//------------------------------//
// V.XI - Don't Look Back 
// Story: The Broken Bond 
// by TheApexSovereign 
//------------------------------//

In the midst of the sun’s descent, Fluttershy mustered the strength Twilight sorely lacked, left her in Pinkie and Fizzle’s hooves, promising she would help Starlight. 

Not to confront. Not to question, nor even comfort, hard as resisting would be (which would be very, very hard). But Starlight needed strong friends, honest friends, now more than ever, and that is what Fluttershy was going to be. 

So... they were just going to talk. Honestly and openly. About whatever and wherever their conversation took them. Hopefully to an understanding, if Fluttershy played her cards right. She’d better. If it was an even bigger mistake to invite her father over… 

Fluttershy couldn’t imagine herself wanting to say a word, not to anypony, in Starlight’s place. Not after hearing that terrible fight with her best friends. 

Poor Trixie and Maud. Poor Starlight. Poor Firelight. Things would be different if Fluttershy just… She didn’t know. Never had in moments such as these. But if I’d done something against Hydia instead of sitting there, screaming… 

Discord tried his best to eliminate these dark thoughts. He really did. And he succeeded, mostly. The fact that he didn’t completely squash them wasn’t a failure, but rather Fluttershy’s, her inability to help herself from wishing she was… more, she supposed. 

Just more than weak and helpless Fluttershy, who stood up to a dragon but not some yucky flesh ball in a cloak. 

The thought of being “more” for Starlight, whatever that meant, was actually sort of exciting. It infected Fluttershy with Pinkie’s unshakable optimism, steeled her soft little heart, brought her to the air. The thought of getting Starlight to open up without conflict, as was her specialty, brought Fluttershy whipping around corners like Rainbow Dash would.  

Suddenly, she was in front of Starlight’s door. “Oh, my,” gasped Fluttershy, blinking as she dropped to all fours, one after another. “Was that a record?” Did she top her wbpm record from hurricane season way back when? Fluttershy shook her head, and knocked for what drove her to such desperate speeds. 

No response. It was okay, though; it’s what she expected. 

Fluttershy knocked again. “Starlight? Are you there?” she called. It was an invasion of privacy, but she put her ear to the door anyway, simultaneously thinking an apology in Starlight’s direction. 

There was stillness, save the quickening beat in Fluttershy’s breast. “St—?”

“Sorry,” came a muffled, meek voice. “It’s unlocked.” 

“O-okay!” The ease of this was, offensively, unexpected. “I’m coming in!” she announced out of politeness. With no response, Fluttershy shrugged. Her wing turned the knob. 

She stepped through, into a dim bedroom, and froze cold. 

Either side was black, bisected by pale golden light shining in through the one open window, gleaming around Starlight Glimmer like a halo, whose back was to her—a pink mass which curved slightly out, then dipped inwards, and rounded sharply around her flanks. Fluttershy smothered a gasp; Twilight had shed tears recounting how little Starlight ate nowadays. 

A slight breeze wafted in, carrying a posie’s subtle grassy aroma and stirring her messy tangle of a mane. She was like a ghost.. In that chilling moment, above the horizon, the sun and moon passed one another, and the sky adopted a purpling tint. 

“I’m sorry,” said Starlight, watching the display. “I can’t stand looking anypony in the eye right now. Deny it all you want, but I know inside you’re afraid of me freaking out again. You know I would. I know I would. That’s why you pretend you aren’t annoyed by me.” 

Silence. Dumbfounded speechlessness was Fluttershy’s greatest possible response. 

Until now, her mind raced with all the ways this conversation could go; how it probably would go if she slipped and let herself get emotional. There had been plenty of time for that already, following the quiet, crushing hours of Fizzlepop Berrytwist’s concerned recounting of the afternoon’s events (she called it a report, but Fluttershy had lived with enough predators to know what the tough-guy routine looked like). 

Not a single thought anticipated Starlight just blurting out that which everypony suspected, and only Twilight had been brave enough to question twice: her lack of eye contact. 

Until now, Fluttershy and by extension the rest weren’t confident as to why. Starlight had always avoided it like she did their eyes. Their judgement, she suspected in quiet.  

“I know how you feel. I’ve always been afraid of ponies judging me, too.” Starlight didn’t budge. Fluttershy trotted forth on hoofsteps light enough to catch a mouse by surprise. “You know,” Fluttershy continued, halting behind Starlight as silver dusted the sky, “I, um, never told anypony this, but I was always afraid of making a fool of myself. I was afraid because I had done that constantly in flying school. I couldn’t help it, and the bullying made me afraid of trying other things. Things like singing and meeting ponies… and helping friends when they need me not to be so scared. And you know what? That ended up painting an image of me I thought I’d never get out of. Even my best friends, even Twilight, they’d assume I was naive and helpless without realizing it themselves half the time.” Fluttershy blinked, her mouth agape for half a heartbeat—a moment she realized just what she said, how much she said it, and, with a warming heart, to whom. She just knew Starlight wouldn’t judge her for this, that she would understand. “Thank you for hearing all of that without laughing. N-not that I thought you would! But, um, you know. Most ponies aren’t so empathetic like you.” 

“You were able to reinvent yourself into a better version of you,” said Starlight. “I’m incredibly jealous of that. How petty, am I right?” 

Fluttershy choked silently—it wasn’t quite Starlight’s usual casual approach to these things, she sounded like she didn’t really care either way. The pep in her tone, however forced it might have been at times, was gone. 

“I’m sorry, but may I ask a question?” she asked, turning her head slightly. 

Fluttershy took it as an invitation to sit beside her. Starlight returned to the black, rolling ocean of the Equestrian Central Glade, crowned in her namesake. “Of course,” she said. “You don’t have to apologize for that.” Starlight was silent. Fluttershy moved, hesitantly, and stroked her tree-stiff foreleg to no reaction. “I would love to just sit here and talk with you. It’s been so long, Starlight. I miss you.” 

“I’m sorry.” Her muzzle lowered, forelock swinging partially beside her glassy-eye, hiding it. “I say that a lot these days. I’m sorry for that, too. But I am.” 

Fluttershy inhaled and stopped short of a thoughtless assurance that it was okay, that she had nothing to be sorry about. As if Fluttershy ever believed her friends when her anxiety totally hadn’t made something worse. 

“Friends forgive each other.” She wrapped a wing around Starlight, who inhaled sharply at the contact but didn’t recoil from it. “Twilight has, you know. I’m sure it’s hard to believe, but all she wants is to help you through all this negativity. She doesn’t care about being upset anymore. And we’re too worried to be mad either.” Starlight just stared as her breathing quickened, stared and breathed. Did Fluttershy say something—? ”You had a question,” she realized. “I’m sorry for changing the subject, Starlight. What was it you wanted to know?” 

She bit her lip, attempting to speak. “F-Fuh-Fluttershy?” 

“Yes, Starlight?” She squeezed her terrified friend tightly into her warmth, a pleading reassurance that normally worked on nervous critters. “I’m listening, I promise you, I’m listening.” 

Starlight inhaled, but held it, mouth agape. Tears filled her eyes. And then, “Do you—?” she croaked, then cleared her throat. Quieter, Starlight resumed, “Did you, in all those years… did you ever feel, like you just wanted to… disappear?” Her eyes shifted to regard Fluttershy, huge with pupils no bigger than bread crumbs. “That you think it’d be better for everypony if you just… left their lives forever?” 

A chilled, shaken breath pushed past Fluttershy’s lips, no words like she intended. Please don’t leave. “Only briefly, Starlight.” Please don’t leave. “Before Twilight came to Ponyville. I’d feel like such an embarrassment to Rainbow Dash, and Rarity and Applejack, even.” I know it’s hard and you tried a couple times already, but please, please don’t leave us like this. That won’t solve anything. The nighttime sky wobbled left and right. The words left her throat a feeble rasp. “They made me realize quickly how silly I was being, though. And even then I never paid these thoughts much mind, because I’d ask myself, ‘What about my responsibilities? My animals? I can’t just leave them, all alone and worried about me.’” 

Starlight returned ahead, her eyes upturned to the sky, salted with countless stars. 

“You know...” Fluttershy hesitated. Was this a good time to bring it up now? But for goodness sake, Starlight was talking about some very unsettling things. “I… sometimes, I would think about how awful my friends would feel if I left Ponyville altogether. No letter, not even an explanation. They would feel awful, and responsible, and I couldn’t bear making them feel as bad as I did.” It wasn’t a whole truth, but Starlight undoubtedly saw herself in this scenario. She had to, she was just like that. 

Starlight, a vaguely detailed silhouette by this point, began to quiver, her chin trembling hard. 

“Starlight—” 

“That’s beautiful, Fluttershy.” A harsh sniffle carved through the silence, which reformed immediately as she continued, “I’m so, so happy you were able to change and learn to love yourself.” 

“Oh, only because I had my friends to help me along the way. It took some time, and I’m still not perfect, but I owe what I’ve achieved to those girls.” 

Starlight exhaled a long, damp breeze. “That’s nice,” she whispered. “That’s so nice.” 

Fluttershy’s words came as quick as her building desperation. “It was. It’s wonderful. And you have that, too, Starlight. We all love you, and we’re worried about you.” 

Starlight trembled. And that was all. Fluttershy didn’t loosen her hold, for fear she might get up and run away. Not a muscle twitched, however. 

Not for the hour they sat together, and Starlight broke the silence with a meek, “I’d like to go to bed now.” 

“Of course, Starlight. I’ll see you tomorrow?” 

It took a second for her to nod, and it was barely perceptible. Fluttershy told herself she was being paranoid, to stop herself from interrogating the poor thing as she watched her climb into bed, as she bid Starlight goodnight. 

She told herself this more than once the whole way to Twilight’s room. 

Baby steps pathed the road to success here. 





The book on something by who-cares fell from Twilight’s grasp as her bedroom door opened. 

Twilight told herself to remain on the bed, to be calm, to not pounce on Fluttershy immediately as she finally pushed through the door. 

She failed all three, though she loopholed the last by teleporting into the pegasus, for ten feet between her and the foot of Twilight’s bed felt too far for a three second flight. She’d been waiting an hour, dang it! Not even Pinkie could distract for so long, as she fell asleep curled up on a beanbag chair in the corner, confident in Twilight’s favorite past time distracting her hornet’s nest of a brain. 

Twilight wasn’t in the mood to control herself a second longer for Fluttershy’s sake, though a guilty part of her wished she had as her gentle friend cried out, “Oh, my!” whilst falling on her butt, rolled unto her back, and gawked at Twilight, towering above. 

“You’ve been gone an hour! Is she okay?” Fluttershy took a breath—”Is something wrong?!” 

“Well, um, she—” 

“Fluttershy! You’re one of my best friends and literally any other day I wouldn’t think twice about your speech patterns but please-please-puhleaaase cut the um’s and oh-my’s and just tell me how Starlight is!” 

Her pegasus friend adopted a look unlike anything Twilight had seen from her before. In a cold, dead tone to match, she murmured, “Get off me first, please.” 

Twilight still had the grace to blush. “Sorry,” she said, stepping carefully around Fluttershy’s splayed legs. 

She feared that even Fluttershy had reached her limit with Starlight as she rolled over, rose, and turned without making a sound. “Now take a breath,” she instructed, just being the group caretaker and nothing more. 

Twilight inhaled to her lungs’ limits and slightly beyond, only exhaling when Fluttershy expelled her fears with a feeble smile, but a smile nonetheless. 

“She’s about as well as you’d expect, but I watched her get into bed for the night. She’s willing to see me, at least, tomorrow.” 

Twilight staggered back a step. It was something. It was almost nothing, but it was something hopeful. “An-and what did you talk about, Fluttershy? Did she say anything out of the ordinary?” It felt awful, calling this the ordinary now. 

“I don’t feel comfortable revealing specifics about a conversation I’m sure Starlight assumed was private,” said Fluttershy, frowning slightly. “But if you really want an idea, she was open and honest with me, at least for a few minutes.” 

A few minutes? That shouldn’t have been as strange as the fact that Starlight was open and honest, seemingly from the get-go. “What were you doing for an hour?” 

“Just sitting together, looking at the stars. She... seemed to be considering running away again. But I talked her out of it.” A surge of icy-hot pain surged up Twilight’s back, making her shudder, her wings ruffle. Fluttershy’s sprung in fear as she cried, “Twilight?” 

“Fluttershy, think!” Twilight stressed, making her poor, trusting friend shrink. “If Starlight was truly so open, if she was considering running away again, and waited until you left…” 

The cool confidence Fluttershy boasted a sentence ago shattered with one, heartbreaking look. “N-n-no! Sh-sh-she wouldn’t—w-we talked, I told her that—” 

“It doesn’t matter what you said, Fluttershy!” They didn’t have time for this; Twilight ignited her horn, pure power groaning before her frontal lobe. “We know now that Starlight would do anything to avoid sharing her pain! How could you be so irresponsible?!” 

She didn’t give Fluttershy a second to defend herself, which Twilight regretted, too. She regretted so much these days, and now her thoughtless mistakes might have cost her Starlight, and she cared about that more right now. 

For she stood alone now in Starlight’s room. 

“No.” When her eyes found the open window, Starlight’s crazy conviction in trading her life for Twilight’s hit like a noxious wallop to the belly. “Please, no, please, no, please-no-no-please—!” 

Dozens of feet below, the expanse of what was technically their backyard bore no broken, twisted body of a once-horned unicorn. 

Twilight cried out—screamed, really—with relief. 

There was still hope. 





Twilight imagined herself in Tempest’s den, and then she was. 

And there she was, choking on tea with classical music groaning away on her phonograph. 

“Sorry! Starlight ran away—gather as many ponies as you can and form a search party!” She only spotted a glimpse of Fizzlepop’s hollow expression before magenta flashed before her, giving way to the firelit warmth of her own bedroom. 

A gasping Fluttershy was getting her back rubbed by Pinkie. On any other day Twilight would apologize profusely for scaring her so. 

“Gather the girls, I’m going to look in all of her usual spots, she ran away.” 

And so Twilight did, starting with the train station. When that was all she could logically think to look, sans Starlight’s close friends, Twilight appeared in Manehattan, for Rarity and Spike, then the Wonderbolt Academy for Rainbow Dash. 

They returned to a town of tired but worried ponies, many of whom held lanterns in their mouths or magic. 

It was every adult in Ponyville, save for Maud and Trixie, who were too remote to hear the commotion, and Sunburst and Firelight, who were completely forgotten about in the panic of it all. Twilight didn’t waste time entertaining the notion that Starlight would seek comfort in any of them. 

She barely regretted brushing off everypony’s concerns, too many not understanding if Starlight was foalnapped or she just went on vacation without telling anypony. All that mattered, she told them, was that Starlight needed to be found. 

It was only five minutes into the search before Flitter alongside her sister Cloudchaser cried out, “I see her! Over the hills to the north!” 





“Starlight!” Twilight cried over the pop of magic. “Starlight, where are you going? Are you trying to leave us?! Leave… me?” she whimpered. 

Starlight’s mouth dropped open with all the excuses she had, which were none, before quivering like a soda can about to explode. 

Twilight stepped closer, reaching out, ready to comfort and console and tell Starlight she loved her and that she was sorry for everything. Starlight tripped out of range, her eyes skittering to the gathering pegasi above, Rainbow among them still in uniform. Twilight waved the intimidating sight off, but they either didn’t see or were too haunted by the look on Starlight’s face, and the disturbing circumstances, and probably Twilight’s disheveled mess off a state. 

“I… I can’t do this anymore!” Starlight cried. “I’m sorry! I just can’t live here like this, I’m sorry!”

It pained to see her so terrified. It was agony to know she was driven to this because Twilight was too afraid to talk to her honestly. “Starlight, it’s-it’s okay, you’re okay.” She stepped closer to her friend’s utter terror. “Just… just come home with me, and we can—” 

“I’m sorry,” Starlight whimpered before dissipating into a wisp of pink light that snaked east, toward the Everfree. 

“What the—?!” Twilight choked. 

“Cooome baaack, Starliiight!” Pinkie tore after the fleck of light, having been between Twilight’s gathering fliers and Ponyville. The dumbstruck pegasi zipped after her after a bark from Rainbow. 

Twilight already knew what it was, and her legs lost all strength, so suddenly, that she crumbled to the grass, watching half of Ponyville vanish into the dark forest, one by one their lights flickering between the murky treeline. 

It had been years, but that magical wisp, its origin in the Everfree, the signs were unmistakable. We sealed it though, how could she have gotten through? 

How could she have gone and tricked them like this? 

Where was she now? 

“This can’t be happening,” Twilight breathed. “This isn’t real.” 

But it was the realest nightmare she’d had in weeks: Starlight Glimmer, at last, ran away from home.  





“Next stop, the Crystal Empire!” called the conductor. 

What a long train ride. Starlight was finally where she wanted to be. The moustached stallion stopped her by casually barring the way out her car. 

“Miss, it’s constant winter out there and you don’t even have a scarf,” he said. “The Crystal Empire is where you want off, this here is just a junction at the Frozen North’s border. There’s naught but mountains, snow, and beasts even Celestia herself isn’t entirely aware of.” 

But no ponies. And there were caves to keep warm. And green valleys nestled behind the highest peaks for her to graze on, until she reached the edge of Equestria and crossed beyond. 

I’ll be lost forever if I look back. 

Nopony would be around for her to ruin, or worse, recognize her. “This is exactly where I want to be, sir. So, please, let me off.” 

After a few moments, he lowered his foreleg and stepped aside. Of course he didn’t care enough to argue further. Starlight was, after all, the customer, and this guy was more concerned with what he’ll do when he finally gets home than some suicidal mare. 

“Last chance to change your mind,” he said. 

An appealing thought. But I’ll be lost forever if I look back. Starlight stepped out into harsh winds and blinding white bullets of cold. 

“Good luck, ma’am, with whatever it is you’re doing here,” he called out, tipping his cap. 

The train left. 

Starlight, at last, had done something selfless for the good of everypony. 


End of Act V (Kindness): The Broken Teacher