Rebirth

Disclaimer: I do not own My Little Pony, nor am I profiting off this literary venture.

----

Spike sat on the somewhat small bed and looked around the room.

Pink.

Frilly.

A photograph of a trio of fillies stood on the nightstand. One white, one orange, one tan. All three were cheering over something amazing.

Their own cutie marks.

Spike pondered that himself. He was a year or two older than they were, and they'd been late bloomers. What was his going to be? Could he even get one?

Should he even worry about it? Twilight would be coming back soon, he was sure she'd put him back to normal in no time. But...

(Is that what I want?)

He was still uneasy over it. That voice. A whisper in the back of his mind. It had taken the place of the screaming, frothing, needing greed that he'd grown so used it.

It was a quiet voice, it didn't want for things. It just...

It took those feelings, the quiet envy, the mewling whelp, things that weren't quite thoughts.

And put them to words.

It didn't intrude, force its way to the fore of his mind where he had to struggle to restrain it, to use what he'd learned and been taught to rebel against...

Against who he was.

Perhaps, he admitted, that was what truly frightened him about it. It wasn't proud. It didn't demand attention. It was just... Honest. About himself.

Somepony knocked on the door to the room he was in. Once, twice and finally a third time before they opened to the door and stepped in.

Rarity.

From every perfectly brushed fur of her coat to her perfectly coifed purple mane, she was still the very picture of elegance to his mind.

His heart beat in conflict. (Not like this)

"Is the room to your liking, Spike? Sweetie Bell always leaves it in such a mess." She was glancing about the room as she spoke, wincing at specks of imaginary dust in the pristine bedroom.

"It's fine, Rarity. Thanks for letting me stay though." Fur did a fantastic job of hiding a blush.

"Think nothing of it, dear. I know Twilight left your room untouched in the castle, but coming home so dreadfully exhausted as she'll be and finding a strange pony waiting for her? Again? I'd say her reaction would just be dreadful." Spike rubbed his foreleg uncomfortably.

"I wasn't expecting her to fire them on the spot." Spike finally admitted after a minute. "I really thought those three would work out where..."

He trailed off, the silence saying much where he couldn't.

"I suppose expecting one little dragon to take care of the whole castle was a bit unrealistic of us, wasn't it?"

"I didn't want to say that to Twilight though. I just thought it would disappoint her. I mean, I don't know which would be worse? Telling her I wasn't cutting it as her number one assistant, or her agreeing with me." He looked up when he felt her wrap a hoof around his shoulder and pull him into her barrel.

The comfort felt different, the warmth wasn't as addictive but the hug still felt just as good as when he was, wasn't, was a dragon.

"It takes the strongest of us to ask for help, Spike. Something that I know you know. But Spike... Well, a mare really shouldn't say, but we're all allowed to be weak from time to time. If we didn't make mistakes, what would we have to learn from? Twilight would never be disappointed in her friends Spike, especially because they look to her for help."

Spike wondered, as he struggled to keep his vision from blurring further, how he could have forgotten that lesson.

"Rarity?"

"Yes Spike?"

"Thank you."

----

"Do you fear me, Twilight Sparkle?" Luna stood upon the terrace of the hotel room in Fillydelphia. Her fellow alicorn, Twilight, sat next to her with her chin resting on the balcony.

"Yes? No? I don't know." Her hoof was tracing imaginary figures into the railing.

Today had left her so, so tired. Disgusted, reviled, horrified and terrified and perpetually anxious. She would like nothing better than to slip into bed and just go to sleep.

"Please, Twilight, tell me all that troubles you."

"Princess? Luna." Twilight sighed and focused her eye on the much taller princess. "A lot of things are troubling me. What you said. What you did. I don't know how to feel about any of it."

She stood up and stretched her wings, the joints popping loudly before she sat back down.

"We don't know what we're trying to find, the dark magic dried up and that only makes more questions that I'm afraid to know the answer to. Like if it just popped out of existence, or manifested some new teleportation spell or magic or if it..." She hadn't anything left to gag on but bile, though her stomach did its best with even that. "Metamorphosed or mutated into something else entirely that's not dark magic, or else keeps it shielded and hidden."

"And you knew, knew that it... Did that, it, Spike's gone. It ate Spike. He's gone. I, he..." She hiccuped, she wasn't even trying to stop the tears. When Luna wrapped a leg around her, she clutched around her tightly, seeking some kind of warmth, solace from that loss. "He left because he was afraid of disappointing me! I didn't even get to say goodbye..."

Twilight sobbed, she did so until her eyes itched and her throat burned, the grief did not abate. Some time later, when the tears couldn't come any more she pulled away from the Princess of the night and wiped her nose.

"I thought -hic- thought that I'd feel worse about what you did to Garble. When you dragged us into that illusion. It felt so, so real and I was afraid of what you were doing to him but-" Twilight looked up, staring at something beyond the moon. "-he's a bully. I saw him, with Spike back during the dragon migration. He was breaking phoenix eggs."

Luna inhaled sharply, though Twilight continued on uninterrupted.

"He was trying to get Spike to do it, too. And he just. He said no. Garble was going to hurt him for it but me, Rarity and Rainbow Dash stopped him. It was the same thing here, wasn't it? Spike didn't do what he wanted him to do, so he was going to hurt him for it." Twilight leaned into it when Luna began rubbing her back, wanting, needing whatever comfort she could find.

"I don't, I can't feel anything for him. I should pity him, his friends only follow him out of fear. I should hate him, he hurt my friend not once, twice. I should feel sorry for him because of what you did, showing him that he wasn't strong or tough or whatever he thinks he is."

"But I can't, Luna. I can't do any of that. He's nothing. And I don't know how I feel, if that makes me a bad pony or-" Twilight was cut off when a gentle blue aura surrounded her, the warmth pressing into her.

Like a parent comforting a child.

She was deposited into one of the two massive beds before the duvet covered her.

"You are not a bad pony, Twilight. Nay, you are better than I was so very long ago. Sleep now, my little pony, and under the light of Celestia's sun we will resolve this mess."

Almost against her will, Twilight felt her eyes growing heavy. The last thing she recalled was a hoof brushing her mane away from her eyes.

"Rest well, dear Twilight."

"For I shall guard your dreams."

Author's Notes:

I've noticed a bit of confusion regarding Spike's motivation in earlier chapters, so I'll try to clarify something.

Spike makes bad choices. It's a character trait as well developed as his love of gems or his fragile self image.
He's my favorite character, but sometimes, Spike has his moments.
One part of that, and the part that I thought to try and focus on, can be distilled down to immaturity. I don't mean that as a character flaw, but as a facet of who he is. He's not an adult, he doesn't think or act as one, his logic would not be as one. Reality is going to conflict with his plans, there are going to be consequences he cannot foresee.
In short, if Spike were a perfect character, I wouldn't have a story.