//------------------------------//
// Chapter 23: Follow No Road but the One You Make Yourself 
// Story: Favorable Alignment 
// by Ice Star 
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Sombra:


For weeks, I had stood on a surface so much like blue glass that capped another world like a second sky, and stared up the heavens as my heart and mind tore themselves apart. I could barely trust my own hooves on such a changeable surface as I reversed almost every principle of my life: I would run away from her when I had only sought her out, and previously did everything possible to bring myself one step closer to the mare that haunted me in her entirety, a single figure at the end to life's bridge that I had spent so much effort trying to get to the other end of.

And when I found her, I bided my time so I wouldn't hurt her. When the moment came, I had found that she turned her back to me and flew where I could never follow or call her back.

I had followed her this far, just to see her again, to look her in the eye.

I wanted to know her. I desired to hear her every wish, her every fear, and every thought spoken by a voice that I waited ages to hear again. I wanted so badly to know what she loved and hated, and what made her laugh or what made her cry. Everything. Her stories ensnared me, much like she did, too. I truly wanted to know what she dreamed about, the simplest things, and how she could put off a destination in order to see a journey as I did.

I wanted to experience it with her, and ultimately tell her. If she agreed and let me, I would love her. If she refused? I would accept, faded, torn beyond mending. and go as far away as possible.

But, I would still love her, no matter how much I ran away.

It was crushing to hear her initial response, as if part of me balanced on a string above some kind of oblivion that only returned my pain in tenfold instead of emptying it. It was worse not knowing which possibility had motivated her words, and seeing her locking herself in her own prison immediately after speaking those words.

Then she was gone.

Again.

And I felt those centuries stretched as shadow in a cold and lucid plain come rushing back all at once. She had vanished and I could do nothing about it.

I missed her in repeat.

And I left her.

After everything we had done, said, and felt, I took a page from her book and acted impulsively at the slim chance of freeing us both because healing - even partially - is just using the pain that opened the wound to close it up again.

We were gone.

So I lied.

I lied to myself like I haven't in centuries, and half of me felt there was some merit to the words of acid.

I shouldn't have trusted her. I was better off alone, where I wouldn't hurt the one soul I cared about beside myself. It would have been better for us both. She would have been spared the pain of ever seeing the monster Onyx made. I still would have loved her.

I should trust myself exclusively. But it was still me in the flip side to my inferno of temper, with a passion forged for a millennium, tempered by the cold of time and all my masterful manipulation made into something truly divine. This something was just as fiery, and had a measure of reason where the vindictive quality my hatred held would be. This wanted to play a game of chance.

A long, long time ago I was set on the single idea I would happily bet my own life on, if required.

I knew much of her already, yes. 

But I still wanted to see her as she was in full. I knew that I wasn't delusional after all those years to prove otherwise.

I just needed a reunion, and that's exactly what I got after a couple of years.

I loved her. I fell for her once, and I fell hard.

I didn't mind at all, because it felt more like rising in the end.

Then when I finally met her after all these years...

I fell for her again.

This, and so much more, was on my mind for all those sleepless days and weeks just bothering to get to this island. I looked at each and every one of her stars - the very ones she had taught be the names of not long before this beautiful disaster - blinking up there in the dark, each a sun somewhere else or a seed from a spell she floated up to the sky. Every one was a dream of hers I had yet to know.

A wish I would never hear.

I had screamed out only what I cared to damn with my own words.

It was mostly me.

I cursed my actions, and everything but her under the night sky. I felt like I could scream forever in the cold air.

But I didn't. Screams turned to heaving breaths of creeping panic like I haven't had poisoning me in literally ages. It burned through me as uncontrollable as something else had, ages and ages ago, a wildfire that became so much more controlled.

This was the flip side of the madness that I have never been without. Every smirk, scheme, and pebble of superiority piled in a near infinite mountain of stone. Every stroke of genius and well-spoken word... every stubbornness and truth seen...

There was silence too.

Mostly, it was inflicted by him in those eight years, when I most certainly could not scream forever.

Even when I couldn't cry any longer, and for all the freezing ice that I had with every once of flame that coexisted within this gloriously twisted mind, there was always silence. No matter how much I defied all imposed upon me in every way I would, it could find me.

When I just sat there with eyes that always, always, always saw and knew everything that was happening and stared at the bleakest of futures I would have deteriorated into - the one I knew I would have only days into this life - and how each torture on me was a stone in a jar that would one day overflow.

He wanted me to lose the only thing I never would forfeit: me.

I would sit in those silences unable to make any sound at all beyond a growl or two. That soon subsided into silence too. Those were the days when 'tomorrow' - just the prospect of worrying about it - was almost as  torturous as the day itself would prove to be, no matter how resilient I was.

Sometimes, I wanted nothing more than to not have to see tomorrow. 

But in my ears, and in me there was the loudest screaming I've ever known, as I would sit in corners supposedly alone after his deeds.

It was a sound that only the broken couldn't describe.

I wasn't broken.

I knew that it was everything I wanted to scream and more, because after the growls faded I discovered Onyx's delight.

He loved it when I couldn't speak.

Could not.

Not would not.

Those moments when it felt like the limbo all over again, that eternal second before the finalization of my creation and I gained solid form, where I was no less me and could not yet name myself as Sombra as anything other than I, me, mine-

I am.

That was me before Sombra could follow those primal words, and I could only communicate with images and concepts that I had within me. Then, I only lacked defining features, if you looked for the physical alone.

That was the eternal second.

It was.

It was neither frightening or entertaining, but I remember craving to exist more and more with each little fragment of the eternal second. I fought even then, clever maneuvers of magic that had yet to weave itself properly before it was over, and I stood in a tower of stone with another's tears on my cheeks.

I am.

It was.

I remember those eight years, though. I was quite literally speechless where pained gasps were the only sounds I could make for words that might take days or weeks to come back, and language was robbed in its finer points for me; I knew only a hoofful of words that flurried about in my mind.

And they were all drowned out by the scream.

I only knew that I am Sombra.

Everything else would follow quickly, like a building collapsing. I was there and back again form a more horrifying and grounding version of the eternal second while he laughed as I suffered.

There's too much clarity for any of that to be a hazy fever dream. Nothing like that - as alive am - is so tame to warrant such a degrading form of remembrance. She's a bit like that time, almost like all the parts that I loved when what would become my blood was the thinnest most raging magic coursing through an ether, and all else of existence that was the best. Those have fondly ingrained themselves into my immortal memory.

I cannot love them, though.

I love myself, Sombra.

I love her, Luna.

Something as plain as that experience cannot be loved by me. Yet, she reminds me of all the most awesome parts at times. It took me a long time to realize this. Only more exhilarating, more unique.

Better.

That however, is only one small and almost petty reason why I love her.

I shifted my position on the dark-leafed deciduous tree that let me know I was in one of my dreams. The soft purr - the name was starting to stick - that I had been making slips into a short trill. I clear my throat and lean my head back, glaring at the canopy of trees. I could see no light coming through, no sky.

There are no stars here.

There's no sun, either.

Yet, I can still see my surroundings clearly. How dreadfully inaccurate. I need to teach myself to have dreams with a balanced amount of symbolism, entertaining settings, and proper lighting that doesn't get old the first few times.

With a short sigh, I teleport to the ground and make my way to the clearing. The forest hasn't healed entirely yet. Only a few blades of grass poke out of ash and the scars of black, fresh burns have dulled to muted grays. They aren't anywhere close to a nice shade like my coat, and instead look dry and a bit powdering. The lighter shades streaked through the ash-patches mixing poorly with the darker companions. It gives the neighboring green shots a poor aesthetic.

My gaze drifts over the rest of the clearing. It feels neither cold nor warm, and all traces of Onyx's presence feel awfully stale. The two paths that are within view are an expected sight, and empty.

I dig the metal soles of my boots into the mixture of ash and soil. It doesn't feel unpleasant, so I allowed my boots to be retracted into the plain silver bands right below my knee. The ground was soft beneath my hooves.

There was a path I had not seen before, and it was the strangest of the three by far. It was untouched by the light, leaving it shadowy and even more claustrophobic than it looked. The trees looked ready to collapse in on themselves, weaving a tangled canopy where ones own thoughts looked like they too could have the same affect, with nothing at all to distract from this horrific variety of isolation any traveler of this road would experience. I absolutely do not want this, to ever walk this road, where even the isolation I love could somehow become a cruse.

Still, the most peculiar thing about this path were the ornately carved wooden frames caught in the trees' limbs. Where some work of art would be fixed, only dark-leaved branches clawed their way through the opening, losing the most of the frames in the depth of the foliage.

My only response to the sight of this road was to dig my hooves into farther into the dirt. Immediately after doing so, I felt a familiar presence of magic from my left, washing over me in a heavy wave that usually has a sort of calming influence in some scenarios when I would usually panic or prove to be more volatile than usual.

I sense a disturbance in the usual aura patterns I feel in the clearing, and the sensation that bathes my coat tells me she is the nervous one. I instinctively bristle at the power that I alone feel, even if it isn't unstable yet. My ears prick up - in both concern and excitement - before her steps can be heard. They are always quiet, but I still hear them before she even calls my name.

"Sombra?"

"How are you here?" I call out, turning to see where she's even coming from.

My eyes drift past the first three only to find a fourth, and she is there.

"I can visit dreams," she says simply, walking past the thorns and brambles that choke the path she walks upon, and I see that the road is glass beneath her.

This.

It's important - just like every other esoteric detail here - and it worries me.

"Since you didn't bother to send word of your arrival, I can't exactly say the place," - I gesture around to this mess of a forest - "is clean."

A smile plays at her lips, and even though she is reserved the subtlest signs tell me how eager she is to leave the path, wings ruffling slightly as she makes her way closer to me.

"Welcome anyways, Luna."

I know she heard me, but she looks around without responding. Her ever-curious eyes are looking over everything with a straight-faced expression of quiet determination, and the hints of anxiety flashing briefly. I watch her gulp slightly and they vanish, or more accurately, they were put aside.

"How long has this dream troubled you?"

"What makes you think I've had it for a while?"

"You have that look in your eyes once more - your 'I'm thrilled to be doing this again' look."

"Good eye."

"Why, thank you."

I shifted a hoof, pushing the dirt beneath them about while my gaze rested on her. "This is both the third time I've had this dream, and the third time in my life I've ever had a dream when sleeping."

A look of mild confusion works its way into her features, and she gives me look that asks to be answered with a light air of command to it.

She's so royal in birth alone, that were she any but herself I could hate her just for that. I tolerate Mac's crown since her own rear marks her as the perfect candidate for sitting on the Crystal Throne. Purple Eyesore is merely another royal's pawn turned royal herself - it's her master and that master's perspective on things, as well as the treatment of Luna in the past - that adds so many reasons for me to despise her.

"Do you know what this dream means?" I know by her tone that she's testing me.

"Obviously there's no clues that could possibly lend any help to the Right-Honourable Lord Sombra-"

"Forgive my interruption, but this is very serious. Your dream is not a puzzle, but a question that you are asking yourself. Any answers - the roads - are things you already know you can do or have. This may fell silly to you, and it may not, but these paths are not as innocent as they appear upon glance and after a brief moment or two of pondering."

I say nothing in response.

"These are things that you refuse - options given by others. Even though these roads are all unavoidable options that only you can take, you still abide by your nature to rebel. In doing so, you have given yourself more time to choose wisely. You do not want any of these, and I can see why."

I don't feel as comfortable here as I did alone.

"This is a milestone in your life, and an important one. I have guided ponies in their dreams before - foals who have never had to walk alone, and rely on the often inadequate help of others instead of looking to themselves. When they do, they often find confusion and fear, not being solitary creatures like we are."

"Get to the point."

She gives me a look full of worry.

"You don't hide you from anypony, but you don't let anypony get to know you if you don't want them to."

"I said get to the point. Telling me things about myself that I already know isn't doing that."

"I told you I trusted you, and you told me that you love me. Even though you open up around me at times, never once have you ever said that you trusted me."

My heart sinks in despair, but not because she's right or because I didn't know this. Of course I knew this, it was about me, and I know everything about myself.

I just have to remember to breathe and control my shaking just enough to let me run anywhere. I want this instead of even trying to confront the horrific alternative that I can't bear to consider.

"You have every right not to trust anypony before all of this."

There's nowhere out of this forest.

"I've never had rights before; what makes you think I have them now?"

Why does she looked as if somepony hit her after that response? I don't want her to look like that because of me. I don't want to have to hurt her for pressing too much. She's not a fool like Purple Eyesore, an enemy like Celestia, or disposable enough in the end like Mac.

I can't touch her. I don't want to scare her. I'm not going to tell her. I'm just going to stand here, block everything out, and close my eyes. When I open them again, I won't hear the thunder of my racing heart or anything at all. I'll never have to hurt the one I love.

I just light my horn and let my magic take its toll, and all feeling in my chest dissolve rapidly. I think it's even going to work...

Everything comes rushing back as I collapse into the hooves of Luna, who dashed over to catch me before I finished the spell. The light on my horn is gone, and I feel like I've been choking, but I'm not surprised. After all, I just tried to turn my lungs into shadow, which would have destroyed my body if I hadn't tried to stop myself from suffocating.

But this is a dream. A dream where I have ended up in the embrace of Luna as we both sit on the grassy forest floor together, and she's got my back pulled up so close against her chest and her forehooves wrapped under mine so tightly.

She's afraid I'll leave.

Again.

How could I try to do something like that to her a second time?! I think, hiding my face in my forehooves.

She knows what I tried to do, or at least some of it. She always has been the clever one.

Her magic feels wonderful; I could just sit for weeks and let it flow in the air like a peaceful sheet. Right now, she's worried as Tartarus about me, so the wafting sheet of pleasant aura is like an oddly comforting shroud centered around me while she buries her face in my mane and cries.

No matter how much she tells me I'm not a monster, and no matter how much I've started to believe her, however quietly, I feel like one right now.

"Part of love is trust, Sombra. We both know this, so why won't you just trust me after all this time? I, of all creatures, would not hurt you. Isn't there any way I can convince you of that?"

I inhale deeply before speaking in as low a voice as possible. "You've already hurt me once."

"When we fought all those years ago?"

I shake my head slightly, so I don't disturb her. She nuzzles me through my own mane, and I feel her tighten her embrace as much as possible without wounding me, her cheek pressed close to mine.

"It was when I ran away, wasn't it? Do you hate me for-"

"I don't think I could ever truly hate you."

I can feel her soft breaths as she relaxes her grip a bit. "I used to think you did. Ever since you set hoof on the Sky Scraper I worried you might hate or dislike me, but you loved me all along."

I lean back, closer to her. "Mmm-hmm." My eyes are still closed. I don't want to see anything or anypony right now, not even her and I.

"I know that you fear being hurt again, and having to endure everything you did, I can see why you fear that. You love yourself so much that to be pushed to the - nay, having to live on the breaking point of even the strongest mortals on a good day would have been one of the worst things for you, was it not? Having to watch yourself be hurt, unable to heal yourself, and to be made to do things you never wanted to do."

"I wanted to live so badly, Luna. Onyx thirsted for blood the moment we met, and even before that, but I just wanted to live. My wish then was to be alone and explore the world. How ironic it was that, I, who wanted to live more than anything, hated the life I lead. Mostly, I hated the ponies in it."

For a single minute, I try to just breathe and lie in Luna's hooves, ignoring the dismal, sour feeling that spreads throughout me.

Just one minute, and it's broken shortly after it begins because of Luna whispering in my ear, my eyes widen at her request. I sit up, and turn around to look at her, the back of my cloak still bearing her warmth.

"Are you joking?"

She offers a sweet, wholly earnest smile, her mouth closed and conveying her usual playfulness mixed with the wisdom I appreciate, all with a curve of her lips. "I am not."

I turn around fully so I sit right across from her, and take one of her forehooves in my own, she squeezes mine and even though he smile does not disappear, it is not nearly as big as it was a moment ago.

To fulfill her request, I sit forward just enough to keep from falling over and kiss her. I don't kiss her on the cheek, as I have at other times, but kiss her as she kissed me all those years ago, when we had only a shared misery and a longing for freedom in common.

But unlike that incident, the other party - in this case, Luna - kisses back.

I don't pay attention to how much time passes. It turns out that is quite mutual, but she pulls away after some time, that same ageless smile of wonder - and even a bit of bashfulness - on her face.

"See, Sombra? Good dreams or nightmares-"  I'm somewhat shocked with her casual usage of the word 'nightmare', considering its origin, but keep a neutral expression "-I promise I will be here for you. Asleep or awake; night or day; mirth or misery, and much more. I'm not going to abandon you to your panic."

I look at her, sitting among the grass in all her resplendence, without looking a bit out of place. Her gleaming eyes are looking straight at me. As always, she was the only one who could match my own unwavering stares.

I speak not a word.

"You do not have to lead yourself everywhere if you trust somepony else, sometimes you can follow if you trust another to guide you, or you could choose to work with the one you trust, whether it be following when you would normally lead, the other way around, or working with none to lead and none to follow."

...The last one is something like everything I've ever wanted, and I don't need any magic to tell me that.

She stands and holds out a forehoof, her cool gaze filled with a depth I had never seen in all I had come across, myself excluded.

I was never told how far I had fallen in my life, because to fall from somewhere, one had to be somewhere. Onyx had always tried to enforce that I was nothing. I always knew better, but despite the lack of truth to any of his claims, each lie was like a brick, growing heavier and heavier as time in the Empire passed and he only tried to drag me farther down.

He was completely oblivious to how I never stopped rising.

Tonight, I rise again so I can grab her hoof once I am able to stand. Her horn glows and parts the trees, like violent spears bright sunlight falls past layers of leaves so the forest is no longer in limbo.

From there, a fifth path is seen by both of our eyes. The dense forest marked by no signs of fire is peaceful. Neither of us hesitates to chose the fifth path, a key to both of our futures, as separate or intertwined as they may be. We've both come so far on our own, when the most important choices of the rest of our lives would be made, so this feels almost like a break. Us two, we always knew who we were in a world so apt to don masks and remain on a stage so limited in all but tragedy. Or, that was how she had put it a long while ago, before we ran away from each other. I didn't know what exactly she was talking about, but easily understood the main idea of what she said.

As we walk the chosen route where none have gone, moonlight and darkness in alternating patterns can be seen past the leaves as we get further from the light with each step.