//------------------------------// // Soliloquy 3: That Perfect Filly is Gone // Story: If You Give a Little Love... // by Quillamore //------------------------------// Satsuma. That’s what they called me back then, back when I knew everything. Back before I realized I didn’t. Satsuma Orange. The other name is always something that surprises ponies. But hey, what Orange in their right mind would name their foal Bambi Byline when everypony in their cult of a family has to stay in just the right place? I gave up that way of life in that moment, the one that came far earlier than anypony would realize. Even before Babs was abducted. That moment was just the excuse I gave to everypony, my family, my friends, Babs herself, even Coco. It was the easiest excuse I could give without blowing her secret. The pony Mosely had hurt before Coco, or Babs, or even my mother, for that matter. My aunt, Valencia. I couldn’t jump into another identity yet back then. Nor did I ever think of doing that. My mind was frozen with their ideas. Once you become an Orange, you’re not supposed to go back. That was the way things had always been, and there was no changing it. To think, all along there was, and I’d just never even considered it. To think that right now, after all this time escaping them, I was going right back to the Oranges themselves. I'd returned to my personal Tartarus just to save a friend from suffering the same fate, somepony I didn’t even know a year ago. Maybe that’s why I always thought I was so much better off alone: when you’re alone, at least you don’t pull stupid plans like this. You can look at ponies like that and know they’ll come out broken and know that you’ll be safe. When you’re alone, nopony can really hurt you. I’d sworn myself off self-sacrifice as soon as I saw my aunt Valencia make that deal with my father. Back before, she’d been one of my more normal relatives, if anypony in my family can be normal to begin with. Whenever Mom was away at her store or when Mosely was away at whatever scheme he was cooking, she had always been there waiting to take care of me, even though she was a businessmare just like all the rest of my relatives. I never knew how she could balance it all and make time for being my second mother, but I loved her too much to care. And just like with Cameo, I couldn’t see how much she suffered inside. Thing is, I thought she could be in several places at once, when the truth was that she forced herself to help everypony as she strung herself back and forth. I wish that could be the answer for everything, for the reason I cling to Coco, at least. It’d be too easy to tell myself I’d been saving her time and time again because she’d had that same problem with always putting herself in danger. With striking bad bargains just to avoid the inevitable. Just lump Coco, Babs, Cameo, Valencia all in as ponies I wasn’t able to save. But here’s the weird thing: I should hate at least one of them. My sister chose her over me, and that stunt she pulled at the reunion just solidified that. I certainly shouldn’t be going into Orange territory right now, for her, the pony who trotted straight into my life and threw a wrench in everything. Especially not after she’d thrown everything aside and actually considered trusting that other mare, Suri, the one who ruined everything. Deep down, I know it’s not because Coco agrees with her now. That’s just the way some Equestrians were taught: look the other way towards wrongdoings and sooner or later, you’ll watch as they come back to you on their knees. Watch, but not gloat or laugh over their misfortune, or even thank the stars above for taking them down. Never use them for your own gain, always forgive unless they’re messed up beyond redemption. But the Oranges teach you to think in reverse. Watching them through the courtyard and noticing a distinct absence in their speech, I already know what’s happened here. Even if they wouldn’t have tried to come crawling back to my side of the family, I still would’ve known. Everything good Mosely had ever done—if he had ever done any good to begin with—was forgotten, over already. Another Orange was leader now, and she was the only one who mattered. Forgiveness is a foreign word to us, and deep down inside, it still is to me. I trot in, knowing that I’m too strong to fall for their tricks this time. Whatever they say, I have facts to disprove. I will only be Satsuma on the outside, and I’ll keep my heart guarded through enemy lines. Whatever I do, I won’t let myself be indoctrinated again. But I still don’t know how to break through the damage they’ve already done to me. **** Other ponies say that the most dangerous words in the world are “the way things have always been done.” As I enter the meeting room, I get the feeling that nothing has changed. It’s a gathering of the most dangerous ponies in Manehattan. When I was small, I would always think this place belonged to us and us alone. I never saw anypony else using this specific meeting room in this specific hotel, and there was probably a good reason for that. The Oranges pooled so much money into this room that the hotel owners were likely scared of losing them, or of having anypony else scheduled at the same time. Even as the hotel renovated, I swear nothing in this room has changed for decades—same gray lighting, same tacky orange carpet, everything meticulously kept in place. It’s getting to the point where it’s laughable, like stepping into history. But back then, for me at least, this place was home. Far more of one than my parents’ apartment could ever be, with all the glamour and fascinating ponies it carried. Just for fun, I start looking around to see if anypony took trash off the table since I was here, if any of the vases were moved even an inch. However, I’m suddenly taken by surprise by the last pony I thought I’d see. She stuffs me right into her green belly, her front legs sprawling around me like a spider’s. “Satsuma!” she cries in delight, still using my old name as if by instinct. She never has acknowledged the other one. “Finally made the right decision to come back, eh?” It takes me a few seconds, a few breaths, to realize who’s standing behind me. It seems that the longer I go without seeing Aunt Valencia, the more likely I am to mistake her for her twin brother, and not without reason. Her mane and coat are an exact swap of Mosely’s, and even when I was a foal, I’d mistake her for him sometimes. She always told me she started wearing the white bow around her head so I wouldn’t get confused. “So sorry about that,” I reply, realizing I’d stiffened up a bit when she came in to hug me. “I mistook you for somepony else again. You know how things haven’t been going too well between my father and I.” When she heard this, Valencia’s eyes looked as though they were about to bulge straight out of her head. She looked from side to side and back again, making sure nopony else was watching, even though she knew everypony was. Glares flooded her from all around the table, even though she hadn’t seemed to have said anything wrong. “I believe you’re mistaken,” she tells me through a fake smile. “You have no father, Satsuma. You received your Orange blood through your mother, remember, and your father left her just after you were born.” The faces at the table give her one last skeptical glance before continuing with their business planning the meeting. As much as I should just let this slide as typical Orange weirdness, I can’t help but feel my curiosity get the better of me, and I whisper to her without thinking. “I have a father! I should be happy that I don’t have one, but I do have one. You’re just spouting off a bunch of lies.” Valencia gives me a tiny, perfectly practiced gentlemare’s giggle that betrays the sadness in her eyes. As with just about everything else with the Oranges, and just like they’d done to Cameo, she was living through a mask right now. “You know what happens when we lighten our load. We’re not supposed to acknowledge their existence in any way. Even saying their name is enough to draw attention. If you want to survive in this family, letting go is top priority.” With a final sigh, she says in an even lower voice, “That doesn’t make it easy, though. It’s been getting harder and harder for me to take this, and everypony knows it. I was declared Orange leader last time, but they still think I’m weak. They knew how close I was to him. So they watch me day in and day out, waiting for a mistake.” The call for the meeting to begin goes out, and Valencia becomes rigid once more, the type of competitive, fierce pony nopony would question. She switches back onto her businessmare side as if by magic, lecturing everypony on how to get the Oranges back on track with Manehattan businesses. Her plan is to do something for the community so great that it will override any harm they’ve done. “We have donated so much to Manehattan already, with no appreciation,” one pony asserts. “Every bit of research from other businesses proves that if even one pony in the system is unethical, reputation cannot be so easily bought back.” “And we have filtered the system as best as we could,” Valencia counters. “Our system allows the best and brightest ponies to join us regardless of family heritage, and allows us to dispose of all those who do not meet our standards. It is the way things have always been.” Even as she says this, her eyes are dead inside, and likely enough, her words don’t ring true for herself. But then again, she’s always been more under Mosely’s control than under the Oranges’, even before I met her. “Of course you’re going to argue that,” the other debater yells. “You never wanted the system to be filtered, after all. Your brother introduced scheme after scheme to us, ones that we thought went beyond our standards, so we kept him under watch while you counted your bits and took his side. If you ask me, this family’s ready for a change.” The lie detector in my head, the one I’ve developed from newswriting and from being around my father enough, goes off without a thought, even when none of the Oranges are willing to say it. Mosely never made any bad deals with the family; he kept them to his other job. Nopony was ever watching him until it happened. But with the way history twists itself in this family, everypony probably chose to believe it up until he mentioned change. That’s when I knew. He was a newbie. I’d left the family longer than he’d been in it to start with. Looking at his seat, I could see the paint from his fake Orange cutie mark peeling off, the one that showed he’d married into the family. The makeup he’d bought to cover his up was nowhere near as good as other ponies’; you could never have been able to tell that my mother, for instance, wasn’t a natural Orange. But even if it had been, I still would’ve known from what he was about to suggest with a glow in his eyes. “Aren’t you at least a bit suspicious of why the other families always do so well without our system? If ours is so great, then why do we always fall into disrepair? I want you to stop talking about the way things have always been and actually consider the answer.” They sure stopped talking, all right, but it wasn’t for the reflection he wanted. Instead, they stare at him skeptically the way they did with Valencia, but he’s too clueless to know. Not indoctrinated enough to know when to shut his mouth. “For once in our lives, the other Fruit Families actually want to help us. We’ve been pushing them away for a hundred years too long, and they want to help us. We’ve been seeing the Apples as competitors and practically tortured the one connection we had to them, and they still want to help us. We all know we’ve had more scandals than we can take, and ponies are getting closer to finding us out every day. Why not give in for once and accept their merger?” I haven’t even heard about the Apple merger idea, and yet I know what happens before it does. It happens just like that. First, he retracts his statement as soon as he realizes what he’s said, but it’s too late as they chat about all the similar outbursts he’s made. Questioning the leader, bringing up the undesirables. Accepting their system, trading away everything that makes them Oranges just to run begging to their competitors just like they had with Cameo’s marriage. Turning to ponies they were too small-minded to trust. But most of all, suggesting change and seeing problems where they saw none. Change implies that the Oranges would have to be like everypony else, the worst kind of blasphemy. It means throwing away “the way things have always been done.” Change is an idealistic word here, just like forgiveness. The chair is emptied. The door slams. A mare cries and apologizes. It’s easier to throw away ponies than beliefs. And I’ve seen it so many times that all I can feel is relief that they didn’t see my con. That this time, it wasn’t me. But it could’ve been. The only thing that kept me from that was holding my tongue the way I always had around them. Just being in that room brings back all of the old Satsuma fears of disappointing “the few ponies you can trust.” That’s how they always described themselves to me, trapping me in a world of isolation for my own good. As the chatter and noise keeps going on, saying the same things I’ve heard for years in and years out about how non-Oranges can’t be trusted, I imagine what the foals trotting around the table hear. That it’s right to give up on family when they make the slightest of mistakes, and that they can never have true friends. That trusting anypony other than an Orange, and especially somepony of another Fruit Family, leads to the worst mistakes. I’ve heard things have gotten better for them since I was a foal. The indoctrination isn’t quite as high, supposedly. But just being there gives them all the indoctrination they need without being coached on it. The gossip keeps coming, cutting straight into the debate itself. Turns out most of the other Oranges had just about as little of an idea about the Apple plan as I did, for one. Just the suggestion of it is enough to put them into a panic, just like it had all the other times the idea had been brought up by other Oranges. Valencia’s barely able to control everypony around her, and there sure isn’t any aura of class in the room anymore. Just the sort of assumptions and fears that know no boundaries. “Everypony, everypony,” Valencia finally manages to interrupt, “there is no need for alarm. We may be weakened for now, but no family will ever be able to take us over. We will fight for what we’ve formed here over the years, whatever it takes. Especially if it means turning down a threat from our competition, because we can fight right back.” There’s a sudden gleam in her eyes, and everypony is lured towards it like a light in the darkness. These ponies, the ones who have never known what true desperation feels like, really do think that they’re at the end of their rope. That much finally registers for me in that moment. Coco’s family is stuck with the consequences of their mistakes as the Oranges sit around in their perfect little planning tables, trying to find a way to weasel out of the blame. And, as much as Valencia and I go back, I may even have to choose between her and Coco. Yet my mind already knows the answer, and it’s not the one I would’ve picked years ago. Somehow, something in there tells me I should fight anypony who opposes not just Babs, but Coco too. I would’ve saved anypony from Mosely. I didn’t do that because she really stood out to me as a mare; I did it for my own gratification. If anything, if she wasn’t around and Babs and I could live alone, we’d be better off. Because you can’t trust anypony who is an Orange, and you can’t trust anypony who isn’t. But if I really believed that, why would I be here? Why would I even care if my old family tore that play apart at the seams? Why would I even say anything as Valencia keeps talking and suggests the one thing that scares me more than anything else? “We’ve reached out to one of the Apples’ allies,” she drones on. “Coco Pommel has denied our invitations repeatedly, but we will still make sure she comes.” In that moment, I no longer see the aunt who accidentally converted me away from the crowd. Instead, I only see another enemy I have to go through if need be. I keep my cool even through this, knowing that I’ll need it to ask the final question of the meeting. “Does anypony know anything about a Pink Lady letter sent to the theatre last week?” Nopony wants to make eye contact as they hear this. Somehow, they all know why the letter was sent, and why denying it is the best way to go for the family. Anypony in the room could have done it, and even I wouldn’t know. So I’d have to keep trudging and keep my head low. Next meeting, I’d have to show up again in that perfect filly mask and watch as even more ponies welcomed me in, telling me that nopony leaves the Oranges for long. In a way, too, I realize that I’d never really left, either, as the doubts and distrusts still plague me. “It’s awfully convenient that you came tonight just to mention that letter,” the matriarch, Midsweet Orange, tells me. It’s almost like an accusation, but I barely care. If they frame me next time, and I’m expelled from the family, it’d be a relief if anything else. In fact, I’d almost hoped they’d make it a package deal and banish me with Mosely. Maybe then, I’d stop instinctually isolating myself from everypony. Maybe then, I’d forget. But watching the rain steadily patter from the window, I see that forgetting isn’t quite that easy. I watch the pony go out the door, completely unaware of who could be watching. And naturally, as an Orange leader, everypony’s eyes would be on her. And even though I heard what Valencia suggested back there, my first instinct is still to slide behind her so nopony else could see the secret the three of us had made. Her, and Mosely, and me eventually. The one that made me want to protect ponies to begin with. Valencia’s umbrella went up seconds after she realized what was happening, but the damage had already been done. Orange dye was coming off her flank on one side. A pink-and-green streak already smeared through the middle of her cutie mark, one that hadn’t been there before. One that could disqualify her from ever being a true Orange.