There were all sorts of evenings in the Castle of Friendship.
There were exciting, joyful evenings, when two, or four, or nearly a dozen of the Princesses’ many friends were over, and Starlight was so busy laughing and smiling that she could scarcely spare the time to remember why they’d been invited in the first place.
There were quiet, peaceful evenings, when ponies were busy, Spike would prepare a meal for hours in no particular rush as Twilight lulled herself into a zen state reshelving books or researching that week’s magical obsession, and Starlight would read quietly in an alcove, or perhaps tinker with a kite in her room.
Then, there were evenings where the quiet was not that of peace, but of exhaustion. Evenings when the Elements and their allies returned from some world-saving mission or another so late that they would more accurately be called mornings, when clothes were strewn about rooms they didn’t belong, any food that did end up being prepared was as likely as not to end up burnt or forgotten, and nopony was quite sure who had gone home and who had merely fallen asleep slightly out of view behind a potted plant or a stack of books. It was on this third sort of night that Starlight, amidst a hazy walk to her bedroom, heard quiet sobbing emanating from the library.
This was far from unusual, of course; life, particularly as of late, provided many reasons to cry, good and bad. But typically, such a sound would be accompanied by voices speaking in comfort, especially in the palace of all places. This evening—whatever time it really was—there were no voices.
So, of course, Starlight peered in the door. She may have been inexperienced at discussing her own feelings, but that was no reason to let anypony else’s go unattended.
Her eyes quickly located Twilight Sparkle, face buried in her hooves, lying beside the empty fireplace. Without a second thought—her first being that of concern—Starlight stepped into the library and made for the distraught mare. Exhaustion be damned.
Twilight swiftly looked up at the sound of hooves on the crystal floor, face disheveled even in the dim light. “Who… Who is it?”
“Starlight,” said Starlight, sitting down a comforting but respectful distance from her teacher-turned-equal.
Twilight looked concerned. “Sh– shouldn’t you be in b-bed? We got back from Canterlot pretty late… I think…”
She thought correctly. After the catastrophe that was the inadvertent summoning of the Pony of Shadows, and the subsequent frantic research session and confrontation at Hollow Shades, the reunion of the Pillars and the alicorn sisters had run far into the evening, even before the Elements and Starlight had boarded the train for Ponyville. Between Twilight and Starlight, they probably could’ve teleported the lot of them back immediately, but nopony was interested in missing out on excited, adrenaline-filled reflection on the day’s events on the train home for the sake of a little sleep.
Were Starlight to reflect upon it, she wouldn’t actually remember the last time she’d slept. But that wasn’t important right now. As Twilight should know.
“You’re not in bed,” Starlight pointed out.
Twilight shook her head. “I w-will be in a minute. Don’t worry about me. Just– just—” She broke off, breathing unsteadily.
An ache filled Starlight’s chest. It wasn’t right; whyever Twilight was upset, she’d just saved Equestria, again—and if not Equestria, at least one very old, very grateful unicorn. The pony before her didn’t deserve to feel like this ever again after all she’d done. It wasn’t fair.
She shook her head. Getting angry at injustice didn’t solve it. She knew that firsthoof. “Twilight… I’m tired, but so are you. If you’re staying up, so am I.”
For some reason, all that did was make Twilight begin audibly sobbing again. Am I that bad at this?
Should she move closer, or stay there? Should she hug her friend, or wait until she was prompted? Faust damn her, why was it easier to comfort thousand-year-old supervillains than her teacher?
She considered waiting until Twilight wanted to talk, but six seconds of listening to her friend in pain shattered any resolve she had to carry out that plan. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t– You shouldn’t—” Twilight heaved in a breath. “It’s selfish.”
Well that didn’t make any sense at all. Starlight almost said as much, before realizing that it probably wouldn’t help much. “How can crying be selfish?”
“It is,” insisted Twilight shakily.
“Well…” Starlight reasoned. “I won’t judge. I’m sure I’ve done worse.”
Twilight mumbled something incoherent and disagreeable.
Starlight sighed. Fine. Be like that, you stubborn… “Twi, do you want me to go to bed or not?”
Twilight nodded, face once again in her hooves.
“Great. Then tell me what’s wrong.”
There was silence, but for her friend’s uneven breathing. But then it began, slowly, to even out, becoming less ragged, until, after a few minutes, Twilight almost could’ve been sleeping. Starlight waited patiently.
“Earlier…” Twilight’s voice arose at last. “Earlier, I didn’t listen to you.”
Immediately, Starlight wanted to object, but she knew better than to interrupt just yet.
“Before we returned Star Swirl and the Pillars,” Twilight continued, “I was just focusing on… Well, meeting my idol. I didn’t think about what it could do. What I could do. And I ended up… I almost…” She hiccuped, and pressed her hooves to her eyes. “And then– then after they were back, I was even worse! You kept telling me I was wrong, but I listened to someone I’d never met just because I read about them in a book instead of one of my best f-friends! You had to go to the others because you couldn’t t-talk to me, and because I was too stupid to listen to you, we almost…” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Sent somepony to limbo f-forever just because they wanted their friends to listen to them. Like you did.”
Starlight was about ready to say… Well, she wasn’t sure, but say something that would force Twilight to stop berating herself, but, before she could, her friend finally looked up. “Oh, Starlight, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so s-sorry. I’m… I’m…” Twilight trailed off, presumably to avoid another full meltdown.
Okay. Okay. You can handle this. Both of you can handle this. “Twilight…” Starlight said gently, but with no small amount of confusion. “It’s okay. Really, it is. But you already apologized earlier; we’re good, really! Why is this… hurting you so much now?”
A tiny bit of Twilight’s usual focus returned to her face; just enough to make her look even more concerned than she already did. “Well, I’m not sure I really apologized, I just said that—”
“I know, I was there,” Starlight said quickly. “But still, it was enough. I wasn’t mad at you—honestly, if I was mad at anypony, it was the other Pillars for not pushing back against Star Swirl more.” She chuckled. Twilight, understandably, refrained.
“That’s…” Twilight sighed. “That’s not all. I mean, I am sorry for that, I promise, especially because you’re my equal now, and I shouldn’t—well, obviously you were my equal before! All of my friends are, and not just my friends, everypony, obviously, just because I’m a princess I’m not, um, and you’re a princess, just because both of us are– Um.” She managed to stop herself (or possibly the capacity of her lungs stopped her, but the outcome was the same). “That wasn’t why I was crying. Not… really.”
Starlight nodded. She didn’t entirely know what was going on, but she didn’t need to to help, so her confusion would have to take a back seat. “Do you want to talk about it? Whyever you were—are—upset, I mean?”
Twilight’s swollen eyes darted all about the dim room; everywhere but Starlight’s face. “I really shouldn’t. And you should get to bed. Um, because it’s healthy, not because I want you to leave.”
She may not have been a cult leader anymore (to Trixie’s proclaimed disappointment), but Starlight knew a half-truth when she heard one, and she zeroed in on it with practiced ease. “Twi, I asked if you wanted to, not if you thought you should.”
Guilt flashed in Twilight’s eyes.
Starlight sighed. “I’m not going to be mad. Honestly, I don’t know what you could even do to make me mad”—a lie, since Twilight had done just that earlier that day (yesterday?), but she obviously wouldn’t be doing that again any time soon, if the tearful apology had anything to say for it—”But I care more about you feeling better and being honest with me than I do about that anyway. So come on.” Was that rude? That felt rude.
Rude or not, it worked. Twilight gave a reluctant nod. “Starlight… You’re immortal. Unless, Celestia forbid, you get killed somehow, you’re never going to die.”
Starlight blinked.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought about it; ever since Discord had said the words ‘live forever’ in the changeling hive barely a minute after her ascension, it’d been tickling at the back of her mind (as the draconequus had no doubt intended). Intellectually, she knew that she was now a being many ponies would consider a god, and that she’d received all the perks that came with the role. She knew that.
But… She knew it in the way she knew that Trixie and Sunburst would one day die, or that the pony species would eventually go extinct, or that there were creatures starving on the other side of the world. She knew it as she knew that the changeling queen she’d made the unilateral decision to forgive was a largely unrepentant murderer, and that the Elements of Harmony she and her friends relied upon had decided to sentence a pony to a thousand years of solitary confinement, and that Pinkie Pie sometimes drooled in her cupcake batter while fantasizing about frosting. She knew it—but, for the sake of her sanity, she pretended she didn’t.
It wasn’t exactly easy. Every time she looked in the mirror above her desk, her brain helpfully reminded her that her horn now protruded slightly off the top and out of sight, and every night, as she lay in bed, it was uncomfortably apparent that her legs reached just a bit farther than they had a few months ago. Still, though, from day to day, she kept any thoughts that could force her to have to fully internalize her new agelessness swept neatly under a mental rug.
But now, Twilight was saying it out loud, directly to her entirely unprepared face, and the sweeping was beginning to have a difficult time keeping up. Or, rather, Twilight had said it, two minutes ago. Or was that three?
“...Sorry!” she registered the vaguely purple blob in front of her saying. “I’m sorry! I should know better, I went through this same thing, I should’ve known you wouldn’t have had enough time to deal with it… Knew I shouldn’t have said anything…”
The fact that Twilight was criticizing herself, again, cut through the panicked fog like a knife through particularly stubborn cheese, and Starlight found herself once again in the darkened library. “Huh? Uh, it’s fine.”
Twilight shook her head in disbelief. “It obviously isn’t! Please, forget I said anything.”
Starlight grinned awkwardly. “Too late, I think. Really, though, it’s…” She couldn’t bring herself to say fine again—not after begging Twilight to be honest with her in turn. But it wasn’t, she could reluctantly admit, as if she could avoid the topic forever. Maybe she could let just a few of the panicked thoughts in. Just enough to help Twilight. And then… She could deal with the rest of them tomorrow. After a lot of sleep. And maybe a few of whatever mysterious, unlabeled drinks Trixie had in her fridge. “I can deal with it. Please go on.” Convincing.
Fortunately, it seemed Twilight had given up on arguing with her, as all she received in protest was a frustrated groan. “You’re… Um, immortal now. And, when I first realized that… Celestia, I was so happy.”
Frazzled as she was, Starlight wasn’t sure she could connect the dots here. “That’s… Good?”
“Don’t you see?” Twilight said wistfully. “When I first got my wings, I shut myself in the library for a week when I realized how long I might live. That my friends…” She didn’t say it—she didn’t have to—but it echoed off the walls like a firework. “…You know. Since then, every time I meet somepony new, every time I make a new friend, no matter how happy I am, I’m always a little sad too. Because I know… eventually, I’ll have to say g-goodbye. I felt that way when I met you.”
Starlight raised an eyebrow. “Well, when I met the new you,” Twilight amended. “But now… I don’t have to feel that way. I still do, all the time, with everypony else—but not with you.” Even with her eyes red, her wings a disheveled mess, and lying on the cold floor of a dark room, Twilight smiled. “Because of you, I have somepony, at least one friend, I won’t have to see… die.”
Starlight stared, open-mouthed, at her friend. Faust, she hadn’t even thought about… about…
Misinterpreting her shocked expression, Twilight quickly continued. “Not that I don’t love my friends! I love all of them, of course I do, and 97.6% of the time I don’t even worry about this when I’m with them, it’s just nice to have somepony I don’t feel like I need to accept is going to… leave.”
Latching onto the only coherent thought in her mind and pointedly not engaging with the thousand new anxieties stirring alongside it, Starlight said, “I’m really glad I can help you feel better. I think. But if you’re so happy, then why…?”
Twilight winced. “Right. Well… After we got back, I realized that part of the reason I felt so bad about not listening to you was… I was worried about losing you. Because you’re like me now. I didn’t want… It seemed so much more important. There are only so many immortal beings in Equestria, and the thought of losing one of them because of my carelessness…” She shuddered. “But that’s why I said I was being selfish. I realized I felt bad for myself, not for you. I was thinking of you for what you are, not for who you are, and as soon as I realized that I knew how much you’d hate it, so I started crying, and then I just felt worse because I was really crying for myself, and it just… Well, you know.”
Starlight did know. Twilight was right; the idea of her somehow being more valuable, even subjectively, because of what she was, made her fur stand on end. It was the thing about her new status that kept her up at night even now (though after this conversation, she suspected it might have some new companions). She’d had nightmares about her friends suddenly worshipping her and doing whatever she said—like the ponies in her village.
But… That didn’t mean Twilight was at fault for thinking that way. Or even that she was necessarily wrong. “Is that why you apologized for earlier, with Stygian?” she asked.
“Yes,” Twilight said, face still angled away in shame, embarrassment, or both. “I wanted to do it again. For the right reasons. Because it’s… Well, you, and you’re my friend. And I don’t want things to change, or to think about you differently, just because you’re a princess now.”
Starlight smiled. “It doesn’t sound like you have anything to apologize for to me.” A thought struck her. “But, if you’re still worried…” She scooted directly in front of Twilight, who looked up in surprise, and raised a hoof to her chest. “I promise you, Twilight Sparkle, that I will never treat you like a princess, or anything but my friend. Well. Unless you want me to, obviously.”
Twilight looked startled, then amused, and then sincerely touched. “Starlight… I promise you that I’ll always do my best to treat you as a friend first and foremost.”
“That’s a better way of putting it,” Starlight admitted.
Twilight giggled. “I have a bit more practice sounding what Dash would call ‘princessy.’”
Starlight shared in the laugh, and, for the first time, the silence that followed wasn’t tense, or solemn, or awkward. She let herself linger in it for a moment with Twilight before speaking again. “I forgive you, you know. For all of it.”
“You… you do?” Even restored to a semblance of stability, Twilight sounded painfully unsure.
“Of course I do. I mean, it’s not every day your friend becomes… immortal. I imagine it’s pretty weird to adjust to.” Twilight nodded emphatically. “And as for the stuff with Star Swirl, it’s not like I can blame you there. I’m sure I’d do the same thing in your place, if I wanted your approval.” Which she did. Constantly and perpetually. “You don’t have to worry about it. I promise.”
Twilight smiled. “Are you kidding? Today, you saved a pony I didn’t think could be saved. I’ve never been so proud in my life.”
You’ve… Starlight felt her throat tighten, decided that she was tired of waiting, and leapt forward to pull Twilight into a hug. Without a moment of hesitation, her friend reciprocated.
At that moment, inexplicably, warmth flooded Starlight’s body—more than could possibly be coming from Twilight, especially after lying on the cold crystal. She opened her glistening eyes in confusion, and was greeted with a beautiful, baffling sight: The fireplace had started itself.
The two pulled away from each other in surprise, facing the crackling fire. Starlight had been in the library at night before, but this time, the firelight danced across the crystals in ways both entirely new and comfortingly familiar. The fire was somehow both a darker red and a brighter white than ever before, and its glow shone through the semitranslucent crystals of the pillars on the walls, reflected off the opaque gemstones of the mantelpiece, and bounced happily between every facet and filigree in the room until the whole space shone as if in the light of day. She looked at Twilight, whose coat seemed in the light to have broadened to encompass every shade from turquoise to maroon, and who was staring at her, dumbfounded.
“This place,” Starlight eventually said, as much to fill the silence as anything else, “Is weird.”
“…Yeah,” said Twilight. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but it was suddenly hard to tell that she’d been crying at all. She turned to Starlight with a curious expression. “…This is gonna sound like a non-sequitur, but have you given any thought to your domain?”
“As in…?”
Twilight gestured with a wing. “What you’re the alicorn of. What you could be the princess of. I’ve got friendship, Celestia and Luna have the sun and moon, and Cadance has love. Do you know…?”
Oh. That. To be honest, Starlight had given it some thought, but, whenever she did, her mind inevitably decided to follow the thread of her seemingly-inevitable coronation to royalty, and that idea made her jittery. “Uh, no, I’m not sure.” Hadn’t it taken Twilight herself nearly a year to figure out?
Come to think of it… Over half that had passed since her own ascension, that afternoon on top of the changeling hive. How in the name of Celestia had that happened?
Twilight looked considerate. “Well… I don’t want to pressure you, or push you into anything you’re not ready for. But… If you want to hear it, I think I might have an idea, after today.”
Starlight’s ears pricked up. “You do?”
Twilight nodded. “Empathy.”
Princess of Empathy.
Despite the warmth, Starlight shivered; an odd wave washed over her at the idea. “…Princess of Empathy, huh?”
Twilight looked hesitant. “What do you think?”
Princess Starlight Glimmer. The words didn’t feel quite as dissonant as they always had before.
“I think… that sounds right.”
The fire seemed to crackle merrily in response.