From the Eternal Love of a Sister

by Scootareader

And What of the Past?

I am numb.

We stare into the night sky, its beauty lost on my glazed-over eyes. Our thoughts are elsewhere, perhaps only making it as far as the clouds before being led astray. My mind is surely muddled enough to be residing there.

We are not preoccupied, nor are we pensive; we are simply lost in thought. The mare in our head asks if one can daydream at night, as we are now, perhaps.

Were our thoughts so blissful as to be dreams, we may have believed such a thing were possible.

No, tonight we fight the darkness. There is no army assaulting Canterlot, nor is there a silent assassin creeping through my bedroom door. There is a part of me that hates the rest of me.

Do we hate the darkness that is a part of me? Or is it Nightmare Moon that hates Luna?

My sister’s idea may have given the answers to some of these questions. Perhaps a psychiatrist would have been beneficial. Yet, we made our decision. We are determined to reconcile my fight with Nightmare Moon alone.

What if I fail?

The Moon is not so dreadful a prison. If I lose myself to the darkness again, we can only hope that we are sent back to where She can bask us in Her everglowing luster.

We are not certain of our punishment, however. Am I prepared to face Nightmare Moon? Will Luna emerge triumphant, finally ready to be her own mare?

We will never be prepared. We will face her, then we will either find the strength to overcome myself, or we will fail and be held in the thrall of darkness once more.

I shake my head. What are we thinking? Facing Nightmare Moon? We are imagining ghosts, nothing more. She is a figment of our imagination.

My body shudders. There is a slight chill tonight. We hope that that is what caused it.

It is time for me to perform my royal duties. My eyes squeeze shut, the horn on my forehead flaring to life as we dive into the stream of the subconscious.

---

We tread slowly along the river for a time, watching observantly for any ponies who may benefit from our reassurance or help. We see various dreams: A young filly getting an A- on one of her tests, a mare engaging in lustful acts with a stallion, an elderly pony watching the river flow lazily by as he nods his head to some unheard tune.

Eventually, however, we happen across an all-too-familiar dream. A young colt is attempting to escape from a wave of darkness, its unseen inhabitant striking fear into his impressionable heart.

We dive effortlessly down, my hooves matching pace with his as we ask him, “What art thou afraid of, young colt?”

He sweeps his hooves behind him in an exaggerated gesture, his sprint breaking for a moment as his eyes dart over his shoulder. “That! How can you not be afraid of it?”

We smile at him. “Because we know there is nothing to fear.” We skid to a stop, the colt slowing down, then stopping as he gapes at my courage.

We stare at the wall of darkness, facing it down as it surrounds and encompasses us, then pulls inward to capture me.

We are expecting it, its sinister, tempting whisper. It promises glory, fame, fortune—all that Nightmare Moon had to offer.

I am embracing it.

The darkness soaks into me, pain lancing through every fiber of my body. I cry out in a mixture of fear, agony, and anticipation. My body craves the darkness. My mind pines for it.

The wave is absorbed into my flesh, my form distorting and becoming something else entirely—a most familiar form.

I let out a victorious cackle. “And now, young colt, the fun finally begins!”

The chubby young unicorn lets out a fearful shout and attempts to run away, but I lunge toward him, my body becoming a formless shadow that splashes over him.

The scenery around the colt changes, my body expanding outward to form a laboratory with crude surgical instruments. I am standing over him, a doctor’s mask covering my muzzle, a large hoof-powered drill pointed toward his stomach.

I smile, the corners of my mouth peeping just outside the cover, causing the colt’s eyes to widen in fear. “Let’s check up on you.”

I plunge the tip of the crude instrument into the soft flesh of the colt’s belly as he emits a scream. Then, I begin to turn, my ears ringing as his cries of pain and terror echo within the corridors of my laboratory and his own mind.

I relish this. This is why I was born.

The torture of this colt seems to go on for hours, ranging from flaying to inserting tubes. The final action we perform on him is to put his head into a guillotine, the large blade flying downward to sever his head from the rest of his body.

Just as the blade strikes the bone, the world dissolves around me. The colt has woken up.

I am not done yet, however. The night is still so very young.

I rise back to the river, immediately looking for those blissful ponies I had passed up so cursorily before. Swiftly, I find the elderly pony nodding away at the river.

As I enter the dream, I become a shadow once more, oozing into the packed dirt under him, then turning it to mud. The pony’s eyes snap open as his timeless memories are forsaken. He is sliding toward the river, its gentle babbling suddenly having become a raucous torrent of danger. He grasps for something, anything to prevent him from falling in, but there is nothing.

He plunges in, his kicks proving ineffectual as he breathes water into his lungs. He gasps, shortening his lifespan, his panic fueling our glee.

The dream once again collapses around us, my tortured stallion awaking from his nightmare. We still aren’t satisfied, however.

I rise back to the river, then almost as quickly see the mare being pleasured by her dream stallion. I dive in.

The stallion’s hoof lands on her cheek. Hard.

She looks up in confusion. There was no love in the strike, only anger, and she can see it pervasive in his eyes. He despises her.

The mare struggles, trying to get out from under the stallion, but he strikes her on the face once more and pins her to the bed. Her body is moving, she is trying to escape... but she can’t seem to get any purchase. She is trapped.

The stallion, still glaring at her hatefully, does not stop. He does not pause. He continues to serve the purpose she created him for.

My voice whispers into the mare’s ear. “Is this not what I asked for? What I was hoping to feel someday?”

She lets out a wail of terror, the reality of the situation she is in dawning on her. I am not done yet, however.

I create memories, fabrications of what she has done because of this one act of ignorance. She is first in the hospital, lying on her back, a doctor stallion examining several charts. “You’re pregnant,” he states distractedly.

At the crestfallen look on her face, I warp the scene now to be her parents staring her down. Her mother speaks first. “What were you thinking? You’re barely out of school! You haven’t even found work yet! How can you expect to take care of a foal?”

The father volunteers his opinion. “No daughter of mine would dare cover our family name in filth.”

He opens his mouth to say more, but the daughter cuts him off. “I love him. I would never have done it if I didn’t. Please, just be happy for me. That’s all I want.”

The father shakes his head. “You are no longer a member of our family. See yourself out the door.”

The scene dissolves once more. Her dream stallion has his back turned to her and is cantering away. She calls after him, “Wait!”

His hateful eyes bore into hers. “I will never love you. I will never care about you. You will always be alone, and I will always know my life is better without you in it.” He directs his eyes back to where he is headed, disappearing from her life forever.

The scene changes for the last time. She is in the hospital, heaving with exertion. The doctors and nurses are all watching, telling her to push, to be strong. The foal comes out, then the doctor smiles brightly, grabs her foal, and puts it in her loving embrace.

She looks into the foal’s eyes for the first time. It returns her gaze with a dead, unmoving stare.

I whisper into her ear, “I asked for this.”

The dream dissolves, the young mare screaming herself awake. Still, we are not done. We dive into the final dream we saw this evening.

The young filly has moved from the classroom into her home, where two parents look down at her in enthusiastic approval. They talk about throwing a party for her wonderful grade, inviting her friends over for games, and hugging and kissing her because they love their brilliant daughter so much.

Then, they look at the paper again, their faces transforming from unrequited happiness to unabated anger. They shout at her angrily, asking how she could possibly have done this to them, after they had sacrificed so much for her, given all that they could for her to have a future, only for her to bring back a paper with an enormous F on it.

The filly, horrified, snatches the paper from her parents and runs from the home, their shouts echoing into her ears that they don’t want her anymore, that they don’t want a worthless piece of trash to distract them from their wonderful lives.

She runs back to the schoolhouse, where she presents her schoolteacher with the paper. The teacher shakes her head, saying, “You’re stupid. I can’t help that. You may as well be homeless and alone so you don’t waste anypony’s time.”

My mind is distracted briefly, the illusion before the filly shimmering. We have seen her before.

Suddenly, the dream falls to tatters, and it is her and me in the darkness.

She looks at me, tears in her eyes. “Why?”

I look petulantly back at her. “Because nopony else is willing to do what’s necessary. I only do what I must to make you stronger.”

The tears continue to flow, but her face hardens. She glares at me, piercing directly into my soul, laid out for all of her small world to see. “I hate you.”

I feel myself being dragged away from the filly, her form dissolving as she wakes up, my own dream form flying upward, away from the dreams of the ponies, past the subconscious, toward the ever-glaring light above.

---

The magic fades from my horn.

I look at my hooves. They are not those of Nightmare Moon. That, at least, was only a dream.

Who am I? Was that me, doing those terrible things? Does the filly hate me?

It has to be me. She has to hate me. I am so weak.

The tears start, my final resolve crumbling.

I cannot do this alone.

Author's Note:

Nightmare Moon is fucked up.
--Scootareader

Comments

[Housecarl of Clan Drops]

I'm going to be serious with you for a moment.
static3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140108132233/thestanleyparable/images/8/82/Serious_Room.jpg
This is the most serious table I could find, so that should impress the gravity of the situation upon you.

I'd just like to say that I am very much enjoying this story. I have a feeling it's about to really show that it's not afraid to have the characters deal with the consequences of their actions.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard, "oh, Luna just got hit with the black magic whammy and was turned into Nightmare Moon. They're two separate beings, and Luna's completely innocent." And I'm not saying I hate her and just want to see Luna suffering, on the contrary. If I've only learned one thing in all my time on this site, it's that a writer has to respect their characters. I have no problem with your external troubles becoming manageable with the help of the Elements, but your inner troubles shouldn't just go away with the fading of the rainbow lights from them too.

I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next.

[Scootareader]

3905068
N-no pressure, right?
i.neoseeker.com/mgv/60953/953/102/twilightcrazy_display.gif

I hope I don't botch it this late in the game.

[PaulAsaran]

Well, that was interesting.