Sleep While I Drive (Yet another fic I'm not writing now) · 11:14pm Feb 1st, 2015
This was a dream I had, cleaned up slightly to make sense. Sort of.
Discord and Celestia, as children, are fleeing across the galaxy one step ahead of some sort of pursuit, following a map sent by Luna in a letter of a land where they can live out their dreams. (I say "children" here but I'm envisioning this as pony SF -- Discord so does not work for me as a human that I basically never do human or anthro unless that's the whole point of the story.) Discord keeps discording Celestia into an emotional blank, but then tries to entertain her and make her happy, and we can see him being conflicted about it, and Celestia voluntarily accepting it as if it's yucky medicine.
At some point we see flashbacks to Equestria. A child Luna is put on a spaceship by Celestia and Luna's parents, who are also caring for Discord. at some other point we see Celestia and Discord fighting in defense of the palace, and then in another scene we see a family retainer force the two of them to escape. (I am not certain if this works by knocking Celestia out and telling Discord to take her offworld and protect her, or convincing Celestia that she has to take Discord offworld because the enemy may just take her captive but will definitely kill him.)
Another flashback to the start of the journey. The two of them are flying in a huge low-grav arena at the center of a spaceship, in glamours to look like pegasi, when Discord reverts to his draconequus form and falls out of the air. Celestia at first thought it was that he fell from the gravity shift as they change course. She's brought to see him as next of kin; he's heavily drugged and bound in a magic-absorbing mesh.
They're going to space him; his chaos magic is throwing off navs. We learn that while the enemy may enslave ponies and other creatures, they -- and pretty much any space-faring race -- kill draconequui because chaos magic users can't be tamed, enslaved or controlled and chaos magic is unbelievably dangerous in space. She pleads with the crew to free him, saying she'll keep him from using his magic, she'll take responsibility, but they have to stand firm. Even though he's a child, he's a child with chaos magic and the ship isn't safe as long as he's alive. She begs them to at least give the two of them a lifepod and let them leave the ship together, but they won't do that because he'd be dangerous to any ship that takes him on.
So she kills a whole lot of ponies to free him, and they flee in a lifepod.
And now he keeps her discorded because when she is her true self, her memories of the murders she committed to save his life are destroying her, and keeping her emotionless and blank is the only way he can save her life because when she has her emotions back, she is suicidal. And the only thing keeping either of them going is the hope that Luna's letter is truthful and accurate (and really from Luna) and that the promised land she's found will really be a place of safety for both of them.
Alara, I bow to you, for you are the goddess of writing and ideas.Please, do this one day.
This is horrifying and fascinating. I love it.
I'm always a fan of pony sci-fi. Count me interested.