From the first, quiet moment after Her words settled in the still air of the kingdom capital of a land long lost, Light Flow was sure he'd finally gone completely insane.
That, or his ears had suddenly begun malfunctioning, because what the hell else could it have been?
He misheard things all the time- unheard things, as Applejack sometimes said, and there he was thinking about Applejack, so that explained why her name was on his mind and definitely not on Nightmare Moon's lips because Her saying that name was just out-of-this-realm fantastically crazy.
But- just in case he wasn't totally raving mad- he allowed the question to stutter off his cold lips that had a moment ago been so hot.
"Say that again..?"
If his legs weren't feeling weak and his heart wasn't hammering in his chest where just seconds ago it had been so proud, Nightmare Moon would have seemed downright comical with Her hooked upper lip and the grim glint of dispassion in Her eye. At least after he'd done such a good job of standing up to Her just- it was just a second ago.
But now he was barely staying on his hooves, and every moment that he heard anything besides the hollow echo of Her bleak reverie was a blessing. A blessing of missed quietude, and how he would come to miss that assured silence. How he would miss that blessed warmth from within, as a growth of incertitude gleefully smothered it.
How he would long for that ignorance.
"Oh? What is wrong, child? It is said that confidence blinds, but does it also deafen?" Her voice was so quiet, yet so heavy with acidic scorn that he was on the edge of falling to the cold ground with every word. A tone that had been so familiar, yet had quickly faded to a laughable memory.
Now, the pure apathy of a millennium lost burned in Nightmare Moon's gleaming eye again.
Her menacing stare dominated his every thought as Her head slowly bent to his face's unmoving side, and Her scentless breath washed over his ear with foreboding intent. The fur of their cheeks was nearly brushing: a touch that may have been intimate, once, yet now his fur prickled at ends from a profound sense of danger crawling on his skin.
"You asked for whom has come to stand against me, and as it is your fervent wish, I will again name them by their most righteous sin."
It was low and quiet and so frighteningly close to monotone, yet the intensity below was so giant. Confusingly opposite enough that he felt smothered for air deep in his own chest by the sheer lacking in Her breath, while She just continued: oblivious or simply uncaring of his stilled breath.
"Twilight Sparkle, the genius ascendant wielder of Magic reared for the sole purpose of my opposition."
He found himself mouthing the words recurrently as Her slow, resolute degree wriggled through the walls of his mind. Crawling into the weakest cracks of his psyche, and beginning to fester and burn behind every thought.
"Rainbow Dash, the Loyal savant stuck in the past and obsessed with her fillyhood dreams."
His head shook on its own as color filled his senses, and he could see in a flash the sight of a kaleidoscope with far too much running red. He blinked again and it was gone, yet She remained.
"Rarity, the Generous seamstress weighed by responsibility and shackled by family to mediocrity."
His tongue met his teeth and he tasted sooty ash- the taste of burning fabric. The more he prodded, the more and more metallic it tasted.
"Pinkamena Diane Pie, the Laughing aberration disowned and touched in solace by Chaos."
His ear flicked, and for that single moment, Her words were swept away by the deafening sound of a choking laugh cut short. Then, a silence. Then, Her voice.
"Fluttershy, the Kindly mutant undergone subjugation and discrimination for the crime of caring."
He tried to utter something- but found his throat choked by indecision at the last moment. He nearly coughed, but even that stalled in his chest by the sheer fear of the action.
"And oh- how heinous is Harmony's choice for its last virtue."
Every instant to his unblinking eyes was another new instance of creeping reds at every pulsing corner splotched by flaming grey as reality itself burned down around him, but he could still hear, in those few words, how She smiled.
"It is for their passed and waiting lifetimes lived in blind pursuit of a virtue they will be remembered, yet for as gilded as their future is, it remains an indelible tragedy that you would have first come to know each and every one of them by name."
And he could imagine so clearly, as something too cold to be tears bunched in his eyes and ran down his cheeks, the sight of Her painfully grinning fangs.
Wide and gleaming. Sharp and deadly.
"And how you know the last of them. How you wished you could have her. How you imagined yourself to be hers.
"How you know her Honesty."
He'd been despondent the first time She'd said it. Sure in his most rational mind that he'd misheard, or that She was lying, or that there could've been any other explanation because there just had to be. It was too cruel to be real. How could his life have been so traumatically wicked to have heard her name? How could his life have been so cruel?!
But there was no avoiding the cold, bitter reality of it. And as She again spoke that name in a restrained, giddy knell, he knew, without a single doubt in his brittle mind, that She was telling the truth.
"But how well do you truly know Applejack, when all you've ever done is lie to her?"
In a single moment, Light Flow shattered.
Applejack.
It was Applejack.
Applejack was one of the heroes. Applejack was in the very same castle that he was in right now, on her way to defeat Nightmare Moon.
When Equestria was threatened, and when the entirety of their nation could have been called on to defend their faith, it had been her.
When a prophecy had been penned by an old fool who'd styled himself wiser than a scared little colt, it had been her name written on the next page.
Of course it had been her.
Of course it was Applejack.
Everything suddenly made sense- while the burning world around him slowed and dulled to a static halt. This was why Nightmare Moon, even besides his underdeveloped talents in Necromancy, would choose him. Why She needed him- out of an entire world of smarter, stronger, all around better ponies to choose from- to help Her stop the heroes. He'd long since been extremely wrong: it wasn't about the physical; it was never about physically stopping them.
Why would he need to? If She'd thought it necessary to kill them, She'd have done it Herself. Or contracted an assassin. Or crept into the mind of a newborn foal and twisted their thoughts and memories around for their entire life until the day they were finally considered sharpened enough to rend all that was good limb from limb- this wasn't even really about the heroes: it was about something greater.
It was clear that Nightmare Moon feared one thing above all: Harmony. The heroes, who She considered practically untouchable, were the champions of Harmony. That was obvious, and whether he still felt lingering doubt about Harmony and its power, it was very obvious Nightmare Moon did not.
Fate had not writ the premature deaths of the heroes tonight, so they simply would not die. Chance didn't exist; Harmony deigned every action made, and there was no escaping it. He would accept that as inexorable for now.
But fate had writ an alternative. Harmony, for whatever reason, had deigned Nightmare Moon an out.
Those heroes; those mares- six mares, shrouded in the mists and mires of the Endless Night- had long since been prophesied to win against Nightmare Moon if She were to aggress them directly and on Her own. Whether She was ultimately dangerous and cruelly efficient was... a heavens-sent given, but it simply didn't matter. Something contrived could- and would happen at the last moment, as though life were a badly thought-out story with too-important protagonists.
But not if he were there.
It was natural. It was the inherency of an argument. There could never be one certain outcome: life dictated alternatives. If one thing didn't happen, the other did. If you did not move, you stood still. If you did not eat, you went hungry. If you did not live, then you were dead- there was always an other.
Something has tampered with the storybook. The complete loss of the heroes is a possibility.
If the heroes did not win, then they would lose. There had to be an alternative.
He was that if. He was the fork in the road that offered that alternative. This story- the story of Nightmare Moon- had two possible endings, and he was the 'or.' He didn't know why and he might never understand it, but in Her story, Light was the plot contrivance.
He was Her impossibly lucky third option that only became apparent at the last minute, and it was made all the worse because it was such a natural contrivance.
He could stop them because he knew them. They knew him. Barring two, they all even liked him.
Pinkie Pie and her endless lobbying for them to reconcile from first impressions gone wrong.
Rarity and her nagging propensity to mother him after he'd lost his own.
Fluttershy with her life built on the fragile back of his childish words.
Applejack...
If he stood in their way and made himself Nightmare Moon's living shield, then they would never be able to do what must be done. Even if they found the reason- the minority vote- the urgency to try, he only had to stall them out, and how he knew he could stall.
All he had to do was stand in the heroes way so they couldn't act. That was all he was here for. That was what Nightmare Moon needed him for.
...Your special connection to the passed isn't why you were brought for this night...
...A pony at the end of their rope can be exploited indefinitely...
...Do you believe in destiny...
She'd told him. She'd told him to his face.
It wasn't him. It was never him. It was always them. He was 'special' because he knew them.
That was sad. It should've made him feel sad.
He wasn't special, and he never had been. Nightmare Moon didn't need him for anything he could do. Not because he was a Necromancer, and no matter how abnormally close they had become, it wasn't because She loved him.
It was because he could be leveraged against the ponies that knew him. That he knew. That he loved.
And now he was putting them in danger. Those wonderful ponies that had never left him alone, that he would never willingly call his friends. When they were on their way to fulfill a great destiny that would undoubtedly cement them into Equestria's history, he was here: being groomed to stop them.
He was their opposition. He was their villain.
It should've been sad.
...But it wasn't.
He wasn't.
Because he wasn't thinking about it.
Not a single thought at all.
Not to what would happen in the eventual conflict between he, Her, and them. Not to what they might think, seeing him with Her. Not to what She would make him do to them. Not even to what would come after.
Emerald eyes like jewels cut wide with horror. Seething with rage. Creased with tears.
In the moment after Nightmare Moon had finished speaking, a million thoughts flew at once through Light's head. Too fast to reasonably catch any one thread, yet still: he thought.
And in the immediate moment after, he came to a conclusion.
Light Flow did not shatter, because Applejack- all of his friends were in no danger at all.
The prophecy as that 'old fool' had written it apparently only had one ending: that Nightmare Moon was defeated, and that the heroes won. The Sun would return to the throne, and Equestria would return to peace.
This sojourn down an alternate path was somehow wrong in a way that he didn't understand, and that meant it could still be averted. Until the book opened to the page on which he appeared, there was still a chance he never would. The book could still be correct. If he somehow got himself out of the way, Nightmare Moon would still be defeated by the heroes as She'd always meant to have been.
But... was that really what he wanted?
Maybe... maybe this wasn't going to play out exactly as that letter had said. Maybe it wouldn't be six mares emerging from the night with the sun upon their shoulders- but the sun would still rise. No matter how he felt about it, he knew intimately how much worse life would be otherwise.
He'd been positioned to stop the heroes, but it was a position with a lot of leverage. He could trot out on the heels of Equestria's new dictator: personally ushering in the age of the Night as Nightmare Moon's favored. They would build an empire on the backs of the populace, benefitting nopony but themselves, as typical and self-serving as all villains were at their core.
But- no matter how sick to his stomach the idea made him- he could also do the opposite. It wasn't that he cared about the stability of the kingdom or restoring the Pure Goddess to Her throne or anything so mindlessly patriotic; there were simply facets to his life that he'd miss, otherwise.
Plus, it really did seem as though allowing Nightmare Moon to ascend to the throne would radically change his life, and that was never something he would abide by. He'd die before he had to change anything about his lifestyle.
He could prevent Nightmare Moon from ever confronting the heroes. He could save them the trouble, and the pain, and whatever resulting fame they would see after. He could keep them safe. He could keep her safe.
Maybe it would be okay to play the hero, just this one time in his life.
For Applejack, at the very least.
He blinked- and his eyes were dry. They always had been. He took a deep breath of still air- and for the first time it felt so clear. No longer was he choked by indecision; nor throttled by fear.
He set his jaw, and he looked Nightmare Moon in the eye.
She'd stepped away from him in one easy movement sometime in the past few moments: a sickening scowl on Her shadowed face, which cut such angry lines against the pure metal of Her helmet. Always prepared for an attack, yet Her heart was so strangely open. She was so easy to rile; so tempermental.
So susceptible to insult that She would lose Her mind at merest mention of fault, yet still be so quick to fall to self-loathing upon reminder of Her weakness. Lashing out; pitying Herself. She was hiding something big: She had been this entire time.
He was becoming sure he knew what it was.
He spared a glance to the side. The too-large door at the edge of his vision. Closed, not locked; it'd be easier if it was. There was a decent chance She could knock him aside and simply slip out, and in that case he'd have absolutely no way to prevent this.
He'd just have to give Her a reason to stay.
His heart beat steadily: resolution coursing through his veins like virile lifeblood. He wasn't scared. He wasn't thinking twice, nor thrice, and he could forget about quarce- if that was even a word...
She was gonna have to go through him to get to Applejack.
Her voice drew his attention from forming plans, and their eyes met again as Hers narrowed in clear disgust: Her scowl deepening enough to show teeth. "Wipe that sickening look from your face, child," She hissed lowly: a sound full of enough vile, harming intent to chillingly raise the fur along his spine. "I know what you must be thinking, yet I cannot even conceive of the folly."
She straightened Her plated neck, looking down on high and towering over him as She so loved to do. "Abandon thoughts of heroism now, Light Flow, before you lose yourself in the fantasy. You know your destiny is with me, and me alone!"
With the slightest raising of Her voice, he could hear the power that thrummed below the surface: Her wings unfurling from Her back with a great, sudden force and shading Herself as a dark shadow. Yet still, Her eyes so full of rankling discontent shone as two terrifying points of eerie light in the shade.
He was not moved.
His back straightened- for as tall as it made him seem against a mountain- and raised his head to stare back into that cyan inferno that only burned all the brighter for his trespass into them.
Flashing angry eyes and snarling like an animal certainly made Her seem unhinged, but nothing could disguise Her true nature. It unfailingly shone through at every critical moment. She was lying: to him, and to Herself.
He furrowed his brow as menacingly as he could manage, which admittedly wasn't much. "You're such a hypocrite," he spat scornfully: watching as the rage in Her eyes roared. The blue fire in Her gaze leapt higher.
But he didn't stop. Didn't move. Didn't falter, as he continued to speak. "You know that you've become a fairytale in the years you've been gone." He spoke as a fact: staring resolutely up to Her face as it horribly twisted in elden rage anew. "There's not a soul in Equestria whose foals aren't reared to fear the terrifying tale of the monstrous Nightmare Moon."
His nerves flared in anticipation and he sucked in a quick breath as She took a step forward: the movement far too quick to see until the step had echoed and She was that much closer. "Do not speak of my situation so broadly as though I've no presence!" She snapped; nearly roared. "I know of what tatters my reputation has fallen to, and I know well how it hurts!"
Her shadowed eyes flashed all the brighter as She raised Herself higher. "And I know that there will be a sure recompense for dishonoring me as Equestria has taken to!" She stepped forward again; he was forced to step back: the edge of his hoof grazing solid wood. Nowhere to go, he'd just have to stand his ground. "Do you intend to harm me with petty slights against mine own pride now that I've allowed you close?! Know that I care nothing for-"
Her voice dipped. A flaw; something pregnable. "Don't even pretend that you don't care how ponies think of you!" he shouted: his interjecting scream just loud enough to eclipse Her lowering tone, such that She went silent for a single moment that he took to step brazenly forward.
And miraculously, She stepped back.
She always did. Every time he stepped forward, She would step back. A Goddess retreating from a little unicorn. It boggled the mind.
Her face was a snarling visage of animalistic insanity that seemed to grow less stable every second as Her wings quivered and pitched, but he didn't let the threat deter him. She wouldn't act on it; he had to have faith. "Nothing matters more in the entire world to you than how ponies perceive you, and for the longest time now, I'd thought it was all that: your pride. That you deemed it a- a slight against some vain, Godly conceit."
He shook his head fiercely as he spat Her honorific, and in that moment, Nightmare Moon pulled her lip taut around her fangs. A soundless hiss. A meaningless show. It was always meaningless. "But it's not about how you believe yourself better- it's not your pride- and it's something you've said that's made me begun to think you don't even have pride!"
He blinked- and Her face was inches away. "You would dare?!"
The force of Her roar was so loud- so unexpected that for the immediate moment after, he was more than sure he'd gone deaf. There was nothing else to comprehend in that single moment of inevitable fear besides a dull, yet somehow still deafening ringing.
For all that lived in Her voice, there was so much less true malice in Her eyes than he'd expected.
Except he had expected it.
With his next blink, he could again perfectly hear how Her voice rung off the walls. He could again hear the frenetic pitch in-between the rage of Her seething breaths.
He could hear himself shout back.
"I would dare!"
In that moment, as his voice peaked louder than he thought himself capable of, he felt a senseless source of brilliant, welling power within himself. A force of boundless, tasteless vigor that swelled his confidence, and for that adrenaline-fueled moment as he stared down a snarling Goddess very well bent on his due harm, he couldn't say that he'd ever felt so brave!
Feeling as though nothing could ever hurt him: he thrust his face forward, and for the slightest instant, their noses brushed. Such an intimate gesture of which the sentiment was immediately torn to shreds by the deep growl rising from his chest as their heads came inches from butting. "You spoke within the hour of the things you'd renounced! The things you say you don't deserve! As if you had given something up! As though it were something noble! As though you were doing something thankless!"
He blinked as something cloudy tickled the corners of his eyes: slightly itchy. The stifling ambiance of the room had quieted so much, and all he could hear was his voice: so confident and dauntless!
"Why would you act so humble if you're so intent on seeming like a Goddess?! Why would you be so kind to me when you're supposedly planning on tyrannizing Equestria?! Why have you still not told me your plan?!"
Every breath, between every spat syllable at volumes loud enough to tear his throat and rip his voice, felt hotter in his cold mouth. The persistent itch in his eyes grew with every blink, and it was nearly beginning to burn. The heat in his chest was rising like a wonderful fire!
"Tell me what you're hiding!" he roared, and for the faintest moment, he could swear he felt something whisper along his puffy lips.
But then, it was gone.
Nightmare Moon's face seemed caught in a single moment halfway between molten fury and quaint surprise, and as Her head raised again to tower over him in a dark shadow, he noticed for the first time how the starry expanse of mist billowing from Her head seemed very disquieted.
The miasma shook and juddered in jerking affronts within the space of the air: a quaint motion for something ostensibly gaseous, yet for as free as it seemed it also seemed just as tethered to the mare which cast it.
And it was then that miasma wreathed her face all the more from the light. The stars within did not twinkle; stilled, they were. It nearly seemed like a storm. Violent and malevolent; lashing against the bated air, yet keeping within itself an unchanging calmness.
She, too, was like a storm.
Light shook his head, which had seeming grown foggy at staring momentarily into Her mane. He caught himself, barely, from gasping from the exertion of grasping his attention back, though he anxiously licked along the backs of his teeth for familiar comfort.
He'd slowed, become distracted, and nearly lost momentum. Something... had felt very strange in the recesses of his aching chest for a moment, and for that single moment that he had felt so strong, he had felt so much more.
It was intoxicating. It was familiar. It called for him to reach for it.
Yet he'd stalled. And... he didn't know why.
Now, he was feeling a drawn-out sense of dissatisfaction creeping over his withers. As for how shocking denying the feeling had seemed to him, he didn't have time to give it much more thought. If he was going to call Her out, on everything he'd been suspecting, then he couldn't stop now. He had to keep going, no matter how the air as he turned seemed wisped in purple. He just had to ignore it, like all the rest.
He had to stop Nightmare Moon before Applejack could throw herself in harm's way. This wasn't about him, this was about finally doing something for her.
This was all for Applejack.
He swallowed heavily to clear his dry, aching throat, and turned back to the pricks of light shining against the purple sky. "To say that you'd renounced comfort, and ease, makes me think about everything you've been saying, and the way you've been acting all night." He felt a strange unsteadiness- an odd dizziness, suddenly new to the moment as he spoke, though he was sure it was from the returning thinness in the air.
He blinked haltingly: seeing in the backs of his eyes snippets and flashes of moments he'd honestly prefer to forget, hearing all the while ghosts of whispered clues he'd dismissed for monotony. Taking his breathing as calmly as he could manage, as he sifted in a second through the things that had once terrified him.
Breathe, think, then speak.
"You're... deliberately acting contrary to how you feel, aren't you?"
As he spoke, he turned his attention away from those glinting pricks of light: grimacing as he forced the tired memories of what had happened through the night to resurface. It hurt just about as much as any other emotional pain he'd suffered through to recall their single-note interactions, but the truth lay therein. "You keep flying off the handle and lashing out, but you always just barely restrain yourself. You... you keep contradicting your own image."
An ascendant Queen of Nightmares who would usher a child close and seek simple penances for thoughtless wrongs. Claiming platitudes to be meaningless, yet offering many in turn. How had he not seen the inconsistencies before? Where had his mind been?
He placed a hoof to his head: the tight-knit knot of concentration bunching all the worse on his brow. "You've said, on multiple occasions, how you intend in some way to save Equestria, and when you speak of your sister, you speak of her as though She was some awful villain- though She did erase my memory, to be fair." he conceded, knocking his head for the point.
He'd never liked the monarchy or the government on general principle, but now they'd hurt him personally. Now, he felt justified for moving into the woods and screwing them out of his rightful taxes.
He shook the tiring recollections of old opinions away, and focused on the next cold breath over his tongue. "I'd thought that was all the typical blustering of a comic book villain too vain to concede that they're just evil, but as the night went on, and you kept... acting so high and mighty..."
He sucked his cheek in and bit at it in a moment of relentless indecision, then shook his head slightly and let it pop out silently: sure for the first time in a while that he was on the right track. "Whatever you have planned that you still haven't told me... I think that you really think that you're doing something just."
Affecting apathy. True regret. Shedding tears despite Her claims at stern grandiosity. Denying midnight tales while playing directly into them. What was real, and what was She trying to prove to him?
He raised his gaze, to meet the glowing eyes of a figure too shadowed too make out: unmoving from how She'd been last he'd looked. "It makes me wonder all the more why you're pretending to be a monster."
She did not react, yet still he felt emboldened to have said it. It had sounded incredibly stupid in his own head, but on his lips, it'd sounded... intelligent. "It could simply be that you've confused evil with righteousness; that you see your coming reign and its obvious wrongs as a kind of justice, but then..."
He slowed, feeling again a cautious nagging feeling on his nape, but he physically shook it off, and forced himself to continue through a small grimace. "...if you were really some insane, imperialist monster looking to reign as a dictator Queen to freely torture and break whomsoever you pleased... then I don't think you'd be so..." He chewed on the word for a moment of heady uncertainty until he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out in a breath. "...sad."
His next breath came warmer, and with it went his last doubt as he picked up speed. "You have conviction in how you act, but every time you're really pushed it turns up shallow, and you pull back. As though it's difficult to even be what you're pretending is yourself." He bit down on his tongue to refocus himself because he was beginning to wander a bit, then straightened his back; he was hoping he looked far more impressive than he felt.
"I still don't know what you're trying to do in deposing your sister, but... I do know that you're not really evil.
"You're not Nightmare Moon."
There was nothing. No sudden intake of breath. No sharp turn of Her head. No flash of light signaling that the curse upon Her had finally broken at his words and that She was finally free from the demon that had driven Her to unconscionable acts- there was only the silence.
It made sense, though. Whether She'd been consistently lying or acting deliberately contrary to throw him off, there had just been too many... moments, to not arouse suspicion. To not seem ill-fit in retrospect, or seconds after, or even in the moment.
Moments... when the veneer had broken.
A quiet moment of tender embrace, and a spiteful smile shared beyond armor.
A tirade made within a dream to justify a lifetime of wrong.
A wordless plea for him to fight Her; for him to stop Her.
The first of many wistful moments of forgotten conceit.
A reverie filled with so much lost; so much guilt.
So much resignation. So much restraint. So many apologies.
A blue hoof.
If She wasn't lying- if She wasn't acting- if She wasn't insane- then why did Her own actions cause Her so much grief? Every time She began to bare Her fangs and act as the monster of foals' nightmares, She stopped Herself, and apologized.
Nightmare Moon was a foal's tale. A midnight fright told of an evil monster that spirited disobedient foals away to grind them into stardust, who had once tried to take over Equestria in an age very long past. A devised caricature of the most reprehensible traits that could be ascribed to a potential ruler, fed to foals alongside candy and costumes. In retrospect: a doctrine. A bitter pill made tasteless by grape juice, but the joke was on them: he hated grape juice.
He'd assumed that She was the myth come alive. That the myth had been written after Her.
That wasn't the mare he'd come to know. Not the mare he'd seen in Her rare lucidity.
She'd never told him Her goal. Why? She'd never spoken of Her past. Why? When he'd assumed that She was just as monstrous as the mare who stole naughty children away to tear them into the tiniest shreds of celestial dust to use in Her mischief, She'd never corrected him. Never said contrary. Never acted otherwise.
Yet She'd still told him She was sorry.
Why?
He felt yet more pressing on his bottom lip: ready to continue his argument and to aggregate the facts, but he let the desire die down. He only stared: holding his trembling lip firmly and his eye steadily on the black figure silhouetted against the night's sky of Her own self.
The anger, cathartic as it was, was only right for the moment. That one moment spent in a feverish fervor, to prove to Her and him of his intent, was only right as long as She was snarling back.
Whence Her anger had gone, he would follow with assured confidence and a quiet consideration. That was certainly best, for the moment.
He would be patient with Her, if She proved Herself patient with him.
There was something very profound about the first moment Her shadow began to dim. There was nothing altogether remarkable about the easing of Her shoulders- which themselves were only visible as Her body again seemed less black and more dark- yet he could not ignore how the tightly-wound tension bled from his chest as Her face came into view.
And he could not deny the sweet sense of vindication as he caught Her eyes, and they were not filled with livid temper popping hazardously like burning acid, but instead were sunken and haggard as She seemed, in a single word: sad.
"It is very well," came a voice, and came the shivers along his spine as that voice- so much like a stranger's- was unadorned by any drawling affectation. "-that you have come to unmask me, my inquisitive child."
He was again entirely unnerved in less than a second as, despite Herself, Her sorrowed frown curled up for a single hum of a humorless laugh. "I had begun to believe you too complacent to ponder anything truly meaningful. Nothing intelligent, and certainly never incisive."
It was only a moment, and Her smile fell again. "Perhaps that is why I had foolishly begun to believe myself safe from your scrutiny." If a mare could seem depressed and impressed at the same time, he would've described Nightmare Moon as such. "You lulled me into a masterfully false sense of security in the most genuine fashion, and for that, I must applaud your witless guile."
He blinked. Was that an insult, or a compliment? Which way did She want him to take that? Couldn't She just default to either slapping him or hugging him instead of being so gods-damned ambiguous?
Whether he felt affronted or cheered, he lost the chance to speak as Nightmare Moon sighed and bent Her head forward. His sense of danger jumped as the end of Her horn, nearly low enough to point at him, brilliantly shone to life with trickles of light. Thankfully, the feeling immediately plummeted as the same glow coalesced around the edges of Her helmet, and not his throat.
With a firm, glowing grip around its nose guard and the sides of its neck plating, She slowly began to slide the helmet upwards. Silently, yet so carefully did it ease over Her ears which folded forwards then back, and climbed across the incredible length of Her horn that held the metal in place. The gentle ministrations for Her own doffing were mesmerizing, and watching as he was almost felt a very certain kind of wrong.
In the back of his head, though, he was freaking out. The idea of Nightmare Moon without Her helmet- it seemed incomprehensible, Without any of Her armor, really. He couldn't picture it; he didn't dare to, it seemed so conceptually erroneous. It was like a guardpony without their armor, or a bureaucrat without a tie, or Applejack without a hat: it was just untenable to have one without the other.
He'd never imagined he'd ever see Her without it. He'd never dared to dream She'd let Herself relax that much.
Yet despite the untowardness of it all, he was soon witness to the sight of the foreign plate of hollow blue metal floating in the air, alongside a mare he could scarcely believe he knew.
Her pupils were round.
"You are the first since my banishment to gaze upon my naked face, Light," Nightmare Moon murmured: a look of intense, forlorn discomfort on a wide breadth of face he'd never imagined could be so plainly Equine. Bare fur- a calm expression- normal looking, cyan eyes- the entire moment was beginning to feel impossibly surreal. Was he still breathing? Best to breathe a little faster, just to make up for it.
Her helmet whispered down to hold itself sternly to Her side, and he was struck further by the inherently militaristic impression of the gesture. "In the moments I took to face my sister before coming here, not even was she witness. I can scarce believe I've truly gone mad enough to allow you this." Her frown deepened: it became nearly repressive. "Cherish this privilege, Light."
He'd... never imagined Her face without Her helmet covering fifty percent or more of it.
Light Flow, feeling far more than was showing over his still, dumbfounded face, felt his eye naturally drawn to the right.
...And even if he had, it seemed as though he would have imagined it completely wrong.
"It's... blue," he breathed in a moment of unrestrained awe, and in that moment as Her eyes widened, he remembered how shocked She'd been at the sight of Her own hoof. Perhaps he would've been just a bit more tactful had he remembered sooner, but then, the damage was already done.
Her polished hoof flew in an instant to touch upon the open side of Her neck: to rub against the wide stroke of pristinely blue fur that dominated the area which had been uncovered. First did it relentlessly explore a patch there, then did it desperately touch the side of Her face, and as though She could see the pattern of Her mismatched coloring with Her hoof, Her shoulders sagged all at once. Her helmet set itself gently down almost by an afterthought, to sit idly and ominously at Her side.
"Of course..." She whispered, softly enough that he had to strain to hear. "...simply more forgotten."
...Was it too harsh to make fun of the odd pattern She apparently sported? It wasn't Her entire previously-covered face that was blue, only a jagged section running from Her neck to Her cheeks and an curving arc between Her eyes, though he couldn't say it wouldn't look better if it was just... all blue. It nearly looked like some kind of... Zebrican war paint as it was. Made Her seem like a bad impressionist doing it as a hobby.
He wouldn't say anything. He'd just- forget it.
She straightened then, adopting the same heavy expression of resignation and so little indifference that, along with the new color, he could scarcely believe it was really Her face. "It surprises me to imagine my fur colored thus, yet it is all the same for how little it matters now." She blew out a short breath: Her expression growing more painfully reflective. "It is only another remnant of that which I abandoned, and that which I had forgotten."
The moment continued to grow heavier as She sighed, and swept a hoof across an eye glimmering with shocking wetness. "Though, for all I have changed in my dim past, I must tell you that I truly am Nightmare Moon." Her head shook as Her voice caught: the motion seeming wan to his disbelieving eyes. "I only wish I was truly emulating such a... feared figure, but it is rather the other way around. History has not been kind to my likeness."
There was too much to think about. Her face- Her fur- Her past- What did- How did- What did She- Why was there-
A hoof rose to his head to feel the slowly growing pounding there, but he wasn't sure he remembered doing it. "You're... cognizant of that..?" he stammered: the first thing to come from his mouth the first thing that had come to his mind, which he immediately regretted as sincerely as he did for anything so likely to get him punched.
He sucked in a breath and stepped back in an abrupt panic as he very often did when his hooves broke his teeth, but for how untoward it sounded, Nightmare Moon only sighed again: hanging Her head slightly, as though She couldn't even... look at him.
"Do you think me so lost that I cannot separate right from wrong?" She murmured tiredly, and Her voice was so tired. "It is much as you said," Her dim gaze raised, then, to meet his. "-I know very well when I have gone too far, and I know more than most the face of true evil. It is for the separation of good and evil that I have..."
She trailed off, then blinked. Once, twice, then too many times as a full-body shiver wreaked through Her. Then, Her head hung once more. Tired.
"...prepared."
He shook his head- just because it helped him think. Kept shaking it as minutely as he could, because he was thinking- oh was he thinking oh so hard about oh so many things and oh so many thoughts were running around his head but nothing was really quite quantifying the fact that Nightmare Moon was fully bearing Her feelings to him Tartarus below what did he even say to her now?!
Though Light was really more used to dumping his own problems for others to listen to, as Nightmare Moon sat stilly on Her hinds in front of him: looking for all the world like a completely average pony- minus the wings, size, color and horn- he was gradually piecing together a few possibilities for comfort.
Of course, every thought was just a little waylaid by the angry little voice in his head that said he should never comfort Her, but he'd mostly learned how to ignore it by now. Just a dull drone, really.
Light blinked, and licked his lips. Flicked a glance skittishly to the side, before taking one step forward. The echoing step drew Nightmare Moon's attention and Her head raised: sure proof that She was sad, but not comatose. That was new for Her; She usually enjoyed one end of the extremes of violently awake or morosely absent.
He bit his lip: staring widely at the floor just between the two of them for a moment before finally deciding to buck the pomp and say something. "You really are just pretending to be evil." It was a statement, and he'd delivered it as such: causing Nightmare Moon to crease Her brow a little in some slightly affronted emotion that he could've said something to alleviate except he couldn't really help that he was sounding just a bit monotone.
He... was thinking a little too fast. Slow... slow it down.
His next breath came slower, though he hadn't realized he'd been breathing very hard. Or thinking so fast. Or maybe he was actually thinking too slowly, because there was really a whole lot he needed to think about. The point was-
"Okay, so... if I'm guessing right with what you've told me, before your banishment you... developed some sort of plan to overthrow your... mostly peaceful sister, and..." he trailed as his words caught up to him, and his next thought was so incredulous that he couldn't help but adopt a horrified expression of honest confusion.
"...subjugate the kingdom... for... some virtuous purpose?"
The blatant contradiction deserved to be shot down and used as evidence against him in an unfair trial that would see him locked away forever for criminal irrationality, but instead of any of those things, the ever-depressed gaze of Nightmare Moon actually brightened slightly at his words.
"...Mostly peaceful, hm?" It was a whisper, and on its tail Nightmare Moon scoffed slightly. So slightly that it may have been a short laugh- he just couldn't tell.
He quietly intoned a dull, dumb monosyllable: the end of his mouth quirking up strangely as Nightmare Moon closed Her eyes, and began to straighten Her back. Though She'd hardly been sitting for incredibly long, Her back cracked and popped noisily as She shook out Her withers, then rolled Her shoulders. She took a long, deep breath: shaking Her head- which he maybe thought looked a little like She was trying to shake off Her blue fur- before, as Her posture was finally completely straight and still, She opened Her eyes.
Still round; not vengeful, but less saddened. More... purposeful.
"Let me tell you a story of my sister in times past, and how I came to the terrifying realization of conflict's inevitability."