What If...

by TheMajorTechie

a finale?

~~~~~===+++{Twilight's Castle}+++===~~~~~

After many years of writing, sometimes even breathlessly nonstop at times, Twilight flipped the back cover over. It was done. One thousand chapters. It took nearly eight years to get to where she was now, but she did it. She filled the book. Hit the limit. Quills & Sofas didn't offer enough materials to bind more than a thousand chapters at a time.

Where once she'd had the problem of having nothing left to do, she now faced the opposite.

When would she ever stop doing what she did? There was still so much to write about! So many ideas, and places, and faces, and so, so much more--it frankly felt overwhelming at times.

Where was she in all of this? There was of course Storyteller Twilight, the medium through which her narration was implied, but behind it all, behind everything...

It'd always been her.

It'd always been me, the author. Through good and bad, through thick and thin. Every high, every low, every laugh, every tear.

It's always been you, the reader. Even as some have come and gone, you've been here every step of the way. Left your comments to grow into future chapters. Had fun reading.

And it's always been...

Quiet footsteps skitter up behind my door. Quiet little sniffs. A half-sneeze, followed by a whine.

I stand up from my chair and open the door. Almost immediately, an excited ball of curly white fluff hurtles in, running around my legs. He brings his toys, dropping them in front of me. Staring. Watching.

I pick up his favorite--a blue, bone-shaped toy made of soft rubber. One that'd been lovingly chewed day after day, year after year. And toss it, just a little, to the side. He perks up and turns his nose toward the toy, sniffing the air where his vision has long since faded to milky white.

He whines again, pawing at his toy. It is stuck, wedged in a place too small to fit his head. I kneel down and reach for the toy, holding it instead at face-level for him. I give him a gentle pat on the head. A scratch of his ears. Gleefully, he takes the toy and retreats, sitting in that same old spot by the shelf, chewing.

That same warm spot I thought I felt as I stepped past my bookshelf this morning.

One of the many warm spots he left behind.

When he once basked in the summer sun, migrating with the golden beams of light filtering through the windows, he always left little warm spots--warmer even than the sunlight itself--in his wake.

Where he once slumbered in the quiet nights we enjoyed, exists now only an empty bed, a small indentation the only reminder of where he once curled up with his toys.

The smoke of the incense curls to the sky.

Can you see me, boy?

Can you smell the apples we've left for you, Cody? They sit at the shrine, surrounded by your most favorite of toys, right where you can reach them. We know you like apples. You told us that you did when we found you eating the wild apples off the ground beneath the little tree in our yard.

And even if the apples aren't enough for you when you visit, there are a pile of treats for you, too.

Because of how small you were, we always broke the treats in half. One half for the morning, and another half for the evening. You know that well; it's the cycle we fell into when we had to start giving you those uncomfortable pricks to keep you alive.

Well, now, beside the apples on the plate, you can find eight whole treats. Unbroken and fresh, just for you.

I hope that wherever you are now, you can eat whatever your little puppy heart desires. No longer must you follow that strict diet that the vet gave you nearly four years ago. The diet that once upon a time, saved your life as you lay sickly and weak, undiagnosed diabetes wreaking havoc upon your tiny frame. It's why we had to give you those pricks, boy. I'm sure you'd understand.

Maybe you already had a taste of heaven when you went on vacation with us last summer. You traveled on a plane for the very first time. Tasted seafood and chicken, prepared in more ways than you might've possibly ever imagined. If we could, we would've let you have a taste of so, so much more then.

But now, as the incense burns, you can do just that. I hope that, through that photo of you, happy on the swing set in the park, you can forever smell what we cook in the kitchen. Watch every meal be prepared before your eyes, and share in the taste as we gather for dinner.

It'll be hard to not be able to call you to the table anymore if we drop something, whether it be intentional or not.

It'll be hard to not be able to feed you pieces of carrots and tomato, fresh from the counter, like we always did.

Once upon a time, thirteen years ago, you came to us, a shivering ball of fluff on a cold December's evening. You were even smaller back then, and yet you still managed to scramble up the stairs all on your own. Somehow, you grew even fluffier, a near-solid mass of curls that kept you warm in even the coldest of nights.

I'm sorry we didn't have time back then to play with you as much.

I'm sorry that for many days, you'd be out in our backyard, alone with your toys while we were at school, and our parents were at work. Or stuck indoors, with only a piece of cardboard marking where you could relieve yourself when the weather was too cold.

I'm sorry that it was only after we moved--after I began high school, after almost half of your life had gone by--that we finally had the chance to let you roam free, no longer confined to a single floor of the house and the backyard. We should've been better to you back then.

I hope that we made up for it after we moved. After the backyard no longer connected to the dreary basement, but instead to the kitchen. No longer were you stuck, waiting for someone to open the door from the unfinished basement to the bright lights of the main floor. You actually lived with us then.

And you thrived.

Before, we would let you roam after we'd returned home for the day. By then, sometimes, you were already asleep. Sometimes, you were even still outside, howling at the moon. We joked that you were a little white wolf back then, when I was in elementary school.

You stopped howling after we moved, and I'm still not quite sure why. Now, you no longer slept in the basement or the yard. You slept with us. On rugs. On carpets. On your bed. On bare flooring. On socks and your toys and your treats and in the sun and in the moon and wherever and whenever you wanted to.

I'm sorry it took so long for us to finally be able to express our love for you in full and unrestricted.

I'm sorry you could only experience that love unfettered for three years, before those nasty eye infections left you nearly blinded in both eyes. Before your diabetes developed, and led to those itchy cataracts that took almost everything else that was left.

I hope you can still run through the grass with me in my dreams. Before you became afraid of tripping on the dirt, or having your eyes become irritated along the way. When we once played hide and seek among the towering trees in the park.

I hope you still can return to those warm spots you left behind.

The incense burns low, ashes silently scattering into the pot below. Your shrine sits beside the shrine of the Ground Spirit. We hope that they can guide you on to your next life, whether it be heaven or in reincarnation.

If there is anything I could do if I were to go back in time, it would be to hug you, one last time.

On your final night with us, you slept quietly on my lap as I stroked your head. You were old and tired then, and your poor little heart was giving out.

You knew your time was near, didn't you, boy?

In your final days, you refused to eat that special diabetes food that the vet had prescribed you. You wanted only the best for yourself then--peas, carrots, and chicken. Sometimes, a little tomato or apple, as a treat.

You knew, when your slow, lumbering steps became a frenzied rush up the stairs, that your time had come.

And yet you waited for me.

There you sat, at the very top of the stairs, watching me climb after you.

You held off death itself to make sure I could be with you one last time. It was only after I joined you at the top when you stumbled off, barely holding on as you laid down one final time.

Almost precisely thirteen years after you came into my life, just as you came, you left on a cold December morning in my arms.

I know you tried hard, Cody. I know that it took every ounce of strength to keep yourself going after that climb. To gasp those precious last few breaths of air as I beat your ailing heart for you.

You don't have to be strong for us anymore.

You can rest now.

You can close your eyes now, Cody.

You're safe now. Always and forever.

And I know that you're proud of me. Of us.

On the night of your passing, you came to me in a dream, silently watching as I gave it my all to keep you with us. You watched as I tried, over and over, hoping with all my heart that I could feel yours begin to beat on its own once again.

But you knew you had to go by then. We all pushed that inevitable day back as far as we could, together. But, just as time itself cannot be stopped, so comes your mortal limits.

You can close your eyes now, boy. I know you were watching me in your final moments. Rest now, you're okay now. No more pain. No more needles. No more blindness.

I hope that we gave you the best life that we could.

I hope that wherever you are now, you're free of everything that held you back.

I hope that, as the final wisps of smoke drift away from the smoldering incense, you'll still be with us in spirit.

Thank you, Cody, for being with us.

And to you, the reader,

Thank you for reading.

Author's Note:

Well, here we are.

The final chapter.

I didn't think that it'd come to this, in all honesty. Both 1000 chapters and... well... I'm sure you already know what recent events have transpired in real life for me.

I started writing this fic when I was in 8th grade. Back then, I was horrendous at writing, and the trio of stores that'd come before What If are a testament to that notion.

When I first started writing What If, I planned for it only to work off "serious" suggestions based in canon. Something that, in my mind, would've followed the progression of the show, and ended with the finale of G4. Perhaps one chapter per episode, or something of the sort.

...That certainly didn't last very long.

Almost from the beginning, you, the readers, began to suggest increasingly deranged chapters. Somehow, we'd gone from Starlight Glimmer not holding a grudge against Twilight to breaking Fimfiction itself in increasingly creative ways. And that's beautiful.

Never had I imagined in those very first chapters of this fic that such a wild community would grow around pitching strange story ideas around the way that you all have done. Nor did I think that some of you would begin to build upon each others' ideas to construct large, multi-chapter story arcs that had their own lore and recurring characters.

It's the beauty that comes with community, I suppose.

I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to fully put into words the gratitude that I have for you all. I know that some chapters were vent-y. That a good number of those "IRL chapters" probably served far better as blog posts in hindsight, but what's done is done.

You can't change the past. You can only work to make the present and the future better, both for yourself and the ones that you love.

I know this chapter probably isn't the massive celebration that you might've expected.

It's a quiet, somber chapter, with faint echoes of how it all began, intermixed with a long, heartfelt letter that I can only hope may somehow reach my dog, Cody, wherever he is now.

I've teared up so many times now as I've written out this chapter. Every precious memory I have, from when we built you that doghouse (that you ended up using more as an outhouse) to when you once wiggled free from the yard. We thought you were lost back then, never to be seen again. But thankfully, you'd only escaped into our neighbors' yard, curious as ever to explore.

I should stop making this chapter so much about you. I know I have regrets, especially of how lonely you were before we moved.

But I hope you found happiness after we did. After we finally had the means to spend more time at home and with you.

And I hope you found peace in the end as I cradled you one last time in my arms.

It hurts. So much. But it's a pain that I'll accept.

I know this chapter isn't what you, the reader, might have wanted. It's not the chapter that I might have wanted.

But it's the chapter I needed. For this one last time in this edition of What If, I'm making this chapter about me. Or more specifically, about Cody.

In your memory, the shrine will remain.

Let the Ground Spirit know how you like to be scratched behind your ears.

And once again, to you, the reader:

Thank you for understanding. I didn't think that it would end this way, but just as life happens in the most unexpected of ways, so too can death.

I look forward to your upcoming comments, when What If starts anew.

And I hope that, somewhere out there, Cody knows that we'll remember him.

November 2010 - December 2023

We'll miss you, old boy.

One last ear scratch for the road.

And to another that we've lost this year, Level Dasher.

I hope you've found yourself a new friend up there. Thank you so much for all you've done, whether it be leaving comments for chapters here, or helping me wrangle the chaos of the 500,000th story on this site, or simply being an all-around great guy.

And once again, to all of you, the readers:

I love you all.

Thank you for reading.

EWhat If...

• MLP: FiM
• Comedy
• Random
• Anthology

What If 2: Eclectic Scootaloo! The beginning of a new era. A buncha stories based off of random "What if?" questions.

• Alt. Universe
• Other

TheMajorTechie · 7.9k words  ·  32  6 · 348 views

Comments

[The Spy of the Tiger]

I want to say nothing, but will say I'm leaving this here, for you and for Cody. It feels right for me to do so.

[TheMajorTechie]

11791841
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[bkam]

Here's to another 1,000 chapters of deranged madness.

[Electrix]

This last one made me cry, i feel your pain dude.

Hope Cody finds his way, to his next adventure.

[xiaobai_]

oh my princess Celestia!

[Flora Blossom]

My Little Reviews & Feedback Don't be mad but this was the 2021 review... for this fiction...