... Comes the Most Heartbreak
Twilight watched in disappointment as her number one assistant polished off the last of the Rocky Road ice cream. It wasn’t that she wanted a bowl, but rather how his eating habits had degraded. Over the last few weeks, Spike had increased his caloric intake into a range that could not possibly be healthy, even for a growing dragon, and was bordering on being food-obsessive.
Of course, it certainly didn’t help any that there wasn’t going to be any ice cream just when she was reaching the peak of her estrus cycle. Comfort foods were only any good if they were present. If all there was to eat was boiled oats and daffodils, how was she expected to sit down with a book and relax? You don’t eat hot porridge to cool off!
Still, she could sympathize with him well enough. All of the mares in Ponyville were in heat, and all of the pheromones in the air were bound to be getting him down. He was, after all, a growing boy, and the hormones surging through him were no doubt leaving him confused and as moody as the mares around him. Much to both of their embarrassment, it was probably only a matter of time until she had to give him the talk.
“Spike, I wish you wouldn’t pig out like that,” she scolded, shaking her head as she collected the dinner plates in her magic aura. “I know you’re growing, but it seems like the only direction you’re growing is out.” Pointedly, she snatched up the spoon and poked him in the belly, which had grown like his appetite, before tweaking his nose with it. “You can’t keep dismissing this as baby fat. You barely even fit in the apron Rarity made you, now.”
To his credit, Spike managed to blush before letting out a groan of protest. “I know, Twi,” he whined, staring mournfully down at the empty ice cream tub on his lap. “It’s just... my body keeps telling me to eat, so maybe I’m having another growth spurt.”
She frowned, sitting down beside him. “You know you’re supposed to eat better than that. Rather than pigging out on high calorie foods when you think you’re having a growth spurt, you should balance it out with healthy foods,” Twilight whispered, stroking some of the spines on top of his head, attempting to straighten out the unkempt ridge. “You might be getting lots of calcium, but what of your other vitamins and minerals? When is the last time you had some beans, grains, greens, or even had a nice almandine?” When he didn’t respond, she nuzzled him gently. “You know that an iron deficiency isn’t good for your blood production or your scales. How would you feel if you developed anemia?”
“I promise to eat better, Twilight,” he answered, putting aside the tub. “Just... promise you won’t try to guilt trip me about it. It’s bad enough with Rarity; I don’t need you pushing my buttons too.”
Finally, Twilight cracked an apologetic smile. “I know it’s hard, knowing your love for her goes unrequited,” she said, recalling his recent admittance that Rarity would never feel the way for him that he felt for her. “I know it seems like she’s manipulative and taking advantage of you sometimes, but it’s just her natural charisma. She has a way with words that can get anypony to do almost anything. She doesn’t try to take advantage of them.”
Spike nodded dejectedly, but his jaw clenched in a pained grimace, halting the nod partway. Clutching his stomach, he groaned, and leaped from the little bench. Part of her wanted to gloat, telling him she’d told him so as he scuttled out of the kitchen, but having seen him in such discomfort, she stayed her tongue. Instead, she sighed as she heard the patter of his feet on the stairs and the slamming of the bathroom door.
After washing up the dishes—a chore she didn’t mind doing, even if Spike insisted it was his job—she found herself making her way upstairs to her personal study. Sure, it didn’t grant her access to all of the material available in the main library, but it did house her private collection. Most important of all, it provided a place where she wouldn’t usually be disturbed. She just wanted to sit down, let her wings rest, and go over the next planned repairs to the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters.
Flopping down on her study pillow, she levitated over her logbook and blueprints, trying to determine which section to fix up after the throne room. Certainly, there was nothing to be done structurally until the stonemason arrived from Canterlot next month, but perhaps something could be done to the hall bearing the ‘Organ to the Outside’ to make it into a banquet hall. Granted, adjustments would have to be made to disable—or rather toggle—the device until all the tracks could be discovered and cleared. As much as it might be a source of fond memories for the princesses, we were incredibly lucky that no one was forced through a collapsed tunnel.
“Of course, we can also work on the personal quarters,” she said aloud, momentarily forgetting Spike’s absence. “It would definitely save us a lot of time if we could stay the night without cramping ourselves into the reading room. Plus we’d be able to house some volunt—”
Her musings were interrupted by an agonized, blood curdling scream from elsewhere in the house, followed by the sound of... stones hitting porcelain? First one, then two a few moments later, and finally three and four in rapid succession. What was Spike doing in there? Surely if he was passing some sort of blockage or mass of undigested gems, he would know better than to use the bathtub, wouldn’t he? It could be that he either lost all common sense in his agony, or that whatever was being passed made it too painful to remain upright.
She pushed the scatological question aside for the present and rose to her hooves. Without even caring to put aside her documents, she darted out of the study and into the hallway. Her number one assistant was in great distress, and however awkward it would be for him having her there, she couldn’t just listen to his agony and do nothing. Even as she slid to a halt in front of the bathroom door, she heard him sobbing and whimpering.
“What is wrong with me?” she heard him whisper. After a pained sob, she thought she heard something rolling in the tub. “This isn’t supposed to happen...”
The pain in his voice, which was oddly softer in spite of his screaming, was heartbreaking for her. “Spike?” she called in, tapping gently on the door as she spoke. “I know this is going to be awkward, but I’m coming in, alright?”
A strangled cry was her only response for a few moments before finally he spoke. “Don’t come in, Twilight! Please, I don’t want you to see me like this!” he protested weakly. “I just wanna be by myself.”
Being rejected stung her, but she didn’t relent. “Please Spike, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” she replied in a soft motherly tone. “These things happen, right? I promise you that there’s nothing in there that could possibly surprise me. Don’t forget that I helped change your diapers.”
“You say that now...” Beneath the shakiness in his voice, he almost sounded angry. “Fine... just, promise not to freak out or laugh. Okay?”
Why does he sound more confused than hurt? she wondered to herself, focusing her magic to unlock the door before her. Why does he think I’m going to freak out? Unless he somehow laid eggs, there’s nothing that can possibly shock me.
As soon as she pulled the door open and stuck her head inside, the acrid scent of ammonia assaulted her nose. She could just barely see Spike’s form reclining over the edge of the tub, and he looked terrible. His face was streaked with tears, and, if the red spider web pattern in his eyes were any indication, it seemed as though he’d strained hard enough to blow some capillaries in his eyes.
From the one arm she could see draped over the edge, she thought she could see the thin sheen of moisture on his forearms. The compassionate part of her mind argued that the moisture was water from the tub, run in an attempt to wash away some of the mess and save himself some dignity. Unfortunately, the logical part of her mind was quick to point out that she hadn’t heard the tap run. Besides, water wouldn’t hang off his claws in strands; whatever it was had to be mucilaginous in nature.
The fear—fear of what, though? Judgment?—in his eyes only grew the closer she drew, intensifying her own anxiety. In spite of the awkward smile she showed him, they were both trembling. Twilight worried that whatever had caused his sudden escape to the bathroom had triggered some sort of sexual response. She feared that in the wake of it all, she would have to explain to him about his changing body and about the reptilian—for dragons were members of the family draconis, order squamata, of the class reptilia—hemipenis. Worst, she dreaded explaining that what had happened was perfectly natural in a sexual situation.
She noticed several things simultaneously when she was right beside the tub. Firstly, the viscous, syrupy fluid coating his forearm absolutely coated his lower half, especially around the base of his tail near his cloacal opening, as well as the bottom of the tub. The ammoniac odor was strongest here and seemed to originate from this fluid. It almost reminded her of uric acid, which would make sense if it had been expelled from his cloaca.
That lead Twilight’s attention to what was undeniably the most impossible thing in the room: Spike’s tail, coated in the same fluid as his legs and waist, was curled around what were unmistakably three green and purple speckled eggs. Finally, her eyes locked on the fourth egg cradled against his chest by his other arm. “Spike?” she whispered in confusion. “You couldn’t have—this doesn’t make any sense.” Her left ear began twitching as she stared down at him. “Only female dragons can lay eggs, not males...” She blinked. “How can you be a girl?”
“I’m not a girl!” Spike suddenly screamed, letting the egg roll down his belly to join the rest of the clutch. “I’m a boy, and I’ll grow up to be big and strong, just like my greed growth. I’ll be big and gallant, and then Rarity will give me a chance!”
He hugged his arms close to his chest and turned away from Twilight. Shaking his head emphatically, he began to chant, “I’m not a girl. I can’t be a girl. I’m not a girl. I can’t be a girl.” His respiration increased, and she knew he was beginning to hyperventilate, but there was nothing she could say to soothe him. He just continued his mantra, trembling and weeping as he went.
For maybe the fifth time in her entire life, Twilight found herself questioning everything she knew. Spike, whom even Princess Celestia referred to male, had laid a clutch of eggs. How was this possible? Nature didn’t work that way! Males just didn’t have the organs to do this, but the incontrovertible evidence was right here before her. If Spike laid eggs, didn’t that make him a girl?
Her temples throbbed as Spike’s chant grew more shrill in pitch. None of this made any sense to her, and her number one assistant’s growing hysteria was certainly not doing her mounting headache any favors. Leaning her head down beside his, she nuzzled her dragon gently on the cheek. “Spike, I’m so sorry... about this, and about what I’m going to do,” she spoke softly, lighting her horn. “I promise we’ll get through this, but for now, I need you to sleep.”
~ {F} {t} {M} {o} {F} ~
Spike slowly opened his eyes and told himself that this was all just some queer nightmare. Just remembering the dream sent shivers down his back and left a strange ache in his loins. Boy dragons didn’t lay eggs; that was completely preposterous. Stretching his body out on the bed, he mentally berated himself for even allowing his mind to become bothered by a mere dream.
How would that even work? he asked himself. He knew from one of Twilight’s various study obsessions that there were some amphibians that could spontaneously change sexes to suit a population or environment, and given that he’s the only dragon in Ponyville, being female would make better odds for a chance at increasing the population. Then again, dragons were reptiles, not amphibians, and therefore not prone to such spontaneous changes in sex.
Could it be poison joke? he wondered, staring up at the ceiling. No, Twilight proved that dragons weren’t affected by poison joke in the same way ponies were. All it did was make my spines glow in the dark for a few days.
He rolled on the bed to face the window, pulling the blanket closer around him and dismissing the thoughts. It was ludicrous to question how anything worked in dreams. Twilight said they were just manifestations of his subconsciousness as it attempted to sort through the day’s events and his thoughts. Maybe the dream was just a manifestation of some doubt about his own masculinity? Those aprons they get me are always so emasculating. Just once I’d like a nice, manly blue one with something like ‘Kiss the Cook’ written on it.
Stretching out on the bed once more, a thought occurred to him. When did my basket get so big? For that matter, I wouldn’t be able to view the window from it. The foot of Twilight’s bed is always... He sat up with a start, bringing another dull ache to his loins. Upon looking down, he realized that he was not in his own bed, but rather in Twilight’s. Why would I be in...?
Spike slowly forced his eyes in the direction of his basket, but stopped short and clenched his eyes shut as a tendril of fear wormed its way out of the pit of his stomach. This was so stupid. Why was he so afraid that he was going to see eggs? It was simply a dumb nightmare. He was probably in Twilight’s bed because she’d wanted to comfort him while he slept. That was far more feasible than him being placed on her bed because his own was now housing a clutch of eggs.
“Thank you for coming on such short notice, Princess,” he heard Twilight cry out in relief somewhere below. “It’s just... I don’t know what to do, and none of this makes any sense.”
A moment of silence passed, and then he heard something rather unexpected. “Please Twilight, you are a princess now too; it’s alright call me Celestia in private,” Princess Celestia replied. He could only imagine a hug or nuzzle being thrown in. “Now, Twilight, what seems to be the problem?”
Twilight began to murmur something he couldn’t quite make out, but he could hear the two moving through the library. The whole time, he kept asking himself why Twilight would call Celestia down from Canterlot so suddenly? She was whispering frantically about something, and occasionally he heard keywords like ice cream or castle, but it didn’t really leave him enough to come to any sensible conclusion except maybe that the old castle in the Everfree had turned into ice cream.
“When I opened the door, he was in the bathtub with a clutch of eggs!” Twilight shouted outside the bedroom door. “Four in the bathtub with him and a fifth in the toilet! How could this happen, Celestia?”
Hearing this, he forced his eyes open and stared down at the basket he always slept in. There, wrapped in his favorite blue blanket, were not four, but five purple eggs, speckled with spots of green. This can’t be! It was only a dream! In spite of himself, he felt his fear and panic skyrocketing. No, I’m a boy! I’m still dreaming!
A gentle knock on the door came when he realized he was sobbing once more. “Spike? Princess Celestia is here, and she says she has something important to tell both of us,” came her pleading voice. “May we come in?”
Spike tore his eyes from the basket of eggs—his eggs, his heart told him—long enough to look at the door. It was open a crack, and he could see Twilight peering worriedly back at him. He knew that Twilight would never do anything to hurt him, but at the same time, he wanted to be by himself. Still, he knew from past experiences that he didn’t make the best decisions when he was upset. “I-I guess.”
He watched the door ease open as it was enveloped in a golden glow, revealing both Twilight and Celestia standing outside. In contrast to her usual serene mask, Celestia’s face bore an almost apologetic look. As the two mares entered the room, he noted Celestia’s eyes were looking anywhere but at Spike or the clutch of dragon eggs.
Celestia looked down at her former student as the young princess joined him on the bed, and she let out a heavy breath that somehow carried the weight of more than a decade’s time in its tone. “Twilight, I owe you and Spike an apology for what I am about to tell you both.” Finally Celestia looked at Spike, and the emptiness he saw in those pink orbs frightened him. “For more than ten years, I’ve kept this from you both, and while you will both no doubt be angry with me for not telling you the truth, I only ask that you reserve your judgment until after I finish my tale. A long, long time ago...”
~ {F} {t} {M} {o} {F} ~
When you were just a little filly, Twilight, you came to study under me. You’d exhibited the magical potential to not only transmogrify ponies into various forms of plant life, but also to hatch a dragon’s egg. Few know this, but this part of the exam is less about hatching a dragonling than it is exhibiting enough skill, power, or magical precision to create even a single crack in a dragon egg. In fact, very few ponies have ever successfully hatched an egg in these tests, because the eggs are unfertilized. It was a great feat of raw power to create life from an egg in which there was none.
In fact, in the last hundred years, there have been only five other ponies to hatch a dragonling from their test age, and none of them as young as you. Most entrants to the academy are two or three years your senior, much like Sunset Shimmer. Sunset’s own test was actually one of those instances, although I’ll admit that her hatchling was malformed and didn’t live very long. I’d like to think that was part of why she became so bitter and cruel, but I digress.
I remember sitting down with you, that first day you studied under me. You were full of wide-eyed excitement, so eager to learn from me that you barely thought to learn about me. It was only after I stopped to ask you about your family that you actually took the time for us to get to know each other. Do you remember how shy you were when it came to talking about your family?
“And what of your little hatchling?” I’d asked, pointing out the diapered little dragon sucking on its tail not far from where we sat. “Have you given her a name yet?”
You gave me a slightly confused look before giving me a great big smile, and said, “Yep! I named him Spike, cuz he has these spikes growin’ out of him, an’ he’s gonna my lil’ brother!”
I was rather taken aback at the time. Of all the hatchlings produced by the aptitude and placement tests over the last three hundred years at the academy, I’d never once heard of a female student hatching a male dragon or any instance of the opposite. Hatchlings, it seemed, took a number of characteristics from the pony that hatched them—sex being one of them—as a result of that pony’s magic forming the basis for their existence. Yet you were so certain that Spike had been a boy.
“Why do you think Spike is a boy?” I’d asked, levitating the baby dragon over to join us.
You looked at me with such certainty and told me, “Shining armor says purple is a regal, valiant color, and only the Captain of the Guard wears it because he’s the bravest, most valiant pony under your service, so I thought that maybe Spike would be a valiant knight, and he would protect me from harm.” Let it never be said that you don’t hear the strangest reasonings from the mouths of fillies and colts.
That same day, when Cadance had offered to take you on your lunch break, I took little Spike, and had ‘him’ sexed. Sure enough, while I was subjecting Spike to a cloacal probing, I discovered that Spike was a perfectly healthy little dragoness. Part of me wanted to tell you right then and there that your hatchling was a girl, but the look of excitement you had upon calling her your little brother gave me pause. You were such a happy, albeit bookish and shy, little filly that I felt that any attempts to tell you that you were wrong would make it harder to build rapport with you. Especially when I felt you were likely to be Equestria’s best hope pending Luna’s return.
Over the next few years, I came up with plenty of excuses not to tell you. Part of me had hoped with your rampant curiosity that you would end up doing what all little fillies and colts did, and ‘play doctor’. There were, after all, enough of copies of How to Sex Your Dragon in the academy library that there was no reason you wouldn’t have found out, yet you never did.
Likewise, I tried to justify reinforcing Spike’s masculinity as a way to keep you sociable. As you became more engrossed in your studies, you barely talked to other ponies. After Shining Armor enrolled in the Royal Guard and went off to boot camp and then later officer’s college, you had no other boys to talk to. Nobody except Spike. I became worried that if you didn’t have a boy in your life, you might never be comfortable socializing with stallions when that interest inevitably came about.
Even after you’d grown into the mare you are today, I could not bring myself to tell you the truth. Not only was Spike’s male persona cemented, he was a male in almost every sense of the word. Even the greed growth that you wrote to me about showed him to be masculine. To tell him he was anything other would have shattered his life, or his trust in me. I knew that it would only be a matter of time until puberty would betray the secret, but I chose to remain silent. It was then that I accepted that Spike would be hurt either way. I couldn’t bring myself to hurt him directly, so instead he was hurt through my inaction.
I know how disappointed, angry, and hurt you must feel, Spike. What I’ve done is completely unforgivable, but I hope that one day the anger will fade. I will leave you both now, as you both no doubt require time to think, but please remember that I never wanted to hurt either of you. I just... couldn’t find the words.
~ {F} {t} {M} {o} {F} ~
A day and a half had passed since Celestia’s visit, and Spike simply didn’t know what to do with him—or was that her?—self. On one claw, he wanted to march into Canterlot Castle and yell at Princess Celestia for the emotional hell he was now going through, but on the other, he couldn’t deny that even though the eggs were unfertilized, he felt some compulsion to not stray too far from his clutch. In a way, it almost made sense why he felt so enamored to the idea of caring for Peewee’s egg and why it hurt so much to return the baby phoenix to its parents.
He barely spoke a word to Twilight over that entire day. Most of his anger was directed at Celestia, but at the same time, there was a small part of him that wanted to blame Twilight for some part in this. How easy would it have been for her to question the status quo? Sure, he wouldn’t have just submitted to the examination if he knew what it would have entailed, but it would have shown she cared enough to be sure herself. Instead, she allowed herself to be an unwitting perpetrator of Celestia’s lie.
What was he even supposed to do with these eggs? He knew enough about biology to know that he would have had to been in contact that way with a male dragon for these eggs to have any chance of hatching. At best—that is to say if he felt generous enough toward Celestia—he could donate the eggs to Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns and hope the process that gave life to him could be repeated with his eggs.
Then there was the issue of his friends. All of them stopped by yesterday in an attempt to cheer him up, and each time, he turned them away. They only wanted to help, of course, but he didn’t want to face them. Sure they would offer shoulders to cry on or offer to listen to him, but nothing they could say or do would change this empty feeling in his heart.
His entire life had been built upon a falsehood. Didn’t that make everything about him a lie? It wasn’t Spike the boy dragon that did any of the things he did, because he didn’t exist. But if... he wasn’t a he, then wasn’t he a she? Who was she then? What would she even be called? It couldn’t be Spike; he was a lie she wanted nothing to do with.
“Spike, I know you’re upset, but we really want to talk to you,” the young dragoness heard Twilight say, following a knock on the door. “It’s not healthy to refuse to eat or see your friends. It doesn’t matter if you’re a boy or a girl, Spike. What matters is that you’re our friend, and we don’t want to see you hurting like this.”
She stared at the single egg on the bed in front of her. “My name isn’t Spike,” she grumbled. “I guess you can come in, though. It’s not like I can stop you from coming into your own room.”
Following a moment where she deeply regretted just how bitter she sounded, she turned her eyes up in time to watch the door open. One by one her friends and Twilight filed into the room, all of them appearing quite serious. First in was Fluttershy, who in spite of her apologetic countenance, looked ready to pounce on the bed and cuddle her like the hurt friend she was. Applejack and Rainbow Dash both looked unsure of what they could say to help, but willing to lend a hoof any way they could. Pinkie was probably the one who looked almost as lost as the dragoness; her hair was somewhat deflated, and she looked as though she were simultaneously mourning the loss of an old friend while also excited to meet a new one.
Then there was Rarity. The damp, apologetic look in her eyes told it all. She clearly felt bad for having strung the baby dragon along, like it was somehow her fault that ‘Spike’s’ life had gone so wrong. Maybe it was, in some sense. ‘Spike’ had been so dead-set on being the paragon of masculinity—that she was male—that she’d allowed herself to fall in love with the paragon of femininity, and how was she repaid? Time and time again, the mare rewarded her with emasculating accoutrements, almost as though she subconsciously knew that Spike wasn’t real and was reaching out to the girl within.
It was silly, of course. There was no way Rarity could have known any of that. The unicorn mare before her, like everybody else, thought Spike was a boy based on Twilight’s own mistake. And honestly? On Twilight’s part, that’s all it could have been: a mistake. She didn’t lie to the young dragoness out of malice. She’d made a mistake as a little filly, one that the pony both of them trusted most chose not to correct out of some stupid sentiment.
“So, um,” Fluttershy began in her quiet, unsure tone, shifting anxiously on her hooves as she spoke. “If you don’t want to use that name, what do you want to be called?”
The little dragoness looked up at the meek pegasus with doubt in her eyes. “I don’t know,” she admitted. Reaching in front of her, she picked up the lone egg and ferried it back to the basket to join its unfertilized siblings. “I suppose if I am to keep going on, a name is a good a start as any.”
Pinkie brightened up a bit at this. “Oh, ooh! Pick me!” she said excitedly. “Well, not me. I mean, can you imagine if there were two Pinkie Pies? That’d be crazy! Oh, but we’d have so much fun!”
Almost everypony in the room glared at Pinkie, causing the energetic mare to wilt slightly. “Right, sorry,” she apologized, still managing to keep her smile. “You could be Barbara. It’s a nice name I’ve heard some of the mule folk use. I think it suits you.”
The dragoness raised her eyebrow, but somepony else managed to speak her mind. “Are you sure you’re not offering that because of the obvious pun?” Rainbow Dash countered. “You just want to use her spines as an excuse to call her Barb.”
“Well, puns sell buns!” the pink baker replied, sticking her tongue out. “Besides, what would you call her?”
“Well, sugarcube,” Applejack interjected, preventing any sort of ruckus starting. “Twi originally named her after all them spines growing up and down her back, right? Why not just go with spines?” She pointed her hoof at the dragoness’s dorsal spines. “Ah’m just saying... it’s a name close to her original, similar enough in sound that she shouldn’t have no problems respondin’ to, an’ it has the same meanin’ as the old one without bein’ too—ugh—punny.”
‘Spike’ stared at all the mares as they debated her new name. In spite of all that had changed, they still went on like nothing at all was different. “I-I’ll think about it, but for now,” she interrupted, while waving her hands to get everyone’s attentions, “I think I like AJ’s option better. She’s right, it’s similar enough that I probably won’t miss it, but different enough to separate myself from... the lie.”
“Spik—er, Spines, your life isn’t a lie!” Twilight insisted, joining her little sister on the bed.
Spines let forth twin streams of smoke from her nostrils as she snorted in disgust. Pointing one claw at the basket of eggs. “What do you call those? What part of that basket of eggs makes ‘Spike’ real?” she replied in anger. She stared angrily into Twilight’s eyes, and then deflated, allowing her shoulders to relax. “I suppose once we decide on my permanent name, I’ll have to learn about being a girl, won’t I?” A sarcastic glint reached her eyes. “Oh! I know, you can teach me how to do my own make-up while we talk about boys.”
“Why would you have to stop being anything but yourself?” Rainbow Dash asked pointedly, flaring her wings out as she spoke. “Ponies like AJ and me get called tomcolts all the time. Does that make us any less the mares we are?”
She wilted under Dash’s piercing gaze. “I guess not,” Spines replied apologetically. “It just feels like... if I try to keep living like Spike, I’m not being true to myself, but if I throw Spike away, I’m not being true to myself either. How can I live like that?”
Twilight wrapped a wing around her number one assistant and hugged her close. “This is a big transitional period in your life,” she answered. “That you’ve delivered a clutch of eggs, unfertilized as they are, shows that you’re on your way to becoming sexually mature. The very foundation of your existence has been shaken to its core. You’re bound to be confused about things for a while, but you know what, Spines?”
“What, Twi?”
“We’ll be right there with you, to help you along the way.”
~ {F} {t} {M} {o} {F} ~
“Are you sure you want to do this, Spines?” Twilight asked, putting a hoof on her shoulder. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
The seven of them were gathered out back of the library, a few days after their intervention. The young dragoness had dug a small hole and had fashioned a makeshift grave marker. Hand-carved into the horizontal plank were the words Spike. Clutched to her chest was the smallest of the five eggs. The other four sat behind her, in a box destined for the academy.
Looking up at Twilight, she smiled weakly, wiping a tear from her green eyes. “It’s alright, Twi.” She stepped forward, gently stroking the egg. “I wanna do this.”
She sank to her knees in front of the hole, and gently lowered the egg into the hole. Once the egg sat at the bottom, she began dragging the displaced dirt back into the hole. Tears began to stream down her cheeks as she patted the dirt firmly over the grave. By the time the soil was as hard as the dirt around it, she was bawling her eyes out, as were most of the ponies gathered there.
“Oh, Spines,” Twilight whispered, completely unheard.
Spines rose back to her feet, slow and deliberate. The entire time, she never tore her gaze from the grave marker. “I guess this is goodbye, Spike,” she said aloud, to be heard by all at the small ceremony. “You were me, and I was you, so you won’t be forgotten.” Turning her back on the grave to face her friends, she smiled. “Maybe we’ll see each other again someday.”
Author's Note
Welp, before I begin, I might as well quell a few concerns you might have following this.
"Maleness, or How could they not have noticed he wasn't a boy?"
A really important detail to keep in mind here is that I based dragon biology primarily off of reptiles, rather than some sort of mammal. This means that rather than having a penis or vagina coupled with the anus, dragons have a cloaca, and in the case of males, a hemipenis. A cloaca is a common opening through which the urinary and digestive tracts expel waste. In females, the cloaca also serves as an opening for the oviduct. Yes, just like a chicken, the eggs come fairly literally out of a dragon's butt.
That leads into the idea that 'Spike would have had an erection at some point if he was a guy'. I'm not an expert on herpetology, but I would like to think that the differences between mammals [read ponies/humans] and dragons would mean that a male dragon would not have one of his hemipenes expressed unless in a sexual situation or physically manipulated. Given that Spike is still a child, it seems somehow wrong to imply that he has been in such a situation. It's partially why Twilight seemed uneasy about walking into that bathroom. She was mentally preparing herself for... something else.
"But he still sounds like a boy!" You might say. To be honest, I personally find that Spike sounds no more masculine than Rainbow Dash. Being voiced by Cathy Weseluck, he naturally has that 'Girl trying to sound like a boy' voice. It's not something you really notice until you try to listen to it, and by then, you can't really unhear it. It actually probably isn't too uncommon, in the cases of children who are raised thinking they are the opposite sex, for those children to learn to control their voices to fit in. They might not even think anything of it. That's what I went with here, and partially implicated with Twilight noticing a 'softer' voice.
Yes, what Celestia did was horrible, but when you think about it, could it have turned out any other way? Think about it from her perspective for a moment. She thinks Twilight is likely her best hope for reactivating the Elements of Harmony. In preparation for Nightmare Moon's return, she has to groom the child for her role, which requires Twilight's implicit touch. As cruel or evil as it sounds, sometimes you have to tell a lie to a child in order to build rapport with them, or else you preemptively stunt the amount that they trust you. A lot of this lingers on the fact that Celestia should have told Twilight a lot of things while preparing her, but at the same time, is there any guarantee that she would have come out the same way? You tell a child that they're destined to do great things puts a big strain on them. Suddenly dropping "Your little brother is a girl!" on top of it all just sounds crazy unnecessary.
On the topic of Celestia, I realize that it might be a concern the way her scene was written, with it being solely from her PoV while she monologues. After all, it leaves no room to gauge the reactions of 'Spike' or Twilight. Given the way I had Spines 'react' in the following scene, I actually planned it this way, and intended for Celestia's monologue to to be a 'sit down and listen' moment. Not everybody's cup of tea, I know. Bear with me.
I'd like to thank Kaidan, TittySparkles, Refro, and Abcron for editing, as well as the users involved in the thread "What if..." in the Rule 63 group for goading me on to write this. I couldn't have done this without all of your support, and I hope you all enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
