Hatebunnyby mixtrakChaptersPrologue: Bunny in the DarkChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixPrologue: Bunny in the DarkAuthor's Note Angel's childhood was going so well, until his favourite aunt abducts him for a dark ritual. Prologue: Bunny in the Dark Why? In the end, that was all Angel had left. That was the worst thing, not knowing. If he could understand, maybe he could make it stop. Or at least see an end. His aunt, Leliel, didn’t even look up from the workbench as she carefully traced her paw over some writings in a book, scritching and chirruping under her breath. It wasn’t any language Angel recognised. Craning his head, he could just see some unpleasant looking… implements on the table. Occasionally he whimpered, but his aunt’s normally kind face was fierce and hardened, like a granite gargoyle. This was not the bunny he’d known since he was a kit. They were in some ancient, forgotten part of the family burrow, and the whole area was rank with musty neglect. Leliel, Angel’s favourite from a long list, had suggested they explore the warren. It would be an adventure, she’d said. Angel could barely remember how, but he’d ended up in this dim, cramped, abandoned store-room which bore signs of a very recent re-purposing. Then he’d been sat on a bench. Then chained. It’d seemed all in good fun, somehow. He’d trusted her. Now he felt stupid and betrayed – and scared. More scared than he thought possible. Leliel finally stood, holding a jar and something sharp that gleamed wickedly. Angel had thought the waiting was bad, but seeing the look in his aunt’s eyes as she approached nearly made him faint. She looked eager, excited to the point of shaking, transfigured into something terrifying. He squeaked and chittered and struggled but her footsteps were unwavering, her expression unmoved. She didn’t seem to be seeing him, really, except as an object, for which she had some purpose. He could feel her rapid breathing on his cheek as she leant close, bringing the jar and blade to his side. He squealed pathetically as the jar began to fill. Eventually, mercifully, darkness took him. A soft noise, his aunt’s voice, woke him later, though how much later he had no idea. He felt light-headed, nauseous, and his mind was fuzzy but pierced with sharp pain. With blurry vision Angel’s eyes swayed lazily across the raw dirt ceiling. The odd, rhythmic chanting of his aunt had intensified and roused him from unconsciousness, and he searched for the source of the noise. Lifting his head with effort, he turned and saw Leliel dabbing her paw in the jar and drawing intricate patterns which soaked into the clayey orange earthen floor, staining it a rusty carmine. His usefulness apparently finished, she seemed to now have put Angel from her mind completely. He couldn’t even summon the will to speak; the swirling designs seemed to snake across the earth, hypnotizing him. Finally Leliel stood, satisfied, in the centre of the room and closed her eyes, paws up, swaying with the dancing symbols on the floor. For a long time, nothing happened. Then he felt it. A barely-audible vibration had crept into the room, penetrating his body and starting an odd juddering sensation in his chest. A strange, kind of invisible blackness clouded his mind and eyes and the room went dim and silent, the air thickening and pressing and probing. His aunt, previously intent and determined, changed her body language completely, cowering and grovelling as the designs around her quickened. They bubbled and mounded, clawing at her. She broke the silence hesitantly, but still nothing Angel could understand, speaking briefly. The heavy quiet gathered and towered, his aunt trembled. And she died. Not quickly. Not cleanly or painlessly but crushingly, tearingly, screaming and wailing and spilling. Angel couldn’t watch, but something compelled him. When the cries had stopped, and when the wet crunching died away, the silence brooded once more. He lay there, barely conscious and frozen stiff with fear, as if by staying still he could stop sanity from dripping away with his blood, seeking safety in immobility. But it was no use. The presence saw him. Angel felt weighed and measured, evaluated on some alien scale by an insane intelligence. The room fell away and he was transported to a purple darkness, an infinite sphere with weird angular cutaways revealing distant shapes beyond, rotating lazily in the void. Angel was going mad. Then he was released, his shackles broken, and the room returned. The vibration in the room increased to a tremor, then a shake, and Angel fell off the table as the room began to disintegrate around him. He was too weakened to care, and the weight of the earth falling down upon him heralded a welcome burial. Chapter OneWarmth enveloped Angel, and his half-remembered scream had already faded before he realized what had happened. Fluttershy was holding him, rocking him back and forth like she had when he was still a kit. Like she did most nights. He felt a cold, damp patch on his fur, and the familiar shame of having wet his basket. It was early morning in Ponyville. “Oooh, did little Angel-wangel have the nightmare again?” cooed Fluttershy, consoling. Angel just nodded weakly and snuggled deeper into her fur. “That’s ok. You’re safe here, my little bunny. Do you want some cocoa?” Another nod. Fluttershy put him down gently and went into the homely cottage’s kitchen. “Why don’t you go and have a nice hot bath while mommy fixes breakfast?” And wash off the urine, he couldn’t help inferring. It wasn’t fair on Fluttershy – she didn’t mind, didn’t love him any less. So she said. Angel stumbled, drained, into the bathroom and ran a shallow, warm bath. He stepped in gingerly and leaned back with a weary sigh. Shortly after, Fluttershy brought a steaming mug and went back to the kitchen. Angel drank it with his eyes closed, trying to ignore the images still burned into his mind’s eye. Even after everything else that had happened, somehow it was that night which continued to cost him sleep. After his parents had pulled him from the earth, nobunny had been able to get close to him – not his childhood friends, not his family. His family… Fluttershy came in a while later to find him shivering and staring blankly at the wall, mug and bath gone cold. Wordlessly she helped him out and towelled him dry, massaging some warmth back into his paws. “Breakfast’s ready,” she said, gently. The squirrels were the worst. By rights they should have been grateful to Angel and Fluttershy, as the two worked away preparing suitable nests in readiness for Winter Wrap-Up. But they were constitutionally mischievous, and often Angel would feel the soft poc of an acorn bouncing off the back of his head, followed by chittering laughter. Fluttershy was no help – she’d scold them, and they’d behave for a while before their recidivist tendencies got the best of them. Angel was working in a low opening in a tree trunk, clearing out the detritus mechanically, unthinkingly. If he stayed focused on the work, he could stave off the claustrophobia, which was always worse after one of his recurring nightmares. Angel was no longer capable of going underground like a normal bunny. Suddenly, it went dark. Angel looked up sharply – or tried, but there was nothing to see. The blackness around him was sudden and absolute, and in his utter disorientation Angel had no idea where the entrance had been. He groped around blindly, trying to fight the rising panic even as he heard the muffled chirruping of squirrel laughter from outside. Trying to make his way to a wall, Angel stumbled and knocked his head sharply, driving a squeak of pain from his lips. It felt like the invisible world was spinning, and it became harder and harder to stay in control, to stay rational. Desperately, he tried to feel around the edges for the exit, but his paws encountered only the same unyielding wood all around. He tried calling for help, chirping and chittering himself hoarse, frantically scratching and hammering on the stone-like tree, but he was too quiet. Fluttershy couldn’t hear him. Nopony could hear him. He collapsed on the floor, feeling something warm running down his face. Blood. He could taste it running into his mouth. Blood and darkness. Angel thought he could sense the invisible walls reaching out for him, felt a tingling of his fur that meant, surely, they were about to envelop him, crush him like they had Leliel. He curled up in a ball, unsure if his eyes were open or closed, and his mind went as black as his surroundings. Chapter TwoWater – all around, black water. Clear, crystal black. Somewhere up there, I imagine the sun. But it is not known down here. I’m floating. But it’s not cold. I can’t feel it. It’s… Nothing. I feel nothing. I am nothing. I’m alone. I’m safe. Let this moment be eternal. But he did feel something. The waters moved, a current pushed and lifted him, unwilling, towards the half-sensed light. He fought against it furiously, with rising panic, but the more he struggled, the more he returned to himself. Eventually he broke the surface into sensibility. Somehow, he was out of the tree, sitting on the ground and staring vacantly at the spongy dirt. Its fusty odour, rich with leaf mould, filled his nostrils and he continued gazing aimlessly at each black granule and warm, summer-dappled shadow, even as he heard Fluttershy upbraiding the squirrels. Angel’s mind drifted still, unable to connect. It had nothing to do with him. “…and how dare you?” he heard Fluttershy seethe. “We come here to help you and you torment poor little Angel bunny? As soon as he-” she hesitated, glancing over at his unresponsive face “-wakes up, you’re going to apologize!” That’s me, Angel thought, she’s talking about me. With great effort he slowly looked up, seeing the shamefaced squirrels cowering under the pegasus’s potent wrath. He remembered, and shuddered. The tree. Fluttershy, mid-lecture, nevertheless noticed Angel’s return. She rushed over, all concern. “Oh, Angel-wangel!” she cried, scooping him up and starting to babble with relief. “You’re back! I was so worried, we got you out, and there was some blood but it didn’t look too bad-” Angel, still sensitive after being yanked from his tranquil solipsism, tried to struggle free, but Fluttershy was too overcome to notice, “-but you wouldn’t talk, I couldn’t get you to answer, and so I was worried maybe your head-” his now-frantic thrashing finally freed him from her embrace and Angel stood apart, breathing heavily, ears flat against his skull and eyes wide-staring. He could not stand to be touched. Not now. “Angel, what’s wrong?” Fluttershy asked, frowning and moving towards him. Angel backed away and shook his head, but she reached out blindly. “It’s alright now! Come to mommy…” Mommy… Fluttershy’s hooves began to wrap around his torso. He bit. In the instant before Fluttershy yelped and drew back, a part of Angel’s mind wondered at the smooth hardness which resisted his strong teeth. Inasmuch as he’d expected anything – the action had been entirely instinctive – he’d expected fur. I must have got her hoof, he thought. But it was so smooth, almost slick… Angel looked up and saw Fluttershy, recoiled with open mouth and wide eyes, staring at him in shock. The squirrels wore similar expressions. Realizing what he’d done, he sagged and moved plaintively towards Fluttershy, but it was her turn to shy away. She ran past him, and Angel could see the tears beginning to well up in her eyes. He tried to grab her as she ran past, to apologize. “Leave me alone!” she shouted, shaking him off roughly and flashing him a fierce glare. Angel stood, dumbfounded, long after she’d gone and the squirrels had skulked off to their newly-cleaned nests. Fluttershy’s final expression stayed frozen in his mind’s eye long afterwards. The tears and the tree-filtered light had suffused her normally soft, blue eyes with hard, green-sparkling anger. Chapter ThreeAngel lay on his back in the long grass and stared at the bright, lazy clouds as he raised a paw to feel the wetness on his face. It's not rain, he realized. He must be crying. He'd forgotten what that was like. Days had passed since, angry and unthinking, he'd bitten Fluttershy. She'd maintained an iron silence since then. Nopony could do silence quite like Fluttershy. Angel kept expecting it to blow up into an argument, but that was just old fears resurfacing. Fluttershy was not like his mother. Those had been some bad years. After the collapse, which the warren clan had insisted on calling "that terrible accident", Angel had learned the hard way that it was easier to keep the truth to himself. Especially when his mother, who had been upstairs and was mangled beyond recognition, had finally left the hospital and returned home. Her physical injuries were far worse than Angel's, and she didn't quite look or move the same afterwards. She behaved differently, too, become bitter and cruel. The loss of competence she found infuriating, but worse was the loss of her beloved sister. Angel's insistence that Leliel had... done whatever it was she had done... did not receive a sympathetic hearing. The other bunnies just thought he was crazy, somehow damaged by the event. They were right, but not in the way that they thought. His mother, however, made it clear that she saw his accusations as calculated malice against the defenceless dead. Whenever he tried to explain, she would look at him with disgust. Liar, she would scream, green eyes glinting with fury. Angel later realised that, in her grief and anger, she had needed someone to blame - and she blamed him. At the time, he'd had no such insight. He only knew that his mother was growing to hate him, and that everyone else thought he was insane. He was alone. As the years had gone by, that isolation and ostracization had become entrenched, a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. The glowing clouds coasted on, their easy, carefree drifting making strangers of them. Angel knew, cognitively, that they were pleasant to look at, but that knowledge was only thought-deep. He couldn't access the pleasantness, draw it into his lungs; his body was closed to it. The day was unseasonably warm, but a cold breeze explored the fur around his face and ears, highlighting tear-dampened patches. Angel knew he should get up and go home before the early-spring evening banished the importunate heat. It should be raining, he thought, not moving. No, Fluttershy was not like his mother. But they now shared the same mistrust, the awful silence which they dare not break for fear of what might fill it. Angel had no idea what had made him bite his friend and caregiver. Unlike with his mother, Angel had never had dark fantasies of hurting Fluttershy, of holding her underwater, or burying her under shovelfuls of dirt, or- Angel stopped and shook his head, afraid and ashamed of his own thoughts. Maybe he was crazy. He'd begun to believe what they had been saying about him. Liar. Deranged. For a long time he allowed those words to echo in his skull, and they had hollowed him out. Just as, now, the memory of biting Fluttershy's smooth hoof was playing over and over in his mind... Back then, however, he had slowly begun to see what the others did not - that the bunny who tormented him day after day was no longer his mother, not really. It was apparent in subtle little things - an altered turn of phrase, a way of moving. Above all, it was the cold green sharpness that had entered her eyes. But he said nothing. He knew nobody would understand. No, Fluttershy was not like his mother. The angry green flash of her eyes was just old memories leaking out, never far below the surface. Impassive and unconcerned, the clouds floated on. Chapter FourThis isn't possible, thought Angel. She's dead. She's gone. And yet here she was, his aunt Leliel, standing over him with the small, sharp knife and jar for his blood like before, in the dusty and disused basement. Panic was crawling over his body, sitting on his chest and pinning his paws, but his mind - at least, the part which wasn't blank with terror - stubbornly refused to yield. It sent desperate urges to his limbs - Flee! Flee! - but they would not move. The cold iron restraints weren't necessary. Angel was paralyzed, somehow. Leliel chuckled lightly and drew nearer. Angel's bulging eyes noticed something else - compact, dark and shiny shapes in the corners of the basement, half-hidden in shadows except for the glint of lantern-light on smooth carapace. A soft, excited chittering could be heard, like a chorus of distant and malevolent cicadas. Changelings, thought Angel, with the deadness of inevitability. Somehow he'd known. Leliel's chuckling turned into a gentle giggle, persistent and involuntary as only mania can be. It was a parody of her usual playful mirth. Her eyes flashed an intense green which enveloped her whole body, until there was only the cold glint of glossy chitin. This wasn't his aunt. Leliel would never have hurt him. Another flash, and suddenly Angel was staring at his mother lying in her sick-bed, crippled and scarred, her disfiguring injuries transforming her into a stranger. She glared at him with accusation, painfully moving her twisted jaw to speak. You killed her! she hissed venomously. You did this to me! Angel was free now, somehow, standing over his mother, and backed away in fear, paws raised and shaking his head in dumb refusal. His faced contorted with shame and grief and he began to blubber; messy, wrenching crying. His mother's piercing green eyes, narrowed in hatred, slowly crinkled at the corners as she began a rising cackle. Angel stopped in confusion. Why was she laughing? He remembered something, and a clarity of perfect rage suffused his mind. Angel's mother had blue eyes. This is not my mother, he thought, rapidly closing the distance to the creature's bed. This is a changeling, he thought, as he picked up the heavy brass lantern from the bedstand. My mother is dead, he thought, as the creature's expression turned surprised, and he smashed the base of the lantern into its forehead. This thing killed her, he thought, as the thing writhed groggily in pain, and soft fur became smooth exoskeleton under his paw. He brought the lantern down again, shattering the glass reservoir and wicking lamp-oil into the bedsheets. This will stop if I kill it, he thought, watching the sheets catch alight and the changeling's head loll back into unconsciousness. Angel walked with surprising calmness, unrushed, to the door of the room, hearing the flames begin to crackle and sputter behind him. Accelerated by the lamp oil, the whole bed had come ablaze rapidly. Already he could smell the acrid stench of burning keratin. Angel paused with a paw ready to close the door. He didn't really want to, but some compulsion turned his body for one last look at the funeral pyre of the thing which was not his mother, which had caused him such pain, and driven him nearly to madness. Before he had realised the truth. The flames were nearly to the earthen ceiling, an impossibly rapid inferno. If he looked carefully, Angel thought he could make out a darker shape at the core of the fire. Bones could survive a fire, he knew - would exoskeleton? He had no intention of waiting to find out. Suddenly something caused Angel's heart to leap. He thought there had been a stirring from within the flames - a twitch, a thrashing. It was hard to see. No, there - Angel's thoughts froze as his attention narrowed with painful intensity on the dark mass slowly, impossibly, raising itself from the straw mattress. It lurched from the bed with unnatural and resolute movements, unsteady but determined. As it shambled the floor, it thrust its head forward suddenly towards him, escaping for a moment the wreath of flames, and howled his name. His sense broken, Angel slammed the door against the apparition and fled, stumbling the warren, seeking in vain an escape to the surface and away from this nightmare. That face… it was always in front of him now, imprinted on his eyelids, seared into his mind. It had been burnt, yes. Fur had melted onto skin like toffee, skin seared from flesh, flesh charred from bone. Teeth showing through where lips and cheeks were no more, one eye still glaring green and the other whitened with the heat, it was almost unrecognisable. Almost. Fluttershy. Chapter FiveSometimes, Angel thought, it's hard to tell if you're awake. His nightmares - memories twisted into phantasmagoria of truth and imagining - had been getting more vivid and urgent recently. He'd heard that, for most creatures, sleep was an escape, a restful respite. For him, it was merely another theatre of anguish. He'd sleep, and his dreams would be fantastically unbearable. He'd awake, and remember. The true horror of what had happened - and what he'd done - which was all the worse for being real. The two seemed like equivalent realities, overlapping and bleeding into one another. There was no escape; not under Celestia's sun nor Luna's moon. "Come on, Angel," said Fluttershy, coaxingly, "I thought you liked helping with preening?" Indeed he did…. or used to. Helping the birds of Ponyville with their pin-feathers, after the moult, used to soothe him. Something in the obsessive, repetitive, mindless fastidiousness of the task helped to take his mind off things - carefully searching through the dense plumage for developing feathers, and stripping the waxy coating off so they could unfurl. It scratched some kind of itch, for him as much as for the grateful birds. But the little pleasures had no power to move him now. Angel frowned and crossed his arms, not interested in helping. Not today. But Fluttershy gave him a low-power Stare and he sat, viciously angry, on the stool while the next patient took its place in front of him. Fluttershy had been increasingly impatient with Angel recently, though she tried hard to hide it. They'd never quite made up after he'd bitten her, but had settled into an uneasy and fractious coexistence. Time after time, Angel had longed to apologise, to make things right, but these days he lived in a constant red fog of undirected rage which was superimposed on the background grey deadness he'd grown accustomed to. Fluttershy, too, had changed, her thick walls of patience finally showing signs of erosion. Unusual for her, she'd occasionally stooped to take part in his petty viciousness, his little passive-aggressive actions. Angel caught himself watching her cautiously out of the corner of his eye, as he often did these days. He thought she was acting strange, suspicious. Not like herself. And he couldn't get the image of her burning, green-eyed face out of his mind. A squawk of pain jolted Angel back to the present. He felt the instinctive and irresistible startlement which only a true cry of alarm can cause, cutting through all preoccupation and abstraction and forcing attention to the here-and-now even before he realised what was happening. Under his paws, the small parrot looked at him reproachfully, trying to get away. Angel lifted a paw and saw a tiny patch of bright red. Blood. He'd burst a blood-feather by mistake. Blood-feathers were not ready to have their coating removed; they still, as the name implied, had a blood supply. Angel watched as a tiny dark spot began to grow within the bright green plumage. The parrot probably didn't know exactly what had happened, only that there had been a sharp but fleeting pain. In absolute terms, there wasn't a lot of blood, not yet - but birds didn't have a lot of blood to begin with, and were very sensitive to shock. In other words, the parrot would be dead in mere minutes. Angel couldn't bring himself to care. He sat there, watching as the parrot fussed and tried to reach around to preen the injured spot, still unaware that it was bleeding. It couldn’t reach. The tiny dark speck was slowly expanding, soaking the colourful feathers to a patch of almost black. Angel just watched, saying nothing, doing nothing. Fluttershy saw. It was chance that she looked up from her own patient, chance that she saw the dark wetness on the parrot - or maybe suspicion. Perhaps she'd been checking on Angel's work this whole time. She let out a cry of dismay and rushed over, firmly restraining the parrot while she plucked out the burst blood-feather with her teeth and held the corner of her hoof over the little raised bump which resulted. The bleeding would stop, now that the whole feather had been removed. She soothed the alarmed little parrot, but Angel could see the fury and hatred in her eyes when she looked at him. He remembered that look well. Uncomprehending revulsion, the turmoil of a loathing all the stronger for having driven out a genuine love. It had been his father's constant expression after Angel killed the changeling which had replaced his mother. Angel looked at his paws, and saw the blood. Yes, it was just like before. His vision began to blur and sway. He felt detached from everything, like it was a dream. Fluttershy was still staring at him in horror and disgust, her eyes expressing what she could not find words for. Angel perceived everything as from a great distance as Fluttershy rose, body language tense, and came for him. She was saying something, terse, words cutting like knives even though he couldn't be sure of what he heard, through the fog of dissociation. Things his mother used to say. That he was bad. Evil. Worthless. Harmful. Vermin. Unwelcome and undeserving. That she wished she'd never had him. He cowered, risking another look into Fluttershy's eyes. It was just like his nightmare. As she approached with teeth clenched and lips curled in a snarl, they flashed green. Angel fled. Chapter SixEverypony thought the Ponyville Hills were pleasant and peaceful. Gentle green slopes rolling all the way to the horizon, with only the odd tree here and there. Angel thought they couldn't be more wrong. It was a featureless, barren savannah, infinite, triumphantly suffocating the land under its monotony, like a large and sadistic bully. Everywhere Angel looked, it was green. He walked leadenly, not even crying, muttering to himself; now reassuring, now recriminating. He felt the weird mixture of bleak despair and electric anxiety which characterised the peak of self-loathing. His paws were shaking. Every blade of grass, every breath was hateful to him, a personal injury. He tried to avoid this place, because of the memories. But it didn't matter anymore - his memories were constantly in front of him these days, regardless: eyes open or closed, day or night, everywhere he went. His changeling-aunt's torture. Murdering his changeling-mother. At first, he'd tried to talk about it, but they treated him like he was insane. Then he'd tried to adjust to it, but it was too horrible, too insistent. He couldn't forget, living in the same warren, reminders all around him. Inescapable. Finally, after long months of coldness, distance, and depression, Angel had found his father swinging from a cross-beam. Yet another part of himself had irreparably broken, then, a new depth of pain where he'd assumed there could only be numbness. Seeing his father's bloated face, his bulging eyes, the small pile of droppings on the floor beneath, Angel finally understood: there was no limit to the depth of pain. There was always another layer deeper, another way for the world to hurt you, no matter how much you thought you'd already suffered. Insensibly, he'd stumbled out and away, going on and on and on, far from home, eventually wandering this forsaken green emptiness. Until Fluttershy had found him, taken him in. For a while, Angel had thought he had outrun the things that had happened to him. But eventually they'd found him, of course. Looking back, it should have been obvious. How could anybody have found him out here - a furry little needle in a vast green haystack - unless they were looking, unless they knew? The changelings must have pursued him, just like his memories. Whatever they had wanted, they weren't finished with him. Had Angel ever even known the real Fluttershy? When had the switch happened? Angel had no idea. He didn't care. Whenever the real Fluttershy had gone, the fact remained: she was gone. Whatever imposter was left - the cruel, impatient insectoid in pony's clothing - he could not allow himself to feel anything for it. It wanted his blood. He was almost inclined to allow it. At least everything would stop. Unless it wanted more than one harvest. Angel's legs trembled as he imagined it and he dropped heavily to his knees on the grass, staring unseeing at the impassive meadows. A lifetime - if you could call it life - of being drained, deep underground in some hive. Darkness and pain, immobilised and gagged by dry, brittle chitin and resinous ichor, the walls pressing close. Angel clamped his paws to his head, but the vision only intensified. His eyes plucked out by razor-sharp mandibles. Eye-sockets and ears filled with earth. A sharp jabbing of a stinger into the soft fur of his exposed torso, again and again. Pungeant goo forced down his throat to keep him alive. Angel screamed in frustration and pain, but only the mild blue sky was there to hear. Why would his brain torture him with this vision? He would do anything to make it go away. Anything to revenge himself on the changelings. Anything to prevent it coming to pass. Anything. He straightened, stood up from his kneeling. All the images racing through his head, the pain - it focused, suddenly. They all converged on a single point, overlapping in front of his eyes, forming a single, emergent picture from the chaos, sharp as glass. He knew what he had to do. How to make it stop. They wanted his blood? Fine. Let them lick it off the floor. But Angel would not bleed alone. Fluttershy continued to rifle through Angel's room, looking for some clue as to his whereabouts. She was so worried. "It's so unlike him!" she said to herself, "to run away like this, for so long!" She had to find him, bring him home, make sure he was alright. He'd been getting worse recently, withdrawn, afraid, set off by the tiniest thing. She guessed that when he'd accidentally broken the parrot's blood-feather, it had been too much to him. At the time, Fluttershy had tried to reassure him, to calm him and make sure he didn't blame himself or feel too bad. It happened sometimes, even to her, and there had been no lasting harm. But Angel had just given her that look - a look of absolute terror - and run off. She'd looked in all his usual spots, but no Angel. Nopony had seen him. Maybe one of the birds she'd sent out would spot him and let her know. Poor dear. If only he'd stay with her a little longer, Fluttershy was sure that a loving home would make him feel a lot better. Hoofing through a wooden crate where Angel kept some of the books he enjoyed reading, Fluttershy found something odd. A loose piece of paper, rather old and flimsy, almost falling apart from repeated folding and un-folding. She opened it up carefully and found a short paw-written note, the letters shaky and hasty. It was spattered here and there with droplet-shaped smudges where liquid had made the ink run a little. She read it with difficulty. It was him, I know it. My little Angel. Nobunny believes me. I didn't, at first, either, when he'd tried to tell me - how could he? How could he have killed her, his own mother? But he did. I've been watching him. I don't know how, but I know. He's paranoid, a fantasist - Angel can't separate reality from the warped nightmares he sometimes tells me about. Ever since the cave-in, he's grown withdrawn, sullen, lashing out at the slightest provocation. Vindictive, bitter, vicious, even. Persecuted and paranoid, living in a weird other-world of things that never happened. I tried to ignore it, to believe it isn't true. I failed. It's too obvious. My son is a killer. If only I'd listened earlier, my sweet Annabelle might still be alive, and Angel might not be so… deranged. But I didn't. When he started to say those strange things, after the cave-in, we all just ignored it, laughed it off awkwardly, told him he was wrong. We didn't know how to react. Of course he became secretive after that, when we wouldn't listen. Instead of talking, we forced silence and isolation on him. On a suffering, confused, traumatised young bunny. My family is gone. My wife… she died, although perhaps with her injuries it was a mercy. My son seems forever broken. And it's my fault. Angel bunny, if you read this, please forgive me. I'm sorry I failed you. Now I can't get through to you, no matter how I try. I think maybe I'm making things worse, a constant reminder that you're a danger to those who love you. Maybe you'll be better off without me around. Maybe somebunny else can give you the kind of love and support you need. If somebunny else finds this: please, look after my son. But be careful. Please, Angel bunny, try to find peace, if you can. In my own way, so will I. Fluttershy finished reading, tears blurring her vision. One dropped onto the page and she realised what those splotch-marks must be. Oh, what am I going to do? she thought. Just then, the door to her little cottage creaked open, slowly. Fluttershy started. She heard the sound of light footfalls coming inside, a shuffling pat-pat-pat, like someone walking in a daze. They paused in the front room. Looking around. Thinking. "A- Angel?" Fluttershy called softly, waveringly, "Angel bunny? Are you home?" A silence. She watch the door to Angel's room, hyper-alert and stare-eyed with apprehension. The shuffling pat-pat-pat started again, coming closer. A white, furry head appeared around the door. The dead look in his eyes made Fluttershy want to scream. Yes, Angel bunny was home.
Prologue: Bunny in the DarkAuthor's Note Angel's childhood was going so well, until his favourite aunt abducts him for a dark ritual. Prologue: Bunny in the Dark Why? In the end, that was all Angel had left. That was the worst thing, not knowing. If he could understand, maybe he could make it stop. Or at least see an end. His aunt, Leliel, didn’t even look up from the workbench as she carefully traced her paw over some writings in a book, scritching and chirruping under her breath. It wasn’t any language Angel recognised. Craning his head, he could just see some unpleasant looking… implements on the table. Occasionally he whimpered, but his aunt’s normally kind face was fierce and hardened, like a granite gargoyle. This was not the bunny he’d known since he was a kit. They were in some ancient, forgotten part of the family burrow, and the whole area was rank with musty neglect. Leliel, Angel’s favourite from a long list, had suggested they explore the warren. It would be an adventure, she’d said. Angel could barely remember how, but he’d ended up in this dim, cramped, abandoned store-room which bore signs of a very recent re-purposing. Then he’d been sat on a bench. Then chained. It’d seemed all in good fun, somehow. He’d trusted her. Now he felt stupid and betrayed – and scared. More scared than he thought possible. Leliel finally stood, holding a jar and something sharp that gleamed wickedly. Angel had thought the waiting was bad, but seeing the look in his aunt’s eyes as she approached nearly made him faint. She looked eager, excited to the point of shaking, transfigured into something terrifying. He squeaked and chittered and struggled but her footsteps were unwavering, her expression unmoved. She didn’t seem to be seeing him, really, except as an object, for which she had some purpose. He could feel her rapid breathing on his cheek as she leant close, bringing the jar and blade to his side. He squealed pathetically as the jar began to fill. Eventually, mercifully, darkness took him. A soft noise, his aunt’s voice, woke him later, though how much later he had no idea. He felt light-headed, nauseous, and his mind was fuzzy but pierced with sharp pain. With blurry vision Angel’s eyes swayed lazily across the raw dirt ceiling. The odd, rhythmic chanting of his aunt had intensified and roused him from unconsciousness, and he searched for the source of the noise. Lifting his head with effort, he turned and saw Leliel dabbing her paw in the jar and drawing intricate patterns which soaked into the clayey orange earthen floor, staining it a rusty carmine. His usefulness apparently finished, she seemed to now have put Angel from her mind completely. He couldn’t even summon the will to speak; the swirling designs seemed to snake across the earth, hypnotizing him. Finally Leliel stood, satisfied, in the centre of the room and closed her eyes, paws up, swaying with the dancing symbols on the floor. For a long time, nothing happened. Then he felt it. A barely-audible vibration had crept into the room, penetrating his body and starting an odd juddering sensation in his chest. A strange, kind of invisible blackness clouded his mind and eyes and the room went dim and silent, the air thickening and pressing and probing. His aunt, previously intent and determined, changed her body language completely, cowering and grovelling as the designs around her quickened. They bubbled and mounded, clawing at her. She broke the silence hesitantly, but still nothing Angel could understand, speaking briefly. The heavy quiet gathered and towered, his aunt trembled. And she died. Not quickly. Not cleanly or painlessly but crushingly, tearingly, screaming and wailing and spilling. Angel couldn’t watch, but something compelled him. When the cries had stopped, and when the wet crunching died away, the silence brooded once more. He lay there, barely conscious and frozen stiff with fear, as if by staying still he could stop sanity from dripping away with his blood, seeking safety in immobility. But it was no use. The presence saw him. Angel felt weighed and measured, evaluated on some alien scale by an insane intelligence. The room fell away and he was transported to a purple darkness, an infinite sphere with weird angular cutaways revealing distant shapes beyond, rotating lazily in the void. Angel was going mad. Then he was released, his shackles broken, and the room returned. The vibration in the room increased to a tremor, then a shake, and Angel fell off the table as the room began to disintegrate around him. He was too weakened to care, and the weight of the earth falling down upon him heralded a welcome burial.
Chapter OneWarmth enveloped Angel, and his half-remembered scream had already faded before he realized what had happened. Fluttershy was holding him, rocking him back and forth like she had when he was still a kit. Like she did most nights. He felt a cold, damp patch on his fur, and the familiar shame of having wet his basket. It was early morning in Ponyville. “Oooh, did little Angel-wangel have the nightmare again?” cooed Fluttershy, consoling. Angel just nodded weakly and snuggled deeper into her fur. “That’s ok. You’re safe here, my little bunny. Do you want some cocoa?” Another nod. Fluttershy put him down gently and went into the homely cottage’s kitchen. “Why don’t you go and have a nice hot bath while mommy fixes breakfast?” And wash off the urine, he couldn’t help inferring. It wasn’t fair on Fluttershy – she didn’t mind, didn’t love him any less. So she said. Angel stumbled, drained, into the bathroom and ran a shallow, warm bath. He stepped in gingerly and leaned back with a weary sigh. Shortly after, Fluttershy brought a steaming mug and went back to the kitchen. Angel drank it with his eyes closed, trying to ignore the images still burned into his mind’s eye. Even after everything else that had happened, somehow it was that night which continued to cost him sleep. After his parents had pulled him from the earth, nobunny had been able to get close to him – not his childhood friends, not his family. His family… Fluttershy came in a while later to find him shivering and staring blankly at the wall, mug and bath gone cold. Wordlessly she helped him out and towelled him dry, massaging some warmth back into his paws. “Breakfast’s ready,” she said, gently. The squirrels were the worst. By rights they should have been grateful to Angel and Fluttershy, as the two worked away preparing suitable nests in readiness for Winter Wrap-Up. But they were constitutionally mischievous, and often Angel would feel the soft poc of an acorn bouncing off the back of his head, followed by chittering laughter. Fluttershy was no help – she’d scold them, and they’d behave for a while before their recidivist tendencies got the best of them. Angel was working in a low opening in a tree trunk, clearing out the detritus mechanically, unthinkingly. If he stayed focused on the work, he could stave off the claustrophobia, which was always worse after one of his recurring nightmares. Angel was no longer capable of going underground like a normal bunny. Suddenly, it went dark. Angel looked up sharply – or tried, but there was nothing to see. The blackness around him was sudden and absolute, and in his utter disorientation Angel had no idea where the entrance had been. He groped around blindly, trying to fight the rising panic even as he heard the muffled chirruping of squirrel laughter from outside. Trying to make his way to a wall, Angel stumbled and knocked his head sharply, driving a squeak of pain from his lips. It felt like the invisible world was spinning, and it became harder and harder to stay in control, to stay rational. Desperately, he tried to feel around the edges for the exit, but his paws encountered only the same unyielding wood all around. He tried calling for help, chirping and chittering himself hoarse, frantically scratching and hammering on the stone-like tree, but he was too quiet. Fluttershy couldn’t hear him. Nopony could hear him. He collapsed on the floor, feeling something warm running down his face. Blood. He could taste it running into his mouth. Blood and darkness. Angel thought he could sense the invisible walls reaching out for him, felt a tingling of his fur that meant, surely, they were about to envelop him, crush him like they had Leliel. He curled up in a ball, unsure if his eyes were open or closed, and his mind went as black as his surroundings.
Chapter TwoWater – all around, black water. Clear, crystal black. Somewhere up there, I imagine the sun. But it is not known down here. I’m floating. But it’s not cold. I can’t feel it. It’s… Nothing. I feel nothing. I am nothing. I’m alone. I’m safe. Let this moment be eternal. But he did feel something. The waters moved, a current pushed and lifted him, unwilling, towards the half-sensed light. He fought against it furiously, with rising panic, but the more he struggled, the more he returned to himself. Eventually he broke the surface into sensibility. Somehow, he was out of the tree, sitting on the ground and staring vacantly at the spongy dirt. Its fusty odour, rich with leaf mould, filled his nostrils and he continued gazing aimlessly at each black granule and warm, summer-dappled shadow, even as he heard Fluttershy upbraiding the squirrels. Angel’s mind drifted still, unable to connect. It had nothing to do with him. “…and how dare you?” he heard Fluttershy seethe. “We come here to help you and you torment poor little Angel bunny? As soon as he-” she hesitated, glancing over at his unresponsive face “-wakes up, you’re going to apologize!” That’s me, Angel thought, she’s talking about me. With great effort he slowly looked up, seeing the shamefaced squirrels cowering under the pegasus’s potent wrath. He remembered, and shuddered. The tree. Fluttershy, mid-lecture, nevertheless noticed Angel’s return. She rushed over, all concern. “Oh, Angel-wangel!” she cried, scooping him up and starting to babble with relief. “You’re back! I was so worried, we got you out, and there was some blood but it didn’t look too bad-” Angel, still sensitive after being yanked from his tranquil solipsism, tried to struggle free, but Fluttershy was too overcome to notice, “-but you wouldn’t talk, I couldn’t get you to answer, and so I was worried maybe your head-” his now-frantic thrashing finally freed him from her embrace and Angel stood apart, breathing heavily, ears flat against his skull and eyes wide-staring. He could not stand to be touched. Not now. “Angel, what’s wrong?” Fluttershy asked, frowning and moving towards him. Angel backed away and shook his head, but she reached out blindly. “It’s alright now! Come to mommy…” Mommy… Fluttershy’s hooves began to wrap around his torso. He bit. In the instant before Fluttershy yelped and drew back, a part of Angel’s mind wondered at the smooth hardness which resisted his strong teeth. Inasmuch as he’d expected anything – the action had been entirely instinctive – he’d expected fur. I must have got her hoof, he thought. But it was so smooth, almost slick… Angel looked up and saw Fluttershy, recoiled with open mouth and wide eyes, staring at him in shock. The squirrels wore similar expressions. Realizing what he’d done, he sagged and moved plaintively towards Fluttershy, but it was her turn to shy away. She ran past him, and Angel could see the tears beginning to well up in her eyes. He tried to grab her as she ran past, to apologize. “Leave me alone!” she shouted, shaking him off roughly and flashing him a fierce glare. Angel stood, dumbfounded, long after she’d gone and the squirrels had skulked off to their newly-cleaned nests. Fluttershy’s final expression stayed frozen in his mind’s eye long afterwards. The tears and the tree-filtered light had suffused her normally soft, blue eyes with hard, green-sparkling anger.
Chapter ThreeAngel lay on his back in the long grass and stared at the bright, lazy clouds as he raised a paw to feel the wetness on his face. It's not rain, he realized. He must be crying. He'd forgotten what that was like. Days had passed since, angry and unthinking, he'd bitten Fluttershy. She'd maintained an iron silence since then. Nopony could do silence quite like Fluttershy. Angel kept expecting it to blow up into an argument, but that was just old fears resurfacing. Fluttershy was not like his mother. Those had been some bad years. After the collapse, which the warren clan had insisted on calling "that terrible accident", Angel had learned the hard way that it was easier to keep the truth to himself. Especially when his mother, who had been upstairs and was mangled beyond recognition, had finally left the hospital and returned home. Her physical injuries were far worse than Angel's, and she didn't quite look or move the same afterwards. She behaved differently, too, become bitter and cruel. The loss of competence she found infuriating, but worse was the loss of her beloved sister. Angel's insistence that Leliel had... done whatever it was she had done... did not receive a sympathetic hearing. The other bunnies just thought he was crazy, somehow damaged by the event. They were right, but not in the way that they thought. His mother, however, made it clear that she saw his accusations as calculated malice against the defenceless dead. Whenever he tried to explain, she would look at him with disgust. Liar, she would scream, green eyes glinting with fury. Angel later realised that, in her grief and anger, she had needed someone to blame - and she blamed him. At the time, he'd had no such insight. He only knew that his mother was growing to hate him, and that everyone else thought he was insane. He was alone. As the years had gone by, that isolation and ostracization had become entrenched, a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. The glowing clouds coasted on, their easy, carefree drifting making strangers of them. Angel knew, cognitively, that they were pleasant to look at, but that knowledge was only thought-deep. He couldn't access the pleasantness, draw it into his lungs; his body was closed to it. The day was unseasonably warm, but a cold breeze explored the fur around his face and ears, highlighting tear-dampened patches. Angel knew he should get up and go home before the early-spring evening banished the importunate heat. It should be raining, he thought, not moving. No, Fluttershy was not like his mother. But they now shared the same mistrust, the awful silence which they dare not break for fear of what might fill it. Angel had no idea what had made him bite his friend and caregiver. Unlike with his mother, Angel had never had dark fantasies of hurting Fluttershy, of holding her underwater, or burying her under shovelfuls of dirt, or- Angel stopped and shook his head, afraid and ashamed of his own thoughts. Maybe he was crazy. He'd begun to believe what they had been saying about him. Liar. Deranged. For a long time he allowed those words to echo in his skull, and they had hollowed him out. Just as, now, the memory of biting Fluttershy's smooth hoof was playing over and over in his mind... Back then, however, he had slowly begun to see what the others did not - that the bunny who tormented him day after day was no longer his mother, not really. It was apparent in subtle little things - an altered turn of phrase, a way of moving. Above all, it was the cold green sharpness that had entered her eyes. But he said nothing. He knew nobody would understand. No, Fluttershy was not like his mother. The angry green flash of her eyes was just old memories leaking out, never far below the surface. Impassive and unconcerned, the clouds floated on.
Chapter FourThis isn't possible, thought Angel. She's dead. She's gone. And yet here she was, his aunt Leliel, standing over him with the small, sharp knife and jar for his blood like before, in the dusty and disused basement. Panic was crawling over his body, sitting on his chest and pinning his paws, but his mind - at least, the part which wasn't blank with terror - stubbornly refused to yield. It sent desperate urges to his limbs - Flee! Flee! - but they would not move. The cold iron restraints weren't necessary. Angel was paralyzed, somehow. Leliel chuckled lightly and drew nearer. Angel's bulging eyes noticed something else - compact, dark and shiny shapes in the corners of the basement, half-hidden in shadows except for the glint of lantern-light on smooth carapace. A soft, excited chittering could be heard, like a chorus of distant and malevolent cicadas. Changelings, thought Angel, with the deadness of inevitability. Somehow he'd known. Leliel's chuckling turned into a gentle giggle, persistent and involuntary as only mania can be. It was a parody of her usual playful mirth. Her eyes flashed an intense green which enveloped her whole body, until there was only the cold glint of glossy chitin. This wasn't his aunt. Leliel would never have hurt him. Another flash, and suddenly Angel was staring at his mother lying in her sick-bed, crippled and scarred, her disfiguring injuries transforming her into a stranger. She glared at him with accusation, painfully moving her twisted jaw to speak. You killed her! she hissed venomously. You did this to me! Angel was free now, somehow, standing over his mother, and backed away in fear, paws raised and shaking his head in dumb refusal. His faced contorted with shame and grief and he began to blubber; messy, wrenching crying. His mother's piercing green eyes, narrowed in hatred, slowly crinkled at the corners as she began a rising cackle. Angel stopped in confusion. Why was she laughing? He remembered something, and a clarity of perfect rage suffused his mind. Angel's mother had blue eyes. This is not my mother, he thought, rapidly closing the distance to the creature's bed. This is a changeling, he thought, as he picked up the heavy brass lantern from the bedstand. My mother is dead, he thought, as the creature's expression turned surprised, and he smashed the base of the lantern into its forehead. This thing killed her, he thought, as the thing writhed groggily in pain, and soft fur became smooth exoskeleton under his paw. He brought the lantern down again, shattering the glass reservoir and wicking lamp-oil into the bedsheets. This will stop if I kill it, he thought, watching the sheets catch alight and the changeling's head loll back into unconsciousness. Angel walked with surprising calmness, unrushed, to the door of the room, hearing the flames begin to crackle and sputter behind him. Accelerated by the lamp oil, the whole bed had come ablaze rapidly. Already he could smell the acrid stench of burning keratin. Angel paused with a paw ready to close the door. He didn't really want to, but some compulsion turned his body for one last look at the funeral pyre of the thing which was not his mother, which had caused him such pain, and driven him nearly to madness. Before he had realised the truth. The flames were nearly to the earthen ceiling, an impossibly rapid inferno. If he looked carefully, Angel thought he could make out a darker shape at the core of the fire. Bones could survive a fire, he knew - would exoskeleton? He had no intention of waiting to find out. Suddenly something caused Angel's heart to leap. He thought there had been a stirring from within the flames - a twitch, a thrashing. It was hard to see. No, there - Angel's thoughts froze as his attention narrowed with painful intensity on the dark mass slowly, impossibly, raising itself from the straw mattress. It lurched from the bed with unnatural and resolute movements, unsteady but determined. As it shambled the floor, it thrust its head forward suddenly towards him, escaping for a moment the wreath of flames, and howled his name. His sense broken, Angel slammed the door against the apparition and fled, stumbling the warren, seeking in vain an escape to the surface and away from this nightmare. That face… it was always in front of him now, imprinted on his eyelids, seared into his mind. It had been burnt, yes. Fur had melted onto skin like toffee, skin seared from flesh, flesh charred from bone. Teeth showing through where lips and cheeks were no more, one eye still glaring green and the other whitened with the heat, it was almost unrecognisable. Almost. Fluttershy.
Chapter FiveSometimes, Angel thought, it's hard to tell if you're awake. His nightmares - memories twisted into phantasmagoria of truth and imagining - had been getting more vivid and urgent recently. He'd heard that, for most creatures, sleep was an escape, a restful respite. For him, it was merely another theatre of anguish. He'd sleep, and his dreams would be fantastically unbearable. He'd awake, and remember. The true horror of what had happened - and what he'd done - which was all the worse for being real. The two seemed like equivalent realities, overlapping and bleeding into one another. There was no escape; not under Celestia's sun nor Luna's moon. "Come on, Angel," said Fluttershy, coaxingly, "I thought you liked helping with preening?" Indeed he did…. or used to. Helping the birds of Ponyville with their pin-feathers, after the moult, used to soothe him. Something in the obsessive, repetitive, mindless fastidiousness of the task helped to take his mind off things - carefully searching through the dense plumage for developing feathers, and stripping the waxy coating off so they could unfurl. It scratched some kind of itch, for him as much as for the grateful birds. But the little pleasures had no power to move him now. Angel frowned and crossed his arms, not interested in helping. Not today. But Fluttershy gave him a low-power Stare and he sat, viciously angry, on the stool while the next patient took its place in front of him. Fluttershy had been increasingly impatient with Angel recently, though she tried hard to hide it. They'd never quite made up after he'd bitten her, but had settled into an uneasy and fractious coexistence. Time after time, Angel had longed to apologise, to make things right, but these days he lived in a constant red fog of undirected rage which was superimposed on the background grey deadness he'd grown accustomed to. Fluttershy, too, had changed, her thick walls of patience finally showing signs of erosion. Unusual for her, she'd occasionally stooped to take part in his petty viciousness, his little passive-aggressive actions. Angel caught himself watching her cautiously out of the corner of his eye, as he often did these days. He thought she was acting strange, suspicious. Not like herself. And he couldn't get the image of her burning, green-eyed face out of his mind. A squawk of pain jolted Angel back to the present. He felt the instinctive and irresistible startlement which only a true cry of alarm can cause, cutting through all preoccupation and abstraction and forcing attention to the here-and-now even before he realised what was happening. Under his paws, the small parrot looked at him reproachfully, trying to get away. Angel lifted a paw and saw a tiny patch of bright red. Blood. He'd burst a blood-feather by mistake. Blood-feathers were not ready to have their coating removed; they still, as the name implied, had a blood supply. Angel watched as a tiny dark spot began to grow within the bright green plumage. The parrot probably didn't know exactly what had happened, only that there had been a sharp but fleeting pain. In absolute terms, there wasn't a lot of blood, not yet - but birds didn't have a lot of blood to begin with, and were very sensitive to shock. In other words, the parrot would be dead in mere minutes. Angel couldn't bring himself to care. He sat there, watching as the parrot fussed and tried to reach around to preen the injured spot, still unaware that it was bleeding. It couldn’t reach. The tiny dark speck was slowly expanding, soaking the colourful feathers to a patch of almost black. Angel just watched, saying nothing, doing nothing. Fluttershy saw. It was chance that she looked up from her own patient, chance that she saw the dark wetness on the parrot - or maybe suspicion. Perhaps she'd been checking on Angel's work this whole time. She let out a cry of dismay and rushed over, firmly restraining the parrot while she plucked out the burst blood-feather with her teeth and held the corner of her hoof over the little raised bump which resulted. The bleeding would stop, now that the whole feather had been removed. She soothed the alarmed little parrot, but Angel could see the fury and hatred in her eyes when she looked at him. He remembered that look well. Uncomprehending revulsion, the turmoil of a loathing all the stronger for having driven out a genuine love. It had been his father's constant expression after Angel killed the changeling which had replaced his mother. Angel looked at his paws, and saw the blood. Yes, it was just like before. His vision began to blur and sway. He felt detached from everything, like it was a dream. Fluttershy was still staring at him in horror and disgust, her eyes expressing what she could not find words for. Angel perceived everything as from a great distance as Fluttershy rose, body language tense, and came for him. She was saying something, terse, words cutting like knives even though he couldn't be sure of what he heard, through the fog of dissociation. Things his mother used to say. That he was bad. Evil. Worthless. Harmful. Vermin. Unwelcome and undeserving. That she wished she'd never had him. He cowered, risking another look into Fluttershy's eyes. It was just like his nightmare. As she approached with teeth clenched and lips curled in a snarl, they flashed green. Angel fled.
Chapter SixEverypony thought the Ponyville Hills were pleasant and peaceful. Gentle green slopes rolling all the way to the horizon, with only the odd tree here and there. Angel thought they couldn't be more wrong. It was a featureless, barren savannah, infinite, triumphantly suffocating the land under its monotony, like a large and sadistic bully. Everywhere Angel looked, it was green. He walked leadenly, not even crying, muttering to himself; now reassuring, now recriminating. He felt the weird mixture of bleak despair and electric anxiety which characterised the peak of self-loathing. His paws were shaking. Every blade of grass, every breath was hateful to him, a personal injury. He tried to avoid this place, because of the memories. But it didn't matter anymore - his memories were constantly in front of him these days, regardless: eyes open or closed, day or night, everywhere he went. His changeling-aunt's torture. Murdering his changeling-mother. At first, he'd tried to talk about it, but they treated him like he was insane. Then he'd tried to adjust to it, but it was too horrible, too insistent. He couldn't forget, living in the same warren, reminders all around him. Inescapable. Finally, after long months of coldness, distance, and depression, Angel had found his father swinging from a cross-beam. Yet another part of himself had irreparably broken, then, a new depth of pain where he'd assumed there could only be numbness. Seeing his father's bloated face, his bulging eyes, the small pile of droppings on the floor beneath, Angel finally understood: there was no limit to the depth of pain. There was always another layer deeper, another way for the world to hurt you, no matter how much you thought you'd already suffered. Insensibly, he'd stumbled out and away, going on and on and on, far from home, eventually wandering this forsaken green emptiness. Until Fluttershy had found him, taken him in. For a while, Angel had thought he had outrun the things that had happened to him. But eventually they'd found him, of course. Looking back, it should have been obvious. How could anybody have found him out here - a furry little needle in a vast green haystack - unless they were looking, unless they knew? The changelings must have pursued him, just like his memories. Whatever they had wanted, they weren't finished with him. Had Angel ever even known the real Fluttershy? When had the switch happened? Angel had no idea. He didn't care. Whenever the real Fluttershy had gone, the fact remained: she was gone. Whatever imposter was left - the cruel, impatient insectoid in pony's clothing - he could not allow himself to feel anything for it. It wanted his blood. He was almost inclined to allow it. At least everything would stop. Unless it wanted more than one harvest. Angel's legs trembled as he imagined it and he dropped heavily to his knees on the grass, staring unseeing at the impassive meadows. A lifetime - if you could call it life - of being drained, deep underground in some hive. Darkness and pain, immobilised and gagged by dry, brittle chitin and resinous ichor, the walls pressing close. Angel clamped his paws to his head, but the vision only intensified. His eyes plucked out by razor-sharp mandibles. Eye-sockets and ears filled with earth. A sharp jabbing of a stinger into the soft fur of his exposed torso, again and again. Pungeant goo forced down his throat to keep him alive. Angel screamed in frustration and pain, but only the mild blue sky was there to hear. Why would his brain torture him with this vision? He would do anything to make it go away. Anything to revenge himself on the changelings. Anything to prevent it coming to pass. Anything. He straightened, stood up from his kneeling. All the images racing through his head, the pain - it focused, suddenly. They all converged on a single point, overlapping in front of his eyes, forming a single, emergent picture from the chaos, sharp as glass. He knew what he had to do. How to make it stop. They wanted his blood? Fine. Let them lick it off the floor. But Angel would not bleed alone. Fluttershy continued to rifle through Angel's room, looking for some clue as to his whereabouts. She was so worried. "It's so unlike him!" she said to herself, "to run away like this, for so long!" She had to find him, bring him home, make sure he was alright. He'd been getting worse recently, withdrawn, afraid, set off by the tiniest thing. She guessed that when he'd accidentally broken the parrot's blood-feather, it had been too much to him. At the time, Fluttershy had tried to reassure him, to calm him and make sure he didn't blame himself or feel too bad. It happened sometimes, even to her, and there had been no lasting harm. But Angel had just given her that look - a look of absolute terror - and run off. She'd looked in all his usual spots, but no Angel. Nopony had seen him. Maybe one of the birds she'd sent out would spot him and let her know. Poor dear. If only he'd stay with her a little longer, Fluttershy was sure that a loving home would make him feel a lot better. Hoofing through a wooden crate where Angel kept some of the books he enjoyed reading, Fluttershy found something odd. A loose piece of paper, rather old and flimsy, almost falling apart from repeated folding and un-folding. She opened it up carefully and found a short paw-written note, the letters shaky and hasty. It was spattered here and there with droplet-shaped smudges where liquid had made the ink run a little. She read it with difficulty. It was him, I know it. My little Angel. Nobunny believes me. I didn't, at first, either, when he'd tried to tell me - how could he? How could he have killed her, his own mother? But he did. I've been watching him. I don't know how, but I know. He's paranoid, a fantasist - Angel can't separate reality from the warped nightmares he sometimes tells me about. Ever since the cave-in, he's grown withdrawn, sullen, lashing out at the slightest provocation. Vindictive, bitter, vicious, even. Persecuted and paranoid, living in a weird other-world of things that never happened. I tried to ignore it, to believe it isn't true. I failed. It's too obvious. My son is a killer. If only I'd listened earlier, my sweet Annabelle might still be alive, and Angel might not be so… deranged. But I didn't. When he started to say those strange things, after the cave-in, we all just ignored it, laughed it off awkwardly, told him he was wrong. We didn't know how to react. Of course he became secretive after that, when we wouldn't listen. Instead of talking, we forced silence and isolation on him. On a suffering, confused, traumatised young bunny. My family is gone. My wife… she died, although perhaps with her injuries it was a mercy. My son seems forever broken. And it's my fault. Angel bunny, if you read this, please forgive me. I'm sorry I failed you. Now I can't get through to you, no matter how I try. I think maybe I'm making things worse, a constant reminder that you're a danger to those who love you. Maybe you'll be better off without me around. Maybe somebunny else can give you the kind of love and support you need. If somebunny else finds this: please, look after my son. But be careful. Please, Angel bunny, try to find peace, if you can. In my own way, so will I. Fluttershy finished reading, tears blurring her vision. One dropped onto the page and she realised what those splotch-marks must be. Oh, what am I going to do? she thought. Just then, the door to her little cottage creaked open, slowly. Fluttershy started. She heard the sound of light footfalls coming inside, a shuffling pat-pat-pat, like someone walking in a daze. They paused in the front room. Looking around. Thinking. "A- Angel?" Fluttershy called softly, waveringly, "Angel bunny? Are you home?" A silence. She watch the door to Angel's room, hyper-alert and stare-eyed with apprehension. The shuffling pat-pat-pat started again, coming closer. A white, furry head appeared around the door. The dead look in his eyes made Fluttershy want to scream. Yes, Angel bunny was home.
