And Not Fade Away
You teleport her from her home to directly in front of your door and open it before she has a chance to really look around and get scared by the chaos outside. "Discord!" she says as you open the door. She's so bright and cheerful. "I'm so excited to finally see where you live!"
You want to grab her, pick her up and twirl her into the house. You want to give her a big hug. You want to yell "FLUTTERSHY! How wonderful to see you!" But you don't do any of those things because you're trying to be normal. Normal normal normal. "Greetings, friend. Please do come in," you say instead, calmly, with only a little tiny stutter.
As she walks in, she says cheerily, "I can't wait to see how... uh..." Her face falls with confusion as she looks around. "Oh." She actually looks sad. Dejected. Disappointed. Oh no, what did you do wrong? She must be picking up on the weirdness anyway even though you were sure you got rid of all the weirdness. Maybe you need to make the carpet more even or the walls closer to perfect right angles to each other? Surreptitiously, without letting there be a flash or snapping your talon or paw, you tighten up the precision on everything. Perfectly straight lines! Perfectly square proportions on picture frames! Rectangles that perfectly match the Golden Mean!
Something inside you starts aching. You can't really pinpoint whether it's your head or chest or arms or maybe just all over, because you turned down your pain sensing ability. The thought occurs to you that the fact that you can feel pain at all is worrisome given that pain should be almost completely turned off, but the part of you that is Specs says not to worry about it because the important thing here is Fluttershy and besides you're too happy at getting to see your friend and too nervous about what she'll think to much care about anything else.
"Is something amiss?" you ask, with a smile plastered on your face because no one should be frowning or upset when they're with a friend.
"Um, no, no, not at all. It's just not what I expected." She trots over to the table where you've laid out the sandwiches, and smiles at you. "It's quite... lovely."
You beam at the praise. That makes all of this worth it. "Please have a seat," you say, slowly and carefully, making sure to maintain total control of what you're saying. There can't be anything spontaneous. That would be too chaotic.
"Where is it?" Fluttershy asks, as you push a plush armchair over to the table.
"Right here."
"Oh."
Does she not like the chair? She sounds disappointed. You keep the smile plastered on, trying harder. "I think you'll be quite pleased with the green tea I've selected for us today."
That makes her face light up. "Oooh! Does it actually turn us green? Is it really envious of the other teas? What's it do, what's it do?!"
Fluttershy must be humoring you because she knows you'd normally do something ridiculous (fun) to the tea, but you were there in the store with the tea pony. You know that's not what she really likes, because otherwise the tea pony wouldn't have thought it was so weird that you wanted the teas to do something different while still being Fluttershy's friend. "Uh, well, it tastes delicious."
There's that look of disappointment again. "Oh... Okay."
You sit down on the couch, after serving Fluttershy her tea. "What particularly nice weather we're having," you say. That was on your conversation cards as ice-breaking small talk that would be appropriate in any setting.
"Yes... Yes, we are."
Fluttershy seems so stiff and uncomfortable. You try harder with the conversation cards. "It did rain the other day, however."
She makes a noncommittal noise. You soldier on. "But the weather today is particularly nice." Wait, you already said that. "...As I previously mentioned." Oh, dear, what a faux pas. You're not supposed to make it look robotic. It's supposed to seem natural. You change the subject to cover it up. "Would you care for some milk toast?" you ask, offering her a plate. It's toast covered in milk sauce, exactly what ponies expect milk toast to be, not toasted milk or milk in the shape of toast slices.
"Uh, Discord, you don't seem to be yourself today," Fluttershy says. "Are you feeling all right?"
Oh, no! She's picking up that this is completely unnatural for you and that you're terrible at it! You lose the smile you've been keeping pasted on your face. "Whatever do you mean?"
"Well, it's just... what you're wearing," she says, almost apologetically. "And also what you're saying. And also the way you're saying it. And, um, pretty much everything else."
You wave a paw dismissively and put the smile back on. "Oh, dear Fluttershy, worry not. I can assure you that for the first time, I'm feeling perfectly normal." At least, you assume so, since you've never felt normal by pony standards before. "Now, let me top you off."
You pick up the teapot and go to pour Fluttershy more tea, but suddenly there's no strength in your talon and the teapot falls. A quick pulse of magic keeps it from shattering, but you can't pick it up with magic because Fluttershy is a pegasus and doing that is only normal for unicorns and besides, you shouldn't need to. "Oops! Butterfingers!" You press your talon to your head. It feels numb... on both sides, somehow, because your head can't feel it and it can't feel your head. It's not turning to stone, though, because it's just as light as normal. Maybe lighter. "How embarrassing."
You attempt to reach for the teapot again, but your talon goes right through it, as if it isn't even there. Fluttershy asks, "What's going on?"
Are you transforming involuntarily into your magical form? No, you're in your magical form by default in Chaosville. You're made of solid magic, here. (And in Equestria, most of the time.) Are you transitioning to your matter form and failing? No, you're not actively running any spells, voluntarily or involuntarily. You wave your hand through the teapot a few more times, trying to solidify it, to no avail, and then hold it up to your face. It's slightly transparent. "I have... no idea," you admit reluctantly.
Abruptly Fluttershy gasps. "Discord! You're starting to fade away!"
You look down at yourself. Your whole body is slightly transparent now, and that hollow feeling from before has intensified, and everything around you looks and sounds slightly muted. You realize then that you're very, very tired, and the excitement of seeing Fluttershy had been masking it. Oddly, though, you're not afraid, or even particularly upset. You don't feel much of anything. Only the continuing desire to make sure Fluttershy thinks well of you and doesn't reject your friendship. So you decide that this isn't very important. "Oh, you don't say..." Quick, change the subject. Use the conversation cards! "Have you read any good books lately?" You chuckle nervously.
Fluttershy just stares at you in horror. "Discord, you're disappearing," she breathes, sounding... frightened? Oh, and you tried so hard! You got rid of all the chaos in the environment and now something stupid and chaotic is happening and upsetting her. Well, you'll just have to keep being normal and maybe she'll ignore it.
You wiggle your fingers in front of your face. "Huh." She's right, you are disappearing. That's inconvenient. You shrug, and muster up what's left of your energy to feign enthusiasm, trying to distract her. "Have you tried the scones? They're positively delectable." You lean forward, as if imparting something confidential to her. "The secret is in the extra butter."
"What is wrong with you?" Fluttershy asks, sounding completely exasperated. "You're acting so normal, which is not so normal for you!"
She's right, but you can't let her know that, because then she won't want to be friends. "Well, whatever do you mean?" you ask, adjusting your glasses. "This is just me, being me."
"No, it's not!" From any other pony it would have been a shout. "It's you being like everypony else!"
But isn't that what everypony wants from you? Isn't that the price you have to pay for friendship? Besides, you feel like it's okay. You're too tired and empty to be chaotic right now, so you might as well be orderly, and keep your friendship safe. (A tiny part of you reminds you that Fluttershy chose to be your friend despite how chaotic you were, and then a larger part reminds you that Celestia told her to make friends with you and just because she was willing to overlook the chaos doesn't mean she wouldn't be happier with a you that didn't have it.)
The teacup isn't on the saucer. Everything needs to be neat and precise. Your paws aren't solid anymore, so to pick up the teacup and saucer and put them together require an effort of magic. You're actually using telekinesis, and only making it look like your hands are doing it. It's so tiring, though. Normally you can sling the sun and moon around with a snap. Now, lifting a teacup and saucer is almost beyond you, and while you smile to see that you've accomplished the task and they're together being neat and proper, you feel even more weary once you're done. It's as if you have no energy at all. But it would be rude to take a nap during a tea party, or lounge back and lay down on the couch.
Fluttershy screams, putting her hooves to her head. "The more you do it, the more you fade away!" You glance down at your paw. It's much more transparent. There's a ringing in your ears making it hard to hear Fluttershy, and the brightly lit room seems dimmer somehow. None of this really concerns you, though. This is what it means to be normal, right?
"Of course!" Fluttershy says. "You're a creature of pure chaos! Being normal is destroying you!"
You force a chuckle. If she's right, and your choices are to lose your friends or to be destroyed... eh. You've lived a long time. None of this matters, anyway. Except Fluttershy. "How interesting. That reminds me of something I heard at the market today," you say, from the conversation cards.
Fluttershy gets in your face. "Stop it! Please! You need to go back to being your not-normal normal self!" She sounds almost panicked. "Quick, Discord! Uh, do something chaotic before it's too late! Please!"
You don't like the sound of her being unhappy, though the truth is, even your feelings about that are muted. But she specifically asked you to do the thing you've been terrified of doing, lest you lose her, and it's hard for you to think or concentrate. The paradox makes your head buzz. "Do something chaotic?" you say to her. "I'll try..." But you can't even think of something. The magic doesn't want to well up within you; drawing on it seems like such an effort. And when you try to snap the fingers on your lion paw, they go through each other, even though you just adjusted your glasses a moment ago. You're no longer even solid to yourself.
You look at your fingers, one poking right through the other, and you can't really feel either one. "Ohhhh, that's not good..." you mumble.
Oh, well. It's gone too far to do anything about it. You can't muster up the energy to care. You'll just sit here and listen to Fluttershy and watch her until everything goes numb and there's nothing left but darkness and silence. It's all right. At least this way you get to have your dear friend care about you for as long as you live.
"Then I guess it's up to me," Fluttershy says. She shows every evidence of racking her brain for something to do. You smile slightly, pleased at the evidence that she cares, but you're so tired. "Okay. All right. How about..." With great resolve, she deliberately knocks one of the teacups over. You'd straighten it out for her, but the exhaustion is overwhelming you.
"Oh, no!" Fluttershy says in a totally insincere voice. "I tipped over that cup!" She looks to you for approval. "That's pretty chaotic, right?"
You yawn. You don't mean to. It's very rude. But you're so tired. Moving is an effort, talking is an effort, keeping your eyes open is an effort.
Fluttershy's so upset. You want to tell her everything will be all right, that it's better this way, that you don't mind. You want to pat her on the head and reassure her. But you feel like you have no energy to do anything, that if your body didn't feel so light you wouldn't even be able to remain upright. Your mouth moves, but no sounds come out.
Fluttershy is spinning the tray of sandwiches and chomping on each sandwich as it goes by. She looks up hopefully, mouth full of sandwich. "Oh, my! Talking with food in my mouth after taking a bite from every sandwich!" As she swallows, she lets her tongue hang out and shakes her head like a dog. "How wacky!" She's so funny, and so cute. She thinks she's being chaotic, and it's adorable, and she cares about you. That's all you need, really. That's more than enough. If you fade out of existence with her by your side, proving that she cares by trying uselessly to save you, that would be fine. "Doing anything for you?"
You shake your head at her sadly as the world gets even dimmer and the ringing in your ears gets even louder. But it's all right, you wish you could say. It's been such a long time, and so hard, struggling against a world where no one understands you or appreciates your chaos and you're so different from everyone. You're tired. You're ready to put the burden down.
"Okay. Hmm. Maybe I need to start thinking like you. Ohhh... What would Discord do?" She paces nervously. The world has gone dim enough that the bright yellow of her coat and pink of her mane is practically all you can see. "Well, I guess he'd probably make another version of himself to bounce ideas off of." She does something. You're not sure what because you can't see in that level of detail anymore. "But one wouldn't be enough. He'd need more! Way more!"
Actually, you generally speaking only have one of you to bounce ideas off of, but you can't say so. You see Fluttershy darting back and forth. Almost despite yourself, you strain to see what she's doing. You feel curiosity, and a desire not to fade away at least until you've figured out what she's doing. She doesn't have any magic – well, not like the kind she could use to make Other Fluttershys.
Oh, that's what she's doing. You smile slightly. Those are mirrors! Or reflective, shiny things, anyway. Now she's got several of them lined up, and she says to them, "Hey there, Fluttershys! Any ideas on how to Discord up this tea party?"
You wonder how they're going to answer her. In your newly-remodeled, chaos-free home, mirrors don't talk. But Fluttershy herself pipes up in a voice that's even higher pitched than normal, "Hi, Fluttershy! Thanks for asking!" Ooh, that's good. You'll have to remember that the next time you make extra yous, that they should be polite and thank you for asking them. Wait, but that assumes you're not about to disappear. "First of all, you gotta redecorate this place. I mean, this is where Discord lives! And you're telling me there aren't any stairs that lead to nowhere?" Huh. Are you really that predictable? She never saw your place with the stairs that led to nowhere in it before. Maybe she talked to Twilight?
In a normal voice, she says, "On it!" And then she starts zipping around, flying about and carrying things, moving furniture. Eventually she has... something? You strain to see. Oh. She's piled furniture and other things in a generally stair-step manner. How amusing.
Then she grabs the wall hanging that you turned your last set of stairs to nowhere into, and throws it over the whole mess, and that makes it funny. She's undoing the work you did to please her, in order to save you! Despite feeling so weak you can barely bring yourself to move, you force yourself to your feet so you can walk over and see Fluttershy's "stairs to nowhere" more clearly. Once you're moving, it feels like it's a little easier to move. You stroll up to take a good look at the silliness. Huh. Quite a nice improv staircase. You're proud of her. And the fact that she's trying to save you from vanishing by doing ridiculous things that don't make sense is itself hilarious.
"It's working!" Fluttershy says delightedly, looking at you, and... maybe it is? You feel like maybe you're not quite as exhausted as you were a moment ago, and maybe the ringing isn't quite as loud.
She flies over to consult with her mirrors. "Okay, what else? Furniture on the ground? So predictable! Let's put them where they don't belong!" Then she flies into your kitchen and opens all your drawers, finding your neatly stacked and sorted silverware, your neatly sorted and collated drawer full of twist ties and rubber bands, and finally your neatly sorted drawer full of hardware such as hammers and nails and safety glasses, because you'd never actually use such things and if you did you'd just summon it into existence but ponies have neat and orderly drawers full of things like that.
Fluttershy hammers nails halfway into your ceiling in specific spots, wearing her safety goggles. The nails go in pairs, but pairs that are unevenly separated – some have a short span between them, others quite a wide distance. She ties twine from your drawer onto one of the nails, loops it under your footstool, and drags it up, to tie it around the other nail. Then she carefully rotates the footstool so that it's facing the ceiling, and uses her own flight power to hold it in place, balancing it on her lower legs and the rope while her wings flap frantically and her upper legs strain to hammer the feet of the footstool to the ceiling. She does the same with the lamp, using much longer nails to get through the base. Then she pulls the entire tablecloth off the table, knocking the mirrors, the teacups and everything onto the floor, drags the table over and hauls it up.
You're more and more impressed as you watch her work. She's straining hard; Fluttershy is probably the physically weakest of her entire group of friends, but she's hauling furniture to the ceiling and nailing it in with a really bad excuse for a rope pulley, just to save you. Oh, and a sofa. Sweet chaos. She's got the entire sofa wrapped in three sets of twine and she hauls it up to the ceiling, panting hard with the exertion, sweat sheening her flanks, but she's doing it for you.
Once she's done, she flies down to you, breathing hard, but smiling. You're definitely feeling stronger. The world isn't nearly so dim as it was, and the ringing's almost stopped. You smile back at her.
Gleefully Fluttershy says, "And he'd have a chaise lounge that would actually chase you! Because he's funny like that!"
She thinks you're funny?
(But you knew she thought you were funny. It was why you got so upset when she said Tree Hugger was the funniest pony she knew, because she'd said the same thing to you.)
"Bet you can't catch me!" she says to the chaise lounge, poking it, and then runs off. You can't help laughing a bit. For a moment, you want so much to be able to animate the lounge to chase her, like she wants... and the feeling of want makes you feel strong, just for a moment. You snap your fingers... and chaos floods into you, through you, warming you and filling you and making you feel solid and real and able to feel again.
You laugh heartily, delighted, as the chaise lounge starts chasing her all over the room and around you, and you can't stop laughing because it's hilarious and because she's obviously enjoying herself. A pony, enjoying your chaos! (But Fluttershy always enjoyed your chaos, that's why you were such good friends...)
She stops in front of you. The chaise lounge stops as well, panting like a dog. "And Discord would have a special kind of tea!" she says. "Like a ginseng that could really sing!"
Like the tea you bought and animated, just to do that exact thing. "I would," you say, stumbling over the words. "I-I would!" You snap your talon and summon back the box of ginseng tea that you mailed to somewhere random in Equestria. Another snap opens the box, and the tea bags dance out, singing. They fly over to Fluttershy and serenade her for a bit before going on their way.
While the tea bags are singing to her, Fluttershy says, "And he'd serve it on a floating table! We never talked about it, but I'm pretty sure Discord hates gravity!"
Something inside you is thawing out, even melting, in the warmth of Fluttershy's understanding. She really gets you. Why did you think she wouldn't? "I do! Who wants to be tethered to the ground when you can do this?"
You snap, and gravity turns off. Everything on the floor lifts up and floats, while the things nailed to the ceiling untether, also floating. A shame to undo all of Fluttershy's hard work, but things that are bound to anything are metaphorically antithetical to chaos, and right now you desperately crave chaos. Fluttershy laughs.
"Now this is exactly what I was hoping for!" she says, delighted.
You're glad it's what she wanted, but you don't understand. "This is what you were hoping for? But this is the complete opposite of your tea parties."
"I wouldn't expect you to throw a tea party the way I would," she says. "We're different!"
Her voice is so cheerful, but those last two words hurt. They've been so often used to explain why what you want from ponies is something you can never get. You look away from her. "I know. I was afraid that if you saw exactly how different we are, you wouldn't want to be friends anymore."
Fluttershy zips around you to face you and grabs your face in her hooves. "What? Why would you ever think that?"
You remember the tea pony, and the judgy sales clerk at the teapot store, and you look away again. "Because you and I don't make sense to anypony else." And you've always said you love things that don't make sense, but that's because you can make them become reality. You have no power over Fluttershy or over friendship. You know why she decided to try to make friends with you, but you still don't understand how it became real, or why she forgave you for betraying her, or for all the other terrible things you've managed to do to her or her friends over the course of this friendship.
"That may be true, but we make sense to me," she says. "I never would've thought to make singing ginseng before I met you. But you've opened me up to so many more possibilities and impossibilities. So I guess what I'm trying to say is I like you because you're so different from me."
"You do?"
"Of course I do, silly!" she says. "Besides, what's discord without a little chaos?"
Apparently, nonexistent. You laugh. "Well! In that case, I certainly don't need to be wearing this." You pull off the spectacles, sweater and tie you wore to present the image of sober normality... and find the Fluttershy costume that was the last thing Specs had been wearing before you reabsorbed him with the others. "Oops! I forgot that I still had this on!"
Fluttershy giggles. "Now, about that tea party..."
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Unsettling in how Discord was ready to just... stop. Especially given the last time he was compelled to be motionless. But the way Fluttershy didn't just feed him chaos but also gave him a reason to hang on long enough for it to work was beautiful. Excellent work. I'm looking forward to the conclusion.
Huh.
I hope the next chapter is chronologically after this one and from Fluttershy's point of view
Huh. That was actually eber so slightly disturbing and unsettling. Just...wow.
Man this scene was moving, even more when I read it than when I saw it. I can't wait to see what will be added after this episode!
8436432 That's true. Discord here feels like entropy, which is chaotic at the beginning but at the end is just total stillness.
I still prefer chaise longue to "chaise lounge". But I guess the Fluttershy of the show said lounge. :(
This is a rather important detail, I think. Because Specs is right about one thing, Fluttershy does enjoy neat, orderly, lovely things. At this moment, I truly believe she thought either Discord was showing her a side she hadn't known, or she was perfectly aware he was doing it to make her comfortable, or both.
None of which means she can't like Discord's wackiness as well. But he didn't understand, because Discord always goes all out with everything he does and lacks any sense of subtlety. Discord just doesn't understand nuance yet.