Author's Note

Kindly let me know which chapters felt more like filler, and which ones felt like story. It will greatly help me in future stories or future chapters of other stories. :)

When You Saw What I Saw

The morning came peacefully, with the roosters greeting the townsfolk and Ponyville coming to life again.

I sat at the kitchen table again, having made myself another small breakfast meal. How could anyone ever get tired of toast?

Clanks was standing near, listening to the radio and whatever music that was playing. But after a few minutes of generic tunes, the robot turned off the radio and went over to the table, sitting opposite of me.

"I heard you were up last night," he looked at me with concern. "Was everything okay?"

After swallowing a piece, I answered, "Yeah. Everything... well, not exactly. I've been having nightmares for the past few days."

"What kind of nightmares?"

Downing my glass of orange juice, I hesitated to tell him, wondering if he should know. But Clanks was my friend: He had every right to know as the rest.

"A while back, when I was still freshly trapped in the Library... I found Starlight's book. There was this one section that I hadn't read before, or better yet, I haven't even noticed it. 'Isolation.' Basically, for the first three years after I vanished, Starlight was trying to find some way to bring me back."

"I assume with no success?"

I nodded. "It got so bad that she decided to cut herself off from everyone. Twilight tried to intervene and... well, they had a fight, and Twilight just kinda gave up on her. Starlight had a breakdown. This was one of the few things that led to me wanting to wipe my memory. It was just that bad."

"I'm sorry that you had to experience that."

"Yeah... But I guess the bright side of it all is that it'll no longer happen. It all happened because I disappeared, but now that I came back three years early..."

"They'll never fight."

"Oh... they'll fight, at least at one point from now. But I'm hoping that it'll never get to the point that I saw."

"And the figure you were talking to last night... Princess Luna?"

"She's been watching me ever since Celestia told her. We talked for a half hour, had some tea, and then she left. She told me I should tell both of them what I saw."

"Do you plan on doing that?"

"Yeah," I answered, "in about ten minutes."

"Should I leave?"

I shook my head. "No, no, you don't have to leave. You can read something in the library, if you want. This is just something I need to talk them about on my own."

Clanks nodded, but then recoiled slightly. "If I remember correctly, I am supposed to visit Rarity today and help her with twenty dress designs."

"Twenty? Wow. When does she need you?"

"Not for another two hours. But I am more than glad to leave early for you and Rarity."

"If it's okay with you," I smiled.

"It is more than fine."

Grinning, I grew curious. "Has Twilight been helping you become more intelligent?"

"Indeed. Quite a lot, actually. Both her and Starlight have been helping my processing power increase tenfold, intelligence capacity increase twentyfold, and my language comprehension increase by nearly one-hundredfold."

"So you're basically turning into Twilight if she was a robot?"

"In a sense... yes."

I laughed at his answer, sighing with a happy shake of my head. "All that time, and all those books, and I could never make you any better than I wanted to."

"You made me who I was with what you had," he remarked. "That's what matters. You made me exist with the words you've read and the knowledge you've learned. To me, you are the most important being to exist in my life. Never forget that."

I grinned again. "Thanks, Clanks."

"You're welcome. Well, they should be arriving here soon, so I should head to Rarity's and assist her with her dresses."

"Have fun."

"Perhaps it might be fun."

With another subtle laugh from me, Clanks and I parted, and he shut the door behind me. I sighed, feeling the nervousness grow in the pit of my stomach, but I was ultimately able to control it.

The clock read twelve-eighteen. Only a couple of minutes had passed, but for all I knew, they would be here sooner than I expected. I decided to clean off the table, wash my dirty dish, and heat up the tea from last night.

As I did so, the thoughts of what Luna said both last night and several nights ago rang in my head. 'They will both understand.' Again, like I did before, I agreed with her words, but I couldn't help but keep being nervous. I hated that word: nervous. I used it so much, I started to question if there were moments where it was never even needed. Was it even needed now?

Turning off the oven as soon as the tea was boiling hot again, I walked over to one of the front windows and peeked out, wondering if they were nearby, and sure enough, I was right. A few houses away, Starlight and Twilight were walking side-by-side, chatting away about something that was more than out of earshot.

But they were happy: smiling, giggling, laughing—not like student and teacher, but like best friends. Starlight still carried that awkward look whenever she was around the townsfolk, the guilt of who she used to be still haunting her, but she was getting better—feeling better. Maybe it was because Twilight was right there with her. Even so, she was still herself and starting to show it more often.

I hoped she would stay that way.

Before they got near the door, I went back to the kitchen and placed the now-cool kettle on the table, and setting down three different cups. Whether they wanted to take this to the living room or keep the conversation here, it was up to-

*knock knock knock*

-them.

"Okay," I whispered to myself, "No going back... It's open!"

A second later, the door clicked open and the two mares became visible. I could hear Twilight call my name. I walked in with a smile on my face.

"You came," I said with a gleeful tone as I hugged Twilight. "I didn't think you'd be able to make it."

"I had a couple things on my schedule, but I was able to squeeze this in."

"And I've been... busy," Starlight hesitated, "doing tests on the spell again."

"The time travel spell, right?"

"Mm-hmm. I had a couple of troubles here and there, but I think I'm close to performing it without live hosts."

"I thought you already did that a few days ago?" I asked with a smirk, referencing what she said to lead me to the party. Twilight turned to her, a bit confused.

"I couldn't think of anything else to say," Starlight countered sheepishly at the alicorn, before turning back to me. "So... you wanted to talk?"

"Oh, right," I nearly forgot, "Come in, make yourself at home. I just heated up some tea."

"Ooo," Twilight faintly beamed at the hearing of the word 'tea'. "What kind?"

"Peppermint. I thought it would taste a bit rank, but it actually turned out pretty well. It was Luna's choice."

"Wait... Luna? As in Princess Luna?" Starlight was immediately curious. "When did you see her?"

"Uh... last night," I answered her slowly. "That's... kind of why I invited you over here. There's... something I have to tell you. I figured some tea would help with that."

"Why? Is everything alright?"

"Yeah, everything's fine. It's just... hmm... I don't know how to say it."

"We can wait," Twilight told me kindly. "We did just get here, after all."

"Right..."

So we spent a few minutes having our tea and talking about anything that we could talk about, waiting until I was content with speaking my words. But no matter how many sips, no matter how many times I talked, I never seemed to feel any more ready than I wanted to. I could feel my heart beating in my chest, like it wanted to rip itself out of my body, it was beating so fast.

Eventually, the tea in our cups ran dry, but we weren't wanting to get another fill.

"Do you think you're ready to talk about it now?" Twilight spoke up. She was concerned, but curious.

I closed my eyes for just a moment, and let out a sigh. Even though I couldn't see them, I knew that they were looking at me with worry in their eyes. When I opened my eyes again, I was right.

"I was thinking of all the ways I could tell you what I've been wanting to tell you. But the truth is... I don't think there is any way I could tell you. So I think I'm better off just showing you instead."

With a glow of my eyes, the familiar setting that was my home suddenly warped and contorted into something even more familiar than my house. The endless corridors and bookshelves formed into reality, and the two mares found themselves no longer sitting on a warm wool couch, but instead standing on a cold crystalline floor that seemed to span forever.

"Where... Where are we?" Starlight asked me, baffled.

"A visual recreation of the place I was trapped in. I call it the Library. I'm aware it's not a... creative name, but it was what I called it."

"Wow," Twilight softly exclaimed, "are these all books?"

With a nod, I answered, "Rather, it's an archive—an archive of every event, every figure, and every thing that ever existed in all of creation. From the birth of the universe, to its lonely and cold end. From Nightmare Moon's banishment to her return and reformation. From Discord's petrification to... well, you get the idea."

Both the unicorn and the alicorn found themselves mesmerized by the sheer amount of books that filled the shelves. But what caught their eyes even more was the ceiling: this was the ceiling as I saw it the very moment I became trapped here: big, bright, full of stars and galaxies, clusters, planets... The magic that was the universe.

I teleported us—or rather, reshaped the scene—to the outside of the Library.

"This is just outside. This is the dome, at least how it looked when I first got here."

A moment later, the dome rumbled. Even as a recreation, it caused Twilight and Starlight to stumble, just for a second. Suddenly, a massive comet appeared as if out of thin air, being created layer upon layer.

"Is that a..."

"Comet? It is," I answered for Starlight.

"Starlight... where did I go?"

The familiar sound of my voice caught their attention, only it wasn't me talking. It was me talking. They both looked to the side and saw me standing there. I looked practically the same in every way, only my mane was a bit messier.

"Is that you?"

I nodded. "This was me about two minutes after I woke up. I was confused... a bit afraid... kind of scared. I didn't know where I was or what happened. All I remember is you screaming in pain and then suddenly waking up here."

"Pain...?" And then suddenly, Starlight remembered. "My headache... my migraine... I caused this."

"I don't think that," I responded quickly. "The way I've studied it, I would have ended up here regardless, whether or not you had the migraine in the first place."

But not even my explanation was enough to satisfy her guilt.

"However... that's not why I brought you here."

My eyes glowed again, and the universe stretched as the vision became all the more familiar. The dome settled over Ponyville, and the memories came back fresh in my head.

"This is."

The recreation of myself barged through the doors to watch as the dome closed in on my house once again, like it had all that time ago. Through the front door, down the hallway, and then to the library upstairs. Sitting at the desk...

"That's... me," Starlight paused as she recognized her own self. "When did I end up here? In your house?"

"... About three years after I disappeared."

Her eyes dilated slightly as she stared at me.

"... Three years-?"

The familiar form of what would've been Twilight's future self opened the door. The Twilight I knew watched in surprise as she saw herself. She looked relatively the same, but... not happy.

"Twilight...?" My self said. The two mares were switching back and forth, looking at the me of the past and their selves of a future that no longer existed.

They watched their selves talk, and they recoiled as they saw just how... bitter one was to the other, and vice versa. It was like I could hear them saying in their minds, "This isn't me. I would never talk to Twilight/Starlight like this!" And they were right... now, they were.

The conversation grew heated, and all the two of them could do was just watch as it... happened.

"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!"

Starlight's eyes were wide with guilt, looking at Twilight. The princess wasn't angry at her, but she saw her... differently.

"Twilight...I-"

"What are you saying?" barked the defunct future Twilight, 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! Just stop it!"

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

"Please," My self pleaded. "... Just stop."

It broke their hearts to see me like that, to see me feel so helpless and unable to stop something that was happening right in front of me, and yet so far away. But the scream made Twilight flinch—her own scream.

"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-"

Even after all these years, hearing that smack still shook me to the core.

But I think Starlight was the one who found herself more shaken than even Twilight. She subconsciously touched her own hoof, the same one she would've slapped Twilight with, even looking at it as if she did it herself.

"Get. Out. And don't come back."

With hesitation, the defunct future Twilight walked to the door and said what she had to say.

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

"Twilight, wait..." my self pleaded, only to get nothing in response. The defunct Twilight left the room, and moments later, the door slammed shut. Twilight only stared, shocked at the words that left her mouth, even if she never truly spoke them. I saw her look at me—the real me. Her face...

Starlight's scream still startled me. I remembered everything she did before she did it. The swipe of the books off the desk, the knocking down of the book shelves... her screaming my name and begging me to come back.

"WHERE DID YOU GO? WHAT DID I DO?"

"I'm right here." My self whispered it the first time, as always.

"WHERE ARE YOU?"

"I'm right here." I didn't remember myself crying when it happened. It might have been the moment, and it escaped me.

"WHERE ARE YOU?"

"I'm right here, Starlight. I'm rightnextto you. Just look at me."

The tears were flowing down my self's face. Starlight was having trouble keeping herself composed as she just watched. She couldn't believe that she would ever see herself doing something like this, but I think what hurt her the most was seeing me cry and beg her to just "look at me."

She watched her hurt herself, slamming her hoof against the desk, screaming "why" over and over again.

"Please stop."

"WHY?"

"Just stop."

"WHY?"

Her hoof went through the wall.

"STOP IT!"

My Starlight flinched. She never heard me yell before, it was clear on her face. The unicorn was shaking, staring at my self as he looked at her through tearful eyes, begging her to stop hurting herself. And when she turned to see her own defunct future self, she stopped and stared at her.

She was looking right at us. At least, that's what it looked like.

Her self said my name, and my self started to talk, as if trying to get her attention. But the vision was cut off on my account. That wasn't why I brought them here.

With another flash of light, the vision of Starlight's defunct future self and my past self dissolved into dust and mist, and the rest of the vision collapsed and contorted once again, reshaping our reality and placing us back into the living room, though we were all no longer on the couch.

All three of us were silent, unsure of what to say to one another. I was breathing quietly.

"You can take a breather, if you want," I said to them, "let it sink in."

Twilight and Starlight looked at each other. The unicorn—all she could do was look at Twilight's face, specifically the cheek that she sl... would have slapped, and held it gently, as if trying to nurse it back to health.

"I... I didn't mean to..."

"You didn't do anything," Twilight assured her. "It wasn't real."

"But it was. For a while, it was, and it would've happened. I would've yelled at you. I would've... smacked you..."

"But you didn't. And you won't, not anymore."

It didn't ease Starlight entirely, but it helped, it seemed. The questionable Twilight turned to me, her face hurt not because of me showing them, but because of her own actions—even if they would never happen.

"Why did you show us this?"

I sighed. "Because I've been dreaming this exact same moment for the past four days."

Taking a seat on the couch, I began to explain.

"At first, I thought it wasn't such a big deal, that it was just its own bad nightmare that would go away on its own. But with each passing day, it got worse and worse. It got to the point where Luna decided to intervene. That led to us having a talk last night about the whole thing and her suggesting I tell you about what I dreamed of... Now I'm starting to wonder if just telling you instead of showing you were better than the other way around."

"No," Twilight insisted. "No, it was a good thing to do, showing us. I... I guess I just wasn't expecting that."

"Me neither," Starlight added, getting her senses together just enough to contribute to the conversation. "But why do you keep having them?"

"Because I... Because I'm scared it'll still happen."

"What do you mean?" Twilight asked.

"Think about it: After I vanished, Starlight isolated herself from everyone and spent three years working on variants of the spell to try and bring me back. It got so bad that... well... you know."

I adjusted myself on the couch, swallowing the saliva in my throat.

"I guess I'm just scared that that will still happen someway—somehow. After everything you two have been through, after everything we've all been through... I just don't want us to lose that spark all because I disappeared for a couple of days."

It was the truth. There was no beating around it. Starlight and Twilight were my best friends, they all were. If their friendships fell apart because of me... where would I even begin?

"Hmm... To think—I have the knowledge of the universe at my disposal, and yet I can't even solve a friendship problem after all that time." I cupped my face in my hooves, groaning silently. "Sorry. It's just been one big cluster after the other."

But Twilight simply took my hoof and held it in her own. "It doesn't have to be."

I looked at her, but said nothing.

"We're your friends. No matter what you've been through, and no matter what you're facing, don't ever feel that you can't come to us for help."

"I don't doubt that you can help me. I never have. I guess I was just more afraid of what would happen if I spoke out, said something."

Starlight gave me a smile. "You never know until you try."

I smiled with a faint chuckle. "That's true. That's very true. I used to tell myself that, but then I stopped."

"So keep telling yourself that," she said confidently, "and don't let those bad thoughts seep into your head."

They were right. I had to keep telling myself that. I had to convince myself and believe that. I spent all those years telling Clanks every feeling I ever felt, even if he couldn't help me, because it just meant I still had someone who could listen to those problems or those emotions. I couldn't stop that now.

A part of me didn't want to listen to them—but I loved them. How could I not listen?

For a moment, I smiled at the two of them, but as soon as it came, the smile faded, and what was left was a curious, but concerned frown. "But what about you two? Did either of you doubt each other when you started looking for me?

Neither of them wanted to answer, as if they were too nervous to give an answer. I laughed to myself—it was like they were contradicting their own words. But it was my little secret.

Starlight sighed. "I will admit... I did doubt Twilight, but just a little bit."

Twilight wasn't hurt, or even angered, just perplexed, giving a face that merely said, "Wait, what?" I'll admit, I laughed at that too.

"I thought you would've called off the search soon after. Maybe it was because I was paranoid about the day that would eventually happen and just had nightmares about it, but it's true. I know it would've been for a good reason, but I... I guess I just hoped you would keep looking after the first month."

Twilight looked towards the couch, but not specifically at me, more so to look away from Starlight.

"It was for a good reason... wasn't it?" she asked me.

"It was. The search, with all those ponies, started to hurt the economy just a smidgen. You called it off to prevent a possible depression. That's what caused the whole... thing."

"Right."

"Twilight, I... I know it never happened and... now never will—but if I knew that was the case, I would have-"

"I know. It's okay. You're my student, Starlight, and my best friend. I could never be mad at you for something you couldn't have known."

"But still..."

"It'll be okay. And it'll especially be okay now."

"You promise?" she asked, before looking to me. "Both of you?"

"Of course," Twilight and I said simultaneously. We both laughed quietly at our reaction. Twilight hugged Starlight to further reassure her that things would be okay, just as she promised.

"Get in here, you," the princess said to me, prompting me to get up out of my seat and join the hug.

It was very warm, to say the least. Comforting, warm, and overall, welcoming.

Starlight had to laugh and ask me, "Did this go from you talking about your nightmares to comforting me?"

"Basically."

We all couldn't help but laugh at the sudden realization. Hey—it was funny.