Night of the Loving Dead
love never dies
Lemon Frisk looked at the murky pink haze in front of him, and turned to glance down behind him. Of course, the place he really wanted to glance at wasn't there; it was on the other side of the mountain. So he just glanced down at the path he'd taken last time, in the other direction. The path out of Canterlot.
It had been about a year and a half since the events in Whinnyapolis had changed his life. So much had happened. The Whinnyapolis Collective thrived, and for the first time since Equestria had been destroyed, he'd been truly happy.
And yet, he had to do this.
The Stable residents had been worried, of course, and Misty Cloud doubly so; he'd told her enough about this damned place to dissuade her from ever visiting it. And now he was going back there himself. Because, last year, like all those years before it, he hadn't felt happy on Hearts and Hooves day. Despite having Misty with him, he'd felt miserable. And this year would be no different.
"I went through all this too, remember?" Misty had said. "You feel like you're betraying her."
"That's stupid. She's been dead for two bloody centuries," he had replied. But he knew she'd been right anyway.
"So what do I do now?" he had asked, hesitantly.
Misty had just shaken her head. "That's up to you, Lemon. Whatever gives you peace."
And thus, he'd gotten the bloody idiotic idea to go back there. To her. To Canterlot. To the old garden in Stable One which served as graveyard for those residents who, unlike himself, hadn't gotten back up after they'd died.
He plunged into the pink cloud and breathed in the necromantic poison. How strange, to feel nostalgic about that smell. About the poison that had killed him.
* * *
It felt just as strange to walk back into the big cog wheel door of Stable One. Like... coming home to your parents' house after having moved out years ago. This was the place where it all started. Where, about a year and a half ago, he'd randomly decided to leave Canterlot completely. Why did he leave? He still didn't quite know. Some kind of wanderlust just... appeared. He never could quite pin down exactly what it was that had made him go. But, in hindsight, he was happy that he had.
The ghoul leaning against the wall inside the Stable hallway cocked his head and frowned. "Lemon Frisk?" he asked, somewhat incredulously.
"Hey, Telltale." Lemon said, and walked on.
"Woah woah, pal," the other ghoul said, running after him. "What's up? I thought we'd never see you again!"
Lemon Frisk smirked. "Well, as you can clearly see, I did not get eaten by any monsters."
"Really?" Telltale said with a smug grin. "That's not what Buoyant Waves said."
Lemon groaned. "Oh, great. He's been here. Of course he's been here. What did he say?"
"Said you got hitched," Telltale said. "To a smoothcoat, no less. Must be one freaky mare." He suddenly frowned and looked at his pipbuck. "Hey, Lemon. Why the hell are you here, then? Today of all days. It's Hearts and—" His eyes widened. "Oh. Shit. Hey, I didn't mean to..." He sighed. "You were married, weren't you? And she's..."
Lemon nodded. "Here."
"Right," Telltale said, giving him an unsure look. "You, uh, go on then, pal. Go visit her."
Telltale looked as Lemon Frisk made his way down the corridor, in what he knew to be the direction of the old gardens. He nodded sadly. "We all got loved ones there."
* * *
Lemon Frisk looked at the chunk of concrete they'd put down as Blossom Tree's headstone, and the smaller one of his son, Lemonade Sparkle, beside it. Memories of a corpse melted into a wall and the unliving eyes of the foal standing beside it flashed through his head, but he pushed them away; that wasn't his family. This place brought back those horrible memories of the end, but he knew his real wife and son were in there, if he just dug a little deeper...
He frowned and glanced at the graves. Poor choice of words, even if he hadn't said them out loud. He couldn't help but chuckle, though; that errant silly thought had broken the morose atmosphere, and that made it all so much easier. She always laughed at his jokes, no matter how weird they'd been...
And there it was. The memory of her shrill laugh. He smirked; everypony thought her laugh was such an annoying sound, but that made it all the more endearing to him; it was so undoubtedly hers. The wide curious eyes of his foal were next; the amazement and wonder as Lemonade Sparkle listened to his made-up endeavours of Daring Do attempting to tackle the various household tasks a parent had to do.
"So," he finally said. "Here I am, then." He looked at the name carved into the gravestone. Between his old squad mates and this, he had far more experience carving names into stones than anypony should have in a life time. And that was in his original life time, too.
"I know I haven't been visiting... well, at all, I guess. I avoided this whole place even when I still lived here. And I won't make any excuses; I know what I'd really been been avoiding was you."
He shifted uncomfortably and stared at the ground. "So, uh... I know I should probably not feel as conflicted about this as I do—there's the whole 'till death do us part' thing, after all—but... I met someone new. We kinda got married, too, though in all fairness that was somewhat by accident." He smiled somewhat awkwardly. "Not that I didn't want to, though."
He imagined her reaction to this. Not his gut insecurities, but her real reaction, taking all the facts into account. He could almost feel her, draped over his back as she usually was when he was sitting like this, whispering sweet nothings into his ear.
"It's about time, you know."
Lemon frowned and looked up. He looked down again. Yes, that actually was what she would say, wasn't it? Huh.
"You changed after we died. It hit you too hard. You fell, and you never got back up. And yet, here you are at last. That's because of her, isn't it?"
Lemon Frisk smiled and nodded. "Yeah. It is." He looked at the gravestones. "All that was left of you was... this, and 'this' was just far too painful to remember. So I just pushed it all away, and wandered around this place..."
"Like a zombie?"
Lemon blinked. "Oh, very funny. But, yeah."
"It wasn't all her, though," the imagined Blossom Tree voice in his head said. "You were the one that left. You took that first step."
"That just makes me feel more conflicted, though," he replied. "It took me two bloody centuries, and then the first thing I did was running farther away?"
"The first thing you did was creating some much-needed distance."
Lemon nodded. "You always did know how to twist my words against me."
Imaginary-Blossom bit his ear. "Hey now. None of that. So, that new mare... uh, it is a mare, right?"
"Have I ever given you the impression I played for both teams?"
"Well, you never know! So yeah. I assume you want my... approval or something, then?"
Lemon chuckled. "I feel silly now. I already know what you'd say."
"And I did. Well, you imagined I did. Unless this is my ghostly old self keeping you company. You'll never be sure, hee!"
Yes. This was right. This was the Blossom Tree he really remembered. The mare who played word games with him. The mare who eagerly waited to be swept off her feet into more of his silliness. Less confrontational than Misty, more prone to going with his flow, but she did it with a fierce determination that was all her own. And, to be fair, unlike Misty she never had to deal with the wreck of a person he became after her death.
He frowned. Well. Obviously. Because she was dead. Another weird throught there, huh.
He looked at the gravestone and smiled. "So, now what, then? I just... go?"
"Feel free to stay for a while. But not too long. You know she's waiting for you."
He nodded and nuzzled the empty space next to his head where her head would be, were she really draped over his back. "You're right. I'll just stay a while."
* * *
A few hours later, Lemon Frisk left the graveyard, then Stable One, and then Canterlot. A couple of years later a little mare would emerge from a nearby Stable and events would be set in motion that would result in the destruction of the city hanging on the mountain. Lemon Frisk would never visit his family's graves again.
* * *
Somewhere, nowhere, a conversation took place.
"Is this really alright?" a young adult stallion asked. "I didn't imagine you'd be so mellow about it."
Blossom Tree smiled. "Are you kidding? He's finally getting on with his life. You expected me to be all 'vengeful jealous spectre' on him? Hah. We all just want those left behind to be happy, y'know."
"Yeah, but still... that's him! He was finally here, and now he's just... gone again."
Blossom smiled. "Good. You never tried to do anything, you know. Do you have any idea how hard it is for the dead to influence the world of the living?"
"He actively channelled you. That can't have been too hard."
Blossom Tree smirked. "Oh, not this. This was easy, yes. No, I meant the previous time."
The stallion's eyes widened. "You did that?"
"I had to! He was stuck! Just an errant thought. A weird brain knot. Setting things in motion. And it still took me more than a century to pull it off."
"You made him go away," he said morosely.
Blossom Tree shook her head. "You never knew him quite like I did, but even you should've seen that he wasn't meant to be like that. And you know how he's been doing now; I know you've been watching him. Looking back at the past two centuries, would you really take that away from him? We died, you know. The world goes to the living."
He gave her a grouchy look. "He died too. He should've been with us. Then we would all have moved on ages ago."
"That wasn't his fault. And we chose to stay, Lemonade Sparkle. Me, because he couldn't let me go, and I knew he'd come back for this some day. You, because you were never old enough to grasp these things, and nothing he did in all that time could teach you." She nodded as she watched the figure of Lemon Frisk walking through the wastelands, back to the place he now called his home. "But look at him now. He's alive again. That is a pony you can learn from. That's enough for me."
Lemonade Sparkle gave her a worried look. "So, you're... going, then?"
"Oh, yes. I'm going. There's an airship somewhere, moving on to great places. He came back. We talked. What more is there for me? I've hung around this place long enough." She smiled at her son. "I know you're not ready to go; not when things are finally moving again. So watch him, like you always have. Just, promise me, Lemonade, that you won't watch him with envy. Watch him shine as he shone back when we were all together. Be that wide-eyed foal once more. Learn from him. And when he is ready to move on... be there for him."
She walked away into a distance that wasn't distance, stopped, and turned back to the stallion, who looked much younger and smaller now; barely above the real age at which he died.
"I'll be waiting for you three."
Special perk: Guardian Angel: Someone is looking over you. You have the strange sensation you've had this perk for a long time...
