When first your eye I eyed ….
Sweetie Belle sat in the first row of the Ponyville amphitheater studying her classmates as they rehearsed their play for Ponyville’s annual summer festival. Despite the lackluster reviews of her directorial debut, Sweetie’s knowledge of theater and her connections with Rarity meant that the class had enthusiastically endorsed her as the director for this endeavor. This time the writing wouldn’t be an issue, because the class had chosen to put on the classic story of Dusk Shine and Sunny Feather.
The play told the tale of two star crossed young lovers who risked everything for the chance to be together. Unlike most early romances this one appealed to the young ponies because for one, the heroine, Sunny, was not mere window dressing. She was a warrior princess from a tribe of Pegasi who personally led the raid on an earth pony castle when the evil queen, Maleficent, kidnapped her beloved. Despite the general consensus that Diamond Tiara would have made a great evil queen, the role went to Applebloom; who insisted that she was tired of always being in the background or on the set crew. So in exchange for building the set she got to play Maleficent, even if her accent made it a bit hard to take her menacing threats seriously.
Rumble was cast in the role of the hero, Dusk Shine. Dusk Shine was a kind but unwarrantedly cocky prince, who started the play as a bit of a braggart but became a gallant hero through the transformative powers of love by the end of the journey.
It was a classic story that was studied in both literature and drama schools throughout Equestria and the entire town was looking forward to seeing the young thespians perform it.
***
Sweetie Belle was in love, there could no longer be any doubt about it. Ever since she got back from the Crystal Empire all of her spare thoughts revolved around one orange coated, purple coifed pegasus. As with most crushes, at first she dismissed her feelings as a passing fancy, brought on by spending too much time with her friends; after all she had a crush on Applebloom for a week once, and during one very confusing day she thought she might love Diamond Tiara. But after a week without her feelings abating even in the slightest she was forced to admit that this crush wasn’t going away.
She could pinpoint, with alarming clarity, the exact moment she fell in love. It was at the Equestria Games, during the flag carrying ceremonies. As she watched Scootaloo carry the flag, happily buzzing forward on her scooter she was struck by just how beautiful Scootaloo was. It wasn’t the flashy, manufactured beauty of a runway model. Sweetie Belle had met more than a few models, both mares and stallions, and while they were pleasant to look at, Sweetie had always found them pleasant to look at in the way one might enjoy a painting; aesthetically pleasing but lacking any depth. Their features were all too uniform, too perfect, for Sweetie Belle to really find them attractive. Scootaloo’s beauty, on the other hoof, had character; the little tuft that curled up at the end of her velvet purple mane, the scar she bore from that time she tried to jump a hay bale that was just a little too big, and the way her smile was ever so crooked if you looked closely enough were what made her beautiful.
The other problem with models, according to Sweetie Belle, was that almost all had, at best, vapid personalities, and at worse, they were downright self absorbed. Scootaloo wasn’t like that; she was sweet. It could be hard to tell sometimes underneath her brash exterior, but once you got to know her it would be impossible to find a better friend. She was relentlessly optimistic and cheerful through their seemingly never-ending failures to find their cutie marks. Her smile lit up a room and Sweetie had always found it just a little harder to be upset when the orange pegasus was around.
She was perfect; of course like all perfect ponies, Scootaloo didn’t think so. If you had asked her to talk about herself the first thing she would mention is her small wings, which had so far left her unable to conquer gravity for more than a few seconds at a time. If Scootaloo could be said to have a flaw, which again she really couldn’t, it was that she spent too much time complaining about her wings. But whereas Scootaloo hated her wings Sweetie Belle found that she rather liked them. They weren’t so big as to be distracting, rather they served to accent the adorable curve of her flank and lean muscular tautness of the rest of her body.
Wanting to be sure that her feelings were genuine, Sweetie had conducted an informal poll of some of the couples in Ponyville she knew: Lyra and Bon Bon, her parents, Vinyl and Octavia, and the Cakes. Their reactions had all been a combination of two platitudes: “Oh how adorable” and “When it’s love you just know”.
Well she knew it was love, and that was a problem because she was pretty sure Scootaloo didn’t feel the same way. She had been studying her crush for a few weeks now, trying to divine her feelings and so far the results were not promising. Scootaloo didn’t get a little bounce in her step when Sweetie Belle walked into the clubhouse, she didn’t seem to be inventing excuses for them to spend time together, and she seemed perfectly content to go back home at the end of the days adventures.
And so Sweetie found herself in Rarity’s parlor room talking to her big sister.
“What should you do if you like somepony but they don’t like you back?”she had asked rather tentatively.
“What are you talking about dear? Who could possibly resist your charms? Is it Pipsqueak? Rumble? You don’t have some sort of Stockholm syndrome crush on Silver Spoon do you?
“No, it’s none of them…it…it doesn’t matter who it is, they like somepony else. At least I think they do. In any case they don’t like me ‘that way’.”
“Well forgive me for being brusque dear, but have you asked them if they might have feelings for you?”
“No, but it doesn’t matter, I’m pretty sure I’m not their type.”
Rarity looked at her sister with a mix of sympathy and pain from her own experience with Trenderhoof. “Sweetie, if somepony doesn’t like you for who you are, that’s their loss. You are a smart, funny, very pretty, if I do say so, wonderful young mare, and anypony who doesn’t recognize that is quite simply a boorish idiot and not worth a second thought.”
“Yes they are,” Sweetie said softly.
Rarity wrapped her little sister in a hug and rested her head atop the soft pink and purple mane. “Oh Sweetie, you are far too young to deal with such terrible heartache. Trust me, one day you are going to make somepony very happy, but until then how about this? I have to go to Manehattan this weekend to meet with a supplier, how about you come with me and after my meeting we’ll go see a show? Would you like that?”
Sweetie nodded and nestled her face in the comforting softness of her big sister, and they had indeed taken a trip to Manehattan and saw a Bridleway production of “Colts and Dolls”. For a weekend, Sweetie Belle almost managed to forget about her unrequited love; but then she got back to Ponyville and began directing her own play.
***
Opening night was still a few weeks away but, in her role as director, Sweetie had decided to call for a dress rehearsal so that the actors could get used to their costumes and she could see what they looked like on stage and with movement so that afterwards, Rarity could make any necessary improvements. And though she would vehemently deny it if questioned, she enjoyed the chance to look at Scootaloo in a dress that somehow made her look even more graceful than usual.
“You guys are saying your lines like you’re ordering a sandwich. Dusk Shine is standing outside the castle calling out to Sunny after both her parents and his parents told him to let it go. It’s an important scene. Put some feeling into it!” Sweetie implored the ponies standing on the stage looking about as in love as a tree and a fish.
“Can’t we rehearse the fight scene?” Scootaloo asked impatiently. The only reason she had agreed to play the part of the heroine was that in between the sappy love speeches and elaborately choreographed ballroom dances, she got an awesome action sequence where she fought through a battlefield of warriors to rescue her beloved.
“Scootaloo’s right, love stories are boring,” Rumble chimed in.
“Love stories aren’t boring!” Sweetie Belle bounded up on stage and stood where Rumble had been standing just a moment ago. She looked at Scootaloo, standing in her dress on her elevated platform; unaware of the effect she or her character had on the ponies around them. “He loves her. He knows he shouldn’t, he knows all the reasons why it won’t work and he just doesn’t care. He knows he should forget about her and find somepony else who makes him happy but he can’t, he... just can’t. She’s the last thing he thinks about when she goes to bed and the first thing she thinks about in the morning. She makes him absolutely miserable because every second they are apart hurts. But the only thing that hurts worse is when they are together because she can’t tell her how she feels, and that hurts more than anything else possibly could. She knows… just knows… that nopony could possibly make her as happy as she will and that’s why she’s here, standing outside the gates of a castle, in the rain, because she’s willing to risk everything for just one chance to try and convince her that she can make her one tenth as happy as she feels when they are together.”
Sweetie snapped out of the trance she had been in only to realize she had been openly staring at Scootaloo for the entirety of her impromptu speech. In addition she noticed that not only was the theater silent, everypony was now staring at her, even the ones who were constructing the set. She cleared her throat, “Umm... take five, everypony…think about the scene,” she said before running out of the amphitheater, determined not to let anypony see the nascent tears forming in her eyes.
The nearest form of secluded shelter was the supply closet that held the extra chairs and banners for the amphitheater, so that’s where Sweetie ran to. Safely inside, away from the sight of anypony else, she began to cry. Of all the ways for Scootaloo to find out about her feelings, openly confessing them in front of everypony had been only a step above having Scootaloo learn about them from Diamond Tiara. But now her secret was out in the open for the whole world to mock.
Sweetie sat in the corner of the dusty equipment shed wishing that she knew a teleportation spell that could take her somewhere far away, but the most she could do was levitate a broom. So as it was, she began to resign herself to spending the rest of her life in the shed. Maybe she’d get her cutie mark in stacking chairs. She’d be that weird pony who lived in the shed, and fillies would tell ghost stories about her and how if you didn’t stack the chairs correctly she’d come for you in the middle of the night and turn you into a chair, because she would learn how to do that apparently.
Her musing was cut short by a gentle knock.
“Sweetie Belle?” came the familiar voice of the one pony she had fervently prayed somehow didn’t realize what she was saying.
One glance at Scootaloo, and those wide purple eyes, was all she needed to know that trying to feign ignorance was not going to work. Oh that speech back there? I was just talking about the characters. Why am I crying? It’s just allergies and I’m in this dusty shed because it’s really bright outside and I don’t want to damage my eyes.
“Go away...just leave me alone,” she croaked, her voice broken and ragged. She didn’t really want Scootaloo to go away, she wanted Scootaloo to wrap her forelegs around her and tell her everything was going to be okay. But since she was pretty sure that wasn’t going to happen, she’d rather have Scootaloo leave then be forced to deal with what came next; at least that way she could hold on to the last dying ember of hope she had.
Then Scootaloo did the worst thing she could possibly do: she hugged her without saying a word. The orange pegasus gingerly walked over to her friend, wrapped her forelegs around her and rested her head on Sweetie’s shoulder.
Sweetie Belle wanted to push her friend away. Some small part of her didn’t want to allow her friend the satisfaction of comforting her - if she had to be miserable then the least Scootaloo could do was be a tiny bit miserable too! But she didn’t, and much to that small part of her’s chagrin, the sensation of Scootaloo resting her head on her shoulder felt nice. For a brief instant, she allowed herself to imagine that her fillyfriend was gently snuggling her as they settled in for a quiet movie night, and in that fleeting moment she felt the soothing balm of relief from her anguish. Of course, reality couldn’t let her enjoy her delusions and as quickly as she felt better, her world came crashing down sending her back to her dusty shed with her unrequited love staring her in the face. “Why are you hugging me?” she squeaked out, still fighting the stream of hot tears running down her cheeks.
“Because you’re sad, and it’s my fault. I don’t want you to be sad.”
Sweetie Belle laughed, an involuntarily sharp bark of a laugh. It wasn’t because what Scootaloo said was funny; it was because even in the worst moment of her life, Scootaloo was too darn perfect. It seemed as though the universe wanted to add one last punch line to the cruel joke it was playing. I’m the one who messed everything up and Scootaloo blames herself. Why can’t she be selfish just this once, then it’d be easier to hate her. “It’s not your fault,” she said, furiously trying to wipe the tears from her eyes. “It’s me and my stupid feelings. Can we just forget I ever said anything and go back to being friends?”
“I don’t think it works that way.” Scootaloo said sadly, breaking the hug. The unspoken truth that things would never be the same, for better or worse, hung in the air like an oppressive fog.
“Why can’t it work that way? I promise I’ll never bring it up ever again. Just give me a day to get over all this, and then we can go back to the way things were.”
A brief look of anger flashed across Scootaloo’s face. “You mean when you were miserable? You’re not that good of an actor, Sweetie. Bloom and I could tell something’s been bothering you since we got back from the Crystal Empire and it hurt that you wouldn’t tell us. We’re a trio, we shouldn’t have secrets from each other.”
The only response Sweetie could muster was a soft “oh.” She was so sure that she had done a masterful job hiding her feelings that learning that she had hurt her friends, in addition to her own pain already, just added another layer onto her growing pile of self loathing. The two fillies sat in the shed awkwardly staring at the ground for a few seconds until Scootaloo broke the uncomfortable silence.
“So I was thinking about the scene like you said. Y’know how when Sunny doesn't hear Dusk the first time he calls out to her so he yells louder?” Sweetie Belle nodded. “I was thinking that maybe she did hear him, but she was just scared.”
“Why would she be scared?” It was easier for both ponies to pretend that they were talking about the play.
“Because she knows why he’s there, she isn’t stupid. There’s this totally awesome pony who likes her and she doesn’t want to end up hurting him, and she doesn’t want to get hurt either.”
“But he would never hurt her! He’d do anything to make her happy!”
“Nopony ever plans to hurt somepony, but it happens anyway. And then she’d be left without her best friend, whether either of them meant for it to happen or not.”
Sweetie Belle sat on her haunches unsure how to respond, so she was grateful when Scootaloo spoke first. “Nopony’s ever liked me before.”
“That’s not true, Scoots, everypony likes you.”
“What about Diamond Tiara?” A small smile crept across her face and the friends shared a brief giggle. Predictably, their respite was short-lived. “You know what I mean, Sweetie. Rumble thinks I’m fun to hang out with, and Button Mash and I sometimes play videogames together, but nopony’s ever told me that they like like me before.”
“Well that’s stupid. You’re great. You’re kind and generous, you’re lots of fun at parties, you’re a great dancer, and you’re totally fearless! Which is cool. And you look amazing without even trying! I mean, I’ve seen you when you wake up and all it takes is like two seconds of tousling your mane and you’re good to go. There’s no downside to you, Scoots.”
Scootaloo blushed and pawed at the ground. “That’s nice of you to say,” she said softly.
“Umm... do you think- you could ever- like me?” Sweetie was careful to phrase her question in the broadest terms possible, decreasing the chance for rejection, but also sharpening the sting if Scootaloo said no.
“I already do like you.”
Sweetie Belle glared at her friend as harshly as the circumstances would allow, which granted wasn’t very much. “You know what I mean.”
“I..I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about a filly that way before. Umm…I can’t promise that I’ll necessarily ever feel the same way about you, but I’m willing to give it a try. I mean, when an awesome pony likes you it seems like it’d be pretty stupid to say no, right?”
“Really?” was the only reaction Sweetie could come up with as her emotions fought with her brain, creating a swirling mess of feelings that Sweetie wasn’t quite equipped to handle.
Scootaloo nodded, but then bit her lip. “Umm if it doesn’t work out-and I want it to-I really do, can we still be friends?” The orange pegasus looked down at the ground for a second before continuing. “You’re my best friend and I don’t want to think what my life would be like without you in it.”
The emotions of the last few minutes, combined with her previous emotional distress, left Sweetie Belle unable to respond other than to smile and nod quickly as she tried to fight the mix of happy tears and emotional exhaustion. A second later, she found herself wrapped in another perfectly warm Scootaloo hug. Only this time, she didn’t have to pretend that it was anything other than what it was.