“Merging Dimensions?” Cosmic Theory asked.
“Yep,” Flurry Heart nodded. “I always told you I was Princess of Time, Space, and Dimensions! All I did was merge everyone in one Dimension with their counterpart from another Dimension, and voila! Now there’s a world where both events overlap, and everyone remembers both versions because they’re both versions of themselves!”
“Wouldn’t that cause a lot of problems?” she wondered.
“Only if they’re too different,” she chirped. “For example, imagine if I merged this Dimension with the Human one? There’d either be two of everyone, or they’d merge bodies and memories, and really those memories would be so off balance it’d probably drive them nuts!”
“So it doesn’t here?” she frowned.
“No, because the memories are similar,” she said. “See, the Dimensions I merged only have one difference between them.”
“What’s that?” she wondered, hopping to the crystal floor.
“You,” she giggled, booping the filly on the nose with her wing. “Well, technically the difference is who your second parent is. Because a different second parent creates a different little filly, so now you have a bunch of half-siblings that are you from another Dimension! So you remember being an only child, but everyone else here remembers all of you existing at once!”
“Huh,” she tilted her head, ears flopping to the side. “That’s kind of cool actually. How does it work?”
“Hm, maybe I’ll tell you later,” she smiled. “For now, how about you go meet your new half-siblings? Your mom expanded your rooms so now there’s a lobby with all of your rooms branching off! They should all be there!”
“Okay!” she nodded. “See you later!”
Flurry watched the brown and purple Earth Pony canter down the halls. As soon as she rounded the corner, she relaxed, sitting on the floor and letting her wings hang down. A shaky breath came out as she tried not to cry, not to break down.
“You can’t keep doing this.”
Snapping to attention, Flurry tried to pull herself together. Still she shook, but she was glad it wasn’t one of the kids. She sighed, looking at the purple Alicorn.
“Hi, Aunt Twilight,” Flurry said.
“Flurry, don’t ignore me,” Twilight chastised. “You can’t-“
“I can and I will!” she snapped.
It was Twilight’s turn to sigh. Lighting her horn, she teleported them to another room. It was one Flurry knew well, her meeting room. It was magically soundproofed, and protected by a book’s worth of spells.
Realizing she wasn’t going to get out of this, Flurry sat in one of the chairs. Her aunt took a moment before sitting across from her. She stared, her expression had many emotions merging at once, but overall sadness.
“You can’t save everyone,” Twilight said.
“You don’t think I know that?” Flurry demanded. “Trust me, if I could, they wouldn’t be here!”
“They still shouldn’t be here,” she said. “I know I have memory of them from your merge, but that doesn’t make me their real mother.”
“But you are!” she insisted. “The only difference between Spinel and Ever and Nox and Daz and all the rest is their other parent! That’s the only difference between all their worlds! And you are their mom in all of them. In body and mind and soul!”
“Their parents aren’t the only difference,” she said. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be doing this.”
She wondered if it was unconscious or not, the way Twilight rubbed the scar on her neck. Flurry swallowed, looking away as tears sprung up fresh. Shutting out the memory of those Violet eyes darkening as the life left, she continued.
“They lost their mother,” Flurry said. “Dad lost a sister, everyone lost a friend. I could fix it, so I did. Now, as far as your kids are concerned, you never died. As far as everyone else knows, it was just a dream, a nightmare of what could have been.”
“And what of every other child who has lost their parent?” she asked. “Of everyone who’s lost a friend or sibling. You can’t fix all of them.”
“I know,” she cried. “But this is different.”
“Because they’re your cousins?” she asked.
“Because it’s my fault!” she shouted. “What’s the point of having power over Time and Dimensions if I can’t fix what I did!?”
“Flurry, it’s not,” she shook her head. “You weren’t the one who-“
“No, I know I wasn’t the one who killed you,” she said. “I know it was that jackass. But I’m the one that saved you. In every dimension where this happened, for some reason, Spinel’s was the only one where I managed to save you. The other me’s were too scared, too panicked, too distracted with their own fights, too exhausted to heal. But I only saved you, not the other versions of you. I failed them.”
“And I see it,” she contimued. “Every time I merge with my other selves, I watch you die over and over. I’ve watched it ten times now, lived it ten times. There are ten fillies without their mother because I couldn’t save you! But merging the Dimensions means you’re still alive. And I know you think you’re not your other selves because you were originally only Spinel’s mom, but you know Magic and Souls don’t work that way. You merged with them. You’re just as much Spinel’s mom as Eris’s mom.”
“I….” Twilight sighed. “I know, you’re right. Whether or not I originally was, I am now. If you hadn’t said it was Spinel, I wouldn’t have known. And I know you feel guilty, but that’s not your fault either. Whether you saved me or didn’t save me, it doesn’t matter. But this…. They would have been able to cope. I know it would hurt them, but children lose parents all the time, and they move on. What are you going to do if they figure out that their original mother is dead, just merged with my soul?”
“Nothing,” Flurry said. “I-I never planned to keep it a secret.”
“Then why tell Cosmic that she’s the only anomaly?” she wondered.
“A half truth, for now,” she said. “Because how do you think she’d react if I said it all now? If I told her ‘your mom died, but since I merged her soul and memories with an Interdimensional Counterpart, she’s still alive’? They’ll look for any indication that you’re not ‘mom’. Because how can you be dead and alive at the same time? Yes, they’re going to wonder if I merged you properly. But since you’re still their mom, you still remember things, and you still love them the same way, they’ll see that you’re still you.”
“If they knew you were dead….” She trailed off. “If they knew you were dead, they’d think you weren’t their mom. You’d just be an adoptive parent, but one that’s a cruel mockery of what they’ve lost. I promise, I promise I’ll tell them. But only once I know they’ll understand that you’re you.”
Giving a sad smile, Twilight walked around the table to pull her niece into a hug. Flurry stopped trying to hold everything in, and let herself cry. She left herself sob, because this was her life. She was the Princess of Time, Space, and Dimensions, and she’d chosen the path of fixing whatever world she’d come across. Even if it hurt her to do so. Even if just a merge gained new scars, literal and metaphorical.
After a few minutes, tears subsided, breath returned to normal. She sniffed away the last of her sadness.
“Are you sure they’re the only differences?” Twilight asked.
“The only major ones,” Flurry nodded. “There’s going to be some minor ones. After all, Glitter’s middle name is ‘fight me’ but Writ has more anxiety that you apparently did at her age.”
“Shining really needs to stop telling you embarrassing stories,” she rolled her eyes. “But in all seriousness, is there anything else?”
“Not that I can find,” she shook her head. “Remember, I merged with my other selves. And while it’s hard to separate my memories, I can’t find anything major. At least nothing I know of. If one of the Dimensions had some sort of Eldritch Monstrosity I didn’t know about…”
“Okay, you’ve got me there,” she said. “How many more are there?”
“No idea,” she said. “Can’t be too many more. It’s not infinite. Remember, ‘everything’s the same except X’. So the only possible kids are the ones you could have had instead of Spinel. And forgive me for not wanting to ask about my Aunt’s love life, but I assume that there’s only one for each of your relationships at the time.”
“Point taken,” she nodded. “Just be glad I can handle this. Imagine if I didn’t have a castle and royal budget.”
“Honestly I thought wrangling several children would be harder,” she said.
“Some are harder than others,” she mused.
“Look on the bright side,” she shrugged. “They can’t use Dragonfire to nearly burn the house down because ‘I wonder how much it takes to get through a fireproofing spell?’!”
“Spike needs to stop telling you stories too,” she frowned.
“Well….” She smiled, “Maybe if you gave him the three amethysts you owe him for taking the blame-“
“He can have them when he gives back my Starswirl costume!” P
Author's Note
I had an idea and I ran with it. Well, I had these ideas before, but the new part was the sad element.
