Rejuvenation

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

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Twilight had been quiet throughout the entire process.

Spike, panting and exhausted, couldn't even begin to explain how much he appreciated that.

"Are you okay?" Twilight approached from the side, looking him over, her eyes trailing up and down.

He looked a lot older than her Spike.

"I think so. Gonna surprise the doctors tomorrow though, aren't I?" He was inspecting himself as well. His claws were sliding up and down his arms, gliding across smooth scale.

"Yeah..." Twilight looked to be thinking, she was there, but she wasn't.

Spike lifted the blanket off of himself, sliding onto unsteady legs.

He'd looked sickly as a pony. He looked just as bad as a dragon.

Stickly and thin, his spines jutted out more starkly from his emaciated frame.

He failed to notice Twilight blushing as he tried stretching out his legs, circling around himself a few times to get a glimpse of his tail.

It was longer than he recalled, but it was so much thinner than before. Just like the rest of him.

His claws were longer, his limbs were longer, and this time around even his neck was longer!

With that in mind, it took nearly no time at all for him to stumble over his own feet.

Twilight was under him in an instant. Propping him to his feet with her shoulder in the same instant she latched on to him with magic.

"You need to be careful!" She stood there, his palm against her shoulder until he was steady on his feet. "You have no idea how worried I've been."

"Sorry Twilight. I guess I'm not used to my feet anymore." He rubbed the back of his head, claws sliding roughly against unfamiliar spines.

"I..." She shuffled her hooves. "I didn't just mean that."

"Huh?" His glasses didn't fit anymore, leaving Twilight a purple blur in his vision.

"How long were you sick, Spike?" She pushed him back, forcing him to sit on his bed.

"I don't know. A few months?" He hadn't kept track of it, though he had certainly tried. During the worst bouts, before finding human medication to take the edge off, he'd lost days at a time to exhaustion and fatigue.

"Almost three. I visited a few times when you were hospitalized and you were so... Still. I was afraid you'd died and the nurses just hadn't cleaned you up yet." She climbed up on to the bed, sitting awkwardly next to him.

Ponies really weren't built to sit like that, like they were humans.

"Then you'd come home and miss days of school and Marley would let me check in on you. And you weren't any better." Her voice had gotten higher, Spike could hear that she'd taken a deep breath.

She was crying.

"Twilight, I'm-" A hoof pressed against his lips, halting his apology.

"Don't say it, Spike. You were doing something amazing and it just, it, just, it don't apologize for trying to help people. Okay?" She pressed on, her voice staying level, though at a higher pitch. "And then I came in here because I was worried and I saw you, hurting and changing and it scared me."

"Twilight." He wrapped an arm around her, pulling her against- No, he wasn't strong enough to do that. He pulled himself against her, though. "I wasn't trying to scare you. It surprised me, too, when I figured it out. I'm sorry you caught me in the middle of that."

The both of them sat in silence for a few moments. Twilight gathering her thoughts. Spike simply enjoying her warmth.

"You're different from Spike, you know?" She moved her shoulder against him. "He's learning quickly, but everyone says he doesn't act like a dragon."

"Well, he's a dog. Coming through the portal, he's still a dog on the inside. But..." He scratched at his muzzle with his free claw. "There are dogs here. I watched Winona for Applejack once."

And only once. It had been disastrous.

"So you wonder why he didn't just come through as a dog?" Twilight sounded curious as well.

It would have used less energy, wouldn't it?

"I guess there's a sort of balance between the worlds, the mirror trying to swap things exactly as they are on the other side. I kind of wonder what would happen if Winona tried to go through it. I don't think she'd change, you know?" Twilight shrugged against him, a sign of silent agreement.

"And Spike is probably going to be fine." The other Spike, not himself. Though he hoped he'd be alright as well. "It'd take something really severe to get him down for too long."

"Like not being able to go home?" Her wings were drooping.

He took it to mean that it wasn't really a question.

"What happened?"

"I... Bringing you here, I broke the mirror. It didn't want to let me, you, us through." She pushed against him when his grip went slack.

"Twilight? You... You can't go home?" His heart froze in his chest.

He knew how that felt.

He knew that despair.

"Maybe? Twilight said she was working on recreating the mirror. Just... Better." She didn't sound as worried as he felt. "And... maybe I don't want to go home."

"Twilight?" She wanted to stay here? Away from her family? Away from her...

She'd reached out to the human worlds elements of harmony. Didn't she want to try and be friends with them? Get to know them?

"Everyone here is so much nicer than back home, Spike. If you bump into someone, they say they're sorry, you say you're sorry and everyone walks home happy. At Crystal Prep, if I walked into someone they'd just yell at me, knock my books to the ground and... And usually you would help me pick them up." She pressed her head against him. "The other Twilight, she told me that not all ponies are that nice, that there are places where it's just as bad as back home but I haven't seen it. And my best friend, he's here. This is his home, it's where he belongs."

She sat back up straight and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hoof.

"So I want to stay here. I want to learn magic, learn to fly, learn to fly with you and not go back. Back to all of... That. I love my parents Spike, and I love my brother, thick-headed as he can be, but... What will I be going home to?" He placed a claw on her trembling shoulder, working at deciphering everything she was saying.

Fly with him? But he didn't...

Oh.

He did.

Wings, he'd sprouted wings. It must have been part of the rest of the transformation, but he'd been a bit too distracted to notice.

"Maybe you could transfer to Canterlot High? It's full of good people, nice people who wouldn't be upset with you, or feel threatened by you just because you're smart." And awkward. But saying that probably wouldn't help.

"Maybe. But Spike, that's just a maybe. Even if I did do all that, even if it all worked out, what about you? You're my best friend, you've been there when nobody else wanted to be... When my brother practically sold me for a date with the dean." Okay, that might have been a bit extreme.

"So you're going to stay here?" It wasn't really a question, she'd made herself clear enough.

"Aim at where the target is going to be. Exhale. And release..." Twilight mumbled to herself, seemingly centering herself though Spike couldn't tell for-

She pressed her lips against his.

"I'm staying here, Spike." Her tone was solid, borderline forceful. "You're not getting rid of me, and if you worry me like that again... I'll tear down Tartarus to bring you home again before giving you something to worry about."

He nodded.

She... She'd kissed him.

"Twilight?" His brain restarted, countless thoughts stuttering to a halt as they tried to finish forming.

She didn't respond, not verbally. Instead she leaned against him, nearly pushing him over before he propped himself up.

"I'm... I'm glad you're here." He didn't know what else to say.

Because nothing more needed to be said.

Author's Notes:

And this is done.
There's so much that could be done with this, and I may do an epilogue chapter, haven't decided yet, but I'm satisfied with where I've brought this.
It's kind of full circle, in a way.

Everyone who's reviewed and commented, I just want you all to know that I've greatly appreciated everything you've had to say. Even my less than stellar critics.
This is the first story I've brought to a close... It's really kind of cathartic.