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// Taken Over 
// Story: Not Just a Mare 
// by Mitslits 
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	You may wonder, my dear Luna, how we came from here to there. From love to hatred, acceptance to scorn. And the answer is quite simple, really, if you look back through the years of joy and of pain. 

We spent the years talking, scheming, plotting, and loving. We had all the time in the world. Or, at least, as much time as I decided to give you. For I could send you back after 1000 years had passed. I had this power. And I told you of it. And we formed our plans around it, dear Luna. 

You told me you wanted revenge this time, not just of the day, but of all ponykind. I supported you, for I allowed all my hatred to spill over into the form of one brilliant Master Plan. It was one of the true masterpieces of all time, but you ruined it. You and I both. It was perfectly written and perfectly executed until you deviated from it. The deviation was not your fault. I see that now. But for many years I nursed a dangerous grudge against you. Now, truly, it was not all your fault for I had greatly overestimated your strength. Foalishly, I had believed you could beat what even I had not been able to beat. The Elements of Harmony. But you could not. Of course you could not. It was beyond unfair for me to ask it of you. 

Our plan, if you do not remember after all these years have passed, was this: you would return to your planet as the still-savage Nightmare Moon. Once you were there you would wreak havoc and invite me back. For that is the only way I could return to your planet. I would allow myself to come back and make night reign eternally, as you had first wished. Then we would rule forever in our gorgeous and fantastic night.

It was a brilliant plan. The above, of course, is a massively abbreviated version of our long talked over plan. I do not wish to bore you with all the details, though I myself go over them many times to see if the outcome could possibly have been different. 

But I shall not dwell on the negatives much longer, my princess. Instead I will turn to happier details of happier times. Such as the times we were connected in the most beautiful way. I loved the way you moved, the way you looked, the way you laughed, smiled, touched. Everything about you was more beautiful than words can do justice. And so I won't even try to describe all those magical times we shared together. I loved every minute with you.

I wished for our plan to succeed so I could be with you forever. Eternally. But then you had to go and ruin it with your delays. You could have summoned me the minute you ran into the Elements, but you with your stubborn pride had to take them on yourself. You should have known you had no chance of defeating them. But you could not help yourself, filled with rage as you were. 

I watched in horror as they took you from me forever, remembering all we had shared, thinking of everything we would never share again. I wished I could protect you, bring myself back. And I could have turned you again, I suppose. But I would not do that to you. You were distressed enough the first time and now that you had tasted the bitter poison of revenge it would make your stay on the moon even more unbearable though I would do all I could for you. 

Despite my initial fury, I still felt all the old love for you. That, Luna, will never go away, not after a trillion millenniums in which I will watch from my still cold prison, made all the more a torture by the brief warmth you brought. I shall watch you and your sister for the rest of your lives, remembering with fondness all that you meant to me, all that you forced me to rediscover. I shall writhe in the grip of the knowledge that you and I could have been but never will be. And I will love you from afar.  

For what many of your subjects do not, and will never, know is that on that cold, bitter moon there was not just a mare.