Chapter 2: A Friend in the Present
For a Pegasus, Fluttershy was pretty fast on her hooves. Especially when she was running from danger, or in this case imagined danger.
Rarity had occasion to ruefully reflect upon this as she galloped after her fleeing friend. She was heading right toward the center of town, and Rarity was already noticing houses and other ponies becoming more numerous. I'm making a complete spectacle of myself, Rarity thought, then realized ... and I don't have to. There's only one place Fluttershy would go when she's like this. Rarity slowed to a more dignified canter, letting Fluttershy pull ahead of her and out of view around a corner. She's going home.
The white unicorn was only trotting as she walked through the town square. A leisurely saunter to the other end of town took her to Fluttershy's house -- a humble-looking but actually rather large house on a sizable plot of land, taken up by Fluttershy's vegetable garden, chicken pen and animal shelter. Rather a lot of land and house, really, Rarity thought, not for the first time, as she considered it. Her family certainly provided well for her -- it's odd they never visit. But then, Pegasi could be strange that way -- even when they dearly loved their kin, it was almost a point of pride for them to be seen as going it completely alone. Something left over from the olden days, I expect. Fluttershy had once told her that she came from a very old Pegasus family, but had been plainly disinclined to go into the details.
Rarity stepped up to the door, knocked, waited. There was no reply. No sound. She knocked again. There was still no response, though she thought she could hear an impatient chittering -- Fluttershy's little familiar? She tried the door -- found it bolted.
"Fluttershy?" Rarity asked. "I know you're in there, darling. Are you all right?"
A long wait. Then came the answer, in a very small voice, so that Rarity had to actually press an ear against the door to make out the words.
"I don't feel like walking any more."
"Well, that's all right, dear," said Rarity. "I can just sit and talk with you inside."
"No!" cried Fluttershy. Again, there was that inexplicable fear in her voice.
"All right," said Rarity. "But I am going to talk to you, Fluttershy -- your behavior is really worrying me, and there is no way I am going to leave my dearest friend alone when she feels as badly as you obviously do. So, I suppose I could talk to you through this door -- though it feels a little silly, darling, doesn't it?"
A moment's silence. Then the sound of a bar being lifted and shot across -- Fluttershy's house had a very thick door, with a very solid oaken bar, as if she felt it very important to be able to shut out the outside world when she wanted -- and a lock turning.
The door opened to reveal a very unhappy-looking Fluttershy. Her pink mane was disheveled, probably from her gallop home, and her big blue eyes were reddened. She wiped away a few stray tears as she let her friend in.
"I suppose I can't just get you to go back home?" asked Fluttershy. There was resentment under the meekness.
"But why, my dear?" asked Rarity, trotting quietly into Fluttershy's parlor. "We were having such an interesting conversation, and then those two brutes were rude, yes, but why should we let that spoil our afternoon together? They were just common louts, noponies about whose opinions we need be concerned. One must learn to rise above such unfortunate encounters."
"It wasn't that," said Fluttershy. "They were just two meanies -- maybe not really meanies, just lonely -- it wasn't them." She cast her eyes down. She seemed to be calming: she had surrendered to Rarity's intrusion, and was now once again able to enjoy the company of her friend.
"Then what was it?" asked Rarity. "You seemed positively aghast."
"It was ..." Fluttershy looked around the parlor, as if suddenly realizing where she was. "Oh no," she said. "I can't talk about that. Not here."
Rarity was more than a bit mystified. What place could be safer for Fluttershy than her own home? "Would you rather retire to some other chamber," she asked. "Your kitchen? Your bedroom?"
Fluttershy actually shuddered at that last suggestion. "My bedroom ... no, especially not there. I don't want to ever have to think about ... not there." She cringed.
"Then where, darling?"
"Could ... would it be all right if we went over to your house?" Fluttershy asked, still cringing.
"Of course!" replied Rarity, relieved that Fluttershy seemed to have become more reasonable. "My house is always open to my friend."
***
Nopony appeared to be interested in patronizing the Carousel Boutique right now, which was a situation which normally might have made Rarity feel a bit discouraged, but which right now suited her purposes just fine. To make certain that their afternoon remained undistrubed, Rarity made sure that the "Closed" side of the sign on her door was still facing outward, then went in and drew all the curtains. The light of the fall afternoon filtered dimly in through the windows.
Rarity sat Fluttershy down in her parlor, went into the kitchen, lit a fire under her stove and began boiling water. She got out some scones and some slices of cake, arranged them on plates and made the tea, adding some milk and honey. She walked back into the parlor, bringing the tea and snacks with her in her aura and set them down, spilling neither drop nor crumb.
"Thank you," said Fluttershy, relaxing somewhat as she took a sip of the tea. One thing Rarity had always noticed about Fluttershy was her extreme calm in situations like this: for all her shyness and anxiety, Fluttershy was not in the least bit afraid of any formally-friendly setting. It was one of the traits which made it very obvious to a discerning eye that the yellow-and-pink pegasus had been raised by someponies in the highest social register. It was, in fact, one of the things that had first drawn Rarity to Fluttershy, before she had come to appreciate the many deeper virtues of her friend.
They enjoyed the tea and cakes for a while, then Fluttershy looked at Rarity quite directly.
"I suppose you're wondering why I did ... what I just did ... when we were walking."
"Yes," said Rarity, nodding, "It did strike me as a trifle unusual."
"I guess I have to tell you now," said Fluttershy. "Or you'll keep worrying about me. I wouldn't -- well, I've thought about it from time to time, but I'd never really -- I'm not going to hurt myself. Whenever I think about it, I remember I have real friends -- yourself, and Rainbow -- and my animals -- the world can be beautiful," she said, with an odd emphasis, as if she were trying to convince somepony.
"I'm glad to hear that," replied Rarity, not a tremor betraying the shock she felt. She'd known that Fluttershy was sometimes depressed, but it had never occurred to her that she could be that depressed. Rarity had never been that depressed, not more than once, not even after -- no time to think of her own past troubles now, when her friend so obviously needed her.
"It wasn't those two workponies," said Fluttershy. "It was that ... place. The Carrot and Stick." Her hoof trembled with her whole body as she spoke the name, and some of the tea slopped over the side. "Oh!" she said contritely, putting down the now half-empty teacup. "I'm so sorry -- I stained your lovely rug!"
"Think nothing of it, my dear." Rarity reached for a washcloth with her aura, dabbed up the mess, all without taking her attention off her friend. "There, see! it's all taken care of." She put the washcloth in her laundry bin. The blind telekinetic manipulation she had just preformed was as trivial for her as it would have been difficult for most unicorns; there was really only one other in Ponyville who could have exceeded her in this facility, and Rarity was her superior at fine manipulation. "You were mentioning that seedy little bar?"
"Yes ... well, it was four years ago. I'd been in Ponyville a few years by then, but I didn't really have any friends other than Rainbow Dash and yourself. And at that time Rainbow was away in Flight School, and you were studying in Fillydelphia. So ... I was a bit lonely. I had my animals, but there's only so much conversation I can have with any of them." She almost whispered the last, as if it were shameful that her desire for social contact could not be fully gratified by non-sapient beasts.
Rarity herself liked animals, especially her adorable little cat Opalescence, but thought that Fluttershy perhaps liked them a bit too much. She would never, of course, have let Fluttershy know of this opinion.
"I thought possibly I might make some new friends," Fluttershy continued. "So I went somewhere ponies go to meet other ponies. I went to ..." she swallowed, "... the Carrot and Stick." She looked up at Rarity fearfully, as if she was about to be struck down by her friend in punishment for her long-ago folly.
That dingy little place? Rarity thought, but carefully did not say aloud. What possessed you to do that? This is Ponyville, there's always some sort of dance or social going on. But then maybe that fact wasn't as obvious to Fluttershy, who had always counted on Rarity to take her to places like that, who was too shy to ask anypony else about the occurrence of such events. Maybe to Fluttershy, a dingy workingpony's bar seemed as good as any other place.
And it's hardly that bad, Rarity realized. Frequented by the lower classes, yes, but mostly the honest lower classes. Such as those two teamsters. They were crude, but harmless enough. Rarity had not felt at all threatened the one time she'd ventured in there, just to see what it was like. How had Fluttershy come to grief?
It was obvious enough that something very unpleasant had occurred to her at the Carrot and Stick, however. And Rarity -- who was refined but not at all naive -- did not like the directions in which her own speculations were proceeding.
Rarity noticed that Fluttershy had fallen completely silent. "So, what happened when you went in there?" Rarity asked, affecting a calm joviality which was utterly at odds with her true sentiments.
"Well," replied Fluttershy, "It wasn't so bad at first. I just sat there, and drank, and talked to a couple of ponies -- none of them really wanted to be friends but they weren't mean to me -- one of them said I should go home, though, that wasn't very nice --"
Rarity could picture a sixteen-year-old Fluttershy, incredibly-innocent and devastatingly-beautiful, and could well imagine why some pony -- finding her sitting alone in a common workingpony's bar, might have offered her such advice, for reasons that were quite nice indeed.
"Then one stallion started to talk to me. He seemed really nice. He seemed to be really smart, and had a great sense of humor, and everypony liked him. I never got his real name, but everypony called him "Nosey," or "Smiles." He was a blue unicorn, and he had the strangest cutie mark -- like a whole herd of ponies, running across his flank. He took me from place to place, all over the town, and I had some drinks with him -- I'd never really been out drinking before," Fluttershy's expression became wistful.. "He made me feel really adult and sophisticated, just like him -- he was a bit older than me."
Oh, I'll just bet he was, thought Rarity, who now fully realized just where this story was likely to go, and was trying to contain a growing anger at this mystery older stallion, who had not seen fit to give Fluttershy his name, apparently to make certain that the naive filly he was taking out on the town -- and her family, and friends -- would be unable to track him later.
She was trying to keep her expression carefully neutral, but must not have been doing as perfect a job as she thought, because Fluttershy flinched from her.
"Oh," Fluttershy said. "You're angry. I'm sorry -- I know I behaved like a foal."
Rarity was unsure whether her friend meant her recent panicked flight from the Carrot and Stick, or Fluttershy's behavior on that night four years ago, but in either case her answer would have been the same.
"Oh no," Rarity said, reaching forward to pat Fluttershy's hoof. "No, darling. I"m not angry at you." That was no lie. "Please, do continue."
"Well, after a while I was getting tired and a bit tipsy, so he walked me back to my cottage, and I told him all the names of my animals, and he looked at my henhouse, and my chrysanthemums; and he listened to me -- I thought he was interested in what I had to say."
Fluttershy's whole face and form were cringing now, head and ears drooping, wings folded tightly against her sides, in what had to be one of the most sorrowful expressions Rarity had ever seen on Fluttershy's face, worse in most ways than the times she'd actually seen her friend crying.
Rarity regretted having asked her to continue, but it was too late now. Rarity had to know the rest, if only to be able to help Fluttershy: without helping her, making her relive this would be mere cruelty.
"So then he started nuzzling me, and touching me, and ... well ..." Fluttershy hid her head behind her long mane, so that Rarity could barely see her beautiful blue eyes peeping out through the forest of pink, "... he made love to me, and I let him do anything he wanted, because I thought it meant he loved me and I loved him and I just wanted to be loved because I was so lonely!" Fluttershy's voice was barely a squeak through all of this until the last phrase, during which her volume rose until the last word, "lonely," was a desperate shriek that forced Rarity to pin her ears all the way back to save her hearing.
After that Fluttershy was quiet for a long while, just stood there shuddering silently, and Rarity nearly started to say something -- when Fluttershy unexpectedly resumed speaking, at a much more normal level of volume -- for Fluttershy.
"And I liked it. I really really liked it. I know I shouldn't have because I knew later that he didn't love me but I liked it anyway." Fluttershy said this with a strange defiance, as if she expected Rarity to attack her on this point.
You're not alone in that, Rarity thought to herself. It just took me many months to figure out what you probably found out very soon afterward. Celestia help us both. But Rarity did not speak aloud, for this was not about her own dark memories. She could not afford to take the time for self-pity; she needed to be there for Fluttershy.
And then Fluttershy said something very strange.
"And I should have known even then because he didn't taste right. Not like love -- I've felt love before, from my animals and from you and Rainbow Dash. But I'd never really felt sexual love -- I still haven't -- and I thought that it tasted different than --" Suddenly she seemed to realize what she was saying and ended with. "I guess I'm not making a lot of sense. I'm sorry."
"It's all right," said Rarity. She had no idea what Fluttershy was talking about -- maybe she had an exceptionally good sense of flehmen, or something like that -- it varied from Pony to Pony. But it sounded like an unimportant detail, though two and a half years later, in Canterlot, she would remember it and realize what she had failed to grasp then. "Is there any more?"
"Well, after that we both fell asleep -- in my bed ..." said Fluttershy.
And Rarity knew why Fluttershy hadn't wanted to tell this to her at her cottage -- especially in her bedroom.
"... and when I woke up, I felt really happy. I thought I'd finally found a stallion who loved me." Fluttershy's voice was almost wondering, as if she was amazed that she had still been that naive, after the night she'd remembered.
Oh, Fluttershy, thought Rarity. It's not making love that hardens one. At that moment, you were still a complete innocent, in every way that mattered. Strange, that so many ponies got this rather key point so completely wrong.
"I was an idiot." Fluttershy was obviously struggling to keep her affect flat, and failing: the bitterness was bleeding through. "He didn't love me. He didn't even like me. I could feel nothing from him as he left my house -- he didn't even stay for breakfast. I told myself it was because he was tired, because maybe I drained him too much in my excitement ..."
And again, Rarity misunderstood what Fluttershy had let slip, a misunderstanding that would come to haunt her later, in a moment of horror still far in the future, in Canterlot.
"I gave him my address, so he could write to me," Fluttershy continued. "I thought he'd want to do that. Wouldn't you want to do that, after ...?"
She stopped and looked mutely at Rarity, who blinked back a tear of her own.
"And I gave him a few chrysanthemums -- I put them in a little pot for him. I gave them to him to remember me by, and because they were the only flowers I had to give him." Fluttershy made a very strange sound, somewhere between a hiccup and a laugh. "And yes, I know that was ironic. And symbolic. I never finished Flight School, but I'm well-read enough to know that." She pounded her hoof against the floor, making a thump that surprised both of them. "I suppose when you're the daughter of High Lady Sweetwing Wind, it's in your blood. Tragic symbolism. That's funny." She made the same hiccup-laugh sound.
"So then after he left, I was really happy -- because I thought I'd hear from him, see him again, that this was a whole new wonderful part of my life beginning."
Fluttershy was not at all shy now in her normal way. Instead her voice held a brittleness that terrified Rarity, because it reminded her of her own darkest thoughts, years ago in Fillydelphia. Rarity did not think that way any more, had not for a very long time, and it frightened her because she remembered the darkest of the thoughts she'd had, back then, when ...
"I started on the road into town," Fluttershy continued. "And then I saw the note I'd written him -- the one with my address on it. I thought he'd dropped it. And then I saw something else ... something that made it all obvious to me just how stupid I'd been.
"It was the flower pot. The little flower pot I'd put the flowers in." She looked at Rarity, as if she felt the need to explain her reasoning to her friend. "He couldn't have dropped it by accident, because he'd at least have kept the flowers. He'd thrown it away, on purpose. Because it meant nothing to him." Fluttershy gazed intensely into Rarity's eyes, and Rarity saw that Fluttershy's own eyes were now welling with tears. "Because I meant nothing to him. Not just that he didn't love me. That I was nothing to him.
"I didn't know what I'd done wrong. I tried to make him happy. Every way I could. It just wasn't enough, I just wasn't enough. I suppose I wasn't experienced enough -- but how could I get more experienced, unless I just went out and did that kind of thing again and again and again, with different stallions, until one of them wanted to stay -- and I couldn't do that. It would have been too nasty -- and also I realized something else." Fluttershy's voice was going ragged now, as she lost control over its tone.
"He'd taken me all over town. He'd taken me all over Ponyville. Everypony knew what we'd done. Everypony knew I was ... bad. And not very good at it. And if I went into town they'd be staring at me, all of them staring at me, and laughing at me." Her expression was now wild with fear. "So I galloped home, just like I did today, and I closed the door and hid, and ..."
The words trailed off into an inarticulate keening sound. Fluttershy bent over and started really sobbing, heaving convulsively, her mane completely hiding her face now as she lay down on the floor, looking as if she wanted to crawl under the table.
Rarity slowly walked around the table. She very much did not want to frighten Fluttershy. She was very worried, at this moment, what a frightened Fluttershy might not do. Rarity was not afraid for herself, though she knew that Fluttershy had a powerful and not-well-understood psychic ability, which looked very much like mind control. She knew that Fluttershy would never hurt her.
She was less certain that Fluttershy wouldn't hurt herself.
Rarity crouched down beside her sobbing friend. Tears were actually good at this point -- it meant that Fluttershy was finally letting out her sorrow, her bitterness, her anger at the cruel trick that had been played upon her four years ago. Was Fluttershy angry? Rarity wasn't sure. It was sometimes difficult to read Fluttershy.
Rarity only knew that she herself was angry, and if that stallion had been teleported into her parlor right now, Rarity would have had difficulty restraining herself from demonstrating to him exactly how much she knew about hoof-to-hoof fighting. Which would have been illegal, and insane, and wrecked her parlor besides, especially when she began to draw blood with some of the more extreme moves -- she clamped down on her fury. It was pointless; she couldn't help Fluttershy at all that way.
"Fluttershy?" she asked softly.
The convulsive crying continued. Rarity reached out a hoof to Fluttershy's, covered it gently. Nothing more -- the last thing she wanted to do to Fluttershy was anything she might even remotely consider sexual, considering the context. She wondered how much of the language of affection had been poisoned for her friend, and again had to suppress her own anger.
She tried to focus instead on her empathy, her caring for her friend, tried to somehow make it apparent to Fluttershy through that hoof to hoof contact. She imagined, almost felt something flowing out from her. Whatever it was, she gave of it generously, and it must have helped, because in a few moments her friend stopped sobbing.
Fluttershy turned her swollen, tear-streaked face to Rarity. "Thank you," she said, in what almost an approximation of her normal voice. "I think I needed to -- express myself on this -- with somepony else. You're the first pony I've ever told about this, you know."
Rarity hadn't known this for certain, though she'd suspected -- the only other pony she could have seen Fluttershy telling was Rainbow Dash, and she didn't think Dashie would have had the first clue as to how to handle such a revelation. Knowing Rainbow Dash, she would have just wanted to fly in search of this "Nosey" and hit him, which -- while a tempting thought -- was a plan both unlikely to work and even less likely to solve any of Fluttershy's problems.
"I'm glad you chose to confide in me," replied Rarity. "I'm sorry that you had to go through such an upsetting experience, all those years ago, but you should know that you weren't a bad pony. You just made a mistake, that's all. Good ponies make mistakes, darling, it doesn't make them bad. At least you weren't cruel to anypony."
Rarity had been, and she still winced inwardly at those memories.
"No ..." said Fluttershy, "but I was weak."
"You were lonely," said Rarity. "Ponies need other Ponies. They do strange things when they're alone too long. There's even a term for it ..."
"Lone-Madness," said Fluttershy, speaking with some assurance. "We used to call it Sky-Madness, and some Pegasi get lost in it forever. But that's not what I meant when I said I was weak."
"What did you mean, then?"
"I have something from my mother," Fluttershy explained, softly but otherwise in a normal conversational tone.. "An honor-blade, very old -- Mother said it had been forged in the North-Realm, almost fifteen hundred years ago, when my family led the Guards of Derecho, and defended the North. I used to take it out sometimes, and turn it over and over, and think about how I could stop having to worry about feeling lonely, or inadequate -- forever."
"Darling!" said Rarity with some alarm.
"It's in the Traditions, you know," continued Fluttershy. "That's actually what an honor-blade is for, though this one had of course never been used for that purpose -- because it's also in the Traditions that after it's used for that it's never used again. It's the last release for one of us who follows the Old Ways, you see, and then that blade dies with its mistress, and the metal is reforged into another honor-blade. A beautiful thought, really ..."
"There's nothing beautiful about ..." Rarity could barely say it. "About killing yourself. Think of all the ugliness you'd leave behind for your friends."
"But that's just it," said Fluttershy, still calm. "I didn't have any friends. Not pony friends, anyway. Do you know why I never did it?"
"Because you wanted to live?" asked Rarity.
"Because my animals needed me. If I was gone, who would take care of them? And once -- when I was sadder than usual -- I remembered that I had a friend I really wanted to see again."
Rarity knew who that friend would be. Not herself, as they'd only been casual acquaintances before Rarity had left for Fillydelphia.
"Rainbow Dash?" Rarity asked her.
Fluttershy nodded, then looked contrite. "Oh -- I don't mean that I don't like you too -- I could never have this conversation with Dashie -- it's just that I've known her for so long, since we were both small ..."
"I understand," said Rarity, smiling. "She really loves you. I'm not offended by the fact that you love her back."
"You can't ever tell her this!" Fluttershy said, suddenly seeming to realize how much she'd confessed. "She'd despise me."
"Oh, I don't know about that," replied Rarity. She'd seen some of the worshipful looks that Rainbow Dash directed at Fluttershy, especially when Fluttershy wasn't watching. "I'm pretty sure it would take more than an awareness of one youthful indiscretion to make Dashie despise her fillyhood friend. Still, I shan't tell her," she quickly added, as she noticed the look of panic on her friend's face.
"Good." Fluttershy relaxed a bit, rolling a bit onto her side so as to more easily face Rarity. After a moment, Rarity copied the motion, so that they lay facing one another on the rug of Rarity's parlor -- normally a ridiculous postion, but one that right now Rarity felt to be entirely natural.
"Fluttershy," asked Rarity, "You wouldn't hurt yourself now, would you? Because I know what happened now, and I don't despise you -- I love you and admire you as much as I always have, you must believe me on this. You're a thoroughly wonderful mare and you're one of my best friends, and I would be very sorry if anything happened to you. Do you believe me?"
"Yes," said Fluttershy, smiling. "I can tell that you love me. Thank you for that. Though I don't know how you can still think highly of me, now that you know how terribly inadequate I am."
"Inadequate?" asked Rarity. "You mean, because you didn't commit suicide? Why would I want you to --?" She stopped, confused. Rarity could tell by the look of impatience on Fluttershy's face that there was something she was entirely not understanding about Fluttershy's perception of the situation.
"No," said Fluttershy. "Because Nosey didn't like me." She sighed. "I've had four years now to come to terms with the fact that I'm simply not very loveable."
And Rarity realized that Fluttershy had entirely misunderstood everything that had happened to her
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4181290
Oh, about the game theory?
Yes, it figures importantly into the resolution. The conversation is also in there because I want to emphasize that Rarity and Fluttershy aren't just beautiful. They're also very, highly intelligent Ponies. Which is why they can have a meaningful conversation on such a topic.
They are actually characterized like this in canon, but it can be missed amidst all the beauty and cuteness.
4181579
I'm guessing that when you find out why Fluttershy had such an extreme reaction, you'll be fairly horrified. I was -- both reading the story which inspired this, and writing Chapter 2. Though the rest of the story is nowhere nearly so sad. It's actually about Fluttershy's turning point -- the reason why in the later episodes she's not quite as much the Crazy Cat Lady you witness in the first half of the first season. In other words, she starts getting better.
... Oh snap.
I just realized that Fluttershy's ability to feel the emotions of those around her means that she can also tell when someone doesn't notice her or really care about her. And if she was friendless for a time, her introversion would mean she wouldn't make any more very quickly, and ponies would ignore her. And she would feel that, and think they didn't love her. And if she thought that was because of her...
Such a vicious cycle. How can knowing more about people's emotions make you less able to interpret them like that?
Also, Rarity's going to be kicking herself in hindsight. Fluttershy's not hiding this changeling thing very well. If anyone actually knew what they were, she be discovered in no time. Does she just not know that ponies can't taste emotion? Methinks that if ponies would react badly to her for not acting like a pony, changelings would reject her for acting too much like a changeling.
4181888
Very well put. Plus, as we 've seen in canon, Fluttershy's friends sometimes ignore her, because she has a poor sense of conversational rhythms and appropriate speaking volume. Normally they make allowances for her, but when they get excited they can totally miss what she's saying. She still had this problem as late as Season 3's "Magic Duel" (Summer 1503 on my timeline), though she's improved in the 4th Season (1504) based on what I've seen so far.
My version of Fluttershy can only really sense postiive affect, or its strong opposite. It's basically the Changeling empathic sense, which is optimized toward letting her sense love and feed on it . So she can't always tell subtle things, though she can sometimes tell them if they are directly love-related: for instance she can "taste" the difference between love, lust and liking, and to some extent between romantic love and friendly love.
It's also limited by her experience, and to some extent her wishful thinking. That night four years ago, Fluttershy really wanted to believe that "Nosey" loved her, and she'd neither then nor at the point of the present story been the object of genuine male romantic love. So she misinterpreted what she was tasting.
What she's used to from Rainbow Dash is basically very intense friendly love with some romantic overtones. It's purer and stronger than she gets from anypony else, in part because Dashie doesn't really hold back on what she's feeling, only on what she's explicitly expressing. The next best is from Rarity, who genuinely loves Fluttershy as a friend (as I think Rarity's thoughts make very obvious in this story).
At the point of this story's present, she'd only recently become friendly with Applejack and Pinkie Pie, and only very recently (within the last three and a half months) met Twilight Sparkle. Though they do already really like her, and are coming to love her as they get to know her better.
At the time of the flashback, she was only really good friends with Rainbow Dash, somewhat friendly with Rarity -- and both of them had been out of town for months. She was living on the love from her animals.
"Nosey," as is obvious from his actions, felt only lust for her. And a sort of predatory desire. The really scary thing about him is that he was able to express interest in some of the things which actually do make Fluttershy loveable, without feeling the emotion at all. Having known at least one person of his type, I can verify that this is really the way individuals like this think.
Because she grew up without anypony who cared enough about her to sit down and talk to her about why ponies did what she observed. Merely sentient animals are mostly rather simple -- either they like you or they don't, and they behave accordingly. Sapient creatures, like the Ponies, are much more complex, because they try to model both their own and your own mind and then think about the ways in which their choices might interact with yours to produce desired outcomes.
Which is to say ... they "game" you. Which is where game theory comes in.
Most young mares learn this sort of thing from their mothers, other elder female kin and friends. Fluttershy was the only child of a madmare, and the rest of her family kind of hoped something awful would happen to her to remove her claim to the Mandate with no suspicion attaching to them. They despised her, which she could very easily tell -- that's why she was so happy to leave them for good when she was only ten years old.
But her only close friend when she was young was Rainbow Dash, who doesn't actually understand how the game is played either, but has a strong sense of her own personal space and the willingness to get violent to defend it from anything Dashie thinks is creepy. Rarity was also her friend, but Rarity has instinctively understood all this since she was small -- it wasn't until she went off to school that she started thinking formally about social games.
Neither of them could have been seduced by somepony like Nosey. Rainbow would have been oblivious to his game until he started nuzzling her, at which point she would have just shoved him away. Rarity would have been completely aware of what he was trying to do, and either avoided him -- or let him take her out for a night on the town, then bid farewell to him without letting him get more than a peck on the cheek, if it amused her to do so.
Fluttershy has no idea why he rejected her after a night of pleasure. She's never figured out that it had absolutely nothing to do with her or anything she did or did not say or do -- there was absolutely no way for Fluttershy to win save to reject him at the crucial point. She instead imagines that she was fundamentally inadequate as a mare.
Well ... yes, Fluttershy does know that. But she was under pretty tremendous emotional stress at that exact moment, revealing something that she considers pretty shameful to one of her two best friends in the world. And she was trying to explain what it was that upset her, and what it was included in hindsight the way that she missed clues that should have been very obvious to her given her sensory capabilities. To the point that she briefly forgot that one of those capabilities was one which Rarity didn't share.
And yes. Fluttershy doesn't fit in very well with either Kind. She's far too gentle and timid to make a good Pegasus, she doesn't understand Pony culture in general as well as she should at her age, and she finds the Changelings utterly terrifying and would not like one of their Hives at all. She's a complete misfit -- something of which she's painfully aware.
Oh, poor Fluttershy! I have to admit, I agreed with Rarity's initial desire to do something very nasty to Nosey. No, it wouldn't help poor sweet Fluttershy; but it might convince him to tread more carefully in the future. I also like the descriptions of how both Dash and Rarity would have reacted.
I also like the way you did this, making it a seduction of Fluttershy. The poor filly didn't understand what was going on, and then her devastated feelings afterwards? It made me want to reach across the fourth wall and reassure her. Thankfully Rarity was there for her friend.
I like the idea of the Carrot and Stick too. It does feel like the kind of place that would be in Ponyville; few farming communities were ever without a watering hole. Though I imagine Apple family cider is more common then, say, beer or things like mead or ale.
You did a great job with this story, both in presenting the characters, the set-up, and the emotional toll it took on Fluttershy.
Now I really want to see that Canterlot wedding re-telling, because this is just teasing.
Also, I know you've insisted that your interpretation of Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy's friendship is only possibly romantic and until now I've agree but it's hard not to read into this:
Also, poor Fluttershy. Every time she confesses to a friend, they misinterpret her. It's probably for the best in this case, less so in Rainbow Dash's.
Omg i feel so bad for flutters
This is sad, but at least now she has Harry-The-Bear:
Oh Would-Be-Suitor, this is my very protective friend Harry-The-Bear. He will be on the other side of the door. He has very good hearing and is very protective. He could tear through the bedroomdoor like wet tissuepaper. ¿Did I mention that Harry is very protective?
...might do? The not does not seem to fit.
Also, the end of the chapter lacks a period.
This hurt to read—in the well-crafted emotive-evocative sense.
¡Miss Rarity should gather the rest of the Mane 6, hunt down Nosy/Smiles, geld him, break of his horn while they are at it, and present the testicles and horn to Miss Fluttershy!
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Wow, he's at least as much a Hate Sink in my version as in Bad Horse's!
I despise him, of course: I think he's a terrible equine being, and the sort of person who would draw a moustache on a great portrait and imagine that he'd done something clever.
I agree with Bad Horse, though, that it was absolutely necessary for Fluttershy to learn to be suspicious of male strangers offering compliments, and that lust and love are not always the same thing. These are truths Fluttershy should have learned from her female kin and friends, but during this time in (my) Fluttershy's life she didn't effectively have either. So she had to learn it a much crueller way (*).
What Bad Horse pointed out was that the combination of naivete and extreme beauty that Teenage Fluttershy had made her an irresistible target for creeps like Nosy, even in a culture as kindly as is Equestria. And ... yes. Even in my Equestria, that's true.
Of the Mane Six, Rainbow Dash and Rarity would probably be the most intentionally cruel to Nosy. I named those two intentionally, as they're Fluttershy's best friends. Dashie would want to fly fast and hit him. Rarity might also want to hit him, and he'd be lucky if she only did that, because she might just want to wreck his life. (This would be morally bad for her, though, and Rarity is the closest of the Mane Six to being corruptible, so she has to be careful -- as Princess Luna later warns her, in Post-Traumatic).
The others would be more calm about it, but they'd basically despise him.
How Discord would react would depend on his mood. He's not one to care much about past sexual histories, and Nosy is obviously no rival for Fluttershy's affections. On the other hand, he gets really mad if anyone hurts Fluttershy.
Probably it would be best for Nosy if Discord never thought about him at all. Fluttershy, fortunately for Nosy, probably agrees that it would be best for Nosy and DISCORD, as she's trying to get Discord away from playing cruel magical jokes on Ponies.
(*) Canon later equipped Fluttershy with a family, who do not really seem similar enough to her to be her biologically-nuclear one. In the Shadow Wars Story Verse, I'm sticking with her being the daughter of Sweetwing Wind and a Mysterious Stranger. Sweetwing is crazy, and the Mysterious Stranger's counsel is one Fluttershy has already heard (without realizing they were her sire) and which Fluttershy should not heed lest she wind up the Stranger's servant for the rest of her days. Point is, she can't confide in either. In SWSV canon, Zephyr Breeze is her cousin and those her aunt and uncle. The nicer pair, compared to Windvane.
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I try to teach my niece that men are horndogs, but she is skeptical. This video helped:
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(*nods*)
Indeed, that's the basic point of this story. Men can be cruel to women, and do so in predictable ways for deeply programmed evolutionary reasons (both possible reversals, men being kind to women and women being cruel to men, not to mention women being kind to men, are also common for deeply programmed evolutionary reasons, as well).
Rarity understands this through her intuitive grasp of the patterns of equine nature, coupled with her own sad experience. Fluttershy needs to look at it from an explicitly-biological and evolutionary perspective, because she sees the world through her own Talent of Animal Communication.
By Season Three, Fluttershy is able to handle Discord, so the evidence is that she's learned rather a lot by then.
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As a sapient being, I expect better from Nosy/Smiles. If he cannot moderate his behavior, then one should geld him like the out-of-control nonsapient male animal he emulates.
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Oh yes, I agree that he's despicable, though maybe not that he should be forcibly emasculated. He's a bad Pony.
And the Ponies are in general quite capable of moral restraint and actively good behavior, as is obvious from the Show. So it's not a matter of species or cultural differences.
In Bad Horse's original story, he's the only one in the seedy little bar who seriously tries to seduce the obviously-innocent teenaged Pegasus filly, who others can see is out of her depths. One of the patrons even warns her that she should just go home: she doesn't get that he was trying to be nice to her.
It's sad.