//------------------------------// // Where Celestia mends // Story: Celestia takes a vacation // by Hydralisk //------------------------------// It was quiet, way too quiet. Normally by now Louise would have said something, minor complaints or questions about the lesson, but right now she simply sat there and fulfilled every order like a machine. Celestia, of course, knew that the girl was feeling incredibly guilty and was tiptoeing around her in order to not upset her, thinking that any tiny mistake could lead to her being abandoned. She sighed and immediately regrets it as Louise tenses up. ”Louise, stop for now.” With that, the rock she was levitating dropped soundlessly. The girl still wasn’t meeting her eye. “Louise, look at me.” She looked up shakily and her eyes nearly broke Celestia's heart right then and there. ”I am indeed disappointed that you tried to use your magic to harm someone else, but that doesn't mean I will just throw you aside. You made a mistake, and the fact that you are feeling so guilty shows me that you will do your best to amend for it.” Fresh tears were now streaming down her face and she had to sniff. “Now stop being silly, I liked that loud Louise more.” Instead of a coherent answer, all she got was a nod with something of a yes in it. The lessons continued but Celestia still wasn’t quite happy with it. Louise would hopefully stop tiptoeing around her, and the punishments from the professor would distract Louise and Kirche enough so they were not at each other's throats. But as soon as those were over she was nearly certain that confrontations would happen again, right now there was a case fire so to say and Celestia had to act on that if she wanted to end the conflict completely, but for that she needed more information. So, when Louise started her honorary maid duties Kircher's shift ended. “What do You want?” Kirche asked her accusingly, somehow blaming the pony princess in a childish way. “To ask you some questions, or are you preoccupied?” Celestia tried with diplomacy. Kirche made a face but said, “Fine just make it quick.” “Do you hate Louise?” She did say she wanted it blunt. “I, what, I…” Celestia admitted that Kirche stammering was funny to look at but the redhead caught herself quickly. ”I… don’t hate her, I just really don’t like her.” “Why?” Celestia asked. “Why do you care?” Kirche accused. “Because, as a teacher, that is my job, so please answer the question.” Celestia insisted “Why should I?!” Kirche was now close to shouting. “Because the sooner you do that, the sooner I will be out of your hair.” Celestia countered back. Kirche just looked at her with a judging look, thinking about what to do, before answering. ”I just don’t. She's a spoiled, bratty, egotistical stick-up-her-butt-that-reaches-all-the-way-to-her-head pain to anyone who even remotely tries to approach her.” Interesting, it wasn't directly about her family but how she behaved. Louise self-centered but unapproachable? She would have to test that. Still, this was already very helpful, because Kirche didn’t even mention her or Louise families with a word. That meant that she wasn’t bothered by the rivalry but by something else. “Thank you for the explanation.” Celestia said and took off into the sky leaving a dumbfounded Kirche behind. Now that she had the base of information she needed to dig deeper. She knew how Louise was behaving around her but she didn’t know how she behaved around others. It was time to find out, but first she needed to see Louise in a maid dress, the idea was just too cute to pass up. In hindsight, it could have been way worse, Louise realized. The maid that she got assigned to was Siesta, who was pleasant company and tried to teach her to the best of her ability despite being a nervous wreck about the idea of ordering a noble around. Not so pleasant was Celestia, who sitting in the kitchen and using the opportunity to the fullest to get serviced in any way possible and chit chat with Siesta about commoner life in Tristram. If Louise was honest, it wasn’t that bad. The plates and glasses were still a bit shaky in her hands but the conversation was pleasant to listen to and sometimes she threw in a few words. What would happened if the headmaster informed her parents? Would she be sent back as a result? She didn't mind them knowing about her magic brawl, she could talk her way out of it pointing out that Kirche was a Zerbst, but it would lead to questions about her familiar and the magic lessons. Louise didn’t know if her mother would consider this heretical or if the rule of steel would forbid it. A cold shudder went down her spine at the implications. She needed to talk with Celestia about this, but what to tell her family in the inevitable confrontation that will surely happen in the future? Still, Louise had enough to worry as it was and she really couldn’t complain because all of it felt miniscule compared to her finally getting good at magic. The disappointed look Celestia had for her ripped something in her, yet she was not sure what. Her punishment session passed and it was evening, she finished her dinner and ate her dessert outside enjoying the setting sun. “Ehm, excuse me?” Until it was interrupted, that was. Louise faced the interruption and found it to be a female second year student that she didn’t recognize, she had long blond hair, fairly decent build, and reminded her a bit of Montmorency. Louise was wary, she was not used to being approached casually. ”What do you want?” “The other tables are all occupied, so I thought…” The girl said drifting off, and as Louise looked around she found that indeed all the other tables were seated with at least two people. Strange she never saw the courtyard so full until today. Throwing a last judging look and finding no hidden intentions, she nodded in confirmation. With a few words of thanks she sat down and ordered her food from the maid. They spent the time in uncomfortable silence until the girl spoke up again. ”Uhm, you are Louise Vallière, right?” “Yes, that is right, however I still don’t know your name.” “Ah, sorry, my mistake, you can just call me Katie.” The girl said shyly “Katie? From what house?” Louise asked questioningly. “A smaller house,close to the Borders. Maybe you heard of the Solaris?” Louise had not, but she tried to not be impolite.”It rings some bells.” With that the silence continued. “Ehm...,” by now it was clear that the girl was desperately trying to find a conversation. ”How is your school work going?” Louise gave her an annoyed look and it took the girl a few long seconds to catch up. ”Ah, I am sorry I didn’t mean it like that, I just...” Louise sighed, ”It's ok… and most of it is going very well despite the obvious.” “That’s… nice.” The girl was back to being silent. By now Louise was pretty sure that she had figured it out, she was from a relatively unknown and unimportant family, had not many others to talk to and kept to herself, that could be the reason why Louise hadn’t noticed her until then. But now she talked, and more importantly talked to Louise about school work, school work that Louise had some of the best theoretical grades of every students. Wordlessly she reached towards Katie waiting for the girl to catch on. Sadly she didn’t do so and simply looked at her with question marks in her eyes. “Come on now, no need to hide it, I will help you.” Louise said tiredly not lowering her hand. “Ah, no, you misunderstand...” Louise didn’t let her finish. ”Spare me, no one approached me unless they want something.” “B-but I really don’t, I just wanted a space to sit.” Now Louise stared with narrowed eyes, but Katie countered her look with as much strength as she could muster. “Fine by me then.” Louise was confident that Katie would falter so she sipped her tea waiting for the rustling of paper. She was starting to get annoyed when she heard nothing, and when she then looked back at her after a few minutes she found that Katie was simply enjoying the setting sun in silence. Half an hour later she stood up and started to leave. She made a face and only as Katie was a few steps away Louise spoke up. ”Sorry...” “Huh?” Katie turned around questioningly. “Sorry for instantly accusing you like that.” Louise admitted. “It’s ok.” the girl said and walked away, leaving Louise feeling very guilty. Katie rounded a corner and was surrounded by light as her image distorted before leaving Celestia to stand where she once was. She was very happy with that little experiment despite the results making things a bit more complicated. From what she found, Louise was probably not directly to blame for the hostilities, the girl was distrustful, but not hostile. It presented a problem because Celestia was running out of things to investigate. Right now she had not many options left. She could do a insanely complicated series of spells to invade many privacy's, destabilize the universe and no doubt gaining Discord’s approval in the process, but she decided against it. This required drastic measures. She would make sure these two would get over their differences or her name wouldn’t be Celesita! It was not the first time she brought the children of rivaling families together, she had ended many political disasters that way, and this time it wouldn’t be different. Now how to go about this…she had to be subtly and tread very carefully. “Where are you taking me?” Kirche complained. “You will see.” Celestia simply answered, she knew that Kirche would never come with her if she knew she was dragging her to Louise. Luckily, Kirche wasn’t that angry at Celestia anymore. They reached the clearing and Celestia dropped the perception spell that hid Louise from view, who also didn’t know about Celestia's plan. Instantly both of their looks turned sour and sharp remarks began to fly. Before things could escalate any further Celestia spoke up.”I am sure both of you want to know why I brought you here.” “If you think I will apologize you can go forget that.” Kirche remarked and started to walk away. “I have not brought the two of you here to apologize, but you will listen to what I have to say. You can afterwards decide on how you will react to it.” Celestia said as she stopped Kirche with a soft Golden glow. ”And don’t forget that for as long as I am here that I am a teacher of this academy, even if I only teach Louise.” She added to drown out any comments Kirche might have. Louise stayed mostly quiet but was glaring in hopes of her eyes blowing the redhead up. “It has come to my attention that this is beyond a simple school rivalry, and that if this conflict doesn't get resolved then I fear for the safety of both of you.” “There is no problem to resolve, it’s Kirche who is the one that has done nothing but insulted and mocked me.” Louise retorted. “Insulting? Oh, get off your high horse Vallière, you are the one who outright showed me away after I offered you friendship and then insulted me about everything I did!” Kirche retorted. “Friendship? Ha! Literally the first thing you did when we met was insulting my family!” Now Louise was shouting and had both her hands rolled up into fists. “Enough!” Celestia interrupted the bickering. Louise backed down but continued to talk. “It’s only natural, Vallière and Zerbst always fight.” “Then why do neither of you care about the family feud?” Celestia retorted. At that remark both could only stare at Celestia. “Kirche couldn’t care less about her family and you would need to be blind to not see how uncaring you are about something that happened so long ago.” The two of them could only stare for a moment until Kirche spoke up. ”Then why would she always go on and on about noble honor this, and how as a Vallière she is above me?” “Because it’s the only thing she had left after you mocked her for everything else.” Celestia remarked sharply. Both Louise and Kirche flinched at that for their perspective reasons. “Kirche, you more than anyone have no reason at all to hate Louise from your familie side.” She continued. ”How did this even start?” “What do you even know about my family?“ Kirche shot back bitterly “Enough to understand that the last thing you would care about is some old thing that involved some of your uncles before you were even born.” Celestia knew that she was walking thin ice, one wrong word and it would be ruined. But no risk no gain as they say. “So, here is the question I find the most interesting. If both of you have no particular problem with each others’ families, then why did the two nearly seriously hurt each other?” At first the only thing that greeted Celestia was silence as Kirche was struggling for words. Louise on the other hand decided to speak up. ”Because it felt good.” her eyes were hidden as she whispered this sentence. “For once I could do something, it was always Zero that Zero this, always just the useless Vallière girl and nothing I could do about it. For once I could show you exactly what I thought about you and your loud and insulting mouth! Every day, day in day out you kept remind me Zero, Zero, Zero, ZERO!” By now she was shouting into Kirches face with unrestrained anger. “But do you want to know what I hate the absolute most about you? How you got spoonfed everything you have, you are a triangle class mage, every boy flocks you like moths to fire and you probably barely lifted a finger for any of it.” Louise was breathing heavily at the end but Kirche was silent until. ”Not lift a finger you say? Well then how about I tell you the story of the Zerbst that never lifted a finger.” 22 Years ago the Zerbst familie wasn’t doing very well financially, the steel and iron trades were always their domain but out of nowhere a commoner familie started to take over large portions of the market leaving literal shipments unsold and useless. A tired looking man was looking over letters, reading them multiple times. After he was certain that he didn’t misread he let out a tired sigh. The door to his office opened and his wife stepped in.” What is wrong dear? Why are you still in your office this late?” “It’s the Waffenmacher familie dear, they just canceled the last shipment.” The man said tiredly. “The Waffenmacher?” The woman asked in disbelieve. ”But they need all the materials they can get their hands on, especially after the last few years.” “It’s the Istmach, somehow they arranged a better deal with them.” Another tired sigh followed. “I swear, loyalty is just another overused words these days, no honor in anything.” “We can’t just let this continue dear, if we need to get rid of them then we need to do it before it is too late.” “It already is too late, their position is cemented in, we lost our chance.” another pause. “I need to meet them in person.” A few weeks later the meeting happened, the Istmach and the Zerbst discussed business as intended and while their discussion didn’t go anywhere, something else of far greater importance happened that evening. A young lady with fiery red hair and a glass of wine stepped out of the main lobby, tired of the constant back and forth that lead to nowhere. “What a lovely night this is to bring me such a beautiful sight.” She heard from the side and a dark skinned man, obviously a Zerbst, approached her. “Did your father order you to get some information out of this pretty girl?” The woman said pointing a finger accusingly.” Because if yes, then you will get disapointed, I am just here to look pretty.” “Well, I would say that you succeeded in your goal, and as for what my father want’s… let's just say that those things got swept away by a glas of wine.” And with a snip a filled glass got placed in his waiting hand. The young lady gave him a judging look before the night truly began for them. And a few months later the young lady had a round belly and another meeting was called. You would imagine that this was a disaster but the two greedy familie leaders smelled the opportunity. “And with the blessing given to me by his holiness I hereby announce you husband and wife.” With a thunderous applause, a kiss was shared between the newly wed husband and wife. It cemented the unification of the Istmach and the Zerbst familie. They would continue with the name of Zerbst and the two business where merged creating one the strongest power blocks the Germanian market had ever seen. However there was just one major problem. The husband and wife hated each other, there was never any love between the two as what they had shared that beautiful evening was nothing more than pure, senseless lust. A short while later, I was born. The perfect blend between the two with the hair of my mother and the skin of my father. They hated me even more then they hated each other. “Mommy it hurts!” A small 5 year old child said holding its hand towards her mother. “Go complain to someone who cares, brat.” And the door was slammed in her face. This was just one of the tamest examples. “Daddy please someone is hurting mommy.” The now a bit older girl said shaking her fatter awak in his bedroom. “What do you want?” came the muffled voice from under the sheets. “Daddy please someone is hurting mommy!” the child insisted. Grumpy the man stood up and walked towards the bedroom of his wife. He held his ear against the door and listened in hearing the same loud noises that the child heard. ”Phu, so this bitch can moan when she want’s to.” He commented.”Go back to bed.” he said turning to Kirche. ”Your mother is fine, and if I were you I would stop bothering her.” The time passed and I grew into the tenager that you now have before you. “You will marry him, and that is my last word young lady!” “Well that is good, I have heard enough of both of your mouths already!” Kirche screamed back. “How dare you to speak to you mother like that!” The woman shouted back. “You never where my mother, you were to busy trying to make more of me, you filthy wretch!” And with that, spells started to fly. Kirche was way more advanced than both of her parents as she honed her magic skills and learned while her parents haven’t even touched their wands in many years. After a short fight both her parents were on the ground wandless and with minor wounds. Kirche without even waiting for a word left, ignoring the curses that followed her. “After that I arrived at the academy, the headmaster was easy to convince and I have never heard from my family, they probably didn’t bother to go looking for me as I didn’t even bother to properly hide.” Kirche finished, “Now tell me Louise, was all that I have worth what I never had to begin with?” For a solid minute Louise could only stare at her. Suddenly tears started to swell up in her eyes and she asked. “Why, if you know how it feels to get hurt, why do you still hurt me then?” This lone little question shattered Kirches heart into pieces. ”I...” she struggled to find the proper response. “It’s envy.” Celestia who has been forgotten by the two girl broke into the conversation.“Both of you have something that the other deeply wants and simply couldn’t accept not having it.” “What ever could I want that Louise has?” Kirche asked in disbelief. “A family.” Celestia answered simply. “A family!” Kirche shouted.”I don’t need a ‘family’!” she spat the word.”The only thing that those are good for is using you and throwing you away when you are no longer useful! I don’t need that I am perfectly fine on my own!” She screamed into Celestia's face. Celestia in return simply stared back into her eyes with pattice before asking a simple question.”Then why do I see so much loneliness in your eyes?” “Lonely I, I am not, I, Ah, I will not listen to this nonsense.” And with that she stormed of. No one dared to ask her what happened as she walked back to her room and some would swear that a trail of fire was drawn behind her. During all of that her mind was a storm of memories, all of them from her family and flashes of the conversation raging around acting as fuel. With an enraged scream she slammed the door of her room shut and started tearing at her hair in frustration. Celestia's words ripping through her mind louder and louder every time. Why was this hitting her so hard? She had buried her family so deep into her mind but every time Celestia's words rang in her head more and more memories resurfaced. It didn’t make sense to Kirche but among all of those memories one was the most persistent and it didn’t even belong there. It was a memory of Louise, at the end of the first year many families came to visit the academy to celebrate the finished year and Louise whole family was there. She recognized her sisters and parents from portraits she had seen a while ago. They talked to her, her younger sister hugged her and congratulated her on her scores, some scalding for the damages she caused with the explosions from her mother and a pinched cheek from her eldest sister. Kirche didn’t understand why this one memory keep repeating in her head and she screame in frustration. But then it happened, for a moment, just a single tiny instant Kirche imagined herself in Louise place. Celestia was right. The next morning both Louise and Kirche were a mess. Kirche walked down the hallways and Tabitha greeted her, this time, instead of just reading her book, she looked at her and asked.”Are you ok? You were crying for a while.” Kirche just looked at her and smirked.”The whole school must have heard me. Well not like they are not used to my outcries at night.” she added with a wink. “Silencing spell.” Tabitha simply explained. “I… thank you Tabi, you are a real friend.” Kirche said putting Tabitha's blue hair who simply gave a short thumbs up before starting to read again. Louise was unsure what to make of what happened yesterday but she got even less sleep than Kirche. It was clear what Celestia had wanted to achieve with that, but it was unclear if it had helped. Now she didn’t know what to think of Kirche at all and she was so deep in thought that she nearly walked into someone. This someone, as fate willed it, was Kirche, the girl in question. At first the just stared at each other unsure what to do but then Kirche spoke up.”Good morning Louise.” she said in a even tone. “Good morning Kirche.” Louise said back and they parted ways again. At the teacher's desk Colbert couldn’t believe his eyes, those two having a civil conversation? ”No, your eyes are not deceiving you, that indeed happened.” Celestia said slurping tea next to him. “But, but,... How?” Colbert turned to her.”Also how did you get here?” He asked as his disbelief doubled. Celestia in return simply winked at him before disappearing in thin air leaving Colbert to question reality for the whole breakfast.