//------------------------------//
// Act IV, Scene 9: Rebellious Quartz 
// Story: If You Give a Little Love... 
// by Quillamore 
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With newfound determination in her heart, the words that should’ve made Coco run straight out of the house passed through her like water itself.

“I’ve been expecting you.”  

Those had been the first words out of Belladonna’s mouth, the words that almost had her convinced that the three Orange leaders were a single entity.  This time, though, they’d snuck up on her enough times for her to expect it.

What she didn’t count on was the answer, or just how involved Bambi and Applejack really were in this case.

“Ponies really have been ganging up on me for answers today.  And I suppose now is just as good a time as any.”

She’d said those words with an indecipherable tone—fatigue, maybe, or perhaps boredom.  Remorse, however, couldn’t have been in Belladonna’s vocabulary, not with the way she’d thrown off the act so easily.  The Oranges created their own dictionary, and the only ponies who spoke of doubts or change were the ones who were considered to be failures in the first place—Bambi first, and now Valencia.

As composed and desperate as Coco was to start the interrogation and get the worst part of the issue over with, both emotions faded away as quickly as they had come.  One glance was enough, and from there, memories of the other mare made her sick to her stomach.

Belladonna had gone into Cameo’s shop that day with a sob story all her own, about how her son was about to become more distant than ever.  But he was barely even hers to begin with—she might as well have relinquished all rights to him years ago.  Just a few days with Midsweet had brought Babs to a sorry state, and Coco could only imagine how it would have felt to have his only companionship for years on end, trapped without a real family—

‘Son.’  ‘Him.’  ‘His.’

She smiled under gritted teeth, using everything she had to build a wall around those thoughts.  Babs stared knowingly, as if she could see through her mother’s thoughts, but Coco could fool everypony else.  She had to.

This was a case like all the rest she’d faced over the past months, and she couldn’t let the moral ambiguities get to her this time.  That was what she’d tell herself, for however long it took.

Va-len-cia, she enunciated to herself.  That’s who I’m doing this for.  Nopony else, and especially not him.  I refuse to believe he was this hurt by it, because if he was, he wouldn’t have got rid of Babs like that.

The thoughts were as effective as they’d been the past few times, but for now, fighting through it was all that mattered.  Self-recovery would come later, once her friend was avenged and all this messed-up Orange stuff was over.

“That should make this easier, then,” Scene began, his voice practically background noise in her battling psyche.  “You know what this is about, right?”

From the few times Coco had met up with the mare, she’d half-expected Belladonna to flash her that tiny knowing smile, the same one that bore malice in its seemingly innocent nature.  Yet, just like when Coco had first confronted Suri, she could see that the Orange mare’s face was pointing directly at the ground as she gave her solemn confession.

“A secret that has been kept from you for far too long,” she replied.  “It’s truly something I’ve tried to rectify many times over the years, and I want you to understand that.  But before I tell you anything else, I want you to know that Valencia was never meant to get involved in any of this.  Handing her over to Midsweet was the last thing I could’ve wanted.”

But when it came to getting Valencia under her grandmother’s sway, that had only been the final step.  That, more than anything, was the first detail that Coco snagged on.  Even with all the tears that’d flowed out of the last interrogation, Belladonna had still barely put up a fight against her mother, instead merely accepting that her daughter was destined to be under Orange control.

Each Orange, Coco figured, had their own individual card to play if anypony dared challenge them.  Mosely would go into denial and paint himself as Manehattan’s most upstanding stallion, while Midsweet would tear into her opponent’s main insecurities by pushing as many buttons as possible.  Only now did Coco realize that Belladonna’s pity could be used in much the same way, had been used in that way to distract her from Babs’ kidnapping.

Tangerine, however, remained fooled by Belladonna’s tricks and cantered over to his mother’s side.  Like usual, he’d stayed almost invisible throughout the entire exchange, though Coco couldn’t help but think part of that was by her own choice.  After all, the last thing she needed was a repeat of what had happened last time.

“For what it’s worth, I didn’t even know I was an Orange most of my life,” he interrupted, never taking a hoof off his mother’s haunches.  “My parents were always off at meetings, but I figured, hey, it’s gotta be for work, right?  And frankly, the whole ‘other siblings’ thing floored me, too.  It’s not every day you find out your big bro’s the biggest producer on Bridleway, y’know?”

Belladonna leaned against her son affectionately, still holding back tears about the whole incident, making everypony present want to question just how harshly she’d been interrogated before.  However, for a tiny split second, she sent a knowing smile Coco’s way, almost as if seeing the costume designer removed all seriousness from the situation.

Judging from the way Scene winced out of the corner of her eye, though, Coco figured he could spot a bluff just as well as she could now.

“So, if you don’t mind me asking, what exactly brought you to such a drastic decision?” he asked, keeping his voice level and laced with skepticism.

“Especially since you’re still with the Oranges now,” Coco added, failing to hide the resentment in her tone.

Taking an exaggerated breath, Belladonna approached the two with an unreadable expression.  From the way she dramatically sat on the couch, it almost looked like she could faint at any moment, and at this point, even Suri was rolling her eyes.

“The skirmish you saw today is only the tip of the iceberg, compared to all the things us Oranges were put through over the years,” she began.  “To ponies like you, it might sound like we’ve always had it good, but twenty years ago, there was another economic crisis in our family.  The same one that brought your dear Cameo to our side, if you recall.”

And that brought Mosely into all of ours, Coco barely choked down saying.

“I was struggling to hold it all together back then, since the newspapers had started reporting on the fallen Orange again.  Nopony wanted to buy our products, not so different from now.  And not so different from now, Oranges were leaving left and right, most of them unwillingly.  All that stress can make even the best of leaders snap, but me…I was never really cut out for it, you must know.”

Considering the fact that the Oranges had never been known for their humility, skepticism continued to rein throughout the room.  Still, Coco couldn’t help but wonder—even if Belladonna seemed just as bad as Mosely and Midsweet right now, there was something indescribable that separated her from the other two.  Not anything that made her any more trustworthy, but rather a certain subtlety that her relatives lacked all too often, one that couldn’t even be called kindness.

“Before I go any further into this story, you need to have at least some idea of how we choose our leaders.  Whenever we have the chance to, we look for ponies who have a certain skill with others.  You might think of it as manipulation, as I do now, but back then, it was just seen as having a way with guiding ponies.  Regardless of how you see it, though, the ‘leader’ types were separated out from the others from a young age, and older members would mentor them in any way they could.  You know how changeling hives have a queen and drones?  That’s basically how we were, except my generation…I guess you could say we were all drones.”

Judging from the look on her face, one that could all too easily be fake, Belladonna’s comparing the Oranges to changelings was very much intended.  Though she was as much entrenched in their ways as anyone else, she shifted on the couch and scowled as she said this, as if envisioning a better world.

Meanwhile, Tangerine was nodding at random moments in the speech, as if all this information was new to him as well.  Occasionally, he’d tell his mother to repeat some of her facts, and yet he never wrote them down.  If the group didn’t know better, they’d almost swear he was actually interested in his family’s messed-up ways.

“Why didn’t they just teach you this leader stuff?” he asked, almost as if he was on the other side of the interrogation.  “I mean, if they were so desperate to find one and all—“

“They figured being an Orange leader was an innate ability, and you either had it or you don’t.  That’s probably why so many of us disapprove of the new fallen group: Valencia was basically the lowest of the followers to them.  I found out too late, once I’d already given her up, just how much Midsweet would punish her for that.  As much as we may want obedience, a lot of us thought Valencia had too much.”



She squirmed across the velvet sofa, the one that looked too similar to Midsweet’s for either Babs or Coco’s comfort, as if she’d just woken from a twenty-year coma.

“But that’s getting away from the real story, isn’t it?” Belladonna moaned in that annoyingly leisurely voice of hers.

Against all expectations, Scene actually nodded and showed no sign of holding his tongue, and Coco had to practically strain to keep herself from laughing.

“So, how do you go about sacrificing your firstborn to a witch in this day in age?” he quipped, keeping hold of his serious side with a hidden edge in his voice.  “I just figured, nowadays, if you didn’t want your foal anymore—“

Even though Scene had clearly meant the statement in jest, as he’d take any chance he got to insult Midsweet, he backed off once he realized that he’d hit a nerve.  For once, somehow everypony in the room was able to tell that Belladonna’s tears were no longer fake, if they had ever been.

“I wanted them,” she whispered, losing any power she might’ve had before.  “Even through everything, I did.  I never lost faith that Mosely would improve, or that Valencia would come around.  But my faith in my extended family didn’t quite go that far, and during our last collapse, well…I couldn’t take it.  I wasn’t trained to be a leader, remember?  So I stepped down, and to my utter surprise, Midsweet accepted my decision.”

Coco could hear a world of words in that last statement, ones that could never be conveyed through language alone.  While she didn’t want to let go of her skepticism, she also knew that Midsweet would rarely let something like that go without a price.  If it’d been a simple coercion—especially considering the way the Orange matriarch had once taken such an interest in Mosely—at least that would be a shard more comprehensible than the stomach-turning confession she’d heard from Valencia that morning.  Still appalling, sure, but in a way she was used to expecting from the Oranges at this point.

“She didn’t really, did she?” Scene wondered, now one hundred percent into his steely cop role.  “She had an agenda, and that’s how we got roped up into this whole scenario.”

He made a desperate effort not to say the word “scene,” almost as if he could sense all the ponies around him wanting to laugh.  Meanwhile, Belladonna answered with a simple, yet solemn, nod.

“I never intended to leave the Oranges.  I thought that I could just step down.  Even if I didn’t agree with the path my children were going down, even if Midsweet would have more control over them than I would, I could still be part of their life.  But as soon as I realized the mistake I made, it’d already happened.  Leaving the Orange family…meant relinquishing any authority I had over them.  And it meant that I could’ve prevented this all along…”

Once again, Tangerine leaned his hoof onto his mother’s side to comfort her, but this time, she swiped it away as if it was the worst kind of poison.

“After only a few months of being away from everypony, I was able to see just how misguided we all were.  Even though I wasn’t allowed near my own children, I could still watch the kinds of ponies they were about to become.  But instead of reaching out to them and fighting my family with everything I had, I thought it would be easier to give up.  There.  That’s the crime you’re looking for.  I let them take everything I had, and I wanted to forge my own path.  I wanted to create something that those monsters could never take away from me, no matter how hard they tried.”

Even as she took an accusatory tone, the waterfall of tears didn’t stop flowing; in fact, the rapids grew even faster.  From the way she quivered in her seat for minutes on end without even saying anything, it looked as though she’d never told this story to anypony else before.

“Nice one,” Suri muttered, elbowing Scene.  “You just made a mare cry!”

For once, everypony’s feelings about the pink earth mare came through without words, or even facial movements beyond tight scowling.  Even Tangerine, who’d been hitting it off with her only minutes before, joined in.

“Could you two kindly postpone your rivalry until this mess is over?” he asked, rolling his eyes as he continued to comfort his mother.  “Judging from the way Coco ran away from me the last time we were alone, I really don’t want to have to kick the two of you out.”

As much as Coco hated that he’d brought up the incident, especially considering that he likely had no idea why she’d done so in the first place, she couldn’t help but agree about Suri’s outburst.  Though she’d flipped against Belladonna so easily, her guilt about her past wrongdoing was undeniable, and Coco was already starting to write off Valencia’s resentment of her mother as a misunderstanding.  With the Oranges, however, it was better safe than sorry, especially with the way they seemed intent on making her blood boil every time she saw them.

“I think they get the idea,” Tangerine whispered to Belladonna, still catatonic from the confession.  “You’re okay.  You’re free.  You don’t have to deal with this anymore.”

As he smoothed her hair away from her face and allowed her to fall into a trancelike sleep, he explained, “She’s been like this for a while.  Since the arrest, I think.  If it makes you feel any better, she doesn’t even need to be asked about it to get like this.”

Just like that, a smile crossed the mare’s face, and her age suddenly began to show as she slept.  Belladonna had always appeared to be just as youthful as her children, but in that moment, she seemed to weaken in ways that even wrinkles and delicate bones couldn’t chip away at.

“Has she tried to talk with Valencia at all?” Coco whispered, watching as the mare already began to fade away into another place.

For the first time, when she looked at Tangerine, she saw not another Orange sympathizer, but instead a stallion left to pick up his mother’s pieces.  He hadn’t said much about it until today, but as it turned out, he’d been living with Belladonna ever since Mosely was taken into custody, and he and her husband took turns caring for her.  The strength Coco had originally seen in her, it seemed, was the greatest deception the Oranges were ever able to carry out.

“Yes,” he replied, “but she always backs out at the last minute.  I honestly don’t think she can face either of her children in this state.”

Officer Quartz gave off a tiny mutter, something so small, it barely registered as language.  But, as Coco heard it, she couldn’t help but think that it was something she was meant to hear.

“I hope he realizes what he did to our family.”

Just like Cameo had said months before, there were times when ‘he’ could only refer to one particular pony.  It was something any one of the Oranges could have said, parroted with only their own interests in mind, but something about the way Tangerine said it stuck out.  His eyes narrowed, but in a sense that was far more protective than really angry, and Coco couldn’t help but wonder if the ‘family’ he mentioned was the Oranges themselves or just the tiny branch they’d formed here.

Just from looking at Babs’ impressed face, she could tell that her daughter had heard it too.  While it was more than a little idealistic to assume he was on their side from that statement alone, Coco hoped against hope that this time, in this small enclave, some Oranges could still be trusted.

“I hope he does, too,” she whispered, shocking the officer.  “He probably never will, though.”

Other than Scene nodding several times in agreement, the situation seemed to be almost enclosed between the two of them.  Just when they needed to interrogate the officer most, he appeared to be giving information on his own free will.  And that exchange alone held more sentiment than Coco felt she’d ever need to know from him.

“I never knew him,” continued Tangerine.  “By the time I found out he existed, I was already ten years old.  Nopony knew how to explain it before then.  All I could think about was having another brother and sister to talk to, and the minute I found out I was in the same place as them…I practically burst out trying to talk to them.  It wasn’t the Oranges who kept me from talking with them, though—it was him.  That was when I found out that, while I didn’t know about them at all…they spent an awful long time knowing about me.”

The room grew so quiet that Coco could practically hear the wind outside, yet she had no desire to interrupt Tangerine’s speech.  For once, words were flowing out of his mouth, and she feared that if she dared touch them, they would shatter on impact.

All she could do was stand there and get ever closer, comforting him the same way she’d seen him do to his mother.

“That was when I knew what I’d lost.  We tried to forget about it afterwards, but every once in a while, Mom would tell me I was her second chance.  Back then, it just sounded like the stupidest thing to me.  Why would you possibly want to replace the biggest producer in Manehattan?  Even when I should’ve been asking, ‘why would you want to replace your own son?’”

With a final, almost tearful breath, he finally confessed, “I was working with them, if you really want to know.  They ignored me for years until they figured having a cop on their side would be useful.  They said that if I worked to implicate him, they’d give me whatever I wanted.  But all I wanted was for them to leave me alone, and the deeper I get into this case, I really wish they would.”

The statement should’ve shook everypony there to the core, but somehow, the room remained quiet.  Not because they’d always suspected him of doing so, but because they’d never once thought he’d have these sorts of intentions.  The tension in that chamber could have broken a pony’s head off its body, until an unlikely voice chimed in.

“Hey, we can’t pick our families, right?” Scene spoke, bumping the other stallion on his shoulder.  With a more serious glance, he continued, “You could’ve just told us you were propositioned into something, you know.  It would’ve saved us a lot of time bein’ suspicious of you, that’s for sure.”

As street-smart as Tangerine was, his look of shock was still palpable.  Coco suspected that, even for ponies who hadn’t been raised within the Orange family, forgiveness still came as a surprise every time it happened to them.

“We’ve dealt with that sort of thing more times than you think.  Coco’s been through it, I’ve been through it…so as long as you have good intentions and don’t throw us under the bus, I’d say we’re good.”

Tangerine continued to stammer in an entirely unprofessional way as he stared at Scene with nothing more than pure admiration.  He’d clearly intended this to be his goodbye, and yet Coco could see the two stallions already starting to form a connection.

“Right,” the officer replied, quickly clearing his throat.  “I don’t care if this place is recognized as an Orange family branch or what.  I think that, no matter how much they change, it’s clear I’m not built to be one of them.  So, I’d be happy to live in peace with my parents and son and call it a day.”

He winked as he mentioned his son, almost as if he could tell just how shocked everypony would be about the situation.  Most notably, Suri’s mouth dropped at seemingly breakneck speed, and Coco could’ve sworn she heard her begging the stars above that Tangerine was still single.

“His name’s Tiger Eye,” he added.  “’Bout as old as your filly here, might even go to her school.  I figured the first step to bein’ a rebel Orange is to name your kid something completely different than what they want, so…”

He gave a knowing smile and chuckled, almost hiding just how emotional he’d been before.  Yet Coco, and everypony else around, knew he wanted to be connected with them far beyond alliances.

“We’ll have to come over and meet him sometime, then,” said Coco.  “That is, if you’ll have us.”

“More like, if my ex-wife will,” he joked.  “But, as much as I’d like to stay and catch up here, my other shift’s leavin’ in a few.  I’m glad you all were able to forgive me.”

“Nothing to forgive, my good stallion,” Scene added.  “Nothing at all.”

Everypony gathered together one last time, as if a single storm was pushing them together.  Yet, with all the things she’d come to expect from the Oranges, Tangerine’s last words still managed to shock her.

“I know why you push yourself away from me,” he whispered, looking directly into Coco’s teal eyes.  “And I’m sorry.”

Even as she could see Tangerine leave the room, even if tonight had brought new details into his life, she could still imagine the mystery in his eyes.  The one that would ensure his time with Silver Phoenix was far from over.