I'm Starved For Something Real

Author's Note:

I've had the title for this fic in my head for a few days, but I didn't know what the plot would be until I watched "To Where And Back Again" today. And lo and behold, this happened.

A good friend of mine ships fluttercord, and I thought of him and one of his stories, or rather the latter parts of one that he has yet to post, when I wrote this. So this one's for you, Pip. Thanks for all of your inspiration and help. You're awesome.

Enjoy all the feels!

She was there, wrapped in his claws.

A moment, so joyous and pure for the Lord of Chaos himself, one so unanticipated he did not have words. The best he could do was hold onto her as he’d never held onto anyone else. Feelings rushed past him at lightening speed, so fast he couldn’t catch one even with his chaos magic. Memories flashed before his eyes of auld lang syne, the days they’d spent together in the past. Every tea party, every kind gesture, every moment of their friendship that he wanted to cleave to and savor forever. The memories, good and bad mangled together, served a point. They emphasized just how truly important the pony he was holding was to him. She had changed his life in so many ways. For the first time, he had opened himself up to friendship.

But there was more to it than that, wasn’t it?

Her kindness, her shyness, her caring, it had worked together to touch something inside of him. Instead of just opening him up to friendship, she had taken it a step further. She, and she alone, had opened him up to the idea of love.

Love. Many a time he had scorned the notion, believing that love did not truly exist. He himself hadn’t experienced it, and what he knew about it came from his powers. Love often created a chaotic climate that he felt drawn to. He had seen it for a large part of the time in ponies who’s love lives were in pandemonium, that often led to them breaking up or drifting apart. In the millennia he’d been around, he’d seen few examples of love gone right, and far too many of them gone wrong. It wasn’t a stretch to become jaded to such a concept when what he’d seen of it was mostly negative.

And then, Fluttershy came and everything was different.

He hadn’t seen it, until this moment, just how different everything had truly been. She had opened his eyes to more things than he could have possibly thought, helping him to see things in a different light. All this time, he had thought it had been her, her friendship, that helped him do that. Now, in this moment of complete clarity, he saw the truth, and took the blinders off of his eyes. It wasn’t just her that made that change. It was the love she had given him. He had never seen the forest for the trees until right then.

It wasn’t hard to imagine love being real now. For an odd moment, a space of a heartbeat perhaps, he understood how changelings felt. Once he understood what he felt, he felt starved for love. Her love. He had never craved a thing so much. No power, no control, no authority, no magic- it all paled in comparison to that desperate need for love.

He loved her. He saw that now. It felt like having been born blind and he was just now being able to see. He must have been blind, too, not to see it sooner. But the question was, did she feel it too? He wanted that, he wanted her to feel that way too, because maybe it would make him feel less alone. Even with friends, he still felt like an outsider much of the time. Being a draconequus in Equestria, near none of his own kind, tended to do that. He kept those emotions locked inside of him tight, in a vault under padlock and key. He opened it sometimes, the vault, letting small parts of it out, but now, he realized he only did that with her. He felt safe with her. Now, he realized, he would have to open up that vault completely and make himself vulnerable if he wanted to tell her this.

When he stopped crushing her to him, he pulled back enough to look into her eyes. In those aqua colored eyes, so bright and grateful, he nearly drowned. She looked back at him, and her expression turned to a more studious one that he’d seen before when she was trying to understand her animals. Instead, it was trained on him, on his eyes. He couldn’t fathom what she might have seen there. He knew what he was trying to convey, but she would take what she wanted from it, he knew. He could not influence her in this choice as he had once tried to in all his selfishness, because it had to be hers as much as it was his. He could only hope she would understand.

Her expression changed again, now. A flickering of surprise, and then a sheepishness that caused her cheeks to turn the most adorable shade of pink. She wasn’t one for speaking often, he knew, and he himself would not know how to communicate this feeling. There weren’t words for it. Silence was their medium now. He inched his face closer to hers. She did not cower away at this point. He thought that might mean something. She drew nearer to him, maybe fractionally, but enough to be noticed. So she wasn’t afraid. At least, she didn’t look it. He took the risk, and got a bit closer than before. Her muzzle was almost touching him, now, and he could feel her breath on him. Feeling that, he wasn’t afraid to take that last step, and close the distance.

The kiss was an explosion. Every nerve ending Discord had stood at attention, tiny soldiers standing straight up inside of his body. It warmed him like a fire, and electrified him not unlike an eel. He might have been compelled to electrify himself in that moment if he didn’t think somewhere in the back of his mind that it could hurt her. The kiss obliterated logic, confounded his senses, and took away his thoughts. The raw power and acceptance, accompanied with the love he felt for her was more empowering than anything he had ever felt.

When the kiss broke apart by their mutual need for air, Fluttershy was blushing and looking at him with a small smile. Discord grinned at that, and realized something.

He was the lord of chaos, a master of many things, including illusions. But now, Fluttershy had given him something he didn’t know he needed. Something real.

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