A command of three words would seem to be very, very simple. A foal should be able to carry them out with ease. She should have nothing to worry about as she looked up at the sky with eyes that saw past a scarred moon and into some shadowy place she could not be shaken from, even if anypony was there to do so.
Her legs were locked in place and she stood stone-still.
Do not move.
So she did not. She remained in a ruined castle, breaking around her as she broke within and her mane hung limp about her face.
Do not cry.
Celestia did not cry. She stood still and upset, but pristine all the same. She had her composure slipping, but nopony was around for it to matter... but she still tried to regain it.
It didn't really work. She was tired and hurt, and she hated that. Who had she helped in all of this? Who? Nopony. Nopony at all. Luna was gone.
Luna was gone.
She wanted to sleep so badly. She wanted to blink the world away, but it would not go. She stared into space, quit literally, and waited for Luna to tap her on the wither and tell her-
Something.
She wanted normalcy back, and this was not that. She was begging inside, a sea of unbearable silence that pleaded over and over again for anything at all. An answer, maybe?
Anguished was a good word for this.
She wanted to sit down and sleep the night away. All Celestia wanted was to curl up on her plush bed in her shining, clean home and fall into the deepest sleep possible and say good night to Luna, because hadn't she always done that, and then-
Never fall back out of it.
She wanted her sister back, and here she was standing up at the sky with a stiff an unnatural pose with all these thoughts like needles being driven into her head.
She forced herself to look up higher at the oddity apart from the stars - the moon glowing there for all to see.
And the scars on it, too.
Celestia wondered if the worst scars were the ones everypony could see.
...Had Luna had them? How long? She certainly had them now...
For a minute, her mind was just some kind of static she did not bother to hear past as she stood on, with her ears pricked forward to catch something she was supposed to hear.
Say good-night to Luna.
The little voice made Celestia's blood run cold and the echo of it wouldn't fade.
Her mouth tried to to form the words and she managed a creaking whimper.