The Taxonomy of the Lower Reaches of the Discordian Dimensions

Rarity sighed.

Discord was on her couch again.

A few months prior he had turned up at Carousel Boutique sobbing his heart out and shovelling ice cream into his mouth because he had felt guilty over what had happened with Tree Hugger at the gala. Fluttershy had been the topic of conversation. Fluttershy was nearly always the topic of conversation with Discord. Either that or chaos. For a being that was meant to be random, he really did seem to have narrow interests.

This time was different, however. If Discord had been a mess back then, he was a total trainwreck now.

"She's dating, Rarity. Dating!"

"I know what dating is, Discord..."

"What am I going to do?" he croaked, shovelling a huge spoon of fudge brownie and banana ice cream into his mouth.

"Why do you have to do anything?" she asked.

"Because it hurts! I need to make it stop!"

Rarity suppressed the urge to sigh again. Discord had not quite seemed to grasp that just because you felt a horrible emotion it meant you were supposed to act on it. All he thought about was what he felt in the moment, and what he felt was jealousy and rejection, neither of which  were helping with the draconequus's pride. In fact, she was certain that if anyone knew he had ended up on her couch pouring his heart out to her his pride would have been so wounded that he might consider erasing some short term memories to save himself the embarrassment.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that she thought.

"Discord, I'm sorry that you're hurting, but you have to respect Fluttershy's desicion. You can't be jealous of every stallion she goes on a date with. Well, I know you can't help feeling that way, but you really need to take a step back when you have that feeling come over you. Fluttershy will appreciate it."

"I don't get it! I'm her friend, and she says she's my friend but I keep getting everything wrong. And now these stupid feelings are interfereing with everything. Why did this even have to happen?"

Rarity looked sadly at Discord. "Because you couldn't help but fall in love with her," she said.

Discord stopped shovelling ice cream for a moment and looked at Rarity, who had softened a little to the distraught draconequus.

"Fluttershy is a kind, loving, sweet pony who offered you friendship. It's something you wanted and craved, and despite everything that has happened between the pair of you, she is still your friend. I'd say it's perfectly understandable that you should develop feelings for someone like that. The...the problem is..."

"Yes?"

Rarity grimaced. She couldn't think of a way to tactfully say "the problem is you haven't returned her warmth with the same consideration" without subjecting herself to more wailing and tears.

"The...problem is...I think you need to learn more about friendship and develop who you are and how you integrate into pony society."

"This friendship thing is so hard," Discord whined. "And I didn't...I hadn't..." he stopped. Though he had poured out his feelings and some of the contents of his nose in the presence of Rarity while crying, there were still raw parts of himself he didn't want to expose to the unicorn, or indeed, anyone. And one of those things was that he hadn't realized what a hold friendship and love had over him. Before discovering friendship, Discord had been more or less free to not think about the needs of anyone else. Indeed, when he had been loved in the past, he kept his partners at arms length at all times. Now he knew partly how Celestia had felt when he had...ruined everything.

No, he wasn't ready to talk about that. Not even with Rarity. Drama queen though she was, Discord took the championship title for that one.

He thought about Fluttershy. He had felt uncomfortable with the idea of her hugging and touching him at first, but slowly it became something he looked forward to, until one day he realized he needed it as much as air, and that terrified him, because unlike air, which was in steady supply, Fluttershy could be gone at any moment and at any day. And there were plenty of ponies out there that could potentially convince her that Discord should be cut out of her life. After all, he didn't deserve her friendship, did he? He'd heard mutterings. Ponies talking about how he was not to be trusted. Fluttershy had told him to pay no mind to them.

But they were right, weren't they? And one day she was going to realize they were right, and he would have to contend with the crushing weight of his emotions. Sometimes being numb in stone seemed to have had its merits.

He jumped when Rarity placed a tentative but comforting hoof on his back.

"Discord, we all go through this, believe it or not. We've all loved someone who didn't love us back romantically."

Discord took a deep breath and tried to steady his voice as he said: "I'm afraid she doesn't even love me at all."

"You know that's not true!"

"Do I? Can't entirely blame her if she doesn't. I don't even know what I'm doing. I hate admitting that, but I don't."

There was something unnerving about having the normally jovial draconequus verbally chastize himself. Rarity was used to Discord being exceptionally arrogant and boastful. Not really admirable qualities, but ones she was used to and at least when he was like that there wasn't the underlying implication that he hated himself. She had never known anyone as emotionally raw as Discord, though through her own experiences she did partly understand his concerns.

Finally Rarity said, "I'm sorry, Discord. I don't know what to suggest except to look after yourself and maybe find something to distract yourself with..."