14 - Inner Turmoil
“A Rainbow Dash from another world?!” Windy Whistles exclaimed, her deep magenta eyes shimmering with delighted excitement. Her lips peeled back into a wide, ecstatic grin. “Best. Daughter from another dimension. EVER!”
Rainbow let out a weak chuckle, averting her eyes from her overly-enthusiastic mother and instead choosing to stare at her other self. The other, and more native, Rainbow Dash was looking back at her with a grin of her own, albeit a far more subtle and relaxed one.
“You’re looking good!” Bow Hothoof agreed emphatically. “Loving the ponytail.”
Rainbow lifted a hoof, tenderly lifting up the end of her mane. “Er… y-yeah, thanks, I made it up myself,” she said awkwardly, her voice barely audible.
They were standing in the living room of her foalhood home, her birth parents in front of her with their trademarked excitement, and her other self standing next to her. She wasn’t entirely sure how she had let herself get dragged over here, especially after that speech she gave on the clouds, but…
“Hey,” Windy’s voice called out to her, far gentler than before. A cyan hoof reached out, lifting Rainbow’s chin until she was face to face with her mother’s smile. “Are you okay? You’re being very… quiet.”
Rainbow hesitated, a lump forming in her throat. The moment they had walked in, her other self had gone to great lengths to explain the situation to them, and in the flurry of technicalities and excitement, Rainbow had, for a moment, become completely detached from what was happening. Who she was seeing.
Slowly, her eyes began to water up, her own hoof gently curling around Windy’s. “M-mum,” she choked out, her ears slowly lowering. “I… I…”
Windy’s expression softened even more before she pulled Rainbow into a gentle embrace. The pegasus screwed her eyes shut and returned the hug for all she was worth, burying her face into Windy’s shoulder and openly sobbing as years of pent up guilt and grief were given an outlet.
She felt Bow join in on the embrace a moment later, and her cries only grew louder. It was all so familiar… how long had it been since she had felt this embrace? How long since she had been surrounded in this blanket of warmth and affection? How long since she had heard her parents’ soothing voices whispering assurances to her?
Too long, she decided, squeezing Windy even closer. Far, far too long.
Eventually, the hug came to an end. Windy pulled back somewhat, a few tears of her own shining in her eyes. She sniffled and placed her hoof on Rainbow’s chest. “Why don’t you go ahead and sit down? I’ll be back in a second with some food, and we can talk as long as you want.”
Rainbow gave a stiff, shaky nod.”Y-yeah… yes, please. I’d like that…”
Windy put her hoof to Rainbow’s cheek, offering her one more tender smile before turning and exiting the room. Bow quietly led Rainbow over to the couch and set her down before sitting down beside her.
A peaceful silence fell over the room, then. Rainbow closed her eyes, taking several deep breaths. Her heart was pounding frantically in her chest from the sudden realization of what she had just committed to. But it wasn’t frantic with fear or grief. No, this was joy. Pure, unfiltered joy.
A draft blew through the room, soft and subtle. Rainbow shuddered and opened her eyes to look for the source of the disturbance. Which genius had decided to leave a window open now of all times?
She let out a frightened gasp at what she saw. In the brief few minutes her eyes had been closed, the home had seemingly gone completely to waste. A thick layer of dust had accumulated on every surface it could cling to. Cobwebs filled the corners, and the curtains had gone old and ratty from years of misuse. Worst of all? The furniture was all gone. Every sign of habitation had been completely removed. Even the couch was gone! Rainbow was sitting on her haunches in the middle of the room.
“What the?! Mum!? DAD?!” she cried out, standing up and spinning around. The joy rapidly bled out of her heart, replaced with abject terror. Confused, she darted into the kitchen, only to find it just as empty as the living room. A lone plate sat on the barren counter, a long-decayed lump of what was presumably once a sandwich residing on top with flies buzzing hungrily around it.
“Where are you?!” Rainbow tried again, flying up the stairs and checking the bedrooms. No voices answered her panicked cries, however, and the rooms were just as empty and devoid of life as the rest of the house. A deep, unsettling chill wormed its way into her soul, making her shiver as if caught in a fearsome blizzard.
She came back downstairs a moment later, hyperventilating. Her eyes darted around, desperate for any sign of her family, or even her other self. The house was empty. She would have to try outside. However, when she tried the handle, she discovered that the front door was locked. Grunting, she shoved her shoulder against it.
Once, twice, three times she hit before the door finally came loose with the deafening crack of twisting metal. Staggering out onto the front walkway, Rainbow’s eyes frantically scanned the yard for any sign of what was happening. All she found, however, was an old ‘for sale’ sign that had tilted slightly in the high-altitude winds. The rest of Cloudsdale lay beyond, seemingly untouched, but somehow no less terrifying to behold.
“Rainbow Dash,” a dry, raspy gurgle of a voice said to her right. Rainbow went rigid, a deep-seated fight or flight response going off in the back of her mind. She turned to look, her breath starting to come in laboured, heaving gasps.
Her eyes widened. “M-mum… D-dad…?”
Bow Hothoof and Windy Whistles both stood before her. But there was something different about them, something wrong. Their eyes were devoid of light or life, their coats had gone disturbingly pale, and old bruises and scrapes had festered across their bodies. Rainbow’s blood ran cold when she realized that she was staring at her parents as they were when she had been taken away from them in Baltimare.
Windy stepped forward, her bones creaking audibly under her flesh. “Why did you abandon us…?” she choked out, her words like nails on a chalkboard.
Bow followed after her. “How could you replace us like this?”
Rainbow backed away, slowly shaking her head in denial. “N-no, I… I d-didn’t replace you, I just…”
“You left us,” Windy croaked, her lips peeling back into an ugly grimace. “You left us to rot. You forgot us!”
“You couldn’t save us,” Bow added in a low, guttural snarl. “You couldn’t cope with that. So you replaced us the moment you got a chance!”
“NO!” Rainbow shouted before turning and running the other way, every instinct in her body telling her to flee, to find shelter and hide. But to her mounting horror, the angered words of her dead parents rang in her ears no matter how hard or fast she ran. It was as if they were breathing down her neck, their words making her skin crawl and her heart shrivel.
All around her, a wild storm had suddenly emerged from the sky, turning the sky black and lashing at her with furious rains and galeforce winds. The pushback from the storm was so intense that Rainbow had to slow down and lower her head to protect her eyes. An intense gust of wind rendered her efforts pointless, throwing her off of her hooves and sending her careening wildly through the air.
“HELP ME!” she cried out, her eyes wide with terror. “SOMEPONY HELP ME!”
The only answer she received was agonizing pain flaring up in her wings when she struck the ground. Two sickening crunches filled her ears, and when she came to a stop, a long, agonized wail tore past her lips. The sound was deafening in her ears but was swallowed immediately by the howl of the storm.
Gasping, struggling to keep a hold of herself, Rainbow opened her eyes, squinting against the storm. She was now on a nondescript bit of cloud, surrounded on all sides by the storm. But there was something up ahead. If she squinted, she could just about make it out. It looked like…
“Rainbow…?”
The voice was distant but… familiar… The shape seemed vaguely equine, and it was getting closer. The shadow of wings beating through the air, the figure seemingly entirely unaffected by the raging storm that threatened to swallow Rainbow whole, not quite unlike the very one that had brought her here, to begin with.
But for that figure…
“Rainbow!”
Rainbow Dash’s eyes widened as the figure emerged to reveal the form of Twilight Sparkle, the changeling princess who was a native of this world. Her slit-like pupils stared down at her with concern as she landed on the cloud.
“Is something wrong?”
Rainbow struggled to her hooves, her head pounding and her chest quivering as if it were being thrown around by an impossibly strong pair of hooves. Gasping for breath, she staggered for the changeling. “Twilight… h-help me,” she croaked out. Another intense gust of wind rushed by, forcing her to look down and away.
“Help you…? Why do you need help…?”
“What do you mean why!?” the pegasus retorted, closing her eyes in fear and aggravation, hoping to any divine beings out there that this familiar yet terrifyingly different mare would save her from this… thing!
But when she opened them again…
“Why did you leave me, Rainbow…?” her Twilight Sparkle asked, her lavender coat faded, her mane frazzled as her eyes stared on with little to no recognition. The total void of memory… “You said you would help me. Help me to remember, to be who I’m meant to be. You were supposed to love me! But you left me! Left our world! Abandoned me!”
With every word spoken, the storm grew louder and louder, yet never as loud as the voice of Twilight Sparkle. Rainbow took a step back, her ears folding flat against her head. “W-what?! N-no, no, Twilight! You have it all wrong! I’m trying to get home! Please! Just-”
“You left us! Hurt us!” With every accusation, the visage of the mare she loved seemed to spark with the briefest flashes of a royal changeling. “Again and again! You betrayed us! Killed us!”
“NO!”
Suddenly, there was a blast of green flames against the back of Twilight’s head. The fluctuating equine’s eyes widened in shock and pain, the smell of both burnt fur and chitin permeating throughout the erratic winds. Following that, as if in slow motion, she began to dissolve into dust.
Rainbow’s heart all but stopped in her chest when she saw the silhouette of a certain changeling drone glaring back at her from behind the dust, her eyes narrowed victoriously, and a malevolent crescent of a grin shining through the darkness like the blade of a glowing scythe.
Twilight’s voice echoed in her ears. “You never can protect the ponies you love, can you? In this, or any other world.”
Rainbow reached out a hoof, opening her mouth to scream. She never got the chance.
The clouds under her hooves disappeared with the sound of shattering glass. Plummeting into a wild freefall, Rainbow’s eyes were assaulted by image after image of all of her failures, every time she had failed her friends. All the while, the accusations of her dead parents and Twilight herself echoed louder and louder in her ears.
Frantic, Rainbow curled up into a ball as well as she could, covering her head with her hooves. “I’M SORRY!” she cried out at the top of her lungs. “IM SORRY, OKAY?! JUST STOP!”
Another flash, another image. But this one was different from the others. Instead of one of the many moments that haunted her mind and filled her heart with shame, all she saw was the full moon. Craters on its surface took on the vague shape of an alicorn’s head, something separate from the world around her, searching with an air of desperation for… something.
And then she woke up.
The negative emotions spilling into every empathic muscle in Twilight Sparkle’s brain was suffocating. Terror. Guilt. Rage. All swirling around in a toxic mist that, if other senses weren’t dulled compared to love, the changeling was certain she’d be overwhelmed and poisoned by the terrible mass.
And it all came from the erratically thrashing pegasus sleeping not so soundly in the bed, her terrified shouts bouncing off the walls of the Golden Oaks Library’s guest room.
“I’M SORRY! I’M SORRY, OKAY?! JUST STOP!”
“RAINBOW!”
“LUNA!” was the final shout as the pegasus jolted her way back into the realm of consciousness, sweat pouring in bucket-loads down through her fur as she breathed heavily in a complete panic.
“Rainbow! Please! You’re okay!” Twilight tried to assure the pegasus, hesitantly grabbing a hold of her with her hooves. “It’s me! Twilight!”
Rainbow’s eyes snapped over to her, still wide and frantic. “T-t-Twi,” she stammered out, her words quiet as if she were being strangled.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. It was just a nightmare. You’re okay,” Twilight went on, slowly lowering her voice to bring Rainbow back down.
Slowly, but surely, Rainbow’s panicking breaths began to calm down. Her hoof curled tightly around Twilight’s with a vice-like grip, as if the changeling’s hoof was a lifeline.
“You’re okay…” Twilight repeated calmly, though she was holding in her own internal panic as much as she could. “It was a nightmare. A big one. You were shouting and thrashing and… Well, you’re awake now.”
Rainbow stared at her for a few more seconds before looking away, a violent shudder running through her body. “R-right… okay… thanks,” she mumbled out. As if on auto-pilot, Rainbow pulled the blankets on her bed up and wrapped them tightly around herself for security and warmth.
“Uh…” came a decidedly more cautious call from the doorway, a hesitant Spike poking his way inside. “...Breakfast?”
“Spike…” Twilight gently chided.
“...We have eggs?”
Twilight sighed and looked to him directly. “Okay, go get it started, I guess. But…” she glanced back to Rainbow, biting her lip. The pegasus was staring out the window by her bedside. She was still shivering. “...We might be a while.”
Spike hesitated before offering a small nod and slipping out of view. With the dragon gone, Twilight quietly closed the door in her magic before returning her attention to the distraught pegasus in the room. “...Rainbow? Are you going to be okay?” she asked quietly.
Rainbow looked down for a moment before shrugging her shoulders. “...I ask myself that question a lot more than I probably should,” she grumbled before letting the blankets slide off her body and hopping down.
“That was… quite the dream, wasn’t it…?” Twilight scuffed the ground awkwardly. “Do you want to talk about it? It wasn’t about… us, was it?”
Rainbow didn’t say a word. Instead, she simply trotted for the door, dragging her hooves behind her. Twilight watched the pegasus open the door before coming to a stop. Then Rainbow looked down at herself and grimaced. “...Ugh. I need a shower.”
With that, Rainbow departed, leaving the door open behind her.
Twilight’s ears drooped, a new pit opening in her stomach as the last hair of Rainbow’s prismatic tail vanished from view. She looked aside dejectedly, feeling a sense of, unknowingly misplaced, guilt and shame at the thought of being the source of her friend’s misery.
‘She hates our kind so much that she dreams such… horrible things?’ she inwardly mused with an air of sadness any changeling could pick up a mile away. ‘Oh, Rainbow…’
And with that heartbreaking thought, Twilight moved to follow, her mind securely placed on the fact that one of her friends, no matter where they were from, still seemed to loathe her existence…
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quick someone go get princess luna, we have a dream crisis. oh wait she's dealing with a mysterious storm at the moment that left her severely injured or something.
This mysterious storm has it out for rainbow dash for some reason, not even letting Luna do her job as princess of the night.
That was actually a pretty frightening dream. I thought Rainbow meeting the counterparts of her parents was cute at first, especially all the praise they gave her like their own daughter, but I am not sure that nightmare was worth it.
Holy Emperor.... Poor Dash.....
Could this world's Luna not access Rainbow's dreams? This was a hell of a nightmare for Rainbow to go through...
There is one thing I would say and that somepony didn't do her nightly job.
Man, this was just brutal. This Rainbow is the Element of Loyalty, and thus the failures in her life would weigh down on her more than any other Bearer.
10078331
I thought of something depressing: canon Rainbow hates the fact that her parents for being so loud. This version of Rainbow would appreciate having somepony cheer for her at all.
10078934
Y'know, I never thought of it that way... and I wrote the bloody character. XD
That some Silent Hill level **** right there.
10081116
That happens. Authors learn something new about their characters from comments.
Some reader who knew something about psychology had wrote to Somber explanation how screwed Blackjack's childhood was.