Secrets were always so difficult to keep. Fluttershy always hated being asked to keep them ever since she was little. All it would take was a subtle glance or a simple question for her to start talking about whatever it was she swore not to tell. To be fair she had gotten better; Rainbow Dash had helped her come a long way in keeping secrets.
But learning how to keep one’s own secrets was something she had learned the hard way when she was little.
On the first day of kindergarten the teacher had the class take turns saying what they wanted to be when they grew up. One kid said a fire fighter, another wanted to be a baker, typical things a kid would say. Fluttershy knew what she wanted to be and was so excited to share it with everyone. When it was her turn she proudly said she wanted to be a vampire.
Everyone was silent… then they started giggling and laughing. The teacher told her that it wasn’t polite to make jokes but when she insisted that she was serious it just made things worse. She got sent to the principal’s office for the first time, she had never been so scared before. But it didn’t end there. The next day some of the students started bullying her. Called her Flutterbat and asked her why she was in the sun. Rainbow Dash tried to help but she could only do so much.
From that day forward, Fluttershy made a promise to herself to never talked about her dream ever again and it was one she intended to keep. She never talked about her dreams to anyone and had sworn Rainbow Dash to secrecy. Thankfully her friend seemed to realize how serious she was because she never mentioned it again.
As they grew older the other students who were there either didn’t remember or didn’t go to Canterlot High. To the rest of the world, she was a kind and gentle girl who loved animals and was occasionally scared of her own shadow. Anyone who would have remembered would have thought Fluttershy grew out of her childhood dream, but she hadn’t, her dream only grew stronger.
No one outside of her family knew of her secret bookcase hidden in her closet full of vampire novels, movies, and other vampire related memorabilia. Her brother would tease her about it but knew better than to say anything outside of the house.
But if anyone were to find out…
“Fluttershy are you alright?” called Rarity.
Fluttershy jumped and looked up from her book to see her friend’s concerned look. She sheepishly shut the novel she was reading, “I’m fine.” She replied.
They had met up at the park that afternoon to discuss what to do for the school festival. But as the conversation dragged on Fluttershy found herself growing a bit bored. She wasn’t able to really get a word in on what to do so she decided to read until they came to a decision then go with whatever they wanted. She must have gotten lost in her own little world again, thankfully she had the decoy cover about endangered species covering the true title of the book.
“Are you sure? I’ve never seen you zone out like that before; is the novel you're reading that good?”
“Oh yes, it’s lovely!” Fluttershy insisted, her grip tightened slightly around the cover. “I had just gotten to the section about the Breezies. They’re such a delicate butterfly species that they’ve been on the endangered species list for almost fifty years.”
“That sounds interesting dear, perhaps we could build a fundraising booth to help.”
“Oh oh oh! Maybe that’s what we should do for the school festival!” squealed Pinkie.
“What!” Rainbow gasped, nearly falling out of her chair but managed to regain her balance. “I thought we agreed to do a band performance for the festival.”
“We haven’t agreed on anything yet RD.” Apple responded.
Fluttershy let out a silent sigh of relief as the other girls dove back into discussing what they should do for the festival again. That was close, a bit too close, if Rarity had managed to see the words on the page, she wasn’t sure if she would be able to explain why the words didn’t match up.
Unwilling to take another risk, Fluttershy put her book back in her bag and tried to put her focus back onto their discussion, but she couldn’t bring herself to focus. Her mind was lost in daydreams about the dark shadows and the immortals she longed to meet.
In the end they weren’t able to come to an agreement on what to do but agreed to meet up again the next day before school. The sun was beginning to set when they parted. Rainbow Dash had walked with her at first but she had managed to talk her friend into allowing her to walk home alone.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go home together?” asked Rainbow again, “It’s getting dark out and I don’t want you to get lost.”
“I’ll be fine, it’s not a long walk.” Fluttershy replied. “Besides my brother is visiting and I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”
“Say no more! You have a good night Fluttershy.” With a wave Rainbow zoomed past her on her skateboard.
Fluttershy giggled at the memory of her friend’s antics. She felt a little guilty about using her brother as an excuse, but she really wanted some time to herself. As she continued to walk down the street toward home the stars began to slowly make their appearance and the moon began its path across the sky. There would soon there would be bats, owls, and other nocturnal animals waking up to start their day as their daytime counterparts got tucked in for the night.
She paused only for a moment when she reached the cemetery. The eerie tombstones and crypts casted their shadows across the hills creating a haunted feel. If Pinkie were here, she would certainly find a way to brighten it up and take away the somber feeling. But Fluttershy wouldn’t let it happen, it was far more beautiful the way it was.
Her eyes swept across the cemetery one final time, expecting to see some mourning flowers against the tombstones, maybe even some small mice wandering by. But she found her eyes locked onto a pair of glowing red eyes.
Fluttershy couldn’t move; her mind was filled with wonder about the person staring at her from the cemetery. He was unlike anyone she had ever seen before with dark grey skin, pitch black hair, and wore a pair of black pants with a white button-up shirt and a black jacket. There was something about the way he looked at her that felt familiar… almost like he knew her. But she would have remembered meeting someone like him before.
She tried to resist the urge to blink. Fearing that if she did that he would disappear and that she would never see him again. But soon it became too much.
Fluttershy blinked… and the stranger was gone.
Once she got home Fluttershy shut herself away in her room and collapsed on the bed. Her mind was a flurry of questions. Who was that person? Where his eyes truly glowing or what she seeing things? Why wasn’t she afraid of him?
Question after question plagued her and she had stayed up searching through her secret books and the internet for any information. She considered asking Sunset if there was anyone from her dimension with glowing eyes but she deleted the message before she sent it. It was late and she didn’t want to bother her over what could have been a trick of the light. Her research seemed to point to the one thing she always dreamed of. But it was impossible.
At some point she must have fallen asleep because she found herself in a world surrounded by darkness. She was afraid to move, it felt as if one false step could send her falling deeper into the abyss.
“Come… come to me…” a deep gravelly voice called.
“W-who are you?” Fluttershy stammered she looked around, but she appeared to be completely alone.
“Come to me… Be mine…” the voice insisted.
She whimpered and covered her ears in an effort to ignore the voice calling her and closed her eyes. “It was just a dream, just a dream just a dream just a dream.” She repeated over and over again.
When she opened her eyes to see if the dream had changed or that she finally woke up she found herself looking into a pair of familiar glowing red eyes.
Fluttershy sat up with a startled gasp; the papers on her desk scattered to the floor at the sudden movement and her heart felt like it was going to explode from her chest as she looked around her room. The faint glow of her lamp kept her room from being in total darkness, but she was alone. No scary voice, endless darkness, or glowing eyes staring at her.
Shakily, she grabbed her phone to check the time, it was 2 am.
“It was just a nightmare, nothing to be scared about.” She whispered.
Fluttershy stood from her chair and after a long shaky stretch began to gather up the books and papers and put them back in their proper place. She kept looking over her shoulder, expecting someone or something to jump out at her at any moment. The only odd thing she noticed was her window was open, but she probably forgot to close it earlier. After she ensured the latch was in place she changed into a pair of soft pink pajamas with a pattern of strawberries and crawled into bed.
It took longer than she would have liked to fall asleep only to wake up to the alarm after what only felt like a few seconds. With a frustrated groan she got up to get ready for school, she wandered out of her room and hoped to reach the bathroom before her brother did.
She was so caught up in her own thoughts and getting ready for the day that didn’t notice her window latch was unlocked.
As the week went on Fluttershy wasn’t quite feeling like herself. Her nightmares have become enchantingly strange dreams, one she never wished to wake up from. The voice in the darkness became the stranger she saw in the graveyard. He would smile at her with fanged teeth and kept calling to her, asking her to join him in the eternal night. Sometimes he would hold her in his arms whispering promises to never let her go. But before Fluttershy could give her answer she would always wake up. Now she wandered the halls at school like a spirit lost in her own world. Unsure if her dreams were just her imagination or something more.
But her strange actions didn’t go unnoticed.
She sat at the lunch table with her friends in her own little world. Poking at her salad with her fork but didn’t take a bite or seem to notice anything going on around her.
“I already told you I don’t know; she’s been like this every time I pick her up for school.” Exclaimed Rainbow Dash.
“Well, something must have happened!” Rarity responded, “I’ve never seen her so… out of it before.”
“Maybe she saw a box of kittens and tried to help them? Or met a stranger who scared her?” Pinkie rattled off.
“It looks more like she hasn’t been getting any sleep.” Twilight turned to look at Rainbow Dash, “Did Fluttershy mention anything about a late-night study sessions or nightmares on the way to school?”
“Fluttershy isn’t an egg head like you.” Ranbow Dash continued on ignoring Twilight’s gasp of protest, “And I asked her, but she said other than odd dreams nothing had really happened.”
The girls sat in silence for a moment and glanced over at Fluttershy who didn’t seem to notice. Rainbow Dash, who sat right next to her, decided to be the one to get her attention.
“Earth to Fluttershy, are you there?” Rainbow Dash shook her shoulder gently. “Woah what happened to you neck!” she exclaimed suddenly.
“What?” Fluttershy blinked and looked over at Rainbow Dash, “My neck?”
She brought her left hand up to her neck and felt around. Sure enough, she could feel two small bumps.
“It looks like something bit you, kind of like a spider bite or something.” Rainbow explained.
“I guess a bug must have gotten in when I left my window open last night.” she mumbled. “It’s no big deal.”
“Darling are you sure?” Rarity looked nervously at her hand covering the bite. “You’ve been acting strange all week and now this? Did something happen?”
“Maybe it was a vampire! Searching the night for something to eat and saw you left your window open!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed. She pulled a jacket out of her backpack and pretended to skulk around and used the jacket like a cape. “I vant to suck your blood!” she hissed before dissolving into a fit of giggles.
“Stop it…” whispered Fluttershy. Memories of all the taunting and teasing started popping up in her mind.
Pinkie Pie continued on with her vampire act by sticking two straws in her mouth to appear like fangs. “I am the terror that flaps in the night!”
“Stop it.”
They called her a freak… a walking corpse… her stuff would go missing, and they would laugh every time they tripped her.
Rainbow Dash glanced nervously between Fluttershy and Pinkie. “Pinkie that’s enough.”
Pinkie continued to sulk around the table until she reached Fluttershy. “It’s just a joke Rainbow, Fluttershy knows I don’t mean anything by it right? Besides vampires aren’t even real.”
“STOP IT!” yelled Fluttershy, immediately covering her voice in horror. She didn’t mean to be so loud.
The entire cafeteria was silent and staring…. Staring at her. A slow murmur of conversation built back up, but her friends stared at her in shock.
“Fluttershy, what’s wrong? I didn’t mean to upset you.” Pinkie whispered, lowering her jacket.
“Well, it wasn’t funny.” Fluttershy gathered up her things and left the cafeteria. She could hear her friends calling for her to come back but she ignored them.
After a bit of searching, she found the doorway leading to the roof of the school Sunset had told them about earlier in the school year. It was the only place she felt she could be alone without being found. No one would expect her to come here. They also wouldn’t understand what was happening to her either.
It was funny, they took down villains and monsters from a different world yet she couldn’t tell them she wanted to be one. Afraid if she did that she would be an outcast all over again. Fluttershy brought her hand back up to her neck. Perhaps it was just a bug bite, a coincidence that had her overthinking everything. But the person she saw in the cemetery seemed to real and the dream… In all of the novels she read the vampires never wanted to be with a girl like her. They preferred someone prettier, more delicate, not a simple girl scared to share her true interest.
She ended up stayed on the roof until the end of school and waited until the noise died down before she made her way down the staircase and left to go home. Ignoring the constant buzzing coming from her backpack.
Fluttershy walked as slowly as possible, she half expected her friends to be waiting for her in front of her house. It would be just like them to do that. Never leaving anything alone until it got resolved.
“Come to me.”
Fluttershy’s head jerked up in shock. That wasn’t a dream. She looked around nervously for the source of the voice but the only thing she saw was the cemetery she had walked past the first time she saw the glowing eyes.
“Come to me.”
Without a chance for rational thought or escape Fluttershy felt her world grow hazy. It was as if her mind was encased by clouds. There was nothing to fear, no reason to be afraid at all.
Step by tentative step her body began to move against her will through the open gates and into the cemetery.
“Fluttershy!”
“Fluttershy where are you?!”
Rainbow Dash, Apple Jack, Twilight, Rarity, Sunset Shimmer, Spike, and Pinkie Pie had waited for an hour at Fluttershy’s house after school. Their attempts to reach her phone were unsuccessful and now they were searching the city for any sign of their missing friend.
They had started off together at first. Checking all of her favorite haunts from the Animal shelter to the butterfly garden but Fluttershy was nowhere to be found. Eventually they decided to split into pairs and took off in different directions to try and find her.
“Fluttershy!” yelled Rainbow Dash.
“Fluttershy!” her search buddy Apple Jack hollered.
But the only response they got was strange looks from people passing by. There was no gentle call, or squeak, nothing to indicate where Fluttershy could have gone.
Rainbow Dash pulled out her phone again and tried to call Fluttershy’s phone again. Praying for some sort of response. Voice mail again.
She screamed in frustration and kicked the nearest trashcan. She would have attacked something else if Apple Jack didn’t drag her back and forced her to look at her.
“Woah sugar cube calm down! We’ll find her.”
“We’ve been looking for hours AJ. She could be anywhere alone and scared. All because Pinkie didn’t know when to stop.” Rainbow Dash tried to fight the tears welling up, but she had never felt so terrified over someone who was missing before.
“Don’t say that she has to be somewhere, and you know Pinkie is beating herself up more than you are right now.”
Rainbow Dash pulled out of Apple Jack’s grip and continued down the street. Searching every alley and looking in every store window. Apple Jack followed close behind but seemed more focused on interrogating her.
“Why did Pinkie’s joke upset her so much anyhow?”
Rainbow Dash didn’t respond. Apple Jack grabbed Rainbow Dash’s shoulder and spun her around and took hold of her wrists to keep her in place.
“You know something don’t you.”
She tried to get out of the grip, but Apple Jack only tightened her hold causing her to wince. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“RD if you know something about why she was so upset it may help us find her.”
“Look, I made a promise to Fluttershy I wouldn’t say anything and it’s something that won’t help us find her. Let's just look for her and we can talk it out later.”
Apple Jack was about to start cursing at Rainbow Dash for being so stubborn when she saw something she never thought she’d see. Fluttershy was just down the block across the street in front of the cemetery.
“What?” Rainbow Dash turned her head just in time to see Fluttershy walk past the cemetery gates.
Neither of them moved for a moment before they took off toward the cemetery. Apple Jack pulled out her phone and started messaging everyone where they found Fluttershy and to get there as quick as possible.
The fog surrounding Fluttershy’s mind was gentle, comforting even, it was as if all of her worries and cares have drifted away. She weaved through the tombstones getting closer and closer to the person calling for her.
“Fluttershy!”
He was so close.
“Fluttershy!”
Would he be everything she had been dreaming of?
“Fluttershy wait please!”
Or a terrible nightmare.
Someone ran in front of her and held their arms out. They looked familiar but Fluttershy didn’t know why. Everything was so fuzzy.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?! Do you know where you are right now?” yelled the colorful person. Their hair was so pretty, like a rainbow.
“He’s calling for me.” she murmured then walked around the colorful person and kept following the call only for the same person to stand in front of her again. She wasn’t liking this game.
“Whose calling you?”
“Everyone should be here soon.” Said another person. They sounded familiar too.
“They need to get here now; I think something is controlling Fluttershy.”
Fluttershy frowned. That was rude. She had enough of this silly game. He was calling for her and she would not let them keep her from him. But her attempts to get around the rainbow person and the golden person with the strange hat kept getting stopped.
“Move.” She demanded.
“Fluttershy it’s me, Rainbow Dash. You gotta snap out of it.” The rainbow person tried to touch her but she ducked under their arms and ran further into the cemetery. They shouted for her to come back but she kept running. Then someone grabbed her sending her crashing to the ground. She screamed, kicked, and struggled as hard as she could but the person would not let her go.
He was calling for her. Needed her. She would not let anything stand in her way.
“Fluttershy it’s us!!” called the golden person.
“Let me go! He needs me!” She screeched.
“What is going on?” asked another familiar person. More people were showing up. They tried talking to her. To get her to remember something but she just fought harder. Calling for him to save her.
They dragged her to her feet and started saying something about calling an ambulance. But she wasn’t focusing on them anymore. Fluttershy stared at the sky and felt a smile creep across her face. The moon was in the sky.
A dark energy swept through the cemetery. The people surrounding her stopped what they were doing and began looking around in fear.
“We gotta move, now!” yelled the red and gold person.
They tried to drag her out of the cemetery, but it was too late. A tall foreboding figure appeared in front of them faster than anything they had ever seen. His dark red eyes glowing with fury. The familiar strangers didn’t even have time to scream as they felt themselves be drawn into his stare.
“Sleep.” He snapped.
One by one they dropped to the floor in an unconscious state until Fluttershy was the only one left. She smiled and walked up to him. He brought his hand up and caressed her cheek gently.
“My delicate butterfly, did they harm you?”
“No, they didn't. I am alright.”
He smiled and then asked her the same question he had asked her every night before she woke up. “Will you join me Fluttershy? Will you accept me, Sombra, King of the vampires as your mate?”
Fluttershy looked back at the strangers who tried to keep her from him. For a brief moment the fog began to lift, and she thought she knew who they were. But when she looked back at him it felt like it didn’t matter.
“For all eternity.” She whispered.
King Sombra swept her up into his arms and spun her around. She giggled at his antics and when he allowed her feet to touch the floor obediently leaned her head to the side as he leaned down to bite her neck. When he had his fill, he held her up to keep her from collapsing to the floor. Then he bit his wrist until blood began to flow and held it up to her lips.
And she obediently began to drink.
