Twilight is sick.
Twilight first found out she was sick whenever she was with her friends. Fluttershy had asked for her assistance with some manual work and Twilight, along with Applejack, smiled and nodded and showed up at Fluttershy’s house on the right day at the right time. Twilight wasn’t sure whether something that happened while she was at her friend’s house caused it, or whether that was unrelated. If she had known she was going to get sick, she wouldn’t have helped Fluttershy.
Secretly, Twilight thought that Fluttershy didn’t really need help. The tasks Fluttershy had them performing were, by her approximation, a one-pony job. She couldn’t see the need for her and Applejack’s support. Twilight couldn’t help but think that in reality Fluttershy was just a really lonely pony who was probably too afraid to ask for something as simple and boring as basic companionship. Twilight didn’t tell Fluttershy this, because it wasn’t right to tell somepony that. She tucked it away inside her head where she tucked all the thoughts that would make her a bad pony if they left. She still felt a bit bad for thinking it in the first place, because if she was really a good pony she probably wouldn’t have thought it, and she wondered if it was just a show she was putting on for her friends, this whole act of being a good respectable little pony and not saying anything nearing the truth of her feelings and if she might have been deep down a very bad pony. Twilight decided to help Fluttershy out partially to remind herself that she was in fact a good pony who did good things for her friends, but wasn’t able to ignore the part of her that wondered that if Fluttershy had simply come to her and been honest and simply asked for some basic companionship if she would been able to pull herself from her studies and acquiesce.
Twilight smiled when her friends smiled. In the light brush that edged around Fluttershy’s yard, they gathered up leaves and animal bedding and other refuse to make a compost. Applejack was chatting with Fluttershy and sometimes laughed which made Twilight smile. She felt a little queasy at the time but it was probably nothing so she didn’t say anything to her friends. They didn’t want to hear about how she felt, anyway, not whenever they were laughing and smiling with each other and in general just being happy. There was no point to make them worry about her like that, not just for feeling a little queasy. Twilight felt a little queasy all the time, in fact, so there wasn’t really a point in mentioning it, right? It was just the way things were. Twilight was still smiling.
Twilight wouldn’t have said anything if it hadn’t gotten worse. She gently set down the large bag she was magically lugging around and began to frown. The sickness flowed through her slowly, kind of her blood had turned to syrup and was slowly pumping its way through her body. It didn’t really hurt, not at all in fact but it felt wrong and Twilight knew something was the matter with her body. She shivered and every part of her skin was itchy and clammy but she didn’t know why. Twilight suddenly had a very hard time getting up off the ground or thinking about what she was doing here.
“Girls, I don’t feel so good.”
Twilight blinked, staring straight ahead as her friends finished their conversation and turned to her, still smiling. Applejack asked her what was wrong and if she needed some help. Fluttershy’s smile slowly faded but she didn’t say anything and Twilight could have sworn she saw her creep away at least a little bit.
“I’m sorry, Fluttershy. I think I have to go. “
Applejack asked if she needed some help getting home but Twilight shook her head and smiled and before anypony could ask her what was wrong again she rose from the ground on a shaky set of hooves and trotted back to the house. She felt like a bad pony for leaving her friends behind like that, but she was sure that Fluttershy would understand. Fluttershy was a good friend.
Twilight remembered one time in elementary school whenever she was sick and couldn’t make it to class. She was so terrified at what the teacher would say to her the next day that she felt like she was going to throw up. She begged her mother to write an excuse and vowed that unless she did she’d find a way to prove to the teacher that she was sick because there had to be a way to justify her absence. Ponies don’t just get to back out of their responsibilities just because they say that they’re sick; they have to prove it somehow. Once Twilight’s mother got home from work she had to take Shining Armor to an after-school practice session so it wasn’t until it was dark out that she actually got to write an excuse and she even phoned the teacher and let her know that yes, my little Twilight was in fact sick today, and I forced her to stay home against her will. Twilight went to bed smiling because she had such a good mom who was willing to do these things for her, and she promised that she’d never let her mother down, even if she had an excuse.
Spike was awake and cleaning whenever Twilight got home. She was about to thank him whenever she remembered how sick she was and she asked Spike for some help. He rolled his eyes and Twilight felt suddenly like she needed an excuse but she couldn’t think of one. She couldn’t point to a broken leg or a pile of vomit of a bloody tooth and request, in light of that evidence, help from her assistant. Twilight got a little bit angry at Spike for rolling his eyes, and yelled at him but that was only because she was really sick and needed his help and if he didn’t help her and kept rolling her eyes she might stay sick for a long time.
Spike made her bed and Twilight found it to be a kind of mitigator. She still felt sick whenever she was laying down in bed like this but it wasn’t as bad and she felt like she could handle it. That would be all it takes, Twilight thought. Just a bit of bed rest and she’ll be on her feet and ready to stand up and go again. She thought about taking out a letter and writing to the Princess about how lucky she was to have such great friends who didn’t mind when she couldn’t help them and who helped her whenever she needed but the thought of that kind of make the sickness come back so she tried her best not the think of it. She fell asleep before Spike that night. She didn’t remember what she dreamed about.
The next day was even worse, Twilight remembers. Every part of her body was in a dull sort of languid pain. It felt like it took twice as much effort as before to move them and as soon as her eyes touched the sunlight she just wanted to roll over and go back to sleep. She saw that Spike was already up and walking around the house and she wanted to call to him but really didn’t know what to say. He’d ask her about it if it was really important, she thought.
The Princess had to know. She had to know how Twilight was feeling, but there wasn’t an easy way to phrase it. Maybe it would help if Twilight figured out what was wrong with her first, so she’d have something concrete to tell the Princess. The library Twilight occupied was vast and stocked, so she felt with this much knowledge it wouldn’t take long before she found out what was wrong with her.
Maybe it’d go away, Twilight hoped. Maybe if she just stayed in bed it’d go away in two or three days and on the fourth she would be fine and could start thinking of ways to make it up to Fluttershy and to apologize to Spike for yelling at him. She didn’t see any reason it wouldn’t go away. Twilight was a hard-working, smart, well-off pony. Ponies like her didn’t stay sick. A bit of bed rest was all she needed. Getting out of bed was kind of difficult, because when she stood up and tried to do things that’s when the sickness really pushed on her. She was a strong pony, so she pushed how much she was hurting to the back of her mind and was able to make dinner for her and Spike, and she gathered up a few books about medical practices and a compendiums of diseases and put them beside her bed. She’d start reading tomorrow.
Pinkie visited the next day. She was going around delivering treats to the all the ponies, and told Twilight how she had worked super duper hard today to make sure that she’d have enough for every pony in Ponyville. As she was saying this, Twilight felt the sickness bubbling in her throat, and she wanted to say something but wasn’t sure what. It felt wrong to feel this. Twilight’s feelings weren’t right. She smiled and almost cried as she took a treat from Pinkie, and gave it to Spike on the condition that he please make dinner tonight or if not take some bits and go get something because I’m not sure I’ll be able to cook today. Twilight found concentrating on the books really difficult, so she told herself she’d start tomorrow. She felt bad about doing nothing all day, but Spike smiled and told her that if she was sick that he didn’t mind picking up the slack for a while. Spike was a really good friend, but Twilight only felt more sick whenever he said that.
On the third day, Twilight felt just as bad. She was still thinking that maybe it would go away whenever she remembered that in a way this sickness felt like the queasiness she’d felt for years and years and wondered if maybe this wasn’t the sudden onset of something but the aggravation of some other underlying sickness that she had had for a long time. She added that to the mental list of symptoms and problems she’d been forming in pursuit of an answer, but the list was hazy and indistinct, and didn’t really help Twilight solve much of anything.
She needed Spike’s help again, but before she felt it was okay to ask him for help she thought that it would be proper to explain it to him. If he knew what was going on with her maybe she wouldn’t feel as bad if he helped her. So after lunch Twilight gently sat down at the dining room table and tried to explain.
“Spike. I’m not feeling well.”
Spike smiled and offered a sarcastic comment. Twilight frowned and felt like it the sickness was hurting her. She wanted to cry but wasn’t ready to.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but...I can’t do anything properly. I feel like...”
Twilight searched for words. Her thoughts were covered in a debilitating slime and were slower than normal and she really did start to cry as she stammered out anecdotes and explanations to Spike. She was only crying because it was so hard to think of what to say to Spike so he wouldn’t feel like he was being forced to help her but only that she’d really, really appreciate it if it so happened that he could.
Spike looked really upset that Twilight was crying. She wondered how often he saw her cry. She hoped she’d feel a little better after he promised that he’d do anything to help her, but she felt just about the same, really.
It wasn’t until after the sun had set that Twilight realized that it was the end of the week and that Princess Celestia expected a report. She ran what she had learned about friendship that week over and over again in her mind. How thoughtful her friends were, and how thoughtless they were. How wonderful it was to have friends who offer to help, and who can be asked to help. She couldn’t think of anything that would mean something to the Princess. She wanted to thank them and her, but she wasn’t sure how that would look on paper.
She asked Spike for a scroll and a quill. When he delivered it to her, she wrote a terse note to the Princess apologizing for the lack of a report. The sickness didn’t let her go to sleep easily that night, and she apologized to Spike a dozen times for keeping him up. She didn’t mean to. She couldn’t stop.
Twilight didn’t feel any better the next morning, but she considered that a blessing, kind of. If she had felt better, her resolve might have faltered. After this long without signs of improvement, she decided to buckle down and figure out what was going on. This wasn’t a sickness that was going to get better as the time went on. She must take the initiative to stop it. She knew she could do it, sometimes, and others she didn’t know if she could and that feeling that kind of abject absolute powerlessness made her wish she could curl up in a ball or grab a knife and just cut into herself and pull whatever was making her feel like this out of her and never have to feel this awful again.
The Princess was concerned by her lack of report but not overly, Twilight recognized. She began to read into medical anomalies and rushed through thousands of diagnosis and diseases trying to find something with similar symptoms to the ones she was having. Spike helped her out and held her books sometimes and got her news and gave her a glass of water. She tried to help him by relaxing on the chores he had to do so the house was getting kind of messy but Twilight knew that there wasn’t any point in worrying about something like how clean the house was when she was this sick.
Twilight knew she wasn’t an expert on pony health, and a lot of the idiosyncratic terminology, a veritable lexicon of words and phrases exclusive to the medical profession swam in front of her. The sickness made it made to concentrate at times and sometimes she had to read sections of a book over again to try to pull some meaning from them. Cardiovascular problems, inflammation, intestinal issues, immune system disorders, respiratory failures, chronic fatigue syndrome, infections, viruses, dystrophies, poisons, toxins, poxes - all of them held some of the things she was experiencing but not enough that she could say what was wrong with her. She was starting to get frustrated and angry before she reconciled with the fact that she was, indeed, no expert on this.
She saw a doctor the next day. A local Ponyville doctor who Twilight probably should have known the name of but she let Spike set up the appointment so she didn’t. She tried to explain herself to the doctor and she kept smiling all throughout because she was a friendly pony and didn’t want to make the doctor upset by being upset. She tried not to lie to him but wondered if it was really a lie if she believed it herself. It didn’t make her a bad pony to tell what she was thinking even if she wasn’t sure if she was thinking the right things.
The doctor returned her smile and nodded calmly and told the wall his diagnosis and gave Twilight a small container filled halfway with white pills. Twilight was happy because it felt like she was going to get somewhere with this, and she already imagined her report to the Princess about concerning that ability of those in need to rely on other people for help and support, and that there was no shame in doing so and sometimes it might be the only way you can get better.
So Twilight smiled and took her pills because she wanted to get better. She started cleaning the house because she was already feeling better because she was going to get better. Spike told Twilight that was it was nice to see her better and Twilight smiled.
Twilight started feeling sick the next day. It was kind of quiet though so she figured it wasn’t anything to worry about and tried to be happy and take her pills. One when she woke and one before she fell asleep. Two pills a day keeps the sickness away.
When it wasn’t kept away Twilight frowned. She thought maybe that her body was just getting used to the treatment and was beginning to resist it. Yes, she remembered reading that that was possible somewhere. Her body was fighting back against what it thought was a threat but wasn’t really it was just trying to fix and her make the sickness go away. Twilight wondered if the sickness was helping to fight back against the pills and if such a thing was possible but it wasn’t, probably.
She wanted to see the same doctor but there was an outbreak of some type of measles in Ponyville so when Spike woke up after his nap and walked out he couldn’t manage to get an appointment schedule within the next week. After that Twilight felt kind of alone but Spike gave her a hug and that made her feel a little bit better until he went to cook supper and that just made her feel even worse. She wondered that if she just slept forever if Spike could do what he wanted. Maybe she should go stay with someone else so she wouldn’t have to worry about him anymore.
Twilight’s friends came to visit her once or twice but she tried not to make them worry too much. Sometimes she felt like she wanted one of them there with her in the room but she always caught herself before she asked Spike to go get one of them for her.
“I don’t think the pills are working anymore,” Twilight said to the doctor and couldn’t smile this time.
The doctor asked if she was taking them everyday.
“Yes,” Twilight said.
The doctor told her that this was the type of medicine that wasn’t expected to work immediately and that it took some time to fix what was wrong with her. Twilight cried a little because that was exactly how he phrased and the doctor knew that something was wrong with her.
“Do you know how long?” Twilight said.
The doctor didn’t know how long because every pony was different and every pony’s reaction to this was different. He put a hoof on her shoulder and asked her to be patient and try to relax because he was sure she was going to get better.
Twilight swallowed an outcry and left. She contacted doctors in Manehatten and Canterlot and all over Equestria and some of them agreed to see her. They came and talked to her and they told her how worried they were for her and how much they were willing to help her and she told them how everyone so far had said that and yes for the love of everything on earth please help me please and they gave her a whole bunch of pills and orders to take them and showed her that people were there to talk to about how sick she was if she wanted. Sometimes Twilight let the pills in her mouth long enough to taste them and they tasted really bitter. Twilight didn’t want to take any more pills but she did because she had to prove to everyone that if she wasn’t getting better then it was through no fault of her own and maybe that would be a good enough excuse.
Princess Celestia visited her unexpectedly. She went too long without delivering a report and the Princess wanted to know why. Twilight called Spike into the room so he was there to help her explain what was wrong with her and how she was feeling. Princess Celestia smiled until Twilight started crying because seeing the Princess care this much about her made it hurt much worse than it was before the Princess showed up.
Princess Celestia politely dismissed Spike from the room and sat down next to Twilight.
“I know what’s wrong, Twilight,” Celestia said.
Twilight turned towards her and left the words inside her head where they belonged.
Celestia began to tell her of a time when she was younger when she felt the same as Twilight. It was right after her sister had been banished. She was in a lot of pain then, too, and felt the same way that she was feeling. She hurt so much that sometimes it didn’t even feel worth it to get out of bed in the morning. The fight with Luna had taken its toll on her, both physically and physiologically. She couldn’t stand the pain of standing up from her bed, even if she had had the willpower to try. In the darkest and deepest parts of this sickness, Celestia told her, closing her eyes and letting the tear run down her cheek, she even made plans to pass the kingdom on to a worthy successor, as she wasn’t fit to manage anything anymore. She told Twilight of all the things she tried to get to better, to relieve the pain and how none of them worked but she had to keep trying, you see, Twilight, you have to keep going on not only because you’re worth it but because of everyone in your life who loves and cares about you.
“How did you get better?” Twilight asked. Twilight wanted to get better. Twilight didn’t want to give up on getting better.
Celestia frowned and told Twilight that she didn’t know. She didn’t know how she got better. She tackled Equestria one day at a time and found that even the entirety of the country and all the pain in the world could be traversed if you just simply took one little step forward each day. The sun was starting to set and it was time for Twilight to take the pills that made her sleepy and made her not be noisy all night because she didn’t want to keep Spike up and she needed those.
Celestia asked her if she was feeling any better.
“Yes,” Twilight said. I don’t have a sister who betrayed me. I don’t have a country to run. I don’t have immense physical pain. I have nothing to care about other than myself. Why did you get better and I can’t.
Celestia asked her if she had ever felt like giving up for good.
“No,” Twilight said.
Celestia smiled and told Twilight that if she ever wanted to talk she would be there and that nothing in the world could keep them apart. Celestia said that there was nothing more important to her than helping Twilight get better.
Twilight fell asleep soon after Celestia left. She felt worse than ever, and wanted to give up for good.
“I’m not sure I can, Rainbow Dash.”
Rainbow Dash’s smile didn’t quiver. She told Twilight to come on and that the two of them were going to go out and have fun and hell maybe even go to Manehatten you know she heard there were some really nice clubs opening up. Rainbow Dash told her that they could go there and just like crash for a whole week her parents have a house out there so it doesn’t matter.
“I don’t think I can, Rainbow Dash.”
Rainbow Dash finally frowned and Twilight suddenly remembered that she had forgotten her birthday a week ago and she wanted to say something but just started crying. Rainbow Dash told her that she had to have some fun and just live life a little. Rainbow Dash resisted the urge to cry and told her that there was no way she was going to get better if all she did was lock herself in her house and doing nothing all day.
“I know, Rainbow Dash.”
Rainbow Dash told her that she would be here to help if Twilight would just let her. Twilight thanked her and told her to please have fun in Manehatten because there’s no reason you shouldn’t have fun just because I can’t.
Rainbow Dash left and the sickness kept Twilight in bed for a while.
The awful thing about the sickness was that it had this way of making you think that you ought not feel the way you did at all. How it kind of made you feel bad for making such a big fuss about it, and you were kind of selfish for hurting this much. The sickness had an out-and-out terrible way of tricking you into thinking that maybe you actually were better and nothing was wrong. It did this by scaling back how awful it made you feel until it made you think that hey this felt no worse than something like having a bad day at work or maybe accidentally breaking your glasses or something. It’s not that big a deal and with enough work and hope you can work through it no problem though of course it’s not really true and when you start working or hoping and something comes along to remind you how sick you really are. Twilight could handle it the first time but then when it happens over and over again hope becomes like this kind of aversion she became conditioned to avoid and hate because it was only a precursor to its own disappearance. Invariably.
Twilight tried to read some of the books that Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie had bought her whenever they were in Manehatten. They were things that they thought that Twilight would like, and maybe Twilight would like them so she tried to read them. She tried. If nothing else can be believed about Twilight’s sickness, this proposition must be accepted: she tried. Please, at least remember that.
She couldn’t. She couldn’t read anything. The books they got, her old journals, poems she sent into magazines when she was still in university and full of things like love and lust and creativity and hope. Fairy tales were incomprehensible. It felt like not so much an inability to read but a disinterest so powerful that it felt like her brain was tearing itself in two and the pain just made all the ink smear together on the page and all understanding turn to mush in her brain and she almost almost a hoof drawn back tears on the bed almost threw the book out of the window but Spike would just end up having to fix that too and she could see how sick he was getting of taking care of her after all these months even if he wouldn’t say anything.
Everything he said was noise in her ears. Everything her friends said and her teachers said and her mom and her dad and her brother and her lover and anyone else who prefaced and suffixed anything they had to say to her with an adamant proclamation that yes they did indeed care about her and always would as if to remind her that she was letting them all down and she needed to stop. Everything else they said was noise. Nothing but empty noise. How much of a fucking monster must she be that she could feel this that she could hurt this much every single day and no one has anything to offer her but the same absurd platitudes and empty promises and useless advice. That she could love so much and not feel anything in return. That the friends and family and loved ones she had could surround her and smile at her and encourage her and tell her how wonderful they all thought she was and yet that didn’t improve things at all no somehow made them worse much worse knowing that there’s all these ponies out there who thought she was great and she wasn’t worse that all she’d do is disappoint them wanted them to hate her wanted them to stop caring. That she was doing everything she could manage and everything she could think of to get better but nothing helped. That so much effort could be spent on all this for nothing. That she hoped sometimes that Spike would leave her alone to be forever because she couldn’t stand how much he cared. That she was this in the first place. Please tell me. Please. How much of a monster must she be for all this to be true. How much of a monster.
Twilight sat up in bed and realized suddenly why this sickness had never gone away and would never go away no matter what she did. All this time, she saw it as some sort of assault on her body and mind. The sickness was some sort of foreign agent operating with malicious intent inside of her, sabotaging what would otherwise be perfectly functioning systems, she had thought. That’s why the cures didn’t work. That’s why she couldn’t think about curing this. That’s why the medicine never did anything at all and why she would be like this until she gave up. She thought the sickness was separate and detached from her, some anomaly infesting her, something to be expunged, but in reality
