Rainbow Dash was the only one to confront him. The few other ponies he passed stared with wide eyes as he galloped by. The pegasus, however, wouldn't let him transgress without a challenge. Making an uncharacteristic but understandable shriek, she barreled from a cloud in the chilly sky when she saw Pinkie Pie's contorted, motionless form draped over his body. She cut her charge short inches from his face.

“What happened to her?” she demanded.

When he didn't respond and she saw the dampness on his cheeks, her face softened and her hooves lowered to the ground. He blinked at her, then continued in his efforts, rushing past her with Pinkie slung over his back. He galloped towards Twilight's library, with as much haste as he dared transporting such a vulnerable pony

To Twilight's credit, she didn't hesitate to ask questions or pause for a moment. As soon as her gaze went from the stallion to the pink pony strewn awkwardly across his back her smile dissolved and she flew into motion, charging down the steps to her basement. He followed her into the darkness wordlessly and saw that she was already tearing apart the various alchemical experiments and apparatus that occupied the lower den, forming it into a makeshift treatment center. Telekinetically propelled, the steel machines and tubes zoomed around the basement haphazardly as Twilight restructured them with single-minded efficiency. Finally, a plain white bed was pulled into view from the corner. She lifted Pinkie Pie off of him with as much care as she could, eased her onto the sterile linen and pulled a collection of cruel tools from a nearby drawer. He looked away, unable to watch.

An hour later they both stared down at Pinkie. Blood specked Twilight's face and hooves while a set of equally bloody instruments lay on the table beside her. The iron smell of the blood mixed with the smoky odor of Twilight's chemicals almost made the stallion gag. A slow, rhythmic, and inscrutable tone sounded over and over from one of the machines. Even though her bones had been pushed back into place and her lacerations mended, Pinkie still looked unnatural and distorted; a mere parody of the energetic earth pony was lying broken in front of them. Her breath sounded more like a wheeze – it was desperate and erratic, but her chest barely quivered as a result. There was something more jarring to both of them than the stitches and wheezing and blood, however; it was the void, emotionless expression that Pinkie now wore – her everlasting smile had died.

Twilight, either unaware or unconcerned with the blood that was splattered on her face in her haste to save her friend, sighed with a tinge of relief and was finally compelled to level the obvious query at the stallion.

“What happened?” she asked, barely more than a whisper.

He gulped several times. Silent tears clouded his vision as he stared at Pinkie, unable to look away. Minutes passed before he could find the strength to answer.

“She fell,” he managed to say, his voice croaking as if it he had to gather all the energy in his body to summon those two words.

That’s right. She had fallen – tumbling down the jagged cliff-side like an old doll flung down the stairs by some tantruming foal. He had looked on powerlessly as she smashed again and again against rock, her scream cut short by unconsciousness within seconds, her body breaking more and more with each impact. She finally hit the bottom with a dull, wet thud as he desperately and ineffectually scrambled back and forth, trying to find a way down to her, screaming her name until his voice was hoarse. Her legs twitched slightly as the final spasms of life flickered through her body, like a bug that had been crushed violently under-hoof.

It was his fault, of course. He had discovered something, days before. Something beautiful. Something wonderful. During an all-too-familiar expedition to gather exotic soil samples, he had stumbled, quite unexpectedly, upon a pristine valley deep in the treacherous Rambling Rock Ridge. It was beautiful, and perfect, seemingly unsullied by the presence of anypony before him. Deep inside the otherwise bleak landscape of the Ridge was a hidden gem – a heaven on earth. He was stunned, and had to wait to see if he was dreaming or hallucinating as the scenery unfolded before him. The smooth, low hills covered in a vibrant blanket of grass were cut deep by a sparkling stream that ran from one end of the valley to a small lake shimmering in the sunlight. The air was saturated with a mist – it tasted fresh and rejuvenating. The scattering of oak trees had only just begun to color and shed their gold and scarlet leaves, creating a mosaic on the ground. The landscape rolled out in front of him, a natural masterpiece, and his eyes widened, amazed at what he had found. Immediately, he knew what he was to do with such a naturally, effortlessly peerless sculpt of the earth. He had to show her.

That was why he had brought her there. Without explanation, he had begged her to join him. She, surprisingly, was the one who was nervous. As he bounced around her jauntily, she shivered from the chilly air cutting through her, and from the sight in front of her. There was a thin rock jutting out from the otherwise steep and impassable cliff-face – a path, her partner had explained excitedly and without worry, that served as the only passage way to something wonderful that he had to show her.

“I don't know...” Pinkie Pie had muttered. It wasn't like Pinkie Pie to be so cautious. His smile twitched, but didn't fade.

It would all be worth it in the end, he knew. Instead, he leaped onto the small outcropping to show her just how easy it would be. His legs wobbled slightly, but he spared the daunting sight below him barely a glance. His impact sent pebbles and rocky debris plummeting down the steep precipice. He turned towards her awkwardly, the same carefree, excited look on his face.

“Take my hoof,” he said, extending it down towards her. “I'll walk with you.”

She hesitated for a few seconds as the breeze whistled shrilly through the rocks. Winter was coming; its smell in the air. Pinkie still had an uncertain frown as she looked up at him. His hair rusted lightly in the wind.. A clumsy grin still stretched across his face.

She returned his smile, and her hoof met his.

Twilight listened with patient severity as he confessed to her, bumbling out his distraught explanation through sobs and apologies. He tried to explain how it was all his fault and how sorry he was, and Twilight didn't know how to respond. She checked Pinkie again as if somehow that would relieve the awkwardness of her silence.

After he descended into sniffing and quiet breathing, granting her reprieve, she finally spoke.

“She seems to be stable,” she said, not looking him in the eyes. “If you hadn't brought her back here as fast as you did, she might not have survived.”

Behind her gracious words he was sure he heard something else. He was wise enough to read between the lines.

If you hadn't taken her there at all, she might still be smiling.

He didn't respond, and Twilight wasn't able to manage another word after that. The minutes passed by in silence as her attention flitted between the various apparatus keeping Pinkie alive. Occasionally, a book on pony physiology levitated from upstairs and opened in front of her, checking a few minute facts, after which she closed it and added it to the growing pile on the ground.

Twilight walked past him and towards the stairs, mumbling something about telling their other friends. She stood behind him, one foot on the staircase upwards, staring at him as he kept his eyes on the unconscious Pinkie.

Twilight stood behind him, her mouth opening and closing, as if words were constantly playing on the edge of her tongue – maybe some kind of consolation, or an assurance. There was the chance she felt it was her place to promise the stallion that everything was going to be alright, and that it most certainly wasn't his fault. If that was her ambition, it never materialized. After a few seconds of staring at the scene in silence, she fled the room, rushing up the stairs with sudden urgency.

It didn't matter to the stallion. He had already forgotten she was there. The whole of his mind was occupied by formless thoughts. Looking mournfully down at Pinkie Pie, he wondered what possible words could console him, or what could possibly be done to help her. The abject feeling of his own powerlessness made his breathing strained and eyes cloudy.

“I'm sorry...” he whispered.

He prayed it was only a nightmare, one from which he would wake up sweating and crying and immediately run out his doors to find Pinkie and confirm her safety. But the cold reality lie in front him, immutable by his juvenile dreams – Pinkie Pie was broken.

Now, he wished that they had never met.

It was never a part of his plans – his studies and schedule never accounted for the intervention of the pony whom he had now broken. While all of his peers and fellow students at Canterlot University had chosen prestigious, traditional, and boring internships in Manehatten or Fillydelphia, he had chosen an unconventional off-campus destination. Ponyville was seen by a large majority of Canterlot as a relatively rustic earth pony town with little to offer the aspiring student. However, he had paid attention to current events, and knew that Twilight Sparkle herself had chosen that town as her personal research center. Such a noteworthy and intelligent pony choosing this town meant that there had to be something there for a prospective researcher. The prospect of working together with the princess's personal protégé made his heart flutter with excitement and reconciled all his ambitions. It was easy, after that, to solidify his intention. Princess Celestia, with Twilight's enthusiastic permission, was thrilled to approve the unorthodox request herself.

He had come to Ponyville in the early spring, fresh-faced and with a bag of books and papers tethered to his side. Winter Wrap-Up had just ended a few days prior, and he could still see the snow clinging to the trees of the distant Everfree Forest. Twilight Sparkle, with an excited and friendly smile, had invited him into her home for the duration of his studies. She made every effort she could to make him feel welcome in Ponyville, including introducing him to all her friends. Mixed among all of the other ponies he met, Pinkie Pie and her antics didn't warrant a second glance from him then, as he was far more interested in Twilight and his own studies. For the first few weeks things proceed as he had planned – study sessions and discussions with Twilight occupied most his time, and the rest was filled by the extensive library of Ponyville, which had been augmented by Twilight's personal collection.

More and more as the weeks went on however, he found his mind wandering. Pinkie Pie visited Twilight's house often enough that he formed a cursory understanding of her from these interactions, and she fascinated him more and more with each passing day. He found his eyes running over pages and pages of text but not taking in a single word as his thoughts were drawn continuously back to the strange pink pony. He fancied himself Twilight's disciple in the studies of friendship, and he had just discovered his first case study – he would befriend Pinkie Pie.

She was inscrutable at first. Her childish demeanor and unintelligible thinking knocked him off his guard and frustrated him. Any attempts at rational discussion soon devolved into nonsense, and he almost retreated from his attempt to gain a cogent understanding of the earth pony. Eventually, though, he found himself looking forward to spending time with her. He started leaving his notebook behind when he took her out. When he started seeing her as something other than a research subject something changed. With a smile matching hers, he gladly allowed himself to be torn away from whatever literature he was studying or essay he was composing whenever she showed up at Twilight's, a new adventure planned for the two of them. He sent, month after month, requests that his academic excursion to Ponyville be extended, despite the fact that his goal had veered significantly from its original orientation. Twilight, for her part, allowed him to go each time with an amused, motherly smile. Maybe a year or two ago she would have extolled the merits of perpetual and undisturbed study and research to the hopeful academic, but she was a different mare now. She, perhaps better than anyone, understood how important friendship was.

He was whimpering and sobbing without being consciously aware of it, thinking about those halcyon days that, despite occurring over the past few months, seemed like vestige memories that had no proper place in his current existence. As if they were improper or somehow wrong to think about, he tried pushing them from his mind and allowing the rhythmic beep beep beep of Twilight's machines and Pinkie's Pie chest thrumming in the desperate, uneven throes of life to echo over and over again through his mind. He found the task easier with each passing minute.

All at once, all the exhaustion that desperation and adrenaline had kept at bay broke through and washed over him in a wave. The stench of death and blood and chemicals suddenly became a permeating, heavy cloud, invisible in the air, making it impossible for the stallion to take in his breath in anything other than great, sobbing gasps. He was still muttering nonsensical confessions and apologies to Pinkie Pie as he staggered to her side. Pinkie gave no indication that she had heard any of it. Words fell uselessly from his lips, endless variations of the same, unheard sentiment. He collapsed next to her bed, determined to not leave her alone for even a moment. It seemed like an eternity passed in the shadows of Twilight's basement, but he was still murmuring apologies when, without even being aware of it, his eyelids shut and he fell from consciousness.

He's perched atop the zenith of a vast mountain range. Beneath him lies the whole of physical existence. Celestia's realm and all the lands beyond stretch out to forever and ever, never quite touching with the horizon. The sun rises, arching its glow over the landscape and casting everything in a brilliantly illuminating light. The plains and forests seem to go on endlessly, and the mountains, tinted blue in the distance, lack a visible peak and jut upwards and out of view. The empty pale blue sky above him is as limitless as the land below him. He's humbled by the sight, feeling somehow unworthy, as if he should avert his gaze in shame and feel guilty that he caught even the glimpse that he managed. It seems to the stallion, right now, that if every pony that had ever lived materialized everything they had ever hoped to achieve, and somehow brought their desires into perfect existence, it wouldn't come close to the beauty of the scene before him.

The lit towers of Manehatten look like insignificant blades of stone grass. He can see Ponyville, and Canterlot, and all the other achievements of his species now properly expressed as so much minutiae on a much grander painting. Rambling Rock sits countless miles below him. He thinks he sees pegasi flitting back and forth between the clouds like directionless ants, but he isn't sure.

Pinkie's there, too. She sits beside him with a wan smile on her face, taking in the sight as he does but with none of his embarrassment. He sees her and wants to hug her or kiss her or touch her, but thinks that such desperate and base displays of affection would be impertinent given the scene before him – as if he acted on those desires he might offend some ancient, omnipotent deity who saw fit to lay this sight before him, and who might then decide to snatch it all away in retaliation for his indiscretion.

He sits there silently, with the occasional cloud rolling by close to him. He's crying again, but he doesn't notice it at all this time. He's not sobbing.

"I'm sorry." The words are out of his mouth in a flash, even before he's even decided that he’s going to say anything. Pinkie's presence has finally managed to eclipse everything else in his mind.

Pinkie doesn't respond immediately. She's healed now, with no evidence of the scars or fall or the broken bone, but her smile is alarming. It’s wrapped up in a veil of tragedy. It's somehow worse than her featureless face. It's an exhausted grin, and he doesn't know what it means.

"I know," she says an eternity later.

Her voice doesn't sound right to the stallion. It sounds tired, as if she's constantly on the verge of an exhausted sigh.

She doesn't say it's not his fault, not that he's sure that would comfort him.

He turns to look at her. She's smiling her unreadable, indiscernible smile. He's still confused and not sure what to do, so he just repeats himself, quietly, not sure if he's talking to himself or Pinkie.

“I’m sorry.”

She closes her eyes and nods at nothing, looking like she just figured something out. Without opening her eyes, without a change of expression, she sways violently to the side and throws herself over the cliff face.

He moans and dives after her.

He's falling and falling, and he's cold and drenched, struggling against the force of the wind, but he keeps his eyes open, forelimbs outstretched towards Pinkie, who's still falling with him, not making a sound. He, however, is screaming, and screaming, calling out after her, trying futilely to grab her, but then a cloud sails by under them, slow as molasses, consuming the both of them up for less than a second with its freezing, formless grasp, and when he emerges from the other side and back into the featureless sky Pinkie's gone forever, and he's alone, flailing and crying and yelling as the ground rushes to meet him.

His eyes shoot open and he begins spasming, limbs kicking desperately at nothing as he's overcome with the sensation of weightlessness.

"Stop, stop, it's just me!" he hears Twilight from another dimension.

Twilight's basement starts to take visible form around him, his addled mind emerging from the haze of the dream, and he’s able to calm himself down. Pinkie is still there, motionless and broken, and he realizes that his kinesthetic sense wasn't off. There is a thin purple aura surrounding him as he levitates several feet off the ground. Twilight had brought a couch into the basement while he was sleeping, and she gingerly sets him down on it.

"S-sorry..." Twilight stammers. "I didn't want to wake you."

He doesn't say anything in response, still shaking and sweating from his dream. His immediate response is to curl up in a ball on one side of the couch. He's only able to return his gaze to Pinkie, wholly occupied in silence.

"Y-you were yelling while you slept..." Twilight elaborates unhelpfully. "I read somewhere that you're not supposed to wake somepony up while they're...I'm sorry."

She might as well be speaking a different language. The stallion makes no effort to show that he's heard her or even acknowledged her presence.

"I talked to everyone," she says a minute later after waiting for a response that doesn't come. Walking around the couch and over to Pinkie's life-supporting machines, she makes casual adjustments to the knobs of the repurposed devices. "They'll all be here shortly, and Spike's dispatching messages across Equestria."

His head jerks up, making his first indication that he's noticed her. "How long?" he says, the words more a moderately articulate grunt than any clear evocation.

"Huh? W-well, they should be here in a few minu–"

"How long until she's healed?" he interrupts.

Twilight shakes her head slightly. "I don't...know. I really don't know. It's remarkable she in as good condition as she is, actually. I'm sending letters all over the world for help."

He sits motionless on the couch, staring at her.

"I don't know when she'll wake up," she continues. "...I'm sorry."

What was at first an hour of waiting grows into a day, then multiplies into a week. Slowly, the residents of Ponyville make their way, one by one, to Twilight's basement. Rainbow Dash, Applejack, all the elements come, weep, and talk to the unconscious Pinkie Pie while he sits on the couch, sequestered in his own mind. They try to talk to him occasionally to offer their pity or understanding, but if the stallion hears any of it he makes no visible indication. Rainbow takes offense at his impassiveness, contorting it to be indicative of some sort of unvoiced crime or resentment, but Twilight quickly ushers her friend from the house before her biting statements grew into shouts. Even Celestia's presence and consolation can do nothing to stir him.

He feels like he’s on display as much as Pinkie Pie is. They are coming to see the crime and criminal. Here she is – the epitome of innocence brought low, and the vile stallion who performed the deed. Vague legends and histories stir in his mind of ancient earth pony punishments where, long before the founding of Equestria, ponies would immobilize captured pegasus food thieves in the middle of town, lashing their limbs and wings to stone and allowing the townsponies to do whatever they wanted in retribution for the theft. Often they threw rocks or simply laughed at the pegasus, but sometimes the thief would be found in the morning lying still, their body battered and broken.

He feels as though he is tethered to the couch. He expects punishment. Why aren’t the ponies who slowly shuffle through the darkness of Twilight's basement hitting him, yelling at him, or blaming him? Instead they look at him with wet, sympathetic eyes, touch a hoof understandingly to his, or curl up beside him and murmur careful, comforting words. He can’t help but think that he’s being forced to endure the greater of the two punishments. Only when Pinkie's parents and sisters show up from out of town does he feel ashamed enough to skulk from his couch and go upstairs, pacing frantically around Twilight's library until they leave.

Foreign experts and strange species make their way to Twilight's home as well. Buffalo medicine shamans and griffin doctors, all the experts of their particular fields, examine Pinkie. He watches without hope or expectation. They perform countless experiments and expend dozens of hours pouring over books or in heated discussions with Twilight, Celestia, and each other. And still, they inexorably come to the same answer. With disappointed sighs and apologetic bows, they gradually depart.

He realizes after a while that something is wrong with everyone else's mourning. As day after day the same ponies wander into the room and talk to Twilight and attempt to talk to him or Pinkie Pie, he realizes something is horribly wrong. They aren’t well-wishers hoping that somehow Pinkie will get better by their unnoticed presence; they're a funeral procession without bells or music. Their crying is blithe and insouciant. They have given up on her. She is already dead to them.

As if to prove his point, their visits deteriorate. Only he is there for her, day after day. To the rest of them, she is simply a corpse that hadn't been buried yet. She is a pointless and annoying duty that they increasingly feel isn't owed. He begins to divert his gaze from Pinkie during the rare times they deign to visit, and stares at them with an outrage that simmers and boils just under his skin. He's feels on the verge of barking, incredulous shouting every time one of them enters with perfunctory ease. It is only then that he notices how the words they say mean nothing, how effortlessly the promises and wishes roll from their tongues.

Weeks grow into months. Days and nights pass. The sun rises and falls over and over again with total detachment on the part of the stallion, feeling total ennui for the passage of time. Eventually, winter sets in and flurries of snow swirl outside in Ponyville. Twilight lights a fire for them in the chilly basement. From the moment he awakes to the moment when fitful sleep falls upon him, he is exhausted and weak. He wastes away on the couch in an almost vegetative state, wrapped up in blankets, not even noticing Twilight most of the time. Hope of any sort of activity, cerebral or physical, immediately becomes mired in guilt and abandoned.

Like a plant that has been denied some essential nutrient, he begins to wither and grey. His hair and coat lose any sheen they might have once had, and his eyes become nothing more than two emotionless orbs, forever staring at the pale Pinkie.

Even concerns like food devolve into little more than velleities to him. Twilight provides him with his substances as much as she does with Pinkie Pie. He drinks wine to ease himself to sleep until he notices how much the red liquid looks like a watered down bottle of Pinkie's blood, at which point he moans and pushes it away, refusing to touch it again. The room seems to close up on him, extending and devouring every part of existence, shrinking it so that the whole of it comprises of only the bed in front of him and the pony occupying it. The stairs out of the basement morph into a hopelessly insurmountable cliff face.

His dreams are nothing similar to what swirled in his sleep before. Pinkie never makes a reappearance – at least, not alive. Formless spectres of her broken body occupy his uneasy sleep. Jagged bone jutting from flesh, blood spurting and pooling in hideous shades of bright scarlet flash violently and without coherence whenever he dares to close his eyes. He dreams of slamming his hoof down, crushing a tiny bug underneath – but then, when he lifts his hoof to take satisfaction in his accomplishment, the bug turns suddenly into Pinkie Pie, and her remains are smeared all over his hoof, her limbs twitching in futility. His rest amounts to little more than a few hours each day, usually ending with a frantic shout as he leaps upwards in fright, heart pounding.

"She's getting better," Twilight murmurs one day, seemingly more to herself than anyone. She had given up on either of the ponies who shared the basement with her hearing.

Lethargically, like somepony who has woken up from a slumber decades long, he moves his tired gaze to Twilight. "What?" he groans, his throat drying and cracking.

She looks startled, as though she's just realized she has an audience.

"I...I just said, it looks like she's getting better." As a machine spits out diagnostic reports, Twilight's eyes flit over them. Her makeshift treatment center has been replaced or expanded by high-grade devices from Canterlot to no apparent avail. "She's doing better than I supposed. There's some worrying brain trauma, as I thought, but I don't see any indication of irreparable harm. Some signs of problems at the medulla obl–"

He lapses back into silence after his unusually verbose outburst and turns back to Pinkie. The details don't interest him. Twilight talks on and on about the specifics of Pinkie's injuries, but he blocks it out, shutting his eyes, the same, cyclic, unshakable fears restarting and replaying endlessly.

A bird is chirping from somewhere. The heat of the blazing summer sun feels amazing on his coat, and he can only smile and close his eyes in pleasure. He smells lavender and lilacs, fresh bread and honey.

He opens his eyes. Pinkie's there, sitting across from him on the blanket. A field of multicolored flowers stretches in all directions around them. Fluttershy's home is barely visible far in the distance.

This scene is familiar to him. It's the moment that Pinkie became something more to him; something other than a name and an aggregate of facts and traits. It’s the moment that he felt himself inexorably drawn towards her, an intense fascination awakening in his heart and compelling him towards her with his entirety. The details are lost in a haze even now – all that he remembers is that afterwards there was an unquenchable desire to understand the pink pony completely.

Pinkie Pie sits across the blanket staring at him. Her puffy mane quivers gently in the breeze. She’s wearing the same tight-lipped tragic smile that she wore in his earlier dream, and he sees a misty wetness in her eyes. She isn't saying anything.

He reaches forward, almost touching her, but at the moment is pulled with an unavoidable compulsion for the basket intervened between them. Playing out the motions of the corporeal event, he pushes it open and pulls out a loaf of fresh bread and a jar of golden honey.

“Twilight says you should be better soon,” he tells her nonchalantly, as if he’s discussing the weather. He takes a bite of the bread, considers it a moment, and dips the next piece in honey.

Pinkie blinks, forcing the water in her eyes to gather and roll down her cheek. This is the one thing discongruent with his vague recollection. Pinkie was smiling for real back then, wasn’t she? Didn’t she hop around with childlike abandon, dancing around him as, against all his wishes, he doubled over in unrestrained laughter, brought out by his companion’s innocent inanity?

“She’s lying,” Pinkie says. Her voice is cold and filled with lifeless dents.

He wants to shirk back with fear, deny what she is saying, or yell and shout at her hopelessness and remind her that he’s waiting for her. But he can’t.

He nods at her calmly. He suspected as much.

“She’s just telling you what you want to hear,” Pinkie continues. Yes, he had suspected that as well.

“Soon it will be over, and we can bury this,” Pinkie says, in a voice that isn't her own.

He finishes the last of his bread. The flowers around him die. They can’t hear the bird anymore.

“It’s killing me to see you like this,” he admits, tossing a nod in her direction.

“I know.”

She begins to fade. It’s impossible to tell where it begins – by the time he recognizes it her coat has already grown a pale ivory and her eyes are closed.

“Wait,” he says to her. He feels like he should be panicking, but the word is unhurried.

“I’ll see you when I fall asleep,” she replies.

“I hope so,” he says, but she’s already gone, and the surrounding fields grow to join her in the black aether.

The stallion's eyes open slowly. Before he can panic over the acute feeling of absence in his heart, he hears the noise that he was expecting. The steady beeping on the machine now matches his heartbeat perfectly.

Hearing muffled movement from the top of the stairs, he sits up in on the couch and looks at Pinkie Pie. She’s still in repose – still unmuted and unchanged and broken despite all efforts from the most qualified doctors and magicians. The fire burns brightly in the corner, and his gaze is attracted to it for only a moment.

Twilight makes her way down the stairs. She ignores him. He is just another piece of the scenery by now, a bizarre tumor on the injured Pinkie Pie. She has a brown bag with her, and she pulls from it a variety of colorful beakers and begins lining them up on the a metal table beside her. A book soon follows, and she places it in front of her as she carefully examines each of the potions.

Almost an entire hour passes before she notices him sitting on the couch, staring at her with emotionless eyes. She jumps slightly and looks startled, like her chair has gotten up and started walking around.

“Oh!” she say, eyes growing wide in a brief moment of panic. She recomposes herself, “I’m glad to see you're awake,” she lies.

As if the statement requires physical proof to validate it, she abandons her meticulous study of the beakers and trots around Pinkie Pie and over to his couch. She hops up and curls up beside him, closer than she’d ever been to any pony in a long time.

“How are you feeling?” she whispers quietly. The presence of Pinkie seems to compel her to be muted, as if she risks interrupting some unspoken, unknowable conversation between the two.

He can’t bother to muster an answer for her. What could be said at this point? Doesn’t the pink pony that occupies the perverse dais in the center of the room like the cardinal display in a grotesque museum say everything that it is possible to say about how he’s ‘feeling'? He turns his head slowly towards her, his exhausted eyes hardening from their frigid apathy.

Twilight’s smile quivers.

“She’ll get better,” Twilight answers in a puerile attempt at deception, trying to assuage his obvious fears. The assurance is so basic that the stallion doesn't even hear it. The chants for Pinkie's recovery had become so typical that they have faded to the subconscious.

“I know she will,” she continues, sounding like she’s assuring herself. She picks herself up from the rotting couch and paces around Pinkie Pie. Like a professor so impassioned by his topic that he can’t manage to stay still as he lectures, she flits back and forth around the bed, not looking at the stallion while she speaks.

“Every sign points to a swift recovery. Every day that passes the reports get better and better. I just got a batch of experimental potions for rejuvenation of the mind and body that I’m going to try out on her – after a few tests, of course. Pinkie will recover. The Princess promised me that she would. I know she’d never let anything happen to Pinkie Pie.”

She stops pacing and hovers over Pinkie Pie like a guardian angel, looking down at her friend fondly.

“You’re so caught up in senseless guilt that you’re ignoring the facts. You’re hurting yourself needlessly. She’ll get better.”

She lifts her head up and makes eye contact with him before she walks over. He can see tears forming in the corners of her eyes, and her voice trembles. “You look awful. Would Pinkie want to see you like this? She wouldn’t want you cooped up like this.”

She walks up to him, his face inches from hers. He's reverted to dull passivity, discarding his temporary emotion. If Twilight’s words do anything to stir him, he makes no discernible indication of it.

“It’s killing me to see you like this,” she confesses, breaking into an awkward, nervous laugh.

He stares at her.

“I got you something.” She interrupts herself suddenly, spinning around and reaching for her bag. After a second of rummaging around she withdraws a large leaf and presents it to him. It’s an earthy brown color, tinted with dark green veins. It smell musty, like a fungus.

“I...noticed how badly you were sleeping. A zebra I know had it, and she said all you have to do is chew on it for a few minutes and it will put you right to sleep. She said it’s impossible to dream while you’re under, too. I hope it works for you.”

He has already returned his gaze to Pinkie Pie.

“I know you’re tearing yourself up about this,” she says, setting the leaf beside him. She stumbles around the words awkwardly, carefully choosing each and making her speech sound . She takes his hoof in both of hers and squeezes it tightly in familial empathy. “And I know you want to be here for her if she wakes up, but you ca–...”

Her sentence falters to a stop and her eyes widen. An acute expression of guilt overtakes her, as if she's just accidentally let slip some closely guarded secret.

The word hangs between them, frozen in the air.

If.

He closes his eyes. The disguise has been shorn, the dissembling disassembled. Understanding floods through him in a wave.

Twilight stares at him, panicking internally.

“When,” Twilight corrects herself in a whisper.

“When,” he repeats back, a barely audible growl. He jerks his hoof out of her grip.

After a moment of staring back at him worriedly, Twilight returns to her potions. The stallion curls up inside himself, trying to become as small as possible.

When Twilight finally, after several hours, completes her tests and retreats from the oppressive basement with an exhausted sigh, he stirs.

He hates her, he realizes. He stumbles across that revelation and is nearly startled when he realized how its veracity cuts straight into him. The fact isn’t something that he discerns or actively cognizes – he comes across it almost accidentally as if it was a buried secret or repressed memory deep within him. Yes, he hates Twilight. Maybe he always has. He hates that she hadn't fixed Pinkie Pie yet, and that she persists in her attempts at comforting him with vacuous words devoid of any anesthetic effect. He hates, most of all, that she allowed him to commit this crime. She introduced him to Pinkie Pie – she caused this just the same as if she pushed her friend off the cliff herself. Why is she not brought low just the same as he, collapsed on a decaying couch beside her decaying friend, consumed by guilt and futile objectiveless rage and despair?

She doesn’t care, and he hates her for it. It's a hatred that is both poignant and pervasive and leaves no room for anything else.

He picks up the brown and green leaf beside him and studies it in a disinterested, cursory investigation. He turns it over in his hoof, as if considering it.

It burns bright blue in the fire.

Snow. That’s the first thing he notices. An entire field of pristine snow covering the landscape in a blanket, hanging from the trees. He spins around, trying to place himself. Under the obfuscation of winter, familiarity settles in with slow apprehension.

Of course.

His heaven.

It’s barely recognizable., as snow gently settles on his coat like the ashes of confetti. The entire scene moves slowly – as if the snow refuses to be called down by any force, least of all gravity. Nothing can compel it from its languid stupor.

He’s laughing, he realizes. He’s not sure why, but it frightens him. There’s a terrible moment when he thinks that he's committed a irretractable transgression, the act of laughter being a sin on par with the worst, darkest depths of moral depravity.

He realizes it's okay when he sees that Pinkie is fine.

She's spinning and twisting and skating on the pale blue lake in front of him. He'd never realized she was so nimble – her lithe body contorts itself into bizarre postures that she makes look perfectly natural. She's wrapped in winter garment, a shell of cotton and fur that the snow has only just begun to coalesce upon. The cutting, thin lines of her skates carve indiscernible patterns in the snow that has settled on the frozen water.

He can’t help but be awed by her. Cold weeks have gone by in which Pinkie did nothing but breathe, and barely that at times. Now, seeing her like this, moving and jumping and active, he stares in amazement, laughing and clapping. The smile feels foreign and awkward on his lips, but he can't help himself.

Pinkie notices him and skids to a graceful stop, spraying snow to one side. Her eyes are bright and shimmering, teeming as if about to overflow with youthful joy. Her smile puts a perfect set of snow-white teeth on vibrant display. She raises one forehoof in his direction and gently motions him towards her. It's a suggestion, not a demand. Come on, she's asking him, I want you here. Beside me. I mean, if you're too scared, it's okay, but I want you here more than I want anything else.

He can’t deny her. This is the only chance at catharsis.

Now.

With a gentleness he feels needed to be consistent with the scenery, he picks himself up off the ground and shakes the snow from his body. He feels himself glide towards the ice, never taking his eyes off the smile that Pinkie has – a smile he thought he would never see again.

When he reaches the edge of the lake, he hesitates. Skating was never really something that he'd felt himself capable of, so he stares at the foreboding surface with reluctance. Pinkie looks up at him and motions again.

"It's okay" he thinks he hears her say.

He nods at her and, tentatively, sets a single hoof down on the fragile-looking ice.

A horrific sound like the splintering of bone echoes through the valley. Starting at where his hoof has made gentle contact with the ice, large fractures arc across the lake. Rapidly expanding across the entire sheet of ice, they draw huge ragged canyons along it, following the paths Pinkie has carved in the snow. Aghast and terrified, he steps back from the lake, looking on in complete impotence as the fractures surround Pinkie in a web of rough lines. His face is ashen.

She looks confused, but not worried.

But she's not smiling anymore.

When the ice has fractured to tiny floating blocks in the frigid water, Pinkie is left floating on the only sizeable chunk. She seems to nod in acceptance, and the ice below her cracks. The water gulps her down with a muted splash.

No, he thinks.

Not again.

He barrels towards the lake, his hooves kicking up the white snow behind him. There’s no hesitation – caution is ultimately abandoned in a hysteria of panic. He leaps onto a block of ice, then another, jumping, almost slipping from island to island.

When he reaches the center of the lake he dives into the water. The cold bites into into him, serrating through his flesh and chilling his blood. The tears he didn’t know he was crying freeze on his face. He gasps in shock as the cold consumes him absolutely, his chest taking in lungfuls of icy water. He flails around in the darkness, unable to make sense of anything. His hooves are grasping, trying to find her.

His hoof wraps itself around an object that has to be Pinkie. He clings to it desperately as he pulls himself to the surface, fighting against the numbing tendrils of despair and cold that wrap around his legs and compel him downwards, to surrender.

The sun shines brightly as soon as he breaks the surface of the lake. It’s two different worlds – one second, overwhelmed by darkness and confusion, the next, light shimmering and illuminating the entirety of existence. He pulls Pinkie to the nearest block of ice he can find and drags her on top of it.

Her hair is soaked and clumped. It’s already begun to freeze, little glittering icicles beginning to form in her mane. Her damp, ineffectual clothing clings to her skin. Her eyes open, slowly, as if waking. It’s how he imagined she would wake up, someday.

“Why?” she asks calmly.

He’s sobbing and blubbering, laying on top of her, unable to comprehend her question.

“Why did you bother?” she elaborates.

“Just let me go,” she says

She pulls his face in front of hers so that he can see her. They stare into each other’s eyes.

“Just let me go,” she repeats, “and we’ll meet again, soon.”

She pushes her muzzle forward, and their lips meet. She’s cold.

The lonely ice block they’re sitting on begins to dissolve.

The sun sets.

He wakes up coughing and is acutely aware of the pervasive chill in the room. Each cough is a little silver cloud of exhaled condensation in front of his face. The room is almost completely enveloped in darkness. He’d been crying in his restless sleep, like he has many times in the past, but this time he can feel it; the lines of tears are cold on his face. Twilight has allowed the fire to die, he notices – when he glances over, he finds the culprit of the intense cold in the smoldering embers of the dead, vacant fireplace.

The dream plays over and over in his mind. It was too acute, unnaturally like the recollection of distant memories. He stands from the couch, his weak legs carrying him over to Pinkie Pie. She is immutable and unchanged. It is impossible to correct her through desire. Words are meaningless, so he speaks nothing to her.

The dream is all that he can think about.

Just let me go.

He picks up a flowery pillow from the couch and holds it gently.

We’ll meet again soon.

The pillow hovers over Pinkie Pie’s face.

There are no tears left to cry anymore.

He presses down, forcefully but calmly.

She doesn’t even twitch.

The incessant beeping finally stops, becoming a single, dull tone.

He smiles, for the first time in an eternity. Hopelessness and ennui are pushed out, replaced by stamina and a willful desire to act. He thinks for a second, his mind racing as possibilities lay themselves out in front of him, each one presenting itself in an orderly procession. His old self is back, and, analytically, he pushes through the options one at a time until he lands on one that sparks in his brain and causes the synapses to light up in a fiery burst of achievement and perfection.

He knows what he has to do now, and the feeling is so grand that he can’t help but laugh.

He sweeps out of the basement in a purposeful torrent. The stairs are no longer insurmountable, and he starts up them with a haste he felt himself incapable of just a day ago. He climbs halfway up the stairs before taking a glance back at the corpse that used to be Pinkie Pie. There’s nothing left to attach him. The chain that once bound him to the bed has been destroyed. He’s free to fly, unfettered. After a moment he turns and continues upwards.

Twilight isn’t in home, and he thanks fate for granting him that one privilege. He has no interest in confronting her at this juncture. There’s nothing left to say to her – even his hatred has evaporated in face of his new-found determination. He pushes open the door and steps outside for the first time in months.

The sun is shining bright in the winter sky. It surprises him, and the feeling of it on his skin is irritating. He’s grown so adapted to the dark of Twilight’s basement that the shimmering orb seems foreign and bizarre. After quivering on his frail legs for a second, he turns to the side of Twilight’s house and vomits; a thin, grey gruel that pools on the ground.

That is all the delay he can be afforded. He marches through town, a triumphant smile still on his face. The ponies that populate the town once more look on him in horror. He looks like a walking corpse – his bony, grey frame stuttering and shuddering through Ponyville, somehow making an act as simple as walking look unnatural. He doesn’t notice their stares.

As if under a geas, his body carries him out of town and into the wilderness. He no longer feels the winter cold on his skin, his consciousness possessed by much higher concerns. Rambling Rock Ridge appears before him like salvation after an hour of trotting.

He climbs the mountain, his malnourished form supported entirely by the strength of his purpose. Familiar, snow-covered paths once again guide his hooves to his destination. He feels no nostalgia, nor wistful regret. There’s no room for that anymore. It was as if the abjection of guilt created a void that could only be filled by resolution.

He reaches the thin path that leads to his heaven. Once more, like it had perpetually in the past, the scene of Pinkie’s demise plays itself out in front of him. He marches up to the outcropping and hops on it, as he did months ago when he held out his hoof to Pinkie and carried her to her demise. Looking down, he expects to see an imprint of a pony on ground far below, but he sees nothing but a blanket of pristine, white snow.

He turns his back to the steep descent that he pushed Pinkie from, staring at the rock wall in front of him. A smile still tugs at the corner of his lips. He can’t decide if he feels whole or empty, but there’s no pain anymore. This is proper.

We’ll meet again soon.

With a deep breath, he takes in the thin winter air and exhales all of his sins and regrets.

He closes his eyes and pushes himself from the rock wall.