Author's Note

Obligatory...?

When It Wasn't You

The hallways of the great Library became so familiar to me now.

By now, I knew where every section stood in all four corners of the massive room—and it was still collecting books, many of them appearing by the second, all of them of different events from different parts of the universe. Each time a book appeared, someone's or something's story was finally finished and published here. There were books I never heard of before, and likely never existed anywhere in Equestria or beyond.

I've still yet to read all of them. There were millions.

But even then, I had no intentions of reading any books other than ones that had to do with either time travel or teleportation. Every book on the subject I read, analyzed, and read again. I tried to find books that would allow me to cast spells without the use of a horn. At this point in time, there was only one book—but it existed in a language or dialect that only unicorns could properly understand.

In a brief fit of frustration, I slammed my hooves on a nearby shelf, making the books tremble just a bit. I sighed to myself.

"This is hopeless," I said to nopony in particular. "How am I gonna get home?"

But it wasn't just that one question I kept asking myself. What are they doing? Are they still looking for me? Have they given up?

Do they still care?

The last question was something I rarely asked myself. "Of course they care. Those smiles, those laughs, the emotion... that wasn't fake. That was all real. They have to care. They have to still be looking for me."

With another sigh, I started walking again, down the halls, hoping that another book would pop out of thin air and that one would be the one to get me home. Of course, there's still the problem with the whole 'not-a-unicorn' thing. Would I ever be able to tackle that? Was that even possible?

It had to be. There is no way I would be here forever.

I kept walking down the halls, occasionally glancing at the books on both sides. Many of them were books about cooking or anatomies or the extinction of great species of animals on other worlds. At first, I was fascinated by it all, but it would get boring after some time—even if it was the only way to keep me sane.

But as I continued down further, a single section caught my eye. 'Equis', written in big, bold words at the top. It was already familiar to me. It contained the history of every pony who ever lived up to this moment on the planet and every event that ever happened up to this moment. I've read a few of the books: Hoofertiti, the Great Flood of Stallion's Point. History always seemed to help.

However, the further down I went, the events and the ponies became more and more modern. Soon enough, it wasn't famous historical figures from hundreds of years ago. It was Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, Discord, Starswirl The Bearded... Twilight.

I read her book a long time ago. I didn't think any of this was real, but I grew curious. I wanted to know. And yet, anything I read, and the dome would send me to the exact moment it happened. When it mentioned Twilight getting her cutie mark, all I had to do was focus on the words, and the dome would take me to that exact moment. The way she described it to me all those years ago, I watched it happen in motion.

The day of the Royal Wedding, when Queen Chrysalis tried to hurt Celestia. It even showed the moment I nearly got myself killed by deflecting the first shot—and went flying across the room as a result. It hurt, even just from watching it.

Lord Tirek... that was such a long time ago, like the rest, and yet so far. I watched it play back in front of me, when Twilight tried to fight Tirek the first time and failed, and when she and the rest defeated him the second time. And when the Castle of Friendship rose from the ground for the very first time—I couldn't believe it.

She died at the age of 4,083, long after I disappeared. Time moved so much faster outside the dome than inside. Several years passed every hour, and every day could be centuries. Her book appeared not long after I first arrived. All of their books did.

Even Starlight's.

I read her book after Twilight's. It was awful to say it like that, because it makes it sound like I didn't read the others at all, like I only cared about her. But that wasn't the case at all. Twilight's and Starlight's books were the main priorities for me, because I hoped that if I read them, I would find out that at one point, they got me out of here, and I could see them again.

But it wasn't long before I came to the realization of the books in general. Like I said, every time a book appeared, a story came to an end somewhere in the universe.

That meant Twilight and Starlight both passed on—and I was still here.

They never found me.

I spent hours reading Starlight's book once, just like I did with Twilight's. The pages were crisp, like they had just been printed or pressed out, and they still were after all this time.

"Starlight Aurora Glimmer was born in the village of Arroyo's Plight, which—despite its unfortunate name—was one of the more prosperous and kind-spirited towns in all of Equestria."

Arroyo's Plight. I had never been there, but I read of it. It got its name from... well, anyway...

I skipped several pages, just like I had done before, looking to see if there was a moment that mentioned me finally being free.

So familiar.

But there was no page that mentioned it. No matter how many times I checked, there was nothing that ever told me I was freed one day. However, there was one page that caught my eye, one that didn't catch it before. 'Isolation.'

"What does that mean?" I asked the book, but the only answer was simply to just... read it.

It mentioned me at one point—mentioned the incident in the basement. The day I disappeared, only it wasn't the day I disappeared.

"After the stallion in question vanished and the search parties were eventually called off, Starlight Glimmer spent ten days locked in her room, reading seventeen different books and attempting twenty three different variants of her time travel spell 'Futurus Incarnis,' in hopes that she would be successful in returning him to Equestria. However, all attempts failed and time began to pass, with no step closer to success.

"At one point, Starlight Glimmer fell into a heated argument against her teacher, Twilight Sparkle. Despite Twilight Sparkle's attempts to help or console her, Starlight Glimmer eventually broke all ties between her teacher, and soon after, suffered a mental breakdown."

...Mental breakdown? No. How could I have missed this? What were they arguing about? What did she do?

Suddenly, the entirety of the dome shifted and lurched about. I looked up to the ceiling and saw stars and galaxies become lines and dashes spanning the entire ceiling. We were moving at light speed!

"It's showing me," I said to myself in realization. Dropping the book, I unfurled my wings and flew as fast as I could to any one of the doors. What would be twenty minutes of walking and ten minutes of running was a mere minute of flying at my fastest speed.

As soon as I reached the double doors, I opened them wide and flew through the doorway, trying to observe my surroundings.

I was in Ponyville, downtown. The dome was slowly making its way through the streets, going through several buildings and allowing me to see the insides—even as far as seeing the material the houses were made of.

None of it was real. It was all just a magically simulated representation of every face, every building, every speck of dirt on the ground, just enough to show me what I read.

The dome's size seemed to shrink as it closed in on a particular building—my house. I expected it to be abandoned or boarded up or even demolished, and yet it was pristine and clean, like someone was living in it.

I knew who was.

The dome phased into the house, on the first floor. The interior looked vastly different from what I remembered it to be. Book shelves were moved around, the furniture was in a different spot, even the lighting was different. The celestial vehicle lurched again as it focused to another part of the house, the one part that stayed the same: the library.

Starlight sat at a desk, staring at a parchment of paper that was written seemingly halfway. Her face was tired, and her mane, flat without a single resemblance of a curve, seemed to have a single or couple gray strands. She was stressed. So, so stressed.

"Starlight..." I whispered, hoping she would hear it. But she didn't even turn in my direction, but instead, turned to the door as she heard it open. I looked over to see who it was.

"Twilight...?" I asked.

"What?" Starlight sighed, as if annoyed by Twilight's presence. I found myself looking at Starlight, as if a bit shocked by her expression. Even Twilight herself looked hurt, but ultimately... not surprised.

Twilight sighed. "Starlight... you can't keep doing this."

"Yes I can," Starlight said firmly, "and I will. I know I'm close, I have to be. I just have to keep looking."

"You've been saying that for three years."

Three years? It's been that long...?

"At least it shows how much I care," Starlight retorted. "At least I'm not the one who called off the search after a month."

"Everyone was looking for him. We all were."

"Well, you obviously didn't care enough to keep looking. So much for the Princess of Friendship."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Starlight had gotten past the feeling of bitterness; she was so kind after she was reformed. She always had a smile on her face and did whatever she could to please Twilight, just to make her smile back.

Did... Did I cause this?

"Listen to yourself," Twilight stated sternly, "This isn't you, Starlight. This whole 'shuttering-yourself-at-home' thing isn't you. We're your friends. We want to help you. I can't help but feel like you're... destroying yourself."

Starlight stared at the wall, her left eye giving off a very, very faint twitch.

"Friends?" she scoffed in disbelief. "You still think after everything you have done all this time, that I'm still your friend? That you deserve to be called my friend?"

The unicorn got up from the chair she sat in and advanced towards Twilight. I could see the anger beginning to build in Starlight, her eyes looking like they were ready to glow a burning red.

"No," she whispered, "friends don't give up on looking for their missing friends after a single month. Friends don't decide to give up looking for their friends altogether. Friends don't decide to stop trying to bring them back from whatever it is they got them stuck in. And FRIENDS don't have to be an Element of Harmony to be important!"

"What are you saying?" Twilight nearly barked back, as if growing irritated. "Do you think I don't care about-"

"Him? That's exactly what I'm saying! He goes missing because of our buck-up, and you don't bother putting more time into finding him?! Finding your best friend that you've known since Nightmare Moon?! I've been spending three bucking years trying to get him back! Oh, but the other Elements of Harmony, the moment they go missing, you don't stop until they're safe and sound, but you give up on your other non-Element friend after four weeks. If I went missing, would you ever give two bucks about me?! Huh?!"

"Stop it!" Twilight yelled. "Just stop it!"

"Oh, did I hit a nerve there, Princess? Did I shatter your perfect little bubble of reality?"

"Please," I pleaded. "... Just stop." I hoped they would hear me. But they couldn't.

And then Twilight broke. Her eyes were angry, her horn glowed a redder shade of purple, and yet, when she spoke, she didn't scream—at least, not straight away.

"And what makes you so perfect?! Last I remembered, you were the one who enslaved an entire village by stealing everypony's cutie mark and making them feel useless, and then you went back in time to stop any of us from being friends, so much that you reduced Equestria to a wasteland! You killed everyone because you were selfish! Because you couldn't just bother to move the buck on and get a grip over a damn cutie mark! You don't care about anypony but yourself! So how DARE you think I could be any worse than you-"

The smack echoed around the room—echoed throughout the dome, and probably even echoed through the halls of the Library itself.

Twilight's right cheek was red and almost immediately showing signs of bruising. Her eyes were almost pinpricks, staring endlessly in shock, before her face became blank. She raised a hoof to gently touch the spot where Starlight hit her.

"Get. Out." Starlight said coldly. "And don't come back."

The alicorn said nothing—didn't bother to even give her student a single glance. Instead, she did exactly as Starlight commanded and walked to the door. Before she left, however, she said one more thing.

"He's gone, Starlight. He's gone and he's never coming back. We all accepted it. The sooner you do, the better."

Twilight left the room, her hoofsteps echoing as she went down the stairs.

I could hear myself swallow the saliva in my throat. That was how quiet it was. My eyes darted to Starlight, who simply looked at the now-empty doorway, as if she saw a ghost, but was unfazed by it. She just stared and stared at nothing but the wall, and I listened to the sounds of Twilight's hoofsteps.

"Twilight, wait..." I said, but I cursed myself. She couldn't hear me.

The door slammed shut downstairs.

And with that, Starlight screeched the loudest I had ever heard her screech in her life. It was a loud, painful scream that lasted for seconds. When she was done, she merely just... broke.

She started to take parchments of paper and rip them into pieces. She grabbed the papers and the books on the desk and shoved them as hard as she could—the papers flying and the books slamming into the wall; she grabbed books from the shelves and threw them at the wall, before taking the bookshelves and shoving them to the floor, causing a loud bang that echoed through the now empty house.

With every second that ticked by, her screams turned into cries: heartbroken, angry cries that only she could hear—that only I could hear—as she trashed the library, throwing books at the walls and ripping up parchments that she had written over the last three years.

Then she screamed my name... rather... she cried my name.

"WHERE DID YOU GO?" she shouted. "WHAT DID I DO?"

Starlight fell to her knees and continued to bawl, gasping for air to cry more. Her hooves covered her eyes as the tears fell freely down her face. Her body was shaking.

Mine shook too.

"I'm right here," I whispered.

"WHERE ARE YOU?"

"I'm right here," I said, louder.

"WHERE ARE YOU?" Starlight screamed my name again.

"I'm right here, Starlight," I answered her pleas, with tears forming in my eyes. "I'm right next to you. Just look at me." My voice was shaky and devoid of clarity.

The unicorn screamed again and proceed to slam her fist into the desk, screaming the same questions over and over again, letting the tears fall down with no holding back.

"Please stop," I begged her.

She screamed again, slamming the desk harder.

"Just stop." My voice was more composed, but still shaky.

All Starlight did was keep hitting the furniture—keep harming herself, begging me to just 'come home'... 'come back.'

She punched the wall again and again, screaming, "WHY?" over and over again.

Then her hoof went through the wall.

"STOP IT!"

My voice echoed throughout the dome, playing over and over again as it faded.

And Starlight froze, staring at the hole that she made in the wall. Her body was shaking, her breath short, but not labored. She turned her head and stared in my direction.

It was like she was looking right at me.

"Star-"

I felt something touch my shoulder, and I turned around, startled, but a hoof gently touched my bottom lip before I could even open my mouth.

"Shh. Just wake up."

"Lu..."

"...na?"

Suddenly, I was awake, lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling. It was still the middle of the night, and I was up.

Was that...?

"You're troubled, aren't you?" I heard a voice say to me, and I turned to the voice with a fearful gasp, but after I saw who the figure was, I was a bit more relaxed—though, it wasn't to say that I was relaxed entirely.

Princess Luna walked over from my open bedroom window, shutting it behind her, and carrying a comforting and warm smile on her face, though even that smile was plagued with concern.

I nodded to her hesitantly, answering her question. "What time is it?"

"One o'clock. I'd say more on the dot."

"Oh."

Luna looked at me again, never removing her smile, and simply walked to the door, opening it and inviting me downstairs.

"Why don't we have some tea?"

I laughed—quietly. But even she could tell I was trying to hold the tears back.