Three Weeks Earlier
Princess Twilight Sparkle sat in her throne room, looking up at the magical memory trinkets that had been installed in the ceiling. The roots hadn't been cleaned well enough yet, so fresh clumps of dirt occasionally fell onto the Cutie Map. So many wonderful memories danced above her head. In the years to come, Twilight would look at them again and again, and each time they would remind her of the indelible past that she and her friends shared. It really was the perfect gift to make her castle into a home.
"What a charmed life I have... so perfect in every way," she whispered to herself. Twilight tried her best to smile, but it wouldn't come. The day her friends had surprised her with this beautiful gift had been the best day of her life, hooves down. How ironic that the same evening, this evening, could turn out to be so unspeakable. Twilight stood up and walked reluctantly out of the throne room. She had work to do.
Slowly, the alicorn glided down the long hallway to her bedroom. The magic of her transformation had changed many things about her, even the way she walked. Twilight Sparkle bore more than a passing resemblance to her former mentor, but appearances were superficial. Princess Celestia had grown comfortable living on a pedestal without any close friends other than her sister and advisers. Twilight was nothing like that. She had been without friends for most of her life, and now that her eyes had been opened she couldn't go back. She needed her friends. It was a primal need, rooted deeper than the need for grass or water or even air.
In the morning she would begin work on her medical research. She had carefully memorized all of the formulas she would need to keep Rarity healthy for at least fifteen years, and additional research would extend her life even further. Of course, Rarity and her other friends would still die someday; but the longer they lived, the longer it would be before she'd have to run the risk of abandoning them once again.
Oh, that terrible risk! It frustrated Twilight that she didn't know what happened when she broke the symmetry of time. There were two possibilities she considered plausible. In the less likely of the two, the future would be rewritten entirely, and her dearest friends would cease to exist. If that were the case, putting them to sleep might spare them from the experience, and perhaps even preserve a spark of their souls between timelines. But the more likely alternative was that Twilight would leave their universe for a new timeline, selfishly abandoning them forever. Of course she didn't like that idea, but her friends were stronger than she was. They could live without Twilight Sparkle, even if she couldn't live without them.
Twilight opened her bedroom door and stepped inside. She walked up to her bed and knelt beside it, looking down at the helpless little pony tucked beneath the covers, the pony she knew would be here tonight. There was a loud snoring sound, a sound Twilight hated because it felt so unfamiliar to her. It made the sleeping pony seem alien, and that in turn made the experience more memorable. Twilight didn't want to remember this moment. This is the last point in her life that she would ever want to revisit.
And yet, here she was again; because it was her life to live, and it was the life she needed. It simply wasn't enough for Twilight to be immortal. Her friends had to be immortal too, so she could live with them and share with them and love with them over and over again. Just like all those little ornaments in the throne room, her friends were precious to her beyond words. They were meant to be cherished and remembered and relived, forever. But immortality wasn't possible for normal ponies, so this was the only way to eternity. This was how it had to be, she thought to herself, steeling her conviction for the necessary task at hoof.
"I'm sorry," Twilight Sparkle whispered, brushing aside a tear as she once again cast the spell that stopped her beating heart.
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- Trick Question · 1.2k words · 129 9 · 2.6k views
- Trick Question · 15k words · 107 7 · 2.6k views
- Trick Question · 1.4k words · 86 9 · 2.1k views
- Trick Question · 15k words · 251 14 · 4.1k views
- Trick Question · 1.7k words · 179 8 · 3.8k views
- Trick Question · 1.7k words · 88 10 · 2.4k views
- Trick Question · 6.8k words · 152 5 · 3.1k views
- Trick Question · 1.3k words · 63 16 · 2k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.278 seconds
Total duration
642 users online
1,321,558 hits today, 2,970,782 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.®
Dayum son, dis sum gud shit u got here. In all seriousness, good story and I look forward to more of your work ^^
OH wow. Yeah talk all ou like about Spike needing Rarity and then you off yourself instead. Yes that's totally fair Twilight.
Props for writing a time travel story, those are always tricky, one way or the other.
But I'm sorry, I honestly can't imagine Twilight acting this selfish, greedily and horrible, not without years if not outright centuries of beating her head against the problem near any other way.
Let alone murdering a pony she knows have done nothing wrong in cold blood like that. Not even for her friends.
img10.deviantart.net/8be7/i/2015/321/b/7/run_ii_by_hillbe-d9h136o.jpg
Didn't see that ending coming ,
This was surprising, admittedly quite so.
Whether or not she can ever break the cycle in time however is unknown to me
[]
she killed her younger self
OMG Twilight that's so wrong and sad
6662775
Spoooooooiler!
6662968
Great story
6664760
Thanks!
(I just meant put a spoiler tag over part of your post if you can.)
6665131 I totally don't know how to do that. I'll try though
I don't know what happen at the ending but i still like this story.
OMG, this has cleaned-up so well since the version in the Writeoff! It was always well-written and interesting, but it just didn't add-up for me at the time. This version fixes that. And I know some of that may come from the fact that I know where it's going this time, but you really do a lot more to explain Twilight's thought process in this version. There's also more payoff for the hints at the beginning that her friends drop about needing to move on.
So: Fav'd. This is one of the more unique and memorable pieces that I've read on here. And yeah, it's bound to draw some hate for portraying Twilight negatively; but there are plenty of other stories with happy endings and personal growth. It's neat to see a (non-exploitative) story showing the extreme opposite.
I did not expect that ending. I can see why you got the most controversial tag.
Uh... is that a good thing or a bad thing?
6739839
It means you're likely to either love it or hate it, and I expected a high proportion of downvotes (which has turned out to be true).
6673612
The ending revealed that Twilight has been repeatedly travelling into the past and murdering/replacing her younger self in order to keep reliving the same period in her life over and over, so she can remain with her friends.
6740192
That's okay! I just wanted to check to make sure, since you posted that on the penultimate chapter (where pretty much everything was left unexplained).
6750510
Yep! (Please spoiler though!)
6750585 Sorry.
6751655
Not a problem! For future reference, though, you can use that little Sp button in the compose frame to spoiler your text; you didn't need to delete the post.
6751661 So THAT'S how you get that black bar up?
6751889
That, or manually enclose your words (spoiler)like this(/spoiler), except use square brackets instead of parentheses.
6751900 I was wondering how to do that.
static.fjcdn.com/comments/I+really+didn+t+see+that+coming+_8e0fbe7517708638e8de3fadfcebbcb2.jpg
pinkie.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/rsz/mlfw2005_medium.jpg
6806919
I'm sorry about your distress.
Some of my works are a little on the Sad/Dark side, and just to warn you, this particular one is a lot of both. Don't take it on until you're sure you're ready.
My fiance can't read most of the things I write because he's very sensitive to anything Sad (even when it has a happy ending, like The Element of Surprise).
So what happens when *ahem* her friends wake up in 1043 AS the day after Twilight goes back to off herself? Is Twilight gone forever as she's going back to relive time with her friends forever?
Anyways, dark as usual, but a well-written and intriguing story. Good work!
7004329 So this is my interpretation of what happened regarding the cycle of Twilight replacing her younger selves.
Twilight has a mantle because in one of the times she went back and killed herself, her older self had gained the mantle while the younger self that she killed had yet to gain it. Therefore, the next day, it appeared to Celestia and Luna that Twilight had used other means to obtain a mantle, while Twilight had gotten it normally through her many years of cycling through life.
This would also explain her prophetic abilities, as she would always know of Rarity's disease and the Princesses' ultimatum through her experience after going back many times.
Furthermore, each time Twilight goes back, she knows a little more about Rarity's disease, allowing her to become better at delaying its effects every time. So perhaps the first time she went back in time, Rarity's symptoms appeared immediately, but by the current iteration, Twilight has appeared to been able to find a delaying strategy instantaneously and delay its effects by 20 years.
Lastly, theoretically speaking, if Twilight finds the solution to immortality after several hundred times of going back to replace herself, would she finally just use it on her friends and stop the cycle?
I'm just highly curious about how my interpretation compares with those of the author's or other readers.
7006956
That's roughly the right idea. I don't think Twilight believes she can ever make her friends immortal, however.
7007048 Ah, multiple cycles, so the Twilight who appears at the end had not just vanished from the beginning? I was thinking of correcting my last diagnosis- Dios syndrome instead.
In any case, mindscrewy, but I wouldn't have thought controversial. A pleasant surprise after all that buildup.
This is just.... brilliant. I'd say something more profound, but I'm at a loss for words.
7384429
You will have to read on to discover why.
Sucker punch man, sucker punch...
Nice liked the ending good twist I thought she was going back in time but I like this idea more
The only question is why is she fighting with the sisters do they know what she is doing also why is this so contriversel? I've read story in wich twilight is astronomicly difrent then show Twi so this isn't even that wird any way Reilly like the story.
7778896
She's fighting with the Sisters because they fear she's tapped into some evil power, and she won't allow them to scan her to see how she reached apotheosis (they would discover she's much older than she should be, which would reveal the time travel and possibly the nature of what she's been doing).
7780083
Oh that makes sense thanks for clarifying.
Ohhhh. So she killed her past self and the princesses are like, 'how'd you grow so big in such a short amount of time and know so much about the future?' and they don't know it's because she's from another timeline and this timeline version of herself is dead! Gasp!
Good story though. I've been meaning to read this for a while. It's been in my Read it Later section for forever.
Alt scenario: Instead of killing young!Twi, old!Twi sends her to the future to deal with dying friends and friendless princesses.
Jeez, I was starting to forget how powerful this story is.
I believe Twilight should have come up with some subtle lie to reinforce Celestia's and Luna's hypotheses about evil power if she really doesn't want them to discover her time travel exploitation. They already know about her sudden increased apparent maturity, divination powers and quick success in complicated research and have decades to put two and two together. Also, am I understanding correctly that she doesn't want them to know because they are likely to not want to allow her to recast the spell?
(stupid jokes time
)
memegenerator.net/img/instances/64332569/good-good-everything-is-proceeding-as-i-have-foreseen.jpg
8598204
Something like that. I'd say she doesn't want to know what the consequences would be if the Sisters learned what she'd been doing.
8599249
she should lie and say she is a seer it would give a reason to the sisters about how Twilight able to predict disaster
Yup. Another story from Trick where I'm not sure how to feel at the end. Good job. (yes, I liked it.)
So, I only took Calculus for Biological Majors, but I'm pretty sure 1043-1038 = 5, not 7. Is this an oblique reference to each timeline progressing differently? My first thought was that it was proof Twilight was being more successful each time, but that would be "four years earlier," I think, although the reference points here are rather confused (for example, is each one of these a point in a successive run, ie, the story is, in fact, being told linearly from Twilight's POV, in which case it wouldn't make sense for seven I just realized so that possibilities out).
9880534
I can't believe nopony noticed that after I made the chapter title change. Fixed.
You can has review!
Confusing. I'm not sure I understand the timeline.
11163245
As the chapter titles indicate, each chapter takes place prior to the previous one (the titles specify exactly when each event takes place). The reveal at the end puts this in perspective as a recurring cycle.
Impossible ? Silly. For ordinary people it is possible.
It would be more humane to hide the version from the past somewhere