[Shining’s POV, 6:30 p.m.]

Fleur and I gasped from the news Charles, Ozzy’s old lawyer, brought into light.

Richard Shore… So that’s his father’s name. On top of that, he’s passed away. I can’t imagine what Ozzy’s thinking right—

“What a shame,” Ozzy deadpanned out of the blue. Fleur and I turned to him with widened eyes. His expression was hard to read, impassive, like he’s taking the news of his father’s passing as some kind of common occurrence. “How did he die? Liver finally gave out from all that alcohol? Drank too much one night to induce alcohol poisoning? Or did he just suffocated from his own vomit?”

“Erm…” Charles was at a loss for words on how to react to Ozzy’s words judging by how he cleared his throat and took the time fixing his tie. “It was because of a heart attack, but that’s not really the point to why I’m here—”

“Right... Right, the will. Well whatever he has in there that he’s planning to give me, he can take it with him to the grave for all I care, there’s nothing I want from that man.”

“Ozzy!” Fleur intervened.

“No, I’m serious, Fleur,” he continued with a furrowed brow. “I had to look out for myself for most of my lifetime while he constantly drank himself into oblivion. He didn’t even step in to stop what happened between me and Robert, even when my life was at risk, you saw it yourself, Fleur. If he thinks what he has to give me in his will will make things up between us, he can shove it up his dead ass!”

“OZZY!” Fleur exclaimed with a glare. “I’m surprised at you. You can’t talk about him like that, he was your own father!”

“HE NEVER ACTED LIKE A FATHER TO BEGIN WITH!” Silence filled the air as Ozzy clenched his fist and looked to the side. “I needed him, Fleur. My life was on the line that night, and what did he do? He fucking stood there like any idiot bystander while being drunk, oblivious to what was going on. If I hadn’t thought of him as a stranger before that night, he became one after it. I hardly said anything to him after that damn trial, and as soon as my probation was over, I moved out the next morning leaving only a note to let him know that I left. I didn’t want to see or hear from him ever again since then, and now he brought this onto me.” He looked back up to Charles with a glare. “Whatever Richard mentioned in the will with my name on it, he can take it all back. I don’t want his support now when he could have provided it to me for the past twenty fucking years of my life.”

“Ozzy,” I said with folded ears.

“I understand your feelings towards this, Ozzy. Your father did as well,” Charles said. “He knew what he was getting into when he put you in his will, but he gave me strict instructions to have you watch the video no matter the circumstances. As his attorney, it’s my job to respect and follow through with his wishes to the very end.”

“Ozzy… Why don’t we watch the video?” I asked him as I put a hand on his shoulder. “If this is his last chance to be a father, I think you should at least listen to what he has to say.”

“And we’ll be there for you too so you won’t have to take all of it upon yourself,” Fleur added as she put a hand on his other shoulder. “Please, let us carry some of the pain that’s inside you and help you through this.”

He exchanged glances between the both of us, tensed up, and sighed. “Alright, I’ll watch the video, but I still have the choice to whether or not I keep whatever he has to give me.”

“That’s all I ask,” Charles said. “Shall we take this inside?”

“I’ll prepare us some tea and snacks,” I volunteered as we made our way inside Fleur’s home.

[6:50 p.m.]

I carried a tray with a tea set and snacks to the living room where the rest of us were gathered. I set the tray down, poured the tea in the cups, and passed them out to everyone in the room. The air in the room was unsettling, as Ozzy looked uninterested in the whole ordeal (or at least tried to) while the rest of us didn’t look all that happy.

“Alright, are we all settled?” Charles asked. Fleur and I nodded while Ozzy shrugged.

The attorney took out a DVD from his suitcase and put it in the player. The T.V. was already set on the correct channel to play movies, so when the video started, the first thing we saw on screen was a familiar human man sitting in a chair, but different from when we last saw him in Ozzy’s dreams. He looked cleaner compared to back then. The beard he had before was shaved, his hair was trimmed and styled, and he was even in a sharp looking suit.

“Is it recording?” the man said.

“Yep. You can start whenever you’re ready, Richard,” another voice said, which I recognized to be Charles’.

“Whoa… he looks... different,” I commented.

“A better kind of different,” Fleur added. Ozzy stayed silent.

Richard took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes before he looked directly into the camera. “Hey, Ozzy. If you’re watching this, it must mean I’ve passed on. I want to start off by saying thank you for listening to what I want to talk about in this video. You probably don’t want to see me after all this time, and I don’t blame you. Honestly, I’m pretty nervous just sitting here, as if you’re in this room with me right now. All that I ask is you hear me out, and you won’t have to deal with me ever again. I guess I should start off with after you moved out.

“I have to tell you, when I saw that note that morning, I was hit harder than the hangover in my head at the time. I was told by my own son in writing to drop dead and don’t come and find him. How often do dads get told something like this?” I couldn’t help but glare at Ozzy for writing such an awful thing to him, but he didn’t seem fazed. “I had to stop and think how all of that happened in an instant. I think that might have been the first time I truly felt sober after getting slapped in the face with that. I rushed over to Robert in the hospital to let him know what happened, and he didn’t want to see me again either. He asked the nurses to keep me away from visiting him in the hospital room. It was then that for the first time in my life, I truly felt alone, more than when your mother, Wendy, passed on.

“I was at a loss for what to do then. If Wendy was here right now, I would get such a scolding that would beat all others. I… felt so miserable, I had no idea how much you two meant to me until you left. Ozzy, you probably resembled your mother the most since you had her eyes. If you saw her that time, you would see why I loved her so much. It’s funny how she used to be my boss in a public office at one point, and everyone else at work would call me crazy for even making a move on her from how much of a hardass she was.”

“Wait… Dad worked for Mom before?” Ozzy asked. “I was never told any of this.”

“But when I finally convinced her to date me, all of that work I put in was worth it, because I thought she was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known when I got to know her,” Richard continued. “Even she thought I was crazy for taking my own boss out on a date, but I didn’t see her as one when I saw her the first night we went out. What got me so interested in her in the first place was how strong a presence she had, but at the same time, a little sad. I wanted to know why that was, and that was when I was curious enough to get to know her outside of the office. Things were a little shaky between us at first. She didn’t want to open up very much about herself with almost any kind of topic. But then I told her all the stupid things I’d done in high school and college, and I tell ya, the way she laughed was definitely one of my favorite quirks about her.

“The rest of our dates from there got better as time went on. She got a lot better around the office that the other guys wouldn’t believe, and I learned things about her that I didn’t think was possible for someone of her personality, like how she was really into stories of fantasy and mythology. It wasn’t until half a year later I proposed to her. Not too long after, it was when she was pregnant with your brother that we discussed how we should make our family. We thought two of you was just plenty, and I got to name our first kid while she named the second. When I asked her what she was going to name you, she got the idea from her favorite movie, The Wizard of Oz. She liked the sound of the name when it came up. Every Halloween, she dressed you up with this cute little robe and hat, and even outside of the holiday, she’d sometimes call you her little wizard.”

Boy, if she were still around, she’d probably love Equestria more than anything else.

“When I lost her… I went so blind to what I was doing from then. I knew I needed to take care of you two, but every time I saw you, Ozzy, I felt pain as you reminded me so much of her. That time might have been the stupidest I’ve ever become, because I didn’t want to remember her for her death. I focused so much on forgetting Wendy, I barely remembered that I still needed to take care of you and Robert. I should have known that you two weren’t some kind of poison that pained me every time I thought of her, but a reminder for why I loved her in the first place, and how I should cherish that like I should have with the both of you… When you two didn’t want anything to do with me anymore, I felt like how I lost Wendy tenfold.

“I fell into such a depression, I didn’t think alcohol would help me get out of that one like it did with her. I had to go to a doctor along with my buddies to help me figure out what I was going to do with myself. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t come up to either one of you with how I currently was. I’m ashamed to call myself a father even now. That was when I decided a goal before I would come to find you two: don’t drink for one thousand days.”

“A thousand days?” Fleur asked.

“That’s about three years. If I was able to not drink another single drop of alcohol for that long, that would be when I finally come up front and tell you… I’m sorry.” Richard’s voice broke as tears started to run down. Charles at one point came on screen to pass him a tissue box as he tried to regain himself. A couple tissues and deep breaths later, he looked back into the camera. “I talked about this with my doctor, and with my drinking history, he said my withdrawal alone would probably be enough to kill me. I was willing to take my chances though, because I should have risked and devoted twenty years of my life into taking care of you two. I thought the pain I was about to get into would be nothing compared to how much you and Robert went through. The first week was probably the worst time I’ve ever experienced, but I think that part is as bad as it will get. I’m on my twentieth day right now, and all the money I saved from quitting alcohol so far was put into this suit I’m wearing right now so that I could come to you two as a new man when I reach my goal. Even so, I asked Charles to set this up for me in case something worse happens. If you’re getting this right now, that means I must have come up short in my time to spare.

“Ozzy, I just want you to know that no matter where you are at the time of this recording, or when you get this message, I am so proud of how far you’ve gone in life, and I always will be. You’re probably doing a lot better right now than I’ve ever been. I know you’ve done better in school than I did; I looked into your transcript when you graduated high school. Why didn’t you tell me you were in a choir? I would have loved to hear you sing, and so would your mother since she had a thing with jazz for a while.”

“I thought you wouldn’t be interested,” Ozzy mumbled with a crack in his voice, like he was talking to Richard on screen.

“I’m sure you’ve grown into a fine young man, made some amazing friends, and probably seeing a beautiful girl right now. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all of this, it’s that you shouldn’t take these kinds of things for granted. I don’t know if this will mean anything from me, but I want you to live your life to the fullest with your friends, cherish your girl, and tell her how much you love her every day. That goes the same for your kids too if you decide to start a family.

“There’s three parting gifts I’ll be leaving to you as your father if my time has come, so you can use them however you wish. The first is a few photo albums of the four of us together before your mother left. There’s also things in there before you and Robert came along that should speak for itself what kind of person Wendy was. I feel partially to blame for how little you two know of her, so this is probably the best I can do to show for it. I’ve made copies to give to your brother as well.

“The second gift is all the money I’ll be saving from quitting alcohol. I asked Charles to forward part of that money to Robert once he’s released from prison. He still needs to pay for his crimes, but I’m mostly to blame for not raising him properly. He deserves at least that much, and I know this might be a lot to ask from you, but please don’t wish any ill will toward your brother. I know he has done some terrible things to you in the past, but just remember that he might have been suffering from something he’d rather not show. It may not look it, but I don’t think he was hurting you in a way you might have thought he intended.

“My last parting gift is the engagement ring I proposed to your mother with. It was Wendy’s wish that she’d pass that ring down to one of you two should you come across someone you love like I have. Since it will be sometime until Robert may see another girl again, I’m entrusting that ring over to you. You may propose to that special girl with that ring when that time comes, but other than that, what you do with it is entirely your decision.”

Richard looked down as he fidgeted his fingers for a moment, then looked back up. “Ozzy, I want you to know how sorry I am for not being there like I should have. I know when I meet your mother up there, she’s going to rip me a new one for all the shit I’ve made you two go through, and I deserve it. Just know that neither of you did anything wrong that made me practically alienate you two, my only sons. I’m the stupid bastard that brought this on myself, and unfortunately pulled you along with me. I don’t mind that you’ll always hate my guts, but just know that I’ve never stopped loving you and Robert—not even once—and I always will, from this life to the next.

“Take care of yourself, Ozzy… Even though I wasn’t the best, I couldn’t be more proud to be your father…”

The screen went black, and the DVD player stopped running. I turned to Ozzy, and he was shaking in his seat as he kept staring at the T.V. He gripped the knees of his jeans, and tears were streaming down his cheeks.

Charles took the disk out of the player, put it back in his suitcase, and took out a small black box. “I have the engagement ring here so you can have a look.” He put the black box in Ozzy’s hands who didn’t look up for a second. “I also have the check sent by your father, and the photo albums are still in storage back on Earth. Like we agreed, you still have the decision to whether or not you want to keep all of them.”

With shaky hands, Ozzy slowly opened the black box, revealing a pea sized sapphire gem with smaller diamonds circling around it, all on a silver band.

“That looks incredible,” Fleur commented as she and I stared at the ring.

Ozzy closed the box while still looking down, the tears from his face dried up, but his eyes looked like they wanted to shed more. “How long ago… did he die?” he asked.

“About three weeks ago,” Charles answered. “From what his friends told me, he was about a hundred days away before he reached his goal of a thousand without drinking. It took me this long to come to you now because of the funeral I had to help arrange, and finding where you live while I spread the message to your brother, Robert… He accepted the money to use after he’s released, and his copies of the photo albums are currently stored for him to pick up at any time, but he didn’t respond much to what happened after that.”

“Could I… have some time to think about this?” Ozzy asked.

“Of course. I’ll be staying here for a week before I come back for your answer. If you’ve already decided before then, here’s my information to contact me.” Charles handed me his business card while he took the ring back from Ozzy. “I apologize for bringing the news to you so suddenly, and you have my sincerest condolences.”

“We’ll take care of things from here. Thank you, Charles,” Fleur said.

Charles nodded, packed up his things, and walked out the door. Fleur and I turned back to Ozzy who was still looking down, shaking in his seat once more.

“That’s… That’s not fair,” he said. “Twenty years, and he picked now to tell me all of this? How the fuck do I respond?” He took his glasses off and broke down with loud sobs. I put his glasses on the counter before Fleur and I embraced him without another word. I shed a few tears of my own as I tried to comfort Ozzy for what felt like hours, sitting there and letting him cry on my shoulder.

The sobs quieted down as I rubbed his back. “Are you feeling okay?” I asked.

“I feel like shit,” he mumbled in my shoulder. “I’m also tired.”

“Today has been pretty busy for all of us,” Fleur agreed as she sniffled. “Why don’t we clean up and call it a day early, huh? I think we’ll feel a little better to talk about this in the morning if we get enough rest.”

“We’ll meet you inside when we’re ready, okay?” I asked. He nodded and wiped his face before he put on his glasses and went upstairs. We waited until Ozzy got the shower started so Fleur and I would talk.

“What should we do?” Fleur asked.

“I don’t know, I didn’t think Ozzy had that much hate towards Richard before we watched the video. I know how it feels to grow up without a father, but when he’s right there and hardly does anything with you while your mother’s gone… I can’t imagine how he was able to come this far by himself.”

“Mother and Father may not have been the gentlest of parents from how they raised Fancy and me, but at least they cared about our future enough to get us up to where we are today. At least, that’s what I tell myself.”

“And I’m just lucky Mom’s still alive and kicking, always looking out and providing support for me, Sparkling, and Shooting. Taking care of that many kids by yourself must have taken a lot to accomplish.” We sat there in silence with our ears folded. “How lonely do you think he feels right now? Before he met us, or even came to Equestria?”

“He may have been alone for some time, but not anymore.” Fleur looked at me with hardened eyes. “He has us, Fancy, Bubbles, Toffee, Silver, Spitfire, Soarin, and even Claire. Even with my parents gone, I see you and the rest as an extension of my new family. Now, I want Ozzy to be a part of it as well, and whether we’re friends, lovers, or both, all I want him to know is that he’s not alone anymore, and I’m going to do my best to not let him fall into that again.”

“I don’t think I could have said it any better myself,” I said as I closed my eyes with a smile. “If that’s settled, then let’s start things off tomorrow by giving Ozzy the best day he’ll ever have. Agreed?”

“Agreed.” With a nod, we went upstairs to shower and ready for bed.

[Fleur’s POV, 1:00 a.m.]

Shiny and I were sleeping on both of Ozzy’s sides and holding him comfortably. It didn’t take long for me to fall asleep, but if I wasn’t in his bed, I don’t know how terrible I might have felt from all that happened in the evening. The bed suddenly felt lighter in the middle after a few movements. Startled by it, I opened my eyes halfway, and only to see Shiny facing away from me in bed, still sleeping like a rock. I turned over and saw a shadow walking away from the room.

Curious enough to investigate (and not fall back to sleep), I slowly sat up and levitated my robe hanging from the closet door over to me. I slipped it over my night camisole, tie the straps around my waist, and quietly walked out of the room. The house was dark from all the lights off, so I used a small illumination spell to find my way around. I went downstairs and looked around, no sign of the figure until I walked over to the sliding glass door leading to the back. Outside on one of the poolside lounge chairs was Ozzy looking up in the night sky, with only the moonlight illuminating the area.

“Couldn’t sleep?” I asked him as I walked out, closing the door behind me.

“Yeah. I’m sorry, did I wake you?” Ozzy asked.

“Nah, I couldn’t sleep either,” I lied. “Mind if I join you?”

He gestured to the empty chair beside him. I walked over to the chair and pulled it close to his side with my magic before I sat on it, looking up at the night sky with him.

“It’s a beautiful night out,” I said.

“Yeah… You don’t see this many stars with all the electric lights back on Earth.” A moment of silence passed between us, and the next thing he said had myself surprised. “I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“For yelling at you earlier before we got to that video.”

“Oh… It’s okay, Ozzy, all’s forgiven.”

“No, it’s not okay.” I turned my head to him with a raised brow, he still looked up in the sky. “I tried to forget about him for so long since I moved out, saying a few words about him here and there if asked didn’t rile me up very much, but then he comes out of nowhere with that will of his, and those feelings I tried to ignore just bubbled right back up to the point where I took it out on you. You didn’t deserve that, and now I’m not only pissed at him, but I’m pissed at myself too.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes under his glasses. “I don’t know, Fleur, he’s right on some accounts he addressed in that video, especially being a complete bastard, yet I feel more like one myself, and I don’t know why. Is it wrong for me to hate my dad? My brother? Myself even?”

I looked up in the sky as I thought deeply about the issue, and how I might have related to him on those terms. After a moment of thinking, I turned back to Ozzy. “Do you want to know what I think, Ozzy?” He nodded. “When I think of hatred, I sometimes wonder if that’s mostly mistaken for anger, which I think makes sense as there’s no right or wrong in how your emotions come into the open.” I looked back up into the sky. “If I said it’s wrong to be angry at anypony, then that would mean I was wrong for being angry at Solar for cheating me and what he did to Shiny, or how Shiny would be wrong for being angry at him for it, or Puff Tie when they broke up.

“What may be important here though, especially for me and Shiny since we’re still in it, is whether we should hold onto that anger. I’m still angry at Solar for cheating on me and hurting Shiny, and I definitely don’t want to get back together with him, that’s my choice; however, the fact that I’m still angry at him to this day means I haven’t gone over what went on between us, and if I try to forget about it, it will just sit there until I somehow run into him again and those feelings will come right back up. I want to move on from it and not worry about him sneaking up on me, but I think in order for me to go that far, I may have to consider the idea of forgiving him.”

“Forgiving him?” Ozzy asked as he sat up. “You do know we’re talking about Solar here, right?”

“Yes, I know that. Looking back on it now, I know for a fact that he hurt me greatly for cheating on me, and more so when he hurt Shiny when it was intended for me. I mean, I can’t deny that I loved him at one point, or at least I thought I did, and his actions were acts of betrayal towards me, but I didn’t really think about what he thought about all of that. Maybe he really didn’t know what he was doing, and didn’t know how good he had being with me until he lost it; thus, spiraling him down to that depressive state I saw him in later after the break up, and did something even stupider when I declined his offer in getting back together.

“Maybe he really did mean what he said when he apologized to me back in Manehattan, and I only saw him as the Solar I once knew than the one who’s changed. The only pony who knows whether that’s the truth or not is him, and no matter how we look at it, what happened to us in the past happened, and there’s nothing we can do to change it. Call me crazy, but a part of me wants him to move on and find somepony to make him happy as much as I do with myself. I think the only way that could happen is if I forgive him up front, and the best thing we can do from there is not forget our mishaps from the past, but remember how it made us into who we are today, learn from it, and improve ourselves from there. It’s like what my aunt from Prance would sometimes say: ‘pour comprendre tout est de pardonner à tous,’ or ‘to understand all is to forgive all.’

“Going back to your frustrations with yourself, maybe you’re not struggling with whether or not you should hate your father, brother, and yourself, but whether you should forgive. It seems your father understands fully well what you two have gone through, and I think it’s assuring to know that he didn’t hate you or your brother even once in his life. How Robert feels is another story, but I think it’s important that we step back after we let off some steam, and look at things in a different perspective. Does that make sense?”

Ozzy looked down on the ground in silence for what seemed like a minute, moved his gaze back up to me, and nodded. “A little bit. Thank you for your input, Fleur.”

“That’s what friends are for.” I smiled as I stepped off the chair. “Shall we get back to bed then?”

Ozzy glanced down to the ground for a moment while his lips thinned. He then looked back up to me with hardened eyes. “Actually, there’s just this one thing.”

“Oh? And what might that be?”

“Dad was right on a few things: I shouldn’t take some things for granted, and if I don’t take risks in my life, I may never live my life to the fullest. So if I don’t say this now, I may never know what will come later.” My heart rate suddenly went up when he said that statement with such conviction.

Wait… Could he be?

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, loosening up his shoulders and posture as he did so. He opened his eyes up to me once more. “Fleur, you and Shining are beautiful and amazing mares. I couldn’t be any luckier of a man to be friends with you two, and… I want to take it further if possible. But, I can’t choose which of you two I should go out with and risk hurting something between us.” He looked to the side. “I’ve honestly dodged around these feelings for a bit, thinking if I ignore them long enough, I’d be happy still being friends with you two, but after watching that video today, it’s been running around in my head like the forgiveness thing you were talking about, and I just can’t brush it off anymore. I know I’m making a fool of myself right now for opening up to you like this, and—” I put a finger on his lips, looking into his dumbfounded eyes for being stopped so abruptly.

“You are not a fool for expressing your feelings, Ozzy. We’ll talk about this with Shiny in the morning, but right now, there’s something I want to desperately get off of my chest too…” My heart raced even more while everything else inside me heated up as I wrapped my arms behind Ozzy’s head.

I closed my eyes, moved in, and we connected lips.

Time just seemed to stop as I had finally kissed Ozzy. I felt his arms wrap around my waist as he pulled me closer, my chest touching his, and it seemed our heart rates were in sync. His lips were soft, a little different compared to a pony’s, yet still familiar in a way. It seemed everything inside of me just melted under the intense heat, and if the rest of my body did the same, I probably wouldn’t mind it in the slightest. I didn’t even mind what was poking on my front either. Finally with a light smack from our lips as we separated, we panted our hot breaths onto each other while gazing into our half-lidded eyes.

“Wow,” he breathed.

“Wow indeed,” I agreed. “What did you think?”

“This beats my first with Mascara by a landslide if that’s what you’re asking. That was just incredible.”

“You have no idea how long I’ve been wanting to do that. If only this happened when I don’t look like such a mess right now.”

“Fleur, you’re beautiful enough just being under the moonlight.”

“Well aren’t you just a smooth-talker?” Even though I said that, my face couldn’t help but heat up from the way he complimented me before I gave him another brief kiss. “Now why don’t we head back to bed and discuss more of what transpired tonight in the morning, hmm?”

“Sounds good.” I opened the back door with my magic as we made our way inside, and closed it behind me. “Did I mention you sounded really hot when you spoke Prench earlier?”

I giggled. “Attendez de voir ce que je peux faire avec ma bouche.”

“What does that mean?”

“‘Wait until you see what else I can do with my mouth,’” I translated with half-lidded eyes and a smile. His whole face turned red while he shivered from my gentle trace up his chin. With a light brush up his leg from my tail, I sauntered back upstairs to his room as I giggled to myself.

Oh the fun we’re going to have starting tomorrow. I think he’s going to be just fine.

Author's Notes:

My editors' reactions:

We made it guys, two of our main cast is finally breaking the friend zone. Where will things go from here, and what will Ozzy do with his Dad's gifts? You'll have to read on to find out. In the mean time, I'll see you all in 2015. Until next time,

This is Dudeler signing off, one last time for the year.