• Published 26th Jun 2013
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You Can Fight Fate - Eakin



Twilight discovers that the Elements of Harmony aren't as benevolent as she thought, and crosses time and space in order to stop them

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An Impossibly Old Friend

AN IMPOSSIBLY OLD FRIEND

I reappear in darkness.

Wherever I am, it's dank and smells earthy. Some sort of cave, I think. My hooves are resting on something that feels soft and alive. It’s also hot, and between the heat and humidity I’m sweating before I even have a chance to get my bearings. There’s a point of light off in the distance, and I make for it, not having anywhere else to go. Just as I’m about to step into the light coming in from the cave's exit, a voice interrupts.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” it says.

I recognize that voice. “Star Swirl?”

“Twilight?”

I rush over to where he’s laid out on the cave floor and hug him. He shouts in alarm.

“Ow! Seriously?”

He pushes me away and I fall back. “You’re hurt?” Indeed, I pull my hoof back to discover it's covered in his blood.

“What tipped you off? The shrieks of pain I just let out? Or the fact that I sent you a distress call saying exactly that? Moron.”

My horn ignites, casting light over the familiar stallion. He's older than I remember him being, the wrinkles on his forehead set deeper than the last time I saw him. He looks a great deal like the portrait of him that hangs in the Canterlot library, except his robes are grimy and soiled. "The beard looks good," I say.

He strokes the bloody, matted hair hanging from his chin. "It's seen better days, as have I."

"Let me see your injuries," I say, getting down to business. I remove the robes and quickly fold them up before placing the bundle down by the cave wall. I size up the task before me. Star Swirl is covered in cuts and gashes, and bleeding freely. Fortunately I knew to expect something like this, and prepared a good number of healing spells to cover every eventuality. My horn glows as I go to work and Star Swirl trembles as the injuries start to knit themselves closed. "How did this happen?"

Star Swirl is grateful for something to distract himself from the pain my spell is causing him, necessary though it may be. "I was walking by a window, and it exploded. Very sharp glass everywhere," he says.

"It must have been. You've lost a lot of blood. Here, drink this." I pull a juice box from my saddlebags and poke the straw into it. He takes it and starts to suck it down. It should help get him back on his hooves a bit quicker. "Any idea what made the window explode? Your letter said it was the Elements of Harmony."

"Well, indirectly. I'm sure that if we investigate it'll turn out that when the glass was made some two hundred years ago it had a microscopic flaw, and then as I was walking by it the perfect combination of heat and air pressure just happened to make it fail catastrophically at just the wrong moment. That tends to be the way they operate."

"Sounds like just a weird coincidence," I say.

"Once you've seen the kind of things I have, you'll stop believing in those." His most dangerous wounds are all patched up, so I take a moment to inspect him. He's in pretty good shape for a stallion in his early fifties, although the gray in his mane and beard suggest that he's been through a lot. "What about you? I see you've been taking care of yourself. You don't look a day older than you did when I left."

"Well why would I? You left less than a week ago."

He waits several seconds before he answers me. "Why would you come straight here that quickly?"

"Huh? You asked me to. Your letter said you were dying. Oh, and you're welcome for the way I just saved your life, by the way."

"I gave you a fixed point in time. You could have spent an entire decade studying, made archmage, gotten ready properly and still arrived exactly when you did. Instead you just rush in half-cocked?"

I throw up my hooves. "Gee, I'm so sorry that my heroically charging in to save you doesn't live up to your expectations." Unbelievable. He hasn't mellowed a bit in the last twenty years, just gotten surlier.

He glares at me and collects himself. "You're right. Thank you, Twilight. You didn't have to come at all. I didn't actually expect that you would. I figured I would just bleed to death here in this awful place. Twice."

I tilt my head at the last part. "Can you do that? Can you bleed to death twice?"

"I can," he replies. He shifts up onto his knees gradually, and holds up the amulet that's dangling from his neck. It's dominated by a large ruby placed into a rectangular setting of gold, and covered by carvings of tiny runes. "I made it myself," he says with pride. "It's the only reason I've lasted as long as I have. My own personal rewind, takes me back about five minutes whenever I die. So the Regalia can't just collapse a building on me by surprise, I'll get a second chance."

"I've never seen anything like that," I say. I hold my hoof out to touch it, glancing up at Star Swirl's face for permission. When he nods, I pull the amulet a bit closer to get a better look. The gem is warm to the touch. "So, basically as long as you're wearing this you can't die?"

"It doesn't go quite that far," he explains. "Takes about an hour or so to recharge between uses, so I only get one do-over per attempt on my life. And with something like that blood loss you just helped me with it only means I'll get to live through the last part of it twice. Still, it's kept me one step ahead of the baddies for this long."

"Will you make one for me?"

"Depends. Do you have any massive gems that you personally ripped from the crown of a necromancer who was leading a skeletal army against Equestria just lying around?"

"Can't say that I do."

"Sorry, can't help you then."

It's awfully annoying to hang around a pony who's actually accomplished so much more than I ever have. This must be how others feel around me. "So why would the Regalia be trying to kill you anyway? I doubt even you could be that unpleasant."

"Because I figured them out," he says. "You saw my notes. The Regalia has been changing and manipulating everything, trying to counter basic entropy, and basic pony nature. We all have room for self-improvement after all, even me. But they're fighting a losing battle, and when they fall too far behind and decide we aren't worth the effort, they pick up their ball and go home. By which I mean they blow up the planet."

"The Elements want to end the world? They hate us that much?" I ask. It's the part of all this I'm having the most trouble believing.

"Oh it's much, much worse than that. They do this because they love us too much. They want to make the best of all possible worlds for us to live in, and they'll go through every possible permutation until they find the one they like. I don't like our timeline's odds of winning the grand prize," says Star Swirl. "I don't think the Elements are controlling the Regalia directly though. They're more like free agents with the authority to use the Elements' power."

"That's pretty out there, Star Swirl. I don't see how I'm being manipulated, and I've been exposed to them more than most."

"Oh, really?" asks Star Swirl, skeptical. "Never had anything weird happen around you? Never gotten little bursts of inspiration when you were near the Regalia that helped you figure out a solution to your problem?"

"Well, when you live in Ponyville weird is relative."

"And you started living there right after you used the Elements on Nightmare Moon, didn't you?"

"What are you implying?"

"Oh, I think you're smart enough to know exactly what I'm implying." He stands up and stretches, evaluating the effects of my healing magic, which are apparently satisfactory. “They’re very good at manipulation. We’re talking about a set of artifacts that literally manipulated themselves into existence.”

“How did they do that?”

“Beats me, but I’m sure that they did. Think about it. The other five Elements are based off the Element of Magic. Where did Luna get it?”

“You brought it back with you from my time,” I reply.

“Correct. And where did I get it?”

I sigh. It seems that he’s really going to go through this step by step. “We brought it back with us from the other timeline. The really bad one. Come on Star Swirl, this all happened within the last month for me.”

“Almost there. Ever wonder why that timeline exists in the first place? My time loop spell, obviously, but why did I write it with such an obvious flaw? I knew before I even wrote it that it wouldn’t work right, but I wrote it that way anyway because that’s how I knew it had to happen. Had already happened, thanks to my coming to visit you and fix the problems it caused. What if there was a bigger point?”

My thoughts race through the implications of what he’s saying. “Wait... so everything that happened to me in the time loop...”

“Was to make you their delivery girl, and put the crown in the right place at the right time,” he finishes for me. “You played your part perfectly.”

No. The Elements of Harmony wouldn’t do that to me. They’re supposed to be good. Well, I guess from their perspective this is good. I remember something I thought right after they had finished off Chrysalis and turned the changelings into ponies, without any sort of consent involved. There’s a very good reason they aren’t called the Elements of Niceness...

“So are we just going to sit around here and talk all day, or are we going to do something about it?” he asks me.

“Where is ‘here,’ anyway?” I ask, delaying the need to make my choice.

“Remember how I told you there were other timelines? Ones where somepony tried to use the Regalia, but it failed instead of succeeding? This is one of them, from the very first time the Regalia was employed in my lifetime. The seal on the great wolf Fenrir came undone, and it started to menace the countryside. Celestia went out to fight it. When she lost, it ate her.”

“It ate her?”

“Yep. Swallowed her whole. Luna and Celestia don’t need the Regalia to use the Elements when they work together, but they do if just one of them tries to use them alone. Luna and I took the Regalia and went to help her.”

“She’s never told me any of this,” I say.

“I doubt she’s a big fan of this particular story, for obvious reasons.”

I think about what I know of the Princess. “You know, she always has liked cats more than dogs...”

“There you go, now you know why,” says Star Swirl. “With the Regalia’s help, we beat Fenrir. But what if we hadn’t? Well, it turns out that if Luna had lost, the unicorn council wouldn’t have been up to keeping the sun and moon going. They must be out of practice after so long. All of which is a long way of saying don’t step into the sunlight.”

“Huh?”

Instead of answering, Star Swirl pulls a chunk of moss from the wall of the cave with his magic. It hovers in front of my face for a moment and I get a good look at it before he tosses it into the sunlight streaming in through the mouth of the cave.

The moss bursts into flame. I can only watch as it burns away in an instant before I turn back to Star Swirl.

“It’s a bit warmer out there these days.”

I look out at Equestria, acutely aware now of how I’ve been sweating since I got here. The landscape is a dead and baking wasteland, rippling in the heat rising up from the ground. Star Swirl joins me in looking out over the devastation. “The cave is enchanted, so it’s safe for the time being,” he explains. “In a few days, though, the Regalia will do exactly what it always does. It will reject this world. I’ll either find somewhere else that’s safe for me, or I’ll die.” He falls silent for a long moment. “So now you know what I’m up against. I wouldn’t blame you if you went back to your own time and forgot all about this. You’ve already helped me a great deal, and if you do stay you aren’t going to like where I’m going next.”

“Where’s that?”

“To meet with the only pony who I’ve ever known to have any luck fighting the Regalia. I’m going to see you.”

“What? But I’m right here. I never fought against the Regalia unless you count-” my mind catches up. “Oh no. No way. Absolutely not. She was completely insane, and she’ll kill us for what we did to her last time we were there.”

“I told you that you wouldn’t like it.”

I sit down to think about my choices. Almost certain death at the hooves of an enraged changeling queen who used to be me, or a happy, comfortable life in Ponyville with a pony I love, the best friends I’ve ever known, and just the tiniest shred of suspicion that it might all be a lie.

“I’m in.”

Star Swirl looks surprised that I found it so easy to choose. “I’ll prepare an escape spell and keep it ready. First sign of trouble and we’ll warp right back here.”

I nod to him. His horn glimmers in the dim light of the cave, and a moment later we’ve gone and left the dead, burned-out shell of Equestria to its fate.

------------------------------------

We re-enter the time loop at the same point we always have; the library of Canterlot palace. It’s situated in one of the upper wings of the castle that hangs out over the city in what is, bar none, the most impressive architectural achievement in Equestria.

Or rather we enter the point in space where it used to be. There’s no castle there, and no floor under our hooves. Just empty sky. The two of us instantly begin to plummet towards the ground far below. Gravity is such a bitch.

I look down. There’s a lot of ‘down’ to look at. Below us, though not for long at this rate, is the smoldering wreckage of what used to be the castle spread out through the equally wrecked city of Canterlot. “Cast the escape spell!” I shout to Star Swirl, desperate to be heard over the rushing air. I can’t even hear my own voice through it, hopefully he’ll figure it out on his own. “Cast it cast it cast it cast-”

There’s a blur at the corner of my vision, and I land on something soft and yielding. A moment later Star Swirl lands on top of me. Pinned down as I am, I can only make out bits and pieces of the scene around me. We’re gliding rather than falling now, carried on the back of the big purple pegasus that just saved us. She lands on a nearby hillside and I fumble my way off her back. I’ve never been so happy to be back on solid ground. I turn to thank our savior.

My jaw drops.

That ‘big purple pegasus’? She has a unicorn horn too. In fact, she’s me.

“Hello, Twilight,” says Princess Sparkle. “Long time no see.”

I just kind of sit there in stunned silence for a little bit.

“If we could get the banal portion of this conversation over with as quickly as possible, I would appreciate it,” she says.

It takes me a few more seconds before I can say anything at all. “You have wings!” I finally manage.

“Correct.”

“You’re an alicorn,” says Star Swirl.

“Equally correct. Is it really any more surprising than a changeling queen?”

“Yes!” I say.

She smiles a little and I realize there’s a distinct lack of her trying to kill us. “I’m not going to hurt you, Twilight. Relax.”

“How did you know I was-”

“Not the first time I’ve had this conversation,” she replies. “You two pop up right about now in every loop, or at least the ones that last long enough. Oddly enough you’ve never returned at the time you came in during, from your perspective, your last visit. Probably has something to do with the spell you two cast when you left.” She glares at us at her mention of the spell. “I believed you, you know. I wanted what you told me to be true so badly. After you left I wasted no time killing myself. I wasn’t afraid, in fact I welcomed it. Can you guess what happened after that?”

“Well that didn’t work,” I say. We both flinch as I say the phrase.

“Precisely. After that, I simply broke. I couldn’t believe you would do that to me. To yourself. I devoted myself entirely to hating you.”

I shudder. She’s not talking like somepony who doesn’t want to kill me.

“However,” she continues, “eventually, madness became as boring as everything else. I spent many a loop curled up in a trembling ball at the base of a ticking clock, counting downwards from 10,627 to zero. Then I simply chose to stop.”

“You just chose not to be crazy? Really?” asks Star Swirl.

“Twilight understands. When we set our mind to it, nothing is impossible,” she says lowering her face to my level. “Isn’t that right?”

As if I’m going to contradict her. I nod.

“Once my mind was clearer and I had some perspective on what I had done as the changeling queen, I realized just how pathetic I really became. I had no desire to go down that road again.”

“You did such horrible things, though,” says Star Swirl. “I understand how you were pushed that far, but it isn’t the kind of thing I can ever entirely forgive.”

“You cannot even conceive of how little your approval matters to me,” she counters. “I have not always been this forgiving, either. I have sat in this very spot many times and simply watched you plunge to your deaths, enjoying the sound your bodies made as they splattered in the ruins of Canterlot.”

“What happened to Canterlot?” I ask. It seems like a good time to change the subject.

“I came to realize what my biggest mistake had been for all those loops. I cared. I was so eager to sacrifice myself to save other ponies when it should have been the other way around. So I took the Elements and carried them off, leaving Canterlot to its fate.”

I stare at her. Even as a changeling queen, my double had felt some loyalty to the city, twisted and warped as it had been. “You just abandoned everypony?”

“Temporarily. I needed more time with the Elements. Taking them away from the source of the destruction gave me more time to study and work with them. I could usually tease out a few weeks before they exploded, rather than just hours. I came to realize that once the other five bearers died, their Elements would be unaligned. I found a way to volunteer myself and as you can see, they accepted,” she says, fluffing her wings for emphasis. “You wouldn’t believe how many times I got myself killed figuring out how to use these things.”

“But our friends! They have to die for you to become immortal?”

“Not immortal. The oldest I’ve been able to reach is about one hundred and fifty, but they’re long and happy years. I’ve spent lifetimes adventuring, studying, making new friends, raising families, anything I want to do. It really isn’t that bad. And then when I die, whether it’s by being crushed by some trap in an ancient temple or in a bed surrounded by my foals and grandfoals, I just start over again.”

“You acted like you were pretty happy about your life the last time we met too,” says Star Swirl. “We all remember how that turned out.”

“I’m not claiming to be happy, only content. I’m certainly not doing anything like what I was doing to poor Luna in that loop,” she says. She begins to walk away and waves with one of her wings for us to follow along. “After all, that really wasn’t very interesting.”

“It was also wrong,” I point out as we trot beside her. She comes to a full stop underneath a rocky overhang, covering the three of us in shadow.

“Oh, please. Right and wrong? You sound like Celestia, and just like her you’re too young to have figured out that there is no such thing. There are things that amuse me, and things that bore me. That’s the only meaningful distinction. Keeping Luna locked up and her mind addled wasn’t a stimulating use of her. Now, getting her to revert into Nightmare Moon? That was fun.”

“Why would she ever-”

“I knew the right buttons to press, it was easy. Especially in loops where Celestia didn’t survive. Once she falls again, though, wow,” says Princess Sparkle. “Matching wits against her in a decades-long chess match set against the backdrop of a slowly dying world? Absolutely exquisite. We probably spent fifty-five percent of our time in bed together, and fifty-five percent trying to kill each other.”

“That adds to a hundred and ten percent,” says Star Swirl.

Princess Sparkle grins. “We’re both excellent multitaskers.”

“What about all the ponies who suffered because she wiped out the sun?”

“What about them? They’re fine now. They don’t even remember. Sure, the Elements weren’t happy about it, but as long as I’m bound up with them and alive they can’t wipe everything out the way they want to. Which I suppose brings us to the point of your visit. Finding a way for you to defeat them.” Something in a hidden cache below the overhang begins to glow with her magic, and she pulls out a scroll. She drops it into her hoof and offers it to us. “There you go. Took me three days to come up with the idea, and eleven centuries to dumb it down enough that one of you would be able to use it.”

I unravel the scroll, ignoring her little insult, and try to read the spell that’s printed there. I can wrap my head around the casting process easily enough, but everything after that is so far beyond my understanding of magic I doubt I’ll ever comprehend it. I pass it over to Star Swirl, and from the way he stares down at it I can tell he’s just as lost. “What does it do?”

“The Regalia are powerful,” begins Princess Sparkle, “even having your five friends shatter theirs would only have been a temporary solution, though I didn’t know that at the time. In fact, the only thing I’m confident would have the power to destroy them are the Elements of Harmony themselves.”

“So you came up with a spell that’s just the equivalent walking up to them and asking them to commit suicide. Great. That’s sure to work,” grumbles Star Swirl.

“The Regalia and the Elements are not the same thing,” says Princess Sparkle, cross, and leans in over Star Swirl until he’s forced to take a step back. “Perhaps if you’d let me finish?”

Star Swirl opens his mouth, but proves that he’s learned something in the last twenty years by closing it again.

“Thank you,” continues Princess Sparkle. "The Regalia are merely a vessel for the Elements, and vessels can be broken. When you cast this, it will redirect the energies they channel back at them as long as you are in their presence when they are used by another. Don’t worry about understanding how to control it, everything will make sense once you cast the spell. Plus there will be copious amounts of energy left to turn against your allies.”

“My allies? Why would I want to turn the Regalia against my friends?” I ask.

“Not your friends, your allies,” Princess Sparkle emphasizes. “If you simply reappear in your timeline again and go after the Elements directly, they will predict your actions and they will stop you. Fatally. No, you’ll need powerful beings from other timelines to assist you. Timelines that the Elements have abandoned, and thus cannot predict. Remember that each time the Regalia was used successfully in the past created a timeline where it failed, which the Elements would consequently destroy. I’m sure if you think, you can come up with at least two excellent candidates.”

I stare at her blankly.

She sighs. “Nightmare Moon and Discord. Uncorrupted by the Regalia’s influence. I cannot believe I have to spell it out for you.”

“But Discord is reformed back in my time,” I point out, “Why would I want the evil version?”

“You mean after he was marinated in the Regalia’s energies for a while, he came out differently. Just like Luna did. Of course they can’t help you. In fact they’ll both attempt to fight you off, and believe it to be their idea the entire time. Once you’ve dispatched the Regalia, the remaining energies provided by the Elements should be more than enough to banish them from your world once again.”

“Why would they help us if I’m just going to banish them afterwards?”

Princess Sparkle rubs the base of her horn with a hoof, the same thing I do when I’m getting a headache. “Lie to them. You’re good at that.”

I ponder that for a bit. Would the ends justify the means? These are some awful ponies we’re talking about, and it would be in service of a greater good. Still, service of a greater good is what’s making the Regalia a threat in the first place.

“At any rate, what you decide to do with this is up to you,” says Princess Sparkle, “I can only provide the option to you.”

“Why are you bothering to, anyway?” I ask. “Are you hoping we’ll help you out of the loop in return?”

“I will never escape this loop, Twilight. I’ve come to accept that. However, not all is lost. The disjunction that the time loop spell created, the one you stopped in your universe? It continues to consume this one. Though it may not be for billions of years, subjectively, eventually the damage will become bad enough that it reaches this era. And I will stop, forever. To be honest, I look forward to it. However, that also means that every loop I create is eventually condemned to destruction, by either flame or freezing. Yours, however, may yet be saved.” She smiles. “I have no future, not really, but perhaps you might. So I cast a light into the darkness, and send you back with slight variations of this spell every single loop in the hopes that I might somehow still make a difference.”

To think that I was terrified to come here. This is more than I could have ever expected from her. I can’t help it; I rush in and give her a hug.

“Can I ask a question? A personal one?”

“Of course you may.”

“Umm, well I’m dating this mare...”

“Azalea,” she confirms. I gape at her. “Again, not the first time I’ve had this conversation.”

“Oh, right. I was just wondering... does it work out for us?”

She looks down at me for some time. “I do not know. I haven’t ever met her.”

That’s confusing. All these loops and she’s never bother to go meet her? “Why not?”

“Because she’s dead.”

“How is that more than an inconvenience for you? Just spend a loop saving her.”

“You misunderstand. She died months before the invasion even began.”

I scoff. “Okay, we’re obviously talking about different Azaleas.”

“Flower vendor? Born and raised in Trottingham? Went to university and majored in floriculture with a minor in economics?” I can’t think of any way to answer, so Princess Sparkle goes on. “There was a runaway cart in the Trottingham market. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m sorry.”

“But I met her after the invasion was over! Months later!”

“Did you?” she asks. “Had you ever noticed her before you began to date her?”

“Well, no, but why would I?”

“Precisely,” says Princess Sparkle as if that should explain everything. “Let me pose a question to you. What identity would be better for a spy than a deceased mare, one with a paper trail, from a foreign city? A mare who could hang around Ponyville watching from the background, never drawing attention to herself, and report back what she learned? Another question; how do you think Queen Chrysalis found out exactly which train our friends were on in the first place?”

I see what she’s saying, but I refuse to believe it. “No. Azalea’s a pony. Just like me.”

“Well, she is now,” concedes Princess Sparkle. “The Elements of Harmony did quite a number on the changelings in your timeline, didn’t they? I’m sorry you have to find out this way.”

I stumble backwards. “You’re wrong,” I say as my voice wavers. “You have to be wrong.”

“I hunted down the changeling in question myself. I am not. Ask her yourself if you don’t believe me.”

I make up my mind to do exactly that. “Star Swirl,” I say as I turn to my companion, “I need to go home to my time for a bit.”

“That’s a horrible idea. The second we pop up the Elements will begin arranging things to kill both of us,” he says.

“I don’t care. I’m going. You can come with me, or stay here and rot.”

It’s his turn to sigh. “Fine.”

“Princess Sparkle, I... I...”

She holds up a hoof to cut me off. “No words are necessary, Twilight. Return to your time. Cast the spell. That’s all the satisfaction I need. Good luck.”

I find the determination to channel the magic I’ll need to return to my time more easily than I expected to. Rage is a pretty useful motivator that way. Right before Star Swirl and I vanish, I catch the last snippet of what Princess Sparkle says.

“Thank you.”

------------------------------

Star Swirl and I reappear back in our timeline, the same evening I left from originally. I’m almost immediately soaked by the pouring rain. I’d forgotten about the storm that was scheduled for tonight. “Remember that we can’t stay long,” says Star Swirl, raising his voice to be heard over the weather. “The Elements will figure out that I’m back, and that we’re working together. I don’t want to be around when they do.”

I nod to him, but my mind is elsewhere. There are hundreds of spells that could block out the rain, but I cast none of them. It feels right to let it pound against my back, seeping everywhere and leaving me shivering in the middle of the street. An appropriate penance for how stupid I’ve been this entire time.

I march through the streets until we reach Azalea’s front door, and start pummeling at it. It’s a good thing she’s home; in my present state of mind I could have ripped it out of its frame to get at what I want. Instead Azalea opens it, surprised to see me standing there like some grim parody of the night I invited her out for a stroll on the surface of a pond. Did everything I could think of to convince her she wasn’t just any average pony, when all that time she already knew she was anything but. Just not for the reasons I thought.

“Twilight? What are you doing out in the rain? You’ll catch a cold. Come inside,” she says and tries to wave me inside.

I stay right where I’m standing under the downpour. “You haven’t always been what?”

Azalea freezes up, which is all the confirmation I need that everything Princess Sparkle told me is completely true. “Please, Twilight, I was going to-”

“You haven’t. Always. Been. What?” I ask again.

“...a pony.”

My world collapses around me. I trusted her. I loved her. “So you’ve been lying to me this entire time. About everything,” I say, my tone a deathly calm that belies how furious I actually am.

“No, I never lied to you,” she tries to claim.

The appropriate thing to do would be to laugh in her face at such a ridiculous statement, but I find I just can’t summon the mirth. “Oh, that’s rich.”

“Nothing I told you wasn’t true,” Azalea tries to rationalize to me. “I swear Twilight, I just... I left a few things out.”

“A few things? A few things? Like the fact that you’re a bucking changeling? Little things like that?” I shout at her.

“YES!” she screams back into my face. “I was going to tell you the other day before Rainbow Dash interrupted and said that you needed to go beat up a pack of them, but for some reason I didn’t think that was the time to mention it! Everything I feel for you... that’s all real. Every bit of it. I’m Azalea, Twilight. Maybe I wasn’t born as her but I remember everything she lived through. I didn’t tell anypony what I was because I was horrified at what they might do to me if they found out.”

“So your plan was what, exactly?”

“I don’t have a plan,” she says, her tears starting to mix with the raindrops. “I didn’t plan to live in Ponyville after the invasion. I didn’t plan to fall for you like I did, it just happened. I’m making my life up a day at a time just like everypony else.”

I look at her, really look, and try to wrap my head around the deception she’s perpetrated against me. Was it maybe justified? “What about your parents?”

“They don’t know. They buried their daughter nearly a year ago now, and they hate changelings. They just... I wanted to let them move on.”

“You don’t miss them?”

She stares at me, incredulous, for a long moment. “I miss them every single day,” she says quietly. “Twilight, you’re right. I was a changeling. Queen Chrysalis sent me to Ponyville to monitor you and your friends. I watched you from the background, learned about you and what you liked. It wasn’t personal, it was just the mission.”

“So you were stalking me.”

“More or less,” Azalea confirms. “Then after the invasion the Elements changed me into, well, into me. I had this whole new perspective on all my memories of you, a new understanding of what you were like. That’s how my crush on you started.”

“That’s really messed up, Azalea.”

“You think I don’t know that? It’s why I never approached you myself,” she says. “I thought if I stayed away from you, it would go away. Then Applejack asked me if I wanted to go on a blind date and you know the rest. I was just this dull, uninteresting little pegasus. Nothing special. That’s why I picked this identity in the first place. I’d be so plain and boring nopony would ever look at me twice, especially not you. And then you did.” Azalea falls to her knees in the doorway, and I come in from the rain.

I reach for her despite myself, but my hoof stops inches from her side. “Somepony told me once that every changeling had orders to kill me.” Azalea curls up a little tighter and buries her face under her hooves. “Did you?”

“It never came up. I didn’t ever get the opportunity to do that without blowing my cover.”

“And if you had?”

She doesn’t answer. That tells me all I need to know but I want to hear it from her. “Azalea...”

“Yes, okay? I would have killed you. Are you happy now?”

Not in the least. “What was all that at the hospital then? Why did you pretend to be so shocked by what I went through?”

“Pretend? I wasn’t pretending at all. I know exactly what changeling queens are capable of, and the fact that you chose to become that...” she shudders. “The idea of it still creeps me out.”

“You should have known what the changeling venom would do to me, though. You shouldn’t have asked me what you did,” I insist. I realize that this isn’t exactly of the same magnitude as my original accusation, but I won’t be satisfied if I can’t pin at least something on her.

“I didn’t know that you’d been injected with changeling venom.”

“The nurses didn’t tell you before they let you into my room?”

Azalea lets out a bitter chuckle. “Nopony let me into your room. I snuck in. I told you I can be sneaky when I want to be. I’ve had a lifetime of practice, after all, and I decided that I wanted to see you despite the hospital’s decision to keep you quarantined,” she says. “My mistake.”

"Hardly the only one." I close my eyes and take several deep breaths. A hoof touches my back, and I see Star Swirl standing there looking at me with expectant pity. He doesn't say anything, though. I lie down next to Azalea and stroke her back and wings. She uncovers her face to look over at me.

"You... You aren't mad?" she asks.

"Oh, don't misunderstand, I'm livid. You did lie to me, Azalea, even if it was just through omission. But I'm willing to talk it out with you before I decide whether I'm going to forgive you," I say.

"Why?" she asks, genuinely confused. "You can't tell me that you ever would have started going out with me if I'd been upfront about this from the start."

"No, probably not," I agree. "And that would have been the biggest mistake I ever made. Wait, has Kicky known about this changeling thing the entire time?"

"Of course. I was dating Cloud Kicker, so it made sense for her to take a form that could be seen with me without raising suspicion. She respected my decision not to tell other ponies what I used to be, though. I wish I had a pony like Cloudy to stick up for me like she does."

"Maybe you still can. Listen to me, Azalea. if we stay together, and that's very much an if at this point, no more lies. You have to come clean to the town and my friends."

"But what if they hate me for what I was?"

"Then they'll answer to me. The longer you wait the harder it's going to be, and-"

I'm interrupted when Star Swirl's amulet flashes. He looks down at it, then back up again, and sighs. "I'm going to be hit by lightning and killed in five minutes. We need to leave."

"What, inside? The odds of that are-"

"Infinitesimal, yes," he says, cutting Azalea off. "Dealing with an enemy that manipulates fate and probability is annoying that way."

"I'm sorry. It sounds like that must have hurt," I say.

"Well, the alternative was continuing to stand here and listen to you two talking about your relationship. So comparatively it wasn't so bad," he says.

I roll my eyes and turn to Azalea. "I have to go, but I swear to you that I will come back and we will finish this. Would you do me a favor? Ask the girls to meet me in Canterlot this weekend at the palace. Something big is going to happen and I need their help."

"Of course, Twilight. We'll be there."

"No, they will be there. I don't want to drag you into this any more than I already have," I say. She frowns at that, but doesn't object. Before I go, I pull her face up to mine and kiss her. I break it when I hear Star Swirl tapping his hoof impatiently behind me. "Alright, alright, back to base."

Star Swirl doesn't waste a second. His horn glows and in an instant we've disappeared from where we were standing inside the threshold of Azalea's home.

Rather than back in the cave in Fenrir’s timeline, we reappear in a beautiful corridor. I recognize it as Canterlot Castle, but it isn’t decorated the way I remember it. “Where are we?” I ask.

“Canterlot Castle,” says Star Swirl, confirming my suspicions. “A better question would be when are we. Welcome to the past.”