"Fluttershy, darling," Rarity said slowly, "you are extremely loveable."
Fluttershy shook her head sadly. "You're being very nice to me. I'm grateful to you for it. But I know I'm not loveable. I wasn't loved the one time I ever tried to make love. I barely have any friends. I hide in my cottage. Most ponies look right through me. I'm not popular."
"Fluttershy," said Rarity, rolling upright to sit on her rump.
Fluttershy also sat up to join her.
"Let me tell you about yourself," Rarity continued.
"You are absolutely, utterly beautiful. You look like some princess from an old painting brought to life. Do you think I'm beautiful?"
Fluttershy was flushing a little at the earlier compliments, but she nodded in response to Rarity's question.
"I have to sit at my toilette for an hour every morning to look like this," said Rarity. "You look devastatingly beautiful when you wake up with your hair in a mess. You look beautiful sopping wet. You have a natural elegance about you that most professional models would kill to achieve, and I don't think you've ever been trained as a model. You move with a grace I've never seen in any other Pegasus, and that includes aloft, for all you think you're a terrible flier."
"I'm not really all that good a flier," Fluttershy pointed out, leaning forward. "Compared to Dashie I'm standing still."
"Well, you look good standing still," said Rarity. "And anyway, pretty much every other Pegasus is standing still compared to Rainbow Dash. She's an incredibly fast flier. And you are incredbily graceful. Do you understand me?"
"Well, maybe I'm not all that ugly," conceded Fluttershy. "But love is about more than looks."
"Indeed," said Rarity. "True love is about character. And you are also one of the nicest, kindest and sweetest Ponies I have ever known. You put yourself out tremendously to take care of your animals, you're good to anypony who isn't totally mean to you -- your worst fault socially is that you choose to hide yourself from others, so your friends often have to seek you out. Which we do, Fluttershy. Because we love your company."
"I'm not that nice," said Fluttershy, frowning as she considered her own recent actions. "I didn't want to let you into my house earlier. That wasn't very friendly of me."
"You were under a bit of strain," Rarity pointed out, unable to entirely keep the sarcasm out of your voice. "What kind of a friend would I be if I didn't take that into account? And normally, you are a very polite Pony. Your manners are at least as good as Twilight Sparkle's, and she was raised in the Royal Court. You exude class -- I noticed that about you the very first time I met you. You're like a diamond in the mud of this provincial little town."
Fluttershy outright blushed at this praise, but she also smiled. "You're just being nice to me," she said, "but thank you anyway."
"No, really," insisted Rarity. "I cannot emphasize how admirable and beautiful and loveable in every way you are in truth. Fluttershy --" she looked directly into her friend's eyes, "if I were not as straight as one of my rulers, I would probably be in love with you. And I could not love you more as a friend than I do. Anypony, of either sex, who gets to know you well and doesn't love you is an imbecile, with absolutely no taste in companions. Have I made myself clear?"
Fluttershy nodded, her face bright red, but notably not trying to hide behind her hair. She smiled warmly. Then she frowned.
"But there's one thing wrong with that," she pointed out. "The one time I actually did ... become intimate with somepony ... he didn't like me afterward. So there must be something wrong with me, something that becomes obvious when somepony gets that close to me."
"Oh, that no-account philliper?" Rarity asked angrily.
Fluttershy winced, and Rarity moderated her tone.
"Darling, I'm not mad at you," Rarity clarified. "I'm just upset that you put so much credence in the opinions of such an obviously false and unworthy individual as this 'Nosey,' who wasn't even honest enough to tell you his right name. I wouldn't trust him to sell me a properly-made ribbon, let alone to advise me in matters of the heart. And in any case, he was never interested in being your friend, or really your lover either. It had absolutely nothing to do with anything you said or did -- you couldn't win with him. Can't you see that?"
Fluttershy looked mystified. "Wait," she said. "I thought it was that I wasn't very good in ..."
"No!" Rarity shouted. "It had nothing to do with that!"
Fluttershy was sufficiently curious about Rarity's point that this time she did not flinch from the shouting. "What do you mean?" she asked.
Rarity sighed. She would have to spell it out, and she hated to be so direct on such an ugly topic. Sometimes, however, refinement had to yield to the demands of friendship.
"Nosey wasn't looking for a friend. He wasn't even looking for a lover, not in the sense that you or I would use the term. He was only looking to get laid." On those last three words, Rarity completely dropped her normal Stormy Elite pronounciation, and the dialect of the decent but unassuming lower middle-class home in which she had been born and raised showed through nakedly. Neither of them even noticed this, such was the emotional tension of the moment.
"Wait," asked Fluttershy, "wouldn't that make him care more about how good I ..."
"No." said Rarity flatly. "He went into that bar looking for a mare -- any mare, who was heterosexual and not entirely hideous, who would be willing for whatever reason to walk out of there with him. The fact that he found a goddess out slumming probably made him happier, but he would have settled for anypony. He didn't care about who you were at all."
Fluttershy looked hurt. "But he was so nice to me at first ..."
"Yes," said Rarity. "He was nice to you because he wanted something. Sex. And nothing more. And then when he'd gotten it, he had what he wanted so it was time to leave, before he risked engaging you in conversation and perhaps being tempted to come back. Because he wanted to avoid any complications."
"But you just said I was really nice and loveable -- wouldn't he want to come back to somepony nice and loveable?" Fluttershy was looking more and more confused.
"No," Rarity was being almost mercilessly direct now, a side of herself few Ponies saw outside of the hardest phase of business negotiations. She didn't like behaving like this to a dear friend, but she felt she had to make Fluttershy see what had actually happened that night four years ago, for her friend's own good. "As I said, he wanted to avoid any complications. Love is a complication. Even friendship is a complication."
"What?" asked Fluttershy. "But isn't that why one would want to be with somepony special? Love? Friendship?"
"Yes," said Rarity. "For you or I. And for quite a lot of other Ponies, both mares and stallions. Most of them, I should imagine. But not for Nosey." She marshaled her thoughts, trying to find a way to explain it so that her sweet and still evidently far too naive friend could really grasp it.
"Try to look at it from Nosey's perspective," Rarity continued, her tone softening a bit. "Not from Nosey if he were yourself as a stallion, but from Nosey the way he really was, the way he obviously was from every aspect of his behavior. He went into that bar looking for somepony to have sex with. He did not want a friend. He did not want a lover. That's plain from what he did the next morning.
"Why didn't he want a friend or lover? I don't know the answer. Maybe he was simply a cold and callous sort of stallion. Maybe he had a special somepony, or even a wife and foals, waiting back home for him. Maybe he just wanted to hurt you ---"
Fluttershy looked at her friend in shock. "Surely nopony would --"
"Yes," said Rarity flatly. "Someponies would." She briefly remembered a younger Rarity in Fillydelphia, and just how she had discovered this painful truth about equine nature. "It doesn't really matter why he was trying to avoid making any sort of emotional connection with you. The point is that this is what he was doing.
"The things he said to you? The way he seemed interested in your life, your thoughts, your animals? It was just an act. He was simply saying whatever would work to get into your heart, because he had to assume that you might be somepony who was looking for a friend, a true lover, who would be driven off if you knew that he was just looking for a one-night stand. He was lying, Fluttershy, and he knew exactly what he was doing."
Fluttershy's expression was one of utter shock. She'd obviously never looked at it this way before.
"So it didn't matter how good or bad you were sexually," Rarity said. "If Ponies actually like one another, inexperience is rarely a real problem anyway -- they can always work such matters out over time. You could have been the most incredible lover in the history of love, and he still would have left that morning, and never come back. It had nothing to do with you. Can you see that?"
Fluttershy nodded dumbly.
"You came into that bar looking for a friend. He came in there looking for sex. You were playing two different games. There was no way for you to win as long as you played with him. In the future, just don't get into the game with a stallion like Nosey. And stay away from bars like that -- most of the stallions you'll meet in such places are more or less like Nosey. Do you see?"
A look of comprehension was dawning on Fluttershy's face.
"Yes ..." Fluttershy said slowly. "I think I do see. But you're wrong about one thing ... sorry ... but I think it's important to mention it."
"What's that, darling?" Rarity asked. She was glad to see that at least some of what she'd said had clearly penetrated, but still wasn't certain that Fluttershy had gotten her point.
"We were playing the same game," Fluttershy said. "We were just choosing different strategies ..."
"How so?"
"Birds."
"Eh?" Rarity was now thoroughly mystified.
"Most mammals just mate in season and don't stay together afterward," Fluttershy said. "Sometimes they just stay together long enough for the male to perform the act and then immediately separate. I used to think that Ponies were different because we're smarter and have civilization and morals, so that's why mating means more to us." Her gaze was direct, her ears up, her voice clear.
"Well, we do, darling," said Rarity. "At least most Ponies do."
"But I was wrong," said Fluttershy. "It's not about having better morals. It's about having a different strategy."
"You've lost me," Rarity admitted.
"Ponies are pregnant for ten months," Fluttershy said, "and we're increasingly helpless as the time approaches. We have difficult childbirths compared to most animals, because of our big heads, which we have to have in order to be smart. And then we have foals who take eight or more years to grow to the point that they can be trusted to spend much time on their own, and even longer to learn enough to be productive members of society."
"Yes, that's true," said Rarity. "But what does that have to do with morals?"
"There are two basic reproductive strategies for a species," Fluttershy explained. "High-r, or 'reproduction,' which means 'have a lot of babies and then abandon them to the chances of Nature.' That's what most insects and fish do. And high-k, or 'care," which means 'have one or a few babies but take very good care of them.' Ponies are at the extreme end of high-k -- we only have one foal at a time but we take very good care of our foals."
"I see ..." said Rarity. "But morals?"
"If you're a high-k mother," Fluttershy continued, "you need to put a lot of effort into your baby. You need to put so much effort that you endanger your own survival. It's a lot better if the father also takes care of the mother and foal, isn't it? And keeps on taking care of them as the foal grows to adulthood?"
"Well of course," said Rarity. "Everypony knows that being a single mother is a hard fate."
"Most mammals aren't that high-k," Fluttershy said. "Nothing like Ponies. But some birds are."
"Back to birds." Rarity wasn't sure where this was going.
"Yes. A bird lays an egg, and has to sit on it, and she can't go very far from her nest to get food. And then the egg hatches, and she has a hatchling, and she has to get food for the hatchling and protect it against predators. And it can take a while before the chick is old enough to fly, and even longer before it is developed enough to survive on its own. So birds are high-k animals.
"Well, some birds are," Fluttershy clarified her point. "The ones that are high-k are called 'altrucial,' because the parents have to behave altruistically to their chicks or they won't survive. But then there are other birds who have chicks which don't spend very much time in the nest, which can go off on their own in a matter of weeks. These birds are called 'precocial,' because the chicks are 'precocious.' And they tend to lay more eggs -- they are using a high-r reproductive strategy.
"Now, here's the interesting thing. High-k birds tend to mate for at least a season, and sometimes for life, like swans. But high-r birds mate just like most mammals -- the male will show off for the female, and mate her, and then fly away. The reason why, of course, is that the high-k mother needs the father to stick around; the high-r mother doesn't need the father for anything but his seed."
Rarity noticed that when Fluttershy was talking about biology from a scientific perspective, she displayed neither shame nor any particular shyness. This was her specialty, and within it she was very confident.
"I think I see what you're getting at," said Rarity. "The altrucial birds have -- well, better morals."
"Yes -- from a Pony point of view," replied Fluttershy. "But then of course we'd see things that way. We're very high-k creatures ourselves -- more like altrucial birds than precocial ones."
"You're right," agreed Rarity.
"And here's an even more interesting thing," said Fluttershy. "Dedicated birdwatchers have noticed that in some species -- especially ones that are around midway between the two reproductive strategies -- the birds in a mated pair can cheat on one another!"
"Who would have thought it?" murmured Rarity. "Should I be shocked at such scandals in the avian community?"
"Or," Fluttershy said a bit sadly, "sometimes the male will pretend to form a pair-bond -- that's what happens when altrucial birds mate -- but he doesn't really mean it. He'll get the female pregnant and just fly on. Sometimes he has a real mate and also tries to mate with many other females."
"Isn't it just like stallions?" commented Rarity.
"Yes," said Fluttershy. "It is. And here's why.
"The male bird -- the male of most animal species -- doesn't have to commit much when he mates. Just a little time and energy and seed. But the female gets pregnant, and grows a baby, which takes a lot of nutrition -- and in high-k species she has to care for her offspring. So what this means is that the female has to be more choosy about who she mates with than does the male. There's a basic asymmetry in the situation -- if he chooses a poor mate, he can just fly on to the next one, and if he impregnates a lot of females and helps none of them, he can just count on sheer numbers of offspring to make up for the poorer care given each one. But if she chooses unwisely, she has to take care of the chick on her own, and it's much less likely to survive."
"Now I see your point," Rarity said. "It's just like stallions and mares, then." She remembered her own unwise choice, long ago, and what had nearly happened to her in consequence. She looked away, not wanting to meet Fluttershy's gaze.
"I once didn't think so," Fluttershy said. "Because we are intelligent, and moral. But then perhaps I was wrong." She looked very sad at the shattering of her illusions.
"Well," Rarity said, "Some stallions." She looked back at Fluttershy. "My parents can be annoying," she confided. "But they love each other madly. They have my whole life. I've never seen my father look seriously at another mare. And the way he looks at my mother -- it can be very embarrassing, but it's also very beautiful."
"You're fortunate," said Fluttershy. "My ... my mother's husband abandoned her, soon after I was born." She looked down sadly. "I always hoped I could find somepony better than she did."
"You shall," said Rarity, patting her friend's hoof. "You just need to understand that it may not be the first stallion you meet. And you need to learn how to reject the stallions who don't really care about you."
"Exactly!" said Fluttershy. "And that's where game theory comes in."
"I was thinking more in terms of discernment and restraint," said Rarity.
"Yes," said Fluttershy. "That's exactly the right strategy. In the game."
"Game?" Rarity tilted her head inquiringly.
"I ..." Fluttershy wilted briefly, then rephrased it. "A female would want a male who would stay with her after mating, which would mean a lot of commitment from a single mate. A male might want either to stay with his mate and take care of their offspring, which would be ideal for the female; or he might want to just spread his seed as widely as possible, and abandon each female in turn."
Rarity noticed that Fluttershy perked up again when she moved from the personal to the theoretical.
"In Pony terms," Fluttershy said,"that mare would be looking for a friend ... a lover ... a husband. But the stallion might be looking for the same thing, or he might just be looking to mate and fly on." She looked sad for a moment, then continued. "So how can the mare tell what the stallion really wants?"
"That," said Rarity, "is truly a conundrum."
"So what she does," said Fluttershy, "is see if the male is seriously willing to court her. In birds that would involve him doing a dance for her, or bringing her gifts of food. I suppose in Ponies it would be talking to her, taking her out to restaurants ... showing he cared about her. But he could be only pretending to be interested in her. And I guess she could only be pretending to be interested in him?"
Rarity nodded.
"So each of them has two possible strategies in the game," Fluttershy said. "From his perspective, she's 'cooperating' if she mates with him, 'betraying' if she takes his gifts and doesn't mate with him. And from her perspective, he's 'cooperating' if he stays with her, 'betraying' if she leaves right afterward. It's the Prisoner's Dilemma!
"But the problem," she continued, "is that if they do it that way, there's only one iteration to the game. And she can't let it work that way, because if she mates with him and he flies away, she'll be ..." Fluttershy swallowed, "very sad. And she might ..." Fluttershy's voice got very low, "... have a foal. I was afraid, right after that night ..." She started to cringe again, ears lowering, face going behind her hair.
"The game, darling," said Rarity. "Continue explaining the game."
"Oh, right," said Fluttershy, straightening her posture. "So the female makes it an indefinitely iterated game. She only allows certain intimacies in the early rounds, to give him reason to hope she's interested, while giving herself time to figure out if he's serious. And that way, if he is serious, he'll stick around long enough for her to mate with him, and if he's not serious, he'll fly away before she lets him mate her and then she won't have to worry about being a single mother while he spreads his seed to all the other females! She can do Nice Tit-For-Tat based on his behavior, and if he's Nice long enough she figures he's serious!" Fluttershy smiled triumphantly, clearly considering herself the discoverer of a new scientific principle.
It's actually a very old principle, thought Rarity, and it's one I think I was born knowing. But I think she's got it. This was, essentially, what I was trying to explain to her. It was, of course, more complex than that -- much more complex than that -- but Fluttershy had the main point down perfectly.
"Yes, darling," said Rarity. "You're correct." Even if there are two normal meanings of the term "nice" in this particular context, and one of them is almost the direct opposite of the other. But then, maybe Fluttershy's actually stating it more logically. Ponies aren't always very logical, in matters of the heart.
"I ... I had it completely wrong before, didn't I?" Fluttershy said. "I just wanted to be nice, and I assumed that he wanted to be nice too, so I thought that we'd both win. But we didn't. I picked Nice, and he picked Nasty, and he got all the payoff, and I got less than nothing." Her voice was soft, but she could say it now steadily, and without crying. "I couldn't have won, the way I was playing the game. My strategy wasn't a robust solution to the game."
"Yes," said Rarity. She felt sad saying this. It was an admission that sometimes nice Ponies finished last, that sometimes Love and Friendship could not conquer all, because one was dealing with those who did not respect Kindness. This was not the world in which she wanted to live, but it was Reality, and refusing to face Reality was what led to madness, what led to sitting alone at home staring at an ancient honor blade -- or a pair of not-so-ancient sharp fabric-cutting scissors -- and contemplating what seemed to be easy solutions to Life's problems. So it was better to acknowledge Reality than to avoid it.
"But, darling," Rarity said, "there's another, more fundamental way in which he didn't win."
"How is that?" asked Fluttershy, looking with surprise at her friend.
"He missed the chance to know a really wonderful Pony, a Pony who would have gladly been his friend and his lover and made him happier than a lout like that would ever have deserved," Rarity said, very seriously. "And I know this because your friendship makes me happier than anypony could possibly deserve."
Fluttershy smiled at her friend, a small smile that grew into a look of tremendous happiness that warmed Rarity's own heart.
"Now come on," said Rarity. "We're both messy from galloping and crying and rolling around on the floor and doing such other undignified things. We both need some good long relaxation.
"Let's go to the spa."
They both got to their hooves. As they turned toward the door, Fluttershy lowered her head, bumped, rubbed herself and leaned against Rarity's side, expressing wordlessly how much she loved her friend. Warmth spread from the point of contact.
Rarity looked at Fluttershy, and could almost feel the happiness streaming out from Fluttershy's soul. She knew that Fluttershy's future would not be perfect, because nopony's ever was perfect in an imperfect world, but Rarity also knew that she had helped her friend understand what had happened to her four years ago, and in understanding take the first step to conquer the demons of a terrible memory.
The two friends stepped out into the sunlight, together.