If You Give a Little Love...

by Quillamore

Act II, Scene 7: Massive Multiplayer Ensemble Number

“I did see that back there, right?” a single blue unicorn muttered along the lonely Manehattan streets. “Was I hallucinating or was that a thing that actually happened?”

“So your crush just accepted a gift from the one pony who can actually stop her from being fired,” his companion spoke, trying his best to reason with the stallion who’d been, in his eyes, strangely inconsolable for several minutes. “I didn’t see anything more other than that, and even if there was more, then what’s the problem with that, Scene?”

To imply that there was just one problem, as Remy all too naively assumed, would be a vast understatement. Granted, his friend’s obliviousness was, partially, Scene’s own fault. As much as he’d told him, he still couldn’t bring himself to reveal the full details of Mosely’s treachery to anypony other than himself. Even when he’d told Suri about what had happened, he’d left the worst details to himself. Perhaps he’d done it out of rare empathy for her, knowing that she could very well end up learning the other facts the hard way just by being with the producer for long enough. But that’d be giving Suri far too much credit, and at that, credit that deserved to belong to another far more. And strangely enough, for once, the pony in question for Scene wasn’t Coco.

Calling out a fully deserving boss on his wrongdoings was one thing, but he wasn’t about to let the real victim of the matter go down straight along with Mosely. If he wasn’t too careful, it would be all too easy for an overhearing voice to hear or for Suri to suddenly decide to go rogue on him the same way she always seemed to turn on others. Were either of those two events to occur, and even if the secret could stay safe, one thing was still for sure: Scene certainly wouldn’t be the party who’d end up being the most damaged by it.

Whether or not Babs knew Mosely’s abandonment of her had been intentional, Scene still wasn’t quite sure. The filly certainly had enough reason to hide any evidence that anything had ever happened between the two of them, that was for sure. However much she knew, though, it still wasn’t something that deserved to be brought to anypony’s attention unless it was completely necessary. The last thing she needed was more pain to come into her life, and even if Scene couldn’t stop her from potentially finding out someday that Coco and Mosely were an item now, he could at least keep her safe from any discussion of the latter.

That should have been enough for him in that moment. Scene would still be able to protect somepony, even if it wasn’t the one he’d intended on helping in the first place. But in reality, he would do anything, anything for more power over the situation. Anything to keep him from feeling that he hadn’t just given up and declared Coco as a lost cause.

“I can’t talk right now,” he finally whispered to his friend. “I have a lot on my mind, and I really just need to think about how I’m going to handle this.”

“Can I at least walk home with you?” Remy asked, trying his best to offer his support.

“No, I’m sorry,” Scene replied. “I just really, really need to be alone right now. Nothing against you, but I…I don’t want anything to do with anypony working on the play right now. I’d be happy if I never had to walk onto that stage again.”

“Um, look, I get that you’ve been trying to skirt the main issue, and you’re terrible at hiding it. But from all that I’ve seen of you up until now, you seemed like the type who’d never get this hopeless about your job.”

“This isn’t the right time to—“

“You do realize what you’d be doing, right? If you quit here and now, you would be giving up the one thing you love. It’d be like having your cutie mark torn away from you.”

“I wouldn’t be giving up what I love,” Scene stated bitterly. “Even if I was, I wouldn’t care anymore. As long as I keep that mare from making the worst mistake of her life, it would all be worth it.”

“But I don’t think he’s that bad.”

“He is that bad. I don’t want to keep Coco from falling in love with another stallion; that’s okay by me. But after what I saw, after what he showed me, I can’t even look him in the eye anymore. If somepony like me was affected this much by him, then who knows how much the truth will break her? If she were to find out just how much damage he’s already done to her family just by existing, I don’t think she could go on. It’s not about whether or not I end up with her in the end, I just want to save her…but I can’t.”

Upon seeing his normally calm director’s emotional outbursts, ones that were becoming all too common as of late, the hairdresser’s gaze took on a new intensity.

“What did Mosely do to you?” Remy asked, his voice shaking with concern.

Just then, as if by some sort of spell, both stallions could see that their aforementioned boss was just on the other side of the road, appearing to have just dropped off Coco at her apartment. Without warning or much thought to it, Scene crossed the next chance he got.

He couldn’t get to Coco, not anymore. But maybe he could save her another way. And that path would have to start with a good explanation of why Mosely’s newfound presence in her life seemed to coincide so perfectly with the threats Scene had been given about avoiding her.

“I’m sorry,” Scene muttered just as he cantered off, leaving Remy alone to process the storm that was about to occur. “But I can’t tell you that, either.”

****

She knew the rule all too well, even if it was her first time ever being on Bridleway proper. There were certain things about the trade that didn’t even really need to be learned on the job; society’s whisperings about them were enough to ensure that everypony who walked in the door would know. And no matter how much she’d tried not to create any more ruckus than her dubious past jobs already would, she’d managed to fall into the single greatest, most utterly clichéd trap a fairly young and reasonably attractive stage mare could experience: fooling around with the producer. While she hadn’t quite gone anywhere near that far, the guilt was still eating away at her nonetheless.

Coco had gotten home late that night, or at least enough so to where she could say as little as possible to Bambi and Babs without looking too suspicious. At this point, terrible as it was, it wasn’t so much the pain of keeping secrets from them that kept her mind wandering, not anymore at least. She may not have fully comprehended the situation at hoof, but she knew enough to sense that she’d have to carry on the charade for far longer than she had hoped, so she might as well push that guilt as far back as she could so she could reasonably hope to hold it in.

When would it really end? She had hoped it would be done and over with after the dinner, and looking back on it, she’d thought it would’ve been enough to just talk to Mosely once in the first place. Get to know him a little, keep her professional distance otherwise, make her case for why she should stay on the crew, and that would be that. But dating, being in a flat-out relationship with him would put her in a place of being trapped for months, even years without once voicing her deepest fears to anypony. If her small-minded self had come to that realization just an hour earlier, she reflected, she would have asked if there was another way, refused the cameo now meticulously placed on her collar, just above her heart.

It, along with the new orange flower she continued to wear out of fear Mosely would notice its absence, was a small change, almost miniscule. But looking at herself in the mirror, she was already noting how much his entry into her life was coloring her. She may not have been unrecognizable now, but how long would it be before he found it necessary to change her even more, to the point where it would be almost impossible for those dear to her not to notice?

What if they already had, but felt compelled by the same hesitation in her own heart not to tell?

Throughout what was left of the night hours, thoughts of Mosely still filled her mind, but not in the way he would’ve liked them to manifest. She couldn’t quite place them under the all-too-easy category of merely fearing him; sure, he did have a certain domineering nature when it came to her, but she’d resigned herself to being treated that way long ago. All she had to tell herself was that, unlike Suri, at least he was doing it with good intentions in mind and had some sliver of emotion towards her, even on the off chance she might have considered his love to be anything but genuine. For all she knew, this could very well have been normal behavior for a coltfriend to show.

And yet, somehow, that little voice of hesitation in her mind still went off.

It’s going to be fine, she kept telling herself. Somehow, I can’t help but make an ulterior motive out of the fact that an older stallion wants to go out with me. Can’t I just leave it as simple as he made it out to be? It’s not right to mistrust a member of my own crew, after all. And in the end, no matter how long I have to go at it, what matters is that I can keep my job, that maybe, being with Mosely will bring me even greater things than just that. Maybe, with him around, I can become so famous that nopony will ever have to remember what I did back then.

As she removed her various masks that she felt she would have to grow all too accustomed to wearing in the future, the fancy makeup, coiffed hair, and accessories that came as part and parcel of being romantically involved with big-city aristocracy, she found that she was beginning to recognize herself a little more. But placing Mosely’s flower back on her head, even on a mane mussed by daily stresses, all that knowledge dissipated.

Then again, it was about time she changed herself after all. The old Coco would never do in a society that would always remember the crimes she had committed, had it the chance to grow acquainted with them. She had always told herself that she needed to grow some greater strength in order to survive in Manehattan, to keep herself from falling under somepony else like Suri. And wasn’t this just the opportunity she’d been waiting for?

Hoping more than anything that this wouldn’t be another one of her sleepless nights, placing the flower back on the dresser where it would wait to draw her in until morning, a single set of questions still lingered on her mind. Questions that Mosely still hadn’t quite answered, and might never be able to.

Even if I grow to love Mosely one day, will there come a moment when he realizes that I was no better than Suri? If he abandons her so callously, isn’t that saying that he’ll do the same to me one day? Because, really, are Suri and I any different?

Doesn’t that make orange a good color on Suri, too? Or did he ever even consider her like that? Was she ever anything more to him than a stepping stone for winning my own heart?

****

As he strode through the streets of Manehattan, oblivious of Scene’s pursuit of him, Mosely Orange almost felt guilty at how easy it had been for him to convince Coco of his manufactured loyalty. Almost.

If he had qualms about betraying anypony at that moment, they certainly weren’t focused on Suri. In fact, she’d been perhaps the one thing in Equestria he’d managed to tell his all-too-trusting employee the truth about. Sure, Suri had supplied him with the information he so needed about Scene’s odd behavior and acted as a source of comfort for a little while, but the jolt that had come from being around her had been strong, but quickly expended. Sure, one could say she would be the closest he’d likely ever have to finding somepony as prone to rocking the boat as he was. But Mosely was never one to be attracted to ponies with his interests in mind. Being involved with another version of himself was, well, boring.

For one thing, those like Suri weren’t quite as easy to control, and much as he may have preferred to hide it, that was what kept him coming back in a relationship. An ambitious mare like her could easily ascend to his level with enough effort, and that was perhaps what scared him most about her. Give her enough renown and she would be more tolerantly accepted by high society as his girlfriend, but give her too much power and she would quickly turn into a monster of his own creation. One who would know each and every one of his weaknesses that he’d worked so hard to hide and just how to exploit them. That was why he had no interest in being with what society considered to be bad ponies, not romantically, at least.

Better still to approach love as a way to put those innocent parties in their place, to keep them in line. If they were somehow able to live decades of their lives still thinking the world was a fair place, it was their own fault for being so dense.

The only regret that flickered within Mosely’s mind concerning the situation at hand was the fact that being with Coco would take him even further away from his beloved Cameo. Even in that heart others would all too easily label as nothing but stone, the phenomenon of loss was still present.

And its manifestation was Cameo Orange, herself emanating with the nostalgia of the past and the majesty of a perfectly cultivated mare of wealth. Of course, though she’d been radiant enough without him around, Mosely had had just as much of a role in polishing her beauty as anypony else. She’d already been plenty graceful without him, but that still couldn’t have erased her small-town background, one that would never do in his Manehattan home. Cameo above all had been the one pony he’d been able to mold just as perfectly as he ever could have dreamed. But as suddenly as a stroke of lightning, something had tainted her; she had lashed out against the one who had made her who she was. She had undone all the strings that held her in her meticulously trimmed place, consorted with a disgustingly lowborn stallion, and only came back to him bearing an equally scruffy filly, expecting him to care for it as if it were every bit as valid as Bambi, the rightful daughter he’d been steadily refining and preparing for years.

It was Cameo’s own fault for being so dense.

But, as obsessed as he still was with her, even he could acknowledge that the success he had with her could be replicated. All it would take was a pony who was even more easily led than she had been, who was too caught up in her own problems to question his way of thinking. More importantly, somepony who was even more affected by fear and desperation, somepony who had a deeper, more cutting reason for staying with him than just a marriage arranged between families. Somepony who would be too afraid to refuse him even the most emotionally costing of demands.

Sure, Mosely’s original plans for her might’ve just been to throw Scene off. But, the more he realized it, the more he knew that Coco could fit all those criteria. And so, it could not be chalked up to mere coincidence that he had given his new marefriend the very item that bore his ex-wife’s name. If he really did have to give up on Cameo, the next best thing to having her around would be to project his feelings towards her onto another, one that was already turning out to be all too similar.

It was in the middle of these thoughts that he first discovered Scene approaching him on the sidewalk, and in a moment of weakness, he at first thought nothing of it. It would seem perfectly natural for a director to approach his producer on the streets, and back in the time before this tumultuous play, the two did show up in public together quite often. Mosely never quite considered him a friend, but then again, he seemed so caught up in his own world of delusions that he had no need for anypony else. Except Cameo, at least, back before. With all these components in mind, it seemed logical and mundane for Scene to come up to him the way he did.

It never quite struck him that Scene could have noticed him in the restaurant until the words came flowing out of the director’s mouth in a tone his boss had rarely heard him use off the set.

“Mosely Orange, you felonious fiend!”

At hearing both a prominent Manehattan socialite’s name and the interesting choice of language attached to it, a good amount of ponies surrounding the two whipped their heads towards the scene and whispered remarks to other passersby, watching intently in hope of what was sure to be the talk of the town in a few hours.

“What did I even do?!” the producer responded, all too aware that he was being scrutinized and opting to play the innocent.

“You know what you did,” Scene replied, just barely keeping himself from gritting his teeth. “You know, it’s funny. I never thought I’d ever have to say that to anypony. That phrase, angrily stopping somepony on the street, fully intending to cause a stir, it’s all so cliché. But right now, it’s really the only way I have to process what you just did. Because anything else I might have outside that gut reaction is gone for now. You know what you did.”

“I did nothing, and I stand by that.”

“Would you still say that if I told you I know what you’re planning? Maybe I don’t have a twisted enough mind like yours to piece it all together, but I get the gist of it. All that matters is that, whatever you want from Coco, it can’t be good. And knowing the way you feel about her family, you’re going to push her towards something she’ll regret. You want to keep her away from them, leave her with nopony left to support her, and then throw her away. Just like you’re about to do with Suri.”

The as-of-yet unfamiliar names attached to the confrontation elicited ever more baffled murmurs from the makeshift audience. But, in the grand scheme of things, those didn’t matter. What did was that the Stealer-Orange team was having a very public altercation over something, and that sheer fact made the details of who was right or wrong arbitrary. Either side would bring about conversation and discussion for days.

“Before I say anything else,” Mosely began, trying his best to maintain his composure, “I thought I told you to be more careful about how you present yourself around me. You certainly aren’t playing the role of the dutiful director right now.”

“Exactly because that was a role. This is who I really am. I can go back to work tomorrow and go along with everything you say like always. But that won’t give me what I’m really looking for. I want an explanation.”

“And who’s to say that explanation won’t make you lash out at me again?”

“You certainly didn’t have qualms about filling me in on everything last time. You know, when you gloated about hurting my own crew member and expected me to just let it happen.”

“Fine, then I’ll give it to you again, but only because I had to go and set that precedent before. Don’t expect to hear everything.”

“Only an idiot would, when it comes out of your mouth.”

“So I chose to go out one night with the mare you’ve had your eye on. An awfully juvenile reason to cause such a ruckus, at least, in my opinion. But just this once, I’ll play along with it, and so I’ll tell you this much: Coco accepted my offer.”

“Because you coerced her into it,” Scene said. “I saw everything. If she had an iota of knowledge about what you’d done, she wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But that’s not what I want to ask you about.”

“Then what is?”

“Why did you go to the effort to enforce some fancy rule forbidding me from speaking to her, only to take her for yourself? Why did you put me through all that when you were already planning on getting to her? Why not save us both the pain and just move straight to that step when separating us really didn’t serve you any purpose?”

“Maybe it was because I knew that her being with me wouldn’t have stopped you,” Mosely mused. “Or perhaps, on another side of the same coin, I knew I couldn’t trust you to stay away from her without added interference. I apologize for having caused you more pain than I had intended to inflict, but—“

“Stop it with your lies! All you ever wanted from this was to mess with me so I wouldn’t be able to save her.”

“And perhaps that’s true. But have you ever once considered why you get so carried away about this mare of yours? It’d be best if you did before you tear down everything you spent so long building up for a foalish crush. You could be great, Scene. You already were on the path to being that way, and you can put yourself back in that path. All you have to do is consider the possibility that avoiding her would be in your best interests.”

Cantering down the street, feeling that he’d put in those words he’d needed to say, Mosely uttered a final statement almost as a throwaway:

“That’s not to say I have a problem with you dating one of your coworkers. As long as it’s not somepony who distracts you as much as Coco does, I’m fine with it. Besides…somepony’s got to pick up Suri’s pieces, after all, after the wreck she’ll be in a couple days."

To his utter surprise, the statement he thought would offend Scene the least out of all he’d made or implied, the one he’d meant only as a joke, was the one that provoked the most violence. While Scene was never the sort to inflict too much pain onto others, he did the closest thing Mosely had seen in a while to such a thing—just as the producer tried to move further, he found that his unicorn director had a part of his tail subdued inside his magic.

“You thought you’d let go of me that easily?” Scene asked, an added edge to his voice.

“I thought I told you to forget about her. Or are you even willing to listen to me at all anymore?”

“Don’t you dare pull that act on me. First off, I would be perfectly willing to cooperate if you showed at least some semblance of basic morality. And second, this time, I’m not technically fighting for Coco. Not directly, at least. I’m just surprised you’re this engaged in your evil plotting and the like to get rid of the one pony in the world who actually cares about you just to trick somepony else into being your marefriend. Seems pretty harsh to me, and I barely even tolerate Suri. That should say something.”

“So you just have a protective complex towards everypony on set, no matter how much you may personally feel towards them?” Mosely deduced. “If I were anypony else, I’d almost call that admirable.”

“You know what? It is. If you were anything like the pony you say you are, you would feel it too. But since you don’t, that means that I’ll have to play both sides. I’ll have to follow your orders for how the play is run while keeping you from interfering with everypony’s personal lives. And if that’s how it has to be, I’ll do it. I won’t pretend to be some hero who’s completely unfazed by what you’ve done to me. But if that’s the one way I have to serve a purpose in life, that’s how it’ll have to be.”

“Would you feel quite so heroic if you were to know that I was planning on breaking it off with Suri even if I had never figured out your feelings for Coco? Because that much is true; to say it quite simply, I lost interest in her weeks ago. To be precise, when she started meeting up with you. I had thought that putting her onto Bridleway would provide her with a stable career, make her happier, and it did. But she also changed in another way. Ever since she’s been there, I’ve noticed that she’s softened up a bit. She even apologized for having ever told me your secret. I don’t know what’s come over her, but to put it bluntly: I was attracted to the part of her that mirrored myself. Now that she’s so focused on bettering her life, the mare I thought I knew disappeared, and so too did my interest for her. You’ve felt that way before, I assume?”

“Maybe,” replied Scene hesitantly. “But you’re saying you’d rather keep those you love from improving and moving outside your darkness than be confronted with the idea that your way of living may not be right? If that’s the way you see love, then I’d be really scared of what you’re going to do to Coco, even without my feelings for her.”

“All I intend to do with her is to form her into the pony she was meant to be,” Mosely answered. “There’s this other play she’s doing work for where a stallion guides a mare into becoming a lady of society; she’s told me about it. I can’t place the name, as it’s a much smaller production than the two of us bother with. But to answer your question, I’m doing precisely that. No more, no less.”

“And where does her family fit into your new idea of her? Assuming they’ll even still be in the picture, that is.”

Noticing that the gathering of ponies was still listening to their dispute and that what he was about to say could pay a terrible toll on his reputation, Mosely turned himself around just close enough to whisper in Scene’s ear and responded:

“Trust me, I have standards. They’ll still be alive; I don’t go around murdering ponies just because they don’t fit into my plans. But that’s not guaranteeing she’ll still get to be around them.”

“What in Tartarus are you planning?”

“Well, I figure I can keep Coco around for a few months, make it look like she’s actually doing something to salvage her job. I don’t give her any big threats for a while, make it look like she’s winning. And then I’ll just tell her I have no intention of settling down and being a family stallion. If she asks me about it any further, I’ll say it’s unnegotiable if she has any intention of staying with me. I’ll promise her the world if she chooses me; job stability would be far from the only thing she’d have to gain from it at that point. She could have everything.”

Mosely paused for the slightest of moments, savoring the situation the plan would place him in. For him, turning Coco into his ideal mare would be nowhere near good enough to truly please him. There was one other caveat that would be the final test of her career. It was within these conditions that he spoke once more.

“All she has to do is put Babs back up for adoption.”

At that statement, Mosely could feel the grip on his tail releasing, causing him to slowly move forward and trip.

“You know what?” Scene yelled. “I’m not even going to justify that with a response. There are so many things I can say about how utterly wrong that is, but voicing them would just be stating the obvious. You are the most reprehensible pony I have ever met, and what you just said removed all doubt in my mind of that fact. I hope you’re proud of yourself, because I’m certainly not going to let anypony else keep praising you as long as you keep thinking like that.”

Just then, he stormed off, the audience parted as if nothing happened, and Mosely was left alone. With nothing else to do, he trotted into a stationery store and prepared himself for the next wave of his attack.

****

To give Coco credit, she’d been able to keep up her charade for a good deal longer than she might have ended up planning to. The day after the date was uneventful, spent in happiness with her new family that was all too blissfully ignorant to the deeper trouble plaguing her. Two days after, still nothing of note occurred.

But after the third, all the little signs she gave of greater problems finally began to culminate...

Comments

[JMP]

Well...this is going to end well for....nobody.

[Titan Commander Sebaste]

*has an increasing desire to start swearing*

[Golden Fang Ryu Shenron]

“Maybe,” replied Scene hesitantly. “But you’re saying you’d rather keep those you love from improving and moving outside your darkness than be confronted with the idea that your way of living may not be right? If that’s the way you see love, then I’d be really scared of what you’re going to do to Coco, even without my feelings for her.”

I’d be scared too.

[Orrm]

"War approaches, Luʻi lou fatafata."