Book 1 - The Behemoth came to Canterlot

by Equimorto

Brevity

Twilight held the Charioteer's gaze. He wasn't lying to her, not that he had any reason to. She'd have known even without him telling her. Well, no, she wouldn't have had the certainty, but she'd known that the possibility was there. She'd planned to never return to that world for a reason, and she'd known that she was sending their equivalent of the Behemoth there. "I didn't have a choice."

"Don't make up excuses." In a blink the Charioteer was standing in front of Twilight. His tone was uncharacteristically louder and less composed than his usual. "Don't make up excuses for destroying a world when you're talking to me. Feed them to your citizens, to your friends, even to yourself if you like, but not to me, because I've thought them all. You had your choice and you made it. Own up to it." He returned to his previous position, and he forced himself to breathe a little slower.

Twilight looked at him. She swallowed, and doing so she shed a weight she hadn't realised had come over her in those last few seconds, like a tower placed over her back ready to crush her if she made a single misstep. She thought about his words, and about who he was, and she watched him watch her for a few seconds. "I had no better choice," she rephrased. "The Moonbeast had to go somewhere, and the other world's Moon was the only place I had prepared, not to mention the only place I could conceivably manage to prepare given the timing and circumstances."

"You doomed a world to save your own, like I said. Ponies still died, and it was your fault."

"Some of them could very well have died just as a result of eliminating Nightmare Moon, and what she would have done to them in the long run would have been worse than that." It was Twilight's turn to force herself to breathe slower. "It doesn't mean their deaths were good."

"But it does mean their deaths were better than the deaths you avoided. Because the lives of the ponies here were more important than theirs, and really they were already dead anyway, no?" The Charioteer smiled bitterly at Twilight. "And it was your only reasonable choice, even if you didn't want to do it, and in the end it's not so bad because that world was doomed anyway but this one might still be saved, and you had to fight back, and all manners of other things just to make you feel better about what you did. I told I'd heard them all."

Twilight grit her teeth, trying to stop herself from blowing up. She failed. "Well what was I supposed to do?" she yelled. "Die? Let Nightmare Moon win? Let the Moonbeast stay in our sky? Try to save ponies from there again and get myself killed? What else was I supposed to do?"

The Charioteer sighed. "Listen, Twilight. I'm not saying you did the wrong thing, if you want to make up some moral standard to judge your actions by. All I'm saying is that you did what you did. If you think it was the right thing, and believe me I couldn't care less about what's right or wrong for you, then just accept it. Accept that you did it and stop trying to justify it like you don't believe in your own decisions. You killed them. Move on."

Comments

[Speckle]

...erm, well...
Impromptu therapy session?

[Saix]

"Don't make up excuses." In a blink the Charioteer was standing in front of Twilight. His tone was uncharacteristically louder and less composed than his usual. "Don't make up excuses for destroying a world when you're talking to me. Feed them to your citizens, to your friends, even to yourself if you like, but not to me, because I've thought them all. You had your choice and you made it. Own up to it." He returned to his previous position, and he forced himself to breathe a little slower.

He's taking this awfully personally.