Fluttershy hummed, opening the book in front of her. The pages were all blank...but not for long. Piles of newspapers and photographs were spread around her, glue and scissors at her side.
She picked up one of the oldest newspapers, her nose wrinkling when she saw how faded the photos were, how yellow the paper was. Before she could dwell on it, mismatched arms wrapped around her torso.
"Hello, gorgeous," Discord purred, kissing her cheek. "What are you doing inside on such a lovely day?" A crash of thunder sounded outside, chocolate milk rain pounding against the window.
She smiled, kissing his cheek. "Scrapbooking," she told him. She showed him the pile of newspapers and the blank book.
He grabbed one of the newspapers and narrowed his eyes at it. "Wait a minute...this is old! This is back from when we...had our first, not-great meeting."
She nodded. "I wanted to make a scrapbook about our relationship," she said. "And...while our 'first meeting' wasn't the greatest, it is important to our relationship. At least...I think so."
He wrinkled his nose for a moment, then sighed, his shoulders sagging. "I think it would be fun to invent a new first meeting, something that paints me in a teensy bit better light...buuut the truth is important, isn't it?"
"Mhmm," she said with a nod. "Besides...no matter your past, you're a good creature right here, right now." She took the newspaper and carefully clipped out the article about Discord's escape, featuring a collection of photos of the chaos caused, Discord's statue, and the six Elements of Harmony receiving their awards for defeating him.
Discord sighed and snapped his fingers. With a flash of magic, the article was as good as new, the paper white and the words clear. Another snap, and the other newspapers looked just as good. "Care for a hand?" he said. "I'm bored, and helping you with this seems a little less boring than messing with the Canterlot library so subtly only Princess Bookhorse notices."
She gave him a look, but he continued to grin mischievously. "...well, I suppose working together could be fun," she said. "And if it'll keep you out of trouble..."
"Me? And trouble?" he said with a gasp, placing a hand against his chest. "Why, perish the thought." A glowing halo appeared above his head as he flopped onto the carpet next to her, resting his chin against his fists. "So, what do we do first?"
"Right now, I'm mostly just getting things ready," she said. "Going through newspapers and clipping out articles, picking the photos I want to use...that sort of thing."
He grunted, chewing on the halo and revealing it was chocolate covered in a shiny gold foil. "So...you're just going through all this," he flicked his tail at what was around her. "And picking out all of our best moments?"
She nodded...but paused and sighed, glancing at the piles around her. As much as there was, she suspected...knew that it wasn't quite complete. "I...am missing photos of some things," she admitted. "Like our second meeting, when we became friends. Or anytime we were facing a villain. There might be articles about those, but..."
"Ugh, those are so impersonal," he said, sticking his tongue out, grabbing his cheeks and pulling them down. "If we're making a scrapbook about us and some of our finest and...less fine moments, it should be from our perspective, should it not? Have a little personal touch?"
"I think so," she said with a nod. "But we can't exactly change the past to get photos from back then..."
He clicked his tongue, wagging his finger at her. "You can't change the past," he corrected. "And while I try to avoid altering it myself, you have just given me a good idea!"
Before she could ask what exactly this idea was, Discord raised his claws and tore them through the air, leaving behind a shimmering blue portal. "There," he said. "I'd stay away from this, if I were you, but this is how we'll get pictures of some of our finest moments!" He snapped his fingers, and a flock of cameras appeared around him, each with a different pair of wings on their cases.
A whistle suddenly appeared in his mouth, and he blew into it, pointing at the portal. The cameras flew in and vanished from sight. As soon as they were gone, he began marking the area around the portal with bright yellow tape.
"Time travel can be fun...but paradoxes are not," he said. "Do you have any idea how annoying it is to explain things to your past self? Not to mention making sure your timeline doesn't hiccup and decide that it doesn't exist anymore?"
"Um..." she said, giving the portal a nervous look. "Are you sure this is safe?"
"I know what I'm doing," he said. "I'm not some bright-eyed century-old whelp who doesn't understand that a paradox isn't a couple of waterfowl." He polished his claws. "The cameras are invisible in the past, and if they ever make accidental contact with a creature, they'll immediately teleport back to our time."
He frowned. "Which would influence the past a tiny bit, but it'll only give the timeline a bit of 'indigestion', not make it decide to give up the ghost."
"If you're sure," she said. Still, she inched away from the portal.
"While we're waiting for those," he said. "Why don't we start using what we already have on hand?" He laid on his stomach and turned a few pages, flipping to a new blank one.
"Sounds like a good idea," she said, lying next to him. "Where should we start? I mean...I know you don't like order, but there should probably be some semblance of it. In case we want to look at a specific memory."
"True," he said. "But my magic can shift things around if needed, so we don't need to go crazy and plan where each little thing needs to be."
She nodded. "Just a general sense of how many pages we want to dedicate to certain events would be enough, I think."
"You're the boss, Flutterboss," he said, reaching over and grabbing a stack of photos. He splayed them out between the two of them, the book in the center of the sprawled collection. Fluttershy began to look through them all and arrange them chronologically, while he picked some up randomly, smiled, and "sorted" them into what appeared to be random piles.
Together, they decided how many pages certain events deserved. His reformation, once they had the photos, would get a full two-page spread, as would their wedding and first date. Other special events, such as her opening up the sanctuary, and his proposal, would perhaps get a page on their own, or at least half of one. Other photos they liked would be scattered on miscellaneous pages, and they would include plenty of notes in the margins.
"So," he said, stretching out his arms and cracking his knuckles. "While we're still waiting for the older photos to come back, why don't we start on something a little more recent?"
"But...if you could send the cameras back in time, couldn't you...?" she started to ask. He held up a hand quickly to stop her, then pulled a large chalkboard out of nowhere. It was completely covered in math, diagrams that made her head hurt just looking at them, and the title A Basic Understanding of Time Travelling. He gestured to it, raising an eyebrow.
"...okay, maybe I don't want to know," she said, trying not to look at the spiraling diagram in the center that was painfully hypnotic.
"Probably for the best," he said, setting the board on fire before snapping his fingers and making it disappear. "I prefer you both sane and without a headache, after all." He kissed her forehead, and she felt a cooling spark pass through her skin that made any remaining headache disappear...and which fogged up her memories of those odd diagrams.
"...I suppose we can get started on the photos we do have while we wait, then," she said with a nod. Discord's magic could help fix things if they had to, so they wouldn't have to spend too much time planning. He probably wouldn't have the patience to sit and plan much longer without doing anything, anyway.
"Let's start with our wedding, first," he said. "Yes, I know that it's far from the first thing that happened between us, but...it was one of the most amazing days of my life." He placed his paw on her hoof and gave it a gentle squeeze. Her heart raced a little, and a wide smile spread across her muzzle.
"...as long as it's not in the first pages," she said, chuckling a little.
"We'll put in right in the middle!" he said. "I'll bet you a teacake that I'll pick the perfect page. It'll go right where it would have if we had done this the normal, boring, orderly way." He started to flip through the blank pages, sticking his tongue out in concentration.
She was sure that he would change it with his magic to make it fit in the perfect spot when she wasn't looking, but she didn't mind baking. "I'll take that bet," she said, leaning over and pressing her muzzle against his cheek. He froze mid-page turn, slowly leaning into her touch.
"Then we have a deal," he purred, nuzzling her. He grabbed a stack of their wedding photos. "Now, let's get started!" He stuck double-backed tape onto one of the photos and smacked it onto the page. She smiled and smoothed out the creases before it stuck and became wrinkled, while he quickly jotted a note next to the photo in blue glitter ink.
They slowly worked on the pages, laying down the photos crookedly, deciding what details to write about, and frequently stopping to laugh at or fondly reminisce over some of the photos...like their first dance. Or how he had smeared frosting all over her cheek while feeding her a bite of cake. Or how Discord had made a silent firework show for everyone there...
She was jolted out of staring at the half-finished page when the time portal started making odd sounds. She looked up and saw that it was shaking in the air, ominous rumbling sounds coming from it.
"Is...is that what's supposed to happen?" she asked nervously, edging away from the rumbling portal and ducking behind Discord.
"Don't worry," he assured her, patting the top of her head and scratching behind her ear. "That just means something is coming back through it. And since I know what I'm doing, the only thing that can come through is those cameras and all the photos they took."
She swallowed. Even though she trusted his word, she couldn't help but keep a wary eye on the shaking portal. Its movement grew in intensity, getting a little bit louder...until it finally froze in place, as though nothing had happened.
Before she could ask if something had gone wrong, a huge mountain of photos spilled out, nearly as tall as the portal itself, and wider than her body. It spread out and sprawled across the carpet, the cameras tumbling away with their wings folded up. A few stray photos were coughed out of the portal before it finally winked out of existence.
"...I don't think we have enough space for that many photos," she said, staring wide-eyed at the gigantic pile.
"That's okay!" he said. "I ordered the cameras to take more photos than necessary. That way, we'll have plenty to choose from." He grabbed a large stack and began to shift through them, glancing between it and the large pile behind him. "Though...perhaps I ended up going a skoosh overboard."
"Or a lot of skooshes," she said with a smile, shifting closer to him as he shuffled through the pile. Some photos were clear, while others were blurry, but she could tell when most of the photos had been taken. A very blurry photo of several Discords fighting for her time and attention, a clear one of them baking a cake together, another one of them playing buckball together... "But at least we have plenty of photos to choose from."
"That we do," he said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "Aww, look at this one." He a photo out to her. She accepted it and looked at it, blushing as she did so.
It was a picture of them at one of their earliest tea parties. He had been nervous, having never done something like this with another pony. To put him at ease and cheer him up, she had started eating a slice of cake with her bare hooves.
The picture was when she was about halfway done with the slice. Frosting was smeared all over her muzzle, and she could see a blurry Discord laughing his head off beside her.
She couldn't help but laugh herself, and Discord himself started chortling. "We have to add this," he said, flipping to an appropriate page.
"Yes," she said, still snickering. She smeared a bit of glue on the back of the photo and handed it to Discord. He placed it in the book at an angle, using his quill to write a quick caption of what was happening.
They added some more of their wedding photos to their page, along with colorful captions and quick sketches Discord made from memory. "Hmm," he said, stroking his beard. "These pages look good, but they need a little more...pizazz."
"Oh, I have an idea!" she declared. She dug around in the supplies for a bit, finally emerging with a thin booklet in her hooves—one full of stickers.
She turned the pages until she found some romantic, glittery ones—hearts, roses, and slices of wedding cake. "These should be a good addition, right?"
His eyes flicked over the selection, his pupils slowly dilating. "...they're perfect," he said in an awed whisper, sparkles appearing in his eyes. She pressed a hoof to her lips to stifle her giggles, while he began to peel a glittery heart sticker off of the page. He slapped it in place, right along the corner of the photo of their first dance after getting married.
She grabbed another sheet of stickers and helped him decorate the pages. Soon, they were simply sparkling and shining with a variety of romantic stickers, though their pictures still stood out clearly through it all.
"Much better," Discord said with a satisfied nod. "Now...why don't we go back to the beginning and get this project really rolling?" When she gave her nod of confirmation, he stretched his arms and cracked his knuckles, the pages turning all the way back to the very first empty page.
He snatched up a small article about how the Lord of Chaos was reformed and working for the Crown, along with a photo of her holding his paw for the first time, and began smearing glue on the back of both. She glanced over at the large pile of photos, and leaned over and started to sort them—both by weeding out blurry photos and sorting them chronologically.
They spent the next several hours pouring through photos and reliving their relationship through them. As the storm outside died down and noon drew closer, they went through all of their interactions together that led up to Twilight's coronation, their first tea-party dates, their first date in public at the Gala, their engagement, all the way up to their wedding.
Time continued ticking by as they chronicled events from their marriage—the birthday parties they threw for each other, the holidays spent together, the visits with her family. The time he helped her when she became Flutterbat again. The time they went to a metal concert with Rainbow. The time he had spent a class at the School of Friendship wrapped around her. Even the small moments, like her grooming his shedding spring fur or the two of them helping themselves to a midnight snack had a photo or two put in.
Noon came and went, and finally, they put in the last photo they agreed on—a selfie Discord took of the two of them, with the scrapbook prominent in the frame. "And that's that," he said, taping it in on an empty page while she put a few stickers of cameras and stars around it. "Nearly every moment of our life together recorded, plus some moments with all of our friends. Plus, there's still plenty of empty pages..." He flipped through the blank remainder of the book. "...and you owe me a teacake."
She smiled. Their wedding photos had been perfectly placed in the scrapbook. "I'll make some tomorrow."
"Excellent!" he said. "Now, where exactly do you want to store your book?" He handed it to her.
She blinked. It had been so much fun working with him that she had almost forgotten the reason she wanted to make the scrapbook. She smiled and pressed it back into his hands. "Here," she said. "I wanted to make this for you...so that you can always have the memories of us together."
He paused, his fingers gently wrapping around the book. "...Thank you," he said quietly. "But...I won't need this to remember how much you've done for me. And..." He held the book back out to her. "I want us to keep working on it together."
She smiled softly, placing a hoof over his paw. "...I will," she said. "For as long as we're together, I'll work on this scrapbook with you."
"You'd better," he said. "And...you'd better help me with this for a long, long time." He squeezed her hoof, a little tightly. "Don't you dare leave anytime soon."
She blinked, her eyes becoming shiny. "You know that...I can't do anything to stop..." She shook her head. "But...I'll do my best, okay? To stay for as long as I can."
"Good!" he said. With a snap of his fingers, the scrapbook was teleported away—probably to his memory museum. "So...care for some lunch?"
Her stomach grumbled, answering his question. He chortled as she blushed, a bit embarrassed. "I'm in the mood for something hot today," he said, heading for the kitchen. "Just give me a few minutes, and I can whip up something savory that'll have you salivating!"
"I'm already looking forward to it," she said with a smile, following behind him. "Do you mind if I grab some fruit to have on the side?"
"If you must, you little health nut," he said with a roll of his eyes. They both chuckled as they got to work on making their meal.
Once they sat down to eat, Discord surprised her by moving his chair so it was pressed right up against hers. He wrapped an arm around her, leaned close to her ear, and murmured, "You know I love you, right?" he said. "With all of my heart."
She smiled, turning enough to kiss his cheek. "I love you, too," she said. "...I'm really not going anywhere for a long time. I promise." She reached over to give his paw a squeeze. "We still have quite a few years together...and plenty of chaotic adventures to go on."
His eyes twinkled, the last bit of worry shining in them slowly fading away. "...of course we will!" he said with bravado. "We're practically a force of nature together, an unstoppable duo!"
She giggled a little, and he leaned in close. "...but thank you for the reassurance," he said, his voice so quiet that even she just barely heard it. Slowly, he leaned forward and pressed his lips against hers.
She smiled and returned the pressure of the kiss, wrapping her forelegs around his neck. They lost themselves in the passionate kiss, their lunch briefly forgotten about as they reminded each other of how much they loved them.