//------------------------------//
// Endings 
// Story: Children of Darkness and Light 
// by Aquaman 
//------------------------------//


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“I think by then they’d completely forgotten I was there. I’d almost forgotten I was there. I just stood behind them, watched them go at each other, and didn’t say a fucking word. Because I was a good soldier. Thought I was fighting for something good, something better. Maybe I was. Maybe every creature down in that valley thought the exact same thing. Maybe it doesn’t matter at all…”


===


Twilight wiped her eyes with a hoof. It rose in slow, jerky movements like it weighed a hundred tons, and when it fell again, her face looked like it had aged a thousand years. 

“I loved your mother,” the Equestrian princess murmured. “Like she was the big sister I never had, the perfect match for the big brother I did. I loved her confidence, her spirit, how she could tie you in knots with words and cut you in half with a smile. She was a wonderful princess, but she was born to be a diplomat.” 

Her gaze swept towards Garnet and then past him, to the outpost ensconced in the trees. “She was born for this world, not mine,” she went on. “But when Shining died, after Aris Bay… something broke in her. Something shattered, and some days it feels like all the shards of what she used to be got stuck in me. I can feel them dig into me, cut deeper and deeper with every decision I make — every life I save or end with a word or a smile or my own confidence that I’m on the right side of things.”

Now she regarded Flurry again — like an ant sizing up an approaching sparrow, trying to decide whether to run and warn the colony or die hopelessly trying to protect it. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes, Flurry. More than I can count. But the biggest one, the one I’ll regret for the rest of my life, was you. I should’ve done more. I should’ve been there for you.”

“And done what?” Flurry asked, gaze steady and jaw set. “If you’d been there?”

“I should’ve told you the truth,” Twilight answered, lips trembling and eyes refilling with tears. “You’re every bit your mother’s daughter and more. You’re a brilliant tactician, passionate and courageous and strong beyond measure. You’re exactly who the Alliance needs to lead it…”

Twilight took a breath, sought strength within herself to match her fellow Princess — and found it. “And you should never have been a Princess. You did nothing to earn the power you have, never had to learn how to live without it. Instead of bending to the world and the creatures you serve, you bend them to serve you, and if they won’t bend, you break them without a thought. You’re everything Celestia feared most, the reason she waited a thousand years to choose someone to take her place: because if she got it wrong, she’d give unimaginable power to someone who’d abuse it. Who wouldn’t save the world, but break it, and remake it into something it should never be.”

Twilight took a step forward. Flurry didn’t move — didn’t seem to react at all. “You scare me, Flurry. You have since you were a baby, since I first spoke to you as one grown mare to another and didn’t recognize who I saw behind your eyes. I think of what you are, who you’ll be if you’re left on the path you’ve chosen for yourself, and it terrifies me beyond what I thought my heart could take.”

Another step — and still no reaction. “But something you should know about me, Flurry? I’ve been scared before. I’ve stared down tyrants and psychopaths, warlords and murderers, and I’ve felt fear course through me like poison. But it didn’t stop me. I stood my ground, and I fought for the world that every alicorn before us knew it was our duty to preserve… and I won. Every single time. Not despite my fear, but because of it. Because I knew there was no other option, and because I wasn’t afraid of the only thing that mattered.”

The two alicorns were inches apart. Twilight’s eyes were dry. A low thrum rumbled through the soil, echoed in the trees and skipped in the hearts of all who heard it. “I’m afraid, Flurry: of what you could do, who you might become, what will happen if you aren’t stopped. But I’m not afraid of you. And if you leave me no other choice, I will make sure that no creature anywhere ever is again.”