Compatī

I couldn’t say how long I’d lain in bed. I’d left the curtains drawn when I first ran off for Twilight’s castle, and I didn’t have the presence of mind to open them when I made it home. I wanted it dark, anyway. I wanted everything to go away where I couldn’t see or think or feel.

I wiped my eyes. I didn’t need a mirror to know how red and puffy they were. Today wasn’t a day for mirrors. Today was a day for bed, for burying myself in the comfort of my blankets and pillows and trying to forget.

The world would go on, but I wanted to stay right here where nothing happened but the sound of my breathing, and no living soul—pony or otherwise—could ever hurt me.

There was a knock at the door.

I flinched and snapped my eyes toward the front of my apartment. The loft where I kept my bed gave me a commanding view of the front door, and when I looked, I saw what was unmistakably part of Human Twilight’s hair through the door’s little windows. What was she doing here?

I thought about rolling back over and pulling the comforter over my head. I didn’t even care that my hair was still damp from my shower.

I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I felt so ashamed and disgusting. I wanted to be alone, and yet I felt anxious and completely overwhelmed. Just thinking about it almost had me breaking down again.

Twilight knocked again, harder this time.

Fuck. I couldn’t leave her standing out there. It was raining—I could hear it on the roof. My front stoop didn’t have an awning, and the fall weather had been getting chilly this last week.

I rolled out of bed with my down comforter over my shoulders and shuffled to the door. When I opened it, I was surprised to find not just Human Twilight, but also Princess Twilight.

They both regarded me with a short pause and apparent concern, and the cold air made the tiniest puffs out of their breaths. Princess Twilight wore the dark-purple coat with the faux sheep’s wool trim that I got Human Twilight for Hearth’s Warming, while Human Twilight wore her raggedy old teal one that I’d told her at least a dozen times to get rid of.

Human Twilight had a nervous look about her. Princess Twilight probably hadn’t shared any specifics, and seeing me like this didn’t do her worries any good.

Princess Twilight, though… If I had seen her concerned before, right now it looked like her heart was ready to break. She opened her mouth, shut it, extended a hand, pulled it back, and finally settled on coming in for a hug.

I flinched at first, but her warmth quickly chased away my worries. I wrapped the comforter around her and we stood there for a while. The slow exhalation of her breath on my shoulder was warm, and it reminded me that yes she really was here for me.

“She showed up on my doorstep asking me to take her to you,” Human Twilight said. “Said it’s important?” The upward inflection in her voice spoke volumes of how little Twilight must have told her, and the nervous look on her face begged me to tell her anything she could do to help.

Princess Twilight and I pulled away from our hug. Or, more like she let me pull away when I was ready.

“It’s…” I started. Honestly, I didn’t know how to continue that. “Thanks, Twilight,” I said to Human Twilight. “It is.” To Princess Twilight, genuinely curious: “How did you know where to find her? Canterlot City is like a hundred square miles.”

Princess Twilight rubbed the back of her neck and gave me a sheepish smile. “So, funny story. I knew that I needed to come find you after you rushed out like that, so I followed you over. But you were long gone by that point and school was closed, so I couldn’t go ask Principal Celestia. But I did know you were friends with my human counterpart and that she’d know how to get in touch with you.

“So I found the local library and did a little research on demographics, zoning laws, and transit times to and from Canterlot High to gauge possible places that I would live in a metropolitan area like Canterlot City. Then I did a quick home search in those areas and categorized my possibilities by city tax brackets and the most efficient square footage based on a single-residency with part-time income. Hers was my third guess.” She poked the tips of her index fingers together.

I attempted a smile, as—

“But… telling you about that isn’t why I’m here.” Princess Twilight took another step toward me, her hands clasped at her breast. “May I… may I come in?”

I rubbed the sleeve of my arm and looked away. As much as I wanted to be alone, I couldn’t stand the loneliness. After a moment’s hesitation, I stepped back to throw a half-hearted arm toward my apartment.

Princess Twilight stepped inside. “Thank you.”

She waited just inside the doorway, her hands now clasped at her waist like she was waiting for me to direct her somewhere. I didn’t have the energy for that, so I simply shuffled past her.

“Are you going to be okay?”

Hearing Human Twilight behind me brought me up short. It was odd enough knowing two of the same person, but having them both in the same conversation added an extra level of weirdness I wasn’t used to. I looked over my shoulder and took another shot at that smile from a moment ago. I liked to think this time I actually succeeded.

“I’ll be fine,” I said.

Human Twilight didn’t seem convinced. Her eyes danced between me and Princess Twilight, but she eventually gave a small nod. She adjusted her glasses before saying, “If you need me, you have my number.”

“Thanks.” I wasn’t sure what else to add to that, and it didn’t seem she did either, so I shuffled back inside, closing the door on the way.

My apartment had an open floor plan—it was all essentially one room, with the small loft where I kept my bed lording over everything. It was dark with all the curtains drawn, just bright enough to see the stairs and avoid geolocating any furniture with my shins along the way. I went up to the loft and sat down among my nest of blankets.

Twilight took off her coat before following. At the final stair, she did that sort of lean-to-the-side thing as if peeking in an open doorway. When I didn’t say or do anything, she crept up to the bed and sat on the corner. She looked afraid—of what to say, of a lot of things.

“Do you mind if I turn on a light?” she asked in a noncommittal, walking-on-eggshells tone of voice.

I rolled over to the far side of my bed and snapped on the nightstand lamp. It was one of those vase-like cone tops that pointed upward to light up a room off the ceiling rather than a standard lampshade. It was nice for not blinding myself in the middle of the night whenever I had to get up to pee.

“So…” Twilight said, one hand on her lap, the other clenched at her chest. She rubbed the opening of her blouse between her thumb and forefinger. “You had a nightmare back there. Didn’t you?”

She knew exactly what had happened in that dream. I made that much obvious with the way I bolted out of there.

“Yeah.”

I pulled my knees into my chest and hugged them, stared at the wrinkles my feet left in the bedsheets. They looked like a miniature mountain range stretching from one edge of the world to the other.

A car went by outside blaring rap music with the bass up way too high. Neither of us said anything until it faded away.

“Do you… do you want to talk about it?”

I could feel Twilight’s gaze, that forever reaching, yearning look on her face. I buried my chin into my knees and held tighter. Of course I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to relive what I just relived.

I saw her eyes follow the still-damp tangles of my hair, and she returned her gaze back to her lap.

“Did the shower help?” she asked.

“No.” I sniffed halfheartedly in a pathetic attempt to hide it. “It never does.”

More silence. She put her hand out toward me on the bed, but the inches stretched between us, and I felt afraid to reach out myself, like letting go of my knees would make me fall upward into some infinite abyss. When I didn’t react, she pulled back and considered her lap again, while I retreated to my thoughts.

Hello, Little Sunset…

Her voice still bounced around in my brain as fresh as the day she said those words. I’d had nightmares about that… that moment, every so often. But nothing like today, nothing as real.

The bedroom, the bookshelf, the darkness closing in. I could feel the shadows winding up my legs—feeling, touching, probing—and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake the disgusting thought that somewhere along the line, I made it happen. After all the shit I did, after all the lies I swallowed and feelings I let control me, I deserved it.

I heard a familiar fwwwishz of air. Twilight had snagged a deck of cards from my bookshelf and was shuffling it. It was the one I bought at a thrift store the first time I felt homesick. A red-and-white pony with a swirling mane and tail reared up on the back of them.

She divvied out five cards to each of us and set the deck aside. A hopeful smile spread across her face as she fanned hers out in front of herself.

I knew by the five-count what game she wanted to play. Canter’s Court, as I had grown up knowing it, a two-to-four person game oddly similar to Hearts here in this world. I considered the cards lying in a small pile at my feet.

Playing a card game sat squarely at the bottom of my list of stuff I wanted to do right then. More than anything, I wanted to curl up in my nest of blankets and wish the world away. But that wouldn’t have been fair to Twilight, especially after just letting her in.

She was trying. And by the grace of whatever gods were out there, so was I.

I picked up my cards: an even spread of a five of clovers, king of horns, two and seven of wings, and a jack of horseshoes. She dealt, meaning my lead, so I threw down the two of wings.

I wasn’t in the right headspace to bother with what the best opening card would have actually been. Never really was one for card games in the first place.

Twilight threw down a ten of wings and swept up the hand. She still wore that hopeful smile. Somewhere in that head of hers she believed she could get through to me, that she could help just by being here.

Which she was. Really. But also not. I knew her smile was real. I knew she was right—she was the goddamn Princess of Friendship, after all—but in the moment, believing fell outside the realm of possibility. I appreciated it, but I could hardly work up a smile of my own.

As the game wore on, her smile receded to a simple line, then into a reserved frown. Words lay on the tip of her tongue, but she was either too afraid to say them or couldn’t figure out their proper order.

Not that I fared any better. Staring at the cards, at the numbers and little symbols, trying to eeney-meeney-miney-mo what I should play next in order to keep up with appearances.

The whole situation was too much. Not that I didn’t appreciate Twilight being here—I doubted I could ever put into words how much that meant to me—I just couldn’t think straight enough to play a game at the moment. I just…

I sighed and folded my hand of cards in my lap. This wasn’t working.

I snatched up the deck and put my hand out for hers. The frown on her face turned to distress, and she seemed all the more desperate for the words still eluding her. But she handed me her cards, and I went to shuffling. That done, I dealt them.

One for me, one for her. One for me, one for her. One for me, one for her.

It was all I could do to keep myself thinking, and yet to keep myself from thinking. Mindless motion. One for me, one for her, until I’d dealt the deck. I flipped my top card over and placed it between us. Seven. I pointed noncommittally at her deck.

Twilight wore a mix of emotions, and it was easy enough to see her struggle to follow through. She had picked the song we danced to—this little game of cards—and it was all I could do to keep myself from screaming until my lungs shriveled up.

She flipped her card, a four, and I swept the pair into my off pile. Her mouth formed a hook that would have gotten a smile out of me any other time, just imagining the gears whirring in her head. She didn’t need an explanation, though. War was simple enough to pick up after a few hands.

I threw down a nine, and she a jack. I pushed the pair toward her and pointed at her deck. Her lead.

We played a few hands in silence, me focusing on the sounds and feel of each card flip, her with a distressed frown as her eyes stared past the game itself, until she found whatever thought she was looking for.

“How’d you get through it before?”

I had just pulled a card from my deck when she said that, and the words brought me up short. I thought back to the days immediately after it all happened. All the planning—the lies, deceit, and bullying I did when I first crossed over. It was hard to believe I let my feelings drag me down that dark of a road.

“I didn’t,” I said. I laid down a king to take her queen.

“What happened, then?”

“I just kinda… pushed it all down.” Three versus nine, she took the hand. “Sometimes you forget about it, and the feelings leave you alone.

“You sometimes feel like you’re better,” I continued, “that you’re healed.” Six and five, my hand. “And then some little thing comes along that reminds you of it, and the hole tears open again like it’s always been there.”

“And the nightmare back there was one of those?”

I shook my head. “No. A little thing would be seeing Vice Principal Luna in the hallway and finally realizing why you’ve always had a bad feeling about her. Or hearing one of the guys at school playfully calling his girlfriend his ‘little so-and-so.’”

I turned away from the card game and stared through my bookshelf. The nightmare crept in from the corners of my mind, that feeling of powerlessness and being distinctly and utterly alone. I sucked in a breath before realizing I had dug my nails into my arms hard enough to leave marks.

“That nightmare was more than just a little thing, Twilight,” I said. “That was more than just a nightmare.”

“I, I didn’t mean it like that, Sunset.” She wore a look of almost fear. It was hard to believe, but it seemed like she really had no idea what she wanted to say or how to say it. If the Princess of Friendship herself was speechless, then what kind of lost cause was I?

I clammed up and held my knees again, to show her I didn’t feel like talking for a bit. Not that I didn’t want to hear her voice.

I just… I didn’t want to talk right now. I would have given anything just to listen to her talk, though—to hear her read a book or something. It could have been the dictionary for all I cared. Anything to keep my mind away from what we were talking about and to know I wasn’t alone.

The halt in conversation hurt her, I could tell. She seemed even more distressed than before, and all her motions came in quick, nervous bursts.

She put down a seven, and I matched her with my own. One, two, three cards face down, and I flipped over a… damn, a four.

I caught her staring, and so I waggled my finger at my cards, then pointed to hers.

Twilight placed three cards and flipped an ace. Shit. No beating that. Well, at least my four was crap, but the other cards were… a queen, a six, and a jack. Son of a bitch. I pushed everything her way.

Twilight raised an eyebrow at me. “Isn’t the ace a one?” she asked.

“Mm-mmm,” I said, shaking my head. “Ace is always a trump card in this world, except for a few games where it can be a one if you want it to be.”

A difference I had forgotten about in Equestrian card games. All the same, it was nice hearing her ask that—something normal, even if only for a moment.

“Huh.” She shuffled her winnings into her neat little off pile. We played another two hands before, “I’m sorry.”

“Hmm?”

She couldn’t meet my gaze. She clutched her half of the deck in her hands tight enough to bend them. “When you came into my room the other night and wanted to talk, I thought it was just going to be something little.

“I mean, I knew you were taking whatever it was pretty hard. It was serious to you, so it was serious to me. But deep down, I wanted to believe it was just some silly misunderstanding between you two that we could easily work out together.

“And I want to believe we can still do that,” she was quick to add. “To some extent, at least. But… I, I had no idea just what it was. A-and when you finally told me, I…”

“I know,” I said. “I saw the way you looked at her the morning after. Sorry, for… ruining how perfect she seemed to you.”

Twilight shrunk in on herself at that and again took to bending and unbending her cards. We passed the moments in silence, neither of us able to find the will for another hand of War. A car passed by outside, playing something country-ish.

“I just… It’s a lot, Twilight. It’s a lot to take in. To process, to… to just deal with.”

I tried to keep my voice level. Not sure if it worked. I found enough strength to look her in the eye, at least, but she was still staring worriedly at her cards.

“And I’m trying to,” I said. “To deal with it. It’s just… you can’t understand how hard this is for me.”

Luna came to mind. That stoic, self-martyr-like grandstanding she kept trying to pull ever since she wedged herself back into my life. It was bullshit. She didn’t have the right—not to save me, and sure as shit not to destroy me.

“I know you’ve been trying to be strong,” Twilight said. “And you have been. But you don’t have to go through this alone.”

And there it was. That ever-persistent notion that she and the others kept throwing on me like a safety blanket, that I was a thing to be preserved and protected. Caution: fragile, handle with care.

A fucking porcelain doll. That’s what I was to them.

And they were right. That’s what I was. Damn it all to hell, that’s exactly what I was.

I was tired of it. I was so goddamn tired of it. The tears built up in my eyes, and it got hard to breathe, but I didn’t care anymore.

“Except I do,” I said. I looked her in the eye, and a kernel of desperation welled up inside me. “I’m the one that has to go into these dreams. I’m the one that has to relive this bullshit and save that bitch from all this.”

I jabbed a finger toward the front door. My hands shook, and it took all my effort to keep the anger inside me from dragging me down into a sobbing mess.

“I’m the one that has to see her face and hear her voice and play nice while remembering exactly what she did to me.”

Twilight bowed her head, and her eyes crawled up the bedsheets toward my feet. She had let her cards spill out in front of her.

“You know she hates what she did just as much as—”

“I don’t care!”

And just like that, the dam broke. My throat closed up, and I couldn’t hold back the tears. All I could do was clutch my knees and wish none of this was happening.

“I don’t care…” I whispered through the sobs.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, I felt Twilight’s hand on my shoulder. I knew she was going to say something about Luna, some bullshit about her that I didn’t want to hear.

“I have to go back, though,” I said. “I have to. Because nobody else can. And they shouldn’t have to, because this is all my fault. Because I’m the one who let Nocturne manipulate me. I’m the one who was too stupid to realize she wanted to destroy my life. I’m… I-I’m the one who thought she loved me…”

Twilight pulled me into a hug. I laid my head on her chest, gripping her by the blouse and holding her as close as I could. We stayed like that for a while—her rubbing my back, me sobbing like a child. When I calmed down enough to speak, I pulled away and wiped my eyes.

“When Nocturne…” I swallowed. It was hard saying the word. “When Nocturne raped me, she threatened that she’d come back. I ran away through the portal because I had to get away from her. Because I knew that no matter what I said or did, I couldn’t stop her from coming back whenever she wanted. Not me or Celestia or the entire goddamn Equestrian army.

“I came here to take the magic on this side of the portal and use it to make her pay for what she did. But instead, I became a terrible person, until you and the girls fixed that. And then I just kind of… pushed it down, made myself forget about it.”

I brushed my hair out of my face and took a deep breath. I felt so empty all of a sudden, like all the warmth in my body had bled out of me. I shook my head.

I remembered the vision the Tantabus showed me: that other me with her wings and crown of fire, the broken and brutalized Celestia, the worlds beyond sight that I wanted to subjugate for their indifference, the hatred that I had turned into a mantra. That unholy reminder of what I hoped to become, what I almost truly became.

I looked down at my hands resting in my lap, at all the lines in my palms, curled and uncurled my fingers. “Revenge wasn’t me anymore, and the Nightmare was just this… this thing that I’d gotten used to. It was a part of me, and I was okay with that. It reminded me of where I came from and why I was working so hard to be a better person.

“But then… Luna just waltzes back into my life, proclaiming that everything’s going to be better, when all she’s done is make things worse. And now I have to fix everything before the Nightmare destroys both worlds.” I clenched the loose fabric of my pajamas. “Because I was a stupid, naïve piece of shit with stars in her eyes, who gave up everything she had for a ghost pony who hated her guts from the word ‘hello.’”

I tried laughing but didn’t have the energy. Instead, I rolled onto my side and pulled the blanket over my shoulders.

After a long moment, I felt Twilight’s hand rubbing up and down my arm. I pulled my shoulders in tighter, but I wouldn’t have given up that contact for the world.

“You don’t have to do this, Sunset. If you really don’t want to, we’ll find a way.”

She’d find a way… Honestly, I believed that. Twilight had that kind of resourcefulness. She and her friends could move mountains. But if I were to step aside for her, that left a bigger question that I’d never live down:

“Even if you did, what would that say about me?” I rolled over to look her in the eye. “If I back down and let you save the world like you always do, what would that say about me?”

Twilight didn’t have anything for that. She looked at me like a lost puppy.

“I couldn’t live with myself if I ran away from my problems again,” I said. “I couldn’t live with you fixing my failure because I was too weak to. Or worse, if I let you get hurt instead of me, I… what does that say about me?”

Twilight stopped rubbing my shoulder. Her eyes glazed over, but her face was still wrought with worry.

“It says you’re a strong pony,” she said.

She wrapped her arms around me and rested her head on my shoulder. “Stronger than Celestia. Stronger than Luna. Stronger than anypony I know.”

“Don’t lie to me, Twilight,” I half whispered. I didn’t even have the energy to be mad anymore. I just felt empty.

Twilight kissed me on the temple, and she brushed my hair away from my ear. As much as I hated people playing with my hair, it was Twilight, and I was tired, so I resisted the urge to jerk away.

“I’ve never once lied to you, Sunset. I know you’re strong. Because a weaker pony would run and never look back. You came back once. And I know you’re strong enough to do it again, if you choose to. But if you don’t, nopony would fault you for it.”

A lock of my hair lay next to my hand. I rubbed it back and forth between my forefinger and thumb.

“I would,” I whispered.

More silence. The rain had stopped sometime during our conversation, and all I could hear was the sound of Twilight’s breath.

“Do you remember what you said to me?” she asked. “That night you came to my room?”

I had taken to twirling the lock of hair around my finger, but as she said those words, I stopped. I hadn’t told her much, only the one big thing, really.

“You made me promise,” she said. “You made me promise that no matter what, I’d help you see this through to the end.” Tears ran down her cheeks, and her hand trembled on my shoulder. “That I’d help you see this through to the end.

“And I hate it. I hate seeing you hurt like this. I hate knowing that there’s more and worse things ahead. I hate thinking ‘what if?’ What if you don’t wake up this time? What if you do but you’re not the same? Or it’s not you waking up in your body?”

I reached up and took her hand. She gripped mine tight enough that it almost hurt.

“But a promise made is a promise kept,” she said. “I can’t break that. It’s the only reason I haven’t insisted on doing this myself. I know you need this.”

I really didn’t know what to say. I’d never been in this situation, nor had I ever helped anyone else through it. But I knew well enough that she needed to ensure this got fixed as much as I needed to fix it.

I gave her hand a gentle squeeze, and she took that as a cue to let go.

“Thanks,” I said.

I wasn’t used to this kind of vulnerability from Twilight. She was always perfect, always sure of herself, dorky nerd moments notwithstanding. She projected confidence like it was nobody’s business, like a goddamn Princess of Friendship should, but the tears running down her face painted a different picture.

She wasn’t a god, she wasn’t perfect. She had struggles just like everyone else. Bigger struggles than others, to be fair, but struggles all the same. And right now, I was one of them. She’d hurt enough today, so I offered her a smile.

It got through to her, and she smiled back. She took to stroking my hair again.

I resisted the urge to pull away, and the more she did, the less it felt wrong—the less it reminded me of Nocturne.

She ran her fingers through my hair, until I closed my eyes and breathed a deep sigh. Somewhere as I drifted off to sleep, I heard her whisper:

“I’ll be here. As long as you need me.”