//------------------------------// // 294 - Only a Fantasy // Story: Lateral Movement // by Alzrius //------------------------------// “Okay, she’s asleep,” announced Sonata. Nosey winced at how Sonata was speaking at her normal volume, shooting a glance at where Aria was lying on the ground, drawing slow and steady breaths with her eyes closed. “Shouldn’t we be a little quieter?” Nosey whispered, looking up at Sonata before sending a questioning expression toward Lex. “It’ll be a disaster if we wake up her before you’re done, right?” But Sonata was the one who answered, shaking her head slowly. “It’s fine. Unless we put on a rock concert or something, she won’t wake up because of a little noise.” Her voice lacked its usual chipper tone, and she rubbed a foreleg across her nose a moment later, sniffling a bit. Concerned, Nosey made her way over to her, but didn’t have a chance to say anything before Lex spoke up. “I’m going to begin the ritual now,” he announced, before giving each of them a sharp look. “I want to reiterate how important it is that this process not be interrupted. If anything interferes – if something prevents me from performing the necessary words or gestures, or does anything to Aria – then the consequences could be catastroph-” “Yeah, we get it,” interrupted Sonata, her voice weary. “Don’t let anything happen to mess things up. We know.” Lex frowned at her, clearly unhappy with her attitude. “Once I begin this process, it can’t be aborted. It can only come to its intended conclusion or be interrupted. If the latter happens, Aria’s life will be in severe jeopardy, and mine will be at risk also. That’s the best case scenario.” “We understand.” Nosey’s voice was soothing as she nodded, making it as clear as she could that the message had been received. “We’ll go stand guard and make sure nothing happens.” Gently, she turned Sonata around and walked her away from Lex and Aria before any more feathers could get ruffled. A moment later she heard Lex starting to chant, and knew that he’d begun, but at the moment she was less concerned about him and Aria than she was with her best friend. “You okay?” she asked softly, despite already knowing the answer. Hearing what had happened to Aria when she’d lost her voice had quite clearly done a number on Sonata: the tear-tracks were still visible on her cheeks. Even so, Sonata nodded, wiping her face with her foreleg again. “Yeah, no, I’m fine,” she sighed. “I’m fine, I just…” She let out a slow breath before she started speaking again. “I knew she’d had it rough and all, but I didn’t realize it was that bad for her, you know? I mean, I’d have gone nuts if I’d lost my voice, and living with those creepy-fish people couldn’t have been a barrel of laughs, but the way she sounded just now…it was like, like…” “Like it was still painful to think about,” murmured Nosey, unable to help the shudder that went through her then. “Like it never stopped hurting, even after it was over.” “Exactly! How did you…oh.” Sonata’s ears folded back as she looked at Nosey, seeing the look on her face. “Sorry. I guess I’m a terrible friend just like I’m a terrible sister, huh?” “Hey, come on. Don’t say that.” Nosey put a hoof on Sonata’s back, forcing herself to smile. “Aria and I are both lucky to have you, even if she doesn’t act like it.” “Yeah,” laughed Sonata humorlessly, “except I totes ruined her life, before I came here and made it harder for Lex to save you from that Cereal guy.” Nosey bit her lip, remembering the fight they’d had a few nights previous where she’d not only blamed Sonata for not realizing that she’d been possessed, but had accused her of impeding Lex from figuring out what had happened. “I shouldn’t have said that, before. Xi-” She cut herself off, her throat closing up as she tried to say the name. An instant later, a surge of anger flowed through her, furious that the monster that had tormented her still had so much power over her even after it had been killed. “Xiriel,” she forced the name out, “was able to fool even Lex. There was no way you could have known. I was wrong to say that any of what happened was your fault.” The anger went out of her then, and she suddenly felt tired, looking down. “The truth is, you were right. I was stupid, going to interview Block Party all by myself, without taking any precautions or telling anypony what I was doing. I was practically asking for something bad to happen to me.” Hearing the guilt in her friend’s voice was enough to cut through Sonata’s self-pity, and now it was her turn to put a hoof on Nosey’s back. “If Lex and I couldn’t have known, you couldn’t have known either.” “It was still stupid,” lamented Nosey. “I just…I did the same thing with Lex when I first met him, so I thought I could do it again.” The memory threatened to drag her down into a place she didn’t want to go, so she forced herself to think about something else. Shaking her head, she straightened up and looked back at Sonata. “What happened to me wasn’t your fault, and neither was what happened to Aria.” Sonata grimaced, glancing back at where her sister was lying on the ground, Lex standing over her and making complicated gestures as he chanted, his voice harsh. It looked to her like he was trying to conduct a band, yelling at its only member as she slept through his instruction. The thought brought a wan smile to her lips, but failed to appreciably lift her mood. “It might be. If I hadn’t cut out on her and Adagio when I did-” “-then for all you know, you’d have lost your voice too,” finished Nosey. “You told me that every time you guys tried to take over some place, it didn’t work, right? So that means that even if you’d hung in there with your sisters, it probably wouldn’t have changed what happened to Aria, and you would have gone through something just as awful.” “I know. I said I don’t regret leaving them, and I don’t, it’s just…I didn’t want them to have to suffer like that, you know? They’re still my sisters. I just hope Adagio’s okay, wherever she is.” “The important thing right now is that once Lex is done, Aria will be alright again.” “Yeah.” The word came out as a sigh, but was immediately followed up by a snort of dissatisfaction. “And if I just let her sleep with my boyfriend, she’ll let bygones be bygones.” She kicked a small rock, thankfully away from where Lex and Aria were. Nosey didn’t immediately reply, her thoughts turning back to the angry ranting Aria had unleashed the other day when she’d prodded her on this very topic. While there had been a lot of rage and jealousy in there, she’d recognized the kernel of genuine affection that Aria had developed for Lex…one which, in all likelihood, would only grow when he repaired her voice. And it’s not like I’ve been making things any easier, she knew. Although she’d been getting better lately, that had only been when she was with a small group of people she knew very well. Being in a crowd, or totally alone, or trying to sleep without Lex there…they all threatened to send her back into a panic. That, in turn, kept her close to Lex, which she knew was only making his relationship with Sonata more complicated. “Listen, about what’s been going on…” But having vented her guilt, Sonata was already moving on to her frustrations. “I wish Kara would help me out. She hasn’t been answering me lately when I’ve called on her.” Nosey cocked her head at that. “The love goddess you told me about?” “Yeah,” nodded Sonata. “She’s not showing up in my dreams anymore, no matter how much I ask her to. I even offered her pie!” Nosey blinked at that, unable to stop the corners of her lips from turning upward. “Wow. Something must be up if she won’t come running for pie.” It was a struggle to keep the wry note out of her voice – the prospect of finding something to laugh about being incredibly tempting in the midst of all this drama – but she managed. “I know, right? So that’s why I’m gonna make a spell to get in touch with her and ask her what’s what.” That last part was said with a huff, as though she were talking about tracking down a friend who hadn’t come to her birthday party. Nosey’s eyebrows rose as her smile faded. “You’re going to make a spell?” Her eyes flickered back to where Lex was performing the ritual. Although there were no visible effects of it yet, he was still gesticulating and speaking, every motion sharp and deliberate, each word crisp and clear. It was the very image of a specific, methodical process, one that Nosey knew firsthoof had taken him days of…intense, research to come up with. And he’s a magical genius, she knew, whereas Sonata… “Are you going to have Lex help you?” Sonata shook her head. “Nah. He’d get all up in his head about me talking about our love life to someone else. I’ll just come up with one myself.” Nosey worked her jaw for a moment, trying to sort out the best way to phrase what she was thinking. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Frowning, Sonata gave her an odd look. “Um, yeah. Kara’s been a big help to me before, so why wouldn’t-, oh!” Understanding blossomed on her face. “Hey, listen, I’m not gonna complain to her about you or anything. I know that you’re just hanging all over Lex because of what happened to you.” “Listen, how about I help you with that spell?” The words came out of Nosey’s mouth in a panic, suddenly desperate to change the topic despite having been about to broach it herself. Intellectually, she agreed completely with everything Sonata had just said: she was her best friend, and Lex was her best friend’s boyfriend, and that was that. Lex was someone she respected and admired, and she was more grateful to him for saving her than she knew how to say, but that was as far as it went. Other than him helping her to recover from what had happened to her, there was nothing else between them, simple as that. Except it wasn’t that simple at all… “This one has feelings for you, you know,” cooed the epicene voice of the central head. “She let it slip when I was extracting information from her. She used to think of you as nothing but a way to advance her career, but now you’re so much more to her.” Just remembering how casually Xiriel had revealed that to Lex – taunting him while choking the life out of her – made Nosey want to crawl into a hole and die. Fortunately, Lex didn’t seem to remember, since he hadn’t mentioned it once since then, and he didn’t seem tactful enough to be ignoring it for her sake. But even if he had forgotten it, the memory still made her want to writhe in shame. One of the worst things Xiriel had done to her was make her admit, back when she’d been interviewing “Block Party,” some of her most personal fantasies. Looking back, it had clearly used some sort of magic on her, but at the time she hadn’t known that. All she’d known was that she found herself opening up about her most private dreams and desires in a way she never had to anypony else before. Under Xiriel’s coaxing, she’d admitted – she’d been forced to admit – that she was starting to see Lex in a new light. That while he’d seemed like a curmudgeon with incredible powers whose heart was in the right place when she’d known him in Tall Tale, Vanhoover had shown her that there was more to him. She’d already been getting glimpses of the part of him that only Sonata got to see – the way his features would soften just a little when he looked at her, or how he’d brush up against her sometimes when they were walking – and to a mare who had never so much as been kissed in all of her twenty years, let alone been in a real relationship, the romantic allure of it had been tantalizing. And then Lex had started to pay attention to her, too. It hadn’t been anything tawdry on his part. Quite the opposite, really: he’d forced her to participate in cleaning that warehouse that they’d holed up in once they’d gotten to Tall Tale. To Nosey’s own surprise, the grueling work had actually brought her closer to everypony else; when they’d started, they’d all been strangers to her, but by the time they’d all finished she’d been talking and laughing with the rest of them, as if she’d known them for years. It was like they’d all forgotten that she was a reporter who pried into other ponies’ business, and it had felt wonderful…all because of Lex. He’d had no idea, of course, but Nosey had still felt grateful to him all the same. But it had just been that: gratitude. It hadn’t been until they’d gotten into that pillow fight a little while later – seeing Lex cut loose and have some fun with her and Sonata in an extremely rare moment of relaxation – that she’d realized that he was her friend. It was borderline unprofessional for a subject that she was writing about, but she hadn’t cared. Lex and Sonata were her friends, and she was glad for it, and even if she was going to write the book on them, she didn’t want to mess it up. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t fantasize a little… There were lots of plays and books and stories about love triangles, after all. Girl meets boy meets girl’s best friend. It was practically a cliché. Just thinking about how it would go was completely harmless, even if it was a lot of fun to imagine. It wasn’t like she was being two-faced, either; in her idle musings Sonata was happy for them, and they stayed good friends even after things were resolved. And sometimes…sometimes she thought about a more scandalous arrangement between the three of them…but it was all just a fantasy, something that she knew couldn’t ever really happen. Good reporters dealt in facts, not fiction, and Nosey had no intention of jeopardizing her newfound friendships. Fantasies were enough. And then Xiriel had happened, and now…now Lex's body was pressed against her when she woke up each morning. Now he was gently caressing her while she held still and tried not to moan. Now he was being suspiciously silent when Aria teased him about having three girlfriends. But no, Nosey had reminded herself, good reporters dealt in facts, and the facts were telling her that her emotions weren’t trustworthy right now. They were telling her to stick with what she’d been doing and not interfere with her friends’ relationship. They were telling her to ignore what Aria had been saying. They were telling her to just stick to her fantasies and not confuse them with reality….even if maybe, just maybe- “For realsies?” “Huh?!” Nosey almost jumped in place at Sonata’s voice, coming back to herself. “I mean, uh-huh! I’d be happy to help you, um….develop that spell,” she finished lamely, barely remembering what they’d been talking about as she was speaking. “Aw, thanks!” Managing to smile, Sonata threw her forelegs around Nosey, wrapping her in a hug. “You’re such a good friend!” Fighting down the sensation of guilt, Nosey gingerly hugged Sonata back.