"Sweetie Belle!"
"Apple Bloom?"
"I don't have long and can't really explain. But I need you to take this."
"What is it?"
"A gift. One that you really don't want but I need you to have it. She needs you to have it... all of us do, really."
"Why? What's it for?"
"It's for something you need to do. I can't do it. Harmony, I've lost count of how many times I've tried. And Scootaloo won't do it. Not with all the bad blood between them. It has to be you."
"What's that?"
"I'm sorry, Sweetie Belle. I wish there were some other way. We should have listened to you and didn't. But-"
* * *
A pony has to wonder where the 'dark and stormy night' cliche came from. Nights with real storms were anything but dark, and that was part of their natural beauty and terror. For example, in the hour between the local garrison of Pegasi assembling a super-cell and the moment, the sky was alight in a brilliant red as though it had been lit on fire. Just now, however, the sky was as dark as would be expected whenever it was blindingly illuminated by the flashes of lightning bolts that more often than not struck just a little too close for comfort.
The ponies were on a rocky outcropping in the heaviest downpour Sweetie Belle had ever encountered, something which she knew was a terrible idea. Good thing this was just a dream, she thought as she looked down and saw Apple Bloom's hooves as if they were her own. Several meters in front of her, on the most dangerous part of the rain-slicked outcropping, stood a figure draped in a cloak as black as the night in the intervals between lightning strikes. Sweetie recognized it as her big sister's Moping Cowl, but the odd flashes of light revealed that it was Diamond Tiara, not Rarity, who was wearing it.
At least, it looked like Diamond Tiara, but the adolescent filly had two characteristics which Sweetie couldn't imagine of the bully. Firstly, she was lacking her trademark accessory. Especially odd in this situation where she actually happened to look somewhat majestic. Secondly, she was crying. This is where Sweetie Belle's suspension of disbelief met its limit, because she was very certain that the one thing the rich filly didn't have was a heart. In any case, the whole scenario made for a very touching and surreal scene, like something out of a movie. All it was missing was music and- dialogue! The unicorn filly noticed later than she would have liked that Diamond Tiara and she (as Apple Bloom) were talking and started listening.
"I know Daddy would be sad with me gone, Apple Bloom," Diamond Tiara was saying, her voice barely audible above the storm. "But he would be the only one, wouldn't he? And even that wouldn't last. After all, I'd finally be out of the way of his starting a new family and a new life. I know he doesn't want to think of me as an obstacle, but the mares do and it's long past time to face-"
Diamond's melodramatic little monologue was interrupted by a dark blur rushing past Sweetie's face, followed by a splat and a cry of pain and surprise from a grown mare. Sweetie felt her head turning in the direction indicated by the event and saw what must have been an exceptionally glamorous mare, one that might well have competed with the Princesses in beauty and poise. That is, barring the mud now covering her face. Sweetie's vision whipped back around to Diamond, who was now somewhere between her previously devastated look and a new take on her more typical, hostile sneer. The newness, incidentally, lay in the fact that it was genuine hate rather than childish spite which ignited the rich filly's eyes. It was a terrifying expression on several levels, for several different reasons.
"Oh! I am SO sorry, ma'am!" Diamond shouted against the storm, her voice somewhere between a sycophantic whine and the hiss of a cobra. "For a moment there I mistook you for somepony else! Somepony I've hated for longer than I can remember, because she hurt me very much right around the time I started learning to walk. But of course, you can't possibly be her, because that pony is my mother, and you're here where I can see you."
"Ya might want ta leave that mud on 'case she catches another look at you." Sweetie felt herself saying in Apple Bloom's voice after her view was switched back to the pretty mare at her side. However, nothing could be done for the fact that the torrential rain was quickly washing the mud away from her model's face.
"Diamond Tiara... dearest..." the mare started hesitantly, clearly out of her element in every way. "Whether you believe it or not... I really am your mo-"
"NO!" Diamond Tiara interrupted with a roar, which was punctuated by an extremely close lightning strike that resulted in Sweetie Belle's field of view dropping from an apparent dive for cover. The mare next to her had apparently done the same, leaving only Diamond towering over the scene, the reigning queen of a hellish and surreal landscape of storm, darkness, and slick, cold rocks. Looking up at her former school bully like this, Sweetie Belle found a new understanding of Luna and how she came to be Nightmare Moon. For her part, Diamond continued bellowing into the silence following the deafening thunder. She drowned out even the rain, her voice reducing its relentless beating into background static. "DON'T YOU DARE CALL YOURSELF MY MOTHER! NEARLY EVERY MARE WHO HAS DONE SO HAS TRIED TO KILL ME FOR MY SHARE OF MY DADDY'S LOVE OR HIS MONEY, BUT ALL OF THEM FAILED BECAUSE MY REAL MOTHER BEAT THEM ALL TO IT BY ABANDONING US BOTH WHEN I WAS A BABY!"
Sweetie Belle had just seconds to notice the downpour of tears on her arch nemesis's face and that of her apparent mother before her own vision was blurred out by them. Although, whether they were actually Sweetie's tears or Apple Bloom's, the unicorn filly couldn't tell. Either way, a blink later, the situation was somewhat different, and a whole new level of alarming. Her view of Diamond Tiara was now from a much closer perspective, the two's faces now separated only by a meter or so and both AB's and DT's hooves, crossed in a mutual grip that a quick look showed Sweetie was the only thing holding her enemy on this end of the cliff face. Sweetie noticed that Diamond's grip was incredibly weak, even for a lazy rich pony who was probably not even contributing to her own survival. Then she derailed that train of thought when she realized where it might lead.
"You're doing it to me again..." Diamond Tiara was saying, while Sweetie was wondering at how light the other filly was. Was Apple Bloom always this strong, or... no, that couldn't possibly be it.
"You always do this to me..." She was sure DT was not that kind of pony. At least, she was until she looked into Diamond's eyes again, and at once noticed both the direction of the old bully's gaze and the distinct sensation of sliding toward the waiting abyss. Sweetie saw her enemy's face light up and her blood froze. With a sudden motion, Diamond pulled her face to within inches of her intended rescuer's, a strange, sad variant of her typical sadistic grin plastered on her face. It was instantly added to Sweetie's personal list of Diamond's most terrifying expressions.
"Looks like this is my chance though, to be better than you for a change." As if to punctuate that line, Sweetie Belle felt a harsh shove which sent her tumbling... away from the edge of certain doom. In the last fraction of a second she saw of the supposedly heartless filly, Sweetie saw a different kind of smile on Diamond's face: one of relief. It was another of many moments at which the unicorn filly expected to wake up, but she was not so fortunate. She first had to experience that mortifying handful of seconds of waiting after her most hated enemy's disappearance over the edge...
...And of course, hear the sickening noise that sounded like a cockroach being stepped on, magnified a hundred times over and echoing forever, followed by the faint, haunting echoes of a pained whimper that indicated that the fall hadn't immediately killed Diamond Tiara.
* * *
"No! DIAMOND TIARA!" Sweetie Belle screamed out, accidentally swatting away the toy spider that the real Apple Bloom was dangling over her face with a fishing rod, sending the yellow filly into a fit of laughter.
"Bleh! Wrong answer!" Scootaloo giggled. "But given what you woke up to, I can see where you might make that mistake. Then again-"
"-that begs the question of why I'd expect Diamond Tiara to be in my bedroom." Sweetie Belle finished amid frightened pants, staring at nothing and trying to overcome the cold sweat she'd woken into. Both of her best friends immediately stopped laughing and moved to stand next to each other and stare at her in concern.
"There uh, somethin' you wanna tell us, Sugarcube?" Apple Bloom asked, having adopted her big sister's pet name for random ponies.
"I just had a nightmare." Sweetie Belle replied, slowly warming to the presence of her friends, but still enthralled by the surreality of the vision she'd just escaped.
"Nightmares don't tell you exactly what somepony is going to say to you, Sweetie Belle." Scootaloo said, demanding accusation starting to mix with the confusion and worry in her voice.
"That's the second-worst part. I think it might have been a memory from the future." Sweetie responded looking at each of her friends in turn, helpless to clarify her words but still desperately hoping they understood.
"How is a nightmare being a memory from the future -besides being six kinds of confusing- only the second-worst part?" Apple Bloom asked, both insatiably curious and terrified of learning at once, more so than she often found herself when paging through one of Zecora's potion books.
"The worst part is, I get the feeling I've had this nightmare a thousand times before, even though I only remember the one, and it's such a horrible thing I know I couldn't have forgotten it if I wanted to."
