Abyss, Something Amiss

Rainbow’s eyes looked hazy, something now commonplace. Her gaze was set on the food in front of her, the standard meal for patients in the communal dining hall.

It was flesh. Rainbow didn’t know why anyone even wanted her to eat it. It really looked like it had just come off the hide of an animal.

She took her utensils and cut off a small piece. She bit into it. Tasted like... she should be eating it. She shook her head.

“Never had steak before?” someone to her right asked. She turned and found a sloppy patient having his meal beside her.

He lifted his entire portion up and took a bite out of it. “You better get used to it. They like to feed us the undercooked stuff.”

Rainbow didn’t say anything, just as she usually opted for. The man next to her still had the food in his mouth as he spoke, and blood inside the flesh trickled down his chin.

He chewed loudly, constantly looking between his meal and Rainbow. To the latter, he said, “What’s your name?”

“Not telling,” Rainbow said. Her tone stayed flat.

“Then I’m not telling mine,” the sloppy man said. “Even though it’s great.”

Rainbow ignored him and cut off another piece of her meal. She coughed a little as she swallowed it. It caught the man’s attention again, and with a disbelieving look like he was caught off his guard, he laughed at her.

She took longer chewing the next piece, shutting out the obnoxious patient. This man wasn’t the only one. Half the rest of the hall was filled with goons stupider than him.

She ignored them all. Doctor Zui had told her she was supposed to eat here from now on, to start talking with other people like her.

To show me what everyone sees me as, she thought.

Fuck them, as well as she cared. She would still have her food in silence.

She looked around again. No one looked back at her. She sighed. It felt right now like the doctor wasn’t trying to help her.

-

Another change had been added to her schedule. She took the middle seat in a clumsy semi-circle of chairs. Other patients, none recognizable, sat around her. Whoever was seated in front of everyone, a nurse-looking person in crisp white, began talking first.

“We have someone new this session. She just became well enough to start attending our group, and she’s making progress fast.”

All the other people looked at Rainbow, but she kept her gaze to herself.

“Would you like to tell everyone your name?”

Rainbow crossed her arms, sighing. She said, “Rainbow Dash.”

The few other patients that were paying attention instantly laughed, like they had been expecting as odd an answer.

The nurse said, “I don’t think it’s healthy for you to use a nickname here. Why don’t you tell us your real name?”

“Call me whatever the fuck you want.”

Rainbow obliged them no further, and sniffed dryly. The nurse looked at her without any further expression, but didn’t press any more.

“Well, you joined us at a very good time,” she said. She glanced toward another member of the group. “We just helped Fennu resolve one of his problems in our last group, and we’re ready for a new topic of discussion.”

The patient nodded eerily at Rainbow and grinned, his teeth a light shade of yellow. He gestured his head toward what must have been Fennu’s seat, empty. Rainbow glanced between them without moving her head or mouth.

The nurse said to Rainbow, “How about you introduce yourself to everyone here, in your own words?”

Rainbow took a moment to think about what she wanted to say. She could think of only one way to sum it up that she liked. “I am fucked.”

The others visibly noticed her. “I don’t know how I got here, and I just want to get out. And I’m having trouble getting out.”

Someone picked his nose, and another shifted in his seat. Rainbow concluded, “And I don’t know what’s real.”

“Yes, the doctor said you’re having trouble with your memory,” the nurse said.

“It doesn’t feel like my memory,” Rainbow said.

The nurse raised her pen to her cheek the same way the doctor always did. She asked, “You mean your identity?”

One of the other patients spoke up, unable to look at anyone in particular while he did. “She looks like a normal identity to me.”

Rainbow unfolded her arms and moved her hands to support the back of her head. “You’re the medicine person. You figure it out.”

The nurse didn’t respond, but kept looking at Rainbow. Rainbow averted her gaze and said, “How important is it that I really go through all this?”

“Well, it’s all that stands between you and getting back out into the real world.”

“Miss lady, I’m really hungry again,” another patient said. Rainbow glanced at him, and his eyes looked dead. His mouth hung open even after he spoke.

“You should be more polite,” the nurse lady told him. “That’s not what we’re talking about right now. And that’s what your medicine’s for, you know.”

The nurse focused on Rainbow again, who was looking as far away as she could. The nurse said, “There’s no point in you being here if you don’t offer your feelings to the group.”

Rainbow seemed to ignore her, but looked closer at everyone else sitting around her. They looked back at her, and now all of them looked somehow hungry. Rainbow’s fists bundled a little. It was their eyes that gave the feeling, and their stiffly shut mouths, like they anticipated something.

Out of the corner of her eye, Rainbow saw the nurse’s expression dimming. The woman’s voice rose slightly as she said, “Then, what is it that you don’t know is real?”

Rainbow turned her head back to the nurse and leaned further into her chair. “Everything. It just doesn’t feel real to me at all.”

“Define ‘it.’”

“I’d rather one of these other jackasses ask me something now if you’re so intent on bringing everyone together,” Rainbow snapped back.

The nurse contained her temper, but the aggression on her face kept building. She said, “They don’t need to ask anything. You’re all here for each other’s support.”

Rainbow cracked a malicious grin. “Then why aren’t they supporting me?”

“You’re making this very hard on yourself if you want to leave this hospital.”

Rainbow’s grin fell. Her body stiffened further. The nurse, calm again, adjusted her glasses and placed her pen back on the chart she held. Much easier, she said, “It seems to me you equate the whole world with this hospital. That’s not true. As these fellows can tell you, the real world is quite different from life you know here.”

One of the other patients in the semi-circle said, “But it’s cleaner in here. I like how much cleaner it is in here.”

The nurse chided him again, but Rainbow didn’t pay attention.

They were all starting to talk more. The nurse had raised her voice, and provoked even stupider chatter from the other patients. Rainbow still ignored them and turned her head to the right, toward the closer wall in the room. Toward a window.

Half of the window was obscured by dirt, as if the hospital was underground. But from what Rainbow could see above the mire, there was first an iron fence. She supposed it encircled the entire hospital. Past it, there were only very small buildings: small, clay domes with doors and no windows, like huts. From behind most of them, out of view, smoke escaped upward in small patches.

She saw the people around them, too. The same kind of people as in her group, and the doctor, and her own body. They damn well resembled ponies. A slimmer, upright version without manes. That didn’t really describe them, though. They were stranger than that.

She wasn’t even sure that the word that entered her mind, what they all really looked like, was a word at all. But it fit them.

Inhuman.

Her gaze drifted upward. The clouds, from how much of them she could see through the smoke, were just about to rain.

The nurse yelled at someone to do something again. Probably to sit down. Rainbow closed her eyes and lowered her hands back to her lap, tilting her head back to help maybe shut out the others completely.

The nurse yelled again.

-

Now just a bandage remained over the doctor’s eye. The bruises Rainbow thought she remembered were gone. His eyes were darting between lines on his sheet as he jotted down something new, and Rainbow leaned back uncomfortably in what should have been a much more comfortable chair.

“A very restful night, then,” Doctor Zui said. He looked back up at her. “No more dreams of ponies?”

Rainbow considered her answer. “No.”

“That’s good. Then how about we talk about your rehabilitation?”

Rainbow scooted herself up. “Fine. What do you want to know?”

The doctor sighed barely, but Rainbow noticed. He put down his sheet next to his chair and leaned forward at her, and she suddenly wished her seat was a little farther back. He said, “I know you don’t like me, and you don’t enjoy these sessions. I’m not trying to make you enjoy them. I work with a lot of people who hate me even more than you have.”

It didn’t sound like he was scolding her; it was worse, like he was showing genuine concern.

“What I’m actually trying to do is get you out of here, so you never need this place again. When you don’t even need to see me, it will be because you can finally function on your own.”

Rainbow didn’t react. She tried not to even blink.

“The only way that will happen is if you put a little work into these sessions, too. I don’t want to ask a series of questions. I want you to discuss your days here with me.”

He stopped and silently clasped his hands. He wanted her to talk now, and she frowned. Maybe he was scolding her. It stung as much.

She took the pause after his appeal for herself. In a few seconds, she said, “I’m starting to feel like this place is more of a box than a prison.”

The doctor didn’t reach for his sheet. “How does a box feel different from a prison?”

“Like I’m exposed to everything else inside, instead of being sectioned off. Besides just meeting more people. It feels even smaller than when I just went here from my room now that I’ve seen more of it.”

“You don’t really like any of the new people you’ve met?”

“They don’t like me. They probably already chased off all their own friends. They’re actually bigger bitches than you are.”

Rainbow chuckled, but the grin that came with it faded quickly. The doctor said nothing. Rainbow said, quieter, “You’re actually the nicest person here to me.”

The words came difficultly. The doctor had raised his hands together to rest his chin on them, watching her silently. What might have been a smile was obscured.

Rainbow spoke louder, “Why don’t you analyze that? Say something.”

The doctor said, “I understand how much that upsets you. I want to let you keep talking about it, if you’d like to get more off your chest.”

Rainbow didn’t.

She said, “What will I even do out there?”

The doctor smiled, this one not as comforting as the rest. “I’m glad to see you’re finally thinking about the future.”

-

Rainbow lay awake in her bed staring at the white ceiling, the only part of her room that wasn’t padded. The bedsheets were pulled up to her chest, her arms flat over them. She wondered. Her wondering came quickly, each thought shoving its way in front of the last around her head.

The thought that maneuvered her mind best was the whole point of her day spent. What everyone had said to her. All the same things she had seen. She thought about her... achievements. If they were such.

Sure they were, like the doctor said. The sooner she took to her treatments, the sooner she’d be out on the streets living whatever a normal life was in this world. A very small world for such a big place.

Achievements; is that what Doctor Zui called them? Rainbow didn’t remember. Not remembering was becoming a little less scary for her, though. Maybe not even as big a deal. It really just didn’t matter as much as before.

But isn’t that a big deal? she thought.

Not if she didn’t care.

She didn’t care.

Her eyes started closing more often. Her eyelids weren’t heavy, just... getting harder to keep open. But she didn’t want to sleep tonight. She didn’t know what kind of sleep she’d have. She didn’t know what kind of dreams would flow through her head before emptying out in the morning and she’d have to concentrate on her mental state again.

Concentrating. That’s what they were really having her do. She was thinking a lot more philosophically than she was used to.

Maybe she did just need some sleep. She’d sleep for now. Just a little, before morning came.

-

Her eyes stay shut a long time, but through her eyelids she could feel the bright sun shining again, its light more fresh than warm. It felt like it was coming from overhead, not through a window. Then there was a small breeze, like it could hear her thoughts on the matter.

Dash opened her eyes and the light greeted them. She lay pleasantly in a lawn chair, underneath and to the right of her cloud house.

She rubbed a hoof down her face like she could wake it up further, and stretched long and hard. She looked around: the field under her home bounded farther when seeing it from the ground. There in the middle, it was just her, a couple of lawn chairs, and Rarity in the other one with a magazine.

Dash looked at Rarity silently, still sleepy. Rarity, half of her face shaded by some kind of fashion-ized garden hat, noticed Dash at the same time and smiled at her. “Oh, Rainbow Dash, it’s so good to see you’re up again.”

“Rarity, what am I doing all the way out here?”

“Well, after the others tucked you into bed, I told them that keeping you cooped up there all day would be simply a-tro-cious for your skin.”

Dash glanced down her shoulder, her hair spilling over in a straighter and neater fashion than it had ever been in. Rarity added, “And your mane.”

Dash poked and tugged at her unbecoming hair and looked back at Rarity. “Yeah, I can tell...”

Rarity didn’t say anything further, and flipped a page in her magazine. Dash let her hair go and looked back up at the sky; it looked realer than just bright and warm. Very blue. A stronger breeze came, and Dash could almost feel it cutting through the grass before meeting her.

“So, how long have I been out?”

Rarity said, “Since your little episode at Fluttershy’s, it’s been almost two days.”

Dash’s eyebrows popped up. “Uh, wow. I hope the party still turned out all right.”

“Rainbow, dear, we haven’t held the party yet. At first, Twilight and I thought we should go ahead with it so that the day would still be properly celebrated for you, but Applejack convinced us it wouldn’t mean as much without you in the middle of it.”

Rarity’s face drew up slightly before adding anything further. “They’re all very sorry for the way they acted, you know. I don’t think they’ll really forgive themselves until you’re up and about again.”

Dash stretched her wings and began getting up, despite some stiffness still in her joints. “Well, they can forgive themselves now. Two days is a long nap.”

Rarity raised a hoof in protest and said, “Don’t, just yet.”

Before Dash’s hooves touched the ground, she found Twilight cuddled up in the grass next to her, breathing in quiet, peaceful snores. Dash held herself from getting up.

“She’s been by your side most of the time,” Rarity said. “She got so tired, I insisted I’d come and help to keep an eye on you. You were tossing and turning the whole time you were out.”

Dash pulled back into the chair and leaned against the plush fabric again. “I feel like I missed a lot, though. Did anything exciting happen while I was asleep?”

“Nothing, really. Pinkie Pie mentioned something about putting the party decorations into temporary stasis, and you won’t be-lieve the pastry Applejack is helping her make as a kind of apology--”

Rarity covered her mouth with one hoof, and said, “I shouldn’t have mentioned that. Would you pretend I didn’t?”

Dash chuckled and crossed her hooves behind her head, saying, “Hey, no problem.”

She yawned. Rarity raised her magazine again, smiling. She said, “Now that you’re better, you need some good beauty sleep. The party can just wait until you’re ready for it. After all, the guest of honor needs to look her best.”

Dash didn’t reply. As she closed her eyes, the sunlight began to feel even warmer. She heard Rarity starting to hum softly, though the tune was from another season altogether.

“Rarity, you’re so silly,” Dash muttered.

-

Rainbow’s memory was worse again. She didn’t remember exactly how she had made it here. She had been able to picture her time spent in a linear frame for the past few days, but she sat in a cold, wooden chair now, elbows on her knees as she leaned forward, empty hands dangling ahead, with a mental state to match her posture.

She knew she had been sitting there in the common room for a while. She might have been there for hours. She hadn’t paid attention to any outer indication of time, and there were no clocks in the room anyway.

She had these feelings before, when she just wanted to sit down and ignore the world completely. She wasn’t ignoring it now, though. If there was anywhere she’d want to be in this world, it was those skyscrapers. The closest things to the sky, even though the higher you got, the colder it was. But comfort didn’t matter when they--

Rainbow subconsciously titled her head to the side. Those skyscrapers were the farthest thing from anyone, anywhere.

She felt something bump her knee and looked for a moment, but no one was there. No one was nearby. Her gaze lingered, but she kept thinking.

Maybe this whole place was designed for her to think. Whether she was another fucking crazy or she was actually fucked up enough to build it all in her mind, even when she wanted to make a neat little map in her head, she couldn’t do it. Every room was separate from the others in a nonphysical way, just to keep her focused on something, even if it was inconsequential.

Maybe she really just didn’t care.

But she did care.

As angry as she could get when she remembered an event, or someone in particular, she cared. Even if she wanted them dead or scarred, she wanted them to affect her.

She was right, earlier: she didn’t usually think this philosophically. Not as a pony, she figured. There was never any cause to. Why was she going to all this trouble to put her entire world into terms of right, wrong, existent, and fake in her own time if she had actually been born in this form?

It would make sense if this were her tortured psyche. The agony, pain, and confusion. It would explain damn well everything, even the annoying contradictions everyone kept telling her.

But she didn’t believe that. Not in that way.

A nurse came up to her. Probably a nurse; one of the professional ladies, dressed in crisp white with a tucked hat. Rainbow, glancing up at her wordlessly, supposed she was here at the opportune time to pull her away from deep thought into another session. It was one of the most coherent thoughts she’d had recently.

“It’s time for your regular session. Come with me.”

Rainbow got up, pushing down against her knees. She didn’t remember exactly where she went from there.

-

But here she was again. She knew it’d happen, but that realization was already wandering to the back of her mind as more important thoughts took over.

Doctor Zui sat across from her, the sheet back in his hand. His other hand lay drawn over the arm of the chair, looking almost statesman-like in stature.

Victorious in stature.

Rainbow sat with her arms on the arms of the chair, her legs to the base of it, and her posture straight. She looked across at the doctor plainly.

“Hello, again,” the doctor said. His smile remained from always.

“What are we going to talk about this time?” Rainbow asked.

“Mostly updates, unless you’d like to bring up something new,” the doctor said. “But I admit, I do like to have pleasantries first. How was your night?”

“It was fine,” Rainbow said. “I did dream of ponies.”

The doctor’s smile changed. He said nothing. As the quiet drew in, Rainbow couldn’t even hear the fountain outside the room.

She moved her hands to her knees. “It wasn’t as much of a relief as I thought it’d be. Actually, it was a lot calmer than all my other dreams. It didn’t seem nearly as real, either.”

“It relaxed you, I presume,” the doctor said as he took forward his sheet. His tone was sharper, and his whole manner rushed. “That’s regular in cases like yours. After adapting to this environment again, your normal one, your subconscious mind is making a more desperate attempt to bring itself forth. The dream was more like fantasy than usual, wasn’t it?”

“It kind of was,” Rainbow said. “I didn’t even have to do anything in it, or really talk to anyone.”

“I’m glad to hear that you still recognize it for what it is, Regenbogen. When you’re most loathe to finally let go of something you’ve held onto for as long as this, your subconscious puts up the very last resistance it can. The most comfortable images it knows, no matter how far-fetched they are.”

As Rainbow paid attention to only half his speech, she noticed one of the scars still at the top of his face starting to bleed, no cause seen for it to start. The bandage had already been removed from over it, and just before it had looked fully recovered.

She looked back to him and asked, “What are those names, anyway?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Regen-something. I don’t remember you calling me Regen-something before.”

“It’s your name, like I’ve always called you. Forgetting or blocking it is one of the most normal symptoms of cases like yours.”

Rainbow tightened her expression and decided on an offensive. “Why is it so fucking important I do everything right around here, too? You know, why is it that I can’t do anything at all that’s not normal?”

The doctor looked angry very suddenly. He wasn’t holding his pen in a position to write with it anymore.

He said, “You weren’t functioning properly. This therapy is to help you adapt better to the life you have to deal with.”

“Functioning properly where? What the fuck was I doing?”

“I haven’t told you because bringing it back to your memory would be harmful. After all the help I’ve offered to make you a better person, you should trust me on this.”

“I should get to decide that!”

“You’re getting angry again!” the doctor said. “We can’t have a civil discussion on this if you’re going to keep insisting you’re a damn pony.”

“I’m calm,” Rainbow retorted. She kept herself settled in her seat. Judging by the doctor’s face, she thought he was struggling even more to keep so still.

She really did calm down. Though he hadn’t, he continued, “Obviously, these are still just dreams you’re experiencing. Let’s go on from that. What was the most fantastical part of this latest dream?”

“You know,” Rainbow said, “it doesn’t even matter.”

The doctor clutched his forehead barely, like he was trying to just support it. His jaw twitched. “Of course it matters. Why do you even think that?”

“I really, really thought about it. It doesn’t matter if you’re right or not. I’m not going to like this place because you say I should.”

The doctor’s grip on his head tightened, and he said nothing.

“When I’m here, ponies really don’t seem as real. But if I have to choose one reality to believe in, even if I’m stuck in both, I’m picking the one with people who give a serious rat’s ass about me as a friend, not a fucking patient.”

The doctor slowly lowered his hand. He stared straight into Rainbow’s eyes, and she didn’t look away. He put visible effort into keeping his voice at as few decibels as possible.

“After everything I’ve already told you. Every session I’ve put my own time into, just to help you. You ignore me, ignore all of the professionals here, and put your own fantasy ahead of all the improvements we’ve made together. Fucking ponies. You are psychotic.”

Rainbow waited for him to finish before she spoke again. “It was my birthday two days ago.”

She managed to smile again, not forcing herself to, but glad to wear one again. “I’m going to celebrate it when I go back to bed tonight.”

She couldn’t tell how angry Doctor Zui was anymore. There was something about his face that read both fury and careful study. He moved his pen back over to his sheet, shifting in his seat.

“You are not a pony.”

Rainbow’s smile remained.

“You are not a pegasus.”

The doctor, crossing one leg over another, said his next words more carefully than the last.

“Look at me. Look at what I am.”

Rainbow didn’t. She had already studied it before, and as for it could mean, she didn’t know. It was just another weird part of this world.

An upright version of a pony. There was hair, but no mane; a pronounced chin; ears on the sides of his head, not the top; long, skinny arms with tiny hair on parts of them; and at the top of his head, right through the hair, there were horns.

At the end of his long, furred legs, a pair of cloven hooves.

That was Rainbow’s same image. No, she wasn’t a pony here. But that night, she thought, she would go to bed and escape this dream beautifully. If she didn’t, she’d wait until the next night and have an even better time.

Doctor Zui settled back into his seat for another long session. Rainbow leaned back, crossing her arms more comfortably. The doctor began again the duo’s process. “You are not a pony.”

Rainbow closed her eyes.