//------------------------------// // I // Story: Dreams and Bonds // by bats //------------------------------// Twilight crashed halfway into the cloud, just in front of Rainbow Dash. Her lungs burned and she had a stitch in her side, but she gritted her teeth and tried to force a smile. She physically felt like she’d been run over by a stagecoach or two, but mentally, she felt like it was a fleet of stagecoaches, which was exactly what she was going for. She dragged her gaze up to Rainbow and forced out, “One more time?” Rainbow sat down on the cloud and crossed her hooves over her chest. “C’mon,” she tried to say, but the only sound that came out was a wheeze. She forced more air into her battered lungs. “I thought you liked racing me.” “Twilight …” Rainbow had a disapproving edge in her tone. “We’ve already done all this.” She forced herself to swallow, despite her mouth being dry, and her throat feeling like sandpaper. “It’s just a few races.” A stab shot up her ribs, and she couldn’t help pressing a hoof against the stitch. “I don’t exercise enough. This is good for me.” Rainbow’s glare drifted to a look of resignation. She sighed and rubbed her neck. “Okay, okay, I get it. We tried our best, but that doesn’t mean it had to work …” Twilight rubbed the sweat out of her eyes. “Huh?” “I mean, it’s obvious.” Rainbow gestured vaguely at Twilight. “You still don’t want to sleep in the castle.” “What? No …” “It’s cool, I’m not angry or anything. Like I said, I get it.” Rainbow looked down off the side of the cloud. “Us decorating stuff can’t, like, magically make everything feel like home right away.” Wincing, Twilight sat down and took several controlled, deep breaths, trying to force her heart rate back down to something normal. “Really, Rainbow, the castle is better now, I swear.” Rainbow turned back to Twilight and frowned. “So what’s going on?” She stood up and paced around Twilight, looking at her from all angles. “And don’t say nothing. I was pretty sure this was what was going on before we even started racing.” Twilight grimaced. The constant throbbing pulse in her ears had gone away, and she was pretty sure she wasn’t about to pass out, which normally would be a good sign, but meant she didn’t have an easy way out of the conversation. Twilight had picked Rainbow specifically, thinking she’d be the most likely not to notice what was going on. Either Rainbow was more perceptive than she thought, or she’d been really obvious. Probably both. “C’mon, Twi, you can tell me.” She sat down and crossed her heart with a hoof. “I promise not to laugh, if that’s what’s bugging you.” She sighed and sat down. “It isn’t. I just … haven’t been sleeping well.” She searched Rainbow’s face, hoping that answer would be enough. Rainbow raised her eyebrows slowly and cocked her head to the side. It wasn’t enough. Drat. “Um … can this … just stay between us?” Rainbow shrugged. “Yeah, sure, lips are sealed.” She mimed locking her mouth shut. Darn, she’d promised to keep it quiet, too. Twilight would probably have to tell her after that. She flattened her ears and tried to find some sort of escape in Rainbow’s face, but all she got back was concern. She withered under the look and felt her willpower failing. If nothing else, once Rainbow broke her promise not to laugh, she might have the excuse to stop talking about it. And if not, maybe getting it off her chest might help somehow. Probably not, but her options were running thin. Twilight took another breath and said, “I’ve been having nightmares.” She braced for a snicker. Rainbow didn’t snicker. Instead she frowned. “Like, super bad ones?” Twilight clenched her jaw and nodded. “The better phrase might be night terrors.” Knitting her brow, Rainbow cocked her head in the other direction. “Which are … super bad nightmares?” “The kind of nightmares where you wake up screaming or crying. Or both.” She looked away and rubbed her shoulder with a hoof. “They’re … really vivid.” “What happens in them?” Twilight looked back at Rainbow. Her lungs were burning again, but not from racing. She felt a wash of heat on her face as a wave of panic struck her. Just trying to not think about her dreams made her feel like throwing up. “Bad things.” She blinked and a tear escaped her eye. She swiped it away before it could roll down her muzzle. “I-I don’t know if I can talk about it.” Rainbow’s concern developed into a deep worry colored with compassion. She rubbed the back of her head and fidgeted. “You, uh, want to grab a coffee or something and try?” She gave Twilight a pained smile. “If you really don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to, but, I mean, I’ll listen. Maybe talking about it’ll help?” Twilight returned Rainbow’s smile as best she could, then stood up. “Okay. I’ll try.” She stood up and opened her wings, which screamed at her with jolts of pain. She bit the inside of her cheek and silently promised them that she was only going to glide. She dropped off the side of the cloud, and Rainbow followed her, drifting down in a slow arc back into Ponyville. “Where we going?” Rainbow asked. “Um.” Twilight frowned. Her eyes settled on the top of Sugarcube Corner for a moment, but she wasn’t really feeling like having a breakdown in public if she could help it. “Let’s just go to the castle. I’ve got drinks.” She angled her wings despite their protests and banked off in the direction of the glittering canopy of her home. They didn’t have enough height to make it the whole way without needing to flap, and Twilight touched down on the ground to walk the rest of the way. Rainbow landed with her and followed without any snark. Twilight grimaced. Rainbow must have been really worried about her. They went inside and made their way into the kitchen. Rainbow sat at the wood table set back from the counters in the nook of the room, which Twilight guessed would be called the servant’s hall, if the castle had any servants. Applejack had put it there when she redecorated the kitchen, and Twilight liked eating there more than she did in the dining hall. She put a kettle on to boil and turned to Rainbow. “What kind of coffee do you want?” She opened a cupboard. “I have instant, pour-over, Prench Press …” Rainbow shrugged. “What kind are you having?” “The kind that’s tea.” “Gross.” Rainbow chuckled. “Whatever kind, doesn’t matter.” Twilight nodded absently and set about making their drinks, letting her mind grow quiet through the busywork. She floated everything over to the table and sat down with her steeping tea. Rainbow filled her mug about a halfway with coffee, then drowned it in cream and sugar. Rainbow took a loud slurp and smacked her lips. “So, uh …” Twilight took a deep breath, then sipped her tea. The confused flurry of images ran through her mind, bringing with them another wave of dread. She pushed them back as hard as she could, focusing on a knot in the wood of the table, trying to center herself, detach her brain from reality. If she could think of it clinically as just a series of events, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. She took another sip of tea. “So … you remember Tirek.” Rainbow raised her eyebrows. “Well, I mean, yeah, it’s not like you can forget a guy like that.” The corner of Twilight’s mouth twitched up in a ghost of a smile. “That wasn’t really a question.” She leaned back in her chair and sunk down. She felt beyond tired, as if her ears were stuffed with cotton until it clouded out her brain. “The dreams are about him. About my fight with him.” “Oh man, you were so cool in that fight.” Rainbow cleared her throat and took another gulp of coffee. “Sorry. I bet it was really scary.” Twilight waved her off and took a sip. “When it was happening, I didn’t really have time to be scared or not, I was just fighting. The dreams start out the same. Exactly the same.” She rubbed an eye and leaned against the table. “So much the same that they don’t feel like dreams, they’re just … me fighting him. Like the first time never happened.” She inhaled the steam from her tea, then downed half of it over her sore throat. “Or rather, that they are the first time I’ve fought him, over and over and over again.” Rainbow fidgeted in her seat and put together a second mug of coffee. “That does sound kinda bad to go through every night, yeah.” “It isn’t the bad part.” Her voice caught, and Twilight rubbed her mouth. The bad part was filling up her thoughts, and she could feel the pricks of tears jabbing at her eyes. She swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “The part after the fight happens the same way, too. He can’t beat me, and I can’t beat him. So he stops, and he offers to trade with me. He shows me that he has you—all of you, and says he’ll let you go in exchange for all the alicorn magic. And I say yes, and he takes it from me and …” Her throat seized up all the way. She tried to clear it, but couldn’t force air through at all. She took a drink and dribbled down her chin. “… And then Discord gives you his necklace thingie, and we go to the locked box, right?” Twilight closed her eyes. She could see the dream behind her eyelids, just as fresh as if she were asleep, just as vivid as if it was real, as if it were the truth. “… And he doesn’t let you go. He’d lied. He takes the magic from me …” She opened her eyes and looked at Rainbow. She could feel the tears coming, welled up and blurring her vision. “And then he kills you. All of you. Right in front of me. One by one.” The thread of her voice grew weaker and weaker as she spoke, until it snapped. She slammed her eyes shut and felt the tears spill down her face. “Twi!” Rainbow’s chair scraped away from the table. Twilight held up a hoof in protest, then wiped her face angrily, sniffling and gritting her teeth. “It’s stupid! It’s just a dream, it doesn’t mean anything! It doesn’t—!” A sob tore its way through her yelling and she slammed a hoof on the table. “It isn’t real!” She took deep breaths, her eyes screwed shut and her jaw clenched, forcing herself back to being calm. When the worst of it passed, she looked up. Rainbow stood frozen next to her chair with a hoof raised halfway towards comforting her, looking indecisive and worried. Twilight sniffed again and wiped her face. “It’s stupid.” Rainbow lowered her hoof and chewed her lip. “It’s not stupid …” She glanced at Twilight sidelong, then awkwardly went back to her chair. “I mean, yeah, it’s a dream, but dreams can feel really real.” Twilight nodded and poked at her teacup. “It does feel real. Every time.” Rainbow fidgeted and drank her coffee. “How long’ve they been happening? Like, has this been going on for two weeks straight?” Twilight shook her head. “It didn’t start right away. Of course, it wasn’t like they had a chance to start right away. After we sent him back to Tartarus, we had this castle here, and then the map, and Starlight Glimmer’s village …” She rubbed her face. “They started once we got back to Ponyville. I thought maybe it was because of how I felt about this place, at least in part. But …” She sighed and shook her head. “I didn’t have the dream last night, but that’s because I practiced transforming an orange into everything I could think of, over and over, until I fell unconscious.” Rainbow raised her eyebrows. “It took two hours. And when I got up this morning, I could barely lift my toothbrush.” She smiled weakly. “I’m still getting a headache whenever I use magic, so I thought I better alternate and just race you until I passed out today. You see how well that worked.” Grunting and sinking down into her chair, Rainbow gave her a pained look. “Jeeze, Twi. That can’t be good for you.” “I know.” She groaned and rested her head on her forelegs. “I’m just at the end of my rope. I either can’t sleep, or I wake up feeling like somepony dropped me down a cliff.” “Have you tried talking to Princess Luna?” Twilight nodded glumly and sat back up. “I wrote her a letter. She said she could cast a spell from inside of a dream to change it into something else, but that the only way for them to stop for good is if I work through the feelings that are causing them. I thanked her for the offer, but asked her to stay out of the dreams, because …” She shivered. “I don’t really want to share them with anypony. The problem is, I know what feelings are causing them, but I don’t know how to work through them.” She looked at Rainbow. “How do you work through being afraid of losing all your friends?” Rainbow shifted in her seat and rolled the mug back and forth in her hooves. “I dunno.” “I keep thinking they’ll stop after it’s been long enough. One of these days my heart will realize that my brain is right and you’re all still here.” She leaned her head on her legs and felt the weight of exhaustion fall over her like a suffocating blanket. She was no stranger to being tired. She spent half her academic career pulling all-nighters studying, and the trend hadn’t slowed down all that much in her adult life. She’d always been able to bounce back, though, after a power-nap and a good night’s sleep. Things she couldn’t do anymore, regardless of what she did or when she went to bed. She felt like her mind was crumbling bit by bit, fraying away at the edges with each passing night of terror. “I don’t know what to do until then.” Rainbow tapped her hoof nervously on the table and looked around the room in thought. “Well, uh … you, uh, want me to stay over tonight?” Twilight sat up and raised an eyebrow. “Like, if your heart’s freaking out because it thinks everypony’s dead, you’ll feel better if somepony’s with you, and you can prove your heart wrong right away, right?” Rainbow winced. “Sorry, I said that weird.” Twilight frowned in thought and tapped her chin. “I appreciate the thought, but I wouldn’t want to ask you to do that.” She looked away and rubbed her cheek. “I’m a grown mare, I shouldn’t have to ask my friend to foalsit me …” “I don’t mind, really.” Rainbow sat forward in her chair. “If I can help, I wanna help. I hate seeing my friends feeling bad. And I can see you’re feeling really bad.” Twilight smiled weakly. “Well … I really do appreciate it, but I don’t know if it’ll help.” “Wouldn’t hurt to try, though, right?” Fidgeting, Twilight met Rainbow’s gaze. Part of her wanted to say no. She didn’t want to share the actual dreams with Luna, and she didn’t want to share their aftermath with Rainbow Dash, either. It had taken enough work to shield Spike from it while he was several rooms away from her in the castle. On the other side of the coin, she was too tired to say no. “It won’t be any fun, but if you want to try it, I’d be grateful.” Rainbow nodded firmly. “You got it, Twi.” She stood up, gulped down the last dregs of coffee, and took her mug to the sink. “I gotta go get some stuff done before the day’s over, but I’ll be back tonight, okay?” “Okay.” Twilight walked Rainbow out, then went back to the kitchen to wash the dishes. “I’m going to regret this,” she muttered to herself. Twilight pulled back the corner of the covers on her bed with magic, then blinked and pulled back the other side as well. As she circled the bed and fluffed up the second pillow, she could hear Rainbow Dash in the master bath loudly brushing her teeth. “I’m sorry this slumber party doesn’t have much of a party to it,” she called, rubbing her forehead. Her body had recovered from the flurry of races she’d had that evening, but the mental exhaustion had only sharpened, stabbing her behind the eyes and making her horn throb like a bruised muscle. “Wha’ev’r,” Rainbow gargled back. There was a loud spit, followed by rushing water from the sink. “I had a long day, too. This crazy friend of mine wanted to race for, like, an hour.” She stepped out of the bathroom and smiled at Twilight. “That does sound pretty crazy.” Twilight grinned, then walked to her side of the bed. She tucked the canopy away and strapped it to the bedpost, blinked again, and did the same on the other side. “Do you need anything? Glass of water?” Rainbow gave her a leveled look. “You don’t snore, right?” She shook her head. “Not unless I have a cold.” Rainbow’s glare turned distrustful for a moment, then she nodded. “Good, because I don’t have earplugs.” “Mmf.” Twilight rubbed an eye. “You might want them, I don’t always wake up screaming, but …” Rainbow waved her off. “I don’t mind you waking me up that way, that’s why I’m here, right?” She crossed the room to her side of the bed and climbed under the blankets. “Ooh, swanky.” Chuckling, Twilight crawled in on her side. “I’m glad you approve of my bed.” “It’s not as comfy as my bed, but I’ve slept on worse.” Rainbow punched her pillow and flopped down against it, letting out a contented sigh. “Okay, it’s almost as comfy as mine.” Twilight shook her head, smiling, and turn off the lights. “Thanks for doing this, Rainbow. I really do appreciate the offer.” “No sweat.” Rainbow yawned and stretched out, jabbing Twilight in the side. “G’night, Twi. Shake me if you need anything.” “Good night.” She settled down on her pillow and stared up at the canopy over her head. With blankets up to her chin and darkness around her, the creeping anxiety invaded her thoughts. She knew what would be behind her eyelids when she fell asleep, and she wanted no part of it. As much as she felt that, she also felt the weight of a week’s worth of sleep deprivation crushing her to the mattress. It’d been all she could do to keep from nodding off through dinner, and she’d read the same paragraph over and over again in a fog. It was a hopeless battle to fight. She closed her eyes. A buzzsaw roared to life right next to her head. She sprung halfway up in bed with a jump and wheeled around. Rainbow Dash lay spread out on her back, snoring like a dying bear. Twilight lowered her ears and glared. “Do I snore?” she muttered to herself. She dropped her head back down and clenched her teeth, squinting her eyes further with each passing moment, trying to get used to the demonic grinding. “Yeah, no,” she muttered, then turned and prodded Rainbow gently, but insistently until she rolled over onto her side. The snores tapered off from terrifying down to the sorts of noises a pony made, and she let out a breath of relief. “Thank Celestia.” She stared back upwards and let out a breath, then giggled to herself. Of the possible causes of her not being able to sleep, haunted snoring was not one she’d expected, and it felt like the power of her anxieties had broken. She smiled up into the darkness, then rolled onto her side and closed her eyes. “It appears we are at an impasse. How about a trade, Princess Twilight? Their release for all the Alicorn magic in Equestria. What’s it going to be, Princess?” Twilight stared up at the hulking monster holding her friends in front of her. They all shouted in protest behind bubbles of magic, telling her not to give in, to keep fighting regardless of the cost. She couldn’t, she knew she couldn’t. She squared her chest. “I will give you my magic, in exchange for my friends.” “As you wish.” Tirek’s eyes glowed bright and his mouth opened. Twilight felt the pull of his breath, grabbing at her, grabbing through her, pulling the essence of her being out of her body. The borrowed magic of the strongest ponies in Equestria gave way first, with her own magic clinging to her heart, squeezing her as if betrayed. It tore free and she sunk to the ground, hollow. “O-okay,” she said, forcing her heavy head up. “You have my magic, now give me back my friends. All of my friends.” “If that’s what you want.” His smile twisted into a leer, cruel and sharp. “Take them.” Magic swirled in his hand and he brought her friends forward, one by one. Crimson light flashed out, jeering and incessant. Fluttershy first. There was a tiny squeak of fear and the bubble shredded into nothingness. Then Applejack. Twilight could see the x-ray of Applejack’s bones through her silhouette before she vanished, cutting off her shout of defiance with sudden silence. Then Rainbow Dash. “No!” Twilight shouted. “NO! NO! NOOOOOOOO—!” “No,” Twilight hiccoughed. She sat forward, eyes staring into the darkness, but the images still burned into her mind. The darkness swam and tears flowed down her cheeks. “No, take me,” she sobbed. “Take me…” Rainbow flinched awake, muttering, “Whuzzah?” She tossed the covers off and scrambled up on the bed. “Twilight! Twi, I’m here, it’s okay!” Twilight turned her head and saw Rainbow’s face in the darkness, her expression still dulled with sleep, but full of worry. Twilight still had the last images of her dream tattooed on the inside of her eyelids. Rainbow slammed her hooves against the bubble of force before lighting up in a flash of magic and ripping away into a cloud of dust. But there she was right in front of Twilight, half asleep and a little frightened, but alive. Before she could process anything, Rainbow pulled her into a hug. She slammed her eyes shut and sobbed into Rainbow’s shoulder. She returned the hug, clinging tight, crushing, suffocating. “I’m here,” Rainbow said, “I’m right here.” “You were …” Twilight mumbled into Rainbow’s shoulder. “I know. I’m here now, though.” Rainbow stroked her mane with a hoof in slow circles while she cried, until her tears dried up and her thoughts drifted into nothingness.