Thunderbolts and lightning, very very frightening
Outside, in the sky, teams of pegasi were zipping this and that way, kicking clouds and otherwise bringing the weather to heel. Inside, Jack was watching it all through a window, his nose squashed against the glass.
“Look at them go!” He said, slightly more nasally than usual (on account of the squashing).
Twilight, in the midst of sorting out snacks, trotted over, coming in to stand beside him.
“Looks like they’re nearly done,” she said. Jack looked to her and then back outside again. To him it looked a lot like what had been going on for a good few days now. Clearly he was missing something.
“Amazed you can tell, but then you always were the sharp one. Exciting stuff, this. Proper weather! Ooh, it’s all coming together,” he said, leaning away from the window and giving his hands a brisk rub.
Up until recently, all of the (persistently sunny, calm, and pleasant) weather on the planet had been more-or-less under Jack’s direct control, something they’d learnt after he’d casually dropped this in conversation with Twilight one day, like this wasn’t a big deal. After confirming that, no, he wasn’t just joking, there’d been the general opinion that maybe something should be done about that.
In the event, the ‘something’ was passing the bulk of the control over to the now more comfortably settled pegasi contingent. With the weather given the freedom to act according to what it wanted, they’d operate to take the edge off the worst bits, steer away what wasn’t wanted and basically do what pegasi had traditionally done as regarded the weather.
Of course, saying this was what was going to happen and making it happen were two entirely different things, one being much easier than the other. Luckily for all concerned though the one in charge of making the idea the reality was Twilight, who could organise a pissup in a brewery and could do so very easily, too. Eagerly leaping on such a novel and unique opportunity she planned plans, put the right ponies in charge of the right things, started getting infrastructure set up and also personally grilled Jack for every bit of possibly useful information she could.
And now it was all paying off. Hence pegasi zipping about.
“Kicking clouds, man, I missed you guys,” Jack said, then adding: “Weather’s actually super-complicated, it turns out. Who knew, right? Like, elevation and sea-levels and mountain ranges and hell even the tilt of the planet. You wouldn’t believe what a mess things were at the start. Before I figured it out I just kind of kept everything under control through brute force, which wasn’t good. And even when I figured it out I didn’t really figure it out, I mostly just guessed what I’d been doing wrong, and-”
Twilight stepped in here, knowing that if she didn’t he’d likely just keep going.
“I know, Jack, you told me all this, remember?” She said, gently, leaning her head into his side.
He’d had to tell her all of this - more slowly and in excruciatingly more detail as she asked him questions - as part of the process that he was at that very moment witnessing, the transfer of control and all that. It was that grilling that had been mentioned. Knowing what he did and didn’t do as regards the weather had been quite important in the handover, just in case there was something vital he forgotten to mention (not an unreasonable worry, all things considered).
“Right, yeah, just…”
Jack trailed off. Wasn’t sure where he was going with that.
“One less thing to worry about,” he said, after thinking about it. He’d been personally directing the weather now for so long it had become something of a reflex, and now that he’d had to consciously stop doing it its absence felt a bit weird.
“Exactly. Now come on. You’ve got thousands of years of things to catch up on so we should get started,” Twilight said, gently wrapping a wing around his middle to steer him away from the window and towards the soft furnishings and snacks. It worked.
“Space television, yeah!” He said, pumping a fist. Twilight looked at him sideways. She didn’t look impressed.
“It’s not really - no-one calls it that…”
“Space television.,” Jack whispered, doing another, smaller fist pump. Twilight rolled her eyes but this time said nothing, just continuing to usher him onto a sofa and under a blanket.
The idea for the evening and the reason for the two of them being in a place with sofas and snacks and all that sort of thing was that they, two adults, were going to be having a funtime sleepover. Blankets and watching stuff and eating and that sort of thing. Maybe some hot goss, maybe passing notes - who was to say?
They were both very excited, each in their own way, and both very pleased they’d suggested the idea.
The sleepover had actually been Nova’s idea, in point of fact, despite what Jack and Twilight might have thought. She had not-so-cunningly used her position as Twilight’s favoured pupil and Jack’s favoured space-captain to plant the idea in both their heads, letting them both think that they were the driving force and then just sitting back to let them go at it.
This wasn’t wholly altruistic on Nova’s part, not born out of any desire she might have had to see her mentor and the weird alien thing get some rest and relaxation or anything like that. She’d mostly done it because both Jack and Twilight had plainly been pining for a night of one another’s company but had either elected to ignore this or were just both as bad as each other when it came to being blindingly oblivious.
Which is to say, if Nova hadn’t done it then nothing would have happened, and the two of them would have just kept on moping and exchanging longing looks without actually doing anything about it.
Nova had not been able to bear it, and fervently hoped that the sleepover resolved something or moved something along or at the very least made it slightly more bearable to be around the two of them (as she so often had to be).
You could cut the tension with a knife sometimes, it was ridiculous.
And so it was that they were now in Twilight’s place, under blankets on a sofa in front of a very large, very fancy television-esque thing (that was much more advanced than any mere television, this being the future and all), set for an evening of not doing a lot other than hanging out. Like old times. Like really, really, really old times.
They were doing it at Twilight’s place because Jack didn’t have a place. He could have had a place, they had offered him a place several times, but each time he had demurred. Despite technically always being asleep he - or at least the ‘he’ everyone saw wandering about the place - didn’t ever need to sleep. He mostly just hung around wherever had lights with whoever was around (and awake) until Twilight woke up again.
A place just for himself, a place where he could be alone, wasn’t especially attractive, he’d said. Had quite enough of that already. So that was that and that was why the sleepover was at Twilight’s.
The two of them were lightly bickering over a bowl of something crunchy when, without warning, there was a flash, followed shortly afterwards by a rolling rumble. It being a warm day the window was open a crack, so both flash and rumble entered the room. Jack nearly jumped off the sofa and certainly he upset the bowl (though somehow nothing spilt, in defiance of everything).
“Whoa, holy hell balls,” said Jack, staring at the window.
“Are you okay, Jack?”
Still watching the window he lowered himself back onto the sofa, resetting the blanket about himself and trying (and failing) to look casual.
“Heh, fine, fine. Just hadn’t seen lightning in a while, is all,” he said.
“Really?”
Even if this was the case this seemed a bit of an overreaction.
“Well I kind of just kept things calm once I worked out how. Before? Back near the start? Before I got a lid on it? Lightning for days. Literally lightning for days. Just kept going and going and going and-”
There was another bolt and flash and he flinched.
“Takes me back.”
Not in a good way, it looked like. Twilight leaned forward enough to be in Jack’s field of view before delicately putting a hoof onto his thigh to get his attention.
“Jack?”
Jack blinked and shook his head, glancing down at her hoof then at her.
“Right, right.”
“I did say there’d be a storm once they finished,” Twilight said, gently.
“I know, I know, I remember. And it’d be bad if I made it, you know, stop, right? Just hypothetically.”
“Yes, they’d have to start over again,” she said. She’d already mentioned this to him before, something Jack was fully aware of - he’d just hoped that maybe her answer and the reality of things had changed since she’d said it the first time. Unfortunately not.
“Right. Don’t want that. It’s fine. Just lightning, right? And thunder. Let’s - let’s maybe turn the volume up, hmm? Ooh, next episode. I’ve no idea what’s happening,” he said, faffing about himself and the blanket across his legs, nearly upsetting a snack bowl and failing to find the remote control and yet somehow still managing to up the volume.
Eyeing him sideways Twilight sidled a bit closer and leant into his side. This had an immediate calming effect and the faffing ceased.
They watched a lot of stuff. Jack hadn’t the foggiest idea what any of it was but really couldn’t have cared less. He surrendered all picking responsibility to Twilight and she exercised this responsibility to its fullest extent. Jack compensated by eating more snacks. He didn’t have to and indeed had no particular need to, but he wanted to, and that was more than enough.
They had a nice time.
Later, they retired to bed. Or Twilight did, given she was the only one out of them who actually needed to sleep. Jack got a camp bed at the foot of hers, mostly just to embrace the spirit of the thing. He was even fine with Twilight’s going to sleep in the dark, meaning that he too would be in the dark. She’d offered to leave a light on but he’d demurred - that wouldn’t be fair on her, he’d said. So Twilight nodded off in the dark, excluding the occasional flash from the lightning still going on outside, rain lashing the windows.
Time passed.
It was unclear what woke Twilight up. Nothing had really changed that she could immediately see, it was just that, at some point, she cracked an eye and looked around the room. Still dark, so not morning yet. Still storming outside so there was that. Maybe there hadn’t been anything? Maybe she’d just woken up for no reason, as happened to everyone sometimes?
She wasn’t so sure. Something seemed out of place.
Then she noticed that the lump that was Jack was no longer at the foot of the bed, his camp bed was empty. That got her sitting up.
“Jack?” She asked the darkness, blinking and looking around. Her eyes tried to adjust, but the flashes of lightning kept messing with her. The flashes did, however, let her spot Jack. he was in a corner of the room, knees drawn up to his chest.
“Jack?” She asked more directly.
“I’m fine,” Jack said.
“You’re in the corner.”
A second passed as he tried to think of a snappy comeback or believable denial, but there really wasn’t a lot he could do.
“I know that. It’s fine. I’m fine. Don’t worry about it,” he said.
Of course this had the exact opposite effect of what he’d intended and Twilight was at once out of bed and moving over to him. Another flash - the weather really was going for it out there - spilled from the around the curtains and Jack winced.
“Think in the future they’d have better windows than these. Blackout windows or something. It’s the future, why are there still curtains?” He muttered, pulling his legs in tighter to himself. Twilight, reaching him, moved her hoof to the edge of the window and did something that Jack wasn’t watching but which had the instant effect of blacking out the window completely. He looked up. In the now very-gloomy room he looked at the window and then to Twilight.
“They can do that?” He asked.
“They can,” she said.
“So why didn’t you do that in the first place?”
“I like curtains. And I didn’t know this would happen.”
A pause.
“That’s fair…” Jack said, rubbing his face. “I’m a bloody nervous wreck.”
“Because of the lightning?”
“Hah, what gave it away?” He said. There was a rumble from outside that even the super-fancy windows failed to fully absorb and Jack grimaced. “Thunder too. Ack. It’s just been a while and I can’t - I can’t stop it now because that’d ruin all the flying guys hard work, I know that, and it’s - oh, loud, that one was loud - it’s really taking me back.”
That last one had been louder. Louder even than the one before!
Jack was rubbing his face some more, which gave Twilight more time to think about what she was supposed to do in a situation like this.He wasn’t spaced out like he was sometimes, which was something, but he was also still curled up in a corner, which was something else, and not something good.
She didn’t like seeing him like this. What would make it better the best?
She resolved and decided. She stood up straight.
“Jack,” she said. He dropped his hands to look at her again.
“Hmm?”
With his attention still on her she went back across the room again, slung her covers aside, and hopped into bed, leaving a very conspicuous space which she patted while staring him down.
“Come here,” she said.
“...in with you?”
“Yes.”
Jack swallowed.
“You know, you really don’t have t-”
“Jack,” Twilight said, cutting him off. “In.”
“Well if you say so…”
Not exactly putting up a whole lot of a fight, but then he hadn’t wanted to. Jack was across the room before the next roll of thunder, under the covers and clinging to Twilight so unashamedly you might have thought this was his plan all along. It hadn’t been, obviously, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to make the most of it.
The thunder was still going - if anything it was more going now than it had been moments before; clearly a spicy patch - but it didn’t seem as bad now. Beyond that muffled rumble though there wasn’t anything. Neither spoke.
Jack, his face tucked in somewhere tangled in Twilight’s legs, broke the silence eventually.
“Do you remember…?”
He didn’t finish the question but then again he didn’t have to, Twilight’s mind had gone exactly where his had gone, so she knew what it was he was asking about.
“I do.”
This wasn’t the first time they’d been cuddled up like this.
-
Twilight arriving back at the castle with Jack in tow had been a surprise for those in a position to notice such things. Not a huge surprise, but a surprise all the same. He’d previously been in Canterlot, mostly for want of anywhere better for him to be while it was decided what the next step for him would be - the next step presumably being this. He would be living with Twilight from here on out, until a way back home was figured out for him.
She’d offered to put him up for the duration because, well, for two reasons, really, both of them entirely logical and obvious.
For one, she was the one doing or going to be doing most of the work about trying to find a way of sending him home, so having him close to hoof just made sense in case she needed to ask him anything or poke or prod him to find something out. For another, she had the space. They all had the space, of course, but given the first reason the second reason just made it a slam-dunk. They’d all seen the compelling nature of her case, and so Jack had gone back to Ponyville with her.
And was now in his room, settling in, and Twilight was outside the door, loitering, hoof raised and poised to knock, wondering whether she'd left it long enough to see whether he needed anything or not.
She couldn't quite put a hoof on it, but something about him just seemed a bit off. Not that she'd exactly had long enough to get a perfect read on him or anything, but what little time she had had had allowed her to at least get a little bit of an idea, and that little bit of an idea was telling her he wasn't quite feeling himself.
He'd been quieter than he normally was. There'd been fewer jokes.
Eventually she could bear it no longer and, besides, maybe he wanted a drink or something? She knocked.
No immediate response. She knocked again. Nothing.
Chewing her lip she tossed up the rudeness of just barging into what was now his own room versus the possibility that maybe something bad had happened. Concern won out, and she let herself in.
Jack was not obviously visible, which was unusual. Twilight peered around but still didn’t spot him. She then heard him, over from a corner, behind the bed. She cautiously approached and found him there, on the carpet, weeping. This wasn’t what she’d expected.
“Jack?” Are you alright?” She asked.
Jack paused mid-muffled sob and looked up at her, slowly, and then hauled himself up into a sitting position, his back against the wall.
“I’m okay, totally fine,” he said, wiping his nose on his arm.
“You’re crying. On the floor.”
Jack stared silently into space as he thought of some excuse or reason for this that would let him off the hook, but he quickly realised she had him dead to rights. He shrugged.
“Well, yeah. Apart from that I mean.”
This left them at something of an impasse. Jack didn’t really have a lot else to say and didn’t really want to have to say anything at all in the first place and kind of just wished Twilight would stop looking at him and making him feel self-conscious, while Twilight had no idea how best to handle Jack in a moment like this. When he’d been making jokes back in Canterlot she’d at least been able to pretend to understand and titter along. For this she had nothing.
After what felt like an enormous and agonising length of time (a few seconds) Twilight took the initiative and sat down in the corner with him. It seemed the thing to do. Jack hadn’t seen it coming but didn’t object. He just sniffled a bit.
“What’s wrong?” Twilight asked.
Jack sniffled a bit more and threw his hands up despairingly.
“I don’t know, I don’t know. Guess it’s all just sinking in now. What happened, I mean. To me. Being here, all that. Weird delay, right? Been days now and I was rock solid but now out of nowhere, this. Hit me like a train. Urgh.”
His hands then went to his face and his breath hitched, a sound like a failed laugh emerging. Not quite a sob, but not not a sob.
“Guess I was just thinking about it or something,” he said into his palms before scrubbing tears away on his wrists. “Can’t believe I bloody started crying though. Urgh. It’s stupid, doesn’t help anything.”
“There’s nothing wrong with crying,” Twilight said.
“I’m aware, I know this, but I can’t accept it,” Jack said. This made no sense, and him saying something which she didn’t understand suggested to Twilight that he might be getting a bit back to normal, if only a little.
He was still in a corner though, on the floor, and still sniffling. So he wasn’t all the way better yet.
Not really having a clue what to do in a situation like this with a human - only knowing one human and that human being Jack and therefore being something of an odd fish in the first place - Twilight acted on instinct and went with the first idea that popped into her head:
“Would you like a hug?”
Sniffing, Jack waved this off.
“It’s fine, it’s fine, don’t worry about it,” he said, and while his words might have said this every single other part and aspect of him said otherwise. But you couldn’t go off of anything as threadbare as it being powerfully, silently obvious but yet unspoken, especially when they had said something to the contrary plainly not meaning a syllable of it. It wasn’t the done thing.
Twilight mulled briefly on this issue, but only briefly, as after a mere second or three of mulling she’d come up with the perfect solution.
“...I’d like a hug,” she said.
She had correctly figured him out. He blinked at her.
“...you would?”
Twilight nodded.
“I would.”
Jack couldn’t refuse - politeness wouldn’t allow it - but could he delay?
“...now?”
“Now, please.”
He could not delay.
“If you insist. If I get snot on you I’m sorry,” he said, shifting.
“It’s okay,” Twilight said, worse things having happened. “Let’s go up there to do it,” she then said, pointing. Jack followed the line of her point. He didn’t have to follow it very far.
“The bed?” He asked. This was indeed where she was pointing, it being next to them and all.
“The floor is cold,” Twilight said. Uncomfortable too, but she didn’t want to oversell it.
“Well you’re not wrong. Alright, fine. After you, Twilight, wanderer of cuddles,” Jack said, sniffing and urging Twilight onward and upward.
Thus, Twilight went first, Jack second. They went on top of the covers because neither thought getting under was wise or necessary. Making contact was awkward. Despite it being Twilight’s idea she was still uncertain how to go about a hug, and Jack wasn’t exactly in the best frame of mind. That, and neither really knew what the best way of mating human to pony (hug wise, obviously) was. Where did the limbs go? The fit wasn’t quite natural, or at least not intuitive.
They made it work somehow.
And once they made it work it very quickly devolved into Jack losing what little composure he’d been able to scrape back together while in the corner and bawling into Twilight’s middle portions as the weight of the days since his arrival made itself known. He’d been playing it off as not that big of a deal since it had happened, and every time he had the gnawing realisation that, actually, it was a pretty big deal had been growing more persistent in the back of his head.
Whole world gone and all that. Everyone he knew, everything that had mattered to him, etcetera. No obvious way back, no idea what anyone he’d left behind was making of his disappearance and so on. Joking only really kept it at bay for so long and so well. He could pretend to ignore it, but it was only pretending, and it, as said, gnawed.
Twilight absorbed his outpourings. She’d been expecting them, so they didn’t come as that much of a surprise. She just rubbed his back and let him get it out in the open so it wasn’t festering on the inside anymore. Most of it wasn’t really comprehensible, and what few bits she could make out made sense. She’d miss her home, too.
At length, the bawling tailed off, first into sporadic sobs, then into sniffling again, then into quiet.
The quiet stretched. Eventually, Jack said:
“...thank you.”
Twilight gave him a squeeze and said nothing.
And then the quiet came back, but it was the good kind, and it carried on for a long time.
-
That had been, to put it mildly, a long time ago. Not so long either had forgotten, of course. Somehow. Memory could be notoriously patchy and unreliable a lot of the time and yet for one or two things it seemed fixed and set and could preserve them in defiance of just about anything. How did that work? Who’s to say.
Perhaps it had just been a very important moment for both of them.
Deciding he’d given sufficient time since speaking to allow them both to briefly marinate in the past, Jack wriggled upward from where he’d been wrapped around Twilight so they were now more-or-less face-to-face. Looking into her eyes, from this close, Jack found that he didn’t mind the thunder as much as before. Could barely even notice it.
“...thanks. For then. For now. For being you. For coming back,” he said.
“Thank you for keeping the place tidy,” she said, smiling a small smile.
“Heh, see what you did there.”
That, after all, being his line.
Having looked into Twilight’s eyes, Jack found it difficult to look away. Given that she wasn’t looking away either, it seemed the problem was mutual. Both of them appeared to be on the cusp of saying something, but before either of them could their noses accidentally bumped and the moment popped like a bubble, descending into awkward giggling on both sides.
“Let’s - let’s shift around, eh?” Jack said.
His clinging became less limpet-like and transitioned into something more like an actual hug. They both knew how to make it work now. Even with Twilight having grown they still made it work easily. She was little spoon, his arms around her, hands locked in front. This was good.
“Don’t tell anyone, but this sort of thing happens to me more than I’d like to admit. More than you’ve seen, I mean,” Jack then said, out of nowhere. “Me getting the jitters and all that.”
“It does?”
“Not constantly, of course, but more than I’d like. Just tend to try and make sure it happens when no-one’s around. I don’t - I don’t mind as much with you because, well, you’ve seen much worse from me. But for everyone else it’s a bit…”
Twilight waited for the rest but it didn’t seem to want to come willingly.
“A bit what?” She prodded.
“...s’abit embarrassing, innit?”
“You really need to stop thinking any of this is embarrassing. What you’ve been through isn’t really anything that… well, I don’t need to tell you. But you shouldn’t be embarrassed, Jack. Don’t even be embarrassed, okay? It’s good and I’m always here for you, okay?”
“Okay,” he said, unconvincingly.
All things considered, Jack was actually doing remarkably well. Hilariously well, in fact.
A pause.
“Still feel I should be dealing with it better. I’m, like, a super-powerful monster abomination thing now. I should be ineffable and stoic, you know?” Jack said. Twilight bumped back into him reproachfully.
“Don’t call yourself that.”
“What, super-powerful?”
Another bump.
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“Meanie…”
“You’re not a monster, you’re just you. You’ve always been you. You’ll always be you.”
Jack winced. Such bromide.
“What does that even mean, Twilight?”
“It means I love you.”
This she’d said without hesitation. It hadn’t slipped out by accident, she’d said it entirely deliberately. Sincerely, too. She’d meant it. That’s how she’d been able to say it so easily and why she didn’t feel the need to explain or elaborate. She just settled into his arms some more while he lay there, rigid in shock.
Thunder rumbled the building, but that hardly mattered anymore.
Jack didn’t manage a response, in the end, but he did squeeze her very tightly indeed, which kind of got the point across. Certainly, Twilight knew what it meant.