Politics by Archaeology
Cadance frowned as she looked over the documents Chip had given her. There were those expected of her job here--health records of her subject, character testimonies, whatever they'd been able to scrounge from across the mirror--but there were others, too, more worrisome ones.
Someone's been a busy bee these last few days, she thought as she looked over the papers; orders for high-quality gemsteel, lithumite, even deepstone had been sent out by Sunset after the Riot, purpose unknown. A lab had been requisitioned and then fitted with iron, but now lay empty. And a messenger had gone to Canterlot High, returning with what Radiance swore looked like blueprints.
She sighed, then looked at the unconscious, tied-up girl. When Shining had asked her to come help Sunset, she'd demurred, remembering what Stygian had told her about her duty to her school. In the end, though, he managed to convince her to come, and she'd left the school in Radiant Hope's capable hands. She'd arrived in Castellot in secret yesterday, hoping to use the time before Shining left to prepare for her meeting with Sunset. And she had, Chip had even helped her prepare.
"I thought I was going to help you with your past," she murmured to Sunset. "not attempted treason."
She'd wanted to disbelieve the frantic Treasury Minister, wanted to defend the wonderful young woman who'd saved her ladybug from Chip's horrible accusations, but to no avail; between her clear desire to fight Starlight, her requisition of Guard equipment ("for personal protection," she'd said), her refusal to attend Shining's departure, and her seeming lack of interest in what she was scheduled to do in the days immediately following, all the evidence supported Chip's claims. As much as it broke her heart to do so, Cadance agreed to help Chip plan for Sunset's move, eventually deciding to follow her to the memorial service and plead with her to stay.
She winced as she remembered her failure, and the aching feeling in her hand from her last resort. Carrying an unconscious, armored woman through the city had been difficult, though thankfully the streets had been clear. She and Razzaroo had bundled Sunset into her office, tied her up to prevent her from doing something she would regret, and then the Guard had left, standing just outside to give them at least a modicum of privacy. She'd been forced to deny Sunset her movement and her choice in going with Shining or not; she wouldn't deny her anything else if she could help it.
A groan drew her attention; Sunset was coming back to consciousness. She tried to stand up, but found herself frustrated by the cords Razzaroo had used. She strained against them, trying to either slip or break them, but to no avail. She sighed in defeat, then turned and saw Cadance. Instantly, her face darkened, lit up only by the fiery light of her glare. "If Starlight manages to defeat Shiny," she croaked. "she'll owe you a medal for helping her."
"I'm sorry, Sunset," Cadance sighed.
"Sorry?" Sunset snapped, almost laughing. "Is 'sorry' supposed to make up for helping Starlight? Is 'sorry' supposed to make up for stabbing Shining Armor in the back? Is 'sorry' supposed to make up for destroying the kingdom? If it is, it's not doing it very well."
"It's not meant to make up for anything," Cadance shook her head. "It's only meant to show regret, in this case for the way I treated you. I shouldn't have hurt you like that, there were other ways I could've brought you here."
"That's what you regret?" Sunset laughed. "You're not sorry for possibly ending Homestria, you're sorry about how you did it? Oh, that's so backwards, it would be funny if it wasn't about treason."
"Treason?" Cadance raised a brow. "Treason like I prevented you from committing?"
"I wasn't committing treason," Sunset retorted. "I was trying to help the kingdom, not hurt it."
"By abandoning your official post and disobeying the orders of the Captain of the Royal Guards," Cadance noted.
"Those orders would've hurt the kingdom," Sunset snarled. "He tried to get me to stay back when Homestria needs every able-bodied person after Starlight. As for my post," she laughed humorlessly again. "you could have a sock monkey there instead of me and you'd get the same amount of work done."
"Radiance would beg to disagree with you," Cadance smiled at her. "She says the instructional material you've helped her and the others develop has been a big help, and not just here; they've managed to send copies to coworkers in more impacted places, like Crystallot, Manehattan, even Griffonstone, and they've really helped the response. If the early reports are right, then your work actually helped save Fillydelphia from some sort of monster. It might be hard to see, but you are doing good here, Sunset."
"It's hard to see," she retorted. "because it's not enough. Stopping Starlight and getting Rarity back? That would help a lot. Trying to keep teaching the Bureau Magic 101? Not really. Sending people out to actually conduct research in those places you mentioned would help a bit more, but the Senate's refused to do that a million times. Basically all I can do here is teach cutie-grade magic, and that's not going to help us if anything worse than a level-1 event breaks out."
"What if you do get Rarity back?" Cadance asked. "What will that change? Your friends will be back together, yes, but Radiance won't know anything more about magic. The Bureau will still be at 'cutie-grade' level."
"Me and the girls will deal with whatever comes up," Sunset replied. "while I teach the Bureau on the side. If worst comes to worst, we can always ask Equestria for help."
"Twilight told me her calculations regarding that," Cadance shook her head. "Even before magic started coming back in force, she wasn't able to predict what heavy use of the portal would result in. Her calculations varied from 'minimal impact' to 'reduce the universe to the size of an atom.' Unless there is no other possible way, we can't risk calling in Equestria." She swallowed, then took some of the papers out of the folder Chip had given her and put them on the table in front of Sunset. "And there is another way," she murmured. "one that you thought of."
"Where'd you get these?" Sunset asked furiously. "Have you been spying on me?"
"Yes," Cadance simply nodded. "Along with Radiance, Chip, and Shiny."
"Wow," Sunset snorted. "I expected Chip, and I thought she'd rope Radiance in, but I'd've expected you and Shiny to have a bit more integrity than this."
Cadance flinched, then said, "We tried to stick to public materials as much as we could, to try to give you some privacy. Aside from those," she pointed at the invoices in front of Sunset. "we didn't search anything that the average person on the street wouldn't be able to access."
"And, what?" Sunset snarled. "It was fine to break into these?"
"Look at the signature," Cadance whispered.
Sunset frowned, but did so, then bowed her head with a groan. "You have got to be joking me."
"The princess put the Minister of the Treasury personally in charge of business relating to your work," Cadance shook her head. "at least according to Aunt Tia. She didn't include these because she was spying on you, though; she was honestly confused about them, and wanted me to ask you why you ordered them."
"You already know," Sunset grumbled. "That's why you're here, isn't it? To convince me not to build it."
"I'm here because I'm worried about you," Cadance replied. "Even if everything else was going perfectly, even if we weren't in a crisis, I still would have come, because you're hurting, and I can't stand for that. I'm not here because of your work, or what you tried to do, or magic at all; I'm here because of you, because of the girl who saved my ladybug, the girl I owe a debt I can never repay."
"And you're gonna, what?" Sunset sneered. "Psychoanalyze me? Tell me that I really want to go with Shining because my subconscious wants to abandon responsibility that the capitol symbolizes? Tell me what's what?"
"I want to understand," Cadance replied, her voice pleading. "I want to understand what's wrong, what you think is the right thing to do, and why. I want," she swallowed. "I want to know why you need to save everyone."
Aside from her relationships with Celestia, Shining, and Twilight (and by extension Sunset), there was another reason Cadance had been brought into the fold of knowledge;
She'd begun to exhibit magic.
She'd always been empathetic towards others, but now that empathy had been heightened, to the degree that it almost seemed to constitute another sense. She could sense others' emotions as easily as she could see or hear them, and with a bit of practice she'd thankfully learned to suppress that sense as easily as she could suppress her others. Over the two weeks she'd had it, she'd managed to train it, partially with Sunset's help, honing it into a powerful tool. It wasn't without its drawbacks, though; sensing too much of one emotion could lead it to infect her, while sensing too many different ones at once left her with a headache.
And now, in the face of the overpowering, black rage directed at her by Sunset, she was almost knocked out of her seat, almost knocked out period. As she regained her balance and blinked the spots out of her vision, she looked up at Sunset to see her face twisted into a mask of hatred, eyes burning bright as the Sun as they glared at her.
"Alright, Cadance," she said in a clipped, icy voice barely masking the volcano of wrath just waiting to burst. "Here's what's going to happen. You are going to untie me and send Miss Razzaroo away. You are going to drive me after your co-conspirator and convince him to let me join the Guard. Then you are going to drive away and find some rock to spend the rest of your miserable life hiding under. If, after that, I ever see you again, I will pull whatever strings I need to to have you declared an outlaw and have Shining Armor sent after you with orders to send your twisted, pathetic excuse for a soul down to Tartarus from whence it came. If he fails to catch you, for whatever reason, I will have him declared an outlaw and pursued by every Guard in the kingdom with orders to, upon capture, send him down to your home in the slowest, most painful way they can. If I hear you breathe a word of this to anyone, I will find you, in the ruins of the kingdom if I have to, and flay every last secret from your mind before sentencing you back to Tartarus. Am. I. Clear?"
Cadance swallowed. "Crystal."
"Good," Sunset curtly replied. "Now, untie me."
Cadance swallowed again. "No."
Sunset looked up at her, a thin veneer of curiosity covering a storm of fury preparing to erupt. "No?" she whispered. "I thought I was clear?"
"You were," Cadance nodded. "You made it clear, crystal clear, that you need help."
The storm exploded. "What I need," Sunset boomed, her bonds groaning against her efforts. "is for you to shut up!"
"Yes," Cadance agreed. "You need to be healed so that I can shut up, so that it's wrong for me to intervene like this."
"I was perfectly fine before you and your little soldier butted into my business!" Sunset roared.
"Were you?" Cadance asked. "Both Shining and Chip discovered anger like-like this, both times after a fairly short questioning. If Twilight burst into anger like this, would you say she's okay, or merely experiencing a reprieve from her pain?"
Her ladybug's name seemed to bring Sunset out of her rage, somewhat; she was still clearly angry, furious, but she'd stopped her futile struggle against the ropes. She might be able to reach her, now. Hesitantly, she stretched out a hand to Sunset, a standing leap of faith. Gingerly, she laid it on Sunset's shoulder, causing the girl to glare at her.
"If you're going to give me some 'arm-around-the-shoulder' advice," Sunset snapped. "save it."
"I'm not," Cadance nervously swallowed. "I'm-I'm extending a gesture of trust. Can-can you use your magic on me?"
Wagging her head in confusion, Sunset replied, "I'm pretty sure, yeah. What-"
"If," Cadance interrupted, before her courage could flee. "if at any point you feel like you don't trust me, I want you to use your magic on me. If it turns out I'm lying to you, feel..." She faltered for an instant, then blurted out, "... feel free to use it however you wish. Do... do with me what you will."
Sunset gaped at her, then frowned, clearly remembering her earlier anger. Closing her eyes, a faint light began to glow from within her armor. Taking a deep breath, Cadance closed her own eyes and tried to remember...
"Kerioth," Sunset whispered before she could focus. "You-you thought of yourself as Kerioth, back-back in the graveyard."
"Why wouldn't I?" she whispered back, momentarily shivering; Sunset had seen memories she hadn't even been thinking about. She was leaving herself defenseless. But, she thought as she shook her head, that was the point; she was trying to show Sunset that she trusted her, and hiding behind walls would send the opposite message. However risky it might be, she couldn't hold anything back. "After all," she spoke up again. "I, too, was about to be a traitor."
Sunset sniffled, then shook her head and set her face. "I know you really did, do, feel that way," she said. "but that doesn't change the fact that you went through with it. Why, Cadance? Why did you stab me in the back if you thought it was wrong?"
"Because I thought that letting you do something potentially self-destructive at the behest of a past trauma was worse," Cadance replied. "Because I thought that your need to save others might lead to you needing to be saved. It's unlikely, extremely unlikely, but Starlight might win against Shiny, and if she took you prisoner... Losing Shiny would be horrible, losing you would be a disaster. It would be far too dangerous for you to go with Shiny."
"So, what?" Sunset grumbled. "I'm supposed to just sit in my-my cage like a bird?"
"You're supposed to live your life carefully," Cadance said. "You can't avoid all danger, but that doesn't mean you should seek it out. And, once again, you have a lot to live for, a lot of other lives depending on you."
"Pfft," Sunset rolled her eyes. "I'd agree with you more if those other lives weren't trying to stop me from saving them."
"Sometimes, people don't know what they need," Cadance admitted. "Sometimes they try to stop others from doing what's needed to fix a problem because it requires some sacrifices. All you can do is try to get them to see that what you're trying to do needs to be done, for however long it takes."
"Or do it anyway," Sunset retorted, pointedly stretching against her ropes. "no matter how much they don't want to do it."
Cadance winced, but nodded. "Sometimes," she said. "if the need is great enough, wants can be overruled. But, Sunset, once again, the need that drives me isn't Starlight, or Homestria; it's you, the pain Chip and Shining told me about. Even if you were completely isolated or Homestria wasn't in danger, I would still have done what I did."
Sunset's eyes flashed with magic, and she frowned as she saw the truth of Cadance's words. She took a deep breath, then asked, "If you don't want me to go with Shining, then what do you want me to do?"
"I want you to talk to me," Cadance replied. "Help me understand what's hurting you. Let me help you heal. Then, I want you to think about what your next course of action should be. Whether that's continuing to help Radiance, going forward with your... other project, or even chasing after Starlight despite the danger, I want you to think clearly and deliberately about what course of action you think would be best for you to take. You know which one I prefer, but I don't know everything that you do; whatever you decide, I'll trust your decision. After," she stretched out a finger and tapped Sunset's heart. "we do what we can to heal whatever's hurting you here."
"Seriously?" Sunset snorted. "You've basically been telling me not to go after Starlight since you came here, and now you say you're willing to help me?"
"I don't know as much about the situation as you do," Cadance replied. "If you think that, objectively speaking, going after Starlight would be the best course of action, I won't argue. However, at the moment I'm afraid that your pain is clouding your mind, preventing you from looking at the situation objectively."
"That... makes sense," Sunset raised a brow. "Which begs the question; why didn't you put it that way at first?"
"I'm imperfect," Cadance blushed. "I thought that appealing to your sense of duty would work, and..." She hesitated.
Sunset's eyes flashed again, and her face fell. "You were afraid of me," she murmured. "You were actually afraid of me, of the anger you thought you'd find."
"I wasn't afraid of you, Sunset," Cadance reassured her. "only what the anger Shiny and Chip described to me might make you do. I wanted to wait until we were somewhere more constrained to risk setting that anger off, that's why I held back on telling you exactly why I came." Taking her free hand, she gently brushed it through Sunset's hair. "What need drove me here. And what need," she turned back to Chip's dossier. "drove us to dig up your past."
Sunset's face darkened again. "Some people would say that if something's buried," she growled. "it should be kept buried."
"Not this," Cadance shook her head. "I agree, some things that are buried should stay there, but if they start impacting the world aboveground I think it would be prudent to dig them up. And your past is impacting the present, Sunset; leaving aside your reaction when Chip started asking you about it, I'm reasonably sure that it also plays a part in your need to save everyone, something which I think is preventing you from looking at the question of whether you should go with Shiny or not objectively. You've been burying this for a long time, Sunset; I think it's time to bring it into the light."
Sunset shrugged against the ropes. "Not like I have a choice, do I?" she asked caustically.
Cadance winced; there was anger coming from Sunset, still, but now it was joined by pain, deep emotional pain. Its acridity made her eyes water and her throat burn, like she was sensing the smoke from a burning, broken heart. She grit her teeth and grabbed some papers from the dossier, preparing to dive deeper into the smoke in a quest to put out the fire that produced it.
Clearing her throat, she passed the papers over to Sunset's side of the table, allowing her to see them. She did so, and her eyes widened. "These," she whispered. "these are Equestrian documents. Where--how did you get these?"
"Celes," Cadance cleared her throat. "Celestia wrote to Twilight, across the mirror, asking her to look into your past. It took some digging, but eventually she found you in the public records. Public, not private; again, we tried to preserve your privacy as much as," she coughed out the lost wisp of pain. "as possible."
"That would've been a lot easier," she snapped back. "if you didn't try to spy on me."
"That might've been easier with regards to privacy," Cadance replied. "but not for helping you heal. We had to be careful of more things in our investigation-"
"Spying," Sunset sneered.
"-spying," Cadance sighed. "but we thought it was better to have to take care regarding maintaining your privacy than for you to suffer any longer. Yes, we ran a bigger risk of violating your privacy, but we still managed to keep that risk low, and I'm confident we never crossed it."
Sunset's eyes flashed again, and then she grunted, clearly still not pleased but allowing it to stand, at least for the moment. "So you guys spied on me and dug out my birth record," she jerked her head at the top paper of the pile before her. "I'm guessing two of the others are my parents' death records?"
Cadance nodded, then spread the pile out, revealing four papers; Sunset's birth certificate and the death certificates of her mother, father, and uncle.
She's just like me, Cadance thought sadly as she looked at the collage of death. She's lost those she can't afford to lose, and younger than I did to boot.
"You're an orphan, too?" Sunset whispered, reminding Cadance of her magic.
Startled, she nevertheless nodded. "I lost my father the night after I was born," she explained. "My mother died when I was in third grade. I'm not saying I know your pain, but I can at least understand it a bit."
Her guarded expression returning, Sunset grunted, then looked over the four papers again. After a few seconds, she shrugged. "What do you want me to say?" she asked. "If you want to know what happened to them, you can read, it's not that hard."
"I know what happened to them, yes," Cadance nodded. "I even know the broad strokes of what happened to you-"
She paused briefly as Sunset tensed up, then continued, "-over there; you lost your parents, then entered the care of your mother's sister and her husband, who died a few years later. Eventually, you went to magic school, tutored under Auntie Celestia's counterpart, and eventually ran away, arriving here. The rest I already knew, in some form or another. But there's something I don't know, something important; what impact what happened to your family had on you. That's what I want you to say, Sunset; help me understand how you reacted to all this," she gestured at the macabre spread of papers.
"You already know how I reacted," Sunset replied in a clipped voice. "Aunt Flare took me in, I went to Celestia's school, she took me under her wing, I fell into darkness, she had to kick me out, I ran away from my punishment like the little brat I was, and the rest you-"
"'React' wasn't the right word, then," Cadance interrupted. "'Respond,' maybe, how did you emotionally respond to what happened to you?"
"Nothing," Sunset curtly answered. "happened to me."
Cadance raised a brow in confusion, flicking a glance at the papers on the table.
"Those," Sunset jerked her chin at the same. "are losses, losses I endured and became stronger for. They tried to hinder me, drag me down, and I refused to let them. Things don't happen to me, Cadance, I happen to things. Death tried to take me and my home, but I escaped; he tried to take my new home away with Uncle Lightburst, and I foiled him again. Nothing happened to me, Cadance, not for all Death's trying."
"You lost your parents," Cadance whispered in shock. "How can you say that nothing happened to you?"
"Their deaths did cause a few problems for me," Sunset admitted. "but I rose above them, just like I rose above those caused by Uncle Lightburst's death."
Cadance gaped at the casual dismissal. "How can you say that?" she croaked. "They were your parents, didn't you love them?"
Sunset's face darkened. "I love them more than you can imagine," she icily replied. "All my family, even the ones I didn't lose. Don't you dare think for even a second that I didn't, don't still, love them."
"'Their deaths caused a few problems for me,'" Cadance said. "If you love them, how can you be so-so callous about losing them?"
"I'm not being callous," Sunset frowned. "I'm just saying that, whatever Death tried to do to me after he took them, it wasn't enough to stop me; yes, he stole mom, dad, and Uncle Lightburst from me, but I managed to overcome whatever obstacles that put in my path."
"Don't you miss them, though?" Cadance asked. "Or wish they were still around?"
"Of course," Sunset snapped. "I'm just smart enough to know that that won't do any good. That-that's what Death wants me to do; he wants me dead, either by straight-up dying or over time by spending the rest of my life regretting and weeping. Unfortunately for him," she smirked. "I've gotten pretty good at defying Death over the years. He wants me, he's gonna have to try."
"But then how can you say nothing happened to you?" Cadance pleaded, confusion written across her face. "Even if you overcame whatever happened, it still happened, you still experienced it."
Sunset frowned, then used her magic again. Coming out of her trance, she ahed and nodded, muttering, "So that's what's confusing you, I see. You're right," she spoke up. "I did experience all that stuff. I just think 'happened' isn't the right word. 'Happened' implies chance or-or a lack of agency, of choice. That couldn't be further from the truth; what I experienced was the result of choices, significant choices, both those made by the Death who inflicted my losses and those I made in reacting to them. Nothing happened to me, Cadance; what I experienced was either a loss that was inflicted on me, or a choice that I made in response to it."
"Death itself caused that flood, then," Cadance murmured. "He tried to kill you, and your parents, every one else in the village, ended up caught in the blast radius."
"I don't know if his obsession with me started the flood," Sunset shrugged. "or if he only started haunting me because I escaped, but yeah, that's the gist of it."
"How did you escape it, anyway?" Cadance asked.
"Magic," Sunset replied. "Literally. I'm a unicorn back in Equestria, and-"
She woke up to two hooves of rising water.
"Mommy?" she cried. "Daddy? What's going on?"
No reply, aside from the steadily, swiftly, rising water.
Taking a deep breath, she plunged into the (cold) water and swam down the stairs, the only light a faint, wavering orb at the tip of her horn. She didn't see Mommy or Daddy anywhere downstairs, and her lungs were starting to burn. Paddling back up the stairs and into her room, she gasped for breath on the canopy of her bed, the mattress itself now submerged. Books and toys floated in the water, Ms. Smarty-Pants riding her sailboat in an attempt to keep her homework dry. It was an attempt doomed to fail, judging by the rapidly-rising water.
Desperately, she took another, even bigger breath of air and plunged into the deep again, this time swimming over to her window. She knew Mommy had said never ever to use it as a door again, but this was an emerging sea, and besides, the water outside was using it as one first.
She fought against the current, and emerged into a watery wasteland. Her flickering horn-light couldn't show her much, and what it did show her she wished she couldn't see; drowned houses, sunken street signs, ponies drifting along like Ms. Smarty-Pants' boat.
A faint burning in her lungs dragged her out of her horrified stupor, and she began to swim for the surface, as high as the cliffs surrounding her little village.
Before she could go very far, though, she felt a tug on her hoof. Turning around to look, she squealed in fear, a squeal that rose from her mouth in bubbles; there were dead ponies on the ground, reaching up to grab her with drowned hooves. She fought against them, but the more she struggled the harder they grabbed her, until it felt like she was drowning in a sea of hooves as well as water.
And she was drowning; her lungs were on fire, and the edges of her vision were beginning to curl black. Even if she broke free of the dead hooves, she wouldn't be able to swim to the surface in time. She had only one hope, a hope as faint as her rapidly fading vision.
Lighting up her horn, she reached out to the stars, finding the three her father had pointed out to her on one of their stargazing nights. Finding them, she poured all her magic into her horn, desperately trying to cast a spell she'd only ever read about, and then only once.
A moment later, she flopped damply onto the grassy cliff, her stomach roiling from her near-drowning and emergency teleportation. Rain beat down on her as she whimpered her way over to the cliff edge, looking down in shock at the lake that stood where her village used to be.
Her home was gone. Ms. Smarty-Pants was gone.
Mommy and Daddy were gone.
She fell, numb, onto the grass, staring sightlessly out at the devastation that had once been her home. Everything was gone. Everyone she knew, every place she'd visited, everything she had, was gone.
"What happened?" she rasped, throat ravaged by water and grief. "Why's there so much water? Why didn't anypony wake me up?"
New water and grief trickled down her cheeks. "What do I do now?"
Cadance reeled backwards as the vision ended, Sunset's geode still gleaming faintly beneath her armor.
"Huh," Sunset murmured, faint tears at the edge of her eyes. "Didn't know it could do that. Well, that might come in handy in future. Anyway, yeah, that's how I survived; untrained teleportation, something only a bit less deadly than trying to swim would have been. It's, uh," she nervously chuckled. "not just a miracle that I survived the flood, let's just say. Teleportation's... tricky, especially for a foal. I'm still not sure how I managed to pull it off. Anyway, eventually a weather patrol came by and spotted me, and, after the usual bureaucratic delays, they managed to place me with Aunt Flare. The dam was rebuilt, eventually, but the village..."
Her face fell. "I was one of ten survivors," she whispered. "The other nine were out of town when Death drowned the place. The crown offered to help them rebuild the village, even expand it, but nopony accepted; we'd lost too much, more than any rebuilding could make right. Flutter Valley died that night, Cadance, even if not all of its inhabitants did."
Cadance's heart sank into her stomach. "And ever since that night," she quivered. "Death's been haunting you, trying to take you and those you love."
Sunset nodded.
"That's why you have to save everyone," Cadance said, a statement, not a guess. "Because it's your fault they're in danger."
"Because I can defy the Death that threatens them," Sunset proved her wrong. "I know not everyone's danger is my fault, thank goodness, but I also know that I can face whatever danger they're in. Death wears a lot of masks--war, poverty, monsters--but it's him under all of them, and no mask can stop me from being able to fight him. It's my duty, my destiny, to do so, to protect those who can't. Death made an enemy of me the night of the flood, Cadance, an enemy I will do everything in my power to fight."
Cadance fell silent; she understood, now. Sunset's refusal to frame what she'd experienced as anything other than conflict, Death trying to take her and those she loved, her fighting back by surviving and saving, picked out her motives in heart-wrenching light.
Softly, Cadance began to sing:
There be many shapes of mystery
And many things God makes to be,
Beyond our hopes and fears,
And the end Men looked for cometh not
While a path is found where none was thought;
So hath it fallen here.
"Eweripedes wrote that in one of his plays, The Ypiretes I think. Pater Tregua, an old spiritual counselor of mine, taught me them shortly after I lost my mother. I was distraught with grief, searching, pleading for an explanation for her passing. Why? Why did she die? What did she do to deserve death? Like everyone forced to come face to face with death, I struggled to answer those questions, but Pater Tregua helped me. With those six lines, he taught me something, something important, something I'll never forget; I was looking at it backwards."
"Huh?" Sunset raised a brow in confusion.
Cadance swallowed; this was going to be painful.
"'It's not our place to ascribe meaning to death, Cadenza,'" she replied, quoting the Pater's words. "'Whatever meaning there is to it is beyond our poor power to choose. Don't look to your mother's death for meaning; look to her life. It's not one's death that matters, but the life they lead up to it. Two people can die in the same way, but the context of their deaths will be completely different based on the meaning of their life. Whatever meaning lies in their deaths would be far beyond us to determine, even to comprehend; the meaning of their lives would be far easier for us to grasp, though even then it would still be difficult. I don't know the meaning of your mother's death, Cadenza, but I do know the meaning of her life, a life of love, and that's enough for me."
"I'm going to be blunt, Sunset," she continued, putting her other hand on Sunset's right shoulder. "You're wrong; Death doesn't hate you, he didn't try to kill you when you were young, he didn't kill your parents."
"Liar," Sunset snapped, surging against her ropes.
"You want him to have done so," Cadance ignored her. "so that way your parents' deaths had meaning, so that way your uncle's death had meaning, so that way you weren't just a lucky foal who survived an unlucky chance."
"Liar!" Sunset bellowed in rage, rage marinated with grief. "I'm not lucky, I make my own luck!"
"And that's the thing, Sunset," Cadance whispered reassuringly. "That's the beautiful, beautiful thing; you can't give your losses any meaning because you don't need to. Silver Blaze and Setting Star died in a random flash flood; so what? Their lives had meaning before that, meaning that the nature of their deaths did nothing, absolutely nothing, to diminish. I may not know the meaning of their deaths, but the meaning of their lives is standing right in front of me."
"No," Sunset growled. "No, you're wrong, Mom and Dad didn't just die to a-a flood, Death killed them, he-he tried to kill me, he killed Uncle Lightburst, he hates me, I'm his worst enemy-"
"If you are," Cadance cut her off, her voice like steel. "it's because you made yourself his enemy, not because he's trying to fight you. Death didn't declare war on you, Sunset, anymore than he declares it on the families of those who pass away due to old age. There is no war against you, Sunset, no grand conspiracy; what you endured, what happened to you, was horrible, but it wasn't malice. Your parents died of natural causes. Your uncle died of natural causes. Death didn't try to steal them, didn't try to wage war against you, didn't do anything to them at all. I understand why you want him to have done so, Sunset, I understand perfectly, but he didn't; your parents died naturally, Sunset, as did your uncle, as did everyone and everypony you wanted to be a victim of Death's war against you. I don't know the meaning of their deaths, and I don't know that I ever will, but I do know it wasn't that."
YOU'RE WRONG! roared in her mind, tearing her psyche to shreds. YOU'RE LYING!
Painfully, she dragged herself back together, reknitting herself through the miasma of rage, grief, and fear that was Sunset's presence in her mind. She needed to calm her, quick, she didn't know that she could survive another event like that, and who would help Sunset then? Would she even survive, stuck in a dissolving foreign mind?
"You want your parents to have died heroes' deaths, I understand!" she shouted into the maelstrom of her mind. "But they did, no matter how they died! They lived raising you, and that makes them heroes in my eyes, in the eyes of the world! So what if they weren't Death's personal prey? How they died doesn't change how they-"
A bolt of lightning seared through her consciousness, ripping almost all of it away; memories, emotions, even words were torn away like debris in a riptide. With an agonizing expenditure of rapidly-degrading focus, Cadance reached out to the one thing she wouldn't allow herself to lose, even if she lost all else.
As the last flesh was flayed from her ethereal hand, she grasped her love and held it tight.
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If this is crossing over with another fanfic, then there should be a crossover tag. Why isn't there one?
10928286
? It's part of a continuity, as indicated in the long description, but it's not a crossover. At what points does it seem to be?
.......
What?
10928370
How bad/unrealistic was it, if you don't mind me asking?
10928375
I don't know. This is the most legitimate "I'm not mad I'm just confused" I've ever been.
I honestly don't know what you're trying to do here.
I was going to praise you for finding a way to bypass the trust issue by Cadence having the guts to put herself in the line, but then you started calling what they do the objectively correct choice. If the narrative itself calls one option objectively correct, there's clearly not a discussion to be had here, to which I completely disagree.
Then Sunset's thing... I don't even know.
What was the point of this? That's honestly my biggest question.
If you're already proving that Sunset's in the wrong, and that the only option is that she helps Chip and Radiance, why add the death of her family to the mix? Why add more things to be wrong about? How has Sunset been stable until now, if she's so easily driven to murder? Why does she apparently have so much pull in this weird government yet she's basically useless to anybody? Why is Cadence the one digging these wounds instead of someone that has an actual connection to Sunset?
Why is Sunset's loss only a problem when it comes to her defiance of the government plan?
I hate to say it, but this story is making me dislike Sunset. I think I can maybe see what you're trying to do, but 10928424 raises some very crucial points. Maybe I'm just projecting my own expectations of rationality onto Bacon Horse, IDK.
10928540
Honestly, with the threats Sunset makes, and Cadence doing the "heroic sacrifice", even copying the empathy powers, Sunset's basically the villain here.
I could understand the "hidden trauma" causing her to go against Chip and Cadence but she seems to have gone a whole other level here. I can't imagine Sunset outside of her demon form saying those words.
Okay. I can see where Sunset's coming from to a degree. The concept of her being Death's nemesis was her key coping mechanism since the flood and she's believed it for so long that it's become a foundational part of her identity. Naturally, she does not respond well to trying to have that disproven. So maybe Cadence could have tried changing tack after the first psychic assault?
I can understand Cadence wanting to help Sunset heal from this long-term trauma, but maybe she could've waited until after the crisis for which Sunset is a linchpin? Focus on helping her see the good she's doing for now, help her see how she can best save everyone, then delve into the whys when the girl's a bit better disposed toward her. Or, as Beholder noted, call in her friends for backup. Or consultation. Delving into her records might feel a bit less invasive if her friends were there trying to help her help herself.
Yeah, this definitely could have gone better on virtually every level. And I still think Sunset has a legitimate reason to be frustrated and build ambiguous doomsday devices. I don't expect her to solve everything on her own, but some emergency powers would not be out of the question given the circumstances. The girl is clearly not going to play the game, and no one's letting her save the arena. Is it really so surprising that she's playing by her own rules?
Suffice to say, I'm really not sure how Cadence thought assaulting, kidnapping, and imprisoning Sunset for the sake of a therapy session would go.
10928424
First off, thank you for the comment regarding Cadance putting herself on the line.
Second, I'm having a bit of trouble understanding what you specifically meant by "what they do." If it's about Cadance, as 10928736 so brilliantly put it, "assaulting, kidnapping, and interrogating Sunset," she herself would agree; Cadance didn't want to do all that to Sunset, but she felt she had to before she did something she would later regret. Cadance, as she herself admitted, is imperfect, and chose what she, in the heat of the moment, thought was the least worst option. If it's about what Cadance is trying to convince Sunset to do, however, i.e., stay in the capitol instead of go with Shiny, there are two main reasons for why I seem to be putting my thumb on the scale; first, my personal interest in economics makes it so that, to my eyes, any good that Sunset does in the capitol, no matter how small, is something that no other actor present could do, making Homestria (and, as Cadance points out, indirectly Sunset's friends) relatively better off by having her stay there instead of marching off with Shiny. Second, the narrative that I had planned out had Sunset stay in the capitol; until you got me to start thinking about it, I wasn't even sure the narrative could survive Sunset going with Shiny. You are right, there is a legitimate discussion to be had here, but my plan didn't allow me to see that (even Cady could see it before I did; like she said, she thinks there are good reasons for Sunset to stay in Castellot, but she doesn't know enough to make that decision).
The problem isn't that Sunset's wrong, it's that the trauma of her parents' deaths is clouding her reasoning; like Cadance said, going with Shiny might be objectively the best choice, but at the moment Sunset is not thinking objectively. By assigning undue meaning to her parents' and uncle's deaths, Sunset has effectively constructed a worldview where she is the arch-enemy of Death, a status that simultaneously grants her great power (she can defy Death where others would fall to him) and great responsibility (she has a duty to save as many people from Death as she can). This messiah complex is corrupting her reasoning, providing her with false information that gives going with Shiny undue weight in her considerations. Now, going with Shiny might end up being the correct course of action, but whether it is or not must be objectively determined without the subjective influence of Sunset's messiah complex.
And Sunset's murder of Cadance wasn't easy; Cadance was attacking a fundamental pillar of Sunset's worldview, one of the cornerstones of her sense of identity. When faced with such a challenge, I could think of only two possible reactions; either break down as your perspective of the world, of yourself, crashes down around you, or fight back in an attempt to preserve it, to preserve yourself. Sunset is not, by nature, a griever, and so when Cadance pushed against what she viewed as one of the foundations of her identity, Sunset pushed back. Sunset didn't murder Cadance because she was asking uncomfortable questions (as Chip and Shiny discovered, she simply gets angry then, just like many of us would), she murdered her in what seemed self-defense, protecting her innermost self against the intruder trying to destroy it.
Regarding Sunset's influence in the government, it's mainly confined to the Bureau of Science, which is primarily a research/advisory body; the Senate determines actual policy, and there Sunset's reach is much lesser. In the Bureau Sunset can test and teach, but if she wants to actually institute policy changes she has to go through the Senate. Her teachings have, as Cadance reported, done a lot of good, but they're not as impactful (and crucially, for Sunset's current mindset, direct and visible) as actual policies would be.
As for why it's Cadance doing this, not one of Sunset's friends, Shining thought that her empathy and training as a counselor would allow her to fare better than Pinkie Pie or Twilight. She also had at least a bit of a prior relationship with Sunset, if only because she saved her ladybug at the Friendship Games, dimming the fear of the person he sends to check up on Sunset knowing nothing about her. Primarily, though, it was simply because she was the first person he thought of asking.
Shiny called Cadance in before they knew that Sunset was planning to sneak away with him, though I admit I could make this a bit clearer; like Cadance said, she anticipated helping Sunset with her past, something which Chip and Radiance had been investigating since Ms. Shimmer Goes to Castellot. They hadn't confronted her about it, not because they didn't care so long as she did what they wanted, but because they wanted to gather as much data as they could beforehand; when Sunset exploded at Shiny after the Riot, they decided that they couldn't wait any longer and called Cady in.
And, while their reasons for helping her aren't entirely altruistic, Chip, Radiance, Shiny, and Cady don't only want to help her so that she can work better; all of them held affection for her, for various reasons (Chip and Radiance out of compassion for the new kid, Shiny and Cady for saving Twilight), and none of them liked seeing her in pain. Like Cadance said, even if nothing was going on, she would still want to help Sunset heal because she cares for her, and the others would agree.
Hopefully this helps clear some of that confusion up. If it changes to, "I'm not confused, I'm mad," please let me know why so I can see about fixing whatever it is; your comments have been nothing but insightful and helpful for me, especially when they've been criticisms.
10928951
Wait, Cadance is dead?!
10928956
I thought she was the murder you were talking about. I mean, the end of the chapter doesn't bode well...
10928540
Sunset is acting rationally, at least from her point of view; as she said last chapter, either you're with her or against her, and Cadance stands against her, against the enemy of Death, here. And, in her stand, Cadance attacks one of the foundations of her identity, her self-conception as the hated enemy of Death as opposed to the victim of random chance; faced with such an assault, either grief or rage would be a logical reaction, and Sunset isn't a griever.
10928951
Ok, with a bit more clarity
The narrative is unsubtle and apologetically on Chip's and Cadence's side. "What they do" meaning digging into her past without permission, kidnapping, forcing her to chose their side of the argument, is always justified or excused one way or another. On the other side, Sunset gets no favor to her arguments, she's either wrong, doesn't know better, or her past fucks with her to the point of menace and apparently murder now.
That's why there's no discussion here. Sunset's the villain of this arc because none of her actions get any foundation to work or be supported while Chip and Cadence get to be the heroic saviors of the girl that can save the world.
Politics by many means sounds ironic when there's only one "non-evil" option.
And what angers and confuses me is why waste Sunset's loss of her family in this? In a discussion that from the start was decided that Sunset would lose regardless.
About Sunset's trauma itself, I don't know how survivors guilt works so this could be considered possible, but once again, despite their claims, Cadence's and Chip's actions to "help" sounds like the worse ever possible. Every thing Cadence says to try and calm Sunset at the end sounds wrong and not what anyone with therapeutic knowledge would try. Therapy doesn't work like this.
Cadence and Chip pushing Sunset to face her trauma right at this moment is also the worst possible decision they can make.
I'll reiterate, neither knows a thing about Sunset, no matter how good their intentions are. My mother had good intentions when she raised me and my brothers but we all ended up suffering for it and most of us hate her in one way or another.
Let me rephrase this one.
Why has this mayor trauma only been a problem for Sunset now. Why is only Chip, and not Celestia, Twilight, or Sunset's friends, the one who has noticed this? Knowing who all of these people are, it doesn't make sense for me.
10928969
I meant the threat she gave Cadence at the start.
And if you just made Sunset a murderer, no matter what excuse or justification you give, then this whole arc is done.
10928736
Okay, first off, Ambiguous Doomsday Devices sounds like a great name for a band.
Second... yeah, pretty much no one comes out of this looking good. Sunset's overreaction (blasting someone's mind to pieces is disproportionate to them talking to you) to Cadance's mistakes (I can't think of a good reason why she didn't change tactics after the first blast), Razzaroo standing by and watching Cadance, as you so brilliantly put it, "assaulting, kidnapping, and imprisoning Sunset for the sake of a therapy session..." Everyone made mistakes here, some bigger than others (Reading through all the comments, Cady, Shiny, or someone really should have gotten at least one of the Rainbooms involved).
However, to my mind, Cadance confronting Sunset's trauma was not one of them; showing her the good she was doing and how she could do the most good would help, yes, but it wouldn't solve the root problem, which is that Sunset's mindset of "I'm the defier of Death, I need to fight him and save as many people as I can" is driving her to self-destructive actions. Like you said earlier, she has problems with delegation, making this even worse; instead of authorizing someone else to fight Death in the field while she focuses on strategy, she has to be the one in the fray, the hero, leaving strategy unattended. If Cadance had simply shown her the good she was doing and how she could do the most good, Sunset might agree (or maybe not, "assaulting, kidnapping, and imprisoning" someone tends to leave a sour taste in their mouth), but when the next crisis comes, the heroic instinct in her will flare up again, possibly requiring another intervention by Cadance. Not because Sunset simply dismisses her duties, or because she's eager to break faith with Cadance, but because "this time is different," this time she needs to take the field. Cadance needs to stop the self-destructive behaviors at their source, not one by one as they come.
Agreed across the board. There's a reason they're called emergency powers; they're powers that are granted in an emergency, something which the situation rapidly seems to be devolving into.
10928981
That could be reasonably construed as either an empty threat, meant only to intimidate Cadance, or something said in a moment of anger (perhaps aggravated by what had been done to her beforehand, i.e., the assaulting, kidnapping, and imprisoning) that would be looked back on in horror as soon as rationality reasserted itself.
I must respectfully disagree, for two main reasons:
1. Cadance isn't completely "dead" and she isn't going to stay that way for long.
2. Even if Sunset did kill her (something which, due to the circumstances, I would say would be more likely to be judged manslaughter than murder), that wouldn't need to be the end of Sunset's arc; it would change it, almost completely, but it wouldn't end it. It's possible for a character to do something morally repugnant and embark on a new arc of degradation (Tyrion Lannister in A Dance with Dragons) or try to make up for it and embark on a redemptive arc (Boromir after trying to steal the One Ring in The Fellowship of the Ring). It would certainly complicate Sunset's arc, and make it much harder to see her as a hero, but it wouldn't be the end of her arc.
10929033
I have to ask again, what is the point of this arc?
"Sunset makes her choices" Cadence and Chip have stopped her from taking any choices other than what they need. Her trauma is just used to justify their intervention and convince her to "do the objectively right thing". And now that she has almost murdered someone, she'll be even more mentally distraught and unable to function properly.
I don't see any good outcome out of this, and it's because of Cadence and Chip that it's happening.
They're the ones that brought up this problem in the narrative, and the ones that are make it worse with every action they take.
10929033
I await said reassertion of rationality with bated breath.