3. Goddess
That question overtops its dam a few days after the property damage.
Sunset Shimmer is fidgeting in Celestia's office. She no longer looks like a winged flame demon, which many would say (and some do say, in stage whispers in the halls) is an improvement, but both people in the room are feeling the lack of magic like an ache inside their bone-marrow.
"Sunset," Principal Celestia says out of nowhere, "did you know Princess Celestia well?"
There's a silence that's uncomfortable on both sides, Sunset's apparently more so than hers.
Then all the tension goes out of Sunset, who lets out a long breath and bows her head. "Yeah. You could say that."
Celestia's mouth goes dry. "I-if," she stammers, "ah, you don't want to talk about it …"
"It's okay," Sunset says. "You've been giving me a heck of a second chance. You deserve the truth." The teen smiles thinly. "I guess I'd just expected you to laugh off my story, the way everyone else here has. I hoped you would, really. I've been coasting on the truth being unbelievable for so long that I never thought I'd have to face what it actually meant."
Celestia's gotten good at recognizing when a student needs to get something off their chest — and at shutting up when she needs to listen instead of talk. This is clearly one of those times. But that's not why she's holding her tongue.
Her student — not some fantastic magical interloper who's already just a memory, but the girl who's been the social and logistical hub of the school for her entire tenure — knows both versions of her.
"I mean, I used it as a punchline!" Sunset laughs hollowly. "When Snips or Snails tried to lie to my face about why some plan or another went south, I'd say, 'Yeah, sure, and I'm a magical talking unicorn from another dimension.'"
Celestia's desperate for confirmation that somewhere in the multiverse is a her who got it right. But now that that confirmation is mere words away from reality, the yawning horror of it threatens to envelop her. The only possible outcome is to throw her own failures into sharper relief.
"I didn't understand why you kept quiet," Sunset continues. "I thought by now I'd be in a jail cell dealing with swarms of media. Scientists. Government agents. I mean, your world needs to know what you saw, right? And who I am. What I did to your school … if someone else leaks that, all this comes right down on you. So there has to be a big reason you're covering for me."
… Can she even trust what she hears? From the tidbits Celestia fished out of Twilight's friends, it sounds like Sunset Shimmer and the princess had something of a falling out. She might not be an unbiased source.
Asking this was a mistake, Celestia decides. She should just let the conversation drift away to where it needs to go.
"You think I should go back," Sunset says heavily. "Don't you?"
Celestia starts. "What?"
"You're protecting me because you think I belong back home." Sunset stands and paces over to the window. "Or maybe it really just is that it'd be easier to explain everything with me gone. But if you're like her, you're thinking about me."
"No! No," Celestia says, before realizing she's three sentences behind. "I mean. Sunset … do you want to stay?"
Sunset falls silent. Celestia mentally catches up.
"Yes," Sunset says quietly. "And … I wish I could tell you that's not selfish. But I can't promise you that."
This, she can handle. It's just a student needing a kindly ear. "Why?"
"Staying would give me a chance to make it up to the students I hurt. But I also hurt ponies … hurt the Princess … when I left, and they deserve justice too." Sunset sighs. "The girls here might be my first friends ever. I want to argue they're central to my rehabilitation, but the truth is, I'm terrified to lose them, even though Twilight could help me make more friends back home. It's like that with every argument I come up with. There are so many reasons why staying feels like the right decision, but every single one also feels like a hollow justification to paper over my fears."
The instincts that have brought Celestia to this moment kick in. And she understands the fear at Sunset Shimmer's core.
It's a fear bigger than anything else she's ever faced or going to face, but it's a fear Celestia knows intimately. She fears she's gone too far. She fears she can't be forgiven.
And if Principal Celestia decides that's true — that Sunset Shimmer, a known problem, is Somebody Else's Problem — then, well, by definition that is the sort of decision that Celestia makes. And when Sunset Shimmer crawls back through the portal to face the other Celestia …
Principal Celestia is the lesser of her two selves, mortal and fragile and imperfect. She knows she makes mistakes that Alicorn Princess Celestia isn't capable of. But right now, she needs to know — more than anything in the world — that Immortal Princess Her is not capable of destroying her student, full stop.
So she can't send Sunset home.
(She can't trust a better her to succeed where she failed. Every possible Celestia has to be better than that.)
"You're staying," she says firmly.
(And just like that, they are.)
In front of the mirror the next morning, Celestia spends a long time staring at her wingless form, and then she sighs and pulls out the hair dye she uses to touch up her graying roots.
She thinks about Immortal Her while she's dying.
Out front of the school, in the still and silent morning, she yields to temptation and reaches out to the base of the horse statue. Hesitates, trembling hand outstretched.
Turns away. Hustles uncomfortably toward the front doors.
After all, the only possible outcome would have been to throw her own failures into sharper relief.
Sunset Shimmer is laying bricks there, already working off the day's detention, and for a moment Celestia's heart freezes in her chest. There's no possible way, Celestia thinks, that Sunset could have missed her moment.
Their eyes meet. They pause.
Sunset gives her a brief, sad smile, and Celestia knows immediately that she understands.
Sunset looks away, and silently returns to her work.
What disturbs Celestia most about living in a world of magic is the little things.
On twelve hours' notice, the school board "invites" her to a breakfast meeting about The Property Damage. It means getting up well before sunrise. A few hours past midnight, she finishes prepping her presentation, and sets three alarm clocks as she collapses into bed.
Five minutes before any of them go off, she slowly becomes aware of a tapping at the window. It's quiet, barely at the edge of her consciousness amid the haze of sleep. Then she realizes there's a pattern to it — clusters of threes with little pauses between them — and her brain engages.
She rolls over and sits up, instantly awake. There's nothing there. The sound immediately stops.
Nothing like it has ever happened before. Nothing like it ever happens again. And, sure, maybe it's coincidence that it woke her up clean and alert and caffeine-free right before the most important meeting of her life. But she doesn't believe that, not really. And yet it makes so little sense she's not sure what to believe.
There's a quiet click as her office door closes, which makes her look up from her paperwork. Sunset sits down, hands in lap.
"What did the school board say?" Sunset asks without preamble.
"Oh, exactly what you'd expect," Celestia says. "They were very interested to hear exactly how my valedictorian procured enough fireworks to blow an eight-foot crater in the school grounds as part of an ill-advised Fall Formal prank. Whether we had notified parents that their students were briefly exposed to hallucinogenic chemicals generated by the blast. Whether our liability insurance has sufficient coverage if any parents file lawsuits. What that will do to our premiums. And whether I was aware of a student effort on social media to spread potentially libelous rumors of magical flying demons, and the potential for you to sue us in response."
Sunset laughs bitterly. "Wow."
"You'd be proud of me. When Dr. Scholtz asked me if I really expected them to believe that street-legal fireworks destroyed a stone building facade, I rolled my eyes and said, 'No, I expect you to believe my valedictorian is a unicorn from another dimension who enslaved the school before being blasted through the wall by a friendship beam.' Then I brought up my slide of citations and started discussing Hynek's research on the Michigan 1966 swamp-gas hallucinations."
They share a laugh — genuine this time. The tension melts out of Sunset's shoulders, and Celestia tells herself that she can't be doing too badly if she's managing some sort of reconciliation by proxy with Immortal Her's former protege.
Sunset's smile wavers. "So I … um. Thank you."
Celestia nods and waits.
Sunset swallows and looks away, not meeting her eyes. "I. Um. So … Twilight Sparkle and I have a pair of magical journals that are exact copies of each other. It's supposed to be a secret, but I thought it was important you know."
At first, Celestia's confused and flattered to be the recipient of that secret, however pointless. Then the context clicks in, and her eyes widen. Can Sunset talk to the other world?
"So if you wanted to pass on a message to Twilight, or to anyone else in Equestria," Sunset says, removing all doubt, "I can do that." She fidgets. "I haven't exactly asked Twilight for permission, but for you, she'll understand. And I owe you that much."
Celestia stands up and walks over to Sunset Shimmer, clasping the girl's hands. "Thank you," she says softly, intently. Then she walks over to the window, and lies: "I'll think about it."
She does think about it, though. And hates that she can't stop the thoughts.
She's not going to take Sunset Shimmer up on the offer. That much is clear. And yet … and yet. She thinks about it a lot, over and over, and her thoughts keep rolling back to a single, razor-edged question.
What do you say …
"… to the you who is better than you in every way?" Luna asks.
They're sitting on that cliff atop Canter Peak, and the storm has receded. Celestia's legs dangle over the edge, and she stares out at the brilliant clear day past her bare toes. Beneath them, the land rolls away, pristine emerald green out to the shimmering sapphires of distant seas.
Celestia can feel the solidity of Luna's presence right alongside her, but she keeps her head turned away. (She can feel the weight of wings on her back, and she's too ashamed to look at the ones she once tried to rip away.) Luna, too, feels subdued, lost in her own thoughts, vague and distant.
Celestia twirls a finger nervously through her hair, and looks at that instead, trying not to think about its fading dye. "I was hoping you'd know," she mumbles. "I could have handled it if the other me was the angel I always tried to be. But she's so much more."
"It is a knife straight to the gut," Luna says absently. "When you discover that there is a you who didn't make your greatest mistake."
"Exactly!" Celestia says, and then the guilt floods in. "But don't talk like that. You never did anything wrong."
Luna's response is hesitant and subdued. "I know. You said."
"I wasn't paying attention to you. I was chasing what I thought was important, and I was wrong, and you were the one who suffered for it."
"No! Sister —" Luna says, then pauses, and sighs. "We agreed not to fight over guilt."
Celestia winces. "I'm sorry. You're right."
"I am sorry. I should not have brought it up."
They stare out at the horizon together. Celestia's need for touch overcomes her fear, and she tentatively unfolds a wing and drapes it over Luna's back.
"It is only that I wished for some advice," Luna says quietly, her own wings tightly tucked. "Or perhaps reassurance. I have not been able to stop comparing myself unfavorably to the other me — not since learning that on the far side of the portal, our positions in our battle were reversed."
Celestia blinks. "The other us fought?"
"Alas, yes," Luna says heavily. "But in the other world, it was I who welcomed you back from your exile."
"Wait," Celestia says, "what?"
She turns to look at Luna, really look, for the first time. Luna, too, swivels her head.
Confused cyan eyes stare back at Celestia from a midnight-blue equine muzzle, amid a mane like a halo of stars ripped from the night sky —
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Sunset Shimmer: Scientifically Designed to Melt Hearts
So is this referring to some other exile or alternate dimension? Because if it's referring to Luna’s thousand year exile, then I'm confused by the wording.
Wait...I'm confused...but I suspect that I'm supposed to be here. This sounds like Principal Celestia talking here, and the use of 'finger' and the 'fading dye' re-enforces that. But then there is this, which implies Princess Celestia is talking.
and
Since Principal Celestia would know full well what happened between her and her sister, this confusion implies it it the Princess version here. So...is this two conversations with two sets of Lunas and Celestias overlapping? Or am I just being dense?
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Obviously, Principle Celestia (who always has wings in her dreams) is talking to Princess Luna (little miss Dreamwalker she is). In the EqG world, Celestia moving to Europe was her own sort of "self-imposed exile" that Vice Principle Luna welcomed her back from, and in the normal ponyverse, well, we all know how that went.
The two of them don't even realize who they were talking to until the very last part of the scene.
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8313768
Yea, it's clearly Horse Luna and Human Celestia talking here - they parallel each other without realizing it, and well, magic is as magic does.
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Just to add Word of Author: What 8313801 and 8313768 said.
Just wanted to comment as I'm reading this (side-by-side with the writeoff entry, because I am a massive nerd
) that I think you've done a fantastic job clearing up the final scene in this chapter. I'm a little sad you cut "Something tickles faintly at the back of her mind", though, 'cos for me that one line did a fantastic amount of signposting for what to look for, but I suppose it's a tad unnecessary now, with the changes that have been made.
I had to read that last scene a second time. Then I had to go up and add this story to my favorites bookshelf. I do believe that that's the first time I've ever added a story to my favorites bookshelf before finishing (the available portions of) it. That's a hell of a scene there.
You know... Tia and Luna desperately need to meet the Princesses. I believe that their wisdom and the knowledge of the alicorns' own imperfection would be the greatest gift that they could receive.
Oof. And there's a hard-hitting homonym for you.
Beautiful ending segment to the chapter, and one that caught me enough off-guard I needed to read it again.
She should send Princess Twilight some homework. I think that would go over hilariously.
What were the Dazzlings doing in Michigan in the 60s?
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The only slight puzzlement I have is why horse-Luna would think that horse-Celestia believes that human-Celestia is so much more than any angel that horse-Celestia would have tried to be. I thought that would make horse-Luna realize sooner that it wasn't horse-Celestia she was talking to.
Goddamnit. Well played. (Though... personally, I would have stuck with "dyeing.")
That twist was excellent! Love it.
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Drugs, I would think. Lots and lots of them.
That last scene is a dream, that's amazingly well-written.
Squee!
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Thank you! I really love the way it came together, too.
Wow. This is amazing. So good at evoking emotions in all the right places. Touching on big concepts, too:
This thought right here is an immensely potent one whether we have evidence of extradimensional selves or not.
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Y'know, I keep impulse-editing to edit it between the two every time I come back here to respond to comments and reread the chapter. I've changed it, and then changed it back, twice now.
That probably means I should stop fiddling with it and let my first impulse stand. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Yeah, there are weird levels of self-determination (if you'll pardon the turn of phrase) there that English doesn't have a good vocabulary for. It's an interesting idea.
Thank you!
...Whoa
That embarrassing moment when the Dreamwalker and the Dreamer realize they each picked the wrong channel on her remote control... Or perhaps the right one.
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Fate has a way of bringing souls together.
(Can you spoiler the quote in your comment? Thanks.)
All four have such regrets and believe the other is better. Very compelling.
Holy fuck
I aaaaaaaaa
I had to read the last part again and OH MY GODS
Okayyy okay I haven't even finished reading and I have added this story to My Legends
The saddest part was running out of bookshelves to add this to
Ooooohh that revelation