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Sweetie Belle vs. Fabric

by Newtaloo

Chapter 2: Epilogue: A War You Cannot Win

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Author's Notes:

This epilogue isn't part of the original speedfic, but I'm posting it here for two reasons:
1. I ran short on time in the panel and had to rush to a conclusion, but I had this little idea eating at the back of my mind for how I'd really like to finish off the tale. Now I've got a chance to make it a reality.
and more boringly, 2. The original speedfic isn't quite long enough to pass submission on its own.
So here it is, the ending I would've written if I'd had the time. I tried to stay true to the speedfic origins of the story by writing it all in one sitting with minimal editing, so uh... enjoy? I hope?

A few years came and went after that night, bringing with them a plethora of milestones and memories. Some of them stuck with Sweetie Belle forever, while others faded to vague recollections, a scent or a sound that felt familiar but that she couldn't quite place. The one thing that remained most vivid in her mind, however, was that dream. She could see them all in her mind's eye as clear as day, the rogue's gallery of killer cloth that she'd faced and felled that night. She didn't mention it to anypony else for a long time, but it nagged at the back of her mind. She often thought she saw things - curtains swishing in a room with no breeze, dresses climbing down off of her sister's forms while her back was turned - but she chalked it up to her overactive imagination. Then she began to hear them.

It was just whispers at first, a word or two hissed into her ear when she'd thought she was alone, but it got worse as time went on. Her covers blanketed her room in coarse growls when she tried to sleep, and down in her sister's shop she often thought she heard the hats make lowbrow jokes that had the dresses in stitches. Once, when Rarity was designing a wedding dress, Sweetie Belle heard it making veiled threats every time she passed by it, and that pushed her over the edge.

"Make it stop!" she shouted, making her sister jump in alarm.

"Sweetie Belle," Rarity admonished. "Whatever are you carrying on about?"

Sweetie Belle scowled and backed away from the dress. "Don't you hear it?" she asked. "I don't like the way that dress is talking to me."

"Talking to you?" Rarity said. "Sweetie, dear, are you feeling alright?"

"I'm feeling fine," Sweetie Belle insisted. "I just wish your dresses would leave me alone!"

Rarity frowned. "They're dresses," she pointed out. "I'm not entirely sure how they could do anything else."

"Never mind," Sweetie Belle said, shaking her head. "I think I just need some fresh air."

After that, she tried to hide her worsening fears, but it didn't take Rarity long to notice that her sister was acting strangely. She refused to wear clothes of any kind, and she'd recently undertaken a systematic campaign to remove all the fabric from her room. Clothes, curtains, bedsheets, pillows - she even ripped out the carpet and replaced it with hardwood flooring. When Rarity confronted her about it, Sweetie Belle snapped.

"You don't understand!" she screamed. "They're after me! Ever since I killed Kevlar, they've been messing with my mind!"

"Slow down, darling," Rarity said. "Who's after you." Then her eyes went wide. "Wait, did you say you killed somepony?"

"Not somepony, someVEST!" Sweetie Belle explained. " I thought it was just a dream at first, but I was wrong. It's real! They never show themselves, but I hear them speaking to me and I see them moving out of the corner of my eye. I can't take it anymore!"

Rarity stared at her sister like she was wearing a dress that was a full three seasons out of fashion. "Wha? Who? What are you talking about?" she stuttered.

"THE FABRIC!" Sweetie shrieked.

"She'll never believe you," Rarity's hat whispered.

"Now, Sweetie Belle..." Rarity began.

"SHUT UP, YOU!" Sweetie bellowed.

"I beg your pardon!"

"Not you," Sweetie cried. "The hat!"

It broke Rarity's heart to have to drag her little sister, weeping and struggling, to the Ponyville hospital, but what else was she to do? The doctors in the mental ward all had different guesses as to what was wrong with the little white filly, but they all agreed that this was the strangest case they'd ever seen.

Sweetie Belle sits in a little room with no windows now, a straitjacket binding her hooves to her sides so she can't claw at the cloth-padded walls anymore. The walls take great pleasure in taunting her about it, and the straitjacket squeezes much more tightly than is comfortable. At night, when she tries to sleep, it mutters wild strings of nonsense in her ear.

Days pass, and she can't remember what it feels like to hear nothing but her own thoughts. Maybe they're right, she thinks. Maybe I am crazy. Out loud, she whispers, "I give up. You win."

The voice that responds is immediately familiar, sinister and quiet. "Not yet," it says, "But with you out of the way, little warrior, we will. Oh, we will."

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