Labyrinth: Return of Discord

Once he was calm, Discord closed his eyes.  He slowed his heartbeat simply by willing it.  The air around him seemed to hold still, waiting for him to move, for an exhaled breath to push it into a current, but for that moment he did nothing.

His heart squeezed.  Tha-  In that beat, he sensed her.  She was running out of the castle into the garden.  His heart squeezed again to push the blood through.  -thump.

As his eyes opened, he was no longer in the castle, but floating in the air.  He looked down to see her below.  Her pale, hardly pink hair ruffled in the wind as she ran across the candy grass toward the chocolate maze.  His brow knitted together as he watched her with curiosity.

"Where are you going, little pegasus?"  he asked softly and slithered through the air to follow her.

She hesitated outside the once-hedges.  Her trembling legs shook before she collapsed and cried.  Her salty tears clung to the sugary green licorice, causing it to melt and grow sticky.  When she felt it get stuck in her coat, she shook one leg to try to shake it off, and when it clung to her she just dropped the leg back down.

This confused Discord further and he landed quietly behind her.  "And what are you trying to accomplish by running away, exactly?"  When she didn't move, he nudged her with one hoof.  "Come now, it really is no fun if you don't at least try.  Your friends certainly expect you to join them to defeat me, after all."

Fluttershy curled up.  Bits of green got stuck in her mane and tail, which she wrapped around herself.  "I don't want to defeat you."

Confusion was no longer the word to describe how he felt.  Despite his feelings, he continued on as normal and lifted his feet off the ground to sit on the air.  A notebook and a pencil appeared in his paw and claw while a sofa appeared beneath Fluttershy.

"Hmm.  And how long have you been feeling this way?"

Finally, she looked at him.  It was hard to decide on how to react once he saw her face.  Although she was crying, sticky globs of candy grass were smeared on her cheeks and snout.  He just grinned lopsidedly.

She returned his grin with a frown.  "I hate you."

The grin fell.

"What?"

"I hate you," she repeated, her voice louder this time.  She stepped off the couch.  "I hate you for making me care about you!"

His brow furrowed.  "But that's what evil villains do, my dear.  They lie."

"I...  I felt so guilty for rejecting you, and-"

A twitch coursed through him.  Nearby, a bird turned into a waffle, which fell from the sky and landed on her head.  The tense moment was broken by Discord's laughter.  He regained his composure quickly, however, and wiped a tear from his eye.

"Oh, sweet little Fluttershy."  He tossed the notebook and pencil and moved closer to her.  "Why should you feel guilty?  You followed my plan exactly."

She stared up at him.  Her eyes were cold and dark.  The near-empty stare chilled him to the bone and he withdrew as though he had been bitten, a startled look on his face.

The heavy fog around his mind lifted from that stare that seemed to bore into his soul.  He blinked a few times as he felt the freedom to think without his own laughter echoing in his ears.  Chaos magic was powerful, but it came at a heavy cost:  sanity.

Briefly, he recalled how she once was days ago.  No, moons.  Time was such a fickle thing when trapped within the confines of one's own mind.  He tried to look at her and see the mare she had been when he brought her into his realm of chaos, which had been carefully reconstructed from her memories.

He scowled.  She was so different, and suddenly, he hated it.  He snapped and the beautiful white dress from the ballroom wrapped itself around her.  Ribbons pulled themselves through her mane and the silver trinkets dangled from the woven tresses.

"There.  That's better."  He paused, then his scowl darkened.  It wasn't better.

Her previously canary yellow coat was almost as pale as the dress.  She looked down at the dress in confusion and disgust.  What had happened to that gentle blush when he had first conjured it for her, or the way she looked in the mirror and gasped with awe?

The chaos within him started to churn.  The clarity of his mind started to fade.  His lips twitched slowly into a smile as he lost control again.  He laughed and waved his hand, the dress turning into a straitjacket that wrapped tightly around her, causing her to fall to the ground without the use of her forelegs.

"Well, my dear, this has been fun, I must say!"  He loomed over her as she struggled against the jacket.  "But I have a kingdom to rule, after all."

She looked up at him with anger.  Frustration.  Sadness.

The last one wrenched his heart and he reacted out of instinct to the pain.  He growled and teleported himself away.

The straitjacket seemed to loosen its grip before it disappeared, but Fluttershy remained still.  She stared at the horizon she could see from where she laid on the ground, then slowly closed her eyes.

"No more tears," she muttered to herself.  "Come on, Fluttershy.  Get yourself together."

Her foreleg trembled as she raised a hoof and planted it firmly on the ground.  She started to lift herself up with great strain, then fell back down.  The weight of her own depression was too heavy, but she was out of tears.

"Oh, who am I kidding?  It's useless.  I'm useless.  I cared about a monster.  Now Equestria is doomed, and it's all my fault."

The last bit of color that still lingered in her coat faded, leaving her in a monochrome state of different shades of grey.

In the castle, Discord reappeared in the throne room near the teacup.  He took a deep breath and roared,  "Celestia!  I know this is your doing!"

He threw his claw forward and shattered the teacup, all of the ponies - and the dragon - inside falling to the floor.  The shattered bits of the china and gelatin melted away into the stone floor.  The ribbon still around Celestia's snout unwrapped itself and fluttered away.

Discord paced around them with a predator's hunger.  His eyes were narrowed and a sneer was on his lips.

"What happened, Discord?"  Celestia held her head high with regal grace.  "What did you do?"

"I do?  What did I do?  No, Celestia, I am asking what did you do!"  He stormed up to her.  "Are you messing with my mind, just as you messed with Fluttershy's?"

Twilight and the others looked at the princess with confusion, save for Luna, who looked away with knowing guilt.

Celestia's gaze didn't waver, nor did she flinch back when Discord drew near.  "I cannot do such a thing.  You are the one who trapped my magic, after all."

He twitched.  He pulled away and started to pace again, then laughed.  "Of course!  The other unicorn must have recovered and done this."

He snapped and a cage with Rainbow Dash and a sullen Rarity appeared.  At the sight of her, his laughter faded.

"Rainbow!  Rarity!"  Twilight tried to run toward them, but Discord put a paw on her head and stopped her.  "Discord, let them go!"

"No.  Not until one of you reverses what you've done."  He snapped them all into the cage, which grew in size to accommodate them, and snapped himself to the throne.  He tapped his talons against his paw pads.  "And you all can just stay in time out until one of you fesses up."

Twilight embraced Rainbow Dash and Rarity.

"I'm so glad you two are all right!"

Applejack eyed the grey unicorn.  "I'm not so sure 'bout that, Twilight.  Looks like Rarity's sufferin' from whatever Discord did to Fluttershy."

Discord flinched.  "Me?"  He smiled with innocence.  "I didn't do that to her.  She did that to herself!"

Twilight stepped to the bars to make eye contact with him.  "Of course you did it to her!  You're the one that begged her to love you!  What did you expect to happen when you broke her heart?"

"Broke... her... heart?"  he repeated slowly, as though she spoke a foreign language.  "Broke her heart?  Now, isn't that a bit over-dramatic?"  He tapped his talons on the arm of the throne.

"Discord," Celestia interrupted in a soft voice that was somehow louder than all of theirs.  "What exactly are you afflicted with that you believe one of us caused?"

Discord's gaze flickered to meet hers.  He grinned.  "You want to know, dear Tia?"  He snapped.

Celestia cried out suddenly and her knees buckled.  She dropped to the floor of the cage.

"Celestia!"

Twilight and her friends, save for the depressed Rarity, moved toward her, but Luna was there before any of them.

"Sister!"  She put both of her hooves on Celestia's.  "Sister, are you all right?!"  She jerked her head.  "What has thou done?!"  As she yelled, her royal voice shook the bars of the cage.

"Only what she did to me."

"Reverse what thou has done!"

"No,"  Celestia said in a weak, trembling voice.  She lifted her head.  "You are mistaken, Discord.  I know this pain."  Despite her tears, she smiled.  "Only one pony caused this."

Discord disappeared and reappeared by the cage, grasping the bars.  "Then reverse it!"

"I cannot."  She put her head over her sister's neck and pulled her close for a comforting hug.  "When I felt this pain, the only cure was the return of my sister."  She closed her eyes.  "You, like Fluttershy, are suffering heartbreak."

Silence fell on the room.

Pinkie was unsurprisingly the one to interrupt it with a cheer.  "I was right!  I said he was Fluttershy's special somepony!"

They all looked at her in varying expressions, ranging from Celestia's gentle smile to Spike's light disgust to Applejack's annoyed scoff.

"Pinkie, ya never said that!"

"Yeah-huh."  She giggled.  "I said he was special."

Discord took a few steps away from the cage.  "That...  would suggest that I cared for that weak little pegasus!"  He laughed.  He grabbed his sides and flipped over in the air as his laughter seized his whole body.  "Th-the mere... idea of it...  You're killing me!"

Rainbow Dash groaned loudly.  "Would somepony please fill me in?!"  Her wings twitched with irritation.  "Your letter said to come here, and when I did, that... that thing trapped me in here with Rarity!"  She glanced at the unicorn.  "And don't get me started on her!"

Celestia wiped the tears from her eyes and lifted her head.  "Discord, where is Fluttershy?"

His laughter ceased.  He leaned his head back to look at her upside-down.  "Oh, somewhere or another."

The elder princess's gaze remained steady.  "Summon her here."

"And why should I do that?"

"Because even without my magic, I can still sense my subjects.  And I can no longer sense her presence."