Compatī

“Oh, thank Celestia, you’re awake,” someone said.

I squinted and shielded my eyes from a bright light. That was… was that Twilight?

I dared to peek around my hoof, and sure enough, Twilight stood overtop of me. She looked like she’d had a panic attack or five.

Starlight stood beside her with a glass of water, which she gave to me the moment I looked her way. That cool water going down my throat tasted like heaven.

“You alright there?” she asked.

“I—”

“I’m so sorry,” Twilight butted in. “We tried to keep the connection stable, but the energy efflux kept increasing faster than we could account for, so we weaned off the input until the spell naturally dissipated.”

I blinked, the words slowly sinking into my head. Wait, they killed the spell? I checked my flank and sighed with relief. Cutie mark still where it belonged.

“You’re good, Sunset,” Starlight said. She gave me a nudge on the shoulder. “No cutie mark yanking just yet.”

“I know, I… I just had to check,” I said, getting a laugh from Starlight.

Another hoof rested on my other shoulder. It was Star Swirl, and he wore a real if reserved smile.

“Indeed. It is good to see you back in one piece. But my dear Luna still slumbers. What did you manage to accomplish on our first true dream dive?”

“I…” Well this was going to be awkward. I rubbed my hoof up and down my foreleg. “So, uh, good news. Luna is safe and sound.”

“Saying there’s good news like that means there’s bad news,” Starlight said.

I gave them a hesitant smile. “Y-yeah… The bad news is, I had to trade the Tantabus for her, and she’s not happy about it.”

“You traded the Tantabus?” Twilight shook her head. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“You mean like it wanted the Tantabus,” Starlight said, wearing a concerned frown, “or you convinced it to take the Tantabus?”

She seemed more in tune with whatever implications the situation had. Not that I couldn’t figure out that something bad was going on, but the unnatural tension in her voice sent goosebumps up my legs that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

“It wanted the Tantabus,” I said. “I just don’t know what for.”

“If I know anything about masterminding villainous, long-term plans,” Starlight said, “that sounds really bad. Like, take-over-the-world kind of bad.”

I flattened back my ears. “You’re making it sound like what I did was wrong. The dream was falling apart around me. I didn’t know how long it would be before the next time we had the chance to save Luna. I had a split second to decide.”

Starlight winced and shot a brief glance around the room, doing her best to avoid eye contact. “I’m not saying that you made a bad choice, I-I’m just saying that the choice you made might have been, um… bad.”

She offered me a nervous smile when I frowned at her. It didn’t help any. “What I mean to say is—”

“What she means to say,” Star Swirl butted in, “is you couldn’t have known the outcome of your actions, nor do we know what exactly it plans to do with the Tantabus. You did what you felt was right, and that is all we have to go by.”

Starlight nodded, relieved. Twilight nodded, too, but the silence that followed stifled any sense of ease they might have hoped for.

“You…” Star Swirl began, stroking his beard. “You said you traded the Tantabus for Luna. Does that mean she is with you, this very moment? The way the Tantabus was?”

“I… I think so? I mean, she’s not like a voice in my head that can hear every word you’re saying right now if that’s what you’re hoping. But I did dream of the Tantabus while it was in me.” I shuddered at the thought of being stuck with Luna in my dreams.

“So we can hope for her input on the matter the next time you sleep,” Star Swirl said. He looked out the window, where a new moon hung low in the sky. It seemed like Celestia really did have the whole contingency plan thing covered.

“Hopefully,” Twilight said. “We should all get some sleep. If this has taken a turn for the worse, we need to be ready to face it. Sunset?”

“Yeah?”

Twilight smiled at me. The way her ears perked up and her wings poked just over the arch of her back was all I needed to know she had way more hope in this plan than I did.

She had hope. She wanted this. She wanted to save Luna. And I… I threw on a smile.

“I’ll talk to her,” I said. “If she’s there.”

That seemed like exactly what she wanted to hear. Her smile got bigger, and she fluffed her wings before tossing a hoof over my shoulder. She nuzzled me on the cheek, and that closeness alone made my promise worth it.

“Then it is settled,” Star Swirl said. “Speak with her tonight and see what insight she can provide us. We will convene in the morning.” With that, he turned for the door.

The others followed suit, all of them in higher spirits than I had felt in weeks. Part of me wanted to stop them from leaving, but luckily enough, I didn’t have to.

Twilight looked back from the doorway. The smile on her lips turned melancholic, and it took her a moment to find the strength to meet my eyes.

“You sure you’re okay with this?” she asked.

I did my best to shrug indifferently. “Well, we’re already kind of neck deep in this mess now. Can’t turn back even if I wanted to.”

That got a frown out of her. She cocked an ear to the side and seemed like she had something she wanted to say. Eventually, she looked me in the eye, and I felt the words on the tip of her tongue: You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.

That same argument sprang up the way it always did. I countered with a frown: I won’t let you do this for me.

Whether or not that sentiment got across to her, she smiled anyway and put a hoof on my shoulder.

“We’re always here if you need us, Sunset. Never forget that.”

Smiling, I took her hoof in mine and squeezed it. “I know.”

She turned back for the door, but she seemed to think of something. “Do you… do you want to sleep with me tonight?”

Her face went red as a Hearth's Warming bulb the instant the words left her lips. “Er, I, I mean in the same room. Not, like—”

I put a hoof to her mouth and laughed. It was good to feel normal for a moment. I needed that more than I cared to admit.

“I know what you mean,” I said. “I’ll be okay. Thanks though. And yeah, if I change my mind, I’ll bring an extra blanket.”

That was a lie I’d gotten good at… If I need help, I’ll ask.

I had the personal experience to know better than to ignore conventional wisdom, but there were some things people needed to do themselves. I had to prove to her—to the world—that I was strong enough.

Either way, the lie did its job, and she gave me a big smile and a sigh of relief. We shared a hug and headed to bed. At the junction between my turnoff and her hallway, I stopped to watch her go. Her tail disappeared around the slight curve of the castle, and a few seconds later, I heard the click of a door latch.

“You know,” came a voice, “you don’t have to act strong for her.”

I yelped in surprise and spun around, only to see Starlight standing there, wearing a star-spangled nightcap that looked like it belonged to Trixie. A toothbrush dangled from her mouth.

“Oh,” I said. “Hey, Starlight. Why are… Why are you walking around brushing your teeth in the hallway?”

She pulled her toothbrush out to talk better. “I always go for walks when I brush my teeth. I don’t like standing in front of the bathroom mirror. Staring at myself makes me uncomfortable.”

She went back to brushing, but something in her eyes hinted that she had more to say. “But I’m not wandering today. I wanted to talk to you, just the two of us.”

I sucked in a breath through my teeth. Just what I needed, more emotionally heavy conversations when I was least prepared for them. Which was to say always.

I tapped the tip of my hoof against the crystal floor and looked aside. “Then talk away,” I said.

I saw her frown out the corner of my eye. Her magic let go of her toothbrush to let it dangle in her mouth again.

I knew I was coming across as standoffish, but I couldn’t help how these sorts of conversations made me feel. I was tired of feeling helpless and talked down to. It wasn’t Starlight’s fault, though. I had to remind myself that.

“You’re allowed to ask us for help once in a while,” she said around her brush.

There it was. That single most irritating sentiment they’d been grinding into my head since I got here.

I knew I could ask them for help. That’s what friends were for. But I needed to do this myself, for all sorts of reasons I already told Twilight. Why couldn’t they get that?

“I…” I sighed. “I know. I already talked to Twilight about it. I just… She’s already stressed out enough as it is over this. And if I can just not be one more thing on the pile, then that’s the least I can do.”

She glanced down the hallway behind me, then back to me. “Between you and me, that doesn’t stop her from worrying.”

“What do you mean?”

She pulled the toothbrush from her mouth, and bits of toothpaste flung across the hall. She didn’t seem to notice.

“I mean she worries about you all the time. Not that she doesn’t think you’re capable of handling whatever goes on in that other world, or that you don’t have the best set of friends you could ask for.” She shrugged. “But, you know… she’s Twilight. Worrying and overthinking things is basically her special talent. Honestly, if you really want her to worry less, talk to her. Tell her all the worrying things she should worry about. That way she can at least make checklists and stuff to better cope with the worrying she’ll do anyway.”

“But I talk to her all the time. I’ve already filled up half of the new notebook she gave me.”

Starlight raised an eyebrow at me.

Okay, what in the crap was that look for? I wasn’t lying.

“You might talk to her,” she said, “but you don’t talk to her. You don’t confide in her. At least, not with whatever this is. You’ve been showing us how you feel, but you’ve been guarding what you feel, or what it has to do with Luna. I get that it’s something big—I think we all got that—but whatever’s bothering you, you gotta actually tell her.”

I bit my lip and ground my hooftip into the floor. “I, I don’t know if I’m comfortable doing that. Not yet.”

“And that's fair, but the longer you wait, the more it’ll eat you up inside. Believe me. I know a thing or two about bottling up your emotions.” Her lips warped into a frown as she stared past me at some undesirable memory. She shook her head and gave me a placating smile. “There’s strength in accepting our weaknesses. And understanding what we’re bad at is what lets us grow.”

I smirked, something I didn’t expect myself to have in me at that moment. “You know, I’m really not used to you being so insightful. Whenever we hang out, we usually just, you know, hang out.”

Starlight shrugged. “Twilight’s taught me a lot about myself. Just comes with hanging around her so much, I guess.

“Also Trixie,” she added. Her smile became a thousand-yard stare on the verge of a PTSD flashback. “Nothing teaches you how to be the responsible one better than keeping her out of trouble.”

That got me laughing. If this world’s Trixie was anything like the one back home, I could write a book on responsibility. Still, as easily as Starlight could force a smile out of me, that good feeling just wouldn’t last.

“I get that you think I should talk to Twilight. Like, really talk to her. But it’s not that simple. You see, the thing is, Twilight has… Twilight has a very specific image of Luna in her head. And I have a very different image in mine.”

I took a deep breath and shook my head. Even just talking about having to talk about it was tough.

“I don’t doubt that Twilight’s image is genuine,” I continued. “But that doesn’t change how mine looks, or how genuine mine is, too. And the difference between them is… staggering. I don’t know if she could see my image even if I told her everything.”

I rubbed a hoof up and down my foreleg. “Besides, I don’t want sharing mine to ruin hers. I… I couldn’t do that to her.”

Starlight pulled her toothbrush out and held it aloft. She gave me a frighteningly sober look.

“Are you afraid of her image of Luna changing, or yours?”

Her words ran down my back like a bucket of ice water, and my mouth went dry. An instinctive scowl shot to my face.

“I’m not afraid.”

She held that sober stare on me way longer than I was comfortable with. “Look, you don’t have to tell me what happened between you two, but you should still tell Twilight. Even if you’re worried she won’t get it or that it’ll hurt her. She’s hurting as it is, and so are you, and neither of you will get better until you suck it up and rip that bandaid off.”

She twirled her toothbrush in idle circles like a drum major who’d lost her train of thought. “And like I said, I’m always here if you need somepony else to talk to. We all are. Okay?”

And there we were, back to the original, condescending sentiment. I pursed my lips and looked aside. I knew they meant well, but it didn’t change jack shit for how it made me feel.

“Okay,” I finally said. A momentary silence followed on its coattails, and I felt exposed, like I was disrobing for an operation, laid out on a table for a bunch of indifferent medical students to ogle at.

Starlight looked around like she was searching for another conversation piece. When she didn’t find anything, she gave me one of her awkward smiles that she always wore whenever she had to backtrack over something socially inappropriate. The toothpaste foam coating her lips added another layer of awkwardness to the moment.

“Sooo yeah. I’m gonna… Yeah. Goodnight, Sunset.” She hurried down the hallway for the bathroom, her toothbrush trailing beside her.

She was so strangely awkward, I cracked a half smile as I watched her disappear beyond the curve of the castle hallway. My smile didn’t last long, only until the fading echo of hoof steps left me in silence.

After a hard moment to myself, I whispered, “Goodnight, Starlight.”

• • •

Sleep happened quickly enough. I must have been more tired than I thought. Which wasn’t surprising, given how much dream diving took out of me.

Also unsurprisingly, I opened my eyes to the same goddamn dream of Twilight’s guest bedroom where I slept in the real world.

I was starting to get used to the idea of this little room as a dreamplace, or whatever I should call it. Almost like a home away from home.

That was, until I saw Luna standing between me and the door. I bristled at the sight of her, but I did my best to throw on an indifferent stare.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. I tried standing, but my hooves felt velcroed to the bedsheets.

“I could ask the same of you, Sunset Shimmer,” she said.

I scowled at her. “It’s my dream. I’m kinda supposed to be here.”

“In a dream, yes. But in this dream? What makes you dream of such a place? Why Twilight’s castle?”

Oh, wasn’t that just the most bullshit answer? Answering a question with another question.

I bit my tongue to keep from jumping the gun. If I was going to chew her out for daring to show her face here, I wanted to wait for something big to hit her with.

And besides… I owed it to Twilight. I promised I’d talk to her.

“I don’t know, but you stay over there,” I commanded.

“I have not moved,” she said.

“Exactly.”

She blinked, and I swore I saw a hint of annoyance, but she seemed to think better of whatever thoughts ran through her head and sat down. God, she even sat like she used to, with her wings half spread and everything.

“Why did you come for me?” she asked.

“You were in a coma or whatever. Twilight and Starlight were working on getting you out. But they couldn’t get into your dreams like I could. We think it’s the Tantabus that lets me cross through dreams better.”

She watched me with razor-sharp eyes. Did she think I was lying? What reason would I have to do that? She already knew I hated her guts. I didn’t have anything to hide.

“I gave you the Tantabus for safekeeping,” she said. “Not so that you could stumble blindly back in and deliver it to our enemy.”

“Well it’s not like you gave me an instruction manual or anything. How the hell was I supposed to know? And what did you expect me to do? The dream was falling apart and I had to make a choice. Was I supposed to just let you lay there in that coma forever?”

“Yes!” She leaned into the statement, and out went those wings, just a tad more.

That sent me back on my heels. I locked eyes with her, and I saw something other than that stone mask of hers. Something in her eyes pleaded with me.

Was that guilt?

I snorted. “If it makes you feel better, I wanted to.”

That earned me a healthy dose of silence. Judging by how she scanned the floor, it was hard to tell if she found my words hurtful, justified, or both.

“I subsumed the Nightmare to keep it from plaguing you,” she said. The judgmental sharpness to her voice had left. She sounded tired.

“Yeah? And look where I ended up. In a dream with my real Nightmare.”

She said nothing to that and looked away. The silence that crept in was more than welcome.

I still had a job to do, though, so I reluctantly asked, “So what’s with the Nightmare wanting the Tantabus?”

“Power. I feel it even now, sucking away the Tantabus’s life force. If the Nightmare devours it wholly, I fear what power it will gain. I dare not refute the prospect that it may even find the strength to break free of its own shackles and gain control of my body.”

“You really think that’ll happen?” I didn’t have any explicit reason to believe her, but something in how plainly she said it triggered a primal fear in me. No one would be that serious about something without believing it themselves.

My thoughts flashed back to the dream the Tantabus showed me last night. The evil things I had once wanted to make real. That really was the Nightmare’s plan, wasn’t it? Just like I guessed.

“If the Tantabus could tear open a dream and escape into the real world,” Luna said, “there is no reason to assume this Nightmare could not do the same, if not more, after consuming it.”

I couldn’t argue with that logic. I scuffed my hoof on the bedsheets without taking my eyes off her.

“So then what do we do?”

Luna sat quiet for a while, deep in thought. I had never seen someone more focused.

“We destroy it,” she said.

“Destroy it? You mean the Nightmare or the Tantabus? I thought you were trying to save it. Isn’t that the whole reason you gave it to me in the first place?”

I caught her eye for a split second before she looked away. Her ears fell flat back.

“The Tantabus is a part of me, true, and I cannot imagine life without it. But I will sacrifice what I must to protect my subjects.”

There were a million things I could have said, a million more I wanted to. But all I could manage was a half-hearted whisper:

“Yeah…”

The silence came back after that. Neither of us could look the other in the eye.

“I’m done here,” I said. I couldn’t stand being in the same room as her.

Luna didn’t say anything, but she granted me my wish with a flash of her horn and a suffusive, white light.

• • •

It was still dark when I opened my eyes.

I took a deep breath, and the nightly autumn chill from the window said without words that I was truly awake. I considered lying there until sunrise, but my eyelids weren’t heavy enough and my legs itched for a walk.

My hoofsteps echoed off the hallway’s high ceiling, which loomed just out of reach of the crystal torchlights. It was hard to keep myself from staring up into that darkness. Something about it felt necessary, like it was part of something missing from me. I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

I just… I needed to think. About what I was doing. About what I was doing here. What did I gain from all this and was it all really worth it?

So many questions I had to ask myself. So many answers I needed to find.

I wandered past a staircase, and a whim struck me. The spiral stairs drew my eyes up up up the inner core of the tree, and after a moment’s consideration, I followed them.

I went to the highest tower in Twilight’s castle. It opened onto a balcony that overlooked all of Ponyville and the valley beyond. Canterlot sparkled like a tiny jewel latched to the distant shadow that was Canterlot Mountain.

A slow but steady wind blew across my face. I was too high up to hear any of the bugs, and it was too early for the birds to be out. Just me and the deep, deep shadow of a new moon, with no Mare to speak of.

Starlight was right. I needed to talk to Twilight. Like, really talk to her. I just… I didn’t know how. What if I did hurt how she felt about Luna?

But that’s what this was all about, wasn’t it? Twilight wanting to help me get through this? She had said exactly that so many times, and I knew she meant it. But all the same, I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t want her to hurt for me. That just wasn’t right.

But how much of this could I handle on my own? I was strong. I was. I was. I had to be.

But there was strength in accepting our weaknesses.

I… Starlight was right. I headed back downstairs.

The hallways seemed quieter than before, as if watching, waiting for me to wuss out and head back to bed. I stopped in front of Twilight’s door and put my hoof on the handle.

Here I was, moments away from my greatest fears.

I heard the brass handle jiggling in my grasp, and I remembered to breathe. I had to do this. I had to talk to her. I swallowed the lump in my throat and turned the knob.

The faint rectangle of light swept across the floor and over Twilight’s bed. She rolled over beneath the sheets, and after rubbing her eyes, she squinted at me.

“Sunset?”

I lifted a hoof, about to step inside, but stopped myself. “Hey, Twilight. Can we talk?”