Pinkie balanced the tray on her back as she tippy-toed through the castle. There wasn't really a need to sneak up on Twilight, but she didn't want to give her a chance to run away and keep avoiding the problem.
Twilight had obviously had a lot of practice at it, and had gotten quite good at it, so Pinkie would have to put her fair share of work into flanking her. She couldn't be surprised like in the dining room again.
It was hard to sneak with the giant pan balanced on her back, draped under the dramatic white cloth, but nothing worth doing was ever easy.
There were a few obvious places to check. The library, Twilight's bedchamber... okay, so there were exactly two obvious places to check. The problem was, they were the obvious places Pinkie would look, so if Twilight didn't want to be found right now, they were the first two places she wouldn't be.
The library was closest, so that was where Pinkie walked first. She looked around and... no, no purple book horses. She kind of expected that.
Okay, follow the grooves in the floor to the bedchamber then.
The first indication that she was right was Owlowiscious standing outside the bedroom door, looking concerned.
He looked at Pinkie and gave her a sad, slow shake of his head. Pinkie grimaced. Okay, so she wasn't doing super great, that was to be expected, but it was kind of hard to speed-bake, and besides... it was probably better Twilight wear herself out a little bit, she'd been holding this in for ages.
Pinkie knocked twice. Owlowiscious hugged her leg, then flew off towards the library.
The door handle glowed purple, and opened silently. Twilight lay face-down on her bed, pulling the pillow tight around her head. The glass dish on her bedside table had been shattered, but Pinkie didn't see any blood or bandages.
The bouquet of brilliant flowers had been put down carefully on the floor in their crystal. Twilight hadn't broken that.
She put the pan she was carrying on top of it, and sat on the bed next to Twilight, thinking about what to say.
But then she remembered she wasn't supposed to be thinking right now, and just said things anyway.
“I was going to surprise you with it, but I remembered the chocolate chip ice cream this time.”
Twilight's head didn't move, but her ear flicked up.
“And... well, I was going to bake you reassuring cookies, and tell you everything was going to be okay, but that didn't feel... good enough. Like I was taking you seriously, when I am. I mean, I can't take everything as seriously as you take it, but I don't think you should either.”
Twilight grumbled wordlessly into the pillow. Just frustrated embarrassed noises, like she was being parented at. Pinkie managed not to giggle, but it was hard. Was it wrong to think Twilight was cute like this? She was like a pouty teenager. The dark room lit only by a few purple candles certainly made all of this seem like Twilight going through her goth phase.
... Twilight absolutely owned black mascara and knee-high boots in highschool didn't she? That was kind of a great thought to think.
Oh, right. “So, I made you a giant ice cream sandwich.” She flipped off her dramatic white cloth, revealing an ice-cream cookie sandwich the size of a birthday cake. “Combining the best of both comfort ice cream because you're sad, and everything-is-going-to-be-okay cookies into a single, fantastic thing.”
Twilight lowered the pillow and rotated her head until she could see the cookie-sandwich on her bedside table. She just stared at it, not knowing what to do.
“Well? Are you going to sit up with me, so we can eat some of this bad boy?”
Twilight hesitated. To sit up to eat was to have to have a conversation and have a Relationship Talk. To wrap her pillow around her head again was to avoid the talk, but not get any cookie sandwich.
Pinkie had anticipated this sort of thing, which is why she had used her secret weapon; fresh vanilla in the cookies. The aroma could have raised the dead. But for now it'd be enough to raise a mopey unicorn up off her bed.
Twilight sat up, and cut the cookie sandwich neatly into eighths with her magic. “Did you bring plates?”
“Ah, shoot! I didn't think.”
Twilight held a wedge of it next to her face. “It's okay, I'll just do laundry after this.” She took a bite, and got almost as much around her mouth as in it. “Thanks.”
Pinkie waited for Twilight to eat a little more before she wrapped her around the ribs and squeezed her in a big hug from her side. “I'm not going anywhere, okay?”
Twilight slowly, slowly put her piece back down on the tray. It wobbled as she let go of it. A second later she was slumped in Pinkie's arms, almost sliding down off the bed if the hug hadn't been holding her up. She was crying; the kind that was one quivering breath in then three ragged, shuddering breaths out, repeat. “I was so scared.”
“Why?”
Twilight mashed her eyes against the top of Pinkie's right arm, sniffling. “Everyone else moved on. Everybody else left me behind.”
Twilight stopped to think about that. That was okay, if she needed to think, they had all the time in the world. Pinkie was just going to keep hugging her for as long as it took. If Twilight was falling apart, Pinkie would hold her together, same as always.
Twilight sniffed again. “I... I tried to prepare myself for the idea of you leaving. Going back to Ponyville and being with the Cakes again, and then not visiting anymore, because you'd move on too.”
Pinkie hugged her even harder. “And you call me silly?”
Twilight nodded, face still buried in Pinkie's arms. “It wasn't that I thought you were going to. It--” Twilight bit the inside of her cheek hard, Pinkie could feel it.
“You were gunna say?”
Twilight hesitated. “I realized I couldn't. I couldn't even handle the idea of you going. I got really scared. I didn't know why – I mean, you're important to me, but...”
“You're important to me too, okay, Twilight? I'm still here.” She squeezed the hug a little, but just a little. She didn't want to break something so fragile.
“Everyone else I could handle. When Rainbow Dash got into the Shadowbolts, it hurt, but it didn't stop me. When Applejack stopped visiting, and then Fluttershy... I could deal with it. I could keep working. I got angry, even, but,” Twilight swallowed a dry ball of empty nothing, “I still wanted to save Equestria.”
Pinkie whispered, “You thought you'd give up, without me?”
Twilight laughed the kind of laugh that ponies only did when they hated themselves and they were remembering specifics, “I knew I would. With Celestia gone... without you, what was worth saving anymore?”
Pinkie scolded her. “Twilight, you can't possibly mean that.”
“I do. Which is why I was so scared. And why I was so scared of saying anything. That's not a fair thing to do to you.” Twilight laughed again, the same laugh as before, and her voice took on a forced cheerfulness – the only happiness she was going to show right now was going to be sarcastic, “Hey, Pinkie! It turns out, I accidentally got a crush on you, and now if you leave me, I'm going to stop trying to save Equestria and probably even just give myself up to Nightmare Moon! I wouldn't worry about it too much, but it really is just your fault for being too wonderful to me.”
“My fault for being too wonderful to you, huh?” Pinkie nudged Twilight's head with her own. Twilight went from flooby to rock-solid tensed in her hug in a second flat.
“Did I just say that?”
“Yuh-huh. You did.”
“Well,” Twilight sighed, floobying again, but at some point she'd stopped crying as much, so that was an improvement, “It is.”
“I didn't even know you liked girls.” Pinkie giggled again.
“I didn't know I liked anything.” Twilight grumbled, “I just know I like Pinkies.”
“Wait, so... did you really not know it was a crush?”
“I just thought, 'Oh, I think about Pinkie Pie a lot, and I'm always happy when she's around, and I always get sad when she goes away, and apparently the idea of her leaving me is about the same as the end of the world to me. She must be a really good friend.'”
“... Twilight?”
“Yeah?”
“You're the smartest pony I know, but you're also the dumbest.”
“I knooooooow.” Twilight moaned. “And the only other person I've been able to talk to about this with is Owlowiscious.”
“I guessed that.” Pinkie connected a few more dots, another line formed, “I also guess you told him all the parts about liking me, but you didn't mention the whole... giving up on Equestria part of it, or those panicky bits?”
Twilight nodded. “Yeah.”
“Poor guy really thought you just weren't brave enough to ask me out, I think. I don't think he meant to upset you.”
“I hope he doesn't think I'm mad at him,” Twilight sniffled again. “Of course I told him all about how hard it was to keep avoiding the problem. I was thinking of ways to just get over it... but leave it to a bird to try to play wingman.”
Pinkie snorted. “Well, in his defense, I did pick him up in the middle of a really... silly mating season. I think he might have been really fed up with this kind of stuff by now.”
“Wait- did he think I was trying to ask you to mate with me?”
If Pinkie had thought about what she was saying right now, she wouldn't have said it. But she wasn't, so she did. “What, don't you want to 'mate' with me?” She asked with the most serious, curious tone she could manage.
Twilight went completely still. All her muscles locked up again, and she stopped breathing totally. Like she was trying to hide, but the hiding spot was inside herself somewhere.
“Twilight?”
Twilight didn't move. Pinkie could feel the heat of her nervous, terrified blush against her arms.
“Twilight, I was joking. You don't have to answer that. Twilight?”
Twilight levitated the last of the slice of cookie cake she'd cut herself and ate the rest of it, careful not to get any stickiness on Pinkie's arms as she did.
Pinkie thought about that for a moment, then a lightbulb moment. She gasped. “Oh my goodness you learned about crushes from a puberty book you have no idea how to deal with urges do you.”
Twilight kept her mouth full so she didn't have to answer that.
“Oh my goodness have you been having sexy thoughts about me?”
Twilight coughed and spluttered on her cookie, pulling herself out of the hug and pushing Pinkie away from her. “Pinkie! You aren't helping!”
“How have you been having sexy thoughts about me but not realize it was a crush???”
“I am not a clever pony.” Twilight fumed, “This isn't funny!”
“It is a little bit, though, isn't it?”
Twilight grabbed the pillow she'd been sobbing into just minutes earlier and screamed a battlecry as she whacked Pinkie's head with it, Pinkie laughing hysterically the whole time Twilight kept whumping and whumping her.
Twilight started laughing too. She didn't stop hitting Pinkie with the pillow, but she laughed.
As Pinkie rolled about on the floor, still laughing her butt off, Twilight still hitting her with the pillow for laughing so hard, Owlowiscious swooped in. There was a clatter of something hard hitting the cookie pan. Twilight picked it up with her magic.
When Pinkie got up off the floor, still getting the last of the giggles out, she saw what it was. An amethyst pendant, a soft lilaccy purple, with a silver band fixing the thin end of it to a silver chain necklace. Had it been found in a royal jewel box? Was this the sort of thing the Princesses had worn a thousand years ago?
“What is it?”
Twilight had to think about how to answer that, which was interesting for its own reasons. You don't have to think about something you just know. “It's something special I made for you. I'm not really a jeweler but--”
“You made it?”
Twilight was looking at the pendant, not Pinkie, but she smiled at that all the same. “I guess I did, yeah. It's not really a crystal crystal, either. It's magic.”
“It's very pretty is what it is.”
“Yes, well, it's pretty and magic. If you ever need help, break it. Just stepping on it should work perfectly. I... was really nervous about giving this to you, because I didn't want to seem... clingy? Is clingy the right word?”
Pinkie looked at the very proud owl staring curiously at the cookie. “Was Twilight worrying too much again?”
The owl nodded. Twilight harrumphed. “It was a perfectly sensible amount of worrying.”
Owlowiscious snorted. Before Twilight could snap at him he'd jumped from the table to her back, and was massaging her neck with his claws, a look of serene concentration on his face. Twilight gasped sharply, then melted into it, purring happily. It looked very funny from Pinkie's perspective on the floor.
“I'm still mad at you,” Twilight said to the owl, but it was obvious her heart wasn't in it.
“Thank you, bird bro, for being brave for Twilight 'cause she's nervous.” Pinkie got up off the floor and hugged Twilight again, just a short squeeze this time. “I love it. It's really nice, and it's going to make me feel a lot safer walking around the forest. Thank you.”
Twilight blushed, but didn't say anything. She was obviously trying really hard to think of something savvy to say, something debonair, but every time she got close Owlowiscious found another good spot on her neck and killed her ability to concentrate. He seemed to be doing this on purpose. Good bird. Twilight was much cuter when she was all flustered.
One last hug. “I'm going to go out tomorrow, okay, but then I'm going to come back. I'll always come back for you, okay?”
Twilight hugged her back, tight. Owlowiscious jumped off – he wasn't going to interfere with the moment. They just held each other for a bit, Pinkie to give every ounce of reassurance she could give, and Twilight to give back an equal and greater amount of gratefulness.
Either answer she could give Twilight right now, yes or no, would have hurt her so badly. But Twilight didn't need answers right now. She needed her best friend, and she needed to know she wasn't going to lose her.
Pinkie wasn't going to lose a friendship over Twilight liking her too much.
When the hug broke, just as Pinkie was about to leave, she took the flowers off the floor and put them back on the bedside table.
She didn't know why she did that. It just seemed like the right thing to do. Just to prove to Twilight that she wasn’t going to leave, and nothing really important had changed between them.
Pinkie lay staring up at the ceiling of her own bedroom.
There had been an orchestra pit in the old castle, still with instruments. One by one she'd dragged the antiques to her room as she figured out the best sounds to go with the different poems she liked. And sometimes it was just fun to play a polka on a violin that was worth more than most ponies would earn in a year.
Violins weren't even polka instruments! Absurdism at its finest!
With the candles lit, the room was bright and covered with the happy murals she'd painted, and the walls covered in leaning instruments made it feel festive and cheerful. It was how she usually saw it – she was the kind of pony who fell asleep the second their head hit the pillow.
Tonight was the first in a long time she got to experience her room in the darkness. Now it felt like all those strange and mysterious shapes in the darkness were an audience, waiting in anticipation. Watching her silently, listening. There was no paint, just wall.
“I know I told Twilight not to worry about it,” she explained to her audience, hoping that acknowledgingacknowleding them would appease them, and she could finally sleep, “But... the Good Witch of the Everfree, smartest pony I ever met, says I'm worth as much as all the rest of Equestria to her? That's really scary.”
Her heart hammed in her chest. The weight of the world on her shoulders, even though all she had to do was just be there for Twilight. Really, that just made tomorrow the same as a week ago but it was like, the difference between walking on a foot-wide path painted on the ground, and a foot-wide bridge a thousand feet up.
You do it without even thinking about it when it's ground-level. But a thousand feet up, and it's suddenly terrifying, even though you're doing exactly the same thing in every other way.
... and now she couldn't stop thinking of Twilight in a black corset and a short black skirt and knee-high boots, surrounded by her purple candles and magic books, being that more modern kind of witch.
Pinkie smiled at the thought. But it wasn't making her laugh anymore.
Owlowiscious hooted. Pinkie whipped her head around to see him perched on the rim of a tuba. “Were you here when I started talking, or did you come because you heard me talk?”
Owlowiscious hooted mysteriously. Pinkie sighed.
“Well, I guess you can help me out here. I think Twilight absolutely went through a goth phase in highschool. What do you think?”
The owl chuckled. Pinkie grinned.
“I know right?”
The owl made a questioning hoot. Pinkie's eyebrows furrowed and she fell back onto her pillow again, staring up at the ceiling.
“I don't know why I'm thinking about it. I guess I just think like... I don't know, I think it'd be a really cute look for her. I just like thinking about it I guess.”
Owlowiscious hooted thoughtfully.
“Oh, yeah, way too much makeup. Like, it'd be a really fantastic look for her in moderation, but Twilight doesn't really get moderation, so she'd overshoot it and just look a bit silly.”
Owlowiscious hooted dissentingly.
“Well, yeah, if she had some help it'd probably be fine. But I'm not telling her that.”
Owlowiscious hooted questioningly.
“Of course I'm not telling her that! She's already so awkward about me right now, I don't want to tell her I've been playing dress up with her in my head.”
Owlowiscious hooted thoughtfully.
“Well, I was just thinking it'd look silly, right, but then the more I thought about it the less silly it seemed, and I actually kind of like the idea of it now? A lot. Like, it suits her. It's witchy and rebellious!”
Owlowiscious hooted agreeingly.
“Well. I guess she's going to stop taking those pills now, too. So that's nice. I guess she was just trying to do everything she could to force herself to focus on her work, huh? Like, if she could focus hard enough on that, she would be able to ignore having a crush? You know, for the sake of Equestria and stuff.”
Owlowiscious hooted sadly.
“Yeah, I thought so. She cares so much, you know? And sometimes it feels like she's the only one that does.”
Owlowiscious didn't hoot at that one. Just waited for Pinkie to explain what she meant.
“I mean, like... everybody else seems to have given up already.” Pinkie sighed miserably. “I've been seeing our old friends, trying to get them to come visit but... they all seem to act like we're just making things worse for them! So I guess it's like... it's so hard to fight on the behalf of ponies who'd rather you didn't? Like, you know it's the right thing to do, but everybody else tells you you're wrong. And Twilight's the only pony I know who's strong enough to do it anyway.”
Owlowiscious hooted uncertainly.
“What do you mean?”
No hoots.
“Oh. Right. I guess that's the problem, isn't it? Twilight's not strong enough to do that.” Pinkie thought about that for a moment. “I guess that's what she meant when she realized she'd give up without me. Even if she didn't know that's what she actually meant. Twilight's really dramatic about things.”
Owlowiscious hooted in amusement.
“You have noticed? Good, it's not just me then.” Pinkie giggled. “Twilight was right, you're a really good listener.”
Owlowiscious hooted proudly. There was quiet as Pinkie thought some more. Owlowiscious hooted accusingly.
Pinkie pulled the bedsheets up over her head. “So what if I was thinking about playing dress-up with Twilight again! She doesn't even brush her hair most days, there's nowhere to go but up!”
Owlowiscious's laughter was the last thing Pinkie heard before drifting off to sleep. Apparently she just needed somebody to talk to, too.