Your Kicks Ain't Bringing You Peace of Mind
The lights were off when Princess Luna stepped into Rarity's suite. Luna could see in the dark, but even for her the transition from the lighted hall outside to the darkness within confused the eye. She stepped inside and shut the door behind her, blocking out the glare, and then things became a little clearer.
The parlor was empty, but the wide double doors that led out to the balcony stood open, and Luna could see a pale form there, lounging on a couch that had been inside when she'd left, gently illuminated by the faint light of a waning crescent moon. As her eyes adjusted more, Luna could make out additional details. A mostly empty bottle of wine rested on a little side table, and Rarity held the glass in one hoof, casually, the liquid within it black as blood by moonlight.
She turned to Luna and smiled. "Welcome back, darling."
"Thank you." Luna bent down and claimed a kiss, which tasted of wine.
"How was your day?"
"Boring, as it oft is when duty calls. And yours?"
Rarity looked back out at the view, which included a vast sweep of Manehattan, with the ocean beyond. "It has been somewhat less than stellar." Her words were nearly clear, giving only the faintest hint of the state the wine bottle's low level suggested.
"What happened? The fashion show reviews..."
"They are all out, yes. They were not kind to me this season." Her ears flicked, going down flat for a moment before she lifted them again. Her voice, already somewhat harsh, turned downright bitter. "My spring line is passe, bland, and boring, I am told. My creative genius is spent, my time in the spotlight over." She waved her hoof in a dismissive gesture that came very close to spilling the wine. "All the things critics say when they decide that they no longer feel like praising you. Some young thing garnered all the praise this season. My time has passed, it seems."
Luna inhaled softly, hunting for the right words to comfort her partner. "I am sorry."
Rarity sighed deeply. "As am I. This was not what I hoped for when the show began last week."
"No, of course not. But... you can rebuild, I hope? This won't completely ruin your business?"
Rarity laughed then, a soft, mocking peal. "Oh no, there is nothing to rebuild. I shall no doubt lose the business of a few of those wealthy and famous ponies who live by the dictates of the fashion cognoscenti, but they make up only a tiny fraction of my customers. Most of my business is from everyday ponies, who buy what they see because they like it. All of my shops have already had orders for gowns from the spring line, I always put the seasonal catalog out the same week as the fashion show." She laughed again, and it was harsher, even more mocking, this time. "No, this will do my business very little harm. It merely means that I did not get my fix today."
Luna blinked. She had gotten much better at modern vernacular over the years—and to be honest, one reason she found Rarity so comfortable was that the elegant unicorn almost never used slang—but she had no idea what Rarity meant. "Your... fix?"
"My dose of euphoria, my ever-escalating high, my drug of choice. The thing I used to never think about and now obsess over the way a drunkard obsesses over his next bottle of wine. My fix."
Luna blinked some more. "I don't understand."
"Forgive me, I'm rather drunk. It makes me verbose. I think you do understand, I'm just being difficult about it. I mean, dearest Luna, that today I did not get any praise. Nopony told me how amazing I am. No articles lauded my impeccable design sense or amazing flair. Indeed, not only did I get no praise, but I was criticized, rather harshly at times. Thus, whatever high I managed to hang onto from the few who were verbally positive to me in person at the show has been sapped, sucked away like a vampire fruit bat sucks out the juice from apples, leaving me nothing but an empty husk. I cannot even muster the energy to be jealous of the little filly who stole my spotlight, I am too empty for it, and, if I am being honest, she is too good. She is the new, rising. I am the old, falling. The business will soldier on because to be frank once one reaches a certain point it requires active incompetence to sink a successful clothing company, but I, I shall fade away into obscurity, and become nothing but a dry, thirsty need."
"Ah." Luna nudged Rarity over a bit on the couch and sat beside her. "I do understand, yes. At least some of it. I know what it is to desperately desire praise and be denied it. It is a hunger, and a thirst, yes." She slipped a wing around Rarity and encouraged her to lean just a little closer. "It is, well... maddening."
Rarity chuckled softly, and less bitterly. "Yes. I knew you of all ponies would understand. So many ponies don't. Oh, certainly most ponies want praise for their efforts. But they don't understand about getting the fix."
"I am still not entirely certain what you mean when you put it in such terms. What is a 'fix'?"
"It's a rather low-class bit of slang." Rarity gave a little shrug, indicating that her sober self would never be so gauche, but what was a mare to do? "It refers to how addicts need their drug to avoid withdrawal, often in ever-increasing amounts. It's like that for me. I don't think it is for most ponies. Or perhaps it is, I'm no mind reader. But I think mostly it's not. No doubt many ponies look at me with envy, seeing that I am famous, seeing that I am showered in attention, seeing that I am known all across Equestria, and they would say 'Look at her, she gets ten, a hundred times the praise I do, I would be so happy to have what she has!' And they'd be right, and yet also wrong."
She drained the last of her glass and then leaned a little more into Luna, sighing. "I don't know if this is exactly how it was for you. Possibly not, and it doesn't seem like it's this way for you now. Perhaps I should be asking you to tell me about it, to tell me how you found your peace with being ignored when you expected to be showered in affection. I don't know. I'd like you to tell me about it sometime, though I'm not sure I'd ever dare ask about it sober. I've always wanted our conversations about the past to be mostly positive things, and not dwell on that one stupid event that that you are unfortunately famous for. I see how uncomfortable you sometimes are when ponies bring it up crassly." She paused and shook her head, wobbling ever so slightly as she did so. "Forgive me, I probably should just shut up and let you speak, I'm rambling."
"If you want to ramble, I will listen," said Luna simply.
"See, this is why I love you. You put up with me. I don't know anypony else who would." Rarity sighed again, but also smiled. "It really is an addiction, though. The very first time, when I made those school costumes and everypony loved them, that was incredible. The high seemed to go on forever. I merely had to think about the costumes, and my cutie mark, and the things my teacher said to me, to be bathed in that wonderful glow all over again. It lasted all the way until the next school year.
"I made another set of costumes, you know. They had a school play every year, and every year I made the costumes for it, right up until I graduated. But even though my teachers always complimented me, and sometimes other ponies did as well, it was never the same. Just repeating the same thing could never recreate that first high.
"At the time I dismissed it as simply being because I couldn't re-gain my cutie mark, so of course the later occasions were never as special. And that's true, but it was also because I'd had my first dose, and every dose of the drug I get builds my tolerance a little bit further. The praise of a single schoolteacher coupled with some applause and a comment or two from an admiring foal would mean almost nothing to me now. I would smile, of course, and feel perhaps a little glow, because all praise does give that little glow, but it would vanish in a matter of minutes."
"I see."
"Yes." Rarity nodded, but didn't stop talking. "It was like that when I got my first commission, too. That somepony wanted to pay me for my work was astonishing. It felt so good! It was like praise, but even better. And when I opened Carousel boutique, and that amazing fashion show that my friends arranged, with Hoity Toity there, and the first time I was noticed by the elite of Canterlot, and..." She shook her head. "You see the pattern of it easily, no doubt. Each new escalation was wonderful, but each time the old things no longer shone. Opening my first store was magical. My second was delightful. My third merely pleasing. The fourth and fifth I hardly noticed. And now... what new heights do I have to ascend to, Luna? In my particular pond I am one of the biggest fish, but there's nowhere left for me to swim. Even before this fiasco of a show I'd already been feeling it for months, this feeling that all my work is pointless, that there is no reason to put any energy into my designs. Perhaps that's why this spring line failed, perhaps it was that lack of energy that made the critics pan the entire assemblage. I don't know. I just... don't know where I go from here. I can't see any path but one that leads down, into a constant futile attempt to suck just a little more praise, just a little more attention from a world that will never love me more than it does now."
She put her head against Luna's shoulder, letting her eyes close. They were misted with tears she was trying very hard not to shed. "And I recognize that it is the height of entitlement to act as though I am suffering from being as famous as I can possibly get. Yet I am suffering. It is foolish and pointless and takes me nowhere, but I cannot stop doing it. There's nowhere left to climb, there's no way to get my fix anymore, yet I can't stop needing it. I just can't!"
Tears began to trickle slowly down her cheeks. "I am on a constant treadmill. I create, I hope for praise, I fail to get it, or at least enough of it. Then I hate my work, and then after that I hate myself for caring, for needing the fix, for being unable to just make things for the love of making them and let the chips fall where they may. I wish I could do that! I wish I could somehow stop wanting the praise and the attention. I wish my art could be pure and clean and without this horrible, slimy need clinging to it, ruining it. If I could just turn that part of me off somehow I would.
"And maybe the worst thing is that if I could instead turn off the part of me that needs to create, I'd do that. I would. Because that's what makes it a thousand times worse. If I could quit designing, go 'cold turkey', get away from the spotlight and never be praised for my art again, I'd do it. I'd be free of the need. I'd be able to step off the treadmill. If I could just do that one thing, just stop creating... But I can't!"
Tears were flowing freely now, and Luna enfolded Rarity in a strong, gentle embrace as she continued to spew words out in an almost frantic stream. "I can't do it. I've actually tried, but the ideas just leak out and next thing I know I'm at the drawing board again, sketching just one more little design, and suddenly I have a whole fashion line laid out. I think my record was a week without making a design. I can't stop. I even made a series of designs based around my frustration at the whole situation, if you can believe it. I've never actually had them made into dresses, they were a bit... ah..." She halted and blushed suddenly.
Luna chuckled and squeezed her again. "I believe I recall seeing those on your drawing board. I did rather wonder at all the spikes and skulls and so on. When I never saw them in your boutique I assumed they were some form of exercise."
"You could call it that. But stars above, if I could just cut out this thing that makes me have to create, I could sell the business and live quietly off the proceeds for the rest of my life. I absolutely would do it, if I could. Yet it's not that I'd be unhappy if I didn't create, it's that I literally cannot stop. And then every time I make something, I set a hoof on the treadmill again. Even those stupid ones with the skulls sent me back into a depressive spiral because one of my assistants caught a glimpse of one of them and said something unkind about it. I can't find a way off, I can't find a way out, and there is no way up either, so all I can do is spiral down and down and down."
"I know that spiral all too well," said Luna softly, nuzzling the top of Rarity's head and giving the shorter mare a squeeze.
"Yes. From all that you've shared about your art since I've known you, though, it seems like you've found a way off of it."
Luna gave one short, harsh bark of laughter. "Of course I did. I rode it all the way down, to the very bottom of Tartarus, turned into Nightmare Moon, attempted to more or less destroy the world—twice, even—and generally made a massive disaster of things. After all that, the pains and perils of creative work are easier to face, for I know very well that the consequences of setting hoof back on the 'treadmill' as you call it are dire indeed."
"Oh. Well, I hardly can turn into some sort of Nightmare Rarity." She gave a little smile at that. "Can you just imagine? It would be the most fashionable reign of terror in history! But the very idea is quite absurd, I'm no alicorn."
"I would just as soon you did not turn nightmare, in any case."
"If that's not the answer, then what is? How do I stop this cycle of misery?"
Now it was Luna's turn to heave a sigh. "If there is an answer, I do not have it. Some problems have no solutions, one must simply live with them the best one can." She bent and kissed the top of Rarity's head, just behind her horn. "I have found, however, that it helps when you are not alone."
Rarity echoed Luna's sigh, but said nothing else. They sat in silence for a time, existing, together, without need for further words. Both had said all there was to say.
At length Rarity yawned. "All this wine has made me quite sleepy. I believe it's time for me to head for bed." She rose, and Luna rose as well. Rarity took a few steps towards the bed and stumbled. "Oh dear. All this wine has also made me a bit clumsy."
"Here, allow me," said Luna, and she scooped Rarity up in her magic and floated her back into the suite. Rarity let out a little squeak of surprise, but then simply allowed herself to be carried, relaxing into the gentle warmth of Luna's magic. Luna carried her partner easily through the sitting room and into the bedroom beyond, where she pulled back the covers and set her in the bed. Luna tucked the covers over her, kissed her softly, then circled the bed and climbed in on the other side.
Rarity scooted up to Luna, cuddling against her, and Luna shifted to put a foreleg and a wing over her. They nestled together in warm comfort.
Just as Luna was drifting off to sleep, she heard Rarity say, "You're right. Not being alone helps."
Author's Note
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