Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me
Dear Twilight Sparkle,
I’m writing to inform you of a most startling discovery. It seems that King Sombra, the former tyrant of the Crystal Empire, is not as dead as we would’ve hoped. I have it on good authority that Sombra managed to find a way to the Everfree Forest, where he has presumably been staying since his defeat by the Crystal Heart. Ordinarily this would be cause for great alarm—you are almost undoubtedly panicking as you read this—however it is my judgement that neither Equestria nor the Crystal Empire has anything to fear. The ex-king does not seem to be preparing for any sort of assault or vengeance; quite the contrary, he seems to be doing almost nothing at all. He put no effort into hiding his location, and all observations of him return the same information: he is merely living out his days in solitude, and he shows no signs of malicious intent whatsoever. As such, I would like to firmly request that you refrain from taking any drastic action against Sombra at this time. In addition to this, I will not deny my own curiosity (and your curiosity has no doubt been piqued as well), and so I would like to request that you take some time to speak to Sombra civilly so that we may discern his intentions and plan a course for the future. I wish you luck and know that you will behave with the qualities expected of an Equestrian princess.
Sincerely,
Princess Celestia
********
Twilight double checked the map to make sure she was in the right place. The Sombra she knew had been obsessed with his showy decor, usually all in black. She practically had violent flashbacks remembering the stairs. Oh Celestia, those stairs…
This place was different, though. It was so… plain. It was just a typical one room house made from some cleared-out grey trees. It looked like the CMC’s clubhouse had gotten seasonal depression and moved to the middle of the Everfree Forest to mope. Twilight actually felt awkward as she stepped up to the front door. There was no bell or anything similar, so Twilight raised her hoof and knocked on the door.
Not long after she knocked, the door opened. Twilight wasn't sure what she expected, but she was still surprised. On the other side of the door stood King Sombra, his face cast into a purely apathetic look, both eyes only half opened and half focused. He took a few moments to look Twilight over and then stood silently.
Twilight felt the awkwardness permeate the air. She cleared her throat. “Um, hello, Sombra. I am Twilight Sparkle, princess of Equestria, and I’m here to speak with you.” Twilight spoke, mustering up all the false confidence she could.
Sombra blinked. “You’re a princess? Really? Because the wings and the horn didn't give it away enough. Maybe you should go get a really big crown and a shirt that says 'I’m a princess, so kiss my flank.'"
Twilight had to stop her jaw from forcibly hitting the floor. “Excuse me! Just who do you think you are?”
“I’m definitely not a nervous mare trying to act regal on my doorstep, but one of us is.” Sombra spoke with a dull sense of boredom in his voice.
“You... unbelievable jerk! I came all the way out here to have a conversation with you when I really should be blowing you to smithereens, and this is how you act?” Twilight said, voicing her indignation.
“Do it, then,” Sombra replied.
“What?” Twilight asked as her face contorted in confusion.
Sombra leaned his head in. “Blow me to smithereens. Do it. Do the world and I a favor, and just wipe me out already.”
As hard as Sombra seemed to be to read, Twilight was certain that he was one hundred percent serious, and that worried her. “I’m not going to do that, Sombra. First off, I’ve been told not to do anything drastic here, and secondly, I don’t just go around killing unicorns in the forest. I came for a conversation, and one way or the other, I’m going to get it,” Twilight said with some real determination in her voice.
Sombra let out a deep sigh. “If you say so, Princess, but I speak from experience when I say eradication is really more fun.”
Twilight tried to just let the comment slide. “I’ll keep that in mind. Now would you mind letting me inside?”
Sombra turned and walked inside, leaving Twilight to make her way in. The interior was as remarkably unremarkable as the outside. Everything inside was clearly either found in the forest or made from what it could provide. In the corner was a makeshift bed, and littered throughout the house, there were unfinished projects and various fruits and flowers that seemed to make up the food supply. Most of the light in the room was supplied by dimly glowing violet crystals. A few shoddy windows had been installed, which partially let the unpredictable weather of the Everfree Forest into the house.
Sombra walked to a seemingly random point in the mostly empty room and sat down. Twilight did her best to make herself comfortable in the meager living space. She again found herself in the awkward position of having nothing to say, but the burden of getting a conversation going obviously fell on her. What could she ask to break the ice with Sombra?
Twilight took a breath. “So… how's the weather out here?”
“Stupid, stupid, stupid.” Twilight mentally chastised herself.
“Cold,” Sombra replied.
“Oh. Not as cold as the Crystal Empire, I bet,” Twilight said, trying to recover the conversation.
Sombra gave his first show of emotion in the form of a grimace. “No. Not as cold as the Crystal Empire.”
As the failing conversation began to die off once more, Twilight racked her brain trying to find something better to say.
“So, have you lived here long?” Twilight tried.
“You know exactly how long I’ve been here. Since back before you had the wings and halfhearted princess attitude,” Sombra said with some spite.
Twilight tried to stop herself from feeling offended and focus in on more important matters. “So you remember me, then,” She said matter-of-factly.
Sombra actually looked insulted. “Of course I remember you. I couldn't do much at the Crystal Empire, but that doesn't mean I wasn't paying attention. Do you really think that I’d forget anything that happened that day? You think I haven't replayed every moment a hundred thousand times in my head?”
“Maybe you have, but I’m just having trouble figuring out why you’d let me in your... home here,” Twilight asked.
Sombra's face melted back into a dull stare. “If you haven't noticed, Princess, I can’t really be bothered to care too much these days. I'm just too tired. I could’ve said no, and you could’ve come back with a royal brigade to drag me out... Though given your social skills, the military raid is starting to look like the more pleasant option.”
Twilight was getting fed up with Sombra's hostility. “If thats what you honestly think then believe me, it can be arranged. Listen, I get it: you don’t like talking to me, and I don’t like talking to you. So why don’t you just come out and say how you escaped the Crystal Empire and what it is you’re doing here and make it easier on both of us?”
Sombra's face contorted with scorn. “What I’m doing here? Isn’t it obvious, Princess? I’m wasting away! I clawed my way up, I was beaten back down, and then I crawled to the most desolate hole I could find and tried to rot in peace. You’re the one who came here to pour salt in my wounds, so don’t pretend that you get to feel insulted here, you lavender nitwit!”
That one actually hurt Twilight's pride a bit. “Lavender what now?! You know that it was ME that got to the Crystal Heart that YOU hid, right? Could a nitwit have done that?”
Sombra rolled his eyes. “Somepony here is giving herself way too much credit. Princess, I don’t recall you coming out of the tower with the Crystal Heart in hoof to defeat me. In fact, as I remember it, you fell into every single trap that I set up. You lost to me. Then a dragon fell from the sky, a unicorn threw his wife, and somehow I ended up on the losing side.”
Twilight replayed events from the Crystal Empire in her head. Maybe she wasn't as effective as she remembered, but she still managed to succeed. “It was a combined effort by my old foalsitter Cadence, my brother and I. So I tripped a trap or two of yours. You should still know that it was me that managed to get Spike the Crystal Heart so we could defeat you.”
Sombra cocked his head. “And just what is a Spike?”
“Spike is the baby dragon you saw in the Crystal Empire,” Twilight answered.
“Wait, you knew this dragon?” Sombra asked.
“Of course I knew him. I’m the one who hatched his egg, and he’s been my number one assistant for a long time now,” Twilight said with pride.
Sombra began to laugh.
Twilight scrunched her face. “Just what is so funny about that?”
Sombra stopped laughing. “You see, usually it's the dragon that holds the princess captive, not the other way around.”
Twilight barely kept a shocked look off her face. “Spike is not my captive. Without him, there's no way I could’ve gotten to where I am now, and there's no way things would've played out the way they did in the Crystal Empire without him.”
This seemed to get some of Sombra’s attention. “Really? How so?”
Twilight stopped to recall the details of that day in the Crystal Empire. “The first time I tried to go through the door at the bottom of the stairs in the palace, I was trapped inside my greatest fear, and only Spike was able to shake me out of it. Then he was able to get the Crystal Heart outside when I sprung the crystal trap.”
Sombra narrowed his eyes slightly. “So then you did face your fear. Tell me, Princess, what was yours like?”
This seemed an odd detail to choose, but Twilight finally had him talking, and she wasn't about to stop now. “I was in front of Princess Celestia, and she told me that I’d failed my test. I wasn't going to be allowed to learn magic anymore, and she was so disappointed in me.”
Sombra scoffed harshly and contorted his face in disgust. “Really? You stare down your greatest fear, and it is just you being reprimanded for a poor performance? You honestly make me sick.”
Twilight was taken aback. “Just what do you mean by that, Sombra?”
Now Sombra spoke with pure hostility in his words. “What I mean is that normal ponies don’t have such trivial terrors. When ponies I knew looked into that door, they saw true terror. They saw pain, loss, abandonment and misery. They felt the weight of the world on their shoulders as it finally cracked their spine and left them desperate. I shudder to think what a flowery life you must’ve lived to produce such insignificant fears.”
Twilight felt anger rise up in her. “A flowery life? You don’t know a thing about me, Sombra! I’ve faced down villains and monsters like you plenty of times. I’ve felt sad and defeated, but I always came back from it. I don’t need the judgement of a fiend like you!”
“You really think you don’t? Then whose judgement do you need? It's just Celestia’s, right!? You don’t need to prove yourself to anypony but her. You know, Princess, you make a much better servant than you realize!” Sombra practically spat at Twilight.
Twilight had officially had enough. “I’m not a servant; you’re just twisted, Sombra! You’re a vile, indigent monster that crawled out of the depths of Tartarus and should’ve ceased to be at the Crystal Empire.”
Sombra actually smirked. “Did you really need to come all the way out here to figure that out?”
“I guess that maybe I didn't. I think there was just a small part of me that wanted there to be more to you than that,” Twilight said.
“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint my dear princess, but this is what I am. Feel free to put in an explicit request for my public execution when you write your letter to Celestia tonight,” Sombra said.
Twilight could hardly believe Sombra’s gall. “Maybe I will. It would make me a better as a princess than you ever were as a king.”
Sombra threw his head back. “Oh, spare me. Don’t try to go waving that title of yours around like it should actually mean something to me. You don’t know a thing about what it means to earn your position in the world.”
“You’re wrong about me again, Sombra; I earned my position as a princess by passing Celestia’s tests and showing my connection to both magic and friendship. I’m sure it's more than you ever did,” Twilight accused.
Twilight's accusation seemed to enrage Sombra. “You are an empty-headed, big mouthed mare, do you know that!? You earned nothing! All you’ve ever done in your whole life is jump through hoops and reap the rewards of that fortunate life! I assume you were born to wonderful parents.”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Unicorn parents who no doubt could provide you with everything you needed to live and grow in the magic capital of all of Equestria, with a strong and loving older sibling to provide an even easier time for you. You were then taught by the best and given all the best opportunities until you were taken under the wing of the princess herself.”
“Lots of unicorns had those opportunities. It wasn't—”
“You said the pink one was your foalsitter, right?” Sombra interrupted.
“Cadence was—”
“An alicorn princess who was assigned only to you. Oh, but I’m sure that was perfectly normal. It was so normal for you to be given everything you could ever need and every advantage you could ever dream of from birth! Your knowledge was presented to you, and the friendship that you claim to be so important to you? I’ll bet my life that you didn't seek that out, and it just fell right in your lap.”
Twilight kept silent.
“I’m right, aren't I? You were groomed for and ushered into everything that you’ve ever done. Even right now, you aren't here because you want to be or because you want to make some sort of difference. You’re here because you were told to be here and because it's part of the responsibility that was handed to you on a silver platter! Did you even want to be a princess when you were young?”
Twilight tried to collect her thoughts. “Being a princess was every filly’s dream, but I never thought I would be one,” she admitted.
“That’s because you never really wanted to be a princess. You would have liked to be a princess, sure, but you never wanted to be one. You thought you’d like to be admired and impress Celestia because all your life thats all you’ve ever wanted to do and all you’ve ever done. You’d never make it happen yourself, though, and now that you are one, you act according to what you see as responsibility, not principle. So you know what separates me from you? Nopony ever gave me anything; what I took I earned.” Sombra finished, flashing a harsh glare.
Twilight hardly knew what to say. “Took? Took what?” she asked.
A fire seemed to light in Sombra’s eyes. “I took everything. I took my power, my possessions and the chance to live my own life. What you don’t realize is not all foals are guaranteed a good home. Some aren't even guaranteed a home at all. Do you remember when you were young and the world seemed to be a much better place? Well, I don’t; I’ve always lived in a world of scum and sorrow. Life gave me nothing but a barely beating heart and a grudge against all those ponies who could only look down on me. In a world like this, what am I supposed to do when life just beats me down? What should I believe in when I’m constantly pushed in the dirt? Who am I supposed to want to be when I’m beaten bloody, down in the ground?” Sombra let the questions hover in the room briefly.
“A normal pony may never have these questions answered for them, and so they have to do their best to make their own answers. The answer I found was that if you aren't just born lucky it doesn't matter what you want, because you only have a simple choice: you either live a pointless life of bleeding out all alone, or you become a monster. You know what my choice was. If I had to march over every other pony in my way because I was strong and they were weak, then I would do just that! While everypony else was busy fighting or comforting each other for whatever reasons, I faced everything head-on by myself! So you know what it really takes to succeed in the world? It isn't about following orders; that's how you become the slave. To succeed, you beat your body until it's calloused. You sharpen your mind until it can draw blood. You put a cold stone where your heart was and do whatever it takes to get what you want. Ponies who can't take what they want are better off just killing themselves.” Sombra finished as he was practically shaking.
Twilight looked at Sombra with a sense of wonder. “And that's how you get everything that you want? You shut out everypony else and try to run away from your pain?”
Sombra stared intensely at Twilight. “You don't run away from pain; you embrace it. You managed to reveal my real castle, so you must already know that. Ponies seem to think that dark magic comes from hatred, but that's not really true. Not directly at least. Dark magic is pain. You build up all your suffering and all of your misery, and you project it onto the world around you. When you use it, it makes you feel powerful and... alive. It's practically addicting. For ponies like me it's the pain that makes us real. We're those that aren't lucky enough to have happiness delivered to us, so we accept what pain makes us... or else it will destroy us.”
Twilight felt like she was starting to realize some things, like the pain in Sombra's voice he was barely hiding. She stepped forward and put a hoof up to his chest. Sombra flinched and instinctively looked away.
Twilight tried to look into his eyes. “You say you made yourself take everything, but you never really got what you wanted, did you? You're still alone.”
Sombra wouldn't look Twilight in the face. “I had nothing and nopony to begin with. So what if I die alone? It's my funeral anyway. My whole life I kicked, I screamed, I raised Tartarus, and I always knew that when it all finally killed me, I’d smile as I left because I at least did something.”
Twilight didn't remove her hoof. “You traded more than you want to admit, Sombra. All the friends you could've had. The chance to find out where you belonged. The chance for love… for a real family.”
Sombra gave a mocking laugh. "Love? That's a dangerous word, you know."
"No, Sombra, it's not. Love is real, I've seen it, and it can change everything for a pony," Twilight replied.
Sombra shut his eyes and sighed. "I didn't say it wasn't real. I believe that ponies meet the one that they're meant to love when they're ready for it... and I believe that most of us never are. Like you said, I'm just a monster, and love is for a fairy tale or a princess, not for monsters like me."
Twilight felt a little sympathy rise in her. "Are you telling me that you don't like being a monster?"
Sombra looked conflicted. "I always knew what I was becoming; I always knew what I was doing. Nopony made me do anything... so I don't regret anything I've done. I always wanted to be a monster."
Sombra took a breath, and Twilight felt his heart beat pick up. Sombra turned his head, and Twilight finally managed to look him in the eyes. He looked heartbroken.
"Are you telling me the truth? Or are you just trying to convince the both of us?" Twilight asked.
A dam seemed to break in Sombra as he gave Twilight a sorrowful look. “You know that its too late… too late to admit a big mistake if I wanted to… There's just nothing I can do while the sun goes down on the whole life I wasted away. The good in me died a long time ago, and now no matter what, there's a part of me that just won't let me be happy. So I won’t apologize for anything I did or for anything I was, but I know the world will be better off when I finally just enter the shadows... so that's all I want.”
Twilight raised her hoof from his chest to his cheek. She gave some thought to her words, and then she spoke. “It's hard to see things through when you feel lost and it hurts just to be alive. One of the hardest parts about life is that we can’t go back. The time we’ve spent may never come back to us… but there's still always hope. I know you’re in a dark place; you have been for a long time, but it doesn't always have to be that way. You just need to find that light inside of you, that light that you hold on to in the worst of times that lets you know that there's always going to be a tomorrow, and that there's always going to be a chance to escape. I don’t believe you’re hopeless, and I don’t believe you’re irredeemable, but you have to open up. Give me a chance, give others a chance, and give yourself a chance. It isn’t over yet.”
Sombra listened intently, his mind taking in every word Twilight said, then he brushed away her hoof and gave a bitter laugh. “What is this, you trying to show off your princess talents again? Won't Celestia just love to hear about this?"
Twilight gave a sad look. “This isn't about Celestia, and it isn't about me. For once, this is somepony thinking about you, Sombra.”
Sombra gave a wry smile. “Why? After the things I’ve done? The things I’ve just said? Why would you even pretend to care, Twilight?”
"I guess maybe I'm back to thinking there's some more to you than I thought. As such, it might be my duty as princess to make some more trips over here until I am sure. So you might want to prepare yourself to have some company here for a while. Okay?”
Sombra seemed legitimately taken aback. Turning away he spoke. “I... could hardly care less about your royal posturing. Do what you will, and I will not stop you.”
Twilight gave a light smile. “Very well then, you should expect to see some more of me soon. I need to get back before my number one assistant sends a letter that’ll drop the whole Equestrian military on your head— Oh, and Sombra?"
"What?" Sombra asked without turning around.
"Don't give up," Twilight said pleadingly.
Silence hung in the room for a while before Sombra replied. "I'm not giving up... not yet."
Twilight nodded her head. "Goodbye, Sombra.”
Twilight turned and walked away.
********
Dear Princess Celestia,
I’m writing in regards to your request for me to speak to Sombra. I made the journey out into the Everfree Forest fully expecting to send Equestria into the next great war, but now I think I understand what you meant about Sombra not being a threat. In my estimation, the greatest threat that he poses is to himself. By speaking to him, I was able to really see all the pain and the anger that drove him to be what he was, and I saw what it has turned him into now. I assumed many things about Sombra before I spoke with him. He has done terrible, awful things, and so the only way I could rationalize this is that he was a terrible, awful pony. I feel this was the same determination I made about Discord some time ago, and we both know I’ve been proven wrong on that already. After speaking with him, I now think that Sombra is a pony that has had terrible, awful things happen to him, and hatred is the only thing that he could use to cope. During our conversation, he made me question many things about myself as well, and for a brief moment, I tried to imagine what I would be like had I had his life instead of mine. To be honest, I don’t know if I would’ve been much different from him if I didn't have you, and my parents, and Shining Armor, and all my friends. Sombra had nothing, and for reasons I really don’t understand, I felt so much guilt for having lived my life while he was stuck with his. I cannot in good conscience leave Sombra while all that's dark surrounds and suffocates him; nopony deserves that. I’m going to try to save him. I don’t know what my chances are, or if I can really achieve anything by doing this, but Sombra’s kept up his fight alone for long enough. I think you’ll understand this decision, and I hope it makes you proud.
Sincerely,
Princess Twilight Sparkle