Hitting Rock Bottom

by Jordan179

Chapter 1: An Unhappy Awakening

Cheerilee came slowly to consciousness lying on a rug.

It was a very filthy rug. It smelt of stale tobacco and beer and wine and cider and more dubious smokes and drinks.

And sex. Lots and sex: the exudations of mares and stallions, as if she had gone to sleep in a bordello. A particularly dingy and unhygenic bordello.

"Eww ..." Cheerilee said. Her voice was a gasp. Her throat felt raw and dehydrated, her tongue fuzzy. The sexual reek was so strong that it was as if she could taste it in her mouth, even though she was, wisely, making no attempt to flehmen.

Slowly and horribly, the realization came to her that the reason she could taste it in her mouth was because some of it really was in her mouth. But that's impossible, she thought desperately. I broke up with that cad! Anyway, none of this smells like him -- oh, no.

She opened her eyes very slowly, dreading what vision might reveal. Sunlight stabbed into her eyes and she whimpered, shut them as she suddenly became aware of a truly awesome headache. She squeezed her eyes tight shut again, clenched her teeth, lay there for an eternity until the pounding in her head subsided to mere pain, instead of red agony.

Then, very carefully, she opened her eyes again.

In some ways, what she saw was a relief. She wasn't in some sort of dungeon, captive to some mad orgiastic cult or wicked ring of slavers out of some lewd bit-dreadful. All four of her limbs were free, and when she wriggled experimentally, she did not appear to be bound in any fashion.

She was in an ordinary, mundane, cheap little common room, as might be found in the less-fashionable dormitories near Canterlot University. She was lying on the floor, in front of a sofa, from which she had evidently rolled or been pushed at some point in the process of what had to have been the second worst night of her life.

The room was full of Ponies.

All were about her age, or a bit younger: undergraduate students, mostly. They were sleeping in a variety of postures, ranging from the adorable to the hilarious to the repulsive, and combinations thereof. Some were hugging each other; some were alone; and some juxtaposed in positions which implied that they had fallen asleep during intimate congress.

Looking around (at the expense of her head pounding even more intensely), Cheerilee could not see any stallion who seemed to have been particularly associated with herself. That was a relief -- or worry, depending on how one looked at it. For the taste in her mouth -- and a certain soreness in her nether regions -- informed her that her own personal role in this night of debauchery had been far from chaste.

Oh, no, she thought frantically. No, no no! But the reality around her mocked her mental protestations. Just like my mother! She lashed herself with the thought. I'm just like my mother!

---

She remembered the nights, years after her father's death, when her mother Strawberry's drinking had gotten wholly out of control. When she started coming home in the early morning, stinking, just as Cheerilee herself stank right now. Cheerilee had been young then -- eleven or twelve -- innocent, but not so innocent that she hadn't understood at least some of the implications of what she was smelling on her mother.

She knew enough, even at twelve, that she might have guessed what was going on. Yet her usual intelligence had clearly deserted her in this matter -- probably, she reflected, because she had not wanted to believe the truth about Strawberry. And, for a long time, nopony told her. That, in a strange way, said something good about Ponyville -- in many communities, her mother's conduct would have been thrown in her face the moment that others noticed it.

She was thirteen when somepony finally told her.

It was one of her classmates, of course. Raisin Cake. Raisin was fourteen -- a year older than Cheerilee -- and already cynical and angry at the world. Raisin was the first cousin of Cheerilee's very good friend Cup Cake, but Cheerilee had never gotten along well with her. Though, as Cheerilee remembered, she had actually been trying to cheer up Raisin, which had somehow led to a screaming argument, wth Raisin ranting at her.

And Raisin had concluded:

"Don't give me that crap that things get better. Look at you! Your Dad's dead and your Mom's a whorse!"

The words hit young Cheerilee like a slap to the face.

The whole schoolyard fell silent. Ponies were not a violent species, but -- as with Humans -- to cast aspersions upon a mother's character was a particularly vile insult. Cheerilee, for all her niceness, was known to have a temper. And a mean right forehoof. The onlookers half-expected Cheerilee to hit Raisin.

Cheerilee did not hit Raisin Cake. She did not hit Raisin Cake because, while the red of rage was indeed flickering at the edge of her vision, she also felt a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, because what Raisin had just said made a certain dreadful sense, especially in the light of what she had already noticed.

So Cheerilee did not hit Raisin Cake. Instead she glared into the older filly's eyes, and Raisin flinched for a moment before that gaze.

And Cheerilee asked:

"Why do you call my mother a whorse?"

Raisin Cake blinked, staring at Cheerilee in evident surprise.

"What, you don't know?" Raisin asked. "Everypony knows!"

Cheerilee took a half-step forward, thrusting her muzzle almost into Raisin's own.

Raisin Cake involuntarily took a half-step back, ears lowered.

"Just what," Cheerilee asked, her voice icy-cold, "have you heard about my mother?"

"Uh ... uh ... uh ..." stammered Raisin Cake. "Um ... nothing ... really nothing ..."

"What do you know?" asked Cheerilee, stepping further forward. "Tell me!" As Cheerilee said this, she pressed remorselessly in, and Raisin Cake was forced to step back to avoid physical contact. At the last Raisin's hind legs stumbled; she sat down and shrank back before Cheerilee's cold wrath. Cheerilee's nose actually touched Raisin's, and the older filly flinched away, averting her gaze and -- in the process -- also baring her throat to Cheerilee.

"My mom's friend told my mom that she'd seen Strawberry Punch going to that seedy little bar northeast of town on the Saddle Lake Road -- I think it's called the Carrot and Stick or something like that -- and, uh, kissing stallions and going off with them, and other Ponies told my mom's friend Strawberry did this a lot and that she was a whorse and that's just what I heard!" With the completion of that statement, Raisin Cake squeezed her eyes shut and trembled, obviously not wanting to see whatever Cheerilee was about to do to her.

But Cheerilee simply looked up, and around at the circle of onlookers.

She knew them all, of course, and fairly well. One does when one attends a one-room schoolhouse. Several were her very good friends. Others were at least casual friends. Very few didn't like her, and until just now, she had assumed that none actually hated her. She was a popular filly, helpful and kind to others, and generally well appreciated for these virtues.

What struck her, though, beholding that circle of familiar faces, was that -- among those old enough to understand what was happening, there was plenty of discomfort. They clearly sympathized with the emotional pain they assumed she was feeling -- though in truth, Cheerilee was too numb to feel much of anything right now. But few of them looked surprised.

"How long?" Cheerilee asked softly, shifting her gaze from one to the next. "How long have you all known?"

Most averted their eyes in shame. A few mumbled apologies.

Cup Cake -- the best friend she had in Ponyville Primary, since Mare Ivory Scroll had gone off to Canterlot Secondary -- stepped cautiously forward. Her expression was troubled.

"Several months," Cup Cake said. "I think I found out -- um -- around four months ago, cause it was a little before Hearth's Warming, dontcha know?" Cup Cake's paternal family was from Whinneysota Province, and it could be heard in her voice.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Cheerilee asked her.

"Well, at first I wasn't sure. Then, when I knew it was prolly true -- cause I was hearing it from other Ponies -- I just didn't want to hurt you. I figured you'd be really sad to hear about it, and I didn't want to make you sad." She looked at her own hooves, then directly into Cheerilee's eyes. "I'm real sorry."

Cheerilee had calmed down a little, and she could see that what Cup said made a lot of sense. She also saw that her friends hadn't tried to keep the truth from her so that they could laugh at her behind her back, but rather that they had done so because they feared hurting her. She still wished they'd told her earlier, but now at least she knew that they were still really her friends.

She still didn't like Raisin Cake for the way in which Raisin had chosen to use the secret, but now Cheerilee couldn't hate her for the simple fact of the revelation. Raisin had, after all, ultimately told her the truth. And while Cheerilee greatly valued Kindness, she also very much valued Honesty.

Better to know than to just trot along ignorant of reality, even a painful reality, thought Cheerilee at thirteen. Truth is definitely better than innocence.

Author's Note:

The Carrot and Stick is the same seedy little bar featured in Bad Horse's Fluttershy's Night Out and my own A Robust Solution. The name is a reference to reward and punishment, and given what town it's near probably means that it was founded by one of the Carrot clan (Landscape, Golden Harvest and Snailsquirm/Glittershell's larger family, and one of the founding families of Ponyville). Every sizable town has a place like this, and no doubt if the bar gets burned to the ground by High Queen Nightmare Hunger's Swarms in the Changeling invasion of 1513, it is swiftly rebuilt, complete with shady clientele. Now we learn that it plays its nasty little part as a setting in the story of Strawberry Punch's trip to the bottom, as well.

This is the same Cup Cake who later runs Sugar Cube Corner. I go with Coming Out Of Your Shell and count her as one of Cheery's best friends in her youth.

13-year-old Cheerilee's temper is much less under control than is the case with the Cheerilee we meet in the series or for that matter that of the 25-year-old Cheerilee who is having her moral crisis. Though note -- she never actually does anything all that violent. She doesn't have to -- she is already capable of a very intimidating glare.

Mare Ivory Scroll is the future Mayor Mare. Canterlot Secondary School is called Canterlot High School in the IDW comics. A "secondary school" and a "high school" are the same thing. In 15th century YOH Equestria, most students attend primary school until they drop out or graduate, some time between around 11-16, and only rich or gifted children go on to secondary school. Mare Ivory Scroll's family is rich, and she's smart; Cheerilee has an educational stipend from Falcon Punch's death benefits, and she's brilliant, so she eventually attends as well. Cheerilee, of course, goes on to college and graduate school, which is where she gets into emotional trouble and hits rock bottom.

What I have described is normal educational practice for an Industrial Age civilization. Universal secondary school historically did not become common in the West until after World War II -- which is to say, when we began to enter the Information Age. Equestria is a rich Industrial Age civilization, which is to say it is roughly like America or Britain in that regard, but even Equestria can't yet afford to send all its children to secondary school, let alone college.

Raisin Cake (b. YOH 1471) is a minor character who we assume to be the result of a marriage between a Cake mare and a Raisin stallion. The Raisins are a grapegrowing family who dwell in Coltifornia. Some of them have musical Talents. Raisin's own family is probably rather dysfunctional -- compare her angry and hostile self to the cheerful and kindly Cup Cake. Sometime between YOH 1485, when the flashback takes place, and YOH 1500 when the Show begins, I assume Raisin Cake moved somewhere else. As of now (YOH 1506) she'd be around 35 years old.

The really bad situation to which Cheerilee awakens here is of course based on the biography of the Cheerilee from the Lunaverse, which is actually worse in that Lunaverse Cheerilee apparently lives like this for some years when away at college in Canterlot -- and considers it merely an amusingly-picaresque period in her life. SWSV Cheerilee feels very bad about what's happened, because she still has enough of a moral compass that she knows that she's done something seriously wrong.

But then, the Lunaverse explicitly portrays a morally-damaged society, compared to main-worldlines Equestria. And this damage is in part because Luna is far less competent at civilian leadership than is Celestia. Even with the best of intentions -- Lunaverse Luna is definitely a good and heroic Pony -- she just is not as good at steering the course between undue maternalism and anarchy as was Celestia in the more probable worldlines where it was Luna who went mad and Celestia who had to run the country.

Though note -- Lunaverse Cheerilee is still functional enough to attune to Laughter. Cheerilee, despite being an extremely nice Pony, is also an extremely tough Pony -- very hard to crush and keep down for long.

Hero, and Mentor to Heroes, indeed.

Comments

[Ardashir]

This first chapter seems a bit on the short side, but I do want to see where this is going. I also kind of wonder just how much Cheerilee drinks to get drunk; the ponies probably don't have the capacity of real-world horses, but she's an Earth pony. I have this idea of her loading up on beer and cider to the point where she's sloshing when she walks.

And poor little Cheery, learning the truth like that.

Your Dad's dead and your Mom's a whorse!

I don't know if I should laugh or be horrified at the "whorse" bit. It does make one wonder how the Mane Six and mares in general would react to, say, a human entering their world who innocently refers to them as a 'bunch of (w)horses'.

[A British Gentleman]

So far so good, and this has the potential to be an interesting character piece. Tracked.

[FanOfMostEverything]

The Raisins are a grapegrowing family who dwell in Coltifornia. Some of them have musical Talents.

I assume some of them will discover talents in stop-motion animation when that discipline makes its way to Applewood.

Levity aside, it will be interesting to see where you go from here. You have multiple potential portions of Cheerilee's life to explore. Whenever you focus on, it will interesting to see a further exploration of her saga. Especially how Celestia factors into it.

[Walabio]

I heard that you wrote a story about Cheerilee based off the LunaVerse version. This Cheerilee seems to be in worse trouble than that 1.

[Jordan179]

8630606

This Cheerilee is better at recognizing that things are going very wrong for her than is the Lunaverse one.

[Walabio]

8630725

Perhaps. I shall see. Unfortunately, I can only afford an hour a day to read and usually that gets preempted. Thus is life. Last year, Admiral Biscuit managed to publish a chapter a day. Somber managed to write a 1.8 million-word story. You wrote so many stories that I have not read even half of them. Honestly, I have no idea how you all do it.