Tenebrous Pact lay before Clover, clearly beaten, the Memory Stone on the ground before her. "I… yield," she said, panting. "Better to rot in a cell than what awaits me beyond."
Clover first placed her wings in irons, followed by her hind hooves. "I look forward to moving on from this. Eleven years of this. All this time wasted. Now, I can finally set about to forgetting you naturally."
As he circled around to her front, Tenebrous Pact practically growled at him. "No. I will not grant you the luxury of forgetting me this time."
"I said 'naturally,' witch," Clover said with a laugh as he brought out a third set of bindings. "You will not be given input in the matter."
Before he could secure her forelegs, Tenebrous Pact lunged for the Memory Stone, snatching it into her hooves and thrusting it towards Clover's face. "I will ensure you remember nothing else for the rest of your days!"
Ribbons of memory streamed from Clover's forehead into the air, where they vanished. Clover fell over and screamed from the shock. After nearly a full minute writhing on the ground, losing more and more of himself, he managed to regain his hooves.
Walking was difficult. The strain the stone put on his mind made it hard to focus on moving his hooves.
A few labored steps closer, and he was able to reach for the artifact in Tenebrous Pact's hoof. As it bounced out of her grasp, she moved to pick it back up before falling over and becoming entangled in her shackles. Clover plucked the stone from the ground with his horn, and the witch made to follow it, crawling along the ground. He grabbed a large stick with his magic, and drove it through the rings of the chains and into the ground with as much force as he could muster. From there, it was a simple matter to get out of Tenebrous Pact's reach, then send up a magical flare for help.
As a troop of what appeared to be unicorn city guards came into view, Clover turned to them. "She needs to be escorted to prison, and I need some help as well."
"What do you need, friend?" said the closest guard.
"Where do I live?"
With difficulty, the guards managed to escort Clover to his home, in a city on a mountainside that he did not recognize. Once there, he flopped onto what he presumed to be his bed. He would worry about everything he had lost tomorrow.
The rays of the morning sun shone through the window and roused Clover. The first thing which caught his attention was a hoof draped over his barrel. Looking down, the leg was marelike, slim, and a pleasant shade of violet. As he turned to examine further, a pair of pale yellow eyes met his, feathered wings came up to stroke his chin, and a happy voice said "good morning, my dear."
It did not have the desired effect. Clover jolted out of the bed and to his hooves. "Who are you?"
The mare in his bed looked despondent. "So the witch has been even crueller than usual. Do you not recognize your wife? I had feared this day would come."
From outside the bedroom, the door burst open to reveal an adolescent pegasus colt. "Father! You finally woke up!" He ran across the room and embraced Clover, who was too stunned to react. "Ironbound said you managed to arrest Tenebrous Pact! Is it true?"
The boy let go as Clover gently pushed him back off. "That much I can say for certain is true, but I need to go. I have many questions yearning to be answered." He made for the door, only to be blocked by the mare.
"You could easily ask me. Please." Her eyes were pleading.
"Madam, I think I need to speak with Starswirl immediately, then I might return." Clover stepped around her and out of the house. As the door closed behind him, he could hear the sound of weeping from inside. Not knowing which way to go, he turned down the first street he saw.
There were few things that Clover remembered clearly, but thankfully one of them was the sight of his mentor’s home after many long nights in counsel with the old stallion. Finding it relative to his own house had been difficult, and seeing earth ponies and pegasi in what he presumed was a unicorn territory was strange indeed. But as he reached the neighborhood where Starswirl was located things became steadily more familiar. This strange city had patches of comfort to offer still.
Before he could even knock, the knob on Starswirl’s door glowed white and swung open. “Come in, boy,” Clover heard from deeper in the house. “I have wards to tell me when somepony plans on bothering me that stretch all the way up the street.”
Clover stepped inside, the door slamming behind him. After a brief journey down the hall he found Starswirl in the study, face buried in a book on the desk, he stopped at the threshold. “Do you know why I’m here?”
Without looking up, Starswirl grunted out his response. “I’m a genius, not prescient, boy. Undoubtedly something to do with the witch. What was her name again?”
“Tenebrous Pact.”
“Good, she hasn’t erased your memories of her again. No need to remind you of your target,” Starswirl grumbled.
Clover hung his head and stepped further into the room, just behind his mentor. “That would be the problem, I’m afraid. She has finally been captured, the Memory Stone confiscated and stowed away on the other side of the mirror for safekeeping. As I put her in chains, she managed to activate it one last time. I don’t recall much of anything anymore."
“Interesting. So, how do you remember me?” Starswirl asked as he finally lifted his head and turned around in his seat.
"I slapped the stone out of her hoof before she could complete her work. Most of my memories are riddled with holes. I dimly remember my parents, a lesson from you here and there. Very little else."
Starswirl laid a hoof on Clover's shoulder. "I can scarcely imagine what you are going through, boy. But what do you propose we do?"
"In one of the lessons I recall," Clover said as he looked towards Starswirl's racks of scrolls, "you mentioned offhoof that you had discerned the secrets of time travel."
Starswirl stiffened. "No."
Clover took a step back from the other stallion's hoof. "No, you have not? Or no, you will not share it?"
"Time is not a plaything, boy. You have my sympathy, but what you suggest is dangerous. How can I be certain you remember enough of your studies to cast it?"
"I am certain I know enough to do this. What knowledge gaps I have can doubtlessly be filled by reading my own tomes."
"The answer is no! You will have to solve your problem some other way! Use that oh-so-clever little brain and think of something else!" Starswirl turned from Clover in a huff and went back to his writings at his desk, quill scribbling furiously.
Clover thought something was odd about Starswirl's behavior. He rarely ended an argument he hadn't concretely won. "You know something, don't you?"
"I know a great many things."
"No, you are keeping something from me." Clover used his magic to gently pull Starswirl's scroll off of the desk and towards himself, forcing the old stallion to look. "I would have absolutely told my mentor if I received a visit from the future. When was it?"
"You assume far too much, boy," Starswirl said as a counterspell cut off Clover's grasp of the paper. Clover placed a hoof over it and pushed it to the wooden floor.
A wicked grin flashed on Clover's face. "You would have told me outright were I wrong. Starswirl, you may be far greater than me in all things arcane, but I am clearly superior at reading a face than you. Or perhaps you are just terrible at hiding your thoughts."
Starswirl huffed, then lifted Clover's entire body in his magic so he could recover his work.
As he floated towards the door, Clover resorted to pleading. "Starswirl, please. I woke up this morning to a stranger of a pegasus claiming to be my wife! I am adrift right now, and I know how to set back on course if you would only help me." Clover suddenly found himself unsupported in the air, and there was a loud thump as his hooves touched back to the floor.
"You have what empathy this shriveled old heart can muster, Clover," Starswirl said quietly, "but time is a delicate thing. It is gossamer and lace, and magic is like a warhammer striking upon it when you try to interact with it. You should avoid it unless you have exhausted your options. See yourself out, friend. I need to return to my research."
As Starswirl turned back to his desk, Clover examined the racks of scrolls next to it. "I can't possibly convince you otherwise, can I?"
"No, Clover," his mentor said with a beleaguered sigh. He didn't look away from his work. "This solution is dangerous."
Judging by the yellowing of the works, the ones at the bottom were the oldest. Among those, one was the obvious candidate, with intricate spellwork visible inside and out. Gingerly, Clover took it in his magic and worked it out of its hole. As it floated towards him, Clover began to make for the exit. "Very well, then. I shall have to think of something."
The door was wrapped in Starswirl's aura when Clover approached it. On turning around, he found his old mentor staring at him from the other end of the hall.
"And here I had thought you dumb enough to try and break in later tonight. That's the wrong work, by the way. It is just an incredibly detailed magical analysis of a sandwich I ate decades ago. A decoy of no value. I can see my options are either just let you try, or add new wards to my home every night until my dying day. This is what you seek." A nondescript scroll floated towards Clover from the study, and Starswirl gently took back the other one. "Seventeen years, eight months, nineteen days ago, that is when you visited your past self. A pony can only cast the spell once. And I expect that scroll back when you are done, boy. Go."
Clover took out a piece of chalk and slowly inscribed the sigils on the bare wood of his laboratory floor, checking constantly against the scroll. Judging by the dust he saw in the room's corners, this room had likely seen such use many times before. He wouldn't know.
After finishing his drawing and doing one last thorough check of the spell, Clover stepped into the middle and poured his magic into it.
A circle of brilliant white formed at the base of his hooves, turning slowly. Soon it began to accelerate, and to rise. A dome formed over his head, spinning faster and faster.
The swirling magic reached its peak, depositing Clover in a room he didn't recognize. It was obviously a study, and based on the green stallion staring with mouth agape at him, it was his study.
"Listen to me, Clover. We do not have much time. Minutes, maybe hours if I've cast it just right. I have lost many of our memories to a dark sorceress's foul magic. I need you to recount our life as best you can; start broad and we can determine what needs to be elaborated on. I wish to go back to things being normal."
"W-what happened?"
"Unimportant," Clover huffed. "Even with time travel such as this, it can no longer be prevented. Coming here only seals it further. Please, we don't have much time." He sat down, waiting for his double to begin.
"Very well," his past self started, voice shaky as his magic grabbed a chair. "I was… we were born in a southeastern pocket of unicorn lands. That's several hundred miles north of where we are currently. Our parents - Fine Craft and High Blood - were quite wealthy and ambitious, and we showed much promise with magic, so they managed to secure the great Starswirl as a tutor for us."
Clover nodded, gesturing for his other self to continue.
The double's voice began to steady as he spoke. "Obviously as a small child at the time, I don't remember much of the tutelage itself. But we proved to be a good student. As we were coming of age, Princess Platinum was looking for a retainer. Starswirl suggested we apply, said it would finally get us out of his beard." He smiled. "He obviously believed in us though.
"When the time came to test the applicants' strength, we somehow won. We used all sorts of tricks and games against the more brutish foes, and the princess declared us to be her choice. On that day, she dubbed us 'Clover the Clever.'"
Clover held up a hoof. “Is that why the old curmudgeon told me to use ‘that clever little brain’ when I asked him for the time travel spell?”
“I would imagine so,” his double said with a chuckle. “Glad to hear with everything that changes, he remains as he always was. Anyway, we had been in the position of retainer and advisor to the princess for a scant few months when disaster struck. Roughly a year ago, a great winter befell not just us, but the earth ponies and pegasi as well. The earth ponies could no longer grow food. We assumed it was the pegasi’s doing-”
“I can hardly think of another possible culprit,” Clover interjected.
“-but we would later find out that they had nothing to do with it. As Platinum, myself, and the rest of her retinue traveled south for greener lands, we quickly escaped the ice, and just as quickly found that Commander Hurricane and Chancellor Puddinghead had had the same idea. As our three leaders bickered and screamed at each other, the cold came roaring back in. All of us fled to a nearby cave. That would be everypony including the pegasi and the earth ponies, mind you. As the incessant arguing continued, eventually everypony in the room was too engrossed to notice they were being encased in ice! Everypony except for myself and two young mares, Smart Cookie and Private Pansy. Earth pony and pegasus, respectively. Looking above, I recognized a creature from Starswirl’s lessons that I had thought for certain he had fabricated to scare us. A windigo! They feed on hate and anger to freeze us, and the three tribes had been providing a bountiful harvest. The three of us remaining managed to get a small campfire together. Faced with everything we had been told was wrong and different, we couldn't bring ourselves to hate each other. They were both so pleasant. Throughout the night as we thought death was drawing near, we sought to make our final moments happy ones. We shared our peoples’ songs, our stories, what little we had of our food. As morning drew near, something strange happened. Our newfound friendship channeled itself into magic the likes of which nopony had ever seen! A gigantic glowing heart sprang from the fire and banished the windigos, freeing everypony else in the cave.”
A long pause settled in the air before Clover commented. “And then what happened?”
“Before the others in the cave could dive back into fighting, we managed to convince them to negotiate, truly negotiate, for the first time. We came together and formed a new nation, comprised of all three tribes: Equestria.”
“I do not understand why you would lie to me about this. I understand even less why you think I would believe such a ridiculous thing.”
His past self seemed puzzled. “You would know I am no liar, and I especially would not lie to you in a situation like this.”
“So I am a ‘you’ now?” Clover asked, frustrated. “We are no longer an ‘us?’ Are we not a joined whole?”
“I have suddenly found myself needing to convince somepony that I did in fact accomplish my deeds, so for the time being yes, we are different ponies."
Clover stood and approached his double. “I do not believe it because it could not possibly be true. You say that we burned down everything unicorns as a whole ever built, all because you made two friends?”
The past Clover leaned forward, snout nearly touching Clover’s own. “I burned down everything my ancestors built because I realized what we had built would destroy us all.”
Clover’s anger finally boiled over as he stood. “And this resolution sat well with us? The dissolution of our nation?”
His past self stood from his own chair to meet his gaze. “I’m sure you wouldn’t see it that way had you been there. I fail to see what the problem here even is. I built something radical and different, certainly, but this new nation thus far is inarguably an improvement.”
“And we saw no problem allowing earth ponies into our cities? Pegasi? I can’t stand pegasi!”
"No, you are just confused and scared! I could read it on your face the moment you entered this room! You had never even spoken to a pegasus before that night! What did you even hate?"
"Stop addressing me as though I'm some other pony!"
"Then you should start behaving like me!"
"I woke up this morning next to a pegasus claiming to be my wife! And a little winged half-breed who is supposedly my son! Does that mean nothing to you? That the magic in your bloodline will fade? That you can't pass the arcane on to the next generation?"
The doppelganger's face hardened. "All that means to me is that I need to start courting the mare I fancy. If I am quick, we may even be the first ever marriage of such a pair. Sounds as though it ended well, save for the wretch before me."
"And what of this 'wretch?' Do you not care what happens in your own future?" Clover spat back.
"I suggest that for just a moment you try to look past what your parents taught you about the other tribes, stop making assumptions about that mare because she has a smooth forehead, and instead try and reconnect. If this is the mare I think it is then she is kind, polite, more beautiful than anypony else you'll ever meet, and has a mind gifted in the ways of peace just as much as her commander was gifted in the ways of war. She will try to make inroads to you. And if even a shred of me is left in you, then you will do right by her." As he was about to respond, crackling magic began working its way up and down Clover's body. His double smiled at him.
"And it looks as though you are out of time. Goodbye."
Clover disappeared from the room in a flash just as he was about to retort.
As he walked the streets between his laboratory and his home, Clover pondered what he had learned. Had he really brought all three tribes together as a nation? Standing shoulder to shoulder with an earth pony and a pegasus to do it, no less? That would be no small feat. Something that would likely secure his legacy for all time, or at least as long as this nation stood. That wasn't so bad.
Had he married a pegasus? Well, they were still ponies. Objectively, he was made of most of the same base components as a pegasus. And his past self clearly had no small amount of admiration for this mare. Clover agreed that she was certainly pretty. His past self seemed to have done a great many things he thought were crazy, however. Or had he? Everything Clover had heard sounded like a sensible extension of what came before. Even marrying some feathered girl wasn't that outlandish, given his double's experiences shortly beforehand. And it's not like the stallion he'd spoken to had been some raving madpony.
No, he had been surprisingly composed. Calm. Rational. Clover thought about how things would have looked from his past self's perspective. If anything, Clover had been the raving madpony.
Ponies of every tribe dotted the view before him as he walked. Most smiled at him, a few even greeted him by name. The sun was on its way down, and for the first time since finding himself in this strange place did Clover stop to contemplate this baffling new city. Everything was fine stone, undoubtedly earth pony work. Even the best unicorn craftsmare couldn't quite shape stone of this quality. Opposite the setting sun, Clover could see a mountain's peak, far closer than if the city had been built at the base. Any estimate on how large the city was versus how high up it was revealed there must have been unicorn magic holding it up. Possibly pegasus magic allowing for lighter building materials as well.
The fact that he could see this gorgeous sunset from this high on the side of a mountain without a haze of clouds meant a substantial workforce of pegasi, too.
What had his past self said, again? That everything had been "inarguably an improvement." This city was an engineering and architectural marvel. Without the other tribes, it would have been totally impossible to stand where Clover was right then. Everypony around him had homes that would put most palaces to shame. Certainly an improvement, and an improvement that would have been wholly impossible without major tribal cooperation. He began to trot towards his home once more.
As he approached the door, Clover resolved to be more like the sane pony he'd just spoken with, and less like himself.
Inside, his supposed wife sat at the kitchen table. Her ears perked up and twisted his way as the door opened, followed swiftly by her gaze. She had clearly been crying for some time. He sat down in the chair opposite hers. It was several seconds before anypony spoke.
"So, my past self tells me that we once saved all three tribes from destruction?"
She visibly relaxed. "So you have cast Starswirl's spell, then. I would gladly tell you about it, assuming you wish to speak with me now."
"I think I'd like that. But first, I think I owe you an apology…"
The night his future self visited left Clover with much to think about. Just how unpleasant he had once been without realizing it, just how life-changing that night in the cave had been, and a fair few other weighty concepts besides. One thing he had gleaned required little thought, though. His future self had, without realizing it, effectively come down from the heavens and told him to chase the mare of his dreams. He sat himself at his writing desk, fetched a quill and paper, cast a dictation spell, and began his letter.
"My dear Lieutenant Pansy, I am hoping you will do me the honor…"
Author's Note
First off, before the heavier stuff, a big thank you to Bugsydor and hawthornbunny for their help on this story. Now, onto the depressingly real stuff.
Okay, obviously this can't help but touch on the subject of racism, and "future" Clover here is pretty inarguably a racist. And I'm aware that his turnaround here is quick, and the real nature of racism goes largely unexamined in this text. If you live in the US like me (or any number of other nations where the dominant power structure is consistently hurting various minorities), race is a very hot topic right now, and I wouldn't fault you for being upset that the racist has one conversation, ruminates on it, and is then "fixed." Sadly, in reality, racists' hatred isn't based on any real logic, and presenting them with sensible logic will not fix them. I would also encourage you to realize that I am not an authoritative voice on this subject (for the curious, cis hetero white man, so as far from an authoritative voice on these subjects as it's really possible to be), I'm not trying to be, and that this is a story which takes place in a setting where these kinds of psychological problems can be patched over by a simple conversation. And if you're like me, you would really like the idea of that being true in our reality as well, and I would argue there is no harm in indulging the fantasy a bit so long as you don't forget the reality.
