After Sunset

Chapters

Talk To Me
Like Her
Losing Touch
Another Day
Forlorn Hope
Bedside Manners
Grace In Rewind
What's Warranted
Never-
-Good Enough
Epilogue
Last Rites

Talk To Me

“...so I told them they could them they could go fuck themselves and walked right out of the school,” I finish, chuckling dryly before shivering.

Canterlot is a cold city, but it’s especially cold in the winter, and even moreso at night. Even with a full winter coat, heavy pants, and a beanie tucked around and over my ears, the wind still bites hard. I wrap my arms around myself and rub at my limbs, trying to coax some warmth back into them.

“I think you would’ve laughed, y’know?” I continue. “The look on Principal Celestia and her sister's faces? They looked like I’d just slapped them.”

The gray stone in front of me is as silent as always. She never answers, no matter how much I talk to her, but I don’t expect her to. I figure that, even if she were alive and right here, I could sit next to her and talk for hours and she still wouldn’t say a word to me or even acknowledge me. She hates me, after all, so really it’s almost like she never went away at all.

I shake my head and shoulders, shedding a layer of snow from them, then reach out and wipe the dusting of frost from the flat plane of stone.

Here Lies Sunset Shimmer

-In death may she find the peace-

-That life denied her-

The words are revealed under the sweep of my mittened palm.

“Dad’s pretty pissed,” I say as I lean back. “He’s all ‘Rainbow Dash you have to get your diploma!’ and ‘You can’t just drop out!’ and all that bullshit, like any of that crap matters.”

I stare at the stone, tracing over the epitaph again and again. I’ve read the words so many times, but it still doesn’t feel real.

Because it’s not real.

Sunset isn’t dead.

“So it’s been, uh,” I wrack my brains for a moment as I count down, “like, three months since you closed the portal at Canterlot High… fortunately, that crazy guy that Princess Twilight called up, Discord or whatever, was able to reopen it… but it’s permanently closed now.”

I sigh quietly, remembering Princess Twilight’s explanation. She’d stayed in our world long enough to see to Sunset’s funeral and to make sure everything was in order magic-wise, and then had Discord tear open the portal.

But, she’d said, it wasn’t a permanent one anymore.

Whatever Sunset had done to get everyone out of her collapsing Trial, it had permanently changed the portal inside the statue. Or more specifically, it had destroyed it.

‘It’s not a doorway anymore,’ Twilight had said solemnly, ‘it’s a wound. And if it’s left alone it will fester and grow. Discord and I have to seal it for the good of everyone.’

“You’d have found another way,” I say quietly, curling up and resting my chin on my knees. “I know it… I know you would have figured out how to keep the door open.”

Sunset was- is- smarter than Princess Twilight. I was sure if Sunset had put her brain up to it she would have figured out some half-baked crazy way to fix the portal that would have worked anyway.

Tears track little paths of rime down my cheeks that I scrape away with the back of my mitten.

“I miss you, Sunset,” I say softly. “A-And I know you hate me, but I s-still love you, okay? I always will.”

I’m glad I dropped out of Canterlot High. I hated it there. Everywhere I went it was just another reminder of Sunset. I couldn’t walk past her locker without choking up. I couldn’t go into the locker rooms without remembering the time I found her crying in the showers. Every time I would go into a class that I used to have with her I’d look at her empty seat and it would take everything I had just to keep from losing it.

And no one else understood.

No one… not Pinkie, not Fluttershy, not Applejack or Rarity, loved Sunset Shimmer the way I did.

None of them betrayed her the way I did.

“We uh… we went to that old abandoned train station office last week, by the way,” I say quietly as I shove a hand in my coat pocket and pull out the photo I’d put there. “I wish you’d told us where you were living… we’d’ve figured something out, y’know?”

Carefully, I flatten out the photograph and sniffle softly as I look over it.

All six of us are there, starting with Pinkie on the left, then to Applejack and Rarity with their arms slung over one another, and then Fluttershy bunched up in the middle looking awkward as always, then Sunset, with her mouth turned up in that cocky come-at-me-bro smirk, and then right beside her is me.

I remember how I had my arm around Sunset’s waist, not her shoulder, and how Sunset hadn’t tried to change that. She’d put her arm around me instead, and pulled me close. I had my head on her shoulder, and we were both smirking at the camera. All of us were smiling and happy.

Cold tears scatter over the photo.

“There wasn’t much there,” I say. “Princess Twilight found a stash of your stuff and let us keep a few things. I think Rarity took an old quill, like one of those ones people wrote with way back when… did you actually write with that?” I chuckle a little at the thought. “Pinkie took an old chipped coffee mug that looked like you used to use it, it was kind of gross, but…”

Figures Pinkie would take the thing that she could put coffee or hot chocolate in.

“A-Anyways, Fluttershy found a little blossom she’d given you as a present apparently, and it was still alive,” I sigh and shiver again. “She saw it and she just, like, fuckin’ lost it. Just started screaming and crying like everything hit her all at once. Who knows… maybe it did.”

I don’t talk about how I’d almost lost my shit right there too. I’m still a little jealous of Fluttershy, especially since after all that she seemed a lot better, like she’d gotten something off of her shoulders.

Lucky her.

“I guess you took really good care of it,” I continue. “It had a little hand-made water-dripper that brought in rainwater, and it was put in a spot where it could get some sun.”

Seeing it had broken something open in Fluttershy, I remember. She saw it sitting there on a damp table and she just started bawling. I tried asking her about it later but she said she couldn’t talk about it, not yet anyway.

“Applejack took your grimoire,” I say as I reach over and flick some snow off that started building up on the gravestone. “Twilight said you’d mentioned it and she thought about taking it, but in the end she wanted to know if any of us wanted to keep it. Applejack ended up keeping it, she said she has a bunch of books from her family and… and that yours belonged with them too.”

I hold up the photo and wipe it dry carefully with my thumb.

“I kept this,” I say, and I can’t keep out the choked pain in my voice. “Y-Y’know, because it reminds me that you… you didn’t always hate me.”

I tuck it back into my pocket, patting it flat so it doesn’t get crumpled or folded up while it’s there.

“I wish I’d asked if you liked me too,” I say quietly. “Back in that nightmare place, I wish I’d asked. I think you’d have told me the truth, you would’ve just made it hurt.”

Because I deserved to hurt. After what I did to Sunset I deserved to be hurting. Sunset isn’t ever going to stop hurting, or if she is it’s only because she stopped feeling anything at all, and that’s not any better.

I deserve this.

I stand up and brush the snow from my pants, and shiver as another cold breeze sweeps through the graveyard. The city lights of the commons are dim here. There aren’t many of them near the church, but there are enough to see by.

Before I go, I squat next to the gravestone and press my forehead to the cold stone.

“Bye Sunset,” I say softly. “I’ll come by again tomorrow, okay? Talk to you then.”

The walk back home is a long, cold one, but the buses stopped running hours ago. By the time I get back my legs aren’t even hurting anymore, they’re just numb, the moment I push the door open and the warm air from the heater hits me, I start to shake like a wet puppy.

“RAINBOW DASH!”

“Ugh, hey dad.” I pull my beanie off and shake it out outside before closing the door.

Rainbow Blaze, my dad, is normally a much more upbeat sort of guy. Ever since my mom left, he’s been doing his best, and until lately we’ve always been pretty tight.

‘Until lately’.

“It's past midnight! Where the hell have you been?” Dad looks pretty haggard as he gets up from the couch. “I’ve been worried sick! Every phone call goes to voicemail, and you aren’t answering my texts! What-?!”

“I turned my phone off because you wouldn’t stop calling,” I snap. “I just went to the graveyard to visit Sunset, okay? It’s no big deal!”

“You could have been hurt! The Commons are dangerous at night!” Dad stomps over to me, and he’s probably shaking more than I am. “I… I know you’re going through hardship right now, honey, but please!”

“HARDSHIP?!” I scream, my temper suddenly roaring. “MY FRIEND IS DEAD! AND IT’S MY FAULT!”

“What happened to Sunset was tragic!” Dad cries. “But it wasn’t your fault!”

“I abandoned her!” I grab the keys off the rack by the door and pitch them at him. “I called her she-demon!” I snatch a picture off the wall, one of dad and I fishing out at Lake Everfree, and throw that next, it collides with his arm and he yelps in pain. “I could have saved her but I didn’t! She killed herself because I wasn’t there!”

My vision is swimming, and I’m breathing so hard that I can hear the blood pumping in my temples. It sounds like a heartbeat.

“That’s enough!” My dad yells, and I flinch back. “You’re falling apart! This has to stop!”

“Stop?!” I spit the word out viciously. “I can’t ‘stop’ Sunset from being gone-!”

“Dead!” My dad shouts, and I flinch back again. This time it’s not from the volume. “I’m sorry, honey, but she’s dead! You never say ‘dead’ just ‘gone’, like she can come back! You have to accept that she’s dead, Dashie!”

I’m shaking now. I can’t find any words to say that will get through the thick lump of rage building up in my throat. Maybe Dad takes my silence as a good sign, because he keeps talking.

“I… I’ve talked to your mother, and we both agreed it would be best if you didn’t go back to the graveyard for a while.”

“WHAT?!” I let out a harsh bark of a laugh. “You haven’t had a good thing to say about Mom for five years and now her opinion is supposed to matter?!”

“You’re tearing yourself up,” Dad counters. “We’ve both agreed you need time away, and therapy. I didn’t want to do this, but you’re not leaving me any choice… you’re going to go stay with your mother in Manehattan for a while, and-”

“Fuck! You!” I snarl, cutting him off as I turn, slam the door open, take a deep breath, and run.

My Dad’s shouts for me vanish into the cold night winds as the cookie-cutter suburbs of Whitetail rush past me in a flurry of white and gray. I was so tired a moment ago but now it feels like I've gotten my second, third, and fourth wind all at the same time. My stride is eating up yards like nobody's business, even if all I can taste on the air is ash and blood.

I should have stayed with Sunset in the Trials.

I could have stayed behind.

Even if she hates me. Even if she spends the rest of eternity hunting me down in that terrifying reflection of Canterlot High, it would have been worth it just to be with her again.

To be with her forever.

The slow, sullen advance of dawn crests over me as my burst of energy fades, and my vision doubles, then triples as I collapse against an old, brick-and-mortar wall. I look around, trying to figure out where I ended up. I hadn’t been paying any attention to where I’d been going, I’d just been running as fast and as far as possible.

I furrow my brow, trying to make sense of the area around me. It’s Old Town Canterlot, east end, I’m pretty sure, but how the hell did I get all the way over here? I wasn’t running that fast.

No one can run that fast.

Whitetail might be on the edge of downtown, but it’s on the wrong edge to get all the way to the east end.

“Great, I’m in murder-hobo central,” I grunt as I sit up and look around again, trying to get my bearings a little more clearly.

Maybe a street sign or a-

My heart almost stops as my tired brain finally recognises the building I’m resting against. I also realise why it is the sound of cars and traffic is so far away. I’m not just in the east end, I’m in the worst part of the east end where it meets up with the Commons. It’s all run-down factories and bare-walled Projects. Half the gang violence in the city happens on these streets.

That’s not what makes my blood run cold though.

It’s that the building I’m sitting against is the old, abandoned office for the dead train line that used to run out of the city, and more importantly, it’s where Sunset Shimmer used to live.

With a groan of effort, I lift myself up to my aching feet, and my legs wobble under me as I walk leadenly into the building. The locks were busted open a while ago, since the building’s only tenant stopped keeping track of them after she… left.

The door creaks as I push it shut, and I stumble through the halls towards the main office. It’s the only part of the building that’s still in decent repair, and the specially made set of deadbolts on it, built in for security reasons I guess, makes it the only safe room in the entire building once you’re inside.

That’s probably the only reason that Sunset was even able to sleep in there.

I slip inside the office and knock the bolts back. It’s just the way we all left it. There’s a surplus military cot in the corner, still reasonably clean and dry thanks to the cold, arid air. A cardboard box filled with neatly folded blankets and sheets. They were clean, as far as I knew.

But it’s so cold.

There’s an unpowered space heater nearby, and what little exploring the six of us, including Princess Twilight, had done had turned up a generator a few rooms down that looked like it gave up the ghost a few months back. Without some serious cash and a lot of spare parts, that thing wasn’t coming back to life anytime soon.

“Fuck I’m tired,” I grumble.

I eye the cot for a moment, then chuckle and shrug.

“Hell, why not.”

I grab the blankets and sheets from the box, throw them over the cot, and flop down on them before rolling around a little until I’m curled up in a messy roll. I bunch up some of the blankets near my head, bury my face in the cloth, and take a deep breath.

These were the blankets that Sunset slept in. This was her bed, for lack of a better term, and if I try, I can pretend I can still smell her.

I fall asleep almost instantly.

Like Her

“Come on you piece of junk!”

I swat the generator, then wince and shake my hand out. I’d stolen some parts from one of the big box stores that didn’t care to chase me past the parking lot, and that was if they even spotted me, which they didn’t.

After a month of living in this hole, I’m starting to understand why Sunset was such a bitch all the time before she met us. I’d be pretty fucking surly too if I woke up this cold every morning.

“Bastard!” I kick the generator a couple more times before plopping down beside it again and pulling off one of the panels. “Alright, let’s see if there’s something loose in here…”

Again.

I feel around the inside, running my fingers over every wire and plug, every nut and bolt. I know exactly what each one does the moment I touch it, and I can’t even say as to why. It reminds me of the short time I spent in the Trials, actually, and how we had to rebuild those crappy generators.

It didn’t matter that I’d never worked on something like that in my life, for some reason the moment I sat down to try and fix it along with everyone else, I just… knew. Just like I knew how to put all the new parts I’d gotten where they needed to be. I knew just where they went, how to attach them, and how to wire them up.

“Wonder if some of it stuck with me,” I mumble as I root around. “I wonder how long this thing’s been dead…” I turn my head to look over to my left. “I wonder how long you were living here without any heat?”

The photograph is silent, as always.

I’d found a picture frame tucked away and put the photo of all of us inside it. It was just a plain, metal frame, but it kept the photo flat and neat, and free of the grit and dirt that’s all over the place in here.

My fingers trace over something and I pause. I don’t know why, but something feels off. I let my instincts do the work, adjusting and twisting whatever it is I’m grabbing until-

SNAP

“MOTHERFUCKER!” I jerk my hand out of the generator.

Just as it coughs, barks, and chugs to life.

A slow grin creeps over my face as I wait for a few seconds, then a minute, but the thing keeps on chugging.

“Hell yeah!” I woop jumping to my feet and pumping a fist in the air. “Did you see that, Sunset? I did it!”

I turn back the photo grinning wildly.

“You’d be proud of me, right?” I say softly as I walk over and drop down in front of the picture. “Probably say something like, ‘wow, guess even you can’t be bad at everything’ or something like that, huh? But I bet you’d be smiling when you said it.”

I pick up the photo and run my thumb along the side where Sunset and I are smiling at the camera, then shiver. It’s still cold as shit, and even with the generator running I’ll need fuel for it. There are a couple of full canisters in the basement, and one that had a couple of gallons, but that won’t last me forever.

The gauge on the generator shows it at half a tank right now, and I have to let it run for a little while to get everything circulating before turning it off. I’ll have a warm night tonight, though, at least.

I tuck the frame under my arm and retreat back to the office, shut the door, throw the bolts, and drop onto the cot. It’s a little warmer in here, but not much, so I curl up on the cot and roll myself up in the covers. I stink of oil and sweat, but it’s not like anyone is here to care.

Shifting around under the covers, I bring the picture up so it’s resting on the pillow next to me. I’d grabbed it from a pile of stuff left on the curbside three days ago, and it was surprisingly nice.

“Dad’s probably still looking for me,” I say quietly to Sunset. “He doesn’t get it though, no one does. Everyone kept trying to talk to me like you just… just died of being sick or something.” I shiver again, this time out of anger. “It’s like no one wants to admit that we fucking… fuck!”

I rest my head on the glass pane of the frame.

“A-Anyway… I figure if you made it through just fine living like this, I can too,” I say with a weak laugh. “I mean, it sucks, but like… you did it and you were awesome, so… I’ll figure it out.”

I lower the picture and press a kiss over Sunset before putting it out on the banged up end table near the cot. Maybe tomorrow I’d go out and find a real mattress. I had to figure out money too…

Sunset did it, so I’ll figure it out.

I don’t sleep well, but I never do. That was the case before I left home, and it’s still the case now. No matter what, I always see her in my dreams. I see those black eyes with burning cores of blue fire. I see gleaming silver blades where her fingers used to be, and she’s smiling that too-wide smile of hers, with a mouthful of sharp teeth.

I dream of a beautiful Nightmare.

Strange how those dreams are the most comforting ones I have. When I wake up I almost feel like I rested. I chuckle weakly as I sling my legs out of bed, shiver, and pull on my socks and shoes, and wince a little at the smell. I still have a few coins left for a run of laundry, might as well use it for that. It’s not like it’ll buy me anything else.

I shove my wallet in my pocket, grab a couple of plastic grocery bags, and load up before putting my heavy jacket on and pulling the hood over my head.

The grand old city of Canterlot is a miserable place when you’re homeless. I guess I’m lucky in that I could go back home if I really wanted to, assuming I can call that place home. The thought of stepping foot back in that world makes me sick to my stomach, and at the same time it makes me mad.

Hypocrites.

Everyone on that side of the line is just a bunch of hypocrites.

Sunset is gone because we fucked up. Now everyone is acting like just because we buried her, said a bunch of pretty words, then looted her house for mementos, we’ve made good.

Bullshit.

BULLSHIT!

My scowl deepens as I slip out of the train station and into the early evening air. I’d found the key to the office weeks ago, so no more worrying about coming back to find my hidey-hole looted. Now I can lock it from the outside, and be at least reasonably certain no one is going to steal all my stuff.

The Commons are lively despite everyone being poor as dirt. There’s lots of homeless, though. A lot more than anyone else in the city seems to realise. I would know, being one of them. Everyone just drives by and sees the little makeshift campsites under overpasses and whatnot, but there’s so many more that live under the city, or that you just don’t realise are homeless because they don’t fit the stereotype.

For all anyone else knows, I might be a poor college kid who just doesn’t shower much. Pretty sure no one would guess that I secretly live in an abandoned train office.

Just like Sunset.

That thought cheers me up a bit.

Definitely looking forward to having some clean clothes again, though. I’ll figure out what to do about cash after that. Maybe I can wash up and get a job or something. There’s bound to be something stupid and easy I can get paid for somewhere around here.

I move through the sparse clumps of people that have collected around the sidewalks and streets like litter. Some of them are going somewhere, most of them are just standing around, talking, or begging.

Those last ones are something I’ll never be.

Sunset never did. I won’t either.

It’s three blocks to the laundromat. Funny thing is, I never would have known about it if it weren’t for Sunset. I found a little spiral notebook tucked under the endtable’s drawer that we’d missed when we’d been going through things the first time. At first I thought it was like a journal or something, but it wasn’t. Just locations, dates, names, and notes scrawled in the margins, and it takes a little while but eventually I figured it out.

It’s a survival guide.

Sunset had been taking notes on how to stay alive on the streets of Canterlot from the get-go. I know it’s from the start because her handwriting in the first few pages is almost unreadable, kind of like how Princess Twilight’s was when we first met her. It gets better fast though.

For such a badass, she takes some really good notes.

I learned where the best places to get food from are, and which places to scavenge from. There’s even diagrams of some of the big box stores nearby with notes about numbers of employees and which sections are less watched than others, and where is easier to steal from. Some of that stuff is out of date, but a lot less than I expected.

Before this, I always kinda wondered how she survived, but now I get it. Sunset survived because she was smarter, faster, and better than everyone else who was trying to manage it.

Take the laundromat, for instance: she realised that the fourth row back are the oldest ones, and some of them still use the old cointakers, and if you shove them in really fast, you’ll usually get a few quarters back, but a glitch in the reader will turn the washer on anyway.

Saves me about a buck every time I go in there, and that adds up.

I'm in a pretty good mood as I cross Eighth and Davis, but that mood evaporates when a punk a few inches shorter than me with a dirty mop of blue hair elbows me as he walks past.

“Hey, fucko, watch it!” I snarl.

A chill runs down my spine a split-second later as I recall another note from the notebook.

‘If someone bumps you in this city, immediately check your pockets’

I shove my hands in my pockets as the kid sprints off and snarl wordlessly as I realise my wallet is gone. I bolt after him, weaving between pedestrians and ducking around corners. He glances back and his green eyes widen as he sees me catching up to him.

“SHIT!” He puts on another burst of speed, but I match and beat it easily.

I used to be a track star, this kid is nothing.

He takes a hard turn, almost tackling through someone as he sprints down an alley. I take the turn too, but I know this one. It’s on one of Sunset's local maps. It goes to a dead end, but the end is a fence which is low enough that, if you’re quick, good, and lucky, you can jump it.

He’s only two out of three, because I’m the one chasing him. His luck runs out as I turn the corner twirling one of my sacks of dirty laundry like a set of bolos and let it fly. He’s mid jump when the sack hits him in the back and knocks him straight into the fence, then down onto the ground.

The thief hits the filthy concrete floor with a dull thud, and I drop my other bag of laundry at the mouth of the alley as I advance on him.

“Nice try, kid, but no cigar.” I stop a meter from him and hold out my hand. “Gimme my wallet back. Make me take it back and you’ll regret it.”

Another tip from Sunset: ‘Violence first, violence last, it’s all these savages understand.’

The kid glares sullenly at me with bloodshot eyes for a moment before shoving his hand in his pocket, pulling out my wallet, and holding it out to me. I reach out to take it, but the moment my fingers touch the leather of my wallet, I get another chill down my spine.

I jerk my hand back just in time to see the kid pull a switchblade from his other pocket and jab at me from under his outstretched arm. If I had still had my hand stretched out I would never have seen it, my own arm would have been blocking my view. The blade would have hit me right in the gut, but as it is I get my free arm between us, and the knife sinks a good four inches into the meat of my forearm.

I don’t scream. I barely even flinch. This little pigsticker is nothing like getting filleted by Sunset’s fingers. I barely even feel it.

“You little shit.”

The kid blanches and tries to pull away, but I get him by the neck before he can make good on his escape and pin him to the fence. My temper is boiling over as I slam him against the cheap wooden slats.

I tighten my grip on his neck, and it makes a satisfying crackling sound as I slam him into the fence once, twice, then throw him into the brick wall to our right. He hits the ground and coughs, trying to drag air through his abused throat. He might’ve even managed it if I hadn’t landed a goal-making soccer kick right into his gut.

The thief bounces off the wall and hits the ground again, this time he doesn’t get up, he just lays flat and dry heaves. I’m not done with him though. I bring my foot up, then stomp down hard on the wrist of the hand he’d used to pickpocket me, and I feel something crack and give under my heel.

If he had any breath in him, he’d be screaming.

“Pick a better mark next time,” I snarl. “If you even get a ‘next time’.”

I turn on my heel to leave the alley-

-and stop at the sight of three guys who look like they each weigh in at about two of me blocking the exit.

The one in the middle is a heavy-set guy with broad shoulders and a low brow. He runs his hand over his bald pate as he steps into the alley, chuckling a low, mean laugh.

“Damn, cold as ice, girlie,” he says looking me up and down before looking over at the kid. “Cost me my fastest runner, though, so I’m gonna have to take it outta ya hide on principle… just business, y’know?”

I narrow my eyes at him, look down at the knife sticking out of my arm, then pull it out and brandish it at him as I back away. The big man’s eyebrows go up as I hold the knife out level at him, and he chuckles.

“Damn,” he laughs and looks back at his companions who share a couple of mildly impressed laughs before looking back at me. “That was a fuckin’ power move kid. Tell ya what, forget the beating, ya want his job?”

He jerks a thumb at the crying kid on the ground. I feel a small pang of pity, but nothing else. I should probably feel worse about hurting him, but I don’t. He stole from me, I caught him, and I did what I had to. Just like Sunset was doing whatever she had to do to get back home.

To survive.

Whatever it takes.

I lower the switchblade and straighten out as I look the big man in the eyes and nod. “What’s it pay?”

“Fifty bucks a delivery, and ya make two or three a week,” he says. “Plus, I throw in a bonus at the end’a the week.”

A hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty a week. That’s pretty good money. Not great money, but it’s… it’s enough for food and shit, and a bonus might be a little more, who knows?

Like I have a choice. I could try to find something else, but there’s no guarantee anyone would hire me, and unlike Sunset I’m not a genius.

But I am fast.

“Yeah, sounds good,” I say finally. “I don’t have a phone or anything.”

“No problem,” He smirks, then walks over to the kid, kicks him onto his back, and reaches down to fish out a flip-phone from the thief’s jacket and opens it up to check it over. “This’ll be ya phone. Call it a business phone, a’right?”

“What’s the business?” I ask.

“None’a yours,” he replies with a grim smile. “F’now, anyway. You just go where I tell ya, when I tell ya, and you get paid. We good?”

He holds out the phone to me and I take it without hesitation.

“We’re good,” I say as I pocket the old model phone. “I’m Rainbow Dash.”

“Chase Dragons,” He says, holding out a hand. “And if you’re as fast as your name, kid? Then we might be goin’ places.”

I stare down at his open hand for a moment before taking it and giving it a hard shake. I try to remember how Sunset shook hands. It always felt so good when she did it, and I was unsurprised to find a description for how she learned to shake hands in her notebook. I guess for someone born without hands, it would have to be practiced.

Palm-to-palm, grip tight with the fingers and thumb, and shake.

“Nice grip, kid,” Chase says. “I like you.”

I match his grin with one that I don’t feel. So long as he’s paying me, though, I’ll smile. If I want to eat, I gotta run and I gotta smile.

Whatever it takes.

“Cool… can I do my laundry now?”

Chase laughs uproariously, lets my hand go, and slaps me on the back, sending me staggering forward, between his two thugs, and out of the alley. My laundry bags follow me a few seconds later, tossed at my feet.

“Sure thing, Dash,” Chase laughs. “I’ll be in touch, let’s go boys.”

He gestures for his two thugs to follow him, and they do. Both of them are clearly there for the intimidation factor, not their ability to hold a conversation. Besides, Chase strikes me as the kind of guy who really likes the sound of his own voice, so I figure silence is more of a job requirement than anything.

As I’m stepping out of the alley, I glance back at the kid I just beat down. I dunno if he deserved it, but I can’t let people just steal from me without consequence. A part of me wants to go back and check on him but I don’t even know what I’d do. I’m not a doctor, and if I drag him to Canterlot General somehow, I’d have to answer a lot of really tough questions about who broke his wrist and beat his face in.

“Sorry kid,” I say quietly as I turn away. “Should’ve been smarter.”

I get it now.

I get why Sunset was always so cruel when she came to Canterlot High. I always wondered why she would just socially nuke anyone who came within sniffing distance of threatening her, but not anymore. You can’t back down, you can’t show weakness, and you can’t give anyone an inch, or they’ll take the whole nine yards.

I heft my bags of laundry and start heading towards the laundromat. The flip-phone is heavy in my pocket.

Hopefully that bonus is something good.

Losing Touch

Author's Note

I know it's in the tags but for peace of mind.
CW: For depictions of self-harm and drug-use in this chapter.

Losing Touch

I pull the backpack taut against my back as I sprint through the alleys of the Commons. The whole world is a blur, and I know where I need to go, but I’m having a real hard time focusing on it for more than a minute or two because of how hyped I am.

I’ve already done three runs this week. This one’s a special delivery, last minute, and Chase promised me my bonus early, plus some extra, if I got the stuff to his guy before midnight. It was half-past ten when he called me up to do it.

I told him it was good as done.

It took me all of half an hour to get out to the drop, pick up the stuff, and start running.

Can’t risk taking it by car, especially not out in the Commons. Cops like to stop us for no fuckin’ reason at all, and then hassle us about whatever they feel like. Basically, it's just them razzing the poor because they’re bored. Chase prefers to use the old tried-and-true methods anyway. Street runners aren’t as fast as cars, but they’re cheaper, don’t run on gas, don’t really break down, and are a helluva lot harder for fat pigs in uniform to run down.

Plus, there’s always more runners on the off chance one does ‘break’.

Chase was skeptical when I told him I’d have it there before midnight. The club I’m running this stuff out to is clear up on the north side. It’s a ritzy part of town, and usually one of Chase’s more ‘professional’ runners would take this stuff out there, but apparently the guy who was supposed to do this one got nailed for possession yesterday and conveniently forgot to mention it to Chase.

‘This is big money.’ He’d told me. ‘Don’t fuck me on this, Dash.’

I chuckle as I bounce between two walls and vault over a fence into another alley. I’m faster than anyone in the city; Chase knows it, I know it, and by now every runner in the East End knows it.

Of course, no one knows why.

My mouth fills with the taste of ash and blood, and my smile splits wider as the world turns gray. Time slows to a languid crawl as I dig my heels into the dirty concrete, angle forward, and push off into a dead sprint in the cold, grey night.

Canterlot is a city of mist. The frigid Lake Canter is fed from the icy Canterhorn mountains that border the northeastern side of the city, and the cold drifts off of it in thick banks that swallow the whole city from time to time.

This isn’t mist though.

It’s Fog.

I don’t know how I can touch it from here, or why the thing in the dark doesn’t just yank me into its world completely, but I can, and it doesn’t. All I do know is that if I try really hard, if I think about her and get past the gut-wrenching, soul-swallowing pain and guilt so I can see her face in my mind, I can run through the Fog. Only a little, but it lets me skip whole city blocks.

The first time it happened, I didn’t even notice. The second time I thought I was going crazy. The third time, I knew it was real, and now I run whenever I can. Anything to see her again, or to hear her voice.

‘One, two, Sunny’s coming for you~’

A shiver goes up my spine as I skip between here and there. I grip the backpack tighter as the world drifts between Canterlot and somewhere else… somewhere darker.

“Come on,” I whisper into the Fog. “Just take me… do it… do it.”

The thing in the dark never does though, no matter how many times I taunt it. No matter how often I get into the Fog and no matter how much I tempt it, I always end up coming out, and I don’t know why.

Maybe Sunset isn’t letting it take me just to torture me.

I lower my head and put on another burst of speed. I can hear Sunset behind me, running me down through the Fog. Her footsteps are like a metronome, lazy and consistent, but eating up the yards anyway as she closes in on me with that strange, slow, supernatural speed of hers.

She doesn’t catch me, then again she isn't trying.

I stumble out of an alley a few blocks down from where I’m supposed to make the drop. I flip my business phone open and grin. The dull display reads thirty-five minutes past eleven. That was decent time for a car going from the armpit of the East End all the way to the clubs on the north side in the middle of evening weekend traffic.

Shaking my head clear of the smell of the Fog, I skip past the well-dressed club-goers, each of them wearing outfits that Abby one of which would have bought me a month's worth of crappy dinners at the diner down the road from the station.

I get a lot of ugly looks from them too. Upturned noses and scowls drag across me, and I give as good as I get as I pass them by. They can judge me all they want, but they have no idea what they have. I bet if they ended up in Sunset’s Trial grounds they would probably go nuts in the first couple of minutes.

The club’s music reaches me even before the dark neon flashes of its sign do. It has a dark, grim bassline that thuds through the concrete sidewalk and up my legs as I approach. If it’s this loud from out here I can’t even imagine how bad it is inside. Just the thought of being surrounded by that many people makes me want to crawl out of my own skin, to say nothing of them touching me.

I shiver.

That never used to be a problem, but ever since I got back from the Trials things have been different. It was only a couple of Trials I went through, nothing like the rest of them, but since I got out it feels like everything in my head is dialed up to eleven.

Sounds are louder, colours are brighter, the air tastes… weird. Air shouldn’t even have a flavor but it does, at least to me. Smells are the same way.

My sense of touch is the worst though. It helps when I’m fixing that generator in the back room, but out here it’s like I’ve got a livewire in my skin. It’s why I cover up head to toe.

Everyone around me right now is wearing skimpy outfits for a night spent clubbing, and here’s me in a bulky canvas jacket, heavy cargo pants, a thick orange beanie over my head that used to belong to Sunset if the hairs left behind are anything to go by, and a pair of black gloves. I look like a hobo, and the funny thing is, it has nothing to do with the fact that I sort of am.

I slip past the people crowding towards the entrance of the club. It’s a goth club called Danse Macabre, so naturally everyone is wearing black leather, fishnets, and enough makeup to supply a regiment of clowns.

Part of me wishes I hadn’t said yes to Chase as I step into the alley leading down to the service entrance. I’m practically vibrating being this close to so many people. I can barely keep myself focused, and it’s only as I get out of the crowd and into the mostly-empty alley that I let out the breath I didn’t realise I’d been holding and take a long, ragged gulp of air.

“Blech.” I hang my tongue out. “The air tastes like piss and garbage.”

“Probably because it’s full of piss and garbage,” a voice says from the service door that’s already opening. “You Chase’s girl?”

I scowl and spit on the ground. “I’m nobody’s girl, I’m his runner.”

The man who steps out is tall, lanky, and fashionably skeletal-looking, wearing a tight black corset over fishnet and his face is painted pale with artfully done black streaks dragging down like tears under his eyes. His hair is dyed black and tied back in a long ponytail that reaches to his waist.

“Whatever,” he shrugs and smirks. “Come on in.”

That is just about the last thing I want to do. I do it anyway, though. I promised Chase I’d make the drop.

‘Don’t you want to stay, Dashie?’

I shiver as Sunset’s voice slithers over my ears, and I look over my shoulder to see her leaning against the wall opposite the door.

Her skin is angry red and split with veins of icy blue that match her eyes. Her hair is hanging in matted, lank strands around her face as she licks her sharp teeth before winking at me. Her coat reminds me of the one she used to wear to school; all black leather and studs, but this one is longer and worn out, more ragged around the edges, and cinched tight from her neck to her waist where it flares out around her legs.

And her hands.

Those fingers, and the way they taper off to bright silver blades, make me shudder, and not with fear. I stare at the sharp edges of them, and I want to touch them. I want them to touch me. I want to feel her again, and I don’t care how.

“Hey!”

I turn back to club-guy and glare at him, then glance back at Sunset.

She’s gone.

“Yeah, I’m coming,” I snarl as I step into the club.

I almost choke on the wet, sweaty heat of the air inside the Danse Macabre. It’s cloying and it stinks like someone dumped a pile of used incense ashes into a fog machine and set it to high. I have to swallow hard to keep my gorge down. I want to vomit the taste of the place up, but I force myself to take another step inside, then another, and another as I follow club-guy into what looks like a break room with two other people inside. One is a short girl with an undercut, a gray complexion, and lime green hair, who's wearing a goth-punk outfit straight out of a Beetlejuice porn parody, and the other is a big guy with tattoos and a security vest who has ‘Bouncer’ written all over his face.

“Where’s the shit, Tuesday?” The girl snaps. “Chase promised his ‘best runner’ would show up,” she leans in at me then wrinkles her nose, and pulls back waving her hand in front of her face. “Oh god, you smell like a dumpster.”

“Thanks, I’ve been working on it all week,” I say dryly as I toss the backpack on the table. “Here, now where’s my cut?”

Tuesday pulls the backpack open and eyeballs the contents, nods, and passes it over to the girl. “It’s all here, Tally, go get selling.”

The girl, ‘Tally’ takes a look herself, and her face goes from condescending to confused.

“Yeah, this is the usual drop.” She looks up at me and narrows her eyes. “How the fuck did you get it here so fast?”

“Did all that dye leak into your brain?” I snarl, earning an ugly scowl from the girl. “Chase said he was sending his best runner, right? Not his laziest. I got it here, and now I want my fucking cut.”

I hold out a hand, palm up and wait, meeting Tally’s gaze evenly. She has pretty eyes the color of strawberries, and I imagine Sunset would have lots of fun putting them out over and over again. I smile as I picture it, and whatever it is that Tally see’s on my face makes her pull back, scowl again, this time at skinny club-guy, Tuesday, then snatch up the backpack and storm out followed by the silent bouncer.

“Damn, that was tough as nails,” Tuesday says with a low chuckle as he watches her go, then turns back to me. “Not many people can just glare down Tallymark like that.”

“I’m not here for compliments,” I say. I’m starting to get pissed off as I hold out my hand to him now. “I’m here because Chase asked me to do him a solid, and he promised me a bigger cut, now hand it over.”

“Huh, guess Chase was right, you’re a hard-nosed bitch,” Tuesday says soberly before reaching into his vest and pulling out a money clip and handing it over. “Here.”

I snatch it out of his hand and thumb over the bills. A hundred bucks. Fifty for the delivery, fifty for doing it ASAP. It was good money and it would tide me over for a while. I wouldn’t stop doing runs, obviously, nothing can stop me from running, but it’s a nice chunk of change.

But it’s not what I’m really here for.

“Cool, thanks,” I snap as I tuck the money away, “now give me my real cut.”

His face falls as he looks me up and down, his eyes lingering on my open hand. The longer he waits the more impatient I get. I don’t want to be here. It’s too hot, the air is thick with sweat, and it stinks. I want to go home, back to my cot, and my shitty ramen dinner, and…

...and Sunset.

Sunset’s waiting for me. I need to get home.

“Look, you… you’re what, eighteen?” Tuesday asks after a moment.

“You’re not my type,” I hiss, “now give over.”

“That’s not what I-” He bites his lip then shakes his head. “Look, I know what you want, but I’ll give you two hundred to just walk out of here, okay? You can get help, I’ll even help if you need it.”

‘You don’t need help,’ Sunset hisses, stepping into my peripheral vision with that manic grin of hers. I can almost feel her fingers trailing along my back. ‘You’ve got me… I’ll give you all the help you need.’

“Fuck your help.” I jerk my hand pointedly. “Give. Me. My. Shit. Unless you want me to mention this to Chase, and have him take it out of your ass!”

Tuesday sighs heavily, then shrugs. “Fine, whatever, suit yourself.”

‘That’s right, suit yourself,’ Sunset puts a hand on my shoulder and leans in close enough that I can feel the feverish heat of her breath on my ear. ‘That’s all you ever do.’

I swallow back a lump of rage as Tuesday turns his back on me and walks over to the door at the end of the break room, opens it up, and steps in, gesturing for me to follow. Inside is a crummy little office that doesn’t fit the goth vibe at all. It’s more like middle management’s shitty younger brother.

It takes a minute as he fishes through some clutter on his desk before finding what he was looking for, a small key to one of the drawers on the desk, and opens up the second drawer down on the left.

Inside the drawer is a small lockbox that he pops open, and his face twists as he examines the contents. After a moment, he nods to himself, closes the lid and looks over at me.

“Last chance, kid,” Tuesday says quietly as he holds out my reward. “I’m serious, this stuff isn’t even that pure. It could kill you.”

‘If only.’ The specter of Sunset is sitting languidly on the desk, rocking her legs back and forth and smiling at me.

I stare at her for a moment before looking away and snatching the box out of his hand to tuck it inside my jacket.

“No, it can’t,” I say bitterly as I turn my back on him. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”

I storm out of the Danse Macabre’s back room. My whole body is itching after spending that long in close proximity to that many people, and the stink of used incense is clinging to the inside of my nostrils.

It’s cold outside, and it feels good. I need the cold. I get too hot, too fast lately. I barely even use the space heater despite having plenty of gas and spare parts for the generator anymore, I just don’t need it.

As soon as I’m out of the alley and on the street I flip open my phone and shoot a text to Chase, letting him know his stuff was delivered and that it’s probably getting sold as we speak. Once it’s sent I tuck the phone away and start to run again, dipping through the alleys and letting the Fog swallow me and take me back home.

Every time I step into the Fog I pray I step out in the empty halls of Sunset’s Trial, but I never do. The weird way that time works when I slip into the Fog spits me out near the train station office just fifteen minutes later, give or take.

I lick my lips, savoring the flavor of the Fog as I step out of it and take a breath of the relatively clean air of the East End.

Ducking past the boards and through the broken down doors, I make my way through the dismal, abandoned station and down the hall towards the main office. I fit the key and release the deadbolts before shouldering the heavy door open.

‘Three, four, better lock your door.’ Sunset’s voice sings from around me.

“I know, I know,” I say quietly as I slip past the door, then close it and rack the bolts into place. “I only forgot once in the, like, six months we’ve lived here, but you’re never gonna let it go, huh?”

I turn around, smiling tiredly at the far end of the office. “I can’t believe that guy tried to ‘save’ me.”

The picture of Sunset is smiling back at me from the open chest of the cabinet I’d dragged in here last month. It had been the tail end of August at the height of move-in season. The notes in Sunset’s journal clued me in that it was the best time to collect new furniture. People leave all kinds of crap on the sides of the road that they don’t have room for in their new place.

The cabinet was nice, like a small armoire. I took the doors off easily enough, and the top and bottom shelves inside, then set up the picture right in the middle shelf where I could see it. I put a few other things around it too, stuff I thought Sunset would have liked, or things that remind me of her.

A lock of her hair I collected from the beanie. A studded black leather armband. Some candles that smell a little like the conditioner she used to use.

And knives.

Lots of knives.

Which reminds me…

“Hey, I found the last one while I was out today,” I say brightly as I step over to the cabinet and sit down on the chair I’d put in front of it. “I can finally finish the glove.”

I shed my coat and toss it on a coat stand that I scavenged around the same time I found the cabinet, and my beanie goes with it. The lockbox gets set on the floor beside the chair.

“Here, look!” I reach down to my belt and start unwinding the cord that kept it secured. “See? I found it in a pawn shop!”

My hand is shaking a little as I hold up the knife. It’s an antique silver steak knife with a four inch long blade. It had cost me almost a hundred bucks, but it had been worth it. I already have the other four, and they were already affixed.

I scoot the chair a little closer and set the blade down next to the photograph.

“It’s… It’s good right?” I ask quietly, forcing a smile onto my face as I push it a little closer to the picture.

I swallow the lump in my throat as I slide out of the chair and onto my knees. The tears come a few seconds later as I curl up and pull my knees hard against my chest before resting my chin on them. I let the tears fall, I don’t hide them anymore. Why should I?

I’m all alone.

“I think I’m crazy,” I sob after a few minutes of quiet crying. “I saw you again when I was running to the Danse, and I know it’s not you. I know it’s not real, but I keep seeing you like you were when you…” I trail off with a sniffle and wipe at my eyes. “I uh… I think I’m really losing it, Sunset. I don’t even know if I’m really running through the Fog, or if it’s… it’s something else.”

The picture is silent, like always.

“I’m sorry.” I slump my face against my knees, muffling my tears. “I just miss you, Sunset… I miss you so much. I w-wanna hear your voice again so bad, and I m-miss hanging out with you, and just-.”

I lose it. All the pieces of me fall to the floor and I just start crying all over again, like always. I can never hold it together for long, but I try. The only time I can stay together is when I’m…

Not yet, though. I need to finish. I finally have the last knife, so I have to finish the glove. It’s important, because… shit, I don’t know. It’s a little bit more of her I can cling on to.

I pull myself together enough to stand on shaky legs and grab the chair to drag it over to the full-length mirror I set up in the corner and sit back down. My hair and vest are stained with sweat just from the short amount of time I spent in Danse’s back room, so I pull the vest off and throw it near my cot before running my fingers through my hair a few times.

God, I’m a mess.

Ace bandages are wrapped around most of the exposed skin that lay beneath my vest, and continue down my arms, tied off or secured with butterfly clips that I’ve used and reused so many times I forgot when I got most of them. The bandages themselves are stained and dirty, but I ran out of my last roll a week ago. The money I got from this last run will help, though. I’ll get some more tomorrow.

I grab the small end table I’ve been working with, a sturdy thing from back when Sunset lived here, and drag it between me at the mirror, then open up the drawer.

Inside is a thick wood panel whose surface is covered in nicks and cuts from my work. On top of the panel is a leather wrap tied off with a sturdy cord, and something else wrapped in a microfiber cloth.

The metal parts beneath the cloth clink and clatter as I carefully lift the wood panel up and out of the draw and it on top of the end table. I gingerly pull the at the corners of the cloth, taking care not to yank anything. If I did, and the cloth caught, it would tear, or worse, it might damage the glove.

With the cloth pulled away, a smile for real for the first in hours.

The base is a thick old leather glove, the kind that you’d wear while handling a welder. It’s heavy-duty enough to stand up to a lot of punishment, which I needed in order to build over it.

Each finger is covered in an articulated metal brace. They were easy enough to make, it was just a matter of shaping the metal around an old, heavy, railway bolt with a hammer. They were screwed together around a joint at each finger to make sure the wearer can still move their hands. That was important.

The back of the hand has another smooth metal plate, and it took me the better part of fourteen hours and five discarded failures to get the divided sun symbol that Sunset always wore looking right on it. I had to use a nail and hammer to carefully etch it out, and I eventually learned that I had to switch to a new nail the moment the last one dulled.

The toughest part was the blades.

Each finger was fitted with a five-inch silver blade, and they had to be silver.

Hers are silver, so these ones have to be too. Real silver, not some cheap silver-plated knockoff either. I’m not going to make her hand on the cheap. That’s… that’s just wrong.

The first three blades were luck. I spotted a mismatched set of knives at a garage sale. The guy hocking the stuff was just trying to get rid of his dead grandpa’s hoarded junk, and had no idea the silverware set he was selling was real silver.

There were only three knives in the set though, and it took me two more months to find another matching knife.

That had been a good day. I’d finished the four main fingers and it… it had been good. It had felt good.

But now I have the last one. The thumb. It’s a little shorter, and that was the real bitch. I remember that Sunset’s thumb-blade was an inch shorter than the rest of her fingers, and it took me all the way until now to find a matching blade.

I’d thought about getting a five-incher and just knocking an inch off, but for one, I wasn’t sure I could do it without breaking the knife, and two, that just felt like cheating.

I wanted to do this right.

And now I can.

I’ve already built the joint for the glove, now I just have to remove the blade from the knife, clean up the end, and bond it to the metal thumbcap, so I grab the leather wrap that has all of my tools bundled up in it, untie it and get to work.

I work for almost two hours, carefully hammering away at the old bone handle of the knife until I’ve chipped it away enough to start working on the tang of the silver blade. It takes me another three hours to get that part right. I do it slowly, I can’t risk damaging the blade itself, I might not find another one for a long time, and there’s no guarantee I’ll have the money to buy it even if I do.

It’s not that I mind taking the time, though. It’s… what would Rarity call it?

A labor of love.

Yeah. This is a labor of love. It has to be done right, and if that means working until the wee hours of the morning, then fine.

Another hour of work with the cheap old welder I got out of a backdoor sale from an auto shop that was shut down, and it’s almost done. The backs of my eyes are burning with exhausting as I look up at the watch I have hung from a piece of string near the cot.

It’s almost six in the morning and I’m almost done.

I just need to wait for the bond to set and cool. It might not be the sturdiest thing ever made in the history of metalworking, but it should hold together. While it’s cooling, I get my little ‘reward’ ready. I deserve a reward.

I deserve to be able to hear her again.

My kit is in the small alcove under the main space of the cabinet where I keep Sunset’s photo. I brush my fingers over her smiling face again, and I find myself smiling back at her a little more honestly this time.

The candle goes up first, and a little rig I made out of a wrist brace goes over it so the well of a bent spoon rests just over where the candleflame burns. I grab a handful of cotton balls, another strip of leather cord, and a set of new needles.

Then I grab the lockbox, open it up, and pull out one of the dozen small packets that constituted my weekly ‘bonus’, only this time there were some extras in there, as promised by Chase.

I peel the first one open and nudge out the gobbet of sticky black tar onto the spoon before lighting the candle, and wrinkle my nose. Tuesday wasn’t kidding, this definitely isn’t what you’d call ‘the good stuff’.

Whatever, it’s not like it’s gonna kill me. It never does.

While the heroin cooks, I unwrap the bandages on my arms and torso. The track marks from last Saturday are already healed. They look like little pockmarks. All the pictures I’d ever seen of this stuff in the few anti-drug orientations and assemblies that had been hosted at CHS had shown some pretty horrible crap, but for me I just… healed up.

No matter what I did to myself, I always healed.

The track marks aren’t even really obvious past the other scars. I shudder as I lay my fingers over the patterns I’d drawn in my skin over the past few months.

Thin scars, all in patterns of four lines matching the spacing of my fingers, criss-cross up and down my arms and all along my ribs. I run my fingers along the lines, each pattern, each individual set of four lines.

Four isn’t right, though. She has five blades.

Five.

Now I can finally do it right.

My oversensitive nose tells me the moment the heroin is done, and I blow out the candle, pull up a needle, clear it, and lay a cotton ball over the liquid in the spoon before sliding the needle in with practised ease, and draw up a large measure of the drug.

It’s more than I should be taking. More than anyone should be taking. When he first gave me the stuff and taught me how to use it, Chase told me only to use a little at a time or I’d OD. Except the little that he gave me barely did anything.

So I tried more, and more, and more, and eventually, I was taking enough to knock out a bodybuilder.

But it was enough.

I stare at the liquid in the barrel of the syringe. I want it right now, but I can’t. I’m not ready. I… I have to get ready.

I set the syringe down and get up, walk over to the end table and pick up the glove. It feels good. Nice and weighty, and the balance is finally feeling right with the blade on the thumb affixed. I test the bond tentatively, then a little more harshly, and I smile as it doesn’t show any give.

Good.

Flipping the glove over, I slip my right hand inside and pull it taut and my heart starts to beat faster. It looks so much like her hand did. Finally, it looks right.

I pull the glove off, carry it over to my kit, and sit down.

Then I pick up the cord, flex my bicep a few times to get the blood going, and wrap the cord around it before giving my forearm a few good slaps to get the veins to rise.

“Finally,” I whisper, as I lift the syringe and set the needle to a vein, press down, and press the plunger.

Welcome warmth starts to cloud my mind. It’s not instant, it never is. I have enough of my mind left to get up and drag myself to my cot, flick the lone light off, and lay down before fitting my newly made glove over my right hand again and securing the straps.

I breathe deep and slow, letting my heart do all the work. My body starts to feel warm and fuzzy, and I smile as I raise my hand and turn it over and over. The metal glints a little in the dark, and I admire how sleek and sharp the blades are.

They’re beautiful. Just like her.

“Sunset,” I call softly.

‘Rainbow,’ Sunset’s voice is near and distant at the same time.

“I love you…” I sob.

‘I will never stop hating you.’

“I know.” I tighten my grip, and gasp as the tips of the blades pierce my skin.

It feels so much like the last time she touched me that I’m practically crying with relief. I see her next to me, kneeling over my cot, her eyes burning like embers of blue fire set into pits of merciless black. Her expression, flat and disgusted, is still better than not seeing her ever again, and her hand- my hand- her hand closes tighter over my ribs and drags.

Skin splits, and the copper tang of blood fills the air. The cuts must be deep, but it doesn’t matter. It won’t kill me. It never does. No matter much I shoot up, or how deep I cut, I always wake up.

I hate that I always wake up.

I’m shaking and sobbing as the blades lift from my bloody side and come to rest on my shoulder. I stare up at the vision of Sunset that's glaring down at me with her eyes hooded with contempt.

‘You’re going to remember me…’

Always.

I’ll always… always remember you.

She- I- She tightens her fingers… and drags.

Another Day

Like always, I wake up.

That’s the worst part of this habit of mine. I always wake up. My mouth is dry as a desert stone, and my limbs are shaky as I force my eyes open. My left arm and side burn with a pleasant, searing pain as I shift, and I turn to glance down at the mess.

Blood stains the sheets on the side, it’s sticky and almost brown, and there are three sets of new cuts, this time is groups of five the way they should be. The shape of Sunset’s hands on me is the only good thing about waking up right now.

I take a slow, labored breath as I turn as much as I’m able to, and examine the damage.

The cuts are long and thin, but they’ve already scabbed over. They’re already healing. Same with my shoulder.

I used to play Soccer and run Track so I’ve had my share of injuries before now. I’ve never, in my life, seen damage like this heal this fast.

“Son of a bitch,” I mutter as I sit up and look around. The dark room isn’t so dark to me.

The faint filter of light that drifts in from under the door is enough for my eyes. I can’t tell if that’s just because I’ve spent so much of my time in this room, or if it’s something else. My senses are so keyed up all the time that I have no idea what’s normal anymore.

Despite only having lived like this for a little less than six months it feels like my old life was ages ago.

“Guess everyone’s probably started college by now, huh?” I say looking over at the photograph of Sunset and smiling tiredly. “Always… I always figured we’d all go together, y’know? Go to Canterlot U, and tear the place a new one with how awesome we were.” My smile fades. “Never thought it’d end up like this.”

I wince again as I sling my legs over the side of the bed, gingerly cradling my arm and side as I do. I really should have gotten some more bandages yesterday. That was stupid. Why did I decide I should refill my stock of bandages after I did this?

God I’m a dumbass.

I chuckle as I stand up and limp over to the chair before dragging it back over to the cabinet and sit down. While I do that, I scoop up the used bandages I’d taken off last night. These would have to do until I got new ones. It wasn’t exactly sanitary, but neither was falling asleep high with over a dozen open wounds. If I was going to die of sepsis or something, I figure it would’ve happened by now.

I’ve never even gotten an infection.

“Wouldn’t be surprised if you’re the one keeping me alive,” I say sullenly to Sunset, who just smiles silently back at me while I carefully shake the bandages out straight before starting wrapping them again. “It’s pretty ‘you’ thing to do.”

As I’m wrapping my chest, I look up at the clock. It’s almost eleven at night. I slept through the day and then some.

I shiver and scratch at my skin as a wave of nausea rolls over me, but it fades quickly enough that my appetite has a chance to make itself known.

“Guess I should probably eat,” I say quietly. Then smile wanly up at the photo again. “That hundred from the delivery last night… whadya say we go out to the diner, huh? That’d be cool, right?”

The idea of a warm meal sounds awesome, actually, so I finish wrapping my arms up, collect a couple of tens from the clip of money, then think again about the bandages I need and grab a couple more tens. I tuck the rest away in the box I had hidden under the cabinet. I have almost three hundred saved up in there now. I can afford a decent meal.

I grab my vest and pull it on carefully over the bandages, trying my best not to jostle the cuts too much. In my experience, those things seal up stupidly fast on me, but I also didn’t want to have to run a load of bloody laundry. The sheets were going to be bad enough.

My jacket goes on a little more easily, but it’s a pain to get my arm through the sleeves. I can’t lift it all the way without definitely tearing a scab.

“Okay, that’s done,” I say as I pull my beanie on and walk over to the cabinet. “Ready?”

There’s no reply, but I pick up the photograph and tuck it into my inside jacket pocket anyway. She’s always quiet after nights when I shoot up. I wonder if it’s because whatever is wrong with me has to take a breather after I really fuck myself up, or if it’s something else.

I zip up the jacket, then listen at the door for a moment before throwing back the deadbolts and opening up the office door. It’s dark out, but not dark enough to bother me, so I step outside and shut the door, locking it behind me.

The sounds of Canterlot at night fill the air as I leave the station and enter the East End. Half the street lights are out, and have been for as long as I’ve been here, but honestly I’m grateful. The lights of the north side where I was running last night were miserably bright, and I hated it.

“Note to self, get sunglasses for if Chase asks me to pull an extra run up there again,” I mumble as I shove my hands into my jacket pockets and start heading up the block to the Salt’N’Pepper.

There’s a funny thing about this diner: as far as I know, it’s a franchise that closed up all its locations something like three or four years ago. This one just… never closed up. I think the employees got together or something and bought the place for basically nothing, and because it’s squatting right in between the Commons and the East End nobody gives a shit that the place isn’t exactly up health code.

Half the tenements and projects out here should probably be condemned, too, but they’re still crammed full of poor people.

It’s just more proof that no one really gives a shit what happens on the East End.

The off-tone bell above the door to Salt’N’Pepper jingles sharply as I step inside. The diner isn’t quite empty, but then it usually isn’t.

“Hey, Millie,” I flag down the waitress.

She’s only a few years older than me, but Vermillion has been the night waitress at Salt’N’Pepper since the franchise closed. Her hair is the dusty red of her namesake, shot through with stripes of purple, and she keeps it short and tucked back into a loose tail. Her green eyes are the kind of dead that you only get after working in the service industry for a long enough stretch, and they settle on me with her usual cold shoulder.

“Dash.” Millie acknowledges me flatly. “You shower recently?”

“I think we both know the answer to that,” I reply.

She wrinkles her nose, then nods towards one of the back tables. I head towards it as she grabs a menu, tucks it under her arm, and follows me.

I slide into the bench seat and flip the upside-down coffee mug over before nodding down silently at it as Millie drops the menu onto the table.

“Try to actually keep it down this time,” Millie says pointedly. “I don’t want to have to unclog the toilet again.”

“No promises,” I grumble as I eyeball the menu.

Last time I came in here I’d eaten too fast and my stomach had let me know in no uncertain terms that it was not used to having real food in it anymore by violently ejecting most of it less than twenty minutes later. Let me tell you, the eggs benedict here is no great shakes to begin with, and it does not improve on the second time around.

Millie narrows her eyes at me for a second, then sighs and shakes her head before turning and retreating back to the counter to get the coffee. At this hour there’s usually a fresher-than-usual pot on the burner since all the night shift workers swing by to fill up their thermoses and to-go cups before heading to their respective jobs. Hopefully that means the brew will be marginally less burnt than usual.

Shivers run up and down my limbs and spine as I look down the menu, trying to decide on what my stomach will be willing to accept. I don’t get the shakes as bad as some people, but the knowledge of just how much I have left in my little bunker is calling its siren song to me even from here.

The best part is, I’m basically free to do whatever I want for a couple of days. Chase won’t ask me to do another run for a while, he’s already thrown plenty of cash my way and he doesn’t like relying on one runner too much.

‘Gives’em a big head,’ he says.

Whatever, he knows I’m the best, and I do too. Besides, the time off combined with my extra-large stash means I can spend a solid day and a half out of my mind, which is precisely where I want to be right now.

I unzip my coat and reach into my inner pocket where the photograph is and pull it out.

For a moment, I just stare down at her. Sunset’s smiling face is almost painful to look at now, but it’s worth it. I run my finger over the glass pane covering the photo, and grimace as I leave behind an ugly smudge.

“Crap,” I mutter.

I grab a handful of napkins and wipe carefully at the glass until it’s clean again before setting it down on the table beside me near the window through which the city lights flicker dimly, and the odd passing car cruises by at a lazy crawl.

“Been a while, huh?” I say with a quiet chuckle to the silent picture frame. “Sorry we haven’t gone out more, it’s… tough.”

A shiver runs through me again as I fold my arms over the table and lay my head down. I’m still tired, and my stomach is doing flips. My arm hurts. My side hurts.

Everything hurts.

“Remember last time we went out, just the two of us?” I ask. “Before the… well, y-y’know… before everything that happened at CHS. We went to the Crystal Emporium and got milkshakes?” I laugh quietly as I turn my head to stare lopsided at the photo. “I still can’t believe you’d never had mint chocolate chip before, but I guess you never had the cash for it before. I get that now.”

I turn my head again and scowl at my empty coffee mug, then look up and around for Millie. My scowl deepens when I spot her leaning on the counter with her cell phone to her ear, and for a moment she pauses, looks over at me with that flat, dead stare, and then shrugs again as I turn back to Sunset.

“Can’t get good help these days, right?” I say with a grim little laugh.

Millie comes over a few minutes later with a pot of coffee and pours out a generous measure into the mug.

“Sorry for the wait,” she says, surprising me with the apology. “Pot was empty, so I had to brew a fresh one.”

“S’cool,” I mutter as I pull the now-full mug towards me and sniff.

It definitely smells like a fresh pot of coffee, and I shiver with delight as I lift the piping hot brew to my nose. It’s been so long since I’ve had a fresh cup, even if it’s not the best coffee. I can’t even remember the last time I had a cup that wasn’t styrofoam and filled with something that tasted like tar.

“Know what you want?” Millie asks.

“The number five, with wheat toast,” I say quietly.

“Eggs?”

“Scrambled.”

“Bacon or sausage?”

I grimace. The thought of all that grease is making my stomach twist even without seeing or smelling it.

“Can uhm… can I just have like, some fruit or something?” I ask with a wince. “Or just, like, another egg?”

Millie stares at me flatly for a few seconds before rolling her eyes and muttering under her breath, then scrawling something down on her little notepad and nodding.

“Whatever, sit tight, I’ll see what we’ve got,” Millie says grumpily as she collects my menu and trots off behind the counter.

“That was easier than I expected,” I say weakly to Sunset. “Millie’s usually a lot more of a bitch of substituting stuff.”

I settle back into the bench seat and start sipping quietly at my coffee. I never take my eyes off of the picture of Sunset. When I’m sitting here like this, I can almost pretend we’re hanging out again. I know it’s not real. I know she’s not here. But I can’t think about that every time I do I fall apart again.

This is easier.

“Do you think… ya think you would have forgiven me eventually?” I ask the photo softly as I lower the now half-empty mug. “If you’d gotten out with everyone, I mean. Do you think you might’ve, like… eventually forgiven me?”

She doesn't answer. She never does. So I just stare down at the swirling black coffee and turn it this way and that, watching the brew twist inside the off-white mug. I never used to like black coffee. I hated it actually. I never got the crazy coffee-milkshake hybrids that Pinkie likes to drink, the ones with six shots of espresso and enough sugar to put an elephant into a diabetic coma, but I always got mochas because I like chocolate.

Sunset always got the same thing when we went out: one medium black coffee.

‘It’s bitter, just like me,’ is what she’d said when I’d asked her why, and she’d said it with that smirk of hers that made my heart flip.

I wonder if it’s just because she never had any money, so black coffee was all she could afford and she just learned to like it.

“You never told us how bad things were,” I say without looking up from my coffee. “You never talked to us about, like, where you were living, or how tough things were for you…”

My grip tightens on the mug until my knuckles turn white, and tears burn behind my eyelids as I clench my eyes shut.

“But we never asked, either,” I say after a moment, finally opening my eyes to look at Sunset’s frozen smile. “It’s so stupid… like, where else could you possibly be living? We knew you came over here from Equestria, we knew that shit, and we never even-!”

I swallow hard and bow my head, trying to blink away the tears as I lift my mug and take a long drink from it. It’s still hot, and it scalds my tongue, but it’s good. The bitter liquid is bracing and I can feel myself waking up. My stomach clenches around the coffee, but it settles after a minute.

“I… I know I keep saying it, but I miss you.” I reach out and run my hand over the top of the picture frame.

Not that it matters. By now everything has probably stopped mattering to her. Even if she survived whatever it is the thing in the dark had planned for her as punishment, that probably means she’s just another one of those mindless Killers now. The thought of that makes me want to cry. The thought Sunset Shimmer being twisted into a monster and left endlessly wandering the empty halls of a nightmare version of CHS, waiting for hapless Survivors to be dropped into her domain.

Repeating that endless cycle over and over again until there’s nothing left of the girl that I…

That I…

My arm and side hurt, but now don’t hurt enough.

The atonal bell of the door rings, heralding either another patron or someone leaving to go do whatever it is they’ve got planned for the rest of their night as I continue to nurse my coffee while low chatter drifts towards me from the counter.

I don’t pay it any mind, though. I move the picture of Sunset a little closer so I can stare at it while I finish my coffee. The first of what will probably be several mugs before I go back to the train station and put myself under again.

“-Rainbow Dash?”

I frown at the sound of my name. The voice sounds familiar, and I look up and away from Sunset with a scowl at the interruption.

And my jaw promptly falls open.

Fluttershy is standing less than a foot from my table wearing an expression of pure shock.

She looks me up and down, and works her jaw open and closed like she wants to say something but can’t quite decide on how. She’s wringing her hands which are pale with the cold, and her hair is falling in its usual waterfall of silky pink over her thick yellow parka down to her waist.

I close my jaw with a dull click and fix my surprise into a hard glare.

“Rainbow Dash… you’re… you’re alive.” Fluttershy says it like she’s having to force herself to believe it’s really me. Tears well up in her soft blue eyes a moment later, and she takes one faltering step forward before lunging at me.

“ACK!” I flail as Fluttershy collides me with me and pulls me into a tight hug. I gasp raggedly as at least half of the cuts on my left side open simultaneously, and my vision goes white with agony.

“GET OFF ME!” I snarl, jerking out of her grip and smacking her across the chest hard enough to send her staggering back a few steps.

I do my best to cradle my side and arm without making it obvious how badly that hug had hurt me. I clench my teeth, willing whatever it is that keeps healing me to stitch those cuts up fast while Fluttershy stares at me with a mixture of shock and hurt as she gets up unsteadily from the floor.

“R-Rainbow, you’re-” She looks me up and down, really taking me in this time. “What happened? Where have you been?!”

“None of your business,” I spit, “yours or anyone else’s, okay? Now beat it.”

“No!” Fluttershy’s voice hardens more than I think I’ve ever heard from the soft-spoken girl. “I’m not leaving. I’m… I’m not going anywhere without you.”

She slides into the bench opposite me, brushes back her hair, and juts out her chin belligerently as she crosses her arms over her chest. It would be impressive if her lower lip weren’t shaking the way it does when she’s trying not to cry.

Actually, I take that back. It’s impressive she’s standing up to me at all.

“Number five, no meat,” Millie interrupts flatly as she appears by the table, seemingly unbothered by the minor shouting match as she slides the plate in front of me before turning to Fluttershy.

At first I think she’s about to ask what Fluttershy wants to eat, but she doesn’t. She just gives her a flat stare and holds out her hand expectantly.

Fluttershy plucks a few bills out of her purse and presses them into Millie’s hand.

“You bitch,” I snarl at Millie.

My hands are shaking, and not from the drugs.

“Like I owe you anything, Dash,” Millie says with a roll of her shoulders as she turns back to me and pockets the bills. “Want some more coffee?”

As mad as I am, I can’t blame Millie for being open to a bribe. It’s not like I haven’t done worse. I nudge the empty mug towards her. “Sure, fuck it.”

I turn back to Fluttershy who at least has the good grace to look ashamed. Her cheeks are colored and her eyes are down as she wrings her hands some more before finally looking back up at me.

“I’m not going to apologise, Rainbow Dash,” she says softly.

I shrug as I start picking at the eggs on my plate before shoveling some onto the toast and taking a small bite. I learned the hard way not to just shovel the food into my craw like I used to. My body can’t really take it.

“So ‘ow’d you find me?” I ask around a mouthful of wheat bread and eggs.

“Rarity,” Fluttershy replies as she folds her hands in front of her. “Someone who shops at the Boutique she works at said she saw someone who looked like you come in to a club last night who came from the East End, and that's when I remembered the train station.”

“Was the snitch a goth-punk shorty named Tallymark?” I ask with a raised eyebrow.

Fluttershy shakes her head. “I don’t know her name. Rarity just asked all of her regulars to keep an eye out for you, and let her know if they saw you. She offered them a discount on some things if it panned out.”

“Good for her,” I grumble as I eye the pile of grapes that Millie had loaded the plate with in place of bacon or sausage. They’re a little wrinkled, but otherwise look fine.

I pop one into my mouth and bite down, savoring the sweet tang of it.

“Rainbow where-?” Fluttershy chokes on her words as her hands tighten into graceful little fists. “We thought you might be dead!”

“No such luck,” I say bitterly as I take another bite. “So now will you leave me alone?”

“No!” Fluttershy slams her palms down onto the table, rattling it. “I told you I’m not going anywhere without you!”

“Too bad.”

I tuck back into my eggs and toast as Millie comes back with the coffee pot and fills up my mug, then gives Fluttershy a level look. Fluttershy shakes her head, and Millie gives off her patented ‘suit-yourself’ shrug before trotting off back behind the counter to fuck around on her phone.

Fluttershy stares at me for a long moment before turning to look at the photograph sitting across from me. Her face softens immediately as she sees the face smiling back at her from it. Then she sighs, turns, and looks at me.

“Rainbow… she’s-”

“Don’t.” My fork scrapes jarringly against the plate as I hiss the word through clenched teeth. “You don’t get to talk about her after forgetting about her.”

“You-! How dare you!” Fluttershy snarls, startling me, and I look up to see her glaring at me with tears falling freely down her cheeks. “I haven’t forgotten about her! None of us have! Why do you think I’m here!? Because I refuse to lose another friend!”

“You mean ‘kill’!” I snap, pounding my fist on the table and sending the cheap silverware scattering. “We didn’t ‘lose’ her! We-!”

My tongue glues itself to the top of my mouth. I’m shaking so hard I can’t even hold my fork. The warm and sticky wet of my blood is plastering my clothes to my skin under my canvas jacket, and I’m doubly glad I’m wearing layers so Fluttershy can’t see it.

She looks distraught enough as it is.

“We…” Fluttershy starts, then leans back despondently against the bench seat.

“I’m the only one who’s willing to admit what we did,” I say a little more quietly before reaching out, putting a hand on the photograph of all of us, and turning it to Fluttershy. “We killed her because we didn’t know what she was going through, and didn’t fucking ask, and we abandoned her on the flimsiest fucking evidence because we lied to her face about forgiving her.”

“I wanted to forgive her,” Fluttershy says tightly. “We all did.”

“Yeah well, tell that to her gravestone,” I reply as I pick up my fork and go back to poking at my eggs, toast, and grapes.

It’s silent for a long moment, the space filled only with the sound of Fluttershy taking a long, slow breath, before speaking.

“I have.”

I look up at her again, and this time there’s no anger on her face, or fear or really anything at all.

Just a flat expression adjacent to despair.

“I go to her grave every week since you… since you left, to tidy it up and talk to her for a little while,” Fluttershy explains. “I know you used to go talk to her all the time.”

“Every day,” I say softly, turning the picture back to face me. “I still do.”

“That’s not healthy.”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, I do,” Fluttershy says tightly. “I mean it… I’m not leaving here without you. And I’m not going to lose another friend, no matter what happens.”

Rather than reply, I eat slowly in silence. Fluttershy watches me like she’s afraid I’ll bolt the moment she looks away.

In fairness, if my whole side weren’t in screaming agony at the moment I might give it a go. I know these streets and I know I’m faster than her. I could lose her and double back to the station if I weren’t bleeding all over myself.

“Why did you leave?” Fluttershy asks as I pop the last grape into my mouth and wash it down with a mouthful of coffee.

“Dad didn’t tell you?” I ask with a raised eyebrow, and she shakes her head. “Huh… figures.” I set the coffee mug down and shrug. “Dad was freaking out over all the time I spent with Sunset, and he wanted me to stop visiting her.”

“Well, that’s not that-”

“So he was going to send me to live with my mom in Manehattan.”

Fluttershy blanches, and I feel a small surge of vindication at the look on her face. She’s one of the few who knows what my mom is really like.

“He didn’t,” Fluttershy breathes, and I nod.

She closes her eyes and takes another long, slow breath. Inhale. Exhale.

Seeing Fluttershy mad is a rare thing, but my mom can make anyone mad. She’s just that type of person, and I have no idea what my mom and dad even saw in each other. Dad says she changed as they got older. I don’t know how someone can change that much. I think Dad might’ve just never seen the type of person she really is.

“So I’m not going back,” I continue as I take another sip of coffee. “I’ll live in a cardboard box before I live under the same roof with that fucking garbage bigot, and I can't trust my dad not to try and ship me off again.”

“Okay,” Fluttershy says with a small nod. “Will you at least come with me? I know Applejack will let you stay with her for a while.” I raise an eyebrow at Fluttershy who puts a hand on mine. “I’m moving out soon so I can live closer to the university, maybe we can get a place together!”

“I don’t…” I grimace.

That sounded like a fairy tale. It felt like one too because I knew it wasn’t really possible.

She doesn’t know how badly I’m losing it. She doesn’t know that I see Sunset everywhere I go most days, or about my habits, and how I get through the pain of knowing Sunset will always be gone, whether or not she’s dead. I don’t want to put that on her, that’s not fair.

“No,” I say after a moment, and her hopeful expression drops. “Sorry, Flutters, but no.”

“Why?!”

“I told you,” I say stiffly. “It’s none of your business.”

“B-Bullshit!” Fluttershy snaps.

I’ve never heard her curse before.

“Flutters just… just give it up, okay?” I gesture at her with my fork before going back to my half-eaten meal. “I’m not worth it.”

“You’re worth it to me,” Fluttershy says through tear-choked lips. “I’ll say it however many times I have to: I’m not giving up on you.”

I drop the fork onto my plate with a clatter. Whatever appetite I had is gone. I swipe up the picture of Sunset, slug back the rest of my coffee, and stand up to leave.

“Rainbow!” Fluttershy stands with me, reaching for me, but I swat her hand away.

“Don’t!” I snap. “I’m done with this! I said no, and that’s-!”

I lose the words as my vision swims the moment I take a step away from the table and from Fluttershy. The interior of the diner gives a nauseating heave to the left and then the right, as I stumble trying to keep my feet.

I’m freezing, and I swallow thickly as I look down at the bench, then my leg.

There’s blood everywhere, and Fluttershy pales as she stares down at it.

I’m not healing quickly enough. The cuts are bleeding freely and the bandages I’d used had already been on their last legs to begin with. Now they’re soaked through and doing nothing to stop the flow.

“R-Rainbow?” Fluttershy breathes my name in shock as I try to take another step back.

My legs go out from under me instead, and the diner gives one last violent, jerking twirl around me.

The last thing I see after I hit the floor hard enough for a crack to resound through the diner is a pair of familiar black boots wreathed in fog in front of me. The last thing I hear is the sound of fingerblades rasping against one another, and her husky laughter and voice.

‘You’re going to remember me…’

Forlorn Hope

‘One, two, Sunny’s coming for you~’

“She’s coding! Get the crash cart!”

‘Three, four, better lock your doors~’

“Shit, what did this dumbass do to herself?”

‘Five, six, grab your crucifix~’

“We’re losing her again! Kindheart get me EPI and another pair of hands for pressure! She’s hemorrhaging!”

‘Seven, eight, try and stay up late~’

“Here, Doctor Blaze!”

“Apply pressure and don’t let up! I’m applying EPI now!”

‘Nine, ten, never sleep again~’

Pain erupts in my chest and lightning roars through my veins as I gasp and jerk. Several sets of hands are grappling me, pushing me down, and a familiar voice is cussing viciously and shouting orders from somewhere above me.

“Hold her down!”

“We’re trying!”

There’s a painfully bright light searing down from directly above my head. I can barely breathe. It’s like there’s a vice around my lungs. I’m burning up and freezing and my world is spinning.

“Rainbow Dash, hold still!” The voice snarls, and suddenly the light is eclipsed by a face that I know.

Her eyes are furious amethyst stars, and the hard lines of her face are sharp with fury and framed by a bob of purple hair shot through with aqua strands that taper to a widows peak at her brow.

Aria Blaze.

“Doctor, we need to sedate her!” A soft, female voice says from somewhere to my left.

Aria turns to glare at the speaker.

“The hell we do!” She spits. “Look at her arms!” Her face immediately curdles. “No! Not the cuts, numbnuts, look at her veins!”

“Oh…”

“Yeah, ‘oh’ is right,” Aria snarls. “She’s a junkie, we are not giving her anaesthesia until we know how bad it is!”

“Yes, Doctor,” the voice says weakly.

Aria groans and rolls her eyes before looking back down at me and scowling. “Rainbow Dash, if you can hear me I need you to hold still, got it? Hold as still as you can!”

I bob my head slowly. I feel dazed and confused. There’s a plastic mask over my nose and mouth, and my whole body hurts. The figures moved around me are doing… something. I can’t tell what. I look to the side and watch as Aria swaps out a clear bag that looked like it might have held blood and set it on top of three more empty bags.

“Doctor Blaze, she’s…” the voice trails off in disbelief. “I think she’s starting to stabilise.”

“Good, now start mopping up the cuts and disinfecting. I’m going to have to suture all five of these bastards simultaneously.” Aria gives her orders in harsh, clipped tones, and the people around me hustle to obey.

“How-?”

“We’re doing an interrupted stitch,” Aria speaks so quickly it’s hard to follow, and her voice is drifting in and out like she's on a boat bobbing in the ocean. “We go sequential, left to right. One stitch at a time, otherwise we run the risk of tearing her right back open! Now clean. Her. Up!”

“W-Where-?” I croak. I’m barely able to keep my eyes open, but I do my best to turn my head towards the last place I heard Aria’s voice coming from. “Ar… ria?”

“What’s up, Blue?” Aria says coldly from my periphery before moving a little closer and staring down at me furiously.

She’s dressed in bloodstained scrubs, she’s glaring at me over the top of her surgical mask, and she looks absolutely livid.

“Pardon me, Doctor.” A nurse slides between us and lowers herself, and a moment later I feel a distant, stinging pain on my arms and sides.

“If you’re conscious, Dash, then boy have I got some bad news for you,” Aria says briskly. “Thanks to your extracurricular activities, I’m going to have to stitch you up sans anaesthesia, got it?”

I glance down at my arms. Everything is washed out in a cloying, gray tunnel. My cuts, the ones that Fluttershy accidentally reopened when she hugged me, are oozing steadily, though.

“Secondly,” Aria continues, “I’m going to have to do this in the slowest way possible, because having multiple long, deep cuts side-by-side are almost impossible to stitch up right, so thanks for that.”

The nurse stands and nods to Aria, who sighs, then gestures for her to move before taking her place, sitting down on a low stool and picking something up from below me.

“If you bleed out and die while I’m doing this, it is not my fault, got it?” Aria says grimly as she starts. “Because either I do it this way to make sure none of the stitches tear, and maybe you die, or I risk repeatedly mangling your whole left arm and side and you definitely die, got it?”

I nod slowly. I think I understand but it’s hard to follow.

“Good,” she says calmly before turning to the nurse. “Stardust, keep the wounds disinfected and be ready to swap the IV. Watch her veins, too… there’s no telling what damage she did to herself, I don’t want her throwing a clot or something.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Okay, then let’s get to work.”

Aria is hunched over me for what feels like hours. The needle goes in and out of my skin with a constant, machine-like regularity, piercing flesh, weaving the surgical stitching, and then coming out. Every pass has a nurse swoop in with a foul-smelling swab to dab at the wound.

The whole time, I watch over Aria’s shoulder as Sunset leans against the wall, smirking at me and occasionally wiggling her fingers in a teasing ‘hello’, the silver blades rasping against one another as she did.

As Aria finishes my shoulder and moves to my left side, she gives quiet instructions to elevate my arm. It takes them a few moments to suspend my arm in some kind of canvas sling attached to a robot arm that they wheel up beside me, and the whole time Aria is pressing a pad to my side to keep the bleeding down.

“Noden’s Oath, Dash, you really fucked yourself,” Aria mutters as she pulls her hand back from the wound and grimaces before looking back up at me. “She saw’em y’know? Your friend? She saw the damn scars when they brought you in. I thought she was gonna fucking lose her mind.”

I barely register that. I’m still staring at the far side of the room where Sunset is leaning, grinning lazily around the coils of Fog that drift around her. Aria narrows her eyes at me, then turns her head to follow my gaze.

There’s nothing there for her to see. Just an empty wall.

Only I can see her.

“I… r-remember,” I mutter, and the Sunset’s smile widens fractionally.

“Remember what?” Aria turns back to me, confused. “Damn it, Rainbow, are you still high?”

If only.

Shaking her head, Aria just curses again. “Well, if you are then I guess that takes care of the anaesthesia problem, and if not you probably deserve whatever piece of her mind your friend gives you.”

Deserve? Yeah, I deserve that, and a whole lot more.

It takes Aria longer to finish my side than it did for her to stitch up my shoulder, but the cuts were probably worse there. When she finally stands, she sighs heavily and leans against the operating table for a moment before turning her head to glare at me again. I don’t have the energy to glare back. I’m barely clinging to consciousness now.

“The stitching is holding,” the nurse from before says with a tone of awe. “Doctor that’s…”

“It’s nothing, get some orderlies in here and transfer her to ICU,” Aria says, waving off the nurse’s wonderment before turning her back on me. “And you, stay still or so help me I will stitch you to a gurney, got it?”

I nod vaguely, still unable to focus. Once Aria is gone, though, the orderlies start to move me around gingerly. I’m partially aware of being cleaned up, then shuttled from the table to the gurney, then from room to room before being settled on a bed that’s marginally more comfortable than the cot back in the station office. All I can do is I watch with detached interest as the nurse affixes the various wires and needles to me.

“Try not to move,” the nurse says as she finishes covering my stitching with pads of soft linen and bandages. “You need to remain as still as possible or you’ll risk taking out the stitches, and if you do that Doctor Blaze will…” the nurse trails off with a frown, “well, she won’t appreciate it.”

“Yeah,” I grunt. “She’s kind of a bitch.”

The nurse narrows her eyes at me. “Doctor Blaze is a hard woman to like, but she’s the most capable Doctor in the department outside the Director herself, and you’re lucky she was the one on duty.”

Her voice is hard-bitten and angry.

“If it had been anyone else you almost certainly would have died, so show a little respect,” the nurse finishes before turning on her heel and storming out of the room.

As the nurse leaves, Fluttershy bustles into the room looking terrified. There are bags under her eyes and her face is pale and drawn. Her eyes widen as she spots me, and she moves as quietly as she can to my side before sitting and wringing her hands as she looks me up and down.

I take shallow breaths as she makes several aborted attempts to reach out and take my hand. Each time she draws back like she’s afraid she’ll hurt me.

“I’m not made of glass,” I mumble around the plastic mask the nurse had fitted to my face.

“You almost died!” Fluttershy sobs as she looks up at me. “I… I almost…”

She reaches out and takes my hand, linking her fingers with mine and holding on as if I might fall apart if she squeezed too tight. In fairness, the last time she hugged me I kind of had, so I guess that’s fair enough.

“You’re my oldest friend, Rainbow Dash,” Fluttershy continues wetly. “You can’t just… just do this to yourself!” Her hand hovers over the bandages on my arms, and I know what she must have seen beneath them. “After Su-" She chokes on the name, maybe because it's too hard to think about anymore. "After th-that? No! That’s too cruel, Rainbow! I won’t just watch you do this!”

“Then look away!” I snap.

“I won’t do that either,” Fluttershy says with an iron bite to her tone. “I’ve… we’ve already lost-” she chokes on her words again and tears well up, but she doesn’t look away as she wipes them on her sleeve. “I’m not going to lose you like I lost her, okay? I'm not letting that happen! I’m going to get you through this, whether you like it or not!”

‘She’s wasting her time,’ Sunset’s specter hisses as she settles in beside me, with her blue-ember eyes and nightmare features taking up the other side of my vision. ‘You know it, I know it, and even she knows it… your friendship is a poor woman’s lie, Rainbow Dash, and it a~lways has been.’

I clench my eyes shut and shudder as her fever-hot breath brushes over me. I want to go back to the station, to my stash, to the blades. I run the fingers of my good hand over the raised ridges of scars on my right side, and shudder.

“You don’t get to decide that,” I say finally in a voice weak from blood loss and delirium.

“I’ve already called Applejack,” Fluttershy says quietly, ignoring me. She isn't floundering or shuffling around like she normally does. The awkward girl I grew up with is nowhere to be seen and in her place is someone deadset and determined. “You’re going to stay with her for a while until I get my place near CCU.”

“Make me!” I snarl, jerking limply as I snap at her.

Fluttershy doesn’t flinch. She still doesn’t turn away or fold in the slightest. She just looks down at me, hardens her gaze, and after a moment she braces herself on the railing of my bed and leans in close until her bright blue eyes are inches from mine and my heart feels like it’s freezing in my chest.

“Watch me.”

Her reply is so tight and strained that it catches me off-guard. Then she stands, wipes at her eyes, gives my hand a gentle squeeze, and nods.

“I’ll be back tomorrow, and the day after that, and the one after that until you’re out of the hospital,” she says quietly. “I also told Aria not to sign off on your discharge papers unless I’m here, and she smiled when I asked so I think she’ll do it.”

“I can leave whenever I want to,” I say back with a scowl, but I can’t get a strong enough breath in to give my words any punch.

“And I told her to let me know if you try,” Fluttershy replies. “If you do, she’s going to have you put on suicide watch and forcibly committed.”

My eyes widen.

“I am not kidding, Rainbow Dash,” Fluttershy says with a flat stare betrayed only a little by the tightness around her jaw. “I’m not giving up on you like… like I… I’m just not! So whether you like it or not, you’re stuck with me.”

‘And she’s stuck with you.’

Sunset’s voice slithers over me and I shudder.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Fluttershy blows out a slow, quiet breath, then moves a little closer and gives my hand a gentle squeeze.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Rainbow,” she says again, maybe more for her benefit than mine, before leaning over me again and pressing her lips to my forehead, then brushing a hand over my filthy, sweat-matted hair. “I love you, now try to get some sleep, okay?”

Sleep.

Right.

Sunset is humming melodically from somewhere behind me as Fluttershy runs a hand over my face one more time and gives me a small, weak smile, before she turns and walks out of the unit. I close my eyes and try to push away the memory of her touch. Only Sunset gets to touch me like that.

The last thing I hear before I drift off to sleep is the sound of fingerblades rasping together.

Fluttershy was good to her word and came by every day to stay for hours at a time. The day after I was admitted, she sat with me quietly and read a book, breaking from it occasionally to look up to ask me how I was doing or if I was thirsty or hungry. The second day I’d been moved to a regular room in the hospital, and when she came by it was with a small basket of flowers from her family’s garden and a vase to ‘brighten up the place’.

I knock it to the floor a few hours later when the really bad shakes start to hit, and my withdrawal symptoms kick into high gear.

That crap won’t kill me. I know because it’s not the first time I’ve had to go through it. This is the fifth time I’ve done this, mostly because I don’t bother to ration out my shit, and thanks to Flutters it’s somehow both the easiest and the worst.

The worst part is, I know Fluttershy hopes it will be the last time it happens, and I don’t know how I’ll look her in the eye when I disappoint her. Hopefully by then she’ll have given up on me.

Fluttershy sticks with me through the whole thing though.

She sticks through the nastiest part of it, which amounts to about half a fucking day of sweat, nausea, and alternating between burning and freezing from the inside out while I try not to claw my own goddamn skin off, and the whole time Fluttershy is there.

She holds my hand, washes my face, and talks me through it.

As for Aria? She’s just as hard-nosed as all the nurses warned me.

It’s two goddamn weeks before she even talks about considering giving the orders for my discharge, and by then I’m practically crawling out of my skull.

“I want out,” I say, sitting up as Aria swings by to check in. I wasn’t in the ICU anymore, but she’s refused to sign me over to another Doctor that might’ve been willing to listen.

I have no idea how she’s managing it either.

“Too bad,” Aria says without looking up from my charts. “Unless you want me to call in three burly orderlies to muscle your ass into securement straps, you’re gonna stay right there. Believe me, you do not want to be put on watch.”

“You can’t do this!” I snap.

Aria glances up finally, meeting my gaze for a moment before trailing her eyes down the stitches on my shoulders and along my side. Every inch of exposed skin shows some sign of having been touched by those blades. To my surprise, she doesn’t look at me with pity or grief like Fluttershy does.

It’s more like frustration.

“I can, actually,” She says after a moment. “In fact, I’ve had to argue with some pretty pissed off nurses about why I haven’t already put you on watch.” Aria lowers my charts and hooks them to the foot of my bed. “If it weren’t for me, you’d already be committed, dumbass.”

As much as I want to call bullshit on that, I know she’s probably telling me the truth. Between my scars and the track marks I haven’t got a particularly good argument for being mentally stable enough to take care of myself, which is fair. I’m still hearing Sunset’s voice every so often, and seeing her here and there when things get too quiet.

“Why do you even care?” I ask after a moment. “You hate me.”

Aria doesn’t answer right away. She just crosses her arms and sighs quietly before shaking her head and shrugging.

“She… Sunset gave up everything to get us out,” Aria replies in a subdued tone. “And I mean all of us, including your ungrateful ass, so maybe this is me just trying to make sure it wasn’t for nothing.”

“What does it matter?” I ask shakily. “She didn’t get out… so what does it matter?”

How can it have been worth anything to begin with if the one person who deserved to make it out of there the most had to trap themselves? That’s what I can’t wrap my head around. It’s so unbelievably unfair that I got out, but Sunset didn’t.

“Why did I get to leave but… but she…” I grit my teeth, I try to keep my voice steady but it falls apart and the tears come with it, hot and fast, staining my cheeks with warm salt.

“Because that’s the type of person Sunset was.” Fluttershy’s voice comes from the hall, and Aria and I both look up and back to see her stepping into the room.

She’s carrying a fresh bouquet of flowers and wearing a long, heavy, ankle-length skirt that’s a gentle shade of yellow to keep out the biting chill of the Canterlot Autumn season. Her jacket is dark green and buttoned up, which she loosens as she steps into the room.

Fluttershy brushes a few strands of pink from her face as she moves to the side table and changes out the flowers that had begun to wilt from the last batch.

“Sunset never gave up and never gave in,” she continues quietly as she moves the flowers around. “She always had a plan, and once she decided on something there was no one who could change her mind.”

She settles the last flowers into the vase and smiles as she looks up at Aria.

“Can I talk to Rainbow alone?” She asks softly.

Aria eyes her suspiciously for a moment, then looks over at me, sighs, and shrugs. “Yeah, sure, just make sure the idiot doesn’t try to escape.”

“I will,” she promises, with all sincerity.

Once Aria is gone, Fluttershy moves to my bedside, sits down, and takes one of my hands in hers, and uses the other one to wipe away some of my tears.

“How are you feeling today, Rainbow?” She asks with that gentle smile of hers.

“Why won’t you give up?” I ask bitterly, rather than answering her question.

Fluttershy sighs, running her hands over mine repeatedly as if she's trying to remind herself that I'm there. After a few awkward starts and stops, she just shakes her head and smiles sadly.

Maybe it’s because it’s Fluttershy, but I don’t think I could have stood anyone else touching me. Not with my scars. Not after everything I’ve done. But Fluttershy has never flinched away from what I’ve done to myself. Not when they brought me into the ED, and not any hour or day since. She’s just sat beside me, unwavering, and taking my hand like it’s the most normal thing in the world. Scars or no. When the nurses come in and try to change my bandages, I want to crawl out of my own skin. But with Fluttershy it's almost like nothing has changed since we were kids and she was mopping up my latest skinned knee.

Fluttershy is always the one cleaning me up after I fuck up and... and get hurt.

“I uhm… I don’t know how to say it differently,” Fluttershy says. “But it doesn’t matter, because I’m not giving up, and that’s not changing.”

The taste of copper spills over my tongue as I bite my lip. Anger floods my chest, and I grip Fluttershy’s hands tight as another wave of wracking sobs rolls over me, and a fresh wave of tears comes with it.

“Why couldn’t we have done this when she was still here?” I cry. “Why couldn’t we have fought this hard for her? Why did we give up on her?!”

Gentle arms encircle me, careful of the bandages that are still on my shoulder and side.

Fluttershy hugs me like she’s afraid she’ll break me. Her hand rests on the back of my head and pulls me in until my face is buried against her shoulder, and after a moment I wrap my arms around her and let her hold me while the tears come back with double the force.

“We made a mistake.” Fluttershy rubs calming circles over my back while she rests her head against mine. “But I won’t make that mistake again, Rainbow… never again, okay?”

I hate to admit it, but having Fluttershy hold me and tell me she won’t give up on me… it feels good. It’s like acid in my chest, though. I keep thinking: why couldn’t we have done this for Sunset. Why did she have to go the way she did when all it would have taken was us just living up to our word?

We promised Princess Twilight we would take care of her.

We promised Sunset we had forgiven her.

It’s not fair.

I tighten my grip on Fluttershy’s jacket as she holds onto me. I want to stop crying but I can’t. All I can do is shake and sob and try not to think of Sunset the way I saw her last: as a living Nightmare.

I don’t want to remember her like that.

I want to remember her the way she was when she was happy. The way she looked in that photograph.

The photograph.

“W-Where’s my picture?” I ask raggedly as I pull back from Fluttershy’s shoulder and wipe at my eyes. “The one of, uh… of all of us with Sunset.”

Fluttershy frowns and for a second I don't think she's going to answer, but a moment later she nods and reaches into her bag, fishes around for a moment, then pulls out the picture frame.

She doesn’t hold it out to me, though. She backs up.

“Rainbow,” Fluttershy says as I hold my hand out for the picture. “I don’t… the way you are with Sunset? You, uhm… you know it’s not healthy, right?”

“It’s all I’ve got left of her, Flutters, so... so give it over,” I say shakily, then, after a moment, I swallow hard and say: “please?”

Fluttershy sighs quietly and passes the picture to me. I turn it over and instantly feel lighter at the smile on Sunset’s face. I run my fingers over the glass plate, right over where she and I are holding onto each other. It’s almost like we’re holding each other up.

“I can’t lose you like I- like we- lost Sunset,” Fluttershy says, and I look up as her voice cracks with tears. “Please, Rainbow… please go stay with AJ,” she reaches out and takes my good hand, gripping it tight. “W-We can make this better, okay? Please? For me?”

I look down at Sunset. I don’t want to go to Sweet Apple Acres for a lot of reasons, not the least of which would be that I’d have to be around Apple Bloom and be civil. The thought of being surrounded by Applejack’s family, having them ask questions, ask about the scars…

“Please?” Fluttershy links her fingers with mine and pulls my hand up until her lips are pressing against my knuckles.

I sag back against the bed and groan.

“Fine.”

Her quiet cry of happiness nudged the caked-on apathy that’s been building around my heart for the past year. The smile on her face is better. I want to go back to where I was, but I can’t just say no to Fluttershy like that.

No, I’ll do this, and I’ll probably fuck it up like I always do, but I’ll try.

For Fluttershy, I’ll try.

Bedside Manners

In the end, Aria refused to let me go without at least taking me through basic detox. The whole mess left me exhausted, and I ended up sleeping through most of my third week in the hospital except when Fluttershy came in.

When she came in we would talk. Not about Sunset or about anything heavy. She would tell me about her day, about her classes, and about how frustrated she was getting with the landlord dragging their feet about the place she’d chosen to move into.

She wouldn’t be able to move in until February because of some kind of paperwork snafu. That’s the word she used. ‘Snafu’. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use that word unironically, or even, like… at all, other than her.

It made me laugh when she said it, and that made her smile.

It’s while they’re getting my discharge papers ready that Fluttershy’s soft knocking barely rattles the door to my hospital room prior to her stepping in with a soft apology.

“Hi!” Fluttershy says brightly. “Sorry I couldn’t get here earlier, my classes went late, how’re you feeling?”

I sit up in the bed, shoving one of the lumpy pillows behind my back for support as I do, and try to give her a decent smile.

“Pretty good,” I say with a shiver. “The uh… the shakes are starting to go, I think, but now I can’t tell if it’s the drugs or if I just want to get the hell out of here.”

“I know,” she says softly. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry you’ve been cooped up for so long. I know you don’t idle very well, but…”

She trails off, and I try not to let myself notice too much how her eyes trail down my arms.

There are bandages there now, rather than bare skin. I don’t need them, but Fluttershy suggested that it might make me feel better to have my scars covered up. It’s stupid, because it’s not as though everyone who comes in here doesn’t know what’s underneath them but…

I do feel a little better, and I told her that. What I didn’t tell her was that part of why it makes me feel better is that she doesn’t stare at them as much. I know she doesn’t mean to, and I know she’s just worried, but every time I catch her staring down at my arms and sides it makes me want to crawl into a hole.

“I’m going nuts in here, Flutters,” I say, forcing a more jovial tone. If I don’t, she’ll make me stay. “Seriously, it’s September already, if I spend another week in here I’m gonna snap!”

“I know,” she says again as she moves to my bedside and sits down. “And I just want to say how happy I am that you’re trying,” she reaches out and takes my hand, squeezing it firmly. “I’m proud of you, and I’m here for you no matter what, okay?”

A force back a tired grimace. I know she cares, but she tells me that practically every time she visits and honestly it’s starting to get a little patronising. No matter how many times I say it, she treats me like I'm made of glass. It’s to the point that I’m actually looking forward to Applejack kicking my ass with farm work in the fields.

Rather than let Fluttershy see my irritation, I turn to look out the window of my room. It’s actually sunny for once. The outside is filled with that clear, sharp autumn sunlight. The kind where it looks inviting but you just know it’s gonna be cold as the devil’s nuts the moment the wind picks up.

It’s a lot worse if you’re homeless.

“Rainbow?”

“Sorry,” I turn back to her and plaster on my smile again. “Just restless, how were classes?”

Fluttershy eyes me for a moment, thankfully not looking down at my bandages this time, before smiling back at me. “Kind of boring, actually… we’re still doing introductory parts, and it’s all stuff I know.”

“Yeah, well, the rest of the people in the class didn’t grow up in a veterinary clinic,” I say with a more genuine chuckle. “They’re having to start at the bottom for that degree.”

“I know…” Fluttershy says quietly.

“You okay?” I squeeze Fluttershy’s hand, and she looks up at me with a pensive expression.

“I’m just thinking maybe I don’t want to be a vet, actually,” Fluttershy admits quietly.

I raise an eyebrow at that. “Are you serious? That’s like, all you’ve ever wanted to do!”

She shrugs and scoots onto the bed a little more. I move my legs out of the way to make some room as she lays back and stares up at the ceiling. Her long pink hair pools around her like liquid dawn and she lets out a soft, breathy sigh.

“It’s what mom and dad do,” Fluttershy starts. “And I do love taking care of animals, but after everything that happened at school, I don’t know if that’s what I want to do with my life anymore… does that make sense?”

“I guess,” I say.

To be fair, I don’t even know what I would have done after I graduated. Get a track scholarship or something? Be an Olympic runner? Hell, I didn’t have any plans at all. It’s weird to think of Fluttershy not wanting to be a vet though. It’s always been her dream to own a little veterinary clinic or an animal shelter where she can take in strays.

“So what’re you gonna do, then?” I ask after a moment. “Switch majors?”

“I think so,” Fluttershy says, surprisingly without hesitation, then turns to me and smiles broadly. “But for now, I just want to focus on helping you, okay?”

“Flutters, I don’t…” I trail off, not really knowing what to say.

I don’t want her to put her life on hold for me? I don’t want her help? I don’t even know how to say those things to her. Not in any way that matters, anyway. I know if I do she’ll just brush it off. In a certain sense, Fluttershy can be more stubborn than Applejack by a large margin.

Besides, it’s not like I have any great advice to give. What am I supposed to say? The only thing I major in is bad decisions.

“Hey Rainbow?” Fluttershy says. “Do you think you’ll want to go back to school?”

“Go back to…” I trail off before I can finish the thought. I can’t get the rest of the words out around the crazed laughter that bubbles out of me.

“N-Not, CHS!” Fluttershy says quickly, then frowns. “I… I wouldn’t want to go back there either.”

“So, like, what…?” I ask as I wipe at my eyes. “I ain’t getting into Crystal Prep.”

Fluttershy shakes her head. “No, I mean you can just get your GED, and then probably start at CCU. It’s not hard to get into, actually.”

My first instinct is to laugh again, but I like to think I’m not so stupid that I haven’t figured out that my first instincts are usually bad.

Instead, I decide to go against my instincts for once, and actually think about it.

“University, huh?” I say quietly, and I can almost feel Fluttershy’s spirits rise as I don’t immediately shoot her down. Still though… “I dunno Flutters, I’ve never been great at school stuff, you know that.”

My grades were never like, hot garbage, exactly, but then again it’s pretty hard to actually fail in the public school system. I’m dumb, but I’m not that dumb, I know most teachers just give us C’s or whatever other grades they have to just to get us on to the next year.

Hell, the Diamond Dogs are passing most of their classes, and they’re dumb as actual rocks so the bar for passing out of a place like high school can’t be that high.

“You can do trade classes!” Fluttershy says a little more brightly, sitting up finally, and I have to admit it’s nice to see her get lively again. “It’s not just book work at college, you can do a lot of things!”

I run my fingers over my arms, tracing the familiar swell of ridges that are still faint beneath the thin layer of bandages.

One, two, three, four…

Five. It should be five. I frown on the heels of that thought. Sunset has four fingers and a thumb… five inches and four inches, sharp and silver. I shift in place as Fluttershy talks, her voice drifting out of my attention as I bring a hand up to find the newest set of scars.

One, two, three, four… five.

A breath that had built up in my lung leaves in a quiet rush, and I can’t help but smile a little. Finally, I have five.

“Rainbow?”

“Huh?” I look up at her, and Fluttershy is staring at me.

“I was saying I didn’t want to rush you,” Fluttershy says, this time a little more slowly. “I don’t want to pressure you into anything. I… I want you to get better first, okay?”

Better… yeah.

“Yeah, I know.” Is what I actually say. “I’ll think about it okay?”

“Okay,” Fluttershy says, looking a little happier. “I just- no, it doesn’t matter… just focus on getting better, okay?”

“Yeah…” I trail off as I venture into another question resting in the rear quarters of my brain. A question that had been simmering there for the past couple of weeks, in fact.

Part of me is afraid to ask the question. I feel like I'm not really going to like the answer no matter what it is, but after this long, I can't avoid it like I know Fluttershy has to be avoiding it.

I need to ask.

“Fluttershy?”

“Hm?” She gives me that soft, innocent smile. It’s disarming and always has been, but for the first time in maybe ever, I feel like it might not be genuine. I push past it. “Why hasn’t… Flutters, where’s my dad?”

Something passes over Fluttershy’s face then. It’s like watching a cloud go over the sun in more ways than one. The light just goes out of her for a moment and for the space of a few breaths she’s alarmingly still.

Then Fluttershy closes her eyes. Takes a deep breath in. Lets it out. And opens her eyes.

“Flutters?” There’s a cold knot in my stomach.

“He’s… he’s okay,” she starts, her voice suddenly subdued. “And he doesn’t know you’re here.”

There’s a lot to unpack there.

Fluttershy’s reaction. Her expressions and the way she talked froze my blood for a moment.

“Why?” I ask.

“Because I didn’t tell him,” she replies, but there’s a strange, hollow timbre to her words. “He… he wanted to send you away. I just don’t want to give him the chance to try again. Especially not with you- n-not like this. o-okay?”

There’s a ringing in my ears. It’s like someone let off a pop rocket too close to my head and now there’s this dull, muted noise in my head. I know what Fluttershy is saying. I know that, on some level, it kind of makes a weird sort of sense. Dad said some shitty stuff the night I hauled ass, especially when he brought my shitlord mom into the bargain, so I get that. It makes sense.

So why?

"I know I should have told you." Fluttershy's voice is a distant hum overridden by the volume of my thoughts.

Why?

"But I didn't want to stress you out..."

Why does it sound like Fluttershy is lying to me?

“Rainbow, I-”

A firm knock interrupts Fluttershy, and we both look sharply at the door. In an instant, all thoughts of that immensely weird conversation are immediately sent screeching into the back of my mind for later.

Much later.

More importantly and more immediately, that knock wasn’t Aria. She doesn’t bother to knock most of the time, anyway, and it didn’t sound like either of the nurses who routinely come in either.

As it turns out, I’m right on both counts.

The door creaks open and Applejack steps into the room, preceded by the rim of her dad’s stetson which is perched on her head like always. She’s wearing a thick flannel jacket, heavy jeans, and workboots so well-used that no amount of cleaning will ever scrape out the last of the mud from the cracked leather.

“H-Hey there, Dashie,” Applejack says quietly. “How ya been?”

I pull the covers over my arms before Applejack can even get all the way into the room. I pull them up so she can’t see the scars and marks, even though I know they’re hidden by bandages, and follow that up with the wish that I had something with a little more coverage than this crappy one-size-fits-all hospital gown.

Fluttershy lays a hand over my covered arm.

“Hey.”

It's a too-long silence that leaves a weight in the air between us.

Once upon a time, Applejack and I were closer than almost any other of our friends. We were rivals, sure, but always friends. Applejack kept me on my toes, and I did the same for her.

Now… I barely even recognise her.

Applejack shuffles awkwardly for a moment before sighing heavily and pulling her hat off. As she does, I realise a part of why she seems so different. It’s how tired she looks. There are bags under her eyes, and her normally suntanned skin is pale enough that even I can see she’s looking pretty rough.

“So uh,” I let out a raw chuckle that actually comes out a little less forced than I expected, “I know this is rich coming from me, but you don’t look so good, AJ.”

The farmgirl laughs wanly and nods. “Ayup, well, Ah ain’t gettin’ a lotta sleep if Ah’m bein’ honest, that and uh-” her laughter and even the shadow of her smile fades, “-and things are a mite… tense, at home. That’s part’a why Ah wanted to come talk to ya, Dashie.”

It takes a moment for the coin to drop, which just goes to show how out of it I am. I had literally been thinking about it when Fluttershy had put this idea out there, and I don’t know why I didn’t think about the fact that Applejack had been dealing with it alone for almost a year.

I say ‘it’. What I should really say is ‘her’.

“Apple Bloom?” I say more than ask.

Applejack winces, but nods.

Living proof that decisions have consequences as if I needed more proof of that. Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo never shook the Anon-A-Miss moniker they’d inadvertently used to divide up the school, and worse, it was their actions that had isolated Sunset and eventually put her on the roof of Canterlot High that winter day almost a year ago.

As much as I hate myself for abandoning Sunset, I’ve got a special kind of hate for those three.

When I followed Sunset into the Trials, and while she was hunting me, and even after that when I realised her plan was to get everyone out by essentially cheating a god, I thought that I could let go of the anger I had towards Scootaloo and the others.

I wanted to.

I didn’t want to hate the girl that was like the sister I never had, but the moment that statue cracked… the moment that Tempest revealed that Sunset’s plan had never been for her to escape with us, because it was never possible, all of that hate came flooding back.

Those three, by the time I left Canterlot High, were the collective punching bag of the whole school. I’ve seen the bruises. And worse? My only thought was that they deserved it.

“She doesn’t hang ‘round home much anymore,” Applejack continues quietly, crossing her arms over her chest. “Spends most of’er time with’er friends, does’er… well, she does most of’er chores,” Applejack grimaces like she’d accidentally picked at a scab. “Other’n that, Ah let’er come’n go.”

“Why?” I ask bitterly. “Why let her just do whatever she wants? That’s-”

I can’t keep going. There’s bile in my throat and my heart is thundering in my chest. Fluttershy’s hand squeezes mine, reminding me that she’s still with me, and her soft smile brings my temper back down as I look back up at Applejack.

“Why?”

“You want the god’s honest, Dashie?” Applejack asks flatly, and the cold, flat affect of her tone puts a chill down my spine.

But I nod, because I do want to know. I need to know why.

“Because,” Applejack says. “If Ah leave’r alone, she mostly stays outta the house,” her expression hardens by degree, and her knuckles go white with the effort of not crushing her hat. “And if she stays in the house fer too long Ah really think I might start hittin’er.”

My eyes widen at her admission, and I look over at Fluttershy expecting shock. All I see is a sad, pained acceptance. Fluttershy and Applejack have already had this conversation, I realise, otherwise I have no doubt Fluttershy would have something to say about that.

I’m guessing she already said it.

There are tears in Applejack’s eyes now, and for a moment the congealed apathy and self-hatred that’s been slowly hardening over my heart since Sunset’s funeral cracks as I see everything I’ve been feeling reflected on Applejack’s careworn features.

“Ah got responsibilities to mah family, Dashie,” Applejack continues quietly. “But that includes you… however far gone ya are now, yer still mah family, a’right?”

“I guess,” I mutter, rubbing at my arms beneath the covers.

The scars are obvious. Too obvious. There’s no amount of makeup in the world that can hide the thin, raised hills of rough and pale flesh that my consistent use of Sunset’s ‘hand’ had created. They’re everywhere, some dim and old, some bright and new. The scars are cross-hatched patterns of fours and are clearly visible along my left arm, shoulder, side, and thighs as well as in narrower batches along my right shoulder, side, and legs.

It’s strange.

Before now, the scars never bothered me.

Now, though, with Applejack and Fluttershy standing beside me and the prospect of going back to living like a normal person looming over me, the roiling in my gut at the thought of people seeing me was…

The wave of nausea hits me out of nowhere, and I jacknife forward, clapping a hand over my mouth in a vain attempt to keep my breakfast from making an encore performance, but I can tell right away it’s a useless gesture.

Fortunately, Fluttershy has gotten really good at this.

Even as I realise I’m not gonna make it to the bathroom, Flutters already has one of the hospital’s collapsible plastic emesis bags under me. The only thing I can be thankful for beyond Fluttershy’s sheer speed is the fact that I had too little of an appetite this morning for much to come up but bile, so I keep the majority of it to dry heaves.

“Dashie, you sure you’re good ta-?” Applejack starts, but I hold up a hand to stop her.

“I’m fine,” I croak as I lower the bag and grab a fistful of tissues to wipe at my mouth while Fluttershy fills up a paper cup with some water. “Just gimme like, another day and it’ll be out of my system, alright?”

“What you’ve been using doesn’t go away that fast, Rainbow,” Fluttershy says quietly as she passes me the water.

“It does for me, and I’m not just saying that,” I reply as I knock back the cup, swish it around a little, then spit it out and toss the cup into the garbage. “Don’t ask me why, either. Just trust me when I say, if this crap could kill me then it already would’ve.”

Applejack stares at me for a long moment after I say that, and at the end of it the color drains slowly from her face while Fluttershy eyes widen and her breath dies in a strangulated wheeze.

“Don’t fuckin’ look at me like that,” I say, curling my knees up against my chest beneath the covers. “It’s not like I was trying, I just… I don’t care, alright?”

“Well you goddamn should!” Applejack snarls with hell in her eyes as she takes a step towards me, and I flinch back. “Dashie, Ah swear t’God if you-!”

“Applejack, please!” Fluttershy stands quickly and wraps her smaller hands around one of Applejack’s raised fists and clutches tight. “It’s not her fault, alright? None of us are- we’re all trying our best right now, okay?”

Fluttershy pushes back on Applejack, who grimaces and lets the smaller girl put herself between us.

“Rainbow knows, okay?” Fluttershy says quietly. “Things are bad right now, I know! And they’re complicated! But please! You don’t know the whole story!”

She glances back at me, and for a brief moment I see naked fear in her blue eyes. Then it’s gone and she’s smiling again and it’s a fake, fragile thing that turns my stomach.

“I’ll be right back, okay?”

Fluttershy turns back to Applejack and gives her a hard glare that I only catch the edge of, but if it was anything to go by then color me surprised that Applejack didn’t burst into flames as Fluttershy dragged her out of the room.

That was weird.

I stare at the slowly closing door, and through it I can hear Fluttershy’s voice, in low, hushed tones, saying something. I can’t parse it out though. They’re too far, and Fluttershy’s voice has always been especially soft.

But I want to hear it. Fluttershy is hiding something from me and she doesn’t even have the decency to be halfway good at it! I want to hear what they’re talking about!

I want to-!

‘...m is here…’

My vision doubles, and suddenly my heartbeat is a peal of thunder in my head. I heard something. It was definitely Fluttershy’s voice but it was distant and distorted like it was coming far off and…

And through a wall of Fog.

A cold shiver goes down my neck and my stomach twists, but I close my eyes and force myself to strain my hearing again. I want to hear her! I want to hear!

‘...rnation aren’t ya… …ould tell’er!’

‘...n’t know… …e’s like… …lejack! You can’t!’

Faded snippets and whispers. Nothing more, but I can hear a little. I clench my eyes, strain, and focus. My heartbeat settles from deafening to a steady thud-thud-thud, like a broad hammer striking smooth stone with clockwork consistency.

‘...nster, Applejack, and I won’t le… …here near Rainbow…’

A soft sigh echoes through the Fog. I recognise the sound of Applejack sullenly giving ground, something she rarely did, and only ever to Fluttershy or Rarity as a general rule. No one else could pull her strings the right way.

‘...ight, sugarcube… …till don’t like it, th… …ally that bad?’

Silence stretches out for a moment, and in that moment I think I’ve lost the thread. There’s no sound, no whispers, nothing until-

‘You have no idea.’

Cold sluices down my spine.

I can’t remember if I’ve ever heard Fluttershy say anything in that voice. It’s a tone like silk being stretched to its limit, the odd, creaking strain right before it rips. They’re words that leave a taste like copper on my tongue.

It surprises me so much that my concentration breaks and the world crashes back into existence around me. My vision is filled with white light as I open my eyes again, and stars spark in front of them. I didn’t realise how hard I’d been clenching them shut.

My whole face down to my shoulders is sore, actually, and I have to force my jaw to unclench as I drag in a breath that doesn’t taste like ash and copper.

“Ah!” I bite off a cry as pain arcs up my left arm. I can barely move it, except that it’s shaking and… and stained.

The bandages aren’t stained in the right places though. My side and shoulder are still clean and clear. No, the bandages have odd little spots of brackish brown spreading across them, radiating out like poison teardrops that had fallen over me. It takes me a moment to realise where they’re coming from.

I swallow hard as I put a hand over the bandages and tug at them, pulling away linen that’s sticky and blotted in places where it had been clean and white a moment ago.

“Shit.” The word falls out of my mouth at the sight beneath the bandages.

My track marks. The little, barely-visible pockmarks, were inflamed to a deep, angry red, and something coming from them was staining the bandages. I don’t look too close, my stomach flips and twists as I pull the bandages more tightly over my arms.

Applejack and Fluttershy are still outside talking so I don’t have much time. I know where the nurses keep the spare linens though, and I shuffle out of bed as quietly as I can to grab another roll. It barely takes any time at all to put a clean layer on over the stained bandages, and I breathe a quiet sigh of relief as I tie them off and scramble silently back into bed as the door opens.

“Is uh… is everything cool?” I ask, trying to keep my expression flat. I don’t know how Sunset managed it all the time, she had a poker face like nobody’s business.

“Y-Yeah, everything’s dandy,” Applejack says.

Her voice shakes a little. Enough that I know she’s lying, but I don’t let it show. I know that Fluttershy hears it too, and her eyes dart to my face. She’s trying to figure out if I heard it. If I heard them.

She doesn’t see anything.

“Does that mean I can, y’know, get outta here?” I ask, forcing a laugh. “Because I’ll be honest, the food is not great.”

Their laughter is real. At least I’m pretty sure it is. It’s weak and crackly enough that it doesn’t sound forced anyway. I feel like if they were forcing it, they’d try to make it sound a little better.

“No problems there, sugarcube,” Applejack says, a little bit of her old swagger coming back. “Sweet Apple Acres’s got plenty’a good food t’go around.”

“Aw man, I wasn’t even thinking about that!” For the first time in a long time I feel a tiny surge of nostalgic happiness.

Memories of sitting around the Apple Family dinner table eating, well, apples, but in a riot of colors and flavors you’d never expect. Pies, pancakes, breads, tarts… everything.

“I uh… that sounds pretty awesome, honestly,” I say after a moment. “So…?”

“Yeah, a’right,” Applejack says with a chuckle. “I’ll get yer stuff together but I ain’t pushin’ you outta here in a wheelchair, Dashie.”

“Pfft, like they could get me into one,” I counter.

There’s a second there that the world falls away, and Applejack and I are laughing again like we used to, back in the cafeteria of Canterlot High when everything in the world was lighter and brighter. It doesn’t last, it never does, but when it fades I feel… maybe not better, but I feel a little closer to everything else.

“Ah’m glad y’all are comin’ around, Dashie,” Applejack says after a moment. “Frankly, Ah could use the help on the farm… hope ya ain’t plannin’ on nappin’ the days away.”

The old me? Definitely. Nowadays, sleep wasn’t something I found very easily if I found it at all.

“Nah.” I wave a hand dismissively. “For once, I think I’ve slept enough.”

Applejack chuckles and shakes her head.

“Well Ah’ll be.” She shoots me a grin that’s only a little tired. “Will wonders never cease?”

The process of leaving the hospital is pretty easy, as it turns out. The nurses do one last checkup, look over my vitals, and then pass me over to Aria who comes in, looks around at Fluttershy and Applejack, then shoos them out by threatening them with my charts.

“Alright, finally,” Aria grumbles as she closes the door and turns back to me. “First things first, you’re not going anywhere until I take another look at your arms.”

My gut clenches as I glance down at my inner forearm where the track marks had started suddenly… bleeding… or something, anyway.

“C-Can I-?” I start, and Aria grimaces.

“Look, Blue, I get that you’re not a big fan of people touching them, okay?” Aria says with a surprisingly soft tone to her voice. “I need to do the ones around the fresh wounds, though… the stitches dissolve, but sometimes it can take more than a month.”

Aria watches me for a while, then sighs and shrugs. “Look, let me take a look at your side and shoulder, then you can take off the other ones, alright? Just be careful.”

Relief floods through me as I nod. Aria does as she promised, carefully pulling back the bandages around my shoulder and looking them over with an approving hum that I take to be a good sign. She has the same reaction to my side as she pulls the bandages back, then stands and pats my back as she does.

“Alright, go ahead,” Aria says.

I start undoing the bandages, careful to pull at them careful and bundle up the stained areas. I’m not sure how I’ll explain the track marks, though. Hopefully she won’t think they’re infected or something and make me stay even longer.

As I pull the last of the bandages away, though, I feel an odd lurch in my stomach.

The track marks are healed again. What looked almost like an open wound a moment ago is back to being a barely visible pucker of scar tissue on my arm. I pull the bandages back a little more quickly and bundle them up as Aria leans in to look over my left arm and side completely.

“Looks good,” Aria says quietly. “Better than good, actually, all things considered… you heal up quick, Blue.”

“Always have,” I say with as much of my cocky smirk as I could manage. “If Flutters hadn’t accidentally torn those cuts open I’d’ve been fine.”

“I don’t know about fine,” Aria grunted. “Septic, maybe, but your bloodwork is good, or as good as can be expected… I had to bury some things to keep you off a couple of lists, though, so you owe me on that.”

“I didn’t ask you to do that!” I snap, narrowing my eyes at the veiled jab.

“And?” Aria says calmly, one eyebrow crooked to the sky. “You wanna go to jail, Blue? Flutterbutter out there bent over backward to save your ass… you gonna look her in the eye and tell her you’ve decided to throw that away to do mandatory minimum out of spite?”

Blood trickles through my mouth as I bite into my cheek to keep myself from spitting her good graces back in her face. It’s stupid. It’s a completely stupid impulse. There’s no reason to not just say ‘thanks, Aria’ and move the fuck on, but I can’t. I didn’t ask her to save me! I didn’t ask Fluttershy to either! They just did it!

Aria prods me in the chest with my vitals chart, her grim expression flat and annoyed.

“You owe me, Blue, got it?” Aria says in a cold, deadly tone. “You owe me your freedom and your life, even if I’m pretty sure the only one you value is that first one. Either way, you still owe me… so don’t go croaking until I can collect on that debt, we clear?”

“Fuck you, Aria,” I snarl.

“I’m sorry, I think I had some stubborn jackass stuck in my ear,” Aria says, leaning in and jabbing me in the chest again a little more forcefully. “I said: are we clear?”

My heartbeat is thunder in my ears, and for a moment my vision washes out red. I fight back the urge to do something stupid though, swallow my pride, and nod.

“Crystal.”

Aria relaxes as she straightens, looks down at the charts, nods to herself, then plucks out a pen from one of her pockets and signs off on a few things.

“Good,” Aria says quietly before looking back at me. “Show that restraint a little more often and you might just make it through this, Blue. I've been to a lot of funerals in my life and I'm not keen on going to another for a long time… not even yours.”

The uncharacteristic remorse in her voice catches me off guard, but she doesn’t stick around long enough for me to comment on it. She just hangs the charts, takes a few of the papers and vanishes back out into the halls to finish processing the paperwork and signing off.

Aria is nothing like I remember from the Battle of the Bands. I wonder sometimes, just how long they were actually in that place.

Time doesn’t work right there, is what Princess Twilight said.

Dilation.

I wonder how much she changed.

My eyes trail down to the pockmarks on my arm and I grimace. Come to that, I wonder how much I changed.

Grace In Rewind

“So why all the bandages?” Applejack asks as we pull onto the freeway.

Getting out of the hospital had turned out to be less of a hassle than getting out of downtown traffic, but I’d forgotten how deftly Applejack could maneuver the old Apple Family truck. That ancient piece of garbage was built around the same time Stonehenge was being raised, and by any reasonable estimate, I figured it would probably outlast it.

“Just being careful,” I say quietly.

Applejack hasn’t seen the scars yet. I don’t know how much Fluttershy told her, maybe a little, maybe a lot, but I know at least that she hasn’t seen the scars.

She will though, eventually. I’ll be living with her so it’s inevitable. I’d rather not have that conversation come out of nowhere though.

Right now I’m wearing a pair of heavy jeans that I borrowed from Fluttershy and a blue sweater of mine that I’d left at her place a year ago or more and never reclaimed. I have a few more outfits, all long-sleeved, but I can’t exactly wear those while doing farm work, even in autumn. Wearing bandages all the time would look even weirder.

Soon then.

Today, honestly.

I grimace at the thought and lean my head on the cool glass of the window as the city slowly filters by. Ironically, we’re heading east, which means we’re passing exit twenty-nine which would drop us into the East End, or as close to it as you can get from the freeway.

From the raised freeway, I can look over the dilapidated masses of buildings. East End is part of old town Canterlot, and not the chintzy, gentrified part that tourists like to swing through so they can ooh and awe at the stylised architecture.

If Canterlot is a body, then the East End is its rapidly failing, cirrhotic liver.

Even now, I still feel like I belong there. I want to go back to the shitty station office and my worn-out cot. I want to go back to my habits, and I’m a little annoyed that after finally finishing the glove I only got to use it once. I even miss doing my runs every week… skipping through the Fog and traversing the length of Canterlot.

Chase is probably furious, and the thought makes me smile a little. I’m sure he’s heard from Millie by now that I collapsed covered in blood in the Salt’N’Pepper. Hell, maybe he even thinks I’m dead. I’m probably not the first runner to go out like that, but I’m sure he’s pissed.

He knows I live in the East End, but he never figured out where. Wonder if he’ll find my place. Find my stash.

I guess it doesn’t really matter, in the end.

The sound of Applejack's wide, creaking yawn drags me out of my thoughts, and I glance over at her as she rubs at her eyes. She shakes her head like she’s trying to clear cobwebs from her eyes sending her blonde hair falling raggedly around her face. Despite the chill, she rolls down the window and leans back to let the cold air hit her square in the face.

“Hey, AJ?” I say, sitting up, and she glances over at. “Like, I know I said it before but for real, you don’t look so good.”

“Y’all’re one t’talk, sugarcube,” Applejack shoots back with a wry grin. “Lookin’ like one’a them old black’n’white mummy movies over there.”

I roll my eyes and shake my head. “Seriously, AJ, you look dead on your feet.”

“It’s harvest season, Rainbow,” Applejack says, some of the humor fading from her voice as it tightens. “Ah got a lot’a work t’do ‘round the farm and there ain’t enough hands t’do it, ‘specially not with-”

She bites off her last word, but I finish it for her anyway.

“Apple Bloom?”

The lines on her face stand out as her expression hardens and she spits out the window.

“Ain’t none’a your business there, sugarcube,” Applejack says solemnly.

“Kinda is if I’m gonna be living with you,” I counter. “Especially considering that between all of us, I’m the one who went into that place after them.”

Applejack’s hands tighten around the steering wheel until the leather creaks and her knuckles go white. Then she blows out a slow breath, nods, and sags as some of the tension goes out of her.

“Yeah,” Applejack says hollowly. “Ah reckon that’s fair enough.”

“So?”

Silence answers me for a long while before Applejack finally sighs and shoots me a glance.

“Mind if we wait til we get back t’the farm?” She asks.

I meet her eyes, trying to decide if she’s just putting it off hoping I won’t ask again. No, that’s not like her. Applejack, for better or worse, is too straight-forward for that.

“Yeah, I uh, ‘reckon that’s fair enough’,” I reply, and Applejack gives me a narrow eye’d smile as I smirk at her.

As much as I feel drawn back to the East End and Canterlot in general, I’m not sad to see it pass out of view. The distant, distorted spine of the skyline is the only thing still visible as we retreat down the interstate and eventually pull off onto the long country road that goes out to Sweet Apple Acres, and eventually, even that will get swallowed by the forest.

“Fluttershy says she’s gonna come out every couple’a days t’check up on ya,” Applejack says after a long stretch of quiet. “Seems pretty spooked, honestly.”

“Yeah, not surprising,” I say flatly.

“I mean, moreso than usual that is,” Applejack continues.

I close my eyes and thump my head against the window as my hands trail up to my arms. The sweater, and the bandages beneath, means I can’t feel the raised ridges beneath, and for some reason that bothers me. I want to be able to feel them, to run my fingers over them.

One, two, three, four, five…

“It’s complicated,” I say finally.

“Like Apple Bloom?” Applejack asks and I frown.

“Sort of,” I admit.

The old truck bucks underneath us as we pass off of the main country road to the long gravel drive that stretches out to Sweet Apple Acres. The gravel cracks and crunches beneath the wheels of the truck in a nostalgic, grinding fashion that reminds me of all the times I’ve been out here when things weren’t so complicated.

When we were kids and the biggest thing on our minds was playing tag in the orchards or something else equally silly and dumb.

“Mac got the guest room ready yesterday,” Applejack says as we pull under the tall wooden archway that cheerfully reads SWEET APPLE ACRES with the stylised apple symbol of their farm on either side of the words. “He’s probably out in the north orchard today, though, and Granny’s still at the school.”

I nod as we park, and Applejack kills the engine.

The Apple Family homestead looms up in front of me like a disapproving parent. It makes my scars itch and my stomach turn, but at the same time, something else about this place feels welcoming. Maybe just the memories of childhood.

I muscle the passenger door open and slide out of the truck, grabbing my meager belongings with my right hand while babying my left. Aria had told me in no uncertain terms that I was not to strain my arm. The damage had mostly healed, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t reopen them with enough force. Cuts that close together heal messily, if at all.

“I’ll take my crap up to the room,” I say as Applejack steps out of the cab and stretches to the tune of several cracks and pops.

“Dandy, I’m gonna get some more coffee,” Applejack says dryly. “Want any?”

I open my mouth to say no, then pause and realise that actually sounds pretty good. I’ve been so used to the crap coffee Millie serves that I’d almost forgotten how good the stuff Applejack makes is.

“Yeah, that sounds awesome, actually.”

Applejack nods and I follow her inside before splitting off to head upstairs. Despite the discomfort of being here, I’m too familiar with Applejack’s place not to be able to navigate it. I could probably find my way around this place half-asleep and blind. I walk down the hall, and as I do I pass Applejack’s room, which is weirdly tidy.

Next past that is Granny Smith’s, and across from hers is Big Mac’s, then…

Apple Bloom’s door is cracked open, and I pause at it to listen. There’s no sound coming from inside, but then again Applejack did say that Apple Bloom doesn’t spend much time here. Taking a risk, I sidle over to the door and nudge it open to peek inside.

It’s empty, sure enough, but the inside actually surprises me.

“Man, and I thought I was a slob,” I mutter.

There are more clothes on the floor than there are in the closet. The drawers of her dresser are almost all half-open with haphazard piles of clothing piled on, or hanging from, them. The only slightly clear space is around a desk in the corner of the room near the window that looks out over the barn and the orchard beyond, which is covered in a mess of notebooks and scribbled-on paper.

I step out of her room, pull it back to partially closed, and move on to the guest room at the far end of the hall past the bathroom.

It’s the smallest room, but I don’t really need much space. The bed is big enough for me to sprawl out, there’s a small dresser, a desk, and the window faces out north so the sunrise won’t wake my lazy ass up too early.

I toss the backpack that has what few things I’d collected from Fluttershy as I kick the door closed. She’d raided her room to get whatever of my clothes of mine she could find, along with some socks and underwear of hers that fit me. The only thing I bother to take out right away, though, is the picture frame.

The picture of Sunset, me, and everyone else goes on the end table as I sit down on the bed, and I stare at it for a while before reaching out and picking it back up.

“So uh… here I am, I guess,” I say quietly. “It’s not the train office anymore, but I guess you probably hated living there too, huh?”

Sunset just smiles back at me, like always.

“It feels pretty unfair, being here,” I continue as I scoot back on the bed and drag my legs up to tuck my knees under my arms. “Like, we just fucking… we dropped you for some objectively stupid reasons. Now here I am with fucking holes in my arms and…”

Tears trickle down my cheeks as I run my hand over the glass pane.

“It’s not fair,” I whisper. “None of it… it should’ve been me.”

A quiet knock at the door echoes around the room, and I look to see Applejack nudging it open with a mug of coffee in each hand.

“Hey,” she says softly.

Her eyes settle on me, on the tears, then down to the photo, and she sidles around to sit down on the bed beside me and pass me my coffee as she takes a sip of her own.

I take the mug gratefully and take a drink, ignoring the heat and savoring the rich, bitter flavor. Definitely better than Millie’s stuff.

“Ah remember that one,” Applejack says after a moment. “A couple’a weeks after the Battle of the Bands, weren’t it?”

“Yeah,” I say. “It was right after one of Pinkie’s bake sales where we all pitched in…”

“Right,” Applejack chuckles wanly. “You’n… you’n Sunset were competing to sell cupcakes, shoutin’ over each other and gettin’ rowdy while Ah was trying to sell mah pie slices next to Fluttershy.”

“Sold all of’em though,” I say with a laugh of my own that trails off. “But she sold hers first… just a little bit faster, actually.”

“Sunset was always that kinda natural saleswoman, though,” Applejack remarks, gesturing with her mug at the photo. “Even after she turned over a new leaf, Granny always said ‘there’s a lotta snake oil in that’n’.”

I laugh bitterly at Applejack’s croaky impression of her grandmother. Part of me wants to argue the point, but I can’t. Especially not considering that the whole reason we got out of that hell we were trapped in was because Sunset conned a god.

Applejack takes a long pull from her mug before standing and nodding out the door at me. “C’mon, got somewhere to take ya.”

She gets up and nods at the door again, so I put the picture back on the end table, settling it so it’s angled towards the bed, and get up to follow her.

We head downstairs, then out of the house, and then I’m following Applejack all the way out to the east orchard and through it. The trees are still mostly bright and full, and a lot of them are heavy with apples. It looks good, but I know it’s a bad sign. These apples probably should have been harvested already if it’s this late in the season. I’m no farmer, but I’ve helped Applejack in enough harvests to know that much.

Eventually, we come out on the other side of the orchard on a small hill looking out over the open, green pasturelands.

At the crest of the hill is a simple stone plate raised a few inches up out of the ground that reads:

Bright Mac & Pear Butter

Together Forever

Applejack sits down in front of the epitaph and I join her. She cradles her mug of coffee for a while, sipping from it now and again, and I do the same. I’ve never come out here with her, but I knew it was here. She’d told us all at some point that their ashes were buried where they could see the sunrise.

It’s late afternoon now, and it’s cold, but I barely feel it. The sun is far and away behind us, casting our shadows forward like long fishing lures over the green sea of grass.

I think I might’ve met her parents once or twice when I was really small, but I don’t really remember them. I know Applejack does, she just doesn’t like talking about them. It hurts too much, I guess, and a small, bitter smile twitches across my face as I realise that I finally, finally, know what that’s like.

“Ain’t sleepin’ well lately,” Applejack says quietly, apropos of nothing before taking another sip of coffee.

“Is it the farm?” I ask. “There’s… there’s a lot of apples still on the branches.”

Applejack shakes her head. “Nah… I mean, yeah, it ain’t the best situation t’be in, I ain’t gonna lie, but that ain’t the reason. Leastwise, it ain’t the whole reason.”

I finish off my coffee and set the mug on the ground between us and curl up, tucking my knees in and resting my chin on them as I stare out towards the horizon.

“Apple Bloom?”

She chuckles dryly again and shakes her head.

“Probably should be,” Applejack admits. “But nah, Apple Bloom… hell, I ain’t even sure what to think or do ‘bout that one. She’s… Ah, hell, Dashie, Ah don’t know, things’re a mess with’er.”

“What’s up?” I shift a little and turn to face Applejack who’s still sipping at her coffee even though it must’ve gone cold by now.

“The mess that started all this,” Applejack begins. She doesn’t say the name and I’m glad of it. I don’t want to think about it. “It’s clappin’ back on’er real hard.”

“The bullying’s still happening?” I ask, frowning.

“Yeah,” Applejack says. “Apple Bloom an’er friends broke a lotta friendships, hurt a lotta people, and y’all know when it got out that Sunset… that she… y-y’know… well, you saw how things just got a whole lot worse.”

I’d seen the bruises and heard about the bullying, mostly second or third hand though. I’d pretty much cut all ties with Scootaloo after what happened, and lost contact completely after I dropped out.

“Still lots’a bullyin’ at school, accordin’ t’Granny.” Applejack takes another sip, then frowns down at her coffee, grimaces, and sets the empty mug down next to mine. “Bloom’s takin’ t’skippin’ class, even skippin’ school… I even ain’t sure where she goes, only that she comes back real late. Sweetie an’ Scoots’re doin’ the same thing, Ah hear.”

“Not too surprised,” I say, trying and failing to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “They ruined a lot of shit, AJ, that doesn’t just go away.”

“Ain’t arguin’ that,” Applejack replies. “In point’a fact, Ah reckon if Ah were a better sister I’d be tryin’ to help’er through it all, but…”

She trails off and hangs her head, pulling her hat down over her eyes as she does. She only does that when she’s mad or crying. It’s something about the look on her face that she doesn’t want to show anyone, not even her friends if that’s even what we are. It’s odd to think about the fact that I don’t even know where I stand with Applejack anymore.

We’re like sisters, but maybe more like how Applejack and Apple Bloom are sisters. There’s estrangement. Distance.

Pain.

“Ah just… every time the notion comes that I oughta help’er,” Applejack says, grimacing around every word, “it’s always followed up with the thought that she deserves it.”

I snort out a bitter noise adjacent to a laugh, and nod.

“She killed mah friend, Dashie,” Applejack chokes the words out. “Mah baby sister killed mah friend.”

I can’t really deny that. The disaster that was Anon-A-Miss was stupid on a level that very few people reach, and in the end it isolated someone with nowhere to go but down.

Her sobs are painful, wracking things. They sound like they’re being strangled out of her. Applejack isn’t the type of person who opens up often or easily, which I guess is something we have in common. Or at least, maybe it used to be. I don’t know anymore.

It’s kind of hard to pretend everything’s alright after what happened.

“We all killed her, AJ,” I say quietly, and she freezes, her sob cut off, and she looks over at me with wide, red-rimmed eyes.

I don’t bother to look at her. I stare out over the green grass towards the dimming horizon, and for a moment I trace the colours of her hair in the shades of red and gold.

“What?” I say sullenly, flicking my gaze to her. “It’s not like it’s not true. I hate’em too, but it’s not like we didn’t leave her behind when we could’ve stayed, y’know?”

Applejack shudders, a quick, violent motion, and she curls up around herself like someone’s slowly driving a blade into her gut. Her hat topples from her head and onto the ground in front of the epitaph as tears flow silently down her cheeks. Every inch of her is taut and clenched. I can almost hear her jaw creaking and her knuckles cracking as she shakes and buries her face against her knees.

“Yeah…” I turn my eyes back to the horizon to find those familiar colours again. “How do you think I feel? I’m the one who fucked up and left her behind.”

A quiet hiccough and sniffling sounds from beside me, and a moment later I feel Applejack’s hand on my shoulder, gripping tight, then tugging. I frown and turn back to her, and the look on her face-

I’ve never seen pain like that before.

Tears are streaming from blood-shot eyes and mixing with snot as Applejack tries to rub at her face with the heel of her palm.

Then suddenly she’s almost on top of me. The mugs between us clatter as she closes the distance and wraps her arms around me, gingerly, and doing her best to avoid my shoulder and side as she buries and face against my neck and lets out a loud sob.

I don’t know what to do, so I wrap my arms awkwardly around her and hold on while she cries. I’ve never heard Applejack cry like this before. I imagine that, maybe, she might have cried this way when her parents died, but I wasn’t there for that.

When she finally does pull back, it’s to wipe at her nose and eyes and apologise.

“Heh, no biggie,” I say with a wry grin. “At least you’re dealing with it… kinda. I just fuckin’... I dunno… snapped, I guess.”

Went totally batshit fucking loco, more like, but I think I’m getting a little better. I hadn’t heard those rasping fingerblades in almost a week. I haven’t seen her in a while either.

I almost miss it, even though I know it was just me falling apart.

“You did somethin’ none’a the rest’a us did, sugarcube,” Applejack says in a raw voice as she leans her head gently on her shoulder. “Ya went in there. Ya saw’er, and then ya came out… I can’t even…”

She takes a long, slow, shaky breath, and I wrap an arm around her waist to pull her closer.

“What… what was she like?”

I grimace at that question, even though I’d been pretty sure it was coming. I want to tell her to forget about it, but I don’t have that right. Applejack was Sunset’s friend, just like me and Pinkie and Fluttershy and Rarity.

“You sure you wanna know, AJ?” I ask, leaning my head to the side so it rested on her warm, blond locks. “It’s not pretty.”

“Yeah,” Applejack says quietly. “Ah just… Ah gotta know, Dashie.”

I take a deep breath, tighten my grip on Applejack, and close my eyes. It’s the easiest way for me to see her now. Too easy, in fact. When I close my eyes, it’s hard to see anything else.

“She was… ruined, I guess,” I say quietly, and Applejack stiffens. “She looked a little like she did back when she turned into a demon. Red skin, only darker. Her veins were blue, like someone was running ice through them, and… and her hands…”

I swallow hard and turn my head to bury my face in Applejack’s hair.

“Rainbow?” Applejack says quietly, a tone of worry underpinning her words. “What’s wrong?”

“They were like knives, AJ,” I say through a throat that feels like it’s closing up. “Each finger ended in a sharp silver knife, and she’d hunt us down through the halls of this, like, nightmare version of the high school over and over, cutting us, killing us… and then doing it all over again.”

One, two, Sunny’s coming for you~

I clench my eyes shut and try to drown out the voice in my head. It’s loud and painful, and it sounds just like her.

“Her hands were weapons,” I choke out. “They cut me, AJ… she cut me. She hurt me over and over, and she kept telling me that… that I was going to remember her.”

“Rainbow stop!” Applejack’s voice comes from somewhere far away. She has me by the shoulders I think, and she’s shaking me gently. “Rainbow!”

I have my hands clapped over my ears. I can hear her singing. She’s so far away and so close that she’s almost on top of me. Her heartbeat is in my ears, and her voice is there too!

Three, four, better lock your door~

“RAINBOW!”

I jerk out of my trance to stare up, wide-eyed at Applejack who at some point had moved from my side to right in front of me. I was curled up rocking forward and back, and she had her arms around me, holding me tight and pressing my face to her shoulder as tears leaked from my eyes.

Tremors run through me like the aftershocks of an earthquake. As soon as they subside, though, I shake Applejack off of me, scoot back, and start running my hands over my arms.

“Ah’m sorry, Dashie,” Applejack says quietly as she kneels next to me. “I ain’t got no right t’ask y’all about that…”

“Nah, it’s… well, not fine, but like, I get it,” I say shakily. “That actually, uhm, brings up something else. Something I should probably show you.”

Applejack watches at me pensively as I pull my sweater over my head and drop it beside me. My whole torso, arms included, are wrapped in bandages, but the ones on my shoulder and around my side are the only ones I’m supposed to have. Aria just sort of indulged me when it came to the rest of them.

“Woah, Rainbow, what’re y’all-?”

“Just gimme a sec,” I grumble.

I shiver a little. All I’m wearing under the sweater is my bra, discounting the bandages, and even with my inner furnace, it’s still pretty stinkin’ cold out here.

Before I start pulling at the ties on the bandages, I run my palms over my arms, feeling the ridges of scar tissue beneath and bracing myself. Do I really want to do this?

No.

Do I have to?

Kinda, yeah.

“She… she hurt me, AJ,” I start again, fighting to keep my voice steady. “Sunset’s hands, they were knives, and she hurt me with them, but…”

I swallow hard as I raise my head to look at her, fully aware of how miserable my expression must be.

“I’m actually kinda thankful,” I say with a sour laugh. “Because it meant at least she touched me again, y’know?” My hand tightens to a grip on my arm. “She touched me, and smiled at me, and talked to me after… after she killed herself, and I’m really thankful!”

“D-Dashie, that’s…” Applejack trails off, and I don’t blame her.

Even I don’t know what to call ‘that’.

“But it wasn’t enough,” I continue. “I wanted to feel her again, but I couldn’t remember how her hands felt… her real ones, I mean. I could only remember the knives.”

And her voice. I remember her singing voice. But I don’t tell Applejack that part.

Five, six, grab your crucifix~

Applejack will understand the scars, even if she hates them. Even if she hates me. She’ll understand it. She won’t understand the voice. Strange how every other part of her was so ragged, but her voice was so clear and strong and warm, just like before.

The blood drains from Applejack’s face as I keep talking, and before I can lose my nerve, I start pulling at the ties keeping the bandages on my forearms in place, and that covers a lot of my right side.

Bandages drop in loose coils away from my arms as they unravel onto the ground.

“Sorry,” I say quickly. “I uh… I know you probably don’t want to see this shit, but,” I drop away the rest of the bandages except the ones I promised I’d keep. “I f-figure you’ll see’em eventually, so, uh-”

I’m shaking. I didn’t think I’d be shaking this bad. I can’t stop running my hands down my arms. I don’t know if I’m trying to hide the scars even while I’m trying to show them to Applejack.

Maybe if she sees them, she’ll see there’s no point in helping me. She’s not like Fluttershy. Applejack doesn’t waste time on a bad apple if it’s going to poison the whole lot.

If it were possible for Applejack to go paler, I’m positive she would have. She looks poleaxed staring down at my arms and at the bare flesh of my abdomen and the parts of my waist free of bandages. She’s breathing in odd gulps, her eyes wide, and her pupils thinned to pinpricks.

I can’t really blame her. It’s disgusting. I’m disgusting. You can’t look at a single inch of skin without seeing a scar somewhere, and where there’s one scar there are at least three more. Most of the time, there’s even more than that. So many times I crossed new scars over the old ones, and all of them are in a pattern just like her fingers.

Applejack swallows back her gorge.

“AJ?”

“S-Sorry… Ah…” Applejack staggers back from me, suddenly shocked in motion, and she scrambles to her feet. “Ah just… Ah…”

I tighten my grip around myself, wrapping my arms around my chest, my hands around my arms, and I start to rise, but Applejack jerks back again and I stop, fear hardening in the well of my heart.

“A-AJ?”

She swallows again, visibly, then sweeps up her stetson and steps past me into the orchard without looking back. She’s pale, drawn, and looks like she’s about to throw up, and for all I know she does, but I guess she’s kind enough to get out of earshot before she loses it.

I shiver again and slowly wilt in on myself. Quiet laughter leaks out of me as I run my fingers up and down and up and down, feeling the scars like the strings of a guitar.

“Y-Yeah, that was probably inevitable,” I say through a crackle of what I think might be hysterical giggles.

I flop onto my back as the fit of hysterics rolls through me while I stare up at the slowly darkening sky.

“What am I talking about?” I cackle. “Of course that was gonna happen! Fuck! What was I thinking?!”

My laughter echoes off the hill as I drape both arms over my face. Hot, wet tears stain scarred flesh as my laughter cracks and snaps like splintering ice until it turns into sobs, and I roll onto my side to curl up around myself until the last light has gone out of the day.

I don’t know how long I laid there. Long enough for the cold day to turn into a colder evening.

All I know is that I can’t stop laughing and sobbing, because this… this is it. This is how it must have felt. This is how she must have felt.

“I get it.” My voice, when I find it again, is raw. “I get it.”

It’s raw with salt and tears now that whatever strength kept me laughing is gone. I don’t even have the energy to cry.

Grass is plastered to my face, bare arms, and side, and the swathes of bandages are stained green from laying sprawled on the hill. My sweater is close enough to touch, but I don’t know if I have the energy to reach for it. The other bandages… I should probably put them back on. Applejack won’t want to see all of… of this.

I don’t blame her. I really don’t. And maybe it’s better that way. It’s easier if I just pretend they’re not there, and then she can pretend, and we can all pretend it’s fine.

Everything is fine.

I dig my fingers into the meat of my shoulder hard enough for my fingernails to breach the tender scar tissue that’s building up. I want to go back to the station. I need to find the hand. Her hand. I need to.

I need it.

Everything isn’t fine.

…

It’s dark now. The sun is gone completely and I’m freezing but I can barely feel it. The blood from my shoulder is crusted around my fingers. When did that happen? How long was I-?

It’s a titanic effort, but I force myself to sit up. There’s a faint twinge from my shoulder as I peel my fingers away. It’s already healed, though, so it doesn’t matter. A few more scars that size probably won’t even show up past the other ones.

I want to go back to the station. Back to my habits. Back to my ‘not-life’. Back to her. But I can’t even muster the energy I’d need to run. I can barely manage to mechanically gather up my bandages, wrap up my arms and chest in the familiar, rote motions I’ve hammered into myself, and then pull my sweater back on over my head.

My skin itches.

I stare up at the field of stars and before I can lose the impulse, I force myself to stand. I wobble on my feet for a moment, then steady, and laugh. It’s not the high, cracking laugh. It’s just a croaking chuckle as I wrap my arms around myself to ward off the cold, turn around, and start trudging back to the farmhouse.

The east orchard is pitch black. It must be. But I can see just fine. Besides, even if I can’t see it doesn’t matter, because I’ll find my way back to where I’m supposed to be eventually.

All I have to do is follow the sound of rasping blades.

What's Warranted

It’s late when I get back into the farmhouse, and I’m shivering like a wet cat. I pull my clothes more tightly around myself as I approach the door, mindful of Applejack’s reaction and knowing that if she couldn’t look at me then it probably wouldn’t go over well with anyone else.

Hell, it’d probably just kill Granny Smith outright, and the last thing I need is another death on my conscience.

In a way, I’m almost thankful. Applejack reacting like that… it numbed me up again. The spot in my chest where everything was starting to hurt is just cold now.

I pull the door open, pausing at the small creak the old hinges make, then slip inside. It’s dark, but my eyes adjust quickly.

Quicker than they probably should.

The stairs loom in front of me, creeping up to the second floor where I know the rest of the family is sleeping, and I wonder if Applejack is asleep, too.

Part of me wants to talk to her. To try and explain myself, and try and erase the look on her face that’s currently etched onto the back of my eyelids so I see it every time I close my eyes. It was a look of judgment and horror. An expression that I hoped I’d never have to see on any of my friends’ faces.

I’m not tired. Not yet. So instead of making my way up to the guest room I turn and head into the den to flop down on the couch.

My arms are itching. My chest is tight. I know what I want to do but I promised Fluttershy I would try. I can’t do that to her. Not like this.

If I tried, I bet I could step into the Fog again and be back in the East End in under an hour, even this far from Canterlot. I could step outside, take a walk, and be right back in front of my little shit-hole train station office with my stash and Sunset’s ‘Hand’ and I could just erase the whole fucking world for a few hours.

And then maybe a few more, and a few more after that.

I’d have to apologise to Chase, but he’d accept it. He’d bluster and snarl and make it out to be a huge deal, and maybe he’d stiff me a few times on runs to make up the loss, but then I’d be back to my routine and everything would be fine.

Applejack could just forget she ever saw me.

She could forget she ever saw the scars.

But Fluttershy wouldn’t forget. That’s the problem. She would follow me, she would try to find me, and she probably would eventually. Even though it would be easier on everyone if I just… just stopped existing, I know Fluttershy wouldn’t let me.

It’s the only thing keeping me here right now. The only thing keeping me in one piece is the fact that I made a promise.

And I’ve broken enough of those for two lifetimes.

“Stupid promises,” I grumble.

The front door creaks faintly behind me with the surreptitious softness of someone trying not to make any noise, and I glance up and over my shoulder, past the couch arm, and towards the entryway.

There’s someone there, a slender figure in a hoodie with a backpack slung over one shoulder, and a weight to her footsteps that I half-recognised.

Before I can say a word or even register who it must be, they pause, turn their head, and meet my gaze from across the room, and my heart all but stills in my chest.

Eyes the colour of rose apples, with dark bags beneath them, stare out at me with a gut-wrenching lack of expression. A dark bruise circles the left eye, distorting her light olive complexion, but it’s mostly hidden by the ragged, hanging veil of red hair.

“You…” The word hisses past my lips

She’s taller than the last time I saw her, but then, it has been a year, and kids her age sprout fast. I know I did. When I was her age I grew almost eight inches in the course of a year.

Apple Bloom didn’t quite clear that height, but she had at least a good half-foot more now, though.

“Hey, Rainbow,” Apple Bloom says quietly as she drops her backpack onto the floor by the door with a dull thud. “Forgot y’all were comin’ t’stay.”

She steps into the living room and drops into the chair across from the couch.

“If ya wanna take yer temper out on me do ya mind if we save it t’morning so we don’t wake Granny?” Apple Bloom says as she pulls her hood back. “Also y’all might need t’get in line, Diamond Dogs ain’t had their turn this week.”

And I thought Applejack looked bad.

What little I glimpsed under Apple Bloom’s hoodie didn’t tell anything close to the full story. Her face is a scatter of old, mostly healed bruises, and from the way she’s sitting, I’m guessing she’s nursing a few more nasty ones around her ribs.

There are two tiny butterfly bandages on her lip too. From the look of it I’d guess she got punched square in the mouth, which means that, if anything, the bullying hasn’t just kept going since I left…

It’s gotten a lot worse.

I don’t know what it says about me that I don’t feel bad about it. If anything, it’s a little gratifying to see that my life isn’t the only one that went to shit after the nightmare of the Trials.

Apple Bloom shuffles around in her hoodie pocket for a moment before pulling out a half-eaten candy bar and starts snacking on it, ignoring me for the most part except for the occasional glance at my bandages, where they’re peaking past my sweater.

“Who roughed you up?” Apple Bloom asks after a stretch of silence.

I glance down at my arms and chuckle bitterly.

“Me,” I say without explanation.

Her expression doesn’t even flicker. Her gaze just zeroes in on the bandages again and she lets out a small grunt of assent as she shuffles a bit in her seat until she’s sitting cross-legged in the recliner.

“Ain’t exactly subtle,” she says after a moment before taking another bite.

I narrow my eyes at her. “Yeah well, I didn’t exactly have anyone to hide it from since I was living on the streets before this, so excuse me, princess.”

I snarl the words out as my temper flares, but she still doesn’t flinch. She just stares back at me with an ugly, beaten look on her face before shrugging again.

“Guess that’s fair,” Apple Bloom says after a moment, pausing to stare down at the last bite of her candy bar before popping it into her mouth.

Her eyes fix on me as she chews on the bit of candy, and my first thought is… that I’m not really all that mad.

I should be furious. I should hate her.

She’s the reason that Sunset is gone. It wasn’t just that Apple Bloom was part of it, either. By all accounts, it was her idea in the first place, meaning she was the one who may as well have pushed Sunset off the roof of Canterlot High with her own two hands.

Except… there’s a very particular word that comes to mind just looking at her right now.

Apple Bloom’s face is sunken, leaving her fine-boned features standing out hard against her skin. Her eyes are dull and glassy with a kind of resigned, stolid emptiness, and there’s something that’s just fundamentally broken about her.

Yeah, that’s the word.

Broken.

Apple Bloom is broken, and even I don’t know how to work myself up over someone who’s already that far gone.

“How bad is it?” I ask after a long, quiet moment. “At school, I mean?”

She doesn’t answer for a while except with a shrug, but I wait it out, and eventually, she lets out a quiet sigh and shakes her head.

“Depends on the day,” she says finally. “Sweetie’s got it the worst next t’me Ah guess since pretty much everyone knows that whole mess was mah idea.”

“What about…?” I trail off. I hadn’t meant to ask about Scootaloo but now that the subject is raised I can’t help myself.

“She takes’er licks same as either’a us,” Apple Bloom says. “Sweetie just takes it personal-like is all, Scoots is tough, so she just kinda weathers it. Sometimes the two’a us’ll try ta egg’em on so they’ll tire themselves out beatin’ the snot outta us, instead’a Sweetie… but it don’t always work.”

I can picture it in my head. I can see the three girls getting cornered over and over. Chased down in different parts of the school by pissed off students who want payback, or maybe by this point, it isn’t even about payback.

Schoolkids create traditions surprisingly quickly.

Sometimes, all it takes is having a target put on your back once for the outline of it to stick to your skin forever. Everyone can see it. Everyone can hear the whispers in the hall about who’s on the out and out, and who’s safe to take out your frustrations on.

It’s easier if you think they deserve it, after all. I should know, it’s not so different from being homeless. There are always assholes who’ll troll up and down the streets looking for some poor bastard sleeping on a park bench to mess with.

If I was a better person, I’d feel bad, but I don’t.

I think Sunset would probably feel bad. Hell, she might even forgive them by now, but it’s hard to say. I know she didn’t forgive them back in the Trials. Maybe if she had forgiven them then it would be easier for me to do it too, but that’s just coward’s thinking.

It doesn’t matter because, in the end, they made a choice, and that choice ended with Sunset worse than dead.

I stand up, running a hand over my bandages as I do, and scowl.

“You deserve it,” I say bitterly as I move past her, and out of the den.

“Ah know,” Apple Bloom replies dully.

Stopping at the stairs, my hand tightens to a hard grip on the banister at her reply. Why couldn’t she make it easier to hate her? Why couldn’t she just act like a brat? Or make excuses?

Why does she have to sound as broken as I am?

“We all do,” Apple Bloom says after a moment.

I don’t reply. I don’t know if she’s talking about her and her friends, or if she’s talking about all of us who were involved. The ones who created the profile that started and ended everything, and the ones who stood by and watched an innocent girl lose everything.

It doesn’t really matter in the end, I guess since both are pretty equally true.

The funny thing is: it doesn’t even occur to me what was wrong with that conversation until I get back to the guest room. My brain is sluggish and cold, and I’m distracted by the things that I want and I know I can’t have, so I’ll blame it on that, but I probably should have noticed.

Apple Bloom.

She never needed to turn on the lights.

Morning comes faster and more harshly than I’d like, and despite waking up in a decent bed for the first time in better than six months, I’m still stiff, sore, and bone-tired.

The window is open, cracked just enough to let in the faint morning breeze. It carries the smell of apples and tree bark, which is a step up from the bouquet of garbage and day-old vomit that perpetually hangs around the East End.

Everything under my bandages itches like crazy. I need to change them, and that’s gonna take a while. Hopefully, Applejack didn’t have any grand plans for me at…

“Ugh… five’o’clock in the morning?” I grumble. “No one oughta be awake this early unless they haven’t been to sleep yet…”

I stand up, rubbing a hand reflexively over the bandages and counting the ridges beneath them. I don’t manage more than a couple of steps away from the bed when a quiet, timid knock comes at the door.

Crossing the rest of the room, I crack the door open, half-expecting to see Granny or even possibly Apple Bloom.

What I don’t expect to see is a red-eyed, sallow-faced Applejack who looks like she hasn’t slept in about ten solid years.

“Uhm… m-morning, Dashie.” Applejack’s voice is raw like she’s been crying. “You uh… mind if Ah come in?”

I shrug. “It’s your house.”

Opening the door the rest of the way, I step aside, and Applejack steps inside gingerly. Her shoulders are sagging and I’m struck again by the notion that there is no way she slept more than an hour last night, and that was if she slept at all which I doubted.

“So uh… about… about last night,” Applejack says shakily as she sits down on my still-messy bed.

“Yeah?” I ask after a long moment, and she flinches as I tighten my grip on my left arm.

“I uh-” her voice cuts off in a weak tremble.

“I get it,” I say quietly. “Forget about it, we got work to do today, right?”

Applejack stares at me for a long moment, with a sallow, haunted look in her face. I don’t look away. Why should I?

She’s scared. Scared of me? Maybe. Maybe scared of the scars on my arms. Scared of what they might mean. There’s nothing to talk about, though. They’re there, and I can’t make them go away. I heal fast, I heal pretty well, too. Nobody heals that fast, though.

Nobody heals that well.

“Ah came back,” Applejack says after a moment, her voice raw. “Ah tried to, Ah mean… after Ah ran off like a damn coward Ah tried to come back.”

I raise an eyebrow. I didn’t remember her coming back. I lost some time on that hill though.

“But,” she continues, “Ah just… Ah froze when Ah saw ya again. Sitting there, shakin’ on the hillside… Ah thought: ‘Jackie just go’n apologise. T-Tell’er it’s fine. Tell’er… damn it tell’er anythin’!’ But Ah couldn’t-”

She’s babbling. Applejack doesn’t babble. She isn't supposed to panic and shake like a leaf.

“Just forget it!” I snap.

She flinches. Applejack isn't supposed to do that either.

“Forget it,” I say again.

Then I grab my bandages from my bag and nod sharply at the door. I don’t wait for her to leave before I start loosening the roll. I don’t wait for her before I start to pull at the tied knots of the bandages that I’m going to change out.

Applejack stands and stumbles back away from me with indecent haste as the old wraps unravel and start to fall away. She turns her back to me and I can hear her fumbling with the doorknob.

“Ah’ll uh… go get us some breakfast,” Applejack stammers as she finally wrenches the door open. “You come on down whenever yer ready.”

Whenever I’ve gotten my nasty-ass scars nice and hidden, she means. Her eyes are fixed forward and she doesn’t look back as she flees the guest room.

It takes me all of fifteen minutes to pull away the bandages, swab the area with a disinfecting pad, and then replace the wraps with clean ones.

Aria told me to have someone else take care of this, but I’ve been managing my own care for months. I didn’t tell her that, I just nodded along so she’d let me go. I’m not going to ask Applejack to do this. I don’t need her gawking at my arms and chest while she hogties my arm backward, as she pretends not to be disgusted.

I’m fine on my own.

The clean bandages feel better, and I give them a few good tugs to make sure they’re secure before standing up and tucking everything away.

Everything but the picture of Sunset.

I run a hand over it, letting my thumb trail over her face, and smile a little.

“Day one,” I say quietly. “I promised Flutters I’d try and… and I know you’d be pissed if I broke another promise, so I’ll try.”

Sunset is silent. The half-expected rasp of blades doesn’t come, and I take that as a good sign.

“I love you,” I say after another moment.

Then I pat the frame, pull on my thin, long sleeve sports jacket, and head down to breakfast.

I can smell coffee, and that goes a long way towards lifting my mood. I want to ignore everything that happened last night and just get to work. I want to do something, anything, so long as it keeps me distracted.

“Hey, AJ,” I call out as I make the bottom landing and turn into the kitchen. “What’s the plan for the day?”

I come around the corner to the familiar kitchen and an unfamiliar atmosphere. There’s tension, and a tightness to the air that I’ve never felt in the normally laconic household, and the source of it exists between the two occupants.

The first, Applejack, is moving with that odd, mechanical motion at the counter, moving eggs and bacon from pan to plate before pouring coffee from the carafe. I wrinkle my nose. It smells a little burnt, but at least it smells better than the crap Millie always serves.

I know why there’s tension though.

Apple Bloom is the other occupant, and she’s eating a bowl of cereal with her eyes glued to her phone that lays a few inches to the right of her bowl, occasionally reaching out to tap at the screen before going back to eating.

Neither sister says a word to each other, but I guess at this point there’s nothing left to say.

“AJ?” I say again, and a fork clatters against the plate she’s holding as she looks up at me. “You good?”

She blinks like a deer caught in the lights for a moment before giving a snort and a forced chuckle as she fixes her stetson on her head.

“Sure am,” she says in a painfully jovial tone.

Her eyes flick between me and Apple Bloom. Applejack really does have absolutely no poker face whatsoever. I hope she never develops a gambling addiction because she’d be broke in ten seconds flat.

“Cool,” I say flatly.

I glance down at Apple Bloom, and the moment Applejack sees my gaze fall over her younger sister the tension seems to double up. Not from Bloom, though. The youngest daughter of the Apple Clan is as apathetic of the space around her as she was when I saw her last night.

Now, in the light of day, she actually looks worse, rather than better. Her face is as hard-edged and grim as I remember from the night before but she’s also paler than she probably should be. Her eyes are still distant and glassy, like she’s barely paying attention to the world around her, and her bruises...

The bruises are almost gone, except for the worst ones, and even her lip is healed up.

I take a seat at the table, studiously ignoring the tension, and Applejack sets down a plate in front of me, eggs and toast, no bacon, and a cup of strong coffee.

I’ve definitely had worse breakfasts.

“So where’s Granny and Mac?” I ask between bites of egg.

“Mac’s tidyin’ up the East Orchard fer us, a’fore movin’ t’the North one,” Applejack says. “Granny’s still sleepin’.”

“Took’er meds,” Apple Bloom remarks, drawing a withering glare from her older sister that passes over her like water on nylon. “Ain’t less’n act’a god would wake’er up, and even he’d hafta raise his voice.”

“Apple Bloom!” Applejack’s voice is a harsh, reedy snap of ironwire. Her whole expression is trembling like she’s barely restraining herself and her normally soft green eyes are furious with something I’d almost call hate.

I frown at that. “Meds?”

I look up at Applejack who glowers silently at her sister, who I turn to next. Apple Bloom doesn’t say another word, though, she just slowly eats her cereal as if she hadn’t just been snapped at by her sister.

Okay then.

My eggs and toast go down a little less easy, but the coffee helps. Applejack finishes a little before I do, tidies up her own dishes, then starts for the door.

I only know she gets to it when I hear the stumble and the knock of knee against a wood frame, and the harsh, ragged cussing that follows it before-

“DAGNABBIT APPLE BLOOM!”

A backpack is sent hurtling into the kitchen to crash into the kitchen table. I only barely manage to rescue my coffee cup, snatching it up from the surface an instant before the impact rocks the sturdy piece of furniture. I hear something break inside the backpack, and a moment later Applejack follows it in looking livid.

“What’ve Ah told y’all ‘bout takin’ yer goddamn crap upstairs with ya when ya get home!?” She snarls.

Apple Bloom stares down at the mess of milk spattered around her bowl that had been rocked when the backpack struck the table for a long moment before answering.

“Sorry, AJ… fergot,” she mutters, leaning down to grab the backpack and pull it into her lap. “I’ll take it up with me next time.”

“Y’all better,” Applejack says tightly, then turns and stomps back out of the kitchen.

“And clean up that mess!” she shouts as she storms out of the house and slams the door behind her.

For a moment, it’s quiet, and I look over at Apple Bloom who, to my surprise is already looking at me with those cold, rose-apple eyes of hers.

“Like Ah said last night,” Apple Bloom says unprompted over her spilled milk. “Ah know.”

Yeah, I guess she does.

I put my dishes in the sink and run some water over them, then turn back to Apple Bloom who’s already swept her side of the table clean and gone back to eating what’s left of her cereal.

“Sounds like something broke in your backpack,” I say as I step past her.

Apple Bloom glances down at the pack in her lap, then shrugs and looks back up at me. “Probably mah art project.”

“That’s bad right?” I say with a raised eyebrow.

She just shrugs again.

“Weren’t like it was gonna get better’n an ‘F’ anyway,” Apple Bloom says. “Teachers don’t like us anymore’n the kids.”

I just grunt and nod, then turn my back on her and walk out of the farmhouse to start heading towards the orchard where we’re supposed to be working today. It’s warm for being so early in the morning, or maybe I just don’t feel the cold like I used to. It’s certainly less cold than some of the nights I spent in the East End.

It’ll get colder though. Winter’s coming to Canterlot, and those are always nasty as hell.

I’m halfway to the orchard when someone calls my name. A low, heavy, phlegmatic voice I haven’t heard in a while, and I turn to see Applejack’s older brother flagging me down from near the treeline.

Big Mac’s name is more than a name, it’s a presence. Mac is built like the trees he takes care of, tall, broad, sturdy, and powerful. His shoulders are like the broad boughs of an elder apple tree, and his arms are thick, wind-roughened, and muscular.

Most people have this idea that strong guys look like they do in movies, with torsos the shape of a corn chip, all sharp and angular, but that’s bullshit. Anyone who knows Big Mac knows that’s bullshit. Real strength is barrel-chested, heavy, and thick, with rough slabs of muscle that comes from manual labor, not sculpting exercise.

You’ll never see a guy like Big Mac in a gym, but I’d bet my photograph of Sunset that Mac could trounce any ten of those guys and only barely break a sweat if that.

“Hey, Mac,” I say as I turn and trot over to him.

“Dash,” he drawls around a sprig of wheat as he steps out from under the shade of the tree he was under. “How’s things?”

“Rough,” I say quietly.

I always liked Mac. A man of few words, this guy.

“Mm…” he nods wordlessly, and I feel a shiver go up my spine as his eyes trace away from my chest and down my arms to the cuff of my jacket where a hint of bandage is still peeking out.

I tug the cuff down a little, but-

“Hard times,” he says after a moment, his eyes are the same bright green as his sister’s, but unlike hers, they don’t flinch.

“Guess so.” I run a hand up my arms, and I grimace and sigh. “Applejack told you, huh?”

“Ain’t judgin’,” Mac says.

I actually believe that. Mac is probably the least judgmental person I’ve ever met. The very essence of the live-and-let-live philosophy. So long as no one bothers him or his, he’s pretty much the most accepting guy in the whole world.

“That’d be a first,” I say honestly.

“AJ took it rough,” he says after a moment. “Rougher’n ya know.”

I shrug and kick at the sod under my foot as I shove my hands in the pockets of my jacket and look up to meet his eyes directly.

“I won’t talk about it again,” I say finally. “I told her to forget. It doesn’t matter.”

Mac shakes his head. His brow creases slightly, and on anyone else that would be a full-scale frown as he looks me up and down.

“Ain’t sayin’ that,” Mac says. “Just sayin’ it ain’t in’er t’handle it, but she cares.”

I swallow back whatever response was building in the back of my throat. I don’t even give it the credence needed to identify it, I just swallow, give Mac the best smile I can manage, and shrug one more time.

“It’s fine,” I say. “I’m fine… so just forget about it, okay?”

Big Mac sighs, shakes his head, then straightens and nods to me. As he walks past me, headed vaguely in the direction of the North Orchards, he pauses and settles one enormous hand on my shoulder and looks down at me.

“Ah’ve known ya since you were a saplin’, Dash,” he rumbles. “Ah know what fine looks like on ya, so if ya need t’talk, mah door’s open.”

Then he’s gone, moving again like a mountain that had gotten up and decided to find a different view of the horizon.

“Nothing to talk about,” I say quietly to his back. I don’t know if he hears me, and honestly it doesn’t matter.

I promised I’d try, and I will. I’ll fail like I usually do, but I’ll try.

Never-

The days at Sweet Apple Acres blur together quickly, and I’m grateful for it. My time vanishes into a steady routine of sleeping, eating, and working while the season grinds slowly towards winter, and before I know it an entire month has passed.

My fear of hiding my scars proved to be mostly unfounded. The temperature dropped quickly enough that I was rarely out in the orchards without a thick, borrowed jacket and gloves. That was good for me, but terrible for Applejack.

Every morning we go out there are more spoiled apples. Every day that passed there are more lost crops.

We work as fast as we can, sun-up to sundown, picking and storing as much as possible, but it’s no secret that we’re not going to harvest everything. This is a race that we know we're going to lose and now it's a matter of losing less badly than we otherwise might.

Applejack is tense and her mood gets worse as the days pass, but at least she’s not looking at me with those flinching eyes anymore. In fact, she's barely looking at me at all.

For the first few days, it was almost unbearable. But the closer we got to November and the full end of autumn, the more she must have decided she had worse things to worry about than me.

That and there’s a trick to Applejack I learned a long time ago, which is that if something actually does get under her skin, the best angle is to just not talk about it, pretend nothing happened, and she’ll swap right back to whatever she was doing. It’s easier for her to just pretend nothing is wrong, and frankly, at this point, it’s easier for me too.

At least with the constant work, I haven’t had time to get lost in my own head. More and more I’ve found that’s a good thing.

The less time I spend with my thoughts, the better I feel.

It’s nearing the end of the season though, and that means that soon there won’t be much work in terms of harvesting, but there’s got to be something else. Farm work never ends. I’ve heard those words from Applejack over and over and over in the years I’ve known her so there’ll have to be something.

I cling to that hope as I heft the latest basket of apples I’ve gathered. They’re a little past their prime, but apparently those are fine for making things like cider and applesauce. Not the best stuff in the world, but far from bad, and it’s been a long time since I’ve had a good cider.

Memories of sneaking down into the cellar to sneak some of the fresh stuff with Applejack before the fair stall opened when we were kids brings a small, painful smile to my face as I descend the steps into the storage beneath the barn.

A reflexive shiver goes up my spine, and even now, after a month on the farm, and a month of going between orchard, here, and back, I still get chills and half-expect to smell that stink of death, old and new, that hung around the basement in Sunset’s Trial.

I ignore it, the same way I’ve been doing, and head towards the rear of the dark lower level to put the apples into the bins where they’re collected. My eyes pick out the faint colours of the ones I’m storing, and I move them two and three at a time from the basket to the bin.

As I do, my ears pick up an unfamiliar sound thrumming through the air and rumbling through the bones of the barn’s foundation.

A car engine, a loud one. Twelve cylinders, I know that immediately although I can’t say as to how or why. It’s like I can feel the cylinders thunder. I can feel each one moving to the beat of the explosions of internal combustion.

A twelve-cylinder car, that’s crazy expensive. Definitely some kind of muscle car, and it’s beating the squalid silence of the orchards into submission with main aural force.

‘You know’

I start and spin around, looking back and forth in the darkness for the source of the voice that had hissed out at me. The sound of metal rasping against metal, thin blades against thin blades, echoes in my ears.

‘You know, don’t you?’

The faint light of the dim autumn sun glimmers through the floorboards of the barn and reflects off of something behind me. Something sharp and silver, and I whirl around, my breath seizing in my chest as I stare into the darkness, looking for cerulean embers.

Looking for her.

There’s no one there. Nothing and no one. Just my brain making me hear things and see things again. Just my snapped mind trying to find someone I’d never see again.

My heart is pounding as I back away from the shadows, then I turn and make my way quickly up the steps and out of the basement.

The sound of twelve rumbling cylinders, groaning at idle, reaches my ears, and an instinct from the back of my mind tells me to duck; to keep low, and circle around back to the rear of the house. An itch goes down my arm, tickling across my scars as I sidle around the barn towards the house, and around until I’m ducking down near the north side just beneath the guest room window.

The vehicle I’d heard from the barn is an enormous, long-nosed muscle car, and just being close to it while it’s idling is giving me a headache. I can’t even imagine what riding in it would be like.

Applejack is approaching from the orchards where we were working with her brother hot on her heels. I’m not used to seeing Big Mac moving quickly. He’s the sort of person who knows where he’s going and gets there as economically as possible, with long, even strides.

Not now, though.

“Hey!” Applejack’s voice calls out sharply over the engine roar as she approaches the car with a dark look on her face. “Y’all got business here?”

The driver’s side opens, and a heavy-set woman steps out. She's tall and robust with a pale olive complexion, short-cropped brown hair, and a grim, analytical look in her eyes as they sweep across the farm before settling on Applejack and her brother.

After a moment, she nods, moves to the rear passenger side door, opens it, and another figure steps out. For a moment, they’re eclipsed by the enormous car, but as they stand and straighten, my mouth goes dry and my blood runs cold.

She’s neither tall nor particularly short, her build isn’t really excessive in one direction or another in terms of weight, either. Her professional black-and-white blazer sits comfortably on her compact form, and her severe expression is framed by short, arrow-straight locks of iron-gray shot through with streaks of red.

If someone were to look between the two of us, they wouldn’t see much resemblance.

Not much.

Nothing but the eyes.

I’ve always had my mother’s eyes.

Sharp flecks of frozen cerise settle on Applejack first as she approaches the woman who walked out on dad and I better than half a decade ago, and I watch the jolt of instinctive fear go through Applejack as her stride hitches.

My mom has this… look, that she gives people. It’s something in the way her eyes narrow and line up with her shoulders that gives everyone pause. It was the same when I was a kid. That look could make everything in me lock up cold the instant she turned it on me.

The fear is familiar. It’s primal, even in a child. Kids know, instinctively, to be quiet in the presence of something that can, and will, hurt you.

“Jacqueline Apple?” My mother’s clipped tones come across clear and sharp as the late autumn air. “I have questions for you.”

“That’s some real brass ones ya got there, lady,” Applejack says crossly as she stops a few feet from my mother. “Folks don’t just barge onto mah family’s property and demand answers… not polite folk, anyhow.”

“I’m not interested in being polite.” My mother squares up against Applejack, and despite the eldest Apple daughter having a handspan of height on my mom, she still backs down. “My name is Winnow Winds, and I’m here to ask about my daughter, Rainbow Dash.”

Applejack’s expression hardens, but before she can say something stupid or give something away with her abysmal lack of lying skills, Big Mac puts a hand on her shoulder and gently, but firmly, moves his sister out of the way.

If Applejack has an extra handspan on my mom, then Big Mac has a full right cross, and he levels that unflinching emerald gaze of his down on mom with a particularly stony weight.

“Ah’m Big Macintosh Apple, an’ this is mah farm,” he rumbles. “If y’all got somethin’ t’say then I’d suggest ya say it, as me’n mine got a lot’a work to get done t’day.”

My mother looks Big Mac up and down, just a quick flick of her gaze. Then she smiles and nods to her bodyguard who sticks a hand into their jacket and pulls out a business card to hand off to Mac.

“If you ever need gainful employment, contact my company, Windlass Security,” she says as he takes the card. “You have the body and the demeanor for the work, I’ll pay your travel, relocation, and certification expenses on contract terms, and you’ll have a salary of one hundred and fifty thousand a year starting out.”

I can almost hear Applejack’s jaw drop, despite herself. That was probably more money than any of her family had ever seen, especially not in a year. Farming just didn’t pay that well anymore, and I know they barely scratch better than even on a year by year basis.

“Thank ya kindly,” Mac says politely, and tucks the card into his chest pocket without looking at it. “Now if that’s all?”

“It’s not,” my mother says sharply. “My daughter, Rainbow Dash, has been missing for almost eight months, and according to my ex-husband your family is close with her.” Her eyes narrow in a hard scowl. “He only recently mentioned your names, as he seemed certain you would contact him if you heard from her… I, however, am less sanguine about that notion.”

“Dash’s a good friend’a ours, but she dropped off the face’a the world like ya said,” Mac says without the slightest shift in his expression. “Fer certain, she’d have a home with us if she needed it, but she ain’t come askin’, an’ Ah doubt she ever will… askin’ fer help ain’t ever been in that girl’s nature.”

I watch my mother’s lips twitch upward just slightly.

“My daughter is almost as stubborn as I am,” my mother says in a soft, cutting tone. “But I’ve checked with every single one of her friends and their parents, and I’ve found nothing… and there’s plenty of room on this property for you to hide her.”

“If y’all’re talkin’ about searchin’ our land,” Mac says in a voice like a distant thunderhead, “then Ah’m gonna politely suggest that that ain’t gonna happen.”

I swallow hard, and I watch from my hiding place at the farmhouse corner as Big Mac and my mother stare each other down. She’s barely up to the middle of his chest, but even knowing how strong Big Mac is I wouldn’t give him very good odds. The Apples don’t know my mom the way I do.

“Is that your final answer?” My mother’s tone is a viperous hiss, and it sends a chill straight down my spine and into my gut.

“Ayep,” Mac replies with a stolid nod.

“I see…” My mother takes a single step closer and raises her head to look Big mac directly in the eyes. Her face is a frozen rictus of polite rage. “Consider this your only warning, then, hayseed:

“If I find out my daughter is or was here, I will descend on this rancid little scrap of nowhere with an army of lawyers. I will sue every inch of every acre out from under your family, and once it’s mine I will come down here and personally chop every single tree down, rip the stumps out by the roots, salt the earth, and sell the land as a fucking parking lot.”

She leans in another inch, her mouth splitting into a vicious, blade’s-edge grin.

“Are we clear?”

“Crystal clear, Miss Winds,” Mac says in that quiet, obdurate rumble of his.

Her smile never wavers as she reaches up and pats him on the chest twice, then nods and says. “The offer of employment still stands, by the by… nothing personal, but it’s the principle of the thing. I’m sure you understand.”

“Ayep,” Big Mac says with a nod. “Nothin’ personal.”

“Good man,” she replies before turning and stepping back into her car.

Her linebacker guard gives Mac and Applejack a polite nod, then she moves around the front of the car, gets into the driver’s seat, shifts gears, and reverses down the driveway before pulling out onto the country road heading back to Canterlot.

I turn and curl up against the side of the farmhouse wall. My heart is beating like a jackhammer in my chest, my mouth is still dry, and I’m soaked in a cold sweat. I haven’t even seen my mom in almost five years, and somehow she’s gotten even more terrifying.

No part of me relaxes until the sound of that heavy, thunderous engine vanishes entirely from the distance. When it does, I stand up on shaky legs, swallow back my gorge, and stumble out from around the corner and head up the porch and into the house.

Mac and Applejack are talking quietly as I meander in, and Applejack practically knocks over the stool she’s sitting on as she rushes to my side.

“Dash! There ya are,” she croaks, pulling me into a hug. “We weren’t sure where ya went but- dammit, ah reckon ya saw all what happened up front from somewhere, huh?”

“Yeah I uh… yeah,” I mumble, nodding vacantly. “I was hiding around the north end of the house. I watched the whole thing.”

“Yer momma’s somethin’ else,” Mac says flatly.

I snort out a bitter laugh and nod. “Yeah, ‘something’ is a word for what she is. Raging homophobic psychopath is another.”

Both Mac and Applejack raise eyebrows at that, and I swat the door closed behind me as I step into the kitchen and sit down.

Before I can ask for anything, Mac sets a glass of water down in front of me, and I take it with a grateful nod before downing it in one go and passing it back to him. He takes it, refills it, and gives it back. I go through another three glasses of water and half an hour of just trying to breathe before I stop shaking enough to find the words I want to say.

To warn them about the kind of person they just pissed off.

“Just so you know,” I say after a quiet moment, “my mom will totally do everything she just threatened to do if she finds out about me being here.”

“Pretty sure she was exaggerating, Dashie,” Applejack says with a small chuckle.

I don’t laugh. There’s nothing to laugh about. I just raise my head and look her dead in the eyes, and she flinches back from me. Maybe it’s because it’s me, but more probably it’s because my eyes are so much like my mother’s.

“When my dad came out as bi to her when I was like, twelve, mom had divorce papers served the next day,” I say without looking away, and both of the siblings’ eyes widen. “And then, she spent the next year trying to get custody of me on the grounds that my dad was an unfit parent, and the fact that she lost is probably the reason she refuses to come near us.”

I stand up and wrap my arms around myself as I start to pace back and forth.

“I cried in front of her once when I was six,” I snarl, not looking up. “I think I’d fallen down and skinned my knee or something, and she just watched and waited until I was done, and… and fuck, I still remember it like a fucking movie in my head, but she just walked up, knelt down, looked me in the eyes and said - ‘that’s the last time you cry in front of me, do you understand?’ and it fucking was!”

“What the hell?” Applejack’s jaw drops as she walks over to me, one hand raised for a moment before she drops it. “Dash that’s… that’s messed up.”

“Every sport I went out for, I did because she told me to.” I’m babbling, but I don’t know how to shut it off, so I just keep talking as I tighten my grip around myself. “When I was eight Mom said, ‘you’re stupid but you’re fast, get faster and stronger, and then you’ll be worth something,’ so I did! And she pushed me and pushed me, and Dad just figured she was being supportive but- but honestly I was just fucking terrified of fucking up!”

I stand, move into the den, and drop into one of the chairs so I can curl my knees up beneath my chin and try to stop shaking. It doesn't help, though. I just keep seeing those eyes staring at me, telling me to get better, to do better, to be better.

Applejack moves quietly around until she’s kneeling in front of me and reaches out. She hesitates though. She pauses over my left hand, just for a heartbeat, before taking my right hand in hers and squeezing.

“Dash, did… did your momma- did she ever-?”

I shake my head. “She never laid a hand on me… not like that.”

I almost wish she had. Maybe if she’d taken a swing at me once in a while someone could have noticed. Hell, even if they didn’t notice I think if she’d lost her temper and beat me once in a while it would have actually been a relief because she would have at least seemed more human.

“She’d make me practice track and soccer for hours, even when I was exhausted and falling over,” I say dully. “And every time I did anything it was always ‘do it again’ or ‘not good enough’.” I hang my head and card my fingers through my hair as a shudder sets up in my limbs. “Nothing I did was ever good enough… even when I won, even when I came in first place, all she ever said was ‘good, but you can do better’.”

“Didn’t yer daddy ever say anythin’ about all that?” Mac asks, and even his normally toneless voice has taken on a tight expression of anger and disbelief. “How could he jus’ let yer momma say all them awful things?”

“Because my dad is a coward and my mom is a bully,” I say with a bitter laugh. “Dad was always her whipping boy, I think that’s why she married him. Because he’d stay home and raise me, and she could keep working… that’s the only reason my childhood had any fun in it is that she was working late so often but…”

A weak, humorless laugh bubbles out of me.

“Y’know, I never respected my dad as a kid,” I say after a moment. “He could ask me to do something stupid and simple and I’d just give him lip, but then he’d say the magic words, and I’d have it done in an instant.”

“Ah’m guessin’ them words weren’t any type’a way of sayin’ ‘please’?” Applejack drawls grimly.

“No,” I reply, my jaw clenching as I remember them. “They were: ‘let's go talk to your mother’.”

Thinking back on it, I wonder if dad just thought I was a mommy’s girl. He couldn’t get me to take the trash out without a knock-down-drag-out fight, but the moment he mentioned mom that trash was on the fucking curb. He probably had no idea that those words had me pissing scared.

Applejack lets out a low whistle as she rocks back on her heels, lets go of my hand and sits down in front of the chair with a stunned expression. She probably can’t even imagine a mom like mine since hers was apparently a saint.

“So yeah,” I continue. “My mom doesn’t fuck around. If she says she’ll do something, even if it sounds completely fucking unhinged, then she’ll do it.”

“Well, ain’t like she can just sneak up on us in that tank she’s drivin’,” Applejack says with a weak laugh.

I can’t keep the scoff down as I stand and nearly bowl Applejack over as I storm to the window and jerk the blinds shut and the drapes closed.

“You don’t get it!” I snap as I turn around. “My mom is crazy! C-R-A-Z-Y! Crazy! She’ll hire private eyes to hang out and take pictures! She did it to my dad years ago, and she’s got way more money now! All she needs is one good picture!”

“So what?!” Applejack snaps as she stands to face me. “Ain’t like she can just drag ya outta here! Y’all ain’t even a minor anymore, ain’t been for awhile! We’re nineteen!”

An inchoate snarl of rage and frustration spills out of my throat as I drag my fingers through my hair and down my face. I’m shaking so badly I can barely see straight!

“You still don’t get it!” I shout, putting Applejack back on her heels as I jab a finger into her chest. “She won’t sue you for hiding me! She’ll find something else! Anything else! It’s not just about getting me back, it’s about hurting you for lying to her!”

I can’t breathe, but I know what I have to do. I blow past Applejack and move for the staircase, but Big Mac puts himself between me and the guest room where all of my crap is.

For a brief moment, I think of just making a run for the door, or even just going out a window. The notion of just running at the window and hurtling myself through it to escape is almost funny enough that I laugh.

Almost.

“Y’all ain’t leavin’, Dashie,” Mac says, holding up a single, broad hand. “It ain’t safe.”

“Fuck that, it’s less safe here!” I snap.

“Rainbow Dash, you are not going back to livin’ on the streets!” Applejack snarls, stomping over to me and grabbing my wrist. “Yer stayin’ here an’ that’s final!”

“Why?!” I yell, ripping my arm from her grip. My world is washing red. A heartbeat is pounding in my ears and somewhere nearby I can hear the rasping of metal on metal. “You don’t really want me here! You can’t even look at me!”

“That’s-!” Applejack stalls and I advance on her.

“You think I don’t see you flinch every time you look at my arms?”I snarl. “You think I don’t notice how you avoid even looking me in the eye?! Don’t you fucking tell me you want me here! You took one look at my skin the night I got here and then ran away!”

“You what?”

A soft, cherubic voice cuts through the tension of the conversation like one of Sunset’s razor-edged fingers, and everyone in the den freezes. Applejack blanches, my heart jams itself in my throat, and even Big Macintosh nearly jumps before turning slowly to look behind him.

Fluttershy is standing in the doorway, looking like the specter of Summer in her flowing yellow sundress and white cardigan. Her eyes are wide and disbelieving as they fix on Applejack, and her slack, expressionless face is pale as a ghost as she moves past Big Mac to join us in the den.

“I… I heard that Winnow was coming up here so…” Fluttershy swallows dryly around her halting words, “...so I followed to make sure she didn’t…”

Fluttershy’s voice is drifting around as she looks between Applejack and I. Those baby blue eyes of hers are unblinking as they finally settle on Applejack alone.

“A...Applejack is that- did… did you-?”

Unsurprisingly, Applejack doesn’t even try to defend herself. She just stares, terrified, at Fluttershy for a long moment before slowly dropping her eyes to the ground and clenching them shut.

Finally, she just says:

“Ah’m sorry.”

I open my mouth to tell Fluttershy to drop it. That it doesn’t matter and that it never mattered. That I didn’t need to cry on Applejack's shoulder, or do anything or say anything, because none of it ever mattered.

I don’t get the chance to.

Even though I’m looking right at her, I don't see Fluttershy move. None of us do. I know because Applejack wasn’t even looking at her, and if Mac or I had gotten the chance we both would’ve gotten between them.

That’s not what happens, because for the first time in my life Fluttershy moves faster than I can even register as she lets out a shriek of unadulterated rage and slaps Applejack so hard that it rattles every window in the den.

The look of disbelief that Fluttershy had been wearing a second before is replaced with a twisted expression of anger I’ve never, in my life, seen her wear. She’s panting like an animal, with eyes wide, brow creased, and jaw clenched in fury. Her right hand is red and shaking, still frozen on her left side from her it crossed Applejack’s cheek.

Applejack is on the floor.

Fluttershy hit her so hard she took the stout farmgirl’s feet right out from under her. Blood is pooling out of her mouth and there’s enough that I know she must’ve bitten her tongue, and for a frozen moment no one in the den moves.

Then-

“HOW DARE YOU!” Fluttershy screams down at the cowering Applejack. “You ran away? You just ran off and left her?! After she tried to-! She could’ve-! I TRUSTED YOU!”

Big Mac moves around Fluttershy, trying to put a calming hand on her shoulder but she throws him off. Even in a situation like this, Big Mac is the gentle giant. He knows how strong he is. He could stop Fluttershy by throwing her over his shoulder and marching her out of the house.

He won’t though. It’s not in him to just handle someone like that, especially not Fluttershy.

I kind of wish he was less chivalrous at the moment.

Fluttershy takes another step forward until she’s standing, looming almost, over Applejack. I never knew she had this in her. Fluttershy was always the gentlest, kindest, most soft-hearted member of our group. Even Pinkie can’t compare to her.

Now she looks like a vengeful demon, and I would know.

“That’s it.” Fluttershy hisses the words around clenched teeth. “I’m taking Rainbow away and… and…” she shakes her head, angry tears spilling hot down her cheeks. “I never wanted to say this again, but this time… this time I really, really mean it Applejack. We’re not friends anymore.”

“Fluttershy stop!” Panic is welling in my chest as I try to get between them. It’s happening again. “We’re friends! It doesn’t matter!”

“STOP SAYING THAT!” Fluttershy turns on me, red-faced and furious. “Stop saying it doesn’t matter! It matters! You matter!”

“NO I DON’T!” I bellow, rocking Fluttershy back several steps until Big Mac catches her. “I don’t! I’m not worth this!”

“You’re worth everything!” Fluttershy cries, pulling away from Mac and trying to grab at my shirt, but I move away from her. She holds out her hands that are pleading and shaking. “You’re worth everything to me.”

Oh.

Oh.

I step back from Fluttershy. From Applejack, and from Big Mac, and from the world as the meaning of Fluttershy’s words finally sinks in. I didn’t see it because I wasn’t looking, and she knew I wasn’t looking. She didn’t care, she tried anyway.

You’re worth everything to me.

“No.” I shake my head.

My world is washing red again, furious, arterial red. I can hear a heartbeat thundering in my ears as lightning pain shoots down my arms and legs and through my whole body.

I love Sunset.

Sunset!

There’s no room for anything else. I grip my head as my whole world feels like it’s shaking violently to pieces and scream as a splitting pain tears through me. I taste ash and blood in my mouth, and suddenly my legs are burning.

I have to go. I’m poisoning everything and everyone around me. I’m destroying everything because that’s all I ever do. I’m useless, worthless, stupid, and pointless. There was never anything I could do right and this just proves it! I can’t-!

I bolt from the den towards the door. This time Big Mac is ready and moves to intercept me, but he can’t. I don’t let him. Pain ignites inside of my muscles, turning from agony into pure, unfiltered power as I swing my arm in a graceless club against his chest.

Something cracks and the wind goes out of Mac in the same instant that he’s lifted from his feet and sent hurtling back. There’s a cacophonous crash as his massive form shatters through the lower banisters of the stairs, and he sprawls on them cradling his chest while I rush outside in a half-drunk stagger.

There’s something staining my arms. Something is wet beneath my bandages. I can feel it just like I can feel the bandages straining and ripping from what's beneath them. I’m not sure what I’d be seeing if my jacket wasn’t covering my arm, and I don’t think I want to.

I stumble into the driveway. Fluttershy's clunky van is taking up the front drive where my mom had been parked and I race past it. My limbs are numb and burning at the same time. My throat is clenching even as my gut tries to fill it with bile. My vision doubles, then triples.

Can’t… can’t stay here. I can’t stay here.

‘One, two, Sunny’s coming for you~’

“Rainbow, wait!” Fluttershy’s voice carries through the air, but it’s distant and distorted.

‘Three, four, better lock your door~’

I keep moving, keep running, my shoes dig into the gravel drive with deafening force even as the pain in my head turns unbearable.

‘Five, six, grab your crucifix~’

Metal rasping on metal. Blades on blades. Heartbeats and grinding cylinders. The taste of ash and blood.

“Please.”

‘Seven, eight, try and stay up late~’

I turn, but I don’t stop moving. I keep stepping back. Backing away from Fluttershy who’s surrounded by Fog.

No… Not surrounded. She’s outside the Fog. She’s reaching for me, but I’m too deep.

‘Nine, ten, never sleep again~’

I scream and the world shatters. I’m falling or running or both, and all around me is Fog and darkness. The farmhouse is gone. Fluttershy and Applejack and Big Macintosh are gone.

…

Then my feet hit the ground hard. The taste of cold, dirty concrete and damp garbage hits my nose, the smell of the East End. It’s there for a brief moment before I drop to my knees and elbows, vomit, and then fall over.

My vision closes slowly, like a dying light at the end of a distant tunnel, but I hear something before it all goes dark.

Footsteps and… a voice.

“Well I’ll be damned… Chase was right. She came back.”

-Good Enough

It’s strange how clearly I can remember the taste of the Fog. It’s not because I was sprinting through it for months while I was working Chase, either. I could remember the taste before that, ever since Sunset trapped herself in the hell of the Trials.

I remember waking up to the taste of ash and blood in my mouth the day after, and every day following. It’s a dry, airy taste that’s oddly pleasant. It doesn’t cloy around my tongue or stick to the inside of my cheeks or overwhelm me by choking out the air.

It’s just a taste.

That’s what the air in the Trials tastes like.

Like Fog.

I shift my arms and legs but something is holding me down. I think if I was more lucid I’d be scared

Slowly, I force my eyes open and look around. There’s just darkness. Just darkness and Fog drifting around me in lazy whorls of shadowspun banks that coil around my legs before flowing away and then back like little tides of air.

There’s light but there’s no source, and after a moment I recognise the effect. It’s that weird, half-light of the Trials. No matter where we looked in that ugly place, there was always light. Never enough light, but it was never pitch black, and yet there was no source for the light.

My eyes adjust slowly as I look down at myself.

I’m in a chair.

No, not a chair. A smile tugs at my lips as I realise that what I’m sitting in is one of those chair-desk hybrids that fill the classrooms of Canterlot High and just about every classroom of every public school in the country.

There are scratch marks all over the surface of the desk. The remains of a hundred and one bored students making their mark on a mass-printed piece of faux wood while the history teacher drones on and on about something that’s probably irrelevant and definitely inaccurate.

Six stick figures have been scarred into the desk, one is kneeling and covering its crude face with pinstick hands while the other five surround it, looming over it.

I try to raise my hand to touch the picture but something stops me. I can’t move my arm. I can’t move either of my arms, actually. Or my legs.

“What…” I mumble around a cottony tongue as I look around. “I… I can’t move…” I jerk and shift, but nothing works and panic begins to set in. “What’s-!?”

“Oh hush.” A painfully familiar voice speaks from across the room and I jerk my head up to stare over at its source.

A moment ago the space around me had been empty of anything but the strange half-lit darkness and the swirls of ash-and-copper Fog, but now, just a few meters away, there’s a desk. A teacher’s desk.

Seated at that desk is the nightmare ruin of Sunset Shimmer.

Her hair falls in matted strands around a face that’s just like I remember; fever-red, sunken, struck through with ice-blue veins, and yet somehow still wickedly beautiful. Her eyes are burning cerulean embers. That ragged coat is clad tightly around her, secure at the waist, and the edges and cuffs tattered with decay. Sunset has her feet propped up on the metal desk as she reclines lazily back in the teacher’s chair while she picks at the silver-bladed fingers of her right hand with the knives of her left.

And she’s staring at me.

Her mouth is split into a gash of a smile and she’s staring at me.

“Are you real?” The words come out as soon as they form in my mind, and her smile widens. “Or are you… am I just crazy?”

“Narrow-minded as usual,” Sunset drawls in a halftone warble like she’s speaking through a damaged microphone. “Real or crazy? Why are those two things mutually exclusive?”

Her fingerblades rasp against one another as she laughs and sits up to lean forward on her elbows against the desk.

“You are crazy, Dash,” she says with a bitter laugh that sounds far away for a moment before distorting. “And it’s the bad kind. You’re not just crazy, you’re toxic, but I don’t need to tell you that, do I?”

She slams her hands palms down on the desk and scrapes her fingers along the surface, and metal on metal screams. Sparks fly and briefly illuminate her snarl of a grin like an open wound filled with too-sharp teeth.

I look away. I look down.

The image on the desk is changed. Instead of the five figures surrounding the one, now there are hundreds of figures scrawled all over the desk, jeering with crude cartoonish grins. They’re all surrounding a single spot on the desk that’s clear save for the lone and isolated final figure, standing on a flat plane, with its head inclined down like it’s staring into a deep abyss.

“You got close and what happened?” Sunset hisses through a static rasp.

“You d...died,” I answer through trembling lips. Tears are forming at the edges of my eyes as I stare down at the scarred images, and to my eyes, they seem to cavort and cackle at the lone figure.

“If only,” Sunset said hollowly. “If only.”

“I’m sorry,” I sob, clenching my eyes shut. I want to clap my hands over my ears to drown out the taunting voices.

They’re all voices I recognise, too. I can hear the Diamond Dogs. I can hear Flash and his bandmates. I can hear the accusing voice of Pinkie, the condemnation of Applejack. The betrayed tremor of Fluttershy’s teary words cuts deeper, and Rarity’s derisive hiss is like a swift sharp cut along my throat.

But the worst voice is mine, saying the same word over and over, echoing in my head the same way it must have echoed in hers while she was staring down over the edge of the roof of Canterlot High.

She-demon.

SHE-DEMON.

I’d reached into her chest, dug into the worst parts of her shame and guilt, and then tore them out and threw them into her face.

“Just. Like. Mommy.” Sunset says with a raw, distorted cackle, replying to my thoughts as if I’d said them aloud. “She would be so proud.”

“I’m sorry!” I’m shaking so hard but I can’t move. My limbs feel like they’re nailed to the armrests and legs of the desk-chair hybrid.

The sound of chair legs scraping against the floor echoes in the Fog, and I look up past tear-stained vision to see Sunset pushing away from the desk and standing up. Her coat wavers around her in an unfelt wind, and her body is indistinct and fuzzy, and there’s a strange hitch to her movements like I’m only seeing fragments of frames as she advances on me.

There’s something wrong with her. More than just her mutilated appearance and nightmare shape. Even that form of Sunset had retained some of her old dynamism. Sunset was fire and flame and passion, she would burn everything, including herself if it meant accomplishing her goal.

This Sunset feels different.

“You’re close now,” she crackles through the invisible static. “You’re so close to the real thing… closer than anyone has ever been from this side of the Wall.”

No, not different. Or rather, this Sunset doesn’t just feel different she feels almost hollow.

The Fog curls and twists around her, distorting over her half-there shape and other, stranger shapes that cling to her like barnacles in the unlight of this ugly place. Those embers of blue, weren’t they like fire before? Weren’t they seething like a furnace cast open and glaring out at the world with spite and hatred?

These are like flood lamps. Cold and harsh, but ultimately just bright.

She reaches out and touches my face with those long, sharp fingers, and hate bubbles up through my chest and heart. I know what her touch feels like.

“Who are you?” I snarl. “What are you?”

What little animating life is left in the not-Nightmare Sunset fades out of her like water through the gaps in the sieve, leaving behind an eerie stillness. Her face is frozen in expressionless regard, and her fingers are stopped still as the grave.

Slowly, a doll-like smile spreads over her face. It’s unsettling, how no other part of her face moves but her mouth. Just her mouth splitting open slowly and inexorably.

So-close. Too-close.

The static voice hisses from somewhere around Sunset. It didn’t come from her, and her lips never moved, and now any and all pretense is gone. Sunset’s false voice is gone from the static overlay and all that’s left is that ugly, flanged rasp.

“WHAT ARE YOU?!” I roar, straining against my invisible bonds. Rage is pouring off of me, and the ash-and-blood taste of the Fog is rich on my tongue.

Who. What. Why.

The voice is disjointed, and I realise as it’s speaking that I’m not hearing words. I’m hearing… something else. A soul-chilling alien chittering that rattles at the back of my mind, vibrating my skull and teeth until words appear behind my eyes and underneath my ears.

Know-you. Daughter.

A static wash on unease settles over me as the thing that was Sunset lifts from the ground like the lure of some kind of monstrous anglerfish.

“Was… was it always you?” I ask hollowly as I follow the rising facsimile of Sunset. “The whole time it- was it you?”

There’s something protruding from not-Sunset’s back. Like a spine made of spider’s legs and scorpion stingers. It stretches out from her back, curving and arching upwards into the sky above us, and I follow the faint outline of it and…

“Oh…” the sound is soft and leaves me in a quiet groan.

The sky isn’t really a sky. It’s a twisting roil of black chitinous limbs, twitching mandibles, and snapping stingers. It’s a torment of Fog and impossible alien insect things writhing around one another endlessly. I know this thing. I’ve seen it before, even if my mind had blanked it out before this.

The Thing In The Dark.

I remember seeing it after I died the first time on the hook. I remember looking up into the endless black of the sky as twitching legs and stingers pulled me apart, strand by strand, stealing something out of me every time it did before putting me back together less than I’d been before.

Will you-Won’t you?

“W-What?”

Not-Sunset smiles her doll’s smile as she hangs limply, her lamplight eyes gleaming like unfocused blue spotlights.

Daughter. Hunter. Priest.

My stomach sinks as I realise what it’s asking.

Will you be mine?

I close my eyes and shiver. Was this how it had been for Sunset? Pinned in place and staring up at something that made my brain want to tear itself out of my skull and run gibbering into a corner?

Not-yet.

I freeze as the thing rattles and rasps the words.

Soon.

“W-Wait, I-!” My words die as a sharp crack of pain crosses my cheek. I blink and look around, but I can’t find the source. There was nothing that-

Crack.

Another slap strikes me from the other side and a voice reaches me coming from far, far away. A familiar voice, thick with phlegm and burnt by cheap cigarettes crawls into my ears and settles in there, and I grimace as the Fog and darkness fades, and real light filters into my vision.

“Time to wake up, kid.”

The light in the small room is blinding as I open my eyes, my real eyes this time, and look up. We’re inside the office of the train station, I recognise that much at once, although it’s almost empty of the furniture and little knick-knacks I’d collected now.

I guess Chase must’ve figured out more than I gave him credit for. He probably tossed the place trying to figure out where I’d gone.

Speaking of Chase.

“Mornin’, kid.” Chase is seated backward in a metal folding chair, leaning his crossed arms on the back.

Two of Chase’s silent, thuggish goons are flanking me with a third one standing behind me, and Chase himself is smiling that easy, smug smile of his when he knows things are going his way.

“Ch-” I cough and roll my dry tongue around my mouth before trying again. “Chase… uh, how’s it going?”

I try to move as I speak, but I’m zip-tied to the metal chair they’ve brought. There are three ties on each arm, all tugged tight and digging painfully into my skin, and two ties each on my legs that are biting just as deep.

Chase ignores my struggles and shrugs as he sits up. In one hand he’s cradling a short cane. It’s old, and the length of it has a water-warped twist to it, but the head of the cane is a thick, strong metal. Chase hefts the cane briefly, turning it over and over in his hands like he’s admiring it before looking up at me.

“Could be better,” Chase says after a moment. “But thing’s’re startin’ to line up, now, y’know?”

“I uh… I was in the hospital-” I start, but Chase waves off my words as he stands.

“Yeah, I heard,” Chase says over me. “Talk t’Millie ‘bout it… real talk, Dash, I thought you were a goner for a bit there, but a friend’a mine that works in the morgue told me ya made it through okay.”

He stands, the cane settling at his side to tap lazily against the floor as he closes the distance between us and kneels to look me in the eyes.

“Thought you’d gimme a call when you were out, kid,” Chase says quietly. “Figured you’d give old Chase a ring, but ya didn’t… then I find out ya left and dropped off the face’a the goddamn city.”

I swallow hard at the cold tone of his voice.

He smiles though, and it’s an ugly thing. “But I knew you’d be back here eventually… ya ain’t smart enough to get yer own stuff and trust me kiddo I know your type.” He taps my forehead lightly with the cap of the cane. “Junkies. Addicts. Fuckin’ cowards. They always come back.”

Chase stands until he’s looming over me, and gestures around the office with the cane. I hate the look in his eyes. They’re cold and piercing, just like hers. Just like Moms. Judging me, telling me I’m worthless. He doesn’t have to say it out loud. She didn’t either.

I already know.

“You’n me had a good thing here, Dash,” Chase says with mock remorse. “Shame ya had to go and fuck me like ya did. You goin’ AWOL cost me a shitload of money and made me look like a chump.”

“C’mon, Chase, it’s…” I look around at the empty room before looking back up at him. “You got your stuff back, you got my money I bet too! Just… Just keep it! I’ll even work free for a while, alright? I- I just had some shit happen!”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, kid,” Chase says in a softening voice. The cane clicks hard against the floor as he reaches his free hand out and settles it on my head. “I ain’t mad atcha, alright? But you messed up bad, so I tell ya what: I’m gonna tell ya a story, and then we’re gonna make this right, you’n me, okay?”

He steps away from me, reaches behind him, flips the chair he’d been in before around, and sits down, laying the cane across his legs.

“See this?” He says, gesturing at the length of the cane. “This belonged to my pops, and kid, let me tell you, he used to beat me silly with this damn thing.”

My eyes widen as I stare at it, then look back up at him. He’s not grimacing or frowning though. Chase is smiling.

“Used to hate that old bastard for it too,” Chase continues. “Seems like all it took was me makin’ one small mistake and he’d set ta whalin’ on me with it.”

His smile fades for a moment as he runs a hand up and down the cane for a moment. I have no idea what to say so I don’t say anything at all. I’m not even sure I could say anything past the stone that’s settled in my throat. I want to run, to get out of here, to fall back into the Fog and get as far away from here as possible, but I can’t move!

“F’the longest time I didn’t get it, and I thought the old man just hated my guts,” Chase says quietly. “But, when I got older and little wiser, I realised he weren’t beatin’ me ‘cause he hated me, he was beatin’ me to teach me a lesson about principles.”

Chase stands again, and his meaty fist closes tightly around the shaft of the cane.

“Ch… Chase, c’mon,” I say, and I hate how my voice shakes as he steps closer. If I were in the Trials right now, I’m sure I’d be hearing a heartbeat like thunder in my ears. But there’s no trial. No hook.

No coming back from this one.

“Principles, kid,” Chase repeats somberly. “That’s yer problem… just like every other fuckin’ junkie, you got no principles. No spine. That means the moment you hit a wall, ya give up.”

He gestures sharply with the cane with every other word, jabbing it close to my face again and again before finally pausing and blowing out a slow breath.

“I like you, Dash, I really do,” Chase says. “But what I gotta do now? It ain’t about likin’ you or not, it’s about principles.”

Chase kneels again and puts a hand on my arm.

Then he stands sharply, raises the cane then brings it down with a deafening crack on my forearm, and I scream as the bone breaks under the weight of the blow.

“Principles!” Chase snarls, then grabs my other arm and cracks the head of the cane down again, shattering the bone, dragging another scream from me as I thrash in the chair.

“This is what happens when you half-ass your shit, kid!” Chase shouts as he smacks the head of the cane lightly into his palm with a steady beat. “You don’t commit! You fuck around, then you mess up, and then you think you can just keep fuckin’ around!”

In a single motion, Chase swings the cane down in an arc to crack against my collarbone, and I feel it break with a sharp, meaty splinter. Blood spills from my mouth as I scream and bite my tongue. I can’t move! I can’t move! I Want to get out, to get back into the Fog, to go anywhere but here!

The cane cracks against my jaw and something snaps as my head jerks to the side. Blood wells and spills down my front as I sob through the agony. My jaw is broken. I know it because I can’t close my mouth properly. It’s probably shattered, actually, but I can’t tell for certain. The pain is all one deafening noise now.

Chase is breathing hard, his face is red and his chest is rising and falling with bullish grunts. The red heat of agony is contrasted with the cold bite of metal as Chase pushes the tip of the cane against my forehead and pins my head to the back of the chair. I stare at him through glazed eyes, barely able to focus through the pain.

“You’re a worthless junkie with no backbone, Dash, but I thought you could be better,” Chase says grimly. “More fool me, I guess.” Then he looks up and past me towards his thugs. “Hey, bring out the shit.”

I’m vaguely aware of movement behind me, but it barely registers through the pain in my face, neck, and arms.

“I know you use like a fiend, kid,” Chase continues, his breath evening out as he taps my head a few times with his cane before stepping back and letting me loll forward. “So, since I like ya, I’ll tell ya what I’m gonna do…”

He trails off as one of his heavies comes back and holds out a meaty paw to Chase with a monosyllabic grunt of: “Boss.”

The thug’s voice is like gravel falling out of the back of a rusty dump truck as he passes something over to Chase.

“Here we go.” Chase sets the cane down, propping it against my broken right arm as he turns to me with a broad grin holding four syringes, two in each hand, and each one nearly full.

I’m gonna let you go out riding the biggest high you’ve ever felt, kid,” Chase says calmly. “How’s that sound?”

Chase holds his arms out wide and settles his thumbs across the plungers of both sets of syringes before taking aim at either side of my neck. I jerk and twist in the chair as he advances trying to back up, trying to get away, trying to do anything.

The chair won’t budge. I don’t know if they bolted it to the ground or if the guy behind me is just holding it down, but it doesn’t matter.

In the end, I can’t move.

“G’bye, kid,” Chase says. “Nice knowin’ ya.”

The needles pierce my skin like the bite of an enormous insect. They sink into vein and artery, and Chase pushes down hard with both thumbs, and fire sears into my body. My body is burning and freezing. Every inch of me is going numb and buzzing and screaming at the same time as I go rigid in the chair, and… and…

And everything is quiet.

The pain is gone, and a chill sinks into me. My eyes, which had rolled into the back of my skull, come back into focus as I stare up at the dinghy ceiling of the train station office.

The ceiling is gone, and in its place, is a swirling mass of darkness. In the shadows, shapes move like insect legs and stingers, twitching spasmodically around one another.

Chase’s face is a frozen sneer of violent glee, and the world around is painted in the gray monochrome of the Fog.

So-close.

I work my shattered jaw weakly, and a wretched sob is all that comes out.

Everything parts around the chitinous mass of arachnoid limbs and stingers that descend around me from the ceiling. They twitch and chitter, and in their rattling, I hear him, The Thing In The Dark, speaking to me.

Will you-Won’t you?

“W-Will… What?” I mumble through a welter of bleed and split lips.

Noxious child.

Toxic child.

I start to cry. I can’t help it. I start to cry as the chittering limbs descend closer, but instead of the sharp pain and the unraveling sensation of not that always follows being taken by the thing, the cool shell of its limbs come to rest against me almost gently.

“Wu-Will I… b-be like… he-her?” I choke the words out past my broken sobs. “Will I… b-be better?”

Silence follows my question, a silence broken only by the twitch and chitter of alien limbs. I’m not sure if it has a concept of better. All I know is it’s waiting… waiting for me to choose.

All my life, I’ve always had my choices made for me. At least it feels like that. It feels like nothing I do is mine, and that it never will be, but… but not this time. This time I get to choose.

So I look down briefly. I look at the thick, heavy hands of Chase and the empty, depressed syringes filling my veins with poison, and decide.

“Whu-What… What will I… b-be?” I ask.

My Daughter.

My Harvester.

The limbs twitch and cavort around me and it almost makes me laugh. They seem happy, although I’m not sure how I could even tell. Then they jab and stick into me, and suddenly all the pain goes away as ambrosia floods my veins.

My Blight.

It’s liquid gold in my eyes and on my tongue. Light like dawn in the dark spills through every capillary and muscle. My limbs wrench and twist, my arms snap and mend. A bellowing roar like the end of the world rips out of my throat as my body unravels and a million limbs like spider legs and scorpion stingers weave me back together and the small office is filled with Fog and screams.

My right hand tightens around a length of wood.

No, not a length of wood. A wooden haft. The haft of a long cane capped with a steel handle. I look down at it, frowning. When had I gotten Chase’s cane? When… When had I gotten out of the chair?

How had I gotten out of the chair?

I look back up and around. I’m standing in the lobby hall of the train station. I turn and look behind me. I’m right outside the sealed metal door of the office. The office where Sunset had lived and slept. Where I had lived and slept.

The place where I… where…

Something is wrong. I step back from the door and look down at myself. I don’t recognise my clothes. I’m wearing some kind of long, mantled coat made from dark brown leather. There’s a hood thrown from my head draping down my back. My hands are clad in thick leather working gloves, and my boots are the same style, sturdy and steel-toed.

And at my hip, there’s a thick, heavy pouch, the covering flap of which is secured by a sturdy cord of leather. I unwind the cord and let it fall loose, lift the flap, and…

“These are…” I trail off as I run my fingers over the stainless steel plungers of two dozen carefully maintained, sleek, and shiny syringes.

Twenty are empty. Four are not.

I draw out one of the four, and stare into the gleaming golden fluid carried within. It’s bright and beautiful and just holding it I can feel the rush it carries inside of it, waiting for me to use it.

Except…

I lower the syringe and slide it back into the leather carrying brace. I told Fluttershy I was going to try.

“Principles, huh?” I say quietly.

A smile traces over my lips as I raise the cane and turn it over in my hands. Maybe Chase had a point. Maybe up to now I just never knew what my principles were because I’d never had the chance.

Thanks mom.

Tightening my grip on the cane, I lower it and let out a slow breath that comes out easier than I can remember. I haven’t breathed this easy in a long time.

My hand closes fully as the cane dissolves away into Fog. My long coat, gloves, boots, and pouch, go with it, leaving behind my jeans, sweatshirt, hoodie, and converse, and I shove my hands in my front pockets as I step away from the office.

I won’t go back in there.

In fact…

Drawing out the key, I look down at it, smirk, turn, and pitch it into the distance.

Probably better that no one ever goes in there. Not for a good long time, anyway. After all, I don’t really need to know what happened to Chase and his three goons, just like I don’t need to know why only four of the two dozen syringes are filled.

The familiar grunt and growl of Fluttershy’s van hits my ears as the lumbering old beast rounds the corner up the road, and I smile and raise a hand to flag her down.

I feel better than I’ve felt in a long, long time. For the first time since I escape the Trials… no, maybe for the first time since that bullshit with Anon-A-Miss started and the whole world started falling apart, I feel kind of okay.

Maybe because now I know.

I know she’s still out there. I know she’s going to be okay because I’m… I’m okay. I’m just fine. I’m better now. Because I’m like her. I’m like Sunset, and it feels good. The leather pouch at my hip, invisible and not-quite-real, is waiting just beyond my fingertips on the edge of the Fog, and it’s a comfortable weight.

As Fluttershy frantically parks the car and starts scrambling out of the front seat, I can’t help but think about the pouch.

Twenty empty syringes… well, I’m sure there are more people like Chase, right? Like that girl at Danse Macabre, the pusher.

“RAINBOW?!” Fluttershy sprints across the asphalt to me and slams into me with all the force of a dainty bulldozer, and I chuckle weakly as I wrap my arms around her.

“Hey Flutters,” I say with a laugh.

“You’re okay,” she sobs, clutching at me tightly. She says the words over and over again, and I know she’s just saying them for herself. To convince herself it’s true. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I should never have left you with her! I should’ve known-!”

“It’s okay!” I cut her off, pulling her tight against me, and she freezes. I don’t blame her, even I’m surprised at how… easy… my voice sounds now. “I’m okay.”

Fluttershy pulls away from me, her blue eyes wide as she stares at me. It’s like she’s searching… looking for something, maybe.

“Sorry I ran,” I say quietly, not looking away. “I just- I had some things to figure out, and I think… I think I might’ve actually done it.”

“Done what?” Fluttershy asks cautiously.

“No more drugs, okay?” I say quickly. “No more drugs and no more… no more of the other thing either.”

I don’t need her hand anymore. I don’t need the knives. I’m like her now. I’m better, stronger, and just… I’m better.

“I promise,” I finish, slipping my arms around her. “I’ll do better this time around.”

Fluttershy looks at me skeptically for a long moment. I don’t blame her for not believing me, but I can also feel her wanting to trust me. She wants what I’m saying to be true, and it is. It is true. I don’t need that stuff anymore, I’ve got something more than that. I’ve got something better.

Principles.

I lower my hand to the side of my hip where the pouch lay just beyond the Fog.

Yeah… Principles, and purpose.

“Okay,” she says after a moment. “You… you know I’m going to be checking in okay? And- Oh!” her face falls. “I… I don’t know where- m-maybe Pinkie can-!”

“I’m going back to my dad's,” I say over her rambling, and Fluttershy freezes.

“You’re… but, Rainbow, you know that…” Fluttershy doesn’t have to finish the sentence.

“Yeah well-” I grimace as I consider how the next couple of days are going to go- “I can’t avoid mom forever.”

“She won’t let you leave,” Fluttershy says softly. “She’s a monster.”

I smirk at that.

The taste of ash and blood is a welcome breath of flavor on my tongue as I roll it over in my mouth. Mom isn’t a monster. I know that now. My hand tightens to a fist behind Fluttershy’s back and for a moment I feel it close around the phantom of a cane.

“She won’t stop me,” I say quietly. “Not now, and not ever again, okay?”

Fluttershy frowns softly, then reaches up to brush a hand over my cheek and up to my brow to brush away a few strands of hair.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” She asks, her voice low and gentle.

“Yeah,” I say, taking a deep breath as I do and tasting the rich, gray death of the Fog fill my lungs.

“I’m just fine.”

Epilogue

I stare down at the steaming cup of coffee in front of me and take a tentative sniff.

Yeah, it’s definitely burnt.

Then again, this is Millie’s coffee we’re talking about here, so if it weren't brewed about a hundred degrees over the recommended amount then it probably wouldn’t taste right. There’s something about burnt coffee at ten at night that tastes nostalgic to me now, but I’m not really sure I can account for why.

The really funny thing is that Millie drinks the stuff too. I’ve seen her do it. That’s the weird part about the coffee here at Salt’N’Pepper. Millie makes it this way on purpose.

My phone chimes but I ignore it as I tug my hoodie tighter around myself.

I know who it is. I know she doesn’t like that I’m doing this. She thinks it’s reckless, and that I’m going to get taken away. Fluttershy has always been a nervous sort of a person though. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving Fluttershy behind again the way I did when I shut off after Sunset was trapped, and I’m certainly not going anywhere with my mother.

As if she could make me.

“You’ve got a lot of balls, Rainbow.”

In spite of my new power. In spite of the knowledge that the thing in the dark, the Entity, ‘father’, made me better than human; faster, stronger, and tougher, the sound of Winnow Wind’s voice still sends a shiver down my spine.

Unlike every other time, though, this time I find it in myself to ignore it and take a sip of my coffee as I look up at her.

Winnow is a woman to whom change doesn’t come quickly if it even does.

She’s just the way I remember her from the farm, and even then she was exactly how I remembered her from the last time I saw her.

Neither tall nor particularly short, and not light nor exceptionally heavy either. She’s still wearing her professional black-and-white blazer which sits comfortably on her compact form, those short, arrow-straight locks of iron-gray streaked with red still fall around and frame a face that hasn’t shown pity in better than two decades.

“Hey, Mom,” I say quietly. “Pull up a booth, the coffee is shit.”

To my surprise, the edge of her mouth quirks up just slightly as she turns and gestures to someone behind her, probably one of her goons waiting at the door, and then tugs on the lapels of her blazer to straighten it, which is kind of pointless because it’s already starched and pressed as far as I can tell, and then sits down.

“This place is filthy,” Mom says flatly.

“Tell me about it,” I reply, taking another sip of my coffee before looking up at Millie, “Hey, Mill! She says this place is filthy!”

“So maybe go fuck off about it!” Millie snaps back without looking up from her phone.

My mother side-eyes Millie who doesn’t react despite the withering look. Then she shrugs, turns back to me, and says: “I like her.”

“Me too,” I agree.

“You’re coming back to Manehattan with me.”

“No, I’m not.”

I think if it were possible for an expression to cause a snap freeze, my coffee would be sub-zero, and I’d be dead.

To put it lightly, my mom isn’t what you’d call a big fan of hearing the word ‘no’, especially coming from me. Especially since I don’t think I’ve ever actually said it to her before. Not out loud and, I don’t think, even in my own head.

Maybe because a tiny, childish part of me was sure she would hear me think it.

My mother’s finger’s move to steeple, then twine together, and her eyes that are like a mirror of mine narrow into that heart-stopping, gut-wrenching glare that haunted my nightmares for so long. The difference is that this time, things are different. This time it’s not those flecks of cerise ice boring into my soul that are hovering at the edges of my mind.

It’s a pair of burning cerulean embers.

“Try again,” Mom says softly in a voice like an oiled blade from leather.

I swallow, lean forward on my elbows, and stare into those mirror-dark eyes of hers.

“No,” I say quietly. “I’m not.”

The stare-off lasts for a long moment and neither of us blinks. Mom could be the staring contest champion of the world if she wanted to. She’s got the ‘look’, the stamina, and the sheer, goddamn stubbornness. The funny thing is, Fluttershy is kind of similar, and that’s something I’ve never let myself admit before.

There are times when Fluttershy will get really heated, or really intense, and then she’ll give you this look like…

Well, like mom.

“You will,” Mom replies after a quiet moment. “Here’s your problem Rainbow, is that you’ve got nothing you’ll go all the way for and you never have, while I do, and I will.”

She squares her shoulders and straightens, putting her slightly greater height a hair over my head in a way that makes her feel a foot and change taller.

“You have friends,” She says softly. “You care… and I can take them apart, piece by piece, and I will, and it will be your fault,” then she leans in, her expression stormy, “and I’ll keep on doing it until you stop acting like a child, grow up, and take some responsibility for your life.”

My fists clench beneath the table, and in my right hand I can feel the twisted shaft of the cane lurking just behind the Fog. It’s ready for me, ready to take my rage, my anger, and all of my guilt, and give it form. I can feel it egging me on, maybe it’s my new instincts, maybe it’s the thing in the dark, maybe it’s just years of fucking repression finally starting to buckle.

“Touch them,” I say just as softly, “and I’ll take you apart, piece by piece.”

For a painfully brief moment, I see it.

A crack.

It’s the faintest widening of her eyes. The barest shiver of her glare that takes it from the solid, unyielding expression of judgment I remember from my childhood and turns it into something far more human. Something mortal.

Something weak.

It only lasts for a second, but it’s definitely there, and when the crack vanishes I watch rage take its place in real time.

“Pathetic,” Mom says. “But very like you, Rainbow… you don’t get your way, so you bully and browbeat because you’ve got nothing else to work with.

“You know, I tried— I tried to give you motivation, give you principles, and give the chance to be successful, but you are just dead set on being an absolute failure aren’t you? Just settling for second best, then third best, then fourth, and now you’re what? A dropout, a runaway, and a bum. Well, I’m very impressed, Rainbow, because if nothing else at least you’re consistent.”

“God damn you love hearing yourself talk,” I snap. Mom starts to open her mouth again but I slam my fist into the booth table, cutting her off and leaving a sizable crack.

“Hey!” Millie looks up, glaring, but I turn before she can say anything more and meet her eyes.

I don’t know what Millie sees in my face but whatever it is, drains the colour from her features, drops her jaw silently, and strangles her protest into a weak and brittle wheeze.

“Fuck off,” I snarl, and the words come out with a wet, viscous undercurrent.

Millie doesn’t hesitate, she doesn’t even nod. She just takes one step back, then two, and turns and scrambles out the back. I hear a clatter of pots and pans and a vicious stream of swearing follow her out, and I think I hear her dragging the cook with her.

When I turn back to Mom, I see something that’s very much like uncertainty on her face for the first time in my life.

Another first is that she’s staring at me speechless. Winnow Winds is never speechless. She’s the type who just shouts over you if you try to talk back to her, or even if you just try to ignore her. She gets to decide when the conversation is over, not me, not dad, not anyone else. Just her. Even if that means bellowing over me until I was sitting on the ground shaking and almost pissing my pants.

Who knew all it took to shut her up was yelling louder than her.

Actually, in retrospect, that seems kind of obvious.

“Rainbow~” Mom’s voice drops low and deadly.

I don’t let her have it though. I don’t let her take back the conversation. If I do, then I’ll lose everything. I finally, finally have her on the back heel and I’m going to keep her there if I have to break her back to do it.

“No, shut up,” I snap, “you’re going to shut up and you’re going to listen for once in your life!”

“How dare yo— urk!”

The cane is out and in my hands before I can think. My rage is boiling in my veins, filling my mouth with the taste of the Fog. My left hand is twitching to grab one of the vials, and it’s all I can do to fight off the urge, while my right hand is gripping the shaft of the cane whose heavy, capped head I’ve jabbed forward to bury in my mother’s gut.

I think I felt a rib snap.

“I said—” I twist and press the cane forward hard, pinning her to the booth she’s sitting in— “shut… up.”

A dull wheeze escapes her, followed by a hacking cough as spittle dips from her lips while she tries desperately to drag air into her lungs.

“You’re finished with me,” I say calmly.

It’s strange. Despite the rage, everything feels cold, and in a good way. The way that a cool breeze feels good on a hot day. The way a cold rag feels good against a fevered brow.

“You’re finished with my friends.” I twist the cane again, and another crackle of fractured bone makes me smile. “And you’re finished with dad.”

I pull back the cane and Mom lets out a strangled gasp as she flops forward, scattering the two mugs to shatter against the cheap tile floor as she dry-heaves and pants against the table.

Before she can catch her breath I stand, cane planted on the ground still gripped in my right hand while I reach with my other to grab her by the hair, drag her out of the booth, and throw her to the ground. She hits the tiles hard and cries out as she lands on the fragments of the ceramic mugs. There are deep cuts on her hands, and spots of blood welling against her once-tidy blazer as she looks up at me, finally afraid.

I feel the gold-hue glow of the serum pumping through my veins. Liquid hope catalysed by despair. I don’t know how I know it. I’ve always been shit at stuff like chemistry and biology, but I know it all the same.

Grinning, I toss the cane up lightly and catch it in the center of the shaft before bringing the heavy head down to slap loudly against my open left palm.

“See this?” I ask with a smile, flourishing the cane. “My old boss beat the shit out of me with this.”

I take a step forward as mom starts to rise and plant a boot in her gut, scraping fractured and broken ribs, and sending her to the ground. She doesn’t scream or cry. I think it probably hurt too much to get anything real out.

“He was a drug dealer,” I continue as if she hadn’t moved. “And I was his runner, and he was a real shitlord, but he was right about a couple of things, just like you were, mom… he said I had no principles. You say I’ve got nothing to go all the way for, well—”

I take a single step forward and two-hand the lower third of the cane to bring it around in a brutal golf-swing against Mom’s face. She tries to twist and move, but she’s so slow. I can’t believe I ever thought she was scary. She’s slow and scared, and definitely no monster.

Or maybe she isn’t slow. Maybe I’m just faster now.

Maybe I’m the monster.

Well, good… let her be scared for once in her life. Let her have a monster haunt her dreams for a few decades.

It’s her turn to hurt.

“—and y’know what?” I laugh as I walk over to where my strike threw her and sprawled her against the floor. “You were both right.”

The heel of the cane clacks loudly against the tiles as I plant it on the ground and stare down at her. My blood is pounding in my ears, it sounds like the beating of an almighty heart, and somehow I’m positive that she can hear it too.

My hair has lost some of its color and luster since I stopped having regular showers, which I guess is fair enough, and it’s still kind of gross and oily. I run my fingers through the short, fine strands anyway and smile down at Mom even as my grip tightens on the grip of the cane.

“But now I do,” I say quietly, my smile fading away as I stare down at the woman I call my mother. Winnow used to terrify me, but now… now she’s just pathetic.

Just an angry, helpless, delusional psychopath hurting everything she touches just so she can feel like the big strong queen bitch, even if it means ruining her six-year-old daughter.

“I hate you,” I hiss, and my throat constricts around the words, and the next time they come out in a bellow. “I hate you!”

Mom flinches and scrambles back and away from me. There’s blood leaking from her lips where she probably bit her tongue or cheek. Her face is bruised and cut up from little fragments of ceramic, and there’s a bigger, nastier gash on her right hand. Her clothes are askew, torn, and bloodied. She looks nothing like the terrifying icon that I remember. She doesn’t even look like my mother.

Except for the eyes.

I hate those eyes.

“You were supposed to take care of me!” I scream and the windows rattle. “You were supposed to love me! But instead, you just tore me apart over and over and over!”

For a moment I can feel them again, the raised ridges of scar tissue that covers my arms and chest. I can feel the sequences of fours and fives, finger by finger, where Her hand touched me. I can feel the cold bite of her fingers.

I want to feel them again.

Something beneath my skin snaps and stretches. I can feel the muscles around my jaw cramping and flexing against my will, the same happens through my arms, legs, and chest, and swelling the muscles and stretching skin taut. All I have to do is inject one dose of that serum. Send one vial of gold spilling and rushing through my veins. All it will take is one, and I’ll be stronger than Mom could possibly imagine.

I’ll be able to send her to Father. And she’ll understand what real monsters are.

My fingers are already slipping into the Fog to reach for the thick, heavy pouch that’s resting at my hip, searching for the leather cord that keeps it tied shut to retrieve two of the little metal syringes.

A full one for me.

And an empty one for her.

My phone chimes again, and it cuts through the clangor of my thoughts and pounding in my skull. The Fog recedes for a brief moment. Just the span of a heartbeat, but it’s enough.

I know who it is.

And I promised I’d try.

Mom is staring up at me with wide eyes, eyes that are so much like mine, and her chest is rising and falling with rapid, staccato motions. I can practically taste her fear. I can feel the hammering beat of her heart like she’s a rabbit about to be eaten by a wolf.

“Leave Canterlot.” I draw my hand back from the Fog and away from the pouch. “And if I even think that you’re trying to mess with me or my friends, I’ll come to Manehattan, and I will beat you into a pulp, understand?”

I raise the cane between us and smile.

“Nothing personal, y’know?” My grin widens and I wonder what my mouth must look like to make her go pale like that. “It’s just the principle of the thing.”

She deserves to die. After everything she did, after all the threats she’s made and all the times she’s tried to ruin my life, she deserves to die. But I deserved to die too for what I did to Sunset. For betraying her, for abandoning her… and she still made sure I got out of the Trials, even knowing that she’d end up left behind.

I want to be better.

Like Sunset.

Mom licks her lips as she stares up at me, then swallows hard and grits her teeth.

“You’re a freak,” she hisses. “A FREAK!”

Once, before Sunset, before the Fog, and before the Trials… before the whispers our positions would probably be reversed, but now her insults sound like what they are. A desperate woman trying to convince herself that she’s still the one in control. It’s a little funny actually. Funny and sad. Looking at her now, I can’t really figure out why I was so scared of her. She’s not a monster, she’s just a bitch I had the misfortune of being born to.

I flick my eyes up and look over her head and outside the window. The East End beyond the dirty windows of the diner is gone. I hadn’t realised how quiet it had gotten because there are no slums, no Canterlot, just Fog. Fog and darkness, and a twisting and writhing thing outside in the dark that’s whispering to me.

Welcoming me home.

“Yeah, and?” I reply finally, looking down at my mom. “I’d rather be a freak than whatever you are.”

On a whim, I reach through the Fog around me and into the leather pouch at my hip and draw out a single empty syringe. My mother’s eyes grow wide at the apparent sleight of hand—to her, it must have looked like I pulled the little device of glass and polished steel from thin air—as I toss it to her.

My Mom’s reflexes, broken ribs or no, are pretty good. She grabs it out of the air and stares at it for a long moment before looking back at me.

“Keep it,” I say as I step past her and put a hand on the door. “If you ever mess with me or the people I care about again, you’ll find out what it’s for.”

I turn the knob of the door, and the sounds of the East End flood back in with a palpable force as I open it. The scent of the Fog is chased out by the bitterly cold winds of the city and the stink of trash it carries with it.

This world really is a cesspit, but it’s not all bad.

I put a hand into my pocket and pull out my phone. Seven missed messages from Fluttershy. Rather than answer them, I tap her icon on the app and open her contact info, then tap the call button and raise the phone to my ear.

//RAINBOW!?//

Of course she picked up before the first ring even got through.

“Yeah,” I say with a chuckle. “Cool it with the volume, Flutters… everything is fine.”

//What happened?// she asks much more softly. //Your… W-Winnow, sh-she—//

“—she won’t be bothering us anymore,” I finish. “It’s over with, she’s going back to Manehattan… alone.”

Or at least she had better be, or I’ll have to make good on the promise I made which… actually, I’d probably enjoy that a lot more than I should.

//Really?// Fluttershy’s voice is light with awe. //She’s just… just like that?//

“We came to terms,” I reply quietly as I turn and start heading down the street and away from the East End. Away from the diner, and more importantly away from the train station. “She’s leaving me and dad, and everyone else in my life, alone.”

//That’s wonderful!// Fluttershy says, audibly relaxing. //And your dad?//

“I’ll talk to him next,” I say quietly as I continue towards the northern part of the city. “Tomorrow, I guess… I’ve got a few things to take care of tonight.”

//Okay, so long as you’re safe,// Fluttershy replies, then yawns and squeaks slightly. //I’m just… I’m so glad you’re safe.//

“Yeah,” I say, smiling as I reach my right hand out and tighten it into a fist. “Me too.”

As I grip hard, the Fog swirls around me, shrouding me and taking me into the place between here and there. Between Canterlot and home. The taste of ash and copper settles on my tongue as my hoodie melts away into a long , mantled coat of dark brown leather that’s ragged at the edges. My tread goes from a swift clip to a heavy tread as my converse become heavy, steel-toed boots between steps, and my hands relax as thick leather work gloves bleed into place around them, and in my right hand, the cane folds back into being.

And at my hip is a heavy leather pouch tied shut with a stout cord.

“Anyway, I gotta go but—” I swallow back my nerves and put a smile on— “I was thinking maybe after I talk to dad tomorrow we could go see a movie? Just, like… you and me?”

Fluttershy’s breath catches on the other line.

//Are you… uhm… but—// Fluttershy trails off quietly before finding her voice again. //—what about… y-you know.//

“She’s—” Not dead. She’s not dead, just like I’m not. And she’s stronger than me, so she’ll be back. I know she will. “She’s gone, Fluttershy, but I’m still here and so are you, so… whadya say? Dinner and a movie?”

There’s a soft hiccup and a quiet, happy sob that she’s trying and failing to stifle. I can hear her shifting around in her room, probably looking for a tissue or something. Hopefully she doesn’t wipe her face on Angel Bunny. She did that once and the little gremlin held it against me for months. How it knew it was my fault I have no idea.

//That… that sounds really nice, actually,// Fluttershy says finally, her voice a little raw, but free of tears. //I’d like that.//

“It’s a date,” I say with a smile. “Call you later, Flutters, and… and thanks… for always being there for me.”

//Always, Rainbow Dash,// Fluttershy replies happily. //Always. Be safe.//

I chuckle as I end the call, lower the phone, pocket it, and then reach back behind my head to grab the hood that’s draped down my back. I pull it up and over, shrouding my face, and I take a deep breath of the Fog.

It’s late, and the Danse Macabre will just be gearing up for the night, which means a certain girl with a bag full of drugs will be walking around filling peoples’ heads with lies and their veins with poison. No one will miss her. The world is better off without people like her and Chase.

I reach into my bag and run my fingers over the syringes. I’m tempted to use, but I won’t. There’s no need. I don’t need that kind of help for this. She’s not worth wasting even a little of a full dose on. So instead, I draw out an empty syringe and smile as I turn it over in my fingers.

Will I… b-be better?

I take a deep breath of the Fog, set my feet to the ground in a sprinter’s start. It’s a long run to the north end where all the ritz and lights of Canterlot mask a club district full of pushers preying on rich addicts.

My Daughter.

Father gave me a job. He gave me a purpose. He is the thing in the dark, but I get to choose how I fulfill that purpose. For once in my life, I feel like I’ve got something real. Like I am something real, and not just a second-best waiting to fail again.

What will I… b-be?

I push off and the Fog swallows me. I breathe deep as my bones crack and shift and my muscles swell. Traces of the serum in my veins catalyse and activate, filling me with subtle power. I can feel the gold-hue glow of it backlight eyes and fill my veins with shocks of lightning that beg for another hit of the needle.

My Harvester.

I’ll take everything from them, the way they take from others. I’ll break them, take them apart, and leave them empty because they deserve it.

My Blight.

Last Rites

The funeral of Sunset Shimmer is a surprisingly well-organised affair whose attendance turnout would definitely have surprised her.

“...and so we commend to the earth, the body of Sunset Shimmer.” Father Soaring Hope speaks in a deep stentorian boom that carries across the snow-muffled cemetery of the Ponyville Commons Church of Grace. “Those who remain, and who knew her best, grieve, for she was a star as bright as the sun.”

It’s strange.

I know that it’s cold out here. It’s freezing, actually. But the cold barely touches my skin. It's almost warm compared to the cold that’s settled around my heart.

“Although she passed in despair, we must take heart that she is beyond such pain now.” Soaring Hope continues his closing eulogy, and I have to fight to keep in a bitter scoff.

‘Beyond such pain’?

For all we know she’s still in the grip of that horrifying thing in the dark being tortured for eternity for rescuing us. Or maybe it just made her into one of those things. A Killer. A real one. One that doesn’t remember anything about who they are or what they used to be. Just a demon that torments people over and over until they waste away.

If she’s lucky, maybe she just ceased to exist.

“Our hearts break for Sunset Shimmer,” Hope says quietly, and I can hear the genuine grief in his voice. Hope is a really nice guy. Big, but a huge softie. “But let us be comforted by the fact that she rests in peace in the arms of our Father… let us pray.”

I can’t help but stare at the coffin. It’s closed but it isn’t empty. Twilight created a… a kind of fake body using her magic, so that Sunset could be buried without any questions. She called it a 'simulacrum'. I get why she did it too, but knowing that there's something I'm that coffin that looks like Sunset Shimmer, but like a fool, is just…

Obscene.

An elbow to my ribs knocks me out of my head.

“Rainbow!” Applejack hisses angrily, then jerks her head towards the bowing priest.

I grimace and bow my head as everyone around me does the same, but I don't pray. I wouldn't even know who to pray to, other than the thing that took her.

Maybe if I prayed hard enough to that thing, it would take me again.

Yeah.

With my lips set in a grim line, I pray.