After our toast, the PVCC members present vacated the room, leaving only Shining Armor and myself. I got the feeling that he wanted to see me directly, and that everypony else present understood his feelings and left the two of us. When we were alone, he used his telekinesis to float over a few bottles. I recognized the content of the bottles as alcohol. “Care for a drink?” he asked.

I raised an eyebrow, although I tried to reason away my surprise. Bad future, desperate times, it all made sense even the strongest would be driven to drinking. But this was my brother! Flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood. He put the bottles down and poured some into one of the toast glasses. He pushed the glass to me.

“I… only drank the toast to be polite,” I stammered awkwardly. “I-I don’t actually… drink.”

He nodded. The glass remained where it was as he brought the bottle itself to his lips and lifted. Tense silence took the room as I watched him down the whiskey, as if to slake a perverse thirst that refused to be quenched. After a few seconds, he came back up for air.

“Been a long time,” he said. “Been… four years, I think? Yeah, four years since…” He paused. Shining Armor’s eyes, haunted and empty, gazed obscenely at the bottle before him, as if it lusted for his mouth and he could feel it. “Since then. Yeah.”

I gulped. “Look,” I said, “I know what you must have gone through, and—”

He shot me the glare he reserved for intimidating others into silence. It worked—I lost my voice at that moment and felt like hiding. “No,” he growled, his eyes now possessing a drunken fire. “No, you don’t.”

He got up on his hind legs and leaned over the table, crossing his forelegs and looking up at me as he did so. The bottle landed gently before him. I remained silent, caught by his pitiful gaze.

“Let me tell you a story,” he said.

“It began, well, before all this. Before the PVCC, before the revolution. There were these two stallions, see? One was captain of the guard, the other was his subordinate. They were both family stallions: the captain had a wife and sister, the subordinate had his younger siblings, both girls. These two stallions were best friends, the captain taking on the subordinate as his dedicated pupil.

“But then, there came a day in which everything fell apart. The captain’s wife suddenly became very sick. The doctors he found could tell him nothing. Her sickness was unlike anything they’d ever seen. The subordinate suggested presenting this matter to their leader, the Mayor.”

He paused in his story to take another drink. His voice became thicker—with despair, as opposed to drunkenness.

“The captain had served the Mayor for many years, training his guards and soldiers in the martial arts. For this, the Mayor was very grateful, so he decided to use his powers to take the captain’s wife to a dimension in which a cure for her sickness existed. He took her along with a few guards, leaving the captain and his subordinate to handle things while he was away on his quest.

“Many weeks passed. When the Mayor finally returned, he brought with him terrible news.”

I bit my lip as I pieced together what Shining Armor was telling me. “Cadance…”

Another swig of the bottle. His eyes, bloodshot and beaten, looked back up to me. “Yes. The captain’s wife had died during the quest.

“When this had happened, the subordinate and the captain’s sister had both tried as hard as they could to lift his spirits. The captain was beginning to falter in his line of duty, and the Mayor noticed.

“So the Mayor takes the captain aside one day.” At this, Shining Armor looked at the bottle again, the lust for alcohol slowly transforming into anger. “And he tells him, he tells the captain that he needs to ‘get over it’. He tells the captain about the time he had lost a beloved pet.” The bottle was surrounded by Shining Armor’s telekinesis, glowing in his mind’s grip. As he spoke, his words became tighter, angrier, and the bottle began to crack.

“The captain, his faith in the Mayor shaken and his whole life devoured by the void his wife’s death had left behind, tried the best he could to follow the Mayor’s advice. He believed in the Mayor because…” Again, a pause as he looked at the bottle. With a grimace, he broke it mid-air, making me jump as the alcohol and glass sprinkled on the table and floor. “He did this because he was a stupid, stupid stallion.”

Another bottle floated over and uncorked its top. After another swig, he continued his story.

“Then one day, his sister discovered her love of stargazing while on a date with the captain’s subordinate. The cutie mark she received that night was the beginning of what I had hoped to be a very bad dream.” He shuddered. Another drink.

“The captain and his subordinate both loved the sister dearly, and tried their hardest to hide her cutie mark from the public. When one of the subordinate’s own sisters received her cutie mark, even more was put under wraps. And then the friends of their sisters began receiving theirs. Before long, they were knee-deep in a huge cover-up. And before they knew it, the Mayor found out.”

He got up off the table, the bottle still floating before him, and began to pace around the room. His nervousness was apparent, but he continued.

“Neither the captain nor the subordinate knew who told the Mayor. But it came to pass that the Mayor, disliking those who questioned his authority, put their sisters and their friends to death for breaking his Golden Rule.

“The captain and the subordinate reacted to this differently. The captain, having nopony left to live for, decided to throw away his life. The subordinate stayed with the Mayor. Why? I dunno. He still had one other younger sibling he cared for. I assume he stayed cowed to the Mayor to make sure she could be kept safe. But who knows, really?

“Anyway, the captain, he throws away his life. I mean, literally. Off a cliff. All the way down.” At this, Shining Armor stopped in his tracks, and looked at me. There was so much profuse shame in his face, such immense sadness in his eyes. The last four years were nothing but a cruel episode for him, his life decimated. He sighed and turned away, looking at the wall.

“So he finally died, the captain. But at the bottom of that cliff, as his heart began to slow and stop, he heard…” His voice trailed off as his eyes became wistful, nostalgic. “No,” he corrected, “felt a word.” He looked to me again. “Do you know what that word was?”

He walked back over to me, the bottle floating nearby. Shining Armor looked me straight in the eye. “’Arise.'” He paused to let that word sink in.

“Wait,” I said, “you tried to kill yourself, but you came back to life? How does that…?”

“Dunno,” said Shining Armor. “But either way, I rose from the dead. I assume it’s because I... still had a job to do.” The bottle came back to his lips, but suddenly, the color of the glow surrounding it changed, from his to mine.

Shining Armor adopted once again his death glare, shooting it at me, his self-loathing and contempt for others radiating from those bloodshot eyes. For a moment, I wondered how such a broken creature managed to be shaped in the form of my brother.

The silence between us was long and heavy.

“Put it down,” I whispered, trying to hide my fear of this… this unfamiliar stallion assuming my brother's form. “Please.”

His glare lessened until gradually, finally, the bottle was placed back on the table. “You’re going to be leading a mission tonight,” I reminded him, “it wouldn’t do for you to lead them while you’re drunk.”

He said nothing but looked away. “You’re right,” he said, after some silence. His eyes came back to me, looking me up and down. “You know,” he said, “when you said you’d always be my sister, no matter where we’re from, I thought you were just saying that to make me feel better.”

His eyes twinkled a little as a small smile curved his lips. “But now, I think you really meant it.” We stood there, awkwardly for a few minutes more before I excused myself. Being in the presence of alternate versions of ponies you’ve known for a short while is one thing, but the presence of a creature, who on the one hoof is my brother, and on the other a wholly different entity altogether, is a surreal experience.

I wanted to love him, just as I loved him in my own timeline. But this Shining Armor was dirty, sullied, broken. It was the Mayor’s doing, of course; his hoofwork was everywhere. The buildings, the streets, the living conditions, the ponies, my brother… I felt my heart blacken at the thought, and felt a chill.

Suddenly, someone spoke to me, breaking me out of my thoughts.

“Hey,” said Spider-Colt. I turned to see him crawling on the wall next to me, his long and skinny legs making him seem like a bizarre half-spider, half-pony hybrid. “You look a little like you could use some company.”

Deep down I wanted him to go away. He must have seen it in my face, so he did precisely the opposite—he gave me the company I needed.

“I take it Fearless Leader told you his life story.”

I nodded and sighed. “This is all so confusing,” I said.

“What’s confusing?” he asked.

I thought over my choice of words. “OK, maybe confusing isn’t the word I’m looking for,” I said. “It’s more like… bizarre. Surreal. He’s my brother, but at the same time, he isn’t anything like my brother. Where I’m from, he’s so happy and proud, but here…”

I looked down to my hooves and felt hot tears begin to well up.

“Hey, everypony suffers. Your brother’s just tricked himself into thinking he’s the only one who is.”

I looked up to see Spider-Colt sitting on the bench next to me. His glass eyes were much wider than the Mare-Do-Well’s, open and free like a child's. In their wondrous gaze I could see a warped reflection of myself. How fitting, I thought; it captured how I felt exactly.

“It’s one of the many side effects of grief," he continued. "For a while, you become self-centered. It’s all about your pain, your loss. We all handle it differently, but that's the one part that almost always remains the same…”

“I was just told that my brother attempted suicide and that my sister-in-law is dead,” I said angrily, almost yelling. “How am I supposed to feel?” I felt the tears come, felt them fall. I looked away.

“See?” he said. “For a while, it’s all about your own pain. But the thing is, you aren’t alone. He isn’t either. Nopony suffers alone.”

I looked up to Spider-Colt. He pointed outward, to the rest of the subway station. His hoof first hung out, toward Blossomforth. “See her? Blossomforth?”

“I see her.”

“She was going to be apart of the weather team. She failed the entrance exam. It was her last chance at scoring some decent pay, escape from her life as a prostitute, and she failed it. Before Shining Armor gave her a reason to keep going, she was going to end it all, too.”

His hoof then shot toward another pony, the scarred Caramel from before.

“Caramel had a promising career as an electrician. In fact, he was the one who helped to build this place back up to functioning. But he was caught in an accident, sometime after his girlfriend left him for some other guy. The Doctor managed to convince him to join the PVCC a little after that.”

He brought his hoof over to point at Magneighto and Derpy, who were walking around the subway, talking and looking at the lights and fixtures.

“Now, Derpy? Hoo, boy,” Spidercolt said as he stretched on the bench. “Her mom didn’t like the school system, but homeschooling is illegal here. Mayor wants to indoctrinate as many as he can, see? Not to mention that the disadvantaged are often…” He moved his hooves as if trying to find what he needed to describe. He finally sighed.

“Y’know, never mind about that. So anyway, she sends Derpy over to a place called Magnet, where she was mentored by Magneighto.”

“But he’s a unicorn, she’s a Pegasus,” I said.

“So?” he said. “He didn’t teach her magic, just giving her a general education. But over time, they got close. After a few years of being her mentor, he proposed to her.”

I began to fit the pieces together. Shining Armor’s rescue mission alluded to before agreed neatly with everything in Spider-Colt’s story.

“So, the Mayor kidnapped Derpy because Magneighto was a powerful sorcerer, and used her as a bargaining chip to control him?”

He nodded. “Yep. Thanks to Shining Armor, Magneighto’s going straight. Not that Maggie was all that bad to begin with, but you get the idea.”

I bit my lip. I really wanted to ask him about Dinky, Derpy’s daughter. In the original timeline, she never mentioned who Dinky’s father was, and I assumed that she would tell us when she felt ready to. I looked over to Magneighto and Derpy again and saw them looking up at a painting.

It was a painting of a mother holding her foal, the parent and child looking deep into each other’s eyes. It was very moving, by itself, and I wondered who painted something so beautiful in a world this ugly by design. My eyes fell to Derpy, her back turned to me. Her body shuddered as she cast down her face, Magneighto looking to her and sadly resting his head on her neck.

My question was answered.

"So what about you?" I asked Spider-Colt. "What's your story?"

After a second or two of silence, I turned my head to see that Spider-Colt was crawling up a wall, into a dark corner. "I'm looking for somepony," he called back as the shadows swallowed him. "Somepony who can't be found."

Some time passed, and I decided it was time to find Fluttershy and see how she was doing. It was a bit difficult to navigate my way through this subway station, for as I’ve said before, it was rather poorly designed. I wondered who in Equestria the architect was, and after getting lost twice, I wanted to strangle him.

After getting some directions from Minuette, I finally found the hospital room. It was as drab and poorly designed as the rest of the place (How the heck did this place not fall apart?!), with only a few beds, some nightstands, and a radio. There was a nurse here, but it seemed Dr. Redheart was out for the moment.

When I walked over to Fluttershy, her back was turned to me. As I came closer, I noticed she had her mouth open and was looking into a mirror—she put it down when she saw me in the reflection.

“Hey, Fluttershy. How are you doing?”

Fluttershy looked at me with her haunted eyes, but said nothing for the longest time. She looked away. “Twilight,” she said finally, “I know you aren’t from this timeline… but…”

She looked like she wanted to ask a question, but was afraid of the answer she’d recieve. After fidgeting nervously, she finally asked, “Where you’re from… is everypony… still alive? Are we happy?”

Her question nearly made me cry. The quiver in her voice as she solemnly asked this question would have been enough even to make Roid Rage’s eyes moist. I hugged Fluttershy then, stroking her mane, telling her all about Applejack, and Rarity, and Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash, and our adventures, and how much we really loved each other. Fluttershy tried not to show her broken heart, but her tears were all I needed to know it was there.

“Fluttershy,” I told her as her tears ran down her face, “Fluttershy, I know you’re trying to survive in this awful place, and that it’s hard when you don’t have your friends with you. But I want you to know, right now, that…” My throat became thick and I choked. I tried again. “That it’s OK to make new friends. Not to replace those you’ve lost, but to impact their lives the same way you impacted ours. It’s OK… to keep on living, even after we’re gone.”

She buried her face in my mane. I felt her shudder and sniffle, as I stood there, being there, for her. I comforted her the way a best friend knows how, and after almost ten minutes, she came around again.

Her face still in my mane, she asked me, “Is the Fluttershy where you’re from… Is she brave?”

“If by brave, you mean she wasn’t afraid of anything, no. She was very timid—a lot like you. But if you meant brave like, she went in and got the job done despite how scared she was… Then she was the bravest pony I know.”

Her embrace tightened in thanks. I continued. “She was also really good with animals.”

“She is?”

“Yep. It was rare to see any animal uncomfortable in her presence…” As my voice trailed off, I had noticed something rather ugly about everything I’d just said.

I used the word “was” five times. Past tense. Why was I using past tense?

Deep down, did I really abandon the prospect, the goal of restoring our Alpha timeline? Was I losing hope of going home? It seemed odd that I’d abandon that way of thinking: we had allies now, and a plan that was sound. Why did I lose hope then? Why hadn’t I noticed my growing sense of doubt until that moment?

Fluttershy nuzzled me. “Hey,” she said, “I’m going to go talk to Shining Armor, if that’s OK.”

I snapped out of my thoughts. “Why? Why do you want to talk to him for?”

She walked by until she was nearly out of the room. When she was by the door, she stopped and turned. She smiled, revealing her missing teeth. “I want to apologize to him.”

And with that, Fluttershy walked out of the hospital room, leaving me alone in this disproportionate chamber. I sighed, and decided I should probably go wake up Spike and go over the details of the plan with the Doctor.

Before I left, there came a quiet, raspy voice from behind me.

“Wait,” she said.

I turned to see the Mare-Do-Well emerge from the shadows. My heart had nearly leapt through my chest when she appeared (The same way she always did: suddenly). I fought the urge to turn and run as she slowly advanced to me.

She stopped just before me. “Did you really mean what you said? About friends?”

Slowly, I nodded, not knowing what to say.

The Mare-Do-Well looked at one of the beds, as if she needed something else to look at in order to gather her thoughts. After a second or two, she turned back to me—her head snapping back alarmingly fast like before—her raspy voice approaching anger. “Then you’re wrong. Dead wrong.”

“What… What do you mean?” I backed away a little, afraid that she might jump me.

“Friends won’t always be there for you,” she growled. “You get to know them for a little while, and then they leave! They vanish! They fill your head with stupid lies—how tomorrow’s gonna be better, how they’ll never leave you when you need them… and…”

The Mare-Do-Well sat down slowly, as if sinking onto that cold concrete floor, as her voice trailed off. It gradually lost the rumbling rasp and evolved into a voice I recognized.

“… and then… they vanish. They leave you. They leave you, alone, wondering…”

She looked down to her hooves. “…Wondering… what it was you did to deserve losing their love for you.”

Minutes ticked away as I stood there, watching this frightening figure of darkness shudder. I realized that mask hid much more than just a face: it hid so much unbearable pain and loneliness. And everypony she met was so afraid of her. I wondered how long she had carried this pain and nurtured it in her heart. Years? A lifetime? An eternity?

I got over my fear of the Mare-Do-Well, gradually, and came closer to her. Then I put my forelegs around her, embracing her. “Bon-Bon,” I told her, “It’s true that friends can’t always be there to save the day. But everypony deserves to have friends. Nopony deserves to be alone. Nopony deserves to not be loved.”

She pushed me away. “No,” she said, her rasp returning, “That isn’t true. If it is, what about Dr. Chuckles? He deserve somepony?”

“He did,” I told her. “In my timeline, he was a very kind pony who was married to a sweet mare and had foals of his own.” My eyes misted at the memory of Mr. Cake. “Because of… all THIS… all of that got taken away from him. He became what he is in this timeline because…”

It hit me. It wasn’t just this timeline that was my fault. Everything in it, that was created because of my stupidity, was my creation. Big Macintosh leading ponies to arrest innocents for fraudulent crimes, Mr. Cake becoming a vicious gangster, the Mare-Do-Well becoming a lonely vigilante, Fluttershy enduring so much survivor’s guilt, Spike losing his limbs, Shining Armor being the only surviving member of our family, everypony in so much misery…

“…Because it’s all my fault.”

The Mare-Do-Well looked at me with her glass eyes as I sank down. “I created this timeline because of my own stupidity and hate. I ended your friendship with Lyra in my own timeline because of my own stupidity and hate. ”

Suddenly, she stuck her head in front of my vision. Even though it was just a mask, I could still tell her face was contorted with anger. “What do you know about Lyra?!”

I backed off again, this time making it almost to the door. “Lyra and I—” she said as I turned and ran. “LYRA IS DEAD! HE KILLED HER, HE KILLED HER AND IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!!!”

Tears flew from my face as I ran through the warped hallways, their surreal dimensions becoming an even bigger convoluted nightmare as I continued my flight. All the while

("You get to know them for a little while, then...")

I wished I could just disappear, just vanish

(“They vanish!”)

But no matter where I went, I became more and more lost

("What it was you did to deserve losing their love for you.")

The hallways twisted and turned, the ugly colors rushing by me like a nauseating whirlwind, everything began to spin, and finally I ran into somepony hard enough to knock us both to the ground.

It was the Doctor. “Twilight, what—”

Before he could finish, I buried my face in his chest and wept. “It’s all my fault,” I murmured, “Everypony’s miserable, and it’s all my fault.”

“Not this again,” the Doctor chided. He stood me up and dried my tears with a handkerchief he pulled from his coat pocket. “I thought we already went through this. We both made this mess, and we’re going to clean it.”

As he finished wiping away my tears, he pulled me close to his chest. I could hear his heartbeat… heart… beats? (He later told me that he actually has two hearts. Fascinating.) “You have to pull yourself together,” he told me. “We can’t afford to lose yet.”

He seemed to think over his last few words. Strangely, it was as if I could feel his thoughts become heavier. “We can’t afford to lose at all,” he amended. Next Chapter: 16. Holidays: Not Just for the Post Office Anymore Estimated time remaining: 2 Hours, 51 Minutes