Author's Note

So...this is very different to my usual stuff. It's an interesting experiment if nothing else.

Regardless...Um, trigger warnings (in this chapter) for medical issues and major character death.

Twilight's End

Starlight watched as Twilight continued to read the book that had captured her attention from early this morning. Starlight was worried, and more than a bit concerned for her friend.

Twilight had gotten fat over the last few months. Packing on some weight near Summer Wrap up, and only gaining throughout fall and winter.

Spring was coming soon, Winter Wrap Up was only a few weeks away, and Twilight had gone from a slim alicorn to quite a fat one. What had only been a few pounds initially had well...exponentially grown.

Starlight didn’t know how much Twilight had gained. Twilight refused to step on a scale, and had warded herself from spells that could take such a reading. If pushed, Starlight would ballpark it at over a hundred pounds.

Twilight could fit in her throne, but it was evidently a tight squeeze that was deeply uncomfortable for her. She hadn’t flown since the end of summer, and hadn’t exercised as she usually would have through winter either.

Most of what she’d done for over six months was eat, and it showed.

Twilight’s plot and flanks had taken the brunt of the gain, making it hard for her to fit into chairs (and thrones) she’d once settled into with ease. When she was sat in a chair with no armrests or other restraints, Twilight’s plot hung over the edges of the chair by a good inch or two.

Twilight’s Cutie Mark wasn’t spared, warping and stretching along with her flanks to accommodate her excess adipose. Her Cutie Marks were faded, still healing. Part of Starlight worried they never would, since Twilight kept eating.

The rest of her wasn’t spared either, though she was clearly a bottom-heavy mare. While her plot, flanks, and waddling gait made it clear she was fat, the rest of her indicated she was simply chubby. Even her wings were covered in just the smallest hints of excess fat. Her cheeks were chubby, and when Twilight looked down she had an obvious double chin that vanished the rest of the time.

Watching Twilight clear her third, groaning plate of cookies in an hour, Starlight knew what she needed to do.

(LINE BREAK)

Doctor Sunshine looked at the medical records held aloft in front of her bespeckled eyes to the mare sitting in front of her, wondering how one Princess Twilight Sparkle could have eaten herself so fully into the throws of obesity in such a short amount of time.

No illness, curse, or any other magical/non-magical thing was the cause of this sudden weight gain, that was clear. Looking at the concerned notes from Starlight Glimmer made it possible that Twilight was packing away anywhere from 3-10 thousand calories a day.

No other causes needed, if that information was true.

Doctor Sunshine sighed, flipping through the files. Beforehoof, Twilight had been in spectacular health. Perfect blood pressure, perfect everything.

That had changed too, the tests had said. Not near critical levels, not by a longshot, but numbers were high. Higher than they had any right to be.

And Twilight wasn’t listening. Even though the chair she was currently sitting in was far too tight, even though it was groaning under her weight, even though her plot had overhung the exam table. None of it mattered. Starlight’s note was right:Twilight was in denial.

Doctor Sunshine opened her mouth to say something else, deciding to beg with Twilight that something had to be done, but Twilight’s narrowed, angry eyes stopped her.

“I don’t know what it is with everypony focusing on my weight recently, but I’m fine,” Twilight stated, “I feel fine, I’m eating normally, and I think I look amazing. That’s all that matters, not useless numbers on a scale.”

She’d refused to look at the scale while she’d been weighed, too.

Doctor Sunshine sighed, “Princess-”

“I don’t want to hear it.” Twilight said, standing up with a grunt. Somehow, by some miracle, her plot wasn’t firmly entrenched in the chair she’d been sitting in. Though it was now obviously clear it had been painful because of the lines temporarily pressed into her flesh, “I’m leaving. I don’t want to hear any more lectures or anything else.”

Doctor Sunshine nodded, adding that to her notes in Twilight’s files. Hopefully Starlight could get through to her before this became a more worrying prospect.

Somehow, the look in Twilight’s eyes got the doctor (and the nurses) to stay quiet, even when Twilight’s hips got caught in their doorway, leaving her to teleport away.

(LINE BREAK)

Fall and winter had been fun. Twilight hadn’t minded him sneaking extra NIghtmare Night and Hearth’s Warming treats, hadn’t minded him getting seconds or thirds. It had been freeing for him, different to Twilight’s usually strict routines.

But now the fun was over, and Spike was getting worried.

Twilight hadn’t said what had happened at the Doctor’s, but Starlight had. She’d sugarcoated the news, but Spike could tell.

In the months after her impromptu doctor’s visit, Twilight had taken her gluttony to the extreme. Like she was eating out of spite, wanting to prove everypony wrong.

Any weight Spike had gained during the fall and winter months had already melted off of him now that spring was firmly underway. He helped everypony he could, and walking around Ponyville burnt a lot of calories.

Twilight seemed insistent she not burn any calories beyond what she needed to. Ask to her travel any distance more than a few feet? She teleported. She used her magic for things she used to do manually, like preening her wings. She seemed intent on staying inside and holding tea parties (and dinner parties, breakfast parties, brunch parties...parties that had anything to do with food), with her friends.

She didn’t want to go outside to fly with Rainbow, or help Applejack in the fields.

She would do so, if pressed, but those outings were becoming rarer and rarer as the days dragged on into weeks, and weeks into months.

Summer time was coming soon, and Twilight had spent almost all of the amazing spring indoors. Reading and eating, eating and reading.

Spike was getting worried.

Twilight’s waddle had gotten worse as she’d piled on the pounds and her weight gain started showing in areas other than her hind end. Her stomach looked like a balloon,strapped to her wider barrel, constantly stuffed and bloated. Her legs were chubby too, becoming tree-like in their...well it wasn’t effort to hold her up, not really, but they were widening.

Even Twilight’s front half had graduated from ‘chubby’ to ‘fat’. She now possessed two chins, with a third one on the way. Her neck had thickened and was threatening to develop into rolls. Her wings were near useless, Spike hadn’t seen her attempt to flap them in weeks-

Twilight coughed, and Spike jolted from his reverie. He scuttled forward to take Twilight’s empty coffee cup, filling it with coffee, heavy cream, sugar and full-fat butter. He’d tried it once, early in the morning before everyone had gotten up. He didn’t know how Twilight could drink it, but she did. All the time now.

So much so that she’d needed to go to her dentist for cavities and whitening. The sugar (from coffee and just about everything else she ate nowadays), and staining from the coffee (and soda, wine...Creators know what else).

When her coffee was how she liked it, Spike turned to leave. He couldn’t watch her gorge herself on the fourth platter of Sugarcube Corner treats of the day. He just...the thought of it made his stomach churn.

(LINE BREAK)

Twilight’s world consisted of medication, pain, pleasure, and the sounds of magic and machine struggling to keep her alive.

It’d been...over two years since she’d abandoned her self control in terms of her diet. She’d always wanted more, and after one too many pointed questions about how she kept herself slim and trim from some random Equestrian citizen, something within her snapped. It had started off innocently enough. An extra treat here or there, a couple of pounds gained…

And then it spiraled. She’d quickly become addicted to food, gorging herself (in secret at first) day and night, until it became clear that the ‘accidental’ pound or five had spiraled out of her control and suddenly she was tipping the scales at 300 pounds.

Then 500.

Then 700.

She didn’t know how much she weighed now. Probably far more than 700.

As it turned out, she wasn’t like Celestia and Luna. Their...strain of alicorn-ism was potent and ancient. Theoretically they could gain an infinite amount of pounds and still be fine. Not that they would, as much as Twilight might like to see it. They’d suffer no health problems. No diabetes, no arthritis, no heart disease.

She and Cadance weren’t so lucky, as it turned out.

She should have known long before she realized. Should have noticed the long decline of health the others had spotted when she’d still been firmly in denial.

By the time she could admit her failings to herself, Starlight had had to teleport her directly to Ponyville Hospital in the hopes of stopping her sudden heart attack from killing her outright.

She’d lived, but she couldn’t cling to her denial anymore. Which made it all the worse to avoid her friends’ advice. To ignore the doctors. She took her medication like a good mare, but hadn’t changed her diet or exercise.

Five years of...10+ thousand calories a day would do a lot to hurt a mare’s innards. Even with an alicorn’s increased durability. Even considering her health had been perfect until six short months after she’d started truly gaining the weight.

“Twilight?” Spike was...she felt bad for the pain she’d put him through.

Twilight opened her eyes, though she was rapidly losing sight in them. The type 2 diabetes shouldn’t have come as a shock, and it hadn’t. Not really. What had shocked her friends was her utter lack of proper care for said diabetes.

Twilight had had to stay in the hospital for nearly a month after they’d found her out. Trying to convince the ponies there that she didn’t want to die. She just wanted to live on her own terms. Be it for five years or three weeks.

Spike was there, on her right side. Little more than a green and purple smudge that she could hardly see over her chipmunk cheeks.

Twilight wheezed a quiet ‘hello’, barely audible. She wasn’t laying down so much as she was sitting up. If she laid down her weight would crush her lungs...Well, crush her lungs more. As was she was hooked up to an oxygen tank. There were talks of increasing her oxygen but they weren’t sure. Mostly because it was evident she didn’t have much time left.

Twilight weighed...probably half a ton by now, maybe more. Nopony who made it to this girth would survive very long. It was a miracle she’d made it this long.

“Hey, Twilight,” Spike’s voice was trembling again. She wanted to reach out and stroke his spines to comfort him but she couldn’t move that far, “How are you this morning?”

It was morning? Huh. The nurses had left the blinds closed. She thought it was still nighttime.

“Good,” Twilight whispered, shifting her bulk a little. The movement hurt, but so did every part of her these days. Her heart was giving out, lungs giving out. Her hips were displaced because of how damned back heavy she was. Her wings were locked into place by her fat, and pinned behind her. She had bed sores that wouldn’t close. At least one was infected.

Twilight took the pause to breathe again, “You?”

“I-I’m okay,” Spike said miserably. She couldn’t tell his exact facial expression ,but she wasn’t blind enough to not notice he wasn’t dealing well with this.

Twilight raised a chubby hoof towards him, feeling her leg fat sway with the movement. It was heavy, and awkward, but caught his attention. He scooted his chair over so he could be closer, wrapping a claw around her hoof.

“...Sorry,” Twilight wheezed, “‘S...what I want.”

“You want to die?”

They’d gone over this, and Twilight glared. Spike not subtly started to cry, wiping at his face with his free claw. He sniffled miserably, leaning into her, “I don’t want you to go.”

“I...know,” Twilight wheezed. She would have hugged him if she could. Instead, she closed her near-useless eyes.

Aside from the pain, which was honestly being dulled with large quantities of morphine, Twilight felt...Soft, and warm, and comforted. Like she was wrapped in a 24/7 hug of her own flesh. That and food were her only pleasures. In recent days, the doctors had taken her off her strict sugar free diet. They must have gotten those test results back, and clearly it was nothing good if they let her gorge on whatever anypony deigned to feed her.

She’d done nothing but kill herself slowly for the last five years and Twilight was at peace with that. She’d become a slave to her addiction, so unaware of how far she’d fallen that it took a literal heart attack for her to realize what she’d been doing ‘wrong’. Not that that had stopped her. She’d gorged her way into such an early grave that she, the ‘Princess of Friendship’ was dying with only one friend at her side.

Twilight didn’t blame the others for leaving. If she’d been in their hooves she’d have left too. Most had left as part of ultimatums. A few, like Celestia and Luna, simply couldn’t bear to see Twilight like this.

Couldn’t bear to see the monument to gluttony and hedonism that she’d turned her body into.

She only saw Spike and Starlight anymore, and Starlight less and less. Preparing for Twilight’s funeral maybe? Twilight had made up the proper paperwork and paid for everything already. Had done so after she’d eaten those greasy, cheesy potato skins after having a bypass.

Completely relaxed, Twilight quietly slipped into the realm of dreams. All without seeing her fellow alicorn lurking in the background of her memories of the last few years.

Beside her, Spike watched as his friend and mentor lapsed into sleep with a small smile on her face. After almost half an hour of clutching her stubby hoof with both his claws, the heart monitor started shrieking as Twilight’s heart finally gave out for the last time.

Spike was devastated, but he couldn’t help but be relieved that Twilight had gone quietly in her sleep. That was the most soothing death he could think of for a mare who had suffered so much physically in the last years of her life.

Even if it was all self inflicted.