The sun was setting.

The sun was setting and it was so invariably beautiful it almost looked like the sky had been painted on. The fringes of the east had already begun to soak up the deep violets—purple, really, that was starting to become a really common color, lately—of dusk, spreading them as thin as possible to mix with the tinges of crimson that held steadfast in the shadow of the clouds that stretched their vaporous bodies across the glittering atmosphere. Cirrus clouds.

Each was a glowing gradient of bright orange to a deep red reminiscent of oil brush strokes that fringed out just enough on the edges to make it look all the more real, all the more like a fabricated still upon canvas. Everything: the clouds; colors; even the light, it was all being pulled in by the sun, riding off like an old Wild West hero.

The market had let its hustle and bustle die out; everypony had everything they needed to furnish their homes and feed themselves.

Even the birds were quiet alongside cicadas and nature itself. It seemed that every living creature had quieted itself for this moment, this perfect, magical moment in which all of nature was in the flux of day and night.

"This won't end well."

While birds chirruped, a few clouds dispersed as a clumsy gray pegasus flew through them, two ponies walked by talking about the merits of science versus magic.

While the perfection was broken, Spike hadn't even noticed it when it lay all around him. He stared off into space, hunkered down in the same position he had taken not minutes before Rarity had entered his home. Stay there, that's what she had said and he had obeyed. The door latched like it would with anypony walking into the library and Spike stared down at his open claws as if they held the answer to some auspicious question he hadn't yet found.

"This won't end well." He had been repeating it like a mantra, over and over again. At this point, Spike couldn't tell whether or not he was actually speaking out loud. In the end it didn't matter, the dragon was far too lost in his own thoughts to recognize anything outside of his claws. His fingers were outstretched, shivering a bit as his heart pumped blood throughout his body.

Spike sighed and let his face fall into the welcoming embrace of his cold palms.

He didn't cry, didn't scream or moan, all he did was repeat a slightly different mantra.

"This really won't end well." It wouldn't end well and he knew it. Spike could hear it in his voice and in the muffled voices that were starting to rise through the door or an open window somewhere in the library. They're yelling, he thought, or one of them is. I wonder who. He sighed again, bits of steam catching on the scales of his palms. They were fighting—fighting over him—and it was his fault. Rarity had said yes, a dream come true, and then there was Twilight, something he didn't quite understand yet.

The thought crossed his mind that Twilight didn't really understand either and he chuckled. Spike started to picture Twilight jotting down notes and writing hypothesis about her actions, it wasn't long before he had a vision of Rarity turning into a complete drama queen about hearing him.

He thought about Rarity.

He thought about Twilight.

It wouldn't end well, but there was plenty of dark corners to find a little humor in; that was something he was good at. Twilight called me a, what was it again? Cyclist? Sickle? Cynic? Yeah, a cynic.

His mood was starting to brighten, not enough to be a ray of hope but just enough to make a baby dragon start to listen to the world around him. He looked upwards to the dusk, finally leaving his palms, and let out a stream of emerald flame. It was slow, sustained like a tender kiss. His body glowed beneath it like an actor under a spotlight.

The fire sputtered out when a loud yell permeated the thick walls of his home. Spike jumped to his feet, fear and anticipation taking control of his movements. He couldn't recognize enough words - an expletive or two - but he could recognize Twilight's voice.

"Oh man", Spike said as his spines drooped, "Twi's pissed." The moment the words left his mouth he clapped his claws over his jaw, realizing he had just cursed . A childish part of him began worrying about Twilight's rule against swearing before another yell brought him out of his trance.

Spike ran for the door, letting his fear fall to the ground below him.

He had to help.

He wasn't sure who he had to help, but he ran nonetheless. Spike would have to take a side and he knew it, beneath the pit of worry in his heart he knew it.

When the door began to open Spike thought about a long forgotten tin pot.

The colt in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.

That was the first sentence on the very first page of a novel that was now going completely ignored. Next to it, Twilight Sparkle sat with her head resting on her crossed forelegs. Her brow was furrowed and her horn was alight, tracing small strings of magic in the air to form words and diagrams. Probabilities and contingents glowed around her, each going ignored as well despite all their organizational help.

"I-I love him", Twilight muttered into her hooves. Her eyes closed slowly upon hearing the inescapable fact for what she considered as the nth time. There she was being a mathematician again, she had actually formed a written and testable function to measure an increase in heart rate and body temperature every time she admitted it to herself. N, or x, representing the number of times I admit my feelings and Y representing my elevated reaction. Twilight sighed and shivered. Her breath was hot, her cheeks, flushed, and she couldn't stop swallowing; every scientific analysis and cheap romance story she had read all pointed to the same conclusion.

She looked up to the window, worry returning as she saw the orange tinge to the sky. Spike and Rarity had been gone at least an hour by now.

It's not stealing if he comes willingly.

Twilight cringed, Rarity's departing message had been hanging in her head ever since she had tried to start reading. "I was just trying to tell a joke," she mumbled into her hooves.

She huffed and stood up, stretching the pins and needles out of her legs before clambering atop her bed. As she stared out the window the ethereal glow of the setting sun painted her in a new coat of deep amber.

She thought about her actions—about Rarity—and what she had done. Most importantly, she thought about Spike. There wasn't a single specific in her mind, there was only her dragon.

Twilight Sparkle sat facing west and thinking of Spike as a soft smile played on her lips. In that moment, she, and everything around her, was perfect.

"I love you, Spike."

The birds began to chirp, the central market drew to its final close, and a lone figure sneezed on the library's porch.

And then the door opened.

She told him to stay there and doubted whether or not he had actually heard.

In less than three days she had overheard a confession of long withheld love, fallen in love herself, and had found herself in the middle of a love triangle. The novels she read made it so much more glamorous than it actually was; the burning jealousy and need to claim what she held as hers.

Two years, two years! Rarity had picked up on it soon after Spike and his rather interfering guardian had made their arrival into her life. It was just puppy love at first, something she could humor and take flattery from, yet it had soon evolved into love. Love, imagine it! A young drake like Spike falling for her after so long, and he had kept quiet about it for so long.

Then Twilight came along.

Twilight, that was right, was why Rarity was stepping into her so called friend's home. There was an issue that needed to be resolved.

The door latched behind her and she peered around the open room. The spines of a legion of books faced her, but there was no sign of the unicorn she had been searching for. She had drawn in a breath and was about to call out when the clamor of hooves hitting wood came to her ears. Rarity looked up to the carved stairs to see a pair of lavender hooves descending into her sights.

Twilight looked down to the first level, smiling and trying not to trip over herself as she made her way down the stairs. She caught a glimpse of white and her smile dropped. "Rarity?" She asked, confusion blatantly overtaking her. "What are you doing here? Where's Spike?"

Where's Spike? Goodness, she doesn't know a thing about subtlety, does she? "That", Rarity replied coldly, "is precisely why I'm here, Twilight." She motioned for her to come forward. "We need to talk."

Twilight, unaware of the conflict, trotted towards her friend with a tinge of worry in her heart. Rarity was upset, that much she could tell, but she didn't have enough data to properly form any theory on what she could do. "What do you mean? Is Spike okay? Did you two-"

"Don't be coy with me, Miss Sparkle."

Miss Sparkle? Twilight stopped in her tracks, her right hoof resting in the air in a frozen step. She looked at Rarity and shivered, her face was calm but her eyes were aflame with cold fire. And her voice, it made her recoil as if she had been slapped. "Rarity, what are you talking about?"

Rarity gritted her teeth and took a step towards the librarian. "Need a review, do we, darling?" Her words were laced with contempt, burning rhetoric that Twilight couldn't help but fear; however the word "darling" seemed to ooze a venom that could almost be tasted.

Rarity couldn't believe Twilight was trying to play innocent, knowing full well of the situation and what she had done. "Let's see, after knowing how Spike felt you've taken advantage of him multiple times, forcefully thrown me across town with magic, and meddled in affairs that aren't your own." Rarity could see the realization starting to dawn on Twilight's face and continued, raising her voice along the way. "Don't you think that's a little off putting?" Rarity took another step forward. "Molesting poor little Spike like that?"

Twilight had felt a shapeless cloud grow inside her body and spread out when Rarity had called her out. Spike must have told her. She had done nothing aside from listen, letting herself be berated until she heard the sting of Rarity's accusation. "Molesting?" Her question came out a whisper.

"And another thing, what kind of mare tries to—"

"Molesting?!" Rarity visibly recoiled, a good bit of her steam dropping off somewhere it couldn't be retrieved. "How dare you, Rarity, how dare you?!"

"Twilight, calm down." She tried to speak sternly, but couldn't find a tone that sounded convincing enough. The reaction before her wasn't what she had foreseen. Rarity had expected a little backlash, but nothing like this, nothing so passionate from a bookworm.

"No, Rarity, I am not calming down." Twilight's voice was cold, filled with an underlying anger that had quickly reached its boiling point. "You of all ponies have the sheer gall to accuse me of that, of taking advantage of Spike?" She advanced on Rarity as a timberwolf would advance upon an opposing beast, "Let me give you a recapitulation of your own, Rarity. Spike came home and cried to me, cried. Do you understand? And I comforted him. You brought him to me unconscious, that was your fault if you've forgotten, and I took care of him yet again. He comes home from you, battered and exhausted and for the past two years I have done nothing but take care of him after you've gotten your snooty little hooves on him!" There was no stopping her now, Twilight couldn't really stop the anger from spilling out and wouldn't if she had the choice.

Twilight felt intrinsic pings of magic sparking in her fur as she advanced. She pulled in another mouthful of air, readying a new barrage, when something hard cracked against her snout. It moved her face down and to the left a little bit and there was a distinct feel of something hot pouring onto her lips. She brought a shaky hoof to her snout and dabbed at it. For a moment Twilight didn't understand why her fur had turned red, then she could hear Rarity yelling at her, calling her something along the lines of an accusatory harlot or something, and everything clicked.

She had been slapped.

Rarity had slapped her.

Her nose was bleeding.

"Get out."

Rarity's face coiled in a sneer of contempt. "Oh no! I am not taking my leave just because you want me to, you violent little—"

"GET OUT!" Twilight roared, her eyes filling with a burning light. Arcs of uncontrolled magic snapped across her body.

Rarity, frozen in pure fear, began to remember just how she had gotten her cutie mark.

"Twilight!"

They both heard the door open and turned towards the outburst. Spike was standing in the doorway for a few seconds before rushing between the two mares. He frantically looked between them, babbling their names and disorganized please of concern.

Rarity looked down at him and felt a string yank somewhere in her chest. She couldn't get him on her side, not here and definitely not like this, but she could make a good exit. She huffed and turned her face to the door, trotting out in the most dignified way she could manage atop her shaking legs. "Spike!" She called without turning, knowing at least he was listening. "I will remain at the boutique."

With that she made her exit, slamming the door with a thrust of magic.

Spike and Twilight stared at the door in disbelief, neither of them spoke for a full minute until Twilight took the initiative to try and lighten the mood. "Well that escalated quickly," she sighed as she dabbed at her dripping nose. She felt her hoof be pushed away and saw Spike dabbing at her muzzle with a sheet of discarded paper. He wouldn't meet her eyes, but she could tell he was worried nonetheless. That made her feel a little better.

"Twilight, what happened?" Spike finally looked up at Twilight, his eyes wide and pleading like a foal near Hearth's Warming Day.

Twilight sighed and smiled down at her dragon. It wasn't fake, but it definitely let pain shine through, Spike's little shiver said that well enough. "I don't know, I don't think it's over though." She smiled again and kissed Spike's head just to the right of his spines. "Thanks for helping me with that, Spike. I love you." Twilight sat back on her haunches and patted the floor next to her, smiling right at her blushing assistant despite the throbbing pain in her nose.

"Come on, we need to talk."

Without a word, Spike stepped forward and leaned on Twilight as her foreleg pulled him closer to her body.

Outside, the sun had finally set.