//------------------------------//
// Strange Reflections 
// Story: Strange Reflections 
// by uberPhoenix 
//------------------------------//

I couldn't do it. Every time I opened my mouth to speak, a sudden wave of what-ifs, doubts, and alternative solutions bowled me over. So many things needed to be said, but none of them wanted to be first. They all depended on one another, tightly interwoven in a net of insecurities, a net that I had been forming for quite some time now and which, finally complete, was determined to squeeze the life out of me until there wasn't anything left.

It shouldn't be this tough, I told myself. You're strong. A ferocious beast. A dragon. A real man.

And then I remembered how none of that was true at all.

I looked across the room, trying my absolute hardest to make my fear and trepidation show on my face.  It was a cheap way out, a way to say everything that mattered without having to open my mouth, but I didn't care.

Twilight Sparkle looked back at me, matching my fear with her gentle kindness, and I instantly felt guilty. I loved her. She was my parental figure, my best friend. And now she was my shrink.

"I can't do this," I told her. "It's too weird."

Her smile didn't fade, although I still got the impression that she was hurt. "I know this may feel uncomfortable," she told me, "but it doesn't have to be. We're doing everything by the book. Haven't I always told you that you can trust me with anything?"

It was true. And until now I had. Twilight was like my security blanket, except that I had tossed my actual security blanket a year ago, figuring I had outgrown it. I had no plans to outgrow Twilight.

"Everything you tell me today will be kept completely confidential," she continued. "Strictly between you and me. I won't tell a soul. I Pinkie promise."

"But you'll know," I countered. "Even if you pretend you won't, you will."

I could see that Twilight was thinking over the situation, choosing her words carefully. It seemed oddly impersonal, but then again, wasn't I doing the exact same thing? I decided to take the initiative before she could finish whatever new strategy she was concocting.

"Just forget about it," I told her. "I think we're done here."

She took the request surprisingly well. "Okay then," she told me. "It's your choice, whether or not you want to open up about this. Just know that if you ever decide you do want to talk, I'll be here. I always will."

Damn that guilt-tripping.  "Why can't we just go back to how things used to be?" I asked her. "We were all fine before. Can't we go back to being fine? I'm fine," I quickly appended, although I don't think either of us bought it.

"Spike," said Twilight, and her voice was still soft and gentle. "Rainbow Dash told me what you asked her."

Shit.

I had been trying hard all day to stop thinking about how I had humiliated myself in front of Rainbow Dash. But some things can't be taken back, which was why I wasn't taking any chances with Twilight.

"She's not upset, Spike," Twilight assured me. "She wanted me to let you know that it's okay. You didn't offend her or anything. So if that's what you're worried about, don't be."

That wasn't at all was I was worried about. Rainbow Dash is a tough mare with a thicker skin than I could ever have. I don't think I could have upset her if I tried.

No, I was much more worried about the things I'd let slip about myself.  Especially now that I knew Rainbow Dash had told Twilight. Who else had she told?

I had to make sure all of my bases were covered. All the holes had to be plugged. "It's not true!" I blurted.

Twilight raised an eyebrow. I worried that I'd just lost the patient Twilight and replaced her with exasperated Twilight.

"Are you saying Rainbow Dash made it up?" Twilight asked me, but she didn't sound angry or accusatory, just confused.

Damn her. Only Twilight could make me feel like a child who had just stolen from the cookie jar, and she wasn't even doing it on purpose.

"No!" I cried. "I mean, I really did say that stuff, but I didn't mean anything by it. It was taken all wrong!"

Have I mentioned yet that I'm a terrible liar? The truth was, I had been feeling unusually hopeful the day I trekked out to Rainbow's floating cloud house. Desperation can do quite a bit to somepony.

I still didn't know if I was lucky or unlucky to discover that she was home. She poked her head over the edge when I called her name.

"Hey, Rainbow Dash," I mumbled, and she flew down to the ground to hear me better. It was not a great start.

"I've been thinking a lot recently," I told her. "About you."

I swear her eyes bugged out. She was quiet for a little while, just long enough for things to get awkward.

"Wow," she said at last. "I'm flattered, really."

It was my turn to freak out, and I quickly stammered an apology. "That's not what I mean," I very nearly screamed. "Not like that. I've just been thinking about how you're not a very normal pony."

"Uh, thanks?" She probably didn't know whether or not to be insulted.

I foolishly continued. "I mean, for a mare, you're not very girly."

"No," she said dryly. "I'm not. You going somewhere with this?"

"But you're still a girl."

Nothing I was saying was coming out the way I intended it to. Hearing my own voice, listening to me say those words made me cringe. If I were Rainbow Dash, I probably would have kicked me.

"I don't know if anypony's told you this, Spike, but there's more than one way to be a girl. It's not like a cookie cutter template or anything." She paused, and her eyes lit up in realization. "Is this about me being a fillyfooler? Because honestly, Spike, I never thought you'd be one to have an issue with that."

No, no, no! Why was this so hard to explain? Even though I hadn't quite been able to piece together what I was feeling, I had figured that, if anyone, Rainbow Dash would be able to help me recognize the symptoms. Now, her confusion was making me feel even worse about myself. If I couldn't trust her to understand, then who could understand? I was alone. A freak.

"It's nothing like that," I told her. "I'm not gay, and I don't care if you are. That's not my problem."

"Then what is?" she asked me. "I'd love to help you, but I really don't know what you're going on about."

I looked up at her and wondered if I could say it. I could trust her, right? She was the Element of Loyalty, after all.

"Okay," I said. "But you have to promise me you won't tell anyone."

"I promise," she told me. A promise I now know she broke, even if she probably thought it was for my own good.

I took a deep breath and began. "Have you ever felt like you don't really belong? Like you're not really living up to the expectations that others have of you?"

Rainbow Dash chuckled. "All the time, kiddo," she said. "It happens. You can't control what other ponies think about you; you just learn to live with it."

"Yeah," I mumbled, thrown by the immediacy and casualness of the response. "But what if it's something big? Something even you expect of yourself?"

"I've been through that too," said Rainbow Dash empathetically. "Getting stressed about it doesn't do much to help."

I was beginning to become frustrated by how calmly she was taking this. "You're not getting it!" I seethed at her. I forced myself to calm down. "I thought you'd understand because you're not very girly," I said despondently.

"I hate that word," she told me. "I'm not girly. That doesn't mean I'm not a girl."

This was the perfect place to say it. I forced myself to speak.

"Have you ever felt that way, though?" I asked her. "Have you ever thought that maybe you're not a girl after all? Like it was a mistake that you turned out that way?"

There. I'd said it. All that was left was for her to laugh at me. I cringed, thinking that this was something I was never going to live down. Right now, nothing seemed more appealing than laying down in front of a carriage. Yet, at the same time, I felt somehow hopeful. Stupid prospect that it was, I was immediately overcome with relief. No more hiding. No more lying. No for fearing being ridiculed. I was hanging above a pit by a rope, but now Rainbow Dash was going to pull me up. All assuming, of course, that she even grasped what I was trying to tell her.

Rainbow didn't even have to think. "Not really," she told me, and it seemed to me that, rather than drag me onto the metaphorical dry land, the rope had been released instead. "That's not something I think about all that often," she said. "I mean, it doesn't make much of a difference, does it? Being a colt wouldn't be better or worse. Just, you know, different. You know what I mean?"

I didn't. How could something like that not matter to her? Rarity would throw a fit if anypony accused her of not being a proper mare. She had built her entire life, occupation and aspiration, all around that very idea. It began to occur to me that maybe Rarity would have been a better pony to explain this to. She would be better able to empathize. But she was also Rarity. If I could at all handle this, get over my problems without her knowing, then I would try. I knew that Rarity wasn't the type to judge a pony, or a dragon, for a singular moment of weakness, but I couldn't take that chance.

"Thanks anyway," I told Rainbow, even though I wasn't feeling particularly thankful. This had certainly been a bust. All I had accomplished was releasing an embarrassing inner worry amongst my friends. What would I be in their eyes now? I was a boy. Of course I was. I had the parts to prove it, and I had never been anything else. But now they'd see me emasculated, a world away from everything I was supposed to be. And yet, and yet...

I stopped thinking before I even allowed myself to consider the fact that things might be better if they saw me differently, closer to how I felt. I told myself that would never happen. Rainbow Dash wouldn't tell anyone. She had promised. If anyone would keep a promise, it would be Rainbow.

Except of course that she hadn't.  That was why I was now sitting across from from my best friend, a mare who was never going to see me the same way again.

"What do you want from me?" I asked her, feeling stressed and angry and too many other emotions to count. "What's it going to take for you to just let this drop?"

"I want you to be comfortable," she said. "I want you to feel safe and secure. We all do. If there's something bothering you, hurting you, then it's hurting us, too."

"But why? What business is it of yours what I think and feel?"

Her response was simple. "Because that's what it means to be a friend. I'm sure you're mad at Rainbow Dash for betraying your trust..."

"You bet I'm mad," I bellowed. "Element of Loyalty, my scales."

"But she was being loyal," finished Twilight. "To me."

Wait, what?

"I pay attention," Twilight told me. "I know when my number one assistant is under the weather. I asked Rainbow Dash to tell me if she thought she knew what was bothering you. I pushed her to tell me because I can't stand to see you like this.  I know she betrayed your trust, but please, if you're going to blame anypony for that, blame me, not her.  But Spike, you've been off ever since the great dragon migration.  Did something happen there?"

The great dragon migration. I'd left Ponyville to live amongst my own kind, and in the process I had discovered that they weren't really my own kind at all. And at first I had thought I'd known why.

"Why don't you tell me?" I asked bitterly. "You followed me there. I can't trust any of you, can I?"

Twilight turned away, avoiding my gaze. I realized that I'd really hurt her with my remark, but I didn't care. It was true.

"Spike..." she began, but I wasn't about to let her finish.

"No," I said, cutting her off. "I'm talking now. No matter what I do, you always treat me like a child who can't make her own decisions. Have you considered that maybe that's my problem? The fact that I'm forced to live with paranoid, possessive ponies like you? How do you honestly expect me to trust you with my secrets when you've never trusted me a bit!"

Twilight hung her head. "I'm sorry, Spike," he said. "I'll give you the benefit of the doubt from now on. We don't have to keep talking about it."

Part of me wanted to keep talking anyway, just to see how bad I could make her feel. But while that might have made me feel better, it wouldn't be productive. "You'd better start trusting me," I told her, and then I hugged her as tightly as could. "Because I really, really want to start trusting you."

I couldn't leave her. I just couldn't. She was Twilight Sparkle, the mare I had grown up beside, who had taught me how to read, who had always been there for me. She was my sister and my mother, and I loved her. If we could find a way to work through this, we would do it together.

She closed her eyes and smiled, relieved that she hadn't lost me. "Spike..." she began again.

And again, I didn't let her finish. "I said I was talking," I reminded her. "And right now, I want to tell you the truth."

"You don't have to do this," she said.

"I want to. Because you deserve to know, and because I'm sick of pretending everything's fine."

"Thank you, Spike. Thank you for trusting me."

We let go of each other and moved to the fireplace, which Twilight lit with a spark from her horn.

"The colony I found during the dragon migration," I began, "well, you saw it. There weren't any girl dragons. Just a bunch of guys. I didn't get along with them well, but that's not really surprising, is it? Ponyville has boys too, but you never see me hanging out with Snips and Snails, do you?"

Twilight chuckled. "Did you just compare Snips and Snails to a bunch of teenage dragons?" She asked. "I don't think the comparison is really appropriate."

I smiled. "No," I agreed. "It isn't. Which is why I started thinking. And I realized, what if it wasn't the fact, or it wasn't just the fact that they were dragons that I had a problem with, but, you know..."

She finished for me. "The fact that they were boys."

I nodded. "Yeah, well, the fact that they were dragons too. I didn't stand a chance. But it was enough to make me wonder why I didn't fit in. And the answer, or the first answer that I came up with, seemed really obvious. Why should I expect the wild dragons to be like me? Just because we were both dragons? I didn't know the first thing about what it was like to live like them, because all my life I've been surrounded by ponies, by culture. Between you and me, I'm honestly surprised their leader Garble knew how to read."

Twilight groaned. "Don't get me started on that," she said. "The mission in Neighbraska would have gone so much smoother if you'd gotten a chance to read that letter."

"Yeah. But the point is, that got me thinking about my life. About my friends. And I've got some of the best friends a pony could ask for. I love you guys, and I never need anypony else when I'm with you. But you're all girls. Isn't someone like me supposed to have friends my own gender?"

"Spike," Twilight said apprehensively, "It's fine to have female friends. It just means that you're open minded. You're not obsessed with being a brute."

"I know. But not only am I not obsessed, but I want to be as far away from that kind of being as possible. At first I had this fear that maybe hanging out with you guys had changed me somehow. But then I realized that I wasn't forced to choose to have the same friends as you. No one made me be friends with Rainbow Dash and Applejack instead of Snips and Snails and Pipsqueak and Featherweight. I chose you guys. My connection to you was there from the start. You didn't make me into one of you. It's more like, I always have been. I'm not a dragon," and I paused, wrestling with the words on my tongue, trying to sequence them. "And I don't know if I'm a boy either. I think that maybe I never was."

"I guess that means that me and Rarity... Maybe I'm a fillyfooler, the same way Rainbow Dash is." I looked up at Twilight, desperate for guidance. "Is that possible? Is that even a real thing?" I gripped her again and buried my head in her side. I felt so lost, and I needed an anchor. "And I know that it's fine for a boy to like things like cooking and cleaning and that none of that stuff makes me any less of a man.  Rainbow Dash said that there's more than one way to be a girl, and I guess that means that there's more than one way to be a boy too.  But this goes beyond that.  I'm not a guy who likes girly things.  I actually feel more comfortable around you guys than I ever would around a bunch of colts.  I see myself with you, as one of you.  Maybe there's a little bit more to what Rainbow Dash said.  Maybe there's not just more than one way to be a girl.  Maybe, just maybe, there can be more than one way to become a girl.  Or is that just stupid?  I know you probably think I'm weird."  My voice was slightly muffled by her coat.

For a moment, neither of us spoke. We just stayed there, me leaning into her, relying on her, completely helpless and dependent on the one pony I really truly loved, more than whatever attraction I had for Rarity. Then she spoke.

"Spike, listen to me, and listen well. We live in a world with showboating illusionists and gruff griffins and assertive minotaurs and ponies and other creatures of so many shapes and attitudes it boggles the mind. This is a world where a pony can break the sound barrier or brew a love potion gone terribly wrong or become a superhero for a day. We've fought thousand-year old demigods intent on eliminating the sun and omnipotent pranksters who can make it rain chocolate from cotton candy clouds. I will never be able to go to a wedding anymore without worrying that somepony there is a shapeshifter. And, what I find just as unbelievable as any of that is the fact that I have six best friends who I know can support me no matter what, in a world where ponies can and will burst into song with no prompting and where problems, no matter how bad, can be overcome with the power of friendship in time for dinner. Believe me, Spike, weirdness is relative. And I have never, not even once, thought you any weirder than the best and most wondrous things to ever happen to anypony."

I'm not ashamed to admit that I sniffled then. I don't cry, I swear I don't, but Twilight is a special case. "You really think so?" I asked.

She gave me the widest smile I had ever seen outside of Pinkie Pie. "Yes," she said, "and no matter how things change, or how weird they get, you will always be my number one assistant. You're still the same little dragon, or pony, or creature, and I still love you for who you are. Don't you ever forget that."

"I'm so lucky to have you," I realized and told her.

She kissed me on the cheek. "Not nearly as lucky as I am," she said songfully, and then her demeanor became a bit more serious. Still kind, still the gentlest expression you could ever see, but one of action. "So what are we going to do now?" she asked.

Honestly, in all my imaginings, I had never actually gotten this far. "I don't think anything yet," I said. "Let's just keep this between you and me for now, see how things go. The others, well, they deserve to know too, and I want to tell them, but not now, not yet. I don't have the energy. Or the courage."

"Well, whenever you're ready," said Twilight, nuzzling me, "I'll be right there beside you to provide whatever support you need."


---


Two months. That was how long it took me to work up the strength to tell the others. In the mean time, not much had changed at all, except for my outlook and disposition. Those two months seemed like some of the best of my life. Something had been lacking before, something I hadn't even realized was gone. But now that it was back, the days seemed brighter than ever, except for that single lingering dark cloud.

Sooner or later, I knew, I would have to open up. At least now I didn't have to do it alone.

Rather than let the anxiety overcome me and put me back where I had just worked so hard to climb out of, I decided to take the initiative.

Twilight invited the others but didn't tell them why. And that's how I ended up in the kitchen with Twilight, a room away from five confused and eager mares.

"You don't have to do this," said Twilight, probably for the dozenth time.

"Don't try to talk me out of this," I told her, worried that she might succeed.

We walked out together and met the five pairs of expectant eyes.

Twilight was the first to talk. "Guys? Spike has something important he wants to share with us."

I was worried this was going to be hard. But as I looked around at my best friends, so full of innocence and encouragement, it came easily. "I'm not a boy," I told them earnestly.

Silence. The worst response.

Fluttershy was the first to speak up. "So you're, like, a girl?"

It was a question I had been asking myself, and probably the one I still didn't have a definite answer to.  "I don't know," I confessed, "Maybe. Or maybe not.  Perhaps I'm neither. Maybe the whole two-ways-about-it isn't true for me. But I've got time to figure it out." Why did I think that this was going to be hard? I'd managed to work through a lot of my thoughts and feelings when I came out to Twilight, and the talks we'd been having over the past two months had helped to make me more comfortable and certain. Sure, it was personal, more personal than anything I'd ever shared with my friends. But that was exactly it: they were my friends. Like Twilight had once said, a good friend, like a good book, was something that lasts forever.

"Well, Spike," Applejack began, and while I hated how she was dragging out her words, I was determined to let her speak her piece how she wanted to speak it. "I can't say I understand."

Well, crap.

"But shoot, I don't understand a lot a things.  So I guess this just means you can teach me. You're like family to me, and shame on me if I don't give my family a chance."

"I think you're really brave, Spike," interjected Fluttershy. "I wish I had your courage."

Rarity was next. "Well, it doesn't matter to me in the least, Spikey-Wikey. I've been around you long enough to know what you really are."

I swallowed. "Really?" I mumbled.

"Yes, Spike. The truly important things can never be hidden." She bent down and kissed me on the cheek, and I shuddered. "You're a charismatic, chivalrous, intelligent being. Nothing else is nearly as important."

"Yeah," agreed Rainbow Dash. "Except Rarity's wrong. Everything else is important. It's what makes you you. And I don't think any of us would have it any other way."

"Well spoken," complimented Rarity. "I suppose I spoke too soon. Everything in our dear Spike is something to be treasured."

"So, what changes is this gonna bring about," asked Applejack, apparently eager to begin her education. "You gonna start dressing differently?"

"I don't wear clothes," I answered flatly.

Rarity gasped, and a huge grin broke out on her face. "Idea! We should change that, then," she told me excitedly. "I'm going to design a whole wardrobe for you. Oh Spike, you always bring out the best in me, don't you?"

"And we can throw a party!" added Pinkie Pie. My entire face turned an unpleasant shade of crimson.

"That won't be necessary," I told her. "Really, I don't want to make a big deal out of this." Also, I wasn't sure how many ponies I could face with this at once.

"Okay." She seemed a little crestfallen, but it was only a second before she perked up again. "How about a private party then, just the seven of us? To celebrate how much you mean to us."

I relented. "Fine," I told her, and then grinned. "But it better be up to your standards."

"Of course, you silly filly! It's a Pinkie Promise!" Pinkie Pie nearly exploded off her heels from the excitement. "It's going to be the bestest, most super-duper party ever."

And it was.