It was inevitable that Twilight Sparkle would one day marry a book. Everypony saw it coming. So they married, and they had seven beautiful baby Post-it notes, and they were happy.

That is, until the storm. It wasn't scheduled. It shouldn't have happened. But when your whole family is made of paper, getting caught in a sudden downpour is far more than an inconvenience. The children barely knew anything was happening before they dissolved. Her husband survived a little longer; he used that time to ask her to move on with her life without him.

Twilight, though, completely ignored that request. They weren't anywhere near close enough to the Everfree Forest for the storm to have been wild weather, and that meant somepony must be responsible. She swore she would have her revenge.

Of course, she didn't know much about weather engineering, and every minute spent learning how to interpret any evidence she might find was time the trail was growing cold. She needed help. And who better to provide weather expertise than the Ponyville Weather Captain?

Dash agreed to assist, of course. What else could the Bearer of Loyalty do when her friend was in need? She swore she would provide any assistance Twilight might need until justice had been done.

So they investigated. And they searched. And they occasionally beat their heads against walls in frustration. For ten years they ceaselessly sought the culprit behind the storm. Finally, they found the Lost Archive (the spells that brought all the weather records there were the only things that could still find it) floating above the outskirts of Vanhoover, and there the case was finally cracked.

It was simple, really, once they had all the information they could want neatly filed before them. There was a clear discrepancy in the low-level operation reports from Ponyville for that month. It turned out that part of the team was working off the wrong month's schedules. Schedules they had received due to Dash's abysmal paperwork skills.

"Well, fair is fair," Dash broke the silence. "Come on, you can kill me outside." As they walked, Dash gave a strained laugh and added, "It's probably easier this way. What was I going to do next? The Wonderbolts won't want to recruit me; I'm past my prime. Our old friends probably barely remember us. I don't even have a job to go back to. I don't want to build a new life from scratch."

Twilight just walked in silence, still trying to process this revelation. All too soon they were standing on the thin strip of cloud outside the building, and Twilight was charging a magic missile strong enough to be fatal. She didn't even remember starting the spell. She took aim . . .

And shot a gaping hole in the cloud. "I can't do it! I can't kill you for a mistake. You're my friend. Friends forgive each other."

Dash looked into the sunset and smiled sadly. "I promised I would make sure justice was dealt, even if something happened and you couldn't do it yourself. I can't break that promise." Then she jumped off the cloud.

Twilight rushed to the edge and looked down. It was clear that Dash had no intention of opening her wings. Without hesitation, she dove after Dash, praying to any deity who might listen that she would be strong enough to levitate herself and Dash at the same time.

But she wasn't. For a moment, her magic wrapped around both of them and they both started to slow. But then her magic faltered, and by reflex she focused on keeping herself up, which left her floating safely as Dash splattered on the ground.

And as she looked down despite her desire not to see, it was all clear. She never should have sought revenge. Revenge wouldn't bring her family back. Revenge certainly wouldn't repair the friendships she let go of to pursue this investigation. All she had done was waste ten years of her life, and worse waste ten years of a friend's life as well. Dash was dead long before that day. She was right when she said that it was easier to die than to move on.

So Twilight closed her eyes and fell.

The next day, an average resident of Vanhoover went to the park to play fetch with her dog. It was a great piece of equine-canine bonding until the dog dragged a purple corpse out from behind a bush. That somewhat killed the mood.

The police were called in, of course, and they soon found Dash's (somewhat less intact) remains as well. Through the miracle of modern techniques for analyzing dead bodies, they were able to establish with reasonable confidence that both had willingly fallen to their deaths at about the same time. The police left the analysis there; the newspapers were not so kind.

And so Twilight's final epitaph was "Princess's Prized Student Dies in Lesbian Suicide Pact."