Her pillow was wonderfully cool. That was the first thing Princess Celestia thought as she buried her face into it, sighing aloud. On her wide bed, she stretched out her wings and stuck out each leg, knees popping from the stretch.

She sighed again, digging her face deeper into her pillow.

Could I just skip it? she wondered. Could I just lock the doors and fly out the window? Watch events from up on high and spend my night lounging on a cloud?

Such nice thoughts. Such simple thoughts. If only she wasn’t the sole reason for anyone coming to Canterlot to begin with.

“Stupid banquets…” she grumbled, choosing to ignore the soft pitter patter of hoof and foot along her bedroom floor.

Discord, she mused. Maybe tonight won’t be as bad as it could be.

The Spirit of Chaos had never been the type to knock, instead popping out of thin air and demanding the attention of all those around. So why was he so silent now? Why no slammed doors or broken windows as he leapt into the room?

“Evening, Celestia,” he greeted, by the side of her bed. “You look a little worse for wear.”

Celestia slowly edged her head from her pillow, turning to the side. “Just a little tired, is all. Meetings all day. More in the afternoon. A impromptu visit from Twilight and her friends. Now this banquette I’d completely forgotten about. It feels like I’ve barely had five minutes to myself today.”

Celestia watched Discord through the mirror on her bureau. He stood to the side of her bed, next to her length of tail that had slid to the floor. Usually he never hesitated sitting or lying next to her, sometimes his entire body curled tightly around her in that odd snake-like-way only he could do.

“Do you want me to leave?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’d rather you stayed, actually. I’d sent that invitation to you so long ago, I can’t even recall if you’d received it or not. You always had that knack of making even the dullest of gatherings more interesting than they have any right to be.”

A particular thought came to mind and Celestia had to stifle a giggle.

Discord raised a brow. “Something humorous, Celestia?”

She smiled. “I’m only recalling your standup act from the Gala. That Twilight joke… oh, I felt so bad for laughing at that as hard as I did, but… it really is true, as much as I love Twilight.”

Discord grinned faintly. “I’ve always liked the sound of your laughter. If I get you to laugh, then I know I’ve done well.”

“You’ve always made me laugh, Discord.”

“Among other things,” he said, looking down at the floor.

Celestia made to get up, wincing from the aches in her back, when an eagle’s claw and a lion’s paw settled onto her shoulders. Discord rubbed his thumbs into the worst parts on her back, knowing the mare’s body far better than most.

Celestia practically melted from the touch, all royal-like behavior cleanly stripped from her. She thought if she wasn’t careful, she might start drooling onto her pillow case.

“Oh, you really don’t need to do that,” she moaned.

Discord snickered. “By the sounds of it, it seems like I do. Maybe this’ll do the trick.”

Through the mirror, Celestia watched as Discord brought up both hands to engulf with a ball of fire from his mouth. Once properly heated, he brought both toasty hands back to her shoulders, working his way down the center of her back.

She unfurled her wings to grant him easier access.

Discord used an elbow to get at a harder knot in her side. “I, uh, never did get that invitation, actually.”

“Oh? Then would you mind staying, anyways? I’m honestly not looking forward to tonight. Luna’s needed in the sky and Twilight and her friends are already back in Ponyville. I’m sure I can handle a half-dozen short conversations with dignitaries, but it would be nice to have someone to sit with. We could even gossip a bit.”

Discord’s nimble digits paused for a moment. “You’d really want someone like me sitting next to you? In front of everyone? Eating up your ear all evening?”

Celestia tried to turn to him. “Why wouldn’t I? I think it would be fun, you and I at a proper function.” She paused, hesitated. “I want ponies to know we’ve been seeing each other. I don’t like keeping it a secret.”

Discord sighed, his hands growing cool. “They wouldn’t understand.”

“So what if they don’t?” Celestia asked. “I don’t care about their opinion. And why wouldn’t you want ponies to know? Truthfully, I almost… I almost thought you’d get a kick out of it somehow.”

Discord removed his hands from her back, a bit of edge creeping into his voice. “A kick out of it? Why? Because Princess Celestia seen with the likes of me might cause a panic? Because Princess Celestia would never sink so low as to fall in love with a draconequus?”

Celestia pushed herself off her bed as Discord stood. She folded her wings in as she sat on the edge of her bed.

“Where in Equestria did that come from? Why would you ever think that about us? Why would you ever think that about me and the way I look at you?”

Balling his hands into fists, Discord let out a quivering breath and started pacing back and forth before her. “Fine. I won’t prolong this any further. You have a banquette to get to and I have… whatever it is I feel like doing after this. I’ll think of that later. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I can’t see you anymore. Not alone. Not romantically. Not ever. All right?”

Celestia held both hooves over her chest, noticing Discord’s eyes start to water.

He swallowed thickly. “No more late nights. No more secret little brunches far away from the castle staff. No more… tangos together in the Canterlot maze. No more…”

Celestia held out a leg to him. “Discord. Discord, hold on…”

“… no more gifts. No more kisses goodnight. Do you hear me, Celestia? I don’t want any of that! Not anymore. It’s done, okay? Over. Complete. Finito. End credits. You hearing me?”

With a hoof, Celestia grabbed at the corner of her bed linens, bringing them up to her eyes to wipe with.

A moment later, she shoved them aside, tightening her jaw. “I don’t believe you. You’ve never shown a single sign before tonight that this was what you wanted. Just two days ago you were here, in this very bed beside me. Did you lie to me then? Was all this in your head as you touched me? All the things you told me we’d do in the coming weeks?”

To that, Discord didn’t reply, instead stopping where he stood, both fists trembling by his sides. His chest hitched in and out with short breaths.

Celestia leaned off the bed. “Look at me, Discord. If you really want to stop seeing each other, then you at least owe me that. Look at me and tell me that’s really how you feel, because I won’t believe it otherwise.”

It took close to a minute, but eventually Discord turned to her, his cheeks wet with tears. His mouth twitched somewhere between a sneer and a grimace.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Celestia,” he said quietly.

“And you think this wouldn’t hurt me?” She reached out and grabbed one of his hands to hold between two hooves. “You make me smile, Discord. You make me laugh and feel much younger than I am. You make me feel… normal, if that makes any sense. You remind me of much simpler times. I’ve known you for almost as long as I’ve known my own sister, and even if most of that time was spent on opposite sides, that never stopped me from growing close to you. We’ve fought more than most couples over the years, both physically and romantically, but I honestly thought—felt—that this time would be different. There’s something new about you. And even you can’t deny that, not when everyone I know sees the same thing I do as clear as day.”

Softly, Discord rubbed Celestia’s hoof underneath his thumb, before he pulled away from her.

He lowered his head. “I don’t want to hurt you, Celestia. But I guess I must, just a little bit, to save you from something far worse down the line.”

Celestia stared at her hooves. “Is there someone else? Is that why you’re doing this?”

“No. And there won’t be anyone else. I’ve decided that. I’ve promised myself that.”

Celestia sighed. “Then why? At least tell me that.”

A murmur of ponies could be heard through the bedroom’s double doors—guests making their way to the castle’s dining hall, quietly conversing. Neither Discord nor Celestia took any notice.

Quietly, Discord turned and picked up a framed picture on the dresser, one of a blushing Celestia once Discord had given her a set of flowers following the incident with Tirek. Unbeknownst to her, someone had snapped a picture just in time, and Celestia had gone through the trouble of finding it and setting it in a frame. It was a moment in time she’d like to remember; a tiny spark that slowly ignited an ancient fire between the pair.

Discord placed a thumb over his face in the picture before setting the frame face down. Five more pictures sat atop the dresser, some of Twilight and her friends and some of Luna and Celestia. Discord happened to be in all of them.

To steady himself, Discord held onto the edge of the dresser.

“Our first relationship lasted for seventy-four years. Our second, forty-one. Our third, only eleven. Each time we parted ways, I left you in a miserable state and near cursing my name. I hurt you. I went out of my way to hurt you, as badly as I could. But time and time again we found our way back to each other, as we both forgot about the past and instead focused on the future. If our shorter and shorter relationships are of any indication, it probably means this one will end up much the same.”

“How can you say that?” Celestia asked sternly. “What’s happened before is completely different than what’s happening now. Years ago we were either enemies or lovers; there was no friendship to be found between us. It was a more difficult time to be together. But now things are peaceful, Discord. Things are different. I don’t see how basing our current relationship on our rocky past can be of any benefit. All you’re doing is digging up old wounds.”

Discord became focused on a picture of Celestia and Luna out to lunch at one of Canterlot’s nice restaurants. The evening prior, Celestia had asked if he wanted to join them—to “accidentally” stumble into them and stay. If the picture was of any indication, Discord had done just that, giving both Celestia and Luna a pair of rabbit ears just as the picture was taken; his own grinning mug shoved right in-between the sisters’.

Discord smiled thinly. “Even after all these years, Celestia, I still don’t think you understand chaos at all. Chaos consumes everything it touches, no matter the creature. I set my chaos out into the world and giggle and guffaw until my jaw’s sore. I create visual delights the world has never seen or has yet to experience and I am most proud of what I can create. I know my chaos hurts ponies. I know most do not like it. What they fail to understand is that my chaos also affects me in turn.”

Knock-knock-knock.

A knock at the door.

“Princess? Your guests are almost seated.”

Celestia rubbed a hoof across her eyes and faced the door. “Give me a minute and I will come greet them. I’m almost ready.”

“Very good, Princess.”

The guard outside the door trotted away, leaving a heavy silence in the room.

Ignoring the interruption, Discord continued. “As a Spirit of Chaos, I’m forced to live with chaos each and every day. In a way, I love it, and in a way, I hate it furiously. Perhaps that’s why I’ve spent so much of my life alone. Before I met you, I spent every moment of time changing the world around me—anything that I thought would make me laugh, I created, then warped until it made me laugh again. Then you came into my life and things changed. Things became more serene. Thoughts became clearer, calmer. I’d felt myself become happier than I’d ever been before and in turn I didn’t find the need to bring chaos into the world. Life became… better, in a different sort of way.

“But years later, something inside me took control and I very nearly destroyed everything and everyone close to you. I broke your heart in more than one place and, for the first time, you and your sister cast me to stone.”

As tempted as Celestia was to leave her bed and wrap herself around him, she stayed where she was and listened. Discord was rarely the type that opened up in such a way as he now was.

He placed another picture face down. “Our next two relationships ended much the same. A long period of peace and tranquility, followed by a short explosion of ruthlessness that I felt I couldn’t control. For the longest time, I thought that to be the simple nature of my being. One moment sane, one moment not so sane. But I think I’m starting to understand it a little more, and I’ve even come to giving it a name: ‘chaos of the self.’ And I fear it might be never-ending.

“I let myself become happy for a time—let my need to create chaos slip away—and then my instincts take hold and all I want to do is hurt all those around me, bad enough that they’ll think twice of ever being close to me again. Fluttershy and her friends trusted me, and for a time I felt a different type of calm while being with them. But then I sided with Tirek… and I think you know the rest.”

Discord faced her again, eyes brimming with tears. He sat on the carpet on the floor, his head held up by his lion’s paw.

He spoke, voice cracking around the edges, “I’ve come to the conclusion that I can never be happy. Otherwise, I’m compelled to hurt that which makes me happy and start anew. I can’t seem to let myself be happy around others—with others. My role in this world is to disrupt order in ponies’ lives, so I must do the same to myself. And I’ve come to a point where I’m sick of it. Sick of being happy for a while, until the next time I let you all down. And who’s to say the next time I do something out from my control, it isn’t worse than what I’ve already done?”

A bit of cold understanding came to Celestia. “That’s why you never wanted to tell anyone we were seeing each other. You always had a feeling it would end like this.”

“Fluttershy would be happy for us. The rest of them, too. If they heard we had broken up for reasons unknown, I have no doubt they would’ve found reason to bring us back together. I don’t want to do that to them, or to you. That’s why it’s best we end things now, before I lose control and am forced to push you away from me.”

Sliding off her bed, Celestia sat on the carpet in front of him. “And if I don’t want to be pushed away?”

Discord chuckled dryly. “I think most relationships only work when both parties are able and willing, Celestia. You might be close to a god, but that doesn’t mean I’ll stick around just because you told me to.”

She put a hoof on his leg, smiling weakly. “Oh, I think I’ve made you do some questionable things in the past.”

He chuckled again, rubbed at an eye. “Please don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

Celestia scooted a few inches closer to him. “Does this breakup only include me? Or does this mean you’re saying goodbye to everyone—Fluttershy and Twilight and them?”

Whatever trace of a smile left Discord’s face. “Everyone. Starting tonight, I’ll lessen my visits to Canterlot, to Ponyville. I’ll visit Fluttershy less frequently until I go away for good. Then I’ll remain alone. Create my own brand of chaos. I’m sure I’ll annoy some ponies with it—always have—but, at least in this case, I know I won’t be hurting them.”

“And you think this will make you happy?”

Discord hesitated, his mouth working on words he didn’t speak. “No. But it’ll be something I can live with. Like in the days before I met you.”

“I’d rather you stayed.”

“Some things aren’t up to you, Celestia.”

Celestia let that hang in the air, until a thought came to her. “The three times we broke off our relationship, you either left Equestria altogether or were cast in stone. The last time you ‘exploded,’ if that’s the term we’ll be using, you aided Tirek and almost brought ruin to every pony in Equestria. Terrible, yes, but it was because of this that you showed you still cared about me, and I knew I felt the same.”

She removed a hoof from his leg to hide a smile. “Those first two weeks… trying to keep everything hush-hush and out of sight… I don’t think you’ve ever tried to woo me off my hooves as much as then. Those first few mornings, I practically had to pry you off of me with a shovel so I could go about my duties.” She laughed, making Discord stare at her for a moment. “You remember during that fundraiser, when I broke away from the party to meet you in the caretaker’s closet? And then that guard thought I’d mistaken it for the washroom and tried to get in? You changed into that mop and bucket so fast, I almost thought you’d left. Then again, not many mops in Canterlot have eyes and a goatee.”

Celestia laughed again, not needing to force it.

Discord watched and grinned, his eyes dry for the moment.

He said, “It was either a mop and bucket or a badly mismatched coat that I’d make you wear the rest of the night. I almost wished I’d got the coat route. I could’ve sat on your back and whispered into your ear for hours.”

Celestia thought about what she wanted to say next. “Then there was that time at the Grand Galloping Gala, when you became jealous of Fluttershy’s new friend. Although not as problematic as what you did with Tirek, I would still call it chaotic. And when you came to see me later that night? I think I lost track of how many hands you had around me.”

“Twelve,” he answered absently. “Two hands just didn’t feel like enough for some reason.”

Celestia nodded. “Don’t you understand what I’m getting at, Discord? Obviously creating chaos makes you happy. When you’re happy, I get to see the best side of you. The most passionate side of you. You said before that during our first relationship, you felt calm and serene, that chaos held little precedent anymore. But I don’t think you’re the type of creature that can survive without chaos. Decades without it, you started to crave it—so much so, that when it came time to create more chaos, you went too far with it and made me and my sister have to defend all of Equestria.”

On the carpet, Celestia slid closer to him until their legs were touching. With a hoof, she raised his chin so he would look at her.

“You’re Discord, the Spirit of Chaos. I knew what you were during our first relationship and that’s one of the reasons I fell in love with you then. I filled a void in you, and the need for chaos stopped, but not without its repercussions. I don’t want you to change for me, Discord, and I also don’t want to lose you. I love you, and I want you to stay with me. So that’s why I need you to keep on creating chaos—as much as you need to.”

Discord raised a brow. “More chaos?”

She sighed. “Well, as much chaos as it takes so that that part of you that craves it is satisfied. Enough chaos so that the Discord I know and love remains the way he’s supposed to. Enough so that he can stay with me.”

He furrowed his brows, grumbling, “You’re making my chaos—my purpose in life—sound an awful lot like releasing steam from a pipe.”

With a smirk, she said, “Isn’t it? You’ve never asked me to change for you, so why should you be expected to change for me? If it helps, we could even call it something like ‘organized chaos’ or ‘controlled chaos.’”

“No,” he said flatly.

“Scheduled chaos?”

Discord thought for a moment. “Better, I guess.” He looked down again. “But that still might not be enough, though. I stay with you, I stay happy. I create bits of chaos on the side, I stay happy. But what happens if there’s something inside of me that doesn’t want me to be happy? I fear that no matter what, I’ll only go on to ruin what we have and bring you down with me.”

Celestia paused, before telling him, “Then that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

“I knew you’d say something like that.”

She tilted her head. “Oh? You think you know me so well?”

“I’ve only spent over a hundred years with—”

Celestia surprised him with a kiss, wrapping her wings around his back to push him into her. After a moment’s hesitation, he loosened and held a hand behind her head, fingertips delicately brushing at her mane. Neither one could remember how long they held each other. Until—

Knock-knock-knock.

“Princess? The guests are starting to ask questions. What should I say?”

Panting, Celestia unhooked herself from Discord to awkwardly straighten her mane with a hoof. She yelled to her guard, “Tell them only a couple minutes more!”

Still with both arms around her, Discord asked, “You sure about this? It might not happen for months or years, but there’s always the chance I might hurt you again. I’m still unsure if I’m truly the type that’s meant to be happy.”

She held him close, resting her head on his shoulder. “I’m sure, Discord. If things don’t work out, then I’ll only have myself to blame, but at least we’ll have tried. And I, for one, believe you deserve happiness. Whether that comes from me or your friends or from chaos or all of them together.”

For another minute, the pair sat in silence, enjoying each other’s warmth. Celestia nuzzled her head into his neck.

He chuckled. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for your little get-together?”

“I was just thinking about that. Perhaps now might be a good time to try out some of that scheduled chaos.” She looked up at him. “How would you like tonight to be the night you unveil yourself as my very special coltfriend?”

Discord pursed his lips. “That might cause quite the stir, Princess.”

She smirked. “I know—officials and dignitaries learning of such a thing. Almost… chaotic in a way, don’t you think?”

“Could I sit at the big table beside you?”

“Of course.”

“Do I have to use a napkin? Or eat my vegetables?”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

Discord pulled on his goatee. “When you tell everyone about us, can I jump out and dump a big bowl of chocolate pudding on your head?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

He kissed her temple. “What happened to all that ‘scheduled chaos’ talk?”

She sighed. “All right. As long as you promise it won’t stain and that you’ll clean it off me later.”

He giggled. “You know I’d never leave a single mark on that beautiful coat of yours.” He licked her neck with an elongated tongue. “And I’ve already thought of a great way of cleaning you off.”

Celestia laughed, then pulled him close. She knew that in the next few moments, she’d need to get ready and go greet all those outside her door, waiting for her. She also knew the announcement of hers and Discord’s relationship would probably overshadow whatever political agenda she had prepared for that night, but, truthfully, she found it didn’t faze her at all.

Discord made her happy. She made Discord happy. If a bit of chaos every now and then meant that they could stay happy together, then she was more than willing to give it a try.

It might even be fun, she thought, before she tried to convince him that tapioca pudding might not stain as bad as chocolate.

Eventually they settled on butterscotch.