And then they kissed.
And Trixie’s heart shattered into a thousand pieces.
She wanted to vomit. She wanted to cry. To scream. To stumble out from her hiding spot, screeching their names at the top of her lungs, to see the horror in their eyes as they realised their secrets had been found out. As they realised that she knew.
Trixie wanted to do…so many things. Something, at least. Something to show them, or even herself, that she was still there. That she still mattered.
But she did nothing. She just…sat there, hidden behind the ridiculous potted plant with the stupid name. Watching. Waiting for it to be over.
Because, for them at least, she was no longer there. She no longer mattered at all. All they saw, all they sensed, all they cared for, was each other. And Trixie was left outside in the cold.
Just like always.
One moment became two, then four, then five. Heartbeat after heartbeat thudded in Trixie’s eardrums, and still the two ponies before her remained entwined. They were utterly lost in each other.
“We’re just friends,” Starlight had said. “We’re just friends — and not even best friends! You’re my best friend, Trix. There’s nothing to be worried about.”
Just friends. Just friends. Just friends. The words beat a breathless rhythm in Trixie’s mind, circling around and around. Nothing to worry about, Trixie. Nothing to be jealous of. He’s just a friend, and a lower-ranked one than you at that. You’re number one, Trixie. You’re my number one.
But it had all been lies; lies told by Starlight and lies that Trixie had told to herself. The distinction between the two was so blurred that it hardly even mattered any more. Starlight had sworn that she didn’t feel anything for him, and Trixie had wanted so badly, so desperately to believe it that she had lulled herself into complacency. She had let Starlight wrap her in the soft cotton wool of deceit and basked in the soothing comfort of the fantasy. It had served her well enough, staunched the blinding pain against her exposed nerve endings — right up until the point where this sight, this dreadful, sickening scene unfolding before had burned it all away in one horrible fiery explosion of agony and loss.
And now she was adrift again in this roiling grey sea of loneliness and hurt, and it was worse even than it had been before. And she was all alone, without even one scrap of the lie left to cling to for solace.
Trixie bowed her head and clenched her hoof to her mouth, trying to stifle the sob rising in her throat. Her chest constricted, fighting the iron bands that had closed around her ribs, stealing her breath and threatening to make her cry out. No. She wouldn’t gasp, she wouldn’t weep. All she had left now was her pride. Her dignity. The thin veil of concealment — well, that and the stupid plant, Phyllis — were all that stood between her and utter humiliation. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing that she cared. She didn’t want their apologies; or worse, their pity. No. Trixie would keep it in, shove all that white-hot pain and anger and betrayal down into the pit of her stomach, where it would boil and bubble and fester away with all the rest. And she would put on her faithful old mask and keep the hurt inside her, where it belonged. She was a showpony. She could act better than anyone. It was in her blood.
Her father always said to keep on smiling; that was the first thing anypony looked for when they were watching a magic show, according to Big Bucks. Trixie had been less than two years old when her fathers first bought her onstage with them and instructed her to “Smile big, darlin’!”
And Trixie had. The well-worn mask of happiness and confidence was one she had donned many times over the years. When a trick goes wrong — smile. When a crowd boos — smile. When a foal laughs instead of being awed — just smile. Show them all you don’t care. That it doesn’t matter. That they don’t matter to you.
Now there was a new one to add to the list. When the mare you lo— no. Don’t go there. Don’t even think it. When the mare you…care for, that you thought was your special friend, turns away from you — smile. Just smile. Don’t let her win.
And though the muscles in her face trembled, even though it hurt, Trixie slowly, painfully drew her lips back over her teeth, exposing her gums in a rictus grin more grimace than it was smile. The leaves on the plant shook as the air hissed between her teeth, and saliva began to pool in her mouth. But she forced the muscles to stay locked in place; kept the smile there. Just smile. Just smile until it’s all over.
And after an…an eternity of sighs, and whispered breaths, and gentle caresses of hoof on mane, the kiss finally did cease. It might have felt like forever, but in the end, it reached its peak and then faded away. Freed from its magnetic power, the two ponies beside Starlight’s desk drew back to look into one another’s eyes, and smiled shyly at one another.
The desperate smile on Trixie’s face quivered, and her left eye twitched.
The stallion, tall and fire-hued, the white streak on his face looking like a careless dab of paint left there by a whimsical god. Tall where Trixie was short, strong where she was not, bookish where she was stage-savvy, quiet and sensitive where she was loud and brash — for Celestia’s sake, even his stupid beard — he had everything that Trixie did not. Every quality that, apparently, Starlight Glimmer cared about.
Because if it weren’t those things — if it wasn’t his cleverness and his quietness and his stupid maleness — then what was it that made him good enough, while Trixie fell short of the mark? What made Starlight choose him, instead of her?
Trixie’s teeth clamped down hard on her lip, hard enough to draw the tiniest hiss of pain from between her written teeth.
What did he have that she didn’t? What was he that she wasn’t? What made Starlight care about him, and not her?
“Starlight, I…that was…” Sunburst appeared at a loss for words, and his cheeks flushed pink. “I — I—”
“—I know,” Starlight said softly, raising a hoof to his face, and Trixie bit down harder on her own flesh. Blood began to trickle from the wound.
If that were her — if she had been the one out there — she wouldn’t have gotten it wrong like that. She wouldn’t have stuttered or stammered. She knew just what she would have said; like any stage magician, she had rehearsed the scene a thousand times in her head. And in those quiet moments alone in her caravan, just before sleep, she had revisited a thousand times more.
She would have smiled at Starlight, a real smile, not the mockery she wore on her face now. She would have gazed right into those beautiful indigo eyes, and she would have said: “I’ve been wanting to do that for the longest time.”
And Starlight would have blushed, and smiled, just a little tiny smile, and then finally admitted, “Me, too.”
And then Trixie would have taken Starlight’s beautiful face in both of her hooves, just to feel that whisper-soft fur against her skin, and then she would have kissed her again. A kiss long enough and passionate enough to take Starlight’s breath away, and forget everything but the mare she held. Forget the stallion with the orange mane and the shared childhood memories. Forget him entirely.
But as Trixie crouched behind the potted plant, ruby red blood oozing slowly over her chin, she watched Sunburst smile and blush and smile again. It wasn’t her out there. It was him. She was relegated to a third party, a mere audience member in her own dream. In her own life with the mare she had fantasised about growing old with.
And Sunburst wasn’t getting it right, he was mumbling and fumbling and messing it up worse than Trixie had as a foal working with her fathers’ stage equipment — but it didn’t seem to matter. He was with Starlight. He was making her laugh. He was useless, terrible — unpractised — but he still effortlessly taking everything Trixie had ever wanted in one fell swoop.
“We — we should probably get back to the others,” Starlight said eventually, and Sunburst was quick to nod his agreement.
Side by side, tails brushing and intermingling, they headed for the door, and Trixie cowered lower in her hiding spot, praying that they would not see her.
“Starlight, I—” Sunburst hesitated for a moment, and then persevered. “Can I maybe — would you like to get dinner with me? This week?”
Looking startled, Starlight paused, and then her face relaxed back into that beautiful smile, the one that made Trixie feel warm and understood and safe and really seen — but this time the smile was for Sunburst, and Trixie suddenly felt horribly cold. It was like being a flower, after a long period without sunlight and the clouds had finally parted — only for a single ray to shine down on another flower, with none to spare for her. She was all of a sudden outed; not a flower at all, just a weed trying to fit in and hoping that nopony would notice. Just a weed, left to wilt all alone.
“I would…really like that,” Starlight said, her tone strangely bashful. “How does Thursday sound, after the big goofball game is over?”
Trixie’s ears flicked; she could hear a strange sound. Like a small, strangled keening in the back of the throat. It took her a few seconds to realise that the noise was coming from her.
“That sounds brilliant!” Sunburst let out a huge breath of relief. “That would be absolutely brilliant.”
“Let’s just…keep it between us until then?” asked Starlight, still a little diffident. “I just…I want to do this by ourselves. Nopony else.”
“Nopony else except me, here in the bucking houseplant!” Trixie wanted to scream the words, wanted to see the horrified realisation on that beautiful face, the one she had longed so often to touch. “Nopony else except your best friend! No secrets, you swore to me! No secrets! Friends are honest! Friends are loyal! Friends are kind!”
But Trixie stayed silent, and the words stayed unsaid. And Starlight and Sunburst shared one last small, secret smile, and then left the room together. The door closed gently behind them, and their hoofsteps receded along the corridor. Only when they had finally faded from earshot did Trixie finally allow herself to slump to the floor. Allow the tears to come.
The first droplet of moisture slid over her fur to plunk to the floor, fat and swollen, and was swiftly followed by more. Trixie buried her head in her hooves, pulled her hat over her eyes and her cloak for good measure, and then abandoned herself to her grief. Loud, desolate sobs shook her body like a ship in a storm, heaving her shoulders forward and back in ragged breathes. Starlight didn’t want her. Starlight didn’t love her. Nopony would ever love her. Trixie was…alone.
“Th-the great and p-powerful Trixie doesn’t need her,” she gasped, hiccuping between the sobs that wracked her. “I — I don’t need her anyway. It was j-just a dumb crush.” But the lies rang hollow as she spoke them, and the flow of the tears did not lessen. It was all Trixie could do to sprawl on the floor and try to stop herself from ripping apart.
She had never been so alone.
“Do you want to go kite-flying with me on Thursday?” Trixie whispered the words over and over again as she walked slowly down the hall, her cloak brushing audibly against the marble tiles. “Do you want to go kite-flying with me on Thursday?”
A simple question, an innocuous thing. Their weekly ritual, just on a Thursday instead of a Saturday. A banal activity that nevertheless was the highlight of Trixie’s week. A time just for the two of them. A time she treasured.
And now she was polluting it, tainting it, all to trap Starlight in the lie she knew Starlight would be forced to tell. Ruining their beautiful shared time all to force Starlight to come out and tell her what she already knew. That she would not be able to go up to the hills with Trixie on Thursday evening, because she was meeting Sunburst for dinner.
Where would they go, the two of them? Trixie mulled the question over, though she knew it was a masochistic chain of thought. Probably the Hayseed Diner. It was Starlight’s favourite. She swore they did the best hay fries this side of Hoofington, and dragged Trixie there at least once a month. Usually Trixie whined and protested, but what wouldn’t she have given now to have been on her way to a normal meal at the Hayseed with Starlight? Just a normal day, with her best friend in the world. It sounded like heaven. Just to spend a day without carrying the terrible burden of knowing the truth.
She had spent so long in suspense, wondering, hoping. Praying that somehow there could be a way that Starlight would return her feelings. Practising the moment, the confession. Picturing a million different ways Starlight could react. Daydreaming endlessly about those few outcomes that ended with Starlight whispering the word ‘yes’.
There had been so much wishing and waiting, and now all Trixie wanted was to put it all back the way it had been. Stuff the genie back in the bottle. If it was agony not knowing, knowing was a thousand times worse.
Trixie wasn’t an idiot. She knew that this was the end; she couldn’t be friends with Starlight and watch her fall in love with somepony else. It would be too painful.
But at the same time, Trixie knew herself. She knew that she was an idiot. For Starlight, at least. If given the choice between having Starlight in her life, in a horribly painful fashion, or having to face the prospect of a life completely devoid of Starlight Glimmer, Trixie knew what she would choose. No matter what it cost her to keep that patented showpony smile in place. The Great and Powerful Trixie had weathered worse storms before. What was one more? What was a little more suffering, a few more lashes on a back already criss-crossed with scars?
She raised a hoof to knock at the door. One rap, two. Sharp little sounds, echoing in the vast and empty hallway. She could see the candleflame flickering under the door.
There was a pause, and for one dreadful moment Trixie tried to imagine what would happen if he was in there too. If the door opened to reveal not that one most beloved face, but two — one of them the most hated sight in all of Trixie’s universe. She shuddered, paralysed by indecision; should she run now? Just turn tail and gallop back the way she came. Even if they saw her going, it might be better than the alternative. Embarrassment could be ridden out, overcome. Celestia only knew what humiliation awaited if she had to talk to both of them together. She had no idea what she might do.
It was too late; the door was already swinging open. Trixie let out a sigh of relief; Starlight’s familiar figure, clad as always in mauve velveteen, was alone. Behind her lurked the green shadow of the plant, now a regular fixture in Trixie’s nightmares.
“Trixie!” Starlight beamed. “How are you? I feel like it’s been ages since we talked.”
“Ah — yes,” Trixie said lamely, still stumbling to master herself.
Starlight tugged the door open wider. “Do you want to come in and have a cup of tea? It would be so nice to catch up.”
Why don’t you love me? Why can’t you love me? The words were a scream in Trixie’s head, but she forced her lips to form different shapes. Acceptable shapes. Ones that did not reveal the raw, aching wound she was on the inside. “I can’t tonight, Starlight.” Keep smiling. Keep the mask in place. “But I was wondering,” A showpony always smiles, just smile, smile and say it, bucking say it, “if you’d to go kite-flying with me on Thursday?”
