On another end of Manehattan, what the others called a victory was just another defeat in disguise. Talk of Mosely’s banishment from both families had ceased, just as the stallion himself had stopped existing in their eyes. And as he himself had said during the attack, if ponies went long enough without acknowledging a criminal in their midst, time would handle the rest. That was the quickest way for the Oranges to redeem themselves, and that was the path they all chose to take on that day.
That was a fact that, no matter how hard she tried, Valencia Orange could not change. But, on the other hoof, it wasn’t one she could give into, either.
Right after she went back to work managing the orange farms on the outskirts of town, she could already tell that the thoughts were beginning to invade her mind. Within a day, the impending trial—and more specifically how to stop it—was the only thing that never left, even as the hours went on. She already knew why—it was the only way she could live with everything.
With the fact that the one pony who’d been with her through everything, the only one who’d never abandoned her, the one who’d been her only friend while her status froze everypony else out—that her twin brother, an extension of herself, had been nothing but a lying cheat all along.
She wouldn’t believe it. And sooner or later, neither would the rest of Equestria.
Mosely had been the one to plunge the Oranges back to the pathetic place they were a hundred years ago. Valencia would be the one to bring them back to the top. All the other ponies who’d found themselves caught up in the scandal were just poor, naïve souls who’d been conned by some greater party out to ruin her family, and she’d make that immediately clear to them as soon as she won the case.
Considering the secrets Mosely had helped her hide, after all, it was the least she could do for him.
At that moment, two days after the reunion, she stood in front of her husband’s desk, finally keying him in on the details of the affair. It wasn’t that she’d chosen to freeze him out for so long; he’d just been so busy with everything else that she had to fight for an opportunity just to see him. That was just how it’d always been with Torte Framboise lately. How it’d always been with Torte Framboise forever, come to think of it.
If she couldn’t talk to him about it at home, she’d just have to confront him about it at work. Thankfully, living in a city that never slept meant the offices of Turpitude & Torte worked overtime.
Every time Valencia looked at it, her husband’s office was still as imposing as a royal study. With all the thick books lining the walls and piles of paperwork lining the desk, it might as well have been. Remembering back, that was probably the reason her parents had even allowed the marriage in the first place—he might’ve been a foreigner from Prance from a lesser offshoot of the Berry families, but he was still influential where it counted—getting the Oranges out of trouble.
“I’m not getting you out of trouble,” said the stocky brown stallion behind the desk after a few minutes of discussion. “I appreciate you coming to me first to get you out of trouble, but I’ve told you how I feel before about using my job to defend family or other ponies I know. Others may do it, but it’s risky business. The more you know somepony, the more room there is for potential bias—“
“Make an exception!” Valencia yelled in desperation. “The fate of the Oranges hinges on it! Bias might just be the thing that lets you see the case as it really is. If you go into it looking for excuses not to convict him, you’ll come across evidence other ponies would never see. We all know the papers are out for his head anyway, so anything they find that casts doubt on that, they’ll just ignore.”
As Torte bowed his head, knowing what would come next, part of his burgundy mane crept past his eyes.
“It isn’t always that easy, Valley,” he answered with a sigh. “Sometimes you just can’t find it because it isn’t there. It’s not always some conspiracy the media are making. Sometimes, it just isn’t there. And I fear that might be the case with your brother.”
“I won’t accept it! And if I have to convince all of Equestria that Mosely Orange did nothing wrong, then I will.”
“Then, with all due respect, you’d be preaching lies,” Torte spoke, trying and failing to stay rational. “I’ve been conducting my own research on this matter, and from what little has come out this week, defending him would be siding with a criminal mastermind. I exaggerate, of course, but he has racked up quite a few charges.”
With particular emphasis, he listed out, “Two counts of workplace harassment. Abandonment, participation in pony trafficking, an attempt at first-degree murder that came out just a few days ago, all against a foal, and that tax evasion of his you asked me to cover up five years ago. There is literally no way he could manage to evade all of those, even with the kind of lawyer I’m sure he’s trying to recruit right now. Come to think of it…that’s probably why you’re here, aren’t you?”
Valencia knew exactly what Torte meant as he said this, but hoped with everything she had that it wasn’t true. If it was, then there really was no convincing him. She really would be alone within her own family.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Just that you seem different,” he replied. “Like you don’t actually believe what you’re saying now. Something about it just seems empty, and I think I know why.”
With a pause, Torte asked, “Mosely brought you here, didn’t he? Midsweet has asked everypony to stay away from him, but you haven’t, have you?”
“Of course I have!” Valencia muttered. “I may not think he’s guilty, but even I know when to follow orders and when not to. So far, I haven’t been doing anything that my family wouldn’t approve of.”
“Then for your own sake, I wouldn’t look any further into this. With the way you’ve always been concerned about your reputation…you know what could become of you if your theories are wrong, if I can even call them your own to begin with.”
What little that was left of the composure Valencia had always tried to keep within Manehattan suddenly dropped straight off her body. For a slight moment, she didn’t see her husband anymore, and that was all that mattered. All she saw was another obstacle she’d have to remove to get her point across, another pony who would never understand.
“My opinions are my own,” she asserted, “and if you really think I’m so low of a mare to be convinced by somepony else, then it figures you’re on the wrong side of all this. And if you really think my emotions are empty now, you really don’t want to see them when they’re full.”
Raising her voice louder than she’d ever remembered it going, she shouted, “So you aren’t going to look any further into this if you really care so much about keeping me around! I guess that means it’s for your own sake for you, too!”
She’d puffed her chest out in satisfaction at the time, feeling the anger course through her. But the second Torte left the room and she realized what she’d really done to him, she somehow couldn’t keep the tears from flowing.
****
For the first time in a while, Coco couldn’t help but glance behind her before she opened the theatre door. For the past day or so, she couldn’t shake the feeling something was following her, even in the most ridiculous of places, but normally the fear wasn’t quite this strong. That paranoia, plus the fact that Spellshock’s reopening was mere hours away, plus the way everything seemed all too similar to its first opening night, made things all the worse for her.
Ponies had asked her about the scar for a couple of days now, and she’d been all too happy to put on a brave front about it. But what it had really brought home for her was that maybe some ponies were just inescapable. Mosely had caught her so off-guard the first time that she couldn’t help but listen to her fears saying that there could be another time. That she’d have to keep repeating everything she’d done to save her daughter over and over again until the scars covered more than the fur did.
Scene saw her standing outside the door for a bit too long and held the door open, flashing a smile in the process.
“Waiting on somepony?” he asked just before he figured it out. Trying to correct himself, he placed his hooves to his face and nervously muttered, “Oh. Right. That.”
“It’s fine,” Coco answered. “Today just seems suspicious to me. Then again, it’s not like I’ve gotten to experience any opening nights that weren’t.”
“Well, we’ve gone to every length possible to make sure tonight’s an open book,” Scene explained. “Security’s extra tight in case anypony tries any funny business this time. Stage-crashers or unsavory bosses. And we actually seem to be getting a good audience this time around. Show’s already sold out for the next few nights.”
“No news is bad news to the audience, I guess,” she added. “If somepony wants to see a show enough, nothing can tear them apart from it. Not even something like, well, this.”
Both knew they’d have to get back to their respective posts before long, as everypony on set rushed to get everything ready in less than twelve hours. But a few moments were just enough for one of them to speak without thinking, and to say something they would regret just afterwards.
“I don’t think the show’s the only thing ponies are coming here to see,” Scene answered, looking straight at his companion, his voice a little too soft and a little too smooth. “Not anymore, at least.”
Before she’d taken the job, Coco wouldn’t have seen anything strange about that statement. But now that she’d grown acquainted to stallions and subtexts, she couldn’t help but blush and look away.
“What I meant to say was that you’ve become quite the draw here,” he soon corrected. “The costume designer who walked in on a criminal and caught him right in the middle of a performance. That’s certainly some reputation to have around here.”
“You really think that’s why they’re coming here, huh?” Coco teased. “Not because we’re the first production to have these kinds of delays for three years?”
Smiling straight back at her, Scene relished in the chance to finally see her in such a good mood. No matter how much she thought otherwise, and no matter how much Mosely came in to complicate matters, maybe she was starting to turn the corner, at least by a little bit.
Just then, though, he saw the tiniest bit of hesitation in her eyes, and he wondered if thinking that had been a mistake.
“That’s an awfully specific number,” he noted. “You haven’t been researching opening day delays in your free time, have you?”
“I don’t know,” Coco jokingly replied. “Did Spider-Mare: The Musical refund its audience four times after realizing they couldn’t get the play finished by then after all?”
The blue unicorn stallion suddenly froze where he stood, even though the two had been trotting around as they spoke. Coco waved her hoof in his face, trying to figure out to the best of her ability what was going on, but by the time she did, he’d already begun to return to his old self.
“Whoa,” he whispered. “I really can’t remember the last time that came up around here.”
“That what did?”
With a bit of added laughter, he answered, “That play. That used to be the number one thing we couldn’t talk about.”
“It was that bad, huh?” asked Coco. “I figured, other than the opening day delays it had, it was all some big exaggeration.”
“It wasn’t just that bad. It was the worst theatre failure anypony had ever seen in fifteen years. If it’d been anypony else who’d put it on, we would’ve all gloated and laughed at it. But that was the key. Mosely was on the production team for Spider-Mare: The Musical, and Mosely being Mosely, he wanted his failures kept as secret as possible. It was back when he wanted to take a break from my stuff. The way I was back then, I almost rejoiced when I found out how badly it went, so I could get back to really having a professional to back me up. I didn’t know that I could be better off alone.”
As the two were about to enter the main auditorium where the performances were about to begin again, Coco had a hunch that this conversation wouldn’t last forever. But somehow, even though it was about somepony she didn’t particularly like thinking about, she was still curious. What had brought them apart before, if Scene hadn’t known back then? Had there been some other issues between the two of them, even from the beginning?
“Sorry,” Scene muttered as he came to the door. Nervous sprinkles of sweat were already crossing his face. “That…probably wasn’t something you wanted to hear about, was it? I mean, I always say I want to put my Stealer-Orange days behind me, but I guess I’m just as bad as you are when it comes down to it. Even just talking about things he wouldn’t allow me to talk about is just…weird.”
“I know,” Coco replied. “Maybe that’s why I’ve been so paranoid this week. Because, as hard as it is to take everything in…it’s almost easier to believe that everything isn’t over. If you just let fear take over like that, everything seems normal again.”
Even as she said this, though, she kept looking to her scar. She could see now why Babs always fixated on hers, at least a little bit. If you didn’t do that, you’d almost forget it existed. And to both of them, forgetting about them was exactly the same as letting down their guard.
She knew more than ever that she had to keep her guard up. But she also had to fight it and push through. The second-to-last thing she wanted was to go back to being the same naïve, trusting pony she’d been before, but the last thing she wanted was to completely harden away from everypony like Bambi had. The more she thought about it, the more she thought her fear wanted her to head in that direction. But, as she got to talking with Scene, she realized more and more that she was more powerful than her fear, and that she would not let it win.
It’d have its occasional victories, of course, but that’d just throw it off more when she ended up rising above it. And if she kept on with her love lessons, she hoped, that would certainly come true.
“Well,” Scene said, looking to the auditorium and giving an exaggerated wave of his hoof, “tonight is our chance to start everything over. Everything seems to be going without a hitch, or so I’ve heard.”
After a few moments of silence, he wondered, “Wait. Didn’t I say that already? I think I did.”
“I think you’re right,” Coco answered with a chuckle. “But you can’t say that enough. I’m pretty sure everypony here’s on edge just as much as you are. They probably need as much motivation as they can get. At least, I know I do.”
“You’re going to be fine,” the director replied, playfully jabbing his hoof against her leg. “You’re going to get the intermission you should’ve had last show, except this time, you’ll deserve it even more. There’ll be even more ponies to see you shine, too.”
“And you’re really sure I deserve it? Even after the things I had to do to get to where I am now?”
“Hey, if we have to judge based on what happened in the past, I’d be out of the running too. I mean, I did have to cover up a pretty bad crime to keep my job. So I’d say that if anypony calls you a bad pony, then we’ll just have to be bad ponies together.”
Checking to make sure nopony was looking, Scene then pulled Coco into a comforting hug. While she was a bit flustered at first, she soon returned the gesture.
“Don’t we have to go work soon?” she asked, even though she was secretly enjoying the whole situation.
“We’re still ten minutes early,” Scene answered. “Even then, we can still talk all we want as long as it doesn’t get in the way of our jobs. It’s not like before.”
“Yeah,” Coco agreed. “It’s easy to forget that. But I kind of wanted to ask about something else before we head off.”
Taking his legs off her almost as if he could sense what the subject would be, he asked, “And what might that be?”
Hesitation flooded her mind once more. She wasn’t sure if she really wanted the answers to any of the questions that were going through her head, but she knew that she’d have to find out about them someday, and that someday might as well have been today.
“You said your relationship with Mosely wasn’t that good even before all this,” she began, “and then you said that you two broke apart for a while. But after that, you said you’d missed him, and after I heard that…I started wondering how much you really gave up. I mean, the other players and I are certainly doing better now, but at what cost to you? Losing your partner and everything has to be hard.”
“Actually,” Scene said, looking up to the dome on the ceiling top, “it’s not as hard as I thought it’d be. Looking back, I may have depended on him a lot, but it also kept me from seeing who he really was. What I was really capable of, for that matter, too. It used to be, I never thought I even keep a play running without him. He acted like he was the linchpin to everything, so I believed it. So really, if you would’ve seen who I used to be, you wouldn’t have believed it. Sure, I helped the actors and all, but sometimes I felt the important stuff was all him. When he first picked me up, I wanted us to work as equals, but after a while…I just stopped being jealous, somehow. I was more ‘behind the scenes’ than ‘Scene Stealer’ when I was with him.”
“When he picked you up?” Coco repeated. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He let out a long sigh after hearing this, knowing that there was far more to the issue than he thought he would ever have had to explain to anypony.
“That’s how directing works sometimes,” he answered. “Producing, less often, but when young directors first start out, the first thing they always try to do is get some famous pony’s attention so they can do real Bridleway work. A lot of us just end on off-Bridleway or on off-off, still waiting for the talent scout to come, so to speak. That’s part of the reason why I’m not all that worried about the delays here. Believe it or not, I’ve seen far worse.”
“How much worse?”
“Nopony in the audience worse. I got into assistant directing work as soon as I was out of school and ended up on off-Bridleway. Became a full director there, even. I’d done some stuff on Bridleway before, but none of that really matters now. After a while, nopony showed up to any of them; a quarter of the seats full, maybe, if I was lucky. I’d written them all myself, and even though I wanted to be satisfied with that…”
Coco nodded in understanding.
“We artists have to have ponies look at our work,” she answered.
“Well, I wanted to make sure of that,” Scene continued. “I still had one bit of hope back then. There’s an annual theatre showcase every year for off-Bridleway stuff, and I knew a lot of big-time ponies went to that. It was less about getting famous and more about wanting a happier life for myself and my troupe. We ended up placing pretty well in that event, for such an unpopular show, at least. A few of the actors went on to Bridleway, even. And me? That was the day I found out that Mosely Orange needed a new collab partner. So even back then, I didn’t sign with him for who he was. At that point, I was bound and determined to take anything that would let me see different parts of Manehattan than I’d ever seen. Even if it meant giving up my say in how things would go.
“If there was one thing about it I had regretted more than anything, it was not doing more to save the little theatre I’d made my living at for years. Turns out, after losing me, they couldn’t find another director, and so six months later, it shut down for good. I think the space was bought by a dance studio not too long afterwards. But not that long ago, I’d walk past it every day on my way home from work and wonder if entering the contest had really been worth it. I may have been in a better place with Stealer-Orange, but I couldn’t help my castmates or crewmates. I couldn’t even pick the play we were putting on.”
“Wait,” Coco interrupted. “So Spellshock wasn’t your idea?”
Scene merely shook his head in response.
“I’d had a different play planned, but Mosely vetoed the idea the second I brought it up. I wanted to bring back the first play I’d ever performed in. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t get what I wanted as it was the fact that one of his friends had written it. So even before Suri came, it was all a bunch of nepotism and pulling strings. That went against everything I’d thought the theatre stood for, and yet I couldn’t stop it.”
“So then why are we still doing Spellshock?”
“Because,” Scene answered, “I still have plenty of chances to make it my own now. And besides, what the theatre does stand for is making sure the show always goes on. After seeing all the work that everypony’s hearts put into it, it grew on me, too.”
****
Hours later, the stage was set. The audience was full, and the first act was in full motion. It seemed that there would be no interruptions this time, because this time, they would come from a far more silent source.
A mysterious letter had come to the theatre mailbox just as the play began, when the mail service shouldn’t have even been running. Unlike the rest, it hadn’t been marked with a signature, but Scene and Wright knew. An old enemy had struck again.
It was pointless to tell the players now, when they were in their prime of performance, but Pink Lady had returned. Never mind that the controversy she was fighting for was over. Never mind that she’d already revealed her real name. Never mind that her new intentions directly contradicted her old ones. Somehow, she still showed up.
The director and producer would hesitantly cover it up as long as they could, knowing that it was a publicity stunt. A copycat crime, if something so petty could even be called that. But they let one pony in on the secret, just in case.
And it was in the middle of all of this that Coco heard the twelve most terrifying words known to ponydom.
“I know I’ve been a jerk before,” she could hear Suri yelling from outside her dressing room, “but I really need your help.”