//------------------------------//
// Chapter 23: The Curtain Falls 
// Story: For the Good of Equestria 
// by brokenimage321 
//------------------------------//

	“It took a week for them to find us,” Celestia said, after a pause. “By that time, I’d gone unconscious. Luna’s magic helped, but she was no doctor, and a wound like that…” She smiled humorlessly. “Well, I still have the scar.” She pulled down a corner of her dress, revealing, just under her arm, an ugly, puckered pink mark. Posie and Sill stared.
Celestia pulled the dress back up, then shifted her weight uncomfortably. “I owe Luna my life,” she said. “Making a teleport like that was impossibly stupid—trying to appear somewhere she’d never seen, someplace she didn’t even know for sure existed. Without the magical beacon of the Crystal Heart, it wouldn’t even have been possible.” She hesitated. “But, Sombra had done it… perhaps Luna decided to try herself…” She paused, then shook her head. “But more important—Lu helped keep me going through the storm… and, when I couldn’t go any farther, she kept me breathing.” She closed her eyes. “Even then, they only found us, huddled in our little snow cave, because she had thought to raise a light before the snow buried us.”
She sighed. “When I came to, they told me what we’d already suspected. Every crystal pony, every crystal building, every... crystal. Just—gone.” 
A moment of silence. Posie swallowed. “What happened?” she asked.
Celestia shook her head. “I don’t know. And the crystal ponies don't, either; for them, the whole thousand years was… was just a bad dream...” She swallowed. “I think, maybe, like Sombra said, the crystal ponies are tied to the Crystal Heart. Wherever it went, they followed. Maybe it was just trying to protect them.” She sighed. “Sombra might have had something to do with it, too—he was crafty enough to try, at least…”
She fell silent for a long moment.
“I could have helped them,” she said, finally. “If only I had been a little more careful… if only I had waited a little longer…” a tear rolled down her cheek. “If only I had talked to her before… before that…” She swallowed. “Then, maybe...”
“No, no,” Posie murmured. “It wasn’t your fault… you couldn’t have known…”
Celestia laid her head back down. 
“I could have,” she said simply. “I could have.”
Celestia stayed quiet for a long time. Sill looked at Posie uncertainly, a question in his eyes. Posie silently shushed him.
Suddenly, Celestia spoke. “It took… two months, I think, before Luna told me she was with child.”
Sil’s mouth dropped open, and Posie’s eyes went wide.
“By that point,” Celestia continued, “we… we weren’t on good terms.” She shifted uncomfortably on the bed. “But certain things can’t be hidden. Not forever.”
Celestia hesitated again. “She had so much darkness in her heart… anger, and guilt, and jealousy… But…” A little smile crept across her lips. “To see her… there, in the sunlight… knowing she was finally going to be a mother…” She opened her eyes and gave her audience a half-smile. “Would the phrase ‘over the moon’ be too much?”
Posie snorted, and Sill rolled his eyes. Celestia chuckled a bit—but soon, her smile faltered.
“When the child came,” she continued, her voice somber again, “she was an alicorn, of course. Luna had been searching for a name for… well, for her whole life, I think. And she finally settled on one she liked—a name taken from an old opera she loved.” She sighed. “She named her ‘Mi Amore Cadenza.’”
“Cadenza?” Sill repeated. “I don’t think I know her… would she be…” Suddenly, his eyes went wide. “Cadance?” he yelped. “Princess Cadance?” 
“Princess Cadance,” Celestia repeated with a nod. “Queen of the Crystal Empire—and my niece. After Luna and I…” She swallowed. “After we fought, I told everyone that Cadance had been adopted. If they’d known I’d done… that… to my sister… and she a nursing mother, no less… well…” she swallowed again. “Things were already hard enough.” 
Sill opened his mouth to speak again, but Posie put her hoof on his shoulder. He glanced at her questioningly, but closed his mouth.
After another pause, Celestia began again. “For those first few months, though… Luna was happy. Happier than I think I’d ever seen her. When it was just the two of them…” she sighed. “I stumbled onto them, once. They’d cuddled together on a window seat in a moment of quiet, then fallen asleep. And, even when they were dreaming, Luna’s smile almost outshone the sun.” She looked down. “Almost.”
After another moment, she looked away. “It… it was only once, though. When Cadance came, Luna... changed. She barely let me see the child, let alone hold her. I wanted so badly…” she swallowed. “I thought that maybe, maybe, Cadance could, somehow, help bring us back together.” She slowly shook her head. “But Luna wouldn’t let her. At first, we stopped sharing meals. And then, when I entered the room, she would leave. Eventually, she began speaking to me only through letters—even though we still lived in the same palace.” She closed her eyes. “And, of course, you already know how all that ended.”
Celestia went quiet, then laid her head back down on the bed. “...in the end, though,” she murmured, “when it was all said and done…” A tear rolled down her cheek. “Sombra won, you know.”
Sill glanced at Posie, then back to Celestia. He hesitated, then coughed politely. “Celestia?” he said nervously. “You... you killed him, right? O-or banished him, whatever? So… um… why do you say he won?”
She didn’t move. “He got exactly what he wanted.”
“What do you mean?”
“He had a child,” she said. “An alicorn. With Luna. And she came to rule the Empire after him.” She shook her head. “She never knew, of course—I think, eventually, she came to believe she was adopted—but still.” She heaved another sigh. “I knew I’d failed as soon as I saw her cutie mark. The Crystal Heart. She’d never seen it, never even heard of it—but there it was, plain as day.” She closed her eyes. “She was destined to rule the Empire before she even knew it existed.”
Something in Posie’s brain finally caught.“No,” she said urgently. “No, Sombra didn’t win. He might have had a princess for a daughter—but she is nothing like him. She’s kind, and gracious, and rules the Empire just like… like…” she gestured. “Well, like you would.”
“Not like me,” Celestia murmured faintly.
Posie gritted her teeth and pressed onward. “You should be proud of her,” she insisted. “With the way she acts—she is nothing like her father. She might be his daughter, but Sombra couldn’t have failed more if he’d tried.”
Celestia raised her head and looked Posie in the eye. Posie quailed; what she saw there was not anger or indignation, but a deep, bottomless sorrow.
“I wish I could believe that,” Celestia said, finally.
She put her head back down and turned away from them. Posie and Sill waited for her to move, to speak, to do anything—but she simply lay there.
Posie swallowed nervously, and glanced over at Sill. True, she had started it—she had asked Celestia to tell her story, after all—but, never in her wildest dreams, did she ever think that this is what she'd get. She'd always thought of her Princess as perfect: she could never be sad, or angry, or hurt, because she was Princess Celestia. She'd been ruling for over a thousand years—nothing in Equestria could even touch her, because, if it could, it would have already ground her to dust. 
But the pony that laid on the bed in front of them was very different. She was the Princess, to be sure—but she was also a scared little filly, one who had never wanted the crown she was forced to bear, who had, for a thousand years, had done her best to do right by everyone. She tried—but, all too often, she failed. And, every time she failed, somepony—many someponies—ended up dead. 
Posie swallowed.
All this—and they were barely getting started.


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To be continued...