Cadance, Shining, Flurry, I’m a rapist and a murderer.
The words were there, right on the tip of Cheval’s tongue, and she should have been saying them. They should have been the first words out of her mouth as soon as she arrived home. She shouldn’t have broken down in tears, she shouldn’t have let them take her into the palace and into her bedroom, she shouldn’t have let them get anywhere near her. On the theory that she was still a princess of the Crystal Empire with some level of authority, she should have called for the guards and had herself arrested on the spot.
Or executed.
But she didn’t do any of that, because it wasn’t enough that she was a rapist and a murderer, she was a liar too – lies by omission, outright falsehoods, misdirection, she’d used them all on herself and others. So the changeling that had been forced on the nominal rulers of the Crystal Empire wore Flurry Heart’s form and lay on a bed she didn’t deserve with her pillow in stolen hooves and a stolen face buried in the pillow. The tears were real enough.
She didn’t know how long she spent crying, but the sun was sinking beyond the horizon on her bedroom window by the time she finally lifted her head from the pillow. Flurry was still there. She’d known, of course, since a mixture of worry and anger and love had been pouring off of the alicorn the entire time. Cadance and Shining Armor weren’t there…which was stupid of them, given what she’d looked like when she stepped off the train, what she still was behind the illusion. She shouldn’t have been left alone with anypony.
Flurry had noticed Cheval’s movement, and looked to her. She didn’t smile, and Cheval was glad of that. “You…kinda’ smell,” Flurry said.
Cheval was less glad of that, even though she could sense that the grim attempt at comedy was soaked in worry. She looked away from Flurry and at a crystal wall instead. “You do,” Flurry continued. “I’m not surprised, you never notice how you’re smelling, even when you – ”
“Where’s Mo – where’s Cadance? Shining Armor?” Cheval interrupted. She could feel them, their love for her, somewhere in the palace.
Flurry took several seconds to answer. “Mom and Dad,” she said. That was it. Just who they were to Flurry and who they couldn’t be any longer to Cheval, not where they were.
“Where are they?”
Cheval felt movement on the bed, then hooves on the crystal floor. “Reading Amaryllis’ ultimatum. Talking it over. Figuring it out, deciding what’s best.” Flurry had come up alongside her, knelt down so she was eye level with Cheval. “I can get them.” Cheval looked to Flurry, the sister she had been forced on. A normal pony would have felt the love coming off of her, nevermind a changeling. The undeserved love. Flurry Heart loved her.
She really was the stupid one, wasn’t she?
Cheval sloughed off Flurry’s stolen form, took on her real one, the one with a carapace and holes in her legs and fangs. Her bed creaked a little at the sudden change in mass. Flurry opened her mouth to speak, but Cheval beat her to it, the words pouring out as quickly as they could, before she had any chance to think about stopping herself.
“I’m a rapist and a murderer. I raped a griffon. His name was Gideon. I made his ex-girlfriend watch…her name was Gia, and I’m the one who broke them up. I’m pregnant too. I enthralled griffons I pretended were my friends, I don’t even remember who, to make sure no one interrupted me. Then when Amaryllis came to get me I made them all attack her, but it wasn’t Amaryllis, they just killed a drone she had sent. And then Amaryllis’ other drones and some Revolutionary Guard I think she enthralled but maybe not killed them all. That’s why I stink. I’m covered in blood and cum.”
Flurry froze after the first word, and all the love that Cheval had felt sputtered and faded to nearly nothing. She remained still for a few more seconds as Cheval continued, but eventually stood and turned around, walking away at a deliberate, quick pace. The last words that Cheval said to her were as the youngest alicorn was going out the door.
Cheval was alone. She buried her head in her pillow again, reaching out, feeling, wondering where the unicorn and alicorn she’d been forced on were. Sometimes if she tried hard enough, followed the feeling of love enough, she could pinpoint where it was in the palace…
Half an hour later, by the time Flurry would have made up her mind about what to do with what Cheval had said and then gone to find her parents, she lost the sensation of Shining Armor's love. She sucked in a breath and held it. Moments later – for the first time in her life when both her mother and her were in the Crystal Palace – she felt Cadance’s love fade beyond her ability to feel it.
They’d hate her now. She’d be sent back to Griffinstone on the first train tomorrow, tried for what she’d done, executed. Either that, or they’d decide to turn her over to Amaryllis, give the monster she was back to the monster that had birthed her. Either way, they’d hate her, and she’d stop hurting them by her mere existence, being a weapon that could be used against them simply by being alive.
Cheval breathed out. It was difficult. It came out ragged, hardly getting by the lump in her throat. It felt as hard as breathing was after she molted.
“Good...” she began, but even as she started to say the words, she felt it again, a faint tickle the back of her throat that she reflexively swallowed and recognied the sensation of immediately...love. Love tinged with disgust and fury, but still love, getting closer to her room. First from Shining Armor, then Cadance.
Cheval's eyes were as wide as they could get when she heard the angry hoof-stomps on the floor of father and adopted mother entering the royal apartments and making their way to her room. Feeling...feeling like they did whenever they'd come to scold her after she'd done something wrong. The anger was multiplied a thousand times over, yes, but the love...somehow it was still there. It was all still there, even after what she'd told Flurry...what she'd told them.
They still loved her.
They still loved her.
Cheval screamed a sound no equine creature could reproduce. Her wings buzzed in fury. She put her fangs to use on the pillow underneath her and tore it apart, then tore apart her bed. The pair of Crystal Guard that patrolled the royal apartments rushed to the door, beating Cadance and Shining Armor to her as they sought to protect their sovereigns, but she hissed at them and used telekinesis to shove them away and back outside. That was about when her conscious thoughts ended for a time and there was just a vague sensation of noise and thrashing and destruction.
When she finally came back to herself, she was in her bathroom, clutching a piece of broken crystal-glass and trying as hard as she could to jam it into her throat at the soft gap in her carapace where the neck met the head. But her hoof was seized in a blue effervescence, halting it from doing more than mildly stinging while powerful white forelegs were physically trying to pull her own from her throat. In the shattered mirror, she saw Cadance behind her and Shining almost on top of her, both crying and shouting something, but she didn’t hear them.
“Don’t stop me!” Cheval screamed. Her horn glowed green as she tried to put her newfound magical ability to enthrall others to use. “Don’t stop me! Don’t stop me! DON’T STOP ME!” But it didn’t work. Shining Armor had been enthralled by a changeling queen once, one much older and stronger than Cheval, and it was never going to happen to him again. Her attempt didn’t work any better on Cadance.
Pink hooves joined Shining’s. Flurry Heart was there now, and Cheval wasn’t a match for the three ponies. Flurry grabbed the crystal-glass shard and yanked it from Cheval’s hoof, a slight spray of red blood hitting Cheval’s eyes as Flurry cut herself on it, adding pony blood to the griffin that still stained her. The blue glow of Cadance’s spread across all of Cheval’s body, and was joined immediately by Shining Armor’s and Flurry Heart’s, freezing her in place.
They tried talking to her, but Cheval didn’t listen. She screamed and struggled. She called them every single insult she could, the gist of which was calling Shining a whore and Cadance a moron and Flurry a retard, anything to get them to hate her so she could stop hurting them, but it didn’t work. Tears started falling from her as she shouted. Cheval had been sure she’d cried all the tears she possibly could have had left in her last night, but apparently not.
At some point, the palace physician arrived, and the Crystal Guard, taking over for the unicorn and pair of alicorns in holding her still. There was a needle and one-one millionth the pain that Cheval deserved. Then everything was dark.