Old Friends

After her final day of work before her break, Starlight didn't seek to connect with Sunburst or anyone. She simply went home and cried and moped. She couldn't help but wonder how things would have turned out had she not invited Trixie to that dinner. Even if it was unintended, the feeling of betrayal was real and so very bitter, but so was the feeling of having done this to herself through her own folly. It would have been worth having him sit there alone and bored for twenty minutes to make that world of difference. She was losing him again, but it hurt so much worse this time.

Use a mind spell to drive a wedge between them, she thought. Easy. No one will ever know.

I'll know, she countered. Good friends don't selfishly sabotage relationships.

There came a knock at the door. Hesitantly she answered, opening it to see Mudbriar, Maud, Sunburst, and Trixie. A cornucopia of conflicting emotions washed over her but it was anger that took the wheel.

"Oh, good, you're here," chimed Sunburst.

Starlight's eyes rested intensely on Trixie, who was looking away uncomfortably. "Oh, well if it isn't a bunch of happy friends who all met through me," she grumbled.

"Technically I met Maud through my own serendipitous merit and by extension the others," corrected Mudbriar.

"We wanted to see if you'd like to go ice-skating with us," asked Sunburst.

She truly wanted to go and spend time with her friends, especially Maud and Mudbriar, who hadn't stabbed her in the back. Not to mention, further isolating from the situation felt like she was conceding defeat to Trixie. But on the other hoof, she couldn't stand the thought of being with Trixie and Sunburst at the same time, especially with the looming sensation of losing grip on her darkest impulses. One more episode of jealousy and she might do something she could never take back.

She exhaled with feigned indifference, determined to hurt as much as she could. "Well I'd love to go with you, but we're not all self employed magicians and freelance scholars. Got a lot of responsibilities and such."

The tentative smile on Sunburst's face evaporated into crushed disappointment.

"But don't worry, you'll have fun without me," added Starlight coldly. "You seem to be very good at that." She shut the door abruptly ending the conversation.

For a moment everyone just stood in silent shock. Finally Sunburst turned to the rest of the group.

"Um… Why don't you all go to the lake and I'll catch up with you." He waited for them to depart before knocking on the door again. "Starlight? It's just me. Can we talk?"

But Starlight had already left.

Starlight paced around her school office, fuming. "You could have just gracefully bowed out," she grumbled to herself. "It wasn't necessary to be an asshole. But how can they just think we can all move on like everything's the same as always? Like we can all still be friends? My feelings don't even matter!" She drove a hoof through the drywall. She stared into the dark hole she'd made, seething, unable to define the exact origin of her anger. It was just everything. "Shit," she breathed.

Starlight went to her desk and began rummaging violently through the drawers. She yanked the middle one open with her magic and saw something that stopped her cold in her tracks.

Well, if it isn't my other old friend.

She found the unopened bottle of spiced rum laying on its side but it was noticed secondarily to the alluring metallic shimmer in the drawer. Within the chaotic jumble of office supplies she made with her carelessness was a now scattered packet of razor blades.

She'd almost gotten to the point where she just viewed them as ordinary tools like rubber bands or binder clips with no viceral memories attached. She was able to have them right there in her desk, even forgetting about them most of the time. Every single day she’d manage to make it through without abusing them even though they were always there if she needed them. It affirmed how far she'd come and how well she could cope now but today was different than three days ago.

She stared, mesmerized by the glint of the shiniest blade, imagining pretty red drips sliding down a pink backdrop.

You were the worst friend but you were always there for me.

Please, Starlight, something inside her pleaded. Just take the alcohol.

Slowly her eyes abandoned the glint and landed on the rum which she floated up into the air. She ripped off the foil and pulled out the cork, immediately inverting the bottle into her mouth for a big swig. Starlight slammed the bottle down on the desk and collapsed back into her chair with a gasp. She kicked the drawer shut with one leg but could still see the blades clearly in her mind's eye.

She downed another gulp as soon as she caught her breath, wanting to get buzzed ASAP. Her eyes fell on the framed photo of her and Trixie on the corner of the desk and she reflexively swatted it away, the glass shattering on impact with the wall. She slumped over, laying her cheek on the desk and began to sob as the warmth filled up her insides.

Well, you diligently went to your job despite it hamstringing your love plans. You went holiday shopping for a backstabber in good faith. You invested your trust in them and respected their autonomy and refused to interfere. Look at what being a 'good pony' got you. Look what you lost. Look what you could have had with me.

“You got exactly what you deserved for trusting other ponies again and allowing them to have free will," she whispered. "You’re so pathetic now thanks to Twilight." Her eyes crawled up the wall to the very dignified formal portrait of the headmare. It was weird to see her not smiling.

"The old you would have crushed her enemies and just taken what she wanted. Why don’t you just do that?” She could do that. It would be easy and euphoric, at least for a moment. To feel that rush of potency and control again.

She knew why she wouldn't do that. Forcing ponies to stay with her didn’t make real happiness… but allowing ponies to leave did cause real pain.

They had a name for what was wrong with her, but as an adult now working with teens, she felt like the problem was she'd just been a teenager her whole life.

It was wet beneath her cheek now. Starlight drank again until she had less than half a bottle left and her throat burned. She stood up and wobbled out the door into the hall.

Her hoof steps echoed through the lonely corridors. The school was a ghost town. Everyone was gone now but her. She had no work to finish; she had no reason to be here. She just needed somewhere to fall apart in peace.

Her eyes flicked up as she heard a door close. Who was still here? She saw the griffon Gallus straightening a satchel around his neck.

She'd always appreciated his down to earth realism and witty sarcasm. The moment she saw him, a desperate idea crossed her mind. She needed a consolation, an ego boost.

"Oh, hi, Counselor Glimmer," he said in surprise.

"You can just call me Starlight," she laughed. "You're leaving awfully late."

"Yeah, I just had to get something."

"You flying back home now?"

"Actually I was going to take the night train with my friends first just for fun before I went home."

“That sounds nice," she nodded, looking him up and down. "Y’know, it sounds like you have some time to kill before that train,” she smirked, placing a hoof on his chest. She leaned in close and Gallus could immediately smell the liquor on her hot breath.

“I-I, Um,” he stammered, shrinking back from her. “Miss Glimmer?”

“C’mon” she purred. “It's a no-brainer. We can be as gentle or rough as you want. My office or your bed? Or even right here in the hall,” she giggled irreverently. “No one’s here.”

Gallus swallowed. “I really should meet up with them,” his voice cracked. “They’re actually expecting me. Sorry. Um, have a nice Hearth's Warming though.” He sidestepped her and strode briskly away, wings unfurling for liftoff but Starlight captured him with her magic and yanked him back to her, roughly flipping him over and pinning him faceup on the ground.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she snarled in his face. “I’m right here! Ready! Are you not into ponies or something?”

“Uh- uh, well,” he quivered.

“Bullshit! I’ve seen you checking Shimmy’s ass in the halls at least half a dozen times! Am I too old? Is that it?”

“No. I just-”

“Too ugly, then?” she sneered.

“Miss Glimmer, please!” he cried. “You’re drunk. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

Her face fell in horror as seeing the fear in his eyes snapped her back to her senses. She released the griffon immediately. Gallus righted himself and bounded away fearfully.

“I’m so sorry, Gallus,” she sputtered in shame. “I don’t know what I was-” she looked down the hall but he was already gone. "Have a nice… break… Fuck…"

Starlight aparated back into her office chair, and buried her face in her hooves. It felt like everything inside her was disintegrating and she had no idea how to stop it.

She was glad that at least Gallus had the good sense to say no, but getting rejected by a horny teen still did not feel good. She just wanted something to make her feel pretty and wanted, but instead she now felt worse than garbage.

She swallowed more rum as her mind inevitably returned to the shiny blades. She opened the middle drawer cautiously as if she expected a coiled snake to leap out at her. Slowly she craned her neck to peer inside, only stopping when she saw the inviting glint again. She counted each one and found that there were eight.

For a few moments, Starlight lost her presence of mind. She was emotionally exhausted and her head was beginning to swim from the alcohol. Before she knew what was happening, she was floating all eight of the box cutter blades out of the drawer in a procession. She gathered them in a regimented circle, turning and twirling in the air like a synchronized swim team or a carnival ride. They shimmered as the light played over them. She focused her powers, even through the inebriation and they began to glow orange, getting hotter and hotter and then suddenly they were wilting in flames. She stared into the center of their communal fire, losing herself.

What are you going to do now? You're done with this place. There's nothing left for you here. Burn it to the ground.

She glanced over at the floor to ceiling curtains and without any further thought, shot the smoldering blades at the base of the fabric. She sighed, propping her chin up on one hoof, watching with cold, compassionless apathy as a wisp of smoke sprouted before a little orange bloom.

Well, somepony will have to take you seriously now, won't they? You'll be infamous again.

It's about time. I was always better at being infamous than I ever was at anything else.

So are you going to watch from the outside? I'm sure it'll be hauntingly beautiful.

Or I can just sit here and wait for the smoke and flames to take me. Whatever. I like to keep my options open.

Slowly the fire began to catch and crawl upward as Starlight sank into the embrace of her old self and… whatever.

You can't just leave that decision up in the air. Either you're alive and being hunted or you die in a tragedy and many will cry at your funeral. Surely you have a preference.

Starlight shrugged.

Many will cry at my funeral? Even the old me didn't have delusions of grandeur that grand.

You mean the insidious you wouldn’t. The actual old you was a happy filly.

That was before I was an angsty teen and then an angsty young adult and then an angsty adult dabbling in benevolence and then here we are again.

It’s been a roller coaster.

And I want off.

You’re just leaving another hole.

Starlight’s eyes scanned over to the literal hole that she’d left in the wall.

You tried to make a career in service of the ideal of friendship, and now you’re going to sabotage it for so many just because you could never figure it out for yourself. You didn’t think for a second that that’s not fair to the kids.

Tears began to flow down her cheeks and she looked back at the smoldering curtain, the flames now licking the ceiling, threatening to spread to the structure. She tore the cloth down from its rings with her magic, dropping it to the floor in a pile. Then she tore down the other curtain and used it to smother what was left of the fire.

The moment didn’t feel like an epiphany. It didn’t feel transformative or redemptive. It felt like another narrowly avoided disaster that she’d created in a runaway chain of escalating disasters. She'd eked out one more win for sanity, but for how much longer?

Starlight surveyed the destruction in the room and shook her head. "I can't stay here,” she whispered. “I have to leave before I really hurt someone. I should never have even come here. What the hell was Twilight thinking?"

She took one last swig from the bottle, not quite finishing it. Then she wiped the tears from her eyes and aparated to the outskirts of town, a vacant field some distance from Ponyville proper. The snow was falling quietly in bit-sized flakes.

Starlight grimly chose a direction, a spot on the horizon where there were no lights and simply started walking.