Rainbow peered in through the hospital window, forcing her tortured wings to hover. She couldn’t face Twilight, not now, but she couldn’t leave her either. So she floated, looking in at the friend she’d mutilated.
Night had fallen, and Rainbow should be asleep. So should Twilight, but she was still tossing and turned, muttering dictation to Spike. Between the blackness outside and the bandages on Twilight’s skull, they couldn’t see Rainbow, not if she moved carefully.
“Spike, take a letter,” Twilight muttered, for what must have been the twentieth time. “Dear Princess Celestia…” She blinked back tears, and for a moment she tried to grab a handkerchief in her magic, but her only reward was a spark of pain down her spine. Her back arched a little as what was left of her horn sputtered and fizzled.
Twilight fell back into bed, exhaling a sound somewhere between a laugh and a yelp. “Guess I’ll have to learn to stop doing that.”
Spike tried to reach out and help her, but she brushed him away, her tone quickly shifting back to the familiar voice she always used when writing letters.
“Dear Princess Celestia.” Again, she rubbed her eyes. “I don’t suppose the castle is hiring janitors?”
Spike stopped writing, sighed, and crumpled the letter into a ball. “Twilight, just because you’re…”
“What? Useless?” She didn’t look at him, just stared up at the ceiling. Knowing Twilight, she’d probably already counted the tiles, noted any defects, and figured out which ones would need replacing soonest. “Even earth ponies have some magic. It’s in their blood—but everything unicorns have is focused in a single little oh-so-fragile horn.”
She squirmed a bit as her dragon crawled up onto the bed with her. “C’mon, Twi! You can still be a librarian! I’ll be around to carry the books for you, and do the reshelving, and everything!” He tried, and failed, to coax a smile on Twilight’s bruised face. “Sure, magic is pretty helpful, but I’m helpful… er!”
All he got for his efforts was another long sigh. “It’ll never be the same, Spike. My whole destiny is magic! It’s my cutie mark!” She flexed her shoulders the barest fraction of an inch, her joints popping. “Every time I see my flank in the mirror, what am I going to think?”
Spike pressed up closer to her. “You’ll think about us. You’ll think about your friends.”
Through the window, Rainbow could see Twilight’s jaw clench.
“What am I going to say to her?” Twilight grimaced as she gestured with her splinted forelegs, pangs running through her body. “Dear Princess Celestia, I regret to inform you that circumstances beyond my control have…” She trailed off, and Spike added another balled-up letter to the pile.
“Dear Princess Celestia, it’s been a few years since you sent me to Ponyville to learn about the magic of friendship.” She sucked in air through her broken nose, her breath whistling.
Spike’s quill worked at lightning pace as Twilight began to speak faster and louder. “Well, I learned, alright. I learned friends could take your magic away and leave you broken in a hospital bed.”
Rainbow’s wings nearly gave out.
“I don’t know if you had some destiny in mind for me, but I guess that’s out the window now.” She glanced over in Rainbow’s direction. “At least some of my friends stayed true.” Twilight winced as he levered Spike up onto her belly, embracing him in a splinted-leg hug.
The dragon shifted in her grip, his scaly mouth breaking out into an open-lipped smile—no, a sneer. Rainbow had never known Spike had so many teeth before…
Still Twilight muttered. “Not like the others, are you, Spike?” She reached out to comb back his frills, the movement making half-healed wounds pop open. Twilight gasped a little, and so did Rainbow.
She saw blood creep from gashes on her skin, flowing in rivers to the crown of her forehead.
Twilight stared through the window, eyes boring holes in the pegasus outside. “What’s the matter, Rainbow?” The blood moved like a living creature, crawling up Twilight’s face.
“I thought you were loyal, Rainbow.” Still the blood limped its way over Twilight’s fur, coalescing where her horn should have been. Like a scab forming, it hardened, darkened, and crusted over, a new putrid horn sprouting from the stump of the old.
The sanguine horn flashed, her familiar lilac magic enveloping it. “I thought you were my friend.”
Lances of dried blood shot through Rainbow as she fell from the sky.