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Desperation
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“I can’t do this.”
“You need to stop being a pussy.”
“I think I’ve earned the opportunity to be upset!”
“Because god knows that you’ve been a rock for so long, right?”
“Just look at her!” Dax shouted back, his attitude in a place Alex had never seen before, “She’s just as fucking beautiful as the last time we saw her!”
Upon passing out in the Wonderbolt change room, Alex was brought to his magic mind-room, where he was able to converse with his alter-ego freely, in an endless black space that either of them could manipulate freely. Something that annoyed him, as he wished to return to the living world as quickly as possible.
“You need to calm down,” Alex said coolly, trying his best to get a look at Dax’s face, as he looked away from him, “Geez, I didn’t know you were the crybaby in my head too.”
“I can be whatever you make me,” Dax growled, turning around showing his truly upset mood to Alex in the form of puffy eyes and stained cheeks, “I’m what you suppress, you idiot!”
Alex scowled and sat back in a chair that appeared behind him, “What is that supposed to mean? You and I both know that I cried a lot over that mare.”
“Not enough, bucko!” Dax shot back, forcing himself to return to his usual, dick-like attitude, “You’ve been head over hooves for her since the day you met her, and you know it!”
“Head over hooves?” Alex asked, scoffing, “Since when did you start talking so much like a pony?”
“You’re more pony than human now, Alex.” Dax said, before shaking his head and returning to the issue at hoof, “H-how is this even happening right now? Why would you want to shut out these feelings?”
“Maybe it’s because I’m just a strong person,” Alex said, shrugging.
“Oh come off of it,” Dax said, approaching Alex and tapping his hoof against his chest, “This isn’t about being strong!”
“If you’re what I suppress, maybe you’re just the weak one, and I’m the strong one.” Alex said again, only further upsetting his dark side.
“You’re strong?” Dax asked, his rage growing to a new point, “So how about this?”
In front of the two of them, Dax constructed an image in their mind of Rainbow Dash and Speed, savagely going at it on a bed. It was gut wrenching for both of them to see, and Alex put an end to the image as quickly as he could.
“Why are you trying so hard to set me off?!” Alex shouted, feeling every emotion inside of him start to bubble over the surface.
“Because I wanna know what the hell is wrong with you!” Dax shot back.
Standing up from his seat, Alex determinedly stomped toward Dax, and unleashed true anger on him.
“You’re me! Don’t act like you don’t know!” Alex shouted, relieving Dax of some of the suppressed emotion, “What do you expect me to do when I look at Dash? Cry? Break down and show her what she did to me?”
“Well—“
“There is nothing in this world that I want more than that mare. You and I both know that we considered forgetting everything, and just living with her!” Alex shouted, throwing his arms in the air, “Jesus, I wish that I was weak enough to just let it go! But every single day for the rest of my life, it’d be there. Her screwing that guy would be in the back of my mind, festering to the point that I have a stroke, or fucking kill myself!”
Dax knew all of this, and only frowned.
“So! When I come face to face with this mare, who betrayed me beyond comprehension, I should show all of those emotions to her? I should take the future that I’ll never have with her, and shove it down her throat, to the point that it destroys her too?” Alex was seething, he was at this breaking point he had never truly experienced before, and it was horrifying, “But, despite it all, I still love the shit out of her! So! Maybe if I act strong, if-if she sees me keeping face… then, well, then maybe it’ll make things easier for her…”
Silence hung in the air between them, as Alex closed his eyes and forced himself to not cry again.
“Thank you.” Dax said simply.
Alex didn’t respond. He just looked down at the ground. The sprawling blackness.
“So, do you want to go back?” Dax asked, content with the amount of release Alex had had, “Because we can take our time in here if you like. I slowed things down for us.”
Alex considered the proposal for a moment, before he had to stop himself and talk to Dax for a moment.
“You can do that?” Alex asked, sitting back down on his chair, “How much magic do you know that I don’t?”
“Plenty,” Dax shrugged, unsure himself how he had a stronger grasp of chaotic magic than Alex, “But I suck at your happy-magic. So I guess it makes us even.”
The two sat in silence, as their minds both wandered parallel to one another. However, as they did this, it became apparent that neither of them needed to be silent.
“I guess we can hear each other, huh?” Alex asked, as Dax nodded to him, “We might as well bounce off each other a little bit.”
“It’s a lot like talking to yourself, you know,” Dax pointed out.
“Maybe. But, I think it’ll make things easier,” Alex sighed, leaning back in his chair, and placing his legs on a new foot stool.
Dax nodded and took a similar position, in a recliner that appeared under his butt, kicking up the leg rest to accommodate his pony body.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Alex started them off, thinking back to the days when he was still under the influence of the changelings, “After all that time, when we thought we were keeping that terrible secret from her… she was doing all of those things behind our back.”
“Well, we knew it was happening the first time,” Dax said, right next to Alex in his memories, “The changeling spell over us almost broke when the scout told us what was happening.”
“They had to drag us back to the hive because we were losing our mind!” Dax laughed, before going quiet, “God, if only we had broken free, we could have stopped it.”
“All of this would have been avoided,” Alex exhaled, closing his eyes and trying to remember the day once again, “I wish we could go back and just kick that kid’s ass for taking her away from us.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Dax said quickly, pointing to Alex with a stern look on his face, “We do not need a temporal paradox.”
“I know,” Alex sighed, having seen enough Star Trek to know what happens when you muck with time, “If I go back and kick Speed out of town, then Dash will never cheat. But, if she never cheated, then I’d never have a reason to go back and get rid of Speed. So, if I never go back, then no one will get rid of Speed, and she will cheat, leading me to go back, and get rid of him, but then I don’t go back because she didn’t, and… boom! Paradox all over my face.”
“My head hurts,” Dax complained, having only barely understood Alex’s explanation, “But. You’re right.”
“I just wish that I could see that Dash again, you know?” Alex muttered, “The one who hadn’t cheated, the one who spent all her time looking for me… How could she have changed so much?”
“Couldn’t go see that one either,” Dax said quickly, squashing his hopes, “If you went back, she’s remember that. You’d have an ever more complicated time explosion then.”
“I know. I am you, after all.” Alex said, still loving the idea, “If only we could just bang her, then wipe her memory.”
Alex laughed for a moment, but froze.
Both of them sat up and made eye contact at the same time.
“We could do that.” Dax said.
“We could do that shit out of that.” Alex reiterated, “If we wipe her memory, we could go see her at any point before Speed, and have a fresh, unspoiled Dash.”
“You make that sound so terrible.” Dax winced, “But… Christ if it isn’t a good plan.”
“Do you have the spell to do it?” Alex asked hopefully, his mind now dead-set on this plan, “Tell me you can take me back in time.”
“You know I do,” Dax said, standing up, “I can even do you one better.”
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In a blinding explosion of magical energy, Alex found himself inside of the barracks in Ponyville, right next to his locker in the change room.
“Why are we back here?” Alex asked, unlocking his slot, “All I have in here is my armor.”
”Wouldn’t it be more fun to surprise her in this?”
Alex thought about it, and had to admit that it would be fun to reveal himself as the armored pony once again. He did love the dramatics of it all.
“You win,” Alex smirked, as he grabbed the suit, threw it on the floor, and placed his hooves in their slots, before cast a quick spell beginning the suit-up process.
The metal clanked its way up each of his legs, and made its way to his midsection, which was promptly covered itself. The process continued until the final pieces slid over his eyes, completely masking his identity from anypony that didn’t know him. Which, in the past, was everypony.
”God damn we’re cool in this shit.”
“Really, really, really cool.” Alex nodded, walking over to the mirror and inspecting himself, “I’d bang me.”
”I wouldn’t”
“Hey…” Alex said, noticing the strange hanging in the air, “Isn’t everypony missing us at the stadium?”
”Things have been slowed down a ton. Think… a month to one second.”
“So…” Alex began.
”They won’t even notice us gone.”
“Good.” Alex said, “The last thing I need is to miss that ceremony.”
“You sure do care a lot about seeing her.”
“You know.” Alex said simply, “If I’m strong, maybe it’ll help us both move on.”
”And moving on for you, is going back in time and having your way with her in the past, and then erasing her memory?”
“It was your plan too,” Alex shook his head, “We’ll worry about the repercussions when the time comes.”
”You’re the boss.”
“Dang flipping right I am.”
Once again, Alex was surrounded by the blinding light that came with magic of this caliber, and watched in awe as the entire world rewound in front of him, as a pace that was truly staggering. He watched both him and Dash, among others, come in to the change room several times, before the building was promptly deconstructed around him, and he was left standing in a field with the sun and moon circling through the sky fifty times a second, as the ground was filled with snow, then golden foliage, then green once again, as the spell slowed, until it finally stopped, just after winter had ended more than a year ago.
“And finally…” Alex said, holding his breath, as his body vanished from Ponyville.
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