Life Is A Stage
“We are our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.”
-Tom Robbins
“Not such a bad night, huh Scratch?” Shining Armor was feeling good about, well everything. It seemed like Vinyl had hit it off with Intrepid really well, and Shining was able to spend some time with Cadance. Seemed like a win win for everypony.
“It was alright, Twinkle. Tell Cadance she did an alright job.” Right back to being Vinyl, closed and aloof. There was something blocking any real progress between the two of them, and the sooner he could figure it out, the better.
“Just alright? Intrepid and you hit it off pretty well before the show. I’ve never heard you get so excited.” He gave his charge a playful nudge, hoping to elicit the spark he had seen in the concert hall.
“You’ve only known me for a couple of days, Twinkle. Calm down.” Shining could feel the walls being built quicker than they had been torn down earlier. Just a day ago, she put on a fashion show and wanted his genuine honest opinion. Now...now she was as cold as when he was first assigned to her.
A silence fell between the two as they trotted through the capital city under the light of the moon. It was quite a beautiful night, he had to admit to himself. Not a cloud in sight, all of the stars visible. It was nights like these that Twilight would be reciting all of the constellations.
“Centaur, Manticore, Cerberus and The Sister are the stars in the northern hemisphere…” He halfheartedly mumbled the tune under his breath. It was a song Twily used to help her memorize the constellations, and it was catchy he had to admit.
“Are you going senile over there, Twinkle?” Shining shook his head and gave a little chuckle.
“Just singing a song my sister uses to study. It helped her memorize the constellations.” He pointed up towards the brightest stars in the night sky, all four of them. “You see those four, the ones that surround the moon? They make up The Sister.” His hoof pointed to a grouping of stars that appeared from behind a building. “That’s Centaur, you can just make out his bow and hooves.”
“You like astronomy? I guess Twinkle was the right nickname.” There it was, that playful spark. Whatever he was doing, it was striking the right chord now if only he could pinpoint what it was so he could keep doing it.
“My dad’s a professor of astronomy and my little sister is the personal protege of Celestia, the sky is kind of a big deal in the family. Sooner or later you’re going to hear everything about it.” He thought about it for a second and realized that he was really well connected. Like, really well connected.
“And you’re banging a Princess. Gotta say Twinkle, you’re a stallion to be reckoned with. Mess with you and the full power of the establishment will come down on your enemies, huh?”
“We’re not…” The stallion lowered his voice to a whisper. “We’re not banging, alright Scratch? I would appreciate it if you kept it down.” A smile spread across the mare’s face, then it started to crack and a hearty laugh followed.
“Oh man, Twinkle, don’t tell me you haven’t made a move on the Princess yet.” Shining stayed quiet, he could feel his face getting hot from the blush creeping in. “You haven’t?! Are you serious?” Shining lowered his head. “Dude, she is the Princess of LOVE! Can you imagine? I mean-I-what?!” Vinyl was as flustered as Shining was at the moment.
“It’s not like we haven’t talked about it or anything…” The guard finally got out after a few seconds of terrible tension-filled silence. “We just want to wait.” It was true, Cadance had agreed that waiting was for the best, after all a couple who is comfortable with each other emotionally would be better suited for whatever surprises could arise from a more physical relationship, or at least that’s the excuse they both agreed upon.
“For what? The Apocalypse?” Vinyl stopped in the middle of the street, making Shining stop with her. “How long have you two been dating? Six months? A year?” Oh boy, this again. Shining had dealt with this situation before and it was never fun.
“F-Four years…” He managed to mumble out.
“Four years?!” Vinyl roared so loud that a foal woke up in one of the houses nearby, the cries easily audible in the street. “Are you kidding me? Four years? Dear sweet Celestia….four years? How blue are your-”
“Can you not?” Shining Armor cut off the mare before her statement could be completed. “I catch enough flak from my friends, alright? I don’t need any from you.” There was a bit more venom in that statement than he had originally planned. He couldn’t feel bad about it either, there had been so many situations where his friends had poked fun at him and pushed him that he felt something had to be done. “We’ll get to it when we’re ready, alright? Be that a month or years from now. Can we drop it now?”
A silence followed. One that stayed and both of them were afraid to break. With no more words to be said, and his temper still simmering, Shining Armor kept walking back to Vinyl’s home. It didn’t matter if she didn’t feel like coming, because she would be dragged along anyways.
“Hey!” He could hear Vinyl’s hoofsteps coming up on him quick. “Twinkle-Shining!” The mare caught up with him and was now keeping pace. “Listen man, I’m sorry alright? Sometimes I just run my mouth. It has a mind of its own, y’know?”
“I can tell. I just wish you could tell it to shut up once in awhile. We need to get this whole thing between you and I to work, and I don’t think the attitude helps.” Shining Armor immediately regretted his decision. He had let his emotions do the talking instead of his professionalism. stunts like that would only alienate Vinyl further from him, drawing out this whole ordeal.
“Me? You’re going to blame all of this on me? I’m sorry that I’m not okay with some random guard prying into my life!” Vinyl started to walk quicker, Shining matched her speed. “That’s all you’ve been good for, prying and opening things you shouldn’t!”
“It’s my job!” Shining could feel his brow furrowing. This was not helping the situation at all, but it was helping let loose some of the stress these last few days had accumulated. “I have to figure out what’s wrong and I have to fix it! You think that’s easy when you won’t open up?”
Vinyl stopped in front of the door to her apartment building, the small light above the door putting her in a spotlight. She turned around, and in that moment Shining knew Vinyl’s temper. Her eyes, usually a shade of magenta, seemed to burn red with anger.
“Fix? Fix?! Is that what I am? Some machine that somepony said needed fixed? Do I look like a bucking clock to you? A broken down carriage?” The mare advanced on him until their muzzles were mere inches from one another. “You want to fix something, go be a mechanic. I don’t need fixing, Twinkle.” The fire in Vinyl’s eyes died as she backed down and turned towards the door. “If you don’t like it, just say the job’s done.” With that, Vinyl went inside.
For a brief moment, Shining Armor considered it. He could just say she was rehabilitated as much as he could tell and get on with his life. Go back to Cadance and just being a guard, none of this psychologist nonsense. It would be so easy.
----
Vinyl slammed the door to her room behind her. The bottle of whiskey she clutched in her magic got set on a dresser crowded with similar bottles. It was going to be one of those nights.
How dare he just go assume she needed to be ‘fixed’! Hell, that she could be fixed. Ponies didn’t get fixed they got better, and right now Vinyl was as good as she was comfortable with.
“I’m not broken…” The unicorn mumbled out. She grabbed the whiskey from the dresser and took a swig. The familiar burn that slid its way down her throat brought little comfort to the mare.
“I’m….not…” Vinyl struggled to get the words out again, tears welling up in her eyes. The phrase was something that brought up a lot of memories, none of them good.
‘You’re not broken.’
The words were uttered to her by her father years ago, after a day at school that ended in a bunch of the foals mocking Vinyl for not being good at magic. There was only so much you could do to console a filly, and her dad did his best.
‘I promise you, you’re not broken. You just need time.’
The words echoed around this room, the room where they were once uttered. It was like a phantom was relaying the words from the past to the present.
“What if it takes too long…?” Vinyl fell on her bed and took another swig from the bottle. “What if there isn’t enough time?” Now the tears were flowing freely as she recited the material ripped from time itself.
‘There’s a lot of time out there, Vinyl. You just need to find the right stretch of it.’
“That sounds hard…” The blanket that lay sprawled out across the bed, magically got pulled over the distraught mare. She sat the whiskey bottle on the nightstand and pulled the blankets over her horned head.
This time there was no answer, real or imagined. Just the silence of a room. The only sounds were of Vinyl’s ragged breath from crying. A silence too real, and too well known.
The more tears that came out, the more angry Vinyl became with herself. She wasn’t this weak! She would never let somepony like Twinkle upset her this much! Not before today and not today either.
In a fit of anger, she threw off her covers, turned on her speakers and dragged her DJ deck over to her. There was only one way she was going to express herself, and it wasn’t going to be through crying, it was going to be through music.
----
Shining couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t any fault of his own, it was the bass shaking the whole apartment that was keeping him, and he was sure the neighbors as well, up. A few minutes after he had entered the house, the music had started. Now, hours later, it still hadn’t stopped.
“This is ridiculous.” The stallion growled as he rolled onto his hooves from the couch. He was going to stop this, whether she liked him right now or not. He needed sleep on principle. Shining banged on the door with the hoof, hard enough that she had to hear it over the music.
“Knock it off, Scratch! Turn it down so us normal ponies can get some sleep!” No dice, no response came from the other side of the door. A quick test of the knob told him that any regular means of ingress were impossible. That left two choices: either knock down the door or let this nonsense continue. Shining briefly considered the former, but decided that would do nothing but hurt the already...strained relationship the two were sharing. The latter seemed the better option, if only for the night.
A particularly loud drop followed, shaking the house more than normal. The bookshelf that beside Vinyl’s door fell over in the madness of the electronica induced quake. Originally, Shining Armor was just going to pick up the bookshelf, but that thought existed for only a brief second.
There was a door behind the bookshelf, a secret door! What reason could Vinyl have for hiding a door in her home? Was she really a criminal? Hiding her exploits in some secret lair? Or was it some secret extension of her room that she didn’t want Shining to know about? Or, it occurred to him, it might just be a guest room she didn’t want ponies to use due to her antisocial personality.
Once the door opened, the young stallion realized all too well what it was. A bed was perfectly made, clothes were laid out and ready to be worn, jewelry and photos of a happy young family adorned the dresser and nightstand. It was all coated in a thick layer of dust.
This was Vinyl’s parents’ room...
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Yeah... things got heavy pretty quick this chapter.
Well this dropped on the keys like a bag of rocks...
6778722
I got a surge of creativity. Gonna finish this out strong!
Well. That went from medium-heavy to 100lbs of lead in a second.
o_o
6778892
Gravitas, man. Every story needs some.
6775012 lovely chapter, but I feel as though Vinyl and Intrepid compliment each other because Cadence.
Great to have this active again. Looks like Shining is making progress with Vinyl, only for him to put his hoof in it. Still, that parents room is probably key, Vinyl's parental issues are pretty obviously a big part of what is wrong with her.
"They're white." <== obvious comeback.
Geeze, Shining, it's time to make a move on that relationship.
Ooooooo boy... you best leave now... mm mm mm.
Nice chappie
Best fic with scratch in it yet.
Wow, this reminds me a lot during my therapy days when my dad kept saying I needed pills and my mom disagreed strongly.
It was rough when I felt didn't a need ‘fix’ just lonely. Powerful chapter, indeed.
Shining, there's nothing wrong with that. It's quite virtuous, really, that your relationship isn't defined by intercourse. Keep waiting until the time is right, it'll be worth your while.