Between the Lines

by NaiadSagaIotaOar

The Light at the Edge of the World

Rarity knows Twilight is coming, for she looks at the ground and she sees the sky. It’s not there, of course, but she sees it just the same. Little flecks of deep blue and purple on the dirt and rocks, tiny fluttery wisps of cloud that vanish when she blinks. But she’s used to the chaos Twilight brings by now, so there's hardly a lull in her sewing.

Seven times now, Twilight has come for her. She knows that this will be the last.

If she were to turn around and look at what’s coming, she would see the light. It’s a ravenous, searing thing, swallowing up everything it touches in its implacable march. Seven times, she has seen that light, and each time she was forced to flee.

And now, there’s nowhere left to run. She’s sitting on the edge of a cliff, overlooking a turbulent sea. A plane of dark blue stretching left and right and onwards as far as she can see, marked by reflected lights like twinkling stars. The distant roar of the waves breaking against the cliff are… wickedly tempting, in this moment.

But she has a dress to finish, first. She’s so very close. Just a few more minutes of sewing, and she’ll be done. She knows she’ll never wear the thing, but once, just once, she wants to see it and lose herself in its beauty.

Footsteps come from behind her.

She sighs, quietly. “Go away,” she says. Then she pauses and shakes her head—a scowl forms on her lips. “You won’t listen, but I suppose it’s a worth a shot, isn’t it?”

“You know I can’t do that,” Twilight says. Her voice is a vile, deceptive thing. On the surface it sounds forlorn and full of sorrow. But Rarity’s no stranger to those deceptions. Her ear cuts through them, and her mind twists those sounds around until the truth is revealed: I will never let you escape me, Twilight had really said.

“Of course.” Rarity threads her needle through another bit of fabric, careful not to let the hatred boiling in her veins stop her from keeping a steady hand. “For all your faults, you were never one to give up, were you?” Memories stirred: Twilight, so lost in her books she looks ready to pass out, poring over an arcane formula that’s blown up in her face three times, insistent—correctly—that this time is different. Twilight, looking up with bleary, sleepy eyes as Rarity brings her coffee with a quietly disapproving look.

And in an instant, those memories are usurped; in her mind’s eye, she sees Twilight, weaving magic so cruel it stings and bites even as a memory.

“Not on you,” Twilight says, her voice an attempt at a solemn whisper. You’re the one I hate the most; how could I let you go?

Rarity twists her head around to cast a defiant glare. Twilight’s standing there, her hair billowing behind her in a silent breeze; there’s a tremble in the air, a subtle glow around her eyes, that speak of magic—power—Rarity can’t begin to understand.

And behind her, there’s the light. Above her, stabbed by that light, the sky bleeds; it’s turned a filthy, unnatural shade of green, and liquid too dark and thick to be rain pours down in torrents. Where Twilight comes, all living things suffer. She’s a plague, a disaster on legs.

But more than that, she just looks… wrong, in a word. Her face is untouched by shadow, despite the hour, despite the piercing light that should be enveloping her. Sometimes her body appears translucent; every inch of her is an anathema to order. She’s hurt, though—Rarity’s thrown rocks and needles at her, and they’ve left scratches and bruises that haven’t healed yet.

“Stand up,” she says. I want you to be at your best when you die. She holds out her hand. “Come back.” Hurry. I don’t want to wait much longer.

The idea of listening to her—obeying her—makes Rarity seethe. She tears her eyes away from Twilight, and they fall to the dress she’s been sewing. She takes hold of her needle. “I’m busy,” she hisses.

The sea is in front of her, far below. A question runs through her head. She thinks she knows the answer. But she has a dress to finish, first.

Twilight’s voice continues to worm into her ears. It draws closer. “What are you working on?” Twilight asks. It’s ugly. Rip it to pieces. Spare me the pain and yourself the trouble.

“You know,” Rarity says, working her needle deftly through another stitch, “exactly what it is.”

Closer still, Twilight comes. Her presence is palpable; the hairs on Rarity’s back stand up straight and tall when she’s this close. “It must be very important,” Twilight says. What a waste.

Rarity clenches her teeth, pushing Twilight from her mind. There is only the dress.

It’s white. White and gold, breezy and flowing. Small pearls and diamonds worked into the collar make it twinkle and glow as the light catches it. It is the most beautiful thing she’s ever made. She thought it’d be impossible, when she first dreamed of it, but every dress was impossible until she set to work on it.

Even now, it’s not going to be completed. It needs a veil. It needs a ring. But she has no time for the former and no heart for the latter, so compromises must be made.

“I promised to make it,” Rarity says. Just a few more stitches—very soon, now, she’ll be done. She thinks about turning again, so that Twilight can see the venom she hopes is in her eyes, but she doesn’t. “And since I am not you, that means something.”

Another memory wells up, fresh and searing. Rarity sees herself, beaming with bliss, eyes wide, starry and tearful. Twilight’s in front of her, kneeling. Smiling hopefully—scowling, with a vicious glint in her madness-touched stare.

“Rarity,” Twilight says. She’s getting very close now. “I need you to stop.” I want you to be a liar, just like me.

“Then make me.” Magic rises up to answer Rarity’s call. She’s never been one for combat, physical or arcane, but in this instant determination lends her magic a hardness she’s always found it lacking. “I know you’re strong enough to.”

“No. You believe that.” Even you don’t think you can defy me. Twilight’s voice comes down from just beside Rarity. It cracks as Twilight talks. It speaks of pain that speaks of the greatest lie of all—that Twilight has a heart to break.

Rarity looks up. Twilight’s there, standing next to her. Looming overhead, like a baleful storm cloud.

“If you’re trying to goad me into a fight,” Rarity says, “I don’t have time.” Her grip on her needle tightens. “So go away. Leave me in peace, just this once.”

“You have all the time in the world. You haven’t even started it yet.”

For an instant, when Rarity looks down, she sees nothing. The dress is gone. Her work undone. Twilight’s voice slices her to the bone.

The second you think you’re done, I’ll wave my hand and it will all turn to ash.

The dress is there. She knows it is—she can see it, touch it, remember every stitch. It’s hers, it’s a lifeline of sanity in a world of madness.

“And I want you to finish it.” Twilight sits down next to her. “I want that more than anything. But if you want to do that, you need to come with me.”

As if to punctuate Twilight’s words, the light pulses. It seems to draw nearer.

Rarity trembles. She turns towards the light, just enough that it starts to engulf her vision, and then she wrenches her head towards the cliff, towards the waves far below her. They rise and fall, battering endlessly at the cliff.

She’s trapped. Twilight behind her, a fatal drop in front.

The question from before makes a resurgence: if she’s to die either way, was it more noble if she did so through her own choices?

It’s freedom that way, isn’t it?

“Look at what you are,” Rarity says. “You’ve destroyed almost all there is. Am I supposed to believe you want me to make something?” Her hand jitters, and the needle with it.

“I don’t know.” Twilight’s voice is etched with vulnerability as impossible as snowballs on the sun. “But I know that I want you to.” I want you to be wrong. I want to twist your world inside-out.

The malice Rarity hears cannot possibly intermingle with the sorrow, the desperation she sees on Twilight’s face—so she stares at the latter, praying that it will warp into a ghoulish, cackling grin, something that makes sense.

It does, briefly. It flickers between wrathful madness and… and whatever else it is that Rarity sees.

The duality gnaws at her.

“Why are you doing this?” she asks.

Twilight reaches out towards her. Rarity flinches—magic wells up, and Twilight’s hand comes to a lurching stop as though it pressed against stone. Nothing about Twilight’s face makes sense.

“I could list a hundred reasons, and they all have to do with you.” Twilight pulls her hand back slowly, closing her fingers like they’ve been stung. She turns to face the light. “You ran away from me,” she says. “So I had to keep chasing you. I guess… I guess to you, I’ve been…”

Rarity peers towards the light.

It’s a door. A door cut into space. The light surrounds it—one instant, it’s back to being a world-devouring sun, the next it’s just a rectangle of harsh white light.

“I need you, Rarity. A lot of people do.” Her voice is tender and gentle, soft as the finest silks. It wavers. “I love you. Don’t you remember that?”

She does, of course. The memories are like sand in an hourglass; every time she looks at them, they’re different. She and Twilight are curled up together by a fireplace, whispering how one day they’ll be married—not today, certainly not today, neither of them are ready, but one day it’s going to be the best of days—and certainly, Rarity will have to make the dress, and it’ll be the best one she’s ever made…

They’re staring each other down, the fields around Ponyville set ablaze—there’s fire, bright green fire, twisting down trees, freezing them solid. Twilight’s grinning, wide and mad like her delight is ripping her face in two, Rarity’s trying to weep and scowl at the same time.

There’s a sense that something is right, but…

I hate you. I—

Rarity pushes back the correction. It’s a strain; she sees Twilight’s face warping and bending, and tells herself that what she’s known is wrong is right.

“If I go with you,” she says, “what’ll happen?”

“You’ll…” Twilight catches herself, hanging her head. Rarity manages to convince herself Twilight doesn’t make a ghastly cackle. “You’ll wake up, I hope,” Twilight says. “I don’t know exactly what—” Twilight’s mouth moves, but it’s blurry; for a moment, it’s like her face has gone blank, but then she keeps talking and it’s all fine “—did to you. It—it’s like your mind’s… infected. I think I can make it better, but you’ve always shut me out before.”

Twilight holds up her arm. It looks misty and translucent, but then it’s pale and thin, marred by ugly blotches. “I’m not sure I can do this again. Whatever magic you got hit by, it… doesn’t like me being here.”

Rarity trembles. It feels like her head’s splitting, the longer she looks at Twilight without mentally revising her. “What would I wake up to?”

Twilight’s mouth goes blurry again. Longer, this time. “—but I think we can make it right again. You and me and our friends, we can do it. But not without you.”

Rarity nods quietly, shuddering. She looks away from Twilight—over the ocean, down at the gnashing waves, down at the dress resting in her lap—which wasn’t there until she turned away, she realizes.

It hurts. She stares down at the ocean, and the crash of the waves call out to her.

Twilight, though. Twilight. She’s a harbinger of destruction, tempting her towards madness—or she’s a long-lost lover, pleading her to come back home.

Rarity runs through her choices.

And it’s obvious. It’s so, so obvious. But it’s terrifying, just the same, as she rises to her feet. She sees the light behind Twilight out the corner of her eye, and she sees the ocean and the cliff.

“Twilight.”

“Yes?”

“I hope, for both our sakes, that I’m making the right guess.”

She turns. She walks towards the light. Fear grips her as the light envelops her, icy dread snaring her like barbed webs.

---

Rarity’s eyes open. She’s staring up at the sky, which is dark in all the wrong colors, pelting her with rain—a drop slides into her mouth, and it’s too thick to be water and tastes strongly of chocolate.

“Twilight?” she says.

She feels filthy and exhausted, inside and out. Like she’s been lying in the mud for three days straight—maybe she’s done exactly that, who knows. It’s oddly relieving to know how real that feeling is, miserable as it may be.

And Twilight’s voice makes things better. It’s quiet but happy, like Twilight’s bursting with joy but she’s too tired to express it all. The world’s upside-down, but they’re together, and Twilight’s voice makes that sound like a wonderful thing. “I’m here, Rarity,” she says.

Rarity didn’t need to hear that, but she likes that it was said. She looks to the side, and Twilight’s there. She’s… solid. Real. She’s smiling, and that it makes sense for her to be smiling drives Rarity halfway to tears.

“What took you so long?” she asks. She reaches out. When she touches Twilight’s hand, it’s a giddy, hopeful squeeze.

Twilight makes a snort of a hopeless laugh. “I had to untangle you from a spirit of chaos’ magic. It… took a couple of tries. But I got there in the end.”

“Of course you did.” Rarity smiles. She looks back up at the sky. “Now I suppose we have to do something about… all that,” she says.

In the corner of Rarity’s eye, Twilight falters. “Yeah. Yeah, we do.” There’s subtext lacing her voice just then—she’s sorry, so very sorry, to be throwing this burden onto Rarity’s shoulders so soon.

Rarity lets her eyes fall shut. She breathes, long and deep. Three seconds, she gives herself. Three seconds of peace and quiet, where there’s nothing but her and Twilight’s hand in hers and the rain falling down on them.

Saving the world isn’t so different from making a dress. They’re both impossible until you pick yourself up and you get to work.

So Rarity rises. Her legs have a little wobble to them, and her arms feel like they’re made of wood, but she stands, and she pulls Twilight to her feet.

“Then let’s get started,” Rarity says.

Comments

[NaiadSagaIotaOar]

I quite doubted I'd get anything done for the Bomb, but then I had two ideas come to me. One of them lead to this story. The other, had I followed it longer, would've likely lead to a story called "Rarity and Twilight Want to Do the Sex but Sonata Has Crabs," in which Rarity and Twilight's attempts at enjoying a romantic evening are cut short by Sonata trying to smuggle tasercrabs through the mirror portal.

Some other day, perhaps.

[Tiki_the_Cat]

Well. I came up with the same name for a story completely different.

...off to the editor!

[Skeeter The Lurker]

I'm...

Not quite sure what I just read.

I did like it though.

~Skeeter The Lurker

[Herald of Opera]

9881266
What is it with Rarity having to fight crabs, anyway? (Yes, I know who came up with it. That isn't an explanation.)

[NaiadSagaIotaOar]

9881313
I forget it's A Thing until someone reminds me it's A Thing, so I'm probably not the person who can give a good answer to that.

[Darkstarling]

Very nice. This had me fooled at first, it really seemed like it could have been Midnight until the perception warping became obvious. So he’s doing his thing in the human world huh? Well I suppose we’ll have to see how it goes, but they’ve certainly got a promising start. Like Rarity says, everything is impossible until you do it.

9881266
Heh... that other idea sounds like excellent nonsense.

[forbloodysummer]

moral support provided by forbloodysummer

From one person who puts Adagio on the highest of pedestals to another, I will always support your morals

[NaiadSagaIotaOar]

9881304
I'll take it!

Thanks for reading

9881361
Ooo, interesting thoughts! The idea of it being Midnight never crossed my mind, since I was sure from the beginning that Rarity was going to be a little loopy and not seeing things straight. So while some other ideas did cross my mind, Discord felt like the route that would demand the least awkward exposition.

Have to say I meant this as humanized Equestria, though, not the canon human world (Hence the AU and Human tags instead of Equestria girls), so apologies if that wasn't clear enough.

[Ice Star]

Well this was good and surreal as all fuck.

9881266 Some other day soon, I hope.

[NaiadSagaIotaOar]

9882343
The surreality of it was one of the biggest draws for me. I thought of the bit where Rarity's 'correcting' Twilight except actually it's not that and that more than anything else was what made me want to write this. So I'm glad to see the surrealness of it being commented on

I don't feel like I can make any definite crabby promises--I feel like it'd have to be a wacky comedy kind of thing, and some days I just cannot get in the right state of mind for that kind of thing But I sort of like the idea, so... we'll see what happens.

9881413

Adagio cannot be put on a high enough pedestal.

[Tethered-Angel]

Very nice, I'm glad you were able to get it done! Even after talking bout it with you I was still left guessing as to which you actually went with right up until the end.

9882398

Adagio cannot be put on a high enough pedestal.

Aaaand now I want to give Dagi a fear of heights.

[SigmasonicX]

That was a nice creepy story, with a happy ending. You did a great job with Rarity twisting Twilight's attempts to reach out to her. So this is this universe's version of Discord's attack, huh?

[NaiadSagaIotaOar]

9884415

So this is this universe's version of Discord's attack, huh?

Thanks for reading and being creepified

9884358
I was thinking it'd be unsatisfying to give too definite an answer too early, so I'm taking that as a good sign Thanks for talking it over with me as long as you did, though! It's amazing how long I can second-guess myself when I'm thinking of ideas by myself, so just narrowing it down to a couple possibilities was a big timesaver

Aaaand now I want to give Dagi a fear of heights.

Y-you monster, how could you do that

Although I guess that does just mean she'd stay on the highest of pedestals forever, so... could be worse.

[Tethered-Angel]

9884501
I like being mean to my favorite characters

[FanOfMostEverything]

Lovely stuff. So much heavier than Tom... emotionally, anyway. Thank you for it.

[Undome Tinwe]

Wonderful atmospheric writing, and the dichotomy of Rarity's perspective on Twilight was very well done. The use of prose to portray the surrealism of the whole situation was also top-notch. I very much regret not having read this earlier during the bomb.

[NaiadSagaIotaOar]

9988546

The use of prose to portray the surrealism of the whole situation was also top-notch.

Thanks for singling that topic out; silly prose faff like that is usually like half of why I write stuff, but so few people comment on it. So.

[CalculusFilly]

Dude. This is so freaking killer. The twist, the buildup to the twist, it's all perfect. idk what the dislikes are about but this is a GREAT read. Short, but gripped me and as I connected the dots that Rarity's perception was marred, rather than the world itself, it was a GREAT feeling. Love this. Killer prose, too – and the line about Rarity not having time for the veil but not having heart for the ring? God that KILLED me. Poor thing. Pooor poor Rarity.

[NaiadSagaIotaOar]

10074254
I've long since given up trying to guess where downvotes come from--it just seems like there's a plentitude of maybes down that route, with rarely enough information to narrow it down to any useful degree.

Anyway. Really glad you liked it! I haven't read this one since publishing it, but I was fairly fond of it at the time. So I really appreciate that you took the time to comment

[Bad Horse]

10074340
I'd guess the downvotes come from readers frustrated at not knowing what happened. (They'd have had a better chance of figuring it out if your story had come out in season 2.)

The writing is beautiful, and that's what kept me reading. I think the narrative isn't quite a story, though. We don't know what events led up to Discord magicking Rarity (if that's what happened), so we can't see if she shared responsibility for it, or what issues in her relationship with Twilight Discord might have exploited, or what within her cooperated with or resisted the spell, or even whether she made a decision at the end, or was just tired, or had lost all agency.

I think that the most-common way of making a narrative into a story is giving the reader enough causal links, or the loose ends to tie together in causal links, to set forth a proposition or puzzle to the reader. This might be an explanation or interpretation of what happened in terms of the personalities involved, or a paradoxical conflict between beliefs or values, or a comparison of alternative approaches to the world. (Just some common examples taken from many possibilities.)

But we don't have those links here. We've got just one cause (Discord) and one effect (Rarity's madness), which the narrative undoes in a way that raises no further questions, leaving us without even two loose ends to tie together. The narrative unknotted itself without my help, leaving me nothing rough to grasp at, nothing to think about, and slipped away, leaving me standing there blinking stupidly before I realized it was over and there was nothing left to see. At least, that's my knee-jerk reaction at a quarter past 1 in the morning.

[NaiadSagaIotaOar]

11067552
I don't remember this story very well at all, at least not in many specifics, but that sounds like a very reasonable take to me overall. I'm pretty sure I imagined some scene I thought would make for some fun and fancy writing, and didn't figure out what the heck was actually happening until later on (if ever), and I've been told I'm not always very good at making sure the reader gets the same big picture I have in my head. So between that and the short timeframe in which it was written, it's not hard for me to believe it didn't quite stick the landing.

[Bad Horse]

11067622 Thanks for not being upset! In a lot of fandoms it's considered very rude to comment on a stranger's story, but we do it routinely on fimfiction.

I should have said that I was also carried along by wanting to know what had happened between Twilight and Rarity, and then by wanting to know if Rarity was delusional. That worked well for the first half of the story. I wish I could explain why the "reveal" ("chaos spirit") felt anticlimactic to me--maybe just because it literally happened after the climax, after the point where Rarity made her decision (if it was a decision) and the outcome was set. It was a reveal of something that by then didn't matter any more.

I loved the style, and it fit the content well.

I used to be terrible at making sure the reader got the same picture I had in my head, and the only thing that helped me improve that was writing fan-fiction, reading thousands of comments from readers who didn't understand things I'd thought were obvious, accepting the blame myself for each misunderstanding, and trying to figure out how I'd misled them and how I might have communicated more clearly. For an example of this process, see part 1 of the afterword to Trust from Worst of Bad Horse.

Sometimes it's possible to literally improve a story (make it better for all readers) by making something clearer. But the more competent a writer becomes at communicating clearly, the more often that writer must make trade-offs, as increasing the clarity of any one point will be necessary for some readers, but will irritate the ones for whom that point is already obvious. All I can aspire to (and will never fully attain) is the skill level where every writing decision is a trade-off, and I know what trade-off I'm making.