Live with Me
Chapter 8 – Live With Me
It don’t matter when you turn
Gonna survive
You live and learn
I’ve been thinking about you, baby
Pinkie Pie’s eyes snapped open. She sat up and looked around. Above was a black sky, filled with dark clouds that obscured the stars. She stood up and immediately realised where she was.
The graveyard.
She took a step backwards and felt something cold on her back leg. She spun around and saw that she had put her leg through a gravestone. She pulled it out effortlessly and saw that it was still intact.
I can pass through solid stone?
She whipped around and looked at the headstone. It was a solid pink block with smooth sides. The top had been fashioned into the shape of a birthday cake and when she read the writing on the body of the stone, she felt her eyes welling up.
In memory of
Pinkamena Diane “Pinkie” Pie
Died aged 23
Beloved friend to everypony in Ponyville
Loved by all and greatly missed
Wherever you are
We hope you have found peace
And then slightly below, the small words that had been carved onto the bottom of the headstone:
Fill my heart up with sunshine.
If Pinkie Pie had ever doubted that she was dead, the thought was now confirmed in her mind. She saw that the numerous bouquets of flowers that had been left at the foot of her grave were still alive. She can’t have been dead more than a week. She reached for the flowers with an incorporeal leg, but her ghostly hoof couldn’t grasp them. She tried repeatedly to grip them, but each time failed.
“Stupid hoof!” she said aloud, “Why couldn’t I have been reincarnated as a birthday cake or something?”
Saying words out loud somehow gave physical shape to her hoof and she was able to grasp the flowers. She rifled through them, picking them up and smelling them, but stopped when she found a sealed envelope lying underneath. It was addressed to her. She picked it up and opened it with her teeth, took out the note that was inside and unfolded it.
Dear Pinkie,
She swallowed hard when she recognised the handwriting.
I’m no literary genius, but Twilight said the best thing that I could do is write down how I felt. So I thought I’d send you a letter.
I can’t put into words how sad I am that you are gone. I don’t think I will ever truly be able to get over the pain in my heart. You’ve left a gaping hole in my life, one that I doubt I will ever be able to fill.
Pinkie was relieved to find she could still cry, even as a ghost. She swept away tears with her hoof and continued to read.
I know it’s silly, but I come by your grave nearly every night hoping to see you. I can’t believe you’re gone. It’s so surreal. Anyway, I hope that wherever you are, you’re happy to be away from this shit hole, because without you, life is empty and every day just fades into the next.
Love you, Pinkie, always and forever yours
Rainbow Dash.
By the time Pinkie had finished reading the note, she was bawling her eyes out. How could she have hurt her best friend so much? How could she have been so selfish?
She put the letter down and stood up.
Fill my heart up with sunshine.
The words on her gravestone rang through her head. She knew what she had to do.
She reared her front legs and jumped. At first, she got worried when she didn’t land right away, and then smiled gleefully when she realised that she was capable of levitating. She half-ran, half-swam through the air towards the middle of the town.
*
“Dear Professor Lolhooves,” Twilight dictated to Spike as he scribed on a piece of parchment, “It is with great sadness that I must inform you of my recent health concerns. Due in part to the recent tragic demise of my dear friend, Pinkie Pie- ”
“Hold on, Twilight,” Spike said, writing as fast as he could. “Okay, go.”
“I hereby request that you allow me to take a month of sick leave so that I may return to the college recharged and renewed,” Twilight finished, “sincerely, Twilight Sparkle.”
“Done,” said Spike and he blew flames against the letter, sending it off to Professor Lolhooves. “I’m glad you’re not quitting your job outright.”
“Well, that I still haven’t decided,” Twilight admitted. “I’ve had to put my studies on hold. Maybe now I can go back to research.”
“What, so that you can teach at Canterlot University when you finish?” Spike chided. “Come on, Twilight.”
“Well, that it would be a lot less stressful,” Twilight said, scuffing her hoof on the floor.
“You’re a good teacher, Twilight and you know that the students of Ponyville Community College need you more than the prissy Canterlot ponies,” Spike said. “I know where I’d prefer to get my college degree.”
Twilight laughed, “you’re not planning on enrolling are you?”
“No, but if I ever did, it wouldn’t be at Canterlot,” Spike folded his arms defiantly.
“Princess Celestia teaches there sometimes,” Twilight informed him.
Spike snorted, “yeah, and she’s royalty! You’re Twilight Sparkle. You’re a genius and you’re a good teacher, but you need to put things in perspective.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s say you finish your studies and you become a professor at Canterlot University. What then? Where are you going to live?”
“Well I...”
“Exactly. You’d have to leave Ponyville.”
“That might not be a bad thing...”
“What, because of Pinkie? You think Pinkie would want you to run away?”
“Spike, I...”
“What’s more is if you left, I’d have to come with you. Your decisions affect me as well, you know.”
“But-” Twilight began, but she knew the dragon was right. She lowered her head in shame.
“Sort everything out in your head and then make your decision. You’ve got a good job and a lot of friends here in Ponyville,” Spike told her fiercely, “Yeah, Pinkie Pie is gone and we can’t do anything about it except live our lives as she would have wanted – laughing in the face of adversity.”
Twilight nodded at her dragon companion. His words had given her a new sense of resolve. “Thank’s, Spike.” She pulled Spike into a hug.
“Ahh,” said the dragon, blushing slightly, “don’t worry about it, Twilight. What are friends for?” He hugged her tightly.
*
Either way, win or lose
When you’re born into trouble
You live the blues
Town was quiet. Most of the shops were closed or closing so it must have been late, after seven at least, but Pinkie didn’t even know what day of the week it was. She guessed Thursday, but that was only because Cafe Russo was still open; it could have just as easily been Saturday.
As she passed the open cafe, she saw the faces of ponies that she knew. Then, right at the back, she saw them: Applejack and Rarity, sitting at a table.
Pinkie passed through the wall and glided softly over to the table where her old friends were sitting. Their faces were drawn and sombre. She sat down on the only empty seat and laid her hooves on the table.
“How was your uhh... fashion show in Manehattan?” Applejack asked Rarity.
“Oh, it was adequate, darling, adequate,” Rarity sipped on her herbal tea. “Somepony from Trottingham is hosting another evening later on this month and they’ve invited me to go but... I don’t know if I can face it.”
“You should!” Applejack said, “it would be great for your business!”
“Eh... yes,” said Rarity, “about that.”
Applejack set down her coffee. “What’s on your mind, sugarcube?”
“Well, the thing is, after a lot of deliberation and contemplation on my part, I’ve been giving it all a bit of consideration and I came to the justifiable conclusion that-”
“Spit it out, Rarity,” Applejack snorted, “I ain’t got the patience for your high-class mumbo jumbo.”
Pinkie giggled. It was a shame they couldn’t see her.
“I see,” Rarity cleared her throat, “If you wish for me to be blunt, then blunt I shall be,” she took a deep breath, “I’m leaving Ponyville.”
Applejack nearly choked on her coffee. “What?”
“No!” Pinkie uttered. Neither pony heard her. She put her hooves on Rarity, but the white pony didn’t even feel it. Pinkie sat back in her chair with a glum expression.
“I just... ever since...” Rarity couldn’t find the words. “You know how it is.”
“Well sure I do,” Applejack said, “but I can’t just pack up and say so-long to Sweet Apple Acres! I got responsibilities, and so do you! Where you even gonna go anyhow?”
“That’s right!” Pinkie Pie said, “what about Sweetie Belle?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Rarity conceded, “I thought about going to Canterlot and taking up a job there.”
“A job doing what exactly?” Applejack demanded.
“Well... more like an internship really.”
“Rarity,” Applejack said sternly, “a job doing what?”
“Working in a theatre,” the unicorn said hastily, “I’ve always wanted to try it. This could be my chance!”
Applejack shook her head in disbelief. “No offence, Rarity, but you need to take your head out from inside your rear end and put things into perspective.”
“I beg your pardon?” Rarity said, aghast, “What was that about my rear end?”
“That you’ve got your head so far up inside it, you can’t tell it from your hoof,” Applejack explained, “What I mean to say is, bad things happen. But you can’t just run away from them – you’ve got to deal with them. What do you think Pinkie would say if she was here right now?”
Oh the irony, Applejack. Pinkie’s gaze swapped from Applejack to Rarity.
The unicorn sniffed and dabbed at her eyes. “She’d probably say that fashion is my passion. She’d tell me that everything was going to be alright.”
Pinkie nodded. She couldn’t bear to see her friends unhappy. But what could she do? Then as she looked over at the table across the way from them, she saw two ponies, gleefully picking their way through ice cream sundaes. Pinkie got up from the table and snuck over to them. Neither pony saw her, even when she had her ghostly, pink hooves wrapped around their ice creams. She tugged them both away and carried them away from the table.
“What the-?”
“Holy crap!” one of the ponies fell back in his chair at the sight of the two floating ice creams.
Rarity and Applejack paused their conversation to glance up at ice creams dancing in mid air. Then gawped in astonishment as they started to float towards the table where they were sitting.
“Hey, unicorn,” hollered one of the ponies who the ice creams belonged to, “you going to give those back?”
Applejack shifted her position, looking at Rarity. “Are you doing that?”
Rarity shook her head, “It’s not me!”
Applejack made a grab for one of the floating ice creams, but it pulled out of her reach before she could grasp it.
Pinkie emptied the contents of the ice cream sundaes onto the table where Rarity and Applejack were sitting. She started to scrape it together into a solid shape.
“Oh great,” moaned one of the other ponies, looking down miserably at the mess on the table, “now you owe me and by buddy an ice cream sundae.”
“I’ve told you, it’s not me!” Rarity insisted, but something about the way that the blob of ice cream seemed to be rearranging itself on the table captivated her attention. “What in the world is it doing?”
Applejack came around to where Rarity was sitting and observed as the ice cream formed the shape of a heart on the table.
Pinkie Pie took a step back to admire her work. It had certainly broken the ice between the two ponies, but whether or not it would be enough to convince Rarity to stay in Ponyville was another matter.
“Is this somepony’s idea of a joke?” Applejack asked, looking around the cafe. Rarity seemed to be the only unicorn in sight.
“I have no idea, darling. But painting with ice cream... such creativity,” Rarity rose from her chair with a determined look on her face, “it’s given me an idea.”
“Uh-oh,” Applejack said, rolling her eyes, “don’t tell me you’re gonna take a job in an ice cream parlour?”
“No, darling,” Rarity said. “I’m going to bake a cake for you, Twilight Sparkle, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash and we’re all going to have it with a pot of special blend herbal tea!”
Pinkie Pie beamed at her. She didn’t quite know how, but her little stunt had made her friends smile when they were feeling down.
“Sounds good, Rarity,” Applejack said with a wide grin as the two ponies made their way out of the cafe.
“Hey,” hollered one of the ponies who lost their ice cream, “are you going to pay for that or what?” the words had barely even left his lips when a hoof-full of ice cream hit him in the face from across the room. He used a long tongue to lap it off his face.
Pinkie left with a smile on her face. She checked the clock on the wall and decided that it was time to return to the graveyard.
There was somepony else she had to see.
I’ve been thinking about you, baby
See it almost makes me crazy
*
(To get the full effect of this scene – please listen to the song Live With Me by Massive Attack while you read it)
Rain beat down over the cemetery, but Rainbow Dash didn’t mind. Ponyville hadn’t seen sunlight since Pinkie’s funeral and was beset by an almost constant torrent of rainfall. The weather matched her mood: Ponyville could drown for all she cared.
Rainbow sniffed the air. There was something almost soothing about the presence of the rainwater. The sensation of cold droplets on her fur... it served to remind her that she was still here. She trudged through the soft muddy ground on her way up through row upon row of marked headstones.
Her hooves were smeared with mud and her mane was soaked with rainwater by the time she reached Pinkie Pie’s grave. As soon as she stopped walking, she slumped to the ground and her large eyes burst into a flood of tears the second she read the words on the headstone.
It had taken a while, but she had stopped blaming Pinkie for her suicide and had transferred that blame onto herself. She was the problem. She was the one who had kept silent when she knew deep down she should have said something earlier. Maybe if Pinkie had received treatment earlier, maybe none of this would have happened. She couldn’t blame Pinkie for taking her own life, because she was beginning to understand why she did it. She wondered what Applejack or Twilight might have done if it was them.
Nah. Far too fucking sensible.
How Applejack was able to be so emotionally distant was beyond Rainbow’s comprehension. Maybe she was putting on a brave face; maybe she carved up her wrists in secret when she was home. If it had been Rarity or even Fluttershy, they would have sought help from the best psychiatrists in Equestria before things got out of hand. Pinkie couldn’t afford that. She struggled to keep a roof over her head as it was before Sugarcube Corner went under, and once it did, she had barely enough money to eat. But she said nothing about it to anyone. Rainbow could only assume that it was because she didn’t want her problems to become theirs. Her desire to make her friends happy meant avoiding making them sad, even at the cost of her own health.
“Oh Pinkie,” said Rainbow, as she dipped her head. Why was it so hard for her? She thought she was strong than this. Pinkie had always been resilient: she’d been able to laugh off anything that had come her way, any misfortune or sadness, even despite the turmoil that raged on underneath.
Rainbow cried bitterly.
Nothing’s right, if you ain’t here.
I’d give all that I have, just to keep you near.
I wrote you a letter, I tried to make it clear
You just don’t believe that I’m sincere
“I’ve been thinking about you, Pinkie,” Rainbow said through her tears. She rested her head against Pinkie’s grave. It was the closest she could physically be to the best friend she’d ever had. The best friend she would ever have.
*
From a short distance away, Pinkie watched her friend crying against the gravestone. One thought persisted in her mind:
I did this. Me.
She knew she couldn’t take it back. She couldn’t turn off being dead. Rainbow couldn’t see or hear her, even when she sat down next to the blue pegasus and leant against her soft, warm body.
“Ah, Rainbow,” Pinkie whispered, “if only you knew.” She stroked her friend’s beautiful mane, hoping that she would be able to feel it, but the pegasus didn’t react. She continued to cry.
“I just want to be with you again,” Rainbow sobbed.
Pinkie held her mouth close to Rainbow’s ear and whispered: “I’ll always be with you, silly. Just have a little faith.”
Rainbow’s ear pricked. She turned her head and glanced at the empty air next to her, eyes wide.
Pinkie’s eyes widened. Rainbow was looking directly at her. Had she heard her? For a second, Pinkie wondered if Rainbow Dash could see her face, but the pegasus’ lack of reaction told her otherwise. She put her head down on the ground once more. Pinkie put a ghostly front leg around Rainbow and snuggled close against her. She would stay and comfort the pegasus for as long as it took for her to fly home. Even if she never made it back to the afterlife, it would be worth it just to see Rainbow smile.
Pinkie shut her eyes. She wasn’t sure whether or not ghosts slept, but she was starting to feel tired.
“Rainbow Dash!”
Pinkie’s eyes snapped open.
Rainbow stood up and looked around. Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle were approaching from afar.
Pinkie floated off the Rainbow pony and stood to face the others.
“What are you guys doing out here?” Rainbow asked.
“We were worried about you,” Fluttershy said.
“How did you know where I was?”
“Well, it’s raining like the world’s about to end and you weren’t in your house,” Twilight said, gesturing with the umbrella she was holding over her head “We made an educated guess as to where you might be.”
Rainbow smiled a little.
Pinkie saw it and felt the pit of her stomach grow warm. “You have friends, Rainbow,” she said. “Listen to them.”
“Let’s go home, Rainbow,” Fluttershy said. “My cottage is closest.”
Rainbow Dash took one look at Pinkie’s grave before nodding and slowly walking towards Twilight and Fluttershy.
As Pinkie watched her leave, a sudden realisation came to her. I thought that my pain had disappeared when I died, but I guess the truth is that I just spread it around my friends. She narrowed her eyes. I have to put it right for my friends.
“Wait for me guys!” she called as she rose into the air and floated after the other ponies.
I’ve been thinking about you baby
I want you to live with me.
Stats
Page generated in 0.042 seconds
Total duration
954 users online
1,143,838 hits today, 1,822,946 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
More I want more!
Glad you enjoyed it - give me a day or two to finish off and it should be completed before the end of the week.
Ah, I am about to delve into the depths of this little Pinka-cide story.
Depression and sadness, do your worst.
Keep writing dude! My passion has been writing since the day I was born!
Also it's a real good story I favorated it!
4232966 Ditto!
But you spelt favorite wrong. . .
I seriously want to cry after reading this.
4233056
yaaaa I'm not good at spelling.
4233752 Are you young, like me?(Even though my grammar is nearly flawless.) Or an immigrant?
Wow.
Pinkie's the last person I would think to have depression that would lead to suicide (Pinki-cide?)
Which is exactly what makes this story so great
Thanks for the comment :)
It's not that hard to believe! Some of her conversational undertones and song lyrics suggest that she has depression or has suffered from it in the past. Pinkie is quite black and white - things are either SUPER-DUPER GREAT AND AWESOME!! or they are terrible. That in itself is how quite a lot of people who are prone to suffering from depression seem to think.
4234502
Don't blame me, Pinkie wrote it :)
great story man i want more as well
4234093 I'm like 12
4235131 Hey, psst. . .I'm only a year younger.
4235173 kewl
4235173 What school do you go to? We might go to the same one. Pm me the answer!
4240721 Who is Ms. Craig?
4240749 I dunno?
4243287 We don't go to the same school.
4243547 Ok. If we did we could meet up and talk about ponies during middle recess. There are only 2 pony liker's in my school and I'm one of them...
I'm so alone... 
4244417 Poor you. . .
I have 4.
4244430 Your lucky!
I love this but one thing bugs me
How the hell did rainbow NOT see the OPENED leader that pinkie read
FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELS!!!