Chapter 1
Disclaimer: At this point I'm obliged to ask you to stop reading if you're the susceptible sort that experiences misery or disenchantment with the show after reading crappy dark fics. I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry.
Autograph
You stood around under her cloud house, waiting for her to come home. Okay, that was kind of creepy, you admit. You asked around Ponyville. Of course everyone knew who she was, but no one knew where she was. A filly that fast tends to get around, and those nap clouds don't like to stay in one place. You supposed you could have made a rainbow in the sky like some sort of Batmare symbol, but then, you don't have access to the weather factory here. And again, creepy. No, you're just a simple pony with a giant crush on Rainbow Dash.
And that's going to end today, for better or worse.
It's a blistery noon in Ponyville, the worst of which meaning that the mare of your dreams isn't going to be around anytime soon to work. You stake out a bench near Sugarcube Corner and watch parched ponies go about their business. And you blew the last of your bits on a Wonderbolts toy she probably already has, so that lemonade over there isn't doing you any favors. Dry tongue. Pinching pain in your throat and a flustered heat building in your head.
The door jingles and Rainbow Dash steps out. You nearly faint as all the symptoms double down. But you leap with your heart and scramble towards her before she can take flight. Apparently your sudden approach doesn't impress her, and she raises a weary eyebrow while she takes you in in one glance.
“Uh, hi. Are you okay?” She asks, obviously straining.
You swallow. This is the moment you've been waiting for. The words build in your throat, but it tightens and you only manages an embarrassingly audible breath. Your ears are turning red. Again you try to express yourself but you're just making motions now.
“Right.” She says. Her wings stretch, flare up magnificently, and she crouches to spring. Last chance.
“I really want your autograph!” You blurt out, loud enough for everyone on the block to hear. She looks at you again, but at least this time she's not looking at you like you're a creep.
“Oh, another fan,” she laughs. Her demeanor improves almost immediately, and she's all smiles now. “I forget how jittery you guys can get. You got a quill?”
You fumble at your meager saddlebag. It contains all your worldly possessions, that is, just the Wonderbolt toy you bought before making this insane trip. It most certainly does not contain the quill, or anything to sign. So you look down and meekly reply, “no.”
The rainbow pegasus doesn't seem surprised. One second passes and she zips into the shop. Another and she's back in front of you, quill between her teeth and practically wagging about with glee. It seems like she hasn't learned to be cool about this whole 'following' thing yet.
“Wheredaya wannit?” she mouths around the quill. And again you panic. What do you have on you? The toy? No, that would be a disaster, because it's not her, and you want to give it to her. With her name on it? Your flank! No, that's a terrible idea. By now she's noticed you fumbling about aimlessly. With an impatient sigh she disappears again, and this time you think she's gone for good. Your ears go down. You stare at the ground. Then you hear the clomp of hooves as she returns. Damn, she's fast.
And now she's got a signed photo of herself looking as badass and beautiful as any A-list filly you can think of. She tips her head towards you a couple times waiting for you to take it. Then it occurs to you that you need to lean forward, carefully bite down on the end of it...
Your mouth so painfully close to hers, you can't help but fantasize a bit. Thankfully she doesn't notice the way you look into her perfect magenta eyes a little too long before you take the picture and drop it into your saddlebag. You know you're going to cherish this forever.
“Thanks, Rainbow Dash,” you say, in that one breath you finally manage to get. Dizziness or not, it's worth it.
Dash throws an arm around your shoulder, gives your hair a solid ruffle, and flaps her wings. “No problem. I love my fans!” Then she jerks her head up at a sound you both hear. It sounds like someone is calling her. Someone whose voice sounds very pink. “Uh, I gotta go. Sorry!” She completes the gesture and thrashes her wings, lifting off from your shoulders.
You manage to stay up just from sheer virtue of being dumbstruck. The impression her hoof left on your back is still giving you tingles. Yeah, you're never going to wash any of that again. Rainbow Dash LAUNCHED off of you. And that... that's special.
Long after she's gone and you remember to say “bye” to the absence, it hits you. A signature is nice. But you wanted to confess your feelings. Of course she's going to shoot you down. Of course it's going to suck. But at least, you hope, then this whole chapter of your life will be behind you and the pain will stop. If only.
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One of the local lushes somewhat abrasively tips you off that Dash likes to spend summer nights down at the club. Mostly because the unicorn DJ puts on the wickedest shows this side of Manehattan. Possibly anywhere.
In the noisy, elbow-to-elbow country crowd it's pretty obvious how much this lady rocks. Not as hard as your sweetheart, of course, but the bass is thumping your chest almost as much as your rapid heartbeat. Hours pass and you're not even sure Dash is going to show up.
“Are you going to get anything?” The bartender asks, much less patiently than the first few times. Again you have to remind him:
“I'm waiting for someone. But, yes. Hopefully.” It would probably behoove you to buy some water, some juice, anything to get this guy off your back. But you only managed to get a few bits by selling your second saddlebag, the last thing in the world you were willing to part with, and doing a bit of yard work. You're only going to have one shot at a drink and you don't even know if she'll take it.
Somewhere in the flashing lights of the dance floor, you wonder how you missed her at all. She dances like no one is watching, but everyone is watching as she performs some twisted fusion of break dance and disco fever. Only one pony in the world could make it look good.
You watch, transfixed, as she moves. The music, the lights, the energy of the room bends under her twisting arms, her spinning body, her splayed wings. Maybe it's the atmosphere but you feel lost in another world, like the whole universe is centered on this moment. This perfect moment of Rainbow in motion.
Eventually the haze does let up. Your senses come back when the crowd is starting to dwindle and the post show starts to wind down. She must have seen you looking, a lot, because she eventually pulls up beside you at the bar and props her head on her hoof.
“You been following me or something?” she wonders.
“A bit,” you confess, hoping for some kind of a reaction. Her deadpan reaction stays the same. A day of mastering the lines you want to say at least lets you fumble out something coherent. “Can I buy you a drink?”
She sighs and gives you a look. A very tired, weary look. “No,” she says, and you can feel yourself sinking towards the floor by the sudden hook in your chest. The bartender is glaring daggers at you too. Red hot daggers. “I mean, I don't want one,” she continues. “Maybe next time.” She pitches the stallion behind the bar a couple bits, which seems to sate him for the time being. “It's late. You should go home.”
You sit there, trying to find some way to salvage the situation. And you'd like to consider yourself a quick thinker. But it is Rainbow Dash, after all. Maybe it'd be better to take thinking out of the equation. Then you might get to tell her everything before she leaves.
“Better leave it alone, kid,” the bartender grouses behind you, unsolicited. “She might have a good track record, but she doesn't... hell, just trust me. Go back wherever you came from and move on. Y'll both be a lot happier for it.”
All you can do is glare at him and throw down the last of your money. “Cider,” you say. He shrugs, and obliges. You chug the too-sweet drink and the little bit of a buzz clears your head enough to pull together your last shreds of dignity and courage to follow her home and put this issue in the ground at last.
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Now it's dark. And pretty spooky, what with the Everfree over there. The night life has finally given away to country sensibility and you walk the streets alone. The road alone, out of town, to where that magnificent mini-Cloudsdale of a house she has is. A sliver of light stands at the horizon as you sit beneath, staring up at its windows and doors, its dark insides. Should you call out? But what if she's asleep? Maybe you should wait. But you're starting to get tired, too. The only reason you haven't fallen asleep is that surprisingly cold wind that's gusting by you right now.
“You again?”
The break in silence makes you jump and spin, and the hoof didn't help either. It seems Rainbow Dash landed right behind you. There's a bit of tears in her eyes and she's doing her best to look cheerful.
“What's wrong?” You ask, but she shakes her head and takes a circle-step around you.
“You're really serious, huh?” she continues, giving you a look. Unlike before, it feels like she's laying your soul bare with her eyes, stripping away everything about it. “I mean, you don't act like a stalker.”
“I feel like one,” you admit, hanging your head. “I just wanted... Rainbow Dash, I just wanted to tell you something.”
Pomf. She sits her butt down right in front of you and grimaces. “That's why you've been following me? You could have said it earlier.”
“No, I couldn't have,” you choke out. “I've been trying and somehow it just doesn't work. But I'm not going to stop until I can say it.”
You look up. She's still sitting, staring at you. Everytime she looks like that you feel like something is horribly, terribly wrong. And you'd give anything at all to fix it. If only you could find out how. But nothing is coming. And now she's leaving you again, for the third time, and probably the last.
You squeeze your eyes shut and scream out. “I think I'm in love with you, Rainbow Dash!”
The exclamation echoes throughout the countryside. There's no doubt that she heard you. She's stopped in her tracks, something you've never seen before. She smiles straight ahead, but her tail is beginning a slow, dangerous flick.
“I'd kill if you'd feel the same way, but I don't think you do,” you sigh.
And she laughs.
Boy, does she laugh. That tomboyish chuckle that builds into a giggle and soon she can hardly control herself. Rejection is one thing. But laughter? It cuts deep. It would, but she doesn't seem to be making fun of you. No, she lays a hoof on your shoulder and wipes a tear from her eye all while holding herself aloft with her wings.
“Of course you do,” she says. “I mean, who doesn't? But I gotta tell you, you and me? What could you possibly want? A nice filly to toss your wheat every morning? A nice house in Ponyville and a flock of kids? Do I really look like that kind of filly?”
You flick your ears back in annoyance and look away. “I don't care about any of that stuff, I just care about you,” you say. Damn the rest of it.
“So that's it?” she asks. “No goals, no dreams, aside from big ol' R.D.D.?”
You put on your best puppy dog act, looking guilty and handsome in the same look, as if to say, did I do a bad thing? And the way she's motionless there in front of you is worse than when she walked away. The tension is outright murdering you. The last sliver of sunlight slips away and leaves you both as silhouettes, but a few inches away from one another. A rapid thumping fills the air and you realize you can hear her heart beating, too.
“Commitment is a plus,” she admits, and promptly turns about. Her prismatic tail flicks up and brushes across the tip of your snout as she walks away, the darkness leaving everything in your view to your imagination. “But you can't stay with me.”
You wonder if she knows exactly what she's doing, triggering your male instincts. And she's not flying away. She's walking at such a pace that a dimwitted colt like you can keep up. “Even if it's just a little while, it'll be worth it,” you assure her, practically springing in your step.
She doesn't reply. You walk throughout another chunk of the night, all the way to Sweet Apple Acres. Applejack is still awake in the barn, judging by the lantern-light from in there. Dash leans over the door and calls inside.
“Hey, Applejack! Can I use your cellar again?”
“What? Hold on now.” The earth pony calls back. Then an audible sigh. “Oh, fine. But you'd better clean up this time. The last mess you left was disgusting.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I'll take care of it.”
Then she winks at you and practically tugs you towards the cellar door. “You've probably never met anyone as intense as Rainbow Dash,” she proclaims, kicking the door open.
“An' keep it down, will you?” Applejack says. “Applebloom and her friends are finally asleep.”
“Don't worry,” Rainbow Dash assures her, “once we're down there, no one will be able to hear a thing!”
At this point you're grinning like an idiot. What horrible, messy, noisy activities did she have planned? Your love for her is nothing but pure romantic interest. Well, okay. You've had some fantasies here and there. But you'd never try to make them real. Now that she's planting ideas in your head, though, you can't help it. The tingling sensation doesn't help either. It's a good thing she practically drags you down into the underground herself.
The door closes first, and it's dark for a little too long. She fumbles about until she finds a lamp and then carefully lights it. It takes your eyes a while to adjust. Half of the cellar is a pretty boring apple cellar. Apples, barrels, and a somewhat old but not unpleasant fruity smell fills the place. A little strongly for what's there, but you're hardly complaining.
The other half is peculiar for even a farm. Center pieced in a cleared out section, surrounded with immaculate clean hay, is a sloped table perfectly shaped for a grown pony, fully accommodated with chains and leather straps. To the west, a fire pit with still-glowing embers. You can't really make it out in the night but it looks like the whole area is pasted with photographs.
You're grinning like an idiot now, because you really like where this is going.
“This is usually where ponies run away screaming,” Rainbow says.
You would practically throw yourself into bounds but you want to play it cool. You stand beside her and puff up your chest. “I think I'm brave enough to stick it out with you.”
“Are you sure?” She smiles at you. That award-winning, innocent, zine-cover smile that made you fall in love in the first place. “I'm going to make you scream.”
“I know. You're amazing.”
“I don't think you get it. I'm going to take you further than any other pony has taken you before.”
“Why would I say no?”
She leans forward and shakes you, eye to eye, her smile mostly gone. “Dude. I'm going to kill you. Dead.”
… that is not where you thought this was going, at all. You stare rather dumbstruck, straight at the wall opposite. The wall above the table. You notice little snapshots of other ponies hung about all over, as if you'd blocked them out before. Colts, mostly. Colts that look a lot like you, with that leading man look. Smiling. Smiling with insane terror. And it looks like there are a few stains in the walls that Applejack couldn't get out.
“This would be a good time to run...” she whispers in your ear. And her voice makes you shiver in such a wonderful way. Oh, she probably wouldn't try to catch you in public. “Run...” she repeats, and you tremble. You can't move your legs. “Run!” You're not even sure if you want to. Then she leans back and laughs.
“Or... maybe you want this?”
You're not sure. She gives a helpful shove towards the pony rig with her forehead. Now you're hovering above it, above the brink. “Last chance,” she says, and finding no response from you, she shrugs and thrusts. You fall back onto the table like a sack of bricks. She fastens the straps around your arms and legs until they're starting to dig into your skin. Then she gives them another healthy tug and leaps back to observe her work.
“Ha! Man, you're one sick colt,” she laughs.
“Why are you doing this?” You can't help but ask that pivotal question.
The pegasus shrugs. “So we can move on,” she says. “I can get on with my life and you can get on with your um... not living. Of course some of the jerks I've had here really deserved it.”
The thought fuels her kick of the hooves to a nearby barrel, blowing the top off. Inside is a hastily stashed pile of tools and instruments, ranging from surgical to farm equipment. She rustles around inside, licking her upper lip. Then she pulls back and yelps.
“Ouch! Agh...” she rubs her arm. There's a spot of blood near her hoof where she accidentally cut herself. Instead of fixing it, though, she comes back to your table and holds the bleeding hoof up to your lips, expectantly.
You've never tried to touch her before, and it's the strangest gesture you can imagine. But saying no just isn't within you. Maybe getting drunk beforehand wasn't the best of ideas, but you probably would have gone along with it anyway. There's a small part of you that's screaming at you for what you're doing. But you stopped listening to it long ago. Probably because other parts were far, far more annoying.
You open your mouth and give her a tender lick to the hoof. And then another. Her blood doesn't taste bad. Mostly weird. Immaculately clean. You close your eyes and lick and she lets a little sigh as the soft folds of your tongue sooth her pain. You can't help but smile a little at that. And then, a bit of her is inside you now, after all.
“You're pretty good at this,” she says, “but don't make it too easy. I don't want to get bored.” She whisks her other hoof about and you feel metal bite between your shoulder and your neck, sharp enough that you yell out in pain. She laughs and whisks the scalpel up, tossing it over her shoulder with a flourish of your blood.
The pain is getting to be too much to bear, leaving you panting for panicked breath. But then she leans down and puts her lips to the wound, and she licks it clean just as you just did. The sensation is.. amazing, like some kind of liquid silk rolling over your body. A whimper of pleasure escapes you.
“I've gotta remember to take it slow,” she comments, licking her lips nonchalantly as she sits herself on your chest. The weight makes it very, very hard to breathe. “The first time I did this he just would not stop screaming! So I tried to make him stop and it just would not go well!”
“There's always, um, anesthesia...” you suggest helpfully. Might as well try to make this as easy on yourself as you can. She frowns at this, though.
“Too easy,” she murmurs, now carefully manipulating the cherry-tinted blade over your face. “What to take?”
The lantern light almost blinds you as the sharp tip hovers inches from your eye. “Mm, no, I want you to look at me... you have nice eyes...” she tips your head up with a hoof and cuts a thin line down your cheek. The pain, compared to anything else, is little more than an itch. “Your tongue? Oh, but then I like when you talk to me. That's pretty rare down here, you know.”
As she leans back, she blushes and squeaks as something rather rudely pokes her in the butt. You look away apologetically and then she laughs. “Oh, there's the problem! We can't have you all distracted.”
Your pulse races as you wonder what the 'solution' to your consistent filly problem is. It does not stop when you feel the cold press of metal down there, but your enjoyment does.
“H-hey, that wasn't...”
“Part of the deal?” she finishes, letting the edge tease into your skin. “I told you, I'm going to make you SCREAM.”
As she says it she works, practically reefing you down as she works with patented Rainbow Dash speed. What was teasing little pains before is now the full hole-sized sear shooting through your body and you scream at the stop of your lungs.
“Stop, stop! Please!” You beg, tears streaming down your face now.
“Thought you might need them?” she says, barely audible over your screaming, scowling now. “Thought you might like me!?” And she finishes the job with a rip of the hooves. Your stomach seizes a bit and you only manage not to hurl because you're too busy running your breath down screaming. Soon you're only crying and she throws the excess aside. You're bleeding out pretty badly now.
You're too tired to scream, so you cry in weeping little breathes, barely able to see her through the tears and stinging. And through it all what seems to hurt more is that accusatory glare. “I'm sorry,” you say, in spite of it all, “I didn't mean.. I couldn't help it...”
A bit of relief shows in her. She sighs and tosses the instrument into a bucket. “Colts can't. It's why they're so weird. I mean, I feel kind of bad for them.” She reaches up and touches your cheek, this time leaving sticky streaks of your own blood.. “You really care about me, don't you?”
If only you could reply. It's just a whimper and a nod.
“It's probably for the best then,” she says. Then cheerful as ever she returns to her collection and produces a large branding iron from the flames, already orange hot and ready to go . Rather than the apple family signature, though, it holds the shape of her cutiemark.
“Applejack got it for me as a joke,” she explains, resting it close to your face so that you can feel the heat. “I don't think she expected me to actually start pokin' out colts with it. Now hold still, this'll help...”
Before you can weigh in she carefully grabs the thing with her teeth and rams it between your legs. A new searing replaces the old ebb and you can smell your exposed flesh cinching shut with the burn of the brand. You let a muffled sob and can't seem to stop yourself.
This wasn't what you wanted. This was demented. This was a nightmare. You wanted to go... home? No, there was nothing for you there. There was nothing for you anywhere. Rainbow Dash was EVERYTHING to you and you'd choose this before going back to your empty, meaningless life. You weren't going to date her, marry her, mate with her, play with her, no, there wasn't anything for you. But you could give her your life. You could do that much.
It's no consolation. You keep crying, trying hard as you can to keep quiet, but you can't stop. The realization is almost like an anesthesia. You can definitely feel her cutting ribbons into your belly, but you can't bring yourself to care. Your survival instincts are gone. This is all there is left for you, and you may as well enjoy it.
“I love you,” you croak out when you catch her looking your way. She has to look twice.
“Huh?”
“I said I love you,” you manage to repeat, manage to smile.
She blushes at this. “Even though... I mean, wow. You're either really really sweet or really really dumb.”
At least she accepts your feelings, you think, as you close your eyes and try to surrender to it. She probably wants you to last longer than that, and she's taking careful care that you don't pass out right away. No, she shifts gears again. You feel her moving up beside you and your wound-riddled body, sidling up to your bound, bleeding self.
You open your eyes and she's right beside you, right where you've always wanted her. She leans up and kisses you on the lips. You can't move, but you hold on for dear life, staring into her eyes, trying so hard to make the moment last forever. But she pulls away all too quick.
“I think I kinda like that,” she says like it's a crime, and the tears that come out of you next are pure happiness. “It's too bad it has to be like this.”
“Does it...?” You chance.
“Yeah,” she says. “It just wouldn't work.” She seems utterly convinced. But you feel connected to her in a weird way, now. You're going to make this happen. You're going to be the best torture-murder-victim this side of Fillydelphia.
“I've got it,” she says, before dragging a disturbing array of medical devices to the table. “I want to see your heart. All this... love junk, it kind of bugs me. Is there really a connection?”
You don't have much to say about that. But it's pretty obvious she's serious. And you don't have much energy left in you to protest, given the blood loss and the emotional ride she's been running you through. The agony when she starts sawing you open from belly to chest is screaming, but you can't get it out of your strained throat. White hot pain in your eyes. You think your heart will explode before she gets anywhere near it, but she's trying.
It's too much for your body to handle, too. You're fading fast, and the only reason you haven't gone under yet is because you just love watching her work. Even if that work happens to be splitting you open like a candy egg. She looks positively ravishing even when framed by the white towers of your ribcage.
Her hoof descends and she seems utterly amazed. “Cool...”
The world is shrinking to a dot now, but she isn't ready for you to go.
“Say it again,” she says. You give her a mute look. “Say you love me,” she says.
You barely manage to get the words off your lips. But she seems transfixed as she's holding your heart there. Your real heart. Not some bullshit metaphysical concept but some bloodpumping powerhouse that's going faster than ever and she's holding it in her bare hooves.
“Huh?” she says, when she realizes you've said something else.
Your saddlebag, you tell her. You think you do. She reluctantly stops playing with your organs and looks for the discarded thing, and pulls it open. Inside of course is the one thing you own-- that Wonderbolts plush toy. She laughs and gives its wings a little nudge with her hooves. Of course she already has one, but she'll cherish this one forever, too. You can just tell.
“I'm gonna miss you,” she says.
In your last moments you feel her loosen the straps around you and slip up behind you. Her body warms you from behind and her wings enclose over you, hiding your wounds from view. She keeps you still and close even as you can no longer feel your body heat or hers.
There's a brief flash of light and you think you're gone. But you remember the sound might have been something like a camera. You feel her wiggle a photograph under your mouth and stick one of her feathers in it. Naturally, you oblige, signing it, not knowing that Applejack would later be rolling her eyes at it after having to clean your remains out of the cellar. Just like all the others.
The last thing you hear is Dash's breath soothing into your ear as the last of your life slips away from you. It stopped hurting a long time ago. It all stopped hurting, and there's no other way you wanted to go than like this, the last warmth you'll ever know coming from her body.