My Little Pony Friendship is Magic The Movie: What If?

by SuperPinkBrony12

Part 22: Aftermath and Apologies

Since the festival was still ongoing and Songbird's concert was still in full swing, Princess Celestia opted to move the conversation with Queen Novo into Twilight's castle. Thanks to the magic of the Storm King's staff, you now would never have been able to tell that the castle had suffered any damage at all.

Grubber wanted nothing more than to be there to support Tempest, but Tempest refused to let him take part. "It's me that Queen Novo's mad with." She told him.

"But Tempest, I was there too." Grubber argued.

Tempest only shook her head from side to side. "You're not the one who tricked the queen's daughter and then tried to swipe the Pearl of Transformation. If it wasn't for me, the Storm King never would've come to Mount Aris, and none of this would be happening. Like it or not, I have to face this alone: I can't have you and Princess Twilight fighting all my battles for me. For the first time in my life, I'm going to open up my eyes and face the consequences of my actions. It's the least I can do after everything and everyone who suffered because of me." And with that, she trotted into the castle and slammed the doors shut behind her.

Twilight's friends (and Spike) also had the unfortunate luck of being locked out of the meeting. Applejack was the only one who saw fit to say anything about it. "You're really intent on lettin' Queen Novo chew you out, huh, sugarcube? I just hope you know what you're doin' this time by goin' it alone."

So it was that Twilight and Tempest were now alone inside Twilight's castle with only Princess Celestia, and a very hostile and angry looking Queen Novo starring them down.

Celestia opted to break the ice, looking at Queen Novo as she asked the hippogriff. "So, Novo, I understand that the past few years have been... difficult for you, and that's why I lost contact with you and your kingdom."

Novo nodded ever so slowly. "That's putting it mildly. We were attacked, and very nearly wiped out," A lone tear was shed from her eyes. "Hidding ourselves underwater was the only thing I could think to do to get away from him. Establishing an entire new kingdom with myself and my subjects as seaponies was so time consuming. I didn't mean to cut off contact with you, Princess Celestia. Had I known sooner that the Storm King had invaded Equestria, I would've gladly come to your aid."

"To be fair," The sun princess confessed. "My decision to seek out your help was a spur of the moment thing. You were the first ally that came to mind. I had intended on sending my younger sister to meet with you, but unfortunately she was captured too. So it seems that Twilight took it upon herself to meet with you instead."

The hippogriff queen firmly nodded. "Yes, and that's what I've come to talk to you about. Because she and that unicorn over there," She gestured a claw to Tempest. "Both took advantage of my trust, letting me believe they had good intentions and just wanted to be friendly and helpful," She then growled. "But both of them were lying through their teeth. Both of them had alterior motives and just wanted me to be distracted," Marching over to Tempest, she confronted the hornless unicorn. "Don't think that just because you supposedly helped defeat the Storm King for good that I've forgotten how you helped him become so strong in the first place. It was because of you that my husband lost his life, scarificing himself specifically to ensure the rest of my subjects could escape!"

The hornless unicorn whimpered and shrank from the queen's gaze, looking down at the ground in shame and guilt. "I... never knew it was that personal for you. After something like that, it's no wonder you wouldn't trust strangers. And somehow, I doubt that's the only time my actions led to such a tragic outcome."

Queen Novo nodded again. "I'll say. And all of this for what? Just so you could get your horn back? Was it worth using my daughter to get me to lower my guard? Was it worth betraying our trust?" She coldly hissed. "Give me one good reason why I should even think about forgiving you eventually. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't drag you back to Mount Aris and leave you at the mercy of my subjects?"

Tempest slowly lifted her head, sighing deeply. "You have no good reason, your majesty. There's no defense or excuse for what I did to you. If you don't trust me and can't ever trust me again because of that, you have every right to do so. Nothing I say or do can make up for what my actions caused. The only thing I can say is that you shouldn't let your bad experience with me be the reason why you can never trust anyone. Some creatures can be trusted. Maybe not me, but not every creature is as selfish and as heartless as I was."

Novo gave a humph. It seemed that it would take more than one speech and one apology to make her consider forgiving Tempest. All she could say to the unicorn in reply was. "I suppose you have a point. If I shut myself off from the world forever because of you, I'm letting you and the Storm King win, because I'll be letting myself live in fear. And if recent events have taught me anything, it's that we shouldn't live our lives in fear. Fear only keeps us isolated and alone."

Tempest sighed again and slowly walked away. "Thank you, your majesty," She briefly bowed to the queen. "I promise, I won't come back to Mount Aris, or visit Seaquestria no matter what. I deserve nothing less after what I did to you."

"Well, we'll just see if I one day decide to let you come back," Queen Novo vaguely replied. "But don't get your hopes up, especially not now. It'll take a long time for my subjects and I to repair the damage and destruction your visit brought upob us. I imagine it'll take even longer for the emotional wounds you inflicted to heal."

---

Once Queen Novo had finished talking to Tempest, she turned her full attention to Twilight Sparkle. "Now we can discuss what you did, Princess Twilight. I know now that you were being chased, but that doesn't mean I'm ready to forgive you for all you did."

"And neither would I expect you to," Twilight replied and confessed. "Whether I realized it or not, I was lying to you and I was stealing from you. You had every right not to trust me with the Pearl of Transformation's powers. I should've done a better job of talking it over with you, convincing you that my friends and I could be trusted," She adopted a guilty expression. "Instead, I used my friends to trick you. I went behind their backs as well as yours, and dragged them into something they never would've agreed to be part of."

Princess Celestia let out a gasp, shocked at what Twilight admitted! "Twilight! How you could do something so irresponsible?! I would've thought you'd learned your lesson after the Smarty Pants incident."

Twilight gulped and swallowed hard. "I'm sorry, Princess Celestia. I realize now that I've made a terrible mess of relations between Equestria and the hippogriffs. I know I don't have an excuse, or a defense. I wasn't thinking clearly. In the moment, all I could think about was myself, about everything I'd scarificed and how my friends didn't seem to be taking things as seriously as they should. And because of that," She whimpered. "I used my friends as a distraction so I could take the pearl for myself. I told myself I was just going to study it. But all I was really doing was stealing it to use for myself. And unfortunately, it backfired. Not only did my distraction work better than I anticipated, but I ended up undoing everything my friends had managed to accomplish because of it."

Celestia let out a sigh and shook her head from side to side. "What were you thinking? Did you expect your friends not to ask questions if they saw you with the pearl afterwards?"

Twilight sighed back with a guilty expression on her face. "Like I said, I wasn't thinking clearly. That's why afterwards I knew I had to give myself up. I'd let my friends down and ruined everything we'd worked so hard for. I couldn't see past my own feelings. It was only a matter of luck that Princess Skystar and those other creatures were still willing to help."

"Ah, so you didn't have anything to do with my daughter running off to join the fight!" Queen Novo realized. "Guess I should've known better. My daughter always has been a free spirit. And I'm starting to see that she had a point."

Twilight looked up with hopeful optimism reflected in her eyes.

But Novo then coldly added. "But you still used her to get to me, just like Tempest did. And you have no excuse. You knew what had happened. Against my better judgement, I welcomed you and your friends and let you know of our plight. And rather than show sympathy, rather than try to understand why the Pearl of Transformation was too dangerous to be entrusted to you, you did exactly the same thing Tempest did. And you were worse, because you weren't acting under orders from someone else. You did it yourself even though you had to know it was wrong."

The young alicorn princess felt all the optimism leave her, not unlike a balloon that was abruptly deflated. She couldn't bring herself to say anything.

Queen Novo, for her part, just went on talking. "I know the Storm King is nomore now, thanks to you and your friends. I only wish I could've been there to see it for myself. But just like Tempest, your actions stung. I'd say you were even worse in that regard, because you reopened wounds I thought I had closed. You even briefly made me believe you'd been trying to turn my own daughter against me, taking advantage of her niaviety and willingness to trust strangers. Whatever debt of thanks my subjects may owe you and may owe Equestria for putting an end to the Storm King, it can only go so far to begin making up for what you did to me back in Seaquestria."

---

When Queen Novo had finally finished speaking, an awkward and uncomfortable silence filled the air. Even Princess Celestia did not know what to say.

Moments seemed to tick by in agnoizing slowness. But the silence remained. No one said a word, no one seemed willing to do anything.

At last, it was Novo who broke the silence. "Well, I've said everything that I wanted to say," She let out a long sigh, and her posture seemed to relax ever so slightly. "It's amazing. Now that I've gotten all that off my shoulders, I feel... different, somehow," Looking to Twilight and Tempest, she said to them. "Make no mistake, though, that doesn't mean I'm willing to forgive either of you just yet. And neither do I want to see either of you anywhere near Mount Aris or Seaquestria. Right now, I just want to go home with my daughter so we can help our subjects rebuild."

Princess Celestia firmly nodded. "And indeed, you'll be granted safe passage back to your kingdom, Novo. I won't pressure you into re-establishing ties with Equestria. You and your subjects deserve a chance to rebuild in peace, a chance to reflect and move on," She bowed her head to the queen. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry for all you had to endure over the years. I'm sorry I didn't make more of an effort to find out what had happened to you and to your kingdom. But between worrying about Luna's return and then overseeing Twilight's studies, things slipped between the cracks until I had forgotten all about them."

"You had no way to know. And I feel bad that I couldn't be there for you when you needed me," Queen Novo apologized. "I'm not sure if I could've made a difference in anything you had to face during those years. But knowing what it was like to be isolated and alone, I had no right to make you think that I'd stopped caring. I see now that I was letting my fear of the Storm King control me, keep my clammed up inside and cut off from the world. And that is a fool's errand. The world is too big, too interconnected. We can't shut ourselves off from it even if we wish we could."

The sun princess smiled. "Well spoken, Queen Novo. And rest assured that, whatever you decide to do with Twilight and Tempest, I won't stand in your way. But at the very least, I hope you'll consult with me if you decide to punish them in any way, shape, or form."

"I'll keep that in mind," The queen replied. "And maybe someday, I'll be willing to let them come back to Mount Aris, once it has been properly rebuilt," She put a paw to her chin. "And I'm thinking I might just keep Seaquestria as a separate kingdom, ruling over it alongside Mount Aris. I know that for as many of my subjects that have been longing to be hippogriffs again, there are just as many that have grown to like being seaponies. And there are those who I'm sure would be comfortable as both," Turning to Twilight and Tempest, she said to them. "Once I've gotten both kingdoms running smoothly, maybe then we can discuss a formal apology. It'll have to be in public, on my terms. My subjects will need to see that you're truly sorry."

Twilight and Tempest bowed and said in unison. "We'll look forward to it."

Queen Novo smiled back. "I'm sure you will. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must be going. It's time for my daughter and I to head home." And with that, she departed.

Just like that, it was all over.

Author's Note:

We can assume that, given the events of Season 8, Twilight was forgiven off-screen during the passage of time. But much like with Starlight Glimmer's reformation, not getting to see the apology (or anything similar to it) on-screen really hurts. I understand the movie wouldn't want to dwell for long on things like that, but they are things that needed to be seen and addressed.

I would also assume that, given Tempest's non-speaking cameo in "The Ending of the End" as part of the armada that comes to the mane six and Spike's defense, she too has been forgiven by the hippogriffs/seaponies, but even in the comics we never got to see that. And what we did see of Tempest when she met up with one of her old friends, it suggested that she really hadn't changed and hadn't apologized at all for anything she did (if anything, it looked like she felt like she was the one owed an apology).

There's just one last chapter left to wrap up everything else. And don't worry, I haven't forgotten about the "twist" with Tempest's real name.

Comments

[Comickook]

Hello there. Thanks again for getting the second-to-last chapter up. Once again, you did a really good job on the dialogue, characterizations and further epilogue set-up. Yes, you made some excellent points in the author's notes. Of course, time constraints and not wanting to dwell on that sort of stuff is probably why they didn't show more attempts to just talk to Rainbow in "the Mysterious Mare-Do-Well" before they resorted to the measures they did and why Applejack was the only one who apologized on-screen in "A Canterlot Wedding Part Two" (we can guess that stuff happened off-screen, but it's only guess work).

Anyway, definitely looking forward to the final chapter.

[GBHtrain]

A very nice scene between them. You handled the characters well and we finally get to see Queen Novo interact with Twilight again. I wonder if she’s gonna stay at the festival after all, judging by the end credits of the movie. As for Twilights public apology, are you gonna dedicate an episode of your ‘what if’ series to showing it?

[SuperPinkBrony12]

11910316 Maybe someday.

[BlackMumba]

11910316
I think that's a great idea! Not sure how he would do it, though. He's only got one more episode of season 8 and a handful of season 9 episodes to rewrite. So, I'm not sure if he'd have room to squeeze it in. Though, he has occasionally rewritten episodes from the ground up. So, it's possible.

[SuperPinkBrony12]

11910359 Maybe I could use it as a replacement for "The Point of No Return", making it a flashback episode.

[ScarfStar]

11907981
He does this with EVERY story he comments on, it's been going on for years.
If there's no Spike he'll keep asking where he is in every comment in every new chapter he reads.

If he is there he'll keep asking what the author plans to do with him.
If he doesn't like it he'll say he's 'bummed out' that the author didn't cater to him and keep commenting for the story to change to suit him.

He will ALWAYS ask for Spike to be in every relevant scene even if he's not the main character,
He'll ask for him to be shipped with Luna if there's a romance tag (He'll also complain if Luna isn't treated well compared to Celestia),
He's keep asking for him to get a rematch if he loses or gets owned in some way in a fight or encounter.

He'll ALWYAS ask whether he's not a 'damn dog' in EQG fics

Or if he gets powers or weapons like other characters so he can stay in the spotlight,

The guy's library is FULL of Spike focused fics for him to read yet he still complains in every story that doesn't do what HE wants for Spike. It's like he wants some kind of black hole sue.

Oh and if you tell him to cut it out he'll say

'Sorry, I can't help it and I can't keep it bottled up uwu'

EVERY TIME!

[Okie Brony]

I'm loving the deleted scenes that have been added back into this "Director's Cut" of the movie!