What Was, What Is, and What Will Be

by Cynewulf

Rating: teen
Tags: Human, Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe, Rarity, Romance
Length: 14091

Rarity will tell herself all the things that she can't say to Twilight.

Rarity returns home at a strange and disjointed time in her life, hot off the heels of a divorce and the crumbling of her once carefully plotted (and carefully conventional) life path. It's an ideal time to reconnect with Twilight Sparkle, the woman who was, and is, and maybe will be the most important person in her life.

Special Thanks to Monochromatic for her invaluable help and collaboration along the way. Cover art by Maxiima

Published 2024-07-21 19:10:02 UTC
Last updated 2024-07-21 19:10:02 UTC

What Was

My mother said once that it was good that the walls between Right and Wrong were so tall and impenetrable, lest we be tempted to cross the divide. Mankind was not made to discern the difference on his own, she would continue, not quite wagging her finger in my face. No arcane art can tell us, and we cannot expect the gods to do it for us. We rely on that wall to make the choice impossible.

I’ve thought it over these many long years, Twilight. I’ve rendered it almost tangible through my obsession, turned it over in my mind again and again. I’ve looked for the flaws in the crystalline structure of that memory on many long, hopeless nights.

If I understand anything in this life, then I understand this: that appearances are what separate us from the desperate and the atavistic. Keeping ourselves in the stream of continuity, I mean. Propriety. I am a product of my own imagining, but I am also a product of years and years of rigid and life-giving adherence to prescribed rhythms of being.

Coming back home has been difficult. Not because I’m unhappy to see the old sights and meet the old friends, mind you. Pinkie has matured a lot the last few years, but lost none of her charm. Rainbow Dash and Applejack are getting along in life famously, and Fluttershy finally went to school and set up her clinic in a more official manner. They were all happy to see me. Everybody I recognized (and many I did not!) were happy to see me. None of this was difficult.

The difficulty is in the air. It’s a serpent coiling in my chest, shifting uneasily as if the beating of my heart had disturbed its sleep.

When I see you, sitting on the porch of Applejack and Rainbow’s house the snake squeezes around my lungs for a moment. There you are, shifting an errant strand of hair behind your ear, nursing an amber bottle sweating in the summer evening swelter, a smile on your face. There you are. I swallow and feel unmoored. But weakness is never more than a moment. The gulf I imagine beyond the wall my mother imagined can only entice for a moment before it scares me back into the steady flow of reality.

Your eyes light up when you rise and wave. I wave back, walking as fast as these Canterlonian shoes will allow in the somewhat uneven walk up to the porch. Rainbow, sitting beside you, stays seated. But her smile is no less wide and she lays flat back as you stand full of un-released energy while Rainbow fishes about for the cooler behind her. She holds onto another beer while you and I embrace before the stairs.

Lavender, of course it is, what would you pick besides that? I love it. Lavender has a deep, almost intoxicating quality to it. I allow myself another crack in the wall to breathe deeply. The difficulty, the snake, its all gone for a moment. When we separate we are both smiling, you and I, and my heart could burst. Rainbow calls to me and gladly take a drink and the bottle opener she provides with a flourish.

“Really, Dash? A Thunderbolts official?”

“Got one when I was in the reserve program,” she answers with a laugh.

I hand it back and take another look at you, Twilight. You look… vibrant. You look like a painting restored lovingly in the cloistered studio of a master. The evening sun in your eyes reflects like twin pyres. I cannot bear to see them, to wonder at their fire and want to burn in them, and so I do what I must. I pull away and ask the customary questions.

How are you holding up? Have you seen everyone in town yet? How is teaching at the Academy? How are your days and ways and the time you spend awake and dreaming, how does the sun greet you in the morning and how does the moon shelter you in the darkness of night? And of course the questions I cannot ask, are you happy now? Are you glad he’s gone? What are you doing now, with yourself, and do you talk to anyone anymore? Are you lonely? Do you think about the loss? Do you care at all? Do you think of me when you feel it, or when you do not feel it?

Applejack comes outside as you and I make ourselves comfortable and Rainbow stands and stretches. They share a kiss. I catch myself staring, not in judgment, but with a complicated mixture of emotion. I’m happy for them, I think, as I look to the side and see the burning sun slowly departing beyond the towering trees.

But even there I see you, in my peripheral vision. Smiling, hands by your sides. They call to me, they ask to be touched and held. But there isn’t enough space to hold them, in the second of averted eyes. We’re so close. We always are.

Applejack asks her wife about something and I don’t hear it, as I’m too busy listening to you mention some mutual friend of ours you saw last week. I could not care less who it was, I care mostly about the way you tell the story like a shepherd guiding sheep from one point to another. You laugh and its nothing like the tinkling of bells or music, its just honest and even a little silly sounding, and that’s why I’ve always liked it. Every time you laugh at some joke or chuckle at some secret thing I’ve pointed out in a crowded room, I wonder briefly if we are really dancing the dance I think we are—are you dancing? Do you know you’re dancing?

“I’m sorry, you asked me about the Academy, didn’t you?” you say to me. I grin. You love talking about this.

“I did,” I reply. “Are you still teaching conjuration classes?”

“Yup!” You take a long swig from the amber glass bottle. “Celestia’s teeth, remember when we were drinking Blue Ribbon?”

“No,” I say flatly. “I have blocked such distasteful things from my memory forever. For my sanity,” I add, pitching my voice just a step lower in mock dignity to pull another laugh from you.

“Well, I do. Glad we improved in at least some ways. Classes are going fine. I actually had Applejack in for a class the other day. I wanted my students to get a more ‘druid’ flavored perspective on things, and between you and me, I think Fluttershy might have died.”

I snort. “Definitely. Is she still coming tomorrow night?”

You nod. “Yeah, she sends her apologies. But that’s alright. We have time,” you say and I swear to all the gods that you winks, as if we’re sharing some kind of deep confidence in this moment, and I suppose we are, but it still sends me reeling internally.

I sputter something that I pray sounds right, and am saved for a moment by Applejack hearing her name and leaning over to comment.

“It was a pretty fun time. Nice to travel a little, too! I don’t do that much these days,” she says. You look up at her and I lose the next bit because I’m swallowing back a—we have time? What does that mean, which way could you have meant that?—and then Dash is passing on my right and taking a call and the contact shakes me out of the reverie.

Applejack settles on the steps on the other side of you, and that pushes you even closer to me, and our hands touch and I am stuck thinking about it for a few beats.

Every time I say to myself, Rarity, this is ridiculous, you are a grown woman. You aren’t a teenager mooning over a crush! And I suppose that’s not exactly what’s happening here. That would be far less burdensome, wouldn’t it? I wish that it was. I wish you and I were young and overwhelmed by something as tame and endearing as a crush.

We finish the round we’re on, and only then do I notice that Dash is gone. I aim a question about it to Applejack, who gives me an exaggerated wink.

“Oh, Dash? She realized we were out of Wild Pegasus and called her buddy who works at the store on Goldleaf street. She’s so sentimental about things like that. Asked him to stay open for just a few minutes so she could grab some.”

“Aw, that’s kinda adorable,” you say. “Just like the first time we did this.”

“Loyal even to memories, I guess,” Applejack replies, in a strange way. She’s thinking, remembering something. Irrationally I wonder if its me. Or if its you. If “loyal” is an unconscious jab. But no, it can’t be. She doesn’t go in for that sort of thing. Applejack would call me a harlot to my face, and that’s why I like her.

“An admirable trait,” I say, and I mean it.

You turn back to me. “I’m glad you made it, Rarity. I was actually a bit worried you wouldn’t.”

I swallow. The sun is gone. When did it leave?

“I, uh, well. I couldn’t exactly miss a chance to see you all again,” I say.

“Glad to hear it!” Applejack cuts in. Thank the gods for you, Applejack. But just as quickly, I am betrayed. “I was a bit worried ‘bout you too. Dash and I still wanted you to know that we’d be happy to let you come stay in the guest house if you’re wanting some space and time to, you know.”

“I’m fine. The house is mine, after all,” I say. I pointedly do not say this with any heat. No cold. Just matter of factly, because my cold fury is not at my friend, and the idea that some small modicum of it might touch her at all appalls me. I worry.

“I knew you’d say that. You’re a tough one. Always said so,” Applejack replies, and returns to the light of my gratitude.

You’re looking at me as she says it. It’s dark but I can see you looking, I can feel your eyes questing, fumbling at me, then the lights come on and Applejack mumbles something about them being awful bright and with no sheltering dark your gaze pierces right through any conceivable defense and my hand is still on yours and the touch is electric. If I were ignorant of what you were capable of, and of course what it felt and looked like, I would swear you were reading my soul.

“I wouldn’t want to bring the mood down,” I say like an idiot. Something compels me to say it, or maybe I simply want to say it. An obvious invitation to comment, to reassure. When Applejack bullied us all into going fishing with her and Dash before the wedding I thought to myself that it was old hat. Set a bait, reel in a foolish creature. I was and am good at it. People are led around by the appetites, by emotion, and caught off guard they can be caught in anything you please. Maybe that is what I wanted to do. Or maybe I panicked.

“You wouldn’t be,” you say quickly. “I understand if its raw, but we’re your friends, and talking with us is good! It can be really healing. Remember how you girls were there for me?”

“I remember,” I reply by rote, locked into my own manipulation. “And I suppose I can’t complain too much. I hadn’t expected it, really. I certainly didn’t expect…” I cough. “Well. It’s finalized, now. I’m not quite on the market again, obviously, we can’t be so quick as that! And I’m not exactly of the age to re-debut in the circles of society again.”

“Sounds terrible,” Applejack opines, and pulls the cooler that Rainbow Dash had been tending closer. “The re-debuting again, I mean. Sounded like too much fuss the first time! Though I remember you liked the parties!”

“You know me, dear, I am always up for a soiree,” I say.

“Well, a change of pace could do you some good,” you say. Your voice is so gentle sometimes, do you know that?

“Oh, I know.” I am tempted to match your tone, but the Wall demands I play things off. I can’t cross. I have a role to play, and I must appear even-tempered. “That’s why I’m here, after all! Leaving the city behind for friends and a change of pace. Hard to feel down when I have you all here. And besides,” I say, and my heart skips a beat as my mind reaches forward into possibilities I had not thought about until just this very moment, “Rainbow Dash will be back with that Wild Pegasus soon.”

I am not a lush. I know that it has from time to time been something of a joke in our circle to imagine me as being in love with any fine bottle that comes across my path, but I drink far less than people assume. Some of this is for decorum’s sake—it can be acceptable to drink a bit too heavily in the rarefied society I’ve kept since leaving home, but a disgrace to be visibly intoxicated. I am worse at hiding my own drunkenness than I would like! Some of it is simply a preference. But if I am being honest, and I try to be honest with myself if with no one else, I am afraid of what I will do and say in such a state, and secretly thrilled by that fear. Vulnerability is not merely another state of being to me, it is an obsession. It is the northern star of the sensations I cannot afford but crave with ravenous desire.

So if I lick my lips, taste my own lipstick, and then embarrassedly cough and turn my head, then it is reasonable and not a massive lack of self control.

We laugh this off, and the conversation drifts. You ask me if I still remember the little trick you helped me with years ago, when I was feeling insecure about my own command of magic. It had been a lie, though I wonder if you know that. I wanted to spend time with you. Of course I remember, and I show you, holding forth my hand and calling up the glittering stars again, dancing like Planetars in my palm. Your obvious delight is like honey on my tongue. I show off, forming the little lights into shapes.

“I’m glad you remember. You know, I think that was what got me thinking harder about teaching,” you say.

I do not grimace. Best not to let you ever guess my true intentions in those halcyon days. “Really? I guess I assumed you’d always wished to teach, Twilight. You were so consumed with your research into, well, everything.”

“Most things. Research into the arcane and teaching it are quite different. But I understand how you could think that.” You chuckle and lay back. I steal glances down at you, and I know somehow that you know that I am.

Applejack stands and stretches. “You know, I’m glad I didn’t have to go through all that,” she says and leans against the railing, her strong arms folded and her face out towards the now dark shadows of the orchards. “Druids and wizards not workin’ the same was pretty lucky for me.”

“You would have done your best,” I say. “And I have no doubt you would have done well, ‘twere they more similar.”

“Ha! Try, yes, but ain’t sure I would have done that well.”

“No, I’m with Rarity on this one,” you say lazily and shoot me a smile as you reach out and touch my hand again. I can tell you’re feeling a slight buzz, but nothing more. We’ve reached a new rhythm, then.

That’s how it always is, isn’t it? That is how our dance works, vacillating between boldness and subtlety. Gods, its maddening that I can’t just ask you if your dance and the one in my head are even the same! Which steps are your cleverness and which are… whatever else! The skull is a prison for the mind.

Rainbow returns not long after to find you and I laying on her porch, you pointing up at stars and I wishing I could keep my eyes on you. Applejack whistles at her in a way I can only describe as uncouth and Rainbow Dash makes an obscene gesture and they both laugh, and as you pick yourself up halfway to say hello, I join you. Honestly, I’ll never understand how those two work.

Dash holds her stupid bottle of whiskey with triumph befitting a champion. “Got it! Hon, you grab a couple of shot glasses, and if you’re slow I’m just gonna start passin’ it around.”

“Hell, you might as well,” Applejack says and they share a laugh.

Shots. They’re more of a passtime of Rainbow Dash’s then mine, though you confessed University had been interesting time for you, so perhaps they’re more your speed as well.

Not that I’m going to say no. You always make sure to find me and clink our glasses. It’s a bit silly, but it’s also earnest, and I can’t help but indulge you every time. In truth I’d indulge you in almost anything, at least alone.

The conversation around us turns towards events in town. You and I’ve come back for the harvest festival, allegedly, tho I think we both came back more for each other and our old friends. Though, I have to admit as I finish off the first round that you may in fact be genuinely interested in it all in a sort of anthropological way.

“Weren’t you taking notes at some point on the towns traditions?” I ask you. The pleasant warmth in my cheeks is so nice. “Whatever happened to that?”

I hold up the little shotglass and then shake my head. “No, this is barbarous. Twilight, dear, we must raid our dear hosts abode for something to put this in.”

“Oh, the notes are still around. I’m still considering it,” you say and help me to my feet. We make our excuses and head inside.

I feel instantly different when the door closes behind us. A deep breath fails to steady me. My heart thunders like artillery in my throat. Why? Why the hell? But I know why.

You slide past me and walk ahead. “Applejack mentioned something about—“

Honestly, I only catch that much before I’m focused on the fact that we are finally briefly alone. I say something hopefully coherent about wanting a proper glass with some ice, and top it off with some half-considered joke about it being a more civilized option. In the kitchen you go searching and I lean against the counter, steadying myself.

“I’m really glad,” I blurt out.

“I know. You seem tense,” Twilight says. “I’m glad I can help. I’m here for you.” As if I didn’t know that. As if you weren’t always with me. I watch you gather two glasses and ice, unsure of what I even want to say.

“It feels… like breathing. I mean,” I begin but stop. You offer me a glass and of course, of course, you clink them together as soon as I take mine. Rolling my eyes, I continue. “Not that I was stifled or anything. Perhaps it’s akin to the feeling of relief one gets from canceling plans.”

“That’s a feeling I know well,” you say. “You’re handling this all really well. Better than I did, honestly.”

“Yours was a bit more distressing, dear. Mine was a farce.”

Still. Not a great track record for our group. Half of the marriages dissolved. My mother would be appalled. She probably was appalled regardless. I hadn’t talked to her since informing her of my new status as a free woman. She’d not been thrilled.

“I wouldn’t say that, well, okay, I’m sorry but he is a bit of an ass.”

“Delusional,” I correct with a growl. “Honestly. You know, he was convinced he was right to the point of paying for a cleric to come to my home and cast enough spells to fry me, and even then I swear the man isn’t convinced. As if I would sleep with any of his disgusting circle.”

They were repulsive, my former husbands friends. Truth be told, he was not that much better than his associates. What good qualities he had he had because of me, and we both knew it. I molded him, poured time and effort into him. His suits, tailored by my own hands. His connections, forged by and through me. He was a worm, and I made him a man to know!

I would have spit, but not even alcohol could make me do something that uncouth. “What a bastard. I’m glad to be on my own.”

You nod, and with a sad smile you reach out and clutch my hand. “Freedom can be wonderful, Rarity. Really, truly feeling free. It’s… dizzying, at first.”

“Dizzying?” I ask. I pointedly do not look down at our hands. I pointedly do not wish that your warm hand was touching my cheek. I do not think about anything but what you’re saying. That, and hurriedly taking a sip of whiskey, only to remember that none has yet been poured.

“Yes.. The, heh, the dizzying heights of freedom,” you intone, as if reciting something. Knowing you, you probably are. “I know people are telling you you have time, that you’re still young and can bounce back, and I don’t want to be one more person throwing true but platitudinous statements at you. Our circumstances are different, also. I know that.”

I let out a sigh. “A bit, yes.” I watch you close the cabinets with a cup of your own, and retrieve some ice for us both. “I figured you liked shots,” I say, hoping to pull you in another direction, a somewhat safer direction.

“I like what you like,” you say. “I figured I’d join you.”

“Right,” I say, helplessly and hopelessly. When did you learn to learn to outmaneuver me so deftly? When you take my hand and lead me back towards our friends, I am still off-balance, and I begin to suspect I may not recover in time. But I am less afraid than I am excited. Instead of the snake in my chest there is a warm, burning feeling. It’s a kind of good anxiety. A hungry, ravenous kind of anxiety, the kind before you turn the page of a riveting story or the kind before you open some sort of hidden diary that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are not allowed to see.

As we return, listening to our own steps on the old creaking wood of Applejack’s family home, I can’t help but think of how we used to be—specifically when we were much younger, having a very different kind of harvest festival-tide experience.

Do you remember, Twilight, two summers before you received that junior fellowship with the academy? It was the year with the haunted house, and we all laughed at it. But we all went in, did we not, and we played at being afraid. Perhaps I would have noticed our friends being so close then, seen them coming even farther off than I did, but my eyes were only for you that night. In the darkness, with everyone looking everywhere except for you and I, we held hands and reveled in the secret communion.

And near the end, when one of those silly scares truly spooked us—remember that, it was one of the young men from town, I’ve quite forgotten which one—jumping at us from the shadows, and we ran, and we all stopped in the next room and caught our breath and we looked at each other and we laughed and laughed, and your cheeks were flushed and something about it made me feel feral and I forgot all decorum and laughed as hard as you did. I hope you remember the way we kept close after that, hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, and our faces were so close and I felt every single muscle in me strain to avoid kissing you. I knew you felt the same. I saw it in your flushed face in the passing shafts of light.

We are at the door now, and my hand is still tightly grasped in yours and there is a slight moment of panic as you reopen the door and pull me into the well-lit porch where our friends will see, and then I don’t care. And then I care again, far more than I should, far more than is rational. Was this already a loss of my practiced control? Why did I care? What was wrong with this? The moment where our hands parted, where we took a step away at just the last possible moment leaving the haunted house years and years ago, where we could not bear to look in each others eyes, where we transmuted a spark of worry and avoidance into some kind of game post-hoc, a shared fun secret and not a moment of honesty—all that, in the same moment as we push through the door and there I am, in the light with you, hand in hand.

You grab the Wild Pegasus from a smirking Rainbow and pour us both new glasses, getting in your little clink with delight, and in the process you entwine our arms for a blessed moment and I decide, what the hell, why not? This is normal. We drink at the same time and Applejack claps.

“Enthusiastic, Twi!”

“Hey, it’s been a long semester,” you say and throw me a wink.

We settle back on the steps, and I settle my heart. It feels more safe, yet also strangely less… exciting, to be here in the light, and not back in the darkened house, alone with you.

We’ve been finding ways to have little pockets of time together for years. Moments salvaged from busy days with friends, a quiet moment on the road, tea here or there, small letters left for each other in mailboxes and on reading desks.

I’d never done it with anyone before then, and I have not done it since. My husband I drank together, we talked, we schemed. But we never truly conspired the way you and I did, Twilight.

But you’ve been the one doing all the conspiring. I feel as if I should be contributing. I have been knocked off-kilter by life, but am not so disoriented that I cannot give as much as I take!

A few sips in, I lean on your shoulder. With a calculated yet genuine murmur more catlike than human, I cuddle close. “It’s been so long since I could just drink with friends,” I say to you, pitching my voice just a half-step higher.

And, because miracles are real, you reciprocate and put an arm around me. “Same!” you say, voice a bit louder than before. And for a heartstopping moment I’m convinced you’re about to kiss me or pull me into the crook of your neck or something, but you don’t, not yet. Maddening. Absolutely maddening. I manage another sip.

I think I once thought of what I do now as “taking liberties” before I thought better of it with age. No, I am merely enjoying the aesthetic experience of tasting the impossible. It is natural, normal, and fleeting to enjoy the warmth of your body and the sound of your voice so close to my ear. To feign weariness to enjoy laying on your shoulder, to play up my very real and growing intoxication to allow myself a smooth slide into daring innuendo. I admit, some of my crass speech at my former husband’s expense was a bit beyond the pale, but in all honesty I cannot be asked to care all that much, and neither you nor our friends made me.

But the night drags on and on, and soon I know that my acting is no longer an act. My mind is blurred and fogged. The conversation wanders from topic to topic, and when I can no longer keep up, I realize that the hour is very late.

Applejack suddenly stands and stretches, letting out a loud yawn. “Alright. I gotta be up at a reasonable hour in the mornin’. You staying up, Dash?”

She shakes her head, and then looks at me. “You two staying the night? I made sure the guest bed upstairs was ready, but one of you is going to have to take the couch.”

“You mean I bothered you into it,” Applejack says and kisses her cheek. “I suggest rock-paper-scissors, girls. But the couch ain’t so bad. I fall asleep on it mid-chapter some these days.”

And with that, they head inside, and Twilight and I are alone again under the stars.

As soon as the door closes, you hum and say softly, “Well, I suppose its only fair that you take the bed. You’ve had a long way to come.”

I shake my head. “As much as it pains me, dear, I couldn’t bear the idea of you exiled to some couch, no matter how much Applejack or her wife say that it is comfortable.”

“Only two choices,” you remind me. I take a sip to avoid answering. I try not to think of saying the obvious thing, the thing I very much want to say. Maybe you pick up on that. You mirror me, at any rate, and then you continue. “It’s too bad we’re so far from town.”

I nod. It is a bit of a walk. “We don’t have to decide right away,” I say, and then a bit breathlessly add, “We could just.. Stay up a bit longer.” When you cock your head at me, I swear that my face betrays the coiling feeling in my stomach. “I just want to be—to talk, you know, be in a friend’s presence for awhile. A friendly presence.” That isn’t losing its mind that I no longer am attached and locked into the fate of unbreakable marriage, my mind adds bitterly.

I expect a playful response, some push and pull as we try and talk ourselves into spending just a bit more time doing what we both know we want to do, but you just smile at me and say, “I’d like that a lot.”

We stand and head back inside. Rainbow’s footsteps creak above us and the pillow and folded blanket on the bed that I missed before now stare teasingly at me. We set them aside and lounge on either side of the couch, nursing what is left of the night’s whiskey. Or rather, I do. You were never quite as slow at this as I was, but your tolerance is higher.

“I know its a bit… gauche of me, Twilight,” I say languidly, letting myself simply splay across the couch in this odd moment. “But I rather wish the dissolution of my own relationship had been more like your own.”

You raise your eyebrows. “Oh?”

“Yes. Something liberatory and scandalous—in all the best ways, obviously. It was so messy, but that wasn’t the galling part. It was just so pathetic. Paranoid fool. Convinced that I was with someone else, complaining that I was sneaking off whenever I could. Honestly. I wish I had! I so wish I had.”

“Just for the drama?” you ask and tilt your glass slightly towards me.

“Could you even imagine it? It would have been delicious, truly, the web of intrigue I would have spun.”

“Spider Rarity, capturing them all,” you say, and lower your voice. Did you mean it to sound so…. Breathy? Or is that just the echo of my own lurid interest? “I could see you enjoying that, even if the targets of your schemes weren’t themselves very interesting. Unless they would be, I don’t know.”

“Hardly. I assure you, there is nothing so dull as a man who thinks he is quite important and that others should remember it. But such dullards are easy prey.” I blink and then look away, feeling suddenly as if I’ve said something wrong. “Not that I would know. You know me, Twilight. Bluster. I couldn’t do such things even if I tried.”

You just hum at me. “I think you have the ambition.”

“Yes, yes, but I’m simply not as coldblooded and ruthless a mistress of plots as I would like some to believe. Oh Twilight… I’m not much changed in all these years. I rather thought I would have changed more! Grown.”

“You have,” you say quickly.

“Grown complacent, perhaps,” I grumble.

You scoot closer and put a comforting hand on my leg for just a moment and I feel like I’m going to die right there, overwhelmed.

“Rarity,” you say, and the worry on your face melts through self-pity. I cough.

“I’m fine, I’m fine. I promise. Just a moment of doubt,” I say hurriedly.

“Maybe its good to stay the same in some areas,” you say, and then set your glass down on the coffee table. I do the same. You look into my eyes and I look into yours.

Deep breaths, Rarity. I know that look. You know I know that look, you simply must know. Its such an inviting look. It says, I’m right here. You could come closer. You could lay your head in this lap, on this shoulder, on this chest, under this chin. You could have this for a moment and retain your spotlessness. You could make a thousand excuses to keep the wall from falling brick by brick on your head.

I make every excuse. I’m tired, I’m sleepy, I’ve had a bit to drink, but I am not tired or sleepy and I am not drunk. I shove it all aside and swallow the fear and the exquisite excitement of something dangerous and slide over and you grin like a much younger you and my head is in your lap so fast I hardly remember it happening.

You play with my hair, and I don’t even for a second think to worry over my coiffure. It matter less than nothing compared to the ecstasy of being so close without restriction, in an activity that is normal but just not normal enough, right on the edge of what I could justify if I had to. Your fingers trace lines through my hair, curling it around your finger and then releasing.

It is indescribable. I feel exposed more surely than if I had been naked, though with a little internal start I find that no, I am decidedly not more exposed, I could imagine being more exposed. But I am, at least for now, just slightly vulnerable. Placed in harm’s way.

I say nothing. You say nothing. You touch my cheek, first “accidentally” and then quite obviously on purpose.

I am good. I’m so good. I’ve spent so long being as good as I can be, fitting so neatly into the prescribed avenues life was—is—will go, should go. Every principle and step along the way, I followed, in utter conventionality. Every excess and eccentricity was paid for with conventional success or lip service to the values of family and fortune. None of it has ever for even a moment made me feel like this. Of course it never could. I cannot explain it, either because I actually cannot or because I cannot afford to. Maybe it is just the forbidden aspect. The desire that cannot be fulfilled, being with you, in some way that I struggle to articulate or even to imagine.

Everything about you is so soft, Twilight. I feel like some sort of campaigner long from home sinking into a too-soft bed and being lost in it. Surely you must see this… this shamelessness and somehow pity me. I don’t even think I would mind that, to be a creature, to be pitied, if it were you doing the pitying.

“This is nice,” you say quietly. “You know, every time we meet up, I think you’ll look different, but you never do, not quite. For a moment, I think you do, but then no, there you are. Same old Rarity. Same new Rarity.” Your hand stops, hovering, pausing, and I wish it would not. I wish you would touch my lips with your thumb delicately, I hate myself for thinking it but I wish you would part my lips just slightly, to show you could. God, why do I feel this way? How does this happen?

“It is nice,” I manage. “It really is.”

“You’ve been brave all night,” you say. Your hand, your blessed hand, finally moves. It rests on my forehead for a moment, and then you pull it away. “But its just us. You can be honest.”

I sigh. “I am. I… I’m…” A deep breath. Another deep breath. “I don’t know what I am. I don’t know what to say. Am I sorry? I can’t say I am. Do I feel guilty? Perhaps a little. I could have… I don’t know, avoided all the mess. Somehow. Am I sad? I don’t think I am? I can’t tell what it is I feel. But I don’t care that he’s gone. About the part where he specifically is gone,” I add. You continue running your fingers through my hair and shatters my thoughts again. With truly, and I do mean truly Twilight—with absolutely herculean effort I regain my momentum. “I’m sad that my life’s comfortable certainties are gone. I didn’t like the certainties, but I am not happy they are gone.”

“Because they were safe. You understood them.”

“Yes,” I say. “Because I understood them and because finally, for the first time, people weren’t hemming me in on all sides, expecting and waiting and pushing. They left me alone. I had gotten over the finish line, they could afford to just let me breathe. So they thought,” I add and grimace.

You’re silent at this. I can see the wheels turning behind those beautiful eyes, Twilight.

I don’t blame you. You understand what I mean. We may have come from different “stock” in the estimation of power but very dead old patriarchs, but old ways die hard, and so do old expectations. Tradition and the continuity of the family are everything, more important than ambition or freedom. My parents had spent so long preparing me for settling down and having braces of children running around in every direction, and the best I could manage to pull the rudder of their vision was a married life in high society surrounded by money and the monied. That had taken years of pressure, to boot.

It wasn’t as if the idea of… pursuing other kinds of relationships were somehow inherently… it wasn’t as if they found such things distasteful in of themselves. The Thing Itself was not the problem, Twilight, you know that. It was the disconnect. We didn’t do that sort of thing, we didn’t go in for that kind of unconventional lifestyle. “Lifestyle” was and is a very pernicious word, I both commend and condemn whoever came up with that specific little trick.

We talked about it. Of course we did, when did we ever not talk about everything? Oh Rarity, don’t lie. Not here, not in your own mind. But we had talked about it. Your house is old and storied, if not particularly influential or rich, and there was the weight of centuries on your shoulders.

I don’t see it on you. You seem so unburdened.

“It’s scary to rewrite anything. If it’s scary to do with a paper, it can only be infinitely harder to do with your life. It can… it can be wonderful. I promise.”

The way you say that pierces the ecstatic peace.

“You… you’ve ah, you’ve dated since, haven’t you?” I say, or more honestly, croak like some sort of dying thing in your warm soft lap.

There it is. Rarity, you idiot. You absolutely idiotic, impulsive fool. Why would you bring this up. Why. When she withdraws to the safety of distance it is going to be agony. It’s too soon, you just started having this… whatever this safe but thrilling moment is.

You just nod. “I have. A few dates, a repeat. All women,” you add, as if that isn’t the moon, Luna forgive me this blasphemy, plucked out of the sky and falling quickly right on top of me.

“You… I… I, ah.” You look so concerned. Why do you look so godsdamned concerned! I have to stop it, “How has it been?”

“Freeing. I had a lot of long talks with my mom and dad. I had some nice dates. It’s been a good year and a half, Rares. I’ve been taking it slow. I would say it’s… like, I want to say it takes getting used to, and that’s sort of true, but it’s also not. It feels good and right.”

“It… that does sound nice.”

“Nothing serious,” you add. “Not yet. Maybe someday.”

My mouth feels dry. “Someday,” I echo. “Maybe someday.”

You stroke my cheek. “Thinking about it?”

“About you and—oh no you mean, doing that. Dating. Like that, I mean, myself and—“ I cough. “No, just… thinking in general.”

You chuckle as if this is funny and it absolutely is not funny. “You’d do marvelously in the local dating scene, you know. I…” There’s a split moment’s hesitation. “I don’t know if you swing the other way, but if you do…”

I feel myself short of breath. You wouldn’t. Would you? No. Would you?

“...Do you have any idea what some of these girls would do for the pinnacle of high femme?”

Glad I’m not mid-drink, I sputter. “Twilight!”

“I’m serious! You’re a—“ you’re laughing at me, Twilight, I swear before the stars themselves—“a rarity.”

I groan and swat at you, only for you to catch my hand and deftly redirect the momentum. Your fingers around my wrist are strong, but not tight. I’m reminded of a coiled spring, of the way a cat settles in before jumping. I rather like it, though I don’t have time to consider why.

“Seriously,” you say after a smug smile and another damnable wink. “We’ve… ahem. I mean. We haven’t really talked about it directly. You’ve hinted you might, maybe, if I’m not misunderstanding you. Which I could be. I don’t think I am, but I could be.”

“I… it hasn’t exactly been an option,” I say. “I mean. You know, spoken for.” Wonderful deflection, top form, no notes.

“Right. But like, in a general sense,” you say, and gently let my hand down. You don’t let my wrist go, you guide it. You simply have to be doing this on purpose.

“I have considered it. I mean. That’s fairly normal, so I’m told. I’ve thought about it.” A lot. Constantly. Specifically, even.

You nod. “You could try. You could at least consider it. Maybe… it could be time to try something new, even if only for a while.”

You’re so earnest. You can just say impossible things. You could just ignore the immovable wall, you say, as if you possessed some perfect knowledge beyond the ken of mortal man.

“I wouldn’t even know where to start courting a lady,” I say, looking away from you. “I know thirty isn’t that old, Twilight, but it’s also not like I’m starting fresh, either, you have to have some sort of runway into such a thing, surely.”

“Not really. You could start by asking someone if they want to have coffee somewhere nice.”

“You’re impossible, Twilight Sparkle.”

“I’m very reasonable, is what I am.” You yawn, and I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. “Did we ever decide who had the bed?”

I shake my head, forgetting it is currently in your lap for a moment. “No. I was going to offer to take the couch, but I feel like you’ll say no.”

“You’d be right.” A pause. “Weren’t you staying at the old boutique?”

“Yes,” I say, and then I also pause.

In the back of my mind, I had been working this problem. Some ruthless part of me had been working every angle, figuring some way in which I might convince you to share that bed with me. Or the couch, honestly if I was throwing out decorum I could throw out comfort if it meant an extra few inches of proximity. But I could be sent off to my own bed. Maybe that was… no, the idea of whatever lurid and overbearing desire I have in me, in this house, under a friends roof? I’d never survive the mortification.

First, a bit of sadness but relief. I’ll simply head home. But then something else. My heartbeat in my throat again reminds me that you could come with me. We’d be so, so very alone. I could extend my time near you, lengthen the time I could gaze in your eyes and sneak very sincerely accidental touches.

“The guest bed is a bit small,” I say, as absolutely casually as I can. You raise your eyebrows. I feel exposed again. “I wouldn’t mind sleeping under my own roof.”

“Walking on your own would be a bit much,” you say slowly. “I could go with you.”

“And I have a lot of room. We just… leave a message on the kitchen counter and walk back into town. Maybe have a nightcap in my kitchen, or coffee, or something.”

You nod so seriously! And then you grin and I shiver a little, there’s something strange in your eye. “See? Not so hard,” you say, and I look on with confusion and then feel my face grow hot. “Sit up,” you say, and I swear I snap to attention. You let a hand fall down my back, or maybe it’s an accident, and rise and I follow you like a lovesick dog, and I feel so embarrassed and I have no idea why. You find the little whiteboard on the fridge and write a note and then take my hand. Our fingers intertwine and you pull me to you and then with you, towards the door and the night.

“Wouldn’t want you to get lost, it would be a shame,” you say quietly, as we leave the porch behind us.

What Is

You and I on the path from the Apple family farm down into the city, enjoying the warm summer evening… I freely admit that I’m in Heaven. My mind still feels a bit foggy, but in more of a pleasant background hum sort of way,

Our hands are still entwined. You haven’t commented on it. Instead you’ve simply tormented me, laughing, with idle speculation regarding my impossible lesbian dating career to come in Canterlot. It sounds so strangely nice, even sort of normal, when you talk about it. I had expected, oh, I don’t know. I had expected something more foreign to my experience, something odd and confusing. But I suppose that was silly. People are, despite it all, just people.

I admit that it’s fun. You’ve always had a way of charming me, Twilight. When first we met, you seemed so painfully focused like a knife’s edge. What mattered was the thing you wanted, the thing directly in front of you. You barely conversed without some sort of reason related to research or your academic pursuits! But it didn’t take long at all for you to open up for us. You truly blossomed.

And I was blessed to be there for all of it. I’ve gotten to listen to you grow in so many ways. I wish I could tell you that. I also wish that I had grown as much as you seem to have!

“You know,” you say at some point, as we finally cross from fields into town, “I’m joking, but I’m also kind of serious. About dating, like, in a very casual way. Or at least going out, meeting people. It can really help.”

“I know,” I say, and sigh.

You seem like you want to say something, and I long to discover what it is. But the secret seems to die on your lips. We walk together under the light of a lonely street lamp and in the passing glow I see such a strange mixture of signs and symbols in your beautiful face, as if I see you only in the midst of a changing of the guard. Not for the first time I wish I could tap into your train of thought. You offered to teach me something of the theory of such magics but I refused. I said it was out of a lack of skill, and I stand by that, but also… even as much as I want to know, the mystery is also a delight. To see every move on the chessboard can be so lonely.

I can’t help but sink into the past, and I say so. “It’s lovely, walking here with you again. We took a lot of evening strolls through town when you and I were looking our future careers in the face. We talked and talked…”

You smile and squeeze my hand. “Yeah, we did. Honestly, some of those worries were excuses.”

“What?” I blink at you. “What do you mean?”

You roll your eyes, which I can’t even be affronted by, and say, “I wanted to spend time with you. I was… I guess I was wanting some reassurance.”

“Of what?” I ask, but… but perhaps I know.

I, too, wanted some reassurances. I wanted fleeting last moments that proved that the ghosts of… whatever it was I felt then were real. I wanted to hold your hand where no one would see us, and where I would not be questioned or be asked to question! Maybe at the time I could very willfully excuse that as some kind of young indulgence, but eventually I had to know it wasn’t. Right? Eventually.

“That you’d still be there. I wanted… I wanted some memories, for when I left.” You laugh. “Not that you didn’t follow me, eventually! Sort of. But you travel more than I think anyone I know.”

“More than I would like, sometimes,” I grouse. “It gets exhausting, Twilight. I have to! Well. I have to travel some. Its hard to leave things in others hands, even when those others are capable.”

“I don’t know how Celestia does it so easily,” you say, and I feel the strains of awe there that you’ve kept from your early days as her prized pupil. “I can imagine what its like, but I can’t imagine being… sanguine about it. I understand. Its hard to let go, even when you could—even when you should. I can tell it weighs on you. The last couple of times we spent any time together, it was obvious.”

I look away from you, down towards the cobblestones. I want to say that I am fine, that I can handle it! That wouldn’t be a lie. I can endure it all, and I have endured it. I’ve borne up under all the hours in lonely train cars far from home, looking over reports with branch managers in crowded office backrooms, pushing through tedious repeats of repeats of marketing meetings in expensive restaurants that I like less and less, despite the tasteful decor. Do I like it? I’m not sure if I do, truly. I like parts of it. I like feeling as if I can bare up under it all. I like the victorious feeling! But not the rest, not in the way I used to, when it was more novel.

“Maybe that’ll change,” I say softly. “If we’re changing things. I mean, if I am.”

You hum and with a start I realize that we’re almost to the door of the original boutique. I closed this one—well, not closed. That’s a dour way to say that I moved the business elsewhere and converted the space into a workshop and retreat for myself. It still has the old charm, even with no light behind the windows.

I fumble around in pockets for the keys. You let my hand go and lean beside the door. When I look up to unlock the door, I almost miss the lock because of the distraction of your eyes, reflecting a tiny bit of the street lamp light back at me.

The door swings open, and you are first inside before I can say a word. Without even thinking, I step through and find the light switch.

My workshop is as I last left it, what feels like a lifetime ago. It’s messy, organized along some ergonomic schema that made perfect sense to me a year ago but which escapes me now. Before I can even offer up an embarrassed look explanation, you are already looking around with a look of unabashed wonder. I can’t say a thing.

You ask a few questions, remark on some old sketchbooks that I left on a table, generally just… explore. I follow you around like some sort of dutifully loyal hound, answering and explaining and accepting bewildering praise.

But eventually, the late hour draws us back to the matter at hand. We walk back into the living space and you settle down on the couch while I pour a nightcap for us both, and start thinking very hard about the sleeping arrangements.

I knew, objectively, that there was only going to be one bed. I knew that when I set on coming here. But I hadn’t been really considering that. I hadn’t taken it seriously. And now, with a bottle of port in my hands in my lonely little kitchen, I am very much taking the impending inevitability seriously.

I lick my lips, pour us both partial glasses. The question is not whether you’ll be in my bed, but in what way I will broach the subject. I mustn’t be crass, obviously, but being too… honest… no, subtlety is as always the answer. I’ll have to work my way towards it. Nothing to it, Rarity.

I step out into the dim light of my own living room, currently lit by only a single lamp that casts you, the couch, and the little coffee table in warm orange hues. There you are, sitting leisurely on my old couch. In this short moment before you turn your head towards me, I see a strange expression on your face. I don’t know what it means. It is not an unpleasant emotion, it seems. But then I think I do know it—its the face you make when deep in concentration. I put on a big smile and hand you your glass, and of course the obligatory—

“So, I hope this bed of yours is big enough,” you say, and take a sip as soon as you’ve had your little ritual.

Outflanked, I cough on my own drink and nod. I slide down carefully onto the old couch. There’s a t least a person’s space between us. I could bear no more, and I am unsure if I can risk much less.

“Good! Glad to hear it.”

I recover quite quickly, far more quickly than I believe most others in my position would have, and feign and air of nonchalance.

It feels strange to be here. I can feel what’s on the other side of the wall, beckoning me as it has all night, but the closer we get, the harder it seems to breach it. Breach it! The mere fact I’m thinking of such a thing is scandalous in itself, yet here I am. Or was. I rather don’t know anymore.

You continue sipping your drink, the two of us quietly lost in our thoughts. I wonder what you’re thinking of. Do you want to go to bed? Sleep? Tired of waiting to see what happens, perhaps? Not that you’d ever let me feel such a thing, kind as you are, but… but maybe you’ve realized you were hoping for practice, when all I can offer is theory.

Dread claws its way up my spine to besiege my brain. The electricity in the air isn’t gone, but its tenuous. Uncertain. It could become anything. It could become nothing.

Normally, the uncertainty is delicious. Dozens and dozens of secret, quaint little moments that you and I stole in our youth flash by, another dozen or so subtle rendezvous since, and in all of them the uncertainty was most of the fun. The forbiddenness was fun. But it isn’t now. I am not sure why.

“What are your plans, going forward?” you ask, looking into your drink, and then meeting my eyes. “I mean, I assume you’re going to take at least a little time to yourself.”

“I’m taking time off now,” I reply, tearing free of your gaze reluctantly. “Isn’t that enough?”

“It could be.” You click your tongue. “Do you think it is? You’ve had a pretty large shakeup in your life. You have a lot of things to think about!”

“I am thinking about them.” I grimace. I have thought about them, to be fair. The finances, the house, my business. I confess that I had probably been thinking about it long before now. Its hard for me to admit, but perhaps when I chose to keep our accounts separate, I may have been anticipating the day when it would be useful to have my assets cordoned off. I say as much, and you listen patiently, but I can tell in the way you tense that you are not satisfied.

I feel suddenly that I am being examined. Analyzed. Again I am a creature in an enclosure in your gaze. It is unmooring, but not unwelcome.

“What have you thought about them?” you ask softly. Sharply, the world comes back into focus.

My throat feels so dry as I say, “I haven’t… come to any conclusion, yet. I’m still trying to understand my options. I hadn’t expected this. I mean…”

You scoot closer and put your hand on mine for a moment. “I know. Rarity…” you cough, turn away, and when you look back at me your face is wearing a smile again. “Actually, let’s lighten the mood. It’s a bit late, isn’t it? Wouldn’t want to go to bed feeling ill at ease.”

I nod. “That’s fair. I—”

“Superb.” You set your glass down and turn your entire body towards me on the couch. “Remember what we used to do? When we were younger and it was far too late and everyone else had managed to fall asleep, all the girls around us, but you and I were still awake?”

“We used to, ah, play a game,” I said. “Questions. We would ask questions. I remember.”

“Right. And you, Rarity! You have not answered my earlier question.”

I blink, genuinely confused. “I… what question? I’m sorry, Twilight, I’m not sure what you could be referring to.”

“I asked how you felt about girls,” you say, as if that is a reasonable thing to say to me.

“That.” I say, words piling up in my brain so fast that none of them can force their way to the fore. I swallow. “That. I, ah. Well. I would say that I am… Isn’t this a bit… I’m not nearly drunk enough to talk about this!”

“Rarity, come on. It’ll be fun! You know just as well as I do that scandalizing each other and ourselves is just as fun now as it was then. Be brave.”

“I’ve thought about it,” I admit. “Girls. Women, I mean. My interest in them! Thought about it.”

You chuckle. “Really riveting stuff there.”

I’m glad that you put down your glass as I push a pillow off the couch at you. “Twilight Sparkle, you are a boor! You are absolutely the worst! Fine! I have thought about it a lot and I think I am very attracted! Are you happy!”

Unmoved, you press your advantage. Your singsong condescendingly at me, “I am happy! Good girl, was that so hard?” And then when my heart turns over on itself and I look away you scoot even closer. Damn you!

“It’s just very different, is all,” I say.

“Only a bit. At some level its not so different.” You pause, the tempo of your pursuit broken slightly as you say softly, “Okay, yes, it is really pretty different. There’s so much context and—Nope, back on target. You’ll not shake me off that easily.”I stick my tongue out at you, presumably because alcohol makes me stupid. But, shockingly, this fails to deter you. “Rarity, this is a perfect opportunity for you to stake out new territory. But its your decision to make. Isn’t it?”

“I wasn’t, ah, aware I was making a decision.” In my head like a strip of magnesium, a flare of nervousness lights up the entire conversation. I am ruthlessly examining every word, every movement, every tilt of your head. The way the shadow falls on your face. The lump in my throat, the sudden heaviness of my breathing.

Twilight, you and I have skirted the edge of something great and cavernous for so long.

Years have passed. We balance on railings overlooking the deeps. We laugh and play and wink and hold hands in the darkness but you’ve never pushed me over and I’ve never dared to stay long enough to do the same. At least, I don’t think I have.

In my mind, in thi s moment that stretches out before me, the foggy giddiness of alcohol leaves and I am sober and my sight is clear… and I don’t know what to do. My uncertainty is not vacillation, not right now. It’s a simple monolithic fact. I don’t know what to do. I am like the old explorers looking out over the great ocean towards Griffonia in another age, the kind we write romanticized, dashing novels about—on the other side of the Wall is an unknown country. It’s a place that has customs I do not know and expectations that no one’s told me yet. I realize that I cannot go there myself. Not as I am. Not right now. I don’t know when I would be able to, if I would be able to. I don’t know if its possible. I don’t know if it would be better or worse if it was.

The Wall is tangible and the other side is not.

But when I tell you that I wasn’t aware that I was making a decision, I can read the skepticism in your eyes. “Aren’t you?” you ask me. “Aren’t you, right now?”

“I’m not sure how.”

The silence hangs over and between us. My mind tries to convince me that I imagined this whole exchange, that it fabricated those words. Any moment now, Twilight will look at me with confusion and ask what I’m referring to, and I’ll laugh, and we’ll move on, and I won’t have to think about this. But the idea that it might not have happened is no relief.

You tilt your head just so. “Tell me about it.” It isn’t commiseration. Its more… not quite imperious. It isn’t a command so much as a statement of future fact. I will tell you.

So I do. “I don’t know the way. Or, I guess I do know, but I can’t make myself just… take a step. My feet won’t cooperate with my mind or my heart, Twilight. The ceiling’s collapsed in and trapped me under the weight and I can’t move.”

“You make the future sound frightening. Why?”

“It is!” I say. My face is hot, I can feel it and put a hand on my on chest where my heart is beating wildly out of rhythm. “It is frightening!”

You reach out and touch my chin. I stare down at your hand, back to your face, away from there. There is nowhere to look that makes it less real and immediate. “Rarity,” you say so softly, “it’s scary only in so much as its new. Think about this: would I be prodding you like this if there were something bad on the other side? Look me in the eyes.”

Perhaps teaching has worn off on you, Twilight, because the nearest touch of authority in that last bit did make me do as you asked. You are smiling at me and I feel suddenly foolish, as if you’ve said something obvious and the joke of it eludes me.

“I suppose you wouldn’t lure me into danger,” I admit.

“I wouldn’t. I’m only asking you to consider what it is you really want,” you say to me.

Your eyes have always been beautiful, Twilight, but were they always so deep, like twin pools of mystic, aetherial power? Is it your command of magic that brings that light, or is it you? Is there no distinction? I wish I knew the answers to these questions. I want to ask you, even though it would be foolish.

“But I don’t know what I really want.” But I do know, don’t I? I do know exactly what it is I really, truly want.

I want you to kiss me, Twilight. I want it more than anything else in this moment. No, I need you to kiss me. As in, Twilight, my friend, my guide, perhaps maybe something more, I specifically need you to be the one that kisses me, because I am frozen in place.

“You do,” you say. You press in. Your hand is so warm on my cheek. “I know you do.”

“I can’t,” I say, desperate to explain. But I don’t know how! I have no idea how to make it sound right, to get across my need. I know you can understand, I know you could just read it there in my eyes if only you would look! Surely you see it. Surely you wouldn’t—

“It’s not something others can just do for you,” you say, confirming my suspicion. “You have to do it for yourself. Nobody’ll carry you over that first step, Rarity.” Your hand leaves my chin, and I despair, only for your fingers to run through my hair. Your face changes.

For just a moment, I wonder what’s behind this… its not a mask. It’s not exactly a character. It is you, but its a version of you, an angle of you, as if in different light you might become just slightly different. You grew confident, but this quiet knowing you have is new. The surety is almost heady. Even your suggestions feel as certain as if they were recountings of things that have already passed.

I wish I had said then, “What happens if I say it outright?” I wish I had held together that well. So dearly I wish I had held together that well. Your mercy is the only thing between me and abject humiliation, because at this point I was wound up. I felt like I could barely speak, so whatever it was I said came out half-strangled and you laughed.

“Is that the best you can do?” you tease. I nod.

You lean in—and its so unreal—and stop right before you reach me. Your lips are so close to mine, so agonizingly close. “I suppose I can take that as a first step.”

Twilight, I’ve been kissed so many times in my life. But I cannot think of another like the one we share as your fingers grip my hair lightly and your whole body presses as close as the couch can allow. I feel like my mind is fleeing on wings. I feel like my body is shaking itself apart in shock and joy. Time erodes. Space falls away. I have no idea how I ended up on my back, or how many times you kissed me or, honestly, even where. Every atom of me is singing.

When you come up for air, it leaves me feeling weak. Almost dizzy.

Twilight, do you remember what I said about versions of you? And how for the past hour, the past day, the past year, really, you’ve been a version I both envied and admired, confident in having finally accepted a truth you’d been too afraid to accept for years on end. You were in control, I suppose.

And yet, when you finally speak, as unwilling to move too much as I am, when you finally ask in a quiet voice, “Well? Was that good?”

You sound… afraid? No. You sound stressed, which is so painfully you, reminding me so much of a younger you anxiously pacing outside Celestia’s office. Were I more collected in this moment, I might say something to that effect—but I can’t make the jest come out right in my mind.

And I laugh, because for my entire life I feared the wall with an animal fear, afraid that the world would end if I even so much as dared touch it, let alone kiss it, and as you pull back, half-laughing with me as you protest, “It can’t have been that bad!”, I feel so relieved I might cry at the sight of the wall not… not crumbled completely, but for the first time, not insurmountable.

“It wasn’t! I just…” I gesture wildly. Was the air around us always this warm? “The wall comes down and its just…” The insane thing is, I realize, is that I don’t even know where to begin explaining this to you. We share circumstances, but not perfectly, and you don’t know what I mean when I describe the wall! I don’t know how to explain this apparently untrue story I’ve been just… painting over everything.

How do you explain that in a moment the aesthetic of your life, not the passing trend or the fashion of the day, but the underlying spirit of how you approach the world has just been shaken? If I am the art that I make myself, finding out that my references are totally mistaken is just too much.

“I didn’t know it could happen,” I manage after a moment. “I just assumed it couldn’t. I was so sure.”

If I expected this to throw you off, I shouldn’t have. You snort with barely contained laughter and shake your head. “Rarity, why wouldn’t it be? That’s ridiculous. Why shouldn’t it be possible? Honestly?”

“Twilight, I’ve rigorously constructed an entire personal aesthetic from assuming it is not possible. Aggressively cultivated this image built after the certainty I had about what was in store for me. Of course it… it felt… It just still doesn’t seem right, or…”

You stop laughing, you stop smiling. You look so pained. I want to ask what I see in your eyes and I’m afraid because I can clearly see myself reflected in them. What did I say?

Was I right all along? Gods, what if I was? What if this foolish, stupid, forbidden moment turns sour? What if it already has! It makes sense. I wish I could have a moment alone to wail. This was stupid! Stupid, stupid, impetuous Rarity! You’ve crossed every boundary to get here, and didn’t think a single jot about the consequences! I’ll have to smooth this over, blame the drink—

Twilight, what would you think of me if you could see the way I jump from one extreme to another? You used to tease me about this, but you were cutting to the quick in a way I’m still not sure you understand. You hesitate just a moment, and already I am ready to fill in the hole you just punched through the wall. Here’s the mortar, here’s the trowel, ready to entomb myself again. Ridiculous! Rarity!

“Rarity… I’m sorry.” You reach out again and tip my chin up until I’m looking into your eyes. Your voice is gentle, but firm. “I shouldn’t have laughed. I understand. It’s been a long day. You’re going through a lot right now. I got caught up in the moment, I should have been slower about this, I should have…” you trail off. I must look indignant, because you put up a hand and say. “Hold on. I’m not implying I shouldn’t have done, uh, all that. I think I definitely should have. We probably should have. Like, a while ago.”

“I’m not sure I was ready.”

“Probably not? I probably wasn’t either. I’d have to think about it more, in, ah, light of… nevermind.” You cough and draw yourself up straighter, somehow. “I don’t want to stop talking here, but… it’s late.”

I blink at you. Are we seriously talking about time in this, the most central and critical of—my eyes catch the clock on the far wall and I stop that thought immediately. “Gods above, how did that happen?”

I can feel the smug, absolutely terrible reply before it makes impact. “Time flies when you’re having fun, you know.”

“Terrible,” I say automatically, scowling. “But you’re not wrong.”

This time, I reach and take your hand. You smile down at it.

“Bed?” you say, and I wordlessly nod, because saying literally anything at that point would have ruined my reputation for tact and propriety. I assure you Twilight that internally I was screaming and flailing and quite going mad over everything from the casual tone in which you said that to the very word and everything it entailed! But I didn’t say anything, and so none of that escaped me.

I’ll not speak of the rest because it was a blur for me. One minute, I was walking behind you, being led through my own home, and the next I was climbing into bed acutely aware of exactly how many inches were between myself and you. On one hand, you would likely be proud of the amount of mental energy I spent figuring this out based on my knowledge of how big the bed was. On the other hand, it was yet another thing that if I were to let out into the world I would never hear the end of. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.

You lay near me, facing me, and we whisper in the darkness. Most of what we talk about isn’t consequential, but of course it isn’t. What better way to ruminate on the sound of your voice? It’s all that fills my mind. I can’t focus on our plans for tomorrow, seeing our friends, any of it. But your voice I can hold onto until the whole world goes dark, I think.

Finally, as if you could read my heart, you whisper to me that, I know that I can get closer, right? So I do. I can feel your hot breath and shiver a bit before you suggest turning on my side and sleeping close. I’m moving before I can even respond and there we are, your arm around me, our legs intertwined.

“Were you planning this?” I ask. My eyes are so heavy. Traitorous body, deny me even a moment of this.

“Planning?” You hum. “Not exactly. Not at first. But I’m observant when I want to be, you know that. I wondered if it might be… well, if it might be time to try and say what I wanted to say. I had wondered. But you don’t want to rush in, you know?”

“I understand.” I cuddle closer, more securely against you. “Part of me was desperate for some sort of yearning gesture.”

“I could tell.”

If I were not so comfortable I would have wriggled free just to wave a finger at you. But, I am very comfortable, so I don’t. “You are incorrigible and a scoundrel.”

“Not really. I’m very boring.”

“Hardly.” After a pause, I say, “Twilight, are you alright?”

You nod into my hair. I think it is just about then I realize that you’re trying to hide your face from me, that you likely asked me to lay just so with that in mind. Twilight. I’ve been so lost in my own thoughts I could barely hold your own.

“You’ve waited for me a long time,” I say quietly. It’s not a question.

“I was a bit terrified,” you say. Your beautiful voice is so muffled. “I’m sorry. It just sort of happened. I’ll be alright in a moment.”

“Dear, its alright.” All of the worried, anxious vacillating of the night falls away. I reach back for you, realize that its not quite the right angle, and settle for a soothing tone instead. “Twilight. It’s alright to be a little emotional right now.”

“I’m supposed to be more disciplined about this. I’m a wizard, damn it.”

“I know. But you’re just human, after all.”

My answer is a displeased grumble. I smile into the darkness. The confidence is you, but so is this too. “Thank you for… I’m not sure what to call this.”

You nod. You hold me that much tighter, releasing the stress of the night, and in the darkness I feel as if the weight of some nameless vast thing falls of my shoulders.

What Will Be

Walking with you through the harvest festival, I am struck with how strange everything feels. It’s still the same town, still the same you, and I suppose in a purely literal sense the same me. I had expected to be reminiscing about yesteryear the entire time. I’d be thinking about holding your hand when no one was looking, knowing glances behind the backs of people who didn’t share our secret knowledge.

But I’m not thinking of any of that. Not really.

Mostly I’m not thinking at all. I’ve been plotting and planning my whole life. Whether it was designs, learning the little bit of magic I know, imagining in childish wonder what my wedding would look like… I’ve always been planning.

I don’t have any plans. When you talk about working at the school, for the first time I really think about it. I can actually devote my mind to imagining having any other life than the one that’s collapsed around me. I don’t want that, teaching, but I can imagine trying it. And I can see how happy it makes you. How satisfied you are with it.

We walk hand in hand even when people can see us. We haven’t mentioned it, either to anyone else or to each other. We just… do it. There’s no one to ask permission or to apologize to or even to explain ourselves to—there’s just us. The two of us in the eye of a whirling maelstrom of people laughing and running and talking and playing.

You guide me along, exhaustively keeping to the itinerary in your head. We see each of our friends in turn. Each time, I expect there to be some part of me that darts away, desperate not to expose myself. But I don’t feel that at all. I barely even feel the jittery nervousness one expects from something exciting! As much as I enjoy that feeling, I must confess the only thing I feel is relief.

By the time we see Rainbow Dash, predictably haunting the cider stand, I’m barely even fazed by the obvious delight in her eyes, nor by the I-told-you-so, not that she had, at any point, told us so. Let her have it.

For our part, Twilight, we don’t talk about whats to come until the sun retreats in the sky, and the distant lights of the capitol can be seen in the mountains to the east.

It happens so casually. Amidst talk of dinner and whether or not Fluttershy was going to be free to leave her booth soon, you say, “After we go home, I was thinking of seeing a show at the theater. It’s new, I think you might like it! I was thinking we could catch dinner right before.”

Halfway through excitedly answering that yes, I was very free, I stopped myself. “Twilight… I, ah. We hadn’t… I mean, we haven’t talked yet about…”

You blink at me with a kind of baffled expression that would be adorable if it weren’t for the circumstances. “Oh. Oh! No. We uh, we haven’t.”

“We should,” I say.

“Yeah, we should.” You look around, and hum to yourself. “The nice walking path around the lake starts pretty close to here. I could use a bit of quiet.” You raise an eyebrow at me, as if to suggest we both could, and I nod.

We’re both silent. I’m not afraid of the silence. I expect to be any moment now. But I find I just cannot feel worried. Is it because you’re here? I think so. Its hard to feel worried about what you’ll say when your hand is mine.

The path itself is modest, but the view of the lake is nice, and you were right. It’s quiet here. We spend a few minutes finding one of the benches that dot the shore and sit down. I complain a bit about my tired feet, and you chuckle and offer your condolences and its just so normal as if weren’t intertwined intimately only hours before and that drives me crazy, I think, just a bit.

“I’m not sure what to say,” I begin. “I…”

“Well, I do,” you say. I look over at you. “I think its pretty obvious that I love you, Rarity. I’m sure its been painfully obvious for a very long time.”

My mouth feels dry. “Twilight, I feared you might not. I couldn’t accept it.”

You let out a breath. “Ridiculous. How could I not love you, in this or any other world? If I didn’t have you I’d have to invent you,” you say, and then chuckle to yourself, as if that is some reference. It probably is. You do this sometimes, deflecting away from the moment.

“It is true, regardless. I love you, Twilight. I think that I probably have for a long time. Can you… can you forgive me for being so foolish? It took me so long to say or do anything, I just…”

You reach over and gently touch my leg. “There’s no need. Rarity, breaking through to the other side of something like this… repression is a hell of a thing. It doesn’t just stop happening. You’d think it would! But it doesn’t!” You throw your hands up. I know you’re playing your reaction up to make me laugh. I don’t, but I appreciate the effort. It’s sweet.

“Repression? I’ll have you know that I’m no prude,” I say.

You groan and shake your head. “No, I mean… you know what I mean.”

I smile at you. “I do.”

“Argh, you can’t—Okay, no, you obviously can and did. Moving on! Repression isn’t something that you just shatter and move on past. It’s a part of you. Its something you wash out over time. I wouldn’t expect you to just get over it.”

“All the same.” I take a breath. “So are we…”

“If you want to be,” you say quickly.

“I could be persuaded,” I say, just as quickly, as if I could drag back a bit of the suave dignity I’d spent years cultivating. Perfect, Rarity, just brilliant.

“I would be willing to persuade you.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“Normally! I mean,” you falter, and then shoot me a look. “Again, you know what I mean!”

“I do!”

“I’d like to try. If you’re willing. If you want to try.”

I lean in and kiss you, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And it is! Somehow. And you kiss me back, and I realize this can just happen whenever we want now. It hits me all at once. I pull away for air, and say:

“Twilight Sparkle, I would love to try.”

Author's Note

I'd like to thank Monochromatic. You sat in my doc and you were there every step of the way and it was an absolute delight. Thank you. Its harder and harder for me to write these days, and being able to actually finish something means a lot.

Thank you for reading.