your name, like honey pressed to my lips
The rumbling stopped at last, and at last Rarity heard nothing but her own beating heart and the fading echoes of twisting steel. She was, as far as could be told, alive. She felt her stomach, her chest, her face. Yes, most certainly alive. And with a few more pats, she guessed relatively in one piece as well, which was a relief.
That relief was, unfortunately, short lived. Then came the slow, crawling realization of what had happened and where she was.
The ground had cracked underneath them as the Formorian giants had caught up to their bus. Rainbow Dash, still determined to get at least some of the girls to the Formorian king, swerved to avoid their great clubs. Rarity, unable to keep herself from turning in her seat to look, had lost her balance and gone toppling onto the floor. Momentum carried her this way and that, metal bars beneath the ratty school bus seats digging into her arms as she screamed.
And then the ground had begun to give way. It rose before them, and Rainbow pulled the bus into a stop that sent them all scrambling… and Rarity to the back.
They’d scrambled out. She’d tried. She’d lost them.
Or they had lost her. Someone had lost someone. She was in the dark.
Her breathing was so loud in the darkness. Had it always been this loud, in the daylight? Had it always been like a gale in her ear? And had she always breathed this hard, this fast, this frantically? No, she hadn’t.
Rarity tried to calm herself, but found doing so difficult. If her friends were victorious, maybe they could free her, but only if they had time. And if they thought she was alive. If the giants above won, or they were reinforced… No, she wouldn’t think of that. There were still six magically superpowered girls up there, surely that was enough.
Why couldn’t she hear them fighting? How far down was she? How had the bus fallen, and how far?
With weak and shaking hands, she reached out and felt around her. Fallen in a seat, so that was lucky, and no wall behind so she wasn’t in the back. Further exploration and she found the window, and immediately cut herself on the glass.
Rarity cursed, and as she pulled her hand back, she felt something grab her. She hissed and protested, throwing both hands out as if to hit whatever ensorcelled her.
“Who are you?” screamed a voice--Twilight’s voice. “I have magic, and--”
“Twilight? Twilight, it’s me!” Rarity called.
Twilight, who had been levitating her body, dropped Rarity and with a painful yelp she wasb ack in her seat. Rubbing her back, she sat up and sighed.
“As lovely as it is to see you darling… Hear, you rather…” Rarity trailed off. She touched her injured hand and tried not to make any further embarrassing sounds. Probably bleeding. It felt wet, but in the pitch black she didn’t trust her senses at all.
“I-I’m sorry, I didn’t know--”
“It certainly wasn’t a giant,” Rarity groused, and then softened. “Sorry. Twilight, you wouldn’t happen to have any bandages, would you? I need to close this wound, if I can. I’m not sure how big it is.”
“I’m… I’m not sure I can, Rarity,” Twilight said, so very softly.
That brought her up short. “What?”
“I… I’m kinda stuck.”
Well. Shit.
“Stuck in what way?” she asked, gently as she could. She tried not to imagine it too closely. She tried not to think about Twilight’s body pierced with steel and pinned like a bug on a card.
Some grunting. Soft sounds of flesh impacting metal. “I’m not really sure. It’s hard to tell.”
“Are you hurt? Darling, if you’re hurt--”
“I’m fine! I think I’m fine. I feel a little pinched, but…”
Oh, that’s fine, just kept together by crushing--No, no more thinking. Twilight was fine. “That’s good to hear, dear,” she said lamely. She cradled her hand and tried very quietly not to panic.
“Your blouse,” Twilight said, and then coughed. “You could tear it. I don’t have any bandages. Fluttershy has our medical stuff, remember?”
“I assumed at least someone else had something. I did. I’m not really sure where my bag is.” A beat. “I’m afraid to go looking for it.”
“Afraid?”
“The bus. I’m not sure how stable it is.”
“Ah.”
They were quiet.
Rarity heard Twilight breathing now, and wondered that she hadn’t before. At first it was so, so very loud. Too loud. It crowded her. But then it wasn’t crowding her so much as sheltering her. Another voice, another breath, another moth around the lamp.
Rarity knew she would make it. She knew she would be alive. A lady is too grand a thing to die in such an ignoble and pathetic way, for one, and for another all of her friends had magical super powers. Surely this counted in some way towards her eventual salvation. She would make it. Her body was intact. Her sanity was in tact. She herself entire was intact, and you didn’t just die with your body and your mind fine and your heart beating, that wasn’t how dying worked, you couldn’t just die alone like that. It wasn’t as if she’d run out of air down here.
Could you run out of air down here?
She’d thought about that more than once. Drowning. Suffocating. How it might be to just gasp at nothing. She’d always had air and couldn’t imagine not having it. Your lungs would pull at void. Or would you pass out first, would you never even get to have that final moment? Would you just fall asleep and never wake up or--
“Rarity?”
She almost fell out of her seat.
“Yes?” she managed, clinging to the faux leather.
“Is it okay if we, uh, you know. Talk. Or something. Where are you?”
“I’m a few seats ahead of you. I think ahead. I’m not sure which way is which, honestly.”
“Did you bandage your hand?”
Rarity blinked. “Oh. No, I hadn’t.”
She gripped her blouse and bit her lip. Even now, for the briefest moment she felt as if tearing it was some sort of crime. It really was a lovely blouse. And you’re hesitating because you’re mad. Tear the damn shirt.
So she did. Or she tried, and it proved much harder than she’d expected.
“Can we--ugh, excuse me. This is proving a bit taxing. Can I even use this, Twilight? Won’t it get dust in the wound or some such?”
Twilight was quiet for a moment.
“Believe it or not,” she replied faintly, “I actually don’t know. I’ve read about basic first aid before, I have! It’s just, uh, been awhile.”
“I see,” Rarity groused and pursed her lip. She switched to pulling at the sleeves and after some struggle managed to tear something off. It would have to do.
They were both silent for a moment as Rarity worked, and at last she laid back against the seat, away from Twilight. But her thoughts drifted back towards her friend.
“Is it uncomfortable, dear?”
“No.”
“Oh. Good.”
“Hey, Rarity?”
“Yes?”
She heard rustling. “That was a lie. It actually is really cramped.”
“I had a feeling.”
“I tried moving it while you were bandaging. I think you were bandaging? I heard a ripping sound. I’m so stupid. I shouldn’t have used magic on you. I’m all but out. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Gods, Twilight, you’re stupid.”
“Twilight--”
“Stupid--”
“None of that. Stop.”
She did stop.
Rarity cleared her throat. “You have no guarantee that your magic wouldn’t have given out half way and crushed you. We can’t know. We can’t afford to dwell on it either.”
“Why not? What else can we do? Moving might kill us both, and I can’t do any magic for I don’t know how long. Nothing we can do, none of the skills that we possess, are useful here. Can we even really waste time or energy?”
“Can we ever? Much of life consists of not being able to do much, Twilight,” Rarity said, still looking ahead. She closed her eyes, which did nothing, but made her feel oddly restful.
“That’s bullshit,” Twilight said. She coughed again. Rarity noted the sound and filed it away for later. It sounded a bit off.
“Oh? Explain, dear? If nothing else, it will keep us both from worrying.”
“You always have options,” Twilight said. “Always. You can learn more, work harder, get faster. If your skills won’t cut it, you can learn other skills.”
“You can,” Rarity said. “Not all of us are so blessed.”
“But I’m not blessed. I got this way by working at it.”
“And by being blessed with natural gifts that made that work bloom,” Rarity said turning her finger in circles, as if to hurry herself along. “I don’t doubt your work ethic, Twilight, and it isn’t an attack. Hard work makes the woman, I’ll say it as much as you. But we all do have some limits.”
“I mean--”
“Do you think you could be as social as I or Pinkie? Keep up with as many people as we do, keep their names and ages and secrets and preferences straight? Could you do that and then be able to navigate every encounter with them? I’ve no doubt you could memorize facts, but you’ll admit that its daunting.”
“I could… I mean, I’ve gotten so much better.”
Rarity felt petty. “You have, dear. You’ve become a social butterfly in your own right. I’ve been very proud of how you’ve grown.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
“I didn’t mean to cause offense,” Rarity said, gentler this time, as if offering a hand.
“It’s okay.”
Rarity sniffed, and the riled dirt tickled at her nose. Maybe that would do her in, the dirt eating up all the space for air.
“Hey, Rarity?”
“Yes, dear?”
“If I get my magic back, do you think you could hold your crystal shield long enough for me to pull us out? Maybe?”
“Perhaps. I’d love to try,” Rarity said, knowing she wouldn’t and couldn’t. They’d have to be free Twilight first, and without food she wouldn’t have energy. Or maybe she was wrong and they’d be out in no time. Who knew?
“How long has it been?” Twilight asked.
“I’m not sure. A few minutes? At least five minnutes. Ten?” It was then that she remembered that she had a phone, and hurriedly dug through her pockets. Nothing. “Twilight, you wouldn’t happen to have access to a phone, would you?”
Shuffling. “No.”
“Of course. Blast.”
“Shouldn’t they be done fighting now?”
“Well, we can’t be sure they aren’t already. Or… Well, it’s been quiet in here for awhile.”
“How far down are we? We can’t have dropped that far, we only fell for a few seconds. Two or three at most, and I doubt it was that long.” Rarity could almost hear the numbers whirling about in her head.
“I haven’t the foggiest,” Rarity said, and found she didn’t actually care.
She should care, but she didn’t. Twilight’s predicament she cared about, but otherwise… caring was so difficult and it took so much energy. She really just did not have that much energy. Couldn’t she just die in peace, without having to do any blasted math?
“Twilight,” she said, struck by a whim. “If I don’t have some sort of talk going on, I think I shall go rather mad.”
“Right. How do we stay talking? Kinda hard to be--” Another cough. “Sorry. Kinda hard to do the whole light conversation thing in here.”
“A game. One question for a question. Back and forth.”
“That sounds alright,” Twilight answered, and Rarity imagined she smiled. She hoped Twilight was smiling. Smiling meant she was alright, and Twilight had such a lovely smile that the thought just made her feel better overall. “You first, Rarity.”
“Right then. What to start with? I’ll start with… this. Do you have any normal activity that I wouldn’t know about?”
Twilight hummed.
“I bake,” she said. “You?”
“Pardon, you bake? I’d forgotten that if I knew it.”
Twilight giggled, though the sound was scratchier than usual. “I do.”
“Well, I’ll happily join you in that pursuit if we have the time. Your turn.”
“Do you have some thing that you do I don’t know about?”
Rarity pursed her lips and thought. “Well, it’s not a recent activity, per se, but… Online poker.”
Twilight’s laughter was a surprised bark. “You’re joking.”
Rarity felt absolutely ridiculous. “Odd as it sounds, I am not. It was years ago. I’d seen some movie or other and was browsing on my parent’s computer and had some odd ideas about what acceptably ladylike behavior was. It’s easy to think of yourself as sophisticated and smart when you remember that your napping father’s credit card is easy to find.”
“Oh wow. How old were you?”
“Old enough to watch the original Casino Royale,” Rarity groused. “I was perhaps ten or eleven. I spent about two hundred dollars before my mother found me.”
“I imagine she wasn’t happy.”
“Yes, and neither was I afterward.”
“Okay, that wasa good answer. Your turn.”
Rarity rubbed her cheek with one open palm. The sensation was nice, and her hand felt so cool.
“Who was your first kiss?”
“I uh. Do I have to answer? You don’t know them.”
“Aw, Twilight! Entertain me. I languish here, bored and trapped.” And trying not to imagine what you look like back there.
“Fine, fine. Her name was Peach Blossom, and I was thirteen, and she wanted to ‘practice’. And I went along with it because even as a thirteen year old I could see through that, and did not care at all.”
Rarity blinked. “You know, I wasn’t sure if you swung that way.”
“Surely you suspected.”
“Well, yes, suspected. But I hadn’t asked.”
“Well, you know now. So that’s neat.”
“Ah, no, you have more to tell.”
Twilight started to speak, but whatever words came were drowned in coughing. Rarity bit her lip. She wanted to ask. Twilight had lied the first time. She knew that now.
“Sorry. It’s dusty. She was cute. She is now. I kinda knew I wasn’t straight already, but I guess I thought I could make sure? I didn’t exactly have a lot of examples for how queer romance works, Rarity, so someone asking the absolute dumbest and most transparent question of me ever seemed like a miracle. We kissed in her room after school one day, and we both liked it but were too embarrassed to keep going. And then we ended up trying again and just made out.”
“And you dated, I assume?”
“Nope.”
Rarity swallowed. “Truly?”
“I was a shut in and she was shy and together we suffered the classic sapphic conundrum: lesbian sheep syndrome.”
Rarity snorted. “Which is what, exactly?”
Twilight cleared her throat. “Never heard that one? It’s a joke, kind of a mean one and kind of a bitter one. Women are told for so long that they are pursued, not pursuers, and expected to be submissive. Society tells you to mind your place long enough, and as a group you internalize that to the point where even if you’re not interested in men at all, you still end up awkwardly side by side, neither of you willing to make the first move like two dumb sheep. That’s the joke. You don’t want to make it weird or feel like you’re being creepy or pushy, and she’s thinking it--”
“Yes, I know the feeling,” Rarity said quickly, flushed.
“Oh yeah. I guess you would, huh?”
“Excruciatingly, yes. It’s your turn, Twilight.”
“If it helps, Peach and I are still friends. She and her boyfriend are part of my local TCG playgroup, so I see her every now and then. Your first kiss?”
Rarity sighed. “I had actually hoped you’d be original on this one. It was, ah. You want to know?”
“Well, I do now. Tell me, before the bus crushes me.”
“That isn’t funny,” Rarity said flatly as she could manage.
“Sorry.”
“It was Trixie.”
“You did what? Sorry, I thought you said--”
“Don’t be rude,” Rarity said, carefully hugging her legs to her chest and squeezing her eyes shut. “She was very sweet, but she was also very straight. I told her I wasn’t, she expressed curiosity, I naively offered to do something much as your friend did, because I too was not the cleverest of children. She hated it.”
Twilight didn’t respond at first. She was a beat late, and then a few morebeats late. Rarity swallowed again.
At last, she answered. “You liked it.”
“Of course I did,” Rarity snapped, and then winced. “Sorry. I’m just more tense. It’s fine. I’m fine. Just… feeling a little closed in, ha. Yes, she didn’t like it and I did, and I felt gross and unwanted and perhaps a bit unnatural. The feeling stuck. It was, you know.”
“Know?”
“Early on in my transition, very early. I’d barely started.”
“Your what?”
“Nothing. Twilight, dear, I do need to ask you something?”
“I--sure.”
“Are you really alright?”
Twilight didn't’ answer at first, which Rarity had expected. But expecting did not make it easier to bear.
“I don’t know.” Her voice was so small. It was a bird she could break in her hand. “I really don’t know. There’s a lot on me, and I think some of its a seat? But the rest I don’t know. It hurt to move earlier. That why I stopped, and then when I tried again I couldn’t… I couldn’t. And it hurt. It doesn’t hurt right now, but it is a little tight.”
Rarity’s breathing was quick and shallow. She tried to rein it in.
“That’s fine, dear. Is talking bad right now?”
“It’s kinda hard. I want to.”
“Okay. We’ll keep talking.”
“Okay.”
Rarity took a deep breath and ran her hands all along her face, just feeling it, just making sure she was all there. “Your turn?”
“What transition?”
Rarity laughed. She laughed bitterly, and openly, and eventually kind of genuinely. “Twilight, god, really? Even right now, you’re not going to let a single rock be unturned, are you? God, I really love you, you know that? And you don’t even know.”
Twilight chuckled too. “Sorry. Gotta reputation to uphold.”
“And it’s a good one, dear. I’ll not tarnish your impeccable record of sticking your nose into every secret, though this one wasn’t really a secret. Rarity wasn’t always my name. People didn’t always think I was a girl. I didn’t always look this way, and my voice didn’t always sound this way. Do you understand?”
“I… thi--Oh.”
Rarity chuckled, genuinely chuckled without a bit of regret. “Oh indeed. I’m honestly very pleased you didn’t know. It means I pass well. At least, I’ll take it as a sign for such.”
“Congratulations, then.”
Rarity’s smile, which had come unbidden, now left bit by bit. “So yes. I internalized this unfortunate incident in a bad way, as I internalized many things unfortunately. My turn, now.”
“I’m.. sorry.”
“It’s quite alright, dear,” Rarity said hurriedly. “But, my question. If you could trade places with Twilight, the other Twilight, would you?”
Twilight laughed, or rather she coughed with humor. “That’s not the best question. You already know the answer. I wouldn’t.”
“Same,” Rarity said, and peeked over her shoulder. Of course, she could still see nothing. “I mean, give up on these good lucks to become a horse? No thank you.” As Twilight laughed, she continued. “Sure, magic would be nice, but can the other me pick up things? Sorry, dear sweet little ponies, but for all your cuteness we have one advantage: thumbs, which don’t require any sort of magical batteries.”
Their laughter faded. Twilight was quiet. They both were quiet.
For all of her need for noise and sound, for all both of their needs, there does come a point where you just cannot talk anymore, at least not meaningfully. You’ll feel it, they’ll feel it. The words will limp out of your mouth and fall flat and lifeless on the ground, or crawl half-blind and malnourished along the bed or between the chair legs from you towards a now more alien other.
Rarity knows this yawning gulf. She knows it as well as everyone else knows it.
But then the awkwardness fades, and the gnawing begins, the feeling of emptiness eating at your eardrums, like someone screaming right in your ear. Rarity hated it. She’d always hated absolute silence. The gust of her own breathing was white noise now, and beyond it there was no comforting mundanity to focus on.
“My turn?” Twilight asked at last, and Rarity could have wept with relief when she heard.
“Please, go on.”
“How do you know that I’m here? How do I know that you’re there?”
Rarity blinked.
“That was two,” she said at last.
“I know.”
“What exactly… how exactly do you mean that, Twilight?”
“I don’t know. Passing time. How do I know you’re not a hallucination?”
“I do love an existential quandary, Twilight, but that’s a bit on the nose, isn’t it? You don’t know, in that your eyes can trick you and your mind is easy to fool with stray sparks and chemicals, and your ears are fallible. It’s perfectly possible that I am in fact an illusion. But I’m not.”
“You’ve never had that weird moment, where you stop and blink?” Twilight asked, and then coughed for a good half a minute before continuing. “Sorry. You’ve never had a moment where you were doing something and you got lost? Not physically lost, though you can, just like…” Another pause.
Whenever Twilight paused, Rarity felt like the floor shifted beneath her, or like the earth outside shifted and pinched closer around the steel cocoon that sheltered them. The earth outside, beyond the broken glass she was worried about still, waited with bated breath on Twilight Sparkle’s every word.
“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” Rarity said.
“Never stopped. And thought, why am I here? Never felt like always--” Twilight took a deep breath, and Rarity needed to know why-- “You’ve never felt like you’d just always been somewhere or been doing whatever it is that you’re doing, even for a moment?”
“Sure.”
“I’m feeling that right now.”
“It’s just nerves,” Rarity said.
“I know. I used to be deathly afraid of forgetting who I was. I keep thinking about that. It’s such a dumb fear. I had this whole scenario in my mind with a hundred different variations, and every single one was asinine and pointless. I would wake up and lose things one bit at a time until there was nothing left. I’d forget my parents first, and then my friends, and then… or, they’d forget me. That one scared me more, for some reason. I’d wake up in my house and go downstairs and my parents would think I was some stranger breaking in to their home, or not remember having a daughter at all or…”
“Twilight?”
“I just don’t want to be--”
“Twilight, darling. Please. Please, I need you to stop.”
“What?”
“You’re spiralling. I need you to… Twilight, please breathe. Slowly. One-two-three, one-two-three. Remember?”
“I do.”
Her breath sounded ragged. Rarity shifted in her seat, now fully looking back into the void where she guessed Twilight was. Even after hearing her voice talking, pinpointing the direction, it was hard to trust anything. They tell you that losing sight brings everything else to the fore, and they aren’t entirely wrong, but the average person overrates just how good they are at reading the signals their other senses give. You can smell and hear everything. It doesn’t mean you can use that information at all.
So she pointed herself and hoped she wasn’t off. It didn’t matter, but it felt like it mattered.
“Twilight?”
“Yeah?”
“I want to come over there. I’m going to try and move, okay? If it starts unbalancing us you’ll tell me?”
“I guess so. If moving that much would do it, it probably already would have.”
“Fair.”
Rarity rose stiffly and slowly. She slid one foot across the floor and into the alley, waiting for the sickening sound of twisting metal. Quickly, she reached out and gripped the seat across the way, doing her best to ignore the shooting pain as her cut ground against the metal bar beneath the leather.
Step by step, she advanced, cutting a path in the dark. The bus did not break or tip. There was no twisting metal. But even so, her beating heart took up the whole bus, and with nervous energy she landed on a seat several rows back and clung.
“How close am I?” she asked the dark.
“Closer,” it replied. “A few more rows?”
Twilight’s small voice compelled her. She continued, until she did feel something strange under feet, and the bus had deformed under pressure. Her mouth was dry, and her forehead pulsed with drumming pain, her heart trying to split her skin.
The seats were warped, torn apart, and she put a hand up to find that the ceiling slanted. Rarity swallowed, tried to speak, choked on her words.
“You made it. I’m glad we didn’t unbalance the bus,” Twilight said, a little listlessly.
Rarity sniffled. “I am too, dear.”
“Hey, Rarity? I’m glad.”
“For what?” Rarity asked, gingerly setting herself down.
“That you’re here, I mean.” She coughed. Rarity thought that sound was so soft, so precious. Every sound from her voice was a small, barbed gift. “I’m glad it was you.”
“And that would be… Honestly? Same,” she said, and laughed. “Same. I’m glad you were here with me, right now.” And it was a lie, because she wanted Twilight anywhere else, up in the sun where she could breathe.
“I really, really hope we get out of here soon.”
“I do too. Twilight, I need you to be very honest with me.”
A beat. “Okay.”
“Are you okay? I mean, are you injured?”
“I… I can’t tell,” Twilight said, her voice trailing. “I can’t. I don’t think so? But… My extremities feel a bit numb. I am very trapped. I didn’t want to scare you. It’s pinched, and I’m in the divot. Or part of me? My chest hurts, and my legs are kind of numb, and I’m not sure why.”
Rarity nodded. She didn’t really know why, because she hadn’t answered her own question fully, but it felt right. “Okay.”
“Can I ask a favor?” Twilight asked.
“Anything.”
Twilight chuckled to herself, and Rarity’s heart melted. “This sounds so dumb. It is dumb, and I’m dumb. Can you just… touch me? I mean my head. Hand. Arm. Anything. Play with my hair. You’re so close now and the dark is--”
Rarity was already reaching out and halfway she met her friend’s outstretched palm and their hands slid along each other, ships clipping each other in the fog. She felt the soft skin of Twilight’s arm beneath the tattered sleeve, and she felt a tear and felt her hand slip on the slickness--blood or sweat, she did not ask--and found Twilight’s soft hair. She imagined it, frayed and out of place beneath her hand (wasn’t it always, just so?), and she stroked it as carefully as her nerves would allow.
“We’ll get out,” she said.
“I know.”
“I won’t forget you. You won’t forget me. Or you, I guess, for that matter. You’re a hard one to forget, Twilight Sparkle.”
“Am I? I’m not so sure.”
“You have a lovely, vibrant personality.”
“I am a recluse.”
“And if I play Bach cello suite behind locked doors, it does not lose an ounce of its beauty.”
Rarity could feel Twilight rolling her eyes and she couldn’t help but smile.
“You know what I mean.”
“And I still refute it. You are lovely, and I am glad for your company, even in this place, and you are not so easily forgotten.”
Twilight mumbled something that sounded like a thank you, and Rarity didn’t press. She went back to stroking her friends hair as soothingly as she could. Strangely, comfortingly, it reminded her of helping Sweetie Belle back to sleep after nightmares. It was alright. It was all alright.
“You say I’m not forgettable,” Twilight began with obvious disease, “but… how? I’m not aware of having much in the way of a personality.”
Rarity sputtered. “You have lots. Personality, I mean. You have lots. Oh, damnit, Twilight.” Twilight shifted underneath her hand. “Forgive me. I’m just bewildered that you would say that, or that you could think it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, dear. Would explaining it help?”
Rarity felt her head nodding before the affirmative answer.
“Then go ahead.”
Twilight squirmed, and Rarity let her hand go still. It moved up and down as Twilight did, and that felt oddly nice.
“I never felt like there was much to the idea of me. I know that doesn’t make sense. But I had my experiences and the sensory data…” She shifted again, and Rarity wished she could see Twilight’s brow crumple in annoyance at language. “But that’s not a person, it’s readouts and results. I thought that was fine, but everyone around me kept talking about finding themselves or figuring themselves out. That’s how our parents and teachers talked about it.”
“And that didn’t make sense.”
“No, it didn’t. I wasn’t lost. I was here, a bundle of experiences.”
“And that’s not what they meant.”
“Yes. How did you know you were… you know. For all I know, there’s something like that I don’t know about myself.” She took a deep, haggard breath. “God, I’m never going to know. I’m never going to find out I’m going to die in here aren’t I? Rarity, it’s just going to stop. We’ll run out of oxygen as we inhale. I’m using up too much right now. Oh my go--”
“Twilight. Stop it! Please, dear. Breathe.”
“If I br-breathe too deeply, sh-short--I’ll shorten my--”
“One. Two. Three.” And though Rarity could almost see her barely restrained panic, she felt and heard Twilight breathing with her. “Three. Two. One.”
They went back and forth like this awhile, until Rarity returned to stroking her friend’s hair and listening to the softness of her breath.
“I knew because I felt… like I was out of place. I felt like an awkward idiot. Lo and behold, I was one. But for more than just the normal reasons. Everyone is at first, at that age. I was two beats off from where my peers were, a half-step down from the song my male friends made of their lives. I wanted different things, and felt different things. I just assumed that they all hated being what we all were as much as I did, that they must, because I disliked it so much, and… I didn’t want to think I was broken so very fundamentally.”
“You aren’t,” Twilight said.
Rarity smiled and shushed her softly. “It’s alright. I’ve moved beyond it, mostly. Don’t you mind.”
“I used to spend all my time with myself or Cadance. That’s why she knew me so well. She babysat me.”
“Did she?” Rarity asked. She scooted closer until she found something that felt like a wall and leaned against it. She hoped she was close to Twilight. “I know she cares about you quite a lot.”
“We’re like sisters. She used to take me to the library and I would just…” But her voice wandered.
“I can imagine,” Rarity offered weakly, taking up space, trying to push the smothering quiet back.
Rarity already knew it, but found herself discovering a truth in the way that only experiencing it in a liminal space can provide: You can only focus on how awful it’s going to be when you and the people you love die for so long before you start to drift into new topics more or less by accident. You start thinking about how to escape.
Your mind just starts moving without you, Rarity discovered. She didn’t know the math, she had no idea how much air two nervous girls could even breathe, but she made it up as she went. Scenarios sprang up out of the nothingness, ones where Twilight lifted them encapsulated in one of Rarity’s shields up and out of their prison, burrowing through the rocks and dirt and the asphalt until they lay sprawled out on soft green grass under a welcome sun. Unbidden she wondered how it might feel to lie panting, aching, alive and breathing without even the shadow of doubt. Her mind bombarded her body with every way it might feel, the oxygen burning so beautifully, her chest heaving, her skin caressed by a hundred blades of perfect loving grass.
Twilight was right. She would never connect the gap between what she experienced and what she was. Rarity couldn’t show her and Rarity didn’t know herself. There wasn’t enough time. There wasn’t enough time at all, and how much of it wasted, and how much of it left in front of her?
Rarity had chosen to change her life when she was young. It all came tumbling out dramatically over some triviality, as everything she had ever tried to bottle up inevitably did. It had started with new clothes and new hairstyles and none of that fit either, and nothing had fit but some things fit better than others. The world had never felt entirely right but she’d learned to appreciate it like she appreciated jazz and art, ignoring how the grating of half tones hurt and loving how it enticed onwards. She’d done so much work perfecting, or trying to perfect. She’d hid herself so well, practiced in front of so many mirrors and trained her voice so well that it was impossible to tell. The friends who knew her from before barely even remembered. She had reached back into history and grasped it in a steel vice and bade it live or die, memory by memory, on her command. She’d done so much, and it was all going to be wasted and she was going to die curled into a corner in a stupid shitty public transit tomb.
Rarity gripped at her hair with both hands, and she did curl up in on herself then. Twilight hadn’t said anything in what, minutes? Hours? Time was fake! She didn’t know how to keep it with no reference! God!
Her nails, perfect as always, cut exact, clawed at her face. Clawed clawed clawed until she threw her hands down on either side and took deep, horrible breaths, ones that she could feel wasting the precious life-giving oxygen around her.
“Twilight?” she asked.
“Mm?”
“Twilight, dear, is your magic back?”
“I… Not yet.”
Rarity nodded spastically. “Of course not, silly me.”
“Thinking of getting out?”
“Of anything.”
Rarity reached out her hand, just anywhere in the nothing. She tried to call an ounce of that power back.
It flickered along her arm. Crystal sprouted out of thin air in front of her, glowing faintly.
Glowing.
She blinked, and then turned to try and see Twilight in the dim light. Her budding shield only held for a few seconds, but she could make out the general shape of her friend’s predicament. The chairs had folded in on her as the ceiling of the back end was pressed into the floor, and Twilight was in the middle of it.
But she’d not seen blood. Surely that meant Twilight was fine, right? Oh yes, of course it does, because this is a movie and everything works out evenly like that, of course, she chided herself.
“We could,” Twilight managed. “Move this.”
She almost said can we? But didn’t. “We can. Do you want me to try?”
Twilight made a little grunt that sounded affirmative, and Rarity moved towards her, feeling out from her soft body to the tangled mess above her. She tried to leverage her her admittedly lithe weight, and heard something shift. Twilight bucked next to her, and Rarity stopped.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Are you alright?”
“Y-yeah. That hurt.”
“I’m sorry, I’m… I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Rarity sat back, her heart hammering in her chest.
“If we had our magic… you could lift this,” she said weakly.
“And you could shield us both.”
“You were thinking about that too? Lift us up like a wrecking ball?”
Twilight laughed. “It’s the obvious plan.”
“I guess it is.”
Rarity felt Twilight’s hand touch her leg briefly, as if she were groping for another hand to hold. Rarity supplied it.
“We might recover in a few minutes. I can make a shield for a bit, so that’s coming back.”
Twilight squeezed her hand. “We might. Our friends could dig us out. They’ve got magic enough between them.”
“True,” Rarity said. She ran her thumb over Twilight’s hand. “I should’ve saved more power.”
“Or it’s probable that using your shield like you did kept you in one piece,” Twilight countered slowly, her voice seeming almost lazy.
“Sure,” Rarity replied, blinking. Oh, there they came, little teary pinpricks. There they were. “I’m sorry, Twilight. We’ll get you out of here.”
“I’ll get us both. Or someone else will get us both.”
Rarity nodded. She clenched her free hand. She thought about the feel of magic, how it thrummed, how she wanted it to thrum again. “We’ll be in the sunlight again, darling. I know it.”
“Do you?”
Rarity blinked.
“Do I what, Twilight?”
“Do you know? I… I don’t.”
The pinpricks became something else. Rarity took a deep, unsteady breath. It was still hard to think. It had been hard to think normally all the while, really. Another breath.
“We’re going to be fine, darling. I promise. We’re going to be fine.”
It wasn’t a lie. She wouldn’t lie to Twilight.
