Chapter VIII: Depth
Chapter VIII: Depth
“Did you hear that?”
Flash looked up from the moist floor, bloodshot eyes half closed and unfocused. His head wobbled slightly, and he didn’t bother looking around the room for the speaker. It didn’t really matter whether the words had been spoken by one of his hallucinations or by himself, because there was nopony else in his cell.
Still, there had been a noise. Or he thought there had been one. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time his ears had played tricks on him, especially after so many nights without sleep. It had just been so hot. Flash thought it unfair that the unseasonably warm spring air could penetrate this deep into the mountain.
It seemed like the sun hadn’t set for three days, possibly four, but his perception of time was so twisted that he couldn’t be sure the dawn had been any more than an hour ago. If Luna’s darkness hadn’t graced the landscape with its restful chill, that would explain the rising temperature. Splashing more water on his face, Flash rolled over and shuffled toward the door without bothering to stand up, then placed his ear adjacent to the slot at the bottom.
Several minutes of silence passed by, but he had nowhere to go and nothing else to do, so he merely continued to listen. Finally, the sharp ring of metal made its way into the heart of the mountain, muddled by its own echoes as it pinballed down the hallway.
Suddenly, Flash couldn’t hear anything above the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears. As he tried to calm his breathing, he reasoned that it was probably just a dropped tool rebounding from the stone floor. By the time he was able to hear anything besides his own excitement, it was clear from the shouts and cries that there was armed combat taking place in the dungeon, and it was progressing in his direction. A particularly sharp scream made it gurglingly clear that the conflict was no training exercise.
A panicked chorus increased in volume as Flash picked out little snippets of what would surely turn out to be some ponies’ last words. Something about a ‘dead end,’ and ‘no chance of escape,’ and an especially strong voice declaring ‘that means you can’t get flanked, so FORM UP!’
He sat up and closed his eyes, trying to think. Nopony would be invading the dungeon to free him. Even his closest friends on the outside thought that he was a monster who deserved to be locked up. This was likely an unrelated battle that had cornered some luckless guards into an unintended doorway, and they had gotten themselves stuck in a dead end.
In any case, he could wait until the battle was over and then shout for help. In the best case scenario he would be freed, or at least mercifully killed. The worst that could happen is that whoever remained in charge would continue to feed him.
The battle was over surprisingly fast. Less than five seconds of clashing swords followed the distinctive pop of a teleportation event, but Flash’s ears continued to be plagued by the agonizing wails of those left bleeding where they fell. The clopping of hooves filled the hallway as Flash listened to a single pony sprinting toward his door.
Flash scrambled away from the doorway and tried to disappear into the walls as he pieced together the evidence before him. A teleporting unicorn, good with blades, who would have a reason to come looking for Flash. The door was engulfed in a shimmering blue magic field for just a moment before being ripped out of the cinderblock wall.
As his eyes adjusted to the ocean of blinding light that poured around Shining Armor’s silhouette, Flash wondered what Twilight’s older brother had in store for him. Murder, perhaps. Maybe torture, though Flash couldn’t imagine anything worse than his current situation. Flash could instead explain everything to Shining, and live as a free stallion, redeemed in the eyes of his friends and satisfied knowing that Twilight finally got what she deserved.
The thought of Twilight in the dungeon slammed a knife into Flash’s gut. Over three years of dwelling on her infidelity, all those months of trying to remember her every negative quality, and he still couldn’t dodge that blow when he thought about Twilight suffering. That made his revenge fantasies somewhat less enjoyable, though he was making progress.
So Flash hung his head, closing his eyes to await whatever fate that Shining Armor deemed appropriate for the stallion who was responsible for hurting his little sister.
“Flash! You’ve got to help us! Celestia and Discord have turned Luna to stone, and now she’s leaving the sun in the sky until all nations send slaves as trib—”
Looking up with suspicious eyes, Flash interrupted, “Wait, why are you rescuing me?”
Shining looked over his shoulder, as if he expected more Solar Guard to come charging down the hallway at any moment, then turned back to face the emaciated pegasus. “Flash, you’re the key to all of this. Celestia knew that—”
Flash interrupted again. “No, no, I mean, don’t you still think I’m a horrible criminal? I doubt that Twilight would have told you the truth. And Celestia pairing up with Discord? That’s ridiculous. Besides, an entire world burned to a crisp sounds waaaaaaay too boring for Discord. You’ll have to do better than that. Start over.”
‘FORM UP!’ pop, swordfight, hoofsteps coming down the hall, blue glow, door gets ripped out, Shining Armor.
“Flash! You’ve got to help us!”
Looking up dazedly from where he was cowering on the floor, Flash asked, “Wait, why are you rescuing me?”
Shining threw a worried glance toward the other end of the long hall as he replied, “At the international trade conference three days ago, Twilight and Celestia turned Luna to stone, then announced their intentions to take over the world. Celestia is leaving the sun in the sky until all nations turn over control to Twilight. In her villainous monologue, Twilight mentioned you, and then I put it all together.”
Flash nodded, one hoof on his chin. “Yes, that sounds just like her. She always did love explaining how much smarter she is than everypony else.”
Shining groaned as he rolled his eyes with a grin. “Don’t remind me.” His serious visage returned. “Flash, you know her better than anypony else. The world needs you to set a trap for her. Use her equally incredible smartness and arrogance against her!”
With a grin and a melodramatic nod, Flash jumped to his hooves and said, “I’d love nothing more!”
Shining squeezed through the narrow doorway and crowded next to Flash. “Good, but first we need to get out of here and find you something to eat. I’ll teleport us directly to a buffet!”
Flash’s stomach rumbled as he spoke through the drool. “That sounds great!”
Shining ignored the noise, adding, “And while you're eating, we can discuss Twilight’s sentence. I can’t decide between ‘locked in stone’ and ‘public humiliation in the stocks.’”
Deflating and letting his grin slip to the floor along with his gaze, Flash murmured, “Yeah, great.”
His last word echoed in the empty darkness, soon joined by quiet sobs that lasted until the morning light puddled again under his door.
______________________________________________
The line between daydreams and hallucinations had become increasingly blurred. His daydreams provided brief respite from the boredom, but offered cruel hope of rescue or companionship when he allowed himself to fall too far into them. His memories were no longer trustworthy, diluted by his hopes or fears. Almost worse than the days filled with hallucinations were the days when they didn’t come.
Twenty-something meals had passed while he stared at the blank, unmoving, uniform walls. Flash had decided that chocolate was the color of boredom. He didn’t bother to wipe the drool off of his cheek as he sat with his back against the wall. He thought about Twilight. He could hear the sound of his own snoring, but he knew he was not asleep. He wondered why she had never graced his visions. Perhaps seeing her would give him some small comfort, and Celestia would allow no comfort in this place, this state of mind.
Flash had tried to glean some comfort, any redeeming feature of his imprisonment. He imagined himself in his own personal monastery, meditating toward some sort of enlightenment by freeing his mind of the one-sided love that had put him in this place. Instead, Flash began to lament the fact that love is one of the strongest forces in the universe.
Even the rough wood planks, which gave him a place to scratch his wing stubs when they itched, could not be counted as a comfort. No amount of scratching could reach the skin that had long since rotted away with the rest of the medical waste. Any temporary relief had been rubbed away with the feathers, and then the skin below that. By the time he’d realized what he had done, the wood was covered in blood.
The infection had been excruciating, but now Flash bathed regularly, splashing water on his body with the gruel dish and scrubbing with his hooves as far as he could reach. Though he still occasionally scratched to the point of bleeding, some basic hygiene had kept him from getting sick again.
He could feel his scabs dragging across the paint on the wall behind him as he breathed, watching the orange spot stretch across the floor like a yawning cat. Flash decided that it must be August, marking the end of his fourth summer. He had long since abandoned any attempts at counting days, but the summers were easy enough to keep track of.
Squinting, Flash bobbed his head up and down while he continued to focus on the rear wall of his cell. If he moved his head around, he could almost make out a pattern in the glare of the sunlight. It was faint, but after several minutes he was sure that it was real. The back wall of the tiny room was composed of cinder blocks, not solid stone as he had assumed since his arrival.
As he climbed to his hooves and approached this new and interesting development, he looked around his cell. There was nothing out of place, nopony offering false hope or accusing him. No piles of delicious food taunting and waiting for him to reach out. The pattern was real, not a hallucination.
Not only was the rear wall made of cinder blocks, but it had been plastered or smoothed over, to appear as stone. That meant he was intended to believe that he was surrounded by more rock than he really was. There was no reason for such an illusion if not to conceal some weakness. There was a chance of escape, if he could chip through the concreted pebbles composing the blocks. He looked around excitedly, once again analyzing each and every piece of metal available to him, this time with new and hopeful eyes.
The sink and toilet were monolithic, and he had no chance to pull anything useful off of them. His dish was a soft and flimsy metal. The chains were embedded in the stone wall, and welded to the frame of his bed. The frame itself was welded together from iron channels, and the wooden boards were fitted inside the channel so they could not be removed.
One corner of the frame, though, was a bit rusty. Welds could leave tiny cracks, and if the rust had penetrated deeply into the weld, Flash might be able to somehow apply enough force to break the joint and possibly get a chunk of metal out of it. A tool for escape.
Presented with an actual chance at freedom, Flash found the choice far easier than his angsty daydreams had predicted. He would simply disappear, get as far as he could from Equestria, and try to forget everything, to leave her at the bottom of a bottle.
Having a plan of action, some hope of escape, and a determination to ignore Twilight’s well-being, Flash realized that The Rules of his captivity were about to change. It was comforting to have a task to complete, it was comforting to see a future outside of this tiny box, and he could no longer take any comfort in seeing a hallucination of Twilight.
“So that’s it? You’re giving up on me?”
Flash knew that when he looked up, he’d see his former fiancée’s moist eyes pleading with him to reconsider. She could pull off the sad-puppy look better than any puppy he’d seen. There had to be some sort of manual on emotional manipulation in that treehouse library, because his heart rate doubled and his breaths became shallow, just as she’d planned.
Flash spoke calmly through gritted teeth, “I gave up on you when you hid your face instead of telling me the truth.” Looking Twilight Sparkle directly in the eye and sitting up as straight as he could manage, he added, “I just stopped giving up on me.”
A single, lonely tear rolled down Twilight’s cheek as her voice cracked. “You… you don’t love me any more?”
He roughly bumped her aside with his shoulder, speaking as he examined the metal frame of his bed in more detail. “Wouldn’t that be nice. No, if I had stopped loving you, then you couldn’t hurt me any more, and if you couldn’t hurt me, then you wouldn’t be here. Your existence serves only one purpose.”
Twilight didn’t speak another word, she simply collapsed on the floor and sobbed quietly in resignation, with occasional glances that were surely meant to cut deeply. Flash did his best to ignore her illusory pain as he went about his work, poking and prodding various bits of the metal and wood assembly. The planks were fit tightly into the frame, so tight that they didn’t even have enough room to wiggle. If he were to soak the wood, it might swell up enough to pop the weakened corner weld. That would be a good starting point.
After the first three dishes of water, every bit of the wood’s surface was wet, with a puddle growing on the floor beneath. If firewood took nearly a year to dry out, it may take that long for dry wood to soak in as much moisture. Shrugging to himself, Flash decided that he had nothing better to do, so he sat down and waited for the slivers of an ancient tree to slowly drink in the moisture.
Flash looked down at the sobbing alicorn and grinned maliciously. “So… read any good books lately?”
______________________________________________
He had managed to sleep most of the way home, but the horizon still refused to acknowledge the sun’s approach as the train neared the platform. It had been nice to see Twilight, but things hadn’t gone according to plan, any plan.
Sitting up in alarm, Flash spilled his bottle of water on the bench. He noted that things back at the Crystal Empire must have gone wrong as well. There were two guards in full armor standing in the yellow circle beneath the station lights, fidgeting as they watched the train draw closer. As their images increased in size, Flash could see that they were holding a set of armor.
By the time the heavy cars were rolling up to the platform, Flash had already squeezed through the window and flown to the platform. As he listened to the situation report, he extended his wings and stood up straight for his armor to be lowered over his head.
“Sir, you’re needed in the war room, right now.”
Raising one eyebrow, Flash slid a sideways glance at the unicorn who was tightening the straps around his stomach. “That’s not much of a situation report.”
“That’s all we know, sir. Our orders were to send you to the war room as quickly as possible.” One last sharp tug to make sure the plates were secure, and the guard stood back to offer a quick salute.
Flash scanned the sky for any sign of danger, then launched himself into the air, slapping gravity into submission with each powerful stroke of his wings. From above, the Empire looked peaceful, with the sky beginning to smile down its light on the sparkling structures below. With a subtle twist of his primaries he bled speed and dipped to his right, gliding toward a balcony near the heart of the crystal castle.
Without slowing down, he touched his hooves to the floor and let the momentum of his heavy armor carry him sliding down the hall. Half-running and half-flying, he bowled through passageways that he didn’t need to see to navigate. Flash flared his wings and kicked at the slick floor with his brass shoes, making the final turn into the war room.
The room was usually nearly empty, but Flash wasn’t surprised that it was populated in an emergency like this. Prince Shining Armor and Princess Cadance, both in their own armor, had their backs to the door, scrutinizing the diorama on the table at the room’s focus, pointing at various features and murmuring to themselves.
With a few flaps of his wings, Flash jumped over their heads and landed on the other side of the table, panting. He looked up expectantly to the pink princess, who raised her eyes in turn to meet his as she twisted her black handlebar mustache with a thoughtful look on her troubled brow.
Flash’s own eyebrows didn’t know which way to run. He opened his mouth and turned to Shining Armor, who was also twisting his black mustache. Flash inhaled, started to speak, closed his mouth, and exhaled through his nose. He turned around to see all of the guards in the room standing motionless, sporting identical mustaches, though a few were sweating nervously as they tried to avoid eye contact with Flash.
When he turned back to the table, there was a new face studying the miniature town. A neon pink Earth pony was twisting her black mustache, nodding her head in contemplation as her frizzy pink bangs bounced out from under a drab green helmet. Lifting a riding crop in the crook of her forelimb, she pushed a miniature Twilight from a tiny treehouse toward a building with little mushrooms in front of it.
Flash started to speak, but noticed an odd tickling sensation on his upper lip. Snickers began erupting from the guards behind him as he crossed his eyes to get a look at his own mustache. He sighed in resignation before beginning to twist his mustache as he looked down at the miniature Ponyville upon the table. “There’s no emergency, is there?”
Cadance began chuckling as Flash slowly poured a glass of water over the nearest chair. Shining snickered, but managed to croak out, “That depends. How was your date?”
Pinkie zipped out from under her costume accessories, leaving the helmet and mustache floating in the air for an implausibly long moment. She bounced up and down on her four hooves together, wide eyes and a wider grin infecting the entire room with an optimistic excitement that could make anypony forget their troubles. “Tellme tellme tellme tellme tellme!”
Twilight quietly said, “Yes. How was your date?”
Any humor that could have been provided by Pinkie Pie and her mustache prank vanished along with the war room. Flash slowly shrugged, still feeling the weight of his armor pulling him down. He looked over his shoulder, examining his ribs and the few disheveled feathers he had left. As skinny as he was, he felt heavier than he’d ever been.
He looked at Twilight with tears in his eyes. “Why did you have to pull me out? Pinkie was going to make everypony laugh. Please, I… I just want to laugh again.”
She just smiled, the kind of smile that provides no warmth or affection, only pity.
“Did you always pity me?” Flash asked as he examined the waterlogged wood, black with mildew, swollen and bowed within its own metal prison. “Or was I just a toy for you, a peasant you could laugh at behind my back?”
Twilight watched him climb up onto the shelf, and looked up at him, pleading, “Flash, you know it’s not like that.” She reached out a hoof to his, trying to keep him from standing on his bed. “I needed somepony to love me for who I am, not because I’m a princess. You loved me, you still love me, I—”
Flash kicked her away, snarling. “You say that like it’s a weapon. Just shut up and let—”
A booming voice came to them, echoing ethereally as if from some great distance. “Flash Sentry, are you lost? Where are you?”
Their eyes wide, Flash and Twilight looked at each other. He licked his lips, glanced around the room, and finally spoke. “Well that was new. Did you hear it, or…?”
“Yes! I heard it! That was Celestia!” Twilight was giddy, bouncing, looking around the room expectantly, as if the Princess of the Sun was about to slide through a wall and stand regally with her wings extended, awaiting their adoration.
“Forgive me if I’m not thrilled.” Flash spent a moment glaring at Twilight. “I’m just glad that I’m not the only one who heard that.”
“Flash, honey, you know I’m not real. I’m a hallucination representing some part of your subconscious mind. I only know what you know. In fact, if I was actually here, I would know some fancy word for it, and then you would roll your eyes. So if you hear something, then I heard it too, even if it wasn’t real.”
“Yes, I’m aware that you’re smarter than me. You don’t have to tell me every—” Flash opened his eyes wider and gritted his teeth “—bucking—” he leaned forward, towering over Twilight “—TIME!”
Holding up one hoof, Twilight sheepishly said, “Technically, since I’m just part of your subconscious, I can’t actually be any smarter than you.”
“SHUT UP! SHUT UP!” Flash jumped up and down with each word, stomping on the bowed and distorted wood, putting more and more stress on the weld he had been watching for months.
With one final stomp, a sharp bang snapped Twilight out of her most recent sobbing fit. The wood didn’t spring back up this time, causing Flash to lose his footing and tumble to the floor, landing on his back. After giving his eyes a moment to roll themselves around to point in the same direction, he shimmied underneath the bed and looked up at the corner.
The weld had broken, but not completely. Fortunately, it did liberate a triangular shard of metal about the size of a knife blade. Licking his lips and giggling like a foal adopting a puppy made of ice cream sundaes, Flash took hold of the metal and lay down facing the rear wall, preparing for the months it would take to chip through a single cinder block, one tiny pebble at a time.
Flash positioned his tool against the wall, and gave it a sharp blow from his hoof. The plaster facade came off in tiny chunks, and by the time daylight had faded away, he’d managed to expose a whole block in the center of the rear wall. Although he knew that the plaster was far softer than the wall itself, he felt that his progress deserved some sort of reward. Perhaps some cake.
“How was the cake?” Twilight and Pinkie asked simultaneously.
Most of the guards were chatting idly over their empty plates while Princess Cadance shared a quick nuzzle with her husband. Flash looked down at his own empty plate and felt his lip tremble. He whispered, as if to remind himself. “It… it was purple. With pink stripes. And stars. The sugar crystals made it sparkle.”
Twilight smiled sweetly while Pinkie rolled her eyes and replied to a completely different comment. “Well, I’m glad it was better than your date…”
Pinkie inhaled sharply as her eyes grew wider and wider before she leaned forward, vibrating with a dramatic revelation. Flash didn’t bother to lean back in fear like he had the first time, and he didn’t listen as she proposed a plan for an unmistakably unforgettable second date. He simply gritted his teeth and crumpled the paper plate, letting a few stray sugar crystals fall to the floor while he glared at the pony who didn’t belong in this memory.
Twilight shrank away from the furious pegasus whose armor hung limply over his gaunt frame and truncated wings. Pinkie Pie bounced around singing an ostensibly romantic plan as guards joined in the fun, shouting out ideas for settings or gifts. The couple sat in the center of a tornado of mirth, oblivious to the joyous scene that had set the stage for their romance.
“I j-just wanted to have some cake!” Flash half-sobbed and half-growled. “I can’t even remember what it tasted like. You’re ruining ALL of my memories!”
“Not all of them!” Spike pointed out. “Just the good ones.”
Twilight pushed the menu down to the table with one hoof so Spike could see the look on her face. “I don’t think we really need any appetizers for lunch, and we certainly don’t need several.”
“Actually,” Flash said, jealously eyeing other ponies’ meals as they passed by, balanced on the backs of at least a dozen waiters, “I’m starving. I’d be happy to split an appetizer with Spike.” He leaned over and covered his mouth with a fetlock, whispering conspiratorially, “Just nothing with gems in it, okay? I like having teeth.” Flash pulled back his lips and chomped his teeth together noisily a few times.
“You know what?” Twilight said, tossing down her menu disdainfully and leaning back. “I don’t think you can blame me for not knowing this was a date.”
Shining Armor reached out with a stick and knocked over the miniature Flash Sentry that had been sitting next to the Twilight figure among a group of mushrooms. “It looks like we overdid the not overdoing it.”
Cadance nodded, with a thoughtful hoof on her chin.
The waiter stopped and gingerly picked up all three empty plates from the warped and splintery wood, loading them onto the tray he balanced on his back. He stepped carefully over Flash’s back, then looked down at the dust-covered stallion and twitched his mustache in disapproval. Without looking up, Flash slid another tiny pebble out of the hole in his wall to join the small pile that had accumulated off to one side.
Twilight sighed, then shuffled over to join Flash on the floor, prompting him to scoot a purely symbolic distance away. She briefly examined the shallow cavity he was busy chiseling at, then poured all her soul into her eyes. “Please, take me back to the cafe, let’s do lunch again. I just want to go back to the way things were.”
Spike pulled the napkin away from his mouth and tossed it over his shoulder. He waddled over to the couple and gave Flash a look that could cut sapphire. “Twilight, why don’t you go back to being a prop. I need to talk to Flash.”
As many horrible things as he’d said to Twilight over the last few years, Flash was still shocked to hear Spike speak to her that way. After jumping to his hooves and sputtering for a few seconds, he managed to spit out, “Spike! You shouldn’t talk to Twilight that way. You kno—”
“YOU know that’s not the real Twilight!” Spike pointed an accusing finger at Flash. “You don’t know the real Twilight, she’s only ever been a prop to you.”
“What? Spike, we—”
“Sit down, shut up, and listen.” The venom in the little dragon’s voice snapped Flash’s mouth closed like a mousetrap. There was more fire in his eyes than Flash had ever seen come out of his lungs. “The only reason I don’t burn you to death right now is that you’re exactly where you deserve to be.”
Flash relaxed into a smug grin, rolled his eyes and retorted, “Well, that and you’re not real.”
Spike coolly pressed a sharp claw into Flash’s chest hard enough to make him shuffle backwards. “I’m real enough. I’m the only part of your mind still sane enough to know the truth.”
“Sane enough that I want to burn myself to death?”
The fire in Spike’s eyes melted. He lowered his chubby arm, letting it flop to his side. “Like I said, sane enough to remember the truth.” Taking a step to the side, he gestured ahead and asked, “Flash, what do you see?”
Flash brushed the leaves aside to get a better peek through the open window, then winced as Spike grabbed handfuls of long shaggy blue mane to climb up onto the stallion’s bony shoulders. There was a princess illuminated by candles, at a table by herself, with a book at her nose blocking her view of the floral centerpiece. A young white unicorn crooned into a microphone, accompanied by a pegasus filly and a baby dragon. The waiter approached, and addressed her in a thick Prench accent.
Flash turned his head ninety degrees to look out the corner of his eye at the dragon perched on his shoulders, the same dragon who was playing an upright bass on the stage, and did his best not to sound curious. “So, what exactly are we looking at, here?”
Spike grabbed him roughly by the cheeks, twisting Flash’s head back toward Twilight’s table. “Don’t you recognize your third date? The ‘first date she knew was a date.’”
“I… don’t get it. Where am, uh, was I?”
Spike raised one eyebrow and leaned over to look at the foliage that surrounded them, intoning, “You’re sitting in a bush, spying on a bunch of ponies eating dinner.”
Flash pointed inside urgently with a hoof. “No, I mean, I was there, sitting across the table from her.”
“Just watch,” Spike groaned.
“Fine.”
Another mare sitting alone closed a book and took one final sip of wine before standing up. When she turned to leave, she spotted Twilight and immediately smiled, trotting over with a bounce in her curly mane. Poking her head around from behind the oblivious alicorn, she chirped, “I’m glad that I’m not the only one here who’s on a date with a book.”
“Hmm, what?” Twilight jerked her head up, looking for the source of her distraction. “Oh, hi, Cheerilee. What were you saying?”
Holding her own well-worn novel in the crook of one limb, Cheerilee motioned toward the book Twilight was still holding in her magic. “I see you’re on a date with a book.”
“What? No, I’m just here to support Spike’s first public performance. Well, that and eat dinner. We are in a restaurant, you know.” Twilight giggled, gesturing at the diners surrounding them.
“Well,” Cheerilee said, slipping into teacher mode as she sat down on the cushion next to Twilight’s. “You’re in a fancy restaurant. With candles. And flowers.”
Cheerilee turned to the dais and watched a beret-clad Scootaloo gently thump out a beat on a djembe, with a giddy grin underneath the black circles of her sunglasses. Spike nodded his head and plucked the long heavy strings without taking his gaze off of Sweetie Belle, who was pouring her heart into passable Prench with her eyes closed. Cheerilee looked over her shoulder at Twilight, batting her eyelashes seductively, and purred, “Romaaaantic music.”
“And look—” she poked at an illustration in Twilight’s history book that showed a pegasus facing down an impossibly large and heavily armored Earth pony “—a nervous stallion.” Cheerilee leaned back and shrugged her shoulders. “Honey, you’re on a date.”
Twilight and Cheerilee giggled together as single mares, sharing a few moments of girl talk, surrounded by the warm light in the cozy establishment. Flash looked down at the dirt and twigs under his grubby orange hooves, noticing the familiar pattern of the roots twisting over each rock and clump of soil. He pushed aside a little pile of pebbles, then settled down to the ground and began poking at a hole in the restaurant’s wall with his makeshift tool.
The filthy stallion smiled giddily as he pulled out a hoof-sized chunk of the wall and placed it aside, turning back to the hole with hungry eyes.
“FLASH!”
Flash twisted his head around to look at the dragon who was tapping a foot with his arms crossed. “What? I’m busy.”
“Just don’t forget, okay?” Spike seemed genuinely concerned, which made Flash concerned. None of his hallucinations had cared about him before, they only wanted to make him feel worse than he already did.
“O-okay. I’m just gonna…” Flash pointed with a hoof as he turned back to the wall, wondering why he would hide in the bushes watching his own date pass by without going inside.
As he levered the makeshift chisel to the side, a piece of the wall gave way, falling back into the inky darkness. Quickly placing his nose in front of the hole, Flash could detect no air flow, and there were no noticeable smells to give him an idea of what lay behind the bricks.
A cheerful orange glow announced sunset’s approach. Flash worked quickly, using the existing hole to knock more and more chunks away from the rough edge, occasionally resorting to brute force, leaving him breathless but increasingly frantic. Soon, the entire block was reduced to rubble, and Flash used the chunk of metal to scoop the material away from the hole.
As he reached inside with a hoof, Flash was disappointed to feel metal only a few inches away. But as the splash of reflected sunlight crept across the floor, he realized that it would shortly illuminate what lay behind his wall. His heart was pounding harder than he could ever remember as he waited.
“You broke her, you know,” Spike said, sitting on Flash’s shelf, dangling his legs forlornly with his chin in his hands. Night Light nodded somberly while Twilight Velvet sniffed, dabbing at the moisture collecting in the corners of her eyes. Applejack stood motionless, with a resolute scowl tenuously covering a frown. Rainbow Dash hovered above them, forelimbs crossed, with a vacant stare that conveyed more violent intent than a hundred threats. Half a dozen other ponies crowded the tiny room.
Flash looked at them in disbelief, then glanced back down at the sunlight making painfully quick progress across the floor. “Can we please not do this right now?”
Night Light spoke for the group. “Flash, you’ve put this off long enough.”
“Fine. But we stay here. I can’t wait for another year just to see what’s on the other side of my wall.”
Nodding, Night Light looked to Spike, who gave one unsteady sigh before beginning to speak. “She hasn’t opened a book. She hasn’t flown. She just sits by the window. Sometimes she cries.” His voice was cracking, but he didn’t shed any tears. “Not even Pinkie can make her laugh.”
He flexed his jaw, then bit his lip, glaring at the group for a moment. “I didn’t do anything to hurt Twilight. I confessed to protect her. But we’ve been through this a million times.” He lifted his face and spoke to the ceiling. “Hey, Celestia, do you think it’s going to be any different just because you have them gang up on me?” Turning back to the group, he said, “I loved Twilight, I’d never hurt her. As much as she’s hurt me, and, heh, despite my best efforts, I still love her.”
Applejack spoke up this time. “No, Flash, you loved the idea of her. The Twilight you loved was nothin’ but a prop you created in your head. You never loved the real Twilight.” She looked down at her hooves and shuffled uncomfortably as she whispered, “You jus’ wanted her.”
Flash peeled his attention away from the advancing light, then desperately looked to Night Light and Twilight Velvet. “Please, tell them! We spent so many afternoons watching hoofball, talking about Twilight. You told me so many stories, gave me so much advice about relationships—”
Twilight Velvet stomped a hoof, giving up her efforts to hold back the tears or steady the tremble in her lip. “NO! Flash, you have never even met us.” She looked at her husband, who put a hoof on her shoulder and nodded his encouragement. “Nighty and I, we’re nothing but imaginary friends to you. We’re the parents you always wanted; we have a successful marriage, we do what we can for our kids, we even use alcohol responsibly. We’re perfect. We’re cliché.”
Flash was blinking rapidly and beginning to hyperventilate as he tried to digest what Velvet was saying. He kept looking back and forth between her and the floor, where the sunlight was threatening to illuminate the hole he had dug for himself.
Night Light took a step forward, gently asking, “When was the last time your own parents have shown up in your visions? Did Twilight ever meet them when you were ‘dating?’”
The stone was cool against Flash’s cheek as he lay down on the floor to keep track of the light’s progress toward the dark heart of the mountain. He halfheartedly mumbled a wordless reply.
“Sugarcube,” Applejack began, “y’all think these visions are some sorta punishment from Princess Celestia, but you were seein’ things before you ever landed in here. Don’tcha think mah accent is kinda ridiculous for somepony who grew up in the same town as a thousand other ponies who don’t have any twang in their tongue?”
Flash looked to Shining Armor, but couldn’t formulate any words before his boss and mentor spoke up in a cold, official tone. “Flash Sentry, you were removed from the Crystal Guard for your delusions. You talked about sitting around a table at card games you weren’t invited to. You imagined some sort of connection to my family that, quite frankly, creeped me out. When we caught you in the war room playing with dolls, we had no choice.”
“No… no, no!” Flash was trembling now, terrified of what the sun’s last rays would illuminate, and powerless to stop the accusations of a dozen artificial friends. “We-we were engaged. Velvet, you gave me your mother’s ring…”
Her voice was gentle now, the anger had melted into the loving concern that Flash knew, appreciated, and depended on. “No, Flashy, you broke into our home and stole it.”
Rainbow butted in front of Velvet, imaginary spit landing on Flash’s face as she screamed. “Yeah, and when Twilight opened that book you butchered, she nearly burned down her favorite restaurant!” She aggressively poked Flash in the chest with both hooves to punctuate her tirade. “Celestia gave her that book! She kept it in her bedroom, you creep!”
Flash winced and looked down, then gasped when he saw what the evening’s sun had illuminated. He scooted his face closer to the hole, reaching out a hoof to tap on the door, identical to his own, that had been bricked up centuries before to form the rear wall of his prison. The gap at the bottom was still dark, though a few more minutes would let the sun peek into this new blackness.
A soft voice cut through the ringing in his ears. “She came to me and cried when she had to stop her sunset flights.” Fluttershy’s eyes were smooth turquoise blades that slid deep into Flash’s chest. “Somepony was following her, and she didn’t feel safe. Rainbow almost caught you, once, but…”
“The boxing match.” Flash’s ears drooped as he pulled his face away from the slot under the ancient door. The light just wasn’t enough to see what was inside. His gaze wandered to the less angry of the pegasus mares in the room. “I… I remember, remember… Rainbow, I’m sorry.”
“Do I look like a boxer to you, buddy?” her voice cracked. “You broke my rib! But it’s not me you need to be sorry to.”
Flash looked up and accepted the dish of water that Twilight was holding out to him. After blowing the dust off of the floor, he poured the water into the puddle of light that was just reaching its brightest. With no tremors in such a solid foundation, the surface tension pulled into a perfect mirror, reflecting light under the second door, and showing Flash what had been hidden just a few feet away since his arrival.
Ages of airlessness had reduced the pegasus to a mummy. Half of a humerus stuck straight into the air, midnight blue feathers still clinging to the bone like a frozen flag raised in eternal salute to Nightmare Moon. Shrunken skin stretched over the pelvis like a drum, prompting Flash to look at his own bony flank.
His walk down the long hall, with plumbing fixtures every dozen feet, played in Flash’s mind. When a prisoner died, they simply bricked up the front wall to make the back wall of a whole new cell, lopping off the last few feet of the long hallway and leaving the body to decay. Celestia had redefined the word ‘permanent,’ hitting him like a hurricane. Not only would he spend the rest of his life in this cell, but the rest of eternity, too. Nopony would ever see him, dead or alive. He would have no grave, no funeral, and no mourners.
His head waved like a tree in a storm. Flash looked up to Twilight, who returned the same helpless smile that she’d been wearing for years. He whimpered, then rubbed his nose with a fetlock. “It-it’s… I’m in…”
“You know the word, Flash.”
“I want you to say it. You’re the smart one.”
She whispered, “Oubliette.”
“Celestia threw me in a hole so she could forget me.” Flash tasted bile as he looked at the pain in all the faces of ponies he thought he had loved. “I wish you could all forget.”
“We ain’t like you, Sugarcube.” Applejack rubbed her hat in a circle around the crown of her head while she pondered her next words. “Lyin’ to yourself ain’t healthy. If you’d been honest about wantin’ to get to know Twi better, then maybe…” She shrugged.
Everything made sense. Celestia was a fair and honest ruler, who would never imprison an innocent pony, not even to protect Twilight’s reputation. All this time, he had thought Twilight had betrayed him, but he couldn’t imagine Celestia’s apprentice advancing to the point of literal ascension without mastering self-control.
Even Discord, the legendary spirit of chaos that had tormented all of Equestria for nearly a century, had been given a chance at redemption. Looking at his future self in the water’s surface, he realized that only the very worst crime could have landed him in Celestia’s oubliette on top of the Lunar Rebellion’s most sadistic genocidal maniacs.
Sharing a couch with Twilight Velvet, Flash listened to her repeat the words she had spoken the night that she and Night Light had given their blessing. “You’ll hurt her in ways you won’t even know.” His own words, spoken through an imaginary mother. Had he been planning it, even then? He had no memory of the crime and no doubt of his guilt.
He could not imagine anything that could possibly be worse than his current fate; butchered, locked in a hole with no company but the vilest of all monsters, and nothing to do but dwell on his guilt and the pain he had caused to those he had loved.
Flash screamed.
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What........ The...... Fuck....... Okay i was NOT expacting this AT ALL. I am confused, amazed, horrified,enraged, and truly anxious for the next chapters all at the same time. I trust you will f urther explain what REALLY happend in a future chapter? O and fuck you:)
*confused as fuck, and kind of liking it*
I am too confused now with this story. So what we read at the beginning was a hallucination? Or is this the hallucination? I don't know anymore. Clarify it soon please.
4410588
I'm guessing it's another hallucination. The previous bit seemed out of character, but at least had twisted logic to it; not this one. You don't throw the insane in oubliettes, and you certainly don't cut off their wings.
I'm not sure what's going on, but I maintain hope there will be a revelation that explains it all.
4410635 I doubt though we are going to be getting an explication soon. The title is decade. So I guess we have 6 years to go. This is a dark story. I don't know what to think. If this is all a test designed by Celestia. Then I say that this was over kill
4410635 True. An oubliette is usually reserved for those who commit crimes against royalty, such as treason, Lèse-majesté, or...
If this chapter is true then it implies that Flash is an obsessive fan/stalker who blocks out or edits his memories to fit what he believes...
perhaps Celestia is carrying out some kind of deep therapy, trying to make him face the facts of his true nature, even while imprisoned..
Huh....well ok then.
That this isn't the last chapter makes me suspicious. It's a pretty cool twist but I don't trust anything till this fic ends.
4410745
Yeah, I got the message that Flash supposedly really did commit the crime. But if what's said in the end is true he wouldn't be mentally culpable and would deserve treatment, not torture.
It also overlooks the seeming impossibility of him actually performing the crime against a teleporting alicorn with earth pony strength. Another reason I suspect he's hallucinating.
4410915 Boy, that is odd
I'm gonna guess this isn't actually happening. Then again I don't know. If I had to base this on actual psycologocal behavior I would probably say he's hallucinating but I don't know.
I'm actually rereading this in light of the last chapter since it casts prier events in a whole new light.
I find the comment about AJ's accent very interesting. This fic is rather clever in playing on our assumptions.
For some reason I'm compelled to post this image...I wander way.
lh4.googleusercontent.com/-GVV2IdesrU4/UztInLYoUnI/AAAAAAAAKR0/RSmVsHXztbA/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.jpg
4410915 Well given that everything we've seen is from Flash's perspective and he's apparently nuts we can't be sure of anything. Why it's entirely possible that they aren't even ponies and that's just part of his delusions. Note that the imaginary Applejack implied she didn't really have an accent so how much of the show is actually real in this fic is very much in question right now.
Or maybe there never was a Flash Sentry and this is all Twi's fever dream or something.
4414525 I will simply point out the lack of an AU tag.
4423077 You'd be amazed how far a story can deviate from canon and still not be considered AU by the author, but fair enough. That actually makes it more interesting if it's not AU.
I suspected something was odd the way the first chapter began but the possibilities didn't begin to dawn on me until later. One theory I hadn't read anyone suggest - what if this is the efforts of some unknown villain mind warping Flash to harm Twilight? Not that we have any evidence but just tossing it out into the aether. The indications that this insanity trip began before Celestia did her mind zap. I don't believe this is her test. My guess is that's a distraction from the real culprit, whether its Flash, Twilight, or villain. But then why? Why all this insanity? Even if its a villain like I theorized why go to these lengths? Its really hard to solve anything when every scene in this story so far comes under the suspicion of not being real. This feels like that old movie Jacob's Ladder where in the end *SPOILER* ....................
.......
.....
....
the guy was DEAD and the whole movie was a death dream. So maybe Flash is dying and ALL of this is a dream. Sorry about the spoiler space. I don't know how to black out text on a mobile device.
4398733 there is an episode of DS9 where one of the crew is sent to an alien "prison" for 20 years
To him it is 20 years of isolation and madness but in real time only a day or so . It was like an artificial dream or something (Not well explained in episode either).Unfortunately they never told him how their prison system worked leading to him going through what was in essence PTSD
I was thinking about this story and came to the conclusion that no matter how it ends, whether this is a good story or not is completely dependent on the ending.
It doesn't matter if he's gone insane and has created memories so that he's guilty, it doesn't matter if he's finally seeing through his insanity to finally admit his guilt, it doesn't even matter if none of this has been real since Celestia went into his mind. All that matters is that the ending fit and be executed well.
There's just no other way it could go. Even though the story is written in a very interesting way, it's put the entirety of the weight of the story on the finish. If it's cheesy, badly written, or trite at all it drags the entire story down with it.
It's an enormous amount of pressure to put on yourself for this kind of writing. It'll be interesting to see if it gets finished.
4468490 Hmmm... I hadn't thought about that pressure before. So, thanks for that.
Also, I really enjoyed your Pepsi commercial.
4468574 That commercial was a lot less embarrassing than the Viagra ones. I'm still dealing with the fallout from those.
Mind. Blown.
Did not see that coming. I'm saying that a lot on this story. That's a good thing.
People needed to drop the whole "if this is a test... " stuff two chapters ago.
I still want it to be true, and not just mental therapy. But for that to be so we'd need a cruel Celestia.
I'm fine with that.
I'm finally back.
...Jeez, this has gone full-on Lost Highway.
5899878 I've not seen "Lost Highway" (or read it or... what is it? A book? A movie? A TV series?). Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Well, that happened.
Some sort of schizophrenia?