The video camera flickered to life as Twilight carefully pushed the silver button embedded into its surface with one hoof. She stared at it for a few seconds, the edges of her vision blurred and her eyes stinging with fear and uncertainty. The camera stared unfeelingly back, blatantly apathetic in the face of the invisible tears which were screaming behind the walls of her soul. She swallowed hard - this was no time to get emotional. Twilight couldn’t afford to make any mistakes; she didn’t think she would have enough courage to go through this a second time.
She released a deep, shuddering breath…then opened her mouth to speak. She shut it again quickly, finding that she couldn’t look into the camera. It was like looking into a pair of eyes…her eyes. Hesitating slightly, she tilted her horn towards a nearby book: Shady Gardenia Threat: Concern of Time. It was a perplexing, rather vague book at best, though she needed it for a project. A swirl of magenta magic surrounded the tome, lifting into into the air and towards Twilight. It landed unceremoniously on the oak table before her, raising a cloud of dust.
Rather than lifting her eyes to the camera, Twilight examined the pages of the book carefully. She’d always felt as though she were in her element when she multitasked…maybe this would ease the pain of what she was about to do.
Finally, she bit her lip…and began to open up her heart.
‘Er, hey…Dashie.’ She winced immediately. Twilight hardly ever called Rainbow by that name. She lowered her head further into the pages of her book, not registering the words before her.
‘Focus,’ she thought. She cleared her throat before continuing.
‘I’m not sure you’ll ever get to see this. I’m not even sure when you’ll be back…if you’ll be back.’ She paused, allowing herself to give way to a half-hearted chuckle. ‘What were you thinking? You just left! No note...absolutely nothing to prepare us. No warning whatsoever!’ Her attempt to feign reproach failed miserably. In truth, she didn’t care about what Rainbow had been thinking. All Twilight cared about was that she was gone and all she wanted was to get her back.
She shook her head. ‘What am I doing?’ she whispered, half to herself, half to the cold hunk of metal staring into her soul. Her eyes narrowed. Enough. She’d had enough. She threw her book to the ground and glared at the camera.
‘You know what? I’m sick of this. Do you know how long I’ve had to hide from you? From everything I am, from everything I feel? Too long!' She gritted her teeth, her voice growing stronger with every word. 'So, you’re just going to have to deal with what I’m about to say!’ Her voice raised to a screech. ‘I LOVE YOU RAINBOW DASH!’
Absolute stillness followed her words. The camera, though silent, had been subject to the full force of her rage, her love, her fear…her heart. And somehow, it had the nerve to remain unscathed. Twilight closed her eyes and let loose a short laugh. Though there was no one there to hear her words, the feeling of screaming her heart out was tangible…incredible.
‘I said it,’ she whispered, her eyes still closed. ‘I can’t believe I said it.’ She groaned and clutched her head with one hoof. ‘It sounds like such a cliche… “I love you.” I’ve never been a fan of cliches.’ She opened her eyes once again, unable to meet the lens of her capturer. ‘But it’s the truth. I do love you…as more than a friend.’ She pawed at the ground with one hoof. ‘I have for a long time now.’
A small smile traced its way across her lips. ‘Some of the best memories I have are of you. Even the first time we met was nothing short of spectacular. Remember?’ Her voice slipped into a crudely formed accent, similar to Rainbow’s. ‘I can clear this sky in ten seconds flat!’ She sighed, her features relaxing and her regular tone of voice returning as the memory washed over her. ‘I didn’t ever think I’d fall in love with you at that point. But it’s easy to pinpoint the moment when I did…Fall in love with you I mean.’
She glanced quickly up at the camera, then down at the floor where her book had landed. ‘It was at my birthday party. You know, when we all went to Canterlot for my party so Rarity could be there. You got me a book. But not just any book!’ Her eyes sparkled, burning the deepest meaning of her name through the atmosphere. ‘You got me Griffonstone: A History! You told me that you saw me staring at it in a store once.’ The glow faded from her features. ‘But it wasn’t the book that made me realise that I was in love with you. It was the pain.’ Her ears flattened themselves dejectedly over her head. ‘Because you had one opportunity to catch me staring at a book and somehow, you managed it. But you had a thousand opportunities to catch me staring at you…and somehow, you never did.’
She began to pace before the camera as her soul grew restless. ‘That pain just made everything real. Because suddenly, I realised that I’d been staring at you. I realised that it hurt when you didn’t recognise that I loved you. I realised that I loved you. There was no denying it. I just did.’
She ran a hoof through her mane as she began to ramble, descending into mild hysteria. ‘After that, everything just went downhill. I had everything! I had the best friends I could possibly ask for. I was a student under Princess Celestia. I even became a princess, for pony’s sake! And it was fantastic! I won’t deny the happiness I felt from all my other memories just because I couldn’t have you. That’s not what I’m getting at here! What I’m trying to say, is that I could have lost all of that if anypony found out how I felt! My friends could abandon me, Celestia might ban me from being a princess, my parents could disown me! And it was so unfair because while part of me knows they would never do that, another part just can’t get past the fact that the possibility is still there! It drove me mad, do you understand that? MAD!’
She stopped pacing and slammed her hoof into the ground in frustration. ‘And throughout all of that, my love for you never wavered.' Her voice fell once more, along with her head. ‘It was terrifying until I realised: none of it matters.’ She lifted her head and stared directly into the lens of the camera before her. ‘Because you could never love me the way I love you.’
The tense atmosphere started to fade along with her rage, leaving the room empty and desolate. Still, the camera didn’t move. Still, her heart felt like it was on fire. Still, her soul felt like it was burning.
‘So…’ she breathed shakily. ‘I’m going to give you the one thing I could never give you, Dashie.’ She reached out a hoof to turn off the camera. ‘I’m going to give you my heart.’
The machine stopped filming and Twilight’s tail flicked from side to side in distress. There was no going back now. Hardly daring to breath, she wrapped a quill and a yellow sticky note in a plume of shimmering magic and drew them towards her. Onto the note, she quickly scrawled the crudely phrased words “For Rainbow: Watch This” and stuck it to the camera after making sure that the video had been saved and appeared as the first item on the interface of the built-in screen. She was lucky Cadence had given her such a high-tech gadget for Hearth Warming’s Eve; she would never have had the courage to speak to Rainbow directly.
Her lids fell gracefully over her amethyst irises. This was it. She raised a shaking hoof to her chest and murmured a spell she had read a thousand times over, but never dared to perform:
I gave you my soul
I gave you my laugh
And with these words
I give you my heart
A glowing, scarlet cross appeared on Twilight’s chest. She gasped as a pulsing, glimmering heart-shaped light appeared before her. Painstakingly, she stumbled over to the table behind her, where the corpse of Rainbow Dash was spread out across the crystal structure. She only had a few minutes before her life force drained. With laboured breaths, she took her heart in one hoof and placed it against Rainbow’s chest.
Nothing happened.
She waited one second…two seconds…three…and still nothing. She could feel the last of her time flitting away. A tear rolled down her cheek.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, as her form began to shake. ‘I’m so, so sorry…’
And then her legs gave way. Her soul collapsed and she fell to the floor with her heart clutched in her hooves as the words comprising the title of her book: Shady Gardenia Threat: Concern of Time rearranged to form the words Necromancy: The Art of Raising the Dead.
Suddenly, a bright tunnel appeared before her. She turned to look behind her…all she could see was blackness. Her eyes dulled. She was dead. Somehow, she just she knew she was dead.
Twilight Sparkle was dead.
And then there was a hoof in hers. A hoof touching a heart, touching her heart that she was still holding. She glanced up in shock…to find herself staring into the eyes of Rainbow Dash. The pegasus mare opened her mouth to say something, but was cut off as Twilight’s heart invaded her own. And for a single moment, Rainbow experienced everything Twilight felt for her, all the love, all the uncertainty, agony and fear…everything.
For a moment, they were silent. Twilight with fear, and Rainbow with realisation. And then, with no need for words, Rainbow lifted Twilight’s face to hers and kissed her. Their souls seemed to synchronise as Rainbow’s heart slid from her body and joined with Twilight’s, letting loose a flurry of incandescent plumes which caused the darkness to burn with pulsing light.
That’s when Twilight realised that this was the purest, most long-lasting form of love one could feel…eternal love through eternal death.
Without a word, the two ponies walked through the tunnel, ready to face whatever lay ahead, knowing that someday, their loved ones would join them there. And somehow, that made everything seem just perfect: the idea of a world where every type of love wove its way into the existence of their souls.
Neither looked back.
Author's Note
Thanks for reading!
You may think that I'm sick in the head...though I would like to note that the aim of this story was NOT to shock or horrify.
Before you say anything, I'll admit: I'm not a huge fan of shipping or romance...though I find something about TwiDash rather endearing. Most of my writing tends to fall under the categories of Science Fiction, Fantasy or Horror. However, I decided I needed to broaden my scope, and the result was this.
So it is that I am expecting a fair amount of hate for this story: firstly because it is my first time writing anything romance-related and secondly because of the ending. Thus, I am fully open to any advice you may have. 
Also, could I ask that if you should choose to press the dislike button, you explain to me in the comments where I went wrong? I would greatly appreciate the help, regardless of your opinion towards the story itself.
Thank you, once again! You guys are awesome.
