Changeling

by Criticul

Epilogue

The two sat across from one another in silence.
A spread of grains and fruit lay between them, resting untouched; both stared at one another, knowing that they could not possibly avoid it: they had to talk about it now before the truths began mixing and flowing amongst fallacy and mere perception. Some parts of the story were still untold—still fragmented and separated. There were parts that Luna never wanted to remember. There were parts that she wished she could remember but forgot all the same. The whole thing felt like a dream now—felt like a long, twisted sleep, which had never really ended.
Still though, Celestia needed to know.
“Sister?”
The white mare blinked.
“Can we talk—in private, I mean?”
The sister nodded, and the guards pushed out of the room. Silence encroached again; both organized their thoughts carefully, unsure of how to begin. The weight was atrocious: the younger held a burden that could not simply be let go. No, there was a darkness within her—Celestia saw it festering behind those tired eyes. Ambivalence.
The elder pushed her plate forward. “Are you OK? You haven’t been speaking much lately. Is there something you want to tell me?”
Luna remained motionless. “Do you know what happened?”
The sister shook her head. “I know a little. I was hoping you would tell me.”
“What would you say if I told you that I was sick—that I wasn’t going to be here much longer?”
Celestia eyed her sister nervously. Her mouth cringed slightly, as if it was trying to lock away the response. “Well, I would—.”
“No. I want to know what you would think. Actions can harbor false intentions.” Luna cocked her head slightly. “What would you think, sister?”
Celestia nodded in understanding before continuing. “I cannot imagine the depression, sister. You know that I love you more than anything; stop talking like that.”
“But, I can’t! Do you think it’s just something I can turn off?” Luna pushed away from the table, hanging away for a moment before slamming forward once more. “Do you even know why she came? Do you even know who she was? Do you?”
“Luna, she was a parasite. She wanted power. She wanted—“
“You don’t know a damn thing about what she wanted! You are all so ignorant! You all are obsessed with villains and heroes and all those lies, but never have you even once considered that you could be the brutal one. It’s sickening!” The princess closed her eyes before burying her face in her hooves. “I want to tell you what happened. I want to tell you what she said, but I know you won’t understand. You just can’t.”
Celestia bowed her head. She wanted to breathe, but her lungs stopped working; her lips quivered, and her eyes were caught upon the reflection of the sun in a glass of orange juice.
“Luna?”
“What?”
“Tell me what happened.” Celestia’s face glowed slightly; it was not a smile, but a look of comfort. There was interest in those eyes—not like a ruler or a puritan, but as a sister and a friend. “Start at the beginning… tell me what it is that hurts you, so that I can hurt beside you.”
It was then that Luna began to feel a deep sense of regret. She revealed her face, half in tears, and smiled: “Will you listen to me?”
Celestia nodded.
The younger looked down at herself, thinking where to begin. “I think it starts with a thought.”
“A thought?”
“Yes. It was just a thought. A wonder as to why we do all these things—about why we keep going on or why we look up into the stars and think of why we’re so alone. It starts with a Changeling that was given every tool to break us, but wanted none of that.” Luna looked up. “She knew it wasn’t about power. Power was a means to an end, the end being a question, and the question being about the end. If there had been any other way for her to find an answer, she might have gone for it, but this was the one thing that kept her going—it was the one thing that gave value to her pains.”
Celestia had crept around the table to sit beside her sister; she laid one hoof upon the younger’s. “So Chrysalis wanted an answer. But what was the question?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Celestia. The question was ‘why’. It wasn’t ‘what can I destroy’, but ‘why would I want to destroy it’? Do you understand?”
Celestia nodded slightly, unsure but still following.
“We never question why we do things. We always have just led—as was our birthright—but she did. Chrysalis did not break us because she wanted to. She did it because she had to know whether doing it would tell her why she did it. I’ll tell you something she told me once, in a dream: she told me that the only thing she wanted was the gift of immortality.”
“And she didn’t find it?”
“No, she very well could have. She could have enslaved us, breaking into our minds and robbing us of our strength. The invasion gave her that potential: just a single thought and it would have been given to her. I think, though, that she realized that it wasn’t going to make her happy. She saw that we were both as temporary as she was, except that we are given just a fraction more time.”
Celestia continued watching her, nodding.
“It started when I left—when I left my home only to be hunted by my prey. She took my in and toyed with my mind. She explored every one of my responses, but it was pure ignorance kept her from realizing that I was weak. It could have ended there, but she ignored my experience. She thought that she could find more than I could, and so she took me and another back to our home to reap the reward.”
For a moment, silence stood. Luna took a sip of water, revealing that her hooves were shaking wildly; Celestia lowered her voice. “There was another?”
Luna put the cup down before pulling a small, red book out from under the table. “He saved you, you know. He was the one that took you away from the facility when you had fainted—I was too blinded by my anger. I don’t know exactly why he was with her, though—he was quiet about that stuff—but that didn’t matter much. Barlowe was a friend of mine. I can only hope that he found what he was looking for.”
Celestia’s eyes shifted in confusion.
Luna looked up from the book. “Oh, I’m sorry. You never got to meet him; he had left the moment you began waking up.”
“And he was the one that found a place for me?”
“Yes, he had carried you home even though a war. He always did have quite the appreciation for you, though. He would have loved to speak with you about poetry.” Luna placed the book on the table for her to skim through before continuing. “I think, though, that I’m glad he wasn’t there in the end. When I met him in Canterlot, he was tired—too tired to handle any more.”
“But he helped you find her?”
“He had come up with a small plan in hoping to trick the Queen. He put me on his wagon while I took your appearances—he would turn me in, and I would end it when her back was turned.”
“And this didn’t work.”
Luna sighed. “No, she saw through it… she saw through it.”
“And this is where it ended?” Celestia asked once more, flipping through the journal’s inkblot stains.
“No… it never ends, Celestia.” Luna looked down at herself. Her face was stretched again with the misery of loneliness. “Don’t you see? This is when she had her answer. All the manipulation, the domination—it had done nothing for her. The invasions had us pinned, but emptiness still consumed her. It was like a cut that could not be sewn—it just bled and bled until finally she simply ran out of life. Do you get that, sister? She just ran out of life.”
The two were quiet. Celestia’s eyes again were locked on the reflection of sunlight shining out from the glassware. Her eyes were red—slightly tearing. Still, she hardly breathed.
“Do you understand now, Celestia? She wasn’t evil, sister. She wasn’t a villain. Every moment of her life had determined what she would do—every experience and thought and flicker of existence. In her mind, she was just finding purpose in the hand given to her. Good? Bad? What were they worth? All such personal creations….”
“And you feel responsible?”
“And now I wonder why… I wonder why it happened—why that final realization led her to end her own life. I wonder why I keep worrying about making up for my past when I know that it isn’t my fault—that sometimes, people see good while others see evil. I wonder why I have these expectations about survival and love and comfort when I know that they’re all just distractions. And worst of them all: when I look up in the night’s sky and see all the foreign worlds floating out in space billions of miles away, I wonder why it’s all so small.”
Luna stopped. Tears glistened in the corners of her eyes, darkened by the blue underneath. For once, she did not care about her nightmare. She did not care about the safety of the public or the values of justice and ethics and duty; the only things that reached her were the comfort of admittance and the slight reflection of the sun as it bent through a glass of orange juice.
For minutes on end, the two just stared into the light. They made no sounds; they hardly breathed. It was as though they were frozen in time, caught there to endlessly stare into the light for the remainder of their lives, until Luna once turned away.
And she smiled.