Twilight set the crystal down in the middle of her cave, where it rested in a shallow depression surrounded by a simple circle carved into the rock. She then bent her head forward and touched her horn to the gem. Technically, all of the setup was unnecessary—she could have activated the gem with a simple magic pulse any time she wanted to. But she felt this was an occasion that warranted a certain level of ceremony. She closed her eyes and established a link with the gem, which then lit up and shifted through dozens of colors per second before finally settling on a steady red.
She sat back and waited patiently as the crystal started to dim and brighten, connections within it forming and reforming at the speed of magic. After a few minutes, the mixed excitement and trepidation overtook her and she nervously fluffed out her wings and glanced about the cavern.
Other jagged hunks of gemstone similar to the one in the middle of the room lit up the area from where they were embedded in the walls, put there with the use of an ancient spell that made stone act like butter found in the forbidden (for anyone but herself and the princesses) section of the castle archives. The rough shape of a doorway, carved with the same method, stood at the opposite end of the cave, sealed off but still letting sunlight through. That spell was one of Twilight’s own construction, made in frustration after failing to find a magical way to have an undetectable and impassable doorway that she wouldn’t have to dispel and replace every time she used it. Closer to her was another crude exit leading to the rest of her temporary (she still thought of the network of caves she lived in as temporary, even after residing in it for over fifteen years) home, unobstructed by any spells. Her gaze roved back and forth across the otherwise empty cavern, searching for anything out of the ordinary.
She was eventually rewarded when she caught a thin haze of light blue mist forming out of the corner of her eye. She was completely silent for a moment as she watched the mist become more and more solid, then reached out a hoof as if to touch it. Her hoof swept right through the illusion without disturbing it. With a gasp, she snatched her hoof back, realizing that she’d moved right in front of the apparition without realizing it.
A shape slowly formed while Twilight held herself still, unable to keep from vibrating in place with impatience. It resolved itself into a teal pony, with the rainbow mane and vibrant purple eyes coming in to focus last. It looked around itself, then noticed the purple alicorn in front of it.
“Twilight?” it said with a confused expression.
All of Twilight’s self-control fled. She slumped down onto the floor, ignoring the feeling of the cold and jagged rock rubbing against her, and felt tears gather at the corners of her eyes.
“Uh, you okay?” Rainbow Dash said. “I mean, obviously, you’re not okay, ‘cause you looked like you just got hit face-first with a thunderstorm. You need a hug or something? I know that’s more Pinkie Pie’s thing, but...I can deal.”
Twilight looked up. Rainbow Dash stood in front of her, hoof extended awkwardly, looking as solid as the real thing. The sight caused the dam she’d kept surrounding her emotions all these years to shatter. The grief she’d held for all her friends, along with the happiness resulting from one of them standing in front of her, rushed out of her in a torrent of hot tears.
“There...there?” Rainbow Dash said, draping an incorporeal foreleg across Twilight’s huddled form. The limb went through her. Rainbow waved it about a bit, then continued without a change of tone, “Um, Twilight, I’m kind of a ghost right now. Help?”
The alicorn only cried harder. Rainbow stepped back and stood in silence, looking uncomfortable. Twilight eventually gathered herself and stood up, looking at her friend with a mixture of happiness, grief, and wonder.
“R-Right. You deserve an explanation,” Twilight said. “Let’s start with...what’s the last thing you remember?”
Rainbow looked even more uncomfortable. “I was lying on a cloud going to sleep, right after we had that...talk,” she said, looking anywhere but at Twilight.
“Oh. Um, that was the day before you...died. You used your memory crystal right before, and I took it and, well, here you are.”
Rainbow Dash looked down at herself and finally seemed to notice that her body was different. “Hey, I’m not super old and wrinkly anymore. Good job Twilight. I guess you finally came to your sen—I mean...good job. So, what exactly am I?”
“You’re Rainbow Dash. Don’t even start to think you’re not,” Twilight said forcefully, then winced. “That said...you’re basically in a very complicated memory crystal. It gathers all your memories and forms you based off of them. You’re Rainbow Dash, just...not with your body.”
Rainbow quietly absorbed that information for a moment, just long enough for Twilight to get nervous, before speaking. “How real is it?”
“Sorry?” Twilight said. This time it was her turn to avoid looking at her friend.
“How real? Like, compared to the real me, how much of this me is the same?”
“You should be about ninety-nine point nine percent the same,” Twilight said, hoping Rainbow wouldn’t inquire further. Still, if she did, Twilight would tell her. She deserved to know.
“Twilight, I’m not stupid. Tell me, I can handle it,” Rainbow said, putting on her most confident smirk.
Twilight sighed. “I wasn’t lying. You’re almost identical. The thing is, well, if you make one decision differently, your next decisions would change based on that, and any decisions after that would change even more, and so on.”
Rainbow Dash blinked. “So what?”
Twilight opened her mouth to dumb it down, but Rainbow preempted her.
“I mean, I get what you’re saying—but I don’t think it matters.” Rainbow saw Twilight about to speak again and continued hurriedly, “Yes, yes, I get why you think it does. But it doesn’t to me, and I don’t feel like having this conversation right now. Let’s talk about something else. Like, uh, when’s everyone else getting a crystal? I know the rest of our friends have one, ‘cause I gave one to everyone.”
Twilight burst into tears again without warning. “Applejack isn’t coming back,” she said between sobs.
Rainbow Dash’s face twisted, and she looked almost as sad as Twilight felt for a moment before it reverted to a carefully crafted expression of concerned understanding, hiding the grief—and, no doubt, blame—Twilight knew she was feeling.
“You want to talk about it?” she said, reaching forward to give Twilight a hug she didn’t deserve before remembering that she couldn’t touch things and scrambling back before she would have to witness herself going through Twilight.
“...No,” Twilight began, “but I will anyway. It-It was all my fault. I was stupid, and I left the crystals sealed in my room in the castle. One day the tower they were in fell due to something or other rotting—I didn’t really pay attention to the details. I went through the rubble, and my wards kept most of the crystals intact, but Applejack’s—an entire floor had fallen on her crystal. It was ground beyond even powder. I couldn’t…couldn’t fix it.
“By that time Spike was talking about finding a cave to settle down in for a little while, and I came with him. He’s on the other side of the mountain. Been sleeping for a little over fifteen years while I worked.”
“Twilight...” Rainbow said carefully, “It was not your fault. It was just dumb luck. You couldn’t have done anything. And you saved four of us! That—that’s good,” she said, facade collapsing as she finally comprehended the fact that she’d never see Applejack again. They’d been closest to each other; two friends who had heads for sports and athletics, along with (played down and hidden, in Rainbow Dash’s case) drop-’till-you’re-dead work ethics.
“It’s not that,” Twilight said. “I’m at fault for not securing your lives better, but I couldn’t have expected the tower to just collapse like that. What I mostly blame myself for is not listening to you earlier. If I had, Applejack might still be alive. Hay, you all might’ve still been alive. If I’d started before Rarity died, we would’ve been able to use the Elements, and I probably could’ve just ascended everyone.”
“Twilight...” Rainbow Dash took a breath, then looked surprised as she discovered that she hadn’t been breathing for their entire conversation. She shook herself and forged on. “Twilight. I’m going to be completely honest with you right now. You up for that, or you want to have this talk later?”
Twilight let out a small giggle through her tears, then shook her head at her friend’s confused look. “Sorry, it’s just...it’s kind of funny, I think. That you were always the most honest of us, I mean. Applejack...she used honestly as a tool, a thing to turn on and off depending on whether it would help a friend. You were always just honest for honesty’s sake. Anyway, sorry. Go on.”
“I know you’ve been holding onto this for a long time, Twi. But...let’s wait to talk about Applejack until everyone’s here.” Rainbow waited for Twilight’s confirming nod before continuing, “So. Honestly? I do blame you a little bit for not listening to me sooner. But I’m not mad at you. Not anymore. You were the personal student of the princess, and she hasn’t done a thing to fix this. That had to be on your mind, even if you didn’t know it. Plus it’s a lot of work, and I bet a big part of you thought you couldn’t do it. So you didn’t want to try. And to top it all off, we can’t change the past. Starlight and that dragon—and you, actually—tried that already, and each time one of you tried to change something, whatever you were trying to change became more and more certain. So I get that it’s going to take a bunch of talking when everyone’s here, but try to stop beating yourself up for everything, alright?”
Twilight gave her friend a watery smile. She wouldn’t stop blaming herself—she knew Rainbow was only trying to make her feel better—but the words helped, somehow.
“Thanks,” she said, then got up and walked to the other side of the cave and began keying in Rainbow Dash’s crystal into the wards. “But we’ve done a lot of talking. Want to go flying?”
Rainbow Dash followed her with a big grin. “Do I ever!”
“Great! Just uh, you can’t do a sonic rainboom or, well, feel anything, since that’s not a physical body, and you have to stay close to me because I’ll be holding the crystal.”
Rainbow rolled her eyes. “After we get our friends together, the first thing you’re doing is making me a body.”
“Deal,” Twilight said with a smile. She picked up Rainbow Dash’s crystal and walked out into the sunlight.
