• Published 20th Oct 2016
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Pony Courtship Rituals - Codex Ex Equus



Queen Chrysalis tries to date Twilight Sparkle

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Interlude: Cadance (II)

"How could you?"

Cadance jerked her head up at the sound of the voice.

The dungeons under Canterlot were actually quite comfortable, all things considered. They were cleaned out regularly; the food was serviceable enough; and the benches, while not soft, weren't simply bare stone. There was also plenty of light, as befit dungeons built by the Princess of the Sun. Even the sections Luna had designed were well lit, though there it was with the silvery glow of the moon rather than the golden warmth of the sun.

Along with all of that, every door was well oiled, which meant Cadance hadn't even realized there was another pony in her cellblock—other than the guards—until that pony had spoken.

"Twilight!" Cadance jumped up from the bench where she'd been spending her time in silent contemplation—as one properly should while in a jail cell—and bounded over to the bars.

She recoiled a moment later, as she saw the white-hot fury on Twilight's face.

"How could you?!" shouted the other Princess, stomping across the stone floor to stand directly in front of Cadance's cell.

"Twilight, I was just trying to—" Cadance spoke hurriedly, only to be interrupted by Twilight.

"No! No, Cadance! I don't want to hear that you were trying to save me, or that changelings can't love ponies, or that Chrysalis doesn't love me!

"Because she does love me, Cadance! She loves me more than anypony else ever has in my entire life! I never knew a pony could be so kind, could show me such sweetness. She cares about me more than anything, almost as much as her hive. And I don't think you can even understand how much that is.

"No one… no one's ever understood me the way she does. She knows all my favorite foods, she knows just when I want them and how I like them made. She knows how to cheer me up, and when to leave me alone. She knows the things that annoy me, and the little things that make me happy. She knows how to make me laugh.

"And… she accepts me. If I want to read a book, she'll just sit there and let me read it. She doesn't tell me I need to get outside more or get my muzzle out of a book." She paused, blushing. "Okay, maybe that’s actually pretty good advice sometimes, but I don’t need to hear it every single day! No matter what some of my friends think.

"A-anyway… she would actually ask me to read to her, did you know that? I'm not sure how much of my more advanced magic texts she understood, but she was surprisingly fond of scientific treatises. Horror stories and murder mysteries, too. Hated romance novels, though. Which, I mean, thank Celestia, but wow, surprising, right?

"And… and… the way she laughed was like music. She mostly laughed at other ponies, but she would always apologize when I told her to, and she'd always get this adorably guilty look on her face…"

She trailed off, breathing in long, shuddering gasps. Cadance stared at her, shock and a slowly growing look of horror on her face.

"Twilight…" she said unsteadily, "Twilight, do you actually love Queen Chrysalis?"

"I DON'T KNO-O-OOOW!" wailed Twilight, throwing herself against the bars and beginning to sob.

Cadance moved forward, reaching through the bars to wrap her hooves around Twilight and cradle her. The two guards stationed at her cell started approaching, but Cadance rolled her eyes and shook her head at them, and they sheepishly moved back to their posts.

"Shh, Twilight, shh." Cadance whispered comforting sounds to Twilight, stroking her mane and squeezing her tightly. She rocked her as she cried, and slowly, over several minutes, Twilight calmed down. Finally, she pulled back, wiping at her eyes with a hoof.

"Why, Cadance? Why did you do that to us?" asked Twilight, voice trembling.

"Twilight—"

"Do you even realize what you did? What you took from us?" Cadance shrank back, refusing to meet Twilight's eyes. "I liked Chrysalis, Cadance. She was a good friend, and she wanted to mean more to me, and… and I really wanted her to mean more to me, too.

"That's why I agreed to let her try. I could have refused. She might have argued, but if I'd insisted, she would have listened. I didn't, though, because I thought it would be easier to let her down if things didn't work out. And… and I think because I was interested. She'd grown on me after so long together. She was so fascinating, so different from every other pony. I wanted to know about her, to learn what made her tick.

"So... I dated her. I really enjoyed it, most of the time. The rest of the time… the rest of the time was what you did."

Twilight took a deep breath, letting it out slowly with only a slight shudder.

"Why would you do something like that, Cadance?" she asked.

Cadance made the mistake of looking up to meet Twilight's eyes, then flinched away. There was anger in those eyes, yes, but worse was the sadness, the dismay. And even worse than that was the disappointment. She closed her eyes, trying to think, but as she did a realization came to her. All those emotions on Twilight's face, all the anguish and betrayal… she felt those same things in her own heart. Slowly, she turned back to face Twilight.

“I could ask you the same question, Twilight,” she said, voice stinging like a whip, and this time it was Twilight who recoiled. “You know what that… that monster did to me and Shining Armor. What she did to Celestia, what she did to you and your friends… what she tried to do to all of Equestria.”

“Cadance—“ Twilight tried for indignation, but Cadance overrode her like a raging Goddess.

“You can sit there and talk about how much she cares for you, but you know she doesn't give a damn about any of the rest of us. I was scared for you, Twilight, because unlike you, I’m not letting myself be blinded to what she really is. All the sweet talk and all the kindness in the world don’t change the fact that she is a terrible person, Twilight, who has done terrible things. And you’re going to sit there and talk about her to me like she’s as harmless as Fluttershy?”

Cadance rose up to her full height, looking down at the smaller pony, and Twilight shrank back under her furious glare.

“So it’s not about how could I do this to you, Twilight. It’s about how could you do this to me. How could you betray me like this?!”

“S-she’s not really evil, Cadance,” Twilight tried to say. “She just—“

“She just does evil things,” finished Cadance with a sneer. “And that makes her actions excusable, does it?”

“No, but—“

“Did she ever apologize to you, Twilight?” Twilight flinched back again, and Cadance stepped forward, seeing the answer in the other pony’s eyes. “I didn’t think so. She attacked your kingdom, Twilight. She hurt your friends and family, oh so cruelly, and she hasn’t even apologized to you for it?!”

She bent down, to look Twilight right in the eyes. “How can you even look at her without hearing Princess Celestia tell you you had a lot to think about? Without hearing your own brother dismiss you from his wedding? Without remembering when you found me in those crystal caves under Canterlot?”

Twilight looked back at her, and tears started to fall from her eyes. “Because I think I might love her,” she whispered.

She bent her head again, and Cadance stared at her in dismay. She shook her head slowly, gazing at the gently weeping pony, then took a step back and went down on her haunches.

“Oh, hell,” she muttered.

“Why didn’t you just ask?” said Twilight in a choked voice. “You didn’t even try talk to me about anything!”

“I… couldn’t, Twilight,” Cadance said faintly. “If you’d been brainwashed, if it had just been some trick—“

“So instead you decided it was better to just sneak around behind my back,” spat Twilight bitterly. “Was it all just for revenge, Candace?”

“N-no, Twilight!” Cadance’s hoof flew to her mouth. “Whatever you might think of her, you know what horrible things Chrysalis did! It doesn’t matter what her reasons were or how you feel about her, she did those things willfully, even gleefully! She needed to be punished for what she did, Twilight. And if seeing justice done meant I could steal her love the way she tried to steal mine, well then that was just appropriate—not to mention a nice bit of icing on the cake.”

She gasped, blinking in surprise. “Oh my. Well, maybe it was a little bit about revenge,” she admitted guiltily, with an uneasy ruffle of her wings.

“Well then I hope you’re happy, because you got your revenge.” Despite the bite of the words, there was no venom in Twilight’s voice, just a bland nothingness. Dampness dotted the fur of her cheeks, but her eyes, while red, were dry. “Because that beautiful, amazing, wonderful—and, okay, frequently very mean and nasty—changeling is sitting in her hive, probably crying her eyes out, because you took her love away. You got yours back, but who’s going to help her?”

“I don’t know, Twilight,” Cadance shook her head, then blinked in surprise as she noticed Twilight was holding her hoof out. “What are you doing?”

“We can help her, Cadance.” Twilight sniffed back a few more tears and nervously licked her lips. “Just like her... I don't know much about love. So I need your help to figure out how I feel. And if there's ever going to be any peace between you two, one of you has to make the first move. I want it to be you, Cadance.”

Cadance just stared at her, and Twilight took a deep breath. “I know how much you must hate Chrysalis. What she did to you was terrible. But now you’ve done something awful back to her, Cadance. You’re even, the scales are balanced. Now we just need to stop the cycle, to stop something like this from happening again. If you really hate her, if you think she’s a monster, then you can prove you’re better by helping her now, by being better than you think she is. And I think you might be surprised by how much better she can actually be.”

Cadance didn’t say anything, but she shifted uncomfortably, and Twilight took that as encouragement to continue.

“I know you want an apology. You deserve an apology, one that’s serious. Not an apology that I force her to make, or one that I make for her as her fellow Changeling Queen. An apology that she means, because she understands exactly what she did and why it was so wrong. After what you put her through yesterday, I think she actually might.”

Cadance hesitated a moment longer, then, slowly, began to reach out with her hoof.

“And… I want you to help me too, Cadance. Because I feel something for Chrysalis. I know it’s at least friendship, but that’s all I know. Maybe I do love her… or maybe I dislike her still, even if I see her as a friend now. I don’t know, because I can’t separate what she's done from who she actually is. And you just made things worse. I might love her, and even if you hate her... I think you’d want me to know that. And if I don’t, I need to be able to move on, instead of being trapped in this fog. I can’t think of anypony more able to help me with that than you.”

Cadance’s hoof touched Twilight’s, and for a moment she held it there. Then she pulled away, retreating several steps back into the cell.

“Please, Cadance—“

“I’m sorry, Twilight,” Cadance said, voice low and sorrowful. “I know it’s terrible of me, but as much as I want to help you, I can’t. After everything that's happened, I… I just can't—“

“It’s okay, Cadance,” hushed Twilight, giving her a small, not quite steady smile. “That’s actually kind of the answer I was expecting. After what she put you through...”

“Thank you for understanding,” Cadance said quietly, and they shared a brief moment of silence. “So, what will you do now?”

“What I always do,” said Twilight, and now her smile was normal again. “Ask my friends. I just decided that the one I asked first should be the one that could help me the most.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“It will,” said Twilight confidently. “Because friendship is magic!”

“I’m kind of starting to get tired of hearing that catchphrase of yours,” said Cadance, with a small smile. “You overuse it a bit. But what if your friends can’t help?” Twilight gave her a look, and she shrugged. “I do want to help you, Twilight. And if I can’t bring myself to do it directly, I can at least help you make a plan.”

“Well, in that case… I’ll have to come up with the answer myself. I can make my own decisions, you know. I do it quite a lot. I even did it before I became a Princess.” She suddenly brightened up. “I could make a checklist! Or a pro/con list, the only list almost as good as a checklist!”

“Con: attacked your sister-in-law and locked her in a cave on her wedding day,” said Cadance sourly, making a face.

“Pro: is very attentive to my wants and needs,” shot back Twilight.

“Con: tried to enslave everyone you know and love.”

"Pro,” said Twilight, then blushed and continued in a quiet voice, “...is a very good kisser.”

“Ewww! Ew ew ew! I needed to hear about that as much as you need to hear about Shining Armor and me.” They made disgusted faces at each other, then broke down into giggles.

"Thank you, Cadance," said Twilight, once they'd calmed down. "Even if you can't help, at least you're willing to try understanding."

"Anytime, Twilight. Take care, and good luck."

Cadance watched her leaving, chewing her lip in thought. Just before Twilight opened the door, she came to a decision.

"Twilight, wait!" she called out, unlocking her cell door with a spark of magic and trotting out. Both guards tried to move forward to stop her, but she brushed past them like they weren't even there, coming to a halt a few steps from Twilight.

"I do want to help you, more than I have," she said to the surprised pony. "And there's one thing I can do that might at least answer some questions for you."

She lifted her head, magic running along her horn, and then fired a beam down into the center of Twilight's chest. Twilight shied back in surprise—and a little bit of fear—and Cadance pulled back at the same time, drawing the beam back like a fisherpony working a pole.

When the beam came out of Twilight's chest, it carried a cloud with it. It was spherical, a roiling mass of gray that occasionally shot out flashes of black and red light, mostly black. Twilight stared at its tumbling, swirling surface with horrified fascination.

"What is that?" she asked.

"It's your heart, Twilight," replied Cadance, closing her eyes. "Or, at least, it's a representation of a part of your heart, one that deals with your feelings for Chrysalis."

"Oh." Twilight stared at the nightmarish cloud, face falling. "Do I really hate her that much?"

"What? Oh, no." Cadance shook her head. "You're just confused. That's why it's a giant mess of clouds instead of a pure ball of light. Those flashes of light are your feelings towards her, trying to shine through. As you can see, your confusion has mixed up your feelings: red light for hate, black for love." She grimaced. "I never knew love for a changeling was black, yet I'm hardly surprised."

"So… what you're saying is… I'm confused," said Twilight dryly.

Cadance sighed and cancelled the spell, causing the cloudball to fade away. "Yes. Sorry, that wasn't as helpful as I thought."

"It's okay, Cadance." Twilight gave her a smile. "At least I know there is some love in there."

"I'm… glad to hear it too. Kind of..."

They waved goodbye, and Twilight started for the door. Just as she put up a hoof to push it open, Cadance stopped her again.

"Twilight?" The pony looked back at her. "I'm… I'm sorry. About everything. Maybe… you're right, maybe she actually can love. Maybe she actually loves you, and you love her." Cadance let out a sigh. "And if that's true… I'm a terrible Princess of Love."

"No, Cadance, no." Twilight trotted over, putting a hoof on her shoulder. "We have a difficult calling, being the Princesses of Friendship and Love. It's the kind of thing we're always going to be learning about. And if I can learn something new from Starlight and Trixie, you can learn something from Chrysalis and me. It's not like we're Princess Celestia or Luna, where our special talents are predictable."

She snorted. "Let me tell you, that was one awkward conversation for a filly. 'Look Princess, I've mathematically solved your most important duty!' I got a bit of a lecture that day, trust me."

"Thank you for being so understanding, Twilight. And so forgiving." Cadance shuffled her hooves nervously. "Do you think… maybe you can put in a good word for me with my aunts?"

"I'll… think about it," replied Twilight, with a sigh.

Cadance smiled back. "That's fine. Probably more than I could reasonably expect, actually. Thank you."

Cadance saw Twilight out, then turned away. Head down, lost in thought, she trotted back to her cell, ignoring the pained expressions on the guards as she walked inside and locked the door behind her. Climbing up onto the bench, she lay down on her side, head on her forelegs, to contemplate her future.

I wonder what being a statue will be like, she thought idly. At least the weather in Canterlot is pretty nice. And the castle's groundskeepers take good care of the Royal Gardens. Maybe it won't be that bad.

Author's Note:

First off, happy holidays everyone! Here's a present for you all — another little interlude about Cadance.

So, she got some sense knocked into her, thankfully. And now that she and Twilight have yelled things out, she might actually understand exactly how wrong she was.

Also, something I forgot to mention last time: Flurry Heart.

As should be obvious due to her not being mentioned, she is not around yet in the mildly twisted timeline I have going here. However, no worries about any injuries; she wasn't there when Cadance went through that wall. As for when she is going to show up... well, my general thought is that the Canterlot Dungeons have conjugal visits. At which point everything should be roughly aligned with show canon. Much like Past Sins, I want to try and keep things as close to the show as I can moving forward. Which should make things interesting, seeing as how I'm using an existing character rather than adding my own.