Rarity continued weeping. She was only vaguely aware at this point that she was on Twilight's floor in the library but that detail was unimportant at the moment. She didn't even know why she was there.
A gentle hoof on her shoulder and a faraway voice trying to break through her sorrow told her that Twilight was still there, trying to reach out to her.
"Rarity? Rarity? Rarity, please talk to me. Please tell me what's wrong!" she pleaded.
Tell her what was wrong? How in Equestria could she do that? It would mean instant death for her because Twilight would doubtlessly turn her in if she knew what had happened. Nopony could ever know what had happened tonight.
Twilight began stroking Rarity's mane. "Okay Rarity, I need you to calm down now. We can talk about what's wrong but you need to calm down. If you want I can go get some of the others and we can help you through whatever is wrong," said Twilight softly.
At the mention of the others Rarity's eyes widened and she bolted up and grabbed Twilight in her hooves. "No! I don't want to involve them, please don't involve them in this!"
"Okay, okay, I won't go get them," said Twilight soothingly. She began stroking Rarity's mane once more. "Shh, just calm down now and everything will be okay. I can make us some tea of you want me to, would you like that?" Rarity wiped away some tears from her eyes and nodded glumly. Twilight gave her a small smile and stood up. "Okay, I'll just be a minute. I'll bring some tea back for us and we can talk about what's wrong."
As Twilight walked into the kitchen to get some tea, Rarity briefly considered leaving the house and just running away from Twilight. Heck, she could run away from Ponyville too, out of Equestria if she needed to. But no, that would be foolish of her. Yet how could she face Twilight now? What was she going to tell her?
"Tell her, Rarity," she said so quietly to herself that she could barely hear the words coming out of her mouth. "Tell her and it will all be over; it can end for good."
"No, Rarity, it would destroy them. It would destroy all of them."
Rarity managed to sit up and stop crying just in time for Twilight to come in with a kind smile and two cups of tea. She placed one in front of Rarity before sitting down and placing another one in front of herself. Rarity took a shaky sip of tea and began to breathe deeply.
"Now, do you feel up to telling me what's wrong?" asked Twilight. Rarity met her gaze and all at once the tears came back despite Rarity's best efforts to hold them back. It took a few minutes for her to regain her composure.
"I...I..." She didn't even know where to begin, but she had to begin somewhere. "I... well..." Deep breath. "You know what my past is, Twilight, you know what horrible things that I've done in my life."
Twilight nodded and sipped from her own cup. "I had a feeling that this was about... that."
Rarity returned the nod. "Yes, yes it is," she said. She took another sip of tea before continuing. "It's just... in the first few years after you cleansed me with the Elements, I was very happy because I thought that the nightmare was over. I was free to live my life, confident that I wouldn't have to kill anypony ever again." She took a bigger sip of tea now. "But I was looking at the door to my basement again and I remembered what happened down there and I felt something that I never even thought to feel," said Rarity. The tears were coming once again and she drained her cup, hoping that the hot liquid would prevent them. No such luck. A fresh wave of tears fell from her face once more.
Twilight scooted over next to Rarity and pulled her into a hug. "Guilt," she said. "You're feeling overwhelming guilt right now."
Rarity nodded and sobbed into Twilight's shoulder. The basic story was a lie, of course, but the emotion was not. If Twilight believed the lie behind the real emotion then she would help her instead of turning her in.
Twilight patted her on the back. "Guilt and sadness are two emotions that the mind represses as much as it can to protect itself. In your case, your mind repressed the feeling of guilt for almost two years. You didn't believe that you could handle the guilt that would come from murdering almost a hundred beings and so you repressed that emotion for as long as you could. Now it's coming back."
Rarity nodded. She supposed that what Twilight was saying was true but she didn't really care about the technical aspects of it right now. "Help me," she pleaded. She didn't know how Twilight could help her in all honesty. How would such an innocent pony help deal with the guilt of a serial killer?
Sure enough, Twilight looked just as helpless as Rarity felt. "What do you want me to do, Rarity?"
"I...I don't even know," said Rarity. "Don't you have any ideas?"
Twilight furrowed her brow and closed her eyes. She was clearly thinking deeply about what to do. "I don't know how I can help you, Rarity. I mean, you were the first serial killer in Equestria in hundreds of years. Nopony alive has ever tried to be a therapist for an ex-serial killer."
Rarity looked up at her helplessly. "You can't help me?"
"Well, I think the only thing that I can do is be your friend. I am more than willing to talk to you whenever you need a listening ear."
Rarity sniffled a bit and wiped her eyes once more. "Can I have one now?" she asked.
"Of course!" said Twilight. "I saw what was down there, I can handle it."
Rarity nodded before looking around for a second. "Can Spike hear us? I don't want him listening in on this," said Rarity with a worried glance in the direction of Spike's basket.
Twilight shook her head. "He would sleep through a thunderstorm that was happening right inside the house, we're fine. Still, we can go into the kitchen if you want."
Rarity nodded and the two ponies stood up and walked into the kitchen. Twilight directed Rarity to a table and the two sat down. "Okay Rarity, what do you want to talk about?"
Rarity sighed. "Are you sure that you can handle hearing it? I'm one of your best friends, Twilight. Are you sure you want to hear stories about ponies that I've murdered?"
Twilight hesitated for a brief moment before answering. "I'll admit that it won't be an easy thing to hear, Rarity, but do know that I'd do anything to help you get through this and if the best way that I can do that is to listen to what you have to say, then I'll be here to do that."
Rarity's eyes filled with tears once more but she held them back. "Okay, if you are sure that you can handle it."
"I can," Twilight assured her. "Tell me what you want to say."
Rarity took a deep breath and averted her eyes down to the table. She couldn't look at Twilight while she was saying this.
"As you know, I have killed many ponies in my lifetime. I have to be honest, Twilight, most of them I don't regret. After the way Trixie and Gilda treated you, I don't think I will ever regret killing them. As a matter of fact there are only two that I will regret killing as long as I live." Rarity lost the battle with her emotions and she began crying once more. "A mother and her filly." Rarity heard Twilight give a small gasp of shock which only weakened her resolve. "Ever since I met you girls and became a wielder of an Element, I only wanted to kill those who deserved it. The mare and her filly most certainly did not deserve it.
"See, I heard the mare say something cruel to her daughter and I decided to kill her. I thought she was an abusive mother, Twilight, and that the filly would be better off with somepony else to take care of her, somepony who would love her. As it turned out, the mother had merely had a hard day and immediately regretted what she had said. When I went to kidnap the mother to kill her, the filly walked into the room and I had to take her too. They both ended up in my basement and...and..." Rarity couldn't bring herself to finish. She buried her head in her forelegs and began sobbing.
She was surprised to see that Twilight was saying nothing. She regained control and looked up at Twilight.
Twilight was looking at Rarity with an odd expression on her face. Rarity couldn't quite figure it out, but it looked like a cross between sorrow, sympathy and... contempt? "Twilight, please say something," begged Rarity.
Twilight took a deep breath before responding. "What..." Twilight's voice cracked and she cleared her throat before continuing. "What exactly should I say to you telling me that a bad judgment call on your part led to you butchering a mare and her innocent filly?" Twilight's face twisted into a snarl and she slammed her front hooves on the table. "What. The. Buck. Should. I. SAY?!"
The harsh tone of the last word made Rarity jump a little and she whimpered at the unicorn's fury. She began taking sharp breaths and had to concentrate for a moment before responding.
"Tell me whatever you think I deserve to hear," she whispered.
Twilight's averted her eyes and instead stared at the wall. "'What you deserve to hear?' Rarity, you deserve to hear me say 'I'm waking up Spike and telling the Princess about this'. You deserve to hear 'Get the buck out of my house and don't come near me or my friends for the rest of your pathetic existence'. You deserve to hear 'you're a monster. How could you do that? You're the scum of Equestria and you are not fit to exist!'"
Rarity sighed and looked down at the table again. "Then say it, Twilight. Go wake up Spike and—"
"But," said Twilight sharply, cutting off Rarity. "I won't say that because I know that's just my emotions getting the better of me." She looked back at Rarity. "You don't want that life anymore, Rarity. I know that if you had the chance to go back to the beginning and stop yourself from ever killing anypony, you would do it in an instant. Even if you feel now that you did it for protection, you have caused yourself nothing but grief and sorrow. Just look at Sweetie Belle! I don't know in what sideways form the scars she gained by seeing the basement will come out, but she will have that image permanently engrained in her memory for the rest of her life. She will always have to remember that her big sister that she trusted with every fiber of her being secretly butchered other ponies. Heck, I'm gonna have permanent mental scars from what I saw."
Rarity didn't know what to say to this so she resorted to focusing on a small tear in the tablecloth. She knew that Twilight was absolutely right of course, about everything.
"But," she continued. "I know that you would take every horrible minute back if you could. That you would do anything to make amends for the suffering that you have caused. You would even take back Gilda and Trixie if you could, even if you don't want to admit that to yourself. When you were a little filly, before the horrible day in the woods happened, you would never have chosen this as the life for you. You would have been content going through your whole life never having harmed a fly, right?"
Rarity continued staring at the tear as she considered the question. On one hoof, she did believe that the world was better without the likes of some of the beings she had killed. On the other hoof, she seriously doubted whether any of it was worth it. Was killing ponies that hurt her friends worth the mental scars that came with it? Not just for her, but for her sister and Twilight?
"Yes, Twilight, I would take every horrible minute back if I could. I would mend the broken families, I would heal the bloody wounds, I would bring the dead back to life if I could. But Twilight, I can't do any of those things! I can't take back what I did!"
"None of us ever can Rarity," said Twilight softly. "None of us ever can."
"How do I live with what I've done?" asked Rarity. "I'm afraid, Twilight."
"You live with yourself the way the rest of us do: one day at a time," said Twilight. "Focus on the good memories you have in your past. Relish the blessings you have now. You gotta enjoy the little things. I know that your murders were a huge part of who you are, but now that they aren't, put it in the past. We all have mistakes that we've made. Even if yours is arguably the worst, everypony has made a mistake that changed their lives forever. Everypony lives with their mistakes whether they want to or not. You can move past that, Rarity. You can be the pony that wields the Element of Generosity."
"Sometimes..." Rarity poked at the tear in the tablecloth. "Sometimes I still wonder if I deserved that honor."
"Well, why do you think you got it at all?" Twilight put her hoof on Rarity's. "What do you think made the Element of Generosity drawn to you?"
"I think... I think that it's because I do truly love being generous." A small smile played at Rarity's lips, and she managed to raise her head. "Whenever I'm generous with you girls or somepony else in the town, I... I get the same wonderful feeling that I got when I killed, but it was... purer. The joy was untainted by any badness."
Twilight returned Rarity's smile, but Rarity sensed that there was very little true happiness behind it. It seemed almost forced to her. "Rarity, I think that's why you are the Element of Generosity. You are a generous pony, but you had a dark side to you that made you do terrible things. But it's gone now. You can be the pony who gets happy feelings from being kind and generous."
Rarity had stopped crying now and she actually managed to give Twilight a small smile. "Thank you, Twilight," she said. "I know that I don't deserve the help you are giving me, but that just makes me appreciate it even more."
Twilight nodded, glancing at Rarity before her fake smile fell and she turned her gaze to the wall. "Uh-huh."
Rarity stood up and started to move towards the door. "I feel that I've dumped too much on you for tonight and I have to go," said Rarity. Twilight nodded once again and Rarity walked towards the door.
She opened it up and took one last glance at Twilight. She was still staring at the wall with a blank look on her face. Rarity sighed and walked out of Twilight's house.