After Dinner Confrontation
Chapter One
Written by TheCrimsonDM
Trixie once again found herself standing inside the spacious chamber of Twilight’s dining chamber. Of course with a pool of water in one corner, and an assortment of empty plates; the place looked a bit unprepared. The fact that Celestia was staring angrily at her one time student, Twilight Sparkle, only cemented the awkward feeling in Trixie’s gut.
Starlight stood by her side, with her muscles tense and her eyes firmly planted on Celestia. There was a feral nature to Starlight that Trixie was attracted too, and yet at the same time scared of. This mare looked like she was ready to either greet the ruler of Equestria with friendly banter and friendship, or to utterly destroy her.
Twilight was nearly shaking as she looked up into those fiery eyes of Celestia’s. “S-see, I brought Starlight over, and we even managed to convince her first friend to join us as well.”
Trixie leaned over and whispered, “First friend? I’m your first too?”
“Well… I had other friends from my past or by relation to Twilight. You’re the first friend I made outside of that, and you’re my best friend as well,” Starlight answered in a quiet voice.
“I guess I’ve had… almost friends before, but they never stay long.” Trixie lowered her head ever so slightly. “I always screw it up sooner or later.”
“I’m learning to accept that,” Starlight said. “Don’t worry, nothing you ever do will make me not be your friend.”
“Even if Trixie does something… bad again?”
“I’ll join you if you want,” Starlight winked. “Could be fun, raising chaos all across Equestria. Defiling rulers, making trouble, having sex.”
“What?” Trixie asked.
“The last one was a joke.”
Trixie laughed nervously.
“You’re really tense.”
“Like you can speak, you look ready to kill something.”
“I’ve never seen Celestia angry before, I’m worried about what could happen.” Starlight’s eyes focused hard on Celestia and Trixie realized she had missed most of the conversation between the two princesses.
“I would meet this friend of Starlight’s and judge for myself,” Celestia said. She looked directly at Trixie.
Trixie’s heart sunk and she felt her legs wobble a little. Twilight turned back to them and beaconed for them to come forward. With Starlight leading her it was less awkward, but Celestia didn’t take her eyes off of Trixie for a moment. Once they were within hooves reach of the giant princess, Trixie felt her heart give out. She was but a minuscule insect to the giant, she remembered how tall she was back when Trixie was a filly. That same feeling of insignificance hadn’t changed in the slightest.
“So,” Celestia said. “You two are the reason why I’ve been kept here for three hours, waiting for Twilight to finish the dinner.”
Starlight was quick to respond. “I am sorry about that, I should have told Twilight about my change in plans. I guess,” She glanced over at Twilight. “We have all made mistakes today.”
That last sentence hit Trixie like a brick. She hadn’t meant to hurt her best friend’s feelings, but it was also Twilight’s fault for getting her so riled up in the first place. Trixie never would have said anything stupid if not for the mare who was Tartarus bent on destroying her life.
Twilight looked away. “You two made plans without me. Trixie shouldn’t have convinced you to ditch the party.”
“She didn’t even ask me to leave,” Starlight said. “I decided to join without telling her.”
“She still had all the things set up for that impossible trick.”
Trixie took a step back. I don’t like where this is going.
“She…” Starlight looked back at Trixie. “Why did you have that stuff ready.”
Trixie took another step back. “I was planning on doing it.”
“Without my help you would have died.”
Trixie looked nervously from side to side. Stop asking questions!
“Did… did you,” Starlight’s lip quivered. “You knew I would ditch Twilight for you didn’t you?”
Trixie shook her head. “No, no I didn’t. I had hoped that by some miracle Twilight would allow you out of the party but I had no intentions of you just leaving without giving her any word of warning.”
“So you wanted me to break my promise to Twilight?”
Trixie took another step back, and a teal aura wrapped around her. She was lifted an inch off the ground as Starlight’s horn lit up. “How much of this did you orchestrate?”
Trixie closed her eyes. “I didn’t mean to do anything bad. I promise!”
“You would have died if I didn’t save you, so you knew I would come. You were planning all of this weren’t you?” Pain and anger mixed in Starlight’s voice.
Trixie tried to hide the outrage at how unjust the world around her was. Instead she nearly shouted, “Yes, I knew I couldn’t do the trick and survive. But I didn’t think you would really care enough about me to come back.”
“So you were planning to die in front of everypony?” Starlight asked, the tone she used made it clear that she didn’t believe Trixie at all.
“Would that have been so bad?” Trixie asked.
Starlight stared at her, slowly her eyes widened and Trixie dropped from the air and onto the floor. Her legs were too weak to carry her weight and she collapsed. Shame filled her heart and she couldn’t even look up to meet Starlight’s stare.
Starlight spoke again, but her voice came out gentle. “Trixie, were you really going to do the trick without me?”
“I tried, didn’t I?”
Starlight sat down. “You knew I would come back.”
“Nopony comes back for Trixie… nopony.” Trixie’s entire body shook. “You… I hurt you. M-maybe I wouldn’t have gone through with the manticore trick without you before you showed up. But after I hurt you, after I sent my only real friend running away crying… I broke your heart. How could I…” Trixie choked on the words.
Starlight knelt down and placed a hoof over Trixie’s. “You really didn’t mean to hurt me… did you?”
Trixie looked up, her eyes were red and a few tears escaped the sides of her face. “You are the only pony to ever really care about me and I hurt you. Why would I ever hurt you? I’m such a failure though, that I hurt you anyway. Starlight, I c-can’t keep going on alone. You’re friendship means more to me than I think you could ever understand. Clearly the princess of friendship doesn’t care or she would have helped me already, but you could see past… all my crap and see the real me.”
Starlight looked back at Twilight and Celestia. “I’m not sorry I missed the dinner.” She returned her focus on Trixie. “I’m sorry that I missed just how important our friendship is.”
Celestia let out a sigh. “If it saved someponies life, I can accept having wasted an entire night here.”
Twilight sat down. “You can’t do this.”
Both Trixie and Starlight looked back at her.
“You are supposed to be a villain; you can’t turn out to be a really lonely and sad pony. You can’t make me look bad in front of Celestia. And you especially couldn’t have tried to commit suicide via manticore!” Twilight stood up. “Stop it, and act like you’re supposed too!”
In Trixie’s emotionally weakened state she flinched away from Twilight’s volume. Her mouth began working on its own again. “Of course, princess. We should all just do and say and act like whatever you want us too. I can be the villain of the piece to make you and all your friends look better. It doesn’t matter if I run away from a town scared, lonely, and with nowhere to go. You just have to be happy.”
Starlight growled. “Twilight, you need to be quiet.”
“No I will not be quiet in my own castle. I am the princess of friendship! I am the pony that helps ponies out when they have friendship problems. There is no way that I could have missed a clearly obvious friendship problem, and ignored it for years because of my own feelings and, and… made things so much worse.” Twilight covered her eyes with a foreleg.
Celestia smiled. “It would look like my time has not been wasted after all. Twilight is very seldom wrong when it comes to friendship problems… excluding the trading of ponies lives for books.”
Twilight shot her a glare. “I only did that once, and have been trying to make it up to Fluttershy ever since.”
Celestia laughed.
Trixie managed to push herself up onto her hooves and lowered her head. “I apologize Princess Celestia for wasting your time. If you excuse me I… I should be leaving now.”
Before Trixie could turn to leave, Starlight was at her side. “Nonsense. After everything Twilight just said, I’m sure she wouldn’t want you to leave so soon and would even go so far as to allow you stay the night with us in our big, warm, and loving castle. You can sleep in my room, it will be just like a sleepover.”
Trixie smiled weakly at her, then look at Twilight for permission.
Twilight let out a sigh. “I am going to go and find my bottle of scotch. Go ahead and do whatever you want. I'm through.”
Celestia smiled at Twilight. “You have enough for a six hundred pound pony?”
“I have all the scotch in the world, go right ahead.”
Just as the two of them turned to leave, Starlight leaned over and whispered into Trixie’s ear, “I am not leaving your side until I know that my best friend is going to stay alive.”
Trixie tried to come up with a snarky comment but only found self pity. “You’re too nice to me.”
“You’re my best friend, I can be as nice as I want to.” Starlight nodded toward the hall where they had entered. “And I really do appreciate your friendship. I… I sort of needed it actually.”
Trixie smiled up at her. “You did?”
“Yeah I did.” She looked around and only after the two princesses left did she continue. “You’ve had to have spent a lot of time finding that manticore. You couldn’t have just decided that you were going to end it with a manticore tonight because you hurt my feelings.”
“I’ve been on the edge for a long time, tonight just pushed me further than I had ever been.”
“Well let’s see about trying to get you away from that edge,” Starlight said as she led Trixie over to the hallway. “I’m going to help you as much as I can, and if you want I can even try and help you learn a few nifty spells for your show.”
Trixie smiled. “Really?”
“Of course. We’re going to be great and powerful together after all.”