Making friends had meant betraying her, but the Crusaders offered something for which she'd felt a deep longing ever since she began to see it in her classmates. She'd been close to finding it for herself, she thought, with Silver Spoon, but, she'd finally come to realize, she'd never be the pony she wanted to be as long as she made her mother's mistakes her own.
Years earlier …
“Peasants!” her mother hissed beneath her breath, just loud enough for Diamond to hear after she'd thrown open the door of their small mansion. “No good! Lazy!” Spoiled Rich grit her her teeth against her outrage, and Diamond took her queue to begin slinking quietly toward the stairs. No luck. “Diamond Tiara! Do not slink like some common pony!” her mother barked.
Diamond froze momentarily, but righted her posture a second later. “Yes, Mother.”
“It's bad enough I have to spend time near those farmers.” Her distaste was plain. “I won't tolerate my daughter slumping and—” she hesitated. There was more that the mare didn't want to acknowledge. She knew why Diamond had been moving toward her bedroom. If she weren't so proud, Spoiled might have been hurt that her daughter wanted to avoid her. The filly still hadn't learned to handle a healthy disdain of her inferiors. She was only five, after all, but it must be instilled sooner rather than later. “—and excusing herself from … harsh realities.” Spoiled Rich swallowed against memories of recent private discoveries.
Her mother's harsh tone and expression cracked for reasons outside of her frustration with the Apple family's repeat shortage of zapapple jam for the past four years. Though Diamond didn't understand her mother's sudden sadness, the little filly put the blame on herself as only small children can, her tiny pink ears flattened, her eyes turned watery at her mother, and, trotting swiftly to the mare, Diamond Tiara hugged her front leg like a fuzzy pink vice. “I'm sorry, Mother! Please, don't be sad!”
Spoiled Rich was caught off guard by the filly's sudden concern. 'Sad,' she'd said, not 'mad'—not caring for herself, but for her mother. Spoiled lifted her free, un-hugged hoof and looked uncertainly down at her daughter. “Sad? Rich ponies have no excuse to be sad.” The mare steeled herself in order to gently nudge her daughter away, but failed to hide the pain in her features.
Little Diamond could be fooled, but not that easily, and her own expression became all the more pitiful for what she perceived as another mistake on her part. Maybe, if Diamond were a better rich pony, she thought, her mother might not be so sad all the time.
Spoiled Rich sighed and rubbed a temple. “You may not understand now.” Her expression was pitying for half a moment before it once again cooled, and she looked down flatly at her daughter. “Even if others disappoint you,” grieving farmers unable to make their quotas, a husband with eyes for younger mares, “always remember, we are … will always be better!”
Her point made, Spoiled cleared her throat and shifted to pass her daughter for a drink, but she couldn't help asking herself, why, if what she believed was true, had Filthy strayed? As Diamond watched her mother take out the adult cider yet again, she drooped and blamed herself for the inevitable.
The silence of Diamond's room gave her refuge for a few hours. The expensive dolls and dollhouse her daddy had bought for her distracted her from her mother's undignified, drunken crying. The first time she'd seen her mother cry like that had only been last week. It had startled her. When Diamond recovered from the shock of seeing her mother so unlike herself, she'd approached and smelled the cider, the odor oddly strong compared to any other time. Having been allowed to taste a little once, she knew it was strong, and she wondered why her mother would go to such excess. Questions of what was wrong that evening went unanswered but for a pitiful gaze and an injured-sounding if somewhat slurred, “that mare!”
This week, the crying seemed to have gone longer, but had finally stopped, and little Diamond relaxed somewhat. Bored with her dolls, she turned her attention to her jewelry collection, paying no mind to the sound of her mother coming up the stairs.
As Diamond inspected her newest set of bracelets, the door to her bedroom opened with a soft creak, and the tiny filly looked and blinked at the disheveled mare. “Mother?”
At the moment, Spoiled Rich exuded none of the loftiness she touted to her daughter, but sighed dejectedly and leaned, slumped, against the door jamb. “Y-you think—*hic*—Motherzpretty, donchasweetie?”
Diamond's small ears flattened. “U-uh-huh, I mean … Yes, Mother.”
Spoiled managed a half-grin before staggering to her daughter's bed and laying down to face the tiny filly. “C—*hic*—C'mere … D-Diamond,” Spoiled attempted to sound sweet while patting the bed next to her with her hoof.
Diamond grimaced, anything but eager to comply, but hesitantly climbed up next to her mother. As the smell of stronger drink, not apple cider, hit her, Diamond tried to breathe as little as possible through her nose, but forgot the smell entirely when her mother wrapped her forelegs around her and nibbled her small, soft ear.
Diamond's alarm was stayed, but her confusion only amplified by her mother's soft, lilting, confession, “Mommy thinks … yer-pretty too.”
Present day …
Spoiled Rich rested quietly on the rec room sofa near the wine closet. A tall bottle of mulled cider, unopened, stood next to an empty glass and corkscrew on the table in front of her. The will to open and drink had fled after she'd taken her seat, as if there had been no point to it in the end. Rather than drown away her troubles like she usually did, something about them this time seemed too much, even for the spices, the aroma, and the numbing buzz of her favorite drink.
Getting smashed could mean not feeling this way anymore, she'd reasoned after she arrived home and passed the note that Diamond gave her to Filthy. A rich pony ought to always afford a bit of high-end self-medication, she thought, but … well, it was undignified to go to excess as she had in recent years. The things it made her do in front of her daughter … sometimes to her daughter …. Was that why the child no longer looked up to her?
She couldn't actually believe that “friend” garbage. Diamond had to have been manipulating her as she was wont to do on occasion ever since she'd discovered that admirable talent, one that a rich parent couldn't help but be proud of. Still, the filly had taken it too far in the wrong direction this time. As much as she ached for a drink, she couldn't let herself go just yet. She still had to give the filly a sober lecture, she decided. At least, that's what Spoiled told herself, unwilling to think that the cider had lost its appeal for deeper reasons, and she'd begun to prepare by pondering the uselessness of friends.
The deception of friendship was only a means to an end. Even if Diamond had found some need to endear herself to lesser ponies, however undignified or misguided it may be, she ought never to have humiliated the hoof that fed her. There were other ways—ways that Spoiled Rich would have been surprised the filly didn't try—blackmail, bribes, mudslinging, and when those failed, cutting off the competition's resources and waiting for their inevitable failure. She'd taught her all of these things. What was more, Spoiled had seen the filly execute each tactic expertly in the past, so … why?
What motive could her progeny have had for not following through? Had she been pulled in by her own deception? Or, worse, had the “friendship” ruse gotten to her from the blank-flanks? Maybe …. No. Friendship, even love, was never really real, or, at least, hardly ever real. She and Filthy had come to that understanding years ago. Theirs was a relationship of convenience, only called “love” because it boosted their image. Real love, if it existed, wouldn't have led to the shameful realization that he'd gone behind her back to get satisfaction with that hussy.
Now, even her own daughter …. She thought she loved her—that they loved each other—like she once thought she and Filthy loved each other, but, in the end, both had used her. It was a clever trick, she had to admit: playing the moral high ground and taking down the “bully” to gain popularity. She couldn't be too hard on Diamond, especially if the filly actually believed in befriending the rabble.
But if what had happened earlier meant that her daughter not only didn't love her, but no longer respected her as an ally, what did that mean about her legacy to the filly? Was this it? … Even if she could convince the child that her betrayal was wrong on the grounds that Diamond could have edged out the Trottingham transplant … what was the point?
Yes, her daughter could have kept her hooves unsullied by association with commoners. Spoiled Rich's membership on the school board ensured that the puny, spotted colt's request for playground funds was denied. Good mother that she tried to be (in spite of her occasional indiscretions with her daughter), she'd all but given Diamond the win, and, by the the note she'd sent to her father, the filly had known it. That meant she either wanted to edge out her own mother, or else … she really believed in friendship. In either case, Spoiled was no longer needed. The lecture she would give Diamond only stood to make her daughter think she was a fool—more of a fool if real friendship were somehow not the fable Spoiled had thought.
Spoiled looked again longingly at her empty glass, wanting to force herself to forget, but unable to see how forgetting would help any longer if her public image were forever from thence to be taken from her, not only by Filthy, but by Diamond as well. As awful as she felt, stomach twisted and throat knotted, she knew it would be a waste of good cider, or, rather, a waste of comfort on a pony whose comfort no longer mattered.
The pony whose opinion Diamond cared about most until just hours ago now rested quietly on the rec room sofa near the wine closet. Making friends meant leaving behind the loneliness and suffering of the filly's past, becoming the pony she wanted to be, but at a cost she began to wish she'd haggled down, now that she saw the bottle and glass on the table in front of her mother whose head she spied above the back of the sofa.
“H-have you been drinking again, Mother?” Diamond couldn't help but sound accusatory despite her guilt. There might be far worse drunks than an inebriated Spoiled Rich, but Diamond wouldn't know any of them. Diamond just knew she didn't like the way the alcohol made her mother weep and not make sense and sometimes become affectionate in ways she'd had mixed feelings about. Though a bit more wise than when she first saw her mother in such a state, Diamond often still blamed herself partly for her mother's occasional excess. Today, even though she knew that she'd done the right thing, Diamond Tiara couldn't help but feel sorry.
When no response came, Diamond made her way about the sofa, and, finding the bottle unopened and her mother's glass still clean, looked at her uncertainly. Somehow, while seeming to be sober, her mother looked worse than she could ever remember. Her mane was tidy, her gaze focused downward. The only similarity to when she was drunk were the tear stains running down her cheeks, but she made no move to grasp for Diamond's sympathies (or other things) as she had sometimes in the past.
The filly wondered whether her mother was angry enough to completely shut her out. It wouldn't have been the first time, and she now seemed to refuse to make eye contact as she had at those times. She was ready to handle it if that were the case, but something told Diamond it was different this time.
“Mother,” Diamond's address was low with worry. Not knowing what to do or say, the filly started forward, but stopped and decided instead to sit next to the couch on the area rug.
For a minute that felt like 20, waiting silently for something to happen, Diamond looked across the room at the portrait of their family over the fireplace mantle, hanging proudly in an elaborate gold leafed frame the size of a full grown stallion.
Without turning to her daughter, Spoiled Rich's reprimand for the peasant behavior came out in a halfhearted monotone, “Don't sit on the rug, Diamond Tiara.”
Diamond looked at her mother, not surprised, but certainly unfamiliar with being given such an instruction without some acid comment at the end. Diamond stood and blinked once, still waiting for her mother's usual addition, “like a commoner,” but no more came.
Looking at the couch, Diamond considered and decided she may as well take a proper seat. As she did, it took some effort not to repeat her habitual household slogan. There would be fewer yes-Mother's from now on. Still, the pink filly didn't intend to be disobedient without cause.
Diamond lifted herself up onto the couch cushion and sat once more before clearing her throat. “Mother …. You probably know by now, I've asked father to help us rebuild the playground.” The statement was businesslike. She waited for a response, but still none came, and she sighed and her tone softened. “I know what you tried to do for me with the school board,” Diamond admitted. “I wish I could say 'thank you,' but, well, I … I guess … I already explained before, at the school, and …” Diamond swallowed the little bit of nervousness she felt and almost said it, I'm not sorry, but, at the last second, once more she saw the pain on her mother's face, closer now that they sat next to one another. All of Diamond Tiara's pride, her plans to tell her mother what was what and how it would be from then on, flew out the window.
“I'm s-sorry.” Diamond was shocked she'd said the opposite of what she'd first intended.
Spoiled looked askance at her daughter finally, and her miserable expression turned skeptical. “You're sorry? Why, pray tell, would you be sorry?” The mare's tone barely held its edge, breaking on the last word altogether to give way to a new wave of tears. “You have what you want. Why patronize me?” Spoiled Rich's lips drew down and trembled, fighting back sobs.
Diamond looked wide-eyed at her mother then down to her left and right, searching, lost. “I … I'm not patronizing you …. I promise!”
“What is there to be sorry for, then, Diamond? You have f—friends now, and you don't need my help. I understand!” Spoiled regained some of her sharpness on the last syllable, and Diamond recoiled a little, but refused to relent.
“I'm sorry because … because …” the filly hadn't prepared to explain why she was sorry. She scrambled for a reason until, frustrated, it spilled out with passion and uncertainty. “I'm sorry because I didn't want to say no to you, but I had to, and I'm sad that you don't have any friends and I … and I love you!” Diamond reached out to the mare who gave her life only to stop herself and draw back.
Cringing at the mention of friends and love, Spoiled recoiled and, for a second, her chin tucked back unflateringly, defensively, in a way Diamond had done earlier in the Crusaders' club house that very day. "Love?! What could you know about it? If you loved your mother you'd have been ..." unlike your father, loyal. Even if Spoiled had been alone and nopony else could hear her shame, she couldn't have brought herself to vocalize the thought. "You'd never have spoken to me that way!" she snapped at Diamond.
The filly couldn't help but droop again momentarily, but picked herself up. She had friends now, and, even though things were difficult between her and Spoiled, Diamond trusted that doing the right thing would pay off at home too, eventually.
Diamond straightened herself fully and took a calming breath before forming her response. "You once told me that rich ponies let others work for them, not make decisions for them. ... Mother, I'm through letting you make my decisions. I had to say what I said ... but ..." Diamond wasn't sure where she was going with this, "not because I don't love you, but ... because I want to be a better pony ... to make you and Father proud maybe," Diamond didn't know whether her way would succeed at such a task, but she wished it would, "and, also, because I ... I've been ... really lonely." The filly's composure fell slightly. On any other day, Diamond doubted she'd have been able to admit it.
The sorrow in Diamond's suddenly downward gaze was painful for Spoiled to look at, even askance as she did. Ever so subtly, Spoiled felt something change inside of her with regard to her daughter.
"H-haven't you? ... been lonely, I mean?" another string of words Diamond never thought she'd hear herself speak voluntarily.
As low as Spoiled felt, the simple question proved to be her breaking point. What little pride she clung to fell away; her features softened; her head turned, chin down, to her daughter, and, lip's drawn down and trembling, Spoiled couldn't hold back more new tears. The mare nodded, too choked up to answer in any other way without losing herself, not wanting to subject her daughter to more undignified wailing than she already had when drunk.
Their gaze connected, and, her own eyes misty, Diamond smiled and threw herself against her mother to wrap her small front legs tightly around the mare and tucked herself securely against her mother's neck from the mare's side.
Breathing in shortly with surprise, Spoiled looked down at her filly, and, with only a moment's hesitation for the newness of what she suddenly felt, Spoiled lifted her hoof and, leaning into her daughter's embrace, wrapped her foreleg around the filly. Letting out a great sigh, Spoiled felt tears spill hotly from her eyes, both mourning her past and relieved that she might, just maybe, not be as alone as she thought.
In no hurry to break their embrace, mother and daughter sat, eyes closed, in each other's hooves until both felt their hearts calm after what had been a brief, but long-needed resolution to a problem neither had wanted to acknowledge, like a deeply embedded thorn finally pulled out. As their relief settled, warmth grew in parts of them that, until then, had only felt lukewarm at best, and what had been two lonely ponies in each other's company, began at once to feel instead like real companionship.
A thought occurred to Diamond while they still held each other on the couch, relaxed and warm. “Mother.” The filly's head lifted from it's resting place on the mare's shoulder so that she could nuzzle her softly.
“Yes, Diamond?” Spoiled's voice was soft and a little husky with emotion.
“Would you mind bringing the mulled cider to my room and, this time, maybe, sharing a little?”
Spoiled's eyes widened at her daughter's request. A long pause left Diamond to wonder whether she'd asked amiss until Spoiled let out a laugh unlike any Diamond could recall hearing from the mare in recent years.
“No, Diamond,” Spoiled answered. Diamond felt embarrassment sting her cheeks at the rejection, and her ears folded. “No, I wouldn't mind at all.” It was a moment before Diamond registered the real meaning of her mother's answer and she perked back up enthusiastically.
Releasing her embrace finally, Diamond drew back to smile at her mother, eagerness evident in the gleam of her eye.
Spoiled added for dignity's sake, “Nothing too strong, though. I'll teach you what it means to enjoy a good … drink.”