Octavarium (written by OtterMatt) (obsolete)

by Spabble

Rating: teen
Tags: Romance, Dark
Length: 33409

We live, we love, we lose. The circle always goes on, never ending, joy following pain following joy.

We live, we love, we lose. The circle always goes on, never ending, joy following pain following joy. Or at least that’s the story, anyway. After losing everything, Dusk Chaser must ask himself if it’s really true, and if there is a way to rebuild a life lost.

Edited by Spabble.

- - - - -

Hey, everyone. OtterMatt here. Just for the record, I’m not coming back to FimFic. Not ever. I’m sorry to say it, but my life has moved on, as it were, and writing just isn’t a part of it anymore. That being said, I love these stories of mine very much. There’s a lot of myself that I put into them, and at least a couple people have told me that these stories meant a lot to them as well. So, for those people, and for anyone else who enjoys my work in the future, I’m charging my friend Spabble here with curating my completed stories. Thank you all for the love, the faves, and the support as I grew and learned. Keep doing what you love, and the best of luck to you all.

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2014-08-12 18:56:25 UTC

Chapter 1 – Pull Me Under

“YAAAHH!”

Spike jumped back from the window as a large branch crashed down, torn away by the relentless wind and rain.  The tiny dragon quickly composed himself and made sure all his limbs were accounted for.  He checked around to see if his guardian and friend had noticed his lapse.

“What was that, Spike?” came a slightly worried voice from the other room.  A purple unicorn trotted around the corner and scowled at the large branch sitting on the ground just outside the window.  “At this rate, we’ll be lucky to have some place to live after this storm is done,” she said irritably.

I don’t think the pegasi would let it get that out of control, Twilight,” the dragon responded.  “Rainbow Dash is up there somewhere.  Hopefully her weather team won’t let it get too dangerous.”

The pair looked up at the flat, imposing sky, barely visible through the thunderstorm.  Storms like this were incredibly rare, but weather patterns had gotten a bit out of hoof.  There was a lot of extra energy gathering, and this storm was needed to keep things from building beyond the control of the weather teams.  Even so, this storm was just barely within the ability of the pegasi to manage, even with a full team in the sky.  Every so often, a flying pony was just visible among the clouds, ducking down to direct a wind stream before darting back up above the solid grey cloud layer.

Twilight sighed again.  “They really shouldn’t be out there in this— no pony should be.  At least they can get above it.”

Spike grunted in assent.  “No kidding.  I’d really hate to be out there.  Can you imagine?  I’d probably look like—well, like that guy, actually.”

Twilight perked up.  “Like who?  Or, um, whom?”

Spike pointed out the window towards the main road.  “Like him.”

Following the outstretched claw, Twilight could just barely see a pony.  His coat was some shade of grey, making him almost invisible in the unnaturally dark afternoon and torrential rains, and he looked tired and thoroughly drenched.  “What the hoof is he doing out there?” she yelled.  “Is he trying to get killed by lightning or something?”  She bolted for the door, horn brightening as she summoned her raincoat and hat, ignoring her assistant’s protests.

Dusk looked around with bleary eyes, almost unaware of the gale in which he stood.  He found himself on the edge of a small town, and it took him a few minutes to realize that it must have been the lights he had been walking towards in the night.  How long had he been walking?  Was it daytime now?  He looked up at the ominous grey clouds, stirred by angry winds.

When did the weather get this bad? I thought it was just a rain shower back in… somewhere.  Where was I?

He resisted the urge to shake his head to clear it, as the pounding inside it was getting worse and worse.  He dropped his head back down, and his deep blue mane swept down in front of his face, plastered down by the unrelenting rain.  The panicked shaking had passed as he traveled, but now it was replaced in full by exhaustion and weakness.  His legs wobbled unsteadily, barely able to support his weight as he walked.  His grey coat was completely saturated, the damp fur darker than normal.  Even his wings slumped down, almost dragging on the ground.  There didn’t seem to be an ounce of strength left in him.

Canterlot.  That was it.  Why was I there?  Why am I here?  Where is here?

Dusk braced himself as he was caught by a gust of wind.  He was left panting from the effort of staying upright, and wondered why the wind wasn’t making as much noise as it should.  He looked at his leg, and saw a noticeable swelling around the gash.

Huh.  That’s probably bad, he thought vaguely.  It should probably hurt, too.  He glanced about and saw a bright yellow mound moving doggedly towards him though the storm.  He slowly realized as the shapeless mass got closer that it was a pony wrapped in a vibrantly colored raincoat.  The pony appeared to be calling to him, but he couldn’t make out any words.  He stared woodenly at the sight, amused by how out of place it looked in the middle of the fuzzy grey scene.  The pony stopped right in front of him, mouth moving.  Dusk wondered why she wasn’t making any noise, and then the pony stuck out a lavender hoof and grabbed his wounded foreleg.

Dusk felt a jolt of pain, and the world suddenly came into sharp focus.  His eyes went wide as the adrenaline came back.  He tried to cry out, but nothing came out of his mouth.  He noticed the pony before him was still yelling to him.

“What are you doing out here?” she was asking, barely audible over the suddenly roaring winds.

He was about to say he didn’t really know when the wind gusted and the mare put a hoof up to keep her hood from blowing off, just enough to reveal the dark purple mane and horn beneath it.  Dusk suddenly found himself trying to run, but his legs were unable to support him any longer.  His first attempt at a step step left him on his knees.  He could feel his panic starting to dull as the effects of adrenaline gave way to the relentless press of exhaustion.

She stared at her hoof, eyes going wide as she saw the blood that had been left on her.  She leaned in close to him.  “I’ve got to get you to a hospital!  Hang on, I’ll carry you!” she said, aiming her horn at Dusk’s body.

“No!” Dusk gasped weakly, writhing to try to get away from the unicorn as an indescribable dread came over him.  She looked very surprised at the objection.

“Why not?” she asked.  He didn’t answer.  He was too busy trying to stay out from in front of her horn as she tried to levitate him.

She straightened up and looked around indecisively, biting her lip.  She pointed her horn up, and a red burst of light shot from her horn straight into the clouds, causing Dusk to flinch.  Within seconds, a cyan streak broke though the cloud layer.  The streak quickly resolved itself into a pegasus mare, who swooped in towards the ponies, evidently summoned by the distress flare.  She landed heavily next to the unicorn, spitting her sodden multi-hued mane out of her face.  “Twi?  What’s going on?”

“Rainbow Dash, I need to get this pony to Ponyville Medical, but he won’t let me lift him!  Can you carry him there?”

The pegasus looked at Dusk thoughtfully.  “I’m pretty sure I can, but we’re gonna need some help.  Hang on a sec!”  She launched herself back into the air, rolled through the buffeting winds, and quickly disappeared back above the clouds.  She returned just as quickly with a yellow pegasus with a light blue mane at her side.  The cyan pegasus leaned down next to him.  “Hey stranger.  I’m Rainbow Dash, and I’ll be your ride for the evening,” she said casually as she looked over his condition.  Between the three of them, they managed to get Dusk across her back without the use of magic.  “All right,” she called out to the other two.  “Let’s do this.”

Twilight did her best to shield the trio from the rain using her magic, the other pegasus tried to deflect the winds and weather from their path, and Rainbow Dash struggled under Dusk’s weight as the group fought its way across town.  Dusk took the opportunity to finally let go, slumping across Rainbow’s withers.  Everything started going numb again inside Dusk’s head and he welcomed the relief.  Rainbow could feel him relax, though it soon gave way to shivering from the combination of cold and emotional release.  “Hang in there, big guy,” she whispered to him.  “Almost there.”

The wind almost ripped the doors of the hospital off their hinges as Twilight opened them and the ponies staggered into the hospital lobby.  The other pegasus called out for a medic, and a large earth pony orderly and a doctor rushed to their sides.  Dusk gave a weak protest as they hoisted him off of Rainbow’s back and laid him gently on a gurney.  Lights shined in his eyes, and he felt pokes and prods at various places on his body before they started to push him off towards the hallway.  He finally lost sight of his rescuers as the doors closed behind them.

It didn’t take long for Dusk to give in to the numbness in his mind, and as he closed his eyes, his mind finally fell silent.

Chapter 2 – Disappear

Dusk was getting angry.

It was a bright, sunny day just outside the window of his hospital room.  The birds were constantly singing in just the right way to clash with the awful, repetitive beeping of the monitors at his bedside.  His foreleg hurt, though he didn’t know what was wrong with it because of all the bandages over the area, and the IV in his other foreleg was getting itchy.  He didn’t really know how long he had been in this bed, but he knew he was sick of it.  The doctor, however, had been adamant that he not get up.

The worst part of it all, by far, was the fact that Dusk couldn’t find any good reason why he was angry.  He knew himself fairly well, and he wasn’t the type of pony to get irritated so easily.  He had answered a few of the doctor’s questions about how he was feeling and then almost bitten his head off when he was asked how he had been hurt.  He completely ignored the nurses who came in every so often.  It was as if just seeing other ponies was enough to set him on edge today.

Dusk stared at the ceiling.  I don’t want to be an angry pony, he thought.

Twilight thanked the receptionist pony for the directions and headed down the hall where towards the patient rooms.  She counted off the room numbers as she passed door after door, and just before she reached her destination, a tan unicorn wearing a doctor’s coat noticed her and quickly trotted over.

“Excuse me, I’m Doctor Stable.  Are you here to see Dusk Chaser?” he asked her.

“Um, I don’t know.  Is he the pony who came in a few days ago?  The pegasus?  I never actually got his name.”

The doctor nodded.  “Yes, that’s the one.”  He hesitated.  “I’m guessing you’re not family, then?”

She shook her head.  “No.  I just helped get him here to the hospital, and I wanted to see if he was doing any better.  As far as I can tell no pony in Ponyville has seen him before.  Not even Pinkie Pie knew about him, and she knows everyone.”

The doctor sighed thoughtfully.  “I was afraid of that.  There are… issues with Dusk.”

“What kind of issues?” Twilight asked, worried.

He hesitated.  “Mental ones, I should think.”

“Like… he’s not very smart, or he’s got something like Derpy does with her eyes?”

Doctor Stable coughed into his hoof.  “I should really rephrase that.  His mind is perfectly fine, but he seems to have suffered a trauma of some kind.  It’s very difficult to speak to him.  I’ve been unable to get any answers out of him about where he’s from, how he was wounded—anything, really.  And he becomes almost violent if he thinks I’m going to use magic anywhere near him.  It’s made treating him a real challenge.”

Twilight put a hoof to her chin in consideration.  “I did notice something like that when I found him in the storm.  He seemed afraid of my horn.  He certainly didn’t want me to lift him with magic.”

The doctor nodded and made a few quick notes on a chart.  “Well, that does seem to line up.  I have no idea what happened, but he’s been very irritable.  He’s not allowed the nurses to take very good care of him, and he’s not eaten since he woke up yesterday.  The IV drip he’s been on has kept him stable, but I’m worried about what he’s not telling me.”

Twilight nodded sadly.  “Aside from that, how is he?”

“Oh, he’ll be just fine,” the doctor replied, flipping through the chart.  “He got ten stitches to close the gash in his leg, and we’ve got him on antibiotics for the infection in his wound.  Shouldn’t be any complications there.  He’s come up negative for concussion symptoms, though he does have a bit of a knock on the head.  Aside from those, he was suffering from exposure, dehydration, and exhaustion. Taken all at once, he could have had it pretty bad, but luckily you were able to get him here.  He should be able to recover now.”

The younger unicorn kept nodding, not sure if she felt more happy for his recovery or sad for his current state.  Doctor Stable put a hoof lightly on her shoulder.  “It’s my professional opinion,” he said, giving her a smile, “that what he needs most right now is a friend.”

There were voices outside his room, but Dusk couldn’t make out any words.  He pressed his head harder into the pillow, trying to make his ears sink into the fabric so the droning would go away.

Not that it would help much, he thought.  That infernal beeping will probably be in my head for the rest of my life.

After a few moments, he heard a soft tapping of a hoof on the door frame.  He didn’t bother turning to see who it was.  Those nurses never left him alone for long.  The unfamiliar, timid clearing of a throat did get his attention, though.

He glanced over towards the door to see a unicorn standing there, hoof still raised to the frame.  His eyes widened slightly, but his face remained otherwise impassive.  He wasn’t sure why he felt as if this pony was bad news, but something was dampening that feeling.  This pony had the most nervous smile he had ever seen.

“Um… hi,” she said, taking a hesitant step into the room.  “Guess you’re doing a bit better now, huh?”

He simply stared blankly at her.  Was she starting to sweat?

“Heh.  Well, I guess I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself last time.  Sorta busy at the time…” she said, voice dropping to a mutter at the end.  “My name is Twilight Sparkle.”  Her smile was almost supernaturally steady as her ears started to droop.

Dusk remained quiet, looking her over edgily.  “I… don’t think I know you…” he said.

Twilight took a small breath as if to relax.  “Oh.  Well, I guess you probably wouldn’t remember a whole lot about it.  I found you in that storm a couple of nights ago.  A few friends helped me get you here to the hospital.”

Dusk thought about that.  Something seemed backwards in that description of a unicorn offering him aid.  His mind gave a sudden start.  Where in Equestria did that come from?

He licked his lips nervously.  “Oh.  Well, thanks for that, I guess.  I’ve been told that you saved my life.”  Twilight gave a modest shrug.  “Is there something I can do for you?” Dusk asked her.

“Well, I suppose your name would be a good place to start.” She said, her smile getting more genuine by the minute.

Dusk gave her a strange look.  “It’s printed on the door,” he said flatly.

“True.  Also, the doctor already told me your name, but it would still be considered impolite for me to refer to you by name without a proper introduction.”

He gave an impatient snort.  “Okay then, my name’s Dusk Chaser.”

Twilight got halfway to shaking his hoof and noticed how he pulled back from her touch.  “Pleased to meet you, Dusk,” she said, unperturbed.  “What brings you to Ponyville?”

The shudder that ran through Dusk was barely noticeable.  “I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Okay then,” she replied, thoughtfully.  “Where are you from?”

Dusk looked askance at the librarian.  “Is this going to be a questionnaire?”  He actually felt a little guilty as her face fell.

“Nothing like that.  I just… I like meeting new ponies, and I’d like to get to know you a little bit.”

Dusk sighed softly.  “Well, I was born in Cloudsdale, but my family moved to Canterlot when I was a kid, so I guess I’d have to say Canterlot.”

Twilight perked up slightly.  “Do you still have family there?”

“No,” he replied flatly.

She drooped back down.  “Oh.  Is there anypony we can contact about you?  Maybe someone would like to visit you?”

Dusk’s slate grey ears dropped flat against his head as he gritted his teeth in irritation.  “No.  No, I don’t think there is.”

Twilight tried not to recoil from his sudden hostility.  “I just—I wondered…” she trailed off as he finally met her gaze.  “If you don’t have anywhere to go once you leave here, I’d be glad to offer you a place to stay,” she said softly.

Dusk felt a jolt run through him.  What, seriously?  Why would you offer me that?  Who are you, anyway?

The unicorn backed away from the bed a step.  “I’ll let you get some rest.  You should be healed enough to leave soon.  Just think about my offer.”  She turned to leave the room.  “The doctor told me you’re having some troubles with being here.  I understand that you may not like it, but they really are trying to help.

“I’ll see you again soon, Dusk Chaser,” she said as she left.

Dusk lay back again, staring at the ceiling in confusion.

When he finally walked out of the hospital the next morning, Dusk felt awful.  His mane was an absolute wreck, his limbs were all incredibly stiff from lying in bed for days, and he smelled like a weird combination of hospital disinfectant and bad food.  He had bandages wrapped around his right foreleg, a decent limp, and the fact that the bruise above his eye was visible at all through his dark coat was testament to how bad it was.

Given his condition, he had mixed feelings about seeing Twilight waiting for him on the lawn outside the doors.  He stopped a polite distance away, in deference to the peculiar odor he had picked up during his bedrest.

She smiled at him.  “Hey, good to see you up and about!  How are you feeling?”

“In a word,” he replied, sniffing distastefully at his fur. “Terrible.”

Her laugh caught him a bit off guard.  “Well, we might be able to do something about that.  I suppose you’d like a chance to get cleaned up a bit?”

“Sure, I suppose.”  He fell in step with the unicorn, keeping a good distance between them, eyes swinging this way and that as they walked across town.  “So, Ponyville, right?”

“The one and only!  We’re a pretty small town, but it’s only about an hour from Canterlot, as the pegasus flies.”

Dusk’s wings gave an involuntary flap, but nothing happened.  He didn’t seem to notice.

Twilight eyed him closely.  He appeared to be trying to watch every pony in town at once.  “Where have I heard of this place before?” he asked.

“Well, we’ve sort of had some pretty big events happen here.  The return of Nightmare Moon, the defeat of Discord, Princess Luna learning to play Spider Toss…”

“Wait a second.  Those were here?  This place is where the Elements of Harmony are?” he said, completely distracted from his surveillance.

Twilight shrugged.  “Well, the Bearers live here at least.  I think the Elements are still kept in the castle.”  She trotted ahead, and Dusk noticed that they were getting close to a very large tree with windows and a door set into it.  “Here we are.  Welcome!”

Dusk gave the door as wide a berth as he could as it glimmered in Twilight’s magic grasp.  “This… is a house.  Inside a tree.”

Twilight beamed proudly.  “Not just a house—the Ponyville Library!”

“This is a library.  Inside a tree,” he amended, not missing a beat.  “And you live here?”

“I do.  It’s the best place to live in the whole of Equestria, if I do say so myself.”

Dusk gaped at the tall shelves of books overhead.  “It’s a tree…” he muttered to himself.  “It’s an honest-to-Celestia tree.”

The purple-hued pony stopped in the middle of the main room.  “There’s not much of a tour,” she explained, pointing out rooms in turn.  “The kitchen is through that doorway, the bedroom is upstairs, and there’s a bathroom over there, beneath the stairs.  There’s also a spare room down that hallway.  It’s full of books and junk right now, but we can get it fixed up into a guest room pretty quickly.”

Dusk started.  “Guest room?”

“Well, of course.”  Twilight hesitated, kicking the floor awkwardly with her hoof.  “I mean, you did say you didn’t really have anywhere to stay, right?”

The pegasus nodded slowly.  “Oh yeah, you did offer.  Still, that’s a lot of trouble—“

“Oh, not at all,” she dismissed.  “Spike and I will get on it right away.  In the meantime, if you want, there’s a shower in the bathroom, and we’ll make sure you have a fresh towel.”  She headed off towards the stairs with a pleased smile on her face.

“Wow.  Uh, thanks.” Dusk said, softly.

“Here ya go,” said a small, high voice.  Dusk looked around but couldn’t see anypony else around.  “Uh, down here, chief.”

Dusk glanced down to where the voice came from, and leaped a whole body length backwards.  “Gyah!  Dragon!” he yelled, eyes wide.  “Dragon!  Dr—Dragon?  Dragon…” he trailed off, caught up in the absurdity of having seen a tiny purple and green dragon holding a fluffy towel up to him expectantly.

Twilight’s head poked over the stair railing.  “Oh, there he is.  Dusk, meet Spike.”

Spike held out his empty claw.  “Hey.”

Dusk extended his hoof very slowly.  “…Spike.”

“Yup.  I’m Twi’s assistant.” He shook the offered hoof, chest puffed out a bit with pride.

“Spike.  Dragon.  Lives in a tree.”  The pegasus pulled back his hoof and held it to his forehead.  “I—I—I th… I think I need that shower first,” he moaned, taking the towel with a nod of thanks and fleeing for the bathroom.

He quietly shut the door behind himself, finally alone with his thoughts.  He caught sight of himself in the mirror above the sink and felt a little ill.  Sweet Luna, I look like death.  It wasn’t just his mane and fur condition; there were heavy bags under his eyes, which were bloodshot from lack of sleep, and he looked much, much thinner than he was used to seeing.  Have I really lost that much weight?  But I still feel so… heavy.  He unfurled his wings, and gently gave an experimental flap, but absolutely nothing happened.  He frowned, trying again harder, but he was still rooted to the ground as firmly as any earth pony.  His head dropped and his eyes screwed shut in silent anger, which he quickly tried to shake away.

He started the water running and gingerly unwrapped the bandages from his leg, checking out his sutures.  The wound in his leg had been closed rather neatly, though the bald patch shaved into his fur around it made the injury seem comically large.  He sat on his haunches and carefully touched the stitches in his leg, sighing shakily to release the overwhelming emotions.  Dusk swept aside the shower curtain and stepped into the large, tiled shower.

The instant the water hit his face, the world around him blinked out to be replaced by a blanket of darkness.  He was in an abandoned alleyway and felt the rain drenching him as lightning and thunder crashed inside his mind.  He fell to the ground with a cry, clutching his wounded leg as the pain flared, and looked up to stare into an expressionless, mysterious face, unable to distinguish anything aside from the horn protruding from his head.  The face grinned evilly at him, as if to say how it was going to enjoy doing horrific things to him, and as a hoof was raised, Dusk snarled and lashed out, his hoof going straight through the specter and contacting the side of a building.  The apparition vanished, but he could hear it laughing right behind him.  He tried to turn to face his attacker, but his hoof was stuck fast in the wall.

Dusk!  Dusk!  He could hear a voice calling out to him, a soft voice that sounded familiar and yet so alien.  The fear and pain in the voice were palpable, though, and though he knew he was going to die, he had to do something, anything, to get to that voice.  He wrenched his hoof free and spun with a yell, hooves outstretched.  The specter slapped him across the face and he went to the ground, stunned.  There was nothing Dusk could do as the shadow closed in over him.

Can you hear me, Dusk?  It grinned down at him, horn glowing, rippling with octarine light.  What DO I do…? it mused, speculating on the worst possible way to—

Dusk jerked violently as the world suddenly became light and sound.  His eyes burst open to see a violet face right in front of him, and he shrieked and backpedaled hard, slamming into the opposite wall of the shower.  He groaned and struggled to get back up before a pair of hooves firmly held his shoulders.

“Dusk, snap out of it!”

The sodden pegasus looked again and saw Twilight standing in the shower, trying to keep him from struggling.  He glanced around wildly.  He was, in fact, back in the bathroom.  The shower had been turned off, and now Twilight was staring at him with frantic worry in her eyes.  “Twilight?” he asked, eyes still wide.

“Dusk!  Yes, it’s me.  Are you okay?”

“I—um, I think…”  He took a deep breath.  “What happened?”

Twilight stepped back a pace and took a deep breath of her own.  “I have no idea.  I was outside when I heard a yell and a thud, and you weren’t answering me, so I came in and saw you having some kind of episode or something,” she explained, still mildly freaking out herself.  “You tried to—”  She stopped, staring at the far wall of the shower, where the tile had been shattered in the shape of Dusk’s hoof.

“Celestia’s mane…” she breathed.  “Dusk, what happened?”

Dusk followed her gaze and saw the damage he had done.  He gaped as well.  “I’m not entirely sure…” he said quietly, his voice raw.

Twilight was mildly incredulous.  “You’re not sure?  You tried to attack me, and you’re not sure why?”

“What?!”  Dusk looked more shocked than anything.  “I tried to do what?”

She turned and walked a few steps back to give him some room.  “You tried to take a swing at me.  But I don’t think you knew you were doing it!” she added in a hurry.  Dusk looked stunned.  “You tried to, but you slipped on the tiles and fell.  I tried to wake you up, but you were… somewhere else.  Spike ran and got some smelling salts for me, and that seemed to get you out of it.

Dusk sat heavily on his haunches and stared at his front hooves.  His stitches had pulled, and his wound was bleeding again.  Blood had dripped from his nose to the wet floor of the shower.  Dusk’s mind was nothing but white noise.

“I—I’m so sorry…” he whispered, slowly letting his eyes meet Twilight’s.  There was no anger in her eyes, only worry.

Twilight walked over, fetched his towel using her hooves, and held it out to him.  Dusk began to dry himself off numbly.  He didn’t even react when she began to examine his leg.

“We’ll have to reclose these,” she sighed.  “Dusk, what happened?  What did you see?”

Dusk sobbed quietly.  “I don’t know.  Honestly.  It was just feelings and glimpses.”  He wrapped the towel around himself.  “I remember pain, mostly.  And not just from my leg.”

Twilight sat in front of him and put a friendly hoof on his shoulder.  “I want to help you, Dusk.  Can I help?”  The grey pegasus shrugged sadly.  “Will you let me try?”  He nodded.  “Okay,” she said, gently helping him back to a standing position.  “For now, let’s worry about getting some food in you and see where we go from there, huh?”

Dusk nodded gratefully.  This is weird, he thought.  Why am I seriously considering trusting her?  She’s gonna try to make me talk to her about...  Helooked up and saw Twilight standing in the doorway, smiling, waiting for him to join her.  He took a deep breath.  I can’t be alone forever, and I could do a lot worse.  “Thanks, Twilight,” he said, slowly following her out the door.  No matter what, I don’t want to be alone.

Chapter 3 – Solitary Shell

The pegasus was standing in a dark alley in the pouring rain.  He blinked, confused.  How did he get here?  He felt as if there was somepony with him, but when he looked around he couldn’t see anyone else.He had no idea where he was.

He glanced around, but the alleyway was completely enclosed by buildings, leaving him only the narrow path he was walking on.  He heard a quiet laugh from somewhere nearby.His eyes darted around frantically, and he quickened his pace. He had to get somewhere—to safety. Whoever was with him, they needed to get there, and this place felt increasinglyforeboding.

He stopped suddenly as a dark shape melted out from the face of one of the buildings and resolved itself into the shape of a unicorn, identifiable only as the outline where light didn’t exist.  It whistled a disturbingly cheerful tune as it flipped a knife in its hoof and turned to face him.

He started backpedaling hastily but found that the path he had come down was suddenly closed off in a dead end.  He turned to pound a hoof uselessly on the brick facade and saw another pony lying on the ground, unmoving. Somehow, he knew he had failed to protect this pony.

The unicorn walked slowly closer, whistling increasing in volume, eyes starting to glow sadistically as the rest of the world dimmed.  Pressed against the wall, the pegasus began to whimper in fear, telling himself that there wasn’t anything he could do,that there never was anything he could have done.  But he knew better.  This was his punishment for failure.

As the knife rose he closed his eyes and waited for the end.  The pitch-black hoof fell towards his chest—

Dusk burst upwards, screaming and struggling against the pull of the sheets on his bed.  His face and mane were soaked in a cold, clammy sweat.  He glanced around frantically.  He heard the whistling from his dream coming from outside his open window where a lark had perched in the branches of the great tree.  Dusk growled, grabbed a nearby book, and threw it out the window, scaring the lark into flight.  The pegasus sighed and held his sutured leg in his other hoof, flexing the muscles gently.

It was just a dream.  Just a dream.It wasn’t anything like that.It wasn’t.It couldn’t be.

The door opened slightly and a lilac head poked in.  “Dusk, you awake?”

He let out a shaky breath.  “Yeah.  I’m up.”

If Twilight could tell how shaken Dusk’s nightmare had left him, she kept it well hidden.  “Oh, good.  I’ve got to make a trip to the market; I was wondering if you might want to join me,” she said with a hopeful note in her voice.  He didn’t answer, so Twilight walked in.  “Come on, some fresh air couldn’t hurt.  Besides, we could look for something special to prepare for dinner tonight.”

He couldn’t bear to say no to that face.  “Okay, okay.  Let me get a shower first.”

The two walked out and closed the library door behind them, strolling casually towards the center of Ponyville in a comfortable silence.  Dusk blinked in surprise at how bright the sun seemed, realizing that he really hadn’t been outside since he first moved into the library.

As they rounded Sugarcube Corner the town square came into view.  The marketplace itself was, as always, a hive of social activity.  Ponies walked, trotted, or flew from stall to stall, haggling and purchasing in turn.  Friendly conversations rose and fell, mixing with vendor’s calls in a dull roar that added to the generally festive atmosphere of a market day.

Dusk, however, didn’t get a festive feel from it all as they wandered from stall to stall.  All he could feel was a hundred sets of eyes—watching him, perhaps waiting for him to step wrong or lose his vigilance for just a second.  He felt his wings pull tighter in against his sides, trying to shrink himself.  He started breathing just a little bit harder as they walked into the crowded plaza.

Twilight gave him a nudge, leaning in.  “Hey, relax.  Everything’s fine here.  Try to think of something good for dinner,” she said, indicating the long row of produce carts with a nod of her head.

Dusk nodded, trying to drive the panic down by narrowing his focus before it got to be too much to handle.  Okay, I can do that, he thought to himself, walking slowly down the line of food vendors.  What’s good… carrots look decent.  Hay is nice and fresh.  Peaches, potatoes, cucumbers…

“Hey mister, how ‘bout an apple?”

Dusk almost jumped out of his skin as a voice came from right behind him.  He spun around to face a yellow earth pony filly with a bow in her mane.  He let out a breath he didn’t remember holding.  “Uh… no thanks.  M—maybe another time,” he said, turning away.

To his shock, she was right back in front of him.  “Only 2 bits each!  Freshest in Equestria!”

Dusk felt cornered.  The ponies behind and around him were gradually replaced by the walls from his dream, boxing him in.  “No, really…” he said quietly, ears folding down against his head.

“You’re an awfully hard bargainer, mister.  Okay then, 5 for 8 bits,” she insisted, leaning in closer with a cheerful grin.

He stared at her grin, fear blanching his face.  He couldn’t see the filly anymore.  He wasn’t in a market.  He was standing in a dark street, the sounds of rain and moans of pain pounding in his ears.  His leg felt like it was on fire, and the dark unicorn from his dreams stood before him.  “NO!” Dusk snarled.  The mad grin grew as the specter got closer.  Dusk reared, fight-or-flight instincts controlling him.  “Please, don’t k—“

“What in tarnation’s goin’ on over here?” yelled an orange mare dressed in a well-worn Stetson hat, who was charging up behind the scared filly.  “Hey, whadya think you’re doin’, yelling at a young’un like that?”

Dusk blinked as the world came back with a rush of noise.  He was back in a market with a scared yellow filly in front of him.  He dropped to the ground, cowering under the intimidating scolding, unable to stop his violent shaking.  The aggressive mare was just about to launch into another salvo when he was saved by a familiar voice.

“Applejack, don’t!” Twilight yelled, running in between the pegasus and the farmer.  She turned and leaned down to the shaking Dusk.  “Hey.  Hey, it’s okay.  You’re fine.  Nothing’s going to happen to you, I promise,” she said, her voice gentle.

Dusk finally met her eyes.  “…Twilight?”

“Yeah, Dusk, it’s me.  Are you okay?”  He nodded very slowly.

“Twi?  What’s this all about?  Who’s that?” came an irritated drawl from behind the unicorn.

Twilight straightened up and turned to face her friend.  “I’m sorry, Applejack.  Dusk is a friend of mine.  What happened here?”

“He was yellin’ and threatenin’ mah sister, that’s what!” she fumed, although she seemed to be growing less angry and more confused.  “He shoulda—friend of yours?  Since when?”

Applejack and her sister followed as Twilight led Dusk to the other side of the stalls where there were fewer ponies around.  Dusk knelt down on the grass next to a building and tried to stop his shaking.  Once she was sure he’d be okay, Twilight turned back to her friend, keeping her voice quiet.  “I’m sorry about all that, AJ.  Dusk arrived in town a few days ago.  Something… something awful happened to him recently.  He just arrived in town, and he’s having some problems adjusting.  Something must have set him off.”

Applejack frowned.  She turned to her younger sibling, who was looking slightly shaken.  “Apple Bloom, would you happen t’ know what that might’ve been?”

“Um… I might’ve tried to sell him an apple.  Or two.”  Her head drooped.  “Or ten.”

Applejack pressed a hoof to her forehead.  “Apple Bloom, we’ve been over this.  You can’t keep pressin’ ponyfolk after they said no.”

“I’m sorry, sis,” the filly said.  “I jes’ didn’t think he’d react like that.”

Dusk shook his head and stood back up.  He looked up to see the filly in front of him again, looking embarrassed but earnest.  “I’m sorry, mister.  I shouldn’t’a been so pushy.”

I scared this filly.  I almost trampled a child!  Oh, Harmony, what am I doing!  The pegasus found himself completely unable to meet her gaze.  “N—no…” he said quietly.  “I’m sorry.”

The orange mare came and stood next to her sister.  “Well, I suppose we could’a started off better.”  She chuckled nervously.  “I’m Applejack, and this here’s mah little sister, Apple Bloom.”

“Dusk Chaser,” he said, not extending a hoof.

Twilight started to put a hoof on his shoulder but stopped when he flinched away.  “Do you want to keep going, Dusk?”  He shook his head miserably.  “Okay.  I’ll pick up a few more things and then I’ll meet you back home.”  Dusk nodded and turned to head back towards the library, avoiding the crowds as much as possible.

Twilight stood and watched Dusk slowly walk away.  Even his mane seemed to droop.  She sighed sadly.

“Twi…?”

She turned back to her friend.  “I’m so sorry about all this, AJ.  I didn’t think he’d have that hard of a time in a crowd.”

“What happened to ‘im?” the cowpony asked.

Twilight hesitated.  “It’s hard to say…” she started, glancing at Apple Bloom.

Applejack caught on quickly.  “Apple Bloom, would you go mind the cart?”

The filly snorted irritably.  “Hush and let the big ponies talk, right?  You know I’m almost a teenager, right?”

The farmer turned to her sister.  “It ain’t about age.  We’re havin’ a conversation about another pony and it ain’t polite to do so in a crowd.  ‘Sides, do you really think I’d let you sell on your own if I didn’t trust ya?”  Apple Bloom looked skeptically back at her.  “Previous attempts aside,” Applejack countered.

The younger Apple blushed.  “Yeah… okay,” she said, walking back towards the marketplace.

Twilight laughed quietly.  “Thanks, AJ.  I just don’t want this to get out.  I don’t want anypony to get the wrong idea about Dusk.”

“Hey, you know I’m good for a secret.”

“Yeah…” the unicorn replied, looking distant for a few moments.  “Dusk showed up in town half dead about a week ago during the huge storm.  He was hurt, but Rainbow Dash and I were able to get him to the hospital.  He doesn’t remember anything about how he was hurt, or if he does, he’s not saying.  I think that if he doesn’t remember, he doesn’t want to—and if he does, he wants to forget.  He hasn’t really said anything about it, but I’ve pieced together enough to know that it must have been terrible.”

AJ frowned.  “What, like some big accident or somethin’?  Like the one that happened up at the weather factory all them years back?”

Twilight shook her head.  “I’d think that we would have heard something about that.  All I know is that he’s not handling it well.  He has nightmares, AJ.  Sometimes he wakes up screaming.”

The farmer looked horrified.  “Are ya serious?” she whispered.

She nodded, staring distantly in front of her.  “The first time he took a shower after getting out of the hospital, he had a huge… ‘freak-out,’ I guess would be the word.  He punched a hole in the tile in the shower.  He almost struck at me, but I don’t think he knew what he was doing.”  She turned to her friend.  “I don’t think he knew what he was doing when he scared Apple Bloom, either.  I recognized that look in his eyes, like he was somewhere else in his mind.”

Applejack sat heavily on her haunches, disbelief written large on her face.  “Twi, what are you doin’?  He might not realize it, but that pony’s dangerous!”

“He’s not!” she said adamantly, stamping her hoof down.  “I don’t know how to help him, but I’m trying.  I’ve been trying to get him to remember.  I’ve been through every book in the library trying to find something that relates, but I can’t find anything!”  She sighed, tossing her mane in frustration.  “I’ve gone all the way back to the classical era and it seems that almost nopony has even done any serious research into the mind.  Everypony knows what’s in a pony’s head, but getting research approved is so difficult that almost nothing’s been done to see how it all works or how to fix it,” she said, worry coloring her words as she trailed off.  “I’m starting to wonder if he can be helped.”

“Well, I suppose ya could always find an older source.”

Twilight snorted.  “Like what?  Stone tablets?”

Applejack laughed.  “Gee, if only ya knew somepony who lived for more’n a thousand years…”

Twilight smacked herself in the face with a hoof.  “AJ, you’re a genius!”

Her friend gave her a wink.  “Nah.  Not a genius, jes’ good pony sense.”

Twilight closed the library door quietly behind her and looked around as she floated her saddlebags towards the kitchen.  The door to Dusk’s room was closed.

“Spike?” she quietly called.  The young dragon quickly emerged from the kitchen.  “Is Dusk in his room?”

“Yeah,” he said.  “Walked in the door and went straight in there, never said a word.  He looked pretty out of it.  Did something go wrong?”

“Sort of.  He had a bit of a panic attack in the market.”  She grimaced.  “I don’t think too many ponies noticed, though...”

“Ouch.  Should I get started on dinner?”

Twilight looked at the closed door to Dusk’s room.  “In a minute, Spike.  First, I think I’d like you to take a letter.”

Chapter 5 – A Nightmare to Remember

The door to the library softly clicked shut as Dusk leaned against it and sighed contentedly.  Yet another workday was finally done, and the sun was finally setting on his first full week of work at Sweet Apple Acres.  He noticed Spike sitting at the desk by the door and intently reading a book.  Is—is he drooling?

Spike looked up, absentmindedly wiping his mouth with one hand.  “Hey, Dusk.  How you feelin’ today?”

“Either I’m getting stronger, or my muscles have died and can’t complain anymore.  It’s an improvement either way.”  He craned his head to read the lettering on the book’s spine.  It proclaimed the book to be Gemology: The Rare and the Valuable.  “Research?” he inquired.

“Cookbook.”

“Uh huh.  You are a strange creature, Spike.”

Spike attempted to look hurt but couldn’t stop a chuckle from escaping.  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said.  “Oh, yeah—I almost forgot.  Pinkie Pie came by looking for you again.”

Dusk winced.  “Again?”

“She still wants to know when she’s allowed to throw your ‘Welcome to Ponyville’ party.”

“I don’t suppose if I just ignore her for, oh, a year or so that she’d forget about it?”

Spike stared at him incredulously.  “You have met her, right?”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so.”  Dusk sighed and started to walk into the library, stopping short to avoid tripping over a pile of books.  “Looks like Twilight’s been busy today.”

“Oh yeah.  She’s been reading some book that arrived from the Princess.  I think she wanted to show it to you or something.”

The pegasus nodded and let Spike return to his reading.  He trotted over to the kitchen where he found Twilight seated at the table with a book and a small stack of hay fries.  He chuckled to himself as she levitated a small bunch of the fries to her mouth and started munching without ever taking her eyes off the page.

He dropped heavily into a seat across from her.  “Hey.”

Twilight yelped as hay fries scattered haphazardly across the table.  “Sheesh, Dusk.  Don’t do that.”

“Got something interesting there?”

She nodded and swept her snack back up with a glow of her horn.  “The Princess sent me a book, and I’ve been reading it all day.  It’s a fascinating treatise on pony mentality and psychology.  There’s a few things in here I wanted to talk to you about too.”  Dusk nodded encouragingly.  “This book is more of a philosophical text than an academic one, but Neighlor has some interesting ideas that I think apply to you.

“He speculates on the idea that every pony has a sort of dual mind, a waking and a sleeping mind, if you will.”

Dusk tried to roll the idea around in his head.  “So, when I’m asleep I’m using a different mind?”

“Not really that kind of sleep,” she said, frowning.  “Maybe I should call them conscious and unconscious instead.  That does apply, though, because your waking mind is what you think and feel and do, you can control it.  Your sleeping mind is where your fears and instincts reside.  Think of it more like reason and emotion—your sleeping mind is pure emotion and memory.  When you’re actually asleep, your waking mind isn’t being used because it’s resting.  Your unconscious can then bring things up that you can’t do anything about.  In extreme cases, your unconscious can overpower your waking mind, usually to protect you from something, but sometimes something can happen that…”  She trailed off, searching for words.  “That ‘scars it’, shall we say.”

He was interested and didn’t want to be rude, but Dusk was growing more uneasy as he plotted where this conversation was going.  “So you’re saying that I’ve got mental scarring, and that’s why I can’t sleep?”

Twilight nodded.  “Basically.  In fact, Neighlor predicted many of the symptoms you’ve had or still have: difficulty sleeping, nightmares, frightening visions or flashbacks, difficulty being around other ponies—even that you might repress memories, willfully and unconsciously.”

Dusk blinked in amazement.  “When was that book written?”

“Almost 600 years ago.  Something he didn’t predict, though, is how well you would respond to work and physical effort.”  The unicorn looked rather proud of herself for a moment before continuing.  “He did speculate that you wouldn’t be able to overcome it until you’ve come to terms with it, though, and in his opinion, that means embracing the whole experience, including what you may have repressed.”

Dusk shuddered, beginning to feel edgy.  “If I can’t remember it now, how am I supposed to do that?  It’s not like it’s easier now than it was a few weeks ago.  I mean, if I don’t want to remember it, how am I supposed to just will it into my head again?”

Twilight closed the book and put her hooves together.  “I have an idea,” she said.  “It involves a hypnosis spell—well, really a modification of a standard memory spell.  I thought of it myself,” she said proudly.

“I have no idea what that is, but it doesn’t sound pleasant.”

“Actually, it won’t really affect you at all.  Neighlor suggests that we need to bring your sleeping mind to the front without completely shutting off your waking mind.  That way, we can see the repressed memories without looking through the emotional lens of fear and pain that you’ve been seeing it through.”  Twilight looked intently at Dusk.  “What I would do is put you into a kind of sleep, where you could still respond to my words.  We could help you relive the experience and see what truly happened, and then you can start to deal with it.”

Dusk couldn’t respond.  He couldn’t even meet Twilight’s eyes as he shivered in spite of the kitchen’s warmth.  He was feeling pushed in a direction he really didn’t want to be going, but it was Twilight.  Surely she meant the best for him, right?  Could he really stand to go through it all again?  Could he take knowing what really happened?  He opened his mouth but found that words were failing him.

He felt a hoof on his shoulder and looked up to see Twilight standing next to him.  “You won’t be alone,” she said.  “I’ll be there the whole time, and I’ll have help, too.”  He stared at her, wondering if she would really betray his privacy to somepony else.  “Well,” she began, “that one time you had a flashback and you ended up hurting yourself—I’d like to have somepony here to help prevent that.”

Not to mention how I’ve almost hurt you and others?  How tactful, he thought sardonically.  Dusk sighed heavily, closing his eyes in thought.  What she’s said makes sense.  I can’t dispute the logic, but I don’t know if I can take the memories directly.  Even the fragments are torture…  He opened his eyes.  But I have to do what I can to beat this.

“Let’s do it,” he said quietly.

Twilight took a deep breath and reviewed her preparations.  Spellbook, one: check.  Parchments for notes, several: check.  Quill for notes (with ink), one: check.  Assistant (Applejack), one: check.She looked over to the couch where Dusk was lying on his back, fidgeting anxiously.  Terrified subject, one: extra check.

Applejack was talking to him, trying to keep him calm.  Twilight wasn’t sure how well it was taking, but he looked very tense.  “Dusk?  I think I’m ready, if you are.”  The pegasus started as she spoke.  His wide eyes bespoke the emotions fighting inside him, but he nodded at her to proceed.

“Okay.  Here’s how this is going to work.  Applejack, stand by in case Dusk needs help staying calm during the memory.  Dusk, I need you to relax as much as possible, and just do what I tell you.  Focus on my voice and you shouldn’t need to do anything else.”  The two friends acknowledged her instructions, and Twilight closed her eyes for a few seconds to focus.  She let the magic flow through her, shaping the spell to her thoughts and forming it for Dusk’s particular mind.  She could feel the turmoil inside Dusk’s head as the spell found its way to him, trying to gently press his troubled thoughts aside.  A small glowing sigil appeared on Dusk’s forehead as he took a deep breath and closed his eyes.  Twilight found her notes and read off her instructions.

“Just focus on my voice, Dusk,” she said softly.  “Let yourself relax.  Let your mind be at rest and hold on to the sound of my voice.  Focus on your body; feel it relax and become loose and free.  Take a deep breath and let it out slowly.  Concentrate on your breathing, and with every breath you will become more and more relaxed.”  Dusk appeared to become stiller as she spoke, his breathing deeper and less rapid.  Applejack watched the scene unfold with awe on her face.  “I’m going to count back from ten,” Twilight intoned, “and with each count, you will become more and more relaxed, falling into a deeper sleep.

“Ten.

“Nine.

“Eight.  You are going to a safe place where you can watch your memories unfold without danger.

“Seven.

“Six.

“Five.

“Four.  If you feel you need to come back, all you need to do is open your eyes.

“Three.

“Two.

“One.”

Both Twilight and Applejack held their breath expectantly as the unicorn relaxed her spell and waited to see if it had worked.  Dusk didn’t move at all.  Only his breathing indicated his sleeping state.  Even his mind had felt calmer as he had gone under.  “Dusk, can you hear me?” she asked hesitantly.

“Yes,” he said, his voice somehow sounding unnaturally distant.  Twilight repressed a shiver.  This was a terrifying sort of power.  She could easily understand why unicorns were rarely trusted to do this sort of thing.

“Dusk,” she began, “I’d like you to go back to a time three weeks ago, when something very unexpected happened to you.  Do you know the time I’m referring to?”

“Yes.”

“Go there, and put yourself in your hooves at that time.  Where are you?”

“Canterlot.”

“Can you describe what’s happening around you?”

“I’m walking down the street.  It is night, and just starting to rain.  I’m leaving an event, and walking back home.”

“Is there anypony with you or around you?”

“Yes.  There is a pony with me.”

“Who is it, Dusk?”

“It is my wife.”

Twilight started as if struck.  She looked over at Applejack, who seemed just as surprised as she was.  He’s married?  How does a pony forget something like that?  “Let the scene play forward.  What’s happening now, Dusk?”

“We’re walking home,” he said slowly, face twitching ever so slightly.  “I know of a shortcut that will get us home faster since it’s starting to rain.  We’re walking down a side street past some shops.  She mentions how dark it is, and I tell her not to worry.  I tell her that I’ll protect her.  She—she laughs.”  Dusk’s face contorted more noticeably as he finished.

“Applejack, keep an eye on him,” she quietly instructed as he continued.  The farm pony moved closer to where his head was lying, watching closely.

“There is another pony now.  I think he came out of an alley.  It’s a unicorn, and he stops us.  He’s telling us to give him whatever bits we have.”

Twilight and Applejack looked horrified.  A pony robbing another pony, Twilight thought sadly, I never thought that would happen there, of all places.

“I’m telling him that we don’t have any bits on us,” he went on, head starting to twitch from side to side as he spoke.  “He says he doesn’t believe us, that he isn’t going back home emptyhooved.  We’re backed up against a wall, and his horn is glowing.  He demands that we give him our jewelry or he’ll hurt us.  I tell him that I’ll give him anything as long as he’ll let my wife go.  He doesn’t look very convinced.  He says no, and I unclip my wedding ring from my wing and try to pass it to him, but he drops it.”

Dusk’s whole body began to spasm.  “Applejack!  Hold him down.  Don’t let him hurt himself!” Twilight called out.

The pegasus grimaced in pain as his story continued.  “We both go to catch it, and he panics.  His spell fires, and I try to knock his horn away from my wife.  The magic cuts across my leg, and it hits my wife in the chest.  I yell as she falls.” he said, his spasms becoming violent as his mind fought with what it was reliving.  Twilight jumped up and ran to help restrain Dusk as he curled up, almost jerking right out of Applejack’s hooves.

“For Celestia’s sake, Twi, wake him up!” she yelled.

Twilight nodded.  “Dusk!  As I count down from three, you will wake up!  Three!”

“He looks scared.”

“Two!”

“I yell and—“

“ONE!”

Dusk jerked harshly one last time and cried out, eyes bursting open as he came fully back to consciousness.  He stared at the ceiling, eyes vacant.  Twilight and Applejack watched him closely, eyes just as wide as his own.  He slowly looked down to meet Twilight gaze.  Tears were rolling down his cheeks.  “Oh Celestia,” he whispered.  “I killed him…”

Twilight sighed wearily as the letter evaporated in a breath of green flame and turned back to her friends.  Dusk had stopped crying, though he was still sitting on the couch in Applejack’s hooves, shaking slightly as he leaned on her for support.  AJ didn’t look all that comfortable with the situation.

The unicorn trotted over to Dusk’s side.  “Are you doing okay?”

“No,” he said, not bothering to lift his head.  “It’s so much—my head feels like it’s going to explode.”

Applejack pulled back slightly from him, looking worried.  “AJ,” Twilight gently admonished, “not literally.”  She placed a hoof to his forehead.  “At least, I don’t think so, right?”

Dusk shook his head.  “No, not literally.  I almost wish it would, though.  I don’t think I’ve ever felt this bad.”

She rubbed the bridge of her nose with a hoof.  “It is a lot to take in, though, even for me.  I hope you don’t mind that I sent a brief recap of this to Princess Celestia.  She asked that I keep her informed about you, and this is a pretty unusual event.”

“More than you know, my student.”

Twilight spun around to find Princess Celestia walking silently in through the door of the library, shining radiantly.  The regent’s expression matched her voice: terse, and without a trace of the warmth and good humor it normally contained.  “Princess—!”  Twilight was halted by a raised hoof from Celestia.

“Twilight, Applejack—I need you both to go and bring the other Elements.  Now.”  She walked over to Dusk, towering over the pegasus as he sat on the bench.  He felt his heart sink into his stomach at seeing the ruler of Equestria so upset at him.  “I’m afraid we all need to have a chat with your friend Dusk.”

Chapter 6 – Breaking All Illusions

It was hard to tell exactly how long it had been since Twilight and Applejack had gone off into the night to gather their friends—every moment dragged on for an eternity in Dusk’s mind.  He sat morosely on the floor of the library in front of the alicorn princess, unable to bear looking into her face.  The few times he had attempted to speak to her, she had urged him to remain silent and to wait for the others to arrive.  Celestia’s voice, face, and countenance held none of the humor and gentleness that she was so famous for.  The mixture of shame, fear, and despair fed into Dusk until he was only able to lift his gaze from his own hooves to hers, and even then the gleaming surface of her ceremonial hoofwear mocked how dirty he felt.

Dusk turned to look out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the others arriving.  What he saw instead was his reflection on the darkened panes.  He stared in shock at his disheveled state.  His thrashing around during the session with Twilight and Applejack had left his mane and tail horribly messy, his coat was rumpled and uneven from Applejack’s awkward attempts to console him, and his eyes were bloodshot and weary.  He could even see the darkened streaks left on his face from tears.

Dusk slowly turned back to the princess, trying to find his voice.  “P—Princess,” he stammered, “could I—“

She held up a hoof.  “Patience, Dusk.  You will have the chance to say what needs to be said soon enough.”

He swallowed hard.  “No, I—I was just wondering if I could use the bathroom.”  He struggled to meet her eyes.  “I’d like to clean up a bit before the others get back—if that’s okay.  I look terrible.”

For the first time since she had arrived, Celestia’s stern countenance cracked.  She looked at Dusk with what seemed to be pity.  “Allow me, my little pony,” she said, her voice much more gentle, her horn beginning to glow with a soft light.  Dusk braced himself and felt a small tingle over his fur as each strand of his coat was smoothed back into place.  He looked back at the window to see that his mane and tail were once again straight, his coat was clean and neat, and his eyes were clearer.  He mouthed a silent thanks to the princess just before the door burst open and the first of the Elements of Harmony bounded in through the door.

“HEY EVERYP—aw, Applejack, this isn’t a party at all,” Pinkie moaned.

The farmer trotted in behind her, followed by Rarity.  “I never said it was.  I toldja that the princess needed you, and ya just assumed.”  All three ponies sketched quick but respectful bows to the princess and went to sit next to her.  Even Pinkie seemed to pick up on the subdued feeling in the room.  It wasn’t long before Twilight arrived with Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy.

The six mares took their seats around Celestia.  The princess stood to address the group.  “I’m sorry for calling you all here on such short notice—and even sorrier for why you are here—but for such a duty the Elements of Harmony are quite necessary.”  She turned back to Dusk, her face returning to the blank impassivity of a ruler.  “Dusk Chaser, this is an inquest into your role in the death of another pony,” she declared, ignoring the gasps from several of the assembled ponies.

“Princess, there must be some mistake,” Rarity interjected.  “Surely if a pony was capable of such a thing, it was never one like Dusk.”

Celestia turned to Rarity, who quickly fell silent.  “Your faith in your friends is admirable, Rarity, but this is not the time.  The fact is that Dusk may very well be responsible for taking a life, and you are here to observe, not support.”  She looked back to him.  “Dusk, do you understand what I am saying, why we are here?”

He took a deep breath.  “I do.”

The alicorn’s jaw tightened.  “And how do you respond to this accusation?”

“It—it’s true,” he choked out, no more able to look at any of his friends than his ruler.  The expressions of shock they doubtlessly wore were bad enough in his mind without having to see it on their faces.

Celestia held up a hoof for silence.  “Dusk, you may tell your story.  Be honest and forthright.”

“Where do I begin?”

“Wherever you feel it necessary.”

Dusk nodded and took a few deep breaths to settle himself before lifting his head and beginning.  “Well, first off, I feel like I should say ‘I’m sorry’ to each of you.  You’ve all been so very open and friendly with me, and I’ve never once let you know anything about who I am.  Despite that, you are all still so willing to believe the best in me, and I appreciate that.

“I was on my way back home with Elegy—my wife—from a gallery opening for one of her friends, and I decided we should take a shortcut because it was starting to rain.  We got soaked fairly quickly, of course, so it hardly mattered, but we were just enjoying acting like foals playing in the rain.

“A unicorn came out of an alleyway and cornered us.  He had a spell prepared to cast and demanded that we give up our bits.  We weren’t carrying any money at the time, but I offered him my wedding band if he would let Elegy go unharmed.  He seemed so scared.  He couldn’t even hold the ring when I gave it to him.  It dropped and we both went to catch it—”  Dusk stopped, choked.  “He panicked and the spell fired.  I tried to knock his horn aside, but the spell hit my wife right in the chest, and she fell.  I felt like I was watching myself from the outside.  I tried to attack the unicorn.  He backed away from me, terrified.  He kept aiming his horn at me, but nothing happened.  I pinned him against the wall, and—and I…”

Dusk screwed his eyes shut, trying desperately to not start crying.  “I bucked his head right against the wall.  He was dead before he hit the ground.”  Dusk could hear the gasps of disbelief from his friends, but he forced himself to ignore it and just finish the story.  “Immediately, I felt terrified and confused, like something inside my head had snapped or broken.  I couldn’t remember how I got where I was, I couldn’t remember who these ponies were, and I couldn’t remember why they were dead—so I panicked.  I knew I would be next, and I had to get away or die.  I jumped off the wall of Canterlot and found out my wings didn’t work.  After I finally found myself on the ground, I just started walking, even though I had no idea where I was going.  I suppose the rest is history.”  He sighed, his story complete, and allowed himself to sag in relief.

He looked up at the assembled ponies.  Dash and Pinkie looked horrified, Rarity looked mildly disgusted, and the rest were teary-eyed.  Celestia’s demeanor, however, remained impassive, but her eyes no longer held the sharp edge from before.  She took a step forward as everypony gave their attention to her.

“Dusk Chaser,” she began, her voice softer than before, “thank you for being honest.  You did kill another pony, and while this normally carries the most severe penalties in Equestrian law, on this occasion, you acted in self-defense.  Perhaps not entirely, but enough that I cannot punish you further, and for that, I am truly sorry.”

Dusk looked at her through watery eyes, bewildered.  “Wha—?”

The princess walked over to his side and sat next to him.  “What you are living with now is, and will be, much harder.  If I could punish you, then your debt would be paid and you could move on, but it is not so simple as that.”  Celestia looked up at each Bearer in turn.  “All of you, there is something very important that you need to know.  You need to know why you had to be here, and you won’t like it, but it is part of the responsibility of the Elements of Harmony.”

Celestia cleared her throat softly.  “I’m sure my student has suspected as much, but Equestria is much more than merely the land we inhabit.  It is formed out of the magic of Harmony.  Equestria is alive, and it has a relationship with every pony in it.  If ponies care for the land and foster Harmony with each other, they build their connection to the land, and they receive their magic from Equestria as they do.  If a pony kills another before their time, that act is a breaking of Harmony that harms Equestria itself.  When a pony takes a life, they sever their connection to Harmony, and their ability to feel Equestria’s magic is broken.  This is why the unicorn could not cast magic after he killed Dusk’s wife and why Dusk couldn’t fly when he fled.”

The ruler of Equestria looked down at the dumbfounded pegasus.  “It has gotten a bit better, hasn’t it?  But you still can’t fly,” she said matter-of-factly.  Dusk nodded, and Celestia turned back to address the Bearers.  “Dusk has been hurt in two ways.  His mind has been fractured by the trauma of losing his wife and facing death, and taking a life has cut off his ability to use magic.  These can be cured, or at least eased, but it won’t be easy.”  She turned back to speak directly to Dusk.  “By working to foster Harmony with those around you, you can atone for taking a life, and in time, your magic will come back to you.  The other is much more costly.  You will never outlive your memories, though I have a sense that you will find a certain amount of peace if you can sacrifice yourself for somepony who means as much to you as your wife did.”

Dusk sniffed back a sob and stared at his princess.  “Sacrifice?”

Celestia nodded slowly.  “The greatest of sacrifices are required to cover the greatest hurts.  Unfortunately, once in a great while, this is where you are required to come in, my friends,” she said, addressing the assembled mares.  “You are the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony.  Your job is to protect the balance of Harmony and restore it when it is broken.  This task takes many shapes.  Sometimes you can remove the corrupting influence, as you did when you purged the Nightmare from Luna.  Sometimes the evil can be sealed away, as you did when you defeated Discord.  But sometimes, in a very rare occurrence, the Elements may be called upon to take amends from somepony.”

There was a very palpable silence in the room.  “Princess,” Twilight spoke up hesitantly after several moments.  “Does that mean…”

“The balance of Harmony must be restored, whatever it takes.”  The sentence hit like a bomb as everypony was struck by the implications.  “It hasn’t happened in over 2500 years, and I pray that it never happens in your lifetimes,” the princess said quietly.

Twilight walked slowly over to stand before Celestia.  “Princess, have you ever—?”

The alicorn looked at her student.  “I have, Twilight.  Even with the protection of Harmony, it hurts.  It hurts a great deal.  My sister and I were chosen to protect the inhabitants of Equestria, and to see one go, for any reason, is a painful experience for me.”  She looked back at the Elements carefully and intently.  “I know you may be tempted to abandon this duty should you ever be called to it, but you should know that Harmony will choose another group to be its guardians if you do.  Luna lost her ability to wield the Elements when the Nightmare convinced her to turn her back on her responsibilities, and when I used the Elements against her to banish her, even though my intentions were good, I lost my connection to them as well.  That was when you six were chosen to be its champions.”

The princess stood.  “I know this is a lot to take in for all of you.  I am sorry, and I had hoped that you would never need to know, much less act, in such a capacity.  I need to return home and rest before I raise the sun again, but I have one request in the meantime.”  She gently placed one hoof on Dusk’s back.  “Take care of Dusk.  Show him what it means to foster Harmony—and how to be a good friend.  If he is to heal, this experience will most likely be the most important for him.”

Dusk screwed his eyes shut and hung his head, tears beginning to roll silently down his cheeks.  The ruler of Equestria gave a gentle word in farewell to each pony in turn, gave Twilight a warm hug, and waved her hoof one last time as she disappeared with a flash like the sun.  Fluttershy and Pinkie rushed over to embrace Dusk as he wept while the rest stood with stunned looks on their faces.

“Um, girls, I know it’s not really a party type of time, but maybe you’d all like to stay for tea or something?” Twilight asked.

Everypony let out a relaxed sigh and quickly consented, and the mood lightened considerably.  Dusk walked over to Twilight.  “Thanks,” he whispered.

“You’re welcome.  I don’t really feel like being alone either right now.”

While Pinkie flatly refused to accept that this would suffice for Dusk’s “Welcome to Ponyville” party, she gladly agreed to quickly whip up some cupcakes as snacks in Twilight’s kitchen.  The friends sat around, chatting and catching up with each other, and it wasn’t long before Pinkie pulled out a few board games.  Dusk stood to the side for a few moments, watching Pinkie and Applejack argue over who owned the property that Rarity had just landed on, and then he quietly went upstairs to the balcony outside Twilight’s room.

Dusk stood in the rapidly cooling night air, trying to process everything he was feeling.  He crossed his front hooves on the railing and laid his head on them, staring into Luna’s sky.  He felt a sickening sort of void inside.  It wasn’t so much the trial he had just endured, and it wasn’t even the fact that he had killed another pony.  Every time he tried to pin down his feelings, he came to the same point: I forgot her.  Even though he knew why he had, even with the excuses and explanations, he still felt deeply guilty.  He closed his eyes, his ears lying back against his head in shame.  “I’m so sorry…” he whispered into the night.

“Hey, you okay out there?”

Dusk opened his eyes to find Rainbow Dash silently gliding through the door to his side.  “Oh, yeah.  Yeah, I’m okay.”

The blue pegasus stood next to him looking out into the night sky just like he did.  “You know, we haven’t really had a chance to catch up since you arrived.  That’s probably my fault.  I never got off work long enough to see how you were doing.”  He didn’t look over at her, still staring at nothing, only half paying attention.  Both ponies were silent for a long time.

“So,” she said, “what was she like?”

He looked over at her.  “Say what?”

Rainbow turned and leaned against the railing casually.  “You know, your wife.  You look like you need to talk, and I’m sorta curious what kind of pony you fell for.  So, what was she like?”

“Elegy was…”  Dusk opened his mouth and closed it again, trying to figure out how to describe her.  He closed his eyes.  “She was an earth pony, and a singer.  She had a voice that could make Celestia herself cry.  That was what drew me to her at first, but she was gentle and easy to talk to.  She was becoming more famous every day, and she still took time to speak to me, even though I was nopony at all.  She practically put her career on hold when I proposed to her.”  He sighed happily, his entire countenance lifting just a bit.  The hole in him seemed to fill in a bit as he reminisced about her to somepony else.  “She loved to dance, even though she constantly said she was terrible at it.  She tended to be critical of herself, but none of those things ever mattered.  The flaws only made her more perfect to me.”

He could feel a tear working its way down his cheek, but he kept smiling.  “I think the strangest thing about that night is what I remember strongest.  I can’t even remember the name of her friend, the pony we went to see, but I can remember the pattern of Elegy’s necklace as clear as I can see you.  I don’t remember what color the unicorn’s mane was, but I know he was wearing a brown vest.  I don’t know exactly where in Canterlot we were at the time, but I can remember the feel of each cobblestone under my hooves.”  He sighed sadly, ears drooping again.  “But despite everything, despite all she meant, I still forgot her.  How could I ever forget her—forget the pony who was my other half?  I don’t think I’ll ever get over that.”

He looked over to where Rainbow Dash stood hiding her face from him.  She seemed to be wiping her eyes, but she quickly stopped as he looked at her.  Rainbow gave him a little knock on the shoulder with a hoof.  “Well, I would say ‘don’t worry about it, things will get better,’ but somehow I don’t think that’s quite right,” she said, pausing as the silence returned.  “It sounds like she really meant a lot to you.”

Dusk stood back up, noticing that the ache in his heart wasn’t quite as sharp as it had been half an hour ago.  “She did.  And does.  Thanks, Rainbow, I really did need to talk.”

“Hey, no problem.  We pegasi have to watch out for each other, right?”

He grinned at her.  “I suppose we do.”

“Think you can take more party?  If not, then Pinkie’s bound to come looking for you soon, and that would definitely ruin your quiet time.”

“That it would.  Well, I guess I can stand being around my friends for a while longer,” he said, his grin replaced by a contented smile as the two trotted back into the library.

Chapter 7 – The Best of Times

Dusk swept the small pile of sawdust and dirt out the doorway and leaned the broom back against the wall, taking a moment to admire his work.  With all new doors on the stalls, new patches over the holes in the roof, and new straw on the freshly cleaned floor, the stables had never looked better—at least according to the cows that slept there at night.  Pushing a wheelbarrow and hammering boards wasn’t exactly easy, but he had gotten it done, by Celestia.

“Looks good, sugarcube,” said Applejack.  Dusk turned to grin at his boss.  “I gotta admit,” she said, “I didn’t think ya’d get through it so quickly.”

“Thanks.  And you did challenge me to see if I could get it done in just one week.”

“Well, yeah, but I didn’t think ya could actually do it.”  Applejack shook her head, chuckling.  “That’s great, Dusk—ya done good.  I gotta go get cleaned up a bit before the girls get home, and no offense,” she added, taking a quiet sniff, “but you could really use a washin’ up, too.”  She laughed as she trotted off towards the house.

Dusk lifted a hoof and took a sniff.  He blanched at the concentrated odor that overcame his desensitized nose and quickly decided that Applejack was right.  As the pegasus headed for the water pump, he couldn’t help but trot with a bit of a jaunty step now that his project was done.  Applejack had asked him to work on the stables in his spare time, and having a job where everything was under his control made him feel special.  Besides all that, the fact that he was doing all the small jobs meant that the farmers had gotten through half of the apple harvest in just a week, and he could take some small pride in that.  He got some water running and scrubbed his hooves together, washing off his legs and forelocks.  He dunked his head under the running stream and came back up to see a trio of fillies with their school bags racing up the path towards the farmhouse.

The trio stopped on the front porch and talked for a moment, then bumped hooves.  Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle went into the house while Scootaloo sighed unhappily and dropped her bookbag.  Shaking out the water out of his mane caught her attention, and when he opened his eyes again she was waving at him.  He returned the wave and she trotted over.

“Hey, Scootaloo!” he called out.  “I haven’t seen you looking down before.  What’s up?”

The orange filly sat grumpily on the grass next to him.  “Oh, nothin’.  We can’t go crusading today cause Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle are busy.”

“Doing what?”

“Well, Apple Bloom has her chores to catch up on.  Usually, Sweetie Belle and me go over to her place and hang out there, but Rarity’s been really busy lately on a special order.  Granny Smith is giving Sweetie Belle some cooking lessons instead.”

Dusk raised an eyebrow.  “She needs them?”

Scootaloo shuddered.  “Let’s just say that Rarity actually begged her to.”

The image of the pristine fashionista actually going so far as to beg would stick in his mind for quite a while, he was sure.  “Wow.  So, you don’t feel like going home instead, then?”

The youngster shrugged noncommittally.  “My dad works in Canterlot, so he usually doesn’t get back home until later.  I’d just be as bored there as here.  At least here there’s lots of trees to take a nap under.”  The fact that she didn’t mention her mother did not pass Dusk unnoticed, but he let it slide for the moment.  “So,” she continued, “you still working on those exercises?”

“Eeyup,” he said in an awful Big Mac imitation.  “I can lift a hay bale onto my back now without too much struggling, but it’s still nowhere near AJ or Mac.  I’ve seen that guy stack 3 bales on his back and walk off like nopony’s business.”

“Yeah, he’s huge,” Scootaloo laughed once and kicked her hoof on the ground awkwardly.  “Soo…” she hedged, slowly.  “Flying coming along yet?”

Dusk tried not to laugh at her nonchalance.  “Not as such.  How about you?  Surely somepony’s been able to get you off the ground by now, huh?”

“Well, I haven’t really had anypony to teach me.”

“Seriously?”

She scratched her mane with a hoof idly.  “Yeah.  I was gonna have Rainbow Dash teach me, but we only got a couple of lessons in before she got promoted on the weather team.  After that she couldn’t make time.”

Dusk frowned.  “You parents haven’t taught you anything?”

Her expression clouded over.  “Like I said, my dad’s busy.  He doesn’t generally have energy for much besides making dinner and chatting once he gets home, and the weekends are always spent in the market and doing things around the house.”

“… And your mom?” he asked, knowing the answer wasn’t likely to be pleasant.

“I never really knew her,” the pegasus filly said, her eyes downcast.

Dusk sighed sadly.  “Aw, Scootaloo, I’m sorry.”  He put an awkward hoof around the filly’s shoulders, trying to be comforting.  “I can’t promise anything since I can’t fly myself, but I remember a few tricks and tips from when I was a colt, if you wanna try ‘em.”

Scootaloo’s face went from moping to stunned excitement in a heartbeat.  “What, seriously?  You’d teach me to fly?” she exclaimed.

“Well, no promises.  I only said I’d show you some—”  He got no further because the filly latching herself around his chest cut off his breathing.

“Oh, thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!”

“Okay, okay,” he said, finally prying the younger pegasus off of himself.  He thought to himself for a minute.  “I’m pretty sure Twilight said the weather pegasi were gonna try to push a cold front through here, so there should be some decent winds soon.  Do you know where there’s a good hill around here?”

The filly hopped excitedly in place.  “Of course!  There’s a great hill just on the backside of the corn fields.  I race down it on my scooter all the time!”

Dusk nodded and the two pegasi started off across the fields, chatting as they went.

Twilight smiled at Applejack as she answered the door.

“Hey, Twi, what’s up?”

The unicorn frowned slightly.  “Have you seen Dusk?  It’s starting to get dark, and he didn’t mention going anywhere.”

The farmer raised an eyebrow at her.  “Really, Twi?  Dusk’s a big pony, ain’t he?” she said, only to quickly back down at her friend’s annoyed expression.  “Okay, okay, hang on, lemme check.”  Applejack disappeared from the doorway as she called out into the house.  “Hey, anypony seen Dusk around lately?”

“Forget him, has anypony seen Scootaloo?” Apple Boom challenged in annoyance.

“Beggin’ your pardon, Miss Twilight, but I think I saw Dusk and Scootaloo headed off towards the north fields ‘bout an hour ago.”  Twilight turned to see Big Macintosh just coming in from working the orchards.

“Oh, thanks!”  Twilight turned and headed off to find her housemate.  After a few minutes of walking, she could see two pegasi on a hill silhouetted against the setting sun, both standing still with wings outstretched.  Curious, she trotted closer until she could just hear their voices.

“Can you feel it?  Just stay still and wait for the wind to blow.”  She could just make out Dusk’s voice.  “Let it flow across your wings.”  He glanced over at the younger pegasus, her face fixed in concentration.  “Spread your feathers out a bit more.  Use every inch of wing you have,” he offered, pulling gently at her nearer wing with a hoof.

Scootaloo tried, splaying her feathers out as she stretched.  “Like this?”

“Exactly.  Now, roll the leading edge of your wing over, into the wind.  Feel it pushing you down?” he said, suiting his actions to his words just as she did.  The filly nodded.  “Now roll it back, let the wind fill your wing instead of pushing against it.”

“Wooooaaah,” she exclaimed.

He chuckled.  “See?  It doesn’t take much effort.  Certainly not as much as you’ve been putting into it.  You got more lift just by using more of your wings.”

“I didn’t even do anything and I almost left the ground!”

“That’s the key.  Don’t work against the wind, let it work for you.”  Dusk folded up his wings and hoof-bumped the filly.  “Not bad, kid.  We’ll work on more another time.”

“Thanks!” she called over her shoulder as she jumped on her scooter and sped down the hill towards home.

Dusk stood and watched her go for a few moments, and then turned and saw Twilight, a huge smile on her face.  “Ah.  Hi.  Been there long?”

“Not really, no.  Just long enough to see what’s been going on with you two.”

“Twilight, it’s nothing, I swear.  She just mentioned that she didn’t have a teacher and I offered a few tips, and—”

“Dusk, I’m so proud of you!” Twilight cut him off, practically beaming.

He stopped.  “…You are?”

She waited while he trotted off the hill to her side.  “Very.”

He was giving her a weird look.  “Most parents in Canterlot would be calling the Royal Guard if a strange pony even talked to their foal.”

“But you aren’t a strange pony, Dusk.  Well, not that strange,” she joked as they started walking back to the library.  “Yes, we tend to be a little more open and trusting here in Ponyville, but never mind that.  Dusk, you’re doing something wonderful for her.”

“I am?”

Twilight lowered her voice a bit as they began to walk through the town.  “It’s no secret that Scootaloo hasn’t had it easy.  Most ponies know her father keeps long hours.  Not that it’s his fault, of course,” she amended, “but she’s alone most of the time.  She’s had some ponies who have looked out for her over the years—especially her teacher, Cheerilee—but it’s pretty much been all mares.  There hasn’t really been a stallion in her life at all.”

Dusk inhaled sharply.  “Wait, you’re saying that I’m taking over for her dad?”

“Not taking over, more like filling in where he can’t.”

The pegasus winced slightly.  “Twilight, I’m not sure if I can do that.  I mean, what if her dad finds out and doesn’t like it?  And I don’t know anything about foals!  That’s a lot of pressure.  I’m not sure if I’m ready for it.”

Twilight punched his shoulder lightly.  “Dusk, relax.  Nopony’s asking you to adopt her or anything.  Just do what you were doing today: spend some time with her.  Just let her know that you’re interested in her, that you care.”

His face contorted as he pondered the idea.  “Well, I suppose when you put it that way…”

“And if her father has any problems with it, I’ll be happy to go talk to him and vouch for you.”  The two were silent almost all the way back to the library.

“You know, I think I actually felt a little bit lighter when we were out on that hill…” he mused.

“Okay, you were right.  That was tough.”

Scootaloo flopped down on the grassy bank of Sweet Apple Acres’ lake.  Dusk sat down with her, and they watched as the other two fillies continued to play in the water.  The two had been working together for almost a week, and short, one-flap flights were becoming much easier for both.  As a new challenge, Dusk had come up with the idea to use the lake, and the rope swing on the ancient oak on the bank.  It turned out to be a great way to spend a Saturday at any rate, and the other Crusaders had eagerly joined them for some lake time.

The challenge had been that they had to swing off the rope as fast as they could, and see who could glide farther over the lake before splashing down.  In the end, Scootaloo had come up the winner, but not by much.

Dusk shook the water out of his mane and tail.  “Well, if it was easy, everypony would do it,” he chuckled.  “You know you only beat me because you weigh so much less.”

“Pfff.  Sore loser.”

“Okay, okay,” he said, unable to keep a grin off his face.  “So, what did you learn from it?”

The filly concentrated hard for a few moments.  “Well, it’s really hard to glide over water.”

The elder pegasus nodded.  “Yup.  Water cools and heats very slowly, so most often, the water is quite a bit cooler than the air.  The air above the water cools down, and creates a downdraft.  That’s why near the coast it never gets so hot, because the ocean helps cool the air down.”

“And cold air is hard to fly through?”

“It’s not so much that it’s harder, it just doesn’t help you.  If you try the same thing over Ponyville, or a place like Manehatten, you’ll go much farther.  All the concentrated buildings and such give off a lot of heat—”

“Ooh, ooh, I know this one,” Scootaloo piped up.  “Hot air rises, and creates thermals, right?”

“Bingo.”  Dusk laid on his back.  “So, how did you get more distance?”

“Well, I dunno.  I guess I had to spread my wings more.”

“Did you notice that you were curling your trailing feathers down?  Because you were.”

“Is that good?”

“Yup.  You can generate more lift at the slower speeds we were at, and it lets you roll your wings back more, to catch more air.  You do that most often when you land, unless you prefer to land at a full gallop.”

The two drifted into silence, just enjoying the warmth of the sun as they dried off.

“You know,” she mused, “Rainbow Dash said she was just gonna throw me off a cliff to get the feeling.”

He laughed and sat up.  “Well yeah, she would be able to catch you.  This wasn’t quite how it went my first time, either.  We’re kinda doing it the hard way.”

“But if it was easy, everypony would do it?”

“Yup,” he chuckled.  “That’s what my mom always told me when I would whine about something.”

The filly went very quiet, and it was plainly obvious to Dusk why.  “My mom died when I was fifteen,” he said quietly, reaching out to the place where the filly’s thoughts were.  “It crushed my dad.  He hardly smiled after that, and when he did it was usually sadly.”

“My dad’s kinda like that, too,” Scootaloo said, equally quiet.  “When he gets home, we chat about stuff, but when I get ready for bed he’s always got this look in his eyes, like I make him sad or something.”  She sniffed and pawed at a teary eye with a hoof.  “Sometimes I think that’s why he doesn’t find time to do much with me.  That it’ll just make him sadder than he is already.”

Dusk scooted a little closer to the filly.  “Everypony handles grief differently.  My dad couldn’t take being in the same city after mom died.  He moved away, and we haven’t spoken much since then.  I wanted to be as busy as possible, to try to drown it out, so I enlisted.”  He put a careful hoof around Scootaloo’s shoulders and pulled her in just a bit.  “Don’t be too hard on your dad.  I’m sure he’s just trying to deal with it as best as he can.  Maybe you should bring it up?  Ask him what your mom was like.”

The filly grabbed him in a fierce hug around his middle, taking him completely by surprise.  It took him a few moments before he returned it, but he was amazed at how good it felt.  They separated as the other Crusaders came running up the bank.

“Hey, Scoots, we’re headed to the clubhouse.  You comin’?” Apple Bloom asked.

“Yeah.  Yeah, I’m comin’.”  She clambered to her hooves, and started off towards where he scooter was parked before turning back.  “Thanks.”

Dusk watched the three race off into the back orchards to plan their next escapade, feeling like the sun had settled inside his chest.  He got up and leaped into the air, flapping about head-high back towards the farmhouse and Ponyville, far too ecstatic to walk.

Just as he reached the farmhouse, Applejack came walking out the door, chatting with a light yellow mare he hadn’t met before.  His boss stopped and waved her hat to beckon him over as soon as she saw him.

“Dusk!  Great timing, I want you to meet my cousin, Apple Fritter.”

Dusk landed in front of the two relatives, nodding respectfully to the unfamiliar mare.  “Dusk Chaser.  Pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”

Apple Fritter tipped her smaller hat back a bit, better showing her dark green mane and light green eyes.  She gave him an amused look.  “A pleasure, I’m sure,” she said, her northern accent a distinct contrast to Applejack’s drawl.  She turned to her cousin.  “Do you always hire such polite ponies?”

Applejack chuckled.  “Nah, Dusk’s just trying to show off his big-city manners.  Anyway, Apple Fritter’s gonna be stayin’ with us for a while.  She’s lookin’ to start her own shop sellin’ Apple Family delicacies, so she’s here to learn a few tricks from Granny Smith.”

“Well, there’s hardly a better pony to learn from,” Dusk agreed, hiding behind politeness as his feathers pricked with a growing sense of unease.  “Hope we’ll be able to make your stay enjoyable.”

Apple Fritter smiled at him.  “Thank you, Dusk.  If you don’t mind my askin’, what’s a pegasus doing on a farm?”

“Oh, just earning a few bits here and there,” he said, chuckling quietly as his hooves itched to leave.

“Dusk’s had some trouble with flyin’ lately,” Applejack supplied, “but come to think about it, you were doin’ just fine a moment ago.”

Dusk grinned until his cheeks hurt.  “Oh, I can’t get much higher than that yet, but it’s getting better!”

“Well shoot, you’ll be ready for the weather team before ya know it!”

“Maybe!  Well, I’m gonna go fly circles around Twilight until my wings fall off!  See ya!”

As he jumped into the air and flapped clumsily towards the library, he heard Applejack say “Ya know, he’s not always that crazy”, but it was Apple Fritter’s pleasant giggle that sped his wings as he fled the farm.

Chapter 8 – Strange Déjà Vu

There were better things in life than just sitting on a cloud, and Dusk would be among the first to admit it.  No matter how airy and light the cloud, you always ended up with slightly damp hooves.  If you didn’t take great care in choosing the right cloud for a nap it would burn away in the warmth of the sun and you’d suddenly wake up to find that you were halfway to the ground and getting closer in a hurry.  Clouds could be cold, thin, and unstable, and (if you were really unlucky) just testing the integrity of one with a hoof could be enough to discharge the static energy in it and give you a nasty jolt.

None of that even entered Dusk’s mind.  He let out a happy sigh as he closed his eyes and dug his hooves into the soft surface of a puffy, white altocumulus.  The sun felt wonderful on his back against the cold prick of the winter air, and the currents in the wind stirred the surface of the cloud mass in hypnotic patterns, drifting through the sky in no particular hurry.

He let his thoughts drift right along with them.  It had been several years at least since he had felt like this.  There were never that many places to fly around Canterlot, between the security patrols and no-fly zones the Guard enforced around the palace grounds.  Not to mention, in the crowded city there just wasn’t much room left for recreational flying.  Dusk realized he hadn’t been flying just to enjoy the sensation since he had enlisted, and he had hardly even thought about flying once he met his wife.  Losing his flying ability had drilled into him just how much he had missed out on flight, and working so hard for the last four months had rekindled all the joy he felt as a colt.  Just the other day he had even gotten a position on the Ponyville weather team so he could keep practicing.

Dusk’s personal reverie was broken by the sound of another pony’s exertion.  He smiled at the stream of grunts and mild oaths coming from over the edge of the cloud and waited for the pony responsible to show up.

“Come on, just a little bit more—GOTCHA!”  A pair of bright orange hooves appeared over the lip of the cloud and latched on, wriggling as the pony on the other end struggled to pull herself over the top.  Dusk merely sat and watched, quite amused.  Scootaloo finally made it and rolled onto the cloud, exhausted.  “Thanks—for—all—the—help,” she wheezed sarcastically as Dusk broke out laughing.

“What did you expect me to do, carry you?”

“No, but not leaving me behind would have been a nice touch,” she griped between gasps of air.

“Well, this was supposed to be a challenge, to see if you could make it.  Not every pegasus can get this high up, you know.”

“I wondered why we were climbing for so long…” Scootaloo mused as she looked over the edge and goggled at the drop below her.  “Oh wow, I can hardly even see Cloudsdale!”  She took a deep breath of the thin atmosphere and looked around in awe.  “I never thought I’d be able to fly this high,” she said, her voice low and reverent.

“In just a few months, you’ll be more than ready to help the weather team with Winter Wrap Up.”  He smiled proudly at her.  “You catch on fast.”

“Well, if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be up here at all,” she said gratefully.

“You know something?  I should be thanking you, too.  If you hadn’t given me the chance to help you out, I wouldn’t be here either.”

The two sat still and admired the view until Scootaloo had regained her breath, by which point they were both shivering from the high-altitude winter air.

“So, now what?” she asked.

“Now, the fun part.  We see just how fast we can really go.”

Scootaloo’s eyes became quite wide as a daredevil grin spread across her face.

He put up a hoof to stop her.  “Remember, slowing and turning are MUCH harder at terminal velocity, so give yourself PLENTY of room to slow down,” he cautioned.

“Right.  First one to pass the Cloudeseum wins!” she yelled, diving off the cloud.  Dusk took a deep breath and leaped off right after her, his grin matching hers.

“That was so awesome!” Scootaloo shrieked, her windswept mane sticking out in every direction at once.  “I can’t wait to tell Dash about that!”

The two pegasi landed just outside of Scootaloo’s home.  The filly gave Dusk a hoofbump and trotted up the stairs to the door, which opened just before her hoof reached for it.  Inside was a dark blue pegasus stallion with a slight smile on his face and a serious look in his eyes.

“Hey dad!” Scootaloo called, giving him a quick hug and trotting off into the house.

The father greeted his daughter and turned to Dusk, who was starting to feel a bit anxious.  “Why don’t you come inside for a moment?” he said, bidding Dusk to enter with a sweep of a hoof.

Dusk nodded and walked in.  The house itself was simple and fairly well-maintained, but with the scattered detritus and toys that indicated a younger pony lived there.

“Would you like some tea?” the stallion asked.

“Uh, yes, please,” he replied, still feeling a bit uneasy as he continued to look around.  Through the open door of the bathroom he could see Scootaloo standing up and trying to pull a brush through her unruly mane with both hooves.  He had a quiet chuckle at the sight.

Her father offered him a chair at the dinner table, where two mugs of tea were waiting.  Dusk sat and waited for the older pegasus to initiate the conversation.

“I’ve been meaning to speak to you for quite a while now, Dusk Chaser, but it’s not easy for me to find time away from home.”  Dusk started at the sound of his name, which Scootaloo’s father noticed.  “Yes, I know who you are.  You can call me Cloudburst.”

“Oh.  Pleased to meet you, then,” Dusk replied, still slightly stunned.

“I knew something different was going on around here while I was gone every day.  For months now, my daughter has been happier and more talkative than, well, ever since we moved to Ponyville.  I wasn’t sure what would have caused this, but then she showed me that she was learning to fly.  I was, of course, overjoyed,” Cloudburst said with a grin.  “I always felt so bad that I didn’t have time to teach Scootaloo myself, and she had always talked about getting lessons from her hero, Rainbow Dash.  I assumed that was what had happened.”

Cloudburst’s face darkened slightly with a frown.  “I was not pleased when I found out it was, in fact, a strange stallion who had been spending so much time with my daughter.  Maybe it’s just because I spend so much time working in the big city, but I felt like I had to put a stop to it immediately.  I probably should have—that would have been the thing a responsible parent would do—but I just couldn’t bring myself to say it.  Scootaloo was so happy, I just couldn’t take that away from her.

“So, instead, I took my Regent’s Day off work and asked around to see who you were.”  Cloudburst chuckled.  “I heard quite a few different opinions on the subject.  There were a few ponies who described you as a disturbed, crazed madpony—but equally as many who said you were a perfect gentlecolt.  That by itself made me very nervous, but all the ponies who knew who you were said you were living in the library with Twilight, so I went and talked to her.”

Dusk let out a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding.  If he talked to Twilight, this can’t be all bad, he thought.

“Twilight was very complimentary of you, but she told me something very interesting.  She described your relationship with my daughter as ‘therapeutic’.”  Cloudburst took a long drink from his mug.  “So, I think I’d like to hear it from you, Dusk.  Why are you interested in my daughter?”

Dusk took a deep breath and marshaled his thoughts.  “Well, to be honest, I wasn’t initially.  Scootaloo seemed interested when I told her that I couldn’t fly.  I think she saw it as a bond we shared.  I offered to show her a few things I learned back when I was a colt, and I had assumed that would be the end of it.”  Dusk took a moment to sip his tea.  “The thing is though; I’ve had a past that has left me, well, scarred.  I quickly found out that working with Scootaloo was a healing process for me as well.  I still wasn’t totally comfortable with the idea until Twilight encouraged me to keep at it.  She suggested that Scootaloo could use another stallion in her life.”

Cloudburst nodded emphatically.  “That she can,” he said, looking over towards the door to her bedroom.  “It’s not easy having to be away from her so often.”  He sighed and looked back at Dusk.  “For what it’s worth, what you’ve said matches up with what Twilight told me.  And, honestly, having you being Scootaloo’s friend and mentor has been good for both of us as well.  She forced me to talk about her mother, which was extremely difficult, but it definitely brought us closer together.  Since she learned to fly a few weeks ago, we even got to take a father-daughter trip to Cloudsdale for the first time.”  Cloudburst’s eyes misted slightly.  “I can’t tell you what that meant to me, Dusk.  So, for everything you’ve done, for both of us,” he raised his mug up towards Dusk.  “Thanks.”

Dusk smiled and raised his own mug, tapping it against the offered glass, and the two stallions sat back to talk about life until the tea ran out.

Dusk collapsed on a hay bale with an exhausted groan.  The last few weeks had been absolutely brutal on him.  All the muscles he had been building by working on the farm were being tested in completely new ways now that he had started working on the weather team.  He had known that Rainbow Dash could be a bit of a hard-flank on her workers, but he had no idea that the soft-spoken Raindrops was just as bad.  Since Dash had gotten promoted to a regional position and Raindrops took over Ponyville, she had driven everypony to be the absolute best and she accepted nothing less.

His back ached in places he didn’t even know he had muscles.  Being talented at high-altitude flight meant he was constantly chasing down wisps of cirrus clouds, which were no fun to clear at the best of times, and his wings were downright sore.  His jaw even hurt from gritting his teeth as he strained to go just a little bit faster, a little bit higher.  It didn’t help that since planting season was right around the corner, the entire weather team had been drilling on rain formations and storm weather control in addition to their usual work loadouts.

As if all that wouldn’t be enough to keep him in bed for a while, he hadn’t given up his responsibilities on the farm.  Sure, now that Caramel was back he could let some of his old tasks go to other ponies, but he just couldn’t bring himself to quit altogether.  He told himself that he was there because he felt loyal to Applejack for giving him a chance, or that he took a lot of pride in his work, but there was something else underneath his reasons, and it disconcerted him greatly.  He was finding it hard just to stay away from the farm at all.  Anytime he went more than a day or two without being around Sweet Apple Acres he would start to get anxious.  He didn’t even realize it until Twilight pointed it out to him, though the reason still eluded him.  There could be any number of reasons why, including just because the farm ponies were some of his only friends, and he didn’t want to leave them.

He sighed and let his eyes drift closed, not really trying to fight the pull of his tired mind and body.  Maybe if he just imagined that this hay bale was a comfortable couch instead…

“Hey Dusk!”  He shook himself back awake as he heard his name called.  The voice sounded familiar.  Slightly groggy, he raised his head and looked back to see an earth—

Elegy?

The white mare trotted happily over to him, balancing a fresh pastry on her nose.  “Hey, I just made these, try one!” she said in a voice that was familiar, but slightly off.

Dusk shook rubbed his eyes forcefully, trying to wake up fully, and opened them to see Apple Fritter standing before him.  His jaw dropped, and she took the opportunity to put the bite-sized treat directly into his mouth before turning to go.

“Let me know what you think!” the yellow-coated earth pony called over her shoulder.

Dusk closed his mouth and shook his head to clear away the cobwebs.  What the hay was that?  Am I really that tired?  He chewed thoughtfully.  Hmm, these are pretty tasty, though.

Dusk stood in the middle of a darkened street, heart pounding.  On all sides the ground seemed swallowed up beyond sight in the black, even when vague flashes of lightning tried to illuminate the scene.

He swallowed nervously.  Hadn’t this part of his past been exorcized already?  Why was he back in this place?

“You don’t know why you’re here?” came a sinister voice from behind him.  Dusk spun around to see… nothing.  “You’re here to make a choice.”

Dusk turned to look back down the road and saw a white pony he knew only too well on the side, just out of his reach.  “Elegy?” he called out to her.  “Elegy, this—none of this is right!”  He tried to go to her, but his hooves wouldn’t obey his commands.

“Dusk?  What’s going on?”

He looked again, and on the other side of the road stood—  “Fritter?  What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know!” she exclaimed, looking panicked.

“Do you understand yet, pegasus?” the dark voice taunted.  “Do you see the dilemma?  Only one may be saved.”

Dusk began to hyperventilate, fear suffusing through him.  He looked back at Elegy, only it wasn’t her, it was Fritter now.  Elegy was back where—no wait, they changed again!  The two mares switched places in his mindscape, both pleading for his help.  Their voices seemed to be coming from everywhere, and he put a hoof to his head trying to block it out, but nothing could stop the confusion in his mind.

“CHOOSE!” the disembodied voice bellowed.

Dusk screamed and jumped out towards his wife, only to pass right through her.  He spun around, only to notice that she was faded and insubstantial.

“You forget yourself, pegasus,” he heard the bitter voice say.  “She has already been claimed.”

Dusk spun back to Apple Fritter, who screamed in fright as the entire landscape shattered.  Fritter was consumed in a flash as the ground erupted, sheets of blinding light shining up between hunks of the rent street.  Dusk never even had time to blink as a large piece of the pavement flew up to connect directly with his face.

He cried out in pain as he slammed face first onto the floor off the side of his bed, legs tangled hopelessly in the sheet.  He lay on the ground in the dim pre-dawn light trying to regain his bearings as the door opened a crack and Twilight poked her head in.

“Dusk, are you all right?” she asked, her mane still rumpled from her sleep.  She saw him trying to extract himself from his bedsheet and noticed the look on his face.  “Oh no, was it another nightmare?”

He finally tugged his last limb free and just sat on the ground, trying desperately to hold himself together.

He felt Twilight sit down next to him and put a hoof around his shoulders.  “Was it the same one as before?”

He shook his head.  “Something new.”  He shivered in her grasp.  “I have no idea what it means, but I’m scared to find out.”

For the next few weeks, Dusk was plagued by nightmares, sometimes recurring, sometimes new.  It got to the point where he no longer woke up screaming because he was expecting it when he finally dropped from exhaustion each night.

When he worked on the farm, he found reasons to stay as far away from the farmhouse as possible.  He volunteered to carry seed, water and tools out to the farmers as they planted—anything to avoid a situation where he might see Apple Fritter.  He threw himself into his work, hoping to find the same sort of release in it that he had found before, but he grew less and less satisfied with his work.  He began to make mistakes in his weather work, which of course brought Raindrops’ ire down on him.  He could unequivocally say that she was the only pegasus he truly feared.

He walked through Sweet Apple Acres, too tired to fly and too distracted to care, completely lost in thought.  How did my life start falling apart so fast?He groaned and kicked angrily at dirt clods in the path.  It’s somehow Fritter’s fault!  I need to just leave, and— he stopped, mentally kicking himself instead.  It’s not her fault, it can’t be her fault.  But if it isn’t her fault, then that means there’s still something wrong with me.

What was bringing everything back now, and how did Apple Fritter fit into the puzzle?

“Hey, you!”

Dusk froze on the spot, his mind going blank at the sound of an angry voice being raised in his direction.  Oh, Harmony, Raindrops is back!  What did I do?

He turned, expecting to see his weather team supervisor diving at him to punish him for another mistake, but instead he saw Apple Fritter running towards him with a heavy scowl on her face.  He winced as she stopped right in front of him.

“Where the hay have you been?” she scolded.

Dusk’s jaw worked up and down a few times, unable to come up with any sort of response to the unexpected question.

“I haven’t seen you in almost three weeks!  Are you avoiding me or somethin’?”

“I, no, I, um…  uh,” Dusk stammered.

“You ARE!” she said, voice raised in surprise as she advanced on the pegasus.  “What the hay did I ever do to you?”

Dusk backpedaled a few steps, trying to get room to think.  He tried to shake his head the clear it, but when he looked up again, all he could see was Elegy yelling at him in Apple Fritter’s voice.  He shut his eyes and dropped to the ground, putting his hooves over his head.  “Stop, please stop!” he whimpered.

Fritter stopped short.  “Dusk, I—what’s wrong?  Are you okay?”

Dusk tried to compose himself as quickly as he could.  “I’m fine.  I think.  Look, I guess I have been avoiding you.  It’s not anything you did or didn’t do, okay?  I’m sorry.  It was silly.”

“Well, stars above, Dusk, why?”

“Please, please just let it go at ‘I’m sorry’,” he begged her.  “I—I can’t really get into it right now.”

She took an unsure step back.  “Okay, I guess.  Hey, I’m sorry, too.  I shouldn’t have gotten so mad at you.”

He nodded his acceptance of her apology.

She turned to go back, stopping to glance his way one last time.  “I just get worried about you sometimes, is all,” she said, trotting back towards the farmhouse, leaving the pegasus sitting on the ground with his head spinning.

She worries about me.  That can’t be good.

“Why not?” he muttered to himself.

If she worries, then she must care.  She’s trouble!

“What, you’re nuts.  I mean, I’m nuts.  Clearly.  I am talking to myself, after all,” he sighed, putting a hoof to his face in exasperation.

Look, you know that mare has been giving you a bad feeling, right?  Don’t you know enough to trust that?

“Okay, fine, I’ll play along,” he said, making sure nopony else was around first.  “What do my feelings know that I don’t?  Apple Fritter has been nothing but kind and friendly to me.”

That’s.  The.  Point.

“Can you—er, I—stop being cryptic for one damn minute?  You’re my brain!”

She cares.  Caring means she might like you.  If she likes you, there’s a chance you may end up liking her back.  If you get attached, how long do you think it will be before everything ends up in the dung pile again?

“Okay, that’s just crazy talk,” he said, though he was beginning to feel very nervous about these thoughts.  “There’s not been anything to indicate that she’s interested in me particularly.”

So, the treats she’s asked you to try, the way she says hello to you first, the way her eyes always seem to find you in a room before anypony else…  That’s all a coincidence then, is it?

Dusk gritted his teeth.  “Look, if you’re just going to mess with me, then shut up.  I—I can deal with this.  I can handle it.”  His shoulders slumped in defeat.  “I’ve handled it so far,” he said, not even convincing himself.

“I can’t figure it out, Twi.”

The pegasus sighed irritably.   Across the table from him Twilight swallowed her mouthful of vegetables and let her fork float back to the surface of the table.  “Well, I can’t either,” she said, wiping a napkin over the corner of her mouth.  “You used to be excited to go to work and happy when you came home; now I can’t tell if you are or not.  Lately you’ve been up even earlier than me, which would normally indicate that you’re eager to get there, but when I do get up I find you pacing nervously in the library trying to decide if you’re even going to go in that day.”

He nodded glumly, unable to account for his erratic behavior of late.  “Well, as far as getting up early, I guess my sleep hasn’t been quite as sound this week.”

“Have the nightmares been coming back?” she asked, concern coloring her voice.

“Oh, they’re pretty much always around.  I just haven’t been making as much noise lately.”

“So what’s happened that might have started this off?  What’s been different in the last month that wasn’t there before?”

Dusk thought for few seconds.  “AJ’s cousin came to stay at the farm.  Caramel came back from his leave of absence.  Everything else has just been normal work.”

“AJ’s cousin?  Apple Fritter, right?”

“Yeah, Apple Fritter.”

Twilight tapped her chin with a hoof as she pondered.  “What’s she like?”

“Honestly, it’s hard for me to put my hoof on.  She seems really nice.  She’s a couple years older than AJ, but more soft-spoken.”  Dusk recognized the tightness spreading in his chest as he spoke and gasped as it dawned on him.  “Wait.  It’s her.  It’s gotta be.”

“Why do you say that?  Did she do something?”

“No, but I still can’t shake the feeling that I shouldn’t be around her.  Every time she says ‘Hi’ I can barely keep my hooves from running away.  Just seeing her makes things appear in my head, like I can see my wife.  Hay, just thinking about her now makes me want to panic.”

Twilight thought very hard for a few moments.  “Dusk, AJ’s cousin is about the same age as your wife would be, am I right?”

He frowned.  “I suppose so, but they’re not a lot alike.  Why would that matter?”

Twilight sighed lightly and nodded.  “Dusk, have you ever actually said goodbye to Elegy?”

He jerked in surprise.  “What’s that mean?” he said, taking a step back from Twilight’s accusation.

“I mean, have you ever said goodbye?”  Twilight stood and looked him in the eyes.  “Dusk, I know you weren’t ready before, but I know you haven’t let your wife go.  I think it’s going to keep haunting you unless you do.”

His nightmare of his inability to hold on to his wife’s ghost flashed through his mind.  “You mean forget her.  I can’t do that, Twi, you know that!”

Twilight shook her head emphatically.  “No, Dusk, not forget.”  Her voice grew softer.  “Dusk, you haven’t even visited your wife’s grave.  One would think that’s a fairly important thing to do.”

He shifted his weight anxiously as guilt lashed him.  The back corner of his mind recognized the same panic response as when Apple Fritter spoke to him, but he couldn’t spare the time to ponder it.  “I don’t even know where it is,” he said weakly.  “I can’t go ask her family.  I never knew them that well, and since I sort of disappeared when—when their daughter died, they probably don’t like me much.”

“I know you weren’t in much of a condition to go at the time, but that might have been avoided if you had gone to the funeral.”

He started, confused.  “The what now?  Funeral?  When was that?”

“About a week after you showed up here.  There was an article about the attack in the Equestria Daily.  There wasn’t anything in it about you, but it mentioned when her funeral was going to be.  I left the paper on your bed so you’d see it.”

He shook his head in disbelief.  “I—I remember the paper, but I don’t remember anything in it.  Did I read it?”  His head dropped, bowed under the weight of his guilt.  “Did I block out my own wife’s funeral…?”

Twilight walked to his side and gave his mane a friendly rub.  “Dusk, it’s not your fault.  You were suffering.  Nopony expected anything more of you then, but now I think it’s time for you to go.”

“What do I say?”

“I have no idea,” she admitted.  “I’ve never gone through anything like this myself.  Just say whatever is on your heart, I guess.”

“I’ll—I’ll think about it.”

He had thought about it, long and hard.  He had thought about it all the way to Canterlot on the train, and now that Dusk stood at the entrance to a cemetery, he was still thinking about it.

Twilight had come along on the train, saying how she had been meaning to stop by and visit the princess and her family.  He knew she had mostly come to make sure he would be okay, but he appreciated her thoughtfulness.  She had been with him long enough to find out where Elegy’s grave lay and then left him to do what he had to do, and now without her reassuring presence he found the entryway to the cemetery to be almost as impenetrable as a solid wall to him.

Dusk waited, trying to dredge up the courage to go in.  His heart was pounding and his head was crying out for him to leave, but his guilt was even stronger.  He felt so awful for not coming sooner that there was no way he could leave, but it was almost equally hard to go in, so he stood at a stalemate trying to find the strength to go through with it.

He took a deep breath and looked over the graveyard itself.  It was small, and the overhanging trees gave him a deep sense of claustrophobia.  He could feel the walls around the grounds as though they surrounded him directly, and the more he thought about entering, the more they felt like they were closing in.  Maybe I could just go over to that tree, he reasoned with himself.That’s not a gravestone, there’s no reason to be afraid of it.

He let his breath out and coaxed his trembling limbs to movement.  He put his first hoof down over the threshold and gasped slightly.  I can do this, he thought, forcing his other legs to follow suit.  I have to do this.

When Dusk looked back up he found that he was standing under the tree.  He reached out a hoof and touched the rough bark as though trying to assure himself that it was solid and this wasn’t a dream.  He glanced around and tried to calm his breathing a bit, only to have it catch in his throat altogether as he caught sight of the nearest headstone.

Elegy Chaser

Beloved daughter, taken too soon.

Her voice still rings in our hearts.

Dusk sank to his knees, unable to find breath as his world crashed in on itself.  His hoof reached out without his input to touch the carved granite surface of the stone.

“Elegy…” he breathed, barely able to speak around the lump in his throat.  “Elegy, I’m so sorry.  I’m so sorry.”  He sat on his haunches and put his front hooves on the gravestone.  “I forgot you.  I don’t know how, but I forgot.  I—I can’t live tha—” he gasped, eyes closing tight.  “I can’t live that down,” he whispered, tears finally starting to roll uninhibited down his face.  He let go of the memorial and wrapped his hooves around his middle as the tears become intense sobs, the grief and pain spilling out as he wept.

He had no idea how long it took, but in time he finally reached the point where he felt like he didn’t have any more tears left.  He dried his face as well as he could and sat back up next to the grave.  When he opened his eyes, he found that everything around him had changed.  The overhanging trees and lovingly maintained landscaping still made the graveyard stand out from the urban sprawl of the capital that surrounded it, but now as an oasis of green in a sea of grey.  Instead of a sense of entrapment and finality, the scene now gave off an air of peacefulness and calm, and Dusk could almost breathe it in.  It was no longer a place of pain—it was a place of longing, perhaps—but more than anything it was a place of memory.

He looked back to the gravestone beside him, and the words sprang unbidden from his mouth, free and easily.  “So, it’s been a long time, Elegy.  I’m sorry about that.  It’s about a month to midwinter, I guess, so that means our anniversary is coming up.  I promise I’ll come back for that.

“I’m not sure what’s real and what isn’t sometimes.”  He took a deep breath.  “I miss you.  By Harmony, I miss you so much, and I feel like it’s my fault.  I didn’t protect you.  I don’t even know if I could have done anything, but it doesn’t matter because I know deep inside I should have protected you.”  He stopped to wipe a rogue tear away from his eye.  “So much has happened to me lately.  I feel like the pony I was before is just a shadow now—like a picture somepony showed me.  I don’t know if you’re still watching me, but I hope you still approve of who I am, because I’m not always sure.”

A soft smile appeared on his face as he thought of all the good times lately.  “I got a job on a farm.  I know, sounds crazy, right?  It’s been good, though.  It’s kept me busy at least.  I also met a young filly.  I’ve been giving her flight lessons, which is weird because I’ve needed them almost as much as she has.  We’ve helped each other out a lot.”  He touched a hoof to the words engraved on the memorial.  “I don’t know what kind of foals we might have had, but I can only dream that they would have been as enthusiastic as she is.

“I’m not sure if you can really hear me on the other side, but I hope so.  I hope you can forgive me for everything.  Someday maybe I can forgive myself, too, but I’m trying.  I just hope that wherever you are now, you’re at peace.”

He stood shakily to his hooves and looked down at the headstone.  “I love you, Elegy.  I always will.”  He took a step back and stood in silence, embracing the stillness around—and inside—him.

“That was beautiful, Dusk.”

He was so emotionally drained he hardly even reacted to the sudden voice behind him, but it was easily recognizable.  He turned his head and bowed to Celestia.  “Princess.”

The alicorn walked forward to his side, and the two of them looked at the carefully kept plot of grass where Elegy lay.  “I know she would be proud of you.”

“I hope so,” he admitted.  “I feel so… empty.”

“Pain can take up such a large part of us if we let it,” she said.  “By letting it go, all that space inside you is freed up for something greater.”

“So, what does this make me now?  My wife is—gone?”

Celestia smiled down at him and pressed a hoof to his chest.  “Feel in here, does it feel like she’s gone?”

“No, I’m pretty sure I can still feel her,” he said, smiling as Celestia’s warmth lifted his spirit.

“She will always be a part of you, no matter what.  Love may not exactly conquer all, but it does create a bond between ponies that never breaks.”  Dusk sniffed slightly and pawed at his eye, and the princess drew him into a hug.  “This was a very brave step, Dusk.”

The two ponies broke the embrace in silence.  Dusk nodded his thanks to Celestia and walked back out the cemetery gate, alone with his thoughts, to find Twilight.

Chapter 9 – Under a Glass Moon

Dusk found it just as difficult to convince himself that he was okay over the next few weeks.  He did try to make an effort to not avoid Fritter so much, but he was starting to pay the price.  His dreams, even though they weren’t any more intense, were bothering him on a greater level, and seemingly worse each day.  He went days without sleep sometimes, and started missing shifts on the weather team.  He was amazed that nopony seemed too upset about it whenever he came back after missing a day, but he took it in stride.

For her part, his encounters with Apple Fritter remained casual and friendly.  She seemed to truly enjoy a chance to just sit and chat with him on the front porch of the house, or over a railing while he worked at some task or another.  He found himself looking around while working, trying to see if she was trotting over to ask him a question, and he was quite surprised when he figured out that he was disappointed on the times he didn’t see her.  He even realized that on the days he didn’t see Fritter around the farm, he worked slower, waiting as long as possible to see if she would come by.

It was on just such a day that he got the flyer.  He was leaning against a railing, idly picking dirt off the tines of his rake when he heard a voice.

“Hey, you’re on the weather team, right?”

He looked up at the face of the pegasus hovering over his head, and immediately had to force himself not to go sympathetically cross-eyed.  “Uh, yeah,” he replied, pointedly not looking the messenger directly in her eyes.

“Oh, cool.  Here, this is for you!” replied the grey mailmare, pulling a scroll out of her saddlebag and dropping in into his waiting hoof.  “See ya!” she chirped, and flew off whistling to herself.

He chuckled at her spirit, and unrolled the scroll.

“Mandatory meeting for all Ponyville Weather Team Pegasi—tonight,” he read aloud.  Dusk sighed.  “Awesome.  I wonder what fresh hell Raindrops has dreamed up for our drills this time.”

Dusk rolled the scroll back up, tucked it under his wing, and trotted off to find Applejack.  He would probably have to miss work the day after whatever grueling challenge this was sure to reveal.

“All right, pegasi, let’s quiet down!”

Dusk smirked in spite of himself from his place in the front row of the crowd as the assembled pegasi scrambled to follow Raindrop’s bellowed command.  They settled onto the gound, chairs, and balcony of the City Hall’s main chamber, or just hovered in place, attentively.  The room was packed with ponies of every color and—if you counted the muscle-bound Snowflake—size.

Raindrops tapped a hoof on the makeshift lectern on stage, with a very familiar pegasus mare by her side.  “Listen up, pegasi, this is not a drill.”  A resounding sigh of relief filled the room from all the assembled fliers.  “Har, har,” Raindrops deadpanned, continuing on.  “This is a real situation.  We’ve got a major storm front brewing over the Everfree.  How many of you remember the storm at the end of last summer?”  Every pony in the room put a hoof up.  “Okay, good news: this isn’t that bad.  Bad news: this could quickly become that bad if we don’t stay on top of it.”

The captain looked out over her team, and nodded to the back of the room, where the young Featherweight was operating a projector.  The room lights dimmed and slides of weather patterns snapped into life on the screen.  “Reports from our spotters have shown a sizable mass of unstable air building.  Right now, it’s trapped between the warm systems of Ponyville and Canterlot, so it’s had nothing to do but sit there and build in power.  If we let it ride unchecked, it could break out and head either way with considerable damage being done.  The big shots in Cloudsdale have decided that this system can’t be allowed to hit Canterlot, so that means we’ve got to suck it up and take one for the team.”

She took a step back and indicated the mare at her side.  “Because this is such a big deal, our Regional Supervisor and old weather captain is back to manage the situation.  I’ll let Dash take it from here.”

Rainbow Dash nodded her thanks to Raindrops, and stepped up.  Dusk had never seen her looking so focused or professional before.  “Hey, guys, good to see you all again,” she said in a strong but friendly voice.  “Raindrops is right, this storm system has a lot of bad potential, so we’ve got to bleed it off and spread it around.  I know things got pretty out of hoof last year, and you can blame me for that if you like.  We got too spread out and started missing things, so we’re changing things up a bit this time around.”

Her eyes swept the crowd, seeking out specific pegasi.  “We’re dividing into squads to better manage the storm.  Thunderlane?”  The black pegasus snapped to attention at the sound of his name.  “You’re going to be leading Alpha flight.  You need to pick the 6 strongest fliers you can get, because you’re going right into the teeth of the storm.  You’re the first line of control.”  Thunderlane nodded, grinning from ear to ear at the assignment.

Rainbow moved on.  “Cloudchaser?  You get together a few ponies, too.  You’re leading Bravo flight, and bring some good cloud sculptors.  You’ll be in charge of dispersing the rain clouds across the area so no one part experiences flooding.”

As Rainbow’s eyes met Dusk’s, he shook his head emphatically.  Without missing a beat, she passed right over him.  “Mile High?  You’ve got Delta flight.  I need you to take some ponies up high, over the storm.  Keep the warm air from coming in behind the front too quickly.  If this system starts building too much pressure, it could start a cyclone, and then all bets are off.”

In a matter of minutes, Rainbow Dash had assigned a dozen team leads and most ponies had an idea where they would be working.  “I’ll be stationed here in Ponyville, getting the weather recon reports.  Raindrops will be in charge in the air—all questions go through her first.  We’re doing things like this in response to what you all put in your reports after last year’s storm, so if this works then you’re all geniuses.  If we blow it, then I’m an idiot.”  The assembled ponies chuckled at Rainbow’s good humor.  “So do it for me or for yourselves, but let’s get it done.  Go home, rest, and meet back at the fountain in the square at oh-seven-hundred.  Know which team you’re on!”

As the meeting dismissed, ponies began to mill out the doors.  Rainbow tapped Dusk on the shoulder and indicated that he should follow her.  The two pegasi trotted over to an office where Rainbow was setting up her base of operations, where they could get some privacy.

“Dusk, how you been lately?” she asked.

“Oh, okay, I guess.”

She smacked him lightly in the head with a wing.  “You’re an awful liar, you know?  Raindrops has been talking with me about you—you’ve been tired, sloppy, and missing work lately.  She knows we’re friends and asked me what she should do, and I told her to keep her hooves off and let me deal with you.”  She sighed, unhappily.  “I talked to Applejack and Twilight, too, and they backed up what Raindrops had said, among other things.  You’ve had a pretty rough month here.  I had hoped that I could still get you out there, because you’re a great high-altitude flier, but I’m guessing you’re not feeling up to it.”

He hung his head like a naughty colt in the principal’s office.  “I—I just don’t think I can do it, Rainbow.  I don’t know what will happen to me if I’m out in the storm.”

“I had hoped that keeping you above it would help, but I can’t put you out there if you’re not confident.  That’s how fliers get hurt.”  She took a step towards Dusk and gave his shoulder a friendly punch.  “So, will you be back in the library during the storm?”

Dusk rubbed his shoulder absent-mindedly and frowned.  “I doubt it.  Twilight’s getting the clean-up teams organized in there, and I don’t think I have to tell you how hard she can be to be around when she’s in ‘planning mode’.”

Rainbow chuckled.  “Okay, so, what’s plan B?  I guess I could let you hang out here and help me out.”

Dusk pondered.  “Well, actually, I know Lucky and Caramel are going to be on the farm helping the Apple family get ready for the storm.  Maybe I’ll go give them a hoof.”

“Huh…”  Rainbow Dash gave Dusk a cryptic smile.  “Yeah, maybe you should do that.”

Dusk was about to ask her what she meant by that, but she had already walked around the desk to glance over some paperwork, so he said his goodbye and made his exit instead.

He trotted out the door into the night, towards home, feeling very conflicted.  Why did I decide to avoid my home during what is sure to be the most stressful day of the year?  Why am I volunteering to go to the one place that’s made my life so tangled and miserable during the storm?  Why am I not digging a hole to hide in or running for Trottingham before the storm hits?

He shook his head ruefully.  I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

“Hurry it up, we’ve only got a few minutes a’fore this storm really hits!”

Dusk gritted his teeth as he heard Applejack call out to him over the rumble of thunder.  “Working on it!” he yelled back through the gusting winds and patter of fat raindrops as he and Big Macintosh struggled to secure a protective tarp over the Apple family’s wagon.  The whipping winds kept tugging it loose and getting underneath it, and if it wasn’t staked down completely when the full storm hit, the rain could warp and ruin the wood or—worse yet—the cart could blow away and be damaged, preventing them from being able to get apples to market at all.  The danger of the situation was clearly punctuated by the ever-closer bolts of lightning.

Dusk threw his whole weight against the last remaining line.  He drew the rope taut and held it still while Mac drove a stake through the loop and solidly into the ground with one swift kick, and the two headed for the house, heads down against the weather.  Dusk looked around to see that nothing else had to be done, checking the boards over the windows and making sure the barn doors were still closed up.  He made it in the door and the wind pulled it shut with a bang, making him jump.  He closed his eyes and realized that his entire body was shaking.

I have to get past this, he thought to himself.  I can’t lose it, not now.  He wanted to join the rest of the Apple family and farm staff in the main room but couldn’t bring himself to get past the kitchen.  He stood alone, struggling to get control over his anxiety as his limbs threatened to give out underneath him.  His jaw tensed as he fought.  “It is NOT happening again,” he muttered to himself.  “There’s nothing to go wrong today.  No one is going to die and nothing bad is going to happen.  You’re being a foal, stop it.”

What warning did you have last time?  His mind taunted him, replaying how serene and peaceful the night in Canterlot had been.  Then again, maybe it was just your hubris.  “I’ll protect you!”The irony was almost unbearable.

Dusk felt a tear push its way past his eyelid as he tried to deny his own imagination a grip on his fears when he heard Apple Fritter’s voice.

“Dusk, you comin’ in?”

He felt his chest tighten up.  Fritter was the last pony he wanted to see him when he was at his lowest.  He tried to get anything out that might explain his behavior away, but words just wouldn’t come to him.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”  Apple Fritter examined his face and looked puzzled.  “Is it the storm?”  He nodded sadly.  “I don’t understand…”

“It—I,” he hesitated.  “It’s nothing.”

She looked askance at him.  “I don’t think so, Dusk.  You look terrible.  What’s wrong?  Can’t you trust me yet?”

Dusk sighed unhappily, knowing he wasn’t likely to get away without offering at least some of the truth.  “The last time there was a storm like this I—” he choked.  “I lost somepony very important to me.  I just keep thinking something awful is going to happen today.”

She walked over until their faces were almost touching.  “Hey, it’s going to be fine,” she reassured him.  “Nothing’s gonna happen.  This family has ridden out bigger storms before.”

“I—I keep telling myself that,” he sighed, tapping a trembling hoof against his head.

“Would you prefer to go in the other room and sit down?”  He nodded, and she led him into the main room.  Dusk sat heavily on the floor in the corner furthest from the boarded-over windows, and gave a hollow smile to Apple Fritter as she put a blanket over his shoulders and sat down beside him.  He felt rather worn out from the frantic storm preparations, and the stress of the moment was weighing exhaustingly on his mind.  He tried to fight the desire to doze off, but the blanket on his back was a reassuring weight and the body by his side was pleasantly warm despite his misgivings, and it wasn’t long before he succumbed, sliding into an uneasy sleep.

He awoke to a loud crash and the sound of ponies scrambling to get to the front door.  He jumped up to meet the others in the yard just in time to see a few cows disappear into the hazy grey of the storm.  The side of the barn had been completely caved in by a runaway wagon leaving a huge hole, through which the spooked animals had bolted.

Applejack threw her hat onto the muddy ground in frustration.  “Consarnit, Mac, I told you to get that wagon tied down tight!”

Lucky bent over where the stakes were still firmly embedded in the ground.  “Uh, AJ…?” he said, holding up the tattered end of a snapped rope that was still attached to the stake.

AJ rubbed the bridge of her nose with a hoof and sighed heavily.  “I’m sorry, Mac.  I shoulda known better.”

Big Macintosh gave her a pat on the back, and looked over the scene.  “Well, we gotta get ‘em back.”

“Right.  Those critters won’t last long without hurting themselves in this storm,” AJ said, taking charge.  “Mac and me’ll head off after the ones headed into the orchards.  Lucky, take a few ponies and look over near Ponyville—they seem to bolt that way most often.”  Without waiting for confirmation, she grabbed her hat and took off running, Mac close behind.  Lucky looked at his fellow farm workers, shrugged, and they headed off towards town, leaving Apple Fritter and Dusk.

“Uh, should we look somewhere?” she asked, uncertain.

Dusk pushed aside his private discomfort and thought.  “Let’s take a look at the barn.  Maybe we can tell if any went another way,” he said.

Toldja things were headed to Tartarus in a basket, his subconscious taunted him.

Shut up,he retorted.

As Dusk stood in the driving rain the old familiar feelings came flooding back, trying to overwhelm him.  He tried to focus on only one thing at a time, pushing everything else out of his mind as he struggled to figure out which way they should be going.  Everypony else had taken the obvious directions, so Dusk tried to search for clues.

Focus, Dusk, he thought, trying to hold himself together.  Dirt.  Mud.  Tracks?  As he thought, he noticed there were deep hoofprints in the soft ground, left by panicked cattle.  At least two sets of the tracks were headed off into the Everfree Forest.  He tried to swallow the unease as he thought about going in after those cows.

He turned to his partner, and Apple Fritter looked at the muddy hoofmarks.  “They’re headed off into the forest, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, let’s go get ‘em!”

Dusk could feel his mouth going dry.  “Yeah.  Let’s do that.”  His steps were just as unsteady as his voice, but he began the trek into the dark woods.

The path was obvious, even to an unskilled tracker.  A panicked cow tended to leave a wide swath through the brush, and the two were able to make good time as they followed.  As he ran, Dusk tried to concentrate on each hoofstep to block out as much as he possibly could.  Each roll of thunder felt like it was going directly down his spine and every strike of lightning showed a myriad of shadows that he instinctively shied away from.  He ran on, berating himself for every flinch, and quite conscious of the mare with him who kept throwing odd looks in his direction when he did.

The two rounded a bend in the path and ran headlong into a massive wind gust, almost stopping them entirely.  The interruption gave Dusk just enough time to look up and react to the movement heading for him.  Just as the sounds of popping and snapping wood became loud enough to overwhelm the rain and wind, an ancient oak broke through the trees bordering the path, tumbling gently as it plummeted to the ground, broken by the relentless winds.

“Elegy, No!” Dusk cried as he flung himself backwards, catching Apple Fritter and throwing her away from the danger.  The tree slammed to the turf with a roar of rending timber.

Fritter leapt to her hooves.  “Dusk!  Are you alright?”  She ran to his side.

He sat, shaking violently, covering his head with his hooves.  “No, no, no,” he muttered to himself, keeping his eyes shut, knowing what he would see if they opened.  Thunder crashed overhead, and Dusk’s eyes opened instinctively.  He could see trees—or were they buildings?  It was supernaturally dark, making the white pony in front of him stand out like a beacon.

“Dusk, are you hurt?”  He could hear the voice, but it sounded slightly off, like it didn’t belong to the almost ghostly pony he saw.  Why was she asking about him?  W—were his hooves covered in blood?  He shook his head.  She grabbed his face in her hooves and tried to get him to focus.  “Dusk, are you okay in there?  Do we need to go back?”

He tried to focus on her.  He knew her, didn’t he?  Why did her face seem to change as he looked at her?  He started as the answer came to him.

“Elegy?” he asked, “y—you’re alive?”

The pony in front of him looked distinctly confused.  “Dusk, I—who’s—?”

He grabbed her hoof and pulled her firmly after him.  “Come on, we gotta go!” he yelled, dodging around the fallen tree and darting down the path.  Fritter was plainly worried about him, but said nothing as she found a way around the massive downed trunk, merely sighing in frustration as she tore off after him.

Inside Dusk’s head, panic reigned.  All he could see was a street where the path was, leading off into the dark.  He didn’t know where it would end, but he had to lead his wife to safety or else...  She would die…  Again?

He firmly pushed aside his thoughts and raced, trying to find a way to escape the confines of his mental landscape.  He rounded a corner, snapping through a few branches which felt like grasping hooves in his head, and gasped as he came face to face with a dead end.

Fritter raced into the small clearing behind him, seeing him standing at the edge of a large, washed-out ravine, staring panicked into the sky with a distant look in his eyes.  She ran over to him, trying to get him to snap out of his delusion.

The world seemed to explode.  A bare bolt of lightning stretched instantly from sky to ground, impacting a large tree not more than a few pony-lengths away.  The pure concussion of the blast threw Dusk backwards, dazed from the blinding light in the otherwise dim storm.  He tried to blink out the spots on his vision, shaking his head to clear it as the world came back into focus as what it really was.  His wife had been dead for 10 months, and he was out in a dangerous storm with a pony who needed his help.  He looked around for Apple Fritter, not knowing what might have happened to her, and saw her trying to regain her own senses on the edge of the ravine.

She clambered to her hooves and looked over the edge.  “Oh Luna, that was close.”

Dusk could almost feel it coming.  He was halfway to upright when the face of the ravine, washed by torrential rains and stressed by the weight of the pony, gave way.  Apple Fritter didn’t even have time to cry out as she disappeared from Dusk’s view.

“NO!” he screamed.  He took one stride and leaped headfirst over the edge, wings giving one massive push and tucking in close as he cleared the cliff, desperate to fall faster than her.  His whole world faded to just him, her, and the ground as time itself seemed to slow.  He caught up and put his forehooves around her body, pulling her in close and looking over her shoulder to find the ground.

It was too close.  Much too close.  Eons of running water had smoothed the rocky riverbed before receding, leaving only bleached stone under him as the water flowed on the other side of the gully.  In the space between heartbeats he could tell that he wouldn’t have time to land—wouldn’t even have time to pull up enough to avoid crashing.  His wings flared to catch the air and pain exploded down his back as the muscles were forced to pull twice as much weight as usual at extreme speeds, only brute strength keeping them from buckling altogether under the strain.  He was all out of options.  There was no avoiding it now.

Dusk looked at the ground and then at his precious cargo.  He wrapped all four hooves tightly around her, tucked his left wing in to force his body to roll over, and braced for the inevitable impact, hoping only to protect her.  He could feel every breath of air as it tugged on his feathers, the panicked heartbeat of the mare against his chest, the brush of raindrops against his pelt.

Celestia watch over me, he prayed, closing his eyes and tensing for the crash.

When he had plummeted from the side of Canterlot and slid down the mountainside—that had been brutal, but it seemed like nothing compared to the blow he took.  The ground met his body like a hammer meeting an anvil.  He felt his left wing shatter under the combined weight of both ponies as the breath was driven from his body.  Pain erupted from his chest as he skipped off the water-smoothed river bed.  He bounced, only to have Apple Fritter torn from his hooves as his left side slammed into another rock, spinning him around like a rag doll.

He finally slid to a stop, his vision blurred from the incredible pain he felt.  His head felt like it had been flattened, his breathing was quite difficult, and without even checking he knew his wing was broken beyond use.  He lifted his right hoof, noticing it was oddly numb.  Even in his state he knew the angle it was at was neither normal nor healthy.

Just as he was considering giving in to the pain and just blacking out Apple Fritter appeared in his vision, racing to his side.  She was running unsteadily, with a gash over her eye bleeding down the side of her face.  She dropped to her knees next to him, calling his name.

“Dusk!  Dusk, speak to me.  Say something!”

“You—  You look—terrible,” he croaked.

She gasped out a laugh, tears starting to flow from her green eyes.  “You should see yourself.  I bet AJ’d say you look like you lost a few rounds at the rodeo,” she said, her voice choked with relief.  “Your wing is—oh…” she stopped, putting a hoof to her mouth.

“… Is what?”

“Um, just—just don’t move it, Dusk.”  She shuddered, and pointedly did not look at his wing again.  He craned his head around and saw the sickening white glint of bone poking through the surface of his wing, though the sensations were confused and muted under his shock.  “Can you move?” she asked.  “We’ve gotta find some shelter.”

“Not yet,” he replied.

“I think I can see a cave down here—we can hunker down inside and wait this storm out.”

He nodded slowly, blinking against the rain running down his face.  “Give me—just a minute.”  He struggled to a vaguely sitting position.  He tried to shake the water out of his eyes only to groan as he made himself dizzy.

He felt the rain stop as her hat settled onto his head.  “Here, you look like you need it more than I do right about now.”

Leaning heavily on her for support, Dusk fought his way upright and the two began to make their way towards the available shelter.  The rain made the rocks extremely slick, and the wind threatened to drive them backwards as it whistled down the chasm.  Each step jolted his body, especially when he had to hop to avoid putting weight on his broken front leg.  Dusk had to focus just to remain conscious, relying on his friend to guide his steps.  The pair almost lost their balance as they finally made it into the cave and out of the intense weather.  Apple Fritter helped Dusk gently to the ground once they were well inside the cave, away from the storm and unseasonably cold rain.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked, shifting her weight anxiously from hoof to hoof.

“I would say start a fire, but that doesn’t seem too likely in this rain.”  He beckoned her to lay down as well with his good hoof.  “We’re just going to have to wait the storm out for now.”

She sighed unhappily, but did as he suggested.  She lay down next to his right side, turning to him.  “You saved my life, Dusk.  Thank you,” she whispered, giving his cheek a quick, heartfelt kiss before she settled in against him.  Even though his likely-broken ribs protested he wouldn’t have asked her to move away in a lifetime.  He stretched out his good wing protectively over her withers and laid his head next to hers, shuddering slightly as his emotions caught up and overwhelmed him.

Everything felt so different now, like he had left his discomfort back on the clifftop as he dove into the gorge after her.  He felt like everything inside of him had been stripped away, leaving only the bare truth behind—the same truth he had been fighting against.

“I don’t think I could live if I let somepony I loved die again,” he said quietly.

He felt her tense slightly at his words.  She turned to look at him.  “Y—you—love?  As in…”

“Um, it’s all a bit confused in my head right now,” he admitted.  “For months now, I’ve thought of you as a good friend—somepony I could talk to, but even if you were like family I don’t know if I would have jumped off a cliff after you,” he said, trying to keep his voice light even as emotion tightened his throat.  “I was trying to not be around you very often.  I’ve been fighting the idea of you as being important to me, or that I might like you, or more.  I couldn’t admit it—I got scared…”

She looked into his eyes.  “You sad you lost somepony.”

He nodded.  “I had a wife before I came to Ponyville.  The storm on the night she was killed was a lot like this storm today.  It…” he stopped, searching for words.  “It broke me—took me months to start recovering.  I was jumping at shadows for a long time.  I still was—still am sometimes.  Maybe I think that it was my fault.”

“Is that who Elegy was, your wife?” she asked.  He sadly confirmed it was.  “Is that why you dove after me?”

“Yes,” he admitted.  “If I hadn’t done everything possible, I know the guilt would have destroyed me this time.”  He sighed, baring his heart to her.  “Fritter, I really do love you.  You’re a great mare, and one of the few ponies I feel like I can talk to and connect with.”  He tried to grin around his battered face, only partially successful.  “Plus, you gave me your hat.  That’s gotta count for something.”  He let the smile drop, his voice earnest.  “Seriously though, having you as a friend has been, well, it’s been good for me.  I’m not sure if I could leave you, even if I wanted to.”

She was quiet for a long time—long enough that Dusk was getting worried he had offended her somehow.  “Dusk, can I admit something to you?” she asked softly.  “I’d hoped you felt that way.  After I jumped at you for avoiding me, I talked to AJ, asked her if she thought I should ask you out or somethin’.  She told me—plainly—that I shouldn’t press you.  She told me that you had been hurt pretty bad, that I should give you the space you needed.  It wasn’t easy, because you seemed to be fine when I met you, but I can see what she had meant.  The way you kept to yourself for the most part, the way you almost never started a conversation—it all kinda makes sense now.”

Dusk closed his eyes.  “She was right.  I would have pushed you away.  I was so scared of forgetting my wife that I shut almost everypony else out.  It made things even more frustrating for me that I just couldn’t stay away.  I kept working around the farm even after I joined the weather team just so I could see you, even though it was killing me.”  His wing wrapped around her just a bit tighter.  “I know—I know—I could never forget about her, but I couldn’t make myself not be afraid.  I can’t come that close to dying and kid myself, though.  I know what my dreams mean now: I can’t keep trying to hold on too closely to my wife’s ghost, or I’ll lose everypony else I care about.  I’m trying to learn how.  I really am.”

When he reopened his eyes, Apple Fritter was smiling warmly at him.  “I couldn’t ask for anything more than that, Dusk,” she said, turning back away and settling in against his side once again.

He chuckled nervously.  “Well, I don’t have a fancy hat to give you, but I can improvise.”  He reached his head over to his intact wing, pulled a primary feather free with a grunt, and tucked the long grey feather securely in Fritter’s hair behind her ear to lie back along her mane.  She sighed happily, and the two fell silent, watching the rain falling outside the mouth of the cave.

Dusk took the time to finally go through his thoughts.  By this point, there was no point in trying to lie, not even to himself.  He had fallen for Fritter, even going so far as to express his commitment to her in token form.  He knew the depth of what that meant, but did she?  What if she didn’t—would she be scared when she found out?

Even more than that, since the moment Dusk admitted his feelings Celestia’s prophecy had been playing through his mind on an endless loop.  The greatest of sacrifices are required to cover the greatest hurts.  Did that mean that his days were numbered?  Now that he found a pony he cared for more than his own life, would he be required to lay that life down?  How was that fair?

It doesn’t much matter how whole I am if I’m dead, he thought.Would it be better to live a life with a painful memory or die letting it go?  He couldn’t shake the feeling that his reckoning hadn’t come yet—that the worst was yet to come.  That thought terrified him.  What if I can’t save Fritter no matter what I do?  What if my sacrifice doesn’t matter?  As his eyes closed, he was consumed by the thought of how he would try to explain how he had failed again when he saw his wife on the other side.

The same thought was on his mind right up until he heard the growling.

Chapter 10 – Endless Sacrifice

Dusk’s eyes shot open.  He sat up, ignoring his protesting injuries, and listened to the growl.  It was a noise so subsonic that it was more felt than heard, especially over the sound of the ongoing storm, but he knew whatever was making it was big, and probably headed their way.  He shook Apple Fritter.

“Wha—?  What’s going on?”

“We’ve got a big problem,” he said, still staring at the entrance of the cave.

“How big a problem?”

He gulped and pointed a hoof.  “That big.”

Into the cave mouth appeared a nose, and it was unnervingly large on its own.  It was also blue, as was the rest of the massive, ursine head that followed it.  Huge red eyes narrowed at the sight of the ponies as the growl pitched up slightly.  Dusk and Fritter scrambled to their hooves, staring at the monstrously large animal.

“Is that—Is that an ursa?” Fritter asked breathlessly.

“Yes.  Yes it is,” he responded.

“Major or minor?”

“Does it really matter?”

The ursa let loose a huge roar of challenge that made the floor of the cave reverberate.  The two ponies looked frantically around for an alternative exit, or even a hiding place, but quickly came up empty.

“Dusk…” Fritter said, cowering slightly.  “Dusk, we’re trapped.”  Her eyes were getting wider and wider as the reality of the situation took hold.

Dusk stood in front of her, single good wing flared in panic as he tried to think quickly.  Oh, Harmony, what the hay do I do?  I can’t take this thing on!  He glanced behind him at the shaking earth pony, and then looked back to the ursa padding slowly into the cave, watching the ponies closely as if to see what threat they might pose.  He felt a terrible calm come over him.  His limbs weren’t shaking anymore.  Even his injuries seemed to hurt less.

This is it, he thought.  This is the sacrifice.  I have to get her out alive.

“Fritter?  I’ve got an idea.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m gonna draw its attention.  You stay against the far wall, and when you have an opening, you run for it.”

“…  That’s an awful plan!”

Dusk grimaced.  “That’s true.  But it’s also the only plan we have.  If you follow this stream, you should end up right at Ponyville Dam.  The farm’s right there on the other side.  Get some help, and get back here as fast as you can.  If I’m very lucky, I’ll still be here when you get back.”

She pressed close against his side, still staring at the ursa.  “Dusk, I can’t leave you here to die!”

He turned enough to look into her eyes.  “If you don’t, then my entire life has been a waste, Fritter.  Do not fight me over this.  Please,” he pleaded.

She didn’t say anything in return, but she did walk slowly across the cave to the opposite wall, flattening herself against it as much as she could.  She watched him closely, her eyes tearing up.  He gave her what he thought was a brave nod, and prepared himself for the battle to come.

There is a part deep inside most stallions, a part that is often given over to competition, sport, or enterprise.  A part that revels in the fight, that waits for the battle.  For most of his life, this part had made Dusk sick to his stomach, but he needed it like he never had before.  He tried to give himself over to it—to draw strength from it, but he wasn’t sure if it was helping.  His unnatural calm remained, though, allowing him time and clarity of mind enough to plan strategies and examine ways he might take advantage of his smaller size.

The ursa squared itself in the middle of the cave to take a swipe at the ponies.

Dusk took a deep breath, tugged the hat down over his eyes just a bit, and charged.

He let loose a crazed yell, catching the ursa off guard.  He made it all the way to its footpaws by the time it recovered from the surprise, twisting its jaw down to snap at the pegasus.  Dusk sprinted in between the front paws and dodged straight for the wall away from where Apple Fritter was hiding.  He spun, bounced off the wall, and sprinted back the way he had come from.  The ursa, intent on biting the intruding creature, got tangled under its own feet and tumbled to the ground, raising a large cloud of dust.

“NOW!” Dusk screamed.  He could just see Fritter sprint for the entrance, unable to look at him as she broke through the entrance and raced for Ponyville.

Well, that’s that.  Now all I have to do is survive.  Somehow I don’t see that as being quite so simple.

The ursa scrambled back to its paws and snarled in rage, claws raking huge furrows in the stone wall and floor.  Dusk swallowed his fear and tried to get ready for the next round.  The massive bear jumped forward, surprisingly graceful for its size, and took a swipe at Dusk with a paw the size and mass of a carriage.  Dusk tucked in his bad leg and dove forward, sliding on his side as the paw swept right over his eartip.

He jumped back to his hooves, and bucked the ursa’s front leg as hard as he could with only one leg to brace on.  The ursa stumbled and sat heavily on the floor, blocking off Dusk’s escape route with its gargantuan bulk.  He ran back, attempting to jump over the claws heading for him and only partially succeeding.  His back legs were swept out from underneath him, sending him sprawling across the floor of the cave, broken ribs screaming in agony.

He coughed, struggling to get upright again.  He noticed that his vision was starting to swim at the edges as the pain returned.  It had to be now or never.  On three legs, he sprinted as best he was able towards the wall just in front of the celestial bear.  The ursa saw him and moved to get against the wall to block his path, but Dusk had other plans.  He jumped, took two steps up the wall, and leaped.  The ursa seemed almost amazed as Dusk jumped towards its head.  Just before the bear could snap at him with its jaws, Dusk flapped hard with his one good wing, pitching himself into a barrel roll.  Teeth the size of railroad spikes snapped shut, taking a few strands out of his tail, but leaving him more or less unscathed.

Dusk began to level out of his roll, feeling euphoric as time slowed down.  I did it!  There’s daylight!  His hooves were mere inches from the ground when the ursa’s paw finally connected.

Twilight Sparkle looked over her checklist again.  She was pretty sure that every job had been accounted for.  The ponies who had volunteered for cleanup duty all milled about the interior of the library, waiting out the storm and getting ready to go to work.  She allowed herself a pleased smile.  With any luck, the cleanup should be done in just over a day instead of a week.  Just goes to show what a little organization can—

Her thoughts were interrupted as the door slammed against the outside wall, caught in the winds.  Applejack came charging in, breathless.  “Twi!” she yelled, “It’s Dusk—he’s hurt and needs help!”

“Wha—?”

“Come on, he’s fightin’ an ursa!”

Twilight’s checklist clattered to the floor.  “He’s WHAT?”  The unicorn ran over to Applejack.

“I found Rainbow and sent ‘er to the hospital,” Applejack explained.  “She’s gonna get some pegasi and a medic.  Apparently he’s hurt pretty bad, and we’ve gotta go NOW!”

“Where?” Twilight practically yelled anxiously.

“Fritter’s headin’ back, she said just upstream of Ponyville Resevoir.”

Without a second thought, Twilight fired her spell, and the two ponies found themselves slightly disoriented, but right on the shore of the reservoir.

Applejack shook her head.  “Geez, Twi, gimme some warnin’ or somethin’,” she muttered.

“There she is!” Twilight yelled, spotting Apple Fritter at the outlet of the stream, prancing worriedly on her hooves.  The three joined up and headed upstream, hooves pounding as they ran.

Oh, Dusk, she thought.  Why is it always storms with you?  I’m going to go grey worrying about you!

The unicorn’s lungs were starting to burn by the time they entered a ravine.  Apple Fritter was getting even more worried the closer they got.

“There!  There’s the cave!  No, Dusk!” she called out.  The ursa was standing in the cave mouth, roaring to the sky as Dusk lay on the ground in front of the cave.  Applejack and Twilight charged, the latter charging a spell as she ran.

“Now, Twi, hit ‘im!”

Twilight let a burst of magic fly, the amethyst beam striking the ursa dead in the shoulder.  The bear was knocked onto its back paws just in time to catch a flying buck to the center of its chest from Applejack.  The ursa went tumbling over backwards into the cave, growling in rage and surprise.  Twilight set her feet and charged up a spell.  She exhaled smoothly, steadying her mind as she formed a wall of force over the cave mouth, securing the ursa inside.

After making sure the beast was truly trapped, she turned to see the Apple family ponies beside the broken form of Dusk Chaser.  Twilight winced, and sent a flare up into the sky for Rainbow Dash to find.  The cyan pegasus was just barely visible against the grey sky as she streaked in ahead of the medical team.

Twilight walked over to her friends, a lump forming in her throat as she watched.  Fritter was crying openly and begging Dusk to hang on as he weakly tried to hold on to her hoof.  The yellow mare gathered up her straw hat and replaced it gently on Dusk’s head before collapsing against her cousin and breaking down.

As the unicorn knelt by Dusk, she noticed his chest was rising and falling very slowly.  There was blood leaking out of the corner of his mouth, which she gently brushed away.  He looked at her with pain-glazed eyes.

“Dusk, you’re crazy,” she said, her words choking off.

He looked at her and glanced over at Fritter and Applejack as the pegasi team landed and rushed over.  “Is—is she—okay?” he gasped, barely audible.

Twilight nodded.

“Wor—worth it.”

The pegasi medics rushed in, allowing Twilight to gently levitate Dusk so they could slide the stretcher under him and strapped him in.  In a matter of moments, they were headed back to Ponyville, leaving the three friends with the grieving Apple Fritter.

Rainbow walked slowly over to the sobbing earth pony.  “You’ve, uh, you’ve been through a lot, huh?”  Fritter nodded.  “Hey, the docs at Ponyville Medical are great.  I’m sure they’ll have him back on his hooves in no time.”

Apple Fritter took one last sniffle and sat back from her cousin’s embrace.  She rubbed her eyes to clear them.  “He’s—he’s pretty tough,” she admitted, quietly.

Rainbow Dash perked up suddenly as Fritter turned to face the other two ponies.  “Ohhh…” the pegasus said quietly.  “I had no idea you two were that close.  Wow, this is rough, I’m so sorry.”

Twilight looked at her, confused.  “What’s that mean?”

Rainbow looked from Twilight to Applejack and back again, getting nothing but blank looks from both of her friends.  “What, I mean—  That’s his feather, right?”

Applejack gave it a skeptical look.  “So?”

“That’s kind of a big deal to a pegasus,” she said.  “It’s a very special symbol.”

Apple Fritter blushed slightly in spite of her worry.  “He did admit he loves me.”

Rainbow shook her head.  “Nuh uh, it’s more than just that.”  She frowned slightly, as though trying to put her words in the proper order.  “Look, flying is everything to a pegasus.  It’s what we do.”  She spread her wing as an illustration.  “Our wings aren’t that large compared to our bodies.  If we lose even one feather it affects our ability to fly a lot more than it would a bird, so by giving up a feather you’ve basically crippled yourself until it grows back.  He’s saying that you’re more important even than flying.”  She looked directly at Fritter.  “Among most pegasi, that’s basically a marriage proposal.”

It was the sounds that came back to Dusk first—the steady beep of a heart monitor, the rasp of sanitized sheets against fur, the purposeful hoofsteps outside.  Before his eyes even opened, he knew where he was.  He waited for enough strength to come back to him to open his eyes, needing to see his surroundings to confirm that he wasn’t dead.

When his eyes finally cracked open, the first shape to resolve itself against the soft overhead lighting was the purple form of Twilight.  Oh, thank you, Celestia.  He fought the urge to cry as she leaned over and noticed his awakening.

“Hey there,” she said quietly, brushing her mane out of her face.

“Hey,” he croaked in a raspy voice.

Twilight floated over a glass of water and straw, holding it where he could reach it.  “How are you feeling?”

He took a few sips of the water.  “I feel like I got beat up by an ursa, thanks for asking.”  He sighed.  “What was the damage?”

She frowned.  “Pretty extensive.  You’ve been here for a full day already.  Compound wing fracture, broken right leg and two ribs, internal bleeding and a concussion.”  She put the glass back on the table.  “Please, please stop doing things like this every time it rains.  You’re going to give me an ulcer.”

“Sorry.  I didn’t really have time to think it over.”

“That ain’t the only thing you didn’t think over,” Applejack said from behind Twilight, walking up to the bedside.  “Rainbow Dash explained that feather ya’ll gave Fritter.  She’s a mite flustered over the whole thing.”

Dusk winced.  “I know, I know.  It wasn’t fair to her to force the issue like that.  I just—I knew that I was going to die in that cave.  That was the idea, or I thought it was supposed to be.  It was the sacrifice Celestia told me about, and I didn’t want to leave anything unsaid.”  He looked over to the bedside table where Apple Fritter’s hat sat among a few scattered cards and a large bunch of balloons from Pinkie Pie and nodded to Applejack.  “Take it.  Take her hat and return it to her.”  He turned his face away.  “Tell her she can make her decision with no pressure from me.  She can do whatever she wants with the feather, no hurt feelings.”

Applejack picked up the hat regretfully.  “No offense, sugarcube, but I’m not sure this is the best way to handle things.”

“Well, I’ll be here for at least a week, so she’s got time.”  He shifted his weight off of his wings and winced.  “Just—just let her know that I was—that I am—sincere,” he said quietly.  “If she’d take a broken wreck of a pony, that is.”

Applejack leaned over and gently tussled his mane.  “Sugarcube, no matter what, you’re a fine pony.  Git well soon, ya hear?” she said and trotted out the door, leaving the housemates alone.

“Dusk, you know the princess never really said you had to die, right?” Twilight offered.

He looked at her, uncomprehending.  “But, she said it: ‘the greatest sacrifice’.  What else could it have meant?”

“Quite a few of the old Equestrian philosophers have debated whether dying in somepony’s place is the greatest sacrifice there is.  Many think it is, but a few would say that dying is easy, that it’s much harder—and therefore much more of a sacrifice—to live completely for somepony else instead.”  She leaned in and gave him a gentle but warm hug.  “I think that’s what Celestia was implying.  You’ll always have your memories, but as long as you isolate yourself, they’ll have power over you.  Having the mission of caring for another pony and putting them first will give you a purpose.  It will allow you to keep your memories without falling into them.”

Twilight stood back from the bed and looked at the assorted get-well cards on the table, and picked up one in particular.  “Think about it, Dusk, when have you been happiest lately?  What’s given you the most hope?”  She put the card down on his lap, and he opened it with his good hoof.  The card was as vibrantly orange as the filly who had signed it.  “I think I know one young pony in particular who can tell you when that was,” Twilight said, a pleased smile on her face.

Dusk could feel a tear sliding down his cheek as he read the card again and again.  Her father even signed it…

Twilight wished him good night and walked away, leaving Dusk alone with his thoughts for another night.

It turned out to be more than a week before Dusk was allowed to be released.  While the doctors waited for his bloodwork to level out, they had him doing all sorts of physical therapy on his injured limbs.  He made a specific point to be as polite as possible to the hospital staff this time.  The casts were removed before he left, though his wing still had to be taped up, but he could move everything without too much pain.

He stalled on the grass outside the hospital, trying to enjoy the sun and fresh air.  He knew exactly where his first stop had to be, but he was a bit hesitant to get there.  What if she said no?  What if I scared her away?  The exact same thoughts he had been hashing over in his mind for the last week came back again and again.  He wondered if he might have already used up all the bravery he had—maybe that was why his hooves didn’t seem to want to work anymore.

Dusk took a deep breath, steeled himself, and started walking towards the other end of town and Sweet Apple Acres.

Word of his fight with the ursa had clearly gotten around town, because he kept getting greetings and congratulations on his recovery from ponies he had never actually met before.  He thanked each pony, even if in a slightly distracted manner.  He seemed to be moving automatically now, his hooves remembering the route even though his mind was paying no attention.  It was only a few minutes before he crossed the small stream and the borders of Ponyville’s downtown district.

Just before he crested the last hill before the gate, he froze.  He knew that once he went in that gate, that was it, there was no turning back.  He tried to take a deep breath to steel himself, but it caught in his throat.  His hooves were shifting backwards just slightly.

“Having second thoughts, my little pony?”

Dusk jumped as the smooth voice startled him.  He spun around and went to his good knee in front of the Sun Goddess.  “Princess, you scared me!”

She laughed quietly at his response, beckoning him to get back up.  “Now, now, enough of that.”  Dusk stood and looked into Celestia’s face, taking comfort in the joyful emotion she showed.

“How—why are you here?” he asked, bewildered by her presence.

“Did you really think my faithful student wouldn’t write me a letter about one of the bravest deeds Ponyville has ever witnessed?”

He stood, dumbfounded.  “Oh.”

“I have been keeping track of you as best I could.  You have come such a very long way, Dusk Chaser.  So why are you hesitating now?  Getting cold hooves?”

“More like old fears resurfacing.”  He frowned, looking away.  “I just—it’s always the ‘what ifs’ that keep haunting me.  What if Fritter rejects me?  What if I lose her, too?  What if my—what if Elegy wouldn’t have approved…”

Celestia put a gentle hoof under Dusk’s chin, raising his head back up.  “I would find it very hard that a pony as wonderful as you describe wouldn’t be proud of you, and I can’t think of any pony who would begrudge you a chance to live again.”

He stopped, pondering over her words from the last time they had met.  “Princess, you told me that the ‘greatest sacrifice’ would be the only thing that would let me move on from my wife’s death.  What did you really mean?”

She smiled warmly at him.  “The greatest sacrifice is an endless sacrifice, Dusk.  It is the daily choice to put yourself at the service of another.  It is the heaviest burden and the hardest task, but also the greatest reward.”

Dusk smiled as he thought over her words.  “Princess, thank you.  Thank you for everything.”  He took a step forward and gave the Princess of the Sun a heartfelt embrace.  “I think I have somepony I need to talk to,” he said as he stepped back.  Without waiting to see if she was leaving, Dusk turned and trotted down the path towards the farm.

He caught sight of the gate just over the hill rise, and his heart jumped into his throat.  Would she be waiting there?  Would there just be a note and his feather returned to him?  Would she—

He crested the hill, and his mind went silent.  His heart left his throat and leaped clean out of his body.

Sitting on the fencepost right next to the gate was Apple Fritter’s hat, his feather tucked into the hatband.

He broke into a sprint, ignoring his hurting limbs, headed towards the group of ponies waiting for him on the front porch of the farmhouse.

Epilogue – Octavarium

The library had been too small.  Supposedly, the Party Pony of Ponyville had managed to fit over 50 ponies into the library for Twilight’s first bash, but she had run out of room for her latest work, so it had ended up spilling out into the town square.  Dusk stood near the fountain and marveled at everything going on around him.  There were ponies everywhere, and they were all wearing a similar giant grin.  Pinkie had completely outdone herself.

Initially, she had thrown some huge fits when Dusk had refused to let her throw him a welcome party, and he had managed to delay her for almost a full year, but Pinkie had finally had her day.  On top of that, it was the first time she had gotten to plan for so many things to celebrate in one party before.  Her grin upon finding out that she would be throwing a “Welcome To Ponyville/Dusk Saved Apple Fritter From An Ursa/Dusk & Fritter Wedding Party” had threatened to unhinge the top half of her head.

The combination party had started almost four hours ago, and even though the sun was setting, it showed no signs of slowing down.  When the party had started there had been three whole cakes baked by Pinkie herself, with a four-tiered monolith of a wedding cake as the centerpiece.  Almost all of these were now gone, and the mare and stallion cake toppers had disappeared some time ago.

Dusk felt a touch on his wing.  He looked over to see Apple Fritter, having long since discarded her wedding dress, running a hoof lightly over the wedding band clipped around the leading edge of his wing.  He felt a surge of pride, as he did every time he saw that slender gold band encircling her hoof.  He reached over and stole the hat off her head, complete with his feather still in the hatband, and put it on his own head, sticking his tongue out at her playfully.

She smiled warmly up at him.  “So,” she said, just loud enough for him to hear, “is it anything like the first time?”

He thought for a few moments, going slightly distant, but quickly returning.  “Nothing like it.  This is…” he left off, waiting for the words to come to him.  The first time he had been so much more emotional—almost giddy.  Now he felt happy, but more peaceful and content with his life.  Everything felt whole again.  “… just right.”

He gave her a tender nuzzle and looked out of the chaos of the party, from Pinkie Pie’s sing-along over near the cider tent to the entire Apple Family’s horseshoe tournament grudge match.  “It feels weird, though.  As if I’ve been here before, even though this is a new place for me.”  He chuckled.  “I still can’t believe you said ‘yes’ to a damaged pony like me.”

She laughed back at him.  “I wouldn’t say ‘damaged’, myself.  You know there’s no shame in going through what you have.”  He put his wing over her back and pulled her close.  She looked around and then up at him conspiratorially.  “Do you think it would be alright if we left yet?” she asked.

Dusk raised an eyebrow.  “Got somewhere you need to be?”

She winked at him in a way that made him shiver.  “Yes.  Our new house, if you take my meaning,” she said, trotting off towards their home.

Dusk glanced around a bit and ran eagerly after her.

The End

Prologue – Panic Attack

Open your eyes, Dusk.

He couldn’t do it.  He knew what was going to be there when he did.  Just like it was last time he looked.

Do it.  It’s not real.

It had to be, because everything seemed quite real.  He could smell the pungent odor of blood.  He could feel the cold bite of rain on his back.  He could hear the gentle patter of the drops on paving stones.

It couldn’t have happened.

Didn’t it?  Was he just feeling these things because—?

None of this happened to you.  This tragedy was for somepony else.

Oh, well, that was a relief.

Dusk Chaser slowly cracked his eyes open and found himself still on the side of the deserted night-time street.  The rain still fell steadily, the lamps were still dark, and the shadows were still just as deep as before, even if their menacing features seemed further away somehow.  The bodies were still there, too: the brown unicorn stallion and yellow earth pony mare, both lying on the ground, still and silent.

You didn’t know them.  They aren’t part of you.

Why did he feel like he should know at least one of them?  Dusk shook his head in an attempt to clear it.  He felt as if a whole swarm of bees was inside it, buzzing around and deafening him with constant motion and noise.  His gaze drifted down towards his hooves as the noise in his head became louder and louder, pressing in his head painfully.  Was the pain only in his head?  He saw the ugly, deep gash in his leg.  Blood ran slowly down and pooled on the rain-slicked cobbles.

Everything around Dusk went deathly silent.  This never happened.  This is a lie.  You have to leave.Get out of here!  Dusk turned and took off down the street, running as hard as he could, wings flared in panic as he sought an open area to take flight in.  The constant noise and confusion in his head almost drowned out the pain in his leg.  Every door and window hid someone who would finish him off like those other ponies.  The only coherent thought in his head was the intense desire to escape—to get away from wherever he was.

He rounded a bend, hooves clattering and sliding on the wet pavement, and saw the outer wall of Canterlot.  He charged, wings outstretched, ready to escape off a waiting balcony.  He leaped off the wall and felt his stomach lurch as he suddenly started to fall.  His wings did nothing but thrash uselessly in the wind, spinning him around.  The constant flashes of lightning showed the mountain rushing up to meet him.  The sloped face of the mountain slammed into him like the hoof of an angry god, sending him tumbling down wildly.  Dusk tucked himself up, instinctively trying to protect his wings, and waited for the end to come, wondering if he’d even be alive at the bottom.

He finally tumbled to a halt, his body a tangled mass of limbs, and just lay where he was.  Wha— where, am I dead?  He tried to straighten out his legs, and groaned in pain.  Oh, Celestia, not dead.  Too much— gotta get away. He struggled back  to all four hooves and looked back up at the mountainside he just slid down, unconsciously flinching from the raindrops falling towards his face.  What in Equestria happened up there?  I have to… to… something.

He lowered his head back down, shaking the precipitation off his face.  His head was pounding, his mind was swirling, and the only thought he could grasp was to get away as fast as possible.  His shaking hooves slowly began to carry him off, with no particular direction, into the rainy night.

Chapter 4 – Learning to Live

Dusk lay on his back on the small bed.  The ceiling hadn’t moved in at least half an hour—he had been watching.  He pawed at his eyes and yawned.  Lack of sleep aside, he might have a chance at having a good day today.  It was always apparent when he was going to have a bad one; the cold sweat was a dead giveaway.

The last two weeks had fallen into a distinct rhythm.  He had found that getting through a whole night without being disturbed was a luxury he wasn’t often granted.  The nightmares were much more common.  Dusk had heard ponies use “haunted by dreams” as a metaphor, but the phrase was all too real to him now.  He knew he had woken Twilight up at least once as the nightmares got to him, and while she had been tactful enough not to say anything about it, she had to know how often he lost sleep over his dreams.

This can’t last, Dusk thought mournfully.  She’s gonna get sick of me soon.  I’m just a burden on her, and she’s tried to do so much for me already.

He rolled over and stared at the shelves full of unused books for a change.  His host really had gone out of her way for him.  Since he moved in she had been not only housing and feeding him but also introducing him to her friends to get him used to being around other ponies, talking with him about his life, and ever so carefully avoiding the delicate topics.  She learned fairly quickly that he was not open to talk about what happened to him.  At best he was frustrated at what he couldn’t or didn’t want to remember, and at worst—  He preferred to not think about that.  The two had walked on eggshells around each other enough already.

Nothing else to do.  I guess I might as well get up and face the day.  He sighed, levering himself out of the bed.  Again.

Twilight sat at the breakfast table and tried to remain calm.  The Princess had written her a return letter that morning, which lay in front of her as she read it yet again.

My dearest Twilight,

While it is unusual to hear from you without a friendship report attached, I always love to get a letter, no matter the circumstances.  I must admit, though, the situation you’ve related to me is certainly a sad one.  To answer your questions, we haven’t received any reports of missing ponies in Canterlot, though there have been a few other incidents.  Because some of these are still being investigated by the Canterlot Guard, I can’t say much about them, and while I do have a guess—and only a guess—about Dusk’s story, I feel it better to not say anything at this time lest I be proven wrong.

I’m afraid there isn’t a whole lot of information I can give you about issues such as Dusk’s.  There hasn’t been a great deal of research into the subject, and the last time anypony observed serious symptoms like Dusk’s was thousands of years ago, after the Gryphon War.  Studying the mind is only now starting to get over the taboo it’s always been associated with.  It still requires both my personal approval and a vote of the council to conduct research on ponies, so nothing gets done quickly.  I’m afraid that a unicorn’s ability to work magic inside other pony’s headsmakes them uncomfortable and that makes finding volunteers tricky as well.

There are, however, a few selected works I don’t think you would have available in your shelves.  I will be sending you a volume by Samuel Neighlor.  While his theories are more philosophy than science, his ideas are still some of the best guesses we have into the ‘why’ behind the workings of the mind.

I hope you are able to help this stallion, my student, if not by healing his mind then perhaps just by helping him learn to live again.

Princess Celestia

P.S.  As requested, I will also be sending the bestiary for Fluttershy to peruse.  I hope she finds it fascinating!

If nothing else, Twilight had learned over the years that while the Princess’ habit of rarely providing direct answers could seem unhelpful, she was usually paving the way for Twilight to discover the answers on her own.  While this knowledge was comforting, it did nothing to make the search any less maddening.

There was one line that jumped out at her, though— learn to live again.  She passed the phrase back and forth in her mind.  Would it really be that helpful?  Could she have been looking at this backwards?

Twilight nodded to herself.  She knew what she had to try next.

Dusk walked into the kitchen, trying to do his best to present a chipper attitude.  Twilight didn’t look like she was buying it.

“Come here, Dusk.  Let’s talk for a minute,” she said.

Well, that’s that.  Not that I can blame her or anything.  Maybe I can sleep in the square tonight.  He walked over and sat across the table from her, waiting on her to open the discussion.

“Dusk, I think we need to change things up a bit.”

Dusk’s eyes fell.  “I’m sorry, Twilight.  I knew this was gonna come eventually.”

The unicorn tensed, looking bewildered.  “Wait, what?  What was coming?”

Dusk froze, quite confused himself.  “Um… aren’t you asking me to leave?”

“Oh, no!  No, Dusk, I wouldn’t kick you out.”  She relaxed.  “Why in the name of Harmony would you think I would kick you out?”

“Because I’m a total pain in the flank!  I know it.  I’ve made your life nothing but trouble since I moved in here.  I’m a huge burden, Twilight!  I sleep in your house, I eat your food, and I can’t do anything to repay you.”

Twilight got up and walked around the table to stand facing Dusk.  “Any effort on my part is a gift between friends.  I’ve spent four years now studying friendship, and one of the hardest and most important lessons is that you never leave your friends, especially not when they need help.”  She sighed quietly.  “And you definitely need help, Dusk.  I’ve been hoping that things would get better, but I think they’ve gotten worse, really.”

Dusk tried to shake off her words.  “No, not worse.  Really, I think it’s been getting better.”

She met his gaze cooly.  “Oh?  Is there another pegasus in your room who wakes up yelling?”

He winced.  “So you do hear me.”

“Of course.  You’re in the room right below mine.”  Twilight put a friendly hoof on his shoulder, and Dusk was mildly proud that he didn’t actually flinch this time.  “Look, I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and we may be going about the whole situation the wrong way.”

“How so?”

She trotted out to the library and Dusk followed close behind.  “Your mind is injured, much like your leg was.”  Dusk stopped and stared at the newly forming red scar on his leg, where the fur was growing in.  Twilight continued, “To extend the metaphor, we’ve been treating it like bed rest so far, but an injury almost always requires therapy of some kind, using the affected body part to strengthen it back to where it was before.”

He wasn’t quite following the metaphor.  “So… I need to exercise my mind?”

“Sort of.  What I was really thinking of was something to get your mind working on something other than your situation.  Simply put, you need a hobby.”

“Like stamp collecting?  Or that thing you do with yarn and needles?”

“Crochet.”

“Bless you.”

Twilight put a hoof to her face in exasperation.  “Anything physical would be ideal, and you could—“  She stopped suddenly.  “Hey, here’s an idea—you don’t want to be a burden and you need something to do.  What if you could solve both of your problems at once?”

“Um, what did you have in mind?”

“Dusk, I think you should get a job.”

Dusk winced again.  “Ouch, I think I just heard my father,” he deadpanned.

Twilight gasped at him.  “Was that two jokes in one day?”  She grinned madly.  “Maybe you are getting better.  Let’s go get some lunch, and then we’ll see what’s available around town for you to do.”

“Well, that could have gone better,” Dusk sighed.

“I had no idea the Ponyville Post Office was so overstaffed.  The only pony I ever see around is Derpy.”  Twilight looked up at the sky as they walked back across town.  “Hey, you’re a pegasus; maybe Rainbow Dash can give you a place with the weather team!”

Dusk flapped his wings ruefully, barely shifting his weight, much less lifting off the ground.  “Can’t exactly fly, remember?”

“Oh yeah.”

“I’m sorry, Dusk, but we just can’t take on any additional staff,” said Mayor Mare.  “It’s nothing against you, you see, it’s just money.  The Princess has made it perfectly clear that she can’t provide us any additional funding except in the case of national emergency.  At least, not until we pay off the loan we had to take out to”—she paused, teeth gritting—”fix City Hall after somepony”—her left eye started to twitch worryingly—”destroyed it,” she finished woodenly.

Dusk glanced over at Twilight, and they shared the same awkward look.  The two decided to get out of the mayor’s mane as quickly as possible.

“Okay, Twilight, I like sweets as much as anypony, but what made you think that I could get a job at Sugarcube Corner?  I’ve never baked anything in my life!”

“So it didn’t make any sense; I still thought it was worth it.  The Cakes might not have seen any potential, but Pinkie liked you.”  She laughed.  “By the way, you still have some frosting in your mane.”

“I really am sorry, darling, but you know what kind of shop I have,” Rarity said, in the midst of floating fabric swatches.  “Custom orders, small runs, detailed work.  I just don’t have the need for help.”

Twilight sat on her haunches as her enthusiasm finally ran out.  “I know.  It was a long shot.  It’s just that we’ve been pretty much everywhere else in Ponyville.”

Rarity magically pinned a pair of reddish swatches to a hat form and let the others float back into their drawer.  “Really?  Have you asked—“

“Yes,” Dusk and Twilight said in unison.

Rarity frowned.  “What about—“

“Tried that.”

“Oh, do stop that,” the designer huffed.  “I was merely going to ask you if you had been out to talk to Applejack yet.”

Twilight ran a hoof through her mane.  “Didn’t AJ hire all the help she needed for harvest months ago?”

“Yes, well, that was the case.”  Rarity stopped and stared at the hat.  “Which one is better, do you think, dear?”

Dusk stared.  “Um… aren’t they the same color?”

Rarity blew out an exasperated sigh.  “Honestly, Twilight, he’s worse than you are when it comes to fashion,” she grumbled, making her choice of colors herself.  “Anyway, I was saying that Caramel had to leave town due to family issues.  I understand his mother was ill and he was going home to help out.  I do believe our friend Applejack could still use a hoof or two around the farm.”

Dusk perked up immediately.  “Well, that sounds fine.“

Twilight looked thoughtful for a few seconds.  “You know, that really is a pretty good idea.  Thanks, Rarity!”

“So, let me git this straight.”

Applejack leaned casually against the fence and chewed thoughtfully on the straw in her mouth.  Twilight and Dusk stared at her with hopeful grins on their faces.  She spat the straw out.  “Your pegasus friend there wants a job.  Here.  On mah farm.”

Dusk nodded emphatically.  “That’s it, Miss Applejack.”

“Pegasus.  Not earth pony.”

Twilight interjected.  “He doesn’t have to plant; it’s harvest time, right?  Even if he can’t help in the field, surely there’s something he could do around the farm.”

The farmer looked away, frowning slightly.  Dusk was going almost cross-eyed from anxiety waiting for her to make a decision.  Applejack glanced sideways at him, expression deadpan.  “And you’re sure he won’t try to kill us if we offer him an apple?”

Dusk felt his heart fall right into his stomach.  “I—I didn’t—”

The orange earth pony doubled over laughing.  “Oh, Dusk, I’m just messin’ with ya.  I’d be glad to give ya a job.”

Twilight beamed.  “Really?  That’s great!”

Applejack wiped a hoof across her teary eyes.  “Of course.  Applebuck season really kicks in next week, and I’m gonna be needed in the fields most’a the time.  Everypony will be plowin’ fields, plantin’ winter crops, or gatherin’ food in.  It wouldn’t hurt to have somepony doin’ the daily chores.  Frees me up to get some apples harvested!”

Dusk almost collapsed in gratitude.  “Oh, thank you Miss Applejack!”

She winced.  “Okay, first rule: you’ll be out of a job in a heartbeat if ya ever call me ‘Miss’ again, we square?”

“Yes.  Yes.  Thank you.”

“Okay, show up here in the morning, the earlier the better.  We’ll see if me and Mac can’t make a farmer outta a pegasus.”

Dusk collapsed on a hay bale, choosing to drench himself with the water bucket in front of him instead of drinking it, scowling at the sounds coming from behind him.  Applejack strode up, trying to get her laughter under control.  “Had enough, sugarcube?” she teased, leaning on the water pump, forelegs crossed nonchalantly.

As far as first days went, this was one of the toughest he’d ever endured.  He showed up on the farm at daybreak only to find that the Apple clan was up well ahead of him.  Applejack gave him the tour of the estate and wasted no time running him through various tasks to see what he could do.  He tried his hoof at several jobs and found that he didn’t really have it where it counted to be a true farm pony.  His rear hooves were still killing him from his first attempt at applebucking, and he had almost pulled his shoulder out of its socket trying to move a plow.  The general labor was hard enough, though.  Dusk hadn’t had to rely on his physical strength much in his life, and now he was getting a crash course in manual labor.

Big Macintosh hadn’t helped any.  He had taken one look at Dusk, declared him “awfully scrawny,” and ordered that before lunch every day he had to exercise.  The pegasus had been required to run laps of the orchard, lift hay bales, and do push-ups, both with his hooves and his wings.  He was somewhere beyond exhausted.

Dusk turned to glare at his boss, who burst out laughing again.  “Oh, come on, you never done any hard work before?”

“Oh, I probably have, but not in years.”  He sighed heavily.  “I haven’t worked this hard since I enlisted in the REA.”

Applejack grabbed his bucket and refilled it from the water pump.  “Oh?  A military pony?” she asked, passing the water over to him.

He accepted it gratefully, taking several large gulps.  “Sorta.  I enlisted, but I was in the information corps.  I was a recon flier.  I didn’t really do much physical training after basic was over.”

“Huh,” she grunted, a thoughtful expression on her face.  “So, Twilight told me I should keep an eye on ya, see how you were handlin’ things.”

Dusk was quiet for a moment.  He hadn’t thought about it until now.  He hadn’t thought about much of anything aside from what his next task was, and the list had been fairly long.  Keeping so busy hadn’t left him any time to remember that he even had problems, and when he stopped he was so tired his brain just gave up and switched off.

“Honestly, I’m starting to think that Twilight was on to something here.  All this slave-driving you’re doing to me has kept me too busy to focus on anything else.”

His boss chuckled.  “Glad to hear it, sugarcube.  How ‘bout some dinner?  We’re all gettin’ together for a meal to celebrate the harvest season.  We even invited Twilight in honor of your first day.”

He enthusiastically accepted her offer, mostly because it meant he didn’t have to walk across town in his current state.  He shook himself dry and the two ponies headed back to the farmhouse, where Dusk entered into controlled chaos.  He remembered several names from his introductions that morning.  Granny Smith was running the kitchen like a general, directing Apple Bloom at the stove as she put finishing touches on several pastries.  Big Mac was carting plates and trays back and forth to the picnic table on the front lawn, loading up the various delicacies.  Applejack joined the other farm hands as they milled about, helping where they could fit in.  A white filly chatted animatedly with her orange friend in the corner, the latter waving her hooves as she recounted some experience or another.  From her movements, it seemed rather exciting.

Dusk found himself tensing slightly at the sight of so many ponies so close, but it was mostly out of habit.  He found that he wasn’t feeling the same fearful anxiety he had become accustomed to.

“Hey there, how was your first day?” Twilight asked, trotting up to his side.

“There certainly was a lot to take in,” he said, watching the scene in front of them.

“Sort of like this?”

“This is a lot, too.  But it is less painful, so there’s that.”  He turned to her.  “Seriously, Twilight, thanks.  This was a great idea.  Instead of hurting in my head, now I just hurt in my legs.  And my flank.  And my chest.  And probably even my mane.”  He smiled, enjoying the happy feeling of the home.

His friend smiled as the dinner bell rang out, summoning them all to the meal.  A dozen-or-so ponies of every color found places on the benches surrounding the large picnic table.  Dusk found himself seated near the end, between Twilight and the orange filly with the unruly magenta mane who kept up a stream of argument with the other young ones as they all piled up their plates.

“Hey mister, how ‘bout some applesauce?” Apple Bloom said, grinning as she passed a large bowl across the table to him.  Dusk’s face reddened a bit as he gave an embarrassed grin and quiet thanks back.

“I haven’t seen you before,” said the orange filly, turning to him.  “What’s your name?”

“My name’s Dusk Chaser.  What’s yours?”

“Scootaloo.  Are you a friend of Applejack’s?”

Dusk buttered some bread as he replied.  “Employee.  I just started today.”

“Um… you’re a pegasus.”

“Nothing gets by you, does it?” he replied.  Twilight giggled next to him.

“What’re you doing on a farm?  Growing stuff isn’t your talent, is it?” she questioned around a mouthful of apple turnover.

He sighed slightly.  “Nope.  I just needed some work, and I can’t fly, so working here is something I could actually do.”

The filly dropped her fork.  “Yo—you can’t fly?”

“Not really, no.”

Scootaloo stared at him with a strange expression on her face.

“What?” he asked, checking his face for stray bits of food.

“I—I’m not really any good at flying either,” she admitted.  “I’ve been working at it for years.”

“Really?  How old are you?” he asked, taking a large bite from a juicy apple.

“Twelve.  Getting close to thirteen, though, and my wings only really started growing out this year.”

Dusk thought back.  “I knew a few colts in my class in school who were late bloomers.”

Scootaloo leaned her head onto her hoof, moping.  “Yeah, yeah.  Everypony says that kind of stuff.  Doesn’t make it feel any better.  Rainbow Dash says I should work on exercises to build my wing strength up.”

He chuckled.  “Big Mac told me pretty much the same thing today.  He’s got me working my flank off just so I can keep up around the farm.”

The filly looked up at him, a grin spreading across her face.  “I guess we’re kind of in the same boat then, huh?”

“Seems that way, yeah.”  He watched her face as she pondered this, seeing familiar emotions on it.  He had recognized the look of a pony who had always thought they were the only one in their situation.  The two lapsed into silence as they ate their meals.  Dusk felt good about talking to the young pony.  It seemed like he had given her a sense of something; perhaps it was hope.  He felt a small joy at it, lightening his spirit.

Dusk looked across the table at all the ponies happily eating and chatting and, for the first time in weeks, felt a small sense of home.  Though he didn’t know most of the ponies beyond their names, it just felt right to be a part of it.  This was a kind of feeling he could get used to.