//------------------------------// // 2: The Cracks Begin To Show // Story: No Escape From Yourself // by alarajrogers //------------------------------// Discord's head felt like cotton – not cotton candy, unfortunately, which might have had some pleasant aspects to it, but the ordinary stuff. There were pillows underneath him, and an unexpected weight on his back, heavier than a blanket, and warmer. He'd woken up after enough drug-fueled orgies, back in the days when he'd unruled Equestria, to know what it felt like to wake up with a random pony on top of him, or two, or six, but since he was fairly certain he hadn't done anything nearly so fun anytime recently, the sensation surprised him. Carefully, because the cotton in his head seemed to have changed to gun cotton the moment he moved and now his head felt like it might explode, he craned his neck back to see why it felt like a pony was lying on top of him, and saw something very pink. Memory began to trickle back, of collapsing on the cold, crystalline floor of the room that had been chosen for him, of waking up repeatedly despite his exhaustion with nightmares of turning to stone and numbness in whatever part of his body he'd been lying on, of Pinkie coming in and him saying something delirious and incoherent with exhaustion about not wanting to be stone. And then he remembered her picking him up and dropping him on a pile of pillows, and then nothing. "Pinkie?" he said hoarsely. She opened one bleary blue eye. "Hi, Discord," she said, sounding much less cheerfully energetic than she usually did. "Did you stop having bad dreams or was I just too asleep to notice you waking up?" "I don't remember any. Why are you lying on me?" "'Cause I gave you all my pillows 'cause you were having nightmares about turning to stone and I thought well the floor is cold and hard and maybe that's why so I brought you in all the pillows I could find but you're very big and I couldn't take anypony else's pillows, and Twilight hasn't gotten mattresses or beds yet, so I gave you all my pillows and then I didn't have any and then I thought, Discord has really fluffy fur in his middle! He might make a good pillow! So I tried it but I forgot how big you are and I was getting a crick in my neck from trying to lean my head on you but then I thought what if you were a body pillow? So I climbed on top of you and you were so warm and fluffy I fell asleep even though I kicked my blankets off and it's chilly in here." "Ah." He nodded his head sagely. "I was a convenient substitute for a mattress, in other words?" "Mostly but mattresses aren't this fluffy. When you were pretending to have blue flu you weren't so fluffy! And then when you got the green pox I couldn't sleep on you anyway so I have no idea if you were fluffy or not." She wrapped her hooves around him and nuzzled her head against the fur of his midsection. "Sooo fluffy..." "Well, the last time I took a shower I used Celestia's mane conditioner. Although quite a few things have happened since then. Like Tirek taking my powers, and the two of us nearly destroying the space-time continuum. So I'm not really sure why I'd be any fluffier than usual." "Maybe you're always this fluffy and I just never noticed," Pinkie said dreamily. "I could sleep on you for a week." "Since I'm getting up, you may need to find a way to solve gravity if you want to do that." "You could fix gravity so I stay on you." "Yes, but it would be much funnier to see what you come up with." He levitated Pinkie off his back and plopped her onto the pillows. "Aww. These aren't warm! And they're fluffy pillows but they're not furry fluffy pillows." He considered conjuring her a lifesize plushie replica of himself, but between the headache that still hadn't gone fully away and the harmonics of the castle, he didn't think he had the strength. "I'm so very sorry, my dear. I know that sleeping on top of me must have been one of the most delightful experiences of your life, due to my magnificent fur texture, wonderful scent and all-around perfection, but I'm too hungry to continue to play the role of your mattress. Perhaps if you cause enough chaos for me today, I may consider letting you use me as a body pillow again tonight." "Okie dokie lokie!" Pinkie got to her hooves, wobbling. "Let's go have pancakes!" "I thought you wanted to sleep." "But you're hungry! Which reminds me that I'm hungry! Which reminds me that Twilight will be hungry, and Spike! Which tells me I should make pancakes!" "Well, who am I to turn down pancakes? Lead the way, o Minister of Parties!" Spike was already making waffles. "Welcome back to the land of the living!" he said. "Boy, when you sleep, you really sleep, don't you? I was starting to wonder if you were going to sleep for a hundred years or something like an adult dragon!" "Was I asleep a long long time too?" Pinkie asked. "No, I think you crashed out like twelve hours ago or something, but Discord's been down for more than two days." "That's hardly a hundred years," Discord said. "And draconequui are not dragons." "Well, yeah, obviously, but you've got dragon in your name so you must be sort of like dragons." "Ooh! Are those blueberries? Are you making fresh blueberry waffles? I hope you're making a lot because I am super hungry! Can I help?" "Uh, sure, if you mix the batter I can keep pouring it on the waffle iron and making more waffles and Discord that pile is for everypony and also me, not just you!" "I wasn't going to eat all  of them," Discord complained. "Just most of them." "You can have two. And then every time I make four you can have one of them." Discord made a face. "Ugh, I have to do math to get breakfast?" "You can just snap up your own breakfast, can't you?" He couldn't. Snapping up two bouquets of flowers had taken a good bit out of him, if he recalled correctly. After how heavily he'd exerted his powers in ways they were not designed for, he was quite certain that even two days of sleep hadn't gotten him back to a place where he was strong enough to resist the harmonics. If he stepped outside, he could do it, but if he stepped outside, he might be advertising his weakness. "Yes, but I want to eat yours. The breakfast you made, I mean, not the breakfast you intend to eat, that would be the height of rudeness and now that I am fully and completely reformed, I would never be so rude to a friend." Spike sighed. "You rescued my comic books. And my old toys. I guess I owe you more than a few waffles. No, Pinkie! Get away from the coffee pot!" "But I could get so much more done," Pinkie wheedled. "Why are you not allowing Pinkie to drink coffee?" "Do you have any idea what Pinkie does when she drinks coffee? She turns into like a whirlwind maniac!" "That only happened one time," Pinkie said. Discord pulled a mug out of the shining crystalline cabinet with telekinesis, and poured coffee into it with his tail. So his telekinesis worked, but was drastically weaker than it ought to be. He was probably at the level of a unicorn like Rarity. "So what you're telling me," he said as he mixed enough sugar and cream to turn the coffee into coffee-flavored cream sludge, "is that when Pinkie drinks coffee, she causes total chaos?" "Not total," Pinkie said. "Yeah," Spike said. "That's exactly the prob—" He caught what was going on a split second too late, spinning around just in time to watch Pinkie's hoof take the coffee mug from Discord's tail as Discord passed it to her. "No!" He belched flame at the coffee mug, but Discord slid Pinkie sideways with his telekinesis, freeing her to quickly gulp the coffee'd sugar. Discord grinned. "Why did you do that? You're supposed to be reformed!" Spike shouted. "Of course I'm reformed. How could you even question that, after I rescued your comic books for you?" Discord said, putting on an ostentatious hurt expression. "My dear little friend Pinkie wanted some coffee, so I poured her a cup. Isn't friendship all about doing favors for your friends and giving them what they want when you can?" "That's right!" Pinkie said. "That's why friendship is all about MAKING TONS OF BREAKFAST FOR EVERYPONY!" "Oh no," Spike said. "Step aside, Spike! Let me show you how a real master of the craft of baking does it!" Discord sat on the floor, well out of Pinkie's way, and munched on blueberry waffles as in short order Pinkie covered the entire kitchen with flour, sugar, batter, blueberries, bananas, cherries, peanut butter, cream, milk, half-cooked pancake bits, eggshells, eggs, vanilla extract, chocolate chips, hay, and dandelions, most of which she pulled out of her mane. Spike just moaned, paws covering his eyes, for most of the event, though he didn't refrain from munching on waffles himself. The truth was that as much of a mess as Pinkie was making, she wasn't being truly chaotic. She was actually moving with hyper-efficiency, doing things like flipping pancakes in the air and while they were still in the air, slicing a banana with impossible speed and tossing it into the frying pan for the pancakes to land on and cook into themselves. It wasn't pure chaos, but it was complex enough and impossible enough that it was entertaining to watch, and a mess was always fun. Especially when Twilight Sparkle, with bed head, stumbled into the room. "What – what is going on? Pinkie! What are you doing to my KITCHEN?!" "I'm making pancakes!" Pinkie chirped. "Also waffles, scrambled eggs, hay bacon, and cherry pastries!" "...Somepony gave you my coffee, didn't they." "Nope!" "Then what—" "Somedraconequus gave me coffee!" "In my defense," Discord said, "I was promised that she would turn chaotic if I gave her coffee. I am somewhat disappointed. Though I got pancakes out of it, so it wasn't completely pointless." "Aren't you supposed to be reformed?" Twilight asked, glaring. "I am completely reformed! I even refilled the coffee pot. And paid attention to Spike's instructions on proper coffee making!" This called for a halo over his head. If only he had the strength to do it. "He did," Spike admitted. "I tasted the coffee myself, it's great." "Get me some please," Twilight said. "I am going outside. To enjoy the fresh air. That is not covered in pancake batter." "That sounds like a splendid idea! I'll join you." "Me too! Pinkie isn't even letting me help anymore," Spike said, handing Twilight a full coffee mug. "Me too after  I'm done cooking all the breakfast things! And then after breakfast I will clean up the kitchen for you! And everywhere else! I bet a shiny crystal castle like this needs a lot of dusting!" Twilight tromped off, the various plates of already cooked breakfast foods held in her telekinetic field. Discord followed her, eager to get out of the castle's harmonics and test to make sure his powers were working properly. Quite aside from all the other reasons he had to want his powers back at full strength, if he remained this weak even after leaving the castle, he'd actually have to use a bathroom. He was somewhat surprised that that hadn't happened already, given his dim memories of Pinkie forcing him to wake up so she could pour apple juice down his throat. Outside, Twilight stuffed her face with three waffles and an egg, and finished a second cup of coffee, while Discord confirmed silently to himself that his entire problem had been the castle and that his two days' worth of sleep had fully restored him otherwise. Spike ate the rest of the eggs. "Spike, my boy," Discord said. "How would you like to undertake a culinary adventure?" "If anypony but you was asking, I'd probably like it fine," Spike said. "But with you..." "My dear child, I keep telling you, I'm reformed!" He snapped up a plate full of actual bacon. "If you're going to eat so many eggs, you should eat them the way the creators intended them to be eaten." Spike's eyes went wide. "What is that and why does it smell so good?" "Ugh," Twilight said, staring at the juicy strips. "I saw this when I was looking through the library in the other world, while you were sleeping. That's bacon!" "Indeed it is. A keen eye you have, Princess!" Twilight looked up at him. "Discord... for there to be bacon, there needs to be a dead pig." "Not for me! I assure you, Twilight, this bacon is a pure construct of chaos, albeit a deliciously edible one. No pigs died to provide this repast, I can promise you this." He picked up a piece of bacon and ate it. The salt and fats were just what he needed after what he'd done to his head, working with Pinkie. "Why don't you try some, Twilight? Did you know that alicorns are actually omnivores? You can get by without eating meat as long as you eat your eggs and cheese and beans, just as I do most of the time, but a small quantity of meat in your diet is actually good for you." He turned to Spike. "And dragons, I'm sure you know, are obligate omnivores. You wouldn't need to eat quite so many gems if you ate some meat." "But I love gems." "Of course you do, and I'm sure you also love ice cream, but eating nothing but ice cream won't actually satisfy your nutritional needs." "Well, it smells good..." Spike picked up a bacon strip. "Do you Pinkie Promise that this isn't from a dead pig?" "Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a pancake in my eye." He picked up a pancake and stuffed it into his eyeball, which grew teeth and ate it. "Dude, that is so many kinds of disturbing, just never do that again please." Spike sighed. "Also, it's cross my heart and hope to fly." "Well, we are discussing the death or lack thereof of sentient beings, so I thought the stronger sentiment was warranted." Spike tried the bacon. A huge smile spread across his face. "Oh... wow. Twilight, if alicorns are omnivores then you really need to try this!" He ate three more strips, stuffing them all into his mouth. Twilight looked askance at the bacon strips. "I think I should ask Princess Celestia if it's safe for alicorns to eat bacon," she said. "I'm wounded, Twilight! Don't you trust me?" "Frankly? No," Twilight said. "No, I don't. Do I trust that you've learned the value of friendship and you won't betray your friends for power again? Yes. Do I trust that you feel genuine remorse for what you did and you sincerely want to make amends? Yes. Do I trust that you won't feed me something that makes me turn green, or gives me horrible gas, or makes my horn start shooting off random spells like I've just been turned into the living incarnation of poison joke? No. Not even slightly." Discord forced a grin onto his face as something crumpled inside him. Of course she didn't trust him. Why would she trust him? He was a traitor, wasn't he? "Oh, by all means, let it all out, Princess. Tell me how you really feel." "You're still the spirit of chaos and disharmony," Twilight said. "You gave coffee to Pinkie because you wanted to see her disrupt everything. Why should I assume that you aren't playing some kind of prank on me with the bacon?" "Because you saved my life," Discord snapped, unable to keep up the pretense of good cheer anymore. Twilight blinked. "When?" "When you demanded that Tirek let me go. I know what I deserved, Twilight. And I know what you should have done. The smart thing to have done, the just thing to have done, would have been to leave me. He only brought me there so I could see the conclusion of our wager; I wasn't intended to be one of his hostages, because he didn't think you'd want me back, and I didn't either. You could have scuttled the whole deal and put your friends in danger if he'd decided he wasn't going to go along with your demands and a fight broke out again. But you did it anyway. For me. Even though I betrayed all of you, and I didn't deserve it, you still got him to let me go." "Discord, friendship isn't about giving ponies what they deserve. Neither is forgiveness." Twilight sighed. "You're right, you hadn't done anything I knew of to deserve being released. I found out later that you kept the others alive by making a wager with Tirek, and that you tried to let them out of the cage, but I didn't know any of that. It didn't matter. I wasn't going to leave you with him and let him throw you in a dungeon or something. That wouldn't be justice; justice is carried out in an orderly way, not willy-nilly because some villain doesn't like some other villain. And besides... we were friends. It hurt to hear you'd betrayed us, and I wanted to hear from you what your side of the story was, why you decided to do it, because that's what you do for friends. Even if they do something so terrible that you can't be friends with them anymore, you at least owe them listening to their reasons why." "You knew my reasons why. I wanted chaos. I wanted freedom to do whatever I wanted. But I didn't want to be alone. I thought Tirek... I thought he was my friend. He acted like he liked me. Like he wanted to see me unleash chaos. He thought I was funny." He looked down at his plate. "But it was all a lie. And I used to be able to tell when ponies were lying, because lying produces disharmony, but there was so much disharmony in his heart... it'd be like staring at the sun trying to identify one single flare within it." "I had friends who just wanted to use me," Twilight said. "Admittedly, they just wanted to use me because I was Princess Celestia's student and they were social climbers, not because they wanted to steal all the magic in Equestria, but I know how it feels. It made me give up on having friends, for several years. I told myself it was because I had to dedicate myself to my studies and I didn't have time for friends, but it was really because I couldn't tell who was sincere and who was fake. It seemed like everypony turned out to be fake, in the end, and it hurt. So I do understand that part." "They weren't all fake," Spike said. "I went to a lot of those things you were invited to that you didn't want to go to. Some ponies said you were too stuck up to want to go to parties with lowly ponies that weren't associated with the Princess, but some were really sad and disappointed that you couldn't make it. I'm pretty sure Twinkleshine really did want you to go to Moon Dancer's party with her." "Maybe so, Spike, but you only have to get burned a few times to be afraid of going anywhere near fire." "Wouldn't know. Dragon, immune to fire." Spike ate another of Discord's bacon strips. "Tirek was going to kill me," Discord said. Twilight looked shocked. "Really? I mean... he didn't kill any ponies during his rampage... are you sure? He was evil, but a killer?" "Twilight, he blew up our tree with you in it," Spike said. "I'm pretty sure he was trying to kill you." "That was all me, anyway," Discord said. "He kept wanting to kill ponies and I kept talking him out of it. The whole reason we captured your friends, and you, Spike, was that Tirek wanted to take you on directly – which he did anyway after he stole my powers – but I was worried that Ponyville would be destroyed or that one of you two would kill the other one, so I came up with the idea of taking hostages." He wished this conversation hadn't started. It had ruined his appetite. Listlessly he picked at his pancake with his talons. "Trust me, Twilight, he was more than willing to kill." "Then why did you want to be – never mind." She sighed. "Discord, I know you wanted the freedom to create chaos, but... didn't it ever occur to you that a friend who wants to kill ponies is a terrible friend to have?" "I thought... I was more powerful than he was, right up until the end... I thought I'd be able to stop him. And it's not as if I'd missed the fact that siding with him made me a villain. I wasn't willing to let him kill ponies, but... I wasn't going to reject his offer and turn on him just because he wanted to. I thought to myself, I'd just stop him." "But why was he going to kill you? You helped him!" "Because I made the mistake of telling him, early on, that my magic regenerates from chaos if it's taken away. He said, he knew I'd get my power back after he stole it, so he couldn't let me live." He swallowed. "I was... I was sure he wouldn't let me go, even after you made that part of the deal. I didn't expect you to ask for my freedom, and I certainly didn't expect him to agree." "Maybe he was looking for an excuse," Twilight said. "Not to kill you. I mean... stealing your magic, well, maybe he'd planned to do that from the very beginning, but if he was acting like your friend... maybe part of him wanted to be friends, but he didn't believe in friendship. He thought it was a weakness. He said so." "I know. Which admittedly makes me look like an enormous idiot for believing he'd be my friend, but... I thought it was just talk." "So maybe if he didn't want to be weak, but part of him wanted to be your friend... maybe he was looking for an excuse not to kill you. Maybe he really didn't want to but he thought he had to." "Why are you even saying this? It's not exactly as if we're going to pull him out of the depths of Tartarus and hand him over to Fluttershy to be reformed." "I don't know." Twilight shook her head slightly. "I guess... maybe I thought it would make you feel a little bit better. A little less stupid for falling for it." "It... doesn't, Twilight. Tartarus is a horrible place. Even after all he did, even after he nearly killed me, I still can't feel good about anyone being confined to Tartarus. It would just make it worse if there was any part of him that cared about me." He picked up a bacon strip. "Listen, I didn't tell you any of this so you would feel sorry for me. I wanted to explain... I'm not going to play a malicious prank on you. Not today. Maybe not ever. Probably it won't be the not ever; you're a lot of fun to tease." He smiled weakly. "But definitely not today, and I'd never give you something that actually caused you pain. I didn't go back and retrieve all those books just because I felt bad about selling you all out to Tirek. You're the one I wanted to apologize to, you're the one who lost something permanently and I wanted to do whatever I could to make that up to you... because I'm alive right now because you insisted on freeing me. You didn't have to. It wasn't a wise thing to do, it wasn't what I deserved, it wasn't even really safe for you, though I suppose you didn't know that since you didn't know he had reasons to want to kill me." Discord looked into Twilight's eyes. "But you did it anyway. For me." "I also went to the ends of Equestria to get a flower to cure a disease you didn't have, and then spent a week stressing out trying to cure the disease you got after that." "Yes, yes, but you thought I might be contagious. You had reasons to want to cure me that had nothing to do with me. This was the first time you did something for me when it wasn't the right thing to do to help or protect someone else as well." He plucked another bacon strip. "I don't really care if you eat it or not, honestly. I made the bacon for myself, and then I offered it to Spike because he's a fellow omnivore, and then I remembered that alicorns are technically omnivorous as well. So I offered to share. But you're right, you shouldn't trust me. I've done nothing to earn any sort of trust. It's just... you saved my life, Twilight. I can't honestly remember anypony else doing that for me. Freeing me from captivity, yes, but not when being imprisoned meant I would die. I don't prank Fluttershy... and I don't think I'm going to be pranking you. Much, anyway. Certainly not right now." Twilight looked down at the bacon, then up at Discord again. "All right. I'll try it." She levitated a piece to her mouth and bit into it. "Tastes... kind of strange. Not bad, exactly. Very salty, and... kind of... heavy? Heavy flavor? Does that even make sense?" Discord chuckled. "Why are you asking me if it makes sense?" "He's got a point," Spike said, grinning. "Do you like it? 'Cause it's delicious!" "Well, I wouldn't call it 'delicious', but... I guess it's not bad. But don't get used to it, Spike, the only ethical way we can get this stuff is if Discord conjures it up for us." Discord mentally filled in the rest of the sentence with And Discord can't be trusted. It hurt. He wanted it to just be over; why hadn't his penance, the restoration of her books, won her over? He'd given her the key to the power that could imprison him, so it was now a part of her and her friends and could never be taken from them again. He'd hurt himself trying to restore as much as possible of what she'd lost forever due to his betrayal. Why wasn't it enough? Would it ever be enough? Did he even have the right to want it to be enough? And why did he suddenly care if he had the right or not? He'd never second-guessed his right to have emotions, before. At this point Pinkie bounced out to the meadow where they were holding their impromptu picnic, on the side of the castle. She was carrying an improbable number of plates of food. "Hope everypony's still hungry! And everydragon and everydraconequus! 'Cause I've got more yummies!" "I'm still hungry," Spike said. "Sure, Pinkie, I guess I could eat something," Twilight said. Pinkie lowered her plates to the ground in a feat of rapid precision movement that impressed even Discord – not that he couldn't do the same thing, but Pinkie was a pony and limited to hooves, not paws or tail or wingclaw. "Come on, folks, eat up!" Her eyes fell on the plate of bacon strips. "Is that bacon?" "Yes, but Discord says it's not from a real pig," Twilight said. "Which means I can eat some and I don't have to be sad over a poor dead piggy?" "By all means! Twilight won't eat my bacon, she thinks I'm going to play a terrible prank on her if she does." "I just did eat a bacon," Twilight said indignantly, and ungrammatically, which was surprising for Twilight but revealed to Discord how thoroughly the ponies had rejected meat-eating since his childhood. Ponies had never eaten a lot of meat, but two generations after the windigos had nearly destroyed the world with ice, occasional meat was still part of the pony diet, a leftover from grandparents who'd only managed to live through the second coming of Fimbulwinter by being willing to hunt and kill for food. He couldn't really blame them; his own kind had been eating ponies to survive those days, and other sapient beings, which was part of why the ponies had harried them to extinction shortly afterward and he was now the last one. And during his Age of Chaos, he'd grown steaks, ribs and chicken legs from trees and bushes, so plenty of ponies had eaten no-kill meat because it was one of the foods he made widely available. But now, they'd rejected meat-eating so thoroughly that a supremely well-educated genius pony had never managed to pick up that there was no such expression as "a bacon". "Let me try!" Pinkie picked up a bacon strip and munched it. "Mmm, yummy!" "Pinkie!" Twilight's magic snatched the bacon strip away from Pinkie. "Do you even know if eating meat is healthy for a pony?" "Oh, Twilight, as if I would have let Pinkie eat bacon if it would harm her?" Discord said with mock, exaggerated indignation to cover up the actual indignation he felt. "After she gave me all her pillows? How low an opinion you have of me!" "Besides I'm probably going to use him as a pillow again tonight so if I throw up it will probably be on him," Pinkie said. "And if it gives me bad gas he's gonna have to smell it!" Twilight blinked. "Wait, you two... you're sleeping together?" "You make it sound so sordid," Discord said. Pinkie giggled. "It's not like that, silly filly! I gave him all my pillows so he has to be my pillow! It's just like a sleepover, we're not having sex or anything!" Twilight spluttered and choked on her coffee at Pinkie's unexpected bluntness, while Spike's eyes went impossibly wide and Discord just chuckled. When Twilight got control of herself, she managed to stammer out, "D-do you really think that's proper, Pinkie?" Pinkie shrugged. "I don't even know what proper is. But what I do with my body is my business and also the business of whoever I'm doing things with my body to their body so that makes it their business too, but it's not anypony else's business so who cares? But you're my friend and Discord is your friend so I would tell you if we were having sex because if your friends are friends with benefits with each other then that's kind of your business because otherwise things might get awkward sometimes, but we're not, so that's okay!" "Now I wonder if we should," Discord said. "It seems to cause such entertaining reactions in ponies when they contemplate the possibility." "Naah, that's not a good reason to have sex with your friends," Pinkie said. "Pranks are funny, but having sex with a friend just so you can make your other friends' brains go explody is not a funny prank and it's kind of mean to do to the friend you're having sex with because then it's like you're using them for pranking your other friends and not because you actually want to do it with them because you like them. Anyway you are kind of like a giant talking teddy bear, except with dragon parts and a pony-ish sort of face, but still kind of like a big fun plushie who's alive, so you're a lot of fun to have as a friend but I don't think I would want any benefits because plushies aren't my thing, sorry." "Oh, Pinkie! Are you friendzoning me?" Discord put his paw against his eyes. "Say it isn't so!" "No, I'm plushie zoning you," Pinkie said. "Sorry but it's your own fault for being so fluffy!" "Could we not talk about this in front of Spike? Or me? Ever? Please?" Twilight was turning slightly green. Discord had to struggle not to visibly laugh at her. "Why don't we make a deal? Pinkie and I won't discuss the intimate details of our lack of intimate relations in front of you, and you give Pinkie back her bacon. Which is perfectly healthy for a pony to eat in moderation, though if she'd eaten all the bacon Spike has, she might make herself ill." "I'll make sure Pinkie doesn't eat too much bacon and get sick!" Spike volunteered. "By eating it yourself?" Discord asked, grinning. "Yup! It's a tough job, but if it's the only way to protect Pinkie, I'm up for it!" Spike said cheerfully. "Can I eat three bacons?" "Oh, four or five bacons at least should be perfectly safe," Discord said, grinning even wider at the fact that apparently Pinkie didn't know the proper grammar for bacon either. "So I'm supposed to have a conference with Mayor Mare later today, and we're going to hash out the details of what it means that there's a princess in Ponyville, now that I'm an official princess," Twilight said. "Spike, I'll need you with me to take notes, and Pinkie, will you come too?" "Okie dokie!" "I'm a little bit worried about it because I don't want to seem like I'm intruding on the democratic local leadership, and Mayor Mare really is much better suited to run Ponyville proper than I am..." Discord listened with interest to the conversation about politics for only a minute or two before remembering that he wasn't going to be allowed to try to monkeywrench this, deliberately create problems for either Twilight or the mayor, or pretty much do anything to increase the anarchy around here, at which point the discussion ceased to hold his attention and he picked at his food listlessly again. What was he actually going to do with his life? It was all very well to say he was reformed, and to try to be helpful, but he was so used to analyzing every situation for an opportunity to cause chaos, disharmony and general mischief, what was he going to do if doing those things was off the table? Before any of this had happened, he'd been perfectly willing to continue causing chaos in the small, indirect ways he felt he could get away with without making Fluttershy angry at him. It hadn't been as much fun as turning the world upside down in every way he wanted, but he'd taken it as a challenge – how much disharmony could he cause before Fluttershy got mad? How much chaos could he trick ponies into causing, without actually using his powers, just words? In some ways, he'd thought to himself, it was even better this way – being able to do anything he liked any way he liked was fun, but no way to keep his wits sharp. Having potential consequences he had to avoid added spice to the game, sharpened him up and made him work for it. It was strangely satisfying to make chaos that way, with restrictions he had to overcome and a limited toolset, because when he succeeded he'd felt genuine accomplishment. Now, though... now he wanted all of them to be friends with him. He wanted Twilight to trust him when he offered her bacon. He wanted Pinkie to continue treating him as a fluffy pillow; he hadn't slept beside anypony since the first time he'd been turned to stone, and he hadn't realized how much he'd missed it until he'd woken up this morning with a Pinkie blanket. Even more than sex, he craved simple contact; he could create full-tactile constructs to have sex with, or go to bars for xenophiles and let some lucky pony with a taste for strange pick him up, but the tactile constructs tended to disappear while he was sleeping and he didn't trust strangers enough to let himself be vulnerable around them. Pinkie had been the first pony to, literally and simply, sleep with him in over a millennium, and he wanted it. He wanted Rainbow Dash to stop acting like he was going to turn on them any minute now, even though he just had. He wanted Rarity and Applejack to at least not try to get in the way of him being friends with their little sisters, and if they'd accept him as a friend themselves, that would be best. He wanted to earn Celestia's forgiveness. Maybe even Luna's someday. So he couldn't make chaos that would make any of them angry at him. Which meant no disharmony among ponies. Which was about half of the things in life he found entertaining were now things he didn't dare do. What was he going to do instead? An earth stallion poked his head around the side of the building. "Is Princess Twilight here?" "Oh, that's me!" Twilight got to her hooves. "What is it?" "I got a delivery of books to drop off with you." "Yes! Wonderful! Thanks so much! Where do I sign?" Discord stood up. "Twilight, why are you getting shipments of books when I went to so much effort to recover yours?" "Because I'm taking my personal collection to the castle, which means I've got to replace about half the books that are going to the new library you built me, and then I've also got to replace all the library books that I used to treat as part of my personal collection that really belonged to the library, so I still need just as many book donations as before you rescued my books, except now, I'm making a library for Ponyville that someone else can take over and I'm making a library for the Friendship Palace!" Twilight grinned at him with excitement. "Whoa," the earth stallion said, and took a step back. "Princess, what's he doing here?" "Who – you mean Discord? He lives here now. After he helped us defeat Tirek and return everypony's magic, I've made a place for him here at the castle." "Beggin' pardon, Your Highness, but that's not how I remember it going down," the stallion said. "I remember that thing rounding us all up so his partner could steal our magic." "Yes... well..." Discord took a deep breath, forcing his paws to unclench, and stepped forward. The stallion immediately took another step backward. The same sick feeling he used to get, the mixture of anger and grief that they feared him, mingled with shame and guilt, because this time he knew he deserved it. "That did happen," Discord said. "Tirek lied to me and tricked me into helping him. It was a terrible mistake on my part, and I've sworn to try to make amends for doing it." The stallion scowled at him, and then looked at Twilight. "Princess, I'd like to get unloaded fast as I can, if you don't mind. Can I just leave the cart for your staff to unpack, and I'll send someone back for it later?" Twilight sighed. "That would be fine. I'll have the cart brought to Sweet Apple Acres so you can pick it up there after we unload it." "That would be mighty appreciated, Your Highness. Thank you kindly." He left. "Well, that went well," Spike said. "Kind of." "Let's unpack the books, Spike." Twilight went around the corner. Discord didn't follow her. "It's never going to be enough, will it?" he whispered to himself. "Don't feel so bad!" Pinkie said. "You did a bad thing and now everypony's mad at you but just do good things that help everypony and they'll get over it!" How am I going to just do good things when almost everything I want to do is something ponies think is bad? He didn't say it, just stared at the ground. Pinkie was so cheerful, so optimistic. She'd never lived a life like his. As strange as she was to her family, they still accepted her. They still loved her. And she had no problem making as many friends as she wanted. "Wait for me!" Pinkie caroled at Twilight and Spike. "I'm going to help with the books! And then I'm gonna CLEAN ALL THE THINGS!" She looked back at Discord. "Are you coming? You could help!" "Ah, no," he said. "I, um, I'm going to visit Fluttershy." "Okie dokie! But come back tonight, I still need a pillow! I'm going to make a huuuuuge pot of spaghetti and I'll put peanut butter and hot chilis and pineapple in yours!" He smiled wryly. "Pinkie, sometimes I think the only reason you want to spend time with me is that it gives you an excuse to cook things that literally no other pony would be willing to eat." "I like to cook different things! But not baked bads, because even you would have thought those were yucky, I think." She hopped off after Twilight and Spike. "See you later, Discord!" At first he didn't actually go to see Fluttershy. What he really wanted was to be alone, to think. The problem was the lack of anywhere to go. When he walked out onto the street, ponies glared at him, or ran away. One enterprising foal even threw a rock, and Discord considered the possibility of turning the rock into a roc and terrorizing the colt with it, but not today. Some other time, maybe. He wanted to go to the Everfree, where he usually went if he wanted to think about something and he didn't want to go back to his private pocket dimension, but he wasn't allowed to without an escort, which would completely miss the point. Why did he even care, he wondered? He used to thrive on hatred. It had been his bread and butter, a source of sweet, sweet disharmony. When had it changed? Why was their hatred hurting him now? Because you never thought you deserved it, before. You added unpredictability and spice to their lives and they hated you for it. Why not enjoy their suffering, then? But now you know you've done something terrible to them. Now you know you deserve to be hated. That was what hurt. Not their hatred, but the fact that he couldn't blithely ignore it on the grounds that ponies were simply haters and whatchagonnado? After Tirek took his power, he finally felt empathy for the ponies he'd helped Tirek attack... far too late, of course, but he knew now that what he'd done was horrible. They were justified in hating him, so he couldn't make himself simply not care, like he usually did. He could either revel in being outright evil or he could squirm with guilt. And while he'd been called evil many, many times, Discord had never thought of himself as evil. Selfish, sure, he was willing to own that, and disharmonious, certainly, but it was his role in existence to spread disharmony and counterbalance the Tree, so how could that be truly evil? The world needed him to do it, whether ponies liked it or not. This was different. He hadn't needed to help Tirek steal pony magic. In fact, given what his role was in Equestria and the world, it had honestly been a terrible idea from the beginning and a violation of what he existed for. The chaos avatars existed to preserve magic and keep it distributed, not to let it superconcentrate to one vessel. Of course he hadn't thought about that at the time, but now that he was regretting his actions anyway, he could see it. He'd violated his purpose in life, and he'd inflicted something so awful on ponies, it fell close to the range of murder... he'd deprived them of possibilities, cut down the world's complexity, allowed power to gravitate to a single point and promoted the loss of Chaos in the long run. The only reason it wasn't as bad as killing them was that they'd recovered from it. He deserved their hatred. Sighing, he decided that he would, in fact, go visit Fluttershy. Her home was out of the way, where no ponies would be likely to come by and give him the stinkeye. Fluttershy was bustling around, packing a suitcase and setting aside animal feeders. "Fluttershy! How is my favorite little pegasus today?" Discord asked, his tone cheerful. "Oh, hello, Discord." She glanced at him once, head dipping low and her mane half over one eye, and then returned to what she was doing. "You were asleep for a long time. Are you feeling better?" "Much better, thank you. What's all the hustle and bustle about here?" "Oh, um, the Manehattan Zoo wants me to come in and help calm the animals down," she said. "Tirek smashed a lot of the zoo and the animals all ran away, but it's Manehattan so they don't really have anywhere to go? So they want my help in persuading them to come home. I said I was sure they have animal speakers in Manehattan but they really want me to help them, specifically, so of course I said I'd go." "Oh." There had been so many buildings. Discord had animated trees and sent them in to hold up structures that were collapsing, because when Tirek had taken a lot of magic, he'd had to expel it violently, by blasting things. "I, uh. Was that one of the ones I sent the trees in?" "I didn't hear about any trees." Fluttershy still hadn't looked at him since the one brief glance when he arrived. She flitted out of the house carrying a bag of birdseed and started pouring it into bird feeders. "They don't think any of the animals were killed, though. At least they didn't find any bodies under the wreckage." "That's good to hear." "Yes, it is." This was unbearably awkward. "Fluttershy, is there anything I can do to help you? I could fill those bird feeders for you..." He raised his talon. Now she looked at him. "Oh, no, you don't have to do that. I have everything under control here. Just a few more feeders and a little conversation with Angel Bunny to remind him, and then I can grab my bag and head for the train." "I could go with you... maybe help with the repairs..." Fluttershy looked him directly in the eyes. "Discord... that's not a good idea, and I think you know why." "But I want to help." "Sometimes if you hurt somepony, you can't help them right away except by giving them space, because just thinking about you reminds them of how they were hurt. I think probably every pony at the zoo lost their powers to Tirek. They aren't going to want to be reminded of that." She looked away again. "I'm sorry. But I think you should find places around Ponyville to help, if you're trying to make amends. You and Tirek didn't get all the ponies in Ponyville, so maybe some of them won't be afraid of you." It was true – they'd saved Ponyville for last, at Discord's insistence, and Tirek had been focused enough on coming after the Bearers, he'd only pulled the magic from the ponies he'd happened to see out on the streets. Anyone who'd been out on a farm, like Applejack's family, or inside a building, like the Cakes, or Cheerilee and the school foals, had been spared. But it had been a nice day, and there had been quite a few ponies walking the streets or sitting at tables at outdoor cafes. When Discord had given flowers to Celestia, there had been relatively few ponies on the dance floor, most of them from Ponyville, and many of them apparently hadn't yet heard the details of his role in events – several had even smiled at him. It hadn't lasted. As ponies from Canterlot had filtered in and as the Ponyville ponies had shared gossip with each other, he'd felt the wave of anger and fear toward him building, rippling through them; he could sense disharmony, and the presence of a frightening enemy who'd hurt them at what was supposed to be a victory celebration had upset more than a few ponies and even sown a bit of dissension toward Celestia and toward Twilight. Which he might have enjoyed, another time, but not when Twilight had saved his life, and not when the dissent was all about hating and mistrusting him. "You're in Ponyville. Can I at least take care of your animals while you're gone?" Fluttershy shook her head. "Angel Bunny has it all in hoof. Or in paw, I guess. And you and he don't get along, so it would probably be better if you didn't try to help out this time. Maybe some other time." She wasn't looking at him. She wasn't letting him help. She had flat out said that he needed to give the ponies he'd hurt some space. Discord swallowed. "Fluttershy... are – are we still friends?" She stopped filling the feeders for a moment, setting her bag down. Slowly she turned. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. "We're still friends," she said. "I... I'm not going to let one mistake ruin our friendship forever. But..." "But you want me to go." "I just... need some time. To think about things. I... I promise you we'll still be friends. But I have to be alone for a little while, Discord. That's why I agreed to go to Manehattan right now." "When will you be back?" "Um, I guess after we've rounded up all the missing animals. Maybe two or three days, I'm not sure. We can talk then, maybe, if, if you want to. I think." "I'm sorry," he said helplessly. "I know," Fluttershy said softly. She flew to the door of the cottage. "I... have to go in and talk to Angel Bunny and get my bag. I'll see you in a few days?" "Of course." He forced a bright smile onto his face. "Auf wiedersehen!" Then he teleported before she could see the tears starting to well up in his eyes. The Cutie Mark Crusader clubhouse was hardly the finest accommodation possible, but it was in Ponyville and technically speaking he had every right to be here, since the fillies had made him an honorary member of their club. He wouldn't have tried it if they'd been there, though. The day of the party – however long ago that was, he'd been asleep or time traveling through most of the intervening time so he had no idea – the Crusaders hadn't seemed to have any idea of what he'd done, and had been friendly with him. By now, though, he was sure they knew. And the thought of the little girls who'd opened their hearts to him and trusted him to help them with their increasingly outrageous quest for cutie marks now looking at him with fear, or hate, made him hurt inside, the same way he was hurting over the conversation he'd just had with Fluttershy. I'm going to lose her. She doesn't want to be friends anymore. She's angry with me. She hates me. He lay sprawled on the wooden floor of the clubhouse, staring emptily at the grain of the wood. Tears wanted to well up, but he used his powers to block them. I have to fix this. But how? She doesn't want me to help. She doesn't want me to make amends to her, because she doesn't even want to see me. Oh, how he wished he was capable of initiating a time loop that he himself was the focus of. That was impossible, sadly; he'd inflicted time loops on ponies on occasion, and he could step sideways out of time to monitor the loop, but he couldn't start a loop that included himself because for him to run a loop, he couldn't be in linear time himself at all. And nopony else had the power to start a time loop. In theory, he could trigger one that would run on its own, which would allow him to be the focus of it because no one would be monitoring it. In practice, that was so horrifyingly dangerous he didn't dare; a loop with no one monitoring it could theoretically run forever without ever ending, a prospect that horrified him more than death, stone or losing his powers. There was no way to change what he'd done; he couldn't loop, and to travel in time and have any hope of affecting the outcome of anything, he'd have to do it the chaotic way, which involved exactly no precision whatsoever as to when he would end up. He was capable of pulling off pseudo-harmonic time travel, what he'd just done with Pinkie, where he could control exactly when he'd appear and how long he could stay there, but that one had rules, such as the inability to overlap himself more than once and more importantly the inability to change any events that a sentient being had observed. He couldn't go back and warn himself not to trust Tirek and make all of this have never happened. There was no time travel method available to him where that would work. So he couldn't fix it. He couldn't change the past. He couldn't change the facts of his betrayal. He couldn't make Fluttershy forget his betrayal without running the risk of erasing much more of her memory than he wanted to. He could deharmonize her, unbalance her personality in such a way as to foreground her trust and minimize her hurt, but from experience he knew that trying that particular combination on a pony usually resulted in a pony having a childlike trust in everything that quickly got them killed or seriously harmed. Fluttershy was already too vulnerable for his tastes, too likely to trust the wrong individual. Of course. She trusted me, after all. There wasn't anything he could do with his powers to fix this, and he didn't know nearly enough about friendship to fix it any other way. Again the tears tried to burn their way out of his eyes. This time he let them, though he wouldn't let himself sob or otherwise make a sound. I'm going to lose her. My best friend and she doesn't trust me anymore. And I deserve it. Cucumber sandwiches, falling to the ground with tiny little thumps. He lost it then, his magic's ability to restrain his emotions failing completely, more from a lack of will than a lack of magic. Discord curled up on the floor and sobbed, burying his face in his paws. Should have stayed in Tartarus. Should have let them turn me to stone. It was not the nature of chaos to restrain itself. It was also not the nature of chaos to dwell on the past, or to hold still on any emotional state. Once the tears finally stopped, Discord actually felt better. He wiped his face and sat up on his hind legs, sitting more like a pony than a biped, tail curling around himself. Fluttershy hadn't actually said she hated him or that she would never trust him again. She'd said he hurt her and she needed space. Well, strictly speaking, she hadn't even said that; she'd made it a more generic statement about ponies and how they handled being hurt, but he could read between the lines, especially after she admitted she wanted some time alone, away from him and her other friends. Maybe if he gave her the space she'd asked for, everything would be all right. Maybe she'd come back and she'd be recovered from this, the way it had seemed right after the formation of the castle when she'd joked with him and seemed to be comfortable with him and happy, and it would all go back to the way it was before. Or maybe he'd ask Twilight for advice. She was the Princess of Friendship, after all. Of course, she didn't trust him either. But at least she looked at him, she talked to him, she didn't hide her face from him. Not that hiding was at all in character for Twilight anyway. But she seemed... friendlier, at least, than Fluttershy was being right now. Maybe because of the last key, or all the books he'd saved and the tree he'd grown for her. Maybe she could give him some advice on getting Fluttershy back to the way she was before. Pinkie probably would be no help, she'd likely just suggest throwing a party. And he wasn't sure any of the others would give him advice. Maybe Rarity; she'd seemed oddly sympathetic to him yesterday. But it was Twilight's job to solve friendship problems, right? Wasn't that what her new title meant? He should ask her. On the other hand, asking Twilight involved admitting to Twilight that he was having problems. No. He'd wait for Fluttershy to come back and see how things were then. If everything just came back to normal, then great. If it didn't, then he'd swallow his pride, expose his weakness to Twilight and ask for advice. Twilight wasn't even at the castle when he came back. Pinkie and Spike were cleaning the place and organizing it; not that there was much to organize, Twilight apparently hadn't even bought furniture yet. Rarity had brought over more pillows and blankets to make pseudo-beds with, but Pinkie hadn't apparently put any in her own room, which gave Discord a sense of relief. He couldn't ask Pinkie to sleep on top of him – that would make him look far too weak and needy – but he really wanted her there. Anypony, really, but he wanted someone who'd sleep beside him without the complication of sex – he knew from experience that anypony he repeatedly had sex with, especially one who slept in his bed and showed him physical affection outside of sex, was someone who'd gain an emotional hold on him that they could use to influence him unduly, and he felt as if he had too many ponies who had emotional influence over him already. Pinkie had made it clear that she wasn't interested in him that way – which was unfortunate in one way, as he knew Pinkie's philosophies of sex and romance were close to his own, mostly that life was too short to limit oneself to one sex partner, and she'd probably be a lot of fun, but on the other hand, it made her safe to solicit physical contact from without the emotional complications he'd end up with if he had sex with her. He wasn't sure how he felt about being defined as a giant plushie, but to the best of his knowledge Pinkie wasn't a xenophile, so her lack of interest in him that way was understandable without being insulting, and besides, why did he go to all the work to set her up with Cheese Sandwich if he was going to want her for himself? He was so bored. What Pinkie and Spike were doing was literally anathema to him. Figuring out the structure they wanted to use to organize what few non-book items were in the castle, putting the things away in those places... they were turning chaos into order. He couldn't even stand to watch them. But Twilight was having meetings, and doing politics, and what he really wanted to do was go find her and do something hilarious to interrupt the proceedings, because even the thought of Twilight being in long boring meetings with the mayor made him want to crumple ostentatiously to the floor and pretend to be dead of ennui. But he knew better. He was trying to be good, he was trying to prove that he really had reformed this time, that his heart was in it and he was trying to make amends. So, basically, everything he could think of to do that was fun was off limits. What had he done before chaos? As far back as he could remember, he'd enjoyed messing with ponies (or, if he went back far enough in his memory, draconequui), and he'd enjoyed being creative and altering the world with his powers (or pretending to do it, back before he'd had his powers, when he was very small), but there had been a time when chaos and disharmony hadn't been the most important things in his life, when he'd known how to have fun without necessarily annoying others. What had he done back then? He thought of his teen years, in the old castle with Celestia and Luna. He'd played a lot of pranks, he remembered that. And fantasized a lot about Celestia... ah, teenage hormones. What else had he done? There had been studying magic – he'd been obsessed, desperate to learn as much as he possibly could, as driven as Twilight actually, though it had manifested in different ways. He'd practiced, constantly. There had been books; he remembered setting a spell on a book so it would read itself to him, and lying back in his bed, paws behind his head and eyes closed, letting himself be drawn in by the story. There had been running around playing with Luna, because Celestia even then was starting to be crushed by the weight of the decorum demanded of the Crown Princess and hadn't been allowed to play foolish games with her little sister anymore, so Discord had played with her instead. The memory was bittersweet now, given how bad his relationship with Luna had become. "Do not begin to compare me to you. I did terrible things, things that were arguably worse than anything you had done, yes. But I repent of them. No one but I can fight my nightmares, and they are always, always of my own actions, always of the monster I became. You have no remorse. I don't know what you dream of, but when I glimpse bits and pieces through the shield you built around your mind, I can see that your dreams of chaos and tormenting ponies are pleasant ones to you. Tia thinks you can again be the Discord we grew up with, someday... but I think you never were. I think you are a monster that rose from the grave wearing his face and his voice and his memories, and perhaps you even think you are the Discord we once knew, but you aren't. You can't be. He wielded chaos, but you are chaos. And that is all you are and all you will ever choose to be, and that is why I will not forgive you." Discord pushed the memory away. He wasn't trying to make himself more depressed here. There had to have been something he used to do that he'd liked, before chaos became his everything. A different memory surfaced out of nowhere, from so far back he usually couldn't even remember. "Someday I'm gonna fly like you!" "Pretty unlikely, little bro, I'm the Principle of Speed. But hey, it's a goal worth shooting for!" His mouth twisted in a wry grin. Normally he never even thought about his older brothers, or any of the draconequui in his clan besides his mother; few of them had given him the time of day. But he'd hero-worshipped his closest-in-age brother the way Scootaloo worshipped Rainbow Dash, and for some of the same reasons. And even after he'd ended up alone, he'd wanted to fly, fast and strong; he'd worked at it harder than anything except practicing his magic and learning to speak pony. After his wings had been bound and crippled, he'd focused on learning levitation so he could fly anyway, even with wings that would forevermore be naturally small and weak. And then he'd learned body transformation so he could make his wings temporarily larger, expand his natural flight field, and truly fly the way a draconequus ought to be able to do, without assistance from chaos magic. And then he'd practiced a lot. Why had he lost interest in it, anyway? Oh, right, because it had had nothing to do with chaos. Heh. Well, now he had an idea for something he could do, anyway. Rainbow Dash was napping on a cloud. Normally Discord preferred it when there was a little bit of unpredictability to life, but right now, he was pleased that she was exactly where he expected her to be, because it meant a lot less work, and a lot less exposure to angry pegasi, that he didn't have to fly around looking for her. He plopped himself down on the cloud next to her. "Who's a cute little Dashie? Yes you are, yes you are. You want an ear scritch, girl? Ear scritch?" Rainbow Dash murmured in her sleep, smiling, and snuggled against his ear-scritching talon. "Mmm." "Hang on, let me get a picture of this." He spawned a second self. The second him ostentatiously posed a camera. "Gute, gute, iz perfecto!" Second Discord said in a parody accent, and snapped a few pictures, then pulled out a film camera and started rolling. "And action!" "Huh? Whuh—Discord!" Rainbow Dash kicked outward and flapped, putting distance between herself and Discord immediately. Her eyes fell on Second Discord. "You perv! What the hay were you doing, filming me while I was sleeping?" "Blackmail material," Discord said cheerfully. "You'd never have believed me if I'd just told you that you were trying to snuggle against me in your sleep—" "I was not!" "There, you see?" He rolled down a small movie screen and had Second Discord start projecting the film, showing Rainbow's unconscious form mumbling happily and leaning her head back against the scritching. "That did not happen! Everypony knows what a liar you are, Dipcord!" "Well, then today's your lucky day! If you're as awesome as you think you are, maybe you might just get a chance to pay me back for that." "I am 20% more awesome than I think I am. Whattya mean, a chance for payback?" "How would you like the chance to take one free shot? One kick, anywhere, with my sworn word that I won't dodge it or try to block." Rainbow scowled. "Why would you let me kick you? That doesn't make any sense. And don't tell me it's no fun to make sense or something stupid like that. You've got a reason and it's probably a bad one." "Of course I have a reason, and the reason is that I am mind-numbingly, soul-crushingly, devastatingly bored. And I want you to entertain me." She huffed. "First off, you being bored is my problem why? Second, do I even wanna know why getting kicked in the face or something is entertainment for you?" "No, no, that's not the entertainment. That's the stakes if I lose, which I don't intend to." "I'm not playing any games with you, Discord!" "Oh, what a shame. And here I thought you'd welcome the opportunity to use your awesome flying skills and do what you do best – well, what you do second best next to bragging about yourself – to try to defeat me in a game of aerial Tag. But, I suppose, it's only natural; you recognize that no pegasus, however awesome, could possibly compete against the magnificent flying talents of a draconequus." Her scowl was pure entertainment in and of itself. "Like you wouldn't totally cheat." "I'll Pinkie Promise if you like," he wheedled. Rainbow flitted to his other side, restlessly. Discord simply morphed his front into his back to follow her. "Don't do that, that's creepy," she said. "Then don't fly behind my head. That's rude." "I'm rude? After you—" She stopped herself and took a deep breath. "You trying to provoke me into a fight or something?" "No, I'm trying to provoke you into a flying competition, because I can't cause chaos if I'm trying to make amends for... for what I did, and if I can't cause chaos, I need some kind of adrenaline rush to distract me from wanting to turn the grass blue and the sky green." "You know this Rainbow Power stuff we got from the Tree is like the Elements, except you can't take it off us, right? You do anything like that and we can turn you to stone so fast you won't even know it's happening until the birds start pooping on you again." Now it was his turn to take a deep breath. "I know that. I knew that when I gave Twilight the last key. I knew that when I bookmarked the pages to show you how to unlock the box. But I don't want to make Fluttershy have to break her promise, to say nothing of the fact that I really don't want to be a statue again, so I need something to do! If I can't find something exciting and fun to do so I don't think about chaos, I'm going to snap, Rainbow. And by snap I mean both my sanity and my fingers." "You... really want to play some kind of game instead of making chaos?" "It's not 'instead of'; wreaking chaos isn't an option. Not now. Not if I..." He sat down on the cloud, heavily. "I did something terrible, Rainbow. You know it, I know it, everypony in Equestria knows it. And I'm sorry. But sorry isn't good enough all by itself. If I just go back to doing what I want to do, this fast, it does nothing to prove that I'm sorry. I'm trying to make sacrifices to show ponies I'm sincere... but it's so hard. Fluttershy wouldn't let me do anything to help and I can't find anything to do." "Fluttershy's gone to Manehattan. I went with her to the train station." "I know, I went to visit her and she told me." "So how did you think you were gonna help her in Manehattan when you were the one that caused the problem?" "Isn't the one who caused the problem usually supposed to be the one who has to fix it? But she says... they wouldn't want to see me, after what I helped Tirek do. And I suppose she's right." He sighed, and then forced energy back into his tone. "So! I remembered that I used to like to fly, once upon a time, so I figured that trying to dodge you might be thrilling enough to occupy my attention." "You can teleport and use magic and stuff." "Yes, but I don't even want to. I want to fly for once. If I Pinkie Promise not to use my magic during the game, will you do it?" "Discord, your wings are tinier than Scoots' when you think about how big your body is. How the hay are you gonna fly against any pegasus without using your magic to levitate or something?" Discord grinned broadly and unfolded his wings, which, considering that they hadn't been folded, drew a very amusing expression from Rainbow Dash. His wingspan was now three times what it had been, a normal ratio to his body size for a flying serpentine dragonoid. "Like this." "Wow." Rainbow stared at his wings as he extended them fully. "Why don't you keep them like this all the time? They're, like, a hundred percent cooler this way." Discord posed as if he were a pegasus model in a cheesecake shot. "Oh, Rainbow, I knew that eventually you'd see my true beauty!" Rainbow turned red. "As if," she snorted. "I'm a pegasus, 'course I appreciate nice wings. Doesn't mean the rest of you doesn't still make me wanna grab a barf bag." "You always say such romantic things to me," Discord said, sighing with his paws clasped in front of him and his eyes improbably large. "So how do I get you to stand still and let me kick you again?" Discord grinned. "By catching me!" He shot upward as, predictably, Rainbow lunged for him. She followed. This was fun. Why had he stopped doing things like this? He'd used wings to fly during the dragon wars, quite a lot, because he had to conserve his magic in those days and a single spell to give him powerful flying wings burned a lot less of it than constant levitation did. Discord, like any flying creature over a certain size and weight, had a magical flight field, which was a property of his body and entirely separate from his chaos magic. It was still magic – Tirek had taken it too when he'd taken the rest of Discord's magic – but it came from a different magical pool. And like other winged creatures with a magical flight field, he still needed his wings to have a certain minimum of size and muscle strength in order to use them. While the injuries that had been inflicted on him in his childhood had healed millennia ago, they'd prevented his wings from growing with the rest of his body, so in his natural, default state, they were not large enough to easily get a full-grown draconequus off the ground. He could use them without levitation magic, he could even outfly Fluttershy with them for a few minutes, but then, almost anyone who could fly at all could outfly Fluttershy, and the physical effort it took him to use them left his muscles burning and his lungs short of breath within a quarter hour of flight. Most of the time he barely used them at all, relying on his levitation, but when he expected to have to conserve magic or when he was up against chaos-suppression fields, he could transform them to the size they should have been, and they'd stay that way for a few days if he didn't turn them back. They got in his way on the ground at this size – he was used to having the small wings that easily tucked away against his back – so he didn't usually keep them like this any longer than he needed to. But he'd forgotten how good it felt to fly on wingpower and his flight field with full-size wings. He spent several minutes performing simple dodges, ducking and weaving and using clouds for cover as Rainbow chased him. Then she started getting creative, performing acrobatic flips to let herself change vector rapidly, flying in tight spirals so she could shoot off at him in whichever direction he dodged in, so he did the same, demonstrating how much more acrobatic a serpentine dragon's body could be than a pony's. It was a lot harder to use his muscles to sling his midsection sideways, out of parallel with his head and tail, than it was to use chaos magic to do it, but the sense of satisfaction when Rainbow Dash flew right past him without being able to touch him, too fast to change her direction to hit him above or below, was tremendous. His own vector change stunts were faster and more flexible than hers, because a pegasus couldn't double her body over and shift her flight field to point in the opposite direction more or less instantly; a pegasus had to do a flip to accomplish what Discord could do just by bending. He could also spiral himself, contorting into coils wide enough that Rainbow would fly straight through them, and then snap back into a straight line and arrow himself away. Despite all his physical advantages over Rainbow, however, he had two major disadvantages: his technique was rusty after so long depending on nothing but chaos magic to accomplish what he was now trying to do with his body, and also, his wings had gotten very, very little exercise in a very long time. Making them bigger had made them naturally stronger, but hadn't improved their endurance any. They started to ache, and then to burn, and then they were hurting enough that it forced him to slow down... which meant that when Rainbow barreled into him, he couldn't dodge quickly enough to keep her from smashing them both down onto a cloud. "I win," she said, standing on his chest and looking down at him with a huge grin on her face. Discord panted. "So you did. Let me catch... my breath." Rainbow got off of him and flitted above him. Amazingly, at least from his perspective, she didn't even seem to be winded much, and certainly there was no sign that her wings ached like his did. "Take your time. I still haven't figured out where I wanna boot you." He sat up, breathing deeply, folding his wings against his back. They still hurt a lot, but he didn't transform them back, not yet. The pain reminded him of when he was mortal, when Celestia had been his lover and Luna had practically been his sister-in-law. He wouldn't give up his role as the chaos avatar for anything, but he was starting to feel like he had been happier before. "I am impressed," he said, trying not to wheeze. "You are good. If you'd been alive at the age and skill level you have now when I was a child, and I'd known you, I might have been as bad as Scootaloo." "What do you mean?" "Oh, I was obsessed with being a better flyer, when I was a child. Practiced constantly. And it began because I wanted to be like my older brother, though I kept up my interest in flying long after he was gone." "You had an older brother?" Rainbow asked, sounding skeptical. "Was he as chaotic as you are?" "No, no." Discord shook his head. "Draconequus magic wasn't inherently chaotic anymore than alicorn magic is inherently about moving the sun. We had something that was... well, I suppose halfway between cutie marks and your Elements. We called them Principles, and when you found what yours was, you found your magic, because your magic was bound to your Principle. I was the Principle of Chaos, so, chaos magic. My brother was the Principle of Speed. You'd probably have gotten along with him... well, if ponies and draconequui had been getting along, which they weren't, but if you'd known each other in a different time, maybe." "What was his name?" Rainbow asked, the skepticism gone from her voice. "And how fast was he?" "You know, I don't remember? I usually addressed him as Big Brother, but I think I used to know what his actual name was. He died a very, very long time ago." Discord looked out at the horizon, a wistful note in his voice. "I don't actually know how fast he was because I was too young to be able to measure such things, but he was fast in the air, on the ground, climbing trees, swimming... he could do anything fast. He could speed other things up, too, like cooking. When we found potatoes or other vegetables that really aren't edible until you cook them, he could cook them in a few minutes, whereas anyone else it'd have taken an hour or so." "I'm... sorry about him being dead," Rainbow said awkwardly, hovering. "Oh, he'd be dead by now anyway; draconequui aren't naturally immortal. He wouldn't have lasted through my millennium in stone." He sighed. "I can't even remember his face, you know. But he was my hero, the way you are to Scootaloo. Somewhere along the way... I forgot how much I used to love to fly." "Did you always do that wing change thing?" "After I had enough magic to pull it off, yes. My wings weren't always this small in proportion to my body, but they didn't grow properly." He wasn't going to explain to her why not. Rainbow Dash was the last pony in the universe he wanted to pity him. "I flew without magical aid – well, without aid from my chaos powers, obviously I was using magic to fly but it was a flight field, like a pegasus – for a good bit of my childhood. Then I outgrew my wings, so first I mastered levitation, and then I figured out how to make them bigger." "Huh." She folded her forelegs over each other as she hovered. "Why exactly are you telling me all this?" Discord chuckled. "You think I know?" "Well, it's not like anypony else would know why you did something." "True, but it doesn't follow that that means I do know. I tend to follow my whims without thinking about it much. You might have noticed this." "Yeah, you might want to think about doing less of that." She landed on the cloud next to him. "So are you seriously planning to let me kick you?" "You won, didn't you? It would hardly be fair for me to go back on it now." "Yeah, but since when did you care about being fair?" He shrugged. "Perhaps I'm feeling masochistic." Rainbow scowled. "If this is a sex thing I am so totally outta here." Discord burst out laughing. "Oh, Rainbow, if I was inclined to get myself locked up in somepony's play dungeon, you are quite possibly the last pony I would choose. No, this has absolutely nothing to do with sex." He got the laughter under control, and then lost it again, giggling. "But your face when you said that! Oh, if only I'd still been running my film!" She lifted off the cloud again, hovering, scowling even harder. Finally Discord stopped laughing. "Ah, well, I suppose it's time to take my medicine. Where have you decided to grace my flesh with your firm, shapely hooves?" He snickered a bit. "You know what? I'm not gonna." She grinned at him, with a tiny touch of malice in her smile. "I just proved that I can kick your flank in a flight competition anytime I want to, even though you're like ten zillion years old and a chaos god and you've got, like, awesome dragon wings, well, except one of them has feathers but you know what I mean. And you just told me that you used to be really into flying and you were really good at it, and I gotta admit, your moves are slick. I've never seen anypony pull off some of the stunts you did. And I still kicked your flank. So here's what I want. I'm not gonna literally kick you, but you're going to admit to all my friends how I totally kicked you in the flank, like, not literally." "Metaphorically." "Yeah, that sounds like a Twilight word, so I guess it's right." Discord shrugged. "Fair enough." This was why a banner showing a smiling Rainbow Dash, with a hoof up in a victory gesture and a medal around her neck, standing next to a smiling Discord who was waving, presumably at the camera, ended up wrapped around the entire exterior of the Friendship Castle, bearing the legend "LOYALTY DEFEATS CHAOS 1-0; RAINBOW DASH CONFIRMED CHAMPION OF FLIGHT COMPETITION AGAINST DISCORD, SPIRIT OF CHAOS". Because the location of the banner, up high and all around the circumference of the castle, meant it could have been placed by a pegasus, and Twilight would at least have to spend a few minutes figuring out if the culprit was Discord or Rainbow Dash. Discord could play at being humble, if it was funny. Rainbow Dash denied putting it up, of course, since she didn't, but she did express great disappointment when Twilight insisted on taking it down on the grounds that no sports victory, however profound, could possibly justify wrapping the Friendship Palace in a banner. Especially, Rarity pointed out, one with a garish orange, blue and neon green background. Discord just grinned. Making a banner that would resist the castle's harmonics and not instantly fall apart had been an effort, so when Twilight peeled the banner off, he let it start dissolving... in a way that caused it to split in half, dropping one of the halves on Twilight. Maybe friendship would allow him to get away with a little, tiny bit of pranking and disharmony-stirring, after all. That night, after he discovered that a whoopee cushion had been inserted under one of the pillows near the middle of his makeshift bed, where his lower body was likely to be, he just laughed. And carried the deflated whoopee cushion to Twilight's room, knocked on her door, and returned it to her. "A very good effort for a beginner!" he said cheerfully. "Keep trying, and you may graduate to intermediate pranking within a year or two!" "Oh, I don't know," Twilight said. "If I'm stuck living with you, don't you think that would count as an accelerated course?" He laughed. "If you're willing to take lessons from the master, I'd be happy to teach." "Maybe. But don't teach Pinkie or Rainbow. They don't need help." It was a pleasant end to the day, at least. When he went to bed, he was in good spirits. There was a bit of jostling because apparently Pinkie wanted him to be her teddy bear and not the other way around, so she had a mild objection to him spooning around her and hugging her to his chest like a plush toy, but eventually she ended up draped over his midsection like a small but heavy pink blanket, and he supposed that was good enough. It didn't last, though. "Your friends, in exchange for all the alicorn magic in Equestria!" Tirek boomed, and Discord knew exactly what Twilight would do, exactly how she would respond to this. And then she didn't. "I can't give you all the alicorn magic!" she shouted, and teleported away. Discord stared at the place where she'd been in horror. But he knew what she'd do. She would never abandon her friends. This couldn't be happening. "It seems you were wrong, Discord," Tirek chuckled. He was so huge, dwarfing almost everything else in the landscape. "Do you remember our wager?" The ponies' lives were forfeit if Twilight didn't surrender. Discord looked at Fluttershy, helplessly, trapped as he was in a bubble of magic the same as she was. "This isn't right," he said. "She couldn't really have left us." "Oh, but apparently, she did." Tirek smiled, with far too many teeth. "And now I'm afraid it's time for you to pay up." Discord's bubble moved, so that it was directly in front of Tirek. "Wait, wait!" Discord shouted. "I know Twilight too well! She would never abandon her friends! You need to keep them alive as hostages, because she'll be back!" "What if you don't know her as well as you think you do?" Tirek asked, sneering. Discord shook his head frantically. "Twilight would never do this," he said. "This isn't real! That's it, I must be dreaming! None of this is happening!" He tried to force himself to wake up, or take lucid control of the dream, certain that that was what it had to be. Neither one happened. "Ah, but you were wrong about her once," Tirek said. "You thought you'd defeated her when you hadn't. Couldn't you easily be wrong about her again?" "No, we're friends now, I know her, she wouldn't leave us—" "She'd leave you." "She wouldn't leave them!" "You were wrong about Celestia, too, weren't you? And you thought you knew her. You thought she would never harden herself enough to you to use the Tree against you, and you were wrong. And you were wrong about Fluttershy, when you assumed she expected you to betray her. And weren't you wrong about me as well? Tell me, Discord, when have you ever been right about anypony you thought you knew well?" Discord kept shaking his head. "This isn't right," he said again, helplessly. "She wouldn't leave her friends." "She might if it was the only way to save the whole world, sugarcube," Applejack said. "She's led us into danger before. You think she couldn't sacrifice us to save Equestria? It was Celestia who taught her everything she knows, and you know who Celestia was willin' to sacrifice." "We're not worth all the ponies in Equestria," Fluttershy said. "That's wrong. You're the only ponies worth anything. The only ones that matter," Discord said. "You're the only ponies to accept me." "But you can't have everything you want the way you want it if your magic doesn't work," Fluttershy said patiently. "Without your magic, you're nothing, Discord. You can't protect us or yourself because you let Tirek take your power away." "This isn't real! This is a dream! Let me wake up, please let me wake up..." "Silly, how can it be a dream if you can't make yourself wake up?" Pinkie said. "If you're always a lucid dreamer and you can take control of a dream as soon as you figure out what it is, and you can't control this, then it's not a dream! Sheesh!" "The truth is you failed at everything, Discord," Tirek chuckled. "I played you like a harp, and you gave me everything I wanted. And now I'm going to kill you. But first, I promised that you'd get to watch your friends die." Then Fluttershy, no longer in a bubble, was floating between Discord and Tirek, caught in Tirek's magic. "This is the one who was special to you, isn't it? Your little Fluttershy?" "Not her, please not her," Discord begged, paws pressed against the bubble like he could break it if he just pushed hard enough. "Please. You don't need to kill them, please." "But I want to," Tirek said. "Aren't you the one who believed that having the power to do what you want means you have the right to do it?" He began pulling on Fluttershy's head and body, separately, tugging them in opposite directions. She screamed. "Discord! Help me, please!" "Don't! Tirek, no, don't do this! Please, I'll do anything!" "There's nothing you can do," Tirek said. "You're magicless, and that makes you worthless and useless. You have nothing to bargain with." "DISCORD! Please, Discord, make him stop! Please, he's hurting me!" "No, please, don't do this to her, t-take me instead if you have to kill someone, please let her go, please—" Tirek just grinned and kept pulling, and Fluttershy just kept screaming, and nothing Discord could say or do stopped any of it. And then her head popped off her body in a spray of blood. And he couldn't do anything but scream, and scream. "Wake up! Discord, you're dreaming, wake up!" He opened his eyes to find Pinkie Pie, hooves practically glued to the sides of his head and her eyes directly in front of his. He was gasping for breath. "Wh—Pinkie?" "You were having a bad dream, silly billy! I kept shaking you and shaking you but you wouldn't wake up!" "How... did you know?" "That you weren't waking up? It was because your eyes were still closed and—" "No, how did you know I was having a bad dream?" "Well, first you got all wiggly and restless and woke me up. And then you were mumbling, but that could've been a good dream, but then you started making this whiny noise and your paws were all clenched up and your head was tossing back and forth and that was how I knew!" "For future reference," Discord said, getting his breathing back under control with some effort, "if a dreamer sleeps through the end of their dream and goes back into deep sleep, they won't remember that the dream ever even happened. You only remember dreams if you wake up during or right after them. So you should never wake someone from a nightmare; you're just ensuring that they'll remember it forever." Pinkie's eyes went wide. "Oh no, I'm sorry! I thought I was helping you but if you would've just slept through it and forgotten about it but instead I woke you up and now you remember it that must be awful! But at least you're awake now and not having a bad dream!" She plopped herself onto his lap, looking up at him. "Wanna talk about it? Were there giant flying sharks eating all the pastries? Because when I have nightmares it's usually about giant flying sharks eating all the pastries! Or sometimes it's about baked bads!" Despite himself, he chuckled slightly. "It wasn't about giant flying sharks, no. And to be honest, no, I don't want to talk about it." "How come? Talking about my dreams always makes me feel better! Maybe it would make you feel better too!" He plucked Pinkie off his lap and deposited her on the pillows. "I strongly doubt it," he said, and got to his feet. "Where are you going? You want me to come with you?" "You need your sleep, little miss pony. I don't have any parties to minister to in the morning." He grinned at her. "Really, I'm just going to go get some fresh air. Take a little walk, enjoy the moon – it is nighttime, right?" "Uh-huh." Her eyes narrowed. "Are you sure you're not gonna leave Ponyville?" "Now why would I want to do that? There's plenty of fresh air right here. Besides, if I were going to break my parole it would not be while Luna is in charge." He shuddered. "How come she doesn't like you? She was a big meanie pants too who had to get Elements of Harmonized, and now she's all better! You'd think she'd know what it's like!" "She doesn't think I'm sufficiently remorseful," he said disdainfully. "Apparently I haven't made enough mea culpas and genuflections at the altar of guilt for her to forgive me." "Well, you weren't really sorry before, you just wanted friends. But now you're really truly sorry so maybe now you and Princess Luna will get along!" "Stranger things have happened," he said, shrugging. "But it doesn't exactly seem likely." He opened the door to his room. "Get some sleep, Pinkie. I'll be back before long." Pinkie spread herself out snow angel style. "I'm taking your pillows..." she sing-songed. Discord grinned. "Good night." Outside, without the harmonics to interfere, he summoned a scrying spell, allowing a clear, transparent crystal pineapple to form in his hand, each of the facets swirling with potential. Find Fluttershy, he commanded the spell. Two dozen images formed, from every angle, of a hotel room – presumably, in Manehattan – and Fluttershy asleep in bed, mouth open, mane every which way all over the pillows. It'll just be for a moment. Luna won't even notice, she's busy at night, and Celestia's asleep. He pinched off the ward that would detect if he left Ponyville – the pinching itself would trigger the ward if he left it that way for more than a few minutes, but it wouldn't notice him leaving if he came back quickly enough – and teleported, silently, into the hotel room. She was snoring slightly, a sound more adorable than annoying, little squeaks coming out of her as she breathed out. Her chest rose and fell. When he ran his talon through her mane, she mumbled and shifted in her sleep. Alive. She was alive. It had all been a dream. Not a prophecy, not a memory, not a vision into an alternate reality. Just a horror movie his brain had decided to make up and make him watch while he was sleeping. The ward couldn't be fooled much longer than this. He teleported back into Ponyville, to the vast tract of apple trees that was Sweet Apple Acres, wrapped himself around the upper branches of an apple tree, and let himself sob with relief for a few minutes, paws to his face and a silencing spell around him so no one, including Winona the dog, could hear him. Eventually he lowered himself onto the branch completely, no longer keeping his head lifted, and wrapped his arms around it the way his tail and legs already were. It was a thick branch, suitable for sleeping on, and the smell of fresh air and apples and the feel of the chaos of the Everfree, so close by, was much more pleasant than a room full of harmony smelling of nothing but pillows and sweat. The pillows were comfier than a tree branch, and Pinkie made a nice blanket, but he couldn't bear to lock himself away from the majority of his power, not right now. Sleep claimed him, and with his full power at his disposal, this time there were no dreams.