maybe death is like falling asleep [timeline: time between TEL and TEK]

Death was not like Twilight had expected it. 

I suppose that’s because she couldn’t expect much at all, wandering her library, eyes blacker than a starless, moonless night. 

This was, after all, what my beloved wanted. This was, after all, what was right, what she deserved. Peace, her endless thoughts so distant and quiet, everything mattering so, so very little. 

High above, past bookcases gathering dust, hung a chandelier, illuminating the room. She stared up at it, and then down as it fell when, with a thrum of her fingers, darkness greeted her like an old friend. 

The darkness felt better. 

She didn’t like seeing the traces of me all over her life. The wall I’d claimed for my own, pasting sketches and designs she’d red-lined and commented on. The hand-made signs I’d made so I could memorize her systems better. It was better to hide them, whispered a voice that was her own just as much as it was not, better not to think of things that hurt. 

One foot in front of the other, she made her way through the maze, the chaos magic it once possessed now inside her, now a friend she’d learned to accept. She walked through the winding paths, fingertips brushing against spines of books as she guided her way through. 

I wonder if… If she could miss, if that was something she could still do, would she miss being able to walk through the walls? Would she be annoyed, in the way only she could be, that things were somewhat inefficient now? 

If she could, if I was there, would she remark that she couldn’t believe she was saying such a thing, but she missed being displaced? 

But she couldn’t miss, of course. To miss was to feel, and feeling was something she no longer could do. 

Or, mostly could not do, considering she did feel something was wrong. Something calling to her, a flicker of a sensation that something was not as it should be. It took her a moment, but she soon recognized what it was, so she made her way towards it. 

Realistically, it was inertia that drove her forward. The instinct that guides us all when something we hadn’t expected has taken place, but… But I like to think it was something else guiding her. 

No, not think.

I like to believe it was something else guiding her—the part of her, buried deep below insurmountable mounds of self-hate, that was still her. Still Twilight Sparkle, refusing to go out like a light. 

The metal staircase clanked as she walked up to the first floor, past paintings on walls of a life long gone, past the little spot I used to stand at where I would watch her play hide-and-seek with Sweetie and her friends. Light washed over her when she reached the first floor, more rows of bookcases stretching out before her. 

Her eyes traveled up the length of the library’s wall until they reached the chandelier. A soft magic enveloped it, the last remaining vestige of Twilight’s undiluted raspberry-colored magic, untainted by the chaos magic suffusing her soul. 

It died a quick death with but a flick of her wrist, plunging into darkness before it even had a chance to turn into a candelabra, clanking loudly against the floor somewhere in the distance. 

She stood there, waiting in the dark, and it was only because of this darkness she’d brought about that another distant light cut through, glowing an undying pink. 

And a voice, beseeching.  

Twilight?

She walked towards the light, step by step, until she stood right before it, vacant eyes staring down at the soft glow of a pink necklace on the floor. 

Twilight? 

The chain felt cold in one hand, delicately threaded through her fingers, but the crystal pendant in her other hand felt warm, pulsing with magic. She wanted to snuff out its life, vibrant and annoying and just not right, but when she tried…

She couldn’t. 

She couldn’t even try, some force beyond her stopping her, some instinct rearing its head that she did not like having. 

Twilight, please! Twilight?

Finally, her eyes lifted toward the barrier, her attention caught by my voice as it did every single time she’d heard it lately. 

Why was I here? Why, she thought, did I keep coming back? This was what she wanted. When would I learn? Why couldn’t I just leave her alone? This was what was best, whispered the voice that wasn’t her own. 

Twilight!

She could hear the desperation in every crack of my voice. And then the barrier thrumming when something slammed against it. My fist, she assumed, idly remembering someone yelling at me once that all I would accomplish was breaking my hand. 

God, please! Twilight? 

She stepped forward, the necklace dangling from her hand, and she stood before the black barrier as she did every time I came, waiting. 

She waited and waited, through more yells and demands and promises of never coming back, until finally they stopped, and she had her peace and dark once more. 

She made a move to leave but stopped when the darkness shifted. Her eyes were drawn to the necklace and the pendant, which now glowed intermittently, flush with magic. Something stirred briefly within her. Something, a pain she did not like, the instinct rearing its head once again, the same instinct that kept her from killing the last connection she had to me. 

No, the voice that was not her own whispered, no. 

And as the voice became her own, she stood there, watching as the necklace glowed, and glowed, and glowed.