Independence Eternal

Chapters

Missing
Reality
Lost
Applejack
Distraction
Driven
Breaking Point
Confrontation
Pains
Standstill
Decisions
Home
Epilogue
A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood

Missing

Fluttershy is always grateful for how close she lives to Rarity. They visit each other quite a bit, and the proximity means she can take the back roads to avoid the crowds. On some days, like today, she can even get lucky and have the whole street to herself. She skips excitedly down the empty road, her mane flowing gently in the soft breeze as silent homes stare down at her.

I hope she doesn’t mind the intrusion, Fluttershy thinks as she walks up and knocks on Rarity’s door. The sound echoes out and back to her, hollow and empty. She stands patiently, the wind whipping past her as she waits. She waits, and she waits, and she waits. She waits far longer than any pony ever should. Eventually though, politeness loses its grip, and Fluttershy gives the door another sharp rap. Well, hopefully she’s at least awake, she thinks. I would feel just awful if I woke her up.

After another egregious wait, Fluttershy purses her lips. She must not be home. I should let her know I stopped by. Digging through her bag, she pulls out a notepad and a pencil, and writes a note for her friend.

Dear Rarity,

I’m so sorry I missed you. I had stopped by to visit, and maybe borrow some tea, but it seems you’re either away or busy with something else. If I interrupted you, please accept my sincerest apologies. Either way, feel free to come visit today if you would like to, I’m free all day. Don’t feel obligated to bring the tea, I can always get my own, you don’t need to worry.

With Love,
Fluttershy

After quickly double checking the letter, Fluttershy pulls out a tac and pins it to Rarity’s door. There we go, she thinks. That should be good enough. Oh, but now I have to clean… Fluttershy sighs and trudges back home to prepare for the potential visit.

“Angel?”

Fluttershy presses herself against the floor to look under her bed, finding nothing but dust and cobwebs. Where is that bunny, she thinks. It’s not like him to not eat his food.

Back downstairs, Fluttershy stares into Angel’s untouched food bowl. She first noticed it after she finished cleaning. Picking up her various clutter had taken until well after noon, and she had seen no trace of the little rabbit. It’s not generally that worrisome if he stays outside, Fluttershy trusts him to stay safe, but it’s strange that he wouldn’t come back for his lunch. Worried, she steps outside and calls out again.

“Angel! Please come back home!”

A few minutes of impatient hoof tapping later, Fluttershy decides she can’t sit still any longer. What if he’s hurt, or stuck, or scared? She can’t just leave him all alone out in the wild. So, she grabs some supplies and sets off into the nearby forest to search.

Dry leaves crack under her hooves as Fluttershy pushes through the underbrush. The forest is, as always, overgrown with all manner of grasses and vines, but Fluttershy has never been especially keen on the idea of clearing out a more defined pathway. She prefers to move as the winds take her, rarely ever taking the same route through the forest more than once. A pathway would only get in the way of that.

Today, though, she ignores the urging of the winds. She moves with purpose through the foliage, pushing aside branches and digging through bushes, searching for any trace of Angel. She does her best to put herself in the mind of a rabbit, moving methodically along from berry bushes to wild vegetables, searching out valleys in the mountains of green, the natural pathways that a small creature would be attracted to follow. Any small hope or clue to follow.

The silent woods engulf Fluttershy as she delves deeper in. Towering, dominant trees forming walls in every direction, delicate flowers unhindered by wildlife forming massive pools of color in the distance. Eventually not even then wind can penetrate the thicket, and Fluttershy is left utterly alone. The occasional crunch of a twig snapped under careless hooves echoes away and back again, the only sound to disturb the stillness. The slow creak of wood resounds throughout the world as a tree far, far away bends in the wind and shows its age, a sound normally masked by the chitter of animals. Despite being wholly devoted to her search, the utter quiet slowly begins to dawn on Fluttershy.

She stops in a small clearing and takes a look around, absorbing the setting for the first time. She peers between trees, but sees no movement from stags or boars. She gazes towards the canopy and finds no trace of the busy traffic of birds. She pushes aside a log, sunken into the earth, and finds only mud, devoid of its usual microscopic ecosystem.

Fluttershy purses her lips. This seems to have gone past just Angel. She sets off again, a new destination in mind. As she walks, she looks around somewhat frantically, searching for any sign of wildlife. No signs present themselves. She walks alone, stuck with only her thoughts, her steadily growing anxiety.

Subconsciously, she picks up the pace, and before long the world around her changes. The dense forest floor becomes clear, the trees more uniform, the canopy carefully trimmed. Aside from the occasional flowers or weeds, all that marks the ground here are fallen apples, left for any wandering animals that may pass by. The most notable change, however, is the sudden shift in color as dots of red fill the leaves stretching off to the horizon, marking the entrance into Sweet Apple Acres.

The shift in scenery calms Fluttershy enough that she realizes how worked up she’s gotten. She stops, breathes, works through her thoughts. Calm down, Fluttershy, she tells herself. Panic doesn’t help. Just be calm, you can do it. Slowly, methodically, she gathers herself. She lets out a sigh of relief as her heart rate drops and she can focus again.

Once she’s ready, Fluttershy sets off towards her friend’s home. She cocks her head, listening for the rhythmic thunk, thunk, thunk of Applejack gathering a harvest, but nothing meets her ear. Nothing but the wind, finally returned but hollow, empty. She frowns and sets her eyes straight ahead, choosing to focus on her destination.

As the trees break, the familiar sight of her friend’s home reveals itself. A humble, rustic home, large but unassuming. The sort of house that was clearly once much smaller, but the steady growth of a family necessitated the steady growth of a home, and constant extensions and add-ons gave it the cobbled together look it has today. It’s cohesive, and not unattractive, but it makes it clear that its architects were more interested in function than form.

Seeing no movement in the many ramshackle sheds and barns that litter the property, Fluttershy makes her way up to the Apple Family home. She steels herself, tries to shake out her worries, and knocks on the door, but as her hoof meets the wood the door gives way, sliding open with a groan. Nervously, she peeks inside, but sees nothing out of the ordinary.

“Hello?” she calls out. “Applejack? It’s um, it’s Fluttershy. Is anypony home?”

She waits on the porch for a few minutes, anxiously biting her lip, but when she gets no response she reluctantly pushes the door open and walks inside. The home that greets her is dark and dusty. It does look lived in, clutter scattered around, imprints in the furniture, but it doesn’t quite look presently lived in. Fine particles float through the air as Fluttershy moves, and her steps leave a trail of prints in the dust behind her.

Pushing the state of the home out of her mind, Fluttershy moves on. She passes through the living room, which looks utterly alien without a crowd of ponies in it, and into the dining room. This room is much of the same, darkness and dust, except that on the long table sits a half eaten plate of food. Fluttershy frowns as she eyes it. Well, um… they should really clean up after themselves better, she tells herself.

She closes the gaping door of the refrigerator as she passes through the kitchen and stops at the base of a staircase. “Hello?” she calls up it. “I’m really awfully sorry to intrude like this. Is anypony up there? Please?”

With somewhat shaky legs, she makes her way up to the second floor. She hasn’t been up here very much before. In the Apple home visits are always a group ordeal. Seeing one Apple means seeing them all. Fluttershy is okay with that, she’s happy to spend time how her friends would like to, but it does mean that there’s rarely reason to see the various bedrooms.

Walking onward, Fluttershy peers into the rooms as she passes them. First Applebloom’s room, messy but empty. Then Big Mac’s, as organized as Applebloom’s is unorganized, but similarly vacant. Finally, Applejack, her door closed. Fluttershy knocks, just in case, and waits.

When she finally walks inside, she does so with unease. Sorry, Applejack, she thinks. She looks around her friend’s cluttered room. The walls are completely covered with memorabilia, hung with no rhyme or reason to their placement. Well used farm equipment hangs overlapping framed pictures, crooked shelves sit filled to bursting with all manner of knick-knacks. Fluttershy is able to find every birthday present she’s ever given Applejack in some crowded corner or another. It makes her smile, seeing the haphazard care put into it all.

The floor sits covered with various tools, dirty clothes, and pet projects. Muddy boots, tangled rope, a barrel mid-repair. Fluttershy has to step carefully over it all to make her way around. She tries to look in the closet, but its contents threaten to come spilling out as she starts to open the door, so she decides against it. She looks over a small desk in the corner, covered with paperwork for the farm. She checks the bed, unmade, sheet shifting around in the breeze from the window.

Nothing, she thinks, plopping down onto Applejack’s bed. Where in the world has everypony gone? Did I miss hearing about some sort of trip? Hmm… Oh, shoot. She hops up off the bed, an embarrassed blush filling her cheeks. I can’t believe I was just sitting on her bed like that. I should really know better. Being in a weird situation is no excuse for rudeness.

With a nervous hum, she gingerly closes Applejack’s door as she leaves. She walks outside into a late evening sun, the warm light giving the farm an earthy glow. Wind whistles through the trees, beckoning her back into the realm of nature.

She thinks things through. Maybe she already knows about the animals? I should go check Twilight’s house next. If they’re meeting to talk about it, it will probably be there. She walks away down the main path towards Ponyville, then doubles back. Oops, almost forgot to leave a note. We can’t have Applejack wondering who was here while she was gone.

Reality

Going from the farm to the library means going across town, and that means Fluttershy can no longer avoid the busy main streets. At this time of day, trips like this are a nightmare for Fluttershy. Tired, impatient ponies, pushing their way through the streets as they return home. Night owls just starting their days, mingling and procrastinating and blocking traffic. Fluttershy grimaces at the thought of it as she walks onto Mane Street, the busiest road in Ponyville.

The low sun casts an orange glow over empty shops and vacant homes, stalls with no customers and no owners, restaurants with no patrons or servers. That same hollow breeze kicks up a cloud of dust and swirls it around, giving the world its only sense of movement, the only faint trace of life.

Reality crashes in on her. She reels, stumbles, her mind buzzing as it works through what she’s seeing. Everything that’s happened rushes back as the pieces fall into place. Rarity, nowhere to be seen. Angel, mysteriously missing. Applejack. Big Mac. Applebloom. All gone. They’re all just gone

Fluttershy finds herself glued in place, hardly able to think, let alone walk. She begs with her body, asking it to move, to find something to prove her wrong. As long as she moves forward, there’s hope. Follow through with your goals, and eventually something has to work.

How can she move, though, when faced with such enormous solitude? Where would she go? She doesn’t know what’s happened, nor how to fix it. Anything in Equestria could be the solution. There’s no clear path forward, no guidance. When you’re able to go wherever you want, it can become impossible to go anywhere at all.

Just one step at a time. This is what Fluttershy tells herself, over and over, as she finally forces her body into action. One shaky step, then another, and soon she’s walking. With walking comes vision, clarity, thought. Twilight’s house, she decides. I can figure out the next step from there. One step at a time.

Her attempts to ignore the world around her prove to be futile. The lack of crowds is so jarring, so completely wrong that she can’t help but remember what it should be. They’re clear in her mind, the children playing, the merchants chatting with customers, the customers sweet talking merchants. That bench, home to untold love stories. These steps, worn and cracked through use they may never see again. It’s not just a town, it’s a home, and the marks of its denizens are everywhere.

Then, a crash. Movement in an alleyway, and before she knows it her hooves are moving. No hesitation, no fear, all forgotten in the rush of adrenaline, the faint hope of seeing another pony. She skids as she turns into a darkened alleyway, narrow and crowded with some pony’s old junk. The mountain of trash is still shifting, settling into a new position after collapsing in on itself. Possibly just a tremor caused by age, an old rot, but Fluttershy can’t keep herself from hoping there might be some other cause.

With bated breath, she steps into the darkness. The dark swarms in on her, pulling her deeper into the void, snatching the light away. Her legs shake, her teeth chatter as she pushes herself to investigate. She peeks around the wall of debris, but sees nothing. More trash, fluttering in the wind, and more shadows, dancing in the faint light of the setting sun.

As she turns to leave, she catches something in the corner of her eye. A movement on the wall as a shadow vanishes. She wheels around, searching for the source, but again sees nothing. A box shifts in the breeze and tumbles down, landing in front of Fluttershy with a dull, empty thud.

She stares at the box. There’s nothing special about it, no markings, nothing inside it, but still she stares. She stares and stares until it’s too much, all of it, and her legs give out. She sits there, in the loneliness of that dark alley, staring at an empty box as tears well up in her eyes.

Why? Everything was fine yesterday. My friends were fine. My friends were here, and now they’re… She sniffles loudly. They’re gone, and I’m here. Something took them, and left me, and I might never get them back. Why…

She lies down and buries her head in her hooves as the tears flow. It all floods over her, drowns her, and it refuses to let up. She has no recourse, no way to fight this off, not anymore. All she can do is sit, and cry.

Why am I still here?

Eventually, the tears dry. She pushes herself up, out of the alley, down the street. Forward. She makes herself move, as difficult as it may be. It doesn’t help much, but it’s enough. She gets her legs back under her, her eyes focus, her mind starts to move again. She’s able to forget the emotions, at least slightly.

At this point it’s well into dusk. Darkness begins to take hold, warping the empty homes of Ponyville into strange, hostile shapes. Fluttershy moves faster as anxiety wells up inside her. It fills her up, and in doing so quashes some of the heavy thoughts trapped in her head.

By the time she makes the final dash up to Twilight’s home, Fluttershy is in a full sprint. The darkness surrounding her is seared into her vision, threatening to become all she can see, and all she can think of. She skids to a stop at the door, knocking harder than she wanted to, and taps her hoof on the ground as the void devours her thoughts.

A noise in the distance steals her attention, and then a shadow snaps her back around. The horrors of the night close in, set to overtake Fluttershy. Sound, light, movement, she feels a strange malice from them all. Soon panic overtakes politeness, and she barges through the door into the library.

She slams the door shut and leans against it as she catches her breath. Her racing heart slows, her legs stop shaking. The light and warmth of Twilight’s home beckons her back into the world, out of the depths of her own mind.

She takes a deep breath, and another. You’re okay, Fluttershy, she tells herself. You’re safe. You were always safe. More deep breaths, eyes shut tight as she strains to push away the fear. Soon enough she’s put herself back together, at least enough to look out into the house she’s broken into.

It is, as it always is, overwhelmingly spacious. Twilight isn’t much one for privacy, so nearly the entirety of the home is a single massive room. It makes Fluttershy feel tiny, insignificant.

The lack of ponies doesn’t help. No sound of shuffling pages, no whispered gossip, no rowdy kids or embarrassed moms. Just a grand hall of towering bookcases and silent books, empty furniture surrounded by all the odds and ends that make it Twilight’s home.

Twilight’s home, but no Twilight.

Fluttershy sighs. I don’t know what I expected, she thinks to herself. Out of energy and running low on optimism, she walks over and slumps into a chair by a reading table. They’re all gone, whisked away by some magic or machine or…

She glances towards the back of the library and sees the heavy door leading down into Twilight’s basement. A world of science and experimentation, gadgets and gizmos. Any number of things could be possible down there. Maybe, even, something that changes the whole world.

No, Fluttershy tells herself, don’t be silly. She would never be so reckless. Right?

She turns and looks at the next door, leading further into the library. Twilight only keeps the most popular books in the front, the rest sequestered to the maze deeper within. Of course, this includes books on all kinds of strange magic, hidden away in isolation where anypony could find them.

As she mulls it over, Fluttershy’s eyes start to droop. With a yawn, she drags herself out of the chair and walks towards the door. Nothing to do right now other than just go home and sleep, she tells herself.

She catches a glimpse outside through a window and flinches. The sun is gone, set completely in the time she wasted here, and all that awaits her is darkness. She freezes, her mind strained and exhausted, but she forces herself to think. You have to go home, Fluttershy. You can’t stay here all night. You have to… Oh, but I won’t sleep at all if I go out now. Surely Twilight wouldn’t mind if I just…

Fluttershy looks at the door, then up at Twilight’s loft. One cold, menacing, the other familiar and inviting. She shakes away her worries and makes a decision, floating up into Twilight’s room. She’ll understand. Right? Yeah, I’m sure she will. Hopefully. Gingerly, using as much care as she can muster, she lifts aside Twilight’s blankets and lays down in her bed. She stares up at the ceiling, breathes deeply, and shuts her eyes.

Then, a moment later, she opens her eyes again. How can Twilight sleep here? She sits up and looks around. On one side of her, a vast window into the darkness of the night. On the other, an aerial view of the shadowy library, shapes dancing around the corners of her vision. She’s surrounded on all sides by the unknown, and it plagues her thoughts. She can’t stand it.

With a groan, she gets out of bed and starts rummaging through Twilight’s things. She must have something I can- there! Prepared as ever, Twilight of course has a myriad of sheets and blankets to suit any occasion. Grabbing them all, Fluttershy gets to work. She ties corners together, uses pins to close gaps, carefully measuring distances. Then she raises it up, hanging her makeshift wall up at the edge of the loft, a quilted curtain covering the view downstairs.

After giving the window a similar treatment, Fluttershy once again settles down into Twilight’s bed, yawning and pulling the covers up over herself. Much better, she thinks as she drifts off into an uneasy sleep. Tomorrow will be better…

Lost

Day 2

Fluttershy yawns and stretches as she wakes up. It’s a nice summer morning, warm and cozy. She keeps her eyes closed, the blanket close up against her. Maybe I’ll sleep in a little longer, she thinks as she rolls over to the other side of the bed.

Then the world falls out from under her and she plummets to the floor. She lands with a dull thud, jarring but not painful. Groaning, she picks herself up and pries her eyes open. Right. I'm not home. She takes in her surroundings, her makeshift barriers to either side, the bed which she's just discovered is much smaller than her own. Soft sunlight glows behind the cover over the window. Twilight’s room has taken on a bizarrely alien look.

Especially since Twilight is nowhere to be seen.

Fluttershy sits on the floor, leaning against Twilight’s bed as she takes in her friend’s room. It’s all so familiar to her. The little shelves, packed with all of Twilight’s favorite books. Twilight’s desk, covered in half-written letters and lists and lessons. A table in the corner, holding all sorts of old baubles and toys, tiny pieces of Twilight’s life collected together. She knows it all, and yet…

It just doesn’t feel like Twilight’s room. Those aren’t Twilight’s books, they’re just books. The desk will never again feel the scratch of Twilight’s pen. The memories on the table are shrouded by a coat of dust. How can this be Twilight’s room, when there is no Twilight?

No, Fluttershy tells herself. I can’t think like that. There is a Twilight. She’s not here right now, but she isn’t gone forever. She can’t be. I… She looks down and grabs the bedsheet, clutches it, tries to squeeze some drops of Twilight out of it. I can’t let her be gone.

She sits there a while, clinging to the sheet, until her stomach starts to put up a fuss. With a sigh, Fluttershy gathers herself and sets about her day. She pulls the sheet back up over Twilight’s bed, taking extra care to smooth out any wrinkles. She borrows a brush to fix her mane, carefully picking the loose hair out of it afterwards. She takes down her curtains, painstakingly disconnecting them and placing them, neatly folded, back where she had found them. She floats down to the kitchen, scrounges up a makeshift breakfast and scarfs it down. She stops short of borrowing Twilight’s toothbrush, instead just using some mouthwash, but she manages to have some semblance of her morning routine.

Then she plops down at a reading table, a deep frown etched on her face. Now what? Do I leave Ponyville? Go to Canterlot? No, I… I can’t just run away. I can’t ignore what’s happening, or else I’ll just… be alone, forever.

She takes a look around to weigh her options. There’s the sturdy, imposing door sealing off Twilight’s basement. All those gizmos and gadgets, any number of them might be able to bring everypony back. Or, there’s the library, a vast compendium of all the knowledge in the world. Fluttershy can’t do magic, but who knows what Twilight has locked away in there? Find the right tome, and maybe you could change the world.

The basement is dark, though, and the library vast. Both options are difficult prospects for her to commit to. The deep darkness of Twilight’s laboratory is a simple terror, one Fluttershy faces every night, but it is a powerful one. Her fear of the library is more complex, but she’s learned through experience that she and it simply do not mix.

Fluttershy taps a hoof on the table, thinking hard. She looks towards the inner library, then the basement, then the door outside, then the library, then outside, then the library. Okay. She nods to herself. I can handle the library. I have to.

She pushes herself up and marches over to the doorway. There’s nothing special about it, really just the lack of a wall giving way to a hallway, but it looms over her nonetheless. It’s the place where, for Fluttershy at least, Twilight’s home ends and the library begins. The walls are the same, there’s no seam in the carpet, but to cross that line is to step into another world.

Nope. She shakes her head and walks the other way. I can’t do it. I can’t just walk in there and get lost again. I have to find something else, I have to… Oh, but there’s nothing else. Frustrated, she shakes her head more, trying to force herself into a decision. Which she does, her eyes lighting up as it hits her. Snatching up her saddlebag, she dashes outside.

She wastes no time wandering the streets, watching the empty state of things. She allows herself no room to dwell on the world around her, choosing instead to focus on what she can do. Right now, what she can do is go to Rarity’s house, and that’s exactly what she does.

No knocking this time. If Rarity is home, seeing her friend that much sooner is worth the stress of barging in on her. Not that it matters, because Fluttershy walks into another empty building. Rarity’s home, no Rarity.

She makes her way straight to the storeroom and rummages around. Sewing threads are in no short supply, so it takes her little time to fill a pouch in her bag. She considers looking around for more supplies, but can think of nothing she would find, so instead she opts to leave lest she get caught up thinking about the situation she’s in.

On the way out, she borrows some tea from Rarity and leaves her a note explaining what she took.

Back at the library, Fluttershy moves with purpose. Food, water, first aid, she loads up with all the things she’d take on a day in the wilderness. Thread tied down, double checked, triple checked. Maybe a fourth, just to be sure. Just so she can feel safe.

Confident that nothing can go wrong, at least as confident as her mind allows her to be, she steels herself and sets off into the depths.

To say that this place is labyrinthine would be an understatement. Twilight has an eye for a lot of things, but she has absolutely no grasp on architecture, a trait that becomes disastrous in a pony with access to magic allowing her to fit any amount of space she wants in her humble tree house. In some places hallways stretch for ages with seemingly no purpose, while other areas are completely devoid of hallways, just strings of room after room of books. There are stairs everywhere, no rhyme or reason to their placement. Narrow, rickety steps at the end of a hallway, wide spiral staircases serving as centerpieces in larger wings. In more than a few places there are hatches in the floor, ominous portals leading to ladders stretching into infinity. All of this, covered floor to ceiling with books.

It doesn’t take long for it to dawn on Fluttershy what exactly this journey entails. Walking down a featureless hallway, she scans the bare walls and finds very little. There are no maps, no directions, no arrows pointing her along. Just walls and doors. The only things to give any indication of where she is are the plaques telling wayward souls what room they’re about to enter. A room full of cookbooks, another with almanacs. As far as she can tell, there’s no rhyme or reason to how the rooms are set out.

She squints her eyes to read a particularly worn plaque. Does that say… Abbles?

So, with no clear path forward, she just walks. Following this hallway into the next and the one after that, glancing at nameplates in search of anything useful. Walking through rooms when she runs out of hallways, then through hallways when she runs out of rooms. Stopping every so often to tie a new thread onto her lifeline. On and on through the endless maze.

She turns a corner and flinches. Have I… been here before? No, there’s no string. But… She inches her way to the first door, marked “Candy.” No, I’ve definitely seen that room before. I… Fretting, she doubles back around the corner and turns into the first room she sees. I’ll just have to go another way.

Subconsciously, she starts moving faster. Not running, not even jogging, just walking faster. Her method gets muddled as she starts to move erratically, moving randomly through the rooms. No more straight lines, now she’s turning as much as she isn’t. She misses a plaque and has to double back to read it, then just keeps going backwards, walking over her own line for several rooms.

Turning a corner too fast, she runs into a table and yelps, shooting backwards. She stares at it, fear-stricken, for several long moments before she finally processes what happened. She feels her heart pounding, the adrenaline coursing through her body, anxiety buzzing in her head. Realizing the state she’s in, she forces herself to take a seat and breathe. Slow, deep breaths bring the world back into focus. Eventually, she manages to get her body to settle down.

Or, she would, if not for her empty stomach taking the opportunity to make itself known.

Sighing, she collects herself and gets comfortable on the floor to eat. As she does, she looks around the room she’s in. A rather small collection, it seems like all the books have to do with methods for trapping animals. Fluttershy chuckles to herself. They’re exactly the sort of books she was looking for the first, and only, time she had been here alone before.

Normally, Twilight would have gotten anything Fluttershy needed for her. Twilight relished the chance to explore her library, and Fluttershy dreaded it. Even on the few times they had gone in together, Fluttershy hated it. She just couldn’t keep track of where she was, and that terrified her.

Twilight wasn’t there that time, though. Maybe Fluttershy could have found her, or even found somepony else, but panic doesn’t lead to the most rational decisions. An animal needed her help, and she needed to help them. In her racing mind, there was nothing else to consider.

It was only a few hours later that Twilight found her, curled up and shaking under some table in some room, but it felt like an eternity. Lost, frightened, alone, this place had devoured her. It had pulled her in and threatened to never let go.

Strangely, despite the terror she had felt at the time, remembering those times brings a smile to Fluttershy’s face. That had led to a strange week. Twilight, wholly repentant, trying to apologize while Fluttershy insisted that she was okay. Eventually Twilight got so caught up in it that she snuck into Fluttershy’s house at night to get proof that she was having nightmares about it. Which she was, of course, she just didn’t want Twilight to worry. Twilight doesn’t let Fluttershy hide her emotions like that anymore.

Or at least, she didn’t.

Fluttershy pushes the memories away and refocuses, packing her things and setting back off. Back to the endless walking, the aimless wandering. Further in, further down. She tries not to think about how many floors she’s gone down. The last thing she needs at this point is another source of anxiety.

After a couple more hours, Fluttershy reaches to replace a spool that’s run out and realizes she’s used the last of her thread. She stares down into her empty bag. That’s it? That can’t be it, I haven’t found anything. She digs around, under apples and bandages, searching for more. She spots the corner of a spool and snatches it up, but it turns out to be empty, so she tosses it away down the hallway.

No, no, no. She upturns her bag, dumping the contents on the floor. Apples roll away from her, a canteen thunks as it lands. She pushes things around, checking under every little thing, examining every spool. She starts chucking things down the hall as they get in her way, first spools, then bandages, then apples. There has to be something, she pleads as her pile of supplies dwindles.

She picks up the last apple and falls back, sitting against the wall and turning the fruit around in her hooves as she stares at it. No, she thinks. All these books, there has to be something. There has to be a way to bring them back. There has to…

The apple gives a dull thunk when Fluttershy throws it against the wall. She collapses in on herself, falling to the floor and pressing her head into her hooves. Tense, trembling, trying to smother all the emotions raging through her.

Eventually something has to give out. It’s exhausting, the anger and fear and frustration. Soon the shaking stops and her muscles relax, and Fluttershy gets up and starts to walk. She leaves it all, the food, the water, and starts to follow the string back out.

She drags her body along, her limp hooves scraping against the carpet. Tears mark the ground behind her for some way, but they dry up. A pony only has so many tears. She keeps her dull, blank eyes trained on the thread as she walks, no energy left to lift her neck and look around. She runs into the walls as she turns corners, stumbles and loses her balance from time to time, but walks on.

Staring at the thread so long, every detail starts to become more pronounced. The texture under her hooves, the material, the color. Especially the color. Purple first, room after room of purple. Then pink. Orange, blue, red, the colors sear themselves into her mind.

Then she runs out of thread.

Fluttershy stares down at the frayed string as anxiety creeps in. There’s no sign of any more further along, no convenient breaking point to continue from. When did it break? How? There’s no telling how far she may have pulled it away from the entrance. She whips her head around, looking for any reference point, anything recognizable, but finds nothing. Sure, she recognizes the names of the rooms, but she saw so many today. How could she remember where any of them were? She could be anywhere, for all she knows it could still be hours of walking to the exit.

She panics. The thread flies away in the wind as she sprints down the hallway, her breathing shallow and ineffective. She runs blindly through rooms and halls, unable to process the world around her. Her vision blurs, marred by new tears. Soon she closes her eyes and moves purely on instinct, hoping beyond hope that her hooves can take her where her mind can’t.

The wind is knocked out of her as she slams into a bookshelf, crumpling to the floor. Books fall around her, scattering across the floor. When her breath finally does come back, it does so in short, frantic bursts, not enough to get any real air. She tries to look around, but her vision starts to fade, which only serves to panic her further. More fear means less air as breathing gets harder. She curls up as her mind goes blank and the world vanishes from around her, leaving only darkness.

Applejack

Some time later, her rumbling stomach wakes Fluttershy up. She tries to stand but stumbles, dizzy and disoriented, and instead sits up against the bookshelf, taking in the room she’s landed in as she recovers. It’s tiny, the doorway leading in taking up nearly the entire wall on that side. Aside from the ones scattered on the floor, the books on the shelves are packed as tight as possible. Fluttershy blinks the weariness away to try to read the title of one of the books.

Applebloom? Why does Twilight have a book named Applebloom? She keeps looking down the row. Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, Diamond Tiara. She takes a look at another part of the shelf. Octavia, Vinyl Scratch. What is this? Fluttershy reaches out and grabs the nearest book to look at the title.

Applejack.

She flips it open to the first page. The text is messy, obviously written rather than typed. Words are crossed out and replaced, notes are written in the margins. The book is very clearly a rough draft. She reads.

Applejack. An orange Earth Pony. She’s dependable, and very very friendly. I’m not entirely convinced she actually understands the concept of personal space. Still, anypony who gets to know her grows to love her. A member of the Apple family, she has a lot of responsibility with the-

Fluttershy decides to flip to a page further in.

Supposedly, Applejack actually did have a rebellious phase when she was younger. Or at least, that’s what she calls it. I would argue that making your family a peach cobbler doesn’t quite count as an act of rebellion, but she believes otherwise. Maybe it’s an Apple family thing, but I think it’s probably just an Applejack thing. She is many things, honest, hard working, dependable, orange, but one thing she is not is rebellious.

She’s not exactly a pushover, though. If she isn’t happy with something, you’ll know about it. I remember, one time, Fluttershy tried to help restore a kind of grass that was dying out in the forest and it spread into the orchard. I have never seen somepony actually lecture Fluttershy, it was something else.

Fluttershy cringes. She remembers that vividly. Applejack berated her for hours, talking about food chains and invasive species, telling Fluttershy she should know better. She was right, of course. Fluttershy has given ponies that same lecture, but sometimes her heart manages to beat out her mind.

What Twilight didn’t see was the hours after the lecture, after Applejack calmed down. How Fluttershy had tried to go home to stew in her guilt, and Applejack hadn't let her. Instead she made Fluttershy spend the afternoon with the Apple family, talking and having fun until the anxiety was pushed to the back of Fluttershy’s mind.

It didn’t fix things, Applejack knew that, but it made it that much easier for Fluttershy to process everything. Twilight is right, ponies don’t often confront Fluttershy about things, but Applejack wasn’t being reckless. She never would have come down on her like that if she wasn’t positive Fluttershy would be able to handle it with some help.

A smile creeps onto Fluttershy’s face as she reads through the story of her friend’s life as told by Twilight. She gets lost in it, reliving all of her fondest memories of Applejack. The good times and the bad, all the little moments that make friendship so special. It isn't until she reaches the final page that she realizes just how much she's read, but she doesn't hesitate to grab a new book to start all over.

It’s as she’s staring at the cover of that second book, titled Fluttershy, that her stomach really starts to cause a fuss. Pain racks her gut, followed by nausea. She struggles for several minutes, deep breaths and tight muscles straining against the hunger, before she’s able to recover enough to stand up.

Her legs are still shaky, but she’s spent too much time here already. She grabs the book with her name and sets back off into the library. She looks around, trying to get her bearings. Just a long, nondescript hallway. No doors aside from the one she just came through, no signs to direct her. To her right, an empty hall stretching to a corner, and to her left the same.

Except it’s not the same. As she strains her vision, Fluttershy catches sight of something. A tiny, hardly noticeable thing, lying on the floor. The minuscule, frayed end of a broken string. She rushes forward, hardly believing her eyes, but as she rounds the corner she sees that it’s real. Somehow, she’s stumbled back upon her lost trail.

She doesn’t even dare to pick up the thread as she follows it, lest she accidentally break it again. She just walks, eyes glued to her salvation. Through rooms and hallways, intersections and straightaways. It takes her at least another hour to finally get back, not helped by her stomach making her too weak to walk from time to time, but finally, finally she breaks out back into the main library. She would break down in tears on the spot if not for the incessant badgering of her body pulling her towards the kitchen.

It’s dark outside as she stands in the kitchen, eating with neither a plate nor a table. She pays the night no mind, devouring her food. She finishes a sandwich, then makes another, and finishes that. The darkness stares her down as she eats, but she has neither energy nor attention to give it.

After she finishes making a third sandwich, she decides to get a plate and sit at a table. She grabs her food and her book off the counter and heads over to the nearest reading table, the one she had tied her lifeline to, but freezes when she realizes the table isn’t empty.

There’s a note. A note that she didn’t put there. A note being held down by a pair of scissors. Her hooves trembling, she puts her food and book on the table and moves to read the note. Only a single word.

Gotcha.

Distraction

Day Three

Fluttershy doesn’t dally long in Twilight’s room on her second morning there. She brushes her mane, but pays no heed to the disheveled bed, and has no interest in taking down her curtains again. She’s downstairs eating breakfast mere minutes after waking up.

Out the windows is another beautiful day. Just the right temperature, with a perfect breeze. Yet it brings no smile to Fluttershy’s face. It does nothing to brighten her dull eyes, or to raise her sagging shoulders. The emptiness of the world outside turns what would otherwise be beauty into crushing despair.

She stares at the note as she eats. That one, single word. Gotcha. It sears itself into her mind. It means so many things, and yet at the same time it means nothing at all. There’s another pony, that’s undeniable now, but who is it, and what do they want? All she has to go on are those six letters. Gotcha.

A sudden thought hits her. Could they have done this? Sent everypony away, or brought me here, or whatever happened? She taps her hoof on the table, deep in thought. Why, though? Why do all this just to torment me? It doesn’t make any sense...

Fluttershy shoves the note away. It slides off the table and floats gently down onto the floor.

Think about something else, she tells herself. I don’t even know where they are, and it’s not like I can search every home in Ponyville. I won’t get answers unless they come to me.

She goes and grabs the book from yesterday, staring at the cover as she sits back down. Fluttershy. Such a simple title, but it means so much. She strokes the cover idly as she thinks about what’s in the book. Her whole life, all her memories, all her friends. All the experiences that have made her who she is, all the connections that have made her love life.

All the things she's lost.

She feels her emotions welling back up and pushes the book away, shoving her despair back down. I don’t have time for this, she decides. I have to keep moving. The library didn’t work, but that doesn’t mean nothing will.

She gets up and walks towards the heavy basement door. It towers before her, the thick, dark wood contrasting starkly with the colorful world around it. Her fur stands on end as she approaches it. You can do this, she tells herself. You have to do this. Find a way to get home. You can do it.

She continues her mantra as she pushes open the foreboding door and looks down the stairs, threatening wooden steps that descend into an unyielding void. Turning the lights on does very little. They banish the darkness, sure, but no light can disperse the dread. The room is huge, cluttered with machines and lab equipment, imposing monuments to the mysteries of the world. An off-putting smell lingers, a mix of stale air and strange chemical odors. Empty cobwebs fill the ceiling, and faded scrawlings adorn chalkboards all across the walls. The faint light showering the room paints it with a disorienting cavalcade of shadows, making everything just that much more alien.

You can do it.

A hard swallow, a hesitant step, and then she’s there. The machines surround her on every side, connected by a web of cables. There’s no carnage, no obvious signs of an experiment gone wrong. Just row after row of machines that Fluttershy knows nothing about. Learning how to use them all could take weeks, or even months.

Well, Fluttershy thinks, it isn’t like I have other plans.

So, she switches a machine on at random. The screen churns and struggles, and takes a minute to turn on. It’s clear that it’s trying, buzzing with effort, but unknown ages of sitting untouched have taken their toll. A toll she hopes the other machines haven’t paid as well.

When the screen finally does light up, it does so with blemishes, dead areas and warping. A scarring crack runs down one side, rendering half of it completely useless. The rest of the screen is just barely intact enough to make out the words it spits out. Long lists of novels and biographies, ordered and annotated meticulously, followed by a prompt for Fluttershy to give new entries or adjust sorting algorithms. A request which she ignores.

Twilight’s favorite books, maybe? Makes sense, Fluttershy thinks. It doesn’t help me, though.

She shuts off the struggling codex and moves on. The next machine isn’t faring much better than the first. She wipes a thick layer of dust off the screen, even having to push away the web of some spider which is nowhere to be seen. When it flickers to life, Fluttershy is presented with a map of Ponyville. Curved lines shift over the town, presumably weather patterns of some sort. Certainly nothing that could fix things.

Hopefully I won’t be here long enough to have a reason to use this, she thinks.

The work isn’t quick, but it isn’t hard either. Fluttershy doesn’t need to dedicate much thought to testing the machines, just reading outputs and pressing buttons, so before long her mind starts to wander. Her thoughts sift through the past few days, reexamining all the things that have happened in this bizarre and familiar place, and she starts to find her head full of questions she can’t ignore.

I just don’t get it, she thinks as she waits for a machine to boot up. What did they stand to gain by trapping me in the library? The whole world is empty, if you want me gone I can just leave. She turns some dials and watches as the screen fluctuates in unhelpful ways. Unless they want me gone for good, but I’ve slept here for two nights now. She turns off the machine.

The next screen quietly pops into being. Nothing on it catches her eye. Then they taunted me about it! All that effort into making me feel alone, and then they just go and tell me they’re there? That’s so… So… Arrogant! She flicks off the screen and walks to the end of the row.

Was it just to torment me? Being alone wasn’t enough, so I had to be scared too? You couldn’t even see me in there! For all you know, I could have been just fine in there. So what was the point? I mean, what if I hadn’t come out, would you have come in after me? I wouldn’t be a very good plaything if I’m—

Fluttershy catches her own gaze in the black screen before her and loses her train of thought. It dawns on her how lost in thought she was, how she had been standing there staring at an empty screen. She locks eyes with herself and, for a brief moment, her expression is tense and focused, but then she blinks and it’s gone. She sighs, pushing her wild thoughts back into the recesses of her mind, and turns her attention back to the task at hand.

The final machine in the row, just a tiny screen and keyboard embedded into a wall, blinks to life. Rather quickly, in fact, just a brief buzz before a soft blue glow. No scratches or warping, hardly even dust.

What greets Fluttershy on the screen is a long series of messages between two ponies, seemingly going back years. A conversation between friends. Normally, she wouldn’t pry, but that hangup barely surfaces now. Desperate for any faint hope, she starts to read.

I still don’t see why I can’t just use our normal means of communication.

Twilight, not everything needs to be so formal. Even I would like to be more casual from time to time.

I know Princess, but I—

Fluttershy gasps. This is Princess Celestia! I can talk to her, she can help me! Frantically, desperately, she types out a cry for help.

Dear Princess Celestia, this is Fluttershy. I’m terribly, terribly sorry for reading your private messages and contacting you this way, but I really need your help. Everypony in Ponyville has vanished, and I’m completely alone. Please, respond to this if you’re able and let me know if you’re out there. I need to know I’m not alone.

Please.

She practically slams her hoof down on the send button, no hesitation. Then, unable to hold back her curiosity, she scrolls up to read the final messages on the machine.

I have to go, I don’t want to be late.

Of course, Twilight. Tell Pinkie Pie I said Happy Birthday.

There’s a gap in the messages, several weeks without anything.

Twilight, I need you to come to Canterlot, there’s something serious I want to discuss.

Another gap.

Twilight, this is Princess Luna. I apologize for contacting you this way, but we need to speak. I will arrive in Ponyville soon.

Again, several weeks pass with nothing.

Princess Luna, I’m beginning to worry. I know you said it was fine, but ponies are starting to panic. Don’t you think we should do something?

Twilight, what would it serve to stop things now? It is too late to undo what has been done. You must try to trust in her, and help others to do the same.

Then, one final jump forward. Only a few hours this time.

I’ll see you soon, Princess.

Fluttershy sits on the ground, staring at the screen, trying to decipher what she just read. She reads it over and over again, searching for any scraps of information she may have missed. She finds one, too, though not where she expected. As she rereads the dates of all the messages, she notices a stark difference in the one she sent today.

It’s been fifteen years.

Fluttershy is shell-shocked. Fifteen years, she thinks to herself. I don’t… what… how? She leans against the hard steel of the machine beside her. It does nothing to embrace her, or to hold her steady against the waves of realization crashing into her. I’ve only been here three days. How could it... Why… She lies down and buries her face in her hooves, her eyes clenched tight as she tries to work through her thoughts.

Why am I here?

Driven

Day Four

Fluttershy wakes up in a dark room, bathed in a blue light. She yawns and stretches as her wits slowly come to her, piecing together where she is. She’s surrounded by machines, shadows dancing in the weak lighting. She must have fallen asleep without going to bed last night.

She pushes herself up and looks around the basement. The air is crisp in the morning chill, a light draft from somewhere making her mane billow softly. The flickering screen nearby paints the machines around with its inviting glow as it broadcasts its perplexing tale. Everything is as she left it.

Now what? she ponders, walking back over to read the messages again. Fifteen years… She shakes her head and shuts the machine off. It just doesn’t make sense. If this place has been empty for fifteen years, what brought me here?

No matter how much she may want to, she can’t force the answers to come to her. Instead, she decides to just go about her day, hoping her next step will come to her as she does. So, she collects herself and heads upstairs for breakfast.

As she walks into the library, something catches her eye. A piece of paper on the floor, the note she had tossed away. Without thinking, she goes and picks it up, staring at it once more. Still just that one, mocking word.

Who are you? she wonders. Why are you here?

She puts the note back on a table and goes back to her day as her thoughts churn. A quick meal, some lazy hygiene, and before long she finds herself standing in the middle of the library with nothing to do.

Before she realizes it, she finds herself back at the note. She stares at it, and it stares back. She wants so badly to find more answers in it, but it just sits there, unchanged.

Gotcha. She snatches up the note and starts to pace, never taking her eyes off it. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Why leave this? What do you want from me? If you would just talk to me, we could work something out. It’s like you’re trying to make me try to stop you!

She shakes her head. Fine. She tosses the note aside and heads back downstairs. If that’s what you want, that’s what I’ll do. I’m sure Twilight has something down here I can use. You are going to talk to me.

She moves erratically around the basement, digging up any little gizmos and gadgets she can find, trying to find something useful. These smaller experiments haven’t withstood the test of time well, though. Broken wristbands, cracked goggles, snapped antennae. Very few of the things she finds work, and those that do don’t do so particularly well.

At first she’s careful with the machines, delicate and deliberate in her handling of them, but the more that turn up broken, the more haphazardly she moves. As she digs through one particularly full box, she starts to get frustrated by the already tested machines making it harder to find new ones, so she starts to just drop the broken ones on the ground.

One of the things she tosses aside cracks loudly when it hits the floor, and she nearly jumps out of her skin. The shock brings her wits flooding back to her, and she starts feeling her heart pounding in her chest, shooting waves of adrenaline through her body. It’s almost dizzying, and is made all the more disorienting by the realization that she was in this state well before scaring herself.

Get ahold of yourself, Fluttershy. She forces herself to slow down, taking deep, deliberate breaths. This isn’t like you. Just calm down and think, don’t let them—

Suddenly, the world vanishes. Darkness swarms in, engulfs her, and she recoils from it. She falls back, her knees buckling, instinctively trying to make herself as small as possible. For a brief moment she’s lost in the void, and in an instant she’s overwhelmed with a fresh wave of adrenaline. By the time her eyes adjust enough to realize that the overhead light has gone out, she’s already far too worked up for the knowledge to do anything to help.

Not that she’s even given time for relief. A deafening bang echoes throughout the house, the shock knocking Fluttershy backwards. She stumbles, scrambles up and dashes towards the noise in a rush of adrenaline. Through the machines, around the corner, up the stairs, and then she’s stopped. The door leading downstairs has been slammed shut with enough force to nearly knock it off its hinges. Cracks spiderweb out from the center of the door, where it’s been kicked shut. Nothing the wind could do. Nothing she could do. This is them. It has to be them.

Desperation engulfs Fluttershy. There’s no room for fear, nor hesitation or anxiety, not when presented with the possibility of ending her solitude. The most frightening monster in the world would still be another living thing. Another bang rings out as the door shoots open, crashing against a wall as Fluttershy runs into the library.

The library is completely empty. No ponies, no monsters, no sign of life. Scattered books flutter in the breeze flowing in from the open front door. Whoever this pony is, they seem to have left in a hurry.

Fluttershy intends to catch them.

She bolts out into the street and whips her head around. Nothing. No trace of movement in any direction, no indication of where they went. Fluttershy isn’t willing to give up that easily, though. She takes to the sky, pushing back the anxiety that wells up as she ascends until she’s high enough to see the majority of Ponyville.

Empty streets, vacant homes, and utter stillness. Nothing living moves through Ponyville. No gaping doors, no broken windows, no disturbed earth. There’s no sign of the mystery assailant. Fluttershy frowns. They could be anywhere. Searching house by house would be a fool’s gambit. No, she’ll need to do something else.

She lands and walks purposefully back into the library. There’s no going back now, she thinks as she goes around grabbing supplies.

You forced me into this. She strings up empty cans and bottles over all the doors and windows, making sure she’ll hear if anypony comes inside.

I never wanted to fight. I would’ve been nice to you! She uses any leftover thread or string she can find to make a web between the tables and chairs in the library, hoping to trip the pony up if they run in unprepared.

But no, you had to use me for some kind of awful game. As a final defense, she grabs some clear plastic wrap from the kitchen and strings it up all through the air, making a maze of invisible walls that should hopefully make flying impossible.

Well, I’m going to win.

It’s as she’s rummaging around Twilight’s bedroom to come up with more ideas when she hears it. The unmistakable klinking of empty bottles, right at the front door. She freezes for a moment, astounded to be hearing her alarm so soon, but recovers quickly and makes a break for the door.

She sees it swinging as she breaks past her makeshift curtain, and she wastes no time in following the trail outside.

Then she sees them.

Down the street, running deeper into Ponyville, she catches her first glimpse of her tormentor. Not much to see, just a dark flowing cloak covering a pony, but now Fluttershy knows what she’s looking for.

There’s no way she’ll let them out of her sight again. She runs, faster than she’s ever run before, charging after the other pony.

Buildings whiz by in a blur, the world losing definition around her as she pushes her body to move faster and faster. Slowly, steadily, she gains ground.

As they round a corner, the pony sees Fluttershy chasing them and redoubles their flight. When Fluttershy follows down the same street, they’ve left her in the dust, easily doubling the distance between the two.

Still, Fluttershy isn’t willing to give in. She follows for as long as she can, catching the other pony in the corner of her eye here and there and following their tracks.

They manage to shake her several times, but she doesn’t give up. She makes guesses, trying to think of where they would have gone, and it works. She’ll lose sight of the pony, but she always manages to see them again soon after.

Smart movement can only carry her so far, though. Without the speed to capitalize on it, Fluttershy spends the entire time running fruitlessly through the town. She can find the pony every time, but every time they outrun her. She refuses to admit defeat, to give in, but she just isn’t fast enough.

Eventually, though, she has no choice. She kept up the pursuit for far longer than she’d ever thought possible, but there was always going to be a limit. She collapses, panting hard, her legs burning. She squeezes her eyes shut and buries her head in her hooves.

“Why,” she whimpers. “Why!” She coughs when she strains her unused voice, which only serves to make the pain in her legs worse. She sprawls out on the dirt road, teary eyes shut tight as she gasps for breath.

She stays there well after her breathing returns to normal. The dusk washes over her, but she doesn’t move. The night comes soon after, and it too is able to devour her. I have to go home, she tells herself as she doesn’t move. Just roll over and get up, she pleads with herself, and ignores.

She tries to picture it in her mind, feel the motions of getting up and walking back, but she’s feeling things that fail to happen. Her body won’t move, her mind won’t move it, and so she does the only thing she can do. She falls asleep.

Breaking Point

Day Five

Fluttershy blinks away the sleep and looks at the curtain over the window, backlit with golden light. She stretches her aching muscles, lets out a massive yawn, and gets up to walk over to the window. On a whim, she pulls down the curtain and drops it to the floor. Behind it she finds the sunny landscape of Ponyville, familiar streets and buildings stretching into the distance. Little signs swing in the wind, creaking wood and rattling chains still vying for the attention of passing ponies.

Another beautiful day, all for me. How wonderful.

She blows a wayward lock of her haggard mane away with a puff of air and turns away from the window. She means to make for the kitchen, but no sooner does she start walking than she stops again as her mind finally catches up with her. Wait… she thinks. How am I… I fell asleep outside last night. I’m sure of it. Why am I back in Twilight’s house?

Fluttershy’s head snaps around, searching the room for any explanation, and she spots it on the vanity. Another piece of paper, one she’s sure wasn’t there before. She dashes over and grabs it immediately, her brow furrowing more and more as she reads the new note.

That was fun! Smart move with the alarms, keep it up. But hey, don’t push yourself too hard. It’ll be no fun if you get seriously hurt. Let me do the pushing.

Oh, and hey, if you keep yourself holed up in that tree forever I’m just gonna start doing stuff I don’t gotta go inside for. Just some advice.

-Dusty

Fluttershy rereads the note, then reads it a third time. With a scowl, she crumples up the paper and chucks it away. Arrogant jerk, she thinks. I don’t need your help. Leave me in the street next time.

Fuming, she storms down from the loft and heads for the kitchen. She pours herself the last remnants of a box of cereal, along with the rest of the milk in the fridge, and sits down at a nearby table to eat. As she does, the gears in her head turn tirelessly.

Just you wait, ‘Dusty,’ she thinks. I’m not the pushover I used to be. I’m going to catch you. I have to.

Augh, but how? She leans forward, holding her head with her hooves. I’m too weak to outrun them, and I’m too much of a coward to do anything that might actually work. They’re just going to torture me for the rest of my life.

She shakes her head, trying to hold back the emotions. She focuses on the voice in the back of her mind, so tiny now, urging her to keep going, telling her that everything will be fine if she just doesn’t give up. Slowly, she manages to muffle the anxieties overwhelming her.

Fluttershy finishes her meal and goes to clean up, but on her way into the kitchen she snags a leg on one of the tripwires she’d set up. She tumbles to the floor and the bowl flies from her grasp, shattering when it lands.

Shards of ceramic tumble towards her, settling just by her muzzle. She stares at them, little symbols of her ineptitude.

After a minute, she pushes herself up and stomps on the floor. “Fine!” she yells. “I didn’t need that bowl anyway! It’s not like I have any food left.” She turns around with a flick of her tail and kicks through the strip of tape that had stopped her. Useless.

She doesn’t stop there. That strip leads to the next, then the next, and soon she’s tearing down all the traps set up around the library. Useless, useless, useless! I’ve been here almost a week and I haven’t done anything! She grumbles and carries the pile of dismantled traps outside, dropping them in a heap in the street. There. At least now I won’t be getting in my own way.

The breeze sends a leaf flying into her face, catching her off guard. She jumps back, then growls and shakes her head. Get over yourself. Moping won’t get you home.

So, instead, she sets off into town to search for supplies. You have to at least try, she tells herself. Quit being a wimp and put up some real traps. She wanders through stores, picking out sturdy wires and wide nets, anything she thinks she can use. No more Nice Fluttershy.

She works away her frustration, or at least tries to. Scampering around Ponyville, she starts to fill the town with anything she can think of to trip Dusty up. Some netting here, some fishing line there, rickety, hastily made structures that Fluttershy hides as well as she can.

She realizes that she’ll have to spend a lot of time out and about keeping things together, so to make sure she can keep an eye on things she decides to set up some surveillance. She finds a store stocking radios and grabs them all. With a bit of tinkering and a lot of searching for hiding places, she manages to set up radios all over town. If there’s a noise, she’ll hear it.

Her focus doesn’t waver until she notices the sun starting to set, and when it does everything hits her at once. The exhaustion from several hours of hard work floods into her, making her legs weak, and is made all the worse by the hunger that seeps in around the edges. The bare cabinets back in the library flash through her mind, and so begrudgingly she sets off in the opposite direction.

The walk through Ponyville is long and arduous. Her aching legs don’t help anything, making all her movements sluggish. On top of that, Ponyville just feels wrong. The streets feel longer when they’re empty, and the sun feels more harsh. The houses all around her seem to have almost lost their color without the ponies they’re meant for.

That’s a thought that gets stuck in Fluttershy’s head. None of this was meant for me, she thinks. I barely lived in Ponyville. Is it even Ponyville anymore? None of its ponies are left. I certainly don’t count. Here I am, though. One of two citizens of beautiful Flutterville, the town where nopony loves you. Where you can’t even love yourself.

A cool breeze greets her as she wanders into Sweet Apple Acres. It billows her mane into her face, which makes her flinch before roughly pulling it away. The farm glows softly in the waning sun, and the whistling of the wind through the hollow woods lends it a somber tone that does nothing to lift Fluttershy’s mood.

The first thing she does after arriving is fly up into a tree and grab an apple, immediately biting into it. She eats it fast, juice running down her face, then tosses away the core and grabs another, eating it with the same fervor.

With the third apple she slows down. She bites it lazily and starts floating towards the farmhouse. Might as well look inside while I’m here. Applejack isn’t here to object, she thinks as she pushes open the door and heads in.

The house looks the same as it had the first time she came here. Worn furniture, empty for years. An unfinished meal, still undisturbed, somehow with no sign of decay. Creaking stairs leading up to vacant bedrooms. A home frozen in time.

She makes her way upstairs, tossing her finished apple back behind her. It tumbles down the stairs with dull thumps. She passes Applebloom’s room, and Big Mac’s, not sparing them second glances, before walking straight into Applejack’s bedroom.

It, too, is the same as when she saw it last. Boots, too small for Fluttershy. Farm equipment, far too big. Saddlebags, which are in no short supply anywhere in Ponyville. There’s very few things of actual use to be found.

She’s not here for utility, though. She isn’t actually sure why she’s here. She walks over to the bed, staring at a low-hanging shelf that looks ready to drop its contents on anypony foolish enough to sleep here. Stuffed animals, trophies, memories of the life lived here. She moves on, heading to the vanity to—

Fluttershy nearly slams her face into the wall as she trips on something on the floor. She catches herself, barely, and tenses up as she processes what happened.

She wheels around and, with a grunt, kicks the obstacle away from her. A sharp crack rings out as her hoof makes contact.

It shatters loudly against the wall, wood splintering off and flying across the room, and only then does she realize what she’s destroyed. A birdhouse, carved intricately with designs of apples, sits in a pile on Applejack’s bed. Fluttershy recognizes it in an instant, because she’s the one who made it, a gift for a friend.

She stares at the wooden carcass with a frown on her face. Her mind is blank, thoughts drowned out by a mental static. She stares at it for a long time, or at least what feels like a long time, before she finally manages to find a reaction.

It starts with a sigh. Good job, Fluttershy. Now it’s just like the rest of your life. She clenches her eyes shut and shakes her head, but the thoughts won’t stop. Just get out of here before you ruin what’s left of Applejack’s life too.

All she can think to do is run away. She makes a beeline for the hallway, looking away from the shattered remains on the bed, and slams the door shut behind her. The noise shocks her across the hall, ringing out far more loudly than she expected. When she sees the cracks around the handle, she leans forward and growls in frustration before heading off down the hall.

She doesn’t think about where she’s going as she storms away. It doesn’t matter, she just needs to be somewhere else, somewhere that isn’t that room. That somewhere ends up being a bathroom. It’s humble, just a small tub and a messy sink, complete with a mirror above the sink. Fluttershy can’t help but look at her own reflection, and she recoils at what she sees.

She’s a complete mess. Scrapes and bruises run all up and down her legs, marking them with red and blue. Her hooves are caked with a thick layer of grime. Her mane is in shambles, complete with patches of dirt and twigs sticking out of it. She looks worse than she’s ever seen herself before.

None of that is what bothers her, though. It’s all overshadowed by what she sees in her sharp, teary eyes. Rage, a deep, utter wrath is spilling out of her, plain to see in her ruthless gaze. She hardly recognizes herself.

It is her, though, and she knows it. It’s her rage, her frustration that she’s failed to keep contained, and seeing what it’s done to her gives her one final push over the edge.

“What?” she yells at herself. “Why are you so mad? It’s your fault. You broke it, just like you broke the bowl. You can’t even find your way through a library!”

Just like that, it’s out, and she can no longer hold back the anger. She points an accusatory hoof at herself, knocking a cup filled with toothbrushes to the floor.

“What did you even do to deserve all those friends in the first place? You don’t even talk! All you do is sit around trying to act ‘nice,’ and that got you this.”

She swipes her hoof through the air, knocking yet more toiletries to the floor.

“Your friends are all gone, and you’re too ‘nice’ to get them back. All you can do is break things, and get lost, and cry. It’s pathetic.”

She slams her hoof against the counter, sending a stinging pain up her leg.

“Any other pony would have found a way home by now, so why can’t you do it? Huh? You know you’ll never see them again if you stay here, so what’s wrong with you?”

She leaps into the air and flies closer so that she’s nose to nose with herself.

“You know what? Maybe it’s better this way! You know you’re no good at being a friend. Look how much you’re hurting yourself here. The only reason that didn’t happen back then is because you were hurting them instead! If you can’t even get it together enough to find a way home, then you deserve to be here. So you better start getting comfortable, because you’ll never!”

She stamps her hoof against the glass.

“Ever!”

She stamps harder.

“Leave!”

She stamps one final time, and the mirror cracks. Deep rifts scatter out from her hoof, cutting her reflection into a thousand little pieces. She stares into the cold, broken eyes before her as her vision starts to blur with tears.

No more Nice Fluttershy…

With a huff she pushes herself away from the shattered mirror and lands back on the ground. She makes a feeble attempt to wipe away her tears, but winces when the dirt caked to her legs stings her eyes. Can’t even do that right. How do you expect to get home if you can’t even keep yourself clean?

She sniffs loudly and starts to wash her legs off in the sink. It takes a good few minutes, but eventually she manages to get them clean enough that she can at least feel comfortable rubbing her eyes. Then she heads downstairs, goes outside, and starts the long walk back to Twilight’s home.

It’s dark by the time she gets back. A cacophony of rattling and klinking greets her as she opens the door and walks inside. She’s halfway to her bed before she stops in her tracks, remembering that she tore down her alarms earlier. Immediately, her eyes narrow and she growls under her breath.

She turns around and looks carefully around the library. It’s not hard to find the note this time. It’s sitting on top of a basket filled to the brim with freshly picked apples. It’s short and simple this time.

I’m bored. You don’t look hurt, so the game’s back on tomorrow. No holding back, kay?

-Dusty

Fluttershy just about tears the notes to pieces, but instead she goes to find a pencil and writes a note back on the same page.

I’m done being nice.

-Fluttershy

Then she hefts up the basket of apples, kicks open the front door and chucks them outside, spilling them across the street. She throws the note out after them, slams the door, and storms off to bed.

Confrontation

Day Six

Ugh. Fluttershy groans as the morning sunlight hits her, turning away from the window and pulling the sheet up over her head. She hardly got any sleep, and already her head is pounding. At this point, the sunlight glowing through the sheet just seems like another assault from the world around her.

What am I even doing? she asks herself. I’m never going to catch them. Why did I ever think I could?

Fluttershy sighs and tumbles off the bed. The sheet sticks to her for a few feet before slipping off onto the floor, left behind as she heads down into the library. Absentmindedly, she opens up the cabinets in the kitchen before remembering her lack of food, and her stomach growls angrily at her.

So, she drags herself outside. It’s yet another perfect day in Ponyville. The kind of day that should be filled with the singing of birds, the chitter of animals, and the laughter of ponies.

Yet it’s filled with silence. The birds, the animals, the ponies, they’re all gone. All that’s here is her, an empty wind, and the scattered basket of apples.

Right. The apples. Fluttershy stumbles into the middle of the street and sits down before grabbing an apple off the ground to eat. Great decision there, Fluttershy. You really made Dusty look silly in front of all their friends.

The note is nowhere to be seen. Maybe Dusty took it, maybe the wind just blew it away, but it’s definitely not here. Fluttershy rolls over onto her back, staring into the vast blue sky. What was that even supposed to mean? I never had a chance to be nice in the first place. She sighs. I’m not even good at threats.

Fluttershy closes her eyes to think. The throbbing in her head is a constant backdrop to her thoughts. So now what? Do I beg Dusty to leave me alone? Do I run away, go hide in Canterlot? I don’t even know if Canterlot is still there. Well, I suppose it must be if I could send those—

Her thoughts are cut off as a drop of water hits her face. Then another, and another, and she opens her eyes just in time to see the wall of water falling from the rain cloud above. She does not, however, see it in time to avoid it, and in an instant she’s completely drenched.

Then, like clockwork, a breathy laugh rings out from above as a cloaked pony speeds away.

The rain pours down on her relentlessly. It sticks her fur to her body and throws splashes of mud at her sides. Every drop is another blow, another insult from above that Fluttershy must bear.

She grumbles under her breath as she pushes herself up from the now muddy road. “Wonderful. Now I’m sad and wet. Just what I needed.”

Mud and water pool onto the wood floor as Fluttershy walks back into the library. She tries to shake off the rain, but isn’t able to accomplish much. Her back is still matted and grimy, and her tangled mane is now plastered to the side of her face by mud. She ignores it all.

Good one, Dusty, she thinks. You really got me again. We can’t have Fluttershy feeling too safe when she eats. Not when you can make her a failure at that too.

She sighs and leans on a bookshelf, cringing at the wet splurch as mud and water splatter onto the polished wood. Her first impulse is to ignore it, to stop caring about little things like ruined books, but her nature wins out in the end and she peels herself off of the sturdy frame. With no place to relax, it isn’t long before she’s wandering aimlessly around the library.

I had a decent hold on things before they showed up, Fluttershy thinks as she slinks through the rows of books. Maybe I could’ve fixed one of those machines, or gotten through to somepony in Canterlot. But I can’t do any of that with Dusty around.

She turns in place and starts pacing through the library. I might even be able to go find more books without them! They ruined that too.

Her eyes narrow. I’m only a failure because they made me one.

You know what, Dusty? I’m done playing your game. Doing her best to push away all the parts of her mind telling her to give up, Fluttershy kicks open the door leading down into the basement. Do your worst while you can, because I’m leaving.

The wooden steps creak in protest as Fluttershy steps heavily down them. Nothing downstairs seems out of the ordinary. Old, broken machines, dark corners, vacant cobwebs. The only thing that really sticks out to her is a pungent damp smell, but that could also just be her.

Okay… Fluttershy stares out into the crowd of machines that she doesn’t have the tools to understand.

Now what?

She starts to walk slowly through the aisles. How do these get me out? I mean, I suppose if I’m going to be stuck here for years I could study Twilight’s notes and build something myself, but…

Fluttershy walks over to a corner table and picks up a dingy old notebook. Inside are pages and pages of notes, formulas and everything else, and Fluttershy can’t read any of it. Wow, she thinks. Twilight, your writing is really bad.

She tosses the book back on the table. Maybe if I’m desperate.

Then she comes up to the machine where she sent out her cry for help. She finds herself staring into its blank screen, her eyes locked on the warped reflection of herself. This is just going to disappoint me, right? I shouldn’t—

Suddenly, static blasts out from behind Fluttershy. She jumps and wheels around, her heart racing, but the static moves too, staying firmly behind her. She tries looking over her shoulder, but can’t get a good enough view to find the source.

Then a voice breaks through the static. It’s a thin, wispy voice that cracks with every inflection. “Stupid wires! Get off me!” A muffled, far off frustration.

Fluttershy lets out a held breath as she remembers the radio strapped to her side. I don’t even need Dusty to scare me, she thinks. I scare myself.

A deep sigh helps to settle her nerves. Nothing to worry about. Just Dusty getting caught in a trap.

It takes her mind a moment to catch up.

Dusty got caught! Her heart rate jumps straight back up again. I did it! I have to go— She’s just about to run off, but as she turns she catches sight of herself in the monitor again and freezes.

Actually… She reaches out and turns the machine on. Dusty can wait. If the trap worked, they’re not going anywhere. I have to stop letting them control my life.

The screen buzzes to life as the machine quietly whirs. She squints her eyes as a familiar blue light breaks through the darkness of the room. They adjust before long though, and she sees just what she expected.

Nothing.

With a sigh, she reaches out to turn the machine back off. Just before she does, however, the screen flashes and refreshes. It takes a moment, a little notification in the corner telling her that it’s connecting to something, and then her heart skips a beat when the inconceivable happens.

A new message shows up.

I don’t know how you got here, but come to Canterlot and I’ll send you home.

Short, simple, and more meaningful than anything she’s read in her entire life. The sender didn’t say who they are. The message is over a day old at this point. Fluttershy doesn’t care about any of that. The only thing on her mind is the possibility of going home.

She races upstairs and starts to pack. Not that she has much to pack, she hasn’t exactly gotten any souvenirs, but it’s a long trip to Canterlot. She needs to at least be able to take some food, and she also heads up to the loft and fetches the Fluttershy book that she had stored on a nightstand. She dumps everything else out of her saddlebags. Leftover string, medical supplies, the radio—

Right. She pauses on the radio. Dusty.

She sighs deeply and sits down. I… I can’t just leave them. What if they’re trapped here too? I have to take them with me.

But… Fluttershy puts her head in her hooves. What if they really are the one who brought me here? Ugh, I… I…

No. Fluttershy gets up decisively and heads for the door. I can’t leave them.

The rain is still pouring outside. There’s no way for her to go anywhere without getting soaked again, but at least it’s only the one cloud. The mud is a lot deeper now and cakes a good portion of her legs, but once she’s out of it, she’s out for good.

It doesn’t take long to find the right street. There’s only one place in Ponyville that she put wires, and sure enough it’s the right spot. Down the road a ways, in the middle of an inscrutable labyrinth of thin wires, is a cloaked figure suspended in midair.

She approaches cautiously. Partially to avoid wires, but also just out of nerves. “D-Dusty?” she calls out as she nears them. “We need to, um, talk.”

There’s no response as she walks up behind them. “Dusty?” she asks again. “Are you okay?” Hesitantly, she reaches a hoof up and grabs the hood. She swallows hard, her hoof trembling, and in an agonizingly long instant pulls the hood down.

Then Fluttershy screams and flies back as what she thought was Dusty’s head falls to the ground and shatters.

In her panic, she forgets about the wires all around her, and one of them snags her leg. Before she can react she’s falling backwards, and then she slams into the ground, sending a sharp pain up her back.

Groaning, Fluttershy sits up to examine what happened. The cloak has fallen to the ground, covering the glass sphere that had shattered and revealing the chunk of wood that had held it up. Fluttershy glares at it furiously.

Laughter reaches her ears. A hollow kind of laugh, like a slow wind through a wide tunnel, but still a boisterous one. She focuses her vision, scanning the street, and then spots them. A cloaked pony, sitting on a rooftop nearby, clutching their gut in a fit of laughs.

Just like that, all of her anger flashes back, flooding her with adrenaline. She jumps to her hooves, crouched lithely amongst the wires, and rockets herself towards Dusty.

Or at least, she tries to.

What actually happens is that just as she tries to take flight, the mud on her hooves steals the ground out from under her. She stumbles forward, going too fast to stop but with no control, and catches a wire with her chest.

She flips forward, turning through the air for a sickening moment until she slams onto the ground. A sharp crack rings through the air as she lands awkwardly on one leg before falling prone. The pain, combined with the vertigo from the world spinning around her, is nearly enough to make her sick.

She’s too distracted by all this to notice when a blue hoof lands on the ground in front of her. She’s barely lucid enough to see when the cloaked pony leans down to get a better look at her, and she’s just about in a sound enough state of mind to hear them when they finally work up the courage to talk to her.

“Hey, um..” they cough awkwardly and shift around on their hooves. Their voice is dry and unused, barely making it out of their throat. “Are you okay?”

Fluttershy groans and tries to push herself up, but a shock of pain in her leg sends her straight back to the ground. “What do you care?” she replies weakly.

Dusty takes a shocked step away. “Huh? O-of course I care, I don’t wanna see you get hurt!”

“Yeah,” Fluttershy coughs, “because then you’d lose your toy.”

Dusty hums sadly and lays on the ground to meet Fluttershy’s eyes. With the shade from their hood and her blurry eyes, though, she can’t make out much more than their blue fur. “I don’t understand,” they say, “I thought we were having fun.”

“Fun?” Fluttershy points a shaky hoof at them. “You’ve been torturing me ever since I got here!”

“I, but, I don’t—” Dusty sputters, trying to form words that won’t come to them. “I didn’t know. I just… It’s been so long since I had a friend, I—”

“We are not friends,” Fluttershy grumbles.

“Oh.” Dusty seems to almost shrink under their cloak. “Of course. I shouldn’t have— I’m sorry. Do you, um, need help getting home or anything?”

Fluttershy scoffs. “I don’t need anything from you. I only showed up because even after everything you’ve done to me, I couldn’t bring myself to leave you here alone. So just go. There’s somepony in Canterlot who can get you out of here.”

“What?” They tense up and look back and forth frantically. “There’s no way… I-I can’t just leave you, though.” They stand up and try to hold out a hoof to help up Fluttershy, but she bats it away.

“I don’t need you!” Fluttershy says. She tries to push herself up again and manages to find a very shaky stance on her hooves. “All you’ve done is make things worse. I don’t ever want to see you again!”

Fluttershy stomps a hoof on the ground in her anger, but doing so sends shots of pain sailing up her leg and through her body. Her leg buckles under her, sending her toppling back down to the ground. Dusty yells something, but Fluttershy can’t hear them over the cacophony of bells playing in her ears. She hardly feels it as Dusty catches her, and the last thing she sees as she fades into unconsciousness is the shock of rainbow hair that falls from Dusty’s hood.

Pains

Day Seven

Pain greets Fluttershy the moment she wakes up. Her whole body aches, a dull throbbing radiating out from her bruised back, and her head is on fire. Over all of that, though, is the deep, sharp pain in her right front leg.

She groans as she remembers everything that happened. She’s back in Twilight’s bed again, surely making it dirty past the point of use this time, with the sheets draped lightly over her. I guess Dusty carried me back again, she thinks. I wonder if—

Her thoughts run dry as a realization hits her.

That was Rainbow Dash.

Then her mind is racing, questions flying by too quickly to be answered. Why is she here? Why was she hiding? Why change her name, why wear the hood, why—”

Tears well up as she lands on the final question. Why would she do this to me?

Rainbow Dash loved me, she thinks. She looked out for me. She never would have scared me or trapped me in a library or… Or run away from me.

Memories of her old friend play in her mind, a reminder of how things should be. Every piece of advice, good and bad. All the times Rainbow Dash protected her from ponies with bad intentions.

She hurt me so much.

She plays through their fights too. The times Rainbow Dash had gone too far in trying to get her to do something, or times that Fluttershy scolded Rainbow Dash too harshly for some mistake.

Never like this, though. She wouldn’t…

Fluttershy must have been sobbing, because she’s jolted out of her thoughts by a hoof resting gently on her side. She doesn’t turn to face Dusty, and instead pulls the covers up over her head.

There’s a long silence. Dusty keeps her hoof on Fluttershy’s side, but doesn’t say anything. Fluttershy sniffs as she fights to stifle her tears.

Eventually, the hoof leaves her side. “I’m here if you need anything.” Dusty’s voice is tiny and dry, a nervous whisper that barely pushes past the ringing in Fluttershy’s ears. Then there’s the sound of wings flapping as Dusty goes back down to the library.

Fluttershy finds a clean spot on her leg and dries her eyes off on it. Why didn’t you leave me? She wants to ask, but her gut tells her that she already knows the answer to that. After all, no matter what may happen, Rainbow Dash is still Rainbow Dash. She would never leave somepony behind.

Even one she doesn’t know.

Tears threaten to flow again, but she bites them back. Instead, she finally pulls away the covers and tries to leave the bed.

Her body protests the whole way. From pain, from exhaustion, and just from an unwillingness to do what she wants. It’s a struggle to even turn over, her body screaming at her to just go back to sleep, but she pushes through it and drags herself into the waking world.

“Aah!” Her hoof isn’t on the floor for even a second before she crumples, wracked with pain. The stabbing in her leg increases tenfold from putting any weight on it, and suddenly there’s an inferno inside her.

Instantly Dusty is back, crouched beside her, and the pain is drowned out as Fluttershy is hit with another wave of emotion. It’s shrouded under the hood, but she knows Rainbow Dash’s face. She recognizes the look of care and concern behind Dusty’s aged eyes. She can still hear her friend’s voice, faded as it is, as Dusty asks if she’s okay.

“Rainbow Dash…”

Dusty frowns and looks away. “I’m—” She cuts herself off and shakes her head. “You can’t stand on that leg, Fluttershy.” Hearing that voice say her name is more painful than Fluttershy could have imagined.

“I don’t need help,” Fluttershy mumbles. With a tremendous amount of effort, and by gritting her teeth through a tremendous amount of pain, Fluttershy manages to stand back up without letting her leg bring her down again. Then she stretches out her wings and gives them a quick test flap.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Dusty tries to tell her, but Fluttershy is already off the ground. Every flap of her wings jerks her around just enough for another ripple of pain, but she fights through it and floats down to the library to sit at a table she can rest her leg on.

Hesitantly, Dusty flies into the kitchen and grabs a first aid kit before sitting across from her. “We should really—”

Fluttershy grabs the kit and pulls it to herself. “I can do it,” she says as she awkwardly opens the box with one hoof and starts to dig through it.

“Fluttershy…”

“You’ve hurt me enough.” Fluttershy manages to find a rudimentary splint to use. It isn’t much, she’ll have to go to the hospital if she wants a more robust one, but it’s at least enough to keep her from bending the injured joint.

She grunts and winces as she struggles to strap it onto herself. It’s meant to be possible alone, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. After several painful failed attempts, she tosses the splint away in frustration.

“Fluttershy, please,” Dusty says again. “Don’t let yourself get hurt more just because of what I did.”

“...Fine.” Fluttershy stretches her hoof out on the table and rests her head on her other leg, looking pointedly away from Dusty. Putting the splint on is a slow, cautious process, but it gets done without much more pain.

“Hopefully that helps,” Dusty says as she finishes.

Fluttershy looks over at her leg. The injury caused by her own contraption. She groans. “How am I supposed to get to Canterlot now?”

“I’ll make sure you get there,” Dusty tells her. Fluttershy jumps, having not realized she asked the question out loud.

Fluttershy stares at Dusty’s soft, sad face. She gazes into her friend’s guilty eyes, and can no longer hold herself back. “Why…” Tears well up again as she tries to choke out the question, but the words won’t come to her. “Just… Why?”

Dusty frowns and pulls her hood down over her eyes. “Like I said, I didn’t know I was hurting you.”

“How could you not know?” Fluttershy can’t stop herself from crying anymore, and tears stream down her cheeks. “You’ve known me your entire life.”

“No I haven’t!” Dusty snaps at her before wincing and folding back in on herself. “Sorry, I just… I haven’t.”

“Then what happened? You just forgot about me?”

“I tried to remember!” Dusty holds her hooves out, pleading to Fluttershy. “I tried so hard.”

Fluttershy sniffs and closes her eyes tight. “Did you even remember my name?”

Dusty’s legs fall to the table as she sits, stunned and speechless. Eventually she recovers enough to turn away from Fluttershy and hide in her hood. “Of course I did,” she mumbles.

Fluttershy can’t handle any more. She wipes her eyes and pushes herself away from the table before taking to the air and floating towards the basement, her leg complaining the whole way.

“Fluttershy?” Dusty asks.

“I need to tell them what’s going on. Please, just… Let me be alone.”

With that, she floats downstairs and does her best to get comfortable on the ground in front of the communication machine. It takes her a bit to catch her breath. Flying with an injury is infinitely more exhausting than normal, so she lays down in the quiet dark as her body calms down.

After a few minutes of meditation, she feels good enough to stand up and turn the machine on. It flickers on as usual, and she gives it a moment to connect, but there’s nothing new. They probably think I’m on my way. She types up a short reply, although it’s slow and difficult with only one hoof.

I hurt my leg and can’t travel. It will probably be a while before I can get to Canterlot.

Then she lies back down on the cold, hard floor. It’s difficult to get comfortable with her injured leg sprawled out awkwardly, but eventually she manages to find a position where she at least feels okay. She closes her eyes, relaxes, and soon enough is once more asleep.

A few hours later, Fluttershy is woken up by a gentle nudging. She cracks her eyes open and sees Dusty, doing her best to wake Fluttershy without hurting her. In her tiredness, all she manages to get out is a muffled “Rainbow Dash…”

Dusty frowns and sets a tray in front of her. “I brought you some food,” she says, “since you haven’t eaten today.”

Dusty made her pancakes. Fluttershy stares at them, their aroma enveloping her, and tries to decide what to do. “Thank you,” is what she eventually mumbles before setting into them.

She ends up just picking them up with her teeth since her hooves are so dirty. It’s not the most endearing way to eat, but there’s not exactly anyone around to impress. They’re absolutely invigorating. After a week without a hot meal, anything can taste like heaven, and soon the plate is completely clean.

Dusty smiles at her. “At least I didn’t ruin your appetite.” She picks up the tray and starts to head back upstairs. “Oh, and uh, I think you got a reply on the thingy,” she calls back behind her as she disappears.

Fluttershy scrambles to her hooves, fast enough that her leg almost brings her crashing back down, but she leans on the machine to stay upright and read the new message.

How did you manage that? Oh well. I’ll gather up some stuff and come to you instead, just wait in the library. I’ll be there asap.

Fluttershy sighs in relief, and tension flows out of her. She just about collapses back to the floor, but then an afterthought convinces her to write another message.

Oh, there’s a second pony here too, so make sure you bring enough of whatever you need for us both.

Then, deciding she’s tired of the darkness, Fluttershy trudges her way slowly back upstairs. She’s getting a little used to the pain of flying, but it’s still always there.

Dusty is washing dishes and doesn’t notice her show up, which doesn’t bother Fluttershy. She floats lazily over to a soft chair in a far corner and slumps down hard into it. Her body thanks her as it begins to settle, and she leans her head back and closes her eyes.

I can’t believe it’s over, she thinks. I’m safe, help is on the way, and I’m not even alone anymore. Or, well… She sighs. This is just too much.

“Fluttershy?” She pries her eyes open to look as Dusty approaches with a pair of mugs. She puts one beside Fluttershy, as well as a straw, before taking a seat nearby with her own. “I think I remember you like tea, right?”

Fluttershy eyes the straw, then looks at her injured hoof and sighs. “I do.” She takes a sip, letting the warm, calming drink seep into her.

They sit like that in silence for a minute, both sipping their drinks, until Dusty finishes hers.

“Umm…” Dusty hums in thought as she searches for what she wants to say. “Do you, uh… Hate me?”

Fluttershy frowns and looks at Dusty. The blue pegasus she’s known her whole life, who’s always been there for her, who she wouldn’t give up for the world. Except she isn’t. She’s a different pony in the same body.

Fluttershy shakes her head. “I don’t want to,” she says. “No, I don’t think I do. I just don’t know if I’ll ever trust you.”

“What can I do to fix this?” Dusty asks.

“I don’t know, Rainbow Dash.”

Dusty hums sadly. “Will you at least let me try?”

It takes Fluttershy a minute to respond. “Okay,” she says eventually.

Dusty lets out a deep breath. “Thank you. Really, thank you so much.”

Fluttershy finishes her tea in silence. The library is completely still, and not even the wind can be heard outside. The only noise is the breathing of the two ponies.

“Um, Fluttershy…” Dusty says eventually.

“Hm?”

“I know it’s probably a lot to ask, but… Could you please not call me Rainbow Dash?”

“Oh.” Fluttershy looks into Dusty’s face and sees years of pain etched into it. “Of course, Dusty.”

“Thank you.” Dusty nods to her and gets up, collecting the mugs to take back to the kitchen. She stops for a moment in front of Fluttershy. “Um, this is a little awkward, but you should probably go take a bath.”

“Oh.” Fluttershy looks down at her filthy body, covered in mud and grime, and it’s nearly enough to make her laugh. She doesn’t, though. Instead she just nods and starts to push herself out of the chair.

“If you need help—”

“No,” Fluttershy snaps. She waves away the offer, but the gesture sends her another wave of pain that gives her pause. “...Okay. Fine.”

Dusty is eager to help, but there’s not much she can actually do to make short trips more comfortable. So, instead, she goes ahead of Fluttershy to get everything ready, drawing a bath, grabbing a towel, flying to a nearby house to find a brush so Fluttershy doesn’t have to contort herself painfully. Fluttershy spends the time limping cautiously to the bathroom, and reaches it just as Dusty finishes preparing for her.

“Um,” Dusty awkwardly mumbles as she turns off the water, “are you, uh, going to be able to actually… Get in?”

Fluttershy wants to glare at her, but she holds it back. “I don’t need you to do everything for me,” she says instead. “That won’t fix things.”

“I’m not trying to—” Dusty sighs and shakes her head before flying out to give Fluttershy the room. “You’re right, it won’t, but I’m still here if you need me.”

Fluttershy isn’t sure how to respond. She stares at Dusty, as Dusty stares at the floor, and tries to find some words, some feeling. Anger or gratitude or sadness, anything, but either she’s feeling too much to register it, or she’s so exhausted that her feelings aren’t able to sprout. Either way, she has nothing to say, so instead she just closes the door between them.

A few hours later, as Fluttershy soaks in lukewarm water, there’s a knock on the door that drags her out of her half-asleep trance.

“Fluttershy?” Dusty’s raspy voice is barely audible, muffled by the door. “I don’t wanna bug you, but it’s getting kinda late and I need to go home and sleep. Are you going to be okay?”

Fluttershy sighs. “I’m fine, Dusty,” she calls out.

“Alright, well if you need anything, I’ll…” Dusty’s voice turns into white noise as she nervously lowers her voice.

“What?” Fluttershy asks. “I- Dusty, just come in here.”

“Huh? I can’t do that! You’re in the bath!”

“I don’t wear clothes, Dusty.”

There’s a moment of hesitation before the door slowly creaks open and Dusty inches inside, pulling her hood down over her eyes awkwardly. Fluttershy doesn’t move, lest she disturb the delicate position she’s found to be comfortable.

“You don’t have to avert your eyes,” Fluttershy tells her. “It isn’t like I’m a princess or something.”

“It just feels like too much,” Dusty says. “I already hurt you so much…”

Fluttershy looks over at Dusty, staring into the wall, and frowns. “Please don’t do that,” she says. “Don’t… Hate yourself because of what happened. That won’t fix things, and neither will treating me like I’m somehow above you. It’s just going to take time. So, please, just treat me like a normal pony until then.”

Dusty gives an unsure hum and shifts around on her hooves, still looking away.

Fluttershy groans and thinks for a moment. Then she lifts her good hoof out of the bath and, without warning, flicks a volley of water at Dusty that splatters across her hood.

“Wh—” Dusty jumps back, staring at Fluttershy in disbelief. “Hey!”

A tiny, prideful smirk graces Fluttershy’s face for just a moment. “There,” she says. “You looked at me.”

Dusty’s cheeks flush red. “Come on, Fluttershy! I’m just trying to make up for what I did.”

“But I don’t want you to!” Fluttershy snaps. “That’s what I’ve been saying all day. It won’t fix anything, and I don’t want to go from a pony with no friends because the only other pony in the world is tormenting me, to a pony with no friends because the only other pony in the world won’t look me in the eyes. So please, Dusty, just treat me like I’m Fluttershy.”

Dusty sighs and nods. “Okay. I’ll just… Try to be your friend?”

Fluttershy nods back. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Dusty smiles weakly. “Yeah.”

Standstill

Day Eight

It takes Fluttershy a long time to wake up.

She spends hours tossing and turning, an exhausting cycle of being woken up by pain and forcing herself back to sleep. It only gets worse when sunlight streams in through the window, making it that much harder to stay in the peaceful world of dreams.

Eventually, though, she has to relent. Her body hits a point where she just can’t get back to sleep, and trying is only going to make her day worse. So, begrudgingly, she stumbles out of bed and winces in pain as her hooves land hard on the floor below.

She didn’t take the splint off the night before, hoping it would just stay neatly in place through the night. She was half right. The splint was still on her leg, still functional, but it was certainly not neat.

This means taking a lot more care as she floats downstairs to find breakfast. It’s easy to find, Dusty left her another bushel of apples, but the entire process is marked with flinching and groaning as she moves in just the wrong ways.

She fiddles with the splint as she eats, which definitely isn’t easy. Every bit she readjusts brings her a new shockwave of pain. Thankfully, she finds that not much actually needs adjusting. It isn’t a fast process, nor a fun one, but it also isn’t the hour or so of agony she had feared it might be.

Then she’s done. There’s no more self care to be done, not that she was capable of at least, and no large goals to attend to. She’s fed, she’s safe, she’s everything she’d missed the past week.

She’s bored.

She only lasts through a minute or so of absentmindedly tapping on a table before it sets in, and then she’s floating around the library, looking for things to do. Where is Dusty? she thinks. I figured she would have been here when I woke up.

A book she had been fiddling with slips off the bookshelf and onto the floor. She stares at it for a moment before deciding to just leave it there.

Then her eyes fall on something else on the floor, laying nearby. A piece of string, dropped haphazardly and left on the floor, leaving a trail for her to follow. She floats over to it. I could…

She stares down the hallway leading into the labyrinth of backrooms and collections and feels that same dizzying claustrophobia. The hallway is spinning, tightening, shifting endlessly without moving at all.

Except for the string. When she focuses on the string, she’s able to push the rest out of her mind. I mean, last time was just Dusty, she thinks. I can’t imagine she would do it again. Maybe…

She hums in thought for a moment, then comes to a decision. With a decisive nod, she leaves a note for Dusty, grabs some food, and steps into the library.

She doesn’t dare to even touch the string as she follows it. She’s not willing to risk anything. She just keeps her eyes locked to it, following alongside it and doing her best to keep her mind off of where she is.

She isn’t the best at that, though. The first massive collection of books piques her interest just enough to drag her attention away, and with it goes all hope of her refocusing. Instead she looks around, taking in the books and the environment as she walks, although she is still careful to always be sure she’s still following the string.

It’s odd for Fluttershy to see these halls. The terror of being lost had always kept her from really taking anything in, seeing how strange it all is. All the massive rooms, seemingly larger than the entire tree outside and lined floor to ceiling with books. Unlike the public library, Twilight didn’t decorate these places for comfort. Rather, every inch of space is dedicated to holding more books. Twilight made sure to keep everything visible, lest she get lost herself, but it isn’t uncommon for Fluttershy to get trapped in a dead end of free standing bookshelves, or to see taller rooms with shelves held magically in midair all the way up. It’s like she’s in another world, a dimension of knowledge.

It’s hard to place why, but for some reason the terror just never sets in. Fluttershy has no problem roaming the packed rooms and empty halls, stopping to read things that catch her interest or laugh at some architectural oddity. Somehow, something is letting her enjoy this.

Before she knows it, she’s back. Back at the tiny, closet-sized room packed with far more books than it can hold. Rarity. Mayor Mare. Gummy. All the lives of all the ponies in town, sitting pristine and untouched right where she left them.

Mostly untouched, at least. The book on her is gone, of course, but as she’s rummaging around, filling her bags with books on everypony important to her, she sees that another is missing.

There’s no book on Rainbow Dash.

Fluttershy can’t remember if she saw one last time or not. She certainly didn’t look very hard.

She doesn’t spend too much energy searching for it, though. It isn’t difficult for her to imagine where it may be.

Besides, her bags end up overfilled anyway. She never thought she knew very many ponies, but she just kept finding friends. Bulk Biceps, Vinyl Scratch, Lightning Dust, they’re all too precious to her to just leave them. It makes the trip back a lot slower, and a lot more painful thanks to the added weight any time she accidentally uses her bad leg, but it’s worth it.

As she rounds the final corner and sees the exit, she sighs a heavy breath of relief. She’s so caught up in the idea of being able to rest, in fact, that she’s nearly out before she hears the sound of somepony rifling around in the kitchen.

“Dusty?” Fluttershy calls out as she drops her bags on the floor. “I was wondering where you—”

“Who?”

Fluttershy’s jaw drops when she sees the pony standing in the kitchen.

Fluttershy knows those friendly eyes, even with the wrinkles that have worked their way around them. She knows the mane, the fur, everything, and tears well up in her eyes as she takes in Twilight for the first time in far too long.

“Holy cow,” Twilight says in shock, “you’re young. Where the heck did you come from?”

“I-I-” Fluttershy can’t find anything to say.

Twilight smiles at her kindly. The kindest smile Fluttershy has ever seen, or at least it feels that way. “Find a place to get comfy, honey. You look terrible. I actually just made tea.”

Fluttershy nods and stumbles over to a table that she can rest her leg on without it moving. Twilight puts a hot cup in front of her and sits opposite her as Fluttershy slumps down into her seat.

“How’s your leg?” Twilight asks her softly.

“It’s getting better,” Fluttershy mumbles. “I don’t think it’s broken, or at least not badly.”

“That’s good.” Twilight reaches out and strokes Fluttershy’s good leg sympathetically. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner.”

“I’m just glad you’re here at all,” Fluttershy says. “Before, I was starting to really believe it would just be me and Dusty here forever.”

Twilight hums in thought. “Dusty,” she says, “I assume that’s Rainbow Dash?”

Fluttershy tilts her head. “How did you know that?”

“I ran into her on my way into town. It was weird, she took one look at me and just booked it.”

“Oh,” Fluttershy says, a hint of worry creeping into her voice. “I haven’t seen her since yesterday.”

“Weird.” Twilight shrugs. “I’ll find her and work things out after I get you sent home.”

“Well, wait,” Fluttershy objects without thinking, “I can’t go without her.”

Twilight purses her lips. “I understand you’re worried, Fluttershy, but you really shouldn’t be gone longer than you have to be. It’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous? What more could happen? I already broke my leg.”

“I just…” Twilight taps her hoof on the table anxiously. “If your Twilight is anything like me… We all make mistakes, Fluttershy. I don’t want her to make this one.”

Fluttershy frowns. “I’m sure it’ll only be a day or so before Dusty comes back, though. Please, I’m— I’m her only friend.”

Twilight sighs. “How long have you been here?”

“About a week,” Fluttershy says.

“That’s pretty bad...” Twilight shakes her head. “I shouldn’t, but you can stay one more day. If she’s not back by sundown tomorrow, though, you’re going home. I can’t risk any longer than that.”

“Thank you, Twilight. Oh, and um…” Fluttershy looks around sheepishly. “Sorry about your house.”

Twilight laughs. “It’s not like I live here anymore. It might as well be of some use.”

“Are you going to want it back while you’re here?”

“Nah,” Twilight says with a wave of her hoof. “I doubt I’ll really be sleeping much honestly. Got a lotta work to do.”

“Don’t push yourself too hard,” Fluttershy tells her.

“Says the one with the broken leg,” Twilight says. “I’ll be fine. Anyway, enough of the heavy stuff. What were you doing in the back rooms?”

“Oh, that.” Fluttershy blushes a little. “Well, I may have, um, found all the biographies you wrote, and I was… Bored.”

Twilight laughs. “Those old things? Oh, I bet they’re a riot. Have you read yours?”

“No.” Fluttershy shakes her head solemnly. “It just feels… Weird.”

“Well, take it home with you,” Twilight tells her. “You’ll read it eventually.”

“Thank you,” Fluttershy says with a smile.

“So,” Twilight asks, “tell me everything you can. The more I know, the faster we can get you home.”

So, Fluttershy describes her week. The fear, the loneliness, the despair. All of her desperation to get home, all of the torment from Dusty. She doesn’t spare any details.

Then Fluttershy starts to describe her life before, talking about her friends and the town and everything that made her home special. All the reasons she has to go back.

The day is long, stressful and exhausting, reliving all these moments, but Fluttershy gets through it with a smile on her face. Even with the pain she feels, both literal and otherwise, Fluttershy can’t frown when she looks into her friend’s eyes. Not after all this time.

Later that night, long after dark, Fluttershy yawns as a thought strikes her. “So… What happened here?”

Twilight sighs. “A lot, Fluttershy. It’s… It’s not really anything to do with you.”

“That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try to help,” Fluttershy responds.

“There’s nothing to help,” Twilight tells her. She gestures out around her. “This is it. There’s no going back.”

“But I could help you,” Fluttershy says.

“Fluttershy… I made a mistake.” Twilight turns her back to Fluttershy and stares at the floor. “And then another, and another, and another, and now… This.”

Fluttershy frowns. “I’m sure it couldn’t have been that bad,” she says. “I know you. You’re good.”

“Like I said. We all make mistakes.”

“Well, I’m here if you want to talk about it,” Fluttershy tells her. “We may not technically know each other, and you may be older than me, but I’m still Fluttershy, and you’re still Twilight. You can talk to me.”

“Thank you.” Without looking back, Twilight pushes herself up and starts to walk towards the basement. “I need to get to work. Good night, Fluttershy.”

“Good night,” Fluttershy replies as the heavy basement door clicks shut. Then she gazes out the window, into the dark sky above. Good night, Dusty.

Decisions

Day Nine

“Are you sure you don’t want to just go home?” Twilight asks as she tugs the strap on Fluttershy’s leg, making her wince in pain. “I mean, Rainbow Dash isn’t exactly in danger. We’re the only living creatures in the entire world. What’s she gonna do, break her leg?”

Twilight chuckles at her own joke, but Fluttershy has to hold back a sour look. “I’m sure,” Fluttershy tells her. “I can’t just leave her. It wouldn’t be right.”

“She has me here, though.” Twilight takes a seat opposite Fluttershy and leans on the table. “I’m her friend.”

“Why did she run away from you, though?” Fluttershy asks her.

Twilight shrugs. “No idea. Although, from what you’ve told me, it sounds like she ran away from you at first too. Maybe she’s just skittish after being alone for so long.”

“Yeah…” Fluttershy sighs and shakes her head. “That’s all the more reason for me to stay, though. She’s warmed up to me. It could take weeks for her to be willing to talk to you, and I can’t let her be alone for that much longer.”

“If you insist,” Twilight tells her. “Hopefully she realizes you’re still here.”

“Oh, I’m going to go look for her,” Fluttershy says.

“Uhh, I don’t know about that,” Twilight responds. “It can’t be a good idea for you to go traipsing all around Ponyville on a broken leg.”

“I don’t have a choice. If I don’t, I would just be abandoning her out there.”

Twilight sighs. “Well, I can’t stop you.” She gets up and heads off towards the basement. “Just be back by sundown. I can’t let you stay longer than that.”

“I still don’t understand why,” Fluttershy tells her.

“I told you,” Twilight says, “it’s dangerous.”

“But how?” Fluttershy frowns in frustration.

“Because the longer you stay here, the longer your Twilight has to panic about you being gone.” She takes a deep breath and hangs her head. “I just… I can’t take that chance.”

“Alright, Twilight.” Fluttershy nods slowly. “I’ll find her fast.”

Fluttershy has to shield her eyes when she walks out into the blazing sunlight a few minutes later. The temperature is beautiful, but the unrelenting sun makes it hard to actually appreciate it. She’s more or less walking blindly for the first minute or so as her eyes adjust, just moving where her hooves take her.

“Dusty!” she calls out once she’s a way into town. Her voice echoes through the streets and back to her like a distant conversation. The air around her is so still that even the noise feels like a disturbance. On either side of every nearly identical street, faceless homes stare down at her stoically.

The aimless searching turns up nothing. Fluttershy only gets through four or five calls before she decides that, if Dusty was going to respond, she already would have. After all, it isn’t like there’s any other noise in town to drown out her yells. She won’t be covering any more ground if she insists on pressing forward that way.

Well, now what? she thinks to herself. She could live anywhere. I can’t just search every home in Ponyville. She looks down at the road in thought as she wanders aimlessly. Other than messing with me, all she ever did was bring me apples. She shrugs. I guess I’ll check the farm.

The eerie stillness follows her into the orchard. None of the trees are rustling in the wind, there are no leaves falling to the ground. The snap of twigs under her hooves sound like cracking whips as they resound through the forest.

The creak of the farmhouse door as she pushes it open is a welcome relief. Finally, a noise in this silent world. The door swings wide and thunks into the wall, and Fluttershy follows it, taking a few tentative steps inside.

“Dusty?” she shouts from the doorway. “It’s Fluttershy!”

The floorboards groan under her as she shifts her weight between hooves, waiting for a reply. Even her breathing sounds like a monsoon through the silence around her. Her heart beats away in her chest like a mad drummer, pounding their frustrations away.

There’s no response from inside the house.

Well there goes that, Fluttershy thinks. She turns around and walks back out into the sun. Maybe I should check the barns? Or…

An idea strikes her. On a whim, Fluttershy strikes off into the orchard, weaving around trees and trampling over leaves as she moves decisively onward. Shivers of pain start to trickle out from her leg, but she ignores them, becoming more and more sure of herself with every step.

The treehouse is bigger than Fluttershy remembers it. Not actually bigger, probably not at least, but it looks bigger. Like the Crusaders made it cozier just by being inside it.

She floats up and onto the landing before setting down and walking, slowly and calmly, through the open door.

The inside of the treehouse looks like a lot of things. It looks like a dump, with trash and dirty dishes scattered all around. It looks like an art exhibit, with statues and paintings and all manner of other creative works dropped haphazardly into corners. It looks like a shrine to Ponville, with memorabilia and pictures from all over town put meticulously around the room. All of Ponyville except for Rainbow Dash, at least, who had obviously been cut from any photos that once contained her.

Most of all, though, it looks like a home.

There, in her home, is where Fluttershy finds Dusty. She’s curled up on a thin mat in the middle of the room, her hood pulled tightly over her face, light snoring coming from inside. If she didn’t already know her, Fluttershy would have no idea who she was, because her cloak is covering every inch of her body.

Fluttershy walks up and tries to gently nudge Dusty without having to put any weight on her bad leg, which is easier said than done and winds up being a bit less gentle than she wants. “Dusty?” she asks as the black mass on the floor starts to stir. “It’s Fluttershy.”

Dusty looks up and locks eyes with Fluttershy. It’s obvious she’s been doing a lot of crying. “Fluttershy? Why are you here?”

Fluttershy sits on the floor beside Dusty. “I came to find you. I haven’t seen you in a bit, and I was getting worried.”

“No, I mean…” Dusty frowns and glances down. “Why haven’t you gone home?”

“I wanted to make sure you got home too.”

Dusty drops her head onto her hooves. “I am home.”

Fluttershy puts a hoof on Dusty’s sympathetically. “Why don’t you want to go back with Twilight?”

For a brief moment, Dusty scowls. “I just can’t.”

“Dusty,” Fluttershy says, “whatever happened, I’m sure you can just talk it through and—”

“I can’t!” Dusty snaps. Then she winces and pulls back into herself, dropping her voice to a whisper. “She’s the one who put me here.”

Fluttershy leans back in shock. “W-What? That can’t be true, Twilight would never do something like that.”

“It is true,” Dusty says. “I don’t know how, or why, but… Look, just read it for yourself, okay?”

“Read what?”

“On the shelf over there.” Dusty points to a small bookshelf by the door. “There’s a book about Rainbow Dash.”

“Oh!” Fluttershy gets up and floats over to the ramshackle bookshelf. It’s messy and packed full, well-read books shoved in wherever they’d fit. There’s a little of everything, from adventure stories to history texts, although a lot of them look like they haven’t been touched in years.

It takes a bit of looking, but eventually Fluttershy finds it. A tattered little notebook, crushed into a corner with its pages bent. It takes a hefty tug for Fluttershy to pry it loose, and a couple of other books fall onto the floor in the process.

“Just leave them,” Dusty says as Fluttershy fumbles with the books, trying to tidy them up without using her bad leg. Fluttershy is hesitant at first, but then takes her up on the offer and just brings the notebook back over.

“I figured you probably had this,” Fluttershy says as she lies next to Dusty and flattens out the notebook.

“It isn’t easy for me to read,” Dusty tells her, “but I can’t bring myself to get rid of it completely.”

Fluttershy opens it to find that the inside is in even worse condition than the outside. Large swaths of the pages have been torn out entirely, no doubt lost forever, and many of the sparse pages that remain have been scribbled on and blackened out.

“This book has seen better days,” Fluttershy comments.

“After a while, every time I opened it, I’d find some new thing that I couldn’t stand to read anymore,” Dusty explains. “Like I said, I would have just destroyed the thing, but… There’s things in there I need to keep.”

“Like, memories of Rainbow Dash?” Fluttershy asks.

Dusty shakes her head. “No. Definitely not those.”

Fluttershy looks over at Dusty and frowns, then shuts the book and pushes it away before laying a hoof on Dusty’s shoulder. “Why don’t you like Rainbow Dash?”

Dusty sighs. “It’s not that I don’t like her. It’s just that I don’t know her.”

“You could learn about her, though,” Fluttershy says.

Dusty stares at her hooves. “It hurts, Fluttershy. Every time I look in a mirror I see somepony else’s face. Every time I hear her name it’s a reminder that she’s gone and I’m here. I just hit a point where I couldn’t take it anymore. I’d lost too much of her. I just had to block the rest out.”

“Do you think that might be part of why you don’t want to go see Twilight?” Fluttershy asks.

“I don’t know,” Dusty mumbles. “I really don’t trust her.”

“You can’t let that get in the way of being happy, though.”

“I can’t just ignore it.” Dusty reaches out and slides the book back in front of Fluttershy. “Just read it.”

Fluttershy sighs and flips the notebook back open. “What am I reading?”

“Right at the end,” Dusty says. “The last thing.”

Fluttershy flips through and finds the final entry. It’s short, and the writing is sloppy at best, but she can just about make it out.

Rainbow Dash is gone.

Nopony else has noticed. We never really bat an eye if she doesn’t show up for a day or two.

But I know she’s gone.

I messed up a spell. I just wanted to use it on an apple, but I was stupid and testing it outside and… Well, Rainbow Dash showed up. And then she was gone.

It’s been a day and she hasn’t come back. I’m too scared to tell anypony what happened. I mean, how do you tell somepony that you sent your friend off to Celestia-knows-where and don’t know how to get her back?

I’m writing about it here, though. I guess I just can’t stand holding it all in. I’ll tell everypony eventually, but for now…

I just need to get her back.

The entry ends there. After it are more torn out pages, but there’s nothing to actually read. Fluttershy shuts the book solemnly and taps a hoof on the floor. The silence is thick around them as she thinks, trying to fit everything together.

Finally, she turns and looks up at Dusty. “I’m sorry.”

“Mm-hm,” Dusty hums.

“What did the rest say?”

“I don’t remember,” Dusty says. “It doesn’t really matter to me, anyway. It’s not like I was there anymore.”

Fluttershy puts her leg around Dusty to comfort her. “You know it was an accident, right?”

“Of course it was,” Dusty says. “It doesn’t make her easier to trust. The last ‘accident’ got me stuck here for half my life. I really don’t want to find out what the next one will do.”

“You can’t just stay here,” Fluttershy says.

“What choice do I have? I’m not going to let her anywhere near me.”

“But you’ll be alone again,” Fluttershy tells her.

“Yeah.” Dusty sighs and rests her head on her hooves, looking at the wall. “I know.”

“I… I can’t let you do that to yourself,” Fluttershy says.

“You can’t make me go to her.”

“I know, but…” Fluttershy takes a deep, slow breath. “I can make sure you’re not alone.”

Dusty looks at Fluttershy with wide, sad eyes. “You can’t. You have friends and family waiting for you.”

“And I’ll have to apologize to all of them, because I’m not going home until you’re ready to go with me.”

“Why?” Dusty wipes her damp eyes on her cloak. “You were so angry at me.”

“I still am,” Fluttershy says. “That doesn’t mean I can leave you behind.”

“I’m sorry,” Dusty says. “I’m sorry I can’t bring myself to go to her.”

Fluttershy gives her a light, reassuring squeeze. “You’ll get there.”

“Thank you, Fluttershy.” A shaky smile grows on Dusty’s face. “Will you, um… Do you want me to wait for you here in the morning?”

“Uhh, about that,” Fluttershy cringes nervously, “I don’t think I can go back to the library. Twilight seemed pretty adamant about sending me back at sundown, and… I mean, I’m sure I could explain things to her, but I don’t think I’m up to it right now.”

“So you’re just going to hide from her?”

“I guess so,” Fluttershy says. “Besides, I don’t want to leave you here alone. Not even for one more night.”

“I…” Dusty pushes herself up off the floor. “I’ll go get some extra blankets.”

Fluttershy nods and smiles softly, and Dusty takes off towards the setting sun.

Home

Day Ten

The sunlight hits Fluttershy harshly when it wakes her up. She yawns and tries to stretch the tiredness away, but a flash of pain puts an end to that idea. It quickly hits her that sleeping in a treehouse with a broken leg may not have been the best idea.

Still, it does wake her up. She cradles her aching leg for a moment, and once the throbbing stops she sits up and takes a look around. It’s still early morning, and the wind whistles a peaceful tune through the open windows, surrounding them with the sound of rustling leaves and swaying trees.

Surprisingly, Fluttershy sees that Dusty is already awake, off in a corner with her head buried in a tattered old notebook. She sits and watches for a moment as Dusty flips through the pages. Seeing her staring blankly at the old book, Fluttershy can’t help but want to go to her, comfort her.

It’s hard for her to actually do it, though. She feels glued to the floor, unable to think of what to do. Worrying that she might say the wrong thing, or get too close, and make things worse.

Still, she has to try. She pushes herself up, her weight feeling like lead as she fights off pain and anxiety, and walks over to sit next to Dusty.

“Good morning,” Fluttershy says.

“Huh?” Dusty looks up in shock, then sighs in a sort of melancholic relief when she sees Fluttershy. “Oh, right. Yeah. Good morning.”

“Are you feeling alright?” Fluttershy asks.

Dusty shrugs and looks back down at the book. Fluttershy sits down next to her, careful not to get too close but still close enough for Dusty to know she’s there, and waits for a response. Dusty never comes up with one, though. She just stares down at the torn and scribbled out pages, flipping through to random pages with no rhyme or reason.

“I thought you couldn’t read that anymore?”

“I can’t,” Dusty tells her.

“So you’re just…”

“Mm-hm.”

“Would you like to talk about it?” Fluttershy asks.

Dusty shuts the book and pushes it away. “Nah.”

“Okay,” Fluttershy says.

There’s a beat of silence. The air is heavy around them.

“Well, can I talk to you about some things?”

“Do what you want,” Dusty tells her.

“Mm…” Fluttershy hums in thought for a moment.

“Sorry,” Dusty says. “I just meant… Go ahead.”

“I don’t like being angry,” Fluttershy says. “Not for more than a moment, anyway. It makes me feel sick, like… I don’t know. Just sick.”

Her voice trails off, and they sit in silence for a minute as she thinks of what to say next.

“I’m still angry at you,” she continues. “I can’t help it. I hate it, it frustrates me so much, but it’s still true.”

“You have plenty of reasons to be angry at me,” Dusty tells her.

“That doesn’t mean I want to be angry, though.” Fluttershy sighs.

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to say with all this,” Dusty says.

“I’m not trying to say anything,” Fluttershy replies. “I’m just… Talking.”

“Oh.”

They fall into another silence, one that lasts several minutes. The wind outside picks up, and the sound of rustling leaves drowns the forest. Dusty taps on the cover of the tattered book. Fluttershy tries to stretch her leg without hurting herself.

“It wasn’t right,” Dusty says after a while.

“Hm?”

“Ripping up the book, changing my name… It’s my fault she’s gone.”

“You were in pain,” Fluttershy says. “You did what you had to do.”

“I should have saved something,” Dusty says. “Hidden it away somewhere instead of destroying it all.”

Fluttershy gives her a sympathetic hum.

“I mean, how the heck do I make up for that?” Dusty continues. “

“I’m not sure,” Fluttershy says. “Maybe, if you come home with me, you could… Ask Rainbow Dash?”

“I threw her away, why would she want to talk to me?” Dusty drops her head into her hooves.

“I know Rainbow Dash,” Fluttershy tells her. “She’s a good pony, she’ll want to talk to you. If nothing else, she won’t be able to stop herself from being curious.”

Dusty lets out a terse, dry laugh. “Great, I’d get to be poked and prodded before I’m cast out.” She sighs and stands up. “We should go find breakfast.”

“Oh, okay,” Fluttershy says, and she joins Dusty on a trip into Ponyville.

The streets feel a lot less confining with another pony, Fluttershy finds. Houses don’t stare down at her, they just look ahead. The roads don’t seem to stretch on forever, the dust kicked up by the wind doesn’t threaten her. Now that she’s not alone, it really is just an empty town.

“I know I brought you apples,” Dusty says, “but that was just cuz I didn’t know what you like. I usually scrounge around inside the houses.”

“You haven’t run out yet?”

“There were more ponies here than you’d think,” Dusty says. “I’m probably running low, but I haven’t gone hungry yet.”

“Did you have a plan for when you ran out?”

“Leave Ponyville, I guess.” Dusty shrugs. “I bet the trains still work, but even if they don’t I could just follow the tracks for a while.”

“I suppose that would have worked,” Fluttershy admits. “Luckily, now you won’t have to go all that way.”

“Yeah…” Dusty sighs. “Fluttershy, do you… Do you really want me to go with you?”

“Yeah,” Fluttershy says. “At least, I’m pretty sure I do. I know I can’t leave you here, and… I’d like to try to be your friend, Dusty.”

“You get why I’m scared, though, right?”

“Of course,” Fluttershy tells her. “I still think you should try, though.”

“Try how?”

“Like… Talk to Twilight,” Fluttershy says. “See if you can work your way up to it. I know it’s hard, but if you can just get through that one spell it’ll all be over.”

“I’ll try,” Dusty tells her. “For you.”

So, a few minutes later, they’re walking up to the grand old tree that houses the library. Fluttershy leads the way, with Dusty slinking nervously several lengths behind her. The smell of freshly made food hits Fluttershy as she opens the door, and her stomach rumbles impatiently, drawing her all the way inside.

In a far corner of the library, Twilight had been staring dejectedly into a bowl of oatmeal, her head leaning heavily on one hoof. She looks up at the sound of the door, though, and perks up when she sees Fluttershy. “You’re back!” she cheers. “You had me worried.”

“Sorry,” Fluttershy says. “Um, listen, there’s something I need to ask you to do.”

“Wh—” Twilight starts, but her jaw drops when Dusty walks inside. She gasps, and Fluttershy thinks she can see tears starting to glisten in her eyes as she dashes towards her old friend. “Rainbow Dash!” she shouts. “I missed you so much, I—”

Before Twilight can reach her, Dusty flinches and launches into the air and out of her reach. “Please don’t,” she mumbles, her voice trailing off nervously.

Twilight skids to a halt. “Rainbow Dash...” she says. “Are you… Afraid of me?”

“Of course I am,” Dusty says. “You destroyed my entire life.”

“But it was an accident,” Twilight pleads. “I would never, ever hurt my friends.”

“You already did,” Dusty tells her, “and I won’t let you do it again.”

“I-” Twilight frowns and sits on the floor. “I understand.” She swallows and nods slowly. “Okay. No magic.”

Fluttershy smiles softly at Dusty and beckons her down, and slowly Dusty falls out of the air. Then she moves to stand behind Fluttershy, giving Twilight a wide berth as she does.

Twilight looks up at her meekly. “I’m so sorry, Rainbow Dash.”

“Please don’t call me that,” Dusty mumbles under her breath.

“What?” Twilight asks.

“I’m not Rainbow Dash. She’s gone. I’m just Dusty.”

“She isn’t gone, though,” Twilight says. “You aren’t gone. Whatever happened, we can help you if you’ll just come home.”

“Fluttershy, I don’t think this is working,” Dusty whispers.

“Please, just a bit longer,” Fluttershy pleads.

“Just look at me,” Twilight pleads. “I’m your friend. I would never hurt you.”

“I don’t know you,” Dusty says.

“You do,” Twilight says. “We’ve always been friends. Please, I… I can show you! I’ve done it before, I know how to. There’s no possible way for me to mess it up, I swear.”

“No magic!” Dusty takes a step away from her. “If that’s all you have, I should just leave.”

Fluttershy puts a hoof on Dusty’s shoulder to try to calm her down. “She isn’t going to do anything,” Fluttershy assures her. “She’s just stressed.”

“No, right, I’m sorry,” Twilight says. “Please, just let me take you home so you’re not alone! Even if you never talk to me again.”

“You wouldn’t even be sending me home,” Dusty tells her.

“W-What?”

“If I go anywhere, it’s with Fluttershy,” Dusty says.

“But what about your friends?” Twilight asks. “They all miss you so much.”

“They’re not my friends,” Dusty says. “I don’t remember any of them. I can’t go pretend to be somepony I’m not just to make a group of strangers less sad about losing their friend.”

“None of them would expect you not to have changed,” Twilight says.

“You’ve been doing that this whole time! At least Fluttershy will use my name. If I go, I’m going with my friend.”

“Is that really what you want?” Twilight asks. “To just completely give up on who you used to be, on your old life?”

“Yes!” Dusty snaps at her. “I wanna move on, like you should have done years ago.”

“I could never,” Twilight says. “Not while there was any chance of finding you. I can’t just abandon a friend.”

“It isn’t abandoning me if it’s been fifteen years,” Dusty replies. “That’s just accepting that it’s too late. Your friend has been gone for years.”

“How could I possibly accept that?” Twilight asks. “You’re standing right in front of me!”

“Do you think I want this face?” Dusty shakes her head in frustration. “I’m not gonna go torture myself pretending to be your friend.”

“Nopony is going to try to make you change,” Twilight assures her. “If they do, you don’t even have to talk to them, I just want you home.”

Dusty groans in frustration. “What you want isn’t my problem! Just let me be happy. Let me go to a place that already has a Rainbow Dash, so then I won’t be expected to be her too. Let me go somewhere that I won’t have ponies swarming over me asking me to relive all the pain I’ve ever been through. Just let me go, Twilight.”

“I can’t,” Twilight says. “There must be something I can do to get you to come back to us.”

“There isn’t.”

“What about just a week,” Twilight asks, “or even a day? Just give us a chance.”

“No!”

“What if… What if Fluttershy came too?” Twilight begs. “Just come for a day, with Fluttershy, so our friends can try to remind you how much you mean to us all.”

“Why can’t you just stop?” Dusty shouts. “I don’t know you, I’m not your friend, I don’t want to be your friend, and after I go with Fluttershy I never want to see you again!"

Twilight’s jaw drops in shock, and it takes her a second to react. Tears start to stream down her face before she can bring herself to talk again, and she desperately wipes her eyes.. “I-I’m sorry, Ra-” She catches herself. “Dusty. I’m sorry.”

Dusty clenches her eyes shut and growls in frustration. “No!” she yells. “You can’t do that! You can’t just pretend to care about who I say I am when you think it might get you what you want!”

“I wasn’t!” Twilight says. “I promise, I wasn’t doing that.”

“Why would I ever believe you?” Dusty asks. “I’m sorry, Fluttershy, but I just can’t do this. I need to leave.”

“Dusty…” Fluttershy frowns sympathetically.

“Dusty, no, wait!” Twilight begs. “Don’t do this to yourself, just let me help you, please!”

“No!” Dusty shouts, and she blasts the door open with a forceful buck.

An instant later, a bolt of magic flies through the air.

Fluttershy can’t process what happened at first. All the sees are the lights, the smoke, the chaos. Then she sees Twilight crying, and recognizes the magic. Finally, she looks through the smoke, and sees that the spot Dusty had been in is empty.

“What did you do?” Fluttershy demands, running over to Twilight. “What did you do?”

Twilight sniffs hard. “I did what I had to,” she says bleakly. “I couldn’t let her stay here. I didn’t want to hurt her, but I didn’t see any other way.”

Fluttershy sits down in front of Twilight and holds her shoulders. “Twilight, please. I know that you’re hurting, but I need to know that she’s safe. I need to know where she is.”

“I did what she wanted,” Twilight says. “I sent her to your home.”

Fluttershy takes a few deep breaths, then sighs. “Okay. She’ll be okay. Nopony there will hurt her. Everything is… It’s okay.”

Twilight lets out a sob as she buries her head in her hooves, and hearing it snaps Fluttershy back to her senses. She walks over and lies next to Twilight, wrapping a wing around her comfortingly. “I’m sorry you had to go through all this,” Fluttershy says. “Thank you for doing what she wanted.”

“Mm…”

“Maybe someday she’ll visit,” Fluttershy says, “or maybe she’ll write you letters. When she feels safe.”

“But not as Rainbow Dash,” Twilight murmurs.

“No,” Fluttershy says, “not as Rainbow Dash. I’m sorry, Twilight.”

“Thank you, Fluttershy,” Twilight says with a sniffle. “Make sure she’s happy, alright?”

“Of course.”

“I think I’m about ready to send you home.”

Twilight stands up, closes her eyes, and concentrates for a moment. The silence is long and thick, but eventually her eyes open again and she nods. “Goodbye, Fluttershy,” she says.

“Goodb—”

Then Fluttershy is gone, and Twilight lays back down on the floor and puts her head in her hooves.

“—ye.”

Fluttershy jumps in shock as everything changes. She’s still in the library, but it’s different, brighter. More notably, though, is the cacophony of voices coming from Twilight’s loft.

She moves to head up to them, but before she can she’s tackled off her hooves. She flies through the air before skidding across the floor, caught in a vice-like hug. Somehow, miraculously, Pinkie had even knocked into her without hurting her leg at all.

Fluttershy looks down to see her friend grinning uncontrollably through tears. “You’re back,” Pinkie says. “You’re back!”

Fluttershy smiles softly, and tears start to form in her eyes, too. “I missed you too,” she says. “Please be careful of my leg, though.”

Pinkie springs up off of her and wipes her eyes. “She’s back!” she shouts up to the others, and the voices all quiet down. One by one, four more familiar faces pop out over the edge of the loft, looking down at her. First Applejack, then Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and finally, Twilight.

They all make a dash for her, shouting excitedly to see her back, but her eye is drawn away when a fifth face peers down at her. Dusty, looking meek and exhausted, catches her eye, and Fluttershy gives her a reassuring smile.

Then the mob skids to a stop in front of her, having just barely seen her leg and stopping themselves from tackling her like Pinkie had. Instead they all just push in uncomfortably close, each wearing some manner of relief and joy on their face, and bombard her with questions.

“Where’d you go?” Applejack asks.

“What happened to your leg?” says Twilight.

“Did you replace me?” Rainbow Dash slyly demands.

“How could you let that happen to your mane?” Rarity gawks.

“E-Everypony, please, settle down,” Fluttershy says. She can’t help but laugh a bit at the sight of all her friends, especially with the overwhelming feelings washing over her. “Oh, I missed you all so much.”

“We missed you too,” Twilight says. “Are you okay?”

“Of course she’s not okay,” Applejack says, “look at her! She needs a doctor.”

“I’m alright, really,” Fluttershy tells them. “I just hurt it a little, it’s not that bad. I’d like to make sure Dusty is okay first.”

“Dusty?” Rarity asks.

“Oh, right.” Fluttershy waves for Dusty to come down and join them. “Everypony,” she says as Dusty settles down next to her, “this is Dusty. It, um, kind of looked like you had already met when I got here?”

“‘Met’ is a strong word,” Rainbow Dash says. “She barely said a word.”

“The white one kept trying to take my hood,” Dusty tells Fluttershy quietly.

“That’s Rarity,” Fluttershy says.

“Yes,” Rarity says, “and I just want to spruce it up a tad!”

“So, uh,” Rainbow Dash says, “that’s… Me, right? I’m not going crazy?”

“Kind of,” Fluttershy says. “I’ll explain later.”

“Darn right you will,” Applejack tells her, “cuz I’m takin you to see a doctor.”

“I don’t need one!” Fluttershy says. “I'm fine, see?” To prove it, she tries to wave her injured leg, but the sudden jolt of pain nearly brings her to her knees. “Okay, I’m not fine, but I’m also not leaving. I have to be here for her, I can’t—”

Then the rest of the pain crashes back into her, followed by a crushing wave of exhaustion, and it’s too much. Before she can finish her sentence, her vision goes black and she passes out.

Applejack catches her before she topples over. “Y’all gotta learn to listen to me,” she says. “Now will somepony help me carry her to the hospital?”

“Is she going to be alright?” Dusty asks.

“She’ll be fine,” Pinkie says. Then she bounces over and wraps a leg around her. “So, Dusty, what’s your story? I gotta get to know my new friend.” Dusty looks wide-eyed at her for a moment, then relaxes as a tiny smile graces her face. For the first time in what feels like forever, things are looking up for her.

Epilogue

Excerpt From Fluttershy

I can’t sleep, so I figured I might as well finish this thing. It’s strange, looking back and seeing the last few things I wrote here. They were so happy. I pretty much dropped this whole project when things went south, so it looks like I just got bored and stopped.

Oh well. That’s a story for another time.

Fluttershy’s been fine. My Fluttershy, I mean. I don’t really want to write down all those years of her life, but I’ll give you the gist of it. After everything that happened, we… Moved, for lack of a better term. Found a new home. It was hard on us all, but Fluttershy probably had the worst time out of our little group. Ponyville meant so much to her, and without Rainbow Dash…

Time moves on, though. She grew to love our new home. (We wound up calling it Maretropolis. I know, it’s silly, but I think we needed something silly.) She found ways to… Cope, with it all. She fought through it.

She’s living a life, at least, which is more than I can say for myself.

She isn’t the reason I opened this up again. I met another Fluttershy. Way younger than mine. Way less calm, too. I mean, I know she was stressed, but looking back on it, I think even my Fluttershy has mellowed out over the years.

I was glad to see that energy from her.

I know I’ve made mistakes. More mistakes than I’ll ever know. But seeing her, seeing how determined she was to do what was right…

I think Dusty was right. I think I should have moved on. I loved Rainbow Dash. We all did. But she never would have wanted me to give up my own life looking for her. I had to try. I don’t regret the first few years. But after a certain point, sacrifice like that just becomes… Selfish.

I’m rambling. This isn’t about me.

Fluttershy… I can’t say much about her. I only really knew her for a few hours. She knew what was right, though. There’s no doubt about that.

She’s also atrocious at interior design, but we all knew that already.

I guess I have less to write here than I thought I would. I’m pretty much out of insight. All that’s left now is to send this off to Fluttershy. I certainly have no interest in keeping it.

Thanks, Fluttershy.

Letter to Twilight

Dear Twilight,

Hopefully this gets to you. Our Twilight says it should, but I worry anyway. Um, if you’re not her, could you get this letter to Twilight Sparkle please?

It’s Fluttershy, by the way. I wanted to write and thank you for everything you did for us. I know you feel responsible for everything, but that isn’t going to stop me from thanking you. So, thank you.

Sorry I couldn’t get Dusty to write a letter. She’s getting settled in, though. I think, eventually, she’ll write. Just be patient.

She’s doing well! She’s staying with Rainbow Dash until she can get a place of her own. I was worried about that at first, but apparently it’s been good for her. She said she feels like a guest there now, instead of an intruder.

My leg is much better. It was just a sprain, but I made it a lot worse by being… You know. It feels so silly, looking back on it all now.

I’m thankful for that, actually. When it was just me and Dusty, it felt like I would be angry forever. Like something had broken inside of me. Then we got home, though, and I was surrounded by my friends again, and everything just seemed so much brighter. That made it so much easier to talk things through with her.

Also, thank you for the book! It’s a perfect keepsake to remember you by. I’ve been reading a bit of it every night. It’s funny how similar our lives were. It makes the tiny differences seem much bigger.

I hope things are well with you. I’m sending this with a picture of all of us with Dusty, so if you’re ever feeling down about things, you can remember that she’s happy. It should help. Keep in touch, okay?

Eternally Thankful,

Fluttershy

Excerpt From Dusty

So. Weird few days.

Fluttershy’s back, thank Celestia. I was about ready to start tearing holes in the world looking for her. It looks like it was my fault she disappeared, so that’s going to eat at me for a while, but it’s worth it to have her back.

She didn’t come back alone, though. She was with another, older Rainbow Dash? Except not, really. She looks like Rainbow Dash, but whatever happened to her in her life must’ve really shaken things up.

So, yeah. That’s Dusty.

She’s kinda tough to get a read on. I mean, it definitely doesn’t help that she hides in her hood any time I’m around, but Fluttershy seems confident that’s temporary. Even past that, though, it’s just strange to meet a new version of somepony you already know. I keep expecting her to act like Rainbow Dash, and then she just… Doesn’t.

Like, the other day, Applejack caught her sneaking through the orchard, grabbing apples to eat. Old habits, I guess. So Applejack got mad at her, like she would’ve with Rainbow Dash, but Dusty just apologized. Profusely. Applejack felt so bad about spooking her, she said Dusty could just have apples whenever she wants. She’s lucky they’re not Dusty’s favorite food.

Rainbow Dash is having a blast. She’s been taking Dusty everywhere with her. Really freaking out some ponies when they see two of her. I’m curious if she’s partially doing it because she can tell how hard things are for Dusty, but it’s hard to say. Rainbow Dash is definitely the kind of pony who would love to meet herself.

We’ve practically had to strap Fluttershy to a hospital bed to keep her off her leg. I mean, I get it. She’s worried about Dusty. She saw the worst of it, and well, she’s Fluttershy. But there’s still bits of Rainbow Dash in there. Dusty is strong. The best thing Fluttershy can do is get better.

Let’s see, who else… Well, Pinkie is Pinkie. It hit her hard the first day when Dusty said she’d forgotten who we are, but she bounced back. Now she’s been spending days “making up for all those years without sweets.”

Rarity kidnapped Dusty for a few hours the second day to grill her about clothes. She was worried Dusty would only wear cloaks, but they worked out some more stuff. Hats, scarves, whatever will set her apart. Rarity keeps talking to her about dying parts of her fur, but that’s a hard thing to convince somepony to do.

She’s decided to stay in Ponyville, at least for now. She says she’s comfortable around us. It makes sense, those friendships were still there, buried deep down inside her. Even just little embers like that make it a lot easier to rekindle those bonds.

She said she wants a treehouse. Not like mine, not a house in a tree, but an actual house on top of a tree. So we’ve been working on that. We’re trying to grow a huge tree at the outskirts of the Everfree. Kind of near Fluttershy’s house. It’s going to be… Well, house sized. It’ll probably become another house like mine that people associate Ponyville with, but hey, it’s still not as showy as Rainbow Dash’s house.

I think she’s going to be happy here.

Letter to Fluttershy

Dear Fluttershy,

Well, I did it. It took me a couple months, but I went home. Everypony was… Everypony is happy to have me back. Too happy, I feel, but I know you would berate me for saying so. I don’t need two Fluttershys on my case about my mental health.

I realized I never really explained why I was there in the first place. It’s a long story that I don’t really want to tell, but the important part for now is… I haven’t been home in years. Only a few years, but still years.

Long enough for my friends to change.

I told them about Dusty. They’re happy, mostly. It’s a lot easier to reconcile when we’re all together. It’s a bittersweet happiness, but… They’re happy.

As for myself… I don’t know. I have my friends, I’ll be okay, but for now I just don’t know.

That’s enough of my pity party, though. Everypony here has been asking about you. Wanting to know what you’re like, how different you are. I don’t really know what to tell them. I can tell them what I saw, but I don’t feel like that’s the real you.

Pinkie suggested that you should visit. I know that’s a lot to ask, you don’t really know any of us, but they’d all really enjoy hearing about Dusty from one of her friends. Maybe Fluttershy could even give you some advice.

Think about it. I’d really like to see you.

Twilight

Letter to Twilight

Hey Twilight.

Sorry this took me so long. It’s tough. This is, like, my thirtieth try writing this thing. Everything I write ends up feeling like I’m lying.

I don’t know what to say. I’m not really mad at you anymore. You still… It’s still hard to forgive you for it all, but I’m not angry. Or afraid.

That actually makes this harder to write. There’s just no way to say this nicely. I’ve tried and tried, but there’s just no way.

I don’t want to know you, Twilight.

I’m sorry. I know you probably had a lot of hope riding on getting a letter from me. I need to do what’s right for me, though. I have a new life here. I’m not Rainbow Dash to anypony here. It’s been good for me. I’m happy. But my past is my past. I have to move on.

I know you and Fluttershy are still in touch. I don’t mind her telling you about me. If there’s something you need from me, something to ease your own hurting, you can always have her ask me. But I’ve asked her not to tell me about you. Any of you. And I’m asking you the same thing.

Be happy, Twilight. And goodbye.

Dusty

Author's Note

Hoo boy.

If you've made it this far, I can't even begin to convey how grateful I am. Knowing people like my writing enough to read 30,000 words of it is just a wonderful feeling.

I also wanna give another huge thanks to Cyonix for the editing help.

I kinda feel like I can't let this pass without some sort of closing remarks. This was only my second big, serious story, and I think that shows, honestly. I have a lot of considerations I'll be taking into my next story, most notably about scope and focus. I think those areas are where the story really falters. I still think it's a good story, though. It's just one that's taught me a lot.

If you're interested in my light, fluffy writing, check out this story. Or rather, stories. It's an anthology of one-offs, many romantic, all set in the same world.

That's enough of this big, ugly text box, though. Truly, thank you.

A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood

Sunlight streams through the large window beside Fluttershy’s bed, pooling together in golden lakes around the sleeping pony. She rolls over and yawns as she feels the gentle, comforting warmth wash over her. She rubs her sleepy eyes and sits up, watching the world outside. It’s a beautiful morning. Seas of perfectly green grass, unfettered breezes rippling out through the surface in waves. Islands of wildflowers shine out amongst the brush, splashes of color here and there as beacons of life vying to attract the wayward bee. The forest beyond the gardens, a wall of bark and leaves, the tops of the massive flora swaying back and forth in the wind. The familiar sight of the natural world brings a smile to her face, as it does every morning.

Fluttershy stretches and pushes her blanket away before hopping off the bed, floating gingerly to the floor. Humming a gleeful tune, she starts her morning routine. She tidies her bed, leaving no wrinkle unaddressed. She brushes her teeth, fixes her mane, washes her face. You can’t have people worrying over you for looking disheveled, after all. When she finally leaves her bedroom, it’s like she had never slept at all.

She grabs a quick breakfast and gets comfortable at her small dining room table. Most of Fluttershy’s house isn’t suited for more than two ponies at the most, and her eating space is no exception. The small round table sits up against a bare kitchen wall, placed with purpose below a window with a view of the stream that runs past Fluttershy’s cottage. She does have two chairs, the table is at least large enough for two ponies to share a meal, but only one sits at the table, posted opposite the window so she doesn’t have to crane her neck to look outside while she eats. The other chair sits in the corner, generally used as a storing place for unsorted mail and other such junk which is too important to throw away, but not important enough to have its own space.

Fluttershy soaks in the outside world as she mindlessly munches on her meal. It really is a gorgeous day outside. The sun shines down on the world, the few scattered clouds in the sky providing roaming havens of shade. The light glitters as it strikes the stream. Some days the water will be too choppy to make anything out, but today the surface is perfectly still, clear enough that the rays of sunlight break through and illuminate mosses and algae for the world to see. Every so often a gust of wind brings a cloud of pollen past the window, casting the world temporarily in a thick haze. Then the haze is gone, leaving only traces of itself dusting the ground, traces which the next gust promptly steals away.

With a happy sigh, Fluttershy finishes up the last of her meal and cleans up. Grinning, she trots over to the planner hanging on her wall to check her schedule for the day. She keeps a rigid schedule to assure that nothing is ever left forgotten. Rigid enough, in fact, that she devotes an entire day at the end of each month to planning out the next month’s schedule.

“Birdfeeders,” she says to herself. “Got it.”

Moving to the living room, she digs up a small saddlebag and starts rummaging through drawers. First one, then another, and another, meticulously checking every spot. “Oh, where did I put it this time,” she wonders. She checks the kitchen, then her bedroom, her closets, her bathroom, all to no avail.

Frustrated, she makes her way back to the living room. “I guess I’ll need to buy more,” she huffs under her breath. She straps on the saddlebag and sets off, but stops short as she approaches the front door. There, propped against the wall right beside a coat rack, she sees a large bag of birdseed waiting for her. "Right. It's by the door, so I don't forget it." She laughs, shaking her head, and fills up her bags before finally setting off into the morning air.

Checking the birdfeeders is one of Fluttershy’s favorite chores. She doesn’t normally do much flying, as she doesn’t like to go too high off the ground, but the birdfeeders are the main exception. She’s placed them carefully, thoughtfully, all at just the right height that she can flitter from one to the next to the next. Giving some attention to those oft-ignored muscles is important, yes, but it’s also just a nice change of pace. It’s rather refreshing to have a flying course that’s more her speed, although she hasn’t had much success in convincing Rainbow Dash that it’s suitable exercise.

Fluttershy smiles as she relives their debates. “Dude,” Rainbow Dash had told her, “when I said you gotta work out more, I meant, like, for real.”

“This is real,” Fluttershy responded. “It’s just not more than I can handle.”

“Yeah, that’s the problem. You aren’t pushing yourself. I mean, how long can you even stay flying for nowadays?”

“I’ll have you know I can stay up for at least twenty minutes.”

“Fluttershy, come on. What would you tell me if I could only walk for twenty minutes before my hooves gave out?” Of course, Rainbow Dash was right. Of course she was. Fluttershy knows she has blind spots when it comes to certain things, and flying is very much a blind spot. It doesn’t stop being a blind spot just because she knows about it, though. There’s still days where Rainbow Dash has to practically drag her out of the house to get some exercise.

Fluttershy appreciates those days. It’s good to have friends that care enough to put their hoof down sometimes.

Taking care of the birdfeeders is actually very easy. No heavy lifting, no emotional strain. Fluttershy whistles a jaunty tune as she floats around, scooping seeds into little houses and fake flowers. She built them all herself, preferring to be able to specialize them for the birds in her area rather than buy generic ones, and over the years has become quite adept at woodworking. Not many ponies have seen her workspace, a secluded room in her home with a dusty workbench and tools covering the walls. If not for the half finished sculptures of foliage and fauna scattered about the room, one could easily mistake it for a misplaced extension to Applejack’s home. Fluttershy has done her best to make the space her own, though, and in the process grown to love the hobby.

Her skill with the craft is also crucial for the second half of today’s chore. Birds, along with any other creatures which may use these feeders, are not always the most gentle beings, and crafted wood is not always the most durable material. The myriad scratches and dents that all the feeders get are no issue, and in fact Fluttershy believes that these signs of use are the mark of success, but it’s not uncommon for more substantial damage to occur. Petals broken off of flowers, holes bored in the walls of houses, chunks gouged out of faux wildlife. Fluttershy knows all too well the pain of a splinter from a fractured piece of wood, and goes to great lengths to keep her animal friends from feeling the same.

So, while refilling the seeds, she makes a mental note of any damage she finds that needs her attention. Then she goes back home, puts back any excess birdseed, and goes into her workshop to scrounge up the necessary materials. Sandpaper to blunt a pointed edge. Wood glue to piece together shattered remains. Scraps from old projects to fill missing space. It’s not uncommon for Fluttershy to spend hours sitting under a tree, carefully sanding down the edges of an unused piece of wood until it fits perfectly into the scar left by an overzealous creature.

Today, however, brings very little of that. Fluttershy finds very few empty feeders, some almost untouched, and almost no significant damage. The only thing of note she finds is a birdfeeder which had spilled its contents onto the forest floor. Examining it, she sees that the bottom had completely given out, the wood rotten completely through. Unsure of how to easily fix the issue, she elects to instead take the feeder down and into her workshop to begin a longer project of fixing it.

As she hangs a temporary replacement, Fluttershy looks curiously at the pile of seeds on the ground. I wonder why those didn’t get eaten, she thinks. Have they gotten tired of the food I’ve been getting? Maybe I should get something new.

Back inside the house, Fluttershy marks her planner and smiles. The other reason the birdfeeders are her favorite chore is that it’s the only one she schedules on those days. She can never know how long repairs will take, so she elects to take the rest of the day off. Today, she finished so early that she practically has the whole day to spend as she pleases.

What to do, what to do, she wonders. She floats into the living room and lounges on a sofa. Maybe invite somepony over? Oh, but then I would have to clean up. I suppose I could go see somepony else, but who? Pinkie would want to invite the whole group, and I don’t think I have the energy for that. I just saw Twilight yesterday. Oh! Hang on…

She hops off the couch and trots into her kitchen. Sure enough, she finds just what she expected: nothing. Fluttershy is very fond of her tea, having a cup nearly every day, and as such she always keeps it in sight right behind her kettle. That way, she can always see at a glance if she’s run out, which is exactly the case today. She grins at the empty counter and bounds for the door, deftly grabbing a saddlebag as she heads out.

“To Rarity’s!”

“Whoops,” she says as she barges back in a second later, “almost forgot to put food out for Angel. He would have been so mad.”