Twilight had messed up really bad.
There was that feeling you get as a child of being so tired, so tired that you start crying and begging to go home. Not even begging anyone in particular, even when you were completely alone.
It was worse when you got that feeling all grown up, staring at your own ceiling.
What Twilight wanted was to just take a break from her own life for a little while. Not take a holiday, but to be an entirely different person for a little bit. No memories. No guilt. No shame or self-loathing or that feeling of frostburn in her guts.
She didn’t want to be alive anymore. The idea of living the rest of her life with the memories of what she’d already done, and almost did, were an impossible weight. She didn’t want to kill herself though. That was terrifying. While the idea of living with her memories was unbearable, the thought of the void, of not even being able to realize what you once were? That was incomprehensible.
Every time she came close to comprehending just how final and total death would be, something pulled her back. Like an elastic band wrapped around the edge of her brain, trying to hold the thought was just a constant pressure and then snapped away again. But every time she got close, it felt like looking between the loose boards of a rope bridge.
She was too tired to stay alive, but too much of a coward to end it.
Besides. She couldn’t do that to Pinkie.
That was hard, actually. How could she possibly tell her any of this without it seeming like emotional blackmail? “By the way, you’re the reason it only takes me an hour of staring at the wall to get out of bed in the morning, and if I lost that then I’d probably do something horrible”. You can’t unring a bell, and you can’t take that idea back out of someone’s head.
Worse was the selfish reason. No matter how much Pinkie would assure her it wasn’t the case, Twilight would always have that lingering, self-loathing doubt that she was only staying with her to keep her from doing something stupid. Emotional hostage.
But she’d just almost done something truly unforgivable. Had spent days planning it out, running the numbers past Moondancer, rationalizing it, justifying it every way she could... committing herself to it being a foregone conclusion, so she could deal with the self-hatred first, so actually doing it was just a formality.
Now she didn’t know what to do.
That was the honest truth of it. Pinkie said she wasn’t allowed to make any plan that didn’t get her a happy ending. But Twilight had no idea how to do that, because she didn’t know what she was doing before Nightmare Moon.
She could only do all this because she had nothing to lose. That was the honest truth of it. It wasn’t bravery or a sense of righteousness. It wasn’t because she was better or smarter than anyone else. It was always because she had nothing. Applejack, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, they hadn’t joined because they realized she was right. They joined because they had nothing to lose, now, too.
Nobody wants to change the world if they know their place in it.
Twilight had no idea how to plan for a future that had a place for her in it.
Pinkie had a problem, which was that Twilight had nearly committed an atrocity and she had to not panic to their new friends who had just shown up and were super suspicious of Twilight anyway. Which was a problem, because right now she was freaking out about how close her girlfriend (still new and tingly word) had come to committing atrocities.
She thought she handled it well in the moment, but it really was the kind of thing you needed to sit down and talk to a friend about. Except she couldn’t tell any of her friends. Or Twilight’s brother. Maybe Cadance would understand.
Maybe Spike, but she wasn’t really impressed with him right now, and he seemed to be sulking into an ice cream bucket anyway.
It wasn’t even the afternoon yet, as much as that meant anything it meant that it was still way too early to be dealing with all this.
Shining and Cadance were on the second floor balcony together, looking out over the Everfree. Shining had a big spear-axe thing, and he was all stiff joints, looking at the trees. Keeping watch like a proper soldier.
Gosh, he looked so cool.
Cadance was sitting in a chair next to him, some old stone gardenware thing, sipping a glass of apple juice and watching her husband watch things. There was an open book on her lap, but it didn’t look like she was reading it.
“Ah, sorry to interrupt...” Pinkie stage-whispered from the castle, “but could I borrow Cadance for a minute?”
“Ooh, yes. Can she borrow me?” Cadance asked, tugging at Shining’s waist and pouting up at him. It seemed to make Shining more hesitant to say ‘yes’ than anything else.
“What do you need her for?”
“I just need a friend right now, if that’s okay?”
Cadance started tugging on Shining twice as hard, and he sighed a long-suffering marital sigh. “I can’t say no to that, can I?”
“You could,” Cadance opined as she unfolded herself, leaving the book to keep her seat warm, “but it’d be curmudgeonly of you.”
Shining smiled, even as Cadance continued to sell her pout with wild abandon, “Curmudgeonly?”
“I’m very happy to see Twilight again.”
“It does seem like a word she’d like.”
Princess Cadance bounced into the castle with Pinkie, making sure to give a quick lean-hug as she passed. “What do you need, Pinkie?”
Pinkie looked around. Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy might be wandering around, and she didn’t want to say where ponies could hear. So where... oh. “Why don’t I show you a really cool secret first?”
“I do like sharing secrets.” Cadance agreed, “Alright, we can do that.”
There was a long row of candle holders welded into the stonework all down the corridors. What Pinkie had found while dusting (old castles got really dusty) is that some of them opened secret passageways and tunnels through the castle. Usually by swinging open bookcases or rotating walls or other really cool stuff.
She made sure only her and Cadance were there right then, and pulled the lever. Cadance ‘ooh’d appreciatively as the wall made a grinding noise, and a damp archway appeared next to them. With a twist of her wrist, candles flickered on down the passage, and Pinkie gestured for Cadance to follow her.
A few seconds after they entered the tunnel together, the wall ground closed behind them.
The alcove they found themselves in was barely bigger than both of them, but they weren’t pressed together or anything. It was just cozy, and the damp was from the fact that they were in the middle of the insulated stonework of an old building which meant the air was... humid in that way that smelled clean and mossy and natural. Like being behind a waterfall.
“What kind of friendship problem do you have, where you talk about it in a secret hiding place like this?”
Pinkie breathed deep. It was so relaxing in here. “Okay. So... you knew Twilight from before the end of the world, right?”
“I was her foalsitter, actually,” Cadance corrected. Pinkie knew that. But you needed to start where you knew to work up to what you didn’t. “She was my absolute favourite, when she was little. It wasn’t just because her brother was helping me to bed after...” Cadance sighed happily, “He actually just tucked me in with a warm glass of milk and thanked me for looking after her so well if I fell asleep on the job...”
“He sounds amazing. Does he have a younger sister you could introduce me to?” Pinkie asked hopefully.
Cadance blinked, then laughed. “I’m sorry, I was supposed to be talking about Twilight. What did you want to know?”
“What was she like, back then?”
Cadance looked around the room, making for absolute sure nobody could listen in on them in here. Pinkie had picked the spot well. “Well. She was a little... high strung.”
“Even before Nightmare Moon?”
“For as long as I remember. Even before she got her cutie mark. She was actually pretty bad at magic before she saw Celestia raise the sun, but then she decided she was going to be the best at it. It took her a week to start using levitation at a highschool level.”
“Is that hard? I don’t actually know.”
“Most unicorns I graduated highschool with weren’t doing levitation at a highschool level. She was six.”
“... oh.”
“She’s determined. She’s like a border collie, I think. When they’re in sheepdog mode, there’s nothing else in the whole world but the mission. Brilliant, loyal. But when it’s not the job, no attention span whatsoever. And if you let her get bored, she’ll rip up the furniture.”
“She is kind of like a puppy sometimes.”
“If I caught her with her hoof in the cookie jar, she’d pout at me and before I knew it I was helping her with it. She’d always share, too, which didn’t help. It’s hard to be responsible around her sometimes.”
“Tell me about it. But somebody has to be.”
“If you leave her on her own, she’ll be as irresponsible as she can get away with. She has a unique kind of silliness to her that’s only possible because of how serious and clever she is.” Cadance hugged Pinkie tight and squeezed just a little bit tighter. “I’m so glad she’s got another special pink pony to look after her now.”
“Do you think she was unhappy, before all this?”
Cadance’s grip on the hug went completely slack, then she squeezed again. “I think she was too busy to notice it, but yes. She was.”
“Like, really unhappy?”
“I think so.”
Pinkie broke the hug and went back to the secret door to check it would definitely be blocking sound. It looked like pretty thick stonework. “Do you know why?”
“She didn’t really have friends that she was friends with. She thought that happiness was something you earned, a destination with a finish line. I don’t think she ever figured out that if you weren’t happy doing it, you wouldn’t be happy having done it.”
“I think that’s sort of a really good way to put it. I think Twilight knows she wants to save the world, but I don’t think she actually knows what she wants to do after that. It’s kind of scaring me a little bit.”
“There’s a puzzle for you then,” Cadance challenged her, “Solve the one thing that Twilight Sparkle could never, in a million years, figure out on her own.”
“What’s that?”
Cadance’s horn set off a shower of sparks, silent fireworks. “Figure out what makes her happy. Then make her do it. Knowing Twilight-”
“She thinks being happy would just make her work less hard, and feel guilty about it?” Pinkie stumbled over herself trying to stop herself from cutting Cadance off, but also couldn’t help herself ‘cause she knew.
Cadance didn’t seem to mind. “Let me tell you a story. Back when I was babysitting her, we went out to the park and I was pushing her on the swing. She loved the swings, I used to think she was a pegasus born in the wrong body.”
“I guess you don’t think that anymore, huh?”
“No way. So I’m pushing her, and she just stops laughing all at once. I ask her what’s wrong and she says ‘I could be studying right now’. I said now was playtime, and we were having fun. And she was so serious, she looked at me with the most intense eyes. She said; ‘If I have fun, by the time I get home, and I’ll feel normal again. But if I study something, I’ll know it forever. And I only got so many hours in the day. So is playing on the swings worth not knowing something forever?’. I told her time she enjoyed wasting wasn’t time wasted, but she didn’t believe me.”
“So... what did she do?”
“She still liked the swings for a while, but she’d only swing on them if she also had a textbook with her. That way she could study and have fun at the same time. If you didn’t remind her, though, she’d just read and forget the swinging.”
Pinkie tapped the stone walls, for the same reason you click a pen. Think, think, think. So this wasn’t recent about Twilight, she’d been like this forever. That was frustrating ‘cause it meant that just beating Nightmare Moon wouldn’t fix it, but it made Pinkie feel the special selfish kind of good that comes from knowing something bad definitely wasn’t your fault. “Did you tell her that happiness and pleasure were two different things?”
Cadance tilted her head. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, when you do something that makes you feel really good when you start, but a few hours later you feel like you haven’t done anything? That’s just pleasure. Happiness is when you feel good about it even when you’re not doing it anymore. Except knowing things doesn’t actually make Twilight happy.”
“She’s proud of how smart she is. Knowing things gives her confidence.”
Pinkie nodded so hard she got dizzy. “But she doesn’t seem to know things for a purpose, right? So she’s only trying to know as much as possible. So that means whenever she knows she doesn’t know something, it’s going to feel like she hasn’t done enough yet.”
“She’s ridiculous. She’s already maybe the smartest pony who ever lived.”
“Yeah, but she doesn’t know that, because she’ll just point at a bunch of things and go ‘I can’t be smart if I don’t know that!’, right? So she’s doing a thing that makes her feel accomplished, but hasn’t got a destination she could ever get to. So it would be the same problem as having fun, except she never had fun.”
“Pinkie, are you... are you solving Twilight?”
Pinkie blinked. “Ah, maybe? Kinda? I’m trying.”
“Keep going, I want to see where this goes.”
“I was just thinking she needs an objective. Something she can be good at, but still causes her problems she can solve. So it still feels like she’s learning, but also that she’s already crossed the finish line? Like she’s exceeding at something instead of never good enough.”
“So... beating Nightmare Moon?”
“That’d work for a while. But then what? I think she thinks that after that, she’s ‘served her purpose’. I want to know how to keep her going after she’s saved the world.”
“Not if?”
“You think there’s a chance...?”
“I just think it’s great you don’t, either.” Cadance giggled. “Twilight Sparkle and Shining Armor are working together on the same problem. We’re on the winning side.”
“Shining seems so different to Twilight. It’s kind of hard to remember they’re brother and sister until he starts talking about comic books.”
“Really?” Cadance asked, walking further down the corridor and trailing her hoof along it, looking for... something? “You don’t see it?”
“He’s a big tough soldier. She’s an itty bitty bookworm.”
Cadance stopped at a part of the wall and tapped. It sounded hollower. Pressed her ear to it. “They’re both brilliant. They’re both so focused on getting whatever they want. They put everyone else before themselves, though they’d both disagree. They’re both good ponies, with unflinching morals. They’re both leaders... but I don’t think Twilight actually realizes that.... and...” Cadance stopped, then tapped on the wall.
“And?”
“It’s stupid,” Cadance said, tongue poked all the way out of her mouth, eyes scrunched shut, ear pressed to the stone, “don’t worry about it.”
“No, you were totally going to say something else. And everything else you said was smart.”
“I was going to say, they’d rather die than fail. And I don’t think anything in Equestria could kill them if they didn’t want it to.”
“Except themselves?”
Cadance pressed a brick, and it slid away to reveal... a rope and pulley? Cadance tugged it with her magic and the old wheels squeaked away. It came up with a blue ceramic jar that smelled like fresh baked cookies. Cadance knocked the lid off, and it was filled with cookies.
“How did you...?”
Cadance grabbed two cookies out for each of them, then wheeled the jar back down. “I knew my aunt Celestia pretty well, and this is her old castle, directly over the kitchen... Don’t tell Applejack.”
Pinkie munched her cookie. Cadance was really cool.
“Thanks for letting me know about this... now I know how to keep sneaking these. Aunty, wherever you are right now, you’re a genius.”
Pinkie stepped out on the other side of the passage, behind a bookcase, after Cadance went back the way they came. There was a painting with the eyeholes cut out of it so you could make sure nobody was watching when you peeked through, which was super useful.
Then she ducked out and went looking for... anybody, actually. Cadance had been super helpful to talk to about Twilight, but asking Pinkie to figure out how to be happy was like asking a fish what it was like to be wet all the time. Maybe finding someone who could be happy in spite of themselves...?
Fluttershy!
How do you find Fluttershy in a castle at night?
Go to where the most candles were. Listen for humming.
Pinkie ran about looking and listening for that. What would Fluttershy be doing...?
Smell for dust or sweeping. There!
Pinkie flew down the main stairs, nose snuffling the air. The smell of dust was strongest there. The front door was open! Must be outside. Zoom, out and-
“Fluttershy!”
“Oh,” Fluttershy said, spitting out the ancient wicker rug whacker she had been holding, “Hi Pinkie.”
“Fluttershy, if you leave the front door open all sorts of things might come in.”
“I asked them not to, so they won’t.”
“You asked them not to?”
“Well...” Fluttershy tipped her head toward a... what was the name of those big silver serving platters that fancy restaurants put over dishes? Cloche? She’d flipped one of those upside down and filled it with cream. Big Leonard-the-lion sized tongue stains trailed the rims, “I might have had help.”
“You’re spoiling him! He’s going to be impossible to deal with now.”
“No, no, he still respects you a lot.” Fluttershy reassured her. “Apparently you have the mane of a leader. I just thought if you were already playing ‘hard’ I could play ‘soft’” She picked up her wicker whacker again, with its intricate braided loops in the clover shape. She was beating a long rug on a clothesline she’d pinned up.
Except the rug kept going and going and going and going. It must have been one of the long corridor ones. No wonder Pinkie could smell the dust from upstairs.
“I never thought to do this,” Pinkie admitted, “I just thought dusting stuff normally every now and again was a big enough job.”
“Ponies step on this, it kicks it all up, you breathe it in,” Fluttershy scolded, “and it could have made someone very, very sick. Dust is mostly dead skin, and fur. Dreadful.”
“I thought it was just something that happened...”
“Dead skin is just something that happens.” Fluttershy whacked the rug again, and Pinkie coughed. “Did you want to ask me something?”
“I- Do you know what Rainbow Dash is doing?”
“Shining Armor’s teaching her how to keep watch and do sentry training. Teaching Rainbow to sit still for a long time...” Fluttershy whacked her rug again, and Pinkie coughed again, “I’ll take dusting any day of the week. Er, excuse the expression... sorry...”
“It’s okay!”
“Is that what you wanted to ask me?”
Pinkie hesitated. “... no. I just don’t know how to ask what I want to ask without it sounding mean.”
“Well,” Fluttershy whapped the rug again, and Pinkie had finally learned to hold her breath first, “now I at least know you don’t mean to be mean. So you might as well.”
“How do you stop worrying about stuff?”
“Why,” Fluttershy put the whacker down again, “What are you worried about, Pinkie?”
“Right now, Twilight, but I don’t worry about things like you two do. I know if it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay, and if it’s not, you can try to fix it. I don’t get... how you or Twilight do.”
“Ah,” Fluttershy had a quiet smile, “you want help understanding how to talk to Twilight about her anxieties?”
“Yeah, I guess?”
“I’m not sure how much help I can be, I’m sorry. We have very different kinds of anxiety.”
Pinkie tugged her mane in frustration. “There are different kinds?!”
Fluttershy nodded. “Do you want me to talk to her?” That was a hard question. Yesterday, absolutely! Today... she was feeling weirdly defensive and possessive of Twilight. Fluttershy had that quiet smile again. “Would you like to be there when I talk to her?”
“Please?”
Fluttershy nodded once, neat and sharp, like they’d just signed a contract. “Now, I’m going to ask you if you could just try to listen without interrupting, no matter how painful that gets. Parts of this might be hard for you to hear, but it’s going to be important that you just listen and try to understand without judgement.”
“I can do that.” Pinkie hoped that wasn’t a lie. But she’d had a lot of practice over the last two years. “Is this going to be serious?”
“She’s probably going to talk about how much she hates herself, a lot. And a lot of really mean and nasty things about herself. And you’re not going to be allowed to interrupt.”
“I can still hug her lots, right? Is that okay?”
“I think that might be very helpful.” Fluttershy looked into the castle, up the stairs. Chewed the inside of her cheek. “Where is she now?”
“Ah.. I don’t know... Is that bad?”
Fluttershy was already halfway to the stairs, without a word.