Ponyville lay silent. Far, far above, clouds drifted lazily across the star-strewn night sky in eerie black wisps, gaining a dim, glowing outline along their edges as they obscured the full moon. Of the winds that carried the clouds, none were present near the ground, and neither were there any crickets or other nocturnal insects this late in fall. The night seemed almost oppressively quiet to Twilight Sparkle. She drew a deep breath, filling her lungs with chill autumn air, and exhaled in a sigh that segued into a whimper.

Twilight was all too aware of her greatest flaw. This was not the first time a random idea or fleeting suspicion had caused her to descend into obsession, and surely it would not be the last. Minor things had a tendency to occupy her mind completely, and often ignoring them only caused the compulsion to act on them to grow unmanageably intense.

A sudden, lone gust of wind ruffled her coat, a shudder going through her body as the cold air dug its way down between the hairs to bite directly at her skin. Yet the weather did not cause her to lose focus for even a second, her gaze fixated on the locked hatch door leading down into Fluttershy's cellar. There was no turning back now. Or at least, so she told herself.

She went over her suspicions in her head yet again, for no doubt the hundredth time since sundown, trying to convince herself that suspicions were all she had. Fluttershy had certainly been acting strange lately, her behavior at times subtly disturbing for reasons Twilight could not quite put her hoof on. And what had been in those packages she had been carrying home, believing herself to be dressed incognito while picking them up at the post office? In the span of the last few months she had become secretive, even moreso than usual. But mere hunches and conjecture were not enough to justify literally breaking into somepony's house. Especially not the home of one of your closest friends! Yet if her suspicions turned out to be correct, she would surely find that...

... Yes, what exactly?

Of that, Twilight was not entirely certain, but the curiosity made it all the more difficult to try to convince herself not to open the hatch. Pulse thrumming hard enough for her to feel it in her temples, she looked side to side in order to make certain that nopony was around to see what she was about to do. Not that Fluttershy ever got many visitors. Closing her eyes and focusing her mind on the weathered padlock, her horn lit up with a soft aura. To the average unicorn, the intricate task of picking a lock using nothing but magic would prove to daunting a task. Twilight, however, was anything but average. Magical energy ran across the cylinder; touching, prodding, getting a feel for its construction. She smirked ever so slightly and shaped her telekinesis masterfully into the shape of a key. A quick twist, and the padlock popped open with a satisfying click. Another look left and right, and with the coast clear she slowly opened the hatch, carefully so as to make sure that no sudden creaks would alert anypony to her presence.

She looked down into compact darkness, swallowing hard.

”What... What are you? A foal?" she whispered to herself, reprimanding herself for her sudden fear of the dark. "You've faced changelings and monsters and... And Tirek! You fought Tirek and won, for pony's sake!"

A moment's hesitation.

"... In daylight..." she added, willing herself to begin the descent down the stairs into the forbidding darkness, steps creaking softly under her hooves.

Almost immediately, a foul stench assaulted her nostrils, causing her to reflexively cough and spit. Pungent and acrid, earthy with a faint but sharp smell of ammonia. Manure? Fluttershy kept a large, lush garden, not to mention a myriad of pets and animals, so one could assume that manure was in constant demand and ever more constant supply. But storing it indoors...? Twilight wisely decided to breathe through her mouth, teeth clenched.

Even with the light of the full moon shining in through the open hatch, the layout of the cellar was difficult to make out. Yet, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she found the room to be unusually empty. Strange, seeing as how Fluttershy tended to use it as a storage. Twilight had barely lifted her hoof to take another step forward when the hatch closed with a loud bang, causing her to freeze in place. Legs trembling and head swimming, Twilight was certain that her heart would beat clean through her chest. Celestia, what a scare! Yet, it was merely a sudden gust of wind that had blown the hatch shut, nothing more. There was nothing terrifying or sinister about it. A simple illumination spell would take care of it. After a few deep breaths to calm down and regain her equilibrium, Twilight managed to gather her thoughts sufficiently enough to ignite the tip of her horn, immediately bathing the room in a soft, purple light.

"Tw-... Twilight? You shouldn't be here!" came a voice from just behind her. Barely having recovered from the first shock, Twilight once again felt herself freeze to ice. She stood, paralyzed, for a few moments, too terrified to turn around. Yet, the voice seemed familiar... Rarity? No, Rarity was not even in Ponyville, having left for Las Pegasus well over a week ago on some important, prestigious, design job.

"R-Rarity?" Twilight stammered, speech strained as she found it difficult to fully fill her lungs. "I-is that you? What are you d-"

As she turned around, she found herself looking into the bloodshot eyes of a hideous monstrosity, not even a hoof's length from her face; something barely recognisable as equine, only maneless, tailless, furless, and covered in a crisscross of ugly bruises and scars. With a loud, piercing shriek, Twilight acted purely on instinct, tripping over her own hooves while pushing out with an uncontrolled burst of magic that sent the dreadful creature flying, crashing into the opposite wall and getting the wind knocked out of it. It writhed on the floor, desperately filling its lungs with big, ragged gasps of air.

"Rarity! Rarity where are you?" Twilight shrieked, voice cracking as she failed utterly at sounding courageous. "Get out now! I'll hold this monster off!"

The creature retched and coughed, before speaking with a shaky, accusatory voice. "Tuh... Twilight, th-that... wasn't very... Hak... B-be careful where you fuh-... fire those!"

The realisation suddenly dawned on Twilight.

"R-Rarity?" she stammered. Her suspicions had indeed been correct: Something had definitely happened at Fluttershy's cottage. "Oh no, ooh sweet Celestia, what has happened to you?" Twilight could barely even will herself to talk, so severe was the shock of seeing her dear friend so disheveled, so abused. "Did... Did Fluttershy do this to you? Did she h-... OOH LUNA'S STARLIT BUTT, WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR EYE?!" Upon closer inspection, Rarity's left eye was swollen shut making the entire side of her face appear swollen and bulging. Twilight reflexively winked, wincing in empathic pain.

"Flutter-... Fluttershy?" Rarity asked, seeming somewhat confused. "Well, uh, I mean... Yes, but..."

Twilight no longer felt afraid. The pure, seething anger had cleared her mind of any and all fear. "I can't believe it! Fluttershy! Why would she do something like this!" She spat out every word, snorting and scraping at the floor with her hoof. "I knew there was something fishy going on, but this, this is just sick!" Rarity opened her mouth as if to interject, but Twilight continued. "Rarity, you need to get out of here now! I'll deal with that b-" She stopped mid-sentence, interrupted by a click as somepony unlocked the cellar door and begun to descend the stairs.

"Oh Rarity!" Fluttershy called out in her soft, melodic voice. To think, that a voice so sweet could belong to such a brutal, awful monster! "You're not making a racket again, are you? Are you? You know what that means, Rarity! It means that Mistress Fluttershy is going to have to teach you a lesson about good behaviour. Surely you don't want tha-UGH!" In the cover of darkness, Twilight had launched herself at Fluttershy, simultaneously firing a burst of focused magical force, powerful enough to throw the hapless pegasus up the stairs and onto the floor of the main room of the cottage, where Twilight quickly pinned her down. Fluttershy yelped in pain, having apparently landed hard on her wing.

"SHUT UP!" Twilight shrieked at her, voice breaking but not wanting from looking directly into Fluttershy's eyes for even a second. The face of the pegasus was one of confusion and shock as she struggled to say something under her breath. "SHUT UP! I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE UP TO!" Twilight's horn lit up with a sharp, painfully bright glow. "Just gimme a reason, I'll blow your head clean off!"

Fluttershy was frozen in fear, tears welling up in her eyes, lower lip trembling pathetically. "I..." was all she managed before breaking down crying. Naturally, Twilight did not fall for such an obvious ruse. A sick psychopath like her was clearly incapable of crying real tears! "Now, you listen to me and do what I say, and maybe you'll make it all the way to pris-" She was interrupted by the melancholy voice of Rarity, the unicorn carefully climbing the stairs.

"Twilight... Stop... You've got it all wrong." the unicorn said with a deep sigh. "I'm ok, Twilight. I promise you. Please, just... let go of Fluttershy. Please?"

After several seconds, Twilight broke eye contact with the hysterically sobbing Fluttershy and, slowly, stepped off her. The pegasus remained on the floor, laying supine and too terrified to even move. Twilight's horn dimmed somewhat as she looked aside at the abused fashionista. What met her eyes was not the expression of relief or joy at having been liberated that she had expected. Instead, though she stood tall and carried herself with her regular grace, even in her current disheveled state, Rarity's gaze seemed sorrowful and dejected.

"R-... Rari... ty...? Why?" Twilight asked, hesitantly, the glow from her horn fading to nothing. Seeing this, Rarity drew a deep sigh of relief.

"Thank you, Twilight. I... I think..." She paused. "I think there are some things we need to explain."

· · · • • ◇◇◇ • • · · ·

Tink... Tink... Tink...

Twilight slowly stirred her tea, rhythmically tapping the spoon against the inside of the cup. To Fluttershy, each tap could as well have been a cannon being fired, a barely noticeable jolt going through her body every time. While Twilight was no longer actively threatening her with bodily harm, her gaze was none the less unwavering, glare fixated on the hapless pegasus. Fluttershy held her cup with both hooves in a cramp-like grip, one moment looking down at the table, the next cautiously lifting her head to try to meet Twilight's gaze. Each attempt lasted only mere seconds before she found herself blinking nervously, focus drifting, -despite her best efforts-, to the side in a desperate attempt to escape the stare of the alicorn glowering at her. She drew a trembling sigh, causing Twilight to shift in her chair as if on cue. Had Fluttershy been able to stop breathing, she would have. Instead, she silently cursed her own weakness. She had sworn to herself that she would never again feel like she did now; tiny, scared, shrinking away. In many ways, she was a much different pony than she had been; strong, assertive, calm under pressure, not instantly losing her temper when faced with adversities. She could stand up to bully these days without so much as flinching, but when it came to the disapproval of a friend, the foundation she had built over the years crumbled to dust. All that remained was a cold, tight knot in her stomach.

Mere minutes ago, Rarity had entered the shower, instructing her two friends to sit down at the table and share a cup of tea while waiting for her to join them. To Fluttershy, each minute felt like a lifetime. An oppressive, nightmarish lifetime. Preparing the tea had been an ordeal; a normally relaxing task having been turned into something subtly unreal, each action having an unpleasant edge thanks to constantly feeling watched and judged. Even with her back turned, Fluttershy had felt Twilight's glare bore into her, drilling into her cranium and embedding itself in her brain. By the time the tea was finished, Fluttershy's hooves trembled to the point of her accidentally splashing a few droplets of scalding hot tea on her hooves. She was much too tense to even yelp in pain. Upon setting the cups down, one for each of them, Twilight had said nothing, merely grasping the spoon with her telekinesis and begun to slowly stir, surly expression like a stone mask on her face.

At least the staccato sound of running water served to make Twilight's incessant tapping marginally more bearable, but it was far from a calming noise. Despite knowing better, Fluttershy could not help but feel abandoned by Rarity, left all alone to deal with a situation she simply did not know how to handle. Naturally, feeling this way caused the pegasus no small amount of guilt. After all, the situation was no less awkward and difficult for Rarity than it was for her; the difference being that unlike her unicorn friend, she was not caked in mud and dirt.

Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, a short squeak from the tap marked the end of Rarity's shower. Moments later, she exited the bathroom wearing a bathrobe, a towel stylishly wrapped around her head despite the absence of a mane. Even now, she carried herself with such grace and confidence that had she strode into one of the fashion houses of Canterlot, Body Shave Chic would have been en vogue within the hour. As Rarity sat down at the table opposite Fluttershy, the pegasus finally allowed herself to exhale. She had not even been aware that she had been holding her breath.

"Well..." Rarity cleared her throat. "I suppose you have plenty of questions, Twilight?"

"Plenty of questions?" Twilight slammed both hooves on the table, her cup rattling on its saucer but, luckily, not quite falling over. "Of course I have! And why are you acting so... so unaffected by all of this? Just look at you!" She gestured at her friend, increasingly frustrated. "Fluttershy is a monster, she's treated you horribly!"

Twilight had so far thought that shooting someone an angry, disapproving glare was impossible without eyebrows and only one good eye, but Rarity quickly proved her wrong. "A monster? How dare you speak of Fluttershy like that?"

Fluttershy weakly lifted a hoof, opening her mouth to speak but was immediately interrupted by Twilight.

"Gee, I dunno, maybe it's the fact that she kidnapped you, imprisoned you in her cellar and tortured you!?"

Rarity's jaw dropped, an incredulous look on her face. She sputtered angrily, trying to collect her thoughts enough to reply to Twilight's accusations. "K-kidnapped me? Twilight, this was my idea!"

"No it was not!" the alicorn snapped, punctuating her exclamation by once again slamming her hooves on the table. This time, the cup fell over, spilling its contents. If she even noticed, she certainly did not care. "Rarity, that's just Coltholm Syndrome talking. You're traumatized, don't you see?"

Fluttershy sighed and left the table to go fetch a dishrag, muttering under her breath all the while. She knew better than to even try to join their argument.

"Traumatized?" Rarity paused for a long while, frustration growing, and began to rub at her temples in slow circles. "Look, Twilight darling, can we just... start at the beginning?"

"The beginning?" Twilight asked, one eyebrow raised.

"You're an educated pony. Surely you have heard of..." The unicorn paused, the slightest blush appearing on her cheeks but her expression remaining unchanged. "You know... BDSM?"

An awkward, almost tangible silence fell over the cottage, only broken by Fluttershy returning with a dishrag, dejectedly beginning to wipe up the spilled tea.

"B-... BDSM?" Twilight stuttered.

"Bondage, dominance, sadism, masochism." Fluttershy interjected, expertly using her primary feathers to lift Twilight's cup with one wing and wiping underneath it with the other before refilling her cup. With Rarity by her side, she felt ever so slightly more courageous. "It's... a sex thing..." she added, a sudden blush spreading across her face and making her take on a faintly orange tinge.

"I know what it means!" Twilight exclaimed, spitting out every word. "But isn't that supposed to be... be..." She shook her head, growling in frustration at trying to think of an example. Eventually she put her hooves to her cheeks and made an exaggerated expression. "I've been a bad, bad mare! Please spank me! or, Oh dear, I broke the fine china, what a clumsy maid I am! Surely this will lead to a contrived scenario where the mistress of the house teaches me a lesson, erotically!" A sigh. "What you are doing," she continued, shooting a glare at Fluttershy, "is nothing but abuse!"

"It's not..." Fluttershy replied, managing to gather enough courage to speak at just barely above a whisper. "I've never... I've never done anything that Rarity's uncomfortable with..."

Twilight made an exaggerated, guttural noise of frustration, pointing at Rarity's eye with both hooves, mouth a perfectly straight line.

"... It... It was an accident..." Fluttershy mumbled, head sinking.

Twilight stared at her in disbelief. "An ACCIDENT? I suppose kidnapping her and shaving her and locking her in your cellar were accidents too?"

"Twilight darling, you're my friend," Rarity interrupted, once again rubbing her temples, voice betraying only the slightest hint of annoyance. "But would you please be quiet and let Fluttershy talk?" After some consideration, Twilight nodded in reply.

"It..." Fluttershy began, willing herself to look up, to look directly at Twilight. "It really was an accident. I was slapping her face, it was part of the play. We... We both got a little too into it, I started slapping her harder, and she... She really liked it." A wistful smile appeared on Fluttershy's face. Twilight did her best to ignore it, to hide her disgust at Fluttershy's obvious enjoyment, and held her tongue. "And I like it when she likes it. I wanted to give her more, I wanted to... hit her here. On the cheek. We had done it plenty of times but... This time I missed."

"She clocked me right in the eye." Rarity continued. "I told her I was fine and that accidents happen, but she kept saying she was sorry, over and over."

A slight chuckle escaped Fluttershy's lips. "I couldn't stop crying. You had to use the safeword so you could comfort me!"

"Hah, yes... And you even offered me to punch you back. But I'd never do that!"

"I'm sorry," Twilight interrupted the two, "but what the hay are you talking about? Punching each others eyes? And what in Tartarus is a safeword?"

"Oh, a safeword is something you say if you want to interrupt a scene and..." Rarity stopped. It only just now struck her how unaware of kink practices Twilight had to be. Everypony always assumed that no matter the subject, Twilight held an extensive, in-depth knowledge. But judging from her absurd accusations and hostile demeanor towards Fluttershy, it was likely that she knew next to nothing about BDSM. At most, she must have read the dictionary definition, and maybe skimmed through 50 Shades of Hay or some similar book. And the reality of kink was much different from anything you could read in a story. "Twilight," she continued, "how much do you know about BDSM?"

"It's a paraphilia, obviously! Ponies either enjoy hurting others or being hurt." After some hesitation, she added; "And... there's rope... and maids. And spankings."

"Oh boy." Fluttershy sighed.

"Twilight darling, there is so much more to it than that." Rarity said, holding Twilight's hoof in hers. The Princess seemed none too pleased about this, but did not pull away her hoof. "I understand how this must seem to you, but if you'll just allow us to explain, I'm sure it will make sense to you."

Fluttershy stopped pacing back and forth and sat down next to her alicorn friend. With zero knowledge as to what she had witnessed, Twilight likely was not even aware that she had walked in on a sexual situation. Or broken into a friend's house, rather, but that was something they would have to confront her about at a later time.
Fluttershy took a deep breath. Time to let the cat out of the bag.

"Twilight, there's something you need to know. Rarity and I, uhm... We're in love. We're a couple."

"What? You are? Wh-... Since when?" Twilight stuttered in reply. Of all the things she had expected to hear, this was not one of them.

"It will be three years next month, won't it?" Rarity asked. Fluttershy nodded in confirmation.

"Three... Years?" Twilight shook her head, wearing an expression of increasing agitation. Even ignoring the fact that they clearly showed their love in very strange ways, learning their secret now left her with a feeling of emptiness, as if her chest had been opened up and something removed. Everypony had secrets, but to keep something like this hidden away was a betrayal of all the trust and belief in each other that the group of friends had built over the years. "You've kept it a secret from everypony for three years? Why... why didn't you tell anypony?"

"Because we were afraid." Rarity replied dejectedly.

"Afraid of what?" Twilight demanded.

"We were afraid that everypony would react like you just did. Me and Fluttershy, we... we don't have a relationship like most other couples. We thought that if anypony knew, they would think that we're..." Rarity trailed off, her expression suddenly blank. Though Twilight had seen her friend cry quite possibly every other day, for a number of reasons, she had not seen an expression quite like this. Even at her worst moments, there had always been an aire of something exceptional about her, something dramatic. The term je ne sais quoi might very well have been invented to describe Rarity. This was nothing like any of those occasions. This was not a mascara streaked face, hoof to forehead, spread on a chaise lounge and bingeing on a family-size tub of vanilla-strawberry-chocolate ice cream. Even in moments of screaming, crying, sobbing despair, she remained dramatic and fabulous. This was the opposite of that. This was hopelessness and shame.

"... Freaks." Fluttershy completed her sentence. Though she did not wear the same expression of hopelessness, this was likely due to her being closely accustomed to shame, and simply having learned to live with it over the years.

Twilight sat in silence, grasping the cup of tea in her hooves. The tea still hot, the cup burned her, but she only found herself gripping the cup harder. She opened her mouth to speak, but was unable to find words. Her mind was bubbling with emotions, like a pot boiling over, and no one sentence, no one question, seemed to be adequate. In the maelstrom of conflicting emotions swirling in her mind, she found that some especially ugly thoughts had wormed themselves in. Anger. Frustration. Even hate. She wanted to scream, throw the cup into the wall and shatter it into a thousand pieces while storming out, never to talk to her former friends again. The things they talked about made no sense. They were a couple, yet they expressed their love with violence and abuse? Event if she were to accept that absurdity, even if she were to imagine that such behaviour was normal, it was a concept she could not combine with the behaviour they had presented themselves with in public. Was all of that a lie? All those times Fluttershy had acted scared or embarrassed, had it just been a facade, a carefully constructed falsehood to conceal her true nature as a brutal, violent abuser? And Rarity, with all her fashion and glamour, her style and refinement, had she actually hated those things all along? If she just got up and left, she would not blame herself for doing so. But as angry as she was, she needed to know more. If for no other reason than not having to spend every night wondering why her friends would betray her.

"When you..." She groaned, starting over. A sip of tea to moisten her lips, which had gotten very dry all of a sudden. "Even if you enjoy.... weird things, Celestia knows why, what kind of relationship has one pony kidnap the other and imprison them?"

The unicorn and pegasus looked at each other.

"Twilight, why do you think that Fluttershy kidnapped me?" Rarity asked.

Twilight gestured suddenly, almost tipping over her cup of tea again. "Because!" she exclaimed. "You had a job in Las Pegasus, designing dresses for a stage show! Instead I find you here, locked in Fluttershy's cellar!" She grabbed hold of her wobbling cup, then took another sip.

"Darling... I never had a job in Las Pegasus."

The surprise and sudden realisation made Twilight's brain do a summersault, simultaneously sending signals to her mouth to both swallow the tea and spit it out, resulting in a compromise of undignified drooling. She hastily wiped her chin with her wrist. "You what?" she exclaimed. "You mean you planned this?"

"For months." Rarity clarified.

"So when you got on the train and left...?" Twilight asked, wide-eyed.

Fluttershy nodded. "She got off at the next station, then took the night train back, and she's been here with me since then."

There was a long pause while Twilight processed what she had just heard. "But your coat..."

"It will grow out again. In a month, I would think." Rarity said with a smirk. "And the job in "Las Pegasus" would take roughly that long."

"And your mane!" Twilight protested. "You're... I mean, you're... bald..." She mumbled the last word.

"It will have grown out a little, and I'll "return" with a daring new manestyle!" Rarity exclaimed, her aire of glamour suddenly shining through. Fluttershy giggled, knowing what was coming. "The latest trend among fashion conscious mares; short, tomcoltish, a no-nonsense display of attitude and courage! I have already picked out the proper accessories." A grin, filled with pride and confidence. "You know I've made worse things work, darling."

Twilight sighed. Even now, when Rarity spoke of fashion, her excitement sounded so genuine. "I still don't understand! I thought you loved being beautiful and fabulous? And you subject yourself to things like this!"

"I... w-what do you..." Rarity stammered. "Of course I love it! Just because I love, well..." She opened her bathrobe slightly, displaying her coatless, bruised skin. "Just because I love this, it doesn't mean that I don't love looking fabulous! The two aren't mutually exclusive, darling." She thought for a moment, then hastily added; "And Fluttershy is still the kind, loving mare you've always known."

Even if she could stretch her acceptance into believing that Rarity could enjoy looking like she did, Twilight had, to say the least, serious problems believing that last statement. "Yeah, uh, sure. So, what? She just suddenly got angry at you one day and beat you up, and you discovered that you both liked it?"

"No! Not at all!" Fluttershy shook her head vigorously in protest. "There has never ever been any anger involved!"

"Then how! How did all of this start?" Twilight demanded.

"Well, that was quite a while ago." Rarity replied. "Do you remember when Iron Will came to Ponyville?"

Author's Note

And so my first pony fic begins! Updates on Saturdays, or whenever I feel like it. I dunno!

In the next chapter: Rarity eats a live squirrel on a dare and is rushed to Ponyville Hospital after contracting rabies.