//------------------------------// // Melancholy Sadness, Unscathed Occurrences // Story: Redemption // by BillyGoatHicks511 //------------------------------// A/N: I know, I said I’d stop doing these, but I got a quick question. In the Friendship is Magic universe, do ponies have electricity, laptops, and phones? Please post the answer to this in the comments. It will help me out as a writer, a lot. Thank you. On with the show. She couldn’t remember the last time she woke up without feeling that intense sadness. Every morning it was the same. Like clockwork, she ran her routine. Get up, go to work, eat lunch, go back to work, go home, go to bed. There was no fun, no joy, and everything she did was accompanied with a silent hatred and self-loathing. It had always been like this; even from the days when she was merely just a chick hatched from the egg. She has always carried this depression. It only grew stronger and heavier ever since the day she screamed at Dash’s new friends. Why did she go do that? Why was she such an idiot? These were questions she would ask herself, when she would be in the corner of her small utilitarian hovel in Filydelphia, crying. Why was it that she felt she didn’t belong? She experienced melancholy and hatred. The hatred was pure, and aimed only at the thing she saw when looking into the mirror. This self-hatred had accompanied her for a long time. It was a hatred that followed her for miles; a hatred that made her stagger; a hatred that was unpolluted with friendship, because in the end, she had only one friend, and she had to go and screw that up. When confronted with the prospect of someone else entering in, she retaliated. If she could have only opened her eyes just a bit more, she would have discovered that instead of losing a friend, she would be gaining another. Now, she was all alone, with no one to blame but herself. She didn’t knock it, she only accepted it, and it made that morning sadness, that feeling of misplacement, stronger. In her head she was not doing what she should be doing. But she didn’t know what exactly it was she was supposed to do. She was lost and alone in the world, and she realized that she had to do something about it. She found herself at the far end of the spectrum one night when she was moments away from ending her life. She could still remember the feel of the blade in her hands, held just above one of her wrists. She remembered the taste of vomit in her mouth from where she threw up because of the nerves. She remembered the tears streaking wildly down her face, yet her expression was stone-cold. She did not make a single noise. She only stared at herself in the mirror, holding that knife only a few centimeters away from her veins. All the while, she remembered a voice, clear as day yet dark as night, telling her to do it; to pull that cutting edge across her skin, and end it all: slowly feel herself slip away and enter nirvana. That was when she decided that enough was enough. She tossed the blade away and cried for several more hours. She crouched in the corner of the room and screamed until her throat was raw. Neighbors in the apartment next door had just come home from the grocery store, and in concern, called the cops. Gilda did her best to shoo the guards away politely, and eventually, after some smiles, questions, and coffee, they left. Gilda remembered turning to the mirror, and saying these words to herself. “You’re going back to Ponyville, and you’re apologizing to Dash.” And that was all she could remember up to this point. Right now, everything seemed blank. She could only make out the fact that today, she did not feel sadness. She didn’t even feel hatred. In normal circumstances, this would’ve surprised and enlightened the poor griffon, and she would’ve had a good day today. Only problem was, these were not normal circumstances. For one thing, she could make out the coherent sound of motorized beeping. Secondly, these bed sheets were not her own. They were soft, yet stale and sterile. They almost seemed mediocre. She had been in an emergency room once before, and was able to make out two and two easily. Still however, when she came to, she bolted upright in her hospital bed, and screeched. It wasn’t out of fear, but it was more out of shock. She knew vaguely where she was; a hospital. But she didn’t know the details, and most importantly, she had no clue exactly as to how she got there. She gripped the sheets tightly and pulled them around herself. She was filled with anxiety and bewilderment. When the voice from the doorway piped up, she jolted instantly out of fear. “Well, Good Morning,” the doctor stated. Gilda turned to look and analyzed the pony. He was a tall, handsome, slender yet strong pony as presented through his posture and stance. He had a brown mane, glasses, and a golden tan coat. He trotted slowly towards her bed, and pulled out a chair. He sat down right in front of her, and that’s when the accusations began. “Who are you?” she shouted in fear and alarm. “What’s going on? Why am I here?” “My name,” the doctor began. “Is Doctor Rayband. As to what exactly is going on, I believe I should be asking you that question.” Gilda shot the pony a bewildering look. It was a mixture of confusion and hatred. As if she was saying ‘shut the buck up, and tell me what’s happening.’ “We found your body at the edge of the crash site,” the doctor explained. This confused Gilda even greater. “Crash Site?” she shouted in amazement. The doctor nodded his head. “Train 411 from Filydelphia to Ponyville suffered massive technical malfunctions and derailed, killing all the passengers,” he stated calmly. It astounded Gilda how this doctor could be so smooth in handling death. But then again, he was a doctor. Years of experience and training were a factor to consider. As a doctor, he’s seen death hundreds of time, and he just learned to move on from it. The doctor continued his story. “The first responders found your body in the woods. We took you end and basically, that’s it. You have to fill in the blanks.” The doctor pulled up his clipboard and placed the pen in his mouth. Being an earth pony, the doctors of this way of life learned to cope without magic to assist their writing, and instead, learned to place a pen in their mouth and talk around it. When he spoke, it was comprehensible at best. “Now, we don’t need your name and date of birth. We got your medical records faxed in from Filydelphia. All we need to know is how you ended up out in the woods; if you can remember.” She sat upright in her hospital bed for a long time. Time seemed to slow down. Trying to process all the information was like trying to take the Canterlot Castle and shove in into one’s closet. It didn’t fit, it didn’t add up. She couldn’t remember anything. But after awhile, she started receiving a massive headache. Bits and pieces of information started to come to the forefront of her cranium; all of it centered on that particular train. “The 411 train…..Ponyville,” Gilda mumbled to herself. “Why do these things seem so familiar?” The doctor, knowing how amnesia patients worked, tried to assist Gilda in developing her memories. “Is there someone you know who’s from Ponyville?” And that’s when it hit her. The light of newly formed memories was bright and blinding. It filled her skull and cascaded past her eyelids making her see a spectrum of colors. It was too much to handle, so she almost passed out. Instead, she screamed once more. For the reality of the situation frightened her. The doctor came to her side, asking sincerely, “Gilda, Gilda, what’s wrong?” “I was on the train,” she told him. And then she began to recount her story. She stared out the window of the train as it began to take off. She stared out the window for a very long time. It was a 2 hour ride to Ponyville and she had been staring out the window, doing nothing, for almost an hour and a half. Then, finally, she had to talk among the passengers, when a stallion asked her if he could sit in the seat beside her. Apparently, only a few seats on the train sported an electrical outlet, and the stallion was in dire need of using his laptop, which was low on battery life. “Business related,” the passenger politely informed her. Gilda, silently, nodded her head and turned back to the window as the passenger got his laptop set up. She had a lot on her mind, and it had consciously been floating around and pestering Gilda for the past hour and a half. She was simply stressed, and filled with concerns. The biggest concern she was facing involved Dash. She knew she was going to apologize to her, but what then? What comes after that? The more she played it out, the more she realized she was probably facing rejection. She turned towards the passenger sitting on her right, and scanned him quickly. He seemed cute. He had a gray coat with a thick, black mane. He sported glasses which glistened in a strange way when staring down at the laptop. She could also make out the fact that he was unicorn, as he was using his magic to type. Gilda also noticed that, although cute from the neck up, he was hunky all the way down. He sported some good muscle mass, not too much to give off the impression that he was into weightlifting, but Gilda knew this man was taking care of his bod. And right now, in the midst of her stress, all she thought about was curling up next to that bod. They say sex is the best stress reliever. All Gilda needed was something to break the ice. There wasn’t necessary tension per say, but even a Neanderthal such as Gilda knew there were ways to properly conduct oneself in public. She found her icebreaker in the back of the seat in front of her. A couple of magazines were in the pocket for one to enjoy for the time being. Gilda took another look at the unicorn. Although he was typing, it seemed the magic was doing all the work for him, as proven by his uninterested facial expression. Gilda tapped him politely on the shoulder, and he turned to face her. “Do you need a magazine or something?” she asked. Her mind retaliated. ‘Smooth Gilda. Real Smooth.’ When suddenly, it actually worked. “Yeah, can you hand me the sports magazine,” the stallion replied. “I think I might need it.” Gilda spoke as she handed the magazine to him. “Business related?” she inquired. “Why yes actually,” he stated, giving her his full attention. Just as Gilda theorized, the magic continued the typing while he spoke. “You see, I’m a manager of sports athletes.” “Really,” Gilda asked, very interested. “What does that entail?” “I basically work for this college down in Fillydelphia,” he explained. “I take colts and fillies when there in high school and basically plead for the to join our athletic program. If they sign with us, I get a hefty amount of bits. However, I also work on the professional end, and that’s a bit different.” “How so?” Gilda requested. “Basically, no matter who they are signed to, if my name comes up and they want me to be their manager, I get them advertising and sponsors; Cereal commercials, horse-shoe ads, the whole shebang.” The stallion answered. Amidst all that explanation, Gilda found a way to bring humor into the situation. “Why, it just so happens that I’m a professional athlete,” Gilda said, setting up the joke. “Really,” the stallion said as his brows cocked in surprise. “In what field?” The punch line: “I’m a distance swimmer,” Gilda stated. It worked. The unicorn gave forth a pretty decent chuckle. Gilda continued the joke for just a bit more. “Yeah, I have a natural fear of water though,” she said, to which the stallion continued laughing. “Think that’s gonna be a problem?” “Not if I’m your manager,” The stallion proclaimed. Gilda smiled decently. It was hard to actually smile when no real amount of happiness was left in her body, but it did the job. The stallion returned the smile and went back to his business. Gilda then held out her talon. “I’m Gilda,” she told him. The Stallion smiled and returned the gesture. “I’m Francis,” he said. Gilda realized at that moment, that she only had to smooth things over just a bit more, and then she could start quote unquote easing the tension. She started with a simple, yet very lucrative question that had been spoken thousands of time before on multiple pickups. “So, how long are you going to be in Ponyville,” she asked with the utmost sincerity in her voice. The stallion sighed. Gilda immediately caught the emotion behind his sudden release of air; disappointment. He scooted his mane back just a bit, and that’s when she finally saw it. He wore a golden necklace with a green emerald in the center, implying that he belonged to another. “I’m engaged,” he told her. Gilda played it off like it was no big deal. “Great,” she replied trying to sound happy. The stallion sighed again, and reached over to unplug his laptop. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “Don’t be,” Gilda answered. She started to stutter as she realized her opportunity was slowly fading away. “No….l-look. You just misinterpreted what I said. Wh-wh-what I m-m-meant was-” He politely cut her off. He wasn’t being mean; he was just in no mood to play games. “I gotta go,” he told her. And with that, he began to trot away. “No-look,” Gilda tried desperately. “I just….” Her voice got stuck in her throat as he trotted away. Slowly, her emotions and persistence died down. She realized that she lost this time. She sat back down in her seat with a huff. She was disappointed; somewhat. But then again, what good would it have done even if she slept with him. It didn’t change the fact that in 30 minutes, Gilda would be back in Ponyville, and she had no clue how the citizens, with the most important being Rainbow Dash, would treat her. She placed her head back on the window. She was going to try and sleep, but her mind wouldn’t let her. She had been getting another one of those strange headaches again. They were very odd headaches in deed. She would hear a light ringing sound in her ears and then images would flash across her mind for a split second. They were so small and so minute, that she realized they were imaginary. But they seemed so crystal clear, that the Griffon feared she would be hallucinating from time to time. This time, the sights she was seeing inside her skull scared her for a brief moment. She saw the damaged remains of train tracks, and amongst this image, she could make out the faint sound of someone screaming. And then it was over. It would only last a second. But it was its lasting impression that had its impact on Gilda’s soul. She sat in her chair, motionless for quite some time, breathing heavily. And then, she realized that something was out of the ordinary. She couldn’t really make out what it was at first, but she realized that something was wrong. The she looked up ahead at the passengers seated in front of her, and that’s when she caught the sight of them gripping the arms of their chairs tightly. Gilda wasn’t wrong. This train was shaking; rocking even. Trains had turbulence, she was aware of that, but nothing like this. It was getting violent. She felt as though she was in a rock polisher. And then she felt weightless. The world around her turned white. She had no clue what was going on, and neither did the rest of the passengers. All she knew was that with her luck, this wasn’t going to be good for anypony. She could make out the faintest sound of that earlier scream, before the whiteness enveloped her. “And that’s all I remember,” she told the doctor. She had been facing away from him as she told the story. It was best for her not to look at any faces when trying to piece together memories. She found it quite distracting. But now, she had everything firmly in place in her head. As un-pretty as it was, there was no denying that Gilda was in the passenger area when the trained crashed. She turned to look at the doctor, and realized that he was staring. She was somewhat accustomed to stares like the one he was giving off. Being a Griffon and living in a populated area much like Filydelphia, she had gotten use to the fact that she wasn’t a commodity. Some ponies would stare simply out of sheer wonder. It sucked, but she had gotten use to it. But the stare the doctor gave off was quite different. For one thing, his stare had some intensity by it and two, his jaw was slack, giving forth a dumbfound impression. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she finally asked the doctor. The doctor, slowly got up from his chair, closed his jaw, and proceeded to blow Gilda’s mind. “Your train derailed,” Rayband told her. “It didn’t hit a car, it didn’t lose a couple of train cars in the back, it derailed!” He walked around to the other side of Gilda’s bed, and gripped the curtain separating Gilda’s bed from the other bed. Gilda’s eyes watched the colt closely. “The unicorn you were describing ended up like this.” When he pulled the curtain away, Gilda swore she heard a gasp get ripped out of her throat before her talons covered her beak. Whoever was in that bed, couldn’t have been a pony. For one thing, Ponies shouldn’t be covered up with so much gauze that they resembled a mummy. Secondly, she had never seen so many tubes, coming from one being. “The doctors did everything they could to save him,” he told her as he stared at the patient. “But the entire left side of his body was crushed like a tin can,” he stated morbidly. “There’s no way he will live.” Then, he closed the curtain and looked Gilda directly in the eyes. “So, as to answer your question, there are two reasons I’m looking at you strangely.” He got close to her bed, making sure that each emphasize he added to his words had meaning. “One, in about 5 minutes, you will be the sole survivor of this crash. And two, you are…..miraculously unharmed. There isn’t a broken bone, no bruises…..you don’t have a scratch on ya.” It didn’t take long for the words to settle in, but the weight behind their meaning boggled Gilda’s mind badly. That unicorn she spoke to earlier looked tangled and messed up beyond repair. She however…..she felt find. She looked down and examined her body. ‘He’s right,’ she thought horrifically. ‘There’s not even a scratch on me.’ There was some much needed silence between the two as Gilda analyzed herself in a mystical fashion. She looked as though this was her first time in a griffon body. The doctor, although fascinated watching Gilda’s psychological action in a medical sense, didn’t allow his curiosity to get the better of him. He spoke low, and calmly, and asked her a serious question. “Do you have a place to stay, a friend or someone to call?” The doctor questioned. Gilda, shocked, and looking miserable, held her face down to her knee’s and shook her head, ‘no.’ The doctor sighed and got up and away from the bed. He asked her politely to get up and follow him. She did so, and was led right to the front desk. He asked if he could see the patients release papers, and the nurse behind the desk gladly gave them up. He gave the papers to her and as she signed away, the doctor explained his proposition. “Your name was dropped when the media asked for any survivors,” he calmly told her. “Seeing as how there is a colossal storm of paparazzi outside just waiting to snag a photo of you, I’m going to sneak you out back. Then, I’ll take you to whatever hotel you like, and pay for your room and additional costs for however long it takes you to get back on your feet.” Gilda was finished with the papers by the time he finished his offer. She stared at him, flabbergasted. “Why?” she asked, breathless. “For one thing,” he began. “It’s the right thing to do. Secondly……..I don’t think you were supposed to survive that crash. I know what you’re thinking, ‘no duh,’ but hear me out. Luck has nothing to do with surviving a crash like that and not getting a scratch on you. I have no other evidence to back up this claim but…..Gilda…..I think you’re destined for something big. What that is? I don’t know. But I feel that by helping you, I’ll become part of that ‘something big.’ Is that ok?” The griffon nodded her head. The Doctor sighed and took her wing in his tail as he escorted her out the door. She watched as her talons and legs slowly made their ways across the linoleum tiled floors. Only one thought rang in her mind. “What is this…….destiny?”