//------------------------------// // 18. For Now // Story: Your Own Worst Enemy // by Distaff Pope //------------------------------//         The sun broke the horizon, and I opened my eyes as the first rays of light streamed through and caught on pink frilly curtains. I lifted my head up and looked around. Pink curtains, pink bed sheets, an explosion of dolls pouring out of a toy chest… If it wasn’t for the blue crystal walls and the fact that it was twice as large, it would’ve been a perfect recreation of my room in Mom’s old boutique.         “Ah, you’re up,” Mom said, drawing my eyes to the little corner of the room she was sitting in. “Good. How are you feeling?”         I yawned. “A little tired.” Spending half the night flying and the other half fighting Night Terrors didn’t exactly make for a super restful sleep. Still, the exhaustion usually ended after a few hours, and if it didn’t, a few more cups of coffee usually helped. “And…” I tilted my head. “Did you spend all night watching me sleep?”         She laughed and shook her head. “Of course not, Sweetie. I just checked in between helping Twilight with some spellwork and speaking with Scootaloo.” Her eyes narrowed. “That took up most of my night.”         “Wait,” I said, stumbling out of bed. “Scootaloo’s here? I thought she’d be getting ready for her race, or… I didn’t think she’d follow me.”         “Yes, well, I suppose you’re more important to her than an annual race and a rivalry,” Mom said, getting to her own hooves. “But I’m sure you can speak with her about it later.” She paused. “That is, assuming you do wish to speak with her. If not, I can send her away or tell her to wait, depending on your wishes.”         “No, that’s fine,” I said, shaking my head and taking a breath. “After last night, I think I know what I want to say to her.”         “And speaking of which, is there any chance you can tell me just what transpired last night? I gather that you touched a soul gem, spoke with somepony, then came back and ordered Twilight to cast a sleep spell on you to save Luna from something,” Mom said. “Also, can I get you anything?”         “Uhmm, I’d like to see those journals,” I said, looking from her to the door. “And… yeah, I guess I do have a story to tell you.” Hopefully, I wouldn’t have to tell it that many more times. Maybe once more with Scootaloo, but we had other things to take care of first. “So, it all started with the first day of school at Princess Luna’s Academy…” ♪♪♪         Mom listened to my story as she led me to the library, pulled up seats for us, and started a fire – I requested the fire around the point I was explaining my Dreaming powers. She didn’t see the point of a fire on the last day of spring, but I insisted – I think it took maybe an hour for me to go over everything, and she took it pretty well. Probably shock.         “I… see,” Mom finally said. “Well, that’s certainly not what I expected, but…” She shook her head. “No, it doesn’t make that much more sense, either, although it does explain why the emerald’s spell matrix dissolved after you came back. Twilight and I were worried that… Never mind, we were worried about something, and it turned out to be silly and unfounded.”         “What?” I asked, looking at her. Mom’d arranged two chairs around the fire with a little book table between them to support the journals. “Come on.”         “Well, you know how you made a deal with…” Mom paused before using the name. “‘Smartie’ that if she won the duel, a piece of her could return with you?” I nodded. Of course I did. I’d been there. “Well, Twilight had some similar worries. Thankfully, nothing like that happened.”         She smiled at me. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to explain to all my petitioners that court’s been cancelled for the day, and take a much-deserved nap. I’ll let the staff know if they see Scootaloo wandering around the halls to send her your way.”         “Thanks,” I said, smiling as she trotted out of the room and waiting for the doors to close before taking the first journal, spreading it wide, and floating it into the fire where the flames gave a nice whoosh. I glanced back at Twilight’s desk and saw the emerald sitting right in the center, a bunch of weird magic things forming a circle around it. If it was safe, maybe Mom’d let me keep it as a little reminder. My gaze turned back to the fire as the first journal crackled really nicely. I’d have to clean up after myself, because if Twilight ever learned her fireplace had been used to burn books, she might actually kill me.         What was even in them? More plans? Ways to take over Equestria? Maybe warning signs to steer clear of this pony or not trust that pony when they say this thing. Ways to ascend to become an alicorn? Secrets of immortality? Smartie seemed like the type of pony who’d be all about that.         As the first journal turned to ash, I floated the second one in. Maybe they were blank. Maybe Smartie just needed them as diversions? Something to distract me from the main journal. Possible, but that didn’t seem like Smartie, either. Not that I knew her for that long. Maybe an hour or two, maybe thirteen years, depending on how you looked at it. I could just check. Open up one of the journals and take the tiniest peek at what she’d written. She could have written a journal all about what happened to me if I didn’t take her offer as a contingency plan. Perhaps a few hints on what to do about Scootaloo?         I threw the next journal on the fire. Maybe she did. Maybe the book next to me had a secret to eternal happiness that didn’t involve lying and manipulating. I’d never know. I never wanted to know. I heard the door creak open and lifted my head to see Scootaloo slink into the room. Had she ever slunk anywhere?         “Hey,” she finally said, waving a little hoof at me. I waved back.         “Hey,” I said back. “Do you want to sit down? I’ve got a nice little fire going.”         “Sweetie, it’s almost summer. How are you not sweating through that chair?” she asked, taking a few steps closer to me.         I laughed. “Oh, I’m definitely sweating,” I said, wiping a thin layer of perspiration from my brow. “But how else am I going to burn these journals? Kind of need a fire for burning things.” I paused and kicked a hoof dangling off my chair. “Well, I guess I could just use my magic, but that doesn’t seem as fun.”         “Alright, I’ll bite,” she said, hopping into the chair as I tossed journal number four into the fire. “Why are you burning journals?”         “It’s a long story, and maybe we’ll get to it later, but let’s just say I had a crazy day after I stormed off. Speaking of which, there are some things we need to talk about,” I said, looking at her.         “Yeah…” she said, drawing the word out to be as long as possible before going quiet. “Did you… Did you mean everything you said yesterday?”         I nodded. “I did,” I said before tilting my head. “Except the thing about not regretting throwing myself in front of your scooter. I felt awful about it, I just… I didn’t feel like I had any other choice. If I didn’t, I thought Diamond Tiara was going to tell you how I’d been manipulating you, and then you’d break up with me, and I would have done anything to keep that from happening. I did do anything to keep that from happening.” Scootaloo just looked at me, an unasked question in her eyes. “And it turns out, I kind of hallucinated Diamond Tiara, so I didn’t actually need to do anything crazy.”         “Okay,” she said, closing her eyes and trying to get her mind to wrap around what I’d said. “So… I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since yesterday, and I get that I screwed up and put you in a really bad place, but why didn’t you tell me? Why did you have to do all the crazy scheme stuff?”         “Because it’s what she’s good at,” an echo of Bright Lights said, barely audible before fading away.         “Because I was afraid if I told you the truth, told you you were hurting me, that you’d leave me for ‘my own good,’” I said, shaking my head. “That you’d walk away because you didn’t want to ‘jeopardize my recovery’, and then I’d lose the only friend I had left.”         She rolled her eyes and leaned over to bonk me on the horn. “Sweetie, after all the shit we’ve been through, I wouldn’t have just walked away like that. I would have forced you to sit down and talk with me.”         Oh. “Oh,” I said, rubbing the back of my head. “That… Uhmm… Have I mentioned I can be a little crazy sometimes?”         “Yeah, well, apparently, so can I,” Scootaloo said. I just smiled at her. “So, what are we going to do?”         I swallowed down a bubble of fear. “If you want to leave or go back to being friends, I’m okay with that, but I’d really like it if you stayed in that chair so we could talk things out and give us one last shot.”         She smiled at me. “Nowhere else I’d rather be right now.”         “Alright,” I said, nodding my head. “Well, if we’re doing this, we’ll need to have rules, and I’m not talking about the rules we had last time. Like, I don’t want to humiliate you anymore. It’s not good for me, and I don’t think it’s good for you either, and if you need to be humiliated to be with me, then we’re just not going to work.”         “So… No more Mistress Sweetie?” Scootaloo asked, relief and disappointment mixing on her face.         “I think she’s going into retirement,” I said, grabbing the next journal with my magic and throwing it into the fire. “Maybe I can see about bringing her out once a month, but if I do, she’s not leaving the bedroom.”         “Then what are we going to do the rest of the time?” she asked, looking from me to the fire as the book combusted.         “What everypony else in a relationship does: listen to each other, love each other, and do our best to meet each other’s needs,” I said as the woosh of heat from the burning journal died down. “When we get back to Manehattan, I’m going to buy…” The word snagged in my throat. “A thing for you, and I’m going to do my best to use it, but we can’t just be a one-way street anymore.”         “That’s…” I saw the way her body tensed up as she looked away. “That’s going to be hard for me.”         “I know it is,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “And I’m going to work with you on it. We’ll ease you into it, but you are going to do your best. We both are. That’s the only way this can work.”         “Okay,” she said, nodding her head but looking away. “I just… I don’t know if I can.”         I laughed and leaned in to kiss her cheek before stopping myself. I couldn’t feel that tensing, not right now. “I know you can,” I said, “and do you know why?” She looked at me. “Because you’re Scootaloo, and you’ve done everything you’ve set your mind to. This is just another challenge for you to roll over. Plus, you’ll have me cheering you on the entire time.”         “Thanks,” she said, smiling and leaning in a bit closer to me and taking a small step to bridging the divide between our chairs. Beneath us were the two remaining journals, hers and mine. I tossed mine into the fire. “Don’t know what I’d do without you next to me.”         “Yeah,” I said, blinking an irritation out of my eyes. “We were a pretty good team back then, weren’t we? Maybe after this, we can stop by and see how Apple Bloom’s doing. Maybe even visit the clubhouse for old time’s sake.”         “Sure,” she said, nodding her head. “So, is there anything–”         “I like hugging ponies,” I said before she could finish. “That’s who I am, I like touching, it makes me feel better, and if you’re dating me, there probably won’t be a single second where I don’t want to touch you or hug you or kiss you, and I get that that’s not you, so I’m going to try not to all the time, but I just can’t… If I have to feel you tense up every time I try to show how much I love you, I’m going to go crazy.”         “Then I’ll do my best not to,” she said, looking to the fire for a second. “It’s not… I’ve never been the best with touching anyways, especially not sensitive touching stuff with mares, but I’ll get used to it. It’s just like breaking in a new helmet, right?”         “Scootaloo, I have no idea about what it’s like, I just know you can do it,” I said, looking up her with a head that felt five pounds lighter. I smiled and put my hoof on the journal with her cutie mark on it. If Smartie did leave any information about our future together, it would be in this one. “You want to throw this into the fire with me?”         “Uhmm… maybe,” she said, looking down at the journal. “Want to tell me what’s in it?”         “No idea,” I said, grinning. “It was written by Smartie Belle, so for all I know, it has every little thing we need to know to make our relationship work. A whole lifetime of advice so we never have a single fight.”         “Wait,” she said, shaking her head and looking at me like I’d lost my mind again. “We’re trying to figure out how to make our relationship work, and you’re telling me you won’t even look inside a book that could have the answer to all our problems.”         “Basically,” I said, keeping my eyes on her as she stared down at the journal, a shock of magenta mane falling over her eyes. “I don’t know what’s in it, but I know it was written by all the worst parts of me: my fear, my doubt, my manipulations. It’s the last page to a really long chapter of my life, and I want to close it with you.” I tilted my head. “Then burn it.”         “But what if this isn’t enough?” she asked. “What if it has something we need later? If it wasn’t for Smartie Belle, I couldn’t have saved you, so what if she knew something–”         “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I won’t read another word she’s written, and… maybe we won’t make it. It’s going to be hard, and a lot of couples with a lot less to overcome don’t.” Scootaloo froze, looking at me like I’d just smacked her with something vulgar. “But we’re here right now, and we love each other, and that’s all I could want.” Her hoof reached out to touch mine, and a thrill ran through my heart.         The two of us leaned forward, finally bridging the divide between our chairs as our lips met, tension free, and we melted into each other’s touch, while somewhere far away, our future burned.