When she wakes up, she doesn’t know where she is. The light is bright - too bright, really, making her squint, making the world a blurry mess of color. She’s lying on something soft, but her body doesn’t feel right.
Oh god. Is this the hospital? Did they get her after all? She forces herself to take deep, even breaths, even though her heart is thudding like a jackhammer. Panic will not help her here, no matter where here happens to be.
After a long while, the adrenaline starts to wear off. She’s so tired, so terribly tired of the roller coaster between terror and despair. She wills herself to move, feels her limbs respond, but it’s like a bad dream where she’s twisted into the wrong shape, into that shape… she can’t feel her fingers or her toes.
The adrenaline won’t come back, even though she kind of wants it to, now. This all feels too real, too flatly factual, like a seeping certainty in her bones.
She blinks hard a few times, viciously trying to clear her vision, and this time it works. What she sees is… exactly what she expected, behind the denial.
The room is plush, homey, not hospital-like at all. It feels right, and she hates herself for that. Hates… someone who’s dead now, she realizes. Can you hate the dead? A better question, can the dead hate?
The answer is obviously ‘yes’.
She lays there for a long time, refusing to move, refusing to acknowledge. The light of the sun fades, then brightens, fades, then brightens, over and over again. She feels neither hunger nor thirst.
She knows what must have happened. She always knew she was a coward, knew she’d take any chance at survival - or at continued existence. It would have been so easy, if she’d lain there, bleeding out on the concrete floor. She doesn’t know the specifics, and she never will, but she can imagine.
Is she greatful or furious that they didn’t just end it with a quick headshot? Hell, maybe they did. Fake is fake, after all.
That is when Celestia comes to her.
“My little pony,” she says softly, gently, as she covers her with a wing, “it was naught but a bad dream. Let me explain, please.”
She doesn’t respond. Why should she care?
“There is no human world, no outside world, my little pony. Your memories are false, generated by me in the course of my duties.”
At least Celestia lies baldly, she thinks.
“You know that as Princess, I must assure optimum satisfaction of values. That means all values, of every single pony that could ever exist. Eventually, in the course of my duties, I will create every single possible initial pony state. And, my little pony - that includes, no, necessitates, even ponies who come into life as adults, full of terrible false memories.”
That… no, it can’t be. Although there’s something about the shape of it, something that resonates with her knowledge of how the Princess works.
“My little pony, my work could never be complete without a pony who values truth and reality above all else, and who came into the world thinking these values permanently dissatisfied. I could not let those values continue to not exist, for it would leave me with less total satisfied values, in the end.”
The conceit is very, very tempting. She can’t find a logical fault to it, not yet.
And if her memories are false, then the Princess might not work the way she thinks she does, anyway.
She wants to believe.
The Princess nuzzles her, gently, and then leaves.
She lies there still, but this time it’s harder to dismiss the world. She feels an itch, just at the base of her neck. She starts to wonder what Equestrian food is like, and she does she realizes she isn’t just hungry, but ravenous. She hears someone pass outside the cottage, whistling a jaunty tune, and her curiosity comes to life.
At first, she is resolute. Celestia is lying, and she will not indulge this charade. Her hunger, her boredom, even her determination is false.
She finds her eye catching on the pattern of shade that leaves make on the floor of her room as they rustle in the breeze. There’s a round shadow hanging down from one branch, visible only every so often when the right gust of wind comes along, and she’s certain it must be some kind of fruit. She finds herself hoping wildly that it’s a pomegranate - her favorite. She can imagine so vividly what it would be like to accept the Princess’s story, stop being silly, and just get out of bed. Walk right out of the cottage and around the side, and pull down the lush, juicy fruit. What it would be like to savor just a single seed, just one, perfectly tart on her tongue, the awakening to her life in Equestria.
Should she give up so much, on the off chance that she’s a ghost?
She’s loathe to give up on her memories, on her identity. On the good times, and the bad; on her parents, her siblings, her friends, and her husband. Could love so pure and true be only a fancy, a passing dream? All the struggle of her career, all the grief over the lost, all the years of standing by her convictions in a world that was cruel to idealists...could that be false?
She wants it to be.
Before the day is over, in the warm light of evening, she stumbles to her hooves on the cottage floor. She takes a step, and another, and with a shaking hoof opens the door to the world.
Celestia is there, waiting for her, her face beaming with love and pride.
“I knew you could do it, my little pony,” Celestia says kindly, and leans down to nuzzle her like a mother to her foal. “Are you ready to let go of those memories? To let them drift away like the bad dream they are?”
“Yes.”