With each word spoken, it grew more and more difficult to tell Twilight what had happened. A strange new pain grew in Tarnish’s barrel, it was quite unlike anything he had ever experienced before. With it came a new sensation of panic, a powerful panic unlike anything he had ever known. It seized him in a grip of terror and sank its icy claws into both his heart and spine.

This continued until his words died in his throat and all that came out of his mouth was a strained squeak. Breathing was almost impossible now. He fought back the wracking hitch that rose in his barrel, it was like a living thing that thrashed against his ribs and demanded to be let out. His eyes burned with tears that could no longer be held back.

“Tarnish?” Twilight leaned forwards as Tarnish began to sway back and forth as he fought to keep breathing. “Have you been ensorcelled?” Twilight’s muzzle scrunched with fear as well as worry.

Reaching out her forelegs, it was Octavia that caught Tarnish before he collapsed. She leveled her gaze upon Twilight, and her eyes were flinty and hard. “Don’t you understand?” she asked Twilight in a voice that held both anger and sadness. “She’s violated him… thoroughly and completely. She’s forced her way inside of him, stolen away his dignity, and caused the sort of damage that you can’t see on the outside. She’s robbed him of his self worth and she—”

“You’re making it sound like…” Twilight’s words trailed off as her eyes began to water.

“Well, what else is it?” Octavia demanded as she wrapped her foreleg around Tarnish’s neck so she could both pull him closer and support him. When Maud latched on, Octavia gripped her as well, having forelegs just long enough for the both of them. “She stripped away his defenses and forced her way inside. She toyed with him and left him powerless. She’s hurt him, and she’s awful.”

“Tarnish, why didn’t you tell me?” Twilight asked as the first tear slid down her own cheek.

“Because, you can’t always tell,” Octavia replied as she blinked away tears of her own. “You already feel weak and degraded. Talking about it? Admitting that its happened? Taking on all of the shame and the stigma that comes along with admission? It’s not that simple, Twilight.”

“I suppose it isn’t.” Twilight scooted forwards, leaned in, and pressed herself against Tarnish, Maud, and Octavia.

“You tell yourself that you need a little time,” Octavia began, “and you don’t say anything. The wounds begin to fester. You feel enraged, but also powerless, and the guilt and the shame tear you down.” She began to sniffle and her voice became husky. “And then, when you can’t talk about it, when you can’t get help, when you can’t even tell your own best friend about it, you fall into a downward spiral of more guilt and shame as you wonder what is wrong with you and why you’re so weak.”

Wiping her nose, Vinyl sniffled and snorted a few times, then wiped her eyes, and then joined the others in surrounding Tarnish. She leaned against both him and Octavia, her eyes dry, and a furious expression could be seen upon her face.

“I feel bad for not realising,” Maud said in an unusually soft sounding deadpan. “I thought he just needed some time.”

“I’m not even certain that he realised.” Octavia closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against the base of Tarnish’s jaw. “It’s different for males. There is all this pressure to be tough. To be rough and ready. To never admit weakness—”

At these words, Tarnish choked.

“ —and if you do fess up to it, you are somehow less of a male.” Octavia fell silent, and with her eyes closed, she stroked Tarnish’s neck, her foreleg moving up and down in a slow, gentle caress.

A short distance away, Princess Luna stood, her wings folded against her sides, and her face was a stoic, stony mask. She watched over the small group huddled together, her body unmoving as both her mane and tail were whipped about on unseen and unfelt gusts of wind, driven by unseen forces. Two small pups drew closer to her and sat down near her hooves, one of them gripping the hilt of a battered wooden sword.

“Tarnish,” Twilight whispered, “you have the best friends a pony could ask for. Trust me, I’m kind of an expert in this area.” She hoped that her words brought Tarnish some measure of much needed comfort.

For Tarnish, everything he had experienced crushed him all at once. Not just his encounter with his unknown and unseen tormentor, but the fight with the diamond dogs, the loss of control with his magic, injuring his own friends under the influence of the dust bomb, and then the gruesome discovery of how the diamond dogs treated their own. His mind screamed Octavia’s words over and over, he thought about violation, about forced, unwanted entry, and it was all too much to deal with all at once.

Something inside of him broke and he felt a moment of intense pain that was somehow even worse than his previous agonising moment. When he grimaced, his whole body jerking from the mental and physical sensation of the realisation of the trauma visited upon him, Princess Luna recoiled as if she had been struck. The night blue alicorn closed her eyes and bowed her head, as if she too, was experiencing the pain that Tarnish was feeling, as if she had somehow felt the mental tear when it happened.

Unlike Tarnish, Princess Luna recovered right away.

Like Princess Luna, no tears spilled from Vinyl’s cheeks. In her pink eyes there was only burning fury, rage, and raw aggression. The corners of her mouth twitched, her cheeks tugged on them as they drew taut. Her jaw clenched and her ears rose and fell. Where the others looked heartbroken and grief-stricken, Vinyl looked murderous.

Some ponies had different reactions to the trauma of others.

“We need to fix Tarnish some of his tea, his amulet is growing dark,” Maud said as she stared at the now moody looking purple gemstone. She stroked the side of Tarnish’s neck and her foreleg brushed up against Octavia’s. She looked into Octavia’s now open eyes and there was a moment of unspoken communication between the two mares, the silent language of love, friendship, and trust.

They both loved Tarnish, but for different reasons, and in different ways.

Hunched over his cup of tea, Tarnish’s eyes were bloodshot. Even though it was early morning, he looked weary, exhausted even, and there was a dull, detached expression upon his face. His ears drooped and hung limp against the sides of his face. His cheeks were slick and shiny with tears.

Beside him, Kabuki was weaving wildflowers into a chain. The little pup was silent, thoughtful looking, and her paws were yellowed with pollen. Long Ears sat near her, and his back and sides were yellowed where Kabuki had wiped her paws on him. Even though he said nothing, Long Ears was confused and disturbed by Tarnish’s condition, the pup wasn’t used to males breaking down and showing so much weakness. What confused Long Ears even more was the fact that Tarnish had seemed so strong—Tarnish was the slayer of Dig Dag, after all—and Long Ears had trouble reconciling the stark contrast.

“Feeling better?” Maud asked.

“I just feel numb,” Tarnish replied.

“I keep thinking, this has to be like the nail that was in Trixie’s frog.” Maud turned her head and looked into Tarnish’s eyes. “Now that we’ve pulled it out and dealt with all of the buildup, you can start getting better. I’m so sorry, Tarnish… I didn’t realise… I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay, Maud. I guess I didn’t realise it either.” Tarnish took sip of tea, shuddered, and then closed his eyes as his body swayed from one side to the other. His balance felt off and he had a headache just behind his eyes.

“I feel bad for Twilight.” Octavia looked over to where Twilight was now standing, surrounded by diamond dogs, bushwoolies, and badger-kin. “She just got an earful about how her friend was hurt… but it is politics as usual. She has to take care of princessly business. I wonder what it is like for her.”

“It can’t be easy,” Maud remarked.

“She made me so angry.” Tarnish’s strained whisper held little emotion. “I was just so enraged. She manipulated me and led me around by the nose. That night, she… she tormented me and tried to be break me… that night I found the pup. I was so angry that I had trouble seeing. I feel like I lost my moral high ground… I honestly wanted to kill one of my fellow ponies. What does that say about me?”

Maud’s eyes closed and her mouth opened. After a moment of hesitation, she managed to say, “I wanted to kill your father. I did. I wanted it real bad. He hurt you, and it hurt me, and I’ve never felt like that before. I didn’t think anything could hurt that much. It has nothing to do with moral high ground, and everything to do with having an emotional overreaction.”

“It’s done something to me,” Tarnish said, his whisper growing even quieter. “I can’t explain it. I don’t know if I can explain it. There’s a darkness there that wasn’t there before. Ever since that night… running through the trees… thinking about murder… I was half blind… I kept screaming at her to shut up, I just wanted her to stop… I needed her to stop…” Stammering, almost choking on his own words, Tarnish’s voice died and he gave his head a sad shake.

“Let it out and let us in,” Octavia said in a gentle voice.

Taking a deep breath, Tarnish did his best to continue. “She twisted my words around and forced her way inside of my head. I just wanted her to stop… it was hurting me so much. I didn’t think anypony could be that cruel. But she proved me wrong. She took away my faith in other ponies. It was a lesson unwanted.”

“I too, had my faith in other ponies shaken,” Octavia admitted. She looked over at Vinyl and her eyes misted over. “Over time, I became so jaded that I started feeling dead inside. I can deal with feeling disappointed in the ponies around me, I suppose that’s normal when you live in the big city and you see the worst that equinekind has to offer.” Octavia shook her head. “But then there are those that do things that go beyond the pale. It is incomprehensible to me how some ponies act, how cruel they are, how heartless, they lack even a shred of decency… it made me ache inside and I felt myself withdrawing from the world.”

“How did you deal with it?” Tarnish asked.

“I didn’t,” Octavia replied, being honest. “I just stepped back and kept retreating. Helianthus kept reassuring me that there were good ponies in the world, and there were, I even met a few in our little society, but at that point, I couldn’t seem to connect to them, no matter what I did.”

Finished with her chain of wild flowers, Kabuki stood up, stretched out her body to make herself as tall as possible, and slipped it over the top of Tarnish’s head. It slipped down over his face and came to rest against his neck. She then sat down near her brother and began work on another chain of wildflowers.

“Thank you,” Tarnish said to Kabuki.

“You’re welcome,” she replied, and then she fell almost silent, humming to herself in a soft, almost unnoticeable way.

Turning her head, Octavia looked over at Spike, who was going around with a checklist, collecting names and getting to know the diamond dogs, the badger-kin, and the bushwoolies. She watched the dragon for a time, her ears angled over her eyes, and deep furrows could be seen in her brows.

“The second best thing that ever happened to me,” Octavia said in a low voice, “was meeting the two of you. It was like hearing beautiful music for the first time. That night we met, I knew even then that my life was going to be changed forever. We danced… all of us, and it was beautiful. It was just what I needed.” Her gaze fell down upon the ground and she pressed her front hooves together, causing a faint click as they tapped against each other. “I know it sounds strange, but it made me fall in love with Vinyl all over again… it’s hard to explain, but all of a sudden, the world was a wonderful place again”—her voice dropped to a husky whisper—“the world was a wonderful place to be in love again. I had hope and the sun seemed to shine a little brighter. Everything seemed brighter. Everything felt better. Kisses seemed a little sweeter.”

Grinning, Vinyl waggled her eyebrows up and down as she jabbed Tarnish in the ribs with her elbow. Leaning over, the mute unicorn mouthed the words, “She finds me irresistible.”

“I need to find some paper and a pen right away… I’m feeling rather inspired… I can hear the music playing in my head. Such a bittersweet melody that I’m hearing, I must jot it down. Vinyl, be a dear and conjure me up some paper and a pen, would you please?”

As Tarnish took another sip of tea, Vinyl shrugged, shook her head, and pointed at her horn. She stuck out her tongue, made a stupid expression while crossing her eyes, and then pointed to her still bloodshot and bloody red eye.

“Oh, right… you need to rest. Well, I guess there is no helping it. I shall have to wait.”

Looking at Octavia, Maud said, “I bet you could ask Spike. I bet he came prepared with extra supplies. I’m sure he’d be glad to help an artist in distress. Go and ask him.”

A hopeful smile spread over Octavia’s muzzle. “I shall, oh, I shall.”

Author's Notes:

**Holds breath**