March 9, 1002
Nothing works. The clones generated by the mirror pool are idiot savants, incapable of carrying on in my stead, and their blood and organs are tainted by the pool’s magic and unsuitable for transfer. I have eliminated the unneeded copies, and with them die two more of my ideas for how my flesh might be restored. I am now enroute back to Canterlot to resume my experiments on changeling magic, but I am not hopeful. If a means to apply their regenerative powers to ponies even exists, I am unlikely to find it in the few weeks I have left.
It’s not fair. Have I not done everything a pony should do? Everything a pony CAN do!? I am a genius. I could have been the most famous artificer in Equestria. I could have been wealthy and lauded! I could have been the first earth pony to teach at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns! And I gave it all up to do the right thing! I gave it all up, for my sister’s career and my mother’s health and my wife’s peace of mind. I could have done whatever I wanted in life, and I gave it up for the ponies who needed me. And what do I get for it!?
Cancer.
Is this what my father felt? Was this his life? Did he sacrifice everything he had for Mother, Flash Dance, and me, only for the universe to spite him? I have done everything that a pony is supposed to do! And what do I have to show? A dead family. No children. No friends. A wife who I do not and never have loved. An unremarkable professorship at the University of Canterlot.
I was born to greatness—I know I was. I was the earth pony who understood magic without a horn. I was the pony who could spin wonders out of wood and iron that all the wizards of Canterlot couldn't make with gold and gems. When Celestia herself needed an enchanter, she called upon me! I had the potential for greatness in me, and I pissed it away because I thought I was supposed to.
My every waking hour is consumed by the hope that there may be some cure, but I know it is a fantasy. How many great artificers and wizards have died over the course of history? If magic had the power to heal all afflictions, one of them would have found the means. My nights are spent wondering if I will leave any mark on the world when I’m gone. Not my family, certainly not my wife. My work, perhaps, but only for whoever takes my place.
I have turned to Princess Celestia and Princess Sparkle for some small comfort. They are immortal, and their memory will not dull with age. Princess Celestia will always remember asking me to tutor her student in enchanting, and in some small way, I will always be Twilight Sparkle’s teacher. That brief memory will be all that is left of me.
Unless. Twilight wasn’t always immortal.
If I could get the Elements to work for me, that might provide a solution. She is immune to the ravages of time and form, as are Celestia and Luna! But the Elements only work that way for her. I would need a means of triggering them.
I think I have an idea.
Canterlot Castle was beautiful above ground, but underground, a dungeon is a dungeon, no matter how nice the building above may be. Narrow corridors, weak illumination, steel doors, and bars. Applejack made her way down the main corridor to the deepest, most secure cell in the whole of the palace. It didn’t even look like a cell—just a solid wall with half a dozen unicorn guards standing before it. She spoke to the guards there, they opened the cell door for her. It slid apart with a rumble like a rolling boulder, finally coming to rest with a loud thud. The door was just wide enough for a single pony to pass, and Applejack walked through it and inside.
There, she saw something she did not understand. She saw a pony in chains—a purple alicorn, with stars for a cutie mark and with a streak of color in her mane. Her legs were bound in irons, her wings held to her side by thick steel straps, her horn wrapped in a sheath of copper and rowan wood that left it unable to conjure so much as a spark. She saw a pony crying, saw tears running down her face, heard her sniffling and trying to hold it all in. She saw Twilight, her friend, in pain.
“Hello, Tick Tock,” Applejack said, her voice flat and her face still.
“Applejack? Is that you?” Tick Tock asked with Twilight’s voice, peering up and squinting, though Applejack was not three feet away. “What’s happening? Nopony tells me anything, and I think I’m starting to go blind. It’s getting so dark.”
“That would be the magic bindin’ you to Twilight’s body wearin’ off,” Applejack said, plainly and directly. “Took Princess Celestia a while to figure out how ya did it with the Element of Magic and what, but she got it in the end. Says it’ll take about another hour to wear it down completely. First you go blind, than deaf, then numb, then you fall asleep, and then Twilight wakes up again and we all go home.”
“You’re... you’re killing me?” Tick Tock asked weakly, Twilight’s wings twisting and straining in their bonds.
At first, Applejack had no answer, her jaw opening and shutting silently. “Yeah,” she finally said. That did not seem like enough to her, so she let out a breath, trying to think of what else to say. Nothing would come though, and so she simply repeated, “Yeah. I suppose we are.”
“No... no, you can’t!” Tick Tock said, her tone pleading, but Applejack remained stony-faced. “Applejack, please, this isn’t you. You’re not a killer—you won’t even spray bugs! Please don’t let the Princess do this to me.”
“Tick Tock...”
“Please, I’m sorry, I know I need to be punished, but I don’t have to die!” she pleaded, trying to reach out to Applejack until the chains went taut around her legs. “We can find another way to get Twilight back. We can... we can think of something, or—”
“Tick Tock—”
“—or, or find somepony else! Or the Elements of Harmony. Maybe they can set things right. Twilight has eternity, Applejack, this is my only life! Can’t we wait just a bit to see if there’s a way to save us both? Please, you know I—”
“Tick Tock!” Applejack shouted, her words clipped and curt. Her expression never shifted from that stony stillness, and Tick Tock pulled back as though stung, the chains around her clinking as she settled back. After the quiet in the room had stayed too long, Applejack broke it with a quiet, “I already asked. The Princess, she’s... well. She’s pretty set on this.”
“She...” Tick Tock sniffled, staring at Applejack, her mouth faintly open. After a moment though, she understood, sitting up as best she could in the heavy chains around her. “Where’s... where’s Rainbow Dash?” she asked. “Can I see her?”
“She don’t want to see you,” Applejack said quietly, shaking her head gently.
“I’m...” Tick Tock choked, unable to finish the words. She forced the sound down though, sitting as straight as the chains would allow and raising her head high. “I’m sorry I hurt you, Applejack, but please. I’m going to die. I need to tell her I love her.” Though Tick Tock could barely see Applejack, she looked her in the eye as best she could. “I need to say goodbye.”
Applejack sat quietly, lowing her rear to the floor. She didn’t answer right away, instead taking a moment to adjust her hat, shifting it this way and that. “What you need... well. Don’t matter so much anymore.” She let out a long breath, and then gently shook her head. “And I don’t think it’s what she needs right now.”
“I ah... I understand,” Tick Tock said, and though her voice was strained, she nodded. “Do you think later, when she’s ready, you could tell her? Let her know I was thinking of her?”
“Yeah,” Applejack said, drawing a deep breath and glancing at the floor. “Yeah, when she’s able to handle it, I’ll tell her.”
“Thank you, Applejack,” Tick Tock said. The cell fell into a silence, interrupted only briefly by Tick Tock’s attempt to hold her composure, her chest still rising and falling unsteadily, her throat tight and her voice rough. To Applejack, the moment seemed to drag on forever, and she looked down and away at the floor. Finally, Tick Tock asked, “So, why are you here then?” her voice revealing only the faintest tremble.
“Found your journal,” Applejack said, briefly looking back at her saddlebags. “Spent the last few days readin’ it just about cover to cover. Ah guess Ah was... lookin’ for where it all went strange. Where you talked about dreams of burning your parents, or enslaving the earth or... Ah don’t know. Evil stuff. But it was just boring. Everyday things.”
“A-and?” Tick Tock asked, her ears folding back as she looked slightly away and down.
“Ah guess what Ah’m askin’ is...” Applejack said, needing a moment to find the words. “Why? You were dying, Ah know—Twilight, immortality, ritual circle, Element of Magic, killing yourself, we put all that together. But you could have just... done that and laid low. Run off with her body. But ya stuck around in her life for two years. What makes a...” She swallowed, taking a moment to think. “A normal stallion decide he’s goin’ to go posses a nineteen-year-old mare and then date one of her friends?”
“I dated Rainbow Dash because I love her, Applejack,” Tick Tock insisted, sitting up in her chains and narrowing her eyes, her tone turning defensive as she raised her voice.
“You slept with her when she thought you were Twilight,” Applejack said, that queasy, twisting feeling in her gut returning. “She thought her best friend loved her, and then she finds out she’s been cuddling up with some sixty-year old stallion in a mare’s body. She hasn’t been comin’ to work, she won’t talk to anypony, Ah don’t think she’s been eatin’—”
“Don’t you—”
“You basically...” Applejack found her throat tightening, refusing to let out the words. She forced them out though, steeling herself and blurting out: “You raped her, Tick Tock.”
“Don’t you dare!” Tick Tock screamed, trying to leap up at Applejack. The chains around her went taut and slammed her back down to the floor, the metal ringing under her with the force of her impact. For a moment, she lay dazed, but soon she rose again. “I’d never hurt her! Never! I love her, and I wanted to be with her forever.” Tick Tock said, glaring out at Applejack. “Twilight was only ever her friend. I was the one who was close to her. I was the one who was always there when she needed me!”
Applejack looked at Tick Tock and slowly followed her gaze out to a point a few inches to the left of her head. Quietly, she leaned over, waving her leg up and down through the air there. Tick Tock continued to glare straight ahead, her eyes not moving. “I’d never hurt her!” Tick Tock yelled again into the silence, though now her voice had a strong tremble. Applejack continued to say nothing, leaning back to her old position. Still, the silence persisted, Tick Tock’s glare slowly softening, as she head tilted to the floor. “Is she really not eating? Can Fluttershy check on her, or...”
“Fluttershy’s worse off than RD is. She’s so afraid that all the ponies around her are impostors, she can’t trust anypony or anything. Won’t even leave her cottage,” Applejack said, watching Tick Tock’s ears fold back, her tail slump, her head sink to the ground. “Some of the pegasi are making sure RD’s okay though. Check in on her every day.”
“Oh. Good,” Tick Tock said, adding, “About them checking in on her, I mean. Not Fluttershy.” After another brief pause, she added a quicker “Fluttershy’ll be fine. She’s a lot stronger than she thinks.”
“I suppose she is,” Applejack said, letting the silence once again return. This time, though, she was more collected, raising her head and asking: “So is that why you stayed then? Rainbow Dash?”
“No,” Tick Tock said, shaking her head. “No. I wasn’t seriously interested in her until we’d known each other for a while.”
“Then... tell me?” Applejack asked wearily, just looking at the floor. “Would help me make some sense of all this.”
“You mares—the six of you, I mean—you don’t know how charmed your lives are,” Tick Tock said. “I know it doesn’t seem that way to you, but... you remember when Big Mac sprained his leg, and I had to help you take care of the farm?”
“Yup,” Applejack nodded gently. “Ah guess it should have struck me as odd that you knew your way around a farm so well. Read about that in your journal.”
“It should have struck you as odd,” Tick Tock agreed. “I should have been caught, then and there. The whole time I was pulling that plow, I was screaming to myself that this was a terrible plan—that Twilight would never do this. But it was... it was just so important to you.” Tick Tock swallowed, shaking her head as though to clear it. “And then at the end, you thanked me, and you gave me a hug, and I felt like it had all been worth it.”
“That’s why you did all this?” Applejack asked, “For a hug?”
“I want to do the right thing, Applejack,” Tick Tock said, blindly staring down at the metal floor. “I’ve spent my whole life doing the right thing—doing what a pony is supposed to do. All it did was waste my life. With you six... you do the right thing and it all ends well. That’s not how it works with other ponies. You give away everything you have for other ponies and all it means is you’ve got nothing left. I wanted it all to work out. I wanted to be a good pony and then get my happy ending.”
Her voice cracked, her eyes starting to glisten with tears. “Wasn’t I a good friend to you, Applejack?” she asked, lifting her head, though now the spot on which she focused was a good foot to Applejack’s right. “When you needed me, wasn’t I always there? Didn’t I prove I’d go to the ends of the earth for you? I did what Twilight would have done.” Applejack said nothing, watching as Tick Tock’s tears rolled down Twilight’s face. “I care about you all. I do.”
“Ah...” Applejack said, drawing the word out until there was nothing left. “Ah suppose Ah believe that, Tick Tock. You mean well. Maybe even got a good heart. If things had been different...” Her gut started to churn and twist, and she forced herself to go on. “But you’ve done somethin’ Ah can’t forgive. Even without RD, even without what you stole from Twilight, honesty is part of friendship too, and you were never honest with me.”
“I told you in the end, didn’t I?” Tick Tock asked, her voice cracking. “Isn’t that why I’m here? Because I was an idiot and confessed to Rainbow Dash? I wanted the mare I was going to spend eternity with to love me for who I really was. I knew you’d... I knew I’d need to be punished, but...” For a moment, she lost the power to speak, only a quiet whine emerging from her throat.
“If I’d just kept quiet, I’d still be in Ponyville,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut a moment to force the tears out. “I told you because I was tired of lying to you! Because you meant so much to me and I wanted to mean the same to you. Isn’t that worth something!?” she yelled up at Applejack, the words coming out hot and harsh.
Applejack didn’t respond for some time, her tail flicking this way and that as she fiddled with her hat. “It is,” she finally said. “It is worth something, Tick Tock. Just not enough.”
The oppressive silence of the cell was quick to return in the wake of Applejack’s words. The metal around them, far from amplifying sound or creating an echo, seemed to actively absorb noise, creating a stifling quiet. To Applejack, it seemed to stretch on forever, but no matter how uncomfortable it became, she could not bring herself to speak again. In the end, it was Tick Tock who spoke next.
“We... we had some good times though, right?” she asked, her voice weak and pleading. “I mean... good memories?”
“Yeah, some good memories,” Applejack agreed, raising her head to look at Tick Tock straight on. “Like that time you tried to pass ‘Changelings are bad news’ off as a friendship lesson.”
“But that’s what we learned,” Tick Tock said, laughing as she did, though the laugh was as strained and weak as her voice. “Remember that time Fluttershy drank expired cold medicine? Wanted to see if you tasted like apples and started chewing on your mane? That was pretty funny.”
“Up until she threw up on me, yeah,” Applejack agreed, with a weak smile.
“Actually, I thought that part was funny too,” Tick Tock said, laughing again—a quiet little chuckle. The sound ended abruptly, though, cut off by a loud sniffle. “I’m sorry, Applejack. I’m sorry for everything.”
“Ah know, Tick Tock,” Applejack said. After a moment, she rose, walking over to where Tick Tock was chained to the floor. She sat next to her, both of them sliding down to the metal side by side, the chains running under Applejack’s barrel. “Hey, you remember that time you forgot Twilight can’t cook, and tried to convince us all you had magic princess cooking powers?”
There they sat for some time, swapping stories of the last two years. Eventually, Tick Tock grew quiet, and lowered her head down to the ground, the conversation lapsing as she lay there in silence.
“Applejack?” she asked, one of her ears tilting up.
“Yeah, Tick Tock?” Applejack replied quietly.
“Applejack?” Tick Tock repeated, lifting her head sharply. “Applejack!?” she shouted, starting to sit up, the chains under Applejack going taut and biting into her ribs.
“Whoa, whoa! I’m here.” Applejack said, but Tick Tock continued to struggle and shout. “Hey, hey! Calm down!” she shouted, but Tick Tock’s ears did not move, her head blindly jerking back and forth. Applejack reached out with a leg, touching her side. She jumped as though shocked at the contact, but slowly settled down.
“Applejack, I... I can’t hear you,” she said, her voice louder than it should have been. She started to sniffle, though she did not cry, tucking her head in against Applejack’s side. “Please, Applejack. Please don’t let the Princess do this to me.”
“Shh. It’s okay,” Applejack whispered, her own voice wavering, vision blurring as the world became watery. She put her legs around Tick Tock’s shoulders, pulling her in close and holding her in a tight hug.
“I don’t want to die, Applejack—not here in this cell,” Tick Tock pleaded. “I want to see Ponyville again. I want to see Spike and all the students in the library. I want to fly again just to feel the wind. Please, Applejack. I’m sorry, but I have so much to live for. Please don’t let her do this!” Applejack said nothing, and in time, Tick Tock’s struggling slowed.
“Please don’t tell Row Crop,” Tick Tock whispered, “It would hurt her so much to know I cheated on her. Let her think I died, please.”
“Okay, Tick Tock,” Applejack whispered, “I promise.” She held Tick Tock’s head up with a leg, gently supporting her, and that way they stayed, as Tick Tock’s head grew heavier and heavier.
And then her sniffling stopped.