Keto Profen moved step by step along the line of one of the rows of pharmacy shelves, scribbling down on a tabled sheet of paper how much of each medication they currently had in supply. He was just about to begin taking stock of their proton pump inhibitors, when he heard the door to the pharmacy open and somepony step inside and begin walking up to the counter.

He quickly set the quill and paper on the shelf where he was about to start, and spun around hurrying out to the waiting counter.
When he emerged out from the shelves, he found it was Lightning Dust just walking up to the other side of the service counter. Keto is instantly raised in spirit, and he feels a decent mixture of relief and subtle joy at her actually returning as they'd discussed.

“Hi, you came back?” He said.

“You said you'd give me a stronger dose of this. And, it's not doing anything.” She responded a few steps from the counter.

The difference wasn’t large by any means, but Lightning did seem just noticeably less sullen than she was when she first came in four days ago. Seeing, or at least hoping it was what he thought he saw, made Keto's hopes for her rise.

He nodded back, “Oh, yeah of course. You haven't had any reactions to it have you? Has anything started happening or feeling differently since you started taking it?”

She slowly shook her head a few times. “No, everything’s still the same.”

Keto's anxiety began to rise a little bit in worry of his concerningly depressed patient somehow ceasing to believe that medicine, or anything else for that matter, could help her.

He began to apologize and trying to keep her hope level.“Yeah-agh, I knew that was too low of a dose. And, the chemical uptake into your brain's a slow process, so it can take a-I'm sorry I forget to let you know that last time. But, it can take a week or two for you to really start experiencing the effects.”

She had nothing to give back but depressed sarcasm. “Pft, great, another week of getting to be like this.”

Keto practically winced at her words, feeling guilty for having forgotten to inform her of that particular aspect of antidepressants last time.

Lightning reached back behind her wing and pulled out the bottle had given her as her prescription, still holding 26 of its original 30 pills. She cocked her head sideways to place the bottle flat on the counter, at least until he stopped her.

“Hm? No, oh no you keep those. We may need them if we decide to raise your dose any further, to 225, then you'd just take one 150 capsule and one 75 at the same time since, well, there Are no 225 capsules.” He said.

Lightning accordingly picked the bottle back up, though without any effort at applying speed, and placed it back behind her wing. When she turned back to him, he suddenly noticed her eyelids were giving in to gravity by just a little bit, beginning to droop past the upper edge of her irises.

Keto Profen took a second to look into them, wondering whether the implied lack of sleep was from her depression, the Venlafaxine or both.

“Um, y-you look tired, somewhat. Have you been getting enough sleep?” He ended up asking.

“I'm fine with what I get.” Lightning responded in the kind of uncaring tone meant to push a question away.

The extent of her despondent attitude really worried Keto, and he began to wonder about how single-minded she had been about her dream that had been smashed. Still, he ddin’t remember her seeming too terribly sleep-deprived when she came in four days ago, which left him leaning more towards this one problem in particular being the well-known SSRI drug-class side effect.

“Wh-uh, did you start having any trouble sleeeping, or more trouble over the past few days than before?” He asked then.

Her response only grew bitter. “Yeah, but it doesn't make any difference. It's not like I have to stay well-rested anymore.”

“Everypony should always get enough rest,” Keto started up, “Your body needs sleep so it can spend your energy to do lots of important stuff it couldn't really do when you're awake: like purging out cell waste, rewiring your neuron connections, and . . . and a bunch of other things I'll stop mentioning before I make you bored.”

Bored was the only word Keto could think of. Lightning's face was starting to show disconnection from their conversation on top of her already-present despondence. Keto Profen began feeling his temperature rise with the embarrassment of his habitual digressing behavior. It was accompanied, of course, by the steady growth in presence of his anxiety.

“Whatever, it doesn't matter anymore, no matter why it did before.” She verbally pushed him away again.

“Well . . . even if it doesn't right n-I mean seem like it doesn't right now cause your spending your time right now em, uh emotionally recovering . . . I'm sorry, I know I sound stupid right now, but, what about whatever you're gonna do next?”

Keto chose carefully to use the word "do" instead of "try", which was about one of the only things he could think to do to try and come off as positive while having to think at the immediate speed of conversation. Though he began to grow hot under his fur from the embarrassment of his brief misadventure with the phrase "emotionally recovering."

His asking what she was going to do next though, ended up being enough to incite enough rage out of her to just break through her glum demeanor. “What’s next?! There isn’t anything else!”

Keto regrets his mistake immediately, but he only, though really cautiously tries to approach his question differently. “There's nothing else you've ever thought of doing . . . at all? Not even anything like a backup plan? Ah-I know, really, how depressing thinking about them can be, even when you're not depressed. But-”

At that, she snapped. “No! Ok? I didn't HAVE a backup plan, cause I didn't PLAN on failing!”

Lightning was almost at tears by the last word. The gathered, salty water even glimmered on the insides of her eyes, she managed to hold a fleeting, though very real glare at him. Her shoulders rise and her throat clearly trembles with each breath she draws in, holding her so near to sobbing. But out of the remanent flickers of her pride that refused to die, she held the complete cry back and kept it from coming to be.

Keto just cringed for the couple seconds while she yelled, and then his face is left afterwards unable to decide what expression of stress to give. Sensations of hot and cold flushed up and ran down him all over, his Sympathetic Nervous Systemic running haywire. He started picking his front right hoof just off the ground an quickly placing it back down, until he relented from it and just opened into a slow, regretful apology.

“Look . . . I'm not going to say I know. I don't know. I don't know what anything's like for you. But listen . . . I just, want, to help. I want to help you.”

Keto sighed and hung his head to look down at the counter top for a second, and then he raised it up again after a deep breath in and out.

“I'm just a Pharmacist; I'm not a therapist or as psychologist or a psychiatrist. We're not supposed to ask about things like how you feel, and we're not even supposed to talk to you this long either, any patient.” He said, and then paused a second before going on. “But . . . you said no pony else was; no pony else cares. So I'm gonna try. Even if the best thing I can do for you is shut up.”

Lightning Dust's breathing returned to normal over the course of Keto’s talking, and her expression slowly mellowed back out from being filled with distress to just appearing devoid of happiness. The tears that had begun to show receded, leaving behind just a dampness in the fur at the inside corners of her eyes. She kept her eyes down on the counter though, not feeling able to look at him. She wondered how long he could really keep going with her. When would he just give up like everypony else?

“Here, ah-I'll g-go take care of getting this raised for you.” Keto spoke up again, sounding as beaten-down as he felt.

Keto walked away whilst glancing back at her, heavily unsure of himself for leaving her right then. He went and found Lightning's file they had just started after her first prescription filling that Sunday. A small supply rewriting slips were on the table nearby, so he grabbed one and began carefully filling it out. It took a little time, even though he felt the rising heat of guilt the longer he took for keeping her waiting by herself back at the counter. He was just trying to be particularly considerate of how wrote out what he was doing and the reason he saw for it. The last thing he wanted was to have anything he did to help her revoked and undone later on part of his not filling out a form properly.

After he had finished and filed the alteration form, Keto walked amongst the medicine shelves and took a bottle of thirty 150mg capsules to give her. He arrived back at the counter, on the other side of which Lighting was now sitting. A bit of guilt pricked at him more, think she must have sat because she'd gotten tired of standing while waiting for him.

“I'm sorry. I'm really sorry that took so long. Ah-I probably should have just filled out the form earlier, before you came, even if I wasn't sure you were coming. I wouldn't have left you just standing there . . . like I did.” He tries to apologize for what he views as yet another screw-up on his part.

Lightning Dust got back up sluggishly, saying nothing, but not giving a glare or an interpersonally unpleasant look either. She stepped right up to the counter again and simply went to take the bottle from him.

Just then, the pharmacy door opened out front, and a little white filly with a faded-blue mane came in carrying a slip of paper in her mouth. Keto looked out at her, and Lightning turned half around to do the same, albeit more slowly. An adult mare, assumably the filly's mother, caught the door before it closed but held back from following her daughter completely up to the counter.

The little filly walked right up towards the counter on her own, but stopped just a step from being right next to Lightning Dust and looked from her to the counter a few times before sitting down to wait her turn, with her little piece of paper still in her mouth.
Keto glanced at Lighting once before he said anything to the filly, just to check her expression at his redirecting his attention. “Uh, high; can I do anything for you?”

Lightning didn't glare at him in response to his turning his attention to the little filly, nor did she look at all impatient either, though he judged to hold apathy responsible for that.

“Errh, errh . . .” The filly started struggling standing up, trying to reach the top of the counter, but finding it's just out of her height range. For a few seconds, Lightning Dust just voidly watched, but then she unfolded a wing and took the prescription slip from the filly between two feathers and put it up on the counter for Keto.

“Thanks!” The little filly responded to Lightning’s action with an appreciative smile and a very cheery voice.

“Sure” Lightning said back in her hollow depressed voice.

The little filly then turned back to Keto Profen.

“I need to get this pres-kwipsin; I have avsma.” She told him.

Keto looked up past the filly at the mare standing just inside the doorway. She nodded when he made eye contact then smiled and nodded at her daughter when the filly glanced back at her mother for a sign of encouragement.

“Advair AND Zileuton? This has to be bad . . .” Keto unintentionally spoke aloud as he read what was on the slip for her.

“It gets hard for me to bweathe sometimes. I don't like it when that happens.” The filly responded to his unintended words.

“Yeah, nopony would.” He then said back after, trying to his best to sound empathetic and supporting.

“That was great, Snow Cloud.” Her mother suddenly said from a few steps away, having begun walking up to the counter to stand by her daughter.

“See mommy? I did it all by myself!” Snow Cloud, the little filly, exclaimed with beaming excitement.

Her mother gave a smile but then spoke in a slightly more soft, but still cautionary tone. “I saw sweetie, now calm down a little or you might start bothering the pony next to you.”

Lightning actually felt the drive to speak up, though not with much volume. “No, it's fine.”

She suddenly contemplated that she at least had enough energy and motivation to say that. For a few seconds until her thoughts were interrupted, she began thinking whatever she was taking that Keto gave her might be just started to begin doing something.
Keto Profen looked back over at Lightning after hearing her voice again. “Lightning Dust? Would you mind if I just got this filly her stuff before we go back to talking? This is just a refill for her, so as long as she doesn't have anything she needs to ask I can just give her her Asthma medications and let her head right out.” He asked hoping not to upset her.

“Sure.” Was her simple, low response, shrugging her shoulders and looking away. Keto nodded and headed back away from the counter to the pharmaceutical shelves.

Just after Keto left, Snow Cloud then turned to Lightning Dust, with a smaller smile still on her face. “Thanks for helping me. And thanks for letting me get my medicine first.”

“Yeah, sure. It's not like I'm in a rush to go do anything anymore.” Lightning brushed off the gratitude for the good remarks it held about her.

“What's a rush?” Snow Cloud asked.

“It's the same as when somepony's in a hurry, sweetie.” Her mother gave her a short answer.

At her mother’s explanation, Snow Cloud’s expression suddenly dims and her smile and cheery voice both go away. “Oh, just like Spitfire from the Wonderbolts . . .” She says.

Lightning Dust cringed at the mention of Spitfire's name, and ended up having her head drawn back to the little filly.

“She walked right by after one their shows and said hey. I wanted to get her to autogwaph my Wonderboats poster . . . but all she did was just gib me this . . .” Snow Cloud said to Lightning, who she’d guessed was wondering what she meant.

The little filly pulls out a mass-hoof-autographed Spitfire photo. Lightning looks at the picture sickly, with narrowed, anger-laden eyes. It was a cheap piece of fanfare, a copy made from a few that Spitfire initially just mass-autographed by slapping each with an inked hoof over the course of nothing more than a few minutes.

“Yeah, she would . . .” Lightning responds to Snow Cloud’s story, voice laden with bitterness.

Keto heard everything just as he was coming back with a small, white paper bag. And the whole thought of it pissed him off too; the Wonderbolts, if there were any example of group of ponies letting their renown go to their heads, it was definitely them above all others.

Keto Profen suddenly had an idea strike him, an idea he hoped could possibly aid in slowly lifting Lightning up and out of her current state, as well as cheer the little filly up.

“Oh, Lightning Dust was Flying With the Wonderbolts just a little while ago. I know it's not the same thing, but, why don't you get her autograph?” He said to Snow Cloud, pointing his hoof at Lightning Dust.

The little filly gasped, “Oooo, could you, please? Can I really have YOUR autograph, Lightning Dust?” She begged.

Lightning Dust had perhaps never been in so much shock than she was at that single moment, not even when the badge on her uniform was stripped off of her, and she gave Snow Cloud the most confused, peculiar look she had ever given any pony.

“Pleeeaaase?” Snow Cloud begged again, beginning to plead with her eyes too.

Lightning's face returned halfway to normal, though her eyes were still shimmering. It was a look of questioning now.

The words took more than a few seconds to form, but Lightning did speak out with a question. “You want my autograph?”
Snow Cloud nodded her her rapidly with hopeful enthusiasm.

“Here.” Keto said to Lightning, quickly grabbing a quill to pass off to her.

Lightning Dust looked over with a huge amount of uncertainty still lingering in her expression. Keto tried to encourage her by brightening his own, since he couldn't really talk with the quill in his mouth. His came off looking awkward, in a way, as most non-reactive expressions of the like did with him, but something about it ended up making her take the quill from him.

Snow Cloud's eyes widened and glimmered at the thrilling expectation Lightning taking the pen implied, and only changed to a self-searching panic for about a second when she realized she didn't have anything to be signed. But her foalish imagination quickly resolved that.

“Oh, I know! Sign me! Sign me!” She said excitedly.

The little filly held open her right wing and reached it forward toward Lightning, who raised a single eyebrow in renewed confusion. But she signed the little filly's wing all the same. It wasn't the first time she had given one; in the past she had inflated her own image up like Rainbow Dash had, along with her ego just the same, and had encouraged meager fanships of her own in her hometown. Though . . . this felt different somehow. Was it because she felt like what she did?

Just in that moment then, when Snow Cloud looked over at Lightning Dust's illegible, black-inked name on her right wing: a portion of apathy lifted off from Lightning Dust, noticeable enough in her eyes for even Keto Profen to see. It happened when the purely ecstatic smile came over that little filly's face, looking at the autograph she had given her.

“Here's her medication and discus inhaler.” Keto said quietly to the little filly’s mother, not wanting to distract Snow Cloud from her boisterous excitement. He slid the little white paper bag across the counter to Snow Cloud’s mother, containing her daughter’s discuss inhaler and medicative pill capsules, and then finally oriented himself back towards Lightning Dust again.

“Thanks so much.” Her mother said gratefully, and just as quietly. She grabbed the bag with her mouth then tucked it under her wing.

“Ok Snow Cloud, we have to go.” She told her daughter, returning to a normal speaking volume.

Snow Cloud showed a face of disappointment, but she didn’t complain. “Ok mommy.”

Keto felt compelled to do what little he could think of to try to re-raise her spirits.“Hey, you have to get new refills almost every week, you'll run into her again.” He let her know.

“Really?” Snow Cloud asked hopefully.

“Yup. I mean, if everything goes good for her with her medication she won't exactly be coming in here THAT often, b-but still . . .” He assured her, and compulsively clarified himself.

Keto felt a flush of cold regret run down him for saying "if" with Lightning Dust standing right there instead of something more positive for her to hear, like "once" or "when."

“You come here to get medicine too?” Snow Cloud questioned Lighning Dust.

Lightning answered grudgingly, looking away. “. . . Yeah.”

“I didn't think you wuh sick.” Snow Cloud’s curiosity continued.

Keto ended up acting on the urge to speak in and intervene before Lightning Dust was made to feel embarrassed or awkward. “Sheee-has to, uh, get something different, not sick medicine.”

“Huh? But I thought she was your fwiend?” Snow Cloud suddenly changed the direction of her incessant questions.

“I don't have any more friends.” Lightning muttered.

Snow Cloud’s face was shot across with shock. “But . . . but . . .” She couldn’t even say anything first.

“Isn't he your friend?” The poor little filly was finally able to ask, and tried, it seemed, to sound encouraging as she did. “Cause he was happy to see you, and talking to you.” She added on her reasoning.

“Uhh, actually I . . . kinda think I've been talking a little too much for her.” Keto Profen admitted his own suspicions.

Lightning looked over at him with a small bit of shock, and a sad awkwardness. She just then began to specifically understand what she had been feeling earlier the whole time: even if his going on and on about everything she should do and care about, and though some of what he said she couldn't understand, she still had at least liked hearing him talk to her because it meant that one pony at least did care about her.

“Come on, sweetie, we really have to go; daddy will worry if his little snowy angel isn't there for lunch.” Snow Cloud’s mother suddenly told her daughter after looking up at the clock up above the counter.

“Ok.” Her daughter agreed again.

Suddenly, far out of the range of Lightning Dust's expectancy, she felt Snow Cloud squeeze her forelegs in a quick hug, smiling.
“Thanks for being such a nice pony.” The smiling little filly said, looking up at her.

She let Lightning go and turned her head to Keto Profen as she walks away to go with her mother.

“And you too mistor pharmacist!” She said to him with a smile also.

Keto couldn't help himself from giving a true smile. He was socially awkward and whatnot, but something about being called "mister pharmacist" in the adorable voice of a little filly or colt just shot him with happiness.

Lightning Dust was still left with a look of complete and utter lack of understanding at the little filly having called her a nice pony.

“Lightning? I h-have your new dose here.” Keto said all he could immediately think to, wanting both to tell her such and to regain her attention.

Lightning turned back to him whilst slowly returning her face to a regular depressed expression. It really did begin to seem to him that her expression was resembling one far more like that of common depression, and no longer the life-downtrodden face that had clung to her since Keto Profen first saw her.

“Lightning Dust?” He asked with his rising curiosity.

“What was she talking about? Nice Pony?” She asked aloud, with complete lack of comprehension coming out in her voice.

“Uh . . . well, you were pretty nice to her. I mean, as she saw it. I thought so too.” Keto tried his best to say, although unsure of exactly how to answer her not having expected what she asked of all things.
Confusion just gripped her face again.

He saw, and decided to try his best to add on and restate things. “Well, you helped her without her even asking. AND you autographed her wing; she'll probably idolize you now just because of that.” Keto ended his continuation with another genuine smile, believing in the likely outcome he'd mentioned.

“But that's . . . I didn't care! It's not like I did any of it because I was nice.” She denied.

“Th-then, why did do it, everything?” Keto asked out of true, utter confusion.

Lightning found she didn’t have any answer, that she herself didn’t even know, or rather didn’t have any other explanation to offer.

“Hmpf! She deserved an autograph . . . from somepony, I know better than anypony else she's never gonna get one from Spitfire. But that's . . . there's no way I'm nice.” She responded after a few seconds of silence.

She turned her head away, her old face of deep-depression coming back.

Keto started trying to ask her why she was saying that in particular, but without being able to finish. “Wa-wait, ah why, exactly? I mean, you've been-”

She breathed deeply while he spoke, as her eyes narrowed and she quivered all over several times . . . until she verbally exploded. “Because I don't care about other ponies! I don't care about anypony at all. Cause I'm RECKLESS!”

Keto Profen recoiled back from her explosive outburst, heartrate rapidly accelerating. He waited for her rage to come with a second wave, but instead found her only standing there gritting her teeth, trying to still show anger even as tears rolled from each eye.

She went on, harshly bitter and crying. “I'm reckless; that's why I got kicked out. I wouldn't be reckless if I thought about anypony else."

An understanding, or at least a percieved one suddenly molded into place for Keto Profen, piecing itself together from everything she'd just said and the small bit Psychology courses Pharmacy School had required him to undergo.

“I've been like that before.” He said, pure, unefforted empathy coming out in his voice, and Lighting looked eye to eye with him, ready to hear whatever else he intended to say.

“Somepony . . . shows you something they think is so awful about you, and you believe them, and end up somehow just from that thinking you must just be a horrible pony altogether.” He said what he had alluded to.

Lightning's insides were overturned. Keto may not have been intending to have anywhere near the impact on her he was having, but he was. Her eyes were sent gaping wide for several seconds. The realization gripped her that Keto had just spoken out her current reality, and one she had been made by what happened to believe about herself.

“Uh . . . agh.” Keto opened his mouth to try and say something, anything, but he couldn’t formulate any words right then and there.

Keto let his eyes fall closed and his head drop to hang. While his head was down, Lightning Dust robotically picked up the new bottle intended for her, this time actually tucking it under a wing. She did turn her head back to him for a few seconds, but without looking directily at him, and without saying anything. Really, she didn't know what to, she was still being washed over by the realization he had brought with his words, intentionally or not.

The two of them both spoke at the same time, with him saying “sorry” and her saying “thanks.”

She turned away and began to leave, just as Keto's head shot back up after processing her saying thanks. It sounded kind of hollow, but not as much as her voice normally had been. Was it just instinctive, or had it been genuine?

Keto suddenly took in the full realization that Lightning is about to leave, and started rapidly rambling off everything he could think of that he should have told or asked her. “Uh, don't forget to take it with food! A-and uh, make sure to check back in uh-sometime; soon! And if those sleep troubles get worse from the side effects, just . . . remember I can . . . give you something. All I want to do is help, however I can.”

He looked out at her as she stops right in front of the Pharmacy door, about to add on to what he had just said, willing to include shutting up again . . . until she spoke, for the last time before she left that day.

“Don’t shut up . . .” She said without completely looking back.

After that, she walked out the door, and a combination of first just surprise and then happiness fought and suppressed the anxiety Keto's own condition had been driving him to feel off and on throughout much of their interaction.

He was really helping her, or at least getting through to her, somehow. Even just by being himself and screwing up left and right in his speech, AND not relenting from his speech even when his topical vocabulary was obviously starting to transcend her knowledge. But now, at least . . . she seemed to like it.

Keto Profen desperately wanted to help her emotionally recover. He wanted to be able to see her when she was her real self, and not lugged down by sorrow.

He wanted to see her happy.

Author's Note

For returning readers: I've made a few changes since the first chapter. I've gotten rid of my former inconsistencies with tense-usage, and have made sure the story's narration is strictly past-tense. I hope this helps out, since people were making note of it last time. Be aware that I'm not flawless at editing, nor is anybody, so there may be a random sentence here or there that I missed when I ran over everything converting tenses.

I hope everypony enjoys reading.