Author's Note

Warning: This chapter contains suicidal thoughts and actions.

Desperation

In truth, Lazuli had no idea where she was going.

Well, she did, in a way, know her exact destination. Her destination was nowhere, but it could have been anywhere. Her mind just willed her forward. Her wings flapped absently, more of a reflex than a conscious decision. She could have sworn she dozed off a few times, but the landscape below was ever-changing.

She stayed high above the treeline when the went over the Everfree, and flew for over an hour. Probably multiple, in fact, but she couldn’t properly keep track. She only stopped when the air started to get cold and she found herself staring at the snow-capped peaks of the Crystal mountains. They were too tall for her to fly to the top without passing out, and the air would be too cold if she went any further.

She landed on the ground, feeling the crunch of snow under her hooves. Although Draconies were cold-blooded, the average one wasn’t capable of surviving in such an environment.

For her, it was perfect.

Lazuli sat down in the snow, suppressing a shudder. It felt surprisingly good, especially as she gave her aching wings a rest against her back. Slowly, she closed her eyes. The wind softly blew around her, snowflakes pattering against her face and melting into cool water that dripped from her fur.

This is as good a place as any. She thought to herself, slowing her breathing and letting her muscles relax. With a dull fwump she flopped on her side in the snow, and fell asleep.

…

…

…

…

She opened her eyes to find herself standing in a meadow of grass and lilies, the moon’s luminance shimmering down on the surface of the plants and lighting the field in a way that Lazuli found far more pleasant than the sun’s blinding rays.

“You’ve been ignoring me.” She said out loud. There was no response.

She sighed and scuffed a hoof through the dirt. “I went to a lot of trouble for this, you know.”

“You’re insane.” Came a voice from behind her. She turned around to face Princess Luna, who was slowly walking towards her.

“Maybe.” Lazuli responded. “I’ll probably die.”

“Probably?! You’re lying in the snow, Lazuli. You are dying. All this, just to see me?”

“It’s a bit like that.”

Luna took a deep breath and came face-to-face with Lazuli, clearly having changed her size slightly to allow for more comfortable conversation. “Even a mare like you wouldn’t risk something like this if there were not a payoff. So, what is it you want?”

“I want you to stop hiding from me.” She moved slightly closer, now glaring Luna right in the eyes. “I want you to stop hiding anything from me.”

“Well that’s just unreasonable.”

Lazuli’s attitude changed from calm and almost depressed to angry and aggressive. She grabbed Luna by her chest-fur and reared up on her hind legs, dragging her face as close as it could be without telling her. “Listen to me. You’re not telling me something. You’re avoiding me for a reason. I’m having fucking mental breakdowns every other day and you’re not even writing back when I send you letters halfway through the night begging you to do something.”

“Let go of me.”

“It’s a dream, you’re not in any danger. Just like you never are. You don’t want to bother with ponies in the real world, but then you abandon them in their dreams too.”

Luna’s horn flashed blue and suddenly she and Lazuli were standing several feet apart. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what you want.”

“What do I want?! I sent you fifteen letters, princess. And I know you got them, because Celestia sent a letter back the one time I wrote to her.”

“I got no such thing.” Luna snorted.

“Don’t bullshit me!” Lazuli dashed forward with her tail raised, but Luna just knocked her back with a burst of magic. She started growling, her teeth grinding together. “You’re ignoring me! I helped you, I let you pull all the strings in my body but you don’t give a shit!”

Luna shook her head. “You are overreacting. If I always come into your dreams to soothe you like a child, how are you ever going to get past them?”

“I’m reliving my worst memories every day, Luna! You can’t act like you’re ignoring me for my own good, you don’t even write back!”

“I thought you couldn’t write.”

“I spend twenty minutes telling Twilight, or Fizzle, or Spike, or…whoever, telling them exactly what I want to tell you. They know more about me than you!”

“And why shouldn’t they? They’re your friends. I am a princess. And I have thousands of other dreams to watch over every night.”

Lazuli’s mind was in turmoil. She rubbed her temple with a hoof. “I…” She really wasn’t sure if she was doing the right thing here – or if she was even in the right. “I gave up everything my life had, and you told me I’d be fine. You told me. You promised I would be okay. And yet, I feel worse than I’ve ever felt. I have half a mind to sit out there in the snow until my heart gives out, because it’d be better than this!”

“Lazuli, do you want the truth?” Luna stepped closer. “I don’t care about you. Not as any kind of personal relationship goes. As far as I am concerned, we are not friends.” She started to walk in circles around her. “Your problems mattered to me when you were under royal care and protection. Now, you are the responsibility of Twilight Sparkle and the rest of your new caretakers.”

“Responsibility?!” Lazuli’s eyes narrowed. “That’s all I am?! I’m a thing? Something to get pawned off to another pony time after time until they’re sick of me and throw me out on the streets again?!”

Luna briefly paused, her eyes darting to the floor. “When you put it that way…” She looked back up and met Lazuli’s enraged gaze. “Yes. From a professional standpoint, you are a tool.”

“I’m a pony, for Faust’s sake!”

“You are a mentally deranged pony.”

“You haven’t helped!”

“There is nothing to be done. I do feel sorry for you, but only on the most basic of levels. I have seen ponies like you hundreds of times before, and the best way to deal with them is…let them fade away.”

Lazuli felt like she had been punched in the chest. Her heart physically ached, although it was only a dream. She slumped down, falling to one knee. She felt Luna’s hoof on her shoulder.

“Do not feel betrayed, Lazuli. This is simply something I can no longer pay my full attention to…or any of my attention, really.” She noted that the Dracony was shivering. “Besides. You have friends now – and while I may have put it a bit harshly before, you are truly a friend in their eyes, I believe. Fizzlepop has taken a liking to you.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

Luna pulled her hoof back. “Hrmph. Well I understand. Enjoy your journey back, should you choose to make it.”

“Enjoy your journey to Tartarus when that life of yours finally runs out…”

Lazuli’s vision faded to black.

It came back with a mixture of pain and anger. Her eyes shot open, her body jolting out of its half-frostbitten state and standing straight up. Half of her body felt ready to break if she touched it. One of her wings was blatantly frozen, but a few quick flaps shook off some of the ice.

She didn’t say anything – what could she say? She had gotten the answer she wanted, and it was just about how she expected it. Her wings began to flap, her aching joints creaking as she started to dash forward, her legs pounding through the snow before her body finally lifted off the ground.

She didn’t know what she was doing. Half of her was screaming to go home. To talk to Fizzlepop, to vent, to cry. But she had done that already. Another part of her was saying to abandon it all. Take your suit and run. Go back to her camp – or whatever was left of it – and start again.

But there was a small sliver of her that was in control now. The sliver that willed her body to turn itself straight upwards, wings beating painfully to the point that she felt like she was on fire all over. Her eyes stared at the cloud layer above, her teeth gritting painfully together. The cold was getting worse – to the point that she felt her jaws lock up, her teeth no longer able to separate as the saliva froze. Tears were rolling down her cheeks, but they never made it off her face. They just froze in place, hardening to her fur.

The higher she went, the larger that sliver of herself became. Her wings were starting to lock up, her flapping becoming more erratic and wild. They started to crust over with fresh ice, her lungs heaving and inhaling air that was so light she couldn’t even gain lift in it. Her body was in the cloud layer now. The freezing, stinging mist accumulated in the clouds themselves clung to her and stabbed into her flesh like pins, and she felt her wings die…

And suddenly, the part of her that was willing her to do this vanished.

She realized how idiotic this was. She was endangering her own life, possibly even willingly ending it, simply because she was angry at a princess for not talking to her.

No…she thought to herself as her wings stopped flapping and her upward momentum succumbed to gravity’s embrace. It was more than that. It was everything. Her whole life had been a waste. Her existence had only served to cause pain, both on those deserving and undeserving. She hadn’t lived a single day of her life feeling like she was truly free. Even in Ponyville, she was shackled.

Her body plummeted down far faster than it had ascended. Already she dropped through the cloud layer, her eyes opening. She saw the shimmering, reflective surface of her own tears floating in the air above her, and faintly, in its reflection – and soon by turning her head, with her own eyes – the Crystal Empire. Its tall, glorious spire rose above everything else, a little pocket of warmth and happiness nestled in a cold, frigid north.

She smiled softly, her wings folding completely to her sides. She didn’t even know why she had bothered talking to Luna. It just confirmed what she had already known.

She relaxed all of her muscles, although they still ached. Her eyes slowly rolled shut. If there was an afterlife, she knew she wasn’t going to see it. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to.

She could swear she momentarily felt the surface of the snow on her back. Then, a quick, fleeting moment of blinding, agonizing pain.

And then nothing.