//------------------------------//
// Tears of the Moon 
// Story: Blood On the Moon 
// by sentinel28a 
//------------------------------//

   Trixie floated in a world of white nothingness.  She was aware.  She could see—herself, anyway.  There was nothing but her.  The wounds on her body were there, but they didn’t hurt.  That was all right, at least.  Maybe she was dead, then.  Trixie looked around.  Was this it?  Was there nothing in the afterlife? She had heard old mare’s tales, of meeting ponies who had passed on and such.  Trixie did not really believe any of them, because she was the Great and Powerful Trixie, who knew no rivals.
Except one.
Twilight Sparkle appeared then, as she usually did in her dreams, but this was not the somewhat dimunitive purple unicorn—Trixie was actually no larger in size, but thought of herself as being so—but a towering, demonic giant with blood red eyes, horn and golden crown glowing with hellish energy, her mouth parted in a savage, fanged grin.  Wings spread in an arc around Trixie, but the feathers were metallic and sharp.  They tightened the arc, coming closer and closer until they tore into Trixie’s skin, reopening her wounds.  Agony shot through every nerve in her body, her ears assaulted by Twilight’s horrible cackling as she tortured Trixie.  Somehow, Trixie knew this would never end: the pain would be eternal.  She tried to scream but then realized she had no mouth—
Trixie’s eyes opened.  She drew in a breath.  Then another.  She could breathe.  “I’m…alive…”
“Yes, you are.”
She looked around and saw who spoke: Princess Luna.  Luna sat on her haunches, and as Trixie surveyed the room, she realized she was in the palace at Canterlot.  The bed she lay on was actually quite comfortable, though as she moved, the pain started.  It was not as bad as the dream, though.
Then Trixie remembered.  She turned away from Luna.  “Ponyville.  I destroyed it, didn’t I?”
“No.”
“And Twilight Sparkle?”
“Alive.”
“How?  I cast a mass disintegration spell.”
“Which I cancelled out.”
Trixie turned back to her, eyes wide.  “You can do that?”
Luna rolled her eyes.  “I raise the moon every night, and ponies are shocked that I can cast magic? ”
There was silence for a few minutes, then Trixie spoke.  “Kill me.”
“No.”
Trixie tried to fill her voice with as much venom as it would hold.  “Kill me while you can.”  It sounded pathetic.
“Why?”
The question took Trixie utterly by surprise.  She stared at Luna.  “I think it's plainly obvious.  I tried to kill Celestia’s prize student.  I was going to destroy Ponyville.  For that matter, I enslaved Ponyville before all of this.  By Celestia’s law, any of that is punishable by death.”
“’Tis true.”
Trixie motioned around the chamber.  “Then why the nice treatment?  Why am I still alive, or at least not chained up in a dungeon somewhere?”  She met Luna’s eyes.  “Or on the moon?”
Luna’s tail lashed.  Her pleasant expression vanished—but only for a moment.  “Because I believe in you, Trixie.”
It was Trixie’s turn to roll her eyes.  “Oh, please.  You think there’s still good in me or something?  I remember that from books I read when I was a filly.  A foal turns his father back to the good and gains his cutie mark.  Well, there’s no good in me, Luna, and I’d much rather get it over with.”
Luna said nothing for a moment.  “Then why didn’t you destroy Ponyville or kill Twilight Sparkle?”
“I tried.”
“Did you?”  Luna stood and stretched her wings.  “No one saw you enter Ponyville.  You could’ve trotted to the town square and wiped the town off the map.  As far as Twilight goes, why not wait until she was asleep and cut her throat with a magic dagger?” 
“I wanted her to know it was me that killed her.”
“Ah, you wanted a dramatic exit.”
Trixie considered that for a moment.  Luna was right: it would have been easier to take Twilight by surprise.  For that matter, she could have poisoned Twilight, acted like her friend and then slipped a few drops of nightshade into her water trough.  Or killed her silently with a spell in Twilight’s own library.  No one would’ve ever known who the culprit was.  Celestia would’ve figured it out eventually, probably, but by that time Trixie would be long gone.  There were a few places on Equestria where Celestia’s long hoof did not reach.
Yet Trixie knew exactly why she had challenged Twilight to the magic duel.  Assassin tricks were not the way of the Great and Powerful Trixie.  Standing over Twilight’s dying body, defying even Celestia in an epic last stand, or killing both Twilight and herself in an awesome act of mutual destruction—yes, that was how the Great and Powerful Trixie should die.
Then Trixie began to cry.  She couldn’t even get revenge right.
Luna watched her.  Trixie finally couldn’t stand the princess’ stare.  “What are you looking at?” Trixie bawled.
“Myself.”  Luna walked away.

The next day, Trixie was allowed to walk around.  Her wounds were largely healed, through magic, though she winced with each hoofstep at her still-cracked ribs.  There would be scars as well, though hard to see through her blue hair.
She noticed there were plenty of guards around, all of them stoic and expressionless as usual, except for their eyes.  The eyes followed her everywhere, and not a few of them clearly would happily volunteer to be the one to kill her.  Twilight Sparkle was popular with the Royal Guards—her brother was once their commander, after all—and news traveled fast.  Trixie sighed.  Clearly the only reason she was being treated decently was to get her healthy enough to stand trial, after which she would be convicted, and then executed.
It didn’t explain why Luna was being so kind to her, however.  Her last words the day before haunted Trixie.  As they walked through the palace garden, she finally asked the alicorn, “What did you mean by that, that you saw yourself?”
Luna smiled.  “I should think the Great and Powerful Trixie would have deduced my meaning.”
“Please don’t call me that.”
“Very well.”
Trixie stared at Luna, who took in a deep breath of the night air and smiled pleasantly.  The unicorn felt adrift.  She understood the guards’ hate; she understood Celestia’s reasoning for her to be back to full health for the trial.  She did not understand why Luna, Nightmare Moon for the love of Equestria, was so accomodating.  Coming from Celestia, she could almost believe it; she could certainly believe it coming from Twilight Sparkle, the naïve little idiot.  But not Luna, the alicorn of the night.  
“Well?” Luna asked.  “Have you not figured out why I said that?”  Luna certainly hoped so; she had only figured out why she had said it three hours afterwards, after a lot of thought and a few glazed ones down at Donut Joe's.  Trixie gave a shake of her head, and Luna stopped.  
And began.
“Trixie, what you attempted to do—and did, by your actions with the Alicorn Amulet—is indeed punishable by death.  There is no question of that.  The Royal Court would not take very long to come to that conclusion.  I do not mind telling you that my sister strongly desires it.”
“Celestia the Cruel,” Trixie snapped.
To her surprise, Luna only laughed.  “Please, Trixie, enough.  Your attempts into goading me into killing you make no impression on me.  I am almost two thousand years old; I have heard far worse and tolerated much.  That is one of the reasons why you’re still alive.”
Now Trixie was thoroughly confused.  “Why’s that?”
“Because you want to die.”  Before Trixie could say anything, Luna kept talking.  “I know the feeling.  After being freed from Nightmare Moon…death is all I wanted.  I wanted my sister to kill me, as you do."
“And instead Ponyville threw you a ‘welcome back, thanks for not murdering us’ party,” Trixie said sarcastically.
“’Tis true.  But do you think that made things better, or worse?  How did you feel after Twilight defeated you with…what was it, a doorstop?”
Trixie felt the rage build.  “Thank you ever so much for reminding me.”
Luna ignored that.  “It made things worse, the party did.  It brought me face to face with the very ponies that I wanted to destroy.  For you, watching Twilight perform for the Saddle Arabians must have been like a slap to the muzzle.”
Trixie reluctantly nodded.  “You’re right about that.”  She looked at Luna.  “But you did all that under the influence of Nightmare Moon.”
“Nightmare Moon would’ve been powerless without me.” Luna took a deep breath.  This was not something she liked to relive, but she had to.  “You know the story of how I became Nightmare Moon; I will not bore you with that.  What you do not know is the aftermath.
“I was exiled to the moon for a thousand years, Trixie.  Can you imagine a thousand years passing?  No, you cannot.  You are too young, and too mortal.  I can, however, because I lived it.  
“While there are some creatures up there, most of my exile was spent in silence.  Every morning, I saw the sun come up over Equestria with the knowledge that my sister was raising it.  I knew that the moon’s very movement was due to my sister.  I screamed at her, Trixie.  I screamed until my voice was gone.  I screamed that I was sorry, that I hated her, that I would kill her…” Luna fought back the tears.  So many years, wasted.  “And every day, Nightmare Moon grew more powerful.  I let her.  I wanted her to.  The hate filled the hole in my heart.  When the stars aligned and I was able to escape, all I could think of was how all of Equestria would suffer.  Instead of the joy a prisoner should feel when her sentence ends, all I wanted was to make everyone feel the same pain I did.  I wanted them to hurt.  I wanted to see them scream in terror as Nightmare Moon came to devour them.  
“Which is why I started with Ponyville.  I had no idea Twilight and her friends were there.  They were unknown to me.  All I knew was that the Elements of Harmony were nearby and I must destroy them, the most powerful weapon Celestia had at her disposal.  I could’ve just as easily attacked Canterlot directly, but the Elements weren’t the only thing that drew me there.  I wanted to make the ponies suffer—because if they suffered, my sister would.”
Luna glanced at Trixie.  She expected to see an expression of horror, or hatred.  Instead, she saw understanding.  Trixie knew.
“And that would not be the end of it,” Luna continued.  “I would plunge Equestria into eternal night.  Celestia could not raise the sun, because I would not lower the moon.  Darkness would cover all.  Crops would die without the sun.  It would be worse than the blizzard that led to the founding of Equestria.”
Luna looked up at the starry sky.  She could not stop the tears now.  “The foals would go first.  They would starve.  Mares would roll over on top of them, smother them quickly rather than let them die by inches.  Food might still exist in some places, and wars would break out over who would possess them.  The pegasi would try to get to the moon, I think, but of course they would die in the attempt.  And many would try to kill Nightmare Moon…and fail.”  She turned her gaze on Trixie; now the unicorn was horrified at last, thinking of a ruined, cold, dark world of a night that would never end.  “That is what I wanted, Trixie.  Nightmare Moon wanted it, to be sure, but she would be nothing but a dark spirit in the void if I was not for my hate.  You only wanted to kill Twilight Sparkle; I wanted to kill the entire world.  Now…which of us is the greater criminal?”
Trixie gulped.  “And…after all that… Celestia still spared you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”  Trixie checked herself.  “Because you’re her sister.”
“Because she loved me, Trixie.”
Trixie thought about that for a moment.  “I’m sorry for what I did to Ponyville, Princess Luna.  But…I…I still want…”
“…to kill Twilight Sparkle?”
Trixie looked at her hooves.  “Maybe.  I don’t know anymore.  I just can’t…every time I think of her, I just want to…do something!”  She stomped the ground in frustration.  “She just makes me so damn angry!”
“Why?”
“Because…she’s better than me!”  Suddenly, Trixie could not stop talking, and months of frustration poured out.  “She’s so perfect, Luna!  Everything about her!  She’s Celestia’s little pet!  She’s got all of her friends, who think she’s just so great—even that moron Rainbow Dash, who’s got an ego the size of an ursa major, looks up to her! Ponyville practically worships her.  Her magic is perfect and she can take out ursa minors and she can even fool me with stupid illusions!  Me! The Great and Powerful Trixie, who can whip up illusions with the very best!
“Do you know what that’s like, Luna?  To want to be the very best?  All of her so-called friends want to be the best.  I saw that in Ponyville when I ran the place, you know.  Rarity wants to be the best dressmaker.  Applejack wants to be the best farmer.  Rainbow Dash wants to be the fastest.  That dolt Pinkie Pie wants to be the best at partying.  Even that doormat Fluttershy wants to be the best at being with animals.  Nopony comes after them or makes fun of them for wanting that—but that’s all I get!  No, Trixie, sorry, you don’t get to be the best—Twilight Sparkle’s got that all sewed up!”  Trixie was crying again.  “There, now I’m crying.  See?  I can’t even get angry right.  I bet Twilight Sparkle doesn’t cry!”  Trixie wiped at her eyes with a hoof.  “You don’t even know what that’s like, Luna.  To want to be the best and realize that there’s always going to be someone better than you.  That nobody gives a damn if you live or die, because you’re nothing special.  You don’t know what it’s like!”
“Trixie,” Luna said quietly, “I know exactly what that’s like.”
“How? How could you?  You’re a princess! An alicorn!  You’re rich!  You can have anything you want—“
“Trixie, who is my sister?”
Trixie stopped instantly, her mouth open.   
Luna nodded.  Then she began to walk towards the palace.  “It’s late for you, Trixie, and early for me.  Go to sleep.  We’ll continue this conversation later.”