How monstrous do you have to be before you can no longer earn forgiveness?
Sixteen years ago, Princess Cadance was forced to adopt a changeling grub as her daughter and Flurry Heart's younger sister. Her name is Cheval, and she was always intended to be a living weapon to be used against Cadance and her family.
In one story, that's exactly what she became, despite all her efforts to be otherwise.
Cadance, Shining, Flurry, I’m a rapist and a murderer.
The words were there, right on the tip of Cheval’s tongue, and she should have been saying them. They should have been the first words out of her mouth as soon as she arrived home. She shouldn’t have broken down in tears, she shouldn’t have let them take her into the palace and into her bedroom, she shouldn’t have let them get anywhere near her. On the theory that she was still a princess of the Crystal Empire with some level of authority, she should have called for the guards and had herself arrested on the spot.
Or executed.
But she didn’t do any of that, because it wasn’t enough that she was a rapist and a murderer, she was a liar too – lies by omission, outright falsehoods, misdirection, she’d used them all on herself and others. So the changeling that had been forced on the nominal rulers of the Crystal Empire wore Flurry Heart’s form and lay on a bed she didn’t deserve with her pillow in stolen hooves and a stolen face buried in the pillow. The tears were real enough.
She didn’t know how long she spent crying, but the sun was sinking beyond the horizon on her bedroom window by the time she finally lifted her head from the pillow. Flurry was still there. She’d known, of course, since a mixture of worry and anger and love had been pouring off of the alicorn the entire time. Cadance and Shining Armor weren’t there…which was stupid of them, given what she’d looked like when she stepped off the train, what she still was behind the illusion. She shouldn’t have been left alone with anypony.
Flurry had noticed Cheval’s movement, and looked to her. She didn’t smile, and Cheval was glad of that. “You…kinda’ smell,” Flurry said.
Cheval was less glad of that, even though she could sense that the grim attempt at comedy was soaked in worry. She looked away from Flurry and at a crystal wall instead. “You do,” Flurry continued. “I’m not surprised, you never notice how you’re smelling, even when you – ”
“Where’s Mo – where’s Cadance? Shining Armor?” Cheval interrupted. She could feel them, their love for her, somewhere in the palace.
Flurry took several seconds to answer. “Mom and Dad,” she said. That was it. Just who they were to Flurry and who they couldn’t be any longer to Cheval, not where they were.
“Where are they?”
Cheval felt movement on the bed, then hooves on the crystal floor. “Reading Amaryllis’ ultimatum. Talking it over. Figuring it out, deciding what’s best.” Flurry had come up alongside her, knelt down so she was eye level with Cheval. “I can get them.” Cheval looked to Flurry, the sister she had been forced on. A normal pony would have felt the love coming off of her, nevermind a changeling. The undeserved love. Flurry Heart loved her.
She really was the stupid one, wasn’t she?
Cheval sloughed off Flurry’s stolen form, took on her real one, the one with a carapace and holes in her legs and fangs. Her bed creaked a little at the sudden change in mass. Flurry opened her mouth to speak, but Cheval beat her to it, the words pouring out as quickly as they could, before she had any chance to think about stopping herself.
“I’m a rapist and a murderer. I raped a griffon. His name was Gideon. I made his ex-girlfriend watch…her name was Gia, and I’m the one who broke them up. I’m pregnant too. I enthralled griffons I pretended were my friends, I don’t even remember who, to make sure no one interrupted me. Then when Amaryllis came to get me I made them all attack her, but it wasn’t Amaryllis, they just killed a drone she had sent. And then Amaryllis’ other drones and some Revolutionary Guard I think she enthralled but maybe not killed them all. That’s why I stink. I’m covered in blood and cum.”
Flurry froze after the first word, and all the love that Cheval had felt sputtered and faded to nearly nothing. She remained still for a few more seconds as Cheval continued, but eventually stood and turned around, walking away at a deliberate, quick pace. The last words that Cheval said to her were as the youngest alicorn was going out the door.
Cheval was alone. She buried her head in her pillow again, reaching out, feeling, wondering where the unicorn and alicorn she’d been forced on were. Sometimes if she tried hard enough, followed the feeling of love enough, she could pinpoint where it was in the palace…
Half an hour later, by the time Flurry would have made up her mind about what to do with what Cheval had said and then gone to find her parents, she lost the sensation of Shining Armor's love. She sucked in a breath and held it. Moments later – for the first time in her life when both her mother and her were in the Crystal Palace – she felt Cadance’s love fade beyond her ability to feel it.
They’d hate her now. She’d be sent back to Griffinstone on the first train tomorrow, tried for what she’d done, executed. Either that, or they’d decide to turn her over to Amaryllis, give the monster she was back to the monster that had birthed her. Either way, they’d hate her, and she’d stop hurting them by her mere existence, being a weapon that could be used against them simply by being alive.
Cheval breathed out. It was difficult. It came out ragged, hardly getting by the lump in her throat. It felt as hard as breathing was after she molted.
“Good...” she began, but even as she started to say the words, she felt it again, a faint tickle the back of her throat that she reflexively swallowed and recognied the sensation of immediately...love. Love tinged with disgust and fury, but still love, getting closer to her room. First from Shining Armor, then Cadance.
Cheval's eyes were as wide as they could get when she heard the angry hoof-stomps on the floor of father and adopted mother entering the royal apartments and making their way to her room. Feeling...feeling like they did whenever they'd come to scold her after she'd done something wrong. The anger was multiplied a thousand times over, yes, but the love...somehow it was still there. It was all still there, even after what she'd told Flurry...what she'd told them.
They still loved her.
They still loved her.
Cheval screamed a sound no equine creature could reproduce. Her wings buzzed in fury. She put her fangs to use on the pillow underneath her and tore it apart, then tore apart her bed. The pair of Crystal Guard that patrolled the royal apartments rushed to the door, beating Cadance and Shining Armor to her as they sought to protect their sovereigns, but she hissed at them and used telekinesis to shove them away and back outside. That was about when her conscious thoughts ended for a time and there was just a vague sensation of noise and thrashing and destruction.
When she finally came back to herself, she was in her bathroom, clutching a piece of broken crystal-glass and trying as hard as she could to jam it into her throat at the soft gap in her carapace where the neck met the head. But her hoof was seized in a blue effervescence, halting it from doing more than mildly stinging while powerful white forelegs were physically trying to pull her own from her throat. In the shattered mirror, she saw Cadance behind her and Shining almost on top of her, both crying and shouting something, but she didn’t hear them.
“Don’t stop me!” Cheval screamed. Her horn glowed green as she tried to put her newfound magical ability to enthrall others to use. “Don’t stop me! Don’t stop me! DON’T STOP ME!” But it didn’t work. Shining Armor had been enthralled by a changeling queen once, one much older and stronger than Cheval, and it was never going to happen to him again. Her attempt didn’t work any better on Cadance.
Pink hooves joined Shining’s. Flurry Heart was there now, and Cheval wasn’t a match for the three ponies. Flurry grabbed the crystal-glass shard and yanked it from Cheval’s hoof, a slight spray of red blood hitting Cheval’s eyes as Flurry cut herself on it, adding pony blood to the griffin that still stained her. The blue glow of Cadance’s spread across all of Cheval’s body, and was joined immediately by Shining Armor’s and Flurry Heart’s, freezing her in place.
They tried talking to her, but Cheval didn’t listen. She screamed and struggled. She called them every single insult she could, the gist of which was calling Shining a whore and Cadance a moron and Flurry a retard, anything to get them to hate her so she could stop hurting them, but it didn’t work. Tears started falling from her as she shouted. Cheval had been sure she’d cried all the tears she possibly could have had left in her last night, but apparently not.
At some point, the palace physician arrived, and the Crystal Guard, taking over for the unicorn and pair of alicorns in holding her still. There was a needle and one-one millionth the pain that Cheval deserved. Then everything was dark.
The first thing Cheval noticed as she woke up the following morning was feelings of anger, worry, disgust, and love. She almost ate the love out of reflex, until she realized whose it was. She opened her eyes, slowly, groggily, and found herself looking at her father - at Shining Armor.
Unlike Cadance, Cheval couldn’t pretend that Shining wasn’t her real father to make her life and her decisions easier. He was no matter how she tried to look at it. Her and tens of thousands of other changelings across the North.
He’d also been the colt-toy of Amaryllis for nearly twenty years, and before that, a victim of Queen Chrysalis. Just like she had with Gideon, Chrysalis had stolen his will and forced Shining to plow into her the next batch of Badlands changeling drones. Raped by Chrysalis, raped in all but the strictest definitions by Amaryllis, it was nothing short of a miracle that he could ever stand to be near any changeling, let alone raise one as a daughter.
Cheval tried to reach out to Shining, but found her hoof strapped down to the bed she lay on. The dull thrum from an anti-magic crystal, adapted to work on changelings, over her bed told her that her enthralling abilities wouldn’t work either, even without taking Shining’s vastly improved mental fortitude into account. So she settled for shifting to face him as much as she could and put all the force she could through the drugs still in her system to her next words, the most important thing she’d ever asked her father to do for her.
“Kill me.”
Shining reached out, but only to put a hoof on Cheval’s shoulder and rub her gently. “That’s...that’s trauma talking.”
“It’s common sense,” Cheval countered. “I’m a daughter you never should have had. I’m a monster who shouldn’t have been born. I’m killing this family, this kingdom, just by being alive. I’m...kill me, dad. Kill me. Please. I deserve it.”
“No,” Shining said instead. “No, you don’t.”
Cheval sneered. She stared up at the ceiling. “Trauma. I'm not traumatized. I didn't get raped, I did the raping. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed every minute of it, when I raped Gideon. And afterwards I told him that he’d come to love me, that all I’d done was make things go faster but that it all would have happened anyway.” She turned and looked at her father. “I enjoyed raping Gideon! I enjoyed making Gia watch! Those were their names! They weren’t just some faceless griffons, they were people, griffons who thought they were my friends, and I raped them and got them killed!”
Shining’s anger and disgust spiked at that. He breathed in sharply, and turned away from Cheval. She thought that she’d finally gotten through to him, but instead, after several moments, he turned back around. The anger was still held in check. The disgust was at the gates but held behind them. And the love...the love didn't go anywhere.
“You were starving,” Shining said. “You didn't tell Flurry that, but that’s the reason, isn’t it? I raised you, Cheval. I know you wouldn't do this if you could have helped yourself.”
“Turns out you’re wrong,” Cheval countered weakly. Even to her ears, it sounded petulant.
“No, I’m not. Because if I was, you wouldn’t be telling me to kill you now. A monster wouldn’t care what happened to her family, or she wouldn’t tell her family. Instead it was the first thing you did once you’d gotten yourself under control.”
Cheval snorted, but Shining pressed on. “I was in the Royal Guard in Equestria once, before...before all this. Before I met your mother. We liaised with the Canterlot police sometimes, when crimes would happen on castle grounds or Crown property. Some of those crimes were murders. Do you know what ninety percent of murderers do, Cheval, when they’re crimes of passion? When they’d never meant to hurt anypony but something snapped in them and they killed a pony?”
Cheval didn’t answer, so Shining continued. “They don’t fall on their knees and beg forgiveness. They don’t turn themselves in. They don’t call themselves monsters. They claim that the victim deserved it, or they come up with excuses, or they run away and pretend it never happened. They rationalize it or deny it and continue to think that they did nothing wrong, that they just had a momentary lapse in judgment.”
“And I’m sure every rapist is just expressing their love for their victim in their own way, right? That’s how we rationalize it?”
Shining let out a long sigh. “This isn’t something we’re going to deal with in one conversation, Cheval. I just want to make something clear: I am angry with you - I am so beyond angry with you. I am horrified and disgusted. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to look at you the way that I used to...and if the family of the griffons you hurt ever finds out what happened and comes for you, I don’t think I’d stop them from trying to find justice.”
“You should just turn me over,” Cheval said flatly. “Might even do some good. I could tell them about how Amaryllis broke the non-aggression treaty less than a month after signing it. They might even believe me.”
“I might still do that,“ Shining said, “if I thought you'd get a fair trial, if I knew the International Party wouldn't simply use you as an example and kill you out of principle. If I knew you'd live.”
”I don't want to live. I want to die.”
The anger rose again, even as Shining stood up taller. ”No, you don't. You want to run away from what you did when you couldn't control yourself just like you ran away from home. You want to spit in Amaryllis' eye because you think that your death would actually do something to stop her, as though she hasn't already accounted for it like she has everything else. And you want to die because you think some big sacrifice will make you stop being a burden on your mother and your sister and me, as though..." the anger faltered a moment with his voice, but he continued. "As though you being dead would somehow be less of a burden for us. I already have to deal with the idea of my little girl being a rapist and a murderer - you think seeing her dead body would be better?"
Cheval looked away, not responding. No matter what her father said, she knew she was right. After a few minutes, she heard him turn around. Glancing, she saw him speaking to a pair of Crystal Guards that had been hovering just out of hearing range, telling the pair to keep her safe and watch her like hawks. She found herself reaching out her senses, grasping at her father's retreating emotions. The anger almost physically hurt and the disgust was vile, and a new emotion, a seeping depression, tainted everything...but the love was still there, where it shouldn't have been.
She let go of it. She wished she'd never known what it felt like in the first place.
---
The Crystal Guards wouldn't engage Cheval no matter what she tried. They ignored that she was a princess of the Crystal Empire and her demand that they loosen her bonds, deactivate the magic-nullifying crystal, or run her through with their weapons. No amount of begging or rancor or promises of anything - promises she emphasized by spreading her legs as wide as she could get them while they were bound - phased them. A thousand years out of date the Crystal Guard may have been, inept warriors on the battlefield for certain...but they did, finally, have discipline if nothing else.
Hours passed. With nothing to distract her, Cheval just stared at the ceiling, trying to will her life to end. She'd had no luck by the time she heard hoof-steps on a crystal floor that was more familiar to her than almost any other sound in the world. Her breath caught in her throat just as Cadance came into the palace hospital. She waved off the guards with a flutter of her wings, and within moments Cheval was alone with a mare who deserved better than to be her mother.
Cadance stared at Cheval. Cheval stared back. For about a minute, silence reigned over the Crystal Empire rather than any pony or changeling. Finally, Cadance broke the silence. "You didn't eat the muffins I sent. The love they had." Cheval shook her head slowly, and Cadance continued, under her breath, "how could you be so stupid?"
Cheval closed her eyes and turned away, not answering. Cadance came up to the bed and sat down next to it. To a pony's eyes, everything was absolutely still. If another changeling had been in the room, however, it would have known that Cheval was doing something almost unthinkable - making a concerted, determined effort to not gulp down the love that flowed without end from the Alicorn of Love.
Cadance broke the silence again. "Your aunt Double Time told me a story once, about her own childhood in the Northern Changeling Hive. I had told her that I wanted to understand changelings more, to understand the war, why it happened. What changelings are like. She told me about a time before her hive reformed, when they were all still starving for love, when she was a nymph. Amaryllis - who they thought made love, who they treated like a god, made an offhand comment that another nymph, a nymph who's name Double Time couldn't even remember, was 'very red'. She told me about how she and her fellow nymphs interpreted that to be a bad thing. About how they hid everything red they had, and then beat the 'very red' nymph to death."
Cheval had never heard that story before. She'd known, in an objective way, that Double Time had fought against the Crystal Empire in the war that would eventually birth Cheval. She'd known that must have meant that she'd hurt and killed ponies, and it wasn't surprising, given what she knew of Amaryllis, to learn that she'd hurt and killed changelings too. But she hadn't let it bother her, because Double Time was different now and had been for all her life.
She also guessed that her mother really did think she was stupid if she thought Cheval didn't see where this was going. "I wasn't raised in the Hive. I don't have that excuse."
"No, you don't." Cadance said. "Double Time grew up starving. It was with her all her life. She'd known hunger since the moment she was born, it was something she was used to, and she still, when she was less than half your age, killed another nymph as old as her out of fear of that hunger increasing, because that nymph was 'very red.'
"You'd never starved. You had no experience with dealing with it, and then...then to have this happen to you?" Cadance waved a hoof. "I don't know what a changeling queen's breeding instinct is like. I do know that every year millions of mares go into heat for the first time and it floors them. And some of them end up pregnant at far too young an age. I've dealt with those mares, helped them. Some of them are just stupid, some of them are just unlucky, but do you know what a common theme for so many them is, even the ones that aren't stupid or unlucky? Parents who didn't prepare them properly - or at all. And that's just heat. That's not even considering what was happening to you and..." she waved a hoof at her horn, then Cheval's own, the magic there, "...and what came with it."
Cheval couldn't stop herself from snorting. She looked to Cadance. "Don't do this. Don't even try. You didn't know I was going to end up being a queen and wouldn't have known what to do even if I was, not unless you wanted to ship me off to the Badlands for advice. So don't try to take the responsibility. And it's not like I was some idiot filly lifting her tail for a gangly idiot colt I thought was cute. It's not like I was some homeless whore on the street trying to exchange sex for food or money. I stole a griffon's mind and made him fuck me. You can't blame that on hormones."
Cadance was silent for several long moments. "I earned my cutie mark before my apotheosis," she said at length, looking away. "Back when I was still a pegasus, long before I fought and helped reform Prisma. Simpler days...I had two friends, Buttercream and Sky Chariot. I earned my cutie mark helping them come together as a couple, helping them find love. That was when I first learned my signature spell, the one that clarifies and enhances love as long as there's at least some love there. They two of them hate each other now, but not as much as they hate me. They hate me because not long after I brought them together, they started...drifting apart, the way couples do sometimes. And I couldn't let that happen. I wanted, I needed, to have them remain together as a symbol of my cutie mark, my special talent of love. So I cast my spell on them again, and again, and again, whenever they started drifting again, without them knowing. Stretching, inflating what love they still had for each other over and over again...until it finally burst irreparably."
Cheval stared. "That's not the same," she said. "You can't control minds. You always said your love spell isn't any different from a trip to a relationship councilor, just all at once."
"All at once. Whether the ponies I target want it or not. No, I can't control minds, but that doesn't mean I can't bend them. And without any kind of starvation or hormones or other drive, without any kind of driving force other than I willed it, with the best intentions in the world...I bent Buttercream and Sky Chariot's minds and hearts the way I wanted them to bend, and the result was I destroyed their relationship with each other and with me." She finally looked back to Cheval. "This isn't an excuse for you. This isn't me forgiving you for what you've done. This is me telling you that with a fraction of what you were going through, I did almost the same thing. I could tell you a similar story about your aunt Twilight and a spell called want it/need it. Give any being power they're not ready for, and they'll abuse it, and if you deserve to die for it then so do I and so does she and so do I don't even know how many other ponies across the world."
Cheval grimaced. "You didn't enjoy it."
Cadance's head titled to the side. "You think I didn't enjoy seeing my friends together? Didn't enjoy knowing that I was the reason they were still a couple?"
"It's not the same!"
Cadance paused at that, mouth open to retort, but then shook her head. "I...we don't have time for this. Maybe some day we can compare crimes, learn if either of us have done or suffered enough yet to make up for what we've done. That wasn't why I came here. I came about the..." Cadance hesitated again, then lifted a hoof and indicated Cheval's stomach. "The result, and what you want to happen."
Cheval shifted. She had been raised thinking she was a changeling drone - sterile, a being for whom sex was intellectual rather than biological. But for Flurry Heart, it wasn't. The family didn't know if she was like most alicorns, if she was sterile or not...but since Cadance hadn't been even if only the once, and since Flurry aged, assumptions had been made. Flurry Heart had been given the Talk once she'd been old enough, well in advance of her first heat. Cheval had attended, for support if nothing else. Cadance had wanted ensure that Flurry was informed, knew what sex was...and knew that, if it turned out she wasn't sterile, if she could get pregnant and did, she would only carry the foal to term if she wanted it, if she was ready.
Or in short, Cadance was asking if Cheval wanted to abort the thousand changeling eggs, fertilized by her rape of Gideon, even now gestating inside of her. Cadance knew a spell and everything.
Cheval was quiet for more than half an hour as she thought. A deep and instinctive part of her wanted them to stay, and damn that she didn't know where she was going to get the love to keep them alive, where she would lay them, how she would handle everything. But that part of her was more or less what had gotten her into this mess in the first place. And besides, she wanted to die anyway. That would kill the eggs by default.
Cheval looked to her mother. "I want them gone."
Cadance took a steadying breath. Her horn lit up, its normal blue at first, but quickly edging darker and darker, until it glowed black with faint tinges of green. Magic of the same color appeared around Cheval's abdomen for several long minutes. Disappointingly, it didn't hurt. At length, the magic left her, and Cadance exhaled. She looked at Cheval. "This doesn't change anything," she said. "It doesn't erase anything, it doesn't make anything better, it doesn't even start to."
"Yes it does," Cheval countered. "The last thing the world needs is more beings like me."
Cadance closed her eyes, and shook her head. "Just yesterday morning, I would have given anything to have the world be full of beings like you...like I thought you were. Now..." She shook her head again, turned, and left.
---
Cadance left, and the guards returned. Frustratingly, one checked Cheval's restraints, and tightened one that she had been surreptitiously loosening for the past several hours. When their shift changed, Cheval had no more luck with the two new Crystal Guards that came. Some morbid part of her wondered idly if suicide was always this needlessly difficult for beings who attempted it.
The Crystal Palace's infirmary had large windows, so at least Cheval could track time. The sun was setting, turning the sky a bright orange, when the visitor Cheval wanted to see least of all arrived. Flurry Heart came in and ordered the Crystal Guard back, and they complied, leaving Cheval and her older sister alone. Flurry still wore the bandage from where she had cut herself last night stopping Cheval's attempt to put herself out of everyone's misery.
This time, there wasn't awkward silence. As soon as the guards were out of earshot, Flurry came right up to Cheval, putting both hooves on the edge of Cheval's bed and staring at her. Her wings were spread wide in anger. "Do you know...do you know what the worst part of all this is, Cheval? The worst thing? It's that you're not even sorry."
"I am," Cheval said.
"Not for what matters." Flurry countered angrily. "You're sorry for being born, as if you had a choice. You're sorry that Amaryllis is your mom. But you're not sorry for what you did. You tried to kill yourself, you've been begging the Crystal Guard to kill you and dad to kill you and you're probably going to beg me to kill you not because you raped and murdered griffons, but just because of something you actually can't control!"
Cheval looked away. "What's it matter, Flurry? As long as I'm dead, one way or another."
"Would you do it again?"
Cheval started, and looked back to her older sister. "What?"
"Would you do it again?" Flurry repeated. "If you got out but didn't kill yourself but if mom and dad sent you away because they can't stand you. If you had to live on your own again, would you do it again? Rape someone else?" Flurry sneered. "Are you looking forward to it? Putting that fancy new magic to use breaking someone - "
"Stop..."
" - and forcing them inside of you? Or do you want to switch it up, maybe become a stallion and put a mare under you..." Cheval shook her head furiously, but Flurry just leaned down. "Heat season's coming up, I bet it would even be easier. All the young fillies and colts out there, doing half the work for you. So would you?"
"I don't know!" Cheval shouted. "I...I don't know, okay? I don't want to, I don't want to force myself on anypony, on any creature, ever again...I wish I never had! But I was so hungry and if I got that hungry again I don't know. It's not something I can take back. It's not something I can undo or apologize for or make up for or promise to you I'll never do again no matter how much I want to."
Cheval turned her attentions back to the crystal ceiling. It was perfectly smooth and reflective, but the reflection was warped so that Cheval appeared so thin as to almost not be there, while Flurry and her spread wings seemed to dominate the whole thing. "I want to die. I want to die for that, because I don't know if I can control myself if I get hungry again, because Gideon and Gia and a half-dozen griffins who's names I can't even remember are dead, and that's the only way I can think of to even try and make things right. I want to die because no matter what as long as I'm alive I'm a weapon, a tool, of Amaryllis' and no matter where I go or what I do, even if I just sat here forever, I'd be hurting you all. I want to die because I never should have been born in the first place. It doesn't matter why I die." She looked at Flurry. "So yes. I'm going to beg you to kill me, Flurry, or let me out of this so I can kill myself. Dad's wrong, you'll all get over me being dead, and without me in the way and ruining things by being alive everything will be better. Mom and dad won't have a daughter that was forced on them and you'll finally get the respect you deserve from the crystal ponies."
Flurry listened to that, before finally looking away. "You think I want it? Want their respect?" she asked quietly. "I don't want mom to die, of course I don't want that. But you think I actually want to rule the Empire if she ever did? I hate the Crystal Empire. I hate the crystal ponies."
If Flurry Heart had transformed into King Sombra and burst into song and dance, Cheval wouldn't have been more surprised. Her eyes were as wide as they could get as she slowly turned back to look at her older sister. "That's not true."
"Yes it is."
"I'm a changeling. If you hated the Crystal Empire I would have tasted it years ago."
"And I'm your older sister, and I grew up with you, and I remember back when you didn't even have hind legs, just this white...I don't know what it was. You looked like a maggot. I know how to hide my emotions from you."
"Why? Why do you hate them?"
Flurry glared down at Cheval. "Do you really have to ask that question? All my life I've grown up with the sweetest, kindest, gentlest mother in the world, who's never done anything but what was best for the Empire, who's given everything she has into trying to keep its ponies safe even though what she's had to do to do that is tearing her apart inside a little bit, day after day. But mom is the Alicorn of Love. Not just romantic love, all love. And I've lost count of the times that I've found her crying because she knows, she knows, that the crystal ponies love Amaryllis more than they love her, and if mom died and I became Crystal Princess, they'd still love Amaryllis more than me."
Flurry stood, and started pacing back and forth, flapping her wings in annoyance as she did. "Amaryllis, the one behind the War of the North, who killed or maimed thousands of crystal ponies and turned the Crystal Empire into an exarchy in all but name, who loots and pillages and conquers across the North, but it's okay because she comes back to the Crystal Empire and hoofs out spoils from those wars. Who cares what happens over there? Who cares what happened twenty years ago?" Flurry stopped pacing, and looked at Cheval. "Crystal ponies are cheap dates. They accepted Sombra, they didn't like him, but they accepted him because he had power." She started up again, stomping back and forth. "Then when mom and dad and aunt Twilight and Spike and all their friends killed Sombra, they accepted mom because she had power. Mom tried to show them a different way...but when Amaryllis showed up they accepted her for the same reason. Crystal ponies don't want a good leader or a kind leader or a just leader or even a competent one. They just want a powerful one. They want Sombra, they just don't want to admit it."
Cheval stared back. "The...the Empire's culture is still out of date. And of course they want a strong ruler, Sombra's still in living memory. They just want somepony who...who isn't like him, who they think can protect them from him, or their memory of him - "
"No, they want somepony exactly like him, just not actually him. And so that would be my job, then," Flurry interrupted. "If Amaryllis killed mom. If I took the throne. Either I bend knee to Amaryllis and keep her in charge and just be her exarch, or I somehow through some brilliant scheme and master strategy manage to turn a thousand-year-out-of-date rump nation with a fraction the power of the Hive into a force that can overthrow Amaryllis and be the next strong, powerful leader that the crystal ponies want. Thousands of changelings and ponies die so that I can be Flurry Heart, Hero of the Empire."
"You could do it. You're the smart one, despite - "
"I don't want to!" Flurry Heart exclaimed. "I don't want to play a decades-long game of power politics against Amaryllis, I don't want to send spies and assassins after her while avoiding the spies and assassins she sends after me, I don't want to fight a guerilla war, I don't want Equestria to turn around from dealing with the Second Storm or Squirk and come in and push Amaryllis back and prop me up so that the crystal ponies can have their next tyrant, the next Sombra, until somepony else more powerful comes along and unseats me. Because it's not worth it! They're not worth it! Because it won't change anything, it won't matter, not as long as the crystal ponies are still so easy! You can't force change on ponies who don't want change, all you'll do is pile up their dead bodies and make the survivors hate you!" She was all but hyperventilating now, and she finally stopped her pacing. Flurry tucked her wings away and put a hoof to her chest, taking in a deep breath, then letting it out slowly like their mother had taught them to do. It took several repetitions of this before she was calm enough to speak again. "If something ever did happen to mom...I'd abdicate. I'd abdicate before her body was cold. Congratulations, you'd get to be Crystal Princess."
Cheval took several minutes to digest everything Flurry said. "I don't want it either," she said, then caught herself, remembering what she had admitted, what Amaryllis had forced her to admit. "I don't...sometimes I wished that I was mom's only child. Sometimes...sometimes I thought of being mom's only child, of...of making myself an only child. The only one she loves. The heir apparent. But I don't think I'd ever, I wouldn't really - "
"Oh shut up," Flurry interrupted, waving a hoof. "Of course you have. And sometimes I've fantasized about not having a predator changeling sleeping one room down from me. Sometimes I've fantasized about making sure you didn't ever do anything to me." She glared at Cheval, and the changeling felt anger and hate rising. "Sometimes I've thought that you were going to kill and replace mom, or dad, or me, and I fantasized about killing you to stop it, about holding off a whole changeling army all by myself. But that's it, that's all they were. Fantasies. We all have fantasies." She looked away. "The first time I went into heat I caught myself fantasizing about dad and spent a week worried that I was a sick pony before I got my mind on somepony else and moved on and realized that none of it was real, just hormones and my mind. Fantasies don't mean anything. Acting on them does."
Cheval didn't miss the accusation, and flinched. She breathed in deeply. "Fine. I fantasized about killing and replacing you...but I would never do it. And I don't hate the crystal ponies like you do, I don't think they're as cheap as you think they are, I think that if they knew what Amaryllis was really like they'd choose mom or you in a heartbeat. And I might have fantasized about becoming their princess...but I'd never do that either. They deserve better than me, they always have. If you abdicated, I'd abdicate too."
Flurry stared at Cheval for a moment...then let out a small, empty, hollow laugh. "I know," she said. "I know. I...I always figured that you and me, we'd end up running off. Retire to Equestria somewhere. Cayo El Bayo or Las Pegasus. Be tourists...become a tourist attraction."
"Come see the former Crystal Princesses," Cheval said. Something happened with her mouth, and it took her a moment to realize she was smiling - not much, but just a little, for the first time in what seemed like forever. "Monday to Friday."
"Nine to five," Flurry added, her voice cracking as she stepped up to the bed and put her hooves on its edges again. After a moment, she grasped one of Cheval's hooves with both of her own. "Equestria standard time."
They stared at each other for a moment, then started laughing. Or crying. Cheval, the predator who ate emotions, honestly couldn't tell which. She just knew that Flurry's grip on her hoof tightened even as her sister leaned down, and pressed her forehead to Cheval's own. There were tears, that much was certain, but that was all for several long minutes as the two sisters just...just held on to each other for dear life.
At length, their breakdown ended. Flurry leaned back. "Why didn't you eat the muffins mom sent?"
Cheval shifted. "They made me sick."
"Not the muffins muffins, the - "
"The love. I know. That's what I meant." Cheval closed her eyes. "I wanted to stop hurting all of you. I wanted to get away from Amaryllis. I wanted to...to prove that I could be my own mare, that I could be more then whatever fate or happenstance or just bad luck seemed to have out for me. And when mom sent her love, when I tasted it...all they did was remind me of what I was giving up. What I'd left behind, who I'd left behind. So I threw them away, because I think...I think if I'd had even one, then that would be it, and I'd come running back home as fast as I could. Back to being under Amaryllis' shadow. Back to hurting you all just by being here."
"So instead you starved, you hurt yourself, and you turned yourself into a monster, and then ended up back here anyway. Hurting us even worse."
"I know. I know. But I didn't know, at the time, or maybe I didn't want to know, or..." She shook her head. "I had to deal with starvation, and hormones, and power. The deck was stacked against me. But I still tried to play anyway, and..." she opened her eyes, and looked at Flurry. "And now I have to live with that."
Flurry noticed the wording. She searched her sister's face for any sign of deception, but found none. "If...if I do untie you," she said, "If I turn off that crystal...what will you do?"
Cheval looked up at the crystal that shut down her magic and locked her form. She was silent for a long time as she considered. "I wouldn't run away," she said. "I...I wouldn't kill myself. I'd...I don't know. I don't know what to do. I don't know." She shifted. "Roll over off my back. Then...I don't know."
Flurry hesitated a moment more. Then she looked up to the crystal and flicked a little magic at it, and it turned off. She used her hooves and teeth to undo the straps that were holding Cheval down. Cheval rolled over. She grabbed the pillow that had been beneath her head and hugged it to her chest and barrel. Flurry kept her own hooves pressed against Cheval's forelegs. They didn't talk after that. Cheval didn't know what to talk about, and Flurry didn't try to fill the silence. But it was enough, for now. It was what Cheval needed. So she lay there in silence next to her older sister, and tried to figure out how she could have ever been so stupid.
Publicly, Princess Cadance agreed to the first of Amaryllis' ultimatums. The Crystal Empire would cease to exist, becoming instead the Crystal March of Queen Amaryllis' Northern Changeling Hive, severing all formal ties with Equestria in the process, including Cadance's claim to being a member of the Equestrian Royal Family. The title of Crystal Princess would be destroyed, and Cadance would be created as duchess - ostensibly a kindness, to lower Cadance's title so little - of the Crystal March. The March would have some of its former lands restored to it, including its border with Equestria, but it would henceforth be the duty of the duchess of the Crystal March to guard against Equestrian incursion into the lands of the Northern Changeling Hive.
The crystal ponies didn't mind. As far as they were concerned, it was just a de jure recognition of what had de facto been the case for twenty years. It was formalities, an excuse for a parade, but nothing more.
Princess Cadance wasn't much of a ruler and never had been. It had been a mistake to ever make her the sovereign of her own nation. But she wasn't stupid, and she knew that even this state of affairs would last only as long as it amused Amaryllis. One day she wouldn't wake up, poisoned in her sleep, or perhaps all pretenses of subtlety would be dropped and Amaryllis would have her hauled in chains before her to be executed. And she knew that all that would be required for the crystal ponies to accept this was the right wording and the right excuses from Amaryllis. The Alicorn of Love was the alicorn of all love, and though she loved the crystal ponies, she also knew that while they loved her, they loved Amaryllis more, and between their loves, they'd choose the changeling queen. And Cadance loved her family too much to let her love of the crystal ponies put them in danger any longer.
And so, on the night before Amaryllis was to arrive to begin the formal proceedings, Cadance and her family left the Crystal Empire. For any other group of beings, it might have been a harrowing experience, one that required weeks or months of planning ahead of time, using agents that could be trusted and moving from safe house to safe house across the northlands, always on the lookout for the agents and spies of Amaryllis.
But they all of them knew Twilight Sparkle, so instead all it had required was for them to gather together - a normal enough occurrence that raised no red flags - an undetectable message sent by dragonfire, and five minutes of waiting for Twilight to teleport to them, rest a moment, then teleport them all back to Equestria.
They took the Crystal Heart with them.
The following morning, Queen Amaryllis came to the Crystal March to find no Cadance to create as duchess, and no Flurry Heart or Cheval to take the title in her place, and no Crystal Heart to claim as a prize. There was a delay of several hours before a pony named Robust Core was found who may or may not have been only eight steps removed from the old royal family - King Sombra had been thorough in his extermination of the bloodline - and created as the Marquess of the Crystal March, not having done anything to earn a higher title than what his fiefdom required. Despite the theft of the Crystal Heart, Robust Core and Amaryllis promised that the whole of the northlands would be scoured for it, and it would be found, as would anypony who had aided in its theft.
---
Cheval had looked like her old self again, before her trip to Griffonstone, for the journey. It had been decided it would be easier than explaining to Twilight what had happened, at least until they were all out of danger. But none of her family would leave her alone...and though Cheval could taste that it was out of worry that she might relapse and try and hurt herself, she could also taste that it was out of a resolute determination to ensure that she didn't hurt anyone else. Cheval didn't intent to hurt anyone else...but then she had never intended to hurt anyone in the first place.
Twilight's castle in Ponyville had been marginally closer to the Crystal Empire than Canterlot, and given how long-range the teleportation had been even saving a few miles had helped Twilight immensely, so the family had ended up there. Flurry and Cheval shared a room. Without having to be told, Cheval decided not to leave it, grounding herself. Flurry stayed with her. Without knowing they were thinking the same thing, both marveled at how easily Twilight accepted the excuse of fleeing the Crystal Empire as the reason for Cheval seeming so depressed and the family as a whole being so out-of-sorts. It was, at least, a partial truth.
Cadance and Shining Armor went with Twilight to Canterlot to discuss with Celestia what had happened, what Equestria's response to the Crystal Empire situation was going to be. Amaryllis' outright annexation of it was not going to be recognized as a matter of course - there was no such place as the Crystal March as far as the government was concerned, and Robust Core was a pretender to the throne. The fact that Equestria possessed the Crystal Heart would likewise remain secret for now, as would the whereabouts of Cadance and her family - officially, Equestria suspected Amaryllis had slain them, but perhaps they would miraculously turn up alive somewhere.
But that was it. With the forces of the Second Storm still resurgent on Equestria's southern border, and the eastern ocean being threatened by a monstrous being calling itself Squirk and wrecking ships and drowning whole islands in its search for the legendary Flashstone Amulet, Equestria simply did not have the resources to reclaim the Crystal Empire without stretching itself dangerously thin and leaving its shoreline and southern border vulnerable. Despite the official condemnation, status quo was, one again, to be the official policy.
It didn't surprise any of them. Nor was Cheval surprised when Cadance, Shining Armor, and Twilight returned to Ponyville that night, and without even being in the same room or the same floor she could sense that Twilight's love for her had shifted and twisted, that the love was now tainted with anger and disgust and shock, and probably always would be forevermore. Her mother and father were honest to a fault, of course they had told Twilight what she had done, and probably Celestia too. Not that they should have done any different.
Cheval's ear-fins flicked when the door to her and Flurry's room opened. She had resumed her other form, her real form now, and glanced at the door without turning her head. She saw and she tasted the sudden shock from Twilight at the sight of her, could tell how Twilight was trying to reconcile the little innocent changeling nymph she'd known with the rapist queen that was now lurking in her castle.
"Twilight, can you give us a minute?" Shining asked. It was all Twilight could do to mutely nod, and turn and walk out of sight. Once she was gone, Cadance and Shining entered the room, and closed the door behind them. And then there they were. Three of the best ponies in the world...and a monster who didn't deserve them.
Shining spoke first. "I don't...know how to deal with this," he said. "I don't think...I don't think any parent could. All I keep doing is trying to find excuses for what you did and why you did it, but at the same time I keep realizing that if you weren't my daughter, I wouldn't be trying as hard, or even at all."
Cheval shifted, looking down. "There's no excuse," she mumbled. "There's reasons...but no excuse."
Cadance breathed out sharpy. She stepped forward. "As...as a family, we can't handle this. No real family could, no real family is mentally or emotionally equipped to be objective towards each other. So I...I spoke, with Princess Celestia. She always seems so wise, seems to always know what to do...and she reminded me that I'm not just your mother. I stated the intent to, but I never formally, actually surrendered my claim on the Crystal Empire, or my claim to the Equestrian Royal Family, and Equestria doesn't recognize the Crystal March and neither do I. So I'm not just your mother and you're not just my daughter. I'm your Princess, your liege, and you're my subject. I need to view this, to approach this, like that. And I've never been a good princess but damn it all, I need to...need to try."
Cheval stiffened, but nodded. She felt Flurry grab her hoof, and she grasped it back, as tight as she could. Cadance continued, though she reached out a wing and draped it over Shining Armor, leaned against him for support. "S...so, as your Princess, and with the permission and on the advice of my liege, the Solar Throne of Equestria, I am stripping you of your own title as princess of the Crystal Empire. I am rescinding my recognition of your bastard claim and disinheriting you as a member of the Royal Family of both the Empire and of Equestria. You have no claim and no right to anything. And...and I am disowning you. You are...you are officially not my daughter, not Shining Armor's daughter, not Flurry Heart's sister. You are not family, you have no family." She closed her eyes and took in a shuddering breath, holding it. "And, and I must wish...that you should die naked and alone, despised by everypony whom you have ever loved."
Cheval had shuddered at the start of Cadance's sentencing. By the end of it, by the last words that were part of Equestria's official rite of discommendation, her tears were flowing again and her own breath was hitching, but she nodded again. It was, all of it, more than deserved.
"And..." Cadance continued. Cheval had to put a hoof to her mouth at that to stop a wail of contrition - what Cadance had just done was already the most painful thing that she could have done to her, no matter that it was what Cheval wanted and less than she deserved...what more could there be? Cadance gave her a few moments before continuing. "And I am banishing you, to the Badlands Changeling Hive. I've written to King Thorax and he has agreed to suffer your presence for as long as I will not. You will remain there until...until I can think of some way or you can do something for you to make up for what you have done. I think you will be there for a very, very long time."
As exiles went, it was ideal. The Badlands Changeling Hive were all of them reformed changelings. There was nearly limitless love there that was given freely, so she wouldn't be hungry. There were three royal changelings there who all knew how to deal with a queen and so would not allow their subjects to be enthralled by her, even if she were to try. Really, it was where she should have gone in the first place, and maybe she could have avoided all of this if she had.
But it was still banishment, for real this time. Still sending her far, far away from her family - from what had used to be her family.
"I..." Cheval croaked, the simple word catching in her throat. She swallowed several times before trying again. "I...understand. I don't know what I could do or how I could possibly make up for what I did...but...but I promise I will spend every day trying."
"And I'll help."
Shining Armor started and Cadance's wings flared, and Cheval let go of the hoof she had been holding on to like it suddenly burned. All three turned to look at Flurry Heart. "What?" Shining Armor demanded. "No, Flurry, you're not - you aren't banished."
"Of course I'm not," Flurry retorted. "But sending off Cheval on her own was what started all of this. I'm not letting it happen again, I don’t care if you say she’s not my sister, I’m not going to run the risk of this happening again under Thorax’s snout." Flurry reached out again and grabbed Cheval's hoof, holding it tight as she looked into her little sister's eyes. There was love there...but hardness too. “I’ll keep an eye on her, I’ll help her, and I’ll make sure she stays in line. No matter what.” She looked back to her parents. "And even if you say no, I've known how to teleport since I was a yearling, I'm nearly as good as aunt Twilight, so you can't stop me unless you want to lock me up somewhere."
The two older ponies looked to each other, at a loss for words. Finally, Shining looked back, and nodded. "Fine," he said. "That's fine, Flurry, I'm fine with that. We...we can even visit, or you could visit us." Left unsaid was that King Thorax would be obligated by etiquette and protocol to lock Cheval in a cell out of sight of Cadance if ever and whenever she came for as long as she was there. It was something Cheval wouldn't mind in the slightest, in fact she fully expected to be locked in a cell out of Thorax's sight as soon as she got there anyway.
Cadance nodded along with Shining. "Yes. Fine...just..." She closed her eyes, then stepped forward, reaching out and hugging Flurry. "Be careful, be smart. I trust Thorax with my life, when he lived with us I trusted him with your life, but as for the other changelings there...I think...I think we've all learned to not put any trust in the words reformed changeling."
Flurry hugged her mother, then her father. For just a moment, with their love focused on their real daughter, all the anger and disgust they'd felt for Cheval slipped away and there was nothing but pure love. Cheval couldn't stop herself from eating some of it. She hated herself for it.
Eventually, the hug ended, and the ponies parted. Cadance and Shining Armor looked to Cheval, and after a moment Cadance lifted a leg. Cheval almost thought it was inviting her into a hug as well, something to take with her, and she rose to go to it...but instead, Cadance pointed towards the door of the room. "Go. There's a pegasus chariot waiting. It's...it'll be big enough for Flurry too. They'll take you to the Badlands."
Cheval hesitated a moment more, before nodding her head once and going out the door, and into her exile. Flurry followed her.
A week after they had left the Crystal Empire, Cadance and Shining Armor had left Twilight's castle, since it was perhaps the most obvious place in the world for Amaryllis' agents to look for them. Hiding an alicorn and a unicorn of impressive height and stature wasn't easy, but with magical help it was achieved, the two settling down into an isolated cloud-home that hovered in the air six miles from Cloudsdale. Everything they needed would be brought to them by Twilight Sparkle herself via teleportation, and only the three of them plus Cheval and Flurry Heart would know where they were. Amaryllis finding them was as impossible as they could make it.
A week after they had left the Crystal Empire, Flurry Heart and Cheval had reached the Badlands Changeling Hive. One of the words in its name was now a throwback and had been for years, for with the Protean Throne gone and no longer draining magic from the land, the lands surrounding the Hive had transformed into lush savanna, and the Hive itself was overgrown with moss and flowers and vines that turned it into a riot of colors. As the two sisters stepped from the sky-chariot that had brought them, they were met by King Thorax, Prince Pharynx, and Chrysalis. Flurry Heart was welcomed with open arms and embraces from all three. Cheval was looked at with and could taste something she hadn't expected and couldn't understand: pity.
A week after Cadance and her family had left the land now known as the Crystal March, a dozen crystal ponies in the capital, members of the Society for Equestrian Harmony, had been rounded up by Robust Core and the Crystal Guard by the authority of Queen Amaryllis, suspected of having robbed or aided in the robbing of the land of the Crystal Heart and aiding in the flight of its renegade former rulers. They were marched to the empty dias where the Crystal Heart had been on display and, in full view of the city, executed for treason. The intent was to show the crystal ponies cost of treachery to the Northern Changeling Hive. But some of them, hearing their fellows’ protestations of innocence and ignorance, wondered instead if it was the cost of allegiance.
