G.N.D: A My Little Dashie Sequel

by Nibrudly

Letting it out

After that night with Snowflake at the casino, I really stepped into the father role. Over the course of the following months, David and I continued to bond. More talking, more painting, a field trip here and there, I even helped him with his homework from time to time. In the middle of June, after the school year was over, the paperwork was signed, approved and sent into the office. David was legally mine. It was different having a kid in the house again. But it was a good different. Thankfully, he never had any second thoughts about the adoption, or whether I was a good choice. But something did come up that September on Dashie’s Birthday.

It had been a year since she left and it was hitting me harder than I had expected. That day, I had run into town for some groceries, along with everything we needed to make her birthday cake. During the ride back, I felt that distant but familiar sense of depression wash over me. Even with David there, I don’t think I could make it through the day without looking through the album only once. As I made my way up our driveway, the thought came to my mind:

This makes 21.

My heart was physically aching with this thought. On top of the sorrow I felt, I had no idea how I was going to explain the special occasion to David; but I didn’t really care at that point. As soon as I got out of my truck I felt the urge to go look at the album. I left the groceries on the kitchen floor before I climbed the stairs and made my way to my bedroom. When I opened the door, an odd sight met my eyes: David was reading it! He was reading her letter! Now although we had spent all this time together, I never told him or alluded that I, at one point, was a brony; much less that the daughter I had raised was Dashie!

For a few minutes we just stared at each other, David sitting on the side of the bed with the album while I just stupidly stood in the doorway. As carefully as he could, David reinserted Dashie’s letter and put the album back on my bookshelf.

“Hey Dad, glad to see you’re back.”

With what had to be the worst poker face he just walked towards me. I had no idea how I was going to explain this to him. A guy living on his own and he has an album full of pictures with him and a pony: not exactly what you would picture your dad to be. I know we had both grown a lot since that first meeting, but this could be a deal breaker. With this he could possibly decide I wasn’t as good idea as he thought. We shared an awkward glance as he passed by me, before he bolted down the stairs.

Crap!

I couldn’t really blame him, this was as awkward as it could get; especially since he read Dashie’s letter. Not only was I weird guy with an album full of pony pictures, I was also insane. A heartfelt letter from your make-believe pony daughter? He must’ve thought I was a nut case!

“Wait! David, wait!”

As I was on the last steps I could see David slipping out the door. My mind flew back to the day Dashie found out. How she ran away and hid in the forest. How awful I felt for keeping the truth from her until it was too late. And now David was running because I had neglected to tell him the exact same thing! I was not about to let it happen again. I may have lost Dashie but I was not about to lose David!

I burst through the door, ready to chase him down. “David! David, I can explain what you saw!”

He wasn’t anywhere in my field of vision. I started hastily looking left and right hoping to see his figure moving across the lawn, but to no avail. I turned back towards the house and started going for the backyard; hopefully I could catch up to him before he hit the woods. But as soon as I was facing the house I saw him there, sitting on the porch. Thank God.

I slowly made my way towards him, just in case he actually was uncertain about me. As I got closer I saw something I hadn’t seen since that very first meeting ages ago. He had that faraway look in his eyes; I don’t think he even noticed me walk up. From my lower elevation, all I could do was look up at his face and only begin to imagine what he was thinking now.

“David?” C’mon buddy, talk to me.

After a few seconds of staring up at him, he met my gaze.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been looking through your stuff.”

“No, no don’t worry about it. I was actually going to show it to you today.”

“Oh, don’t lie to me. Everybody has something they don’t want anyone else to see. You don’t have to try to make me feel better about what I did.”

This was odd. I was expecting the conversation to be heading in a completely opposite direction.

“David, it wasn’t a big deal, really. You know that, right?”

He went back to staring out at the lawn, freshly cut and the blades all a deep green. I walked up the stairs and joined him on the porch. We hadn’t had a moment like this for awhile. He had been really talkative with me ever since we had that second meeting. And since it had been almost eleven months of lengthy conversations, it didn’t make any sense why he would shut up like this over the album. Well guess what? I was a father again and it’s my job to make sure my kid is okay. He couldn’t pull the silent card on me now.

“You know David, I’m your dad now, and a dad is someone a son can talk to, about anything. So could you talk with your Old man?” My smile did not bring me any noticeable progress. So much like that first meeting ages ago; we just sat and stared at the grass. Ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour, an hour; still nothing from David. Since he wasn’t in the mood for conversation, I figured now would be a good a time as any to explain the album and about Dashie.

“Today’s her birthday.”

Finally, I got a response from David. “Whose?”

“Well, you looked at the album and read her letter. You know who I mean.”

“You mean the pony?”

“Yes. Rainbow Dash, or Dashie as I called her. Believe it or not I found her sixteen years ago in a cardboard box.”

He cocked his head towards me.

“Yeah, I found her and took her home. And then for fifteen years I raised her as my daughter. You’ve heard about the show, right?”

He gave a simple nod.

“Alright, so you realize how weird it was that she’d be here, in real life. I thought it was weird, too. However, she was in my home, I didn’t really have anywhere else to take her, and I was living on my own at the time. My parents had died recently and I had been watching the show to help me cope. So, finding her was like an answer to my prayers.”

Now his body was shifted in my direction.

“So, for the next fifteen years I fed her, I played with her, I helped her learn how to fly; I laughed with her, I cried with her and, most importantly, I loved that little filly with all my heart. Of course, we had a brief falling out when she learned the truth; you know, when she learned that she was from the show? You had me worried, I thought you were going to do what she did.”

“What’d she do?”

“Well she was so angry at me that she ran away, off into the woods. I waited in the house for three days hoping she would come back. You see, I was certain she would have flown as far away as she could from the guy who had kept this important truth from her all her life. So on that third day I finally took a walk through the woods, hoping I just might possibly find her out there.”

“Did you find her?” I was surprised he was taking me so seriously. Maybe this wasn’t going to be as hard as I thought.

“Believe it or not, I did; or rather, she found me. We both apologized and everything went back to normal. Things were going good until the day she had to leave.”

“What happened?”

It had been so long since I had thought about it. Today was the first time since our second meeting I actually thought about the day she left. To my surprise, there was only a pinch of pain instead of a wave like I thought there’d be as I recounted the events to David.

“Remember how she was from the show? And you know how there’s five other ponies in the main group?” another nod; he seemed very focused on my story, “Well they have also have this ruler: Princess Celestia; she along with the other five came back to take her home. She’s a really important figure over there, you know. It happened on this very day a year ago.”

“Did she want to go?”

“No, she wanted to stay; and even though I knew she had to go, I sure as hell didn’t want her to leave. But, I knew this day had been coming for a long, long time. I had been dreading it since I brought her through my door all those years ago. What had happened was she had ended up here by accident and they had just figured out how to come get her. However-and I have no idea how it works-while she was here for fifteen years, over there she had only been gone for fifteen days.”

“Really? Only fifteen days?”

“Her friends thought the same thing. So when they learned I had been raising her for all those years, they couldn’t help but feel bad about coming to get her. However, she didn’t belong here. I was the only one she had for fifteen years; she needed to go and be with her real friends and family. The fact she was anything remotely close to what she used to be was nothing short of a miracle. So, after a…really long goodbye, she went back to start living her life again. I’m just glad she wrote me that letter before she left. It is among my most prized possessions.”

David shut up again and returned to staring towards the grass. However, it was only minutes before he continued our conversation.

“Do you miss her?”

“More than you would ever know, buddy. She was, in every possible mode of thought, my daughter. You have no idea how hard it is to know that by the time a month goes by for her, I’m going to be old and gray. However, it wasn’t long after I found that ridiculous flier and ended up meeting you. Since you came along it hasn’t hurt as much. Although she’s gone I still have you. Right…David?”

He went back to staring at the lawn. I didn’t blame him, this was a lot to digest; especially if he actually believed it. However, it wasn’t even two minutes before he replied.

“I’m sorry.”

“Like I said, I was going to show it to you anyway.”

“No, not that; for running out on you.”

“Well, it’s understandable, I’m sure I seem like a crazy geezer.”

“That’s not why I ran.”

“It’s not?” While that was a relief, I didn’t feel relieved.

“When you came through the door and you saw me, I thought you were going to be just like everyone else. So, I just left to save you the trouble of kicking me out.”

“Hold on there; why would I kick you out? And what do you mean by everyone else? Come on David; you can tell me what’s going on.”

“Well…it’s like…urgh! This is stupid! Just…just forget I said anything.”

“David, I’m your dad and I want to hear it. Nothing you say is going to sound stupid to me.”

“Well…it’s a long story and there’s a lot to tell.”

“And we have plenty of time ‘til the sun goes down.” I laid back on my hands and got comfortable. “How about you start from the beginning? Hmm?”

With that he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, holding it in for a minute before letting it out. “Okay, here goes.”

“I was six years old and in first grade. I was looking through my dad’s stuff, you know, because it looked really cool. I found this bag of white stuff, I thought it was sugar. I tried some but it didn’t taste right. When my mom found me puking in the bathroom she asked me what had happened. I showed her the bag.”

“It turned out it was some coke that my dad had stashed. When my dad came home that night, my mom got into a big fight with him. I don’t remember the words, but I remember sitting at the top of the stairs listening to them yell at each other and my mom screaming. I ran downstairs and found her on the floor crying. She…she told me ‘daddy’ wasn’t going to be there anymore. If I had just kept my nose out of his stuff they may have still have been together!”

So that’s how it happened. No wonder they broke up!

“David…you can’t blame yourself for what happened. It wasn’t your fault.” He then got very vocal and yelled in my face.

“Yes it was! Don’t you get it?! If I had just left it alone I might still have a mom! A year later she found out she had cancer, and a year after that she was gone! She didn’t make enough to keep up the treatments. If he had been there, she might have lived. So after destroying my family you’d think I would have learned my lesson, right? Wrong!”

That’s when I saw the water in his eyes. I could tell he was trying to keep his cool.

“After she died, I was put in the foster system and every house they sent me, I’d go poking through their stuff and they’d get mad at me. Sometimes there’d be more yelling between my foster couple, and sometimes they just yelled at me, but every time they all would send me away. After being repeatedly rejected it was getting harder and harder for them to find me homes to stay in.”

“But, then they put me in the orphanage and I met Snowflake. He didn’t get mad at me for being curious, even if I looked at his stuff. And Lizzie was so nice that I thought I was finally someplace stable. But then adoption day came around and this couple talked with me. I had been moved from home to home for so long I liked that they wanted to talk to me. We hit it off and Snowflake started the process; like me and you. But then one evening I go poking through their attic and the guy yells at me, and then he called Snowflake to come get me. I don’t know exactly what I did, but I know I was looking where I shouldn’t.”

Or the bastard had recently learned he couldn’t get into David’s trust fund. David was taking a deep gasp every now and then; I could tell it was getting harder for him to stay in control.

“After that, I didn’t know what was safe anymore. So I kept my hands in my pockets and I kept my mouth shut. That’s why I didn’t talk to Snowflake for so long. I didn’t want to mess things up with him and Lizzie. But then you came along and you waited a whole hour and a half just to hear me talk. And when you gave me that advice I thought you might understand what I was going through. Then when I had that slip-up you didn’t keep your distance, but you actually liked the idea. You were so much more than that couple; I thought I had found someone I could be safe with: someone who wouldn’t kick me out for being me.”

As the meme went, my heart exploded after hearing this. All this time he was just trying to stay out of trouble. No child should ever have to feel that way. His voice had become cracky by this point. He was still trying to soldier through it.

“ I-I thought you wouldn’t mind it if I looked at your old pictures, but when I saw who was in it and when I saw the letter I knew I had made a big mistake. And then you came through the door and I thought it was going to happen again! But then you didn’t yell at me; you actually told me your secret. I can’t believe I let myself think it would happen again. I know it’s stupid, I know you love me and would never do that to me, but I just...I just couldn’t help it.”

I had heard enough. I leaned over, wrapped my arms around him and buried his face in my shoulder.

“Don’t ever think that’s stupid. You didn’t deserve any of that crap. None of that was your fault, David, absolutely none of it. It wasn’t you, it was them, you understand?”

I could feel his head go up and down in a nod.

“Now listen to me, I’m never going to send you away. You are so very, very important to me, David.”

I could hear his muffled voice, “You…you mean-ean it?”

“With all my heart, David. It doesn’t matter what you do, you will always have a place in this house and in my heart.”

With this his breathing became sporadic; he was still trying to hold it in.

“Let it go, David, just let it loose; it’s okay. Just us out here, I’m not gonna tell anybody.” Soon I could feel seven years worth of pain and sadness seep through my shirt.

“That’s right, just let it all out, buddy. Keep going ‘til it stops.”

Soon he was outright sobbing into my shoulder. He’d turn his head to the side every few minutes for air or to cough. I could only imagine how long he had been holding all of it in. Never having someone he thought he could really talk to or to help him with all this baggage. He didn’t deserve this, any of it. I knew I was not holding the David I had met in the orphanage ten months ago; I was consoling the David who hadn’t had a real source of safety or love since his mom passed away. All this time, keeping everything bottled up because he thought it would make things worse, how could someone so young go through so much?

I know at these moments, the father is to be an absolute rock. But, I was having a hell of a time trying to keep my watered eyes from leaking a tear or two. But, after what I had just heard, how could I not? I couldn’t stand to see my son hurt like this. And it was all because of stupid decisions. How could his dad do drugs, much less keep a stash where David could get to it? And, how could that greedy bastard turn him out just because he wouldn’t get the money? And, how could all the rest of those foster couples turn him away? How could any of them turn away a kid as brilliant and wonderful as David?! But the thing that struck me the hardest was how in the world did I let my son think I wouldn’t care about this?

He was the only thing that mattered now. He was the only thing on this Earth that I could never replace. He was as much my son as Dashie was my daughter. And although I lost her, I know I would never allow myself to lose David.

We sat there a good fifteen minutes before he was able to start calming down. He still had some lingering tears, but at least now he had a smile on his face.

“You feel any better, buddy?”

“Y-Yeah.” He gave one last sigh.

“Good. Ever bake a cake before?”

“A long time ago.”

“Then let’s refresh your memory; come on.”

We spent the next two hours making her cake and getting dinner on the table. After we finished we decorated that cake and sang happy birthday. While we ate our respective slices, he kept asking me questions about Dashie and what she was like. I still couldn’t believe he actually believed it. We talked for a long time about Dashie and how we would celebrate her birthday in the future. During the whole evening, I felt happy. And also something I hadn’t felt for years. It was the same feeling I felt the night of Dashie’s fourth birthday with me. I felt like a father again. At that moment I knew I would never change my mind about how I felt about my son.

I will always love and cherish my daughter, but now I have found another whom I can love and cherish as much as her. Although it hurt for her to go, I finally feel the way I used to be while she was here. Now, I know one day David’s going to have to leave, too, but at least this time I’ll be ready for it. And this time, I know he can and will always come back.

Comments

[Divine Path]

...Nibrudly, I don't know how much you doubt yourself, but you simply cannot do that with this being written. I'm almost weeping as I read this...
You're perfectly conveying the internal misery that Dad goes through for all those years.
I shall read on.