The Elements of Turmoil

By RadaVonVon

Chapter 14: A Not-So Common Misconception

“Stop!” A shout rang through the entire dining hall as Twilight slowly turned. Her eyes fell upon the brown earth pony, restrained by the heavily armored unicorn guards. The voice, however, had come from none other than Princess Celestia herself. “He is with me.” She informed them, and they released him. His hoofs touched the ground almost soundlessly.

Twilight Sparkle had never heard a silence like the one currently ringing through the dining hall as she locked eyes with the stallion. He twisted his head painfully. “What’s going on?”

“Why are you here?” Twilight was ashamed at the way her voice cracked as she spoke.

“Can we… Can we talk?” The Doctor asked quietly. It seemed as though some kind of dam was holding back any emotion from his voice. It trembled lightly just beneath the surface, vibrating the surface in the slightest.

She wasn’t sure what kind of logic or reasoning had been lurking behind her next actions. She turned, flipping her direction, and bolted. She heard nothing. The shoes Rarity had made for her hooves were lost somewhere among the dry, gritty dirt and parched, dead grass desperately clinging to life in the Canterlot garden.

It was a dark evening. She didn’t know where she was going. Somewhere along the lines, she thought she heard someone call her name. Maybe it was Fluttershy, or Rarity…

Her hooves continued to pound ceaselessly against the hard-packed earth.

At some point, tears had sprung to her eyes. As if the darkness wasn’t distorting her vision enough already, what she could see began to swim with unshed tears, blurring and garbling to a dark mess of colour.

The cold air left and entered her lungs as she gasped, stopping for breath. As a filly, she had been a bad runner. She recalled her physical education teacher shouting at her to keep running. But, she couldn’t get air in her lungs! They weren’t big enough.

Finally, the lavender unicorn stumbled, face-first, into the grass. Tears had just been steaming from her eyes flowed freely now, and she let out a strangled cry, squeaking and covering her head with her hooves. She tasted her brackish tears, flowing down her face and into her mouth. Down her nose, onto the cracked, thirsting ground. She sniveled loudly, finding her body being wracked by heavy sobs. Twilight buried her face into the ground and her hoofs, feeling as though she had doused her face in a puddle of water.

Every tear she hadn’t shed was bursting forth, now. Every night she had spent alone, every minute more that she waited for him. All of the trust she had put in him to come back just a mere three hundred seconds later. What was he doing here, anyway?

She knew that her hooves were now coated in tears and most likely mucus from her nose, dribbling pathetically and mixing with the lubricant from her eyes as well. The mascara Rarity had recommended was sure to be running down her face. She looked up slowly to examine her surroundings, still bawling like a small child.

Discord. Ironically, now she was lying pitifully at his feet. She laughed, tears still clouding her vision as she wiped them away and sniffled loudly. “A-are you here to make fun of me, too?” She snapped, getting to her hooves before breaking down and settling back on her haunches, a consistent stream of tears issuing down the unicorn’s face.

She’d never cried about this. Never cried for what Clockwork had lost, what she had lost. She hadn’t even shed a tear since he had left. Not a single one. Not even Clockwork’s sappy books had gotten to her, and some of them had been genuinely heartbreaking.

She felt her awareness slipping slowly away from her, somehow entirely calm as she wailed at Discord’s feet.

The first thing she was aware of was a comforting, soft warmth. She burrowed further into it, smiling faintly, only barely conscious.

Gradually, her senses became alive. Smell. She could have sworn she was at the seaside, saltwater washing over her hooves whiles he squished the sand underneath them, a light breeze caressing her flanks and mane, sending small grains of sand into her mane to get stuck for her to dig out later. She inhaled quietly and sighed, further embracing the warmth and calming scent.

Sound. A soft roaring. Perhaps she really was at the ocean? A roaring and a thumping noise. The waves…?

Sight. She saw the redness of light filtering in through closed eyelids. Recognizing that she was awake, she only groaned and moved deeper into the plush, welcoming heat source.

Her eyes snapped open and she jumped to her hooves. “Wha- what the-?” Twilight Sparkle found herself looking down at an all-too familiar brown pony. She watched his eyelids flutter as she sat there in shock. Had she fallen asleep in Canterlot gardens? Why was she here? Had he brought her home? Why was he sleeping in her bed?

He was laying on top of her favourite cosmic sheets, though she distinctly remembered being under them. Judging by his position, his arm had been around her. She shivered. “Oh, hell, no!” She gasped, shoving him out of the bed and growling. “We’re figuring this out right now!” She snarled.

“Hunhwha- OHCELESTIA!”  Doctor Whooves slid from the top of the bed, landing directly onto the wood flooring with an audible, painful-sounding thumb. “Sorry, Twi! I couldn’t find the guest bed.”

“I have all of the guest rooms furnished!” Twilight Sparkle retorted, before blinking. “Wait, okay, what the hell are you doing here?” She scowled. “You left, remember?”

“For five minutes!” Doctor Whooves got to his feet, grabbing the bedding and beginning to make the bed. “Sorry, maybe six or seven!” He mumbled, rolling his eyes and smoothing out the blue comforter with his hooves, then propping up the pillows against the headboard. “And you decided to go off and have this party and make a big deal at the Gala and get all dressed up somehow in that time or something and getting your friend, Fluttershy, to hate me, and I’m sorry if you’re all angry, but for the love of Celestia, I have no idea what I did!”

“You know full well you didn’t leave for five minutes, you inconsiderate, rude, heartbreaking oaf!”

“I did!” Doctor Whooves snapped. “And I saved you from having to get your memory wiped, so we can do,” He paused, leaning forward and kissing her. “This. I went back, there’s this thing called a Companio-“

He was interrupted with a slap to the face from Twilight’s capable hoof. Her face had deepened into a frown as Doctor Whooves, shocked, put one of his hooves to his cheek. “How dare you?” She shuddered. “How DARE you?” She shouted, her voice reaching an unnatural level of shrillness. She inhaled, quivering. “And now you just want to come back, pretend you were actually gone for five minutes?”

The Doctor froze in horror. “Oh.” His eyes turned down, scanning the ground in horror. “Oh dear. Oh dear, oh no…” He swallowed. “Uhm, Twilight. H-how long have I been gone?”

Twilight looked back up at him with dead eyes. “Years, you idiot. You’ve been gone years.”

He froze, every vein in his body glaciating before he swallowed slowly, his eyes wide. “I-I left last night, as I recall.”

“Liar.”

“N-no, Twilight. You don’t… I…” He swallowed. “For me, it was five minutes.” He whispered, face cold and stony.

Twilight looked up at him, the colour draining from her face. “You’re not lying, are you?” She murmured, eyes desperate. She hoped he was kidding. He had run off and cheated with some other mare, right? She only felt a sinking sense of terror when she realized that the stallion didn’t look even marginally older.

“I’m not.” Doctor Whooves whispered. “I… I’m so sorry.” He looked down. “I’m so, so, so sorry, Twilight.” His eyes grew moist, and Twilight shivered. “I never… When I came back, I thought this might be what happened.” He was shaking. “I thought, it crossed my mind, and I eliminated it. It was a silly idea, I thought.”

Twilight swallowed, wincing and staring at him. “I should probably… Tell you something. I’m not sure how to… I mean, I you need to know, but…” Twilight shook her head and looked up nervously from her hooves.

“We have a lot to talk about.” He bowed his head. “I’m so sorry. I understand if you found someone else, or, you gave up, or something.” Whooves laughed. “You probably have a husband, huh?”

Twilight just stared blankly back at him. “I kept…” She shivered. “I kept waiting for you.” She looked at him, smiling awkwardly. The good situation was that when they had first met, Whooves had been somewhat older than Twilight. Now, he was only marginally older. The ponies were still each considered rather young, however. They were far from middle-aged or anything of the sort.

Doctor Whooves blinked. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think about how time… I just wanted you to…”

“Sh.” Twilight paused. “The accent’s adorable and all, but you’re going to be freaking out in a few minutes.” She mused, placing a hoof over his mouth and proceeded to wince, biting her lip. “AfteryouleftIhadafoalandnamedhimClockworkandnowhe’sinaforeigncountryriskinghislifeforallofEquestria" She paused to inhale sharply. "andIreallyhopethathecomesbacksafebecausehelooksalotlikeyouandIjusthopeyoudon’tfreakout.” She sighed, and then smiled nervously.

The Doctor promptly passed out cold on the floor.

“This. Is. The. Most. Boring. Day. We’ve. Travelled.” Sir Prize groaned, stamping his hooves along the path.

“Dude, quit whining. Seriously. You’re acting like a little filly!” Gem snarled from the other side of the group. Since receiving his cutie mark, he’d been slightly less antisocial.

“Hey!” Solar Flare protested. “Fillies are awesome!”

“Eeyup!” Apple Core bumped hooves with the blue Pegasus nonchalantly.

“Whatever.” Gem snorted, a plume of smoke escaping his nostrils. “Clockwork, we’ve been on the road for five days. I think. Whatever. Shouldn’t we be there, soon?”

“Guh, will everypony hang on for a second?” Clockwork snapped, sitting down and pulling out the map and flipping it upside-down several times before reorienting it and leaning in. “Actually,” He murmured in surprise. “We should be there in a day!” His eyes grew wide and he leaned in, scrutinizing. “Yeah, we’ve got a day.” He sighed in relief, glancing behind him and grinning. “Guys, we should stop.”

“The sun’s just starting to set.” Gem pointed out whilst rolling his eyes.

“Well,” Clockwork sucked in a cheek, chewing on it and pondering it for a moment. “We’ll just have to get up tomorrow, huh? Come on. Let’s celebrate! We’re almost there!”

“Dude, aren’t you like a hard-flank archetype?” Sir Prize asked, blinking at Clockwork.

“Not sure. “ Clockwork shrugged. “For some reason, I get this overwhelming sense that everything is gonna be okay.” He murmured, watching the sun, now a shrouded shade of red; begin to disappear over the distant horizon.

Sir Prize cocked his head but shrugged, pulling the tent out of his saddlebag and beginning to pitch it like every other night. “Need some help?” Clockwork asked, looking over his shoulder at the unicorn.

“Nah.” He heard a murmur escape Prize. Clockwork nodded absentmindedly, eyes trained on the glowing red orb slowly settling over the horizon while the other five pitched the tent. He heard rustling behind him as the tent went up. There was a familiar pattern of hoofsteps. Solar Flare closing in behind him.

“Hi.” She murmured, almost in a whisper, as she settled next to him with her orange and blue tail wrapped around her paws.

“Can I ask you something?” Clockwork mumbled.

“Yeah. Of course.”

He breathed deeply, bowing his head. “I know what’s going on. So just… Be aware of that. What exactly do you see in me that’s all that great?” He turned to her and smiled. “I’m just a bookworm of a unicorn. I sit in the library and I read. I don’t like to make friends, or be with them. I’m pretty rude if I don’t feel like talking to you. I’m not great-looking or anything.” He spoke with calmness that was alarming even to himself. Novels always seemed to speak of being of love with someone because they were funny or smart or charismatic. All the heroes were well-muscled, or funny, or had some deep, dark secret.

Clockwork had no secrets. He had no tragic past, or horrifying secrets. He was just an introverted kid. A normal pony, walking through the world. He hadn’t been deprived of interaction, he simply preferred to be alone. Lately, he’d found he didn’t mind the company of these particular ponies, for the most part. He might even grow to like them.

He was antisocial. He didn’t have a drug problem, and he didn’t need some lively girl with big eyes and short, messy hair to walk into his life and show him what being happy really was by pulling some kind of stunt at a restaurant.

He was very much content with his life, the way it was. If his father were to walk in, he’d find himself distraught and at a loss for what to do. There really wasn’t anything missing. Not like in his novels. He didn’t look outside and see a grey, hopeless world. Equestria was going to be fine once they took care of whatever this was. Everypony was happy with their lives, for the most part.

Celestia had created a Utopian society. Most societies in his books were dystopian, all the residents thinking they were happy, but there was some sort of horror. Stalliont Green was ponies. There was some sort of horrifying secret. There were no secrets in Equestria, Celestia was simply a fair ruler with everypony’s best interest in mind.

Even ponies like Clockwork, who didn’t care for ice skating or shopping or eating dinner with other ponies. He was aware of Solar Flare stammering nervously beside him.

“What? Go ahead.” Clockwork questioned, raising an eyebrow and looking at her.

“Uhm.” He heard Solar Flare gulp. “Listen,” She mumbled quietly, looking at her hooves. “I-I need to tell you something.” She shifted. “I really like you.” Her hoof was tapping nervously. “A-and, I hope that you w-will give me a chance or something, and uh… I’ll be okay if… If, you know, if you don’t want to, but I’m sorry for wasting your time. I know you just said you knew, but… I just had to get that off my chest, first.”

Choosing his words carefully, and keeping his eyes trained on anything but her, he repeated his question. “What do you see in me?”

“I… I don’t know.

His blood went cold. Clockwork finally turned to look into her scarlet eyes, brow furrowed. He opened his mouth nervously and bit his lip. “Listen, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way or anything,” He fidgeted. “Because, uhm.” The unicorn paused. “I’m just… Not…” He cocked his head to the hazy sunset and squinted his eyes. “You’re great. You’re really pretty and nice. So… Know that. But, I just… Can we be friends? None of this interests me. I don’t even know if I like the idea of making friends or… having relationships. I’m sorry. You’re great. I hope you end up with someone nice.” He did his best to smile, but she smiled dejectedly.

“Y-yeah. Th… Thanks.” She murmured, turning to the tent and walking away slowly, her head cocked at an odd angle.

Clockwork sighed, turning his eyes onto the rising sun. Was he a jerk? That briefly crossed his mind. He’d read plenty of novels about the nice, perfect girl gets turned down by the antisocial or alcoholic guy and breaks her heart and then she becomes depressed. He shook his head. He was a nice guy. He was the good guy. He was saving Equestria.

So why couldn’t he shake the nagging feeling that every decision he was making was a bad one. What, was going to destroy this power that was going to destroy Equestria a bad decision, too? He frowned quietly, remembering Discord’s message and shivering. That simply wasn’t the case. No, Celestia had told them, and Celestia was a goddess!

Of course they were right. He glanced back over his shoulder to the tent and poked his head in. “Okay, guys. I let you sleep in. Let’s go.”

Solar Flare looked up at him, eyes moist. He flinched and turned away, taking down the tent as the ponies filed out simultaneously, Solar Flare being the last and not even so much as glancing at him.

Trying to avoid any awkward silences, Clockwork began to trot next to Candied Chaos. “Hey.” He smiled.

“Hey.”

“How are you doing? You’re not speaking much.”

“Freaked out.”

“About what?”

“That draconequus bastard claiming to be my father.”  

Clockwork, surprised by the sudden darkness carried along in her voice, raised an eyebrow. “Are you okay? I mean, I get that, but he’s clearly lying.”

“I know. Why does he know so much about my life? He even said I was his favourite little ‘Element of Turmoil’ or whatever.” She shook her head, green and yellow mane splaying across her pink, freckled face.

Clockwork stared at the ground. “He’s… He’s Discord! He probably knows everything about me, too.”

“Yeah.” She scoffed. “I’m sure he does.”

The conversation ended there. No one spoke.

Though the sun rose in Discordia, it wasn’t nearly as prominent in Ponyville. The days were more like the hazy darkness that creeped into development just before the sun set. At any given moment, the sky threatened to go entirely dark and plunge them into night. The mist constantly rising from the ground was ruthless.

He was trying to avoid thinking of Solar Flare. He’d only feel guilty. There was nothing wrong with her. She was perfectly nice and sweet and pretty.

He just didn’t feel anything. A painful wave of guilt washed over him as he thought once again at the way she had desperately looked at him when he had stepped into the tent. He inhaled deeply in a vain attempt to relieve the constant, pounding, shaking feeling in his chest. It felt like it was going to collapse at any moment.

The notion of any sort of relationship with her past being friends made him irrationally nervous. He wasn’t sure why. She was perfectly normal, wasn’t she? And nice. By all means, he should be happy that such a great young mare would feel that way about him. Right?

He felt his stomach drop. No. Not right.

His musings continued, but he entirely avoided the subject of Solar Flare, in spite of the fact that all of his thoughts only continued to lead back to her no matter what he did. Finally, around mid-noon, he pulled out the map.

Well.

This wasn’t what he had been expecting.

The map said they were there. By all means, the foals had arrived. He furrowed his brow, turning to the other five. “Hey, guys,” He called, each of the others standing at attention. “Will someone come take a look at this map? It says we should be here by n-“

He was cut off when the ground began to shudder and groan, opening up beneath them, collapsing. There was nothing beneath his hooves. Just open air and an inky black expanse beneath him as the ground continued to split and he began to fall, hearing the shouts of the other ponies beside him.

He screamed.

Formatting issues. FML.

Submitted to Equestria Daily. Generally, there's some grammatical, formatting, and stylistic issues. So, mostly technical stuff. Chilling over here at ponychan, expect a potential jump in quality, and quite a bit of editing and rewriting.

COMIC-CON ATTENDEES: I'll be going as Pinkamena Diane Pie with my friend, who'll be Rarity. I'll have a blood spattered shirt and stuff, shouldn't he hard to spot. Just wanted to let you guys know ahead of time.

-- RadaVonVon Next Chapter: Chapter 15: Harmonising Estimated time remaining: 59 Minutes