Equestria Copes

For the next hour, Discord just lay there, not doing much of anything. He was breathing, he was blinking, but he wasn't fidgeting or fussing or twiddling his thumbs. He just stared ahead, letting time pass. Occasionally, he would sigh, but it wasn't the kind of sigh where he was asking for attention. He seemed genuinely hurt.

Fluttershy was definitely confused. Discord and Angel weren't friends. Why was it that Discord was caring for Angel, and why was he so upset that Angel was mad at him?

Eventually, Discord drifted off to sleep, his breathing stabilised and his eyes closed. To Fluttershy's amazement, a bubble appeared above his head, showing images in his dream.

Fluttershy was horrified by what she saw. It started off with the last time she saw Discord before the events leading to her death, followed by every step he had taken to ensure that she and the others went to solve their last problem together, to the very moment everything had gone wrong. She watched the colour drain from his face as he rushed to pick up her broken body, saw the terror on his face as he realised that he had caused this, and felt the crushing weight of responsibility that he had to be experiencing in that moment.

As the dream started from the beginning, Fluttershy noted that Discord pulled his tarp closer to him. Very obviously, he was haunted by his decisions. He had created the last problem; brought together the villains under a single banner, and set them loose upon Equestria. She didn't know why he had done so, but that didn't matter. He was causing complications on both sides to create an even match, and when it all went wrong, he had felt it. He had never meant for her to die. That was an unfortunate accident. An accident that he rightfully blamed himself for, but one he had never intended to cause.

As she placed her hoof on his shoulder, she found that it didn't slip through. He was cold to the touch, but she left her hoof there.

"I don't know if you can hear me," she said, gently rubbing his shoulder. "I don't even know if you want to hear my voice, but there's something I need to say.

"I'm not going to tell the other girls about this. They deserve to know, but I'm going to keep this just between you and me. Twilight has made it clear that intent doesn't matter as much as the actual events; That it doesn't matter what you were trying to do, but what you actually did do. If you were trying to show off how fast you could go and ran into somepony, just trying to look cool doesn't mean your victim is uninjured.

"But I have to disagree. Intent matters a lot, and I would even go so far as to say that it's more important than the actual events. Without intent, there would be no actions. Without desiring to make a change, no change would happen. And while sometimes, you may fail to do what you set out to do, and ponies could end up injured or even dead, I don't believe you intended to cause any real harm."

Discord shuddered in his sleep as Fluttershy rubbed his back. He was watching himself picking up her remains again.

"I can't pretend to know why you did what you did. Perhaps you knew something we didn't. Perhaps you were afraid that we weren't ready, and you set this up to make sure that we were. Perhaps you wanted to gather up all of Equestria's enemies and lock them away so that they weren't a problem anymore; to turn all of our foes into just one so that we could more easily be rid of them. I'm even willing to believe that you did all of this for the good of Equestria. Because if our destruction was your intent, you wouldn't be beating yourself up over it now."

She leaned forward and kissed his forehead. "I forgive you, Discord. You didn't mean for this to happen, obviously, and you have justly accepted your fault in all of this. However, you've also started to move towards fixing the mess you made. Maybe not the best steps, as that would be finding somepony to watch over Equestria, but you've found somepony to watch over Angel Bunny, and that's a baby step in the right direction."

She looked up at the dream. It was still just as haunting as it had been when it started. "Let's see if we can fix this, hm?"

Placing her hoof on the dream bubble, Fluttershy stopped the image and replaced it. No longer was it the series of events that had landed Discord in this funk. He was no longer watching her die over and over. What she had in mind was something else. Into his dream, she injected some of her own memories of trying to make Angel eat when he was grumpy, making some of his favourite foods, and brushing his fluffy tail.

After a few loops of that, she added in a few scenes of Angel doing nice things for her; making sure she took time out of her day to care for herself when she'd spent all day taking care of other animals, pushing her to do a better job, driving her to improve herself, and taking care of her when she was sick. He really was sweet, when he wanted to be.

The final touch was replacing her hooves with Discord's claws. He was now the one cuddling with Angel Bunny on a cold, dark winter's night, snuggled up in front of the fireplace.

He seemed to be sleeping a bit more soundly, now. Fluttershy didn't know if she'd actually done the right thing, or if she'd even helped, but she'd planted the idea in his head that he and Angel could be friends in the future. She definitely wanted them to be closer to each other, but she'd be okay with Discord just ensuring that Angel made it to a good home. And also, she wanted him to stop blaming himself for what happened. It was not good for him to dwell on that, and he would be better served by moving forward and working to make Equestria better. In her absence, she was counting on him.