Chapter 3: This Too Shall Pass

“Are you okay?” Twilight asked.

“We need to leave. Now.” I reply, an unwanted bluntness to my voice. I’m still panicking. I need to break everything down into steps. First, make sure we’re anywhere else so that I don’t make a scene. We need to be fast. I don’t know if I can handle the page vibrating a second time. Breathe. Okay. That worked a little. I need to remember to keep breathing, it’s really good at helping clear my mind, even if only for a moment.

I left the journal in my locker at school. Princess Twilight probably tried writing a message that I couldn’t see because I don’t have my journal. Out of curiosity, which she is known to have a lot of, she would have then attempted to write something on the loose page to see if that would work. This means two things, the first is that it isn’t just written messages that transfer between the two books, but any kind of physical change. When I tore out a page from my journal, the same page must have also detached from hers. That’s embarrassing. But more importantly, it means that she doesn’t know how the journals work either. She would have written this message as a test to see if it works or not. If I’m correct, and I know Princess enough to be somewhat confident about this, then she’ll assume that the message didn’t actually send if I don’t reply. She’ll think that the page being torn stopped it from working. She’d be wrong, of course. The page did vibrate, but it will stop her from sending another message for at least a few more minutes.

“Let’s get out of here then.” Twilight, My Twilight, nodded and gave me a reassuring look. She started to get out of her seat. Her willingness to help despite not knowing exactly what happened means everything to me.

—

“I’ve never been here before” I say as Twilight leads me to a nearby forested area. It only took a couple of minutes to walk here, yet I was completely unfamiliar with it. Seems that a lot of people are, considering how empty it is.
“You tend to know things when your favorite hobby is research.” She comes to a stop and sits down on a bench. I don’t think she knows what happened earlier but she’s good enough at reading people to know I didn’t want to have a meltdown in public. This area is perfect. The trees block us from anyone who would risk seeing us.
I sit down on the bench and take a deep breath in and out. Twilight is sitting upright with her hands politely on her lap and her bag to the side of her. Embarrassingly, my posture is almost the exact opposite. My legs are splayed out in opposite directions and my back is laid across the seat of the bench instead of the backrest.

“Tough day, huh?” Twilight smirked.

“Oh, uh. Yeah.” I scramble to sit up properly. I can’t help myself but let out a small laugh. I push my hand into my jacket pocket and feel the crumpled up piece of paper. My expression becomes serious again. I need a lot of mental fortitude to push through this. I take the paper out of my pocket. Luckily it was pretty loosely crumpled, rather than being a tight ball. This made it easy to straighten it out again. I place it on my lap and use the palm of my hand to iron out as many small creases as possible, taking care to not actually look at what’s written on it. I can feel my Twilight’s gaze on me as I do this, but I don’t have the energy to give a running commentary on what's happening.

Once the page is about as flat as I can reasonably get it, I take my bag off, place it on the ground next to me and pull out my pen. I look back at the paper, this time making the effort to read it. Sure enough, the page starts exactly how I had expected.

Dear Princess Twilight,
How has Princess Duty been going lately?

I’m sorry but it isn’t working out.
I think we should stop seeing each other.

Okay

Suddenly my heart starts racing. There’s definitely more text underneath it. My theory was right. My Twilight gently places her hand on my knee. I have so much tunnel vision that I can’t see her, but I can tell she knows how I’m feeling. She chooses to remain quiet. Good. I need to focus. I work up the courage to read the new text. It’s in Princess Twilight’s handwriting, of course.

Hey. Do you want to talk about it?

Huh. A nice message. I honestly wasn’t expecting that. I guess I can work with this! I smile and let out a small chuckle. I’m kind of mad at myself for getting so worked up over it. Yes, we broke up, but we still care about each other a lot. There’s no way Princess Twilight would turn on me so quickly. Hell, if you look at things from her point of view, I’m probably the one who’s been acting unreasonable. This is great! I’ve totally got this! I begin to write.

Yeah. We can talk. Thanks

The page immediately vibrates. I’m not caught off guard, I was kind of expecting this. I feel bad for leaving the journal behind and making her wait. I look at the new message.

Oh. So you can talk now, huh?

I’m confused. It’s difficult to discern the tone in a written message, but I swear this one comes across as rude and confrontational. Not at all the tone of her previous message. Maybe there’s some kind of mix up? I write a reply.

Hmm?

It’s a simple message but it’s a good way of making her clear up what she meant. The page vibrates. The journal itself only vibrates when it’s closed, but since my journal is technically closed in my locker, the page always vibrates. It’s a little annoying but I can put up with it. I read the new message.

You’re finally done running away from your problems? From me? From Princess Celestia? You always complain that I’m the one ignoring you, but when was the last time you visited Equestria?

The tears immediately start falling. She’s angry at me. I bury my face into the palms of my hands. I deserve this.

“Sunset…” My Twilight tries to comfort me but I can tell from the tone of her voice that she doesn’t know what’s happening or what to do. The page vibrates again. It’s only a subtle vibration but it may as well be sawing my leg off. She hates me. Of course she does. I need to read it. I pry my hands from my face and try swatting the tears out of my eyes. The message is still difficult to read but I’m able to make it out anyway. The writing is messier. I can tell that she’s heated and emotional too.

You’re always demanding that I visit. That I take out time for you. But you never offer the same thing back. I warned you that I’m busy right at the beginning of the relationship and you said you didn’t mind. And seriously, tearing the page out the book? Don’t think I couldn’t see that.

My crying turns into a full blown sobbing fit. I don’t know what to do. She’s right. I’m awful. I never considered her feelings. Why couldn't she have told me this from the beginning? Why give me the silent treatment and expect me to figure it out? Was it some kind of test that I failed? Is that all the relationship was to her? All I was to her? The tears slow down. My sadness turns to anger. I write.

Why didn’t you tell me? How was I supposed to change if you didn’t tell me that what I was doing was wrong?

Immediate reply.

You were supposed to know. I thought you cared about me enough to notice!

I barely have enough time to finish reading the message before I start tearing the page into little pieces of confetti. I didn’t sign up for these mind games. I concede that I messed up, but I don’t deserve being used as some kind of test. My mind is racing. My eyes are burning. I clench my fists tight, with the tiny paper scraps in them. My fists vibrate. She’s so mad! I imagine her in her castle in Equestria angrily scribbling on the tiny paper shreds solely to get them to vibrate and annoy me.

The image in my head is so vivid and in character for her that I begin to laugh. After a few seconds both the laughing and the crying subsides and I’m left with nothing but regret. Whilst I don’t agree with her, she did have some valid points. I was too scared of running into Princess Celestia to ever visit Equestria again. That was selfish of me. I didn’t think it was a big deal to Princess Twilight but apparently it was. I don’t want that to be the last time I ever talk to her. Going out on such bad terms stings, but I don’t know what to do about it.

“Do you know how I got these glasses?” The twilight next to me spoke softly.
I had somehow never thought of that before. It’s one of the most obvious ways to distinguish the two Twilight’s, yet I never put much thought into them.

“No. I don’t.” I reply, unsure of where she’s going with this but confident that she brought it up for a reason.
“I had a girlfriend too, Moondancer. She was the only student in Crystal Prep to accept me into her friend group. I was never any good at making friends on my own. I’m still not, really. Any recent progress is thanks to you.” Twilight smiled at me.

“Thanks.” I’m not sure how to respond but I’m interested to see where this is going. I don’t think she’s ever told any of the Rainbooms about this before. Princess Twilight has never mentioned a Moondancer in Equestria either.
“She wore glasses. One day when she got a new pair she gave her previous ones to me as a memento.” Twilight suddenly turned a lot more somber. “But then I messed up. I took her for granted. I was so happy that I became careless. Funny how that happens, right?”

“Yeah.” I nod. Finally understanding what she’s trying to get at. “I’m all too familiar with that feeling.”

“I did some pretty bad things. I’m not too hard on myself about it because I was young and didn’t know any better, but she was right. She hated me. Cut me off from her friend group and still won’t talk to me. She probably never will. Shortly afterwards I took the old, worn out glasses and restored them. I swapped out the lenses to fit with my eyes. I wear them as a reminder of what happened, so that I can make sure it doesn’t happen again.” Twilight took the glasses off carefully and placed them on her lap.

She reached out to hold my hand with both of hers and gave me the exact same serious look as she did when we were at the lockers.

“Don’t lose her forever. I’m not saying that you should immediately get back together. But at least keep the door open to become friends again. I’ve tried everything to get back into contact with Moondancer again but she wants nothing to do with me. Don’t be so quick to burn that bridge permanently.”

“Breakups suck.” I exhale.

“Yeah. They do.” Twilight smiled and let go of my hand. “I don’t know exactly what went down but she probably said some things she regretted in the heat of the moment. Take some time to calm down and think about what you want to do, then shoot her a message. I can’t guarantee she’ll reply, but at least you can say you tried.”

“You’re right.” I nodded. “I’m actually glad I broke up with her, but I don’t want to lose her as a friend. I’ll talk to her on Monday and figure something out.”

“That’s great!” Twilight unexpectedly hugged me.

A lot of terrible things happened today. I broke up with my girlfriend, got embarrassed at school, got into a huge argument and Twilight hugged me. It was a good day.

—

A couple of days passed. I spent most of the weekend resting in my room. I thought about what I should do next. I made sure to eat plenty of food and found time to talk to all of my friends. I walked to school alone on Monday. Everyone individually volunteered to walk with me but I politely declined. I arrived at school early. Almost no one else was there yet. I strode over to my locker with the strangest feeling of both anxiety and optimism. I opened my locker and grabbed the journal. I made sure to ignore all the new messages in the book and began to write.

Dear Princess Twilight
Do you have time to talk?

—

The End

Author's Note

The final chapter!
Sorry this took so long to publish. I actually wrote most of the chapter a very long time ago but I kept losing track of time and forgetting to update. Hopefully you enjoyed this fic, let me know if you did! I do plan on writing more fics in future. Thank you for the support