When Angels Fall
Chapter One
LoanSnark
Rainbow Dash had been sleeping when the doctor came in, pushing a cart of medical supplies. Now she lay wide awake, staring at the ponies beside her bed warily.
One of them was one she knew personally. Doctor Helping Hooves, Ponyville's finest psychiatrist, and a pegasus to boot. She had known him now for three months and some days, ever since the incident. The Earth pony mare, though Dash did not recognize her, was clearly a psychiatric nurse, from her thigh-length socks to the trio of syringes, full of a powerful sedative, strapped to her left breast.
Dash eyed them suspiciously. What did they want?
The doctor stepped forward."Good morning, Dash. We're going to be trying something new today. Now, please hold still for me."
Rainbow Dash barely had time to react before the doctor knelt down, grabbing her head between his hooves and holding it down, leaning over her with those deep, comforting brown irises. Meanwhile, she felt the nurse grab her left hind leg, holding it off to the side. Doctor Hands' voice was slow and measured, with a charming British lilt. "Now, Dash, I know a big part of your condition is a fear of medical tools, but I'm going to need you to bear with me. We're going to give you a shot of an experimental elixir. It'll mellow you out, we hope."
Rainbow Dash gasped, struggling against the ponies' strong hooves. The straitjacket around her torso held her forehooves against her chest, so she kicked out crossways with her free leg, hitting the nurse square in the chin with a socked hoof.
"Damnit! Doctor, strap her down, for Harmony's sake!"
The doctor obliged, moving to attach Dash's right hoof to the bed's footrail, while keeping a rear hoof planted firmly on Dash's chest.
Rainbow Dash struggled, attempting to sit up to no avail as Helping Hand finished attaching the thick leather strap to Dash's right hind hoof, cries of fear and protest reduced nearly to nil by the thick mesh muzzle around her snout.
The doctor grabbed her head again, forcing her to gaze at him. "Dash! Calm down! You don't have a choice! Rainbow Dash...please..."
As she gazed into his warm, coffee-colored eyes, the pegasus felt an overwhelming urge to obey the doctor, the one who cared for her, the one who understood her.
To be a good girl.
Eventually, her struggles subsided, her restrained leg growing still.
"Good, good, now you're onto it! Nurse, take care of the injection, please. I'll keep her still."
He sat there, holding the pegasus in a firm grip, as the nurse rubbed her upper thigh with a generous amount of isopropyl and primed a disturbingly long-needled syringe which, Rainbow Dash saw out of the corner of her eye, was filled with a strange, flourescent green liquid.
"Now, honey," the nurse cautioned, "You're held down nice and snug, but I'm going to need you to help me out here, and keep yourself from bucking when this goes into you, because it will hurt.
Hands removed her muzzle, and the cyan pegasus finally spoke.
"Make it quick."
The nurse smiled, and placed a steadying hoof on Dash's free leg.
"Of course."
With that, she steadied the needle against Rainbow Dash's thigh, and finally plunged the three-inch rod into the pegasus's leg.
Her thigh was on fire. She tried to ignore the invasion of her flesh, the sickening feeling of metal piercing her body, the same feeling which had haunted her nightmares for so long.
The doctor, noticing his charge's discomfort, quickly thrust a latex-covered hoof into Dash's silently screaming maw.
"Steady! Bite, bite!"
Rainbow obliged, clamping down hard on the doctor's hoof with jaws like steel, tears streaming down her face. She felt sick.
And then, it was over. The needle lay on the cart, spent, as the nurse taped a bandage over the small, but deep-running, hole left by the violation of her patient's flesh. "There we go! Now, that wasn't so bad at all, was it?"
In response, Rainbow Dash turned her head to the side and vomited. Luckily, Helping Hands had predicted this, and now stood up, trotting over to the room's vanity to wash the bedpan of the evidence of their gruesome deed.
In the mirror, he saw the nurse remove the leather strap from around Dash's hoof, and the pegasus curling up, shivering, mind and body spent.
Smiling warmly, he opened the nearby cabinet, pulling out a sky-blue, cloud print blanket. Returning to his charge's bedside, he draped it around her shoulders, watching as the shivering stopped. However, the mysterious drug now forcing its way through her veins had severely lowered her self-control, and upon viewing the design printed upon the flannel, Rainbow Dash began openly sobbing, tears falling upon the blanket, causing the previously innoculous-looking clouds to appear as if they were raining heavily, as if the heavens themselves were weeping for their fallen angel. Even if she had been able to move her forehooves, she likely would have made no pretense of hiding her shame. It didn't matter. Little did at this point.
"Dash...what...what's wrong?" Helping Hands asked nervously, though he had a suspicion, one strong enough to border on certainty.
Sure enough, the sky-blue pegasus lifted her head, and in those rose eyes, Doctor Helping Hands recognized a sorrow which he had, in saner moments, seen in every patient's eyes at some point in his pernicious career.
"I just wanna go home."
********************
"You know, you don't have to do this."
"Well, duh. Why else do you think I'm doing it?"
"..."
"Listen, moldycake, ever since...it happened, I've been thinking...about...a lot of things, obviously. Like, why do you think I started putting black in my hair and coming back here buzzed every other night? 'Cause it's not good for you, if that's what you're thinkin'."
"..."
"And in one of the few moments I wasn't buzzed or hyper, I figured the only way I'm gonna get my friend back is if I go and get her. And who knows, she might not even want to see me. But in any case, I've gotta try."
"...I wish you'd stop calling me 'moldycake'".
"Yeah, and I wish I didn't wake up with the taste of apple schnapps and hundreds of unborn foals in my mouth every morning. I wish their various fathers wouldn't ask where in Tartarus I got that scar after they finish up. I wish we still served cupcakes. But hey, when life hands ya lemons and you're making lemonade, try not to squeeze 'em to close to that gaping hole in your chest."
"..."
"Anyway, I'm out."
"Be careful."
"Do you even need to say it?"
*******************
"I know...I know..."
Doctor Helping Hands held Rainbow Dash close, shielding her from that which was meant to help her. The blue pegasus's tears soaked the front of his crisp, clean doctor's jacket, staining it a drab grey.
"Why...*hic*...why can't I leave?"
"Please, Rainbow, we've been over this. Your phobia and violent outbursts resulting from it have shown you unfit to live normally. Your fit just now only proves that."
Rainbow continued to sob; her straitjacket lay on the floor beside the bed, replaced by a hospital gown and a pair of socks on her forehooves.
"Please...just let me go...just...JUST LET ME GO!"
With an inequine cry, the pegasus hurled herself at the polished cedar door, desperate to escape the prison she had been put into, told to stay in, told they were trying to help. Eventually, her struggles faded to dull thumps, accompanied by a quiet whimper.
"N-no...no more...no..."
Silently, the doctor walked towards her, wrapping his forehooves around her torso. Pulling his patient towards the bed, Hands sat with her, holding Rainbow Dash close as her eyes dried, her sorrow replaced with a horrible emptiness, as if someone had inserted a vacuum into the valves of her heart and sucked until all they got was darkness.
She was breaking. She had fallen, and now she was breaking , shattering against cold, hard reality.
Eventually, the nurse walked back in.
"Um, doctor, I'm going to need consult with you on something." She gave Rainbow Dash a nervous glance, before lowering her voice to the doctor, who had walked over.
"Our patient here has a visitor."
Author's Note
Hiatus is over for a week, then I have to get ready for sophomore year. GAH! I might still upload things occasionally, though, both here and on DeviantArt. And, if I find anything cringeworthy, the Cringe Channel. Yes, the Cringe Channel. Shut up.