Celestia stared at the now closed throne room doors, trying to assess the situation and plan for what to do next.
She had clearly said the wrong things to Iridescent. She should have taken his feelings into account, something that seems rather stupid to not have done in hindsight. At the time she was focused on maintaining the relationship between him and Sunset Shimmer.
If he got what he wanted too quickly then he’d be gone. The two of them were obviously growing very close even if they didn’t want to show it. Once he left Sunset Shimmer would have a negative reaction and go back to her isolated ways.
They’d be back to square one.
Not only was their relationship important for Sunset Shimmer’s development, it was important for his own too. The two of them clearly needed some sort of guidance. Sunset Shimmer needing more positive influences and Iridescent Horizon needing somepony to be close with. Just as he was close with his father.
But, even if he did get his memories back, he could be horrified of what he would see. It was possible he could have used a memory suppression spell on himself as a way to cope without realizing it. That wouldn’t be the first time it had happened, though it was quite rare.
But the question was, should she base how she treated him on a “what if”?
“Princess?” The pegasus guard at the door spoke up. “Should I go after him?”
“No, Forecaster. There is no need.”
Next time she’d be more careful.
***
“Why are we here?” The meathead asked, scratching his chin with his hoof.
Sunset sat across from Iridescent on her bed, looking down at the spellbook and finishing her mental checklist.
“We need privacy,” She explained. The filly also needed some time to escape if the guards heard him screaming in pain. But the spell likely wouldn’t result in that. “Also if the spell gets interrupted there may be bad consequences.”
Likely.
Not like Iridescent had any clue that she had never attempted to actually do the spell before. The spellbooks were hard to understand and the spells even harder. As a magical prodigy she had cracked them, of course. It wasn’t going to go wrong.
All the spells required live subjects anyway. It wasn’t like she could just do it on the fly to see if it worked.
Nonetheless the idea was still something to be excited about. If the spell worked they’d have a chance to view the memories of what happened to him. Maybe send him home, maybe get that boost of magical extra credit for her to become a princess. Could even throw in a claim or two that they had been good friends.
Foolproof.
“Right,” Her ears picked up the sound of his magic locking the door not too long after she said that. Guess he was rather paranoid. “The Princess might come looking for me. I pretty much blew up at her in the throne room.”
“I doubt it,” Page two-seventy, section six, memory spell applications. Live subject, check. Isolated area, check. Counter spell ready, check. Normally Sunset wasn’t meticulous with these things but this spell actually ran the risk of hurting somepony. “The guards were talking about it, though. Something to do with your dad?”
“Yeah. It’s just, why does she care about my memories? If I live in the dark forever I won’t be able to see my dad again. I won’t even be able to go home. Staying here is nice and all but I can’t live here forever.”
Sunset nodded, though she didn’t quite understand. That specific problem was foreign to her. She had accepted the castle as her new home but she didn’t have a home to go back to in the first place.
Or parents, for that matter.
“Then,” Iridescent continued as his brow furrowed in frustration. “She keeps asking me about how you and I are getting along. We’re doing the whole ‘friendship’ thing right, right?”
“Think so.” She shrugged. Watching other ponies interact gave her a decent grasp of the concept. Nicknames were involved. Lots of weird nicknames. They already had that covered.
“She’s so worried about you having friends but she doesn’t have any herself. Isn’t that hypocritical?”
“Yeah... It is.”
The Princess spent most of her days isolated. Doing her royal duties, raising the sun and moon and sending letters to who-knows-where. She didn’t have any friends apart from the ponies she asked to run errands for her. Celestia was capable of living a life without friends, why wouldn’t she let Sunset do the same?
“What if she’s right and I don’t like what I see,” Iridescent sighed. He glanced out the window and toward the main body of the castle, looking directly at the windows of the throne room. “But don’t I deserve to know what happened? What does keeping my memories away from me do for her?”
Sunset didn’t know. The two of them likely never would. Celestia worked in mysterious ways. Always watching, never giving straight answers and never being there when you truly needed her. A scowl morphed onto her face but vanished just as quick as it came. Now’s not the time.
“The book says we need to maintain eye contact during the spell,” Changing the subject, she used a hoof to nudge the book in his direction and hover over the spell so Iridescent could read it himself. “It’ll let us ‘connect’ more easily.”
“Eye contact,” He repeated, already looking away from the book. “Got it.”
“We cross horns, I activate the spell and we bring forward a memory for viewing. Sounds easy, doesn’t it?”
“Super easy.”
“Great.” She looked up from the spellbook and into Iridescent’s eyes. In them she saw hesitation. The same feeling that had been practically written across his entire body when they first met. He didn’t look like was too certain of, well, anything.
Sunset, after a moment of her own hesitation, put a hoof on his in an attempt to be comforting. The two of them awkwardly stared at each other. Inside her head, she urged her body to say something, anything. He seemed like he really needed it.
Before she could, Iridescent beat her to the punch.
“You look constipated.”
“...”
Her hoof retreated and her expression faded into a neutral glare. Iridescent snorted in amusement. Sunset fought the urge to grin. At least he was relaxed now. That would make her job a lot easier.
“Alright. Now we touch horns.”
“Sounds intimate.” The moron said jokingly.
“Just do it.”
The two of them awkwardly stared at each other again. Getting close together like that seemed weird. It wasn’t something she had thought about until he mentioned it. If somepony walked in they’d both probably die from embarrassment.
Sunset, deciding to just get it over with and taking the initiative, leaned forward. Iridescent waited a moment longer before also leaning in so that their horns crossed over one another.
This was rather weird. They were really, really close together. So close that their foreheads were touching. All kinds of gross.
Sunset activated the spell with a deep exhale. A spark of magic flared from the tip of her horn as she did so. Both of their magical appendages began to glow their respective colors before Iridescent’s switched to turquoise.
“This feels weird.”
“Tell me about it,” She grunted. The spell was using him as a conduit to prevent her from being drained of her magic entirely. It would feel unpleasant for him but all of the strain would be on her. “Lucky for you this doesn’t require much effort on your part.”
Their combined magic was combing through his memories. It created a strange sensation that felt like somepony was tickling her brain.
“Okay,” Sunset muttered as spell latched onto a memory of his. The two of them shuddered at the strange feeling. “We’re both going to see this. You better hope it’s not something embarrassing.”
In an instant, his attitude seemed to shift drastically. Iridescent’s eyes widened in fear, whole body going tense like a coiled spring. With her magic probing around in his mind she could literally feel his distress.
“No. We can’t do this. We need to stop-“ Before he could continue their mouths both opened in silent screams. Sunset saw Iridescent’s eyes begin to glow white before her world faded to black.
***
Jessie’s eighth birthday was going great.
He sat on the counter, copying the whisking motions his mother was doing. They were making brownies, a special recipe his mother had wanted to share with him. Though he was young, the boy could tell that the recipe was very important to her. He wanted to take in every detail.
The dark skinned woman was humming an unrecognizable tune, naturally wavy hair tied back in a pony tail. Scraping noises from the whisk echoed from the bottom of the bowl as she glanced back and forth between her recipe book and the now mushy brownie ingredients.
She still had on her suit dress from work, having rushed home to celebrate her son’s birthday. Jessie couldn’t help but feel bad that he made her hurry.
His father was also present, cooking the rest of the dinner because his wife had ordered him to. Though he did it without question, he didn’t look too happy about being stuck with everything else.
“Wipe that look off ya face, Eric. The boy wanted to make brownies.”
His father, Eric, just sighed and pulled the uncooked chicken from the fridge. Jessie really wanted to laugh at the white chef’s apron hanging off his neck and hairnet on his beard. It looked so funny!
“Yeah, yeah, Steph. Maybe when I’m teaching him how to fight, you can be the punching bag.”
His mother just laughed.
“As if you ever could lay a finger on me.”
Eric rolled his eyes, but Jessie made out a faint half smile underneath his dad’s annoyed look.
“You two are gross,” The young boy giggled, the copied aggressive whisking his mother had been doing long forgotten. Now he was swinging his legs off the edge of the countertop. “You look at each other funn-“
“Oh but, Jessie,” Stephanie interrupted. A mischievous grin spread across her face. “Your dad and I saw that you were talking to that girl at the bus stop. ‘Looking at her funny’. What’s her name again?”
The boy went wide eyed. Eric barked out a laugh.
“That girl from down the street he’s been trying to go see? Isn’t her name-“
“LA LA LA!” Jessie yelled, putting his hands over his ears. “I’m not listening to you!”
Stephanie ruffled his hair and cheekily smiled.
“She’ll think you’re soooo handsome when you get those dreadlocks, won’t she?”
“Stop it!” He whined, drowned out by the sounds of his parents’ laughter.
“You know, Jessie,” His dad said between bouts of laughter. “We can always set up a-“
***
The memory ended abruptly, a slash of pain ripping through Sunset’s head like a dagger.
She woke up back in her bed, back in Equestria. Albeit with a massive headache, confused, disoriented and sick to her stomach. The spell had been interrupted but the limited viewing of somepony else’s memory like that felt different from any kind of magic she practiced before. It felt wrong.
It made her want to vomit.
“Sunset? You okay?”
Sunset’s gaze snapped upward, blearily laying eyes on Iridescent. He had backed away after the spell at been interrupted and was now sitting open the opposite side of the bed.
“What-,” She hissed as her head throbbed. “What was that?”
“Memory spell,” He said, wincing from his own headache. “I think I broke us out of it. You weren’t supposed to...”
He trailed off, eyes casting downward.
A million questions struck through her at once. So quickly that it made her headache throb again. But she mustered enough strength to glare at the colt in front of her.
“You know that’s not what I meant,” She said with mounting frustration. Her head was pounding and that only served to anger her more. “I want to know what we just saw.”
There was no skirting around the subject this time. She expected answers in one form or another. It wasn’t something that was up for debate.
“Sunset, I don’t want-“
“ANSWER ME, YOU MORON!”
Iridescent flinched and shrunk back, ears folding onto his skull. Sunset almost apologized but she instead hardened her glare.
“I...” He didn’t say anything else for a long moment. She could almost see the gears turning in his head as he figured out what to say. Then, the colt whispered something she didn’t quite hear.
“Speak up,” Sunset snapped at him. “I want to know.”
“I’m from another world.” He repeated louder.
The words sent an unnatural chill down her spine. Another world? It felt like she wasn’t supposed to hear that sentence ever. She never even expected to.
“Explain.”
Iridescent took a deep, shaky breath. His mouth opened to speak but then closed as he tried to make a decision. Finally, he seemed to make up his mind and launched into his explanation.
Rushed, forced and words that didn’t make much sense to her were hurled in her direction and she couldn’t do anything but take them in.
He started with the fact that not only was he from another world, he was a different species. One with its own culture and history and advanced technology that made Sunset’s head throb more.
But she listened.
He talked about his parents and where he grew up. Their first names and their family name, Morrison. How his dad was named Eric and his mom was named Stephanie. How they had named him Jessie after a friend of theirs who had passed away.
He talked about the night his mom had vanished. How his dad had cried and wouldn’t leave his room for days after the police (his world’s version of the guards) had officially declared her dead. The way his father took care of him as best he could. Even moving away from their home to try and get away from the bad memories.
The more he nervously rambled on the more she noticed that he was almost crying. Either from stress or how much he missed his parents.
Finally he talked about how he woke up in an alleyway in Canterlot with nothing but his new name and a new body. The few weeks he spent cold, hungry, confused and alone. Gathering information from eavesdropping on conversations and how he learned more about the world he was in. All those events leading up to meeting her in the gardens.
“So... yeah,” Iridescent finished awkwardly. He didn’t even make an attempt to look at her. Gaze downward as if the bed were the most interesting thing in the world. “That’s it. Please don’t tell anyone.”
At first, Sunset didn’t move or say anything at all. She just digested the information dump with a neutral expression. It was a lot to take in.
A whole other world. He was from another world. He wasn’t even a pony! It explained so much about him.
Well it only explained a few things. But they were things she should have been more suspicious of. Like him not knowing magic or being able to find his town on a map. Or the fact that he complained about eating hay whenever they snuck out to grab food.
The claim that his name was different further hinted to her that somepony had done this to him intentionally. But why? He never mentioned any reason as to what could have caused it. To go so far as to even give him a new name screamed “ULTERIOR MOTIVE”.
“Sunset?” Iri- Jessie was looking at her, an unreadable expression passing over his features. “Eske ou anfòm?”
“You’ve actually eaten meat?”
“What?” He did a double take and she was met with a baffled look. “I’m from another world. Out of everything I just told you, the fact that I’ve eaten meat is what you’re concerned about?”
Not really. Griffon ambassadors had come over plenty of times since she had moved into the castle. Passing by the dining hall and seeing the meat on their plates was a shock the first few times but she quickly grew indifferent to the idea. Some creatures just ate different things.
“I felt like it was the easiest question to ask. After you rambling off about bacon and then saying it looked like my hair.”
Jessie snorted.
“Kinda does. Can’t fault me for that.”
Sunset rolled her eyes, then winced again as the headache throbbed just to remind her that it existed.
“Your species’ dietary habits and your bad jokes aside, why didn’t you tell anypony? You could have gotten help. The Princess definitely could have done something.”
“I was stubborn, I guess,” He muttered, pawing at the bed beneath them. “I didn’t want to bring attention to myself. Thought I could do it on my own.”
A bucking awful reason, if she was being honest. Even a stubborn mule would admit to needing help. He had spent so much time trying to survive on his own instead of taking the easier alternative. She wasn’t going to tell anypony if he didn’t want her to but he needed help. One thing she didn’t want to do was have to worry about him.
“You really are a complete idiot.” Sunset said blankly. Though she didn’t quite mean it. It was pretty admirable he had made it this far.
Jessie snorted, then chuckled, then laughed loudly. Before long he was clutching his sides and doubling over on the bed. Sunset joined him because, well, it was rather funny.