“Why did she do it?”
“What do you mean?” asked the individual sitting on his banana-yellow chair, idly scratching behind one horn with the tip of his pencil. “Why did who do what?”
“You know very well what ‘who and what’ I’m talking about, me,” Discord said pushing himself up on one elbow and giving himself a glare. The tips of his horns began to smolder. “Twilight Sparkle.”
“Still talking about her, I see,” came his response. His counterpart gave the back of his head another scratch. “Why this fixation with a small, purple unicorn?”
“It’s not a fixation,” Discord said, snapping as a vague sense of unease twisted its way across his tongue like an allegro lemon. His counterpart flinched, the tip of his pencil snapping against the back of his skull as he pulled away. He clicked his tongue, reached up, and broke off the end of his horn, giving it an idle flick to check that it was sharp before putting it to the pad and writing once more.
“I see, still claiming it’s not a fixation.”
“It isn’t!” Discord said, shaking his head and spreading his mismatched arms wide as he sat up. “She’s an annoying little know-it-all. There’s nothing to fixate about!”
“Except the event,” his counterpart said, still looking down at the paper. “You keep bringing it up. In fact, according to my research, you’ve been thinking about her and that event, oh, say—” There was a faint ring, and he reached up to his mouth, tearing free a sheet of paper and flipping it around. “At least some of the time,” he said, pointing at a picture of Twilight Sparkle with one claw. A line of text was printed under the image, words identical to what he’d just said.
“In fact, based on this conversation, I think I’d be willing—” Another ding, another sheet of paper, “—to upgrade you to ‘most of the time,’ not some.”
“Stuff it, me,” Discord said turning on the couch and facing the twin suns that hung in the sky. The landscape was remarkably barren today, he realized as he glanced at the echoing, sun-baked dunes of mashed potatoes. Here and there a lump of whipped cream had been shaped into a vague melted mass that had probably been a statue of some kind, but inattention had reduced most of them to a sludgy ooze making its way down the sides of piles of mashed potatoes. “If you want to get my attention, give me numbers. Good hard, solid numbers I can’t wrap my brain around.”
“Very well.” There was a faint click, followed by a whirring noise, and Discord looked up to see his counterpart standing over him, mixing his brains with an egg-beater. “I’d say that in the four days since the event, you’ve been thinking about our little purple friend at least twenty-twelve percent of the time.”
Discord grimaced. “That is serious.”
“Indeed.”
“I don’t like serious.”
“No, I don’t,” his counterpart agreed, licking the beaters. “Ooh, it even tastes purple.”
“Wonderful,” he said, shaking his head again. “So what am I supposed to—”
“Discord.”
He paused and glanced around. Strange. That voice had sounded familiar. And it had definitely been directed at him. Maybe it was—
“Discord!” The twin suns shook and then dimmed, something white and purple moved across their surface. There was a faint rumbling sound, as if the sky itself was shaking.
“Oh, now what?” With a last look at his counterpart, Discord leapt into the sky and soared up towards the twin suns. As he came closer, they resolved themselves into massive, dome-like windows of tinted, yellow glass. Windows to somewhere else. And standing on the other side of the glass, in that somewhere else, was a gigantic, white, four-legged figure with a disapproving glare on her face.
“Of course,” he muttered as he reached the glass. “Just when I’m getting somewhere at last.” He let out a long, exaggerated sigh that dropped a massive, oversized mallet into his waiting hands. “So much for ‘me time,’” he said, pulling the brim of his cap low over his eyes as he pulled back.
The mallet let out a giant quack as it struck one of the windows, the sound echoing across the landscape. For a moment, all seemed still, and then the glass shattered, pieces cascading down around him like peanut brittle.
As a matter of fact … he reached out with one claw and grabbed a piece as it flew past, taking a quick bite before spitting it out. Ugh, walnut brittle. Of course. He tossed the mallet over his shoulder as he flew out past the window, expanding to his full size as he squeezed through the frame.
“Sorry about that, Celestia,” he said as his old body collapsed in a pile of glass behind him. “Got lost in my own head for a moment. You know how it is, you’re painting a hall, your mind starts to wander …” His ear popped, a pink, wrinkled brain bursting free with a mad giggle. He snagged it with one claw and shoved it back into place. “And next thing you know, you’re lost in your head. What did you need?” If the solar diarch was impressed by his show, she didn’t show it. Instead she seemed focused on something behind him.
“What I needed, Discord,” Celestia said, nodding her head slightly at the wall behind him, one corner of her mouth turned downward, “was for you to stop.”
“Eh?” He turned, eyes widening as he saw the results of his handiwork. What was supposed to be a simple patch job, a restoration of a few feet worth of scorch marks left by Tirek during his wanderings through the castle to their original color, had instead become a massive mural that stretched the length of the hall—as well as, if he guessed correctly based on the stares of the nearby staff, a decent portion of the nearby halls as well. What had once been white marble with gold-and-red trim was now an impressive—if he did say so himself—collection of images that were part of the marble itself. There were multiple portraits of himself—even one of him sitting in a hot tub made of cream pies, random splashes of bright color that seemed to twist even as he looked at them, even a cartoonish image of Princess Celestia with—of all things—a bright pink mane in place of her normal multi-hued ethereal one that made her look as if she was related to Pinkie Pie. He reached out with a single claw and gave the pink mane a tap. It was cotton-candy flavored, and loud to the ears—if loud was a flavor; he couldn’t quite recall if it was or wasn’t to most.
But what was even more jarring was the number of purplish figures scattered along the wall. There were at least a dozen of them, all with varying expressions of confusion. It looked as though the number he’d given himself had been right on the money.
“Well, it is an excellent, and I must admit, mostly harmless bit of chaos,” he said, glancing over at Celestia, who didn’t seem quite as amused by it. It was the truth, that was certain. For something he’d done while not even paying attention, it was a pretty impressive bit of work. He could feel the energy seeping off of it, the subtle rips and eddies in the natural state of things already feeding him increased amounts of his own magic. Give it a few days and it would “harden,” so to speak, his disruptions sinking in and providing less and less power as the rest of the world adjusted. And the bump certainly wasn’t anything impressive, nothing on the level of what, say, levitating a mountain for a few days could give him. Though that wasn’t always the case. Sometimes the most surprising changes to things could give the most astonishing results; that was just how his own brand of things worked. Chaos was fickle.
“But not what you wanted,” he said at last as Celestia continued to give him a disapproving look. “And, quite honestly, not what I wanted either. I mean, look at your backside in this picture,” he said, tapping the cartoonish caricature with one claw. “It’s clearly much too large. Why—”
“Discord…”
He winced. “I know, I know,” he said, shaking his head. “If it makes you feel any better, this wasn’t on purpose.” He reached out, picked up a corner of the cartoonish image between two fingers, and began to peel it away from the wall, extending his own unique brand of power into the stone and rearranging the atoms in the stone back to a more similar shape to what they had been—although he did make sure to mark one of the veins with a small squiggle that looked suspiciously like his own head. A minor deviation that would ensure just a little bit of chaos for him, as well as bit of amusement if anyone ever noticed.
He held the flat image up in the air, rolled it into a baton and then tapped it against the rest of the stone, sucking up his paintings into the tip and restoring the wall to what it had looked like before Tirek had smashed up against it. So much for that, he thought with a sigh as the flow of magic vanished. He’d probably burned more magic creating it than he’d recovered from it. At this rate it’ll take me months to get back to where I was before Tirek. And it had taken him almost a year to get that far too, with Celestia, Luna, and Fluttershy watching his every move, limiting the amount of chaos he’d been allowed to cause and reap the benefits from. The elements had very nearly stripped him of everything when they’d let him out, and although he’d been restored along with everyone else after Tirek’s defeat, the rainbow-kaboom or whatever Twilight and her little friends had done had been just as unhelpful as the elements had been, canceling out every iota of the power he’d gained during his rampage with Tirek. Not that he was sure he wanted it at the moment. Something about that power made him uneasy, lately.
“Discord?”
He shook his head again and then shoved the baton up his nose, feeling a faint glimmer of chaos energy enter him as it vanished. “I must apologize, Celestia,” he said, looking at her once more. “I really have been off on my own little world lately.” It took a bare glimmer of energy to manifest a small planet next to himself, packed with hundreds of versions of him. And, he noticed as he dismissed it, several yellow pegasi and one purple unicorn. “I’m afraid I was just running on automatic. Why didn’t anyone try to get my attention?”
“They did,” Celestia said, turning and pointing her head head again down the hall in the direction of another faint source of chaos. “You may step forward, now.”
Discord felt his jaw fall off as two members of the Royal Guard stepped out of a nearby doorway. Or at least, two ponies who looked like they had been members of the Royal Guard. Both were still clad in the armor of the pair that had been escorting him around the castle earlier, and both still had the same builds, but there were a few key differences, the first being that neither of them were any longer white. The enchantment on their armor had been suppressed, and both now sported entirely new mane and coat colors. One was a very familiar shade of purple with a two-toned magenta-and-pink mane and tail, while the other was butter yellow, with a pink mane and two disheveled wings that seemed to be unable to sit still poking out of his back.
He couldn’t help it. He let out a snort as the pair glared at him, a snort that quickly grew into laughter. “I’m sorry!” he said, wiping a tear away from his eye and dropping it to the floor before bouncing back onto it. “I really am, but you have to admit, that is funny.”
“Perhaps amusing,” Celestia said, giving him another stare to go along with the unhappy looks the two guards were giving him. “But I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to return Sergeant Brick and Private Spark to normal.”
“Yes, yes,” he said, waving a paw and restoring the pair’s natural colors. The formerly purple Guard let out an audible sigh of relief as he removed his helmet, his mane changing to a dark grey. The other one still looked alarmed, however, and there was still a substantial amount of chaos energy coming off of him. Discord frowned as he looked closer, then nodded and snapped his finger. There was a flash of light, and the Guard’s wings were gone, a unicorn horn back in its rightful place on his head.
“There, all better,” he said, wincing as he felt his energy reserves. Spontaneous transmogrification, even a simple one, took a lot of energy, and just as he’d suspected, there was a lot of energy missing. Days worth, at the current rate.
“Oh, don’t look so glum,” he said as both of the guards continued to give him angry looks. “It wasn’t so bad. Most ponies would pay quite a hoofful of bits for a color job like that, and who wouldn’t want to have wings for a day, hmm?” They continued to glare at him, their expressions silent but disapproving.
“Oh come off it,” he said, his watery seat vanishing as he stood and put his hands on his hips. “It could have been worse. Both of you were still male, weren’t you?” The pair exchanged panicked looks with each other, then glanced at Celestia, bolting as she gave them a nod.
“Discord ...” she said, turning towards him as the pair ran out of sight.
“I know,” he said, raising a paw and placing on his chest. “It was an accident, Celestia. Like I said, I was thinking.”
“I know,” she said, sitting down on the stone floor and looking at him. “You seem to be doing a lot of that lately. This is the third time you’ve gotten lost in your own thoughts, and by far the one where you’ve caused the most mischief.”
“Unintentional mischief,” he said, leaning forward and floating in the air just to annoy her. If she’s going to sit, I’m going to float. “Believe me, Celestia, if I wanted to cause some real chaos around here, I could be a lot more subtle.”
There it was, that faint flash of hostility somewhere behind those normally impassive, calm eyes. Then it was gone, so quickly that he doubted most mortals would have seen it. All it took was even the mention from him of what he could do, and it was there. That would never be different.
“But I won’t,” he said, spinning in the air and resting on his back as he looked at her. “I’m going to do what you ask me to, before I end up back in your garden, just like we agreed.” He spun again, facing the wall and looking for any signs of scorched or molten stone.
“Is that really why you’re doing this?” Celestia asked, and he paused, everything from his breathing to his pulse freezing solid.
“Doing what?” he asked after a moment, turning back toward her as he idly bent a section of stone, smoothing out a leftover depression.
“This,” Celestia said, nodding her head at the wall. “Helping. Because I or my sister will encase you in stone once again if you don’t?”
“That was the deal, Celestia,” he said, frowning. “Remember? You handed down that sentence in front of everyone. I’m on my last rope, my best behavior.”
Celestia frowned. “And what of Twilight Sparkle?”
“I—” Nothing. He tried to talk, opening and closing his mouth, but nothing came. He tapped his head a few times, watching as empty word balloons fell out of his mouth, bouncing along the floor before breaking apart into wisps of smoke.
“I see,” Celestia said, nodding. Then she looked up at the restored hallway. “This is good enough for today, Discord. I have another task for you.”
“Very well,” he said, materializing a pen and paper and preparing to take notes. “What next?”
“Go speak with my sister.”
He nodded, jotting it down. “Yes, and?”
“That’s it.”
He paused, looking down at the single line with a frown. “That’s it?”
“Of course,” she said nodding. There was a smug looking smile on her face.
Moon-butt must have something for me to do that’s particularly distasteful, he thought as he readied his pen. “And?”
“And nothing,” Celestia said, looking up at the wall once more. “Once you’ve spoken with her, the rest of the day is your own—”
That got his attention. Free time, to himself? He let a horseshoe drop from his hand.
“—provided you let either myself or my sister know before you go anywhere.”
He nodded, dropping the other horseshoe to the floor with a clang before dismissing both of the illusions. Celestia didn’t laugh, though he thought he saw just the ghost of smile flicker across her face for a brief moment. Never fails, he thought as he dismissed the notepad. A perfectly good joke, and not even a snicker of amusement. From the funny one, no less. And now she was sending him to speak with her nearly humorless sister. This day is just going to be perfect, isn’t it?
“Luna’s in her study,” Celestia said as she turned to walk away. “Her personal study.”
“And that’s all I need to do, just talk to her?” he asked.
“Of course,” Celestia said, pausing and giving him a faint smile. “Just talk.”
* * *
He was forced to wait outside the door to Luna’s study, two of the Night Guard giving him suspicious looks as he loitered in the hallway. Part of him wanted to exercise a little chaos, maybe change the color of the carpet, or better yet, one of the Guard, but the expressions on their faces said that it would be a bad idea. The crystal armor on their chests marked them as part of her elite personal division, the Crescent, and if he made any trouble, he knew whose side Luna would take.
No-nonsense, he thought as he slid up next to one of them, doing his best impression of the stern, impassive looks on their faces. How dull. They should learn to loosen up a bit. A brief, grey illusion that made him look like a statue didn’t even get a blink.
“Most ponies would have flinched by now,” he said, cocking an eyebrow.
Neither of the pair said anything. They didn’t even glance at him. He frowned, feeling out a little with his magic. One of the pair was a pegasus, he could tell that much. The web-winged and fanged look was just an illusion enchantment, though a highly skillful one. Possibly from the lunar diarch herself.
The other, however, wasn’t an enchantment, but natural. Discord allowed himself a smirk as he stared at the pony. Of course they’d make a natural fit for her Guard, Discord thought, sinking back in the air. I wonder if his partner here knows?
There was a click as the door to the Princess’s study opened and two ponies walked out, each clad from head-to-hoof in crystalline armor pieces that made the armor worn by the Crescent Guard look almost cheap by comparison. Discord watched as the pair walked past him, each giving him a passing glance but seeming surprisingly unconcerned.
Dusk Guard, he thought as he felt the magic coming off of the armor. Now those were some odd ponies. Word had it they’d continued to charge Tirek after he’d sucked all the magic out of them, and even then they’d made him work for that.
I told him those crazy ponies wouldn’t go down as easily as the rest of them, he thought, following the pair with a wandering eye as they rounded the edge of the hall. But nope, he wouldn’t listen. Head under a rock, that one.
“Discord?” At the sound of his name snapped his eyes away from the retreating pair of ponies and towards the door, where Princess Luna was standing with a surprised expression her face. “We—I mean I—did not expect to see you up here. Are you not helping my sister?”
“Oh, I was alright,” he said, shrugging. “Right up until I turned one of my guards purple by mistake.”
“I see,” Luna said, her mane drifting gently in the magical breeze that few could see. He gave it a little flick and watched as her mane swirled about her head. Her patient look soured somewhat, and he smiled.
“And what, may I ask, are you doing here?”
“I’ve been released into your care,” he said, giving a slight bow. “Your sister wanted me to speak with you.”
“I … see,” Luna said after a moment. “Were there any other instructions?”
“Only that if I leave afterwards to go anywhere, I’m to let you or your sister know.”
“Very well,” the Princess said, turning. Had that been a sigh in her voice?
Oh, Celestia, what have you gotten me into now? he wondered as he followed her into her study, the doors shutting with a faint thump. I’d rather talk to insufferable-Applejack than this. He took note of the paintings on the walls, the two plain chairs that sat on the plush carpet in front of the room’s sole desk, and then conjured his own chair into existence, a gaudy, discolored thing that clashed with the room’s colors. A faint wisp of chaos made itself known. Not enough to make up for making the chair, of course, but enough to be a welcome treat.
“So!” he said, smiling as Luna sat down behind her desk. “What do you want me to do next? Clean the royal sewers? Scrub the underside of the city supports? Dust the moon?” A tool for each job appeared in his hand as he said it, only to be tossed over his shoulder and replaced by something new moments later. They were, in fact, quite real, something the palace gardener was sure to be annoyed by as three of her prized bags of fertilizer vanished into Discord’s hands. “You ask it, and it’s yours.”
“Discord, cease your prattle,” Luna said, her own horn flashing and returning each of the wayward items with a recall spell. “I have no intention of giving you another assignment, as you surrendered yourself to the Day Court, not the Night Court.”
“Technically, I surrendered myself to the Cake-flank Court,” he responded, raising a finger. “I was only shunted over to the Day Court when it became apparent that there wasn’t any such thing as the Cake-flank Court. To my disappointment, I might add. But what do you mean you have, as you put it—”
“No intention of giving you another assignment,” one of the portraits on the wall said, in Luna’s voice.
“That,” he said, snapping his claws and returning the picture to normal. “So, ipso facto,” he said, procuring an expensive looking suit with gem-encrusted links that would have turned even the richest heads. “More to the point, to get to the thrust of the matter, that is to say, to determine what you want or what I’m doing here, to make things clear, to bring them to a head, to let the jury know exactly what we’re dealing with …” He clutched the lapel of his jacket with one hand, waving his free paw towards a box full of a dozen various sapients and one living pinata, all of whom were looking on with great interest. “The simple question that you must answer the court, Princess Luna,” he said, letting his voice take on a nice drawl, punctuating each ‘W’ sound with a slight inflection, “is exactly what and why I am here today.”
He paused and struck a pose, the jury clapping with complete disregard for the fact that there wasn’t even enough room in the study for them or their box, much less for them to be standing in it. One of the members, a jackal, was even cheering and holding up a sign with his picture on it. Chasing an ambulance. “Now, can you answer the question, ma’am?”
“Perhaps, Discord,” she said, almost stunning him as the corner of her mouth upturned in a small smile. “If I can but answer with a question of my own?”
He paused, rubbing one hand along his chin. “Hmm,” he said, nodding, still keeping his accent. “It might be a tad unorthodox for our situation, young missy, but I think we can make do. The only problem is that with that game, I’d have to give you the answer, and I don’t know what it is.”
“Very well,” Luna said, crossing her forelegs on the desk. “That may, in fact, be the question.”
He paused, one finger extended, his mouth hanging open. “Oh fine!” he said, shaking his head, his suit losing its ornamentation as the box of jurors vanished. Luna’s desk changed, instead becoming a game show box, like the kind seen at carnival games. There were two others sitting nearby, one occupied by Princess Cadence, the other by—he fought back an urge to groan—Princess Sparkle herself. Luna nodded and glanced at the other two alicorns, one after another.
Blasted Twilight Sparkle, Discord thought, summoning a spotlight on himself and Luna. A loud buzzer sounded somewhere, Luna’s box lighting up. Even when I have my fun, she’s on my mind. Still, appearances … He summoned a microphone and held it up as grand music began playing from somewhere. “Yes, Luna? You’ve taken ‘Improbable Puzzlers’ for fifty bits. And the question is?” He angled the microphone towards her, noting how the spangled jacket he was wearing seeming to be filling the room with points of light.
“Simple, Discord,” the Princess replied. “My question is: What is wrong with you?”
He stepped back, tilting his head to one side as another buzzer rang out. “I’m not quite sure that I know what you—”
“You know perfectly well what I mean,” Luna said, her horn lighting and dispelling his illusion. He dropped back into his mismatched seat with a heavy meow, his shoulders slumping. “As amusing as your illusions and tricks can be from time to time, now is not the place.”
For a moment he considered pulling up something just to spite her, but then he dismissed it. After all, she had admitted she found them amusing which was…
Well, if he was honest, it was worrying. When she’d called his little fun ‘amusing’ before, it was usually right before she’d blasted him out of the castle with instructions for some new, unenviable task. But she’d already said that wasn’t her goal today, and if one thing could be said about either of the Princesses, it was that neither of them were liars…
He narrowed his eyes as he leaned forward. “All right,” he said, crossing his own leg across his knee. “Let’s assume I do take this seriously, Luna.” He gave her name a little length for emphasis. “What do you want?”
“I want to know what’s been bothering you,” she said, giving her head a soft shake. “Nothing more.”
He could feel his heart starting to race now, revving its engine as his mind threatened to blow its clutch. Not that he was really sure what either of those things meant. It was weird how his body manifested itself sometimes.
“Luna,” he said, slowly. “Assuming I entertain this question seriously, if at all, what makes you think anything is bothering me to begin with?”
She smirked at him, and suddenly his stomach was winning the race. “Discord, anyone can see that you’ve been occupied since Tirek’s defeat.”
And my betrayal, he added silently, although she didn’t mention it. “There’s lots to do, and I’m running low on chaos.” He turned away, closing his eyes and tilting his head back.
“True, but that is not what is ailing you,” Luna said. There was a pause. “It would not have anything to do with a certain purple princess, perhaps?”
His internal organ rally came to a crashing halt, the lead organ exploding in a fiery ball of jello that brought the other, pursuing organs to a crushing, violent halt. For a moment everything seemed to stand still as the audience waited to see who would stagger out of the smoke. Then the purple flames parted and out crawled the brain, bruised but functioning.
“Twilight Sparkle?” he asked, feigning surprise as he looked at her. “What about her?”
“Well, I do not know,” Luna said. “Surely over the past few days it has not escaped anypony’s notice that you seem to have developed a small fixation on her.” He cringed as the Princess leaned forward. “Purple ponies painted on walls, a fondness for the color, muttering her name from time to time under your breath.” She gave him a questioning look. “You have not fallen in love with her, have you?”
“What!?” The race vanished in a cloud of loud smoke as the brain came apart at the base level, its molecules separating. Discord shook his head as he reeled back. “Me? In love with that book-loving, know-it-all, unicorn-jumped-alicorn? Surely you’re joking? We’re not even the same species, Luna.”
“A barrier many have overcome, and one you surely could.”
He scoffed and snapped his fingers, a flash of smoke filling the room. When it faded he was standing on four hooves, a large horn protruding from his forehead and a twisting snarl of a cutie mark on his flank that seemed to shift impossibly as the light fell on it.
“Oh, of course,” he said, rolling his eyes as he looked up at Luna. “Fall in love with a mortal. Maybe even give up immortality. Get married after a long courtship, have a family, raise a few screaming foals. Eventually die in each others arms for the perfect romance. How sweet. The classic, unexpected love story, never told before in stories like ‘The Pony and the Minotaur,’ or any one of those other legends out there.” He tilted his head to the side and batted his eyes sweetly before clapping his own hooves together and dispelling the effect with a flash. “Not likely.”
“So you’re not feeling any sort of longing or affection towards Princess Twilight Sparkle?”
“No more than you,” he said, leaning forward.
Luna nodded. “Very well, then. But she is on your mind, Discord. So tell me. Why?”
He leaned back, eyeing the Princess. She appeared sincere, although he knew she had a long history of being quite capable of keeping her emotions in check. Well, save one violent outburst, but that hadn’t quite been her fault. But it felt sincere, as loathe as he was to listen to that gut feeling.
“Fine, fine,” he said, waving a paw as her look grew only more inquisitive. “Just quit … quit staring at me like that, and I’ll talk!” He shook his head, pressing his arms against his sides. “I can’t stop thinking about her because of what she did.”
Luna’s eyes widened in surprise. “Do you mean saving you?”
“Yes, saving—how did you know about that?” he asked, one eye narrowing as an eyebrow floated off his head. He stuck his eye out, moving it past its socket before pulling it back with the eyebrow reattached.
“I asked her for a written report of everything that transpired after we had given her our magic,” Luna said, lighting her horn and pulling a thick roll of parchment paper from a desk drawer. “She complied, quite thoroughly. I must admit that what you told her was…”
He waited, leaning forward and steepling his fingers. “Yes?”
“Interesting,” Luna said, the roll vanishing once more. “But I think it has to do with why you have been so distracted lately. So tell us, Discord,” Luna said, narrowing her own eyes. “Why?”
“I don’t know!” he said, shaking his head and throwing himself back into his seat. “I suppose … because I feel terrible every time I think about her and her friends. Why me, Luna? Why did she do it?”
“Do what?”
“You know very well what, Princess!” he said, standing. “She stood up for me. I had nothing. Tirek took everything that was mine. I couldn’t have even gotten what I’d lost back; he’d taken my ability as well. All she had to do was let him have me. I would have let him have me, if I was a pony. All that grudging concession they gave me, all that back and forth with the elements, everything I did: the mental games, the horror I put them through, and when she didn’t have to, she put me into the bargain! Why!?”
He sank back in his seat, watching as his words bit and nipped at one another in the air. He waved one paw idly and they faded away. “I’m the immortal that wasn’t supposed to be, remember? The mistake. I—”
His words were cut off as Luna cracked her hooves down on her desk. “That is a lie! Thou wast never a mistake, regardless of what the rest of us may have thought at the time.” She looked down at her hooves with an expression of surprise, staring at the twin imprints she’d left in the heavy wooden top of the desk.
“Allow me,” Discord said, snapping his fingers and realigning to wood. A small expenditure of power, but nothing dangerous.
“You were not a mistake, Discord,” Luna said, composing herself once more. “None of us were. Only our choices can be. Your actions may have been mistakes, as well as the actions of many of the other immortals, but you yourself were not a mistake.”
“My magic runs in opposition to everything of the natural order,” he said, shaking his head. “You know that as well as I do, Luna. I disrupt to survive. It may not excuse my actions, but …” He held his wrists up, heavy chains forming around them and nearly pulling him to the floor.
“You were not blameless,” Luna said, shaking her head. “But nor was I. I disagreed with my sister’s plan to release you once more.”
“You were right too.” He glanced down at the links of chain, watching as they shifted from grey, to black, to pink, and then back to grey. “I did betray you.”
“And yet Twilight stood up for you,” Luna said.
“And now I’m back at square one,” he said, shrugging. “Why did she do it?”
“Because perhaps Twilight wished to show that despite her own misgivings, despite what you had done to her and her friends then and in the past, she was still willing to extend a true hoof of friendship towards you. As you said, she was a true friend, even if you didn’t see that at the time?”
“Even so, why?”
Princess Luna shook her head. “Only Twilight can answer that question for certain, Discord, but ask yourself this: how likely is it that you would have believed her actions sincere were you still the capable threat you once were?”
He nodded. He’d already tested that once, though Twilight had seemed to find his antics more than a little off-putting. Which hadn’t been reassuring. Sure, let the pink party-machine or the dressmaker sing a song or two and it’s fine, but the draconequus does it and the world is ending. He hadn’t even made any of his magic permanent; it’d all gone right back to base as soon as he’d had his moment.
“Twilight herself probably had her own misgivings,” Luna continued as he settled back in his seat, the cushion letting out the faint sound of cake breaking through ice. “As I said, I cannot answer for her, but I believe that she was willing to make the ultimate step and forgive you of your actions once she saw that you had seen how thoroughly you had been mistaken.”
“Because that’s what friends do, isn’t it?” he said, his voice quiet. Somewhere his therapist other let out a cheer and then began writing out a lengthy bill. “But doesn’t that usually mean one of them has to apologize first?”
Luna shook her head. “When I returned from the moon, my sister had forgiven me before I had even asked for it. Even if I had never asked for it, she knew that the only way to even keep the wound I had torn in her heart from opening all the more was to be willing to truly forgive me, even if I never asked or apologized. Young Twilight has shown considerable maturity and bearing for her age, indeed, shown she is worthy of her ascension.”
“But—”
“Tell me, Discord, did you need to go along with what she said?” The diarch leaned forward. “You did not need to accept Twilight’s admission that she was your friend. If you had, there was nothing that required you to stand by her and say what you said. And had you been lying, I doubt you would have ever even stuck around to say what you did.”
“Well—”
“Instead, you stayed, Discord,” Luna said as his unsaid words planted a grave in the back of his throat, a mime giving a silent funeral. “If you truly wish to know what I think, I believe that you have been occupied not so much because of what you did, but because you don’t know how to react. When did you last have a friend who was willing to put forth any sort of risk for you?”
Once again his words died in his mouth as the butter-yellow pegasus he’d betrayed stared up at him from his memories. Fluttershy had stood up for him, and how had he repaid it? And past that … nothing. No one, mortal or otherwise.
“Fluttershy did,” he said, shrinking in his seat until Luna’s desk looked like a towering cliff, she a mountain behind it. “And I treated her like I had everyone else.”
“Very well, Discord, you are free to leave,” Luna said, shocking him back to his normal size.
“What? Just like that?” he asked, his seat vanishing from beneath him with a pop.
“Just like that,” Luna said with a nod. “You have been alive for thousands of years, Discord. I scarcely think that you do not already know what you need to do.” Deep in his head, the therapist quietly generated another, larger bill, this one printed with the words “I told you so.”
“The only thing I need to know now is whether or not I have given you a sufficient enough push.”
“There’s a lot to say,” he said, gently lowering himself to his feet. “I’ve done a lot.”
“You are an immortal, Discord,” Luna said. “You have time enough to say it, I think, and to make amends, one small step at a time. Who knows?” she said, shrugging. “Perhaps one day you’ll be remembered for the good you have done, rather than the evil. So, where will you go?”
“Ponyville,” he said, nodding. “For the rest of the day, I think. I have something I need to do. But before I do, Luna, I …” He took a deep breath, almost unbelieving he was about to say it. “I know we’ve had our differences, but maybe with time, I can …” Luna leaned forward.
“Maybe I can forgive you,” he said with a wink. Luna’s face soured.
“Oh, get out, you knave!” Luna said, lighting her horn and sending a paintbrush bouncing off of his forehead. “Before I plant you in the royal garden without bothering to return you to your stone form!”
* * *
The walk through Ponyville had been … daunting, to say the least. He’d certainly never been welcome there after his initial brief moments as king of the chaos capital of the world, but after betraying the entire country to Tirek, well … Any goodwill he’d earned cleaning up his vines had been swiftly shoved under a rug. Even the Guard that had been assigned to tail him was keeping his distance, staying a few dozen feet back at all times.
It felt strange to walk through the town, looking at each one of the scowls and knowing that he’d earned them. One of the friendlier places around, and I made every one of them an enemy. Not that they hadn’t earned it, calling him accursed, and a mistake, and refusing at all to have anything to do with—Well, he thought, catching himself. Their ancestors did, in any case.
He could already see the cottage on the edge of the forest, populated as usual by its menagerie of animals and wildlife. He’d managed to find some of her favorite sandwiches on sale in town, although the patrons and owners of the store he’d been at hadn’t exactly been welcoming. In fact, if not for the Guard, he was sure they would have thrown him out. He was powerless enough they could have managed it, too. He’d been forced to take a train to get there. And use real bits to pay for the sandwiches.
He stepped over the bridge, noticing the silence that gripped the property as one by one the animals noticed him. It was a disturbing silence, one that made him swallow. The door looked just as he remembered it, but at the same time it almost seemed taller, thicker. He shook his head and pulled his eyes out, brushing them off to make sure he was seeing things properly. Only two steps left now. He raised his paw and knocked: three deep, heavy sounds, one light, and an electric ring for good measure.
The door opened before he could gather himself, his hand hanging in the air. Fluttershy looked up at him, her face halfway hidden behind her mane as her eyes widened, her mouth a small ‘O’ of surprise. It was now or never.
“Fluttershy,” he said, crouching slightly and looking straight at her eyes. He coughed as his words caught in his throat, a team of emergency specialists deploying with winches and prybars to force out words he couldn’t really recall ever saying truthfully, words that seemed heavier than almost anything.
“I’m sorry.”
And for the first time, as he felt a small bit of the weight in his chest vanish, he truly meant it.
Author's Note
This was a fun one to write. I've never had an excuse to pen Discord before, and I had quite the time enjoying some of the more ridiculous things I could have him do, from taking metaphor at literal, face value, to simply playing with the laws of space.
Plus, it was nice to be able to play a bit with my own headcanon and explanations for why Discord is the way he is. None of us is simply "evil." There's always a sequence of events that led us to where we are, a series of choices that we've made, in response to ours and others choices. Discord is no different. Sure, he's a bit of a jerk, but why? It was fun to explore that and look at the why and what that made him who he is. Plus, it was also interesting to play him from a more serious angle. Guy's got his heart in the (kind of) right place with a few things, but he's go no experience with things like "friends." And unlike the Genie from Aladdin, everyone despises Discord on first sight even when he's trying to make a good impression. Sucks, no?
Some of you probably noticed the reference to a "Dusk Guard" (who are not the Night Guard or the Royal Guard). This is a reference to my other works, so technically, this story does line up with that canon and universe, so the Princess Celestia and Luna written here are the same Celestia and Luna written there. I'm not telling you who the two Dusk Guard were, though, that'll have to remain a secret. Attentive readers of those stories may find one or two hints of things to come buried in this story, but not large ones. This story is pretty disconnected.
Anyway, thanks for reading. Leave a comment below and upvote if you're so inclined, and check out my author page for all sorts of wordy goodness, such as writing guides, tons of stories, and even links to actual, published books of mine!
