"There, there, darling," said Rarity kindly. "I'm not going anywhere. I'll be here for as long as you need me, I promise."
Twilight was still crying hysterically on her friend's shoulder, apparently endless rivulets of tears running down both ponies' coats and pooling on the dirt floor of the library. Her mane was dishevelled and her ears flattened in misery, the usually vibrant purple of her coat having lost much of its silky sheen. Her eyes looked at Rarity, but they didn't really see her, instead gazing straight through her and at something far beyond.
"She's go-o-one!" she wailed between great, racking sobs. "She's go-o-o-one! How am I supposed to go on without her?"
Ah, thought Rarity knowingly. So that's what all this is about. She certainly kept it very quiet; I didn't even know she'd been seeing anypony. She levitated a tissue from a nearby shelf and used it to dab at Twilight's red and staring eyes. Princess she might be, but she was still a mare like any other – even more so, in some ways. Rarity felt on surer ground now she knew that this was the sad outcome of a romantic entanglement rather than, say, a boiling-over of frustration after the failure of a particularly complex spell – but she'd still need to be careful. These things had a habit of coming back to bite you if you didn't handle them just right.
After a while, Twilight seemed to have subsided a little, though it might just have been exhaustion setting in. The sobs were somewhat less frequent, the tears flowed a bit less freely. Rarity chewed her lip for a moment, wondering whether she should risk saying anything – but it wasn't just anypony clinging to her in the utter depths of despair. Of course she had to give Twilight all the love and tenderness that she could.
"So..." she started carefully, "when did all this happen?" Not the best line imaginable, and she grimaced inwardly at how dismissive it sounded, but with somepony like Twilight it wasn't too disastrous. Probably. At any rate, she got what she had been aiming for: a reaonably coherent reply.
"This morning," gasped Twilight, who seemed to have become rather unsteady on her hooves. Rarity moved a little closer for support and waited for her to say more. After some more tears, the alicorn added, "An hour ago, two; I don't know. It's all still so raw."
My goodness. Who'd have thought Twilight of all ponies would get into this sort of state? It just went to show that you never could tell. Still, great as it was, Rarity's surprise was as nothing to her condition after taking the full force of the the bombshell that her friend was about to drop.
"Cele-e-estia! Oh, Celestia, come back to me! Ple-e-ase! I'm so sorry! I miss you so mu-u-ch!"
Celestia?! What the—
"How am I supposed to do anything without Celestia here with me? I just let my horn run away with me for a moment. It was only a little spell! It shouldn't have been any big deal! How could she just break up because of a thing like that?"
Rarity felt her head start to swim; she was beginning to wonder just who was supposed to be doing the supporting here. She consciously set her jaw and attempted to think clearly, despite the frankly rather gross dribble from Twilight's lolling tongue that was now oozing into her coat. She tried to focus on choosing her words carefully.
"Twilight... are you telling me that you and Celestia were..."
Rarity trailed off. She wasn't at all sure how to end that sentence, and she was even less certain that she wanted to try. But Twilight, who seemed to have got hold of herself a little more now, was responding anyway.
"Oh, Rarity, you know so much about how to handle these things. I'm sure you'd have known what to do. Except... you don't know Celestia like I do... like I did. I've never experienced anything like this before, and all I knew about heartbreak was what I heard from other ponies or read in my books. I just... I just wanted so very, very much to be with her always. To caress those smooth curves and hold her tight to me and... oh, just everything. I felt so safe when she was there with me; she even let me hide behind her sometimes, especially when Maud came round wanting to read those stupid poems of hers. It was so nice of Celestia; I know she never liked that sort of poetry anyway. I wanted everything to be one never-ending wholeness of happiness, all held together so perfectly. And now all I'll ever have to remember this beautiful, divine, amazing time by is a pathetic little fragment."
Rarity waited patiently for Twilight to finish. The outpouring of words made a change from the sobbing, certainly, but even so she wasn't sure that it was getting either of them very far. On the bright side, at least she's stopped drooling on me. Had her friend been more experienced in the ways of love, Rarity reflected, she would surely have realised by now that fragments often were all you were left with after the end of an affair. She said nothing, but reached out a forehoof to rest it gently on Twilight's shoulder. Her companion stepped back as she did so, forcing Rarity to take a pace forwards in response.
"Ow!" A tender spot on one of Rarity's hind hooves had trodden on a sharp piece of gravel. Doubtless one of Spike's leftovers. Silly little dragon. She kicked it away dismissively, watching it fly for a few feet before hitting the ground and rolling onwards to disappear down a wide crack near the wall. She let her attention wander briefly, but after a moment she felt the atmosphere change and the tension rise. She looked up again.
Rarity was shocked to discover that Twilight's eyes were now burning with an intense, fierce anger. She'd been prepared for mood swings, but this was a little... extreme. Twilight's wings flared and her horn crackled with magic potential. For all the world, it looked as though she was preparing to attack. An angry alicorn was not a creature to be trifled with, and had Rarity not known her so very well for so very long, she might well have leapt back from the other pony in fright. Even so, she found herself biting her lip again as she stood nervously before Twilight.
"How could you, Rarity? How could you do this to me as well?"
"W-whatever do you mean, darling? I'm your friend; I'm only trying to support you. If you don't want me here, then of course I shall leave you in peace, but I thought you might be grateful for a shoulder to cry on at a time like this."
Twilight didn't seem particularly mollified by this reply. Rarity pushed on: "I really do understand, dearest Twilight. I'll admit that I was startled to hear that it was Celestia who was involved, and I can see that this might cause you some... problems in the future. But believe me, darling, these things really do start to heal with time."
Still no change in Twilight's demeanour. Rarity took a deep breath. It looks like I'm going to have to take a chance here.
"Now you listen to me, Princess Twilight Sparkle," she said in a considerably more commanding tone. "You simply cannot let yourself stay in this state. Unhappy as this experience has been for you – for both of you, no doubt – you've always been a mare who has taken her responsibilities very seriously. Equestria needs you, it really does. You're simply going to have to perform your royal duties."
Ah. That seemed to have made a difference. Twilight wasn't exactly calm now, but she had at least drawn back a little from the precipice.
Somewhat encouraged, Rarity continued with her bolder approach: "And you know, you'll still have to work with Celestia and—"
The flash of purple light came with terrifying suddenness. Rarity shrieked and tried to shrink back from the blinding aura, but she couldn't move. She felt the tell-tale prickling as a teleportation spell began to do its work; quite a strong one, too, by the feel of things. It didn't hurt – Twilight's magic never did – but it was a distinctly uncomfortable sensation nonetheless. She tried briefly to counteract the spell with one of her own, but there seemed to have been some restraining magic added to the mix. Twilight was much too powerful to overcome in any case. There was no way out of this one.
As she dematerialised, she heard Twilight speak one last, short sentence in a harsh, grating whisper quite unlike anything Rarity had ever heard from her before.
* * *
It was a long time before she finally came to the end of her long, energy-sapping journey home from the depths of the San Palomino Desert. There were still no railways out there, and she'd swallowed her considerable pride sufficiently to accept a lift part of the way from a passing griffon. He had been civil enough, but it certainly wasn't an experience that Rarity wanted to repeat. As she crept gratefully into the first soft bed she'd felt in weeks, she resolved never again to interfere in the private lives of royalty. It just wasn't worth the trouble.
Even so, there was plenty to be done. She could hardly avoid Twilight for the rest of her life, and in any case she was reasonably confident that the two of them could find a way to put what had happened behind them, rather than living out their days in an eternal state of enmity that would benefit neither. Perhaps it was wishful thinking, but she even held out the hope that they could somehow rebuild their shattered friendship.
She winced and silently chided herself: Not the ideal choice of metaphor, Rarity. Twilight's words came back to her, painfully sharp and clear still. The words that had proved that not even she knew everything about the mysteries of love in all its remarkably varied and endlessly surprising forms. The words that explained why she had been treated so savagely by one of her best friends. The words Rarity had heard so many times in recent months, with only a slight change of tense, but whose significance she had not truly appreciated.
Until now.
For she had not merely kicked away a worthless piece of gravel. The blocky pebble she had sent barrelling into oblivion had been all that was left of a lost part of Twilight's life, something Rarity had only realised when it was already far, far too late. All she could do then was to wait, endure the sensation of the teleportation spell beginning its implacable work – and listen to the other pony destroy her utterly with four plain, cold words:
"Celestia... was... my... rock."
