Princess Twilight Sparkle released all the air from her lungs as she fell backwards onto her bed. To say that the past few days had been trying on her was an understatement. The battle with the Dazzlings (or sirens, whatever you wanted to call them) had been quite an ordeal, not helped by her anxiety flaring up as she kept failing to write the musical counter-spell that, it turned out, hadn't even been necessary.
"Thank you, Sunset Shimmer," Twilight muttered to herself, feeling a bit surprised at how thankful she truly was. Even after offering Sunset a second chance, she hadn't expected the unicorn-turned-human to come as far as she had. And yet, Sunset had been the one to pull the Rainbooms out of their altercation that allowed the Dazzlings to access their magic. Twilight smiled briefly at the thought, knowing that, for all her faults, Sunset truly had changed. It was a comforting thought. Hopefully, the rest of Canterlot High would begin to see the good in her now.
A knock on the crystal door brought Twilight out of her daydreaming. Rising up on the bed, Twilight looked at the open door, discovering that Spike had already opened it.
"Hey, Spike!" Twilight greeted warmly, before she leaned back and yawned. "I was about to go to bed. Do you need something?"
Spike opened his mouth, raising one claw, but he glanced towards the floor nervously. He shuffled both scaly feet, the way he always did when he wasn't sure what to say. Twilight stared at her number one assistant, perplexed. Usually, she already knew when he had something on his mind, but this time, she was left in the dark. Spike seemed almost ashamed to look at her.
"Spike?" she asked again. It seemed to snap the dragon out of his stupor.
"Um, well..." he mumbled. "Never mind. It can wait until morning. I'm just gonna...finish the re-shelving, before bed..." With that, he turned around, his tail disappearing behind the door.
Twilight sat up, climbing off of her bed. She didn't buy Spike's act for one second. So she trotted after the purple dragon, catching up to him fairly quickly.
"Spike," she called out to him. "You know you're bad at lying to me."
Spike stopped in his tracks, his tail falling to the floor in defeat. "I guess," he admitted, turning to the alicorn. Twilight looked into his eyes, trying to get some kind of hint as to his feelings, but all she saw in his reptilian slits was remorse. "I'm so sorry—"
"Sorry?" exclaimed Twilight in surprise. "Why are you sorry? You haven't done anything wrong. If anything, you saved our flanks back in the other world. If you hadn't found the human Vinyl—"
"No," Spike interrupted. "I'm talking about all that stuff before the battle. When you were trying to come up with the counter-spell."
"Why?" asked Twilight, genuinely confused. "You're acting like that was your fault, which is wasn't, in any way. We were fighting, and I was over-thinking again. You know I do that."
"I wasn't talking about that," Spike replied. "I was talking about when we first got there. When you were still figuring out the sirens."
Twilight didn't reply this time. It was a signal to continue.
"When we got there, and Sunset and the others were all worried about the sirens, and I kept talking about you. About how you'd gotten the whole castle, and the Princess of Friendship thing, and how you could fix the problem easy, and how great you were at magic...
"I didn't realize it at the time, but I contributed to all the stress you were already dealing with. I was pouring even more pressure onto you. Everyone started to expect you to finish the spell so quickly, even you yourself. I was just trying to compliment you, but I was just setting up more expectations that you couldn't live up to, and you thought you had to finish the spell by yourself, and it was making you so anxious." Spike looked down at his feet sadly. "I'm so sorry. I've been a terrible friend, a terrible assistant..."
Twilight was taken aback. If she were forced to be completely honest, she probably could've done without all of the "Princess of Friendship" hype Spike brought when they came to the human world. It just reinforced her belief that she was supposed to be the one with all the answers. After all, Sunset and the others had no other option but to call her.
At the same time, she couldn't bring herself to blame Spike. Not to mention that she didn't want to, obviously.
"Oh, Spike," she said tenderly, pulling the small dragon close with one of her front legs. Spike resisted a bit at first, but eventually brought his claws up, wrapping them around Twilight's leg. He clenched up his eyes, letting a few stray tears drip onto Twilight's hair. She let him cry for a minute, before she began to speak again.
"Spike, I would never, ever, blame you for that, and I never want you to do that to yourself. All you were doing was trying to support me, trying to assure me that I could handle the situation. That's something friends do for each other.
"And besides, there's no guarantee anything would've gone differently if you hadn't said those things. You know how I am, I get prone to anxiety, or trying to do things by myself." She gave a small smirk. "Maybe I'm not as bad as Applejack, in that regard, but in the right situations, I do it."
Spike nodded, his mind processing Twilight's words, but that expression of doubt remained on his face. Twilight gently pressed a hoof to his chin, pushing his face up so that he looked her in the eyes.
"I've been with you since you hatched," Twilight said earnestly. "You were practically my only friend until I moved to Ponyville. You've helped me more than I can ever repay. You would never hurt me on purpose, and I wouldn't do it to you."
Now Twilight's eyes were beginning to tear up. "Shining Armor always used to tell me how, when I was born, he had this instinct appear inside him. He knew that he would always love me, and would always protect me and care about me, no matter what. I didn't understand what he meant, until I met you.
"You are family, no matter what species you are. And no matter what mistakes you've made, I'll always love you."
Spike smiled, his whole body shaking as he hugged Twilight as tight as he could. Twilight responded in kind, draping her lavender wings over the small dragon. In that moment, both knew two things. They knew that it would be okay, and that family wasn't about blood. It was about bonds.
