Falling unconscious and being knocked unconscious are naught but two different paths that lead to the same destination. Falling can often be found through fainting or the crippling vice of exhaustion, sights that can induce a mental overload can often induce the effects of fainting, while being knocked out necessitates only a good blow to the back of somepony's head.

When one is thrown out of their coherent thoughts by a strike they often wake up with no recollection of anything in between the strike and their waking moment. However when one sinks into the black fog at the bottom of their mind something much different will occur, they find themselves in a blank lucid dream. It is the place everypony forgets they have been every time they awaken to see the first rays of morning light, the place between sleep and dreams.

It is there that Spike rests, floating listlessly as he waits for his eyes to flutter open.

From outside some ethereal wall that he couldn't quite grasp, his nerves recognized a touch that could have simply been an imagined gust. The frills on either side of his head picked up vibrations and sent them directly into his head in the form of an interpreted sound. There was definitely movement outside of his fulminant slumber, almost a full reversal of the fall he had taken to get into this state, and the sounds of pegasi dropping coconuts on a wooden floor.

'Can a pegasus carry coconuts while they fly?'

Or maybe it was hooves, yes, hooves impacting a wooden floor while somepony was running. Somepony was walking and then that very same pony was talking. Spike could at least register it was a she, a she he definitely recognized. He'd heard his name called out by her before, something about having thins walls or another phrase like that.

Thin walls, that really sounded familiar.

What Spike experienced next can only be described as a dream. His mind began to sort through whatever memory it could find, attempting to make coherent sense of each scene's meaning and motive. It was almost like watching a play that he starred in, there he was kissing Rarity, and there was Twilight snuggling their bodies together on the library's solitary couch.

'We should get a new couch, maybe even another couch. That's a really good idea, I should tell Twilight about it later.'

Images and sounds played past in reverse for the young dragon. Rarity kissed him, then Twilight did the same and took him to bed while she read him a picture book or something. At the end there was only the moving frames of his own claws tossing something unidentifiable out of a can and into their best cooking pot. There was probably more to the dream, or whatever it was, but Spike had already lost interest.

'What was in that can? It looked horrible.'

He had lost interest and his mind had gone to work. It wormed through all of the stress that had been caused in a measly two days and searched through them like a foal would work backwards through a maze to get a quicker solution. The quicker solution in this case was a different truth, one that made more sense, a convenient recollection. All of those crazy images had to be a dream. He'd fallen asleep after looking at old pictures and was finally waking up. Twilight would be miffed about him sleeping in, but he honestly wouldn't care. It isn't like he hadn't withstood he abilities of lecturing before. He would wake up from this dream and everything would be back to normal.

Forwards or backwards, either way, it seemed like a dream. As with any dream there must be an end, an end to the delusion. For Spike it was to be a few sounds. he tried to concentrate, but he couldn't get much. The feeling reminded him of Twilight muttering math equations in her sleep before a big experiment.

Along with the noises came a new feeling that spread across his body, something he had felt a number of times throughout his life. It was the electric tingle of being picked up by magic. Something soft encircled him along with the magic and the sounds started to become voices, recognizable voices.

Rarity talking, then Twilight saying something that sounded like a question. There was another exchange, but it got a little muffled, Spike couldn't help losing interest in something he didn't quite get. There was a ringing that was instantly known to be a burst of magic before he actually started to feel something, something soft and smooth stroking and prodding his cheek.

From somewhere beyond the veil of his eyelids, Spike could hear a voice he knew and loved, "...ike. Spike? Spike, wake up, I'm here. Everything's going to be okay."

As if emulating Atlas lifting the sky, Spike began to raise his heavy eyelids.

Twilight shut the curtain to her bedroom window with a sigh, knowing she had made a fairly large mistake. She shouldn't have turned away like that, shouldn't have left Spike out there to fend for himself while he was under stress and she definitely shouldn't have let him go so easily. She had turned around and closed a door on him for Celestia's sake!

Watching him go, however, that was the worst part. Seeing that desperate stance he took before he turned tail and ran made her legs twitch, wanting, needing to go after him. In the end, though, it wasn't her place. Past experiences had taught her that she couldn't fix something before it happened. While a preemptive strike would work in a simple game of chess with her older brother, it wouldn't work when an actual problem was occurring.

In reply to her previous sigh, Twilight chuckled to herself over the knowledge that almost anything could work on Shining Armor when it came to chess. Spike had even beaten him once. The captain of Celestia's royal guard ended up cooking gem enhanced pancakes that night. A gentle smile burst through her somber mood, shattering it with another pleasant memory she had shared with her assistant. The accidental bite she had taken from a bit of turquoise was always a good topic to make her family laugh, one minute she tastes something like a test tube and the next her final filly tooth had fallen onto her plate.

That was a charm about Spike, he would always make you smile with some intrinsic idiosyncrasy of his. "More than anything though", she softly spoke to herself, a quirk the two had picked up from one another, "it's a charm about loving him." Twilight stopped to blush before she let out a patient giggle, admitting it to herself would still make the bookish unicorn flustered. Her mirth ended, however, when she looked at the drapes she had drawn across her window.

Spike was currently with Rarity and, based on recent events, had a good chance of needing her when he returned. Twilight needed to be at her best for him and she knew one foolproof method to be at her best, using her superior intellect for everything it could muster.

Any scientist would say that they needed their lab to work, any writer their typewriter; the occupation didn't matter, all that mattered would be the tools of the trade. And Twilight, as a subtly renowned scholar, would need her research materials. She closed her eyes, shutting off each sense she possibly could as her mind was cleared into a state almost akin to sleep before a spark of magic began to radiate from inside her horn.

Sorting books was simple when she could simply lift them with a beginners telekinesis spell and float them to wherever they needed to be, however, finding a book that could be on a shelf or under a bed multiple rooms away could be a bit of a chore. She couldn't see the book, she couldn't even physically look for it, she just had to find it, know where it is, and bring it to her. The search and retrieve spell, an extra credit report she had never had the courage to submit to her mentor. After all, what was a usable spell without some sort of manual?

The spark gradually began to shift and expand like putty, stretching itself through the ridges of her horn and outwards into her coat. Twilight opened her eyes to reveal glowing discs, exhaled, and released the charge in a focused wave. From behind the rays of mystic light that radiated from her irises she could see thousands of twisting images of her library, fluttering by too fast for even a single location to be discerned. Then, she felt it, that knowledge that she had it like Captain Peghoof had the white whale he sought after. With an actual motion of tugging on an invisible object she reigned in the object of her desires.

And promptly fell on her flank as a violet notebook tumbled from a magical portal directly into her snout. "Reason number two never to teach anypony this spell", Twilight grumbled, "no way of knowing how the object will make its way towards you." Rather than getting up and sitting like any civilized mare to study, Twilight simply picked the book up with her magic and let it float above her. It wasn't anything all that extravegant, really, just a five bit notebook any parent would buy for their foals' first day of school. The cover, though, it always made her smile. In green letters that had never been washed off sat the title, "Twilight + Spike", written by her own hooves. She flipped it open to the first page, revealing a note scrawled in much more legible handwriting. "A Study on the Possible Relationships of a Unicorn and a Dragon", she had written that as an embarrassed teenager after her brother had teased her about having a crush on her young assistant. The first few pages she skimmed through were those of lighthearted "notes" about her assistants' appearance and how they acted around one another.

The first section of the book didn't serve any scholarly purpose, really, rather it served as another portal into the beautiful memories of Twilight's foalhood. Photo albums, family traditions, even diaries kept the memories alive. With a few more turns she found herself giggling at scrawled messages in the margins of her entries. Spike had written silly statements outside the barriers of her more organized text while under the illusion that she had no idea he could possibly have been the draconic culprit. Small sentences like, "Twilight is best pony", or something with little more grammatical potential littered corners and edges, sometimes running off the pages before they could be completed. The best part about finding Spike's idle communications was finding her own reply to a single statement that lay at the center of a page left purposefully blank.

In letters of a glossy emerald stood the words, "I love you, Twilight."

Below them, "I love you too, Spike", lay in purple ink.

The messages had stopped after that and Spike wouldn't look at her for more than two seconds without blushing. She'd never blatantly said that she'd caught him and wanted him to stop, Spike had just gotten embarrassed and figured he had done something wrong.

Twilight breathed a sigh to bring herself into a more studious manner, beyond the written communication lay actual notes. There was everything about Spike in this book, his favorite foods down to his chemical makeup. Twilight had been continuing this project even after the two had reached Ponyville so she was sure there must be some information regarding the possible changes of his personality.

"Ways to help him if he's hurt", she muttered, flipping over a section of Spike's sleeping habits. "Ways to convince him that I'm better than- No!" Twilight shook her head and shouted to herself in an effort to regain her concentration. This wasn't about her, this was about Spike. Spike and Spike alone, she was here to help him, love him, and take care of him. "It's his choice", she steeled herself, "and I'll be with him every step of the way."

Twilight had come partway through her studies, she honestly had no idea exactly how long she'd been reading, when a series of quick raps came to the library's door with somepony calling her name.

Twilight's fur filled itself with a static charge as she was enveloped in a cerise explosion of magic, instantly transporting her inches from the door. A glow of magic encircled the door as she pulled it open, ready to take charge of whatever crisis may be at the outer edge of her home.

"Spike?"

No answer, no answer because he was laying there on the floor, not moving an inch.

"Spike?!" Rarity shouted his name as she drew towards him, if there was any time for her dramatic voice to rise forth from her throat it had picked the perfect opportunity. She flipped his body over, obviously forgetting a medical lesson about moving the injured, and scanned over his body. Her eyes and hooves traced over every accessible scale she could find, searching for a bruise or tear. Any wound on her darling Spikey-Wikey could have brought tears to her eyes. Said torrent found itself building behind her eyes as a certain thought of morbidity bloomed in her mind.

"No", she muttered, "not him, not here, not now." Rarity looked down to Spike's underbelly, paranoid delusions increasing in their power the longer she took.

She was greeted with the steady rise and fall of Spike's stomach, shifting ever so slightly like a smooth sea of green, he was breathing. He was breathing, just unconscious, and she was losing her mind over nothing.

However, that didn't change anything about her situation. Spike was unconscious in her hooves and it was probably her fault. She had to do something other than call out to him and verify his beating heart, but she wasn't a nurse.

'Rarity, you, you, you and Twilight. And, and...'

"Twilight!" She shouted, startling herself at her discomposed outburst. With a quick lift of azure magic Spike was on her back. "Oh, come on, Spikey-Wikey. You're going to be just fine." At that moment Rarity felt a feeling of insecurity bubble in her chest, was her previous statement for the dormant dragon resting atop her or was it for her own sake?

As more nervous questions cluttered her mind a dignified trot for the door became an all out gallop into the streets. Spike fainting was definitely her fault, Rarity had come to accept that, but there was something else bugging her as a great oak tree began to draw closer.

'you and Twilight'

Why did he mention Twilight? Was she calling out to her for help? That seemed the only explanation, but his words just wouldn't leave her head.

His words repeated themselves over and over again until she made the erroneous decision to shake her head as she ran towards her destination, Rarity only learned her lesson when her forehead bounced backwards off of the heavy library door. Before standing on all four hooves, Rarity quickly berated the door with a shout of, "Dumb door!"

She quickly righted herself and began knocking on the heavy door loud enough to permeate every room in the library as she called Twilight's name. Her knocking obscured the distinct sound of magic discharge from behind the door and Rarity quickly found her hoof touching something a little softer than the hard wood of the door.

"Ow! Rarity, what they hay? Why did you hit me?" Twilight stood in the doorway, dumbfounded for the moment by the light strike she was met with upon opening the door to her home.

"What?" Rarity asked blankly before realizing her hoof was a few mere inches away from brushing against her friend's muzzle. "Oh!" She quickly drew it back, already preparing a barrage of apologies, "Twilight, darling, I apologize. Something has me very worked up and I need your help." As she was speaking Rarity shifted her body so that Spike could slide down next to her forelegs without any major impact to the ground. Spike let loose a quick snore as his tail end met the ground and quickly returned to his dormant matter. "You see, darling-"

"Rarity, what happened?!" Twilight cut her off, quickly picking up Spike's body in a veil of lilac magic. He floated tranquilly aside Twilight's head, listing lazily like a specter from an ancient Equestrian myth. Twilight's scrutinizing gaze turned directly onto Rarity, freezing her on the spot.

Rarity had seen her friend agitated to the brink of madness before, but this was something else entirely. Twilight's irises seemed to have frozen into violet shards of broken glass as almost indiscernible sparks of magic danced and flashed across her pupils. To say she was taken aback would be an outright lie, Rarity was obviously shaken by the sight before her. So much, in fact, she could barely hide the quiver in her voice as she spoke, "Twilight, dear, Spike fainted. I was worried so I brought him to you thinking you would know what to do."

"He fainted?" Twilight asked incredulously, "What did you have him doing?"

Rarity flushed a bit with agitation, clearly upset by her friends adverse reaction. "Twilight Sparkle, calm down. I did not have him do anything at all." She ended her rebuttal with a quick step towards her fellow unicorn in hopes of bringing the already erratic conversation to order.

Twilight, however, held her ground and remained as resolute as she had been before. With Rarity coming so ostentatiously close to her, she couldn't help the small growl that escaped into the underlying volume of her reply. "Then what did you do, Rarity? Tell me exactly why Spike fainted."

Rarity drew back, scoffing in an attempt to avoid giving the answer, or at least a direct one. With a hoof drawn to her chest she drew back to her original position, speaking in a proper and level voice, "I'm afraid I can't tell you the exact details, darling. After all", she almost confidently sighed, "a lady doesn’t kiss and tell."

For a brief moment Rarity believed she would be off the hook, that is until she opened her eyes to face the aghast demeanor spread across Twilight's visage. In an instant she knew she could have picked a much better phrase to save her tail. The shocked stare Twilight had so quickly changed to rapidly regressed and formed into something cold and calculating, to Rarity it was almost like the infuriated glance of Princess Celestia herself.

"Rarity, get out", was all Twilight said as she turned around with her dragon assistant still levitating at her side.

"What? Twilight, surely you must-" Was all she could say before the iridescent charge of magic surrounded her body. She saw an image of Twilight glaring at her, glaring with glowing eyes, before her body met the floor of her own boutique. Her lunch stirred in her stomach and her legs hurt from the instantaneous impact of her friend forcefully teleporting her away from the library.

After the events of her day and this unpredictable climax, all Rarity could do was simply sit in the center of her designing room in utter confusion.

Twilight had Spike cradled in her forelegs, rubbing his cheeks with her hooves as she cooed softly to him, "Come on, Spike. Spike? Spike, wake up, I'm here. Everything's going to be okay."

A soft smile played on Twilight's lips as she saw Spike's eyes begin to flutter open.