• Published 9th Mar 2017
  • 2,162 Views, 101 Comments

For His Majesty - CrackedInkWell



It has been two months after Prince Blueblood came out, and the Princesses decided to help their nephew out by throwing a masquerade to help him socialize with other stallions that had the same interests.

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Chapter XIII: Breakfast at Fancy’s

Author's Note:

I've been listening to a lot of Christopher Titus's "Norman Rockwell is Bleeding," lately and I must admit that some of the dialogue is inspired by his stand ups.

By the time Fancy had finished with his morning routine to step out of his room in his black housecoat did he smell a combination of cinnamon and baked bread that was coming from his dining room? He found the young Prince sitting at one end of the table with trays of cinnamon rolls, a pyramid of oranges and brewed coffee from a pot that the wealthy unicorn didn’t recognize to be his. Even the china and cups seemed to have come from someplace else.

“Good morning Fancy,” Blueblood nodded as he entered the room. “I’ve decided to not only move my breakfast from the palace to here but I thought about sharing it with you. So would you sit down? I want us to have a talk.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“Hm? Oh no, nothing of the sort,” he frowned. “But I do want to talk to you on some matters of concern.”

Fancy took his seat across from the Prince in which his hoofcolts immediately served him his cup of coffee, “I suppose this also came from the Palace too?”

Blueblood nodded, “Normally this particular brand isn’t on sale on the market and can only be served to royalty. Auntie Luna has developed a taste for it; she likes this more than I do.” Once he let his consort put in the sugar and cream to be mixed into the bitter, inky substance to being able to down a cup of it did the Prince began. “Fancy, did you dream of anything last night?”

“I did,” he replied, “Though I still wanted to know what has brought you here.”

“In a moment, do you happen to remember what has happened in that dream of yours?”

The older unicorn paused. Hesitating to answer at first, “I had gone to bed with a nightmare at first. But near the end, it did become better. I remember that you were in it.”

“Was it when you were playing the piano in a ratty theater about to set yourself on fire because I had broken up with you?”

Fancy blinked, “How did-”

“You could thank, or rather, blame my Auntie Luna for doing that,” Blueblood interrupted before he sighed. “I know she brought me into your nightmare, on behalf of her, I’m sorry. But at the same time when I saw you in such a state and heard the reasons why… I couldn’t help it but be concerned.”

At this point, the older unicorn poured another cut and quickly downed the cringing, scalding liquid down his throat. “Um… how much did you hear?”

“Plenty enough, apparently,” Blueblood lit up his horn and took one of the oranges. “So, to start off with, how come you didn’t tell me about your last husband abused you?”

For a long couple of minutes, Fancy didn’t respond. He propped a foreleg up on the table to rub his hoof against his forehead. “Blueblood, what happened was in the past.”

“Especially when you brought it up in a nightmare?” the Prince questioned.

He frowned, “You know, Your Majesty, there is a statistic that says that out of all the survivors of domestic abuse, as high as eighty percent of them never tell anypony. And among those whose ex-spouse is a well-known, respected opera singer, who is shorter and has a smaller body frame then I am – one hundred percent never tell.”

“Who was it?”

The older unicorn shook his head, “He’s out of my life and I don’t want the past to come back to haunt either of us. You don’t need to get involved with something that has been longed resolved.”

“But what did he do to you?”

Fancy sighed as he poured himself another cup. “Simply put, there’s a good reason why our marriage didn’t last two years. He was almost like my dad, in that he was a nutcase. Where I would present my argument of the case,” he said in a manner of a reasonable teacher. “His retort would invariably be to punch me in the face.” Blueblood’s jaw dropped. “Twas a ‘sugar imbalance’ he would often tell me. Every single fight after he would beat the living crap out of me was that he would come up to me saying, ‘Fancy, I’m sorry, I just had a sugar imbalance.’ At one point when he made that excuse to me, I told him, ‘No, diabetes is a sugar imbalance; you on the other hoof are a testosterone Molotov cocktail!’ right before he punched me in the face.”

“That’s horrible,” Blueblood remarked. “Did he treat you always like this?”

“Only after when we got married,” he said as his horn lit up for one of the cinnamon rolls. “You know how most ponies have a build up to anger, where you could instantly tell when a pony is getting infuriated? He had none of that. My ex-spouse had one of two personalities: either ‘I love you’ or ‘DIE YOU BLOODY BASTARD!!’” this made his coltfriend flinch when he raised his voice. “Sorry. The point was that I couldn’t tell when he was going to snap or why. I remember one time that we had a fight on Hearths Warming Eve in Trottingham while we were watching a movie on the couch. Apparently, it started because he thought that I was watching Mr. Brickhouse too intently.”

The blond unicorn raised an eyebrow, “Really?”

He chuckled, “Indeed. It wasn’t until later that while I was going through therapy, did I end up writing a poem for the sake of recovering once we got the divorce. Apparently, my doctor had me do it over something about creatively unleashing that aggression or something like that. I wrote a poem basing on what happened that night. Now how did it go…?”

Fancy hummed in thought for a moment, “Uh, I remember,” he cleared his throat and recited, “T’was the night before Hearths Warming and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except for the psychopath on the couch. I looked pleadingly to my spouse, his face furry red with visions of me and Mr. Brickhouse danced in his head. With bile in my throat and no help in sight, I put on a smile, and my plot hole got tight.”

Blueblood tried to suppress a laugh as he quickly covered his mouth. “How can you put something like this in such a light-hearted way?”

“There’s more,” his consort replied. “Well, before I continued on with the poem, I’ll have you know that on that night, we were snuggled up watching the movie when in the middle of it he burst out ‘What sort of sorry sod watches this rubbish!’ Anyway,” he cleared his throat and continued on with the poem. “’This is only a movie,’ I said and turned to argue my case, but I must have an undesired look, ‘cause he punched me in the face. I picked up his watches, the gold, and silver too, and out into the street, both watches I then threw. Out the front door, he went in hot pursuit. Yes, he dashed off like Mr. Toity after a fancy golden suite. In fear for my life, I locked up the place, turned my attention towards the film, and wished I had a mace. When all of a sudden, there arose such a clatter, I sprang up from the couch to see what was the matter. I grabbed the cord and pull open the blinds, and there was my husband, quite out of his mind. My heart stopped frozen with fear as he beat on the glass with a vodka bottle, filled just about to here.”

Fancy showed a short distance between his hooves between a few inches of each other. “I knew well the window couldn’t much take it, and he was screaming, ‘UNLOCK IT YOU BASTARD, OR I SWEAR I’LL BREAK IT!’ Well I couldn’t well do that, t’was my mother’s place. So I opened the door, and he punched me in the face. So summoning my stallionhood from bottom to top, I screamed like a little mare, ‘I’M CALLING THE COPS!’

“I don’t understand,” Blueblood piped up, “if he was treating you this badly, why did you stay with him for two years?”

“Let me give a clue,” his coltfriend replied as he finished the poem. “I was about to ring when he was standing right there, wearing those striped socks, but otherwise bare. He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, wheeling me in with that, ‘You’re my big daddy’ smirk. I heard him exclaimed as he turned off the light, ‘You know this is your fault, I love you too much to fight.’

The Prince was sickened by this, “You stayed for sex?”

Fancy rubbed his hooves in circles, his ears folded back, “What can I say? It was very… physical relationship. In more ways than one.”

“But have you tried to tell the police that you were getting punched around by that brute?”

“Oh, believe me, I tried. But remember, my spouse was shorter and had a smaller body than I, so when they came and I told them what happened, they took my statement down like I was a drunk U.F.O. abductee. I just sounded dumber and dumber with every passing word. ‘He’s has a hook that you wouldn’t believe that… well, he could really throw a punch… it’s like fighting a squeal on a sugar rush…’ In fact, our last fight I nearly spend a night in jail because of him, but they wouldn’t take me in because I was afraid of my husband. Rubbish.” He mocked bitterly before taking a sip of his coffee.

Blueblood paused in thought for a moment before asking, “Fancy, why you haven’t told me any of this before?”

“I didn’t want to give you the wrong impression,” he replied as the older unicorn grabbed an orange. “It’s not just you; I’ve been trying to keep this part of myself hidden so ponies won’t give me some unwanted attention. Doing otherwise would have caused a scandal that once gotten out can never be put back in. Can you imagine the humiliation I would have to face when everypony knows that I’ve gotten beaten by an opera singer?”

“It does make me wonder, are you afraid that I’m going to do the exact same thing to you?”

This gave his consort pause as he looked at him for what seemed like a second of eternity, “I can tell that you’re not like him. Based off of what I already know about you, you don’t have the reputation of hitting another pony, do you?”

The Prince shook his head, “I never raised a hoof to anypony. I was taught that doing so was unprincely. To do so was a sign of weakness.”

Fancy raised an eyebrow but said nothing. “Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?”

“There is,” he nodded, “I want to ask another personal question: What was your family like growing up? You’ve already mentioned about your father…”

Then it clicked to him, “Wait, did you thought that he was the one that was beating me?” Blueblood nodded. “No, Father was indeed mad, but he never laid a hoof on me. Mother was a different story, but never towards me or my siblings.”

“You have siblings?”

Fancy nodded, “Yes. An older stepsister, an older and younger brother too, however, before I can get to them, if we’re really going to have this conversation, there’s something you probably should know. My mother, as of now, has been divorced seven times – well, six actually. She told me that she wouldn’t divorce the seventh one, because she didn’t want ponies to think that she couldn’t commit.”

“I’m starting to see a pattern here,” Blueblood chuckled.

“Now, keep in mind, my mother is a great mum. Really, she is. She can be the justest, noble and most understand pony in the world when she’s sober. Drunk, however, her personality flips. When I was a child, I thought she had an alter-ego,” here the older unicorn laughed. “The most negative superhero on the planet, Anti-Mum! Wherever there is hope, she will stop it! Wherever self-esteem rears its shiny little head, she will be there to kick its testicles to the moon!”

The blond unicorn couldn’t help but laugh along too, “Sweet Luna, is that true?”

“Allow me to demonstrate,” he said playfully, and then he said in a foalish voice: “Mum! Mum! I got a B on my report card!” then immodestly switched to a falsetto voice, “But it’s not an A, isn’t it son? Now that the smile has left your face, I’m off.” Then he switched it to his normal voice, “Mother, I just graduated High School.” Back to the high voice, “But you didn’t come close to Valedictorian, did you loser?” Then he returned to his normal voice, “Mum, I just got myself my first job.” But to his intimation of his mother’s voice, “Good for you – wait a moment, something’s wrong. Oh, I know!” Here he motioned his hooves to pretend his uncorking a bottle of wine and drinking it from the bottle. “First job huh? Well you’re not a manager yet, are you dishcolt? When your confidence returns, so will I!”

Blueblood was laughing so much that he struggled to keep place in his seat as Fancy continued.

“Hey Mother, I finally made the manager,” then he switched to his mother's. “Is that so? Well, a real stallion would own his own line of work. Now leave me alone, I’m off to destroy your brother!” the unicorn then cleared his throat, “Oi, Mother, guess what? A couple of years ago, I have been using my wealth to be a patron for the arts in Canterlot where for every artist that I assist, I get some bits back. Because of this, I have become one of the most influential ponies in Equestria. And I have made more money in one month then you did all year so what do you say to that!”

Fancy then impersonated his mother as he let his moth struggle to find the words before replying to his question, “I think without me pushing you boy, you would never have made it.”

“I find it amazing that you could take something so dark and turn it into something humorous.”

“Call it my defense mechanism,” his consort shrugged.

There was a pause between the two before Blueblood resumed, “Are your parents still around?”

He nodded, “Mother and my youngest brother live in Trottingham while my father is in a sanatorium in Fillydelphia. My older sister is in Applewood as a producer while my older brother has joined the police force in Manehattan. We’re spread out that way simply because we need to be.”

“Need to?”

“The last time the six of us were together,” Fancy replied, “Dad had plotted to kill mother with a broken bottle by drugging us. It wasn’t until later we found out that he put his medicine in the gravy and none of us woke up until three days later. So the further separated we are the better.”

Blueblood gave a low whistle, “I’ve got nothing. I mean… how am I supposed to respond to something like that?”

“I don’t think you can. So is there anything else you wanted to talk to me about.”

“Just one more thing,” the Prince sat upright in his seat, “before I head back to the palace, I want you to make a promise with me.”

“Oh?”

“That if we’re serious on growing together as a couple, I should think that for now on, we should stop trying to hide the truth about ourselves. What I saw last night from your dream was heart-wrenching. I don’t want to see you end up in such a state that you were in your nightmare. Frankly, I’m sick of being around ponies that are only facades. I don’t want that from you. Can you promise me that starting now, could you please tell me the truth of what’s really bothering you?”

Fancy closed his eyes and hummed in thought, “I will, but on one condition.”

“Name it.”

“The next time that you have a nightmare, can you have Princess Luna to come to fetch me so I may return the favor?”

Blueblood’s expression dropped, unnerved at the very idea that was being presented. It was one thing for him to see his coltfirend’s dream, but it was quite another for it to be reversed. His mind froze with horror at the idea that someone like Fancy would not only visit him in his dream but the one nightmare that always kept coming back, even with his aunt’s assistance. “If I refuse?” he questioned.

“Then I won’t keep your promise and our relationship would be put into jeopardy.”

Downing some of the coffee to put some liquid in his suddenly dry throat, the Prince agreed to the terms.

“Excellent,” his coltfriend smiled. “So is that everything?” the Prince nodded. “Now then, I’m going to be quite busy for this coming week. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to get out of it until next Wednesday. However, after that, I can put in some free time for us.”

“Fair enough,” the blond unicorn got up. “I still need to get myself caught up on some matters, but I too will be looking forward to our next date.”

Just before the Prince could leave the room, his consort called out, “Blue, before you go, I wanted to say thank you, for having this talk with me.”

Smirking, Blueblood walked up to the unicorn and pulled a hoof into his, “It was a pleasure to get to know you better, old man.” He said before he kissed his hoof.

“Was that supposed to be a compliment or an insult?”

He chuckled, “I’ll let you figure that out,” with that, the Prince started to make his way out the front door and headed back to the palace.