//------------------------------// // -Reunion // Story: Undead Princess Twilight Sparkle: Monster Slayer // by Lord Destrustor //------------------------------// I sat quietly, absent-mindedly tapping a hoof on the table. The room was big enough for six, with chairs strewn around the simple table. Some glasses waited around a pitcher of water, while I waited for the ponies for whom this water was intended. It struck me, for a moment, that I would never need to drink water again. Yet another simple thing I had lost forever. Minutes passed in the gentle hum of the machine spewing cold air in a corner of the room. I was snapped out of my contemplation by the sound of numerous hooves approaching. I straightened up, instinctively drawing a deep breath that served absolutely nothing. I knew who was coming, and I had rehearsed this reunion all day in my head. I had anticipated every permutation of what they would say, how I would answer, how they would reply, and so on. I was prepared for this conversation, for this meeting. Yet when the door opened and he walked in, all of these plans left me, immediately jumping out of the nearest metaphorical window. The words flew away and all I could say was reduced to a babbling “I’m sorry.” If I still possessed the ability to cry the room would have been flooded instantly. I looked at his bruised face, his left eye swollen shut, the terrible marks I had left on his skin, showing so easily through his white coat. And his sincere, kindly smile, so accepting. So unbearably forgiving. “H-hey, Twily,” he simply said, a touch of apprehension resonating in his voice. He was scared, but not for himself; his warm eye travelling over my form showed nothing but care and love. He was scared for me, for what his entering this room was doing to me. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so sorry, I didn’t… I’m sorry Shining,” I pleaded almost incoherently, writhing in my seat as I struggled to refrain from leaping into his arms. My parents followed him, and my mother could only spare one glance at me before averting her eyes and retreating outside with a sob. “I’m sorry Mom,” I called out to her as my father followed her with soothing whispers. “I’m sorry Dad, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry…” I looked down at the table, unable to merely look at them anymore, my trembling hooves moving upwards to cradle my head as I kept mechanically repeating my apology like a mantra. Suddenly I found myself enveloped in the warmth of his forelegs. I couldn’t help clamping my own around him, feeling the unfathomable heat of his skin warming mine. His muscles tensed for a second and he shivered once, twice, before he somehow managed to relax. “Hey, it’s okay, shhhh. It’s okay Twilight, I’m fine; I’m not mad at you,” he said, and all I could answer was a single pitiful whimper staggering through dry, tearless sobs. My hooves shaking more than ever on his back while I clung to him in my turmoil. The door, left ajar by my parents’ retreat, slowly yawned open once more to let Cadance walk through. She stopped in the doorway, keeping it open while she looked outside as if waiting for something. She was no doubt hoping my parents came back soon. She glanced at me and uttered a simple “hello, Twilight,” before averting her eyes and biting her lip. I closed my eyes, letting my brother’s hug soothe my sorrow. We stayed like that for a while, listening to the lonely heartbeat I would never echo, until the sound of chairs being moved brought me back to attention. After one last squeeze, I broke the hug and reluctantly pushed Shining away. Seated in front of me, my parents were a mess. My mother’s face was streaked with tears, her eyes red and her breathing labored; while my father simply looked impossibly tired, with his unkempt mane loosely swept back. I couldn’t possibly look at them. My eyes glued to the table, I muttered a few more choked apologies before shaking my head and giving up on speaking altogether. “Twilight, we still love you.” My father’s voice cut through me, causing me to curl up on myself with the weight of renewed guilt. How? How could they still love me after what I did? How were they strong enough to stand this? How could they bear to see my corpse staring them in the face, in this cold room filled with the smell of my decay? How in the world could I ever still be loved? I silently rocked back and forth for… some time. I couldn’t say how long exactly, with the room’s lack of a clock, and I was mildly preoccupied with other matters. Unfortunately, these matters were incredibly difficult to manage. My family was as silent as myself; no doubt struck mute by the unbearable unease permeating the atmosphere. I struggled for things to say, subjects of conversation to engage, but my rotting, dead, useless brain refused to help in any way. “Twilight, please… talk to us.” I glanced at my mother; her eyes meeting mine, and I had to look away. The glance had been long enough. Enough to see just how thoroughly she was devastated; the unbearable worry, the terrified confusion, and the sheer grief, each emotion twisting her face into something barely recognisable. And, underneath the broken mask, deep within the trembling, crying eyes, the love she still had for me. I put my hooves down on the table, seeking to brace myself as if it would help in any way. I stared at one of them for a moment, looking at the withered, wrinkled flesh while I searched for something with which I could grant my mother’s request. “I…” I began, still searching for words. I then decided honesty couldn’t hurt, and simply admitted my inability. “I don’t know what to say.” “Just… tell us about… what’s been going on with you, Twilight.” I looked somewhere near Cadance’s head, nodding weakly at her suggestion. A fleeting memory of her snarling, terrified face, surrounded by thousands of flecks of blue and orange, flashed in my mind. “Well,” I said, finding the words coming more easily now that I had an excuse to let my mind wander away from the four ponies in the room, even momentarily. “I’ve been tested on, inspected, scanned, prodded, poked, rubbed, cut, stitched, stretched and examined in every possible way and sense of the words for about a week straight now. I guess you could say I’ve been… busy.” “And, uh, any news about your… uh, condition?” From the corner of my eyes I could see my father grasping his own hooves as he spoke, wringing them relentlessly. “The doctors, and professors… and the coroners and morticians, and the practical and theoretical thaumaturges of Canterlot University, and the princesses… have been studying me for quite a while now, and…” I trailed off, thinking back to the few details that had been shared with me. “Well, the only two things they know for sure is that this is definitely some form of necromancy, and that I’m definitely the one who did it. Somehow.” Shining spoke next, breaking the short, awkward silence I had unwillingly provoked. “So, does anyone have a clue on how-“ “Nopony has any inkling of a clue on how to go about finding a way to possibly fix this. Even the most basic components of my… enchantment are beyond anything anyone has ever even seen before. I… Imagine you’ve heard about the considerable time Princess Celestia spends in the royal library? She’s in the forbidden section, reading a whole lot of necromantic… ‘works.’ She hasn’t had much more success than the rest. I don’t know what in Tartarus I did, but I really, really did it.” I shook my head, even then still trying to think of new avenues of study that would help figure out what I had done to myself. A few ideas slipped by, all immediately rejected on the simple basis that we’d tried them already. We had tried just about everything. “And, uh… how about… physically? How are you?” “Let’s see,” I said, tapping a hoof to my chin. “I don’t need to sleep, eat, or breathe; so my needs are incredibly easy to meet. I somehow lost almost all sensitivity to pain, while still retaining most of my senses of touch and proprioception; for some reason I’m only mostly numb to pain and nothing else.” I found myself on the verge of smiling, nearly overcome by the fascination that can only come to scholars speaking to an audience outside of their domain; ponies for whom every minute detail of the subject at hoof is still new and surprising. “They even drained out all the blood I had left,” I visibly prodded the wrinkled flesh of one of my legs to show them, “to slow down my decomposition. Someone also had the brilliant idea to lubricate my eyes and mouth with oil so I don’t have to spray water into them all the time, and I…” The strained, uneasy looks on their faces eventually managed to tell me they might not have shared my excited fascination regarding my new and strange absence of metabolism. “I’m… going too far with the details, aren’t I? I’m sorry.” I rubbed the back of my neck, almost chuckling. “Well, anyway, they’re trying everything they can to preserve my body as much as possible, for as long as possible, in case…” The silence lingered once more. Despite the newfound ease with which I had talked mere seconds earlier, I could see my family was still somewhat troubled. My apprehensions hadn’t changed the fact that they were the ponies who no doubt loved me the most in the world, and I had come to realize that nothing had really changed that. I had no reason to fear the mere act of speaking to them, although I could plainly see how hard this was for them. I felt a pang of guilt for that. This was all my fault; I should have been more careful, I should have been calmer. Just how horrible had I acted to make my own death the lesser of the many strains on own relationships? Even at that moment, I had almost blundered once more; speaking words of probable false hope. I had still gone too far despite myself, as my mother’s next words showed they had all guessed what I had refrained from saying. “In case they can fix this?” I silently cursed myself. Once again, my actions would hurt my loved ones. They hoped, and I regretted that. “Twilight, do you think there’s a way to… bring you… back?” “I don’t know. Like I said, no one knows. Nopony even understands what’s going on.” I had to nip this hope in the bud. “What I am sure of, is that I… you shouldn’t expect me to return to actual life. I’m dead, Mom. I don’t think there's-" “Stop saying you’re dead!” She had barely raised her voice above her usual tone, barely above my own; yet all eyes turned to Cadance. Her legs weren’t resting on the table; the hooves were planted on it, discreetly bracing as if she was about to rise. She stared into my eyes as she continued, her voice quieting back down. “Stop saying you’re gone, stop trying to tell us it’s already over! Stop giving up like that! You’re still here with us, and I don’t care what science has to say about it; you’re not truly dead as long as you’re still here!” Shining tried to say her name, his placating tone nowhere near loud enough to cover my own voice. “I’m a walking, talking corpse, Cadance! How is that not dead?” “You’re not just a body, Twilight! You still have your soul, your mind; you’re still with us. That’s what matters, Twilight! You’re not dead, because dead ponies can’t stand up to my face and argue about it!” Her voice cracked, and her face mellowed. “You’re still here, Twilight. There’s still hope. You did this, so I’m sure you’ll find a way to fix it too… as long as you don’t give up. Please don’t ever give up.” I fell back in my chair, only then noticing I had even risen from it. I couldn’t seem to be able to look at anything else than the two little tears she had shed while she spoke. I wanted to scream at them, to yell my frustrations at these tears and the hope they had been born from… But I knew it would do no good. Thinking back on it, I always did find it funny that I was too hopeless to fight against hope; the irony wasn’t lost on me even then. I was decidedly not in the mood to laugh at that moment, however. I just felt… tired. I wanted to sleep; I wanted to escape the waking world again at least once, I wanted to slip back into whatever shroud dreams are made of, and forget my own existence for a few hours. And never again would I. “What am I going to do then? If I can’t be fixed, and if I never choose to let go… What do I do with myself?” "Well," said my father, "I guess you'll have time to figure it out, right? ...We'll be there for you, honey." "Yeah... thanks, Dad, everyone." Yes, time. Perhaps too much.