//------------------------------//
// Chapter Six 
// Story: Octavia's Reprise 
// by Venates 
//------------------------------//

	“Octavia.”
The grey mare’s eyes shot open at the sound of her own name spoken by a voice she was once much more accustomed with. She turned her head to its source, a white unicorn with a crazed blue mane.
“Vinyl…”
“I asked what you’re doing here.”
“I…” Octavia was taken aback. Vinyl’s words were very forward, and considering Octavia was losing hope of seeing her at all that night she found herself struggling to respond. “I… I wanted to see you.”
“Well, you just did.” Vinyl replied. Octavia felt a certain déjà vu encroaching her. “Look, I really don’t have time to play catch up here. I barely have a few hours to unwind before my next gig, and I’d really rather spend it doing something I actually want to do.”
“Oh… I see…” Octavia was crestfallen. All of a sudden her actions over the last few hours felt utterly ridiculous. Why was she there? She had a concert herself several miles away with only a few hours to prepare, yet she came all the way to Manehattan on a night train to try to talk to somepony who didn’t want to see her. And for what?
Vinyl glared at her old roommate for a moment or two before breaking the silence. “Sooo… Yeah. See ya.” She turned to leave.
“Wait!”
The DJ spun slowly back around to face the source of her irritation. He expression softened slightly after seeing the pain in Octavia’s face. Something was different. Something in her eyes said that she was not the same mare Vinyl walked away from years prior.
Octavia licked her lips, her mind moving rapidly. “Maybe… Could I just… Could I walk you to wherever you’re going? Maybe?”
Vinyl considered this for a moment. She finally shrugged. “Whatever. It’s a free kingdom.” She turned and started walking away from Octavia, who quickly yet gently placed the violin she had been playing next to its owner before trotting up beside her old friend.
For a solid chunk of time the only sound either made was their hooves against the street. “So what do you do these days.” It wasn’t so much a question the DJ wanted an answer to as a way of breaking the silence that she so disliked.
“Oh… Um, well I play,” the cellist began, “I play in concerts every so often in Canterlot. Sometimes in some of the concert halls, but other times for garden parties and the like as a favor to a peer.”
“So you did wind up in Canterlot then. It’s nice to know you didn’t have to live that lie forever.”
“Yes… Yes, I… I suppose it was a certain realization of a dream…” The way Vinyl addressed it didn’t make it seem as such, however.
“You live there and stuff too?”
“Yes… I have an apartment in the upper district. It’s near many shops and the theatres I play in, so it’s rather convenient.”
“Ah. Upper district. I bet it must be quite the place. Can’t imagine what the rent would be.”
“It’s actually rather humble, all things considered… I don’t spend much time there, so I really don’t need a lot.”
Vinyl snorted, her attention on the path in front of her for a moment. It appeared as though she already used up her usual small talk topics, or at least the ones she could ask without sounding accusing or just plain cruel.
“It’s… It’s really good to see you again, Vinyl.” The DJ turned to face Octavia, the first time she’d done so since discovering her play a tune from their shared past. The look on her face told Octavia that she didn’t feel quite the same way.
“What has gotten into you lately?” Vinyl asked. “First the phone call yesterday, and now a visit out of bucking nowhere. The last time I saw you, you made it pretty clear you didn’t have any interest in seeing me again, let alone trying to be friendly. And that was years ago.”
“Yes, I know, I… I’m sorry.”
The DJ stopped walking, Octavia following suit after a step or two. She wondered if somehow so simple an apology had struck Vinyl the way she hoped her words would since their phone call the day prior. “This is me.” Vinyl said nodding towards a decrepit apartment building. Optimistic thoughts were dashed from Octavia’s mind. “I really need to get some sleep.” She turned a magic lock using her horn’s aura, and moved to step inside.
“Vinyl, I miss you!” Octavia cried suddenly. Her words echoed in the dark alleys that surrounded the tall, shady structures around them. The white unicorn stopped and backed up a few paces to look directly at her grey counterpart.
“Miss me? Why on Celestia’s green Equestria would some stuck-up mare like you miss me?”
“Because…” A well of emotions in Octavia’s chest was preparing itself for a breach. Octavia searched desperately for a way to maintain her composure in front of the mare judging her every word, but the dam inside her finally burst, and skirting around that which had been bothering her relentlessly for days could no longer be ignored. “I almost died, Vinyl!” Octavia screamed. The DJ didn’t move, and her expression remained fixed. Octavia wished she could see past the purple sunglasses Vinyl wore and into the heart of her once best friend. When the DJ said nothing, Octavia continued. “The day of the wedding, when those… things attacked… I almost died. And I think I almost let it happen too. My whole body froze up, like I was watching it all happen from somepony else’s body. One of those creatures came straight at me, and… Of all things, Vinyl… I thought about you. About the day we met. I could have thought about my mom, my first crush, or a performance I would have never had the chance to play in… But I thought about you. And I realized… I realized that I’ve been missing you for a long time. I just refused to admit it.”
An uncomfortable silence presented itself yet again.
Please say something, Octavia thought.
“Listen, Octy…” the DJ said when she finally did, “It’s late. I don’t know where you’re set up to sleep tonight, but you really should start heading that way…”
“Oh…” Octavia was spent. She didn’t know what more she could say to let her old friend know just how bad she’d been hurting inside the last few days. “I, uh… I don’t have a place to stay. I kind of… came last minute.”
“What?” A trip so far away with clearly no planning behind it was very unlike the musician Vinyl once knew.
“I’m certain there’s a hotel around here somewhere, yes?” Octavia began. “Surely it wouldn’t be that difficult to find a room…”
“Are you kidding? You know the big game against the Fillies is tomorrow, right? Never mind, don’t answer, of course you don’t follow sports…” Vinyl said. “Point is, no place is going to be open in the entire city, especially at this hour, except for some creepy joints to the south. And trust me when I say that you do not want to stay there.”
“Oh… I see… Well…” Octavia’s mind ran as fast as it could, though where it was running to she could not determine. What was she going to do?
“…Look, part of me is screaming for even thinking this, but… You can stay here until morning. If you want.”
Octavia’s head and ears sprang up. “Wh-what?” She looked at Vinyl for a moment, looking for any sign that she heard her correctly. “Do you mean it?”
“Don’t get weird about it. I have a couch you can sleep on, though I’m sure it’s not exactly the kind of exquisite furniture you’re used to.”
“Vinyl, I… I don’t know what to say! Thank you!”
“I told you not to get weird about it.” Vinyl stepped back inside the open door, standing just out of the way to show Octavia that she was welcome inside. After stepping over the threshold, Vinyl closed the door behind her, sealing it with another spell. “This way,” she motioned.
Vinyl’s apartment was small, the clutter within it making it feel even smaller. Most of it was a single room with a very worn couch at its center, a desk against a far wall with crumpled papers on the floor around it. A few boxes of take-out were spaced out here and there, giving the place a rather distinct scent. A small hallway led off the main room with a door on either side; a sink was visible behind one, leaving the second to what could only be a bedroom.
“There’s a blanket and pillow over in the corner,” Vinyl said. Octavia looked and saw the slumber companions lying in a space the most devoid of the apartment’s unorthodox decorations.
“Oh, um… Thank you,” Octavia managed. “Do you… Do you have visitors often?”
“More than you would think,” The DJ said with a shrug, heading for the bathroom. “Sometimes ponies just need a place to crash, and I offer it to them. Celestia knows, I’ve needed the same favor a few times myself.”
Octavia’s insides shifted uncomfortably at the thought, but decided it best to not ask about such memories. She collected the blanket and pillow, finding the sides with the least amount of stains before setting them under and over her head and body on a couch that poked at her uncomfortably in a few places. As she lay there, her mind once again stepped back to wonder what exactly she was doing with her life. When the sound of swirling water echoed from the bathroom’s opening door, Octavia turned her head in an attempt to address it.
“Good-night,” she called, her voice passing over a small lump in her throat. A short grunt responded to her before the sound of another door closing echoed forth.
Octavia sighed and stared up at the ceiling, unable to collect all of her thoughts. The day had gone perhaps a little better than she expected, but not nearly as well as she had hoped. She admitted that she had no one other than herself to blame. In a fit of frustration, she punched the back of the couch and rolled onto her side. Why did she ever let a friendship she used to care about so much get like this?
Something in the darkness caught her eye. On the wall across from her sat the only shelf in the entire apartment, and on top of it rested a small hoofful of paper record sleeves, their edges frayed to the point that any records within them were there out of habit more than safe keeping. Next to them was a small box with a rectangular glass lid on top, a scratch or two here and there not quite preventing the silhouette of a tone-arm from peeking through.
Octavia rolled the faded blanket off of her, grabbed the chair from in front of the desk, and moved it just underneath the shelf; the resident unicorn could probably get the artifacts down with magic any time she wanted, but Octavia would need a little bit of a boost. She carefully grabbed and removed the record player from its shelf, not wanting to damage what could be a very old and sentimental possession, assuming it was what she thought it was.
She recognized it instantly.


- * - * - * -


“How excited are you?!”
“So excited!”
The two fillies sat together on a train back to Ponyville, paying the white landscape streaming by their windows very little attention at all. Their first semester complete, Octavia was heading home to spend the holidays with her parents. And, because they now shared a mom and a dad, so was Vinyl. She was having a really hard time containing her enthusiasm.
“Young filly, please sit down!”
“Sorry.” Vinyl grinned sheepishly at a disgruntled attendant. She sat and looked up at the lime-green mare, who then turned and proceeded to the needs of other passengers. As soon as she was out of sight, Vinyl hopped down and got into the seat next to Octavia, the one she was assigned to in the first place. “This will be the best Hearth’s Warming Day ever!”
“I know! I can’t wait! And it’ll be so nice seeing Mom and Dad again!”
“It’ll be nice finally getting to meet them too!”
The two fillies rattled in their seats like rockets about to take off, eyes and smiles impossibly huge. If the train attendant weren’t checking on them every few minutes, one could only imagine what the two balls of energy would have done to the car. Then again, if the train didn’t serve complimentary cookies earlier in their travel, maybe she wouldn’t have to.
When the locomotive finally arrived at Ponyville’s station the two fillies were the first off the train. They were also the last, as trying to get back through a crowd of ponies anxious for fresh air proved difficult when attempting to reclaim forgotten luggage.
“Mom! Dad!” Octavia ran to two older ponies, forgetting her bags a second time. Vinyl’s horn sputtered for a moment, but eventually she managed to drag two sets of baggage behind her, one in a pale blue aura.
“Octavia! So good to have you home again.” A mare with a grey coat slightly lighter than her daughter’s pulled the music prodigy into a deep hug, her long mauve hair shielding the filly from sight for a moment. When she finally let go, Octavia ran to the stallion standing next to her and gripped one of his deep, dark blue legs. “Hey, kiddo,” this one said, ruffling her mane slightly.
“Octavia, did you bring a friend home?” her mom asked, noticing a shy unicorn foal stepping hesitantly towards them, the bags she bought for her daughter months before in the filly’s magical grip.
“Oh! Yes! Mom, Dad, this is my best friend Vinyl!” Octavia raced over to Vinyl, throwing an arm around her as though to prove she was more than happy to call her such. Octavia’s father looked at the newcomer with some concern, but her mother gave a warm smile.
“Well, welcome to Ponyville, Vinyl,” she said, her pleasant voice reflecting her smile. “Are you going to be staying with us for a couple of days?” Octavia’s dad looked at his wife with a certain amount of shock, but said nothing.
“The whole break!” Octavia said happily. At this, her father’s look of shock only deepened, and her mother’s face took on a trace of it as well.
“The whole break?” she asked. “Sweetheart, don’t you think she wants to spend time with her own family?”
“Well…” Octavia began. She looked at Vinyl, who had yet to speak, and didn’t look as though she was going to start any time soon. What happened to all of her excitement on the train? “Vinyl doesn’t actually have any parents… So I told her I would share you guys with her! So if I’m sharing my parents with her, that means she can spend Hearth’s Warming with us, right?”
Octavia’s parents looked at one another, their faces indiscernible to the fillies. Her dad shook his head ever so slightly, to which her mom squinted her eyes, boring into those of her husband. She turned back to the fillies, her face once again carrying a warm smile, albeit with a hint of sadness. “Of course, dear. That’s what family is for, isn’t it?”
“Oh, thank you!” Vinyl finally found her voice. She ran up and gripped the mare’s leg tightly. “Thank you thank you thank you!”
“It’s no trouble at all, sweetie,” Octavia’s mom chuckled, gently unhooking the filly from her appendage. Her husband gave the mare a look, who brushed it off with a roll of her eyes. “My name is Minor, and this is my husband Jazz.”
“Mr. Melody is fine,” Minor’s husband grunted. 
His wife didn’t acknowledge he said anything.
“Jazz and I were just getting out the decorations for the house,” Minor said. “Would you girls like to help us set them up?”
“YEAH!” The fillies’ cry echoed throughout the town, causing a pegasus to fall from a cloud in alarm.


- * -


“We’re barely getting our own daughter through that school, and now you want us to feed another mouth for three weeks?!”
“She’s. Octavia’s. FRIEND.” A quiet argument was taking place that winter’s night in Ponyville, the two voices locked in combat barely more than a hiss. “You know how hard it was for her to make friends here, and to be honest I thought she’d have an even harder time in Manehattan!”
“I don’t care! I mean, yeah, she’s got a friend, that’s great. But we can’t afford this! I’m already pulling double shifts at the farm, and you still haven’t found an opening to—”
“Stop that. We are not going to discuss where the money comes from anymore. We’re both trying very hard, and I still manage to scrape up a little from—”
“Of course we’re not going to talk about it, because then you’d remember that I’m pulling all the weight!” Jazz sneered. Minor looked hurt, and about ready to cry. Seeing his wife is this state softened Jazz some. “Look, we just… we can’t afford it. We’re not running an orphanage here.”
“I never said we had to! She’s just one filly, and isn’t exactly going to be here forever…”
“But you don’t know that! She doesn’t have a real home other than Saint Marey’s… Octavia could bring her home at every break! All summer even!”
“Would that really be so bad? For her to have a friend, and that sweet little filly to have someone? Surely we could—”
“Mom? Dad?”
A young voice stopped two hearts at once, the couple now realizing the kitchen had a third occupant. They both turned to see their daughter standing in her pajamas in the kitchen’s main entryway, rubbing one of her eyes. It was unclear if she was trying to rub out sleep or an invisible tear.
“Does… Does Vinyl have to leave?”
Octavia’s parents looked at each other much like they did at the train station. Jazz gave a grunt, turned towards the secondary kitchen entrance, and walked into the living room, leaving mother and daughter alone together.
“No, sweetie,” Minor finally said, patting her leg to show Octavia that she was invited to join her on her chair. Octavia crawled up, slipping slightly on one of her sleeves. “Your father and I were discussing… something a friend is going through. That’s all.”
“Oh…” Octavia nuzzled her mother’s warm fur, having no reason to not believe her words.
“Why are you even awake right now, my little pony? Do you and Vinyl need me to sing for you again?”
“No, you did fine… Vinyl’s still asleep. I just couldn’t sleep is all.”
“Oh?” Octavia hadn’t given her parents any trouble like this since she was a newborn. Minor knew other foals occasionally would need to join their parents in their bed a few times in their youth, but Octavia always seemed perfectly content in her own bedroom.
“Well…” Octavia began, “Before you came in to sing to us, I asked Vinyl what she wanted for Hearth’s Warming. And she got kind of sad. I didn’t know Hearth’s Warming could make people sad.”
Minor hummed. “I suppose not everypony is lucky enough to have so many wonderful memories about this time of year.”
Octavia continued. “She told me… She told me that she usually just get clothes. She says that she doesn’t mind much, even if she never wears them, because she says the clothes she does have usually get too small.” Octavia looked up at her mother, this time the tears in her eyes apparent. “I don’t want her to just get clothes, Mommy. She’s really nice, and she’s my best friend. I want her to get something special.”
“Like what?”
Octavia stopped crying for a moment and hopped off her mother’s lap. She walked out of the kitchen without a word. Confused, Minor debated if she was supposed to follow her daughter out into the hall, or stay put for her to return. Within moments Octavia answered this for her, coming back with a magazine in her mouth. She hopped back into her mother’s lap, dropping the periodical on the kitchen table.
“Oh, is this the magazine Vinyl was reading when I tucked you two in?”
“Uh-huh. She just got this one last week. She’s almost always looking at this page,” Octavia said, flipping the cover and a few pieces of paper behind it over. She pointed a tiny hoof at a picture of a device listed with a few numbers to the right of it. “Vinyl’s always talking about this. Like, what she would do if she had one and stuff. I told her she should get one, but then she got all sad. It’s a lot of money, and we barely made enough selling lemonade for her to even start getting these…”
“I see…” Octavia’s mother sighed as she looked at the object on the page.
“Do you… Do you think we can get it for her? I think she would really like it.”
Minor looked at her daughter, then back to the page. Even with its ‘special holiday price’, the device still cost a lot more money than Minor felt comfortable spending on her own family, let alone somepony she just met. Times were really hard on them at the moment. She could only imagine what her husband would say…
“Of course, dear. I think it’s a wonderful idea.”