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The horse dramatically places a hand against the glass, and then leans on it, smirking. "I'm sure it'll be fine if I just lean on it," he says emphatically. "What could possibly go wrong?"
The fish tank belongs to a school friend of Olivia's, a girl who is currently on holiday. Olivia volunteered to look after her aquatic plants, which in practice meant the horse would look after her plants. There's laughter from all sides of him, and then a deafening silence. He removes his hand, sparing a quick glance at the place where he had leaned to ensure that it's not cracked, and then exits stage left.
He finds himself in the same room, the same set, but the fish tank is nowhere to be found. The carpet is drenched and covered in glass shards, and a few aquatic plants are lying limply on the floor. "Huh?" he mumbles. The tank wasn't supposed to break until a few scenes later, that was the joke. And is that real glass? The tank itself is meant to be made of fake, easily breakable glass, so it won't be a safety hazard when it shatters, but it looks suspiciously real and concerningly sharp. He'd better get a safety technician.
He turns to find one, but the glass is on all sides of him, rendering it unsafe to move anywhere. The aquatic plants are dragging themselves along the floor. Sabrina is informing the audience of the technical difficulties with a vocabulary almost impossible for a child her age. The theme song starts playing.
Except it's not the actual title screen version, which is annoying. It's some sort of instrumental cover, though the actual instrument is hard to make out. It almost sounds like it could be a ring tone --
"Shit!" mumbles BoJack Horseman, jolting awake. "Who the heck is calling me? It's …" He tries to look out a nearby window in order to guess the time, then gives up. "I dunno, it's late. Or early."
He forces his eyes open, tries to sit up and struggles to take in his surroundings. And -- god dammit, another Horsin' Around dream? He hasn't had one of those in a while. They were pretty much a nightly occurence during the show's run and for a while after, but now they were few and far between and disturbingly likely to feature Sabrina acting like an adult. God dammit.
He forces the matter out of his mind. He has to go get the phone.
By the time he's even remotely awake enough to even consider answering, his phone's ringing has ceased. He forces himself to check it anyway, just in case it's important - after all, if whoever it is can't wait until morning to call him, it's probably urgent. He forces his eyes open to stare at his lock screen, which displays the time (a little after three AM) and his sole notification, a missed call from Hollyhock.
His heart skips a beat. The thing is, Hollyhock doesn't call him unexpectedly. She just doesn't. Yes, there's the weekly Sunday call, and those calls sometimes involve making plans to call at another time, if they're planning to meet up in person or if there's something particularly interesting going on in the life of one of them and the other wants frequent updates. But Hollyhock doesn't call him without prior discussion, and Hollyhock certainly doesn't call him at three in the morning.
So, despite the fact that his eyelids are still drooping, he calls her back.
She answers almost immediately despite how early it is -- though he guesses she must have already been awake in the first place to try to call him. "BoJack?" she asks uncertainly. Her voice breaks as she speaks, and it only confirms BoJack's suspicion that she wouldn't call this early unless it was important. "Sorry, I-I know it's early, but --"
"It's fine. I'm awake now." He sits down on his bed. "What's up?"
"Sorry for waking you up," she repeats. "It's just -- I didn't want to be alone, and, and I don't know, I needed to talk to someone --"
BoJack frowns. "What about your dads?" His eyes widen. "Shit, did something happen with --"
"No," she answers hurriedly. "My dads are fine, and I'll tell them when I can, it's just -- they won't get it. And -- And I feel like maybe you will?" Her voice grows quieter, more uncertain. "I don't know, you said some stuff the last time I visited, and ..."
"The last time..." repeated BoJack under his breath. "Shit."
The last time she visited was a while ago. The last time she visited was before he went to rehab -- before he had to ask the staff to borrow a phone on a Sunday afternoon, and explain to her that he had done the opposite of what she told him to do. That mere minutes after her speech on how he shouldn't take drugs unless he needed them, he rammed his car into traffic in the hope of getting another prescription, and then gotten so high he couldn't understand what was going on around him until he strangled Gina and had to be driven to rehab. Not his best moment.
Hollyhock still loves him, of course. She's forgiving like that, and she's perhaps a little too forgiving of him in particular. But he has his doubts that any of the stuff he said the last time she visited was good, considering that most of that visit was spent trying to get illegal drugs.
"What's wrong?"
She releases a long, shuddering breath into the phone.
"I want to kill myself."
"...Shit."
His heart pounds in his chest as he struggles to figure out what to say. "Don't," is the first thing that comes out of his mouth, terse and insistent. "I --" What's he going to say? I need you? He's meant to be helping her, not taking her hostage and forcing her to stick around to help a fully grown adult. You can't? Yeah, except she's an adult and there's a scarily high chance that she can.
This is all your fault, he thinks. You thought you could change but this is all the same! Your poison is inside her. Look at this, you've ruined her. You should have just cut contact with her after she overdosed, but no, you had to go and --
Metaphorical wheels screech on metaphorical rails as he forces that train of thought to a stop. He takes a deep breath.
"Hollyhock," he begins. "You -- You're an amazing person. You're smart, and funny, and you're always nice even when it seems like nobody else is. And -- And you've got your whole life ahead of you, and you're going to do great things, and you're going to experience great things, and -- and I want you to be around to see it."
"I'm not smart," she insists, sniffling. "How can you -- How can you know I'll do great things? Everything just feels so hopeless, I --"
"Look, Holly, if there's one thing you've taught me, it's that nothing's ever hopeless. And no matter how much it feels that way, you always have a chance to turn things around." He frowns. "Did something happen to make you feel this way?"
"N-No," she sobs. "I -- I just can't be happy! I … I don't get it, BoJack. I have eight dads who love me, and, and a brother, and my biological mom, but -- none of it makes me feel better. I -- Am I just gonna be unhappy forever? Am I the problem?"
BoJack listens to her sobs through the phone, taking a breath before he responds. "None of this is your fault. It's just -- You've got a huge family history of depression and I'm sorry that I didn't do more to warn you about that. But -- it's gonna be okay. There are people that can help you."
"I know," she mumbles, sniffling. "I know I should talk to a doctor, but -- I don't know, I'm scared. I -- What if I talk to a psychologist and it turns out they can't help me? What if --"
"You're not the problem." He sighs. "You know, I had the same fear as you for a long time. I was a complete mess and it was destroying my life, but I wouldn't seek help because I didn't think it was possible for me to change. But in rehab, I learned that that's not how people work. We can always change, and no matter how far we go down a certain path there's always time to turn back. And -- And sometimes we might not be able to do it ourselves, and that's why there are people to help us, but we can change."
She sniffs. "You promise?"
"Of course. It'll be okay." He hesitates. "Can I tell you a story?"
"I'm too old for bedtime stories." She forces a laugh, but he can still hear the distress in her voice.
"No, not like that. It's … I don't know, it's a story from before I met you." He rubs the back of his neck nervously. "As you know, I, uh … I've made a lot of mistakes in my life." A small, self-deprecating voice in the back of his head tells him to make an unnecessary joke about that being the 'understatement of the century', and he tells it to shut up. "And, uh, a while back, I guess all of the shitty things I did kind of caught up to me." He pauses. "Well, some of them caught up to me."
"What happened?" asks Hollyhock cautiously.
"Well, I was a huge asshole to my roommate for several years," he begins, slipping into a more careless tone to hide his regret. "And he put up with it for way too long. We, uh … Well, recently we sort of patched things up after I came out of rehab, but back in 2016, we had this huge fight."
"No! No, BoJack, just... Stop. You are all the things that are wrong with you. It's not the alcohol, or the drugs, or any of the shitty things that happened to you in your career or when you were a kid. It's you. Alright? It's you."
"What do you mean?"
"Uh … Basically he called me out on being horrible to him and then moved out. And, uh, I realised that I actually enjoyed having him around and I'd taken him for granted."
"What's the point of this story?" asks Hollyhock.
"I'm getting there, I'm getting there. Anyway, uh, right after that, I..."
The words catch in his throat. Even years later, the wound feels so fresh in his mind. How could he possibly explain it to her? That he hurt her starting from when she was only three when they worked on the show together, causing him to be one of the many factors in her eventually turning to substance abuse, and then took her on a month-long bender when she was nine months sober, leading to her eventual death by heroin overdose?
"...Uh, BoJack?"
"Sorry," he mutters hurriedly. "It's … kinda hard to talk about. Anyway, right after the fight with Todd was --" He gulps. "Sarah Lynn's death, which was … at least partially my fault." He takes a breath before continuing. "After that, I was meant to be acting in a spin-off of Horsin' Around, but ... I don't know, I freaked out because of one of the child actors. I was scared of the same thing happening again."
He hears Hollyhock gulp. "What did you do?"
"Walked out on the show and just ... drove. I didn't even know where I was going, just that I had to get away. But eventually I realised I couldn't go back to LA, but I didn't have anywhere else to go, so I just ... kept driving. And ..." He takes a deep breath. "And I drove faster and faster. And then I ... I took my hands off the steering wheel."
Hollyhock gasps. "You tried to --"
"Yeah. Well, almost." He sighs. "I almost crashed, but then I opened my eyes. I don't know why, I just did. And I saw something that made me stop."
By now, Hollyhock was metaphorically (and possibly literally) on the edge of her seat, clinging to his every word. "What did you see?"
He stands up. "A herd of horses running."
There's a long, heavy silence as he paces around his room.
"Did that actually happen?"
"What? Of course it did!" He takes a deep breath and pushes his offense at the accusation aside. "Look, Holly ..." He pauses, glancing around at his bedroom, looking for something to say, and a metaphorical lightbulb appears over his head. "You know, your great-grandfather was a cab driver."
"Wh-What?" She laughs slightly, but it comes off as forced. "Weren't you meant to be talking about --"
"No, listen," he interrupts. "I don't mean he just drove a cab. See, this was before cars were invented, so they'd have to get someone really strong to pull a carriage on foot. And most of the people who did it were horses." He finds himself grinning. "You know why they always picked the horses for that job, Hollyhock?"
She gives a defeated sigh. "Because we're meant to be fit."
"No, because we're strong. And we can keep going for miles, longer than most other animals, because we don't give up. No matter what." He pauses. "Being a cab driver used to be a really hard job, you know? You would have to wear a harness and a bridle, and I'm pretty sure you could feel the pull of the carriage the whole time. Some of the passengers probably had whips."
"Isn't that illegal?"
"Eh, a lot of stuff wasn't illegal then. Anyway, point is, cab drivers had to do a bunch of stuff that probably hurt, and of course if you take your average Joe and connect them up to a carriage they won't be able to pull it. They had to do a bunch of training and stuff first. And -- And they called it breaking. You know, like if someone was trained to pull carts, they'd say he was broken."
"Well I mean, that whole thing is kind of messed up."
"Yeah, but -- Look, what I'm trying to say is that sometimes horses have to be broken. And it hurts, and it's not fair, and it's okay if you're upset about it. But -- but after all of the breaking is done, eventually someone invents cars and they don't need to rely on intense manual labour anymore. And, uh, and then you've got all of the strength and willpower that you needed to survive, but now you don't need to spend it all on getting through the day, and you can do whatever you want with it." He smiles. "You know what I mean?"
There's a moment of silence between the two. "Yeah," mutters Hollyhock, her voice starting to regain the idealistic openness that he always loved to hear. "Yeah, I think I do." She pauses. "How did you know all of that anyway?"
There's a long, heavy silence.
"I read dad's book."
The laugh that flies out of Hollyhock's mouth is the first genuine one he's heard all night. "Seriously?!"
"Well..." he mumbles, half chuckling himself. "I was cleaning out my house after I got home from rehab and I found the copy he sent me, and well, I dunno, I realised the only reason I hadn't read it yet was to spite him. And I mean, well, you know my dad was horrible to me, but it seemed kinda pointless to still be trying to spite him?" He shrugs. "I dunno. I still hate my parents for how they treated me growing up. But when I actively do things just to spite them, then I'm just wasting my energy on people who are awful."
Hollyhock is once more on the metaphorical (and possibly literal) edge of her seat, clinging to his every word. "Oh God, I have got to hear this. How was it?"
He pauses. "You know, I once tried to write my autobiography, but I ended up getting really high and things got out of hand. Instead of an autobiography, I wrote twenty pages of erotic Doctor Who fanfiction, some soup recipes, five different 9/11 conspiracy theories, and several embedded YouTube links that couldn't possibly be published as a physical book. And unless you've got some sort of secret novel you're working on, I can definitively say that that 'autobiography' made me the best author in the Horseman family."
"That bad, huh?"
"If I'd read it before he'd died, I wouldn't have been so shocked when someone actually decided to duel him over it."
Hollyhock giggles. "I'd better go now. It's pretty late … or early, I guess."
"...Oh." The atmosphere loses its playful edge, loses all of the comedy that it had gained upon the mention of Butterscotch's train wreck of a novel. "Holly … Talk to someone, okay?" He rubs the back of his neck anxiously. "Really, see a professional. Trust me, it helps."
"I will," she promises. "Probably in the afternoon, after I've gotten some sleep. Or first thing tomorrow morning." She pauses. "This doesn't replace our Sunday call, does it?"
"Of course not," he answers. "And -- I know getting help will take time, but you've gotta be patient. Keep yourself safe until Sunday, okay? I …" He gulps. "I want you to be safe because you're my sister and I love you."
His heart skips a beat as he waits for a response.
Her voice comes through, clear as day and with typical Hollyhock-like kindness. "Love you too, BoJack."