The Family Cygnet

It was late in the morning, again, almost noon by the time he woke up. He needed to get back to the Crystal Empire. He’d decided that his relationship problems were… unimportant in the grand scheme of his life at the moment. Still, he wanted to talk with Twilight before he left. He needed something to lift his heart, even slightly, from the low he found himself in after last night’s work.

But she wasn’t here. The house was empty, as far as he could tell. Night and Velvet had gone off, probably to their respective work places. He should have gone to the castle to find her, but the thought made him nervous. If she had wanted to talk to him, she would have. She hadn’t, so she didn’t.

Instead he crafted a letter.

He told her that he’d be leaving this evening due to some sudden business in the Empire, and he’d love to talk to her first. She was more than welcome to come with him and Flurry could use some fun aunty attention as a distraction. They could also work out their other, more personal, issues. He could really use a friend to come back with him, but he understood all too well if she had too much to do here in Equestria.

It wasn’t emotional. It was straight and to the point. He sent it to Twilight via magic, and sat in the burnt out kitchen, looking at the boxes and boxes piled around him. Maybe there were some leftovers from last night?

He shook his head. Maybe just coffee for him.

A noise startled him, and Twilight came stumbling into the kitchen. Her hair was matted and tangled, and her purple coat was messed and disheveled. Oddly, she was covered in bruises. Shining blinked in confusion as Twilight held the letter with her magic.

“You’re leaving already?” She sounded nervous.

He frowned, looking at her hooves. She had linear marks around all four her fetlocks where her skin under her coat had been rubbed raw. He’d seen prisoners get like that when their captor tightened the ropes too much. Not to mention her neck, which was covered in dark red spots.

“What the hell happened to you?” He stared at her. “Are you okay?”

Twilight looked down, seemingly confused, then looked back up. “Oh. Shit. I didn’t clean up,” was all she said.

Shining stared. “You look like you were interrogated.”

She blushed. “Uh, don’t worry about that. Here.” Her horn glimmered and a spell wrapped around her body as the marks disappeared. She smiled nervously. “All better?”

He shook his head. “Not better. Not at all. That was an illusion spell.”

She shrugged. “I’m an alicorn. I’ll be completely healed by this afternoon.”

Shining glared at her, remembering the rebels he’d spent all night agonizing over. They’d intended to capture Flurry. It wouldn’t be a stretch to wonder if they had agents here in Canterlot. His face tightened as he took an anxious step towards Twilight. His voice was angrier than he intended, imagining what might have happened to his sister. “What… Happened… To… You?”

Twilight glared at him, narrowing her eyes. “Stop. I took care of it, and it’s explicitly not your business. I just came down here in a hurry because I got your letter and I was worried about you. I should have cleaned up first, and I’m sorry about that.”

He stopped, letting his eyes take in other small details. She was wearing the necklace she’d gotten yesterday. Her hair wasn’t just matted, it was tangled. Something in it had dried and she hadn’t cleaned up. He noticed that she had ear piercings, a little dark blue stud on one side and a little crème white one on the other, set in small gems. Had he missed those yesterday? They were small enough and low enough he might have.

He took a breath, suddenly feeling nauseous again. The cultists had wanted to use Flurry for a ritual. At best it would be a dark and taboo thing, dark magic could be fueled by adulteration of a virgin. More likely, it was sacrificial in nature. Twilight had been vocal about her virginal status when they’d been drinking. Had the cult…

“What’s going on, Twilight? I’ve been trying to get you alone to talk, but you’ve been acting strange. I’m worried about you.”

Twilight’s eyes flicked to the side, then straight back to him. “I’m terrible at lying. So I’m just going to come out and say it.” She took a deep breath, letting her nerves settle. “Somebody duck fucked me.”

Shining’s eyes went wide in alarm, remembering their drunken conversation from three nights ago. “Duck… fucked? You were raped?” His heart dropped for her as his fears were realized.

She shook her head. “No. Nothing like that. I’ve explained this before. They fucked me. I let them. End. Done. I could have stopped it if I wanted. I didn’t.”

He looked at her again, too many thoughts running through his mind as the bile rose in the back of his throat. “But how? Why? When?”

She bit her lip. “‘How’ is that they just did it. It’s not a hard thing to do. ‘Why’ is because they wanted to, and they could. ‘When’ is, well, a lot in the last three days. Any other questions?”

He stumbled backwards until he was sitting in his chair. “Wow. I, uh, need to think about this.”

She looked downward. “It’s, ah, one of the things we needed to talk about.”

He looked back at her. “Why the bruises? Can you drop the illusion?”

Twilight shrugged and her horn twinkled. Slowly, marks started appearing across her body. “The bruises, are, well, we like it rough I guess.”

“We?”

She nodded. “We. I wouldn’t have let them hurt me if I didn’t want it, too, Shining.”

He had never hurt Cadance during sex. The thought was alien and strange to him. In the moment, Twilight seemed more a wild creature and less a pony. Who would do that? Who would enjoy that? How even?

He gulped, pointing to her neck. “What are those from?”

She blushed. “Ah. I’m, what you might call a ‘brat’ in their vernacular. This is where she usually punishes me… when I’m, uh, snarky.”

He felt his chest tighten. “Snarky?”

“You know, disrespectful. It’s a tendency I have, but we’re working on it.”

“What about those?” He pointed to her rope burned hooves.

Twilight held her hoof up, inspecting it closer. “This is from the restraints. It’s just rope. I could snap it if I wanted. But, uh, it makes it more exciting when they tie me up sometimes. Just a little fun accessory.”

“Accessories?”

She nodded. “Yeah, you know. Blindfolds, whips, the leg bar thing that keeps me, uh, you know. And the beads, the ornaments, the wax, the…” She trailed off nervously.

“Ornaments?” What the heck was she even talking about?

She blushed, looking down at her necklace and then lifting her hoof to her ear. “Uh, well, she likes to, um, watch me. So she likes making me look pretty while she does. So there’s, uh, jewelry and… um… things that decorate me in other, um… places…”

Shining sat back, silently trying to process as much of this as he could. So the earrings were some of these ornaments that Twilight had forgotten to take off.

Twilight stood nervously. “I’m sure you and Cadance do this sort of thing all the time, right?”

He blinked. “No. No we do not. We usually just have sex.”

She tapped her hoof, looking downward. “Oh.”

He didn’t want to ask this, but he’d noticed her odd language and her words rang over and over in his ears. The thought was eating him, even if he knew the answer would make him more nauseous. “So what does she watch you do?”

Twilight nervously took a breath. “She likes to watch me, uh, squirm when she touches me. She likes to watch when I get punished and, uh, shiver. She likes to watch when he fucks me. Especially with the ring that keeps him from, uh… Oh, and, uh I sort of danced a little for them last night. They both liked watching that.”

“He? There’s two?” His heart sank further.

She nodded. “They’re a couple. They usually have a third, but she left recently. I’m, uh, their new third.”

Shining felt more than nauseous, he felt sick. He didn’t say anything. He tried to imagine his sister doing all those things, and it was all too easy. It was like his earlier erotic fantasies of her, only far more painful for him somehow. She had a smile in his mind. She was content. She screamed, happily.

He stared blankly at her.

She continued, “So, uh, anyways, we need to talk about the thing where I was going to join you and Cadance.”

Shining felt his eyes wet. He had been a fucking idiot. She’d told him that she didn’t care. That she had no romantic inclinations. She’d been crystal clear about that.

Twilight kept talking, “I don’t think it’s a good idea anymore. He is, uh, aggressively possessive and refuses to wear condoms, and, uh, sort of made me, uh, emphatically…” She blushed, looking awkwardly to the side before talking quickly. “Promise to be exclusive with them so they don’t catch anything.”

Of course she wouldn’t want to be with him. She’d made it very clear that all she wanted was to be fucked, like an animal. And this couple duck fucked her. They duck fucked her more thoroughly than Shining had any inclination whatsoever to even consider the acts involved.

She smiled nervously. “So, I don’t think I can be your and Cadance’s third… Is what I’m trying to say.”

Shining stared at her, wondering what she was feeling. Probably nothing. She had the romantic depth of a duck, after all. He, on the other hoof, was heartbroken in an entirely new way. He’d been turned down before, but this wasn’t that. This was something else far more devastating. This was his LSBFF, and it looked like that’s what she’d always be.

If even that.

Would that be better? Or would that be worse? Every time he’d see her, he’d see these bruises. He’d know she was hiding it under an illusion. Worse than the bruises, the matted coat and mane were even more damning. He recognized those stains. He knew what it looked like when cum dried in coats and manes. She was covered in it, it was far more than any normal stallion could manage in a night. It must be some stallion.

He felt something warm fall down his face, and his heart was empty. “If you’re happy.”

She smiled, looking anywhere but at him. “Oh good. I was worried how you’d take it. I mean, I love you, I really do, but this isn’t about love for me, exactly. It’s, you know, like a duck. My body just needs it, and I’ve never felt this happy and content with that part of my body and mind after years of struggling and pining for ponies that just… weren’t good matches for me, you know? It’s such a relief to find a pair of ponies that just want to make me orgasm until my mind goes blank and then some, then they get up and go to work in the morning no questions asked.”

Shining stared at her, the warm tears running down his cheeks as he asked the last question. “I need to know… Who are they?”

She blushed, still looking awkwardly to the side. “I really shouldn’t tell you, but, uh, I guess you do deserve to know. It’s, please don’t judge, it’s, uh, Mom and Dad.”

“I have to go back to the Crystal Empire. Cadance is having a parenting emergency with Flurry. I’ll be at the train station waiting for the next train.” He got up from his seat, and walked out the door, leaving Twilight standing confused in the family kitchen that she’d burnt to the ground.