Dog Years

Chapters

1 - Eye to Eye
2 - Back to Back
3 - Head to Head
4 - Face to Face
5 - Side to Side
6 - Heart to Heart

1 - Eye to Eye

Looking up from his basket at the foot of her bed, Spike gave Twilight as much of a glare as he could manage. "You know what it usually means when they say a dog's gone to live in the country, right?"

Squatting on the carpet, Twilight blushed a deeper purple, and Spike closed his eyes briefly to send his usual 'thank you' to whatever power had given him the ability to think and speak and see the full range of colors more than a dozen years ago now. "The phrase is 'going to live on a farm,'" Twilight more sputtered than said, "and it's got nothing to do with this!" She put a finger to her chin. "Though the countryside in Equestria is very nice, the little I've seen of it. Just exactly what you'd expect a magical pony world to look like." Shaking her head, she got all stern-faced again. "But I'm being serious, Spike!"

"I know." He ignored the crick in his neck and tried to clear the roughness from his voice without making it sound like he was doing so. "And I'm fine, Twilight. Maybe next year we can—"

"You've been saying 'next year' for the last five years." She folded her arms. "As near as Sunset, Fluttershy, and I can tell, your exposure to Equestrian magic has done a lot to keep you healthy this long, but we've got to face facts. You're not getting any younger."

"I'm fine!" Pushing himself up onto all fours, he did some more ignoring: the little stabbing pain in this hips and the little gnawing pain—not so little anymore, he had to admit—in his middle. "Maybe I'm not the bouncy, fun-loving ball of fluff I used to be, sure, but, well, neither are you, Dr. Sparkle. And I'm betting your students at Canterlot Tech would agree with me." He lolled his tongue out in a canine smile and added a human-type grin to the expression.

As he'd known would happen, Twilight's sternness melted, but her lips went all pinched, her forehead wrinkling. "We can't put this off any longer, Spike." She swallowed so loudly, Spike could hear it even through the stuffiness that had been creeping into his ears for a while now. "We need to talk about it."

Seeing her unhappy always made his throat tighten, but the thought of leaving her... "I'm fine," he said again, just managing to control the process of lowering himself back onto his cushion without his knees and elbows giving way completely.

"Spike—"

"There's nothing to talk about!" He didn't want to snarl, but that was how it came out. "I'm not moving to Equestria! My life's here! In the world where I was born! As a dog, not a dragon! End of discussion!" Trying to roll over so he could put his back to her, he had to concentrate, slowly drawing his legs up against his belly so he wouldn't wince at the low-grade ache the movement caused.

As muddy as his sense of smell had become, he couldn't miss the sour stink of Twilight's fear. But her voice scarcely shook at all when she said, "What about just a visit, then?"

He stopped and looked up at her again, her hands clutched in front of the purple sweater she was wearing. This was a new wrinkle to what had become a fairly regular argument by now. "A visit?" he asked.

"For a weekend!" Her smile had way too many teeth showing. "I can talk to Sunset, and I'm sure she'll be happy to arrange everything with Princess Twilight on the other side any time we're ready to go! Because, yes, I mean, sure, you wouldn't be moving there this year! What was I thinking even bringing it up?" Her laugh, every bit as phony as her smile, collapsed just as quickly. "But you said maybe...maybe next year, and...and we could just...just go over now and...and see what it's like?"

Another unmistakable scent—the salty and awful smell of her tears—wavered across his nose, and squinting, he thought he could see her eyes shimmering in the bedroom light.

More than the usual little pain gnawed at his innards, and gritting his teeth, he pushed himself up once more so he could peer more closely at her face. "Just the two of us? Just for a weekend? Or are you planning on getting all the girls together so you can try to guilt me into staying there?"

Her relief washed over him with an almost flowery aroma, then Twilight was bending down, catching him in her arms, pulling him to her chest. "Just us," she breathed, and Spike closed his eyes, the sensation of being held by her worth every jabbing twinge that crackled through him. "Well, I mean, us and Princess Twilight and her Spike." He felt the cushion of his bed slide back into place beneath him, her grip sadly loosening, but she kept scritching the fur at the side of his head. "They'll meet us on the other side of the portal to show us around. That's all: no high-pressure tactics, no hard sell, nothing. Okay?"

Like he could refuse her and her magic fingers anything when she was actually acting reasonable on the subject... Still, he blew out a breath and tried his best to look exasperated. "All right," he said. "I guess it won't hurt to pay a visit and see you turn into a little horse." He aimed a smirk up at her. "So when would we go?"

"Yes!" Twilight shouted, and Spike had to gasp when she scooped him up again, sprang to her feet, and rushed for the bedroom door. "How 'bout now? Is now good for you? 'Cause I'm thinking now!"

"What?" Spike started to squirm, but that just made things inside him feel more stabby; Twilight's arms had come around to support his hind legs, though, so he let his weight settle against her stomach, spread himself over the wonderland of her torso, and rested his head on her shoulder. "So when you said you could talk to Sunset about this," he murmured into her ear, "you meant that you'd already talked to her about it."

"I did," she said, and Spike's fur prickled, the purple glow and lavender scent of her magic stroking over him; vaguely, he heard a metallic rattle, and he glanced down to see her car keys float over to drop into her sweater pocket. "I really, really, really hoped you'd agree, so I had her set it up for this weekend." More rattling and a creak told him she'd magicked the front door open.

The late afternoon sunlight made him squint, and he tried not to think about how long it had been since the two of them had been able to even go for a walk together. "Devious as always, Twilight." He snuggled into her neck. "I assume the girls'll be meeting us at the portal?"

"What?" They'd reached the passenger side of her little Wonder Bolt, the electric car she'd designed and built six years ago while still an undergrad at Canterlot Tech, gaining her several degrees and her first professorship all at once. "No!" She glared down at him through her glasses and settled him into the front seat. "That part was completely true: just you and me and Princess Twilight and her Spike."

She stood, closed the door, and Spike watched her practically skip around the front of the car to the driver's side. "But," she went on, sliding behind the wheel and starting the motor, barely a hum to Spike's ears, "if we have fun, maybe the next time, we could get everyone together and have a major outing like the good old days."

Spike did some more not thinking about the last time all eight of them had been together, how winded he'd gotten just walking through the park to their picnic site, how he hadn't been able to play fetch any more than he'd been able to miss the wrinkled brows and wavering fear scent from all the others. "Yeah," he said, also trying not to remember how much he used to enjoy the sensation of the wind whipping through his ears when he could still climb up and stick his head out the window while she drove. "Just like the good old days."

2 - Back to Back

Canterlot High seemed to be deserted, though whether it was the lateness of the day or because it was summer, Spike wasn't sure: he'd kind of lost track of the seasons a spring or three ago.

Still, no murky scents or muffled sounds of other people presented themselves to him, blinking around at the blurry front of the school where they'd had their first adventures all those years ago. "And the portal's really still here?" he asked, only realizing that he'd spoken the question out loud when he heard the words.

"Where else?" Twilight had carried him from the parking lot, and he'd stifled his immediate objections—he could probably walk there without stopping to rest too often—at the thought of spending more time in her arms. "I mean, yes," she went on, "in theory, we could probably coordinate something with Princess Twilight to translocate the spell's focus on our side to some other spot, but she's the only one who can open it now, so why bother? That does remind me, though..."

Everything shifted sideways, and Spike felt concrete underneath him now. Turning, he saw a gray, squarish blob that had to be the base of the Wondercolt statue, the restored statue itself a curving set of smears against the late afternoon sky.

"Sunset?" Twilight asked; she had one hand resting on her cocked hip, her other hand pressed to the side of her head—holding her cell phone, he guessed. "We're at the statue now. Okay, thanks." She dropped the phone into her purse, a spicy scent of nervous excitement coming from her. "Sunset hopes we have a good trip and says to give the princess a couple minutes to get the spell matrix fired up." Her shoulders shifted, and the nervousness around her became more pronounced. "You're really going to like it over there."

Spike gave her his human smile—all lips and no tongue, he'd discovered early on, made talking while smiling a lot less painful. "As long as you're with me, I'll go anywhere and do anything." He stood, unable to stop a flinch at the pain zipping through his belly. "Within reasonable limits, of course," he added, hoping she might mistake his flinch for a wink.

"Of course," she said, and the still-increasing nervous stink made Spike's ears want to droop.

He forced them to stay perky and remembered a question he'd wanted to ask her in the car before the motion of the ride had gotten him too queasy to risk opening his mouth. "How many times have you been to Equestria, anyway?"

"Me?" She blinked. "Maybe a dozen or so."

Part of him didn't want to continue the thought, but he did anyway. "So you're not considering packing up and moving?"

"Me?" she asked again, her voice pitching up and tightening. "With my current teaching schedule? And the students I'm mentoring? I couldn't even consider it!" Taking a breath, Twilight cocked her head. "When I retire, though, that's a definite possibility. Especially if I knew my best friend was waiting there for—"

Pulling his ears back, Spike cleared his throat loudly.

Twilight held up her hands. "I know, I know: no hard-sell tactics." She dropped her gaze. "Sorry."

Spike just nodded, not sure he trusted himself to speak right now.

Several awkward seconds ticked by, Twilight seeming to look everywhere but at Spike and Spike swallowing against the soreness throbbing in his neck after his throat clearing. How could she not get what he was saying? Not that he was actually saying it, of course, and not that he ever planned on saying it if he could help it. But she should understand, shouldn't she? After all these years, shouldn't she know?

Warmth flickered through the air from behind him, and while turning to look at the plinth didn't show him anything new, his prickling fur told him all he needed to know: something magical was starting.

"There," Twilight said, and the nervousness thickened even further around her. "You go through first, Spike, and I'll be right behind you."

He couldn't help aiming a backward glance at her. "Because we're going to live in the country, right?"

Her lips tightened. "I already told you! The expression is—" She took a breath and blew it out. "Do you need me to give you a boost?"

With a snicker, he faced forward again. "Naw. Though I should probably let you, shouldn't I? What with little ponies not having fingers and thumbs, this'll be your last chance to push me around for a while."

A little sound reached him—something like a sob, maybe? But he was already stepping forward, already pressing his nose to the strange, shimmering scent of rushing wind and water he could now detect from the base of the statue, and before he could turn to see if he'd imagined the sound, the rushing had flowed over him, snatched him up, and tumbled him forward.

Splaying his paws to steady himself, he couldn't quite find where his paws were: lights of every color streamed around and past and through him, a roaring in his ears that had an almost musical quality to it. The colors formed shapes that swirled and swayed, squishing into being and stretching away with the same not-quite rhythm as the not-quite music, and for all that Spike found it enormously disconcerting, it was the most fascinating thing he'd experienced in years.

He wanted to turn and ask Twilight if this was what usually happened in here, but two things stopped him. First, he didn't quite know how to turn since he didn't have any sense of himself as a physical being at this point. And second, if that had actually been a sob he'd heard, did that mean he'd been right with the half-joke he'd made before stepping in? Had she pushed him through the gate to this alleged pony world to be rid of him? To get him out of the way so she wouldn't have to watch him die?

The thought tore a huge and jagged gash through whatever there was of him, and he tried to spin, tried to howl, tried to cry out just as the crashing din and the dancing abstractions both vanished. Spike's ears popped, and he was sailing through empty air, blue sky suddenly above him and green grass below.

Instinctively, he brought his forelegs up to try and land on his paws, but instead of paws, he saw clawed hands, his legs still purple but darker, scalier, more muscular. Something was happening along his back, too, flaps of fur or skin or both, it felt like, unfurling, catching the breeze and shaping it, directing it, caressing it so he wasn't falling any longer according to his gut. His wings, he realized. Which meant it was true: he really was a dragon here!

The wings were slowing him down, holding him up, stopping his headlong hurtle. Completely unsure how he was doing it, he was actually pulling into a hover over the grassy field, hills in the distance, clouds drifting here and there above them.

"Hello, Spike!" a voice called, a voice that was both familiar and not familiar at all. "I'm Twilight Sparkle: the other Twilight Sparkle, I mean. Welcome to Equestria!"

Wanting to turn this time left him more baffled than before. Yes, he had a physical being now, but when he tried to think about flapping his wings differently, he became even more aware that he had no idea how he was flapping them at all. Gritting his teeth, he tried to stop their increased flailing, but they just got floppier and floppier till gravity grabbed him, pulled him rump-first onto the grass with a thud that shook the ground.

"Whoa!" the almost-Twilight called. Something purple and the size of a robin whisked in front of him, and Spike found himself looking at a winged unicorn: he would've thought she was a chew toy or a doll if she hadn't smelled so strange and alive, a mix of lavender and meat, of feathers and freshly fallen rain. "Are you all right?" she asked.

All he could manage was a nod.

She smiled, his eyes drawn to the golden regalia shining at her forehead, chest, and hooves. "Ah, yes. I remember my first time in your world, how hard it was figuring out hands and feet. I'm guessing wings'll take a little more time."

3 - Head to Head

Spike blinked at the hovering unicorn. "You really are little ponies," he blurted, his voice sounding mostly like his own but somehow deeper, rounder, more resonant.

The princess shrugged, her shoulders rising and falling even as the gentle motion of her wings kept her floating steadily in place in front of him. "Size is relative, really." Her tone now that Spike was listening more closely was fuller than Twilight's, too, but he definitely recognized that she was sliding into lecture mode. "I've often thought it would be worthwhile to experiment with carrying objects of carefully calibrated weight and measurement through the mirror in an effort to establish—"

"Spike!" The distant shout was unmistakably Twilight—his Twilight—and turning, he saw a purple unicorn galloping across the field toward him. She was even smaller than this flying one, was wearing horn-rimmed glasses, and behind her...

Behind her was the fanciest toy set Spike had ever imagined he would see. A castle, cut from crystal also in various shades of purple, stood maybe ten yards off from where he sat, its highest spire reaching just above his eye level, and the town beyond it looked even more fantastic, buildings he could've stepped over with ease but perfectly constructed and decorated right down to the miniature flowers in the miniature window boxes.

More movement caught his eye from beside the castle, a platform set up there with a mirror and another purple, winged figure, but the little unicorn wearing Twilight's glasses commanded his attention as she slowed to a trot, her jaw dropping and her eyes going wide. "Spike?" She asked it this time, and even though he could tell she was whispering, the word came to him loud and clear.

As did the almost irresistible impulse to pick her up. He could've done it easily, he was sure, wrapping his new claw-fingers carefully around her and hoisting her in both hands.

But he shook the idea away with the same decisiveness as he did the impulses he still occasionally got to jump onto the kitchen table. "Twilight?" He made sure to say it quietly, too, pushing against the impulse that was urging him to let loose a roar that would send cracks shattering through every inch of that castle.

Twilight stopped entirely, her head and body tilting back till she dropped onto her haunches to stare up at him.

Instead of bending over, scooping her up, and squeezing her to his chest the way a large portion of him wanted to, he forced himself to merely point a claw at her and say in as close to his regular voice as he could manage, "You are seriously adorable that way, you know that?"

A shadow swept over the grass, and the winged unicorn settled delicately beside the non-winged one. "It's so wonderful to see you again, Twilight!" the princess said, lowering her neck to nuzzle the side of Twilight's head in a way that kicked the adorableness of the scene up another dozen notches. The princess straightened with a smile and a sideways glance upward. "And I'm so glad you finally persuaded Spike to come through and pay us a visit. My own Spike and I have been looking forward to—"

"He's huge!" Twilight shouted. Waving her forehooves, she jerked her head back and forth between gaping at him and gaping at the princess. "Look at him! He's huge!"

The princess gave that little shrug again. "Well, size is—"

"And don't tell me size is relative!" Twilight sprang onto all four hooves, and even though she only came up to about the middle of the princess's chest, the glare she was employing made Spike very glad she wasn't aiming it at him. "I have studied every aspect of relativity theory, both special and general, during my years at Canterlot Tech, and none of it said anything about my dog becoming some sort of reptilian behemoth!"

"As we've discussed," the princess said with a sigh, and Spike found himself thinking there might be reasons other than her students that kept Twilight from coming through the mirror more often, "science and magic have both correspondences and differences. Still, I was under the impression that you understood how Spike's relative age as a dog would translate through the mirror into—"

"Big, you said, yes!" Falling back to sit on the grass, Twilight did some more hoof waving. "But this is ridiculous!"

Spike pricked his ears—though the things rising on the sides of his head didn't quite feel like ears... "Wait a minute. You're saying it's not that you're little ponies but that I'm a giant dragon?"

"Pretty much," something very much like his own voice said right beside him. Darting his glance up from the two ponies, he saw a purple dragon, square-jawed, broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, but still about chew toy sized, his arms folded across his chest and his wings holding him easily in the air. "When Twilight and I first went through to your world, I was just a baby, scarcely a decade and a half old, so I came out as a puppy. Even now, if I crossed over again, I'd probably look pretty much the same. But you?" The dragon—the other him, Spike realized with a swallow—cleared his throat. "You're about as old as a dog can get, aren't you?"

"No, no, no!" Twilight was shouting somewhere below him. "Spike! This...this isn't how it was supposed to happen!"

"Excuse me," the other Twilight said, a very familiar note of peevishness entering her voice, "but I recall quite distinctly telling you that your Spike, being an ancient dog, would likely emerge here as an ancient dragon. And ancient dragons—"

"No!" Twilight shouted again. "You only said it was possible, not that it was probable! You said—"

A very horse-like snort interrupted her. "I said that I couldn't give you precise percentages on what might occur because we didn't have enough data. And you said it didn't really matter as long as he was too big to fit back through the mirror."

"What?" Spike had been about to jump in and ask if they could maybe stop arguing and start explaining what was going on, but the princess's words struck him as hard as a thrown tennis ball when he was looking the other way. "Too big to—?" Things began clicking together in his head so loudly, he could almost feel them shake when they collided. "That's why the platform." He gestured past the other dragon to the structure beside the castle. "And why we're outside. I mean, unless you always keep your magic mirror in the middle of a field."

"Of course," the princess said, rising up into view again. "Not 'of course' about us keeping the mirror out here, I mean, but 'of course' that we brought it down from Canterlot Tower. We needed a nice, big, open field just to be on the safe side."

Spike wasn't looking at her by then, though. He was looking at the unicorn practically cowering in the grass, her eyes shimmering. "You knew," he said, again shoving down the impulse to roar it. "You counted on me being too big to fit through and get home again. Didn't you?"

She was shivering now.

"Spike?" the princess asked from somewhere off his right ear. "You mean she didn't...didn't tell you what we'd discussed? Sent you through without telling you—?"

"He kept saying no!" Leaping onto her hind legs, Twilight waved her front hooves, wobbled, and toppled over onto her back. "And I couldn't just...couldn't do nothing!" She rolled onto her side, tears streaming down her face now. "I love you, Spike! I couldn't just watch you—"

"You love me?" And this time, he did roar it, surged to stand upright in a way that had never felt as natural, clenched his claws into fists and let his wings unfurl behind him. "Love to you means lying to me and tricking me?" And now that the words were pouring out, he couldn't have stopped them if he'd wanted to. "Because I love you, Twilight Sparkle, have loved you since before I had a word for it! I love you so much, I refused to even think about going on with my life if I couldn't see you every day! And now? Now?"

Twilight had buried her face under her hooves, her sobs stabbing like pins into Spike's head and driving him to bellow. "Now I'm doomed to live in a place where I'll never see you again: the real you, I mean! Where I'll never get to sit in your lap or see your nose wrinkle when you laugh or feel your fingers stroking through my fur! Ever again!"

"I'm sorry!" The words bubbled up from the little purple heap of her. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm—"

Giving in to his impulses at last, he threw back his head and howled with a thunder unmatched by any storm that had ever driven him to hide under the bed. Springing upward, he pounded the air with his wings till the ground disappeared, the clouds closed in around him, and he couldn't hear her voice anymore.

4 - Face to Face

It took them four days to find him.

Or at least, he figured it was four days. A couple or six hours after leaving the castle and the mirror and...and everything, he'd slammed into the top of some mountain range and dragged himself into a cold, clammy cave he found there. The light washing in from the opening had then faded and returned three times before he heard claws or hooves or whatever scrabbling along the cliff face outside.

Which meant this was now the fourth day, the fourth day of thoughts and feelings crashing over him like waves across a breakwater during a storm—

And wasn't that a stupidly poetic image! Spike covered the thing that wasn't his head anymore with the long, thick, scaly tail that wasn't his tail and the paws that weren't even paws and wished he could just cuddle against Twilight and—

And that brought on even more of the crashing waves. At least the rock walls and ceiling of this cave were handy for tearing chunks from and crushing them to rubble. Sometimes he even found gems, and the aromas that tickled his snout and rumbled his stomach led him to chomp those down. A dog had to eat, after all.

Even when he wasn't a dog...

He'd slept some during those four days, he knew, because being furious, he discovered, was just plain exhausting. And since he was getting it from both sides, angry at himself for the way he'd acted while also angry at Twilight for the way she'd acted, only in sleep could he get away from all the compounding piles of awfulness.

So he was almost sure it was four days after sliding into this hole that the sound of someone or something clattering over the stones at the cave mouth behind him rustled his ears. He just wasn't sure at all what he wanted to do about it...

"Wow," that voice that was almost his own said. "I didn't know there were unclaimed caves this big anywhere around Equestria. Talk about your prime real estate!"

"Go away," Spike rumbled without opening his eyes or uncurling from the knot he'd made of himself.

"Are you kidding?" The way the voice echoed told him its source was moving, coming into the cave and skirting along the wall toward Spike's head. "And pass up the chance to see what I'm gonna look like in a thousand years? 'Cause I've gotta say: pretty awesome."

Which made Spike uncover his face and crack his eyelids to glare at the smaller dragon. "You've been hanging out with Rainbow too much."

The dragon shrugged, a gesture that looked more human coming from a bipedal creature than it had when the princess had done it all those days ago outside the castle. "I like spending time with all my friends." A flap of his wings brought him up to perch on an outcrop of rock closer to Spike's eye level. "I'd like to spend time with you, too, if that'd be okay."

The word "time" stuck like a couple dozen pins into Spike's head. "'Cause I've got nothing but time, you mean?" He didn't bother swallowing his growl. "I'm a magical dragon now, right? So I get to live while she dies!"

"And if you could save her?" The other dragon had folded one hind leg over the other, had cupped his knee with his foreclaws and was leaning back on the outcropping, his wings slightly spread. The pose made Spike think of those cartoons he'd seen watching TV while Twilight was at work where a character has a little angel or devil sitting on their shoulder.

This guy, though, was clearly the devil. "Really?" Spike asked, letting his lips pull back from his teeth. "You want me to say I'd force her into the same thing she forced on me? That's your plan?"

"So you're saying you wouldn't." The guy didn't even blink.

Fortunately, Spike had spent the past four days slashing and crushing rock from the roof of the cave, so he knew from experience that it was big enough now for him to leap onto his hind feet and wave his forearms. "Well, of course I'd save her! I'd do anything for her! I'm her dog! That's what dogs do!" He lunged forward and crooked a claw at the little guy's chest, a claw, he couldn't help noticing, that was longer than the guy was wide. "What we don't do is make decisions! Humans do that!"

"Huh." Not a single waver of fear scent brushed Spike's snout, but then he didn't know if dragons could smell the same things dogs could. Still, the little guy stayed sitting calmly even with the tip of Spike's claw hardly a whisker's width from his purple scales. "'Cause it seems to me this all started when you decided to let yourself die."

As much as Spike tried to keep it steady, his claw started shaking. "That wasn't a decision." He could barely get the words out. "When the alternatives are dying in her arms or living forever without her, there...there's no choice. None at all." He flopped onto his belly, dust and dirt from the floor bursting into a cloud around him. "You wouldn't understand."

"Maybe," that oh-so-similar voice said quietly. "But I do know that my Twilight's got a whole squadron of magical researchers looking into the processes of aging and death and all, trying to see if there's anything we can do for our brother and our pony friends before we reach the same point your Twilight has."

Despite himself, Spike looked over at him. "Your brother?"

"Shining Armor." The guy gave a little grin. "Doesn't every universe have one?"

"He's Twilight's brother. Or—" If Spike had still had fur on his neck, he knew it would have been bristling. "You think of your Twilight as your sister?"

Bringing a hand up in front of himself, the other Spike waggled it back and forth. "I mean, she hatched me way back when, sure, but I can't say I've ever thought of her as my mother. Big sister, first friend, role model, employer: things like that." He cocked his head. "I'm guessing you and your Twilight have a slightly different relationship?"

Her face appeared in Spike's memory, and every bit of his anger evaporated. "She's my goddess," he whispered, a phrase that had floated across his mind every time he'd looked at her for more than a decade even though he'd never allowed himself to say out loud. "She's been my goddess for longer than I can really remember, since before I got the ability to think the way humans and the rest of you do. For the entirety of my existence, it's been the same way: when she was with me, everything was perfect, and when she wasn't, everything was miserable..."

"Whoa." The guy was sitting forward, his eyes wide. "So when you said you loved her—"

"I meant madly, passionately, totally, and wholeheartedly." Spike could suddenly feel every rock he was lying on jabbing against his scales. "She's the world to me, and without her, I'm nothing...or at least nothing that I want to be." He stretched along the cave floor, sharp, yes, but somehow cooling, too. "Getting to talk with her and know her and share her life since that first bit of magic sucked me up and spit me out, it's been heaven. Sheer, unadulterated heaven. And while I know she'll be sad when I die, I know just as well that she'll get over it. Humans always do. But living without her? I...I can't do it, Spike. I can't..."

He shut his eyes, let the darkness and the silence settle over him.

Not that things stayed silent for long. "You forgive her betraying you, then?" that voice asked like the voice of his conscience set free.

Some of his earlier anger prodded at him, but all this talking had pretty much ground it away to ashes. "She's Twilight," he said, raising his head. "I'm betting yours acts without thinking now and again, too."

The other Spike was nodding, a glint in his eye. "And she always works to fix it when she's messed up."

A sort of crunchy spiciness filled the air, and Spike raised his head further. "You...you mean—" He rolled around so he was on his paws and belly, stuck his face, bigger than the other Spike's whole body, practically right up against him. "This? Me? They've figured out a way to—?" He didn't dare let himself say it.

Excitement bubbled in the other Spike's scent. "When you flew off, I don't think I've ever seen my Twilight as mad as she was at yours. Yours lay there awhile just sobbing about being sorry while mine yelled at her, but then she jumped up and started yelling back a whole lot of talk about universes and nexuses and I don't know what all." He gave another of his shrugs. "Long story short, they dug a pond in the field behind the old castle in Ponyville and moved the mirror spell over onto it. They think it should be big enough for you to get home."

5 - Side to Side

With a swallow, Spike pushed himself to the lip of the cave mouth, his local counterpart hovering outside. "Open your wings," the other was calling, "and slide right off! Trust the magic in you to know what it's doing!"

"Trust the magic," he muttered, gazing down through the mile or so of empty air at the rocks strewn all along the base of the cliff. Raising his voice above the rush of the wind, he felt the need to point out, "We don't have magic where I come from, y'know!"

"Sure you do!" The smaller dragon drifted closer and spread his claws. "Twilight's read me all Sunset's notes, and the way I see it, it's not just her and your Twilight and your friends using magic over there. Unless you're trying to tell me that your world's full of talking dogs?"

Spike gave him a glare. "Talking's one thing." He gestured at the precipice. "Throwing myself into that is something else entirely!"

"Not really." Drifting even closer, the other Spike ended up floating right in front of Spike's snout. "All magic runs on love and friendship, and love and friendship run on trust. You've gotta trust that you're not like any other dog in the history of either world, and you've gotta trust that the magic knows you, likes you, and will do everything it can to make this whole situation come out all right."

The simple conviction behind his words made Spike's heart pick up a bit. "You really believe that?" he asked, barely able to hear his own voice over the gusts streaming into his face.

"I do." The other Spike touched a hand to Spike's nose, the sudden warmth making Spike shiver more than the wind. "I mean, whaddaya think would happen if a regular dog from your side came through the mirror?"

That made him blink. "You'd have a non-talking dragon flying around?"

The other Spike shook his head. "We'd have a dog running around: just a regular, ordinary dog exactly the same as it was before it came through." He spread his arms. "And yes, Twilight—both Twilights, actually—would tell you there wasn't enough data to reach that conclusion since, y'know, they've never actually sent a dog from either side through to see what would happen." He tapped his chest with his claws. "But I know what'd happen."

Multiple questions forming, Spike opened his mouth.

But the other Spike was still going on: "'Cause magic isn't stupid and mechanical like science. Magic has an understanding of what's going on, and it wants to help in its own way." He poked Spike's nose again. "Ten years ago, magic washed through you in ways it had never touched any creature in your universe before or since. It knows you, and after four days of sitting here eating Equestrian gems, it knows you even better. " Grinning, he swooped back. "So let yourself trust! And let yourself go!"

And, well, it wasn't like he had much choice at this point...

Taking a deep breath, he flexed the big muscles along his back till he felt the tips of his wings brush the stone on either side, then he stepped out into the nothingness.

Two, maybe three seconds of sheer, stomach-scrambling terror was all it took for his wings to curl or furl or whatever it was they did, and he was gliding out of free fall, away from the wall of stone behind him, and out over the valley, a guided missile suddenly instead of a plummeting anvil.

"Everything okay?" The smaller dragon slid into the space off Spike's right shoulder, and for all that the guy was multiple yards away, Spike could see his grin down to the little pointed teeth, could hear his question even with the wind whooshing past, could smell that same eucalyptus-fresh tinge of excitement from him. "'Cause everything looks pretty okay to me."

And Spike couldn't deny it. "You make a good argument for being a dragon," he said, not raising his voice this time since he knew he wouldn't need to.

"Argument?" The younger Spike's grin widened. "Hey, I'm just spending time with a friend." He pulled ahead and called back, "We've got a couple hours' trip ahead of us, though, so lemme show you some gliding techniques."

The trip turned out closer to five hours, but after a few minutes demonstrating the basics of flying, his other self lapsed into silence, something for which Spike was grateful but which also annoyed him a little. Not that he wanted to talk about all this, but not talking about it, he discovered, just meant that it curdled and sloshed around in his head.

Simply put, if he went home, he would die, likely before the end of the year. But if he didn't go home, he would never see Twilight again—his Twilight, he meant—would never smell her scent without that horsiness in it, would never hear her voice without that whinny behind it.

And she would die before he did.

He would keep pushing that thought away, but then others would bubble up: she'd brought him here thinking he would come out too big to go back through the mirror, for instance, but he definitely recalled her saying something about the possibility of moving the portal's entrance back at Canterlot High when they were waiting for Princess Twilight to open the thing. Add to that the way she'd been honestly shocked at his size, and maybe...maybe...

Maybe she'd wanted to turn this trip into one of her object lessons. Maybe her plan had been to arrange things so that he, now a biped, would be able to carry her, a quadruped, around in his arms.

An electric thrill crackled down the yards and yards of his spine at the thought. It seemed so much like something she would do, and, well, all the times he'd lain blissfully on his back cradled against her while she rubbed his belly, he could've returned the favor. The thought of stroking his claws gently over the soft hide of her chest made the breath quicken through his nostrils—

Until the image of the little bespectacled unicorn collapsed on the grass and crying "I'm sorry" over and over again drifted like a ghost into his mind. He sighed a huge puff of green fire and smoke that brushed over his face as he flew forward, following his smaller self. Whatever Twilight might've intended, it had all gone wrong. But she'd apologized, she was apparently working to make it right, and Spike couldn't stop hearing a little voice whispering that, if he hadn't gone blasting off the way he had, he could've dug this pond with a couple swipes of his claws and gotten home two or three days ago.

If he really wanted to go home...

Which of course he did! How could he want anything else?

And that just started the whole sorry mess tangling around inside his skull again.

All this stirring back and forth made the hours seem to both creep and pass way too quickly. But grass began appearing among the rocks below, spreading till it took over the rolling hills. Scrub brush became greener, more plentiful, trees popping up in thicker stands and gathering into actual forests here and there. Signs of civilization made themselves known—farms, roads, ponies wearing hats, pulling carts, entering towns where scents of supper wafted up to him, the sun just above the horizon to the west.

And then he was following the other Spike over the swell of a ridge to see that purple crystal castle in the distance, his vision sharp enough to pick out the two purple figures on all fours beside a rectangular pond that hadn't been there before. The larger of the figures bent toward the smaller and extended a wing in Spike's direction. And the smaller of the two—

She leaped into the pond and vanished without so much as a splash as far as Spike could tell.

The knot that had loosened in his chest at the sight of Twilight tightened again with a jerk that nearly made him gasp. Flexing his wings, he shot past his guide, closed the distance to the pool in four big flaps, pulled up, and dropped less gracefully than he might've liked onto the opposite shore from the princess. "She couldn't even face me?" he asked, the growl in his voice making him fold his ears and clear his throat.

The princess sighed. "I won't lie to you, Spike: that was some of it. She's extremely sorry for what she did and wants very much to make a personal apology to you. But she didn't think she'd be able to concentrate on the steps necessary to make this transfer work if she was constantly breaking down in tears the way she's been on and off the past four days. So she's gone through to prepare for your arrival." She looked up at him, a gentle sadness in her eyes. "That's assuming you're still determined to go back."

Another purple shape entered his field of vision, Spike the dragon gliding in to alight on the grass beside the princess. And seeing the two of them together, sensing how their actual scents changed, sort of wrapping around, amplifying and complementing each other, he knew the answer to her not-quite-a question. "I have to be with her."

Princess Twilight's horn glowed, and a book appeared floating in front of her. "I'll let Sunset know you'll be along shortly. She and Fluttershy are with your Twilight in her bedroom, awaiting your arrival."

Spike had to blink. "Her bedroom?"

A quill pen popped into place above the book, the princess's hornglow grabbing it and using it to scrawl over a blank page. "The laws of thaumatic resonance say that both ends of a portal like this have to be roughly the same size. So when we moved one access node to the pond here, we had to move the other to a larger surface. It's now the ceiling of Twilight's apartment."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Spike raised his claws. "I'm gonna go crashing through the roof?"

With a scraping sound, the quill stopped. "Probably not," the princess said after several long seconds.

The other Spike turned wide eyes at her. "Probably?"

"Well?" Spreading her wings, she leaped upward and crossed the pond to hover in front of Spike, the book trailing after her. "When Twilight contacted me about you coming through, the available data gave me nine possible outcomes with substantially non-zero probabilities of occurring: you could've remained a talking dog, you could've become a pony, could've emerged a fifteen-year-old baby dragon, et cetera." She blew out a breath. "Transdimensional indeterminacy dictated that we couldn't know how the waveform would collapse actually until we observed the results of the experiment."

His tongue feeling suddenly dry, Spike swallowed. "And how about now?"

The glow of her horn flared, and a stack of papers as long as her neck fluttered in the air beside her. "Seventeen substantially non-zero outcomes," she said quietly. Another flare, and the papers disappeared.

6 - Heart to Heart

Spike had to do some more swallowing. "And one of those outcomes has me crashing through the roof?"

The princess settled back onto the edge of the pond at Spike's big clawed feet. "The percentage on that one's honestly pretty small. The portal should work the same way as before, shunting you to exit at the transverse center of the nodal complex on that side. So once you hop in, you should drop out just above her bed, and she'll be standing right there with her magic to catch you."

"If I don't come out as a giant dragon." He looked at the placid surface.

She shrugged. "That's another one with a pretty small probability." Sighing, she went back to writing in her book. "What's most likely is that you come out the other side exactly as you went in four days ago."

A clearing of throat drew his glance to the other Spike, gliding over the pond with a few flaps of his wings. "I'm afraid I have to disagree with you there, Twilight."

"Really?" The princess glanced away from the book. "You have more data?" Her eyes lit up. "Do I get to do another batch of calculations?"

The smaller dragon shook his head. "You've just gotta trust the magic."

She blinked. "What in the bright blue name of Equestria do you mean by that?"

With a sigh and another couple flaps, the other Spike rose to a position where he was looking Spike right in the eye. "Remember what I said earlier about the friendship you and Twilight have, the love and the connection that make magic happen? Well, magic changed you once in your world, brought you here to change you again, and I'm convinced it'll take all the old and the new and change you even more when you go back." He reached out and touched a claw to Spike's nose. "You can tell me about it next time you visit."

The princess's mouth squinched up on one side. "That's not exactly scientific."

"Exactly." The smaller dragon didn't budge his gaze from Spike's. "It's magic." He hovered back a bit. "I'll see you around."

A lump was forming in Spike's throat. "Thank you," he forced out around it. Then he looked down, nodded to a confused-looking Princess Twilight, and stepped off the grass into the water.

Strangely enough, he didn't fall, or at least he didn't feel like he was falling. The colors and shapes rushed over him the same way they had on his first trip through the portal, giving him the impression that he was moving forward, and the almost musical sounds seemed to start in front of him and flow past.

They seemed different, though, the colors and the shapes and the sounds, still strange and jarring, sure, but gentler, maybe? Less like they were poking him and laughing and more like they were petting him and cooing. Like whatever force it was swirling and crashing around him was trying to reassure him...

Wishing he could find his eyes so he could close them the way he usually did, Spike still sent his silent 'thank you' out to the power that had given him more than a dozen years of being able to talk to Twilight and understand her—well, as much as anyone could understand her, of course. No matter what happened next, he would always be grateful for—

The shapes and colors all froze at once, flattened, and cracked like ice, and before he could draw another breath, Spike found himself looking down on Twilight's familiar room, her bed just below him. Three human scents tickled his nose in a way that seemed more canine to him than draconic, and Sunset's cry of "There he is!" perked ears that felt like proper ears along with Fluttershy's gasp and Twilight's "What the—?"

Then the stroke of her power was prickling his fur—

Fur instead of scales! Yes!

But it somehow seemed to be more fur than he remembered, and he whumped pretty heavily into her coverlet and blankets, sank into them more deeply than he ever did when she would let him up on the bed.

"Spike!" he heard Twilight shout. "Is...is that you?"

"Twilight?" he said, his jaw moving and the word coming out in a voice a little deeper than he was used to. Steadying his paws against the squishiness of the bedclothes and mattress beneath him—they were paws, he could feel, but did they seem wider?—he pushed himself up, turned toward her on his right, saw her beautiful human face staring back with wide eyes, saw something moving in the mirror atop the dresser behind her, and—

And had to stare himself. Because the creature standing on the reflected bed was more wolf than dog, longer than Spike had been before, leaner, lankier, more muscular. The fur was the right shade of purple, he was strangely glad to see, but it was longer, fuller, thicker, his tail much bigger and bushier. Forcing his eyes away from the mirror image, he looked down at his forelegs, flexed his toes, watched his fur ripple with sinewy strength.

"Oh, my," Fluttershy more breathed than said from somewhere to his left.

From the same direction, Sunset chuckled. "Looks like mirror travel agrees with you, Spike."

"Trust the magic." He dropped back to sit on his haunches, his gaze moving back to Twilight's face, the only sure point he'd ever had in his life. "That's what the other Spike said," he told the still gaping Twilight. "You didn't and I didn't and now...now, it's..." He raised a paw, not a twinge of pain anywhere in his entire body. "If I'd only listened to you years ago—"

"No!" Twilight clutched her hands in front of her chest. "I was wrong to force this on you, and I—" Closing her eyes, she turned away. "I'll understand completely if you want to go live with Fluttershy now or something. I tricked you and lied to you, and I—"

Without even thinking, Spike sprang from the bed, scooped Twilight up in his forelegs, and stood upright on his hind paws, Twilight startled and staring and perfect in his arms. "And I love you." He bent to touch his pointed black nose to her pert little purple one. "I may have bellowed that at the top of my lungs a few days ago, but I want to make sure you hear me say it again. 'Cause we were both wrong here, so how about I forgive you, and you forgive me?"

"Oh, Spike." Her eyes half-closed now behind her glasses, Twilight relaxed against his chest, brought one hand up to caress the fur at his cheek—

And a clearing of throat across the room snapped his attention to a wide-eyed Fluttershy and a grinning Sunset. "Okay!" Sunset said, crooking a thumb over her shoulder. "Might be it's time for me and Shy to hit the road."

"What?" Fluttershy looked back and forth between Spike and Sunset. "But...I have so many questions about how this could help my older canine patients!"

"Oh." Again, Spike moved more quickly than he had in years, setting Twilight back onto her feet and dropping to all fours, though even sitting down like this, he couldn't help noticing, his head was about even with her waist. "The other Spike didn't think that mirror travel would do anything to a regular dog." He had to swallow. "It's like...like the magic was just getting my outsides to catch up with my insides." When he shrugged, he realized that he could move his front legs in ways a lot more like human arms than should've been possible.

Definitely not a dog anymore, but certainly not a dragon, either. Still, every inch felt like him: for the first time in years, really...

"You guys don't need to go!" Twilight was saying, Spike gladder than ever that he could see the adorable colors her face was turning. "In fact, Sunset, you need to report the outcome to Princess Twilight! I know she'll be on pins and needles waiting to hear, and we'll need to set up some more comprehensive experiments to see how the mirror affects non-sapient lifeforms! Also, Fluttershy, could you maybe give Spike a quick exam here? We'll come in to the clinic for something more comprehensive as soon as you've got an available appointment, but—" She glanced down, and Spike's breath hitched at the sweet relief shining in her eyes. "For all indications so far, I'd have to say that he's definitely in good health."

Both Fluttershy and Sunset giggled, but Spike lost track of everything else in all possible worlds when Twilight's hand gently began scratching his ear.

"And the girls!" Twilight's hand pulled away, Spike almost falling sideways into her leg, he'd been leaning so deeply into the glorious sensation of her fingers. "We need to call them, tell them Spike's okay, invite them to the biggest picnic party we've ever had!"

Spike straightened to see her looking back down at him. "If you'd be okay with that?" she asked.

He had to leap onto all fours so his new tail could fully wag. "Right now, I'd be okay with pretty much anything." And while he didn't know exactly what he was other than Spike, he did know in a way that he'd never known anything before that he was going to be at Twilight's side for as many decades as she had coming to her. "And bring a tennis ball!" he called out, practically galloping for the bedroom door. "We've got some 'fetch' to play!"