— They wanted to be there, one voice says.
Because they believed in you, the other says. And it killed them.
There are two foreign voices clashing in my head.
She made me promise to continue the project, the first voice says. It is cold, detached; the void between the stars, the darkness that defines my light. It tells me I have done no wrong.
I defy that. I cannot recognize it. I do not want it. But it is a part of me. I have a terrifying suspicion that this is how Luna felt when her jealousy began to whisper to her. I know it's not true, but I am terrified nonetheless.
She made me promise to continue, dispassionate logic echoes. It should console me that reason agrees with the first voice — but it does not, because reason also provides the counterpoint:
But why did they have to die at all?
That voice has a name. Two names. It speaks its words in the voices of my friends.
I want to shout and deny it, call it the impostor it is.
Mac would never give voice to those words. At Granny Smith's funeral, at Apple Bloom's hospital bed, at Fluttershy's side as she put down Angel, I have seen Big Macintosh Apple when the tides of grief rise too high. He curls in upon himself, takes a deep breath, and floats along on the surface, unmoored and drifting through the days and nights, bumping into the flotsam of friends and jetsam of chores, until the water recedes and he has floated so very far away. Then he shoulders his yoke, stands up, and plods back home, in perfect silence all the while.
One day, he will wash away beyond our pleas to return. One day, he will break, as his father did when his mother passed. One day, when he picks himself up after the tsunami, he will turn and walk in a different direction, and none of us will ever see him again.
I hope it is not I who will break him.
Fluttershy, too, would never give voice to those words. She would do something far crueler than to say them, crueler even than to hold them in silence: She would never think them at all.
I would show up at her doorstep, and she would see Russet's story in my eyes before I even opened my mouth. I would stumble through the final speech of a lost pony, as I promised to do, and she wouldn't even listen. I would get halfway through the speech I'd spent days memorizing, stammering through my tears, and I would miss a word, tripping over Trixie, and she would step forward before I could stop her and she would hug me. I would lose it completely, bawling onto her shoulders, and I couldn't shout at her; I would be too weak to say Hate me, too weak to say It was my fault. Every fiber of my being would be crying out for her to mourn, to blame, to hurt, to hit; but she would just hold me as I sank weightless to the floor, drying my immortal eyes and shushing me like she shushed the foal who would grow up to be murdered by me as surely as if I'd nursed him on the icy daggers of my royal teats, and Twilight, she'd say, Twilight, velvet voice over velvet hoof as I flailed to draw blood upon a nonexistent iron edge, Twilight, listen, as I hyperventilated, listen, she'd say, listen:
They wanted to be there —