Unfinished Business

by Fission

Chapter 4: The Magic of Friendship

Unfinished Business: Chapter 4

Twilight Sparkle looked at the mare lying next to her and needed every bit of her willpower to keep from bursting out in laughter. The Great and Powerful Trixie looked back at her with what was probably the most dumbfounded expression that she had ever seen. The only time she could recall a pony’s jaw dropping closer to the floor was when Rarity had convinced her to go clubbing several months before. She still didn’t really understand what the point is to go out and dance to loud music, but those stallions sure had looked surprised when Rarity passed by them.

After collecting herself somewhat, Trixie began to speak softly: “Trixie had heard rumors… but she didn’t believe that they could be true. It really was your friendship that defeated Nightmare Moon.”

Twilight’s eyes glinted softly as she reminisced. “Trixie, if there’s one thing I’ve become absolutely sure of, it’s that friendship is the most powerful magic in the world. Every day that I’ve spent here in Ponyville has only reinforced that.”

At this, Trixie’s shoulders slumped. “Twilight,” she hesitated. “What is it like having friends as good as yours?”

The purple unicorn cocked her head and gave a quizzical look. What is she getting at? “Well,” she began, and the rest seemed to come naturally as she gushed about her friends. “They’re the best friends that anypony could ask for! Applejack is the most dependable pony you’ll ever meet, and Rainbow Dash would never leave anypony hanging. Fluttershy is the kindest, most caring creature in all of Equestria and Rarity is probably the most generous. Don’t even get me started about Pinkie Pie—” Twilight looked towards Trixie and immediately cut herself off.

What Twilight saw confused her. Trixie sat before her with her eyes closed and a pained expression on her face. “Trixie, are you okay?” Twilight asked.

The blue unicorn slowly opened her eyes and recoiled a bit at the proximity of her concerned host. She shifted her gaze downward and fiddled her hoof on the floor. “Trixie has never... had any friends before.” Tears slowly welled up in the corners of her eyes and made their way down the sides of her face. Her voice quivered slightly as she continued. “Of course, that can be the price of being a performer... but hearing about how wonderful your friends are has made Trixie long for friends of her own.”

Twilight gazed upon her in confusion for several seconds. Eventually what Trixie was saying sunk in and the confusion gave way to concern. How can I help her?

Twilight patted her back with a tender hoof, and turning towards her, said “Trixie, I understand how you feel. Before I came to Ponyville, my only real friends were Spike and my books. What I’ve learned is that there are plenty of amazing ponies out there to be friends with.” She smiled softly as she continued. “You just have to give them a chance.” Twilight hesitated and pulled her hoof back slightly, did I overdo it? I know she’s sad, but Trixie is just so... independant. Does she even want my help?

All of her doubts vanished as Trixie turned to face her. The magician’s eyes still shined from the tears, but a gleam of hopefulness showed Twilight that her kindness had not been misplaced. “Twilight?” Trixie asked. “Is this...? What there is between us... is this friendship?”

A warm smile crossed the purple mare’s face as warmth spread throughout her chest. She didn’t know what could have possibly caused this change in Trixie. But whatever the cause, it simply felt comfortable talking to her. “Yes, this is friendship, I’m sure of it.”

“You aren’t just saying that to make me feel better, are you?” Trixie’s voice was tinged with doubt. “After all, I was terrible to you and your friends when I was last here. I would understand if you had trouble forgiving me.”

“Trixie, everypony deserves a second chance... and of course I want to be friends with you. You’re fun to be around.” She blushed a bit at the last statement.

This reaction was either not noticed or simply ignored by the blue magician, who continued “I enjoy your company as well, Twilight; and I appreciate the hospitality. I admit that I would likely not be so welcoming if I were in your position. At least, after... last time.”

Twilight wasn’t sure what to think. She hadn’t wanted to broach that touchy subject herself; it appeared that Trixie wasn’t really comfortable discussing it either despite the fact that she had brought it up. Twilight opened her mouth to respond, but was cut off by Trixie’s unsteady voice.

“Twilight, I never got the chance to properly thank you. When you saved me from that Ursa, it made me realize that actions speak louder than words. I may have run off without saying anything, but I was merely upset that you had made me look so foalish. I have had a lot of time to think about it since then, though. When I finally cooled down a bit I started to understand that there is a difference between being confident and just plain cocky; and I certainly used to push that boundary, to say the least.” She brushed a few strands of her silver mane out of her face and blushed slightly.

Twilight furrowed her brow, hardly believing what she heard. Never in a million years would she have expected Trixie to have been so affected by the Ursa incident. It was embarrassing, of course, but had nopony ever called any of her bluffs before? Regardless, she was definitely here in the flesh– Twilight had done some reality checks that she had learned from a book on lucid dreaming just to be sure– and despite it going against everything that Twilight thought she knew in the world, the brash mare was actually confiding in her. Was this all just because of their new-found friendship? Twilight felt another idea nagging in the back of her mind, yet she couldn’t quite pin it down.

The look of shock on her face must have registered with her guest, as Trixie broke the awkward silence without missing a beat, “Anyway... thank you, Twilight. You taught me a lesson that I can never forget.”

“Trixie, I never wanted to make you look bad in front of everypony. I couldn’t just stand by while an Ursa Minor destroyed the town though. You shouldn’t be thanking me for this though; I just didn’t want my friends to think I’m a braggart.”

Trixie gave her a deadpan look. “Twilight,” she spoke matter-of-factly “you are simply too gracious; but you are much more naïve than Trixie took you for. The most powerful unicorn in all of Equestria is thanking you.” She struck a pose for emphasis. “And yet you still deflect the compliments? Trixie demands that you accept her gratitude.”

The librarian raised an eyebrow at her. “So you’re going to make me? I suppose you’re welcome, Trixie. But really, I was just doing what anypony would do in that situation. I don’t need any thanks.”

“Such modesty. I suppose I will have to teach you to be less of a pushover. But that can wait, I suppose, it is getting late, perhaps I should depart soon.”

The two unicorns had indeed been working much longer than they had thought. Lunch had been entirely unnecessary with the amount of food they had both consumed at breakfast, and they had barely even noticed the passage of time. The sun was just beginning to set, the bright rays of warm summer light fading to a calm orange that peeked through the windows, creating a shadowing effect only partially dispelled by the interior lighting.

“Trixie, you don’t have to leave now. I would be happy to have you stay for dinner,” proposed Twilight cheerily, holding a smile that was perhaps a bit too inviting. She stood still for a moment, nervously glancing at the unicorn in front of her. It had been a long time since she had had a heart to heart with anypony, and frankly, it was nice. Aside from that, she was actually getting to know Trixie. Hopefully that would eventually give her a better picture of why Trixie had come back.

At this thought, both mares became acutely aware of the scent wafting in from the kitchen: hayfries and carrot soup. They had skipped lunch, after all, Trixie might have exploded if she had eaten anything more earlier in the day, and the hunger had crept back up on them while they had busied themselves in conversation. Spike had stolen away from the main room of the library several hours earlier– listening to a story he was already familiar with sounded like a great way to waste an afternoon– and had eventually made his way to the kitchen to cook dinner.

Trixie’s face lit up at the suggestion. “Twilight, I would love to stay and indulge in more of your assistant...”

“Spike,” Twilight corrected.

“Yes, my stomach has finally cleared itself of those delicious pancakes. I would love to try another meal prepared by Spike, ” continued Trixie. “Of course, if it isn’t an imposition.”

“I thought we decided that we were friends!” joked Twilight. “You don’t have to worry about imposing on me. Come on, I bet that Spike is nearly done cooking.” She trotted towards the kitchen happily, her pink and purple tail bobbing with each step as Trixie followed close behind.

---

“Twilight, you are a very fortunate pony to have such an excellent chef for an assistant,” stated Trixie as she lifted the last few drops of soup to her mouth. “Spike, Trixie must admit that you have a talent.”

“Well, well, well!” announced Spike as he munched on a hayfry. “You hear that, Twilight?”

“Spike! I like your cooking. I just think you could be a little bit nicer about it when I try to cook,” retorted Twilight.

The three were gathered around the table in the kitchen of the library finishing their food. Spike sat atop a chair while the two mares stood. All were comfortably full; Trixie had been able to restrain her eating this time. Outside, night had fallen over the warm summer landscape: a serene atmosphere populated by the twinkling stars and fireflies.

Trixie found herself staring out a darkened window as her hosts continued their banter. Without shifting her gaze, she stated “Trixie should be going now, it is getting quite late. I think I would do well to spend some time mulling over your Nightmare Moon story.”

Twilight looked up from her argument with her foster-brother. “Oh, you have to leave now? You have a place to stay, right? If you don’t, you would be welcome to stay here. But, umm, only if you need to.” A liminal blush crossed her face.

“No, that won’t be necessary, Trixie will be... fine. Thank you for your hospitality, Twilight. Perhaps you can help me plan out the show sometime soon,” answered Trixie, starting in the direction of the door.

“Any time, Trixie. This was a lot more fun than I expected. I’d love to keep helping you out.” Twilight hurried up to Trixie, not wanting to make her guest walk alone.

The pair reached the door and Twilight held it open with her magic. The glow of her horn produced a soft purple light which flickered throughout the shadowy room.

As Trixie stepped out the threshold, Twilight reminded her “Don’t forget to come back any time. I’ll be glad to have you stop by.”

“I’ll be back, Twilight.” She clapped a hoof to Twilight’s shoulder. “And I’m glad to have you as a friend.” She turned to leave but was stopped on her third step by Twilight’s unsteady voice behind her.

“Trixie... I’m glad that you came back.”

Trixie looked back over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow. “Yes, Trixie is starting to think it wasn’t such a bad idea as well.”

As Trixie turned to continue on her way, Twilight quickly shut the door behind her, a blush quickly spreading on her face. Why did I have to say that? Where did that thought even come from? She’s going to think that I’m so weird now! All I can ever seem to do around that pony is act stupid and awkward. Maybe I need to read up on some social skills...

I still feel like I don’t know anything about her, and I just spent an entire day with her! Why can’t anything make sense? Ugh! Everything is even more confusing than it was this morning. It seems like she’s just not telling me everything. Why didn’t she say anything about where she’s staying?

She nearly fell over herself rushing towards the stairs. Maybe I can find out where she’s going... She stopped herself at the window next to her bed and gazed out. As her eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, she picked out the speck of light that she was looking for. The soft beacon was far in the distance, but easily visible from Twilight’s elevated vantage point. As the glimmer emanating from Trixie’s horn slowly moved through the darkness, Twilight became conscious of her destination. The glow lingered for a brief moment, and extinguished itself right at the edge of...

The Everfree Forest?

Author's Note: Whew. That took forever to get this one to you guys! I apologize for that, but this is an important chapter and I wanted to make sure that I got it right. Speaking of getting it right, my editors/prereaders Dr. Jekyll and Railrugs helped me a ton on this chapter. Some of the stuff I had was a total mess before I got to revising it.

Chapter 5 is probably going to take a while. I'm going to rewrite most of chapter 1 and some of chapter 2 in an effort to get this up to snuff so I can submit this baby to Equestria Daily. Haha it would be pretty amazing to make it up there, so wish me luck I guess :P. The good news is that I plan on chapter 5 being from Trixie's perspective, so you'll get to see a different side of things for sure. Hopefully I can burn through these rewrites at a decent pace and get chapter 5 out in a reasonable amount of time. I can keep you guys updated via my blog, so just check my userpage if you're wondering anything. Once again, thanks for reading, and I hope you're enjoying the story.

-Fission

Rates and comments are always appreciated!

Comments

[Fox-Sama]

Welcome back to the world of the living!

and I loved this chapter, so much building up, and guess, it feel like they were really talking, and not just dialogue

[jileel]

brilliant

[Tome]

Now we wait!

[Draven Eclipse]

This story is pleasing to me. I shall track it and see how it develops.

[Baree]

Hmm. I imagine you might get it back the first time with some comments from the pre-readers about what they want to see different, but I shouldn't they would ask for to many changes. It also might be accepted right away. Either way, I see no reason why you wouldn't be able to get this up on EqD. I have been enjoying it so far anyway.

[Fission]

comment roundup, I suppose.
173192
Sorry I missed responding to this. It must have just slipped by somehow. Glad you liked it though, and I hope you like this newest chapter too
265186
Haha yeah, this one took me longer than I wanted for sure, but I hope I made it worth the wait. That's high praise though that you could actually envision the characters from the writing. It means a lot!
265627
Thanks! Glad you liked it!
266147
Yes, unfortunately. Hopefully all goes well with the revisions though so I can get this baby submitted to EqD pretty soon. As soon as that's done I can get started on chapter 5. Hopefully the Trixie POV will be worth the wait.
266321
Glad you've liked the story so far! I'm going to do my best to keep delivering you guys quality work.
266414
Well I certainly hope that things will go that well. I'm just really hoping that it could be enough to overhaul the first couple of chapters. The last couple have went really well, in my opinion at least, so hopefully I won't have to do any work on them.

I can keep you all updated on the progress of everything with the blog on my userpage. If you haven't seen anything from me for a while either check there or feel free to shoot me a pm.

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Good luck on EqD. And Everfree, eh? Fascinating...

[SomethingForThePain]

Glad you're back! ^.^ it was certainly worth the wait.

[oblivion2k]

Ooh, perspective change, sounds fun!
I'm shocked that this is your first fic, honestly. That's impressive. Keep it up man!

[Fission]

Here's another quick comment roundup.
268198
Thanks! I really hope they like it.
272450
Well it was certainly longer that I would like to take between chapters, but I'm glad that it worth it. My goal is to see if I can get out chapter 5 in about the same amount of time even with all of the revisions on chapters 1 and 2.
274082
Well, I sort of spent a lot of time learning by observation. I absolutely love to read. I think it helps too that I haven't been trying to rush myself. I think that's a problem with a lot of newer authors. And yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to writing a bit more from Trixie's perspective. The pancake scene sort of was, but this should be most of the next chapter.

[Fission]

289932
Thanks for your feedback! actually, I'm working on rewriting the first couple chapters now, and that's one of the main things that I'm targeting.

[PunkRoctorok]

Omg! Great chapter. Haha I'm glad we got to see Trixie develop more. Also your romantic teasing is spot on. Totally tracking this fic.

[Fission]

308404
thanks again for all of the in depth feedback, It's been very helpful. I'm glad you've liked the story so far and I hope that you'll like the changes I'm making as I rewrite my first two chapters.

[Kamylian]

Pretty good. I like this Trixie literation; she's nicer, but still kinda full of herself. The story has been steadily increasing in quality since chapter one, so I'll assume it'll get even better as it goes on. And the cliffhanger has me intrigued as well, so I'll be keeping an eye on this one.

[Fission]

So, if anyone is wondering, I'm on a bit of a hiatus now. I have just tons of stuff going on in real life and it's been that way for the last few weeks. I'm hoping that I can get back to working on this within a couple weeks. Also, I've done a lot of revisions on chapters one and two, but chapter two has some pretty deeply ingrained flaws i.e. Behoof itself was pretty terrible and I got massively and infuriatingly telly. My original plan was that I was going to post both of the revised chapters at once, but I'm probably going to do chapter one first. I might even write a new chapter before I get around to finishing off chapter two. I'm still committed to seeing this story through, even though I've had some issues with motivation and the amount of time I've had available to write. Yeah, so I just figured that some of you might be thinking this is a dead story. Happily enough, it's not dead.
-Fission

[Clouded Mind]

Any plans on updating soon?

[Fission]

668497
Well, I'd love to be able to say that I've been working on it recently, but that hasn't really been the case. My motivation to write unfortunately took a plunge a couple months ago and I've just starting to write again recently. Right now I'm working on a comedy one-shot about Twilight getting a new book. Hopefully I'll just get in a flow and write some more of this story afterwards. The thing that bothers me is that I know that the beginning of this story should be a lot better, yet sections of the rewrite have just caused me a lot of difficulty and frustration. However, I don't plan on leaving this story unfinished, as that would make the title a bit too apt, perhaps; but I'm just not sure what the timeframe is for an update. Thanks for reading though, anyway!

[Clouded Mind]

670935
I'm just glad you still plan to update it, also looking forward to your new story.

[The G&P Tea]

ah that heartbreaking moment when you see a comment on the "last" chapter is 21 weeks ago and no continuation. Well, if you certainly dont have the motivation or what have you (8 weeks can change things) I cant really argue now can I? Anyways, enough of my whining, I would like to say that up to this point, I have really enjoyed the story. The characters are well done, the dialogue feels flowing and natural, and overall I really like the story in a whole. I eagerly await to see what will happen next in the story!

[Rask]

"Maybe I need to read up on some social skills..."
You and me both fictional character Twilight Sparkle.

Please find your Muse. Find your will to journey on this story's path.
I regret the journeys I abandoned. I regret more the stories I didn't lay to rest.

[Clouded Mind]

So...any hope of seeing this update or has it died?

[Fission]

1625468
At this point, it's fairly unlikely that I continue this. I suppose there's a possibility I might pull it out and write during winter break. In short, this story needs too much work for me to be satisfied with it, and I've been extremely busy with my first year of college lately. I've just found a sort of general lack of motivation to write, I guess. Seeing your comment certainly put it in my head again though. I suppose I'll have to think about this more.

In any case, it will be about a month before I will have any time to really consider writing more.

Sorry, I'll bet I sound extremely scattered throughout this comment. Initially, I figured that I'm about done with this fic; but the more I think about it, it's definitely not outside of the realm of possibility. My mind is literally changing continually as I write this comment

Sorry about being so lukewarm about this. I've got a solution though. If I decide that I'm going to write more of this, I'll throw up some sort of a teaser beforehand to get more views to let everyone know that I'm back to writing. In any case, thank you for the ongoing interest. I don't really know if I deserve this; it's been over six months since I gave any sort of update.

[Clouded Mind]

1626382 It was a good story and would be a shame to see it left unfinished... Was a bit worried you had pretty much abandoned it altogether and I wouldn't even get a response. So, nice to see you're still around at least.

[JetstreamGW]

Thanks for reading and I hope you can stand to wait a bit longer, I'm not going to leave you hanging for long.

-Fission 5/6/12

Y'know...

[Knight N Gale]

So is this story dead...or what?

[Johndye]

On hiatus? Well, I can wait *Away for 60w, 1day*

DEAD