Beneath The Surface

by Roxxi

Rating: everyone
Tags: Dark, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Derpy Hooves
Length: 1292

Something my hands put together while I was asleep at my desk. It's not happy, you've been warned

Not everything is quite what it seems, and this especially holds true for ponies. Sometimes, that bitter old mare is secretly a kind old pony afraid to love again. Sometimes, that bragging pony is really afraid she might fail. Sometimes, that happy-go-lucky face you see on the street is much darker and somber beneath the surface.

Published 2012-11-30 00:40:01 UTC
Last updated 2012-11-30 00:40:01 UTC

Chapter 1

My situation is a complex situation; one that most ponies would never find themselves in. Constantly pretending to be somepony I’m not, always putting a different face on when somepony confronts me, never being able to show who I really am. Yet, I find this to be no less difficult to do than changing one’s clothes to suit the weather.

Laugh all you want, the fact remains that while you know of me, you do not know me. You’ve seen me in the streets countless times, yet you are blind to who I am; spoken a million words to me, yet never conversed with me as myself; heard my voice, yet never listened to what I really had to say. I know the looks the other ponies give me are not for me, but for whom they think I am.

Think back to your earliest years, can you remember a time when the whole world shunned you because you weren’t like them? Because you didn’t fit the image they gave you before they even knew you? You could spend a lifetime arguing that you know my plight, and yet you do not understand what I have been through and still go through.

Imagine, if you will, having everything you do, neigh, having your very being rejected, shunned, and mercilessly mocked. Imagine never being given a chance to fully prove yourself because you acted a little strangely, because you were from a different place than the others around, because you made one mistake a long time ago. Take that, and increase the horrible feeling it gives you by a thousand and you will still only feel a fraction of what I have felt.

You think I am lonely, hurt, saddened, and yearning for acceptance. You are wrong, I am not merely alone, I am isolated from the world I live in, despite the fact that I stand next to you. Hurt cannot describe the agony and pain my heart is forced to endure under the heavy burden of your glares and taunts. To say I am sad would be to say that our dear Princess Celestia fiddles around with a light bulb; if I were sad, I would be happier than I have been in years. I do not yearn for the acceptance of my peers, I crave it. I so desperately throw myself at the chance to feel loved, to be appreciated, even to just have a reprieve from the humiliating jeers at my existence.

Go ahead, deny that you stare at me with disgust, or that you spit upon my name when I cannot hear you. You could swear upon everything under the sun and moon respectively, and I would still know you were lying. You think I do not know what everypony says behind my back? Again, you would be grievously wrong in assuming such a tale to be true. I am not as empty-headed as you would have me be; the obliviousness that I wear like a mask is just that. A mask that you will never see past.

I hear every word, every spiteful, degrading, mocking, dismissive word. Still, I carry on with a smile, pretending as though I haven’t a care in the world and that my life is clear skies through and through. How can I accomplish such a feat despite the weight I carry? I do it not for my own benefit, but for the good of Equestria.

How? How is this for your good? A better question would be: How is it not? If I were to suddenly change from my outward appearance to who I really am on the inside, you would never be able to accept it. The very thought that a pony as ditzy and carefree as the pony I pretend to be could be a serious and reserved pony of deep thought, pain, and misery would be incomprehensible to the world we live in. The chaos that would erupt from revealing myself as I truly am would be so cataclysmically disruptive it could tear apart the foundations of our society and lead us into a world of inescapable anarchy.

Do you still persist that I am still being foolish and that my words are nothing but fanciful whimsy meant as a joke? Still denying it only enforces what I have been trying to get across to you; you will never be able to accept me, and neither will anypony else. My tale is not a humorous yarn to tell at bedtime, and yet you continue to laugh. The only part that I find laughable about this is that I already knew you never would, I always did.

They say our thoughts and our dreams are a means of escape from the trials and tribulations of our day to day lives. If only that wishful thinking held true for me as well. The thoughts swirling in the depths of mind are plagued with nothing more than mind-numbing pain. My dreams; riddled with demons even the most heinous of cutthroats would be frightened to even hear of. I should be insane from this maddening carnival of shadows, but I remain as I am. Perhaps I lost my grip on sanity long ago, though it would be more likely that keeping my sanity firmly rooted is a punishment, as having the capacity to process and understand the frights and horrors that ravage me when I close my eyes is a worse punishment than being as daft as a common fool.

I suppose by now you must be wondering why I am baring my torn and twisted soul to you. It is out of selfishness that I do so, I am afraid to admit. If I must be doggedly followed by the phantoms dwelling in the abyss of my heart and be chained by the deeds of others and my own sins as well, then would it not be a small justice to myself to bring another down into this hellish pit to join me in eternal torture? Surely you must agree that one as damaged and forsaken as me is undoubtedly deserving of a companion to wallow this sea of emotional anguish and misery.

It matters little now if you share my view on the matter or not now. You know my secrets and that you can never tell another soul. They will reject you as they have rejected me for saying such things; that is how perfect my disguise is. So you have a choice, if you can even call it a choice: Join me willingly in my despair or be abandoned by your friends and loved ones and forced to join me still. Regardless of what you choose to do, now that you have been exposed to my disease, you will inevitably find yourself beside me, sinking further and further into oblivion from within…

Author’s Notes

I have to be honest with you; I don’t know what possessed me to do this little monologue of sorts. I was sitting at my desk waiting for inspiration to hit me and I just remember waking up to finishing the last few words, I didn’t even realize what I had written until after I had read it myself.

I almost threw this thing out, but for some reason, I posted it anyways. I guess after thinking about it, this partially an introspective bit, but also something I feel Derpy could also feel. Hell, Pinkie Pie would have been just as fitting for this as well if you think about it, but for some reason Derpy Hooves felt right to tag this for.

If this should be tagged as 'Teen' instead of 'Everyone' or 'Sad' instead of 'Dark' please let me know.