//------------------------------//
// Chapter 14. Proverbs 25:15 
// Story: The Draconequus with the Dragon Tattoo 
// by A M Shark 
//------------------------------//

Chapter 14

“Through patience a ruler can be persuaded, and a gentle tongue can break a bone.”—Proverbs 25:15






Weak sunlight streamed in through the window, causing Fluttershy’s eyelids to twitch open. She was lying on her side with her chin resting on Discord’s left shoulder and her cheek pillowed against his neck. The coils of his warm body were wrapped around her from tail to just behind her front legs, and his eagle arm was wrapped loosely around her neck. It was strange to think that being in such a position would once have sent her into a full-blown panic, but now it only brought a sense of security.

The last thing Fluttershy remembered was crying herself to sleep in Discord’s arms. Considering what she’d faced the day before, she had feared having a nightmare but had felt too exhausted to resist falling asleep. But the expected nightmares hadn’t come. Instead she had slept quite soundly.

Well, maybe not quite soundly.

She’d had at least one dream. Shutting her eyes, she now tried to recall its details. All she could really remember was that it had been dark in the dream ... and she’d been vaguely aware of Discord leaning over her and ... kissing her on the forehead. A small half-amused half-wistful smile crept across her face at the absurdity of the idea. The fact that she’d actually been able to feel his lips, complete with that fang on one side of his mouth and that ring through his lower lip on the other, pressing against her forehead with no bandages between them pretty much confirmed that she’d been dreaming.

Oh, Fluttershy, where do you get these silly ideas from? she thought, shaking her head. Why in the world would he have done that?


Is it so silly? the small voice in her head prodded. He kissed you on the forehead before he left yesterday.


Fluttershy’s eyelids cracked open again and she frowned. It was true. At least he’d seemed to kiss her—

Her thoughts were interrupted as Discord, still asleep, tightened his eagle arm around her neck and slid his lion paw underneath her to wrap around her shoulders. The arm around her neck wasn’t tight enough to choke, but it did put enough pressure on her bruised throat to make her wince. This discomfort drew her attention to a throbbing that had started on the back of her head, and an itching that had started on its left side where it was pressed against Discord’s neck.

Squirming about, she lifted her head away from him ... and noticed something odd, well, odder than usual about his arm. The barbed tattoo that ordinarily looped around his biceps was gone!

Twisting her head around to follow the line of his neck, she saw that the wasp tattoos it normally sported were missing as well. In fact, all his tattoos seemed to be missing!

“Discord,” she called, shaking his neck.

The draconequus snorted himself awake. “Hmm! What is it? What’s going on?” He snapped his head up, pulling her closer to his chest and out of his coils in the process. “What’s wrong?” He twisted his head a full three-hundred and sixty degrees, searching the room for any possible danger.

“Muffings wrong.” Fluttershy’s voice came out muffled against his chest. “At least I don’t think so,” she added as he loosened his hold on her enough so that she could raise her face clear of his chest fur.

“What do you mean?” Discord asked.

Looking up to meet his gaze, Fluttershy now saw that not only were his tattoos gone, but the studs and rings he normally had on his face and in his ears were gone as well. And not as if he’d merely taken them out, but as if he’d never had them in the first place. There weren’t even any tell-tale indentations marking where the jewelry had been the night before.

Discord frowned at her. “What is it?”

“Your tattoos and piercings, they’re all gone.”

He blinked then raised one of his now-unpierced eyebrows. “Really?”

He snapped a full-length mirror into existence above them and let it hover there. Fluttershy swallowed, not comfortable with something that big and heavy-looking floating over her, but Discord seemed too busy scrutinizing his reflection to notice.

“Hmm.” He kneaded his facial features with his paw. “Hmm. Huh.” Then he shrugged and snapped the mirror back out of existence.

Looking back down at Fluttershy, a concerned expression flashed across his face. “Your head’s bleeding.” Lifting her in his arms, he let his long body uncoil and straighten into a standing position. “Come on. Let’s have a look at that.”

“But ... what about your tattoos and piercings? Why are they gone?” The fact that Discord seemed to be acting so nonchalant about their sudden absence was almost as baffling as the absence itself.

The draconequus was silent for a moment, and when he finally spoke his voice was thoughtful.

“I guess I don’t need them anymore.”





When they got a look at Fluttershy’s head, it turned out her stitches had broken sometime during the night before and the wound had started bleeding again. Out of respect for her earlier wishes, Discord didn’t try to heal the cut magically. But he did use a bit of his magic to fuse the threads of her stitches back together before helping her clean up the blood and swapping the stained bandages for fresh ones. He also gave her another ointment rubdown, trying to be especially gentle with her neck since the bruises around her throat made it currently look like the skin of an overripe banana.

Lifting her mane, Discord whistled at the sight of the lump that had sprouted where the tree branch had been slammed into Fluttershy’s head. Snapping his talons, he conjured an ice pack. “Here. You’ll want to get that swelling down or you’ll have to pay double the next time you get a manecut.”

He let go of the pack and it floated over to Fluttershy like a cloud. Once it reached her, it proceeded to hover near her head, coming down every now and then to put gentle pressure on that swollen lump.

With the ice pack floating along after her, Fluttershy went to check on Angel. When she nudged him, the old bunny stirred enough to nuzzle her hoof with his head, but didn’t seem to be in any hurry to move from his bed. Considering the part he’d played in her rescue, Fluttershy decided he had earned a breakfast in bed, and went to find him something to eat.

As she bustled about, fixing Angel’s breakfast, Discord leaned against the wall, watching her and flossing his impressive array of teeth. What he hoped to accomplish by doing that before breakfast rather than after, Fluttershy wasn’t sure but didn’t bother to ask. She put a salad down on the floor near Angel’s bed in a spot where he could reach it easily without having to leave his bed. By that time the swelling on her head had gone down enough that she no longer needed the ice pack and Discord flashed it away.





Later as Fluttershy and Discord ate their own breakfast, it began to dawn on Discord that their investigation was done. The killers they’d been trying to find were dead. Apple Bloom and Big Mac knew about it and intended to tell their grandmother as soon as possible. What was there really left for him and Fluttershy to do?

Fluttershy meanwhile had been surreptitiously studying Discord. She’d noticed that he kept twitching his ears, raising and lowering his eyebrows, and rubbing at his nose. A couple of times she even saw him pressing his forked tongue against the inside of his lower lip. All these little actions made Fluttershy smile inwardly since it reminded her of when her tail had undergone its impromptu docking, and how odd it had felt to suddenly have all the weight of that long hair gone. While the draconequus didn’t seem to regret losing either his piercings or his tattoos, their absence was clearly taking some time to get used to.

I guess I don’t need them anymore, he’d said.

His appearance was still unusual, but now he looked much more approachable without all the hardware on his face and the jagged designs etched across his body. She thought back to how strangely out-of-character it had seemed to her that he had chosen to cover himself in such fierce-looking images and pierce his face in ways that didn’t look so much decorative as they did painful. Now, seeing him in a sense “unmasked,” she remembered wondering if he’d used those tattoos and piercings to discourage ponies from trying to get close to him.

And yet the night before, when he’d held her close and whispered words of comfort in her ear, she hadn’t even noticed the rings in his nose, the studs in his brows, or the ink on his arms. All she’d seen was the friend who had saved her life.

The thought triggered her memory of the Apple Bloom changeling’s words.

“Discord...”

“Yes, my dear?”

“Last night...” She swallowed and the action sent a twinge of pain through her bruised throat, causing her to put a hoof against it. “When the ... changelings had me tied up ... before they tried to strangle me ... one of them asked me what happened to Applejack.”

Discord frowned. “I thought they killed her.”

Fluttershy looked down at the table, letting her mane fall on either side of her face. “That’s what they told Apple Bloom and Big Mac. But later on they told me that she disappeared before they could.”

Discord stared at her bowed head as his mind adjusted to this new piece of information. The puzzle had been completed, all the pieces had been fit into place ... and now Fluttershy had whipped out a new piece that somehow needed to fit into that puzzle. A piece that could possibly change the whole picture.

“Why didn’t you mention this the night before?” he asked, reaching over and putting a talon under her chin to tilt her face back up toward his.

Fluttershy blushed. “Because I wasn’t sure who they were lying to, and I wasn’t thinking very clearly last night. ... But now I am thinking clearly ... and I still don’t know who they were lying to. Everything else we found out last night seemed to fit together ... but I can’t stop wondering if somepony else killed Applejack before the changelings could get to her.”





After replacing the magical shield around the cabin so that no pony could get in and bother Angel, the two detectives went back to where they’d left the changeling bodies the night before. Neither of them were very optimistic about finding clues there, but they couldn’t think of any other place to start.

It had warmed up considerably so Fluttershy was wearing only a scarf and the whistle Discord had given her. The draconequus had ditched his snow vest but still wore the scarf Fluttershy had made for him. He hadn’t taken it off since she’d given it to him.

The trees were still where they had landed the night before but seemed to have stuck their roots back in the ground. Some of their trunks were straight but most were twisted into shapes they could never have achieved naturally. Other than that they seemed completely unharmed. If Fluttershy hadn't seen it the night before, she never would have guessed that they had previously been blazing with fire.

The same could not be said for the changelings' bodies though. Seeing their charred corpses once again gave Fluttershy mixed feelings. Considering the fact that they had been cheerfully trying to kill her just before their own deaths, she guessed she should probably feel glad that they were gone, and on a certain level she was relieved. But at the same time she found her stupid soft heart wishing her would-be murderers had been captured alive rather than killed. She knew from Discord that he hadn't intended to kill the changelings. He had only wanted to keep them from escaping and, when they had eluded all his more restrained attempts to catch them, he had pulled out the big guns. And unfortunately the big guns had worked a little too well.

As for Discord's feelings, the fact that the changelings had tormented Fluttershy with her pet's death, injured her, and attempted to kill her not once but twice in the space of one day had effectively robbed him of the ability to regret their deaths on a personal level. But he did regret them on an investigative level. If he had managed to take the changelings alive, he and Fluttershy could have questioned them, and possibly have learned why they had murdered those first six ponies and whether or not they'd killed Applejack as well. But now any information the changelings might have had to offer had died with them.

Still it wouldn't hurt to check the bodies on the off-chance that they might carry some clues.

The partners were about twenty feet from the corpses when they both heard a loud, "There they are!" above and behind them.

Fluttershy's head jerked up. That sounded like Rainbow Dash!


She started to turn in the direction of the voice, but she'd barely begun to move when Discord whipped around so fast his limbs blurred. Fluttershy's eyes widened as she saw splatters of iridescent ink shoot up the draconequus's back like a gravity-defying paint spill. Most of the spill morphed into a familiar dragon-shaped tattoo. The tattoo arched its back, ripping its whole body away from Discord's spine before whipping itself back down so that its inky body slapped around his torso in its familiar circling manner. The ink splatters that had landed on Discord's neck formed into swarming wasps, and lines of ink twisted into barbed loops and spirals that tangled around his limbs like vines. He took a step backward, and she saw sunlight glinting once again off metal in his ears and face.

The next moment he'd scooped her up and was holding her against his chest.

"Let her go, you creep!" Rainbow Dash's voice yelled, and looking up Fluttershy saw the multicolored pegasus streaking toward them like a guided missile. Just before she reached them, Discord flashed himself and Fluttershy out of the way, causing Rainbow Dash to dive headfirst into the snow.

She jumped back up, shook herself, and whirled around, looking about for them. "Get back here, you—!" Then she saw them a few feet away. Her magenta eyes widened and her voice came out low and terrible. "What did he do to you?"

What did—? Then Fluttershy remembered the bandages on her head and the bruises on her throat. "Rainbow, this isn't what it looks like."

Rainbow Dash spluttered. "It looks like somepony beat you upside the head with a tree branch!"

"Well, I suppose in that case it is what it looks like," Discord muttered.

"Discord, that's not—" Fluttershy was about to say "helping," but her voice was suddenly drown out by a much louder higher-pitched one.

"Don't worry, Fluttershy! We'll save you!"

Pinkie Pie!


Sure enough Pinkie Pie and Rarity were racing down the hill toward them. Flying behind them was Twilight with Spike perched on her back, and ... was that Princess Celestia and Princess Luna behind them?

Pinkie whipped out her party cannon, and as it continued to roll down the hill, she hopped hind legs first into it, and fired. She shot toward Fluttershy and Discord, trailing several balloons tied around her middle. As she whizzed past them, she wrapped her forelegs around Fluttershy as if giving one of her famous hugs, and yanked the pegasus right out of Discord's arms. As the two ponies continued to fly through the air, Pinkie pulled out a pin and popped the balloons trailing behind her. A set of drag shoots unfurled from the balloons' remains, jerking the two ponies to a halt and allowing them to float gently to the ground.

"Pinkie, what are you—?"

Scarcely had they touched down then Pinkie let go of Fluttershy and flung the descending drag shoots over her, wrapping the pegasus up like a burrito.

"You'll thank us later. I got her, Twilight! Quick! Cast the spell!"

Spell?! Fluttershy tried to get out from the canvas only to get shoved down and pinned to the ground.

"Hurry Twilight! She's fighting!" shouted Pinkie Pie.

"Pinkie, be careful!" Fluttershy heard Rarity gasp. "We don't want to smother her."

"Oops," said Pinkie.

Rarity's light blue magic surrounded the canvas cocoon as she and Pinkie loosened it enough for Fluttershy to poke her head out of the top. What she saw was Rainbow Dash, Twilight, and the royal sisters circling Discord, firing attacks at him. Twilight lowered her head and Spike sent a blast of fire at the draconequus. A snap of Discord's fingers, and the fire transformed into ice. Before Spike could fully spit the column of ice out of his mouth, its weight yanked him off Twilight's back, forcing Rainbow Dash to swoop in and catch him as he fell. The ice thunked into the snow and stuck there like a stalagmite.





As he dodged the alicorns' magical attacks, and Rainbow Dash's aerial ones, the draconequus knew that magically he was more than a match for any of them, but this sudden attack of theirs had taken him completely by surprise.

Inside his mind was whirling. How did they know he was here? And why weren't the three he'd manipulated behaving like the opposite of their elements?





Fluttershy squirmed in her canvas burrito, squeaking, "Pinkie! Rarity! Too tight!"

"Oh, dear." Rarity quickly used her magic to loosen the canvases a bit more. As soon as she did this, Fluttershy took the opportunity to shoot out of them and race toward the fighting. Pinkie tried to tackle her but missed.

"Girls, stop!" Fluttershy shouted. Discord turned at the sound of her voice, and she leaped toward him, wrapping her forelegs around his neck. The flying ponies all swerved or extinguished their magic to avoid hitting her.

"Stop it!" she shouted at them, even the princesses. "All of you! Stop attacking him! He doesn't deserve this! He saved my life!"

That got everyone's attention and they all went still whether in the air or on the ground.

"Saved your life?" Celestia repeated softly.

"Oh no! She's delusional!" Pinkie exclaimed, clapping her hooves to the sides of her head. Then she did a double take, suddenly realizing something. "Wait a minute! Why aren't you acting all mean?"

Of all the things Pinkie could have said, Fluttershy had not been expecting that. "Mean? Why would I be acting mean?"

"Because he tricked you into being the opposite of your element like he did with the rest of us!" said Rarity, pointing at Discord. The draconequus fiddled uncomfortably with the claws on both his hands.

Fluttershy looked from her friends to him, but he avoided her eyes. "Discord ... do you know what she's talking about?"

The draconequus snorted dismissively. "No, of course not. I have no idea what they're—" Suddenly his dragon tattoo stretched its head around to the front of his throat, and hawked up a huge glob of bright red ink that arched through the air and splattered over Discord's hands, making it look as if he'd just dipped them in blood. This action had come so completely out of left field that for several seconds the draconequus, the five ponies, the dragon, and the royal sisters just stood or hovered there, staring at the draconequus's now-red hands.

Fluttershy looked up from his hands to his face. "Discord..." He jerked his gaze away from hers again, but not before she saw the guilt in his eyes. Fluttershy suddenly let go of him and hovered there, staring at him. He still had the same mixed-up body, the same tattoos and facial piercings, the same scarf she'd given him ... but it was as if some stranger had suddenly taken her partner's place.





I ought to wring your neck even if you're just an over-grown blob of ink! Discord mentally gritted through his teeth at the tattoo, which had already resumed its usual place.

When he felt Fluttershy's forelegs disappear from around his neck, he quickly looked to see where she'd gone. The distrust he then saw in her big soft eyes seemed to cut into him like a knife.

"Fluttershy..." His paw moved automatically to cup her cheek, remembering too late that both his hands were still covered in fresh ink. Fluttershy jerked away at his touch and his hand left a crimson smear across the left side of her face, like a callback to the wound she'd received the day earlier. The draconequus had been used to ponies flinching away from his touch and it had never particularly bothered him before. But now getting such treatment from Fluttershy seemed to twist the blade even farther into his heart. Fluttershy looked from him to her friends and back again several times. No one said anything, waiting to see what she'd do.

Then Fluttershy suddenly pulled her wings in and dropped to the ground. She hit the snow running, not to her friends, not to Discord, but away from all of them.

"Fluttershy!" her friends shouted after her, but she ignored them.

"Fluttershy, wait!" Discord pushed off the ground, intending to fly after her, but Rainbow Dash swooped in front of him blocking his way.

"You leave her alone!" the blue pegasus ordered, jabbing her hoof right in his face. "You touch her again and I'll—"

"—have to catch me first." Discord pointed out before vanishing in a flash of light.

"Quick, we have to go after Fluttershy," said Twilight.

"Wait, Twilight," said Celestia. She didn't raise her voice but it carried enough that all the ponies heard it and stared up at her. Even Luna gave her sister a look of confusion.

"You may follow her at a distance, but don't approach her just yet," Celestia continued.

"But..." Twilight hesitated, want to obey her ruler, but wanting to help her friend as well.

Celestia seemed to sense this and nodded. "You may see Fluttershy, after I have had a chance to speak with her."





Fluttershy half ran and half flew over the snow, not knowing where she was headed, only wanting to put distance between herself and the source of her current confusion. She felt as if she were being torn in two. She didn’t want to believe Discord had done what her friends had claimed, but why would they have made up something like that? And then there was the way Discord had started to deny their accusations before his dragon tattoo had taken it upon itself to expose his guilt in vivid detail.

Now everything she thought she knew about him had been cast in doubt. Memories of him aiding her with the case, binding up her injuries, and comforting her flashed through her mind. Had all of that been a lie just to gain her trust?

She ran until she came to a river with a bridge spanning it. She stopped at the river bank and tried to catch her breath. Looking down into the water, she saw the crimson streak Discord's hand had left on her face. The sight reminded her vividly of when she'd looked into the mirror yesterday at the blood running down her face. She remembered the anger Discord had expressed when he first saw that blood, and how he'd later tried to curb that anger and be gentle with her. Now she found herself wondering if the anger, the gentleness, both, or neither had been an act.

Turning from the river, she scooped up some snow and started scrubbing her face with it, trying to get rid of that red stain. The process left her face cold and wet but when she looked back into the river she was now free of the ink stains.

"Fluttershy."

The pegasus whirled around to see Princess Celestia standing just a few feet from her. Fluttershy quickly lowered her gaze to the ground. Despite the fact that Celestia had always treated her with kindness, Fluttershy couldn't help feeling rather intimidated by the princess. "Your Majesty?" she asked, her voice trembling.

"Don't be afraid, Fluttershy," said Celestia, approaching her and using a hoof to lift the timid pony's face upward. There was no disappointment or anger in the princess's face, only a small smile of encouragement that filled Fluttershy with a longing to just pour out her emotions to Celestia like a young filly to her mother.

"Fluttershy, I want you to hear your friends' stories. And then I want them to hear yours."





When Fluttershy's friends arrived at the river bank a few minutes later, Celestia cast a spell to prevent anyone from being able to overhear them as they told their stories.

Fluttershy learned that yesterday, when they had discovered that the blizzard had ended, Twilight and Spike had gone to Ponyville to spend Hearth's Warming with their friends.

They'd arrived at Sugar Cube Corner to find Pinkie Pie acting like a complete grump. The Cakes had informed them that Pinkie had been that way ever since the blizzard had started and that they'd been wondering if she were suffering from cabin fever from being cooped up inside for so long. But when Pinkie's grouchy attitude persisted even after going outside, the Cakes, Twilight, and Spike began to suspect something else might be up.

A visit to Rarity found the white unicorn hoarding everything in sight, and a visit to the Wonderbolts revealed that after the blizzard ended Rainbow Dash hadn't shown up for drills or to help clear the skies as they had expected her to. Spike and Twilight then paid a visit to Fluttershy's cottage as well only to discover that it was locked up and empty, and questioning their friends on her whereabouts met with no cooperation whatsoever.

Twilight had sent word to Celestia that her friends were acting strange, and later that night Luna had reported that she'd seen a strange forest fire at Sweet Apple Acres that had ended as soon as it had started. These combined reports prompted the royal sisters to run some tests on the decoy statue Discord had left behind and discover that it was fake. Then they'd told Twilight about Discord and how they thought he might be connected to her friends' strange behavior.

Twilight, Spike, and the royal sisters had spent the next morning rounding up Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity so that Twilight could break the spell they were under. With the three ponies back to their true states, they and their restorers had put the pieces together and confirmed that Discord had indeed visited the three of them. They had then told Twilight, Spike, Celestia, and Luna where Fluttershy had been staying, and, fearing Discord might have paid her a visit as well, had rushed there, intent on rescuing her.

Then it was Fluttershy's turn to recount her side of the story, starting with the day she'd first arrived at the cabin. As she told of her stay at the cabin, of how she'd been tasked with finding Applejack's murderer, of how she'd tried to contact Twilight, of Discord's arrival, and all that had followed, she found to her surprise that her own confusion over his actions began to clear. Discord had indeed been as horrible as her friends had described him. At first. But then somewhere along the way he had changed. He'd had several occasions where he could have just let her die; where it would have suited his purposes much better, but instead he had rescued her. He had done so just last night. All the concern he'd shown for her over the past days couldn't have all been an act. Nopony was that convincing.





Unbeknownst to the group of ponies, Discord was currently invisible, floating quite near them, and fuming that he couldn't hear a thing that they were saying.

Well, maybe not completely unbeknownst, he thought grudgingly, using the fur on his lower back to scrub the crimson ink off his hands. Celestia must have suspected that he'd try to spy on them and had found a way to prevent it. Which was really annoying!

He watched the various ponies, trying to read their lips but that could only get him so far.





Fluttershy told her friends what had happened to her up until that morning when she and Discord had gone out to look at the changeling corpses. The only thing she left out was the changelings telling her that Applejack had disappeared before they could kill her. It wasn't that she wanted to lie to her friends by not mentioning this, (For all she knew the changelings had been lying to her when they'd told her that.) but she wanted some more time to think on it before sharing it.

After Fluttershy finished her story, Celestia was silent for several moments. She had been aware of Applejack's mysterious disappearance ten years ago, but she like the others had come to believe the earth pony had met with some unfortunate accident. Over those years, they had waited for the Element of Honesty to choose a new bearer but that had yet to happen. Which raised the obvious question of: How would they stop Discord without all the Element Bearers?

When Celestia had banished Luna she had always held onto the hope of her sister's reformation, but she had never held such a thought when it came to Discord. All those centuries she had firmly believed that the only way to protect her subjects from the draconequus was to condemn him to an eternity in stone. But now the ruler of Equestria began to feel she might need to readjust her thinking. Fluttershy had just revealed that she had managed not only to resist Discord's initial manipulation, but also to win his aid in her mission to solve Applejack's murder. Even if they could find another way to turn him back to stone, the fact that he'd gotten out once proved that there was a very real chance he could do it again sometime in the future. But if he could be converted from an enemy to an ally...





Discord watched the group as Celestia spoke to them. Then most of them started to trot over the bridge toward Ponyville.

Twilight stopped by Fluttershy. "You sure you'll be all right?"

The draconequus started in surprise when he heard her voice. Celestia must have just lifted the spell.

Fluttershy nodded, and seemed to say, "Just let me talk to him, alone."

Spike and all of the ponies either walked or flew into Ponyville, except for Fluttershy and Celestia, who stopped at the middle of the bridge. Then Fluttershy reached under her scarf, pulled out the whistle Discord had given her, and blew into it.

After straining his ears for so long, trying in vain to hear what the ponies had been saying, the sound of the whistle in his head was like an explosion.





Fluttershy watched her friends head into Ponyville, intending to stop by the hospital and pay their respects to the Apple family, before taking out her whistle and blowing a quick blast.

Immediately Discord appeared in front of her. "Give me that!" he shouted, snatching the whistle from her. His head was filled with brief seconds of blissful silence before he heard the voice of his old enemy coming from behind him.

"Hear me out, Discord." Celestia's voice was an emotionless command and he turned to face her, not because he felt compelled to obey, but to see if her face was as expressionless as her voice.

Celestia's expression was calm. "Fluttershy has been pleading your case with me, Discord, and I've decided not to have you re-imprisoned."

"Considering you don't have all the Element Bearers, it's not like you could even if you wanted to," he pointed out smugly.

Celestia's eyes hardened briefly. "There are other, less merciful ways to imprison you, than turning you to stone, Discord. But I'm offering you a chance to prove I needn't employ them. Consider yourself on probation."

“Oh, deep and abiding joy,” was his sarcastic response before plucking out his eyes and tossing them like a pair of dice so that they rolled down the bridge and disappeared from sight.

Celestia ignored this. "Fluttershy has claimed you as her friend, so she will be reporting back to me on your progress."

Discord was still eyeless but the muscles around his empty sockets seemed to twitch in Fluttershy's direction.

"You will continue staying with her at the Apple cabin, and when she is ready to leave, you will go with her back to her cottage," said Celestia.

Fluttershy had been standing quietly with her head down ever since Discord had snatched his whistle back from her, but then something bumped against her hoof and she jumped with a small squeak. Looking down, she saw that Discord's eyeballs were staring up at her. Somehow they had managed to roll down one end of the bridge and up the opposite one. Discord blew into the whistle and his eyeballs rolled past Fluttershy over to him. Then he gave the whistle a quick suck and his eyes shot up as if they'd been snagged by a vacuum cleaner. They squeezed through the much smaller opening in the whistle's end, Discord's jaw flexed as if he were swallowing, and his eyes popped back up in his eye sockets.

With his eyes back in their proper place, he studied Celestia suspiciously, trying to find the catch in what she was proposing. "And what makes you think I won't just mind control Fluttershy to tell you what I want her to tell you?"

Fluttershy's head jerked up at that and she looked from him to Celestia, but the alicorn just gave her a small quick knowing smile before turning back to the draconequus.

"I don't believe that will be a problem, but Discord..." She paused and he raised an eyebrow, waiting. "I want you to think long and hard about what you want." Celestia said finally.

Think about what you want—Discord frowned. The fact that Celestia had said that while addressing him didn't seem right. "Would you care to repeat that?"

"I want you to think about and then decide what it is you want, Discord, because sooner or later, all get what they want ... but they don't always like it."

He cocked an eyebrow again. "Isn't it my job to be cryptic?"

"Oh, I'm not being cryptic, Discord. Just sharing a simple truth." Turning, she leaned down to Fluttershy. Speaking softly but making no effort to conceal her words from Discord, she said, "Think about what you want as well, Fluttershy. And remember that in the right light, a weakness may become a strength."

Then, before Fluttershy could question this, Celestia spread her wings and flew away, leaving Fluttershy and Discord alone on the bridge. Fluttershy watched the princess disappear into the sky, before turning back to Discord. He still wasn't looking at her, but his dragon tattoo slid its head from its usual position along the side of his neck to the back of it. It poked its head through his bristly mane like a tiger peeking through tall grass, and looked down at her with a hopeful expression.

Fluttershy had to smile at the irony of things. The draconequus may have intended for his tattoos to send the message: I don't need anypony! but sometimes they seemed determined to do just the opposite.

"Discord." She flew up behind him and laid a hoof on his back. Underneath his fur, she felt his muscles flinch slightly at her touch but other than that he made no move to get away from her, even though he could easily have teleported out of her reach. Encouraged by this, she went on. "When I told Princess Celestia about what happened, it gave me some time to think..."

The multiple earrings edging his ears clinked together as he flicked said ears back in her direction, still not looking at her but clearly listening.

Fluttershy paused, running her hoof down his back in short gentle strokes while mentally arranging her next words. "And I've decided I still want to be your friend, if you'll let me. But it's up to you."

The dragon tattoo started trying to stick its head underneath where her hoof landed. Discord reached over his shoulder and seized the dragon tattoo by the neck, and dragged its head and neck back over his shoulder to face him. The tattoo hissed its displeasure at him.

"Cut it out!" he ordered, before slamming his free hand down on its head as if smashing a bug. The tattoo made a noise that sounded like a whiny grumble before he released it and it snapped back into its proper place.

Fluttershy winced at the abuse he'd just shown the belligerent body art, but didn't allow her hoof to falter in its continued stroking. "I'm going back to the cabin to start supper. Come home when you're ready to."

Then she felt a sudden surge of boldness and ran her hoof up his back instead of down, causing him to shiver involuntarily as she stroked his fur the wrong way. Startled at receiving this sort of teasing gesture from the shy pony, Discord turned his head, neck, and upper body around to look at her, but she had already landed and was trotting away down the path.

She hadn't gone far when she heard his hoof-and-claws alternately clopping and clicking on the stones behind her. He caught up with her, and she saw his hands come down into view on either side of her head as he slipped the purple tube-shaped whistle back down around her neck.

Turning, she nuzzled his hip just above his goat leg, the highest point she could reach in her current position. Then she felt him briefly cup the back of her head very gently so as not to hurt the still-tender lump there.

Not exchanging another word, not needing to, they walked back to the cabin together.