-Fade Away-
Twilight Sparkle watched as the frail body of her oldest enemy crashed to the ground, eyes half-closed. She smiled as she tucked the feathers of her wings back into their rightful place. Her eyes scanned her small circle of friends who were glowing with the glee of the newest demon vanquished. She didn’t have much time, but they didn’t need to know that. Not quite yet.
“Well, I’ll be. Is it just me or was that a little too easy?” a familiar farmpony stated, voice ringing with barely hidden glee.She grabbed the rim of her fallen hat with her muzzle before returning it to it’s rightful place on her head.
Oh, Applejack. Her oldest friend here, though not by much. She was always so honest and so willing to help any friend in need. Twilight closed her eyes, a small smile gracing her gentle features. Her memories had improved ever since she had ascended. Twilight felt every moment with Applejack resurface from the backs of her mind. Is it wrong that her stubbornness is both her best and her worst trait? She grinned.
Her grin disappeared as she remembered that the same stubbornness was what caused her to buck‘one more tree’. Twilight hadn’t known it would be a whole forest, especially in the temperature it was. She couldn’t have known.
Twilight remembered when Spike had had to go begin his one thousand year nap. It had been Applejack who had brought her from that rut back into the world again. ‘You’re a princess now,’ she had said, ‘you got more responsibilities than you’re used to. It’s perfectly alright to be down every once and a while, Twi, but you gotta get back up. You’re the strongest pony I know, Twilight. You can do it, too.’
She would definitely miss Applejack the most.
“Oh, shush. Guys, you have me. Everything gets 120% easier when the Dash is around,” the cyan pegasus said as she did a small aerial loop for effect, landing near Pinkie Pie with a smirk.
Twilight watched the stunt in a final moment of awe. It had been a very long time since the six had met and Rainbow was still acting with the same youthful vigor that she always had, a trait the the others could rarely call upon.
Rainbow Dash would never leave Twilight in the dust, though she had definitely made jokes about it in the past. She was loyal to a fault, and it was that same loyalty that had caused her downfall.
Twilight was still mad about that. Rainbow could have just let the avalanche happen. Her alicorn form could have definitely taken the brunt of the blow. What would it have left her with? Maybe a few missing feathers? Definitely not what it had done to Rainbow.
Twilight remembered when Rainbow had been teaching her how to fly after she had first ascended. She had insisted that it be her instead of one of the other princesses. They weren’t ‘cool’ enough to teach her best friend. It hadn’t gone that well, to say the least. Rainbow Dash was strictly quick and impatient, barely waiting for Twilight to learn what she called a ‘simple’ but what was actually a rather complicated maneuver. It was still very effective teaching, though. The speed of the lessons helped, to say the least. With Rainbow’s rather fast-paced teaching, Twilight learned what would normally have taken a few weeks in just days.
She would definitely miss Rainbow Dash the most.
“Um-”
“Oh wow, Dashie! Do it again! Do it again! You just went all swoop! boom! rah! and-” Pinkie Pie continued her incoherent rambling as she bounced, her brilliant pink hair bouncing up and down at an almost alien pace.
But, of course, nothing was ‘alien’ for Pinkie Pie. If anything, Pinkie was the definition of ‘alien on Equestria’. Twilight could never understand Pinkie Pie, or anything her supernatural Pinkie Sense could tell her. Somehow, she didn’t care anymore, especially after her skeptic’s mind had caused Pinkie Pie to take the ‘doozy’ for her. She’d learned to believe in Pinkie’s sense, though it was nowhere near as useful now as it had been in the past.
More so than any of the other five, Pinkie’s Element had always fit her to a ‘T’. The Element of Laughter, always focused on seeing other ponies smile. Never caring about herself, but instead the happiness of others. Pinkie may have been called crazy by the ponies who resided in Ponyville, but to Twilight that was her way of reaching out to others.
But, in the end, everyone appreciated Pinkamena Diane Pie. Everybody smiles when the hear her name. And that’s really all Pinkie ever wanted.
Twilight remembered the day the Gummy never woke up after Pinkie took so much care into putting him to bed after he had to take some relatively strong medication because of a passing flu bug. Pinkie had woken up early to go see if he was alright. He wasn’t.
Pinkie acted like nothing was the matter, smiling and saying that everything was alright, that it was his time to go. But Twilight could see it in her smile that Pinkie Pie was lying. She had loved Gummy. No kind of Pinkie Sense can predict the amount of grief that Pinkie Pie was almost definitely suffering alone.
So Twilight did the thing that nopony else would have done: she noticed. She brought Pinkie back from the sorrow that she was experiencing and in return Pinkie taught her one of the most valuable lessons in friendship that she will ever have been taught: that not everypony is who they seem. That even the happiest-looking pony is fighting some sort of battle inside their own minds.
She would definitely miss Pinkie Pie the most.
“Darling, we can have time for this later. It appears as if Fluttershy has something to say.” Rarity made a curt nod towards Fluttershy, flicking her deep violet mane to the side as she moved.
Rarity. Twilight had almost forgotten about who should have been the unforgettable fashionista. She took a mental slap
from herself as she remembered that Rarity would have never done the same. Though she may have seemed arrogant and materialistic, she had always put her friends first.
Rarity had more than the social tact necessary to run her business. It was always the white unicorn that solved the petty arguments between friends, always her that was told the deepest secrets, because though Rarity may have been blunt, she was never one to be loose-lipped.
She was also the most creatively talented person that Twilight had ever known. When a foal had thought of being successful, they often thought of a dream much like what Rarity’s life had been. So much talent, cut off by an accident. It was nopony’s fault, not really, but Twilight couldn’t help but blame herself.
Twilight still remembered when Rarity had insisted on making Twilight a gown for her coronation ball. Twilight didn’t like that, not one bit. She thought a simple blue and lavender ensemble would work, but Rarity had a vision of something so much bigger than that.
After so much work put in to such a short time frame, even Applejack would admit that the gown looked beautiful on Twilight. Rarity had taught her the simple lesson that sometimes, things were worth the wait.
She would definitely miss Rarity the most.
“Oh, thank you, Rarity. I just was wondering...um, Twilight? Are you okay?
Twilight mentally slapped herself for the second time that day. Of course Fluttershy would be the first to notice her shaking, or the wind just slightly blowing her mane where there was none.
Sweet, delicate Fluttershy. Fluttershy, who would always stand up for her friends, even if it meant facing her deepest
fears. Fluttershy, who was always so kind to anypony and any animal she would meet, even if it just seemed like simple shyness at first. Fluttershy, who Twilight felt like she knew better than any of the other four, with their late afternoon tea and romance book clubs and animal care days. Fluttershy, whose eyes closed one final time so peacefully on that late autumn day.
She was the only one of the five who Twilight didn’t have to hide something from, and yet, at the same time, the only one who Twilight felt like she had everything to hide from. Fluttershy had taken it so well when she ascended, even knowing that it would mean that their afternoon tea and book clubs and other activities would be put to a standstill.
Twilight remembered when Owlowiscious had died. Fluttershy had been the one to help her with her grief of losing the second of her most valuable assistants, even holding a small, six-pony funeral and giving her that helping hoof she needed to get up again.
She would definitely miss Fluttershy the most.
No. She would miss them all. They had taught the alicorn lessons on so much more than friendship-lessons that Twilight wouldn’t forget for the world. But, this was so much more than the world.
Twilight hated being an alicorn. Why couldn’t she have just stayed a unicorn? Stayed with the normal life-span. The average talents. Everything just so she could be there with her friends right at that moment, not as a solid illusion but as a living form. She wished that she hadn’t been cursed with this dreadful immortality. The Element of Magic could live forever, so why couldn’t they?
It was her destiny to be the one left behind, with all of the memories and happiness. It was in her nature to be the one most likely to carry on. Fluttershy had told her to be happy before she had passed away.
Equestria needs her, more than any of the lost souls here. They could press on in immortal ecstasy and Twilight would know nothing of it. She needed to be a fair ruler, and Twilight couldn't do that if she had this lasting pain, this terrible knowledge, that her only best friends had left the surface of Equestria, never to be seen again.
Twilight glanced down at her front hooves subconsciously before noticing that one of them was becoming a much more transparent lavender. And Twilight Sparkle still needed to do one more thing before she left for good.
Twilight Sparkle had to fade away.
She pulled her friend into a group hug using a combination of the undamaged hoof and her magic.
“I love you all,” she said, “please remember.”
“Uh, Twi? What’s the big deal?” Applejack questioned, not rejecting the hug but still eyeing Twilight suspiciously. Twilight smiled.
Twilight saw the beginnings of black smoke appear at her hooves and realized that she had less time than she thought. She casted a spell of her own design for this specific occasion, the ‘fifteen-minute rooting spell’ on all five of her friends, uttering a quick apology as the stared in awe at the waves of black mist appearing at Twilight’s hooves.
“Hey! Stop! Twilight! You can’t just leave us like this!” Rainbow’s wings flared upwards as she tried desperately to free herself.
The lavender alicorn layed down, her head resting on her hooves and her horn glowing in one last spell.
“T-Twilight! P-please don’t leave me!” Fluttershy whispered, as if almost to herself.
Snapshots of time and mental photographs blasted through the five ponies like fire, sending them all to the ground until they curled up into Twilight’s position. Each memory that Twilight had of their time together was being submitted to the ponies in the room as if through a radio tower. The five friends groaned as they relived everything that they had seen.
“Memories of friendship and love so true,” Twilight uttered through the spell, “these are the pieces of my heart to you.”
“N-Never forget.” Twilight said, as the last memory keeping her to the world was severed and cut from existance.
A flash of purple light and black smoke left the five remaining ponies in solitude. After all, even the Alicorn Princess of Magic could only stay in the land of the dead for so long.
Even the Alicorn Princess of Magic knew when it was her time to fade away.
The gravestones in the center of Canterlot Garden were losing their sheen, and Princess Twilight Sparkle knew it as she and her sister approached them for their weekly visit. Twilight took out her picnic basket and flipped out the miscellaneous china teacups onto the table as she poured herself and Celestia a cup of tea.
A picturesque view of the sunset was just leaving the sky as Twilight looked up. The sisters always visited at the time that the crepuscular rays hit the garden, as an idea from Celestia soon after Twilight had found the hidden garden. Twilight smiled at the irony.
This was Twilight’s favorite place to be, and she didn’t really know why. She had always felt some sort of silent connection to the gardens here. As Twilight looked at the gravestones, she noticed that once again the pony ‘Rainbow Dash’s cutie mark’s lines were becoming less pointed. She always tried to convince Celestia to get the Royal Engraver in to sharpen the lines, but Celestia always said that ‘they would have liked it better this way’. Twilight never agreed.
“Wow, the way you describe them, they sound like beautiful ponies,” Twilight said over a cup of tea.
“They were,” Celestia smiled.
“I only wish I could have met them.”
“Y-Yes. I do, too.”
