//------------------------------//
// A Broken Heart 
// Story: Broken Symmetry 
// by Trick Question 
//------------------------------//

An irritating, buzzing sensation slithered beneath my skin. My previously-insensate mind was no longer blissfully disconnected from reality. I opened my eyes. It felt vaguely like I was dreaming about being tortured. Applejack and the doctor who had attended to me earlier were standing above me. I lay on a gurney in a radiology room.

"Ms. Moondancer, do you know where you are?" said the doctor, in a dreamy, drifty voice.

It took me a moment to put things together. Everything looked fuzzy because my glasses weren't on. (I later realized it had been a miracle that my glasses managed to stay on my face through that tumble I took.) They must have been removed by the medical staff once I passed out.

"Dodge City Infirmary," I finally said. There was an IV in my left foreleg with a goodly amount of painkillers coursing through it. My right hoof hurt terribly, but it felt like the pain was just outside of my reach.

The doctor nodded. "Normally I wouldn't wake a patient like this prior to surgery, but Applejack insisted. She needs to talk to you. Is that alright?"

I nodded my head slowly. "Oh, doctor?" I said, though the words came out slurred.

"Yes?"

"You can safely give Twilight any drug that comes in a rate, a rayk, hold up—"

"A racemic mixture?"

"Yes. Yes, that. But the buffer too. Has to be. A mixture," I said.

"I suspected as much. We discovered shortly after starting the IV that her anatomical isometry was backwards, and based on the bizarre results from her blood samples, it appears the reversal is also molecular," said the doctor, with a brief smile. "She should be safe now. But we'll need to reverse her condition very soon, so if you know of a spell to do the trick you can tell us after surgery."

I nodded again, even though I knew that Twilight wouldn't need one. It was easier than speaking.

"Thank you kindly, doc," said Applejack. "Now if'n I can beg your pardon again, I do believe I need some time alone with Moondancer here."

"Ten minutes," said the doctor, wearing a stern frown. As she exited the room she grumbled something about the Elements.

Applejack shut the door to the lab and pulled out the scroll. The seal had been broken. "They found this. Your sweater, too, even though it was further out. I guess it was easy to spot from a distance."

I nodded.

"You were right as rain about Twi, but it's a good thing I'm the only mare to have taken a gander at this here scroll. Can you help me make sense of this?" asked Applejack. She opened the scroll and held it in front of my face.



Milk

Eggs

Sour Cream

Hay

Brown Sugar



I stared at the scroll for a while. "It's what Twilight gave me to... oh, bucking Tartarus," I said. Applejack's cheeks turned red and she coughed nervously.

"Lemme take a stab: more time-travel hoodoo? Am I warm?" she asked.

"Yes," I said, starting to feeling a little less groggy. "In the previous time loop, I must have told Twilight to write a shopping list down, then lie to me that it was a letter from her."

"But why? And for that matter, why would she go along with it?" Applejack asked. "Help a farmin' mare out. Use small words if you gotta."

I smiled. "You're not dumb, Applejack. This really is confusing, even for dorks like me and Twilight," I said. "I have no idea how the time loops started, but somewhere down the chain this happened, maybe by accident. I would have told Twilight to do the same thing she did in the last iteration in order to preserve as much symmetry between loops as possible. That increases the odds that Twilight will survive in the next loop."

"So for some reason she did somethin' weird before, which means she should do it again?"

"Exactly. But she can't use the same scroll. I'll need to write down a list of instructions for her to follow."

Applejack hoofed me a piece of paper and mouthed me a fountain pen. I picked up the pen with my magic, but it was unsteady and I couldn't use my hooves.

"Er, hold up," she said, and took them back. "You can just tell me what to write."

"Okay. Here goes..."



Dear Twilight,

This is Moondancer. Your molecular chirality has been reversed. You must follow these instructions to the letter to preserve as much symmetry between loops as possible. Immediately head back to Canterlot, time-travel back one day, and then come get me at your old place. Give me a scroll with your seal on it that lists "Milk", "Eggs", "Sour Cream", "Hay", and "Brown Sugar" in that order, but tell me it's a letter to explain your situation when I arrive at Dodge City to save your flashing butt. You might need some extra shenanigans if you think you'll be too hungry to last a day in the box. The rest you can figure out.



(Later, thinking back I realized Applejack probably misspelled words like chirality, since most ponies don't know what that is. But that was okay. Twilight was a smart cookie, and AJ herself was smart enough to realize it wouldn't matter.)

"That all?" asked Applejack.

"That's it," I said. "She can't be allowed to see that scroll, though, so trash it. Only give her the letter. Oh, wait—I do need you to do something else."

"Name it."

"You have to tell Twilight Sparkle that I didn't need to run to get here on time," I said.

Applejack furrowed her brow. "That ain't true, Moondancer, and you know it. Besides, she'll want to see you after surgery."

"You can't tell her I'm here, either. I know it isn't true, but it's important. If she hadn't told me that, I might not have realized I needed to do the opposite—"

Applejack groaned. "Now listen here, missy. I ain't no good at fibbin'."

I paused. "Well, just say the words, then. That's probably enough," I said.

"Look, sugarcube," said Applejack, as she placed a hoof gently on my shoulder. "I don't care for these time-travel antics. I may not understand the details, but I can tell when somepony's paintin' themselves into a corner with lies and deception, and that's exactly what this thing is doin' to you both. I'll do what you ask, but you gotta promise me this will be the last time you need to do somethin' so foalish. Find another way to go about it next time, alrighty?"

I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly. "No need to worry," I said. "Twilight and I will probably be putting a moratorium on our experiments after this mess, and neither of us will be using ourselves as guinea pigs anymore."

I opened my eyes. Applejack looked very relieved, then she paused for a moment in thought. "Her fault, weren't it?" she whispered to me.

I nodded. "Mostly, yeah. Don't tell her I said that."

Applejack smiled made the motions of a Pinkie Pie Swear, which Twilight had fortunately taught me on a previous visit to Canterlot. I nodded and smiled back. Applejack turned and opened the door, and the doctor entered.

"Are we done?" asked the doctor.

"Yes ma'am," said Applejack.

"Then it's time to scrub in and fix that damaged hoof," she said. The doctor uncapped a syringe and squeezed it into my IV.

As I succumbed to unconsciousness, Applejack leaned over and whispered something in my ear that my brain wasn't quite able to process.

"I really hope you know just how much Twiiiliiiiight loooooooveeeeeeeees yyyyyyyyyyyyy—"





I woke up from sedation for the third time in as many days, to a familiar, welcoming face. Twilight Sparkle loomed above me and held my good forehoof gently in hers. She'd been crying recently. My right hoof was carefully held in traction and had a thicker cast on it this time. The cast was a midnight blue color, and it looked like there was some silver ink on the front that I couldn't quite make out from this angle. I was sure it was random chance, but it reminded me of Princess Luna. I liked that.

I pushed myself hard to speak, just to get the joke out. "We've got to stop meeting like this," I said. My hoof still hurt, but it was a dull, throbbing ache this time. I reached for what looked like a hoof-held button with my good hoof and pushed it. Sweet, euphoric narcotics flooded my core with warmth.

"I'm so sorry Moonie!" said Twilight as she leaned over and buried her face in the covers. "I know this is all my fault. I was such a foal to do that experiment!"

"Yep," I said, reaching around her with my good foreleg, careful so as not to tangle the IV tube. "I might have done the same, though. There was no way we could have known it would get this crazy. Wait, this is the re-reversed Twilight back from Canterlot, right? I can't see at the moment."

Twilight Sparkle lifted her muzzle up and wiped her eyes, then she levitated my glasses onto my face so I could see her. The stripe was indeed on the correct side of her horn, but she looked totally exhausted. "Past Twilight is halfway back to Canterlot by now, and I was careful to avoid her when I got off the train," she said, then grimaced painfully. "You shouldn't have run! Somehow I knew you were going to anyway."

"No, I should have run. It was the right decision," I said. "And I'd do it again. But, um, please don't make me do it again."

She nodded solemnly, then clenched her jaw. "Moondancer, I didn't want to say this, but we need to pause the experiments," said Twilight.

I winced, but nodded in agreement. "Yeah, I know. It's too dangerous until we have a working theory," I said. "My backers probably aren't going to like this."

Twilight's face hardened. "Don't worry about a thing. I'll stand behind you, and if necessary, I'll get Celestia."

"Thanks. So I guess your polluted biome didn't kill every living thing in Equestria, right? That's a good thing," I said.

Twilight's eyes watered, and once again I regretted sticking my now freshly broken hoof in my stupid mouth.

"Oh gosh I'm sorry, I didn't mean," I said as quickly as possible, which wasn't all that quick given the drugs in my system.

"No, it's okay," said Twilight, and she sniffled a few times while bravely holding back the waterworks. "I didn't stop to think about the consequences of my actions. I put all of Equestria in danger, and even worse I put you in danger. I just happened to luck out."

"It's fine. Nothing bad happened," I said.

"It isn't fine. Between the two of us, I'm the one who deserves to be punished, but you're the pony who's suffering."

"Ugh, give it a rest, Twi. You don't deserve to be 'punished'. Everypony makes mistakes, sometimes even big ones. We didn't know what we were dealing with. I'll live, and my hoof will heal. This mess is behind us, it's over. And as for my supposed suffering, I don't mind being in pain if it's for you," I said. I'd thought I was exaggerating, but to my surprise, I actually meant it.

Twilight smiled and petted my mane, which for some reason felt nice. I didn't understand what she was doing, but it meant something, and it wasn't condescending or mean-spirited. She just wanted to touch me and make me feel better.

"I still wish you hadn't run."

"Are you nuts?" I said, flabbergasted. "You'd want me to let past Twilight die?"

"Moondancer, I don't want you to be hurt because of me! I can't let you sacrifice yourself like this. If something had happened to you, I just..." Twilight's mouth hung open, but she seemed unable to finish the sentence.

I sighed. "Look, for most ponies this is the sort of ethical argument that only comes up in truth-or-dare, but for us it could actually be meaningful someday. If push comes to shove, I would sacrifice my life to save yours, every time. And you should be willing to accept that."

"I can't," said Twilight. She bit her lip.

"If Applejack tried to sacrifice her life to save Equestria, you would stop her?"

Twilight Sparkle looked down at the floor and said nothing.

"Don't play with me, Twilight. Answer the question."

"No. I wouldn't stop her," she said softly.

"And would you order her to her death if it would save Equestria?" I asked.

Twilight shut her eyes tightly and turned her tail on me. "I don't even want to think about this!"

"You need to, at least this once. I want us both to be able to make the right decisions in the heat of the moment."

With her rump still facing me, Twilight spoke, "Yes, I would order Applejack to her death to save Equestria. But only if there were no other choice, and only because I know that's exactly what Applejack would want me to do."

"Well, that's what I want, too. So now you know. If a choice comes down to the fate of Equestria or Moondancer, you'd damn well better be ready to choose Equestria."

Twilight turned back around. Her facial features sported a strange mix of anger and pain. "Why are you doing this to me?"

I sighed. "Because I care about you. Look, we don't need to have a lopsided relationship, but you're crazy if you think that my life is more important than everypony else's. I don't even know you half as well as your best friends from Ponyville, yet you're treating me like there's something special about me. I don't understand what's going through your head."

"Moondancer, we're more than just friends," Twilight said, very quietly. "Are—aren't we?" She looked at me with vulnerable eyes. I really didn't understand.

"Well, yeah, of course. We're partners in science," I said, which was the only thing I could think of to say.

"Oh," said Twilight. Her face fell, and I immediately felt I had done something wrong.

I took a deep breath and tried to center myself. "Look Twilight, I don't want you to feel like you're being punished. But just this once, I need you to promise me you'll put Equestria's needs before mine from now on," I said. "I'm worried about your judgment with this strange way you're treating me."

Twilight closed her eyes. "I promise," she whispered.

"Do the Pinkie kind," I added, as gently as possible.

Her eyes teared up. "I guess this is my punishment, then? I can't say I don't deserve it. Yes, Moondancer. I Pinkie Pie Swear that I will put the fate of Equestria above yours," she said, her voice cracking. She made the motions half-heartedly with her forehooves.

I reached up and tugged at her shoulder. "Thank you. Now come here," I said, and pulled her into a hug as she cried into my vomit-stained mane. I didn't really know what to say, so I just let her lean on top of me for a few minutes as I stroked her back with my left forehoof.

When Twilight finally stood back up, she still looked terribly distraught. She had to reach for some tissues to dry her eyes. I felt really bad for her, but I didn't understand where any of these emotions were coming from. I figured she just felt guilty for my hoof, but that didn't make much sense.

"It's okay, Twi. It's all over," I said, and tried my best to smile.

"I guess," she whispered.

"Anyway, did you want to talk about the experiments? I figure you've had roughly one backwards day longer than I have to think about the situation, plus my surgery downtime and the trip back to Canterlot," I said. I felt uncomfortable about Twilight's mood, so I wasn't really in the spirits for talking shop. I only asked because I hoped the distraction would make my friend feel better.

Twilight nodded and blotted her eyes one last time with the tissues. "The experiments, right. Okay. Well, you were right, we lucked out with my biome. I put together a spell that can detect the reversed organisms, and they can't survive in this environment," she said. "I'm not sure why they die off so quickly, to be honest, but if they didn't I'd have left a trail of microbes everywhere I went. I can detect the trail, but virtually none of it is living."

"We should probably take the time to scour Equestria and remove all traces," I said. "Having reversed DNA and RNA floating about might be dangerous in some way we can't presently foresee."

"I know. I've already informed Princess Celestia of the situation and she's putting together a task force. She wants to know more about what we're doing, though, and I said I'd talk to her after I spoke with you first," said Twilight.

I rolled my eyes. "Buck. Well, as long as she can keep a secret, I suppose she's the best pony to know about all this. Do you think she'll shut us down?"

Twilight shook her head. "I don't think so. Even after what happened she's still supplying steady magilectric power to the lab, for what that's worth. Also, something mildly disturbing came up when I spoke to her."

"Uh-oh."

"She knows what time travel of the third form is, and she refuses to tell me," said Twilight. "She told me that Star Swirl forbade even private discussion of it, but she apparently trusts you and I to keep whatever we discover a secret. If we have discovered time travel of the third form, you might not be able to publish. We'd have to go through Celestia first."

I frowned. "Well, that sucks. But I guess it's for the best. Either way I need some time to theorize about what our research is doing, because I'm stumped."

"Me too," said Twilight, shrugging. "I've been thinking about it for the past day and a half, and I'm still in the dark. The parity shift doesn't make sense, and the disappearance of the antimatter even less so."

"I may be able to partially explain the parity shift," I said, unable to stop a grin from creeping across one side of my muzzle. "Here's a hint. The chirality shift should have affected the particles themselves, too. That means there are zillions of particles with reversed angular momentum."

"You mean like electrons?" asked Twilight. "Electrons can have either positive or negative spin, so there shouldn't be a big difference if they get flipped. The universe might be off by a few in one direction or the other, I suppose."

"No. I mean composite particles which are also fermions, like protons and neutrons. Those particles actually have a hoofedness to them. If they're reflected, they'll behave in a very similar way but with one caveat. Weak interactions, which cause nuclear radioactivity, are known to violate charge combined with parity in special cases," I explained. "Combined CP-symmetry is violated in certain particle decay paths. It's part of the reason the universe prefers matter to antimatter as time moves forward, as we talked about earlier."

Twilight nodded. "Fascinating.... so you're saying that by moving back and forth between matter and antimatter, some kind of weak force interaction is causing the parity of everything in the chamber to flip?"

I shook my head. "Not quite. I can't explain why it happens yet. But there is an inherent asymmetry between matter and antimatter due to weak CP-violations. The neat thing about this is what we can prove if we analyze some flipped matter in a particle bangbox," I said, now grinning from ear to ear. "Do you see where I'm going with this?"

For a moment, Twilight Sparkle stood in thought. I could see the wheels turning behind those beautiful purple eyes of hers. It was funny, I'd never really noticed a pony's eye color before. I realized I'd had a lot of experience looking into hers lately.

"Oh!" said Twilight, her face suddenly lighting up with all the intensity of a brush fire. "If you're right, and the particles themselves have reversed angular momentum—or parity, I know these are the wrong words but whatever—that would confirm several potential theories of particle supersymmetry!" She squealed like a little filly.

I smiled up at her. "I love seeing how much you enjoy discovering new things. I'm lucky to have a friend like you that I can relate to."

Twilight blushed and smiled, then a hint of sadness crept back into those otherwise-pretty eyes. I wondered if she still felt guilty about my hoof.

At some point the doctor had apparently walked into the room. Neither one of us noticed until she loudly cleared her throat.

"A-hem. Glad to see you're up, Ms. Moondancer. We'll need to keep you another four hours, and then you should be able to leave provided the Princess will take responsibility for your care," said the doctor. "You'll need to follow up on a weekly basis with your local hospital."

"I figured as much. So how bad is it?" I asked.

The doctor frowned for a brief moment. "You'll be fine, but it's not pretty. I'm an experienced surgeon, and even I don't enjoy looking at a hoof in this much distress. We had to remove most of the keratin around the entire hoof, and use a mechanical approach to set the coffin bone. There are two metal insertions we're using to hold the bone together. One of them is permanent," she said. "But in the long run it will make the hoof stronger than it was initially, ironically. You'll be on antibiotics for the first two months. The pharmacy here has three prescriptions for you, ready for pickup."

I looked over at Twilight and saw that she was tearing up again. "Stop that," I said, tapping her gently on the cheek with my left hoof. "You're too pretty to ruin that face with ridiculous amounts of guilt. I'm fine."

The doctor nodded. "Moondancer will be fine, Princess, provided she makes her hospital appointments. The plastic sheaths that protect her hoof will need to be changed weekly to make way for new keratin. Ms. Moondancer, you'll need a hoof-wheel to walk until you're fully healed, and don't try to use manumancy or do any flexing with that hoof in the meantime."

"Thank you so much, doctor," said Twilight, trying not to make eye contact with either of us.

The doctor smiled wryly. "Well, since you've required my staff to maintain silence on the chirality reversal, everything about this recent emergency is strictly between us. But I'm not above giving doctor's orders, so be more careful with those science experiments, okay? Hooves are very important parts of a horse," she said, then hoofed me a pen and a clipboard. "Moondancer, could I get you to sign this release? This will let us send your medical records to Canterlot General."

"Sure," I said. I took the pen and clipboard with my magic, signed, and returned them to her.

Then she winged Twilight a silver marker. "Applejack needed to return to Ponyville, so she signed the patient's cast as soon as she got out of surgery. I figured you might want to sign as well, Princess, given that your doppleganger apparently left here without knowing Moondancer was still in our care. Either way, you can keep the marker. I'll, um, just leave you two alone," she said, then walked briskly out.

"Seriously, Twi. Stop beating yourself up over this," I said.

"Right, you're right. I'm just glad you're okay," she said, then moved to the other side of the bed to sign my cast.

I watched her move, admiring her musculature. She's more fit than I am, probably because she has to save the world every other week. She walked up to the cast and looked at what Applejack had written. Of course, I hadn't read it yet. Twilight's eyes widened and she blushed.

"What is it?" I asked.

"N—nothing," she said. Twilight carefully guided the pen to my cast with her magic, then paused and took it into her right hoof instead. I guessed she wanted to practice her hoofwriting with my cast, which I didn't mind as long as it was legible. I assumed as a princess she probably had good hoofwriting and mouthwriting skills as well as her expected expertise with TK-writing, given that she was raised as a unicorn and studied magic at a very early age. (Maybe not wingwriting, but her wings were relatively new—and that's more of a parlor trick than a useful skill, anyway.) Twilight wrote something in roughly the same place where Applejack had, then set the pen back down. "I need to sit and rest for a little bit, if that's okay," she said.

"Not a problem," I said, and smiled. "I need to rest too, and we'll be together for the trip back. Take as much time as you need."

"Thanks," said Twilight. She still sounded glum. I was starting to worry about her. Had I pushed her too hard? I regretted it, but I still figured it was still for the best. She sat down in a chair in the room and immediately dozed off. I realized she'd probably been awake for nearly two days straight if she hadn't napped in the chamber, and it made sense she wouldn't have.

As Twilight began to saw logs with the fervor of a lumberjack, I grew increasingly curious about what she had written. Too curious. I certainly wouldn't wake her up by looking...

I used magic to lift the restraint and pilot my hoof through the air. There wasn't much slack so it was slow and difficult, and it hurt a little to do it. Once out of the sling, I gently lowered the cast and craned my head to look it it.

Twilight had written, "To my good friend Moondancer, with whom I look forward to growing, sharing, and learning, into the future," and signed, "(Princess) Twilight Sparkle." I felt my face flush with warmth.

Directly beneath this, Applejack had written, "Best wishes on Twilight & Moondancer growing together in life," and then signed it. Seemed normal enough. Except something wasn't quite right.

A small amount of text had been inked over at the end of Applejack's sentiment (just before her signature), covering a little more space than "in life". I could have ignored that as some kind of mistake, but why would a mistake happen at the end of a dedication, after what she wanted to write had already been written? It couldn't have been a mistake in the signing, because Applejack's signature was much larger than the blotted-out portion. 

Something else was strange, too. The ampersand had been seriously screwed up with lots of extra ink. It took me a moment to realize that the symbol had initially been a heart. Applejack had drawn over it, effectively breaking the heart and changing it into an ampersand.

That seemed like an unlikely mistake. Iconographic writing and language writing are processed by different parts of the pony brain. Nopony would likely put a heart down by accident instead of an ampersand, even if they didn't know how to draw an ampersand properly. The longer I looked at it, the more obvious it became: the ampersand had been drawn to cover up the fact that there was a heart there initially!

But why would there even be a heart there in the first place, I wondered? I supposed that friendship could have been a 'heart' thing, but iconographic hearts usually denoted love, as in hearts-and-hooves day. Applejack couldn't think that Twilight and I were...

Could she? We were both mares! I knew that sort of thing could happen, but I had never been in a relationship in my life! I didn't even know what love was supposed to feel like, so I certainly couldn't be in it. Especially when I wasn't a lesbian. I was certain I would know if I were one of those.

Then I realized something else. Twilight took quite a bit of time writing on my cast. She might have changed what Applejack wrote.

I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. It made much more sense than Applejack changing what she'd written down herself. As I carefully raised my hoof back up and slipped it into the sling, I considered the implications. It probably wasn't a big deal, right? Maybe Twilight had changed it so that I wouldn't be embarrassed. Or, maybe so she wouldn't be embarrassed. I didn't know which possibility was worse. They both felt icky.

Either way, I knew I couldn't bring myself to ask her about it. I tried my best to put it to the back of my mind as I listened to her snoring on the other side of the room.

It didn't work.





The wheel took some getting used to. It was actually three little wheels: two at the tip of the hoof and a smaller stabilizing one in the back. The whole armature strapped firmly around guides in the cast, and had a metal base with a cushion. The wheels were rubber, and the axle had a small clicking mechanism that kept it from moving unless I pushed it somewhat, and required more force to go backwards than forwards. I imagined how it must work with a simple lever and spring system on the inside. I knew there were fancier versions with crystals that could help control movement, but I couldn't imagine blowing bits on something that extravagant when this little thing worked just fine.

I elected to carry my sweater rather than wear it since I still desperately needed to wash after that ordeal. Twilight Sparkle was barely awake when we walked to the train, and she slept again on the train ride back home. Since we left in the early morning, we didn't need an overnight car. Twilight just dozed off with her head in my lap, which I propped up and held with my good hoof. It was nice. She blushed rather fiercely when I had to wake her up.

She clearly wasn't tired when we arrived, but she was very quiet. We didn't speak hardly at all until she dropped me off at her observatory. She walked me inside, and waited until the door had shut before saying anything.

"Okay, safe and sound. I need to go to my guest room at the castle and try to fix my sleeping schedule. Tomorrow I'll come get you, and we can go to the lab and make some decisions about how to proceed with things. I think we may want to leave the lab active so the room on the far right—room three, I mean—"

"Twilight, what's going on?" I asked, interrupting her. "You seem really distant. Did I do something wrong?" I worried that the answer might be a resounding 'yes'.

Twilight gasped. "No! No, no. Oh Moondancer, I'm sorry," she said, then walked up and hugged me. "I just, I don't want to, you know, get in your way or anything."

"We're friends, Twi. I want you in my way. You're being weird, and I can't help you if I don't know what's going on up here," I said, tapping her on the forehead.

"I, I just have some feelings I need to work through, it's not your fault," Twilight said nervously, as she stepped back and broke eye contact with me.

I sighed. "I can tell. Just don't put up any permanent barriers between us, okay? I'm your friend. You can come to me if you want to talk about your feelings. That's what I'm here for."

Twilight looked nervously at her own hooves. "Yeah, you're right. I really should. Look, Moonie, there's some stuff I need to talk about, but it can probably wait until after we've gotten the lab squared away," she said.

"That's fair," I said with a deep air of resignation. Honestly, though, I wanted the talking to happen now. I almost began to look forward to shutting down the lab.

"It'll be okay. I won't lock you out forever," she promised, hugging me again. "We'll talk more soon. For now, you should rest."

Twilight left. I showered with a plastic bag tied around the cast, though I also used telekinesis to deflect any water from getting near it. It took three shampooings to get the filth out of my mane, and I briefly wondered how Twilight had managed to withstand the smell.

After a light snack, I brushed my teeth, took an antibiotic, a pain pill, and an anti-anxiety med, and then carefully settled myself into Twilight's bed. I knew it was just my imagination since she hadn't slept here in years, but my brain convinced me that the bedding smelled vaguely like her, and it was a deep comfort. I wanted to surround myself with Twilight Sparkle. I didn't want her to be sleeping in the castle when I was here. But I wanted the Twilight around me to be a happy Twilight. I resolved I would find a way. I couldn't stop thinking about her. I needed my friend to know how much I cared about her, and I needed her to feel loved.

Platonically, of course.