Chapter 1
The young pegasus closed the bulky wooden door behind her before she turned around and inhaled deeply; the warm, familiar, and welcoming scent of her home filled her lungs. She sighed in contentment as she switched on the light switch beside the door, and watched as it illuminated the room. Fluttershy would usually see a hoard of animals emerging from their respected places to greet her, but upon her late arrival tonight she was only greeted by a soft silence, save for a few interruptions of snoring coming from a certain bear. Her eyes scanned across the room before they fell upon her beloved bunny, Angel, who was balled up on his favourite spot on the couch. Fluttershy realised that he must have been waiting up for her, so she made a mental note to give him an extra helping of carrots in the morning.
After carefully placing down her saddlebags, so as to not disturb the slumbering animals, she flew beside the small bundle and kissed his cotton white head. She smiled, and then padded to the kitchen with the thought of a warm cup of tea on her mind.
However, just as her hoof flicked on the light switch to her kitchen, an all too familiar voice echoed behind her.
“You’re home rather late, don’t you think?”
Fluttershy squeaked and hopped in the air as she turned around to meet her intruder. Her fearful expression, however, depleted away as her teal eyes locked with yellow and crimson red.
A small smile crept onto her face. “Oh goodness, Discord, you scared me,” she said, and then glanced at the clock that hung on one of the walls. “What are you doing here so late?”
“I believe I asked you that first.”
“Oh, yes you did. Well, I was at Rarity’s. She wanted to ask for my opinion on some of the songs that she has been writing for the Pony Tones. We ended up getting so lost in conversation that I guess we both lost track of time,” she smiled.
Fluttershy suddenly paused for a moment before the colour drained from her face and her eyes widened. “Oh my, we didn’t have any plans for this evening did we!? I don’t recall making any, but oh I’ve been forgetting a lot of things lately! Just yesterday I had completely forgotten to help Harry look for his missing teddy bear! It was so terribly hard to get him to sleep last night; he was so devastated.”
Fluttershy gasped, “What if there’s something wrong with me!? Amnesia!? Maybe even Dementia or something much much worse! I need to go speak to Twilight right awa-!”
Fluttershy’s ramblings were abruptly cut off as a paw planted itself over her mouth.
“Now now there, are you done doing… whatever it is you were doing?.”
He got a soft, if not hesitant, nod in reply. “We didn’t have any plans for this evening. I was bored and decided to visit. Just so happens that when I got here, you weren’t.”
“Mmph.”
“Pardon? Use your words, Fluttershy. Just like we practised.”
“Mm mm pph?”
“Oh. Right.” Discord removed his paw from her muzzle, “One more time, dear.”
“I’m really sorry for not being here, Discord. Have you been waiting long?”
“Not particularly. I was actually hoping to disrupt you from your sleep, but as you can tell that didn’t exactly go to plan,” he dramatically emphasized his woe by throwing his paw to his forehead and gazing into the distance.
“I’m glad you weren’t waiting on me for too long. Would you like some tea?” Fluttershy asked, ignoring his second comment and antics that had followed.
“As a matter of fact I would.”
Fluttershy beamed at him then proceeded to turn hoof and head towards the kettle.
Discord had made himself comfortable on his favourite spot in the house, her sofa. Fluttershy wasn’t quite sure yet whether it was Discord’s favourite spot only because it was Angel’s favourite spot, or if it really was just a coincidence. Anypony else would immediately agree on the former, but Fluttershy had come to know that Discord has more layers than he lets on.
Luckily, to Fluttershy’s relief, she had been able to quickly scoop up the sleeping Angel and place him gently in his wicker basket before Discord had had the chance to make a beeline for the sofa.
They lit a fire in the fireplace in the front room to fill the small cottage with warmth as Fluttershy busied herself in the kitchen.
Discord was about to change the wallpaper for the upteenth time before he heard a muffled giggle coming from his yellow friend. He stopped his claw midway in the air and raised a bushy eyebrow.
“What are you giggling about over there?” Discord questioned as he awkwardly stretched his neck to an impossible length, peeking his head around and looking into the kitchen from where he was sitting.
Fluttershy took a short moment to calm her giggles behind her hoof, “Oh, it’s nothing. I just realised that I still smell like oranges,” she giggled once more before she continued. “I suppose I should really go take a bath soon. I do love oranges, but maybe not quite this much.”
Discord snorted, “I agree. Quite frankly after today I’m rather sick to the stomach of oranges and pray to never encounter one ever again.” He reinforced his disgust by sticking his finger in his mouth and making a gagging noise.
“Oh my, I hope not forever, oranges are a really good source of vitamin C,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Good to know.”
The tea set that Fluttershy typically used whenever she had guests over, was spread across the oak coffee table. Discord had already tucked into the arrangement not even a second before Fluttershy had set it down. If Rarity had been present at that time she’d have scoffed at his bad etiquette, but fortunately for her sake she wasn’t.
Fluttershy took her tea tentatively between her hooves and sat herself onto her armchair. She took a few sips of the warm liquid as she made small glances towards Discord every now and then to find him either diving face first into the biscuit tin or adding more sugar to his tea than even Pinkie Pie could handle.
Once Discord seemed somewhat relaxed, with all things considered, Fluttershy spoke up.
“I was thinking about today and I just want to say that I’m proud of you, even if you did cause a little trouble and gave Twilight some grief. But in the end you learnt from your mistake. And although it wasn’t technically in your intentions, you even helped Twilight understand and come to terms with something about herself, and for that I am very proud of you.”
She paused, “However, I am a little curious as to why you set this all up in the first place. Purposely leaving Twilight out of our weekend together, that is. I mean, I guess you were trying to upset or get a reaction from Twilight, but... why?”
She looked up at Discord expectantly, hoping he’d clear things up for her even though past experiences told her not to get her hopes up. To her dismay all she got from him was a bored glare at a nearby wall. If she didn’t know any better she would think that he hadn’t been listening to her at all.
Fluttershy inhaled quickly as it dawned upon her, “Discord, you... you weren’t mad at Twilight were you?”
Discord sighed before finally contributing to the conversation, “And pray tell what makes you think that?”
“Well, um you two haven’t exactly always been on good terms in the past, except for now that is, right?. And this isn’t the first time you tried to make Twilight feel bad. I know you two sometimes find it hard to get along so you argue a lot and go out of each other's way to make the other feel, well... miserable. So it would probably help explain most of your actions from today if you were mad at her. Maybe you two had a little tiff or um... maybe something else?”
“If it helps you rest easy, no, the Princess and I did not have a ‘tiff’,” he said as he gestured the last word with quotation marks.
“Oh, good. Then I’m glad to hear that you two are on good terms. But… Discord, I still don’t understand; why did you do what you did today in the first place?”
“Were you forcibly trying to teach Twilight a lesson so she can become a better pony? I suppose that was nice of you… I think. But if you were, I don’t get why you wanted her to learn something in the first place?” Fluttershy kept her gaze locked onto his wild eyes, looking for any signs or answers to her questions.
There was a short pause as Discord flicked a stray crumb off of his lap. He lazily made eye contact with her, “Not everything needs to have a reason behind it, Fluttershy.”
Fluttershy softly sighed and finally looked away as she smoothed out a small raised lump on the table cloth with her hoof and made a thoughtful noise, “I suppose not.”
“Right, now that that’s out of the way, can we move on from talking about Princess Twilight? She’s not exactly the most fascinating of conversation topics if I’m brutally honest,” he huffed.
Using her back and years of practice, Fluttershy lifted the tray layered with empty tea cups, pots, and a tin which only moments ago was overflowing with biscuits of different varieties. Since meeting Discord, Fluttershy always kept more than one full tin of biscuits as a spare just in case she had any surprise visits. She was grateful Discord hadn’t figured out where she hid them yet.
With ease she carried the tray to the kitchen to clear up, leaving Discord to slump across the sofa as he smacked his lips in satisfaction. He would never admit it to himself, let alone anypony else, but his tea parties with Fluttershy were the thing he always looked forward to most. Especially including the unscheduled ones.
The second Fluttershy had ducked behind the kitchen's entrance Discord let out a large sigh. She was right to question his actions. It was actually beginning to become an increasingly regular thing; Fluttershy being right.
He scratched the back of his head and then paused with his paw at the top of his neck, and then looked over towards the kitchen. “Hey, Fluttershy...do you think everypony would like to get together to make ice cream sundaes next weekend? We could chop up some nuts and pineapple for toppings.”
Fluttershy leaned over to the doorway of the kitchen so that she could see Discord. At first her face was slightly scrunched up in confusion at his uncharacteristic question, but it eased away once she saw the sincerity in his expression. “That sounds lovely, and the pineapple toppings sound delicious,” she said with a smile.
Grinning mischievously, Discord replied, “Yes it does, and pineapple is also high in vitamin C.”
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This is great! It's going to my favorites, which means it will be on my front page for a short while!
I definitely enjoyed this. It was short, but sometimes simple just works. Why change what works?
I really liked this, and I enjoy how its still up for interpretation as to why he did what he did. Nice little slice of life fic. And you did excellent with characterization and I'm of COURSE going to interpret it as fluttercord because I must.
And since you're super nice about asking for feedback, I'll go ahead and say that grammatically, there are two or three places where you have a question mark next to a period when the period isn't needed. A little tiny mistake. Didn't affect my enjoyment at all though.
And perhaps the ending was a little abrupt. I thought there would be more, I'll admit. I still enjoyed it a lot and I'm sure others will disagree, I just didn't see it coming.
But it was still a fun read and I'd definitely read more fluttercord from you! :D Oh, and I'll up vote this!
I am a big fan of discord and fluttershy's platonic relationship and highly appreciate, that you give me a chance to enjoy this fanfic, allthough I am not a fan of the pairing.
It would have been a shame if I wouldn't have liked this fic,
simply because I don't like the ship
Oh boy, this is going to be a rant and I apologize for that in advance. You wanted honest feedback though so here goes.
The end of the episode isn't odd, it makes perfect sense when you face one simple reality, Discord is an absolute jerk and the sooner he gets stoned again the better. "That whole jealousy thing was just a happy accident", does anyone really buy that, even for a second!?
Some grief? And you shouldn't be proud of him.
Mistake, Ha! Mistake, my eye.
Yes, he was trying to get her upset. Why, cause he's a jerk, that's why.
Well, lets see shall we. He drove all her friends insane and pushed into a deep depression (I know, pre-'reformation'). Upon being released, he caused all kinds of chaos and got Fluttershy so mad she seriously threatened to end her newfound friendship with him. He ruined her day with Cadence at the Starswirl exhibit, on purpose (c'mon it's obvious 'friendship test' my eye). He betrayed her and all her friends to Tirek. He ruined her first gala as a Princess by bringing the freaking Smooze. And now this load of horseapples! Which, as stated above, was CLEARLY his intention from the start. I can't imagine why Twilight wouldn't get on with him. (Can you hear the sarcasm, cause I meant it.)
If they are on good terms then Twilight is an idiot. Seriously, she should be trying to figure out if that Rainbow Power of theirs can stone him cause they're going to have to use it sooner or later.
No, he's just a jerk, and it wasn't nice at all.
What? No seriously, what's that got to do with anything?
Anyway, that's my feedback. I don't mean to rip on your story, it is well written. It just annoys me so much that the girls just don't seem to see the glaringly obvious fact that Discord is a selfish jerk who enjoys causing suffering to others. He even said so in this episode for pony's sake! Seriously, the only good thing, that I can think of, that he ever did for Twilight was to point out the important passages in their journal. Of course that was right before he stabbed them in the back!
I know right!?!?! I was squeeing in every other scene! They're just so cute!!!!!!!
6707686
You can't actually condemn people to a hellish fate worse than death because they are huge jerks, you know.
Aside from the Tirek incident, Discord hasn't done anything to justify a life sentence in prison, let alone being turned to stone for eternity. And the Tirek incident, while it certainly warranted a worse punishment than he got, didn't warrant turning him to stone because they wouldn't have gotten the Rainbow Power had Discord not been sincerely remorseful and genuinely learned the lesson about why he doesn't want to do that again.
His crime at the Gala incident wasn't bringing the Smooze -- Princess Celestia was actually hoping he'd do something like that, and while the Smooze was very disruptive, by the end it was behaving itself and getting along with everypony. It's what he threatened to do to Tree Hugger. Had he gone through with that, he'd have deserved to be turned to stone, or something at least -- but they talked him down. Again, he deserved some kind of punishment, but not being turned to stone. Ruining Twilight's day by pretending to be sick isn't even a crime, though deliberately getting Rarity and Applejack sick might have been considered such, and he paid for that by actually getting sick.
Even though I am a fan of the character, I agree with people who think that Discord is a jerk who hasn't really learned empathy with ponies yet and will probably continue to be an asshole for some time. However, it appalls me that people who don't like Discord keep declaring that he should be turned to stone for stunts like making Twilight feel bad. Really? Really?
Being unable to move but conscious, unable to speak but able to hear, is horrible. Humans have suffered from this -- it's called Locked-In Syndrome or Korsikoff's Syndrome, and it is hellish. Humans, at least, can count on the disease causing them to die younger than they otherwise would have, and in any case we're all mortal, so sooner or later the torment will stop. Discord would have no guarantee that it would ever stop. Death would be kinder, but the last time I checked, no one gives out death sentences for being a rude jerk.
If they had the ability to turn him into stone for a finite period of time -- say, give him a sentence of five or ten years -- that might have been a fair punishment for his treason, given that he showed genuine remorse and helped them in correcting the situation. Jailhouse snitches can get their sentences knocked down lower than that. But if they didn't do that, then nothing he has actually done since then warrants any length of time in stone, because it is simply not a jailable offense to ruin a party or make a friend jealous. And it is pretty obvious that emotional punishments work well on him -- Fluttershy yelling at him or his "friends" laughing at him rather than with him obviously cause him emotional pain and are probably much more effective than turning him to stone, which, as we have seen, did jack-all to reform him or make him change his behavior in any way.
6842627 You make some good points there. I wrote that comment while angry, something I should not do. You are correct, he shouldn't be turned to stone. However I think you trivialize his actions a bit too much. In the episode What About Discord, he wasn't trying to make Twilight feel bad. No, he was trying to drive her insane, and admitted to enjoying it. I say again, you are correct that he shouldn't be stoned, but what punishment he did get was very litttle compared with his intent.
What I'm saying is, he's more than just a jerk, he's one wrong move away from hurting everyone. The Tirek incident proves that. Perhaps punishment is not the answer, but some other kind of rehabilitation. I don't know, all I know is he's a time bomb waiting to go off.
6842667
Where are you getting that he was trying to drive her insane? (Literally, as opposed to "Oooh, that Discord! He drives me insane!") He said that her jealousy was a "happy accident", that he wanted her to learn that "even she can feel jealousy", and that he felt "glee" at seeing her try to recreate their weekend. He never said or even implied that he was trying to drive her crazy -- the implication was, he was trying to make her feel jealous, and then rubbing her face in it -- unless you're talking about the hyperbole of his illustration of her getting angry, but that's a character who exaggerates things drawing a funny picture, in a cartoon, which exaggerates things to begin with. The vibe I got was Discord was trying to "teach a lesson", but not benevolently -- he was trying to bring her down to his level, to make sure she knew that she wasn't a perfect paragon of friendship but that she can have dark emotions too. After all, the last time they met so far as we know was the Gala, which Discord almost wrecked with his own jealousy over a friend.
I agree that he could very easily hurt somebody. What he tried to do to Tree Hugger was unconscionable. At the same time, he's obviously learning, because the prior Discord couldn't have had a fun weekend with five of the Mane 6 if he'd wanted to. Since they ruled out mind control, it was pretty clear that Discord managed to win them over by being genuinely friendly and goofy, not making the jokes all about him or about mocking them, and actually joining in with them on their activities. That's... a huge improvement.
Personally I don't think he did it to make her jealous simply because I don't think he could possibly have known he'd succeed at winning them over; I think he talked them into leaving her out because he felt like she'd ruin things if she was there, and then after that had the "brilliant" idea to make her jealous about it, because I don't think he plans ahead that far and I do think he's adaptable and makes and carries out plans very quickly based on the circumstances. But that would mean that he really was genuine over the weekend, and then basically backslid because he wanted to rub Twilight's nose in how he was awesome and won over all her friends and they had a great time without her, nyaah nyaah nyaah. Which means he is actually getting better at being a friend. Unfortunately what MLP showed us was the part about him being a jerkass as usual.
I do think they need more than Fluttershy tsk-tsking him for him to grasp genuinely moral behavior before he does something really awful, but if he's improved to the point where the rest of the Mane 6 can actually enjoy his company when he tries, that's additional leverage they can use in rehabilitating him. Part of the problem with Discord is the vicious cycle where he's a total jerk, no one likes him because he's a total jerk, he desperately wants to be liked but no one will like him so he retaliates by being a total jerk, rinse and repeat. He needs more ponies to actually care about him, because that's the only leverage that works on him and the only thing that stops him from being a total jerk -- but who's going to care about him when he's a jerk? I'm not one of the Discord fans who's all like "waah waah they should have been better friends to him!" He's a jerk, except to Fluttershy, how can you be better friends to a guy who likes to torment you?
But now that he's figured out how to not be a jerk when he wants not to be, and they've shown him that when he's not a jerk they'll laugh at his jokes and accept him as a friend, now there's some positive reinforcement in the mix. Be a good friend to the Mane 5, get accepted as a friend. Be a jerk to Twilight, get mocked and made fun of and no one thinks your jokes are funny anymore. That kind of thing has the potential to get through to him faster than Fluttershy alone could.
6842899 Hmm, interesting, yes he said i was a happy accident. The thing is I believe that was a bold faced lie. Yeah alright, maybe 'driving her insane' is a bit much, but his intentions were far darker than just teaching her a lesson. He knew full well Twilight would over-react and go a bit crazy, and he just sat back and enjoyed it. I'm not saying his intentions were totally bad, but he enjoyed hurting her, he even said as such, and they hardly did anything to him.
6842952
I think it was a bold-faced lie too. He wanted her to be jealous. (I think it was an accident in the sense that he didn't convince them to exclude her so that she would be jealous; I think he convinced them to exclude her because if he was actually succeeding at getting them to be friendly with him, adding Twilight to the mix could have felt threatening, like she would ruin it. After the fact, though, once he realized it was bugging her, he totally wanted her to feel jealous and left out and frustrated and unhappy.) And yes, he totally enjoyed her confusion and frustration. He's still the Spirit of Disharmony, after all.
About all I can say is that the ponies are as aware of the following fact as I am: if putting Discord in stone would be morally reprehensible because he hasn't done anything nearly bad enough to warrant it, then they don't really have a lot of punishments available to them, and shunning him as a friend and rejecting him will pretty much ensure that they won't be able to control him at all. He only responds to the threat of affection being taken away. When they threatened to stone him in Princess Twilight Sparkle, while they were accusing him of having created the vines (correctly, as it turned out), he showed no sign of being afraid or even cowed; he continued to clown around, pretend he didn't know Fluttershy's name or identity, and generally act like he was totally in control. But when Fluttershy reminded him, after the Elements were taken away, that he still needed to be good because their friendship was on the line, he did that shrinking thing, which seems to convey a genuine sense of being "cut down to size".
If Discord could never have been controlled by fear of being stoned (and he never showed any evidence that he would reform out of fear of that fate; mostly he demonstrated that he'd fight back viciously to prevent it, but not that he'd moderate his behavior to avoid it), but he can be controlled by fear of losing affection... then they have to offer him affection, to punish him only mildly for his transgressions, because if they all turn on him and reject him permanently, they have no leverage anymore. And Twilight, at least, knows this. So I don't think they make up with him or give him slaps on the wrist because they feel like aw, he didn't really do anything bad... they're doing it because it's the only way to minimize the chaos without turning him to stone. Which he doesn't deserve, yet. But he might do something to deserve it, if he feels really hurt and rejected. And none of them want the situation to go there. He's a slightly more mature version of Anthony, the omnipotent six-year-old from the Twilight Zone episode "It's A Good Life".
6843031 Yeah, I see what your saying. It just bugs me that they didn't even get slighty angry at him, that wouldn't have hurt anything. They could have chastised him, given him a disapproving glare and then moved on. Something like that. I just think he got off way too lightly. Still overall, he could be a good friend, maybe ,one day.
I love this story because it is another little look into the life of Fluttershy and Discord.