Hateful Mirror - a new story by yours truly · 8:24am Jan 3rd, 2015
So, a few months ago I got asked a question by Starlight Nova, asking me this:
Dear Scipio Smith,
Can you please tell me how Breaking Dawn would react to Twilight being murdered, before AND after the events of Vengeance of Dawn took place?
I answered, and it turned out that this was in relation to the famous fanfic The Assassination of Twilight Sparkle By the Coward Prince Blueblood, and its sequel.
A couple of months and a couple of messages later and Starlight asked me to write out a one-shot detailing just that: how Breaking Dawn would react to Twilight's murder done in the style of Aftermath of a Fallen Star. Now I admit I've only read the first chapter of Assassination of Twilight Sparkle, and I've only read the Trixie chapter of Aftermath, but nevertheless the idea intrigued me and I said I'd do it.
I'm not going to publish it as a fic, because I don't think that's right (Assassination/Aftermath aren't my stories, and I've no real right to appropriate them just to crowbar my OC into it's setting) but I am going to put it up here for you all to read because there isn't a lot of point writing something if you aren't going to show it to anyone. This is set before Vengeance of Dawn, so the Dawn here hasn't had her own shot at Twilight. I might do an after version at some point.
A couple of other changes to my own continuity and to that of Assassination: Razor Wind is not a Royal Guard in Vengeance, but if I was going to rewrite the story (and I might) she probably would be, Dawn's relationship with Sunset Shimmer is also not quite as described in the main fic; not having read all the way through Assassination I didn't initially know how exactly Twilight had died and for the purposes of this fic I took that she'd been stabbed to death on the senate ballroom floor like Julius Caesar. TV Tropes tells me she was actually slain in her sleep, which just seems incredibly squalid for people who believe that they are saving their country, so in this fic she was murdered in broad daylight.
So, courtesy of Starlight Nova, here is Hateful Mirror; I hope you enjoy it.
Hateful Mirror
Is there a story about two mares, one of whom does the other a great slight without ever realising it, and goes on her merry way, while the other mare seethes at the injury done to her, and plots a revenge the mare who did the slight is unaware of until, at last, the two meet again?
There must be. If the griffons don’t tell such a story then surely the zebras must, as obsessed with vengeance and face and the revengement of all acts done to their ancestors far into the mists of time. We ponies probably do not tell such a tale, though. We like to think, like to pretend, that we are above such base and cruel emotions as hatred, jealousy or the desire for revenge.
Recent events have put the lie to that. We are no better than any other race, for all our vaunted harmony. We are as prone to fear, as prone to wrath, as prone to lash out with great violence at those things we blame for our uncertainty. If we seem kinder, nobler, friendlier than our neighbours it is because we dwell ever in the warm sunshine of Celestia’s majesty, and in the sunlight it is easy to be a paragon. Yet when night falls we are as savage as any griffon warrior, vengeful as any zebra lord, greedy as any dragon sleeping on his hoard of stolen gold and jewels.
Yes, I think the zebras and the griffons know our story well, and probably they laugh to see that we, who scorn the barbarity of their songs and tales, have played out such a narrative upon the stage of court, where the knives are real and the actors do not rise up at curtain’s fall to take a bow.
And yet, I wonder if even they tell a story similar to the one I mentioned earlier, but with one crucial difference: what if the mare who was slighted never confronts the mare who did her wrong? What if, in fact, they never meet, never having the chance to do so? What if she who did the insulting perishes of some unrelated catastrophe, leaving the whole matter of the first mare and her revenge drifting in the wind, an irrelevant subplot, a waste of time, a pointless distraction to the attentive audience. Does anyone tell such a story, and if they do what happens at the end? What does she who is now denied not only her revenge but also her catharsis do now? Where does she go, now that her story cannot continue to its proper conclusion? How do you live when all that you might have lived for is gone beyond recall.
A question for the ages with which I have been struggling for many years.
My name is Breaking Dawn, and I, too, once studied under Princess Celestia. I raised Tartarus at her school, where I flatter myself that they will talk of wild Dawn and her antics yet, I contested with Sunset Shimmer for the love of the princess, and I fought to claim for myself a great and heroic destiny. A destiny that would put my name on every tongue, my glories into every mind, and raise me to the heights of royal dignity.
We shared that dream, Sunset Shimmer and I; shared it and fought over it. She hated me when we first met, and I didn’t much care for her either, but by the time she left I think we… understood each other. I might even go so far as to say we were friends, although Sunset would deny it. She never had a lot of time for friendship. She would have beaten me, I think, had she stayed. I feared that often. She was so proud, so striking, so beautiful. The sight of her always rendered me drab and commonplace? How could I compare to her? She would have beaten me, had she possessed more patience.
But Sunset left, fleeing to another world to find better scope for her ambitions, and I got thrown out. It turns out the destiny I chased was never mine to begin with. It belonged to another mare, a better mare than I many would say, by the name of Twilight Sparkle. She moved in as I moved out: into the role of hero, into the position of protégé and student of the princess, into Celestia’s affections, even into my old room. She did the things that I had only dreamed of doing, she saved Equestria, she became an alicorn and a princess rolled into one.
And now she’s dead. Twilight dead and Sunset lost and only I remain, the least of them. Least powerful, least regarded, forgotten in reputeless banishment. I did not have the courage to seek my fortune beyond the bounds of this reality, and now I am not worth a murder. I live on, who had the least to live for.
They murdered Twilight Sparkle. A group of nobles stabbed her to death in the palace ballroom. They say that she was planning to usurp Celestia. So says Gallant Heart, anyway, and Gallant Heart is an honourable stallion.
Did I hate Twilight Sparkle? Yes. She was the face of my misfortunes, the root cause of every trouble that beset me, the pincushion for every ounce of blame I sought to cast away from myself. I hated Twilight Sparkle because I wanted everything she had.
I nursed my grudge against her. I fed it with frustrations and the scraps of tattered pride. I told myself I could have done all that she had done. I flattered myself that one day I would rise again from the depths of my abandonment on that day Twilight Sparkle would prove to be nothing more than my factor, that I would exchange her glories from my shame and all that I had longed for would be mine.
And now she is dead. So should I not rejoice? Should I not spit upon her corpse? Should I not wear a gown of flaming taffeta and dance through the streets in celebration, joining those who even now make rowdy merrymaking at Twilight’s expense, who slander her name, who mock her reputation, who trample her royal dignities into the mud and mire. Should I not feel as they do? Should I not rejoice? Do I not?
No. I have bitten into a sweet red apple and swallowed only ash. My hooves are leaden and when I hear some stranger make a jest of Twilight the anger rises in my throat and I want to bombard the jester with every painful spell at my command. I have no tears to shed, no grief to scream out to the skies. I do not mourn for Twilight Sparkle, and yet I hate that she is dead. Why is that?
Is it because I wanted the pleasure of defeating her all for myself. Could it be so simple, so jejune? Is my anger all at Twilight, for dying before I could confront her and play out the last act in our drama? Is that it? Is the disquiet in my soul rooted in nothing but selfishness? Am I so small, so base, so monstrously self-centred that when a tragedy occurs my only thought is how it affects my story? Is my offence built upon nothing more than the fact that another story dared invade my own, and overpowered it in the narrative of the times, reducing my own tale to a footnote?
No. That is not it, or so I tell myself. I never sought the death of Twilight Sparkle. Her defeat, yes, her shame, certainly, her banishment, most likely. But when I envisage myself standing over her, having defeated Twilight and stripped her of all she stole from me; as I imagine her staring up at me with wide and frightened eyes… in all of my dreams the end is always the same: I show her mercy. For what price victory if your foe is too dead to realise they have lost, too unalive to acknowledge your superiority? One day I too will die, as Twilight died, and we will live only in the memories of those who knew us. And then those who knew us will die, and only our names will live on in stale histories and lively tales. One day all that you were will be erased, all the complexities of your spirit will be flattened out by the ironing board of history, all the many facets of your soul reduced to the simplest of clichés. All that will be left of you are your deeds, and facile interpretations of your character offered by historians. Was Commander Hurricane so arrogant, or Princess Platinum so vain, as generations of young fillies have portrayed them on the stage at Hearth’s Warming Pageants? Of course not, but that is what remains of them; that is, for good or ill, what they are now. What would history say of me if I had murdered Twilight? Would I be anything but a villain? The conspirators bathed their hooves in Twilight’s blood and ran through the streets of Canterlot crying out ‘Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!’ But do you think that when history records the tumult of these times the books will call them liberators? It will not, unless it is to record that that is what they called themselves to justify their crimes. No, I did not seek out Twilight’s death, nor feel cheated of that which I never sought.
Perhaps it is the manner of her dying which offends me. If it was Twilight’s destiny to fall, then she should have fallen in stricken battle, matched with a worthy foe, the fall of her star matching the grandeur of its rise. She should not have been stabbed in the back by those who cringed before her face. I have a friend, Razor Wind, who is in the Royal Guards and she told me that one of the conspirators knelt down and kissed the hem of Twilight’s dress, only so he could impede her movements when the knives came out. Blueblood slashed at her face so as to disfigure it, because he was envious of her beauty. Then, as I said, they bathed their hooves in her blood and ran through the streets proclaiming what they had done. And everyone gasped with such shock because no one imagined that such a thing could happen here in Equestria. How the zebras must be laughing. Twilight did not deserve such an end, so ignominious. To be a victim, at the end… she did not deserve that.
She did not deserve to die, though of course that is not what the conspirators say. They say she meant to depose Celestia and take the throne for herself. They say she meant to open up our borders to all manner of degenerate foreign outcasts who would swamp our land and make it theirs. They say she meant to preside over the disintegration of our culture (I would have thought they stabbed our culture of harmony and tolerance to death on the ballroom floor along with Twilight Sparkle, but maybe they mean a different culture). They say she was ambitious and we must believe them, for them that say it are honourable stallions.
The lies they think Equestria will swallow. They may have done their deed in public, they may have carved Twilight as a banquet fit for the gods, they may spout their high-minded justifications and prattle of their honour and their long and noble lineages but none of that will change the fact that their murder was as squalid an act as any back-alley mugging, and done for the same reasons. They hated Twilight because they feared her, and they feared Twilight because she proposed to take their power away and reduce their incomes. They thought they were entitled to things, and when it turned out that no, they really weren’t, they got so mad they decided to kill someone, the pony they blamed as the source of their ills.
Huh. Put like that I think I’ve worked out why I’m so angry; because they’ve held a mirror up to me and I can’t stand what I see there.
So what do I do now? How does my story end now that my enemy is gone and revenge is denied me. Well, having seen at last just what I was, I think there is only one way I can atone. Amadeus Blueblood has fled to Unicornia, where he thinks himself beyond the reach of Celestia’s justice. But I will pursue him there, I will strike him down (and I’ll do it while looking him in the eye) and then I shall bathe my hooves in his blood and run riot through the streets crying ‘Justice! A princess avenged!’ Yes, since I cannot take revenge on Twilight I will take revenge for Twilight instead. And perhaps Celestia will remember me and think what a good girl I turned out to be in the end. And when Unicornia puts me to death for murder all that I was and did will be forgotten save that I so loved Princess Twilight that I became a martyr in her name. And my name will live on, for so long as Twilight Sparkle is remembered.
She'll claim vengeance one way or another!
I would've had it end with Dawn reconciling with Celestia and becoming her student, but this is good too.
You forgot to add the little part at the end that tells what happened to Dawn after this story
If this was a real published story I'd fave and upvote it.