Chrysalis did release her mask nor the tension that threatened to burst out until she was out of the ward: No longer surrounded by the rampant, erratic quaking that had met her on entry nor the silence but for a low, crystalline hum of some obscure magio-medical device which followed her out. Even when the guards fitted the shackles to her fetlocks and the restrictor to her horn, even when they returned her to her cell, her heart did not protest as much as if she’d been made to remain in the maze of cots.
Alone again now, she was once again aware of the painful prickling of her chitin - the imagined spears and bolts slung by the dead, battering against the fortress walls of her heart.
Each breath hurt like a lungful of a furnace’s blast, and she shuddered as she took another. Had it been this painful this much in the past, when the Kuru had come before? She could not remember the losses needling so sharply then, but neither had she ever lost so many.
Never everyone.
Then, there had always been survivors to turn to. Further lives to shepherd forward, plans to make, and subjects to rule. Distractions. That had been it, wasn’t it? Distractions, which might keep her mind from the horror. Voices to continue venerating, so the silence was not so acute.
But there are none now.
All the assaults and tribulations of her life, she had taken in gallop: Evade the threat. Take stock of what remained. Find a new plan, because the old one tended to die along with the victims (and there very frequently were dead, not only from Kuru. Things which forced sudden adjustments of plans tended to do so violently).
That was why she had fallen in with the cursed centaur and whatever that little filly was, wasn’t it? Because I couldn’t stand being alone. Even if it meant following around a hyper-thyroid meathead and a horror in a filly’s flesh. Even then I knew what would come.
Anything, even arguing with those fools, would quiet that anticipation.
Nested within that admission was the seed of another: It wouldn’t have mattered if they had listened to her. Her heart was never in it anyway. The whole thing was just a way to pass the time until the Kuru finally came to charge its terrible toll on the changelings.
Those wretched fools betrayed me. Turned on the only one who ever really cared for them. Threw themselves at the hooves of ponies who were only interested in using my subjects to prove that their pitiful pony ideas were right. And I -
-I-
-I ran away.
I left them to the Kuru. Alone and without anyone to lead them. Guide them. And-
Bitterness rose in her chest, hard and biting, like a lance of celestial fire scorching her heart to cinders.
-why shouldn’t I? Hadn’t I lead them without peer for so many years? Were we not more successful than we had been under any other? I was succeeding! We were succeeding!
But then I lost. I lost all of them.
And instead of leading them to victory, I abandoned them to Kuru and then deceived them into comfort as it took them to the misted neverworld.
A ruler must sometimes deceive her subjects. Even Celestia knew that.
So why does it hurt so much to have done so?
Never in a thousand eternities would she admit any relief when the cell door opened to admit Spike again. But even just watching him snake his way in and curl up on the floor was better than being left alone with the voices of the damned screaming from her memories.
It gave her an excuse to bring the mask out again.
“You look… distraught.”
“I am,” Spike said. “I’m angry. Pissed. Upset. Bitter. I’m a lot of things right now, and I can’t figure out how you aren’t.”
“Or you are merely the only one allowing yourself to show such weakness.”
Spike eyed her sidelong, but no retort emerged.
He sees through me.
Eventually, “We sent out your message. I did, I mean. Took it to the other Changelings. It… didn’t go over well. What this is, what it meant for any of them who were sick already.”
“I can’t think why not.”
His eyes slipped closed, his focus turned internal for a moment until the urge to fill the room with cinder and flame was a little less sharp. “We’re trying to keep it quiet for now, but Applejack caught wind of it. She’s-” Another pause, this one heavier. “-not happy. She and Twilight were in the royal suites for the better part of two hours, arguing it out. ‘Jack doesn’t think it was right, what you did.”
Eyes rolling dramatically, Chrysalis tossed her head back. “Why, the element of honesty is perturbed that a changeling would dare do something dishonest, no matter how necessary it is. I can’t comprehend how you ponies ever functioned as a society.”
“Chrysalis?”
“What?”
Looking straight at her, Spike drew his lips back - purple retreating to uncover bone-white teeth. “Just remember, these are my friends too. I want them to be happy as well. And I’m already a little on-edge from what happened to Thorax and the rest, so try not to be so snippily smug about how much my friends are hating this too.”
Chrysalis gave a little, low harumph, the kind of small dismissive gesture that allows one to register their protest while not saying anything remotely offensive.
Settling back down, Spike let his expression fall back to a neutral blankness. “Thank you.”
“You do know it isn’t going to end so soon though, right? This is just how it starts. When word does get out - and it will, because ponies are in general spectacularly poor at keeping secrets - more than just your friends are going to be upset.”
“I’m trying not to think about that yet,” Spike murmured.
“You should be. It is coming, whether you want it or not. If you wish to still be standing on top when the avalanche strikes - if you wish to be able to endure through this storm - you must be ready.”
“Why are you even telling me this? I’m your enemy.”
Chrysalis peeled back her lips in a grin, eyes narrowing in a thoughtful expression. “I am not actually sure… but perhaps I could teach you more? You already have a mind as sharp as those claws; if you sought to claim the throne of-”
“Forget it.” Spike’s tail lashed, striking the wall with a heavy thud. “I’m not interested in learning from you.”
“Oh, come now. You only just admitted to me that we are not entirely different. We have both been subject to the ponies’ efforts to shape us. We have both been hurt - or will be hurt - by their foolishness in playing with what they do not understand. And we both will never be accepted by ponykind-”
“You shut your muzzle and quit wasting words, Chrysalis.” Sitting himself up again, Spike pointed to his chest with a clawed thumb. “You know what the difference is between us? Yeah. We’re both hurting, and I don’t know if I’ll ever belong. But you can’t ever let go of yourself. All you ever talk about is how you will persevere, what you will do to rebuild your hive. It’s never what changelings can do. You haven’t even said once what any survivors should do going forward.”
“There will be no survivors,” she said softly, though Spike could hear the bitter tremble barely audible in her voice, “and even if there are, that decision has been made for them. Ponies will never accept something which feeds on them. Something which is outside of their control.”
“You don’t know for certain, and you haven’t even tried to think about it. You know what’s been eating at me this whole time since Starlight Glimmer explained it all to me? Why didn’t you try to warn any of the changelings about this! If they’d known-”
“-then they would have fallen even faster!” Chrysalis barked. “Don’t you understand, you who feel that greed eating at you? If they know there is a way out, inevitably one gives in! I have to be the only one who knows, the one who has to endure that knowledge!”
“And you don’t ever want to give in? You’re somehow - somehow immune to it?”
“Of course I do! I feel that desire just as much as any other changeling. Sometimes I even think about what it would be like to just give in, and live my last days in utter freedom from hunger even as I am dying. But I don’t, and do you know why?”
Spike gave her a very flat look. “No, but you’re going to tell me, aren’t you?”
Driving a hoof into the cell floor, Chrysalis yelled over the rattle of her chains. “Because I have to. I am the Queen. I cannot fall; I have to endure, so changelings can rise.”
“...yeah. It’s always about you, isn’t it. Me? Maybe I am still a naive little baby dragon, but I don’t want to bet on that. I’d rather put myself into being right in the first place.”
“And what will you do now that the first pillar has fallen, hmm? What will you do when it comes crashing down for dragonkind?”
He stood up again, turning for the door. “If it comes crashing down… I don’t know yet. Future Spike’s problem. But right now, I’m going to mourn my friend.”
“When the time comes and it does all tumble down around your head - when the ponies turn on you - then you can come find me. My offer is still open.”
“Least you won’t be hard to find.”
“Oh?” Chrysalis raised her eyebrows questioningly.
Pausing at the door, Spike looked back. “You’re going back in stone. If any of the changelings survive, they’ll get to decide if you get let out again.”
For just a moment, the mask slipped. Cracked. Turned aside, and let Spike see the truth beneath: The utter relief written on the Chrysalis’ face. “I will await it.”
Halfway through the door, Spike paused again. From out in the hall, he turned back to look inside: “Just one question, Chrysalis. One question, and I’d really like it if this answer wasn’t a lie. Did you ever care for him?”
She nodded without a second’s hesitation, chains clinking as she did. “I loved each and every one of those poor fools. After all, they were my subjects. They were mine. They shared in my hunger, and I understood theirs. I cared for and guided them, endured the knowledge of Kuru for them. In return they served, revered, and endured for me. That is how it should be.”
“...yeah,” Spike sighed. “I thought so.” And he loped from the room, eyes turned down and wings hanging half open so that they nearly brushed the dungeon’s narrow walls.