2 ½ years ago …

Sunset Shimmer walked slowly through the halls of Canterlot General Hospital with a bouquet of flowers in her arms this Sunday morning. The last few steps were always the hardest, where she had to steel herself so she could greet her friend with a smile and make sure it didn’t show on her face too much when things had deteriorated.

However, when she noticed the door to the room standing open, Sunset couldn’t help but quicken her pace, and stepping into the room did nothing to alleviate the knot in her stomach. There was a single nurse present, occupied with changing the bed sheets.

“Excuse me,” Sunset said with a suddenly dry mouth, “the woman who is in this room …”

“She’s gone,” the nurse answered simply without looking up at Sunset.

The flowers dropped from Sunset’s hands as a high-pitched noise suddenly rose in her ears, but as that neared its crescendo, it was overtaken by the sound of laughing children from down the hall.

The nurse also noted the laughter and gave Sunset a look.

“I see,” Sunset said, clutching at her chest and breathing hard. “But you really could have phrased that better.”

The nurse raised an eyebrow, then noted Sunset’s expression of shock and the bouquet at her feet, and her eyes went wide in an apologetic way. “Oh! Oh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean for it to sound like that. I just meant she was doing her usual morning rounds.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Sunset replied, steadying herself against the nearby wardrobe in an attempt to calm down.

The nurse picked up the flowers and said by way of apology: “I’ll put these in some water for you while you go see her.” Before she left the room, she added: “You’re her friend, right? I’ve seen you around before. Please tell her that she needs her rest.”

Sunset nodded weakly. “I’ll try, but she marches to the beat of her own drum.”

“That she most certainly does.”

After taking a couple extra moments to get herself together, Sunset left the room and walked down the hall in the direction of the laughter. She knew where she was going, quietly opening the door into a communal lounge where she spotted a gaggle of children in pajamas around a pink-haired woman in a wheelchair. Half of them were holding balloon animals and toys of various shapes.

“Alright, who’s next?” Pinkie Pie asked with a smile that was weak, but reached her eyes nonetheless.

“Me! Me!” One of the kids yelled. “I want a horsey!”

“One horsey coming up.” Pinkie Pie picked up one of the slender balloons from her lap and tried to blow it up, but after a few breaths she broke out into a rasping cough as the air was released from the balloon. And it didn’t stop for quite a while as the children looked on with worried expressions.

“Are you alright, Ms. Pinkie Pie?”

“Yes,” she replied, still coughing, “my throat is just a little dry. Give me a moment.”

Having filled a plastic cup of water from the sink in the corner, Sunset came up and carefully took the balloon from Pinkie’s weak fingers, replacing them with the cup.

Surprised, Pinkie Pie looked up and smiled gently. “Sunset, thank you,” she said, slowly putting the cup to her dry lips and taking a drink, the cough slowly subsiding.

Sunset nodded. “You shouldn’t push yourself so much,” she said before blowing up the balloon in her hands, tying it off and handing it to Pinkie Pie.

Pinkie smiled gratefully, beginning to twist it into shape with her shockingly scrawny looking fingers. “Now, let’s see about that horsey, huh?”

Knowing that her friend wasn’t gonna stop until every kid in the room had a balloon animal of their own, Sunset silently busied herself with blowing up more balloons and handing them off. The hospital staff had arrived at the same conclusion some time ago. Having failed in their attempts to curb Pinkie’s excursions, they’d moved her into the room that was physically closest to the children’s wing as to at least keep what had become her daily commute short.

When all the kids had received their animal, a blonde girl of about eight years asked excitedly while jumping up and down: “Ms. Pinkie Pie! Will you do the silly dance with us?”

“Uhm,” Pinkie Pie swallowed hard, her hands grasping the armrests of her wheelchair weakly. “Maybe … maybe just …”

But Sunset put a hand on Pinkie’s shoulder, realizing that it wasn’t necessary to keep her from getting up, because she clearly couldn’t. “Listen, children,” she said softly, “Ms. Pinkie Pie is tired this morning. Maybe some other time, huh?”

“Awwww!”

Sunset began wheeling Pinkie Pie towards the door as the children waved her off. “Bye, Ms. Pinkie Pie! Come back soon!”

Pinkie smiled and waved back as they exited, but as soon as the door swung closed behind them, she closed her eyes, leaned her head against the backrest of the wheelchair and began breathing heavily, no longer able to hold her usual smile.

“The nurse said you need your rest, Pinkie,” Sunset said gently as she slowly pushed the wheelchair through the corridor.

“Oh, fudge the nurses,” Pinkie Pie replied in an uncharacteristic show of annoyance. “I’m going crazy cooped up in that room, Sunset. At least let me have this.”

Sunset sighed and spotted the open door that led outside. “Hey, how about some fresh air? It’s almost spring, and the sun is nice and warm today.”

“That sounds nice,” Pinkie replied.

As Sunset wheeled her out to the balcony, she said: “Hey, I didn’t see that kid going through chemo in there today. I hope he’s alright.”

“Oh, you mean Trimmer?” A small smile returned to Pinkie’s features. “He’s in remission, so they allowed him to go home with his family the other day. He still has to come in for more sessions, but it’s looking good.”

“That’s nice,” Sunset said as she fluffed up Pinkie’s pillow and bundled her up with a blanket, and in that moment Sunset couldn’t help but really look at her. Pinkie had lost so much weight, her cheeks were practically sunken in, dark rings under her eyes and the eyes themselves slightly clouded over when she could even keep them open. To see her cheerful and energetic friend reduced to this husk of herself made Sunset’s heart ache. “Listen, I spoke to my friend from Germany the other day, Isabella, the medical student? She says her professor is working on this new set of diagnostics tools and …”

“Sunset, stop,” Pinkie interrupted weakly, “we’ve been down this road so many times.”

“We wouldn’t have to get you to Germany or him here,” Sunset said in what was almost a plea, “if we could just send him over a copy of your latest MRI scans and blood work, maybe …”

“Sunset, just stop it. It feels like I’ve seen every doctor from here to the East coast, and you girls almost killed yourselves forcing open the portal to get Mage Meadowbrook here for a magic consultation. None of them could even say what’s wrong with me. The unanimous consent is that this either goes away on its own, … or it doesn’t. It’s time to let it rest.”

“I can’t do that,” Sunset said with tears in her eyes, “if I stop, that feels like giving up.”

“It’s not giving up. It’s just accepting things as they are right now. There’s always hope,” Pinkie said, “some days I feel better than others. Even if we don’t know, it might get better on its own eventually. The worst thing is that I’m bored out of my mind here. Please, tell me some news about you and the girls, Sunset. Did you find a spot for your practical semester yet?”

“Yeah,” Sunset replied, “Twilight talked to Cadence for me, and I can do it at Crystal Prep.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Pinkie Pie replied, closing her eyes and enjoying the warm sunlight hitting her face. “I’m so glad you and Twilight made up. How are the others doing?”

“Rarity and AJ are doing well. Busy, running their businesses. Rainbow is well on her way to winning the MVP trophy for the university team this season, and Fluttershy seems to be doing well now that she’s started vet school proper.” Sunset trailed off and bowed her head while kneeling in front of Pinkie’s wheelchair, tears forming in her eyes. “Pinkie, I can’t do this. I know this is what you need right now, just some light-hearted distraction. But I can’t pretend that everything is okay, because I can’t help but feel like this is all my fault.”

Pinkie didn’t reply.

“I know you don’t blame me, but I blame myself. Everything that’s happening to you, it all started after that dreadful night in Maretime Bay. It has to be connected, and it’s all my fault. I brought Equestrian magic to this world and let it run rampant, and then I put all of you in danger trying to clean up my mess while we all pretended that we were invincible, but we should have known better, I should have known better. I’m the only one who really understood the dangers, and I thought I could keep you safe, but I couldn’t, and now …”

Pinkie remained silent.

“I can’t just stop and pretend everything is going to be okay, because this is my fault. I have to find a way to make you better. I have to. I’m so sorry that this happened to you, Pinkie Pie, so please hang on until I find the solution, please.”

Once again, there was no response from Pinkie Pie to Sunset pouring her heart out, and she looked up tearfully.

Pinkie’s lips were slightly parted as her head had slumped to the side onto her shoulder, her eyes closed as if in a blissful sleep.

“Pinkie?” Sunset asked, reaching a hand up to her friend’s face. “Pinkie Pie!?” Her second call was slightly more alarmed as she put her hands on Pinkie’s shoulders to slightly shake them. She didn’t stir, and that’s when Sunset noticed that her chest wasn’t moving with her breath. “PINKIE PIE!” As her eyes began to fill with tears, Sunset screamed in the direction of the open door: “HELP! SOMEONE! PLEASE HELP!!! MY FRIEND NEEDS A DOCTOR!!!”

Present day …

Beep-Beep! Beep-Beep! Beep-Beep!

Sunset’s eyes opened slowly, and she found them and her cheeks wet with tears, which was nothing to say about the pillow which was soaked through. With a groan, she turned in her bed and slammed her fist down on the annoying alarm clock, laying there silent for a few more minutes until the tears had dried.

Exhausted from her recurring nightmare, she climbed out of bed and put on the water heater to make herself some quick instant coffee. Passing a half-packed suitcase, she crossed her apartment to the far wall which could be described as looking like someone had raided the set of CSI if you were feeling generous, or a conspiracy theorist’s basement if you weren’t.

All over the wall were post-it notes, photos, newspaper clippings of strange events over the last three years, held up with thumbtacks and red string, all connecting back to two central items in the middle, one reading Maretime Bay incident and the other Pinkie Pie.

Sunset lightly touched a photograph of her late friend while she took a sip of her coffee, a photo taken before Opaline had unleashed hell on Maretime Bay, showing a Pinkie Pie with healthy skin and a huge smile on her face.

“I’ll find them, Pinkie Pie. I swear,” she said, a promise she’d renewed every single day since she’d learned the truth during the Friendship Games, “I won’t let what happened to you happen to anybody else.”

Unfortunately, she hadn’t made a lot of progress in her search over those few weeks since she’d first made that promise. Wherever the other two entities that had escaped alongside Opaline were, they hadn’t made a big splash. Sunset’s eyes drifted over towards the calendar on the wall which marked today as the start of the week-long Camp Everfree trip.

I’ll find them, but I can’t let myself go down that same road I went down two years ago. There are people who depend on me for other things, and maybe it’ll do me good to get out of my own head for a few days and focus on my students.

Having already turned halfway, she returned and pulled Pinkie Pie’s picture off the wall, placing it reverently into the leather case that held the geode pendants and stowing that safely away into an inside pocket of her suitcase before resuming packing the rest of the normal necessities.

Author's Note

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