Let Me Go

by Shakespearicles


Tea For Two

The mid-day sun shined brightly over the Silver Shoals retirement village. Several residents were shuffling about outside, enjoying the pleasantly warm autumn day. A last hurrah of summer before the cooler weather set in. In the courtyard, a pony was entertaining a rather irregular regular visitor.

"You're looking vivacious as ever," Discord said.

"Comes with the territory," Celestia said, sitting across from him at the patio table. "You know that." Her weak smile was somehow a strange mix of playful coyness and a knowing seriousness. It was the sort of smile that could only really be done by her. The ponies around them wore their age in the wrinkles of their face. Celestia's face was as ageless as ever, but she carried her age in that smile. The knowledge of the harsh truths of life, but the wisdom to enjoy life all the same.

"Tea?" he offered. She nodded. He lifted the kettle and poured it into her cup. She took a sip and then looked at him.

"This is the wrong cup for wine," she said, swishing the burgundy liquid in her tea cup.

"Oopsie!" He snapped his fingers and her tea cup transformed into a proper wine glass. "Unless you actually did want tea."

"Honestly, I don't care much for tea," Celestia said. She took a long sip of her wine glass. "Thank you."

"But I've seen you drink tea at literally every single function you've attended," he said.

"Quite right. In fact I've done the math. I've drank enough tea to fill the pool they have here."

"But you don't like it?" he asked.

"Fancy that. Such was the duty of a princess. Ruler of all, but a slave to protocol." Celestia's wine glass refilled itself. She gave Discord a look. "You're trying to corrupt me," she said.

"As if it were possible," he said, finishing his own glass and setting it on the table to refill itself.

"Behave," she scolded halfheartedly, drinking her wine.

"As if it were possible."

Discord's eyes scanned around the courtyard. When he had first visited, the ponies stood and stared, either in fear or curiosity. It never phased him anymore. He was used to the reception whenever he went to a new place. But now, most of the ponies there had seen him visit several times before. His physical appearance always garnered a brief second glance, but no more than a pony with a missing limb in a wheelchair.

"No Luna today?" he asked.

"She's still the night owl that she has always been," Celestia said. "It's what she enjoys."

"That's good, I suppose. You've both earned it. Now that you're retired you can live it up. She can do whatever it is she does, and you can... day drink." Her eyes narrowed at him slightly. "Hey, I'm not judging. Have fun! You only live once."

"I certainly hope so," Celestia muttered, taking another drink.

Discord didn't antagonize her. He knew it was a sore subject. While he reveled in his immortality, Celestia lamented her own far too often for his liking. He noticed the small, purple diamond charm on her bracelet and looked down at the same one on his own. He fiddled with it a bit in his claws.

"The service for Ms. Rarity was nice," Discord said. "Very tasteful. She looked beautiful. I didn't know the last dress she ever made was her own funeral gown."

"She designed it. Sandbar and Yona did most of the work. She had been sick for a while... I think she knew."

"Everypony knows," Discord said. "Foalhood is over the moment you know that it's going to happen to you. Death: inevitable, yet unexpected." Discord flicked the charm on his bracelet, sending it spinning around to the other side of his wrist, out of sight. "Ponies come and go." He motioned at the elderly ponies around them with a sweeping motion of his arm. "Everypony." He looked across the table at the alicorn sitting with him. "Well, mostly."

"No... it's everypony," Celestia said, acutely aware that immortal did not equate to invulnerable.

"Everypony and everything, all of it, all of it is temporary. In time even Canterlot Mountain will erode away into no more than a nub of dirt." He looked at the world around them. She just stared at him, watching him looking around the area. She watched his eyes intently, watching the way they focused on things farther away versus the middle distance. Or rather the way they didn't.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"Hmm?" His eyes returned to her.

"Where are you?" Celestia asked again. "Your eyes... one of them never changes. Whenever you look around I can see one of them changing. The diameter of your pupil in the light, your focus. But the other just... stares. Like your looking right through me at something else. Lost in thought. I always just thought it was part of your chaotic nature but... even when you change everything else about yourself for a bit, that eye... never changes."

"I'm just keeping an eye on things," he said.

"Things?"

"Things," he repeated with a seriousness she seldom saw from him. She waited patiently in silence. "What?" he asked in annoyance.

"I was waiting for you to continue," she said.

"Well get comfy. I won't be telling you about it any time soon."

"Well time is something that you and I have in abundance," Celestia said, "In the end, time is all you have."

"Not anymore."

Celestia saw it. It was just the tiniest glimpse, but it was there. It flashed across his face for the briefest instant that his guard broke. A glistening shimmer in his eyes before he blinked it away.

"It's her," Celestia said. "You're keeping an eye on Fluttershy. Right now."

"No," he said. "Always. Ever since-" He swallowed hard. "The first time the Elements turned me to stone, I was annoyed. The second time it happened, I was surprised. But ever since that time the changelings took Fluttershy and- and my magic couldn't save her..." He grit his teeth, trying to force back the tightness in his throat. "Just remembering it makes my heart race, and I feel like I can't breathe. I've never ever felt like this before. It- it's like-"

"It's fear," Celestia said.

"I fear nothing!" he growled.

"You fear for her," she said. "Because you care about her."

"After all these eons... I've known her for such a short time. But if anything were to happen to her-" He looked at his mismatched forelimbs, balled into trembling fists. "I would kill everyone and then myself."

"I do believe you would," Celestia said.

"Because I'm a monster!?"

"No. Because you love her," Celestia said. "And some of the worst atrocities have been in the name of love. Throughout history there have been those who would have butchered the whole world for what they loved. But of all of them, I think only you would actually be able to do it."

"Love!?" he sneered. "You ponies talk of your love. You sing of it. Tell stories about it. This beautiful wonderful thing, like it's the light of the world. If this is love, then why... Why does it hurt so much!?"

"Because it's real."

Discord's eyes darted around the courtyard at the elderly ponies. Their old bones creaked as their fragile bodies shuffled about in the fading twilight of their lives.

"All these ponies are going to die," Discord said. "Someday everypony is going to die. Everypony. Someday she-"

"Discord," Celestia put her hoof on his trembling paw. The wine in their glasses started to boil. "Discord, I know! I know that's why you had never let yourself get attached to anypony. But you have to accept it." The glasses shattered and he slapped her hoof away, standing up so quickly he toppled over the table. Steam evaporated off his cheeks from water that was definitely not tears. His eyes burned red with the intensity of the sun. Celestia didn't flinch. "Discord, someday you're going to have to be prepared to let her go."

"No."