//------------------------------//
// And Be All Our Sins Remember'd 
// Story: Triptych 
// by Daetrin 
//------------------------------//

	Celestia winged over the water, the weight of more than just her body pulling her down.  Heavy thoughts dragged at her as she banked down toward the high mountains of the griffon’s home, flying as much by memory as by sight.  None saw her, despite the circling sentries,  for where she was going she neither wanted nor needed an escort.
        She landed atop a high peak, powdered snow crunching under her hooves.  It was small and bare, the only thing of note an ancient standing stone, weathered to the point that the single word carved into it was barely readable.  Gently, carefully, Celestia brushed off the thin coating of snow with her wing, clearing it away from the ancient symbols.  Gently, carefully, she sat down in front of it, regarding it for seconds that stretched to minutes, minutes that stretched to hours.  Finally, she spoke.
        “Aquila.”
        “You know, they say you die twice.  Once when you stop breathing, and again, much later, when somebody says your name for the last time.” 
        Celestia smiled at him, a faint, sad smile.  “I believe I quoted that for you, before the end.”
        “That you did.”  He shook his head at her.  “I know it was meant well, but it’s not exactly reassuring.”
        “I wish I had something better to tell you.”  Her smile faded. “But I’m afraid that sometimes even I am at a loss for answers.”
        “I know.  And that is why you have come to me, yes?”  He lifted bushy eyebrows at her.  “A lack of answers.”
        “I could have come just to pay my respects,” she demurred, but he waved a chiding claw at her.
        “You only come to talk when you have troubles,” he said, disarming the words with a smile.  “You are a good pony, Celestia, but you have so many of your own concerns.  Nobody could expect you to make the trek out here merely to brush the snow off my tombstone.  Especially not I.”
        “But who else would do it?”  Celestia sighed and conceded the argument before he could reply.  “And yet, you’re right.  I have troubles.  Not mere war or monsters or the end of all things.  I’ve graduated to issues of my own creation these days.  And less tractable ones.”
        “Less tractable than a chaos demon ready to destroy the world?”  Aquila murmured, his eyes bright.  “My dear Celestia, what have you been up to?”
        “Everything,” she said with another hint of a smile.  “You know me.  I scheme in my sleep.”
        “Yes, and I always said it would get you in trouble.”  He clicked his beak at her disapprovingly.  “It seems I was right.”
        She stuck her tongue out at him.  “I’ve been at it for thousands of years.  I’d be surprised if you were wrong.”
        “No you wouldn’t be.”  He grinned at her.  “Pleased, but not surprised.  You always took mistakes more personally than you should.”
        “Than I should?  My mistakes hurt others, not myself.”  She lifted her eyebrows at him.  “You never have won this argument.”
        “You mean you’ve never conceded it.”  Aquila was unimpressed.  “You may have more responsibility than the average pony, true, but that doesn’t make you unique.”
        “That may be true,” Celestia said, unconvinced.  “But given that responsibility, what troubles I do have - or create - are the most extraordinary ones.”
        He snorted.  “Fine, fine.  Tell me about your extraordinary troubles.”
        “There is a new god,” she said after a meditative pause.
        “Another one?  A new Discord?”  He cocked his head at her, eyes focused and alert.
        “No, not a new Discord, thank Harmony.  This one’s my doing. Or maybe my fault.  It’s my student, Twilight Sparkle.”
        “A pony?”  He blinked, not so much in surprise but to focus more keenly on her.  “A new pony god?  That’s hardly fair, is it?  Most peoples get two.  Or one.”  There was only a touch of bitterness in his voice, but it was enough to make Celestia wince.
        “I have done my best, Aquila.  But they are not my subjects.  My choices are even more limited than usual.”
        “They are my children, Celestia.”  He turned to look over the rugged peaks and the soaring aeries of the gryphon homeland.  “It is hard seeing them fade while your ponies grow and thrive and, it seems, breaking all the laws of our world to do so.”
        “They are not gone yet,” she said quietly.  “So there is still hope.  More now, I think, than before.”
        “Oh?  And how does a pony - a problematic pony god, no less - represent hope for my gryphons?”
        “It is a fact, or perhaps a truth, that we do not change.  You know that more keenly than any of us.”
        “I ought to,” Aquila said dryly, casting a glance at his tombstone.
        “And yet, here I am.  Equestria is not at my back or in my veins.  I am not raising the sun or setting it.  I am not in Gryphonia for matters of state or diplomatic negotiations.  I am talking to you simply because I wanted to visit an old friend.”  She offered him a faint smile.  “Can you imagine me doing that even a hundred years ago?”
        He opened his beak and then closed it with a sharp clack.  “A hundred years ago you would have found an excuse.  If you could.  But if you could not, then...no.”
        “Just so.  It may be that it is simply because I can leave Equestria to Luna and Twilight, but I think there is something deeper at work.”  She shook her head ruefully.  “Even I have trouble picking apart all the subtleties in the undercurrents of the world.  Especially when they apply to me.  I knew things would change when Luna returned; I was prepared for that.  But with Twilight…”
        “Twilight being this student god of yours.”
        “Emphasis on student.  You two would have gotten along famously.  Well, assuming she could get over records kept on vellum.”  Celestia dismissed the aside with a wave of her hoof.  “Twilight’s role - that’s not the right term. Her type of influence, I suppose, is not clear to me.  But if she is capable of changing me, then the entire world may be balanced on the edge of a blade.  She could erase all the order that keeps us from collapsing into despair and dissolution without even realizing it.”
        The beaked smile that Aquila gave her in reply was equal parts lazy and hungry.  “So you made, no matter how, someone who can not only contest your power, but also someone whose influence is out of sight of your all-seeing eye.  My, my, that’s most unlike you.  Were you that desperate?”
        “Yes.”
        “Oh.”  His eyes widened and the smile dropped off his face.  “For Luna, then?  Or Equestria?  No, it would have to be both.”  As always, he saw right through her.  “You couldn’t lose either, so you gambled everything on a third option.  Gambled, and lost?”
        “Not yet, but I fear it might become so.”
        “Fear? That’s very unlike you.  I thought you had no fears.”
        She sighed.  “I have many these days.  Words said in anger, or left unsaid in fear.  Thoughtless slights and needless jealousies.  These are things I cannot address, not with all the power in the world.  I would rather deal with a real villain than all the thousand things that poison the mind and dull the soul.”
        “That’s unusually gloomy for the living sun.”
        Celestia pursed her lips in a brief, self-mocking moue.  “Indulge my melodrama.  It is relevant to the topic at hoof.”
        Aquila laughed.  “Oh great Celestia, surely you are the most unfortunate, the most put-upon, the most long-suffering, the most - “
        “Hush.”  She gave him her best scowl, though it was spoiled somewhat by the corners of her muzzle twitching upward.  “You would interrupt a perfectly good mope.  Do you know how long it’s been since I last had one?”
        “I’m sure you’ve been counting the minutes.”
        Celestia snorted.  “Dramatics aside, it really is a concern.  The only option I saw was flawed from the start.  In order to find a companion for Luna, I would have to make one, for there were no other gods or immortals. But since it was my doing, it poisoned all the bonds that have sprung from it.”
        “As if there wasn’t enough bad blood between you two.”
        “Don’t you think I know that?” Celestia snapped.  “And now it’s not just her, but Twilight.  And worse, whatever lies between them.”
        She took a slow breath, the only sound the whisper of errant wind and the hush of falling snow.  She hadn’t expected her nerves to be so raw, not after the distance she’d put between herself and Canterlot.  But the wound was there, just as fresh as it had been when she’d confessed to them, when she’d decided on Twilight, when she’d known she had to plan for Luna’s return.
        Celestia had judged Luna, and found her wanting.
        She had never wanted to, but her hoof had been forced.  In one moment she had broken the equality between them and crippled their relationship forever.  They were meant to be equal, but the moment she had claimed victory something had shuddered, shifted, and shattered.  She was the older one, but she should never have been the elder one.
Yet she was still running Luna’s life as if she were another subject.  More closely than one, even, for she could not trust that any excesses on Luna’s part would be curbed by other ponies or Equestria itself.  The only things keeping Luna in check were Luna herself, and Celestia.
And she hated thinking of Luna that way.  Luna was her sister.  Her family.  Her constant companion from moment they’d come into being.  The only one she could rely on to be there, to understand, to laugh and tell jokes, to argue and stubbornly oppose.  To be her counterweight and undying light among the flickering flames of mortality.  To think of her as anything less was cosmically, intrinsically wrong.
And yet, and yet, and yet.  It always spiraled down to the hard truth that she had no choice.  No matter how raw the wound, it was one she could only try to ignore.  To look at Luna’s face and having the joy of sisterhood dimmed by knowing she could no longer trust was a pain that couldn’t be addressed or salved, merely endured.
That wasn’t the end of it, either.  Bad enough that she had to hold that distance, but she had to worsen it.  And not by an accident that could be forgiven, but by deliberate plan.  She had engineered this hurt, for all of them.
For she had brought Twilight in.  Or let Twilight in, past her masks, her defenses, the roles she played for every pony in Equestria.  She’d allowed Twilight to give her hope, even though she knew what was coming. She could have stood the pain of yet another friend, yet another favored student, but Twilight had become even more than that, and they would both have to live with the consequences for a very long time indeed.
“You have to trust them, you know.”
She looked at Aquila silently, neither encouraging nor discouraging.
“All the world knows that Celestia always performs her duties.”  The words could have been mocking, but they weren’t.  “And for now, at least, it is your duty to be mistrustful of what they might do to Equestria.  But it is not your duty to be mistrustful of what they might do to you.”
“I suppose if I did not want the truth, I wouldn’t have come to you.” She sighed.  “So I can neither deny the duty to do the unpleasant nor use it as a shield against the same.  It seems fitting.”
Her discussions with the other gods had been important.  Vital, even.  She had needed to know more about gods and their peoples, both for her sake and for Twilight’s.  Changes on the order of a mortal ascending to godhood happened but once or twice in the history of Creation, and it was imperative Celestia be prepared for whatever might come.
Twilight would really have been a better candidate to investigate the nature of gods.  Learning was in her blood, whereas Celestia was no better equipped than the average pony.  Still, everything she’d found, every word and attitude and answer, had driven her toward one conclusion.  
Gods were inseparable from their peoples.  There was no trick, no fine print, no way to wriggle out of it.  Even cheating as flagrantly as she was, she was still the sun, still order and duty to her ponies. Which meant that despite the half-threat she’d given the dragon brothers, she could not take any other path but to adjust to the situation she’d created. Duty, then, bade her return.
She didn’t want to.  She wasn’t ready to, if nothing else because she was not settled in her own mind, but it was more fear that kept her away.  Fear of what they might say to her upon her return.
“If you could take it all back,” Aquila said.  “Would you?”
Celestia eyed him sharply.  That was a dangerous question.  It begged a decision, one on which she could and would not renege, and so instead of answering she was silent for a time.  Again there was no noise on the mountaintop, and no motion but for the steadily falling snow building up around the base of the obelisk.  The flakes collapsed into rain before they reached her coat, refreezing into ice in a circle about her as the drops touched the cold ground.
From the far distance a gryphon’s call echoed, rebounding plaintively among the peaks before fading back to silence.  Aquila cocked his head at the sound, expression unreadable, and Celestia finally faced him again.  “No.  I have made mistakes, just like any other, but I would not unwish Twilight nor my sister’s happiness with her.
“So where does that leave you?” He persisted.
She shook her head at him.  “Usually you’re more subtle than this, but I suppose I deserve it.  All there is left to do is go back.  There aren’t any more excuses left to me.”
He grunted.  “You usually don’t need me to tell you these things.”
“Usually, Luna and Twilight are not involved.”  She pursed her lips.  “They are the only ones who can really hurt me.  Hurt me, not just Princess Celestia.  Thousands of years old, and yet I can still act like a foal when it comes to those I love.”
“To err is equine,” Aquila murmured. “Be you ever so much a Princess.”
“Or a god,” she sighed, bracing her shoulders instinctively against what she knew awaited her.  “All that remains is to return home.  Thank you, Aquila.”
There was no answer.  After all, he had been dead for over a thousand years.