Twilight Sparkle and Applejack floated next to one another in the inky blackness of the deep night sky.
"Hold on tight," said Twilight, speaking into the phonocrystal in her helmet.
She awkwardly gripped her friend's deepsuit in a bear-hug. The magenta glow of her magic aura surrounded them both, and both suits accelerated sharply toward the metal ship in the distance. The sensation felt like she was standing on earth again, except she'd gained a few thousand kilograms of mass.
Twilight grunted at the painful upward pressure intensifying along her legs and flank, but from Applejack no sound came through the speaker. AJ was a tough cookie, thought Twilight. She couldn't remember the last time she'd heard her friend complain about anything physical, despite all the backbreaking work she performed daily on her farm.
The pressure slowly abated as the inertial dampening finally took effect, and then Twilight's magic aura disappeared. The large metal object in the distance continued to shrink.
"Horsefeathers," cursed Twilight, clenching her eyes shut. "The gravity inversion I cast will continue to increase our acceleration, but it's too late. It can't counteract the gravitational field in its entirety because it's using that same field as a power source. Your relative velocity was too large after the pipe blew."
"Dagnabit, Twilight! I told you not to come after me," growled Applejack. The anger in her voice was unmistakable, despite transmission static—the phonocrystals weren't much better than tin cans with string. "Why'd you have to go and do this thing?"
Despite the dim light within each helmet illuminating the muzzle area (Rarity's idea, naturally), it was difficult to see Applejack's face even from up close. Reflections of a million stars danced on the glass of both helmets, creating a mesmerizing effect. It looked like Applejack's face was covered in a spray of tiny, drifting disco lights. This made it challenging to make out her friend's expression, but Twilight knew her well enough. Her anger was undoubtedly directed more toward herself than Twilight.
"I had to try, AJ," Twilight said firmly, "and I'd do it again in a heartbeat."
"Then you're a dang foal," said Applejack, frowning. She reached out and forcefully shoved her friend's suit in the barrel with two thickly-gloved forehooves.
"No!" shouted Twilight, instantly reaching out to grab one of Applejack's hooves. The suits made manual grip clumsy, but Twilight used her telekinetic magic to brace the contact. The pair of ponies twisted in place and bumped off of each other a few times before finally reaching equilibrium.
After a few moments, Applejack sighed noisily into the phono. "Fine. Look, I wasn't really gonna run away, sugarcube. I'm just upset that now we're both about to kick the proverbial bucket."
Twilight shook her head, which didn't shift the helmet she wore. The oversize bowl, large enough to accommodate her horn, was attached to her deepsuit by a rigid seal at the neck. "You don't understand, AJ," her voice crackled over the phono. "The deep sky isn't like swimming or flying, because there's not enough air to push against. You can't go places by moving your body, no matter how hard you try."
"Ah. I suppose that would explain why all the buckin' I did wasn't gettin' me nowhere," admitted Applejack, then tilted her upper body to look toward the metal vessel in the distance. "Deepship's lookin' mighty tiny down here. It's just gonna keep floatin' away like that, I guess?" she asked.
"Not precisely. I think it's in a stable orbit. It'll be circling us for centuries, probably," said Twilight. "But you're right, we can't make it back."
"Not even with teleportation?" asked Applejack, her voice hopeful.
"I'm afraid not. Teleportation won't work with the suits. I can't accelerate faster than my antigravity spell is already pushing us, and thrusters are meaningless at our relative velocities," Twilight said. "Argh! If only we'd waited another month, I might have figured out a way to launch a deepship large enough to carry more ponies..."
"Nah. Then we'd all be doomed. It's better bein' just us two. Actually, it'd be better still if it was just me, you stubborn horse," said Applejack. "I'm so mad I could spit, but my helmet would get gooey. This is the only hat I got on at the moment, and I'm not about to disrespect it."
Twilight ducked her head low and away from the phonocrystal as she spoke, causing a static crackle from the echo inside her suit. "I'm sorry, Applejack."
"I know you are, hon. I know," said Applejack, reaching out to squeeze her friend by the shoulder. Twilight could barely feel Applejack's touch through the thick fabric.
After a moment, Twilight looked back up with misty eyes. "I'm sorry for what happened, I mean. I'm not sorry for what I did. To be perfectly honest, I think I'd rather die than watch you go in there alone," said Twilight. "You're my best friend, you know?"
She tried to study Applejack's face through the two curved layers of glass between them, but the twinkling starlight shimmering on the glass surface was too distracting. Even when their helmets touched, between the starlight and the poor quality of the phonocrystals, it felt like Applejack was miles away...
"Wait—watch me go in where, exactly?" asked Applejack, snapping Twilight back to her senses.
Twilight pointed in the direction of where their tails would be if the deepsuit design hadn't demanded they be strapped to one leg. Applejack looked down between their suits. At first, she saw nothing. But then she studied the dark sky harder, and saw more nothing: a little circle of pure darkness, surrounded by a curious halo of smeared light.
"Beggin' your pardon, Twi, but could you kindly tell me what that little inkblot is?" said Applejack. Despite the poor sound quality, it sounded to Twilight like the tension was rising in her friend's voice.
"It's called a black hole," said Twilight, "and we're probably the first ponies in history to see one in person. There's something anomalous about it, though. It should be rotating, and have an accretion disc. The disc would look like a big glowing dust cloud circling the darkness, a bit like water going down a drain in slow motion."
"Ain't all that light smeared up against the sides of the little hole-punch your disc?" asked Applejack, motioning in a little circle with her blocky foreleg boot.
"Oh, no. That's just an optical illusion. Black holes have gravity—you know, the force that usually holds us to the ground—but it's so strong that nothing can ever escape once it enters, not even light," explained Twilight. "Light that gets very close to the edge gets bent, so you're seeing light from stars all across the sky wrapped right around the rim."
Twilight felt something touch her free forehoof, and looked up to see that Applejack was now gripping both of her forehooves with her own. She squeezed back gently, and they drifted in silence for a moment before Applejack stated the obvious.
"Um, pardon me for sayin' this, Twilight, but I think that thing might be gettin' a touch bigger?"
Twilight Sparkle exhaled loudly enough for the phono to catch. "I know, AJ. We're getting closer because it's pulling us in."
"Right, I guess that's what you meant by 'let you go in'. Might I ask what that means for us?" asked Applejack. "I wasn't exactly lookin' forward to suffocatin' with my best friend so far up in the night sky I can't even see the ground no more, but I'm gonna guess this ain't a good thing neither. Especially since I do believe I heard the words 'no escape' come across this crystal talkie thing."
"Well, it means we'll die in there instead of out here, and much sooner," said Twilight. "If we were just floating out here, I could have provided us with fresh air and water using magic. We would have starved to death instead of suffocated. Granted, that's not much fun either, but at least that way we'd have more time together."
"I see. So, you're tellin' me that somethin' about that there black hole is what's gonna end us," said Applejack.
"I'm afraid so. When we slip past the point of no return, one of two things will happen. Either we'll be vaporized instantly by a wall of energetic particles, which should be merciful, or else nothing special will seem to happen until we get closer to the center, at which point we'll be stretched like spaghetti and ripped to shreds by the gravity. It all depends on which of two competing theories is correct. In a way, this is kind of fascinating!" said Twilight with a bright smile, which rapidly disappeared. "Oh Stars below, that was insensitive, wasn't it? Applejack, I am so sorry."
Applejack burst out with a hearty laugh. "It's okay, hon! It's nice to see you grin, even through a couple panes of curvy glass. You love ideas so much you just light up a whole room every time you find somethin' new to explore," she said, with a gentle squeeze to Twilight's hoof.
Twilight Sparkle hoped those two panes of distracting glass were enough to mask a blush.
"I'd like to hear more about it, if you want," continued Applejack. "I like learnin' more than most ponies think, and I believe you know that already. Besides, it'll give us somethin' to do before we go down the drain, so to speak."
"Sure. It's kind of complicated, but basically, a black hole is like... well, it's a lot like the hole-punch analogy you used. Think of it like a hole punched in space and time," Twilight explained. "Our physical theories break down at the singularity, which is a point of infinite density at the center of the hole. The event horizon is a sphere around the singularity which marks the point of no return, forever separating whatever falls inside from the rest of the universe."
"I take it that would be the rim of the thing," said Applejack.
Twilight smiled again. "It looks that way, but it actually isn't. That's another optical illusion caused by the way its gravity bends light. The true event horizon is a little deeper into the hole," she explained. "But the gravity spell I cast will accelerate us faster and faster away the closer we get, so we won't actually enter the hole until the spell ends."
Applejack nodded. "Oh, well that's not bad. I mean, can't you keep up the spell for a long time?" she asked.
"In this case, no. A strange interaction between the black hole and the spell will kill us before we enter the event horizon. When I die, the spell will end," said Twilight. "Then our corpses will fall into the hole."
"Alright then. How long we got? No need to sugarcoat," said Applejack. She tightened her grip on Twilight's hooves briefly in emphasis.
"I don't know," admitted Twilight. "The math is too complicated to do in my head, but a rough guess says we have on the order of minutes. Maybe even a half-hour or longer, but I doubt it will last until bedtime. Unless you want me to cast a spell to make us fall asleep, I mean."
"Nah, I ain't afraid. Well, not of dyin', anyway," said Applejack. "For one thing, Apple Bloom comes home every other day with her head chock full of ideas about life and death, all sown there by some crazy alicorn," she said with a grin.
Twilight smiled weakly. "She's a wonderful student. She's told you some of the basics, I guess?"
"Yeah," said Applejack, "and confidentially, it's helped me deal with Ma and Pa, at least a little. You just, wake up somewhere, like from a dream or a daydream, I take it?"
"There's a lot more to it, but that's usually a good analogy. For mathematical reasons, the abstraction of consciousness can't end, so you always end up drifting somewhere. Multiple somewheres, actually, kind of like the branches of a tree: you split into multiple selves, all the time. It's just not common to shift into another reality until something as logically cataclysmic as death happens," Twilight explained. "The likelihood of destination depends mostly upon the simplicity of the abstraction function. Physical bodies like these are pretty weird, but they're one of the least-complicated ways to embed the correspondence between the temporal pattern of consciousness..."
Twilight looked back up into Applejack's faceplate and paused her lecture. Even with the lights clouding her vision, she could tell she was getting too technical for her friend to follow.
"Keep on, sugar," urged Applejack. "I can usually catch about half of what you throw at me, even in the worst case."
"Sorry. I guess the details don't really matter. I know I can get a little carried away sometimes," Twilight admitted.
"Do tell?" said Applejack, in her best surprised-sounding-voice.
Twilight laughed. Knowing Applejack, the cowpony had just scored herself a point.
"You're so much fun to be with," said Twilight. "That's one of the reasons I was so glad you volunteered to come with me. I know we've been making a lot of time for each other lately, but I still feel like we don't spend enough time together."
"Really? If you wanted fun, you coulda brought Pinkie instead," Applejack pointed out.
Twilight swallowed, grateful the phono wouldn't transmit the soft sound. "No, it's more than that. You're special to me, Applejack. I don't understand why, but I want to share feelings and ideas with you that I'm too embarrassed to talk about with my other friends. It's almost like you're a part of my family? I don't know, this probably sounds weird."
"Nah, it ain't weird. I feel the same kinda kinship, Twi. To be honest, it's the main reason I offered to be your partner in this crazy mission. I wish we had more than a hoofful of minutes left between us, though. Is there any chance we might, y'know, when we do reach the end—wake up from the same dream together?"
Twilight shook her head. "I'm sorry AJ," she said, "but the odds are so close to impossible it's not worth a mention. Usually when you lose somepony, you don't see anypony quite like them for an unfathomably long period of time. Until then, you'll see them in bits and pieces, within the friends and loved ones you still know."
"Like how I see Pa in Apple Bloom every day, I guess," said Applejack. "You know, Twi... I ain't never told you this, but I think you have a lot of Ma in you," she revealed.
"Really?" said Twilight, the sudden energy in her voice adding static to the transmission.
Applejack nodded. "Definitely. I don't remember too much, but she was strong, kind, and smart as a whip. You and her'd get along like bread and butter."
"I'm sure we would have," said Twilight, smiling.
"Somethin' about your face reminds me of her, too," added Applejack, "but Ma might not have been quite so pretty as a certain alicorn princess I know."
Twilight Sparkle was fairly certain she saw Applejack wink, and she felt oddly warm and giddy inside. This always seemed to happen when they were together, even though she didn't fully understand why. She'd been meaning to run tests.
"Anyhoo, despite the impossible odds I still hold out hope we'll wake up in the same world," said Applejack. Then she paused with her mouth open, as if holding the conversation between her lips. "I dunno, maybe even in the same bed?"
"AJ, you are so crazy!" Twilight accused, with a bright laugh. "But, thank you. And sure, I'd love to wake up from this in a world that still has you in it. Even if we're in the same bed, which is a bizarre idea..." The idea even made her feel strange.
Applejack looked at the stars surrounding them, which until this moment had been fixed in location. "Twi, is this one of those optical illusions? It looks like the stars are all movin' up and away from the hole," she said.
"Yes," said Twilight. "It's not the black hole causing the illusion, though. It's the increasing acceleration from my spell distorting what we see as it changes our inertial frame of reference. The closer we get to the event horizon, the faster we'll accelerate, and more and more of the sky will get swallowed. When we're very close to the horizon, everything will be black except for a little ring of bluish light above our heads. We'll still be outside the black hole, but our acceleration will make it appear as though we're surrounded by it."
Both ponies looked down between them. It looked like they were standing on a circle of pure darkness, rimmed with a shining light. The circle was slowly but surely expanding. Stereo vision made it seem thousands of miles away. It was as if the Celestial Sphere itself were being blotted out, bit by bit.
"Y'know, it's right pretty," said Applejack.
"Yes. Yes, it really is," said Twilight. "Um, AJ?" she added, looking back up into her friend's helmet, trying in vain to make out the details in her face.
"Yeah, sugarlump?" said Applejack.
"There's something I haven't told you yet. I wasn't sure if I should spare you some of the details about what's going to happen..."
"Out with it, hon," said Applejack, gently but firmly. "I can catch whatever you pitch at me, as long as you're by my side."
Twilight nodded. "I'm using an inertial buffer to prevent the acceleration from killing us, but we're starting to speed up quite a bit," she explained. "Our relative velocity will grow very close to the speed of light as the spell's acceleration increases. When we're inches from the event horizon, the passage of time will be much, much slower for us than for the rest of Equestria. Do you understand what that means?"
Applejack paused for a moment to think. "No idea. Sorry," she admitted. "Can you draw me a picture?"
"It's not complicated. Eventually, every second that passes for us will mean a week passes on Equestria. Then, each second will be a month. Then years will fly by, and then centuries, and so on. Oddly enough, the starlight is actually what's going to kill us. We'll get roasted by millions of years of high-energy light in a matter of seconds," Twilight said.
Applejack nodded. "Makin' sure I follow you, I believe that means pretty soon everypony we've ever known is gonna be history," she said. "Wait a minute, though: wouldn't that give them more than enough time to save us?"
"If they could find us, absolutely," Twilight said. "But we were so far off course, it can't happen. The deep sky is too enormous, and magic can't reach far enough to locate us. Nopony will ever find us, or our ship, not even in a trillion years. Which, ironically, is time we actually have."
"So why'd you wanna hide this from me, Twilight?" asked Applejack. "I mean, it's pretty strange, but it ain't that hard to explain."
"I know your family means so much to you, and our friends mean a lot to both of us," said Twilight, her head bowed. "The idea that everypony we've ever known will soon be dead and gone while we're still up here..."
Twilight stopped talking as a "tink" sound alerted her to glass-on-glass contact, and she looked up as a gentle sensation enveloped her. Applejack had pulled her into an awkward hug, and looked her dead in the eye—or as close as she could with the distraction of stars reflecting off of their helmets.
"Now, listen here, sweetheart. I do believe when I signed up for this here shindig, I promised I would follow you to the end of everything," Applejack said, her voice deep and clear despite the limitations of the phonocrystal. "Granted, I didn't know I'd be meanin' it literal-like, but if there's anypony I'd wanna be stuck with for a few million years, it'd be you, and that's the truth." Then Applejack smiled, and Twilight smiled right back.
"You always seem to have your hooves firmly on the ground, even way up here," said Twilight. "You know, I should really be freaking out right now, for some reason I feel fantastic. Here I am hugging my best friend in the worst possible situation for us both, and I feel like I'm drunk on cider or something. Maybe I'm suffering from radiation poisoning? I don't understand..."
Applejack loudly cleared her throat into the phono to get Twilight's attention. "It's okay, hon. You're mighty good at understandin' most things, and I leave those to you. But you'll just have to trust me on this one. I get the message well enough for the both of us."
Applejack released the hug, and the pair of ponies returned to holding hooves. The circle of darkness beneath them was much larger. It looked rather like the stars were all migrating upwards, leaving behind nothingness, all of it happening thousands of miles in the distance.
"You know... We've had remarkably full lives, for being so young," said Twilight. "I wouldn't change a thing. Except the falling into a black hole part, of course."
"Me neither," said Applejack. Twilight made a crackling giggle through the phono in response. "Somethin' tickle your funny bone, hon?"
Twilight smiled. "I was just thinking about when we first met. You were the first pony I actually spoke to in Ponyville. Cadance and Spike are good friends, but they're more like family than friends since I grew up around them. Applejack, you were my first true friend. Did I ever tell you that?" Twilight asked. "I never understood why any of you mares were so nice to me. I always assumed it was due to the fulfillment of the prophecy. It's not like there was anything special about me..."
"Well, I remember gettin' to know a certain preoccupied unicorn. It was obvious on sight she needed a friend the way a dog needs water," said Applejack. "But there was more to it, truth be told. I knew there was somethin' mighty special about that young mare the moment I laid eyes on her. It took me quite a while to figure out just what it was, but like you said: I wouldn't change a thing."
Twilight smiled and looked into Applejack's eyes. It was a little easier to see past those layers of glass now with darkness engulfing the lower half of the sky.
"Yeah. I love you too, AJ." It took a moment for Twilight to realize what had just popped out of her mouth, and then her eyes widened in surprise. "Oh! I, uh, I mean, as a very good friend, of course," she nervously corrected herself.
Twilight could just barely make out Applejack grinning wider than a barn door. "Of course," she said gently, then looked to the side and whistled, which made a scratchy-sounding noise over the phono. "Looks like more than half the sky is missin' now... Um, Twilight?"
"Yes, AJ?" said Twilight.
"As much as I'd rather be alone, well, it would have been awful," admitted Applejack. "Scary and lonely. With you, it's scary, but it's beautiful, too."
"It would have been awful for me too, to go on without you," said Twilight. "But, yeah. You're welcome."
Applejack frowned. "I still ain't givin' out hope we're in the same dream. Impossible things happen all the time," she said.
"Actually, that positive attitude may help your transition," said Twilight. "Keep your mind on good thoughts, on the things you'd like to see and feel wherever you end up. It might be waking from a dream, or maybe you'll reconnect to reality as a very young foal somewhere..."
"But will I remember this? Will I remember my friends, I mean... will I remember you, Twilight?" asked Applejack, a slight catch in her voice.
"Probably not. Most of the time, large transitions in consciousness don't maintain information of that depth. It's like when you wake up from some crazy dream, and despite all the details, it vanishes from your mind in seconds. The only way we'd still know about each other is if this experience weren't real. Like, if it were some kind of a shared delusion."
Applejack pursed her lips in thought. "Maybe some kind of magic spell?" she asked.
Twilight paused for a moment. "Well, it couldn't be typical magic. No spell I know of can create memories this detailed." She looked up at the dwindling sky as it passed the halfway point, and noticed it turning a slight bluish tint. "It's going to get bluer and bluer as we go faster and faster, and we'll probably be in trouble when the stars seem to blur together," she added.
"Okay, warning noted—but think with me now, Twi," asked Applejack. "Zecora's potion gave you some pretty fancy visions, didn't it? Were they like this?"
"Huh. That's true. Alchemy might be able to do something like this. But all of the mission details, it couldn't create any of those..." said Twilight. "The memories we have make it impossible that this experience could be some kind of a programmed vision."
"Right, the mission, before everythin' up and went haywire. You mean how we were s'posed to go..." said Applejack.
"WAIT!" shouted Twilight. "Don't say anything about the mission!"
Applejack stopped cold. "Beg pardon?"
"Oh my gosh. We just might have an outside chance of getting out of here. But colt, is it ever a longshot," Twilight said. "Just don't say anything about the mission."
"Yes ma'am. I'm all ears," said Applejack.
"Okay, here's the idea. If I remove all of our memories about the mission, then the Twilight Sparkle and Applejack who end up without those memories might never have actually had them in the first place," said Twilight. "That would at least make it possible for this to be a shared hallucination. It might even make sense, because this black hole is so unusual it shouldn't exist in the first place," she added.
"You had me and then you lost me. If you remove our memories, we're still hosed, ain't we? We might not remember why we have no chance," said Applejack. "But we know right now that it can't work."
"Not if it's part of the simulation!" said Twilight, grinning. "Look, it's really hard to explain, but it's the same consciousness connection I was talking about, turned on its head. If we remove our memories, we have just as much chance of being the ponies who never had the memories in the first place as we would be if we were simply remembering a hallucination somepony else had designed for us. That plus the oddness of the black hole will actually inflate the likelihood. Just—look, I know you might think I'm crazy, but please trust me on this, AJ," she begged.
"Sugar, that there's the easiest thing you ever done asked me to do," said Applejack, with a smile.
"I just need your permiss—" said Twilight.
"Go on."
Twilight cast the spell. The next thing either pony was aware of was a splitting headache.
"Ow," said Twilight. She heard Applejack groan over the phono, and both ponies looked up. Most of the sky had been gobbled by the darkness. Projected above their heads was a large circle of stars, blue and blurry, like a broken planetarium.
"I guess we've been out for a minute or two," noted Applejack. "Spell worked for me, though. I can't for the life of me remember anything about a mission, or even why we'd want to go up this high in the first place."
"Me too. Oh Celestia, I hope this works, AJ," said Twilight. "But it's still a longshot, because I can't think of a single reason somepony would want to torture us like this!"
"I'd say Discord, but this ain't his style," said Applejack.
"Agreed. Plus, the magic involved probably requires high-level alchemy. And who on Equestria would want to put you and I into a fake life-or-death situation?" asked Twilight.
Applejack groaned. "It's Apple Bloom."
"Oh, that makes perfect... Wait, what? Apple Bloom?" said Twilight.
"Yep, I'm sure of it," said Applejack. "This is just the kind of horse apples she and her little friends would pull on us, and I'll betcha with Zecora's help she could whip up a hallucination too. Granted, it ain't likely, but it's possible. And she has pretty much an all-access pass to both of us."
Twilight nodded slowly. "Okay, maybe that makes sense, but Apple Bloom wouldn't mess with us like this without a really good reason," said Twilight.
Applejack chuckled. "The Crusaders have done somethin' like this before, actually. Nothin' half as fancy, but the same idea. I mean, Twi, you know she's always talkin' about me gettin' a special somepony," she explained.
"Okay, but what does this have to do with me?" said Twilight.
Applejack said nothing, simply waiting.
"Wait, do you mean ME?" gasped Twilight. "Like, me, with you...?"
"Yes, I do," said Applejack. "Now, please don't go tellin' me on my deathbed that I'm that bad of a potential marefriend, Twilight Sparkle," she mock-pouted.
Twilight looked down as the wheels in her head turned. "Well, of course not. You'd make the best marefriend anypony could ever dream of, Applejack. It's just... I mean, we're both mares," she said, as though the truth of the matter were self-evident.
"This I know, sugarcube. But sometimes, that is a thing that can actually happen," Applejack explained gently, and took Twilight's forehooves in hers again.
Twilight froze for a moment and looked back up to Applejack's helmet. "Well, sure it is, but... I guess I never really thought I could feel like..." she said, and her voice trailed off.
"You alright hon?" said Applejack.
"Yeah, I... I think I am. Well, it's the best chance we have," said Twilight, looking above her at the dwindling circle to avoid making eye contact. It was small, deep blue, and uniform. Twilight Sparkle's cheeks burned, and her hooves trembled.
"Look, I know this is all kinda sudden, Twi, but you know, we might be able to up our chances a touch more," said Applejack. "If I understand the idea, maybe we try to give my sister what she wants... then the whole thing adds up, don't it?"
Twilight took a deep breath. "Yes, I think so," she said softly. She knew it was hard to make out her voice with her head tilted away from the phono. She continued to stare up into the deadly circle of light in the distance. It felt a lot less scary than what she might find in the eyes of her friend.
"But, I love you—I mean that mainly as a friend, of course—and if you don't want to look down here into my eyes and see this through, I will respect your decision," said Applejack. "I just hope that, whatever may come, I get to see your wonderful face again someday." Then Twilight heard what sounded like a sniffle, but it was surely just static. The only time she'd ever heard Applejack sniffle is once when she'd caught a cold. Applejack cried all her tears away way back as a foal when she lost Ma and Pa.
As she watched the circle above her shrinking, Twilight Sparkle tried not to think about anything that might make her cry. But the image reminded her of a closing door, just like the emergency hatch on a deepship as it irises shut. She had pushed so many ponies away as a foal, preferring to wall herself off into a protective world of facts and study. How many open doors had she let slip closed in the friendless days of her youth? Twilight could feel warmth in her face and chest, filling her core. Lethal doses of gamma radiation from centuries of starlight, no doubt... but then again, maybe not. Maybe that burning sensation deep inside her was from something else entirely.
With all the bravery she could muster, Twilight Sparkle lowered her head, and her eyes met Applejack's. Here in the deep darkness of empty space, with no twinkling lights left to distract her, she could finally see Applejack's face in perfect clarity. Applejack wasn't crying, but her eyes were wet. Twilight reached out and pulled her friend close to her, or at least as close as two bulky deepsuits would allow, and she smiled. Twilight could finally see right through those two panes of glass: within the lit helmet, a warm and welcome face. So familiar, and yet it felt like she was seeing it for the very first time.
Twilight smiled as she looked her friend in the eyes. "AJ?"
"Yeah Twi?" said Applejack.
"Even if we don't wake up in Equestria, I'm really glad it ended like this," said Twilight.
"Me too, sugarcube. Me too," said Applejack, as the warmth of their friendship consumed them both.
