Born in Equestria

by Winston

Big Bad Wolf

Born in Equestria

5. Big Bad Wolf

The row of lights set over the mirror in the bathroom created an island of warm illumination in the night, spilling out into an otherwise dark cloud house. In the middle of that radiant oasis, Rainbow Dash stood still and stared into the mirror. Everything was so quiet that a pin drop would have been audible, and every breath she took, no matter how soft, seemed to fill up the void of the silence with the rushing noise of just that gentle movement of air.

She'd been standing there for the last couple minutes, since she'd woken up from... She wasn't sure. Some kind of dream. She knew it was, but it was disorienting and she was disturbed by the way she couldn't remember. It was normal for dreams to slip away quickly, but this... This was so lucid feeling that it should have been clearly recalled with ease, and not being able to was like having blacked-out lost time in her own life. It was there but it was gone, like being drunk to the point at which everything was hazy and the world moved along second by second, the one happening right now being all she was aware of and the one that had just past forgotten as soon as it was over. It left feelings, it left impressions, strong ones, but no consciousness of specifics that fit together in any logical way.

It was bits and pieces that were left, jumbled and out of order in a disjointed narrative like having a few random torn out pages to a book and being able to make out the tone of the story and almost a gist of what the plot might be but not enough to know much for sure. Things flashed in and out and jumped around.

The sensation of mystery was deeply unsettling. It was like finding a huge cut on herself and not knowing how she got it.

Out of what she could recall, most strongly she remembered being different. Somehow she was... Different. She was not what she was now that she was awake and looking at herself in the bathroom here in the earliest hours of the new day.

Her face stared back at her from the mirror, and she studied it, closely. Her own rose-colored eyes looked back at her, illuminated brightly in the bathroom lights. Points of light glinted off of them, reflections of the lights above her. These lights were warmer, more yellow, but a scrap of something recalled a cooler silvery light, a muted one, alone in an inky blackness. In the meandering bubble of that memory she knew that they were the same eyes that she recalled somehow looking up, from another mirror, one made of still water instead of glass, and it was in the dark of the night outside somewhere, lit only by the light of the moon, instead of these artificial bulbs. In that reflection in the dark, her eyes were hers but her face was a different build. Her muzzle was longer and more sharply pointed, with a smaller hairless nose, and... The tips of teeth... Sharp teeth, long and conical, predatory canines, protruding from her mouth just a bit.

Why were her teeth different? She didn't understand.

She remembered suddenly reaching out with a forelimb to touch that mirror, dipping it into the water, and as the reflection broke apart into expanding ripples at the disturbance there was the feel of the cold liquid. The sensation of chill and wetness hitting her was a shock. Hooves were just solid growths of hard tissue, like a horn. They had no nerve endings and no sense of touch or temperature. If she'd had a hoof at the end of her leg, she couldn't have felt the water like that. But she did feel it, because there wasn't a hoof, there was a paw, divided up into pads, each ending in a long, sharp claw. It was like a dog's, like what she remembered Winona's paws looking like from every time she was at Applejack's and the farmpony's pet jumped up on her and licked her in an excited greeting, but it was also bigger and heftier, stronger seeming than what a mere dog would have.

What was this creature?

"Who are you?" She asked, loudly, sternly, staring angrily into the mirror of her bathroom, bathed in bright light.

She stared, examining the face staring back at her intensely. She took in all the detail, every hair, line, nuance, contour of bone and skin, looking for an answer somewhere in them. While she studied, her expression of anger dropped away slowly, fading into a neutral gaze.

There was nothing. It was just the face of a pony. Just an ordinary pony. Sky blue coat. Rose colored eyes. Mane hair of mixed reds, oranges, and yellow falling forward making up her bangs. It was the same face that was always there, her whole life.

It was there before she left.

It was there now that she was back.

And it was there the whole time in between. It was there every day of training, it was there in every patrol, it was there on the front line while she was fighting, it was there in every battle, every house cleared, every griffin killed and captured, every friend lost, every injury, every ambush, every mercifully quiet day when nothing happened.

It was the same face, the same skin, always, no matter what the pony... The thing... The... Machine... Wearing it did. No matter how it acted.

When that thing did something that splattered blood on that skin, on that face, that was just fine, because blood washes right off. Good as new. Like it never happened, like those griffins had never been torn apart, never been kicked to death or smashed in the head with a rapidly swinging steel ball, or...

Or grabbed in those vicious jaws with their long pointed teeth and ripped asunder while they struggled ineffectually in terror, held down by those strong, meaty paws with the big claws they bore sinking into them.

It was the same skin, now and always, feigning innocence like she didn't remember all the things she'd done in it those three years. It was the same, like there wasn't suddenly a flash of recollection, images of chasing them down in the dark, feeling the sheerest delight in the hunt, in cornering them deep in the trackless midnight forest where they were lost in panic but she knew every twist and turn, where they didn't stand a chance, and where she savored the feel of rending flesh and destroying her enemies relentlessly, one after another, while they could do nothing to stop her.

They were lambs being slaughtered, one by one, on the altar of Equestrian military power. She was the weapon of the Empire of the Sun and the Moon, the agent of its righteous decree of holy destruction. Her teeth were the daggers that sheared open their throats and bled them to perform the sacrament.

Drain the life from them, that it might be given to Equestria in exchange.

Blood for Equestria.

A chilled shudder went down her back when she knew that this is what she had dreamed of, and that... In that moment when it was happening, there in that dream... She had enjoyed it. It was confusing and frightening, because it was her, but it was so unlike her. In all those three years she never let herself like the idea or feel any pleasure in the act of ever killing anything, because she knew in every fiber of her being that it was a sad and terrible thing to have to do, never a thing to celebrate. It was only out of necessity, never desire. She never wanted this. But in that dream, in that other body, there was reckless abandon and not a shred of moral inhibition. Kill the griffin. Kill every griffin. Lambs to be butchered, every one of them. It was sublime indulgence, pure and simple and sweet as honey. It felt natural and easy, this pursuit, this destruction with the teeth and claws she somehow possessed. The gates and the barriers of right and wrong were removed, and this... Form... This... Piece of something inside of her made manifest... Ran rampant and unstopped, acting out in perfect honest accordance with its terrifying basal instincts welling up from some hidden corner too dark to see into.

She remembered the fresh taste of blood in her mouth every time she bit down, coppery and salty, warm on her tongue, and she remembered that she loved it, in the cool dark night forest.

In her bathroom under the bright yellow lights, her stomach turned and she wanted to throw up.

Why would she dream this?

"Who are you?" She spoke quietly this time, and her voice cracked, anger replaced with desparate pain.

She looked into the mirror again. No answer. There was still just the same pony face staring back, the one that was always there.

She slumped down on her haunches and stared down at the floor.

"I don't even know anymore, do I?"

She stared down, and almost glanced at her side, but didn't. It wasn't worth it. She knew what was there. She knew what the scars looked like. She didn't need to look at them again to know they were still there and always would be.

Looking was pointless because how they looked wasn't the point.

How they felt would be there whether she looked or not.

Since the way they felt had hit her, more than a week ago now, it hadn't left her mind. Sometimes it hurt and sometimes it didn't but there was always that sense of change in them. She left three years ago and didn't have them. Then she came home and she did. The same pony who'd left had not come back. Nopony else might realize their significance, they may all be fooled, they might all think this is just the same old Rainbow Dash with a new twist, a souvenier from another adventure, and that might even be what she'd thought about herself at first, too, but she would always know better now that she'd been hit by it. After a pony has done these kinds of things... They can't go back. Some things can never be taken back.

She'd barely ever stopped to think about the scars outside. They didn't matter, not for themselves. They were the one piece of evidence of her changes that her skin bore, but they were not the real substance of it. But where was it, where had that pony changed from one thing into another? Where was the point of transformation, where was that line she crossed? That mattered. That was invisible, but that mattered.

She had no idea. It was a slow process, creeping along so invisibly that she couldn't tell. It wasn't the day she'd gotten the scars. That was just another day. Every day was just another day. Little by little, they crept by, one by one, three years worth of them. In every one of them she did what she had to in order to survive and see the next one, and one by one they left their mark, like hammers beating metal, each individual blow almost too small to see any change when she was caught up in existing moment by moment. But the cumulative effect...

Almost nothing, outside. Just those three scars.

What scars were there inside, that she had ignored just as much, that were even harder to see and define?

Teeth.

Claws.

Bloodlust.

They weren't there in the mirror, but she could see them. They weren't there on her body, but she could feel them.

How does a pony become a wolf?

She couldn't tell. There was a saying she'd heard once, a long time ago. Nopony can say what part of the river each individual drop of rain will become, they can only say that it takes every drop together to make it all that it is.

All she wanted was for it to be over... She thought that was what coming home would mean, that it could finally just be over. But there was a truth uncovering itself only now that it had seemed like she could have it at last. It never would. She knew now that she'd let herself become something, because she'd done certain things, and there was no going back, no more than the river could send away every drop back to where it came from and return to being dry land.

No more than she could give back all the lives of the dead. No more than she could put back and make right all the blood she'd spilled.

Her eyes watered and heat flushed her face, making her ears burn. She took one sharp breath, and her chest shook. Tears welled out and spilled down her cheeks, and she exhaled in a shuddering sob. She leaned against the wall, and cried, with her head bowed and her wings drooping at her sides, in bitter tears of frustration and resentment.

It was too late. Rarity was right, this wasn't going away, it couldn't even be covered up. She couldn't even seem to push it out of her sight, even just for a little while, just for a short reprieve. She would always remember. It would always haunt her dreams, color her world, make everything different.

After the last three years, some part of her could never not be that wolf again.

Mourning sobs of pain and regret and loss echoed through the house, emanating into the darkness like the light from the bathroom, for a long time.

---

Light, bright sunlight, was beginning to shine in around the edges of the blinds over the windows, filling the bedroom with natural illumination announcing it was midmorning.

Rainbow Dash didn't care, other than to vaguely feel a sense of annoyance about it.

She lay in bed, covered in blankets, half awake in a hazy way but with her eyes still shut. She wanted nothing to do with the world outside her little nest of warm blankets and soft cloud pillows. There was no point in getting up, moving around, doing anything. Eventually maybe needing to go to the bathroom would force her up, but not yet. Not for a while.

For now, there was nothing out there.

It was a foreign land, this place she found herself in.

Ponyville...

Ponyville was no place for wolves wearing the shape and the skin of a pony.

No, Ponyville was for real ponies. Ponyville was a home for peaceful, gentle creatures. It was for the ones with good hearts, living quiet lives, where they would be safe and not terrorized under the ravages of wolves and killing machines.

Things like her didn't live in Ponyville. Or they shouldn't, anyway.

That's why she hadn't felt like she was really home yet. That's why there was the feeling of unfamiliarity, of subtle change, of things being physically the same but not the same.

Ponyville hadn't changed, she had. She just didn't understand where that change was until now. She thought coming home would be just picking back up where she'd left off, that it would be simple and life would just... Go back to what it was supposed to be, what she remembered it being, here in this little Equestrian town with all her old friends. Maybe there'd be some readjustment, like there always was when a pony moves around to a different place, but in a little while she'd be back to her old self.

That was a naïve illusion and a foolish hope. That was impossible.

There was no home to come back to.

Home was gone because she - old Rainbow Dash - was gone. She could never go back.

It would never be over.

The thought cut into her, and she supposed it might have made her cry, except that she'd already spent a long chunk of the night doing that. All that was left for now was a burned-out shell. She was tired of crying, exhausted from it. It hurt too much now. Her throat was tight and sore, her nose was stuffed up, and her eyes and her head ached. Her mind and soul felt just as drained, making her numb and apathetic. The thought no longer had the sharp sting that brought tears, anyway, now that it had run through her so many times. It was just an omnipresent saturated dull pain, coloring the whole background of everything but too diffuse to focus on anywhere in particular.

Everything hurt.

No reason to get up. No reason to do anything, walking around being a stranger in a strange place that was the same but not the same. It would only hurt.

She pulled the blankets up tighter, covering her eyes, blacking out whatever light she hadn't already.

At least here in the dark it was warm and soft, and sometimes... When she was able to drift into patches of dreamless sleep... Mercifully thoughtless.

All she wanted was to disappear into the dark and not think ever again.

Thinking hurt too much.

Darkness was the only place there was any relief, so she hid there as long as she could.

Comments

[Stryker Bolt 11]

wow...just..wow, man

[dashybrony2012]

That was.....the most amazing thing that I have seen written , the way you carved the words is just.....incredible

[kilo]

Even as a fairly new soldier, these stories hit pretty hard. I haven't had to deal with emotions like this, but many of my friends have, and some haven't coped well at all. Excellent work on a difficult topic and I'm looking forward to more.