Disclaimer:I do not own My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, etc.

For some reason, I've been wanting to write this story for a while, yet various things have prevented me from doing so, but I finally got around to it. This doesn't HAVE to be considered a pairing fic, but you can take it that way if you like. Pinkie-centric, obviously, as she is one of my favourite characters in the show. It says this fic takes a place after The Return of Harmony, but the episodes "Party of One" and "A Friend In Deed" also play a small role. (And a bit of mentioning of Baby Cakes.) This fic has some angst, but it's not the sole focus.

Enjoy!

A light breeze stirred in the grassy courtyard as Pinkie Pie looked up at the horrified face before her.

She was standing in the new location of the Discord Statue, which had been moved from its original place in Ponyville, as having the living embodiment of chaos trapped in stone tended to make most people uncomfortable.

The first time she had heard of Discord, she didn't think that it sounded so horrifying. After all, how much fun would candy floss clouds and chocolate rain be? Pinkie had to admit that when she first tried the deliciously tempting concoction, she thought that maybe this Embodiment of Chaos guy wasn't so bad after all.

How very wrong she had been.

The memory of what happened in the maze had grown somewhat hazy with time, but Pinkie could still remember the taunting laughter that had chilled her very core and summoned up feelings of intense sadness that the perky, pink pony usually did her very best to avoid.

She supposed that it was strange for her to be here now, sitting before the frozen statue of Discord. But recurrent dreams and subsequent memories had pestered and nagged at Pinkie, until eventually she hopped on the first train to Canterlot. Perhaps this could be chalked up to another bout of her unique eccentricity, but for Pinkie Pie, it held a deeper meaning, something that she carried in her very heart.

She had not elected to bring her friends. As close and dear to her as her colorful companions were, she was pretty certain that they would not understand. Twilight would interrogate her, asking her if she was really sure about this, as though this was a mere whim. Rainbow Dash would tell her not to go, or possibly tell her she was a little bit gaga for wanting to do something like this in the first place. Applejack too would take a practical, no nonsense approach, telling her to put the past behind her. Rarity would be skeptical, wondering why, perhaps, Pinkie Pie would want to visit the remains of one of the most frightening foes they had ever encountered. Even Fluttershy had enough hostility in her to never wish to encounter Discord again. No. This was something Pinkie felt compelled to do alone.

Still, Pinkie Pie went.

Her happy-go-lucky attitude aside, Pinkie was a persistent pony, always had been, and once the notion had entered her mind, no amount of reasoning was going to dissuade her from her task.

That being said, as she sat there now, staring at Discord's frozen face, she felt uncharacteristically uncertain of what to say. Her ability to talk about the seemingly most frivolous of subjects may have been a famous quirk of hers, but that was just it, this was not a frivolous subject to Pinkie. Maybe that was why it was turning out harder then she expected.

Taking in a breath, she began.

"I don't know if you can hear me..." Pinkie said. "But if you can, then maybe this might make sense to you..."

Naturally, she received no response from her stone audience, but now that she had started, she felt a little more emboldened.

"It's been a whole year since you escaped." Pinkie said. "I guess it must seem pretty weird that I'm here talking to you now, but it felt like the right thing to do."

Here, Pinkie nodded to herself.

"What you did to me and my friends was really mean." the pink pony scowled temporarily, remembering something her 'grey' self had said.

"Well quit it! You'd better THINK before you laugh at the PINK! ...ie Pie!"

"And for a while, I think...I think I even hated you. I don't think I've ever hated anyone before. Not really REALLY. I'd never felt so...so angry, I guess. I remember you said that your favorite Element of Harmony was Laughter, but for a while...nothing felt worse than hearing laughter. That day, I discovered that laughter isn't just for when you're happy. Laughter...laughter can hurt."

She stopped once again, thinking. There were people she had disliked, to be certain. Gilda, the Diamond Dogs, the Flim Flam Brothers, but hatred was not an emotion that Pinkie Pie was familiar with, even if that was what was aching in her gut. And when she'd first heard those balloons, mocking, taunting, making her feel so helpless and weak...

"Oh, poor Pinkie Pie!" Discord's disembodied voice crooned, a turquoise balloon circling Pinkie as she lay there in the mud, begging for the voices to stop it, stop it, stop laughing. "And here I thought laughter made you happy."

"Happy?" Pinkie had spat, the colour draining from her very body. She spat the word, as though she hated nothing more than the very Element she once bore proudly. "I don't think so."

Pinkie shook her head to dislodge the memory, and continued bravely on. To say what she had come here to say.

"But lately I've been thinking about it...about all the things that happened. Not just in the maze, but all of it. And I wonder if you were hurting us, and other ponies, because it hurt. I mean, I met Princess Luna lately and she's actually really nice, even if she was Nightmare Moon. I guess you don't know, but for a while, she wasn't Luna anymore. All she wanted people to like her. She just wanted to be appreciated. And when they didn't, she went...dark. And she didn't understand some things, but she wasn't so evil after all. She was just...misunderstood."

"Hast thou come to...make peace?"

"Has anybody ever made you feel like that?" Pinkie asked, knowing she would receive no reply, but the question left her mouth anyway. "You made me so angry...it felt really bad, thinking that my friends didn't like me, that all I was to them was a big joke. But how did you know that would hurt so much?"

Pinkie bit her lip.

"Your friends laugh at you all the time."

"Maybe you were sad, or lonely." Pinkie goes on, sitting down and a frown creasing her brows. "It's not easy being different, after all, and what's more different then the spirit of chaos, right?"

Here, she chuckled a little, but it lacked its usual sparkle. This was harder then she had anticipated, but she surged on.

"It's...it's not nice feeling rejected." Pinkie said, haltingly, as the memory came floating back to her.

"Oh no...My friends don't like my parties and they don't wanna be my friends anymore!"

"And sometimes...sometimes, I feel like if I didn't have my friends..."

"Stop it! Stop laughing at me!"

"Then I wouldn't be able to smile." Pinkie said quickly. "...Maybe that's why you made everypony so sad. Encased in stone for so long...of course you'd be mad when you got out. Even if you did hurt me and my friends, maybe you just didn't want to get turned back into stone again, trapped. Being forced to stay here, unable to speak or talk to anybody...it could drive anybody crazy, right? Especially if you've never had any friends to talk to...if you've never known what it's like to have a real friend by your side. Maybe causing chaos is the only way you know how to be happy, even if makes others so sad and scared."

Pinkie stopped. For a moment, for the tiniest moment, she thought you felt something. Not quite her Pinkie Sense, but something like a tremor, or a fissure. Looking at the statue, however, its face was still frozen in fear, immobile. Somebody less idealistic then Pinkie would have shrugged it off as nothing, but the Earth pony may have been eccentric, but she knew that she should never ignore her instincts.

Pinkie smiled slightly.

"I guess you must be wondering why I'm talking about this, huh?"

The Pink pony rose to all fours again.

"I've made a lot of friends over the past year." she explained. "So many different people, and at first, some of them didn't like me too much, or I didn't understand them well at first. I've learned a lot about friendship, and about the different ways you can be friends with people. I also know that when you have a lot of responsibility, it doesn't mean you can handle it. Being a spirit of something must be a pretty tough job, right? And then I thought about how sad I'd be, if I was all alone, with nobody to talk to. So I thought maybe if you had a chance, maybe you could use your powers differently next time. Some of it was pretty fun!"

Pinkie had not planned to say this last part, but remembering the chocolate rain clouds always brought a smile to her face, being a sweet-tooth herself. And that was just for starters, when she recalled the soap-covered roads and flying buildings. The breeze picked up again, with slightly more insistence then last time.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is that being different doesn't have to be a bad thing. And maybe if you had a friend, you wouldn't want to make everypony sad."

Here, Pinkie smiled genuinely, her eye closing a moment.

"So, I'll come back and visit you sometime!" Pinkie said, totally at ease with speaking to a statue now. She had totally lost track of the time. "I know you can't really talk that way, but sometimes, it's nice to just to know that somebody is there for you, you know?"

With that, Pinkie, feeling like a huge weight had been lifted from her, turned and, in true Pinkie Pie style, bounced away across the grass, the last words she spoke carrying across the light breeze.

"I'll be back. I Pinkie promise!"

And, although Pinkie Pie had no way of knowing and returned to Ponyville with an equal lack of fuss as she left it, the unseeing eyes of the statue remained fixated on the spot where Pinkie had sat and poured out her heart.

If he could, Discord would have smiled.

I had a slightly more downbeat ending planned, but I like the way this ended. (It's up to you how to interpret Discord's would-have-been smile, by the way. I don't agree with all Pinkie said in the story, per se, but I like the idea of her trying to reach out with her new understanding. How Discord might take it is also interesting, too.)

Thanks for reading~