"Twilight, please drink some tea," Princess Celestia said.

Her student sat before her in a sorry state, bedraggled, stick-thin, and twitching with worry. "Prin— I mean, Celestia, this isn't the time for tea! I need to know what happened to her! Why isn't she here? Why—"

Celestia held up a hoof, and Twilight fell silent. The senior princess sighed and looked Twilight straight in the eye, and for the first time that evening, Twilight saw that deep down, Celestia was just as worried as she was. "You need to drink something. They told me you haven't eaten in days."

Twilight drank. The tea cup shook in the grip of her magic, but she spilled almost none of it. "What happened to Rainbow Dash?"

After a moment of dead silence, Celestia sighed. "We took her to the Royal Canterlot Hospital to give her treatment for the mental trauma inflicted by the star creature. The treatment was a success and she'll be returning to Ponyville tomorrow."

It took a few seconds for Twilight to comprehend Celestia's words. "How? I tried to fix it for days and I completely ran out of ideas! The damage is too deep in her psyche for me to work over without making it worse!"

"We used the Lethe ritual."

The teacup dropped from Twilight's grasp, almost hitting the floor before Celestia caught it. Twilight stared at Celestia with pinprick pupils and pointed a hoof in her direction. "No. You didn't! After all the scandals about it and the correspondence we shared, the conclusions we agreed on, you'd just go back on all of that and subject her to that vile spell without telling me?!"

"Twilight, please calm down! For her sake, let me explain!"

Twilight grit her teeth and took a deep, loud breath. "You have one minute before... before I throw you out of the castle."

"The clinic that brought the ritual to our attention used an extremely powerful memory erasure for profit, in order for their customers to soothe the pain of their failed relationships. Despite the technical lack of malpractice, all of us agreed to legislate and regulate them out of business—"

"Because Cadance pointed out that it's foalish and short-sighted to never endure a breakup the traditional way. It damages our equinity and stunts our emotional growth."

"But the four of us hadn't accounted for instances like this. You made it clear that Rainbow Dash couldn't function after the attack, that she completely shuts down every time she's reminded of you, let alone in your presence. And yet you kept trying to treat her afterwards for so often, wearing yourself down, that we had to take matters into our own hooves."

Tears welled up in Twilight's eyes, and she started to sob. Celestia caught her in her forelegs and let her bury her face in Celestia's shoulder. "Of all the ways it could have hurt us, why did it have to be this one? I kept trying to find another way to help her, some way that wasn't... that."

"She hasn't forgotten you."

"Yes, she has! If you went through with the Lethe ritual like you said, you had to have gone deep down and eliminated everything having to do with me, scrubbing out every last trigger. I tried to take half-measures, and every time the memories I spared overtook her and put us back at square one."

Celestia patter Twilight on her back, between her ratty, neglected wings. "Twilight, Luna was able to figure out a way."

"...of course." Twilight exposed her eyes again. "Her dreams. She'd be able to get a better scope of the situation. I wish I'd asked her."

"It truly is a shame that your love for each other had to be corrupted this way, but in the rare instance when she thought back to the days before that first kiss, the dream was perfectly pleasant."

Twilight gasped. "You mean—?"

Celestia smiled and nodded. "She will remember you, but as a friend. And even Cadance told me that the love you two shared was strong and pure, and may yet start anew, given time and care."

Gears started turning in Twilight's head, and her face brightened like a wilted flower reverting back to a healthy bloom. "Y-yeah, that's something I can work with. I just wish she had a say about it."

"Luna got permission, actually. She didn't want you killing yourself over her."

"Oh..."

"Now please, let me make you something to eat."