If You Give a Little Love...

by Quillamore

Act II, Scene 4: Bargaining Chip

Upon coming to her conclusion on the situation, Fate stared straight into everypony’s eyes with her own ice-blue gaze, analyzing their apprehension, attempting to find the answers that’d been kept from her for whatever reason. Terry might’ve had a fair deal of experience in the hospitality aspect of his job, catering to his customers’ every whim and thus allowing Fate to stay on the sidelines closer to her comfort zone, but throughout her years of negotiating business deals, of managing records, and of generally working to keep her employees in line while maintaining a neutral composure, she’d obtained her fair share of skills as well. And among the most useful of them, something that was all too needed in such a city as Manehattan, was how to call somepony’s bluff, how to tell that all the information she needed wasn’t fully there.

“It’s a bit of a long story, actually,” Coco finally and hesitantly admitted upon realizing that, even though the two were mother and daughter, Fate still wasn’t about to go easy on her. “Pretty convoluted, and it involves some things I was too afraid to tell you before. It’ll take a lot of explanation, and I’m not exactly sure you’ll take it well.”

“We’ve got time,” Fate replied, keeping a certain emotionless edge to her voice. “Go ahead and tell us.”

“We promise we won’t hold it against you unless it’s anything really bad,” Terry added. “Like if you landed in prison, never told us about it, and that’s how you ended up meeting her.”

“Terry, honestly, why on Equestria would that be the first conclusion you’d jump to?” she questioned with a roll of her eyes.

“Just trying to lighten the mood before the big revelation, I guess. For all we know, we could end up needing it.”

“It’s nothing that bad, I promise,” Coco clarified. “It’s just that I now happen to be Babs’ legal guardian, and that’s how I came into contact with Bambi. I figured staying with her sister by blood would ease the change a bit.”

“So you adopted a pony without telling us?” Fate asked, giving only a single raised eyebrow as a response.

“So we really did have a grandchild all this time?”

“Terry, that’s not even the point. While it is good to have another addition to our small family, that still doesn’t change the fact that our daughter should’ve told us far earlier than she did. For all we know, it could’ve been a spur-of-the-moment decision that she might end up regretting, not to mention how difficult it’d be to balance her job with her life as a single mother and—are you even listening?!”

The potato bread baker was completely inattentive to the situation, instead choosing to hug and play with his new granddaughter, placing his hoof to her nose repeatedly as if she were an infant.

“You’re enjoying this far too much to care about how hastily it was dropped on us, aren’t you?”

“So our daughter hid something from us, and that’s wrong. But I’m sure she had her reasons for it and that she isn’t the sort to come to a split-second decision. More importantly, we got an adorable grandchild out of it, so how can this be all bad?!”

He was just about to gently move Babs’ tail off her flank so he could get a better look at her cutie mark when Coco quickly intervened.

“She can show you her mark later,” she explained, “but she gets very sensitive when she’s touched there. She also has some scars on there that are pretty well covered-up, but she’s still self-conscious enough about them that she puts her tail over her flank when she meets new ponies so they can’t see.”

“Did she get into an accident as a foal or something?” Terry asked in concern. “Or is that something I should bring up in front of her?”

“We’ve had to do a lot of explaining about this already to other ponies, and sometimes Babs is okay with it, but other times, it makes her uncomfortable. It’s just how she is. We prefer to stay on the cautious side, though, so it’d probably be better if she isn’t around when I tell you about how I came across her. She’s had it really rough and even though other ponies have to know about what happened so they understand why I chose to adopt her, it can still be uncomfortable for her to have to listen to.”

“We can take her over to Coco’s apartment and start loading the boxes into the cart we rented,” Rarity offered. “That way, you can all catch up and we won’t have to worry about triggering anything too bad in her.”

“We’ll probably cover more ground that way, anyway,” Bambi agreed. “Depending on how soon we get this over with, we may be able to have Babs spend some time getting to know her new grandparents.”

Babs spent a few moments pondering the decision, wondering if it would really be the most convenient thing to split up and further delay the already long moving process, but eventually relented.

“I’ll be fine,” she stated with a smile. “I’m glad you’re lookin’ out for me, though. It may be harder on you to do things this way, considerin’ how much explaining you’ll have to do, but—“

“It’s worth it if it means you won’t have to be reminded of the past again,” Coco replied. “I made a big mistake getting you into that confrontation at the theatre, and I’ve learned to be more careful about the way I explain your situation to other ponies. I don’t want you to have to feel like what happened back then is inescapable. If you ever feel uncomfortable with anything, just tell me this time instead of feeling like you have to run away from me. Believe it or not, I’m actually pretty understanding.”

The entire day went by in a far greater blur than Coco could have imagined, with the move taking nowhere near as long as expected and with the newly formed family even getting a few moments in to shop around the Manehattan streets and to catch a movie together. And yet, the words Babs would say after that would be all that would stream through her mind up until the night, when she and her parents would finally have to part. In spite of all the pains she made to convince them that her decision was not rash, that it had been planned all along, those words above all were enough to assure her that saving Babs really had been the best decision she’d ever made.

“I know,” the filly told her in that moment. “Anypony else would’ve just left me there, would’ve just told themselves it was part of life in Manehattan or that I deserved to be treated that way. But you weren’t like that. I get the feeling that, out of all the ponies out there…you were one of the first ones I felt really understood me.”

In the future to come, that statement still wouldn’t be able to remove itself from Coco’s mind, but not because it warmed her heart as it did on the day it was first said. Rather, it would leave her to question more and more that if Babs was really convinced that she would’ve been completely abandoned without her…just what could’ve happened to her before the kidnappings to make her think that way? Just when did the breaking of Babs Seed really begin?

Was she ever even allowed to be “whole” to begin with?

****

As Bambi was showing Babs around the former refuge that had become her new home, images of the past day continued to flash through Coco’s mind. It wasn’t so much that the encounter with her parents had gone badly; on the contrary, even Fate was rather understanding when she divulged the true story. After the movie, they’d even stopped to buy their new granddaughter a few small trinkets she could use as keepsakes of their first meeting, including a plastic cuff bracelet she wore all day around her front leg. All seemed to be going well, and Rarity was on her way back to Ponyville now. Yet Coco still couldn’t shake certain loneliness about her.

There had to be a reason for why Scene didn’t show up. He wasn’t the sort to just break his promises like that. When the rush of the day was finally through, she spent most of the evening just lying in bed, trying to rationalize all the various reasons he could’ve chosen to back out of helping her. Even after all this anxiety about him had manifested, she still couldn’t even bring herself to be mad at him; rather, she kept wondering if perhaps she had done something wrong herself. she backtracked to the last time she’d really gotten in a good conversation with him, back when she’d first negotiated the deal with Bambi, taking the words she’d said then apart piece by piece, trying her best to find something, anything that might have insulted him, but to no avail.

Maybe he might have just been busy today. Maybe he felt uncomfortable getting too involved with somepony who was, after all, just supposed to be a coworker like anypony else. Or maybe she’d begun to rely too much on him, begun to take for granted that he’d always been so willing to help.

It was in these troubled moments that she heard a ring of a doorbell, a ring that was too soft for Bambi and Babs to hear as they were caught up in their moments of sisterly bonding and joking around. But Coco, in her instability, heard it loud and clear, and, taking care not to disturb the other two too much and distract them from their time together, opened the door.

Just outside was a yellow stallion she’d never seen before, his lime-green mane slicked back in an especially suave style. He carried a small bag by his side, something that seemed mundane enough at the time, but when he’d eventually end up leaving, Coco would be left to speculate about how convenient it was that the parcel just so happened to cover up his cutie mark.

At the moment, however, she was just as eager to get the meeting over with, go to bed, and hopefully start an even better day. To her, this encounter with the stranger would be nothing more than a simple, interchangeable routine.

“Hello there,” she whispered. “Do I know you?”

“Oh, trust me: you do,” the stallion replied. “You just don’t realize it yet.”

“What on Equestria could you possibly mean, and what are you doing here so late at night?” she questioned. “I mean, pardon my asking, but I do have the right to be a bit suspicious.”

“Of course you do. I came off really weird with that last sentence, but I really do want to speak with you. Now’s not exactly the most convenient time to go into too much detail, but the gist of it is this: I know a way for you to keep your job.”

After hearing this, her guard only further went up. How could this random pony possibly know that her career was in danger? It wasn’t exactly common knowledge, and she trusted those friends who knew well enough to trust that they’d keep her secret.

“You might wonder how I found out about you,” he continued, “and I want you to know that it wasn’t by coincidence or stalking or any of that. I work on the very same play as you; we merely haven’t gotten the chance to get acquainted yet. After all, there are so many ponies needed to fill just one production and you can’t possibly know them all.”

“Y-yes,” Coco replied, her fear rising. “I know. But if I don’t know you, then how did you find out about me?”

“Simple: I heard about your problems and I sympathized with you from the beginning. I was the one who told Scene about your issues in the first place. I have ties to the producer, and he’d listen to whatever I had to say. I understand you’re probably feeling strange about all this, and unfortunately, I don’t have very much time. If I would’ve come at a more convenient hour, we could’ve discussed all this without me having to rush myself and come off as really scary. Trust me, when I’m not desperate like this, I’m really not scary at all. I just come off that way because I went through what’s happening to you now and…I really, really would just like to help you. All you have to do in return is one simple thing.”

“What might that be?”

“There’s a café out by the theatre where all the famous ponies of Manehattan meet. Turns out that I’ve pulled enough strings in these parts to where I’m accepted there. Meet me there tomorrow, and I promise you that we’ll have a whole new start and we can completely forget about anything that might’ve went wrong tonight. Actually, though, there’s something else you have to do before then.”

He carefully lifted the parcel, still not revealing his cutie mark to her, and pulled out a small flower barrette almost identical to the red one she always wore. That in and of itself wasn’t all that strange, as her now-signature hair accessory had been quite the fad in Manehattan back a few years ago. Even Suri had worn one once in a while. The store that sold them was still open and generated a fair amount of business despite being only a shadow of its former self, and somehow, Coco had never quite had the heart to get rid of it once the trend ended. She’d built up too much of an attachment towards the silly thing.

“If my suspicions are correct, you still haven’t really made your debut in high society here, but that’s okay,” the stallion continued. “As long as the ponies in charge know that you’re with me, they’ll let you in. I’ll wait for you inside tomorrow at the time I give you, but they’ll only know it’s you if you wear this. I’ll tell them that the one I’ve invited is the one wearing this particular flower, and as long as you’re wearing this special symbol, they won’t question a thing about you. They’ll know that you’re with me.”

The delicate, peach-like orange of the flower sparkled in the dim light of the condominium hallway, luring her in with the sheer simplicity of its offer. All she had to do was listen to this stallion talk, maybe agree with his plans, and her job would be saved. If he tried anything too devious, she could always back out and tell somepony in charge that a mysterious pony had tried to take advantage of her. And even then, hadn’t Suri gotten involved in just as devious things to get ahead? She would be even better off then, as she didn’t really seek this out of ambition. Today, more than anything else, had reminded her of how important her family really was, and how she would do anything to provide for them.

Coco didn’t move a muscle, didn’t even protest as the stallion placed the flower to her hair just where the red one would’ve been had she not taken it off for the night. Any other time, the alarm bells in her head would be ringing. They would’ve rung even louder had she caught a glimpse of his cutie mark then, an image of the fruit that would lead to all her troubles, that had already led her down such a troubled path.

The stallion, just before walking away, took a few moments to stare deep into her eyes, interlocking them with his own gaze and taking in every detail.

“I was right,” he said with a grin somewhere between being devious and flirtatious.

“Orange really is a good color on you.”

Comments

[HB_DS2013]

Prolly a member of the Oranges.

[Golden Fang Ryu Shenron]

“Orange really is a good color on you.”

Mosley.....