Felix was sleeping on the mattress Moony had placed on the floor, right between her bed and desk. He’d bundled up the blankets she’d gotten, twisted them into a nest which he now laid curled up in. He slept quietly; the only indicator of life being how the strands of mane in front of his muzzle would wave with each breath.

Moony was paying the price of those salt licks now. Her head was starting to pound with a headache right behind her closed eyes.

She didn’t groan -she didn’t want to wake Felix- but she threw her hooves into the air, shaking them angrily at the sky. She’d drank so much water after, why was she still getting a headache? It wasn’t fair.

Still, the upside to this hangover compared to the other ones she’d had was that painkillers wouldn’t damage her liver this time. So she dragged herself down the stairs from her bed, carefully stepped over Felix, and opened her desk drawer. Shaking a pill from the bottle she’d found in there, she checked if the cup she’d left on the desk earlier that day still had any tea in it. It did, so she licked the pill up and gulped it down with cold tea. Gross, but this way she didn’t have to go to the kitchen.

She then slumped into her desk chair, staring out the window, waiting for the effect to kick in.

There were no stars visible. It had made Moony uneasy at first, but she’d gotten used to the constant light pollution of the city.

Once her head felt a little better, she rose from the chair… and climbed up on the desk. The window was the easiest way to the roof after all.

She had to be careful to make sure the window didn’t creak, but once it was open she quickly slipped out, grabbing the ledge above to brace her hind hooves against the quoins. Using them as leverage, she then swung herself up on the ledge -pushing the window closed on the way- and further up until she could grab the side of the roof.

There she had to pause to breathe a little -ponies were not made for climbing, and her muscles strained at the gymnastics she’d just performed- before finally heaving herself up on the roof.

It was empty, aside from some discarded folding chairs, a few empty bottles and the door to the stairway.

Okay. Time to see if her theory held water.

“Discord,” she said into the empty air. “I need to speak with you.”

The roof was silent, aside from the normal sounds of the city and the wind blowing through her mane.

“I’m serious. I know you’re listening; I need to talk with you.”

Nothing.

Well, time to do something Felix would berate her for.

“How do you think Fluttershy would react if she knew you did all this and then didn’t even have the decency to talk about it?”

For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then, the air rippled in front of her, and out of the distortion a creature appeared.

He was long and snakelike, with six mismatched limbs whose sockets appeared to shift and move up and down along his body. His muzzle was long and horse-like, with large deer ears, a short mane, mismatched antler and horn and a fang poking out. His mouth was frowning and slightly open, showing off his array of various teeth, and his eyebrows were pulled down into an impressive glare. His eyes, although different in size, were coldly fixed on her.

“That’s low,” he said. His voice was somehow both rumbly and cracked on high notes.

She licked her lips. “Worked, didn’t it?”

Discord frowned even deeper. “What do you want?” He spat out.

“Oh, no introductions then?” She mockingly held out a hoof. “Hi. Twilight Moonstone. We’ve never met before.”

He shot her hoof an unimpressed glare.

“No?” Moonstone pulled her hoof back. “That’s fine; I know your name. People keep talking about you, even if we’ve never actually seen each other before now.”

She cocked her head at him. “You know, I used to worry about that. Why you’d only visit my moms when I wasn’t there, or see all of my moms’ friends’ kids except me. I wondered a bit if you didn’t like me, or if I’d done something wrong.”

Her face grew colder. “But it wasn’t that I had done something that made you not want to see me, was it?”

“You going to keep slinking around the edges, or do you actually have anything you want to say!?” His voice increased in volume, and a wind began to blow around them.

“How!?” The pressure which had built up in her chest finally burst. “How could you just do this!?”

“I did what I had to!” He yelled back. The wind picked up in speed and she felt her tail and mane whip at her sides and face. “There wasn’t any other choice!”

“Of course there was!!”

“What, should I just have let him die? And you’re supposed to be his friend!?”

She felt a familiar pressure built up in her head from her anger. Normally she didn’t let it out, keeping it under tight lock and key… but now. Here.

The only one here aside from her was a practically immortal spirit.

With a scream, lightning tore from her horn. It exploded out in violent waves of heat and light, most of them hitting the metal door to the stairway. She felt lightheaded from the rush of it, as her eyes watered from the blinding flashes from her forehead.

“I am!!” she screamed. She felt raw inside, and her voice reflected that as the two words made it crack. “How dare you—!?”

“There was only two options!!” Discord yelled. The wind had now turned into a storm, sweeping away the chairs and various trash off the roof. They turned into projectiles as they flung around the two arguing figures. Moonstone’s lightning burned them before they hit her, and Discord just ignored them bouncing off his sides.

“—think that I’m not!” Moonstone continued, ignoring his interruptions. “And why didn’t you ever tell us? Even if there only was that one option, why didn’t you ever say anything!?”

Clouds gathered above them, and heavy rain started to fall —getting caught in the storm raging around them.

“You say you care about Felix, but he’s spent his entire life not understanding why his magic wasn’t acting like others!” Moonstone continued. “Why didn’t you help him!?”

“That’s none of your business!”

“He’s my friend!”

Discord flew into the air. “I don’t have to explain myself to you about Felix! If this is all you want to talk about, I’m out!”

“I only started to talk about it because you refuse to explain why you did this entire thing in the first place!”

“I did!! There wasn’t any other options you dumb pony! Either I take the horn or he dies!!”

“That wasn’t the only solution!”

“Yes!” He rose higher into the air. “It! Was!”

The word shook with the last word he spoke, and Moonstone had to steady her legs as Discord rose higher into the air, seeming to turn to leave.

Deep breath. Deep bre— oh, buck it.

“Then just one question, Discord!” She yelled after him into the storm, her horn crackling out lightning with every word. “Just one bucking question!”

“What?!” He roared, turning back to face her.

“Why didn’t you just take the horn of a dead pony!?”

Everything… stopped. Frozen in place, like when a reel gets stuck at the movies. Except, that was projected flat on a canvas; here, the world was frozen all around her. Items just hung in the air, water droplets glittered all around her and even the sounds of the city had stopped. The only thing still moving was a few residual cracks of electricity from her horn and her own lungs heaving.

Even Discord was still; his spindly body still and his face locked into a snarl.

“…What?” He somehow got out through his teeth.

“My horn must have been off of my head for hours by the time you found it. Its nerves and tissues would have been so dead at that point, I’m not even sure what you did to make them work again.” Moonstone ranted at him, swishing her tail in agitation. “So why didn’t you just get another one? From someone else, who didn’t need theirs anymore?!”

Discord’s face grew slack, as he stared uncomprehending at her.

“…you didn’t think about that at all.” She closed her eyes. “Did you?”

All the previously frozen items fell to the ground with bangs and clatters. And splashes, as the water doused the roof and Moonstone.

“But, that’s…” Discord fumbled around for a bit, before slamming his paw and claw into the ground below him. “That’s, ah, that’s grave robbing! Or desecrating the dead or something. That would have been against the law!” He pulled out a scroll from behind his back, and held it out towards her, his front legs stretching impossibly long to hold it out and point at an entry. “See!”

She shoved the scroll away without looking at it. “Two things; since when does the spirit of chaos care about laws?”

“Since this spirit doesn’t wish to make his friend angry or get turned into a statue.” Discord snarled at her. “But I can’t believe you would suggest—”

“Yeah, whatever, let me finish.” Moonstone interrupted him. “There were two things, remember? So two; that’s what organ and body donors are for.”

Discord fumbled a little again, then scoffed. “Yeah, as if they’d give me—”

“No shit! That’s why you talk to other people when you have problems! If you’d had a doctor or, hay, even my mom working with you on it, they could have seen the obvious solution staring you in the face and helped you with getting a donor horn!”

She tossed her mane and pawed at the ground. “All the offence, Discord; you suck at seeing obvious stuff and solutions when they involve other people.”

“You’re one to speak!” Discord suddenly floated right in front of her face. “Or how are you doing here, hmmm? You can lie in your letters, but I’ve seen how you’ve really been failing, oh, Daughter of the Princess of Friendship.”

She bared her teeth in response. “Because I’m sure stalking isn’t on your long list of no-nos!? And any problems I may have only affect me! You can’t hurt other people because you’re too stubborn or stupid to get help, and then go ‘Oh but you do it toooo’ to excuse yourself!”

Discord grabbed his horn and antler and tugged on them while shrieking. “Why do you even care!? There’s no difference between now and how it was a day ago! You didn’t have a horn then, you don’t now! How is the fact that I gave it to someone rather than it disappearing in a cave any different!?”

“Don’t change the subject!”

“I am! Don’t dodge the question!”

“Fine!” She yelled. Her horn was crackling again, and the winds were once more picking up speed around her. “If we go by your, what, consequentialist idea? Then it doesn’t! There is no difference, nothing has changed —but there’s more to life than just the results of actions!”

She stomped her hoof. “Before now, it was people I could forget about! Just bad people who did bad things, with no use in dwelling on it. But then…” She stomped her hoof again, and screamed up at him. “It was you! All this time, it wasn’t just bad ponies who did a bad thing and got punished for it. It was you, too!! It wasn’t just a normal bad thing, it— it was betrayal!”

“I’m the Lord of Chaos!” Discord yelled back. “What part of that makes you think I’m not going to do bad things?”

“You were supposed to be my moms’ friend!”

Discord stopped again. This time, the storm didn’t just pause; it instead grew softer and softer, as Discord sunk towards the ground.

“You were supposed to be our friend,” Moonstone said again, her voice trembling against her will. “But you didn’t trust anyone enough to get help. And now… Felix and I have to deal with that.” She slumped. She was so tired. “Now we have to live with this.”

The roof was silent. Discord had landed; all four legs on the ground which put his head just slightly above hers. She didn’t look up at him though, and bowed her head to the ground.

“There’s no point in this.” She muttered to herself. “You’re never going to admit or get what you did wrong, and I need to stop going back to what could have been different.”

She sat down, head still bowed towards the ground. She was so tired.

After a few minutes of silence, Discord took a hesitant step forward. “How are you dealing with this?”

Moonstone glanced in his direction, seeing his paw and claw a few body lengths away from her still. “What?”

“About… all of this.” He must have gotten onto two legs, because the front paws rose into the air while waving around a bit. “About… Felix having your horn, about losing it in the first place, how everyone…?”

“And what—” Moonstone’s head rose to stare into his confused eyes. “On earth. Makes you think you have the bucking right to know?”

Discord genuinely didn’t seem to know what to answer to that.

“You’re not my family, you’re not my friend. You’re not my therapist, you’re not my doctor, you’re not anything to me.” She hissed at him. “So what makes you think I’ll tell you that?”

Moonstone chest heaved, her tail lashed and flicked off the water Discord’s storm had splashed her with. “I don’t care that you may have affected how my life started out. This is my life, and you were never a part of it.”

She turned her back to Discord’s still form. With a heavy sigh, she took a trembling step forwards. Now, as the adrenaline crashed after her anger, she let herself realise just how dangerous that could have been. Discord was supposedly a law abiding citizen, but she had just after all seen how much he was willing to fudge laws to do what he thought was right. Plus, even the mildest of ponies will kick when angry enough…

“Wait,” Discord said, suddenly right behind her.

She tensed, and felt her legs tremble grow stronger. She shot him a look over her shoulder. “…what?”

He didn’t respond, just snapped his paw.

Immediately, the light around the roof dimmed. She jumped, and whirled around —but Discord didn’t do anything, just looked up. She followed his gaze…

…the sky was a tapestry of glitter and light. From horizon to horizon stars shone brightly, and the milky way stretched out above her like a cloud of dark yet shimmering satin and lace. Even without a telescope, her eyes saw more details than they’d even seen before: from specks of stars normally hidden in the brightness of others, to just how many colors the sky truly possessed in its shimmering points of previously white light. Even the moon was brighter and clearer, making her eyes water as she traced the craters which lined its surface.

Moonstone closed her eyes tight.

“I’m sorry,” Discord murmured beside her. “If there is anything I can do to make it up to you, just tell me.”

“Take your shit bribes somewhere else” Moonstone spat between clenched teeth. “You can’t buy forgiveness with stuff, and I don’t forgive you.”

“…but—”

“Go away Discord.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t know what Felix will do, and I can’t say how I’ll feel in the future, but right now? Just leave me alone.”

Nothing responded. After breathing heavily for a little while, she dared to open her eyes again.

The roof was empty. Just herself, the discarded chairs she’d seen before -now back to their original position after the storm had blown them about- and the door to the stairs.

The door.

With a groan, she began to drag herself towards it. She didn’t want to think about any of this more tonight, she just wanted to sleep and hope Luna was guarding her dreams.

“Moony?”

So much for that.

She turned around, and saw Felix peering over the edge of the roof. His eyes were wide and worried.

“Sorry,” he whispered. Why, she wasn’t sure; they were the only ones there. “The window closing woke me up, and I wasn’t going to follow you but then I heard—”

He swallowed, and pulled himself over the edge so he could fold his wings and stand while talking to her. “Discord is unpredictable, and I stayed close to be able to tell if I needed to—”

Moonstone chuckled mirthlessly, and turned to walk towards him instead of the stairs. “Protect me? Why, my hero.”

He frowned and lashed his tail. “I know you’re upset and that’s why you’re making fun, but yes. Yes, Moony.” He gave her a pleading look. “He wouldn’t do anything to you if I was in the way —he cares about me and my mom too much.”

Moony suddenly felt very ashamed. “Sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to imply… I mean—” She reached him, and bowed her head. “Sorry.”

He nuzzled the side of her muzzle. “It’s alright. I mean, I know you’d beat me nine times out of ten in a hoof-to-hoof fight. But against Discord —unless you suddenly grow a tree of harmony, the best you can do is hide behind people he cares about”

Moony buried her face into his mane. “Please don’t be a meat shield for me.”

She felt his chuckle more than heard it. “No promises.”


——-


After they’d stood there for a little while, Felix had carried Moony back down into the apartment. At first, they’d gone to bed… but Moony quickly realised sleep wasn’t happening. So she’d snuck down from her loft again, and sat down at the edge of Felix’ mattress, staring at him.

He cracked an eye open. “Can’t sleep either?”

She mutely shook her head, knowing he’d be able to see it even in the darkness of the room. He sat up and shuffled over in his blanket nest, patting the space beside him.

She sat down with a sigh. “Just a lot of thoughts.”

He hmm-ed. “Wanna talk about it?”

Moony shrugged and looked away.

The conversation grew quiet for a few seconds as Felix didn’t push her. He leaned against the pile of blankets, his tail wrapped around his paws and his claws were curled up against his chest. In the faint light from the window, his fluffy mane practically glowed red. Moony’s eyes were inadvertently drawn to his head, as his ears twitched and flopped slightly with sleepy sluggishness as he listened to the sounds outside.

“Is it weird?” He asked.

Moony jerked; she hadn’t realised he’d caught her staring. “What?”

He reached up to touch a talon to his horn. “It it weird? That it’s…?”

Oh. Of course he’d assume that’s what she’d been… she thought for a second on how to respond.

“It’s a little weird,” she finally admitted.

Felix faltered, so Moony put a hoof around him. “None of that, now. I told you; I love you, and I’m not letting you go that easy. I can deal with weird.”

Felix leaned into her shoulder, hugging her back.

“You know…”she said softly. “Discord tried to ask how I feel about all this. And the truth is,” she sighed. “I don’t know. How I feel …or am supposed to feel?” She shrugged. “Does this even affect my previous feelings about my disability? Or about my mom's overprotectiveness? I don’t know, Felix.”

He nuzzled her. “You don’t have to. This is a very odd situation.”

She thought about it for a second. “Actually, I do know on my moms’ part.” She said, flatly. “I am one hundred percent sure they’d be just as overprotective if I’d just been kidnapped without anything else on top.”

Felix snorted into her side. “D’you remember when Disco was staying over for a couple of weeks and Twilight made him wear a helmet when flying? And put a tracker on him in case he got out of the castle?”

“And took him to two doctor’s appointments because Mama Twi thought his appendix was bursting when he just had a tummy ache from candy.” Moony grinned. “My moms are always… intense.”

“Understatement,” was all Felix murmured back.

She settled further down into the nest, halfway laying down. Felix groggily moved closer so his head was resting on her shoulder.

She felt warm and sleepy. Felix mane was soft and gently tickled her side, as his soft breaths ruffled the fur on her chest.

With a final sigh she fell asleep.