Little Memories

by Skijarama

Confusion and Catharsis

Twilight and Spike returned to the library a few hours later and arrived just as Celestia was leaving. Rainbow Dash was, mercifully, far more relaxed and composed than when she had run off earlier, much to Twilight’s immense relief. She was, however, still rather quiet. Even the mouth-watering scent of Spike’s cooking did next to nothing to draw any enthusiasm out of her, which was far from normal.

The two were sitting in the front room while they waited for dinner to be ready. Rainbow was on the couch, her eyes closed and her head tilted up towards the ceiling. Twilight, meanwhile, was curled up in a chair with a book on intermediate magic open in front of her. Although, with how worried she was about Rainbow, it was hard to focus on the text contained within those pages.

Eventually, the silence became too much. With a quiet exhale, she closed the book and looked at the princess. “Rainbow? Are you alright?” she finally asked, her voice timid.

Rainbow opened an eye. “Huh? Yeah, I’m okay. Why?” she asked curiously, tilting her head towards her.

Twilight shifted uncomfortably on her haunches. “Well, it’s just… you’ve been really quiet since Spike and I came back. That’s not like you.”

“Oh. that,” Rainbow grunted. She lowered her head, letting out a heavy sigh. “Sorry, Twi. I just got a lot on my mind right now, that’s all.”

“About Discord?”

Rainbow cringed and looked away, a few bangs of her mane falling in front of her face. “...Yeah,” she mumbled in response.

Twilight bit her lip, her ears folding back. “Do you mind telling me more about him and what he did?” she ventured quietly, a small flicker of hope in her voice at the prospect of learning more about her past. “I mean, I was there, wasn’t I?”

Rainbow was quiet for a few seconds. She looked directly ahead, her eyes focusing on a spot on the wall. “Discord’s the spirit of chaos and disharmony. He’s our polar opposite. Everything he ever did was designed solely to break down our world and all of the rules that make it a place we can be comfortable living in. And…” she glanced down at her hooves and grimaced. “And that includes ponies themselves.”

Twilight tilted her head in confusion. “What does that mean?”

“It means he can mess with minds,” Rainbow clarified, tapping her temple for emphasis. “He can flip personalities around, insert new ones, cause delusions and hallucinations. That kinda thing.”

Twilight’s eyes widened, her mind wandering back to Rainbow’s earlier declaration about how Discord had messed with her head. “Oh… I see.”

“It was nuts,” Rainbow went on with a shake of her head. “And… it caused more than a few problems.”

“You mentioned that everything bad that happened to us, even my amnesia, could be traced back to him,” Twilight recalled with a thoughtful hum. “Could you explain that to me?”

Rainbow twitched at the question. She lowered her head, her lips drawing back into a thin line. After a second, though, she gave her answer. “To make a long story short, he put a spell on me. That spell made me feel nothing but terror and hatred for Starlight Glimmer, the pony who changed the original timeline. I let that fear get the better of me, and dragged you and all of our friends with me to Manehattan to find her. And, well…” she closed her eyes and shook her head in dismay. “That trip was the start of everything else. And we never woulda gone on it if Discord hadn’t put that spell on me.”

Twilight looked down, her hooves curling together on the cushion. Combining that information with what she had seen in her flash, it was becoming pretty clear why Rainbow hated him with such a fury. And now, that just left one more question. She gave Rainbow a far more tentative look, her words quiet and cautious. “So… are we going to let him out?”

Rainbow’s eyes snapped to Twilight. The alicorn immediately flinched back, opening her mouth to dismiss the question and move on to some other topic, but Rainbow answered her before she could.

“I dunno yet,” she said simply before rising from her seat. “And no offense, Twi, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t ask me about it anymore. It’s not easy for me to think about, and…” she sighed and strode past Twilight, heading for the kitchen and dining room. “And I really just don’t want to talk about it anymore. I’m sorry.”

Twilight mouthed like a fish for a few seconds as the pegasus disappeared from her line of sight. She was quick to recover, though, and looked back over her shoulder at Rainbow. “No, I’m sorry for bringing it up.”

Rainbow paused in the doorway and gave Twilight a small smile. “Nah. You got nothing to be sorry for. You asked, and I told you what you needed to know,” she dismissed before sniffing and looking off into the kitchen. Her eyes lit up with anticipation at whatever she saw, and her wings unfurled slightly. “Oooh. Now get off your flank and come over here! Food’s about ready, and it looks good!”

And with that, she vanished into the kitchen. Twilight managed to let out a quiet giggle when she heard Spike protesting, no doubt from having his personal space shamelessly invaded by a hungry pegasus, and rose from her seat. As she entered the kitchen, she had to agree. The meal Spike had made both smelled and looked delicious.

They ate well that night, and, for a while, both of them were able to put the looming statue out of their minds.

---

After dinner was consumed, it wasn’t long before Rainbow Dash excused herself to an early sleep. The blankets had felt constricting against her body for a long while, but eventually, her mental exhaustion from the events of the day finally caught up to her and she was swallowed up into the world of dreams.

And what a dream she had to start with.

There were statues as far as the eye could see, standing together in rows and straight lines that, together, created a labyrinth of sorts. Each and every single one of them was of Discord, each one showing him in a different pose and illuminated by a dull spotlight. Rainbow Dash found herself standing on a checkerboard marble floor in the middle of a four-way intersection, her wings missing from her sides and an empty black sky looming overhead.

She cringed at the sight, her heart starting to beat faster in her chest. “Okay… alright, it’s just a big spooky maze full of Discord statues,” she whispered to herself between clenched teeth. “Nothing to worry about… just gotta find the way out.”

But that was the problem. Which way would lead to the exit? Without her wings, she had no way of checking which way to go, meaning she had a one in four chance of getting it wrong and wandering for, presumably, a really long time. How big was this maze, anyway? Curious, Rainbow trotted up to one of the paths and tried to peer between the Discords. She only saw more of them, stretching on and on before being swallowed up by the darkness like a thick fog.

Rainbow backed off and tried not to look at the two faces above her. One was grinning like a sadistic maniac, while the other was staring at her with a quivering lip and lowered ears. She returned to the center of the intersection and took a deep breath. “Okay… alright… uh…” she sat on her haunches and looked at her hooves, racking her brain for a solution.

After a few minutes, she settled on a route. She licked her lips, placed her right hoof on the wall of statues, and began to walk, always keeping her hoof on the statue. Every step she took was like a nail into her skull, the only sound in this accursed maze aside from her anxious breathing and the spine-tingling scrape of her hoof on the hard stone of each statue.

As she went, her eyes were steadily drawn to curiously examine the faces and poses she passed. They were remarkably varied in their presentation. Some made him appear as a malevolent entity, such as a devil, complete with the cartoonish pitchfork and cauldron of lava. Another one depicted him as a gentle and stalwart guardian, curled protectively around a collection of cribs with baby ponies peacefully sleeping within as he watched for danger.

Yet another showed him coiled low to the ground as if to hide, covering his head with his paw and talon. Another showed him hanging upside down from a tree with the poofy mane of some poor stallion attached to the end of an ice-cream cone. Yet another depicted him as looming over six frightened mares, his eyes narrowed with sinister intent.

“Yeesh. Mixed messages, much?” Rainbow deadpanned to herself as she turned a corner.

Any further snarky comments were replaced by a startled yelp when she came face to face with a larger statue of Discord that, much like the last one she had examined, loomed over her threateningly. Its eyes glowed a sickening hue of yellow, and for a second, Rainbow almost believed it was alive.

“Gah. Dead end, I guess,” she muttered, turning to keep going and following her hoof. “I’ll get outta here eventually- what in the?!”

The maze had changed behind her. Where once there was a long corridor with turns to the left and right she had spent far too long already steadily navigating, there was now only two walls to the left and right of her, with one more statue closing off the other end, posing as an angel with a harp in its grasp and a halo over its head.

“Wha?! Where did the turns go?!” Rainbow demanded, stepping forward and looking around frantically. “Come on, this isn’t fair!”

“Fair?” An aged, gravelly voice echoed in the air around her.

Rainbow froze, her fur standing on end. She slowly turned around, facing the statue with the glowing eyes again. The glow had gotten brighter.

“Perhaps we haven’t met.”

The statue suddenly lurched forward, advancing on Rainbow at a steady pace, it’s stone base scraping and grinding against the ground like claws dragged across chalk. “I’m Discord. The spirit of chaos and disharmony. Hello?”

Rainbow backed away, her chest rising and falling in a series of frantic gasps. “Hey! Stop that! Statues aren’t supposed to move!” she stammered while desperately searching for a way out. She was only met with more statues, each one staring right at her with a wide range of expressions.

The angelic statue began to move as well, closing in on Rainbow’s other side and doubling the awful scraping sound.

She was trapped. Rainbow looked back and forth between the two statues as they drew closer and closer, her heart pounding in her ears. Desperate, she hurled herself against the nearest statue, trying to squeeze past it and its fellows. Sadly, they were too close together, leaving her no space to squeeze through in time. Growling in frustration, she tried to push it over instead, putting all of her weight into it.

Such a shame her muscle mass was starting to fade away.

Rainbow gasped in shock when she realized she was starting to shrivel up like a raisin, all of the muscle and fat leaving her bones. Suddenly feeling very weak, she tried one more time to push the statue over before collapsing to the ground in a fragile, skinny heap. “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh,” she whispered in terror, her eyes locking onto the threatening statue as it drew nearer. “S-somepony… somepony help…”

The yellow glow of the eyes grew brighter, bathing all else in shadow and filling Rainbow’s soul with nothing but fear.

“Help me!”

The sound of stone grinding on stone became deafening, the eyes looming closer and closer until they were all she could see. It was getting harder to breathe. It felt like its claws were enclosing around her neck. With one last shuddering gasp, Rainbow screwed her eyes shut and screamed as loud as she could at the heavens.

“SOMEPONY HELP ME!”

Suddenly, everything came to a stop, and silence even more deafening than the roar of stone from a moment ago filled her ears. Reluctantly, Rainbow opened one eye to see that the statue had fallen perfectly still, and the glow had faded from its eyes. Its expression had changed from one of pure malevolence to one of confusion.

A gentle breeze washed by. Rainbow gasped in shock when the claws gripping down on her throat suddenly dissolved into dust, followed shortly by the rest of the statue and all of its brethren. The maze was gone, and the marble floor had been replaced with a solid surface that rippled and shimmered like a pool of pristine water.

Then, in the distance, a massive moon slowly waxed into existence until it was full, bathing Rainbow in its soothing pale glow and reflected perfectly in the surface beneath her hooves. And then, finally, with one last gentle pulse of light from the distant celestial object, Princess Luna appeared, her wings unfurled.

Rainbow leaned back in shock, though her shock was soon replaced with joy when she found that her twig-like body had been restored to normal, and her wings fluttered into existence on her back with a shimmer of pale magic.

“Heh… Do you gotta one-up yourself with your entrances every time?” she asked with a shake of her head before hauling herself to her hooves.

Luna rolled her eyes and made her approach. “I suppose I do not need to… but where would be the fun in that?”

“I dunno,” Rainbow admitted with a shrug. “But, to be fair, you’re not usually popping into my dreams for fun.”

“No,” Luna aknowledged with a small nod. “But it is my hope that, someday, your mind will be at peace enough that fun dreams are all I will find.”

Rainbow sighed and looked over her shoulder. “Well, not tonight, huh?” she mumbled in disappointment.

“Unfortunately not.”

Rainbow shook her head and looked back at Luna, her ears lowering. “I, uh, guess I don’t need to tell you what I was dreaming about, do I?”

Luna shook her head before coming to a stop a few paces away. “No, you don’t. I saw more than enough. You are troubled by my sister’s request, aren’t you?”

“To put it mildly,” Rainbow spat at the ground. She sighed and put a hoof to her temple to quell a rising headache. “Ugh… what did most of that even mean? I’m not the dream expert here.”

“No, you’re not…” Luna agreed with a sage nod before her horn lit with blue magic. Beneath their hooves, a pillar of stone slowly rose, lifting them into the air until they were in the clouds, looking down on an endless ocean bathed in star and moonlight. “However, I am curious to see what you make of it yourself.”

“What good would that do?” Rainbow asked with a raised eyebrow.

Luna turned somewhat, a mirror appearing in front of her. Her reflection, however, did not move to match her movements when she gestured. “Self-reflection is a good skill to have. Thinking upon ourselves at our deepest and most fundamental levels can enable us to see faults in who we are,” she explained, her reflection twisting and contorting into the image of a viciously-grinning Nightmare Moon.

“But if we cannot, or choose not, to see the flaws in ourselves,” Luna went on, waving her hoof. The image in the mirror rippled and changed, showing a younger version of the alicorn glaring spitefully into a mirror clouded with swirling gray fog. The young Luna snarled and spun away from the mirror, and only when she did so did Nightmare Moon push through the mirror, looming over her with her fangs bared and ready to plunge into her neck.

Suddenly, the mirror shattered, and Luna turned to face Rainbow directly. “Then they will advance upon us and swallow us whole.”

Rainbow blinked, working through the visual metaphor in her mind. After a few seconds, she nodded and turned away, thinking back on what she had experienced. “Okay, uh… well, I was in a maze,” she began slowly. “A maze where the walls were made of Discord statues.”

Luna nodded and slowly lay down on her belly, her ears standing tall. “Go on, my niece.”

Rainbow hummed and looked down at the waters far below. “Okay, uh… each statue looked different, too. Some of them made him look like a nice guy, others made him out to be the worst thing in the world.”

“And what does that tell you about how you are feeling?”

“I, uh…” Rainbow’s muzzle scrunched up before she let out an exasperated sigh. “Gah, I dunno! C’mon, don’t put me on the spot like this!”

“Rainbow,” Luna urged her on in a firm but gentle voice. “Do not be so quick to give up on this. This is your mind, Rainbow, and nopony should know it better than you. Think.”

“Ugh,” Rainbow groaned before flopping down onto her haunches. “I dunno. Confused, maybe?”

“And why would you be confused?”

“Luna, c’mon, you know why.”

“Tell me anyway.”

Rainbow sighed and looked up at the sky. “Okay, okay, jeesh. I guess… I guess ‘confused’ might be the wrong word. Conflicted, maybe?”

“Go on.”

Rainbow was quiet for a moment. After a short time, she took a deep breath and continued. “...Mom made a few good points about him before I went to bed. She explained how she thinks that there’s good in him, and she made a pretty solid case. She’s not wrong, having him on our side would be incredibly useful. But...”

She looked back down into the oceans far below, her shoulders sagging. “But I just don’t know if I can commit to that, Luna. He’s powerful. Stupidly powerful. If we let him out and we can’t make him change his ways, then all we’re gonna do is let the most powerful enemy we’ve ever had right out of his cage. He won’t underestimate us again. If we can’t make him our ally, then we lose. Period.”

“So you are saying that you are enticed by the potential he has as an ally, but worried that the risks are greater than the rewards?” Luna surmised slowly.

Rainbow nodded. “Yeah, I guess… I just don’t want him to hurt us again. Or me. I…” she sighed and gave off a weak, humorless chuckle. “Shamed as I am to admit it, I’m scared of him…”

“Believe me, I am aware,” Luna nodded along. “And so is my sister.”

Rainbow shifted on her haunches. “I kinda figured.”

Luna hummed quietly before rising to her hooves and joining Rainbow on the edge of the pillar. “You know, she brought that very concern up with me more than once in the weeks leading up to this.”

Rainbow turned to face her aunt with a raised eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”

“Indeed. Tia was worried from the very beginning about how you would take the idea,” Luna confirmed. “And as you and I spend so much additional time together via these dream therapy sessions, she hoped that I would be able to guide her hoof.”

“And what did you tell her?”

“That yes, you would take it poorly,” Luna aknowledged with a nod. “That you would probably react with anger and fear from the onset, and that you would be incredibly difficult to persuade without some very solid reasoning.”

Rainbow looked out at the clouds around them with a frown. “So she knew I’d take it poorly coming in. That’s great.”

Luna glanced down at Rainbow and smiled. “...I also told her that the trauma you suffered through because of him was not something you could run from forever and that no matter the outcome, bringing him to you could only do you good.”

Rainbow froze for a second before glancing back at Luna with a completely bewildered expression. “...You what, now?”

Luna’s smile grew, and she gazed up at the stars over their heads. “Rainbow, do not underestimate Tia’s love for you. As bad as she may be at expressing it sometimes, there can be no denying that she loves you with all of her heart. It runs so deep that the mere thought of upsetting you with something like this made her question herself at every turn. I had to convince her to bring Discord to Ponyville when she left this morning.”

Rainbow’s eyes widened. “Hold up. You made her bring him!?” she demanded while standing up.

Luna nodded. “Indeed, although my reasoning was very different from her own. She wanted to bring Discord to your friends in the hopes of making him an ally, so that Equestria, and you, would be safe,” she explained before meeting Rainbow’s eyes. “I, on the other hoof, wanted her to bring Discord to you so you could face him one more time and finally put all of the pain he put you through where it belongs.”

Rainbow tilted her head. “And where would that be?”

“In the past.”

“Huh… ya know, I dunno what I was expecting you to say, but that’s kinda obvious, now that I’m thinking about it.”

Luna giggled to herself before rising to her hooves. She placed a hoof on Rainbow’s shoulder and gazed deep into her eyes. “Whether or not you choose to release Discord and make him your ally and friend is a decision I leave entirely to you. However, I would ask a favor of you regarding him.”

Rainbow’s smile faltered somewhat, an uneasy tingle building up in the back of her neck. “Okay, uh… what do you want me to do?” she asked carefully.

Luna leaned down and offered her adoptive niece an affectionate nuzzle. “He is a statue, now, and utterly powerless. You hold his fate in your hooves, and there is nothing he can do about it. Let that feeling empower you. Go to him. Face him. Rise above him and tell him, to his face, exactly how you feel about him, and you make it known to any and all who are there to hear it that no matter how much he hurt you, no matter how much you suffered because of what he did... you survived. And you are all the stronger for it.”

Rainbow returned the nuzzle and listened intently as the instructions were conveyed in a whisper into her ear. When they pulled apart, she gave Luna a crooked grin. “So, lemme make sure I got this down, here. You want me… to yell at a statue.”

Luna’s smile gained an edge of mirth to it. “You would be surprised how much stress one can relieve merely by screaming at things that can’t scream back.”

That got Rainbow to laugh. “Ha! Oh, heh, okay, fair point!’ she chuckled before taking a deep breath to calm herself down. She looked up into Luna’s eyes, her smile slowly fading away and replaced with an anxious frown. “...Are you sure this will work?”

Luna lowered herself down to Rainbow’s eye level. “I cannot claim that it is certain, no. Your mind is unique, like every other. But you stand to lose nothing but an hour or so of sleep for the effort.”

Rainbow was quiet for a few seconds. Then, without a word, she reached out and wrapped her aunt up in a tight embrace. The hug was returned without hesitation, and Rainbow buried her face into Luna’s shoulder. The two were silent, savoring the contact for what felt like ages.

Eventually, Rainbow leaned back and gave Luna one more smile. “Thanks for stopping by, Luna…”

“Anytime, Rainbow Dash,” Luna replied in a whisper before closing her eyes and unfurling her wings. “Now, I believe you have a statue to shout at.”

And with that, the dream ended.

---

Rainbow slowly came back to the waking world, feeling rested but groggy at the same time. She groaned quietly and slowly sat up to look around. Twilight and Spike were both sound asleep in their beds, still. Not at all surprising, given that the sun hadn’t come up yet. The distant horizon was just starting to turn a soft shade of blue to herald its coming, though.

Rainbow remained there for a few minutes, blinking away the mess the sandmare had left in her eyes and getting her wits together. Her gaze remained affixed to the window, and the world beyond, the entire time.

Eventually, she rose from her bed and silently descended the stairs, her sights set on the exit.

Discord was out there.

And she had a few things to say to him.

Comments

[tom117z]

9811865
Kind of an odd thing to say when, this many years later, we know said gamble works out quite well.

[Danger Noodle]

I'm beginning to think that Discord had planned for Rainbow to seek out Starlight so that she would be out of Canterlot when the Changelings happened. If I recall, he had mentioned to her that he knew about the timelines and what was happening.

[THERDSTORYWHISPERER]

9820645
An interesting thought, that does sound like something Discord would do. A great chapter, it's great to see Rainbow in the role of a caring and concerned Princess/Politician. The question now is, is she going to take a leap of faith by freeing the choitic spirit?

[Admiral Q Ponyform]

9820543
Time issues. No guarantee it will work out this time around. The changeling invasion happened for soonervtgen it should and at greater cost.

[tom117z]

Luna’s smile gained an edge of mirth to it. “You would be surprised how much stress one can relieve merely by screaming at things that can’t scream back.”

I feel like she did that a lot for a thousand years...

[NcF]

And what a dream she had to start with.

Ah sh*t, here we go again.