-=-Present Day, Present Time-=-
“This is going out to all my under squeaks, upstairs and down. To my downstairs followers, Mom, I know you’re Vanessa32. Everypony who can read this knows, and I’m sorry. I know I said I wouldn’t do this…” The lady-bug-plushy suddenly was engulfed in pink fire, and became a lady-bug-pony. “Magic is glitching. I can’t keep up with this lie anymore. To my upstairs followers, please know I never meant to trick you. But I did it anyway. Because you’ve always had friends out there that you didn’t even know to look for. This is me.”
-=- X Days Before Maretime Bay Day -=-
“You wanted to talk, so talk.” The little grey unicorn sat opposite to a cyan earth pony stallion.
“We seem to be at an impasse.” The nameless pony flashed an oily smile. “I can’t just grab you and be somewhere else because the ambush doesn’t happen yet. When the ambush does happen you just loop the narrative. Did you just loop causality just to have a safety meeting? Respect! You’re a very clever girl.”
“I’m a witch pony.” Gloomy said dispassionately. “My special talent has always been words and timing. My cutie mark was a jinx. If you could just grab me and run off, you would have done it back when we were walking up the mountain. I’m not afraid to meet with you because you are not a threat to me. This isn’t even the second loop.”
“Clever girl, indeed.” The stallion took a long draw from a very suspicious cigarette.
“I’m marginally glad you noticed.” The filly clopped her hooves in an ominous beat. “I gave you a chance to back out. What do you want?”
“What do I want?” The blue maned cyan changeling who no passerby seemed to notice chuckled as he took a chug from a dubious flask. “It doesn’t really matter what I want. Mr. Sunshine wants you. And I am in the unfortunate position of owing Mr. Sunshine a favor. Think of it as a job interview.”
“What are you willing to pay?” Gloomy stomped her beat through the mud the tempo had become since losing her cutie mark. “The dark marks the day. Have you already paid, for the bed where you’ve laid? And now you want me to meet with the sun?”
“Wow.” The dirt colored earth pony clapped with earnest enthusiasm. “I feel less bad about this. Nine dogs in hell, you might win. But there is one little issue…”
The rhythm paused, as if if the air had rushed out of the room, and the Queen’s shark like smile leered ear to ear as her tail tensed ready to strike. “I want my doll back. You have days to decide. I don’t know or care how many. Try again however many times you like, little pony.”
“You are so adorably serious.” The stallion who was suddenly there laughed out loud. “I remember what that was like…” He took a draw from an elaborate brass pipe. “Sometimes, I remember. How it felt to believe you had potential… it felt good. The truth, little filly, is you either ride on the train or you stand on the tracks.”
-=-Present Day, Present Time-=-
“You caught me.” The look on OC’s face is priceless as I flop up the stairs into the intruding horror’s waiting embrace. I know it’s wrong, and feel bad, but I do it anyway. It doesn’t matter that she threw me away. I am still her doll. I wish my button eyes could express more when I look at Gloomy. My girl just scowls as she lays down her sick beat. This was always coming. But this isn’t really my song, is it?
“Lay beside me.” The rouge queen runs her shark-like smiling teeth across my velvetine existence with a terrible gentleness. “Tell me what they’ve done”
I’m en-coiled in her tail… that venomous appendage ready to inject me with any emotion she wants at the moment. “Speak the words I wanna hear, to make my demons run.”
I am dangling in front of that maw. “The door is locked now. But it’s open if your true.” Did I ever really have a choice? “If you can understand the me, then I can understand the you.”
I never had power, only the illusion of power. These words were never my own, this was never my song. “New Foal joins this herd, and quickly she’s subdued. Through constant pain, disgrace, the filly learns their rules.”
Her song echos across my fluffy brain. “In time the foal draws in, this whipping post done wrong, Deprived of all her thought, the filly struggles on.”
I want the song to stop. I want a happy ending. That is not a thing in my power. “On and on she’s known, a vow unto her own. That never from this day, her will they’ll take away.”
“Come lay beside me.” The queen nuzzles me with an unspeakable innocence. “Under Wicked skies. Black of day, dark of night, we’ll share this pair of lies.”
She whispers the promise of sweet nothingness is my velvetine ear. “The door cracks open, but there’s no sun shining through.”
There is no joy in her laugh, “Black heart scarring darker still, but there’s no sun shining through.”
“What I’ve felt, what I’ve shown, never shined through what I’ve shown.” Did she always shine like that?
“Never me?” The words hit me like a fist to the skull I don’t have, and then the other half of me swings again. “Never Me, and I dub you Unforgiven.” It was always her place to judge me.
Gloomy has her attention now, at some point I’ve noticed that I can only see her through my captors eyes. “What I’ve felt, what I’ve known,” She sings her chorus in a husky reply. “Tune the pages, turned to stone!” My reprieve is brief, as her attention focuses on me once again. I fear it. I loathe it. I want it. I need it. I am her doll. “Will you be there, if I’m the one who waits for you?”
I can’t see her anymore. Just myself through her eyes. I can feel her eyelashes across my face. I can feel her warm breath, and the too-gentle caress of her needle-like teeth. I can fell her stinger against my back as she utters the entirely unveiled threat. “Or are you unforgiven too?”
There is no rescue. Every dream and every nightmare since I was thrown in that garbage heap is racing across my brain. And for the first time since magic came back, the world goes dark. And I’m just a doll again.