Drastic Measures

by Nimnul

Planning Ahead

With Berry gone, Lyra took a drink from one of the previously untouched glasses before eyeing Bon Bon, who was still standing in place, taking several deep breaths. "What's wrong, Bonny?"

Bon Bon scowled at nopony in particular. "I'm not going to lose a friend to their own bucking idiocy again! What good is it for Pinchy, for us, if she feeds this guy his own teeth and goes to prison? She wants to track this guy down? Fine. But we'll do it right." Bonny looked away and continued more quietly. "I probably can't keep her from going, but I'll make sure she'll get to go home again." She sat down and started gently petting her dog.

The earth pony talked very little about the old job, as she referred to it, but she'd previously admitted to survivor's guilt to Lyra. "I want you to stay out of trouble, too, y'know." It hurt Lyra a little when Bon Bon got into one of her moods and found it easier to show affection to the service animal than to her marefriend, but she knew it wasn't really her fault.

"Doubt Berry's gonna try and sue me in case I gotta pin her down to keep from doing something stupid. I promise we'll be fine." Bon offered a small grin. There seemed to be something else on Bon Bon's mind, however.

"You know I trust you." Lyra grinned in return. "I'll hold down the fort, you shouldn't be gone too long, right?" She tilted her head. "Or should I come along?"

Until recently, Lyra would have assumed she'd be tagging along as a matter of course, because Bonny needed company. The earth pony hated others getting into her personal space, and could get irritable when taken out of her personal comfort zone of their home and the candy store. But as a team, Lyra could get right up into other ponies' faces, make a show of her own manic energy and generally take attention off Bonny, who wasn't always real personable. The earth pony had good days and bad ones.

"Well, you should come along to Canterlot, because otherwise your mom is going to complain again that you don't visit enough. Las Pegasus though? I wanna sleep on that one. But first, I've got to write some messages. Think Twilight's gonna send a letter to Princess Luna for me?"

"Probably, but why? Does Berry really need that kind of attention? I mean, Twilight's one thing, but the sisters?"

"It's a long shot, and presumptuous, I guess." Bon Bon admitted. "I'm hedging my bets in case I can't reign Berry in. Luna knows who I am and has some idea what I used to do, so she'll take it serious." The earth pony shrugged. "Plus, she'd know something about doing something stupid 'cause emotions are running high."

"Couldn't you say that about Twilight as well?" Lyra wasn't really sure how Bon Bon had come up with the idea of bugging Princess Luna with this. They weren't exactly pals. Sure, Lyra and Bon Bon had been part of Ponyville's communal dream to fight some dream monster, but that probably didn't count. Another time, Bon Bon had been out very late and had been startled very badly by a flying Luna, who'd been in town to visit the Friendship Castle. Lyra supposed that Luna might feel bad about that. Maybe. Apparently Bonny found flying creatures larger than normal ponies very disconcerting.

"Okay," Bon Bon scowled again. "I meant doing something stupid and actually facing real consequences. Sure would love to come out of it with Berry gettin' a gentle scolding about always thinkin' the worst about ponies or something, but you know that's not gonna happen unless we make it happen."

The dog whined at Bon Bon, and Lyra could also see that her love was unusually upset. "Why is this bothering you so much?" It was a guess based on long years of experience with their relationship. Bon Bon was awful at giving voice to her emotions and usually defaulted to just getting mad.

The earth pony thought for a few moments before answering. "Ponies got hurt on the job. You accept that. Some is bad luck, some is taking calculated risks, that's fine ... but sometimes it really is just because somepony was careless and stupid and should have known better, and a pony gets to thinking, maybe I shoulda noticed they were too green and would screw up. Maybe I could have reacted and kept the wheels from coming off. Maybe this, maybe that." A grim smile that didn't reach her eyes. "This time I'll be ready."

"You really think it'll go bad?" Lyra liked Berry Punch quite a bit. Even after the other earth pony had sobered up enough to notice such things, she had never minded it when Bon Bon had one of those days were she acted like a surly jerk at the drop of a hat.

"Nine out of ten times it's been Berry who threw the first punch in a bar fight. She'll tell Pinchy to use her words but it's a bit of 'do as I say, not as I do.'." Bon Bon shrugged. "Look, if all I end up doing is keeping her from having a drink to stop herself from worrying, that's fine."

"Yeah, I get that." Lyra smiled at her love. "I guess it is weird. I'd be pretty steamed if suddenly somepony told you you'd have to work the old job again."

Bon Bon chuckled. "Yeah, me too. But c'mon, you'd just go tattle to your mom."

Lyra had grown up with a foal's certainty that the elder Heartstrings was the world's best mom. A lot of fillies thought that about their mothers, but even as a grown mare, Lyra had felt herself justified in the belief when she found that her mother and Bonny got along very well even after a middling initial impression. "Course I would, she's the best kind of crazy. You're hers now, forever."

"I don't mind." Bon Bon smiled fondly, but changed the topic. "Well, I got some writing to do."

---

Twilight Sparkle frequently worked deep into the night. Local administration might be mostly handled by Mayor Mare, but the Princess of Friendship nonetheless had plenty of work to do. Additionally, her ascension hadn't curbed her enthusiasm for reading and research. She didn't usually expect visitors after a certain point, however.

"Bon Bon? What are you doing here?" On their last occasion for a conversation, the previous winter, the earth pony had made it clear that she wasn't overly fond of Twilight Sparkle, the pony. That still stung, but Bon Bon's friends had mentioned that winter generally left the earth pony in sour moods, so Twilight had made vague promises to herself to win Bon Bon over at a later date.

Maybe that later date had arrived now. While Bon Bon could be cantankerous in private, her canine companion served as a useful reminder that Fluttershy clearly trusted the earth pony - she wouldn't have agreed to help train the animal otherwise.

"Princess." Bon Bon nodded. It seemed more like an acknowledgement than a greeting. "I got a letter for Princess Luna. It's urgent." She hesitated briefly. "But I think first thing tomorrow would be alright. No need to wake Spike if he's in bed already."

"Just when she's sharing breakfast with her sister or about to get some sleep?" Twilight frowned. "I can wake up Spike."

The ghost of a frown seemed to steal across the earth pony's face before the smile Bon Bon tried to maintain in public or at work re-asserted itself. "Your priorities, Princess."

Perhaps Bon Bon found the idea of interrupting a child's sleep more objectionable than causing inconvenience to one of the Princesses. "Maybe I could help you? I'm right here."

"Why, I thought you'd be happy that somepony would confide in Princess Luna." Bon Bon grinned. "You know, more ponies trusting her?" She turned her head and stuck her muzzle into one of her saddlebags, presumably to retrieve the letter.

"Of course! I'm sure Princess Luna would be happy to help you. It's just, I thought I could help you unless you needed her unique talents, and I thought you didn't like anypony else in your head." It seemed petty and counterproductive to Twilight for a pony to decline Luna's aid with nightmares, but she supposed that a pony couldn't be forced to get help.

Bon Bon resumed eye contact with the princess, spat out a neatly folded letter, then stepped on it, presumably to keep Twilight from picking it up. "Oh, she tell you that, or did you figure that out all by yourself?" The earth pony scowled.

Twilight swallowed nervously. Sometimes she felt like Bon Bon was just looking for excuses to get angry. She watched the earth pony's dog try to nudge her. "It was an inference, okay? Princess Luna is pretty serious about dream-confidentiality."

"All I'm asking for," Bon Bon ground out, "is a favor from you. Spike, rather." She sneered. "What were you going to do if it turned out I had recurring nightmares about using my training and strength to do serious harm to regular ponies in pursuit of an ultimately pointless objective?"

Twilight managed not to flinch. Again with the Want-It Need-It spell! She wondered if Bon Bon would always see her as a dangerous loose cannon that just so happened to have the protection of Princess Celestia. That nopony had actually been seriously injured at the time seemed to offer little comfort to either of them.

Before the earth pony could take another verbal shot at the princess, Bon Bon's dog escalated his intrusive behavior, attempting to lick her about the neck and face. The canine was quite a bit taller than Applejack's Winona and managed to be quite intrusive indeed. "Alright, alright Swampy!" Bon Bon actually smiled as she gently patted the canine's head. "Good dog!"

The Princess of Friendship decided not to interrupt. 'Tasks that provide a tactile distraction are useful in emotional overload situations,' she quoted in her mind. 'They allow the pony partner to recover and sustain emotional control in settings where uncontrolled emotional reactions are unacceptable.' A lot of ponies would argue that it was unacceptable to angrily lash out at Princesses.

Training Swampy as a service dog had been primarily Fluttershy's work, but the pegasus had shared the notes she had compiled in the process and with input from Lyra, who'd been attempting to deal with Bon Bon's symptoms for years.

After a few more moments, Bon Bon sighed. She still glowered as if daring Twilight to comment, but tension seemed to have left her, and Twilight thought she could see guilt in the other mare's look. "That was a cheap shot. Sometimes it just sets me off when things don't go like I thought they would go. Swampy tries to reign me in. You can't be mad at him." She smiled at her companion again. "Good dog!" She dug out a treat from her other saddlebag, to the excitement of the mutt.

Having the incident brought up did hurt, but Twilight nodded. "Don't worry about it. It's nice to see you're working well together. Let's go wake up Spike, then."

Bon Bon scooped up the dropped letter and nodded. Speaking through her clenched teeth, she admitted, "Don't mind saying. It's good for me'n Lyra both. She doesn't have to feel so tied to me anymore."

"Please don't call yourself a millstone around her neck again. Being able to be away from you without worrying will be healthy in the long term, though, so I agree." Lyra was extremely dedicated to her partner, but the unicorn had seemed to put her own social life on hold for a time to emotionally support Bon Bon, who found it stressful not to have a trusted partner to cover her back. Lyra hadn't initially reacted in a very levelheaded manner when Twilight had raised that concern during her attempt to rekindle their old Canterlot friendship.

"No argument there. I was always telling her to live more. I wasn't going to come apart from spending an evening alone."

---

Spike had admittedly been a little drowsy, but sending letters to Celestia or Luna wasn't strenuous work, and, to Twilight's slight annoyance, was more ready to assume it was really important than he would have been if Twilight had woken him up for a personal message. He tended to assume Twilight overstated the urgency of her communications with Canterlot.

They watched the letter burn up. Bon Bon nodded. "Thanks, Spike. I added a line about not responding immediately if it was still night. No need to keep you up."

"Appreciate it." Spike yawned, but he had been happy to help.

The earth pony pulled a small bag of rock candy and a hoofful of bits from her bags. "Here you go. Your overtime pay. Feel free to spend at my store!"

"Overtime pay, huh?" Rubbing his chin, Spike grinned at Twilight. "Thanks."

"Great, now you've given him ideas. Good night again, Spike." Obviously Twilight had generous personal funds available as a Princess, but in the interest of teaching Spike frugality, and to avoid greed-related complications, she was careful how much money she made available for Spike to spend himself. Therefore, he appreciated the few bits Bon Bon had given him for the inconvenience.

"Heh, night Spike."

Twilight escorted Bon Bon back out. She had learned sufficient introspection to know that she tended to worry a little too much about the future, at times. Still, meetings with Bon Bon tended to leave her worrying. She'd been reassured that difficulties such as the earth pony's were anything but a guaranteed outcome of seeing too much combat, but she couldn't help but wonder.

She'd once talked to Luna of such things after the Princess of the Night had had a chance encounter with Bon Bon, and it hadn't been particularly helpful.

"It was once a sad truth that virtually none of our loyal protectors would return from fighting our battles intact, Twilight. Combat alone shatters bodies and frays nerves, but the chaos of Discord's reign, and the foul creatures from the untamed regions of the world, could steal sanity forever. Thus our veterans were left fearing the shadows, and the night, and sometimes even the nature of their friends and neighbors, for the rest of their lives."

At the time Twilight had immediately been distracted by questions such as 'Had ponies encountered changelings in those early days?' or 'Had a population of ponies incapable of appreciating Luna's work due to their own traumatic experiences contributed to her eventual fall?', but now it mostly made her worry about her friends, and try to be patient with Bon Bon. In any case the earth pony would probably have been quite upset with the supposed lack of sanity Luna's statement implied. She functioned perfectly well and wasn't a danger to anypony, after all.

Comments

[Greatazuredragon]

Wow, it's really been that long since I put this in my 'to read list'?
Grumpy Bon Bon is always fun to read, nice work.

[redmar]

I think that BonBon is more unstable tha Twilight realizes. I also like how Twilight tries her best to be friendly to BonBon despite the latter not liking her.