Into Darkness

by Slate Sadpony

Rating: everyone
Tags: Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Tragedy, Princess Celestia, Twilight Sparkle
Length: 6188

When one of Twilight's experiments does not produce the expected results, she questions herself and her abilities.

When one of Twilight's experiments does not produce the expected results, she questions herself and her abilities.

Published 2015-05-11 17:20:02 UTC
Last updated 2015-05-11 17:20:02 UTC

Into Darkness

“Are you sure about this, Hawkeye? I mean, I do need a volunteer for this experiment, but don’t they need you for the Spring Showers?” Twilight adjusted several lenses, then returned to her checklist, re-examining the experimental protocol and ensuring that everything was set up properly. “Besides, you already have excellent vision. Are you sure that this magical vision improvement spell will even make a difference?”

Hawkeye grinned, adjusting himself in his chair and resting his chin on the small stand in front of him. “I know you’re new to flying, so you probably have no idea how limiting even great vision is. Sure, I can spot a dog at cloud height. But if this spell works out like you say, I can see the rabbit the dog is chasing — and redirect a rain cloud away from the both of them! You’ll see, precision rain is definitely the way things are going on most farms. It saves water, prevents run off, and helps keep the plants from drowning. But nopony can see well enough to aim the water with proper precision. Until today!”

Twilight smiled, lining up her lenses with where Hawkeye placed his eyes. If her calculations were correct, and the months of research she’d put in weren’t leading her astray, then this spell would enable Hawkeye to have vision on par with his namesake. Sure, it would come at the cost of seeing in the dark, but Hawkeye was an early to bed, early to rise sort of pony, and had jumped at the chance, even when Twilight had explained the long list of potential side-effects and unusual reactions.

“You did read that paperwork I gave you, right? You didn’t just sign it?” Twilight placed a blinder over Hawkeye’s face, lining up precisely with the stand where Hawkeye was resting his chin. “Hold still, I need to lock these blinders into place on the stand.. If things are off by even a millimeter, the spell won’t work. Or worse, something could go wrong.”

“I let my dad read it, he’s a lawyer and stuff.” Hawkeye wriggled in his seat. “He said it was super generous, what with you agreeing to take responsibility for anything but the unexpected, and even then your Magical Malpractice Insurance will handle things.” Hawkeye flexed his wings, tapping his hooves and flicking his tail. “Plus if this works out, I’ll get upgraded to ‘Specialist,’ which means like, a hundred bits more each and every work day. And I get cookies after this, right? Sugarcube Corner cookies? I don’t want something you picked up at the convenience store on your way to the lab.”

“I had Pinkie bake up a special batch just for you — you’ll get them and your fifty bits for your time as soon as the spell is complete, whether or not it works.” Twilight checked the alignment on the lenses one last time and then went to the far side, preparing the incantation that would be necessary for focusing and directing the magic from her horn.

Hawkeye licked his lips. “I can almost taste them!”

“Good! Now just hold very, very still — I need to focus the beams right into your corneas.” Twilight closed her eyes and began to chant, resting her horn on a stand in alignment with the lenses. For months she had practiced her aim, practiced holding perfectly still while focusing dual beams of magic through the series of gem lenses needed to purify the essence of the spell. She had done dozens of dry runs, beginning with target practice on vegetables, and then stepping up to animals that Fluttershy had helped volunteer. Already this spell had restored sight to an old cat, two dogs and a budgie. But it hadn’t yet been tried on ponies, or even creatures with normal sight. And this difference put a twinge of fear in Twilight’s heart.

The magic crackled and split the air as it leapt from the tip of Twilight’s horn. She opened her eyes now, focusing it on the twin sets of lenses, which focused the erratic beams into tiny, narrow, points, each one hitting right on target. “Keep your eyes open for the duration of the spell — don’t even blink! The light should grow brighter, then there will be a moment of darkness, then the world should come into focus like never before!”

Twilight sighed and allowed the spell to finish and the spell to dissipate. The brightness of the magic from her horn had temporarily blinded her somewhat. As her eyes adjusted to the more normal light, she looked forward to see Hawkeye, still grinning, still holding his eyes wide.

“Can I blink now? My eyes are getting really dried out.”

“Sure.” Twilight got down off the stand, moving over to remove the blinders and help Hawkeye out of the frame.

Hawkeye hopped down and began rubbing his eyes with his hooves. “So how long is this temporary blindness supposed to last? Jeez, it’s like that time I looked up at the wrong moment and stared right into the sun. Super annoying!”

Twilight froze. The temporary blindness had lasted mere moments for her other subjects. But it had been a full fifteen seconds now. Twenty. Thirty. And Hawkeye was still pointing his head this way and that, his eyes wide open but completely unfocused.

“Is this some kind of prank? I get it, ha ha.” Hawkeye stumbled a bit, bumping into the stand, and then a nearby table. “You wanted to scare me into sitting still by casting a little blinding spell on me, to let me know what the ‘dire consequences’ might be if I blinked at the wrong moment.” He thumped his hoof around, then sat down on the floor, his face pointed at a blank wall. “Joke’s over, reverse the spell, put me back in the stand, and let’s do this for realsies.”

“I don’t understand…” Twilight waved her hoof in front of Hawkeyes face, then froze as he failed to react. A chill ran down her spine. She could feel the moisture flee from her throat, her stomach sank, her heart leapt in her chest. “I followed the instructions precisely. It was just like all those other times, with the cat, with the dogs, with that bird that wouldn’t sit still…”

Hawkeye blanched, moving his hoof in front of his face slowly, and then setting it back down. “Twilight...I can’t see.” He stood on his hooves. “Sweet Celestia Twilight, I can’t see! I can’t see!” He began to buck wildly, turning this way and that, smashing into and upsetting tables and equipment as he stumbled blindly.

“Hawkeye, please calm down!” Twilight tried to move in, Hawkeye’s hoof smacking her across the face, forcing her to back up. “Maybe the temporary blindness lasts longer for ponies! Maybe we just need to wait!” Continuing to back up, she began to hurriedly flip through her spellbook. There had to be some sort of counterspell, some emergency “undo” option to put things back to the way they were.

Hawkeye smashed into a nearby table, tripping and falling badly, his eyes wide open but pointing nowhere. “Twilight, this isn’t funny! I can’t see, Twilight! What did you do to me? I can’t see!” He collapsed on the floor, sobbing and pulling in his hooves, his unfocused eyes staring up at Twilight like a dead fish. “Twilight, help me, I can’t see!”

Twilight sat down beside him, torn between her desire to comfort him and a fear that, in his literally blind anger and confusion, he might lash out at her a second time. She too began to cry, her tears dropping down on to the ancient tome she had just referenced. “I’m sorry Hawkeye, but...There’s no counterspell. Not for this. Not for a healing spell. I...I don’t know what went wrong. But please, we’ve got to get you to the hospital. Maybe science can help where magic has failed. Please, just stay calm, and no more panic. I’ll get you there as fast as I can, in the best way I know how.”

There was a blinding flash of deep purple light, and the both of them disappeared, leaving only a shimmering magical dust glittering across the laboratory floor.

***

Twilight paced back and forth in her living room. Where could it have gone wrong? Before she had left, the doctors had said that they were baffled at the blindness, and needed to investigate both hysterical and magical blindness before they could reach a conclusion. Hysterical blindness? Had she somehow damaged his mind? Was this just a trick caused by fear or misunderstanding? And if it was magical, would a counterspell even be possible? Such things took years of research to properly formulate, and even then there was no guarantee of success.

She had gone over her notes dozens, maybe even hundreds of times. This should not have happened. It couldn’t have! Yet there was no denying that Hawkeye could no longer see, and that standard medications and healing spells had no effect. Something was wrong, and she couldn’t even figure out what it was.

Determining the source of the problem obsessed her every moment. She had been without sleep, pausing only just barely for bodily essentials, turning away every visitor or inquisitive friend. She had poured over her books and even sent away for more, determined to find out what could have possibly gone wrong. This spell, while novel in itself, was a near analog of dozens of other sight-related spells, all of which had been practiced for centuries. Certainly some pony, some where at some time, had encountered the same problem, and had at least isolated what had gone wrong. Maybe they had even solved it, and their solution was simply so obscure or unusual that it had been forgotten

That had to be it. The solution had to be out there, just obscured by place and time. Sooner or later, research and experimentation would yield dividends, and she could make things right for Hawkeye. It would just take time. She was Twilight Sparkle, and she wasn’t about to let this end here. No pony had ever suffered a permanent injury as a part of her research. She wasn’t about to let that start now.

There was a sudden, sharp banging at the door that pulled Twilight up from the book she was scouring. As she looked up she realized that her hair was in disarray and that there were deep bags beneath her eyes. No time to fix that now. She’d need to ask whoever was at the door to leave, to come back later, unless they were dropping off something useful. New books maybe. Or a pizza. Had she ordered one? She knew she had sent Spike out for one, but she couldn’t remember if he’d come back with it. When was that, anyway? Yesterday? This morning? What day was today, anyway?

At the door was a large stallion dressed in full Royal Guard regalia. An older pony, his regulation blue mane flecked with dabs of gray, he towered above two more ponies, one an elderly but stern mare and the other a young bespectacled stallion. All of them bore frowns on their stern faces. Only a fourth pony, a young and well dressed mare, seemed determined not to be dour. “My name is Stout Defense, and this is Perilous Research and Adept Inquiry. We have been dispatched on behalf of the Committee of Magical Inquiry to investigate Hawkeye’s loss of sight due to your experimental spellcasting.”

Twilight froze. The Committee of Magical Inquiry? She had written to them for over a decade, submitting experimental protocols and permit applications, but she had never seen any member face-to-face. She had heard the horror stories, though — tasked with banning or disapproving dangerous magic, they were given wide berth to condemn experiments or ban procedures, as well as the power to punish violators as they saw fit. Those who stood on the wrong side of the Committee could find themselves imprisoned, or worse.

The fourth pony stepped forward, her saddlebags threatening to fall to the ground as they sagged with papers. “And I am your court-appointed attorney, Res Ipsa. I’ll be assisting and defending you during this inquiry.

“Come on in.” Twilight’s throat felt dry, her tongue swollen, and as the ponies came into her living room, she hurriedly dashed into the kitchen to help herself to a glass of water. It shook hard as she used her magic to hold it under the faucet, spilling across her hooves. She winced, but choked down the whole glass before returning to face the trio.

Res Ipsa gestured to her throat. “There’s water all over your chin and neck.”

Twilight grabbed a doily off the couch and began to dab her face. “Oh, sorry.”

Adept Inquiry moved closer to her. “Twilight, as the experiment which lead to Hawkeye’s blinding was examined and approved by the Committee, it is extremely important that we review the protocol and interview you to determine what actually happened. We need to ensure that the accident was indeed unforeseeable and that the experiment was not approved in error, nor that the procedure or procedures like it need to be banned.”

Perilous Research stepped up as well, standing alongside Adept Inquiry. “Magical accidents happen, Twilight, and we’ll need you to work with us. But do understand that you are, until right now, under suspicion of malpractice. Princess or no, you are still bound by the laws and regulations that govern all magical ponies. Now, do you wish to discuss this with your lawyer, or may we begin?”

Twilight bit her lip. She knew she had a right to a lawyer in this sort of situation. A free one, even. But wouldn’t that just be delaying the inevitable? Wouldn’t they just come to a conclusion no matter what she did to defend herself? She gulped. She was not in the right mind to make decisions. Not when she was so exhausted that she could barely stand. “I think I need to have a word with my lawyer first.”

Res Ipsa stepped forward. “A wise choice.” She put her hoof around Twilight’s shoulder. “Is there some place we can speak in private?”

Twilight gestured towards the dining room. “In there. We can close the door.”

Res Ipsa nodded and followed Twilight into the room, closing and locking the door behind her. “Now, I want you to tell me, from the beginning, exactly what happened.” Res dumped her saddlebags onto the dining room table, spreading out her voluminous notes and beginning to scribble as Twilight talked.

Twilight began slowly, describing how she had originally researched the procedure, starting with her accidental discovery of the original text in the ruined library located deep within the Castle of the Two Sisters. From there she recounted how she had scoured the Royal Canterlot Library for more information, digging up additional facts and more recent research into optical spells. After that came the long process of developing a protocol, having it approved, then testing it on vegetables and small animals. Only then did she come to the actual preparation of Hawkeye himself.

“Now did you in any way deviate from the protocol you submitted to the Committee?” Res Ipsa put down her notepad and looked Twilight directly in the eyes. “Anything, even the slightest variation?”

Twilight sat down on her haunches, rocking back and forth slightly. “No, nothing. Not a thing. It took me months to develop that protocol. I wouldn’t even know what to change if I wanted to. And I didn’t want to change anything. I just wanted it to work.”

“You didn’t forget to clean the lenses before starting? Or maybe, by accident, fumble part of the incantation?” Res Ipsa returned to her notes, writing furiously.

“I can’t think of a single thing.” Twilight began to rock in earnest. She suddenly realized how tired she felt. Very, very tired. She wanted to lie down, but she feared that if she did, she would pass out. “I’ve been over it again and again and I just can’t figure out what…”

Res Ipsa got Twilight to her feet, putting a hoof on her shoulder. “As your attorney, I advise you to not undergo formal questioning at this time. You need to calm down and rest, and I’ll do what I can to postpone your court date until you’ve recovered. But the Committee does have a warrant for your laboratory and orders to confiscate anything and everything that may constitute evidence.” Res stood up and took a few steps back. “Do I have your permission to let them in there, and accompany them? You’re free to accompany us as well, but be advised you’ll be held back and not allowed to touch anything. There isn’t anything I should know about the lab, is there? Some unreported experiments or potentially incriminating evidence regarding another matter?”

“No, nothing...” Twilight leaned on the dining room chair, her hooves wobbly and uncertain beneath her.

“No doors or chests you have left unlocked?” Res Ipsa began to repack her notes. “They’ll break the locks, so it’s best to let me know the combinations, or tell me where the keys are.”

“Everything is unlocked.” Twilight tried to follow Res Ipsa, but every step was hard. She wanted to just lay down on the carpet and take a nap right where she was.

“All right, then.” Res Ipsa hoisted her saddlebags onto her back, her whole frame bending at the weight. “I’ll let the Committee know they can begin their evidence gathering. As your attorney, I advise you not to accompany them. I advise you to go to your bedroom and get a nap. I’ll contact you in the next few days so that we can arrange a more formal discussion, and go over what the committee’s inquiry comes back with.”

“Okay.” Twilight continued to move, but slowly. Had she ever been so tired before? Maybe that time she fell asleep in her breakfast.

“I don’t wanna give you false hope, but I really think you have a strong case here. This really was an unforeseeable accident, and whatever went wrong, I really doubt it’s your fault. I’ve hardly seen any pony put so much work into developing a protocol and sticking to it. But we won’t know until the Committee reaches a decision.”

“All right.” Twilight yawned, laying down on the carpet. It was amazingly comfortable. Was it new? Had Rarity installed it when Twilight wasn’t looking? It just felt so soft and warm.

“Would you like me to help you to your bedroom before I accompany the Committee?” Res Ipsa moved closer, putting a hoof around Twilight’s shoulder. “I’m going to help you to your bedroom. You need this.”

“That’s fine.” Twilight leaned on Res Ipsa and closed her eyes, letting her hooves find their own way as she was half carried, half dragged to bed.

***

Twilight sighed, her body still shaking as she exited the courtroom. She had barely been able to breathe since the judge had declared “No Malpractice Found.” She was giddy with excitement at the thought she had been cleared, but being declared not guilty had not alleviated her guilt. Indeed, it seemed to make it worse. The feeling that she had “gotten away” with blinding an innocent pony made her heart sink into her stomach. On some level, she had expected or even hoped to get punished, and that such punishment would “force” her to recognize what horrible wrongs she had committed. Instead she was told that she had done no wrong and was free to go. But Hawkeye was still blind.

Res Ipsa smiled. “You can breathe now. I told you that you would be cleared of all charges. This was the easiest case I ever defended. The way you kept and followed your protocols and records was incredible. I only wish every pony who did magical research was as diligent as you.”

“But Hawkeye is still blind.” Twilight kicked at the carpeted floor. She hadn’t been sleeping well these past few weeks, and with her magical experiments shut down for the duration of the investigation, she’d had a lot of time to think about what had gone wrong. She still had no idea. “I did everything right. I followed every rule. But because of me, some innocent pony is blind.”

“It’s not because of you.” Res Ipsa put down her papers on a nearby table. She began to re-organize them, placing most of them into a folder marked “Closed.” “It’s no pony’s fault that this happened, any more than it’s some pony’s fault that they get hit by a meteorite or are born with three legs. It’s just one of those things that is beyond anypony’s control. Even a Princess.”

“But it is my fault! I performed the experiment! I designed the experiment!” She could still see Hawkeye in her mind’s eye, his sightless eyes glowering at her from behind opaque sunglasses. Somehow the fact that his eyes could not see her, yet they still showed their hatred for her, sent a chill down her spine. “If I hadn’t done all that, Hawkeye would be up above Ponyville directing the precision rains on Applejack’s crops.”

“If you hadn’t done it, maybe Hawkeye would have crashed into a bird and gouged his eyes out, or developed cataracts, or died in a fire.” Res Ipsa finished sorting her papers and returned them to her saddlebags. “Twilight, every day in my job, I help ponies who have found themselves in the worst trouble of their lives. Sometimes its their fault and sometimes it isn’t. But in either case, beating yourself up isn’t going to put things back the way they were.”

“But I must have done something wrong, or else this wouldn’t have happened!” Twilight didn’t know what to think anymore. She knew, on an intellectual level, that bad things did inexplicably happen to good ponies, as much as she and the other Princesses tried to prevent it. But at least in her own life, everything that went wrong could be traced back to a cause, some pony or creature or force of nature that could be blamed. This freak accident was truly inexplicable, and that made her feel helpless.

Res Ipsa sighed. “In the eyes of the court and Celestia herself, you did nothing wrong, and as far as it matters, that means you didn’t.” She began to walk towards the exit, directing Twilight to a nearby bench as she moved. “Look, if you need someone to talk to, I can recommend psychologists who specialize in this sort of problem. You’re not the first pony to have this happen to them. In fact, I need to get back to the office, I have a three o’clock with a pony from the Royal Academy who was doing some investigations into Tirek’s magical draining abilities. The wrong kind, apparently.”

Twilight sat down hard, biting her lip, and then chewing idly on her hair. She had always known that magical accidents were a part of the job, but she had never thought they could happen to her. Accidents happened to ponies who were careless, who didn’t craft their experiments properly, not Twilight. Only now Hawkeye was blind. And even the Committee of Magical Inquiry didn’t know why. They didn’t believe it was Twilight’s fault, but Twilight couldn’t let that go. Surely there must have been something she had done wrong. Surely it was, on some level, still her fault. And therefore something she could fix, or at least prevent from happening again.

Twilight looked up to see Res Ipsa opening the door for an older pony. But next to that was Hawkeye, his blind hooves feeling out each step while his wife, Sunflitter, helped guide him through the door. Twilight closed her eyes and looked down, sighing. “I’m sorry, Hawkeye, I really am.”

Hawkeye suddenly turned, pointing his head this way and that. “I heard that!” He stumbled towards Twilight, his footing unsure. He bumped and pushed ponies out of his way as he came towards Twilight, heedless of his wife’s efforts to get him to turn around. “I can hear you Twilight! I know you’re there!”

Twilight winced. It was uncanny, seeing him stumble towards her, his feet moving frantically as he tried to remember where the sound had come from. Twilight squeaked uncontrollably, realizing that she was terrified of Hawkeye, of his anger, and of the unnatural way he stumbled around with blind rage.

“I can still hear you!”

Hawkeye was only inches away from Twilight now. She froze with fear. Dragons, monsters, evil monarchs — these didn’t feel Twilight with fear, because she knew what to do, how to handle them, dangerous and deadly though they were. But this single blind stallion filled her with terror, his unseeing eyes the physical manifestation of her powerlessness. “Please, I’m sorry, just...Just leave me alone!”

“Leave you alone?” Hawkeye spat, missing Twilight by almost a meter. “If you’d left me well enough alone, I could still see!”

Res Ipsa came running at a full gallop, grabbing Twilight and trying to drag her away. “As your attorney I advise you not to talk to this pony. Please, come with me immediately.”

Twilight couldn’t tear her eyes away. She had never seen such anger up close before. This was not the petulant and childish anger that she saw in Rainbow Dash, or the exaggerated and feigned anger that affected Rarity. This was a deep rage that came from the heart, some twisted perversion of a feeling that made the hairs of Twilight’s mane stand on end.

“Shut up you stupid mare! You’re guilty too! You helped her get away with this! I’m blind and what does she get? Not even a slap on the hoof!” Hawkeye stumbled towards Twilight, but Res Ipsa yanked her away, almost dragging her to the front door. Hawkeye knew that his quarry was escaping, but he’d barely been able to find her before, and now that she was on the move, he had no hope of catching up. “I’ll never forgive you for this, Twilight! I’ll never let you live this one down! Soon everypony will know you’re the worst Princess Equestria ever had, and you made me blind! Me, Hawkeye, leader of the precision precipitation patrol! Or should I say former leader!”

Hawkeye’s rant continued, getting increasingly incoherent as Twilight let herself be dragged outside. It was a cloudy day, with gray fluffs blocking out the sun and threatening rain at any moment. Res Ipsa continued to drag Twilight, pulling her out onto the main street. “Don’t worry about him, he’s just talking from a point of anger. I’ve seen this before, and in a few months, he’ll forget all about you and focus on a whole new set of problems.”

“But he’s blind, and it’s my fault!”

Res Ipsa sighed, retrieving a card from her bag. “If you’re going to keep talking like that, you need to do it to this pony, B. F. Rawhide. He’ll help you, I promise, but I can’t anymore. I’ve done what I can do, and short of walking you to his office, I can do no more. Would you like me to do that?”

Twilight bit her lip, and then nodded.

***

Twilight gently turned the page on her book, reading slowly through the text before making notes on a separate sheet of paper. More notes on magical history, digging up old knowledge and repackaging it for modern readers. She would be ready to begin her treatise soon, an extended catalog on the development and use of earth pony magic as it applied to farming. The grant for this project had been languishing unclaimed for months, and at her psychologist’s insistence, she had picked it up in an effort to get back to her old self.

She had enjoyed the research initially, loving the art of chasing down the old books and scrolls in search of forgotten knowledge, but the research had lost its luster once she knew that none of it would result in actual experimentation. The hundreds of hours she’d spent in the royal libraries over the past few months would ultimately result in a thick tome that few ponies ever read, outside of other researchers looking to save time at her expense. It wasn’t even going to be a mass-market book, read by enthusiastic young fillies and colts curious about magic. It would be a reference manual, one that ponies couldn’t even check out of the library, and that they probably wouldn’t even want to.

Still, Celestia had commissioned it over two years ago, and even if this was only three fifths of what he had been doing, it was more than she had been up to since “the incident.” Spike had remarked on how happy he was to see her writing again, and Pinkie Pie’s efforts to cheer her up had become subdued and polite. Everypony seemed to believe she was returning to her old self, and that gave her confidence that she was.

But that didn’t mean that she had accepted an offer to join a group research project in Manehattan, nor that she had signed up to assist the royal engineers in using magic to develop new methods of bringing water to the Appleloosan desert. She had been able to use her treatise as an excuse, but increasingly her fellow academics were seeing through her ruse, and encouraging her to delay or abandon the project in pursuit of new magical knowledge and experimentation.

She had laid awake at nights, debating with herself whether she should take up such offers to conduct research, or indeed resume her previous pattern of self-directed study and experimentation. There was certainly demand for her, not as a Princess but as a scholar in the magical arts, but every time that she approached the subject, her enthusiasm was quickly replaced by anxiety. Instead of fellow researchers and eager test subjects, she saw only Hawkeye’s blind, angry eyes. His words at the courthouse haunted her dreams, and even though her psychologist insisted she was making progress, she felt unable to escape her failure.

Twilight closed the book, putting her latest page of notes into the pile and staring at them. Was this what she was going to do for the rest of her life? Was she doomed to a timid existence of writing papers so safe and uncontroversial that ponies didn’t even have an opinion on them? Had this one failure really broken her in a way that Sombra, Chrysalis and Discord never could?

“I see that your research is coming along well, Twilight. It’s good to know that I put that treatise in the right hooves. Most ponies write it off as boring, but it’ll be essential if we’re to get the most out of future harvests.”

Twilight looked away from her notes to see Celestia standing there, her spectral mane resplendent even in the dull light of reading lamps. Twilight twitched involuntarily, and began to pull at her mane with her hooves. “Yes, Princess Celestia, I expect to be able to finish it within the next year or so, just like I stated in my initial projections.”

Celestia sat down next to Twilight, looking down on her with a faint smile. “Oh Twilight, aren’t we on a nickname basis at this point? You can call me ‘Tia,” just like all the other ponies I call ‘friend’. At the very least you can refer to me as your teacher. I’m still proud of you, Twilight. I hope you understand.”

“Yes, Tia.” She had never been quite comfortable with the Princess’s insistence on familiarity, nor that the Princess seemed think more of her than she did herself. All of this confidence and friendliness just made Twilight feel like she had let the Princess down all the more, that she had failed much more than some distant regional monarch. She had failed her teacher, a mare who was as dear to her as her own mother, and embarrassed the entire royal house by injuring somepony with an experiment they had approved.

“Twilight, I’m here because I am worried about you.” Celestia stood up, moving in close to Twilight and staring deep into her eyes. “I am worried that you are going to let this setback change who you are, and in so doing, Equestria will lose one of its greatest scholars. And I will lose one of my most prized students.”

Twilight bit her lip. It was a catch-22 to be sure — if she resumed conducting experiments, she’d never be free of the anxiety that there would be another irreversible accident. But if she didn’t go back to experimental research, she would be disappointing the Princess, and that felt every bit as awful. There was no victory here, only choosing the defeat she could most live with.

Celestia gave Twilight a hug and then sat back down, smiling at her. “You need to forgive yourself, Twilight.” She drew an imaginary circle in the air with her horn and it suddenly burst to life, illuminated by soft blue wisps of magic dancing around its edges. Deep within the circle, Twilight could see the blind Hawkeye, talking politely with Fluttershy, who was presenting him with a lineup of tame birds. Each one squawked in a friendly manner, permitting Hawkeye to nuzzle them and kiss their beaks. “Hawkeye may forgive you in time, or he may not. But he is moving on despite his disability, and your friend Fluttershy is helping him to select a seeing eye animal.”

The irony was not lost on Twilight. The blind pony Hawkeye was going to use an actual hawk’s eyes to resume his job, or at least something close to it. He seemed to delight in the birds, kissing and nuzzling and caressing them just as Fluttershy did. It made her feel better to know he was getting past his disability, but the sight of his blind eyes made her mane stand on end, even if they were obscured by opaque sunglasses.

“But I just...What if I fail again, Princess? What if another pony gets hurt because of one of my experiments?”

“Then the Crown will do everything it can to make amends, or else you yourself will find a counterspell, or fix, or cure.” Celestia waved her hoof across the image, making it dissipate. “Twilight, you can’t let this failure rule your life. All ponies make mistakes and have failures.” Celestia looked out a nearby window at the moon and sighed. “Even Princesses.”

Twilight bit her lip, then pawed at the floor with her hoof. Everything Celestia said was certainly true, and how could her own failures compare to what Celestia had been through in the past thousand years? She took a deep breath and looked up, trying not to cry as she looked into Celestia’s eyes.

“I forgive you, Twilight.” Celestia moved forward and gave Twilight a kiss on the forehead. “I forgive you, and I hope that someday you will forgive yourself.” She smiled and gestured towards the pile of notes at the edge of the reading table. “In the meantime, I think that I’m about to receive the finest treatise on earth pony magic that I’ve ever commissioned. Aren’t I?”

“Yes, Princess.” Twilight winced, and corrected herself. “I mean yes, Tia.”

“Good.” Celestia stood up and began to walk away, disappearing into the nearby stacks of books. “You’re still my favorite student, Twilight. Never forget that. Because I won’t.”

Twilight smiled, then picked up her next book, opening it to the first page and getting out a fresh piece of note paper.

Author's Note

This is the second story I decided to write using the "Great Expectations" prompt. I wanted to show what happened when Twilight had great expectations and they were not met in a disastrous fashion. I decided that she would conduct an experiment that would cause a pony with great vision to become blind, since this would really set him back and force him to change who he was. I also wanted the problem to be unfixable, so that Twilight would have to live with the failure.

But I wasn't sure what to do other than that, and it took me awhile to get to the point where I ended it with Celestia coming in and asking Twilight to forgive herself, while Twilight takes "baby steps" back to where she was. Also I decided that it should be ambiguous if Hawkeye ever forgave Twilight, because that wasn't important, what was important was how Twilight felt about herself in the light of the fact that she'd permanently handicapped somepony.

Since I wasn't restricted by the limitations of the Writeoff, I took my time on this one, and actually went in and edited it extensively, reading it aloud to myself and re-writing or deleting anything that didn't work. I think the story was much improved and I hope to do make this standard protocol.