked over at her, eyes wide with emotions Dash was in no position to read right now. Hesitantly, she stepped towards the corner but Dash threw out her forehooves.
“No! I… I didn’t know what I was doing. I thought… I thought Pinkie was… I didn’t mean to hurt Rarity, honest! I didn’t! I-I don’t want to hurt you too!”
“Hurt me?” Applejack repeated. “Sweetheart, you could never hurt me.”
“I didn’t even see her, AJ! I thought I was saving Pinkie from that pony in my dream!” Dash held her head in her hooves and trembled. She did not understand what was happening to her and that terrified her more than anything else. “I didn’t know what I was doing… I’m sorry…”
“Twilight?” she heard Applejack say grimly. “When you’re done fixin’ up Rares, we need to talk.”
“So these nightmares are a recent phenomenon?”
“I think so. I never usually remember my dreams when I wake up. The first one I can actually remember having was last night.”
Dash squirmed in her seat. The office off Sugarcube Corner’s kitchen where Cheese Sandwich habitually did the business’s paperwork was designed to be functional but cosy. With Twilight, Applejack and Rainbow Dash in it, it only seemed cramped. Twilight sat across Cheese’s desk from them, leaning her elbows atop its chaos of invoices, receipts and seemingly hundreds of candy wrappers.
Applejack tried to lay a hoof on Dash’s shoulder. Dash shied away, turning her face so she could not see her wife’s expression. She was still wound too tight after what she had done. Rarity was fine – being treated with the finest healing spells ever created, delivered by the most powerful alicorn who had ever lived, did wonders for any injury. She had even forgiven Dash already, more concerned for what had instigated the outburst than the damage to her or her cloak. Dash had scrubbed her hooves three times in the café’s restroom but they still felt slick with her friend’s blood.
“Rainbow Dash?” Twilight prompted.
“Huh?”
“I asked if you want me to have Spike send a letter to Luna for her to walk your dreams and see if it’s something magical.”
A frisson went down Dash’s spine. “Magical?”
“Or, if you’d prefer, I can use a spell right now to check for magical residue on you.”
“You think these dreams ain’t natural, Twi?” asked Applejack.
Twilight rubbed her chin with one elegant gold shoe. “I think we should rule it out, at least. I don’t want another incident like the Tantabus, where if it is magical it grows beyond our ability to easily remedy before we know it’s even there. If I can’t find any trace of magic on you, Rainbow Dash, we can look into more mundane explanations.” She lowered both forehooves to the desk. “You went from zero to sixty in an incredibly short amount of time, Rainbow Dash. From what you’ve told me, inside eighteen hours the problem started and progressed to full sensory waking hallucinations. One night of bad sleep does not cause a reaction as dramatic as that. I’d feel better if I could reassure myself - and you - that the problem is not magical in nature. And if it is, hopefully I can take care of it quickly and simply at such an early stage.”
“And then I won’t have any more dreams of that pegasus?” Dash asked, not quite managing to keep the desperate note from her voice.
“Hopefully,” Twilight reiterated.
“And I won’t… hurt anyone again?”
“Sweetheart.” Applejack leaned into her field of vision. “That weren’t your fault.”
“She’s right, Rainbow,” Twilight added. “You said yourself, you didn’t know what you were doing. You thought you were saving Pinkie Pie from a pretty awful fate. That’s actually rather admirable.”
“I nearly caved in Rarity’s skull,” Dash snapped back. “If Pinkie hadn’t stopped me I might have killed her.”
“But she did stop you,” Twilight said firmly. “And Rarity is fine now. She doesn’t even remember anything that happened.”
“Rares knows you well enough to know you’d never do sumthin’ like that on purpose,” said Applejack. “We all do. An’ we all wanna help you get better from whatever this is.” Tentatively she snaked her hoof across to the Dash’s folded forelegs but Dash was unwilling to unfurl them. “Rainbow Danger Dash. Look at me. C’mon, look at me. Please.”
It was the ‘please’ that did it. Dash met Applejack’s eyes and felt somewhat shamed by the love shining there. Applejack’s gaze silently promised that she had full faith in Dash’s integrity and she knew Dash was not a bad pony. Dash just wished she felt the same way – or trusted herself as much as Applejack did.
Dash took a deep breath. “Can you take a look at me, Twilight? I don’t want to have to wait for Luna to get here.”
“Sure, Rainbow.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Actually, very little. Just sit there and let me scan you with my horn.”
Dash blinked. “Really? That’s it? I don’t have to be asleep first?”
“I’m just looking to see if you’ve been touched by magic in any unusual way that might explain these episodes. If I find anything, that’s when we’d do a deeper dive into your dreams. And if that’s the case, Luna really would be more of an expert than me.”
She swallowed thickly. “Okay.”
Applejack touched her forelegs again. It took a moment but eventually Dash unfolded them and allowed her wife to clasp her hooves.
“I’ll stay right here with you,” Applejack promised. “It okay if I’m holdin’ her like this, Twilight?”
“Um, to be honest it’d be better if you weren’t. Your biorhythms might interfere with the thaumaturgical data I’m trying to retrieve and concurrently mentally process.”
“I’ll pretend I understood that an’ restate I wanna stay as close to Dash’s side as I’m allowed until you’re done.”
“That’s perfectly okay. Being in the same room won’t change anything, I just need Rainbow to not be physically touching anypony else while I scan her.”
Dash nodded and closed her eyes as Twilight’s horn ignited. She had been touched by Twilight’s magic before – carried, pushed, shoved, scooped up, dumped down – and knew to expect a tingling like being rubbed with wax-coated feathers. She twitched a little when the sensation started in the tips of her hind hooves but otherwise remained still, hoping that would make the whole thing go quicker.
This time, however, a small knot of coldness also sprang to life in her belly the moment the tingling started. It pulsed in time with her heartbeat, becoming more pronounced the further up her body Twilight’s magic went. By the time Twilight had reached her haunches, Dash’s breathing had quickened and her entire ribcage felt like someone had put an iron band around it.
“Twi… light…” she gritted. “My… m-my stomach…”
“Hmm?” Twilight gasped. “Sweet Celestia!”
“Twilight?” Applejack sounded anxious. “What’s happenin’?”
Twilight moved her magic to Dash’s midriff, right over the swirling ball of cold. Dash nearly screamed. It felt like a black hole had opened up inside her, sucking all warmth away from her limbs. Her bones were made of frost and her blood was nothing but ice-water. More coldness swept through her, nestling in the base of her skull and pulsing outward.
Useless! Failure! You passed your flight test and still did nothing with your life? How dare you waste all your potential doing stupid tricks for brainless crowds like some trained dog! You were the pride of Cloudsdale and you threw it all away – for what? A life on the ground like a stinking mudpony? You’re a disgrace!
“Twilight, why’s she shakin’ like that?”
“Applejack, stay back. Don’t touch her!”
“But she’s havin’ a seizure!”
“Don’t! Touch! Her!”
“Rainbow Dash! Sweetheart! Can you hear me?”
Dash could hear but do nothing to indicate it. She was dimly aware of toppling from her chair but was too caught up in the voice filling her mind.
You had a chance at everything and instead you settling for nothing! Less than nothing! You’re a traitor to your kind! A deserter! Nothing but ground-bound garbage! You don’t deserve your wings!
Her back arched and her eyes flew open but she could see nothing except writhing purple-black effervescence. It crowded her vision, undulating like a cauldron of boiling slime.
“What is that?” Applejack cried out. “What the buck is that!?”
“Hnnng! It’s… magic of some kind.”
“It’s all over her!”
“It has been all long. My own magic is just making it manifest physically. It’s reacting to my spell.”
“Well get it off her then!”
“I’m… trying…”
I gave up everything and everyone to make the factory thrive. I gave back to the city that made me! And what did you do? Stuck your hooves in mud and into mudponies! Left Cloudsdale to decline and become no more important than any other city. You should have cut off your wings because you sure as shit aren’t a Cloudsdale pegasus!
Dash’s chest seemed about to explode. Was this what having a heart attack felt like? No fair! She had eaten right and exercised for years to stay healthy. She couldn’t die here, not like this. She couldn’t leave Applejack all alone …
Applejack…
“Pathetic!”
Why was her mouth moving?
“I can’t believe this is what I am. This is worse than being a flight test failure. Fucking an earth pony isn’t just failing, it’s unnatural!”
Applejack gasped. “R-Rainbow Dash?”
“That’s not Rainbow talking,” Twilight grunted. “That’s the dark magic. I’ve brought it right to the surface – AAAH!”
Dash’s entire midriff shattered in a rush of heat and shimmering purple-black power. Her mouth opened in a silent scream, spine forming a crescent. The coldness rushed out of her, spiralling up and out. Through the thrumming in her ears, she heard a cry.
“Twilight!” Applejack yelped.
Twilight continued to cry out. Coldness continued to flow out of Dash. The two seemed intertwined, thinning together until Dash could not tell one from the other. Her senses merged, culminating in a strangled sob from her own throat and one last burst of bitter-bright agony.
“Failures belong in the pegasus device!” she shouted.
Then, abruptly, the coldness was gone. Her body was hers to control again. Dash slumped back, turning onto her side to cough violently.
“Rainbow Dash!” Applejack was at her side. “Twilight, can I touch her yet?”
“Urrghh…”
“Twilight?” A new note of panic entered Applejack’s voice. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine. That just took a lot more out of me than I expected.” Twilight got shakily to her hooves. “Wow… that was, as Pinkie might say, a doozy.”
The door thumped open. “Pinkie might say: what the hay is going on in here?!” Pinkie shouted, perched atop her party cannon, whose barrel was levelled into the room. “In fact I do say it: what he hay is going on in here? And what the heck is that?” She jabbed a hoof.
Dash squinted. Her vision was blurry but she could just make out what looked like a tiny ball of purple-black goo hanging in the air above her. It undulated as if trapped inside an invisible sphere and extremely unhappy with this fact.
“That,” Twilight grunted, “is what caused Rainbow Dash to attack Rarity. It’s magic of some sort – definitely dark in nature. It was lodged inside Rainbow Dash. It started in her stomach but had wormed its way right through her neural network and was so deep into her cortex I’m not surprised it was affecting her dreams.”
“It’s making my fur stand on end,” said Pinkie. “Yack.”
“I’ve trapped it in this containment spell.” Twilight absently made a spherical motion with her forehooves. “I can take it back to Canterlot and study it to find out what it is and how dangerous it might be.”
“But it’s definitely out of Rainbow Dash now?” Applejack demanded.
Twilight nodded. “I just don’t know how it got into her in the first place. This is powerful stuff. Whoever cast it had to be wielding a tremendous amount of power.”
“I think I know where it came from.” Sniffing the air, Fluttershy edged around the cannon to slip through the door, Rarity close on her heels. “I recognise that smell.”
“What smell?” Rarity also pointed her nose delicately in the air. “I don’t smell anything.”
“When you spend half your time in a dimension surrounded by chaos magic, you learn to recognise its smell.” Fluttershy’s brow furrowed. “Especially when it turns up where it’s not supposed to.”
“Discord did this?” Anger fizzed through Applejack’s voice like electricity from a whipping cable too close to a pool of water.
“I don’t know. I just know that it smells of chaos magic.” Fluttershy touched the elaborate flower clip tying up her mane. “And I intend to find out why.” She tapped firmly on it five times and turned it counter-clockwise.
In a burst of smoke, Discord appeared in front of her. He was decked out in a cap with a tiny ogre on the front and a t-shirt bearing the words ‘How Can You Marry An O&O Player? You Ask Him For a D8 First’. His wide smile and raised paw both dropped when he realised where he was.
“What the-? Fluttershy, didn’t I tell you only to use the summoning charm in an absolute emergency? I was about to meet Ari Addax! Do you even know who that is?”
“Discord,” Fluttershy said firmly.
“He’s one half of the duo who created Ogres and Oubliettes! And I was going to meet him before you summoned me to… um…” Belatedly, he looked around, taking in the five angry looking ponies, one angry dragon and one prone pony breathing laboriously on the floor. He returned his gaze to Fluttershy. “You look mad. Why do you look mad?”
Fluttershy pointed at the floating ball of purple-black magic. “Why was that inside Rainbow Dash?”
“Huh?” Discord slithered over, poking it with a talon. It bubbled furiously but stayed inside the containment spell. “I don’t know. It was inside the lovely but apparently very sleepy Rainbow Dash, you say?”
“Discord,” Twilight said warningly.
He waved his paw. “I know, I know. Believe me, oh most princessly of princesses, I’m eager to fix this little problem for you as soon as possible so I can go back to the convention I was so rudely plucked from right before I met Ari Addax.”
Fluttershy cleared her throat. “Discord, I’d really appreciate it if you’d tell us how a piece of your dimension got stuck in my friend’s stomach.”
“It’s been causin’ her all sorts of problems,” Applejack added, scowling.
“Problems?” Discord cupped the sphere and passed it from paw to claw like a baseball player before making a pitch. “What sort of problems?”
Succinctly, Twilight told him. Dash, who had few other places to look, watched the rest of her friends’ faces as they listened. Pinkie’s whole expression crumbled when she heard how Dash had watched her die so horribly and been trying to save her from that fate when she mistakenly attacked Rarity.
“Oh Dashie…” she murmured.
“You poor dear,” added Rarity.
Discord blew a large pink bubble using gum he had definitely not been chewing when he arrived. It popped on his face and then levitated it off to float next to the ball of dark magic, leaving nothing but smooth fur where his features used to be. The bubble-gum started talking using the facsimile of his lips. “Well now, it seems there has been a tiny, small, very little mishap after my frankly hilarious prank on Rainbow Dash when she last visited dear, sweet Fluttershy and myself for tea.”
Fluttershy blinked. “You did what?”
Applejack’s scowl deepened. “He closed the portal on Dash’s body when she was halfway through an’ scared her half to death it was gonna cut her in half.”
“She squealed like a stuck piggy,” bubble-gum-Discord chortled, before noticing Fluttershy’s expression and smothering his laugher. “Ahem, but comedy stylings aside, it seems there was a side effect I did not predict.”
He twirled a talon and the bubble-gum reshaped into the likeness of Rainbow Dash and Applejack walking through the portal to his pocket dimension. The portal closed and Dash wriggled, held in place. Applejack rushed back to tug at her forelegs until she popped free and Discord himself appeared, laughing uproariously.
Discord’s body uncapped a marker-pen and drew an uneven mouth on his head, which said, “It seems that when you were touched by the dimensional void, dear Dashie, you absorbed some of it into your body. It’s a one in a million chance – but then again I suppose myself and my powers are indeed one in a million.”
“Get… to the… point…” Dash grated.
With a noise like stones being thrown into a tarpit, two eyes popped into being above the inexpertly-drawn mouth. “You caught a dimensional echo, my dear.”
“A what?" Twilight demanded.
“A dimensional echo. A multiverse resonance.” Discord raised a thumb to his mouth and blew on it. His regular features returned with a squelch. “A snapshot of a life not lived. A ‘what-might-have-been’.”
“Start makin’ sense,” snapped Applejack.
Discord sighed. “It really is quite simple. There are many different universes out there, separated by dimensional walls beyond your mortal brains’ ability to comprehend. Though not all, some are created by divergent decisions – new timelines where we made different choices than we did in this one. When dear Dashie was, uh, caught in my prank most of the dimensional wall passed harmlessly through her but an echo of herself from another universe … snagged.”
“Are you telling us,” Twilight said, quietly but coldly, “Rainbow Dash had another version of herself trapped inside her?”
“Sort of. It’s just an echo.” Discord shrugged.
“Did you trap a living soul in her?”
Discord rolled his eyes – literally. They came to a stop by Twilight’s golden shoes. “No, you silly filly. I already said, it’s a dimensional echo. The real pony and real soul are still alive and kicking in whatever universe she lives and kicks in. And it’s so small it looks like you got it out of her before it rooted itself too deep.”
“Rooted itself?”
“The longer an echo exists inside a corporeal being, the more it thinks it’s real. It’s not but it thinks it is and if it roots itself into their neural network enough to consume a creature’s mind and take over its body as its own… well, then things become sticky.”
Dash wanted to shudder: that thing had been trying to take over her mind and body like a parasite.
“So if it’s not really alive, we can get rid of that nasty icky thing?” Pinkie asked.
“Certainly.” Discord stuffed his eyes back into their sockets. “In fact, in the interest of getting back to my convention, I’ll do it for you right now.” He grabbed the containment spell, unsheathed a claw and punctured it.
Purple-black magic exploded into the room. Dash weakly cried out when Applejack threw herself on top of her, shielding Dash’s body with her own. Obscured by undulating power, she heard her friends squeal in shock and fright.
“Discord!” Twilight thundered. “What did you do?”
“You think I can get rid of it while it’s contained in your spell? Mixing magics, Twilight, is a very dangerous idea, which I should have thought you would kn-”
“Help!” Somewhere in the melee, Fluttershy’s squeal cut through his words. “Get it off me!”
“It’s in my mane!” Rarity shrieked.
“Buzz off, bozo!” Pinkie yelled. “Or you’ll be eating party cannon!”
“Twilight!” Spike called. “Do something!”
“Discord!” shouted Twilight. “Fix this now!”
Somewhere in the surging magic, Dash heard her own voice, made raspy almost beyond recognition by a life she had never endured. “You’re all pathetic. Good for nothing but the spectra you’d produce. What kind of Equestria is this, where weaklings like you are left to fester and drag down the rest of us? I was the best and you ruined me.”
“Stay the buck away from my wife, you no-good varmint!” Applejack’s growl reverberated through where her chest pressed down on Dash.
A figure rippled in and out of view: spread wings, pricked ears, arched neck. Its outline wobbled as if it was made of fog and its eyes shifted from rose-pink to impenetrable black and livid purple; an immutable mixture of Rainbow Dash’s own eyes mixed with dark magic. Her other self glared out at her, scouring Dash through with their blatant hatred.
“YOU RUINED ME!”
Her other self leapt. Dash felt Applejack tense, trying to protect her. Something sinuous sprang forward, placing itself between them and the echo-Dash. Discord? The world seemed to slow down until everything was halted in one perfect, awful crystalline moment; the sudden breath before falling off the edge of a precipice.
Twilight’s glowing horn pierced the echo-Dash’s throat, passing right through. Discord snapped his fingers. The world detonated in warring light and dark energies that swelled and flowed over everything and everyone like smoke. Wherever they touched, they provoked gasps. When they reached Dash, she felt Applejack spasm like she was having a fit but was too swept away in the images playing through her own mind to think of anything else.
Her flight test. The memory came clear and true. She remembered that day. She remembered the ponies who approached her after she scored her record-breaking round. What she did not remember was saying yes. She knew she had said no; had chosen her dreams of joining the Wonderbolts over making the Cloudsdale Weather Factory her career. Being a weather pony was only a temporary job to pay the bills until she made it into the Academy. Yet she witnessed equally clear and true memories of abandoning those aspirations and instead being ushered into a place, hidden deep within the weather factory, where both ponies and dreams went to die. She witnessed snivelling fillies and colts, younger than her, who had failed their tests; saw them being led into an all too familiar atrium lined with metal pipes and centring a ravenous machine with spiked roller teeth. She learned what that machine did: extracted spectra, the pigment needed to create rainbows, a sacred duty given the Cloudsdale pegasi hundreds of years ago by Celestia herself. She watched as those fillies and colts were chained up, twisted, broken beyond repair and then their sobbing bodies dropped into the machine to produce the spectra Cloudsdale needed. She keenly felt her national pride, stoked by ponies around her, taking on a dark edge like a knife in a nightmare. It was right that these failures were used for their spectra. It was right that they should die so Cloudsdale could keep its pride. It was right for her to be Director, overseeing it all, making sure the Rainbow Factory ran smoothly. She even started to think that her friend, the Element of Kindness, would better serve ponykind as pigment than a weak, useless wannabe-mudpony who embarrassed her sovereign city more with every ground-bound year. Everything was progressing as it should until… her. The grief seared hot and raw. So did the fury. An orange filly, primed to join her in her leadership, instead relegated to the failures. Her protégé, useful for nothing more than the pigment and magic in her cells. Her own personal embarrassment, far worse than the stupid, weak yellow pegasus. Defiant. Rebellious. Proud to have failed.
You can’t have happiness. You ruined me!
You ruined me!
“YOU RUINED MEEEEE!”
The last of echo-Dash’s essence fizzled away. Soon the only noise in the little office was Twilight’s glowing horn.
“That was very stupid, princess.” Discord tilted his head to one side and tapped, as if checking to make sure none of the dark magic was trapped in his ear canal. “Mixing chaos magic with alicorn magic and dimensional magic? I thought better of you.” He shrugged. “Still, it all worked out in the end. I’ll be going now.” He made to walk out the door. “See you later, Fluttershy.”
“Discord,” Fluttershy said softly.
He paused. “Hmm?”
“I… don’t think I’ll be coming by for a while. I… need some time away from you.”
He blinked, nonplussed. “What?”
“You shouldn’t be alone right now, darling. You can stay with me.” Rarity slung a foreleg over her shoulders and glared at Discord. “You really have no idea what you’ve done, do you?”
“I admit, the prank went a bit too far but –”
“Discord.” Fluttershy could not meet his eye. “Didn’t you see any of that?”
“Any of what?”
“Those… memories from the other Dashie.” Pinkie looked like she was about to be sick. “We all saw them, right?” She looked from face to face.
“We did,” Applejack said dully. “Felt ‘em too.”
“Well of course I saw them but why is that a problem?” Discord spread his arms wide. “They weren’t real.”
“They were real enough.” Spike drew himself up. “You’d better go back to your convention now, Discord.”
Discord looked between them, realisation dawning of just how badly he had screwed up. “Fluttershy, I didn’t mean-”
“Please. Don’t.” There were tears in Fluttershy’s eyes. “I need some time to… process what I saw.” She flicked her gaze to Dash but just as quickly looked away again. “I know it wasn’t really you, Rainbow, but it felt so much like you that I just… I need some time.”
“We all do,” said Rarity, blue eyes leaden with unwanted knowledge.
Dash struggled to sit up. “I’m sorry.” She noted how Fluttershy winced at the scratchiness of her voice, so close to her other self’s. “It wasn’t me, ‘Shy. I’d never do any of those things – never think those things about you or Applejack or… or anything.”
Fluttershy paused before saying, “I know, Rainbow.”
“Is it safe for us to leave, Twilight?” Pinkie asked. “I think this party is over.”
Twilight seemed distracted. “Hmm? Oh. Yeah, it’s safe to go.” She tried to open her wings but the small space was too cramped. “I will too. I have some things to think about… myself.”
“I think we all do.” Rarity started to lead Fluttershy away.
Pinkie paused in slowly wheeling her party cannon out the door. She seemed to want to speak but nothing would come out. Finally, she shook her head and left. Twilight trotted briskly after them, leaving Spike with Discord, Applejack and Rainbow Dash. Spike seemed surprised that Twilight would leave without him but instead of following her like he would have when he was younger, he turned and helped Applejack lever Rainbow to her feet.
Discord, downcast, snapped his fingers and vanished.
“Do you two need help getting back to Sweet Apple Acres?” Spike asked.
“Be much obliged, Spike,” Applejack replied. “Sweetheart, you up to walkin’?”
Dash lurched at her. Applejack flinched away but the momentum carried Dash into collision. Only then did Applejack seem to realise it was a hug.
“It wasn’t me,” Dash whimpered. “It wasn’t me. I w-would n-never… I wouldn’t… all those foals, AJ. What she did to … t-to all those poor kids… And she was happy about it. She enjoyed it!” She gulped back a sob. “I … I have th-that kind of evil… inside me too–”
“No. Never. You’re nuthin’ like her.”
“I am her, AJ. All it took was one different and choice and I would be her. I… oh Celestia… she’s me and I’m her and I’m capable of… o-of…”
Only when Applejack fiercely returned the hug did Dash allow herself to break. She bawled into her wife’s chest, wracked by the grief of a lifetime she had not chosen and the children she had not murdered.
Scootaloo plopped her quill into the inkwell and stretched luxuriously. She hated grading papers but Starlight got what Starlight wanted when it came to admin. Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom had both finished their quotas hours ago and retreated to the faculty quarters. Now, however, she was finally done and could –
The classroom door opened. She looked up, expecting Vice-Principal Trixie to berate her for still being here. She had a protest ready. It died on her lips.
“Princess Twilight? What brings you to the Friendship School so late?”
Twilight stepped into the candlelight. Scootaloo squinted. Her eyes were… odd. The irises shifted from her usual purple to a lighter shade, almost rose, fringed with undulating purple-black. When she smiled it, too, was oddly sharp and humourless.
“Hello, Absentia,” she rasped.