//------------------------------// // Chapter 1: Sapphires and Emeralds // Story: Unbalanced Scales // by Bugsydor //------------------------------// Spike was confused. Wonderfully confused. Horribly confused. He wasn't even quite sure what sort of confused he was at this point, but he was fairly certain that it was a happy confusion. Rarity, the love (or at least really persistent crush) of his life, had just burst into his room at the Palace of Friendship, announced her undying love for him, and kissed him full on the mouth in a way that felt electric. Judging from the mild charring and scent of ozone around him, it might well have actually been electric. And then her face went pale (er, moreso than usual), she babbled an apology involving something about dragons, distant relatives, and coming on too strong and not considering his feelings, and bolted. Now, Spike was no stranger to erratic pony behavior, having lived with the Princess of Freakouts since he'd hatched, but this was a new one even for him. For one, Twilight had never kissed him anywhere but the forehead. Even so, Spike had an order of operations for situations like this. So he cracked open a window to let the ozone out, brushed off and swept up the char, wiped the goofy grin from his face, and found Twilight to ask if she'd seen which way Rarity went. “I'm sorry, Spike,” she said while looking up from the latest volume of Friendship & Magic, “I didn't even know she was back from visiting family. Maybe you could check the boutique?” He thanked her, then strolled over to Carousel Boutique, slowly coming out of his daze as he went. “Rarity?” he said after knocking on the door (the sign was still set to “closed”). “Are you in there?” Silence. Well, it smelled like Rarity had been there recently; he'd recognize that vaguely sandy, fruity scent anywhere. “Rarity?… Are you alright?” More silence. Spike tested the door, and found it unlocked. “Okay,” he announced, “as a good friend, I'm coming in to check on you. If you want me to leave you alone, just say so!” Yet more silence. Spike opened the door to find… darkness. Well, mostly darkness: there was a little light coming from the second floor where Rarity lived. He went inside and began to ascend the stairs, saying “Rarity? You were acting kind of… odd earlier. Not that I minded? I mean, it felt great! And I'd always wanted to, but…” He continued up the stairs, passing a shelf filled with elaborate Sophistiqué eggs. “…it was really unexpected. Are you okay? Did you catch something while you were away? You didn't get cursed, did you? I swear, if Discord did anything to you, his O&O character is getting so many negative lev—” Spike opened the door at the top of the stairs onto a scene from his dreams. Rarity was lounging in a massive pile of golden bits, emeralds, sapphires, and amethysts. And then she plopped a rare baby-blue sapphire into her mouth and began to suck on it. “Never really seemed fair to me that the best-tasting gems were too hard to just bite into,” Rarity said to herself. “I suppose there's probably some metaphor for my current situation in there somewhere…” “Uh, Rarity? Did you just… Are you eating gems!?” “Oh!” she said with a start. “I'm sorry, dear, I was a bit, eheh, preoccupied. I've had a lot on my mind lately and… well, a lot of it has been about you.” While flattered, Spike was not about to be deterred. “But… gems? Last time I checked, most ponies don't eat gems. Are you feeling okay?” “Physically, Spike, I've never been better. As for eating gems? I never could quite figure out why more ponies didn't. They've always tasted divine to me, and yet there is nopony manufacturing sapphire swirl ice cream; I've always had to make my own. After the Crystal Empire returned, I thought it might have been because my family hailed from there, but we didn't. When I asked my parents about it, Mother just chuckled and said I'd understand when I was older. Which I suppose I do now…” She popped another baby-blue sapphire into her mouth after trailing off, the old one having apparently dissolved. “If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were part dragon.” Spike said with a chuckle, running a claw through his relatively new patch of goatee-like chin spines. “Actually, yes.” She let out a melodious sigh. “It seems I really was the last to know, after all.” Spike blinked, slowly. “Wha— Bu— I was joking!” Rarity blinked owlishly herself, and then started to laugh. A real, beautiful, honest laugh that grew until she had melted into her pile of gold and jewels. “Thank you, Spike. I— I really needed that after the month I've been through.” “Anything for you, my lady,” he said as he bowed. “Ah, always such a gentledrake.” She released another sigh, eyes lost in a particularly large amethyst. “While I have been anything but a lady. I'm sorry for, ahem, stealing that kiss earlier. And for zapping you; I wonder if that happens every time…” While his first instincts as a dragon, a male, and a scientist were all screaming at him to test that hypothesis immediately and thoroughly, Spike's hard-won sense of empathy won out as he sat down next to her on the glittering hoard. “So…” he said, swinging his legs as he sat, “I guess this all means that, after all these years, you like me back?” “Y— yes. I believe it does.” “Is that why you were out visiting family? Because of me?” “After a fashion.” She forced the tension out of her back and let her eyes wander between various trinkets and baubles around her home. “You see,” she continued, “it was a bit of a slow burn until fairly recently. I would notice you'd done something nice for me, and I would think of how sweet it was of you. Or I'd notice that your wings were looking exquisite one morning, which seemed a little strange at the time since I was never really interested in pegasi. Or Starlight would ask if she could borrow you for some errands and I may have, eheh, growled at her a little.” She straightened up a little, looking Spike in the eyes. “Eventually it got to the point where I just couldn't stop thinking about you. I thought there must have been something wrong with me. No offense meant to you, of course—” “None taken,” Spike replied. “—but as far as I can remember, I had never heard of a pony being attracted to someone outside their, well, species. I'm still coming to terms with it, really. “Come to think of it, you never really had a problem with the idea, did you, even back when we first met at that Summer Sun Celebration that brought us all together. How did you feel about, you know” – she fidgeted with a golden bit with her hoof – “liking a pony?” “Eh, I never really thought about it until I saw the Dragon Migration and tried to follow them. At that point, Twilight and I figured it was because I'd been around mostly ponies ever since I was magically hatched by, again, ponies, so I imprinted on them.” A tired smile crept onto Rarity's lips as Spike reclined on his side, a claw stroking his chin-spines. “I suppose it really could be that simple,” she said, “but I don't think it is for me. When I've had my own crushes on stallions, like that soap-horned blockhead Blueblood, I think I was only ever in love with the status they would give me. One might say I was just, hehehe, trying to add them to my hoard.” “Speaking of, where did this come from?” Spike said, pointing down at the pile of gold and jewels. “It's… pretty nice, actually.” “Oh, this? Here a little, there a little. It's mostly my stock from the cupboards downstairs, with a few choice additions from my private collection. The chaise lounge may be more ladylike, but I didn't think it would be enough this time.” Spike almost said how his experiences with Smolder and the Dragonlord herself had taught him there was nothing more ladylike a dragon could do than lounge around in a pile of treasure, but thought better of it just in time. “Would you like some?” she said, levitating an assortment of gems over to him. “I'm afraid I didn't get any rubies out, since I wasn't really expecting you to join me, but different sorts of corundum always tasted like they're from the same family to me.” Spike thanked her and started munching on a particularly tangy emerald. He'd save the sapphires for later. “Well,” Rarity said, returning to her tale, “eventually I confided in one of my aunts, and she pointed me at my Grandpa Merc, and said he might be able to help…” ///)_^_(\\\ “…And that's how I learned that my great-great-great-grandfather was not only still alive, but also a dragon,” Rarity said. “Huh. Wow. That's… That's pretty cool. And, y'know? It kinda explains a lot.” “Like what, darling? I'm still a little dazed, myself.” “Well, for one thing, there's different kinds of dragons. There's noble dragons like me –” Spike puffed up his chest “– and then there's, well, Garble. I kinda like the idea that I'm not too closely related to him.” “As do I, but what else did his story clarify?” “It explains a few things about you, too. There’s your affinity for jewels, your reaction to my molt pheromones, your sharp wit, your sense for money, your, uh, tendency to hoard random things whenever you're hit with mind-altering magic, your breathtaking beauty, your attention to detail… hay, the fact that your cutie mark kinda looks like dragon scales. And oh yeah, the fact that you apparently find this” – Spike struck the most muscular pose he could while lying on his side – “irresistible.”Credit to FanOfMostEverything for this paragraph. Rarity jabbed him in the chest with her horn. “Careful, darling. My wit isn't the only part of me that's sharp,” she said through a wry smile. “Oof. ‘Point’ taken.” “Besides,” she said, her smile softening, “as well as you've filled out these past few years, your fine physique is hardly the main thing that's attracted me to you. As I've learned the hard way, looks alone are not a solid basis for a relationship.” After that, they lay in silence on the hoard for several seconds. Spike looked into her eyes, only to find them looking off in the distance. “You're still not comfortable with the idea, are you,” he stated, sitting back up. “You're… not wrong, I suppose. While I can't stop thinking about you, I also can't stop thinking about how much this relationship will change things. And I suppose I am still getting used to the notion of, eheh, interspecies intimacy.” “Would it really be ‘interspecies’ if you already had a little dragon in you?” Spike said, and then he immediately clamped his claws over his snout. It was hard to say whether Spike's or Rarity's face was redder. They glanced back at each other, and then hastily looked away. “And then there's the whole thing with my identity being turned not so much on its head as several degrees to the side, what with finding out that I'm part dragon on my mother's side,” Rarity hastily supplied. There was silence again, aside from Spike's affirmative grunt as the gears turned in his head. “Well, I think I have an idea,” Spike said a few seconds later as he got up and dusted away some errant gemstones. “Praytell, what?” “I'm going to pay your ‘Grandpa Merc’ a visit and ask his permission to court you. I'm not certain that's how things work for ponies or most dragons, but it's part of my noble dragon code. “And besides,” he said, eyes softening, “it'll give you some more time to think.” Rarity got up herself, and wrapped the drake's midsection in a tight hug. “Thank you,” she said. As Spike neared the front door, Rarity spoke again. “Spikey-wikey, I've just got one question:” she said as mischief glimmered in her sapphire eyes. “Yeah?” “Do you have any idea where Grandpa Merc lives?”