A Slave's Freedom

Her voice, though strained and dry, is alive. She's barely hanging onto life.

"Dash!"

She holds up her hoof for a few seconds, pointing at what seems to be a glass of water on the stand near her bedside.

"W-Water…"

Without a moment's hesitation, I grab the glass and hand it to her.

She gives me a slight smile and cups the glass with her forehooves. Sitting up with all her strength, she carefully tips the glass to her lips. The water rushes past her parted lips, and travels down her throat. She sets the glass aside, glances up at me, smiles wide, before letting her eyes close. tight.

"Thanks," she says, her voice not as strained as before. She leans her head onto my shoulder.

I sigh and pat her head. "Anytime."

She sighs too, letting out a breath whose strength lingered in the air. "How long has it been?"

"A few weeks," I reply swiftly.

I couldn't tell her the truth if I tried.

"A few weeks?"

Is that a frown on her face?

"Ah-huh, a few weeks." But really it's been three months.

Her eyes fell from my gaze.

"It felt so much longer…"

"Huh?"

I watched to see if she changes, but that face is still away from me, looking outside that dull white window sill.

The trees look nice here.

"I was dreaming for a long time," she begins while her gaze is focused outside. Green little treetops trickle dewdrops from the tips of their branches. "It was the same dream every time too. We had left the gorge, and my friends were able to get you your own place." A smile worms onto her face. "I thought it was great. You were working at a restaurant, and you were happy with it. Then, the dream ended with y-you…"

Her voice trails off. The dew stopped dropping from the branches.

"I…?"

"Y-you went missing one day," she continues, her voice shaky and raspy. "Ponies said you had gone back to the gorge. I was confused and worried, so I went after you." Downcast eyes meander on the meadows of a fake pleasant landscape. "I couldn't find you at all." Ears dive down and twitch to the sounds of a shrill scream of death. "Then I heard you."

"You're mine."

His voice makes me catch my breath.

"You were… gone," she breathes out. Her good wing twitches, and her body begins to shake. "I had to see that… mangled body every time."

"Mangled body?" I ask.

She shakes her head. "Don't ask, please, please, please, don't ask!"

I frown. Not every nightmare can be explained. But is she glad that they're over?

"Are ya glad that they be over?"

She looks at me with a raised brow, but then slowly gives me a nod. "I never want to see you like that…"

"'Like that?' Dash, what do ya mean?"

She growls at me and screams, "Why do you want to know?"

Because it hurts you.

Because it is chaining you to him.

Because we're both chained together.

There's a blood mark here, there, here, there; and one be running down the field, before a bullet grazes his young precious heart.

"I… wanna know if I was wearin' chains."

Her face warms up. Red blush decorates her cheeks. "W-What?"

"Chains are a sign of ownership."

A tilt of her head this time. "H-Huh?"

I whirl my pointer finger. "Ya know? Master and such?"

Her eyes widen. "Oh! Right… you're still a slave."

Am I?

I thought about it again, and again, and again. Master tells me I'm still his, but am I really? Whose chains wrap around my wrists? Whose whip bears deep within my body? Does my back still look like the branches of an old oak tree, where many slaves stand under to keep their bodies from keeling over in the deadly, hot summer sun? Does the machine that kept me awake still penetrate my skin with the sharpest of needles?

All I know of his torture with his hand near mine.

"Right…"

I may be fine with her nearby. "So… Dash?"

She barely gets the message, but as she snaps out of her funk, she says, "I didn't see any chains, Dyson. Why would you be chained?"

I felt my lips fall to the trap of a frown. In my mind, we were chained to the ground by our bodies, slaves to the world around us for being weak. Yet I was chained both mentally and physically by my Master. Master is here somewhere; she doesn't understand. "I still hear him, Dash. He's here, somewhere, and I can't shake him off."

She frowns too. She understands me now. She knows my pain. She— "Dyson?" —She says things to me. We talk. It's a good thing, isn't— "Dyson?" —it? I mean, I know she's here for me, helping me find home maybe— "Dyson!"

I snap out of my funk. "Huh, Dash?"

She grabs my arm with her forehoof. "You're never leaving me."

Pardon?

She glares at me with fire in her eyes. Her frown is no longer there. Eyebrows slanted; no hint of confusion laying on her face, just anger, smoking hot anger fizzling in a fire pit, blazing in the midnight sky with people, whose aching bones hope for another day of rest watch its tantalizing glow from up close, zeroing in on its form. The warmth spreads throughout their bodies, and I feel its warmth too. The fire is right here, beside me.

And it burns the chains right off my wrists.

"Can you get the nurse, Dyson?"

She smiles at me.

I nod and do as I'm told.

I'm a slave to my words, not my Master.

"How are you feeling?"

It had been a few minutes since the nurse had entered her—our room. She had been tidying up our areas (more of hers than mine) and making sure we are alright. She already asked that question to me, and I told her I was fine. Barely any pain, just a dull sensation in my back. Probably from sleep.

Meanwhile, Rainbow Dash was telling the nurse about her pain.

"Slightly in pain, Redheart."

She was wearing that same old hat with a cross on it.

"Where is the pain, Dash?"

Her mane was done up in a bun.

"By my wing…"

The stub wiggled as it was mentioned.

"I see…"

There was no wing there to see.

"It hurts when I move it." Bluntly put.

"How intense is the pain?"

"Five." Rainbow Dash knew the drill. "But I can handle it," she added.

She forgot to tell the nurse that the pain was more intense mentally. Losing her wing had devastated her. I know that more than ever.

"Are you sure? I mean, if you want we could—"

A grimace lay on Dash's face. "I am fine, Miss Redheart. I can handle pain like this."

Redheart stares at her momentarily, her eyes glancing over her form. Then, as Dash slowly sat up in her bed, Redheart let out a needed sigh. "Okay, call me if the pain increases."

It's been increasing ever since you arrived. The grimace was just a call for help, a chain that still links with another within her body. Yet you didn't see it. You saw just the grimace, not the chains that dangle all around her. They tell her that she'll never escape, that she'll never gain that wing back, that her chances of flying with the best team in Equestria was a dream gone by, resting in the meadows of a fake pleasant landscape with little green treetops dropping miniscule amounts of dew from the tips of their branches. Life for her, has stopped dead center in a room that tortures her body and mind.

And all she has is me as solace.

"Dash…"

The hoofsteps outside the room flittered in the air.

"Dash."

They scurried off into the distance.

"Dash?"

Little dewdrops dance on the ground. Puddles form.

"Dash!"

And they dance until the night sets the stage.

Her sleeping form is not a pretty sight. Streaks of sadness still appear on her face. They are permanently engraved there, on her soul and body. Her soul weeps for the death that had been brought upon her. The death of losing one's dreams.

What is her dream now?

It must be something related to the ground. She's practically an earth pony now.

A one-winged earth pony.

"Dyson… don't… me."

Mutters of faint memories take flight in the air of the hospital.

I had talked to the nurse. She said her friends will be coming soon. They were afraid of entering before, probably due to me or something. Redheart didn't tell me why, so I have to assume the worst. It is a habit of mine, knowing that I might be at fault, that I might be the reason that she's like this, that I might be the one who caused her pain, made her stay here in chains instead of comforting her when she needed it the most. It is my fault. My fault.

"Your fault."

Lingering his voice is, drowning out my sorrow with fear.

"Did you ever think for a second, that ya ignorance could land you in this here jail, Dyson?"

Letters drop down in the breeze on the crossroads.

"Ya never did think before you spoke, nor did'ya  think before ya acted, and ya never thought before you interrupted me. Yet here ya are, askin' why you're screwin' up again when the answer has been in plain sight."

And he is right. My Master is right. Questioning myself after the fact, when those machines blinded my vision, my own lack of true care for her whole self and not just the physical self; everything is wrong.

"Then wrong your wrong.  Have I taught you nothin', slave?"

He didn't demean my race. He told me to do something more. He is right. I am going to do something more.

So I stand up and let the window bring cool air into the room. Dark nightlights shine bright in the sky. They twinkle sometimes.

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star, show momma how bright ya'll are."

They twinkle a lot in the winter.

"Is he… nice?"

"I wonder… parties?!"

"Pinkie, ya'll are… rampant than—"

"Shhh, darling… wake—up!"

Noises of all kinds wrestle in my mind. Some are voices, bickering happily and mingling with each other, while others are metallic beeps ranging from the heart to the cold shells of a corpse. Was it alive in beginning? Maybe, but as something I do not know of, not of what I am. They don't wear the wounds I bear.

My eyes are welcomed with the white walls as before. But around me are the colors I've missed. They've been outside all along: in the trees, on the paths surrounding the hospital, on the hat of Redheart's nurse cap. Maybe this is the final stage. Maybe this is the final field I'm in. It is different though, with no cornstalks climbing, no cotton to meticulously pick, no bodies collapsing to the heat, and no gun barrels poked at my sides. All I feel is love.

"Is he awake?"

I hear her voice in the midst of them all.

"D-Dash?"

All around me are colors with eyes. They all peer at me. But in the crowd I see her face. She's smiling and hoisting her hooves around those colors.

"These are my friends, Dyson!"

And one by one, the colors became whole.