A Tenuous Peace

A slender mare ascended the cobblestone steps of the decrepit Manehattan apartment building. What sections of her silvery pelt that lay exposed beyond the shelter of her somber raincoat now glistened with dark, glassy droplets. With due haste, she continued past the well-tended common area -- past the scrutinizing glance of an errant landlady -- and only stopped short of his room. Touching her ear delicately to the door, Victoria listened intently and could distinguish a sobering and dissonant drone produced by a familiar grand piano.

She unfastened the iron bolt and floated silently into the apartment. Her rain-drenched attire was swiftly shed and hung to dry. after which point the mare approached her troubled lover at last. His hoof, she compelled away from the keys; his lips, she eagerly and passionately brought to her tender own. It seemed to her the most appropriate gesture.

"Together at last, my dear," she cooed, seating herself beside him and warmly yet futily pressing her body against his. "I left Ponyville as soon as I had heard 'ze news. Mille fois merci, heavens above, for sparing you your liberty -- 'zough, as I understand, it comes at a price."

Victoria proceeded to utter a compassionate sigh. "Shall we talk, my love?"

The piano was slow. The carpet looked dirty. News paper articles for job listings lay about. Dishes filled the sink. There were bed sheets and a pillow on the sofa nearest the piano.

Their kiss, though passionate, was tired and lacking his usual zeal. His body seemed to tremble ever so slightly at her touch. His eyes were tired and hardly open.

"Vicky....It's you....I was worried that you...." He said with hardly any volume. The smell of alcohol was on his breath. A bottle could be seen on the other side of the piano bench.

"They took away my armor...." Renny solumbly looked down at the piano keys, sounding like a depressed child.

With a firm hoof, the mare brought his cheek to her breast to arrest his trembling features. "Oh, sweet little thing. How 'zey 'ave wronged you," she lamented in a whisper.

"Nonetheless, you are a free stallion." She paused to consider the precise articulation of her next words.

"I understand 'zat the premature end to your career does not come easily at all. Perhaps at an earlier time, you would have thought it your destiny to bring justice to the Manehattan streets..."

"I am of the opinion, however," Victoria continued with renewed spirit, "'zat a brighter future lies on the horizon. You are still the same loving and caring Renaultar, are you not?" She endeavored to smooth his less-than-pristine mane. Her expression, which meanwhile lay beyond his peripheries, reflected another sentiment; something entirely unaffected even by the stallion whom she consoled. One could suppose that Renaultar's loss impacted her in some other profound manner.

Renaultar, though devistated, did not weep, but rather was silent and still. Whatever sorry he may have had earlier was either already expended or put into his piano. Staring blanky into Vicky's chest.

Then he laughed. It was ever so slight but chuckle he did. "I was going to get an interview with an interview with a private security company. I was so prepared for them and it was so promising. But they didn't even start the interview when they said I was 'risky' for them after what happen. Can you believe it? They think me, a cop, is a liability!" He half heartedly laughed and reached a hoof around, finding the bottle aside him to bring to his lips.

Victoria's heart, undisturbed by the solemn cheek which lay upon it, remained determinedly calm. She would only continue to express her sympathies for the stallion to whom she had pledged her uncompromising love.

"Ah, but stallions are creatures of poor sight, my love. You must excuse 'zem. Now, upon my matron saint, I promise 'zat you and I shall make amends; for 'zis world is in fact capable of forgiveness to 'zose still living. Should 'zere be a time to weep, it is now, when you are in my tireless embrace. Do not hesitate, sweet colt. Only, once grievances are expressed, you must bring yourself to pursue a solution."

To her visible chagrin, the stallion then reached for his bottle.

"Renaultar, please! You've clearly had enough." Suddenly animated, Victoria lurched in the direction of Renaultar's bottle and attempted to seize it.

Renaultar tried to keep the bottle in his grasp, using his strength to hold onto it, but the awkward angle made it difficult.

"This is my weeping! I'm perfectly sh-sober and fine!" Renny tried to wriggle it from her grasp and get another drink of it but it slipped away in his desparation. "Aww, I only had 2 glasses..."

He let his head fall onto the piano, creating anything but a subtle sound. "...You said stallions have poor sight? Funny. I must be more than half blind then."

The mare observed him with an expression local to incredulity. Upon bringing the bottle to her nostrils, she shrunk back and contorted her features. "My word, how can one enjoy indulging in such poisons?"

Just as she had placed the alcohol down, Renaultar's chin came down on the keys. "Oh sweetheart. I shall just have to look on, in your behalf." Victoria, quick to interpret the humor of his observations as a subtle interlude amidst tempests of grief, promptly set her hooves upon the keys and endeavored to recall a piece. It was a mere baroque minuet, whose jauntiness and technical simplicity suggested that the mare had learned it in her filly years; on a cold bench, with a hawkeyed and scrutinizing tutor at her side.

"Metronomic and formulaic, is it not? Hearken, love, and perhaps you shall not slip so willingly into a drunken delirium," She murmured facetiously, watching intently for the potential beginnings of a smile.

Renny immediately lifted his head from the piano when Vicky began to play. His ears perked up sharply to listen before he put his hooves to the piano. He played a mix of more energetic yet smeared version of her well practiced playing. His hooves were fumbling the keys, rather intoxicated. Vicky would not be dissapointed though when a smile did start to come to his face.

"Gosh darned keys are running away from me." He emphasized by slamming a note, as if catching a fleeing critter. "Father always told me drinking is for the weak. But this is kind of funny.....I have no idea what I'm playing." His tune by now was veering off to another set of imaginary music stored away in his mind. His troubles seemed to be put aside for the moment.

"You shall find 'zat your father is quite right; but I shall not force you to your misery right 'zis moment."

Victoria grinned sympathetically before improvising a harmonic line over his melody. Hers, in contrast to his, adhered persistently to a tempo and dynamic. Having thus established some semblance of an accompaniment, the mare turned wholly to face the stallion, who stood taller on the bench than herself.

"One day, you and I shall be so happy. I 'ave quite a keyboard back on 'ze estate, and I insist 'zat you accompany me on my soon-to-occur return trip."

"'Zere are, of course," Victoria added cautiously, "financial reasons for such a visit, as well."

Renny let his hooves fall from the keys when she turned to him, the music coming to a messy and abrupt stop. He looked over the mare and smiled at how lovely she was before turning himself to her and giving her a firm embrace.

"A trip would be a nice break....But how can I see your parents like this? I'm an embaressment. What family would allow their daughter to marry a jobless stallion?" He kept his embrace tight, hiding his face from her over her shoulder.

The mare faltered here, sighing ever so slightly such that one could not recognize that she had in fact anticipated the question.

"Sweetheart," Victoria uttered just so deliberately, "a stallion strong in constitution need not fret; for all misdoings may be forgiven, all misfortunes resolved, with but a little cleverness."

As swift as Death, she brought herself over him and secured his forelegs in her hooves. Looming over her partner with her snout just short of physical contact and her curls drowning his peripherals, she captured his eyes in her brilliant, passionate own.

"We shall ask of my father a meager sum. Yes, my love, much of it shall be allocated to our wedding day. The rest, dear Renaultar..."

A deciphering eye could perhaps detect the calculative demons which pranced then in the depths of her black pupils. "...Well, if you love me, you shall invest in the future that I have planned for you," she commanded; and in compensation for her vagueness, she wore a smile saturated with the fullest extent of pretensed love and desire which one could possibly muster.

Renaultar was looking down when Vicky suddenly seized his forelegs. Her sudden passion surprised him, and all his senses were absorbed into her as her beautiful eyes swallowed all other trains of thought.

In such a desperate moment, Renaultar felt relief bleeding into him, but those eyes gave off a brush of something else. It was ever so slight. Renny couldn't put a hoof on it in its habitat. He soon scolded himself for jumping to any conclusions in his mind. His wife to be was worried for him. Of course he would see distress in her.

Borrowing money was one of the last things Renaultar wanted to even consider. It was degrading to him, yet with those eyes looking into his soul he felt obliged to nod. They had talked about it before. Still, he voiced his upset.

"I don't like it....But what future do you plan for me? You have an idea?" He said before giving her snout a gentle kiss, humbled by her. How could he refuse a face like that?

The lips from which Renaultar stole kisses curled with cordiality and enterprise. "Ah, but yes, mon petit chou."

Her hoof drifted along his breast. "'Zere is, in the world, another justice," Victoria began surreptitiously. "One which preserves the tranquility of the domestic sphere and soothes the hearts of the trembling. Indeed, it is a justice 'zat cannot be moved by the precarious operation of a dysfunctional law system; a system which, as I understand, has wronged you in the past. Yes, it is privatized justice. A noble employ, I do believe, and quite suitable for the gallant and righteous stallion 'zat you are."

The mare, having spoken, watched his features meticulously. Even the most subtle twitch of a muscle she would capture and analyze in order to further her persuasive cause.

Renaultar did not just twitch, he shifted, rustled, and let his eyes wander about like a dog unsure of the edibility of his meal. Still trapped in her grasp, he forced himself to meet eyes with her again and put on a slight smile. "So...a private security of sorts? Whose authority would I be representing?"

He spoke ever so cautiously at first, but before he could even be finished with the sentence, his eagerness started to become aparent. Suspicious or not, the idea of a private and less confined version of his job seemed too good to pass up. There was hardly any selling to do. Already he wanted more. And as his curiosity grew, his acute suspicions started to fade.

Confident in her advance, Victoria demurely paused to rest her snout on his breast. "Why, the authority of all peace and order in the universe and nothing less," she replied coolly.

In the next moment, she was mobile again; on her hooves now, drifting carelessly away while the stallion evaluated the proposal. How curious it was that his apartment became so filled with interesting trinkets at that very moment!

"Ah, and such a lovely wedding we shall have! Do you not dream of rose-trellised bowers, of pretty little fillies clothed in white? I do, monsieur, I do."

Then, as if to clarify, Victoria added in a declamatory fashion, "When you are ready to begin your career anew, send word to this establishment." At last, she nonchalantly placed a business card on a nearby stand before trotting off to access Renaultar's wines.

Renaultar didn't need much time to think. Her redirection of his attention to the wedding wasn't even necessary. He already knew what he wanted. His passion was being a sheepdog, protecting the flock. He already knew what he would do.

Getting up onto his hooves, he smiled and took the card. Briefly reading over it, he made sure to note it for later. "It will be...a magical wedding. One I cannot wait to have and...consummate." He looked over Vicky with a chuckle.