Spike’s arm was starting to cramp. He’d been on his knees for over a minute now, holding up the flower he’d picked at random and offered to Rarity with a playful “for you” with just as little forethought. Rarity hadn’t moved since the words left his mouth, seemingly frozen in place with one foreleg raised in mid-step.
Birds sang in the trees nearby.
The Ponyville clocktower chimed the early morning hour in the distance.
The wind rustled the grass in the foothills surrounding them.
Still Rarity didn’t move, as if Spike’s simple gesture had turned her to stone.
Ever so slowly, his arm fell to his side and the flower drooped in his grip. Did he need to apologize? They were just out digging for gems like always, as carefree as any two friends could be. So what if he’d offered Rarity a flower; she liked flowers, she liked gifts, and in every previous instance she’d reacted to both with an adorable smile and a hug. On some occasions, no matter the size of the gift or bouquet, she even added a quick kiss on the cheek. Those were the best moments of all, when the whole world faded away and just left the two of them for a perfect split second.
Except this clearly wasn’t one of those moments.
Spike rose to his feet, and all of a sudden the spell on Rarity broke. She coughed a few times and fanned herself. “I-I’m so sorry, Spiky, my mind wandered off for a moment there.”
She smiled a little too brightly at him and continued her walk around the gem cart. “I think we’ve done more than enough for today. I should be preparing for my day trip to Canterlot, and I’m sure you have a full day of tasks ahead of you back at Twilight’s castle.”
He joined her in front of the cart, the flower still clutched in his hand, this time behind his back. “I… guess I probably do. But about before—“
“And I so do appreciate your help and our friendship, Spikey. I wouldn’t change a thing about it! Not a thing!”
Spike rocked back on his heels as if she’d struck him, and in a way she had. It wasn’t like she owed him anything. It wasn’t like he expected a certain number of gem hunting trips, hours of assistance, and small gifts to add up to a marriage proposal or something. Maybe a younger him did, but not anymore. He liked to think that he knew Rarity almost as well as Twilight, and part of that knowing was a familiarity with her choice in romance novels.
Every single one of them involved a dashing stallion or entrancing mare moving heaven and earth for their beloved: world-threatening evils were defeated, the helpless were saved, and every wrong righted in the most dramatic way possible. They weren’t that different from his comic books, in a way. The one thing none of them, her novels or his comics, ever had was everlasting love blossoming from something as simple as a yellow flower offered up on a whim. Winning the hoof of a fair damsel always required defeating the monster.
The cart wheels rumbled along the road as they made their way down the hill, back towards Ponyville. Their home town looked the same as it always did at a distance: picturesque, tranquil, and completely monster free. Sure, monsters did show up from time to time, but never the kind that a little dragon like Spike could defeat. Real monsters took a team effort, a team like Rarity and his other pony friends. They fought the monsters, they saved the world, and when the dust settled they were the ones everybody cheered for.
Sometimes he helped too, usually with the cleanup afterwards. He could scrub, sweep, and organize with the best of them, but that didn’t make him the dashing hero Rarity expected or deserved. Fighting monsters was for heroes like her, and so was the fame, the glory, and the grand romantic gestures that heroes deserved.
And maybe, he sometimes told himself, all of that was okay. He couldn’t be luckier, having so many amazing friends, Rarity included. So what if part of him pined for more? That was probably just dragon greed talking. He was good at the simple things, and the simple things like offering Rarity a pretty flower were always appreciated and always safe. Or so he’d thought.
With some surprise he realized he still had the flower clutched in his hand. Slowly he loosened one finger and then another, but the others wouldn’t budge. The flower hung there, a tiny little victim of his latest screwup. Why did he have to do whatever it was he’d done? Would it dawn on him later? Would she just turn around and tell him?
Rarity’s boutique was in sight now, barely a minute away at their current pace. Any second they’d part ways, but not silently if he could help it.
Spike cleared his throat. “I’ll… see you when you get back from your trip, Rarity. I hope you have a great time!”
Seconds passed before she glanced his way and responded, her expression sullen. “Oh? Oh, yes. I suppose you might. I do have a great deal of orders to get through though, and with the way business is picking up in Canterlot Carousel I’m afraid I might not have as much time to spare in the future. Take care, Spike.”
He watched her go, more focused on her words than the sway of her tail. No matter the reason, a door had swung shut: forget romance, what had he done to their friendship?
---
Spike pushed the castle’s heavy door closed behind him. The grand entryway, which tended to double as the prep area for Twilight and the gang’s next adventure, stood empty and quiet. Not even an open reference book was there to greet him.
“Twilight?”
She’d been in the library this morning when he left. Did she get caught in another book avalanche?
“Starlight?”
After checking the kitchen and the cozy chairs by the fireplace, he gulped and added “Trixie?”
The answering silence checked off all of the castle’s usual occupants, welcome and otherwise.
His claws clicked loudly on the polished floor as he made his way to his room, only to realize he still had the flower on him. He held it up and glared at the vibrant and sweet-smelling plant that ruined his morning and possibly one of his most treasured friendships. “I ought to just roast you.”
Smoke curled around his nostrils, but that was all. His gaze drifted to the collection of pictures atop his dresser, including an amazing portrait of Rarity wearing the fire-ruby necklace, his first and grandest gift to her, and tossed the flower next to it instead. What chance did he have of defeating a monster anyway if one dumb little flower could hold back his fire breath like a bucket of water?
He fell onto his bed, face up, and locked eyes with his reflection in the crystal ceiling. “Did I really… Are we still friends even?”
His reflection only offered up watery eyes.
Spike sat up, his fists clenched. “I’ve got to find out what’s wrong! I can’t just let our friendship just… just end!”
The flower on the dresser sat there next to Rarity’s picture: beauty and the botanical beast. Maybe it was cursed, or she hated its shade of yellow, or he’d committed some horrible crime against fashion by getting grass stains on his knees.
Or maybe she’d just had enough of him.
Her smile in the picture looked real, but was it really? When was the last time she smiled at him and meant it? Was today’s gem hunting trip just out of pity or something? What about the one last week, and the one before that?
“What am I supposed to do now, anyway, march up to her door and—”
A million possibilities swirled through his head, from moonlit serenades, to reading a long apology note, to delivering six pints of her favorite ice cream. The thought that he no longer knew how she’d react to any of those things sent a shiver from to his shoulders through his tail. All those crazy ideas shared one fatal flaw: him on her doorstep. What if she really was tired of being around him, and told him so?
A deafening boom shook the floor under his feet. Twilight must be home, and now he had a room or corridor to un-explode. She really needed to work on her teleportation.
Spike flopped onto the bed again as a set of hooves galloped their way down the hallway beyond his open door.
“Spike! Spike, are you in here?”
He didn’t bother looking up as Twilight skidded into the room, breathless and elated, judging from the pitch of her voice. Unless he was as bad at reading her as he was Rarity. Maybe he should just stay in bed forever. “Hey, Twilight. I’ll clean up soon, okay?”
A shadow fell over him and Twilight’s enormous smile filled his field of view. “Who said anything about cleaning? Spike, I just made the most amazing discovery!”
“That’s great, but can you tell me later? I kind of need to think about something.”
Her smile faded and her ears drooped. “What’s wrong? You know you can tell me anything, right?”
And of course now things were going to get even worse, by way of putting his total loss of a dear friend into words, and in Twilight’s case including a second-by-second analysis of exactly when his heart cracked open and by how many millimeters. “You know what: tell me what you discovered. My stuff can wait.”
The mattress sank as Twilight sat next to him. “Are you sure? If you need me to leave, or to take over cooking and cleaning for a while… I could make your favorite sapphire pancakes for dinner.”
Spike stomach lurched at the idea of Twilight cooking with gems again. Having one broken internal organ was plenty. “I’m sure. Just tell me what you found to take my mind off everything. Please?”
Twilight took a deep breath. Spike could almost hear her heartbeat ramping back up as her excitement returned. “I wrote a spell that lets you see alternate probabilities.”
“I… don’t even understand that sentence.”
“Imagine you’re playing a game of Ogres and Oubliettes and you roll a three.”
Or totally blow it with the most beautiful pony ever with a dumb flower. Spike thought to himself.
“What if you could go back and see what would’ve happened if you rolled a ten?”
His eyebrows rose. Or what if you stomp that flower into the dirt instead? “So you can go back and change something?”
“No, it’s not going back and it’s not changing something. You get to see what would’ve happened if one thing was different and then snap back to reality. Well, more like crash back into reality. I… sort of made a mess of the library on reentry. When you’re feeling better I could really use a hoof re-shelving everything and scrubbing off some scorch marks.”
So much for stomping the flower, but what if he was the thing that changed? Would asking Rarity a simple “is something wrong” make any difference? He could throw out an “am I bothering you” or even a “you’re so beautiful” without a worry of making things any worse than they already were; it would all just be pretend. Except he had to use this to make things better for real, and that meant finding out what he did wrong. That probably meant heavy questions like “are we friends,” the kind that were too big and scary to dare speak for fear of what the answer could be. Unless he could get the answer with magic without ever asking the question, not really asking it to the real Rarity.
“How does it work? Could I try it?”
Twilight leapt to her hooves. “I was hoping you’d say that! I’ve got a whole list of critically important historical events that aren’t as fully researched as they could be! Here, how about this one.”
A battered-looking book materialized next to her and landed on the bed.
“It’s a history of the founding of Equestria, signed by the two authors.”
“Aww, you want me to go back to when everypony was fighting in the freezing cold, and—”
“Oh, if only! The spell has to be cast on an object that was present at the event, something connected to it.”
She flipped the book’s cover open and pointed to the author’s signatures. “Inkwell and Quick Quill never worked together again after finishing this book. Apparently they never even spoke to each other after signing their names in this very spot!”
Reading the faded yet hurried-looking signatures took some effort. “So you want me to see what made them fight?”
“Or what would’ve happened if they never did. There’s some uncertainty in what exactly the spell shows you, but just imagine what you could learn! Think of the research papers, and the new textbook editions, and the addendums…”
Pure instinct and self-preservation got Spike on his feet, the history book tucked under one arm and the other patting her firmly on the back. “That’s amazing, Twilight! Except don’t you want to go and see Inkwell and what’s-their-name for yourself?”
Twilight bowed her head. “I would but… The spell can only be cast twice every hundred moons, and not on the same pony. With some more research I might be able to remove those restrictions, but for now—”
Spike was already at the door with the flower in hand. “Once is all I need! Let’s go cast a spell.”
“Hold it, you’re forgetting this!” The history book, which Spike had left on the floor, was now floating in Twilight’s magic aura.
“Yeah, about that… I’ve kind of got my own uh… historical event I’d like to go see.”
“We can’t take this lightly, Spike! Each of us only gets to do this once, and that means picking the most important moments in history. This is an incredibly rare, once-in-a-lifetime—”
“It’s about Rarity.”
Silence hung in the air while torrents of words raced through Spike’s mind. How did he explain something he didn’t fully understand?
Finally Twilight took a deep breath. “What hap—”
“I-I don’t know. I just know we were out hunting gems like we usually do on Saturday mornings when…” Spike wiped a line of tears off his snout.
Twilight rushed over and pulled him into a hug. “Do you think you said something that upset her?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did she tell you what’s wrong?”
“No.”
“Did you—”
“I don’t know, okay? All of a sudden she just decided we need to head back early and basically tells me we won’t see as much of each other anymore.”
He pulled away and paced through the room. “And I know you’re going to say this is just a friendship problem and I should go talk to her, or give her space, or something, but what if… what if it’s really bad? What if she’s done being my friend? If she was just a little upset she would’ve gotten all dramatic, and if she was super upset she would’ve been crying, but… I’ve never seen her like this.”
“You know Rarity—”
“I thought I did.”
“You do, and you know she’s not going to throw away a friendship on a whim. Besides, how is my spell supposed to help? It won’t change reality.”
Spike stared down at the flower clasped in his hands. “I need to know what happened. Maybe if I know then I can apologize, or… I dunno… see it the way Rarity saw it. Maybe I really am a bad friend.”
Twilight stomped her hoof. “You’re not a bad friend, especially not to Rarity! If she even thinks that… But she doesn’t, trust me. She doesn’t, and right now she’s probably just as upset as you are, even if we don’t know why.”
He held up the flower. “Then let me prove it.”
“Only if you promise to do this the right way afterwards: no matter what you see, your next stop is Rarity’s boutique.”
“She’s visiting Canterlot today, but I swear I’ll sleep on a bench at the train station if it’ll help. I’ll do anything to make this right.”
After heaving a great sigh, Twilight nodded. “Other historians say Quick Quill wasn’t the easiest of ponies to get along with anyway.”
Tears came again as Spike hugged her. “Thanks, Twilight.”