A Tale That Wasn't Right

by Equimorto

All That Was

Sunset stared at her reflection in the cyan eyes of her slightly smaller, wingless, but otherwise identical double.

"Who are you?"

"I'm pretty sure you know that one. Ever looked in a mirror before?" the other her replied, a snarky tone to her voice. "But I'm willing to let it slide. Why don't you ask me something else?"

The alicorn gave a grunt. "Where are we?"

"Oh, that's an interesting one," Sunset replied. She lifted her hoof and gestured dramatically. "Welcome to where time stands still."

"What's that supposed to mean?" the princess barked back.

"Exactly what it says, silly. I thought Celestia's star pupil would be smart enough to get it," the unicorn said while moving closer to her other self, "guess the standard for being a princess isn't that high after all."

The sound of gritting teeth could be faintly heard coming from Sunset's mouth.

"Or maybe it's just high compared to the rest of pony society."

A slight twitch could be noticed on the alicorn's left eyelid.

"But I guess it should be expected, given the quality of those who sit on the throne."

A flash of light, the unicorn's body was sent smashing on a bookcase before being pinned there by a pair of hooves, books falling off the shelves and stopping midway through their fall.

"Another word and your fur joins the dust on the floor."

The two glared at each other, the taller one's angry stare being met by an interested gaze from her unascended counterpart. It was the latter who broke the silence first.

"Irascible as always I see. That attitude of yours never got you anywhere good I recall. Not before I came to fix things, that is."

"Quit the nonsense and tell me what's happening."

"I'd love to, but it seems I'm not quite in a comfortable enough position to. And like it or not, Sunset, I'm your only way out of here, so you better make me want to help you."

The princess pondered what she'd been told, then begrudgingly let go of the other mare.

"Great. Now if you'll follow me, I'll be glad to tell about how you managed to screw up everything again, and about how I am going to fix this." The unicorn didn't wait for an answer, and instead started to walk in a seemingly arbitrary direction down the corridor, the other having to put in quite the effort as she struggled to follow her through the unnaturally dense air, already regretting her decision.

She finally managed to catch up to her, the two of them having arrived inside what looked like a large round library with other corridors departing from it, a staircase circling the room likely leading to another floor above them, the illumination too scarce to determine how tall the room actually was.

"So, about this place," she asked as they took a right turn down another bookcase lined hallway.

"As I was saying, time seems to be frozen in this place. Nothing moves if you don't touch it, nothing changes on its own. It's also the reason why the air acts so weird. It makes for some rather impressive scenery when you look at the hourglasses, especially the broken ones. There's even a number of perfectly working clocks that just refuse to tick. Funny thing, they're all stuck on eleven fiftyeight."

"What's funny about that?"

"Right, you wouldn't know that. I made sure you couldn't."

The pair took another right turn.

"But I should probably tell you more about me. Where to start? You can't imagine even half the stories I could tell you of gates and halls and silver keys. It would probably be faster to just make you read them. I wrote them all down, you know? Turns out, living here means I don't have to sleep, unlike you, so that leaves quite a lot of free time." The mare stopped and turned to her winged companion, her eyes opened unnaturally wide. "You'd be surprised to find out how much time you spend doing nothing but sleeping. Leaves quite a void to fill, when the only thing you want to do is keep watching and the show stops for eight hours." She turned her face away and resumed her walk, the suddenness of her action forcing the other to once again struggle to cath up to her.

She finally managed to reach her side, panting slightly as she watched the inside of the room at the entrance of which the unicorn had stopped. It was a circular room with a series of mirrors placed along the walls, a particularly large one with a winged sun chiseled at the top of its frame standing on the side of the room opposite to them, a green cushion sitting in front of it. Two tables lined the pathway between the door and the mirror, the left one occupied by a series of neatly positioned books standing side by side, each volume sporting the letters 'OGAHASK' written in bright gold, and under that a different sign on every book that Sunset deduced was part of a numbering system, although she didn't recognize it. The right table only had a single open book on it, an inkwell and a quill resting by its side.

"See that big mirror over there? That's where I'd be watching right now," the smaller of the two said as she started to walk towards said mirror. "Unfortunately," she continued, reaching the other side and touching the mirror's surface with her horn, which caused it to turn black, "it's broken right now, as you can see. Your fault. And all because you just had to decide there was something wrong when everything was going perfectly fine."

"I've said it before, but maybe I wasn't clear enough. Tell me what is going on, and be very clear about it, because I'm getting rather tired of your blabbering, so I might just decide to take the truth out of you," the alicorn spoke as she neared the other mare.

"You agreed not to use that forced secret reveal spell just a couple months ago, do you really value your promises to Celestia so little?" the unicorn said, watching as the other stopped and gave her a puzzled look. "Surprised? I know a lot of things about you, Sunset. More than you do, probably. But I do want to help you. So, where do you want me to start?"

"The beginning," spat out the princess, shooting an angry glare at the now smirking mare.

"Well, if you want me to do this properly I guess I'll have to start all over, so excuse me." The wingless one turned around, then turned again, an unconvincing expression of surprise crossing her face as she pretended to notice the alicorn for the first time. "Hello me-" she gave a slight bow "-meet the rea-"

She never finished the sentence, the wind getting knocked out of her lungs as the other Sunset's magic grabbed her and pulled her face up to the alicorn's, her eyes practically shooting fire at her.

"I said enough with your games," she growled at her.

The unicorn said nothing, and instead simply pointed at a mirror in a corner of the room, the top of its frame decorated by a stylized depiction of the sun. Sunset let go of her and walked towards the mirror, then lowered her horn and touched its surface. As soon as she did, images started to appear in place of her reflection.

Immediatly, the princess recognized her younger self as the one moving in the mirror. She saw herself studying, discussing with Celestia, reading books on her own. But there was something weird about the vision, things playing out differently than how she remembered them, that version of her seeming to have a completely different attitude. Yet for some odd reason nothing of what she saw felt wrong to her.

"What is this?" she asked.

The other walked up to her. "It's how things went once. How they went for me."

The images kept moving on the mirror, straying further and further from the reality the princess knew. Arguing with her teacher. Refusing to go out and play with others, choosing to stay inside and study. Celestia bringing her in front of a mirror. Another discussion. Breaking into the forbidden section of the library. Getting caught. Celestia having her brought away by a pair of guards. Knocking them out and running back to the mirror. Walking up to and then going straight through the mirror.

The unicorn to her side touched the mirror, turning it back to its normal reflecting state.

The princess turned towards her. "What did you do?" she asked in a whisper.

"I fixed our life." She returned her that same wide-eyed stare from before.

The alicorn pushed her aside and walked to the next mirror, this one decorated with a six pointed star.

"It wasn't an easy thing to do, trust me. Had to start all the way back from the beginning."

The mirror's surface came alive at the touch of Sunset's horn.

"From the day you were born, I made sure everything went they way it should've gone in the first place."

Sunset recognized the purple filly in the mirror as Twilight Sparkle.

"I gave you everything one could ever want."

The young student being sent to Ponyville by Celestia.

"I made you the perfect student."

Nightmare Moon's return, Twilight and her new friends finding and using the elements.

"I made you an alicorn, a princess, the most powerful pony in all of Equestria."

Discord's return, the changeling invasion, the Crystal Empire.

"I gave you the life that should have been ours from the start."

Twilight becoming an alicorn, her battle with Tirek.

"For every single day and night of your life I watched over you, making sure it all happened the way it was supposed to, making sure you reached the glorious future you were destined to."

As she watched the history of a world not her own unfold before her, Sunset finally understood. The horrible feeling of unbelongingness gnawing at her for as long as she could remember found the reason of its existance, and in that moment she knew that what she was seeing was the way things should have gone.

"But you just had to ruin it all again. It would have been so easy, Sunset. All you had to do was live your life. Everything was going to be perfect. Everything was going to be right. The brightest of futures, for the rest of all eternity, and you only needed to play along. But no, let's go around messing with the script. Why, why did you? Couldn't you see it? Could you really not see how it was the best possible life you could have? Did you really think you could find something better, that there was something wrong with what you had?" Sunset was practically screaming at this point. "I have worked so damn hard for this, Sunset. I've done things you couldn't even begin to imagine. And I won't let you take it away from me. I won't allow you to destroy the life I deserved!"

"This has to stop. We're going to change things back to how they were, now."

"I don't think you understand, Sunset." The unicorn's horn started to glow a bright amaranth, the glow around it rapidly expanding as she charged her magic.

The alicorn turned towards her a moment too late.

"I Won't let you take this away from me."

The blast hit the princess in full, knocking her half unconscious. She was dimly aware of the world bending around her, and soon she was falling again. Racing across the void, universes passing by her as she fell towards the sky, lights flashing in her eyes from alien stars in times impossibly distant, until finally she found herself anchored to reality once more, her vision blurry as she tried to determine where exactly she was. The world slowly came back into focus around her, and she became aware of a white silhouette sitting in front of her. She closed her eyes and shook her head, the low buzz in her ears finally coming to an end, and she focused back on her surroundings.

She recognized the place, she recognized the situation, and with horror she realized she had already lived through this same events.

"What is the matter, Sunset?" Celestia asked before taking a sip of tea from the small cup she was holding with her magic.

Comments

[aline1]

Hmm evil mysterious version of sunset trying to 'fix' things it seems that sunset and twilight need a hero to set things right... They have to be strong, they have to be fast and they have to be fresh from the fight...

[Ze1a7in]

...holy shit. damn. wtf. insert other expletive here.

there are no words that describe my feelings right now.

[Changeling Alzura]

mind blown