Reasoning
Rainbow Dash wasn’t sure how much time she spent pacing back and forth in the quiet of the Golden Oak Library after she returned. It could have been mere minutes or a collection of hours. Who could tell? No matter how long it had been, she spent all of that time meandering aimlessly through the library, her head down and her emotions slowly calming back down to something approximating a reasonable state of mind.
After a while, she came to a stop in the central room and took a deep breath. When she let it out, it left her lips as a dry, humorless chuckle. “Heh… jeez. I’m such a mess,” she mumbled under her breath, running a hoof down her face.
And she was, wasn’t she? She was an absolutely broken mess of a mare at this point. One little glimpse of the petrified statue of Discord was all it had taken to make her all but lose control of herself. If she was being perfectly honest with herself, it was kind of sad, and not at all cool.
Before she could ponder her severely degraded mental health any further, a gentle knock came to the door before it swung open. The visitor revealed itself to be Celestia, timidly poking her head in and giving Rainbow a careful look. “May I come in?” she asked after a moment.
Rainbow hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, sure, come in,” she said in a tired voice before dragging herself over to the couch.
Celestia closed the door behind her, watching Rainbow as she slumped into the seat and pulled the band out of her mane, undoing her ponytail and letting the hair fall wildly over her back. The alicorn then made her way over and joined her daughter on the couch, sitting by her side and draping a wing over her shoulders.
For a few seconds, both were silent. Then, with a quiet sigh, Rainbow leaned against Celestia’s side, trying to take some comfort in her body heat. “Hey, uh… I’m sorry I yelled at you back there,” she mumbled regretfully, her ears drooping.
Celestia shook her head and gave her a gentle squeeze. “You have nothing to apologize for, Rainbow Dash. I should have given you more advance warning about who I was bringing and why. I misjudged how you would react, and there is nopony to blame for that mistake but me. I’m sorry I upset you as I did,” she countered in a hushed voice.
Rainbow took a deep breath, some of the tension leaving her system at the reassurance. “Heh… well, apology accepted, I guess,” she muttered before glancing up into her adoptive mother’s eyes. “But I get the feeling you’re not quite done trying to make me let him out, are you?”
Celestia winced, tearing her eyes away in a display of hesitation. “I… want you to at the very least consider it. I cannot force you or any of your friends to go along with this plan of mine, and so if you truly wish to refuse, then I will take Discord back to Canterlot and have him permanently sealed inside of a heavily-warded vault,” she explained before looking into Rainbow’s eyes again. “But I do want you to give it some thought, first.”
Rainbow grunted and looked away, a bitter frown appearing on her muzzle. Images of Discord flashed through her mind, his sickening muzzle smirking at her amid a backdrop of a Ponyville tarnished with chaos. A few more images flickered in front of her eyes, including a frightened Starlight Glimmer staring back at her in a crowded train, the plumes of smoke rising from Canterlot, and the moment she held Twilight’s body in her hooves atop the Crystal Palace.
“Mom, just give it to me straight here… why do you think letting him out is a good idea?” she eventually asked, her voice low and cold. “I mean, yeah, I get that he’s stupidly powerful, and having that on our side would be a pretty big bonus. But c’mon, you know as well as I do that that mook isn’t just gonna give up throwing chaos around like confetti from Pinkie’s party cannon.”
Celestia was quiet for several seconds, her eyes going distant. “Well… to put it as simply as I can, I do believe there is some capacity for good in him,” she eventually stated.
“You sure about that?” Rainbow deadpanned, looking up at Celestia with a flat and unamused look. “You sure that’s a fact, mom?”
“I believe it, yes,” Celestia shot back without missing a beat.
Rainbow blinked in surprise, leaning back. “Wha… okay, screw it, I’ll bite. What makes you think that?”
Celestia managed a small smirk at Rainbow’s candid approach before launching into her explanation. “I thought back on all of the times that Discord was running free. And while it is true, his reign of chaos was miserable for those forced to live under it, his actions were never overtly… harmful.”
Rainbow tilted her head, thinking back on her experience with the Spirit of Chaos.
“Yes, he made the world a wildly unpredictable and senseless place and broke every single law of physics for the sake of his own entertainment. But at no point in all the time I have seen him wreak havoc did he do anything that directly caused physical harm to a single creature. So I do not believe he is an inherently violent or bloodthirsty creature. His desires are less gruesome than that.”
“He still turned our whole world upside down and inside out, you know,” Rainbow reminded, calling back on Applejack’s earlier statement. “Upside down houses, water flowing uphill, cotton candy rain clouds with chocolate milk. None of that stuff was fun.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Celestia agreed with a slow nod. “But at the same time, comic artists do exaggerated illustrations of cartoon characters getting harmed in outlandish ways all the time. We laugh at slapstick comedy.”
“Right, so we’re a comic strip to Discord,” Rainbow remarked dryly before leaning back against the couch. “Ya know, you’re not really making a good case for him, here.”
Celestia sighed and looked up. “What I am trying to say is that, once you step back and really consider him, he is not really all that different from us. He desires entertainment, he desires joy and laughter. Much like the artist drawing slapstick comics where cartoon characters get hurt, Discord uses the world around him to make his own entertainment. But if he could be made to see that the lives he toys with are not unfeeling, if he could be made to care about the ponies he so often toys with, perhaps he could be made into a friend and ally.
“After all, if our comic artist’s drawings were to suddenly come to life and befriend him, would he truly want to cause them any further harm? Would he find the sight of his friends screaming as an anvil dropped on their heads entertaining anymore?”
Rainbow was quiet for a few seconds, giving her mother’s reasoning some thought. She still didn’t like it, not at all. But in the back of her mind, she could see the underlying logic. It made sense, albeit only a little. She leaned back and took a deep breath. “Okay, so, just lemme make sure I got this down right,” she began, lifting her hooves and gesturing vaguely. “You want me and my friends to let Discord out of his stone prison and then find some way to make him our friend so that he won’t want to screw with our world anymore. That about right?”
“In a nutshell, yes.”
“Hmm.”
Both of them fell quiet. Rainbow rolled the idea over in her head several times, trying to nail down exactly how she felt about it. It seemed reasonable enough, but at the same time…
“...Mom, I’m all for being a forgiving mare and all that,” Rainbow began, sitting forward in her seat and staring at the floor. “But… Discord really hurt us. He really hurt me. I… I’m still trying to put myself back together after what he did to me. He needs to pay. Letting him off the hook and making him into a friend is just… I dunno. Should we really be so loose about that sort of thing?”
Celestia was quiet for a few seconds before she answered. “I understand what you mean, Rainbow. Forgiveness is a hard-earned thing, and I am not blind to the trauma you suffered due to him, both directly and indirectly. Truth be told, I still feel myself getting angry when I think of what he did…” she admitted, her eyes lowering. “But at the same time… forgiveness, compassion, understanding… those were some of the pillars upon which Equestria was founded. When Luna and I assumed the throne, we swore on our lives to uphold those ideals until the day we passed on from this world.
“So yes, he should face consequences for his actions. But if he can be rehabilitated into something better than what he was before, if he can be made to see why he was wrong and turn over a new leaf, then I would say the rest of that punishment could be him using that new self-understanding to make up for the mistakes he made in the past.”
Rainbow hummed quietly and leaned back in her chair again. “...I dunno, Mom. It’s still a tall order. And it is really risky. There’s no real way we can be sure he’ll keep his word, or that he’ll stay a good guy even if we manage to pull it off. Besides, I doubt he’s quite dumb enough to underestimate us a second time. If the chips are down and we have to seal him up again, we won’t get a second chance to do it right. He won’t let us have one.”
Celestia nodded slowly. “I understand, Rainbow. As I said, I cannot force you to go along with this plan. The Elements of Harmony won’t work if their wielders are not themselves in harmony with one another… but please, just think about it,” she whispered before giving Rainbow an affectionate nuzzle. “I won’t think ill of you no matter what decision you make.”
“Right… thanks, mom,” Rainbow mumbled, returning the nuzzle before letting herself relax into Celestia’s side again. The two fell into a comfortable silence after that, taking solace in the embrace of the other and allowing the quiet atmosphere to wash over them.
Eventually, though, the quiet had to be disturbed. Celestia shifted on her haunches and spoke in a far more candid and casual tone than before. “So, have you read any good books lately?”
Rainbow gave her a deadpan look. “Really mom, really?”
“I haven’t seen you in months, Rainbow,” Celestia protested weakly with a small smile. “I want to catch up with you. I may have brought Discord with me in the hopes of reforming him, but I also came here to spend some long-overdue time with my daughter.”
Rainbow rolled her eyes and sat upright. “Touché,” she relented before answering her mother’s question. “Nah, no good books. At least, no new ones. Just Daring Do. Twilight, though, she’s been reading books faster than Spike eats a basket of fresh gems.”
“Oh?” Celestia asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Yeah. She’s mostly trying to get her magic back up to snuff. Keeps trying to figure out the ‘failsafe’ spell or whatever.”
“And how is that going?”
“Well, so far she has managed to make an apple that Spike burnt to a crisp into a slightly less crispy crisp,” Rainbow snarked with a smile and a shake of her head. “So, uh, slow, I think. I dunno magic or anything, so…” she gestured vaguely. “There’s that, I guess?”
Celestia tittered behind her hoof in amusement. “I see. And how is she doing herself?”
Rainbow’s smile grew, and she leaned back in her seat. “She’s doing good, I think… sometimes it’s hard to notice that she has amnesia. I mean, yeah, her personality’s a little different because of all the lost experiences, but, well…” she let off a wistful sigh. “She’s doing better, I think. She’s settled and she’s happy.”
Celestia’s smile warmed up significantly. “That’s good… I’m glad to know my student is doing well.”
“Yeah… me, too,” Rainbow agreed with a small nod. Then, without any warning, she rose up to her hooves, leaned over, and hugged Celestia tightly around the neck. “I know I said it before, but… thank you for saving her back in the Empire…”
Celestia returned the hug, resting her chin on Dash’s mane. “Of course, Rainbow… It was my pleasure.”
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I'm glad you decided to write this chapter. Everything is out on the table now, and Celestia's reasoning does make sense from her perspective
Good choice adding this nice little chapter, it is always good seeing those two interacting.
Hope Dash still says no. Sorry Tia too much of a gamble
Great chapter, when it comes to a chapter featuring Rainbow Dash and Princess Celestia, it'll automatically be brilliant!
Yeah, they should still probably lock Discord up forever. Sadly, that's not going to happen...
Something Celestia didn't consider about her analogy is...if the comic characters got a chance to meet their creator, how many do you think would try to kill them for the shit they put them through? Same with the characters in the stories we write, for that matter.
Thus, in canon, the invention of the tactical Fluttershy. Ready for all your chaos-curbing needs!
That is surprisingly profound. I like it.
Since when Nicole would steal John's lines?
10536397
smooth...