Fluttershy finds herself lost in vivid memory and seeing directly through her own, young eyes.  Her filly self sits on the floor, doing her best to drown out the sounds of her parents' argument outside of her room.  The sound is muffled enough so that all she can sense are tones of voice, each one loud and aggressive, presumably arguing about some insignificant little detail.  She thinks she hears her name, but doesn't dare respond; the last time she walked into the room while they were fighting she got a scolding that scared the living daylights out of her.  She is that insignificant little detail.  Her father complains every chance he gets about how 'needy' the little yellow pegasus is, while her mother tries her best to defend what little praise she does have for the filly; not out of love, but instead out of defiance.  

Something Fluttershy's parents never told her but that constantly ate at their hearts was that neither of the two young pegasi were ready to have a foal when they did; Fluttershy was a mistake, and unfortunately they made her aware of this through actions rather than words.  As the pegasus's memories flash back and forth between different instances of her childhood, this becomes more and more clear to her.  She sees through her eyes during one of the days that her parents attempted to teach her how to fly.  Her frustrated mother pastes on a false smile and attempts to show her the right way to flap her wings.  Each time she manages to hover just a few inches off the ground before falling again, and each time this is rewarded with a sigh.  

Her father, a young, aggressive stallion takes her onto his back and flies several yards in the air, figuring that the only way to teach her is to let her fall.  She remembers the look in her father's eye as he let her go: cold and unloving.  She watches from her helpless fall, trying to flap her wings but only feeling like her body is being jerked forward and back.  He doesn't try to help her, and even though her mother watches in horror, she doesn't try either.  They didn't really care.

Fluttershy doesn't remember the impact, but does remember that her leg was hurt in the fall and the argument over hospital bills lasted for a few nights following.  Every single day she feels more and more unloved.  Her parents struggled just to keep from killing each other, only staying together for Fluttershy's sake, regardless of their disposition toward her.  She would feel like a pet in their presence, never saying a word and just doing as she's  told.  Her visions flicker between various awkward dinners where nopony would speak in any tone outside of a vicious snap.

As her days in primary school closed off she would try to pursue her interests.  She recalls the painstaking effort it took to work up the courage to audition for the choir program.  She recalls her embarrassment when everypony in line was absolutely amazed with her voice, and the disappointment when her parents didn't show up to her first concert.  She remembers breaking down and crying for hours after being caught singing in her room by her father and subsequently berated for it.  

"That's what you're going to do with your life?  You're going to sing?  Why don't you do something useful?"  His sarcastic, acid words eat her alive inside.  Everything she tries to do, and the one thing she's good at, is never good enough.  She recalls trying to run away from home one night, only to sneak back inside for fear of being chased down.  She recalls looking in the mirror and seeing only a disgusting figure staring back at her.

Nights without dinner to try and keep her weight down after her mother made some snide comment about 'saddlebags' on the young filly flash across her eyes; sometimes nights without dinner just to avoid having to be in the same room as her parents.  Her repressed childhood quickly and painfully works its way into her head, showing her just why she might bury some part of herself.   The final images begin to fade; one particularly bad one where her father finally raised his hoof against poor, young Fluttershy.  She had been told that night to "let everypony know" that the black eye was from her own clumsiness and certainly not from troubles at home.  

The memory dissolves from her vision and is replaced with the manifested home that she first stepped into, only blurred intensely by tears.  She can feel the light, warm hoof of Numbers on her shoulder, and see Courage out of the corner of her eye giving her a discreet, reassuring look.  As she takes a look around her room she sees that it has become muddled and torn apart, almost as if a massive gust of wind came through.  

"Your parents weren't easy for any of us to deal with, Co-pilot."  Courage states as she tries to get the mare's attention by tugging her shoulder.

"Your father...  I understand he wasn't ever very much help for your self esteem."  Numbers adjusts her glasses with her magic and steps forward, sitting just a few feet in front of Fluttershy.  "Just know, though, that your ambitions never died.  They just went to sleep..."

"You said this was supposed to help show me where though..."  Fluttershy sniffles and shivers, calming down and once more trying to repress the awful memories.  "All this did was make me feel... horrible."

"Well, think about it, Co-pilot."  Courage moves to go sit next to Numbers, showing an unusual level of respect for personal space and general comfort zones.  "You're the sweetest, nicest, most irritatingly kind thing in Equestria.  Where do you think that part of you went?"  

"Uhm..."  Fluttershy doesn't actually try and think at all.  She's so drained from the emotional overflow that she just wishes for the two knowledgeable ponies to give her the answer.

Courage sighs and stands up, nodding toward the front door, "C'mon, I'll show you."

Fluttershy hesitantly stands up and follows the earth pony, catching a glimpse of her flank as she walks beside her.  Her lack of wings isn't the only thing that makes her different: she only has one butterfly as a cutie mark, instead of Fluttershy's triplet; this is the first time that Fluttershy has really noticed.  The earth pony casually opens the door and shows Fluttershy the outside.  Things have certainly changed: the landscape is no longer the Everfree forest, but a vast microcosm of activity.  Everywhere she looks she can see things happening; some mechanical, some natural, some just plain incomprehensible.  What seems to be small ponies work through the massive plots of land, ocean, machinery, air, even seeming to be beneath the ground based on small protrusions in the floor below.  The doorway doesn't touch the ground anymore either, instead it seems to be near the top of a massive tree, with smooth bark beneath it hundreds of feet toward the floor.  The pegasus stands in awe as the sight before her, trying to take in the shifting environment as she sees it.  

"It's somewhat dangerous to be showing you this, Fluttershy."  Numbers steps up behind her and looks out the doorway with the others.  "This is your mind, in all its glory.  Remember that you're still asleep; this isn't even close to the level of activity that it performs while you're awake.  Showing somepony the workings of their mind has a tendency to drive them crazy, it being as complicated as it is, so we'll keep this brief.   Right now we're standing on what you can see as a tree, your home in fact, and looking into thought in its purest form."  Fluttershy shivers a little from the heights, she hasn't ever liked being on a precipice like this.  "Everything you see here is a process; organized and put together by you, most of which happens without your knowledge, however, and all of that is thanks to your subconscious mind.  That's where this tree is rooted, so to say."

"Is that where I can find her?"  Fluttershy tilts her head toward Numbers but never breaks her eyes away from the sight.

"Yeah, if that's where you put her."  Courage has grown bored of the view and has taken to sitting back on the couch, reading what appears on a cursory glance to be a slightly 'dirty' thought.

"What she means to say is that you emulate many qualities of your ambitious and ideal self, Fluttershy."  Numbers walks back into the home and beckons the pegasus to close the door.  "Perhaps she's locked away in your core being, someplace you can access her without having to let her... be."

"W-where would that be?"  Fluttershy, a little confused by the thought of such a thing, begins re-engaging herself in the task.

"Well...  That I'm not sure of."

"Hah!  Finally something stumps you."  Courage puts her book down and laughs derisively at the unicorn.  The word "stumped" rings in Fluttershy's mind however; she just can't let it go.  

"Wait a minute...  You said this tree was my psyche right?"  Fluttershy tries to snap the other two ponies out of another squabble before it gets too far out of hand.

"Well, yes, at least that's how you've manifested it."  Numbers backs away from Courage, trying to hold her ground but not wanting to be in 'punching distance' of the malevolent earth pony.

"Could she be at the bottom of it?  W-with the roots?"  The more she begins to think on the matter, the more comfortable she starts to feel.  Her mind seems to just be a story book almost, filled with various symbols and metaphors that more often than not lead to exactly what she is looking for.  

"I hadn't thought of that...  I suppose it's worth a look."  Numbers tries not to admit defeat in the matter, but (as Courage makes so perfectly clear with a theft of her glasses along with mocking laughter) she lets her countenance betray her.  

"How would I get down there though?"

"Just jump."  Courage tosses the pair of glasses toward Fluttershy, who promptly (if not clumsily) catches them between her hooves.  After looking them over she reaches out to hand them back to Numbers, though to Fluttershy's surprise she isn't there anymore.  She looks around quickly but doesn't see either of the two ponies, frightening her into thinking that she had done something wrong.  The floor seems to be the same, but the walls are gone; Fluttershy glances over her surroundings to see herself standing perilously on the end of a very large bough.  

"Where did you go?  What happened?"  She tries to keep calm but can already feel a minor panic attack brewing in her chest.  Everything seems to change the instant she stops focusing on it, until finally she stands at  the end of a thin plank overlooking the treacherous fall toward the ground beneath her.  Fluttershy tries to look away, but can't fight the fascination of wanting to know just where she is.  She allows this to take her over as she looks down over the edge, seeing nothing but open space below her that tapers into a very light patch of lit ground surrounded by darkness.  

"Oh we didn't go anywhere, Co-pilot."  Courage's voice comes from behind the pegasus, who gingerly turns around to see the smug earth pony standing on the branch, looking with a very serious gaze at Fluttershy.  "Ya got Numbers back, that's what happens when you show us what's what."

"I-I-I don't understand..."  Fluttershy feels a very sinister vibe coming from Courage.  Her voice sounds almost serpentine, and her body language suggests an assertion of dominance.  

"Of course you don't...  Numbers allows you to think very heavily.  You could say she's the embodiment of your thought as it weighs out a situation, and when you out-thought her you absorbed her.  This isn't quite like what you did with Supershy... you buried Supershy.  Which, for the record, was very good for me."

"W-what do you m-mean?"  

"When you absorb one of us we lose our ability to control you, but when you bury one of us we just lose our ability to control ourselves.  Supershy has been influencing you for years, and frankly that's annoying to me.  Numbers is simply allowing you to think more clearly, to weigh out situations better and analyze your surroundings, which is why I had to go to great lengths to get this place ready."

"Where are we, then?"

"This is just outside your psyche, Co-pilot.  I had to make sure that you couldn't see anything and use it against me while we were here.  It was inevitable that you would absorb Numbers first, because I don't wanna be absorbed."

"What...  What are you going to do?"  As Courage speaks to her, Fluttershy realizes that she's telling the truth.  Her thoughts become more clear and coordinated, not weighed down by any sort of inhibition or passionate emotion, but the area around her is so frightening and demanding of her attention that she can't focus on the pony in front of her."

"We act as filters for your emotions, and emotions are very, very strong, Co-pilot.  So strong that they can rip a pony's mind to pieces.  Your mind was already encompassed by three pieces, me, Numbers, and Supershy, but your emotions ripped up the bonds that kept us working together.  You're trying to fix your mind, and I've been helping you, as has Numbers... but I'm done helping.  You try to lock me up, you try to keep me down, and up until that goody-goody was locked up you had me fight against another piece of yourself just to keep me too tired to take anything away from you.  Well without us to filter your emotions, you'd go insane, and absorbing us is one way of keeping us under your own lock and key while still using us to keep your thoughts and feelings cohesive and appropriate... Or one of us can take over."  

"You're going to... take me over? H-how?"  Fluttershy feels almost as if she's being pushed back toward the edge, looking Courage straight in her fiery, emotionally charged eyes.  

"I have no reason to lie to you.  You're weak without your little ideal self to help you strive.  You've never fought with anypony in your entire life and that's because you've ignored me.  Without me, left to your own devices, you're destiny-bound to fail... hard.  So I'm going to get you to jump, and then one of two things is going to happen.  One: You'll overcome your irrational fear of heights, which I highly doubt, and use your own sense of courageous effort to absorb me and have the willpower and bravery necessary to get Supershy out.  Or two, and this is far more likely:  You're going to cry all the way down, and smack your pretty little body against that pretty little patch of ground and I'm going to take over.  You won't have the strength to take yourself back, and you'll see how it feels to be locked up in this place... alone... watching through your own eyes as you do everything you've never thought you could do.  I've got some big plans, so I'd suggest you take another step back and we just get this over with."

Fluttershy looks over her shoulder and finds that the edge of the plank has moved right up against her back hooves.  As she turns back to look at Courage, she sees that the earth pony is almost nose-to-nose with her.  She squeaks in fright and has to fight her reflex to jump backward.  "P-please don't make me do this..."

"Aww what's the matter?  Getting stage-fright on your big moment?"  Courage cruelly plays off of Fluttershy's early performing phase, especially the stage fright.  "If you want to fix yourself this is what you have to do.  It just so happens that if you screw up I benefit greatly.  So jump.  Oh and don't even think about trying to throw me off in some big, climactic battle or nuthin' like that... You can't touch me... even if you could you're a wimp so I'd win anyhow.  

"I-I-I..."  She can't even think of what to say, the earth-shattering idea that she has been betrayed by her own mind is still taking hold in the poor mare.

"I was hoping you wouldn't even have the courage to jump on your own...  That bodes very well.  Not for you of course, but for me."  The earth pony lifts her hoof up and hovers it just inches in front of her nose, showing the perfectly clean underside in frightening detail to the pegasus. "Bu-bye, Co-pilot.  It's been a fun ride, but I think it's high time I took the stick."  With that she pushes forward, bumping into Fluttershy's nose and sending her careening off of the edge.  The fall seems to be in slow motion: Courage lays down on the plank and crosses her forelegs beneath herself to watch the pegasus fall, and Fluttershy can only see the malicious grin on her face as it slowly shrinks into the sunless, black sky.  The sound of air rushing past her ears deafens the pegasus as the blur from the passing tree bark gives her the impression of falling at terminal velocity.  Her wings feel paralyzed as she tries her best to unfold them, only managing to squirm in the air and fight desperately to survive.  She rolls over in midair and can see the ground rapidly approaching, though she doesn't know what will happen when she hits.  

This is it I guess...  All I wanted to do was love Twilight, and this is how it ends.  Fluttershy thinks to herself, cringing in horrified anticipation for the upcoming impact.  Tears catch the air beside her face and rush up into the sky around her.  The final thought in her mind is the hope that Twilight will be able to handle the new management of her once-sweet-and-innocent marefriend.