TCB: The Red Shoes

by Madrigal Baroque

Take off my red shoes

Pain.

Ana had forgotten how bad it could be. She'd spent most of the day before running on adrenaline and desperation, and after dinner last night she was so exhausted she'd collapsed into bed. She hasn't even objected when Lilac insisted on tucking her in.

She woke up with hell in her lower limbs.

Her left leg throbbed; her calf was cramping, and the bottom of her left foot felt as though it had been seared with a blowtorch.

Her right leg was ten times worse. She couldn't even feel her twisted right foot; that was the only mercy. Overwhelming the ache of strained muscles and stressed tendons was the misshapen lump that had once been her right knee. A hot, blunted iron spike was being rammed underneath her kneecap. Angry hornets, wings aflame, buzzed frantically along her nerves to places she didn't know could hurt. Desperately she tried to shift a little where she lay, desperate to achieve the smallest fraction of relief, and was rewarded with a fresh burst of agony that made her shriek in helpless torment. Pain. Pain was all she knew. It filled her senses, shut out any other thought. It was worse than the attack that had destroyed most of the bones in her legs. She'd been dazed and confused and blissfully in shock for hours afterward. She didn't even remember how she got to the backwater clinic where she'd lain for weeks, without any painkillers, believing with all her heart that there was no greater pain that existed.

She'd been wrong. The pain, the worst pain, had waited to make its appearance now, to perform its hideous wonders on her badly-healed limbs just when she'd begun to believe there was an escape.

Something jarred the mattress near her, shaking the bed and sending fresh waves of anguish through her wrecked legs. Ana screamed and a pair of impossibly huge, impossibly blue eyes stared down at her. "Ana, what's the matter?" Lilac looked both anxious and terrified. "Where does it hurt?"

"FUCK!!!" Ana screamed in the pony's face, and Lilac recoiled as if struck. Ana didn't care. "WHERE DO YOU THINK IT HURTS, YOU DAMN STUPID HORSE?!" Ana was wailing, sobbing with pain and despair and fury. "I was the premiere dancer in the finest troupe in the Western Hemisphere, the best in the fucking world, and because another bitch wanted my spot she had her fuckbuddy and his brother smash my leg bones to splinters! I'll never dance again, I can't even fucking walk, it hurts all the time, it hurts worse when I try to get around, and I JUST WANT TO FUCKING DIE!" Ana hurled a fist at the trembling muzzle and missed badly. "Just leave me the fuck alone!"

Her eyes flooding with tears, Lilac wheeled around and bolted from the room. Good, she was gone. Ana was glad. She didn't feel abandoned at all.

She gave herself over to wracking sobs that shook her whole body. It made the pain worse, but it didn't matter. Life was pain. The world was pain. Nothing else was real.

So overwhelmed was she that she didn't even know anyone had come into the room until she felt the needle slide into her arm. A vast, velvet darkness descended upon her, and Ana welcomed it as it consumed her.

She hoped she wouldn't wake up.

***

But she did.

The first thing she noticed was that her arms felt sore. No wonder, pushing that damn wheelchair around all day. It was still better than the crutches. Trying to maneuver with those fucking sticks for any distance always made her legs hurt so bad.

But that was the funny thing. It was why she noticed the ache in her arms. Her legs weren't hurting. In fact, she couldn't feel them at all.

They must've cut them right off. Good! Fucking things were useless for anything but making me miserable anyway.

But she felt hot tears welling up in her closed eyes. Those legs were hers, dammit, ruined or not. They had served her well, brought her to the pinnacle of her art, made her the toast of the continent. Without them, she was nothing. A sob escaped her raw, aching throat.

She felt something warm come to rest on her shoulder. Not a hand. A voice came from it. "Ana? It's okay. I promise, it's okay."

Ana forced her wet eyes open. Lilac's face was close to hers, those cerulean eyes wide with concern and compassion. She was resting her head on Ana's shoulder. Gently, she nuzzled the side of Ana's head with her muzzle. Ana wanted to push her away, but somehow it didn't seem worth the bother.

"My…legs…" she croaked.

"Are they still hurting? Dr Pastern said they shouldn't be."

"I can't…feel them…" Ana pushed herself up on one elbow and looked. She discovered she was no longer in the room she shared with Lilac. It looked like one of the examination rooms. She was lying in a hospital bed, covered by a thin gray blanket designed more for modesty than warmth. Underneath the thin synthcotton she could see the misshapen lumps of her legs. She tried to move them, and they shifted a little, but she felt nothing. She couldn't even feel the blanket against her legs. They were completely numb.

"The doctor did something to make your legs stop hurting," Lilac explained. "You just have to be really careful not to hurt yourself, since you can't feel any pain down there anymore. But I'll help you. When you're rested up, we can go back to our room. Your wheelchair's right over there in the corner–see? I promise, everything's going to be fine."

***

While Lilac's definition of fine differed significantly from Ana's, there was no denying that her life was easier after the nerve blocks Dr Pastern had applied to her mangled legs. She learned how to maneuver the chair, and was more mobile than she'd been since the attack. She was able to go to the classes and seminars, get to the cafeteria by herself, and if she was very careful and kept herself well supported she could even stand upright long enough to have a shower.

Even so, Ana kept mostly to herself…as much as Lilac would allow her to. Her pony roommate kept trying to introduce her to others at the Bureau. There was a quiet but handsome young server in the cafeteria. Lilac called him Trev, and somehow he always managed to provide something special for their meals. Ana hadn't tasted real strawberries since the post-performance gala after her star turn as Odette before a gathering of the Good Families. No, that wasn't true. If these Equestrian imports were any indication, she had never tasted real strawberries before.

Ana skipped lunch one day, having become engrossed in a lesson on Equestrian culture. Pastern had been right; there was dancing in Equestria, at least of a sort, as well as many other art forms. Oddly, Equestrian art echoed Earth's classic periods in ways that only the well-educated would be able to detect. She found herself engrossed in a lively discussion (along with a game designer, a folk singer, and a graphic artist) about whether Equestrian art was derived from Earth's, or vice versa. She thoroughly enjoyed the debate, and lost all track of time.

Strangely, Lilac didn't come searching for her. Ana didn't miss going to lunch, really; she had a longstanding habit of skipping the midday meal altogether. By the time the group had agreed to disagree, it was almost dinnertime.

When Ana went to the cafeteria, there was a third party at the table she shared with Lilac. An ungainly tall girl in a Green level jumpsuit sat awkwardly on a seat cushion, smiling politely and nodding when Lilac introduced her.

"This is Tib. That's not her whole name, but she has like four of them so she just goes by 'Tib'. I think it's really cute, don't you? She just came here today, all the way from New Mobileans, can you believe that? Tib, this is my roommate Ana. She was born in Atlanta. That's kind of close to where you come from, isn't it? I mean, not super close, but they're both in the Old South, so you're practically neighbors, continentally speaking. Is 'continentally' a word? I guess it is now. Anyway, Tib helped me get you a tray. You know how new I am at this stuff. Trev slipped us some extra because I told him you skipped lunch. Anyway, why isn't anypony else talking? Say hi already!"

The frizzy-haired girl–Tib–offered a cautious smile. "Hi. Nice to meet you, Ana." She had a pleasantly sweet voice that was completely at odds with her ungainly appearance.

"Pleasure." Ana nodded curtly.

"See? I knew you two would hit it off. Now, Tib, you were saying that your new roomie wants to get dinner in her room because she doesn't like crowds? Maybe after dinner we could go with you, when you take a tray back for her. You could introduce us and I'll talk her into coming in here with us every day! It's no fun being lonely. I was alone for a long time and I hated it. I remember this one time…"

As Lilac continued her narrative, Ana looked at Tib. The hazel-green eyes met hers, and Tib winked at her. Ana suppressed a smile–and winked back. Sometimes all you had to do was sit back and let Lilac filibuster.

***

Even after Trev underwent Conversion, he still helped out a lot in the caff. Now known as Chocolate Chip Muffin, or "Chip" as Lilac named him, he was more helpful than ever, and displayed a sense of fun he'd long kept buried under his cultural conditioning. He came from a Sikh family, he'd explained. Caring and supportive, but not overly given to whimsy. His parents had not chosen Conversion, but they'd allowed their son to make his own choice. He was obviously saddened by that, but it was difficult to remain melancholy with Lilac around.

Tib's roommate finally made an appearance at table after days of coaxing by a determined lavender pony. Park Eun-sook was a tiny, deceptively frail-looking Korean woman. She appeared to be in her fifties, but Ana sensed she was at least a couple of decades older. She spoke in clear, measured tones with no trace of an accent.

"What is it you call her, Tib?" Lilac was nibbling on one of Chip's newest creations, a kind of alfalfa and dandelion quiche. It smelled really good, actually.

"Halmeonee," the old woman said tersely. "Only Tib gets to call me that."

Lilac chewed and gulped, licking her muzzle. "Is that your middle name?"

"No. Two names are enough for me."

"It means 'grandmother'," Tib supplied. "She told me this morning."

Eun-sook shot Tib a look that would have stopped a bullet train on its tracks. "I did not tell you that you could tell anyone that."

Tib shrugged, unflustered, as she took a sip of orange…whatever. "Oops."

"So 'how many' is Korean for grandmother. I learned a new word today!" Lilac clapped her hooves. "And I didn't even make it up!"

"Hal…meon…ee." The old woman enunciated the words very carefully. "And you call me Eun-sook."

"And what does…unsoak mean?" asked Lilac. (Eun-sook rolled her eyes.)

"It rhymes with 'sun took' more or less," said Tib. (Eun-sook snorted.) "And it means 'cranky little old b--' ow!" Tib flinched from the slap the old lady delivered to her head.

"Enough from you," Eun-sook growled, but there was no bite in it.

Lilac giggled, and Ana had to suppress another smile. Obviously those who chose ponification–the early adopters, at least–were more or less misfits and outcasts. Like she was…now.

Ah, but still Ana remembered a time when she wouldn't have been caught dead in public with the likes of the Cajun girl or the old Korean. A time when she'd been the toast of every continent, the face and legs and spirit of classical ballet.

Sometimes in the night she would dream of being back on stage, before an attentive audience enthralled by the slightest tilt of her head, the smallest gesture of her hand, and every step she took as she danced. The dance was her only friend, her only lover, the only thing she trusted.

She leapt and cavorted gaily as the peasant girl Giselle, only to become a subtle wraith as her ghost, the pinnacle of despairing beauty. She was the graceful Odette, a princess transformed into a swan. In the pas de deux in Don Quixote, she could balance the arabesque perfectly, unsupported by her partner, for a full breathtaking minute, without the slightest wobble, poised en pointe as motionless as a glass sculpture.

But glass was fragile. So fragile.

They broke her, did Camille's bullyboys. In reality they accosted her in a deserted hallway, long after the theater had closed for the night, when she'd tarried too long trying to perfect her ronds de jambe for the next evening's performance on an uncommonly short stage.

But her dreams, every one of them, would end with the men charging up onto the stage, wielding their weapons, knocking her legs out from under her before she could flee. Then the blows would come, her screams for help and pleas for mercy drowning out the pummeling of her flesh, the splintering of her bones.

Snobby little ghetto gash. Not so high and mighty now, are you? You've been walking all over everybody with those pretty little feet. Well, you ain't never gonna walk again. We ain't gonna kill you, we're just gonna fuck you up so bad those legs of yours won't be of any use to you or anybody else, ever again.

Sometimes she woke up crying, quietly, tears coursing down her face.

One night she woke up screaming, too terrified to remember where she was. Then a warm body settled onto the bed beside her, a shape that was not human. Lilac nuzzled her, humming softly, sweetly, her very presence anchoring, comforting. She lay there until Ana stopped trembling and sobbing, until she stopped gasping in pain that no longer troubled her, until she realized she was safe and her heartbeat slowed to normal. As she relaxed, Lilac left off humming and rose from her bed, still not saying a word. Hooves tapped softly on the tile floor as the pony returned to her pallet. When the wakeup chime sounded, Lilac greeted Ana with her usual cheerful "Good morning!" No mention was ever made of the nightmare, the screaming hysteria, the comfort.

Ana couldn't help but feel grateful.

***

Author's Note:

I have arthritis in both my legs, and I wake up some mornings in so much pain I just lie there and cry.

I broke my kneecap when I was a teenager, and let me tell you something, kids--that is a pain I would not wish on my worst enemy. I can only imagine what it would be like to have both kneecaps pummeled to splinters and every bone in your legs broken...and then deliberately allowed to heal badly by a so-called doctor who was bribed to ensure Ana would never dance again.

I don't know what happened to Camille or her cronies. I hope they got what they deserved.