[2/3] losing you

I. 

Without a way of telling it, time stretched out before Princess Twilight Sparkle like an ocean. 

Minutes melted into hours, hours melted into days, days into weeks, weeks into months, months into years, and years into decades, until the ocean of time swallowed her whole and she couldn’t even feel it around her anymore as she sunk to its bottom. Minutes could be as slow as centuries in this ocean just as easily as months could be as fast as seconds. 

“It’s a clock!” the strange mare said, levitating an even stranger device towards the wary princess’ head. It was red all over, save for a white circle with ornate sticks constantly moving towards numbers. “Can you hear it?”

Tick. Tick. Tick. 

“What is that?” the princess asked. 

“Time,” the mare replied and then grinned as the device drained Twilight’s whole ocean. “I rather thought you’d like to keep it.” 

So she did. 

She kept it safe in a clock, and in a calendar, and in the first journal she’d started in hundreds of years, taking special care to note how it shifted around her, warping in ways she didn’t remember time could. 

Time felt slow with Rarity, which made some scientific sort of sense. A life lived by rote was largely unobserved, and a life unobserved was as if it didn’t exist. It simply flashed by, in the background, lost to routine. Tick tick tick. 

But Rarity was new. Interesting. Different. There was no routine with her, every moment something that had to be studied and analyzed and observed with great care, slowing down time enough that Twilight Sparkle felt that a year of knowing Rarity was no different than knowing her for decades. 

It was a shame, then, that their ending went by so very fast. 

“Cadance watched him die, Rarity.” Her voice was ice cold. 

“Twilight.” Rarity stepped back, almost backing into one of the library’s tables. Was she afraid? Concerned? Who cared? “I—”

“She watched him die, trying to save her.” A step forward. Tick, tick, tick. “Do you even realize how awful that is? Do you?”

The mare held her ground, as she so often did, absolutely incapable of letting things well enough alone. “Twilight, you’re upset, and—”

“Of course I’m upset! Because I know how that feels. I know what it’s like to watch the pony you love waste away their life trying to save you,” she snarled, time enacting its curse, ticking by faster and faster, blinding them both from registering the feelings she’d just affirmed. She pointed a hoof at the unicorn. “Look at your cloak. The one you’ve been wearing every day since you came back. Look at it!”

Rarity slammed her hoof against the floor. “Why do you care so damn much about my damn cloak?!”

“Because it’s a reminder that you almost died because of me.”

Rarity said nothing, tears filling her eyes. 

“I can’t free myself, Rarity,” Twilight continued, despairingly. “I have tried. I tried when you nearly got killed by dragons because of me. I tried when you were cursed because of me. I tried and tried and tried when the only information I had about you was a letter telling me you’d barely survived a timberwolf attack because of me. Tell me why I haven’t freed myself. Tell me!”

“I-I don’t know, Twilight!” Rarity protested, desperate, no doubt feeling all her efforts slipping in between her hooves. Tick, tick, tick. “If you’d stop blaming yourself for—!”

“And if that doesn’t work?!” Twilight interrupted. “Then what?!”

“Then we find something else! We find another way!” the strange mare who should have stayed a stranger insisted. “I’ll find a way to free you even if I have to spend the—”

“The rest of your life?” Twilight asked, the cold coming back as she spoke words that would haunt her the rest of her life. “And then you die, and then what?” When Rarity did not reply, Twilight was glad to do so in her stead. “Then I get to spend the rest of eternity sitting here wishing I could have died with you!”

And to that, time paid attention. 

II.

Time had a bone to pick with Twilight Sparkle. 

It knew what it was like to be ignored, or to be taken for granted, or obsessed over, but this? This stillness, this complete ignorance to its presence? No, no, no, absolutely not. 

It followed her as she walked through the library, her black eyes systematically surveying her lonely prison. Twilight Sparkle did not care for time’s protests. She didn’t even hear them, her thoughts warped around a single constant thought: all was as it should be. 

A thundercrack of magic broke the quiet. She didn’t bother looking for him. Why should she? She didn’t care. She never cared when he came, sometimes laughing, sometimes shouting, always trying to get under her skin with his deceits and lies. 

There was only one time it almost worked. As she floated around the princess, gloating and mocking, he said that her beloved had never loved her at all. That she only cared for glory, for fame, not Twilight. 

That had been the first time something within her had stirred. Where her heart, for a moment, burned brighter than her miserable self-hate. 

There exists a world where this was enough to free her mind, to use a necklace one last time, in time to fix what could still be fixed. 

But that is not this story. This is not that time. 

“She’s coming.”

A flash of white in her mind. Light gray coat, three diamonds, indigo mane, and a disarming smile under two sapphire eyes. A pang in her heart. Yearning. 

“It seems,” he said just before leaving, “you’ve run out of time.” 

Three explosions shook the earth, and for the first time in centuries, time was delighted to see Twilight Sparkle finally paying attention to it again. 

The first drew her to the library’s entrance. 

The second cracked the black barrier, fracturing it into dozens of branches until it looked like a puzzle.  

The third and final explosion shattered the barrier, turned it into a mountain of magic and dust from which a blue alicorn emerged. 

Twilight Sparkle stepped back, the foreign magic inside her flaring to life, suffocating shock as it travelled through her body and converged on her horn. A moment passed, and before Twilight could snarl for her to leave, Princess Luna lunged forward. 

III. 

Violet eyes fluttered open, stirred awake by a pain raking her body, as if she’d slept wrong for years, tears wetting the corner of her eyes. She closed her eyes, the vestiges of a fading nightmare throbbing painfully in her mind as she gripped a blanket and held it tight. She turned around with a groan and pressed herself against a wall. 

“…Twilight?” said a cautious voice, deeper than any pony she knew. 

Her eyes shot open, finding it was not a wall she was pressed against, but a smooth scaly underbelly whose owner peered down at her with big wet eyes. 

His name tumbled out of her mouth, hoarse with unuse.

“…Spike?” 

In the back of her mind, as he said her name again, as she wept out his, she wondered if she was dreaming up until his claw wrapped around her, and she felt it. She felt it. The warmth of his body, the beating of his heart, the air in her lungs, the pain ripping through her head. 

“How—I—Where—?” She could barely manage the words, colliding against his. “What happened? How—?”

The pain forced her head into her hooves, her mind grasping and failing to remember anything.

“She’s out,” he said. “And she—she got you out.” He looked beyond her, his voice a roar. “Princess! Princess!” 

‘She got me out?’ 

She wracked her brain, fighting the pain to remember how she’d been freed but nothing came out, everything a blur. Save for something. A single image, a moment that was, ironically, crystal clear. 

Twilight herself, on the floor, having been smashed against a bookcase. Fury overwhelming her until it stopped all at once when her eyes landed on a chain and traveled down its length. An altogether different pain snapping her apart—or, perhaps, snapping her back together—when they settled on a transparently clear crystal. 

“Twilight?” Spike asked, alarmed by her sudden stillness, and then even moreso as she tried to get up. “Twilight?”

“I-I—I need to apologize to her,” she said until the physical pain in her body was too much and she tumbled back to the floor, agonized. But not defeated. She continued to speak: “Where is—?”

“Apologize?” She could hear the confusion, the indignation in his voice. “Why? To who? To Princess Luna?” 

“No, Spike! To Rarity,” she exclaimed, wracked with so much horror as she remembered their last moments. “Where—Where is she? I need to—” 

Her words melted into groans, every muscle burning as she tried to get up again. 

A voice cut through the pain. 

 “Twilight.” 

Princess Luna stood before her, her expression the picture of kindness, just as Twilight had remembered it for over a thousand years. The deep blue eyes, the soft smile, and when she leaned down and nuzzled the petrified younger princess, the warmth she remembered, too. 

“Princess,” she whispered, touching her muzzle, feeling the coat stained with tears. “Princess, I’m—I’m sorry, I—” 

Princess Luna laughed softly. “Sorry? What are you sorry for, Twilight Sparkle? As somepony waiting for you in Canterlot told me—” She leaned back so as to look into Twilight’s eyes. “–There is nothing to forgive.” 

“Princess,” Spike said, his voice wracked with pain, “remember the thing we talked about?” 

Her eyes flickered to him and then back to Twilight. “Yes, I remember.” She reached out towards Twilight, brushing her hoof against the side of her barrel. “How are you feeling? Are you in pain? I had to subdue you, and I may have used more force than—” 

“Princess, where’s Rarity?” Twilight cut off, anguished, trying to keep her voice controlled, to force the words out without them breaking in half. “I said some—I said some really terrible things to her, and I need to—I need to apologize—” 

Princess Luna smiled sympathetically, but rather than offer information, she asked: “Can I hold you?” 

“…What? Princess.” Aggravation laced her voice until guilt forced it away. “Yes. But. Rarity, I—” 

“I heard you,” the princess reassured her. “But I would like to hold you.” 

Without waiting for permission, the princess laid down next to Twilight and pulled her into a tight hug, resting her head atop Twilight’s as she started to hum. 

Twilight Sparkle was not dumb. She had done her fair share of dumb things, certainly, but she was altogether a smart individual. As someone who’d spent a good portion of her relationship with Rarity hiding facts, she could tell when somepony was stalling. 

“What is it?” she asked, trying her hardest to be brave. “Does she not want to see me? Princess.” When Princess Luna said nothing, she looked up at Spike, hoping to find answers and finding instead his eyes hidden behind his claws. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?” 

“Twilight, ” Princess Luna said, her voice as firm as her hold on the alicorn, “you’ve been gone a very long time.” 

IV. 

If one were to venture deep inside the Everfree Forest, past the timberwolves and abandoned houses, one would eventually stumble across a beautifully kept garden contained entirely within a perfectly circular immense depression on the ground; a garden which could be accessed by walking down an ornate set of metal stairs. Large bushes with all manner of beautiful flowers decorated the edges of the hole, each and every one tended to by watering cans and shearing scissors enchanted with navy-colored magic to garden by themselves, through rain or shine keeping the garden beautiful for centuries to come. 

There was a large oak tree in the middle of this garden, covered in vines and foliage, towering high into the sky above all else. 

One would think the sight of this tree would be the most arresting thing about this garden, but one would be incorrect. It was not this tree that should catch one’s attention.  

It was the one next to it. 

The spectacular jacaranda tree growing tall and proud was certainly a sight to see, the bright flowers decorating not just its own branches—a large portion of them intertwined with the branches of its partner—but the ground around it, like an artist coloring a canvas with delicate brushstrokes of lavender. Its trunk was brown, the once smooth bark now scaly and coarse all the way down to its base, itself surrounded by a small fence protecting two small twin headstones. Each was engraved with a carving of an owl similar to the many owls that were used to visiting the garden out of habit learned through generations. 

There were no benches in this garden, no place to sit save for a hammock that hung from one of the jacaranda tree’s sturdiest branches. This hammock, carefully woven in colors of white and lavender and kept intact with magic, had many times sheltered ponies into a restful sleep under the branches of the two trees. It had kept a unicorn warm once upon a time, then her and her husband, then occasionally their children, and one special night, a unicorn filly and her grandmother, sleeping together for what would be one of the last times, the latter falling asleep to stories a princess had once told her grandmother a long, long time ago 

This time, however, covered with blankets, the hammock was privileged to guard somepony it had been waiting to meet since the day the tree first sprouted more than a hundred years ago: an alicorn princess, grieving in silence, clutching the clear crystal pendant for the first time hanging from her neck. 

V.

There is nothing that prepares you for the world spinning on without you, for the whole host of things that have changed in that time, and even less can you prepare when you were asleep as it spun. 

The days that followed her liberation were a blur to Twilight, information trickled to her in amounts she could manage, said in words she could tolerate, conveyed in places she could stand to be in. Her library was out of the question, the mere thought of climbing down those stairs sending her into full blown panic attacks. Princess Luna had tried to encourage moving towards Ponyville, towards a certain carousel-themed house that had been prepared for her arrival, but she couldn’t bear that either. The only thing she’d want to find there had died decades ago. 

The only place she could tolerate was that hammock, and it was in this hammock, Princess Luna cuddled against her, that Twilight came to terms with the following: 

A year after her imprisonment, Rarity had moved away from Ponyville to Hollow Shades, redirecting her efforts and her grief into freeing Princess Luna. Living in Hollow Shades alongside Pinkie, they started a daycare for foals; a daycare whose secret purpose was to slowly but surely, over the span of decades and generations, convince an entire town that Princess Luna was real and living and breathing, enough to break the hold the chaos magic had over the town and the alicorn’s prison.

This was good. This was sound, and the more Princess Luna explained Rarity’s plan, how it started and how it had worked, slowly but surely, the more Twilight Sparkle loved Rarity, and the more she understood, heart bleeding out, that life moves on. 

Rarity, she learned—wishing she could die as she learned the fact—got married. She did not ask the name of her husband, and only knew that she’d met him at grief counseling she went to because Twilight trapped herself. 

Rarity had foals. She did not want to know how many, even as she gathered it had been more than one, and that those foals had foals of their own, and that they had been close to Rarity and her husband. 

Rarity had lived a full life in Hollow Shades. She lived there for most of what was a long life that Twilight—selfishly, selfishly, selfishly—did not want to know about. She refused to learn details, she refused to let Princess Luna tell her more, and when the princess told her it would heal her, not hurt her, Twilight did not care. 

Rarity had been happy. Rarity died happy and surrounded by her family. This was all she could tolerate knowing, all she frankly cared to know, even as parts of her burned with betrayal she knew was selfish.

All that mattered, in the end, in the depths of her soul, was that Rarity had been okay. 

Pushing down anger, and pain, and grief, and a guilt she felt was choking her alive, Twilight focused it all into one fact she could live with. 

Because of Rarity, Princess Luna had been freed. 

Because of Rarity, Princess Luna had been able to free Twilight. 

So now, because of a Rarity who’d once loved Twilight, the only thing Twilight could do was do as Rarity would want and focus on freeing the other two princesses. 

VI. 

Twilight Sparkle stood by Rarity’s tree, carefully placing flowers she’d picked in front of two graves. Saddlebags hung on her back, filled to the brim with century-old owl-shaped inkwells she didn’t think she’d ever be able to bring herself to open. 

Any moment now, Princess Luna would come by with a carriage headed to Canterlot, so there she was, saying goodbye. 

As carefully as she could, she stepped over the graves and rested her forehead against the tree, closing her eyes and taking in the weathered scent of bark. 

Even if the instinct was there, she did not apologize as she had dozens of times before in the past two weeks. 

Funny, how she’d spent thousands of years dreaming of the day she’d escape a tree, and now she couldn’t bear to be parted from one. 

Was it stupid to say she felt Rarity was there? Was it silly? Was it delusional of her?

Rarity wasn’t there, of course. Spiritually, she was gone, and physically, according to Princess Luna, her headstone was somewhere in Hollow Shades, but even knowing this, it was under this tree that Twilight felt her Rarity. 

In the bushes Rarity had planted, in the hammock she’d made, in the tree she had planted so she would be where she should have been until she died—right next to Twilight. 

The sound of a carriage approaching filled the air. When she turned to look, Princess Luna had already landed and was in the process of unbuckling the harness from her back. 

“Are you ready?” she asked. 

“No,” Twilight replied, turning back to the tree, forehead and forehoof pressed against the bark. “I just need a moment, please.” 

“Of course,” said the Princess. “A moment, then.”

She took in the scent of the tree and forced the words out before she choked on them. 

“Princess?” 

“Yes?” 

“Do… Do you think Rarity knew I didn’t mean what I said?” she asked, and she told herself she would not cry. She swore. “That I’m sorry?” 

“Yes,” said Princess Luna, kindly. “She knew you didn’t mean it.” 

A moment passed by, and the dam having cracked open, Twilight allowed herself the most haunting question of all. 

“And, do you—?” The tears came by, as did the crack in her voice. Stupid, stupid, stupid! But it was too late, so she swallowed the tears and the crack and the fear and then asked, “Do you think she still loved me?” 

Princess Luna didn’t give time space to exist. 

“Yes,” she said, firmly. “Rarity loved you very much, Twilight. Until her final days, she spoke of you with affection. Her entire family knew who you were.” She could practically see Luna’s smile, full of sympathy. “Yes, she loved you very much.” 

Twilight let out a breath, or perhaps something more akin to a shaky laugh that was, unfortunately, not filled with any measure of relief because as nice as that was to hear, as relieving as it was, it was also not what she meant. 

She didn’t mean if she loved her like that. No, what she had meant was had Rarity still loved her? Not like a childhood memory one speaks of every so often under the warmth of the fire or in bedtime stories, nostalgia-ladden and wistful, but like Twilight loved her. Crazy, in love, ready and willing to do anything for her, including the horrifying reality of having to live without her. 

She could clarify, of course. She could ask again, but could she? Did she even have the right? Did she even have the gall or the bravery—both, to be honest—to dare to ask if Rarity had still loved her? If Rarity—who had a family, had a husband, had kids—if she’d lived out a long, long life, and if at the end, when she was taking her last breath, had her last thought been of Twilight?

Did she love her, Princess Luna? If, at the end of her life, given the choice between her husband and her kids or changing it all to be with Twilight, Princess Luna, would Rarity have faltered? Would she have hesitated? Would she have maybe said yes, Princess Luna?

Had she died still loving Twilight? 

“Okay,” she replied instead, because she loved Rarity too much to disrespect her memory by ever asking. So, she stepped back from the tree and got herself together, wiping away tears. “I think I’m ready to go.