I Have No Voice, and I Must Cry
I lifted the cup to my mouth and drank for what felt like the millionth time since the tea party had started but was really probably the billionth. I knew that it was peppermint, but I couldn't really taste it. HE had just refilled the teapot for the dozenth or so time that day, and it was so hot that it felt like my taste buds were burning off, like the tea was trying to eat its way out of my throat and stomach like acid. I tried to scream and writhe as the liquid burned its way through my body, instincts telling me to do anything to get it out of me. My muscles, long ago bent to the will of another, ignored my frenzied commands.
“Are you enjoying the tea?” my unknowing tormentor asked.
My eyes raised slightly to meet his, mild nervousness reflected in Discord’s face as he sat cross-legged on the picnic blanket. He genuinely cared about me, I knew.
It had all started over fourteen hundred years ago.
It had been over a millennia since I lost control of my body, although I hadn’t bothered counting after the first few decades—HE did that for me. I’d been alone for another hundred and nine years before HE showed up again, and before everybody had vanished I had been alive for a century and a half.
HE had come back. That was what started it all. HE had broken free of his stone prison in Canterlot and wreaked havoc across the world before my friends and I stopped him with the Elements of Harmony. I had hated him that day, for hurting my friends. Hated him. Over the next year and a half, though, I had realized that HE didn't know any better. How could I stay angry at someone who didn't realize that what they were doing was wrong?
The second time we met wasn't as bad as the first. Sure, HE was spreading chaos wherever HE went, but at least it was only where HE went rather than the entire world, and because of that, not only did both of us become friends—in his case, the only one HE would ever have—but HE became a better being for it.
The entire future didn't depend on that one moment. There were other times, moments where a different word or action could have broken the chain and prevented everything that’s happened to me since... but that was the first link I had control over.
The years marched on. I had fun with my friends, got married and had foals, defeated ancient and hideously evil monstrosities long ago forgotten by ponykind. We still met, every now and again, sometimes after years and sometimes every day for a month. But while HE was immortal, my body could only last so long. I grew old. Most of my friends were already dead by the time I passed on. Rainbow Dash had been first; a wing broke while she was trying to perform a Sonic Rainboom in her mid-forties. A dead tree had fallen on Applejack a few years later, and Pinkie Pie had one too many cupcakes at her 50th birthday party and died of a heart attack. Then, when I was sixty seven, I died in my sleep surrounded by family. It had been a good, long life and I was ready to let it go.
But I wasn't allowed to. Discord had never figured out how to make friends after me, and the loss of his only friend was devastating. HE couldn't accept that I was gone, so HE brought me back and made me undying. I asked him to let me die; HE refused. The princesses asked the same on my behalf, and still HE refused. Eventually, I just dropped the subject—it had become clear that HE wasn't going to let his only friend go. Another decision that for hundreds of years I have wished I could change. I would beg and sob for as long as I could if I had gotten a second chance.
We saw each other on a more regular and predictable basis after that, once a month at least. The first dozen or so times, and every so often afterwards, I’d ask if he’d let me go. He never did.
Time went on, the circle of life spun. Rarity died at age 73. Twilight Sparkle still possessed a remarkable amount of magical ability at 85, and the fact that she was still going strong twenty years after most ponies gave in proved it. Still, magical exhaustion is often fatal at older ages.
The years passed. I never really made any new friends; most of the time I started getting close to somepony, they’d end up moving away or having some sort of accident or coming down with an incurable illness. I never really thought much of it, and eventually I just stopped trying. After 90 years of immortality, I was seeing Discord every week and the Princesses every other.
Then they disappeared too.
I should have figured out a long time before then that Discord had been responsible for ponies “moving away”. The idea had crossed my mind once or twice, but I had never thought that HE would actually... but when Celestia and Luna vanished, and nopony could find them, it was obvious.
I confronted him, insisted that HE undo it all. HE denied that HE did it, claimed that HE was innocent. I knew that HE was lying; I could always tell with him. I told him that it was over, that HE had burned his bridge and could find himself another friend because I wasn't anymore. HE asked me if I really meant that. I said yes. After a moment of stunned silence, HE snapped his fingers and disappeared. So did everypony else.
So I wandered. Over the first few months, I realized that there weren't any animals left either, or at least not where I went. I moved from city to city, town to town, looking for survivors. But they were all abandoned, from the settler towns in the south to the metropolises of Cloudsdale and Manehattan. I was starving most of the time, especially after the first few decades when even the canned goods started to spoil. Water was less of a problem; as a pegasus, I could get plenty from any clouds that happened to be nearby. But food and water didn't matter, since I wouldn't die no matter what happened.
I’m positive that I went insane at least once. I have vague, distant memories of talking to Angel during a trek through the Arctic. At times I’d see friends and family. I don’t think it ever lasted very long, though, a few months at the most and I believed I stabilized after about fifty years. I had gotten used to the loneliness.
I settled down a hundred and three years after everyone disappeared. My travels ended on a beach a few hundred miles south of where Manehattan had stood. I built a cabin about a thousand feet back from the ocean and started up a small garden. Every day I’d wake up at dawn, eat breakfast, and tend to the garden before taking the rest of the day off. Some days I’d go hiking or flying. Sometimes I’d go swimming. Sometimes I’d just relax on a cloud with a book salvaged from a city. A salad at dusk and then to sleep. It was a lonely life, but not a bad one.
It only lasted six years.
I’d accepted what had happened, what I was responsible for. I’d made peace with the losses I’d suffered and grown to enjoy my new life. It was summer, hot and humid, and I’d spent most of my day swimming. I was on top of a small hill about halfway to my cabin, still dripping water, when I froze, a chill running up my spine. There was a loud pop from behind me and I tried to turn around, to find to my horror that I was unable to. When that failed, I tried to turn my head—again, a futile effort. A moment later, I realized that I couldn't move anything. My jaw wired shut, eyes staring straight ahead, wings frozen to my sides, and hooves glued to the ground, I heard something that hadn't been for a hundred and nine years, something I’d never expected to hear again. A voice. Discord’s voice. Apologizing and asking me if I’d please please take him back as a friend.
I was torn. Part of me wanted to say I never wanted to see him again—after all, it was because of him that I hadn’t seen another living being in over a hundred years. Another part wanted to start sobbing and hug him as tightly as I possibly could. I’d gotten used to being on my own, but hearing someone else’s voice for the first time in over a hundred years undid all of that.
Neither part of me won the battle, though, and even if one had it wouldn't have mattered because a moment later I heard myself accepting his apology, even though I had wanted to do no such thing. I was, of course, shocked, scared, and confused. I didn't really understand what was happening until a few hours later. When it hit me that I was now a prisoner in my own body, I tried to fight back. There was only a little bit I could still control, such as where my eyes moved and inhalations through the nose. He took control over the former when I refused to look at him. I lost control over the latter when I tried to suffocate myself. The suicide attempt came about three months after HE had taken control when it sunk in that I wouldn't be able to free myself. Another suicide method I tried was to mentally force my heart to stop beating, an attempt that failed miserably. And even if I had been capable of stopping my heart—which, now that I think about, I might have— it wouldn't have mattered. But logic and desperation rarely mix, after all.
The first week (although it could be argued it was only a day, since HE wouldn't let the sun go down until we were done) was catching up on what had been missed, consisting mostly of him telling me how much HE had missed me, with me forcibly relating some of my experiences over the decades thrown in. The first thing we did after catching up was a slumber party that lasted a month before HE got bored and let me actually sleep. Two days after that was a hiking trip that lasted over a year. HE threw a birthday party during the trip, and has done so once a year every year. That’s how I've remembered how long it’s been, from the numbers of candles on the cakes.
One thousand seven hundred twenty three candles on the last cake.
It was getting dark again. HE left the day/night cycle alone most of the time, and just had us do one thing during the day and another at night. Night had been stargazing ever since the end of spring, the tea party had lasted since March. It wouldn't last much longer, though; I could tell it was fall by the color of the leaves and we were overdue for a “walk through the forest” phase, which tended to come every decade or two but hadn't in 43 years.
I took another sip of boiling liquid but didn't move a muscle, before reaching out a hoof and grabbing a scone. It was chocolate chip. I hated chocolate chip scones.
As I chewed on the baked good, my head tilted up towards the sky, softly glowing with cool shades of red as the sun sank below the horizon. We stayed there all night, and the next day, not working or moving off of the hilltop, just drinking scaldingly hot tea, eating horrible scones, watching the stars and talking. Finally HE made me suggest going on a walk through the forest, to which HE readily—obviously—agreed to.
So we walked. We left that very moment and walked for two months, eating apples during the day and roasting marshmallows over a fire at night before going to sleep under the stars. We walked until the trees were bare and the snow started falling. It was at this time that we “miraculously” discovered a cabin. There was more than enough room in it for both of us and plenty of supplies to pass the winter in comfort.
We have been here for some months now, and winter will be coming to an end soon. Most of the time has been spent in front of a blazing fire, and I am not so close as to be burned.
Once, when I was young, I wished I had more time to enjoy life. I have now had almost 1500 years, and I can’t stop thinking about my friends and family. I miss them more than I’d ever be able to say even if I could willingly say anything at all. But I can’t; I’m a prisoner in my own body, unable to even move my eyes, never to be allowed the freedom of death or insanity, a wind-up toy of a mad god.
I have no voice. And I must cry.
Author's Note
Special thanks to everyone who's worked on the show and Harlan Ellison. Please don't hunt me down and consume my soul.
