And I Hope You Die

by Aquaman

Drowning

Flurry stumbled back a step, her mind racing and her lips moving without making a sound. Of course Cozy knew what she’d done. She was too smart not to. She’d done it on purpose, to manufacture this specific scenario—and to force her to play the leading role in bringing it to an end.

“Why?” she whispered.

“You know why,” Cozy said. She wore a thin smile, and a strange melancholic expression that turned Flurry’s stomach to look at. “You know exactly what I want. I’ve wanted it for years.”

Suddenly, the ice in Flurry’s chest exploded into flames. “What the fuck are you talking about, Cozy?” she yelled. “You didn’t want this! You were happy, I… we were… fuck you, Cozy!”

Cozy let out a wet cough, running her teeth around her mouth and spitting out more blood before she replied. “Go ahead. Say what you want to say.”

“Why are you dragging me into this?” Flurry said. “If you want to kill yourself, then do it. Just give up on life, on everypony who cared about you, and end it. I can’t stop you. But this… you dragged me into this. You’re making me do it for you.”

“I’m not making you do anything, Flurry,” Cozy murmured. “I’m giving you a choice. Me or your empire. And we both know what the right call is.”

“Oh, go to hell, Cozy!” Flurry snapped.

Cozy’s smile took on a wry tilt. “Kinda already did. It’s not as bad as you’d think.”

Flurry whirled away and began to stalk across the throne room, stopping after only a few steps to tap her hoof against the ground and suck in deep, shaky breaths through her nose. Finally, she settled herself with a firm sigh, and turned back around.

“Why?” she asked again. “Why are you throwing everything away?”

Cozy had rolled onto her back while Flurry was composing herself. Her head rested on the flat side of a piece of crystal debris, and her breath came in shallow gasps, each one making her veins glow a bit brighter through her tightened, translucent skin. “It was never mine,” she answered, tilting her chin down just enough to meet Flurry’s eyes. “You were never mine. I just borrowed you for a little while.”

“To do what?” Flurry said, drawing nearer again to where Cozy had fallen with every embittered word. “Was I just a target to you? Somepony to lead along until your master plan was ready? What was I good for, Cozy?”

Cozy’s eyes shone—but not with magic. “Everything,” she said, and the weight in the word—the heartache, and the sorrow, and the fear—sent Flurry reeling more than a punch in the gut ever could. “You were everything to me. Stronger and braver and better that I thought a pony could possibly be, and good through every inch of your heart. You deserve to be a Princess. You might be the only pony who ever has deserved it. You made me happy. And if I’d kept that happiness for myself, if I let you love me like I loved you, I would’ve ruined you.”

Flurry had closed the distance between them, and still she felt miles and miles from the mare laid out before her. “All I could ever be for you was a liability,” Cozy went on. “Not because I would betray you, or because I wouldn’t take every punishment imaginable just to keep you safe. Because if someone worse than me came along, and they told you to choose between me and your empire, you might have chosen me.” Cozy coughed, and grimaced, and choked back a noise halfway between a growl and a sob. “Millions of ponies might die, because of me.”

“Cozy, stop,” Flurry said. “I would never… t-there’s a way out of this, I can…”

“You can’t,” Cozy said. “You can’t be like the rest of them. You can’t give up the power you have to protect everypony else, to protect yourself, for the sake of one pony you love. You have to be stronger. You have to be great.”

She pushed herself up with a shuddering hoof, and hooked the other around Flurry’s neck. Flurry felt something thread through the crook of her forehoof, and she gripped it instinctively. She looked down and saw a shard of the Crystal Heart clutched in her grasp—hovering, wrapped in the Heart’s stolen magic, over Cozy’s chest.

“I will make you great,” Cozy told her. “I will make sure you survive no matter what I have to do. That’s all I’m good for. And it’s what I want. It’s the only thing I’ve wanted since the day I met you.”

Flurry looked at the shard. Cozy lifted a shaking hoof and placed it over Flurry’s. “Do it,” she whispered. “Please.”

Silently, instinctively, Flurry made her decision. She closed her eyes, leaned forward, and–

Comments

[nlinzer]

Correct Cozy. The burden of the ruler. You must choose your people over your friends and loved ones. Its why no one in their right mind would want to be a ruler unless they are compleltly selfless or they don't take the job seriously.

Twilight would choose her friends over Equestria, she is a bad ruler. Flurry can't make the same mistake.

Be willing to sacrifice your friends, your children and any chance at happiness for your people. That is the responsibility of a ruler.

[Princess Starflight]

Why do I feel like the next chapter should come before this one?

[Cerulean Blue]

Hell of a cliffhanger.