Equestria

by Jabberspike

Compromises

Feeling the cool floor under her feet, Tara held Marge’s hand as they entered the rec room. Tara had managed to immerse herself enough in reality, apparently, so now she was ready to talk to other people. Equestria was all just a way to compensate for a lack of human engagement, so if it was to be destroyed, Tara would have to socialise. She had tried before in the past, and that feeling bubbling up in her stomach back then had returned. Pausing when she saw her fellow patients lounging on a couch, Tara decided to try and listen to some of them.

There sat a pale woman, playing with her filthy blonde hair, and another, younger woman, clasping her hands as if she were praying. The latter looked up at the ceiling, and then the floor, before saying, ‘The doctors come with needle and thread, sew up all the cracks in your head.’

‘Zoe,’ said the blonde woman, sitting upright, ‘Cut that out.’

‘Gilda, she’s been very bad,
Got no love from mum and dad,
She’ll stay here forever more,
A dirty and disgusting wh-‘

‘I said cut it out!’ growled Gilda through clenched teeth, causing Tara to stumble into Marge’s arms. ‘You keep saying that fucking rhyme, and you really think I’ll learn something from it?’

‘Gilda!’ Marge cried, restoring order to the couch.

With that, Gilda placed a finger in her mouth, and forced her eyes to widen. ‘Sorry, Maggie,’ she said in a pseudo-innocent voice.

Raising an eyebrow, Marge continued, ‘Girls, this is Tara Muschel.’ The other patients waved. ‘I would like you to make her feel welcome around here, in case she...’ A brief chuckle, which made Tara shrink somewhat. ‘...drifts off elsewhere.’

‘Ah,’ said Gilda, ‘One of them.’ She then turned to Tara, reaching for her hand with a smile. ‘You know,’ she said, freeing Tara from Marge’s clutches, ‘They never execute nobody, you know. It’s all their fancy.’

While that line did earn Gilda another of Marge’s cynical glares, it slowed down the bubbling in Tara’s stomach. A quote from a book – one of her books, not those of Clarice. She sat beside Gilda, trying to match her smile. ‘Hey.’ That’s how she seemed to begin everything.

Looking up, she saw Marge nod.

‘So...you have a little world up there,’ Gilda pressed a finger to Tara’s forehead. ‘Tell me about it.’

Once more Tara’s throat had become reluctant, stinging at the question. She couldn’t very well tell Gilda about Equestria, could she? A magical land with ponies, real?

Pinkie Pie stood at the corner of the room.

‘Well, er...’ Tara’s hand movement had now matched those of Zoe. That young woman still sat at the end of the couch, staring at Gilda and Tara.

‘Gilda tries to make a friend,
She goes and drives them round the bend,
Then she...’

Immediately, ignoring the presence of a superior, Gilda seized Zoe’s wrist. ‘I told you, shut up.’ A quick slap from Marge,
however, and the grip was loosened.

‘Twilight!’ Pinkie had come closer. ‘That mean meanie-pants!’

Turning away from the miniature hassle, Tara mouthed ‘Go away.’

‘Oh, come on, Twilight. You don’t want to be with those weirdoes, do you?’ Her expression looked like that of Gilda a few minutes ago, only genuine. ‘What about your friends?’

While wishing to snarl ‘They’re not real’ at Pinkie and hopefully banish her away, Tara couldn’t bring herself to do so. Instead, she stood, and approached Pinkie.

That memory, not a memory of a fantasy or a fantasy of a memory or what have you – swam through Tara’s head before she awoke. Right before that, she remembered fighting Discord, which then segued into that scene. Looking back, she wasn’t sure how one led to another, but that was the way dreams worked, wasn’t it?

She had hands and feet. Fingers and toes. Pale skin, hair instead of a mane, no tail. The room she had awoken in was empty – typical of her awakenings, the asylum tried to break the ‘news’ carefully. It wasn’t even her usual room this time, yet her mind had registered reality quicker than usual.

Wait, didn’t she suspect it in her dream? Yes, Equestria did feel a little ‘lighter’ than usual, and she was sure she heard another voice, one that wasn’t Discord. A voice saying things like, ‘Oh, and Celestia takes the ponies to a hall with stained glass windows’, ‘Twilight should go looking in a maze’. A voice constructing what Discord sought to destroy.

Tara clutched her head, feeling the bandages and the scars. Discord was still there, still in Equestria, relishing his victory in his little game. An image of a forlorn Celestia overlooking her ruined kingdom flashed past Tara’s eyes, causing her stomach to twist. She couldn’t very well let Discord have his fun, could she?

A while later, in came two men, both having a strange resemblance to the other, that Tara was unfamiliar with. Marge wasn’t here, making Tara hang her head. The soothing voice of her psychiatrist always helped Tara welcome reality, calming her almost as much as...

What about Spike?

One of the men leaned over to face her, his reeking breath against her face. ‘What is your name?’

Drumming her fingers on the bed, Tara took a deep breath before responding. ‘My name is Tara.’

The man nodded. ‘And where do you live?’

‘I live in an institution.’

‘Are you a pony?’

‘No,’ she replied, forcing a laugh.

The man turned to the other. ‘So it seems Discord is proving successful so far...’

‘You!’ Tara suddenly growled, pointing her finger in the man’s direction. Upon getting a worried stare, however, her accusing hand shuddered before it returned to the bed.

‘She will need another injection or two before she completely returns to reality, but you and your staff can also help that,’ said the man before returning to Tara. ‘Pleased to meet you, my name is Thomas Foster.’

Tara gave no response except to lie down again, still awake.

After her awakening, time had begun to move rapidly, like...never mind. Tara used to find lying in bed when being unable to sleep an awkward and boring task, but now it strangely occupied her before returning to her ‘friends’ in the asylum. Foster returned, wielding a needle. Discord. ‘No,’ Tara groaned upon seeing it, wriggling a little.

‘Now, now,’ Thomas seized Tara by the arm, and she suddenly found herself paralysed. ‘This is for your own good.’ In went the needle. ‘There, there. Be a brave girl.’

In the corner, Tara once again saw Pinkie Pie, now blending in perfectly with the scenery around her. She didn’t have her usual bounce, but rather trotted slowly to Tara’s bed. ‘That’s right, Twilight,’ she said in a grizzly growl, ‘You don’t need us anymore, we’re all too silly, aren’t we?’

As Foster pressed down on the syringe, Pinkie faded away, making the room seem all that larger. What could she do?
Tara was then lifted from the bed and placed in a wheelchair, ready to reunite with her fellow mentally-impaired. As she was wheeled away from her bed, the loud squeaks gave way for another voice:

‘There once was a woman named Tara,
She made pony tales that did star her,
But it is pretty silly
To think you’re a filly,
So she threw away her tiara...’

Closing her eyes, she found herself as Twilight Sparkle once again, her fingers and toes and hands and everything gone. Yet she swore she still felt those things in her pony form. She had read about that once – phantom limbs, wasn’t it? Looking about, she saw the once-bright skies of Canterlot clotted up with thick clouds, and Discord laughing his ass off.

‘And what are you laughing at?’ Pinkie Pie appeared out of nowhere as per usual for her, but the voice she used was alien for her.

‘You ponies are just the most fun I’ve had in eons!’

‘You better think before you laugh at the pink!’ snarled Pinkie before shifting her eyes in other directions. ‘...Ie Pie!’

Twilight, remembering how it was Pinkie that led her to that coma, wanted to laugh at Pinkie like Fluttershy was doing at that moment. At last, no longer would Pinkie be able to bring her back here. Tara could recover, leave the asylum and have a semblance of a normal life, and Pinkie wouldn’t be able to interrupt it. And all the ponies, Celestia, and even dear Spike, they would be gone.

They would be gone.

‘Look at this, Twilight!’ said Discord, gesturing towards Applejack, Rarity, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy.

‘Rarity,’ the washed-out Applejack said from behind Rarity’s “diamond”, ‘This here diamond of yours? Twilight said we should split it six ways,’ she continued while stroking the gigantic rock, ‘since we, er, found it together.’

Rarity lunged at Applejack, causing her to back away.

‘Girls!’ cried Twilight, running to the arguing Pinkie and Fluttershy, ‘Why are you acting like this? We need to stick together!’

Another laugh came from Discord, and Twilight almost jumped at his throat. ‘Now I certainly wouldn’t want friends like these, eh, Tara?’

With the mention of her human name, Tara blinked open her eyes to find herself not in the now-rotting world of Equestria – yes, her brain did feel like it was slowly eroding – but in the white rec room of the asylum, her wheelchair beside the couch. She was in front of the television, a taped episode of Doctor Who playing.

‘Hey, Pony Girl!’ While cringing at the nickname, Tara turned to see Gilda, smiling an actual smile. ‘You okay?’

‘I’m...’ Looking out of the window, Tara swore she saw a selection of strange visions. Dancing buffalo parading through the street, soap flooding the road...no, it wasn’t the outside streets, it was Equestria! Those beautiful skyscrapers, the intricate buildings, all levitating and turned upside down. ‘...fine.’

‘Uh oh!’ Gilda said in a bouncy voice, ‘You paused between the two wo-ords! Something’s u-up!’

‘No, really. I’m fine.’

‘That’s what they all say.’ Gilda chuckled, and Tara chuckled along with her. ‘Just now I heard you blathering about something breaking out of a statue.’ Moving away from Tara slightly, Gilda stood up. ‘You ever watch Gargoyles?’

‘What?’

‘You know, that old Disney cartoon. Been yoinks since I watched it, but it was about these gargoyles that would come to life every night and they’d battle evil and stuff. And there was this evil girl gargoyle who wanted to kill all the humans...’

Gargoyles...those stone monsters that perch atop certain buildings...that’s what the ponies were now. Fluttershy had lost her innocence; she was now akin to that pig-like monster Tara remembered seeing in that gardening shop. Though it was made of stone, Tara had imagined what it would be like were it alive.

It’d be like Fluttershy is now.

Why couldn’t she be more like Gilda?

Gilda wouldn’t let anyone jab her with a syringe. Gilda wouldn’t let Discord run amok. Gilda was confident, Gilda was firm. Not like pathetic little Tara.

‘Were you just in Ponyland?’

Not Ponyland, it’s called Equestria. Tara didn’t bring up that correction though, as she looked about the room. ‘Where’s Marge?’

‘Didn’t they tell you?’ Gilda looked at her hand before chewing up another fingernail. ‘She’s been fired. You know, after what happened to you.’

Oh, yes. That was right.

Tara sunk into her wheelchair, clutching its arms tightly.

‘Hey, chill. She was on thin ice anyway,’ Gilda said, placing an arm on a shivering Tara. ‘Yeah, all the other doctors thought she was a qua...’ Tara held herself, chewing on her arm. ‘Hey, cut that out. I’m trying to help you. Anyway...’

It was all because of Equestria, you know. You had to go and create that world and then wallow in it. Now look what’s happened. Why couldn’t you listen to your better side, Tara? Why did you go and do what Pinkie Pie wanted? Yes, Pinkie Pie wanted you to do that. She’s like that, all unpredictable and confused.

Nothing but trouble.

Why didn’t you just leave her in your childhood where she belongs?

In an instant, Gilda slapped Tara across the face, making her injuries sting all the more. ‘I said cut it out!’

Though that slap did bring her to reality, Tara shrunk away from Gilda, her eyes watering up.

‘Oh, oh, look at this. You’re crying now, just because I was trying to be nice?’

Lifting her arms away from her head, Tara attempted to look at Gilda. ‘I’m not...’

‘Of course you are!’ Gilda flicked her finger at Tara’s eyelids, collecting a tear. Sticking the finger in her mouth, she continued, ‘You’re still in your happy pony land, aren’t you? You know, where everyone is easily forgiven and they listen to your pity parties and all that crap.’ She leaned her arm on one of the wheelchair’s, and looked at Tara in the eye. ‘If you want to get out of here, you better jettison that.’

Seeing Gilda before her, Tara swallowed, attempting to form a response. Gilda wanted an argument; she wanted her to be firm, confident like she was. So, what to say? ‘Well...why are you still here?’

An angry grin instantly lit Gilda’s face. ‘Are you kidding? I love it here! And at least I acknowledge I belong here, unlike “These people are my intellectual inferiors, not like my imaginary ponies wah wah wah”.’

‘I don’t think you’re...’

‘Oh, listen to poor innocent Tara. Just...’ With a grunt, Gilda turned away, watching the television.

Tara looked about the room, still wringing her fingers. This is where Pinkie Pie would appear, accuse Gilda of being a ‘mean meanie-pants’ and Tara would become Twilight Sparkle again. Actually, at that moment, there didn’t seem to be anyone in the rec room except Tara and Gilda. Well, there were other girls, but they were engaged in their own errands. One played with her own hair, one looked at a window – not through it, at it – and another just stood there without movement. Zoe wasn’t even there – perhaps she had been released?

She still swore she saw buffalo dancing.

After a while, in came Foster, sporting a shit-eating grin as he approached Tara. ‘Are you feeling any better, Miss Muschel?’

Tara narrowed her eyes at her visitor. ‘Go to hell.’

‘Look,’ continued Foster as he held the handles of Tara’s wheelchair, taking her away from the rec room, ‘I understand you may find my experiment a little...how shall I say...distressing. But as long as it gets your head out of the clouds.’ He chuckled, making Tara squirm. ‘Poor choice of words, I know. I’ll be back tomorrow to see how you are faring.’

‘Why are you doing this?’ Tara asked as she was returned to her room.

After being asked that, Foster gave another laugh, this one smaller. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Tara gave no answer. ‘This isn’t part of some evil plan to erase people’s minds or something in that vein...though you aren’t actually the first person to think that.’

A moment of silence followed, with Tara adding a smile of her own, before Foster lifted her onto her bed, said ‘Goodbye’ and left.

Now left alone, Tara surveyed the room, expecting Pinkie Pie to arrive any minute now. She awaited the appearance of the pink pony like she would await a package she ordered, but Pinkie did not appear. No scowling pink pony came in to beg her back to Equestria or to remind her to save it. Vanquishing Pinkie before had led to this accident, but now she knew it would lead to no such thing.

She had won. She wasn’t a brightly coloured pony, she was a grey little human in a grey little world. Her mind had too much potential to be wasting it on thinking about...

Was that them? Rarity, Applejack, Fluttershy all leering down from the ceiling, like gargoyles, not the cartoon those things from the buildings, stone demons like Discord...

She swore she heard someone approaching.

As soon as the grimacing ponies had vanished, the handle on her door had begun turning. Still weak, still flustered, she only lay there, shuddering as usual.

Slowly the door creaked open.

Bert the orderly entered.

‘Just remembered I was supposed to give this to you.’ Still shuddering, Tara took the card from Bert’s hand, awaiting him leaving. After he locked the door behind him, she looked at the card. A typical store-bought ‘Get well soon’, with a little cat on it. She opened it.

Gilda.

Not the human Gilda, the Equestrian gryphon. A replication of a doodle she had done during a therapy session. It was better than she remembered it being, and she shook her head at how she could have seen that so clearly. Beneath the obligatory message, a single ‘G’ was written.

Her would-be friend.

The card fluttered to the floor.

---

Once again she was Twilight Sparkle, her hands making way for hooves, her head filled with different memories. Now she stood on a chequered ground, surrounded by floating buildings and delusional ponies. Her purple mane drained of all colour, she walked away, all on her own. No friends, no Applejack, no Rarity, no Fluttershy...

No Pinkie Pie.

Who needed them anyway? Her first instinct was right; they were all crazy. Now that they had become vicious gargoyles, they were even more so. But who cares? They were merely a distraction, something to prevent her getting her work done. They couldn’t stop Discord, they didn’t want to. So, if they didn’t want to, why should she?

And speak of the devil.

‘Twilight!’ Discord squealed, a larger smile than usual lighting his hybrid features, ‘You’ve gotta see what I just did!’ His tone was that of an excited child showing a picture to mother, so perhaps that’s why Twilight could muster no fear or anger. Still, Discord directed her attention to a pony seasoned with pepper. A single sneeze, and the surrounding buildings fell down. No, not buildings – cardboard representations of them. That’s all they were. They were never constructed from brick and cement, merely with a thought.

‘Come on, Twilight Sparkle, you’ve got to get into the spirit of things!’ Discord raised his hands into the air, almost looking as if he were crucified. ‘After all, this is your new home!’

‘Not anymore.’

As Twilight trotted back to her library, she heard Discord’s ‘Yes!’ of victory. Ignoring it, she made her way to her bedroom, to dear old Spike. There he lay, claws clutching his stomach, writhing and squirming. Twilight froze as she listened to him murmur unintelligible gurgling, then she noticed the pile of scrolls lying proudly on the floor.

The letters she had written to Celestia.

Using her horn, she levitated the scrolls, unveiling their contents. As she stared at them, she didn’t read them, rather she lived them. The memories she used to have in this world all flurried back into her mind, which did cause a slight headache, but any pain was quickly soothed by what she saw before her. Once again, she felt the cooling waters surround her body, doing away with the ailments of the poison joke. Again she felt a wave of triumph after having escaped from the Diamond Dogs. Her brain immediately turned from the doubt Discord had sown, now pondering on her friends, their quirks and how their minds worked. Yes, her friends were real; they were born, had childhoods, and inside their heads, they have their own little thoughts. Those thoughts even taught Twilight a thing or two.

All those memories...

When Nightmare Moon was exposed for what she truly was, a victory that led Twilight to many more adventures. Going up a mountain to confront a sleeping dragon, which led to Fluttershy gaining a smidge more confidence...

Forced to work under the watch of Clarice.

That memory had crept back, and so did the phantom fingers and toes. This wasn’t a dream, Tara still felt awake. She could feel her soft bed against her skin, she could feel the chill of her bedroom. Yet she could also feel the magic emanating from her forehead, illuminating and revealing the scrolls.

Shaking her head, she found herself fully awake, yet still with that feeling of creating magic, and still with that urge to defeat Discord. The image of Discord played in her brain, a being made up of different creatures with unimaginable power, that was as alive and breathing as she was. A skeleton lay beneath the scales and fur, a heart pumped blood and he had a cunning brain to devise more horrific changes to give Equestria...

‘Still doing that, I see. You should really stop that.’

With that little voice, Tara sighed, twiddling her fingers again. She took a look down at the floor, to the open card. The picture of Gilda the gryphon, now somehow looking more like the type of creature that would terrify innocent Fluttershy. But Gilda’s not like that really, is she? Maybe the angry gryphon of Equestria should have a new name. Gretta. Goldie.

Oh look. Pinkie Pie. She doesn’t look too happy.

Despite still being monochrome, Pinkie Pie was the brightest thing in the room. That uncharacteristic scowl remained on her face as she looked around. She paced, her walking reminding Tara of a wind-up toy. When she laid eyes on the card on the floor, she shuddered and looked up to stare Tara in the face. ‘Oh, you still think we’re all just a joke, don’t you?’

Tara raised her head. ‘No. I don’t.’

‘After all we’ve been through,’ she growled, leaping onto Tara’s form, ‘After what you’ve seen...you still come back to this dump?’

Pausing, Tara looked upward for a while in thought, and then replied, ‘I’ll come back.’

‘Yeah, right!’

‘No, really, I’ll...’ With a sigh, Tara attempted to collect her thoughts together. ‘I know what you were trying to do. You...didn’t have to.’

‘Oh, really? I try to make you happy, and this is how you repay me? Did you prefer being with that old bat?’

Shuddering and wringing her hands once again, Tara attempted to search for an answer. She noticed herself fidgeting, and stopped herself, laughing slightly about her doing so for a figment of her imagination.

‘Aha! I knew it!’

‘Yeah...you know when you appeared to me here, I didn’t speak to you, because...’

‘Why? Because people would think you were “crazy”?’ That last word was emphasised with Pinkie circling her ear with a hoof, and her eyes becoming spirals.

Tara nodded, making Pinkie Pie gasp. ‘Still,’ added Tara, ‘I guess everyone knows I’m crazy, so...’ She spun her hand around, and then pointed at Pinkie, who had regained some of her colour. Forcing herself to take a good hard look at Pinkie Pie’s face, she tried to see her not as a delusion, not a lunatic, but as a part of her. Another Tara. Like Fluttershy was her timidness, Applejack her hardworking nature and Rainbow Dash being something pent up, Pinkie Pie had to be something. Her inner child? No, something more than that.

‘So does this mean you are going back to Ponyville?’ Pinkie Pie bounced, just once.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but only for a while.’

A smile crossed Pinkie Pie’s face, which then shrunk into a slight frown. ‘But you’ll come back, won’t you?’

‘Would you like me to tell you a story?’

Gradually, yet not too slowly, Pinkie had regained her coat’s colour, and was bathed in her namesake once more. ‘Sure! I love a good story, especially one with lots of action and...’

Pinkie disappeared. Back into Tara’s head, back where’d she stay.

Tara smiled.

‘Discord had flooded Ponyville with chaos, and sat back to admire his work...’

Comments

[Parchment_Scroll]

Wow, I thought this was done two chapters ago. Very nice.

[RadaVonVon]

This is making me happyyyy.

[Frost]

On the insanity thing: the story isn't real life. Either form could be real, the other trying to get her to stay in a coma, or keep her awake.