Off on a Tangent

I came to on the Friendship Express as it pulled out of Ponyville Station. Applejack was sitting on one side of me, holding the lead of the rope that tied my legs together in her teeth. She noticed as I opened my eyes, and tapped me on the horn, gently. “Don’t try nothing, sugarcube. Twilight told me what you did to Time Turner.”

“He wanted to die,” I said. “He literally asked me to kill him.”

“Save it for the princess,” Twilight snapped, glowering at me from the next seat forwards. “We’re going to go tell Princess Celestia what happened, and she’ll fix everything! I’m sure this sort of thing happens all the time and we never hear about it because Celestia fixes everything so that everything is fine, and nopony has to die. You’ll see.”

“Couldn’t you just have Spike send a letter?” I asked.

“Shut up,” Twilight snarled.

“You tried, didn’t you,” I said. “It didn’t work. Oh Celestia, is Spike okay?”

“He’ll be fine,” Twilight snapped.

“I don’t know, Twi,” Applejack said. “He wasn’t breathin’.”

“He’ll. Be. Fine.”

I closed my eyes. Poor Spike. Then again, if Time Turner’s theory was true, he was one of the lucky ones. I didn’t really think his theory held any water, though – if we’d split off from the flow of time, it didn’t really matter when we died. As far as time was concerned, it was still the same instant that the universe was originally destroyed. Either dead ponies would find the afterlife, or they wouldn’t, or the afterlife didn’t even exist in the first place.

After an indeterminate period of something that sure felt like time passing in awkward silence, Applejack spoke up. “Sure is foggy out there.”

I opened my eyes, and looked out the window, and at first it looked like fog – distant objects were lost in a white haze, but the trees and bushes near the tracks swept past as dark, hazy outlines. But then I looked back towards Ponyville, and I could still make out the town’s bright colors in the distance. “I don’t think this is fog.”

My words sounded strangely muffled, and I noticed that I’d stopped feeling the ropes binding my limbs. I still couldn’t move, but there was no sensation. “We need to go back,” I said, as I looked around and saw the train car seem to fill up with fog, blurring our view of the other seats, and the doors at the end of the car.

Twilight lit her horn, and a brilliant purple light formed at the tip. Sort of. I could stare right at it, and not be blinded, and the light it cast reflected off the walls and ceiling, but not off the fogginess that was turning everything into a muted gray.

“Something’s not right,” Applejack said, her voice faint but still audible over the equally muted sound of the train. “Twilight, what in the name of all things other than apples is going on here?”

“We’re going to Canterlot,” Twilight said, and although there was nothing like sound associated with her mouth moving, I could still sense her talking nearby, and the meaning from her words formed in my head. “We’re going to see Princess Celestia, and she’s going to fix all of this.”

Everything was white. There was nothing underneath me, and nothing wrapped around my legs, but they couldn’t move because they were tied up. I told Applejack that we needed to stop the train, and go back to Ponyville. Twilight said that she’d take care of it, and teleported away, leaving Applejack to guard me. Applejack started to panic, asking what was going on in a series of increasingly frantic exclamations loaded with her family’s traditional speech patterns. Twilight returned, said that she couldn’t find the engineer, and teleported us back to Ponyville.

We landed in the middle of the market square, and I yelped as Twilight and Applejack landed on top of me, crushing me into the dirt. White mist seemed to lift off us, rising like a tiny cloud until it evaporated in the morning sun. I wiggled in my bonds, rubbing my muzzle into the dirt and reveling in the feeling of gritty dust working into my coat, and the smell of soil and vegetables and ponies. There was sound, too – a babble of excited confusion as everypony gathered around, wondering what was going on.

“So, uh, what now, sugarcube?” Applejack asked, sliding off me and helping Twilight to her hooves.

“I don’t think it matters,” I said. “Look, you can’t even see Canterlot anymore. This morning it was still faintly visible. It’s only a matter of time until everything fades away.”

“We can still fix this,” Twilight said. “There has to be something we can do to fix this!”

“I don’t think we need to. Everything is fine, just not, you know. For us.”

“For who then?” Applejack asked.

“For the real us,” I said. “In the real time-line, after the time loop resolved. It’s like Time Turner said – when I cast the spell, time looped, but we didn’t go with it. We’re off on a tangent, trapped in a timeline that doesn’t exist.”

“Are you sure, Lyra?” asked Rose, from her flower stand, ten feet away. “I don’t feel like I don’t exist.”

“Trust me,” I said to her, smiling. “You don’t. Whatever this is, whatever is letting us experience… this, it isn’t reality. The real versions of us aren’t ever going to know what didn’t really happen here. We can do whatever we want, with no consequences.” I struggled a bit, but the ropes were still tied tight. “I mean, no long-term consequences. Can you untie me? I promise not to kill anypony else who doesn’t ask for it.”

Applejack narrowed her eyes at me.

“Okay, okay, I promise not to kill anypony else, even if they ask for it!”

“Pinkie Promise?” she said, raising an eyebrow.