Bon-Bon couldn't sleep.
She wanted to, but something in the back of her head screamed for wakefulness. Years of working in S.M.I.L.E. had left a lot of scars - some (like the one on her left foreleg) were physical; others were etched deep into her mind. And when that unnameable something in her pony hindbrain was ringing like an alarm that something was wrong? Then there was no convincing it otherwise.
She just wished it for once something would happen instead of making her wait in constant tension.
It was 3am, after all.
3am and she was staring at the ceiling.
3am and all she could think about was the past. It didn't matter that she'd left S.M.I.L.E. two years ago - it was still yesterday, as far as her subconscious was concerned. Two years. Five years. A lifetime. All of it sat right behind her eyes and every time she closed them? Yesterday was there.
And in all those yesterdays, Bon-Bon couldn't remember sleeping either.
She wracked her brain to try and remember having a good night's sleep and all that she could think of were moments of her foalhood, distant and fuzzy. Maybe they weren't even real - just hazy false memories she made up to convince herself that the good old days had been good.
Sleeping well certainly hadn't been something that happened at S.M.I.L.E. Being woken up at a moment's notice to scramble and stalk some horrible monster was in the job description, and the rest was hardly a cakewalk. They were normal ponies, after all. Highly trained, well equipped, selected specifically for their resilience and strength of will - but still ponies. Still able to feel fear when a hydra roared. Still instinctively looking towards a sound in the bush even when you knew there was a cockatrice nearby. Still hesitating to strike an oddly-acting friend deep in a changeling nest. Still mortal.
And even when she did sleep, those memories were there. Waiting for her just behind her eyelids, making sure she didn't forget.
Bon-Bon wondered if the others still fought with the memories, too.
She wondered if they were awake.
She hoped she was the only one who remembered.
But she knew she wasn't.
"Stay?"
Lyra's pleading voice scoured across Bon-Bon's soul as it always did, making her grimace. It wasn't that the request was unreasonable - just that it couldn't be done.
The pair had shared a bed plenty of times (just had, in fact), but never for a night. Once the sun went down and evening came, Lyra would sleep in her house and Bon-Bon in her own. It was a line that was never, ever crossed.
No matter how many times Lyra asked, it wasn't something Bonnie was willing to do. If she did, then there would be no disguising her sleepless, tortured nights. And that meant Lyra would ask what was wrong. And that meant telling her who Sweetie Drops had been and of the life before Ponyville. And that would require a full accounting of her life's sins and the horrors normal ponies shouldn't know about..
Enough of Bon-Bon's life had been ruined by S.M.I.L.E. without adding sweet Lyra Heartstrings to the list.
"Please?"
But every request from the mint unicorn - the one with golden eyes and a golden heart - was a drop of rain wearing down a mountain. Bonnie pushed and pushed to keep Lyra away, but she pressed back in each time. And little by little, Bonnie wanted to push less and less.
Lyra didn't ask again. She simply sighed - heavy and resigned to seeing her marefriend slip out into the night again. As always: a kiss on the cheek, a placating murmur of endearment, and then gone until the next dawn.
The sigh broke Bon-Bon.
"....okay." The earth pony could barely whisper it as she looked at the floor. She knew she would regret it, but she couldn't bear Lyra's sad face again.
Really, it made sense. When she was in S.M.I.L.E., Sweetie Drops had never known when to retreat.
All she could hope for was Luna's favor and one night of peace. Just one without anything visibly wrong so she could satisfy Lyra's needs and return to their separate peace tomorrow. Just one to prevent the unicorn's inquisitive care from finding the truth and ruining what they had.
Swamps smelled terrible. They were supposed to smell terrible. This one didn't. It was sweet. Sickly sweet, like candy left in the hot sun until it oozed. It got into your nose and wouldn't leave; it soaked into your fur like hayburger grease. It made the swamp just as miserable to be in, and at the same time more unnerving because it smelled wrong.
Not that there was anything about the situation that wasn't wrong. Something was out there - the entire reason S.M.I.L.E. had been called in. The specifics were still unknown, but it was something unnatural and hungry.
That several foals were missing suggested it was a smaller creature: larger and more aggressive ones would have also gone for adult ponies. But none of the elderly were gone, which also suggested a lure of some kind. Something that the older and more experienced wouldn't fall for, but would attract a foal's attention.
"Could be a wisp," suggested Helium Singer.
Sweetie Drops grunted. "You assume every monster in a swamp is a will-o-wisp," she countered. "We don't even know for sure that it's in the swamp."
Her unicorn partner rolled his eyes. "Sure, sure. You just want the dangerous monster to have its lair somewhere nice, like the storage room of the town pub."
"I was thinking the well, but we're not gonna have this conversation if you're going to be a jerk about it."
Singer took the win with his usual smug smile.
Those were the last words they shared before the two partners plunged deeper into the marshes. There were other pairs scattered around in the twilight, doing their own sweeps. S.M.I.L.E. had called an all-hooves-on-deck emergency with this one: a pony-attacking predator striking at the edges of a settlement was bad news, and it was only a matter of time before it grew bold enough to do more than lurk in the shadows. It could be anywhere around the town - but the neighboring swamp was the logical first place to check.
That sweet smell had just made it seem even creepier and more likely to house an abomination. At least, that's what Singer thought - and Sweetie Drops couldn't entirely disagree with him.
It was slow going, every step needing the effort of three. Suctioning muck, unstable ground, biting insects… a pony couldn't go more than a few seconds without something slowing them down. And the light faded more with each slogging step. Soon they wouldn't have a choice but to pull back to town and try again tomorrow. Probably from the beginning, so whatever it was wouldn't slip past them.
Just as that thought came to mind, Sweetie heard the noise. She froze, holding up a hoof-signal for Singer to go silent. A few moments - then there it was again. Snuffling breathing, like a pony worn out from crying.
Sweetie motioned them forward, inching slowly as they tried to pinpoint just where the sound was coming from. The light was nearly gone by the time they locked the location down: beyond a patch of ferns was a small muddy rise in the middle of a deeper pool. There was a pony sitting in the tiny patch of semi-dry earth, curled up into a tight ball. Sweetie squinted, trying to make out any details - but all she could manage was that they were roughly foal-sized and had a green coat. She and Singer exchanged glances and crouched behind the ferns.
"Could be a lure," he hoarsely whispered.
She nodded back. "Could be. But we can't know from here and it's our duty to find out."
He glanced towards the small form and let out a frustrated breath.
"Either it's a foal to rescue or a trap to spring." Sweetie Drops rolled a shoulder in anticipation, her eyes locked on the small form. "You stay here and be ready. I'll approach."
Singer nodded again and pulled out their flare gun - first priority would be to signal for help. There were too many things in the world that couldn't be handled by two ponies alone - but twelve together was a different question. The two shared another firm nod, and then Sweetie Drops slipped through the ferns.
Each mud-slowed step through the marsh was taken with extreme care - Sweetie was about ninety percent sure the shape was a trap, and losing her footing would be almost sure death when it was sprung. But she had to spring it. Leaving it just meant another, less prepared pony would stumble into it later. And a trap meant the beast was close by. If they signaled for assistance too early, it would flee and go to ground. But if she triggered the trap and engaged it, she and Singer could hold it still long enough for the others to arrive and overwhelm the monster.
So Sweetie got closer. Step by step, until she was within reach of the curled foal. "Hey." Her voice was raspy, throat tight as the rest of her tense body. The foal didn't react. "Hey," came another try. When that didn't bring a reaction, Sweetie Drops took a deep breath and reached out to touch the curled ball's shoulder.
Touch managed what voice hadn't. The foal uncurled, rotating towards Sweetie. In the barely-there light she could see the fur was wrong - it didn't move like pony hide, too stiff and bending in the wrong places. The foal's head turned to her: a skull covered in moss, with most of the white bone at the front exposed to show a rictus grin. But worst were where the eyes should have been: empty space and guttering green witchlights that stared back into Sweetie's soul.
She was highly trained and widely experienced, but Sweetie Drops was still a pony. Confronted with the horror of a foal's skull animated with dark magic, she froze for a quarter-second.
The foal-lure's jaw flopped open in a silent scream, but that was merely incidental. The real threat came from the rest of it: the plant-like trunk that was half buried in the mud and spread throughout the bog. Vines lashed out from the murky waters all around, thrashing through brush and tree to grab at both ponies. The dark limbs were studded with rows of sharp, red thorns that tore apart the nearby plants as they swung.
Singer was just barely able to pull the trigger on the flare before he was grabbed - it lit the entire scene in a ghastly red as three thick vines wrapped around him. His falsetto scream was cut short when one squeezed his barrel, but that's all Sweetie could see.
She had her own problems. There was no chance of helping Singer until she saved herself.
The chance of doing that was low, too. By the time her wits returned after that quarter second, the vines had her in four places and the thorns were digging in to anchor her. Each movement to struggle tore them through her flesh - a longer one on the vine around her left foreleg went especially deep, scraping against her cannon bone and sending a wave of nausea through Sweetie.
That sweet scent of the swamp was overwhelmed by the smell of blood as she continued to thrash and fight. Her two free hooves lashed out but failed to connect with anything solid - what little they could contact was soft, like kicking a pile of wet leaves.
Sound gave a slight hope: the wild splashing might have been their struggles against the monster, or it could have been the others arriving to help. There was no way to tell, and Sweetie's oxygen-starved brain couldn't pick out any clues.
She got to experience first hoof that the phrase 'choke the life out of somepony' could be literal - and that it hurt intensely even as everything went black.
Bon-Bon woke up screaming. She was upright in bed without even realizing it, gasping deep lungfuls of air after her initial cry finished and left blind terror behind.
The panic got worse when she felt herself grabbed. Bonnie's first reaction was instinctual: old training kicked in and her muscles tensed as she moved to throw her attacker off. Those were crushed down quickly, thankfully - another subconscious part of her brain recognized that the pony grabbing her was Lyra and refused to harm the most important pony in her life. In turn, that bought the time for the rest of her to awaken and catch up with what was going on in the waking world.
And it horrified her. Those flashback nightmares were uncommon, but having one now? It was the worst possible scenario. A sleepless night of tense fear, she could disguise. But not this. And while Lyra holding her fiercely felt good - Bon-Bon knew that it was the beginning of the end. There was no disguising or dismissing what had happened. Questions were bound to come and there was no lie that could cover it all.
Over the next few minutes, Bon-Bon's panic faded into dread. Lyra didn't let go the entire time - she held Bonnie in a tight embrace, barely moving in the darkness of the bedroom. Her breathing was slow and stable, and Bon-Bon's naturally fell into the same rhythm. The two breathed in and out with the same steady pace, gradually bringing the earth pony's heart rate down to normal.
It was only when it stabilized that Lyra finally spoke. "You okay?" She kept her voice quiet and soft, much like how Fluttershy would talk to a spooked animal.
Bon-Bon tensed up again and shook her head.
Lyra mulled that over before asking her next dread question. "Did you want to talk about it?"
Clenching her eyes tight, Bonnie shook her head again and braced.
Another pause, and then Lyra nodded. "Okay." And she gave her marefriend a tight squeeze.
And that was it. Bon-Bon waited a fearful minute, but there were no more questions. Just the pony she loved holding her close in the darkness and the itching of the scar on her foreleg. But every ticking second made her anxiety rise. Finally, she tore off the bandage and pushed ahead. "Aren't you going to ask?"
Against her shoulder, Lyra shook her head. "You'll tell me when you're ready."
Bon-Bon was silent as her train of thought derailed into the ocean.
Lyra was silent because she had nothing more to say on the subject.
That couldn't last, though. Bon-Bon had enough field experience to know you didn't leave a wound open. "It's not normal. You aren't concerned?"
"I am." Lyra nuzzled Bonnie's neck. "But sometimes things are tough to talk about. You'll tell me when you're ready to tell me."
"What if I never am?" The wobbling tone in Bonnie's voice was less fear and more disbelief now - unable to grasp what the trap was. Years of finely-honed S.M.I.L.E. instincts screamed it was a lure to pull her in, but Bon-Bon couldn't see how.
Lyra just smiled. "Then I'll worry about you for a long time."
Bonnie twisted, looking into Lyra's golden eyes and searching for the deception. She couldn't find any. Just concern, care, and love.
It made no sense. Ponies were inquisitive creatures, and Lyra was… well, she was a lot of things but incurious was not one of them.
With the confidence of an alicorn, Lyra read a bit of Bonnie's mind and justified herself with one simple statement. "I trust you."
The rules of romance novels said that, upon being told that, Bon-Bon should break down crying in her lover's embrace. There should be a breakthrough as she finally confronted her trauma and overcame her problems in dramatic fashion.
Reality said otherwise. There were no tears and no drama. Just slowly laying back down on the bed where Lyra took a turn as the big spoon.
But Bon-Bon drifted off to sleep not long after and slept through the rest of the night.
She got through the next night, too. Though it was her turn to be the big spoon.
Author's Note
Hey Secret.
Present for ya.
