Tear Jerker / Hard Reset (Eakin)

• Twilight describing to Celestia how horrible each of her deaths were and how alone she felt every time it happened, before telling her what it must have been like for her friends.
  Twilight: All my friends died alone.
• Luna's death, which ends up being the final straw in driving Twilight into committing suicide during that loop as that particular future "has nothing left". Celestia's reaction is equally heartbreaking.
• Twilight after escaping from the time loop, when she begs Luna to not die again because she can't stand to lose anyone else.
• Twilight's reaction in general after ending the loop, when it's clear just how much psychological trauma she suffered from her ordeal.
  • Culminating in an intervention by her friends where they lay out just how much her refusal to tell them the full truth about what happened to her is hurting them as well as her.
• Twilight being forced, due to the effects of Changeling venom, to tell Azalea every single horrifying detail of her trip to the alternate universe, aware that she's being controlled and unable to stop it or even hint to Azalea that she should interrupt her.
• From Changing Lives: Following the above, Azalea's breakdown at Cloud Kicker's house, during which she accidentally confesses to having been a Changeling and having mind-controlled her.
  • The following morning Azalea revealing that she has the memory of the original Azalea's painful death, and that she has regular nightmares about it.
• And of course, in the companion story The Reign of Queen Twilight Sparkle, it is hard not to feel sorry for Queen Sparkle when, after she finally sees what she's done, and feels incredible guilty, is given hope by Twilight Prime that she can finally die; no more loops. She rushes to say her apologies to the now deceased Luna, and kills herself. What happens next? "Well, that didn't work."
  • Even worse? Twilight Prime was lying. Because of the venom, Queen Sparkle was trying to get her to kill Star Swirl and prevent him from casting the spell that would take the two of them back home. Because the complexity of the spell, Star Swirl was not going to be able to stop Twilight Prime from killing him. In order to get back home, Twilight Prime had to give Queen Sparkle a false sense of hope that she could be free of the hell she locked herself inside.
    After all, she's me. And if I'd been through what she has I know exactly what I would want.
    • There's also something upsetting in one little exchange:
      "I'm sorry." She misunderstands. "Don't be sorry."
    • "The rush of power fills my ears, but I can still make out one more thing Queen Sparkle says. The meanest thing that she possibly could. 'Thank you.'"
• The final chapter of You Can Fight Fate. Princess Twilight, originally Queen Sparkle, has taken the slowest of slow paths through the multiverse, living through hundreds of trillions of subjective years until the literal end of time. Her final thought is:
  Twilight: Well. That worked.
  • It's mentioned briefly, but Princess Twilight never found out what happened to Twilight Prime^note the last time they interacted was when Princess Twilight revealed she worked with the Elements to get revenge on Twilight Prime in an act of vengeance against being given false hope over her loop being closed off; as far as she knows, Twilight Prime was erased from existence, "to [her] eternal shame".

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