Twilight Sparkle and the Stupid Original Pony

After her bummer of a misadventure with the viciously insouciant troll, Twilight was more than happy to let Starlight start her on-call duty a few days early. Glimmer could always use the extra on-call bonus, anyway.

Twilight delayed writing her after action report so we could respond to Rarity’s ~~invitation~~ summons. We were having a pleasant tea at the boutique when I asked for her perspective on Spike’s return from his time travel jaunt.

“Oh, darling, I couldn’t possibly reveal the details of such a deeply personal event. It was entirely too sultry to share. And my mane was such a disaster that night.”

For a moment everypony sat quietly, sipping their tea. I certainly hadn’t meant to pry overmuch.

“You see,” Rarity said breathlessly, “it was like this…”

—

The boutique was half destroyed and Rarity’s temper was nowhere near vented. She staggered into her workroom panting. She felt awful for driving dear little Spike out into the night. But dammit, she needed some action and he was too bucking young.

Dear Princess Celestia, why did the fellow of her dreams have to be half her age and three years under the age of consent?

“Oh Spike,” she whimpered into the shadows, “can you wait just a few more years? Can I?”

For an instant she considered whether the prison sentence would be worth it to just do him now.

“No! Bad Rarity!” she slapped herself hard enough her cheek stung.

“Oooooo-ungh!” she cried in frustrated rage and pushed another dressmaker’s ponikin over. This one clipped a shelf of sewing supplies as it fell, sending tools and notions flying. Rarity whirled and kicked. Her hoof connected with pair of falling pinking shears sending them soaring across the room to impale the clock over the door.

“I should learn to colour my own fibres, I could really do some damage with a vat of dye!”

She went through the motions of splashing gouts of steaming dye across the room, stomped a rack of dresses into the imaginary puddles, and then heaved as if to push over a cauldron that wasn’t there.

Stumbling to the wall she collided hard enough to knock yet another hole in the plaster and slid to the floor “And I just want to diiieeeee…..” she groaned.

A trickle of blood ran down her face where she had struck herself.

“Rarity.”

It was Spike’s voice. She had not heard his approach over the sound of her own sobbing and mayhem.

Rarity didn’t dare look up, she didn’t trust herself to look into his eyes.

“Go home, Spike. I love you too much to commit statutory rape against you.”

“Rarity,” he repeated.

Spike was aghast to see the mess and destruction. Even worse than he had guessed from the crashing and banging that had filled the boutique as he approached. Even worse than he had imagined when he ran from the boutique eight years ago.

“Statutory rape means that even if you want me as much as I want you, our culture has agreed that children your age are too young to make that kind of life decision and I go to the mare’s prison. I don’t care about prison, I don’t care about the ghastly attire, I don’t care about the inedible slop. I don’t even care about sadistic guards and cell block bullies and getting rapedevery day in the showers. But I do care about hurting you.”

“I know what it means, Rarity. Look at me.”

“I can’t,” she whispered in a tiny voice.

Spike waited for her to say more.

“If I look at you now I am lost. I don’t want you to grow up hating the old washed up fashionista jailbird who molested you…”

Spike sighed.

“Rarity, my sweet love, simply look at me.” His voice was gentle, compassionate, but never before had she heard that note of command in it. “Now, please.”

Reluctantly she raised her head. She had to blink the tears out of her eyes to focus on his unexpected bulk.

“Spikey Wikey?” For minutes she simply stared at him. Finally she stood and walked to him like a mare hypnotized. She was amazed to find that when standing she no longer need look down to meet his gaze. Raising a hoof she felt the firmness of his adventure hardened muscles, delicately traced the line of a scar that ran almost from shoulder to his elbow. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’ve been trying to.”

“I neither know, nor care, how you’ve done this. Shall I assume the position right now, or may I wash my face first?” Her expression was a radiant alchemy of joy, relief, and desire, shining through smears of tear streaked mascara.

“Rar’, there is something that must be addressed first.”

“A bath too perhaps? I certainly am a wreck.”

Rarity was bruised and bloodied from injuries sustained during her tantrum, bedraggled and tear stained, coat dusted with plaster, splinters in her mane and tail her knotted in tangled elflocks.

“Not that. You are the best thing I’ve seen in my life.” Spike knelt before her. “Rarity, will you marry me?”

“Well, duh—” she cleared her throat. “Pardon me, what I mean to say was: nothing could stop me, my dear Sir Spike.” Once more she was herself: elegance incarnate. No amount of mess and mayhem could lessen her.

“You make me more happy than I can say, my lady. Now, if I am to take wife I must be able to provide for her—”

He dropped his pack with a thud that shook the floor of the boutique. Loosening the drawstring at the top he let it tip, spilling bushels of coins and gems to flood around Rarity’s hooves like a sparkling river.

“—if you’d like to retire.”

Rarity’s eyes were as wide as saucers but she shook her head ‘no’.

“Now, to adorn your dress of purest white—”

“Oh, Tirek take my dress of pure white, let him wear it!” Rarity stomped impatiently, her hooves splashing coins and jewels, “I shall wear a harlot’s red and walk the aisle unshod and visibly pregnant! Take me now!”

“–of purest white,” he repeated, again with a quietauthority emphasizing his words, “I bring you…” with a flourish Spike unrolled a strip of blackest velvet. The fabric was frayed at the edges but safely nestled in the midnight depths of its lush folds were six diamonds the exact size and cut of the gems making up Rarity’s cutie mark. Pale blue, and luminous in their adamant perfection, they held her gaze magnetically.

“Oh. Ohhhhhh. Oh My.” Rarity was entranced. “Would it not be a crime to neglect these beauties? They must have been a king’s ransom.”

“A Queen’s, in fact,” Spike chuckled, “yes, my love, they literally were a queen’s ransom.”

“It will take weeks to acquire the silks I need and at least two more weeks to sew them. I shall surpass myself. Can you wait that long?”

“I have been waiting since the hour I set foot in Ponyville for the Summer Sun Celebration back in one thousand twenty four. Eight years ago for you, my lady, fifteen for me. A few more weeks are a very small thing.”

—

“Oh, Rarity, you tell it so well! I love that part of the story,” Twilight said when the tale had ended, “sooo romantic!”

“Dang, Spike, what an absolute stud! I suddenly feel much less confident about how I wooed Princess Twilight!”

“Hey, how did you meet my mom?” Spike asked “All anypony knows is that a mysterious stranger showed up out of nowhere at her side.”

“Yes, dears, you must tell all. How did Twilight find her dark stranger with the silver tongue?”

“I kicked him!” Twilight said with an impish grin, “until he agreed to come home with me.”

“I wasn’t going to mention the kicking,” I replied, “just the long nights of wine and song!”

“Wine and song? I don’t remember that at all.”

“The wine was so you wouldn’t remember my singing!”

“I remember something was long, those nights,” Twilight murmured.

Rarity offered her pronouncement: “Well I think you two are a wonderful match. But I can see from the smoldering exchange of glances that we will have to hear the story another time.”

She stood and walked us to the door.

“Run along now children!”

—

Walking back to the castle with Twilight I nuzzled her. “I’m sure glad to be spending the rest of my life in Equestria…”

“In spite of all the kicking it took to get you here?”

“You can kick me whenever you want, just don’t kick me out.”

“Never!”