Author's Note
Because I wanted to do a songfic.
For real, check out the song "Creature" by Jelly Roll. It's great.
Hope you all enjoy this little one shot!
Creature
There is a certain amount of comfort in the darkness.
It envelops, protects, and conceals any creature from prying eyes. If one is not careful, they can make a home there, and grow comfortable in it to the point that the light feels uncomfortable. Discord, of all creatures, understood this. After years spent in exile for his chaotic nature, more still as a statue, he, like many others, found comfort in the darkness. He’d had to, or else he would have had nothing to comfort him.
Living in exile from general society as an outcast had thrust him into the arms of darkness, which wrapped it’s tendrils around him and told him that it would be alright. He’d leaned into that embrace, had depended on it, because he had nobody else he could depend on. He’d learned very quickly that the only creature who was going to look out for you in the world was yourself. The world hated him, and he hated the world right back, for making him feel unwelcome. He’d sat in the darkness a long time, and grew used to the thought that he would never see the sun.
He made a home for himself in the darkness, made friends with his demons, danced with the monsters in his own mind. He’d learned quickly that he could count on their presence. They would never let him down. He rarely left his home dimension for that reason. However, once in a while, the urge to stir up some chaos in the world that had been so unkind to him prompted him to leave the safety of his comfortingly dark world and step into the light. But going into the world of the light had an effect on him. As though he were a piece of paper under a magnifying glass on a sunny day, those trips ignited his anger and indignation at the way he had been treated.
Slowly, a different kind of darkness overtook him. The need for revenge at any cost. He would flip their world upside down, and then they would see they had been wrong to spurn him. On that day, he left the safety of his own dimension, and crossed into Equestria. He was going to make them all pay for what they had done. Then, they would be sorry.
The plan backfired. Spectacularly. Celestia and Luna- rulers of the land that had spurned him, had used their magic, along with the elements of harmony, to encase him in stone. It was then that he had to get to used to a different kind of darkness. The darkness of having your mind awake, but your body frozen. Hearing life pass you by and not being able to participate in it was a different kind of torture. He’d grown used to that darkness too, and in it, his demons had whispered in his ear that someday he would have his revenge, if he’d only plot it carefully.
When he broke out from his stone prison, he snatched the elements of harmony, hid them in the maze, and watched as Twilight Sparkle and her friends went into the maze. Keeping them separated from each other, watching as they all became the opposite of their true selves, and finally having a sense of victory over them, was everything he had hoped for.
And then, something happened that he didn’t expect.
Twilight and her friends had managed to restore themselves to normal, and had entrapped him in stone again. He’d been bewildered at the sudden turn of events. How could it be so? He’d been so smart about how he systematically took them all out. He couldn’t wrap his mind around it.
However, when Twilight and her friends released him under Celestia’s orders and he became friends with Fluttershy, he began to understand. There was a kind of power in friendship that he had never been able to tap into, because he hadn’t had anybody. But when Fluttershy became his friend, it was like everything changed. He’d been so angry and alone in all his time in the darkness because he had felt so misunderstood. He’d thought the darkness would be his only friend, but now that he had one, he was so happy to be wrong. It was then that he began to swim out from the depths of the darkness toward the light.
The change from dark to light was not an instantaneous one, and in fact the darkness tried to reclaim him multiple times. The one time it tried to consume him completely was when he had chosen to team up with Lord Tirek. He’d thought that the freedom to cause chaos whenever he wanted was more important than friendship. But then, Tirek had turned on him, imprisoned him in a bubble too, and he had known in that very moment that he would be alone in the darkness forever then, because he had sacrificed his friends.
He could not have expected Twilight to spare him. It was the moment that tilted his entire worldview on it’s head. He could not comprehend why she had spared him. But then, the thought crept in that had forever changed him. That’s what real friends do. He’d nearly cried in his gratitude and his self loathing for what had happened, and gave her the necklace Tirek had given him a sign of true friendship. It was in that moment that the tight hold darkness seemed to have on him was released at last. He was finally free to walk into the light. He didn’t have to be alone anymore.
This was not to say the darkness did not still try to get at him. He likened it to a creature in a closet. Though the closet door was shut, he could still hear the rumblings of it as it muttered doubts and fears into his ear, and jimmied the handle to try and get out. But with the help of Fluttershy and his other new friends, he kept the door shut. It was true that the darkness had never let him down before. It was predictable, safe, and comforting.
But so were his new friends. And he knew the darkness could never touch that.
