The Kiss of Immortal Love

~ IV ~

The Bridge Betwixt Serenity and Apathy

The lands were a mixture of beauty and death, great oaks of silver rising tall, its leaves charred and branches chopped. Grassy fields blended with burned areas and leaving for smaller distinctions and distances between the two as the journey went on.

They travailed across the rolling hills of the east, underneath the gigantic trees and its dome of shade, white cherry blossoms rich in the air. Winds blew its cooling touch from the air levels above warm. They'd taken their first break beneath the tree. Spike lowered onto a knee, feeling his claw around the print of a deer.

"Would you have killed them?"

The question came from behind him. He didn't bother to stand as he turned around to glance at the mare. His digits played with the texture of the dirt—the impression fresh as moisture soaked its essence.

"If Shining Armour's planned had worked and he came back with his full force," Twilight continued in a fear to dare another step toward him. Had she finally recognized him for a dragon beneath the jacket and mask? "Would you have killed them? It'd be your duty to escort me."

Spike lifted to his feet and rested a claw on the blade, drawing it out, allowing the metal to glint.

"You would have fought back." Twilight nodded and finally dared that step forward. "But how far would you have gone? Merely wound them and go on? Sever something important, allowing them to live but never the same? What would you have done?"

Spike was clenching his claw, and yet, it was relaxed around the handle of the blade. Thinness of redness spreading into the construction of the arm. It hung in a flexed state by his size, the claw clenched, digits digging into his palm.

Why couldn't he open his mouth and say what he felt? There was something about Twilight Sparkle melting through scales and metal evoking feelings within him. Those emotions embodied his duty. Her natural grace drove his diligence to protect and escort her.

But she was in fear of him and what was to come, and he couldn't soothe her woes, offer nothing to her more than his services. In the arm that still remained, he answered her question by drawing his blade, slashing an 'X' through the air—twirling the steel into a swift docking into his sheath.

The click was the loudest sound to come from him.

"No thrust or stab or anything of the sort." Twilight actually came to smile at him, something pulling at the corners of her lips that was genuine. Shade rested on her face though the violet of her eyes burned softly through the dimness. Pools of magenta one could swim within. "Only what needs to be done. The usual way of the average soldier. Guess you're like the rest when it comes to matters of battle, huh?"

Her stomach growled. Twilight's ears flapped up, and her eyes widened in embarrassment. In giggling, her snout dove into her muzzle, and she lowered her blushing cheeks. "I, um, k-know we're to hunt 'game' during out travels to keep afloat. But there... may be another difference between us."

Spike tilted his head to the side.

"Ponies don't eat meat."

The sweeping lands had been blessed by nature and protected by the chance of circumstance. Hills of shining greens populated in white flowers kissing upon its every shade. It was a valley tucked within towering cliffs jutting around the spanning horizon. Miniature rivers curved through the hills with polished marble bridges crossing over them.

Which the duo walked over, the view to their side depicting the grandeur of an ancient building left to ruin. Towering arches of four had lifted it from the ground, one now removed, leaving it at a slant. Vines of violet were strewn over its shape.

Spike kept a claw on the handle of his blade, glancing back every now and again, watching the mare interested in her horn. Something was bothering her. Those eyes raising only to spot her horn then look down again. The face that was weary from the weight of sadness, it then bore.

The dragon stopped, and so did she.

Sweeping the surroundings of the abandoned lands of beauty, he turned around and dipped to a knee, asking her closer with the backward flicking of digits. Nervously, Twilight stepped closer. He then opened his palm. Without hesitation, she placed a hoof onto it.

Which he guided to his thigh.

He reached into his jacket and searched within a pocket, withdrawing a nut of creamy colour and texture. Bringing the sharpness of his bottom digit to its side, he slowly sliced through it, peeling its coating afterward. The spade of his tail curved to his side, which he hung the peel upon.

"What is this? You don't have to do anything." Twilight willed a smile. "I not in pain or anything. Just... a long day." She shook her head. "Not the kind I'm used to, but maybe you are. Always been a kind of all-nighter kind of girl, y' know." She weakly giggled to herself. "Okay. I've never referred to myself as a girl in the third person before.”

Spike dipped to his thigh and, using his snout, nudged the hoof to the side. Blackness tattered over the furs with patches of purple peeking through. Spots seemed a swollen red beneath the coat. He took the sleek shell and rubbed it into the tenderness.

"What is that! It's cold and slimy! It feels... nnngh! D-Don't stop!" Twilight's face switched from disgust to love as her ears perked again. Her barrel shivered in cute sways like a dog scratched behind the ear. "The soreness is going away! I-I've never heard of a natural remedy like this before!"

Once the slime had been worn off the shell, the claw tucked it back into the coat, it jostling from the weight. In taking the peel from his tail, he laid it over the hoof, rubbing his digits over to smooth it out. Pressing in places to feel its squishiness, the plushness of softness rising around his contours.

The mare shivered.

Spike choked.

"Y-You didn't cut anything! Just... never been touched like that before." Twilight lowered her muzzle completely as a warm blush spread over her snout, those heavy bangs blocking her eyes. "N-Not that I mean it... gah! Something is wrong with me today. Your first impression of me must be terrible at this point, huh?"

Spike had jerked his shoulder back but, in catching himself, his digits remained on the hoof. They traced its surface to ensure the film kissed the furs enough to cling. He felt around it, the warmth radiating beneath the skin. The silk of strands delicious in brushing his scales.

Pressing in spots to explore its depths and texture brought pleasure to them both.

It was to make sure the ointment was applied correctly, of course.

"You make me feel very strange... mister dragon." Twilight laughed from underneath her hair. "There's so many ponies that I've made an effort to appear 'worthy' too. Saying all the right things and acting in a way to imply a... a specialness about me." Her expression was hidden behind the veil of mane, the kind of emotion in her voice an unknown. "You need to prove that more the less you feel as such. You ever feel like that, or is even feeling to that degree a privilege allowed only to a few?"

The remedy had been applied, yet the claw held the hoof, feeling further across it.

"Ponies have to see me at my apparent best before they can witness me at my worst. Or else they'll always think of you like that. Everything coming after that... will always feel like an act to them." Spike's eyes glinted as they flicked downward at the foreleg. His claw felt across it, squeezing in places, feeling the softness of its form and the caresses of its furs. "But you haven't seen me at my better nor my best. You've only endured my lows and worsts. Your opinion of me must be lower than the rest who have seen differently of me."

Despite his awareness of holding the arm without reason, he couldn't let go, nor find the motivation to keep holding her.

"But the truth is... I've revealed that anyone but you—and maybe that's why." The mare sat before the arched railing of the bridge, trees and hills and rivers and structure looming behind her. Her tranquility bested the setting. Yet her face was a mystery for the moment. "Despite all those who praise and love me... it's that spire I return to, alone. Hugs and kisses I've shared with others and on the cheeks. Yet sometimes I run my hooves over the other, only to feel the sensation of being touched... caressed."

She shook her head.

"You claw exploring my hoof is the first time I've had another feel my body." Her weak chuckle came in bursts that barely procured the air to allow them. "And I have no clue what it is I feel beneath it all. I want your claw to search all over, defining every inch of me. It's a mutual passion I crave... or am I just insane."

Her chin dipped until brushing her chest. "Spend your whole life with books and pages and equations... appearing in conferences and discussing the orientations of the star with others... you never... I-I never speak about how their glimmer makes me feel. Didn't consider much about feelings until recently. Changed my life for the better... until... until... until a number of things..."

What... what was happening to him. Spike endured the surge of something sensitive yet reliable coursing through his body. Like the streams behind him, a condense one ran through him, mind to chest and spanning out. Utter sincerity spreading out from inside a husk.

If only she knew of his similar life and duty, the cold sweats of mornings and battles of afternoons and loneliness of evenings. Returning to a home not of his own with a kick mocking him even for showing. Never knowing the touch of another beyond flying hooves and charging shoulders.

Violence was his only contact.

It rendered embers to the husk for when the battles lasted but never after.

The sincerity coursing through him now, an inflection of weakness and strength, valued and cursed his weakness. Twilight's days spent behind covers of books while in bed; his beneath a mask while he laid against a tree in different lands. Both alone and matched with their ways to occupy the time.

All the things he wanted to express, despite the vulnerability they cast upon him, a battle nearly won by his next act. His hoof left the comfort of that hoof to reach that chin and gently tug it up. Its definition treated his scales and seeing those glowing eyes upon him calmed his heart.

Yet she couldn't see his smile from beneath the mask.

The beauty of the valley slapped into harsh winds during the ascent of the ranges of rock jutting ever upward. There'd been a path laid on its face, going at a slope to the sides and ever uphill. Upon reaching the top, the smoothness of faded brown rose and dipped into mounds.

"Gah! S-Spike! I-I'm being lifted from my hooves here!" Spike had arched forward with the lone claw shielding his eyes but, upon hearing her voice, perked up and turned around. Twilight was feet behind him, wings flared like a shield, her eyes peeking through in the slits between its tips. "Winds at this velocity may pick us if we're not careful. Is... is there no other way around?"

Spike immediately dashed back a few steps, braving the pelting of rocks and the washing of sand into his scales. Crouching by her side, he draped his coat over her, forcing her body against his leg.

Huddled together, he pointed across the range, the long bridge connecting the gap of the two ranges. It swayed and kept left from the winds, not breaking nor snapping, but its roped beams beyond stretched. “W-We're taking that?! It... I mean... if it's held this long during such conditions... m-maybe..."

Spike rolled his eyes and tapped a claw onto her wings.

"T-These! A-Ah! There's a funny story about these!" Twilight coughed either from shame or sand in the lungs. She brushed closer and pressed harder against his body. He fought the impulse to tuck his arm around her barrel—but his phantom arm did so anyway. "There more for display purpose than anything else." She shook her head. "B-But what I mean to say is what about you?! I can fly... but what about you?"

Spike shook his head.

"You've got me confused again!" Whips of winds and the siege of dirt and sands thundered a cacophony rendered Twilight's yells into whispers. The quaking of lighting boomed from the distance. The two kept close together as they dared tentative step across the plane. "Does that mean you don't care about yourself or that you'll find a way?" No response as his foot felt the area ahead before taking the step; the way how they continued forward. "Is it a mixture of the two?"

Spike nodded.

They'd reach the bridge through the haze of different shades browns as the fog cleared from over the bridge. It leaned to the left, and that caused the dragon to drop his shoulders. Looking at his missing left arm, the phantom didn't appear, leaving him without aid.

But he'd been given his hint.

"Ack! W-What is..." Spike winced an eye shut upon swirling the mass of his tail over the mare's barley, a loop from the fluff of her chest to the sinking softness of her belly, forced to squeeze them both for security. "O-Oh. I see now. Guess I can't complain about not being held anymore, right?"

Spike winced again. Was it uncomfortable this part of him? Smooth scales flexing as they shifted and perhaps the overall texture like a cold slime then slathered over her coat? There wasn't any choice in the matter. But for her to feel so pleasant, and him so much not so... guilt wrecked him for the act.

Then he turned around and, with still a smile only hopeful to calm her, one again not seen beneath the mask, his claw tugged down her hood as far as he could. Then in looking over his shoulder, he began backward, that claw resting on the strained rope shivering in constant vibration. His foot risked the first step onto the wooden planks.

It held with a groan and not much more. The pressure seeped into its center, not diving below that, holding, not threatening to breakthrough. Stepping back and doing so again, Spike would have done it a third time—had the length of his tail not run out.

Twilight was still ahead.

"I-I... I can't do this! Look at my legs! They're wobbling so much that I can't get them to stop!" Twilight shook her head and her face was hidden underneath the hood. She held out a foreleg to show the shivers jittering through it. "I'm not like you! I want to pass over... but I can't! I know I have to. That this is nothing to anything else. But I'm scared. The planks may break. I may fall. The winds may carry me." She flicked her head up and the winds pushed back her hood and mane, revealing the full extent of her face. "Do you know how many possibilities set to occur here? All the terrible ways this could go?"

Spike glanced over his shoulder to the other side of the bridge, the ropes still holding to the distant posts. Winds intensified tenfold, and the bridge lifted inches to the left. His feet slid across the planks.

Minutes were left before the bridge couldn't be crossed.

"I'm doing my best to be like you... to act like how you did in all those stories I heard... but I'm scared... too terrified to do the right thing! How can I be expected to do what must be done if my body refuses to move?!"

Her head shook violently as she hugged the post of the bridge, clinging to it as if never to let go. His tail was tight around her, the seconds passing, causing it to slip, their connection fading. "If we don't make it in time, more will die and suffer, so I have to cross this bridge and not be such a filly. B-But I can't! I'm scared! I'm not like you... I can't stop myself from being scared!"

She struck her foreleg out again. "How can anyone expect me to walk to my duty with legs shaking like this! You can't do what must be done if you're always so scared of everything! This was a bad idea. I'm not meant for this. Nothing and useless except for reading books and explain things. Why couldn't my life be like that? Why are we out here?!"

The creaking of wood turned to a sickening pitch.

Spike closed his eyes and dipped his head, thinking of her words, what to do to make things right. Despair blossomed from his heart in the same fears repeated, only different, from one once like him.

Though the difference between them wasn't that great, and in that, he found his answer.

Spike took the chance to let go of the rope and trusted in his center of gravity to keep him on the bridge. Holding out his arm, the mare lifted her crying face from the post, coming to see his claw. How it never kept in the same place.

"You're... you're shaking too?" Twilight blinked the tears from her eyes and willed herself forward for a better look. "Your claw can't keep still. Talons are twitching. Your arm is shivering." She gazed into his eyes. "You're absolutely scared right now too. That... doesn't go away?"

Spike shook his head.

Twilight gazed into his claw again. Despite his stoicism and will to press forward, his arm was utterly shaking like her own. He just wasn't expressing it. Suppression had become the dragon's lesson. But he didn't want it to be hers. To be hugged and consoled and helped was his desire.

But this wasn't the time.

And he wasn't the one to do it.

Her hoof landed in his claw. As the dust storm continued, the holding of claw and hoof became something new in the period of intensity. The world raged with movement around them, but as their shivers met, it quelled the other side, bringing stillness to both.

Twilight dared the first few steps forward, nearly crying at the creaking of wood, but keeping across it. After a final squeeze of her hoof, he drew his claw away, holding the rope of the bridge once more. Together they moved across it, step by step, enduring the winds, the pelting object caught by the air. It was slow, but they made it across, a valley looming beneath and spanning into the distance.

They reached the final few planks arching the highest into the air, hard land between two posts, the entrance to the next range. Both of them were a step away from the other, close to their final mark. Twilight blossomed in excitement in seeing the ending of her trauma.

"T-There it is! We're there! We did, we did it! Oh dear Celestia, are you seeing me right now? Your student braved danger! Real danger!" Twilight giddily galloped forward to the widening of the dragon's eyes. He gave a coughed scream muffled by everything. "You told me I could do it! And I proved it! I made to—ah!"

Twilight had lunged forward to the striking of another swirling current spawned from the rage of a tornado itself. Dust and filth stung her eyes into closing and, in great foolishness, her wings flares to rub them at once.

The storm carried her body into the air in seconds.