Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I'll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I've written a whole song in an hour.
--Eminem
He wouldn’t wish fame on his worst enemy.
Every few years he sees the stars in the eyes of the new hopeful recruits and he shakes his head and tsks under his breath in bitter wryness as their hopeful faces blind him. And every year his thoughts jeer, “They don’t know what they’re getting themselves into.”
He supposes its a fresh change of pace to see how eager they are and how much love they have for flying in the beginning, but in a way that love and spirit makes it all the more painful when he sees them chewed up and spit out within two, three years.
Fame was a sadistic, two-faced maiden who enjoyed pushing until it broke the shoulders and spirit and drive of the one whose shoulders and spirit and drive it was set upon.
But the cycle never ended, because the other face of fame was one that was glamorous and so charming that it was literally irresistible. And it was everywhere: the most appealing of parasites, and it weasels into the minds of everypony when they are young and they recognize the power that it grants.
But it didn’t grant power. It suffocated. Go here, pose for this picture, kiss this foal, advertise this, say that, keep your nose clean, don’t let your eyes linger on anypony lest it be taken for wantonness. They’re watching.
Sometimes it felt like they wanted him to fail.
It wouldn’t be that bad, failing. Then he could be free.
But the only way to fame was to claw, scratch and fight to the top, and similarly the only way down was to fall from grace. But a fall from grace was not as easy as it sounded. In a way, it was almost as bad as the climbing up to grace. It was like that climb, in reverse.
But would it really be so bad?
Ten years of torture. His entire life, for ten years of torture.
He was once that colt with the stars in his eyes that spent every waking moment practicing to become the best. Fame was a dream to him then, and he was seduced by her utterly and completely.
Perhaps it was because he never paid attention in school, but he wasn’t smart enough to come to his senses and wake up from the dream as he grew older.
Even when he got fired, over and over and over, for daydreaming on the job. And he’d have to go home to his family, and, he’d never forget, that one Christmas he sobbed all night because she had to cover for him and put his name next to the word from on the label of a present he couldn’t buy because he couldn’t afford it.
He was disgusted with himself, because it was his job to provide but he hadn’t.
He remembers:
Moving them around every few months; one tiny, damp, squalid, rat-infested basement apartment in a dilapidated tenement block to another. The sound of a hysterical infant two doors down, the sound of breaking glass and loud voices next door, and the three of them huddled on a mattress on the floor sharing one blanket during one of the coldest winters.
The pickle jar and some fifty bits adding to two hundred, started by them for her brighter future, and the one day that it was stolen because, doy, the door didn’t have a lock.
Them, copying that couple next door, and undoubtedly waking her up with their arguments.
“...Sometimes mommies and daddies yell, baby, but we still love each other…”
“You’re making mommy cry. Why? Why is mommy crying?”
The one night he came home from work to an empty house, that note on the bed with their new address.
...And him, standing in that line of recruits, his resolve not strong but desperate because failure wasn’t an option when this was literally the only…
Fame jealousy. Their split. Having to jump her back and forth between them and only watching her grow up through stolen weekends months and months apart because of this show in that city, or that product advertisement, or this luncheon with those important ponies.
“...Oh. That’s okay, dad. There’s always next weekend.”
The posters in her room; the ones of him.
“...It’s so I can see your face when you’re not here, dad…”
The sounds of the screaming crowd buzzing in his ears. The pills to help him sleep, four when he was supposed to have two. The nightmares that haunt him:
“Don’t leave daddy. Please!”
“Daddy’s got a show, baby girl. I have to go.”
Him leaving her behind, pleading for him to come back and… wait… but, she was his daughter...
No, no, they’d call a foalsitter for her.
He had a show to get to.
Him, in his private room before the show, staring at the mirror, arguing with his reflection about who it was exactly that he was flying for, anymore.
But it was for them. All of it was for them.
“Is that why you can’t give me the time of day anymore, dad?”
And, somehow, she’s there in his room. His reflection melts to become her, and she steps into existence out of the mirror. But she isn’t his baby anymore; her eyes burn with hatred and her tone sears him. She’s the spitting image of her mother, and she wears the face her mother wore all those years ago when they would argue about money.
And then the scene melts before he can respond, and he’s catapulted into the sky. He’s in full uniform, and his teammates appear beside him, and they’re in show.
But as he flies, the sky turns stormy and his teammates disappear from beside him. He fights against the wind, and he puts up a good struggle until the storm starts to mock him.
“Fly. Fly for them. Show them that you love them.”
And again the scene shifts back to him, standing in front of his daughter like he was before he was catapulted into the sky.
Except now the show manager bursts into his room and roars that he’s missing the show.
“Go out there. Show them that you love them more than us. It’s the truth.”
She’s dissolved from the room, but he can hear her hissing tone in his head.
He’s shoved and guided to where the rest of his teammates wait, but he’s not there at all; in a flash he’s up in the dark sky again, fighting to go forward.
And then he understands what the storm meant by fly for them.
Go out there. Show them that you love them more than us.
He loses his battle with the wind and is sent tumbling backwards and straight into one of the gigantic stadium lights. The glass pierces him and draws blood, the light sears him and he sees his skin catch on fire.
And that’s when he wakes up with the shrieks of an alarm clock, and the pillow under him is soaked in tears.
Its dark outside, be he can’t wallow in his fears because he’s got a ten o’clock show that morning, and probably a bunch of other stuff that he’s forgotten about.
But that was okay. He has ponies whose jobs it is to remind him of that stuff.
All he has to do is go here, pose for this picture, kiss this foal, advertise this, say that, and keep his nose clean.
Lest he fall from grace.
