Twilight got off the bus on North Canterlot's main avenue, at twenty-one minutes past three in the afternoon on a Wednesday, January tenth. Not without instantly hating the heat wave with which she was recieved, after traveling with the A/C on.
Her destination was two and a half blocks from where she stood, and with seven extra minutes, Twilight was sure that at a calm pace she would have a couple left to spare. However, the small, imperious need to be extremely punctual required her to walk as quickly as possible. Both to the destination and to any minimal piece of shade existed. Not even with a summer dress and sandals, was it possible to escape from the high temperatures that the sidewalk steamed off, like small snakes willing to wrap everything in fire.
Twilight breathed in at three twenty-six. Two seconds before confirming that it was the right street and the correct address number. As announced by the small plaque on the house, the post at the corner of the street and the note in her little notebook in a calligraphy that, according to her, was becoming neater.
The house was a standard size for those surrounding the area. Not as small and narrow as those tiny duplexes, nor so excessively large to occupy a whole block quarter. With walls in meticulous white, wooden doors in bright varnish, a small front garden with well-maintained and colorful flowers, two floors and a garage. It may not be the standard housing of the average population, on the contrary, but given the context, Twilight couldn't say she was surprised.
The last time she stepped into that house, had been six months ago, leaving it with a mixture of feelings that she really didn't know how to describe. A whirlwind would be, in the most simplistic and cliché of cases, the best way to name them.
Breathing out again, Twilight wiped the sweat from her forehead and the nape of her neck with a tissue. She shook invisible dust particles from the skirt of her dress, made sure that the latter was in correct position on her shoulders; reaffirmed the clasp on that impromptu bun she had tied her hair into because of the unbearable heat, straightened her back and finally rung the doorbell of the entrance gate — also white in coordination with the general aesthetic.
At... Twenty-nine minutes past three. Perfect.
She wasn't counting the seconds, no, no. She had no reason to do so if she focused on having an idea of how many minutes passed in order to arrive on time.
Twilight didn't understand the exact reason for the need to look as presentable as possible. Or maybe, if she was honest with herself, she was so aware that it was her head thinking at two thousand kilometers per hour, forming theories and speculations, that wanting to have a notion of control over the stupidest things possible proved to be an attempt of distraction. The best of all, in fact. To her already worn misfortune by the things of life.
Speaking of punctuality, after one or two minutes of sudden self-absorption, a very familiar someone spied through the curtains of the window on the ground floor. And within the next few seconds, Twilight could hear clearly the keys operating on the front door.
It had been at least three or four months since she last saw Sparkle. They didn't tend to cross paths too much, even though they shared the same group of friends on this side of the mirror. Each had a life to take care of and, apparently, very different schedules. Not to mention that Twilight tried to visit whenever she could, but it wasn't necessarily often.
Sparkle was still as thin as always, however it now seemed more like a product of an accelerated metabolism rather than of her own will (though Twilight sure was at least one extra size for several reasons. Recent holidays included). Blue-jean shorts with a high cut, along with a gray T-shirt with short white lace sleeves were a positive contrast to the kind of clothes she had always seen her wear. Her loose hair that reached her chest also suited her well.
Sparkle received her with a much more calm and sincere smile than the one that she could have dedicated to her six —or ten, for that matter— months ago. Twilight answered with an enthusiastic one, before exchanging more or less formal greetings and starting a conversation about how detestable high temperatures were with its humid climates and the salvation that meant the great invention of the air conditioners.
Once inside, Twilight felt her shoulders relax a little. The girl in front of her looked different, she looked better, more radiant, more alive. With less noticeable dark circles and a naturally straight back. Like someone who had decided to remove a portion of the weight they were carrying.
Like Twilight when she realized that there were things that wouldn't happen again. That, even if the demands remained the same, the boundaries and consequences were different.
Everything was still in the same place she remembered from the first and last time she visited. Same furniture, same tidiness and general order that was always welcome to invade her visual field. Same giant library in the living room that revived the childhood curiosity Twilight forced herself to repress before she ended up diverting in that direction.
"You drink coffee?" Sparkle asked once they were settled in the kitchen. She had a measuring spoon in one hand and a jar of said ground beans in the other, like she knew what her response would be.
"Yes, thank you." Twilight could be engulfed in the endless flames of Tartarus' infernal heat, and even then coffee would be her first choice in the face of any sentence.
A minute or two passed in which neither spoke. Sparkle concentrated taking as accurate measures as possible to place them in the coffee maker, turning her back for a moment to Twilight. Who simply dedicated herself to observe what the other girl was doing and to enjoy a silence that, given by itself, wasn't uncomfortable at all.
Until she noticed the scars on the forearms of her human counterpart and felt her smile fade along with the barrier with which she had been able to stop speculations, anxieties, and fears.
They were small, from the last third of the forearm to the elbow. Thin, with small spaces between them, as if they had formed an entire line before. In a lighter color than her skin tone without shouting their presence, but still visible, still evident. And then Twilight realized her own hands were pulling down the skirt of her dress, trying to cover as much skin as possible with sudden self-consciousness.
Sparkle could look better, more alive, more like herself. That didn't necessarily mean that she was better, that she felt one hundred percent better. It had been just six months, for Twilight almost seven damn years had passed and there were still things she couldn't control.
"So, uh... How are you doing?" Twilight decided to cut the silence and start a conversation. Before the air got heavy or her head went to places where she definitely didn't want to be. "You decided to stay here, at the end?"
Sparkle nodded, taking two clean cups from the cupboard.
"The judge gave my custody to Celestia, actually. She preferred me to stay with the adult I went to than with another male relative." She rinsed them with a little dish soap and water, then dried them with a dishcloth each. For the contamination and/or reproduction of bacteria that were totally benign, but that still created a certain degree of paranoia that was better to get rid of. "And, in December, I managed to pass six out of the eleven subjects I failed, so I hope to do the same with the remaining five in February —You drink white coffee, right?"
It took three seconds and a blink for Twilight to understand that she had been asked a question.
"Oh! Uh... yeah. And without sugar, thanks."
Sparkle took more exact measurements, before applying almost-perfect portions of milk to each of the coffees and bringing them to the table.
"I babysit my niece whenever I can... I don’t know, the usual, I guess" she summarized, pausing to take a sip of her drink. The other girl tried to process everything she had heard to make some kind of comment. That was how conversations worked, right? "And you? How's your life, Princess?"
Twilight rolled her eyes at the unnecessary title. Sparkle knew perfectly well how much she hated it, judging from the small, well-concealed smile. It was a friendly way to bother her — now, at least — and to keep the conversation going before they got stuck on a subject that, evidently, she didn't really want to address too much.
"Returning to stability for the umpteenth time, I suppose." Something always, always happened that took her out of the place where she began to feel comfortable. So much so, that Twilight no longer knew if she was the problem entirely or just a very good magnet for that kind of thing. "We recently reached a year with Sunset, I was able to have a conversation with Velvet without it ending badly, and for now work isn’t so heavy, thankfully."
"Velvet? You call your mother by her name?" asked Sparkle, blinking with what seemed a genuine curiosity.
Twilight nodded. She was used to the fact that whenever that escaped her mouth around someone who didn't know her much, they ended up doing the typical out of place questions. In general, she argued that it was nothing more than a name. Shrugging to minimize the importance and indicate in a subtle way that it was nothing of their incumbency obviously included. Act that she repeated now, not wanting to inquire too much into the subject.
"She never took care of me as such. I don't know if she didn't know how, or just didn't want to." With her counterpart, it was impossible to lie to one another. They could try it, they could give it to understand that it was a topic to be evaded or a subject to be discussed later, but they always found that something that gave them away, something that only they could identify as mere façade. There was no point in lying to the only person who could understand what she meant by that, anyway. "I guess both."
Instead of frowning at the commentary overloaded with cynicism, Sparkle stared at her own ceramic mug with generic flowers, seemingly immersed in her own reflections. Twilight took a conscious gulp of her coffee for the first time, trying to appease the growing anxiety.
"I should start implementing it..." murmured the girl in front of her about fifteen seconds later, turning her gaze again to another non-existent point on the table.
It took Twilight another two seconds to understand what she was talking about. When she was able to connect the pieces in relation to what she had heard less than five minutes ago but that, nevertheless, she was only now able to understand.
"They... They took your custody away from your mother?" she asked slowly. Maybe it was a little late for that, though it wasn't like Sparkle gave her a chance to ask before.
The aforementioned nodded with some shyness. Did Twilight sound too disbelieving despite her efforts to use the right tone? Though she supposed that it shouldn't be an easy subject. As far as she knew, physical and/or legal custody could be lost or passed on to one of the parents in a divorce or similar cases. It wasn't irreversible as the patria potestad, that one required a much longer and complex trial, but for it to be taken away from her mother, there had to be a very good reason. One that Twilight wasn't sure she wanted to hear.
"She went to pick me up at school once, saying she wanted us to talk. I didn't think it was too stupid, that she wanted to listen to me for the first time in her life." Sparkle told it in a low and decisive tone, like a bad anecdote, a disappointing anecdote. Where expectations proved too high, or useless, or illusory. It was palpable in the air, noticeable in the brightness of her eyes that, once again, set in the varnish of the table; visible in the restrained tension of the shoulders. "The point is, when we got to the house, turns out my… turns out that my dad was also there. I have a restraining order against him."
Naturally, that last sentence was followed by a horrible silence.
Twilight felt a familiar and uncomfortable tingling in her spine. One which she had never lost the habit, one that stole her body heat to the point that she had to wrap her hands around the cup in an attempt to stop their tremor.
Sparkle seemed to notice the reaction she was producing and immediately clarified that nothing had happened to her, that she tried all the time to keep as much distance as possible.
"They just wanted to chat and reach an agreement. To be honest, I don't know and I don't care," she added, with a heavy sigh. "There are more legal ways."
Twilight could only nod, going along. There was something that didn't add up, that told her Sparkle wasn't being completely honest, or that at least she was keeping important details. However, she decided not to dig deeper and drown the bitter taste of bad sensations in caffeine.
After all, she couldn't say she was surprised, no matter how much she hated to admit it. Her mother would have done the same, or worse.
"Wanna eat something? Sorry I didn't offer you before," asked her counterpart suddenly, standing up. To cut the tension and fictional silence, supposed Twilight. "There's apple cake."
"You know I can't refuse." She accepted, with the best casual attitude she could achieve. It wasn't ideal if Twilight took into account all the sweet things she was eating lately. But better kill anxiety with a good dose of sugar than drown in it.
Two minutes later, they found themselves opposite to each other. Each with a medium-sized plate of pale beige ceramic, a fork that was certainly not silver but looked like it, and a slice of homemade apple cake. Twilight couldn't help but notice that Sparkle's slice was barely a third of the standard size, unlike the one given to her. However, she refrained from making any comments. It wasn't her place, she couldn't meddle in her life more than she had already. Besides, she was ingesting something else besides black coffee, right? That was an improvement, at least.
"It's really good." Twilight decided to swallow the worry before it resurfaced completely and changed the subject. "Did you bake it?"
"If peeling and cutting the apples counts, then yes." Sparkle commented with a small smile. "Celestia made it, she loves to cook sweet things. I'm more of a salt person."
"You get along with her, don't you?"
"She's like..." Sparkle began to make circles in the air with her fork, searching for the words that suited her idea best. "Like that aunt that you wish would be your mother or something like that."
"I know the feeling." Twilight felt the corners of her own lips rise. Princess Celestia was the one who had always been there for her. Be it offering her a cup of tea at the end of their lessons when the frustration over some failed spell was too much, or when stress and fatigue fell like lead on her shoulders. Many other times, Twilight had also accompanied her at tea time just to chat, always returning home with something to reflect on. "It's good to have someone like that."
"I guess,” she commented, cutting her slice into equal parts. "At least I don't have to put up with lectures if I do something in a way she doesn’t like."
Well, there went the attempt for a more casual and positive conversation.
In her particular case, Twilight's parents hadn’t been strict. Of course, there were schedules and norms that had to be respected, tasks to fulfill and responsibilities to carry out on the daily basis of the — apparent — family normality. It was more of a structured organization, rather than strict. Her father used to be quite permissive, beyond the fact the everything had an implicit cost to pay and his authority came from it. Her mother was the opposite, sometimes she wouldn't give her the time of day and would send her over to her father or brother. Others, she was so over everything Twilight did to the point of annoyance. At least it was a sign that her mother cared, right?
And Shining, being ten years older, was always the balance between the two. The closest thing to a healthy parent figure. Several times he had made better decisions than any of their parents. Shining was the only one with whom she could say she got along with greatly and that she adored with her soul.
Twilight didn't realize that the conversation was over, each of them occupied with what they had in front of them. Until Sparkle decided to pick it up again.
"Speaking of parental figures and all that, can I... ask you something?" The aforementioned stopped short, her fork with a piece of dessert suspended in the air for a second. Twilight made a sound of affirmation before resuming her activity as calmly as possible. If Sparkle was asking for permission, it was likely to be something sensitive. "It's going to sound weird, but, how... did your father die? If it's too personal pretend I didn’t say anything, really."
There was a genuine curiosity in the tone, still trying to be as sensitive as the subject would allow. Twilight exhaled air through her nose before sipping coffee to lower the food and respond more clearly.
Her father’s death wasn't something she had trouble talking about. Not only had it been of public knowledge at the time, being a recognized figure in his field of work, but it had also happened a long time ago. And it was difficult to stay with any feelings, given the events.
"As an astronomer, he worked at the Canterlot Research Center studying the influence of celestial bodies on living beings. At that time he was in a joint investigation on how the moon cycles affected the poison mortality in a scorpion, that if I'm not mistaken, was becoming an epidemic in Saddle Arabia." Twilight remembered that, as a child, adults used to burn her ears off with compliments about how helpful and great his job was to society. She also remembered nodding her head or keeping quiet until they stopped talking. If he was so nice, who would believe her if she said the opposite? "I don't know how it happened, only that he came in contact with the poison and, uh, they found him in the lab, the next day."
At that point, Twilight used to walk back home alone, or waited for her brother if he ended his shift early at the royal guard. That day, she found it weird, seeing Shining waiting for her at the entrance instead. Thirty minutes and half a dozen donuts later, she received the news, still halfway to the house.
She never knew why, but that was the only time Twilight shed tears. She didn't remember crying at the funeral, the grief only belonging to those around her. Twilight had remained motionless, looking at her father's lifeless body as if at some point he was going to get up, like it was only a joke. Until her mother took her out of self-absorption to give her a white lily, when it was her turn to say goodbye and give him good wishes for a sure ascent. She placed the flower carefully in the coffin, hiding it so that it wouldn't be seen that it had been withered after a simple spell.
"Ah," Sparkle murmured after a moment of polite silence, still crushing her cake slice in equal parts over and over again. "Now I think I get it".
That last sentence left Twilight frowning in confusion, since in spite of the low and withdrawn tone she still managed to hear it.
“Get what?” She asked slowly, not understanding. The temporalities of the events? The spectrum of parallels? There was something in Sparkle's tone that she didn't like. As if she had just won a game where Twilight didn't know she was participating.
Definitely, that comment had been involuntary, unconscious, or whatever it was. Sparkle seemed to panic for a second until she realized what she had muttered aloud. It was then that she crossed her arms, her expression dropped, and the quiet atmosphere with which they had begun changed drastically.
"You know what I mean." They seemed to have gone back in time eight months ago. To the school library, to intense visual communication, to measured movements full of enormous meanings.
And as in early May of last year, Twilight met a defiant look on an expressionless face. One who warned her that fire ate the predetermined truths, that she would end up in ashes. Because if both didn't end up in the same state, then they would never be even.
She inhaled air through the nose in the most concealed way possible. So as not to show that exasperation was quite triumphant and rapid in the terms of traversing the skin were concerned. Twilight wasn't going to go through this again. No, no, no and no.
But if they were here to have an honest talk, there weren’t many alternatives left.
To the bonfire, then.
"No. I don’t have the slightest idea why you believe that having a pair of wings and a polished little crown resolves and absolves you all evil." It wasn’t like Twilight wanted to rub her own problems in her face. But Sparkle had this idea that everything was easier for her. As if she had been given to choose from a tray of silver what events she wanted in her life to happen. A little pepper to encourage the drama with a tragic background and then a few spoonfuls of salt to cover up all the fiery flavor. "Because my sleep disorders are still there, my anxiety problems are still there. Everything is still in the same damn place."
Twilight wished she could cover everything with huge and extensive saltpeter. Wished things had been so easy.
Wished Sparkle was easy to convince without the need for physical and concrete evidence.
"Your father died when you were barely ten, Twilight,” she reproached her. As if the answer was there in a poster, obvious and giant in front of her nose and she couldn’t see it because she just didn't feel like it. "Didn't we speak thousands of times of the amplitude in the parallel spectrum?"
Twilight frowned even more bewildered, at the tone of her counterpart. How did that automatically translate into something positive? What kind of train of thought was she following to reach all these absurd conclusions?
"And what do you think? That I went to talk to you because I spied you through the window? That I stole your diary? Do you have any idea how hard it was for me?" Twilight had actually taken the trouble to visit several centers of the list and investigate every single site one by one, making sure that both the attention and the information were useful. It wasn't easy to sit down and talk about hypothetical cases and personal experiences with the guidance team.
Nor it was the best thing to do when she had almost been forced to cross the portal to clear her mind from the very same topic. It seemed like a pattern, getting into situations that made her feel horrible, and that was the reason she wasn't putting an end to this discussion.
Sparkle leaned against the chair. Her back as straight and tense as someone who feels the imminent need to get defensive and stand to the imaginary height of their supposed antagonist.
Twilight knew how this was going to end. She didn't want to hear it.
"Well, it seems that it didn't take you anything to throw me under the bus in order to play heroine in front of your girlfriend." And it didn't take anything for Sparkle to reproach things that had happened eight months ago. Even though she had all the right to do so and this was the first time in months they sat down to talk. It was absurd. So absurd that now along with the anxious exasperation on the skin, the guilt was dragged up to her chest and the base of her throat.
"I'm sorry! Ok? I had a horrible argument with Sunset because of that." They spent more than a week without talking to each other. It hadn’t been the main reason, but a powerful trigger. "I was nervous and I didn’t take into account a lot of stuff, I admit it."
She took a heavy gulp from her coffee, with a nervousness so rough that it even hurt to swallow it. But she was losing control of her hands over everything else, either gesticulating too much or stretching the damn skirt of the dress that now didn't cover enough skin.
Sparkle gave an exaggerated and incredulous snort, without taking it seriously in the least.
Control, Twilight, control. She's doing it on purpose.
"Yeah, sure. Nervous about what? That she wouldn't take your acting seriously?"
Twilight rose with a thud of her palms that lifted the forks a millimeter off the table.
Here she drew the damn line.
Sparkle held her gaze in all her adolescent and poisonous rebellion, inviting her to give an answer. Inviting her to the damn fire more horrible than the asphalt snakes on the outside and more potent than the endless flames of Tartarus' infernal heat.
Talking to her at such times was like talking to a young reflection. One of eleven or twelve years old, when she answered back to her mother to the maximum provocation to make her show she cared enough to impart a limit, however extreme it might be.
It was a double-edged sword, you got that false sensation of having the advantage and the control of the conversation at the cost of destroying your nonexistent self-esteem. Which can always break a little more, right? Who cares?
"...Why you, out of everyone, don't believe me?"
When you live the hell on earth and somehow escape from it, the first tendency is to avoid anything that is similar even in the structural skeleton of its form.
Sparkle was challenging her to show all the possible and concrete proof that, indeed, she had gone through all that she claimed and had survived to tell.
"Why is it so hard for you to believe that I also had it bad?" Twilight didn't bother to control the rebellious tear that would escape her eyes. She only stared at her counterpart, who got up too.
"What do you mean why? You got to have it all so good." Sparkle spoke, nailing without any real force the tip of the fork in her counterparts chest after each word pronounced. Twilight didn't flinch, motionless without understanding the words that reached her ears, nor her explosive tone in envy. "Your father is a nice memory, your whole family loves you, you’re popular even in my school. God! You are a princess who lives alone in a crystal castle. How could you possibly know how I feel?"
Only the noise of the fork crashing into some ceramics on the floor nearby made her blink and look at her in bewilderment. Much bewilderment.
Did Sparkle really think that she had everything served on a silver platter and still complained about it? Because her already worn misfortune by the things of the life, didn't fit in with the ideal she had of her?
What?
"And what about me? Why do I have the worst?" she reproached her, pointing to herself with a break and a despair in the voice that was reaffirmed in the tremor of her hands, in her expression, in that spark of helplessness that moved quickly between white corneas and violet irises. "Why do I just have to suck it up? Why do I have to settle for the leftovers? It's not fair!"
Her mug of white ceramic with generic flowers painted in pink and red, broke into about ten or thirty-eight irregular pieces as it flew from the table and fell squarely on the floor. The few cubic centimeters of coffee remaining were scattered around.
And Sparkle collapsed. She defragmented like sand on the table, on her arms, on her scars.
"It's not fair," she murmured in the suffocation of her own body, between what seemed like a type of crying that only served to accumulate more anguish in the center of the chest.
Sparkle could look better, more alive, more like herself. That didn't necessarily mean that she was better, that she felt one hundred percent better. It had been just six months. It was the first approximation to a normality that ended up being strange after years of having to live under a different logic, toxic and even self-destructive. For Twilight more than almost seven damn years had passed and there were still emotions that would always be there omnipresent. There were always things that would escape her control.
Like now, where the only possible reaction was to move the plate with the cake turned into crumbs like its initial owner. Next to her own half-finished slice that now churned her stomach by just looking at it, for the fear that it also ended up in shards and one of them would get hurt.
For some reason, Twilight legs trembled when she tried to move them. She still forced herself to walk around the table and occupy the seat next to Sparkle. For a moment it occurred to her to put a hand at the beginning of her back or perhaps an attempt at a comforting embrace, but it was quite likely that she would also send her flying with an answer of the same nature as the others.
Twilight then just fell silent, as if she had just been told a relative died and it was her responsibility to take care of comforting those around her. She must feel bad, too. And Twilight felt bad, she felt like the author of the crime, as if everything had been her fault.
“I think it happened a year before entering what you here call elementary school”, was the first thing she managed to say. She wasn't responsible for what Sparkle believed or stopped believing about her. However, perhaps by showing her that she was mistaking her for an enemy, by showing Sparkle that she was in fact as burned as intended, Twilight could mitigate some of her hatred. Or calm her down, at least. “I don’t remember what I read about storms, but I know there was one that night so I asked my dad to stay with me because I was scared”.
Twilight was sure she should be around five or six years old, since she was the only one in her class who could read, write several words and even levitate small objects or perform spells considered difficult for her age. And because she practiced for the entrance exam for Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. Her desire to learn added to the apparent natural talent that she had with magic and gave her an advantage, but there was no guaranteed vacancy without practice.
"I remember he put a spell that made it look like little stars fell from the ceiling. I was so excited that I asked him to do it like ten more times. Later I learned he only did it to cover the one that blocked the sound..." Twilight felt herself get wrapped up in the uncomfortable tingling that provided electric touches all over her body and made her hair stand on end. So familiar, so close, so common, that her stomach churned just thinking about it. The nausea was present just thinking about it. "I s-suppose it was by direct association, but after that night I know I hated golden stars and storms made me panic."
There were times where Twilight would sneak around before sleeping in her bed. It could be under the latter, a closet, the sofa, or even when she got her first telescope, she stayed on the roof. It had a flat and easily accessible part, which her father himself taught her as the more feasible and clear to observe the sky from the house. She always slipped away with a blanket, a pillow, and her constellation book. She watched the stars until the tiredness forced her to make into a ball and sleep, waking up with the first rays of the sun to stealthily return to her room and pretend she had never moved in the first place.
"And, uh, a bit more than… two years ago I told my family." Twilight wasn't sure if she still lived in Canterlot at that time, why the three of them had met for lunch, or how she had reached the point where shouting seemed a good idea. "Mom slapped me in the face and told me things I’d rather not repeat. Shining wasn’t like that, luckily, but it still wasn’t a nice situation."
Her mother was the type of always having a different idea of the past, one much more positive and denial of reality. To her, Twilight had the perfect childhood, as if the school citations she had for getting into fights with all the boys of her classes or for odd behaviors had never existed. And since she was a great daughter, she tried to overlook all of these illusions most of the time. Until her patience ran out and Twilight ended up remaining her that wearing a smile in a family photo didn't mean being one hundred percent happy. When things can’t be avoided, you try to endure them in the best possible way, you keep going, you ignore them, they are hidden during the day until they have to go out again at night.
The last argument she had with Velvet had its roots in that very same thing. Twilight had gone to her childhood home in Canterlot to help her mother with a late spring cleaning. The idea was to spend some time together, clear as much as possible the house and settle the idea of moving to a more comfortable place for a single person.
She ended up with totally opposite results when she was forced to explain why she didn't want to continue seeing family albums, if all she was going to hear was how happy she looked in a photo with her father all that kind of comments that seemed more justifications than anything else. Twilight had to bring to the surface many sensations, many feelings so that the answer was that she couldn't let mistakes go.
“After a while, she apologized for acting that way. Though she still believes I’m being resentful and that “I shouldn’t make a storm out of a glass of water”.
The only good thing that had resulted from all that experience, was this. Maybe she wouldn't have deigned to think about her counterpart, maybe she wouldn't have gone to investigate and maybe they wouldn't be sitting here, having an honest conversation six months after absolutely nothing. At least, the dancing chill, the growing anxieties, the discomfort, and the bad feelings had somehow served to help someone else. That was what mattered the most.
Sparkle lifted her head from her self-imposed darkness, swollen eyes and wet cheeks with anguish that she didn't bother to wipe with her forearms as it would prove to be in vain.
"Five years?" she whispered under her breath, watching her suspiciously from top to bottom for a moment. Searching desperately for something, anything, that proved her right. "Until he died?"
Twilight held Sparkle’s gaze with all the anguish blossoming in her chest and memories walking through her arms. It was one of frightful familiarity. One that challenged her until giving up when it didn't find the slightest fictitious evidence it was looking for, and whose exaggerated luminosity became blurred between reddened corneas and violet irises. One where the horror of perfect understanding became as present as the twinkling of impotence. Where she saw herself reflected and enveloped between gleams of anguish, between that glimmer of empathy. Between the disgusted resplendence of the own experience.
Twilight nodded slowly, almost not finding her voice.
"Until the day before."
Sparkle stretched out an arm, with annoying need more than with real desire, to the only coffee mug left on the table. That for sure would be cold and lost its appeal as a drink. She anyway gave it a heavy and audible drink, as if trying to lower something more than simple nausea or loosen a twisted stomach. And she stood still thinking, looking at a particular nothing where apparently all her emotions and thoughts were passing.
She stood still thinking for twenty-eight damn counted seconds.
"I really thought you had more luck than me." Honesty was palpable, there in her voice, like one who admits defeat and also completely grieves about it. As if the explosion of envy also meant the burial of relief. "I guess in the end we're just as screwed up, aren’t we?"
She commented, with a kind of bitter laugh, a smile, and more wet cheeks. It made Twilight feel for the first time her own tears fall from the chin to the collarbones. It was strange, since with these sensations was that she alienated herself from her own body and any kind of touch felt far and distant, as if trying to perceive through a thick and invisible layer of numb skin.
Twilight stretched a trembling arm to the black marble bar of the kitchen, taking napkins perfectly folded in triangles. Held between halves of a wooden fish of colors so vibrant and paradoxically more alive than the people in the room.
"I'm not here to compete with you." She offered them to Sparkle. White and neat as a sign of truce and openness to negotiations as if were ethnic Han from the Equestrian North in their confrontation with the Southern region. The girl looked at her surprised for a moment, understanding the message, and accepted one with reflected trembling hands to blow her nose.
"I know," she muttered once that she seemed to recover her composure a little, with dry cheeks and a more regular breathing. "...I'm sorry I yelled at you like that."
That was the signal that Twilight needed to place, slowly, a hand on her counterpart's shoulder. It was strange, she felt like she was freezing, but the heat invading her touch seemed to regulate the temperature of at least part of her body again.
"It's okay, I know where it comes from." She shook her head slowly, dismissing unnecessary apologies. It wasn't as if she were a saint when it came to answering back. That was clearer than water, so accepting them when she had fallen into a game she knew too well, would be something hypocritical on her part. Or at least not very sincere. "You know that I also have a… strong personality. And, uh, better to do catharsis than to keep pushing it down."
A hand rested upon her own, alien, hot and sure in the small squeeze that gave hers with, she supposed, a certain level of appreciation.
And suddenly that fire spread to her whole body when she received a hug. It was comfortable in comparison to the shiver that gloated winning to the logical sense and the total and rational control. One that she welcomed with one hand at the base of Sparkle's back and another in the silky smooth hair that Twilight began to caress in the way she knew was effectively reassuring. One that gave her warmth, like those hugs that are given with such affection that they don’t want to be undone.
"Thank you." She felt, somewhere close to her ears. "For everything."
And after what seemed like an hour, Tartarus’ infinite heat and the snakes made of flame that went from the inside to the outside, Twilight felt the corners of her lips rise and her eyes moistened again.
"I’ll do it again a hundred times."