In Sickness and In Health
“Bon Bon! I can’t!”
“But we’ll be together, Lyra!”
Lyra Heartstrings swallowed her pride - and a thick wad of copper-tasting saliva - and pushed her hooves forward again. Even now, Bon Bon’s voice, her very body trickled over to her like fresh spring water. And the strength in that voice - rare, considering how bedraggled years of Cutie pox had worn it down to a grating hiss - haunted Lyra’s ringing eardrums.
When the weak flutters of her heartbeats weren’t blaring through her ears, anyway.
Yet Bon Bon, her friend - her more-than-friend - had asked something of her, and for the last few minutes, Lyra had tried to oblige her. It’d been so hard, so crushing on her soul, and not just because of seeing Bon Bon waste away in Redhearts’ medical cots. But here? Now? In their apartment, with the chandelier lights sputtering out and the cold seizing her limbs? Now, the pressure on Lyra’s chest was unbearable
Oh Celestia, I‘m so weak, she scolded herself.
“No, you’re not, Lyra. You’re... just like I was before. Ailing. Struggling. Held down by life and all the torment it threw at us as a couple.” Lyra didn’t know how, but Bon Bon was before her again, her form as hazy as it had been behind those quarantining curtains at Ponyville Hospital so many days ago. “But we don’t have to be alone anymore. Please Lyra: finish this one last vow. For me.”
“I…” Lyra’s tone was wisplike, begging, and as low to the ground as she was, sprawled across the dining room floor she’d polished hours before. It now stunk of something far sharper than bleach. “I don’t know, Bon Bon.”
“It’s our biggest promise, Lyra. All it needs is one step.”
So why did Lyra’s mind wail so desperately to not obey Bon Bon? Surely she’d never do anything wrong by Lyra. From those jokes they shared on the Town Hall benches, the sherbet ice cream scoops they battled their tongues at - and their eyelashes behind - outside Sugarcube Corner, Bon Bon always seemed to be perfectly attuned to Lyra’s wants and needs.
Yet the red blossoming under Lyra’s collarbone and chest weren’t from ice cream. No, it was from the wound burbling at her neck and splattering under her barrel, signaling her laborious drag from the bathroom. Where she and Bon Bon had last locked eyes moments before, separated only by a pane of glass as Lyra rubbed her mourning eyes raw.
Oh, how beautiful it had been to see Bon Bon again! She had even sworn she heard Bon Bon’s exhalations of joy over the hard clattering of the medicine bottles Lyra had cleaned out of the dresser. Bottles without her name. And until that moment, without a purpose, anymore anyhow.
But then Bon Bon reminded Lyra of just what she had promised her, on one particularly warm Hearts and Hooves day, in their bedroom. When the sweat dripped off their bodies and the need for more memories remained. Like a master strummer, Bon Bon had asked Lyra what eyes she’d be willing to do for her. And Lyra - after her chortling laughs of surprise over how Bon Bon was still conscious from their sessions - offered her love the ultimate promise.
One beyond friendship.
One before the contrast in their bodies’ states made them better appreciate the term in sickness and in health.
“I’m not strong enough, Bon Bon,” Lyra’ sobbed, the present creeping back into her brain as her vision started timing. “W-we’re friends! Isn’t there another way for us to-”
“I’m sorry, Lyra,” Bon Bon’s voice had lost its cherub-like tilt. Something deeper was in it now, something that struck at Lyra’s heart like the strings of a bow. There was something wrong. But Lyra’s oxygen-starved brain was hard-pressed to find out what. “There isn’t. We sealed this vow with a kiss, Lyra. And so much more.”
Lyra’s eyes fluttered as she looked to the edge of their dining room table - and another sight. Peeking over the wooden edge, like a curious foal, was a black-and-red box. Its contents decorated Lyra’s forehoof; a glittering stone ring. It’s been one of Bon Bon’s most hard-fought gifts for Lyra, fetched from some mountain she wouldn't name after a month-long sojourn that Bon Bon previously claimed was about Gustave Le Grand.
An explanation that Lyra noticed Bon Bon wouldn’t look her in the eyes when talking about.
It was similar to how Bon Bon had looked away before she’d spoken about just what the S.M.I.L.E. logo on her shades from before was about, and Bon Bon said ‘oh, silly, it’s just for camerawork!‘
Camerawork indeed. Lyra’s mind seemed fit to taunt her now.
But if there was any deception that concerned Lyra this time, it faded in that ring’s radiant crimson hue. Bon Bon’s smile as Lyra donned that ring sealed the deed. Lyra had spent almost a week prancing about with it, about this little ‘signet of the sombra’, as Bon Bon had called it.
For six days, Lyra felt like the luckiest pony in the world.
On the seventh day, Bon Bon became the unluckiest, when the Pox struck her.
Until this day, every visit Lyra paid to her ailing friend, no matter how many smiles lit up on Bon’s maw, seemed to make her condition worse. Goodness, that notice Redheart had sent her ahead of time nearly ripped Lyra’s heart down the middle. But one look through a spotted bathroom mirror, and Bon Bon was back to Lyra again.
Surely this was real. It had to be.
“I love you, Bon Bon,” Lyra whispered to her bestie, her one and only.
“Then stay with me, Lyra. Forever.”
Lyra gulped again. Somehow it’d become hard to breathe around those bubbles of air and spit like she was swallowing stone soup. But she pulled herself up on that sunflower-stamped wall. She pulled up that beautiful kitchen knife, the big one the one Bon Bon often used to split apart her confectionary treats.
And for the second time that night, with far fewer tear-streaked protestations than before, Lyra lifted that knife to her neck. For Bon Bon, she repeated. To be together forever.
But now, the reason for the blade’s shaking in her mint-green hoof wasn’t just from fatigue and pain. As she looked upon her Bon Bon - the one she’d pledged her life to, in so many ways - something was wrong. Bon Bon’s smile, once as welcome a treat as anything Pinkie could whip up, had never been this wide. Her skin, rich as it always has, had never been this milky-white.
What? Her mind rebelled. I thought it was just from the reflection before - why does Bon Bon look so… pale?
Bon Bon’s eyes weren't pale, though, and that was what made Lyra drop her uniting tool at last. They flickered between the blue mirroring the moonlight waxing outside the dining room window -and a haunting, vivid red that seemed to catch on the blood sticking to Lyra’s coat.
Something was wrong here - the request, Bon Bon’s state, so much about the twist this night had taken. And Lyra needed to know exactly what.
“I can’t! I can’t!” She’d almost forgotten what it was like to say no to Bon Bon. But now, Lyra needed something more than just this pony’s reassurance that doing this would somehow… unite them.
“But we’ll be together!” Was that desperation in Bon Bon’s voice? Yes, that was it, just as present as the vermillion glow on that ring on Lyra’s forehoof. Maybe this was just some new game Bon Bon was calling on Lyra to see through. Bon Bon was no stranger to keeping her cards close to her chest, right?
But yet, Bon Bon was in front of Lyra, clear as day! They’d beaten Redheart’s report, all somber and sterile, and At 2:56 P.M, Bon Bon got away from us claptrap!
They should celebrate! Show Redheart she was wrong! Be the couple Ponyville needed!
Not… this!
“No. I have to call for help!“ Lyra finally cried.
“Wait, what?!” Bon Bon responded.
“Please, Bon Bon!” Lyra’s un-ringed forehoof scrabbled for the house phone, too lost in her pain and her sorrow to call on her magic. And it hurt like Tartarus itself to look away from Bon Bon, to reach for that phone hanging on the wall. But Lyra had to let somepony else know about this miracle. She’d be mourning and laboring for too long! And Bon Bon had beaten the odds!
“Don’t do it Lyra! This was a promise between the two of us!” came Bon Bon’s echoing pleas.
“I have to! For the both of u-”
Then her ring-holding limb flicked backward. Lyra was stuck on her back knees, between the phone and her apparently-betraying limbs. And she looks back to Bon Bon, to try and reassure her of her actions.
And Lyra’s heart thrummed into overdrive, as her eyes shrank in horror.
If there was any doubt in Lyra’s mind that the pony before her was not Bon Bon, those doubts were confirmed now. Despite Lyra’s ring now flashing blindingly bright, Bon Bon’s bloody eyes burned brighter about them. It was almost like their ice-cream-sharing scenes from before, but so much worse - because there was green sclera around Bon’s eyes then, madly flickering as they drew Lyra in like a beckoning inferno.
Bon Bon even looked like the skeletal self she’d been on the last visit. Bones poked underneath her sunken coat like claws, yet their grip on her arm held almost crushingly tight. Her gown, the one she’d originally worn in those beads - now hung in red-tipped rags spiraling around her. It reminded Lyra of the maw of an angry shark.
And the voice billowing from this Bon Bon - this monster’s - maw felt like a predator’s, mocking and deafening all at once as Lyra finally recognized the two words it was screaming. Over and over like a mantra, those words drilled themselves mercilessly into Lyra’s helpless mind.
“YOU PROMISED!”