If You Give a Little Love...

by Quillamore

Act III: Learning to Love Again--Scene 1: Mea Culpa

“Bring him in at once.”

It certainly wasn’t the usual setting for a family ceremony, and the purple earth pony ought to have known. After all, for the longest time, she’d been the one to organize them. But Midsweet had insisted, and as much as everypony liked to believe the Orange family was a democracy, they all knew who was in charge. Whoever lived the longest got to make the decisions, and Midsweet had certainly done just that.

“Are you really sure this is the right way to go?” she whispered to the elderly pony before her. “It’s been less than a week, and ponies are already talking about what fragile condition he’s in. Plus, we’ve had to let too many of our members go over the last few years. Doesn’t he at least deserve some better closure than this?”

“Don’t be so easy on him, Belladonna,” the other replied. “You know as well as I do that if we keep him around too long, we’ll have another crisis on our hooves. The markets have already started turning our crops down because ol’ Orange Jumpsuit here had to go and ruin everything.”

Crisis, at the time being, was an exaggeration, but for a family as used to wealth and prosperity as the Oranges were, it was the largest catastrophe in years. Even having a few small stores turn down their products was enough to sound the alarm for many relatives, because they’d studied up on other businesses to know how it went. The larger stores, so focused on keeping their prices, would stay with less reputable buyers for as long as they could before the protests came in. Usually, that would keep victims of a controversy safe for a few months.

It’d been easy enough for most of the Oranges to blow their losses off with this in mind. Back then, what had only been a few days ago in most ponies’ minds, they didn’t even really know what had caused it. But all it took to wipe that pride away was one fateful letter from Ponyville, a city that they wouldn’t have cared less about if the name on the envelope hadn’t been from one of their clients. Barnyard Bargains had been the first, and to this day, the only big-market chain to stop carrying Manehattan Orange products. Those in charge had tried to ease their pain by telling them they would be “seeking to expand your branch in Applewood” and that the bits should have still ended up coming back to them. Everypony involved knew better.

It was then that all the Oranges had been put to work. Some were tasked with pleading to the director, Filthy Rich, not to finalize the deal. Others sent him and his fellow businessponies letters just wanting to know why they were being turned down, and still others scoured the papers and populations to answer that same question. All would end up bleeding into the first step of the family method: finding somepony to blame. Step two: nipping that pony in the bud, no matter how vulnerable they might be or how beloved they might have been.

Cruel, some had called it. Merciless. But it was the way things had always been done. Now more than ever, the Oranges would have to stick to their traditions if they had any hope of surviving.

Even if it meant losing the pony that had made Belladonna question everything she’d fought for, the one she knew would have to fall sooner or later. Even if it meant watching her darling family of five become a family of four.

Even if it meant standing by in silence as Midsweet disowned her oldest son.

“Now, it’s going to be okay,” Midsweet had coached her daughter. “This is going to be no different from all the other times you’ve seen it. I’m not going to make you step in too far, but in exchange, you need to get one thing into your head: you still have plenty to live for. You’ve still done better for yourself than a lot of us have.”

Similar consoling remarks repeated throughout the room for several moments, and up until then, Belladonna was almost about to buy into them. Her dread of the situation, however, returned when she saw a group of three stallions enter the room from the other side. Two of them, unicorns, were gripping the other tight with their magic, making sure he didn’t go too far off the trail. Given the fact that he was already wearing some sort of monitoring cuff, Belladonna hardly found all this ruckus necessary. But, as she had done all too often lately, she kept her mouth shut and tried not to look the other stallion in the eye.

While at least part of that was because his gaze carried a sort of panic she rarely ever saw, she knew the real reason. Looking at him, she could never see him how the officers or even her mother would. All she saw was the foal she had failed so many years ago.

Once, long ago, he had been the one Midsweet had personally advocated to work alongside her as the Orange family heir. Anypony else who didn’t know his story, though, would just see him as any other criminal, the tolls of his deeds having caught up with him. The usual gleam of a proud Orange had certainly left him for the time being as he looked at everything with an overwhelmed eye, unable to fully believe what was happening to him.

“That’s what happens to ponies once they first see they’ve hit rock bottom,” the officers had explained to her beforehand. “It might be a sign that he’s not too far gone if he still has some sort of recognition that what he did was wrong. Or it could just be that he only knows how ponies will react to him once they find out. Either way, he might not be himself for a while.”

She’d spent so much time mentally preparing for this moment that she barely noticed the stallion rushing towards her already, only seconds after the unicorn officers released their magic. His usually suspicious gaze suddenly warmed upon seeing the two familiar ponies, and in that moment, he almost seemed to be his usual self. The self he had been when he was a foal, before all this drama unfolded. He reached his hoof out towards Belladonna, both outstretching their forelegs before realizing a glass wall separated them.

“Necessary precautions,” one of the officers explained. “Same for all prisoners. We wish we could’ve changed them for you.”

“That’s fine,” the other stallion answered. “Just seeing them right now is enough.” With a mournful sigh, he muttered, “That’s better than what my crewmates have given me.”

“As victims in your alleged crimes, Mr. Stealer and Miss Pommel have been forbidden from meeting you for their own safety.”

“It’s not like I could’ve put them in any real danger,” he replied bitterly. “Mr. Stealer because I lack the resources to here, and Coco because…”

The gleam that had shone in his eyes just a moment earlier suddenly dimmed as he realized just how much he had truly lost. Even through the hours of questioning, explaining, and pleading, he was never quite able to complete his thoughts about that particular mare. Anything less than complete denial of her involvement in the case would only bring further instability to his already troubled mind.

“Before you proceed any further,” Midsweet interrupted from the other side, “I would highly suggest you not get too excited about our visit. This isn’t going to be a reunion in any sense of the word.”

The stallion, still keeping up a sliver of hope, answered, “They’re forbidding you from seeing me after this? With the way you can be, I wouldn’t have thought you’d abide by their rules. Or, at least, you wouldn’t let them get in your way.”

“That isn’t why I said that. You of all ponies should know that we Oranges make our own rules. If you gain acceptance into our family, there is nothing in all of Equestria that can stop us from being by your side. We will fight for you no matter how much we have to dirty our hooves to do so.”

All panic completely flushed from his eyes once he heard this, a sparkle of excitement glimmering in them for the first time in several days. For once, he felt as though he was back in control again, and the prison walls began to dissolve. With enough bits, he could finally be out of there. All these factors came together to make him so stupefied that he could barely hear what Midsweet said next.

“All these years I thought you’d listened to us, Mosely,” she spoke with a sneer. “If you had, maybe then you’d know that we’ve never extended that sort of mercy to anypony, let alone you."

“There’s no point to extending mercy,” he countered as soon as he realized the true implications of what Midsweet was saying, “if I never did anything in the first place. Which I most certainly didn’t.”

Both mares raised doubtful eyebrows at this, but said nothing. They could only hope that the protective shield separating them from him was also enough to mask their utter skepticism at the situation.

“If you must know,” Mosely continued, trying his best to keep his composure, “I was framed. I assume that much of the information you and the police are taking into account here probably comes from irreputable sources and are no better than glorified rumors. And even if they were true, the ponies who spread them are no better than they accuse me of being. Many ponies here in Manehattan have wanted my head for quite some time, and the director of my latest production simply wanted in on it. He felt that the offers I had been giving him weren’t good enough, and that if he managed to accuse me of a major crime, he could weasel his way out of a binding contract.”

“Ah, yes,” Midsweet muttered. “Weaseling, the very thing you happen to doing right now. Or, considering the amount of times your mother’s had to put up with this sort of behavior from you, perhaps ‘Moselying’ would be a better name for it.”

Pressing his hoof against the glass barrier once more, Mosely could almost feel his freedom running out. Once more, his memories reverted back to that night when he’d lost everything, the way his honeyed voice could only plead like a basket case would. He opened his mouth and tried to find the reasonable words to back him up, but all he could see was the danger of the situation.

“But, if you will hear me out on this, I can prove that I’m not lying here. Believe me on this one thing and I will never ask you for anything else ever again.”

“And what might that evidence be? Why wait so long to show it to everypony if you had it all this time? You do realize that, if you were falsely accused, you could have saved the family’s reputation by now by showing it to the authorities?”

“What do you mean, if I was falsely accused? Even after what I’ve said, and everything I’ve done for this family, you’d still believe them over me?”

“In any normal case, we wouldn’t,” Midsweet clarified. “But you ought to know as well as we do that that’s far from the case here. We’ve seen the recordings, Mosely, and we’ve heard what you said. You outright pleaded guilty that night, or at least, you might as well have. You backed up their claims and said that you’d done those things to that foal. And, worse yet, you dragged us into the whole deal by saying you did it to save the Oranges. As if pulling our name into the mud would really do anything about that.”

“You know that was never my intention, and it was the last thing I could’ve wanted. But what if it was the only thing I could’ve done? What if you were there, and you knew that if you didn’t admit to crimes you never committed, the ponies you love would only be hurt more?”

His eyes shifted from side to side, finding that even the one thing he was the most talented at was a lie. Or, rather, that it was the truest thing he knew, seeing how he was able to convince nopony except himself that it was the case.

“I really do hate to admit it, but when I said it, I wasn’t thinking of you. There was no physical evidence for me or against me, which should’ve meant that I could let it slide, say nothing, and take my damages. But after I’d been fighting my accusers off for an hour or so, I’d found that they had something that I couldn’t let them keep. The one who made me confess was my marefriend. They’d found her when I wasn’t around and tried to turn her against me. And it’d worked, for a while. But one of the last times I got to see her, she told me that she had doubts and wanted to be with me. That’s how I knew that they’d forced her into questioning me that night. So if you want to know why I gave into them, I did it for her, because I knew that if I didn’t, they’d just hurt her more. I regret it already.”

Upon hearing this, he could notice his grandmother’s face turning to look at him in understanding, and his soul rose once more.

“That’s a pretty good defense you have,” she spoke with a smile. “I really did underestimate you all this time, Mosely. That whole ‘giving yourself up for love’ shtick really will convince them. It’s a great concept: you against the jealous world fighting for your lady’s honor. If you really do make it out of this whole debacle with your life ahead of you, it’d be quite the blockbuster. You’d get a film deal out of it within days, because it’s perfect for the screen.”

Her smile turned dark before finally whispering, “Too bad that’s the only place it would work. If only real life worked that smoothly; maybe then you would’ve stood a chance of ponies actually believing you. Maybe then, you’d be something other than a common criminal in a well-bred body. Because, really, when it comes down to it, that’s all you are, and all you’ve ever been. Our only regret is that we didn’t see it sooner. Maybe then, we would’ve known better than to foster those grandiose delusions of yours. But for now, be lucky we’re even bothering with the ceremony, because if it were really up to me, I would’ve said that you’d stopped being an Orange the minute you were born.”

Midsweet placed a hoof up to the glass barrier for the last time, just under Mosely’s chin. As usual, it didn’t touch a single strand of his fur, but the point was clear enough as it was. He’d convinced himself into power for far too long, and it was time he found out who was really in charge.

In that moment, not even Belladonna, the one who’d once sworn to protect her foals at any cost, could do anything to separate the two antagonists.

“Be lucky I’m bothering to disown you the civil way, because you sure didn’t give the foal that luxury.”

Mosely didn’t say a word. He’d already knew that fighting his family was a futile battle. He kept silent all through the pain, saving his strength for the courts that would eventually come for him. Or at least, that’s what he’d planned on doing before Midsweet broke the news that would end up breaking him into pieces.

“I will say that you did have one thing going for you, Mosely,” she told him just before the ceremony. “You always were good at spotting potential in other ponies. And, thanks to that, we’ve already found your replacement. Granted, we don’t trust her enough to make her head of the family quite yet, and likely, she won’t feel that way towards us either, at least not in the beginning. But sooner or later, like it or not, she’s going to be ours, and she just might have what it takes to actually get us to where we need to go. If not, well, maybe then you can give her tips on what to do with her life after becoming an Orange reject.”

Silence. Utter silence. He wanted to scream deep inside, to warn the pony the police wouldn’t let him go back to, or at least to give one last threat before his pride withered into dust. But somehow, words were not enough in this moment, and there was no way they’d be enough to save a mare who would never be ready for the sorts of things his family was capable of.

“Don’t worry,” Midsweet whispered over her shoulder just before leaving him forever. “I have a feeling you like her already.”

****

Staring at the building looming just in front of her, Coco suddenly regretted deciding to go out with her family. As much as police questionings and interviews had taken up her entire week, she’d never been quite so scared as this during one of them. ‘

Though it seemed a thousand feet tall in her mind, in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t that large or even very noticeable to begin with. It was just like any old structure you’d find in downtown Manehattan, and upon further inspection, it was probably even smaller than her parents’ shop.

But the size it lacked was more than made up for by its name, the most imposing thing Coco had seen in a whole week. On any other occasion, even that wouldn’t have fazed her, but she’d come to know the area in front of her all too well, even without ever visiting it. All she needed to know about it to gain her bearings was the collection of jewelry that adorned the windows.

In a futile attempt to take her mind off the situation, she stared at the window just like she had at the museum, wondering if this was some sort of twisted habit she’d developed in the last month. A single, simple brooch lay in the center of a display littered with glistening jewels, and though it had its own differences to it, Coco couldn’t help but think of the similar one she once had.

Once had, of course, being the key term. She gave a quick glance over her shoulder, waiting for Bambi and Babs to meet up with her at the location they’d given her and bade her time just staring at it and wondering what had happened to her own.

She knew one thing for sure: the cameo she’d worn just over her neck had an origin every bit as mysterious as the mare who had crafted it, and as soon as its maker disappeared, so too did the brooch. As much as she would’ve liked to have thought she’d put it aside on her own free will like the orange flower, the truth was that she honestly had no idea where it could have gone off to. While she hadn’t been called to the theatre in a week, she’d popped in a few times in hopes of finding it, but to no avail.

More than a few times, she’d asked herself why she even cared about finding it in the first place, a useless trinket given to her by the most deceptive pony she knew. Had Bambi or any of the others found out about her daily searches, they would have surely jumped to the wrong conclusions, and honestly, she didn’t blame them.

Sometimes, on the sleepless, guilt-ridden nights she still had, she tried to pass the time as she did now, wondering just what about it was so important. She’d come up with all sorts of stories about what she’d do if she found it, and they were always a little different.

In some, she kept it to use as evidence in the trial she so dreaded, and in others, she pawned it just to get rid of the thing. In her particularly dramatic dreams, she’d throw it over a boat and leave it to the sea. But, in the one that stuck out in her mind most, she’d give it back to the one who’d made it as a peace offering, and the two would trot off as friends. She’d give it to the loneliest pony she knew and hope for the best.

Facing Cameo in her thoughts was easy enough. But now, standing in front of what was very clearly her store and unclear of why she was even there in the first place, she realized just how naive she still was, and how much she still wanted to run from her troubles.

Coco wished she could have felt her normal sense of relief at seeing her family, but instead, she took them in as much as she could as if to memorialize them in her memories. Focusing on all their smallest details and how much she still wanted to know about them, she found her fear reigning over her once more.

“Sorry we took so long to get here!” Bambi yelled from a few feet away. “We just had to take care of a few things first. You got here okay, didn’t you?”

“Um, yeah,” Coco answered, scraping her hoof against the sidewalk. “At least, until I realized where you were taking me. You could’ve warned me before the fact, you know.”

Everything about her had turned rigid as she turned to the building once more, from her tail to her posture. Even her smile was more of a gritted and forced expression than anything resembling happiness. She rubbed her hoof against her mane repeatedly, looking back and forth between Bambi and the structure in front of her.

“Sorry about that,” Bambi replied. “I just...I kinda thought I’d clued you in about what I was getting you into. In any case, I figured this would be a good ‘first mission’ for you, so to speak.”

As her roommate flashed a mischievous wink at her, Coco’s hunches about the situation were confirmed. A few days before, the two of them had discussed how both her and Babs had a long way to go before they would really recover from the Stealer-Orange scandal and how the first step towards any sort of family stability would be to build themselves up to where they were before. All three of them had agreed to these sorts of meetings whenever Coco had free time from her job, where they would make a sort of game out of solving problems and confiding in each other. It was all more than a little silly, but she figured that if it helped, it helped.

Unfortunately, she hadn’t quite realized up until just how much effort would go into completing these challenges. That is, assuming she’d still have the chance to take on another one after this.

“And how exactly is this supposed to help Coco?” Babs asked, staring straight at her older sister with a raised eyebrow. “By scaring the negativity out of her?”

“I was about to leave it as a surprise,” Bambi answered with a shrug. “I figured you wouldn’t act as natural if you already knew what the moral was. But basically, the key word I was going for here was ‘closure.’ See, I’ve been asking around, and everypony I’ve talked to about it seems to think the best way to get over trauma is to confront it one by one, as much as you can.”

“Then I can’t, and neither can Coco. Can’t we just do somethin’ else today and do this six months from now?”

“The trial’ll be over six months from now. Listen, like it or not, if we’re going to have any chance of really getting Mosely where it hurts, we’re gonna need Mom on our side. She’s better with these sorts of things than I am, for one.”

With a sigh of exasperation, she whispered, “Look, I know this is going to be hard on all of us. We haven’t exactly had the opportunity to keep in contact with her. Heck, the two of you don’t even really know her to begin with, but I’ll be there to help you get through to her. Either way we look at it, it’s best to get her on our side as soon as possible.”

“That’s what I’m worried about, though,” Coco replied. “It may be that easy for you two, but you have to remember that, for all the terrible things he did, if it weren’t for Mosely, I wouldn’t have ended up finding you two. Babs would’ve still lived with her, and she wouldn’t have to have shared her role as mother with anypony else.”

“What exactly are you getting at with that? I thought we’d agreed to set that behind us as much as we could.”

“But that’s just it.”

Coco’s head turned towards the horizon and the uncertainty it brought.

“Cameo never made any promises like that. I guess I’d always had these sorts of fears ever since I found out your mother is still alive, because I know how these stories go once the birth parent comes back into the equation. Assuming they don’t ignore their foal completely, they either push for custody or try to make as much trouble for the adoptive parent as possible. And I figure that, since I’ve been working with Mosely up until now, that’d only make her more suspicious of me.”

Realizing the other two ponies were giving her strange looks, she conceded, “Or at least, that’s just what I’ve been afraid of.”

After freeing her fear, the relief Coco had felt all the other times she’d shared secrets seemed to lag behind, still not quite coming to her. For all the doubts she’d had about whether or not she still deserved to be Babs’ mother after the scandal that’d almost ruined her, she still wanted to hold onto her with everything in her heart. She owed it to her, and to Bambi, to make sure she could really make up for the way she’d deprived them of a family.

Finally, a few moments later, she figured that now was as good a time as ever to confront the mare she’d secretly been wondering about ever since intermission. The one who could be her enemy, but also the one who had saved her job. The one who just might know how to put her back together better than anypony else.

Against her better judgement, she’d opted to enter the jewelry store alone, fearing that Cameo might still have resented Bambi even after her roommate had told her they’d reconciled.

“She’s got a point,” Babs muttered as Coco suggested the idea. “That mare’s kinda unpredictable.”

“Nah, you’ve only seen her bad side,” Bambi answered. “Hopefully, she won’t be quite like that today. If she is, though, you know who to call.”

Coco would’ve liked to have gone into the store alone to face off against the mare who resembled herself in so many ways, but just as she was about to step through the door, she was faced with another figure. A tiny one, but one that had grown so much in the past few months.

“If this has to be the end,” Babs spoke, pressing her small body against Coco’s foreleg, “then we’re definitely going out together.”

Pulling the filly into her embrace, she replied, “Then I’m not about to leave you now.”

And with that, the two opened the handle to a new world. Their only hope was that it would be better than the last.

Comments

[Golden Fang Ryu Shenron]

“If this has to be the end,” Babs spoke, pressing her small body against Coco’s foreleg, “then we’re definitely going out together.”

With a bang!

[Snowdrifter]

8838095
I always go out...
(wait for it...)
... With a Yang!
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[Orrm]

Silence. Utter silence. He wanted to scream deep inside, to warn the pony the police wouldn’t let him go back to, or at least to give one last threat before his pride withered into dust. But somehow, words were not enough in this moment, and there was no way they’d be enough to save a mare who would never be ready for the sorts of things his family was capable of.

Oftentimes, there's a reason why a leader of ruffians is needed.

Because if he was absent, they would run loose, and cause pandemonium everywhere they went.

For all Moesly's evil intent, horrible attitude and delusions, I know for a fact that he was necessary. For now, the snake has no tamer.