About to Crash
Chapter II. – About to Crash: Golden Flash
"What goes up...
...must come down." -Anonymous
. . . .
The first thing Twilight’s eye fell upon as she walked into the bustling main hospital lobby was a pegasus, who fidgeted nervously with a seemingly pent-up energy. Even though nurses, doctors, and other yellow-garbed patients filed through the lobby nonstop like little cells through an organism, the pegasus' gaze struck Twilight with an intensity of love and compassion, and her bright silver eyes were framed against her aquamarine coat and long, wind-swept golden mane in a heartily becoming manner.
With another curious glance, Twilight saw revealed inside the pagasus' windows of the soul a curious image: the pain of a pony that could only have known the bounds of two opposites of mental anguish. Her cutie mark stood out boldly from the crowd, and showed upon her flank a bright shining sun, cut in half by a swath of the full midnight moon. Beside her was a brown pegasus who sat looking for all the world as though he had not slept in a week. A large purple bruise sat ringed around his left eye, and the cloudy green orbs reflected a mirror that held the aquamarine pagasus in a sense of fear and degradation.
The energetic mare shot a nervous glance at her surroundings and suddenly lept up with a tearful cry, jarring Twilight a great deal at the sudden outburst. Several ponies around her merely turned their heads for a moment, and then continued onward, completely nonplussed.
“I’m alive again! Darkness far behind me!” the pegasus shouted. She turned to the brown stallion, her face lit up in wild excitement. He merely coughed awkwardly, and responded weakly.
“Now, Golden…”
The mare wouldn’t have any of it, though. Her face was set in absolute surety.
“I’m invincible. Despair will never find me!” With a kick, she flapped her wings, hard, as she tried to take off. The brown pegasus, pea-green eyes wide with fright, tried to jump on her to stop her frantic flight. He recoiled backwards with a crack as the mare sent an unintentional kick to his jaw, and bowled backwards right into the chair he had been sitting on.
Black-clothed guards seemed to appear out of nowhere, and, grabbing ahold of the wildly elated pegasus, proceeded to hold her wings so she could not move. She screamed out loud with a desperate, piercing sound that scared Twilight further.
“Boundless energy! Euphoric sensations!” Her face cracked under the strain of the struggle, and her silvery eyes glanced about, moistened with fear and anxious with fright.
She finally broke into flooding tears as the situation became far more than she could possibly handle. Weeping heavily, she relaxed her body, and let the guards place her, limp as a rag doll, back in her chair. The brown pegasus joined her, his face more sullen than Twilight could imagine anypony’s could be as he ran a hoof numbly through her long mane and nursed his bleeding mouth with another.
Twilight's eyes were wide as her face stood in barely controllable shock. But still, she felt oddly drawn towards the golden-haired pegasus. The unicorn turned to Dr. Glass sharply, and dropped her shaking voice to a low whisper as the din in the entry hall subsided to the normal chatter.
“Doctor, what can you, ah, tell me about her?” she inquired, subtly pointing a slightly quivering hoof at the pair. The mare was weeping quietly, and the aura of boundless energy seemed to have drained from her form completely.
“An interesting first encounter, wouldn't you say?" He chuckled slightly as his guest's eyes darted back and forth nervously.
"That would be Golden Flash. A very new arrival, I believe they’re just getting her into processing. Her husband there, Matthias Bane," he pointed to the tired-looking pegasus, “is admitting her. She has bipolar disorder, and he is worried her bouts of mania are too much for him to handle alone, as you may tell from what you saw. The black eye, as well. Completely by accident, but something she has no control over. So, that’s why we offer help.” Dr. Glass beamed at Twilight, appreciating a chance to show that the hospital offered a benefit to society.
“Ah, I see,” she said as her articulate mind filed away the bit of information. Her gaze returned to the brilliant mare. The pegasus' spirit seemed...trapped. Ensnared within the form of a physical manifestation.
All she wants is freedom...
. . . .
...And of course, it can't possibly be easy for her. Especially for a young pegasus with a mind split straight down the causeway of emotion. I can only imagine what her life could be like.
She can’t stop pacing.
“I’ve never felt so alive!” Golden Flash proclaimed breathlessly. Her thoughts were racing now, and set on overdrive.
Running around the house, she left an easily-identifiable wake of destruction behind her, as pots boiled over and objects lay strewn about haphazardly. She tripped over an overturned rocking chair, dusted herself off, and fell into a fit of unexplainable giggles. Suddenly, her face hardened, dead serious.
“It takes a village,” she mumbled to herself. This she knows is true, and she's said it so many time before. With a sudden burst of inspiration, Golden ran into the laundry room to grab her husband Matthias’ formal suit for alterations. Sure, the Cloudsdale Charity Event began in less than a half hour, but she didn’t care. They’re expecting her, but she’s got work to do!
Matthias Bane helplessly stood by, his mane slicked back and his form half-dressed in his sharp suit, save for the long, black overcoat that Golden was now going mad with. He watched in shock as his wife ripped his tailored suit cleanly in half as she attempted to vigorously apply some insane new idea that her mind had thought up. Matthias took a step forward to attempt to wrestle his already-ruined jacket from the aquamarine pegasus, but stopped himself short with a grimace.
It’s meaningless to try, he thought disparagingly. As he rubbed his red-rimmed eyes, he said to himself,
“I’ve never seen her get this bad.”
She skipped from the sewing dresser, piled high with ripped and shredded fabrics, over to the kitchen, and proceeded to stir pots and pans. In her wild bout of euphoria, she glanced right over the fact that some pots either had no water left in them, or that they were boiling over furiously, setting the flames hissing and spitting. Another notion caught and held her, and she dashed back to the laundry room, rummaging through a pile of dresses.
"Hon, where's my purple dress? Where's the purple dress!?" she cried to the weary brown pegasus. The stallion took a step forward and opened his mouth to speak, but shut it as soon as she burst out of the closet, scattering a multitude of wrinkled dresses. Hugging her favorite purple gown close to her chest, she danced and skipped around, pirouetting with the dress to music that only she could possibly hear.
Matthias did not move from the spot.
Even though she seemed so high, he knows that she can’t fly. And when she falls out of the sky, he thought with a sigh...
He’ll be standing by. He always is.
. . . .
Things hadn't always been this bad, but they hadn't started off grandly, either. As Golden Flash wriggled into her flowing purple gown with the occasional squeak, Matthias’ thoughts fell back to when he had first met his beloved wife.
From what he had told her, he knew that she had been raised in a small Midwestern town, by some charming and eccentric loving father (rest his soul). She had been praised as the "perfect teenage mare," and everypony had always thought very highly of her.
But she cried, every day. And with endless drive, to make the grade, she worked her hoof to the bone to keep up that image. She had told Matthias that it was no small task, and he believed her.
Then one day, she woke up to find: this perfect pony had lost her mind. Her father moved with her to Cloudsdale, and she had become a shut-in there, hell-bent on ensuring she saw as little of the light of day as possible.
But Golden's spirit was not one to be tamed, and after a little more than a year, she had found the air under her wings again. The first time she had taken off from her home, she fell-- and bumped straight into a young, strong-willed brown pegasus named Matthias Bane.
From there, it had been like a dream for the pair. Her willingness for novel experiences was richly refreshing for Matthias, who had grown up in the same cloudy city for his whole life.
. . . .
After having struggled into her long, violet dress, Golden now sat at the mirror, washing her face with brilliant colors and shadows that enhanced her beauty ever-so-carefully.
"Hon..." Matthias said gently to his preening wife as he checked his watch. The Event had started over twenty minutes ago. "I don't have a suit to wear tonight, it seems you, ah..." He stopped as she whipped around with an angry look on her face, makeup halfway-finished.
"Mathi! I'm busy, can't you see! I still have to do my mane!" Turning back around with a flash of golden hair, she started rustling through drawers, throwing things out with a careless hoof. Matthias' face fell with a grimace. He recollected on a time when she had been like this, her mania seeming to engulf everything she did, like when she would drag him outside to fly daily, even in the frigid and pouring rain.
Dodging a bottle of Mane n' Tail, Matthias took a leave of absence to go lie on the couch. Painful thoughts stung at his exhausted mind as he remembered the last time she had been so full of energy...
Because even though he knows that she gets so high, and thinks that she can fly, he knows that she will fall out of the sky eventually.
She has to.
. . . .
In the cloudy haze of a painful memory, Matthias, decked out in the white uniform of a pegasus workhorse, floated on a gentle breeze to his home, his body sore but face split in a wide grin. Even though he had had the longest day of his life at the Rainbow Factory, it was time to relax. It was his and Golden's one-year anniversary, after all!
Armed with an assortment of fresh roses, he alighted in front of his home, and awkwardly shifted the effort from his white hard-hat to the bundle of sweet-smelling flowers. After fumbling with his keys, he looked up with a smile as he held the shining ring aloft to the door. The smile fell fast, though, as he saw that the door was, in fact, flung wide open, a tiny crack forming along the top hinge where it looked like it had been busted open.
"Golden?" he cried inside the darkened hallway. His voice was caught now with surprise- what happened here? Setting his white hard-hat down with a clatter, he saw where a whole dish of hayseed had been thrown in the umbrella holder, as if they had been completely forgotten and tossed aside.
"Oh..." he breathed. "Oh no." Throwing down the beautifully-wrapped bouquet, he took off in the air to find his beloved wife.
He first searched the pine forest that they the pair always loved to fly together in. Soaring and swooping as low over the trees as he dared, he called out Golden's name fruitlessly into the unyielding treeline. It wasn’t until late into the night, by the moon's merciful light, that he found her unconscious form at the foot of a tree, blood dripping from out of her nose. Her wing was broken in a gruesome manner, and her eyes were half shut and glazed over. Her face was caught in a scowl of surprise.
Picking up her broken form, he took off slowly into the air. Flying by the stars, her whipping mane mixed with his tears as he cried the whole way home, carrying her gentle body in his forearms.
After the aquamarine pegasus found out what had happened to her in the forest, she spiraled downwards. Once barely taking a break, she now slept her days away. All she wanted to do was cry. Food tasted like ash, water was acid, sunlight was an acrid bane. No one ever knew she could be so sad.
And all Matthias could do was stand helplessly by. He knew that it was meaningless to try.
But, in the face of misery, she found hopefulness. Feeling better, she had weathered this depression. Her wing healed. She returned to her usual self, riding the locomotive of mania up to the point of where she was now.
. . . .
In the present day, Matthias stood by, watching carefully as his wife jumped in the shower with her dress still on, makeup running fast down her smiling face in a gruesomely weird way. The Charity Event had ended almost an hour ago, but she was still clamoring around the house getting ready.
He had to do something to stop these destructive fits.
. . . .
Much to her advantage, Golden resumed a frantic pace. Fresh out of the shower, the house was her stomping ground as her mind surged in euphoric mania. Parading around in a soaking-wet dress, she knocked over furniture, priceless family objects, and even managed to spill a whole pantry-full of daisy-bread on the floor, and proceeded to dance on the slices to some unhearable symphony.
Boundless power, midnight hour.
"Mathi, don't look so glum! Just wait for the party!"
She enjoyed the race.
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What's this? Someone is adapting one of my all time favorite albums into a fanfic? Interesting, very interesting. And an excellent job so far as well. I look forward to seeing where this fic goes, it has high potential. I like the use of Twilight as an outside observer of each of the six characters. I noticed that unlike the first two, the third chapter seems to be almost entirely a rewrite of the original lyrics with only a few added parts or details. Do you plan to alternate between Twilight's original story and chapters dedicated to rewrites of the lyrics?
406418 You've got a keen eye, and to an extent that will be true, but the true details will remain a surprise for you all! But I'm certain you will enjoy the story... I know that I'm having an insane amount of fun writing it!
Get it? Insane?
......
Why do I even bother...
P.S. Extra brohoof to you, my good friend, for knowing what good music is.
This definitely caught my eye. Dream Theater + ponies = win.
I got your note on DA, and I will most definitely be reading this starting later tonight. This is one of my favorite albums, and Dream Theater is tied with Pantera and Judas Priest for my all-time favorite band.
406418>>406471>>406532>>406840>>408310>>409934>>416216>>419446>>477374>>533124
The story has been re-written! Check it out!
Yussssss
This is wonderful...also, Dream Theater rules.
Wow....just...wow. I'd have never expected you to take the lyrics of a song and so fluently incorporate them straight into the story itself. Bravo! I'm looking forward to reading the rest.