//------------------------------// // Ugly // Story: Born in Equestria // by Winston //------------------------------// Born in Equestria 3. Ugly As soon as she got home, Rainbow Dash locked the door and pulled the curtains on every window. Safe. No more ponies to cope with now. Having not had much appetite or interest in eating there at the party, Rainbow Dash realized she was getting hungry. She wandered into her kitchen and looked around, though she knew there wasn't a lot to choose from. There was a welcome home basket of a bunch of vegetables that Applejack had given her from the farm sitting on the counter, and it was the only food in the house so far. She hadn't had much inclination to properly stock the fridge yet, with all the other work involved in coming home and moving back into her house. Dropping into a restaurant for something quick had been easier so far. Not an option now, though. Not if she was going to stay hidden away for the time being. And really, looking back at it, she was tired of doing that anyway. That was how the gradual buildup of fatigue over being welcomed home with questions had started, when random ponies around town had recognized her during her food and shopping runs and decided that since she was eating alone it would be alright to stop by at her table and chat. One even paid for her meal before she could stop it from happening, saying it would be her pleasure to buy lunch for a war hero. "War hero"? If only she knew. If only these ponies knew. Rainbow Dash remembered blushing under coat and feeling embarrassed when it happened. It was not in the good, flattered, that-was-so-nice-you-shouldn't-have embarrassed kind of way, either. Just the weirded out creepy kind of way. Maybe, she thought, she should feel more guilty about not feeling more grateful, but it was hard when she was pretty sure they weren't really buying lunch for her, they were buying it for some sad naïve idealization they had, a ghost who didn't exist. She didn't want that imaginary pony's lunch. She didn't deserve it. After that she'd taken to ordering to go and bringing her food back home as quickly and quietly as possible. But... That was not something she had to worry about right now, fortunately. She turned her attention to the food at hoof. The basket had some carrots in it, some cucumbers... Apples, of course... Some other fruits, a bunch of other vegetables. It didn't really matter to Rainbow Dash, there wasn't much growing on the Apple farm that she didn't like, and she wasn't about to look this gifthorse in the mouth. Good enough to fill her up for tonight. She brought the basket to the kitchen table, along with a plate. She started eating her makeshift dinner, and while she did she kept half expecting for somepony to knock on her door, coming around to find out whether she was feeling alright or if anything was wrong after bailing out of a party that quickly. Preplanned responses for their concerns already ran through her mind. She was just tired. That was about all she had to say about it. Yes, best to keep it simple and consistent, and not contradict what she'd already told Pinkie Pie. It wasn't a lie, anyway, she really was tired. Tired of the questions. Tired of... Just tired. Three years of being drained leaves a pony nothing but tired. Three years of being afraid and being angry and being sad and being pushed and being under pressure and being alone. Three years of killing and being killed. Three years of impromptu funerals in the field. Three years of cremations for pegasi and griffins and burials for earth ponies and unicorns. Three years of struggling to get through the day, three years of trying to support other ponies when they were the ones who were breaking down and just couldn't take it anymore. Three years of being dirty. Three years of being hurt. Three years of nervously scanning the skies and watching her six while foraging for decent grass or wildflowers or anything with some actual flavor to suppliment the food the army managed to get to them. Three years of getting a letter from her friends or her family being a sporatic luxury that was never guaranteed. Three years of understanding but not understanding and hoping desperately it would make some kind of sense later with a clearer, more distant view. Three years of trying to hold on to something, to remember what she was before, to not lose herself... Three years of trying, struggling, clinging with everything she had, not to lose loyalty. Three years of the war machine. Once she'd gotten herself started, it was all she could think about while she sat there eating. Why was this all she ever thought about now? It drove her crazy and it made her upset and frustrated that it wouldn't leave when it was supposed to be over. She needed something to take her mind off of it. She'd sit here and think about it and stress over it all night if she let herself. A distraction was the most important thing for her right now. Without that, this would be another complete hell of a night. She could feel it heading that way. Still chewing the end of a carrot, she walked to her bedroom and over to the bookshelf. She spotted a well-liked title on a comfortingly familiar book spine. Daring Do. The first one, where her career as a real reader had taken off strong, for reasons not all that different than now, as a distraction to help her through an unpleasant time. Yes, perfect. Fitting. She pulled it from the shelf and returned to the kitchen. Rainbow Dash sat at the table, with the book open to the beginning, and started reading it. She'd read it before, of course, but not for years. The story as far as the overall plotline was concerned was well known to her, but there was still an enjoyable sense of rediscovery in each paragraph and sentence as she read them. It drew her in, the way she loved in a good story, and she let it. She willed it to do so. She just wanted to forget about everything else for now, and this... Well, she couldn't think of anything that would do it better. It was much healthier, anyway, than the next closest option of trying to block it all out with the dull foggy numbness of alcohol. Still, though, it was true that she was tired, and after an hour or so of reading, she was closing in on exhausted. No amount of immersiveness in the story could overcome that, only cover it up from her more immediate consciousness. Eventually she kept finding her head bobbing forward, and the page she was on seeming to rise up toward her face on its own until the end of her muzzle was almost touching it, before she would catch herself and sit back up to read a little more. The process repeating with increasing frequency each time was the last thing she remembered that night. Rainbow Dash began coming to, disoriented because when she opened her eyes she could see that the kitchen was, oddly, tilted 90 degrees with respect to the usual horizontal angle of the plane of the floor, which was now vertical. Turned sideways? But how... Oh. Wait. No, that doesn't make any sense... It wasn't actually tilted, she realized, her head was just laying on its side on the table. That was why she was a bit sore, too, where her head came into contact with what was beneath it. It was uncomfortable, resting on... Something hard? But not quite the table's surface. Something flat, though. Paper. The texture felt papery. She'd fallen asleep on her book. Her still sleepy mind pieced all this together quickly enough. She'd fallen asleep reading. Well. That explains it. She must have been out for a while, too. Last she remembered, it was the middle of the night, but now it was obviously not, since there was an aura of sunlight in all the windows seeping in around the curtains and blinds and gently illuminating the interior of the house. She took a deep breath and lifted her head, and the kitchen righted itself. She looked down at the table. The book was still open to where she'd stopped reading. Hopefully the weight of her head on the pages all night long hadn't done anything too terrible to the book's spine. It looked okay at first glance, not creased too badly. Strange, she couldn't help but think. Usually when she drifted off like this, it was only for a few minutes or so. Then she woke up again, finally admitted to herself that she was too tired to keep reading, and got in bed to go get some real sleep. Maybe she should go do that, she considered, even if it was morning already. Actually, though... After sitting up for a minute, she realized that she felt pretty good. The time she was out cold on her book had flown by instantly, untroubled by dreams or anything else. She felt like she had just really rested. That felt like a first for the past couple days or so. She stood up and stretched, and it went from feeling pretty good to a brief couple minutes of feeling absolutely divine as she extended her legs, flexed her range of motion, gave her back a few twists and spread her wings as far as they would go. She stretched out every limb until her mucles gave her little shivers and her tendons stood out like tightened ropes under her skin as they reached their limits. The movement sped up her heart and got her blood flowing, spreading a gentle sense of warmth through her. It felt... She wasn't sure what word said how it felt, when she thought about it. In the end, she concluded that just enjoying those sublime sensations was more important than overthinking it. When it's the first time you feel good - really good - in days, you don't pick it to death. In that moment, the day seemed like maybe it would be an enjoyable one. Optimism seized her, she walked over to the nearest window and pulled up the blinds. Bright and sunny and beautiful. Her mood lifted even more. Maybe today would be different. She hoped so, because she still had a lot to do. Like get the fountain with its rainbow cascade back up and running! She smiled. The thought was motivating, and the vision of it filled her mind. The fountain had been deactivated and drained for the last three years while she'd been away. She'd arranged for Fluttershy have a key to the house to let herself in and peek around once a week or so to make sure the place wasn't falling apart, which Fluttershy was fine with, but asking somepony else to take care of something unnecessary like the fountain wasn't exactly fair to them and Dash wasn't about to ask that much, so it had been turned off. All the equipment should still be good, but it would take some doing to fill the system back up, get the pump going and the mist catching the sun's light and diffracting it into rainbow colors, and get it all circulating again. She hadn't placed too high a priority on it so far, but now she realized how longingly she wanted to see it again. It was one of the things that made this place really feel like home, the way she remembered it had been. Maybe having it back, seeing the rainbow spray and hearing the gentle soothing white noise of rain and flowing water it made, would help her. And at the least, it would get her outside the house for the morning, wouldn't it? Out into the sun. That'd be nice. So she made up her mind. That would be her project for the morning, while she had the inspiration and the energy. A quick trip to the Ponyville hardware store later, Rainbow Dash had the energy cell, a crystal infused with magical force, that would power the pump. She'd found the old one in a closet where she'd stored it before she left, but it was flat and lifeless after such a long time. Maybe she'd look into getting it recharged later, since those things weren't cheap and a spare was always good to have around, but it was quicker right now to just get a new one. She installed the cell into its holder, and briefly jogged the switch for the pump on and off. It spun to life for a brief second before it stopped again, proving that it still worked. So far, so good, though she wouldn't want to run it without water in the system for any longer than that brief test since the pump could overheat and burn up otherwise. With that in mind, getting water into the system was next. That wouldn't be too hard, she'd get water from the same place she'd always gotten water for her house in the sky: grab a stray raincloud not earmarked for any weather team use and squeeze it out. Well, "squeezing" was metaphorically speaking, getting the rain to fall was more of a process of knowing how to buck the cloud properly to induce the microscopic vapor droplets to coalesce together into raindrops that would fall where they were wanted. But Dash had no lack of skill at accomplishing that. She found a cloud with sufficient moisture in it and got the rain to fall and fill the reservior for the system easily enough. Then she went back to the pump. It had a small bleed valve at the top, to check and make sure that it was primed with water instead of trapping air. She cracked it open and sure enough, a small stream of water came out until she shut it again. Good to go. Time to make things awesome. She hit the switch. The pump spun and made noise. It was a lower pitch than when she tested the pump with air in it, with the resistance of the liquid reducing its speed to what it was designed to properly run at. But that was the only real noise. There wasn't any sound of falling water, or any other movement. The pump was pushing, but the water didn't seem to be flowing. Looking for the source of the problem, Dash left the pump going for the moment and flew out to the first and highest cascade of water - or where it should have been, anyway. It was still dry. Must have been a clog or a blockage somewhere in the system, between there and the pump... She moved in for a closer look at the outlet where water was supposed to be coming from. Suddenly, whatever obstruction was preventing the flow broke loose and water gushed out energetically without warning, erupting in a brief spray before dying down to the gentle rivulet it was supposed to be. Unfortunately for Rainbow Dash, that spray happened to follow a trajectory running directly through where she was standing in the basin, and as such, the gush of water hit her, leaving her soaked from head to hoof and nose to tail. Not so awesome. It smelled funny, too. She looked down and saw that the water was dingy, with a dark grey cast and was murky, only partially transparent. "Aww, gross." She mumbled to herself, making a disgusted face. She hadn't thought about it before, but now that she did it dawned on her that she probably should have realized this would happen. The whole system was either made of cloud or resting in a foundation of cloud material, and clouds are particularly great at one thing apart from being comfortable and soft: they're total dust sponges. Any kind of dust blowing around in the atmosphere was liable to end up trapped in a cloud at some point, and these clouds had been sitting around with nothing and nopony to clean them out for three years. Of course they were going to be dirty. The inside of the house wasn't so bad, with Fluttershy there to occasionally keep an eye on it and the interior construction cloud being pretty well designed to not trap much dust anyway. The outside surfaces were mostly alright, too, with rain every now and then rinsing them off. But inside the piping and the stuff that nopony had touched in all that time and nothing could remove the slow accumulation of dust from, well, it was filthy... Grimy... Gritty, but also somehow almost vaguely greasy at the same time... Rainbow Dash was really disliking the sensations it left in her coat, her skin, and her mane. It just plain felt disgusting. She instinctively convulsed her shoulders and her haunches back and forth energetically in a twisting motion for a moment, shaking out the water like a dog as best she could. Some of the heavyness of the water's weight went away but it didn't really help, she still felt just as dirty. The thing that bothered her was that this feeling felt... Familiar. It reminded her. In an unwelcome way it reminded her of too many things. It reminded her of being sweaty and grimy from hours of wearing armor. It reminded her of feeling gritty from ashes settling in her coat. The way her wet mane hung in limp stringy strands, tangled up and all the colors darkened, felt like every other time she'd been drenched or splashed with something unpleasant. The greyness of the dirty water clung to her coat, dulling its color, like she was... Like she was changed back. Pulled back... Back to the pony who did the things that made her feel so dirty, so filthy. So disgusting. So low. Angry tension ran down her spine. She shuddered with it. Buck!!! She suddenly wanted to scream. Why?! This isn't me anymore! There was nothing to scream at, though. She looked down. There was just a dark, wavering reflection of herself in the thin pool of dingy deep grey water. Frustration and resentment flared through her. The welling emotion was so hard to fight, try as she would to stay calm. For just a short moment, a sob welled up into her throat, but she choked it, staying quiet and contained. She swallowed it down, forcing herself to stop and stay composed. No. Not like this, not here. Not outside. Her ears were burning hot and her eyes watered. They became warm and misty with crystal clear tears, but she didn't let herself break down. She blinked them away. Not while she was still standing here, hoof deep in filthy water. Not here, in this utter lack of dignity. Being dirtied and defeated was one thing. Being abjectly humiliated, admitting to the world she was broken - that was something else. Not even the worst of the savage physical and mental beatings she suffered in three years had brought her down to that. So how could she be so dangerously close now? Because it isn't supposed to be happening here. I'm not supposed to have to think about this now. It's supposed to be over. The bitter unfairness of the thought echoed in her head. There wasn't anything she could do about it. Slowly, she unfolded her wings and flapped, lifting herself up to hover in the air. She shook off her hooves, dripping murky water back down. She hovered her way over to the pump, and thought about flipping the switch off, but some corner of her mind that somehow managed to keep itself eerily distant and detached and logical realized it'd be best to just let it run for a while. The water would hold the dust, as long as it kept flowing and didn't get the chance to settle out, and she'd change it and replace it with clean water later until all of this junk was flushed out. Her project to get the fountain going properly again wasn't done, it would just have to be on hold for now. So screw it, let the pump go. All she wanted at the moment was to get inside the house. A slow hover, trying not to drip or track the foul liquid around, was the best she could manage. It got the job done. She got through the door and pushed it shut behind her with the edge of one rear hoof. From there she went through the living room and to the bathroom, finally landing and coming to rest in the shower. She sat motionless, and stared forward at the wall of the shower. There was no noise once she stopped moving. She looked at nothing in particular, and found herself getting lost in the nondescript blank surface. It was quiet, absorbingly and hypnotizingly silent, in the house, just like it had been for the past few days. There was no reason for it to be otherwise. She was the only pony in the house, and all she was doing was sitting on the cold shower floor, motionless, feeling the slight chill of being soaked. Diffuse daylight came in through the frosted window of the bathroom. Even that light seemed cold, casting the room in slightly blue hues. Quiet. So quiet. So cold. So alone. Just staring at a blank white wall. Starting to shiver, bit by bit, as the chill set in ever more. She was anchorless. That was suddenly the only real sense in her mind. She was lost. She was in limbo. She wasn't still out there but she wasn't home. She didn't feel like she'd changed but she didn't feel the same. This... Whatever this was... The undefinable feeling of really being nowhere... Was not what she wanted to be. She wanted her old life back. A sense of loss and longing overwhelmed her. She wanted her old mind back, her old way that she remembered, from before she'd left, of being able to just... Be happy, feel good about herself, at least most of the time. Nothing's ever perfect but there was a time when she really liked her life and who she was. She blinked and shook her head, taking a deep breath and wresting herself out of the mesmerization of the silence and blankness as best she could. Well, she would have it again. Determination steeled itself up and ran through her and she gritted her teeth. And it would start being reclaimed now. She reached out and turned the water on. It was cold at first but quickly warmed up until it was comfortable and soothing, and her shivering went away. The water that ran off of her was tinted with hazy dark grey, at first, but soon ran clear and clean, and watching that transformation brought her no end of satisfaction. By the time she was out of the shower and toweling off, Rainbow Dash felt much better. There was no more of the gritty or greasy feeling in her coat, no more funny smell, and of course no more discoloration. She looked like her old self again. The mirror showed her something more familiar and more welcomed than the mess she'd been a little while ago. Bright sky blue coat. Vivid rainbow-striped mane of straight hair, still damp but beginning to regain volume as it dried back to its usual trademark slightly wild, loose and not overgroomed look. She ran the towel over her sides and smoothed down her drying coat. It pushed the hairs down into a uniform direction, forming the illusion of a surface that almost shimmered with a clean shine. On the left side, she paused and frowned. Three parallel stripes running at an angle down her side, the fur of her coat refusing to smooth out evenly, were left in a permanent state of looking ruffled, the hairs growing in haphazard directions, like three long narrow cowlicks. It was subtle, but noticable. No matter how she pushed them down, there wasn't much improvement. The scars. They were something she hadn't thought much about for a long time, the marks of the vicious claw-raking some griffin had given her, cutting her open in ugly but shallow gashes. She remembered getting them stitched. Her memory replayed it, briefly, involunarily. It struck her at the time, how it oddly didn't hurt at all like she'd expected. The doc used some kind of novocaine or lidocaine or some other painkiller numbing spray that made her skin completely dead to all sensation before she started sewing it up. But after it wore off, the stitches itched like nothing else, and it drove her crazy with the intensity for a few days and she had to constantly fight not to scratch. Other than that, it was really no big deal. She'd been back up and flying patrols again the next day after it happened. It had been... What? A year and a half since then? More? She didn't even remember, exactly. That was how little she really thought about them. They were old. They would never heal completely smoothly, the hairs would grow back in at random angles instead of consistent uniformity, but it caused no problems, and no physical pain, so they were easy to forget - provided, that is, she didn't have much concern for the particulars of her appearance. She usually didn't. But the old Rainbow Dash looked a certain way, and she didn't have these scars. These were something brought back, a souvenir that she couldn't just set aside somewhere. They were just another reminder that she didn't want shoved in her face right now. They marred the reclamation of image, undermining the comforting cleaning effect of the shower that had otherwise helped settle her back down. I just can't get away, can I? A wave of depression dragged at her. But it wasn't as bad as before. She fought it, bucking up under the weight. No. She couldn't just give up too easily. She'd already come so close to winning this victory today. She could finish it, and then with the momentum behind her, she could win another... And another, and another, whatever it took. No one ever said that things would be easy, all she could do was keep trying. There had to be a way to fix this, to not have to see them. Rainbow Dash walked into the Carousel Boutique later that afternoon, and the little bell attached to the door rang softly behind her. Rarity emerged from her studio room and into the main gallery, expecting a customer. When Rarity saw who it was, she broke into a friendly smile and enthusiastically greeted Rainbow Dash with a hug. "Rainbow! How are you? We've hardly had the chance to talk since you've been back. I'm sorry about that, I think we've just both been so busy..." She seemed guilty. "Oh, yeah," Rainbow Dash nodded, "moving back in is a lot of work, and I know you're always busy with trying to fill the orders you get. But business has to come first, right?" "Yes. You know how it is. I'm so glad you stopped by, though! Won't you come on in for a while? I can afford some time off and I could use a good break. I'd love to spend some time and get all caught up, if you'd like." "Yeah," Rainbow Dash smiled back, "I was kinda hoping you'd be able to. I'd like to hang out together for a while." "Anything for a friend, Rainbow." Rarity nodded. "Hungry at all? There should be something in the kitchen to snack on. Let's just go see..." The white unicorn walked out of the showroom and into the kitchen, and Rainbow Dash followed. "I hope your process of settling back in here at home is going smoothly enough," Rarity said, as she magically gripped the refrigerator door and pulled it open, rummaging around. "Actually, Rarity..." Rainbow Dash said hesitantly. "About that... Yeah. Part of the reason I'm here is 'cause I could use some help with something, and it's... Kinda your thing. At least the most out of anypony I really know." "Oh?" Rarity's curiosity was piqued. "What is it, Rainbow? Whatever it is, you know you'll only get my best." She turned away from the fridge to look at Rainbow Dash. "Well..." Rainbow Dash looked at the white unicorn, then turned slightly at an angle so that she was still facing Rarity but her left side was also clearly visible. She looked down at her side briefly, at the scarred parallel lines running down it, and back at Rarity again. Dash's eyes had the look of worry kept under a veil, the face of somepony troubled but trying not to show it. "So, uhh... What can we do about these?"