Apology
“Lightning stop!” Krysta cried. “Just… just stop, okay? You can’t do this.”
Lightning did stop, in response to her insistent cries. He turned back towards her. He and his sister stood upon the outskirts of Ponyville, having already passed through the town without stopping, ignoring the way that Rainbow Dash had followed them from above to make sure they didn’t go anywhere near Twilight. Twilight – Miss Twilight, Lightning supposed he ought to call her once more – and her friends had returned to Ponyville later that night, upon the late night train. Lightning had not been on said train, or any other, for the simple reason that he had no money to pay for a train fare to Ponyville or anywhere else. But they had walked back – or rather Lightning had walked and Krysta had ridden on his back – taking it slow so as not to creep in like thieves in the night but to arrive just after the break of day. They had passed through the town, and now Lightning intended to camp out in the field, deliver the Prism Stone, and then… then he would place himself and Krysta in the hands of the fate, like they had been in the old days.
Judging by the way that she was standing with her hands upon her hips, Krysta didn’t think much of this idea.
Lightning blinked. “What can’t I do, Krysta? And what should I do instead?”
“You can’t just ignore this!” Krysta cried, her wings flapping emphatically behind her. “You can’t just camp in the middle of some field and ignore Twilight! You can’t just cut yourself off.”
“I’m not cutting myself off,” Lightning mildly. “I’ve still got you. Unless I haven’t.”
Krysta huffed with exaggeration. “Yes, you’ve still got me, of course you’ve still got me but at the same time that is absolutely not the point! The point is… the point is that you can’t just ignore this, for crying out loud!”
“I’m not ignoring anything,” Lightning said. He looked away from Krysta, and out across the placid meadows of Equestria that lay spread out all around him. This really was a beautiful country, peaceful and at peace with itself both at the same time. No danger, no menace… nothing at all. Small wonder that Rainbow Dash blamed him for what had befallen Miss Twilight. This must seem like a land in which visitors brought their perils with them, and caught up natives to this peaceful land up in those same perils.
Perhaps I did. He only attacked me because I am an Olympian, after all. There is some force in the argument that Miss Twilight was only in danger because of me.
I do not regret what I did to end the fight, but I do regret that Miss Twilight was caught up in a conflict to begin with.
“I’m not ignoring anything,” Lightning repeated. “I am… I am respecting Miss Twilight’s wishes – and the wishes of her friends – that I have nothing more to do with her.”
“Really?” Krysta said. “That’s what you’re going to hide behind?”
“I’m not hiding-“
“Oh yes you are,” Krysta replied, her voice sharp and slightly scathing. “Since when do you let other ponies tell you what to do?”
“I obey the orders of my sovereign and my officers-“
“If you don’t want to see Twilight again then have the guts to admit it,” Krysta demanded. “Don’t hide behind big bad Rainbow Dash and Shining Armour.”
Lightning fell silent. He clenched his jaw and said nothing.
Krysta smirked. “Can’t do it, can you?”
Lightning snorted. “Miss Twilight,” he declared. “Has made it very clear that she does not want to see me.”
“She would if you apologised,” Krysta pointed out.
Lightning spluttered indignantly. “Why should I apologise? I’m right.”
“So? People who are right apologise all the time just to get the argument out of the way.”
“Oh, really?” Lightning said. “Who?”
“Me!” Krysta yelled. “I’m always right but I always apologise because I care about you enough to not want to fight.” She took a breath. “I care about you,” she repeated. “Just like you care about Twilight.”
“I-“
“You were going to kiss her, dude, don’t deny it,” Krysta said. She shook her head, and the little smirk returned her to elfin features. “Do you love her?”
Lightning blinked. “I… how would I know? What does love feel like?”
“You’re asking me?” Krysta asked incredulously. “Well… how do you feel about her?”
Lightning frowned. “I… I care about her. I want to keep her safe. I want her to…to be happy. Is that what love is?”
Krysta shrugged. “It sounds like a good start. And don’t get me wrong, I like Twilight too. I’ve always liked Twilight, remember? She’s cute, nice – nice to me, which is very important – she brings you out of your shell; your stupid armoured shell. I am one hundred percent on board with Twilight Sparkle as the object of your affection. I mean she’s certainly better than Stellar, not that that’s a very high bar to clear. Like I said, one hundred percent on board with that. I am not on board with you just slinking away with your tail between your legs and me on your back.”
“I am not slinking away,” Lightning replied emphatically. “For one thing I can’t actually go just yet, not until the warp tunnel opens back up again to retrieve the Prism Stone.”
Krysta frowned. “And so… you’re just going to stay here and ignore everypony else until that happens? For the next three days? You’re just going to sit out in this field and not talk to Twilight, not talk to anypony?”
Lightning inhaled deeply through his nostrils. “Well when you put it thus so baldly it sounds rather absurd.”
“You think?” Krysta demanded.
“We’ve been on our own before,” Lightning said. “It will be no different than plenty of times in the old days.”
“You hate the old days, I’m supposed to be the one who gets all nostalgic about all the times we slept under the bush or with the stars as our blanket and you’re supposed to be the one who reminds me that we were cold and hungry and hated every minute of it,” Krysta reminded him.
Lightning blinked. “I never said I hated every minute of it.”
“I’m pretty sure you did, at least once or twice,” Krysta said.
“Really? When?”
“Yes and I don’t know, I don’t record our conversations so I can gotcha you when we have an argument.”
Lightning smiled. “If we’re having an argument then isn’t it about time for you to admit that you’re wrong because you care about me?”
“Ahaha, aha, you’re hilarious,” Krysta remarked dryly. “No, it’s about time for me to stand my ground because I care about you and because… because I think you’re making a mistake. You know what the big difference is between now and the old days?”
“Enlighten me.”
“We didn’t have a choice back then,” Krysta said. “People hated us and we couldn’t do anything about that.”
“That feels like where I am now, to be perfectly honest,” Lightning muttered.
“Well it’s not,” Krysta insisted. “If you just said sorry to Twilight-“
“What do I have to apologise for?” Lightning demanded. “I saved her life! And neither she nor any of her friends have thanked me for it.”
“Is that what this is about, do you need gratitude?”
“No,” Lightning declared petulantly. “But it… it might make me a feel little better about this.” He scuffed his hoof back and forth, tearing up the grass beneath it to expose the soil that lay underneath.
He expected Krysta to laugh at him. She didn’t. Instead she looked almost troubled, she shivered and not from the cold on this warm day. “Okay, so… back to your plan. You’re going to sit here in your pride and wait for the warp tunnel to open, then what?” She hesitated, and once more a shiver seemed to wrack her entire body. “Are you… are we going back?”
“No!” the word shot from Lightning’s mouth quickly and with great force, like a shot from a cannon. “Krysta, I… I have made my choice. For you. I’m not going to go back on that just because Miss Twilight and I have… unless Princess Celestia revokes my right to stay here, which she has not done to my knowledge, then I am a pony of Equestria still, and shall remain so, whatever the state of my relations with the ponies of this town.”
Krysta sagged with relief. Clearly this had been bothering her for some little while. “So… what are we going to do?”
“I’m going to send the Prism Stone back through the tunnel, as we planned,” Lightning said. “And after that… I thought that we could travel north, heading roughly towards Manehattan but really going…wherever we pleased. We could see whatever we wished, do whatever we wanted, it would be-“
“Just like in the old days, yeah,” Krysta murmured. She folded her arms. “You know… not too long ago I would have loved to hear you talking like this.”
“But now?” Lightning asked.
“Now I just don’t want you to make a horrible mistake,” Krysta said. “You can have a good thing here.”
“We can have a good thing anywhere we want,” Lightning said. “I can make a life for us anywhere in Equestria that we desire.”
“But it won’t be here,” Krysta replied. “And there will always be a part of you that knows that and regrets it. She’s so good for you, and she’s so… why can’t you just say you’re sorry?”
Lightning’s expression hardened. “Do you think I did the wrong thing?” he asked.
Krysta was silent.
“Krysta-“
“No,” Krysta said. “But what I think doesn’t matter, what Twilight thinks matters; what ponies in Equestria think matters.”
“Maybe the ponies in Equestria are too soft,” Lightning muttered. “Peace and safety have bred weakness in them.”
“Maybe,” Krysta conceded. “Or maybe… maybe. But either way this is the way they are. This isn’t Olympia, this isn’t the cruel worlds we wandered before. This is… this is somewhere new and wherever we go you’re going to have to live with that. To… behave a little more like they do or we’re just going to have trouble everywhere. With ponies that you like less than Twilight. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
A sigh escaped from between Lightning’s lips. “You’re saying that as a guest in their land – even a guest who wishes to stay here indefinitely – I have an obligation to respect their ways, however I may feel about them.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have put it so pompously but, yeah,” Krysta said. “Look, it all comes down to this: do you want that fight to be the last thing you ever say to Twilight?”
Lightning hesitated for a moment, then shook his head. “No,” he admitted. “No, I don’t.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Krysta said. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Wait,” Lightning said. “Just… wait a moment. What if… what if she doesn’t want to see me?” He would have a hard enough struggle bending his pride enough to apologise for something that wasn’t his fault, but to do so only to have the door slammed in his face was… he wasn’t sure he could bear it. Not from her. One rejection had already been enough.
“Not going to be a problem, trust me,” Krysta said. “After all, am I not always right about everything?”
“No,” Lightning said. He waited for a look of dismay to settle on Krysta’s face before he added. “But you are right far more often than I am.”
Krysta snorted. “Well at least you’re starting to learn that,” she said. “Now are we going to move, or are you going to praise me some more? Because actually, either one of those is good with me.”
Lightning chuckled as he began to walk back into Ponyville in the direction of Twilight’s library.
He would never admit it aloud, but he considered himself fortunate that he was not waylaid by Rainbow Dash on his way to the library; not because he was afraid of her – she was a loudmouth and a braggart whose prowess, real or imagined, held no terrors for him, a veteran of the battlefield as he was – but because he feared that his resolve might not withstand an assault upon his sense of obligation for what had occurred that night if she were to confront him again. He had put Miss Twilight in danger. She had almost died at the hooves of Silver Spear because of her association with him. Those facts were blunt and beyond dispute. The facts, then, being undeniable, how could he deny that he was dangerous for Miss Twilight?
Well, possibly by arguing that Silver Spear was an anomaly, but he didn’t know that for sure; and if he were to argue that he would protect Miss Twilight… she hadn’t exactly appreciated his protection, wasn’t that the problem?
He wanted to see her. He wanted to make things right with her; Krysta was right, he wanted to make things right with her even if that meant humbling his pride and pretending to be wrong although he wasn’t. But if had been confronted by Rainbow Dash – or anypony else, for that matter – with the fact that it was better for Miss Twilight that she never see him again nor he her then… then he might have conceded the point and turned away for all of Krysta’s prompting and pushing.
As it happened – and for his part he was glad of the fact – there was no sign of Rainbow Dash; she had given up her vigil, it seemed. And so Lightning was able to make his way to the Golden Oaks library, the living tree spreading its eaves out across the ground. He could not see Twilight on the observation deck, nor could he see her through the windows; he hoped that she was in. Hunting for her through the town would only increase the chances of running into one of her disapproving friends instead.
Krysta hung back a little as Lightning approached the door. He hesitated, wondering if this was what was best for her.
He didn’t know, he only knew that this was what he wanted.
He knocked on the door as gently as he could while still being sure to make himself heard.
He expected Spike to open the door, although he hadn’t yet worked out how he was going to talk his way past the little dragon, but instead it was Twilight herself who answered, looking up at him with disapproval in her eyes.
“Lightning,” she said coldly.
Lightning bowed his head. “Miss Twilight.”
Twilight pursed her lips together. “So we’re back to that now?”
“It did not seem as though you wanted any particular closeness to me,” Lightning replied, his voice gruff. “Is that not so?”
Twilight did not reply. She stared at him. A half-sigh escaped between her lips. “Did you come for your armour? I’m afraid I’m not sure that I can help you to sell it any more, but if you take it to Canterlot I’m sure that-“
“That is not why I’m here,” Lightning said, cutting her off. The money he could have made from selling the armour would have been useful in paying off his debts and starting his new life. But he could do without it, if need be; it wasn’t as though he and Krysta hadn’t been poor vagabonds before. “You may sell the armour yourself, if you wish, in payment of my debt to you.”
“You don’t owe me that much,” Twilight told him.
“Nevertheless,” Lightning replied. “You may call the rest a gift, if it puts you more at ease.”
Twilight did not look more put at ease by that. She continued to stare at Lightning. “Is that what you came here to tell me?”
“No, not really,” Lightning said. He hesitated, falling silent while Twilight stared, expectant. The moments dragged on, first one and then another and still Twilight stared and Lightning said nothing.
“If there’s nothing else,” Twilight began. “I need to be-“
“Please, wait,” Lightning said. “Just a moment more.” He took a deep breath. He glanced away from her for a moment, he swore that looking into her eyes was making his harder. “I… I do not have a back made for apologising. This does not come easily to me. I have… I have offended you by my conduct, I know; and if I have offended you so deeply that you cannot bear to be in my presence then one word from you will silence me forever. You need never see me again, if you do not wish it. I will complete my mission and depart this place of Ponyville, never to return. But if any trace of your earlier feelings remain…” he trailed off, unsure of what to say next.
Twilight’s eyes narrowed. “Are you… are you trying to apologise?”
“I believe I am, rather badly, yes Miss Twilight,” Lightning said.
Twilight fell silent. She seemed to be waiting for something, although Lightning wasn’t sure what exactly she was waiting for.
“Well?” she asked.
Lightning blinked. “Miss Twilight?”
“Apologise!” she cried.
Still Lightning held his peace, for just a moment longer, until he was at last able to force the words out from his mouth. “I… I am sorry, Miss Twilight,” he said. “I… erred, last night and I… I compounded the error with harsh words to you, words that I regret. I’m sorry.”
Twilight looked at him, and it was her turn to refuse to speak for a little while. When she did speak, her words were quiet, barely raised above a whisper. “Thank you,” she said. She smiled, and her tone acquired an edge of teasing to it. “All the more so because that was quite difficult for you, wasn’t it?”
“As I said, my back is not made for such things,” Lightning confessed.
“Don’t worry,” Twilight said. “You’re not the first pony to come to Ponyville with a lot to learn, but there is no better place to learn it and no better teacher than-“
“You, Miss Twilight?”
Twilight shook her head. “Than my friends. Would you like to come inside?”
Lightning smiled. “I would like that very much, Miss Twilight.”
“Please,” she said. “Just Twilight.”
Lightning’s smile broadened just a little. “As you wish, Twilight.”
Twilight took a step back. “Would you-“ she stopped. Her whole body froze as though she had been struck, or enchanted into statuesque immobility somehow. Her eyes widened.
Lightning frowned. “Twilight? Is something wrong?”
“Pinkie,” Twilight murmured. She looked at Lightning. “Pinkie Pie just… just spoke to me, telepathically!”
“That shouldn’t be-“ Lightning began.
“And she’s in trouble,” Twilight cried. “She’s in real trouble, I have to help her!”