all i do is get over you

We’d rented a cabin a little north of White Tail Woods. 

I remember the drive there, the wind tussling his blue hair, one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding mine—not as shyly as the first time he got to hold it, but still as gentle. 

“I’ll get the fireplace going as soon as we get there,” he was saying. “The owner told me there’s a little projector we can use to watch some films, too. What do you think?”

I smiled. “I think that sounds lovely.”

Even though I’d gone on a few dates in the past few months with a couple of men, none but Rift Shield had ever managed to get further than a dinner or two. It didn’t matter how nice the date was, there hadn’t been a single time I didn’t spend the night after realizing the only value I saw in the dates was to prove to—to who? The others? Myself?–I could move on. 

Rift Shield, on the other hand, understood his position. Neither of us acknowledged it, of course, but we both understood that this was only happening because a certain other door had locked herself shut. 

But he was handsome. And kind. And, as I said, I was eager to prove I had moved on.

‘Rift, are you sure about this?’ I’d asked him before our trip, because I’m not completely insensitive. I treasured him quite dearly, and though our three weeks of dinners and movie nights had gone very well, this was the first time we’d be moving further, and I wasn’t sure how I would react. I wasn’t keen on hurting him. ‘I can’t guarantee this will… end how we hope it will end.’ 

‘I’m a big boy, Rares.’ He grinned at me affectionately. ‘I can handle whatever happens. As long as you still want to give it a try, then so do I, no matter how it ends. So, do you?’ 

‘I do.’ For the three or so weeks we’d been seeing each other, I’d barely thought of her. And when I did, it was with peace. Plans were advancing, the Dreamland was thriving; I’d come to terms with my situation. I ached at times, but I didn’t yearn any longer. ‘I want this.’

‘Great!’ He’d opened the passenger door to his car. ‘After you, then, miss.’

Hours later found us watching an old movie on the projector, the two of us cuddled on a couch at just the right distance from the fire that we felt perfectly warm. One arm wrapped around me, snaked around my waist, and the other again held my hand, idly playing with the rings on my fingers. 

We did that a lot, I noticed. I had always been a physically affectionate person, but I found myself constantly touching him in one way or another, craving that attention more so than I ever had before. Running my fingers through his hair, squeezing his arm when I wanted to direct his attention, just generally finding comfort in the fact that he was… well, physical. 

He, of course, returned the gestures in kind, and I wonder if we were both one and the same. Holding each other to reassure ourselves that this was real and happening, even if we both did it for different reasons. Him, in disbelief he’d been allowed this chance. Me, desperate to ground myself to someone who was actually there. 

I didn’t even think of her. Evidently, not thinking of her was easier since I’d left the necklace to Pinkie, but this was precisely the kind of situation when I should have thought of her, even if to think to myself that I was moving on so efficiently, and yet I didn’t. 

I felt… alright. I felt present. Even if there was some sliver of me that was unsure about the entire affair, I still felt as though the whole entire world was me, and Rift, and this positively ancient comedy movie we’d found inside a shelf. 

Maybe this wouldn’t be fleeting.

It was right after the movie ended, when he turned to me and said he’d had a great time, that his great time turned into an extraordinary one when I leaned in to kiss him. He hadn’t been expecting it, and to be frank with you, I don’t think I’d been expecting it either. It had just felt like it was the appropriate thing to do, to kiss after a pretty awful but entertaining movie. 

“That was lovely,” I told him when I pulled back, grinning at his completely dumbstruck expression. 

“Uh. Hello,” he stammered. And then quickly yelped, “I mean, yes! Great! Like that kiss! Gotta be honest, halfway through the middle act, I thought the guy’s acting was going to kill the mood for the rest of the weekend, so thank Denza for whatever I did to earn that.”

I fluttered my eyelashes at him. “There might be another one if you’re still planning on making that pasta you mentioned yesterday.”

I admit I laughed when he all but flung himself off the couch, his wings practically lifting him up, speeding towards the kitchen. 

That had been lovely. And the kiss had been nice. No… butterflies or torrential emotions, but a nice moment I’d enjoyed well enough. I think I could live with that. I think that would be just fine. A string of nice moments I enjoyed well enough for the rest of forever, the only highs and lows being that of my own voice when I was being theatric. 

Just as I’d teased, Rift Shield was awarded a second kiss after a delicious dinner, and my heart felt light when I heard him giggling in the pantry when he went in there to put food away. Even I giggled, and it felt painfully good to do so. 

I leaned against the kitchen island, enchanted by his giggling like I hadn’t felt enchanted by someone in a very long time. Affection bubbled up in my belly, up through my chest and in my heart, compressing it in a way that did not feel uncomfortable or upsetting. 

I was happy. I was happy to be with someone, happy like I hadn’t felt in a while, and you will forgive me for emphasizing the feeling like this, for spinning around this point over and over again, this happiness envelopping me like a warm wing, because—

There are habits we form. Ticks, crutches, gestures, verbal or physical, all manner of things, that we do so often in certain situations that they become a fixture of said situation. We all have them, in one way or another, these unconscious expressions of our soul, and here is one of mine. 

There I was, happy, and content, and charmed, and being charmed and happy and content and delighted by someone, leaning against that counter, giggling like an idiot, I did what feels most natural in that situation: I reached up with my hand to grasp a necklace that was no longer there. 

And I thought of her, my curled up hand pressed against my chest for a moment before it splayed out until I could feel the beating of my heart with my open palm. 

“What do you think about dessert?” asked Rift Shield from within the pantry, unaware. 

“Dessert sounds wonderful!” I quickly called out, closing my hand into a fist, the fabric of my shirt crumpled inside my hand. 

I thought of Twilight Sparkle, and I thought to myself that it was okay. It was perfectly alright. I was at peace, and there was nothing I could do for her anymore, and I was doing what I could, and I didn’t yearn for her anymore. 

I hadn’t seen her in person in over a year and a half. I hadn’t visited her statue in Canterlot for almost a year, and with all my photographs of her interred in the library with her, her image was now becoming a faded blur. I hadn’t even dreamt of her in months. 

Princess Twilight Sparkle was now what she’d been for me for most of my life. 

A fond fairytale that I knew was not real. 

Though we shared the same bed, and he held me close in his arms, nothing beyond that was to happen the first night, if at all—an expectation I had set well before the trip began. 

I wonder if that… I wonder, and I wondered even then, briefly, in his arms, if that meant something. If the fact that something as simple as a kiss feeling like a good enough big step should have been an indication of something else. I can only now, in retrospect, wish I’d been more aware. 

Regardless, we were both happy to be there. Comforted by each other, the real affection we held blanketing us both, and I have to confess, it was nice to be held. It was agonizingly nice to be in someone’s arms, to feel safe and protected, and as I drifted to sleep, I thought that feeling that way surely meant this was right. 

Even though White Tail Woods neighbored Hollow Shades, the Lady of the Night never once blessed their little town with her presence. It was entirely out of her domain, as was the little cabin Rift and I slept the night away. 

That said, I was sitting on a blue divan in the middle of a white expanse. At least, I think it was a divan. It kept alternating its form between a blue divan and a black couch, which doesn’t really matter all that much beyond the fact that both fit two people. 

I was sitting on the edge of it, comfortably leaning not against the divan-sofa’s backrest, but against someone else’s chest, their criss-cross legs a comfortable seat, their slender arms wrapped around my waist, and their chin pressed on my right shoulder. 

I mentioned earlier how I felt safe in Rift’s arms. 

What I felt in this dream was not safe. What I felt in this dream, wrapped in those long arms, my back aware of a chest that breathed in and then out, was that I was not safe simply because there was nothing that could touch me. 

To be safe implies to be in danger, and the mere concept of danger did not even exist to me when Twilight Sparkle held me.

Discord came by. 

Discord, that tall demon of a man, stalked up to me, ugly yellow eyes narrowed to uglier slits. This wasn’t the first time I was seeing him in a dream, mind you. He was a regular appearance in nightmares ranging from mildly annoying to so horrific and tortuous that Princess Luna had Pinkie check up on me frequently the day after. The latter were unfortunately the norm, and yet. 

“I’m going to stop you,” he hissed at me. “You think you can free Princess Luna? You?” 

And yet I felt completely calm before him. I even noted to myself how interesting it was that I was so calm. My worst nightmare stood before me, threatening me, and I felt like I was talking to some nobody on the street. 

“I am going to free her,” I told him, plainly. As sure of myself as I was that the sky was blue. “I have a plan, and it’s going to work.”

“What?” He snorted. “Just like that?”

Twilight shifted behind me, and whatever peace I felt somehow magnified. “Yes,” I replied, smiling sweetly, “just like that.”

Discord stamped a foot on the floor. “I could kill you! I could kill everyone you love, slowly,” he insisted, a threat he’d enacted in other dreams before, forcing me to watch in some, forcing me to hear in others, and in most killing me before he moved on to my loved ones. 

And yet, again, I was unmoved. He had no power over me, and even less so with Twilight next to me, her eyes watching him with idle curiosity. 

“That won’t happen,” I told him. “You can’t hurt us. And I think you should leave, please.”

Just like that, with an indignant huff, he stomped off, throwing one or two or fifty insults my way. I didn’t even care. 

“Did you see me?” I asked her, squeezing one of the arms wrapped around me. “I thought I handled that very well.”

“You did,” she replied, in a voice I vaguely remembered being hers. She buried her face in my hair for a moment and said, “I’m proud of you.”

Here is an interesting fact. Though I could not dreamwalk, my regular meetings with Princess Luna had increased my affinity for knowing whether I was in a dream or not. As such, this entire dream, I was aware on some level that it was precisely that—a dream. I was aware that Discord hadn’t come to threaten me, that I hadn’t just defeated him with my level-headed coolness, and that the Twilight holding me was just an imagining. 

“I think you would be proud,” I said. “I’ve been doing better. I’ve been going out with Rift. Really going out with him, I mean. Not like the others.”

“I know,” she replied, her chin finding its spot on my shoulder again. “Is it going okay?”

“I think it is.” I closed my eyes, enjoying the moment. “I rather think it might work out for us.”

“Mmm.”

Suddenly, we were sitting side by side on the divan, and for the first time, I could see her face. 

I wish I could say she looked just like she did in real life, but I can’t, for I don’t know. As I’ve mentioned already, I hadn’t seen what she looked like for a very long time, so just like her voice, her face was composed of the strongest impressions I had of her. The long dark hair and its pink streak, the piercing violet eyes, the sharp, angular face, and… and the warm smile. 

You don’t smile much, do you, Princess? I’d teased her once, a month after meeting her. If I’d known she would learn to smile so much that it would be one of the only memories that would withstand the passage of time. 

She lifted her hand and brushed my hair out of my face briefly before running her fingers down my temple, past my cheek, and further down still until she was holding my hands in hers. 

I’d never felt more at peace. 

“Rarity,” she said, “you know this isn’t the real me, don’t you?”

“…I know,” I replied, quietly.

“And you know I have to leave, don’t you?”

“I know,” I replied. “But you can stay a little longer, can’t you?”

Her eyes crinkled when she smiled affectionately at me. I smiled back at her, only for it to vanish when she was suddenly no longer sitting beside me but standing in front of me, my hands suddenly cold and the word ‘danger’ now a part of my vocabulary once again. 

“Wait,” I said quickly, thrown off. “What’s wrong?”

She stared down at me, violet eyes shining with affection as much as they were compassion. “Nothing is wrong,” she said, sweetly. “I just have to go now.”

“Go?” I asked, my peace crumbling around me. I leaned forward. “What do you mean ‘you have to go’? Go where? This is a dream. You don’t have to go anywhere!”

It was kind. If I had to describe the look she gave me in one word, it would be that. Kind, endlessly so, the same look one might have when trying to explain to a young child why they won’t be seeing their ill grandmother again. 

“Rarity,” she repeated, looking down at me, as much an authority as Princess Twilight Sparkle would ever be. “I have to go. You know that.”

“But why?” I demanded, because if she was to be a wise all-knowing adult, then I would play the role of the petulant child until the bitter end. “You don’t have to go now. I’m over it, you know this. It’s not bad for you to stay.”

She said nothing. She just gave me a final look, and it was only when she turned around to leave that finally I stood up. 

“Twilight, wait!” I begged, reaching out to grab her hand, only for my hand to go right through her now incorporeal body. 

I staggered back from shock, not caring for the fact that she stopped moving, but only for the fact that when I tried to grab her again, my hand went right through her again and again and again. 

But she’d been right there. She’d been there. She’d been right there. 

She finally turned, and her voice was so gentle.

“Twilight isn’t here, Rarity.”

“I… I know,” I replied, voice weak. 

“She isn’t coming back.”

“I know. I know, I know, I—” My voice caught. “I just—You can’t leave yet, you—I just—” I tried to grab her hand again, and when again I grasped nothing but air, I soon found myself on my knees before her, one hand clutching my face, the other inside her foot after having failed to grab her leg. 

“You just what?”

She wasn’t trying to be mean. She loved me. Love is what she was made of completely, a snapshot of a version of Twilight Sparkle who loved me and who, for all I knew, no longer existed. 

“Why can’t I leave?”

And there was I, tears in my eyes, my voice coming undone, begging to her ghost. 

“Because I’m going to miss you.”

She said nothing. So, I continued.

“And I know you’re not her,” I said. “And I know you—I know she isn’t coming back, and I—I know I have to let her go, but this is a dream, and it doesn’t matter, so please.” I buried my face in my hands, agonized in knowing that tomorrow when I woke up, she would be gone. “Please, just. Just stay.”

I couldn’t tell you how much time passed. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours, it could have been centuries in that dream. I just knew that time passed, and then stopped when she spoke. 

“Okay.”

I looked up and then down as Princess Twilight Sparkle sat before me. She loved me. She was dead. She loved me.

“I’ll stay just a little bit longer.”

When Rift Shield woke up at six in the morning, he found me not in bed besides him as he’d expected, but curled up on the bathroom floor, clutching the towel I’d used to try and muffle my crying, my magic exhausted from having tried to cast a spell again and again on a necklace I no longer had to speak with someone who was as good as dead. 

“I’m sorry,” I said, ashamed. Humiliated. Ravaged to once again find that no matter how much I begged, no matter how hard I tried, no matter what I did… I looked up at him—standing under the frame of the door, at a loss for words, gutted to see me so destroyed—and choked out, “I tried.”

He walked over to me, and there wasn’t anything but love in his heart when he sat down and pulled me into a hug. 

“I know.” He kissed the top of my head. “It’ll be okay.”

“What if it’s never okay?” I asked him because I was tired. I was so. so. terribly. tired. 

“Well,” he said, “then that’ll be okay, too.”