//------------------------------// // Part I ~ First Rounds // Story: On The Rocks // by 8_Bit //------------------------------// So yeah, I fucked up big time. There’s nothing I can do. Nothing at all, no words I can say that will make any difference. Knowing that I’m useless in this situation is hard enough, but not as hard as knowing that of the two of us, the only one who would know what to do in a situation like this is in fact the one desperately clinging to me as if her life depends on it. Octy's barely able to make a noise louder than a snivel. My hooves are wrapped around her too, but it almost feels like it’s making no difference at all. She’s way past upset. Her whole fucking life just fell apart in front of her eyes, and I’m all she’s got left in this world. And that ain’t much. My mind keeps going back over and over all the crazy shit that just happened, but I can’t see what else I could have done. I start to wonder where the night went wrong, but then I realize, maybe it was when I… Yeah, that was it. I saw red, got mad, and boom. The whole thing goes to shit, and it’s my fault. Instead of being in that big, warm house, in a queen sized bed, I’m sat in a cramped taxi with broken heating, in the middle of a late night storm. And Octavia’s desperately cuddled up to me, not even moving a muscle, except for a whimper or a sob every now and then. I see her breath rising in the cold air, steamy tendrils clawing at nothing in particular, and all I can think about for now is getting her home. It’s a long train ride ahead when we finally get to the station, although she’s definitely in no state to travel. But we can’t stay in this town for any longer than we have to, the more time we spend here will just be more pain for her. Between a rock and a hard place, much? We pass through the town square, as the big clock tower above the town hall starts ringing for ten o’clock. I can’t believe so much shit happened in twelve hours. In fact, literally this time yesterday we were leaving our house in Ponyville and heading for the station to catch an overnight train. It's a long ass way to Trottingham, we figured the time would pass quicker if we slept on the way here. It was eleven at night when the train left Ponyville, and we didn’t get here until just after nine this morning. I dunno if there’s even gonna be a train we can catch tonight. Just gonna have to make like a pegasus, and wing it. Okay, ding. That pun was a sin. But I’m serious when I say I have no fucking idea how long it’ll take to get home. Octavia’s not gonna be up to conversation, not in this state. Plenty of time for me to dwell on all the shit that just happened. I sit forward in my seat slightly, just for a stretch, but I feel Octavia’s grip on me tighten dramatically. Like if she ever let go of me, she’d lose me forever, and she’s desperate not to lose me too. “It’s okay,” I whisper as gently, and with as much affection, as I can. I follow up by nuzzling her mane and kissing her on her forehead. “I’m right here with you. I ain’t going anywhere.” The words seem to work. Her grip loosens slightly. But only slightly, she’ll never let me out of her grasp. That’s about as much conversation as I’ll get out of her at the moment, small gestures and whimpers. This is one night I’ll be happy to put behind me, but one she’ll never forget. The sound of a train whistle in the distance snaps me to attention, and less than a minute later, the taxi pulls up. Out the left window and through the heavy downpour, I can see the lights from inside the station building. “That’ll be seven bits,” a gruff voice announces, startling me. I look to my right to see the driver, having detached himself from his stirrups, has made his way round to the window. His raincoat looks hopelessly overwhelmed as the rain completely smothers it, washing onto and straight off of it in a fierce torrent. His teeth chatter beyond any control. I can’t help but feel sympathetic, right up until the moment where I pat myself down and realise exactly what I’ve forgotten. “Oh, crap,” I say out loud. The taxi driver rolls his eyes, with the typical ‘oh, not that old story again’ look on his face, one that’s more out of frustration than anger. He’s probably heard it a million times before, and he’s clearly not about to let a fare slip from his grasp. Not without a fight, at least, given the weather that he’s stuck out in. My heart sinks as I realise the only solution. “Tavi,” I say softly. “Have you got your purse?” She doesn’t respond at all. I may as well have not said a thing, for all the good my asking did. There’s no point asking again either, I’ll get the exact same silence in reply. I can’t tell if the taxi driver hasn’t noticed the state Octavia is in, or if he just doesn’t care, but he holds eye contact with me in an expectant stare. I fumble around the seat, Octavia’s grip on me tightening the very instant I take a hoof off of her. It’s like the beautiful, intelligent mare I know and love has been reduced to a feral animal, solely living by instinct. Right now, I'm her life-jacket, and if she lets go of me she'll sink. It kills me to see her like this. Feeling a slight lump that she’d been resting against, I resist the urge to make a victorious ‘ah-ha’ when I recognise the feel of the metal clasp of Octy’s purse. She won’t budge at all, so it takes some effort to pull it out from beneath her, but I’m so relieved to hear the jingle of coins when I do. And I breathe a sigh of relief as I open it. Not only are there enough bits, but Octy had the foresight to keep hold of our train tickets in here too. The taxi driver gives a satisfied grunt when I pass him the bits, plus a couple extra as a tip. It’s the least he deserves, having to pull a taxi on a shitty night like this. Yes, I know it was Octavia’s money. I’ll pay her back. It takes us a few minutes to walk from the taxi rank to the station building. At normal walking speed, it would have been about thirty seconds. If we’d ran to get out of the rain quicker, that would have gone down to about ten seconds. But Octavia couldn’t move any faster than a shuffle, even with me there to support her. I don’t think she even noticed the rain at all, even though it could have been a typhoon for all I know. When we finally get into the station, I grimace. The building was just one room, and not even a very big one. Several small benches sat against the back wall, next to a coffee machine. The only other things to occupy the room were a wilting pot plant, and the booth used to sell tickets and answer customer inquiries. Go figure, it's closed. I should explain, we’re in the outer areas of Trottingham. Central is where you get the big stations with the trains that arrive and depart at all hours of the night, but areas like this, despite the rich ponies that live here, just don’t have that much need for trains to arrive so often. This station only has one platform, and I realise the likelihood of getting a train out of here tonight was dwindling rapidly. After spotting a number of timetable leaflets sat on the desk of the booth, I grab the one for long distance services and lead Octavia towards the nearest bench. The collective puddle of all the water streaming off of us begins to drench the scruffy carpet, but I really don’t give a damn at this point. I sat her down, before sitting down next to her myself and gently ease her into a lying position with her head on my lap. I don’t think she even notices how drenched we are. She shivers a bit, but she’s been shivering this whole time. Again, the guilt hits me. She deserves better than this. A wooden bench in a draughty station building, soaked from the rain and with no clue as to when we can get home. A blood-stained bandage wrapped around my hoof begins to slide around, totally soaked from the rain and no longer really able to serve its intended purpose. So I slip it off, ball it up and toss it towards a wire-framed trash can. It splats loudly as it lands neatly in the bottom. Heh, three points. I open the timetable, hoping for some clarification on this particular matter. The tickets in Octy's purse are our open return tickets, that let us get back on any train heading back towards Ponyville, just as long as we do it within thirty days. Problem is, they don't cover the private rooms like we had on the way here. Those you have to book in advance on a specific train, when you know which service you'll be using. And we don't have enough bits here to get one. We'll be able to get on the next train, but it'll be economy benches for us. Staring at the charts written in tiny numbers, it takes me a few minutes to work out which one is the right schedule for us. I glance up to a battered clock hanging from the wall, which read ten past ten. It takes a phenomenal amount of willpower to keep me from a furious outburst, which would have involved some very colourful language. The last train of the night left at two minutes past ten. The train we’d heard when we reached the station? That was it. After that, the next train of our service wasn’t until seven in the morning. My groggy brain takes a moment to do the math, but I finally realise we aren’t getting into Ponyville until five in the afternoon tomorrow. All I want is to get Octy home as soon as possible, but I can’t even do that. Without any control, I let out a frustrated sob. Yes, I cry, big fucking deal. But I’m not crying from sadness. It’s exasperation. Exhaustion. It's fucking... everything right now. I fucked things up with her parents, I had to steal money from her to pay for our taxi, I can’t get her home until tomorrow, and I can’t do anything to comfort her right now. The whole shitty fucking situation is all my fault. I dug this fucking hole, but can I get us out of it? No. Ugh... deep breaths, Scratch... you're no good to Octy if you break down yourself... She whimpers again, which brings my attention back round to her. Where my attention should be right now. I stroke her mane softly, gently making that weird shushing sound that’s meant to be comforting. Fuck knows why I do it, but it looks like it helps. There's no sleep on the cards for me tonight. A couple of hours go by, but it feels like months. I hear it when the clock tower we passed earlier hits midnight. Octavia fell asleep a while ago, but it’s fitful. She’s having nightmares, not that I’m surprised. My ass goes numb from the crappy wooden bench, my back hurts from leaning against the brick wall for too long, I’m fucking freezing, and to top it all off, I kinda need to use the little filly’s room. I don’t move though. I’m not leaving Octavia’s side, not for the rest of the night. And not being able to sleep, I’ve got more than enough time to think over all of the events of yesterday. “Vinyl, wake up you lazy cow.” “Bite me, rich bitch.” Octavia giggled loudly, right in my ear, as she leant in to kiss me on the cheek. She let out a little snort at the same time, which shut her up straight away. I could tell she was embarrassed, but I gotta be honest and say that I think it’s fucking adorable when she does that. In fact, while I’m being honest, I’d expected things between us to be… well, awkward, after ‘that night’, but things have been better than ever. No, really, I mean it. It was like an enormous weight had been lifted off of our backs. We’ve been closer, there’s been so much more of our epic banter, and even our… well… our ‘intimate’ time has been better. Ah fuck it, I’ll just come out and say it bluntly. She’s been riding me like a rodeo horse. She’s an aggressive one when she wants to be. Don’t even get me started on how bad she gets when she uses the riding crop. “What time is it?” I asked, rubbing my eyes. I hissed loudly and retreated under the covers as soon as Octavia parted the curtains, revealing the rolling Dappleshire hills racing past our window. And sunlight that was a little too bright. “Quarter to eight,” she replied, tutting to herself and tearing the covers off of me. Bitch. “I was hoping we could get some breakfast before the dining car closes,” she said, though I could tell by the tone of her voice she was less impressed with the foetal position I had taken to. She’d obviously forgotten how warm those covers were. But, she had a point about breakfast. If anything was worth the ultimate struggle of tearing yourself away from your bed, it would be food. I felt something small and metal bounce off my shoulder. Looking up and peeking one eye open, I saw Octavia had tossed me my glasses. Igniting my horn, I levitated them and pushed them up my muzzle. Ahh... that made the sunlight a lot more bearable... “Fine, I’ll get up,” I groaned. Never one to turn down a chance to play the role of the doofus, I rolled off of the bed and fell straight to the floor with a thud. “Carry meeeee!” I begged playfully, staring up at her with the widest puppy dog eyes I could muster and reaching out to her with all four hooves. “A great lump like you? I’m not overly keen on the idea of putting my back out.” “That’s not what you said last night.” “Oh, shut up,” she said, poking her tongue out at me as she headed to the door of our small compartment. “Now come on, they stop serving breakfast at eight.” “Fine,” I conceded, hauling myself off the floor and following her out of our small compartment. My back gave a small spasm as I stood up, but given how tough the bed had been, I wasn’t that surprised. ‘Bed’ was actually a just generous way of saying ‘crappy foam-covered bench that folds down for sleeping on’. We could have upgraded to a bigger room with an actual double bed, but we'd figured it’d be cheaper to go for the basic digs. Never again. The hour or so we had left of the journey went by... pretty quickly actually. The breakfast was, honestly, pretty gross. It’s a train meal, so it’s not like I was expecting any of that gourmet stuff you get in Canterlot, but seriously, how do you get hay bacon strips wrong? Ugh. I'm not gonna be able to look at hay bacon for weeks without feeling sick. Sometimes I weep for equinity. By this point it had been a little over a month since ‘that night’, and while I’d told Octy she could open up to me with as much or as little information about her past as she felt she needed to, she’d decided to pretty much explain most of it on the night I’d asked her to write the letter to her parents. What she'd said previously was that she'd had the sex change operation at age seven, but this wasn't actually true. Seven was the age she'd started transitioning, but the actual operation... you know what, let me just give you the full low-down as best as I can remember it. Octavia was born under the name Philharmonic Melody, to her mom Allegra and her dad Staccato in Trottingham General Hospital, twenty-eight years ago as of the twentieth of November. Even as a young pony, she knew she was different, but had difficulty opening up to adults about it. Most ponies simply called her ‘Phil’, but she always used to say 'Call me Philly' because it sounded just like filly. In kindergarten, she’d preferred playing with the other fillies rather than the colts, you know, dolls and whatever. In school plays, she always wanted to play the female roles, and once was even caught trying on one of the princess costumes for a Summer Sun Celebration pageant her pre-school was holding. Naturally, being different in Upper-Crustville lends itself to terrifying all the stick-in-the-plot adults around you. Once her dad caught wind about her doing girly stuff, he had her put in a colts-only school, which is where she started suffering from anxiety and depression. This went on for a while, and she still doesn’t know if her dad even noticed how she was feeling. Luckily just after her seventh birthday, her mom took her to a psychologist. An old family friend, it turns out, somepony smart enough to know that kids can understand themselves enough to know how they need to live their lives. It’s a really long story, the way she told it, but the short version is that when the psych suggested that she was really a filly in a colt’s body, it gave her an emotional lift that brought her mother to tears of joy. Her father never really approved, apparently, but he preferred it as a solution over the anti-depressants Octy had been on for months. As I said, when Octy first drunkenly dropped the bombshell about the whole thing to me, she told me she’d had the sex change at seven. She really gave me the basic version there, seeing as until then I knew absolutely zip about transitioning. It was an over-simplification that bordered on innacurate. Seven-years-old is when she’d started presenting as female, a stage called social transition, and she made all the first basic steps like name changes, whole new wardrobe, pronouns, all that stuff. Hormone blockers came next, to give her the most natural puberty possible, but the hardest part for her was that she wasn’t legally allowed to… um… get her ‘plumbing’ fixed until she was sixteen. ‘Tartaurus in Equestria’ is how she described those few years of her life. She had been attending an all-mare boarding school, and it had been several years since she’d had her name and gender corrected on her birth certificate and other stuff, but she still had… well, you know… the wrong parts. Very few ponies actually knew, due to her attending a very traditional school with strict uniform requirements, meaning her privates were always covered by several layers of cotton and dreary tartan, but one of the ponies who did know was her just-as-traditional headmistress. And because in her bigoted eyes, Octy was still a stallion, she forced a lot of strict additional rules onto her. She had to have her own changing room for gym, and her own bedroom separate from the normal dormitories where the other school fillies slept. Octy’s dad had to pay a fortune on top of the school fees to keep the headmistress happy. See, I don’t get all this contradiction about him. From the way Octy described him to me, he sounded just as ‘traditional’, narrow minded and backward as her bitch headmistress, but rather than rely on Trottingham’s free public health services (something Equestria really needs by the way, I hate how much I pay in health insurance) he paid for all her medication, surgery, and even a whole new wardrobe of girly clothes himself. Paint me confused. After Octy had the final operation, just before her seventeenth birthday, she was over the moon. Not literally of course, but despite how much pain she was in for the first few months that followed, she’d said, and I quote straight from the horses mouth, “My ten year journey has finally come to fruition.” Like, that was the first thing she’d said when she woke up. I think the drugs were still making her woozy. By her eighteenth birthday, the pain and anxieties of her transition were just a memory. She was a normal teenage mare, getting ready for her final month before the start of her university course. Which, coincidentally, is where I came in. But that's a whole other long-ass story in itself, so let's just skip back to where we left off.