Act II: Chapter Three:
Obsessed
It wasn't a dream.
She had stayed in the same spot where Nightfall had left her, staring on at the staircase from which her other self descended. So certain was she that Nightfall spoke to her via her dreaming, and that she would wake up any moment with clammy hooves and a sheet of sweat on her forehead. It had to be. It just had to.
Yet as minute after painful minute passed, Twilight's desperation to know that she was merely dreaming -and not hallucinating her conversation with Nightfall - overflowed into her racing heart. Like the orange glow of the sun briefly flickering outside the window, the truth of the matter was dawning on her. This was not a dream, she did hallucinate, and everything Nightfall told her was, therefore, true. To deny now was only a game of kidding herself.
And like three deadly blows from the Reaper's scythe, those three points crippled her legs as she collapsed into her books and let out a scream that recoiled off the walls and vibrated the glass around her. "Damn it! Alicorns damn it!" Gasps of hyperventilation were all she could draw into her lungs, and with each desperate gasp, the barriers that she'd built to keep her panic swallowed and her mind steady broke down and flooded out of her eyes.
It was collapsing. Her work, her sanity, her very life; it was falling apart. And not one damn thing could be done to stop it. To salvage one or two things was possible, but what did it matter when she was far too late to escape from her choice? By letting her own self-doubt seize her, she had forgotten all that her princess taught her to learn or be. More than that - she abandoned it.
She was supposed to be this intelligent, wise doctor, following the restrictions of dark magic! Yet how did a single moment of curiosity shatter her future as a the pony who cured madness? The Alicorn Amulet, whatever its purposes, used its trickery and opened her heart to its corruption. It opened her heart to Hyde.
In the very meaning of the phrase, she was engaged in a dance with Discord himself. Foolish, and dangerous to none but the one who accepted him.
After a time, her eyes had finally dried out. Calmness should have been the first thing to come after crying, as always like the comfort of a mother to her fearful child. Yet that feeling - the kind of standing in a black hallway at darkest night, when you know that you're alone, yet feeling eyes pried on your back - would not let go of her so easily.
That feeling of dread had latched onto her, same as Nightfall was latched to her magic.
The doctor sniffled quietly. Before her stood two choices.
One: curl into a little ball and force out more tears until she either shriveled up in starvation or Nightfall killed her herself.
Or two: actually get off her flank and do something to fight back and reclaim the life that Nightfall wanted to steal.
In no way was either choice going to be easy, and anyone could think that the second would be much harder. But facing the truth that she was dying gave her one good insight - that she had to stay strong, for both herself and her mother, who still depended on her.
Rising from her old books, damp with old tears, she hobbled to the table. The brief light of dawn had vanished, the sun slipping above a vast sheen of grey clouds that hung over the city. Her study could only be made out in silhouettes with the pitiful light that broke through the clouds. Yet it would have to suffice; she had neither means nor will to try messing with the matches again, and assumed the box's contents had been scattered after Nightfall's little . . . chat.
Stray papers were scattered on the floor near the pile of forgotten books and tomes , and on top was her journal. She plucked it with a careful jaw and brought it to the writing space. Sifted through filled entries as the pages brushed against each other like fallen leaves. Near the end was an empty page. She was running out of space for entries, even for a six-hundred page journal; a quibble in the long run.
"October sixth -" The quill in her hooves splatted ink over the page. With a small exhale, and a quick motion, the page was discarded. She started anew. "Oct-tober sixth. Sev-seven forty A.M. Nightfall told me that our choices are our own to choose, and that consequence is the result of that choice. We can't escape the result, but must answer for it. And . . . when I chose to use the Alicorn Amulet, I never considered . . . this of all things to happen. I can't keep ignoring the oncoming danger." She paused in a sigh. "Nightfall has set herself apart from me, and become her own pony. She feels, and thinks, and lives just as anypony else would. And just like anypony else, she fears. She knows that I want to recreate the TS8 Formula and use it to be rid of her."
But wasn't that the core instinct of every living thing, sapient or not? To survive? And her efforts to rid herself of evil, exactly what Nightfall was, terrified her darker side. In that sense, and in the sense that she was technically not even a month old, she was little more than a filly huddled in the corner, begging the mad doctor not to hurt her. Except this filly had her own tools of torture to manipulate.
"We've become two separate parts of one soul. We've gone mad, mad enough that this separation of ourselves is possible. And because of that, she's found a way to kill me. Princess Celestia warned me many times about how . . . frail my connection to magic is, but I never imagined it was this bad. Nightfall intends to drain my magic, severing that connection. Not only will it kill my half, but it may just make me forget I was ever 'Twilight Sparkle'. We are still the same pony, so . . . m-my consciousness as me will . . . sl-slip away and go right into Nightfall's. I'll n-not only die, I will become Nightfall Hyde."
And her bloodlust would become Twilight's as well. She wouldn't stop. Not ever. Her thirst for violence didn't just extend to the governors. She would long for the blood of bystanders, innocents . . . her friends. Her Spike. Even thinking that she could ever hurt her brother sent a prickling shiver through her spine.
"So, my formula, this time untouched by the amulet's magic, is my last hope to beat her. But Zecora still doesn't have the ingredients I need, and even if I can't afford to wait any longer, I can't leave the study. Nightfall's control over her comings and goings are too arbitrary. There's just too much of a risk to endanger somepony else."
She scribbled the words faster than ever, her thoughts pouring like spilt ink over the pages.
"And even if I do get the formula made, I'll have to kill her myself, in essentially the same way she intended to kill me. I'm no better than her, even without this choice. Everything she has done, she did to earn my favor, perhaps in the hopes that I wouldn't want to go through with using the formula. She did what I've always wanted to happen in the secretest -" she crossed that out "- most secret part of my heart: the governors being removed, getting revenge on Octavia, and so much more. She is the embodiment of the desires that I couldn't speak of, solely for my mother's well-being. She is everything I feared to be."
"Am I interrupting something, sugarcube?"
Twilight shot her head up and spun quickly. The sudden momentum threw off her balance and landed her on her side. A few feet away from the table stood Applejack, in her hoof an open letter and on her face a scowl that even Tartarus' wardens would fear.
It was one that Twilight certainly feared. How long had she been standing there? Did she hear what she'd been reading out loud? What was she going to do now that she knew?
Already her imagination, or Nightfall's own will, threw images into her mind's eye. She was chained, being dragged to Princess Celestia, disgust ridden on the alicorn's face. Doctors were unplugging the dozens of wires connected to machines that kept her mother alive.
Guards bringing the doctor up to the gallows, where a rope awaited her.
Nightfall's voice rang clear: There's only one place to go for madmares like us.
No. No! That wouldn't happen! It couldn't!
"A-applejack, I can explain!" she started. She rose hastily to approach, but the farmpony's withering stare held her back.
"I damn hope you can." It didn't seem possible, but her emerald eyes narrowed more so, making the visage of a pony whose patience had long since vaporized. She walked past her, to the writing space. Twilight was quick enough to snap the journal closed and tossed it aside before her friend could see its written words, although that seemed moot now.
"H-hold on! How much did you -"
Applejack again struck her with such venom in her eyes. "Why don't we start by you explainin' what the hell this letter's s'posed to mean?" She spread out the folded paper on the writing space. On a closer look, Twilight immediately recognized her insignia at the bottom of the page, along with her name, however sloppily written.
She'd opened her letter! "Applejack! I told you that was only supposed to be opened under the appropriate circumstances! Not whenever you felt like prying into my personal life!" She wanted to clear up this question, of how much Applejack had heard or knew, but seeing this letter opened before intended unlocked a burst of rage from her gut.
"Yeah? Then maybe you'll think better of abusin' yourself the next time you got secret letters to pass 'round." Her attention dropped to Twilight's thin, stilt-like legs, which she immediately tried to cover up with little effect. "So, you wanna tell me who Nightfall Hyde is?"
She knew. At least in part, she knew. It would only be a matter of time before she figured out -
"Must be a real important pony to pass all your equipment to."
What?
She must have looked dumbfounded, because Applejack then groaned and smoothed out the paper again. " 'I, Doctor Twilight Sparkle, pass on my equipment, journal, and formula concoction to Nightfall Hyde, should I pass on or leave Equestria. She will complete my work, as promised, and take credit for the completion of Project TS'." She spun around fast. "Remember now?"
No, she didn't. She never wrote a will! When did she write a will? She wrote confessions - letters revealing that she used the Alicorn Amulet and had become corrupted! She wrote those in dreading if she was overtaken by the amulet's magic, her friends and princesses could remove her as a threat, by any necessary means. But that was before she knew this magic as Nightfall Hyde, and certainly before she was a murderer. Before the stakes became too high to let anyone know the truth.
So why did Applejack have a will, not a confession?
You're welcome, sister.
She froze. Nightfall was there; she could feel her stirring. How could she be active, even when withdrawn? Better yet, how could she know about the letters? They . . .
. . . they were written by Nightfall, not her. The sloppy wording. The mention of Nightfall Hyde, even though she didn't refer to her as that at the time.
She mentally conjured the memory of her writing those letters. A pink aura held a quill dripping with ink. But soon, the image distorted and shifted, like a dream quickly shifting to a nightmare, and the aura turned green. It wrote in words hardly readable, as a voice thick behind phlegm read out, "I, Doctor Twilight Sparkle, pass on my equipment, journal, and formula concoction to Nightfall Hyde . . ."
You're welcome, Nightfall said again.
Did she . . . did she manipulate her memory . . . to make her think that she wrote a confession?
. . . how far could she go, then, to tamper with what she thought was real and what was not? What if that was how she was able to speak to her? Not a dream, not insanity, but memory manipulation?
She faced Applejack. "How long ago did you -"
Applejack cut her off with a stomp. "No. I'm askin' the questions here. And remember what you said to me 'bout that? That all mine would'a been answered with this letter?" She advanced on her, pressing the letter into her hoof. "Well, ain't that just amusin'? Cause all I got are more questions! So you better start explainin'."
Firm right where she stood, Applejack wasn't planning on moving until she had her answer.
Twilight's tight swallow could have been taken out of fear or relief. For one thing, Applejack wouldn't be standing here giving demands for answers if she really heard Twilight write her entry. There was both an advantage and disadvantage to this: her lack of knowledge, though a good thing, could change with one question, and she would prod for answers until Twilight relented.
Long ago, Applejack the Bearer of Honesty was one of her closest friends, someone who Twilight could trust with her secrets because she believed in her. But she was still the Element of Honesty. If she learned that Nightfall was the same pony who murdered innocents and terrorized all of Canterlot, and was asked to keep that a secret . . .
At once that image of doctors unplugging her mother struck again.
"Nightfall," Twilight threw out a quick lie, her mind set on keeping her mother safe, "Is a colleague. From . . . from the hospital." If Applejack reacted, she didn't show any sign. She just kept her withering stare on her. "We met a few years back and, um . . . well, her interests in my work were . . . certainly influential. And, you know, work reviled by the rest of the city, she was the only one I trusted enough to pass my stuff over to if I ever did disappear."
Applejack scrutinized her for over a minute, as if thinking. Opened her mouth to say something, but stopped. For a moment she thought that she was buying it. She let out a wispy sigh, finally backing off. "Alright."
Twilight blinked. "Alright?"
She nodded. "Alright." But then added, "A collegue, huh? Then why is it that, until right now, I ain't heard of this 'great colleague' who's helped you so much to the point that you felt like bequeathin' everything to her?"
One sentence. She unraveled that lie with just one. Damn. Question!
Really, she should have been prepared for Lady Lie Detector to sever it, but she didn't think it'd happen that quickly! Twilight snapped her mouth shut.
Applejack sighed, "I thought as much. Now, it might just come as a surprise to you, sugarcube," she said the name of endearment spitefully, "But I'm not your bad guy, cause I actually wanna help you."
Then she shouldn't have come here, practically, indirectly, threatening her mother! She was just so damn stubborn! Too stubborn for her own good; and what if she finally got her answer? She would just screw both her and her mother over. Her honesty dictated that she would take that information and rat her out to Celestia!
She'd rather let Nightfall overtake her and go on a rampage before letting her mother die.
Thunder rumbled outside. Two quick flashes of lightning ignited the room, highlighting Applejack's face. In that split-second, Twilight saw her glance away, as though now realizing that her stubbornness was equally matched by the doctor's. Whatever she was thinking, she tried to outwardly hide it, but her ear flicking slightly betrayed that she lost her resolve to push for her answers.
Her stance finally loosened. " . . . Fine. I get it. You got your reasons for keepin' quiet. But they ain't good reasons to keep yourself locked up here."
"You're right about one thing," Twilight's voice strained. "I have my reasons." To save their damn lives, to keep them as far away from Nightfall as possible! "And you have no right to butt into my personal life."
Applejack shook her head slowly. "I got that right when it started concernin' your brother." She walked back to the table, opening one of the drawers. Twilight couldn't, for the life of her, remember if she locked the one with the amulet, and for a moment feared she had been found out.
But she instead selected one with photos, not an evil artifact. "After our little trip from the Everfree Forest, I realized, this obsession was only gonna get worse. So I told Spike he could bunk with me until you got your mess sorted out." She sifted through photo after photo, Twilight noticed, of her and Spike together.
Only those.
"But you wanna know what he told me? He said that he had to stay with you - not because you told him to, and certainly not out of obligation for your work."
She selected, from dozens, a single photo, and practically threw it at Twilight. She just barely caught it in her hooves. "He wanted to stay behind, just so that he could be there for you, when the time came that you couldn't handle this work anymore. Again, not because he had to. But because he wanted to. Because he really cares about you, and wants his sister back."
Twilight looked down at the photo. It showed her, a filly cradling an infant Spike in her forelegs. She looked surprised, just realizing her mother was taking that picture, and was about to beg her not to out of embarrassment.
She gasped softly, remembering that day. That picture had been taken after she'd come home from the test that made her Princess Celestia's student. With Spike at her side.
The professors hadn't expected the egg to hatch, nor was it ever supposed to. Yet it did. And they had an impossible child on their hooves. Had Twilight not begged her mentor to let her keep him, he would have been sent off to be experimented on.
She was a filly far too innocent to realize the implications of 'experimenting', and Princess Celestia agreed that Spike belonged with her.
Twilight turned the photo, reading the small footnote on the back: Already grown up! - Twilight Velvet.
Oh, Spike . . . what did she . . .?
"That mare is the one I remember, before work and potions got the better of her." Applejack's hardened stare was becoming all too familiar to her. "I don't even see a pony here. Just a shell, somepony who's hollowed herself out for a potion." She softened her gaze, voice thawing. "I know you ain't abusive. I know you're anythin' but cruel. But is . . . shovin' everypony away worth what you're doin'?"
Was it? Even if she had those ingredients in her hooves, even if she were rid of Nightfall this very second, never to take possession of her body again, getting her friends to trust her again seemed a distant path that she could no longer take. Those friendships were a broken mirror; even if it were somehow fixed, the cracks would forever remain.
Which was why she needed to fix her mistakes as soon as possible. And she couldn't afford to wait any longer on a letter that might never come. "You're right. Spike doesn't deserve this. So . . . do you really want to help me that badly?" She was careful with her tone. What came next was nothing short of manipulation. But she had no choice.
Applejack inched forward, eager. "Of course I wanna help you. Anythin' to turn this around."
"Good. Because I need you to go back to the Everfree Forest."
As expected, Applejack stumbled on her hooves. "Say . . . what, now?" That skeptical look was back, and seemed there to stay.
Still she continued. "I've asked Zecora for the ingredients to recreate the formula, but she's been at it for weeks. I don't have any time left, so I need you to go and just take whatever she has. And then bring it back."
Already the farmpony was rejecting the request. "Now hold on! I said I wanted to help you, not help indulge your work! I'm not gonna throw you right back into that same damn addic -"
Twilight couldn't help herself. At once she sprung on her friend, pinning her right into the table. The cube structure trembled upon impact, and a vial dislodged and broke on the table's surface. "Applejack, please! I wouldn't ask you if I didn't need this done!"
Applejack flinched, eyes wide open . . . almost fearful. At once she got off, drawing a distance. Being delirious would only convince her friend to instead retrieve a straightjacket. "Please, Applejack. I have no excuse for what I've done, not at all." She prayed that she wouldn't catch the double-meaning, that she would only think of her seclusion. "I can't even ask this of you, but I need you trust me. Just for a little while longer."
She waited. Her friend still looked like she'd seen Discord himself inside Twilight's eyes. In a sense, that was especially true. Here Twilight was, thin as bones and eyes wild, demanding she go right back into the cursed forest and enable the work that became an addiction.
"I do trust you, sugarcube," Applejack said, her expression sobering into mere caution. "I'd stake my life on trustin' you if I had to. Just for that, because I do trust you . . . I'll do it." Twilight opened her mouth to thank her, but then she said, "But the moment, and I mean the very second I get back here, you will tell me everything. And I mean everything."
Her tone clearly said that it wasn't a request. Twilight started to protest, but she stamped her hoof, cutting her off.
"I mean it, Twilight! You tell me everything, or you can forget 'bout ever getting those ingredients!" She meant it. She would leave right now, and let her slip into insanity if she didn't agree. Of course, she didn't know that she was going insane because of an evil twin, but still. Hesitation to abandon her wouldn't happen.
Twilight smoothed out her mane as best as she could. Stray hairs jumping out like wild sparks weren't even a question, and they weren't helping her case of sanity. " . . . fine. I'll tell you about the letters when you return."
"Everything, you mean? You'll tell me everything?"
She sighed. "Yes. Everything."
Applejack nodded. "Good. S'pose I'll leave you to it, then." She turned away, went back to the staircase. As Twilight returned to the table, she heard her heavy hoofsteps pause at the door, then resume after the loud click of the knob.
Silence drifted back into the study. Faint drizzle patted the window, and Twilight stood by it, watching tears fall into the streets. Back when equine culture was far more . . . rustic . . . ponies believed that rain was a sign of the Alicorns Above weeping for their subjects. When great suffering was felt amongst gods. Perhaps today that was true.
Lives were lost, fear ruled the city over the Alicorn Princesses, and a monster had been unleash for curiosity of one who played with powers she didn't understand. That was more than reason to cry.
"I'll never be able to escape from you, will I?" Twilight murmured, returning to the table. "You won't ever stop trying to kill me, even after I've gotten rid of you. It's all to prove that you and I -" she twisted the knob of the Bunsen burner and held the will over it with careful hooves "- live and breathe as one."
Darkness played its role in every creature with sapience; this Twilight always knew, for without evil, how could one tell right from wrong? But until now, she thought of it as a disease, something that had to be removed to better a patient.
She was kidding herself. Nightfall came to her so she could reveal truth, to open her eyes to what evil really was to good: inseparable.
To split oneself completely of evil was impossible by any means other than divine intervention. To think otherwise was to act as a god, to try having for themselves that power which belonged only to divinity worthy of it.
The TS8 Formula would decrease evil, as intended, but it would never really obliterate it. Even if only a shadow of evil remained, it would only come back, stronger and more lustful for vengeance. And then the cycle would repeat. Her darkness - her Nightfall - would return all over again even if she drank the formula and freed herself.
Nightfall, Twilight, - they were the same pony. At the very core of who Twilight Sparkle was, she was two halves of a soul that was so intricately intertwined to the point that they were inseparable - not because they wanted to be, but because they couldn't be separated.
Their moral extremes reflected off each other; one half that refused to contain it, and the other that begged for mercy to be dealt. And the truth that Twilight shared Nightfall's same desire to attack, a desire so drowned throughout her life to stand for good that it was forgotten, frightened her most of all.
"What streak of madness lies inside of me?
What truth do I fear to embrace?
My bloodlust is all Nightfall Hyde sees
It's all a game she's made . . . for me to face . . ."
She circled the table, sight rising to the cube-like structure holding every last piece of her equipment. The equipment that Fancy fought to let her keep . . .
The vials all shone off the light of bleak morning. Her mind played with her, images of the lives lost dancing on the glass. Fleur de Lis drowning into the floor, Blueblood writhing as blood seeped into his coat, and Silver Mist, who hardly moved a shiver as her wings were sliced off and her windpipe opened. And her fate wholeheartedly accepted. Each of them, to her dread, spurted some deranged glee in both Nightfall and her.
"What is this strange obsession
That's tearing me apart?
It puts . . . my soul at question,
Of what's in my heart . . .!"
Sitting solemnly at the end of the structure was the very same vial that had birthed Nightfall. She started to turn away, but barely caught her reflection; only, green, snake-like eyes fixed intently on her, instead of purple irises. Twilight recoiled, falling at the foot of the chaise. Even after the vison had gone, she'd dare not even breathe.
"Am I the mare that I have claimed to be?
Or am I somepony I don't know?
"Is there a part of me about to die,
For all my vicious lies
And the choice I've made . . .
For you . . .?"
She just laid there, curling into the side of the chaise. Suddenly felt . . . so tired. Longing for her mother's embrace, to tell her that things would be alright in the end, she slowly closed her eyes. The very last thought that came to her, before a soft prickling touched at her heart, was that even if she had won, even if Nightfall was gone, she still lost.
Because even if by some grace from Princess Celestia that she was allowed to insert the formula into her mother's treatment and managed to save her, in what world would Twilight want to live in, where her mother would awaken, only to see in her daughter's place, a murderer?
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Grey, purring clouds blotted out the sun, what little light that escaped falling onto the nearby trees. How many weather pegasi objected leaving the refuge of their homes just to organize the clouds for a dreary, all-day rainstorm?
Spike exhaled a curious sigh. He certainly wouldn't have objected to a change of pace if he could control clouds. Then he'd actually have something to do.
He hung in the space of the front door, watching with little interest the light drizzle needling his scales. The sun, although blotted out, still stood over the city to say that he wasn't breaking curfew, allowing him this moment alone. Anything to get rid of this stupid cabin fever, and to do more than reread his crossbow manual, waiting for a request that might never come.
He'd stayed behind with Twilight to care for her, same as she cared for him, but being treated with little more than a cold shoulder and being trapped in a city on top of a mountain had eaten his resolve. But how could he leave? What if he liked being with Applejack over Twilight? Then he'd leave her all alone, for good!
So . . . he was gonna wait. He just had to be patient. Twilight would come back around. She always did. Always. She'd love him all over again, and things would be okay . . . wouldn't they?
"Was . . . was it something I did?" He looked to the golden spire of her study tower. She was so close, yet so distant from him. "Just let me do something to fix it, and I promise I will. So, it'd be great if you'd just tell me . . ."
He sighed again, attention back onto the clouds as he stepped out, feeling the harsh wind curve into him. He didn't care where he went, only that it was away. Away from the empty stares and the dismissals. Away from feeling like, despite her promise, he was being sent away. Worse, being slowly disconnected from her. Would he even care about her anymore by the time she had finished her project?
"The rain falls at my feet,
And I see tears run across empty streets . . ."
He'd entered the small, local park, the canopy of trees shielding him from the rain. Just when he was about to sit down however, he heard another voice, right above him.
"I stare on at the clouds,
Passing by like lovesick crowds. . ."
Spike moved on, deciding to let the stallion sing as he added his own voice quietly. No one would bother either anytime soon; the park was long since abandoned out of fear for what had happened just a week ago . . .
"I think of her, who we were . . .
But when I think of her, then I remember . . ."
"Remember . . ."
"In her eyes, I could see
Who I can choose to be!"
Spike reached his hand out to an oak tree, his clawtips leaving faint marks on the cold bark.
"In her eyes, I saw a sister's love . . .
One strong as the Alicorns Above!"
He took his hand away, shivering as fresh memories of being yelled at and pushed away lashed out at him.
"But then things changed, a heart gone cold."
"And I don't know how to reach her soul . . .
By looking in her eyes, could I ever stand . . . in her glow?"
"By looking in her eyes, can I see beyond the sorrow in her heart?"
Lifting his head, he saw a faint silhouette move across branches, the expected groans quieter. He rushed after him, wondering what he was going through. Hopped onto a low branch and settled there.
"Will her eyes show love for me,
Or am I remiss?"
"But I'm not a fool to miss,
That love . . . in her eyes!"
He stood right up and squeezed his claws into fists, sight to the pouring sky.
"I know their every look,
Her eyes!"
"One glance was all it took,
Her eyes!"
"But most of all, the look that had set me free!"
"If I'm wise, I should walk away,
Yet again. . ."
Spike then knew why he was here. Because for all the times that Twilight had been there by his side, she did it out of love. It was why it was now his turn to support her back. Even if all he got were empty stares, because he knew they were false. He just knew!
"But truth is, I'm not smart,
I can't just ditch her now
I'll always stand with her . . ."
"After all," he whispered to himself, tracing his claws along the cracks of the bark as a soft smile broke through.
"Friendship's worth forgiving for . . ."
"Now I realize . . ."
"Everything worth living for,
It's there! In her eyes . . .!"
"Love is worth forgiving for!"
"Now I realize -"
"Now I realize -"
"Everything worth living for,
It's there! In her . . . eyes . . . !"
Spike laughed quietly, his breaths in quick heaves. He blinked away the moisture from his eyes, while mentally scolding himself for being sappy. But whoever the other guy was, he sounded much happier, too. Whatever he was going through, Spike knew he could get past it, same as him, if he just tried.
He slid off the branch, his decision made. He would wait for Twilight, no matter how long it took. Because he was her brother, and wasn't it exactly what family did - endure hardships for those they loved? And Spike loved his sister.
Family, friendship, love, it was all worth the wait and the effort to fight for. And wait and fight and endure he would.
For Twilight.