"Oh, no, no."
"No problem at all."
"We, we were just ... "
"Everything's fine."
"It's nothing."
"Yeah, nothing."
"Nothing."
As the hurried, stammering, overlapping denials petered to an end, Twilight Sparkle steadily cast her skeptical eye over her embarrassed friends, giving particular attention to the two ponies who were conveying the least amount of conviction: guileless Applejack and timid Fluttershy.
"Nothing, huh?" she replied at last. "Well, next time nothing is troubling you, do you think maybe you can resolve it a little more peaceably? I just received a message from the Crystal Empire. They're complaining about the noise."
Frowning in bewilderment, Pinkie Pie opened her mouth to voice her many questions regarding the feasibility of Twilight's assertion. Rainbow Dash jolted the pink pony with her forehoof and shook her head as a signal to let it go.
"You're the ponies who taught me about friendship," Twilight continued. "I expect you — no, I need you — to set an example, especially with me in this condition. Not have screaming matches out in the street like a bunch of schoolfillies. Is this how it's going to be from now on? Are you just going to fall apart without me?"
The questions were rhetorical, of course, but the thought of such a situation coming to pass hit Twilight close to home. She proceeded in a gentler tone. "Is there anything I can help with?"
Her friends looked uncertainly at one another. They hardly wanted to let Twilight know that they had been arguing about whether to ostracise her in an effort to reawaken her capacity for love. Understandably, Twilight misinterpreted her friends' body language. "I haven't forgotten the friendship lessons I've learned, you know."
"No, no, we know," they replied.
"So why were you fighting?"
Her friends winced and glanced around, conflicted. Twilight quickly surmised that they were keeping something from her. Somehow, she doubted that the source of such a raucous fight was in the nature of a surprise party.
"You aren't falling apart without me," she murmured, crestfallen. "You're falling apart because of me, aren't you?"
Applejack blurted, "It ain't yer fault, Twi".
"I never said it was," yelled Twilight, before taking a couple of deep breaths to calm down. "Nevertheless, you're not denying that I am the cause of the friction among you. I warned you. I knew this ... this charade would never work."
"Don't say that, Twilight," cried Rainbow Dash. "We can still make it work. So we're going through a rough patch. What friends don't? We all just need some time to adjust. In the meantime, we're gonna do all we can to make you feel like our friend."
"But, you aren't.
"You've been inviting me to do all the kinds of things we did together as friends. Parties, picnics, makeovers, flights. Things I loved doing with you because I was doing them with my best friends.
"Now I'm just ... doing them. With a bunch of ponies I know. I'm not enjoying your company. I'm enduring it, just as you're enduring mine. Don't deny it, I'm not totally oblivious. Every moment I spend with you just reminds me that I don't care about any of you anymore."
"Then why did you invite us all to your dinner party?" a dismayed Rarity asked.
Twilight drew to her full quadrupedal height. "Because that's what friends do. You all invited me to join in with your fun, so I had an obligation to do the same for you. Except this evening wasn't fun for me at all. I felt like a-a-a waitress, sitting at her customers' table. A gatecrasher at my own party. Only without the possibility of at least making friends.
"Don't take this the wrong way. This isn't a reflection on any of you. It's all because of those ..." Twilight grew tense, breathing heavily through her flaring nostrils and stamping the floor with increasing tempo and force at the thought of the changelings who had ruined her. She spat out a staccato string of incoherent word fragments before emitting an exasperated sigh, deepening into a groan that in turn rose exponentially in pitch and volume into a lengthy scream of helpless fury and anguish. When it was over, she stood panting before her sorrowful friends.
Yet she did not cry. She was sick of crying. More to the point, she knew that if she cried her friends would try to comfort her, which would only serve to make her feel completely awkward, so she would shoo them away, and that would hurt their feelings even though they'd probably deny it.
Finally, she looked up at her friends. "Maybe I should take a step back from you all for a while."
Her friends turned to one another in consternation. A step back. That was on a one-way downhill road to "let's just be friends". Or in this case, "let's just not be friends". Pretending to unfriend Twilight would have been painful enough. Now she was asking them to leave her alone.
"How long is 'a while'?" asked Rainbow Dash uneasily.
"Until I feel ready to socialise with you again."
Timidly, Pinkie Pie voiced the collective question in her friends' minds: "But what, what if you ... never feel that way?"
Twilight shrugged.
There was a moment of silence as Twilight's friends achingly contemplated this proposition.
Eventually, Discord cleared his throat and guiltily scratched his crest. "You may as well know, Twilight, you are not the first to suggest that such a course of action might help you somehow."
Rainbow grimaced. "Yeah, that was pretty much what we were fighting about."
Twilight managed a weak smile. "Desperate minds think alike, huh? Look, I'm not planning on becoming a recluse. Any time you need my help organising, solving a friendship problem, driving a dangerous runaway creature back into the Everfree Forest, anything like that, I'm only too willing. But as far as quality time is concerned, it can't be done. Not with the way I feel. I mean, the way I don't feel."
"What about me, Twilight?"
Twilight looked down in surprise at Spike, who had wandered in to see what the ponies were talking about. He was standing by her lower hind leg, his eyes huge and imploring. "Are you gonna 'take a step back' from me too?"
Twilight soughed. Another innocent casualty of those good-for-nothing changelings. "Spike, my home is your home, and it will be for as long as you want. And I will always be grateful to have you as my assistant. But for the time being, I'm afraid that's all our relationship will amount to."
"And you're sure this is what you want?" asked Fluttershy.
"Of course it isn't what I want." Again, Twilight had to pause and breathe deeply to quench her own anger. "What I want is for us all to be the best of friends like we were before. But we can't always have what we want. I'm just trying to think of ways to make my situation a little more bearable."
"I'm so sorry, Twilight," choked Fluttershy.
"I'm sorry too," added Rarity. "If we had the faintest idea we were only making you feel worse——."
Twilight held up her forehoof. "No need to apologise. We're all dealing with something new here."
Pinkie Pie began sobbing. "Then I guess ... this is ... goodbye."
Weeping like a widow on the inside, Applejack wiped her misting eyes on her foreleg. "Sure gonna miss yew, Twi."
Discord fought hard to contain his emotions. Ever since Fluttershy had introduced him to the magic of friendship, of all her circle of friends, Twilight Sparkle had taken the longest to warm to him. Everything had to be logical and straightforward with her, everything in the right place at the right time, planned meticulously to the last detail. As a spirit of spontaneity and disorder, his very being was anathema to her approach to life. Yet even they shared some common ground, particularly their mutual love of magic. It seemed to him that they were just now making some genuine connection, only for that friendship to be snatched away, possibly never to return. "Until next time." He gulped heavily. "Chaos-buddy."
The ponies wanted to rush forward and give Twilight one long, tight embrace. Yet they sensed this would only make the princess more uncomfortable, so they refrained out of respect. Slowly, they turned to leave.
"Twilight?"
The speaker was Rainbow Dash, who had turned back in mid-air to face the princess. The other friends halted their departure to listen.
"I just want you to know that I will never give up on you. No matter how long it takes you to come back, my door is always open."
"Mine too," added Fluttershy emphatically. The other friends firmly conveyed the same sentiment.
Twilight Sparkle nodded with a slight, wry smile. "I know." She turned and headed glumly towards the castle library, Spike trudging alongside her, while the others filed towards the front door, each looking back to get one last, sad glimpse of their dear friend.
* * *
After a few steps Twilight paused, thinking.
"Twilight?" inquired Spike.
"I know."
"Huh? I didn't tell you anything. I was gonna ask why you'd stopped."
"I know."
Silence.
"Ssooo, why have you stopped?"
"I know."
"But I don't know. That's why I'm asking."
Twilight seized Spike in her forelimbs and launched herself joyously into the air. "I know!"
Spike's thrill at realising Twilight was exuding honest joy for the first time in weeks was only slightly dampened by the alicorn's sudden dematerialisation, which left the poor dragon to plummet unceremoniously to the floor. Thankfully, the scales of even his underbelly were highly impervious to such an impact.
Before Spike reached the floor, Twilight reappeared in a burst of magical energy in front of her startled friends and began stotting exuberantly in a circle around them. "I know! I know I know I know I know I know I know I know."
There it was. The uninhibited, adorable glee that the normally subdued academic would unleash upon discovering some arcane knowledge or solving some intractable problem. After the stilted, forced happiness she had been displaying recently, her newfound bliss was as a cool, fresh spring erupting in a desert.
"Twilight, what do you know?" Rainbow Dash broke in excitedly. "I mean, besides a bajillion magic spells and the entire history of Equestria?"
"That you'll never give up on me. That's why I couldn't generate the spark until now. I'd been thinking of all the love you've shown me over the years, your contrition, your forgiveness, how glad you all were just to know me and be with me. But that was the old me. What about the post-changeling me? The me who couldn't love you back, who might never love you back? The me who couldn't even bear to keep your company? You still love that me and you'd still do anything for that me, no matter how much it hurt you. And I know it. With all my heart, I know it."
"Well, sure, but we told you that from the beginning," Applejack pointed out.
"Oh you told me, all right," replied Twilight. "But deep down I didn't really believe it. I had no love for you at the time, meaning I had no trust. And you didn't know what an emotional burden I'd be on you, either. Now I've experienced for myself just what you're prepared to put up with from me. All because you consider me your friend."
Twilight's friends felt their hearts overflowing. Her spark was back for sure. They converged on her but she held up her forehooves to stop.
"No time for hugs. It's still only a spark. Off to the Crystal Empire for a full recharge. Spike, can you please send Princess Cadance a message letting her know we're——?" Twilight stopped short at the sound of a burst of flame. She looked over to see a swirl of glittering particles that had once been a scroll, gliding through an open castle window.
Spike, clutching an ink-tipped quill, grinned smugly at Twilight. "On our way?"
"You're the best, Spike. Now where are my timetables? The trains should be back running to the Crystal Empire by now."
Discord chuckled. "Oh pish-tosh, Twilight Sparkle. Why fiddle about with signal failures and whiny passengers when you can travel in comfort and style, directly to the Empire, via Discorde Air?" Suddenly clad in a pilot's uniform, he struck a proud pose and summoned a stirring fanfare.
The others just looked at him.
"What? Obviously you all get to ride together first class this time."
"You mean actually inside the airship's gondola rather than strapped to the balloon envelope?" Rarity asked tartly. "What a rare privilege."
"Precisely. And I promise not to drop any of you into a mud pit." Discord smirked at Twilight. "Provided there are no more piercing shrieks of rage."
Twilight gave Discord a warm smile, before her lips, her eyes, her entire body started quivering uncontrollably. "Is ... crying allowed?"
Discord made an excessive show of being inconvenienced. "Fine, I suppose. As long as you don't set me off. It's dreadfully hard to navigate when your eyes are all blurry with tears." He extended his forelimbs so that they encircled Twilight and her lifelong friends, and drew them together in a snug embrace. "No time for hugs, my cloven hoof." With a snap of the prehensile fibres at the tip of Discord's tail, the eight creatures vanished from the castle, to reappear in an open field suitable for Discord's airship self-transmogrification.
Or possibly at the Crystal Empire itself. Discord still needed a few milliseconds to decide.
THE END