"... I could just snap my fingers, and she'd be fine. She'd go back to being young, strong and healthy. She could take care of those hideous little creatures that she won't let me improve, as she did before!"
Celestia sighed deeply into her hoof, dreading a well-recognized expression on a face she never thought would have it. Eager, desperate, manic, afraid. The hope that mortality could be cheated. And she knew that when she had said her piece, the expression would melt away to anger.
Here we go...
"Discord..." She started carefully, eyes far off in the distance, troubled, " Our powers cannot interfere with life and death. The natural order of things exceeds our magical influence, as it should. We are not the deciders of fate, nor the judges of life. The three of us must contend with this reality, as that is our fate. Just as Luna and I must raise and lower the sun and moon each day, so too must we watch these ponies' lives rise and fa-"
"Oh save it, Celestia!" Discord snapped, cutting her off irritably. "I'm no mortal pony born yesteryear; I know as well as you do that ponies must die so that others can be born, blah blah blah, natural order, beauty and sanctity of life, how lucky we are to see it moving, yada yada yada."
Celestia regarded him with a controlled annoyance at his interruption. "Then what did you come here for, Discord, if not comfort? You know as well as I do that there's nothing I can do to save Fluttershy."
Discord looked out through the window, conjuring up a table to lean slightly on, looking unphased. "Nothing, right... Nothing you can do at all." He glanced up at her. "Nothing; That's why Miss Twilight stuffypants will die some day, too."
Celestia's eyes flashed and she moved to speak, angry words on her lips, but Discord went on, cutting her off. "Oh, that's right! Twilight's going to be an alicorn, isn't she? Because she's sooo special. She gets a free ticket out of death because her teacher is a Goddess."
"We are not Goddesses, Discord. You've made quite sure Luna and I both remember that."
"But you can change pony destiny and cheat death like one, can't you? So if Fluttershy had, instead of saving and easing the pain of lives, read books and stuck her nose so far in your plot she could balance you on her head, then she wouldn't have to die? How very egotistical of you, Celestia. I'm afraid my faults may be rubbing off on you."
"Discord, enough!"
Discord stared at her imperiously, arms crossed.
The Regent of the sun stared down, her eyes in shadow, as she composed herself. Finally, she turned her head up to him, and he saw rage boiling under the surface of her quiet dignity. Hard to spot, but he'd known her for millenia. Hardly threatening to a being who could turn her into a wind-up toy at a moment's notice, but it was this moment only that she held power over him; turning a pony into an alicorn is a trick only an alicorn herself could have up her sleeve. Discord, as the God of Chaos, the dissolver of absolutes and hater of rules, could not touch the most powerful, most final of absolute rules. It burned him inside for centuries, sure, but never as it did now, in these circumstances.
Celestia finally spoke, her words coming out wrathfully, as they never did against a mortal pony. "How dare you. The state that Fluttershy, the element of kindness, has found herself in, is a tragic one. All of her friends, myself included, will mourn her passing when it comes. Which it will." She gave a firm pause, staring at him levelly, before she went on.
"Your insinuation that you are the only one of her friends to be affected by her death is an insult to us, as well as to Fluttershy." He turned away from her at that, but she continued on.
"To bring up Twilight's future in my presence, in my court, while discussing these things is inexcusable. How dare you speak of her while we discuss such a tragedy. And how dare you judge me for her ascension. Twilight is the only pony I've come across in the last five millenia who could advance, and she is the only pony who will. The number of good friends, loyal soldiers, incredible thinkers, and even lovers I have had to watch pass in that time is innumerable to me, even in all the journals I've kept in that time.
"The pain of loving short lived flowers is immense. You mocked me by mentioning "How lucky we are to see it." I am not blind, Discord. This is our burden, above all else. You have rejected my sister and I as companions in our timeless existence, and that is your choice. But the two of us had each other, as you remember, and as you see now. I lost my sister for a thousand years, to her madness and my own mistakes. So don't you dare talk to me about loss, as you've simply never had anything to lose."
By now, Discord was facing the doors leading out of the throne room, hands folded behind his back. His face could not be seen, for the long, dark shadow of the sun had passed over it. The wind blew against the stained glass, now all tinted orange with a slow dusk.
Celestia watched him grimly, reclaiming her seat at the throne.
"Goodbye, Celestia." He said stiffly. His usual sense of humor and mockery were gone, and in a snap of fingers, so was he.
Fluttershy lay in the hospital bed, staring weakly at the sunset in the window. Her wings were ruffled and feathers lay around the sheets where she tossed and turned in her sleep. Her eyes were clouded over and although they were fixed on the descending golden orb, she gave a weak smile at a sudden, familiar presence beside her.
"Discord, visiting hours ended two hours ago. You'll get in trouble..." She paused, taking a ragged breath, "... if the doctors see you."
The draconequus in question said nothing. His face was carefully moulded into a strange, emotionless stare.
Her breathing was heavy and raspy, as though every breath was the first one she'd had in ages. It slowed and relaxed as she slipped into sleep. Discord stood and disappeared.
Having teleported without much thought of where he was going ( Which was the case more often than not) he found himself on a familiar small bridge in front of a familiar tree cottage. He glanced up at it, a curious feeling boiling in his stomach. He remembered the glorious improvements he'd tried to implement on the boring little house, but which Fluttershy had not allowed him to keep.
You could do it now; She's not home! She won't mind.
The familiar voice of chaos egging him on stood out for a moment. He had relented to her demands time after time, because, as he remembered from the very beginning, " if I don't, I'll lose the one friend I ever had."
She's leaving you anyway. You held up your part of the deal but she's going away; She doesn't really care. She just wanted you under control.
His temper flared as he began pacing, muttering to himself.
"What pathetic irony. Even my very freedom was on the generous extension of Fluttershy's will. They all let me stay out, as long as Fluttershy's friendship could keep me in check- Me, God of Chaos! They wouldn't use their little gemstones on me and I could roam free, as long as a little yellow pony could keep me from raining boiling tea on their little heads!"
And he had refrained. He had been a good little Discord. He helped Princess Sunshine and her merry little rainbow kingdom from starving, going to war, or in some other way destroying itself in an entertaining battle of inevitability. The years had been long and boring. But he had complied, so that he could come visit Fluttershy and take tea with her, find out what made her laugh, and what made her scream in terror (trying to avoid the latter) and even joining her and her unworthy little pony friends (Except maybe that pink one, she'd had promise) on their stupid little adventures. He'd restrained himself. And now she was dying.
"What's the use of holding back now? Nothing's going to keep her here." He stood and began pacing angrily. "Twilight's years of hot for teacher pay off in eternal life, and Fluttershy dies a spinsters' death, with her home rotting away; It seems the animals of the forest have to find a new place to treat their broken little wings."
Twilight. Oh, how he loathed Twilight. A more law-abiding, boring, rule-keeping pony he could not imagine. He was doomed, apparently, to spending eternity with her, and three other boring, rule-keeping, law-abiding ponies. At least Luna had a rebellious bone in her. Twilight had nothing except an obedience so excessive, it led to the occasional insanity. The only thing he could think of that might pass the time was perhaps invading her mind, filling her with thoughts of Celestia's disapproval of her, her regret for Twilight's "alicornification." Maybe another Nightmare Moon; Really, Luna was so theatrical. He wished he could have been there himself to witness it, with a big bowl of chocolate popcorn. As he entertained these thoughts, an envelope appeared suddenly, in front of him. It had a royal seal.
He opened it, and a huge pair of glasses appeared in front of it, the text moving over them like a projector. It was a medical certificate;
NAME OF DECEASED: ...................Fluttershy
DATE OF DEATH AS STATED:..........4/22/5034
PLACE OF DEATH:.........................Canterlot Royal Hospital
There was no signature, no sender. No note of sympathy or regrets. Fluttershy had been his only friend, since the dawn of his time. Only she had made a small nest in the cavern of whatever constituted his heart. Her death was nothing but a sheet of paper and the destruction of something he had not even known existed in him until the day she said he was her friend. Only her. The ground fell away as he seemed to grow, and the clouds around Fluttershy's cottage darkened. The only one, and she was gone. Was it back to the way things were again? Where did he stand?
That question was only for him; and he found the answer in his pain. The birds fluttering around were startled when their beaks became huge, razor sharp syringes. The trees gnarled bark jutted out as sharp, electrified wire. The last straw broke and Discord was free at last, and more trapped than he had ever felt in his life.
If I do, I'll lose the only friend I've ever had. If I do, I'll lose my only friend.
Well, she's gone now, isn't she?
The clouds color began to resemble rotten leaves on a decaying forest floor. Discord's body grew, and his voice seemed to distort.
"The elements can keep me in check, can't they, Celestia? Your rules will save you, won't they, Twilight?"
She was always so smug about your imprisonment. Her voice glowing with a future of eternal life, of blessed existence, while Fluttershy ROTS.
"Oh my, I seem to have forgotten; You can't use the elements without Fluttershy, now, can you?" A grin, tainted more by bitterness than it had been in centuries, adorned his face.
Lightning struck the cottage and a flame caught on swiftly. From the fire, sheet metal rose and assembled into a frightening throne. Thorned vines grew in crisscrossing patterns, the thorns growing long and hard as steel.
"What's left to keep chaos down when harmony dies?" He cried out gleefully, a lost man stepping on ants. "And harmony always dies."
As he turned from the growing fire behind him, as the screams of ponies became audible from the town nearby, as the sun became a spiral in the sky and the moon rose and fell and rose and fell in a mad, quickening spiral, his eyes were uncharacteristically dark. His mouth did not smile; the streets ran hot with acid, and snow rained on the desert. "I'll show you chaos, Celestia. All the alicorns and elements in the world couldn't save you now."
And Tartarus broke loose.
