Up the Rungs
Snakes and Ladders
by Monochromatic
It started, as most things in my life tend to do, with moi.
Specifically, it started in an Equestrian city that is as beautiful as it is deadly, much like myself. A city of wonders, of glitz and glam that draws your attention away from the vipers living amongst its citizens, whispering and hissing and judging your every step, every move, and every word.
Does it sound like I’m bitter? It does, doesn’t it? Well, let me assure you that I’m not.
Blue magic enveloped a doorknob, and a grand oak door swung open, allowing us safe passage into the castle suite I’d been staying at for the past week or so. The smell of scented oils caressed my nose, and I allowed myself to get lost in it, losing track of the conversation I was having.
“And then Pinkie said that I should organize a Twilit Ballroom Gala, which I know she only suggested because she wants to organize a party in the castle, but I talked it over with Princess Celestia and she thinks it’s a great idea.”
Twilight’s voice carried throughout the room, a soothing ambient sound to the maelstrom of thoughts that consumed me. I did feel bad about it, you know? The poor dear had reserved an entire day of her visit just to see me, and she doubtless would have had a better time with a plush doll of myself.
I had a question, you see.
No.
A statement, perhaps, might be the better word. In truth, I had an affirmation to put before my friend, and more than being frightened by her reaction, by the fear that she wouldn’t reassure me as I hoped, I was frightened by the fact that her reassurances might mean nothing in the end.
The door closed behind me with a heavy thud. I noticed—or felt, rather—the chilly air brushing my coat, and my eyes drifted towards the charred remains of logs in the fireplace.
“Oh, please. Her? Work? I bet she’s flirted her way to the top. ”
“Flirted? I think you mean manipulated, darling.”
“Probably both.”
Vipers. Slithering through the city dressed in silk and jewelry and smiles as fake as the tiara that clung to my head and reminded me of the fact that I did not belong.
I’m not bitter.
I’m not.
“Rarity?” Twilight called, and I realized I’d been staring at the fireplace a bit too long. I turned to her and she frowned. “Rarity, were you even paying attention?”
“Oh, goodness, Twilight, I’m afraid I wasn’t,” I said, pressing a hoof against my chest and fluttering my eyelashes. “It’s rather hard not to drift off when listening to a voice as soothing as yours.”
She rolled her eyes. “Right,” she said with a laugh, moving into the room and dropping her saddlebags onto a nearby chair.
A smile curved my lips, and I giggled apologetically. “I’m sorry, Twilight. I got distracted by the fireplace.” I licked my lips. “It’s quite chilly in here, don’t you think? At what time does your train leave? Do you have time for one last cup of tea?”
“I think so,” she replied. “I still have some time left before I need to leave.”
“Fabulous.” I left my saddlebags near hers. “Be a dear and put the kettle on, won’t you?”
Twilight blinked. “The kettle?” she asked, looking towards the kitchenette in the distance. “For the tea?”
“I should think so,” I said, levitating several logs from a basket and dropping them inside the fireplace. “I do hope you know me better than to be barbaric enough to use magic to heat it up, Twilight!”
“What? No, I know that, but…” She looked over the kitchenette and frowned. “Do you even have a kettle here? I thought these were just for decoration.” She gestured towards the bell pull hanging near the window. “We can have someone bring us tea and cookies from the kitchen.”
“There’s no need for that,” I replied, perhaps a bit more curtly than usual in the hope that Twilight would, as they say, get the hint. “There’s no reason at all to have somepony trot all the way up here just to bring us tea.”
She laughed.
“It’s never bothered you before,” she said.
“Well, it’s bothering me now,” I replied sharply — sharper than intended — and before the guilt could set in for raising my voice, I forced a smile and nodded towards a cupboard under the stove. “I believe I saw a kettle there earlier this week.”
Twilight paused for a moment, her brow furrowing, but if my change in attitude had caused any suspicion in her, it clearly wasn’t enough to warrant investigation. She followed my tacit request and opened the cupboard.
“Oh, you were right,” she exclaimed, taking out a white kettle and filling it with water.
I moved my gaze away from her, listening to the murmur of flames within the stove while I grabbed a long matchstick from atop the fireplace and struck it against the bricks, a small red flame engulfing its tip.
I watched as it burned, the flame getting closer and closer to my hoof, and it wasn’t until it was a few inches away that I finally flicked it into the fireplace, the magically-enhanced logs quickly crackling to burning life.
Fire that consumed everything it touched, much like I was being consumed by…
Well, let us not get ahead of ourselves, I suppose.
Once the water boiled, and once two cups of chamomile tea were set at the coffee table, my royal friend moved towards the couch, lying down upon it with a grand sigh which I politely elected to take as a yawn. It wouldn’t do to pry lest she wanted to open up.
“Tired, darling?” I asked sympathetically, taking a spot on the opposite side of the couch. “That was quite the yawn.”
She smiled, raising an eyebrow. “Are you doing that thing where you purposefully mistake sighs with yawns so the other pony corrects you and you have a polite way of asking what’s wrong?”
“That depends.” I took the cup in my hooves and gave my friend a meaningful look. “Would you like to tell me what’s wrong?”
She sighed again, picking up her cup of tea and blowing the steam away. “There’s nothing wrong. I’m just… I guess I am tired.” She took a sip of the tea and continued. “There’s a few pieces of legislation I’m trying to push to help the economic growth of Ponyville and the other towns near Canterlot, but it’s hard when not everypony in power is on my side.” When I raised my eyebrow, she elaborated. “Canterlot nobles who own lands near us. Actually exercising any of my political power feels like playing a game of ‘red light green light’ with them.”
I laughed. It wasn’t bitter.
“Everypony’s watching,” she said, playfully.
“And everypony’s judging,” I added, teasingly.
We both took a sip of our tea.
There we sat, Twilight Sparkle and I, quietly ruminating up until the precise moment when her eyes drifted towards the coffee table and her gaze found the assorted jewelry I’d left scattered about. A few necklaces, some rings, two pairs of earrings and, finally, a golden brooch shaped like Princess Celestia’s cutie mark.
“Oh, isn’t that the Royal Brooch Princess Celestia gave you at the Winter Fashion Festival?”
“It is, yes.”
She smiled brightly, seeming pleased. "I'm glad you use it. It's very pretty and rare. Only a few hundred ponies have gotten those over her millenia of rule." She beamed at me with what seemed to be pride. “You worked hard for it.”
My breath caught in my throat for a moment. You worked hard for it. A statement said with such conviction, it was clear Twilight believed it. It was certainly an encouraging statement, but it was also damning, wasn’t it? Damning in ways Twilight did not realize, and as damning as the thought it brought forth in me. A silly little twisted version of a line from a beloved novel.
"It is a truth universally acknowledged," I said, "that I, Rarity, a single mare who desires recognition and success must, without a doubt, be a social-climbing bitch."
Now that, my darling, is a statement.
And a rather strong one at that, considering the fact that my recently cleaned coat was nearly stained by the hot tea Twilight spat out.
"You're a what?!"
My eyes drifted briefly towards the alicorn seated on the opposite side of the couch, the poor dear now hastily drying the tea off her own coat.
"You heard what I said, Twilight," I said, looking back into my own cup of tea, taking a spoon and swirling it inside, trying to get rid of those pesky little lumps of sugar at the bottom. "I'm a social-climbing bitch."
The longest and perhaps the loudest silence we'd shared in quite some time followed. If I had a knife, I was quite certain I could cut through the tension I had brought in with a single line.
Well, tension on Twilight's part, at least. I was fine. Altogether at peace with the statement as I battled away at the sugar lumps.
"I mean, yes, I did hear what you said," she said after recovering. She put the teacup down on the table and sat up straight, a pronounced frown marring her face. "I… I'm just… I'm trying to understand how me saying your brooch was nice led to that."
"Interesting, isn't it?" I replied, fascinated by the swirls of white sugar finally dissolving.
"Fascinating," Twilight replied, clearly anything but fascinated. I finally looked up and met her severe gaze. "Can you elaborate on why you just said that?"
"The Princess gave me this brooch, as you know," I continued, levitating said object from the table and looking it over. Made of the finest gold and shaped like the Princess's cutie mark, it was a piece of jewelry given only to those held in Her Highness's greatest esteem.
For me, it was a treasured gift from a dear friend and lifelong role model.
For everypony else save my friends, it was a symbol of undeserved status.
"Rarity," Twilight said gravely. "Rarity, did somepony say that to you?"
And I couldn't help but laugh. Not out of ill-will or anything of the sort, not to mock my dear friend, but simply because…
"Darling, you are naive.”It was both heartening and crushing that she did not understand. How could she? I was glad that she didn’t. It meant she was better than them. "Darling, dearest, Twilight Sparkle, they don't have to say it. It is a fact."
"That is not a fact," Twilight cut off, her lovely voice taking on that certain tone that announced an upcoming lecture. Were we in her library, an open book would have doubtless appeared before her. "A fact is a statement that is consistent with reality or can be proven with unquestionable evidence and careful observation. You being a social-climber is an opinion. You being a heroine of Equestria is a fact."
I sighed theatrically. "Nowadays, is there really a difference between an opinion and a fact?"
"Yes, there is!" she insisted, and I myself couldn't tell if I was simply trying to tease her or truly posing a question. A bit of both, I think.
“Perhaps academically, yes, but realistically, when so many ponies share the same opinion, it might as well be a fact.”
“That isn’t—”
"That just makes it worse, you know," I interrupted, moving away from the topic lest she would actually summon a dictionary and lecture me. "Me being a 'heroine of Equestria'. It means that everything I've ever achieved was given to me because 'I'm a heroine' and not because of my own merits. And really, they’re right. I’m not even a heroine at all. I simply stand there looking, granted, fabulously charming and then I scream a little and faint on my couch while I wait for you to do all the hard work and give me the credit."
"That is not true!" Twilight protested, anger flaring in her eyes, the poor dear clearly conflicted by the fact that the terrible pony saying these terrible things was myself. "You know that's not true! You’ve done a lot!"
"Have I?" I asked her. "It's true I did work hard to be a social-climber."
"Rarity! Will you stop?"she snapped, and now her wings flared up until they returned to her side when she groaned. "Where did all of this even come from? And—and I just spent the entire day with you. Why did you wait until I literally have only thirty minutes left before I need to leave you to do whatever it is you’re doing?!”
I hummed again. "To raise the stakes? To add flair and drama to your day?" I grinned at her and fluttered my eyes. "To perhaps compel you into staying another day here?"
"Rarity, this isn't funny.”
My smile slipped away and with it my facade.
"Ponies gossip, Twilight," I said, finally sobering up. A dry laugh left my lips. "I do love gossiping, it's true, but the act seems far less appealing now that I've been given a rather nasty dose of my own medicine."
She fell quiet.
“Oh.”
“Oh, indeed,” I softly replied. “I wasn’t going to say anything, if it makes you feel better. I was going to rise above it, as it were, but…”
But I suppose I was a bit bitter after all.
“After what happened with the journal being published, you would think a silly little group of ponies gossiping would be easy to ignore, but to know that both sides of society see me as a manipulating self-absorbed bit—”
“Rarity, don’t. Please.”
“They don’t understand,” I said. “Back home, in Ponyville. They look at me and sneer at me for wanting success, for being as polite with the snobs as I am with everypony I meet, and they will never understand.”
“I do,” she said.
“No, you don’t, Twilight,” I replied. “It’s awful. It is horrific that this world is ruled by who you are and who you know, but that is the way Canterlot and the upper echelons of society work. And you will never understand what it is like to work hard, to try and make it on your own, only for everypony to disregard your hard work and intentions simply because of what your goal is and—”
“Everything I ever had was because I was Princess Celestia’s student.”
My anger disappeared. Twilight stared at me from the other side of the couch, her expression undecipherable. Torn between detached and intense. I blinked at her.
“Pardon?”
“I grew up as Princess Celestia’s protégée my entire life. That was the only thing that mattered about me to everypony in Canterlot. It was never because of what I did, but who I knew.” She faltered, swallowing down whatever lump was in her throat, and continued. “I shut myself off from friendships because I assumed no one would ever bother to go deeper than what they’d heard about me.”
Two instincts battled within me. The first, to go and lovingly tell off whoever had dared to make my best friend want to be a social recluse. The second, to protect myself from the thinly-veiled insinuation that I was wrong for trying to be a part of high society, which only highlighted how little she understood why I did it.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Twilight,” I said instead.
She smiled briefly. “That’s not what you really wanted to say, is it?” she asked, and I felt oddly proud of the fact that years of friendship had finally taught Twilight how to read ponies as effortlessly as she did books. Or maybe I was simply that predictable.
I pretended it was the former.
“Oh no, I truly am sincerely sorry that happened to you, darling,” I said carefully. “But you must realize that it does seem as though you’re trying to shame me for wanting to be part of a society that mistreated you.”
Twilight raised her eyebrow. “I never said that.”
“Twilight, darling, dearest, sweetheart, you just did.”
“No, I did not,” Twilight replied. “You heard what you wanted to hear. I only confirmed the opinion that Canterlot mostly works based on who you are and who you know. Doesn’t the fashion industry work that way too?”
“Well, yes, unfortunately, but that’s a different thing altogether, Twilight.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Is it, though? I mean, aren’t nobles and nouveau riche technically your primary consumers when you take into account all the fashion and social events they regularly organize? Not to mention the fact that they’re the only ones who even wear clothes on a daily basis?” She raised an eyebrow. “How would you be able to sell clothes to a consumer if you don’t know them?”
Though I valiantly tried to, I was hard pressed to find anything to say. It seemed, after all, that Twilight did perhaps understand.
“I…”
“Do you remember my birthday party? The one we had here in Canterlot?” she asked, and I felt my cheeks burn as I tried to melt into the couch.
“Ah, yes.” I took a sip of tea. “The one where I made the mistake of trying to attend two parties at once rather than attending the one that mattered?”
“No, your only mistake was lying about it, not the fact that you tried to attend both at the same time,” she clarified, and it hardly did much to alleviate my shame. Or, at least not until she asked, “Do you remember what I told you when I found out?”
And now that I remembered crystal clear, and as I recalled the event, tears stained my eyes.
"You said you were surprised," I said at length. "You said you hadn't realized I was such a savvy businesspony, and that with the Grand Galloping Gala coming up, it made perfect sense that I was trying to mingle with them as they could be potential customers." A soft laugh left my lips. “Twilight Sparkle, it would seem I’ve underestimated you.”
She gifted me a smile. “A little,” she teased before sobering up and continuing. “That’s how it works. There's a term for that—"
"Networking?" I cut her off.
"No — I mean, yes, but more accurately, making friends," she said. "You've always been there for me. You’re my best friend. I was more than fine with you missing one birthday party if it meant you’d be able to better secure your livelihood." She then offered a playful smile. “As long as you don’t lie about it, of course.”
I stared down at my tea. “Of course,” I said, cheeks still burning no doubt. And yet… and yet the shame faded and a timid thought arose. “But… what if that’s not entirely true? What if I also do still love the parties and the thrills of high society? I… I was a snob, I was ashamed of—”
“You’re not anymore, though.”
“But I was.”
“And so was I,” she said unrelenting, and before I could cut her off, she persevered. “Don’t you remember the first time I came here? I was a total snob! I didn’t think any crazy fun-obsessed pony from Ponyville would understand anything about Nightmare Moon or saving the world.”
I couldn’t stop a laugh. “Yes, it’s rather true you did hold us all with some amount of contempt early on,” I said, and the sight of her blush rather cheered me up.
“Yes. Well. Anyway, that’s not my point,” she quickly said despite having brought up the topic herself. “My point is that I learned. I became a better pony because of my friends. Because of you. We helped you appreciate Ponyville, and you helped me appreciate Canterlot more than I ever did in all the years I lived here.”
Silence.
“But ponies still continue to think of me as a self-centered social-climber,” I pointed out.
Her ears lowered, and she too fell silent, her brows knitting together as she sought out the proper words. “Yes, they do,” she said finally. “And there will always be ponies who think that no matter what you do or say. Just like I said, ponies hear what they want to hear.”
“That’s not very encouraging,” I noted.
“No,” she conceded, “depending on your definition of social-climber. If you’re thinking of the erroneous definition which is to use ponies solely as tools for social-standing, then yes, it’s not encouraging. But if you use my definition, which is to put yourself in the best place to achieve your dreams using hard work, great social skills, creativity and generosity towards everypony, then yes, Rarity, you’re a social-climbing bitch and I wouldn’t want you to be anything else.”
It was liberating to laugh at that, even though tears wet my eyes. Like shackles I’d been dragging along behind me had suddenly vanished.
It seemed I was no longer bitter.
“My, my!” I exclaimed, wiping my eyes with a nearby tissue. “I daresay I might adopt your definition of the term, Twilight. If only more ponies shared that opinion.”
She hummed. “We can figure that out some other time,” she said. “Because my train is leaving in less than twenty minutes.”
“What? Already?!” I gasped. Horrors! I felt like we’d only just started to talk about the topic! “After everything we’ve been through?! After a friendship bonding session like we’ve not had in months?! Twilight, you wound me!”
“Well, you shouldn’t have waited until the last second to bring this up!” she exclaimed.
“Oh, I did, didn’t I?’ I said, leaning back and sighing dramatically. “I will only keep you long enough to say—” I offered her my grandest smile. “Thank you, Twilight, for having such a high opinion of me.”
She smiled back.
“It’s not an opinion, Rarity. It’s a fact.”
FIN