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// Chapter One: Behind the Door// Story: Sorry// by Normal//------------------------------//

	"Rarity, please protect me, please protect me, big sister..." 

	My voice had grown hoarse over the...I don't know how long I had been here, how long I'd been praying. I tried praying to Celestia, I tried praying that the Royal Guard would show up. But lately I've just been praying to one person. Rarity...My voice keeps breaking now...I can't do more than whisper and soon I won't even be able to do that...

	I can't even tell where I am. It is pitch black where ever it is. I can't tell how many time's Celestia sun has risen and falled since I've been here...I can't even see the hoof in front of myself. I can wave it now and it'd make no difference.

	I startle myself as I hear a sharp sound break the crypt like silence of the room...of my prison. My eyes flit around, and I curl up protectively. But its stopped. I realize I don't even know what's happening anymore. That sound? the sound that startle me so? I realize that was my laughter. I can't even think clearly. If I don't get food and water soon, I'm going to die here, left to be a withered corpse in a room not even blessed with Celestia's presence. If I could muster anymore tears I would be sobbing at that idea...

											~

	I think I fell asleep...or passed out...but I woke just now to a searing pain. I couldn't figure out what was happening. My eyes felt like somepony was holding a torch to them. Even with my eyes clench tightly shut the pain was still there, crawling through my eyelids and stabbing my eyes with a thousand needles. I whimper from the pain.

	"...Rarity..."
	
	I felt the stabbing burn again as my eyes shoot open. I heard something, I know I did. This time it was real. 

	"Please...if there's anypony...there..."

	I trail off as I feel my eyes adjusting, not just to the pain but to what I'm realizing was light. I was blinded by a simple light where the door was cracked. The door in which a large stallion stands. He'd be big normally I believe, but in my weakened state he seemed larger yet. Taller than Celestia I'd even venture to say.

	"Hello...," My voice cracks and I find my frail body being wracked with violent coughs before I can speak again, "Can you help me? I don't know how I got here, where I am, anythin-"

	"I brought you here."

	His words do more than cut me off but silence me too. I freeze, feeling suddenly cold, trying to look at that stallion closer. Everything was still blurry to my eyes but I could still make out his form. The way he stood by the door like that made the light frame him, leaving him the most visible thing in the room. Yet at the same time it leaves him shrouded in shadows that frustratingly hide any details.

	"Get up. Now." 

	His tone is brisk, a tone I know as a filly that one would hear from a displeased parent. I find myself not thinking, already trying to get my hooves positioned under me. They feel so weak but I get them to work. I stand there shakily and then like a new born foal I find myself eating dirt as all four collapse under me at haphazard angles. I cry out as I fall but no sound leaves my throat. 

	The form by the door has not moved at all.

	I try to force my legs under me again. I wonder if this is all a dream, is there really anypony there? Maybe I've died already...maybe I just don't realize it...

	"I said get up," The snarl of his voice cuts into me, "If you can't get up in the next minute I will leave you to rot for another day without food or water."

	My legs finally find a grip beneath my body and my mind locks onto two words. Food? Water? My body aches just thinking about them and I stumble around, trying to aim myself in the direction of the light.

	"Please, sir..."

	"Be quiet. You will learn you are only to speak when spoken to."

	I whimper at the words, causing my throat to scream in pain. I shut up then, as told, but for my own reasons. If I thought I could stand, in my state, on only three legs, I'd be rubbing at my painful throat now.

	"You will follow me. You will remain quiet. If you do anything to try to get away I will shatter your hind legs and throw you back in that room. I'd rather not have to do that."

	Those words took longer than they should have to register in my mind and I almost fell down again when I thought about being left in the dark, starving...again. I find my hooves moving mechanically, following his receding flank. 

	Pushing the door open farther I'm rewarded with another bleak sight, another small room, a single naked lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. As I look at it the bulb flickers and I feel my head swim. 
	
	"Pick up the pace, filly, before I change my mind."

	I squeak and return my attention to the successful manipulation of putting one hoof in front of another. And then the light brightens. I hadn't even realize I had walked through another door until that. The rooms plain, but seems so much more comforting than where I just left. A bedroom, furnished simply with a bed, dresser and nightstand. I see a pale off white quilt laid over the foot of the bed.

	And then his voice breaks my viewing of the room. 

	"Should you behave, and should you prove your worth as my slave, this will be your room. You can sleep in here when I see fit."