Epilogue
Happiness is short and fleeting, but sorrow is eternal. We must all cling to what little joys we can find, lest we drown in the sea of our own grief, our own tears. Never forget those you have lost, but do not let loss consume you, lest you be too absorbed in your own sadness to see the occasional bliss that makes life worth living.
Twilight laid silently in the cool grass, staring up at her immortalized lover. The marble sculpture captured Rainbow Dash's essence perfectly. From the proud, cocky smile across her face to the wind-swept mane and wide-spread wings. She cared little for the dark trails running down her cheeks as she read over the golden plaque again and again.
A gentle, feathered wing slid over her back.
“Hey, Dashie,” she greeted without turning away. “It's a nice day out; we should go flying.” Her tears dried, slowly, leaving only her matted cheeks as evidence they were ever there at all.
“Twilight...”
The alicorn jolted at the voice that most certainly did not belong to Rainbow Dash. She snapped her head around, eyes widening. “P-Princess!”
Celestia sighed quietly, shifting herself further into the grass. “Just Celestia, Twilight. Please.”
Twilight smiled, relaxing into the comforting wing of her former mentor. “Right, sorry; old habbits die hard, I guess.”
She could see the pain flash in the older alicorns eye as she said; “Some harder than other, it seems.”
“Celestia? Are you alright?” Twilight asked, tentatively. She craned her neck, struggling to get a better read on Celestia's face. The princess, however, seemed unable or unwilling to meet her gaze, and Rainbow Dash's words came back to her; If you're really this worried, just talk to Celestia tomorrow.
Taking a breath, Twilight steeled her resolve. “You've been acting... odd around me, these past couple months. What's wrong?”
Celestia visibly shuddered. “It's... it's nothing, Twilight; don't worry about it.”
“I've known you long enough to spot where you're lying,” Twilight said pointedly, narrowing her eyes slightly. “What's wrong?” She repeated, more forcefully this time.
For a time there was a hesitant silence floating in the air, the most notable noise being the pair's own breathing. Eventually, Celestia sighed, the weight of centuries carried on her breath.
“Do you know where we are, Twilight?”
Twilight quirked her head to the side. “The castle's Statue Gardens?”
Celestia nodded before asking again; “And specifically, where are we?”
“Oh..” Twilight trailed off, looking to the statue in front of them but deliberately avoiding the plaque. “We're... we're at Rainbow's statue.”
“More than just her statue,” Celestia corrected solemnly. “Twilight... this is her grave.”
A quiet breeze blew through the gardens, hindered only slightly by the tall, bordering hedges. Twilight felt the tears coming again, felt them beading in the corner of her eyes. “I-.... I know...” Her voice was shaky and uneven, like a foal's first steps.
“And yet, day after day, you walk through the halls talking as though she were standing right beside her.” Celestia finally turned to look the smaller mare in the eye. “The guards think you're delusional. That you couldn't handle the passing of your lover so soon after your friends.”
She was crying openly now, struggling not to simply break down and start sobbing. “M-maybe they're right...”
“I don't think so,” Celestia continued, looking over the ornate statue. “I think you know full well what happened, but you don't want to accept it. So you pretend, you shroud yourself in your memories and pretend it never happened.”
“So what!?” Twilight shouted, suddenly, staring resolutely at the dirt. “So what if I do!? They... they were my friends! My... my wife... and they're all gone! Why can't I pretend!?”
“Twilight-”
Twilight growled as she stood, forcing Celestia's wing from her back. “Don't you know what it's like? To see everypony you care about, everypony you love die right before your eyes, helpless to stop it? Rainbow's the only thing stopping me from going mad with grief, and you'd have me, what, just forget about her!?”
“Of course not,” Celestia protested in a quiet voice, the kind that commanded attention. “But you can't live like this.”
“Why can't I!? I loved- love, her. Why can't I just pretend, why can't I just be happy!?”
“It's not healthy, Twilight; you have to know that. Death is something everypony must deal with, at some point,” Celestia said, as soothingly as she could manage. “You have to deal with it and, one day, move on from it. Death cannot define you.”
Twilight's hooves shook beneath her. “Nopony has to deal with death like I do – like we do. Immortality is nothing but a curse. Rainbow Dash keeps me sane, keeps the pain away. I just-” she broke off into strangled sobbing, her tears raining down on the grass that had often welcomed her sorrow.
“I just want the pain to go away.”
“Twilight please-”
“No!” Twilight snapped, glaring through her crying eyes. “I'm not giving up; I'm not letting her go.”
A deep frown creased Celestia's lips, the corners of her mouth weighed down with an empathy few others could offer. “I'm sorry, Twilight. I'm so very sorry, but you have to let her go.”
“No, I don't. I never will.”
Celestia felt a single tear rolling down her cheek, her options growing more and more limited by the second. Until only one remained “I'm... I'm sorry it has to be this way, Twilight.” She lit her horn. “But I can't stand to see you like this, and neither can Equestria.”
Twilight's head snapped up. “Wh-what are you-” Then she felt it. That familiar, aged and practised magic.
In her mind.
“No! No you can't! Please no!” Twilight's own horn sputtered to life, but in her emotionally distraught state she could produce little more than a few harmless sparks.
Celestia's cheeks grew wet as she closed her eyes to focus. “I'm so sorry, this is for your own good.”
Twilight shook her head, as through trying to shake off the magic in her mind. “You can't take her from me! No! Please no you can't!”
With a strangled sob, Celestia's horn flashed once, and then went dark. Twilight's hooves flew to the sides of her head and she screamed into the grass before slumping to the ground in silence.
Doing her best to regain composure, Celestia only barely managed to stop her tears as Twilight woke up with a groan.
“Ugh... my head... Celestia? What happened?”
“You fell asleep,” the alicorn answered calmly. “It is rather peaceful out here.”
Twilight blinked, mildly confused, before turning to the statue in front of her. She could feel the sadness welling up in her chest, but she didn't cry. Her eyes trailed down to the plaque, and she tilted her head curiously.
Here lies Rainbow Dash, Wonderbolt.
The Loyalist of friends
and most faithful of lovers
“That's odd, I don't remember Rainbow ever marrying...”
Celestia bit her tongue. Hard. “It's just something nice to put on the tombstone.”
Twilight chuckled weakly. “Like they would run out of things to say about her. She certainly never did.”
Laughing quietly, Celestia nodded. “True. Now, it's about time we return to the castle, don't you think? I've allowed my work to pile up recently, and could use some help.”
“I'd love to be of assistance,” Twilight answered with a smile. More genuinely happy than Celestia had seen in months.
Stats
Page generated in 0.032 seconds
Total duration
672 users online
1,056,739 hits today, 2,054,621 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Ok, now you have to make an alternate ending where either the memory spell doesn't work, or she regains her memory. It must happen. I command it. That fucking bitch doesn't get to mind fuck someone and get away with it.
7235108 I definitely, absolutely and vociferously agree.
Yes, Twilight was lost to her grief, but she has the right to be. Rainbow was her wife, and Celestia had absolutely NO right to wipe her mind like that.
That's why I hate her in stories like this.
It's also why I will never, even if I knuckle under, follow canon (fat chance; I don't like Twi AS an alicorn, even though I've pretty much accepted this nonsense at this point) and make Twi an alicorn in my fics (don't hold your collective breaths in that one, though), make her immortal.
Never!!!
But anyway, putting this story back on "Tracking".
Just in case.
7235108 Agreed. Ever heard of grief counseling, Celestia? It tends to work, and it's a heap more ethical than the invasion and rape of somebody's mind.
Just a thought.
7235138 And it's a good thought.
She's just so used to doing what she wants to (and damn the consequences!), when she wants to do it, that she just ignores everything, and everyone, else.
Makes me wonder how Luna would react to what she did to Twilight.
7235108
7235129
7235138 Okay so..... everyone's ignoring that Twilight LITERALLY was going to be driven insane by this right? That eventually we would've had another Nightmare Moon on a more COLOSSAL scale since she more then likely would've tried Necromancy to raise the dead..... this was the only way that Twilight would've moved on. Oh and as of counseling? She would've said what the counselor would've wanted to hear. Twilight is smart like that. Say what you will but Twilight would NOT have moved on with her life. At all.
7235173 I'm not ignoring anything. Grief counseling is meant to deal with such problems. The idea would be helping Twilight cope with the loss of her wife through coming to terms with her situation.
Not, you know, forcibly violating her mind and erasing her memories.
You can claim Twilight would just have lied to a counselor, but such people aren't idiots, and honestly we have literally no way of knowing. That's a poor attempt to justify mind rape.
Which can never be justified anyway.
7235150 Not kindly, I should think. I could see maybe Discord telling her, or re-inserting Twilight's memories.
7235184 Oh sure. Then lets leave the self destructing lavender Alicorn with enough power to kill a power sucking minotaur roaming around who's smart enough to not only cover her tracks but also vanish like a ghost. She would ignore what the counselor is saying because then that would be tampering with her memories of Rainbow Dash. They TRIED being reasonable at first but she didn't care. She wanted to go insane because 'I love Rainbow' and was completely selfish.
Ugh. Ew. No.
Firstly, I thought we were done with these stupid "Twilight outlives her friends" fics.
Second, seriously, that ending? Celestia literally erases her best memories of RD from Twilight's mind? That is in no way the right thing to do. Have you never heard of therapy?
Sheesh.
7235173 No, I'm not, and its' the principle of the thing here. What Sunbutt did was mind rape, pure and simple.
She can shed all the tears that she wants to, but the fact remains that she knowingly violated the mind and memories of the pony that she supposedly loves and cares for.
Sorry, that's just the way I feel, so this is one thing that you and I (and some others, apparently) are just going to have to agree to disagree on.
7235184 Yeah, I agree,
And I didn't think of Discord (who'd probably be just as cheesed off at her as Luna would be), but that could be.
7235189 Evidently not, despite what the show's producers (who would know this sort of thing more than we would, I would think) have said.
And I totally agree with you on the ending.
7235187 And if you're talking about Tirek, he was a centaur, not a minotaur.
7235206 Okay. Apparently people want a Zombie Apocalypse lead by a Lich Twilight. That's cool. Totally ignoring that this was because Twilight was incapable of moving on but okay.
7235208 Either way. Same rules apply.
7235211 As I said, agree to disagree.
I'm not getting into a fight with you over our varying opinions on this point, Vamp. I like you too much for that.
7235215 Sorry. I'm kind of a purist.
Considering the time between Rainbow's death and when Celestia 'fixed' the problem, it really comes across as Celestia being unable to see Twilight suffering decides to erase Twilight's memories because she (Celestia) is feeling bad.
Three months of depression is nothing, especially when you factor in it's someone's wife/husband.
Um, what?
7235442
What?
Obviously, Twilight is talking about the time when Angel Bunny found out he was going to die, and took out half the population of Ponyville in a fit of rage over his own mortality.
7235251 Absolutely agree with you on this.
7235539 *snrk*
7235211 Indeed.
7235187 Your argument is based entirely on supposition, but you are entitled to your views.
7235129
Well I agree with many things I disagree with the Twilight as an Alicorn thing. There is nothing in canon that suggests that Twilight or Cadance are immortal.
7237329 Okay, cool.
And my point exactly.
I think that the only true immortals in this case would be Celestia and Luna, and then only because of theirconnestions to the sun and the moon respectively.
7237329
You disagree that Twilight is an alicorn?
7235206
Actually, given the way Twilight "sat down" RD to talk with her during Lesson Zero I do think therapists exist, they just haven't had a reason to appear on-screen.
7235187
The heck? Why would... So...she gets six months to deal with the death of the last of her Ponyville friends and her wife, as well as the burgeoning weight of her immortality coming down on her, and mind rape is the immediate answer? An no, don't even attempt therapy because she might fake being better. Don't try having her make new friends, and when she doesn't get better after zero effort has gone into helping her, the obvious solution is to wipe away her most treasured memories.
Yeah, this makes sense.
7239271
7236169
7235206 I get it everyone. I'm wrong. I understood that after Tater's reply to me. But yes keep hammering it home that I was wrong. That always makes it better.
Kodeake's writings sure seem to generate a fair bit of debate amongst viewers. Obviously one could take that as a compliment or...well you know, whatever the opposite of a compliment is... But I for one would be rather pleased with myself if I could generate debate like this among my fans and viewers based solely on my own personal idea. Just as long as its friendly debate and competition, not all-round, mean BM...
In regards to this chapter though, instead of making this chapter a conclusion to the story, would it feel better as an Alternate Ending? In the previous chapter, it was left with Celestia telling Luna that she will talk to Twilight 'Tomorrow'. Who knows how many 'Tomorrows' have already passed. So Celestia is procrastinating and trying to avoid the truth that Twilight truly needs help, that or she doesn't want to hurt her like she had to do here. In the previous chapter, it leaves the viewer wondering what really happened to Twilight, which emphasizes the whole sad idea. I feel like that would actually be a better ending than having a straight up conclusion like this - having the viewer wonder what actually happened to Twilight. Then again, I just personally really liked the ending in the first chapter but hey...
7239271 Hmmm, good point.
7239280 Vamp, you're entitled to your opinion on this, but please, just remember that we are, too.
And that's the last that I'M gonna say on it.
7239271 Agreed. The whole thing was poorly considered.
7239280 Nobody is trying to "hammer home" anything. I merely said your argument was based on a single, impossible to prove assertion, that Twilight would lie to a therapist. I also wished to convey that even if she did, it would not justify mind rape.
It is not wise or healthy to take everything as a personal insult.
7240246 It was less towards you and more towards the other guy who saw that I already just gave up but clearly still felt the need to say 'hey you fucked up'.
7240259 If you mean conantheimp, he was presenting an argument, not insulting you.
In any case, it's an internet debate. Taking it personally is ill-advised.
7239271
no I disagree with what the individual said about Twilight being an Alicorn.
7254087
Sorry, I was just poking fun at your misphrasing.
7240290
Not to mention taking this chapter (or this fic, for that matter) too seriously at all is a mistake. Even when compared to fanfiction in general.
7235189
I thought we were too. I got all my immortal Twilight... feelings out with a fic I did a loooooooong time ago. Much before this one. Ah well, can't blame a guy for havin' a bit of fun.
7235539
EXACTLY! At least someone is picking up on the subtext here.
7259975 It certainly did not come across as lighthearted or comical, but if you say so.
7260577
I never said it was light-hearted. I said it shouldn't be taken seriously. As I said in the A/N, it was just written as a bit of fun because I wanted to play with the idea a bit.
7259975
Changed my downvote into an upvote for that response. Good responses to criticism – especially more subjective criticisms like mine – are a rare thing among authors on this site.
I still don't like the story, but I like you. Gonna check out your other stuff!
7268785
Please stick to the more recent stuff: Anything older than two years was written when I was doing the whole edgy thing...
Also it took me a long ass time to learn how to take criticism. I find it's a skill I find very lacking on this site, unfortunately..
Finally crossed this off my "Need to Finish" list, and damn that ending.
Celestia is seriously really cold to do something like that.
Damn. That was.. damn.
That ending really hit hard. Wiping someone's memories of their spouse? I understand why she did it, but that's fucked up.
Overall though, a fantastic story.
What Celestia did here was messed up and heartless...I'm sorry but thats how I see it. She could have at least offered Twilight a form of counseling or therapy but NO, she had to erase the memory of the one she loved.
I like What If scenarios, hence my name, and right now I'm thinking of a fic where Dash comes back from the grave as a ghost or whatnot and shows Celestia what for.
7869191 Celestia felt a single tear rolling down her cheek, her options growing more and more limited by the second. Until only one remained “I'm... I'm sorry it has to be this way, Twilight.” She lit her horn. “But I can't stand to see you like this, and neither can Equestria.”
Celestia, please refer to a fic titled In Her Sanctuary (good story by the way) and see how much better it seemed to end for YOU when it was Luna and Cadance, the ones who try to be understanding and therapeutic insteaf of resorting immediately to memory-erasing magic and orders to just suck it up and let her go.
You can tell I like a fic if it makes me this emotional. You did a good job, here. It's just that mind magic like that is cruel and heartless in my eyes. Everyone has the right to their memories, and taking them and way like that is only going to cause scenarios where they'll feel like they do have any rights at all, inside or out.
And yet again we hate Celestia
You can has review!
That ending.... That's it. I'm done. I'm time traveling to prevent Celestia from erasing the happiest days of Twilight's life. Hooves, we have a job to do.
Why does it felt like this story stroke my heart.I’ve read this for like....I dunno several times? I guess.....good job
I come back to this story ever now and again.
To remember.
Dick move Celesticles, 4 stars.