“Good morning, Minuette.”

Colgate opened her eyes and fixed the nurse with her best attempt at a glare.

“You gave us a scare last night.”

“I did?”

The nurse just smiled and went to check Colgate’s vitals.

“Oh, right. The suicide attempt.”

A quick, but concerned, glance upwards.

“Don’t worry, I’m over it. Last night was just a case of the blues.”

“Must be some blues. In and out, nice and deep. You got it.”

“You could say that.” As her mind cleared of sleep, she recognized a sensation at the base of her horn. “You’ve locked my magic.”

“It’s been locked since you got here, sweetie.”

Colgate looked at the nurse, who looked back and, seeing something in Colgate’s eyes, finished her vitals quickly. When she was a safe few steps away, the courage reentered her voice, still leaving room for a bland kindness that Colgate recognized. She used to use it on her own patients all the time. “Do you know where you are?”

“Not specifically. Hospital, though.”

She smiled. “You’re in the Solar Maiden Detoxification Center.”

“Detox?” In the back of her mind, she could imagine Rouge’s indignation at the thought. She wanted to continue, but couldn’t think of anything to say. Instead, she repeated the one word.

“We’re across from the premier rehabilitation center in Lower Canterlot, where you’ll be going tomorrow. We have—”

“Thanks for the sales pitch, but I’m fine.” She looked down at her foreleg and saw a bandage where the IV needle had been. “Well, that’s an improvement, anyway.”

“There’s someone outside who would like to talk to you, Minuette.”

“It’s Colgate. It’s always been Colgate.” She frowned. “Dammit,” she added.

“My apologies, Colgate. Can he come in?”

“He. So not Fleur. Someone new.” “Why?”

“Just one of our counselors. He’d like to meet you.”

“Covert Datura here to torture me,” she thought quickly, her eyes flying around the room. She wanted to find an excuse not to see the new pony, but could not think of one. “Send him in.”

The nurse smiled again and gave a little bow, and Colgate stared after her, suddenly frightened of the bow’s unknown significance. When the crimson stallion with the cream mane entered, Colgate hardly noticed him until he pulled up a chair.

“Good morning, Colgate. You prefer Colgate, that’s right?”

She looked at him. He was a heavy unicorn with soft, blue gray eyes and a ruddy, coltish smile, his short mane covering the base of his horn in designed shagginess. He was clearly younger than she.

“My name’s Drift Dive, I’m one of the counselors over at rehab. They told you you’d be heading there tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

He nodded, and she felt an immediate prickle of disgust—as if already being told she was to move were an accomplishment that deserved his recognition. “How are you feeling today?”

“He already knows how I’m feeling. They told him everything.” “It’s freezing in here.”

He rose, checked the thermostat. “Well, let’s turn it up a few degrees, hm? Seventy-eight comfy?”

“More.”

“Eighty?”

“Fine, fine.” She didn’t take her eyes off him as he returned to his chair. She thought she would feel safer with him on the other side of the room, but it was not so. Sitting closer, she could at least gauge his reactions more clearly.

His soft voice almost lilted as he leaned in, concern filling his face. “What happened last night?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“In the bathroom? One of the RNs found you sleeping soundly with your head in the sink.” He smiled. “Must not have been very comfortable.”

“Oh, that.” She matched his smile, hating him and herself equally. “I was trying to drown myself.”

He nodded. “And… you appear to be feeling better now?”

“Oh, much. It was a passing fancy.”

“We don’t believe suicide attempts are mere ‘passing fancies’, Colgate.”

“So what sort of issue was mine pointing to, then?” She straightened in her seat, ignoring the soft dizziness that pressed in on her head. “Depression, maybe? Blind rage that I could take out on no one but myself? I personally believe I was enchanted by someone who wants me gone, and my actions were not my own that night. But that’s me.”

He sighed, smiled, dipping his eyes for a second in thought. “This is a serious topic.”

“Am I not being serious?”

“You don’t sound it.”

“Forgive me, Drift Dive. I can call you that, right? What part of my suggestions seemed least serious to you? The depression, the anger, or the magic?”

“The first step in recovery is admitting that you need help, Colgate. That’s what I’m here for.”

“Then admit you need help,” Colgate said flatly.

He smiled. “Not me, my dear. You.”

“I was put here. I have no need of your help.”

“Why do you feel that?” His eyebrows contracted, and he looked at her as if he were truly curious.

“I don’t feel that way, I know it. You’re not tripping me up on rhetoric, doc.”

“Hm, I’m no doctor, ma’am.”

“Now it’s ma’am?”

“If you’d prefer—”

“Never mind, sir, formality is fine with me.” She grinned, seeing his ploy. He wanted to keep her talking about unimportant topics so she might slip up on something more consequential. “That’s very clever.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I was left here against my will. I assume I’m not imprisoned? I can walk out at any time?” She rose.

“Of course, if you feel it would be good for you.”

“I feel it.” She stopped halfway to the door. “This might be what they want. He’s hardly said anything, and I’m running away.” She looked at him, and he met her eyes, his own wide and soulful. He reminded her of sorrow, and she was impressed at how well he conveyed it. “It must be a mind game. They want me to run away.”

“Why do you feel it, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“There. He pushed too hard. So it is a mind game.” “You know what, doc? I think I’m having a change of heart.” She smiled smugly at him, imagining she could see the withering triumph in his face as he realized his plan to flush her out was about to fail. “I need that help after all.” She settled back into bed, halfheartedly reached for the IV needle to replace it in her foreleg before remembering it was gone.

“Well, I’m glad to hear it. See? Congratulations, Colgate, you’ve just—”

“Back to familiarity?”

“You’ve just taken what many consider to be the hardest step in the recovery process.”

Drift Dive was continuing, but Colgate paid him no attention; she was searching her memory for her short time in therapy in Canterlot, feigning contrition for her actions in Ponyville. She had told the therapist then that she had depression, but hadn’t had much time to practice pretending it.

“How do you feel about being here?”

“Sad, Cole. You feel sad.” “To be honest, I… sometimes wonder what the point of it all is.”

Across the field, a two hundred-acre pillow of rolling, grassy hillocks and straight, clean pathways, and a wide duck pond adjunct, the Lunar Maiden Rehabilitation Center was the hopeful destination of all those who made it to its detox twin in time.

The counselors’ chamber was a soundproof boardroom on the north side of the facility, its door facing the main corridor which afforded them a view of the common area and all those within. There, Drift Dive was having his weekly meeting with the other counselors.

“How’s everypony doing?” Her name was Cyclone, an overweight earth pony with thinning hair, false teeth, and a smoker’s voice. She made eye contact with each pony, her beady, golden eyes the only shows of the tough, jovial soul inside the battered, doughy body.

“Same old over here,” said Almond Butter, a tired-looking, arthritic unicorn in large, half moon glasses and a wrinkled, beige dress. She gestured as she spoke, one hoof limply waving up and down. “Steady progress with Poppy Seed.”

“Oh, I feel so sorry for him,” a young, dark-coated mare said. Her mane was tied in a single, floor-length whip, her cutie mark a small, orange flame. Her voice was eager and motherly, and her teeth gleamed against her fur. She fluffed her wings once and continued. “He’s been doing so good lately, though. No shouting all month.” Her name was Soft Spirit.

“He could be withdrawing, though,” Drift Dive said.

“I know, he might be, but I don’t think so.”

The door opened, and in entered the fifth and final counselor, a golden-maned unicorn with an old facial scar and bags under her eyes. She took a seat and, after a second with her face in her hooves, addressed the others. “What’s new?”

“Just talking about Poppy Seed,” Drift Dive said.

“Ah, yes, yes.” She looked at the clock. “Progress, I heard? I haven’t talked to him in a while.”

“Progress, but not much,” Almond Butter said.

“How’s it going with Silver Platter, Nugget?” Drift Dive asked.

“Well,” the unicorn sighed, “we’ve signed another behavior contract, so we’ll see. She says she’s committed to this one, admits she wasn’t really on board with last week’s. She thought it was too strict, but didn’t say so.”

“Still not speaking her mind,” Almond Butter said, shaking her head. “When will they learn?”

“She’s the one whose husband, uh…” Cyclone lowered her voice and gestured with her hooves, miming a strangulation motion. “Choked her, right?”

“Yeah, that’s her,” Soft Spirit said, her big eyes wide open and on Nugget. “You okay? Long day?”

“Long week,” Nugget said.

“Drift Dive got himself a new friend,” Cyclone said, reaching over to pat him on the back. “Went all the way over to detox to meet her, and we know what that means.”

“Someone special,” Soft Spirit said, her voice a gentle tease. “What’s her name?”

“She just came in a couple days ago,” Drift Dive said. “Minuette Colgate, prefers just Colgate.”

“She’s that blue unicorn her friend warned us about,” Almond Butter said, lifting her glasses briefly in an expression of shock. She looked at Soft Spirit. “Right?”

Soft Spirit shrugged. “I haven’t heard about her.”

“It is her, I think so.”

“Yeah, yeah, that supermodel brought her in,” Cyclone said. “Yeeeeah, now I remember. Said she was crazy. Not, like, the Maiden crazy, but crazy crazy.”

“She’s bound to seem crazy at first,” Drift Dive said. “She’s still detoxing. She’ll be coming over tomorrow.” His voice was proud, and he sat up straighter. “I’m going to be her counselor. Dr. Step already told me.”

“Congratulations, Drift Dive,” Soft Spirit said. “That’s excellent.”

“What was her poison?” Nugget asked, the first hint of interest entering her voice.

“Painkillers,” Drift Dive said. “And I think a history of alcohol.”

“Oh, heck, Drift, I thought you were gonna hit us with something weird,” Cyclone said.

“Not that painkillers can’t completely wreck your system,” Almond Butter said.

“No, nothing like that,” Drift Dive said. “She seems okay, physically.”

“Physically,” Soft Spirit repeated.

“I’m not sure if she’s crazy, but there’s something off about her.”

“C’mon, give us the scoop,” Cyclone said, leaning forward as much as her bulk would allow.

“If I wasn’t told otherwise, I’d think she’s bipolar,” Drift Dive said. “We talked about depression this morning, but only after she calmed down. She started off pretty agitated.”

“Understandable,” Almond Butter said. “Is this her first time in rehab?”

“Oh, I’m gonna love meeting this mare,” Cyclone said. “Let me at her, I’ll get her talking.”

“Agitated, or angry?” Nugget asked, looking back at the clock.

“Just agitated,” Drift Dive said.

“If he meant angry, he’d have said so,” Almond Butter said, wincing as she turned her head to look at him.

“Did her friend warn you about anything specific?” Soft Spirit asked.

“Apparently, she was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder at a young age, took antipsychotics all through college and adulthood, and only recently went off them. It’s been one train wreck after another since,” Drift Dive said.

“Antisocial personality disorder,” Nugget said. “How do you like that?”

“Nope, never mind, I don’t wanna meet this pony,” Cyclone said, raising her hooves in surrender.

“So we don’t know if she’s actually depressed. She could be faking it for some reason.”

“Depression often comes along for the ride with this type of thing,” Almond Butter said.

“But I’m saying we can’t assume that here.”

“That’s terrible,” Soft Spirit said.

“I’ll be honest, she didn’t seem that depressed,” Drift Dive said. “She said all the right things, but I’m not sure I buy it myself.”

“She’s acting?” Cyclone asked.

“I think so. Why, I don’t know.”

“Some impossible reason in her head,” Nugget said. “Girls, the last thing we need in this facility is a psychopath. I know you won’t hear of it, Spirit, but I say we tell them to dismiss her right now. Save ourselves a lot of trouble.”

“We can’t just turn her out because of what her friend said,” Almond Butter said.

“That’s bull,” Cyclone said, frowning at Nugget. “She might be psycho, she might not be, it’s our job to find out the truth, and then help her with it. If she is, we can send her to psych.”

“If she’s looking for help, but I guarantee you she won’t be,” Nugget said. “Fifty percent chance she runs away in a couple days, fifty percent she stays and causes a whole heap of trouble. Either way, that’s bad. I keep saying, we need to hold on to our patients to show that we’re a credible, viable center. We can’t keep losing ponies.”

Soft Spirit was rolling her eyes dramatically, lolling her head back and forth.

“We have to think of the business too,” Nugget continued, staring intently at Drift Dive. “What’s good for us is good for the patients.”

“And vice-versa,” Almond Butter said. “That’s what I’m trying to say. We can’t just toss her out out of fear that she might do something.”

“The business won’t survive if we close our doors to certain patients,” Cyclone said.

“It won’t survive if we keep losing ponies,” Nugget said.

“But that’s a crappy thing to do,” Soft Spirit said. “These ponies need us, especially ones like Colgate.”

“Need, sure, but she’s not gonna want it.”

Her dinner was served on a plastic tray, a salad with no dressing, a wedge of cheese, and a roll of soft bread, with a cup of apple juice. It had to be food that anypony could eat with just their mouths; it wasn’t the cutlery that was against regulations, but the hoof straps that were required to use it. She was in her room, there being no common area in her facility. A different nurse from the morning’s had delivered her food and stayed a bit to chat.

“How are you feeling?”

Colgate was famished, but didn’t look at her food. She was trying to remember when she had last eaten, and found that she could not.

“Top of the world,” Colgate finally said, biting into her cheese.

“I’m happy to hear it. Do you, um, have any questions about tomorrow? Did the doctor already go over all that with you?”

“No, he didn’t,” Colgate lied.

“Well, there’s just a little discharge paperwork, and then one of our RNs will walk you over to rehab, where you can check yourself in and start on the road to recovery.”

“Can’t wait.” She sipped her juice through a bendy straw.

“You really are more fortunate than a lot of ponies who come here,” the nurse said at length. “You weren’t particularly far gone.”

“Good for me. Why don’t you go and help them, then? Since they’re all so much worse off.”

The nurse straightened. “Oh.”

“Thanks for dinner.”

The two sat together, one eating ponderously, the other staring without shock or hurt. Finally, the nurse rose. “Have a good evening, Colgate.”

Colgate nodded, watched the door close. She tipped her apple juice over and let it spill on the tile floor. It spread slowly under the soft lights, pooling around the bedstand’s legs, stopping before it could creep under the door. She ate her salad, wishing she hadn’t wasted her drink.

A middle-aged unicorn in floral scrubs and a pen holding her bun together walked Colgate out of the Solar Maiden at eight in the morning. She said nothing in response to the front office staff who wished her good luck in rehab, not out of malice, simply preoccupation. The sky was overcast, but no pegasi flitted about to move the clouds, and the air was still and quiet as they crossed the field on a hard, beige walkway.

Marigolds and daffodils bloomed in uneven garden shapes on both sides of the path, clear of trees and larger shrubberies. They walked silently past a duck pond, a pair of elderly stallions sitting side by side at its edge, heads leaned in together in soft discussion. She could hear no traffic in the distance.

The Lunar Maiden was larger, a pale blue L with wide, clean windows and rustic, wooden benches sitting in pairs along the side Colgate faced. Brown and white umbrellas, lowered, sprouted from amongst patches of flowers and grass in small peninsulas of earth. They cut through the grass on a mild slope and stopped for a moment on a brick circle, marble benches outlining it and the sundial at its center. The pony explained that the entire facility, its grounds, and the furnishings had been donated by Princess Celestia near the turn of the century. The exact date of the donation had been engraved on the sundial’s rim, and Colgate looked at it to appear interested.

Glass and wood doors swung open to a marble and tile vestibule, where a tiny earth pony sat in front of a tall, black wall, a skin of water sliding down to produce soft, white noise. She checked in Colgate with a genuine smile on her freckled face and led her around the facility, starting with the common area on the other side of the fountain.

An empty fireplace presided over the wood-walled room, its floor-to-ceiling windows affording the lowered light from outside space to fill a tableau of books, puzzles, magazines, and other activities on tables and shelves. A few ponies looked at Colgate, one smiled. Behind, the black fountain’s other side was engraved with the Lunar Maiden’s mission statement.

The receptionist walked Colgate down a wide, tile corridor to the dining area, where a few late risers were taking their breakfasts still. Hissing water and clattering plates moved from within the kitchen behind a pair of bat wing doors to one side, a sign saying “Employee entrance only, please” hanging on the wall.

“So we’re just gonna have you over here,” the receptionist said, leading Colgate back to a room just off the common area. Her name was already on the tiny sign under the door’s number. Inside, unlike the detox facility, the bed looked more like it belonged in a house than a hospital. On the far side, there was a glass patio door, locked, and Colgate could see the pond beyond it over a short, stone rail. Two potted ferns flanked the door. Above her bed, there hung a still life of a basket of pears and plums, and across, next to the TV cabinet, a scene of glassy waves over a windswept beach. The TV was off, and there was a VCR underneath it, but no cabinets for cassette storage.

Behind a curtain, there was the bathroom, fully furnished with toilet, shower, and bathtub. Colgate tested the sink and looked in the mirror, seeing, again, no cabinets or drawers.

“Feel free to spend some time in here, get settled in, or you can go out into the common area if you want too. Common hours are six a.m. to eight p.m. If you want to go outside, just be sure to tell one of us first.” She smiled up at Colgate, who took her eyes off the bed to return a weak grin.

“It’s wonderful, thank you.”

“I’m so happy you could join us, Colgate,” the receptionist said, shaking her hoof. “Do you have any questions before I go?”

“No questions.” She looked back at the bed.

“Okay, well, it’s good to have you. I’ll be up front if you need anything.”

She left, leaving the door ajar, and Colgate paced around her new bed. She was still hungry, though she had eaten before heading over, and her head felt fuzzy. She wanted to act, to move, to do something to assert herself over the new environment, but no ideas were forthcoming, and even that emptiness stirred only a suggestion of frustration in her mind. It was the feeling of bereft powerlessness, and she knew it well.

She lay back on the bed and tried to think, staring at the ceiling. For the first time, she realized, she had truly nothing to do. When she was young, she went to school; after that, the long, winding road from medical school to internship to her professional life; after that, the Datura; after that, keeping herself and Rouge afloat as the world seemed to constrict all around them. Finally, in the space of only a few days, she had lost even that, and had only a bed, a patio, and a TV to fill the vacuum.

It was the start of a new day, and she was suddenly finding herself the only occupant of an empty life.

Over a jigsaw puzzle, she only distractedly fitting pieces together and he not touching them, Colgate stared back at a rail-thin, lanky unicorn with a crosstie tangle of yellow teeth, a ratty mane and a poor attempt at a moustache. He shook and bobbed his head up and down when he spoke, which he only did after considerable pauses, as if the act were too strenuous to do without premeditation. He had no cutie mark; where it should have been, instead, the fur was sere and white, a pair of ugly blotches on his burgundy coat. She had asked about them, but he only fidgeted and said that they were gone. She pressed, but he only mumbled lower and lower, until finally looking down, then up at her, as if waiting for her to stand up first, or select a new conversation topic. He looked at her the same way Rouge sometimes would.

“Afternoon, Flame,” a fat earth pony said, swaying over to their table. She smiled at the nervous unicorn across from Colgate, then at Colgate herself. “Hi! Don’t think we’ve been introduced yet. My name’s Cyclone, I’m one of the counselors here.”

Colgate appraised her as they shook hooves. A large, polka-dotted dress made her look like a walking circus tent, and her mane was draped over her neck awkwardly, hanging over rolls of skin and making it look like her head had never been properly attached. Her smile revealed a neat row of perfect teeth filling in the space of what Colgate assumed was, at one time, a jack o’ lantern’s grin.

“How ya doing?” Cyclone asked. “How d’you like us so far?”

She could see the other unicorn edging out of his seat. “It’s very peaceful. I like what you’ve done with the place.”

“That’s good. I like to think we do a good job here, making everything nice. Some of our patients like to help us decorate. Aw, especially around the holidays, if you’re still here, you’re gonna get to see some really pretty decoration. We get a Hearth’s Warming tree in the corner there, all the tinsel and ornaments, we do a present exchange, everyone loves it.”

“Sounds like a chose a good time to hit rock bottom,” Colgate said.

Cyclone laughed. “Right? ‘If I’m gonna need help, then dang it, at least I’m gonna need help during the good parts of the year’.” She laughed again. “I don’t think I got your name.”

“Colgate. Painkillers.”

A look passed momentarily over Cyclone’s face, and Colgate’s guard was immediately up. “Ooooh, Colgate. Yeah! Drift Dive went and said hi yesterday.”

“He said he was my counselor.”

“Oh, he is, at least right now, but anyone can talk to anyone. We’re awesome like that.”

“I have a question,” Colgate said. She glanced down at her puzzle, her interest in it gone, like the strange stallion.

“Shoot.”

“What’s with that guy’s cutie marks? He wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“Ah, uhhhh, yeah.” Cyclone lowered her voice. “We try not to ask him too many questions about his past. He’s really shy, doesn’t deal with it well.”

“But what about his marks?”

Cyclone frowned, thought. “I can’t speak for him personally, ‘cause I don’t know his story, but you see it a lot in this business. Sometimes ponies don’t want others to know what their special talents once were, or don’t want to be reminded themselves. It’s like a way to break away from an old, unwanted identity, you know?”

“Huh.”

“Hey, Colgate, I don’t wanna offend you or anything, but I’ve got a little advice. I’ve been working here for ten years now, so I know a thing or two about the kinds of ponies who walk through these doors.”

“The kinds of ponies like me.”

“Well, yeah, okay. They don’t really like it when someone just up and asks them about their lives, you know? We’re all here for a reason, and those reasons can be painful to share.”

Colgate looked at her face, saw veiled concern. “For me? How much does she know?” “I’m used to questions about my past.” “I’m sure you are,” she imagined Cyclone thought.

“But some ponies aren’t,” Cyclone said. “You know how you have your personal space, like the physical circle you don’t want people getting in, getting too close? Think of it like that, except it’s for emotional things, instead of physical. You know what I mean? I don’t know if I made any sense.” She chuckled.

“He’s afraid of revealing a secret.” She nodded. “Of course.”

“Right, in a way. Just be careful, is all we ask. Respect, and be respected.”

Colgate smiled and turned back to her puzzle, and Cyclone left her.

In the corridor near the nurses’ station, Cyclone stopped Drift Dive. “I just met your new friend. She’s really something, Drift.”

“Impressions?”

“She’s observant and guarded. I don’t think I made a very good impression on her.”

“What did she say?”

“Not much. Asked about Flame’s cutie marks. She’s weird, I tell ya.”

“Any danger?”

“I didn’t see any. I think she’s trying to keep a low profile until she feels comfortable here.”

“Hmmm.” Drift Dive greeted a passing patient, who waved back and scurried away. “I’ll go say hello this evening, and we’ll see what happens.”

Colgate was back in bed, watching TV, trying to find a channel that didn’t remind her of Rouge. They had seen so much daytime TV, it seemed a futile cause, but trying was better than nothing.

Every time hooves came close outside her door, she imagined them belonging to Cyclone, returning for a second attack on her character, this time in her room, the safest place she had.

She had been unbalanced, and who could blame her? Since arriving in the facility, she had been utterly without explanation as to her whereabouts or the cause of her new imprisonment. There was no doubt in her mind that Cyclone, and maybe all of them, belonged to the Datura, but her purpose was unclear. Information extraction—Colgate’s role in the destruction of the watchpoint, or of the confluence of confusion and fear around one city block—or just to torture her as recompense for trouble inadvertently caused. Colgate didn’t know just which.

The pair of conclusions, though, were not sufficient. She wanted to write them off, tell herself she would see in time what the Datura’s intentions were, but it felt wrong whenever she ran it through her overworked mind. There was some other conclusion yet to be drawn, but, though she had been trying since the morning to reach it, it eluded her. Knowing this, she again asked herself: who could blame her for not being at the top of her game that morning.

Her comment to Cyclone had been foolish. She knew about personal space, about privacy, about ponies’ needs for security in the eyes of others, but she had made herself seem an idiot. “They’re counselors, remember. They know how to treat ponies like you.”

“No, they’re just pretending. The fat one, at least. It’s entrapment.”

Someone knocked at her door, and she jumped. It opened before she could bid the pony enter.

Drift Dive, his crimson coat a deep russet in the dim lamplight, smiled heartily. “Colgate, how are you?”

“Can’t complain.” She smiled back and settled back on the bed, hating the rumpled sheets that so clearly indicated her earlier unrest.

“You haven’t been out and about much today. Just getting the lay of the land, I take it?”

“I’m not feeling well.” A partial lie; she was accustomed to feeling worse.

“What’s wrong?” He looked at her curiously, and she realized then that she was caught. An hour earlier, she had told a nurse that she was feeling perfectly fine.

Staring back at him, she could imagine his thoughts. “Gotcha, Cole. Which lie is it? Feeling fine, or feeling bad?”

“It is quite stuffy in here,” Drift Dive said, going for the curtains. “Mind if I let some light in?”

“Get away from that window,” she thought slowly, but he took her silence as assent, and let sunlight spill into the bedroom.

“You might be surprised how much good natural light can do a pony.”

“Are we letting my slip-up go? He’s probably waiting for the right time to spring it on me.” “I’ve heard it can be nice, yes.” She smiled. “I love the view.”

“Each room has a slightly different view of the park, or the lake. It might look like a regular old field to most, but, through so many windows, it really does take on a life of its own.” He breathed in, stalling for time, she imagined. “It’s like a hundred ponies painted the same picture from a slightly different vantage.” He chuckled. “My apologies. Er, shall we begin?”

“Begin what?” “Why, tormenting you,” she imagined him thinking, the eager thought matching his kindly smile too well.

“Calm, Cole. Let him make the first move.”

“Our session.” He cleared his throat. “Let’s start with some introductions. I’ll go first.”

She nodded, barely listening. Her mind was racing to invent an origin story for herself, but she could get no further than a false name. Each time she tried to imagine what she might have been doing in Canterlot, her thoughts circled back in on themselves, remembering Rouge and Fancy Pants, wondering what other treachery she was to soon face. She needed to find out whether Drift Dive knew what he was doing, or was just a pawn for someone else, but couldn’t think of how to do it.

“And that’s how I found my passion for helping ponies. I…” He leaned in, pressed his hooves together, and she watched imperiously from her bed. “It’s always kind of difficult for me to tell that story, but I value honesty and open dialogue, so I think it’s important to get everything out on the table nice and early.”

“Of course,” Colgate said. She could sense his tension, his impatience for her to begin telling her own story, to begin showing weakness. “My name’s Colgate, as you know. I used to live in Manehattan before moving here on business.”

Drift Dive nodded along. “Omitting Ponyville. Interesting.” She poised for him to ask about it, but he did not.

“I guess I started really feeling depressed a couple years ago, at my job. My boss changed, and I, uh, my department didn’t handle the transition really well. I was laid off because the new boss didn’t understand how I did things. He thought I was making mistakes.”

“I understand,” Drift Dive said.

Colgate paused in thought. “What’s he waiting for? Am I to just talk myself into a corner?”

Drift Dive shifted his weight. “Come on, Cole, keep lying. Let’s see how much of the work you can do yourself.”

“Of course,” Colgate continued, determined to escape Drift Dive’s trap, determined to spite him, “you know the rest. I’m sure the mare who brought me in explained everything.”

“Not really, no,” Drift Dive said. “She told us to take care of you, and that’s about it.”

“An obvious lie, but he knows I’ll spot it.” “She’s a good mare. I trust her.”

Drift Dive blinked, inhaled through his nose before speaking. He was momentarily unbalanced, not expecting Colgate to refuse his bait, but no ideas came to her to take the advantage.

“Maybe half a year ago, I started with the pills. OTC stuff, nothing special.”

He nodded.

“…And things went out of control after that.” “Your move, Drift.”
“I’ll have to be gentle to get anything out of this one,” she thought he thought. She could see it behind his eyes, searching intensity that was so easily disguised as compassion. At the root of both, though, a talent for spotting suffering.

“How depressed are you feeling now?” he asked.

“As depressed as you like,” she thought, but feigned consideration for a minute. “It comes and goes. Earlier today, I was pretty low, but now I’m okay.”

“Are there any triggers that you’re aware of?”

“Now he searches for specifics.” Satisfied that she had him sufficiently distracted from the real her, she was able to speak more freely. “What’s a trigger?” She still needed time to formulate her answer, though.

“A trigger is a—”

“Is he the only Datura in here, or are they all sent to torment me? That Cyclone’s probably in on it; she and this one can do a classic good cop, bad cop thing. Might even be a few posing as patients, keeping tabs. Surely not all of them are, though. I’ll need to find the real patients.”

“—conversation topic, or a familiar sound, or something you see on the side of the street, or as complicated as a series of thoughts that build on each other. The eventual goal, though, is to replace these ‘unsafe stimuli’ with ‘safe stimuli,’ things that serve the same effective purpose as their predecessors, but don’t cause any harmful thoughts or feelings.”

“I think I get it. Any triggers for me, though? I can’t think of any.”

“Do you remember how you felt right before you started feeling depressed earlier today?”

“I remember thinking about my pills.” It was mostly true.

“Do they make you sad?”

“Not when I’m taking them,” she thought indignantly. “They didn’t really make me feel like anything.” The urge to oversimplify came to her, to make his job more laborious. “I don’t know what they were, I just took them. My friend told me they’d make me feel good, and they did.”

“Which friend is this?”

“You don’t know her.”

“Not the lovely mare who brought you in?”

He was trying to coax her into a trap, into naming her former Datura contacts. A spot of warmth spread inside her, a little joy at what was, to her, an easy advantage in the perilous conversation. “His name was Whipped Cream, he was one of my neighbors. I helped him with his schoolwork sometimes, and he introduced me to these… pills.”

“Study aides, Cole? You don’t seem the type,” she imagined him thinking. She sneered at him in response, as if to challenge him to question her claim. Instead, he said, “It’s an unfortunate truth, one out of every fifteen college students dabbles with drugs in their life, or worse.”

“This was more than dabbling.” She sighed, long and low, as she had once practiced in her home. A depressed sigh. “They made me feel… what’s the word? Numb, I guess. Like all my troubles just disappeared for all that time I was high.”

“Is it helpful for you to talk in such detail about your experience?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, genuinely surprised. He was being too direct, too attached to the story she was giving him. “Where’s his suspicion?”

“Do you find it… healthy, I guess, to talk about your pill taking experience in detail?” He looked her in the eyes, his own large and unflinching. “Or are you simply allowing yourself to remember your chains fondly?”

“I…” “C’mon, Cole, don’t let him trip you up.” The thought was in an imitation of Rouge’s voice, already beginning to fade from memory. “I don’t know.”

“Some liar you are,” she imagined Drift Dive thought, though he only continued his gaze into her eyes.

“I don’t know,” she repeated more firmly. “They just made me feel better. It’s no more complicated than—” She stopped herself.

“Who are you trying to convince of that, Cole?”

“So, sometimes, when I think about them, I do get a little depressed.” She broke eye contact, and, in that moment, knew she had lost the conversation.

“It’s quite common for depression to follow an addiction, or be wrapped up with one. Believe it or not, Colgate, you’re actually past the hardest part already. You know you have a problem.” He lowered his voice as he leaned in. “Some of the ponies here, they still don’t. They still deny, deny, deny. Sometimes, denial is the worst drug of them all, I say.”

“I’m not like that.” She was still addled from her mistake, and the pleasure that beamed through Drift Dive’s serious, concentrated expression made her want to be sick. There was nothing she could do to change it.

“So what would you like out of rehab, Colgate?”

“Nothing, you fat jailer. I want out.” She bowed her head, no good ideas springing to her lips. “I want help.” The generic response was the best she could muster.

He smiled, but she missed it. “And help you’ll find here, if you’re willing to accept it. Do you remember when I came in and opened the curtains for you? Maybe a little change to your environment would help alleviate some of this depression, hm?”

Forty-five minutes later, Drift Dive was gone, and Colgate lay back in her bed, mind on fire. His parting words had been “You might not believe it, but your depression isn’t as bad as a lot of the ponies I’ve seen here.” Then he smiled, gave her a wink, and left.

Not as bad. Not as bad. Those three words were shots from a pulse crystal, each one finding its way over her wall of falsehood and onto her exposed, frightened self. He knew; had known the whole time, more than likely, that her depression was all artifice. The entire conversation, the whole hour, he had followed along, pretended to agree, to understand, to want to help, and then, with those three little words, brought her crashing back to reality. “You are my prisoner, our prisoner, and we have as much time as we want with you. If not me, another.”

She had felt trapped earlier that morning. On the bed, alone, with the sun going down, the reality was finally sinking in. A whole day had passed with nothing to do except talk. She had no friends, no one who both knew where she was and cared to help her escape, and the following day would be just like the first, and forever after that.

She stared at the ceiling and did not cry, though she wanted to. She felt empty inside, as though her heart had been removed without her knowledge, replaced with nothing, and soon fell asleep with the TV on.

“You can’t be serious,” Nugget said, looking askance at Drift Dive. They were outside, both finished with their shifts, waiting for the bus.

“I know it’s not exactly on the straight and narrow, but I thought it’d be good for her.”

“Good? Good, for a depressed pony to hear how her depression isn’t as bad as others’?”

“I know, I know, invalidating her problem, I get it,” Drift Dive said. “Still, she seems like the type to benefit from a little… well, I hate to put it like this, but a little stark reality.”

Nugget grunted.

“And hers really doesn’t look that bad,” he added sheepishly.

“Whatever. Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it tomorrow.” She walked a distance into the street to see whether the bus was coming.

“She was quite open today, more than I was expecting.”

“Cyclone said she doesn’t trust her.”

“Well, I suppose that’s no surprise.”

“Do you?” She looked up at him, the sunset gleaming off her facial scar, even under the short fur. He had never asked about it.

“Trust her? So far, yes. She didn’t seem guarded to me, just a little confused, a little irritable. I’m going to talk to her again tomorrow.”

“You don’t have to talk to them every day, you know that.”

“I know.” He smiled, enjoying the warmth on his face. It was chilly in the facility.

Nugget shook her head. “You’ll burn yourself out if you make it too personal, Drift. It happened to Almond Butter, it can happen to you.”

“I like her, though. There’s nothing wrong with liking someone.”

Nugget widened her eyes speculatively. “Well—there it is! Well, good luck, that’s all I have to say.”

The bus pulled up, and the two got on, bound for the inner circles of Lower Canterlot, and their homes.

Colgate slept fitfully, and was awake for the nurse to pop her head into her room. After a brief exchange, in which she assured the pony she didn’t want for anything, she fell back asleep, wondering how many tiny visits she had missed. Disguised Daturas filled her dreams, persecuting her.

She took breakfast at seven in the morning, not tasting her bagel with cream cheese and orange juice. Across from her sat the same unicorn with the bad teeth, who refused to meet her eyes.

“Hey buddy,” a soft, high voice said as it sat next to her. A thin pegasus with a color scheme much like Colgate’s settled herself in the seat.

“Hi Sea Shine,” the strange unicorn said quietly. He was smiling, but still not looking up, his hooves turning over each other like weak fish in a pond.

“Hello, Flame,” she said. “How’s your book?”

“It’s good, it’s good.” He waited a while, thinking, and stole a glance at both mares. Colgate simply watched, fascinated. “It’s really good.”

“That’s good to hear.” She turned to Colgate. “How are you today?”

“Fine,” Colgate said. The pony’s voice, the way she sat, the way she looked intently at her for the single word, immediately aroused her suspicion. The pegasus’ simpering, maternal bearing was cloying in the morning. She was trying too hard to make Colgate think she was interested.

“What’s your name?”

“You work here?”

“Oh, no, no, sorry.” She laughed good-naturedly. “I’m just a patient, just one of the ponies. I’m Sea Shine.” She reached for Colgate’s hoof and shook it. “You’re a quiet one, aren’t you?”

Colgate just stared at her. It was early, and she wasn’t thinking straight. The despair from the night before, mixed with a restless sleep, mixed with hunger and what she assumed were withdrawal symptoms, was a potent combination. She didn’t know what she wanted to do, or even what she could do.

“I guess you can say I’m this place’s Element of Laughter; I try to be everpony’s friend. We’re all in this together, after all, so why not?” She shrugged at her own question.

Colgate pushed her bagel toward the unicorn, who shied away. “You got any kids, Sea Shine?”

“Two, yes, Beach Dreams and—”

“They’re better off without you.” She walked back to her room.

Staring at the TV, quietly hating the ponies performing on it, Colgate paid no heed to the hoofsteps in her room.

“What happened this morning?”

She looked at Drift Dive, finding on his face the emotion that she had failed to grasp from his voice alone.

“What did you say to Sea Shine?”

“I told her she could drop a few pounds, that’s all. Is this a counseling session?” She looked back at the TV, her eyes sore. She’d been watching it at close range for an hour.

“Well, no, not exactly. I’m just concerned, Colgate.”

She breathed in, trying to master her emotions, suddenly flooding. The simple truth was that she had failed to control herself earlier, and was paying the price. She had slipped up, said the wrong thing to the wrong pony, and so proven herself fallible. She could be broken under pressure, and the counselors now knew it.

“She was quite upset. She said you insulted her children.”

“Didn’t know she had kids,” Colgate said softly. She wanted to do something, but had no ideas. For a second, she imagined a bottle of pills in the bathroom, waiting for her, and her mood lifted.

“What happened?” he asked again.

“Probably projecting. I’m depressed, remember?” “Celestia, hold it together, Cole.” She looked at him again.

“What made you say what you did to her, whatever it was?”

“It just slipped out.”

“Slipped out?”

“That happens, when ponies talk. You say one thing and mean another.” She turned back to the TV and switched it off. In her mind’s eye, she could see herself sliding it off its stand to shatter on the floor, as she had at the hotel in Grass Graves.

“What did you mean to say?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“That’s what I said.” She glowered at him, and he averted his eyes. “Give me privacy. I’ll apologize to her later, on my terms.”

“There’s no need for anger, Colgate.”

“I’m not angry, I’m overjoyed. I have a hard time showing emotions.” She turned back to the TV, its blank face making her feel silly. She wanted to put her hoof through the black screen, and so refute the puerility it reflected.

“Some fresh air might do you good. Shall we take a walk?”

“No, but you should.”

“Colgate…”

“Leave me be. You’re making me sadder, reminding me of my problems. Look, I just admitted I have problems again. In your eyes, that makes me better.” “Cole, you need to cool it.” Rouge’s voice again, complete with its drunken slur and joking impression of what she considered a sagacious tone.

“Would you like me to leave?” Drift Dive asked.

“That’s what I’m asking, yes.” She was able to see him leave her room through the TV’s reflection.

Soft Spirit and Drift Dive were outside, walking around the duck pond, enjoying a cool breeze off the water and the birdsong that surrounded them in scattered pockets. Soft Spirit’s cloud house was a speck among specks miles away, floating over an empty field between a pair of strip malls.

“She’s still adjusting,” Soft Spirit said. “Give her time. Remember Empty House?”

“He was different,” Drift Dive said.

“Not so different, it sounds like. Maybe Colgate’s a little more sensitive, but they both have the same buried aggression. At least, it sounds like she does. What did she say to Sea Shine?”

“I don’t even know, they both told me something different. She’s holding out on me, that much I can tell. There’s something going on with her that she’s not letting us know.”

“Give her time,” Soft Spirit repeated. She paused, dangling her long strand of mane over her face, and expertly flipped it to her other side, where it lay across her back.

“You must wake up two hours early just to do your mane,” Drift Dive said, and she laughed.

“Are you gonna give her space, or try to figure out what’s bugging her?” she asked.

“I’m going to try once more tonight, once she’s calmed down a little.”

“Almond Butter told me she wants to say hello as well.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“No?”

“If she hated Cyclone, she’ll really hate Almond Butter. Any sort of direct question or address seems to put her on edge, I’m noticing.”

“Maybe she’s afraid of us. The lady who brought her in, did she say anything about an abusive past?”

“Nothing at all. She just said to take good care of her, and be careful with what we choose to believe.”

“I bet you she doesn’t trust us, or anyone. I bet you she’s terrified underneath all the meanness.”

“You may be right.” He left the path to stand at the pond’s edge. A goose skated by, leaving its glassy trail of ripples behind.

“Don’t take it personally, Drift. They don’t want to hurt us, no matter what they might say. Remember that.”

“I know, I know. It’s just an expression of hurt inside.”

“Exactly. It’s our job to help them express it better, and learn to deal with it.”

Drift Dive sighed.

In the shower, Colgate watched the spray of water hitting the glass door, refracting the soft light that came in from under the curtain like a blurry sheen of rainfall. The light inside her room matched the light outside, so that, when she had entered the shower, it seemed as though her whole world were bathed in perpetual gloaming. In the mirror, it had turned her magical suppression collar into a golden band, the rim of which she could just see if she looked up.

The water was freezing cold, and it distracted her from the muscle cramps, the shivers, and the ill feeling in her stomach from spending too long without any pills. Her concentration was scattered, her thinking sharp and impulsive, her memory dull and disordered. Everything that had happened, from her first meeting with Rouge to their unexpected—but not completely—separation, felt in her mind more like a movie of someone else’s life: something she had seen acted out on film, enjoyed, and then thought about from time to time as she lived out her own ordinary life.

She didn’t know what she had done to find herself where she was. In Manehattan, when she was younger, the Datura had been nothing like what she had recently seen. Ponies didn’t betray her, didn’t scheme against her, didn’t try to manipulate her and her friends. In those days, she had understood, if not felt, a sense of community, but there was none of that in Canterlot, or Ponyville before it.

One betrayal after another, she had eventually figured. Ordering her thoughts into one concise phrase had taken effort, but she had been momentarily proud as she read the scratchy, mouth-written words on her notepad. Writing, she was finding, did help.

She turned and put her head under the freezing shower, cooling her headache and her simmering fear. She was surrounded by enemies, that much was clear, but she still didn’t know how to respond.

When she had dried off and climbed into bed, shivering from the water instead of withdrawal, she took another look at the notepad. A word popped up in her mind, and she wrote it on a blank page: Institution. The Datura was an institution, which meant that its members operated as one. “Maybe I’m less outnumbered than I thought,” she thought.

“Colgate?”

She quickly flipped the notepad over at Drift Dive’s voice and told him to enter. He did so slowly and with a look of respectful deference on his face, which she did not trust.

“How are you?”

“I’m a ray of sunshine. What do you want?”

“Just came to check on you. You’ve been shutting yourself away a lot, and we wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“Then consider me checked on. Depression’s under control.”

“Now, Colgate,”

“Your presence makes me contemplate suicide, Drift Dive.” She looked him in the eyes as she said it, her own eyes hard and flat, like her voice.

“Oh. Um, is it right now?” He backed away into the door. “Do you feel safe right here, right now?”

“Of course I feel safe,” she said. “I’m not going to actually do anything. You’re free of any liability I might cause.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what is?”

He hesitated. “Your health, your happiness, your recovery. I want that for you.”

“Why are you so committed to your role?” She studied him, waiting for him to continue.

“Do you want me to go?” he eventually asked.

“Please do so.”

He nodded and attempted a smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” “As much time as I need, Cole. Remember that.”

She lay on her side to look out the darkening window, the flash of pleasure at shutting down his conversation fading with that same, powerful realization. “You are my prisoner, and I have as much time as I want with you. If not me, another.” She thought it in Drift Dive’s soft voice.

Where once there was a lightly forested valley, there was a lake. North of Applewood, south of Trottingham, one and a half miles west of the Whitewater Stampede, a band of unmoving water gleamed in the dying sunlight between two rocky ridges, furred with conifers and oaks. The water followed the valley’s curve before terminating at a sheer floor of unbroken rock that eventually became the foundation of the wide, empty meadows over which the angel had passed half a day ago. The rock floor had become an eerily singular floodplain, a silver coin at the tail of a silver snake, its head, Octavia and Pinkie were only just seeing as it moved into view, the battered bulk of Applewood’s possessed hydroelectric dam, tilted, motionless, sinking slowly into the ground under its own weight and swallowed by the millions of gallons of river water it had pulled with it when it finally left the city.

A gray mantle of storm clouds had built up before them, and they could see the steel mist of rainfall covering one side of the dam. The wind would carry it toward them, and Whooves said he expected it to start getting seriously wet in only a couple hours. Octavia didn’t care, but she was surprised that Pinkie didn’t either.

Silent, the two of them at the angel’s head, they watched the intruding lake beneath them. In places, drowned houses were visible next to sunken lines of fence or blurring dirt roads. Occasionally, a cart or a picnic table. Once, a pristine, white gazebo framed by what had once been a flower garden, and what looked like tinsel and streamers from an unknown celebration.

The dam itself had come to rest like a fallen leaf, tilting to one side against the sharp upturn of what eventually became the first of a chain of mountains far west of Trottingham. Black boreholes with trails of mud and lichen hanging from their bottoms dotted its face, the only features that were still recognizable. In the middle of the dam’s concrete superstructure was a fray-edged hole, a dark, skeletal pit of shattered concrete, twisted gantries, and dismembered machines, large enough to consume the angel and their friends’ airship if they flew into it. A trail of cogs, pistons, and unrecognizable wreckage preceded the dam’s final resting place under its water. There were no other signs of struggle or effort; to Octavia, it appeared Princess Luna, returning to Canterlot, had taken five or ten minutes of her time to punch a hole through the monster machine, doing, with a fraction of her power, what the ten of them had not been able to.

“It’s almost an insult, kinda, maybe, kinda,” Pinkie said.

Octavia looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“How we didn’t even get a second try to stop it. The princess just swooped in, blasted it, and went about her business. Like she didn’t have to wonder if we’d be able to beat it if we got another chance.”

“I think that we could have.”

“Do you?”

Octavia frowned and closed her eyes. She had slept that night, and her usual batch of nightmares was fresh in her mind.

“Do you really think we could’ve?”

“I must think that, Pinkie, because, if we cannot stop that, then what hope is there of stopping Discord?”

“We’ll have the Elements then, though. Silly.”

“I guess I do not think about them very much. Do they really make so large a difference?”

“Uh, yeah. They’re the most powerful magical thingies in all of Equestria.”

“That dam seemed quite powerful to me.”

“The Elements of Harmony are better. They… I dunno how they work. But they’re better.”

Lightning lit up the northern sky, and, after a second, thunder poured over them. A lightning bolt jumped down to touch a crane at the top of the dam.

“Neat.”

“I should not complain. It is defeated, one way or the other; that is what counts.”

“Don’t worry, sis.” Pinkie scooted closer and entwined her tail with Octavia’s. “Soon, we’ll only have two to go, and then it’ll be over. That’s, what, maybe a month? Two at the most? We’ll make it.”

Octavia forced a smile. “I wish I could be so cheerful.”

“Hm.”

A gust of wind blew the first suggestions of rain into their faces, and Octavia closed her eyes again.

“What made you want to come with us?” Octavia asked.

“I dunno. I just did.”

“It is not like you to separate from your friends for something like this.”

“It might be.”

“Not from what I have seen.”

“I dunno. It felt right. I figured I… I dunno, maybe it was time I started earning my keep around here.”

“You do not think that you do enough for us.”

“Yeah, I guess not,” Pinkie said in a small voice. “I’ve actually thought it for a little while.”

“I will not deny that I am happy to have you with me for this task, but I think that your sense of obligation is misplaced.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because not all of us should be doing what I do.”

“What you do?”

“What I do, running headlong into danger, or volunteering for impossible tasks. I am not trying to sound arrogant, or bitter; I do those things, have done for some time.”

“I guess so.”

“Do you remember when I got angry with all of you, a long time ago, because I did not believe we were doing enough as a team? I do not remember which town we were in, but it was shortly before collecting an Element.”

“I think I remember.”

“I was wrong to be angry, and to demand what I did of you. You all, I mean.”

Pinkie nodded and didn’t speak for a time. Rain lashed the dam and the water at its base, still a ways from where they flew. Trottingham was near, but not yet in sight.

“I don’t think you were wrong,” Pinkie said at last.

“No?”

“We do need to focus, or we did. We needed to get our heads in the game, to get serious about our jobs, and now we are. I am, at least.”

“Okay, in that way, yes, you are right, but I was wrong to demand it in the way that I did. What I am about to say is selfish, and, for that, I apologize; I will apologize to the others when we reconnect. At that time, I thought myself the only pony among you who was taking her task seriously. I wanted you all to be more…” She sighed. “To be more like me. It truly sounds despicable out loud.”

“I forgive you, sis. Ponies say mean things when they’re mad.”

“I now realize just how foolish that was of me. Roan showed me that.”

“Twilight?”

Octavia rested her chin on the insufficient railing on the angel’s side, the metal wire digging into her uncomfortably. “Seeing Twilight taking matters into her own hooves, embalming Applejack like that, dragging her half-finished corpse back to the hotel… it frightened me. Not in the same way that that dam frightened me, but in a quieter, more… I do not know how to describe it. It is something that I would have done, or tried to do, if Twilight were not there, and seeing it done by another bothered me more than I like to admit.”

“Why’s that?”

“I have no idea, but it made me realize that I was wrong to want you all to be like me. It would be a group of ponies jumping at the chance to prove themselves, to show how strong they were.”

“You’re saying we need ponies Fluttershy and Rarity too, not just the big, glorious heroes like you and Twilight.”

“I am no hero, but yes, that sounds right. Some of us are better suited to support and to help.”

“Do you think I’m one of those?”

“I do, yes. No offense, but you have never flourished under pressure.”

“None taken. I know I’m not the best when it comes to all the fighting and magic and stuff.”

“Not at fighting. You are a powerful mage, or have the ability to be, I remember.”

Pinkie’s tail fell away from Octavia’s, and she looked pensively out at the storm. Lightning flashed again on the dam’s husk.

“Have I said something wrong?”

“I don’t like magic,” Pinkie said. “In fact, maybe I hate it.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“You did not seem to dislike it months ago, when Twilight was helping you with that large sigil.”

“That was, well, that was duty. It was also easy.”

“It did not look easy.”

“It was. Octavia, can I tell you something?”

“Of course.”

“Something private.”

“All of this is private.” As if to prove her point, she looked behind, making sure Whooves was not within listening distance.

“You actually are right, it’s not like me to do something like this. I’ve always preferred doing easy things, and that spell was easy.”

“It is no crime to prefer doing easy things, as long as that preference does not overtake your sense of what is right.”

“Yeah, and I’ve done a pretty good job of balancing it out, so far, at least. I think.” She smiled at Octavia, who did not return it.

“Then what is there to worry about?”

“I guess nothing.”

“You have done your best in all things. You cast your spells, you were there for every fight.” She looked at the dam in time to see yet another lightning bolt hit it.

“We lost the fight with the dam. It trampled us.”

“Only one of us should bear any blame for that.”

Pinkie stiffened. “Um…”

“I am speaking of myself. Everypony did their best, but I could have given more.”

“You… passed out.”

“My own weakness. I should have fought smarter and not exhausted myself.” She looked at Pinkie, her eyes rimmed with red beyond the usual bloodshot obfuscation. “And for that, I am sorriest of all. I failed everyone, and Applewood is ruined because of it.”

“It’s… it’s okay, sis.”

“It will never be okay.” She sat down, then crouched to rest her head on the angel’s cold, metal back. “No apology I can make will undo what happened.”

Pinkie put a hoof on Octavia’s mane, stroking it softly. “I forgive you.”

“I do not deserve forgiveness. No mistake like this deserves it.”

“Good evening, ladies!” Whooves cried, emerging from a hatch nearby. “Octavia, my dear, I must show you something I’ve discovered about this brutish machine. Why… oh my, am I interrupting something?”

“Forgive me,” Octavia said, rising and swiping a hoof across her damp eyes. “I was just finishing a conversation with my sister. What do you need to show me?”

“Are you okay?”

“I am fine, thank you. What do you need to show me?”

“Here, land us by that dam, hm? Only for a few minutes. I think we could all benefit from a splash about in the water.”

“Yes, of course.” She wiped her eyes again. “Angel, land close to the dam. Keep us level when you do it.”

“Come, come,” Whooves said, going back down the hatch. He took Octavia down a narrow corridor and through a heavy, metal door on tight, recessed hinges. Inside was an arrangement of opaque portholes in an uneven line, supported by rough, metal stands. Octavia had been in the room only a few times, but had never found anything to do there.

“What is this?”

“Well, at first, I thought I’d found a congress of lamps, but there was no way to turn them on. Further inspection revealed a very vague shape in each one, and some experimentation and study revealed what I think is these circles’ purpose.”

“Which is?”

“I think they might be windows. Those spotlights on the outside, I think they’re the angel’s eyes.”

“I see nothing through these.”

“Yes, yes, so I thought as well, but I think you need to ask it to let you see through them.”

Octavia thought, wondering why a machine would need so many eyes. “Angel, let me see through your eyes.” She felt foolish saying it, until the glass circles flickered and turned transparent.

“Hotcha! The doctor solves yet another mystery!” Whooves cried with a jump of glee.

Octavia put her face to one, its fit around her skull nearly perfect. She could see the false river beneath them, growing closer as the angel descended. She could see the lush green of grass on the valley’s sides bowing out slightly at the fish-eye lens’ edge.

“Beautiful view, wot?” Whooves asked, his voice muffled from inside another eye.

“This will be helpful,” Octavia said.

“Come again?”

She pulled her face out of the socket. “I said that these will be helpful for the battle. We can stay inside and see what is happening.”

“Ah, and not have to worry about being pitched off the side, yes, I see.”

“Doctor, I appreciate you finding these. I doubt that I would have.”

“Nothing at all, my fair lady.”

They went back into the open, and the rain had reached them when they had landed. The angel rested by a shallow pond off the lake’s side, hemmed in by a low, rocky strand. They could see wilting treetops reaching up from the lake’s surface, and, farther out, entire acres of forest motionless underwater, appearing to sway as the rain pelted down. From above, streams of water slid down the dam’s face, over abutments, off edges of scaffolding and hazard-yellow gantry arms.

Whooves dove straight into the water, kicking up silt and drowned flowers as he frolicked. After a second, Pinkie joined him, making little noise save for an occasional giggle. Octavia, meanwhile, stepped in at the pond’s far side, where the water was calmer, and submerged herself to her muzzle. The cold water bit into her fur, greasy and unkempt with poor maintenance.

“Capital idea, doc!” Pinkie said.

“That’s what I’m here for!”

Octavia let the rest of her head sink, and she watched their bottom halves move about inside the tiny pool. Coming up for air, she pushed through the water, keeping toward the side so she might not have to attempt to swim, and came to the strand, only a couple feet thick, barring them from the rest of the tremendous lake.

She took care as she climbed out, only putting weight on a hoof when she had sufficiently tested the ground on which she rested it, and balanced on the band of mud and stone. She was not aware of the voices’ cessation as she crossed and reached a shallow slope.

Octavia had never learned how to swim, and vague warnings pushed one another around in her mind, that she should not be getting so close to such a large body of water. If she were to slip, or go too far out, or be pulled by an unpredictable current, she had no way to survive on her own. Still, she let herself take a few more steps out into the lake, putting the strand farther behind her.

Lowering herself once more, she put her eyes to the water’s surface, momentarily mirroring the leaden, occasionally flashing sky around her searching, purple irises. She rose for a second for a new breath and then submerged fully. Her slope remained even for a few feet before turning to a monocline, over whose edge she could see the group of trees protesting their slow, drowning decay amid the flanged teeth of collapsed rock from the cliff just beyond, its very top still above the water. Farther along, where the trees thinned, she could see a cottage, its windows reduced to dead eyes, its chimney smokeless, its roof sagging like an empty sack. A scattering of firewood lay across the path to the front door, which remained closed.

Then, rising back up, the dam’s massive corner loomed, a heavy, concrete page, a towering parapet from which its spare, lightning-scorched cranes kept watch. As her face parted from the water, she once again saw only the argentine sky, bejeweled in rain-speckled, epilimnial dignity. From her angle, there was little to suggest what ruin lay below.

“Thinking of taking a swim?” Whooves asked from behind.

“I cannot swim,” Octavia said. “So no.”

“It is beautiful in its way, though. Could be a national park in the future.”

“It is an affront to Equestria.” “And I am responsible.” She looked at Pinkie, who gave her an encouraging, but distracted, smile.

Colgate woke up with a start and reached for her notepad, intending to write down her dream; she woke feeling that it contained the key to her escape. As she wrote, though, it faded, and she was able to only produce the words “large entryway, smoking hole.” Meaningless, and she crumpled up the paper with a grunt of dismay.

Voices outside. Patients were coming and going to their breakfast, and she knew she would need to be among them eventually. She couldn’t hide in her room forever. She rose and took another cold shower first.

At the table, croissant with butter on her tray, she was able to take furtive looks at a large, tawny earth pony with shaking hooves and a tongue that constantly darted out between his lips. He gave her a courteous, rushed nod when he noticed her looking, and she looked no more.

“Today’s a new day,” someone said in the crowd, and Colgate knew it was directed at her, a taunt, a reminder that her captors had all the time in the world.

“Wait,” she said, not realizing she had spoken aloud. An idea coalesced quickly, and she stared down at her napkin, imagining writing it out.

“You okay, Colgate?” someone asked, and she got up and rushed for her room, for her notepad. She wrote down the few words she recalled or that made contextual sense to her, which, although useless on their own, were enough to focus her whirling thoughts. She emerged from the room with a clear plan.

The Datura had taken such great care to construct a realistic rehab facility for her, and the actors had been so true to their roles, it had seemed impossible that she should escape, but, writing her jumbled thoughts out, it had come to her. They were being too loyal to their disguises. She had only to check herself out and go elsewhere, and they would be powerless to stop her without dropping the façade.

She needed only to figure out where to go once she had left. Rouge’s house was out of the question; she had shown her true colors the day she left Colgate alone with the police. Living with her would be living with Fancy Pants’ eyepiece, in her mind.

Colgate went to the front of the facility and smiled at the receptionist, the same tiny pony who had checked her in days ago. The receptionist smiled her real smile as she saw Colgate again.

“Hi. Um, this is a little embarrassing, but is there any way for me to know who brought me in? I’d like to talk to her.”

Colgate got into Fleur dis Lee’s car without a look back at the facility. The supermodel wore an olive green cloak that showed only a triangle of her pale throat and chest, and, as soon as they were away, she removed her blue bouffant wig. Colgate just stared at her.

“I don’t want ponies to recognize me if I’m visiting the Maiden,” Fleur said casually. “Hence the disguise. How you feeling?”

“Top of the world.”

“Yeah?”

They drove in silence, Colgate watching the familiar sights of Lower Canterlot come back to her. She recognized many locations as they passed. “Yeah, that’s right,” she eventually said. “Never better.”

“Happy to hear it. Do you think you’ll be up for some work tomorrow? Rest today, of course.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Is that a problem?” Though Fleur’s voice remained the same, Colgate felt a change in the car’s energy.

“It’s just weird to be thinking about Datura stuff again, after rehab.”

“Understandable. I won’t ask you for any details about your time there.”

“That’s nice. I have a question for you, though.”

“Ask away, though I can’t promise to answer everything.” Glancing at Colgate, she added, “I’ll tell you as much as I can, how’s that sound?”

“We’ll see,” she thought. “Why did Fancy Pants try to kill us?”

Fleur nodded thoughtfully as they merged onto the freeway, heading up the mountain. “Do you want me to be brutally honest? It’s not going to be pleasant to hear.”

“Better this than rehab.”

“Hm. Well, Colgate, simply put, you and Rouge were being more trouble than you were worth. Monitoring you was becoming too resource-intensive, and too much of a headache. Plus, you were starting to become a threat to civilians, so Fancy did what had to be done.”

“But now I’m free. Of attempts on my life, anyway. How’s that?”

“When you figured out the trap, we thought you might have some potential still.”

“We?”

“Fancy and I.”

Colgate looked back at her wig, discarded in the back seat, suddenly nervous. The thought occurred that she may have simply stepped into an extension of the same prison she thought she was leaving.

“We’re married,” Fleur said with a smile. “You didn’t know that?”

“So I’m smart enough to keep alive,” Colgate said.

“You’re valuable enough to keep alive. There’s a difference.”

Colgate glared at her.

“How did you figure out you were in a trap, anyway? I’d love to know.”

“I dunno. I just did.”

“Yeah? What about that photographic memory you had a while ago?”

“What about it?” Colgate didn’t remember saying anything of the sort.

Fleur sighed, and they drove on.

Fleur’s house, one of two in Greater Canterlot, the second being the one she shared with Fancy Pants, was a two-story dollhouse with fat, turquoise trim on grass green walls, bay windows on both floors and a varnished, wooden porch. A weathervane creaked on the roof, and flowers bloomed in plantar boxes beneath each window, as well as in a small garden around the back.

Colgate looked down at the address painted on the curb before her mailbox, then across the street at the other houses’. “Your address doesn’t match the others.”

“Impressive,” Fleur said, unlocking the door with her magic. “Come.”

Colgate stepped into a messy home that belied the neatness outside. A sheet was thrown carelessly over a black sofa, its corners catawampus to the arms, a large, fluffy cat dozing in the middle. It looked up at Colgate sleepily for just a second.

“It’s one of five changeable addresses. I rotate them from time to time, just to make me that much harder to track. Same with the street name.”

“Do they have real-life counterparts?” Colgate went into the kitchen and grabbed an orange from the counter. The knife block had been emptied of its cutlery.

“Only one. It’s a trap house, abandoned.”

“Interesting.” She looked at the orange and, after a moment of thought, brought it up to her horn to try to pierce the skin.

“Let me,” Fleur said, simultaneously grabbing the orange and slipping Colgate’s magic suppression collar off. Deftly, she peeled the fruit with a narrow beam of magic. “Here.”

Colgate nodded to the knife block. “Just in case my head wasn’t all together?”

“I would understand if you were angry with me, and I’d rather we keep any hostilities quite in the verbal category.”

“How am I to know you won’t pull something on me when I fall asleep?” Colgate asked, looking into her orange before biting off a slice. “How do I know I’m actually worth keeping alive for you?”

“Because I need you for an assignment tomorrow, and maybe for a lot of assignments in the future. Here, did you see the TV? I heard you enjoyed relaxing in front of one.”

Colgate glared at the large television on its polished, wooden stand. “I’d rather not for now.”

“Suit yourself. Hey, watch it, I don’t want any drips on my carpet.”

Colgate looked down, then at the orange, and squeezed it in a band of blue magic. Orange juice darkened the light gray carpet.

“You are predictable, aren’t you?” Fleur asked. “You’ll find I’m a forgiving mare, to a point, but a good Datura has enchantments on her house. You might not want to test anything more destructive; the building is less compassionate than I am.”

“I can feel the love from here,” Colgate said. She watched Fleur cross to the kitchen and grab a paper towel. “Is the cat another Datura trick?”

“Why not find out for yourself?”

Colgate looked at the cat, still sleeping, its tail tip harmlessly swaying across the blanket. Possibilities burst in her mind’s eye, but she stood where she was.

“Come along. You’re getting the spare bedroom, right next to mine. Contain your excitement if you can.”

Colgate followed her down the corridor to the back of the house, into a small bedroom with space enough for a dingy mattress and a bare nightstand. Its surface still bore the streaks of a cleaning agent, reflected in the sunlight from between open blinds.

“On the same principle as the knifeless kitchen, there aren’t any bed springs for you to dig out. Again, just in case.”

“Trust is a core component of a successful Datura team,” Colgate said. She had been taught the phrase back in Ponyville.

Fleur, still smiling, turned to look her in the eyes. She flipped her mane out of her face, giving Colgate a pert grin of small, pearly teeth, looking then every bit the supermodel she was. Her voice was sweet and soft. “I sprung you from rehab today, where you were because you held a pony hostage and forced her to drive you out of a crime scene you created. I won’t apologize for taking precautions.”

Colgate looked past her at the window, then the nightstand. It was too much like the room in rehab; she imagined Fleur knew that.

“Those are the pertinent bits. Bathroom’s on the right side of the hall, it’s all yours. I have mine next to the bedroom. Oh, also, you won’t find the sharp objects I’ve taken, if you go looking for them.”

“I’m not going to hunt for knives,” Colgate said.

“As I said—”

“Hurting ponies is the farthest thing from my mind.”

Fleur smiled a little lower. “Let’s give it a few days.”