Button Mash peeked out from behind the curtains. The school theater was packed full. Every seat was taken. There was standing room only. It was opening night. The second Sunday of May.
Mother's Day.
Button's eyes scanned the crowd, looking back and forth through the rows of general seating. Most of the guests were prominent ponies with their mothers for the holiday. The advertising for Princess Twilight's school play had done well. Even Princess Twilight's brother, the Prince from the Crystal Empire was in attendance with his mother.
Button looked until he found her. His own mother, Cream Heart, sitting there in the middle of the crowd, three quarters of the way to the back of the theater. At once he felt both that she deserved better, to have a front row seat, and simultaneously wished that she had not come at all. But she was there. Even in the dim light, the features of her face were unmistakable to him. She glanced down at the program in her hooves. Button felt his heart jump into his throat.
Princess Twilight Sparkle's School of Friendship
presents the classical play
Oedipus Rex
Directed by Vice Principal Sunburst
Starring and Co-written by Button Mash
Button started to panic. His mother was here. His mother was about to see this play. His mother was about to see this play, and know that it was co-written by him.
Sunburst found his lead actor hyperventilating backstage. "Hey, HEY!" he said, trying to calm him. "Deep breaths. Stage fright?"
"UH HUH!" Button gasped.
"Just try to imagine the audience naked," he said.
"That's not helping!" Button yelped.
Sunburst glanced through the gap in the curtains at Stellar Flare. "I know."
Button Mash promptly vomited from over-excitement. Luckily, he had eaten bananas before the show. 'For stage fright'.
~
"Do they prevent stage fright?"
"No. But they taste about the same on the way up as down."
~
"There you go. Just let it all out," Sunburst coached, rubbing Button's back. "You still scared?"
"Terrified."
"Just remember the giant meteor," Sunburst said. Button Mash closed his eyes and listened to his director's words. "A giant meteor is about to crash, and we're all about to die. What's the one thing you wish you had done?"
Button Mash silently focused on that question.
The answer crystalized in his mind.
His breathing slowed as he calmed down.
He was ready.
Sunburst smiled. He turned and walked through the curtains to announce the beginning of the play. Then the director stepped down off the stage to take his seat in the audience.
The supporting actors took their place on the stage and the play began. On his cue, Button Mash entered from stage left. It was show time. And the show must go on.
For the entire play, Button looked at the other actors and actresses. Even when the stage directions told him to look out at the audience, he just looked at the back of the room, over the heads of the audience, into empty space. Anywhere but where he knew his mother was sitting. He couldn't bear to meet her eyes.
It was the final act of the play. Button Mash, playing the part of King Oedipus, was at last confronted by his mother, Jocasta, being played by Miss Cheerilee.
"Oedipus!" Miss Cheerilee said, dramatically, as all dialogue lines of the dramatic play were said.
"I can not bear the thought of you taking another stallion's hoof as a suitor, Mother!" Button Mash said, as Oedipus. "They seek not your love, but power! They seek what you could offer them as their queen, by making them king! When you have always been my queen!"
"And you, my sweet prince!" Cheerilee said.
"Abash! I wish not to be thine prince, Mother, but thine king!"
"Prithee! Doth this be true!? That this plague borne upon thine house and hold be because of whom thee holds dear to thine heart!?"
Button Mash looked away from his co-star dramatically, as all stage actions for the dramatic play were to be acted.
"Tis!" he said.
"Nay!" she insisted. Button Mash looked out at the audience. Only this time, he looked directly at his mother. Cheerilee continued, "I can always tell when thou art being untruthful, Oedipus! Thy can'th look me in the eyes!" Even squinting into the harsh spotlight, Button Mash could see his mother bristle in her seat, hearing her own words spoken from on stage. "Surely thee jests!" Jocasta spoke. "Thy can'th truly be in love with thine own mother!"
Button Mash had practiced the lines a hundred times before. But as he looked out at his mother, Cream Heart, sitting there in the audience looking back at him, the words caught in his closing throat. The tears running down his cheeks glittered in the stark spotlight. Of the hundreds on ponies in attendance, he was only speaking to one. And it wasn't his co-star.
"I am!" he said. "And I'm tired of pretending that I'm not!"
Sunburst felt his mother's hoof on his thigh.
Shining Armor held his mother's hoof a little tighter.
Button's eyes never left Cream Heart's. "Mother, I love you! I say these words, not as platonic platitudes, but in true romance! I want to scream it from the mountain tops! I want to hold you, take you as my queen, if you would have me as your king! I want you, even as I know that it is wrong to. To wed. To bed. To bear my heirs!"
This time, Cream Heart was the one who looked away. Button's lips trembled. He frowned and pulled his belt from his costume. "These thoughts plague my mind. That I should atone for these sinful desires that haunt my soul- A thousand lashes across my back!" The clasp of his costume cape broke, causing it to fall to the stage floor, and with it, the protective padding. But the show must go on. "OPUS DEI!" He threw the belt over his shoulder, bringing it across his bare back.
The heavy belt connected against the skin of his bare back with the sharp crack of a whip. Everypony in attendance tensed in their seat. It was a whipping that would have broken any other stallion to his bawling knees. But Button didn't even waiver where he stood, taking the lashing in stride. The long, straight, deep-red welt appeared through his fur, identical to the other scars that crisscrossed his back.
~
During the proceedings of the divorce, Cream Heart had thought that Button's father used to beat him. Button swore up and down that he hadn't, and testified to the same under oath, even as he refused to explain the injuries.
At last Cream understood. He had been punishing himself for how he felt about her this whole time, and she had been so blind to it. She didn't want to believe it. She felt awful for the anguish he had been in this whole time. She couldn't bear to look at him.
~
Button's lip trembled. The familiar sting across his back was nothing compared to the pain he felt from the look on her face. He could tell his mother was disgusted with his confession. She couldn't even look at him, at her disgusting, deviant son. He felt ashamed. He deserved this. He brought the belt up again. "OPUS DEI!"
Miss. Cheerilee caught Button's hoof and took away the belt. "NO!" she shouted. "No... Oedipus!" she added trying to regain the course of the script. "Take me! Have me as your queen! My prince- nay, my king!" Her hoof on his cheek turned him to face her.
Button didn't even remember the words, but the rote practice of rehearsal had them spilling from his mouth.
"But what of the gods?" he asked.
"Damn the gods!" she said.
They embraced and kissed each other. It was just a quick peck, all that Cheerilee would allow.
The lights dimmed and the curtain fell, ending the play.
Everypony in attendance was on their hooves, clapping and cheering. A few minutes later the lights came back up and Sunburst walked up onto the stage, waving out the entire cast of the play. There were many supporting characters between the cities of Corinth and Thebes. They all filed out onto the stage as Button continued to scan the raving crowd, unable to find his mother.
He walked down off the front of the stage and the crowd converged on him.
"Dude! That was amazing!" one stallion said.
"That whip sound was some great special effects!"
"That love confession at the end? I felt that! It was so real!"
"This play speaks to me- to a lot of stallions, I think!"
Hoity Toity pointed at the corners of his eyes. "You see this? This is where the tears would be if I could cry. But I can't. Botched face-lift. But my goodness how I wish my mother were here to have seen this! Magnifique! You really should consider bringing this rendition on the road to Broadway in Manehattan!"
"Please," Button Mash begged, as he pushed his way through the crowd. He looked at every face as he went, but she was gone. "I just, I just need some air!" He ran for the exit, out of the back of the theater.
Button ran outside and looked around frantically in the dark. There, leaning against the wall of the school building, was his mother. She didn't look over at him, but she knew he was there.
Cream Heart sighed. "You know, I read Oedipus Rex when I was in school... It used to be a tragedy. But I guess someone took some artistic license." She looked down at the play program in her hoof. "Co-written?" she asked.
"... Yeah." He braced himself for her to roll up the program and start swatting him with it.
Cream Heart just snorted and started walking home. She got to the edge of the street lighting before she looked back at him. He stayed where he was standing by the exit. "Is there an after-party you're waiting for?" she asked.
Button Mash trotted after his mother, catching up with her. "I... wasn't sure if you wanted me to come home."
Cream Heart scoffed. "Save the drama for the stage, Button." Button let out a sigh of relief. "But I do have a few criticisms, Mr. Playwriter."
"Wha- which part?" he asked.
"The ending, obviously," she said. "It's so easy to just end with the dramatic kiss, and just assume they lived happily ever after. But what happens after that kiss, hmm?"
"Well... I don't think they'd allow that in a school play."
Cream stifled a chuckle. "I mean, the next day. The next week. The rest of their lives?"
"I dunno. I didn't think that far ahead," he said.
"Exactly," she said. "You'd have to consider what other ponies would think. The rest of their extended family. Their friends and neighbors and coworkers. It's not just about them. A relationship affects everypony around them. Especially if it's... unusual." Her words cut deep, because he knew in his heart that they were true. "Oedipus really should find a princess his own age."
"I know..."
"And his mother should be able to do the same with a stallion her own age."
Button felt his jaw tense again. "I... I know." Even still, he held on to his small glimmer of hope. "I think they could make it work," he mumbled. He couldn't tell if she heard him or not. Back home, they walked upstairs to their bedrooms' hallway. Cream Heart stepped inside her bedroom. Button Mash waited by her door. She looked at him. He looked back at her, hopefully, expectantly.
"What?" she asked. "You think after that dramatic little love confession of yours that I'm just going to have you climb between my legs and go for it? Go to bed!"
Button Mash was the picture of crestfallen as he shuffled away to his bedroom.
Cream Heart felt no better. As a single mother to a colt, she'd heard more than her fair share of 'Jocasta' jokes. As she took the ribbon out of the hair of her tail, she saw the remnants of the dull bruise on her hip from where Filthy Rich had struck her. She remembered how Button had come charging in, fending off a stallion much larger than himself for her aide.
After the divorce, and everything leading up to it, and everything since, her heart had been broken into so many pieces.
But oddly, that memory of Button coming to her rescue felt like the beginning of them being mended back together again.
Next door, Button Mash had been crying silently into his pillow until he had no tears left to give. He felt his small bed shift as a weight joined beside him. He felt the warm embrace of a hoof around his torso, and a calming voice cooing in his ear, bidding him to stop crying. He wanted to turn over to hold her, to kiss her, to-
But she held him fast, shushing him to remain still.
"Shhh," she hushed him as her hoof ran along her chest. "It takes more than just a grand gesture, Romeo." She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. He tried to turn to kiss her back, but she backed away. "I'll stop trying to date other stallions, and we can see where it goes." Her hoof moved to touch the tender welt across his back. "No more of this, okay?" Button whimpered but nodded in agreement. "I'm not making any promises, but I'm willing to give this a try. But for now... go to sleep."
Button didn't know what tomorrow would bring. What, if anything, might come of this. But laying there, in his mother's loving embrace, it was the first time in a long time that he felt at peace.
For tonight... that was enough.