Canterlot City was in shambles.
At least, that was how it looked at first glance. But no, as Rarity kept looking with eyes as wide as they could go, she saw that it was far worse: Canterlot City was in scrambles.
Nearly every building she saw seemed to be a mismatch of at least two or three others, and those were the lucky ones: the unlucky ones seemed to be half themselves, and half nothing at all. They showed open rooms like exposed guts, sagging and threatening to collapse.
Lines crisscrossed the streets like the aftermath of some arcane earthquake. It took Rarity several seconds to figure out what she was seeing there, but finally she understood: parts of the city were plain old missing, and what was left had been joined clumsily together, as if by wrinkles in spacetime.
And the sky—the sky—was neither day nor night. It had a purple glow to it, as if the whole city was being bathed in a violet aurora, and the stars it held were nothing like Rarity had ever seen. There were far more of them, for a start, and they drifted as she watched.
She raised a hand, tried not to let it tremble, and slapped herself very hard.
“Ow,” she said. The pain in her face felt about right for what she'd feel if she were awake, and she certainly wasn't bolting to consciousness in a normal version of her bedroom. “So... I think we're awake,” she said, pulling her head back through the window, “and the world may have ended while we weren't looking.”
“Oh, Rarity.” Twilight chuckled. “Good guesses. Really good guesses, actually! But wrong on both counts.”
She grinned, and walked away from the window, twirling as she went. “Nothing's ended, Rarity—everything's just changed! The magic in my Helm seems to have merged dreams and reality! So we can't really say we're 'awake' or 'asleep',” she said, adding the air quotes herself, “because neither term has any meaning anymore!”
“How?” Rarity pulled herself away from the window to look at Twilight. “How on Earth did your Helm do this—where is it?” She froze, and looked around, and saw no evidence of the device.
Twilight flapped her hand. “Eh, don't worry about it. It'll turn up.”
“We need to find it, Twilight, it might be the key to fixing all this!”
“Fixing?” Twilight giggle-snorted. The sound was usually cute. Right now it sent a chill crawling down Rarity's spine like a spider. “What's there to fix? I mean, have you looked at this?”
She raised her hands, and—the building shuddered. Rarity yelped, bending her knees to brace for whatever this was, but Twilight just stared up at the ceiling with a gleeful smile upon her face. And after a moment, Rarity saw what was happening: the ceiling, and the whole roof, was hinging upward as if she were in an oversized dollhouse.
“Wow, this is a way better view.” Twilight smiled all the wider, staring up into an unknown cosmos. “Seriously, Rarity, look at it! It's incredible!”
And Rarity looked. She'd only glanced before, but the longer she watched, the more she saw. Comets blasting across her field of vision, almost audible as they sparkled and fizzled and burned. Actual lines drawing themselves between stars, forming constellations as if the sky were an astronomy textbook. As she watched, one of the stars winked out—and then exploded into a supernova a moment later, so that for several seconds there was a new sun in the sky, forcing her to shield her eyes.
“Doesn't it take your breath away, Rarity?” Twilight's voice was almost hypnotic. “What do you say? We could find a hill somewhere, and lay out a blanket, and lie down in the grass like it's the Fourth of July, and just watch this. Forever. Until the end of time.”
And heavens above, Rarity was considering it. The starfield above seemed to expand, as if her eyes were zooming in, letting them grab more and more of her vision, more and more of her mind—
She looked down and saw she was floating several feet above the floor. She yelped, and gravity remembered its job, and she landed awkwardly. “This is bad, Twilight, really really bad!” She took Twilight by the shoulders, trying to wrench her attention away from the stars. “I have no idea how your little invention caused all of this, but we need to find it and....”
Rarity trailed off. “Midnight,” she murmured.
Twilight cocked her head. “What?”
“Midnight! You were fighting her in the dream, and then there was this, this light, and then we woke up to this!” Rarity felt her knees tensing again, ready for action, and she tried to concentrate on the magic in her geode. “She's got something to do with this, I know she does—and if dreams are mixed with reality right now, then she could be—”
“Ssshhhhh.” Twilight laid a finger on Rarity's lips, staring intently into her eyes. “Ssh ssh ssh ssh sh. Just calm down and stargaze with me, Rarity. Everything will be fine.”
Rarity grabbed the hand and shoved it away from her face. “Everything is not fine! It's clearly terrible, and—and you should care!” There was that cold feeling down her back again. “You should care. Twilight would care. Twilight would be trying to fix this.”
And the Twilight in front of her smiled, in a way that the real Twilight never would in a situation like this. And now that Rarity was looking harder, she didn't have glasses. Her hair was neater and more lustrous, her eyes didn't have bags—everything about her was perfect. “Wow, that's a lot of negativity there. Like, didn't we just go over this? Nothing needs fixing!”
“You... what are you? Where's Twilight?” Rarity backed away, and looked all around the room, as if the real one were concealed somewhere.
Twilight didn't approach her. She just winked. “I am Twilight, silly. Precisely the best parts of Twilight, in fact, without all that icky disgusting Midnight—” she turned to the side and spat the word like it was the vilest, most vulgar, most disgusting curse imaginable—and then she was looking at Rarity again, a grin twisting her face “—gumming up the works. And let me tell you something....” She leaped into the air, ten feet high, maybe twenty, and hung there. “I've never felt better!”
Rarity kept backing up, bumping against her bed and nearly tripping. And then she looked at the bed, and gasped. It was like a strange, three dimensional magic eye puzzle: viewed one way, it was Rarity's bed, empty and with the sheets messy and unkempt. Viewed in another way?
It was Twilight, sleeping on Twilight's bed, the helm still upon her head. “Twilight!” Rarity yelled, leaping forward, and the apparition flickered and disappeared. She stopped, and screwed up her face, and concentrated, trying to see it the way she had before—
Twilight was back. “Twilight, wake up!” Rarity hurried forward, still concentrating, and grabbed the Helm and pulled with all her might—and was quite surprised when it came off as easily as any hat. She'd half-expected it to be magically affixed in some way.
But Twilight was still asleep, and the world was still shattered. “I don't understand,” Rarity said. “Why won't you wake up?” She reached out, tried to take hold of Twilight's shoulder—
Purple magic surrounded her, and slammed her backward into the wall opposite the bed. “Nuh-uh-uh,” the fake Twilight said, wagging her finger as Rarity wheezed from the wind leaving her. “This Sleeping Beauty isn't looking for a Princess Charming to wake her.” She snapped her fingers, and a translucent dome appeared around the bed. Then another one, and another one. They looked as solid as Rarity's magic diamonds, if not more so.
Rarity stumbled on her feet. “Twilight,” Rarity gasped, looking at her, “or whatever you are, this has to stop. We have to bring the world back to normal. Let me wake her—”
“Normal?” The not-Twilight leaned her head back and let out her longest, loudest peal of laughter yet. “Are you kidding? Normal for me is terrible! It's anxiety, and no sleep, and having a shoulder demon that never goes away. This is the new normal, Rarity, and if you're anything like me? You're gonna love it here.” She lowered her head, and fixed her gaze on Rarity. “No matter how long it takes me to convince you.”
Rarity turned and ran for the window, and then heard another finger snap, and saw yet another glass dome surrounding the house. She put her back against the open window, and saw that the bed didn't even have Twilight in it anymore, and the not-Twilight was walking closer. Rarity's breath hitched in her throat, and she backed up as much as possible, and she tried to activate her geode to make a barrier but it wasn't working, why wasn't it working—
Outside the window, something shattered, and someone yelled, “Jump! I'll catch you!”
Rarity didn't need to be told twice. She pushed herself out onto the window sill, and bent her legs, and jumped with all her might. In front of her, not-Twilight just kept smiling, but for the first time it looked strained. She reached the apex of her jump, and then started falling, her insides first and then the rest of her—
“Got you!” said the familiar voice, and a hand grabbed Rarity's wrist, arresting her vertical momentum in a jerky movement. Her own hand flailed for a moment before she grabbed her savior's wrist in return, granting her a modicum of security. Then they were off, and Rarity watched as they flew through the dome—or rather, through a shattered hole in the dome, like some vandal had tossed a boulder through it. The shattered pieces reconstituted themselves as she watched, and within seconds of her escape, the dome was whole.
“All right, Rarity, you're safe from Twily,” said the voice as they sped across the broken suburbs. Then there was a humorless laugh. “Oh, who am I kidding. Like anyone's safe right now.”
Rarity's eyes widened. For the first time, she looked at the hand that had grabbed her, and saw that it was purple. Then, her eye tracked up the arm, along the chest, and finally to the head—and she yelled, “You!” and twisted her arm free.
“Rarity!” Midnight yelled, as Rarity plummeted to the ground, wind whipping at her hair.
She landed hard on someone's lawn, but managed to roll to take some of the impact. When she came to a stop, she did a quick check around her body, and nothing felt broken, so she shoved herself to her feet.
Midnight landed in front of her. “Are you stupid?” she demanded. “What kind of idiot lets go of the person carrying them?”
It was just as she'd appeared in the dream: same glowing glasses, same deep violet wings. Same sneering expression. “Stay away from me,” Rarity said. She backed away once again, looking around. She needed a weapon. Any weapon.
“You need to listen to me, right now,” Midnight snarled, advancing upon her. “Do you have any idea what you two just made me do?”
“I said stay away!” And Rarity raised her hand, and there was a sword in it, and she swung it down at Midnight's head.
And Midnight shrieked, and cowered, and yelled, “I'm not Midnight!”
Rarity stopped. The sword was several inches from Midnight's face. She'd nearly slashed someone with a sword. Also, she had a sword, what? She lowered the blade, examining its keen edge, seeing her confused face reflected in its mirrored surface.
After a moment, she considered what the girl in front of her had said. “You're what?”
“I'm not Midnight,” said Midnight. She was still hunched over and cowering. “At least not the same Midnight you've seen defeated.” Then she frowned and reconsidered: “Well, okay, I sort of am, because that Midnight was still Twilight, and I'm still Twilight, and so by the transitive property of equality—”
Rarity angled the sword up again, just a few degrees. Midnight yelped and fell back on her rear. “Don't hurt me, it's not my fault!”
Conscience caught up with Rarity, and she shoved the sword into the ground. Then she sat down. “Explain. Are you the same Midnight that appeared in Twilight's dream last night?”
“I—” Midnight gulped, and looked up from the ground to just barely meet Rarity's eyes. Then she looked away, as if she'd been trying to stare at the sun without glasses. “I guess I am.”
“And you've been doing this for weeks? In her dreams?” Rarity found herself leaning forward.
“Longer than that....”
Despite herself, Rarity bolted to her feet. “Then how is this not your fault?”
She heard Midnight sputtering something behind her, but at this point, the question was rhetorical. Rarity huffed and turned around. “All right. I need a moment, so please be quiet.”
“It's what she made me for,” she heard Midnight mumble.
“Quiet!”
Rarity gesticulated with her non-sword hand, because the sword hand was still holding the sword, and the sword was still planted in the ground, and she was working very hard to make sure it stayed there and didn't do something she might not regret. And since she gesticulated with her other hand, she realized for the first time what she was holding in that very hand, which she had been holding since leaving Twilight's/her own house.
She stared at it.
Okay. All right. Deep breaths. She was supposed to be the one who could make it through any situation, no matter how stressful, with a dazzling smile and a stylish outfit to match. In fact, if she recalled correctly, the exact words had been, the world could be ending and you'd just, you'd just go out and deal with it like you always do, because you're amazing.
She turned around, thought about a pillow until one appeared on the ground in front of her, and then she picked it up and smushed her face into it and screamed and screamed and screamed.
Then she dropped the pillow and turned back around, and smiled at Midnight. “Right. I'm going to go save the world and look fabulous in the process. Are you coming?”
Midnight, on the other hand, wasn't looking back at her. She was sitting on the ground, knees huddled near her face, cocooning herself with her wings. She didn't respond, and when Rarity let out another prompting, “Midnight?” she still didn't respond.
Rarity snorted, and walked closer, leaving the sword behind. “Darling, this is not the sort of can-do attitude I'd expect from a destroyer of worlds.”
Midnight winced at that. “This is what she was afraid of, you know.” Her voice was so small that Rarity could hardly hear it.
Rarity kneeled down beside her, and after a little while, Midnight kept going. “This is what she made me for. I was supposed to criticize her, castigate her, wear the face of her greatest failure so that she'd never forget how much she screwed up. So that she'd never make that much of a mistake again.”
She sighed. “And then she shoved me out of her head, and look what happened—the magic of the Helm tried to inject a dream into reality, as if the two aren't completely incompatible. And now, reality's in tatters. Again. Why bother doing anything?”
Rarity squinted. “You were doling out that outrageous abuse because it... felt like the right thing to do?”
“It was the right thing to do.”
“No it wasn't.” Rarity sighed. “But for that she had you in her head, torturing her? All this time, and none of us ever knew?”
Midnight snorted, still not meeting her eyes. “Things can be broken without looking broken, Rarity. Remember?” Then she slumped in on herself. “It doesn't matter, since that's not my job anymore. Things are stuck like this forever now, and I might as well just sit here and feel sorry for myself.”
“As opposed to, just for instance,” Rarity said, suppressing an eye roll, “getting up and helping me fix reality?”
“How do you know you won't make everything worse?” Midnight hunched in tighter.
“Because....” Rarity took a few seconds to compose her thoughts. Then she reached out and took Midnight's hands, and started unwinding her arms from her knees. “I don't see how the situation can possibly get worse from this, but I'll admit that it could surprise me. This week has been full of surprises. But you know what?”
Rarity reached in, and gently took Midnight's head, and lifted it so that they made eye contact. “The world is broken, and Twilight needs help. So I don't care if things could get worse. They need to get better, and we're the only ones who can do it. The chance of failure is no reason not to try.”
“It's the best reason.” Midnight tried to avert her gaze, but since Rarity still held her head, all she could do was look down. “There's no point trying to fix anything right now.”
“Then why did you save me?”
Midnight stiffened.
“I know you're afraid. In fact, I know you're fear. Twilight's fear.” Rarity leaned closer. “But that just means you're part of Twilight, and the Twilight I know would want to save the world. Just like you saved me. Because you know there's still a chance.” Rarity put her hands on Midnight's shoulders. “What do you say?”
There was a pause. At last, Midnight dared to look up into Rarity—and then just as quickly averted her eyes. “It's still hopeless. I mean... look at that.”
She raised her hand and pointed back at the house they'd come from. From the outside, it was a mishmash of Rarity's and Twilight's houses, but more to the point, it was surrounded by at least a dozen translucent magical domes, and their combined opacity rendered it almost invisible.
Rarity stood and examined it. “Yes, I would say that Twilight has done quite a number—that is, not the real Twilight, the fake one....” She put her hand on her chin and cogitated. “Daylight! Yes, Daylight Sparkle. That's exactly the right name for her.”
“Whatever you wanna call her.” Midnight was speaking into her knees again. “I barely broke through one of those. I can't break through all of them, and you definitely can't. It's impossible.”
“Well, lucky us.” Rarity reached down, took Midnight's hand, and pulled her to her feet: to her credit, Midnight didn't resist. “I wasn't planning on accessing Twilight quite like that.”
Midnight frowned at her. “Then how?”
“Well, I had a more direct route in mind.”
And Rarity held up the Helm, smiling smugly.
“Where are we?” Midnight said, setting Rarity down on the ground.
Rarity took a moment to think about that. She'd had a plan in mind, obviously. She'd been about to tell Midnight to pick her up, carry her, and start flying around the ruined Canterlot City until they knew where to find someone who could work with magic and who wasn't Twilight. And then... it had just sort of happened.
A part of her was realizing that, oh yes, this was how movement sometimes worked in dreams: all about the destination, not the journey. The bigger, more dominant part of her was trying not to vomit.
“Oh,” Applejack was saying, “that is... that is not okay.” Next to her was Fluttershy. She was on the ground, fainted and stiff as a board. Somehow, in a reality where sleep no longer existed, she had managed to pass out.
“I just....” Rainbow Dash was scratching her head. “I don't get how it even, like, works? Like, whose half of the head does the thinking?”
Sunset and Pinkie were also there, but they didn't seem to have any input. Rarity, looking on from the side, covered her mouth.
The location was, more or less, Applejack's farm—although the barn seemed to have been cross-bred with Fluttershy's house, and Sunset's apartment, and possibly a couple of other buildings as well. The girls were looking out at the fields where the animals of Sweet Apple Acres spent their time. And, without going into too much detail—because Rarity was certain she might have a minor conniption if she thought about such details—what had happened to the houses had also happened to the animals.
“I mean, it's better than the other one,” Sunset said, dubiously. “Like, that pig we saw before Fluttershy blacked out. How was it not... you know....”
“You don't need to elaborate,” Applejack said.
“Spilling?”
“Aaaaand you elaborated.” Applejack put her hand on her face. It was unclear, from Rarity's perspective, whether she was simply facepalming or had seen more than a mortal mind could bear for the moment. “I just wanted to sit here and wonder how it balances on two legs, and then you had to say a thing like spilling.”
“What's the problem?” Pinkie Pie piped up. “I walk on two legs all the time—heck, sometimes on one leg!” She raised one leg and hopped in a circle. “And I never have any trouble with keeping my—”
She froze mid-turn. Specifically, the part of the turn that got her facing Rarity and, more pertinently—
“Oh my god! MIDNIGHT SPARKLE!” And Pinkie Pie reached behind her back and pulled out about a dozen party cannons, and every wick was burning down fast.
Midnight cringed back. Rarity took a step forward, raising a protective arm. “It's okay, I'm with her—”
“Oh my god! MIDNIGHT SPARKLE KIDNAPPED RARITY!” Another dozen party cannons appeared. By now, the rest of the girls had refocused their attention (except the still-unconscious Fluttershy) and some of them were entering fighting stances.
Rarity held her hands around her mouth and yelled, “Pinkie, shut up!”
The sound was titanic. The grass in the field actually blew back from the sound of her voice, and the wicks on Pinkie's cannons blew out. She, as well as the other girls, raised their hands to their faces in self defense.
When it was over, Rarity held out her hand toward Midnight. “She is not exactly who she looks like, and she is helping me to solve this nightmare scenario, so I would appreciate it if you didn't try to turn her into confetti, mm?”
Rarity glanced down at her. Midnight was cowering, hands hovering by her ears. “She's got really good control over the dream,” she said, glancing at Pinkie.
“Hold on a second.” With a movement as impossible as her previous movements, Pinkie stowed the cannons behind her back. Then she bounded forward, right up to Rarity. “Did you just say that this is a dream?” She frowned, then raised her hand, poised for a self-slap—
Rarity took her wrist and gently lowered it. “It's complicated. Twilight's dreams—” she nodded at Midnight “—got merged with reality somehow, and we need to undo it.”
Midnight stared at the ground.
Now Sunset was approaching at a light jog. She looked down gravely at Midnight, and then reached out a hand, opened and ready to help Midnight up. “She never got over you, huh.”
Midnight sneered and looked away from it. “Did you 'get over it'?”
"I guess I didn't...." Sunset sighed. “But I got through it. You can accept what happened, and learn and grow from it like any other painful lesson. Or you can let it fester.”
“Just call me Uncle Fester, then.” Midnight still wasn't meeting her eyes. “I knew you'd slip into moralizing mode. Can't you save it for someone who's not evil?”
Sunset knelt down in front of her. “I did.”
Midnight winced back. Sunset reached around her own neck, took off her necklace with the geode, and put it in her pocket—her gestures exaggerated almost to the point of pantomime, and very noticeable. Then she stuck out her hand again. “You're not evil—you're a part of my friend. Our friend. Even if it's a part that's hurting.”
Midnight looked away for a few seconds more. Then she forced herself to meet Sunset's eyes, if only for a moment, and took her hand. Sunset stood, pulling Midnight up with her.
“So,” Sunset said, looking at Rarity. “You said that the problem was that Twilight's dreams got out into reality, right? I think Princess Twilight had a similar problem a while back, with Princess Luna and something called the Tantabus.” As Rarity opened her mouth to ask, Sunset plowed ahead: “Long story, no time, but the point is that if my intuition's right, we need to get Twilight's dreams back into her head, right?”
Rarity nodded.
“So....” Sunset shrugged, and looked at Midnight. “Can't you just fly over to Twilight and get back inside her—”
She trailed off, and when Rarity saw what she was looking at, she understood why. The domed-off house over yonder, the one where Twilight was sleeping, didn't just have domes around it anymore. As they watched, earth and bits of buildings rose from the ground, enveloped in purple glow, and placed themselves around the dome like bricks in a giant tower. And the exterior magical dome was rising, up and up as the bricks kept coming, until it looked like—
“An observatory,” Rarity breathed. “She said she wanted us to watch the stars.”
“What?” That was Rainbow Dash, who'd run up beside them. “Twilight's doing that in her sleep?”
Midnight shook her head, still trying not to meet anyone's eyes. “I'm not the only one that came out of her head. Daylight's keeping watch over Twilight, making sure no one else interrupts.”
“Okay. Extra complications, that's fine. Okay.” Sunset pinched the bridge of her nose, sucking in deep breaths. “Contact Equestria via the journal, ask for help? Writing doesn't work the same way in dreams, it probably wouldn't work. Go through the portal, ask in person? No, god no, that might screw up Equestria just as bad as this if any of the dream got through too. Use our magic, somehow?”
“Dunno if you've noticed, sugarcube—” Applejack jogged up beside her “—but the magic's been a little unreliable just recently.” She held out her own geode, and there was a faint and flickering orange light, like a fluorescent without enough power.
“Of course it has.” Sunset's hand moved inward, from merely pinching her nose to clutching over her mouth. “Come on, Sunset, think, there must be some way to get through to her—”
Rarity ahemed. Sunset stopped rambling and looked her way. “I did actually have an idea already,” Rarity said. She smiled, then reached down and into a stylish leather purse she'd been carrying the whole time, at least the whole time she'd been thinking about it—and from it she pulled out the Helm.
Sunset leaned in, hand lowering from her face.
“It's what Twilight was using to get into my head. She called it the Helm.” Rarity held up the device. “If she can use it to get into my head, then I—” she turned the Helm a hundred and eighty degrees in her hands “—can use it to get into hers.”
“Uhhhh....” That was Rainbow Dash again, who was frowning. “So why are you telling us? Why not just put it on right now?”
Rarity sighed. “Twilight did something very complicated and, ahem....” She blushed a little, remembering an afternoon well spent. “Simply very complicated to make sure this Helm would go into my head, specifically. I don't think it'll be able to find hers right away....” She proffered it to Sunset and beamed. “But perhaps our resident magic expert might be able to figure something out, provided she had, just for instance, a bit of Twilight to work with?”
“What?” Midnight said. “Where's the bit of....” She trailed off, because everyone was looking at her.
Sunset took the Helm and frowned. And then she turned it over in her hand and frowned deeper, and sat down with it in her lap. She took her geode back out of her pocket, and she put it on, and then she placed her palm on the device, and she closed her eyes. Rarity thought she could see little fits and starts of flashes behind her eyelids, as her geode struggled to function.
And then she stood up. “I can't.”
Rarity took a step back. “I'm sorry, what?”
“I can't,” Sunset said, and stepped toward her, “because your magic signature is already in here, and it's locked in too tightly. I can't extract it to make room for Twilight's. No signature from Twilight, no way to get into her head.”
“But—but there must be something we can do!”
“Realistically speaking, there isn't.” Sunset paused. She looked around, at the strange landscape, at the stars crashing into one another, at the pigs that didn't bear description, at Twilight's observatory building itself higher and higher to the heavens. “But this is not exactly a realistic situation....”
She looked down at the ground, apparently struck with thought, and then looked at Rarity. “Sometimes magic can have... a mission. A goal it needs to reach before it dissipates. Maybe, just maybe, we need to achieve the goal, we need to... no. Not we.” She held out the Helm, right toward Rarity. “You. You need to put this on.”
“So I can get inside Twilight's head?”
“So you can get inside yours.”
Rarity blinked.
“The magical signature in this Helm was put there to help you. To deal with your issues. Maybe what you need to do is fix your own issues before fixing—”
Rarity held out a hand. “No, hang on. I am fixed. I've been doing quite all right, I've been getting excellent sleep with no nightmares, so it's pretty clear that Twilight is the one with the problem—”
“Did the nightmares stop?” Sunset had fixed her with one of those piercing glares. The kind of glare that affixed a person to a corkboard for examination. “Or did Twilight come in every night to end them?”
Rarity raised a finger, opened her mouth... and closed her mouth a few seconds later.
“So she treated the symptoms. You need to treat the cause.” Sunset stepped in closer, pushing the Helm right up against Rarity's front. “Come on, Rarity. You need this.”
Rarity looked away, gritting her teeth. “Pssh! I'm trying to help Twilight here, and, and I just can't believe you're trying to focus on my little problems!”
Sunset snorted. “Wow. You two really are perfect for each other.”
That felt like getting punched in the solar plexus. Rarity exhaled sharply, and then sucked in a breath through those gritted teeth. At length, she met Sunset's eyes, and then took the Helm. She turned it over in her hands a few times, rotated it, and at length she determined which part of the helmet was the front.
She lifted it over her head, and hesitated, and said, “Wish me luck?” to the group.
“Good luck,” said Applejack.
“Good luck,” said Rainbow Dash.
Fluttershy said nothing, because she was still out cold in the field.
“Good luck!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed, waving.
“You're probably gonna screw it up and the Helm will explode and you'll die of exploded head,” Midnight muttered without looking at her.
Sunset rolled her eyes, and placed a hand on Rarity's shoulder. “You've got this.” Then she frowned and turned around. “By the way, Rainbow Dash, do you have a twenty on you? Because you just lost a—”
Before she could lose her nerve, Rarity yanked the Helm down onto her head—
“Make it big.”
It was like being in a hall of mirrors, except that every other Rarity was turned the wrong way. She gasped, and looked around, and saw the back of her own head over and over again, and other than that—darkness.
“I'm going to make it big.”
She looked down and saw much the same thing, and then she saw the reflective floor beneath her crack. And then she saw it shatter.
“I need to make it big!”
She was falling, falling, amid infinite other Rarities, and there was a sound like a jet engine around her as the infinite blackness changed, brightened, and then glowed brighter and brighter—
Rarity screamed. It was as if her head was being split wide open, and something as big as the world was being pulled out.
“Rarity!” someone yelled behind her. She didn't know who. She was clutching her head, trying to hold it together, failing. Someone was screaming. It was probably still her.
Then it was over. Rarity shuddered, and breathed heavily for several seconds before opening her eyes. The Helm fell off her head as she sat up and looked around.
She was back in the real world, as far as that meant anything right now. Her friends were all around, looking extremely concerned for her welfare. Midnight was just looking at the ground. “I knew there would be a recursion problem,” she was muttering, “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it—”
What was new was the boutique.
Rarity stared at it as she slowly stood. Once upon a time, she and the other girls had taken an unusual detour through Equestria in the wake of yet another magical mishap—a cruise ship sinking, nothing major. She'd taken a little detour within that detour, just out of her way enough to see how her older Equestrian self was doing. The answer was quite well: she had her own line of shops, and her flagship in Ponyville was Carousel Boutique. At the time, the sight had filled Rarity with renewed vigor: if one Rarity could achieve her dream, so could the other!
Now she was looking at a second Carousel Boutique, here in the dream realm, and the sight wasn't filling her with anything other than a horrible, gnawing unease.
It was the paint, she realized as she walked closer. From a distance, everything looked in order: the blues and pinks and yellows complemented one another for an airy, chic facade. But as she approached, she saw that “facade” really was the only appropriate term. The paint was peeling, or running, or cracked everywhere she looked, and it seemed to be decaying before her very eyes. The awnings and curtains were frayed and sun-bleached. The windows were dirty and cobwebbed.
None of that, however, compared to what she heard as she reached the front door. It was a manic muttering from just inside the building: “Make it big. I'll make it big. I know I can make it big, I swear I can make it big—”
Which wouldn't have been so bad, except that it was her own voice. She grimaced, then reached into her purse and felt around until she found a certain steel hilt. Gripping it tightly with one hand, she pulled the door open with the other.
“I don't care what they say, I have it handled, and I can make it big.”
It occurred to Rarity, as she walked into the interior, that she had never seen the inside of the real Carousel Boutique. However, she could make some reasonable assumptions.
For instance, given that the exterior of the building had a radius of, oh, let's say twenty yards to be generous? And a height of two and a half stories? It was unlikely that the interior had a floor space you could fit a couple of football fields inside, and a roof that gave her vertigo just by looking up at it. A place large enough to be a hangar would be simply absurd, wouldn't it?
“I can do this. I know I can do this. Who says I can't do this?”
Also, she was sure that the other Rarity certainly sold a multitude of dresses, and sold them for people—well, ponies—of reasonable size. Not one gigantic, massive, unbelievable ballgown large enough for a mythological giant.
“I will make it big, I need to make it big!”
And one last thing: the Equestrian Rarity definitely didn't look like that.
“Hello?” Rarity called up to the other one of her. “Are you my... strange psychological doppelganger?”
The Rarity she saw froze. Then she turned away from the massive dress, and dove, and swept across the floor until she was hovering in front of Rarity's face. “Yes? Hello? What is it? I'm very busy but I'm sure I can pencil you in. Sometime in the next five years.”
“Um.” Rarity gave her a visual once-over. It was definitely herself, but with some changes... no, not changes so much as exaggerations. The hairstyle was that much curlier, the makeup was that much heavier, and Rarity was certain that if she were to wipe that makeup away, the bags under her doppelganger's eyes would be that much deeper.
But there was one big thing: her feet weren't touching the ground. She had wings on her back—
“Spit it out! What do you want? No time! Thank you for coming to Carousel Boutique, goodbye!” Before Rarity knew what was happening, her doppelganger was grabbing her by the shoulders, spinning her around, pushing her toward the door.
Rarity dug in her heels. “Just a minute! I wanted to see that lovely dress you've been making, dear. It's quite something.”
The shoving stopped. Rarity turned around and saw the other Rarity—she needed to come up with a name for her, if only her name were as easy to mess with as Twilight's—holding her eyes wide open. With the amount of mascara around them, they looked even wider. “Yes. My crowning achievement. Look.”
She pivoted around in midair, finally letting Rarity glance at her wings—four of them, sheer and transparent just like a dragonfly's, and vibrating madly—and then the doppelganger was flying away. “Just need to do this. This one more thing. I've got it handled. Then I'll have made it big.”
“Yes, it certainly is... rather large,” Rarity said, walking closer to the dress. She moved slowly, trying not to provoke any undue reactions. “I, um, I'm rather impressed.”
“It'll take me to new heights. I'm handling it. It's almost done.”
“Yes, dear, of course.”
This dress had some issues. Now that Rarity was close enough to see it, she could see all the yards of fabric that had been stitched together to make up the massive thing, all white like a bridal gown. The stitches were irregular, widely spaced, and far too visible against the fabric. On the whole, they looked like the work of an utter amateur—or someone cutting corners, someone pushing herself too hard against an unattainable deadline.
Rarity gulped, and a word came to mind: Vanity. That was the name she was looking for… and dear lord, did she really look like this from the outside? She really did have to start making some lifestyle changes, didn’t she?
“Dear,” she said, “I was wondering if I could talk about your work for a second.”
“Don't have a second,” Vanity called down from the top of the dress.
“I'm sure you feel that way, darling, but if you'd just take a moment to slow down and look at the stitches—”
“No!”
The shout filled the huge, hangar-like space, and left echoes after. Vanity zoomed back down, rage twisting her features, and jabbed a sewing needle toward Rarity's face. Her wings buzzed like a swarm of locusts. “Don't tell me to slow down. Don't tell me to lighten the load. Rarity can do anything she sets her mind to, and I am Rarity!”
Rarity took a nervous step back. “But, dear, you need to take care of yourself—” The wings, she realized. They were frayed, and bent, and looked to be on the verge of tearing themselves apart. It was a wonder Vanity was keeping herself aloft at all.
Vanity scowled. Then she flew back up, and made some more stitches, and cried out, “It's done!”
“Aha.” Rarity reached into her purse again, and grabbed the hilt of the sword. “What, exactly? What happens now?”
“It's done, it's finally complete, it's finished!” Vanity was screaming with joy, as she grabbed the upper back of the dress with both hands and both feet, and as her ruined wings finally slowed to a stop, folding against her back.“Thank you for coming to Carousel Boutique. Goodbye, forever!”
Rarity didn't have time to ask what she meant by that, because that was when the steam started coming out from the bottom of the dress. And that was when she heard a deep, booming noise, and looked up to see the top of the silo opening up to show the starry sky above.
That was when she heard the countdown. “Ten... nine... eight....”
The building wasn't just like a hangar, she realized. The building was a hangar.
“So long, cruel world!” Vanity was yelling at the top of her lungs, and she was only barely audible over the engine noises that were filling the room. “Rarity is off to new heights, and this time, the sky is not the limit!”
“Three... two... one... launch!”
The engines blasted on. Rarity was blasted back, straight through the door and out of the boutique, skidding across the grass on her back.
She forced herself up and looked. There was the outside of Carousel Boutique, and there was the gigantic hole in its roof. And after a second, there was the rocket-dress, lifting its way slowly out of the boutique.
If Vanity got out of there, if she made it out beyond the Earth—
Rarity jumped into action. She ran at the boutique, not at the door hole but at its wall. One jump—she was at the second floor, clinging onto the curving roof. Another jump—she was hanging from the upper cupola. But the rocket-dress was accelerating, and soon she wouldn't be able to go further without being blown back by the engines.
She pulled herself up, and found herself face to face with the dress. It was almost all the way out of the boutique now. She ran forward, she jumped—
And she reached into her purse, and pulled out her sword, and plunged it into the fabric just as the bottom of the dress cleared the roof.
The sword slipped a few feet, but at last it held. Rarity had both hands on the hilt, and it was a struggle even so to hold on, because the fabric of the dress was flapping around like clothes on the line in a gale. Nonetheless, she was holding on.
Which was more than she could say for the stitches. As she watched, the yard of fabric her sword was in was coming undone from its neighbors. The threads were pulling themselves loose from their holes, bit by bit.
Rarity gritted her teeth: the noise was tremendous, but she couldn't worry about that now. She pulled one hand off the hilt of the sword, and grabbed the fabric above her, and pulled herself forward with every bit of muscle strength she had and possibly a lot of strength she didn't. Then she pulled the sword from its hole, and plunged it yet higher still, and pulled herself further.
The yard of fabric was nearly undone. She kept climbing, ignoring the blast of the engines and the burning in her arms, and finally she reached the next yard—just in time. Just beneath her legs, the original yard of fabric gave way, and fell only a short distance before being shredded in the exhaust.
Rarity really wished she hadn't looked down. The ground below was already looking as distant as if she were on an airplane, and it was getting further and further. She gritted her teeth and focused her attention: this yard of fabric was coming apart too. The whole rocket-dress was falling to pieces all around her. She needed to keep moving.
The climb got less vertical, and therefore easier, as she kept moving; before long she had found a steady rhythm. Not long after that, she was at the dress's waist.
Her arms felt fit to fall off. She gritted her teeth, ignored it, and soldiered on.
Finally she reached the dress's breast. Heaving breath after breath, she pulled herself over the top—and there was her doppelganger. “Vanity!” she gasped.
Vanity was looking skyward, sheer unthinking joy on her face. And it was a face that looked far different from what Rarity had seen down below: the makeup had been blotted and smeared by air pressure, giving her an almost ghoulish appearance. Worst of all was the mascara: it streaked sideways across her face like tear tracks.
“Dear!” Wrapping her legs as far around the dress as they would go, Rarity reached out her free hand and roughly shook Vanity's shoulder. “We need to go!”
Only now did Vanity notice her. She looked down at Rarity, the joy in her face souring to cold disdain. “I don't need you in my dream!”
“This dream's unsustainable!” Rarity waved her hand down at the dress. “It's falling apart right underneath you. If you keep going it'll self-destruct!”
“I can do this! I've got this handled!” With terrible determination, Vanity turned her gaze skyward once more. “They'll see. They'll all see.”
Rarity chanced another glance downward. Nearly the entire dress below the waist had been reduced to tatters. The engine—whatever passed for an engine in this literal flight of fancy—was sputtering now, as if it had been critically damaged. “I can't let you do this to yourself,” she said, quietly enough that no one but herself could hear. “I...”
She closed her eyes, gritted her teeth, took in a deep breath. The dress was beautiful, really. No matter how rushed it was, how frantic its construction, it was gorgeous. A work of art, daring in its simplicity: it was something approaching a masterpiece.
It had to die. “Forgive me,” Rarity whispered.
Then she pulled her sword from the dress, located the point where the heart would have to be, and stabbed.
Immediately, she knew she'd done something more substantive than chopping away at fabric: she'd pierced something solid at the end of her sword. Moreover, the engine was sputtering now like never before, and she heard a beeping sound start up. A prelude, if she knew her action movies correctly, to an explosion.
Vanity's expression turned to horror. “What have you done?”
Rarity left the sword behind and crawled back up. “Dear, we need to get off this thing right now!”
Tears filled Vanity's eyes, even as they narrowed in anger. “You've ruined everything! I was so close, I was finally so close—”
Rarity reached out, and put her hand on Vanity's face, and smiled tenderly.
Then she lunged forward, and tackled Vanity, and knocked the both of them off the rocket. It only took seconds for the two of them to fall beneath the bottom of its tattered remains. It only took a few seconds more for it to explode, lighting up like another supernova in the starry sky.
They were falling, and the ground was worlds away.
“I could have done it!” Vanity screamed. “I had it handled, I had finally made it big, I....” She wiped away her tears with a hand—tears that were already flying up above her face, above her mussed-up hair—and sobbed, “Why did you ruin this for us?”
“It was never going to work,” Rarity said. The wind was flapping insistently at her clothes, trying to get her to pay attention to what was coming from below, but it could wait. “It was all coming apart. You needed to slow down.”
“I can't slow down! I'm Rarity, I have to keep moving!” Her wings flailed helplessly against the overwhelming force of gravity, of the air rushing past them.
“But you're putting yourself under too much pressure.”
“Pressure is what makes diamonds!”
“It's also what shatters them!” Rarity snapped. Then she sucked in a breath. “I know. I know it's hard. I know you don't want to feel like a failure, and I know that whenever you're not pushing ahead it feels like you're falling behind.”
Vanity stared at her for a few seconds. Then she crumpled, chin onto her chest. “It's never good enough,” she said. “No matter what I make, I could always have done it better. No matter how much I do, I should always do more. It's never enough. I'm never enough.”
Rarity shook her head. She glanced down. The ground was getting a little unnervingly close. She looked back up at Vanity. “You are enough. You're a wonderful friend, a genius designer, and a beautiful person. Beautiful out here—” she let one hand glide over Vanity's face, and then lowered it to point at her chest “—and in here. You just need to go easier on yourself.”
“And what if that means I'm not trying hard enough?” Vanity looked at her through red-rimmed eyes. “What if I'm not doing my best?”
Rarity smiled. “Taking care of yourself is your best. Leaving enough time for your friends, for the people you love, and for your own self? That is the best that you can do. And I promise you, Rarity....”
She reached out, and clasped Vanity's hands and held them in her own. “You and I are going to make it bigger than anyone's ever seen.”
Vanity sniffed. Then she let go of Rarity's hands, only so that she could grab around Rarity's back in a tight hug, and bury her face into Rarity's shoulder. Rarity hugged her in return. “There, there. We'll be all right. We'll be all right....”
With her eyes shut, Rarity didn't realize what was happening at first—but the tactile sensation of Vanity was changing. She opened her eyes to see her doppelganger glowing brightly, and glowing brighter still until she was nothing but light. And then, right before her very eyes, the light flowed into her.
Vanity was gone, and Rarity felt whole.
Of course, she was also still falling to her death, which could be a slight problem, but one thing at a time.
She gulped, seeing the ground approaching very alarmingly fast, actually. Now, in dreams, you usually woke up before hitting the ground. In real life, not so much. What would happen in this strange in-between place?
It didn't really bear thinking about, so she strained, and concentrated, and tried to imagine the dragonfly wings she'd seen upon her own back—
And then her vision was all covered in violet haze. “Got you!” Midnight yelled, and Rarity found herself slowing down—just in time, since she was maybe fifty feet from the ground. Then forty feet, then thirty, twenty, ten....
She touched down as gracefully as a cat, tiptoes first. Midnight's flying form touched down a few seconds later. She was grinning nervously. “You did it,” she said. “And your head didn't explode.”
Rarity grinned back.
“Rarity!” Sunset was running up to grab her in a hug. Shortly after, she was followed by Rainbow Dash, and Applejack, and Pinkie Pie (Fluttershy must still have been out cold). “I was so worried!” Sunset said into her ear. “There was the rocket, and then it exploded, and you were falling—”
With a firm shove, Rarity managed to dislodge them. “You were right,” she said. “I did need that.”
Sunset smiled. Then her eyes widened. She looked around from side to side, and then ran over to the discarded Helm, and scooped it up. “It looks like....” She examined it as she had before, but with renewed urgency. “Yes. Yes. The magical signature is cleared, and it can be reset! Midnight!”
Midnight flinched back. Rarity shook her head, smiling, and took Midnight's hand. “It's all right,” she said, leading Midnight over to the Helm. “We just need your help again. And you've been doing a great job of giving it,” she added, as Midnight grimaced and looked off to the side.
Sunset pushed the Helm toward Midnight. “Infuse your magic into this, as much as you can manage without burning it out. Quickly!”
Midnight sighed, and took the Helm in both hands. A few seconds later, when she handed it back, it was glowing purple with all the magic it had absorbed.
“All right,” Rarity said, and took the Helm from Sunset's hands. “I'll put this on and talk to her. After a little while,” she said, turning to Midnight, “you need to find your way inside here as well. I mean, you came out of a head, so I hope you can find your way back into one.”
“I... think so.” Her expression was dubious at best.
“Okay.” Rarity glanced up at the observatory where Twilight was being kept: it was still growing taller and taller, and she had to crane her neck to see the top. Then she looked at the others. “Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to have a heart to heart with my girlfriend.”
“Wait,” Rainbow Dash said, “you're kidding, right?”
Rarity winked, and raised the Helm over her own head.
A hand on her shoulder stopped her, and she looked back over to Midnight, who seemed to be struggling to say something. “I don't think you can do this,” she finally said, but still seemed to be struggling. A few seconds later: “But I really hope you can. Good luck.”
Rarity nodded, and pulled the Helm down.
She was ready for anything. Perhaps some sort of never-ending, perpetually-shifting mirrored labyrinth. Maybe a realm of technological monsters, created from Twilight's unrestricted genius. Maybe some sort of magical hellscape, all cyan fire and arcane brimstone, raging inside Twilight's head?
Whatever was coming, Rarity was ready for anything.
She should have been ready for nothing.
All around her was darkness. Not even total darkness, either: just a boring, slightly-gray darkness, the kind that might have revealed more detail as the eye adjusted—except there was no more detail to reveal. Rarity's head whipped from side to side, and she could feel her hair bouncing against her head, and she could see her hands as she held them in front of her face, but—
There was a slight sound from behind her. The suggestion of a sniffle.
Rarity turned around, and saw the only two things in this mindscape. From some invisible source above, there was a dim light. Underneath it, hunched in on herself as if the circle of the spotlight was a prison, sat Twilight. No wings or horn, so it wasn't Midnight. And she didn't have the manic enthusiasm of Daylight, either. This was definitely Twilight. Her Twilight.
Rarity cleared her throat.
After a few seconds, Twilight glanced up at her. She looked so sad, and so so tired, with those puffy bags under her eyes. And then she looked back down and away.
Rarity frowned, and marched forward, reaching out a hand to place comfortingly on Twilight's shoulder—and then she found her hand bumping up against an invisible wall. Well, not invisible exactly: the wall was exactly where the spotlight ended. She walked around the circle to check, running her hand along the entire circumference just in case there was a break, but none appeared. It felt like an outside window on a freezing-cold morning.
Twilight still wasn't looking at her.
Rarity groaned in her throat. She reached her hand back, and pulled a sword from her imagination, and raised it in both hands—and drove it straight into the light.
Immediately, the invisible wall was visible as a network of fractures, and Twilight bolted upright in shock. Then, Rarity grunted, and wrenched the sword, and the whole thing shattered—the wall and the light. The shards crumbled away as they fell, and by the time they would have hit the ground, they'd been reduced to nothing at all. Now it was just Twilight and Rarity in the darkness.
Rarity dismissed the sword with a thought and bent down, crouching next to Twilight. “Apologies for being so bold, but I think we've both had enough of one another's walls by now.”
Twilight didn't look at her: her fingers were interwoven over her head, protecting her from an impact that wasn't coming. Rarity couldn't hear a sound from her but the whisper of her breaths.
So Rarity sat down, noting in the back of her mind that there wasn't any texture to the floor: it didn't feel like anything but a barrier against gravity. “I can sit here as long as you need,” she said, and reached her arm out to Twilight's far shoulder.
And she waited. Her full attention was on Twilight, because there was nothing else in here to be distracted by. So she saw every twitch of Twilight's face, at least the side of her face that Rarity could see. The several times she made to open her mouth, only to stop. The several times she turned away from Rarity, and turned back.
Every line under her eyes. Every quiver of shame. Every rise, every fall of her chest.
“I really screwed up,” she finally said. “Didn't I.”
The words came so suddenly, without preamble, that Rarity nearly jumped. She leaned in. “How much do you know?”
“Not much. Images, flashes from outside.” She closed her eyes. “It's enough. I broke the world again.”
“Well, it's not at its best—”
“Don't patronize me.” The tone was harsh, full of pain.
Rarity sighed. “All right, darling, you did basically break the world.”
All the anger went out of Twilight's pose in a moment: she slumped forward, head in her hands. “I knew it. I had to make the stupid magic artifact, didn't I? I knew what could happen if a dream got loose into reality, and I still made it because I was so selfish and stupid and, and short-sighted....” Her palms ground against her cheekbones. “I'm the worst person in the world.”
“Don't say that about yourself.”
“The math's pretty clear from a utilitarian standpoint. Who else do you know who’s doomed the world twice?”
“You're not stupid, Twilight, and you're certainly not selfish—”
“What do you call this!?” Twilight bolted to her feet, standing over Rarity. Her hands were balled up into fists, held at her chest level. “Building that stupid Helm, endangering the planet, for what? So I could build up enough nice girl points that you would actually like me the way I wanted you to? And then you—then you....”
Her hands lowered, but remained clenched. “Oh my god,” she whispered. “You actually did say you liked me, didn't you? And I handled it so badly that I broke physics.” She laughed, or at least made a similar sort of sound, looking away and to the side. “Look. Just... just do whatever you need to do to fix this, and then I'll be out of your hair. You won't have to see me again ever. I can drop out of school, they'd probably still give me the diploma—”
Rarity stood up and grabbed Twilight's hands. “And why would I want that?”
“Because I failed.” Twilight still wouldn't meet her gaze. “I wanted to ask you out and I failed.”
Rarity smiled. “And is that so bad?”
That was enough to get Twilight to meet her gaze. “It's literally as bad as it can be, Rarity! I can't fail. I'm not allowed to fail.”
She looked so raw in that moment, like every layer had been peeled away to reveal the core. “And don't,” she started, before sniffing and wrenching a hand free from Rarity's grasp to wipe her nose. “And don't say you get it, because you don't. No one gets it. You fail and maybe a dress gets made wrong, or you get into the wrong college. I fail and reality goes kaput. I'm not allowed to fail, and I just did.”
She looked away again. “Not like you ever fail. You're too perfect.” She snorted at that, like 'perfect' was an insult.
Rarity tried to ignore that, but she didn't have time to talk before Twilight plowed forward, her voice thick and wet even in its anger: “All right. Come on. Tell me whatever magic words are gonna fix me and friendship this problem away, until next time.”
Oh. Rarity really wished she hadn't said it like that. She really wished she didn't have this surging, vitriolic heat in her belly, clawing up toward her vocal chords like erupting magma. “Twilight Sparkle,” she said in a low tone. “Look. At. Me.”
Twilight looked. Rarity hadn't given her any other option.
“I don't have magic words,” Rarity said, stepping closer. “If I had had them, don't you think I would have used them on myself? Don't you think I'd have 'friendshipped' my own problems away if that were an option? It never was, and I don't have any magic words. All I have are my words, so I want you to listen to them.”
Twilight nodded slowly.
Rarity sat down, and Twilight followed her. She still held Twilight's hand. “I don't know what it's like to mess with reality,” Rarity said. “I'm not going to pretend we share that experience. But don't you dare tell me that I don't know what it's like to fail, Twilight, because I am always failing. I am always making things that are less than my ideal standards, I am always screwing up in some small way. And that's not healthy, that's not a reasonable way to think, but I still do think it.”
Even now, she thought. Even after having reconciled with Vanity, she knew there would still be some part of her that felt that way.
“But,” she said, to Twilight and to herself, “I take those mistakes and I learn from them, and I get better. Just like everyone does, and just like you do.”
“Well, I clearly haven't.” Twilight broke eye contact for a moment. “I mean... I just wanted to help, so much. I screwed up once and I've got to make up for it, and I felt like I was nearly getting somewhere—and now look at me.” She sniffed. “Back in the red. And you want me to believe you love that?”
Rarity clasped both hands around one of Twilight's. “You're not a tally sheet, Twilight. You're a person. A couple mistakes, no matter how grave, don't make you any less worthy of being loved. Platonically or... otherwise,” she added, leaning in closer.
Twilight, however, shook her head. “Then how about only doing the dream thing so you would like me? Does that disqualify me?”
“First of all, that's bunk and you should know it. I don't believe for a second your motivations were that selfish.” Rarity shifted, so that she was kneeling rather than sitting flat. Twilight, on the other hand, squirmed and hunched her back to render herself shorter. Rarity understood: there was nothing quite as embarrassing as being praised for something you saw as worthless.
“But secondly.” Rarity smiled. “Secondly, the more I think about it, the more certain I get. I was feeling something like this long before this week. And I've had a long time to see you, Twilight. I know what I'm getting into when I say how I feel about you.”
“No you don't—”
Rarity squeezed harder. “I do, and we both know it, Twilight! Your brilliance, the way you look, the way you always try to help—even your neuroses? I've had enough time to see all of them, and that's why I can confidently say I love Twilight Sparkle.” She leaned in, and rested her forehead against Twilight's. “Warts and all.”
Twilight sniffed. “I don't.”
“I know.” Rarity shook her head, feeling her hair grate against Twilight's fringe. “And it's not as easy as just saying it, but I'll say it even so. You need to try. You need to start loving yourself.”
And then—right on time—she heard a strange sound behind her, like a thousand people exhaling all at once. As if a lot of air had been displaced from a space the size and shape of a person. Rarity smiled. “And there's no time like the present.”
Twilight's forehead left her own, and she saw Twilight's eyes widen, the pupils contract. “No—but—”
Rarity moved forward, holding Twilight in a tight hug. “It's all right. I had a talk with her.”
Behind her, she heard slow, hesitant footsteps as Midnight drew closer. “H-hey,” she said.
Twilight was just staring, hyperventilating a little. Rarity squeezed her and whispered, “Breathe. I've got you.”
“So,” Midnight said. “This is... different.” Rarity didn't need to look at her to know that she was looking down and to the side. Twilight was Twilight, no matter who she was. And any second now, she'd gather her courage and look up, and say something like—
“I know you're thinking I'm about to call you a horrible person,” Midnight said, the words coming in a rush like a dam being overtopped. “Just like all our dreams. And believe me, it's all on the tip of my tongue, it's kind of hard not to say it actually—but Rarity's really smart. And I think she doesn't think I should say it, right?”
Rarity nodded.
“Yeah. Then... I think I want to stop this,” Midnight said, slowing down a bit. “I don't want to keep doing this. I don't want to keep making you think you're a failure.” There was a pause, and Rarity imagined how Midnight must have been fidgeting. “Is it okay if you stop making me think I'm a monster?”
Twilight's breathing was slowing down, Rarity noticed. She released Twilight, then stood and turned around to see that, yes, Midnight was twiddling her thumbs, maintaining eye contact with difficulty. Then, Rarity turned to Twilight, and saw she was doing much the same.
Slowly, almost unconsciously, Twilight took a step forward, Then another, and another. After a few seconds, Midnight mirrored her movements, and they were approaching one another. Twilight reached out a hand, and Midnight started glowing white—
“NO!”
Running footsteps, closing in fast. Rarity's head whipped around and saw another Twilight—Daylight—running at her, a light like a halo surrounding her, and sheer frenzied fury on her face. She was running at Rarity, running at Twilight—
Rarity raised her hand, and an infinite diamond barrier cut her off just before she could get to Twilight. She screamed and pounded at it with her fist. “No! What's wrong with you? You're letting her back in?”
She'd looked so perfect before. Now, as Rarity watched, split ends frayed from Daylight's ponytail, and her makeup started to run, just a bit. “Stop it!” she shrieked. “We were perfect! Just leave her behind, and we could be perfect! We could be—we could be—”
Rarity glanced back to see that all eyes were on Daylight. Then she looked back at Daylight herself. She was slumped against the barrier, and she'd stopped pounding, and she looked so, so desperate. “We could be okay,” Daylight whimpered. “I just want to be okay. Why can't I just be okay?”
Rarity sniffed, and found her cheeks rather wet—wet enough to be worth wiping. Then she waved her hand, and dispelled the barrier, and caught Daylight as she stumbled forward. “I know,” Rarity said. “I really do know.”
“I don't want to live like this,” Daylight said. “I don't want to live with her.”
She heard Midnight sputter at that—how utterly bizarre was it that, even as they shared a voice, she could tell every Twilight apart?—but Rarity just led Daylight forward. “I love all of you, Twilight. I just need you to believe that I've got the right idea. Can you trust me on that?”
Daylight looked up at her, and after several seconds, she nodded.
“All right.”
The three Twilights were together now—Twilight, Midnight, and Daylight. Twilight was the one to reach out her hand first, but the other two followed soon after.
“And, darling?”
All three of Rarity's girls looked at her.
“You're not going to just be okay.” Rarity beamed. “You're going to be wonderful.”
The three hands met in the middle. There was a light, glowing brighter and brighter—
Gymnopedie, by Satyr, was the first thing she heard.
After taking the few minutes she needed to recognize the tune, Rarity's consciousness decided that the next good idea would be to open her eyes. At length, she did, and found herself—strangely enough—in her own room. Everything was exactly as she had left it the night before, and ordinary sunlight streamed in through a crack in the curtains.
Strangely enough? She pursed her lips, reaching over to her phone to silence the alarm. Now why should such a thing be strange—
It was then, and quite rudely as well, that her consciousness decided to disgorge some details about what she had dreamed. Her phone slipped from her fingers and thumped onto the carpet below.
Oh, right.
She burst from her bed as if shot by a cannon, and pulled her clothes on as fast as shaking hands would let her. Then she ran to her window, shoved upward at its handle, and leaped out—and her magic activated, conjuring a diamond under her feet before she could fall. She leaned forward and surfed through the air, taking the direct route.
Her phone was dinging as she went, and she checked it. One from Fluttershy to a group chat: This may be a weird question, but did something happen last night? I had the strangest dream. One from Rainbow Dash, specifically sent to her: So was that real? Because I don't have twenty bucks on me right now.
Nothing from the one she was most concerned about.
Within five minutes she'd arrived at chez Twilight, and once again she levitated herself to the second floor window and hammered at the window. “Twilight! Twilight, are you okay!?”
Twilight was lying in bed, Helm on her head, but her eyes were open. At Rarity's voice she turned her head, then swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up. She hurried to the window, opened it, and stepped back so Rarity could jump in.
Rarity pulled the Helm off her head and tossed it back onto her mattress. “You're okay, aren't you? You're not hurt, or in pain, or something? Twilight, darling, speak to me.”
Twilight looked up at her. “Rarity,” she said. Then she slumped forward into Rarity's embrace, and started sobbing. “I think I need help, Rarity,” she said. “I think I really really need help.”
Rarity hugged her back, smiling as she rocked Twilight from side to side, as if slow dancing. “It's okay. I've got you. It's okay.”