As Fluttershy approached the next room she was barely doing anything more than trying to catch her best friend. She needed to know how Rainbow Dash truly felt and was not going to let anything get in her way. Little did she know that oneself is one’s greatest enemy, and usually the biggest thing standing in a pony’s way.

With her attention not on her surroundings it caught her by surprise when the room shifted into a replica of her cottage living room. This didn’t stop her fast enough to prevent her from running into the table where a darker version of her sat. It’s eyes pure, yellow orbs of malice with pupils as dark as coal. Her mail and tail a blood red. Her coat a dirty gold.

“So the weakling shows up for some tea. Why don’t you have a seat?” Darkshy asked.

“Ok!” Fluttershy replied hesitantly. She didn’t know why this thing looked like her, but if it was going to be nice at least it was a step up from what she had just been through.

As she went to sit down Darkshy quickly fluxed her wings causing the seat and Fluttershy in it to fall over. “I told you to take a seat. I didn’t tell you to sit down now did I door mat?”

“Take a seat means to sit down though, and I might be a door mat but that doesn’t give you an excuse to be uncivilized.”

“Ah! Ah! Ah! I said nothing about sitting down. Only to take a seat, I didn’t tell you what to do when you chose it.”

Picking up her seat she stood by it. “What do you want me to do know?”

“Ha! You are a riot. You really do lack any back bone don’t you? You’d think that seminar, or Discord discording you would break you out of your coccoon. But no! I’ll tell you what you can do with that seat. Move away from it and sit on the floor beside me. After all ponies sit in chairs, pets and objects stay on the floor where they belong. And you are less than any pet I know of.”

Sitting on the floor, her head hanging down in humiliation. As she sat her mind wondered to what she was supposed to do here again. But for the life of her having been humiliated in what looked like her house while her animal friends ignored her made her feel like even less of a pony than when she was in the previous room.

“Look who’s a good door mat. You know what I can’t believe that I’m a part of you. You have all this anger, all this pure rage locked away within yourself but rather than accept it you bottle it away. It sickens me. Well! What do you have to say for yourself!?” Darkshy yelled at her.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone. It’s wrong to hurt others.”

“But it’s even worse for yourself to allow to get hurt by others. You’re even worse than Pinkie Pie! At least others can tell when somethings wrong with her. You! You just smile like a saint and pretend that everything is perfectly fine. You let others see when your afraid, but that’s the only dark emotion you let others see.”

“But I don’t want anyone to get hurt. It’s better that I suffer than others. I can’t have others risking themselves and putting themselves out of the way on my account. I’m not worth it.”

“What about me! I’m part of you that you ignore and I hurt! What about my wants!? What about my needs!? You are so wishy-washy and you don’t even give me the time of day. What a hypocrite. All that talk about others suffering and you do that to me without even giving me the time of day. You really are pathetic!”

“I-I’m sorry!”

“No you’re not. I know you. You say words like 'sorry’, or 'nice’ to deflect conflicts. But you don’t really mean them. Not really.”

“But I -”

“DON’T TRY FOOLING ME!,” Darkshy screamed her muzzle literally inches away from Fluttershy’s own. “You can’t fool me since I am you!”

What do I say? I don’t know what to say! Not in this situation. What can I do to show that I truly am sorry? I never knew she existed. Well at least not in anything other than an abstract aspect of myself. Like when I was in the Great Galloping Galla, or when Discord mind raped me, or even when I went power crazy from Iron Wills seminar. But never did I really think of that as another me. Just something that I needed to ignore. But I can’t ignore her now. Worse, she actually exists and I hurt her. I never meant to hurt anyone but none the less I have. So how do I make this right? How do I fix what I never knew I broke till today?

“What can I do to make this right?”

“Figure that out yourself. I don’t owe you anything.”

“You’re right.” Fluttershy said as she gave her opposite a huge hug. “And I hope that someday you can forgive me. I promised that I was going to no longer be a burden, and I was going to do better for my friends. But I need to promise to do better for myself as well I guess. Do better for you.”

“Well, now you can take your seat and sit down. You earned it.”

“So you see me as a pony?”

“You’re close enough that you can sit at my table without tainting it. Here’s your tea.”

Darkshy gave Fluttershy a cup of jasmine tea. Fluttershy sat in contemplation as she drank her tea. As she sipped it she remembered that to pass this test was to accept and forgive. She could and did forgive others as well as accept them. But she had more greater problems accepting and forgiving herself. She was always the type to bury them in a dark corner and pretend that such things didn’t exist.

“You know that’s funny right?” Darkshy said.

“What is?”

“That you forgive and accept others. If you really did what they did to you would be less scaring. But no, you dwell on it, using it as fodder to assault your own psyche. What’s even funnier is that you never realized it till right now.”

“But I do forgive them. They were right about me after all.”

“You are coming close to loosing your table privileges. The next time you give in to those thoughts I’m going to personally beat them out of you until you learn your lesson. So think really hard. How do you really feel about them. Give into that anger for once.”

“I-I ... I don’t want to hate them.”

“But you do.”

“I ... hating others is wrong. I am mad at them yes. I think what they did was horrible, but hating others is the wrong way to go about it.”

“Then why are you angry at them?”

“You know why. You are me after all!” A thin line of anger was coming out of her voice, a glare directed at the table as she turned from grey to white.

“Yes. I do. So can you really forgive them?”

“I don’t know. I thought that I did. But they hurt me so much, it still hurts. I didn’t even do anything wrong to them. They just hurt me because I was different.”

“So if you aren’t going to forgive them what are you going to do?” Darkshy asked a small smile playing on her lips as she looked at how much being shown her inner darkness was weakening the hold of her kindness. Taking the lid off all that bottled in emotions.

“I won’t forgive them, but I’ll accept that they did what they did and I’ll move on. If they didn’t do what they did I would never have become the Element of Kindness and I would never have gotten to were I am today. So what they did was a blessing.

Even if it hurts, even if I can never fully forgive them for what they did. I will accept it as something needed to get me where I am today. But I won’t give into you. I won’t give into hate. I won’t let anger and cruelty rule me actions. But I won’t ignore you either. I won’t let you be hurt like I have been. I’ll start looking out for myself as well as others.” As she finally confronted herself and let herself forgive herself while fully accepting the good things that came from the bad parts of her life a light washed over her darkside.

“Congratulations you’re now a pony worth knowing.”

With that the room dissipated and she stopped seeing Rainbow Dash farther ahead of her. Even though she was emotionally drained and traumatized. Her emotions now unbottled even if she had accepted herself. She used that rage to run to Rainbow Dash, not to just prove she wasn’t a burden but to give her a piece of her mind. Since while her dark side was cleansed. She still had a lot of unresolved issues that this experience had forced to the forefront of her mind. Rather than bottled up, so while many of the others would have rested. She was once again running full force to the next room.