A Duet of Hearts

The bar was exceedingly busy, which - on a cold Friday night in this part of Manehattan - was unsurprising. As per usual, the cold, grey streets outside offered little appeal to most, causing ponies from nearby to gather in their dozens inside the establishment. While it was technically a dive bar, it wasn’t an unpleasant place to be. Indeed, compared to the numerous cesspits in Manehattan that managed to qualify as bars, it was a palace. Every table was occupied, and there were many more ponies simply standing idly about the place, making navigation of the crowds a skill in itself.

A glass filled with a mixture of whisky and cola rested on a sturdy table in one of the darker corners of the bar. The drink belonged to a refined, cultured mare who had, above all else, an overwhelming desire to slip into a coma. In her mind, thoughts - hundreds of the pesky blighters - fumbled and tripped over one another, each sulking owing to lack of attention. Some were more valid than others, most involved homicide, and almost all of them pertained to a single event a few weeks prior, as well as the infernal wretch who’d incited it.

Octavia Melody looked around the crowded building for the umpteenth time in her time there that evening, though she had no idea why. She’d been there for long enough to have seen just about every detail, up to and including the somewhat humorous messages carved into her table. Her ears were filled with the gentle yet loud hubbub of chatter, interspersed with an occasional laugh. Everypony there was happy, it seemed. Everypony seemed to be enjoying their present company and their drinks. Uproarious laughter would occasionally rise from a small group somewhere among the masses of ponies in the bar.

An ashen hoof reached for the vessel resting on the table and in a single, fluid motion raised it to the lips of a haggard face. Octavia threw her head back, allowing the sweet liquid to flow down her throat and polishing off the remains of her drink, before slamming the glass back onto the polished wooden surface.

The glass managed to hold Octavia’s attention for a few moments. Reflected in it were her normally piercing violet eyes, now dulled and weary; her normally lustrous and well kept mane of black coal, now unkempt and forlorn; and a dishevelled pink bowtie. Snorting her derision at the pitiful visage reflected in the glass, Octavia swept the container from the table and sent it flying into the air. It hit the laminate flooring a short distance away and shattered, sending a couple of ponies diving to avoid any shrapnel. Grumbles began to arise from their direction, but Octavia didn’t really care. Nopony could tell where the glass had come from; it wasn’t her problem. Her table now clear, she rested her hooves upon it, and her head upon them.

******

The streets were unsettlingly quiet, which - on a cold Friday night in this part of Manehattan - was unsurprising. As per usual, the warm, bright taverns and similar, sometimes shadier establishments offered great appeal to most. While it was technically a perfectly ordinary and reasonably maintained street, it was a singularly unpleasant place to be. Indeed, a cold, dark street is never a good place to be, but when wet from cold rain and tears, the icy gusts commonly found in the city in the autumn are wont to seem tangible as they slice through anypony unfortunate enough to be in their way.

A blue pair of headphones, almost perpetually bound to their owner, rested upon a slumped neck. They belonged to a vibrant, fun-loving mare who had, above all else, an overwhelming desire to slip into a coma. In her mind, thoughts - hundreds of the damned things - kicked and punched one another, each actively pummeling another for attention. Some were more useful than others, most concerned ways to survive the cold night ahead, and almost all of them were caused by a single event a few hours prior, as well as the lazily scrawled notice which had caused it.

A magical pale blue tendril reached for a saddlebag resting on its owners back and - in several uncertain fumbling movements - located and extracted a small faux leather coinpurse. Vinyl Scratch yanked the string off, stared into the brown purse, then dumped it back into the saddlebag. A puddle on the pavement a short distance ahead of the DJ held her attention for a few moments. Reflected in it were her purple shades which revealed nothing of the teary, despondent eyes behind them, and her normally wild, uncontrollable mane which had - wettened by rainfall - fallen heavily over her face. Shaking her head at the puddle, Vinyl trudged onward.

Having checked her purse, she knew she wouldn’t have enough bits for a hotel room, or a train ticket home to her brother’s place in Ponyville. The only friend she knew well enough to crash with was Pinkie Pie, but she was renting a room from the Cakes and was therefore, like her brother, in Ponyville.

Vinyl kicked a discarded bottle lying forgotten in the street. It flew down the road and hit the pavement outside a nearby bar, shattering and throwing shards of glass across the road. Nopony noticed; the miserable weather had driven them all indoors. The bottle had landed outside what looked to be a fairly busy bar, with a glowing blue neon sign:

"Blue's Tavern"

Maybe a drink’ll keep me warm tonight.

Vinyl had only a few bits left. Enough for a drink or two, but very little else; not even some food. Drawing closer to the establishment’s entrance, she could hear the dull roar of conversation inside. Using her magic, she pushed open the door, then released it once she’d got through, allowing it to swing shut.

The tavern was incredibly crowded, full of ponies chatting, drinking, and trying not to fall over, but fortunately Vinyl knew nightlife. She knew it exceedingly well, in fact. With deft hooves, she beelined for the bar, ducking in and out of, weaving around and occasionally pushing past groups of dazed drinkers. Calmly, she stepped up to the bar and placed an order of-

Damn, when did vodka get so expensive?!

Seeing the prices, she had no choice but to half-heartedly order the bar’s cheapest beer. It was of an appalling quality - total swill, in fact - and Vinyl knew it, but if it improved her odds of surviving the cold night ahead then it was welcome. She reached out to the glass using her horn and placed a bit on the bar before beginning to search for an empty table. There didn’t seem to be any at first, but then something caught her eye.  Vinyl began to make her way towards a darkened corner of the room and the table which occupied it. On closer inspection, there was another pony there; a grey mare with an expression which was hidden because it was buried in her hooves. Deciding that she had no further options, Vinyl sat silently opposite the worn-down looking pony. There was nothing on the table, peculiarly, save one coaster pushed to the side of the table.

Vinyl observed the mare she was sharing a table with. She hadn’t noticed Vinyl’s presence on account of having her head firmly in her hooves. A pink bowtie implied class, but its current state also indicated its wearer had bigger woes than her appearance. A straight yet messy black mane implied the same thing.

She looks kinda cute...

Whoa. What the hell was that?

The only sign Vinyl saw that the pony had been drinking was the water-ring left by a glass, though where the glass was now, Vinyl couldn’t guess. She suspected it was being cleaned.

The unicorn sat a short while, sipping her beer occasionally and wincing almost every time.

******

“I am sorry, Miss Melody, but just what were you thinking?” The insufferable Prince Blueblood had stood before her, in all his self-absorbed glory, and had just finished a psychotic rant the likes of which Equestria hadn’t seen since one of Blueblood’s servants steeped his tea for five minutes instead of eight and a half.

“All I did was do what you paid me to do!” Octavia had retorted, feeling her temperature rise alongside an almost uncontrollable urge to swing her cello into the noble’s smug face.

“And you thought such an uncouth song for fillies would fit an event as prestigious as the Grand Galloping Gala?”

“It wasn’t my fault! You got what you asked for!”

“At no point did we ask for an entire evening to be ruined by your bumbling incompetence as a cellist, Miss Melody,” Blueblood had said, in his trademark smug manner. That was all she could take. A seething ball of white hot rage had risen from her stomach. She’d picked up her cello and slung it onto her back. Seeing nothing nearby heavy enough to use as a weapon, she’d turned about.

“How dare you turn away from me when I, Prince Blueblood, nephew to Celestia, Regent of the Unicorns, am speaking to you? Know your place, peasant!” Those were the last words Blueblood said for a fair few hours, because at that point, Octavia had bucked and sent her hind hooves hurtling into the pompous buffoon’s face. He’d hit the ground with a heavy thud, and Octavia had left the deserted Entrance Hall to Canterlot Castle. With a little luck, the Guard would think he’d been trampled in the stampede which followed the tumult earlier that evening. Octavia sighed and swallowed hard.

“Looks like I’m done here,” she’d said aloud, to nopony in particular.

Octavia reflected on just how she’d come to be in her predicament. She’d been replaying the same conversation on a loop for a while now, desperately trying to find something, anything, that was even remotely reasonable about it. If she hadn’t assaulted the Unicorn Regent, things might be different; perhaps she could have salvaged the situation. But while the guards had assumed Blueblood was trampled, and drawn a rather vulgar aspect of a stallion’s anatomy on his back while he was passed out, Blueblood still kicked up a storm the next day. The story had reached the ears of every noble in Canterlot and beyond by that evening, but fortunately, Octavia was long gone by then.

Finding the entire situation to be quite horribly unfair, Octavia kicked herself internally as she heard a quiet sob escape from between her lips, bringing with it more hot tears of regret which rolled down her face.

******

It was a quiet, reserved sob, as would be expected from a mare of class and sophistication who had been taught not to show too much emotion in public, but that didn’t make it any less heartbreaking. Vinyl hated seeing ponies cry. It somehow made her feel guilty, though she had no idea why. The guilty knot in her stomach only served to worsen the hunger pangs. It was not long before the stranger broke down into a hysterical fit of sorrow. Vinyl felt a stabbing pain in her chest, and it took all of about thirty seconds for her to cave.

“Uh, are you okay?” Vinyl asked. A moment passed with no response, but the stranger controlled her despondent outburst and began to look slowly upwards from where her hooves rested on the table.

******

“Do I look ‘okay’ to you? I am sitting alone in a crowded bar in a major city sobbing into my own damn hooves! Which part of that says ‘okay’?! I recently made the single biggest mistake I have ever made in my entire damn life! Why, why is it too much to ask to drink myself into a depression induced stupor and forget about all of my problems?!” was the verbal tirade which, for a moment, Octavia considered unleashing upon the uninvited stranger who’d taken it upon herself to sit opposite her. But she simply didn’t have the energy.

“I am fine, thank you,” was all she could manage to say.

Even from that short phrase, Vinyl picked up on the rich lilt of her accent; the sort one would find among the elite of Canterlot; Though, what that accent was doing in a place like this was beyond her. “Are you sure? You don’t look fine to me,” Vinyl replied.

“It is not your problem, okay?! I have no issue with you sitting there, but if you insist upon doing so, all I ask is that you do so without pestering me! Leave me alone!” Octavia snapped, a mighty blaze burning in her eyes. Suddenly, the soft lilt Vinyl had noticed previously became a sharp, scathing blade. Instead of coming up with a retort or trying to get into the stranger’s head, though, Vinyl decided it was best to just do what the mare had suggested. She looked at her beer, took a sip, then fought the urge to spit it out. A few moments passed of an awkward silence - bar the noise of raucous patrons - between the two mares, Vinyl staring awkwardly into her glass, and Octavia staring at her.

The crowds of patrons continued drinking, talking, laughing, and occasionally singing in the way only drunken ponies can. Staring at the newcomer, however, meant Octavia was able to gauge her far better.

She has been crying. Despite the purple shades covering the unicorn’s eyes, twin streaks of matted fur were plainly visible from beneath the glasses.Rain does not fall like that. The headphones - flecked with raindrops - around her neck made it obvious that she was a fan of music, and her mane was sodden and flat; she’d definitely been out in the rain. You horrible pony! You just yelled at a mare who’s been crying in the rain and still tried to help you!

Feeling guilty for having snapped at a mare who obviously had problems of her own which she - like Octavia - had probably come to the bar to forget, Octavia forced her cracking voice to break the tense silence between the two;

“I am sorry, I don’t know what came over me; I know you were just trying to help. I suppose things have been rougher than I thought.”

“Don’t worry ‘bout it; wasn’t any of my business anyway,” Vinyl replied tersely, desperately trying - and horribly failing - to disguise the dejection in her voice.

“No; that was truly vile of me. I should not have snapped like that at you. I can be so standoffish at times; you, a total stranger, just tried to comfort me despite the fact that you have clearly got problems of your own, and I could do no more than yell at you for it. I am such a socially awkward dullard at times, I truly am,” Octavia explained. Vinyl may have not known what “standoffish” or “dullard” meant, but something she did notice was the emphasis the ashen stranger had placed on the word “clearly”, and she had no idea why it was there.

“What do you mean,” she mustered the best Octavia impression she could, “‘Clearly’? What about me says I have problems?”

“Okay, first, that impression of me is a tragedy on par with Shakespur’s ‘Titus Andalusian,’” Octavia began, playfully, “and second, practically nothing. Except the tear-streaks on your face, the fact your mane and fur are both sodden, and the fact that that means you’d been crying in the rain shortly before entering this establishment, so presumably, you’d come here to drink yourself into a stupor. Alone. Like me,” Octavia concluded, matter-of-factly. Vinyl was blown away, and were it not for her shades, Octavia would have seen her eyes visibly widen and been amused to no end by the fact.

“Buck,” Vinyl said quietly, taken aback, “how’d you do that? You’re like Sherclop Holmes!”

Octavia chortled demurely, “Call it a… knack, for judging ponies,” came the cryptic reply. Octavia swung her hind legs over the side of the booth’s chair upon which she sat, and stood. “Look, I feel awful for having yelled at you like I did. You are clearly a nice pony. So, how about I buy you a drink, Miss-” it suddenly dawned on Octavia; she had no idea who in all Equestria this mare was.

“Vinyl. Vinyl Scratch.”

“Octavia Melody,” she gestured to herself with a hoof. She then extended it to the unicorn whose name she finally knew, and to her utter chagrin, Vinyl did not shake it. Instead, she went for the hoof-bump. Octavia bit her tongue at the faux-pas which Vinyl hadn’t even picked up on, and mustered every iota of discipline she had to not recoil in abject horror and run for the door at such an uncouth gesture, typically reserved for the common echelons of-

Wait. I am not in Canterlot anymore. This is the norm here. I am one of the common ponyfolk now. Ye gods, how the mighty have fallen.

Quickly, Octavia recovered from her train of thought. “So, what are you drinking?”

Vinyl hated the idea that somepony was spending their hard-earned bits on her, but she had come for a drink to take the edge off of the sharper winds that would come her way that night, and the swill which she’d bought herself must’ve had a proof roughly equal to that of a crabapple on a stick. It certainly tasted like one. As much as she disliked it, Vinyl found herself ill-inclined to object. “Uh… I guess I’ll have a vodka and cola, please,” she began, before finishing bashfully with, “... if that’s alright with you, at least.”

“Sure,” Octavia replied, turning to fetch their orders with a smile.

Hate to see you leave, love to watch you go, Octavia, Vinyl thought as she watched her newfound friend walk to the bar.