Twilight wanted to fly with Rainbow Dash. She wanted to soar through the air with one of her best friends, one of her friends who knew and deeply understood the rush and magical sensation of flight, and just lose herself in the moment.
She wanted to feel the wind on her face and underneath her wings, and she wanted to hear her and Rainbow’s laughter echoing through the skies as they flew amongst the clouds.
She just… needed a minute to prepare herself. That’s all.
At least that’s what she told Rainbow Dash, but as she walked into the first bar she came across and huddled herself in the corner, legs curled into a ball in front of her and head buried in her arms, she began to think that perhaps she was simply making excuses to put it off.
She wanted to fly with Rainbow, that much was true in her heart.
She just… she didn’t want to be afraid.
She didn’t want to be afraid of Rainbow, and she extremely still was; it took a lot of time and effort and emotional energy to shake off her fear of the Slayers the first time, when she first started getting to know Rainbow and Ra— uh, the other one.
Twilight could still vividly remember the sounds of the Slayers invading her family’s home, her mother’s frantic pleas for Twilight to hide, and the sound of blood being spilled as Twilight cowered underneath the kitchen counter inside the cupboard as she tried her best not to cry or make any noise, terrified and certain that the Slayers were going to come for her next.
But they never did. Twilight had spent a lot of her life wishing that they had, but they never did.
It was hard not to recall those memories when the Slayers were brought up, and especially when Twilight was face to face with any of them. But Twilight had decided that she wasn’t going to live in fear anymore, for her sake but especially for Spike’s.
But then everything she had built came crashing down around her, like the burning branches of the crumbling library. And now Twilight didn’t know what to do.
“Damn girl, you live like this?”
Twilight’s ears perked up at the sound of an unfamiliar voice, and she bolted her head up as she realized she was having a visible emotional breakdown in the middle of a crowded public space.
“Eheh,” Twilight chuckled awkwardly and looked up at the girl speaking to her. “Well, my ex-girlfriend was very dramatic. I think it just rubbed off on me.”
The woman was… a pony? She definitely looked like a pony, though Twilight eyes were a bit blurred with tears.
She had a white fur coat, and a dazzling mane of fluffy orange hair that fell all around her face. What was odd about her though were the green scales that decorated the bridge of her nose, and her horn which looked more like an ancient tree branch than a typical unicorn horn.
“Oof, girl troubles, huh?” the woman nodded knowingly, before slapping her back against the wall and sliding down until she was sitting on the ground next to Twilight. She handed Twilight a can of beer, which Twilight took cautiously, and tapped her own can against it. “Hit me.”
“Uhh, well I don’t really know if—”
“Mm!” the woman interrupted with a grunt as she smacked her forehead, and she spilled beer on her chest as she tried to talk with her mouth full. “Where are my manners? Geez, I’m such a doof today I swear to god.”
The woman stuck out her hand for Twilight to shake, closing her eyes and giving an enchanting smile that could light up an underground cavern all on its own.
“Name’s Autumn Blaze!”
“I’m Twilight-” Twilight shook Autumn Blaze’s hand, but as Autumn opened her eyes, Twilight immediately recognized that familiar ethereal glow and her head started spinning “-Sparkle.”
“Yo, we’re the same!” Autumn cheered, banging her beer can against Twilight’s, which remained unopened. “Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me!” Autumn whispered with her hand covering the side of her mouth, grinning ear to ear and giving Twilight a wink.
Twilight wasn’t sure about this overly-friendly stranger at first, but her earnestness was quickly growing on Twilight.
“Thank you,” Twilight opened the can of beer she had been graciously given and took a slight sip; she wasn’t much of a beer drinker, and her nose curled instantly at the taste as she let it fall delicately out of her mouth and onto her cloak.
“Tastes like piss, huh?” Autumn laughed. “Sorry about that-” Autumn took another swig of her own beer, and she took to it with such gusto that Twilight couldn’t help but at least try another sip “-this swill sure isn’t for everyone, but gawd I just love eating garbage, you have no idea.”
“Okay,” Twilight hummed as the beer taste settled in her mouth like snow turning black from being exposed to a leaking garbage bag. “I’m kinda coming around to it on the second sip.”
“Really?” Autumn Blaze asked, her eyes and smile filled with such cheer and optimism that Twilight couldn’t possibly ruin it for her.
“No,” Twilight said sheepishly, her ears flattening against her head. “I just didn’t want to disappoint you.”
“Ha! You’re not gonna disappoint me by not liking this shitty beer,” Autumn Blaze scoffed and slapped Twilight on the shoulder. “You’ll disappoint me by not telling me about your girl troubles though.” Autumn flashed a shining smile and blinked innocently, and Twilight couldn’t help laughing.
“Well,” she said drolly, “if you’re that insistent—”
“I am,” Autumn nodded.
“—I’ll tell you.”
Twilight took a deep breath and tried to collect her thoughts; she didn’t want to bore Autumn with all the details, plus she didn’t want to share anything too personal with a stranger— a very friendly and charming stranger, but those were the kind that would get you! Or maybe Twilight was over-worrying again; either way, the woman was still a stranger and Twilight wanted to be mindful of what she said.
But at the very least, she was a dragon just like Twilight, and that made recalling the story much easier.
“Have you ever tried to make friends with ponies?” Twilight kept her voice relatively low, but quite frankly she could’ve been screaming and no one would hear her over the chatter of the bar.
“Eh, not exactly?” Autumn hummed and fidgeted her lips as she pondered. “Yeah, not really. I mean sorta kinda? It’s complicated. But I have friends who’ve done it, so I get it.”
“My ex-girlfriend I mentioned, who is a pony—”
“Oof,” Autumn visibly winced.
“—she discovered my secret recently.”
Twilight paused to give a dreary sigh, and she unconsciously took another sip of beer, her nose turning up in disgust once she realized what she’d done, though Autumn’s gleeful snickering at Twilight’s silly face made her feel a bit better.
“All my pony friends discovered my secret recently,” Twilight said.
“Yo, that’s rough,” Autumn groaned.
“Well, they’re all coming around, I think,” Twilight smiled softly, thinking about how kind and sweet Pinkie Pie and Applejack had been to her, and even Rainbow Dash; Rainbow being honest about her fears, and very specifically saying that her fears weren’t an excuse to treat Twilight badly, meant a lot to Twilight.
“You super sure about that?” Autumn asked skeptically, a disgruntled frown on her face.
“Y-yeah,” Twilight nodded. She was a little taken aback by Autumn’s reaction, quite frankly. “I trust them, and they’ve all been very kind to me even after learning my secret. And not just me either, we have another dragon in our group too. She’s even dating one of the ponies now, and they seem genuinely happy together.”
“Oh,” Autumn said flatly, and a skin-crawlingly long second passed before Autumn beamed. “That’s awesome! So what’s the problem then?”
“Uhhh,” Twilight muttered. If there was any dishonesty in Autumn’s sudden switch into being happy for Twilight, she couldn’t see it; but that jarring tonal shift still put Twilight on edge. “Well, the thing is, I think one of my friends is still scared of me.”
Twilight took a deep breath and sighed, swishing her beer can from side to side. It felt weird to say that out loud; she knew it was true, Rainbow told her as much, but to admit it still hurt.
“Honestly, that’s not even the problem,” Twilight said coldly. “I’m afraid of her too. I’m afraid of her seeing my true form and— and freaking out!”
“Do you think she can hurt you?” Autumn Blaze asked seriously.
“No,” Twilight responded immediately.
She figured it would be best to leave aside the detail that her friend was a Slayer, and it was true that Twilight was absolutely confident that Rainbow wouldn’t try to hurt her.
“It’s not that I think she’ll hurt me,” Twilight continued, “not physically anyway. It’s that if I show her my true form, and she’s scared of it, I— I just don’t know how I could deal with that, like, emotionally.”
“Hmmm,” Autumn hummed thoughtfully and took a long sip from her beer, Twilight waiting with bated breath to hear what she was going to say. “I think you gotta show her. If she acts scared, screw it, let her be scared.”
“Wh-what?” Twilight asked incredulously. She had no idea what to expect from Autumn Blaze, but she sure wasn’t prepared for advice that bad!
“You’re gonna meet a lot of people who seem really friendly and chill and cool, Twilight Sparkle,” Autumn said, her tone dead serious as she motioned with her beer can for emphasis. “But sometimes those people, when they see the real you, they can’t handle it.
“They want you to be something else. They think you’re ‘dangerous’ somehow,” Autumn clicked her tongue and scoffed, shaking her head with gritted teeth. It didn’t take a genius to see that she was speaking from the heart.
“They’ll tell you that they love you while they stick a knife in your back,” Autumn hissed. “They’ll tell you they care about you even after they tell all their friends how they wish your ‘kind’ didn’t exist. Those people don’t deserve you.
“Hell, those kinds of people don’t deserve anyone, and the fact that they get to sleep soundly at night while the folks they stomp their hooves on get crushed under waves and waves of hostility and violence makes me sick.
“At the end of the day, Twilight Sparkle, you need to know your boundaries. You can’t have a relationship based on a lie, and if your friends can’t accept the real you, then they can’t be your friends. It doesn’t matter how much you love them and care about them.”
Twilight blinked.
Autumn stared into the distance.
An awkward pause.
Autumn broke the relative silence with her laughter.
“Woah! That got heavy!” she cackled, and put her hand on Twilight’s shoulder. “I’m super sorry about that! That was a lot!”
“I appreciate it though,” Twilight said, surprising herself. “You were speaking from the heart, and um—” Twilight sighed. “As much as I hate to say this, I think that you’re right.”
“Of course I am!” Autumn said proudly, pounding her chest. “Like, I didn’t mean to just roll over you with a big ol’ monologue, but I meant every word of what I said, and I stand by it! You just can’t be friends with people who can’t accept you, end of story.
“And if there’s something you have, like a relationship, that can be destroyed by the truth? It deserves to be destroyed. It needs to be destroyed for you to live healthy, and you deserve to live healthy, no matter what anyone tries to tell you.”
“That’s—” Twilight took a deep breath, or at least she tried to but her chest felt like it was gonna implode from the pressure. “That’s a lot to think about.”
“Well, you got plenty of time, right?” Autumn asked, needling Twilight with her elbow. “Not the end of the world if you can’t figure everything out in a single day, y’know?”
“Yeah,” Twilight took a sip of her beer and was honestly starting to get a little used to it, “I guess you’re right.”