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// 2: A Matter of Trust  
// Story: The Rise and Fall of the Holy Romane Empire 
// by Ponycletian 
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	The Sun was just cresting the horizon as a weary Princess Luna made her way through the winding halls of Canterlot Castle. She wanted nothing more than to simply curl up next to the fire in her chambers and sleep. To forget, for a little while, the problems that loomed so large on the horizon.

With her parents dead, and Discord fled, the castle that she had known for all her life felt... empty, almost desolate. It was with a sigh of relief that she found herself standing before the door that led to the suite of chambers that she shared with Concord.

The gust of frigid air that hit her when she opened the door chilled her to the bone and caused her to shiver. Every surface in the room was covered by a thin layer of frost which shone and glistened in a strange half-light, the likes of which she had never seen before. The source of this phenomenon was a strange grey fire flickering in the fireplace, which seemed to cast both light and shadow in equal measure. She entered the room and, closing the door behind her, approached the figure resting motionlessly on the carpet before the strange fire. As she drew nearer, the air grew colder, and she realized that the fire, rather than warming the room, was draining it of warmth and color.

"Concord." she said with concern. "Is everything alright?"

His reply, when it came, was cold and desolate, and he didn't take his gaze from his ghostly fire. "What have you decided to do about me?"

"What do you mean," she asked uneasily. "Why would we have decided to do anything either with or about you?"

A hint of hope crept into his voice, but he still refused to look at her. "Given Celestia's reaction to my presence, and the fact that I am equally capable of having committed those murders, it seemed reasonable to assume that I would be a suspect the same as Discord."

She felt she was starting to understand what was going on, but there had to be something she was missing. If he was innocent, then the mere expectation that he would be a suspect wouldn't have caused him to do whatever he was doing, and if he was guilty then she didn't imagine he would be sitting around waiting to be caught. In a careful tone, she said, "she did believe that you could have been behind this, but I told her that I didn't think so."

She reached the spot where he lay, and she lowered herself to the ground beside him. "Lift your wing," she said quietly.  He finally turned away from his fire, which was still radiating freezing air, and looked at her, head slightly tilted in confusion. She shivered again and said simply, "it's cold." 

He nodded and lifted his wing, draping it over her as she pressed herself against him. She sighed comfortably as warmth slowly started to return to her body. He was still looking at her with that faint hint of confusion. 

"Why don't you think it was me," he asked evenly.

She gave an exasperated sigh. "Are you going to try and convince me that you did it too? Just tell me, did you do it?"

Still calm, he replied, "no, I neither committed the acts, nor do I have any intention of convincing you one way or the other of my guilt or innocence. What I want to know is why, in the absence of any clear evidence other than the ability required to kill two of the most powerful ponies alive, you don't need convincing."

She could hardly believe that he had just asked her why she didn't think he was monstrous enough to kill their parents. "B- because, it just doesn't make sense," she stammered in surprise.

"What doesn't make sense? I could think of no verifiable means of proving that I was not responsible, so what makes you confident enough to claim to Celestia that I'm not?" His voice and expression were still calm, but his eyes seemed almost pleading, like he wanted to be convinced.

She took a moment to arrange her thoughts. "The main reason is that it just doesn't seem like something you would do. Celestia said that the reason why you might have done this was that you wanted us to have to turn to you for help. She suggested that you would frame Discord so that we would be forced to rely on you to fight him, essentially putting you in charge. But the problem with that argument is that it assumes that you wanted to be in charge to begin with, and I just don't think that you do." Concord started to speak, but she realized her error and spoke hastily. "I'm sorry, it's not that you don't want to be in charge, it's that you don't want it enough to break the law. That's what I meant."

"And what makes you think that I would be unwilling to break the law to gain absolute authority?"

She rolled her eyes. "Please," she said incredulously, "you won't canter inside, have never complained about an order or request, and practically make me beg before helping me pull pranks on Celestia or Discord, and only if they prank me first. You are, on your own, perhaps the most boring, rule abiding, and quiet pony I know, but those aren't my only reasons." If her less than flattering description of his personality bothered him, he hid it as well as he usually hid everything else. 

"Another reason why this doesn't seem like you is that it just feels too convoluted and far too... chaotic. If you wanted to take over, I always imagined that it would be a quiet, understated coup. Everypony would wake up one morning and learn that you were in charge and that there was nothing anypony could do about it." She shivered again, but this time it wasn't the cold. She had tried to imagine, once, what would happen if Concord decided to simply take over, and what she had imagined had kept her awake for nearly a week.

He must have felt her shiver and mistaken it for the cold, for the fire suddenly turned into normal fire and his wing's hold on her tightened slightly. She nuzzled his neck appreciatively before continuing. "But the strongest reason, for me anyway, is that I trust you when you say that you didn't do it."

For several minutes, the only sound was the fire, and the two ponies quiet breathing. Finally, Concord broke the silence, saying softly, "thank you, Luna. That you are willing to trust me, even about something as important as this, means more to me than I can say."

She leaned in quickly and kissed him on the lips. It was like kissing a statue, for he did not react at all. He may have made great strides over the years concerning empathy, emotions, and feelings, but expressing them was still difficult for him. Besides, he would never do anything even faintly inappropriate until marriage anyway, since he viewed marriage customs as a sort of unwritten law that he must never break. She pulled back and said, "I love you."

His response was a quiet, "and I, you," before turning to look into the fire once more.

She was starting to feel somewhat drowsy, between the warmth of the body beside her, the heat emanating from the quietly crackling fire, and the stress of the night before. She wanted nothing more than to lie there in comforting embrace of her closest friend and just let sleep overtake her, but there was one more thing that she had to do. "Concord," she said sleepily.

"Yes, my love," he said tenderly, looking at her once more and smiling gently.

It wasn't very common, but every once in a while, he managed to let a glimmer of genuine emotion through. The response, simple though it was, made her heart swell with happiness to hear him express such care and affection. "I know you don't like to use magic that other ponies couldn't manage, but Celestia and I would like to ask if you could... ." She had to stop to keep herself from crying. "If you could magically preserve the bodies until Celestia gets back from finding Discord." 

"We thought the best thing to do was to find Discord as quickly as possible to try and convince him to return, but that means that there will be no time for a funeral, but... ." She tried to hurry through her explanation, hoping that she would finish before her grief overwhelmed her, but to no avail. Tears started rolling down her face, and she buried her face in the soft fur of Concord's neck. 

As she cried, she could hear Concord's voice speaking soothingly in her ear. "Of course, Luna, I'll take care of it. I know it seems hard, but I think you and Celestia are doing the right thing." For what felt like a long time, her whole world was reduced to nothing but the warm, tear streaked fur on which her head rested, and grief. When the sobbing finally diminished, Concord asked tentatively, "would you like to go to bed? I'm sure you must be tired." 

But she didn't want to be alone right then. There were only five ponies in her life that she felt close to, and two of them were dead, killed by the third who the fourth was setting out to find. At this moment when everything seemed to be falling apart, the last thing she wanted was for the only friend still with her to leave. She shook her head feebly, unable to speak.

"Would you prefer that we just stay here?"

She nodded into his neck, and he said calmly, "alright, we can rest here." She felt a gentle pressure on her cheek, but it was gone after a moment. As tired and sad as she was, her heart did a tiny flip when she realized that, for the first time in their relationship, Concord had kissed her. She finally managed to fall asleep with the shadow of a smile on her lips.