Queen of Clubs

by horizon

3. Queen

Luna shuffled through the scrolls she'd brought with her to The Loveless, trying to restrain her fidgeting as she waited her turn. In the world's most ridiculous irony, Sun-days were now her favorite night of the week — partially because her stupid older sister was too busy to keep her from sneaking out, but mostly because it was Open Stage Night at the club, and some of the regulars had even complimented her a time or two on her poetry.

There was a smattering of tepid hoofbeats and claw-snaps as the Diamond Dog before her finished the mournful, howling ballad celebrating some stupid lover lost in some meaningless war or something. Luna tried not to judge. Everyone had their own darkness; that was this place's point. But, well, some darknesses were pettier than others.

The Diamond Dog spread her arms, soaking up the last of the applause, and then loped off the stage. Luna smiled — some butterflies making an exploratory journey through her innards — and selected one of the scrolls almost at random. The club quieted as she stepped onto the comparatively harsh glow of center stage and cleared her throat.

"They say we be sisters," she read, in the Equestrian-accented Old Imperial she'd had drilled into her head with numbing hours of Classics. When your heart carried silent burdens you couldn't speak, nothing freed your tongue quite like using a dead language which only lurked in the shadows of academia.

Then she took a breath to steady herself, and her face contorted:

"They say we be sisters.
Bonded by blood,
The thickest chain."

(She narrowed her eyes, pointing out accusingly into the darkness of the audience, her face a feral snarl.)

"Whose blood?"

"Whose blood?" (She'd only written the line once, but she repeated it for emphasis.)

Luna stamped her hoof, then jabbed it into her chest, wings flaring out.

"Mine own," she growled, and her voice dropped to a whisper.

"Thou think'st thy friends cut me not,
With their whispers and false smiles?
But when you drag me to their parties —" (She nearly spat the word.)

"Whose blood is the chain that binds me to thee?
Thine, sister?
I say thee NAY!"

She let the sudden shout echo around the silent room for a moment.

"Thou wilt never, in a thousand years,
Feel the life leak from thee,
To bind thee to the sister thou loves —
If even thou lovest me
In the way I love thee,
To bleed for thee, and bleed, and bleed."

Luna swung her head from one end of the room to the other, staring out into the scattered figures huddled in the embracing darkness.

"And I hope," she whispered as the applause began, "thou never wilt."

The audience's stamps and snaps were polite and scattered, but Luna basked in them regardless. Sure, they might have been tepid by some objective measure (some annoying part of her brain said mockingly), but that didn't matter. They meant she'd been heard, and that softened the ache.

She relinquished the stage — already thinking about which poem she'd read next time her turn came around — and a young stallion, with jet-black legs under a nondescript off-black cloak, stood up from the pillows a few rows behind hers. Huh, she thought as he stepped past her. He looks kind of familiar. But I know I'd remember if I'd seen him before — that's an awfully distinctive coat color for the North.

The pony leapt up onto the stage, deliberated for a moment, then grabbed his cloak in his teeth and jerked it off with a single motion, sending it fluttering to one side of the stage. He was a unicorn, maybe Luna's age, with a body on the thin side (maybe cute in a coltish sort of way, she decided) — and he'd just doubled down on the black thing. His pelt was barely distinguishable from the charcoal-black leg-wraps and shirt that clung to his form. On top of those was a black leather chestplate and pastern-guards that, judging from their stiffness, had probably started the morning at a gryphon armorer's. The only hint of color anywhere in the silhouette of his form was his piercing red eyes.

(She made a mental note to suggest metal accents to him if they talked — his aesthetic seemed to be dull, giant swaths of a single color, and while virtually anything would work to break that up, iron might enhance the quasi-martial look he wasn't quite pulling off. And maybe an accessory to match the eyes? Yes, more red, for certain.)

The colt drew in a breath, legs trembling a bit. He glanced down at his hooves, then in her direction, and their eyes met for a moment. He froze. Then he closed his eyes, turned away, and breathed out, and his posture gradually straightened.

"There is a love in my heart," he said, projecting his voice in a firm and artificially deep tone like the professors kept trying to teach her to do in the Academy's ritual magic classes. His eyes swept over the audience, and his gaze fixed on Luna for another lingering moment before he returned his stare to the empty wall at the back of the room.

"A love in my heart," (he repeated,)
"Pure and intense and entire,
A love that drives me
Through storms and fear,
And I don't know why."

An odd flutter squeezed at Luna's heart. He understands! she thought wildly, and straightened up, her full attention on the stage.

Then Luna realized he had no notes, and her breath caught. Is he composing this on the fly?!

"She doesn't know," (the colt said,)
"What I've done
For her and her alone.
How can I make her understand
What burns in my heart,
What binds us together?"

Luna listened, rapt, an old and familiar ache flaring to life and burning for once with somepony else's flame. Oh, Celestia.

"So I turn to the shadows.
This is my sacrifice,
To walk this dark road.
To endure any change, any truth,
For the sake of my love.
And thereby set things right."

As the mysterious colt began backing off the stage, Luna whooped, stomping enthusiastically — not caring a whit for the glares the other clubbers gave her as they went through the formality of their own applause. She circled around toward him, wingtips quivering, and zeroed in on him as he took a moment for himself after the performance.

"That was amazing!" Luna whispered, doing a very un-dark-and-gloomy hooftip dance. "That really spoke to me!" The colt visibly started, and some part of Luna noted that he'd been staring blankly at the wall, legs trembling, breath coming in shallow gasps. Stage fright hits all of us, I guess.

The colt stared at her, frozen, and some sensible inner voice told Luna to tune it down. She coughed into her hoof, refolded her wings, and put the mask back on — the detached, worldly persona she had immediately come to admire about everyone in The Loveless. "But I'm sure you figured that out from my own poem," she said. "I haven't seen you around before, though."

"U-unh, n-no," the colt said, and Luna embarrassedly took that as her cue to dial it back even more. Enthusiasm was one of the few sins of the shadows, and hers had been a doozy.

She drew in a deep breath, stood a little straighter, and self-consciously ran a hoof through the mane she had blackened with an alteration spell. (It never hurt to make sure — even with alicorn levels of magic, it took constant vigilance to keep the effect going.) "They call me Queen Nightmare here," she said detachedly. "And you are?"

"P-pain —" he stammered, then froze, mouth snapping shut.

Luna wasn't quite sure what to make of that. "Pardon?" she said neutrally.

The colt's eyes darted around for a moment, then settled on his hooves. He took a long breath, closing his eyes — and then, when he opened them back up again, he stood a little straighter, brushing a wrinkle out of his black shirt.

"Pain," he said, slipping back into his deep stage voice (which, Luna realized, got her heart fluttering anew). "There is pain in names, is there not? History. Within this place, we cast off the shackles of history to embrace who we truly are. We are freed to remake ourselves into our authentic selves, that we may seize what we need to survive in the shadows."

Luna suppressed an inner squeal, nodding thoughtfully. He was not only on her wavelength, he was so profound.

"And so if we are to share names," the colt intoned, "let mine be …" There was a moment of what Luna at first thought might have been hesitation, but decided was more like a pause for emphasis. "Let it come from the shadows in which we find solace. Sombra. Sombra Darkshade."

Luna felt the moment entirely overcome her. "Sombra," she said, rolling the flavor of the name on her tongue, and then lunged in and clamped her lips to his.

"Mmmf!" he snorted, staggering back as her weight pressed him to the wall, and for a terrifying moment she knew she'd gone too far. Then he inhaled through his nose, hooves fumbling for her barrel as his breathing restarted, and soon they'd sank to the floor and their tongues were wrestling with the same urgency as their bodies.

(Right up until the doorgryph roughly kicked them, and motioned toward the stairs with a scowl.)

---

The wind stirred, and cold crept in around the edges of the thin cloak, and Paint opened his eyes to the icy glitter of stars. Atop him, Luna mumbled and shifted her wings, causing the cloak to lift even further. Paint shivered and flailed for the edges of the fabric through their tangle of limbs.

"Pfft," Luna said, pausing for a moment to bite at his bruised neck again, digging her canines in not quite hard enough to break the skin. "Cold? Really?"

Paint stifled a whimper at her gnawing, running a hoof lightly down her side, and cleared his throat to deepen his voice again. "It is nothing worse than the ice of unkindness which freezes the hearts of ponykind against those such as us," he said, casting a brief yet longing glance toward the nearby shelter of The Loveless. "However, alas, the spirit of burning shadows which sustains me against the world is still trapped within mere unicorn flesh."

Luna shifted against him in a rather distracting way. "I'll mere unicorn flesh you," she murmured sultrily, then giggled. "If you stop shivering. That's pretty distracting."

"Then this one would kindly inveigh upon you to cease pulling the cloak away with your wings."

"You're right," Luna murmured into his throat. "I've got better things to do with them."

"I would look forward to that — but perhaps we can lie here for a bit first?" Paint murmured back, wrapping his hooves around her back and pulling her body heat in closer. "As you said, the shivering is rather distracting."

Luna nodded and folded her wings down to cover his sides. Paint closed his eyes, feeling the numbness recede, then let himself savor the slow pressure of her breathing against his chest.

"There's no way Celestia's having this much fun tonight," she said out of nowhere.

Paint opened his eyes again. "Excuse me?"

"Celestia," Luna said. "My sister."

"No, I know who she is. I'm just wondering why you're mentioning her."

"Why shouldn't I?" Luna said. "She's everything I'm here to avoid."

"... My point exactly?"

Luna sat up abruptly, peeling the cloak away. "My point is, you doofus, I'm trying to say how much more fun we're having." Acid crept into her tone. "But if you'd rather be at one of her stupid parties, by all means let me help you track her down."

"Don't be ridiculous," Paint said.

"It's not ridiculous in the slightest. Literally every pony on the planet likes her more than me."

Paint sat up too, bumping his muzzle to Luna's and giving her a stern look. "Don't give me that. You know that's not true."

"Mmmh," Luna grunted, turning her head away, but Paint thought he caught a smile flitting past her lips.

He lowered his muzzle, tentatively nibbling at her throat, feeling her tense and then fractionally relax into it. "Maybe you need some more convincing of the fact?" he murmured.

Suddenly, Luna shrugged her shoulder to his, pushing Paint back, and turned her head away. "Could we not talk about her now?"

Paint blinked. "Huh? But I didn't ..." He frowned. "What's the problem?"

"Sorry. Never mind. Sorry." Luna pressed a hoof to the bridge of her nose and sighed. "You're right. She's been on my mind too much."

"It's alright. Let's —"

"But I hate her! Nnngh!" Luna shot a hoof out past Paint's shoulder too fast for him to even flinch, and there was a sharp crunch as the stone wall buckled and cracks spiderwebbed out from the impact point. "And I hate that I hate her! She's my sister, we're supposed to do everything together ... but. Gah! It's like my entire life revolves around her, and I would be okay with that if it went both ways, but it's always me making sacrifices! Do you even know how we ended up in the Crystal Empire? That was all her! I wake up one morning and suddenly it's 'pack your bags, Luna' and the next morning I'm freezing my butt off!"

Paint paused for a few moments to make sure she was done, then tentatively touched a hoof to Luna's shoulder. "That's horrible," he said. His face darkened. "What gives her the right?"

"I know, right? Thank the stars I found this place. At least somepony understands me here."

Paint chewed his lip for a few moments, curiosity building. "I don't get it," he finally said. "Why didn't you say anything to her? That's ..." not like you, he didn't quite say. "Disappointing."

Luna blinked, then roughly shoved him back, eyes flashing. "Excuse me?"

Paint flinched. "I mean — that is — you're so strong." As the snarl on Luna's muzzle receded into doubt, he swallowed and pressed on. "Why are you letting her push you around like that? Everypony at school knows not to mess with you. She should, too. If I were you I'd march up to her and give her a piece of my mind."

Luna narrowed her eyes at him, one eyebrow raising, and his heart froze. Oh, buck. I mentioned school. Why did I mention school, she's going to recognize me —

"Yeah," she said contemplatively. "Maybe I will."

---

The ink wouldn't wash out.

Paint, crouched over the sink, stared at his legs with slowly growing horror. Sure, he'd asked that seedy old pegasus for something that wouldn't bleed out of his pelt while he was making his move at the club, but he hadn't expected it to be permanent. And yet, four different soaps and two bleaches and three hours of scrubbing later, his once-white coat refused to lighten beyond a deep muddy grey. And classes were about to start.

He took a breath. Slowly lowered the shampoo he had been about to retry. Looked at the pony in his mirror. Really looked.

Grey, he thought. Caught between darkness and light.

He stared into the red of his eyes, his mind replaying the secret shadows he and Luna had explored in each other.

"Well," he said, lowering his voice into the stage intonation that had helped liberate his tongue, "it is my sacrifice to walk a darker road."

He grinned and shouldered his saddlebags, then quickly brushed his still-black mane (none of that dye had lightened) and stared back into the mirror again. "Sombra," he said experimentally, then rolled it the same way Luna had. "Sombra."

Paint smirked, then wheeled around and trotted to school, darkened head held high.

---

The whispers started when he walked into class. Professor Professor, eyebrows raised, watched in silence as Paint took his seat. Paint casually set his textbook down, passed his homework forward, and began taking notes from the blackboard as if nothing had changed. The professor opened his mouth, thought about it for a moment, then shook his head and began his lecture.

Paint ignored the whispers and the giggles and the stares. He was above that now. He did allow himself two glances over the course of the class: one to Shot (who nodded back with a shocked sort of respect), and one to Luna (who was staring at him when he glanced her way, but quickly averted her eyes with an inscrutable expression).

It felt so strange seeing Luna in purples and blues. Like she was naked, kind of. But more that it was like looking at her with her skin stripped away.

---

Paint was entirely unsurprised when a mocking voice carried down the hall in between classes. "Well, well," Gilt Edge purred, backed up by a wave of snickers rippling through the hallway. "Look who decided to go for that promotion from loser to freak."

Paint slowed to a stop. Carefully closed the textbook in his hoof and stowed it in his saddlebag.

He heard hoofsteps close in behind him, and a note of menace shaded into the bully's voice. "You think that makes you too good to talk to your old friend Gilt, huh?"

Paint closed his eyes for a moment.

Sombra slowly turned around.

"Well, you're gonna —" Gilt started.

Sombra lit his horn without a word.

A nearby rubbish bin rattled. Then its lid shot off as if flicked by a dragon's claw, spanging off the ceiling and flipping crazily between them before noisily settling to a halt a few body-lengths away.

The hallway went dead silent.

Sombra took a single step forward. Lit his horn. Smiled.

Gilt Edge — and half the crowd — yelped and bolted.

---

Luna was waiting outside the door to second class when Paint walked up. She was leaning against the wall, one wing half-lifted to brace herself at a comfortable angle, casually inspecting the frog of one forehoof. Without so much as looking at Paint, she nodded at him, gave him a little jerk of her head, and started walking down the hallway.

His heart fluttered and soared. Without so much as breaking stride, Paint swerved away from the classroom and followed her.

The two of them walked side-by-side to the building exit. Paint stayed silent — at first figuring she was waiting to say anything until they were outside, and then trying to give her the courtesy of starting the conversation, and then holding back out of a creeping fear that he'd done something wrong and to speak up would make it worse. She simply walked, face hidden behind that blank mask, wingtips quivering with some repressed emotion.

Paint followed a still-silent Luna to the edge of the school grounds, feeling the tension gradually thicken. She squirmed through a hole in the fence around the hoofball field, trotted into the shadow of the bleachers, and hopped up onto the squat stone structure of a campus leystation, settling in on her stomach with her forehooves dangling over the edge.

Paint hoisted himself up, grunting a bit, and settled in alongside her, a respectful few hoofwidths away. His heart was beginning to hammer in his chest, and he felt heat rise to his muzzle as memories of the previous night began to surge through his anxiety.

"Hey, you," Luna finally said, eyes fixed on the ground.

"… Hey," Paint said, emotions swirling in a muddled mess.

Her eyes didn't move. "I thought you looked familiar."

The tension finally coalesced into something concrete. Paint chewed his lip. Okay. She's disappointed at the reality of the colt behind the mask. That's not the end of the world.

Paint cleared his throat and dropped into his stage-voice. "I'm not the stammering colt you met a few weeks ago," he said with quiet confidence that — to his surprise — he didn't have to fake. "This doesn't change anything."

"It doesn't," Luna agreed, and Paint's gut unclenched. He reached a hoof toward her, and was opening his mouth to reply, when she added: "But I was hoping I wouldn't see you again."

Paint's heart squeezed into a little ball, and kept squeezing.

"W-what?" he managed, voice contorting back upward.

Luna sighed heavily. "I thought about what you said last night, and woke Celestia up to confront her when I got home," she said, and for the first time since Paint had met her, the unquenchable fire in her voice was out. "So we had a long talk. A really long talk. And it turns out I've been wrong about everything."

Paint stared, feeling a floaty numbness spread out from his chest.

"She brought us north in the first place because … well, I never took to being groomed for nobility the way Celestia did. I'd developed a reputation at nearly every school in Everfree. Behind my back, Celestia begged the Everfree Council to send us out to the edge of pony lands — where everypony would treat us as curiosities rather than princesses-to-be, and we had the room to just be ourselves. I never would have had the freedom before to visit anywhere like The Loveless, and if I'd known that's why she arranged it I would have been thrilled … but I never quite got filled in on that plan. And when I saw all our new freedom and interpreted it as Celestia pushing me away except for when she wanted to drag me to her things, I got … well. Even more bitter. About-to-do-something-I'd-regret bitter."

"B-but last night," Paint said helplessly.

Luna touched his shoulder and gave him a pained smile. "Was pretty fun. Thanks. But our talk made Celestia realize that I was just as miserable here as I'd been in Everfree — and as much of a butt as she can be, once she realizes I'm hurting, she moves the heavens to fix it. She apologized and mentioned that Star Swirl had agreed to tutor us personally for a while if this didn't work out, and entirely aside from hearing Celestia apologize, that's a dream come true for me." Her voice softened. "So we're leaving right after school. I figured it would be easier if we just vanished — then you could have some good memories, and wouldn't blame yourself for my departure. Sorry it didn't work out that way. And thank you for being one of the things which made the Empire almost tolerable."

"One" of the things, Paint's mind echoed mockingly. "Almost" tolerable.

"But the club!" Paint said, desperately retreating for solid ground which didn't exist. "What you said to me! And your poem! I heard that pain! That was real!"

"It was … at the time," Luna said. "But then I realized I was wrong about the mare I loved. The mare I'd do anything for." She smiled gently. "You should understand that better than anypony. I mean, I heard your poem. You've got a special sister, too."

All Paint could muster to that was a deflated kind of squeak.

Luna leaned in to give him a quick kiss on the nose, then stood up and hopped down to the ground. "Dream well, Sombra," she said as she trotted away. "Hey, maybe I'll see you if I ever visit this frozen dung-hole again."

Paint stood. Reached out toward the mocking sway of her retreating hips. Opened his mouth. But there was nothing to say.

His vision began to blur as the alicorn disappeared in the distance. His legs began to tremble — and not, he slowly realized, with fear. Stormy emotions were raging and swirling through the cavern of his chest; the love that had once swelled to fill it whenever Luna walked by was small and hard and cold now, a crystal tossed by the winds.

"One" of the things. "Almost" tolerable.

And, worse, he could feel it growing jagged as it tumbled — leaving little stabbing pains in his ribs and lungs and gut every time he breathed.

"Loveless," Paint hissed through clenched teeth, feeling the first tears cascade down his cheeks. "Loveless. Loveless."

Comments

[Lurks-no-More]

Okay, this is not how I was expecting this story to go. Nope.

[Ice Star]

"Hey, you," Luna finally said, eyes fixed on the ground.

[nemryn]

It's interesting how this manages to be ludicrously over the top while also being a trainwreck of feels at the same time.

[Icy Shake]

8661803
Well, high school AU that's also a Horizon joint and all that.

"Hey, maybe I'll see you if I ever visit this frozen dung-hole again."

Man that's some unfortunate timing on publishing this.

[PresentPerfect]

You're a madman.