I Need You To Be Brave
by MidnightDancer
Once upon a time, there lived a little purple pony.
She was a unicorn, the most obviously magical of the four races that populated Equestria. Apart, of course, from the alicorns, whose magic and might were venerated and respected and feared, sometimes. Eventually, she joined them, but for me, this story is about the little purple unicorn.
The Hall of Heroines is quiet this time of day, and I come to look up through the centuries at the honors bestowed on my best friends. Most of all, I come to look at her, the mare that was so many things to me: mother, sister, friend. The stained glass window towers still over my small body, the morning light pouring through and casting fragments of green, lavender, blue, and gold across my face. Princess Twilight Sparkle, the reluctant princess. I chuckle to myself, remembering her quick smile and natural leadership that even years into her reign, she never wore comfortably. I smile fondly, letting my eyes slip closed, left only with the jumbled impressions of colored light through my lids and warmth on my face. The glass is cool under my hand as I touch the bottom of her stained-glass hoof. If only I could touch the glass and know that somewhere, she felt it.
I can't, of course. Those days are long past.
A soft tpp sounds from the end of the hall, and I turn, blinking against the bright sliver of light falling from the entrance door. It widens, admitting a powder-blue unicorn mare followed by a dutiful troop of foals. I rack my brain as I let my eyes roam to her pale orange mane, and finally dredge up a name: Diamond Tome.
"Here we are, fillies and colts! The Hall of Heroines!" The mare gestures excitedly at the solid wall of windows, and turns to walk backwards in front of the foals, her cutie mark of a crystal book flashing in the light. "Princess Celestia and Princess Luna have kept this hall as a way to remember all of the struggles that made Equestria what it is today!" The little ponies peer up listlessly at the ancient windows, feigning interest as Diamond Tome creates a pointer of light in her magic, indicating windows as she passes them. "This one shows the first battle between Princess Celestia and her sister Princess Luna, who was at that time possessed by the evil Nightmare Moon."
I watch, with some fascination, as she continues to troop backwards towards me, and I can't help but feel some bemusement. These things that she's pointing to, these rote tales she is telling with such enthusiasm... I was there. They're sort of my story, in a way. Her story, I think, glancing back up at the towering form of Twilight above me.
"...and then Princess Twilight Sparkle, with her five closest friends, sent the chaotic demon Discord back into his stone prison!" The wand of light raps the window smartly, and I jump slightly, pulled from my thoughts.
A small red hoof attached to a strangely large red colt waves in the air, and Diamond Tome nods indulgently. "Yes? What is it, Apple Cider?"
"Well, ma'am," came a polite and heartrendingly familiar drawl, "ain't Discord a good fella now? Helps out the Princesses, like." Diamond Tome looks slightly discomfited, her eyes flicking between her student and the window.
"Ah, well, yes! But at the time, Discord was a very different po-er, draconequus." She recovers smoothly, the manic light I have come to associate with slightly unhinged academics creeping back into her eyes. "These windows cover millenia of conflicts and achievements, and the thing that you must understand is that ponies and other creatures all change over time. Princess Luna let jealousy take her once, Princess Celestia somehow learned and mastered Dark Magic, and even an old villain like Discord changed to turn over a new leaf. Incidentally, it was the friendship of the Elements of Harmony that changed him for the better." She resumes her lecture, gliding seamlessly to the next window.
As she continues on, rattling about the Royal Wedding in which I took part, the first faint pings of annoyance make themselves known. She's just... saying names and dates, and some boilerplate stuff from the Book of Harmony about how ponies change over time. I can't put a claw on why this bothers me so much; they are, after all, merely schoolfoals that need to have a basic grasp of history. But still...
"And now we come to one of the more interesting windows! As you can see, this little purple fellow isn't a pony, but a dragon! He was Princess Twilight Sparkle's employee-"
"Assistant." It blurts out of me suddenly, and I feel my hands clench. Employee. Pah.
I take a savage sort of joy in the way Diamond Tome jumps into the air, whirling to face me. Her eyes widen, and her mouth hangs open for the barest second. "Of course! Yes! Assistant! And because dragons are so long-lived, class," she continues, and I have to hand it to her—the mare is devoted to teaching, "we have him still here with us today!" She smiles brightly, sweeping out a hoof that only barely shakes to indicate me.
I stare at the class, and they stare back, fifteen small nonplussed faces. "Uh... hi?" I wave one hand cautiously. A filly in the front blinks and tilts her head.
"So! Spike!" Diamond Tome bustles around to stand beside me, though I note that she keeps herself just far enough away that there's no danger of us touching accidentally. "You rescued the Crystal Kingdom! That must have been very difficult."
Rubbing the back of my neck, I shrug, my eyes finding the floor. "N-Not really. I mean, it wasn't just me, Twilight helped, too... I just was the only one free to bring back the Crystal Heart, that's all." Centuries old, and I still freeze up when somepony bigger than me puts me in the spotlight.
Diamond Tome just nods encouragingly, before giving me a cautious pat on the head. "Well, it was very brave of you! I hope you got hazard pay for that," she laughs, before beginning to trot backwards once more.
"But I didn't... I didn't mind..." I trail off, turning to watch them go as the schoolteacher starts her script once more at the window I stand in front of. I move slightly to the side, inching away from the image of the pony I loved best in the world.
"And here we have the ascension of Princess Twilight Sparkle. She was very smart, and studied friendship under Princess Celestia as her private student!" The foals look bored, rolling their necks and blinking sleepily in the heat of the Hall. "She became the Princess of Friendship, and did many wonderful things during her reign. Including, of course, defeating Tirek, negotiating peace with the Minotaurs, and stopping the Frost Dragons from destroying the Crystal Empire." Her hooves are moving again and I blink.
"Her favorite books were the Daring Do series. She would read them for hours!" The ponies turn, their stares uncomfortable on my scales. "Just, um, an interesting fact?"
Diamond Tome lets out a brittle laugh, the one I have come to associate with an adult that has had quite enough of a child's antics. "Yes, quite interesting. They're certainly classics. Anyway, class, as I was saying, Princess Twilight was a force for good during her time in Equestria. Few foes could stand before her magical might—"
"And she liked jasmine tea the best!" I have no idea what I'm doing, why I'm blurting all this out. My hand finds her stained-glass hoof once more, and the warmth of the glass gives me the fleeting feeling that she's still smiling benignly on me and encouraging me as she always did. "S-She really liked it with honey, especially when she was sick." I stand a little straighter, smiling. For some reason, all of this, embarrassing as it is, is making me feel better. I can almost hear her whispering, be brave. Be brave for me.
I can see some of the foals turning towards me, interested smiles finally gracing their faces.
I can see Diamond Tome's face reddening as she raises her voice over mine. "—and the combined might of her and her friends using the Elements of Harmony was nearly invincible—"
The savage joy is back. I don't even know why I hate this lesson she's giving them, I just do. I can feel my spines stiffen as I face her, being brave, my voice raising as well. "She was always so careful about everything, but she left the Elements in a glass box in the bottom floor of a public library! She could be a silly pony, sometimes—"
"—and, and when she sent Tirek back to Tartarus, that was when she received her castle and her stewardship over Friendship—"
"—and speaking of silly, this one time, she bewitched her doll to be irresistible! Almost destroyed Ponyville! Celestia had to come and—"
"—and furthermore, she was killed in service to Equestria, along with all of her friends."
I freeze. Diamond Tome is glaring at me, a gleam of sick triumph in her eyes as my mouth simply snaps shut. I will myself not to cry, biting my bottom lip as she turns her manic smile back to her class, who also froze with their eyes round and mouths trembling. Her voice is at a more normal pitch now, but much more serious than I've heard her be yet. "Yes. Princess Twilight Sparkle and her five friends stood against Tirek when he returned anew, thirty years after his return to Tartarus. While Princess Twilight appeared as young as the other Princesses, her five friends had aged normally and were in their middle years. She dealt a killing blow to Tirek, ensuring our peace and prosperity in magic, but not until he had killed her friends and inflicted a mortal wound on her as well."
Silence rings through the hall, the absence of noise deafening as her students stare, stock-still, at her. Finally, a small yellow hoof rises into the air. Diamond Tome appears to compose herself once more, turning the rictus on her face to the foal. "Yes, Gleaming Cloud?"
The little yellow pegasus colt stammers slightly. "I-I thought that... that Princesses can't... can't die. I mean, the other three are still here, so..."
The teacher nods. "They cannot die by natural means, but they can still die from a mortal wound. At least, so far as I am aware, that is the case with ascended alicorns such as Princess Twilight and Princess Cadence. Nopony is really sure about Princess Celestia and Luna, because they were born as alicorns and so they might be different."
I can see the children swallow this explanation and nod, trotting dutifully behind her again as she starts towards the double doors at the end of the Hall. As they pass, I can almost feel the foals pushing everything down, pushing everything away, and I almost want to scream at them. My fists shake again and I bite my tongue. They learned more about Twilight the Pony from me than they'll ever learn anywhere else...
As the last of the clip-clopping of hooves leaves the Hall, the door banging closed behind them with a finality I could not argue with, I feel a sudden stroke on my balled fist that still rests on the window. I glance over in shock.
A clear, fragmented purple hoof, shot through with twists of precious metals welding the glass together, is gently stroking my equally purple scales, and the dam inside me breaks as the effigy of Twilight—of my mother, my sister, my friend—steps down from her window and sweeps one brittle wing around me. The tears burn, and I look up into her flat glass face framed by the setting sun behind her and wail, simply wail as I have not done since I saw her fall from the mountain on her last day. Be brave! Those were the last things I heard from her, and they come back now with a vengeance, for I have never felt less brave in my life.
She holds me, glass hooves still somehow warm and carrying a softness I didn't expect, and even though I know it's not true, I let myself fall into it. I don't even care why, or how. But I am careful, so careful as she holds me to her.
I don't want to break her. I don't think I could stand that, again.
The living glass lets me cry myself out, the sun slipping down fully past the horizon to make room for the moon. The room cools even as the body against mine grows warmer, slowly lengthening as my sobs subside into the occasional hiccup. I pull away, still sniffling slightly as the last of the glass hoof resting on my arm is replaced by a warm lion's paw. Scrubbing my face with the heels of my hands, face hot from the tears, I meet his yellow and red eyes.
"H-Hey, man."
Discord smiles, clapping me on the arm as though the last thirty minutes never happened. "And hello to you too." He jumps in the air, resting languidly on nothing, tail curling on the floor below him.
My voice grows a bit stronger, and I cough before continuing. "Yeah, so... how long were you here, anyway?"
"Oh, not long. Just long enough to hear that absolute nag fail to even mention the names of Equestria's greatest heroines." He hisses out that last, eyes narrowing for a brief moment. "I was, of course, going to come out as Twilight and run them out of the hall—I haven't had really good chaos in far too long—but then," he swoops down, giving me a gentle noogie, "you started talking and really, Spike, you were doing such a good job that I didn't have the heart to interrupt!" His eyes gleam for a second. "It was very... brave of you, to stand up to her like that."
I bat his paw away from my head, chuckling without humor. "Yeah, well... she got on my nerves." I can feel my face flushing again, and I glance away, back at the glass of Twilight.
"Oh, mine too, mine too," Discord hastens to assure me before snapping, a chaise lounge knocking me off my feet as he takes a seat beside me, small glasses perched on his nose and a clipboard in his mismatched hands. "But the question is why it bothered you."
I roll my eyes and hop off the couch, barely noticing as he poofs them away. "I dunno. It just felt like... like she was teaching just the stuff she did, and not who she was."
"Exactamundo, my good dragon!" The draconequus poofs in front of me, grinning widely. "And the reason she did that... that all the teachers do that, is because she can't teach about who she was. Nopony knows, anymore. Just you, me, and the darling Princesses."
"Yeah, but... but they could find this stuff out, and they could tell the kids... I was..." I fidget, brain working to try to put what I'm feeling into words but failing.
"And it would just be more facts and figures for them to remember for a test that won't mean a single thing in the long run of their education." I glare up at him, shaking again, but to my surprise he lowers himself to my level and looks at me steadily. "You knew her, probably better than anypony. I knew her. Celestia and Luna and Cadence knew her. We were given a gift, a singular chance to see her and know her as she truly was. You can teach a class, I'm sure, on all of her idiosyncrasies and exactly how cute she was when she was sleeping, but you're the only one that saw it."
That gives me pause, and I stare at him. I can sort of understand. I think.
"What a pony has done can be taught. You can put up a glass window with pictures of all the stuff they accomplished." He waves a paw dismissively at the entire Hall of Heroines, rolling his eyes slightly before looking back to me. "But you can never teach what a pony is. What a pony was. And, especially... you can never teach what a pony meant to you and have another pony truly understand it." He rubs his own eyes, taking a deep breath, before glancing up at the small effigy of Fluttershy on the wall opposite. "Not unless they knew and loved them the same, and nopony loves the same as another, Spike."
By unspoken agreement, we begin to walk down the hall, away from the physical reminders of those we lost. I glance up at him as he floats moodily along, his brow furrowed slightly. As we reach the door, I smile up at him.
"Hey, wanna go get some doughnuts?" My lips feel dangerously wobbly, my eyes uncomfortably prickly.
He snaps, and one lands neatly in my claw. "Extra sprinkles?" Discord tips me a wink, politely not noticing the tears tracking down my face again, and we slip out of the hall, closing the door on the memories.
Author's Note
For Regidar.
Be brave.
