"OCTY!!!"
"VINYL!!!"
"OCTAVIA!!!"
"VINYL!!!"
Fear. The only thing going through Octavia's head as a stallion roughly clamped his hoof down on her muzzle, a rag in his hand. She tried her best not to breathe in and throw off her assailant but, after a short struggle, the stallion smashed his other hoof into her head and a sense of dizziness invaded her mind and she had no control over her breath. She breathed in. Lungs burning, she looked around with wide, scared eyes. As the scene around her faded, she only had time to see Vinyl being given the same treatment in the wreckage of their cottage.
...
...
...
She gasped as she sat up, rope digging into her sides. Vinyl. Where was she? Where was her best friend?! Where was her marefriend?! The questions kept coming through Octavia's drug addled mind as the darkness around her lent nothing to the answers.
After a few minutes of this, Octavia's mind began to get...darker. As it did, her surroundings appeared to do so as well even though she knew it wasn't possible. What if the captors had already killed her?! What if they were going to rape her?! What if they already were?!
"VINYL!!! VINYL, WHERE ARE YOU?!?! I NEED TO KNOW, VINYL! IS THIS A PRANK?! PLEASE, VINYL! THIS IS TOO MUCH! LET ME OUT!!!"
No response came. A few more minutes passed as Octavia was left alone with nothing around her. Only the rope around her torso holding her in place and burning her skin.
She screamed.
She yelled herself hoarse.
But nothing happened.
With nothing around her except the Darkness that had was invading her mind and made it impossible to think of a lighter side, Octavia began to cry. Wet, hot tears sliding down the grey fur on her face as she did so. She cried for herself, she cried at the hopelessness of it all and she cried at the darkness. But most importantly, she cried for Vinyl.
Vinyl, the mare who meant nearly everything to her, her marefriend, her lover, her Vinyl.
As the seconds, minutes and hours slipped down the line with the speed of tar, she cried. She didn't know how long for. She no longer cared. Just so long as Vinyl was alright. Wherever she was.
After an indeterminable amount of time spent crying, Octavia's tear ducts began to dry up. It didn't stop her though. She still cried.
The pain from the rope became her lifeline as she cried. So long as it was there, there was hope. So long as it was there, there was still a chance Vinyl was still alive. So long as she was roped up, it meant the ponies out there hadn't finished Vinyl off yet. Meaning she would still be alive.
Right?
With great pain from the rope, Octavia stood, still crying nothing. (her) The fur on her cheeks had become stained with the tears and were still moist. (mind) She held no doubts in her mind that she wouldn't be escaping from this darkness. (took) All she could do was prolong the inevitable. (on) And if...it...was inevitable, then if she managed to put herself out of action, (more) maybe her captors would spare Vinyl. (darkness)
This was the logic running through her Darkness infused mind as she crawled over to wherever the rope came from, using said rope as her guide underneath her hooves. A minute later, she came across the end of the rope. It was held in place with a closed hook in the wall that, in any frame of mind, she doubted anypony would ever be able to get it out of the wall unaided. That was good.
Her mind took on more of the Darkness. She took ahold of the rope.
Suddenly, a bright light assaulted Octavia's eyes from to her far left and she smashed her eyes shut, shielding her face with her hoof.
"Get in there." A gruff voice, no doubt one of the captors, said as a muffled thump sounded from between him and Octavia. Suddenly, the light cut out with a loud slam that made Octavia wince from the volume of the noise after her time in complete silence. She lowered her hoof.
"...Octy?" A small, quiet voice called to her from the place of the earlier thump.
Vinyl.
"Vinyl! Vinyl, what did they do to you?!" The grey mare gasped out as she rushed over to where Vinyl was laying on the floor.
Vinyl started to chuckle but quickly began to wheeze instead.
"I'm fine, Octy. Just a few broken bones and a couple cuts."
"What did they do?" Octavia asked, her voice much softer as she sat with Vinyl, holding her head to her rope bound chest.
"They hit me a couple times, whipped me. That kinda thing. Standard information retrieving procedure."
Octavia began to cry again. Her tear ducts hadn't had enough time to replenish all the tears, though, and so her puffy, red-rimmed eyes managed to squeeze out a single tear. A single tear that landed squarely at the base of Vinyl's electric blue mane.
"You idiot. You're hurt and you're joking about it. Doesn't it hurt?! It definitely hurt me, not knowing where we are, where you were! Why are we here, Vinyl? Why?!"
Vinyl was silent.
"Octavia. I have to confess something." Vinyl was suddenly very serious, shocking Octavia. This...wasn't Vinyl. Was it? "You know that I'm not the most...careful pony, right? Of course you do. We've lived together for years. Well, once upon a time, I wasn't as well off as I am now that I'm making all this music. And I love this life, really, I do, especially you, my dear Octavia. But, like I said, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. At one point, I fell on such harsh times that I was forced to turn to a much...darker...source of income. I'm not proud of it, but I used to be a part of a very well known gang in Canterlot. The Canterlot Mafia. You've heard of them, right? I mean, heh, who hasn't?"
She had heard of them. The Canterlot Mafia were a very dangerous gang that ruled the underworld of Canterlot. Sure, Celestia and Luna were powerful, but what is power when faced with hundreds, if not thousands of ponies ganging up on them? Even the Two Sisters would fall to that. But what surprised Octavia was Vinyl's involvement. She thought she'd known the white and blue unicorn. Apparently not if she had, at one point, been a part of the most ruthless gang in Equestria. Now, Vinyl had taken on a more dreamlike quality in her tone.
"And it was amazing. We were like a family. We were family. I got my pay and I managed to get a place of my own. But it didn't stop there. See, I'd become addicted. It was just so... I was... I can't really describe it, but when I was doing those...things...the muggings and the burglaries I felt like I was on top of the world. I felt like I was important. Of course, from there I threw myself into my work. I rose through the ranks and came to pretty much the midway point between a common grunt and Big Boss, the leader of the Canterlot Mafia, when I had to stop. The Canterlot Mafia isn't the only gang in Canterlot, Octy, the Razor Hooves were there as well. They aren't as well known to most people, but everyone in the Canterlot Mafia knows who they are. They're like the Mafia, but they're much more...hidden...in their attacks. They're the ones behind loads of political deaths in the higher society of Canterlot. You might see that a noble has, say, accidentally fallen into rapids on one of the faster moving rivers in the countryside while on vacation, but that's not true. Well, sometimes it is. But not most of the time. Usually, it's one of the two main gangs. The Razors or the Mafia. The Razors more often than not, though. What those newspapers don't say is how another pony has miraculously managed to secure a spot higher up in the royal court that the newly dead pony might have gotten instead of them. Those ponies have probably paid one of the two to handle it."
Octavia was surprised and shocked, another gang in Canterlot? How many other, smaller, gangs must exist if one of the biggest managed to get through unnoticed by the general populace? How bad could they be? Worse than these...Razor Hooves? What did this mean about Vinyl? If Vinyl had said that the two gangs had both killed then...did that mean that...had Vinyl ever killed anyone? Suddenly, the storyteller's tone become harder.
"One day, I had been sitting in my office, handling the paperwork, when I heard a knock from my door. I called out for them to come in, and, to my surprise, it was one of my higher ups. She had been smiling at me. She sat down and she told me that I'd been promoted. I was so excited, of course, it was like a dream. The next job up was that of managing the gang's activity in one of the districts. Up until then, I'd just been handling one of the casinos in one of the lower class districts. This promotion meant so much to me. I accepted immediately but I was told that before I could properly be moved up I had to pass a rite of passage. I agreed and went along with it and she led me down into the basement below HQ. She led me past a few cages holding a couple animals and a few of the vehicles we used to move around some of our more powerful operatives. Sometimes, they needed to be at important events and needed to make an entrance, other times, they needed to be smuggled out of the city and to a safe-house out in the country. She led me past them all and to an old metal door. I'll never forget the door. It was mainly a dull grey metal but it was darker at points where it had been stained from whatever had happened before. Most of the edges were really rusty but it looked really secure. She opened the door and led me in."
Here, Vinyl stopped. And while Octavia wanted to know what happened, she knew it must have been hard for Vinyl to come clean like this. She held Vinyl's head to her chest in the darkness and gave her a long, lingering kiss. It wasn't a kiss of passion like those he two normally shared but rather one that conveyed safety. Security. Vinyl wouldn't be judged for her actions and Octavia wanted her to know that. Vinyl kissed her back and raised a hoof to Octavia's cheek. As the two parted, Vinyl ran her hoof down the side of Octavia's face in a sign of love. She leaned into the gesture. Happy that, even when the two were in complete Darkness, surrounded by nothing but each other, they still had each other.
"I love you, Octavia." Vinyl said, lovingly.
"As do I, you, Vinyl." Octavia returned.
"Do you really want to know what happened next?" Vinyl asked, her voice cracking a bit.
"If it would hurt you, no."
"No. You need to know. I can't keep it from you any longer. If these jackasses are going to kill us, I want you to know me. And everything about me. No secrets."
"If that's how you feel, Vinyl, then I suppose I should tell you that I was the one who ate those chocolate cookies you were saving."
Vinyl chuckled, definitely sounding better after the ordeal from earlier. A sliver of the Darkness left Octavia's mind as she smiled along with Vinyl. Her Vinyl. Always her Vinyl. No matter what she'd done.
"Heh, well anyway, the mare led me through the door and into a room. There was a pony tied up in the middle of the room but he was gagged and his legs were all tied together. He had no blindfold. I looked over to my superior and she gave me...she gave me a knife. Then she told me to kill him. She told me that he was a Razer and I would have to kill him if I wanted the job."
A heavy silence settled over the two.
"Did you?"
"..."
"Vinyl, did you kill him?!"
"...yes."
And just like that, Octavia's world shattered.
"You killed him!"
"Yes."
"Why?!"
"Like I said, once you were in the Mafia, they were your family. I held the knife for a moment and looked over to the mare. She smiled and nodded. I looked over to the stallion on the floor. He was a bright green earth pony with a fox for a cutie mark. He was looking at me. I'll never forget the look in his eyes. He was so scared. He was so scared, Octy, and I killed him. I killed him! He was shouting through the gag and jerking about on the floor and I drove the knife in through his stomach. he was screaming by that point. But I didn't stop. I didn't stop! I'd started it then, I couldn't very well stop there. He was in pain! What was I supposed to do?! I pulled it back out and I shoved it in his heart!" By this point, Vinyl was sobbing. Octavia was numb. Vinyl - her Vinyl - had killed somepony. obviously she felt guilty, but Octavia couldn't help but feel that from that point on, Vinyl and her would always have this driving a wedge between them both. That was, if they ever got out of the Darkness alive.
She sat there, holding Vinyl's head and staring at where she thought it was. The fact then crashed down on her. Vinyl was broken. The Darkness was taking her as well. Just as it had been taking her earlier. And it would drive her to insanity if Octavia didn't do something.
So she did something. She slowly brought Vinyl up to her eyelevel and held her as the poor mare cried herself ragged over her shoulder. Sure, the revelation that Vinyl had killed somepony weighed heavily on her mind but that didn't mean she couldn't comfort the sobbing mare. She held Vinyl as she sobbed out her guilt over Octavia's shoulder and dampened the grey mare's shoulder with her tears. She held the mare and made sure she knew that Octavia was there for her.
A few minutes later and Vinyl had hiccupped herself back into a state where she could talk coherently again.
"After that, I got the job but I just kept remembering the poor guy. Every time I tried to sleep, I would dream of his face and the terrified look in his eyes. In the end, I tried to quit. But, of course, by then, I knew too much for them to just let me go."
It all suddenly fell into place. The kidnapping, the torturing, the story. They'd been kidnapped by the Razers for information on the Mafia. Vinyl had been their target but Octavia had been there as well so they were forced to take her along.
"So how did you escape?"
"I didn't."
Again, a silence hung over the two mares' heads like a blanket smothering a fire.
"What do you mean, 'you didn't'? Vinyl, I'm scared, please tell me!"
"I never escaped. I never stopped working for them. You always wondered where most of the money from my gigs go, well they go to the Mafia. I can't escape them but I can keep them from killing me. On the bright side, it means that we are going to get rescued. It's not like the Mafia can afford for the Razers to know everything that I know, huh?"
"So all this time...all this time, you've been working for the Canterlot Mafia?! "
"Well, not 'working for' more like 'paying off'. Octy-"
"No. Don't you 'Octy' me! My marefriend has been working for the Canterlot Mafia for years and has never thought to even tell me?!"
"Oc-"
"Vinyl, no! What we're you thinking?! That nothing like this would ever happen?! Well it has! So so much for that!"
Octavia was conflicted. On the one hoof, she felt guilty for yelling at Vinyl, but on the other, Vinyl had betrayed her. Hadn't trusted her enough to tell her this before. And now Octavia was furious. She gently lowered Vinyl's head to the ground and walked back over to the hook in the wall. Vinyl said nothing.
Suddenly, another bright light forced Octavia to cover her eyes as the door re-opened.
"Ya ready ta talk yet ya Mafioso bitch?"
Vinyl stayed silent, out of Octavia's sight.
"Gone silent now, huh? Well, ya know what we do ta tha quiet ones, eh? We make email stay that way. Maybe ya could be a bargainin' chip for ol' Charlie."
The stallion at the door walked over to Vinyl, if the clip-clipping of his hooves were anything to go by. Then he stopped for a moment. A loud thump rang out and Vinyl grunted. The stallion had kicked her.
"Still not gonna say anythin'? Ah well. At least ya won't scream."
And with that, he turned around, presumably having picked up Vinyl with his magic if the sizzling sounds were anything to go by.
As the door slammed shut again and Octavia was plunged into Darkness, she cried again. She felt the warm tears drip slowly down the fur on her face and fall onto her hooves on the floor in front of her.
It was her fault. They were going to kill Vinyl and it was her fault. She'd broken Vinyl to the point where she'd given up. Where there was no saving.
She cried for Vinyl. Her Vinyl.
The time dropped slowly past in the Darkness as it slowly began to invade her mind again.
"You killed her." it said.
"I know..." She called out.
"You broke her."
"I know."
"You don't even care."
"Yes I do!" Of course she did! Vinyl was Octavia's marefriend! She wouldn't have done what she had if she didn't care.
"And yet, you are the reason why she's going to die."
"...I know..."
"So why fight the truth? You don't even care that she's going to die. Face it. You sent her to her death without a single word otherwise.YOU are solely responsible for her death."
Octavia didn't reply. She knew the Darkness was right.
"Of course I'm right. How could I not be when you act like you do. Parading around like you own the place. But what do you really own? You have her blood on your hands but you don't own that."
"...I'm sorry..." She managed to croak out between the sobs that wracked her body.
"No you're not..." And Octavia was left alone again. In the dark. With only herself.
She had no idea when it was that she fell asleep but she woke up to the muffled sounds of fighting and yelling outside the dark room she was in.
"...hey..." She tried to shout but her throat was still scratched up from her earlier crying.
"Hey." She said, getting a little louder.
"Hey!"
"Hey!"
"HEY!!!" She screamed, destroying her throat in the process. She didn't care. Just so long as she was out of the Darkness and she knew that Vinyl was safe. She tried to break her tether but only succeeded in making it tighter around her. The pain truly was excruciating.
"HEY!!! PLEASE!!! HELP!!! I'M IN HERE!!!"
Immediately, the door banged open, almost falling off its hinges.
Once again, Octavia was forced to cover her eyes in an attempt to stop the pain that came with the excess light attacking her nerves.
Suddenly, she was being held up by somebody. She looked to her left where the unknown pony had pulled her front right leg over their shoulder and was helping her to stand up. Another pony raced over to the hook in the wall and pulled out a sharp looking knife. She looked back to the pony holding her up.
It was Vinyl. She wasn't dead.
Sobs took control of her body again and Octavia found herself wearing apologies into her marefriend's shoulder, their positions very much reversed from earlier.
After a moment, the rope had been cut and Vinyl gently pulled Octavia off of her shoulder and looked at her face. Octavia's eyes were red and puffy and she was still squinting from the light level. But from Octavia's point of view, a very different story was laid before her eyes.
Vinyl had a black eye and was blending from a cut in her forehead that was dripping down the side of her face. But the most prominent feature was a poorly stitched up wound that ran down her neck that was still seeping blood.
"Vinyl! My Lord, what happened to you?!"
Vinyl didn't respond verbally. Instead, she pointed to the wound on her neck, shook her head and then maimed talking. The message was loud and clear though.
When the stallion from earlier said they'd make Vinyl silent, they hadn't meant that they were going to kill her. They meant they were going to make her silent. Unable to talk at all other than in gestures and writings.
Vinyl tentatively brought Octavia out of the dark room and into a brightly light hallway. All around her ponies were fighting, however, there were obvious sides. Everypony on one side had razors wrapped around their hooves, no doubt the Razor Hooves, while the other held knives and swords.
The two sides were going at each other with the intention of killing and Octavia cod already see large number of dead bodies littering the floor around where the action was taking place. The tension between the two was so thick, you cod cut it with a toothpick, let alone a knife.
Vinyl led the staring Octavia over to a quieter corner of the house they were in as the fighting continued away from them. Vinyl began to treat the burn marks from the rope around Octavia's waist while Octavia looked around at the house they'd been held in. Only it wasn't just a house. It was a mansion plain and simple. From where she was sitting, Octavia could see many portraits lining a few corridors at least 500 metres in either direction, many of which portraying the same grey furred stallion with a lighter grey - almost silver in places - mane and a fan cutie mark. Octavia recognised it right away. This was Hoity Toity's manor. But the Razor Hooves had kidnapped them hadn't they? Did that mean that...Hoity Toity was a member? That was something for another time.
Octavia turned back to Vinyl.
"Did the Mafia come for us?"
She nodded.
"How did they even find this place?"
Vinyl stopped with her tending of Octavia's wound to think for a moment before her horn glowed a deep magenta and words appeared in front of Octavia.
I sent out a beacon when I woke up that told them my exact location and that the Razors had me.
Silence reigned between the two again as Viyl went back to mandating Octavia's wound. Then she sat down next to her and started off into the distance, the same action her grey furred companion had been occupying for the past minute or so.
"...So is this how it's going to be?"
Vinyl made to speak but remembered her wound when no sound came out. Instead, she tilted her head questioningly.
"You didn't think I was going t throw you out on the streets, did you?"
Vinyl looked away, ashamed.
Octavia sighed.
"Look, I know it's going to be tough, but we have to move on from this. Even if we do have some lasting scars." For Vinyl, her voice, for Octavia it was the Darkness. Darkness never left a pony. Only bid in the recesses of their mind until they could tear down their walls and destroy them from inside. Both would never be fully used to their wounds.
Vinyl nodded, looking slightly relieved.
The two then sat together, enjoying each other's company until another pony with a light blue coat and a wagon cutie mark took them out and to a carriage.
The whole journey back to their cottage was spent in silences. One out of compulsion and another out of thought. Try as she might, Octavia knew she would never be fully able to get passed the fact that Vinyl had killed somepony, but knew that it was a subject best left alone.
As the carriage stopped outside their home, the two stepped out and looked at their house. In many ways, it was like them. It was divided into two and yet remained one building. It was a balance between their two personalities and lives. At that moment, though, looking at the ruined house, the two had a sense that the trashed state of the house alongside it's continuous standing mirrored their relationship perfectly.
"I do still love you, Vinyl. Don't doubt it. Not now, not ever."
Vinyl nodded, pointed at herself and and then at Octavia.
"I won't."
But still, lingering in the back of Octavia's mind, was the Darkness, ever present, ever watching, ever waiting.
