Once Coco finally managed to clear her thoughts of Oranges—a vigorous process which seemed to last for hours instead of seconds—the first things she fully registered were the lights of the tower, decorated like it was Hearth’s Warming Eve even as summer approached. Similar details lined the entire building, with streams of color dappling the windows and statues of various childhood heroes out in front. Most of the sculptures seemed fairly modern and were probably switched out often, seeing as Coco was only really able to recognize Daring Do out of them; most of the others had fantastical details about them that made them seem almost impossible to pony society. One’s horn was split in two. Another was little more than a bubble of muscle attached to a pony head, though the superhero costume at least gave some explanation for that. But not all of them were these outlandish mutants; some were just ponies with butterfly wings or even a green alicorn in a land where the only known ones were purple, pink, white, or some shade of blue.

Turning to the other ponies by her side, Coco noticed that Babs seemed every bit as enraptured with the building as she was, but Cameo seemed to maintain her usual composure, just looking at the odd sight with a level face.

“I’m guessing you don’t get around to this part of Manehattan much, am I correct?” she asked. “It was a pretty well-known place when I first came here, but I guess things change so fast in this city. Though, to be honest, I’ve never really been inside it myself.”

When Cameo brought it up, Coco supposed there was some sense of familiarity to the place, buried underneath all the changing decorations. She couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was, however, until the three ponies went through the revolving door.

The inside was every bit as flashy in a different sort of way, still maintaining a look of opulence and age even amongst all its colorful shelves and sculptures. It had the same classic balconies as many of the other large Manehattan department stores, but by some sort of magic, model trains would move around each of them, never once falling into the pit below.

“You can’t make them fall off,” Coco said suddenly, noticing that Babs, too, was watching the strange trains. “Somepony in my class tried to knock one off when I was a foal. This tiny magic shield went off and everything, and he got kicked out of the field trip.”

“So they really are that small, huh?” Babs replied. “Thought I was just seein’ things since they’re so high up. Are they for Breezies or somethin’?”

While Coco was used to these kinds of questions from a foal who’d barely had much of a foalhood to begin with, Cameo just stared at her daughter in shock. Of course, Coco had bought Babs toys before—she wasn’t that bad of a mother, at least—but larger ones were too often outside her budget when she’d worked for Suri, and she’d imagined the orphanage wouldn’t have appreciated seeing one filly get spoiled over all the others, anyway. By the time she’d adopted Babs and taken the other job, both birthdays and Hearth’s Warming Eve were already a year away, and she figured she might as well wait until the play started or until some other holiday to surprise her.

“You’ve never seen toy trains before?” Cameo asked, trying her best to keep her composure. While Coco still barely knew the mare, she still couldn’t help but realize that she always had the same look on her face in situations like this, the same one she wore when she went on stage that fateful night.

Babs just shook her head without saying a word, keeping a clear gaze onto the mare.

“Then I’d say we have quite a bit of sightseeing to do these next few hours,” Cameo continued. “The store closes at eleven, and as you can see, this place is massive, so we have a lot of ground to cover if we have any hope of seeing everything.”

It was at that moment that Coco realized she had no idea what Cameo was trying to pull. She trusted the mare, sure, but with the way she talked, going through a toy store was a time-sensitive mission that would lead to some miraculous result. And the strangest part was that Coco wasn’t even entirely sure that she was exaggerating.

“Honestly, I thought we were just going to stay at home and play games or somethin’,” Babs whispered to Coco, thinking that the other mare couldn’t hear. “So why’re we in this fancy place?”

Coco shrugged just before walking into a giant Ursa Minor plush that had somehow been in her way without her noticing it.

“Uh muh muh,” she muttered incoherently, already feeling her face pressing into the blue fur. According to the other two, she’d stayed in this exact position for approximately five minutes, apparently shoving anypony who tried to remove her from the large bear-shaped object until Cameo had to physically drag her off it.

“Sweetspot bears are the best,” Coco said afterwards, still half-asleep. “It just reminded me of when I bought one as a foal and how I was never able to buy anything that comfortable since then. If I ever found out what fabric they use for those, I don’t think anypony could ever stay awake in one of my designs.”

Her two companions were still staring at her oddly as they made their way away from the stuffed animal section, figuring it was better not to take any more chances for the time being.

“What I was telling Babs when you were asleep was that I wanted to help out as a mother any way I could,” Cameo explained. “So I figured that picking out toys with a foal could be the first step to that. And I also figured it’d be the best place to take our minds off everything.”

“Off what exactly?” Coco asked. “Work? School?”

Instead of responding, Cameo stopped to look at a floor mosaic that formed a rainbow around one of the larger aisles. She trotted towards the piece of art and stopped suddenly on its orange stripe.

“For the purposes of this evening, there is no word for this color,” she spoke, getting into one of her dramatic moments again. “Neither is there a word for the fruit that shares its name. There is to be no discussion of the ‘M’ word, the ‘O’ word, or any combination of the two. I will say the forbidden words once for clarification, but any mention after that will be punished with a harsh glare and a reminder of the rule. Do I make myself clear?”

Coco nodded in understanding, while Babs still gave her a strange look.

“So what you’re suggestin’ is…we don’t say that name?”

“Or any of the others,” Cameo replied, finally getting off the mosaic after realizing others were staring at her. “They might be having their meeting tonight, and we may have to deal with the results tomorrow, but consider this an exercise. Whenever you feel like thinking about any of them, look at something else. Remember a joke you heard yesterday, or talk to one of us. Wait to channel your feelings until the time is right, and keep taking care of yourself every other time. That’s what got me through, at least.”

“That sounds like a lot to remember,” Coco said, remembering that the last time she’d seen him had been just over two weeks ago. That even after that time, she still thought about how the Ora—no, that family—had influenced Mos—no, that stallion—almost every single night. That day, when he’d left his permanent scar on her and showed her that he might never be out of her—

“It’ll seem like a lot at first,” answered Cameo, somehow knowing exactly when to cut through Coco’s worries. “For both of you. Bambi’s already helping you out, so I wanted to make sure my voice was heard too, since I know how you feel and all. But for the moment, let’s just take a minute to appreciate this!”

She waved her hooves out dramatically towards a smaller division within the store, dedicated entirely to building miniature carts. Foals would receive a kit with a particular template, and the three watched as they worked to put them together and customized them with the strangest of decorations they could imagine. The workers molded each one over with a sort of plaster to keep the wood preserved for years, and judging from the look of the finished ones, they even had time to put a bit of varnish on them, too. Even then, there was some missing element to them that none of them could quite pinpoint.

“Aren’t they supposed to be pushed?” Coco asked. “I haven’t seen any of the wheels on these things move once.”

“It’s more for the experience of making something, I guess,” Cameo answered with a sheepish grin. “So you can put it in your room and show it off to everypony else.”

Seeing that just one of these ornaments would cost them thirty bits a piece, they all decided it would be better to keep looking around the store. Judging from how all three swore they heard something break as they walked past, they figured it was probably for the best.

“Don’t worry,” Cameo replied. “This store’s been in Manehattan for decades, so everything here probably isn’t that fragile…probably.”

The rest of the first floor itself was fairly unremarkable, or as unremarkable as any store that flashy could possibly be. It had the sort of standard dolls and action figures that didn’t seem near as interesting to Coco in her marehood. She took a few mental notes of the clothes they wore, the styles that seemed to appeal to fillies these days, and moved on ahead.

Babs didn’t seem to take much interest in the selection either, but then again, Coco had learned by now that that was just the response she had to these things; she’d rather get out and explore than stay home and play with dolls as she’d done when she was a foal. Even when one did interest her, it was of a sort of gargoyle-griffon hybrid that looked more like a creature from a fantasy book than any sort of ordinary plaything. But even with all of that, she seemed to be enjoying herself far more than usual, thrown into the colorful and inviting environment even without taking interest in any of its products.

Or maybe just half an hour of the Orange rule’s already starting to impact her, Coco proposed to herself, just before she went back to censor her own thoughts. Maybe without all this drama, she can just be a regular filly from time to time.

The stairs to the second floor were sprawling, almost as tall as a decent-sized building themselves. Like everything else, they had a strange pattern to them, painted in white and black almost like a strange, surreal piano. The black keys were on the right side of the stairs rather than the left, for one.

Even while looking at the ornately decorated stairs, the two mares both dreaded going up them, judging from how long and strenuous they looked. Babs, on the other hoof, saw them only as a challenge, rearing up on her hind legs as though scaling through them was a race in and of itself. However, she only managed to make it up one when she heard a strangely musical noise.

By then, she’d already jumped off the stair, suddenly taken aback. After a few short seconds of hesitation, she carefully placed a hoof onto the lowest stair, only to hear the same note play again. Within a few seconds, she’d touched it several times in quick succession, feeling strangely proud of herself for making some attempt at a song.

“Because I am just a pony,” Babs sang, the tune actually somewhat matching what it was supposed to sound like. “I make mistakes from time to time…”

“Sweetspot will close in two hours,” the intercom interrupted. “We understand that this store is ridiculously large, so please make your decisions as soon as possible so you can enjoy the rest of our attractions. Thank you.”

With a shrug, Babs finally decided to go further up the stairs, only stalling a few times when a particularly appealing note sounded from one of them. As much as she was trying to keep her usual composure, Coco couldn’t help but notice that Cameo was having quite a bit of fun with the staircase, too.

“There’s a smaller one like this upstairs,” Coco explained, already thinking back to her foalhood. “I think it was in a movie or something? Anyway, it’s probably going to have a really long line, so it’s good that we stopped here.”

When they finally reached the middle level, they found that it was full of familiar sights: the whole place looked like a huge theatre storeroom with musical instruments and costumes everywhere. A gang of foals had crowded around a singing machine that seemed to operate through magic, with a much smaller version of a movie screen projecting words onto it.

“Makes you feel old already, doesn’t it?” Cameo suddenly asked. “Seeing all these strange new things, I mean.”

“Not really,” replied Coco. “If anything, it just makes this whole place different for me. If it was the same way as it was when I was a foal, it’d just be like any other place. Plus, after everything we’ve been through to meet each other, it’s nice to actually get to know everypony. And if we really intend on being a full family…”

Babs’ attention had already been turned toward the instruments, and as she carefully examined them, Coco couldn’t help but notice that Cameo was barely watching. Instead, she was almost staring off into the distance as if something was calling her there.

“That’s just it,” Cameo finally whispered. “I could move in with all of you any time I wanted. The bits wouldn’t be an issue at all, and I could still commute to my store. I’d finally get the peace I wanted in my life, but…”

Looking into her eyes, Coco knew this wasn’t going to be the same sort of issue she’d have to deal with when she first met Bambi. Rather than relentlessly fighting for her child like Coco had always expected, the other mare appeared to have lost all hope of any ties between them.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while, really. You and Bambi have been the ones pushing for me to live with you, and the ones who always end up initiating the conversation. I know it’s hard for Babs to take in, suddenly knowing about her mother and everything, but even now, she still seems put off by me. I’d hoped that maybe having the three of us together tonight would help, but even that doesn’t seem to work.”

She gave the tiniest of chuckles, almost too light to be truly bitter, and sighed, “Maybe I really am out of touch with fillies, after all. Part of me is even scared about what happens if she does end up bonding with me. Even when Bambi was a foal, things were different, and everything was so…rigid. When you live with them, you get good at raising perfect foals, because there’s an exact science to it. But when a mare who’s used to their systems wants to raise somepony who can think for herself, who isn’t a perfectly hypnotized shell of a pony…let’s just say that it’s harder than you can imagine.”

Coco gave the other mare a pat on the back, at first uncomfortable about engaging such an important mare in physical contact.

“Trust me,” the younger mare replied. “Judging from they’ve made me go through already, I can imagine. And since I wonder about how good a mom I am sometimes, I’m hardly the pony to be giving you advice. But Bambi and Babs were able to understand me even through that terrible sacrifice I had to make for them. We can do it for you, too.”

“But what if I do something wrong when you two aren’t around?” asked Cameo. “Even back when Babs was young, when I thought I was free from them, I still found myself wanting to shape my daughter into what I wanted without even thinking about it. Flynn confronted me about it back then, and I didn’t understand. But now I do. I know that deep down inside, when they teach us new members of the family how to raise foals, they teach how to do to them what that stallion did to me. As much as I know that I’m better than him, I can’t help but wonder what will really happen if I’m not careful.”

“Nothing will,” a voice answered from behind them.

Both mares did double takes, realizing that the conversation they were having wasn’t one that should be heard by anypony. However, upon realizing that it was just Babs coming back from the instrument demonstration, both gave heavy sighs of relief.

“You scared us half to death there!” Coco teasingly scolded.

“Well, I had to tell her sooner or later,” Babs sighed. “I might not have heard everythin’ you two said, but I know that I’m no Orange. And nothing either of you two say or do is going to change that.”

Cameo gave her a harsh hoof gesture and a glare, wanting to be annoyed at her for saying the forbidden word. But once she realized just why the filly had said it, her face softened, even though it still showed a hint of fear.

“You were right about how that night was hard on me,” Babs continued. “All I could do to understand it was to just lump you in with everypony else. That night, I learned that an entire family could throw me straight to the wolves ‘cause I didn’t have the right parents. And, if anythin’, it wasn’t even really anythin’ you did. It was just seeing who you were and what you looked like. I thought that if those highfalutin ponies rejected me, well, once you got to know me—“

“I’d end up doing the same to you?” Cameo replied, her voice trembling slightly as she said it.

The filly’s silence told her all she needed to know.

“Why do you think I would’ve gone to all that trouble getting you back if I would have just let you go like that? When I thought of you all these years and how far you were from me, I never once saw you as a mold like they did. I really did miss you as a pony, and as a second chance. And you really do need to stop seeing yourself as such a bad pony. That’s what they might’ve thought of you, but in my eyes, you’re perfect.”

Turning to Coco with a wink before urging the two forward through the store, she whispered, “That goes for both of you.”

Somehow, by some miracle, when Coco went to sleep that night, the Orange rule still seemed to apply. As she clutched onto the giant plush Ursa Minor she’d bought to match with Babs’, somehow she didn’t have any doubts of how Mosely really was, because he never even entered her mind. She knew that this would only be a temporary reprieve, though, and that even without his presence, her mind was still deep in thought about something else entirely.

Letting herself relax for once with ponies she loved had been, admittedly, the best thing for her sanity in what seemed like forever, and right now, she was only looking for more ways to replicate the effect. Keeping herself away from them back when she was dating Mosely had been one of the worst mistakes she’d made, and now that she was finally getting to be with them again, she realized just how much she valued them.

And just when she recognized that, she turned to the letter she hadn’t opened in over a month.

Everything just felt better knowing Scene had been the one to write it, and while she hadn’t really thought about his love confession too much, she couldn’t help but feel a sense of relief when she discovered the truth. Granted, she wasn’t entirely sure yet if she saw him the same way he did for her, but over the last week or so, she was actually considering the possibility.

She could always start small, she told herself. Just a dinner or a night out, like they were still friends. She could sort out her emotions later, like she should’ve been able to do all along.

But more importantly, it just seemed to her like all her love lessons had been leading towards this. Opening up to other ponies, keeping contact with the ones whom she already knew and loved. What could be better to solve a failed relationship than another relationship, one that she knew could really turn out right this time?

Even then, Coco tried to tell herself she had the best of intentions in mind. But even then, she knew. When she would go up to the theatre tomorrow and accept the offer Scene had made her so long ago, her first priority wasn’t just to fall in love with him. Deep down, it was to protect herself, so that the thoughts would never have to come again.

Just like they whispered to her that night, just once, but still enough to make their impression known.

The Oranges were behind everything all along, they said, paying no mind to just how much she feared these sorts of ideas. You have to accept him into your life sooner or later.

Author's Notes:

While I'd been meaning to unveil Coco/Scene for a while...something happened that made me realize the world needs a whole lot of shipping fluff right now.

This was supposed to be "light filler," but it got dark near the end. Sorry! If it makes you feel any better, Babs did end up getting a keyboard to replicate the fun she had with the piano. Or just imagine me trying to ponify the name "F.A.O. Schwarz" and eventually saying "forget that, I'll come up with my own name."

...yes, I also realize the "musical stairs" aren't real. But this is Equestria, and Equestria gets cool stuff we don't have because *magic*