Lateral Movement

by Alzrius


620 - Hush Now, Quiet Now

There was no way for Dark Streak to avoid breathing some of the poison in.

The exertion involved in her maddened rush toward Lex Legis, along with how she was still getting her breath back after she’d been caught in the zone of dead air she’d made, made sure of that. Even as she twisted her head around and snapped her beak shut, she could feel a tingling sensation developing in the back of her throat, a bittersweet taste settling onto her tongue a moment later. Along with her sudden shift from offense to defense, the symptoms were alarming enough that her dagger strikes went wide, doing little more than leaving scratches along Lex Legis’s shoulders as she crashed into him.

They went down hard, and Dark Streak tucked her wings close to her body as she rolled, riding her momentum and directing it so that she could come up on the edge of the dead air, far from the ring of fire Aria had created. Keeping her daggers clenched tightly in her talons, she raised her head immediately, already thinking about what she needed to do after she dodged whatever follow-up attack was surely about to follow. Namely, retrieve the bag Lex had tossed at her; she made sure to carry the antidote to every poison she used, just in case something like this ever happened. It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out which toxin he used, she reassured herself as she got her legs back under her, springing up into a fighting crouch. I always keep the remedy in the same-

“You should have talked to me first.”

The voice was soft, masculine, and utterly heartbroken. But that wasn’t what made the daggers drop from Dark Streak’s suddenly-nerveless talons.

It was that she recognized who it belonged to.

“Bright Feather?” she croaked, only to realize as the name was leaving her beak that it couldn’t possibly have been him.

After all, Bright Feather – her husband – was dead.

He’d died back on Everglow, almost a year ago now. He’d been torn apart after investigating Old Greybeak’s cabin, despite knowing that the hateful bitch’s ghost still haunted the place, after he’d heard that two wayward children had gotten lost there. He’d always had a soft spot for children, especially after…

“It wasn’t only your decision to make.”

“I had to!” she shrieked, spinning in place; the voice had come from behind her that time, from the back of the factory. “You wouldn’t have been able to go through with it! You would have…have tried to talk me…” Her voice trailed off as she realized what she was saying.

This was the conversation that had spelled the end of their marriage. They’d continued living together afterward, never having formally ended their union, but there hadn’t been any intimacy between them. They’d become two strangers who happened to reside in the same house. Why was this happening now…?

This isn’t right, she decided, and it took her a moment to realize that she should have come to that conclusion immediately. The fact that she hadn’t made her choke down a wave of panic. What was she doing?! She was in the middle of a fight! She needed to kill Lex Legis and his…wait, no, the Sirens! This was their doing! They’d used their magic to mess with her mind! Except…she hadn’t heard them singing…so if they hadn’t caused this, what else could have-

Suddenly she knew exactly which poison Lex Legis had gotten her with.

Yanking her goggles down so that they dangled around her neck, she squeezed her eyes shut as she tightly pinched the space between them, focusing as intently as she could. It’s not real! she told herself insistently. It’s all just phantoms! Ignore them and finish what you came here to do!

But when she opened her eyes a moment later, Bright Feather was standing right in front of her.

His eyes were bloodshot, with tear tracks matting his cheeks. His voice was hoarse, filled with repressed sobs. He rocked in place as he held a small bundle to his chest, one that was completely still as he fixed her with a look of absolute sorrow.

“She was my baby too.”

Intellectually, Dark Streak knew that this wasn’t actually happening, that the correct thing to do would have been to ignore the hallucination she was having and go kill Lex Legis. But that impulse was utterly drowned beneath the wave of emotions that swept over her then. They’d never spoken of what had happened after that day, and some part of her had always wondered if she should have brought it up again. Had there been some particular combination of words that would have made him understand? Would he have come to see things from her point of view if she’d just kept trying to reach him?

Although she’d tried to put those speculations out of her mind, she’d never been able to truly escape them. Now, faced with the vision of what had happened on that day, she couldn’t summon up the strength to disregard what was right in front of her. Real or not, she just couldn’t.

“I did it for her!” It was all she could do not to howl the words in anguish. “Why can’t you see that?! No one would have accepted her!”

“We would have.”

The new voice was one that Dark Streak didn’t remember, coming from behind her. Spinning around, she needed a moment to recognize the orange-furred pegasus filly with the dark pink mane and tail. The one whose wings didn’t work.

“Just because she couldn’t fly doesn’t mean that everyone would have been mean to her,” stated the filly, giving Dark Streak a look of pity. “I can’t fly, and I have lots of friends.” As if to back up what she was saying, the two other fillies that had been with her that day – the earth pony with the bow in her hair and the unicorn with the curls – stepped out of the shadows and put their forelegs around their crippled friend. But their eyes were sad, gazing at the griffon in silent condemnation.

Dark Streak could feel herself starting to shake, her breath coming heavier as she shook her head. Behind her – on the other side of the pillar of fire – she could hear a low murmur of voices, followed by the sound of hoosteps, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Not in the face of what she’d just been accused of. “That’s different! You’re ponies! She wouldn’t have been able to live among your kind!”

“Why not?” This time, the voice was Willow’s, the purrsian slinking out of the darkness with her usual stoic expression replaced by one of detached scorn. “I came here in order to give my son a better life, and the ponies of this land accepted us both without hesitation.”

As if to prove her words true, her kitten ran across Dark Streak’s field of view then, rushing past Willow before turning and giving his mother a wave. “I’m going to the talent show, Mom!” he called, grinning toothily before joining the three fillies, who turned and followed him as they galloped off into the dancing shadows cast by the light of the flames.

“None of that matters!” Dark Streak barely recognized the sound of her own voice now, the words coming out guttural and harsh as she repressed the urge to scream them from the top of her lungs. “We had to live there! I would have had to watch her grow up there! Do you know what that would have done to her?! What that would have done to our family?!”

“I don’t,” lamented Bright Feather, “but we would still have been a family. We could have gotten through it together, until we’d found our way here, to this world.”

“You’re twisting things!” hissed Dark Streak. “No one knew that there was a world like this out there! There wasn’t any hint that a place like this existed! I’m only here now because of what happened! Because of the decision that I made! We would never have found this place otherwise!”

“You don’t know that for sure,” came the cold voice of Willow. “And you never will.”

“YES I DO! YES I DO!” screamed Dark Streak, the last vestiges of her self-control collapsing. “I did what a mother is supposed to do! I put my baby first! I did what was best for her, even though it broke my heart! It wasn’t wrong! IT WASN’T WRONG! IT WASN’T WRONG!!!”

Bright Feather stepped forward then, holding out the bundle he’d been cradling; it twitched and moved now, unlike before. “Look at her, and say that again.”

She didn’t want to. She wanted to turn and run away, as far away as her wings could carry her. But even as the impulse crossed her mind, her limbs refused to move, frozen by her desire to see her daughter again, even knowing what was about to happen.

A choked whimper escaped her lips as she stepped forward. Even though she knew this wasn’t real, that it was all a delusion brought on by the poison she’d been subjected to, she couldn’t tell the difference as she took hold of the swaddled infant, feeling the weight and warmth of her through the blankets. Tears rolled down her face as she gently pulled the cloth back, dreading the sight that awaited her even as she couldn’t help but ache to see her again.

She was so beautiful. Inquisitive little eyes looked around in innocent wonder. The feathers on her head and upper forelegs were black, just like her mother, but changed to a brilliant turquoise on her belly, matching Bright Feather’s coloration. Her lower half also shared his colors, save for the black tip at the end of her tail, which waved cutely.

And at her sides, there were no wings to be found.

Her daughter was the most despised kind of cripple in all of griffon society. The ones who were scorned and mocked, to the point where even their parents were shunned for having produced such a twisted mockery of what griffons were supposed to be. The ones who were relegated to the absolute bottom of their culture, an embarrassment that no one respected or accepted, regardless of what they accomplished.

An alce.

“Are you still certain you weren’t wrong?” Willow’s voice was mocking.

Dark Streak’s mouth was dry, her body shaking with sobs. “I…”

“Was it really what was best for her?” The orange filly’s voice was imperious, demanding an answer.

“She…” Dark Streak couldn’t finish, holding her daughter tighter.

“Did you do the right thing?” Unlike the others Bright Feather’s voice was free of any undertone, and it took Dark Streak a moment to realize that he was really asking.

It was a question that he’d never put to her when he was alive. During that last conversation, he’d been too consumed by grief to try and look at things from her point of view, to let her explain that although it had broken her heart, she’d only wanted what was best for their baby. Nor had they ever returned to the topic afterward, even though she’d wanted to so many times.

And now he had…except, to her horror, she was no longer so sure of herself. The things she’d seen here in Equestria – weak, vulnerable, careless Equestria – had planted a seed of doubt in her mind. Ever since she’d met that crippled filly, playing carelessly with her friends, that seed had begun to sprout, creating a crack in the wall of absolute certainty that she’d erected around her heart in the wake of her decision.

That certainty had been what had made it possible for her to go on, afterward. The knowledge that there hadn’t been any better alternative had sustained her even as her marriage had withered away into a hollow husk. It had enabled her to walk away when she’d been widowed without shedding so much as a tear.

And it had been what had made her into such an excellent assassin.

After all, once you’d killed your newborn baby, killing a stranger was easy.

Except it wasn’t a stranger Dark Streak was holding now. It was her daughter, brought back by the visions she’d been poisoned with. And now that she’d seen that there was a place where her little girl could have grown up safe and happy and accepted, Dark Streak knew that she needed to answer the question she could no longer ignore:

Had she done the right thing?

In her left talon, her baby cooed softly, reaching up to brush a tiny foreleg against her mother’s beak.

Had she done the right thing?

In her right talon, although she didn’t remember picking it up, her dagger gleamed.

Had she done the right thing?

When it came to her a moment later, the answer made Dark Streak scream long and loud.