No matter how many times Twilight brought a fist or foot against the wall, it stubbornly refused to fall. To move even a fraction of a fraction of an inch.
Twilight looked down at her hand. Her knuckles were reddened. She didn't yet feel the pain, but she knew it would come in time. Just like her friends' pain would.
No matter how nice. No matter how understanding. No matter how kind her new friends were. She couldn't change. It was like they were punching at her mind and her mind was equally immovable.
Eventually they would feel that pain. And they would leave her. And Twilight deserved that.
This was normally the part where Twilight started crying. But she didn't feel like crying today. She hardly felt today. Rainbow's soccer game had been amusing, but Twilight found herself less interested in the triumphs of her friend and more interested in keeping track of the statistics of the players and the physics of the game. She cared more about why the ball was deflected so much by such a minor tap of her friend's head than the fact that her friend had prevented the other team from scoring. She cared more about figuring out what the coefficient of friction was between the cleats and the pitch than the girl who was wearing those cleats.
She looked around the closet she was standing in. It wasn't like her room back at Crystal Prep. Luna had barely been able to give her a key, and she had to share the small desk with the janitor. But he didn't have much to do in the way of paperwork, and had actually thanked her for keeping the space cleaner than he did himself. I guess I'm a better friend to him than I am to my actual friends...
This space was really where she belonged. It was her castle, with a moat of walls to keep out distractions. Here she could safely work with papers and numbers and create theories about the universe. Not walk around pretending that she could be like everyone else. At Crystal Prep, she hadn't had friends, but at least she was respected. The other students knew she was smart, and they understood her passion for science. Here, everyone was more concerned with hacky sacs or rock bands than mathematics or linguistics.
Bzzzt.
Bzzzt.
Twilight sighed as she pulled her phone from her pocket. She saw the picture of a girl that she was technically friends with. A swipe answered the call. Putting on a smile to release dopamine into her brain and artificially improve her mood and tone of voice, she said, as excitedly as she could muster. "Hi, Sunset. What's up?"
"Twilight. Where did you go? The girls and I were going out to celebrate."
"Oh. Well, you know. I've got a lot of studying to do, so I... uh... went home early! I'm just walking home now. Almost half-way there, so it'd be quite a ways out of my way to come all the way back and then head even further away from my house, so I think I'll just keep going home. But thanks for thinking of me!"
There was a rustle on the other line and Twilight caught the phrase "...go on ahead..." followed by a few seconds of silence. Then, "I'm on my way into the school. I'll meet you in your office."
"What? I think you misunderstood. I'm nowhere near Canterlot High. It'd take a while for me to get back. Whatever it is, we can talk tomorrow. You go have fun with our friends."
"I'll be there in a minute."
A low pitched beep and Twilight noted the fact that her smile was gone.
Her arm dropped. As it reached its lowest point and slightly sprung back, due to the elasticity of her muscles and tendons, her phone fell out of her hand and clattered to the floor. The forces involved in its angle of impact and the way that its case absorbed the kinetic energy prevented anything vital from being broken, but Twilight herself was not so lucky.
Now she felt like crying. Yet the tears refused to come.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Three knocks, each separated by almost exactly 1/3 of a second, sounded from the door.
"Please, don't come in!" Twilight shouted. Her voice's pitch had raised by at least two octaves in the last few minutes.
"Twilight, I just want to make sure you're okay." The voice needed to penetrate four centimeters of oak to reach Twilight's ears, but it was still clear enough. Twilight understood every word and could make out that Sunset was the speaker.
"I'm fine. There's nothing wrong. I just need some time alone." Even given her previous attempt at deception, Twilight decided that last phrase was the biggest lie she had told this night. Her thoughts encased her phaneron in an eternal existence of aloneness. "Just, go have fun with your friends." She recognized her slip up one word too late.
"They're your friends too, Twilight. And so am I. Can I please come in?"
Why did Sunset have to give Twilight a choice? And how could Twilight fairly weigh her options? Surely, she couldn't waste Sunset's time by sitting on this decision for more than a few seconds. But at the same time, how could she choose? To reject a friend's offer of help would be socially questionable at best. Yet she had come to this room to be alone. So allowing Sunset in would be to go against her own wishes. But then, perhaps Twilight's opinion had changed in the past few minutes? Did she now want Sunset to come in?
She closed her eyes. On the one hand, she greatly respected Sunset. The girl was the one who had literally saved her from herself. And that surely meant Sunset deserved some of her time. Twilight owed her. The other hand was irrelevant. She nodded at her own decision.
"You can come in," she said in a monotone. For several seconds she heard nothing. Twilight opened her eyes and looked at the door. The gate of her metaphorical castle remained unchallenged. "I said, 'You can come in.'"
"I heard your words. But I want to hear it in your voice."
The taijitu of Twilight's mind twisted. "Darn it, Sunset! Get in here!"
After a moment, the door opened and Sunset walked in, facing Twilight immediately upon seeing her and not dropping eye contact as she kept her distance and shut the door behind her.
Twilight planted her legs firmly upon the ground in a wide stance, preparing to fight a duel of words with this challenger of her solitude. "I said you could come in! I don't care about what you hear in my voice. I made my decision; that's all that matters!"
Sunset nodded. "You're right. I'm sorry I didn't respect your decision."
The agreement toppled Twilight's psyche. She had left herself vulnerable. The lunge forward was meant to be met with resistance, yet she now found herself plunging due to the dodge. I was being totally unreasonable. I just attacked my friend for trying to help me. Why isn't she mad at me? The bafflement spilled from the sea of Twilight's thoughts onto her face.
"I'm not here to argue with you, Twilight. I'm not even here to help you. I just want to understand what's going on."
What's going on. Twilight pushed the thought into the input of her conscious mind and awaited the output. As it arrived, she tried her best to turn the impulses of her brain into words. "I'm trying to keep up on my studies. It's not that Canterlot High isn't a good school, but Crystal Prep was much more challenging. I'm worried that, if I don't take extra time to study on my own, I won't be as prepared for college and life in general. I came to Canterlot High for the friendship and social experiences, but I still want my studies to go well."
As Twilight weaved her explanation, she fought to convince herself that it was true. This wasn't a lie. It was just an alternative version of her experience. Looking at the whole situation from a different angle. Like seeing an irregular 3-D shape from another side and understanding that it isn't quite the shape one thought it was.
"And how do you feel about those friendships?"
Again Sunset cut through her explanation like a red-hot knife.
Input. Output. "They're good. Everyone here is really nice, especially considering I almost destroyed everyone and everything here in an outburst of arcane magic. And my friends are everything I could have hoped they would be. Kind, loyal, generous, honest, funny. I feel like this particular experiment is going great."
Upon Sunset's face appeared a grin so slight that someone less observant than Twilight would never have noticed. "But as nice as everyone else is, you're worried that you haven't changed at all. That you're still the same person you were before you discovered friendship. That nothing your friends do is having the slightest impact on you. And that you'd be better off back where you started than here at Canterlot High."
Input. An unexpected error has occurred.
Twilight's jaw dropped. Every muscle in her body relaxed. The world around her seemed to be tilting to the right and she instinctively reached to grab the table beside her. Twilight felt naked. Worse than naked. Her mind, her identity, had somehow been laid bare before Sunset's eyes. But how? What had she done? How had her mind failed to protect her innermost thoughts?
Briskly walking over to her friend, Sunset landed a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, sit down. It's alright." After a few steps backward, Twilight swiveled her chair and sat into it.
Sunset looked around and found a stack of large white buckets. Finding the handle of the top one, she placed her other hand on the lip of the second and pulled up on the handle until some air entered between the two. She then pulled it away and upended it, sitting it upon the ground in front of her friend. As Sunset seated herself there, Twilight's eyes were still on the stack of buckets, thinking about the forces involved in the girl's action. Yet Sunset kept her eyes focused on Twilight's.
"Twilight, I need you to understand that I know exactly how you're feeling right now."
Twilight tried to turn her gaze back to Sunset, but she felt more comfortable looking at cleaning tools. "How can you? My mind is so screwed up. How can you understand what it's like to go through every day pretending to be people's friend? Trying to be something you know you were never born to be? All because of a magic you might never understand and a few girls who keep believing that you're someone better than you could ever hope to be?"
Sunset gave a slight chuckle and shook her head. "Did you forget already? I'm friends with the same group of girls who just won't stop believing in me. Plus I'm a formerly sociopathic interdimensional being who's been trying to fit in among humans for years."
This brought Twilight's eyes straight to Sunset's as she flung her head around. "Oh, right. To be honest, I did forget that. The 'interdimensional being' thing, not the 'you being friends with my friends' thing." Twilight sighed and looked to the floor. How could she have been so insensitive to her friend? "I'm sorry. My complaining about not understanding humanity must seem pretty stupid, huh? I mean, you're literally from another universe. What right do I have to complain?"
"It's not stupid in the slightest." Sunset reached out her hand and grabbed one of Twilight's, giving it a gentle squeeze while smiling. "And I want to hear all about it."
Caught off guard again, Twilight's eyes at last filled with tears. "Well, I--" She gasped and let out one sob. Then another. The hand that Sunset wasn't holding clenched into a fist and Twilight hit her leg with it. Taking a deep breath that shuddered only once, Twilight sat up straight and let the air out of her lungs, looking at the wall just above Sunset's head. "Sorry. As I w--" Again a sob escaped her and as she scrunched her eyes to fight it, a tear escaped from each.
She needed to tell Sunset what was upsetting her, yet she felt the emotional part of her mind attempting to overwhelm her prefrontal cortex.
"No!" Twilight shouted, pulling her hand away from Sunset's and standing up from her chair. She turned to face the opposite wall and walked toward it. She took another deep breath.
And another.
"Just give--" Gasp. "--me a minute." As tears brimmed in Twilight's eyes, she removed her glasses and set them on her desk. She simply had to detach herself from the situation. Focus on her breathing, not her surroundings. Breathe in. And out. And i--
She felt a hand grab her left shoulder. "It's alright," Sunset said. "Let it out."
Shaking her head, Twilight wheezed, "But I-- can't tell you-- what's wrong-- if I'm-- just crying."
"I think you're saying plenty."
Twilight turned her head to look at Sunset, whose eyes also now held tears. "And I'm listening."
The girl was holding out her other arm. Twilight looked to the hand. All it took was a slight curl of the fingers to give Twilight the invitation she needed.
Throwing herself into the other girl's arms, Twilight collapsed into her friend's embrace. With her physical collapse came the mental one; her sobs were no longer restrained. Totally undignified, she hung upon Sunset's form and cried into the girl's jacket.
Sunset rested her head upon Twilight's and gently rubbed her friend's back.
"Tell me everything."
