Cut Me Like a Curse

by AugieDog

Rating: everyone
Tags: Adventure, Cookie Crumbles, Lyra, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Hondo Flanks, Bon-Bon
Length: 6091

Desperation can make a pony do a lot of crazy things. Like maybe even tell the truth...

Desperation can make a pony do a lot of crazy things. Lie. Cheat. Steal. Pay a call on two ponies who were trying to kill her the last time she saw them.

Of course, she was trying to kill them, too, back then.

But that's all in the past! And now that their daughter Rarity is on Princess Twilight's new ruling council, set to become a leader in the Equestrian government once Princess Celestia and Princess Luna actually step down, well, everything'll be totally different and so much better, right?

As long as the truth doesn't come out, of course...

An entry in the Ancestral Tribute contest, this story was awarded 3rd place, and its title comes from David Mallett's song "Ambition."

Published 2022-10-04 22:20:00 UTC
Last updated 2022-10-04 22:20:00 UTC

Cut Me Like a Curse

No, please, Lyra. Don't say anything till I'm done. I know you have questions—like why we're lying here in the front yard of this ramshackle little house down by the pond—but please, just...just let me tell the whole thing first, OK?

Thanks. And I love you. Please, please, please remember that.

It's just...

Desperation's a funny word, y'know?

Switch a couple letters, and you've got "perspiration," something I was dripping with at dusk last week. Each step I took toward that little gate in the picket fence behind us, I got sweatier and sweatier. Because, sure, I'd never set hoof inside the house, but I'd been really close to the folks who live here during my last couple years at the Academy a decade or so ago.

Which, now that I think about it, is where the whole "desperation/perspiration" thing started. See, we had this one instructor—

No, it's not any academy you've ever heard of. And please: no questions till—

You goofball, you don't need to stuff a hoof into your mouth. You're so—

So beautiful. I don't tell you that enough...

But at the Academy, see, I would always make fun of this one instructor we had, an old pegasus stallion called Pomme Frites. He constantly pointed out in his lessons that "desperation" became "preparation" with a little letter switching.

"The words, they are opposite," he would say in a nutty accent like that—we all thought everything about him was phony right down to his moustache, the way it squirmed around on his face like a caterpillar trying to turn into a moth. "But the words," he would go on, "they are intricately connected. For to the distressed mind without preparation, desperation bites at the fetlocks. But to the distressed mind without desperation, preparation will come galloping to lend assistance."

Between classes, then, I'd do his voice and the weird little strut of his walk while I talked about desperation and preparation both leading only to perspiration, a situation that leaves the distressed mind both sticky and stinky.

Distressed. That's a funny word, too, the way it definitely doesn't mean anything like "de-stressed"...

But desperation, perspiration, preparation, distressed, sticky, or stinky, I wasn't thinking anything was funny when I came slogging this way a week ago. I doubt I even noticed the sunset sparkling all purple and orange from the uppermost facets of Princess Twilight's castle. The top tower's the only part visible from this part of town, see? Right over there above the roofs of the houses up on the bluff and shimmering with every color you can think of against the blue of an afternoon deepening and stretching out toward night...

But like I said, I didn't notice it that evening. I was barely managing to keep the Academy's precepts as it was, my regulation little smile nearly cracking on my snout, my ears wanting to fold back and hide in the pink and blue of my mane. I'd been too well trained to fall completely to pieces, though. I trudged through the front gate, crossed the yard, reached the door, and rapped on it gently but firmly.

I didn't lunge for it, I mean, didn't pound on it while wailing at the top of my lungs. That definitely would've violated the Academy's precepts...

Fortunately, the door pulled open before I could lose what little control I was maintaining, and a pink, chubby unicorn mare with a swirled stack of purple mane on her head blinked out at me. "Bon-bon?" she asked, and her face went all smiling and friendly as if it was the easiest thing in the world. "Well, now, isn't this a surprise, don'tcha know! How the heck are you? C'mon in!"

She stepped back, her hornglow pushing the door open even further, everything completely polite and neighborly. You never would've guessed that the last time we'd stood this close to one another, she'd been trying to cave in my skull.

Of course, I'd been trying to kill both her and her husband at the time, so I guess I can't really blame her.

"Thanks," I said, and I stepped inside before adding, "Bouffant," as quietly as I could without letting my voice collapse into a whimper.

I could sense her going still behind me, even the waver from her horn seeming to freeze for an instant. "I see," she replied just as quietly, but the power banked in those two little words made me think of white-hot coals covered with the thinnest layer of ash. "And while I hate being rude, Sweetie Drops," she went on, her homespun, up-country accent replaced with something a good deal more urbane, sharper and absolutely cutting, "might I ask your intentions?"

Remember what I said about how funny desperation is?

"Please," I whispered, letting my neck droop and not even trying to turn in her direction, "I need your help."

"Cookie?" a stallion called from another room. "Sounds like we got us a visitor." He had the same sort of loopy, northern drawl as the mare'd been using just a minute before.

"Oh, ya betcha, Hondo!" she answered, her nasal twang back. And then it vanished again, the words as soft and smooth and cold as a winter midnight. "Our dear old friend Sweetie Drops has come to call."

The steady clatter of the stallion's hoofs approaching from the hall to my right stopped. "Really?" rumbled a voice even colder and smoother, and the shadows in the doorway on that side of the room seemed to flex and tighten into a shape with narrow eyes and slicked-down ears.

"Magnum," I said, keeping my gaze fixed on the wall in front of me. "Bouffant. I...I'm so, so sorry for everything I did, and if there was any way for me to get out from under this without the two of you, you know I wouldn't be here. But please, I...I can't...can't—"

"Really?" the stallion repeated, and he moved into the room, the clashing colors of his shirt almost painful even just in my peripheral vision. "And we should care what happens to you...why, exactly?"

"Because it's not just me!" Knowing that I was breaking Academy precepts, I whirled, let them see my wide eyes and flared nostrils, let the sour panic in my scent flow freely.

Desperation, preparation, and perspiration, right?

"It's everyone!" I went on, waving a hoof. "Everyone in the old Agency! All our cover stories are about to get blown, all the precautions we put in place to bury what we did, it's all about to crack wide open and splatter every rotten secret everywhere! That's why you should care!"

They were standing side by side, their expressions blank, my two favorite instructors from my Academy days. Back then, they'd been top field operatives who were teaching for a couple years while they transitioned to other positions in the Agency. Bouffant was pregnant with their second child, after all, and their first was getting old enough to need a more stable environment than monster hunting could provide.

Me, I was as wet behind the ears as any greenhorn could be, but I had a real knack for monster hunting, they all said. Magnum and Bouffant took a liking to me, invited me into their home there on the Academy grounds, let me be sort of an older sister to their first daughter, even named their second daughter after me when she was born. They showed me tricks, taught me techniques, gave me the sort of training the Academy couldn't. They had real-life experience, after all, and they shared it with me freely, lavishly, generously, you might even say.

And I betrayed them.

I...I told you some of this the day of Cranky and Matilda's wedding: how I'd captured the Bugbear, how it'd escaped, and how they'd had to shut down the whole Agency to protect us and the world. And that was all true. It...it just wasn't the whole story...

Which means that, yes, I've been lying to you, Lyra. Again. Sins of omission were kind of the "bread and butter" crime for us in the Agency, but it wasn't our only crime, not by a long shot.

See, the Bugbear didn't escape. I accidentally let it get away when I stormed in, sure that its prison wasn't secure enough.

Which was crazy! I mean, they were locking it in Tartarus, and I didn't think that was good enough! Not for my monster, the monster I'd captured when so many others had failed, the monster that had made me the toast of the Agency and by default the greatest monster hunter who ever lived!

But Celestia herself had assigned Magnum and Bouffant the job of getting the Bugbear locked away for good, and I was outraged! Insulted! My monster, and these has-beens were taking it away from me!

That's the way I was thinking. Or, I mean, not thinking.

Even all these years later, I don't know how to explain it. I'd had more Bugbear venom pumped into me than any pony in history, and maybe that warped me somehow. Or maybe collaring it when every other attempt had crashed in catastrophe as well as the accolades I got from departments of the Agency that I hadn't even known existed when I'd graduated from the Academy a month before, maybe that warped me somehow.

But when they told me Magnum and Bouffant were taking the beast to its final resting place? When it had been Magnum and Bouffant the month before my graduation who'd begged me, ordered me, even tried to use reason on me in their efforts to convince me not to go after the Bugbear in the first place?

Instead, I'd roared out of their house, had sworn that I would succeed where all others had failed, and had spent the next two months in the field till I'd found the Bugbear and bottled it up. And now the Agency was giving my prize to these same two losers?

Like I said, I wasn't thinking. I was feeling: feeling that I was the greatest and that only I could be trusted to seal the Bugbear in Tartarus. So I followed them down there through the very gates—every agent was assigned a key—and into Tartarus itself. There, I begged them, ordered them, even tried to use reason on them in my effort to convince them to let me snap the wards into place.

They refused—by which I mean that they explained to me how they'd actually activated containment wards before, how these were especially powerful ones, then told me that I could certainly watch if I was going to be insistent about it, but that this was the trickiest sort of spell, one that called for a gentle and knowledgeable touch—

And that's when I attacked them.

I'm pretty sure I meant to kill them, and I'm sure they would've killed me if they'd gotten the chance. They would've had to. I was insane, Lyra, my heart and temples pounding to the rhythm of the voices in my head telling me that this was the way it had to be done.

They were good, of course, Magnum and Bouffant. But I was better. Or at least I was so completely out of my mind that I didn't care if my attacks were hurting me as much as them. We whirled around the confines of Tartarus, blades flashing, hooves smashing, hide and hair ripping, blood spraying.

And that was when the Bugbear broke free.

The Bugbear, y'see, it absorbs things: power, knowledge, skills, whatever's going on around it. That's what makes it so dangerous. If you go up against it and it gets away, it's like it copies everything you brought to the fight and takes it with it. So nothing will work on it twice. It's learned what you've got and instinctively develops defenses that counteract whatever it was you just did.

And the three of us fighting there beside its cage? We were pretty much the top of the Agency's talent pool. And we weren't holding back at all.

When the Bugbear's roar shattered the adamantine bars surrounding it, I don't think I even noticed. No, it wasn't until its lightning-fast stinger was stabbing molten-hot venom into me, locking my joints and spinning me with a crash into the wall of Tartarus that I realized what had happened.

Lying there unable to so much as blink, I watched it stab Magnum and Bouffant, then I watched it grab the key from Bouffant's pack, open the gates, and fly off into the night, the gates slamming shut behind it.

During the next few hours, it dawned on me just what I'd done, how I'd fed this monster not just everything I knew about the Agency's methods, techniques, and operatives, but everything two senior operatives knew, too. And maybe I still couldn't blink, but the tears I cried as I slowly came to my senses kept my eyes plenty damp, believe you me.

Bouffant and Magnum recovered first—I think the Bugbear's venom must have a cumulative effect or something, and like I said, I'd been pumped full of it during our original battle. They didn't even look at me crumpled against the remains of the Bugbear's cage. They used Magnum's key to open the gates, and they raced off, the gates once again slamming shut.

Leaving me alone and paralyzed in the entryway to the underworld. Which I absolutely deserved.

It took me another couple of hours before I could move, and when I could, I used my own key to get out, then turned my back on the gates and ran and ran and ran and ran. I couldn't think, but this time, it was more that I didn't want to think even though my mind was as clear and sharp as the stars in the moonless sky above me.

It was afternoon by the time I finally staggered into Trottingham and dragged myself to the Agency's safe house, but it was too late. A notice taped to the door said that the grocery store that had been on this site had moved across town, but the code letters worked into the sign announced that the Agency was being shuttered for good, that the final contingency plans had been activated, that all operatives were hereby instructed to slip into their secondary identities and go about those alternate lives from now on.

Because between me, Magnum, and Bouffant, we knew the primary identities of pretty much every operative currently active in the Agency. And now the Bugbear knew those identities, too.

The secondary IDs, though, those would all still be secret. Except for mine, Magnum, and Bouffant's...

So I threw away my two-month-old secondary identity, used the last of my bits to buy some new phony papers, and headed for the most out-of-the-way place I could think of—Ponyville—to go into business as a candy maker named Bon-bon.

I'd already set up the shop and met you before I discovered that Magnum and Bouffant, now known as Hondo Flanks and Cookie Crumbles, were living here as well with their two daughters. I pretended not to know them, of course, same as they pretended not to know me, and I'd never gone anywhere near their house, not once in the ten years since I'd moved here.

Till last week.

That's when I stood there trembling in the room right on the other side of that bay window and told two ponies that I'd tried to murder that they needed to trust me when I said that every former Agency operative was in mortal danger.

"Really," Magnum said again, but this time, he didn't make it a question.

Bouffant didn't do even that much. She didn't have to: the slow arching of her left eyebrow said everything she could possibly have said.

"Listen!" I hissed, straining to keep my voice down. "Princess Celestia is abdicating the throne! You have to know this! Your daughter is one of the ponies taking over from her!"

Neither of them changed their expression in the slightest.

I moaned and rolled my eyes. "Plausible deniability lives and dies with Celestia's administration! And granted, I've got the most to lose if Twilight Sparkle or any of her friends start poking around in file cabinets or old store rooms and find the paperwork that you know Celestia kept—that old nag never threw anything away!" I snorted a breath through my nostrils, then made as visible an effort to control myself as I could manage. "But your daughter! Both your daughters! Do you want them to learn about the things their parents did under the names Magnum and Bouffant?"

Magnum's moustache shifted toward Bouffant, his gaze doing the same a heartbeat later, and Bouffant's eyebrow lowered a bit, her eyes narrowing. "We've nothing to be ashamed of," she said, but I could smell her wavering as surely as the sulfurous stink you get when somepony strikes a match.

"Really?" And when I asked it, I made sure it came out sounding like a question even though I was pretty confident I knew the answer. "And yes, mostly what we killed were creatures who would've killed ponies if we'd given them the chance. But look at Discord. The Agency's plans for him, if I'm remembering right, didn't say a word about reform. Or Starlight Glimmer. How did we deal with situations similar to hers before Twilight Sparkle and her friends? Or the memories we erased when ponies got too close to things we decided they shouldn't see? Or the lies we told over and over to those nearest and dearest to—?"

"Enough," Magnum more growled than said, and I let the honest fear I felt at that moment fill my face, let it overwhelm any hint of the satisfaction I also felt. "I don't need to tell you, Dropsy," he went on, "that it's been more than ten years since the Agency folded, and now that Princess Twilight and Rarity and their friends have finally gotten the Bugbear locked down in Tartarus, everything we did is less than dust and ashes, not even ancient history."

I was already shaking all over, so shaking my head wasn't hard at all. "Celestia's got two hooves out the door at Canterlot Tower, but she's always been a politician." I made sure to pronounce that last word like a slur. "It's all about control with her, and you know she's got dirt on every former operative the Agency ever employed locked away somewhere to ensure our good behavior." I tapped the lovely area rug on the floor in front of their fireplace. "We just need to get in, find her paperwork stash, burn it, and get out before this new crowd has a chance to start rummaging around."

Bouffant cocked her head. "I assume you have a plan?"

Desperation and preparation again, right?

Without blinking, I rattled off, "Celestia has three top-secret storage locations in the palace. I've got maps and access spells for all three. We need to strike sometime in the next week to take advantage of the turmoil caused by the shift from the old regime and the new."

"I see." Bouffant's gentle tone made me way more nervous than if she'd been shouting. "And how widespread a strike are you anticipating?"

"Surgical," I said, slipping back into Agency lingo with an ease that bothered me a little. "Total destruction at each site would be too time intensive and too likely to set off alarms. But the three of us know the stuff we'd be looking for, so we could slag it quick and move on. An hour at each site ought to do it."

That neither of them told me to get out or told me I was an idiot or just plain slammed their hooves into my waiting face got a tiny, tiny tingle of hope prickling along the base of my mane.

Which should've been a warning to me right there. That's another lesson from the Academy. Hope makes you careless, makes you think you've got things under control when maybe you really need to give them a second or third look. Hope makes you think you've prepared enough.

But you can never prepare enough. There's always more you could be doing or planning or—

OK, the way you're wrinkling that lovely mint-green forehead at me says I need to use a little more of that control stuff right about now. Just tell the story, right? Just tell the damn story...

So they looked sideways at each other, then they looked back at me. "All right," Magnum said. "Tomorrow at midnight, we meet beside the big baobab tree in the Arboretum next to Canterlot Tower, kitted out in full gear and ready to move."

"And if," Bouffant added as slippery as a snake sliding into a cellar, "this all proves to be nothing more than another bout of your paranoid ravings, Dropsy, darling, you'll go back to your life, we'll go back to ours, and that'll be the absolute last time we ever exchange more than vapid smiles." Her honey-dark contralto roughened. "Understood?"

I nodded, moved very carefully and deliberately past Bouffant, pulled the door open with my teeth, and got out before they could decide to save themselves a whole lot of trouble by putting a knife in me right then and there. I made my way back up into Ponyville proper, and maybe you don't remember it, but we got very romantic that night.

No, don't. Don't answer, please. I could get lost in thoughts of you so easily, Lyra, could reach out a hoof and touch yours and let the two of us get sidetracked into memories of the past we've shared.

It's just that I need to tell you about the past we haven't shared, a past I've made without you, a past you need to know about.

The next night, then, I told you another lie: that I needed to be in the shop all night working on a special chocolate soufflé for Twilight's coronation. Instead, I got my equipment from the hidden cabinet behind the oven, squeezed myself into my black skinsuit, and snuck into the undercarriage of the last train leaving Ponyville depot for Canterlot. It's a non-stop at that time of night, too, so I arrived in the capitol with plenty of time to crawl through the sewers to the Arboretum. I clambered over the wall and reached the baobab just as the midnight chimes began sounding from the palace next door.

Just like the good old days...

Magnum and Bouffant stood camouflaged in their own black skinsuits so perfectly, even I might not have seen them if I hadn't known they were there. And we had our ways of getting into places other ponies shouldn't go: that's another thing that the Agency taught us to do really well.

Then it was just a matter of sneaking through the palace's darkened hallways, leaving no more trace than your average moth as we flitted through the patches of shadow between the torches that stuck out from the walls at regular intervals. As I'd figured, the guard presence was a little sparse and scattered: moving Celestia and Luna out while moving Twilight in had stretched their forces exactly enough. Prepared, I led my two former colleagues into the throne room and the first of Celestia's hidey holes.

Around the back of the throne's dais, part of the structure slides open when the right sequence of words is whispered, and you just trot right in. "Stupid Celestia," I said after I'd closed the door behind the three of us. "Just because she's the oldest thing in the world doesn't mean she always needs to use the oldest tricks in the book." I popped one of the crystals I'd brought, and a green glow grew from it to fill the space, revealing row after row of metal cabinets with sliding drawers.

"Left side," Bouffant said, pointing to Magnum. Technically, as the senior operative on the mission, she had the task of giving out individual site assignments, and I had other things on my mind than arguing with her about ranks.

Magnum nodded and headed for that part of the room, his horn sparking to give off a similar sort of light as my crystal.

"Right side," Bouffant said then, tapping her own chest, her horn lighting up, too.

I nodded and made my way toward the center aisle. "I mean," I went on as if Bouffant hadn't spoken, "we all knew Celestia was an idiot, right? Senile and lost in her own little world most of the time?" I raised my voice just to make sure they'd be able to hear me. "Honestly, I'm surprised it's taken this long for somepony with some power to recognize what a liability she is and depose her. And yeah, I know the official line is that she's stepping down of her own accord, but that claim's as phony as that mane and tail of hers."

From the look on your face right now, Lyra, I'm guessing that you're feeling the sort of shock and anger I was trying to inspire in Magnum and Bouffant. They'd devoted their lives to Celestia, after all, and hearing somepony they already despised and distrusted spouting off like that, well, I was hoping it would drive them to act on that shock and anger.

Please, Lyra, please, please just let me talk, and it'll all make sense, I swear.

No, I'm sorry. Sorry for not telling you the truth when I should've, sorry for all the times we were together on the sofa or curled up in bed and I didn't—

But you'll see. Because I love you, and I need you to know exactly what...what I am and what I've done...

So I kept up my monologue, there in that storage room under Celestia's throne. Sure, I kept opening file cabinets as well and leafing through the pages, but mostly I was focused on saying every horrible thing I could think of about Celestia. Desperation drove me, and I...I wanted Magnum and Bouffant to attack me, see, needed them to attack me.

But they didn't.

I got to the end of the cabinet row, and I was sweating so much and blathering so stupidly, I didn't even notice that I'd stopped hearing the other cabinets slide open and closed. Until I stepped out into the space at the other side of the room and found Magnum and Bouffant standing there looking at me. Not looking angry and disgusted the way I'd expected, but looking more puzzled than anything else.

It stopped me, the way they were looking at me, pulled my snout shut and let silence drift over the room for the first time in what felt like hours.

"Odd," Magnum said then, his voice wrapping around me like a scarf on a cold day. "You're going through an awful lot of effort to get us all fighting, Dropsy, and I can't say I understand why."

"Yes." Bouffant's voice wrapped around my neck more like a rope than anything else. "Before yesterday, I would've been happy to stomp you into the ground at the proverbial drop of the hat." Everything about her shifted to velvety and feline, and I mean with purring and everything. "But you've got me curious now." She turned to Magnum. "It's more than some sort of long-delayed guilt over the way she destroyed the Agency, wouldn't you say, darling?"

"I would." He cocked his head, and I wanted to fly at him, wrench the hoofblades from their pockets along the sides of my skinsuit, and aim for his fat, pulsing jugular.

But I didn't.

He cocked his head to the other side. "It's something more than that, something triggered by the incipient regime change, but not for the reason she told us." Waving a hoof at the room, Magnum narrowed his eyes. "For I'll wager all that I hold dear that there's not a single shred of paper here about us and the Agency, Dropsy, not here nor in any other repository into which you might've planned to lead us this evening."

"And besides," Bouffant said, tossing her mane, "we've already told Rarity all about our previous lives." She gave a sighing little chuckle. "Once it became clear that she'd established something of a double life all on her own as a fashionista and a savior of the world, we thought she might profit from our examples." Her gaze sharpened, almost made me want to take a step back. "Both from the things we did well and the mistakes we made. For there's no lesson to be learned or taught when actions remain hidden and untold."

"Indeed." Eyes continuing to narrow, Magnum regarded me.

Now, I don't know if you've ever had anyone regard you, Lyra, but I would not recommend the experience. I mean, if Bouffant's gaze was as sharp as a knife—and it was—Magnum's gaze was as piercing as a needle. "I'm guessing, however," he went on, "that there's an action you wish to remain hidden and untold, Dropsy. So much so that you brought us here tonight to kill you."

And I...

I mean, hearing him say it right out loud like that, I couldn't do anything but stare. I thought I'd been so slick and so clever that they would never know, would never even begin to suspect that I...that I...

I'm all right, Lyra. I am. I just...I need to tell it, need to tell you everything.

Because I lied to you again is the thing, just a couple minutes ago when I told you about the fight Magnum, Bouffant, and I had inside the gates of Tartarus, the fight where the Bugbear got away. And standing there in that darkened space, my mind twisted beyond desperation and my body dripping with perspiration, I knew that all my preparation had come to nothing. All I could do was watch petrified while Bouffant slunk toward me.

"Something you did," she was muttering, the sharpness of her eyes holding me in place like nails in my hooves, "but you did it after the Bugbear's escape dissolved the Agency and activated the destructive protocols. So you couldn't be sure what Celestia would do with the information she might have gathered concerning your activities afterwards. Would she burn all traces like she did with the Agency records, or would she keep the reports since the Agency at that point had ceased to exist?"

She reached me, then, and began walking in a slow circle around me, her voice still soft and gentle, almost caressing. "It had to be something awful that you did, Dropsy, something so awful, you couldn't live with the chance that Rarity and Twilight and the others might find out about it when they took over Celestia's government. Something so awful, you put this little mission of ours together in the hopes that we would end the charade you feel your life has become. Something so awful—"

Her words choked off. Her eyes went wide. And then she proclaimed the crime that I'd committed against all ponies everywhere, the crime that I'd never breathed a single hint of to anypony but the crime that I was sure Celestia knew all about.

I mean, she's Celestia! How could she not have known? That she hadn't thrown me into Tartarus herself was a mystery that had hounded me every hour of every day for as long as I've lived in Ponyville! And now? All Celestia's records were going to Twilight Sparkle! Who would undoubtedly organize them, refile them, find the truth, and destroy my life the way it should've been all those years ago!

Oh, Lyra! Thank you! Just...just hold me like this, please. Hold me like—

Like it's the last time. Because it might be...

Because I'm going to tell you. Magnum and Bouffant, they were insistent that I had to admit everything after I melted into a puddle of tears in the throne room's record vault. I mean, not right after. Because when I say 'melted,' I mean melted. Calling it ugly crying doesn't even begin to give you an idea of the drooling, weeping clump of mucus I dissolved into.

But they scooped me up, guided me out of the palace, and poured me into a seat between them on the 3AM train to Ponyville. I don't remember much about the trip itself, but I was more or less conscious by the time dawn was breaking and they were leading me into their house here. They cleaned me up and fed me and let me sleep the rest of the day. And then they started getting insistent.

"It's vital," Magnum said, and it was the voice of the teacher I'd known in their house and the classrooms at the Academy. "The more you try to hide this, the more it'll grow and spread and fill your mind till there's no room for anything else."

"Especially," Bouffant added, "now that you're engaged to Ms. Heartstrings. You need to come clean with her at least, but I'd also recommend telling Princess Twilight or Rarity or one of the others on the Council. Making a full declaration to the appropriate authorities is the first step toward healing, Dropsy, darling."

Declaration. Funny how close that is to "desperation," too...

But here goes.

You remember, Lyra, back when I said that I dragged myself to my hooves inside the gates of Tartarus after trying to kill two of my dearest friends in the whole wide world, after destroying my life and the lives of all my former colleagues by letting the Bugbear escape? Well, what I neglected to mention was that I wrapped my shaky teeth around my key, unlocked the gates, pushed them open—

And heard a rustling little snicker in the darkness behind me. Woozy, I turned in time to see a grin as thin as a dagger slash across a red, black, and gray face before the rock he held in both hands smashed me in the side of the head, knocked me through the gate, and collapsed me into a heap on the ash-covered rocks outside. "Thank you," a creaking voice said. "And while I haven't the time nor the strength to deal with you properly now, trust me when I say that I'll be dealing properly with all you little ponies very, very soon."

By the time I could stand again, he was gone. And that was when I ran and ran and ran and ran. Because it was me, Lyra.

I was the one who let Tirek out of Tartarus.

Everything he did, turning Equestria into an empty eggshell that he very nearly smashed to shatters, all of it, all of it was my fault. He would've killed everypony, would've killed you, and all of it, all of it, all of it—

My fault.

If I hadn't been a crazy nut job, Tirek never would've happened! He would've stayed locked up where he belongs, and all the horrible things of the past however many years wouldn't even be—

Uhh, Lyra? You...you're nibbling really soft and gentle on my ear the way I like so much, and it's making it really hard to wallow in grief and apologize for—

You forgive me? Just like that? Lyra, I almost destroyed everything!

Yes, I'm sorry! Of course I'm sorry! This whole damn confession has been because I'm—

Mmmm...

Being kissed by you's the best thing in the whole entire world, you now that? Well, the best thing we can do in public, I mean. But you—

You forgive me? You mean it?

Mmmm...

Yes, I...I'll have to tell Twilight now. Just to get everything out in the open. Or if not the open, then at least on the record for the new ruler of Equestria. We can get Magnum and Bouffant to talk to Rarity first, have them soften her up and pull whatever tricks they can pull to make sure she's on our side before we—

They're standing right behind me, aren't they?

What're you, crazy? Lyra, I've been their mortal enemy for a decade! They won't want to—

Oh! OK, then! Group hug!

And thank you, all three of you. I...I still have a lot to atone for, but I'll do it, whatever it takes.

If...if you'll help me...

Thank you. Thank you...