Nothing is Nothing and Peace is Peace
There is Peace at the Bottom of the Abyss
B_25
Spike had been walking with the girls in the afternoon when, suddenly below his feet, a hole swallowed him whole. He fell at once into complete darkness as hoofsteps echoed on above. He was falling. And everything within twisted and churned.
Then electricity sparked him out of the bed as his claw tore at his chest to calm his beating heart. Cold sweat froze over his scales as they became slick with it. Breathing heavily, the dragon kept like that for a while.
Then he turned on the bed to the ruffling of sheets beneath him. He brought his foot to the ground but stopped. Swallowing, he tested it above the surface, like toes over a pond, wondering if they would phase through the land itself.
It made contact, and his feet clambered on the ground, not trusting it to hold his weight.
The nightmare was recurrent and sleep wasn't nearly as frequent. Spike twitched when composing scrolls—dashing a long, black line, across the written text. Even his writing bore edges from a wobbly claw. With the girls, he kept close to himself, holding his shoulders with his claws.
And then it would happen.
He'd be walking across grass and the next step would phase through the earth itself. Suddenly he would be falling and his stomach would churn as the darkness closed into him. He fell without the sensation of wind. Without sounds beyond his echoes.
Every day, he tripped into an abyss.
Twilight was worried.
"Spike? I'm worried for you."
Spike blink back into existence with a full twist evoked by a tick. He glanced around and found that he was on a stool. There was a lab around him. Clean white walls with the whitest blinds. Twilight sat at a desk. There was a bed in the corner.
"W-Where—"
Spike fell with the stool into the void and sunk into the abyss. It sliced his midsection as breath could not be achieved. The horror of falling resumed. It scared him at the start. Terrorized him on when it would happen next.
But when he started falling, and there was nothing else, that was when his heart found rest.
"That'll be two bits!"
Sugarcube Corner. Standing before the counter. Pink pony holding out her foreleg in expectation. Natural instinct to reach for his waist and the feeling of a pouch filling his palm. It brought it to the mare's hoof as the portal opened at his feet. The bag fell into her hoof as he descended into eternity once more.
"Bye-bye!" Pinkie waved from the hole turned dot turned nothing. "See you!"
None understood that he was falling. That he could be taken from them at any point, at any second, and they did not seem to care. They had him around, talked to him, and treated him like someone that was there.
Even though he was haunted by this terrible fate, they didn't pay it much mind, not any heed—as though it did not exist at all. Suddenly, he was there. And suddenly, he was not. It made zero difference to them. The effect was minimal.
When an extreme is not recognized by others, one is forced to not see it as much either, lest they find more use screaming into the void. It was a horrible, terrible thing to the dragon. To be taken and whisked and dropped and forever gone. But the others didn't notice. They didn't care. It was nothing to them.
And soon, it became nothing to him.
There's peace at the bottom.
Origin of the voice: unknown.
Spike had been falling when he heard it. But how he heard it was up for question. With his frills? Or was it something that spoke within his head? Did feelings spell out the words? Or was it a sense of that being the case.
Each time he fell, he wondered about the end, of the apparent fear that was supposed to come. Did one fear falling because of its demise—or of the falling itself? At first, it was a scary, sudden sensation. Death was implied within it.
But pegasus flew, and earth ponies learned the wonders of parachutes. They could fall without it ending with the end. Once death had been stripped, the sensation of falling no longer scared them. It was no longer a matter of fear.
Spike, in learning to fall, no longer feared falling.
His friends not caring no longer fazed him. The falling no longer scared him. But now that nothing mattered, he felt nothing, and he often wondered why he was still something. Agony was about him. Dull, and without a voice.
"Spike! Listen to me! Focus!" Twilight's hooves clopped before his face as he shook out from his sleepy trance. Blinking, he looked around, finding that he was in his room. "You fainted again! Right in the kitchen! Your head—does it still hurt?"
Spike reached a claw to his scalp to feel a pulsating ache thumping from beneath the bone. He tried leaning forward—but two hooves settled on his shoulders. They pushed him back into the bed. His spines compressed against the pillow.
Above, Twilight hovered. "Spike. Are you... with me?"
Spike glanced left and right, clenching his stomach for the fall. It would come at any second, and he would not let it take him by surprise. Still, he looked at Twilight. "I'm here. Here for now, at least."
Twilight blinked as her mouth opened and hung that way. "Wha... w-what do you even mean by that! What is going on with you! Do you need help? I can take you to Nurse Redheart at once." Twilight tried to control her breathing, but it quickened after her words. "Do you need to go to Canterlot instead? Is this something to call Princess Celestia for?"
Spike's lips separated, the dryness of his mouth a desert to breathe through. "You're... not real, are you?"
Twilight's mouth still did not close. "W-What?"
"You're not real." Spike shook his head waiting for it. But where was it? When would it come? Was this how it worked? Once you were defeated, it glinted hope—only to dash you back? Tormenting him with the prospect of someone caring? "None of this. Drop me already. Let me fall. I'll get closer to this time."
Twilight's lips went to move but stopped as her eyes searched around the room; the edge of her hoof rubbed at the bottom of her lips. Breathing shakily through her mouth, she looked back at him with a smile. "You'll get closer? Closer to what, Spike?"
"To the bottom of the abyss."
"What's down there?"
"Peace."
Twilight digested this for a moment before closing her eyes. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"I'll help you reach the bottom." Twilight inhaled sharply and exhaled slowly. "Do me a favour, now. Close your eyes. Don't stop anything. Just let your mind... go.” She softly hummed a lullaby that hung on the border of recognition. “And talk. Talk to me. Rattle everything without a second thought."
Spike breathed much the same before finally letting his eyes close. Instead of seeing darkness behind his lids, he was instead out on the farm. "I'm at Sweet Apple Acres. Applejack is walking next to me. We're... talking."
"What are you talking about?"
"I... I don't know." Spike gasped as his chest caved in with the breath. "She barely sees that I'm here. Like I'm an insect she's trying to ignore. It... it feels like, if I'm close to her, I won't fall." His claws clenched at the mattress as the space opened at his feet. He rattled in place for a moment, rocking, a way of dealing with the falling.
"W-What's wrong?"
"I-I'm... I'm falling." Spike raised his head to breathe, inching higher for breath, unable to inhale at his current speed. He could suck a small portion in—but his lungs burned at the lack of oxygen. "None notice when it happens. They don't care. It's horrible. And scary. But all I can do is fall."
"Is that what you want to do?"
"It's all that I can do." Spike arched up on the bed to find a space of air to breathe inside. His form curved over the mattress in handling his shifting descent. "I can't change it. Nopony cares when it happens. And I'm nothing to the world with this curse."
He then exhaled and relaxed on the bed. "All I can do is reach the bottom. It's my last choice—even if it isn't a choice at all." Soon he was tranquil, and he was breathing steadily. "I can dive. Close my eyes and dive. Dive... dive... dive..."
"But there is no peace down there."
Spike flinched. "What?"
"There is no peace at the bottom of the abyss." The darkness tinted into a purple hue, bringing colour, presenting texture to the unknown. It became a place. Something seen and experienced. "Because there is no bottom. It's nothing. It's all an illusion."
Spike felt himself slowing before he was floating in the space. He no longer fell. Was that an improvement? If falling took him nowhere... then wasn't that the same as floating? It was only a difference of sensations.
"There is no peace in nothing. Nothing is nothing. A concept with a reality unable to be experienced." Twilight cleared her throat as her voice softened. It did so out of care, out of concern for the current state of his mind—and the effect her words would have on it. "Peace isn't the absence of everything. And you won't get it by being nothing at the bottom."
Silence spread within the space. What had been dark, scary, and unknown—was now a section of peace. One quiet and warm and infused with the spirit of Twilight Sparkle. The mass pulsated with her voice, lifting him up with the breeze. Looking around, he shouted from within. "But how do I get out from here? How do I find peace, then?"
Twilight laughed. It wasn't at him, and it was the sweetest sound he'd ever heard.
"Use your wings! You did learn how to fly, didn't you?" Twilight teased. "And I can't tell you how to find peace. Nopony can. But I can suggest that it does not come from falling into yourself."
Spike checked over his shoulder to see his wings, white and bright, flaring out and consuming the space. With a nightly flap, it took him upward, through the hole, leaving a trail of a rainbow in their wake.
Spike woke up in his bed with the slow opening of his eyes. Raising from his bed and lowering a foot to the ground, he did not fall through, but he did push himself toward the door of his room. Out into the hall, which was dark, but with a light near the end where the kitchen.
He stumbled through the darkness and into the light, from isolation to companionship, finding the seven friends gathered at the table. They were too immersed in their game of cards to notice him. He swallowed, stepping back, feeling an opening below his feet—but not wanting to be a bother.
But then he shook his head and stepped forward, into the light, with the clack of his steps enough to rouse the girls. They looked at him happily. Most of them, at the very least. Rainbow peeked over Applejack's forelegs to peek at her cards—only to receive a headbutt against her snout instead.
"Hiya, Spike!" Pinkie greeted by stretching her forelegs into the air. “You look horrible! Is this a new style?"
"You look rather famished! A growing adolescent must ensure they are eating to meet their needs!" Rarity laid her cards facedown on the table while glancing over at him. "Has Twilight not sampled a chart for you to follow? Are you not eating well? Perhaps I could offer a couple of meals to ensure you are not only snacking on gems at night?"
Applejack chuckled. "Or the boy hasn't been beating enough trees to work up an appetite."
"Maybe he's worried about all the tail he's gonna get if he looks a bit better than that."
"Rainbow Dash!" Fluttershy followed. "You shouldn't joke about a friend who's in pain." She then blinked and looked at the dragon. "Not to imply that you are in pain! Are you in pain? Not that you look awful or anything. You look dashing!"
Spike's mouth opened as his head turned between them all. His eyes blinked as his head ground into thought.
You girls shouldn't care about me. I'm nothing.
"Even if you felt like we thought you were nothing," the voice of Twilight whispered in his head again, "and that we were so great... do you think we would treat you so horribly? That we would treat you like trash because you weren't as great as us? Could you ever imagine a time where Fluttershy would ever scoff at anyone?"
Spike wobbled, and, at once, the girls flashed forward, some at his hips, others hovering at his shoulders. They helped him forward, lowering him to a chair pulled out. He was seated, and then he was weak.
Don't fall into yourself.
There is no peace in nothingness.
It's just nothing.
You have to be alive to find peace.
"I..." Spike began with a shyness not felt since he was a kid. He was expecting something to open beneath him with his hope renewed. "I... I had a nightmare." It was hard to breathe, for his voice had to carry the weight of the agony that'd been locked and festered. "And then nightmares."
It felt like he was chipping away at cement. But the faces of friends were around him, attentive to him. Their hooves laid on his wrists, and they helped him along through the pain. "I k-kept falling through the ground, and none of you cared. You never noticed. You never did anything. And that was the scariest thing of all."
Spike continued talking as the girls kept on listening, finding his chest lighter as the words came out. The experience of the past had meant nothing, but as he came to speak about it, the weight of others' care put some legitimacy into the experience. Slowly, he was starting to feel like someone, and then, he was beginning to come alive again.
Though, as he spoke, he did his best to ignore the tickle that came from the floor.
