"Wha-bu-didn't you-I saw——." Desperate and confused, Twilight Sparkle cast her mind back to her fillyhood, to the days of strolling around Canterlot with Princess Cadance, watching her then foal-sitter changing quarrels and complaints to smiles and embraces seemingly without effort. She had never considered that the love spell had a limit. Yet as she thought about it, it dawned on her that Cadance reserved her spell for couples, families and friends, never mere acquaintances or strangers. And she always strengthened a kind of love already present; she never turned friends into romantic lovers, for instance.
Twilight looked back up at Cadance's tearful, helpless visage. The young alicorn's utter lack of empathy at the sight reminded her of what she had lost, and this forged her desperation into determination. Steadily, she shook her head. "Ohhhh, no. Don't you 'sorry' me, Mi Amore Cadenza. Spreading love is your gift, your destiny." At this last word, Twilight levitated Cadance's hindquarters, emphasising to all present the crystal heart cutie mark — the insignia representing a pony's definitive, integral talent. Letting Cadance drop, Twilight continued, "And a pony always pursues her destiny, no matter how hopeless it seems. Now pull yourself together and tell me what we need to make this work".
Seeing the implacable resolve in Twilight's eyes helped Cadance gulp back her despair. "You need some trace of love energy within you. A residue, a-a-a spark——."
"A spark?" Like a faithful dog sensing the long-awaited arrival of her master, Twilight sat up in her hospital bed, only to cry out in pain as the sudden movement aggravated the soreness in her belly. Wincing, she settled gingerly back down. "Why didn't you say so? I'll get you a spark. Just give me a few minutes of unbroken concentration." She gently closed her eyes and prepared to take slow, deep breaths.
At once the theatre doors burst open and in cantered the two pegasus orderlies who had wheeled Twilight there earlier. "Princess Twilight," said one.
"Uurrgghh!"
"Please forgive the intrusion, Your Highnesses, but we're re-populating the hospital now and the doctors need this theatre for surgery. We're here to transfer Princess Twilight to her private room."
"Great, just what I ... actually, that is just what I need. Carry on."
The orderlies carefully but swiftly carried Twilight onto their gurney, transported her to her room, lifted her to her bed and left. The room was comfortably furnished and large, for a single room, but with seven other ponies and a baby dragon present, it was somewhat crowded.
"Want us to give you some privacy, Twi?" asked Applejack.
"Yes. No! I might have a better chance of kindling that spark if my friends are here with me." Resuming her regulated breathing, Twilight shut her eyes and guided her consciousness through her many memories.
Okay, she mused. Last time I found the spark, it was the time I forgave Discord his betrayal of Equestria to Tirek. Hm. That spark's out now but if I follow the same pattern, I just have to find the time I showed my other friends the most forgiveness. That's easy enough: the changeling invasion of Canterlot at Shining Armor's wedding to Cadance.
I get it. Storming into the rehearsal and calling the bride-to-be "evil" in front of everypony wasn't the most strategic of moves. But I knew Cadance from my fillyhood, I'd spent so much time with her, and she was absolutely nothing like the brute who'd been leering at my friends' wedding preparations and abusing my brother. Yet my friends, who didn't know Cadance at all, just brushed it off as so much pre-nuptial stress. And unfortunately for me, and for the rest of Canterlot, Shining had answers for all my accusations. I was not his favourite pony in Equestria that evening.
I'll never forget the expressions on my friends' faces. No, not their looks of disgust as they swept silently past after Shining Armor tore a strip off of me, although that was devastating enough. It was their scandalised looks the next time they saw me, at the wedding. The wedding Shining had warned me to stay away from. After I had spent all night and half the morning trying to escape from the catacombs with the real Cadance. What went through their minds when I didn't come back the night before? Where did they think I was? Were they even concerned? Was the chance of me making another ugly scene really foremost on their minds right then?
I don't know. I never bothered asking.
"Sorry Twilight, we should have considered the possibility that there was something to what you were saying and not totally abandoned you and made you feel half an inch tall."
"That's okay."
That's okay. Just like that. It was OK because we were back together, because my need for my friends, my love for my friends, was so great.
So why can't I conjure up any love for them now? Why can I only think of how rotten they were and how magnanimous I was? Nngh! This isn't fair.
Duh, you spent a week hosting a swarm of parasites who think love is food. You expect them to play fair, dawnhorse?
So now what? Is there another angle from which I can approach this?
Wait, that's it! What was it I read that time? Who has been forgiven much will love much? Maybe it's not how much I have forgiven my friends but how much my friends have forgiven me. Oh, stars and studs, are there some rich pickings in that field.
The parasprites. Eesh. I was standing right there. Pinkie Pie said what they were called, that they were bad news, and what she needed to defeat them. Did I listen? No, I just ignored her. Then, when it turned out the parasprites were uncontrollable, a smart pony would have thought Pinkie might have had something useful to contribute, and actually asked her why she was galloping all over town collecting musical instruments. But nooo, she obviously had no idea what she was doing and was just getting in our way. I'd better save the day with my magic. Magic solves everything.
Heh, it sure was fun repairing the town after that catastrophe. Still, at least I learned never to dismiss my friends' behaviour a priori as irrelevant nonsense. Cough, Snookie Boo, cough.
Yet she forgave me.
Speaking of magic solving everything and not causing a gigantic mess, how about my first Winter Wrap-Up in Ponyville? I said the townsponies didn't need magic to change their seasons. I said their traditions were important to them. I said, I said, I said.
Then I went and did it anyway because I was too impatient to find a way to help. Boy, Applejack was madder that I'd used magic than at the hours I'd set the snowploughing back.
Yet she forgave me.
Smarty Pants. Celestia save me, Smarty Pants! Here's a friendship lesson for you, genius: Dear Princess Celestia, One of the best things a friend can do is help a friend who has a problem. Sometimes, though, your friends don't have any problems. Everything is going fine. Moments like this don't always come along, so it's important to enjoy and cherish them together. Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle.
But nooo, the only way you could think of to learn about friendship was to solve a problem and, when you couldn't find one, you made one! Brilliant! Enchanting your old Smarty Pants doll so that innocent ponies would fight over it and you could teach them a lesson about sharing. Yeah. Except when a spell makes you want something more than anything, that really means anything. Rarity's sister, Applejack's sister and brother, about half the town got caught up in the hysteria until Princess Celestia came and countered the spell.
Forgive me? My friends blamed themselves. They just wanted to help me apply some perspective to my late-friendship-letter problem but they came across as insensitive and uncaring. Of course, you wouldn't know anything about that, Miss Babies-take-a-lot-of-responsibility-some-ponies-just-aren't-up-to-the-job.
I just hope Smarty Pants has forgiven me.
Barely acknowledging Spike while he was tearfully resigning as my assistant, turning Fluttershy into a vampire fruit bat-pony mutant ... so many thoughtless words and actions, and they always forgive me. They want me—me—to stay their friend. Yet I can't muster up one little spark of love for the friends who love me and care about me so much? All I'm summoning is reproach for myself.
Well, there's only one thing for it.
No.
Yes.
I can't.
You must and you will. The stakes are too high for you to repress that memory anymore. You have to open it up, submerge yourself in it, absorb it into every fibre of your being.
The worst coronation day ever.
* * *
Of all the myriad questions swarming around in Twilight Sparkle's mind at the reception after her coronation, one kept surfacing above the horde: will my friends treat me differently now that I'm a princess?
One thing seemed clear: if the raucous, mocking laughter filling the air was any indication, Rainbow Dash was one pony who would have no such problem.
"Oh, you nailed the take-off, Princess, I'll give ya that," the hooved hoyden cackled, "but a few seconds in that open air and you were like a loose kite in a thunderstorm".
Twilight met her friend's banter with a crooked, tight-lipped smirk. She had only herself to blame, after all. Full to bursting with euphoria at what she had accomplished with the help of her beloved friends, she had spread the wings that she had acquired as part of her ascendancy and joyously taken to the skies in a graceful, spiralling arc ... only to realise very quickly that there was considerably more to flying than just flapping her wings. Aligning her body, negotiating airborne currents ...
"I think you did very well for your first flight, Twilight," said Fluttershy kindly.
Only because you didn't do that well in your first hundred flights, thought Rainbow Dash. Fluttershy was acutely sensitive about her late blooming and generally modest aerial ability — as well as many other things — and Rainbow knew better than to tease her. Twilight, however, was fair game as far as she was concerned.
"Good thing I was around to rescue you with my awesome speed, skills and quick wits," Rainbow continued. "Hey, I saved the life of a princess! Does that mean I get to be a royal guard? Ooh, or a knight?"
"Slow down, Rainbow," chuckled Twilight, "there's a lot I need to find out myself about this whole princess thing".
Applejack spoke up. "B'sides, didn't Twilight become a princess by savin' yew, Rainbow Dash? And alla us too?"
Twilight's smile grew marginally more bashful. So far, only she and Spike knew the whole story of how her friends had come to need rescuing in the first place. Would confessing achieve anything positive? Maybe what they didn't know wouldn't hurt them.
Rainbow's smugness faded slightly. "I see your point, AJ. Phew, yeah, what a crazy couple of days that was."
"And not the fun kind of crazy, either," intoned Pinkie Pie. "More like the 'who am I this can't be happening somepony please get me out of here' crazy." She stared hauntedly at nothing for a moment, before humming cheerfully and sipping some more punch through a straw.
"A couple of days?" Applejack gaped. "Sufferin' sundowners, ah felt like ah spent half mah life trapped in that boutique. Uh, no 'fence, Rarity."
"Oh, none taken, darling," the courtly unicorn replied. "That's how the illusion affected us all, saddled with our mis-matched destinies. How odd, though, that whatever scrambled our cutie marks only targeted the five of us."
"Somethin' to do with the Elements of Harmony, ya think?" suggested Applejack.
"Possibly," replied Rarity, "but why then wasn't Twilight affected?"
Fluttershy spoke up, "I don't know, but thank goodness she wasn't. After all, Twilight was the one who fixed us". Twilight's other assembled friends voiced their agreement.
Twilight felt a wave of relief at the apparent turn the conversation had taken. The more her friends discussed what could have caused the confusion of their destinies, the more likely her role in the calamity would emerge. "Technically, we all fixed one another. I just came up with the idea. And I couldn't have even done that without Spike here."
The baby dragon blushed. "Aw, I doubt that. You would have figured it out sooner or later."
"Mm, I don't know, Spike. I was really lost there. If it weren't for you, I'd probably still be beating myself up about it."
Instantly, both Twilight and Spike realised that the former had said too much. They exchanged an eyeblink-fast glance of anxiety.
"Why Twilight, why ever would you admonish yourself for something like that?" asked Rarity. "Our predicament was hardly your fault, now was it?"
Twilight summoned all of her well-honed intellect to deliver a convincing response that would avert any possible suspicion. "Uhhh ..."
Spike hastily jumped in. "Oh, you know Twilight. If she can't solve the problem, she's part of the problem."
Rainbow Dash's eyes were narrowed with suspicion. "I think I've got a pretty good idea of who was responsible."
"You do?" Twilight winced uneasily.
Rainbow snarled, "Discord".
"What?" cried Twilight and Fluttershy simultaneously.
"Why so surprised? Freakishly powerful magic, changing our true selves, turning Ponyville into a disaster area? That's Discord's M.O. all the way."
"B-b-but, but, but he, I, um——."
"I think what Fluttershy is trying to say is that Discord has reformed," interjected Twilight, carefully avoiding a lie. She herself was rather dubious of the depth and sincerity of Discord's professed reformation. Unfortunately, other than Fluttershy, so were the other ponies: they seemed quite receptive towards Rainbow's hypothesis.
Rarity turned gently to the shy pegasus. "Sweetheart, maybe Discord has taken a genuine liking to you, but he is a spirit of chaos and disharmony. He spent aeons following his whims and wreaking havoc, not caring how he affected his victims. I find it hard to believe that he could quash those instincts virtually overnight."
Rainbow Dash felt even more emboldened. "Yeah. I say we confront him."
"With what? Your cutie marks are all back to normal." It was a desperate gambit and Twilight knew it.
"How about the whole population of Ponyville? They saw it too. Let's just see what he has to say about it."
"No!" Twilight's emphasis startled even herself, but she would not countenance accusing Discord — true friend or not — of a deed she knew he did not commit.
"Come on, Twilight," protested Rainbow. "Who else could cook up the kind of magic that can change a pony's destiny?"
Trapped, Twilight shot a resigned look to Spike, then hung her head in abject shame. "Star Swirl the Bearded."
She told her friends everything. About how Princess Celestia tasked her with fixing Star Swirl's unfinished spell; how she tested it without even thinking of what the consequences might be, let alone planning for them; how she had inadvertently changed the Elements of Harmony which, in turn, had exchanged the destinies of their bearers (save for Twilight herself, for casting the spell had given her immunity).
It was several excruciating seconds before her friends could speak.
"You ... ruined our lives?" rasped Rainbow Dash.
"Yew ruined mah family's livelihood?" cried Applejack.
"You ruined all of Ponyville?" shrieked Pinkie Pie.
"But she——." Spike started blurting out a protestation that Twilight had fixed the problem, only to fall silent when the dejected alicorn held up her forehoof.
Flabbergasted, Rarity stammered, "Wh-wha-what were you, what were you thinking?"
"That it was a chance to learn from a legendary magical unicorn and ... impress Princess Celestia. I was greedy for knowledge and approval. Nothing I say or do can mitigate my actions." Twilight's voice was almost gone. "I'm sorry."
Another lengthy silence settled on the group as they tried to process Twilight's reckless folly, staring aghast into space and slowly shaking their heads.
Fluttershy had not uttered a sound since Twilight's confession. She fixed the centre of their table with a tense, brooding frown for a few minutes, before turning coolly towards the new princess. "Punch?"
"Sure." Twilight smiled weakly, then yelped in pain and surprise as she sustained a sharp shoulder jab from Fluttershy's forehoof that almost toppled her.
"Don't ever do that again!" Fluttershy snapped in a burst of fury.
Massaging her sore shoulder, Twilight grimaced in dismay as the outburst brought home to her the suffering she had caused.
Fluttershy fumed at her for a moment, then shrank back and began shifting her eyes around nervously. "Um, Y-Your Highness," she whimpered.
A round of gentle chuckling broke the tension.
Rarity leaned confidentially towards Fluttershy and spoke with fake apprehension. "I'm not entirely sure, darling, but I think you might just have committed high treason".
"Off with her head," growled Pinkie Pie, before retracting her own head inside her body, mumbling a string of incomprehensible words and finally sitting firmly down on her haunches so as to pop her head noisily back out.
Fluttershy turned ashen. "Ohh, I'm so sorry."
Twilight felt brave enough to venture a joke. "Hey, this is my grovelling apology, Fluttershy. Stop stealing my spotlight."
"I'm sorry," Fluttershy repeated unthinkingly, to more laughter.
"So you guys aren't mad?" Twilight asked with hesitant hope.
"Well ah kinda am," Applejack admitted, "but yew did work things out in the end, Twi. It's what we all gotta do from time to time."
"And ... and what if I hadn't worked things out?"
"What if the moon were made of durian-flavoured ice cream, silly?" asked Pinkie Pie. "Let's just deal with what did happen. Now enough Gloomy Gus talk. This is a coronation party!"
Fluttershy passed Twilight a cup of actual punch, which the new princess accepted, overwhelmed with gratitude. The celebration of Twilight's ascendancy, and of the group's indestructible friendship that had made it possible, began anew.
* * *
"It's gone."
Twilight's friends gaped at her, as if unable to process the confirmation of their worst fears.
"There's no spark," her muted monotone continued, "no residue, no trace. There's nothing. It really is gone".
"'Gone'?" Spike exploded, rushing towards his mistress and best friend. "It can't just be gone. How can it be gone?"
"I don't know what else to tell you, Spike," Twilight murmured. "I can't generate any feelings of love."
"But you can't stay like that!" Spike turned to Cadance and gazed pleadingly up into her streaming eyes. "Princess Cadance, do something!"
"I'm sorry Spike." So distraught was Cadance that there was literally nothing else she could say at that point.
Spike wrapped his forelegs tightly around Cadance's front cannon and shook it with the untempered desperation of a bereaved child. "Please. You've gotta fix Twilight. You've gotta fix her. Please. Whoa!"
A powerful yet intangible force yanked him from the limb and dashed him flat onto his back, his hind legs in the air. Sitting dazedly up, he looked across to see Twilight glowering at him.
"Enough," she scolded. "This isn't Cadance's fault, Spike. Stop tormenting her."
His grief now compounded with guilt, Spike inexorably joined the chorus of quiet sniffing emanating from various quarters of the room. "Sorry Princess Cadance, I didn't mean to ... torment her?" His reptilian eyes widening, Spike leapt to his feet and again rushed towards Twilight, this time in excitement. "Why would you tell me to stop tormenting Princess Cadance unless you still cared about her on some level? Huh? I knew it! I knew there had to be some love still left in you."
Thinking it worth a try, Twilight looked deeply into the eyes of the pony who had brought such joy to her fillyhood, and was now bringing even more joy to her beloved brother. She tried to absorb Cadance's despair and hurt, to trigger some emotion buried within herself.
It was no use. "It just seemed wrong to me. I'd feel the same no matter whom you were upsetting."
"Agape," Cadance said quietly.
"What's a 'gah pay'?" asked Spike in morose confusion.
"Agape means love for ponykind as a whole. A sense of justice, duty, right and wrong. It looks like that's what the changelings have left you, Twilight. It's the most important kind of love there is and I can magnify it all you want, but ... I can't convert it into affection."
"So that's it," rejoined Twilight in a soft, bitter voice. "This is my new destiny. A heartless monster."
At these words Rarity removed her anguished face from Rainbow Dash's shoulder and protested tearily, "You're not a monster, Twilight".
"Oh? What would you call something that looked like a pony, walked like a pony, talked like a pony but could never feel affection for any other ponies?" Twilight glanced despondently back at her right wing. "I'll tell you what you can't call her: the Princess of Friendship. It's like you said, Rarity. My love for my friends and family has been with me every step of my journey. I'd be nowhere without those feelings. Without my friends. And that's where I am now."
"What do you mean?" exclaimed Pinkie Pie. "We're still your friends."
"But I can't be a friend to you. You don't mean anything to me."
"Maybe not," replied Fluttershy, keeping her voice steady despite the rivulets flowing down her cheeks, "but you mean more than anything to us".
"Darn straight," added Applejack. "And ah'll be hornswoggled if ah see yew kicked to the compost like a melon rind, just 'cause those dirty changelings took all yer sweet stuff. A pony ain't a piece o' fruit, Twi."
"This pony feels more like a vegetable." Twilight sighed heavily. Could she really maintain friendships with ponies she could never love? It seemed impossible to her. "Look, let me go, okay? I'll be fine. I still have my books and my magic. And I can still help fix any trouble Ponyville might have, if what Cadance says about this 'agape' is true. But don't put yourselves through the heartache of pretending that what's left of me can be your friend. Remember me the way I was instead."
"We do remember you the way you were, Twilight," sobbed Rainbow Dash. "That's why we'd never let you go as long as you live."
As Spike hugged Twilight's lower foreleg, the other ponies in the room drew wordlessly around Twilight in a communal expression of undying adoration. Twilight looked at her friends, one by one, absorbing the expressions in their eyes — pain and determination born out of their abiding love of her.
"As you wish."