The more it hurt,
"Bad dream?" She knows she hates calling them nightmares.
Spitfire nods slightly, eyes on the floor. Her body rigid, upright. She's always upright.
Twilight steps to the side, the left door wide open. "Come in." She always has to invite her because she never enters otherwise.
Spitfire's chest expands with a silent breath as she walks into the castle, as if she might have refused her.
Twilight shuts the door softly behind her. "Do you want some water?"
Spitfire shakes her head. Not tonight.
"Okay."
There is a small pause. Twilight considers inviting her to sit down on a nearby sofa, but watching the mare’s distant expression, second guesses. Not quite there yet. Instead, she takes a few supportive steps closer to the pegasus and stands close at her side. She doesn't say anything.
Spitfire embraces the silence while she tries to gather her mind. It's easier to do when Twilight is close. It's easier to be calm when she's in her company somehow.
When she's ready, she eases a hoof off the ground, and Twilight knows she can come in for a hug. They stay in each other's embrace for a while, and Twilight takes note of Spitfire's racing heartbeat, listening for her breath.
It quivers. She bites her lip.
"I know," Twilight offers quietly, tightening the hug. "It's okay."
It takes a long time for Spitfire to regather herself. About six minutes is Twilight's estimate. When she does, she steps back and ruffles her wings slightly.
"I..." She wants to tell her she's better now, but Twilight knows that already, so she says something else this time. "Thank you, princess."
"I keep telling you," Twilight smiles soft, and hopes that Spitfire doesn't see the hurt in it. "You can just call me Twilight."
Spitfire doesn't like that.
She thinks that to call a princess by her name must be among the most disrespectful things you could possibly do. And she wants-- needs to show Twilight her respect on account of how much she's done for her.
They are not equals in her mind.
"And I told you," Spitfire turns it around, "That you need to start treating yourself with more respect, ma'am. You don't give yourself enough credit..." She is still speaking soft. She is not fully recovered. "Not nearly enough."
"Come on, Spitfire. You have to know you're not just some pony to me."
Spitfire cringes at that. "Well, I should be. You shouldn't even know me beyond my occupation. This... This is all wrong." There is a guilty tang in her voice.
"What is?"
"I just told you. You should never have had to see this side of a pony in my position," Spitfire answers, her volume lifting for a moment. "Not even once. The wonderbolts exist to give safety and peace of mind to the citizens of Equestria. The princesses are our top priority. Yet somehow the captain of that group is relying on one of those princesses to know her weaknesses, intimately. How is that not wrong?"
Twilight shakes her head. "Even if I hadn't ever seen it, Spitfire, I wouldn't have assumed that you don't have your weak points just like everypony else."
Spitfire paces along the floor for a second, noticing more reasons that she admires the mare from that response. "Still."
Twilight lets the topic drop there. She recognizes that Spitfire deserves a space for her emotions to dwell without respite, so she makes room for them in the silence by setting her own aside.
She knows that Spitfire isn't saying this because she plans on changing anything anyway. Otherwise, she'd have stopped visiting a long time ago. She knows that she just wants to say it, get it off her chest.
Spitfire sighs and sits on the floor. "...I don't understand why I always have to do this. It's just a stupid dream. Dreams can't hurt you. I know that. I mean, you’d think I’d at least be able to shake ‘em off after I wake up, but-....” Her words drown behind the frustration rising in her tone until she sighs suddenly, trying to let it go.
She has already spent a brief time wondering why Princess Luna never appears in them, dispelling them for her. She has reached the conclusion that it's because she's strong enough to handle it compared to the other ponies she must be prioritizing. She is at peace with this explanation.
Twilight walks over and sits at her side. "Do you... want to know what I think about it?"
Spitfire gives that a considerable amount of thought, appreciating the request for permission. "...Alright," she says after thinking about it some. "Shoot."
"Well... I think that bad dreams aren't meant to hurt you,” begins the princess, recalling something Luna told her once, “But they are a powerful manifestation of the hurt you already have. So... instead of focusing on getting rid of the dreams, sometimes you have to try to heal the wound that the dreams are coming from."
Spitfire laughs through her nose. "You're funny."
"Why am I funny?"
"Because. You make it sound so easy."
Twilight looks at the floor, frowning. "... You know, I could get you a-"
"Don't," Spitfire cuts in. "I don't need a shrink. Can you imagine what the 'bolts would think?"
"They wouldn't have to know."
"Whatever. I don't need one. I'm in working order, I'm not mentally sick or anything. Just a bit haunted is all."
"You don't have to be mentally ill to see a therapist. They're for everypony. Even ponies who are mostly happy go to therapy."
"That's nice, but what I'm saying is that I don't need one. So it's a waste of effort."
"I don't think it would be a-"
"Can we drop this please?"
"...Okay." Twilight appreciates Spitfire's ability to set her boundaries without hesitation. It relaxes her somehow. So she accepts this order. "...Do you want to go back to sleep yet?" She nods down the hall, where Spitfire knows her bedroom to be.
Spitfire shakes her head. She wants to wrap a wing around Twilight, but refrains. Not equals. "No. Not yet at least.”
"What time are drills?" A familiar question.
"'Bout an hour from now," Spitfire answers. "But I feel good. Awake, that is. I don't need any more sleep tonight."
Twilight's gaze softens. She knows that her subordinates only get around five and a half hours of sleep each night, and that Spitfire has to get up an hour ahead of them. She thinks she needs more sleep because she's familiar with the dangers of lacking it. "Alright," She says anyway.
Spitfire is comfortable here, staring at the floor at Twilight's side.
Twilight is too. Though she wishes she could wrap a wing around Spitfire. She refrains without an invitation; She thinks that doing so without one could be disrespectful. Even though they are equals to her, she knows how Spitfire is about receiving unsolicited affection.
So they relax in each other's company for a time. It stretches on long enough that Twilight yawns silently, forgetting herself.
Spitfire slouches. "I'm sorry for keeping you up, princess. I can-"
"No!" Twilight straightens in alarm. "I mean... It's fine. Please, stay as long as you like."
She says it like she would to a friend, but it pains her to know that Spitfire probably sees it as her princess persona speaking.
Spitfire pauses and peers at Twilight from the corner of her eye. She tries to guess whether Twilight had been sleeping before she came. She is skilled at estimating these things by the look of ponies' faces. "You weren't sleeping," She gathers. "Were you?"
A blush creeps its way onto Twilight's face and Spitfire finds it pathetically adorable in a way. "Sure I was," Lies the princess, shuffling her feathers nervously. She quickly understands she's too obvious though and sighs. "...No.”
Spitfire watches her eyes for a moment and then finds herself speaking. "...How come? Everything okay?"
Twilight nods easily. "Yeah, everything’s good."
Spitfire would press on this issue if she wasn't regarding Twilight as her superior, but she does so she lets it go.
Twilight recognizes this reaction and clicks her tongue. She refuses to take advantage of that. "Oh alright, I’ll just tell you. I was just up reading."
"Ah," says the other, a comforting reassurance seeping into her smile. "Should have guessed. Mind if I ask what sort of book it was this time?"
Twilight lets out a small sigh. "You may..."
Spitfire laughs a little, and that warms Twilight's heart. "Alright then. What book?"
"It was... A.K Yearling."
Spitfire's smirk peels higher. "Ah, okay. It just so happens I hear a heck of a lot about those books from a certain subordinate of mine. Didn't realize that author was so popular."
Twilight smiles. "Yeah, I bet you have.” There’s a small pause where something clearly rests on the tip of her tongue, just barely holding herself back from adding something. Her wings hunch ever slightly when she decides to say it, and it couldn’t be clearer to Spitfire how much pride goes into it. “I'm actually the one who introduced the series to her. First time she ever read a whole book, I think."
"You are?" Spitfire replies with an astonished lilt to her voice. “Color me impressed. Considering Rainbow Dash.”
Twilight lets out the slightest chuckle, her cheeks coloring only barely. “Yeah, I know.”
Spitfire laughs a bit too and her whole body relaxes for the first time tonight. She's never felt as calm as she does around anyone but Twilight and she doesn't know what to make of it. She thinks she should have had access to this feeling years ago, that she's been cruelly cheated out of it until now. A small part of her is jealous of it despite having it in her hooves, like it doesn't count anymore.
She needed this feeling with the one who claimed they could give it, who said that they were the best thing that ever happened to her, not with Princess Twilight. Being here reassures her, like the sting of disinfectants on fresh wounds, that that pony had been wrong.
And yet, she finds that she could easily get one more hour of sleep in, sitting right here next to her. She finds herself shocked at how easy it would be to lay her head against the alicorn and close her eyes, to be lulled into a calming dreamscape by her presence alone.
She could never do that though. Not equals.
Twilight watches in the corner of her eye as Spitfire’s eyes fall shut, sitting upright the way she is. It's a sleeping posture only a certain type of pony is able to pull off for very long. Twilight feels a strange comfort at the knowledge that they have this in common.
Again, Twilight finds herself wanting to pull her in close, to tuck her in her wing and allow her to rest against her side. She again doesn't, sure that it's not what Spitfire would want her to do.
There has always been so much that Twilight is willing to do for her and so little that Spitfire is willing to receive. She wants more than anything for her to know that she can lean on her.
Twilight takes this moment to promise to herself that although she will remain at a comfortable distance so long as it's what she wants, she will also never allow herself to be out of reach. She will do everything in her power to support her from the distance she needs.
"Spitfire," Twilight mutters.
Apricot eyes fly open, awake, like fire sparking in a cave. She looks over at Twilight, seeming taken aback by herself. "I wasn't sleeping," she insists.
Twilight chuckles. "I believe you, but if you can get better sleep here than at HQ, I don't see why you shouldn't take advantage of that."
Spitfire takes in this suggestion with a quiet releasing breath. She expects to be embarrassed, but Twilight has seen her drift to sleep many times before. She considers that perhaps at this point, it would be rude to turn the offer down when it's so clear how much she could use it.
She lets out a silent little yawn and gets onto her hooves. “...Yeah, maybe you're right. We could both use the sleep anyway, huh.”
Twilight stands too, offering a bright smile. "I'm glad." She walks ahead with an inviting nod in her direction.
Spitfire watches, finding herself unable to follow her.
She’s been here so many times. Twilight has helped her so many times. She needs to do something that feels like movement, like progress. Twilight has been trying so hard for her. Spitfire needs to show Twilight that she’s trying too.
That she’s trying to heal the wounds.
Twilight notices her delay and turns around.
Spitfire's gaze trails back onto the floor as something shifts behind her eyes. It seems to Twilight as if she's letting go of something, albeit hesitantly. She takes a long quiet moment to herself that Twilight doesn't dare interrupt, feeling that she's preparing herself to say something.
"I was always told…," She starts in a low rasp, and it's clear to Twilight who exactly she's thinking of by the sound of her voice. It was never something either of them directly spoke of, but this particular pony’s role had flowed between them as a silent understanding for some time now. "That I was the type of pony who could take any amount of pressure and use it to my benefit somehow, like fuel. Like overcoming hardship was what defined me or something. …And…" Her expression hardens, cringing slightly. "That way of thinking burrowed itself into my bones. I started measuring my worth by how much pain I could handle. The more it hurt, the stronger I was. That's what I would always tell myself, but…" Her body goes rigid again, like it was when Twilight opened the door for her. "But s-sometimes it doesn’t-...”
There is a long pause now, accompanied by the unspoken words that Spitfire finds too hard to say. She suddenly wonders why she’s even saying any of this.
Twilight’s gaze softens, a sympathetic look offered in response to the silence. It is a look that reads, simply, ‘No rush. I’m always listening.’
Spitfire’s gaze hardens on the ground in front of her, allowing a long silence before she can speak again. She considers backing away from the topic. She considers apologizing to the princess for burdening her with this. The blood flowing through her body is warm with the urge to stop now, to leave the castle and never have to face Twilight again.
…Twilight.
Compassionate, patient, warm Twilight.
She had never once judged her for showing weakness even after all this time. She even acts, sometimes, like the world depends on Spitfire’s comfort and security.
Spitfire has always attributed it to her duties as a princess. It is the easiest way to make sense of all these things. Far easier than to assume that she is actually worth all the attention.
…But Twilight has always insisted otherwise.
Because Twilight is Twilight.
And maybe that was the simple reason why she’d come up to her that day. That day when, in her weakest moment, she had busted out of that cursed house and flown so fast and so far that she barely noticed when her body crashed into the dirt, miles upon miles upon miles from where she’d started.
What sort of miracle was it that she had landed on the outskirts of Ponyville? And why hadn’t they just gone back to being strangers yet? How was it that Twilight still found so much spare energy to keep caring about her years after the fact?
Where in Equestria did a pony like that even come from?
“...Spitfire?” Twilight’s voice returns her gently to the present where she's watching her with an invested, worrying gaze.
“Sorry,” mutters Spitfire, her racing thoughts settling back into the place they’d started. “Sometimes it all just feels…” She takes a focused, deep breath. “...debilitating. …I don’t even know if that makes sense, but…”
Twilight takes a moment to think about it, but then nods thoughtfully. “It does. I think I understand. I mean... at least as much as I can without being in your position...”
Spitfire meets that with a comfortable silence, gazing back at the ground.
After a second she finds, strangely, that she feels just a bit better. Lighter. She can’t even really rationalize it.
Perhaps it's the simple fact that she’d never been able to talk about any of this before. The simple fact that she had finally verbalized at least one small part of the soul sucking force of feelings inside her, and now it was at least out here in the real world.
Real.
….Heard.
She catches up to Twilight, feeling comforted enough to look forward to sleep. As they walk down the hall, she meets the other mare's compassionate sleep-ridden eyes, forcing herself to say something for her. “Thanks again. Everything you do for me, it means more than I could possibly put into words. So really. Thank you, princess.”
Twilight offers a soft smile, but it isn’t a perfect one. There’s a hint of pain hidden inside it every time Spitfire uses that word. She doesn’t deserve that pain. She doesn’t deserve to be reduced to her status. Twilight is a pony. She is a truly amazing pony.
Spitfire clears her throat.
“I mean… Thank you, Twilight.”