Grief Comes In Five Stages

The Most She Did, The Least We Can Do

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“I’m so excited! Are you excited? I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited. Well, except for that time I went, ‘Hua,’ but I mean really. Who can top that? But I’m also really nervous. I don’t know what to expect. I mean I hope it’s a super-duper-iffic surprise waiting, because that would be super-duper-iffic!”

“For the last time, Pinkie, that’s not a real word,” groaned Applejack and Rarity at the same time. Upon realizing their simultaneous comment, they briefly looked at each other in surprise. Then, they couldn’t help but give their respective chuckles.

“I can’t look, but I have to,” Fluttershy said at her usual whisper volume.

“I can’t believe you guys managed to find all six of them,” Spike said, rather impressed with the group.

“It’s true,” affirmed Twilight Sparkle, “The past few months have put us through trials and tribulations, and now it’s paid off.”

Opening her saddlebag, she levitated some small objects out. Each of them floated to one of the ponies in the room. Said ponies each took a hold of their object via the methods that they were accustomed to grabbing objects.

“We finally have all six keys to the Tree of Harmony’s treasure box,” the youngest princess announced.

“Aw, yeah. We’re awesome!” hooped Rainbow Dash before clapping her wing against Fluttershy’s.

Indeed, the labor they had put forth was about to bear fruit. Each of them had faced an adventure that put their understanding of friendship to the test. Each of the successfully passed tests had revealed a key. Now, after all this time, the mystery of the Tree’s parting gift was about to be unveiled.

“What are we waiting for?” piped up Pinkie Pie, “Let’s open this present!”

“All right.” Twilight tapped her hoof. “The order we received these keys may be important. Let’s try putting them in the correctly fitting locks in the same order.”

Each of the others nodded in agreement. Applejack trotted forward first and set her key in place using her teeth. Fluttershy gently nudged her key into the second slot. Pinkie hopped in next and mouthed her key in. Rarity took care to align her key exactly with the shape of the keyhole before levitating it in. Rainbow fluttered down and jammed her key into place.

Spike’s eyes widened. He probably could have sliced the thick anticipation with one of his claws. Pinkie had summed it up quite nicely earlier. It really was an exciting moment. The sixth and final key floated in a magenta aura as it moved closer to the box. Every pony and dragon in the room was so anxious that they could have sworn that the key was slowing down.

Hold on. The key actually was slowing down. The second hand on a nearby clock was still moving at a steady rate. The key stopped moving just as it was within a millimeter of the last slot.

“Uh, what’s the holdup?” wondered Rainbow aloud.

The magenta aura surrounding the key vanished. Without the magic, it fell into gravity’s clutches. Metal clanged against the table before clanging again on the floor.

“Twi?” Applejack looked over to her friend.

The friend in question was acting really weird. She had a hoof held to her chest area and her pupils looked like pinpricks in the white sea of her eyes.

“I… can’t… breathe,” she whispered.

*WHUMP*

“Twilight!” exclaimed the whole group.

But the pony couldn’t answer from her collapsed state. Her usual shade of lavender had turned very pale. Her irises rolled back into her head before her eyelids shut.

---Nee-Eu-Nee-Eu-Nee-Eu---

“Twenty-five. Twenty-six. Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty.” The doctor pressed against her chest once more. “Come on. Stay with me!”

He grabbed the defibrillator for the second time in two minutes.

“Clear!”

An electrical pulse jolted through the patient. However, the long and angry bleep from the heart monitor refused to be silenced.

“Spit,” he whispered before resuming CPR, “One. Two. Three. Four. Five.”

He wasn’t the only one facing negative emotions while he worked. Six other faces wore varying degrees of worry. Without being allowed inside the room longer than for Twilight to be taken into emergency care, they were forced to wait outside.

“Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness,” Fluttershy repeated to herself over and over.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” rambled Rainbow Dash.

“This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening!” Applejack told herself.

“I don’t understand. What’s going on? Why is this happening? What are we going to do?” asked Pinkie Pie with verbally light speed.

Rarity prepared to faint, but a teary-eyed Spike caught her long before she reached the floor.

“No!” insisted Spike strongly, “The last thing we need is for you to have a heart attack!”

She immediately looked ashamed and couldn’t hold eye contact with him. Instead she opted to slowly turn toward the closed E.R. doors. Even from here, she could hear the monster’s horrifying screech.

*BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE*

---A Disturbance---

“No,” she muttered, “That’s impossible.” For the first time in over three millennia, a fine-glassed teapot shattered at her hooves.

“Sister, what-?” Luna started asking before a look of dread and realization crossed her face.

A bright burning light in the air was just snuffed out. The very air around them felt heavy. It compelled them both to sit on their haunches.

---Requiescat in Pace---

A loud, deep ringing echoed across Ponyville. A second ringing of the same pitch followed. A third rang. Finally, the only sound that could be heard was that of cold, stinging rain. Lightning flashed through some of the clouds, but it didn’t make any noise as it consisted of dud bolts.

Several ponies stood around a single area. Each was adorned with a black article of clothing. They dared not show their colors lest they give the impression that this was a celebration. No, this was a time of quiet, peaceful tranquility. Even the loose pins refused to drop on this day.

The ones granted closest proximity to the grave were her closest friends, family, slightly extended family, and of course, her first mentor. Others had lost a princess. The closest ones, however, had lost their sister, their child, their friend, their daughter, their little pony, or something even more. All of these held tears in their eyes. Some even looked like they had flowing rivers. The loudest cry was from Spike on his claws and feet.

His cry sounded like a dragon’s roar.

Contrary to the norm, only a few ponies ran around in blind panic. The runners were way in the back rows.

---Still Here---

He heard the hoof steps clamber around. He tried to position his pillow so he could get back to sleep. But his efforts to ignore his hatcher and boss were in vain.

“All right, all right. I’m getting up,” Spike resigned.

His joints cracked in places as he went about his morning stretches. He gave a quick look over to Owlowiscious. The owl was actually perched to sleep for the day.

“Come on, lazy feathers. Wake up,” Spike said while poking him.

“Hoo,” hooted Owlowiscious.

“You, obviously,” Spike answered the nonexistent question. He then called out, “Twilight, what do you want for breakfast?”

Twilight answered that she would like some pancakes and orange juice.

“I’m on it!” he hollered back.

“Hoo,” the owl remarked.

“Me!” answered Spike, “Ugh, I don’t have time for this. I’ll deal with your questions later.” He then stepped lively downstairs.

…

After a few minutes of pouring batter and flipping, the pancakes were done. He served them on a plate and placed that on the table alongside the butter, syrup, cutlery, and glass of orange juice. It was of course in the neat order that he knew she preferred.

“Bon appétit!” he said with a smile. He turned around to go find his own breakfast. Searching through his usual stash area, he grabbed three quartz gems and took a crunchy chomp out of them.

Meanwhile, Twilight was busy talking about something that currently held her interest. Because of this, she barely took a bite of food and the extras went completely untouched by her magic. In a moment of a sparked idea, she galloped off to do whatever it was she was talking about.

“Wait, what about the rest of your pancakes?” called Spike.

Twilight half answered him by telling him to take care of the dishes.

“Sure thing,” he said with a sigh. He went about putting the leftovers away, giving a quick rub down of the sitting area, and drinking the juice himself.

“Hoo-hoo,” commented Owlowiscious flying in.

“Twilight,” answered Spike, “You know how she is. When she’s fixated on an experiment, she has to go find the results and put everything else to the side.”

“Hoo-hoo, hoo.”

Spike wasn’t crazy. That owl was crazy. How dare that birdbrain make up stories about Twilight not being there? That was ludicrous. Twilight was only absent when she was going on an adventure. She had just come back from an adventure. So logically, she was here in the library. She was home.

---Who Is To Blame?---

If it was possible, Rainbow Dash was double-timing her double-time during her weather work today. The clouds were getting poofed and swatted like there was no tomorrow. The cloud-clearing job that should have taken a full minute didn’t even last fifteen seconds. Normally, Dash would have been happier to have extra nap time before her scheduled Wonderbolt training. She was feeling anything but normal today.

“Urrgh! Why aren’t there anymore clouds?” she fumed, “Darn it, I need to go get more.”

A seven-colored trail was all that remained in that spot after she flew off. Then, in about five seconds, she came back hauling more clouds than were in the sky before she had started. She practically threw her hooves at each of the sky’s new, white obstacles. With each cloud that she demolished, she yelled out a word.

“Why! Did! You! Leave! Us? We’re! Supposed! To! Be! Friends! What! Kind! Of! Friend! Dies! When! They’re! Needed! The! Most?”

Somehow, these questions only made the work more aggravating. These clouds needed to get out of her way. It was their fault for causing such weird weather whenever Equestria was in danger of chaos or the Everfree.

“Wait, chaos? Oh!” Dash fumed, “This is all your fault, Dipcord! If you hadn’t planted those stupid seeds in the stupid ground, Twilight wouldn’t have had to go through any of that horseapple foal-spit to clean up your mess.

“And you know what? This is your fault too, Tree of Harmony if that is your real name. If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t have had to go on all of those crazy adventures exhausting Twilight and giving her the heart attack in the first place.”

Rainbow’s breaths were heavy. She was exhaling steam at this point. Eventually, though, she lowered her head and closed her eyes. Her wings carried her to the top of one remaining storm cloud.

“Oh, who am I kidding?” she griped, “This is all my fault. If I hadn’t been such an impatient jerk, she wouldn’t have had that heart attack. I was too stupid to notice anything out of the ordinary and my last words to her were ‘what’s the holdup’. Who says that to their dying friend, huh?”

Letting out one more frustrated cry, she stomped her hooves against the cloud. The resulting lightning bolt fried an area of a twenty-foot radius underneath the cloud patch. Luckily, no pony was foolish enough to be around at the time.

---

“How can you end the fun so soon?” asked Discord, “Did you know that death was the only power I couldn’t reverse and therefore took that path so you wouldn’t have to play? Why that’s the most cliché and boring path I’ve ever seen any pony take.”

Idly, he started munching torn pages of paper.

“You and your friends were supposed to act as my ‘foil’, my entertainment, my own personal toys for amusement. With an incomplete set, it’s like trying to set fire to gasoline, explosive but predictable. Without you, how am I going to get my kicks now?”

He belched up a few books that had the reformation spell in their last pages.

---Give And Take---

“How about some cupcakes?” offered Pinkie Pie. “No? How about… two corncakes? Three corncakes? Six corncakes? Twelve corncakes and ten licorice sticks?”

While she was mentioning these sweets, she was zipping back and forth between the window and downstairs. Each trip back up, she brought her most recent offer to the sugar divines hoping for some kind of answer.

“A razzleberry pie? No, wait. How about a M.M.M.?”

Though her stack of offered goods grew, the results were not reciprocating.

“You drive a hard bargain, but I know what’ll convince any pony.”

She zipped down and quickly back up with a stack of her latest addition to the stack.

“Lemon Surprise Muffins! Normally, I’d save these for one customer, but you’re really forcing my hoof here. So, will you let Twilight back? I’ll even throw in the party for free!”

Yet, the sugar divines were still unimpressed and not answering.

---What I’ve Done---

Normally, Celestia would be able to at least put on a façade of listening to the most boring of presentations about why the Royal funds should go toward one of the multitudes of ridiculous causes. Today, however, her neutral disinterest was a bit more obvious to every pony present except the one in the emu-feathered suit. It seemed like he really loved the sound of himself talking.

“… for you can plainly see the undoubtedly severely consequential effects if…”

Yet, her stare was blank as her mind was focused elsewhere.

You were growing so much. It wasn’t a mistake to nudge you toward making friends. That much I’m sure. Each of them was able to teach you something. In return, you were able to help them develop as well.

“… because the resulting aftermath will most certainly create a new, refreshing beginning…”

And you were able to finish that spell even faster than I expected. I thought for sure that this was a sign. The Elders had some pony that was ready when my time came. But…

“What is it? I’m in the middle of something big?”

“Well,” answered one of the other dressed up ponies, “It’s just…” She made a motion with her head in an effort to tell her superior to look. She was the first to see a droplet running down the back of Celestia’s cheek.

“Are you all right, Princess?” she wondered out loud.

I was told that I would have to leave in the next ten years. I could have waited a bit longer. Why did I push her so soon?

---

~You’ve come such a long, long way…~

---

When I let her know she was the one, whose choice was that? Hers? Mine? The Elders’? Some other outside force?

---

~I have watched you…~

---

The single droplet soon gained a companion. That companion gained another companion and one more after that.

I shouldn’t have pushed that on you like that. What right did I have to say…?

---

~It’s time to fulfill your destiny!~

---

“I’m sorry.” Celestia closed her eyes. She then immediately stood up. “Please excuse me.” Without waiting for an objection, she galloped out of the room.

The stallion that was speaking, along with the other ponies in the room just stood there with varying degrees of confusion.

---Mourning Never Lasts---

Three ponies continued their lives as usual. When I asked them how they could move on, they had the same, relative answer.

“The work isn’t going to go away,” pointed out Applejack.

“She wouldn’t have wanted us to wallow in permanent misery.” Rarity continued pushing a cloth through the sewing machine.

“There are other lives that still depend on us,” answered Fluttershy placing another bowl of food in front of her squirrel friends.

“Dying for us was the most she ever did. Living with memories of her is the least we can do.”

Author's Note:

This is why I shouldn't write when I'm angry.

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