On The Rocks

by 8_Bit

Part V ~ Closing Time

Author's Note:

Reader discretion strongly advised. This chapter is also a difficult one. That helpline directory one more time, because it can't be linked enough, can be found here.

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My head… ow, my head.

As I drifted back into consciousness, the blinding lights in my face became unbearable, so I had to bring my hoof to my eyes to block it out. But all my muscles felt disjointed and weak, and did I mention my head? Oh dear Celestia, Luna and whatever other horses they might have rode in on, my head hurt. But not like… it’s kinda hard to describe. Not like painful kinda hurt, more like… everything was floating around and feeling spacey, and it hurt to try and process this? It was super weird.

“I think she’s coming to,” said an echoey voice with a funny accent.

”Vinyl! Vinyl! Wake up,” called out a similarly echoey voice with an accent that was just as weird, but this voice was more familiar. Something about it made my heart flutter.

”Mamá,” I groaned. “Me duele la… la cabeza…”

“Vinyl,” said the familar voice again. “Oh Vinyl…”

“Por favor… apagar las luces…”

“Miss Melody, do you understand what she’s saying?”

“Exactly as I’ve been trying to tell you, the lights are too bright, give me her glasses.”

”Now listen here, we’ve explained this to you but…”

”No!” shouted the familar voice, a little too loudly for my comfort. “I’ve told you exactly what she needs three times now, the lights are too bright and her eyes are sensitive. Now give me her glasses right now before I shove that stethoscope up your arse and tell you exactly what your damn heartrate is!”

Damn… this pony had moxie…

I let out a low moan as something moved my hoof away from my face, and for a moment there was nothing but my eyelids barely blocking out the bright light shining down on me. But then some weight pressed down on the bridge of my muzzle and around my eyes, and the light dimmed a little. Not completely, but enough for it to no longer be painful to me. So, I dared to open my eyes.

It took a bit of blinking to clear the gunk out, but eventually things faded into view. The room I was in was white, giving strong impressions of being frosty and sterile. Slowly my senses started coming back to me, enough for me to put the word ‘hospital’ at the front of my mind. Several tubes and wires were hooked up to my forelegs, connecting me to a large machine that was being examined by a mare in white uniform. A mask covered her entire muzzle, which was causing the lower part of her own glasses to fog up slightly.

Feeling a weight press gently on one of my forelegs, I looked down to see a grey hoof had come to rest there. Turning my head to get a better look at its owner, I felt butterflies in my stomach as I saw her. Brain fog is a bitch, of course her voice was familiar. I love this mare.

”Oc…ty?” I muttered, fighting the haze my mind was bogged down in.

She gave me a series of small shushing noises that was… actually kinda soothing. “It’s okay Vinyl, you’re okay. I’ve got you.” She cracked a huge smile that made my stomach start doing barrel rolls as tears rolled down her face. Or was it rain water? Her mane was soaking wet, like she’d just gotten out of a shower.

I looked around, confused. This… this wasn’t the Ponyville hospital? And the nurse, assuming that she was the pony that Octavia had just been arguing with, her accent was not a common one in Ponyville. Like, at all. Where the heck were we? There was a strange tightness wrapped around my forehead, that it took me a moment to realise was some kind of bandage.

And then… as the nurse starting checking me over… it all started flooding back as my brain began to root itself back into place. The floaty feeling faded away as memories resurfaced. Train. Butler. Mansion. Gazebo. Dress. Dinner. Photographs…

“Octy…” I muttered, trying to keep my breathing under control. “What happened?”

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “How much do you remember?”

”Everything up until you told me about your dad, how he… he…”

“Okay, okay,” she said gently.

I couldn’t finish the damn sentence. Just… what her dad had done… it fucking broke me just thinking about it. But Octavia not only had to live through it, she had to live with it. Her whole life, she’s carried the weight of that on her shoulders. I don’t know how she could stand it.

“Well, after… that,” she began, talking slowly. I realised at this point, she’d changed out of her white dinner gown, and had washed all the makeup off her face. “I think something just broke, inside you. I’ve never seen you that angry, ever. It was rather intimidating, to be quite frank with you.”

Well I guess if I was ever gonna be the angriest I had ever been, having it be on behalf of my marefriend isn’t the worst way to go about it.

“Then you just stormed off. And I followed you. I don’t think you were thinking rationally at all, you kept going down random corridors, getting lost, doubling back on yourself. Blinded with rage, I suppose.”

“Yep. Rage, hehehe, that’s why I kept err… getting lost. Yeah.”

She gave me a knowing smirk. “Yes, no doubt. But eventually you found your way back to the dining room. Mother and Father were just finishing their first course of dinner and had been wondering where we were. I was astounded that Father had the nerve to carry on in such a blasé manner, considering the awful things he’d said to you, but you were rather quick to deliver some karma.”

”What’d I do?”

“You strolled right over to him, turned him to face you and… umm… well, to use the word ponies around Trottingham use to describe it, you… you nutted him.”

I gagged. “Ew, gross! What… how did… why?!”

“No no no,” Octy exclaimed, waving her hooves dismissively. “Cultural differences, Vinyl. The Trottingham use of the word is not remotely sexual. Here it means ‘to headbutt’.”

“Whuh… I headbutted him?!”

”Mmmhmm. Pretty hard too, it knocked you both out cold. Though it seems even in your fit of rage, you had enough sense to turn your head slightly at the last moment. Otherwise Father would have ended the evening skewered like a kebab. Unfortunately your logical reasoning must have already been skewered, as you turned your head so that you hit him with the bump that you recieved from Bleathman this morning.”

“How long was I out?”

”Not terribly long, about half an hour. Just enough time for us to summon an ambulance and get you both here. They tried to throw your glasses away, but luckily you’ve got me here, I wouldn’t let them. You started rolling around and moaning just after they hooked you up with all the tubes and wires.”

“And er…” I went to scratch my elbow, but some of the wires caught on the frame of the bed. “What about your old man, how’s he doing?”

She shrugged. “I can honestly say that I don’t know right now. He was still unconscious in the ambulance, Mother accompanied him away and I insisted that I was to stay with you.”

A pang of guilt hit me. ‘Don’t rise to anything’, that was the only damn request she’d made, and I couldn’t even pull that off. Jeez… talk about muddying the water. Sure, Staccato did a good job of that himself, but I sure as shit hadn’t helped.

“So, what now?” I asked.

Octy scratched her chin. “Well… the way I see it, you’ve put yourself in a favourable position with Father. By which I mean, favourable for you.”

”Huh? Whadda ya mean?”

“Well, in Trottingham high society, secrets are a second currency, and scandal can tear an entire family tree up from its roots. While we were in the ambulance, I informed Mother of exactly what it is you’ve found out, and no doubt she will pass this on to Father when he wakes up. You stumbled onto something he’s kept secret for twenty years, and if news broke about it, his reputation would be in tatters. He’d be a social pariah. And currently, the power to bring him down like that is entirely in your hooves.”

Huh.

”And… what do you think I should do?”

Her eyes met mine. “Vinyl, I want you to do what you think is best.”

This was… huh. Yeah. A pretty weird situation. After feeling like I’d been on the back hoof with Staccato all day, being suddenly thrown into a position of power was not at all what I expected.

“But, if the news broke, everypony would know about you. How could I expose you like that?”

”I don’t care,” she said simply. “This isn’t my home, so I really don’t care. My home is back in Ponyville with you. So what if a few pampered pricks find out I was assigned male at birth? Their judgement means nothing to me.”

That’s my mare. Screw what everypony else thinks.

“But honestly,” she continued. “If you’ve currently got leverage on your side, you’d be wiser to think about how you could use that as a defensive tool, not as a weapon.”

”Meaning what, exactly?”

”Let’s not mince words Vinyl, you just assaulted Father.”

It took a few seconds for the implications of what she was saying to really hit home. Yeah, the thought of Staccato being torn down and suffering the consequences of his shitty actions was pretty sweet. And very tempting. Or, I could go home peacefully with Octavia, back to Ponyville. Back where we both belong.

“Okay,” I said. “I want to go see him.”

This… turned out to be a hassle in itself. You see, it ain’t like the movies at all, when you get a bonk on the head. In the movies, the hero gets knocked unconscious, wakes up, kills all the bad guys and saves the girl. But in reality, even being knocked out for a short amount of time can carry with it some serious risks. My mind was still a little hazy, and apparently the only reason my head wasn’t throbbing like a bitch was because of the high strength painkillers they were feeding me through a tube. The doctors didn’t want me going anywhere until they ran some tests.

Luckily, Octavia is real good at diplomacy. The doctor who… I don’t know the technical terms, but basically, the one who knows the most about head injuries? He wasn’t going to be available for another couple of hours. So Octy managed to negotiate a wheelchair that she’d use to escort me to Staccato’s room, with all my drips and beep boop machinery on this little wheeled platform that could be pulled along behind. I don’t think this was strictly allowed, like at all, but Octy’s scarily good at her ‘can I speak to your manager’ voice. The other room wasn’t that far away, and even though I was holding all the cards, I still felt real nervous sitting there in my standard issue blue hospital gown as Octavia knocked on the door. Apparently the medics had no choice but to cut me out of the red gown Allegra had lent me...

”You ready?” Octy asked.

I just nodded.

The door cracked open an inch. “Oh, Octavia dear,” gasped Allegra, who threw it open the rest of the way. “And Vinyl, oh my poor darling, you’re awake.”

“Hi… Allegra,” I grinned. I hadn’t expected to feel this awkward, especially as somewhere in the back of my mind I couldn’t stop wondering about the price tag of that now-shredded gown. “If err… if it’s okay, I’d like to talk to Staccato.”

“Oh…” Allegra’s face took on a serious note that I’d yet to see from her. “Yes, I think that would be a good idea. Please, come inside, he’s awake as well.”

She stepped aside and Octavia pushed me into the room. And sure enough, there on the bed was Staccato. Like me, his forehead was wrapped up in a bandage. His eyes widened as he noticed me, and then his face took on a new expression. Which made it a grand total of four expressions I’d counted from him so far, at least I think. I’ve had a few pummels to the head today so my counting might be off.

Staccato was wary. He leaned ever so slightly away from me as Octy pushed my wheelchair right up to his bed, and looked me up and down like I was some kind of dangerous weapon. Like, in his head, he was trying to make a decision between fight or flight. At that moment it looked like flight was winning, but like me he was hooked up to all that usual hospital garb, so he wasn’t going anywhere. Allegra went round to the other side of his bed and stood by his side. She was still wearing her purple dress, and her makeup was patchy and rain-damaged.

“Relax dude,” I said. “I ain’t here to finish the job.”

“Ah,” he replied, the tension ebbing out of his shoulders, but he still looked uneasy. “Good.”

“So firstly,” I continued, looking back and forth between Staccato and Allegra. “I just wanted to tell you, I am so sorry about your son, Symphonic. I can’t begin to imagine how hard that must’ve been for you guys.”

Yep, that caught them both off-guard. Tears welled up in Allegra’s eyes as a hoof shot to her mouth. She was trying to suppress a sob. And Staccato, he just looked surprised. Then he gave a small nod that might have been in gratitude, but was equally likely his way of saying ‘please continue’.

“Secondly, I would like to propose a deal. I know something that you don’t want anypony to ever find out. In exchange for my sworn silence on that subject, you agree not to press charges against me for our little err… altercation over dinner.”

Not even a moment of hesitation. “Agreed,” said Staccato, who held his hoof out towards me. Which I wasn’t expecting, at all. But… never leave a pony hanging, right? So I reached out, and tapped my own hoof to his. Which apparently was not what he was trying to do, because he scoffed indignantly, Allegra let out a small chuckle, and Octavia sighed loudly behind me.

“Vinyl dear,” Octy whispered in my ear. “Hoofshake, not hoofbump.”

Oh. Duh.

I reached out again, grasped his hoof firmly in mine, and we both shook. He seemed more satisfied with that, and Octavia let out another sigh, though this one was of relief. At least I wasn’t gonna end up in a jail cell.

“Well,” Staccato said, his voice taking on some of the normal smug drawl I’d so grown to love over the course of the day. “I’m pleased that we can put that matter to bed. Was there anything else pressing on your mind, while you’re here?”

“Yeah, actually. Thirdly, I want to have a straight up honest conversation. No psychological warfare, no loaded comments, no trickery or subterfuge. Just a conversation where everypony says exactly what they mean.”

Subterfuge? Where’d I pull that word out from? But it was true, I was tired of all the tiptoeing around. And Staccato looked taken aback by that.

”Tell you what, since you were so nice to make the first move towards that at dinner, I’ll lay out all my cards for you. My name is Vinyl Scratch, known professionally as DJ Pon-3 but I leave that title at work. I’m a lesbian, and I am head-over-hooves in love with your daughter. I have photophobia and ADHD. I’m impulsive, loudmouthed, and probably a little too quick to jump into a fight. But ponies take all this and assume they know everything there is to know about me. I’m not an idiot though, I like to think I’m kinda smart when I need to be, but ADHD is the enemy of focus so my academic scores are nothing to brag about. But what I do have is good insight and observation, and you’ve told me everything I need to know about you.”

“Oh indeed,” he scoffed, going to cross his forelegs but, like me, got the wires caught on his bedframe. “And what information have you gleaned from me during your observations?”

”Your name is Staccato Melody. Given your domineering personality, I’d say you were an only child, very used to getting your own way. And you probably had a very traditional upbringing, ‘the stallion of the house is the head of the house, what he says goes’. He brings home the bread and his wife and children grovel at his hooves. In fact, grovel is probably an understatement, I’d say you and your mom were probably terrified of your dad, so why shouldn’t your wife and child be scared of you? You spent some time in the military, naturally, serving your princess and your country. And you bury yourself in your status and your work to hide from the fact that you perpetually mourn the loss of one son to cruel fate, and the other to the fact that she had her own plans for life that didn’t align with yours.”

His face during my spiel was a pretty damn spectacular sight. It jumped from indifference, to surprise, to shock, but as I wrapped up, it devolved back into his favourite, the cold emotionless stare. Allegra could barely look at me, her ears folded back in stunned silence as she examined the sheets on the bed.

”And how, pray tell, did you deduce that I spent ‘some time’ in the military?”

I shrugged. “Easy, it never leaves you. Your stiff posture, the way you carry yourself, even your military standard short mane that you’ll never bring yourself to grow out. It was definitely a position of authority, I wanna say you made it as far as a colonel? And one of the perks of the rank of commissioned officers is a personal slave… sorry, an ‘orderly’ as you would call him. So you were never left wanting for anything, even in the armed forces. And who knows, maybe you even grew fond of your new assistant, enough to offer him a position in your family home after your honourable discharge. A position as a butler, maybe? How am I doing, am I in the right ballpark?”

“More or less, yes.” The scowl on his face said everything I needed to. “So how precisely did you surmise all of this?”

”I’m not as dumb as you seem to think. Just… observation. Insight, and one or two educated guesses.”

“Is that a fact?” he asked, his eyeline wandering aimlessly around the room. “It appears I have underestimated you then.”

Oh, I couldn’t keep it up any longer. “Of course I didn’t guess all that, you idiot,” I laughed. “Octy told me all about you, weeks before we came here. I didn’t need to ‘observe’ it. But for a moment, you thought I had. And that’s the point, even if I ain’t got the smarts to actually try and deduce stuff like that, I still got you to doubt your judgement. And if you thought you could be wrong about me, don’t you think you could be wrong about other stuff too?”

”I don’t follow.”

“Your daughter, dude.”

His wandering eyes froze, and he turned his head to look over my shoulder, where Octavia was stood. Ugh, dios mio, again with the unreadable facial expressions. But his eyes seemed… I dunno, unfocused? He looked her up and down, and whatever he was seeing, all his energy seemed to be going into processing the visual inputs. Oh, and keeping his face stoic, of course. Luna forbid he let an emotion slip out right now.

”You lost a child, dude,” I pressed on. “And I cannot overstress that I sympathise with you on that. But you still have one, right here. One that you chose to tell the world isn’t actually yours. Why?”

Staccato’s face twisted into a snarl. “Why?! Because he was supposed to be my heir! Oh I was overjoyed when Allegra’s scans came back to show she was expecting twins. Two strapping young colts, an heir and a spare, to continue my bloodline. But no, one of them couldn’t survive the rotten pustule she calls a womb, and the other chose to turn his back on his intended path to mutilate himself and parade around under the pretence of femininity. You ask me if I could be wrong about other things? My bloodline ends with a half-formed fetus, and a freak against nature, and I am certain of that.”

Okay, so he really is a rotten piece of shit. And he’s damn lucky I was confined to a chair at that moment, as he earned a hoofslap at least three times during that rant. Allegra had gasped in horror at the comment aimed at her, but Octavia hadn’t responded to anything. I tilted my head slightly, to try and look round at her, but all I saw was a stony calm on her face. A well-rehearsed veil, like she’s heard this kind of stuff a million times before. Oh… Octy…

“Alright,” I said, maintaining my composure as best I could. “So now your priorities are out in the open, it was all about having an obedient little colt to carry on the family name. So when Octy came out, why didn’t you let her do her own thing and you could just, I dunno, try again?”

“Vinyl, dear,” Allegra began. “I wish it was that simple, but…”

Whoosh. Thud. It happened so quickly, I didn’t have time to process it until Allegra stumbled backwards, clutching her face as she let out a wail. I couldn’t believe it. One swift movement of Staccato’s foreleg, a sickening crack as his hoof impacted Allegra’s muzzle, and then my body flooded with adrenaline. I understood now, I’d been right. And damnit, I’d prayed I was wrong, in fact I would have given anything for it to just be an overly active piece of imagining on my part. But the flinches from both Allegra and Octavia made sense now. Staccato was an abuser.

As Allegra slumped against the wall behind her, Staccato adjusted himself in bed to sit slightly more upright. By the way he looked, you’d think he’d have just dealt with an inconvenient problem. Hitting his wife, to him, seemed no more inconsequential an act than swatting an annoying bug.

”Leave us,” he said, softly.

With a whimper, Allegra scrambled to her hooves and dashed to the door. Her movement was awkward as she held one hoof to her face, and she seemed to fumble with the door handle for a few moments before she finally got it open. When it slammed shut again, I gave another glance backwards at Octy. Her calm veil was still holding strong, with only the glassy look in her eyes betraying any emotional distress.

”You ask me,” Staccato growled. “Why I did not simply make another attempt to impregnate my wife?”

I turned back to face him, and felt my ears droop as the look on his face turned into one of seething hatred.

“Well, Miss Scratch. Clearly your powers of deduction far exceed my own, if only I had thought to attempt such a thing. But I daresay my attempts would have fallen short, as unfortunately my wife’s first endeavour towards pregnancy left her womb unsuitable for any further attempts. Had I known she was not fit for breeding, I assure you I would have courted somepony else. But as a wretched homosexual, I’m hardly surprised that the intricacies of copulation are a mystery to you.”

”She… what... but…”

“And what else could I do? Yes I had sympathy on my side when we lost Symphonic, but the scandal that would have broken after Philharmonic… ugh. Maybe I could have courted a mistress? Oh the tabloids would have just eaten that up, poor Staccato Melody, deranged and in grief after the loss of his second son, finds solace in another mare but brings a bastard child into the world. No amount of sympathy to my plight would salvage the damage to my reputation.”

I found my hooves again. “Alright, you’d claimed Octy was adopted, why not just adopt a colt instead if having a male child was that damn important?!”

“Because I’d already backed myself into a corner you fool,” he shouted back at me. “To think how I’d be viewed by my peers if I admitted that I’d allowed my son to debase himself in such an affront to nature. And to add insult to injury, my wife insisted that I bankroll the entire process?! If I have one regret in my life, it’s that I didn’t put my hoof down and stop that nonsense before it got too far. I was too soft when Philharmonic was a child, I wish I had the backbone back then that I do now. No, the adoption story was the only way. But the cover-up was that we only adopted a filly because we were touched by how strong a resemblance there was to our lost son. A story which would fall apart if we adopted a colt.”

“Listen to yourself,” I gasped, not quite able to believe what the dude was saying. “You care more about what other ponies think than you do your own daughter’s happiness and well-being. Yeah you paid for her to transition, but you didn’t give her an ounce of moral support. Fuck me, you made her feel like it was something to be ashamed of. And for what, all in the name of tradition?”

“Tradition is all we have!”

”Tradition is just peer pressure from dead ponies!”

“Oh will you both shut up!”

Both me and Staccato jumped as Octavia thrust herself right into the middle of the fray. I hadn’t even realised how loud we’d been shouting until the quietness of the room deafened me. And for a few moments, the only sounds were the steady beeping of the various pieces of hospital machinery, and the heaving breaths of Staccato and me.

“Vinyl,” Octy said, facing me. “Please, allow me.”

”No, Octy I…”

“Please. Let me say my peace.” Her gaze pierced me like a knife, but… that look of determination on her face. She had to do this for herself.

”Okay,” I conceded.

“Father,” she began, turning to Staccato. “Firstly, I feel like I should clarify something on Vinyl’s part. I gather that in a similar vein to how you thoroughly research the background of anypony wanting to do business with you before you sign into a contract, you had your underlings gather information regarding Vinyl as well?”

“Naturally,” Staccato replied evenly. He had returned to old faithful stoic-mode, but there was no hiding the rise and fall of his chest as he regained energy after our argument. “I don’t allow anypony into my home without thoroughly researching them.”

“So would I be right in assuming that among those research materials there was included a newspaper clipping, a few years old, regarding an altercation with another pony named Neon Lights?”

”That is correct.”

”Aw fuck.”

”Vinyl, hush.”

”Sorry.”

“What the newspaper fails to mention,” Octavia continued. “Is the provocation that led Vinyl to lash out and attack Neon Lights in the first place.”

Staccato raised an eyebrow. “And what provocation was that?”

”Neon Lights was incredibly inebriated that night. And there may have been more illicit substances involved, but that’s purely speculation. Regardless, at one point in the evening, his inhibitions dropped and suddenly I found myself squarely in his crosshairs. Vinyl and I weren’t formally together at this point, but we’d… ermm… experimented together, shall we say?”

I think at this point Octy was too wrapped up in remembering the details of the story, because if she caught the look of pure disgust that Staccato wore in response to that sentence, she didn’t react to it.

“Regardless,” she said. “I found myself to be the subject of his desires, and he wasn’t overly receptive to being told ‘no’. In fact after repeated attempts failed, and despite my efforts to inform him that I simply had no interest in stallions, he proceeded to force himself upon me. It was during this that the performance Vinyl had been giving drew to a close, and when she saw Neon Lights atop me and my desperate attempts to get away… well, the headlines explain everything else.”

Yeah… it’s not my proudest moment. Neon had to get stitches after that, and you can still see the scar to this day. Looking back, I don’t remember much about the actual assault. I think I had another ‘seeing red’ moment and just… all I remember is coming to and wondering why my hooves hurt. I never expected it to happen again, but tonight was an extreme case. Perhaps I need to think about anger management therapy.

“So,” Octavia concluded. “Do not judge her too harshly for that incident. She was defending me. End of story.”

Staccato seemed to be mulling that over. “Okay then, child. Anything else?”

Octy sighed. “Yes. I can’t keep the pretences up any longer. The weight is too much. I thought I had accepted my lot in life, but the way you talk about me, like me being myself is such a burden on you… it’s not something I can bear any longer.”

“Stuff and nonsense, child,” Staccato chided. “I thought I raised you to have more backbone.”

“Vinyl is right though, tradition is just peer pressure from dead ponies. And it’s that tradition that made you put up walls between us, when I started to live my life as the pony I truly am. Please Father, let us break that wall down together. Tell everypony who I really am. I am your child, your daughter. I am transgender, and so, so proud to say it. That should never have to be a point of shame for you. I know there’d be a lot of work into rebuilding our relationship, but I’m willing to put in the effort if you are.”

My jaw dropped. After everything that had happened, everything Staccato had done, Octy was giving him a chance to clean the slate. Damn, this mare was too pure for this world, way too willing to forgive and forget. This stallion was single-hoofedly responsible for her seeing herself as some freak of nature for almost her entire life. The reason she’d never had the courage to tell me that she’d been born as a colt. And here she was, throwing him an olive branch.

A shaky hoof slowly rose up from the bed, moving towards Octavia’s face. My heart stopped for a moment, but it came to rest gently against the side of her muzzle. And just… held her there. Could… could her words have gotten through to him? She let out a sob, and leaned into the hoof as tears started flowing down her cheeks.

”Octavia…” Staccato whispered.

“Yes, yes Father,” she laughed, her voice bordering on hysterics as the fur on her muzzle began to darken with tears. “We can start again, I just know we can.”

But Staccato pulled his hoof away, resting it on the side of his bed. He stared up at her, and gave the most barely perceptible shake of his head. “I lost one son,” he muttered. “And then you took the other one away...”

His hoof twitched. Time seemed to stand still as I saw what was coming, just a fraction of a second before it happened. Adrenaline surged through my system as I tried to push myself up out of my wheelchair, to stop it in any way I could. But I wasn’t fast enough. Up, his hoof swung.

THWACK!

I stared in silent shock. Staccato gasped. Octavia sobbed. In mid-air, she’d intercepted his hoof with her own. Now she was pinning it back down on the bed, trembling furiously as she held her other hoof high above her head, readying a strike of her own in reply.

“I didn’t take anypony away from you,” Octy said, her voice shaky. “Philharmonic Melody never existed. He was simply a mask I was forced to wear for the earliest part of my life. If I am guilty of anything, it is purely that I had the audacity to remove that mask.”

Staccato looked in disbelief from her face, to her hoof pinning his own down. “How dare you?! You… you insolent wretch!”

Octavia cackled maniacally. “Oh, oh I dare, Father!” She leaned in so her face was inches from his, her teary eyes wild and feral. “I dare to free myself from the shackles you imposed upon me from birth! Even before I found out who I truly was, my life was never really my own, now was it? Oh it was all set out for me, everything was written, your perfect son would go on to inherit your vast fortune. Well you know what!? Fuck your fortune, fuck your perfect little story, and fuck you!”

At this point, Octy was even scaring me. This was a side of her I’d never seen before. And Staccato… oh, that dude definitely pissed himself as his wild-eyed daughter got right up in his grill. So much for being the all-knowing, unconquerable head of the household. No, he was getting some much needed comeuppance now. I liked the words she was saying to him, even if the way she said them was damn terrifying.

“And your bloodline?” she continued, practically foaming at the mouth. “Your bloodline dies with you. Oh Father, you have my gratitude for financing my transition, don’t ever doubt that. But you get nothing else from me. Not now, not ever again. When the history books look back on Staccato Melody, all that there shall be is a footnote calling him a miserable, abusive twat whose pathetic desire to keep himself relevant in high society cost him his family.”

She turned and stormed towards the door, leaving both me and Staccato in stunned silence. I mean, good for her, she really did say her peace. There was a lot to unpack from her words, and they’d definitely been a long time coming. The only problem was, these words came from a broken heart. As she pushed past me, I got a look at her face. Her eyes. Those little diamonds… they’d shattered.

“You lost one son,” she cried as she stopped at the door. She wasn’t even trying to hide the fact that her anger had made way for just… unrelenting pain. “Most ponies would use that as an eye-opener to what really matters. We could have been a happy family. And you threw it away. You did that. Change your ways, or you will die a very lonely stallion.”

And with that, she threw the door open and left. Echoing hoofsteps faded away as she ran down the corridor, with the unmistakable sound of hysterical crying mixed in just to wrench my heart out of my chest.

When I could no longer hear her, I turned back to face Staccato. Oh, his face… this was the best expression of the day. Utter disbelief and horror. How dare he be spoken to in such a way, right? Well she dared. She gave him exactly the verbal assault he deserved. And I didn’t want to spend another minute in a room with him.

Yeah, it was probably pretty stupid, but fuck everything. I started unhooking all the wires and tubes connected to my forelegs. The machine beeped at me in protest, but screw it. I didn’t care. I just had to get out of there. After I very carefully removed a needle several inches long from my wrist, I looked myself up and down to make sure I’d gotten them all. Then, I rose to my hooves and glared at the stallion in the bed. As I ripped off my hospital gown, I had a moment of clarity. The only thing that had been scary about Staccato Melody was the hold he’d had over Octavia. With that gone… he was just a pathetic old stallion with bigoted views and too much money.

He grunted in surprise as I threw the blue gown in his face. Oh there was so much I wanted to say to him. There weren’t enough words in existence for me to stress enough to him how much of a piece of shit he was. How he deserved everything that had just come to him. And that I seriously hoped he spent the rest of his life in misery, squalor and loneliness. But, I settled for one of my abuela’s favourite insults.

“Que te folle un pez,” I said simply, and then left. I didn’t look back.

On the bench outside, Allegra was waiting. She looked up at me in confusion as the door clicked shut. Oh, her eye… there was already a giant bruise forming, and everything around that eye was swollen and puffy.

”What’s wrong?” she asked.

”Just... karma,” I explained. “You should go get that eye checked out, y’know.”

“Oh err…” she seemed to stumble at the suggestion, like the idea hadn’t even occured to her. “I shall do, darling, I just wanted to make sure you were both okay first. But then Octavia just went careening off down the corridor, crying her eyes out.”

“We’re both fine,” I said. “Well… not fine but, we’ll be… I don’t know, okay. Just, which way did Octy go?”

Allegra pointed. “That way.”

”Thanks,” I said, breaking into a run down the corridor. I made it a few metres before I stopped. “Hey, Allegra?” I called back.

She looked at me, puzzled. “Yes dear?”

”Your whole family was in on the moonshining, right? So how’d you end up meshing into the high society stuff?”

”Oh, umm…” she leant back in her chair, bemused by the question. “Well, once the prohibition era ended, they continued running the distillery they’d set up on the outskirts of Trottingham. Except, they didn’t need to be so ‘cloak and dagger’ any more, as it was no longer illegal, so they brewed scotch whiskeys instead. It was a profitable venture, they purchased parcels of land to open a vineyard as well, expanding into wine production. By the time my father was born, they were an established fixture of Trottingham culture.”

”So, your whole family is wealthy?”

”Err… a somewhat impertinent question, but yes.”

“Did you and Staccato sign a pre-nuptial?”

”I say Vinyl, this is getting somewhat…”

”Please! Just… I don’t have time, just answer the question.”

She paused. “Yes, we did. Our family fortunes were to remain separate.”

“Okay,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Run. Divorce him and run. He is pure scum, and you’ll be better off without him. I think it’s fair to say Octy just cut him out of her life, and please, for your own sake, you should do the same.”

I didn’t wait to hear what she had to say in reply. All I could think of at that moment was catching up to Octavia. So I just… ran. I figured she’d want some fresh air after her face-to-face with her old man, so I followed the signs for the exit. Some of the hospital staff in white uniforms must’ve recognised me, as they shouted for me to stop. They told me I needed to go lie down, they needed to keep me for observations. So I just shouted back that they could observe my asshole as I went out the front door.

Mature? Not really. But I didn’t care, I had no time to stop for anypony that wasn’t Octavia right now, and it felt good to vent a bit of frustration too.

Smart? Again, not really. With the whack on my head, leaving the hospital right now was probably the dumbest thing I could do, but I was on a roll with the bad decisions tonight, and at this point it was a sunk cost.

As I ran, I noticed blood trickling from the spot on my wrist where I’d pulled the really big needle out. As soon as I was sure there was nopony chasing me, I dove into a bathroom door. Very quickly, I ripped the bandage off of my head and tied it around my wrist and hoof. Hopefully that’d stay in place long enough to stop the bleeding. And with that, I poked my head out the door to make sure the coast was clear, and continued running.

Eventually, I burst through a set of glass double doors into the night. The very rainy night. Octy stood just a few metres away, facing outwards into the darkness. Her whole body shook violently as she wailed and sobbed. And my heart fucking ripped in half.

I raced to her side, pulling her in tight. She almost seemed to act on instinct as her hooves clamped around me. The fact we were both getting soaked with rain went unnoticed by her as she buried her face in my chest and howled, letting all her pent up pain and frustration out in one horrible symphony of heartbreak that felt like icicles in my heart.

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do.

Here we were, hundreds of miles from home, with rain drumming down on us, and we had nowhere to fucking go. As I’d left Allegra behind, I only had one objective in my mind: catch up to Octavia. But then I realised, it was like a dog chasing a carriage. I’d caught her, so now what?

And then the universe must’ve looked down on us and figured we’d been through enough shit for one day, because it threw us a lifeline. Funny how I’d thought about dogs chasing carriages, as one with a familiar sign lit up on its roof started passing us by at that exact moment. A carriage, not a dog. Obviously.

”Hey, woah. Taxi!” I shouted.

---

True to my expectations, I don’t sleep a wink. Octavia manages it, and I figure of the two of us, she’s probably the one who needs it more. Exhaustion creeps up towards me, and my rational thinking comes and goes in waves. The dark room begins to light up as the sun starts to rise, and I think the painkillers they had me on at the hospital are starting to finally wear off. Though, weirdly, my head doesn’t hurt as bad as I thought it would. Maybe my rain soaked scalp helped cool the swelling? I dunno, I ain’t a doctor.

I watch, almost transfixed as the dying potted plant in the room begins to brighten. Shadows form behind it as the light gradually intensifies. The deep blue light fades slowly to orange, and when sunlight finally breaches the decaying room, it instantly warms me.

Octy stirs slightly as the room lightens around us. However, the warmth only spreads. I don’t know what time the storm finally passed us by last night, but from where I’m sat I can just about see the sky outside as the sun makes its relentless climb upwards. It’s a clear and cloudless day today. Huh. It couldn’t have been a day earlier?

Exhaustion must have been dragging me down, because I barely even reacted when the door opened and a stallion stepped in. Judging by his uniform and the whistle hanging from his shirt pocket, he probably worked for the rail company.

”Oh bloody hell,” he exclaims when he sees us on the bench. “Bloody vagrants, you couldn’t have found somewhere else to kip last night? You’d best be getting on the first train out of here, you mark my words, else I’ll be ringing the coppers. You hear?”

I give a limp nod in reply, and he steps through a doorway into the information booth to start sorting though leaflets.

If he was here starting a shift, then that must mean the first train would be here soon. What time was our train again? I don’t know where I put the timetable, but I vaguely recall the number seven being significant, so more than likely, it’s a seven o’clock train. I manage to sum up the energy to ask the clerk what time it was, to which he grumpily points to the old clock on the wall (which I’d totally forgotten about) and says it is half past six.

Hehehe, somepony hasn’t had his morning coffee…

The thought of coffee is enough to stir me. I turn to eye up the machine next to one of the benches, but… nope. Not gonna move Octy just yet. She’s able to disconnect from everything enough to sleep, and I damn well ain’t gonna deprive her of that until I actually have to. Time marches slowly past, and I briefly allow myself to bask in the comfort of the gradually-warming room.

And then my ears flick. Is it my imagination or was that… nope, that is definitely a train whistle in the distance. Chugging noises accompany it, and at the information booth the clerk starts busying himself even more with his organising of all the leaflets. I’ll admit, I’m not looking forward to what lies ahead. There is so much me and Octy have to unpack from the last twenty-four hours. But I love her. And she loves me. Together, we’ve got this. I know we do.

”Octy,” I whisper, giving her the gentlest shake I could manage. “Wake up, it’s time to go home.”

Comments

[Daemonabacus]

This was intense. All things considered, I think Vinal handled it fairly well; should probably get that head checked though. Oh, and I loved the swears! Hilarious.

[TheLonelyDraconequus]

Well, no stabbing but good enough. Love douchebags getting their due.