After a brief period of what felt like falling through darkness, Diamond Tiara collapsed in a confused heap on her bedroom floor. Thoughts sped through her mind like professional Pegasi flyers, and she struggled to latch onto them. One thought repeatedly made its way past her, and she grabbed on to it.
It was the memory of... that night. She could see the look in that stallion’s eyes... something happened that night, and the fact that she couldn’t recall it properly deeply troubled her. Why can’t I remember!?
Coat still on, she sped down the stairs, and out the front door into the freezing snowfall of early morning. In the distance, a large looming tower gleamed in the stunning moonlight. There’s only one pony who can help me. I just hope that it’s not too late…
Diamond Tiara approached the door, and pounded on it with the sum force of her fears and frustrations collected within her this evening. It wasn’t long before the door was answered by a sleepy Twilight Sparkle. “... it’s two o’clock in the morning, my little pony. I know I said the other day that my door is always open, but... ” Diamond Tiara took that as the closest thing to an invitation to come in as she was likely to get, and clumsily skidded onto the crystal floor.
“Princess Twilight, you have to help me! I, um... I can’t remember something, and I know you’re like, the best at magic in town. I would really-”
The sleep-deprived princess glanced at the filly and squinted, before sighing, “... you’re Filthy Rich’s daughter, aren’t you? Diamond Tiara, wasn’t it?”
Though hearing her father’s name caused a pang of resentment to strike her, she still nodded to Twilight. “You’ve heard of me, then?” said Diamond Tiara, her autopilot to socially connect kicking in on cue.
“Yeah, you could say that... and by ‘heard of’, I’d say ‘heard complaints of’.”
The filly bowed her head, and idly pawed at the crystal floor with a hoof, “... yeah, I’ve been told that.”
The purple princess slowly walked over and pointed a hoof squarely at Diamond Tiara, “I have a pony everybody seemingly loves to hate waking me up to help her. Why should I help you?”
The filly sighed, and reluctantly accepted the possibility that her past was going to haunt her unless she dealt with it. She looked up at Princess Twilight, and found cold, weary eyes sizing her up. “I’ve, um… been visited by two ponies this evening. They wanted to show me my life and how other ponies live. I… stumbled on a memory, and I don’t remember much of it. I came to you for help because I figured that you’d have something magical to help me remember.”
Twilight Sparkle put a hoof to her chin, and contemplated. “I have to be up early in the morning… but I think I can spare some time for you. Who was it that visited you, anyway?”
“Princess Cadence and Princess Celestia.”
Twilight took a step back. Not just ponies, but princesses. If Princess Celestia was helping, then this was big. The die had been cast; Princess Twilight now felt positively compelled to help the distressed foal. Wasting no time, she scanned her impressive new bookshelves for a book she had put there the previous evening, “A-ha! Magical Memory Medicaments. I had to order another copy from Canterlot when my... previous library went up in smoke.”
The alicorn placed the book on a table, and proceeded to flick through the pages at breakneck speed. After several frantic seconds of searching, she stopped on one particular page, and mentally committed the arcane densities required to memory.
After writing some quick calculations on a piece of parchment, she approached Diamond Tiara. “I’m going to use spell number forty-five; it will help me to guide you to the memory you seek. Hold very still.” The princess lowered her head down, her horn making contact with Diamond Tiara’s head. Her horn flared with the influx of arcane energies, and both of them were enveloped with the familiar tingle of magic
Diamond Tiara had instinctively closed her eyes as she felt magical energies swirl around in her head. She opened her eyes, finding herself in another place. She looked to her side and found Princess Twilight giving a relieved sigh. “Considering I’ve never used that spell, I’m quite pleased with how that went! So, um… do you recognise where we’ve ended up?”
Diamond Tiara scanned the room, and felt a cloying blackness in her throat. She recognised the room from prep school; it was her dorm room. She turned around, and spotted herself in the bed, looking forlornly at the moon in the night sky. Faint remains of the earlier memory came bubbling to the surface, and almost on cue, she heard the reception door downstairs open. Her doppelgänger left the bed, and walked calmly to the door. Following suit, she pressed her ears to the gap in the door, the spell descrambling and reassembling the memory fragments of that day, including the conversation from down the stairs.
“... yes, she is upstairs. Remember, she is not to be injured; we don’t need the hospital digging around here.”
“It’s fine, Matron. After tonight is done, the debt I owe Penny Pincher is paid.”
“Here, use this - we just want her to mistrust people; if she remembers this, it could lead to a psychotic break. This will make her forget this after a day or two - she’ll be too scared to tell anypony before then”
Hoofsteps began to ascend the stairs, and the facsimile Diamond Tiara retreated to the bed. Retreating from the door, Diamond Tiara stood side-by-side with Twilight Sparkle as the creaking hinges announced the entrance of another pony. With the benefit of years of memories since then, and her undivided attention, she recognised the stallion in the doorway He walked into the room, and placed a saddlebag quietly on the floor.
“That’s... Match Point, the school’s PE teacher. Everyone heard rumours, I just thought… that it was little foals crushing on an older stallion. How could…”
The scene playing in front of them wasn’t yet over. The stallion moved toward the bed, and threw the covers off the startled foal. Before words of protest could make themselves known, a hoof covered the filly’s mouth, “If you make even one sound, I will snap your neck like a stick. You belong to me now; struggle, and I will make your life at this school a living hell.”
Twilight looked aghast, disturbed that something like this had taken place. Diamond Tiara was fixated on the scene unfolding before her, as the older stallion forced himself onto the quivering foal, her sobs muffled by the pillow. The purple princess curled a wing around the sniffling filly, “I… think we’ve seen all we need to.” Diamond Tiara had noticed that the saddlebag had come undone, and a small magical shard had rolled out of the open compartment. She nodded to Twilight, and hung her head low, feeling a wave of shame and embarrassment crash over her.
With three clops of her hooves, Twilight Sparkle released the magical bindings of the spell, and both Diamond Tiara and the princess found themselves back in the library. Diamond Tiara was shaking, a combination of incandescent rage and complete shock. The forcefully-repressed memories started to come back to her.
She remembered the shard touching her head, and a wave of cold flood her head, followed by Match Point threatening that, in no uncertain terms, she would meet a grisly end if she ever spoke of this. The emotional turmoil from witnessing that event proved too much for the filly, as she fell to her side on the hard marble floor. She curled up into a foetal position as tears flooded down her face, the foal’s anguished sobs filling the room. Twilight walked over, and curled up next to Diamond Tiara, slowly draping a wing over the distressed little pony.
More memories began to resurface, and they played in the filly’s mind like a roll of film. She'd entered her en suite bathroom, and turned on the water to the shower. After looking all around her dorm room to make absolutely sure she was alone, she got in, and let the cold water run through her fur. The chill of the running stream from the shower head sent sharp stabs of discomfort up her spine.
She welcomed the discomfort; the pain of the cold water took her attention away from what had just happened. Maybe… this is what I deserve. I wanted to please daddy, I wanted to make friends here… then this happens… if this is what happens when trying to make friends, I don’t want them!
She’d always had this.. feeling that everyone was out to get her, but she never knew where it came from. She just figured that it was normal. Diamond Tiara had rationalised that, because other ponies were out to get her, she had to get to them first. A pang of regret surged into her, and her mind was cast back to when Celestia led her to observe Sweetie Belle. The filly’s journal made her remember giving Sweetie Belle a dressing-down at school; when challenged, she had no real answer for Princess Celestia.
As much as it hurt to admit, she wasn’t as perfect as she thought she was. She thought that she was inherently just better than other foals her age. Have I… been wrong about them all this time?
As the minutes passed the sobs began to lessen, eventually replaced with sniffles and silent tears. Diamond Tiara looked up at the intricate clock on the wall. Quarter past two. She gave her eyes one final wipe with her hooves, and let out a long sigh into the room.
She needed some time to think. She approached the princess on the floor, and gave her a quizzical look, “Do you… do you have any hot cocoa?”