"And... I'm gone. You're on your own for a bit, Ivan. Good luck."

I cracked my eyes open for what seemed to be the first time in years and stared blankly at the hospital wall I found myself in. It was... all in all... Pretty... alright.

Wait. What? It was alright? It's just a blank wall. How in god's name can it be alright? Wait...

Wait...

Give me a moment...

Running diagnostic processes, please wait...

Where's... The spider? The spider? There was a space in my head where it wasn't. The walls of the hospital room were white. Stark white. I could... feel myself... There was clarity, it was unexpected, but for the first time in a long time it felt like I was breathing again. Like the slow tide of a long sleep had been lifted, and I sat on the bed, or lie in it with my thoughts unmolested, undisturbed...

And I could remember again.

There was the normal strong taste of self dislike that flowered like a blooming rose within me, just like it always had. There was the feeling of weakness, I half expected the familiar wheeze when I took a breath, the familiar pounding of my heart when I could finally taste the air and revel in the fact that the world hadn't smothered me in my sleep like I had dreamed, the slight feeling of serendipity...

But more importantly, I remembered earth again. I remembered the taste of the air...

My thoughts were looping. Something was wrong, I had been changed somehow, I was different... Right... I was a zebra... there were things... I had done...

...

...

...

...What have I done...? Who am I? Who was I? Who...

............Malice...

I'm... I'm a murderer.

I'm a liar. I'm a murderer. I'm a savage. I'm a rapist of souls. I'm nothing more than a shadow of something that should never have been, a creature born of darkness who existed only to try and blot out the light on others, someone who was nothing more than a plague bringer, a Typhoid mary, someone... Someone who... didn't deserve...

Suddenly a wash of bile came from deep within me, so perfectly vile as to capture everything about my little trip into Equestria since the very beggining, and I purged myself rather quickly, just barely managing to get my head over the edge of the bed before I vomited...

The floor was a rather nice checkered pattern. I could barely see the hospital filth on it.

I was a murderer. I had stabbed and killed and cheated and... God... What...

That wasn't me. I was cruel, sure, I was manipulative, but killing? Killing? In cold blood? While someone stared at me beggingly, their eyes lightly dappled with the sorrow of their eminent demise...

Skinner. I could remember him, how I had saved him... Then cut him down. Then lied.

But that wasn't me. It couldn't have been me. It was impossible that that was me. I'm not...

"No..." I muttered, and my voice shocked me, startled me to the core. "No..." That wasn't my voice.

That wasn't me. That wasn't me, the voice was too deep, too grizzled, too imperfect. I felt the urge to scream and found that I couldn't force myself to scream yet.

But then I did.

It was a glorious scream and it was loud and full of anguish. It was perfect. It was precisely what I wanted at that moment, for I realized something. I was a puppet with cut strings and I was lying limp on the bed with my own desires in control. It wasn't a cruel scream. It wasn't harsh or hurtful to anyone but myself.

"...no..." My voice was cracked no, slightly raspy. It wasn't cruel anymore. It was like someone had shattered a mirror and I had just lost a cruel reflection.

Then the doctor's arrived and I remembered someone very important.

Catastrophe... ... ...Sera... Catastrophe... Shot... Lying shot...

There was a stab of agony in my heart at that. A very deep piercing stab.

The doctor's looked at me like something was horribly wrong. I managed a polite smile to them, almost sheepishly. "Bad dream. How is she?" Her... Being Sera, Of course. I was Ivan. Ivan Marks. Yeah. That's who I was. Ivan the zebra... was out for a while. I was ignored for the most part, a few doctors shot me a glare over drawing them there for something as pathetic as a bad dream.

I was panting slightly from the dream as a nurse arrived to clean up the pool of vomit. "... Mirror..." I begged from the bed. Begging... This was a true beg, I was a beggar from the soul. Things were wrong, so very horribly wrong and I feared it might be entirely too wrong to salvage them. Was I too stained with blood to save myself? Was Salvation too far away now? If it was... did I dare to just... leave my good deeds behind?

Pshaw. What good deeds? When was the last time I had done something even close to being good? God, I was going through a villain's blue screen of death and I wasn't even sure that I was the villain! What horrible thing had I done that I hadn't done to survive.

Except I hadn't done any of it willingly. My last... real... memory... was of... Earth...

Gareth's death.

I managed to stand up within the hour, my mind fueled with indignation and healthy doses of self loathing. An hour after that, the doctor arrived with medicine.

"You're suffering from a massive reduction in magic. It's unlike most things we have seen in a long time, thought according to your friends, you pushed most of it into the griffon we are still treating for a ballistics injury. Quite out of character, I must add, from what we have heard from. As it would appear that you are... alright... apart from a few nicks and injuries, I am prescribing you a magic supplement to return you to your full faculties."

He walked away and left it on the counter next to me, namely because I had thrown my best dull look at him while he was speaking to assure him he was talking to a cow so far as intelligence went.

I stared at my medicine for a long moment, my mind pondering and thinking as hard as I could, trying to divine within certainty... Within certainty what might happen if I actually took my meds.

Malice was gone. Malice was gone from me, and he had left suddenly, shattering the illusion that I had been under. Maybe... Maybe that was tied... to my magic? Maybe he had to send his coils down my magic in order to control me... Which meant that getting my magic back... Would...

I was free. I was free. I was tasting freedom from something I didn't even know I was chained to and I was liking the taste of freedom. It was like a splash of acid had set me free, I was weak, I was pathetic, but I could change that. I could change that. I could CHANGE that.

I could... I just had... to... Keep awake... Couldn't sleep, Malice would get me.

I focused on the pill bottle... Focused as hard as I could, feeling for the strings of magic I had, remembering how the... Other had done it, the murderous other, the bad other, how Malice had done it... and hesitantly tried to lift the bottle. As carefully as I could, I couldn't do it. I was missing a piece.

A focus. Right. I needed a focus for magic. I needed a focus to burn off as much magic as I could.

I rolled out of bed a half hour later and slipped in the slickness of the floor. I hit the ground hard. Fucking. Hell.

Walking was hard. I took a few attempts to get hooves under me and failed. I tried... I remembered Bambi on Ice. Trying to emulate that, as horribly lame as that was, it wasn't too much longer before I managed a wounded limp across the hospital room. "... Gotta... redeem..."

Yeah... That's what I was after. Redemption...

Redemption.

Author's Notes:

Well. This is the thing I was hiding from you all. My bad.