Happy Sunshine

I stayed again in my special chair, awaiting Pinkie Pie's new obstacle. Because, from the looks of her swollen, bloodshot eyes, she was in no mood for chatter. I stayed quiet, letting her build and brood, to take apart the little gremlins attacking her psyche. She stayed smiling in a curiously crooked way, to the right and showing her teeth in some, gruff expression of wellness.

"Doc... You ever been in love with someone, but they leave you because you're too clingy...?"

I instantly nodded and felt completely better about our therapy session. Because this was a situation I knew. This was a place I'd been and could actually answer her with. I scrawled a word down and made it 'relationships.'

"Yes, I have. I'm a specialist when it comes to being clingy. And pity sex, too."

I made her spit her drink out, which was just water, thankfully. But I sat still wiping us both dry with a spare towelette. It was rich and especially dry, pleasant against my coat and better against Pinkie's.

I pressed it against her thigh just to tease. She yelped and covered herself, glancing away with a 'horn dog...' We started again with our tired, but comfortable grins. Because we were both kindred souls, her and I, with history only we would ever know.

"Well... hehe, me too. Specially when we're talking about Rainbow Dash. I gave the girl whatever she wanted and I was always happy she was around. I did all sorts of things, y'know, I wrote poetry, I sung for her, hell I even got into hoof-boxing just to look good."

Pinkie lit a cigarette over the edge of the fainting chair. Unlike other psychologists, counselors, therapists and quacks, I let my patients make their own decisions in my office. No bullying. No peer-pressure. I trusted them as mature, reasonable adults to handle their drug problems. And if not, if they had a note from the front desk saying otherwise, or an ink stamp saying they couldn't, that's when I acted.

"But she... didn't stick around, you know. Guess it was my fault for being so boring. Maybe, I was just too bland for her."

That piqued my interest. Why would she say that. Pinkamina was not the most mundane pony around. In no universe was she anything near mundane. I would've said, if it weren't so biased, that she were the last pony I'd call 'boring.'

"Boring? I'm pretty sure that wasn't her reason, Pinkamina. Doest... do you have another reason in-mind. Because that sounds rather ludicrous. If you take into account Rainbow Dash and her recent anxiety episodes, perhaps she's just... scared."

We stayed inanimate like the ice in my glass, drowned with memories instead of Lethargy. I felt my own shatter to pieces when I remembered my last love. She was a young mare just barely the age of thirty. And she'd always come home and call me with her cellular. Day in and day out, we'd Scope. Scope was a video and voice and instant messaging communications software developed in Sweetden. At the time and even during the time of Pinkie there, it was, for the lack of a better word, paradise. No more awkward and stilted physical vicinity. No more odd stops in alleyways to get mugged, because you fell for a crooked Crabslist ad...

In retrospect... she was a lot like Pinkamina. Her hair was gold. And her eyes were violet. It was her cheery demeanor that drew me in. I was a gloomy mare back then, much gloomier than anypony in my family could handle. I lashed out. I kicked and I screamed. I did everything. But one thing... I never did, was understand ponies like my Surprise did.

The first day we met, I was in the rain, alone and boozed on Applejack Daniels. I met her eyes with hate and slurred 'at what art thou gandering?' and she replied 'doth you force me to say... the fairest maiden in all the land?'

And I fell for her right there, alone and down on my luck.

I stayed away from shattered memories of my beloved. I feared I would grieve her like I used to. It was complicated. The term, Celestia once educated me during an alcohol intervention, was 'complicated grief'. I would see her everywhere. I would delude myself into believing she would one day come back and kiss me goodnight. That we would shed no more tears and fly away forevermore, this was my dream; my irrational and desparate hope that my Surprise hadn't died in my hooves ten years ago. No, I told myself, clinging and clutching to her name every night at 10:30 sharp. She was still alive. And someday, she'd sweep me off my hooves and rescue from my booze-soaked misery.

I looked up from my notepad, my eyes bloodshot, my cheeks soaked with cold perspiration and tears. And Pinkamina was there too, holding my forehooves still.

"Luna...? Luna, what's wrong- you've been crying for an hour straight..."

"Oh I... I didn't notice. Would you kindly just- excuse yourself from the office, I must've been attacked by allergies."

I fumbled and I knocked my glass over in blurred confusion. I couldn't see anything. And my mind was shocked from abrupt transit. I heard her sniffle and then she held me still... holding me. I tried not to feel comfortable. I really did. But she was Pinkamina Diane Pie. And she looked just like my Surprise. Same downward mane when struck ill with depression. Same suicidal tendencies.

They even held me the same... So I held her back. And I jittered everywhere, remembering her blood on my hooves. And the last words she ever said to me.

'I... pulled the trigger. I couldn't live without you...'

I held her close, Pinkamina Diane Pie, the closest one to my Surprise,

and I kept her away from thoughts of brains on my coat, away inside

the way she went out, the way she shot her temple and died, leaving me to cry.