The Northern Sky

by DashTillDawn

The Remembrance

Twilight, that two-faced cheat! I can't believe she would do this to me! And how can North just go along with it?! A flurry of enraged thoughts swarmed my mind while I paced the halls of the castle. Spike had originally tried to ask me why, but my angry glances made him rethink.

I ran back to the castle after I had seen Twilight with North, making sure to stay out of sight. They managed to find Redington, but that didn't matter. I was now faced with a new dilemma: should I confront them, or see how things play out. When the door glided open in a purple haze, I decided on the latter. I put on my best fake smile and ran to greet them.

"You're back!" I exclaimed, catching North in a tight embrace. He hesitated, sensing something off. I tried my best to feign a smile, hoping he wasn't onto me. After a second he smiled back.

"Yep, we're back, and once again, Twilight has taught somepony a new friendship lesson." He announced.

"Oh really? What's that?" I asked, half-hoping the answer would be an admission to his guilt, followed by him begging for forgiveness.

"Let's just say: patience is a virtue." He winked. I watched Twilight lead Redington to the Map Room, where everypony else was waiting. I must have stared at her a little too long, as North noticed he had lost my attention.

"Something wrong? You're staring at Twilight."

"Oh, no. It's nothing. I'm just tired." I lied.

"Ha! You're telling me? I almost got crushed by a two-ton chunk of rock."

"What!?" I cried, genuine concern showing on my face.

"I'm fine. As it turns out, Red's had a lot more practice with his element than I have mine." He stated, as if I was just expected to be okay with the fact that he almost died. He had come close to death quite a few times, and each one gave me just as much of a scare as the last. Cheater or not, he was my friend, and I would be heartbroken if something happened to him, as with all of my friends.

"I thank Celestia that you're okay." I told him. Knowing that we would be expected to join the group, I turned to follow the path that the others had taken. Just before I walked off, North called me back.

"Starlight?"

"Yes?" I kept my voice calm, but my mind was screaming. This is it! This is his admission to guilt.

"What would you call us?" He used his hoof to gesture between us.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, we act as if we're star-crossed lovers, but we've really only known one another for a few weeks. Are we a couple, or just close friends?"

"What do you think?" I was afraid of what might come next. My hopes for an admission had already been crushed, but now I feared that our entire relationship might be at stake.

"I just feel like we're taking this too fast."

"So what you're trying to say is...?"

"I think we should just refer to ourselves as friends until we've been together long enough. We still don't know as much about each other as we let on, and I don't want things to fall apart between us simply because we didn't know that the other one preferred X over Y."

I didn't know what was worse: the weight of his words, or the fact that he might have been right.

"I understand." He had completely crushed me without moving. I tried to act like I was fine, because I knew the guilt of hurting my feelings would then destroy North, too. One heartbreak was enough for today.

"You don't have any problems with that?" He inquired. It took everything in my power not to scream Yes! Yes, I do have a problem with this!

"No."

---

Walking into the map room, Twilight had already begun introducing everypony to Red. I tried my best to seem attentive, but my mind was in an entirely different place. I had convinced myself to slow things down between Starlight and I, but now it felt like a mistake. I knew I was doing it for her protection, but it still felt wrong. I thought so hard about my choice that I didn't even realize they had changed topics.

"Right, North?" Twilight asked, but I didn't hear her.

"North?" She tapped my shoulder. I looked up at her with distant eyes.

"I need some air." I told her emotionlessly.

"But-" She started, but I was already halfway out the door. She shrugged and exchanged looks of concern with the other ponies. I walked out the door, not noticing that I accidentally slammed it shut behind me. Once I was out the castle doors, I unfolded my wings and took to the sky. As I always said, flying was a great way to relieve stress, and right now I had too much to bear.

Usually I would fly a route around town, but today I simply followed a straight line, gradually building speed. Had I kept going, I probably could have created a Sonic Rainboom, but my attention was yanked away by something else: the distant, looming clouds. The clouds we referred to as Darkness. The clouds that were effectively ruining my life. The only things I had ever felt hatred for in my entire life. I didn't have the capacity for hate- not since my mother died. Thinking about my mom brought back the memory of the day she died.

I was in school that day, as I would have been on any weekday. We were in the middle of learning multiplication tables when my neighbor- Bluebell- entered the classroom. She whispered something to Miss Apple, who then called me to go with Bluebell. We walked in silence for half of the trip before I spoke up.

"Miss Bluebell, where are we going?" She froze at the question. She couldn't bring herself to break the bad news to me, so she gave as simple an answer as she could.

"The hospital."

I processed this answer.

"Why?" Ah, the follow-up question every parent learns to despise. Not wanting to give anything else away, lest there be more follow-up questions, she tried her best to dodge around and change the subject.

"You'll see when we get there. So, what were you learning about in class?"

"Oh, just the stupid multiplication tables. I don't get why we're spending such a long time on them. They're so easy." I whined.

"Not everypony is as smart as you are, North. You're an incredibly intelligent colt. The others may need some more time to learn... What's seventeen times fourteen?" She quizzed.

"Two-hundred and thirty-eight." She thought for a second, deliberating over whether I had been right or not. I was.

"You're going to do great things one day." She assured me, putting on a fake smile. We finished the trip in the same silence we had started it in.

When we finally got to the hospital, on the other side of town, the doctors were waiting for me. They led me through what seemed like endless hallways, finally ending in a white room with a single bed. I took in the sight, not quite understanding what I was looking at. It was my mother laying in that bed, hooked up to a dozen different gizmos and gadgets. I looked up at Miss Bluebell, who refused to make eye contact, and then to the stallion in the white coat. Upon realizing that I was confused, he got down in front of me, putting a hoof on my tiny shoulder.

"Your mother was in a carriage accident. She's stable for now, but we don't know if it will last."

My eyes clouded. I may have been in second grade, but I knew what that meant. I was one of the smartest colts the school system had ever seen, and it stayed that way until Twilight and Starlight were introduced, more than a thousand years later.

I approached the white bed cautiously, as if Starry Sky- that was her name- were going to jump up and scare me. I gently nuzzled her awake. Her eyelids cracked open to meet my own clouded eyes. She smiled faintly and tried her voice. It was more of a rasp than anything.

"Hey, North. How're you holding up?" Unable to bring myself to say anything, I laid my head on her stomach. I stayed there for an entire hour. My face was buried in the blanket in an attempt to stifle my sobs. It didn't work. Starry put her hoof on my back, making an effort to comfort me. That was when she broke into a coughing fit. The monitors all started beeping and buzzing. Nurses and doctors rushed into the room, all but one tending to the mare on the bed. That last nurse held me in the corner, keeping me from getting in the way. I could tell by the way she kept me that she thought I was going to rush to the bedside, but I simply sat and watched. When they wheeled the bed out of the room, I said a single word, somehow knowing that it was going to be the last word my mother would ever hear from me, and hoping it would put her at peace.

"Goodbye." I said to her, just as the stretcher left the room. Even through all the commotion, I saw her ear twitch. She had heard me.

I lost my only parent that night, having never met my father. I would find out later that he died that same night, trying to stop a robbery. Ever since that fateful day, I never hated a pony. I never felt sadness. I never let life get to me. At first, it was my method of coping, but I eventually adopted it as a way of life. If I couldn't do it for my sake, I did it for Starry's. I lived that same way for the entirety of my life, up until this moment. Those clouds threatened to take away everypony I cared about, which filled me with a rage unmatched by anything. I suddenly had the burning desire to see those clouds vanish from existence, along with the pony that created them. I lost everything once when my mother died, and a second time when I froze in the ice. There was no way in Tartarus, Equestria, and everything in between that I was going to let it happen a third time.

Doing a one-eighty, I headed back for the castle with a new motivation. Flying always helped me in stressful situations, and this was no exception.

---

Rainbow Dash, Twilight, and Fluttershy had all flown after me, while everypony else ran beneath them, struggling to keep up while dodging buildings. When I met them halfway, none of their concern seemed to fade.

"Are you alright?"

"Why'd ya run off?"

"What's going on, dear?"

I was bombarded by questions from the concerned mares. I didn't answer anypony except Starlight, because her question was the one that I knew I could answer.

"You came back on your own, and you seem to have caught a second wind. Is it time for us to head to Cloudsdale?"

"Let's go." And that was the end of it. It suddenly clicked with everypony that I wasn't going to talk about it unless we started the next leg of our journey.

Because of the placement of Cloudsdale, it would be necessary for us to take an airship. Knowing this, Twilight already had a hot-air balloon prepared. The ponies without wings loaded up, and within minutes we were in the air. The first questions began after fifteen minutes of awkward silence, and I was finally willing to answer them. What I didn't tell them was just how badly I wanted to see the Darkness gone. Similarly to how Twilight tried to kill Midnight, I was out for blood, and I wasn't going to chance my friends getting in the way.