Pain (IV)
“I very much appreciate your visiting, dear, but there isn’t a problem for you to solve.” Rarity gently placed her teacup back on its saucer, the extra flesh coating her arm and cannon wobbling as she did so. She turned her head to level her eyes at the corpse standing in the corner of the room. “If somepony would simply stop acting so foalish, then this situation, such as it is, would be resolved.”
Broken nodded, trying to avoid letting his own cup slip out of his hoof. Even in the times where he had barely any access to magic he could always manage to lift a fork or plate or cup or just the food itself, but such a convenience wasn’t available to the pegasus he was impersonating. Pet had made to hold it for him, but he’d waved her away to her own tea; if Rarity and Gaia met as often as it seemed, Gaia more-than-likely held her own teacup. Doing it differently might arouse suspicion.
That, and this was the first time in months that he’d had the chance to drink something other than soiled water or his own blood, and he’d be damned if he let somepony else have control of it. He quickly took another sip, trying to not react as the heated liquid washed over the cuts in his throat.
“Dawn didn’t send me up here to ‘solve a problem’. She wanted me to talk to you, Rarity.” The mare gave a small snort, but didn’t say anything. “If you don’t want me to, that’s fine. But I want you to think about how you’re affecting everypony.”
At this, the mare laughed openly. “I think you’re greatly overstating my importance, darling. After that debacle with the internment camps, Lady Dawn has made sure I’m not in a position to ‘affect’ anypony without her direct say-so.”
“I meant us, Rarity. Me, Pinkie, Rainbow, Dawn, your friends, we all get really worried when you do things like this. And besides, I’m sure she has the others on a tight leash too.” Broken couldn’t stop himself from grinning. “I know she has one on me and Lash, after all.”
“Oh, hush, there are foals here!” Rarity blushed behind her coat, her eyes quickly flicking between Pet and the corpse in the corner. “And I know exactly how tight her leash is on all of you. You and Lash don’t need to check in with her to visit your cottage in Ponyville. Thalia has her ‘experiments’ with the captives, but half the time even Dawn doesn’t know where she is. And as for Iris, that pegasus is so flippant I’m halfway convinced that she’s a rebel herself!” The bags under Rarity’s eyes seemed to darken as she glowered at the air in front of her. Broken gently placed the saucer on the table, leaning over and offering the mare a hoof. She waved it off.
The thoughts of killing her were a lot harder to stomp down than the ones for Pet.
“Rarity, you know that’s not true.”
“Isn’t it? You know how loyal she is to your tribe. You heard what she said when Dawn ordered the cloud cities brought down.” Rarity shook herself from side to side, folds of flesh swinging with her. “Hearing her run her mouth, I can be damned sure that Dawn’s ‘leash’ on her is a lot looser than mine.”
“If Dawn didn’t want to let ponies speak their mind, then she’d not have started the Revolution, Rarity.” Broken could feel the bile rising in his throat. “If Rainbow actually did anything about the cloud cities, I’m sure Dawn would have come down on her. Probably harder than on you, even; it’s not like you were trying to let the camps get that bad.”
“Mmm!” Rarity nodded, giving an affirming sound through closed lips and a mouthful of tea. “That’s quite right, darling. If I could have given every one of those creatures three meals a day, good housing, proper healthcare and education… well, as Applejack would say, ‘you can bet the gems on my flank’ that I’d have spent every bit I had doing so.” She paused for a moment, but picked back up before Broken could speak. “Such as things were, however, it was not to be. I did the best I could with what I had, even if Dawn constantly cut it back and the rebels stole a good deal of what I did manage to send down…”
“Sometimes things just don’t go your way. It’s not your fault if somepony chooses to do something bad or stupid or wrong, no matter how much it might hurt them or how much you want them to do otherwise.”
Broken blinked, somewhat surprised at how blatant his words had been. Rarity had noticed as well, starting another nod before abruptly halting it, slowly lowering her head and glaring at the disguised stallion.
“Fluttershy, darling, I am enjoying this talk, but I’ve already told you. No.” The mare drained her cup, putting it and the saucer to the table with a loud clack.
“Rarity, I know that you love her, that you’re trying to do the best you can for her.” True. “But this… what you’re doing to yourself? It’s… it’s bad for you, very bad for you.” Also true. “I’m trying to help you.” Laughably false. “I’m not going to tell you how to deal with her, but… I just want you to think about what happened with her legs.”
The mare’s eyes narrowed. “What, exactly, do you mean?”
“We know that she’s been having… difficulties, physically. You mentioned that she’d been sluggish, that you’d had to force her to get up and move for weeks before-“ he’d watched the puppet’s strings snap tumbled and fell when the seams ripped and its parts fell off it didn’t scream as the dust came from where there should be blood “-the accident. Don’t you remember?” He waited for her cautious nod before continuing. “Well, maybe this is something like that. And you didn’t start refusing to walk back then, so-“
“There is a BIG difference between not walking and not eating, Fluttershy!” Broken cursed internally as Rarity shouted in his face. “That, that was some horrible, horrible parasite, o-or disease, that wasn’t her, that did that to her, that took her legs a-and… this, this is her, i-it’s her starving herself, deliberately, and I don’t know why she’d do it, where she got it into her head that she shouldn’t eat anymore, b-because she’s always been my beautiful sister, she, she’s…” The mare trailed off, wrapping her hooves around herself as she sent a frantic glance at the corpse in the corner. “Look at her, Fluttershy, she’s barely there anymore, just skin and bone, as bad as those striped beasts that lost me the camps…”
Broken did turn himself, his gaze brushing over the familiar furnishing and decorations, his eye forcing itself onto the corpse. It had been placed in the corner, braces holding its legs such that it could look like it was standing. Its eyes were clouded thickly enough that he couldn’t see their colour; its mane hung limp and thin, several bald spots visible even at a distance. A large, pinkish-grey gash ran from just above its hairline, crossing its brow to disappear behind one of its eyes. Its form was undoubtedly thin, though it looked closer to ‘drained of blood’ than ‘eating itself to survive’.
Broken turned back to Rarity, finding a mare that much more aptly fit the latter description. She gained a manic grin as she saw the disgust on his face.
“See? She’s destroying herself. I told her as much, I told her that I wasn’t going to let her give up, not after all I’d done for her, and I told her that, if she can’t see what she’s doing to herself, then I was going to show her.” She lifted her forelegs, the limbs quaking under the effort of moving against gravity, the empty skin sliding over knobby joints.
“Rarity, have you considered that she might not need to eat anymore?” The mare’s legs dropped, and she affixed Broken with a bizarre stare.
“What do you mean, ‘not need to eat’?! Everything eats, Fluttershy, it’s a part of being alive! My sister is alive! Why wouldn’t she need to eat?!”
For some reason, as he saw the fear in her eyes, heard the notes in her voice, Broken felt a ball of ice fall into his stomach. He licked his lips, knowing exactly what he was about to say and exactly how the mare in front of him would react.
“Rarity…” he said, Gaia’s voice cracking. “…you know that Sweetie Belle is dead.”
He was prepared for her first move, dodging the teacup as it flew at him. He jumped out of his chair just before she sent several blades of magic into it, the thin lines barely penetrating the padding before they dissolved. Then he was blocking her hooves and her horn as she shrieked, her voice hurting his ears more than her limp strikes hurt his already-injured legs. She was already panting as he backed into the wall, and he could see the few muscles in her legs tense as she prepared to leap at him; the moment she moved forward he simply sidestepped, watching almost pityingly as her horn and head struck the solid stone.
“Pet-“ he started to say, but she was already there, worriedly fussing over the now-unconscious unicorn. He glanced up, his gaze finding a corner of the room and the corpse placed there. “Get her to bed, then step outside. I’ll be along in a minute.”
“S-Sir Shini- erm, M-Mi-“
“Don’t worry, Pet. I know she seemed angry, but this had to happen. It’s all part of the plan.” He gave her a grin, which she shakily returned as she carefully lifted Rarity off the floor.
The fact that she could do so with so little effort disturbed Broken far more than it should have.
He waited for her to actually leave the rooms before he moved, giving her another smile and a nod when she sent an uncertain glance his way. He was standing the moment the door closed, crossing the length of the room faster than he’d thought he would; he found himself breathing stale air as he approached the corpse.
“Eight years.” He found himself speaking, his breaths hard around the words. “She’s been stringing you along for eight years. Lying to herself about getting you back.” His vision blurred, and for some reason the corpse gained a pink tinge. He felt a lance of pain tear through his skull, and then his head lowered and his horn began to glow. “How about I give you back to where she stole you from?”
The corpse shifted, somehow, her head nodding forward. He let the spell go, and she seemed to stiffen in the eighth of a second before her head was replaced with a spray of black and red on the rest of her body and the wall behind her. Broken felt his own legs shaking, his sight turning an even darker red as another lance of pain shot through his head and the braces on the corpse’s legs bent, the body dropping to the floor with a wet slumping sound that he couldn’t describe because he needed to leave, needed to get out of that room, and he turned and watched the door starting to disappear behind the haze of pink-red-black, and he took a step towards it, then another, then another and another on his legs that he couldn’t feel past the pain in his head as he remembered something he can’t remember why can’t I remember her pushed through the door magic-first, wrenching it off its hinges and throwing himself into the hallway, the hallway that had air and light and was nothing like that room that he used to live in with his wife and her
“Sir Shining!” He heard a voice, calling him by his old name, and he took a breath into lungs that he hadn’t realized had been empty. He blinked, several times, confused at the blue strands that covered his vision before he realized that he wasn’t Gaia anymore. He’d had to go back to his actual form to use his magic.
The voice called at him again, and as he took more breaths and brushed his mane out of his eye he realized that he was feeling much better. Better than what, better than when, he wasn’t sure of, but his current state of mind was certainly far superior to whatever and whenever he was comparing it to. He felt so good he even started to laugh. And cough, because he hadn’t genuinely laughed in probably a decade and his vocal cords weren’t used to the motions not being counterbalanced by sarcasm, bitterness, and/or pain.
“Sir Shining?” The voice asked a third time, somehow more worried and confused than it had been before, and Broken was easily able to place a name to a face as he turned towards the speaker. He felt his grin widen at the look on that face that he’d placed the name to.
“Pet! Good to see you!” He laughed again. “Thanks for that, just needed a bit to finish something up in there.”
“I-is everything alright?” The mare’s eyes shifted to the doorless doorway. “P-Pet heard-“
“You didn’t hear anything you need to worry about. Just cleaning up the mess Marshmellow left behind, sweetie.” He giggled at his little joke. “All part of the plan.” Ooh, the plan, right. Almost forgot about that. Check off Taffy, Marshmellow once she wakes up, Cotton Candy soon enough if not yet… That left two. Cinnamon and Lollipop. He felt himself shrink, his laugh getting lighter and softer as he swapped his horn for wings. “C’mon, Pet, we have a meeting to get to.”
“W-we do?”
Broken gave her a look of exaggerated confusion. “Well, yeah. We need to fill Dawn in on what happened, don’t we?”
“Ah, o-of course, Sir Shi- M-Mistress Gaia.” She gained a small smile, which widened slightly as the stallion gave her a larger one. He quickly started back down the hallway, Pet following slightly behind him.
He started laughing again when he realized how much his head hurt.
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Glad to see that Sweetie was finally allowed to die. Of course, it's going to throw Rarity over the tipping point to full-on insanity...
Isn't it "Marshmallow"? I don't see how it could be additional wordplay because Rarity isn't very mellow at the moment.
Sweetie-Zombie is still best zombie. Even if her head's cut off.
5551383
"All part of the plan..."
Broken knows exactly what that kind of loss can do to somepony.
5551457
Where I'm from and to the best of my knowledge it's always been 'Marshmellow', but that's apparently not common to the world. I used my spelling for her earlier, and I'm just keeping it the same for continuity.
5551383
5553077
-.-
5553077 Oh, if it's a legitimate alternate spelling, then never mind. Out of curiosity, what country/region are you in?
You seem to have skipped "Pain (II)"?
5551383
Assuming her soul was still in that rotten corpse.
5555182
Not sure if it's legitimate so much as just how everyone does it (similar to "ain't"), but every teacher I've had here in rural Alberta's spelt it with 'mellow' rather than 'mallow', and I've been marked wrong for using the latter. It might be some local brand or something, not sure.
5555305
Don't worry, it's fully intentional. Who said that Broken's telling them everything?
5555693
The way I have it is that the 'ponified' curses are used because Equestria is a generally 'polite' society, with a larger social stigma against cussing, especially in public. They're like 'dang' or 'frick'; a way of expressing one's displeasure in a more controlled manner, and a good amount of the clunkiness is intentional to further discourage their use.
The real curses are still there (Broken's used 'fuck' several times, for instance), but they're saved for more severe situations.
5558337 Well, when I said legitimate, I was kinda beating around the bush of "is it definitely endemic to the region or just a few people?", but if multiple schoolteachers are correcting "marshmallow" to "marshmellow" that's pretty watertight evidence. That's very interesting! Thank you.
5558374
Makes sense, but that doesn't mean I have to like it
*petulantly mopes in corner*
5558337
I've seen it on packaging around here. It's either a local brand or just an Alberta thing.
I'm all caught up…
:,(
Sad thing is Twilight could have strung Rarity along just as effectively by using her hideous soul warping spells to make a similar looking unicorn filly think that she was Sweetie Belle, and everything would have been fine. It would have been much more evil yes, but not apparantly so, leaving Broken in the very uncomfortable position of having an innocent filly to take care, of not the nodding corpse of one. As wrong as it would have been, it would have shown that Twilight genuinely cared for Rarity's well being. That Rarity only had a shriveled cadaver to comfort her, one that Twilight apparantly didn't even bother to preserve as she had Spike's, really shows how little regard Twilight had for Rarity, no matter how much Twilight called her a friend.
Then again perhaps Twilight doesn't have preservation spells, and Spike's remains are just as deteriorated...
5597701
I'm not really certain what 'soul-warping' spells you're referring to. if you mean what happened to Pet, that was essentially what Twilight was worried about when Discord glanced at Broken's memories: Dawn literally ripped out a good chunk of her psyche along with her memories in order to give herself a blank slate (that could do timeline spells) to work with. It wasn't soul warping so much as tossing the victim's mind in an acid bath, and Dawn didn't even know how to do it in a way that didn't cause death or brain-death in the victim until she managed it with Pet (her attempts were a part of the 'live experimentation' she was doing with Pinkie, by the way). Actually replicating another pony's mind, especially one like Sweetie Belle whose brain had been dead for long enough that even if she had been properly brought back she would have had the mental capacities of a potato, would be an (if-not-entirely-then-almost) impossible task.
Plus, Dawn promised to bring Sweetie back, not to give Rarity a replacement. She honestly believed that she had resurrected Spike, and so she saw no reason to not do that with Sweetie once she had access to Canterlot's store of necromancy scrolls - the thought of claiming that another pony was Sweetie would never have crossed her mind.
The state of Sweetie's body is also because both Rarity and Dawn were entirely delusional as to how the necromancy (didn't) work; as Broken mentioned, necromancy as it was made the outsides look fine but left the insides a rotting morass (in animals, the rot starts in the limbs and works its way up as time goes on, something that I probably haven't mentioned yet and really should have). What happened with Sweetie is what happens when the spell is maintained for too long and starts to degrade - the rot starts showing through. Rarity and Dawn both thought that Dawn had fixed the spell and that it worked like it was supposed to, so Sweetie's degradation was seen by Rarity as being a result of disease and/or Sweetie's own self-destructive behaviour, just like it would be in a living pony. (And on that last point, Rarity's claim that Sweetie 'refused to eat' was due to the body's esophagus and back of the throat collapsing, rendering Rarity physically unable to shove food down the corpse's gullet like she'd been doing for the last seven-and-a-half years).
As for Spike, I can confirm that the same thing's happening to him as to Sweetie (to a somewhat different degree, for a variety of reasons), and that said deterioration is actually something of a plot point. Beyond that's [spoilers], though.
5597876
Well, even if "Dawn" didn't care for Rarity due to being too nutty bonkers to realize that she's talking to a shambling corpse, it still shows a striking lack of the friendships.
I was more thinking what Twilight did to Pipsqueak anyway though. Pet was... something else. She wouldn't have to recreate Sweetie's memories, just make some poor filly think she was Rarity's sister. Anyway it'd be far too un-morbid for a dark spectrum world like this, so corpse party ahoy.
5598049
I think I understand where you're coming from, but think about it from Twilight/Dawn's perspective - if you had a choice between fulfilling your promise to a dear friend and bringing a pony that they dearly loved back from the dead (in such a manner that they're exactly like they were when they were alive, yes they are, of course they are, why are you claiming otherwise
) versus taking somepony else and having them claim that they're the dead loved one, which would you consider to be more of a show of friendship?
And the Raising (what Dawn did to Pipsqueak) isn't really soul-warping either - it's essentially a mix of an incredibly strong emotional suppressant (though it doesn't remove the emotions entirely) and an Oath enforcing loyalty similar to what Broken's Celestia had with the guardponies, but a good deal stronger and without any caveats for 'betrayal' should the pony being sworn to go insane/evil.
So exactly like the Oath enforcing loyalty that Broken's Celestia had with her guardsponies. Just even stronger.
Anyways, the Raising doesn't warp a pony's soul so much as warping a pony's perspective whilst chaining the 'soul' down. Pip is still Pipsqueak, he's just had a lot of shit go down without him really understanding, and he's been misled by a pony he thought was trying to help him.
And I'm not personally sure how brainwashing a pony to believe that they're somepony else is less morbid/disturbing than tying strings to a corpse and puppeting it around. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I just honestly don't get it.