That night Sable, Starlight, and I all spent in the library searching my books for spells which might be used to track down Despair. Even far into the night, we came up empty. My mind wasn’t on the task; I kept finding myself thinking about Sable and what Luna had told me.
“I think I found something.” Starlight spoke up, drawing our attention. She put her book on the table, atop an unruly pile of others, and pointed to the open page. “This spell lets you know the location of a marked object.” I read over the magic and quickly spotted the flaw in Starlight’s plan.
“But we would have to mark him first; he would have to be right here. If we could do that we wouldn’t need the spell at all.” Starlight blinked and rubbed her eyes, rereading the spell again.
“Drats. I’m sorry, I read that wrong.”
“But maybe… Sable.” His ears perked up, and he looked down from the ladder he was standing on. “Do you think your messenger bird spell could find him?”
“I doubt it; I need the name of the target for it to work.”
“Let me give it a try anyway.” I quickly wrote a word onto an empty scroll and folded it into a bird shape before concentrating a moment. My magic aura engulfed the origami swan. If it worked, we could track the messenger right to Despair. “Find Despair, deliver this message.” My voice echoed inside itself, and the bird animated. It flew into the air and circled the room twice before landing on Sable’s horn to sit there like a big butterfly.
“Well, that didn’t work.” He shook his head, but only managed to get the messenger to flip over and hang down in front of his eyes. I couldn’t help but giggle, despite his frown. I snatched it from its perch and let Sable take it, allowing it to unfold and return to its inanimate state.
“I’m sorry Twilight. I really thought that would be more help.” Starlight yawned, blinking bleary eyes. “I’m useless like this; I’m dead tired. We can come back to it in the morning.” The thought of my own warm and soft bed was certainly appealing.
“You two go ahead.” Sable pulled down the next book from the shelf he was searching. If exhaustion bit at his heels he didn’t show it, although he was quite used to staying up later than most. “I’ll keep at this for a while longer.” Starlight needed no further encouragement and headed away without fanfare. I almost did the same but hesitated at the door. I closed my eyes, listening to the sound of the pages in Sable’s book turning. Then I looked back at him, alone in the library, and recalled my conversation with Luna.
“Can we talk?”
“Sure. What do you need?” He didn’t stop reading. I glanced around the room, at the stacks of tomes and shelves crowded with books, and found it suddenly claustrophobic.
“It’s a bit stuffy in here, how about we get some air?” Pages stopped turning, and he looked up, curious. The book snapped shut, and he jumped from the ladder, using his wings to glide down until he landed somewhat heavily in front of me. He frowned at his hard landing but then followed me to the castle’s balcony.
Despite the dim light, I could see a pair of guards patrolling down on the ground, some tents for the regiment had been set up not far away. They arrived not long before dusk to guard the castle. A light fog had begun to settle on Ponyville.
I held my head up to feel the wind blow, breathing deeply. The night air was cold, possibly colder than it should have been, or was it just my sense of dread playing tricks on me?
When I looked over at Sable, standing nearby at the railing with one eye locked on me, I didn’t know what to say. What could I say, what hadn’t I said before? All my conversations came back, time and again Fluttershy or I had told him he wasn’t alone anymore. Even if not in those exact words. With nothing to say, I could only stand there, just out of reach, as the silence grew thick between us.
“You said you wanted to talk?” Eventually, he broke the stillness. I still had no words for him; I could barely even bring myself to look at him. “If you have nothing to say, I should get back to work.” Maybe I was overthinking it; it wasn’t about words. I threw both arms around Sable and held him tight as he turned to leave. I could feel him try to jerk reflexively away, but I only held him tighter. “What’s this about?”
“Don’t give up.” I had to whisper it in his ear.
“I just said I was going to keep looking, don’t make me repeat myself.”
“It’s not about the spells. You know what I mean.” In my arms I felt him tense, I wouldn’t have been able to see it happen, his black coat would have hidden it from me.
“I’m still searching for my mark. You know that.” He was dodging the topic again.
“It’s not even about your mark. It’s about you.” It was subtle, but I could feel him start to shake. He took a deep breath, holding it in while the shaking stopped.
“I don’t know what you are talking about.” Now I wrapped my wings around him too, the only way he could pull away now would have been teleportation.
“That’s a lie, and you know it.” He started to quake again. For perhaps the first time since I went to see him after we discovered his secret, I began to feel as though his mask was cracking. “Luna told me she’s been visiting you in your nightmares.”
“So that's why she seemed so familiar…”
“Don’t change the subject.” Weakly he tried to laugh. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“…I don’t know.” I squeezed just a little more. “That’s the truth. I don’t.” He dropped his haunches to the floor, no longer even trying to pull away. “What would I have said? Oh gee, thanks for trying, but I only feel worse?” He paused. “Can you let me go now?”
“Not if you run.”
“I won’t. There’s no point. Not anymore.” Slowly, hesitantly, I let him out of my wings and arms. He did move away, but only to take a seat at the railing, putting his front hooves on the banister and looking up into the star-filled sky. I sat down beside him, well within arm’s reach. “No more secrets.”
“I thought you were getting better. When you came back from your family, you seemed so much stronger.”
“At first, so did I. The only good part of being at the bottom of a pit is that you can only go up from there.” He crossed his arms and let his head rest on them. “I don’t know if I can really explain it.” He paused, I could see him trying to find the right words. “When I look at them, and you and Fluttershy, I see what I did, what I can do, what I could do again.”
“But you won’t.”
“But I know I could.” He turned his eyes to face me. “What would you do at your worst moment?” His voice was quiet, thoughtful. “When all your hopes and dreams died around you, and there was nothing you could do to save them?”
“I… don’t know.”
“I do.” He nodded sadly. “I’ve been there. At that moment where I gave up, when I felt there was nothing left to lose.” He scowled, disgusted. “I violated them; I violated myself. I could do it again.”
“You’ve been there again, twice.”
“I know.” He nodded again. “My actions when you dispelled the curse at Pinewood. Before that, my attempt at the map. I’ve seen what I would be willing to do when pushed far beyond the limits of my sanity.” He looked away from her. “I almost… I almost killed you.”
“But you didn’t. You came back.”
“You could have saved yourself.” He paused again, glancing my way out of the corner of his eyes. “You should have saved yourself.”
“I was saving you.”
“By nearly letting me kill you?”
“I knew you wouldn’t let me get hurt.”
“Taking a terrible risk in the process.”
“It was no risk at all, I know you.” This was starting to go in circles, time for a new tact. “We all have demons in our past. All of us, Starlight and Princess Luna most of all. We overcame them, so can you.” He had no immediate answer. It was several long quiet moments before he spoke again.
“You say you’ve all faced demons and overcome them?” He opened one wing, black glass and stars glittering, and smashed it against the railing. Tiny shards of glass flew away from him as the spell broke, dissolving in little flashes. “I faced mine, and shattered like that wing.” My heart sank, what I said was supposed to be inspiring. “So I’m weaker than even I thought.”
“You are not weak. You get up, every day, and face a world you aren’t comfortable in even knowing how hard it will be. You hold yourself steady when fear tries to break you, even when you could run. You consider the worst that could happen, and then resolve to prevent that outcome.” I draped one wing around him. “These are virtues and strengths. Not vices and weaknesses. Fluttershy told you as much that night in the hive; she could see these qualities in you too.”
“Then why?” He grasped at his heart, shutting his eyes as if in pain. “Why does it hurt to look at you, to see Fluttershy’s face in my mind?”
“Because you know who you are, you don’t want to hurt us, and you hope to be a better pony because of it.”
“Hope… is that what it is? Hope terrifies me.” With nothing else to say, he leaned forward until his horn rested on the railing. Tears dripped from his eyes onto the stone tiles. It took me a long time to find anything to say to that.
“Hope is a powerful feeling, and it’s true that power can be frightening.” He didn’t respond, didn’t even open his eyes. “Sable, look at me.” He turned away. “look at me.” My command had more force behind it this time, when he refused to respond again, I took his head by force and made him meet my gaze. “Hope is only at its most powerful when things are the bleakest. Take that hope, that power, and hold onto it. Grasp it with everything you have, and don’t let go. You lost everything, not only once, not just twice, but nearly three times and you still press on! Even when it’s all you have, you still have hope.”
He broke, collapsing against me, and for the first time he actually reached out to return an embrace. I let him cry, not sobbing aloud as he did for his parents, but quietly weeping until he nearly exhausted himself. Eventually, he drained his strength, and I had to carry him back to his bed. I covered him with the quilt his mother gave him and shut the door behind me to let him rest in peace, praying to Luna for his dreams to be quiet.