The Last Princess

by bookhorse125

Tale of an Earth Pony

Would recommend listening to this while you read: Open Up Your Eyes - Lyrics

Twilight glowered at Sunny and stepped back. “Well. Sorry to disappoint you.”

Sunny blinked as she was suddenly transported into the middle of a massive throne room with two thrones - a larger one and a smaller one, both with velvet cushions, sitting atop a ramp with two waterfalls cascading down the sides into small rivers that ran the length of the throne room. Twilight was standing in the center of the carpet, surrounded by a dragon and six ponies - five of which Sunny recognized as Twilight’s friends. Twilight looked so much happier here - this was the pony that Sunny always thought of when her father told her stories about the Guardians of Harmony.

Sunny watched as Twilight stood in front of a massive stone monument with a statue of the six friends and stone carvings of the Elements of Harmony for each pony that they represented. The rest of the surroundings were obscured by fog, but Sunny knew exactly what had happened. Twilight from the past turned around and slowly began walking in the opposite direction of her friends, leaving behind everything that she had known.

As the song came to a close, Twilight gave no indication of giving Sunny any more attention, but she wasn’t about to give up just yet. Tears swimming in her eyes, she called out, “You’re not the only pony who’s lost somepony they love, you know.”

The alicorn stopped, but didn’t turn around.

“I lost my dad,” Sunny continued. “He was the best pony in the world - the only pony who believed in friendship and magic and unity anymore. Despite all the lies we were told, all the things we were taught, all the hardships that we had to go through… he never gave up hope that, one day, things could be alright again, that things could change. He inspired me to believe in it myself, to hope for it myself, but I wasn’t just going to sit there and do nothing about it. I was going to go out there and be the change in the world, instead of just waiting for it to happen.”

“I was the change in the world,” Twilight said in a quiet voice. “But it wasn’t enough. Not everypony appreciates change.”

“I know,” Sunny replied, thinking about Sprout and Maretime Bay while she and her friends were off chasing after crystals. “They think that the way things are is better than what they could be - but that’s not true. No matter how perfect things might seem, they can always be better, because we can always accomplish more together than apart. It’s our differences that get us so far, not our similarities.”

Twilight gave a humorless laugh. “That’s what I always said. But it wasn’t enough.”

“Is anything enough for you?” Sunny asked exasperatedly. “You and your friends accomplished so much together… you saved Equestria on multiple occasions… I looked up to you more than anypony in the world other than my dad!” She quieted down and said, “He believed in you, too. He died believing that you would do anything for Equestria. I guess you let him down, too.”

If she expected this to impact Twilight at all, she was disappointed. The elder pony simply shrugged and made no sound.

“He told me all about you,” Sunny said, sitting down as the weight of her memories came crashing down. Before, she had always resisted the pain that came with remembering her father and how he had gone just a few years before his dream was realized - but now, looking at Twilight in her depressed state, this pony who had succumb to the weight, let the grief consume her until she couldn’t remember what she stood for at all - until she had lost herself completely - Sunny knew that she couldn’t let that happen. She refused to let that happen.

No matter how many bad things happened, to her or to anypony else, there were good things, too, and they can outnumber the bad things if you let them. And all those good things were worth fighting for.

“Every night…” Sunny took a deep breath as she recalled the memory. “He would tell me the same story. And no matter how many times I heard it, over and over again, I kept asking him to tell it to me, because it gave me hope that what he believed in could, someday, become a reality.” She closed her eyes as she began to tell the story, and therefore didn’t see Twilight Sparkle turn around and stare at her wonderingly.

“Once upon a time, many many moons ago in Ancient Equestria, there lived a very special unicorn. The unicorn was very bright - as bright as the sun. One day the princess summoned her to the castle for an important assignment - to learn about friendship. She soon made lots of new friends - earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns. Together they showed everypony the magic of friendship, and how to live in harmony.”

Twilight very slowly approached the cage and sat down in front of it, her eyes wide and filled with wonder.

“He told me that everytime I asked, and I never grew tired of hearing it. The feeling that it gave me - it was so strong, so powerful, that it was what empowered me to go out into the world to make his dream a reality. In fact, it was losing him that made me realize how powerful a dream and a hope can be. It can be something that you live working for, trying to make it come true, it can be something that you naively believe in just so that you can have it there, or it can be something you let destroy you. I wasn’t going to sit there and just hope that all three ponykinds would unite without me - and I most certainly wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life just missing him and feeling sorry for myself and blaming other ponies for something that was out of their control - for something that wasn’t their fault.”

The words hit Twilight right in the heart, and she lowered her head shamefully.

“Sure, I could choose to be mad at the ponies who didn’t believe in him - when magic returned, I could have rubbed it in their noses that they were wrong, or made them pay for making me secretly doubt myself all those years.”

A feeling was growing in Sunny’s chest - a kind of tingling sensation that she knew from experience always preceded her alicorn transformation, but she didn’t bother with it now.

“But my dad’s dream - his hope - was that ponies could unite and get along together, not get angry at each other and try to prove that they were better, or more right, or more perfect or believing than anypony else. And it wasn’t necessarily their fault. I couldn’t bring myself to get angry at them. They’re my friends. And I think true friendship is when you care about other ponies no matter what they do - that you always have their back.” Sunny opened her eyes and looked straight into Twilight’s, unafraid. “I don’t think your friends left you. I think you felt that they were gone and left them. You had so much riding on you, and instead of helping Equestria, you came out here to spend your life feeling sorry for yourself when you could have tried harder, when you could have fixed everything.”

The guilt in Twilight’s eyes, the pain that she was feeling, the obvious internal conflict that she was struggling with, trying to justify her own actions while also knowing that Sunny was right, almost made Sunny want to shut her mouth, stop talking, stop hurting her. But she also knew that this ‘real world’ that Twilight thought existed did exist, just not quite in the way that she was saying it did. She needed to realize her own mistakes were her own - that it wasn’t anypony else’s fault - and that there was still hope that she could fix everything.

“You can still fix this.”

Twilight took a deep breath and closed her eyes, imagining each of her friends individually. There was energetic Pinkie Pie, spreading joy and laughter to other ponies to the end, only doing what it took to get a smile. Bold and daring Rainbow Dash, always ready to push the limits but never faltering in her loyalty to her friends. Honest and hard-working Applejack, the level-headed one, learning to step outside of her own comfort zone. Creative Rarity, who knew just how to make a pony look fabulous and was always giving more than expected. Timid and gentle Fluttershy, giving kindness and care to whoever needed it. Spike the dragon, her brave assistant from the moment she had hatched him from an egg, who had always, always been there, even when her friends hadn’t been.

And dozens of other friends she had lost besides: Starlight Glimmer. Celestia. Luna. Sunset Shimmer. Starswirl the Bearded and the Pillars of Equestria. Cadance, Shining Armor, Flurry Heart. Moondancer. Fizzlepop Berry Twist. Her counterpart friends in the mirror world. The unicorns. The pegasi. The earth ponies. The changelings. The dragons. The griffons. The hippogriffs. The yaks, the buffalo, the breezies, the kirin, the dozens upon dozens upon hundreds of other creatures she had met on her travels and had befriended.

All of them were gone.

But were they really?

A single tear slipped out of Twilight’s closed eye and splashed onto the floor. “This is all my fault,” she whispered. “I let this happen. And I didn’t fix it. It’s all because of me…”

Sunny wrapped her hooves around herself and closed her eyes as she was sucked into her own memories - memories of her father, and even of her friends. But she didn’t feel like they were far away from her at all - she didn’t feel a crushing sadness, an empty void that only love from her friends and family could fill. They were closer to her now than ever before - because she knew that they had never left her, and she wasn’t going to leave them, either.

She opened her eyes and gasped - the cage had melted away into nothing, and Twilight stood in front of her now, staring down at her with a strange blank expression, like she wasn’t sure what to think.

Sunny scrambled to her hooves. “P-Princess, I’m so sorry-”

“That cage was impervious to magic,” Twilight interrupted, and Sunny saw, to her great relief, no anger in her eyes anymore. There was a light curiosity, a whole lot of guilt, and a tiny spark of something that looked like… “None but the most powerful of magic could have broken it.”

“Oh.” Sunny swallowed. “Well… sorry about that.”

Twilight surprised Sunny by smiling, but her eyes were still sad. “I used to be a lot like you. Before… all this.” She looked around the cave, not as if it was a sanctuary, a place she could hide and wait out all the bad things until she had her friends back, so that they could defeat them together, but as a prison, one that had kept her here, while the world fell apart around her, and she let it happen. The worst part was knowing that she could have prevented all of it… that all of this could have been undone… maybe she could have been a better pony, the pony her friends knew.

As if she could tell what she was thinking, Sunny stepped forward and put her hoof on Twilight’s, and the other alicorn looked up, surprised.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Sunny said quietly. “You’re thinking that, if you could have done things better, if you were better… then they would still be here. Things could be better. All the hardships and trials and bad things could have been avoided, and that would be the Equestria that you would want to rule.”

Twilight looked sideways at Sunny, and she knew that she was right.

“But,” she continued, “sometimes that’s not always the way to get the world we want to live in. Sometimes, those bad things that we wish we could avoid, they’re the things that brought us the most joy and happiness in the long run. I remember when my dad… died… I felt like I had to do everything I could to make his dream a reality… I owed it to him. If he hadn’t gone, then I never would have gone with Izzy on a quest to Zephyr Heights and discovered that magic had disappeared, or gone to find the crystals to bring it back. I never would have met Zipp or Pipp, all of Maretime Bay would still believe all those lies about unicorns and pegasi, and the same in Zephyr Heights and Bridlewood. The world would still be divided. Even if I could go back… I wouldn’t change a thing. Because the present I have is only because of the past as it is, not as I wish it was. For every bad thing that happens… good things happen, too.”