Celestia’s long life had shown her wonders. Life and love and sacrifice, every vice and virture from which the thread of a world is cut and the values of its history and the prophecies of its future are shaped. Over the course of centures the tender legs of Equestria had found their footing under her tender guidance. The wind and rain had been tamed. Cities arose and enemies were laid down, with reluctant force when the need was great.
As for magic, raw magic, it did not impress Celestia as once it had done. Many of the great feats that added so much to the mystic and romantic visions of bygone eras she had witnessed with her own eyes. Time, that thief of beauty and memory could snatch neither from her. Many of those legendary feats she had wrought herself, for great causes and against powerful foes. The years had done nothing to diminish her power though patience and experience had tempered it. Better, Celestia had long ago decided, to applaud those who tamed the rain than those who called the lightning.
And so when Celestia gazed down into the swirling pool of silver before her, what arose in her heart was a dread - and excitment - that Equestria had not known for twenty generations. Hardly had Celestia known it still capable for such trepidation to overtake her. And so easily! All the years were as nothing to true feeling. Lives had been lived from cradle to grave with no two beats of their Princess' heart so urgently together, so fervent in their pounding.
The silver pool stank of magic. Reeked of it. It suffused the air with undiluted power until it was as if all the world was coated with a tangible greasy coat, slick and shimmering with possibilities.
For once in living memory - Celestia’s living memory - her mouth was dry and her words stumbled on her tongue. Silver danced across her vision, ripples and swirls in its surface making a mirage of her every feature.
Princess of the Sun, Celestia had never been burned by sunlight or known blindness by its dazzling purity. Yet here, in this place, she had to turn away from the tantalizing silver and in that moment of sharp pain knew something of what it must be like for others to look directly upon her sun. “Discord, this is...even you...this...this is beyond you. Beyond anyting.”
“And yet,” the draconequus smoothly hissed as he slipped into the corner of her peripherary, “here it is. As am I." He wrapped smoothly around her shoulder in a slither of sinew and scale. “And you. No point asking the how of it, I don’t feel like explaining it and you don’t feel like understanding. Besides,” he cooed as a claw worked its way along her chin, bringing Celestia’s eyes to the draconequus’ own, “we both know you’re much more interested in the why. And the what.”
The air shimmered. Power like this could exist. If it could, than the world couldn’t. Never both together. Magic like this, not the magic of knowledge and insight, of paper and practice but raw power... with it lightning could sing, rain could raise cities or the mountains go marching to war... a world, a living, breathing world of living, breathing peoples couldn’t exist in that any more than it could exist in the seething heart of a star. “With this... I could change anything in the world.” she said. “Anything.”
“Oh no, my dear, sweet Celestia. With this you could change everything. Though I do have a little something particular in mind.”
Distantly Celestia felt Discord twinning through her legs, though in the eminence of the silver pool even that felt charged, distorted, like oil in the water she could not bring her mind to focus on it, only the silver. His voice echoed like it were two speaking together, the first just out of perception. Celestia struggled to hold that thought but it too slipped away into the silver.
“You can undo what is done,” the voice whispered in an ear. “Rewrite what was written,” it whispered to the other. “A thousand years, my dear, sweet Celestia. A thousand years of your guilt, a thousand years of your what-ifs.” Discord rose again in front of the alicorn, his serpentine form sliding smoothly to block her view of the silver, “Well,” he cooed, “This is your what-if. Your chance.”
“Luna,” Celestia said. Fear, hope, oh how they all came rushing back like the tides!
“Yes! You can save her, Celestia. Save her from ever succumbing to Nightmare Moon. Can save her from yourself! How cold of you it was, how hard-hearted of you it was, banishing her for a thousand years. And I should know...” the spirit smirked with evil glee as he wrapped another coil around the unresisting alicorn. “I’ve been solid stone.”
Celestia’s lips were so dry, her heart fluttering so wildly in her chest. “All the years...”
“Yes, yes, you’d have them all to live again. No, not again. Differently. Better. Because so would she. So would precious little Luna. Together, always. Never torn apart. Never betrayed. Doesn’t that sound niceee?” The last he hissed so near her it could nearly have been the kiss of a snake, but even this did not draw Celestia from her reverie.
“I could...I could...”
“But will you? This is a once in a lifetime oppurtunity, and you,” he hissed, “know more than most others the full weight of what that means.”
“Every life come and gone for a thousand years,” Celestia murmurred. “My subjects, my students... I have no right...”
She gasped as another coil of Discord’s body tightened around her. “Go find your faithful student if you feel like arguing pedantics. I for one am sorely uninterested. It is never a question of ‘should’ or ‘should not’ with me, sweet little Celestia. It is about what can be, and what will be. ‘Should’ does not matter. Only in the dictionary is ‘should’ a bigger word than ‘can,’ and I can see it written all over you. Every inch of you wants this, and speaking of words, here’s another. Absolution,” he whispered in her ear. “Doesn’t it have such a nice ring to it?”
Discord shrugged. “As for everyone else? Some will live. Different lives, certaintly. Perhaps no lives at all, in which case others will take their places. It hardly matters. Do you really care for them that much anyway? Oh don’t be like that, it’s okay, you can be truthful with me. I know, I know, you think you should think of all these theorhetical ponies, but this is dear little Luna we’re talking about so how can you?” His claws dragged her face to his. “So what’ll it be? Time’s running out. I’m not a patient spirit, Celestia.”
The silver churned enticingly before them, all else was a haze in the air so heavy with magical portent. Even words. Even thought.
“Can you be so selfish?” Discord asked. “Can you gamble the paradise you created for the redemption you desire?” The demon smiled with wicked delight. “I won’t judge, you know. I don’t care for ‘shoulds’ at all. The question is, has been, always will be, can.” Discord sprung away in an instant, every twist and every turn of him flying away in a chimeric blur. Free of his coils Celestia faultered and nearly fell, barely catching herself.
Should you?
Celestia struggled for words.
Can you?
Celestia fought back the frantic beating of her heart, the desperate racing of her thoughts.
Will you?
“Yes,” she murmurred. “Yes!” And with that, Celestia let herself be pulled headlong into the undoing of the world. For all that could be gained she could give anything.
For all that should never have been lost she could give everything.
Blankets tossed and pillows scattered, Celestia turned in restless sleep and would not wake. At the side of the bed Luna waited in silence, unmoving, unblinking. Her horn aglow with starlight, Luna drew the silvery thread of a dream from Celestia. It shimmered with a light of its own, twisting and turning on itself as it was drawn into the air, spooling upon itself before Luna.
She glowed faintly as she the fey light entered her, and for an instant her eyes shone silver. “I see,” she muttered in a voice so soft as to be just shy of silence. “I had not expected that, Celestia. Truly, I did not. This is a powerful dream. And a painful one.” Celestia would not suffer of it again, Luna would see to that. As the last vestige of the shining silver thread left Celestia, the sleeping alicorn settled into exhausted stillness.
“I cannot change what happened, dear sister. No power can. For all the deception of your dreams you know that to be true. I cannot give you back those thousand years, nor you me no matter how we may wish to. And yet...you would have done regardless, had it been but possible to do so...” Carefully, after a moment’s reflection Luna gathered the strewn pillows and returned to sleeping Celestia the tussled blankets. “All I can give you is peaceful sleep. I cannot free you from the past, dear sister. Or myself. But there will be no more bad dreams, I promise you, and I am here. I love you and forgive you. Perhaps in time that will be enough for you to love and forgive yourself.
Luna kissed Celestia’s forehead. A tear that glittered with starlight fell and splashed in silence across Celestia’s cheek.
A passing shadow stole Luna away so swiftly it was as if she’d never been at all, a trick of light and nothing more.
“Sleep in peace, dear sister. Sleep in peace.”