Truth in Nightmares

by ZeldaFanDaen

The Past that Haunts Her

The veil of night lay heavy and cloying over the skies of Equestria. The magical kingdom of all pony kind slumbered through this deep, dark hour, the subjects and citizenry trotting blissfully through the landscapes of sleep. All save for one.

Like a spotlight upon a stage, the glow of the moon settles upon the shoulders and upturned face of a dark and powerful mare. Her mane and tail both flowed, undulating in a breeze of the mare’s own magical making, holding within it an array of stars as brilliant as those twinkling softly in the sky above. Her sharp and slender horn rose from her brow, aligned with the moon that was her charge. On this chilled and lonely night Luna, the dark Princess of Night, sister of Celestia, the Alicorn of Daylight and ruling princess of Equestria sat alone, her soft breathing and the distant cries of nocturnal creatures the only sound to be heard. Casting her lonely gaze out upon the city of Canterlot, the very capitol of what should have been her kingdom, as much as it was Celestia’s, Luna’s mind turned to the past. Alone with her thoughts, her mind tread upon her memories.

Her sister’s student had found her place as the Princess of Friendship. For a time she had hated and feared that little mare who had stolen from her the power and rage that had once been hers and banished them to the winds. Twilight Sparkle, and her friends, each so unique and so different from one another had been both her victorious conquerors and her salvation. But though ages had passed since the days that sparked her fury and tempted her to evil, not all had changed.

“Still they slumber through my works,” remarks the dark princess, bitterness carrying in her soft voice. “Do they not know how we… how I toil? Each star, a unique point of light, each constellation a painting, all for their sake?”

Slowly, Luna turns her head away from the full and brilliant moon that had once been her prison. Though deep, the night was still young and many duties still lay before her. Rising to her hooves, Luna spreads her wings and took to the skies, her horn igniting with a soft, ethereal blue glow. Before her that glow spread into a great circle, its glow burning at the edges as a silvery mirror formed within the center. With a deep breath, the Princess of the Night pushed her hoof against a cloud passing beneath her, pushing herself forward and into the mirror’s surface to the world of dreams. For this is her nightly duty: to serve as warden for the dreams of her slumbering subjects. Once, she had been a Nightmare, and in penance for that crime she took it upon herself to banish the nightmares of her ponies.

Like a ghost, she drifted through dream after dream in this new world where time meant nothing. She allowed herself a small smile, thus far the dreams had been good, her ponies dreaming of joyous past memories, of glory or victory, of love or lust, but all the dreams she had passed were pleasant. One dream, though had caught her eye. Like a storm, dark clouds circled about this dream, and she knew immediately that the pony who owned this dream was suffering within. Her glowing horn split the clouds, and with a flap of her dark wings, she entered the subconscious mind of the dreamer.

There came a brief moment of disorientation for Luna, and then before her she saw something which turned her blood to ice. If she had not known better, she would have though she had entered into her own nightmare, and there she was. Nightmare Moon, the terrible shadow of her past stood upon ruins left of her sister’s throne room, Celestia herself lying slumped at the terrible mare’s hooves. An ever-expanding puddle of crimson pooled beneath her beloved sister’s head, the white spire of Celestia’s horn, snapped and cracked, lying lifeless and light-less several feet away.

This was a scene of her victory, what history could have been, and for a moment the Princess of Night balked, her hooves driving her backwards as her wing covers the gasp that escapes her mouth. The memories of her rebellion spring unbidden to her mind, flooding her senses with the phantoms of her former fury.

“No, sweet sister, no” she whispers as hot, salty tears pool at the edges of her wide and disbelieving eyes. With a deep draw of breath, she bites harshly upon her fear and casts her watery gaze about the nightmare she has found. “Whose dream, nay whose nightmare is this? What poor soul would see these horrors in their hour of respite?”

Her ears swivel, hearing through the mad cackling of the Nightmare basking in its horrid victory a soft whimper. Her guilt-ridden gaze sweeps across the room, following the sound and her heart freezes in her chest and rises to her throat at the sight before her. Small and still so innocent, her coat an immaculate white, her mane a soft and ethereal pink. A form from her past that she could never forget. There quivered her sister, as she had been as a filly, so innocent and now alone, facing her greatest night terror.

“Why sister?” whimpers the inner child of Celestia, her avatar within her own dream. “Can’t you see I’m sorry? Can’t you feel how you’re breaking my heart! I love you, Luna! Please don’t leave me again!”

Frozen to the spot, Luna watches as a truth she had hid from for so long plays out before her. The chill of realization washes over her mind, followed by a renewed horror. This was Celestia’s dream, her sister’s worry and weakness made manifest within the world of dreams. She was witnessing the fear that Celestia held buried within her heart. And so she felt the truth. Her sister feared her, even still. As she watched the filly that her sister once was rise and scream in despair at the Nightmare she faced, and as the scene shifted before her, replacing the body of her sister as she was in the present with the body of Celestia’s student, Luna could do nothing. Hatred spread from the filly within the dream, dark and burning as that small filly stood against the Nightmare only to be smacked aside by the terrible power that Luna herself once wielded.

Luna did not know when her legs had failed her, and only wondered briefly when she threw herself from her position upon the floor, her tears flowing as she reached out to catch the form of her sister.

“Tia! No!” she cried, her tears trailing behind her in her mad flight to catch the filly in front of her. “Tia I’m sorry!”

A flash of bright light blinded the Princess of Night then, all-encompassing and burning like the light of the sun. The sudden flash stopped Luna short and she found that the ground beneath her was no longer there, her wings fluttering by instinct to keep her aloft. As the light dimmed, her sister was there before her, resplendent in all her glory, as powerful and regal as she had ever been. A moment of confusion clouded Luna’s mind as she fell into her sister’s embrace, her familiar voice a tender whisper to her ears.

“Shh, dear sister. I am here. I see you have decided to pay my dreams a visit tonight.”

There was a lilting, teasing tone to Celestia’s voice as she hugged her sister close, Luna clutching tight, tears of shame, relief, and agonizing fear falling from her closed eyes. For a moment the sisters floated there, the only sound their breathing and the wracking sobs of the Lunar Princess. Gently, Celestia released her darker sibling, holding her at foreleg’s length.

“Come now, sister,” she says, a bemused smile spread across her face as her gently hoof wipes the tears flowing from beneath Luna’s eyes. “Dry your tears, I am fine as you can see.”

Undoubtedly trying to assuage Luna’s fear and guilt, Celestia lets out a small, restrained giggle, her hoof caressing her sister’s cheek. With a deep, shaking breath, Luna bites upon her bottom lip and squares her shoulders. Slowly, her racing heart begins to return to a normal pace, her final tears trickling down her cheeks, leaving only a few final salty streaks upon her dark coat of fur. Once again that soft laughter reaches her ears and, looking up, Luna sees the amusement in her sister’s gaze. Pushing away from her sister, Luna spreads her wings out in full, her face drawing into a deep frown.

“What is this, sister?” she demands, sniffling still as she tries to reign in her composure. “How art thee so suddenly free of this nightmare? By what power didst thou end the horror?”

For a brief moment, Celestia cannot help but stare at her sister, taken only slightly aback at her outburst, and her use of the old Equestrian vernacular that she was still trying to abandon for the modern forms of speech. All too quickly, Celestia recovers her own composure. The knowing smirk that spreads across Celestia’s face belies the façade of surprise she wears as she brings a fore hoof to her chest in a dramatic gesture.

“Why Luna! Do you have so little faith in your sister?” she asks, a teasing and false note of heartache in her lilting voice. “And no thanks, I see, for giving you something to do on this boring night.”

Celestia’s gentle mocking leaves Luna speechless, staring wide-eyed at her sister and giving Celestia the opening to continue either heedless or - dare she even think it? - uncaring of the pain she is inflicting as the truth of this nightmare is laid bare.

“I must say Luna, I am disappointed. I go through all the trouble of staging this challenge for you and you balk? I even made it easy, giving you a familiar foe to defeat.”

The chiding, mocking tone in Celestia’s voice grows thicker, and the prank is revealed for what it is. But Luna knew better. This had been a test. A test she had failed, and the haughty look within her sister’s eye was all the proof she needed to now know just how much Celestia pitied her. That is what it was. Pity. Distrust. Even now, Luna’s nightmare carried on. But this was not her dream, this was her sister’s and even now Celestia was not fully awake and aware. Before her stood her sister’s subconscious mind. There would be no falsehoods here. With a cry that shattered the dream around her, the Princess of the Night took wing, fleeing from her sister, from the dreams of her subjects, from the world of dreams entirely, leaving as she came, through the mirror created by her magic.

Into the chill and the stillness of the deep night Luna flew, rising above the clouds until the world below was no longer visible. Below, her sister jerks from her slumber, her own mind a jumble as she tries to recall her dream through the haze of half-sleep. But far above, where none could see, Luna wept bitterly. The past would never leave her be, it would seem. Finding a small cloud, an island in a sea of thousands of others, Luna settles upon it, folding her wings to her side and burying her face against her own dark plumage, bitter tears falling to join with the droplets of water beneath her.

Guilt, jealousy, fear, despair, and the burning seed of hatred well up and nestle within Luna’s breast and soon her form is once more wracked with sobs as she laments the truth before her. The past never forgets, never changes. Even now, she cannot escape its horrors. Emotions she had thought were long ago banished or buried rise within the weeping Princess as magic not her own takes hold of her moon, slowly carrying the shining silver emblem of her soul towards the western horizon as a much brighter light begins to rise in the east. Night is ending, but Luna’s Nightmare lives on as she cries herself into her own troubled sleep. They say that those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. But the sad truth is that the past will always rise up through the present, and the future will always show its reflection.

And so, her heart and mind torn asunder by this truth, Luna, the once banished Princess of the Night slips from the world of the waking, and her shadow spreads beneath her, created once again by the harshly burning Sun.

Author's Note:

I cannot promise to finish this. I have all too often struck upon inspiration and begun a story that I never finish. But I submit this humble beginning, my first piece of MLP fanfiction. I welcome comments, I beg for criticism. This is but the beginning of a story that brews within my mind, though I know not where this tale will carry on to as of yet. I have plans, half-formed of a war sparking from this. A war that will involve not only the Princesses of day and night, but also dragging into it Princess Twilight Sparkle and her friends, and perhaps more terrible still, the three Cutie Mark Crusaders.