It took little over a day for Twilight to wake up after the defeat of Discord, but when she did, she awoke to a sight that would have charmed her in any other scenario. As her eyes first fluttered open, she saw she was in the hospital in Canterlot, surrounded by all her friends. It looked as though all of Ponyville had managed to squeeze into her room. As she began to sit up, the whole room gathered around her to cheer her. Before she was given a chance to speak, she was bombarded with favors. Rainbow Dash offered to read Daring Do to her and take her on a cloud ride, Pinkie Pie offered her a party, Fluttershy had a small choir of birds ready to sing, Rarity offered to take her to the spa and Applejack gave her a large tray of apple based foods.

Twilight had yet been given the chance to speak, and it seemed like that’s was their goal, or maybe hoping to make her forget somehow. But there was only one pony she wanted to talk too right then, she didn’t care which one of them, but she had to talk to one of the Princess’s, she had to know for sure if her suspicion was true about Don, and they would know. She intended to get up without a word, but her friends wouldn’t have it, they insisted that she stay with one of them for awhile. Even the Cutie Mark Crusaders tried to brighten her up, it was too much to the point where she finally couldn’t take it anymore. Twilight forced her way through the crowd of ponies and finally screaming at them

“WOULD EVERYPONY JUST LEAVE ME ALONE! I don’t want any of these favors at all, I just want to be alone” and with that she teleported away before they could respond.

Twilight appeared outside the Princess’s chamber, and for the first time in her life, entered without knocking. It was a minor rudeness, but it still made a point as Twilight walked across the room over to Celestia. The Princess seemed to have been expecting her, for Princess Luna was there as well. Despite all her restraint, Twilight could not hold back the question that burned within her

“WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME HE WAS DAYBREAK!?”

Twilight yelled so loud she felt a tear in her voice, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t take it, she didn’t want to lose control of herself, but the Princesses stares seemed to bring the pain into the open, she collapsed to the floor and began bawling uncontrollably. She laid on the Princess’s floor and cried, worse than she ever had. She felt the Princesses walk over and sit with her, Celestia draped her wing over Twilight, just as she had done for her when she was a young filly. Luna and Celestia waited patiently for Twilight’s sobs to cease, and although she was more upset now than ever before, her crying stopped quickly. She looked up at the two Princess’s and saw how they were looking at her. Despite how mad she had been at Celestia, her anger almost evaporated when she saw her eyes. She too, had been shedding tears, though Twilight wasn’t entirely sure why.

Twilight looked up at Princess Celestia “why?”

The question again fell from her lips, and the Princess sighed, but Luna cut her off

“Prepare yourself Twilight Sparkle, this may shock you, but you must try to understand” Twilight nodded and looked to Celestia, she cleared her throat to speak

“Twilight, to tell you why, I must tell you everything about Daybreak, so I will start at the beginning. Daybreak became a student of mine only a few days before you, and like you he possessed extraordinary abilities with magic, but you, by far were more skilled. I came upon him at his home, before the pipes blocked the way in you see. I saw great bursts of light coming from within the house, so I investigated and found a young colt, the same age as you at the time, attempting to light up his home with his magic. I inquired as to where his parents were, and he told me…”

“I don’t have any parents” Twilight echoed as she remembered him telling her that as well

“Precisely Twilight, so instead I asked him why he lived alone, and he told me why. He had random magical fits, very similar to the one you had the day I met you, except for him, they happened all the time, at random moments. He said that for as long as he could remember, he had lived there so as not to harm other ponies with his power. So I offered him a place at my side, like you, and he began to practice magic with my supervision. With my guidance his random spurts dropped drastically, but still happened on occasion. Then I found you, and you both began to study, and for almost a year you two never spoke to each other, except for when you asked him for a favor or to be a test dummy for your spells. However from the first day you arrived, he began doing things for you, some things, maybe you didn’t even notice. He still studied, but only when he wasn’t doing favors for you. So after about a year around the time Cadence began foal sitting for you, you finally asked me about him. I advised you as best I could and it seemed you two had fun playing around Canterlot that day. You may have thought you were chasing him, but truthfully, he was playing with you. That night, and I must apologize for this part sister…”

She motioned to Luna who nodded

“...That night I began to consider freeing Luna from her 1,000 year prison so that I might make amends with her. But the spell I would need to use was too strong even for me, so I needed an assistant to help me and with Cadence being away and your brother in training, I had very limited options.”

Twilight saw where this was going and felt the tears coming again, but she endured

“At first I considered asking you, but Daybreak had been spying at my door and volunteered instead, saying that he was worried it might strain or hurt you. He insisted on helping me open a portal to the moon that would free my sister as Luna and NOT Nightmare Moon. So Daybreak and I went to the last known location of the Elements of Harmony in the Everfree Forest. I knew that being near the Elements might help us to bring my sister home free from evil. Daybreak and I began to cast the portal spell near the Elements, hoping to use some of their dormant power to strengthen the portal. At first it seemed to be going well, but then disaster struck us. The strain the portal put on Daybreak caused him to go into one of his magical fits again. With the portal being open and his magic loose, everything fell apart! His magic destabilized the portal and sucked him into it, blowing the roof off most of the room! I tried to reopen the portal to get Daybreak back, but he was gone. I only told you part of the truth, the next morning because I thought he had died and I couldn’t bear to tell you that...But then, after several years had passed, there was a storm one night, and during that storm I felt the same magic I had felt on the night Daybreak had vanished many years ago, for I could not forget it. As I felt it, I requested Luna to go and find where it was. What Luna told me shocked and amazed me dearest Twilight. Luna told me how a portal had opened and a creature had fallen from it, crashing into the ground. After I heard this, I had one of my best guards go to Ponyville and watch him. And as he told me reports of you taking him in, introducing your friends to him, I began to realize it was him, changed, but it was him. So after two months, I decided to meet with him, possibly to explain things, knowing he had little to no memory. However when he finally stood before me in this room I felt a different power from him like something dormant had been awoken inside him. That is when I understood how he had survived. During that moment he must have unlocked his hidden power and shielded himself somehow, but his power was sporadic and chaotic but at the same time enticing. That is why everypony loves him so easily, except for Spike. Dragons have an unusual sense of magic, Spike could tell there was something not right with him. Let's just say that his powers made him more appealing in its own way. Now I’m not saying that he wasn’t charming on his own, but his magic flowing through him so openly may have made him more…lovable, is best word I can think of. However Twilight, that is precisely the problem, his power was unstable and prone to a violent reaction at some point. So I knew it was inevitable that, in some way, this would happen.” Twilight jumped to her feet “Then why didn’t you tell me?!”

“Because if I had, imagine what you might have done. Look at what you did with the limited knowledge I told you. You tried to change it, and regardless of whether or not we like it, this had to happen, he had to stabilize in some way…I’m sorry Twilight, I know how you felt about him”

Twilight turned away from the Princesses, tears forming in her eyes once again “no Princess, I don’t think you do”.

Twilight lowered her head and left the Princesses sitting where they were, making sure to shut the door gently behind her. All of her anger had faded, now she knew the truth, Don…Daybreak, her one love, was gone, again, and there was nothing she could have done about it. She hated admitting it to herself, but the Princesses had been right, a being with all that power, flowing without his full control, was like a time bomb and couldn't remain. Twilight walked past the hospital and informed her friends, as they stopped to comfort her, that she was going out to where the maze had been. At first they began to protest, but then Rainbow Dash, of all ponies, stopped them and said they’d see her on the train home. Twilight gave a nod of thanks to Rainbow Dash and wandered out to the previous sight of the maze.

Twilight wondered to herself if there was anything she regretted, but other than the one time she had deceived him, their relationship had been practically perfect. The only thing she wondered, was why he had said his name was Don, she wondered where he had picked that up, perhaps the correlation between dawn and daybreak. There were so many questions she would never have answered now, and so many things she would never get to experience with him gone. Her dreams of a family died with him. She admitted it, despite barely knowing him for under a year, she used to fantasize about them, married in a couple of years, maybe even a young philly or colt with them. Her dream, gone, shattered, she felt empty and hollow on the inside.

As Twilight finally reached the spot where the tower had stood not so long ago, she lay down, curled up and hugged herself. She let some tears fall from her eyes, and just wished she could have done something, anything to prevent him from doing what he had. Twilight laid there for a few moments, but a glare kept hitting her in the eye. Eventually it frustrated her enough to get her up. She walked over to where it was coming from, and saw stuck in the branch of a tree, was the necklace Cadence had given Daybreak. Twilight felt the smallest of smiles hit her lips, she levitated it down her quickly and hugged it close to her. She hung it around her neck, and it began to burn a bright red. She took comfort in its burning, it let her feel close to him. It burned for several minutes before the glow ceased, for a split moment Twilight panicked. Thinking she had somehow broken it, she frantically took the necklace off and put it back on, then sighed with relief as it glowed again.

“Oh good, I guess it makes sense for the glow to only last a few moments, or else it would bother every pony.” She comforted herself with his necklace, but it was not enough to fill the void in her heart. The sadness was overwhelming, and she knew she had to leave now, or she might never. So she picked herself up and walked all the way back to the train station.

The ride back to Ponyville was quiet to say the least, however it was full of things that should have made her feel better, but didn’t. The main one was Spike, he came up to her and formally apologized for his treatment of Don early on, she merely nodded, but deep down she thanked him for that.

Eventually Twilight came around to telling her friends everything the Princess had told her including Don's real name. All of her friends tried their very best to comfort her even more afterwards, she could tell they were giving it their all. Unfortunately nothing could make her feel better, but one pony out of all of them did make some progress. Rainbow Dash had been the pony closest to Daybreak next to her, and she made it clear that Daybreak being gone hurt her more than any athletic injury could ever have. Twilight felt for her, but then Rainbow admitted something to her in private later that night, that completely changed the way she viewed her attempts to comfort her.

Later that night Rainbow brought Twilight to the back of the train and stood outside the door with her

“Listen Twilight, I know you think no pony understands how you’re feeling...but I do, I never admitted it, but I kind of, maybe-not-admitting-anything-here, but I might have loved him too, he was beyond awesome, I just wanted you to know that, so that you know you’re not alone in this”.

Twilight looked at Rainbow Dash with a new found appreciation for her, but Twilight could tell she was saying this to make herself feel better as well. They all needed something to make them forget and move on, but that is where they all differed from her, she would not…move on, she refused to.

Once they were back in Ponyville the news of what happened spread quickly to the ponies who didn't already know, by the end of the afternoon Twilight had been forced to lock her doors to keep the mountain of ponies trying to comfort her, outside her home. All the constant favors only served to make her feel worse, and she didn’t get why they couldn’t understand that. However one good thing had come from all of Ponyville learning of what happened, Big Macintosh had taken a trip from Sweet Apple Acres to Twilight’s house and returned her Smarty Pants doll to her. It had almost been enough to make her smile, if only for the fact she now had two keepsakes to remember Daybreak by.

Author's Notes:

Oh i just can't wait for the later chapters when so much more stuff about Daybreak makes sense to ya'll
but i won't be a spoiler, for now, have another cahpter my bros