"How are things outside?" Celestia asked, lifting her neck to look at the guard who'd recently walked back inside.
"Stable for the time being," he responded. "The first weapon has stopped firing, and Princess Twilight appears to be heading here. Starlight Glimmer is currently in the process of neutralising the second. No reported casualties among the external groups. The portal near the first weapon has seemingly been deactivated. Nightmare Moon is still safely contained."
"I understand." Celestia gave a polite little bow with her head to dismiss the stallion. "Thank you."
He bowed back, then walked away from her corner. She sat alone in it, bandaged, lying down with only a carpet separating her from the floor. Bruised, defeated, depowered. Completely useless, irrelevant to the events unfolding outside. Yet Twilight's ponies still acted like she was their princess.
She couldn't blame them for being used to doing so. Not much had passed since her stepping down, though it had already been months and Twilight had rather prominently taken on her role as sole ruler during the Behemoth crisis. But habits were hard to break, and in truth it was hypocritical of her to demand they not see her as anything more than a mare when she still saw them as her ponies. In a sense, though she'd be one of them, she'd never be just a pony, and she knew that well.
But she'd hoped her condition would change things, at least then. She'd expected to see something in the guard's eyes, something in his behaviour. Contempt, even hidden, surprise or confusion and uncertainty, maybe disgust, maybe compassion. She'd expected to be seen as fallen, frail, to be looked at like the unhelpful weight she was in that moment. Smoothed out by empathy and by her history maybe, mellowed by understanding, maybe sad and not hateful, but she'd expected something to be there.
But to the guard's eyes, she still was the same as ever. For all of them. Not for Shining or Cadence of course, but they hardly could count, they'd seen through her years before and they knew her differently from how the average pony did. It was the regular ones' opinions she cared for, even as she chastised herself for just thinking of them in such terms. But it was irrefutably true that to them she was still the same princess she'd been a week before, even while lying naked on the ground, hurt and scarred.
There was maybe one pony there that would have looked at her differently, though perhaps out of braggadocious foolishness rather than wisdom. But she'd toned down the former through the years, so perhaps she wouldn't either, or not fully. She wasn't in that room to confirm the possibility, either way. Her aside, and obviously not counting those who already did know her differently and whose opinion of her was yet another one, no one there seemed to have the reaction she was hoping they would have had. There was one pony throwing odd glances at her, yes, but his deal was something different still and seemingly much more personal to him than about her in any way.
No one gave her the look Twilight had given her that evening, when she'd finally pushed things into clicking. When she'd cast Twilight's doubts into solid certainty and broken down her hesitation with her confession. No one there had that look of realisation, or anything close to it. Perhaps it was better that way. It wasn't what she wanted, so maybe it was what she deserved. Maybe it was selfish to ask for others to look at her the way she looked at herself, and maybe that she did was already enough. She just had to live with things being that way.