Equestria Copes

Fluttershy stayed by Discord's side all night long, watching over his dreams. She did stop to consider that this was supposed to be Luna's realm, but quickly dismissed it. Not only was Luna retired, and probably called out of that retirement to find a new candidate for princess, she probably had hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of nightmares to lay siege to. She had enough on her plate as it was, so having Fluttershy remove a drop from that bucket was probably inconsequential, and even if not, was probably appreciated.

Every time Discord would start to change his dream to something worse, in the form of "but" and "what if," she would change it back. She could not remove all doubt, but she could smother it with encouragement.

He woke up and stretched, moaning as his joints popped back into place. "Oh, my... That was an actually restful night of sleep!" he noted. "I can see why Fluttershy didn't like..." he sighed and shook his head. "Again. And those first few seconds were going so well..."

He took a moment to do some deep breathing and stretching. He didn't say much of anything, which was fair. Nopony was around, so he'd just be talking to himself. Granted, as the lord of all chaos, that wouldn't be much of a stretch, but he seemed to be acting more normal, as though he were taking active steps to change his ways.

Folding down his rain cover, it almost looked like a normal hill again as he turned and set off for Ponyville. He was still walking, or rather, trudging, but no longer was he dragging his tail behind him. He kept it up out of the dust. Not quite in the air, but at least out of the way. He walked right up to Fluttershy's cottage and let himself in. Fluttershy followed through the closed door and up the stairs, where Angel was still lying.

"Good morning, little Angel Bunny!" belted Discord, yanking off the covers. "Slept well, did you?"

Angel just curled up tighter. He really didn't look healthy.

"I just spent the whole night in my thinking tree," lied Discord, "and do you know what I thought of?"

Angel huffed.

"That's right! I came up with a solution to our little problem!"

Discord scooped Angel up in his claws. Angel tried to fight back, of course, but it didn't take much effort for Discord to forcibly hold him still, even without chaos magic.

"See, I've been trying everything I could to make you eat something ever since I took command of Fluttershy's cottage, here, and so far, nothing has worked. So, I've decided to just give up."

Fluttershy followed the two of them down to the kitchen, Angel kicking and screaming all the way. On arrival, Discord used his tail to grab Angel's food bowl and set it on the table, then grabbed a carrot as he sat down in a chair.

"Normally, this is where I would beg you to take even one bite of carrot. But not today!"

With a loud crunch, Discord bit into the carrot, chewing as loud and obnoxiously as he could manage. All of this he did while holding Angel down in just such a way that he had to see it.

"Mm! So very tasty. And you missed out on all of it! You could have been eating this the whole time, and you refused. If only you'd cared enough to eat... Now it's all mine!"

Discord took another big bite of carrot, staring Angel down as he chewed. It hurt Fluttershy to watch what was happening, but it had to be done, and she knew it. She had planted the idea in his head, and now he was doing as she had said.

"I guess you didn't really care about Fluttershy, either. She would have wanted you to eat. But since you've decided not to..."

As he went for a third chomp of carrot, he conveniently relaxed his grip, and Angel jumped from his grasp, grabbing the carrot out of his tail, as well as the others from the bowl, moving them away from Discord.

"Oh, you silly rabbit," teased Discord, easily pulling a carrot from his grip. "You think you can hide these away? Not a clever idea, by any means."

Angel jumped up and grabbed the carrot back, and then, to keep Discord from taking them again, started eating them.

That was it. Though Angel couldn't see it, Discord was smiling. Angel was eating, at last. That was a step in the right direction, even if it was hard to watch.

Fluttershy thought back to when she had to do this. Angel had been refusing to eat, not for several days, but for an entire day. That she could make him ignore his anger and eat, not out of love, but out of spite, was good enough. He would still be angry when this was over, of course, but he'd be fed, and that was something, at least.

On any mormal day, she'd have put a stop to this behaviour right away. She didn't much care for teasing, and she especially didn't like the mistreatment of Angel. However, she was very proud of Discord for standing up to the capricious rabbit. Even if it was more forced and aggressive than she would like, it had worked, and it was what was best for Angel.

Discord leaned back, as if a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders. Not all of it, merely the first step of many that would eventually culminate in his recovery, but it was a big first step.

Fluttershy flew up behind him and started rubbing his shoulders. Her hooves went right through him at first, but with some effort, she managed to reach through. Not really, but she was able to project her will through, as his shoulders started moving in line with her hooves. He may have been doing all of the moving on his own, but perhaps he could feel her presence, and just maybe, she was providing some amount of comfort.

"You did very good," she whispered in his ear. "You're doing a very kind thing, looking after my affairs after my passing." She kissed his cheek. "Keep doing what you're doing."