Limerence

by Bicyclette

Part III

The Princess of the Night could not bring herself to face her.

But she knew that Rose was facing her. Even in her dream, she could not stop her from speaking.

“Do you remember now?”

“Yes.”

Without opening her eyes, Luna still knew that Rose was giving her that familiar and warm smile.

“Do you remember how you tried to make yourself forget?”

“Yes, I do.” Luna sobbed. “A thousand ways to hurt the ones closest to me. To be then destroyed in turn and to deserve it. A thousand versions of that night, in every permutation, with every mixture of the ponies in my life both past and present. It was not to hurt myself out of guilt. It was to drown out the real memory in a sea of fake ones. To make me think that I was remembering the fragments of a dream.“

“But it wasn’t a dream, was it?”

Luna opened her eyes. Her voice was weak. “No.”

Rose smiled at her. The same smile she had given her that night. No different from any other loving smile she had given her throughout their time together. But it should have been.

The words that she said to her that night had been no different than any other time she had said them. Those same three words she would whisper to her at the end of whenever they would make love. That same reverent tone.

“I am sorry.” The words seemed absurd. How could mere words said to the mere shadow of the pony in front of her possibly mean anything? But she could not help but say them over and over as a desperate litany, a supplication for a forgiveness that would never come and never be deserved. “I am sorry. I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry.”

Rose frowned at her, concern deep in her sky-blue eyes.

“Is this why you have been so afraid to love again? Because of what happened to me?”

“How could it not be? How could I possibly love again? Let myself love again?”

Suddenly, Rose began stroking Luna’s wing with a hoof, and Luna felt surprise at herself acquiescing. The softness of Rose’s fetlock was exactly how she had remembered. The way it calmed her, too.

“You are not the mare you were then. You will not make the same mistake again.”

Luna could not meet her gaze. Her voice was choked with sobs. “How could you possibly know that?”

Rose spoke steadily and calmly. “Look at what it has made of you. A poor and broken thing, hiding from her own memories. Hiding from her own people. You know the consequences now, deeper than you could have ever imagined. Down to your very bones.”

She placed a hoof on Luna’s chest.

“You will not make the same mistake again,” she repeated. “And that is what we must take from the past. What is the point of guilt? What is the point of feeling pain? To remind us to avoid what is bad for us. Any amount beyond ensuring this is needless. Especially when there is no restitution to be made. What would feeling one more pang of guilt ever do for me? I have been dead for a thousand years. All that is left of me is three lines and a few rough sketches in old history books nopony reads. That, and what is left of me in your mind.”

She smiled sweetly.

“And you knew me well enough, Luna. Well enough to know that I would not want you to feel guilt about what you did to me. You know that, don’t you?”

Luna did not speak. She could not bring herself to agree.

Rose sighed sadly. “You have so much life in front of you. Do you really think that I want to be the last one you have ever loved? To spend the rest of your millions of days flagellating yourself over me? We spent ten wonderful years together. We were always fated to share no more than fifty. Will you start letting yourself love again, then? When you have tortured yourself for longer than I would have been alive? If one lifetime is not enough, how many are? Ten? A hundred?”

“None could ever be enough. I could never cast you away as if you were nothing. As if your death meant nothing.”

“You won’t be! Don’t you see? What better sign could there be? That your first love after me is practically my reincarnation?” With a wave of her hoof, the dress Coco had made appeared in front of them, shimmering and ethereal.

“What better way to give my life meaning than to love and cherish the pony that completed its greatest unfinished work? For me to live on, not only in your head, but in hers as well? And not only hers.”

Another wave of the hoof. A constellation of dresses, elegant fabrics and delicate lacework, ornate patterns and elaborate motifs.

“A pony of her talents, who understands both this strange, modern world of fashion and the world of our time. Who better to bring this tradition back to life again, with the imprimatur of the Royal Couturière? Can you picture it? My designs living on, in a world of the distant future I never could have possibly imagined. My legacy, far more than three lines in a chronicle and a few rough sketches in a dusty old book.”

She took both of Luna’s forehooves in her own.

“And they truly will be my designs, because they will be coming from the same source. The same font of inspiration.“

With the tip of a hoof, she booped Luna gently on the nose.

The Princess of the Night tried to hold back a smile, but could not prevent one from flashing across her face, if only briefly.

“I…” she began, trailing off. She closed her eyes. “I wish that I could. But I can’t stop feeling the guilt. Even if I wanted to stop. Which I still don’t.”

“You don’t have to stop, or even want to stop. But wouldn’t it be awful if you let your guilt over me stop you from doing what I would have wanted you to?”

“It… It would,” Luna admitted. “But I don’t know. How could I love again, knowing that in a mere pony lifetime, she will age and die“—she turned to look at Rose, and past her as well—”and join your eternal ranks?”

“Oh, but that was always the deal! We were always to be drops of water, fated to create a ripple that spreads across your surface for a while, until the ripple is no more and its water joins your ocean.”

She stroked Luna’s chest with a hoof.

“But don’t you see what is wonderful about that? How generous? We are here for a fraction of your lifetime, but you fill ours. From the moment of our betrothal to our dying breaths, we get to know we will be with the one we love and worship for every second of it. What a marvelous gift to give! How cruel it would be to deny it out of fear!”

She looked deep into Luna’s eyes.

“And yes, you will feel sorrow when we pass. You will feel regret when something reminds you of our short time together, and how you wish you could have made more of it. How you wish it could have been longer. But it would never have been enough, would it? I could have lived to be a hundred, always by your side, and the sight of me in your dreams would still give you that aching hole of longing in your chest that you feel right now.“

She tapped Luna’s chest for emphasis, giving her a determined look.

“But don’t you remember the joy as well? The sensation of my touch, the taste of my lips? You can have those joys again with her, discovering them in all their wonderful uniqueness. Do not despair that you know you will outlive her, that you can already imagine her becoming a memory. Cherish the time that you have with her. Love her as fully and as deeply as you can, for as long as you are able. And when that all-too-precious, all-too-short journey that you will share with her finally ends, let her join our eternal ranks.”

She placed herself against Luna’s side, nestling herself between her body and her wing.

“Let us not be these formless specters to haunt you during the night. Let us comfort you in death as we once had in life. Let us be with you as we once were in flesh and blood, here, in the Dreamlands. That is all any of us would have ever wanted. To live on in your mind, to keep giving you our love unimaginable centuries past our dying breaths.“

Tears filled Luna’s eyes as she felt the warmth of Rose’s body against hers. That familiar sensation. That urge to take her deeper into her embrace, to feel her kiss. The knowledge that, yes, the real Rose that had been dead and gone for a thousand years had truly thought all of these things, and even said as much. That the thought of Luna imagining her now, long after her death, taking comfort of her assuaging words and touch, would have only brought her the greatest of joys in life. That she truly did love her in this way.

And that Coco would as well..

She opened her eyes, and though she was looking through a vale of tears, Rose’s adoring, sky-blue gaze still shone brilliantly through them.

The same sky-blue as Coco’s.

Giving in, she met Rose’s soft lips with her own, tasting them, luxuriating in that soft hint of lavender and chamomile.

The same scent as Coco’s.

Breaking the kiss, she blinked away her tears, and smiled softly at Rose, who was smiling softly back. A familiar sight she had seen countless times in their years together. Not a single iota less beautiful for its familiarity.

In a loving voice, Rose spoke to her.

“I am so glad. That you are choosing to truly live again. That you have changed. You’ve finally accepted what our love means. What all of our love has always meant. It took you so long, but you finally did it.”

She looked at her with love and adoration in her eyes.

“You are not the mare you were then. You will not make the same mistake again.”

“I am not the mare I was then,” Luna repeated after her, a teary smile breaking across her face.

In the eyes of this image of Rose, Luna saw the exact same eyes as she had in the memory she had dreaded for so long. That look of ultimate trust and devotion.

“I will not make the same mistake again. I will never betray another as I have betrayed you so awfully.”

Rose did not reply right away. But even in the silence before Rose spoke, Luna could feel an odd tension in the air.

“Betrayed?” Rose asked, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“The look you gave me that night. The words that you said.” Those three words. “You trusted that I would see your love for me, and that it would be enough for me to stop myself. It should have been enough. I’m so sorry that it wasn’t.”

Rose frowned. “You thought that is what I meant by those words? You thought that I was begging you for my life?“

Luna frowned. “What else could they have been?”

Rose smiled at her sweetly, and stroked her chest again.

“I saw what the transformation was doing to you. The raw power that was surging through you, an amount beyond your ability to control. At least, beyond the ability of what you once were.”

Rose looked deep into Luna’s eyes.

“I knew then that my death was inevitable. I was telling you that I was perfectly okay with that. I was expressing to you the depth of my devotion. That your will be done, even if that will end my life.”

An icy hand gripped Luna’s chest. Rose giggled airily.

“Can you imagine what most ponies are fated to? They are cursed to live their little lives of mundane mediocrity. They are cursed to love their little loves for each other. Cursed to never know the true depths of love’s devotion. The true fullness of love’s joy. That is the gift you’ve given me, my Princess. The gift that you’ve given us.”

A cold dread suffocated her lungs, contrasting sickeningly with the warmth of the mare on her chest. And not just her. Behind her, came the members of the eternal ranks, and the sensations they brought with them. The gentle brush of Timid Quiver’s wing on her own. The firm massage of Citronnier’s callused hoof on her thigh. The shine of Grape Galette’s eyes, as blue and bright as those of her granddaughter’s next to her.

“We are but drops in your ocean. Breeding stock, raw material, for you to do with as you wish. For you to use to enact your will, as is your very right. We all knew this. We all wanted this. And you know this. Deep in your bones.”

Each caress and kiss, unique and meaningful and familiar. Melding into each other, forming a revolting tangle of devotion and love. Suffocating her. Sickening her. As Rose spoke, her voice was joined by those of the others. Each one full of the personality of the mare they had belonged to in life, each speaking in unison.

“But the ponies of this time have been made ignorant. They may be materially rich, but they are spiritually poor. You must give back to them what they have been deprived of. Give back to them their talents and bodies being used for a greater purpose than the anomie of their individual lives. Give back to them the joy and peace that true love and devotion and obedience brings. Give back to them the ancient songs that hum in harmony in their very blood. Give back to them their place in the great Chain of Being, and the sense of rightness woven into the fabric of the universe itself that comes with knowing that a deserving, immortal ruler unafraid of Her own power sits at its very head.”

Their voices melded into each other, singing their words to her in time with the throbbing pulse of the blood in her body as her dread built on top of dread.

“You are not the mare you once were. You will not make the same mistake again.”

At last, too late, Luna realized what voice was emerging from that hollow chorus. That familiar, echoing timber. Visions of a sky cast into eternal night.

“Your sister will not be able to defeat you a second time.”

Comments

[Ri2]

Oh shit

[Sledge115]

I wish I had words here. But... damn.

The entire final sequence was intense as all hell. How this all unravels, both Luna and her memories, how a chorus of voices guides Luna to confronting her past.

It's powerful.

[The Sleepless Beholder]

Well, this explains a few things I was wondering.

Rose always felt too "alive" for a memory, even if augmented by an alicorn brain, but this explains it. Seems like the Elements didn't do a very good job cleansing Lulu, and Coco unintentionally caused too much of Luna's past to come out. Curious to where this'll be going now.

[applejackofalltrades]

Damn. Well, I was wondering why on earth Rose actually felt like something more than just a memory. I mean, hot damn. I was expecting some kind of,,,, I don’t know what I was expecting, but it certainly lived up to the hype. I don’t really know what to say here, and I mean that in the best way possible. So, I’m assuming what happened here is that Rose was in fact... Nightmare Moon? And Coco had unintentionally uhhh tapped way too far back in Luna’s memories? I dunno if I worded that right.

Anyway this last bit? Holy hell. Jeez, Bike, you can’t just leave it there. Where’s the rest? Ahaha. Great job, I just really don’t know what to say here so I apologize for my shitty little comment, I’m just amazed. I mean, I heard that this was a good story but come on. Wow.