• Published 3rd Dec 2015
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Synthetic Bottled Sunlight - NorrisThePony



Of all the terrible forces Celestia could have fallen to, Flim Flam Industry was the last one she had expected.

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Only Two Bits A Bottle

i

Celestia awoke.

She blinked as she adapted to the dim light, the last traces of some dream or nightmare lingering only for a minute on her confused mind, as the rest of her terrible reality came into focus like a distorted sunset dancing off rippling ocean waves.

She hated this time of day, this period of momentary confusion, because after the confusion always came the same thing. Realization. Realization that the only thing her eyes were awaking to was sharp electric light and four plain brick walls.

The confusion passed. The realization set in. Quick on its tails were dread, and fear and…

“Hmm…” Celestia pursed her lips, casting her blanket aside as she rose from her bed.

An angry, fang-filled grin. A flare of blue magic, and another flare of yellow cutting it short. A terrible, mirthless cackle. A weeping white alicorn, covered in blood that she wished desperately could have been her own.

Realization. Dread. Fear.

Guilt.

Celestia smiled with bitter familiarity. There it was. It had taken a little longer than normal, but it had come all the same. Sweet, terrible guilt. It clawed at her mind, it begged her to finally stop, and it also drove her forwards through each day.

That wasn’t to say her days entailed a whole lot now, though.

She groaned in pain as her hooves touched ground. Ten years. Ten bloody years, and still it was there. If anything, the otherworldly pain had only grown in intensity. As she stumbled up, her muscles singing out their protest, she carried out her familiar ritual. Some ponies rose and greeted a loved one, some sent thankful words to a deity above for another glorious sunrise....

As Celestia rose, she had a ritual, too, as familiar names echoed through her mind and off her wayward lips in synchronization with her throbbing pain.

“Damn you, Discord. Damn you, Sombra. Damn you, Chrysalis. Damn you especially, Tirek…”

A crippled, throbbing wing shot memories of the changeling queen almost rending it off with sharp fangs. A splotch of mismatched, perpetually burnt flesh reminded her of the blast of chaos magic that Discord had managed to discharge at her despite being no more than a stone statue. A twisted horn filled with holes from when Tirek had attempted to steal her magic. When she coughed, it felt as though something inside her had been jarred loose, but she knew better; the unicorns might’ve been able to remove the crystal spear that one of Sombra’s soldiers had impaled her with, but they could not reverse the damage its enchanted head had done to her. It felt as though her own insides were trying to devour themselves, but fortunately her alicorn magic had prevented the sensation from escalating any further. Still, she had never truly healed completely, and in her present situation she truly couldn’t.

As she looked at the frowning mare in the mirror (one of the few interesting things in the plain room she called home), she greeted her with a pained, forced smile that looked terrible on this strange mare's face as she imitated it in synchronization.

As her one eye focused on the revolting patch of red flesh that was the other, another name entered her mind, joining the perpetual chant of childish insult.

“Damn you, Lu—”

Celestia stopped.

She stared at herself in the mirror for a few motionless seconds.

She rose a hoof and wiped the tears streaking from her one good eye.

Sadly, she offered a correction. “I’m sorry, Luna. I love you.”

Celestia turned from the mirror. She hated the mirror. She should have smashed it long ago, but in her sleep she imagined it would be replaced once again, out of punishment or out of kindness she truly did not know.

Opposite the mirror, at the foot of her plain and featureless bed, was an old grandfather clock that she regarded with passing curiosity. A relic of a time that seemed so much better. One of the few relics she had left, her own self aside.

5:38. She smiled at the time, and noted that it was the first time in three months that she had risen on her own accord. No blaring alarm, no aggressive shoves, no harsh jolts of electricity or cackling laughter. Simply a shudder of fluttering eyelids—eyelid—and a new day.

That, at least, was nice.

In another corner of the brick-wall room was a bookshelf. Celestia grabbed a novel at random and took to staring at the blurred words on the page. Her glasses were somewhere… heavens knew she needed them now, but even if the words were legible, Celestia’s mind was elsewhere.

Ten bloody years. Perhaps eleven, in several months.

Eleven years without feeling the warmth of her own sun. Eleven years, a prisoner at the mercy of her own subjects.

If only they could have been different. If only she could have been a better sister, then perhaps she could have been a better friend, and a better aunt. And… a better teacher.

Now, she was left alone, and with nopony else to blame but herself, no matter how many names she cursed upon waking.

In exactly one hour and twenty two minutes, the alarm did sound, but she was already awake. Surely they should have seen. The moment she heard it blare, she rose from her bed, giving the ponies on the other side of the sweeping surveillance camera’s eye a small smile as she grabbed a glowing metal ring from her nightstand and brought it around her cracked and broken horn.

It sent uncomfortable tingles down her body, but she was used to it, and they were only temporary anyways. The magic inhibitor pulsed twice, and then Celestia felt its magic flow enter into her own, negating its effects.

To a limited extent. If Celestia truly wished, she could melt the damn thing into ash. But she knew it would do nothing but waste her own time.

Wake up. Leave her room. Do her job. Return to her room. Repeat. Might as well keep to the schedule.

The moment her inhibitor was on, a section of the brick wall slid open. Celestia squinted at the sudden unwelcome electric light, a synthetic solar eclipse nearly blinding her untrained eye.

As her vision recovered from the familiar assault, a young mare stepped forwards. Her features were blurred, but when Celestia reached for her eyeglasses on her nightstand, she saw that the mare was greeting her with sympathetic eyes and a small smile. She was also holding a platter containing the princess's breakfast, which she placed on Celestia’s vanity as she trotted in.

“Good morning, Your Majesty!”

“Same to yourself, Raven,” Celestia nodded. In one universe, long ago, this young mare (hardly young anymore, Celestia corrected herself) was her assistant and friend. Then again, that truly had not changed too drastically.

“A 7 AM sunrise?” Celestia questioned. “What month is it again?”

“September, Your Majesty. September 24th.”

“Hm. I seem to have lost track.”

“I can have another calendar brought to you, Princess,” Raven suggested.

“I could do without the reminder,” Celestia shook her head. “But I suppose it is my duty. The only one I have, now.”

Raven said nothing. It was a topic she did not like speaking about, and Celestia doubted the powers that be liked her talking about it either. It was already against their will that Raven was allowed to be her assistant, but when Celestia had threatened not to raise the sun, they had hardly been presented a choice.

Back in those days, they had been willing to succumb to her whims out of fear of the threats she made. But time had passed and they had evidently become much more confident. Celestia doubted she could have done the same today; they would have called her bluff and laughed at her wild claim.

“How is the surface, Raven?” Celestia asked, trotting into the next room, the one with the blinding white light. “Same old?”

“Mostly, yes,” Raven replied, trotting after her former Princess.

“Have they started selling bottled sterilized air, yet?” Celestia asked, the remark somewhere on the threshold between somber and joking.

“Sometimes I feel like it’s only a matter of time,” Raven laughed, all the while casting nervous glances at the security camera looming in the second room, also.

Celestia caught the glance and frowned.

“Have you passed on my request?” she questioned.

“Yeah. They’re still saying no.”

“Did you make sure to say ‘please?’” Celestia said sarcastically, rolling her one good eye. “Just an hour is all I ask. One hour of sunlight.”

Celestia came to a full halt, turning to meet Raven’s eyes. The mare looked at the ground in guilt and fear, refusing to meet Celestia’s begging expression.

“One hour.”

Raven was silent. She glanced again at the surveillance camera. The minutes ticked by… 7:03… a later sunrise than scheduled, but Celestia didn’t care if she displeased anypony with her harmless delay.

“I’m dying, Raven,” Celestia said solemnly, abruptly. Best get her point through swiftly. Not that it was something that came to Raven as news.

“I know,” the mare said softly.

“I need the sunlight. My injuries won’t heal until I feel it.”

“I know,” Raven said again. “They do, too. They’re trying to… find a solution.”

Find a solution. Celestia snorted. They'd been trying to find a solution for four years, and they had been presenting poor Raven with "no comment" every time Celestia posed her request.

“Their solution doesn’t involve me,” Celestia vocalized Raven's implied premises. She had in her mind an image of ponies in lab-coats, ponies with elaborate contraptions, ponies with equipment pointed at the sun. “It cannot be done. They can do a lot with their machinery and inventions, sure. But the sun needs my magic to be risen.”

More silence. The clock ticked on. 7:06. A late sunrise indeed.

“I’ll ask again,” Raven gave up her fruitless, duty-obligated protests. “For you, Princess.”

“Can I speak with them?”

“I’ll ask,” Raven repeated, firmly this time. “The sun, Princess…”

“Yes, you are quite right,” Celestia nodded. She turned and trotted into the room proper. It was considerably more plain and featureless than Celestia’s room—if that could be believed—and yet as if by some cruel joke it was considerably brighter, allowing every corner to be coated in harsh white light.

The only thing of note besides another surveillance camera and an overhanging lighting fixture was a long tube like device, that soared upwards through the ceiling. When Celestia had first seen it, she had mistaken it for a telescope, but that hadn’t made sense. She did not quite know where she was, but she knew it was underground. Far underground.

That was the purpose of the telescope—or, Sun Trotter 2000, as its colourful paint job boasted—to allow her magic to bridge through the layers of rock dividing her from the surface. Complicated dials and cables ran across every inch of the device, and on the surface, Celestia knew there was some strange electric dish pointed directly at her sun that actually helped her magic get to the sun much easier. In her growing weakness, Celestia was at least relieved for that.

Despite its complexity, using the device was a simple affair of flipping a switch and bringing her horn into a hole of precise dimensions that fit around it like a set of comfortable slippers. She turned the machine on and brought her hoof into its midst, and as she did she felt the magic inhibitor around her horn temporarily shut off as her magic was allowed to flow into the machine and nowhere else.

Celestia found the sun’s tug after having to sift through a thick layer of overhanging smoke and smog. Every dawn, there was a little more. Eventually she found the sun’s link, and with a small smile she welcomed it like an old friend. If it could be called such; it was perhaps her last one left.

It was also more or less the only reason she was still alive.

She had always disliked Flim and Flam, but her dislike hardly justified action or activity. They were pompous and irritating, but more or less harmless. Between changeling invasions, large-scale war, and magic-devouring demons, Celestia had had bigger priorities.

She never would have imagined Flim and Flam were such villains themselves. But when she had defeated Tirek—trotting too close to the gates of death herself—she had swiftly found out. Her mana pools empty, her link to the sun shattered until they refilled… the period had become known as the Third Longest Night. Yet, where most ponies looked with fear and confusion, Flim and Flam, ever the optimists, saw opportunity in the weakened princess.

A murderer, they had called her from their soap box. A killer of kin, a slayer of the changeling race, and a crazy old mare who would one day bring a fiery destruction for all. A tyrant and a liar who claimed to have control over the sun and moon which in reality orbited the planet by themselves. Equestria would be better without her, they claimed.

It had taken two fast talking, universally loved business ponies to turn the will of the majority of Celestia’s subjects around. And she had hardly been in any state to fight them off with her body still bearing the injuries of too many battles, not that she could ever bring herself to turn her magic towards marginally innocent ponies.

Celestia guided the sun into the sky, hoping for the ponies she could not see that the smog was not thick enough to obscure its presence. Then, she removed her horn from the Sun Trotter 2000, felt the tingle of the magic inhibitor resume, and turned from the room to return to her own. She traveled the distance like a ghost, brushing past Raven as if she were not there.

“See you tomorrow, Your Majesty!” the aging mare called after her. “I’ll pass on your request to the bigwigs up top!”

Celestia muttered a distant ‘thank you’, creeping into her room where the stone wall once again closed behind her, leaving the Princess of the Sun alone to preside over her kingdom.

ii

As much as she despised them, Celestia was forced to admit to herself that the Flim Flam Brothers had perhaps been greatly beneficial to saving Equestria from the depths of despair it had been flung into.

Dark battlefields and bloodied ponies had greatly filled Celestia’s memories of the wars against Sombra, but the truth was those battlefields hardly represented Equestria during those times. They had held the Crystal Empire back well enough, and Equestria’s innocents had remained out of the fray of violence.

Of course, they still dwelled in the depths of despair. War time efforts became the priority. Up North, the fields were blood soaked and the skies were filled with the smoke of mortar blasts. Down South, the fields were stripped clear of harvest and the skies were filled with the smoke of industrial smokestacks. As terrible as the war against Sombra had been, it had helped lift Equestria’s economy from the dumps The Second Long Night had flung them into.

Flim Flam Industry hadn’t been born in that war, but it might as well have been. From a tiny little entrepreneurship, it grew to a massive corporation. The two stallions had what Equestria needed in those times: cleverness and creativity. And, at the cost of a few forests and a trace amount of unsullied skies, Equestria was given hope and progress.

Celestia did her best to remind herself of all this as she glared at the suited stallion in front of her, a hoof tapping impatiently against the table. Had to think of the ponies. Had to consider their welfare. Had to dismiss her own freedom for their happiness. She’d been doing it for ten years, although those years hadn’t been without her escape attempts. Now, she lived like a prisoner because of those attempts.

She was sitting at a polished glass table—still underground, but a short elevator ride up—being stared down by at least a dozen other well-dressed ponies and well-armed guards, with her old friend the magic inhibitor in place on her horn. Celestia almost had to remind herself that these ponies had once been her loyal subjects.

“No?” Celestia repeated the suited stallion’s minced words, saying it as if it were a challenge. “Forgive me, can I simply ask why?”

“It’s in the interest of Equestrian security, you understand,” he said. Celestia didn’t know his name and didn’t care, although she hardly felt comfortable despising a pony she didn’t know the name of.

“An hour in the sun to heal some of my wounds is threatening to Equestrian security?” she asked acidly. “We’ve been here for two hours, and I’ve only asked that one question, and you’ve yet to give me a frank and understandable answer. I don’t know how you think I perceive time, but even I think ten years without seeing the sun is cruel and unfair.”

The same stallion moved to protest, but Celestia cut him off with a sharp look. An empty threat thanks to the horn inhibitor, but it worked nonetheless.

“I don’t know who any of you are,” Celestia proceeded. “I wished to simply speak to Flim and Flam, not their flying monkeys, but if you had in you a shred of sense I could have forgiven you. The fact of the matter is that you’re too gutless to say the truth of why you won’t let me go to the surface.”

More silence. Stunned looks. Terrified ponies.

“You want me to die. Because you think you’re on the brink of some solution that finally negates my purpose, and snuffs me out of the equation. I know how you brainwashed corporate slaves operate, you know!” Celestia’s voice had risen to a sharp, near-shout, and she herself had risen from her seat. “This whole institution is a liability to you. And the less liability, the better. I’m the political equivalent of a stubborn old mare living on land you want to build a supermarket upon.”

“Well. Haven’t you got us all figured out.” The smug mare finally composed herself to pretend she hadn’t been terrified a moment ago, and made an attempt to dispel Celestia’s fury with a sarcastic remark. “Princess, can you please sit down?”

“No. Shut up. I was talking,” Celestia replied sharply. “After all I’ve had to do to ponies much closer to me than you, do you really think I have restrictions about what I have to say?”

The mare glared daggers at her, but waved a hoof for her to proceed, knowing she could not silence the princess's voice except by hearing it spoken out to its conclusion. It was amazing how they treated her like another competitor, instead of a glorified prisoner.

“I have no doubt you’ve got your snouts shoved into some hole in the sand you call science, but you can’t use science to raise the sun.”

“Your Majesty, you don’t know the components of our business and research infrastructure—”

“Speaking in tongues doesn’t make your words any more significant to me,” Celestia cut this new stallion off before he could get another meaningless word in. All of these fools were sweeping upon her like stallions to a drunk mare at a bar. “I’m telling you it isn’t possible. I’m going to perish, then the sun is going to fall, and your science and your technology won’t be able to save you.”

Silence fell. Celestia sat back down, her piece said. The gathered ponies looked at each other helplessly, as if discussing matters through some corporate hive-mind. Eventually, the first stallion, the one directly across from Celestia who she presumed was the highest authority, spoke.

“Your request has been considered, Princess, but our stance remains.”

“Then allow me a counter-proposal,” Celestia did not miss a beat to anger or disappointment. “I will write a spell that will allow several unicorns to raise the sun. Consider it the same as what you are doing, but done by an actually competent mare.”

That one swiftly spoken proposal, as it turned out, had been the straw to break the camel’s back. Celestia grinned and drove the dagger in further.

“Think of the exceptional synergy! The elimination of market research liabilities!” Celestia continued into uncharted silence with sarcastic humor. “Of course, I will only help provided you allow me my short time in the sun. I will need to directly bridge the link between the scroll and the sun anyways.”

Celestia leaned back, smiling smugly. “So. There’s my counter proposal.”

The stunned silence had been so intense that they had ordered a twenty minute recess. Celestia imagined letters being furiously scrawled and sent to Flim and Flam through dragon fire (or whatever their technological equivalent was).

“A scroll, written by yourself, to raise the sun.” They had been all business the moment they had convened. No minced words. The meaning had to be clear. She was smiling from the first sentence. “Are you confident this can be done?”

“Indeed,” she nodded. “I’m more than willing to do so to guarantee my ponies safety. Plus, it would mean you could finally get this stubborn old mare out of the picture. So, I take it the godly brothers of Smoke and Smog smiled upon my request?”

“Your counter proposal has been accepted,” the suited stallion replied instead. “What do you need for your scroll?”

Celestia blinked in confusion, and then chuckled lightly when she realized the request was indeed serious, and not some joke she was missing.

“A quill. Ink. Parchment. It’s a scroll.”

“They will be provided.”

“Marvelous! Glad after ten years you’ve decided that thinking is beneficial to your cause.”

iii

Celestia had added another item to her initial request, and with her trusty quill and parchment placed atop her brand new oak desk, she had set out writing. Wood was scarce, she was told, and she was quite grateful for it.

It had been centuries since she had written a proper magic scroll, and it had taken her some time to work back into the proper routine of doing so.

Back when she had been a Princess, she had taught magic to her subjects out of textbooks, but this reflected a fairly narrow amount of potential magic. Skilled unicorns did not only flip through pages of dusty spell-books and regurgitate spells created by old, long dead unicorns, they also devoted much of their life to creating spells of their own. In many ways, they were quite like Flim and Flam; always innovating, always inventing.

Celestia considered herself an innovator, too. Yet even as she crafted a spell for her subject’s future, it was difficult to smile and maintain hope as she wrote what was more or less her own elegy.

Quickly, she caught the emotion and chastised her selfishness. Had to think of the ponies. Had to consider their welfare. Had to dismiss her own life for their freedom.

Celestia worked hard on the sunrise scroll, as the pages on her new calendar flipped onwards through the year. September, October, time had no intention of waiting on her.

She knew, as she put her head to her pillow on Nightmare’s Night, what would happen. It had been the same for thirteen years, since it had happened. And yet when her mind entered the realm of dreams, it came as a horrible surprise all the same.

The Everfree Castle.

Loud, distant cackling. The sound of stone rending stone.

The sky dark with an unmovable moon.

She flew onwards, with a confident purpose and a heavy heart.

No.

There she was. Celestia. Dreaming Celestia. Imprisoned Celestia. Pathetic Celestia. Begging her to turn back, for this Celestia knew what would come. She had lived it, and now she was living it again through her nightmares.

Turn back! Please! Let her be!

The other, younger Celestia shook her head. No. The same word, with the same meaning, spoken in the same voice, and yet it was so different.

Her dreaming mind skipped past the battle. It wasn’t important. The ending was all she needed to see.

A bested beast wearing the twisted, parodied face of her sister, scowling with satisfaction even as Celestia stood triumphant above her. An angry, fang-filled grin. A flare of blue magic, and another flare of yellow cutting it short. A terrible, mirthless cackle. A weeping white alicorn, covered in blood that she wished desperately could have been her own…

In a torrent of emotions, Celestia was jerked into wakefulness with her throat pained from her sobs.

Nightmare Night had quickly become her most hated holiday.

Celestia celebrated Hearth’s Warming Eve by using a coat-rack and old clothing to create a tree in her room, only to decide it was a truly depressing affair and take it down again.

The day after Hearth’s Warming Eve, she had her first visitor in four and a half years. She’d been expecting more, all things considered, but then again, most of Equestria thought her to be dead. Flim and Flam had said so, and what reason did they have to lie?

With loneliness making up the entirety of her life (her brief moments with Raven in the morning and evening excepted) any guest was a welcome one in her opinion. Even ones bringing nothing but judgement and hate.

A knock came on the stone wall. It was still her home, after all. If she didn’t want to be disturbed, then she wouldn’t be—unless it was to raise the sun, which she had on occasion refused to do. But, again, any guest was a welcome guest to the lonely princess.

“Come in!” she trilled happily, lifting her golden crown atop her head. Like her trusty quill, the crown was almost like a friend to her by that point, even if it signified nothing but her own stubborn pride.

The wall slid open. Captain Shining Armor strode in. Celestia’s resolve broke for a moment—a brief, untraceable moment—and she recovered enough to smile and greet him.

“Happy Hearth’s Warming, Captain Shining Armor,” she said.

“Hello, Celestia,” he said. It would seem he did not believe she deserved her full title. So much for loyalty-to-the-grave. “I suppose you know why I’m here?”

“I do,” Celestia nodded, although internally her mind was reeling with sudden realization. Of course. She’d even labelled it on the damn calendar! How could she have forgotten her own niece's birthday?!

“Forty years...” he said.

Celestia nodded again. “...To this day. I still remember it like it was yesterday, you know. Her sweet little voice… even as a crying newborn she had a voice like a song. I remember the first time I held sweet little Cadence—”

Don’t use her name!” Shining snapped.

“Yes, I’m sorry,” Celestia nodded. “I forgot. Do you accept my apology, Captain?”

He grumbled something that sounded like “yes.”

“Things could have been better for us,” Celestia said. “I wish they had been.”

You wish,” he said, gritting his teeth. Apparently it was a sentiment that needed repetition. “You wish.”

“I wish,” she said again, the word spoken for a fourth time, but still a million times less than Cadence deserved. “I’m sorry, Captain Shining Armor. For you. For her. For Twilight. For Equestria.”

“You failed her,” he said simply, bluntly, emotionlessly. “She begged you to save her. You didn’t.”

She couldn’t. Celestia considered telling Shining that, but she did not. He wanted to place blame where no blame could be placed. Cadence had died a hero against Chrysalis, and though the changeling had bested her, the distraction had been enough for Celestia to break free. Cadence had saved her, and Cadence had saved Equestria.

But Celestia stayed her tongue. She offered no justification, because she did not deserve one. Shining Armor wanted to place his emotions on her, and she was more than happy to bear them.

“Well?” the stallion snapped, his voice cracking as his emotions swelled. It seemed even he had expected her to speak, and her silence had somehow been worse.

“I have nothing to say to defend myself,” Celestia said simply.

That seemed to satiate Shining Armor, and he turned his attention instead to her desk. Celestia tensed the moment he leaned over her scroll, but thankfully he did not seem to be reading it.

“So this is it? The sunset scroll?”

“Yes. My own personal eulogy. You can be the first to use it, if you wish.”

Shining Armor said nothing. He prodded the scroll, shrugged, and turned back to face Celestia, who was fiddling with a kettle atop a hotplate on her vanity. She poured two cups of tea, took one herself and offered another to the Captain. He narrowed his eyes at the cup, as if it were some poisoned and revolting substance, and shook his head in disgust.

“Unfortunate birthday,” Celestia mused passively, stirring her own tea. “The day after Hearth’s Warming. I always used to tease her about that.”

Celestia saw Shining tense at her words and instantly regretted even speaking at all. She suspected that to Shining Armor, any mention of Cadence—even innocent reminiscing—would be seen as an insult to her memory. Celestia felt a strange hollowness at the very thought. She had practically raised Cadence from birth like a mother, and she had loved her as much as a mother ever would. Now, she could not even speak her niece's name.

“Captain Shining Armor, why did you come down here, truly?” Celestia asked, doing her best not to show her sorrow. “You do not have to answer, but forgive me if my ensuing assumption is incorrect.”

Shining indeed did not answer.

“You came down here to feel satisfaction, and closure. To reassert to yourself that the mare you hated for failing you a decade ago is still the same mare. I am. I haven’t changed. I truly hope that coming down here has given you your satisfaction.”

“You’re despicable,” he seethed. “You don’t even care."

"I don't care?" Celestia repeated. "Captain Shining Armor. You don't truly believe that."

"Well, you certainly don't sound very emotional about it. Then again, I guess us mortals mean nothing to you."

Celestia grimaced. She'd forgotten she had used that word during those eternal months after Cadence had passed. Directly to Shining Armor, no less.

"I didn't mean offense with what I said," Celestia offered meekly. Perhaps, if it had simply been Cadence's death, all would have been fine. But to have a mare so close to her—her child, practically—torn away so violently...

She had responded to Shining Armor's emotions with the most volatile thing: more emotion. She had done a poor job caring for Cadence, but she had done an even worse job caring for those suffering from her loss.

Celestia took a single step closer to Shining Armor, and he looked away in response, only to turn back and face his former princess. She imagined it must have been difficult for him to reconcile her present self with the majestic mare he must have remembered. Even she was shocked by the discourse; her body covered in wounds that could not heal, her one tired eye looking out from behind worn eyeglasses. A smile that was not a smile.

Clearly, she must have looked deader in her survival than Cadence ever had in her sacrifice.

Wordlessly, Shining Armor turned away from Celestia again. He gave the stone wall a firm tap, the whole while refusing to let his gaze stray back to the unmoving princess, like a preying arachnid in a web. In an instant, the wall opened once more, and Shining Armor prepared to leave Celestia to her infinite lonesome.

He paused before leaving. He did not turn to face Celestia as he spoke.

"Oh. They want me to remind you that, upon completion of your sunset scroll, you will be provided with the proper documents to sign confirming your compliance with your immediate... liquidation, following your 'hour of sunlight."'

"Very bureaucratic," Celestia sniffed.

"Please don't sign them." Shining said, abruptly and firmly. He spoke with no emotion, as though his words were indisputable facts. "Cadence wouldn't want it... and I don't either."

Celestia couldn't help but grin, and with nowhere else to look she directed her grin at the surveillance camera undoubtedly documenting their whole conversation. As if simply not signing their papers would really make a difference if they decided her purpose was unnecessary. She was willing to trade a tedious, lonely existence for one last glimpse at Equestria.

"I'm sorry. It seems that even in death, I must let you two down," Celestia replied. "I want to see my sun, Shining Armor."

"Then—goodbye, Auntie Celestia," the weary stallion said, with evident effort, and still without turning. "For what it's worth; I forgive you. That's what I came down here to tell you."

Celestia nodded, although Shining would not have seen her do so. He forgave her, but he would not forget what she had done. His forgiveness was less an emotional one, and more a blunt acknowledgment that she herself truly felt sorry, and that even despite her failure, she had loved Cadence.

Before the wall closed, Celestia called out one last thing;

“Shining… if you don’t mind… can you please tell Twilight I wished her a Happy Hearth’s Warming?”

Captain Shining Armor did not reply as the stone wall closed behind him.

iv

Celestia had been slowly and reluctantly picking away at her scroll, somewhat wary of completing it because of what happened next. Her fate now hinged on its success or failure, but moreover Equestria’s fate did, too. If it failed when she reached the surface, she would never be allowed outside again. Of that, there was a guarantee.

But after Shining Armor's visit, Celestia had felt a sudden guilty composure to finally finish the infernal scroll. She pushed through the last of the preliminary enchantments in under a week, and on the first day of the new year, it was finally completed.

The whole thing was written in ancient runes that Celestia doubted anypony else without magical training could read. That was good—it meant she would have very few questions to answer when she traveled for her last hour on the surface to complete the last enchantment.

The next day, after she had risen the sun, she stopped to speak with Raven instead of sulking into her room.

“I finished my sunrise scroll yesterday, Raven,” she said abruptly, stopping in the threshold between her room and the brightly lit one with the Sun Trotter, looking behind her shoulder at Raven without turning.

“Oh?” Raven asked, evident foreboding seeping into the one word. Celestia knew that Raven was no fool, and she must have known that it was hardly good news she was presenting. Simply an hour in the sun followed by a slow death in perpetual loneliness now that even her one sole purpose had vanished.

“Yes. I suppose this is the last time I raise the sun,” Celestia nodded. “Then I’m going into retirement.”

“Then… then this is likely it,” Raven replied. “This is goodbye. Princess, you should’ve mentioned you were almost done! This is too sudden to be goodbye!”

“Goodbyes are better sudden,” Celestia replied. “Trust me, I know. So with that said…”

Celestia bent down, grimacing a little from the effort. She felt her glasses droop off her muzzle from the movement, revealing a growing cloudy cataract on the one eye that had life to it at all. Raven met them, and Celestia traced the mare's eyes as she turned to look first at the age-lines on Celestia’s face, and then at the once beautiful multi-chromatic mane now greying with age. Celestia recognized the look as the same one she gave her reflection every morning upon waking. Eleven years without the sun had done terrible things.

“Goodbye, Raven,” the weary alicorn said. “You’ve been my only friend for eleven years. Thank you.”

“What’s been done to you, Your Majesty… it’s so cruel. I’m so sorry. I should have helped you escape! Somepony should have done something! This whole damn corporation that rules your world is evil!

“Raven,” Celestia said, a smile betraying her firm tone. She pointed at the sweeping surveillance camera. “Don’t compromise yourself for no reason. Remember that Equestria was in poverty, and ponies were starting to starve. Flim and Flam’s industry helped them where I couldn’t. They gave ponies jobs, and they gave ponies food. What happened to me was only what I deserved for being unable to do the same.”

“That’s a lie,” Raven spat. “You would have provided for them the same. Except your solution wouldn’t have poisoned the skies.”

“Thank you,” Celestia said simply. “But I think you should stop. For your own safety. Goodbye, Raven.”

When she was back in her room, Celestia immediately crept to the mirror, but was disgusted by the sight she saw. Damn the glasses on her nose, damn the scars on her face, damn the mass of distorted bone that was her left wing, damn the hideous hole-filled horn on her forehead. Damn the fake, plastered smile on her pathetic face.

She looked away, but the rest of the room did not fare much better under her scrutinous gaze. Every book had been read a dozen times, every speck of dust floating in the air Celestia had probably sneezed from at one point.

The only place safe from angry thought was her desk, with the scroll still atop it. She smiled at the scroll. It was hope objectified. Every rune meticulously calligraphed by practiced horn-writing, every line of magic code considered with painstaking care. Every possible outcome considered and calculated. Celestia did not like to boast, but truly it was a perfect scroll. She was rather proud of it.

Celestia pushed the scroll aside and opened the old drawer beside the desk to examine the contents inside. A murder mystery she had written out of boredom. A diary with a dozen entries about her past started but never finished, many pages with the pen-lines streaked and distorted. A sequel to her first murder mystery. A series of belligerent letters to Flim and Flam that they had refused to send for her. A prequel to her murder mystery. A spin-off to her murder mystery, this time starring the hardboiled detective mare’s foolish yet good-natured older sister, who did not quite see eye to eye with her younger sister but still loved her unconditionally.

She found unopened letters to Captain Shining Armor, asking if his little sister (Twilight Sparkle; she had remembered that name without quite knowing why) had ever become the great unicorn she had desired to, despite her university rejection. A decade’s time had been cruel to these letters, Celestia noted sadly, and whatever Twilight had become, Celestia realized the time had long since passed to change it. Twilight would have been… seven? Eight?—when she applied to her school of magic, but that had been ten years before Luna and about twenty to the day. Twilight would already have been creeping upon her thirties.

She tore open the letter, frowned at her familiar hoof-writing, and crumbled it up swiftly. More memories she did not need.

v

At noon, they came for her. She signed all their paperwork, and then she presented the sunrise scroll that negated her one sole role. The heavily armored guards took it from her with no measure of grace for the princess they should have been serving. Celestia moved to place the magic inhibitor on her horn, but one of the guards stepped forward and presented a larger, much stronger looking one. Celestia shrugged and placed it on her horn without delay. Already her hooves were itching for movement. She was going outside! She felt like a dog about to be taken on a walk, and she did not even feel a little guilty for her immature self-image.

Eleven years! Forget them all! What did those lonely, isolated years matter, compared to any brief length of time in the sun?

She traveled up too many floors by elevator, she was led down bright corridors, but that had all passed in a blur despite her near-insane excitement. Sun, sun, sun! She had become like a parody of her own essence, and she laughed with genuine joy at the very thought!

Yet in an impossibly brief moment, her laughter and joy ceased as the last door swung open, and she stepped out into the light of Equestria. It was not blinding. She had known blinding and the light that greeted her was nothing of the sort. The sun’s tug was there, and it was strong, but as Celestia stepped out onto the raised balcony overlooking Equestria, she could not feel its warmth. A terrible sense of anticlimactic disappointment swept over her.

There was no sun, and worse, the sky was dark red clouds as far as she could see. On the horizon loomed towering smokestacks, spewing their pollution into the air mercilessly. The few trees she could see were hideous and straggly. As far as her good eye could see were factories, smokestacks, and other industrial structures. And on every single one, those two infernal twins, with their smiling, patronizing faces…

Her hour in the sun had lost all its appeal. Eleven years she had been looking forward to it, and in less than eleven seconds it was gone.

“The scroll,” Celestia sighed, reaching a hoof behind her. “I want to get this over with.”

It was passed into her accepting hoof. She unfurled the scroll completely, the culmination of months of work now finally at its end.

In the corner of her eye, Celestia could see many guards. Some had rifles pointed at her, some were unicorns with their magic at the ready. It seemed they had taken every precaution.

Celestia smiled again as she turned her attention back to the scroll. So had she.

With a subtle vibration, the horn inhibitor shifted frequency, and Celestia felt her own magic creep back to her, although it was still greatly limited; teleportation and offensive spells were made impossible, but her link to the sun was still intact.

She looked to the scroll, behind her at the bright causeway she had come from, and then at the smoggy skies. Then, she lit her horn, brought it to the scroll, and braced herself for what came next.

The scroll lit, sparked, then exploded. Multicolored light flared in every direction, an orb of magic surrounding the Princess of the Sun. The magic inhibitor on her horn sizzled and died. Bullets and unicorns panicked attempts to subdue the princess bounced harmlessly off the orb that had surrounded her. She had anticipated such a course of action, after all.

It was all in the scroll.

The orb surrounding Celestia pulsed once, twice, three times with its great, meticulously inscribed power, then it imploded inwards with great swiftness. Celestia felt her scroll’s magic painfully start coursing through her veins, then she was cast far upwards in one final, powerful teleportation blast, quickly becoming lost to the ponies below in the field of smog.

Sunrise Scroll her flank. She wasn’t giving up that easily.

Sirens split the skies. Celestia had been expecting that, too. Pegasi had been dispatched in an attempt to find her; she could hear their shouted orders over the blaring alarms, but she had already disappeared into the thick smog.

They had given her her time in the sun, under the false pretense of a purpose. And she had written their scroll, under the false pretense of selflessness. She mused for a moment how impossible such a move would have been in a greater Equestria not helmed by mindless bureaucratic slaves; a time when the runes she had written had meant more to ponies than archaic gibberish with a purpose, the specific means be damned. It was difficult to believe that eleven years had already made such a time obsolete.

Celestia’s wings quaked. Her muscles tore themselves apart. Her breathing was pained and labored. She had escaped not as a triumphant hero, but as a weak, old mare

She could not find the sun through the smog, but it was there somewhere. Perhaps she would keep it in the sky for an extra day longer, just to drive home to all of Equestria just how unnatural that day had been. A long night had preceded her imprisonment; let a long dawn accompany her return!

Celestia flapped her weary wings once, twice, a dozen times, every one feeling like her last, guiding herself forwards into the somber noonday skies, being assaulted by the industry below her. There was much to be done, and much more that she could do now that she was free from the confines of two rooms and one purpose.

One purpose…

Celestia supposed that, technically, remained unchanged. Hadn’t her one purpose always been the same thing? Save Equestria. Save it from beasts, from invasions, from wars, save it from ‘mission statements’ and ‘operationalized strategies.’

Celestia smiled as she broke the last of the thick cover of smog. There it was! The sun! For a few moments, it was all that would matter to her. She couldn’t imagine how the Equestrians had been getting by without feeling its wondrous heat—or the cool beauty of the moon, for that matter—but she knew one thing for certain. She would be bringing them back before long.

Author's Note:

Thanks for reading.