The Rescue Service

At first sight, Rosemore Point looks like so many other plazas in Canterlot: a semicircular expanse of white marble with a fountain in the center. There’s always a fountain – legend has it that the cousin of one of the first Royal Architects ran a fountain construction business. Supposedly, if you know where to look, you can still find builder’s plaques reading ‘Cargo Pants & Co.’ in old-fashioned lettering on some of them.

At Rosemore Point, however, the fountain is the least important part of the plaza. The real draw is out on the perimeter of the circle, namely a low balustrade and behind the balustrade a sheer thousand-foot drop down to the valley beneath Canterlot. It’s one of the only places, apart from the closed castle gardens, where ordinary ponies can go and see that.

For a pegasus, of course, that is not very exciting. But unicorn and earth pony tourists flock to Rosemore, thrilled with confronting their fear of heights. The back side of the plaza is lined with souvenir booths and food stalls, and the entire thing is a fixed stop on all the tourist trails, except for those visitors who can’t abide the thought. Some get panic attacks even from entering the plaza, knowing what lies a hundred steps in front of them.

I wish I could say that isn’t my real reason for asking Vinyl to meet me here. But in truth I have no idea why this was the first place that came to mind when Hissy Fit suggested we ought to meet in a neutral public space rather than her office. Who can ever be sure of their subconscious motives? I only hope she won’t be too affected.

The plaza is fairly quiet late in the morning; the guidebooks all warn that the light won’t be properly dramatic before around one o’clock. There are a few dozen visitors hanging around the perimeter, but nothing like the circus it’s going to be later in the day. I stay by the fountain, staring at the falling water and trying to collect my thoughts one last time before Vinyl arrives.

There’s a commotion over by one of the entrances to the plaza.

“That’s none of your damn business!” shouts Vinyl’s voice.

Turning around, I see that she’s arguing with one of the Ponies For Life volunteers on duty. I trot over towards them.

“All I’m saying is that the pegasus guards catch nineteen out of twenty ponies that jump,” the white-blanketed volunteer says. “You’ll only get a giant fine and be sent to talk to the same counsellor pool that we can get you into for free, no names taken. It’s not worth it.”

“It’s alright; she’s with me,” I tell him, briefly fluffing up my wings.

He raises an eyebrow. “Of course, sir.”

I walk Vinyl away from him, wondering at the strange authority it seems to give me here simply to be unable to jump to my death. Or perhaps I’m reading it all wrong and only making a fool of myself.

Vinyl is still grumbling to herself. “Just what do they think I am?”

“Depressed,” I explain. “They’re famously good at spotting genuinely unhappy ponies and not bothering the ordinary tourists. Used to be a game, back when I was an undergrad: you put on your best mope and try to look like a jumper, and if you get them to talk to you without approaching them yourself, your friends buy your drinks for the rest of the day.”

She looks at me dubiously. “What if you actually are depressed?”

I shrug. “Then I think the idea is that you deserve the drinks anyway.”

“Still sounds horrible. Not something to joke about.”

“It also means that those students who do need help know where they can find it.”

“Hrmf. Did you ever win one of them?”

I wave one of my wings. “I’m not really eligible. Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, being stopped by the Piffles means you’re probably actually sorry and not just faking it.”

Way to end the small talk and introduce the elephant in the room, Finey. Vinyl stops dead in the middle of the plaza, hanging her head. I notice she’s not wearing her sunshades. “So what is it?” she almost whispers.

I’m supposed to deliver a verdict; that’s why she’s here. But I still have a dodge left. “I need to ask you something first. Why did you do all that to me? What were you thinking?”

“I think . . . You know I’m usually the sub, right? What that means?”

I nod.

She stares at the fountain while she continues. “But Octavia, and also some other doms, they were having so much fun topping that I thought I oughta try that too. And then I thought you had already agreed with Octavia to let me try it out. So I tried some things, but they were not very fun, but I thought perhaps I just need to be a bit rougher before it starts being fun. But no matter how hard I tried, it just made me sicker, even though I had to pretend to like it, because, you know, I didn’t want to disappoint Octavia. But she never said, stop, that’s too much, back down, no matter what I did. At last I just gave up.”

“You mean it was all an act?” I remember how she grinned and giggled while sticking things into my body, pulling my feathers, slapping, biting . . .

She cringes. “No, that’s – or yes. Perhaps. Perhaps I also wanted to convince myself I was having fun.” She turns around, looking at the ground in front of me. “I don’t know if you can ever forgive me . . .”

“I don’t think I can.” There, may Celestia strike me dead, I said it.

Her ears fall down. “I understand.” She turns around and walks slowly away, towards the edge of the plaza.

I hurry after her. “I’m not gonna press charges, though.”

“Why not?” She keeps walking.

“I did some research on what would happen. Everypony says being the accuser in one of those cases is really stressful.” When I talked it over with Cinna, she told me stories she knows from some kind of organization for sex workers she’s in – apparently the legal system is not too friendly towards them. There’s a good chance I’d get that too, she said, due to what the Service does. “And it wouldn’t really make me whole anyway, would it?”

“No,” Vinyl replies. “I guess it wouldn’t.”

She walks up to the balustrade and stands for some time staring at the mountains on the other side of the valley.

“You know, I tried to turn myself in,” she says darkly. “Walked right up to the guard barracks and told everything. Day before yesterday.”

“Shit, Vinyl, you can’t do that! Do you know they exile rapists?” That’s another thing I found out while researching what would happen if I pressed charges. Also part of why I’m not going to – even if I won, I would have that on my conscience. She shouldn’t have done all that to me, but to ruin her life forever for it? It’s not proportionate. I’ll get better.

“Ha,” she says. “In my case they laugh at rapists. Said unless I show them either a dead body or a live victim to complain, they couldn’t do anything.” She spits into the abyss. “I’m supposed to congratulate you.”

“Thanks,” I say, automatically. “No, wait – why would you even try such a thing?”

She shrugs. “Save you the trouble.”

My head is spinning. Did she really do that? Why? Yes, she’s sorry, she says, but there’s feeling bad about something and then there’s this. On the other wing, if she’s making it up, why?

She’s breathing heavier than before, isn’t she?

“Um, you’re not gonna jump, right? I kinda promised –”

Suddenly her face crumbles in on itself, and she’s bawling her eyes out soundlessly. “What kind of w-world is it if I can get away with that?” she sobs. “How can the princesses let that happen?”

What do you do when somepony who was a bastard towards you, someone who hurt you and used you for her own amusement, stands crying in front of you and there’s nopony else? I think I ought to be happy she’s hurting – it’s what she deserves, isn’t it? But somehow I can’t. It’s just sad.

I reach out a wing and wrap it around her, to coax her away from the edge. “Perhaps they don’t know.” It’s trite, but you can’t hold the princesses responsible for everything bad that happens. They’re ponies too, after all. “Come on, we have to get you away from here. Where do you live?”

“P-ponyville?”

“Oh.” That’s a bit far to walk her. What else is there – my place? I don’t really want her there.

“But I’m staying at t-the Prancing Pony . . .”

I know where that is. “Okay. Come on, this way.”

She lets me lead her away, past the volunteers, into the city. She calms down a bit while we walk.

“Would you feel better if I lie and say I forgive you?”

She shakes her head. “Not when you tell me it’s a lie.”

“Sorry.” It’s dawning on me that I have a kind of power over her, being the victim she wants to make it all right with. If only I knew how to use it. Or what to use it for.

“Forgiveness is overrated anyway,” she continues. “Too easy. Why would you forgive me?”

I shrug. “Because it’s the right thing to do?”

“Says who?” With my wing still wrapped around her, I can feel her becoming agitated again. “It’s not right that I can do what I did and not pay for it somehow.”

“So we’re back to getting even?”

It takes some time before she answers.

“I know I can’t really ask anything of you, but . . . please, can’t you try?”

The receptionist at the hotel is busy talking to a few other ponies and doesn’t notice me going up the stairs with Vinyl. I doubt he would have said anything, though. They’re not nosy here.

Vinyl’s room is small, just a bed and a half-ajar door towards an adjoining bathroom. There’s no chair, so I stand around not quite knowing what to do with myself while she roots around in a pair of saddlebags in the corner. Coming back up with two pairs of hoofcuffs, she lies down on the bed and locks her hooves together two by two.

She notices me staring at the cuffs. “Sometimes, when I’m alone, I like to put them on nice and tight,” she explains. “It helps. But I have to keep these within reach.” She dangles the keys in the middle of the room with her magic and suddenly tosses them around the corner into the bathroom. They land in the tub with a loud clatter. “Now I can’t get at them myself – too far.”

I sit down on the bed behind her. The rest is up to me, I suppose. Why did I let her talk me into this?

“So what now? Do I just punch you?”

She half-shrugs. “If you want. There are some toys in the bag too. No rope, I’m afraid, unless you go out and find some first. I’m not going anywhere.”

I look at my forehooves, trying to imagine beating her bloody with them. I don’t even know how beating somepony bloody works. It’s something you hear said, or read about in dramatic stories, not something you do. I want to find out about that even less than I want to know about those ‘toys’ she spoke about.

I hold out a hoof and let it fall limply onto her body. Immediately she tenses up all over and almost stops breathing. I don’t think she actually wants to be beaten up, and I’m glad she doesn’t, but she wants something. What?

I lie down behind her back and reach a foreleg and a wing around her.

“What are you doing?” she stammers, surprised.

“Hugging. I think you need a hug.”

She begins to shake violently, and I know she’s crying again. I have no answer to that, so I keep hugging. It takes a long time until she stops.

“You’re being nice,” she says eventually. “You say you won’t forgive me, and you don’t have to, but then why are you being nice?”

That matches an answer I’ve already thought of. “What you did was real, and it’s only luck it didn’t put me in the hospital. I can’t just up and pretend it didn’t happen at all. Perhaps a better pony than me could do it. But that doesn’t mean I have to hate you indiscriminately.” I stumble over that last word, which feels clunky and insincere all of a sudden. Where was I? “I mean, you’re still a pony, a pony who needs a hug. And I’m the only one around to give one.”

“Mmh.” I can’t see her face from here, but it sounds like she’s smiling. “Octavia’s a pony too. Would you hug her?”

“Is she sorry too?”

“Ha! No, Octavia didn’t do anything wrong. In fact it’s all my fault. And you, she says, you’re a lying liar and you had a great time, all the way through.”

“Hmm. No, then I don’t think I’d hug her.”

“The worst of it all is that she’s getting away with it too. I mean, both not stopping me, and whatever she did to you before.”

“Yeah, that’s a shame. If she doesn’t even get to feel bad for it . . .” I want to say something about how Vinyl feeling bad about ‘getting away with it’ sounds like it ought to be punishment enough that she’s not truly getting away with it after all – but I can’t think of a way to phrase it that won’t sound callous. Oh, if only I had a blackboard! And an audience that understood symbolic logic . . .

Suddenly I’m aware I’ve been quietly nuzzling at the back of Vinyl’s neck while I lost myself in thought! I jerk my head away, shocked and disgusted with myself. Damn you, Finey, here’s a mare in emotional distress, a mare who made herself helpless before you – those hoofcuffs are fairly tame compared to what I’ve seen in the Service, but all the same she won’t even be able to walk in them, so if I wanted to take advantage . . . She even cuffed herself left and right rather than fore and back. I could simply roll her onto her back and push her legs apart . . .

Bad thoughts! Of course Finey Jr. takes that as a cue to wake up. I let go of Vinyl and roll over on my side to give it space to come out. It’s a reflex thing; trying to smother a growing erection by lying flat on it is a mistake you only make once. I narrowly avoid hitting her with it.

Vinyl twists her neck around to see where I went. “You’re flagging,” she informs me, redundantly. So much for hoping she’d be together enough to ignore it.

Play it cool now. “Sorry. I don’t really control it.”

“I know.” She lies back down, looking away from me again. “You can fuck me if you want, though. I don’t mind.” Did her voice tremble a bit there? Her fatalist attitude is beginning to annoy me. Her tail is twitching a little, but that could mean anything.

I manage to reach over and stroke her mane comfortingly. “You say you don’t mind, but you don’t really want it, do you?”

She starts shaking again. After a few seconds I realize she’s laughing this time.

“Sorry,” she says, rolling onto her back so she can look at me. “It’s just, a stallion with his wang out, trying to be all gentle and touchy-feely . . . that’s a bit comical, isn’t it?”

“It is?”

“Yeah. It’s like, excuse me, ma’am, just ignore the big built-in dildo with the lifelike squirt function, and let’s pretend it’s all about hugs and rainbows and friendship instead. Nothing personal, you know. I’m sure it works on all the straight mares.”

Right. She is – or was – marefriends with Tavi. I hadn’t stopped to think what that implies. She’s welcome to lean that way, of course – I like mares too; who am I to judge?

“Do you want me to leave?” I ask.

“Nah, it’s alright.” She smiles. “Only, if you wanna take me, you have to be brutal about it. Demanding.”

“Sorry,” I say. “Not for me.” But I guess I can stay for a bit, make sure she’s alright. At least until she wants her hoofcuff keys back.

She leans back lazily. “You’re not very good at getting even, you know that?”

Perhaps not. But I’m pretty sure I like it that way.

* * *

Of course it couldn’t last.

Over the last week I think I’ve spent more nights with Pokey than at home – and then only because I had late shifts at the cafe and couldn’t very well come knocking after closing time, in the darkest night. That would have felt like I was moving in, like it was a relationship, which it wasn’t. I don’t do relationships. He was with Cressie anyway, and they were cute together and I didn’t want to break them up.

He was still a magnificent lay, though.

I didn’t let him tie me up again right away. Not that it hadn’t been interesting, but I don’t want to become one of those ponies who can only get off that way. So we were back to the old-fashioned way – ‘vanilla’, they call it – and Pokey didn’t push at all, but stayed just as civil and thoughtful as before, and we made excellent vanilla love, and I didn’t even mind when Cressie invited herself into it halfway through. Then we did another round with her in the middle, since I thought she did deserve thanks for loaning out her stallion, and then one for Pokey, and it all felt delightfully naughty, cheating and not-cheating at the same time.

On Sunday he took me down to Underfall Park (or he took us, or they took me, or perhaps we took Cressie – anyway, we all went) where I hadn’t been since forever. I don’t know why; it’s a beautiful place. We went to see the mistbows and had a picnic, and I caught myself thinking this must be what a family feels like if everypony isn’t at each other’s throats all the time.

When we came home I helped bathe Cressie. I know earth ponies need to help each other scrub (which, to be frank, makes me thankful to have a horn), but somehow I doubt it usually involves quite as much splashing and whining and desperate escape attempts. I came this close to shouting banana pie and yell at her to pony up just long enough to get it over with. But that wasn’t for me to decide.

After we all got dried up, Pokey did me up with harness and stocks and gag and blindfold and a bandage pinning my ears down to my skull, and spanked me with the paddle for about an hour (or so it felt) before fucking me well and hard. Then he left me to contemplate my fate while he did something to Cressie that made her come loudly, and came back to me for more spanking with a different instrument and another fuck. I went to sleep still wearing the blindfold and harness – he loosened most of the straps first – with my ass on the fire and the rest of me glowing. Just once in a while won’t do harm, right?

Today, however, Pokey appeared to be nervous and sad when I arrived in late afternoon, and he barely said a word during dinner. Afterwards he made Cressie stay in the bedroom, and he came back and sat down in the couch in the far end away from me. He sighed.

“Bellchaser,” he said. “I’m not sure you ought to keep coming here.”

The next thing I remember is standing in the middle of the floor and something I had shouted echoing through the room. Pokey still sat there in the couch the same as before; it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds.

“You see,” he was saying, “it’s – I mean, you know Cressie means a lot to me, right?”

I nodded, numbly.

“She’s the most important pony in the world for me, and she’s always gonna be that, no matter what we play at otherwise. She’s given so much – put so much trust in me . . . So I think it’s not fair to you to let you keep hoping for something more.”

I struggled to follow along. “Who says I’m hoping for more?”

He looked at me. “Go ahead and say you’re not.”

I was about to protest that I never wanted to be anything but fuckbuddies. But then I remembered that ‘family’ feeling. That was more, wasn’t it?

“I thought so,” he said. “And I’m sorry for, well, stringing you along this far. It just happened. And you’re still a very – I mean . . .” He caught himself and chuckled sadly. “I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s not you, it’s me.”

Liar. Of course it was me. He was choosing between me and Cressie, and he chose her. It’s what he should choose, what I would have insisted on if he gave me a say. But it still hurt.

See, that’s why I don’t do relationships. Getting dumped sucks.

“Okay.” I composed myself, fought to remain mature about it. “It’s not fun unless it’s fun for both of us.” That’s the first law of fuckbuddying. (Don’t take it personally is the second. I’ll get on with that tomorrow.)

“Yes, exactly!” Pokey suddenly brightened up. “Where did you – well, none of my business.” He deflated again.

I felt like I should be screaming and shouting and throwing things. But down that path is where you become Mrs. Crust. I still haven’t figured out what else there is to do, though, so I just stood there.

Eventually I had to say something. “I guess I should be going now.”

He looked away and nodded.

Before I left, I found Cressie dozing in her basket in the bedroom. I reached out with a hoof and ruffled her mane like I’ve seen Pokey do.

“So, this is goodbye, I think.”

She jerked awake and stared at me, possibly not believing she heard correctly.

“Your master doesn’t want me around anymore.”

Her ears folded down, and she gave a pitiful little whine and started licking the hoof I’d been petting her with.

Oh, of course she wouldn’t break character for something as trivial as me being kicked out! No, wait, that wasn’t fair. I knew her well enough to know she doesn’t break character, period. It’s probably easier that way too, not needing to think up something to say on the spot.

I wanted to say something more, but what? Take good care of him for me? No, that would be an insult; she’s already doing that for herself. Was, even before I came.

Then I heard myself say, “I hope you’re happy.”

She shied away as if I’d hit her, and shrunk down into the basket, looking at me with big hurt eyes.

Did I really say that? “Wait, no!” I backpedaled. “That’s not what – I mean, I didn’t . . .” I couldn’t even think of a reason I’d have said that. How does one explain oneself then?

I turned and fled, down the stairs, out, home.

I had forgotten how empty my apartment feels. Perhaps it only began doing that recently? What am I going to do with myself here?

There’s a stack of papers on the writing desk, staring at me. I don’t even remember what I was doing the last time I worked on them. Finding places where I can foreshadow Rose Petal’s betrayal? I’ll have to revise that. Betrayal is not something you see coming.

I sit at the table, trying to figure out what I did wrong. It had been so close to perfect, hadn’t it?

Horseapples. Horseapples. Horseapples.