//------------------------------// // Act II, Scene 8: Blackened Hearts // Story: If You Give a Little Love... // by Quillamore //------------------------------// To give Coco credit, it wasn’t even so much that she’d hid the truth all that badly, but rather that she happened to share residence with a pony all too keen to mysteries. Bambi Byline still hadn’t known her new roommate for all that long, but from her years as a reporter and practicing the pony-watching that went with it, she didn’t really need to. From her observations, most ponies had much the same mannerisms when it came to concealing secrets. And so, if she were to get anywhere near familial relations with this mare that was still so unfamiliar to her, it would be all but necessary to stage an intervention somehow. What she needed first was evidence of some sort. While she’d had suspicions ever since the meeting with the mystery stallion had been announced in the first place, Bambi had laid low, ostensibly because she had no right to interfere in a distant acquaintance’s affairs, but more so in hopes that Coco would drop some information of her own accord. The costume designer remained silent on the matter for days afterward, and just when all hope was lost on gaining information that way, Bambi found herself on the downstairs level of the condominium building, just beside the set of mailboxes. Even with her status as a renowned newsmare in mind, the letters sent to Bambi were still fairly ordinary in nature. Every once in a while, she did receive pieces of fan mail or hate messages, but most were nothing more than bills to pay or advertisements for local businesses. Sometimes, she was left to wonder why she even bothered to check it daily. For one thing, she lived near the top floor, and the multiple flights of stairs she had to traverse to reach the bottom might prove too much effort for less patient working ponies. But somehow, it was a little tradition that kept her life sane, even with so many changes swirling around her. She never once thought that one of those changes might actually manifest itself in just that spot. Carefully pulling out the various parcels from a mailbox that had been stuffed far beyond its capacity, she almost paid no mind to the tiny invitation that floated to the ground. Bambi debated to herself whether or not to even pick it up, as she received so many requests to appear at parties, their organizers all too eager to accept somepony who happened to be both a famous journalist and a member of the revered Orange family. After a while, she had stopped humoring them, having lost all desire to appear at stuffy celebrations that were really all the same. After all, they didn’t really want the real Bambi to appear at those, but the image many of them had of her: the perfectly cultivated heiress who would never dare utter a condemnatory word in public or sneak off after work to laugh over badly rated films. In other words, the pony she used to be. Ponies wondered why she had so little love for her father, and though she would never openly admit it, Bambi would’ve felt much the same way about him even if the incident with Babs never would have happened. It’d been more of a matter of realizing that she could never fulfill their requirements and of how poisonous so many of these rich ponies really were. It’d been more of a matter of choosing to pursue her fillyhood dream of being a newsmare, only to see all too vividly how much those like her, some even friends of her family, could hurt everypony else. Babs had only really been the spark. Bambi had the matches ready ever since her parents had split. That was the real thing that made her understand and move past the prim-and-proper path she’d been on for years: seeing her mother protest at the way Mosely sought to control her. Bambi had always admired her mother slightly more, connected with her more, and as soon as she saw just how much Cameo had suffered from trying to be somepony else, how much the mask had begun to strangle her, she saw no further point in trying to create one of her own. But, then again, the days when she could chatter on happily with her mother were over long ago, and unlike Mosely, she really saw no point in dwelling on them. What mattered was that Babs was back, Coco seemed nice enough, and for once, she had a family again. Sure, there was some mysterious obstacle of the equally mysterious stallion, but the sooner Bambi uncovered it, the less time it would take for the three of them to get back to making memories together. She never thought such sentimental thoughts would enter her mind again, and it was that sort of optimism that kept her living even when she skimmed through the contents of the invitation. Strangely enough, it was addressed not to her, but to Coco. As if that wasn’t already weird enough on its own, there appeared to be no sending address. Those two factors together, in Bambi’s warped investigative mind, could mean only one thing—the mystery stallion had struck again, and he was perhaps more clever than she’d previously counted on if he really wanted to keep the charade secret from even the post office. The venue itself wasn’t quite so interesting as the lack of sender. Granted, it might have fascinated some of the more starry-eyed dreamers of Manehattan—some museum or another was closing early and hosting an exclusive gala for the most elite ponies in town. Exactly which museum it was didn’t really matter to Bambi either—there were so many of them in Manehattan that she’d given up on keeping them all straight. More importantly, she’d been to enough of these events to know that they were insufferably stuffy, crowded with ponies all too eager to show off their newfound status, and most annoying of all to her, there was so much ruckus that she could barely focus on the exhibit that she’d actually attended the party to see in the first place. In short, it was the sort of place she wouldn’t be caught dead in unless she had to cover it for an article or some other ulterior motive. Considering the circumstances, it would have been easy for Bambi to just throw the invitation in the trash and never utter a word to Coco about it. But if this stallion was as persistent towards her as Bambi suspected, it would only take a few days for him to inform its recipient that a letter from her had somehow failed to reach her, and it would take only a few more connected dots to incriminate her roommate from that point. Perhaps he had spoken with Coco about it on their last date and she would have known about it regardless. But, most importantly of all, just pretending it wasn’t there wouldn’t solve the larger problem at hoof. He could just as easily come back, send another invitation, basically anything would render her efforts moot. So, as she trotted back up the stairs, about to present the invitation as if she had never seen it, she instead opted to create a secret of her own. With any luck, she would manage to keep it within her heart every bit as long as Coco had with hers, releasing it only when necessary. Having clung to her brand of faulted honesty for so long, she almost forgot how invigorating the rush of hiding the truth was, how it could make you feel like you were the only pony in Equestria who was really in control. But Bambi had also learned to stifle those thoughts the very second they began to manifest themselves, because she recognized them all too well. Those delusions of grandeur, no matter how small, were still strictly within her father’s territory, the place where she had vowed so long ago never to cross. Because, as much as she might have believed that cities and pressures could never fully taint a pony, those who’d been born to somepony of such depravity might not end up being so lucky to her. Any slight similarity she found herself sharing with Mosely she would reject, even if it meant placing herself under the very same pressure she’d so sought to avoid. This secret wouldn’t be kept for her own gain; it would be one that she would never fully exploit. Rather, it was one that would be necessary to maintaining the small shred of peace that she’d managed to find within this small space with her unlikely family. If any doubts would happen to show up in the days to come, she would rationalize it as an inevitable occurrence. She would go to the gala even if she had to sneak in. And she would not let this stallion be a mystery any longer. **** At the very same time, in another side of Manehattan, an identical letter had been delivered to a much less glimmering place. Had the mailpony examined its contents, he would have likely have chalked it up to a mistaken address; after all, nopony in such a painfully plain apartment complex would possibly receive such a prestigious invitation. But the circumstances were far from ordinary, and neither was Suri Polomare. Strangely enough, she had never really bothered to move somewhere else once Mosely had kindly aided in raising her status and her funds. With all the thoughts streaming through her mind of trying to move past her old life, one would think her first instinct would have been to leave the apartment behind just as she had done with her knockoff business. Even she herself was left a bit baffled at why she remained inexplicably chained to the property she’d owned ever since she’d chosen to make her path in the big city; she’d simply never thought of the prospect of leaving it behind, even as she dreamed of becoming so rich she’d have no use for it. Maybe it was because it was the one place she really considered home after she’d grown so scornful of her small-town fillyhood. Or perhaps it was because that little piece of pragmatism hidden so deeply inside her knew her success couldn’t last, even when everything else about her was certain she’d hit her big break. The more she thought about it, the clearer it was to her—Mosely served precisely the same purpose in her life. When Scene had told her his censored version of the producer’s worst secrets, somehow Suri didn’t turn out quite so blasé about it as she would have liked him to think. She’d told him she was out for gossip, that she was desperately searching for a reason to leave Mosely, but now that she had it, it was almost as if she’d grown even more attached to her coltfriend. Although she was growing to trust Scene more and more as her pining for him grew, when she finally got the information she was searching for, something within her didn’t want to believe it was true. She would shove it to the side by telling herself that the reason she felt so skeptical all of a sudden was because she would only trust it if it came from the pony himself, that she knew how far Manehattan gossip could go if left unchecked. But, as she made her way to the museum and remembered what was enclosed in the letter, she realized that she’d known the answer all along. Like Coco, Suri had also received an invitation from an anonymous sender, one who called herself “Pink Lady” just like the mare who sought to sabotage the production. With that coincidence in mind, she’d almost refused to attend, knowing that it was all too likely a trap created by somepony nowhere near as gifted at setting them up as she was. Nevertheless, even if it was a blatantly obvious ploy to get Suri into a position that could disrupt production, the promise contained underneath the otherwise uniformly printed venue information seduced her so much that any danger instantly became an afterthought. Going to the gala would settle once and for all whether Scene’s whisperings about Mosely would really be true, because as long as he didn’t make alternative plans at the last minute, it would be a place where it would be all too easy to whisk him away from his usual element with little stir. She would simply take him aside when everypony else was too occupied with their own small talk to notice, ask him her questions, and her pesky indecision would finally be gone for good. Either she would choose to leave him for good or stay with him for as long as he let her. That was the ultimatum she made under the light of that night’s full moon. An ultimatum that would be all too easy for Mosely to complicate in his own special way. An ultimatum that Suri would never get the chance to decide for herself. **** Any possibility of the gala night going off without a hitch was immediately dashed when five ponies converged, creating a shower of revelations in their wake. Everypony else idly chatted over drinks, only pretending to examine the works of art placed before them. There was a time early in the festivities when Scene, Coco, Mosely, Bambi, and Suri were all under that very same spell, trying their best to cast their everyday issues aside to surrender themselves to the glitz and glamour. Perhaps they could have resigned themselves to such a fate had they chosen not to notice each other; perhaps they could have continued living in the sweet dream of ignorance the gala provided. But fate also always seemed to have a way of bringing them together, even when they wanted nothing more than to be apart. Scene and Bambi, as usual, blended swiftly into the background, eliciting only a few nods of recognition. However, seeing such a pony as Mosely Orange escorted by an unfamiliar and positively radiant presence set the partygoers astir. The couple was plagued with questions, not one of them being scratching the surface of the situation. As long as Mosely was with another mare he sought to mold into his own, most other ponies took for granted that she wanted to be changed. And, for most of the night, even Coco herself tried her hardest to avoid it and suck in the attention that had never been paid to her before. But all that would shatter with a single statement: “Just what are you doing here?” Even from the slight time he’d spent with her, Mosely could pick out the intruder anywhere. He certainly hadn’t counted on seeing the one pony who could unravel him like no other there, the one he’d had to painstakingly avoid for days just to keep his plans intact. All this time, he’d still held out some hope that he could control Suri just as he had Cameo, as he would do to Coco. But, as her gaze met his own, he knew that she was a lost cause. She always had been. It was time he took her off her high horse and chose to treat her as one. In the blur of the night, a chorus of questions echoed throughout the pristine white walls, all eventually evening out to the same response: “What are you doing with her, Mosely?” she asked. “Do you really need to ask that question, Suri?” he chuckled. “You said you never wanted anything to do with her.” “I changed my mind once I realized what everypony else saw in her. Something that you don’t have, and never will.” “What is that?” “It’s simple: she’s real. Everything that you try so hard to accomplish, she’s already done. You have to exert so much effort to get what you want in life, but she glides by. She gets the promotions, the better jobs, everything else, because she doesn’t have to lie about who she is. The pony she is on the inside is already alluring enough to do the heavy lifting about everything else. And you, well—“ “Well what?” “You’re just Coco’s knockoff. You try to emulate the original, you really do, but you just don’t have the real Manehattan air. Take it from me, you try, almost too hard. And for those undiscerning enough to take you for the real thing, you pass for it. For Celestia’s sake, you almost passed for me. But once I pulled myself away from you and ended up in the embrace of a real Manehattan mare, I could never settle for a Ponyvilian dolled up like a big city filly ever again. That’s why avoiding you for the past few days really hasn’t been that hard to do.” “You don’t really mean that…you always told me I meant something. You don’t get it; before you, I never meant anything to anypony. You took me at the darkest point in my life and turned me into something greater. You can do it again, just leave her behind and—“ “I won’t. And they were right not to see anything in you.” “Don’t say that!” “You have no right to give such orders. Because, Suri Polomare, you’re nothing. You always have been, and you always will be. Don’t even bother trying to change that, because you can’t.” “I can, and I have!” “Only because I was around to guide you. But without me? Well, you’ll just have to see how little you’ve really changed, because I’m certainly not going to bother. Why? Because now that I know what a lost cause looks like, I’ll be more careful to avoid them in the future. They’re pretty easy to spot in a crowd; all you have to do is look for the pink coat and purple mane.” As the altercation faded into the background, as everypony else dissipated into their own small groups, there was one pony who no longer matched with everything. Some would say that she had deserved her exile, and perhaps she did. Back when Suri was making her way in Manehattan, still struggling to come to terms with the sins she would have to commit to succeed, still questioning if her path was that of darkness, she would recall a single story. It hinged on a clear-colored opal within a jeweler’s display, appraised at an enviable value, and yet still overshadowed by pricier diamonds and coveted pearls. Opals themselves, in the grand scheme of things, were fairly worthless unless they allowed the shadows to color them. The closer they came to complete blackness, they say, the more of a novelty they would become. Few opals were daring and strong enough to let the darkness absorb them, but those that did would receive the greatest of rewards, would eventually become more powerful than anything. Even as their light and purity ebbed away more and more, they would become the most sought-after jewels of all, enough to completely eclipse those that had started off with more value. With this in mind, Suri had started gathering darkness as soon as she could, and somewhere along the way, she was able to polish away all the regrets. But even that wasn’t enough to advance herself, to protect herself. Even hearts as blackened as hers, she realized, could still break.