Crimson remembered the dream. The dream from last night. An oft-repeated dream from that one night months ago.

A dream for the dark of midnight. A dream of waking up and still being in the nightmare.

Cold. Dark.

Hungry. Blackness.

The ribbon was burning cold on his ear, tied where a little lamb had once worn it. Not in his mane where he'd left it.

So very, very searingly cold. It burned through his fur, blistered his skin.

The darkness was cold and thick, as firm as tar.

Crimson lay prone in a bed, unable to move, as that deeper darkness dripped down the ceiling, crawled sideways along the walls, flowed up out of the floorboards, and all coalesced into the furthest corner of the room.

His night vision couldn't pierce this darkness, couldn't let him see, couldn't let him move.

It was hungry, so infinitely hungry. The gnawing of a lamprey-toothed hole inside your stomach, which left you empty no matter how much you consumed.

Weight. The sensation of being crushed all the time from all sides. There was no space on the other side of the curtain. There was only where you ended, and where the next pressing, hungry mouth began.

No space to bite, your teeth already locked onto the next thing just as its teeth were locked onto you. Bite as it bites you. Flesh that wasn't flesh stitched together in a web of straining threads.

To squirm, you had to squirm pressed up alongside everything else. No space. When one thread jerked, a hundred others followed, and then a thousand more, and then all in one neverending violent ripple.

No light, no sound, no space. Just crushing hunger; yours, theirs, and togethers'.

Hungry. It was hard, so very hard to remain separate, to retain that sliver of what made you an individual, to not be crushed under the weight of it.

Hunger did not begin. Hunger did not end. You were merely one tooth in an endless cycle of teeth.

Prey was sitting in the corner of bleeding darkness, a rip in the black behind him to something beyond.

Prey was sitting there, a doll, a lamb, and telling Crimson about all of this. About what it felt like on the other side.

About the hunger, about the darkness, about what had happened to him.

"No heaven, no hell for me. Just the other things. I'm stitched into my place on the other side."

Long threads of shadow trailed out of the seams in Prey's joints, half-lamb-half-doll, and led back into the black. The threads were jerking erratically as things somewhere on the other side tugged on them.

"It is cold. I don't have a body or nerves, though. I'm cloth and straw. I don't get cold, but it is still so cold. And I'm always hungry. So hungry. Always so very hungry."

The doll stood on patchwork legs, then padded towards the bed, a marionette moving along on shadowy strings.

Button eyes stared at Crimson, paralysed on the bed. Prey's stuffed leg reached out, wanting the ribbon back, to solidify his place here in the real world.

'A connection. One side here, one on the other.'

"I want to stay here. I want to stay with you. I'm stitched in over there, but I can come back here to you. I will always find my way back to you."

'To the ribbon. It will always find its way back to you.'

Crimson didn't move, he was still frozen on the bed, but the room twisted, the distance out of the corner of his eye stretching and then snapping closed. And now the doll, Prey, it was Prey, a damned version of Prey, had the ribbon.

His final gift to Crimson. Now he'd reclaimed it.

"Prey." The frozen words escaped his numb lips, and like a lifted spell, suddenly he could move again.

Except this was just the re-dreamt dream from that first night, and Crimson knew how it was going to end.

Because then he'd been sitting, not laying frozen on the bed in the dark. Longing, grief, a hope that was impossible to realise. Crimson had spread his forelegs wide, his wings reaching out.

"You've come back to me, Prey. Please don't leave again. Let me hold you here and make you stay."

His wings ached to encircle Prey, his forelegs shook, desperate to hug Prey for the first time ever. Because Prey was gone and this doll had come back. And in anguish he knew it was impossible. That he was only in a dream.

Fear of the shadows? Fear of the hunger and the cold and the dark? Fear of the things he couldn't see but could feel pressing in close? Yes, but Prey was back, and it was an impossible dream.

"A hug?"

The unliving stitched mouth had begun to twitch, thread writhing, "I never gave you a hug. But you want a hug now?"

And then the doll's mouth had ripped open, strings stretching between punctured lips. Darkness was all that gaped inside the wide, wide smile. "False flesh, just an echo of touch. No runes now, no touch left. So petty, I was so petty. Don't touch me I said? When it wasn't even real flesh to touch?"

The smile split past the cheeks, cracked open along the seams, all the way across the head. But there was nothing inside, no stuffing, no straw, not even hollowness, just brimming, humming blackness.

The doll's cloth forelegs spread invitingly, its body remaining standing suspended on black strings that vanished into the air above. The darkness of nothing roiled.

"Come then." It said, and smiled wider still.

The clack of cloudsteel-shod hooves coming to attention snapped Crimson out of his daydream.

He was at his post, on one of the Palace's side doors. The moon was just beginning to rise into the budding fresh night.

The thestral in Night Guard armour matching his own gave him the needed salute, "Anything to report?" His replacement asked.

"Nothing." Crimson answered him. His shift was over.

The other thestral moved to take his spot, "Good. Dismissed then."

Crimson let the last traces of the dream drift from his mind, and began striding for the locker room. Night was here, the Palace was quiet, and his shift was over.

He served Luna, not her sister Celestia. That was his job. That was the only reason he was still here.

Four months.

Four months, come and gone.

Four months, and he was still reliving the same dream.

His wing had healed. His wounds had closed. And then, in the darkness of night, he'd had that dream.

That first night, of the first time... and now, he remembered and dreamed it over and over.

The night air was warm. He entered the Night Guard section and slipped into the locker room, moving without having to think. He nodded to the three thestrals and one root-covered pony inside. Two removing their armour, and two putting theirs on instead. Lilly had finally brought herself up to enough strength for light duty, and in keeping with Nighthawk’s promise, had been allowed back in.

They didn't exchange words, just nods. There was no need for anything more. Crimson removed his armour -a replacement set, not the same damaged pieces from Haven Hay- undoing straps, and packed it into his locker.

He no longer took his armour home with him. He no longer lived just to serve an immortal alicorn. Once he had, but not anymore.

His father's wingblades stayed on, though. He thought about that dream so often, the surrealness, the longing to reach out to Prey even when he'd known at the time beyond a shadow of a doubt it was just a dream, and then-

-And then Crimson shut his locker, spun the combination, and quietly left the Palace, exiting via the Guard Compound. For obvious security reasons, flying inside the Palace grounds was restricted.

Canterlot still glowed a soft gold even in the night, streetlamps bathing roads and cosy lights shining in windows. But Crimson ignored the grandness of Upper Canterlot. He had somewhere much more pressing to be. He trotted off into the dark streets without fear.

Now free of his helmet, the silk of Prey's ribbon fluttered in the night air where it bound back his braided mane. Ponies had commented, questioned, even outright laughed. They had all been ignored.

At the base of his tufted ear, sat the small stud of clan Cilldara. Crimson's new adopted clan. Gloom's old clan stud, from when he was officially accepted into Cilldara. There were only two thestral clans left now, not that anyone else knew it.

Prey's old ribbon, and Gloom's old clan earring. Crimson walked the darkening streets towards the outer edge of the mountain city.

The vast open night sky beckoned, the plunging drop off the mountainside stretching before him.

His wings spread, feathers perfectly twitching to catch the tiniest of breezes, and he stepped off the edge.

Crimson glided. His wings did not beat, he just glided off from Canterlot's edge.

The nightlit world spread beneath him, so very far beneath him, his launch point so very high up. He knew from experience he could glide all the way to his destination without a single wingbeat.

Smooth air flowed over Crimson's wings. The freedom of every possible direction surrounded him. Alone and free, with no one and nothing to see or touch him up here. This night sky was his.

His body had healed completely from Haven Hay. Scarred nastily, but appearance didn't matter. His wing still worked perfectly. Prey's hoofwork had not failed. It never did.

Crimson glided through the night. Tiny patchwork fields and dark roads passed beneath him. Pinpricks of light signalling lone farmhouses. Sometimes in little glowing clusters of houses instead. He idly wondered if, were he above Canterlot, he would be able to pick out his friends’ houses like that. Scenic at least may still be up and his lights still be on, working late into the evenings to prepare for his wedding.

Off to his left, a much bigger cluster of yellow lights shone. The town of Ponyville.

Crimson had no interest in going there, or even flying over it. He couldn't stomach the thought of seeing any of the six ignorant Bearers of the Elements of Harmony who lived there. Especially not the traitor Celestia's very own special student.

'Celestia, the Sun Wolf.' That is what Prey had called her. The hateful name fit.

Regardless, he didn't care about the small pony-exclusive town which had recently become so puffed up with its own self-importance. He was not some celebrity-chasing tourist. His destination tonight had nothing to do with Ponyville.

The destination he was gliding to lay beyond, in a black stretch of land where no tiny lights glowed in the night. The black stretched on for miles and miles and miles. Dark trees.

Crimson had an apartment, Prey's old apartment back in Canterlot.

He no longer cared to remain in the gold capital when he didn't have to. So two months ago, in longing, he'd searched for an alternative.

The Everfree Forest.

Wild trees. Twisting, overgrown thorns and bushes fighting for space to survive.

He smelled leaf mould, so thick he could practically feel tiny motes of decaying leaves in the air under his wings.

Branches ceaselessly swayed and groaned in the endless canopy of trees. Unnamed insects and nocturnal animals called and skittered. Untamed wildlife. And death.

There came the frantic scream of some animal being dragged down and killed.

Uncaring, cruel nature at its height.

It was a tinge of home.

Out on the borders, beyond Equestria's taming touch, this is how it had been. The Everfree just contained a slightly higher concentration of monsters than normal.

'And much fewer than the Deeper Green, as Prey said.'

The dark trees sighed as he silently wheeled above their canopies in a wide arc, slowing himself before angling downwards.

He was here. At an almost-clearing, or grove. A tangle of three gnarled trees stood at its centre, so interwoven that they were as one life.

Not a Wolfing Wood clearing, never a Wolfing Wood. Not large enough, not twisted enough, not dark enough. And a Wolfing Wood would never deign to bear the treehouse cabin suspended in its branches like this one did.

Yet even so... animals didn't come close, no squirrels ever clambered up these gnarled trunks, and no birds ever roosted in these reaching branches. The other dark, knotted trees of the Everfree leaned away and seemed to hold their breath at the grove's edge, far more silent than they should be in the wind. Because there was still something off-putting there.

It was that hindbrain instinct, deep in your bones, which whispered you weren't supposed to be here. It was the warning that the average pony was too blinded to recognise any longer.

This log treehouse was Crimson's. He knew it was exactly where it belonged. You had to take if you wanted to survive in the wilds.

He landed on the small cabin's sloping cut-sod roof, and took a moment to comfortably refold his wings. He hadn't needed to flap once since his launch off from Canterlot, as predicted.

The tang of the forest's night air was sharp on Crimson's tongue, one he could uniquely recognise. It was a scent always tinged with the traces of blood only he could smell.

He was used to it. He'd built this cabin one log at a time by hoof. It was his secret retreat when he wanted a break from even Carton Juice's well-meaning presence. His nest, where he hoped nobody would find him.

There was a zebra living in these trees somewhere, of all people. She'd been poking around seemingly trying to find this place. She wasn't going to succeed, or if she did, he'd warn her off then.

Inside the small, unadorned cabin it was dark. Crimson didn't need any lamp, though. He knew his way to the low bed.

A straw mattress he'd transported all the way out here, along with warm blankets, greeted his questing hoof in the dark.

'Home.' For now. Or merely a place he'd taken, carved out of the world by tooth and hoof.

'Mine.'

He pulled the ribbon from his mane, the knot untying itself. He let it flutter free into the dark as he sank onto the bed. It would always return to him.

Crimson closed his eyes, and breathed in the darkness.

He smelled the scents of the forest outside, of seasoned and cut wood from the cabin, the straw in his mattress, and the faintly musty featherdown in his pillow.

The night was not quiet, as the night is never quiet in a forest. But here, in his small cabin, it was still.

Crimson breathed out. His muscles relaxed. His heart calmed.

Without warning, a soft weight settled onto his back out of the dark.

A smile of ripped thread and torn cloth, a smile dripping blackness. Crimson had seen the smile.

What no one remembered, because they'd all forgotten him, was that Prey had smiled all the time. He'd had so many different smiles. They'd been false, fake, merely crafted masks. Ones Prey had worn to trick, to deceive, to hide what he was really feeling. Crimson had seen Prey wear so many different smiles.

But he'd also learnt Prey's smiles, and learned how to recognise the few tremulous, brittle, but real ones. Crimson knew what Prey's real smile looked like.

The black smile of the doll-that-is-Prey had held no malice. And Crimson had not been afraid.

Crimson's heart soared. He smiled and didn't open his eyes.

On his back the soft, warm weight of a doll, of a lamb, kneaded him as Prey settled down for the night.

A pegasus did not sleep on their back, not with wings. Those folded wings now shifted up to help nestle the runt figure into place.

Prey let out a soft sigh as he laid his head down, Crimson feeling the pressure of a small chin and the warmth of two drooping ears as they rested on his back.

He didn't shift to try and look, not when they had both just settled down. He didn't need to see to know the ribbon was now tied behind Prey's ear. Where it belonged. What allowed Prey to manifest here.

One side here, one on the other.

A tiny huff of contented breath tickled Crimson's fur, as his blood brother tucked himself in.

Crimson hadn't been dreaming that night. He hadn't believed it, hadn't been able to hope it was anything more than the long haunting of a waking dream.

But it had been real. A pincushion, a contingency plan that had never been Prey's own, squirming free of hunger to wake in the dark under the mountain weeks later.

Hunger, it was always there, always pulling on Prey and trying to drag him back. The threads and strings he was tangled in, couldn't escape, couldn't properly explain to Crimson. Couldn't explain why he could not always manifest here, why he didn't have a real body, why he could only be stitch and cloth that was also sometimes flesh.

Time, space, it didn't work the same on the other side. And there was the hunger that Prey had to fight off every sliver of every single second. He was always hungry, but it intensified the longer he managed to stay here on this side, in the real world.

It was an endless emptiness which couldn't be filled, and to one that Prey would always eventually crumble. Then Prey would vanish, stitched back into the other side, until he could recover and claw his way back out. But the ribbon, and likewise Prey, would always find their way back.

Crimson didn't care about any of that. Prey was back, and that was enough. A last hope rekindled, a secret kept.

It swept Crimson with joy so fervent he felt as if his bones might melt when he finally understood that it was real, and not a dream. Prey was finally free of Luna's leash, and safe from the Wolf, Celestia, who thought him erased. Freed from his own runes too, a price to be sure, but now also free to hug and rest in the peace of blessed silence and with no longer the danger of shattering the other.

Contentment. Peace. Closeness Crimson had never known his heart was yearning after for so long. His friend. A brother. Acceptance.

"Goodnight, Prey." He hummed, a reverberation carried through his chest.

"Night watch over you, Crimson." Prey murmured, snuggling himself further in.

Bittersweet. Love. And true friendship.

Okay, I admit it, I admit it! I am a sucker for happy endings. There. I said it. Are you satisfied?

Lots of people have been agreeing with the predicted Bad Ending tragedy, and it would have fitted. Oh, it would have fitted perfectly. And I considered, very deeply. But, I am weak in the end... and I gave in to a happy ending.

(Although, April 1st is coming up... So, perhaps. Something cannon, but not really 'official' like above.)

The next chapter isn't actually a chapter, but Author's Notes last thoughts, words, credits, and ramblings on this story.

A very big thank you to Panem et Circenses for the work over the last two weeks. 😄