Compatī

The universe had an uncanny habit these last few days of making sure everything hurt like hell.

It started with my hind leg, an aching, throbbing pain that lanced when I tried moving it. My ribs felt like the punching bag of a heavyweight champion after a good workout, my jaw was as swollen as a bad bee sting, and god, fuck my leg.

I put a hoof up to my forehead to stave off a pounding headache that gave Starlight’s cutie mark removal spell a run for its money. Some monotonous beeping nearby wasn’t doing me any favors.

“Holy shit,” someone said. “You’re awake already?”

I opened my eyes to see the auburn-maned pegasus chick sitting on a chair against the nearby wall. A plastic smock-looking thing lay discarded beside her chair, covered in enough blood to make a haunted house worker proud. It took a moment for the only two active brain cells between my ears to rub themselves together:

“I’m not dead?” My voice came out hoarse, like I’d spent the entire day singing my heart out at a rock concert, and my throat hurt when I swallowed.

“Not quite,” the mare said. She threw on a prideful grin. “You almost were for a few hours, but I like to think I’m pretty good at what I do.”

“…What?”

That’s when I noticed the heart rate monitor—the source of that beeping—on a table beside me and all its little wires and strips of tape keeping it on my hooftip, along with an IV sticking out of my foreleg. It led up to a red plastic bag she had hanging from a bent clothes hanger jammed into the ceiling. There was a giant “O-” on the label.

I lay on the center table of what looked like an operating room. A row of cabinetry dominated the length of the far wall, littered with boxes of hoof gloves and face masks. Long sheets of what looked like corrugated steel lined the nearby wall, decked out with long plastic bins filled to the brim with little plastic-wrapped medical doo-dads.

The floor was a mess of torn-open plastic wraps and scattered medical paraphernalia—needles, blood tubes, IVs, and a bunch of other stuff from those bins that I couldn’t name—and a healthy pool of blood trailed in from the double doors and onto the table where I lay, as if someone tried mopping up with my insides instead of water.

It looked like a murder scene. And yet here I was, alive and un-murdered.

“I’ve never had a dream before that was this one-for-one with the real world,” the mare said, looking around at all the surgical odds and ends. “But I’m not gonna question it. You’re really heavy, though, you know that?”

I decided to take that as a compliment and ignore the rest of its implications. “Yeah, that’s kinda Luna’s MO… whenever she’s involved, expect hyper-realistic dreams.”

Goddamn, my head hurt. At this rate, it would for sure win out against Starlight’s cutie mark spell.

“But for real,” I asked. “What the hell’s going on? And how the hell am I still alive?”

“Well, like I said,” the mare said. “You were teetering on death’s door there for a few hours until I got you stable, aaand I used to work here.” She buffed a hoof on her chest. “Lead trauma nurse for three years.”

“Well that’s awfully fuckin’ convenient,” I said. “Who the hell are you?”

The mare grinned. “Well, I could keep being a smartass and say ‘a lead trauma nurse for three years’ again, but I think the real answer would get your goat better. You don’t recognize me, do you? It’s the wings, I bet.”

She pulled her mane back into a messy bun and struck an informal pose, much the way I imagined Copper would.

I squinted at her. Cream-colored coat, auburn mane, those amber eyes… Wait, was she…? No, it couldn’t be.

“You’re that nurse bitch from the retirement home,” I blurted out. I vaguely remembered Stone Wall mentioning the whole ER thing.

She scowled at me and let her mane fall back into place. “I have a name, you know. And you’re welcome for saving your life. No big deal or anything.”

I… Well, she got me there. “Sorry, I… thanks. I-I’m Sunset Shimmer. You were… Acuity, right?”

She smiled like sunshine. “Yeah. I’m surprised you remember it. Nice to formally meet you. I… do have to say sorry for how I was last time we met. I, I was having a bad day.”

I tried my best to return her smile. “I was gonna say, you’re a lot more laid back than the stick-up-your-butt you were then.”

“Says the mare who thought the best way to say hi to her old friend was to scribble all over my med schedule. And stick up my butt or not, I had every right to be concerned when the mare who put a fucking Royal Guard into retirement strolls through the door with a frown on her face.”

I winced at the accusation. Though, it was hard to deny. That’s exactly what I did.

She wore a searching look when I found the courage to meet her gaze. I didn’t think she realized how deep that would cut, or maybe she wanted me to hurt. I gave her the benefit of the doubt and set the thought aside, instead focusing on the part of her dream that kinda tripped me up.

“So you’re a pegasus in your dreams,” I said. “What’s up with that?”

Her smile took on an amused twist at the ends, and she leaned against her chair’s armrest. “You literally just fought some hulking shadow beast thing, and you’re more fixated on the fact that I have wings in my dream?”

“Well, touché, but still. How come? I get that dreams are dreams, but that seems like an odd, uh… discrepancy?”

She shrugged. “I grew up always wishing I could be a pegasus. My mom was a pegasus, and she used to always tell me stories about Cloudsdale.”

“‘Was’?”

“Was.” She looked around the room at nothing in particular—or maybe everything in particular. “It’s why I ended up busting my ass in school to get here.”

Was… shit. I didn’t mean to drag out that old baggage on her. Not really the time or place even if I did.

Was this the kind of counseling crap Luna dealt with every night? Door-to-door heart-to-hearts after fighting off bad dreams? No wonder she was so somber all the time, dealing with everyone else’s problems.

“What made you change jobs?” I asked. Not that I felt compelled to take up Luna’s mantle, but… well, I felt like I owed her at least that much after stomping through the vulnerable side of her memory.

Acuity’s smile flatlined. “This place was going to kill me. The pay was nice, but too many overtime and on-call shifts. I already have a few grey hairs coming in thanks to this place. Greener Pastures is… easier, and I still get to help ponies who really need it. Especially your friend Stone Wall.”

Hearing his name out loud got goosebumps crawling up my legs, and my heart wrung itself out like a sponge. Considering who I was talking to, I knew the conversation would end up here, no matter how much I wanted to avoid it. My mind flashed back to that moment in the Royal Treasury. I could still feel the heat at my horn tip, hear the roar of—

“He talks about you all the time, by the way.” She stared at me with a cross between nostalgia and pity. “You were his favorite thing about his job. ‘I always wished I had a daughter like her,’ he’d say.”

Her eyes traced a slow path toward the bandages around my stump of a leg. “He never told me exactly what happened, but something tells me karma has a sense of poetic justice. Or at least a twisted sense of humor…”

I followed her gaze to my leg. Karma… That was a word for it. It was even the same damn leg as his.

I didn’t really believe in karma, but the way the universe had been fucking me over recently had me reconsidering. Either way, I couldn’t argue against deserving all the shit life had thrown at me.

“Where’s Luna?” I said, again in desperate need to change the subject.

“Over there,” she said, nodding toward a gurney in the back corner that I hadn’t noticed. Luna was tucked in beneath a blanket, and she had her own clear IV bag of what was probably saline. “She’s fine. Whatever spell that was you did before passing out did a hell of a job. All she really needed from me was a few bandages and the drip.”

Finally some good news. Those last moments were a little fuzzy, but I could still see her lying motionless in a pool of blood, how the light all but went out in her eyes.

“So you’re really real, huh?” she said, eyes still on Luna. “Not some figment of my imagination?”

“The way you say that tells me you already know the answer.”

She shrugged. “I know, but I guess I just want to hear it from you.”

“That’s a logical fallacy and a half,” I said, grinning. Had she really just walked into the same stumbling block Twilight had when I visited her?

That seemed to push a button. She puffed up in the cheeks, and her wings did that half-mast thing pegasi did when flustered.

“Yeah, well, you’re a logical fallacy and a half.”

I laughed, and—ow, my ribs.

That got her sputtering and putting a hoof up to try and hide that grin of hers. Sputtering became a snort became full-blown laughter, and I fell back into a laughing fit alongside her and ow fuck, goddamn it.

Still, it felt good to laugh, felt good to share a laugh. I really needed that right now.

“But really,” Acuity said after our laughter subsided. “She couldn’t just stamp her hoof and wake me up?”

“I-it’s more complicated than that right now. Clearly. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here. Well, I should say she wouldn’t need to drag me along for the ride. It’s just… It’s weird, when I think about it.”

“Like thinking me being a pegasus in my dreams is weird? Seriously, if that’s weird to you, then what the heck do you normally dream about?”

“For the last seven years?” I nodded at my leg. “The thing that did this.”

Her ears fell back. Judging by the look on her face, I worried I might have to throw her on the table and start chest compressions.

“Oh… well, I guess, um…” Her face turned up in a wry smile. “From how you blasted it to kingdom come, it should be having nightmares about you instead now, eh?”

I knew she was just trying to smooth over that little conversational speed bump, but it got a smile out of me. If only…

“If everything goes according to plan,” I said, “it won’t, ’cause it’ll be dead.”

“Plans don’t always work out the way you hope, though.” She was staring at my stump again.

“Not really,” I said. “It’s dream hopping. We’ve gotta stop it before it figures out how to get into the real world and all hell breaks loose.”

“Looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you, then.”

“Yeah. Speaking of, we should get going.” I tried standing up, but the world chose that as the best moment to practice its cartwheels.

“Hey hey hey,” Acuity said, leaping to my side to steady me. “You lost a lot of blood and you’re still dehydrated. Don’t be stupid and leave AMA on me already.”

Against medical advice? my brain weaseled out. I had all those cheesy hospital dramas I used to binge in the human world to thank for that nugget of wisdom. But something else she said had me grinning like a drunk sorority mare.

“‘Don’t be stupid’?” I said. “That’s not very professional of you.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not a real-life patient, so I can say what I actually feel.” She punched me playfully in the shoulder, but last night’s beating made sure she found a sore spot that still really hurt.

“Lots of work baggage there?” I asked, gritting my teeth so she hopefully didn’t notice.

“You don’t know how many times I’ve wanted to say that and more to some of my patients. You see a lot of dumbasses come through the trauma bay in three years.” She settled me back down to a sitting position, where I was steady enough to hold myself up.

“But for real,” she said. “You shouldn’t be jumping back into action just yet.”

“I’ll be fine. We’re not going to fight that thing again anytime soon if I can help it. The plan is to get out of the Dreamscape first. If we do that, I should come back in like this never even happened. At least, that’s how it worked last time.”

“What about the princess?”

“Same thing when she was linked to me. Now, though… I have no idea. But it’s all I have to go by, and I need to get back to Twilight and the others.”

She perked up at that. “Princess Twilight? Damn, this must be big. Is Princess Celestia involved, too?”

I frowned. “I wish she wasn’t.”

“Oh…” She coughed in an attempt to avoid an awkward silence, but that only served to highlight it.

“Anyway,” she added. “Before you go…” She rubbed her foreleg, looking aside. “I know it’s not what you want to hear right now, but it’s something you need to hear. Stone Wall won’t say it, but he’s horribly depressed. The only time he ever smiles is when he’s talking about you or Princess Celestia.

“I know you said you’d come back, but in my line of work I’ve heard enough empty promises from patients’ friends and family. You will actually come back and see him again, won’t you?”

Goddamn it. I didn’t need my heart twisted into a knot right now. I took a slow breath in through my nose to keep my voice steady.

“If I get out of this alive, it’ll be the first thing on my list.”

She didn’t seem one-hundred-percent convinced, but she eventually smiled. “I look forward to seeing you, then.”

“Same.” I focused my magic at the tip of my horn and pulled Luna to my side. Another ounce of magic, and the Wake-Up Spell wrapped around us like morning mist. Its chill got goosebumps crawling up my legs, but the sensation was both familiar and welcome after all the shit we just shoveled. Still, I looked back before completing the spell, one final thing on my mind.

“By the way,” I said to Acuity. “You should wear your mane down more. It’s really pretty like that.”

And up Luna and I went through the Veil. Gravity waved us farewell, and the spray paint of stars welcomed us back to that silent emptiness I would never get used to.

Coming out of the dream didn’t fix my leg, nor any of my other aches and pains, so there was something about either Luna flinging me from the Eversleep that differed from leaving a dream by my own magic, or the Eversleep itself. But that was neither here nor there. It couldn’t transfer to the real world, and I still had a job to do.

Luna tumbled listlessly beside me—still asleep, but alive. I put her on my back, and off we went.

A few days went by, just me and the stars. Luna never woke up, but I could feel her heartbeat against my back, slow and steady. Its rhythm was a constant reminder of the unknowns lying ahead: how were we going to wake up? Did we have to re-enter Luna’s dream? Was there even a dream for us to return to? Did I have my own dream out there somewhere that I could enter and then wake up from?

The questions pestered me like mosquitoes buzzing around my ear.

We came to Twilight’s dream, that little cluster of stars too eerily similar to her cutie mark. Thankfully, the Nightmare hadn’t weaseled its way in, but farther on in the distance I saw other dreams twisted and discolored from its touch.

So she was awake when it passed by, judging by her dream’s transparency. Whether due to a late night working or a sleepless night spent tossing and turning, we finally caught a break. But where the Nightmare couldn’t enter, neither could we.

I curled my hooves in and sighed, resigning myself to follow its slow orbit through the Dreamscape.

All I could do was wait.