~ IV ~

Advice from an Ex

Spike walked through the crowd of ponies and saw the world from well over their heads, to the fountain at the center of the square, that, and all the buildings that flanked the space. Chatter and the sizzle of the sun had become one as the incoming breeze was a relief.

It was a colder breeze, unlike a few weeks before, marking the end to something, and the start of another. He shook his head and kicked it through the crowd on his route to the fountain. Various ponies sat on the benches around it—and few on the stone of its foundation.

Spike kneeled before the water looked at his reflection. Turning his face to reveal the darkness beneath his eyes and the looseness of his scales. Tired, and lacking tightness. His reflection showed more than his appearance.

It revealed what others would feel in looking at him. His essence. The lack of will inside of himself. He shook his head and cupped his claws, which he dipped beneath the water, the icy touch, pleasant. Then he raised it as his face lowered into the water.

He splashed himself. Washed himself. And the cold buds, bursted, to help him feel more alive.

"I'm afraid that public bathing is rather frowned upon nowadays," that musical voice greeted him as the cold water washed down his frills. The warm cloud summer bathed him after his wash. "Although I do not mind running a cold bath at home for an old friend."

Spike shook his head and, once done, looked at the guest over his shoulder. There stood the snowy mare in a thin, caramel dress, with some overs-side hat. Both articles had wet spots from his previous flick.

He smiled sheepishly.

As she wiped drops of water from her cheek. Her hoof stomped into the ground as she looked down at him. Rarity didn't look impressed.

"I see some things never change, do they, Spike?"

His smile dropped. "I guess not."

And then he dunk his head back into the fountain with the hopes of drowning.

"Please make yourself at home."

That was hard to do as he stepped into the room and closed the door behind with the spade of his tail. It clicked, and his footsteps cracked next into the open air. He looked around the setting. The opening of the boutique, with dressed and naked mannequins, set in rows on either side, facing him as he walked in.

He left the shadows as a circle of sunshine shone from the open windows above. Strolling beneath a low archway into the next room, the dragon found a familiar sofa, one slept on many a night, that would be retaking him.

Spike stumbled over to it and crashed into the plushness. Wrinkling the weird material these things always seemed to be made of. Leaning back was an awkward sink that still tensed his abs. But he did his best to get used to it.

Make yourself at home. Celestia. Can't even remember the last home I had.

His eyes swept the familiar setting for it all to appear alien on his eyes. Nothing had been changed or moved. Yet it was the feeling of it all. Like being at a friend's house while, you can be yourself there, you're not fully comfortable either.

That'd been what it felt like as of late. Going from one friend's house to another, allowed to stay there for a while. But it was never his. It never felt like home. But what even was that? Home? With the work put in on the farm, he could rent a place, maybe even own, with all the bits saved up.

Even if I got myself an empty flat or a dusky cave... would that be home? Or would that feel like a place I was just staying at? No matter what. I'll need to find a place soon enough. But that feeling. Home. Can I find a place where I'll feel like I belong in it?

Belong. That was the word. To go to a place and feel like you were meant to be there. That your being could be unleashed, and you, yourself, could be free. To have that feeling. That sense. He had it as a kid. With Twilight in Canterlot. The feeling of home being a home.

Does that come after making my own into my own? The stuff you have inside of it? The friends that come to visit and stay with you? Surely you and your life is what makes a place into a home. But... something's missing.

One's feelings were often clues to an incomplete truth about their soul.

"Now this should be an interesting question to as—why, with how many times I've been on the opposing side of it." Her voice had sung from the kitchen to the clinking of glasses. All sounds ceased. "But will the lady and dragon be having tea today? Or is this sort of visit a dark wine in the middle of the afternoon?"

There was a crack beneath his scales and a wince that turned his face. Rarity wasn't the kind of mare he wanted to be weak around. Not after what had happened. When she, despite her better virtues, was the type to use one's weakness against them.

Going for the tea would allow him to be strong, get the company and light conversation needed, and move on, with a clearer head and a healthier heart, on what needed to be done next. It was the right call.

And yet.

"I'll be the excuse for you to have the wine."

Distant sounds of glasses being settled on the counter.

"That might be so, dear," her voice continued a lofty melody. "But it's still dependent on you how pricey of a bottle you wish to go for."

Still have your ways of finding how messed up I am. Not the little boy that you could tell with a glance anymore. Or maybe she's just being nice. Dunno.

"That depends." Spike leaned off the couch as it groaned, resting his elbows on his knees, looking down into his clasped claws. "How much is this failure worth to you now?"

Silence.

"Not even all the bottles in my secret wine cellar is worth a scale torn from you."

He meant it as a joke or something close—but mare went for a bottle he knew she shouldn't have used for this. Soon there was the plug of a cork, the pouring in the glass, the bubbling for breath of a turned bottle. Hoofsteps then resumed into the room.

In the open archway appeared the lady with a magical blue swirl around her. The violet curls of her mane blocked an eye as the other, the one exposed, was dressed in a wispy black. Blue shone beneath in it with a half-lidded stare. Lips pulled to the side with a muzzle a touch downward.

Spike's heart accelerated at the beauty as he could feel the beginning of the sweats. She'd become even more perfect. Daring and clamming to all that which she desired. A goddess in a body of a mortal that was as devious as she pleased.

She strolled forward without her eye leaving him. Looking up at him with a slow sway to her hips. Her head inched to the side with a tilt, gazing at him with an increasing smile, prompting him to glance at the presentation.

The snowy peaks of her rump rose and dropped, every step, a little wobble, as the twins, twisted and ground, up and down, into the other. How her cutiemark flexed and compressed on the dough, it spawned across. It raced his heart. In how she could make it move. Knowing how to walk to the context of her prey.

But then her head leaned back in, blowing his view, with that smirk now full. She appeared between his legs and nuzzled into his claws, forcing them to open, which she laid her cheek upon. Plush and bountiful. Warm fur and smooth skin with the urge to softly squeeze.

Which he did.

Rarity giggled and slid out at once. His claw squeezed in the open air and, on the next, was squeezing on the glass floated into it. She laughed again while stepping back. "Careful, dear. You won't like the feeling of squeezing that. I assure you."

His head bent low. "Right."

Rarity smiled and turned. Waited for a second, then glanced back. The side of her face, the reveal of that smile, lowered muzzle and narrowed eyes. Her voluptuous backside presented to him. There. Just existing in all its perfection. All but a reach away.

She stood there, waiting, without a sense of awkwardness. Then she smiled and closed her eyes even more, walking away, still showing the rise and drop to that stadium. Strolling across the room, and the wooden table in its middle, she took a seat on the chair on the other side.

Spike looked into the glass and twirled it around. Seeing his peering face on the reflection, ripples that figured his image, parts of him, there, others carried in a blur. The more he twirled the glass, the more the flavour spread—and the less he could see himself as a whole.

Place to place. Mare to mare. Failure to failure.

He raised the glass to his lips and went for a light slip. Stung, at once, by a definite flavour of berry.

"Uh-huh-nuh! Never take a sip as the drink is still being stirred." His vision lifted from the glass to the mare across from him. Rarity sat straight in her seat, swirling her glass in magic, but never looking at it. Her gaze was on him. "You ruin the process and the taste for yourself. And sometimes, transformations, are better left unseen."

Spike turned and coughed and massaged his throat. "You sure about that? What about that motto of facing a problem boldly?"

"That's one of Rainbow's lines, dear." Rarity never looked at her glass, but slowed its speed, innately knowing its needed tempo. Her charcoal eyelashes framed the glow of her blue eyes. "Works for the sort of life that she lives. Then again. You do not live as she, do you?"

Wish I did.

Twilight probably does as well.

"No."

"Good boy! Although all life is different from your own." Rarity peered over the glass and into the wine, not needing to see into her reflection, but to ensure the extent of the process. "All we share are similarities. That's why we pick from others' experiences in aid of our troubles. Whatever seems... mutually applicable."

"Which can be sometimes not looking at problems?"

"Which can sometimes be looking at something as a problem."

Spike choked. He looked away in shame. He was a male, a dragon, a beast. Yet, he seemed to be weaker than everyone on everything. His claw twirled the glass on instinct in need to do something. Twirling the wine as it swirled around on the inside. "How can you be sure it's not?"

"Just that, rarely are we offered assurance, we are gifted with strong probabilities." She glanced at his glass and, as she continued to do so, the dragon was forced to as well. Nothing special about it. Although the wine splashed wildly inside. "Tell me. Do you know why ponds possess lily pads?"

His brow narrowed. "So frogs can hop across them?"

"Any other reason?"

"Unless I can catch a quick study break for the library? No."

Rarity smiled. Differently this time. More sincere instead of a play. It always amazed him how ponies could do the same act, in so many various ways, from genuine to everything else. All he knew was the former and lost in all the matters of the latter.

The mare, though, told him that, despite lacking that complexity—that it was a good thing.

"Perhaps it's a good reason that you don't know as it keeps their intent as it should." Rarity coughed and wiped her hoof on the fluff of her chest. She actually looked away. "Ponds have lily pads so that smaller fish may hide underneath them. They escape the view of you and me as well as those dastardly frogs. In fact. It is there where they grow most."

Spike blinked. "In hiding?"

"Correct! Most fish grow the most in being able to hide." Rarity glanced back at him. "And as much as I hate to say this, us creatures above the sea are not so much better. What myths have you grown up on again? The things those comics of yours like to say?"

Spike swallowed. "That... you grow most... in facing your problems?"

"Precisely! That you get out there, and you do." Rarity stopped swirling her drink and let it settle close to her lips. She looked at him from over the rim in toasting it to him. "Confess to that girl in the open. Beat that bully on the street. Gain those muscles in the gym. Become more out in the open. That is what is most celebrated of all."

Spike exhaled. "Isn't that true, though? Thinking a whole lot about a thing doesn't get you too much." He glanced into his drink to see that it splashed it a little less. "You learn more about yourself in your interactions." He shrugged, and the liquor whipped for it. "Anything else is all in your head."

"There is as much truth in growing in the open as there is in growing beneath a lily pad—it's when one is valued more than the other that issues arise." Rarity sipped from her drink, closing an eye, surrendering to the shudders it evoked. A breath later, she pulled it back. "Those who feel stared at are less willing to be daring. Less willing to put on that extra weight on a bar in being watched. Not wanting to make a mistake, to attempt something different, or to be themselves at all in facing a crowd."

Spike looked down as it slowly started to click. "You always feel watched, and you're less willing to do all the awkward things that cause you to grow?"

"To state the theme clearly." Rarity's eyebrow rose, and she twirled her drink again. "Keep starting at the transformation, those growing pains, and you might find they haven't developed as you would have liked. Sometimes practice is better done in the shadows. With only the occasional glance."

Rarity stopped twirling the drink for another sip, this one, this time, allowing her to recline into the seat. She laid like that, defeated, but pleasantly so. "Mhm. I do not watch the drink... only checking up when needed. And now, it is ripe."

Her magic toasted the glass in the air. "The initial state is poor, although everything required for a proper sip is there. Why is this? A lack of balance, of course." She lowered it for another sip, and then another, her tail flicking from the drink. "Were I to stare as I swirled the drink, my reflection would be a mess, and I would be lost for it."

She floated the drink to the side of her face, where it kept turning, but idly now.

"The gift of self-awareness is given with the curse of self-consciousnesses, for the two enable the other, and a balance must be strung between them as well." She tittered to herself. "Everything in life is not so much holding that balance—but in being better able to reach it."

Spike sighed and twirled his drink. It was hard to tear away his gaze. Hearing the splashes and the uneven spread. But, he refined, idly, from those sounds, allowing his body to take over for his mind.

"When the wine is being swirled, it loses its initial form, and all seems to be lost in the chaos of motion—but, despite how it looks, we know that fear is silly." Her drink paused in the air, and it's vortex ceased. It looked as how it did initially poured. "Regardless of what happens, it'll return to looking like this—for there is no other state it can be."

Spike cleared his throat. "What if it spills?"

"Indeed, that is the power behind the fear." The whiteness of her lips settled over the glass, and the next intake was a gulp; the glass tilted back to reveal its empty state. "In losing that wine, we know where our limits lie. Not so willing to spill in public. But daring to find it in private."

And now she grinned as the bottle lifted from the table and over to her glass.

"And so long as there is more wine out there in the world," she said as the glass started to fill in a dark purple, "then we can always be refilled! Now that you've made those previous mistakes." The glass filled, and she twirled it, for an excellent few twirls, and then let it settle. "You swirl the drink again, it losing its form, all to spread flavour throughout. Once the process is done, you dare that next sip."

Which she did to a smack of her lips.

"To find the taste has spread, that the drink is not so tense, and that it is balanced because of that process." Rarity hovered her muzzle over the rim, looking into her reflection. "And now I can look at myself, clearly, with a drink that's more than just pretty on the eye."

She resumed drinking and became infatuated with it. Sipping and drinking, letting it rest in her mouth, enjoying the love of it all. Bringing moisture back to her throat as the dragon sat hunched, and she laid back.

How the times have changed.

"Tell me," Spike said as he twirled the drink without looking down at it, except over at her, with a face, not defeated, but weakened. "How do you always know what's on my mind?"

"Because you are my Spikey-Wikey."

"That all?"

"And because you are like me, or how I once was, and place a great weight on the small."

"Guess you have me there."

"And that I have been thinking about you as of late." The back of Rarity's head leaned into the chair as she stared into the ceiling. Her shoulders dropped, and her frame deflated. The feeling of defeat rolled off her. "And about us. What was. What could have been. And the muddle in-between."

Spike rose and twisted a claw. "I'm still the one who messed it up."

The back of her head rolled on the rest, all to look at him, with a tired, loving gaze. "Dear. Were it so easy to blame you for everything and exempt myself from reflection. Alas, I am not that shallow. Nor you so at fault."

His gaze fell to the side. "I still failed to be what you needed me to."

"And there are some changes, some flavours, that are not initially inside that glass of wine." Rarity's giggles grew to the point of laughter that echoed from the surrounding walls. Then she breathed. "It was my expectations of you, and you lack of being able to be that, which was the death of our lust."

Spike blinked and looked back. "Lust? What about love?"

"I still love you, of course."

"And I you."

You didn't say it.

Rarity smirked at that but continued on. "Who would have thought that, in the course of our romance, that the greedy dragon would be the hopeless romantic, and the lady, the sexual deviant. To wish for romance for so long—only to find I did not have a passion for it."

"Or you had a terrible date."

"Except I had the best in the world, Spike," she smiled with a sleepily, tilted head, "and I would not lie to you on that. But I figured for a dragon like you, that you... would be wanting to claim this lady in more ways than one. I pushed you. Showered you in affection—in public."

"But that's how—"

"How normal dates are, yes, and you are not one of them, dear." Rarity fiddled and sat up on the seat. Her cup flew over the table, just before him, starting to hover. "You spent your whole life chasing after my tail. Without any real expectation to see underneath it. Spent your youth around girls—but never with one. Is it any question, then, your struggles with intimacy?"

"That wasn't your fault."

"No? And tell me, when I laid my cheek on your claw, without you fainting, have you not gotten better in that regard."

He glanced down.

"Well?"

"...yes."

She smiled. "Good to know you moved on."

His eye shut. "Did you?"

"To various partners, I’m afraid, and sometimes a different fellow later in the night."

"Shopping around?"

"Tasting wines to see which I would like in my cellar."

"That metaphor doesn't carry well."

"It does! I already have a bolt and chain and an empty basement."

Both of them laughed at that as the dragon came to lean back into the sofa, able to look and feel awkward, for it no longer was so to present company. He held out his glass and clinked her own. Then the two sipped without a toast—though to settle the little, complex things, still between them.

"Although," Rarity broke after her sip as the wine soothed her voice, "there is room in my growing harem should you wish to be in it. I do not know how far solved your... problems are. But I assure you our times together will be one one one, slower, and as personal as they were before."

Spike coughed on the drink as it went down, coughing and laughing, rubbing a claw at his sore throat. He croaked through the blockage. "H-Heh! So easy." He stroked to help the passage down. "All those years of thinking and feeling and trying. Just for you to make an offer like that."

Rarity nodded. "Things don't carry the same weight as they used to."

He did the same. "Time goes faster and feels less full."

"Only with improper company, dear."

"Touche."

Spike put his other claw to the drink, cupping it with both, swirling it around, delicately now, loosened by its taste. He no longer watched his reflection, instead, the twirl of the wave, how smooth it was, ensuring it stirred right. Focus on that set everything at ease.

Could I do that now? Now that I'm... no longer afraid? Learned in the dark to tend to a mare so that I could be causal at it in the light? With an offer so free like that... no feelings or love attached... just a mutual 'feeling good' for both sides. To be in that casual string of dates and getting it on like most do.

He sighed as the stirring of the drink slowed.

I can do that now. Maybe not to the same degree as Rarity. She just wants a good time for a long while before slowing down with someone else. I could get that. Have her for more practice. Make up for all those times I left her dry—and forcing her to move onto various stallions at a time.

Yet.

After settling.

An inhale of the drink revealed lavender.

"Thank you for the offer... but I have a few other problems with a mare that I need to take care of first." He sipped the drink, and continued to do so, tilting his head back to down the glass. Once done, he wiped his lips with his wrist. "What we have is light. But it wouldn't be right to be going around that."

Rarity smirked and finished her drink, slowly, more delicately, letting him see the little lump as it passed down her throat. Once done, she turned, looking at him, licking the corner of her lips for the blood still there. "Knew it would be a matter of time before a sweaty mare needed your assistance. Now whoever could that be? Someone that you couldn't refuse more than you could me?"

"I... always wanted to be there for you, Rares."

"Yes. Yet I never gave you the room to grow it. Let's not touch about that now."

"Right."

"Was it sweet Fluttershy being unable to ask for a stallion that came for your comfort?"

"Uh, no." He blinked. "Though maybe I would have, if it was—"

"Has Applejack gotten tired of her gimmick? Cooling her toys to help deal with the steam." Her tongue clicked at her teeth. "Certainly a way to keep things interesting with that girl."

"Rarity... you really shouldn't be telling me this about the girls. I'm close. But not close in the way that you girls—"

"Did you get the pleasure of fucking Rainbow Dash on a cloud? The sights, feeling, wind on your scales and dick inside her—"

"RARITY!"

"Hey! Don't you know it's rude to interrupt a lady?" She covered her face with a cross of forelegs, and, only hearing the dragon exhale, did she peek through them. "And, by the way, there's no way you enjoyed the delights of Pinkie Pie if you're still shameful about all this."

Spike collapsed as to take every word personally would never lead to an end in the assault. "I didn't do anything with our friends. Or strangers for anyone. Alright?"

Rarity winked between her forelegs before they fell. "That only leaves your best friend."

Anything inside had vanished. Hate or love or the effect of the jokes in the air. The sudden dulling of his scales and the scratching aches of his heart. His expression dropped, his head next, his gaze after that. "Twilight. She... it's a lot worse for her."

"One only needs to see those papers to glimpse that." His glance to her was met with a raised hoof. "Rest assured. Only her friends could tell. Anyone else would guess it to be how awkward that whole day had gone. Princess having to deal with other shameless mares being in heat at her speech? That's the common view of her strangeness that day."

Spike looked to the floor. "Because one never thinks of the stoic princesses getting hot and bothered."

"And yet our purple delight is baking on the inside." Rarity's brow narrowed. "She's not baking one of your little ones inside of her yet, is she?"

Spike shook his head. "Celestia, no. We're not even that far along yet. Would need to get her used to having someone before I..."

He blinked. "Huh. I've... never thought about having kids before."

Rarity sounded amused—but not insulting with it. "And why is that, dear?"

"Because I never figured I'd get... close enough with a mare... like that... to have them." His eyes were blinking as to process something too large for their comprehension. "The biology isn't there for it. I'd never get close enough with a dragon to want it. This land is my home, and..."

Home. My home is with ponies. But where in that land do I feel the most at home?

"Guess I just never saw a point in thinking about something that will never happen."

There was silence for a while and no reply. No wine left to sip and an empty drink to twirl. He did so even though there was no point, or maybe the motion was the point, something to occupy himself with. Soon magic sizzled. And the sounds of liquid pouring exhausted into the air.

"Sometimes it's in thinking about what we cannot have, Spike, we still learn on who we would like to be." His glass filled and was already being stirred right. "But if there were ever to be a mare more important than me in that heart of yours. It would have to be Twilight."

Rarity hovered the bottle back to the stand. "But, surely, sexually messing around with Twilight must be a new weird."

His head cocked, and he shrugged. It was easier to talk about another mare and doing the sexy bits now. Maybe because what they had done allowed something to be proven deep inside of him. "Not anymore weird than we usually are. She's my best friend. I'd lose everything and dare anything for her."

"You've always loved her."

"Of course I have. She's Twilight."

"Would you like her to be your Twilight?"

How does one even answer a question like that? "It's the only thing I've ever felt greedy for."

"But?"

"She deserves someone better."

"Oh, please. Poor mare in heat, and you came up as Twilight's first choice."

"Maybe. Just... I... I don't know what I feel for her." His eyes squeezed tight, and memories raced of her. The long strands of fuzz pointed from her cheeks. How easily her chest could be a wonderland of fluff. Her blush. The way her bangs covered her eyes. "I love her. But I wouldn't... start calling her babe. Even marefriend isn't right."

"Have you said anything to her yet?"

"I said I love you."

Then it clicked.

"I love you." His head shook. "I used to think that... that was a terrible line. Everyone says it. Doesn't have any weight behind it at all. Love's something that has be proven, right? You have to say what you love about them. Have a passion behind it. Have..."

"Or maybe you don't need to have those things at all."

"Yeah." Spike thought about it some more. "I guess if you're feeling the need to prove that you love someone—that love isn't strong enough to be the proof itself. But I love you. That 'you' can only mean her. That 'I love you' is unique from the rest because that 'you' can only mean her."

Rarity's eyebrow raised, but she didn't raise a fuss, as first—and, hopefully, final—loves tended to be odd. She allowed the dragon to babble.

"I love Twilight. That I know. Always have and always will." His head shook. "I never needed anything in response to that. Just being around her. Getting to be with her. Loving her because... because it's the most natural thing in the world."

His heart led the words as his mind remained confused.

"Everything she does is nice. Her voice. The giddiness about a discovery. Even how snide she can be at times. The way she blushes and hides into herself. How she'll lay close to her, burning, barely able to look at you—but melting you when you do."

He exhaled.

"I could never see myself on the other side of that. It feels... selfish, and wrong. But then she's done so much to show that I also deserve to have someone and to have... things done to me. I don't love her like a marefriend. Don't even love her as a friend. I just... love her. That's it and that's all."

His eyes closed.

"Not just a friend or a marefriend or a friend with benefits as to give it an identity is to limit it. I just love her, and that composes what she is to me. I love her. I... love her." Steam evaporated from his words as he sighed in being brought back to the weight of the present. "Love her so much because I got to see so much more this last while. What could be for when she finds that special someone."

Rarity coughed and, although she tried to keep her eyes on him, couldn't bear to do so. “And this... love.” She swallowed. "Have you confessed it?"

"Not... quite like that." He chuckled. "But yes."

"And her response?"

"...do you need to ask?"

Rarity looked down and to the side. "Suppose not."

Any hope for an answer to the problem, a revelation that would cause things to change, it all faded, at that moment, as nothing he could do could reverse that choice. Already he had his transformation, his understanding, and acceptance of what was to be.

"Still agreed to help her with her heat, although it's quiet, and she tends to look away." Spike coughed and did so again. Rubbing his throat and then soothing it with a sip of wine. The world became loose in his vision. "We were close to, uh, s-sex before I told her that. She doesn't want to go that far, now, as to, um, f-further complicate things."

Rarity snickered horribly to herself. Or maybe at herself. "Afraid that won't be enough to deal with the sting below and between."

Spike nodded. "Been getting the feeling of that." He sighed. "Thinking, maybe, I find someone that could... be there for her in that."

Rarity clicked her teeth but said nothing more. Wanting to insult him for such a line but not finding it right. Some matters did not have fancy words to be spoken upon. Rather one had to endure the turmoil of being silent.

"But I think... I was always going to be okay with this," Spike said without doubt in his voice, although his mind followed it slowly. "Always knew, maybe from you, that all you could do was love someone and do all you did for them because of that. But to never expect it in response. Or else you would be betraying that compulsion."

Rarity's snout scrunched. "It's not wrong to want love in response, Spike. Even if I were such a hollow mare as to have no desire for that quality—you should still find someone that does, and has it for you."

He smiled. "And I will, someday. But I'm content just to love for now." It amazed him how, in never saying that word for most of his life—that he preached it, maybe thinly, in a day. "But I think it's best I call this thing off with Twilight. If it's my goal to help her, then..."

"Right."

Both of them finished their drinks, and they rose, the mare and the dragon, he so much taller, as she had to tilt her head back. But they were smiling in a way. Though the years and after so much turmoil, now, to be like this, so grown and so different.

"Spike? A request before you leave?"

Spike lowered onto a knee as she trotted close. "Anything."

"You've become a proper gentledrake and I an improper lady, and I wish, before it brings you pain, for you to lose that title when it finally starts to drain you." Her white hoof laid on his knee, rubbing it. "But until that time comes. I need you to promise, no matter what, to be there for Twilight."

His eyes narrowed in confusion.

"I was the one to string that horrible affair for her and, ever since then, she and I have not been as close." Rarity shook her head and looked aside. "Neither does she go to bars to find someone else for occupying the other side of her queen-sized bed. But she might be going back to that kind of life. Your fear of her becoming like me might be coming true."

His eyes playfully rolled.

"But regardless of what happened, no matter the pain, promise me, the next morning, that you will be there for her." There was a strain and a crack in her voice. No longer composed or well or sounding above another. Rather the raw creations from the pieces of a dulling heart. "Even if she has hurt you. With a word or an act or a lack of care to something important. Please. Let it rest in the back of her mind, no matter the terrible date, or the twenty-fourth ending of the world, that you will still be there."

Spike smiled as his claw slipped to her hoof, coming to lift it, squeeze it, and hold it. He looked into the mare's eyes as his other claw came to support her cheek, stroking it, not mentioning the touch of tears on his scales. "Number one assistant from birth to death and even after that. More than that, though, I love her."

Rarity was able to smile back while lying in his palm. "Indeed, that is all the assurance that I will ever need."

The two kept like that in the shadow of the room, until light rolled across, the clouds in the sky, moving away, as to let light shine in the place that once was dark. Everything between them. There'd been no hatred between them. But this was their proper resolution.

The ability, after their pain, to be truly happy for the other.

For the mare groomed as a lady only to find she preferred lust over love.

And the dragon, to find his love, and the one it belonged to, only to never have it delivered.

Author's Note

Howdy gang! Managed to get this chapter out just before the deadline.

Don't have much to write about this entry due to real-life stresses and problems. Should you be willing to help me in any regard, here's where I go more in-depth about it.

Here.

WIth that out of the way—let's get on with the story!
~ Yr. Pal, B