Just a Thought

by Chinchillax

5) Avoidance

It was beyond wonderful to be completely enveloped in the warm water. His entire body felt comfortably numb and warm. Only sleepiness and hunger truly stopped him from relaxing completely.

"Spike, are you okay in there?" said Twilight through the door, her question echoed slightly around the crystal bathroom.

Spike jerked up, splashing Key who chirped at suddenly having water thrown on him.

"Yeah, I'm fine!"

"Okay, well... it's getting late. And I have some gems if you're hungry."

With speed to rival Rainbow Dash, Spike quickly got out the tub, towelled himself, and threw open the door. Thick steam poured out of the bathroom like fog, adding condensation to every crystal surface outside the bathroom.

"Hey Spike!" said Twilight. "You look a lot better!"

"I feel better, too," said Spike. It wasn't a lie. He legitimately felt better after a simple bath. Why had he felt so bad before? Oh—death. His death. The one he ought to stop procrastinating on.

Twilight looked into his eyes, "Is something wrong?"

Spike heard a plucking sound coming from the bathtub; water began to drain. A second later a very damp Key landed on his shoulder. Key made a chirp that Spike could only interpret as: "tell her." Spike froze, trying to get his mind straight again. His mind had been happily empty for quite some time, and to start using it so quickly gave him a feeling of vertigo.

"I could use some sleep," said Spike.

The damp water on Key started to steam and disappear, continuing the slow condensation of the hallway.

"But uhh... could I have some gems first please?"

"There are some in your room," said Twilight.

"Oh, thank you," said Spike. He wasn't sure what else to say to that.

Twilight walked with Spike to his room. She started chatting about the search parties that were assembled for Spike three days ago, but she spotted the embarrassed look on his face and switched the subject to what the ancient bearers had been up to. It sounded like they were facing a lot of culture shock after being missing for a thousand years.

When they arrived at Spike's room, Twilight opened the door for him, revealing that there was a rather large supply of gems of every kind in a bowl near his bed. Spike licked his lips as he gazed on the rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. He hadn't eaten in over a week.

"Do you need some company?" asked Twilight.

Spike had already started gorging himself on gems. He looked back at Twilight and smiled, quickly closing his mouth so as not to show off the gems stuck in his teeth.

"I'll just leave you to it," said Twilight.

"Mmm hmm," mumbled Spike as he continued to chew.

"After you get a good night's sleep, I want to hear all about what happened. But for now, sweet dreams Spike."

She closed the door behind him and all at once Spike realized that he would dream that night. He continued eating at a more voracious rate as the reality of his situation sunk in.

Luna could watch his dreams. He was sure to dream about committing suicide or something dreadful that Luna would ask questions about. His very mind wasn't safe—sleep wasn't safe.

Spike continued eating the gems, downing each and every one, barely chewing on them as he swallowed them. No matter how much he ate, the empty feeling couldn't be filled. His body was getting full, but his heart ached at his new dilemma.

He could just not sleep. That was obviously the safest route. He had been without sleep for... quite some time now. If he could just keep it up, he'd be fine. He had heard about ponies dying from going too many weeks without sleep—perhaps he could do it. It would be a very slow method of dying to be sure. But it would get the job done eventually.

But his friends would notice. Luna would notice. A dragon that didn't sleep was suspicious.

"Keer!" chirped Key.

"I can't go to bed now, I have a problem!" said Spike.

"Kee," said Key. He waved a wing to the bed.

"Not right now, I just.... gotta... think."

How to stop Luna from watching his dreams, but still fall asleep. Well... she couldn't view his dreams if he didn’t dream at all.

Spike threw open the door to his room and scampered his way to the library. Just as he expected, Starlight was sitting there, reading and experimenting with some spell.

"Starlight!" said Spike. "Can I ask a favor?"

She put down her book quickly, getting a good look at Spike. She seemed to take longer at glancing at him than she did normally, as if the former villain could recognize a future villain. "Sure! What do you need?"

"I need a umm... sleeping potion. Going through the Everfree was well..." he put a strained look on his face by pretended to have gone through something horrible. It really wasn't hard to imagine; he just imagined killing all of his friends someday. That was practically guaranteed to happen if he didn't kill himself.

"Ooh... that does look rough."

"Can you get me something so I don't have to dream?" asked Spike.

"No dreams? Well... I suppose. 'You can't have a nightmare if you never dream,'" said Starlight. She winced at the song she had sung herself once upon a time. "Anyway, I think I got just the brew, though you might want to talk to Zecora if you need something stronger. Or maybe just talk to Luna. She's pretty good at dealing with dreams."

Starlight thankfully didn't ask too many questions, and twenty minutes later, Spike had several doses of dreamless sleep in his claws. He had memorized page 293 in the "Useful Herbal Potions" book and was dead set on creating his own version next time, and forever for as long as he lived.

Key gave a quick squawk when Spike came back into the room.

Spike downed the sleeping potion. The effect was instantaneous. It felt like his entire body was growing numb. He quickly crawled into bed and said goodnight to Key, letting the darkness of slumber embrace him.

---

It felt like it was merely seconds later when he awoke the next morning. He hadn't dreamed. Instead, it felt like he had transported into the future several hours, only his well rested body proof that he had even slept at all.

His mind didn't give him any respite though, and dark thoughts immediately came swirling in, choking any other stray feelings with one single desire: Kill Yourself.

He needed to protect his friends—all of his friends. And the best way to do that was to not be there at all. He had the oddest desire to write it down. A goal not written is only a wish after all. That was why Twilight always kept the most detailed to-do lists. To-do lists were just teeny tiny goals.

Instead of the comfort of putting quill to paper, Spike tried hard to keep the thought at the forefront of his mind. Whatever he was going to do, it was for the ultimate goal of someday dying. He knew that wasn't the most effective goal setting method. After all, any idea not written down had to be remembered. And the mind can only hold a couple of thoughts at once. So Spike would just have to juggle: "Kill yourself" along with all the other thoughts he had to keep track of.

Spike broke down what he needed to do in his head:
Lifelong Goal: Death
Actionable items for today:
Make no progress on Lifelong Goal—focus on damage control on the last attempt
Pretend to be okay

It seemed simple enough. He still needed to think of some good lies to tell Twilight. He wasn't used to lying, but he knew the trick involved telling as much of the truth as possible. Half-truths were the best kinds of lies.

Spike crawled out of bed. There was much work to be done that day. He wasn't sure what it was going to be, but there was always something that Twilight needed done.

After finishing washing up he looked at his room one last time. There wasn't any inherent sign that he was going to kill himself, was there? Was the bed made, but still disheveled enough to be normal? What did his room normally look like? He analyzed the comic books and regular books. There wasn't anything in the way they were organized that would betray his feelings, were there? Just to be sure, he looked at the first letter of every single title, analyzing it to make sure nothing spelled "death" or anything. It all seemed to be properly random. There was no way he could be read into too deeply. For all intents and purposes from the outside, nobody should notice his psychological problems.

That was the key. Don't be noticed. Just help. He had been good at that.

He cringed, thinking of the search party that had spent three days looking for him and the two weeks he had been missing. That was anything but inconspicuous.

His head sagged at the thought, and his eyes found their way to a single orange feather.

"Key!" Spike said, his voice letting out a small squeak. Where was he? Where was he!?

Here Spike was, overanalyzing his bookshelf while that bird could be anywhere. He could be with Fluttershy. He could tell Fluttershy everything. He could—He could!

Spike needed to accelerate his plans.

Everything only worked if he was the only one that knew. But he wasn't. Key knew. He was just a bird but he knew! He knew! He—

And at that very moment, Key flew in through a crack in the window.

Spike raced towards Key unable to think of a proper response to the amount of anxiety he had given him. Spike ended up cautiously standing next to him. "Where did you go?"

"Kree," said Key, as if that explained everything.

Spike frowned, until his mind was able to make some kind of excuse. "You probably eat different things that I used to feed you... so... you went out to umm... eat?"

Key nodded his head.

"Ah! Okay. Okay," said Spike. "Okay. I was— just worried is all."

Key tilted his head to the side.

"About what? Just uhh... stuff... wanted to make sure you were okay is all."

Key's eyes narrowed, piercing Spike with the force as if the whole castle above him fell down and impaled him.

Could phoenixes tell if somepony was lying? They did seem crazy magical. There was a lot Spike didn't know about phoenixes.

Key continued to stare.

"Alright, alright," Spike said, grabbing his tail, almost hugging it as he pulled it closer to himself. "I was just worried you might have talked to someone about me—about my uhh... problem."

Key shrugged.

"What's that supposed to mean!?" asked Spike.

Twilights voice filtered into the room from downstairs. "Spike, it sounds like you're up! Do you want breakfast?"

Spike tried to say yes, but it came out like a sharp screeching sound. He coughed before shouting yes down to the lower floors.

Wait, Twilight shouldn't be doing the cooking. He was supposed to! Spike took one look at Key before bounding downstairs. His feet made small echoes as he skittered to the kitchen, where Twilight was making breakfast while Starlight was reading a book.

"I'm so sorry I'm late!" said Spike as he stopped a few feet away from Twilight. His breathing was heavy. Was it supposed to be that heavy? Would they notice it was different? Was he giving subtle clues left and right about the state of his own mind and intentions? He gulped before flashing an ashamed smile. "I should be the one cooking breakfast..."

Twilight looked at him, tilting her head slightly sideways. "You don't have to cook breakfast every morning. I can do just fine myself."

"I think you may have actually added too much salt," said Starlight.

"Nonsense, I measured it precisely," said Twilight.

Starlight's horn glowed as a magical field appeared in front of her eyes and she looked at the small print in the cookbook on the other side of the room. "It says a 'pinch' of salt. You can't really measure that precisely."

Twilight frowned, looking at the instructions again.

"I'm sorry! That book's mine and I use claw pinches, not hoof pinches. You probably added more based on a hoof sized pinch," apologized Spike. "I should have been here."

"It's fine, Spike!" said Starlight. "As Pinkie would say in this situation. If you drown it in sugar enough, anything tastes good." Starlight poured a bigger helping of syrup onto her stack of pancakes.

"Okay, that much sugar cannot be healthy," said Twilight.

"But it does mask the saltiness," said Starlight, taking another small bite. "Salty sweet is the best kind of sweet too."

Twilight took a bite of pancake, chewing slowly before swallowing it. She finally conceded defeat and drowned her own pancakes in syrup. "Why is Pinkie right so often. I mean—she's not right all the time, but it's enough to be annoying... and not to mention unhealthy."

"Mmmhmm," hummed Starlight in agreement as she chewed a particularly large bite.

"Spike, you going to sit down and eat too?" asked Twilight.

Spike became aware that he was still standing and alleviated the awkwardness by swiftly grabbing a stool to sit down. He was a little too quick and the stool nearly clattered to the floor before he saved it and sat on it before anypony noticed.

There was already a plate ready, and Twilight floated an unusually large stack of pancakes onto his plate. Trusting their judgement, he poured a rather excessive amount of syrup.

Was eating really okay to be doing? Wasn't he being wasteful by eating breakfast? I mean—he was going to die anyway. Eating just seemed a waste of Twilight's resources. Yes, she got a nice stipend from Princess Celestia, but that didn't mean perfectly good food should go to waste to someone that was just going to die later. But in a sense... everyone was going to "die later." And eating food certainly wasn't a waste despite the length of someone's life. There were insects that only lived for days that still ate. It's not like it was a waste. But Spike somehow felt that he should be the exception. Someone with a natural death deserved to eat normally. But those like him—that were just going to die soon—what was the point of eating?

"Is my cooking really that bad?" asked Twilight, staring at Spike's plate. He had only eaten a few slow bites.

"Actually, I just ate so many gems last night that I'm really not that hungry right now."

"And it's too salty," said Starlight.

Twilight gave her a sneer.

"What? It's good to be honest," said Starlight.

Twilight rolled her eyes before taking another large bite. "Well, I think they taste fine."

Spike took a few more bites of pancake to give off the illusion that he was a good guest. But also not too quickly so as not to ruin his own alibi from earlier that he was full. Wait—he wasn't a guest. This was his home, wasn't it? But he was going to die soon, so he must be a guest in the world of the living.

"Well, enough about my cooking. Spike, you were feeling pretty messed up last night. Are you up to talking about what happened now?"

Starlight nodded in agreement.

Spike froze, trying to think of what to say to that. Perhaps he should have dreamed properly last night. He had read that dreaming helped solidify thoughts and memories and make better sense of the world around him. He hadn't really gotten that. But there really wasn't anything he could have done with Luna watching, so that wasn't the best solution.

"Uhh..." said Spike. "Which part?"

"How did you get turned to stone in the middle of the Everfree forest?" asked Starlight. "That's a bit unusual for you, to say the least."

Lie. Tell the truth. Lie. Tell a half-truth. Ambiguously untruthful?

"Well... y'see..." Spike tried to stall, anxiously awaiting his mind to come up with the ideal response, but nothing came. At least nothing good.

Stone. Turned to stone. Discord got turned to stone once. And Twilight had told him he was the new Rainbow Dash. Rainbow Dash liked...

"Flying," said Spike.

"What?" asked Twilight.

"That didn't come out right. I mean... uhh... adventure... really."

"Adventure?" asked Starlight.

Spike's brain started running at the top speed of frozen molasses trying to figure out how on earth the rest of the conversation was supposed to go with the vague prompts of 'flying' and 'adventure.'"

Twilight gave him a concerned look.

Spike coughed. "Okay, here's the truth. It's a little embarrassing. I, well... I wanted to prove to myself that I could go on adventures too. I mean, you always go off around Equestria with your friends on grand adventures and I'm not invited all that often. So I thought I could toughen myself up by going on a little adventure of my own. Just go into the Everfree forest and back safely. My original goal was to go in and out of the Everfree forest once a day until you all came back. Just to boost my own adventuring experience, I guess. But well... it backfired. The first time I even went out, I got petrified. So... yeah..."

Spike's inner mind was positively beaming at his own lie. It was amazing! He deserved a medal for what his tongue was able to do that his mind somehow wasn't able to.

"You went out to the Everfree forest... for an adventure?" asked Twilight.

"Yes. And I uhh... I guess I got one," Spike smiled sheepishly.

"I'll say," said Starlight. "Not many ponies can say they've been petrified and lived to see it through."

Twilight said nothing. She left her food half eaten as she stared at Spike.

Spike gulped. "I—I'm sorry."

She got up from her stool and neared Spike.

He thought she was about to hit him or hurt him or something. He probably deserved it too. No—he deserved death. Anything less than that was a tragedy.

Twilight embraced him. It would have been a very good hug except Spike's claws were slightly sticky from the syrup and he would feel awkward if he got her mane sticky so he just hugged her back without letting his claws get close to her.

"I'm so sorry, Spike."

"Wait, what do you have to be sorry for?"

Twilight stepped back. "I've been leaving you alone all this time. I thought it'd be easier for you. I mean—you are a baby dragon, and you haven't really complained that much before about not going everywhere I go. So I thought it was fine."

Spike stared at her.

"Do you want to go on more adventures when they crop up?"

Spike didn't know what to say, so he nodded his head and hoped that was the correct answer.

She embraced him again. "I'm so sorry Spike. I'll fix this, okay? I'll take you on some adventures. You don't need to prove yourself to go with me. You're my number one assistant, and no one can ever take your place."

Spike's stomach churned as she said those words.

It had been easy to think about killing himself when he thought nopony cared. But... Twilight cared. She really did care. His death was supposed to solve problems. Twilight wouldn't have to worry about Spike anymore. There's no need to worry about a problem that's not there.

But if she cared this deeply? His death would hurt.

It didn't matter that he would die. It mattered that Twilight would have to face that death and not understand.

Killing himself was going to be more difficult than he thought.

Comments

[Megapanda25]

Spike broke down what he needed to do in his head: Lifelong Goal: Death Actionable items for today: Make no progress on Lifelong Goal—focus on damage control on the last attempt Pretend to be okay

...ok...now I'm getting a tad uncomfortable.

[Chinchillax]

9150582
Yeah... it's gonna get worse before it gets better.

I hope you stick it out until the ending though. Given Spike's situation, I feel like the ending is as optimistic as it could be.

Thanks for reading it. (And I love your avatar. It's perfect for this story )

[Emperorxeno]

Moar

[Megapanda25]

9150966
Nah, I'm in for the ride now! Can't wait to see what happens yet.