My Little Death Note

by Caberea

Secrets, or Lies?

Twilight would have felt surprised, but a part of her had come to acknowledge the strangeness of the Shinigami. But being the father of Celestia? That was beyond ridiculous. It had to be some sort of joke, maybe that’s what this whole thing was, some massive prank that her friends had put together for her return. Put deep inside she knew that this wasn’t the case. This was all too impossible to just be some prank, but at the same time it was too impossible to be real.

Why had Celestia never told her about this? Was it something that she had neglected to tell her because she dismissed it as irrelevant, or was it something more than that?

“Hang on, if he really is Celestia’s father, then that would make them…”

“Yes, both Celestia and her sister are in part Shinigami.”

This was not something she was just going to let slide. Celestia had kept this from her for how long? She was Celestia’s prized pupil. How could she have just left out something as important as that?

Twilight stormed out of the basement angrily, levitating the Death Note out with her and slamming it into her saddlebags. She shut the door to the basement with equal force, creating a resounding slam that would later make her worry if she had broken something. Not now though, now she was going to confront Celestia and Luna and make them finally tell her the truth.

“Spike!”

She yelled out for her assistant but there was no need, the dragon had already rushed down to her, drawn by the amount of noise she was making more than anything else.

“What’s the matter Twilight?”

“Send a letter to Celestia telling her that we’re coming to back to Canterlot for a short visit, and nothing she says is going to stop us. There’s something that she hasn’t been telling us, and I’m not going to rest until I’ve found out why.”

She didn’t need to give Spike the exact details of what to write in her letters anymore. Among other things, his time at Canterlot during her studies had resulted in a considerable increase in his vocabulary, and with it his writing abilities had soared. However, so had his need to know the reason behind those letters.

“What has Celestia been keeping from us exactly?”

“Secrets, lots of secrets.”

That was all the information he would give him for now, and Spike managed to recognize that and stopped asking his questions.

Twilight put on her saddlebag, before realizing that the Death Note had very little to conceal itself. Using her magic she shaped the material over the top of the book, making it seem as if it were just another part of the bag. At the same time, she began preparing a long-distance teleport to Canterlot, it wouldn’t do her any good if Celestia didn’t have time to read her letter. The longer Celestia spent worrying about when Twilight would arrive, and what to tell her, the better. Let her mind wander what it was that Twilight needed to talk to her about; it would serve her right for keeping such a secret from her.

Her spell went off with a flash, and she found herself with the odd feeling of not having any ground beneath her hooves. It was an unique sensation, one that she would doubted she would ever get used to, but such was the nature of a long-distance teleport.

Unlike a regular teleport, that allowed for a pony to materialize nearly instantly by a quick consumption of magical energies, the long-distance teleport took some time for the target to travel between areas. The advantage to the teleport was that it didn’t consume nearly as much energy as the regular one. If she had tried to teleport herself instantly to Canterlot, she would find herself unable to cast spells for days afterwards, as the toll that teleport took on the user increased exponentially with distance.

Celestia would tell her everything, she was sure of it…Though the more she thought it about it, the more she wondered just how much her teacher had actually told her. Were there other things that she had neglected to tell Twilight because she didn’t trust her? Or did Celestia feel that Twilight wouldn’t be able to deal with it. Had Celestia always doubted the security of her mind? Was she correct to? If anything her time in Ponyville lately had shown plenty to support that idea. Could that have been why Celestia sent her here? Had Celestia seen her as a threat? That at any moment her student would snap and attack her, so she had sent her back to her friends so that they could control her?

Control her…

How much of her life had been under her control? From the moment she had been able to talk she had wanted to go to Celestia’s school for gifted unicorns, but had that really been her desire, or her parents? Did she really want every moment of her life to be under control, every point in time scheduled in place? Had Celestia shaped her like that for a reason?

Now that she looked back on it, almost every aspect of her life had been controlled by the princess. Up until she had developed her obsession for keeping to schedules, Celestia had made sure that she was always perfectly on time, always finished with work, always abiding by every rule lain into place. Had it all been so that when Celestia couldn’t control her life directly, Celestia would control her through her own studious habits that she had developed?

What if-?

Twilights thoughts were cut short as she suddenly came out of the spell, managing to keep her balance despite the disorienting nature of having carpet under her hooves out of nowhere. Spike and her saddlebags had made it through fine too, though Spike had lost his balance and fallen when coming out of the teleport. Looking around her she realized that she had misjudged her spell slightly. While she had intended to appear in the throne room, instead she found herself in a lavishly decorated bedroom. Unless she had seriously misjudged her spell, she was in the castle, but she had never seen this room before.

The walls were strange to say the least, a rainbow of colors that shifted and changed as she moved around the room, certain parts of it seeming fixed in place only to move moments later. The bed was absolutely massive, larger than any she had seen for a pony in her life and it certainly didn’t seem to be lacking in comfort. In a corner of the room was a faded wooden shelf containing a small assortment of what seemed to be a collection of random objects. There didn’t seem to be any defining quality to them whatsoever, other than that they were all very old, yet in pristine condition.

There was no doubting it; she was in Celestia’s bedroom.

It was both exactly what she had expected, and somehow lacking. She had expected Celestia’s room to be somewhat older looking, perhaps cluttered with objects from when Celestia had been young. But the room looked new, and the walls alone made it seem as if it were a place that only the great could tread.

Twilight soon forgot it was she had come for, losing herself in the majestic simplicity of the place. She ran her eyes over the objects on the shelf, until they caught on a small orb that she had missed before. It was indented into the shelf, a white little thing that seemed to emit a small amount of light. As she gazed at it, an image sprung to the surface of the orb, showing her a glimpse of when she had graduated from Celestia’s school.

Had Celestia kept it her to remind herself of the power she held over her pupil? That she would belong to her forever?

Before her thoughts could continue any further in that direction, the door to Celestia’s chambers opened, and Twilight quickly turned to the cause of the noise, looking like a foal caught someplace that shouldn’t be. Spike might have reacted similarly had he not still been trying to stand.

“Celestia, I’m sorry I was just-” Twilight began to explain herself; before she recalled the reason she had been here in the first place “-about to ask you about your father.”

Celestia seemed to be caught off guard by her remark, or it could have simply been the shock of seeing Twilight in her bedroom. A slight blush came to her cheeks as she realized how this would have seemed to an outsider. Celestia seemed to be thinking similar thoughts as the faint red suffused her teacher’s cheeks.

“So did you want to talk to me here specifically? Or shall we go somewhere less…personal for it?”

Twilight would have wanted to go somewhere else under normal conditions. As inviting as the room was, it was Celestia’s private chambers, and after having been taught by Celestia for years on end, something just didn’t feel right about that.

However, there was too much doubt about her teacher in her mind, and she feared that should she leave the room, Celestia would attempt anything to dissuade her from what she had come for.

“Just here is fine thank you very much.”

“In front of Spike?”

Twilight glanced to the dragon, who had only just managed to recover from the effects of the teleport.

“He will be fine, and he deserves to know about this, just as I do.”

Celestia sighed, and went to lie on the bed, suddenly looking very tired and unkempt. She didn’t look to Twilight as she spoke, but her voice carried clearly across to her student.

“So what is it that you want to know about him?”

Twilight decided to start things off simply, if Celestia had simply seen her father as an unimportant fact, then she would tell Twilight everything, and she would have been proven wrong to doubt her. But if Celestia tried to dodge around it…

“What kind of a pony was he?”

Celestia paused before answering her question.

“He was a murderer. No. He was more than that. He was a monster. A vile being that didn’t have the right to be called a pony, yet alone to live amongst them. He had a book, one that gave him the power to decide who in this world was worthy of life. With it he slaughtered millions, not caring if they were pony, griffon, dragon, or otherwise, he killed indiscriminately.”

Celestia paused again, and a silence filled the gap.

“I’m sad to say that my and my sister weren’t much better for a long time.”

Twilight felt that her teacher had at least earned back her trust. Though she hadn’t gone into any details about the Death note, she had at least mentioned it, so she clearly wasn’t trying to dodge around the truth, of that she was sure. Twilight felt that she should have let her last remark go, but there was just too much left unsaid to do so.

“What do you mean by that?”

Twilight wasn’t sure when the tears had started, but when Celestia turned to address Twilight, her eyes were wet, watery trails streaming forming a small stream down her face.

“I’m a murderer Twilight. Or I once was. He had said we needed to do it to live. We didn’t think we had a choice in things. How could we have stood by for so long as we heartlessly killed everypony we knew?

Luna and I share the bloodline of some ancient race of deities, known as the Shinigami, or death god. Our mother was mortal, but our father was, in part, one of them. Our father told us that we needed to kill, or we would die. That the deaths we caused with the notebook were the measure of our lives. What else could we do?

Then came the night, the night I killed our mother. When we came of the age where we needed to start killing, our mother tried to stop us leaving. She didn’t want us to grow up to be like him. He decided the only thing to do was kill her, telling us that she would have died anyway. He decided to do it as a test for us, or an example. Something to show that this was who we were, and that we would always have to be like it.

He held my hoof as I wrote her name in the Death Note, the book of psychopaths and murderers, telling Luna that soon she would make her first kill too. Back then another pony had wielded the power of day and night, but it seemed as if the stars wept for us that night.

We became just like our father, killing relentlessly in order to extend our own lives. To stop ourselves from hating every moment of our existence, of what we had become; I am ashamed to admit it, but we, or at least I, started to enjoy it. It wasn’t until many years later that we saw what we had become. One young filly begged me to spare their parents; they looked a lot like you all things considered…I only wish I had seen the error of my ways sooner.

I killed them all, not just the parents, but the filly too, and everpony in the house. There is nothing I can do to pay for that, nothing I could have done then either. That day I vowed that I would never kill again. That I would aid Equestria in a path to a brighter future, one where no pony would ever need to kill. I have tried my hardest all these years, but fear I haven’t even come close to repenting for my mistakes.

So yes, I’ve kept this from you all of these years Twilight, I’m truly sorry. I just didn’t know how you would react. I didn’t want you to hate me, to think that I’m some kind of monster.”

Twilight could only gape as her teacher broke down in front of her, begging for her, the student, to forgive her. She didn’t know how to handle this, and a quick glance at Spike showed that he didn’t either.

For what was probably the first time in her life, Twilight stopped thinking, and just let the words flow from her heart.

“I could never hate you Celestia. You took me under your wing at your school, and became almost a second mother to me. You have never done anything wrong in my lifetime, and I doubt you ever will. If anything, you are the kindest pony it has ever been my fortune to meet. That is repentance enough for whatever you once were.”

Celestia began to calm down, sealing back into her mind the memories of those horrible times, and before long she had regained her composure, though her mane didn’t quite have the flow it normally retained.

“Thank you, my student. Now if that is all you had to ask, it would be wise that you returned to Ponyville.”

“There is one other thing Celestia.”

Celestia seemed reluctant to let the conversation continue, yet bade her proceed.

“Where is that book you talked about now?”

“It is in a place where nopony shall ever find it, stored away with Luna’s. No pony has the right to choose who lives and who dies, and where it is hidden they will never get the chance.”

They could both tell that the conversation had ended, yet they lingered a moment longer, before Celestia turned out of the room, what had likely been a brief respite from castle life ruined. Moments after the door closed behind her, the purple unicorn was nowhere to be seen, having already cast the spell to take her back.

Twilight thought over what Celestia had said, and decided that there was no reason for her to lie about any of what she had said. Her teacher was still trustworthy at least, if a little misguided. Thinking on it, her last remark hadn’t been entirely incorrect. No pony had the right to wield such power.

But what of she who would be a goddess?

Comments

[Paladin Redflare]

Quite nice, good job Celestia... Twilight is doomed anyway.

[Paladin Redflare]

789082 Death Note only makes me want Light/Twilight to die horribly...it's because of her that someone else found a Death note and killed Sweetiebelle for being a hero.