Spasms shuddered all over, wracking Starlight horribly yet it was the only thing she felt through what must have been a frigid, sodden coat of wool.
Numb. She was numb. I’m numb and I can’t move. Did she even have legs anymore? If she were to lift her head, would they be frozen black and hardly recognizable?
Who knew? Who cared? Starlight couldn’t do that if she wanted to.
I’m gonna die here. I am. A blanket of filth in the sky hung precariously close, it seemed, suffocating Starlight, pinning her in this creeping, pallid burial mound. Sheets of freezing needles whipped overhead, their sting abated long ago. Or maybe it was moments?
Moments, she decided. Almost forgot… snow piles up fast around here.
And it piles up heavy.
And wet.
Cold, too. So cold it invoked memories of hot chocolate, hot tea, hearths ablaze and reading with Twilight, swaddled in robes and blankets.
She’s probably hates me by now. If she’s even figured it out. The clone wasn’t exactly a perfect copy, but it wasn’t meant to be. Kind of. Who knew? Who cared? After all, the Starlight Glimmer Twilight was misled to know was a completely different pony now.
It shouldn’t hurt so badly now. An ache tried to claw its way out—like a parasite that never, ever died. It only slept, lulled like a false sense of security when Starlight would be too ignorant of her propensity to make a foal of herself.
Sudden cold surged forth, an icy shadow overtaking over her brain, making everything flash a white even brighter than before. Spasms overtook her, Starlight’s bones screamed, as did she: a feeble groan, drowned out by the eternal roar of the Frozen North. Stop shaking. Get up. Her useless body trembled. It had to be a stampede of Hydia-knows-what, except the cold sinking its icy fangs into her bones spoke an obvious truth.
Starlight often missed those, all throughout her life.
Perhaps this would be the last time.
No.
NO!
I have to keep moving!
I… Her legs wouldn’t move, pinned by the blizzard. I have to though.
But what was the point? There was nothing in this frozen wasteland. The valley of rolling green hills was buried in snow, the grass that wasn’t coming in patches so sparse that the lone mouthful she managed went down like a rock, and she couldn’t stand the agony of sudden sustenance. Refusing that dinner roll Dad had offered felt asinine in retrospect. As did a great many things. But refusing to eat because she couldn’t stand the act was stupid if living was still, at the very least, a base motivation.
I never think things through.
Lying here felt easier, and all the more enticing. Starlight was only going to fail again, hurt others, if she made it through this. So, why bother? Her destiny was to know heartbreak to the end of her days.
What a stupid plan. Unless a miracle fell upon her silver platter, as they often did, this was the end of the road.
At least Twilight had lived in the end. I’m fine with this. A calm bloomed warm throughout her core. I hate this, but I’m fine with it.
I’m here because of my choices, after all.
Never looked for that geography textbook’s publication date. Or background checked the author. Any idiot with a quill and a bit of social pull can get their drivel on the market. A greater curiosity was how Twilight accepted material so clearly out of date.
Maybe it wasn’t anypony’s fault, and Starlight was still looking to shovel more blame. Hydia and her brood could’ve willed this storm to have a laugh. Or mark a fitting end to the Hilariously Tragic Life of Starlight Aurora Glimmer.
Heck, maybe it wasn’t even them, not directly. Maybe she lured some windigos herself, another primeval myth drudged into reality thanks to her ignorance.
Most interesting was the fact that she cared enough to think about it at all. Is my brain distracting me from the fact that I’m dying? Thinking had always been her form of coping, regardless if it was a healthy kind or not.
“Starlight!” cried the wind. She really was dying—her passing into the afterlife was heralded by an illusion of Twilight Sparkle, of all ponies. “Starlight, please, where are you?!”
Louder that time, followed by a four-beat rhythm crunching through the snow.
Starlight’s lungs froze still. No way—”Oh, my gosh!” The voice was directly above her. “Starlight, hang on! Just hang on, I-I’ll cast—” A broken exhale cut off this very convincing illusion, followed by the sonorous awakening of magic. Abruptly, the storm’s howls muffled as though safely on the outside, and Starlight plunked by a warm fire.
A damp icy-hot fire—a toasty sensation which coursed through Starlight, unfreezing her joints. A great, life-giving gulp of air filled her breast, the coarse landscape receded. Humidity enveloped Starlight, soaked to the bone but warm, finally she was warm and it was among the best feeling she could recall experiencing. Even the muck beneath her, cloying to her belly, provided a refreshing coolness on her undercarriage; the valley—no, just her immediate surroundings, were a mire.
Starlight planted her hooves, the muck and limp brown grass slurping them as she shoved against her crying bones. They begged in agony like nothing else, and Starlight groaned louder the higher she rose, the greater the ache increased. “Come… on!”
A new warmth, air but a gentle cloak at once, yanked her up, and Starlight’s back hit a wall of similar making before realizing she was shoved.
And a snarling mug appeared before her, but the lilac bubble wouldn’t grant more than a centimeter of personal space. “What in the wide world of Equestria do you think you’re doing?!” Twilight, she realized. It… you—”Is this how you planned on leaving us: trading your family for some unmarked grave?!”
You came for me. You went looking for me anyway.
“What is wrong with you?!” Twilight sobbed. Sobbed. For her. “Why’s doing this to yourself preferable to just talking to me, Starlight?” Starlight couldn’t begin to understand her words—the fracturing between syllables, the harshness. “You honestly thought I wouldn’t tell the difference between you and some hairbrained clone!? Are-are you actually stupid, Starlight?! Or did you just not care about how I felt anymore?! Or any of your friends for that matter!? ”
“N-no…”
“THEN WHAT?! WHAT?! Do you honestly think that any of us, that Trixie, would just forget you ran away from home, from us, and live happily ever after, like no big deal?! WAS THIS YOUR BRILLIANT PLAN, STARLIGHT?” Everything—the world, Twilight, Starlight’s thundering breast went still for but a moment. The wind outside roared.
And Twilight wrenched away, blubbering in every heart wrenching sense of the word.
All for Starlight.
This worry for Starlight.
This effort coming out here for Starlight, in spite of how she left. Why? The word was lodged in her throat. Why are you doing this to yourself, Twilight? After everything…
No matter what Starlight did…
Twilight, you still…
You still care about me.
And she was still talking. Ranting, the words coming out a garbled, muffled ring in Starlight’s ears. Her tears flowed, wracked her, shattered the nonsense spewing past her snarling, quivering lips into snotty gibberish.
The only thing clear: her total lack of anger.
Twilight still cares about me.
She never stopped.
And I just ran away with a plan even more boneheaded and selfish than the one that started this mess.
It didn’t need to be a mess, though. None of it.
But Starlight made their mess hers. And she broke Twilight, made one of her, too. I… Starlight lost her breath. All I did was end up hurting ponies. Again.
A great, heaving gasp tore her throat open, and as it closed, Starlight screamed. “I AM SO SORRY, TWILIGHT!”
The racing in Twilight’s heart stilled, then rumbled at triple the magnitude. Her anger, grief, all of her shattered to nothing towards the red, crumpled face of Starlight Glimmer.
“I-I-I know that you want me to be happy,” she gasped into her hooves. “An-an’ that I shoulda been smarter, an’ taken responsibility t-to fix my mistakes, but I just feel so… s-so bad about every STUPID thing I’ve done!”
This needed to stop. The tears, the self-hating. “Starlight.”
She hyperventilated, mouth contorting for words. “I… I-I… I…”
Twilight’s throat clenched shut. “Starlight, please.”
She screamed hoarsely. “I keep believing I’ve done something good n’ right but I every time I never do! I brainwashed ponies ‘cause I didn’t wanna lose another friend, I brainwashed your friends because I didn’t wanna lose you, I lost my horn because I thought you deserved to live more than me! But then I lost my friends and I lost you and I didn’t wanna hurt you guys so badly again, but I just ended up hurting you guys just like I always have and I just. Want it! TO! STOOOP!”
Her stump sparked, Twilight’s ears rang; her scrawny, mangy body thrashed with sobs. “S-Starlight—”
“I keep making things worse and worse and worse, and I don’t know what to do! But I ran an’ I screwed up even more, if that were possible! I just don’t know what else TO DO!” The loathing in her voice was bloodcurdling. “I only know that you’d be better off without me; that other ponies who need you girls would be helped without my sorry self hanging around and mooching off your kindness and ho-hogging your attention! I’m helpless, Twilight, I know you hate this about me, I know you want me to be strong Starlight as always, but I can’t help but think about all the time you spent on me coulda been for somepony better—!”
“STARLIGHT GLIMMER!” That was too far. Too far.
And Twilight got exactly what she wanted: silence, save for the silly, hurting student shrinking within herself, shuddering, squeaking, snivelling.
She probably felt disgusting right now. Ashamed. Embarrassed.
A tightness, the same that ensnared Twilight’s soul since the day they became friends, squeezed a muffled cry from her breast.
The real Starlight sat before her, and all Twilight could think to do was hug her tight.
Calm. Calm. Calm-calm-calm, be calm. Be a princess, and a friend. She stayed her hooves, at least. “Starlight.” No response. Twilight shut her eyes, the Frozen North screaming all around, her Bubble of Warmth humming, her friend crying. “Starlight, please look at me.”
She was met with a shaking head, a quivering mud-caked mane. “I can’t.”
Twilight lifted a hoof, but stopped short of caressing her mane. “Okay. That’s okay,” she breathed. “You don’t have to, and that’s okay. But, please, listen to what I’m saying at least. And really listen.”
No response. Twilight had nothing, save for her useless words. All that was left between them was hope—hope in Twilight’s title, her destiny, the fact that she was out here and so was Starlight. Hope that this was some horrible contrivance that would better Equestria down the line. Hope in their friendship, that there was a chance of saving it here and now.
Twilight could only hope, as she had countless times in the past, and with stakes far greater than Starlight not just hearing but listening, too.
“Starlight? Are you going to listen?”
A frantic shake, a perpetual denial of eye contact. “I am.”
This was the best Twilight would get. “I have never… ever… wanted you to be happy. Not for the sake of it, that is. But I came off this way. And that’s the reality of it. I’m sorry for that. I am. All of this, this whole entire mess really started because I wanted to avoid shame and regret being on the forefront of your thoughts… and mine.”
She ceased her shaking, exhaled hollowly, as if realizing, ‘Truly?’
“In my desperate efforts to grasp this reality, to make it real,” said Twilight, “I was negligent to how I’d be perceived. How you’d feel towards my relief that you were satisfied with your decision when you were so clearly not. It made you feel ashamed when you couldn’t be proud, and because of that, you tried even harder to live up to these ridiculous expectations we placed upon ourselves. This, Starlight, is why I’ve tried so hard to make up for it.”
Starlight peered over her hooves, a cautious foal.
“But it didn’t stop there,” said Twilight, herself now the one unable to meet her gaze. “Not twenty-four hours after realizing how you truly felt, I did everything I could to avoid piling on more, assuming your reaction for the worst and—” Starlight gasped, uttered an apology while covering her face. Twilight inhaled, hardening her heart, powering through for Starlight’s sake. “And in doing so, I was all the while ignorant and thick-skulled about what would truly, genuinely benefit you in the long run. You’ve always preferred a blunt approach, but I was frantic to make you… happy,” Twilght gasped, “and that is the worst, most horrible way I could have gone about this.”
Long, mournful sobs echoed in Starlight’s hooves. Twilight touched her, and she flinched away. “Twilight, no!” she cried, flashing her her tear-soaked face. “No, this… this isn’t your fault. I’ve… I felt the same. I’ve done the same, but ten times worse! In my mind you and the girls were always these horrible, judgemental ponies when all you were tryna do was help me! I realized constantly that I was wrong but I can’t stop it! I can never stop thinking like this, ever!”
“That’s okay.”
“No it’s not!” And she was suddenly forgetting her pain, her weakness, and stormed into Twilight’s face, pushing her towards the opposite end of the bubble as she ranted. “I’m horrible, and selfish, and I hurt you girls because I was too stupid to wanna talk about any of it! You should hate me, Twilight—all of you should hate what I do and that I can’t ever change, regardless of what I learn or how often I do!”
“Starlight, stop!” Twilight reared up, grabbed her face. “Stop it, please. Please, stop this. Stop blaming yourself like this. Please.”
“I can’t.” Starlight wept, gasped, and gasped some more, the smeared muck halving her face carved by a widening gap of damp, pink fur. “Why? Why do you do this to yourself?”
Twilight nearly asked the same so thoughtlessly. “The same reason you sacrificed your horn for me.” What she said didn’t even register until Starlight almost brought her down, too, collapsed and caressing the price she paid. “Starlight. Look at me, please.” Twilight squeezed her cheeks, held her words until Starlight opened her eyes, then rose to meet hers. “I have spent the last month… absolutely losing my mind over you.” The awkward breakfasts and dinners. The small-talk. Remembering the jovial interactions they shared, without a shred of hesitation in either’s hearts. “I’ve spent every... single day,” Twilight squeaked, “watching helplessly as you fell apart, little by little. As you became more distant from me and the girls. As you scurried off to your room for hours at a time. Every time you failed to look me in the eye, and realizing that after everything, all I did these past two years was suppress your darker feelings instead of helping you through them.”
Tw-Twi-light—”
She barely heard over her own gasping cry. “Starlight, you mean so much to me, I care about you so much. I mean that, I really do, but all those times you casually expressed your discomfort in my home and my forgiveness of your crimes, I brushed them aside with equivalent nonchalance and instilled the impression that I didn’t care!”
“But I acted like I didn’t care, Twilight! Don’t blame yourself, please!”
“Well I’m your teacher!” Within a heartbeat, they were frozen in the tender warmth of the bubble, of each other. “I’m your teacher,” Twilight whispered, bringing the remnants of Starlight’s horn against her own, “and I hardly ever acted as one. Just your friend.”
“And that’s what I loved about being with you.” Starlight gazed into her soul, eyes tear-filled, unflinching. “You didn’t ever treat me like a problem that needed fixing. With you, I felt normal. Because of you, for stretches of time between mistakes, I felt like an actual pony. And that was the best I could hope for after everything I’d done to… tah…”
Twilight encircled one hoof around her head, pushed the other against her lips. “That was always my intention, Starlight.”
She was stock still. And then, welling up, “I don’t wanna lose you.”
“You haven’t.” Twilight mustered the strongest smile she could manage while whimpering. “You haven’t, Starlight. I care about you now as much as I did then.”
“But I will lose you! I already have and you haven’t realized it yet.”
“And what makes you think I’m lying?” Twilight wasn’t angry, just hurting, and scared. She didn’t want to lose Starlight either. “I think about how I feel, I look into my heart, and I find that my feelings are unchanged. I love you, Starlight. I still love y—”
“Hydia!” Starlight was rigid, eyes wild, ruddy as her cheeks. Then she started convulsing, her face crumpling. “She told me I’d lose what I treasured most, and my horn was the means to that end—”
This was crazy. That monster was crazy. That horrible, awful monster! “Starlight—”
“I lost you girls, I lost all my friends and then Hydia came to me and said that our deal was finally complete when I heard you saying you were tired of me last night!”
The thought of her constantly living in fear of the witches’ foreboding words, for a month… Starlight was still, even now, unbelievably strong. If Twilight had heard such words, she would likely tumble down a similar path.
She was fairly close, actually—would have if not for Luna and Spike.
“Starlight, listen to me.”
She snarled. “No, you listen to—”
“Those were powerful, gruesome monsters you were dealing with. You understand that?” Starlight’s eyes raked up and down the forelegs still nuzzling her, and would never truly let go. “Those were monsters who took immense pleasure in watching us suffer. Monsters who came to me one night, flaunted your horn—the idea of saving you before my eyes—crushed it, and then left. These were monsters who had zero intentions of playing by any rules. Monsters who were acting for their own pleasure and nothing more.”
“I-I…”
“They were villains, Starlight. And villains lie.”
Faster she scanned Twilight’s forelegs, up and down, down and up. Then the bubble around them. And finally, Twilight’s face—her eyes last. “Twilight,” she choked, stifled by a sob. “Oh, gosh, I’m such an idiot, Twilight!” And she threw herself into her chest, embracing her. Crying, soaking her shoulder. “I’m so sorry.” A hug—it was a hug, the first they’ve had since the night Starlight awakened from her spell-induced coma.
The first Twilight could remember her initiating since she graduated. It had been literal years.
Twilight snapped out of her reverie and ensnared her back. She would never let go. Never. “Shh, shh.” She stroked Starlight’s trembling back, again and again, in circles, then again, whispering, “You’re okay, you’re okay.”
“I’m not.” A snotty snuffle. “Oh, I’m really not, Twilight. You did what you thought was right and I put you through unbelievable pain without once thinking rationally.”
She did. Absolutely. “But I don’t care, Starlight. None of us do. Do you remember the first lesson I taught you?”
She felt a nod, a damp chill pecking her shoulder. “I do,” said Starlight. “Friends will do anything for one another. No matter the cost.”
And it all circled back to that fateful choice—the one made in Cloudsdale fifteen years in the past, and a similar one, a month ago, in the ruins of wherever Flutter Valley lied. “I’m such an irresponsible foal,” Twilight breathed. “Oh, Starlight, that wasn’t my intended takeaway. Never. I didn’t want the weight of a debt on your shoulders. That was the last thing I wanted. What I mean, what I meant back then, was… was, y-you remember the song? What the girls and I taught you in the week that followed?”
Another nod. “Now I do. Of course.”
“‘Friends are always there for you,’” Twilight sang in a broken melody. “At the time, it was to demonstrate that true friends will never abandon you for such petty shortcomings. That, in spite of our differences, we’d stick together, help one another, no matter the cost to ourselves. We cared about you, Starlight. I mean it: we cared. I never told you that outright because I felt you disliked pity, but—”
“I never wanted more than I already had,” Starlight inadvertently finished. Harsher on herself, of course, but that was the truth of it. “I couldn’t stand it,” she croaked. “And I still can’t, Twilight. I guess, in the end, that this is my selfish reason for running away.”
“Oh, Starlight, you’re not selfish.” This poor, hurting pony. All of them have been ignorant, distant—no wonder she felt they didn’t know her at all. “I’m sorry you were never comfortable being honest with us.”
“I am, too.” She sniffled, and pulled back, keeping her hooves on Twilight. “I’m sorry, too. I should have known better—”
“And that’s something we always experience. There’s no shame in that!” She smiled weakly.
It only deepened Starlight’s frown. “Nothing compared to what I’ve done.”
Twilight maintained her honest feelings: smiling, in spite of her pain. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I hurt you the same way, after all.”
In dropping her head on Twilight’s shoulder, Starlight’s horn grazed Twilight’s cheek. “I’m so stupid.” A faint burn ran the length of her muzzle.
It was microscopic compared to the warmth of Starlight’s touch. “You’re not.”
“But if I just talked—”
“None of this would have happened, I know,” Twilight finished. “I’m in the same boat, I’m afraid.” But she didn’t care. She didn’t care because Starlight was listening, she was realizing, and she was feeling bad about her actions and learning as she always had. “Starlight?”
Stifled chokes answered.
“Starlight, in all my years of living in Ponyville, charged with learning friendship, one lesson I always failed to learn was that it’s okay to rely on friends to help. This has been my consistent failing, even to this day.” Starlight’s uneven breathing filled the silence. “Friendship? It’s not a give-and-take affair. It’s really, truly all about letting the ponies who you care about, and care for you in turn, inside your world. They want to be a part of that! Otherwise, they wouldn’t feel so hurt in being denied this.” Starlight shivered, wracked with what had to be guilt. “That’s what friendship is, Starlight—not just making the ponies you care about happy, but having a bond you wouldn’t share with any random stranger.”
She was silent for a moment, and then, “You girls have done this for me all these years. You, Trixie and even Maud, at least this past month… And I—”
“Can still mend what’s been broken. That’s the idea of fixing, Starlight.”
She pried away, forelegs squeezed around her throbbing, narrow stomach. “I can’t just ignore what I’ve done to them, Twilight! I made Maud cry, for goodness sake!”
“And she’s willing to overlook that! She cares about you, Starlight, just as deeply as I do.” Twilight pat her sore but mending heart. “That’s why I’m forgiving you now.”
“Oh, why do you all care about me?” Starlight asked the bubble’s dome. “Why am I so gosh-darn worth all this nonsense?”
“Because we know you care on a level few ponies really do,” said Twilight. “Because I have somepony I just couldn’t live without anymore—somepony who knows me well enough to unabashedly tell me like it is. Who can do that without making me feel judged or silly—something not even Spike can manage! And Rainbow Dash to fail at in the heat of the moment, too.” Starlight cast her gaze aside with knitted brows. “I care about you because you’re my friend. Because we share a bond uncommon to even my closest friends, that doesn’t make sense to anypony but us! You’ve failed, sure, and you hurt me. But so have I, and no friendship is without its hard times. But you, Starlight, you get back up quicker than anypony I’ve met. You take your guilt and try your best to turn it into something I’m inspired by.”
Pained eyes snapped to meet hers. “B-but I—!”
“I understand that that’s why you always hid from us,” Twilight said aloud, then gentler, “that you couldn’t look us in the eye—because you regret what you’d done not solely for the loss of your magical abilities, but because of the pain you felt it put us through. I know that doesn’t lessen the guilt you’re feeling, and I can’t promise that that’ll ever go away, because that simply isn’t who you are. But what I do know, is that even now, in this horrible, asinine decision you made… it was done with the best of intentions, without fear or desire of absolving yourself of guilt, but to—in your mind—attone.” For the umpteenth time Starlight fell apart, cupping her face to hide it. “And for that, regardless of how you fail,” Twilight continued over her cries, and Starlight’s, “that is why I’m able to look past your failures. It’s why your father is able to do the same! And Trixie and Sunburst and Fluttershy and all the rest: we love you, Starlight. You’re a caring, selfless, amazing pony, and I am so, so sorry it had to come to this before I was able to tell you!”
“T-Twilight?” She didn’t look up.
“Yeah?” Everything was still—Starlight, the moment, Twilight’s heart… even the blizzard outside. Twilight glanced to the heavens, catching the tail-end of a ghostly herd galloping off into the jagged horizon.
“Twilight, I’m…” Starlight’s gaze was downcast. A green, filmy tear clung desperately to her snout before she rubbed it off.
With a thick sniffle, Starlight met her eyes, brows set and determined. “I think I’m ready to go home now.”