Starlight Wakes Up

Some old bedsheets rustled loudly before Starlight popped her head out from under them, taking in a huge gasp of air. She reached out to turn on her lamp. She covered her eyes from the shining light temporarily, which were full of tears. She jumped off bed, wanting to tell somepony about her horrible experience immediately, shuffling her hooves nervously as she tried to find the crystal door.

But she couldn't find one.

As she started to pay more attention to her surroundings, she found that she wasn't in the castle anymore. She was in an old dusty room, with plain stone walls. The bed appeared to be quite old and wooden, too, and very uncomfortable. It felt eerily familiar to her, as if it were home.

"Wait, where am I?" Starlight asked herself. "Shouldn't I be in the..." She walked up to a small little blue window facing the bed. What she saw made her voice trail away weaky, and make her jaw drop in horror.

A row of old brick buildings with wooden roofs, facing each other with seven houses on each side of a dirty, sandy pathway in between. The houses were in a state of heavy disrepair, with purple banners hung on each house equally. In fact, minus their doors, each house were identical to the next. She recognized this town only too well. It was her town, or as it had been once known, "Our Town". She had once ruled this town with an iron hoof before, having tricked everypony that by being equal, they could be happy. It was a past that Starlight had long since wanted to forget and avoid repeating, and here she was again.

She was frozen in place for quite some time, until a knock on her door was heard. She shook her head and left her room, walking downstairs in this old, rugged home. Walking past an extremely simple kitchen, she arrived to what she remembered to be her main door, and opened it.

"Hey, Starlight!" a male voice called. There, standing in front of her, was Double Diamond, a completely white colt who lived in the town. He seemed a few months younger than she last rembered, and seemed somewhat...greyer.

"Double Diamond? What are you doing here?" Starlight asked, raising her eyebrow as she looked around anxiously.

"Well, I came to wake you up, Starlight." The white colt explained, "It's time to check on our visitors that you trapped last night." This made Starlight freeze again. She could barely believe what she was hearing.

"No no no no," she spluttered at him, "what are you talking about? I didn't send anypony to the..." Her voice tailed off again as she looked over him. Everypony in the town seemed to be walking around with horrifyingly unnatural big grins, some wearing dirty old vests. A horrible-looking muffin stand caught her eye, with some of the most horrible-looking muffins sitting on the trays. Starlight's eyes widened, she felt like her entire life as she knew it was gone.

"I-I need to go!" She said quickly. Breathing heavily, she ran back into her house and up into her bedroom, breathing fast and uncontrollably. She ran up to the small, bedroom mirror to reach for any paper bag she could find, inhaling and exhaling loudly into it. She looked into the mirror, finally seeing herself.

She had her old manestyle, the one that packed itself around her horn in a nerdy way. Seeing this added to her already heightened tension, as this was the mane-style she wore before she had turned her life around. No no no no no no, this can't be happening, this CAN'T be happening, she thought to herself while almost bursting the paper bag with heavy breathing. She stumbled backwards, and fell onto her bed.

She then made the mistake of looking up at the table across her bed, where six glowing jars simply sat on each other, stacked neatly like a house of cards. There were the six cutie marks of her friends in there. A cloud with a rainbow thunder-strike from it, from Rainbow Dash. She remembered how she used to learn how to "chillax" with her. Fluttershy's was there too, and filled her head with memories of how she learnt how to handle animals, and enjoy picnics in the green fields. Pinkie Pie's cutie mark, with it's three balloons, seemed to hit her gut as she remembered the times she tried baking with her. Applejack's three-apple cutie mark stared her in the face, along with Rarity's. And then there was Twilight's cutie mark, sitting to the very right of them all, shining with an immense, purple glow, trapped in it's container. Her mentor's cutie mark...

Something in Starlight's head snapped from the tension, and she started screaming. Screaming and screaming she dug her head into the bed and kept screaming, muffled in the mattress, unable to think properly. Every time she dug her face into the mattress, the scarred image of Twilight's horrifying, greyed blurry face kept re-surfacing from the darkness of the sheets, and vanishing when she lifted her head again to breathe. She wanted to wake up, she was convinced that this must be some kind of horrible dream, that she'l wake up, and be able to tell Twilight about it, and forget this scene forever, and maybe even learn a friendship lesson.

But no matter how much times she buried her head into the bed the jars wouldn't go away. She began crying, she couldn't handle this. She could have sworn that she would've woken up in the castle, and meet her friends and live happily. She didn't want to re-live this moment again.

A warm, comforting arm wrapped itself around her back. She looked up to see the white stallion from earlier patting her back. "What's wrong, Starlight?" He asked, "C'mon, this is a happy town. What's there to be sad about?"

Starlight wanted to say a million things back, but she could only gulp and choke on her tears. She looked up at him, grabbing Double Diamond by his shoulders, shaking him back and forth in distress. "NOTHING is fine here! This is ALL wrong! I'm..-I'm so sorry!"

Double diamond was confused by her behaviour, and quickly backed off. He couldn't understand how this confident leader of equality had become a sad, babbling mess overnight. "What are you talking about, Starlight? You run our town, you TOLD us that being equal was the right way. Come on," he snorted, turning around to leave the room, "we've got to check on our guests! You were gonna check on them an hour ago to see if they've accepted our, uh, philosophy. Anyway Starlight, see you at the re-conformation house." He shrugged to himself and left Starlight on her own. He only made it to the bottom of the stairs before she heard Starlight screaming again.

"GUESTS?!"

Quick as a flash, Starlight Glimmer rushed out of bed downstairs coming face-to-face with the stallion.

"T-Take me to them, I need to set things RIGHT!" She was breathing heavily down his muzzle, her heartbeat racing dangerously. He was visibly confused and worried by her behaviour, so he quickly walked with her to the end of the strip of buildings, in front of the building where the "guests" were trapped.

Starlight ran towards the door, opening it hastily. She found Rarity, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle all laying on the floor weakly on the floor inside the cold chamber, tired and exhausted. That's when Starlight remembered only too well, how she had forced them into this room for going against her ideology of extreme equality. But... why where they here again? Why was she leading the village again? Shaking her thoughts aside, she bolted inside, to the surprise of the rest of the village, and began to apologize profusely to Twilight and the others, leaving them extremely confused around her.

Twilight looked weakly up at her, blinking in confusion. "I'm glad you've seen the error in your ways, Starlight Glimmer, but what do you mean, we were friends?"

Starlight helped Twilight to stand, almost choking in her tears as she explained how they had forced her out of her village, and how she tried to break their friendship by stopping the magic rainboom using time travel, and how Twilight stopped her, and instead became her friend. Twilight and the others were extremely confused, clearly not sharing these memories Starlight seemed to have.

"I'm sorry Starlight, this sounds quite amazing and all, but we never did anything together." Twilight said.

"YEAH" Rainbow Dash butted in angrily, "except for like, TRAPPING us and taking away our cutie marks!" She fluttered above the ground softly, crossing her arms in a very angry way. "Not exactly something a friend would do, ya know."

"I know, I know, I'm realy sorry. But... if we were never friends... That means... That means..." Starlight looked down, beginning to realize the severity of the situation.

"It means you never knew us, sugerpot." AppleJack said. Of course, she meant to say sugercube, but her lack of a cutie mark seemed to affect her accent at that moment.

Twilight continued Applejack's train of thought more clearly. "Starlight, it means that you never did any of those things. Maybe it was some kind of gut feeling trying to warn you, where you felt so guilty for what you did to us, you had a long frightening dream imagining what would happen if you didn't stop all this.'

Starlight began to cry. "But...that means.. we were never...friends...and I never got to meet...my childhood friend... Or get Trixie as a best friend... Oh Trixie, I can't lose Trixie...!"

Twilight raised an eyebrow. "You know about Trixie? But that's impossible... We KNOW her. And I'm pretty sure I would never let you be HER friend, no offence. She's kind of a bad egg."

"But you did!" Starlight exclaimed, "And you found it very hard to, and, and I got to meet the other princesses, Celestia and...and the other one!"

"Luna?" Rarity asked from behind her.

"Yeah, her!" Starlight said excitedly, "She's the one who controls the uhhh, the moon, and... and dreams..."

Her voice trailed off as she began to slowly understand what was going on. "And... Dreams..." she said again, looking down at the dusty floor.

"Starlight..." Twilight said slowly, rubbing Starlight's back comfortingly with a hoof. "It's alright. We can still be friends. If anything, it means you can do everything again. The right way." She gave an encouraging wink and a pat on Starlight's back, leading Starlight outside the damp dusty room and out into town.

"Maybe..." Starlight said hopefully, "This was Luna's way of... warning me of all the heartache and trouble I would go through, if I didn't listen to your advice. She gave me a dream so... vivid... and horrifying... yet amazing... That I would want to be your friend. She showed me how amazing friendship feels that I'd end up changing my ways so that I could get that feeling back. I... I don't want to lose you all, even though it wasn't real, I'm just..." She fell on her rump onto the floor, wiping her eyes. "I don't know what's real anymore! I just want everything to be back to normal. I-I-...I want to learn more about friendship again!" She began to cry, and the entire village began crowding around to watch their leader slowly going mad with sadness on the floor.

"Wait, are you saying their kind of friendship is good, Starlight?" asked Suger Belle from the crowd. Starlight looked up at them. Their battered clothes, their horrible village. This was no way to live, she thought, and nodded.

"It's true, friends. I've been... a terrible leader to you all. I... shouldn't be your leader, I should never have been." Starlight slowly stood up, talking to her crowd with a more clear voice, more confident that she was setting things right, using everything she seemed to have learnt from her dreams and her mentor within them. "I've been leading you using very selfish personal desires of mine. Being different doesn't make you lose your friendship, far from it. Instead, it's better to appreciate and take interest in what makes each other special. It's okay to like some ponies more than others, it's okay to have friends that you choose. You don't need somepony else to choose a friend for you. I'm sure that Princess Twilight Sparkle here can give you a better explanation than I ever can. You all-... You all need to fend for yourselves, I... I can't do this anymore! You're all getting your cutie marks back, and I'm leaving forever!"

After her broken and disjointed speech, Starlight quickly turned around, and began to run towards the cave nearby, tears running down her cheeks as she only desired to set things right as soon as possible. Twilight and the others were surprised, they didn't think they'd find escaping this easy, but they couldn't help but feel sorry for Starlight.

"I think it's quite clear," Rarity commented out of nowhere, "that the poor dear has simply gone mad. I mean, making friends with US, after all that nonsense and trapping us. I'm still quite upset with how she treated us prior."

"I don't know what to think," Twilight said. "On one hand, she was an evil leader who seems to be misunderstood, but everything she told us back there, it felt too real to be just an ordinary dream. Perhaps Luna really did give her those dreams of us being friends. In fact, maybe Luna saw our discomforting dreams last night, and realized we were captured! So she gave Starlight a long, painful dream about being our friends, so she would become extremely attached to us and let us go. What an amazing rescue plan. I never would've thought of that."

"That's because you can't enter other ponies' dreams, Twi', so you obviously wouldn't think of doing it," dead-panned Applejack behind her.

"Oh, right." Twilight said, and then turned around towards the town. "Well, we better go and explain everything to the village ponies. I'm pretty sure they're even more confused than we are. Just look at their faces..."

Indeed, the village ponies were all shocked, and had no idea what do to. As far as they knew, their leader had just cried and barked at them with something about forgiveness and friendship, and then abandoned them. What COULD they do?