//------------------------------// // W1 Mortal Enemies - The Sins of Empire by Cynewulf (AU, Drama, Sad) // Story: RariTwi Extravaganza // by RariTwi Squad //------------------------------// For the prompt MORTAL ENEMIES... The Sins of Empire by Cynewulf It is a chilling thing to watch someone you loved keep on moving and talking long after they’ve died. Chilling isn’t quite the word. My vocabulary fails me when it comes to her. If it were not a matter of survival in this brave new world of ours, my composure would likewise have failed long ago. But it is a matter of survival, and so my composure holds. Not that we see each other much. As I stride into the complex to greet the day, I am immediately mobbed by attendants. New designs straight from one of the nameless draughtsmares, stacks of forms and reports that need to be gone over with a fine tooth comb, errata from a dozen different desperate sources that all needed my personal attention right this minute, or a dozen different tragedies would blossom. Even before the Ultimatum that permanently dashed our hopes of a better world, I was used to this cacophony. So, before I reach my office I have signed untold parcels of Very Important Papers and sent aides in various directions. Logistics, the magic word upon which the world spins. Logistics are more important than bravery, skill, or numbers. Logistics wins wars, and logistics keeps them from happening in the first place. I had had this argument with Applejack, when the front lines were still around Tall Tale. When I close my door, I find that one of the cloud of importune underlings has snuck in. I can’t help but smile when I identify her. “Coco. It’s good to see you.” She bows slightly, and only then do I notice her saddlebags around the standard uniform. Poorly packed, as usual. Without her knowing, I fasten them closed more securely. “You as well, my lady.” “How goes Manehattan?” She grimaces, and I file that look away for later. I’ll have to ask Sharp Eyes to make a few calls. For now, I keep smiling. I don’t have to inquire as to what makes her make such a face: I already know that she’ll divulge everything. And she does. She glances around furtively, seeming suddenly nervous. I let her. She has nothing to fear from the Empress, at least not here. Every other inch of Equestria might belong to her, but my office is mine, and nothing penetrates. “The Empress’ demands have been… They’ve been a bit unreasonable. Not impossible! I mean, I don’t mean to imply that she’s erred in anyway, it’s just--” “She is very rarely rational,” I say flatly and examine my hoof. “Irrational, unforgiving, inflexible, and frighteningly inhumane. Celestia is many things these days. I’m not surprised to hear it. You’ll need to cook your books, my dear.” Coco stares at me with her mouth wide open. A younger me would have felt smug about this, to have so shocked by my candor some more flighty mare. This me that I am, on this side of the chasm of Might Have Beens, can only muster a dim annoyance. I tsk. “Don’t insult me, dear. You think I would let her worm her way into my sanctum? You’re quite secure here.” With a few sharp steps I take my seat behind the desk and swivel back and forth. “Have a seat. I have a few minutes, and young Flourite always brings enough coffee for three. He’ll be along shortly. Don’t worry, and please don’t startle him. He is a gentle soul. Tell me what she’s whined about now.” Coco seems frozen. I wait for a few beats, and then gesture at the chair. She shakingly takes a seat, I assume prompted on by remembered instincts of obedience from when we were simply in the business of fashion. “She… She wants more out of our factories than they can physically, um, put out. The tank production goals are just not reachable. Maybe if we had two years of peace, we could retool and expand, but she wants them met four months! I-I have the order! Let me, uh…” She brings out a manilla folder and I gently take it from her with my magic. While she sputters, I read over them.She’s right. Honestly, she’s probably being generous. This isn’t simply a bit unreasonable. It’s insane. I lay the folder down on the desk and massage my temples. “Idiocy,” I spit. “Everything since we first crossed into their territory has been absolute foolishness. I cannot even begin to describe the insanity of it all. Every little detail is inane nonsense piled on inane nonsense. I am so very tired, Coco. Very tired.” She stares at me like a cornered, trapped animal. Predictable, and yet sad. This age is unkind to all of us, and Celestia has a way of turning fine ponies into cowering minions. “It… I…” “Do you hesitate because you are afraid?” I ask, and pretend to look back over her reports, as if the question is unimportant. Don’t look them in the eyes. It’s become one of my cardinal rules. Don’t look them in the eyes until you know they are true--if you don’t give yourself away, you’ll only scare them off. And by them I mean any soul left in this mockery of Equestria who has the gall to wonder if perhaps there should be no “front lines” at all. “Yes,” she replies. “Yes, and I don’t know why you aren’t. She watches everything. Half of my staff is spies, Rarity.” The last bit ends in a kind of hiss, more tense than angry. “Half of my difficulties have been in making ponies whose only use is… is… tattling into something resembling competency!” I almost look up, but she’ll see my smile. I find I like bitterness in others more these days. I like the reminder that they care. “I want to go back to making dresses. I liked designing displays. I enjoyed the scarves and the suits and the hats and… and…” There was a knock on the door. Fast as I could, without moving a muscle, I silenced Coco with magic--I shut her lips a bit forcefully and cleared my throat. “Yes?” I needn’t have said anything. One of the clerks--Gentle Breeze, I think--burst into my office with a flushed face and wide eyes. “Pardon, my Lady, it’s just--she, ah… she wanted to see you and--” She pushes by him as if he weren’t there and I understand immediately. “Sparkle,” I say and nod slightly. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” She looks at Coco, and I swear if ponies could combust others with a look alone… But perhaps she can, now. Perhaps that is the kind of pony she became when our beloved leader got her hooves on my Twilight. “Leave us.” Coco and the clerk both fled swiftly, and when they left the door open in their haste, Sunrise Sparkle shuts it carelessly and stands with an imperious air before my desk. “It has been a year,” she said. “A rather eventful year at that!” I reply with intentionally fake cheer. “Look at all we’ve managed in the last twelve months. The execution of Chrysalis was certainly nice. I think my favorite part was the capitulation of the Polar Bear communities and Yakyakistan.Isn’t it precious how they all died together, wars days apart?” She doesn’t rise to the bait. She just stares at me. “What do you need, Inquisitor?” I ask, settling back into tired flatness. Fine. She won’t play. There’s truly nothing left of Twilight if she can’t even be bothered. This is a doll, a toy for a mad goddess to throw about and childishly hurt others with. “Many things,” she says. “Well, tell me. My personnel is at your service, and my person is as well between the hours of nine and six. I’m afraid that’s when I pack up for the day, regardless of the emergency. I’m rather frail these days, as you should know. I have a medical dispensation and everything.” The staring is unnerving. I am not so vain as to deny it. It’s less equine and more… predatory. It reminds me of a starving griffon, that stare. She’s hunting. Before I sally forth with some disarming wit, I go over a brief checklist in my mind. The bugs in the office were wiped in the last three hours. Hyacinth, the dear, always does a sweep in the morning before anypony arrives. The runes I carved in the walls have not been tampered with, for I would have felt it immediately. My staff here is all spoken for, except for those whom I have effectively isolated and rendered harmless to myself and others. She isn’t here for my seditious statements. But she probably does this staring to any and everyone she meets. To those whose soul is a hammer, all the cowering fearful of the world are nails. You used to be so different, Twilight, but the meticulous attention to detail is very You. “Why did you never write back?” I breathe in. No more games. She’s finally going to push the issue. “I have been remarkably busy, T… I have been remarkably, tirelessly busy. Perhaps not tirelessly. As you can no doubt see, with your astute eye for detail, I have bags under my eyes. I’ve not aged well, have I? Not how we expected. I am a busy and exhausted mare.” “I’m busy as well. I wrote.” Another breath. I hate you, Sunrise. Sunrise Sparkle. What a loathesome, stupid name that is. Sunrise, as if you could wash away the crimes of a generation with names that sounded cheerful. As if the juxtaposition of such a positive, happy thing with such a miserable, soulless personage wasn’t inherently abominable. As if that were your real name. “I will write you back,” I say, and it isn’t a lie. I had meant to answer her. Not because I care to, but because it prevents visits like this one. For every three letters she sends, I answer one. In the past, out of spite, I thought to keep it at a perfect ratio to drive her mad. But that took far too much energy, and it took far too much heart, and both are in shorter supply than rationed flour or salt. “I hope so.” She pauses. “I used to get a letter every week. Sometimes two.” “You used to have a different name.” Shit. I didn’t… but I did. I meant to say that. I’ve been far, far too reckless today and everyday recently. “I did. And you used to write.” “I have written,” I counter. “You have. In a way.” “Tw--Sunrise,” I begin, but she cuts me off. “I can hear how you say that name. You’ve always had a flair for the dramatic, Rarity. You aren’t as subtle as you think you are. You aren’t even close. You like to think of yourself as clever and witty.” She turns and examines one of my bookshelves. She moves on to the ponniquein in the corner wearing the first Mark I uniform I designed before the first war had even begun. I am still, in a very bitter way, attached to it. For all the misery that followed, I still enjoyed working on it and I’m still proud of that design. I can’t help but wonder if she’s going to use it and me as kindling. It would suit her new modus operandi, wouldn’t it? Purgation and cleansing by fire, that’s Celestia’s new motto, is it not? Harmony through Order. Order through Strength. “Your tongue is venomous,” she said. “You know the difference between poison and venom is easy to remember, once you know the trick? If something is venomous,” she tsked, and almost immediately my office felt warmer, “then when it bites you, you die. But if it’s poisonous, and you bite it, then you die.” She flicks the collar of the uniform, and I tense. But she moves on to the next bookshelf. “I suppose that makes you poisonous, then,” I say. “In that biting you these days is bound to be a pat way to acquire a swift ride down to Tartarus.” She chuckles. Or, well, she makes an approximation of a chuckle. One must be more than a shell to laugh, I find. “You know, Midnight Bloom thinks we should have you tried.” If she’s expecting panic, she’ll be dissapointed. “So I’ve heard. She’s also not subtle.” Sunrise turns and smiles brightly at me. “She is absolutely not. If I told you that I agreed with her, what would you say?” Composure, Rarity. Composure is what makes us great. “Then I would say that my views were vindicated, and I would probably make a rather daring but foalish gesture like asking for my choice of death or for an honest duel. Something grand, because you are quite right. I simply adore the theatrical. Which is why I’m less than impressed by what is happening in front of me, and of what you do as our mutual friend’s Inquisitor. I taught you that. I taught you to walk with a sway in your hips, with a gaze of steel. I am the one who taught you to have a firm, commanding posture. I know what you’re like when you have none of that. I can see the seams.” A pause, and then I can’t help but genuinely smile. “Seams. I suppose I’m still a dressmaker after all.” “I don’t need you to be impressed. I’m certainly not by your paltry attempts to upset me with your blasphemous attitude towards Her Holiness, Empress Daybreaker.” I sigh. “I used to think that even the suggestion of that was ludicrous. I wish I had laughed when I had the chance. So, am I to be taken away? Is the game up?” “No.” I stretch and stand up. Laying both hooves on the desk in front of me and leaning forward, I speak low and fast. “I knew as much. Celestia--I refuse to call her by that idiotic name she cooked up in whatever sweltering retreat warped her mind!--knows that she cannot replace me. We both know how the game is played, and even at her most insane and unreasonable, she has enough of a mind left to know that Rarity of Ponyville cannot be replaced. It was I that made much of her victory possible, when it was still Equestria we worked for. I didn’t fight or command, but I handled something far more important.” “Paperwork?” Sunrise asks and laughs. I don’t laugh. “Logistics, Sparkle. Logistics. Logistics are the sinews of war and of life equally. Logistics, the movement and management of ponies and material, is what makes the world work. I understood that when I was still running my boutiques. The difference between fortune and failure could often be a day delay on some important shipment. Supply and demand are in constant flux. In the world of fashion, one plans and makes contingencies and knows when to move, or one flounders and drowns. To take me out of my place… who would replace me? I love Coco to pieces, and she is a dear, but she couldn’t do it. Suri? Never. Braeburn, down at Ironpony? That bumpkin is a buffoon who got very lucky, and we all know it. Redmane, in Baltimare?” I laugh. “I wouldn’t trust him to wait on me at dinner, let alone manage the industry of the Empire.” “You’re bold for somepony in the presence of an alicorn given a blank check by a goddess to kill whoever she deems worth dying.” I sit back in my chair. “Because I’m not a fool. If you’re going to kill me, you’ll do it regardless. If you aren’t, then you aren’t. You’re warped, Twilight, but you aren’t blind. It’s me that enables this awful nightmare to an extent. Imperial Wartime Industry Commissariat. It’s my work that keeps the tanks running smoothly, dear. It’s my paperwork that makes sure that every frightened pony pulled from their life to die in Nova Griffonia at least has a uniform, some armor, and a gun that works. The way I see it, I win regardless. If I die, then the nightmare is over. If I live, then I live.” She stares at me again. “Why don’t you write?” I look down at poor Coco’s reports. Tanks. Shells. Armor. Uniforms. Treads. Coffins. “Because, Sunrise, I used to write a wonderful mare named Twilight Sparkle. She was kind and intelligent and so very curious. She was full of life and loved learning. She taught me many things, and in turn I taught her what I knew. We shared so many beautiful moments together.” I look up at her. “But she’s dead now, and I think I can be forgiven for not wanting to write mewling letters to the mare who devoured her and wears her face like a prize.” I look back down, and pretend to read. She doesn’t say anything for a minute, perhaps more. I suppose this is it then. This is the last day. But it isn’t. I hear her say, softly, “I’ll be waiting for that letter,” and then the door shuts. “And I’ll be waiting until I find a cure for what ails you, Twilight” I say, satisfied that she isn’t listening in. “Even if it takes me until Celestia’s killed everyone besides the three of us.”