Twilight of the Soul

Was it morning yet? Twilight was unsure. She’d awoken in that accursed grey part of the day that wasn’t quite night or morning, and to make matters worse, she couldn’t for the life of her seem to get back into any resemblance of restful sleep. Not even being a Princess could save her immune from insomnia, it would seem.

Maybe if I just lie here...

Tossing fitfully against the now suffocating embrace of her blanket, she winced as a loose feather was plucked out by her careless struggles. The shock of the pain, although minor, shook away any remaining sleep and removed the fanciful notion of being able to slip off to dreamland any time soon.

Nope.

The purple pony grunted in annoyance, absentmindedly manipulating the feather in a field of midnight violet, running it against her cheek and savouring the luxurious texture as the velvety spines caressed the sensitive skin below her nose.

She snorted in a most undignified manner as an errant barb tickled the inside of her nostril, banishing the spell and sending the feather itself spiraling lazily to the creaking floor below.

Et tu, feather?

She really needed to get Rainbow or… preferably Fluttershy to show her how to take care of her latest appendages; They still felt like heavy, awkward dusters, and according to one technicoloured showoff made her look like some kind of big purple bumblebee when she did dare to take to the air.

Not that she didn’t trust her, just that Dash tended to get a little bit carried away when it came to teaching Twilight new things about flying or being half a pegasus. Her wings still ached a little from the last time she tried to teach Twi how to do a double front flip over the lake. How she’d let herself get talked into that she’d never know, the sound of Dash guffawing at her clumsiness was not one she’d soon forget.

A Princess ridiculed by her subjects, hmph. And they say Alicorns have it easy.

Still, she had a much greater appreciation for that little sensitive spot between her wings now that had previously gone so unloved as a mere unicorn. Completely incidentally, she also had an appreciation for the gnarl that happened to stick out of the hollow of the tree at just the right place to…

BANG

A loud crash downstairs interrupted the warm and fuzzy thoughts of rubbing one out against the wall, and Twilight must admit she felt somewhat ashamed of herself, a light blush creeping up her cheeks.

I need a coltfriend… or a life. Maybe just a good night’s sleep for once.

SMASH

Her ruminations came to an abrupt end with yet another small demolition of something downstairs. Had it not been somewhat between three and four in the morning, she’d have bounded down in a flurry to see what was going on.

As it was she could barely get herself to escape the now infinitely more attractive pull of the warm sheets versus the cold void of the hallway beyond her room.

Why does the home invasion have to wait until I’m trying to sleep?...

Muttering curses under her breath at the inconsiderate nocturnal trespasser, she reluctantly pushed off the blanket and hopped off of the bed.

Slowly, cautiously, Twilight moped to the edge of her room, passing the light switch and flicking it with practiced ease. She expected the light to be blinding coming from hours of the exact opposite, but instead the room remained cloaked in rebellious darkness.

“You’ve got to be kidding me…” She grumbled in an accusatory manner, eyebrow twitching in anger at the light-bulb hanging inert from the ceiling.

The grain of the wood took on a different life in the stillness of the night, a frightening mirror of a familiar world where light seemed to be consumed by the dark and all of the corners of the seemed to reach out to grab at her with eldritch limbs. She shivered slightly at the thought.

No… that was silly, right? A fully grown Princess no less getting spooked by a power cut and afraid of the dark like some little filly? Utterly ridiculous! The very thought sent ripples of indignation through her scientific mind, and she clopped intrepidly into the darkness. Until she was out of the comforting moonlight and into the much darker passage itself.

Come on Twi, don’t freak out, it’s just the dark, and maybe some horrible monster downstairs trying to hunt you down and eat you…

Nipping that thought in the bud, Twilight admonished herself for her immaturity. Luna controls the night now, in theory it should be as safe as the day, and theory was very important as Twilight well knew. No more Nightmare Moon, no more scary filly stories about monsters, and no more-

CRUNCH

The sound of wood wrenching and splitting apart was unmistakable, as one who lived in a literal treehouse could attest to. Anything that was capable of doing that clearly wasn’t bothering to check whether the owner was alright with it.

Twilight gulped nervously, eying the impossibly abyssal depths of the darkness surrounding her; Fear began a clammy march down her spine, turning her legs to the consistency of jelly. Trembling as she advanced past the first flight of steps towards the landing she caught a glimpse of the destruction wrought upon her precious library in the pale, languid moonlight.

Several bookshelves were toppled in her vision alone, literally ripped from the oak with unfathomable strength, their precious canvas bound contents scattered across the floor like so much straw in Applejack’s barn.

Twilight gasped, the sort of gasp a mother might give were she to see her precious child tumble down a flight of stairs or fall out of a window.The sound echoed through the ruined library, a rasp of stunned surprise followed by a low growl of anger.

Oh no! Sweet Celestia, not the books!

In a moment the fear turned to rage, anxiety to a yearning for retribution. Tartarus has no fury like a scholar protecting the written word.

The sight filled Twilight with righteous fury, her horn beginning to glow with luminescent magic as the fear, much like the shadows, began to recede from Twilight’s mind and the room respectively.

“I don’t care what kind of pony-eating literature hating monster you are! Nopony. Messes. With. My. BOOKS!”

She yelled out, any lingering trepidation banished.

The irate librarian picked up speed, confidence represented by a growing strength of light as she practically leaped down the final flight of stairs, wings extending ever so slightly as she dropped with a heavy thud onto the cold, hard floor.

It would have looked a mighty graceful and intimidating sight, befitting her regal status, had she not landed on an upturned novella detailing the finer arts of gardening and fallen flat on her scrawny, equine ass.

Groaning, she gathered her splayed legs behind her, rising wearily. She suddenly remembered why she was down here, and shook herself off, bristling with anger. Glancing around the thoroughly wrecked library, which she couldn’t help but notice that besides the upturned shelves and books, was empty.

No sign of the shelf breaking intruder could be seen, the door was still firmly locked, and all of the windows had their shutters fastened as it had been when she had closed the place up for the evening. Even tomorrow's to-do list draft was resting peacefully on the desk top, awaiting her diligent eye to rewrite the whole thing anyway.

“No way…”

Twilight had been so sure that she’d find… something, that actually not finding anything only caused her burst of courage to disappear as soon as it had appeared. It had taken all of her nerve to come down the stairs in the first place, and the crisis was far from over.

Of all the possibilities Twilight had pondered whilst descending the stairway in the shadows, she hadn’t considered the idea that her little charge might have simply scared away whatever it was that attacked the library. Her keen perception kicked in, and panic knotted in her stomach. What if this thing was simply trying to get her attention?

Focused by fear and an overwhelming desire to find the rogue intruder, and ignoring the dull pain in her backside, her horn began to glow brighter as she tried to dispel the darkness from the room, squinting in concentration as the spell began to ramp up in power.

Casting the ray around the limited space of the interior, Twilight expected to be rewarded by the sight of something at least trying to hide. Instead she saw a large patch of darkness seemingly unaffected by the great beam of magical light, as if it were simply devouring it.

The amount of cognitive dissonance between her brain and her eyes was outstanding to the point of disbelief. Twilight simply refused to acknowledge what she was seeing, trying to blink and squint this anomaly out of existence where it had no place being.

Her tortured mind worked overtime trying to compensate for the impossibility of the scene, eventually finding a laboured excuse that allowed her to at least continue functioning. It was a dream. It had to be.

Twilight chuckled nervously to herself, shaking away the beam and slowly turning away from the darkness.

"Stupid old nag, you, must have gotten off to sleep after all..."

Twilight only deprecated herself as such when nervous, not that Spike or any of her other friends were there to try and convince her otherwise.

Spike wasn't here, she realized absentmindedly as she attempted to let her mind wander into her usually pleasant dreams. She remained stubbornly planted in the library, the very vivid and unwelcome visit that was fast becoming a nightmare.

She couldn't ignore the feeling of her hair standing on end, or the abrupt chill that flooded the air as if from the heart of winter itself. Shivering again, she turned to face back to the spot she had rejected, had completely expunged from her reality.

Staring back at her was a curtain of featureless black void.

Something was terribly wrong with the darkness inside of The Golden Oaks library. Twilight knew this now. No matter how hard she tried to convince herself it was a dream, the raw scent of fear and the cold sweat always brought her eyes back to the shifting vortex of nothingness that now spread out, creeping as if alive along the edge of the room.

Twilight blinked her eyes rapidly, her instinct to bolt contained only by the fact that she was inside, and had nothing but solid oak to flee to. Her breathing intensified, and her head craned automatically left and right, attempting desperately to find an exit.

She could make out shapes now, silhouettes of long and short creatures alike massed and writhed in a race around her, pinpricks hollow pits for eyes and mouths cracked into impossibly wide grins, the vast empty spaces that seemed to shriek silently and bore directly into her soul.

Panic rose as bile, barely avoiding vomiting as the hunting darkness swirled and danced in what could only be described as a mockingly predatorial display of victory. Like a cat toying with a mouse before finally breaking its spine.

It formed a black cocoon, enveloping her, covering every surface and object. Twilight could do nothing but shudder in terror, her light flickering as her concentration wavered and unadulterated horror took its place.  Her cry froze in her throat, the darkness advancing in shuddering leaps towards her perfect unison with the wavering flickers of her spell. She could almost hear the hunger.

Finally spotting the door, she made a break for it, legs pumping in a primordial dash for survival as old as the hills themselves. Pony runs from monsters, prey is chased by predator.

Tendrils of the darkness quickly lashed out at her exposed legs, wrapping themselves around and constricting tightly as if a snake finishing off a captured meal. The pain was overwhelming, and so sudden that any attempt to cry out simply froze in her throat.

Picking her up by her front legs as if she were little more than a toy, the darkness produced another tendril, this time focusing on her wings. The thing gripped savagely at her back, yanking and tugging with hideous strength, as if trying to rip the things straight off of her back.

The sickening horror of the impending mutilation drove Twilight into a state of shock, adrenaline rushing into her horn, and allowing her to surpass what would normally be an impossible barrier. Instinctively, she produced the age old enemy of the dark. Light.

Nonononono! You can do this! It’s just a dream! Just a dream! Wake up Twilight, wake up now!

Redoubling her frantic efforts, the light increased tremendously in intensity, almost as if a star had been born within the bowels of the library. Undoubtedly the brightness would have been enough to dazzle any passers by and likely awaken the entire neighborhood, had it not been blocked by the impenetrable shroud.

Twilight shrieked as the tendrils threw her away as if she were some red hot coal suddenly deposited in its grasp. Gasping as she sailed through the air and into a bookshelf, she could feel some of the small and delicate bones in her wings snap under the weight of her body, which she struggled to raise back into a standing position.

The inky cloud began to hiss as if in anger at the light, shrinking back like some wounded beast, retreating into the sanctuaries behind bookcases and in corners. She could see the deep scratches left in its wake, carved deep into the wooden floor and all upon the walls.

The marks themselves appeared to be made by tiny, incredibly sharp teeth, many dozens of them, as if the darkness itself was merely millions of gaping maws opened wide for the feast.

Twilight could barely comprehend the level of fear she was experiencing, her back leg throbbed in a deep and nauseating pain, as her wings refused to follow her orders to tuck back, remaining stuck out at her side like a broken branch.

This must be a nightmare, a sick and twisted nightmare of unmatched proportions. But if it was, Luna would have come to help wouldn’t she?

“Luna?...” She called out weakly, hoping somehow the Princess of the Night would hear and come to her rescue. The dark paid no heed to her.

A fresh movement behind the window pane seemed to attract her attention, as she turned her painfully stiff neck to get a better view. Squinting to avoid being blinded herself by the intensity of the light reflecting off of the exposed floor, the windows seemed to be coated with the same black fog, except, on the outside.

Twilight screamed as the realization dawned on her, the entire outside world had been swallowed whole, and all that existed was she and this circle of howling darkness.

Trying and failing desperately to avoid sobbing in her state of mind numbing, heart stopping terror, her tears mixed with the sweat and pooled underneath her eyes. The fog could be heard scratching incessantly against the window pane, invisible, hungry fangs gnawing at the glass to snuff out the last rebellious source of painful light.

“No! Please!.... Please!... No!...” She begged nothing in particular, as the darkness seemed to find new strength and pushed back slowly outwards once more, like waves of black water lapping at a bleak shore. Her back leg hurt so much, and her wings felt as if she'd hammered nails into the bone, pinning them into position.

She tried again to increase the brightness, horn throbbing with fresh pain almost as blinding as the light as she quivered under the enormous strain of keeping up the spell, her only hope of keeping back the tide of blackness. She wailed, tears now running openly down her face as she could feel her legs tremble and give away.

“Spike! Celestia! Shining! Da-Daddy!" Mortal fear gripped her, as her mind faced the realization that she was about to die, alone and devoured by this tide of unearthly beasts. A ringing in her ears came first, followed by a numbing of her extremities. She began to see her body was failing her, the stress of the spell and her injuries and the terror causing her frail form to shut down.

In a way she was relieved, as she wouldn't feel the teeth sink into her tender flesh.

"I ca-can’t do this!...It hurts so m-m-much...”

She collapsed, her limbs unable to cope with the pain now radiating from her horn like a dying star. Her vision swam, her mind still protesting the situation despite her body all but ready to give up the ghost.

This wasn’t right, this wasn’t supposed to happen, not in Equestria. None of this was real! None of this was possible!

“Wh-wh-why?...” She murmured weakly, barely able to breathe as her concentration broke, like a dam bursting under the unrelenting pressure of a monsoon. Her horn smoked like a piece of hot iron, the light giving way to the inevitable darkness, which solidified into the shroud and surged forwards unbidden. Twilight tried to fight it once more from the floor, but her exhaustion made the gesture futile.

As the last sparks sputtered uselessly, beasts and monsters coiled excitedly around the room, swirling like a school of ravenous piranhas. The scratching intensified, and she dimly registered the sound of glass shattering a thousand miles away.

Expecting to vanish underneath a carpet of black horror and devoured like so many carrots in Shy’s rabbit hutch, she instead found her barely conscious form surrounded on all sides by… strange creatures, emerging from the thin film of darkness as if from behind a curtain. The library had disappeared, replaced by a dark void of fathomless depth.

Her pain had left her, along with all other feeling. Fear, worry, cold, they were gone.

The bipedal creatures seemed cloaked in metal, with wicked weapons of various design either hanging from their prehensile ...hands? Or large enough to brace over their… shoulders. They looked a little bit like Spike, except much taller and leaner somehow. None made a motion to move forwards, and Twilight found herself fascinated despite her condition at their forms.

The tranquility of the surreal scene was broken, as a dark rumble shook them, like thunder before a coming storm.

I do apologize for this, strange child. We knew not else how to gather thine attention.

A voice, disembodied and ethereal floated into her head. For a split second it sounded like Discord, but… deeper, more menacing in nature.

As if reading her mind, the voice continued, as shapeless clouds floated around the assembled figures.

I… We are not of this world, in our great need we grasped out into the aether and it appears we have found yours.

Twilight could not claim to comprehend the voice, delirious as she was, but somehow found something very soothing about it. She “listened” raptly.

We require your attention, for a brief spell, oh ye creature of purest soul. Your defence was valiant and determined, if you are capable of resistance in the face of such insurmountable odds in future, it would appear our trust is well placed. We almost killed you trying to gain access to your mind.

Twilight might have found objection to being called a creature, but she appeared to be in no position to disagree with the voice as it stood.

“Whe-Where am I-I-I?... Am I d-d-dead?...” She rasped weakly, struggling and failing to raise her head from the soft, comforting embrace of the dark floor.

Do not worry with matters of where or how, child. Such would only serve to further confuse you.

She did not care at all for his… its… their patronizing tone, but again found no energy within her to protest. For being dead, she sure found it easy to take offense.

Far from here is a being in extraordinary peril. Held captive in a primordial prison, and will soon lose his mind and body to curse. He holds within him the key to saving his realm, and possibly all others, as you hold it within to save him.

Twilight found herself even more confused than she was previously. Her beleaguered mind found it near impossible to keep up with the apparent nonsense spouted by the unknown thing.

Curse? A prison? Saving all realms? Had she not been feeling the effects of her struggle so keenly, she would have yet again dismissed it as a dream. As it was she could feel the tendrils of this creature worming into her mind, a being of incredible power and… so very alien in nature.

We appreciate you will find this hard to comprehend in your ...current state. Allow us to aid you.

Twilight felt yet another uncomfortable probing into her head, pressure building against the fragile barriers attempting to reform themselves and powerless to stop it.

Her vision once again grew dark as the figures faded away into mist, the continuous pulsing of the darkness overwhelming her senses. She closed her eyes, losing sensation in her limbs as her mind began to experience a soaring soul-flight through the nether between the worlds.

She awoke shortly afterwards gazing at a squalid cell, all pretense of corporeality long vanished. She instantly felt grateful for the lack of otherworldly blackness, but the place was still much too dark for her liking.

A shapeless consciousness, passively observing something impossibly distant and strange, unaware of the monumental importance this vision represented.

With a start she found that yet another creature was twitching erratically in the corner, similar in stature to the beings that had surrounded her earlier, and clad in armour much the same.

It was clear both it and its wearer had seen better days, days of sun and grass and freedom which blended into an indiscernible mash of violence and horror.  Unperturbed by the brutality of the mind she was suddenly able to read, with a bit more focus found she could hear its thoughts.

As if it were the most natural thing in the world, she found herself delving deeper into the psyche of it, lost within its mind, scanning through his thoughts and memories trying to understand who it… no… he was. The memories were fragmented, painfully so, as if his entire life had been shattered to pieces and scattered to the wind for the birds to sort through.

She retrieved images of fighting and pain and suffering and so much anger.

For a moment, Twilight thought it impossible that this was the same being of hope and salvation that the ...Dark has mentioned, but as she delved deeper she found it harder and harder to separate her own thoughts and self with his, like a swimmer becoming lost in an eddy and carried to fathomless depths. For a brief moment she lost herself to the other being.

What…. what is… why?... The withered creature sat in a corner, oblivious to the environment it inhabited, neck drooped and slowly lolling to and fro under the weight of his own accursed head like the serene movements of riverweed in a slow stream on a lazy summer day. Thoughts passed through its shattered mind as clouds pass upon the sky.

Almost losing his moment of coherence back to the curse, he felt but the slightest touch of something else intruding into his broken mind like the first rain of spring, bringing life back into a parched meadow. Visions of bizarre landscapes and faces of unknown creatures whirled in his mind, finally focusing on a five pointed purple star, soaring in the nights sky and beyond.

Constellations he had never seen and stars unmatched in their aura of brilliance dotted the blackness in the back of his soul, bringing with them a sensation he had long ago forgotten. Hope.

Out of his haze, and gasping with a dessicated voice, he jerked up painfully, slamming the back of his armoured head into the grimy brickwork behind. Suddenly aware of the fact that his hands and legs were half submerged in the frigid, black trickle that exuded from the wall.

Shaking himself off, his sunken pits for eyes wandered briefly past the brow of his visor, drinking in the rancid squalor that surrounded his vision. It had been yet another period of time lost to the terrifying curse, another few days, possibly weeks of being little better than…

He glanced up at the pitiful creature in the cell opposite, only barely visible as a groaning, writhing mass of red flesh and withered limbs. Had he been in a more lucid state, he would have thanked the Lords for being put in a chamber devoid of whatever it was that swarmed across the thing’s carcass.

He’d watched it die dozens of times now. Rats came to gnaw, the cold came to sicken. If those two failed; hunger was the ever present reaper of hollows. How many times he himself had fallen into the false peace of death was a number he’d long since ceased to bother counting. He’d given up after thirteen or so.

Sometimes it would bash its own head into the rusted bars of its cell until it lay still again, pausing only to moan and grasp the bars like a drowning beast. Its pleading, piercing gaze used to frighten him, but now only serves to punctuate the expanse of eternity that separates his existence and the end of time.

It was foretold he would remain in this place until that point. What remained of him, at any rate.

He could feel his mind slipping, as surely as a man clinging to a precipice can feel his hands weaken and his arms tire.

He no longer remembered why he had come to this foul place, as he was attired in fine armour and not shackled like a beast he could only assume he had come voluntarily.

He no longer remembered his own name, where he had come from, if he had family that would miss him. If he could only… remember their faces.

What good would that do? Better to them I am dead than…

Hollow.

Twilight awoke groggily, looking bleary eyed around the sunlit and pristine library floor. Taking a short moment to allow her memory to catch up with her sleep deprived mind, it all came flooding back.

She scrambled to her hooves, wincing slightly as her stiff limbs extended fully. She ran her eyes back and forth along the walls and outside the window, trying to power her horn back on despite the immense headache this produced. It took a second to realize it was broad daylight.

Was that… just a dream? Wh-why am I downstairs?

Casting a nervous glance into the now fully illuminated room, she eyed any and all shadows with apprehension, waiting to hear the gnawing of teeth or the rumble of the advancing tide.

When both failed to manifest, she noticed the scratches and gouges left behind by the darkness had vanished as well.

“Sp-Spike?...?”

The room echoed in response, deaf to the distraught tones of the Princess.

The glass of the window was perfectly intact, despite the image of the faceless horrors that once sat behind them etched permanently into her memory.

Twilight whined piteously, needing something, anything to indicate that she was back in “reality.” She had faced death, and although it had seemed to real she now found herself back where she had began with no explanation. Was she going crazy? Was she in the afterlife? Would anyone miss her if she was gone?

She curled into a ball and began to feel tears at the edge of her eyes, like a foal frightened and confused and crying for its mother. She rocked back and forth against the floor, shaking her head and closing her eyes. Her mane hung disheveled from her head, collecting tears as she pressed herself into the bookshelf.

“Spiiiikeeee!” She let out a cry of desperation, sounding more like the grief stricken sobs of a loved one instead of the pleading tones of someone who needed rescue.

Her little dragon had to be there, he just had to. Ever since she was a filly she depended on the green and purple as more than just an assistant. She’d taken care of him since he was a hatchling, and they’d been thick and thieves through thick and thin together.

If there was anyone that could be trusted at a time like this, it was him.

"Huh, wha..?"Spike snapped out of his slumber, curtains still drawn, yet the sun casting rays through the gaps of the fabric. Wondering vacantly what time it was; And silently grateful to Twi for letting him sleep in, he noticed that her bed was empty, to no great surprise. What was a surprise was the state she had left it in, messy. Desperately, uncharacteristically messy. Spotting a lone feather on the floor, he picked it up, running it nervously through his taloned fingers. He was beginning to worry about her.

“Spiiiikeeee!....”Hearing his Princess and number one pain in the plot shout after him, he sighed in relief, sound in the knowledge that some terrible disaster hasn't happened upon her. Glancing up sleepily to the clock suspended on the wall, his heart almost stopped when he saw it was well past eleven, almost edging into midday.

Aw crud.

When a hyperventilating Spike rushed downstairs, panicking about oversleeping and facing an outraged Twilight, the last thing he expected to see was the mare on the verge of hysterics, huddling against a bookshelf and crying gently into a soft, lavender wing. She looked like she hadn’t slept at all the entire night, and practically ready to bolt at her own shadow.

“Twilight!” He yelled, all anxiousness of getting in trouble evaporating as he saw his friend and practically big sister in great distress.

“Wh-what happened!?” The little drake leaped down the stairs and closed the gap between himself and her as quick as dragonic-ally possible, stopping only once he’d given himself enough room to avoid dashing into her.

The relief in Twilight’s face was instantly palpable, as her suppressed sniffles became full on wailing sobs as she threw her forelegs around him and cried softly into his chest, warm tears running over his smooth scales.

It’s over! It’s over! It wasn’t real! Thank you Spike, Thankyouthankyouthankyou...

Spike knew from experience that it’d be better to simply let her cry herself out first, before trying to extract an explanation from the distraught and panicked pony.

He was about to offer more soothing, but was cut off as he got a good look at her body, which had until now been concealed by her wings. His cold blood somehow ran colder, as hers ran warm and sticky down his belly.

Her wing stuck out at a dreadful angle, signifying what could only be a bad fracture. One of her back legs appeared almost twisted back on itself, a sight which made spike sick to his stomach, his eyes staring at the huge bruise and the blood on the floor.

Finally, his eyes settled on her forelegs, whose red nectar flowed almost freely over his smooth scales.

“Twilight… your… your legs…”

She looked down, a feeling of icy dread running down her spine almost as a counter to the new, overwhelmingly hot pain flowing from her limbs. Trickling with blood, from newly reopened wounds, were dozens of bite marks, savage and deep. How she had not noticed before was...

Agony flared from her back leg as she tried to move it, heavy bruises flaring out like some horrid flower around the center of the pain. Probably a fracture, she noted distantly, her mind too busy tearing itself apart to make much of an emotional response. She guessed that was also the reason her wings felt oddly numb as they refused to acknowledge her instructions.

A sinister, all too familiar voice echoed in her mind.

The Dark is not gentle. Do not keep it waiting.

She broke into a manic smile, the answer to the burning question was right in front of her the entire time.

All that fuss over something so simple.

It was.

She vomited over Spike's shoulder trying to laugh at the funniest joke she'd ever heard, shortly before passing out and slumping forwards..