It wasn’t until Rarity cut her tongue open on the knife that she realized things had changed.
The knife, along with a few droplets of blood, fell down to the concrete below. She scrunched her face up like a trumpeter hitting a high note and squeezed her lips shut, partly to stifle a cry of pain and partly to make sure no more evidence spilled over her trail. Tonight had been bad--a failure, if not for the fact that she had succeeded--but, thank the gods, tonight would end. For better or worse, she would wake up tomorrow a free mare. She would make some tea. Her cup would runneth over and she would feel the great burden of wealth slide from her shoulders and into her coffers where she would keep whatever sum the Crystal Heart fetched from her Griffonian contacts. Noir would be a distant memory, a flickering shadow thrown across a shady street in the part of town she would never visit again. She could live the life of a true artist, unshackled by wealth. She could sleep without worrying about being firebombed.
A good night’s rest always made her feel better.
Blood pooled in her mouth. She sucked air through her nose and tried to think of a solution. Spit or swallow? Full or hollow? She tried to be artistic about it and pick the taste apart for all its foul intricacies, but focusing on it only made it worse. Her whole face ached. She moaned and curled up until she felt her rear hooves start to slip. She stretched each hoof one at a time and redoubled her grip. It wasn’t too far a fall--but nopony falls if they can help it.
What was she even doing up here? None of this was a part of the plan. She was no Twilight Sparkle when it came to planning, but she had experience in this kind of thing.
Then again, look what happened to Twilight Sparkle.
She panicked and swallowed. Bitter iron touched the back of her throat. Her gut wrenched, and she heaved a mouthful of blood all over herself. It clotted in the creases of her clothes, cascaded down the twisted metal in channels. She teetered atop the chain link fence, forelegs bowed on the top pipe, hind legs shoved through the holes of the fence, jaw agape in pain. Mute and crippled.
Rationalization wouldn’t help. She thought herself down the fence a dozen times before her own blood reached the spot where her rear legs clasped the fence. She felt herself slipping, but couldn’t focus. The gash on her tongue wouldn’t stop bleeding. Lights soared into the night sky from the direction of the mayor’s office.
Three hooves slipped simultaneously. The other one held on tight, but one was enough. She pinwheeled over the fence and fell over her knife. The backpack containing the crystal heart smacked against the ground like a hundred panes of glass cracking all at once. Sirens cascaded through the streets and into the endless night time starscape above her rattled head.
At least she had fallen the right way. She wouldn’t have to scale the fence twice.
Slowly, in jagged breaths, Rarity realized the fall had knocked the wind out of her. Or maybe the knife had just run her through and collapsed her lung. Rarity didn’t know what getting the wind knocked out of her felt like. She didn’t exactly know what having a lung collapse felt like either, though. She rolled onto her side with a wheeze and clutched her side, half expecting to find the blade lodged hilt-deep beneath her ribs.
But it wasn’t. A quick look over her shoulder revealed it was still on the ground, just lying there.
The next breath came a little easier, though when she pushed her luck and tried to pick herself up her vision swam and she collapsed again. Some suffering.
So she did what she could without moving too much. Slid her knife back into its strap on her hind leg, checked her mane (it was ruined), made sure she wasn’t broken (she wasn’t). The Crystal Heart still needed checking, but her backpack had fallen out of her reach, and she wasn’t about to suffer the indignity of crawling through the dirt and grime to get it. It could have cracked during the fall. Sure sounded like it did, at least. Would it sell as well with a crack in it? It may have just made a funny sound when it hit the ground. It hadn’t exploded, so it still worked properly. Magical items had an unstable nature to them; something to do with leylines or pressure differentials, something like that--Twilight knew more about it than she did, as always--that made them prone to explode if they got chipped or cracked. The Crystal Heart had enough magical energy to level a city, so the lack of cataclysmic explosions played in her favor, as always. It probably just came down at a weird angle. Twilight would know why--probably something about lattice bonds and internal pressure and vibrations and sound. She’d be able to explain it, as always.
She looked up at the night sky and saw red. Sirens from all over the city called out for her.
Was Twilight even alive right now? The last time Rarity saw her before the guards got her--had she exploded? No, that was the door. Right. But she was hemorrhaging magic--right from her neck, too. How much magic could one pony lose before they turned inside out? In a lot of ways, Twilight was like the Crystal Heart; fragile and powerful and coveted by criminals. Her muscle and sinew and bones and guts were stuffed with immense magical potential energy. A big enough crack and she would explode, too. Maybe she already had, sometime in the past month, and Rarity hadn’t noticed. Twilight Sparkle kept many secrets. All this blood and bruising--it might just be fallout.
More blood leaked from the side of her mouth, but she payed no attention to it. One drop or a whole bleeding puddle--evidence was evidence. She just had to hope nopony would notice it, or the suits at the weather factory would schedule a surprise thunderstorm to keep everypony inside while the military locked down the area.
Had Rarity killed her best friend?
She crawled towards the fence, hacking blood, very unladylike, grabbed the bottom links, curled up into them, and sobbed. Was this the kind of pain that haunted great artists? If so, she wanted nothing to do with art ever again.
The tears only lasted a few minutes. When they were out and done with, she rubbed her eyes and stared into space. The stars would have been beautiful, if they weren’t clipped by the buildings and washed out by the streetlights. She could still see the big dipper, except for its handle. The remaining stars formed a great big indigo box in the sky.
Rarity rolled over. She didn’t want the stars anymore. Stars--what were they? Nothing but explosions. Maybe if she were in a different mood or a different life, they’d hypnotize her. But she had seen enough explosions for tonight.
Speaking of explosions, and lack thereof--Rarity pushed herself away from the fence and propped herself up on two hooves, reclining like she might on a fainting couch. In this position, she scooted across the ground towards her bag. Dirt be damned--the ensemble hadn’t survived the getaway unscathed, and she was going to burn it after the job was done anyway. Evidence is evidence, no matter how chique.
She got to the bag and unzipped it. Inside sat one, intact, not-exploding crystal heart. Though the glow was too revealing to conduct a thorough check, it was safe to assume she hadn’t damaged it.
With her mind and her loot accounted for, Rarity stole away towards the shady side of town.
As she snuck through the backstreets and shallow shadows, something occurred to her: when it’s night, every part of town is the shady part of town.
“Hmm,” she chuckled, “shady part of town.”
The thought took her away from the dirt and crime for a candid moment. In her little joke, she was Rarity, performing a late-night walk through her hometown. The trees rose up on either side and stared curiously at the display, twisting and parting and throwing beams of moonlight her way to show their appreciation. Here she didn’t have to hide. The streetlamps cast fat pearlescent spotlights on Noir’s business. The street was completely empty. Not a police carriage in sight, not one red or blue light. No friends she had killed.
Still.
She looked right. Then left. Then right again. Then left again. Then she repeated the whole process three more times. Her horn lit up, illuminating a nearby alleyway. Then she looked right again. Then left again. If it hadn't been as deadly important as it was, she would have sung to her movements. You do the pony polka and you turn yourself around--
But it wasn’t a game. That’s what it’s all about. When had her own antics ceased to amuse her? When had she lost her luster? Perhaps the crystal heart had leeched it--that’s why it shone so brightly tonight of all nights, when she wanted it more than ever to flicker and die.
As she trotted up to the door, she briefly wondered whether or not Twilight would try to kill her. It seemed ludicrous--but then again Rarity had just knowingly dragged herself along the ground like a wounded animal and ruined her outfit beyond repair, so all bets were off.
She got to the door and eyed the building. The walls were a rough royal purple, almost the same as her tail. Flakes of orange rust sat in clumps on the ground. The thought of all that metal dandruff on her hooves made her wince--but the door would not knock itself.
One-and, four-and--,and...--one-,,four.,.two-,...e-uhm--
“Uh--Snowball,” Rarity called into the door, “I’m sorry, but I forgot the knock. It’s Rarity. You need to let me in. It’s urgent.”
No reply.
She looked around again, the same old tired tiring dance, and knocked again.
The door, hinges and all, collapsed inward. It fell atop something bulky lying in the doorway that kept it from settling evenly on the floor. The second door was cracked wide open and leaning against the frame like an aged figure draped across the length of the doorway.
Rarity looked over her shoulder again and dug out her knife.
Experienced hooves kept her silent as she creeped over the door and peered through the hole. It occurred to her that if somepony was waiting inside for her, she would probably be dead in a few moments. All the best artists were cut down before their time--but Rarity didn’t want to die, not tonight, not ever. She wanted to make dresses and money until the end of time.
“Noir?” she called. No use hiding herself, though she looked in no way presentable for a formal meeting with all the blood and grime clinging to her fur. Given the state of the door as she pushed it aside, she doubted Noir would be as concerned with her appearance.
Rarity tried the lightswitch to no avail. Whatever had torn the doors open must have shattered the lights, too. Moonlight slid through the open windows and diffused halfway to the floor. Her coat would have looked beautiful in this light. “Noir?” she called a second time. Her voice rang against the wall as if the whole room had splintered. She briefly wondered if he was dead--but of course he wasn’t, Rarity was just being an idiot and stamping her hoofprints onto what looked like a vacated crime scene. What she needed was light. If this was a trap, if she was about to fight, let her kick and scream in the light.
Rarity opened the bag and took out the crystal heart. As she held it up, she let her other hoof tighten around her knife. “I’ve got it,” she taunted the shadows as they fell away under the weight of the light, “don’t you--”
In the gentle, shimmering glow of her prize, she saw Noir.
She took a shaky step towards his body and tripped over a bar of gold lying on the floor. She let out a yelp as she went down. Her muscles ached. Her night was supposed to be over. First Twilight, now this--did ponies just die by association now? A pony who lives in the shadows is condemned to die in the shadows, but Rarity was still alive, wasn’t she?
Maybe she just had the wrong perspective. Maybe she was the shadow, corrupting the good, murdering the rest, falling over time and money indiscriminately. First on her knees, then on her hooves, she approached Noir.
Blood had sprayed from the five gaping holes in his chest onto the desk. All the war stories she had been told by bold newspaper headlines had made it explicitly clear what happens to a pony when you shoot them, but not until she saw it up close did she realize how violent a death by gunfire must be.
She reverently nudged Noir’s chair. His body spun slightly until one of his legs hit the side of the desk and stopped him.
She stared into his eyes.
“Well,” she whimpered, “I guess this means my debt is gone.” Somehow, she laughed. She clamped her hoof over her mouth, but not before she had a chance to hear herself. Something about her voice had broken. Something about her mind had broken. Tears dropped lifelessly down her cheeks. This was supposed to be poetic and tidy and artistic. Here was something that could be twisted into divinity. Here was god of the underground with five bullets in his chest! Why did she sound like the criminal?
She reached into the unlocked bottom right drawer and pulled out Noir’s spotless revolver. Never mind hoofprints, never mind DNA. Her need was not pure, or lustful, or heartfelt. It was pathological.
She stuck it in her mouth.
The lights outside redshifted and subsided. The crystal heart glowed on and on and on.
She didn’t know what to do with her tongue. It just sat there in her mouth. Moving it left or right only made her taste the metal. She felt like vomiting again at the taste. Here was every ration card she had stolen during the war. Here were her fine exotic furs. Here was her god damn art and her god damn sacrifice. Dead with five bullets in his chest. Leveled to spin lead through her magical-neural relay and stop her dead--
A real artist might be inspired. A better pony might be horrified. Rarity tasted the metal and gagged. A real artist might appreciate this great tragedy as a large-scale work of art unfolding right before her eyes on a lifesized canvas. A real artist would swoon at the gore. A real artist would roll in the blood, giggle, drink it. A real artist would feast upon the flesh of the dead, suck the marrow from his bones. A real artist would assign some meaning to it all--any meaning, it didn’t really matter what. A real artist would contribute! A real artist wouldn’t just stand there. A real artist would add another shade of red to the floor.
Rarity tried to pull the trigger. Bitter iron touched the back of her throat. Her gut wrenched. The revolver tipped out out of her hooves. It fell with a thud into a pool of Noir’s blood. Some canvas.
More lights outside. Not for her, but close enough to remind her this was a crime scene now. The room went dark again as she shoved the crystal heart back into its bag. She took one last look at Noir’s body before her eyes could readjust to the light, an elegant and dead silhouette wrapped in one of her own custom tailored four-piece suits. An odd rush of pride swept through her, though it only made her shake more. He died in her suit. He died wearing her art. In a way, that made his body her own work of art. Some canvas!
Before she climbed over the front doors, she used her magic to pick up the bloody revolver from the floor. She dangled it a leg’s distance from her face, scrutinized the miniscule carvings on the side. Scoltcilian, a little gibberish calligraphy, and Noir’s old family seal. Five bullets. No serial number.
Shadows tilted off their natural axes, like their necks had been snapped. Deep, bleeding purple touched the walls. Rarity’s fur bristled as white light like a beam of moonlight fell across the revolver before her.
Without a second thought she furrowed her brow and vaporized it.
"Nasty business,” she whimpered, licking fresh blood off her lips. “I should--go home and make a dress.”