Eventually, Pinkie calmed down, her hyperventilated crying fading to the occasional sniffle. She peeled her face off of Cadance's shoulder and wiped her eyes, rasping, "Sorry about that."
"Nothing to apologize for," Cadance reassured her. "The only discomfort your tears posed to me was as reminders that you weren't feeling well."
Pinkie gave a thick giggle at that. "Twily's right, you do have a big heart." A hint of envy entered her voice before being quickly banished, but not before it infected "I can really see why Shiny loves you."
Cadance gave her a wan smile in reply. Hard as it was to have a romantic rival, admitting defeat, even indirectly, like Pinkie had was much harder. I would apologize for stealing Shiny's heart, but both of us know that I wouldn't really mean it, she mused. All I can do is try to be worthy of him. "And I," she replied, "can see why he speaks so fondly of you."
The soft smile Pinkie sent her in response was more meaningful than an ear-to-ear grin. "I'm sorry if I ever make him speak grumpily about me," she said. "I know that sometimes my Pinkie-ness can be a bit... much."
"Most of the time," Cadance reassured her, "he's more puzzled than grumpy. Speaking of which, I've been meaning to ask you; how did you manage to get into the Palace when Sunset was brought on?"
Pinkie nervously twirled a lock of hair. "See, this is another thing I tried not to tell Twily about, because she doesn't like getting "I don't know" as an answer. I mean, I know how I got into the Palace in the sense of "I know what path I took," but I don't know how I got in in the sense of "I know whether I walked, ran, or climbed the path I took." I mean, if you need to go somewhere, you don't care if you walk, bike, drive, or fly, do you? You just go there. That's what I did; I was sitting at Canterlot High, my Pinkie Sense told me somebody was making a Pinkie Promise, I needed to go there to serve as a witness, and I just went there."
Cadance simply stared at her. You "just" traveled several kilometers in the blink of an eye, bypassed dozens of well-trained Guards, and avoided being seen by a room full of people, before returning to Canterlot High the same way? Just how extraordinary are you, Pinkie Pie?
Pinkie groaned in frustration, before snapping her fingers and smiling. "It's like those quantum mechanics guys Twily talks about sometimes," she said, "how they make things happen but they don't like people watching them work. My gifts get where I'm needed, but they don't like me watching them take me there, or," she flinched in fear, and shame, "telling them where I want to go."
Cadance blinked. "You mean you don't have control over it?" she asked shakily.
Pinkie nervously shook her head from side to side. "Well," she drawled, "I can not go where my gifts want me to. It's-it's like they're a taxi, but-but someone else sent them to pick me up. When my gifts think I'm needed somewhere, they drive up, honk their horn, roll down their window, then say 'Hey, we've got a Pinkie Promise being made in the capitol.' Most of the time, I go, 'Ooh, this is my ride!', jump in, make sure whoever's making the promise knows that breaking a Pinkie Promise is the fastest way to lose a friend FOREVER - ever - ever -"
(Cadance winced at the volume, though she had to admire the effort the girl put into mimicking the echo.)
"- then jump back in the gift-taxi and get back home. I can tell the gift-taxi drivers, 'Oh, sorry, I already have an appointment' and they'll just go away, so I don't have to go where my gift wants me, but I can't hail a gift-taxi, tell them 'Castellot, stat!' and have them drive me there, even if it would be really useful for me to be able to."
Cadance's eyebrow rose at the venom in her last words. "Do you," she hesitantly asked, "resent your gifts?"
Pinkie flinched. "'Resent' is a bit of a harsh word," she nervously laughed, "I mean, do you resent your foot when you bang it against the wall? Sure, sometimes it might be annoying, but most of the time it's really useful! I mean think about it, where would we be without our feet? How would we stand? How would we play 'This Little Pinkie Went to Market?' What would happen to all the shoemakers? And what about all the industries that supply the shoemakers? The economy would fall into-"
"Admirable escape attempt," Cadance cut her off, making her voice as firm as her uncle's, "but I know what stalling sounds like. If this is a sensitive topic, Pinkie, I'll be glad to drop it, but only if you tell me so directly. Do you resent your gifts?"
Pinkie flinched, rallied, then wilted. "Not," she hesitantly replied, "not in the sense of 'I wish I didn't have them-'" Another flinch, then a correction to, "- at least, not all the time. Sometimes, when I get a doozy that won't leave me alone but doesn't tell me what's going to happen, I wish I could turn them off, but most of the time I like having my gifts. They-they're really helpful for small stuff, like storing props," she pulled a rubber chicken out of her hair, "showing up where my people need me," came from over Cadance's shoulder, before "and remembering what everyone's favorite cupcake flavor is" accompanied the girl bouncing back in front of her. "All of that's really, really handy, and I'm glad Providence gave it to me. It's just..."
A surge of emotion washed over Cadance: anxiety, shame, anger.
... envy?
"Starlight's a big threat, right, Cadance?" dragged her out of her confusion, Pinkie Pie turning around to hide her face. "I mean, she has to be if the Princess decided to send Shiny after her, right?"
"Yes," Cadance smiled reassuringly, though the girl couldn't see her. "Don't worry, though, Shiny is more than a match for her."
"So you trust him to save the realm?" Pinkie asked as she turned back around to look at her.
Frowning, Cadance nodded.
"Would you trust Sunset to?" Pinkie asked.
Cadance hesitated for a moment, a moment which saw her return to the office where Sunset had confronted her. If Shiny weren't available, would I support her taking his place? Eventually, after weighing the firebrand in the office against the shining knight Twilight had described, she nodded.
"What about Twilight?" Pinkie pressed. "Would you trust her to catch the realm if it started falling?"
Cadance swallowed. "Alone," she whispered, playing for time, "or-"
"Not completely alone, no," Pinkie shook her head as she stepped forward. "Just in Shiny's position, the person with whom the last buck stops. She'd still have her friends, advisors, and henchmen, but she'd be the one responsible for making decisions. Would you trust her then?"
"Yes," Cadance nodded. "Yes, I would."
Pinkie softly smiled at her, took another step forward, then asked, "Would you trust me?"
Cadance froze.
"Would you trust me to save the realm like you'd trust Shiny, Sunny, and Twily?" Pinkie continued advancing. "Would you trust me to sit in the commander's seat and not get distracted seeing how fast I can get it to spin? Would you trust these hands," she waved her gloved palms, "to catch the realm if it fell?" She paused, then whispered, "If it was a choice between me and Starlight, would you feel like you were choosing between gold and straw or between a rock and a hard place?"
"You are nowhere near as bad as Starlight," Cadance frowned. "The closest comparison to her I can think of is Cinch. Pinkie Pie, you're a wonderful girl, and if anyone tries to say you're not, they're wrong."
Pinkie wanly smiled back at her. "Thank you," she replied. "That's... that's really nice to hear. But... it's not an answer. Yes, I might be better than Starlight, but still, would you trust me with the fate of the realm?"
Cadance's frown deepened. She's expecting me to say no. Why?
"They-they're really helpful for small stuff..."
"It's just..."
... envy.
She bit back a gasp as contempt bit into her like acid. The girl before her blurred, her hair falling straight as her mouth fell into a snarl, blue rage superimposing itself over her eyes like illusory fire.
But none of that rage was focused outward; all of it was turned on Pinkie Pie. Cadance could almost hear her shadow screaming, "What's the point of having gifts like this if we can't use them to stop threats like Starlight?!"
She shook her head, dismissing the baleful illusion, and blurted out, "Yes."
Pinkie blinked in confusion. "What?"
"Yes," Cadance confirmed, "I would trust you with the realm."
Pinkie simply stared at her, wide-eyed, for several moments. "Why?" eventually escaped her lips.
"Because you came here," Cadance replied, though she knew that alone wasn't enough of an answer. "Because you've studied psychology, because you talked with me about my uncle. I would trust you with the realm because you care."
"Who doesn't care about their home?" Pinkie tried to dismiss her.
"Most of the residents here probably have neighbors that care about them," Cadance retorted, "but do those neighbors care enough to study psychology so they can better understand what the residents are going through, or to come out here and visit the residents? And even if they did, does that make doing so not as good? The point of caring isn't whether it's rare or common, it's that caring is good in and of itself."
"Even caring about people like Starlight?" Pinkie whispered.
Cadance stumbled. Twilight crying her eyes out, Sunset breaking, Shiny being forced to pursue... "Sometimes," she stammered, "sometimes caring means trying to stop someone from doing something that hurts them, even if it only hurts them indirectly."
Pinkie stepped forward, pressing her advantage. "What about people like Cinch?"
Tears dotted the edges of Cadance's eyes, though strangely they looked almost purple in the light. The sight confused her enough to stop the roar of rage from escaping her throat, giving her enough space to compose herself and consider her response. "Caring," she carefully answered, "doesn't mean unconditionally accepting. Sometimes, even if we care about someone, we need to punish them for their past behavior so that they learn not to do it again."
"But when," Pinkie pressed, "do we know they've learned? When's their reformation party?"
Cadance clenched her fist at the unasked question; when would you be willing to forgive Cinch? She knew her knee-jerk answer of "Never" was wrong, and "When they prove they've learned their lesson" felt cheap, more circular reasoning than true answer. After a moment of thought, she realized what it would take for Cinch to prove that she'd changed enough for Cadance to forgive her: genuinely apologizing for her actions at the Friendship Games.
"When they do something they would never have done before they learned," was the translation she offered.
"But how do you know whether they really wouldn't have done something?" Pinkie asked, clearly trying to stall. "How do you know it isn't just something you didn't know they would've done?"
"How do you know that the sky won't fall tomorrow?" Cadance countered. "There's always going to be doubt when making a decision, no matter how much research you do. You can chase certainty, but you'll never catch it; the best you can do is follow it far enough to be fairly sure about what's the right choice. You can't just doubt forever; if you want to make a decision, you need to accept uncertainty at some point. How uncertain is up to you, but being uncertain at all isn't. As Twilight would say, "You might be comfortable with 99% confidence or 90% confidence, but you'll never reach 100% confidence.'" Kneeling down, she put a consoling hand on the sniffling Pinkie's shoulders. "That's actually why I'd be willing to trust you with the realm. Yes, you might not know much about statecraft, but you care about Homestria, and Twilight's reports on you tell me that you're willing to move Heaven and Homis for those you care about. I would trust you with the realm because I know you would try, and I know you would try because you care." Tenderly, she grabbed Pinkie's hands and clasped them with her's, then smiled, "And I'm 99.9999% confident that, even if you didn't succeed, you would put up a good fight."
Pinkie stared back at her, mouth gaping, eyes shining. Then, before Cadance could blink, the girl's arms were wrapped around her in a tight embrace, love and gratitude trying to express themselves physically when words failed.
Once more, Cadance replied in kind.
After a few moments, Pinkie's words returned, in the form of a whisper. "Thank you. That... that meant a lot to me."
"Don't worry about it," Cadance smiled. "You're worth it."
Pinkie gave her another squeeze of thanks, then released her and backed away. "Sorry for being so sobby," she sheepishly rubbed the back of her neck. "I guess I bottled up a lot more than I thought I did."
"I understand," Cadance reassured her as she stood back up, brushing off her skirt. "Feels like I bottled up more of my anger than I thought, myself."
Pinkie flicked a quick glance at her forehead, then slumped in relief when she saw nothing there. Before Cadance could ask her why she'd done so, Pinkie asked, "Do you wanna talk about it? You just let me pour out my bottle on you, it's only fair you get the chance to pour your's out, too."
Cadance hesitated, then sighed, "You mentioning Starlight and Cinch reminded me of how they've threatened my family, and when I think about that, it gets difficult to see anything other than red. I try to be the big-hearted woman Twilight described me as, but if someone threatens my family it feels like that heart turns to stone. It's just so frustrating; I know that I should be better than this, I want to be better than this, but part of me still wants to run an epee through Cinch's shriveled, black heart."
Pinkie cocked her head at that. "Not Starlight's?"
Cadance took a deep breath. "I know it's petty, but Cinch has earned more of my hate than Starlight. She helped drive my uncle into the abyss, then turned the school he'd worked so hard for into a cesspool of corruption, and you know what she did to Twilight at the Friendship Games. But," she swallowed heavily, "if I'm being honest, the main reason I hate her is because she misled me. While I was Dean, Crystal Prep didn't experience corruption; as Cinch told me, it was simply realpolitik, or a misunderstanding, or a few bad apples. Despite every cell in my body telling me otherwise, I believed her, and tried to tell myself that the rot I smelled was simply too much sweetness."
She clenched her fist again, nails biting her palm. "Then came the Friendship Games, where Cinch almost made me an accessory to the murder of one I love like a sister. The deal I'd struck with the devil was almost repaid, and it's only thanks to Sunset that it came undone. The Games showed me what I'd been blind to for too long, what I'd been allowing to happen under my nose, and I wept for shame. But there's a difference between letting something happen and making it happen, a difference that, the more I thought about it, the more my tears turned from ones of shame to ones of anger. Yes, I'd accepted Crystal Prep's corruption, but that corruption was only there in the first place due to Cinch. I was victimized by her schemes just like Twilight had been, another fly caught in her web, though one that accepted the spider's invitation there instead of flying into it by accident. She'd been playing me like a puppet, dirtying my hands instead of hers alone. And when I realized what that meant about the Friendship Games, how she'd tried to make me an accomplice to my sister's murder..." Blood welled up where her nails cut into her hand. Swallowing heavily, she whispered, "I'm glad that Indigo's father was able to convince her to retire. If he hadn't, I don't know what I'd have done."
Pinkie clasped her bleeding hand in consolation. "Nothing bad," she quietly reassured her, "You're too good for that."
Cadance gave a dismissive snort. "An old spiritual director of mine, Pater Tregua, told me something about that once," she replied. "'Goodness and badness aren't determined by our identities, but by our choices.' I'm not a good person, I'm a person who tries to do the right thing, and with Cinch and Starlight my motivation to try is much weaker."
"But you don't like that," Pinkie countered. "You want to try, even with them, and if you can trust me to try to save the realm, I can trust you to try to do the right thing when it's for people you don't like."
"Pinkie," Cadance sighed, "it's not that simple. You doubted your abilities, I doubt my-"
"-ability to motivate yourself?" Pinkie cut her off with a smirk.
"You doubted whether your abilities would let you do anything even if you tried," Cadance shot back, "I doubt whether I'd be willing to try at all."
"And, again," Pinkie breezily answered, "I know you don't like those doubts, so you'll try specifically to prove them wrong. You've got little Angel Cady on your shoulder, and you really don't wanna disappoint her, and you know that not trying to do the right thing would make her give you the "I'm not angry, just disappointed" speech until you break down crying, admit that you goofed, then try to un-goof it. I can trust you to try to do the right thing, either because you told yourself to or because Angel Cady stared at you until you did."
"And what's stopping me from simply gagging "Angel Cady," as you put it?" Cadance raised a brow.
Pinkie's reply was simple; "You are."
Cadance had to give a short bark of laughter at that. "You'd trust the person being watched with the care of their watchdog? When is that ever a good idea?"
"When the person being watched knows the watchdog's right," Pinkie quietly replied. "You could gag Angel Cady, yeah, or do a switcheroo and lock her in your cell, but you'd always feel her watching you, looking at you in disappointment. You could try to block her out, try to ignore her, but I don't think someone who's spent as much time with their shoulder angel as you would be able to shut her out completely, because, in your heart of hearts, you'd know that she was right."
Cadance simply stared back at her, stricken silent, before eventually loosing a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Pinkie. That's... comforting to know."
"The truth is comforting," Pinkie smiled, before frowning, "I do think that Pater Tregua guy you mentioned said something comforting, too, though; I trust you because you try to do the right thing, not because you've tried to in the past."
"I know," Cadance nodded in understanding. "Uncle never let me rest on my laurels, either." Another thing to thank him for.
Pinkie nodded sagely, then shivered. "If my doozy's right," she murmured, "you might have to pick up that epee you mentioned."
Cadance's blood ran cold. "What do you mean?"
Pinkie bit her lip. "I don't want to say," she whimpered. "If I don't say it, maybe it won't happen."
Cady's hand gently brushed Pinkie's cheek. "I understand that you're afraid," she soothed, "and the way you're trying to keep us safe, even if it makes you uncomfortable, is moving. But my uncle taught me -" (By counter-example) "- a better way to fight prophecies like this."
"Really?" Pinkie sniffled, wiping her eyes. "What is it?"
"Listen to them," Cady replied, her thumb wiping away a stray tear, "then do everything you can to write yourself a better future."
Pinkie's confidence collapsed. "But what if that makes the prophecy happen?" she fretted.
"Then at least you tried," Cadance answered, softly smiling. "You tried to do what you thought was right, and hopefully put up a good fight."
Pinkie stared back at her, fear and hope warring across her eyes. Her fear-led teeth almost drew blood from her lips before, bolstered by the warmth flowing from Cadance's hand, hope drove them back, parted Pinkie's lips, and convinced her to speak:
"You," she hesitantly began, "you were in a tower, one-one made of shining crystal, blue like-like cornflowers. And-and you weren't alone; there were knights, and-and bright shadows, like-like patches of the night sky, and all of them were listening to you. Because-because-because..." A gentle circular rub from Cady's thumb helped Pinkie stumble over the barrier, squeaking out, "... because they had to, because the tower was surrounded by dark shadows and grey soldiers and snow clouds and a big black star, and they all wanted to get in but nobody inside wanted to let them in so everybody inside had to work together to keep them out. Some of the knights were crying because some of the grey soldiers were knights, and the dark shadows were so old and the bright shadows were too young but there wasn't enough time for them to get away before the tower was surrounded, and the snow clouds weren't snowing because the snows were further north." Taking a desperate breath, she blurted out, "Then the toads came, then more grey soldiers, then elves because why not, and you weren't just fighting for you or the people in the tower, you were fighting for everyone, one candle against all the world's darkness," then slumped in Cady's arms, spent.
Cadance braced her, murmuring soft sounds of reassurance as she tried to hold the girl up. "It's okay, Pinkie," she whispered, "Everything's okay."
"But it won't be," Pinkie whimpered. "Night will come for us, and the next day's Sun will only be a black star."
"Then we'll wait for the next day," Cadance promised her, clasping her hand. "And, if the Sun doesn't shine then, the day after that."
Pinkie's sorrowful, haunted gaze struck Cadance mute. "And if the Sun never shines again?"
Determination took Cadance's tongue back. "Then we'll burn as long and as bright as we can to make up for it."