The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one is loved; loved for one's own sake—let us say rather, loved in spite of one's self

Everything after the overstallion's office was a blur. I barely remember leaving the stable, only walking through corridors. Nopony stood in my way. They all knew I didn't belong. They simply let me leave.

I was flying. I didn't care where I was going—anywhere, nowhere, it didn't matter. I only had to keep moving.

I looked down and I saw the ground far below me. My whole life, I had been falling—every time I had a new bruise or broken bone, it was because "I fell." I kept on falling, and nopony ever reached out to save me. And the one person I had ever had to hold onto as I fell, my brother, had only been dragged down with me. And somehow, I was still falling. I looked down at the ground, and I decided it was time to stop falling.

It was time to hit bottom.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, tucked my wings against my sides, and pitched forward.

There was a brief moment where I felt my heart leap into my throat and my stomach twist into a knot, but all that passed as I breathed out.

It was quiet. Not silent—the sound of wind rushing past my ears was ever-present—but there was a strange, calm sense of stillness around me. I wasn't falling anymore; I was weightless. I finally felt as if I had managed to let go—to break free of everything that had been holding me back, dragging me down.

I smiled.

Opening my eyes, I looked up at the clouds. I let my whole body go limp. My legs stretched out above me, my wings alongside them. A few stray feathers, pulled out by the wind, floated lazily above me, and I watched them fly away on their own.

As I gazed up at my hooves above me and the clouds beyond them, I imagined myself walking along the clouds—that gloomy, ever-present ceiling over the wasteland. I felt young again, and I thought back to that single happiest moment in my life when I looked down from the stable's ceiling to see my little brother smiling back up at me, so innocent and pure. That was how he deserved to be remembered, not for what the stable had turned him into . . . what it had turned me into.

A strong crosswind buffeted me from the side and sent me tumbling, eliciting a sharp cry from me; a desperate, primitive plea of instinct, swallowed up by the open sky. Unfortunately, my voice wasn't the only thing to react on instinct, and my wings fanned out reflexively to bring me back under control.

I was facing the ground.

It was racing toward me. Bleak, sickly gray-brown fields of dirt and decay as far as I could see. My hooves flailed wildly, scrambling for purchase they wouldn't find. I was falling, but my wings—which stubbornly refused to pull back in against my sides, no matter how much I strained—were slowing my descent and steering me off course.

A stray, low-altitude cloud came up in my path. It was far too thin to stop me; my impact scattered the puffy nimbus into a fine mist, but it robbed me of rapidly decaying downward momentum. I coughed and sputtered, gasping to draw in a breath after having the wind knocked out of me, but I found it hard to take in air as it whipped past me. Suddenly, I became deathly afraid that the landing wouldn't kill me.

My mouth opened wide in a futile attempt at a scream. Wind rushed up my nose and throat, inducing another coughing fit as I choked on my own breath. My eyes watered, stinging my cheeks with icy, wind-chilled tears. My wings burned from the strain of holding me aloft, and it was then that I saw they had steered me toward an old, abandoned barn; a putrid shade of dull red—where it still had paint—it looked as if a stiff breeze might knock the whole thing over. I hated to think what would happen when I hit it.

Fearing it might be the last thing I ever saw, I cried out once more with a redoubled effort, twisting my body and straining my wings against the wind. I flipped over onto my back, and gazed up one last time at the sky above. The clouds were far away now. I reached a forehoof out, dreaming one last time about walking on the ceiling. My thoughts drifted to Starry, and I breathed out a whisper, "Goodb—"

My back exploded in pain as I hit the roof of the barn. It cracked and splintered under me, and I continued falling, crashing through the rafters—thick, heavy beams that only yielded to me due to centuries of decay weakening them. I came to rest on the floor of the barn with shards of rotten wood clattering around me. And, again, I couldn't breathe. I prayed silently to the Goddesses to just let me pass out, but my lungs, burning in my chest, starved for air, pulled and sucked in a gasp.

And then I heard the floor creaking under me.

"Not again," I whimpered as I felt the support fall out from under me once more.

I fell through into the barn's cellar, dirt and debris scattering everywhere as the floor fell in after me, half-burying me under a pile of rotten wood and other pieces of Old Equestria's decay.

***

"Day!"

"Day! Say something!"

No words came out, but I managed a whimpering gasp as I struggled under the crushing weight of debris on top of me. I blinked the dust from my eyes, and I saw Starry hovering over me. Her mane was matted with sweat, and she was covered in soot stains.

"Easy, Day. I found you. Just hold on while I get you out of there," she said.

After she dug me out from under the rubble, Starry reached out to me to help me up, but I kicked her hooves back. With a pained grunt, I rolled away from her and struggled to stand. Again she tried to help me, and again I pushed her away, this time with a snarled, "Don't touch me! Just leave me alone!"

"Day . . . what's wrong? What happened?"

After managing to stand up, I limped over to the wall and leaned against it for support while I clutched a hoof against my side where I could feel my broken ribs moving with each breath I took. I should have been in a lot more pain, but the numbness I'd been feeling since I left the stable had dulled more than just my emotions. "I fell. What's it look like?" I groaned.

"Day . . ." She looked at me with her eyes pleading. Pleading for me to let her get close to me. But after everything I'd been through, I knew I couldn't do that. It would only end up hurting more, and I just wanted to stop hurting, stop feeling . . . anything.

"Just leave! I don't need you! I wish I'd never met you!" I yelled at Starry, my legs shaking.

"You don't mean that," Starry said in a calm, soothing voice. A mother's voice. "Day, please, I want to help you, but you have to tell me what's wrong."

"Nothing's wrong! I'm fine!" I shouted, cowering back against the wall as she took a cautious step toward me. "I'm fine! I'm fine! I'm . . . fine," I choked back a sob.

"You're covered in blood, Day! You just took a dive through a barn!"

"So what if I did? It's not like I accomplished anything. Everything—" I choked again. "Everything I do turns out wrong. Why should this be any different?"

"Day . . . talk to me." Starry took another careful step in my direction, and I pressed myself harder against the wall, as if I could force myself through it to escape her. It only made the pain in my back flare up, though. But all that felt distant, as if it were only an imagined pain. It was completely eclipsed by the churning torment in my heart—an anxious, screaming fear that gripped my stomach and twisted it in knots and squeezed my chest from the inside, trying to suffocate me. It was as though some horrible monster were inside me, trying to claw its way out.

"Everything!" I trembled. "I should have—should have died when I first left the stable. Exile meant death." I looked up at Starry, my lips quivering. I could feel the monster clawing its way up the inside of my neck. "I went to Security and confessed, knowing that I'd die for it. But I was okay with it. B—because I knew the last thing I'd ever done had been to prote—" I winced, choking as I struggled to keep that monster inside. "Protect my little brother."

Starry stood there, just out of reach. She didn't say anything, only watching me with wide, sad eyes. Why should she be sad? I thought. What reason did she have to feel sad? What right did she have? She hadn't done the things I'd done. She hadn't lost everything she ever cared about.

"But then I kept living. And I had to live with what I'd done, what I'd lost . . ."

"Day, I don't blame you for killing your mother. From what you told me, it sounds like you were justified. I know that doesn't make it any easier, but—"

"I wasn't the one who killed her." I watched Starry's face as it went from a look of confusion to one of incredulity as she realized what I meant. The monster thrashing inside my chest quieted for a moment, and I sat down, lowering my head with a sigh. "Sweets killed her. I cleaned him up, got him back to sleep, and I took the blame for it. I had to. It was the only way to protect him. And the only reason I was able to face what I thought would be certain death was the knowledge that I would die protecting him."

"You're a good pony, Day." Starry reached toward me.

I clenched my jaw, feeling that monster tearing at my insides again. "And now I killed him!" I snarled through gritted teeth, as though that were all I could do to keep the monster from bursting free through my mouth. I felt tears rolling down my cheeks as I looked into Starry's wide-eyed stare. "I killed my little brother. I didn't mean to. I just wanted to stop him—stop him from killing the overstallion." I winced. "That . . . that monster . . . he was our father. Our father! It was his fault! He raped our mother! He was the reason she hated us! We were nothing but constant reminders to her, reminders of him, of the sweet nothings"—I spat the words—"he'd whisper to her. She didn't want us. She never wanted us. Nobody did. All we ever had was each other. And I killed Sweets just to protect that monster."

I was shaking all over. The monster inside me was clawing its way out and I couldn't hold it back any longer. My chest heaved with deep, sobbing breaths and I cried out in the worst pain of my life. I hurt so much that I couldn't even feel it when Starry rushed up to me and threw her forelegs around me. I wrenched my eyes shut and buried my face in her neck, muffling my desperate, agonized wails into her. "I killed him! And for what? So I could just stomp our monster of a father to death anyway?"

Starry didn't say anything. She didn't say she was sorry, or tell me it was okay, that it wasn't my fault, or that I didn't do anything wrong. She just held me. And I held her. She was warm and soft and I just wanted to stay with her as she slowly rocked me in her embrace, quietly hushing me as I cried.

The monster that I'd been struggling to contain had burst free through my face in a torrent of tears and anguished sobs. And when it was finally gone, when I couldn't cry any more, I clung to Starry as tightly as I could manage, despite the pain in my ribs and along my back and across my shoulders.

"Please don't leave me," I whimpered.

Nothing Starry could have said would have meant anything to me. I knew from all the times I'd told Sweets that I'd always be there, that I'd always protect him—I knew that "always" isn't something you can promise. Doing so will only set an expectation that you'll never be able to live up to. To say that she'd never leave me would have only been empty words—sweet nothings whispered in my ear. But Starry didn't say anything. Instead, she just held me. And that was enough.

***

I was in no mood or shape to fly, so Starry and I walked back to Mum's Diner. It was a long walk, made longer by my injured pace, but that was okay. For once, Starry and I got to travel together without anything getting in the way; no raiders, no caravans, no dark forests, and no stables. It was only she and I.

I told her everything. I told her what really happened that morning when mom died, and how much I felt as though I had failed my little brother, that he felt there was no other choice but . . .

And Starry just listened. She listened while I told her about waking up alone and looking for my brother, as in a dream. She listened while I talked about finding him on top of our mother in a bloody mess—the dream turned nightmare. She listened to me go over what happened in the overstallion's office, and how I killed my brother and my father.

All the while, Starry never said anything. Maybe she understood that there was nothing to say that would have meant anything to me, or maybe she just didn't have anything to say. She walked at my side, put her wing around me, and nuzzled at the back of my head. And no longer did I recoil from her touch. She was warm, and I leaned against her side for support while we walked.

We had to stop a few times when I broke down crying. Starry was patient, and she held me, wrapped me tightly in her wings, and rocked me gently in her warm embrace while I cried and shivered. I begged her not to leave me, repeating my lonely plea several times, as if the words themselves were other limbs I had to cling to her with. Making those pleas was more important to me than hearing a reply. And though she never did say anything, the way she held me made me feel safe with her. Rather than tell me she wouldn't leave, she simply stayed with me and kept me close to her.

I wasn't okay, not by a long shot. And maybe I never will be after all I've been through, but Starry managed to give me something that I hadn't known I was missing. She made me feel as if I mattered to someone. And while that didn't make everything all better, it somehow made it bearable. No longer was I trying to deny my pain. I had finally hit rock bottom . . . somewhat literally. And though I still feel like it would be tempting fate to believe things couldn't get any worse, I didn't have to suffer alone in silence anymore.

***

The sun had set by the time we reached the diner. But the moon was in full and even the cloudy skies couldn't hold back Luna's brilliant glow. The bright night would watch over the end of the old day and the coming of the new.

Lights were on inside Mum's Diner, and as we approached, we could hear loud noise from within: signing, laughing, sounds of celebration. It hardly seemed like a place where I belonged. I felt absolutely wretched. I was sure my eyes were puffy and bloodshot, my face was wet, and I had streaks of snot along my forelegs where I had wiped my nose. Not to mention my myriad aches and bruises, but those were hardly anything new.

Starry turned to me, put her hoof on my shoulder, and smiled gently. The silver bars on her collar sparkled with reflected moonlight; two bright, shining stars that had always been there, guiding me through the darkness. I didn't have it in me to smile back at her, but I knew I didn't have to wear a mask for her anymore. She stroked my mane a couple times then leaned in to kiss my forehead. "Let's go home," she said softly, nodding toward the diner.

The corners of my lips pulled back ever so slightly, and I nodded. "Home."