The ponies who found her were aghast.
Having lived hundreds of years under Princess Celestia the Benevolent's rule, violence itself was somewhat surprising, but the acts that were done to this poor mare were unheard of. And while all of the kingdom's guards knew about murder – in a mostly theoretical way, of course – this type of brutality had ceased at least a thousand years before.
The mare's corpse documented the whole spectrum of bruise coloration as well as a wide range of burns aged from pretty much just before death to years old. The beatings were so severe that her body could only be identified by her cutie mark.
Later, when the most hardened guards came to investigate the corpse, they were all violently ill, and each one of the guards required special care for weeks so that they could cope with their frequent nightmares. Needless to say, the ponies who found the corpse required extended trips to the psychiatric ward.
The perpetrator was found easily, as he was the murdered mare's spouse. Upon interrogating the neighbors as politely as they could manage, the guards came up with two horrifying details. First, was that the other ponies had turned somewhat of a blind eye to the abuse. Such statements as, “Well, I thought that she seemed a bit timid around him,” or “I just didn’t know her very well,” were common.
This blindness was not, as one might suspect, feigned ignorance, as the guards themselves found when they had to deal with a violently ill pony after they had shredded the wool off her eyes. While most of the neighbors knew something was odd, they lived their own sheltered lives, and had rationalized away the now tell-tale signs of long term physical and mental abuse.
The second disturbing detail was that the monster of a pony who perpetrated such heinous crimes had a daughter who had not been seen for at least a week.
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For almost a week after learning of the poor filly's existence, the pegasus guard desperately dredged through the clouds searching for her corpse, until one of them had the bright idea to find out where she had last been seen. Had violence been a more frequent occurrence, going to flight camp would have been high up on the list of places to look for the young filly, but as murder was virtually unheard of this was not one of the places the guards thought to look.
The guard who discovered that the filly was last seen falling off a cloud relayed the news immediately to the other guards. “I've found Fluttershy,” he told the frantic guards, who interrupted the explanation with a cheer, “she fell off a cloud at Flight Camp five days ago.”
After some frantic calculations, the relieved guards realized that her abusive father had been in custody longer than Miss Fluttershy had been missing from camp.
Of course, there was still one small problem: nopony knew where she was. After contacting the Flight Camp director, she told them “It's common for the younger foals to run home.” She continued, with a quaver in her voice, “So, did something unusual happen that I need to look into?” The guards dismissed themselves hastily before being forced to admit their disturbing discoveries to the director.
One can easily imagine that it took quite a bit of shenanigans to figure out that any young pegasus had merely landed on the ground and stayed. This was especially perplexing, since by all accounts Fluttershy was quite capable of flying when not intimidated by crowds (or anything else), so the guards found no apparent reason that she shouldn't have flown back to Cloudsdale.
Eventually, one of the guards decided that maybe she found the ground a safer alternative to returning to her father, and after a quick search he found her living with a bear family, taking care of the local animals not far from where she must have fallen.
The guards had a good chuckle about their ineptitude, but all agreed it was probably better than having to commonly deal with such atrocities.
By the time the guards reported the news of Fluttershy's discovery to Celestia, the trial of the villain, Angel Wings, over his clearly having abused and murdered his wife, had already been arranged. Of course the trial needed to be delayed in order to get the timid filly to appear as a witness to condemn her father.
After what felt like months of patient questions by the calmest of all of the most able listeners, the court dredged up Fluttershy's meek descriptions of abuse – not only to her mother, but also to herself. As the reports trickled up to Celestia, her anger grew, like a small flame being fed larger and heartier wood, until it resembled a barely contained bonfire. The guards' rough treatment of Angel quickly turned from an embarrassing event to a laudatory one, and the serious trial became more and more of a formality.
By trial day, nearly everypony who knew about the sordid events knew with certainty what Celestia's verdict would be: “Let him rot in Tartarus!”
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The one worded protest was shocking, not only because nopony knew that Fluttershy could talk in normal tones, much less a ringing cry, one which clearly drowned out the smug mutters of approbation, but also because everypony else knew that the verdict had been decided well before the trial itself. The court erupted in near deafening cries of confusion, anger, and distress. Even Celestia could barely keep the courtroom from rioting.
It took quite some time and a series of odd emissaries between Celestia, who obviously intimidated the young filly, and the shy Fluttershy before her protest could be comprehended as: “I mean .. . if it's not too much trouble couldn't *mumble-mutter* [Princess Celestia] just somehow keep dad from hurting anypony again, without going to Tartarus?”
During the pause from the trial “Somepony invent a word for a pause like that!” Celestia sequestered herself in her chambers in order to look into her raging heart as she pondered the question. Was she incapable of doing something to save this despicable pony from his rightful punishment? She was, after all, the most powerful alicorn on the planet. But, should she? Should she not send him to where he deserved to be? And what about the justice for the filly who would not speak on her own behalf – should her justice not overcome her mercy?
After an hour of deliberation on the morality of the argument, Celestia realized that she had made this decision before. She had chosen justice over her sister. If she admitted the truth to herself, and after hundreds of years she finally allowed herself to do so, she realized that despite the fact that she did not regret putting Luna away to her beloved moon for succuming to dark magic, she missed her little sister. Because of that newfound realization, she wept for her once perceived need for justice, and bawled for her newly created perceptions of spiritual weakness. Mostly, though, she sobbed because she missed her precious little sister.
After she washed her face, and gave a most un-princess-like blow of her nose, Celestia resolved to figure out how to grant the filly her wish.
When, an hour later she realized the solution, she chuckled, though she admitted to herself that she still felt more like crying than laughing.
With a quick call to Cadence, and a substitute babysitter, Celestia braided the power Cadence drew from a filly's love for her abusive father together with some of the power from an ancient spell in order to change Angel, the monster in pony form, into a fairly harmless bunny rabbit. As a mercy, she allowed Fluttershy to forget the events of the past until she was strong enough to deal with them, and sent her and her new pet to the bear cave near Ponyville.
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After Fluttershy had taught her such an important lesson on mercy, Celestia realized that abandoning such a teacher to live in a cave without any friends was the most ungrateful act imaginable. So, in her oft-times ineffable manner, Celestia surreptitiously sent a sizable donation to the Ponyville animal care fund, along with a politely worded message noting that perhaps a young filly with the name of Fluttershy might perhaps be an asset to the care of local animals. It was further noted that the funds given might be able to supply a house for said filly.
Celestia relegated the finding of friends for Fluttershy to a promising unicorn guard. He sent a pegasus to Cloudsdale to investigate who was friends with Fluttershy. The pegasus discovered that the poor filly had no friends, probably because her father forbade her from dealing with others as much as he could get away with. However, there was one student from Flight Camp who was close enough to being a friend to Fluttershy that the prospect of their friendship seemed as likely as any. There was another benefit of this potential friend, one Rainbow Dash. She was competent enough at flying already that she could graduate a couple of weeks early and be placed immediately in Ponyville's weather flight crew in a promising position. If that worked out, Celestia noted that it would be worth it to give the unicorn guard, Shining Armor, an early promotion.
Occasionally, over the course of the next few years, Celestia would send a guard or two to Ponyville – unofficially, of course – to check on Fluttershy. Along with bringing details about the mare's health and happiness, all those guards brought back positive reviews of Ponyville's parties. Nearly all the mare guards came back complaining that they couldn't afford Rarity's fashions, and the stallions came back with stories about the delicious Apple Farm cider whenever they were lucky enough to get a mug.
In an eternity shoved within a few years, the ancient spell looked ready to unravel. Celestia called upon Cadence's assistance again to place a little magic in a letter:
My dear Twilight, there is more to a young pony's life than studying, so I'm sending you to supervise the preparations for the Summer Sun Celebration in this year's location: Ponyville. And, I have an even more essential task for you to complete: make some friends!
“Why,” asked a suspicious Cadence, “do I need to put a drop of love magic into this note?”
Celestia admitted that the magics needed to transform Angel into a bunny were taken from the magics used to imprison Nightmare Moon. She also admitted that she hoped that a spell would assist Twilight in becoming friends with Fluttershy which could teach her many lessons about mercy and friendship. Finally, Celestia admitted that the whole crazy plan revolved around the insane hope that she could be reunited with her sister by arguments or, if need be, by magic.
As one might guess, Cadence was upset with Celestia's risky gambit for quite some time.
And though Cadence took a while to forgive Celestia, and the adventures caused by Nightmare Moon's release are significant, this is not the place for their stories.
Author's Note
I tried to address abuse while staying within the feeling of FIM as much as possible. Though I think this is a weightier issue than is usually dealt with, I think I did all right in keeping to the lightest reasonable tone.
Some details you may think are anti-canonical:
1: Fluttershy claimed to be a poor flier, but there is no proof that she actually was. In fact, she flies easily to the ducks in THAT VERY EPISODE. In that episode two of the CMC think of her as the best flier in Ponyville for a moment. If you look at “Return of Harmony” she shows that she is a very capable flier since she catches up to Rainbow Dash while dragging a hot air balloon. As many people have stated Fluttershy seems to have poor self esteem, and that is [very likely] the reason that she claims to have been a poor flier.
2 If you look at the text of the note from Celestia I quoted in this work, it doesn't mention dusty books as was stated in the first episode. This fanfic assumes Spike added that part. As Celestia sends Twilight to a library and “sends more books than ever” after Twilight becomes a princess, it isn't too much of a stretch to say that either the dusty books comment was out of character or placed in her mouth by Spike.
As we do not possess magic (or technology) which can neutralize the abusers, I do not condone keeping abusers out of jail.
Most importantly, this fanfic is partly inspired by the #YesAllWomen movement. [statement about society, not MLP] Because it's not as controversial for Hasbro to show Fluttershy get slapped as it would be for them to make an episode dealing with abuse head on. (one cannot defend Angel by saying he has tender moments; so do pretty much all abusive relationships) As a group that watches TV shows extolling the virtues of friendship we need to be aware about abuse, so that we can be the best friend to the abused that we possibly can be.
They, like Fluttershy, deserve it.
