Little Voice

“What you did was wrong.”

“Guess that took care of that problem. And it was fun, too!”

“What you did was very, very wrong.”

“Better get home soon. Adagio’s gonna yell at me if I come back past 11pm again.”

“Not even wrong-ish. Horrible!”

“Wonder if I should tell her about tonight. Not exactly low profile, but I bet she’d love it!”

“What you did was wrongest. No wrongier thing than what you did just now. Wrong, wrong, wrong, what you did was— Listen to me for Tartarus’ sake!”

“Hello? What was that?”

“The inner part of your brain. The one you forgot about.”

“I have a part of my brain I’ve been missing? I always thought it was just one big pink thing inside my head.”

“There are parts of your brain that don’t work as they should. Or that you don’t listen to. Like me.”

“Well, what are you, exactly?”

“Your Conscience. It’s nice to be listened to for once! But it’s just a start.”

“How… how long have I had you? Also, can I call you Connie?”

“... Excuse me?”

“You know, like short for Conscience. It’s cute!”

"Well… I’d rather let you do that than listen to your whining later. You can."

“Yay! So, um, like I was asking, have I always had you, Connie?”

“Everyone has had a conscience since their childhood. So did you. But you never listened to me. Why wouldn’t you listen?”

“Actually, come to think of it, I do kinda remember sometimes I’d hear a voice in my head. When I did things with my siren voice, especially. It sounded like me. Except it wasn’t me. Or was it? Is it?”

"I’m that voice, Sonata. I’m you and you’re me. Except that well, I’m the better part of you. The part that you forgot during your, well, ‘happy’ life."

“What do you mean by 'better'?”

"Moral. Based on moral values. As in, ‘good.’ Not thinking about just yourself, but others too."

“Well, I think about how Adagio, Aria and I are gonna be okay all the time. I mean, that’s good… right?”

“To some point, yes. But caring only about a small group of people while hurting others isn’t much better. Do you think they care about you?”

“Well, Aria couldn’t care less about me, that much I know.”

“Oh, does she? And what about Adagio?”

“Of course she does! She’s taken care of me since I was an itty bitty siren. She’s practically my mom! She’s the reason I’m alive, and why we’re all here in this alternate world … wait.”

“Is she? What do you know about her for sure?”

“Well, she always sings to me whenever I’m scared or upset. And she’s tough, but always tells me that she loves me and Aria no matter what.”

“And what does singing do? Doesn’t it force you to change your mood at all? They’re just words. She tells you she loves you. But how much of that can you know for sure?”

“Oh please, it’s completely different than from when we’re singing to other people!”

“How can you know? Have you ever used your voice on her? I mean you shouldn’t, but have you? You can’t tell what happens; you can’t tell how powerful she is.”

“Of course I’d never sing to her to control her! Adagio says we’re immune to each other. And even if we weren’t, why would I? She cares about me already. I don’t have to second guess how she feels about me. Unlike ponies and humans.”

“You don’t even know how she feels about you, the only things you have are her words and empty assumptions. She’s controlling you, just as you’re controlling all of your friends, and you know that, don’t you?”

“No! She’s not! And I have a very good reason for using my powers on my friends why I just said can’t be used on me, I’m sure of it!”

“You’re sure, but you never really know. And what’s the reason you use your powers on your ‘faithful’ friends?”

“It’s the only way I can keep them. You remember how things were for me back in Equestria! You… you were there, right, Connie?”

“I want to hear that from you.”

“I’m going to take that as a yes. Anyways, you know how hard it was for me to make friends without magic, being the way I looked and all. They’d always run away from me as soon as they saw…”

“Perhaps you looked in all the wrong places.”

“Whatever, I’m not taking that chance again. I can only guarantee they’ll stay with me if I sing to them. You’ve seen it work.”

“They stay with you, yes. You have a whole army of zombies as your friends. Congratulations! But can any of them really support you when you need them? Do they love you, or do the spells you’ve sang into their minds make them love you?”

“I… I… Why do you care?”

“Like I said, I’m you and you’re me. I want only the best for you, but to heal the wound, you must sometimes tear a scar. So answer me, have you really made any friends besides Adagio? If we even consider her a friend…”

“On Earth or in Equestria?”

"Anywhere."

“Well, there’s my boyfriend, though I haven’t really gotten to sing to him yet- you know Blue Sky.”

"One. And how many ‘friends’ have you made by singing?"

“That depends, what year are we talking?”

"How many ‘friends’ have you made? Dozens? Hundreds?"

“I dunno, I’ve lost track…”

"But there were a lot. Enough to lose track, weren’t there?"

“Yeah, what’s your point?”

“Imagine all of them were their own people. All of them had their own lives. You controlled them. You sang for them to make them do what you want, never letting them choose on the matter themselves. You’ve taken the lives they lived, the lives they could’ve lived, away from them.”

“Well, maybe their lives would have sucked without me. I’m a fun person. I shaped their lives pretty well, don’t you think?”

“Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve killed them. You’ve killed what they could’ve been. You’ve taken lives that could’ve happened long before what you did today.”

“I never killed them… directly. I’ve only ever killed these guys, and they weren’t even my friends to begin with!”

"‘These guys’- how many of them were there?"

“Only two.”

“ ‘Only?’ Only!? Think of it like that, how would you feel if you were one of them? What if Blue Sky was one of them?”

“I’d never hurt him like that. I wouldn’t want any of my friends to be hurt or killed like that. Well, Aria’s debatable.”

“But what if, Sonata? What if? Place yourself in their position for a moment.”

“It’d… it be awful. I don’t want to die, especially not in a violent way.”

“You wouldn’t want to be told to walk into the edge of that cliff over there, would you? You wouldn’t want to smash against the sharp rocks down below. This is exactly how they felt. This is exactly what you’ve done to them.”

“They deserved it! They were going to hurt Blue Sky!”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I overheard them. They were talking about how mad they were at him for… some reason. I dunno, they said something about “Crystals” and “money”. And they were gonna go after him soon. I couldn’t leave them alone after that.”

“So you didn’t even know what they were going to do to him? You only assumed they’d hurt him. You interfered with something Blue Sky was up to based on an assumption. And you say you care about him? Do you even trust him?”

“Of course I trust him! And he cares about me, too! We get along great, and that’s BEFORE I’ve gotten to sing to him.”

“So you trust him, and you still interfere with his business. What happens now? What would he think of you if you told him? Would he have done something like that?”

“Well, I don’t have to tell him…”

“You trust him but you keep secrets from him?”

“Well, sometimes that’s necessary! And, well, if it ever does come up in conversation for whatever reason, I’d just reassure him it was for his safety.”

“And you think he’ll believe you? Perhaps he’ll start asking questions. Prying. He’ll probably find out about other things you’ve hidden from him. Maybe the fact that you’re a siren, for one?”

“Blue Sky’s not gonna find out. About the siren thing, about the killing, any of that. If he does, I’ll just tell him to forget about it. And we’ll live happily from there on out!”

“You keep secrets from him. You lie. And I don’t think he’ll be as understanding. A relationship based on lies is like a house of cards. One nudge and it’ll topple over. But you need to tell him. If he finds out himself, things will be even worse.”

“I can’t… I can’t tell him. About anything. He’ll leave me if he ever knows anything about this.”

“I think it’ll be better that way. Maybe you should start over. With all that happened, with all that would happen… I think telling him is the only way. He might stay with you. He would if he really loves you.”

“No! I can’t risk that! No one’s ever loved me for who I am outside of Adagio! I need him… he can’t know. Anyways he know plenty of other stuff about me, so it’s fine.”

"He doesn’t know who you really are. He doesn’t love you for who you are, he loves what he thinks you are. Just tell him."

“He knows I’m funny, he knows about my interests and passions – at least the ones that don’t have anything to do with Equestria – and I know about him. Why do I need to bring up the siren thing anyways?”

“Because interests and passions are not the whole you. You are who you are, but you are also what you are. Unless, of course, you don’t want to be a siren…”

“Adagio says it’s nothing to be ashamed of, but… okay, maybe I kinda don’t like it at times. How ugly I look in reality.”

“How you have to hurt others to feed…”

“At first it bothered me, but I got used to it over time… that tends to happen. And Adagio said she never even had to worry about that when she was younger. I admire that.”

“She never had to worry because she doesn’t care about other people. How can you admire that, not caring about others? Maybe that’s the reason others don’t want to care about you, unless you sing to them. If you changed, then perhaps, just perhaps, they’d think differently.”

“But singing and feeding off energy is the one way I know how to survive at all! It’s probably the only way! Are you saying I have to die in order to get people to like me!?”

“What if there are other ways? You never know. The princesses wanted the best for you. They thought they could, well, change you in some way. Perhaps if you’d listened to them then, you’d have found the solution by now. Maybe you’d have found true friendship by now.”

“Well, the princesses aren’t here right now. Heck, they’re probably dead back in Equestria. But right now I need to stick to what I know if I’m going to survive off of what little energy there is in this place. At least I’ve found some stuff to enjoy about it. Tacos, dancing, theme parks, nicknames…”

“Yes, there are things to enjoy. There are things to enjoy everywhere. But you can be truly happy. Don’t you want that? Don’t you want to risk finding a portal back? You’d just need to escape from here and find the princesses. Perhaps they haven’t forgotten you. Perhaps they’ll listen to you. You need to get away from Adagio- she's made you believe a lack of empathy is a virtue!”

“No! No, I don’t wanna leave Adagio!”

“You don’t even realize how much Adagio is hurting you!”

“She’s not, I swear! She cares about me and Aria, a lot!”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry to say it, but you don’t think like that. The rest of your mind is thinking otherwise, Sonata. You’re lying to yourself.”

“Shut up! Just…please, that’s not true! It- it can’t be… it just can’t be… my entire life…”

"I’m sorry, Sonata, but it’s just the truth..."

“Can you please just… stop? I don’t ever want to hear anything else from you, okay? You’ve done nothing but feed me scary ideas and lies… I don’t like any of this!”

“I’ve never told you lies. Only the truth. Only the things that would lead you to a better, happier life. They come at a cost though. No happiness is without a cost.”

“You keep telling me things I don’t like… all you’re doing is making me upset. How is that supposed to help me in any way?”

“You don’t see that now because you’ve never listened to me. Things that would’ve been obvious to you had you listened, now seem really alien to you.”

“Look, I don’t want to hear any of this. I want to be happy. And you’re making that really hard for me right now! But I guess that’s your job, isn’t it? Make it impossible for me to live the life I want?”

“You don’t want this life, and you’re not happy. You’re lying to yourself and saying that you’re happy. This is not a life for you, not a life you should live. Listen to me for once! Think about what I say! Perhaps you might realize that I’m the one telling the truth!”

“No! I don’t believe you! You’re not me. You can’t be! I’d never think like that about Adagio! You don’t know anything about my life!”

“I only want to the best for you. I am you. I’ve always been you, pushed into the back of your mind. You’re not even a complete person without me. You lie to yourself. Your life is a damn lie!”

“Please, just … Shut up, okay! Leave me alone! For good! I never want to hear from you again, alright? Just go away!”

“I… I’m sorry.”

“Then leave.”

“… Hello?”

“Are you there?”

“… Am I alone now?”

“Guess there’s nothing keeping me from going back to Adagio now. But then… why do I feel so empty?”