Underside, San Palomino Desert

Day 14

The first thing to greet my eyes upon waking up was the ceiling, nearly invisible in the darkness. A little bit of moonlight shone in from a window, more than enough to let me know what material made it up. Some kind of stone or brick, though my mind didn’t want to figure out exactly what kind. All it knew was that it made no sense; we had been surrounded by wooden buildings earlier, not to mention I felt unusually comfy. All the houses were barren if I recall correctly.

I shifted my attention from directly above me to my side, and found more evidence that this was not the testing site. An end table with a desk lamp on it, an area I first mistook for a kitchenette before realizing the lack of stove, fridge, or other appliances. All it had was a rusty sink and cabinets, not to mention some small medical supplies sitting on top of the latter or on the walls. With a look directly behind me, I bore witness to an old, faded poster. The words were impossible to read in the darkness, but I knew the yellow pegasus on the front.

This was a medical clinic, which meant my friends had found either another abandoned mining town or some actual civilization. I willed the MentaBuck up, wincing at the pain it’s neon green hud caused in my eyes. They begged me to shut it off, close them, and return to resting, but I ignored them. Everything about me felt strange, and I wanted answers.

Answer I had not found while both sides of me talked in my sleep.

That thought proved a worthy enough distraction from the headache my MentaBuck was giving me. I searched my brain for those opposing sides, trying to find them. I felt neither of them anymore, their individuality snuffed out in the time between that conversation and me waking up. Just how long had I been asleep? Was it days or weeks? Both were terrifying for different reasons, the main one coming to my head being checked in with Ironsight.

“Wait, this isn’t right. Who’s doing this?”

I blinked as I heard the voice. Willing the MentaBuck’s hud away and forcing myself to sit up, I looked all around me for any sign of a pony within the room before me. No one. If there was no pony with me, then that meant the voice I heard was… one of them? It had to be. Which one, though? Rhapsody or Dead Hooves?

“It doesn’t matter right now. You’ll just give yourself a headache figuring out the answer.”

I blinked as I heard them speak again, initially confused at what they were asking. Then I nodded, recalling the head-splitting sensation something even that simple proved to give me. My existence felt disorienting, strange, wrong. As badly as I wanted to fix that – answer which of the two ponies in me this body had first belonged to – that had to wait.

First things first, figure out where I am. That meant pulling up the MentaBuck and dealing with the way the light hurt my eyes.

Upon looking at the map, I let out a sigh of relief. Underside. That meant I was safe for the moment, at least physically. It also confirms that the body had been unconscious for more than a day; it had been a two day journey to find Lucky Shot after all.

A grimace painted my face as the changeling came to mind. Lucky Shot, the entire reason we had been out there; one half of why I had ended up out cold from blood loss. The body had wanted to ask him several questions before they or Day Glow killed them. I prayed that they were still alive, if only so that I had the ability to extract just one or two things of note from them before we killed him. That much had not changed.

That was my whereabouts figured out, now to see how bad my injuries still were. I looked down, shivering as I recalled the near-death experience that had nearly been this body’s last moments. Lots and lots of bandages on my midsection and foreleg were expected, likely covered in a good layer of my own blood. After all, it isn't like somepony recovers like that and is…

A simple glance down at myself left me stupefied. There wasn’t a single bandage wrapped around any of my body, as there weren't any holes in me that needed to be covered. My chest was completely healed on an externally, and pressing against it with what should have been a mangled foreleg revealed that it wasn’t the only thing to be completely fine. No pain from cracked ribs, no coughing blood or harsh breathing from a popped lung, nothing. I was completely healed, no scarring on my entire body despite every piece of logic in me saying that there should be.

“H-how–”

My brow went high, and my should-be-horribly-scarred hoof went to my neck. My voice, it felt… off. It was like an in-between of Rhapsody’s commanding low alto and Dead Hooves’ raspier tone had been pushed slightly together. That was wrong, I damn well knew so. A pony’s voice didn’t change with the stomp of a hoof. I felt my heart beat a little faster.

Something was wrong with me. Something was very, very wrong with me.

Suddenly, the bed I had been on felt a lot less safe than it had been originally. Kicking what sheets had still been covering me off, I slid off the bed, forelegs out with the hope they would keep me from falling. They didn’t, instead choosing to give out under me as soon as I had half my weight on them. I crumbled to the floor, a muzzle impacting the hard surface under me with the force of a bullet. A wing immediately went to cover it, the rest of me ceasing as waves upon waves of agony passed through my nerves.

Forcing myself to fight through it, I struggled onto my hooves. They felt weaker, ready to collapse, and upon looking down to make sure they wouldn’t do just that I realized something. Maybe my brain was tricking me, perhaps the conglomeration of memories in my brain were fucking with me, but the ground seemed farther away then usual. Was I imagining it?

“Focus on that later. Get out of here!”

“Right,” I mumbled out loud. My voice still felt wrong, but it was something to think about later.

My eyes darted around me wildly, trying to figure out where the door was. It ended up being on the other side of the end table, or out of view of the bed. I made my way towards it with unsteady steps, the invisible horn on my head coming to life at my command and giving some real light. Light meant seeing, seeing meant I wouldn’t be fumbling with the door before me, and fumbling meant freeing myself from this room.

I swung it open without any care for subtlety, quickly shuffling out of the room as it slammed into the wall to the door’s left. A brief look around confirmed what my room had told me: this was a clinic. Most likely it had been back before the Last Day too, giving the general layout of the place. Shut off terminals, medical supplies strewn about in a fashion both chaotic and orderly at the same time, a lack of debris or disrepair, it had been kept well maintained. So many doors leading to different rooms too, most of them likely for patients. I didn’t want that, I wanted the chance to see my face, to get an idea of if anything else was different about me.

A bathroom, that would probably be the most likely chance for me to get a look at myself. Most of them had mirrors after all. Even if it wasn’t a full body mirror, it would work perfectly. Not wishing to stay around for somepony I don’t know to find me, I started trotting down the hall to my right. My eyes flicked to each door, looking to see if they could possibly be anything else. Last thing I wanted was to intrude on a patient’s sleep, or make them think I was a doctor when I’m not.

Thankfully there was not any need to guess; they had labeled a bathroom not too far into my walk, left side of the hallway. There was no light inside of it, so I didn’t bother to knock before opening the door. It was small, holding just enough room for everything a pony would expect a bathroom to hold. Sink, toilet, a tiny trash can, and most important to me, a mirror. I immediately positioned myself in front of it, the light of my ‘horn’ making my reflection clear as any other day in San Palomino.

Two things struck me immediately as being wrong.

It didn’t hurt to recall what the body looked like: magenta coat, white and blue mane and tail, yellow eyes, cutiemark covered hidden under a cruel symbol of an old world traitor. The mare that looked back at me had most of that, but some things were slightly off. Her left eye was still yellow, but her right one was now blood red; her mane was still blue and white, but now a streak of black joined them; the coat was still a vibrant magenta, but her wings now shifted into a tan. My brain felt like a brick wall had been stacked in front of it, for when I looked at myself I saw neither Dead Hooves nor Rhapsody's body.

Instead, I saw the pony that was… me.

“This is you. Your name is Danse Macabre.”

I swallowed a lump in my throat, and the pony in the mirror did the same. Danse Macabre, the name they had given me before I had awoken. It fit well, given the name of the two ponies that made up who I was. Dance equaled music, and macabre was a word well associated with things morbid, grotesque, or deceased. A sigh left my lips, ears falling flat against my head.

“What do I tell you, Iron?” I asked the mare in the mirror. “This voice, you won’t recognize it; it’s too different.”

There was no answer, not from my reflection or the remains of Dead Hooves and Rhapsody within me. It was something I’d have to figure out myself, apparently. It left me with a feeling of dread, any hope of an easy upcoming conversation with him dust before my altered self. I lifted a hoof and placed it on a mirror, wishing to draw some courage from the mare that laid inside of it.

The fact she was also stricken with a look of unease told me that wasn’t happening.

I bid my reflection farewell, stepping out of the bathroom and closing the door behind me with my magic. Despite knowing whoever ran this place wouldn’t want me walking around, I didn’t want to head back to the room I woke up in. Something in me desired to walk, run, perhaps fly if my wings felt like working. Without even a second thought, I gave into that desire, the sound of my hooves on the floor echoing as I started down the hallway.

The quiet of the world was a blessing for my chaotic mind, still passively doing everything in its power to separate and order the memories that were called up. They were random, brief, flashes of sounds, sights, and smells that felt both familiar and unknown at the same time. Everything was a contradiction. Happy family, horrible family; loving husband, all alone; a healthy life, and one filled with sickness. The only commons in any of them was the knowledge that my two sides had lived, been happy, and suffered greatly. The silence helped me adjust to the constant noise.

“Danse Macabre. I am Danse Macabre,” I said to myself. My mouth repeated the name over and over, hammering it in so that it would be impossible to forget it. “Mother, soldier, deadweight, neuromancer, I am all these things. I am Danse Macabre.”

A particular set of double doors caught my attention, different from the rest that I had gone by before now. They seemed to be made mostly of glass, but it was made in such a way where somepony couldn’t see through it. This had to be the way out, given how out of place it was from the others; waiting areas always seemed more inviting than anywhere else in a clinic or hospital.

I pushed the door open with ease and walked through, finding before me a rather familiar sight. The lobby was not too different from the one we had spent the night in back in Trotson, though the layout was mixed up. Chairs were in different places, the door leading outside was on the building’s right instead of the left, and overall it was a bit smaller. The only thing that mattered to me then and there was the exit.

So I stepped inside… and heard a gasp. My head snapped to the welcome desk, finding a rather tired hippogriff staring at me with wide eyes. I froze, silently swearing at realizing I had been caught.”

“Wait, your the mare that–”

“Don’t pay attention to her. Out the door, now!”

Agreeing with my inner voice, I bolted away from the hippogriff mare as soon as possible. I heard her call out to me, asking for me to come back, but I wasn’t listening. Horn opening the door outside, my hooves carried me through it. The cold desert-night initially made me shiver, but it did not stop my sprint into the streets of Underside, away from the clinic and into the crowd of whatever few ponies were awake.

There weren’t that many ponies or creatures out that night, but there were more than enough of them to aid in my escape. All their eyes tracked me as I went past, but not for long enough to tip anypony from the clinic off who may have been on my tail. It felt wrong in some ways – the doctors were just as much the reason I was alive as Sharpshot – but there was still that unexplainable something nudging me out here. This is where I needed to be, at least for right now.

After several minutes of galloping, my pace slowed. It first dropped to a light canter, then a trot, and finally a full stop. My neck craned up, looking towards the moon. The chill of the desert breeze, the star-filled sky, the chatter of the few passersby that went by me. My jaw hung, expression filled with awe and nostalgia at the sight above everypony. It felt like the first time I had ever seen it in my whole life, which was incorrect. Both Rhapsody and Dead Hooves had seen it before, after all.

Then again, while they were both me, I wasn’t exactly them. Their memories felt like old pictures in somepony else’s picture books when my mind could grab them for longer than a second. What brief visions of the night I had seen felt like nothing compared to truly seeing it with my own eyes.

In other words, it was my first time seeing the night sky, even if my two halves contradicted that.

“So… beautiful,” I mumbled.

One hoof reached outwards to the moon, as if wishing to grab it and pull it closer. Obviously it didn’t work, but it didn’t stop me from trying for the next minute or two. My wings flapped, not giving enough lift to get me airborne but more than enough to feed my wish to believe that maybe, just maybe, I could grab the moon. It was only a matter of time before it hit me that such a thing was impossible. Didn’t make the night any less beautiful.

Tearing my eyes away from that and to the world around me, I briefly paid attention to ponies and other creatures walking by. Some seemed a lot less steady, most likely from drinking, and others were having chats with friends or family as they made their way to whatever destination awaited them. As soon as I thought about friends, a frown graced my face; I felt alone.

“There was a motel, remember? If you want to be with friends, then that is where they will be.”

I nodded, the idea was good. Being with friends sounded very nice right now, after the body’s near experience. With a quick look at my MentaBuck to give me an idea of where I was in relation to the motel, and started to make my way towards it.

Knock knock knock

“Willow? Gemmy? Anypony? Please open the door.”

Nothing. If they were in their rooms, then they were fast asleep and unable to hear me. I tried anyway, several more times, hoping that the banging on the door would at least be enough to get their attention. Once, twice, thrice, on and on I went, hoping to be heard at this late hour of the night.

All I ended up doing was well up a feeling of anxiety inside me, along with a healthy dose of shame. Now more than any other point in the night, leaving the clinic felt like it had been a terrible idea. Out in the cold, nowhere to go, and I had absolutely no idea how to get back to it. Desperate to find some other action outside of admitting I was an idiot, I considered one last final course of action. It made my stomach more than a little upset, just thinking of lying to them, but I had no choice.

With another series of raps on the door, I steeled myself for what I was about to do. “Sharpshot, it’s me, Rhaps–”

Before I could finish saying her name, a sudden surge of pain ripped through my entire body. Legs buckled, wings went rigid, and a noiseless scream left my mouth as the most aggravating pain in both my lives tore through me like a hall of machine gun fire. My brain begged me to turn away from my plan, and I had no choice but to submit to it’s wants. With a hasty, harsh shake of my head, I dispelled any want of lying to these ponies of who I was. The pain disappeared with it.

Taking a few steps away from the motel door, I sat down and stared at it lost. What just happened? Why did every nerve in my body light up as if they were being burned alive? Sure, lying to the ponies I was traveling with about who I am wasn’t good, but the night was cold. Too cold in fact, now that I had been out and about for longer than a few minutes. At the very least, I had figured out one undeniable fact: I wasn’t Singing Rhapsody.

That left Dead Hooves as my true identity, but that didn’t fit. My hindlegs still worked, I had no visible horn, the constant hunger pains from the Gluttonous One’s influence weren’t there. All of those things coincided with the unicorn, and none of them accurately fit with how I looked or felt at this moment. That meant I was Rhapsody, but the pain I had just been subjected to from trying to invoke her name as my own nudged me away from that idea.

No closer to the truth than before. I grimaced as a particularly harsh breeze passed through my feathers and coat, as if mother nature was also mocking me for my predicament.

“Well, that isn’t a pony I expected to see tonight.”

My ears perked up, and I turned my attention behind me. I let out a gasp at the sight of the Abyssian looking at me from not that far away, his expression both joyful and sympathetic at the same time. His eyes glowed in the dark of night, looking me up and down. There was only one Abyssian I had interacted with, and the voice he had was a dead giveaway as to who he was.

“Basalt?” I asked.

“Remember little ol’ me huh? Didn’t think our conversation left that much of an impression,” he responded, kneeling down so that he was closer to my height. “Being up and about this late, I doubt your doctor would be happy about that.”

I hung my head, a wave of shame passing through me. “No. They’ll be upset, but I couldn’t stay there. Needed to get out; need to… see the stars.”

Looking back to the night sky was all it took for that brief shame to turn into awe, and Basalt joined in. He too smiled at the tiny lights in the sky, and the great pale moon that hung above us all. The two of us sat there for a minute, soaking it in, enjoying the atmosphere.

“Is this all you came out here for?” he asked, after a time. He had looked back to me, the tiniest hint of concern in his eyes. “Missus Rhapso–”

“No!” I shouted in panic. The moment he had started saying her name to me, the pain came back. “Not Rhapsody. Not her… anymore.”

The silence my words left was far less peaceful than any I had been in previously that night. Somewhere in me, no doubt the piece of me that was Singing Rhapsody, was hurting from having to say it. What other choice did I have, though, when somecreature else calling me her name made me hurt? This has to have been the result of another of the ghost’s spells, but trying to figure out exactly which one made that horrible migraine come back.

“Sorry, Basalt,” I said. “I’m not her, just a shadow of what once was her. That’s… that’s the only way I can explain myself, what I am.”

“Something more happened than just the injuries, didn’t it?” He asked. I opened my mouth to ask how he knew of them, but he had preempted the question before a single sound left my muzzle. “Sharpshot told me what happened – popped lung, broken ribs, mangled foreleg – but he also told me about other things. Changes to your appearance, your body healing itself without any sort of medicine. It’s why I managed to recognize you despite the mane, eyes, and cutie mark.”

I blinked. “My cutie mark.?”

“You haven’t noticed it? The dashite brand is gone.”

My brow rose at his words, and my gaze shifted from the abyssian to my own flank. I stared at it, rubbed my eyes with a foreleg just in case I was seeing things, and then found myself staring at it even more. Where the mark of an Enclave traitor once was was now three quarter notes, connected by a triplet bar. I knew this mark well. It was Rhapsody’s mark, the one she had gotten years ago when she had touched her bass for the first time.

Now, it was my cutie mark too.

“My cutie mark,” I repeated quietly. A smile crept up my face, water welling up in my eyes. “Something good has come from all this, as small as it is. It’s so nice to have it back.”

“I can imagine, though this is definitely the first I’ve ever heard one of you ponies call their cutie mark a small thing,” Basalt said, a somber laugh leaving his muzzle. I joined in, finding my choice of words similarly comedic, even if they were true. “Still, not exactly normal. Though from the sounds of it, none of your predicament is.”

I shook my head. “No, but at least I got this out of it. All the scary things to come, all the terrifying discussions I’m going to have with my friends, is made just a little easier by this being here.”

“A tiny light in the dark, as faint as that which the moon reflects,” the abyssian waxed. After a pregnant pause, he stood back up and stretched. “Well, got to get back to the Lucky Clover. Want to come with me? Don’t think anything alcoholic is good for you right now but it’ll at least get you out of the cold.”

Getting onto my own hooves, shivering slightly at the reminder of how chilly the night was, I nodded to Basalt. After stupidly leaving the clinic, being among company sounded like the smartest thing to do right now.

“Three days? Really?” I asked, tilted a half-empty cup of Sunrise Sarsaparilla this way and that. Basalt nodded, standing behind the bar and doing everything in his ability to keep looking professional. “I mean, that makes sense given how long it took us to get there, but that also means that I’ve likely been laying in that room for one whole day now.”

“Yep. Your wounds were mostly healed but Sharpshot insisted on bringing you to somepony here,” he explained. He looked to the rest of the Lucky Clover, passively examining the few ponies, griffons, and otherwise that were seated. “Gemini, she acted so tough while you were gone, but as soon as she saw you? I think a wound in her cracked open again.”

I scowled, sighed, and then brought more of the root beer to my lips. Gemmy, I already knew she was going to hurt, but hearing it from somepony she had likely been around the past several days, it hurt even more. It felt like I was supposed to be there right now, with her, comforting them. To take it away, or at the very least ease it, would mean the world to me.

“Whether I left her here or took her with us, nothing would have likely changed,” I said, more to myself than to Basalt. “At least she didn’t get hurt, this way.”

“Thank your princesses for small blessings, or whatever ponies do,” Basalt replied. I nodded in solidarity. “Still, the way you are talking about this, it’s like you expected it to happen.”

“Expected? No,” I said. I emptied what remained of the root beer down my muzzle, set the glass down, and sighed. “It’s just that both parts of me are… kind of in agreement that it was impossible.”

“Right, this… soul eating, memory fusing thing,” he replied, motioning in an irritated manner. “Magic. Not something I know much about, but then again it sounds like the same went for you and this other pony.”

“I’m surprised you aren’t questioning anything about it.”

“Trust me Missus… Danse, I think you said?” he asked. I nodded. “You see enough crazy stuff around where you don’t really question it anymore. That, and your explanation makes as much sense as any other going around town.”

My head automatically tilted itself to the side. “Ponies were starting rumors?”

“You know how individuals are,” he replied with a roll of his eyes. “Your story is so odd it was impossible to stop it from spreading around town. Tartarus, give merchants long enough and it will hit the SMR. The radio host lives off stuff like that after all.” He grabbed a bottle of Sunrise Sarsaparilla from under the bar, opening it with a bottle opener before pouring it into my empty glass. “Even earned yourself a little nickname, partly for your strangeness and partly for your services to the Shattered Moon: the Cloudborne Anomaly. Don’t ask how the first part of that came about, I have no idea.”

“Sounds like some work went into that.”

“Yeah, and with the way the world works, I can guarantee it will stick. Especially if DJ–PON3 or Mysterioso hear it.” He leaned in. “That's what ponies call the local radio stallion, by the way. No one knows his actual name.”

“Put a lot more creativity in my little nickname, didn’t they?” I asked. He gave a shrug, offering a weak smile. “Though, back to more important things, is Gemmy… alright?”

His gaze briefly went elsewhere before returning to me. “Outside of her reaction to seeing you return? Yeah. She isn’t the toughest mare out there, but she did something that has a lot of us here thinking highly of her. Others had her back, me specifically.”

I smiled at the abyssian. Knowing she was physically safe meant the world to me, and meant that all I had to do was patch up whatever had broken inside of her. Not that it would be easy, considering my very existence was likely to mend her nearly as much as it could hurt her. Caution would be the only approach when it came to that reunion.

As for whatever she did that made everycreature so grateful? No answers were needed there; I already knew exactly what she had done.

“Let me guess,” I said. “She found an equalist infiltrator and hooved them over to the Shattered Moon.”

His brow went high, attention thoroughly hooked. “Well, yes! How did you know?”

“My memory may be all fuzzy, but I remember some key things,” I answered, taking the refilled cup of root beer and down it all in one go. “Ponies I considered friends and family, ponies that I have to kill or have a responsibility to, a young mare that I gave an important mission to. That last one was Gemini, it had to be her.”

“Well, Danse Macabre though you think yourself, there is a little Rhaps–” Basalt stopped as he watched me shiver; another flare of pain, “of your pegasus half, in there. Listen, I know you probably don’t want to hear it, but perhaps it would be best to head back to the doctors. Magical though I’m guessing it is, there is clearly something wrong still.”

“You’ll have to narrow it down. Everything about me is wrong right now,” I replied, letting out a chuckle out of my morbid joke. Basalt responded with a firm, disappointed stare. With a sigh, I relented. “Yeah, I should. Wandering around in the middle of the night isn’t going to fix anything, no matter how bad I want it too.”

“Need an escort back?’ he asked. After a moment of hesitation, I gave him a nod. “Got it. I’ll bring you there in a minute or two, just going to make sure my patrons are all set and my staff knows I’ll be heading back out for a few minutes.”

Another nod, and Basalt made his way around the desk and behind me to the rest of the pub. I rested my head against the bar’s counter, my scowl refusing to fade. What was it about going back to the clinic that had me so jumpy? I had more than enough experience with Enclave doctors, Sharpshot, and Stitches where I felt it shouldn’t exist. Yet still this inner fear stayed, as if some piece of me that felt so brave suddenly felt extraordinarily small. Which side it was though remained a mystery to me.

The door to the Lucky Clover opened behind me, something I hadn’t given too much thought about. The sound of someone non-equine filled the floor with thumps, just heavy enough for my ears to hear them. They grew closer, closer, and then a griffon appeared by my side. I turned to look at them, only to find them looking back at me. Dark blue fur, crimson feathers, eyes tired from age yet filled with something immense. Most would have seen it as wisdom, but the look did not take me as the look of a wise griff.

“You’re her, aren’t you?” Falke asked. “Gold’s contract, I mean.”

“Yeah, and you're Falke,” I replied, staring back at the griffon.

“The one and only. Falke Rotfeather, long-time talon, grandfather, and far too old for the shit he does,” he said. The griffon chuckled at himself, then waved off his own joke. “Not the only one my age still going strong though, am I? Had a feeling Gold didn’t just up and die when he disappeared all those years ago, now I know that I was right!”

“Can’t really take credit for it. Only met him some time ago,” I said. Once again, I made the mistake of trying to figure out specifics, only to wince and bring a foreleg to my head as I was punished for my actions with pain. “Fuck. I… I can’t remember how long exactly?”

“I’m assuming you haven’t fully recovered yet,” Falke said. Closing my eyes to hide from the bright light of the pub, I nodded. “Damn, sorry to hear that. Good to see you up and about though, at least. Heck of an improvement, if you ask me.”

Daring to open my eyes again, I thought about his statement for a moment. Then, a tiny smile adorned my face.

“You know, that’s probably the most positive outlook anyone has offered me so far,” I replied. “The accuracy of it is up for debate, but I’ll take it.”

“It’s all we can do sometimes. Life throws unavoidable brahmin shit our way, and we must look for that tiny bit of light so that sorrow and agony doesn’t swallow us whole,” Falke said. He laughed at his own wisdom, and let out a heavy sigh. “You need it, in Gold and I’s line of work. Things almost never go the way you intend it to.”

I didn’t respond, but I more than understood what he meant. Both my lives had dealt with quiet a large number of events that fit perfectly in that category, too many to really recall. The pain, the suffering, the despair and depths that they had fallen into needed no help emerging, however. They were there, still as strong and horrible as they had always been.

Yet each feeling was also opposed by something more positive, and with it faces of ponies I knew. Willow, Iron Anchor, Joy, Starry, even Sharpshot, as strange as it was, all had a place there, cycling in and out with each other. They were the lights Falke had mentioned, the ones that lifted me up when things got dark. They allowed a little bit of hope in situations that were completely devoid of them.

“Thanks,” I told the griffon. He grinned and winked at me, the talon that had previously been holding his head up now reaching into the air to wave somecreature over to us. “Guess that’s part of how you’ve stayed alive as long as you have. Merc work sounds taxing.”

“No less taxing than the Enclave military, I’m sure,” he replied. He flashed a faux irritation. “I got dumbass clients, you have politics. I have to make sure the jobs I take aren’t death traps in disguise, and you have regulations and protocol up the wazoo.”

An involuntary snort left my nostrils. “You get used to it after a while.”

“Yeah, just like you get used to being old,” Falke said. He shifted so that he was able to comfortably look behind him, Basalt having walked back over to us in the. Falke gave the abyssian a mock salute. “Hey Bas.”

“Evening, you old rooster,” Basalt responded. He finished making his way back behind the bar, briefly flashing me a look halfway between worried and comforting. Seems our departure wouldn’t be quite as immediate as he wanted it to be. “Chatting up Missus Macabre tonight instead of being with those grandkids of yours?”

“Yep. You know Gideon and Gigi; they won’t be going to sleep anytime soon and, well, there is only so much of them I can handle in a day,” he said, the grin on his beak never once fading away as he spoke. It made me beam, seeing the hidden pride the griffon had in the younger generation. “Macabre, though. I swear Gold said a different name when we last met.”

Just like that, my smile vanished from existence, replaced with melancholy. “It’s… a long story. The name is Danse Macabre now. Rhapsody… I can’t be her anymore.”

Falke tilted his head, raising one side of his brow much higher than the other. His attention turned to Basalt, hoping for some form of an answer. The abyssian merely put some form of alcoholic drink in front of the griffon, and then held his paws up as if surrendering. An exhausted sigh left his lips.

“If you're looking for an explanation, you ain’t getting it from me,” he explained. “The situation is needlessly complicated, absurd, but at the same time it makes sense.”

“If you want the short version,” I said. “I’m two ponies and one at the same time. The result of a spirit with some cannibal curse attaching itself to me and things going awry.”

“Cannibal, eh?” Falke asked, scratching the underside of his beak. “Some strange version of raider disease? Wouldn’t fit with the cause of this being dead.”

“No, not raider disease,” Basalt answered, leaning over the bar. “The Mlafi, or Gluttonous One if you want the Equestrian name. A post-war legend, no record of it before then. No idea where exactly it originates from but from what I’ve heard.”

He leaned in further, motioning us all to do the same. We did as he asked, and he put a paw up to hide his muzzle from the other patrons.

“They say it came right from their highness’ home.”

“No shit, Canterlot?” Falke asked. Basalt nodded, and the griffon looked to me with a mixture of awe and terror. “You are one lucky mare. Anything that comes out of that place is not to fuck around with.”

“Rhapsody and Dead Hooves, the other mare in me, didn’t know,” I said, laying my head on the counter. “Not that it matters. Too late to get back.”

“Can’t argue with that. Certainly does make my earlier statement about you improving a bit inaccurate, no offense,” Falke replied. I waved the comment off, he was right after all. He took a long gulp of the alcohol Basalt had given him, then sat it down on the table lightly. “Hey, Danse, can I ask you a favor?”

Basalt stood up, and I straightened out my posture as my attention focused fully on the griffon. There wasn’t any great chance in his face, nothing that screamed what he was feeling, yet still I saw it. Conflict, confusion, questions, all hidden just in his eyes. This was personal, unsettling, something he wanted to do himself but couldn’t bring himself to. Shifting on my seat so I was completely facing him, I gave Falke a nod.

“I’ll be heading back to the clinic when Basalt’s ready, but if it is something simple–”

He held a talon up, silencing me without a single word spoken. He got off his seat and started slowly making his way towards the door. His wing beckoned me to follow, and I found my hooves hitting the floor before I knew what I was doing.

“I’ll bring her back myself, Bas. Will pay when I get back.”

“Huh? Wait, Falke, what are you–”

The door closed behind me, my magic coming alive without a second thought to do so. As soon as Falke started to turn back to me, I cut the aura to keep questions down. His eyes went from me, to the Lucky Clover’s entrance, and then down the street. Then, with a quick turn, he started down the street. I trailed directly behind him, eyes drifting toward the night sky.

“Gold didn’t come back with the rest of your crew,” Falke said. My gaze instantly turned to him, every other sound in the night drowning out. “Tried to ask that ghoul friend of yours, Sharpshot, what happened. Get pissy at me, he said some things that… well, a number had to break us up before one of us really hurt each other.”

“He got that pissed, huh?” I asked. Falke gave me a nod. “Fuck, sorry. Sharpshot is an ass, but him snapping out of absolutely nowhere just… doesn’t make sense.”

“You know him better than me, so I’ll take your word for it,” the griffon replied. “Still, the way he acted from me mentioning Gold, it sounds like something happened. Something a bit more than the old bird croaking.”

A shiver raced through my body, though whether it was from the chilly night or knowing exactly where this was heading was up in the air. If Gold was gone, and Sharpshot was irritable enough to nearly start a street fight, then it was pretty clear what had happened: I had been declared a liability to ArcanaTech. If I was a liability, then Gold would have put a gun to my head and attempted to pull the trigger. Whether he succeeded or not didn’t matter, a well of rage building up from inside me.

“That fucker! He tried to kill us!”

I ground my teeth together, pulling every bit of Rhapsody and Dead Hooves’ willpower together to try and hide my fury. A liability? What in the Infinite’s name gave him the right to call me a liability. Half dead though I may be – my mind an unintelligible mess from whatever had happened to me though it was – I still knew what was important. The wants and desires of my two halves were my own; Gemini’s happiness, the safety of my ex-husband and foals, revenge against the ponies who had brought one part of me to the wasteland, it was all still front and center in my mind.

Nothing had changed, except for the fact Gold was now also on my list of creatures to kill.

I opened my mouth to tell Falke everything, but found my vocal chords unresponsive. Falke had stopped in his tracks. He looked back to me, my silence having lasted far longer than I thought. The longer my voice refused to work, the more concerned his expression grew. Still I tried, desperate to tell him the truth despite my own body seeming to work against me.

“Danse, is everything alright?” he asked, after a while.

“Even if we are certain, it would be best to check with Sharpshot.”

“Yeah, sorry,” I replied, the scowl countering my own words. That sudden control my two halves had just showed to me, it felt backwards. I was the one with the body, so why did they get control? “You want me to ask Sharpshot about Gold’s disappearance.”

Falke nodded, talons and paws starting back down the street. “If you would prefer to focus completely on your recovery, I understand.”

“It’s fine, I can do it,” I said. “Not like anything can go wrong with asking a hormonal mess of a ghoul why he tried to beat a griffon to death.”

“Hah! Like a tiny little thing like him was going to do anything outside of leaving bruises,” Falke said, head tilting up as he let loose a long, thunderous laugh. “I appreciate it, Missus Macabre. I’m sure Gold told you, but we’ve known each other for quite a long time. This is the first time I’ve ever heard him bail on a contract, you see.”

“And since it is out of character, you want answers. Completely understandable,” I said. Silence fell upon us, Falke’s having said all he needed to. Hoping he wouldn’t notice, I lowered my head, looked to the side, and dropped my voice to a mumble. “Don’t fucking do that again.”

“We’re just trying to help you,” my two halves replied. The way they addressed me felt so condescending, it just made me more upset. “Danse, we didn’t expect things to be like this; we thought we would be in control when we woke up.”

“You are. I’m you,” I spat back, “or are you saying I’m something else.”

“No. Danse, you are us, we know that. It’s just–”

“Then don’t take control away. Your advice is appreciated, but I am in control here. Got it?”

A pause, as long as it was infuriating.

“We won’t promise that. This is our body just as much as it is yours.”

I growled at them, but they knew just as much as I did that any show of hostility was empty. Harming them meant harming myself, and I had zero interest in partaking in such things. Instead, I turned the growl into a show of displeasure. Was I not them? Was Danse Macabre not the name they chose for me?

“I am you. Trust in yourself,” I told them.

Yet another pause, followed by more unwanted words.

“If only we could. If only…”

Falke did indeed bring me back to the same clinic I had run from earlier. The staff certainly had some choice words for me, acting as I had, and I simply apologized where I could. The griffon bid farewell to me, likely heading back to the Lucky Clover, and left me to be escorted back to my room. Thus my night returned to wear it began, like a story gone full circle.

For a while, I sat in bed and stared at the darkness that enveloped the room around me. While I had failed in my task at reaching Sharpshot and the others, the night had at least been productive. I imagined I was caught up on almost everything that the public knew, as little as that likely was. Day Glow’s involvement in the past few days likely meant a lot of specifics stayed with Shattered Moon and those who had been there. It would be something to ask him specifically, once we had the privacy and opportunity to do so.

Yet, for all the productivity, it didn’t make things any easier. My head still erupted in migraine when trying to recall most of my memories, and everything about my body felt both right and wrong at the same time. So many questions, so many answers, and yet more of the former swirled around inside my head despite that. That was to say nothing about how fast it had all happened.

How the fuck had it only been two weeks? My head tilted down slightly, ears flat against my head and sorrowful.

“I missed check in,” I whispered to myself. “Ironsight either thinks I’m dead, or a traitor. Fuck.”

I fell onto my side, the bedsprings squeaking underneath me irritatingly. Perhaps it was for the best that I didn't call in. Explaining everything that had happened to me since we last talked would only end badly. He would have called me insane, and by all means he was correct. Nothing about me was normal anymore, or even believable to all but those who had seen me turn from the ponies I had once been… into Danse Macabre.

Emotionally, it made no difference. At the end of the day, I was now officially an enemy of the Enclave, and there was nothing to stop them from using my own family as an example. All I had to guide me was the will to protect Gemmy, what a brave mare she had become in my absence, and vengeance. All of this was still linked to Medicine Ball, Lucky Shot, and Angel Hair, whether it was intentional. They wouldn’t get away with what they had done to me.

“Killing such ponies would be a good idea anyway. They changed sides once, who says they won’t do it again?”

“On that much, we agree,” I said. My horn lit up, bring the bed’s blankets over my body via telekinesis. After that, and some slight adjustments with the pillow, I closed my eyes. “First things first, however, is confirming why Gold bailed on us.”

“Right. We’ll be there to assist, guide, and help you, so don’t worry.”

“You make it sound like I don’t know how to use my own brain or body,” I replied.

They did not reply. If that was a good or bad thing, I did not know.

Author's Note

Well, this chapter got finished a lot quicker than I expected.