In the past ten minutes, I had probably moved all of a couple of hoof lengths. It was probably the slowest I have ever moved before in my entire life.
It still felt too fast.
My teeth gnawed at my bottom lip, twisting the skin like a regular mare would her hair. The fur of my coat was standing on end the same way the feathers in my wings were bristled and stiff. I knew why though. It wasn’t a mystery to me.
After all, it’s kind of hard to ignore the problem when it’s standing right in front of me.
This wasn’t any different than how I felt before. Really, it was almost exactly the same. The library was cold and dark. The windows were shut and door closed. It wasn’t any different than the last time I had seen it. But now I knew what was inside. Didn’t stop me from shivering in my hooves.
I took another deep breath, the tenth in the past minute at least. Every time I let the air in, it felt like it would slip out through my clenched chest. It was like a claw was holding itself around me, reminding me that some part of this was my fault, that I should feel guilty because of this. So no matter how many breaths I took, it didn’t me-
My mane whipped left and right as I shook my head. No, this wasn’t my fault. This was… this was Twilight’s fault, but she needed help. She may be smarter than the rest of us combined, but she still needed help from us. Now was no different.
My hoof took another step forward. I was standing just in front of the doorway now. Just a few more steps and I’d be inside her home. I swallowed a ball that had lodged itself in my throat, giving my wings a quick flap to free the thing gripping my chest. It helped, just a little, but any amount of help was enough right now.
The door was hard on my hoof when I pushed against it, just a little cold too. The first fact was obvious. I knew the reason for the second. Leaning forward just a bit, I felt the hinges of the door frame swing open, revealing the same dark home that I had gone into just a couple of days ago.
The feeling of loneliness assaulted me the moment I took a step into Twilight’s home. Why was I alone now? It didn’t work out well last time. I sighed, holding back the urge to buck myself. We had all talked about this just a little bit ago. I was the only one who could do this. Twilight wouldn’t even listen to any of them, and ambushing her right now… that would be pretty bad, even I can realize that.
We all thought this through before I came here, me and the rest of the gals. Even if she wasn’t… excited to see me, she still let me see her. That was further than any of the other girls got. If we were all in there together… so many things could go wrong.
Twilight… she at least listened to me. If… If I can break through to her, even if just a little, it’ll be something more than any of the others could have done. Besides, I don’t think any amount of apples, sweets, hugs, or kisses are going to make Twilight better right now.
Right now… she needs to feel… something.
Before I know it now, I’m standing just outside her door. I want to laugh out of the irony, but my tight torso stops that. Really though, I couldn’t move more than a few hooves forward for the last few minutes, but then I just start thinking all deep and stuff and I’m right where I need to go. Twilight would probably think of some deeper meaning in that… Maybe she can tell me it once I help her.
Yeah, that’s how it’s going to go. Totally.
I lift my hoof to push against the door, but now I can’t even bare to touch it.
I had to, I know I have to. But… oh in the name of Celestia, why can’t these things ever be easy? I just want to run in there, tell Twilight to get better, than go on with life, but I know, I just know that as soon as I do, everything that happened before will happen again. She doesn’t need me to be tough and in her face… It’s like Applejack said, just saying what happened is what made her like this. She needed a friend now. A friend that… that knew where she was…
I guess I qualify now.
Another deep breath; another strain on my rib cage. This… isn’t going to be easy.
I let my hoof fall more than press against the door, pushing it open with my weight. It opens hard, taking more force than her front door, but slowly, probably just as slowly as I was moving before, it opens into another dark room. It’s different than the darkness behind me though, because in here… I’m going to have to talk.
Twilight is in here somewhere, and I know it. I can’t see at all, at least no better than last time, but I know that she wouldn’t have gone anywhere else. She was still invisible to me though, hidden in the dark like some evil secret of Princess Luna. But she was there. I knew she was there. All I had to do now was just talk to her. Easy… right?
“H-Hey Twilight.”
My voice almost echoed in the still air of the room. I heard blankets rustle as I finished speaking. It was all I needed to know that she was still in the room, not like I ever doubted that she wasn’t.
“I-It’s me...” I let my voice carry off as I finish. She’d recognize me, I knew she would. How could she forget the mare that broke her? It’s kinda hard to forget something like that. I hear more than see her blankets rustle on the bed. At least she responded to me. That’s farther than the rest of the girls got.
“Can I help you Dash?” Her voice made me shiver. Caustic and cold. Just like I deser- NO!
“Yeah, ah…” I feel like Fluttershy. I know what I want to… what I have to say, but I just can’t make a syllable with my lips. My teeth are more inclined to bite on them then let them move. “Can… we just talk?”
The room is cold and silent after I speak. I don’t hear her move at all. I’m stuck biting my lips, waiting for her to say something. I don’t know what I expect her to say though. I know what I want her to say, but I can’t see her saying it. So instead, I wait, and think.
It would be a blessing if this was all just some horrible bad dream. Maybe I left the window open before I went to bed. Twilight was telling me a while ago that cold air can bring you nightmares. If… if that was the case, and this was all just some horrible dream, I’d be so happy. I’d be thrilled. But that’s a fantasy, and this is real life.
“What do you want to talk about?” She asks me in a voice no different than before. That’s okay. I deserve it. I’d prefer shouting, but this is okay t-
I whipped my head as hard I could, letting my thoughts jostle themselves
“I-I just…” Okay, keep calm, I can do that… Yeah, I took lessons from Fluttershy during Wonderbolt Training. I can do this, easy. I just… need to think.
Twilight feels bad because she thinks she’s done more harm than good. Anything obviously good she’s done, she thinks is because of somepony else. I felt bad because I thought I made her think this way. I thought I made her think this way because of that… book. But… how do I fix this? Burn the book? Tell her she’s wrong? How?
My friends told me, convinced me, that it wasn’t my fault, that I’m not responsible for this. I want to help her, not just need to, want to. She needed to see that. Maybe… maybe if she sees that I want that more than anything else at this point, she’ll start to snap out of it. That’s a good place to start… but I can’t have her thinking of that book. Maybe I just… I need to get her mind off of it. But how?
“I wanted to ask… about… the new Daring Do?” I bit my lip as the words left my mouth like a question. What good was that going to do? I wasn’t in here for more than a few seconds and I was already screwing up again! Maybe my friends were wrong… maybe it really is my fault that- STOP NOW!
“Daring Do?” Her voice sounded like a condescending mother about to scold her filly. I almost felt that way.
“Y-Yeah, I mean…” My hooves start scratching against one another. We couldn’t see one another, but I felt more exposed than I ever had before. It was like she was watching me from everywhere, and not just in the blankets on her bed. “You were the one who got me into them, a-and you were right about how good they were.”
“I… was?”
She sounded confused. She sounded… not dead.
Something was working.
“Yeah!” I probably spoke that too loudly, but I couldn’t care. “I mean, you have no idea how much fun it is for me to read those books. They’re totally awesome. A mare who does the impossible no matter what is going on around her, adapting to every situation thrown at her. She’s like the mare every filly wants to be.”
I hear her blankets shuffling in the dark again. It really is impossible for me to tell how she’s moving, like getting up or just adjusting herself, but at least I know she’s not just ignoring me.
“I thought that…” she ran off mumbling something I couldn’t follow. She thought what? That I found those books myself? Hay to that! I wouldn’t have even picked up one of those things unless she convinced me to in the first place.
It was working!
“I was in the hospital for days and those books were so good, I actually wanted to stay in there longer. I mean, can you imagine that? Me! Rainbow Dash, the most awesome of the awesome ponies wanting to be in the hospital just so I could read a book?” I was smiling in the shadows. I know she couldn’t see me still, but… what was it that Pinkie always said? You can always hear some pony smiling when they talk.
She didn’t say anything; she was still just as silent as when I came in. I waited though. I knew she’d do something, she’d have to. At least… I hope she does. Otherwise, I was just running my mouth off for nothing.
But then I heard it. It was faint, dull, but in the silence as loud as a dragon’s roar. It wasn’t more blanket movement or words at all. It was something I had unknowingly wanted to hear since the moment I came here. Hooves moving across the floor.
Twilight was out of her bed.
I was truly, honestly, thrilled.
I didn’t speak, at least I tried not to, biting my lips more out of excitement than nervousness. I have no idea what she’s trying to do, but I know that her doing anything more than just talking poorly of herself in that bed is a good thing. Her hooves click against the floor lightly, but in a slow tempo. Then again, my heart was beating so fast with excitement; everything was probably slow to me at this point.
Then I heard something else, something… hard, like a rock. No… Twilight didn’t keep rocks in her home, it was… it was the flint! She was going to light the candle! I felt my hooves nearly bouncing on the floor with excitement! This was so easy! All it took was just a single reminder of what she had done and she was good as new! Well… okay, not quite there yet, but still.
There was a small flick of sparks in the dark, impossible to miss. Nothing lit though, and I realized she must have missed the candle. Who wouldn’t when the room was impossible to see in. Another spark with another dull sound of scraping stone, but still nothing happened. She… was probably just a little weak. It was like… what, almost a week of being up here alone? Who wouldn’t be a little weak after that? Didn’t matter though, just a quick party with the rest of the gals and-
The candle lit.
I stopped thinking. I started staring.
If Twilight looked frail before, she was brittle now.
Her mane was beyond frazzled… it was graying, aging even. It looked like it belonged on the head of a mare three times her age, not a filly who was on the tail end of her studies with the Princess. The streak of pink that I normally always pegged her for was impossible to see, too much of her mane the same color now. But then… with the body she had now, it didn’t look out of place…
The forelegs she had propped on the table were thin, so… oh my sweet Celestia so thin! I thought they were twigs, I hoped they were twigs. Counting the bones along her undercarriage would have been easier than counting the feathers in my wings. That’s not even mentioning the way her skin sunk into her face. The lavender fur that covered her hid nothing, if anything, it showed everything. Her coat didn’t look any better than her mane, though. If anything it was worse, so much worse.
Patches of it were gone, bald and bare showing the light lavender skin beneath. What fur I did see in the candlelight was lighter than her skin. I didn’t know if it was the lighting or whatever, but… her fur looked like it would blow away with the wind. I was scared to breath for just that reason. No... that wasn’t why. I couldn’t breath because of what I saw in her eyes.
Nothing. Just like last time… worse than last time. Before… there was at least something in there. There was sadness, loneliness, maybe even a bit of helplessness. Now… nothing. It was like looking into a glass ball. It was like she wasn’t there anymore, like there wasn’t a Twilight left. Her body looked dead… every part of her…
I couldn’t hear anything, I couldn’t feel anything. My vision was stuck on the dying mare in front of me, my jaw hanging uselessly, shaking with something I didn’t know. It was either fear or sorrow, but I couldn’t tell which one. My heartbeat rocked my ears, pressed against the flat of my skull. Wings hanging low until they touched the floor, legs shaking like I was standing over an earthquake, I swallowed on nothing, the ball in my throat growing larger with every second I watched her.
How… How did this happen? Just… just thinking made this happen? A few bad thoughts, a few wrong ideas… and Twilight Sparkle, the strongest unicorn I have ever met looked like… that?
My vision blurred, forcing my eyes to look away.
Oh Celestia, this was bad. This was at least twenty times worse than what I thought it was before. I-I thought she was just thinking the wrong way, and that was bad enough to make me want to… to die! But, but this? I was nothing short of a freaking miracle that I didn’t start hurting myself.
I choked on air, pushing a ruff sob from my throat as tears trailed themselves down my muzzle. I tasted the… the awful salty liquid as it trailed over my lips. It was like drinking acid. No, acid would be better. At least then I might be able to die.
I… I couldn’t do this.
They were wrong. I was wrong. This was all my fault. No way around it! How… How could Twilight looking like this be her fault? There’s no way a mare would do this to herself, not in any book or story I’ve ever read or even want to read. This was my fault… and… and now I had to fix it.
Just one apology, and then I’d be gone. It would be the last time any of them would see me. My friends, the town, Twilight… I-I’d just be gone, farther than Fluttershy’s house, and so much farther than the Everfree Forest. I’d… I’d go past the Crystal Mountains, maybe over the seas. I don’t know, but anywhere is better than here.
Here I just cause pain.
I tried to take a deep breath, but found that my lungs shook as much as my body. I took in nothing but gasps of air. My teeth clenched. Some part of me actually hoped they’d crack. Looking up, I looked right at the pale purple mare, ready to beg for forgiveness before I left for redemption.
She wasn’t looking at me though. She was looking at her desk. The glassy orbs reflected the candlelight the same way I’ve seen mirrors do in Rarity’s Boutique. It made the claw over my chest grip even harder. My trembling lips moved to speak, ready to speak… but couldn’t speak.
There was something in Twilight’s mouth.
No.
She was holding a quill in her mouth.
No.
She was using the quill to write something.
No.
That… The book was open on the desk.
No!
“No!” I screamed my thought without even trying to stop myself. I didn’t take inaction against what I did next either.
My hooves darted across the now bare lit room, putting myself right beside the haggard form of Twilight. I didn’t push her, no I didn’t even touch her. Some part of me thought that if I did, she’d turn to dust! What I did do was tear the book right out from her hooves, throwing it on the ground that I hoped would ruin it. A quick flicker of the flames and I saw it no more damaged than the unicorn’s bed sheets.
I looked at Twilight, hard. She looked at me… with nothing. Her eyes were on me, but I didn’t see her looking at me. I felt my coat and feathers bristle, but I didn’t say anything. Words were doing nothing. No, less than nothing, they were doing harm.
Words were what made Twilight start to doubt herself. They were what broke her, twisted her, and made her… this thing. Words were what convinced me that I was a traitor, a coward, a… a monster even. No… words were stupid and worthless. My vision fell from her down to the book on the floor. I have no idea what she wrote. She wasn’t using her magic, so she wasn’t speaking what she was writing. I already knew it was going to be bad… but I still had to see.
My hoof flicked the book, turning over until its pages were looking up at me. I didn’t bother to read what was on them. I kicked more than pushed the pages until I reached the end, the first really empty blank page in the thing so far. Well, not completely blank. There were two lines written on the empty page on the left. That had to be what Twilight was writing.
I scanned the words as fast as I could.
#1021: Made Rainbow Dash wish she stayed in the hospital
#1022: Made Rainbow Dash cry wh
She didn’t get to finish the rest of that one, like that did any good. It was pretty freaking obvious what she thought.
“Is this what you really think Twilight?” I wanted to sound mad, angry even. It didn’t work the first time, hay, I can’t think of a single time when it has worked, but I still really wanted to. Instead though, my voice sounded like the farthest thing from what I usually sounded like.
I sounded sad.
“Do… Do you really think everything is so simple like this?” Her head cocked to the side; almost as if something has moved out of place in her mind and she was trying to angle it back in.
I hate words. I really do. I hate them worse than the bullies from Flight School or the stupid prophecies that keep putting me and my friends in danger. But right now… I think I got it.
Words were what broke Twilight, because words were all that she cared about. She wrote down and read everything, listened to everything, and put every action she saw into words. Words were, almost literally, her life. So maybe, just this one time, if Celestia bless me, I could make those words do some bucking good.
I took another deep breath. I hoped it was the last one I needed.
“Twilight, do you really think this is how every pony sees you? That we just… keep track of what you’ve done right and wrong?” She didn’t move aside from her jaw opening and closing. “Well, let me tell you, we don’t. I have never once thought of you as anything else other than one of the most important and dependable ponies I know. You don’t stop working until you’ve done something beyond 100%, and you don’t stop moving until you’ve fixed every little thing that has gone wrong.
“That’s something that I… admire about you. I either give up because I don’t understand something or fly away because I don’t want to deal with it. You. Never. Do. That.” I punctuated every word with my hoof on the ground. Twilight blinked. “I can name a hundred different times every pony in Ponyville, or hay, even Equestria, thought we were done for, but you always found a way out. You and you alone. Sure, we helped, and that’s what friends do, but we only helped because you knew what to do.
“So what if you’ve made a few mistakes, you’ve always fixed them. So what if you don’t finish everything you start, that just means you finish the things that are important to you. And so what if you don’t have the answer to every question, that just means you have something else to learn.” I wasn’t taking a deep breath, but did stop to breath.
“You’re important to me Twilight, to me and all of your friends. No matter what you think about yourself, please realize that you will never get us to think any less of you.” I swallowed on the saliva collecting in my mouth. “If you need me to, I could fill that book with all the good that you’ve done, and I still wouldn’t be any more than halfway done.” To this day, I still don’t know what made me say what came next.
“I’d give up anything to see you happy again Twilight. I’d even give up my wings.”
I shut my eyes as I spoke the words. They slipped out before I could even think what they meant to me. Giving up not only my passion, but my dreams. Letting go of the thing that defined me. Would I really be able to do that? Give up… everything I had just to see Twilight happy again? Just to see her smile and life like, like she had on Hearth’s Warming Eve? With the image of the mare in front of me against the memory of the unicorn in my mind, it wasn’t a hard decision.
Of course I would.
For a while nothing moved in the room. Even with the low level of light coming from the flickering flame on the candle wax, I didn’t bother to look around. I didn’t want to see a broken mare with empty eyes right now. Now… I wanted nothing more than to hear Twilight say the phrase I was so determined to say to her.
“I’m sorry.”
That… that wasn’t me.
That was Twilight.
She could have said anything at that moment and it would have affected me the same. It wasn’t that she apologized, oh Celestia, I swear this mare has apologized almost as much as Fluttershy has in her life. But… no, it’s how she said it. It wasn’t cold or empty or heartless. When she spoke, she sounded alive.
She sounded like Twilight.
“I-I’m sorry!” My eyes shot to her as soon as she spoke those words. Her hooves wobbled across the floor, moving towards me. I was still as a statue, shocked and awed. Happy and terrified. Thrilled and scared. “P-Please. I… I didn’t know… I don’t kn-know…”
Her hooves fell from beneath her.
Sprawled across the floor like she was dropped, I found myself trying to hold back from crying in fear. It only got harder as I started to hear something else. Something… I had only heard come from myself, at least recently.
Twilight was crying.
Tears fell from her glassy eyes, dampening the wood beneath her as they slid off the clear patches of skin on her legs. Wracking breaths coughed and choked her, making her carriage vibrate and twitch in a way that I thought just looked painful. Her head swayed back and forth, moving without any kind of force behind it. It took me a moment to realize that she was trying to stand… but she couldn’t. She was too weak to even stand.
I’m crying again too.
I was next to her before I had another thought, lying next to her before I thought of how I might hurt her again. My wings were around her, my hooves around her neck, and her face against my underbelly. She was cold and still for a moment, a brief second that felt longer than the past two days put together. But then the sobs returned in force, muffled against my fur. Her weak legs and hooves tried to pull on me, to bring me closer, but she couldn’t move me any more than I could move the earth.
Twilight was crying into me like a lost foal. Shaking and screaming into my fur as my coat grew damp around her. My wings were still pulled around her, but no harder than the blankets on her bed. My hooves slowly traced the pale mane on her head, as softly as I could possibly manage. She was more fragile than glass right now, already cracked and nearly broken.
“I-I’m s-s-sso… ss-ssoo…” she kept trying to speak, but every time she came close, another heaving sob would pull the air from her lungs and push tears from her eyes. I didn’t say anything. I hated words. I still do.
So instead, I kept her close to me. I held Twilight against me as she poured everything she had hidden away. I felt all of her emotions spill over me, through her cries, tears, and frail legs. Her body shivered in my wings and her cries shook my hooves. But I didn’t let go. There’s no way that I could.
“P-Plea-ea-ease ff-fforgive mm..”
“Shh..” I spoke as softly as I could. She was hurting herself by just talking, more than she already was. I leaned down and placed a chaste kiss on her forehead, just aside the base of her horn. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise.” She continued to cry.
Time was lost against me through Twilight’s cries. It could have been minutes or hours, I’d even believe a few days, before Twilight slowly grew quiet in my hooves. Her harsh breathing had fallen into a soft snore, her nose and muzzle pushed against my coat. The lavender coat around her was still damp and wet from her tears, but her eyes were shut and hidden. Somehow, I knew that whatever was behind those closed lids was anything but glass.
I continued to rub my hooves through her mane, grooming her in her sleep as her frail legs held me close. Even if I wanted to move, I doubt that I could, not without hurting her and definitely not without waking her. I didn’t mind though. This… this is what I wanted.
She wasn’t back, not yet. There’s no way either of us would be able to just walk away from something like this. What she said, what I thought, what we did, we meant everything. My eyes looked at the journal still open on the ground, just out of my reach beneath the desk where I had thrown it. I let a low sigh escape my lips. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind about burning that thing to oblivion and beyond.
Twilight told me once, before any of this began, that books always taught us lessons. They were meant to guide us, help us, and teach us things we could never realize by ourselves. If there was anything I had learned, it was that there would always be some pain. Bruises, scrapes, maybe a broken bone, even… trauma like this. But that didn’t mean that was the end of it. Things never stopped moving, for better or worse. But that’s what made us stronger.
Twilight and I… we wouldn’t be the same after this.
Even as I held the tired and damaged mare in my hooves, I knew she would never be the same Twilight that I had given the empty book to before. This would always haunt her the same way it would me. We could try and forget, and maybe even force ourselves to, but it would still be there. Really though, it was okay.
I would be there for her, no matter what, making sure that she never thought anything close to this again. It would take time, weeks, months, who knows maybe years. It didn’t matter though, not to me at least. Not as long as I kept her safe, as long as this never happened again. As long as we kept moving, there was always some progress to be made.