"When you're rife with devastation, there's a simple explanation. You're a toy maker's creation trapped inside a crystal ball. And whichever way he tilts it, know that we must be resilient. We won't let them break our spirits as we sing this silly song!"
When Twilight Sparkle blinked open her eyes, she was met with a vast whiteness. There was no shape to the landscape before her, no form, save for a vague shadow underneath of her representing the ground.
"Hello?" she called. A faint echo responded. "Pinkie? Applejack? Rarity? Fluttershy?" She frowned. "Rainbow Dash, if this is some sort of prank-"
"Oh trust me - it's no prank."
Twilight whirled around to find a strange being before her. He was a pyramid, or at least one side of one: he appeared to be two-dimensional, flat as paper. He wasn't very large - maybe two feet tall. His limbs were black, and floating just over the tip of his triangle was a tall, thin top hat. He had a single eye, and a black bowtie. His entire body was encased in a golden glow. Among his notable features was that he appeared to be floating.
She took a step back. "Who are you?" she demanded. "And what are you? Where am I?"
"Questions, questions. Always with the questions," the pyramid said. He tucked his arms behind his back and floated around Twilight. "The name's Bill Cipher. I'm a dream demon, and you, little horse, are in Purgatory."
"What?" Twilight spluttered. "P-Purgatory? Why am I in Purgatory?" She grew defensive again. "Did you send me here?" Her horn sparkled with pink energy.
Bill mimed wetting his thumb and forefinger and pinched the tip of Twilight’s horn, extinguishing the glow. "No. You're here simply because your time came, as did mine. You met the big end, and now you're here," he explained.
Twilight backed away from him. "Impossible! I was just with all of my friends! Where are they?"
"In their own Purgatories most likely. You say you didn't...kick the bucket? No disease, no injuries, no pain?" Bill raised what would've been half his eyebrow at her, if he had one.
Twilight shook her heard fiercely, tears welling in her eyes. "No! This is impossible! I can't...poof out of existence! I can't just die! Equestria needs me!"
Bill chortled to himself, and floated down to her height. "Simmer down," he said. "This Equestria of yours is most likely a pleasant memory by now."
"What?" Twilight was forced to take deep breathes and a step back, looking around wildly at the whiteness about her. The tears were gone – her eyes were wide and manic. "I failed...how...how did I fail? I couldn't have. How? I couldn't have let the princesses down. We won, didn't we?"
"You didn't fail anyone," Bill said firmly, crossing his arms in front of him. Twilight's focus snapped back at him. He shook his head, or rather his body. "Sometimes it's a burden to be an all-seeing eye...and a pain to try and explain it."
"What are you talking about?" Twilight demanded.
"I can see the big picture, sixer," Bill said. He looked down, muttering to himself. "Man, never thought I'd get to say that to someone again." He looked back up at her. "I'll put it this way: if you're in Purgatory, that means you get a second chance. You're not being scrapped - you're going to be recycled. Maybe something new, maybe the same old, same old. If it's something new, though, you're not going to remember much, if any."
"I can go back? How?"
"That's not up to either of us to decide." The hands went back behind his back. "When the time comes, the time comes. So to as you ended, you will begin again. It's a bumpy cycle. However, there's more pressing matters here." He seemed to be glaring.
"What?" Twilight did not care for the look in his eye.
"This isn't your Purgatory."
Twilight blinked and looked around. "It's not?" she asked. "I mean, if everyone has their own Purgatory, I sure wouldn't want mine to look like this."
"That's because it's mine," Bill said flatly. “I think I was put here to, well, think. Best way to do that: no distractions. A void."
"I see." Twilight nodded. "That is odd that I'm here then."
"Maybe it has something to do with what you were back in this...Equestria," Bill offered. "What exactly were you to this old world of yours?"
"Oh, how rude of me. I didn't introduce myself, I'm-"
"Twilight Sparkle, an allicorn. I get it," Bill said. "All-seeing eye, remember? I've known about you before I got sent here."
"Right," Twilight said, a little trepidatious. "Well, I was Princess Celestia's best student, not to brag or anything. Then I became the princess of friendship. My friends and I protected Equestria, and I was to be Princess Celestia's heir."
Bill looked mortified. "Are you kidding me? The princess of friendship?" he exclaimed, seemingly to someone above. "You send the princess of friendship of all beings here? Is this some kind of big joke?"
"W-Who are you yelling at?" Twilight asked.
"The being who sent me here," Bill huffed. He crossed his arms grumpily. "'Absolve my crime,' he says. A whole lot of good I can do towards that here, with the princess of friendship." He glanced at Twilight. "No offense."
"What sort of crime are we talking about here?" Twilight frowned, worried.
"Eh, nothing major, just destroying my entire home dimension," Bill said casually.
Twilight couldn't help herself and her jaw went slack. Here was a two-foot tall floating pyramid, who could talk with no mouth and see everything with just one eye, and he had destroyed a dimension.
"You're serious, right?" she asked. "An entire dimension?"
"Yep. Wasn't that big a deal, really."
"Sounds like it to me. So...what happened to you? That caused you to end up here, I mean."
"I died – punched into oblivion and incinerated, erased," Bill said, looking away. "Been here a few years now. Alone."
Twilight stepped up and attempted to set a hoof on the dream demon's shoulder, but her hoof phased right through him. She retracted it with a sheepish grin. "Listen, maybe whoever put you here wants you to do good in whatever form you take next." A look of enlightenment crossed her face. "That's why I'm here! To show you the error of your ways!"
"Oh great," Bill groaned, rolling his eye. "Or, more plausible idea: you've been sent to torture me until I'm remade."
"Nonsense. Look, I helped reform a god of chaos back where I'm from. I think I can handle this."
"Fine, you may as well try. I can’t exactly leave." Bill sighed. "What's the big whoop about doing good anyway?"
"Well, it makes you feel good inside. My friend Pinkie, for example, is...well, was always helping others when she could. Sometimes she was a little pushy, but she did her best to make others happy, and it always made her super happy in return."
"Being pushy made your friend happy? What kind of crowd, or herd, rather, did you run with?" He snickered at his own joke.
Twilight frowned. Perhaps she was looking at Bill's problem from the wrong angle. "You said something about absolving your crime. What's that all about?" she asked.
Bill shrugged. "All I got was: 'If he wants to shirk the blame, he'll have to invoke my name. One way to absolve his crime. A different form, a different time.'"
"Absolve, to set you free from guilt," Twilight elaborated. "Do you feel guilty about what you did?"
"Of course not. I'm not sorry for what I did, nor do I feel bad!" Bill snapped, turning away from her.
"It was your entire home dimension, right? Doesn’t that make you the last dream demon of your kind? For that matter, the last form of life from your home?"
"So what if I am? I like being the only one."
"Well, I wouldn't. No one to relate to, to talk to, to look at you with some level of familiarity? I wouldn't want to live that life."
"Well I have, for over a trillion years, in fact!" Bill drooped slightly. "Why would I feel lonely?" He drooped further. "Why should I care about my home when I can have the multiverse?"
"Because home is where you came from, it's a part of who you are, Bill," Twilight explained softly. "It's always going to be a part of you, no matter if it's there or...just a memory..."
Bill glanced back at her. The princess had sat down, her head bowed as she tried to control her tears, her eyes shadowed. He could hear her struggling to speak, and didn't need to look in her head to know what she was going through.
"Bill, I had a wonderful life in Equestria. I had so many friends, I got to do something to not only better my world, but help spread my wisdom and my teachings so that it could carry on after me and my friends. To know it's all just a memory, for naught, that it doesn't exist anymore…I…I..."
Bill turned to her and his gaze softened and he floated down to her level again. Ever so gently, he raised her chin. Tears flowed down Twilight's face and pooled against the void around them. It was a look of loss he could hardly bear to see.
"So," he said. "That's what it feels like when it's gone, huh? That good feeling of yours?"
Twilight sniffled and wiped at her nose. "It's what it means to care about where you came from," she said with a croaky voice. Bill sighed and looked down.
Bill nodded, or rather his body bobbed slightly and he turned from her. His arms slipped behind him and his fingers netted together. He didn't have anything to say, nothing that came to mind to ease the allicorn. So instead, he looked. He couldn’t very much see his own future, but maybe…
After a moment of silence, he shut his all-seeing eye. "Twilight," he said. "Maybe my sight's not what it used to be in this void, but I know something." He turned to her, his eye open. "Whatever future the cosmos has in store for you, you're going to keep doing what you're good at. And I'm sure those friends of yours, in some shape or form, will be there too."
"You really think so?" Twilight wiped at her cheek.
"Well, I can still see a little," Bill said with a soft, cryptic chuckle. He floated down to her. "Maybe I'll give this good thing a try, whenever I’m remade. I mean, if it feels that bad removed, the flipside has to be a rush, right?" Twilight smiled weakly and nodded.
"Do you think I'll be here long?" she asked, looking around.
"Couldn't say, but, while we're waiting…" Twilight jumped back when, in a sweep of blue fire, a chess set appeared between the two of them. The pieces on Bill's side glowed blue, while the pieces on Twilight's side glowed pink. "It's a bit boring playing against myself. So, care for a game, princess?"
Twilight smirked and approached the board, her horn with a faint pink glow around it. "Only if you're offering."
A chair appeared floating behind Bill, and he took a seat in it, while Twilight settled down fully, tucking her legs under her. And so they played, beginning to end, end to beginning.
Dedicated to a community that inspires friendship.