How can I explain away something I haven’t done?
If you can’t just hear me now, you’ll never trust anyone.
With all the crazy doubts you have, I’m truthful even still.
But if I can’t change your mind, then no one will.
Those words played in my head as I waited for Celestia to appear. I knew I needed to be proactive. I wasn't just going to keep sitting here waiting for something to happen. I needed to convince Celestia myself that her hate for me was irrational and she should help me. Fluttershy and Luna weren’t going to do it. Even if they tried to help me without Celestia, I didn’t think she’d let them get very far. Or, at the very least, she'd try to delay their progress. I knew that. I needed to take my fate here into my own hands.
Shortly before she left, I asked Luna to speak with her, and Celestia produced herself a little while later. She wore the same expression as always, and stood at the entrance of the bedroom, waiting for me to speak.
I took a breath. “I know you hate Sombra, and I know why, too. I feel bad about what he did, and I'm sorry about that. But I want to know why you hate me when you know I’m not him.”
I know I didn't do a very good job, but I tried to sound apologetic. I was a little sympathetic to her, but I mostly wanted her to know that she was being completely unreasonable to me.
“And why do such things matter to you?” she asked immediately.
I looked at her for a second, confused, then answered, “Um, because you wanted to kill me? I know you're upset with me, but I don’t want you to turn into Daybreaker and try to kill me yourself.”
“Then you should rest assured that I will not let some creature like Sombra turn me into a monster.”
“Okay, but…” I started, then stopped. I wasn’t going to go down the route I wanted to. I needed to stay on track and convince her to help me. “I mean, if you hate me so much, then you should want to help me so that I can get out of your hair. I mean, if you don’t want me here, and I don’t want to be here, then this problem should solve itself.”
“And what happens when we send you away and Sombra returns?”
“Then kill him! I don’t care! Do whatever you want! Just don’t make me stay here!”
She stared at me for a little while, taking in what I told her, and I added, “You don’t even have to do it for me. You could just do it to maintain whatever image you want to keep.”
“Are you threatening me?” she asked.
“Um, no,” I said quickly, trying to clarify what I meant. “But I don’t think Luna would appreciate it very much if you didn’t help me.”
“Are you suggesting that I’m shallow? Because if so, you should understand that if I did hate you as much as you say I do, then what you’re saying is very dangerous for you.”
“I- I just- I want you to help me! If you hate me that much, you should want to help me! You’re not supposed to be doing this!”
“And from what you say, you’re not supposed to be Sombra. It seems like we’ve both gotten our parts mixed up.”
I huffed at that and turned my head away from her, starting to feel hopeless. “Fine. Whatever. I’ll just wait for Luna and Fluttershy to help me. If you’ll let them.”
There was a long silence as I lay on the bed, waiting for Celestia to leave. However, she stood there, and I could feel her eyes staring at me, as though she was thinking. “When you came here,” Celestia suddenly asked me, “was there any gap in your consciousness?”
“What?” I asked back, confused, as I turned around to face her again. Her neutral expression was gone and was replaced with a scowl.
“Was there any gap in your consciousness when you arrived here?” she asked again, more forcefully this time.
“Um, no? What do you mean?”
“From one second to the next,” she told me slowly, as if speaking to a child, a frustrated tone in her voice, “was there anything that happened in between you being in your body and you becoming Sombra?”
“No. It was instantaneous, faster than a blink.”
“And what is it you were doing immediately prior to this?”
“Nothing! I was sitting at my desk!”
“Did you feel anything different before this happened?”
“No.”
“Is there any magic in the place you came from?”
“No.”
She scowled at me harder. “Do you understand how unbelievable your situation is? For everything you claim to be true, Sombra has to have found magic more powerful than anything we’ve ever known, in which case, we would not be able to let you leave.”
“If that’s true,” I countered, hating the way this conversation was going, “then why wouldn’t he have just enslaved the Crystal Empire again?”
“The answer is that he would have, which indicates only one other scenario.”
"And that is...?"
“That you’re lying. A much more reasonable explanation is that you are using your magic to make us see what you want us to see.”
“But Luna told me that Dis-”
“Despite Discord’s high opinion of himself, he is not as all-powerful as he claims to be. And even if he was, it still does not explain-”
“STOP!” I screamed, interrupting her. She looked at me like it was the last thing she expected from me, but I was fed up. I didn’t want to keep going around in circles with her. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do to convince you that I’m me, but either tell me that you’ll help me or that you won’t. I don’t want to wait around here forever thinking about how much you hate me, and I don’t want to waste time trying to get ponies to convince you to help me if it’s not going to matter.”
She thought that what he told her seemed honest, almost desperate.
“You’re being unreasonable, Celestia,” the alicorn princess thought, staring at the black-coated stallion.
She huffed silently at that. She wasn’t being unreasonable. It might have seemed that way because of Luna and Discord’s belief in him, but just because things seemed a certain way didn’t make such things true. While both of them could find the truth in many things, she herself had always been more knowledgeable with these kinds of things.
“That’s true, but as your sister told you, you’re letting your judgment become clouded. At the rate things are going, it’s only a matter of time before they all gang up on you. Do you not remember the fire that began to appear in your hair this morning? Are you trying to turn yourself into Daybreaker?”
She wasn’t going to become Daybreaker. She had too much self control for that. And even if she did, it would be Sombra’s fault for bringing himself here. It would actually work out quite well for him. Appearing out of the blue, tainting their minds so that she could turn into Daybreaker, and then, with her gone, he could rule over Equestria. The way things were going would turn out excellently for him.
“Let's presume that things are headed down that path. Is it not your duty to prevent such things from happening?”
The easiest way to do that would be to take Sombra out of the picture.
“How demented are you? How much sight have you lost? There is a quick solution to this. Publicly apologize, send him away, start a speech about how every creature needs friendship, and be done with it.”
And what if she didn’t want to do that?
“Then keep spiraling and lose everything.”
Celestia growled to herself at that. She didn’t want to help him. She couldn’t even bear to look at him. All she saw was her Sombra. Her Sombra, who became a villain because of this Sombra’s villainy.
“And what does that creature have to do with that? He has done nothing except cooperate with your requests. Moreover, he doesn’t want to be here, and you don’t want him here. As he told you, this problem should solve itself.”
And what happens when he isn’t Sombra? Does that demon come back into his body? The last time she saw him, he nearly conquered Equestria.
“Stop this right now. You’re the most important and looked up to pony in Equestria. If he is Sombra, he’ll reveal himself. If not, you’ll never have to deal with him again.”
Celestia stayed silent at that thought.
“Stop being irrational and direct your hate to something constructive. If you truly believe that creature is making a mess of things, then you should do everything in your power to send him away. If Sombra reappears after this creature is gone, then blast him with all your might.”
“Fine,” Celestia said to Alex after a very long while. “I will see what I can do, if only to get you out of my mane and to prevent you from disturbing the image I’ve worked to maintain. You've caused quite enough trouble for me as it is, and I now have to go through the trouble of repairing it.”
“Thank you!” Alex got out, exasperated, leaving out the fact that it was trouble she started for herself.
"However, once you're gone, if Sombra reappears, he will feel the full force of my rage."
"I don't even care because I'm not him."
“You should be ecstatic,” Celestia told her sister flatly as the two lowered the celestial bodies. “I’ve decided to help that creature.”
Princess Luna rolled her eyes at that. “Yes, I guess you could say that I am satisfied that you’ve decided to stop being so emotional and hateful towards some creature who has done nothing to you.
The white alicorn eyed her sister suspiciously. “Let me ask: why are you so quick to take his side?” she asked her seriously.
“Because I know that if I were not, you would strike that creature down without hesitation.”
She watched as Luna gave her a quick glance, then turned her attention back to the moon. She put her own attention back on the sun’s lowering, and began to think about the situation.
That being was not Sombra. She knew that. And yet, she couldn’t help the immense hatred she felt for him. If not that creature, then that body at least was responsible for the ponies she lost in her life. Even now, she knew that just the sight of it was clouding her thinking, which, in turn, was slowly causing her sister to turn against her, and would push away other ponies from her. Slowly, she could feel herself starting to crack.
It, of course, began with the death of Princess Amore. When Radiant Hope announced that Sombra had killed her, she herself felt as though she’d been physically stabbed. She was a very close friend, and had known her since childhood, and it was a tough blow to hear that she’d been lost. Not only her, though, but the entire Crystal Empire, which, as a result, caused Radiant Hope to decline her tutelage and abandon her destiny.
It might not have been so bad if she hadn’t lost the Sombra she loved to evil in the mirror world. Not just lost, but lost specifically because of this world’s Sombra’s evilness. Had he not been, then her Sombra might still be with her. But he had been, and what happened during her time in the mirror world was unchangeable now.
And now he was back, seemingly taunting her, causing more mischief as he made it so that Luna stood against her, as well as making another former student abandon being princess. And then, after that, to claim no wrongdoing… it burned her badly. It made her hate grow to think about.
“Calm down,” she told herself as she set the sun. “This is a very easy situation to fix. He’s not being malicious. He hasn’t tried to attack or make a move. He’s just…”
Infuriating was the word. She thought he was infuriating, but knew she had to put those feelings to bed. Anger, hate, and pain were awful emotions, dangerous emotions, to hold in. Too many times she saw what it did to other ponies, and knew that, as ruler of Equestria, she couldn’t allow herself to be consumed by them. She would control herself. She would control herself.