> Gone
>  by IGIBAB
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Gone
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sister.

I raise my eyes towards you.

You are up here. Your face is looking at me with an accusatory eye. My own eyes, they are crying. What have you done...? What have I done...?

I stay here, looking at you, my heart denying the truth, denying the reality of our actions. This moon which you refused to lower now bears the stain brought by that dreadful disagreement.

But it is time... The sun must rise. The moon must set. It is what Equestria awaits. Is this my punishment? As I am still trying to accept the fact that you are gone, I must already take on your role on top of mine? You who blamed me of stealing all that was yours, here I am now, stealing what the people knew you for...

Your face passes below the horizon. A new moonset for Equestria. A new sunrise. But his warmth doesn't reach my body, doesn't pierce to my heart, doesn't dry my tears. Oh, sister.

They are here. Our subjects. In front of me. They don't understand, they ask me questions about what happened.

I answer. I explain, the tragedy of your heart, the indecency of my ignorance, the answer from your pain. But it's not what they hear. They see it as arrogance, madness, insolence. They are scared. They thank me. They declare me saviour of Equestria, only rightful ruler.  

Why are they doing this? What did I say wrong? Where was the mistake in my explanations? Why am I the only one crying for you?

Is this the extent of my ignorance? Was I so blind? How much did my light eclipsed your night? Is this why I only see indifference in their eyes, when I tell them about your oh so harsh punishment? And the only compassion they have is for me?

Sister... I rule now alone. Equestria awaits my decisions. But they act like nothing ever happened. I reigned during the day and there was no one to be reigned on during the night, so it does not change anything for them. They do not realise it.

I receive dignitaries from the great cities. We talk about your departure and they come to this very conclusion. Their only worry is regarding dreams, but a unicorn proposes to take care of the risks of nightmares with magic. They see a business opportunity.

I can not believe what I'm hearing, or seeing, or feeling. Here is what your disappearance means to them. All day long, here is what I heard. Even though my legs are still shaking from what happened, even though shudders of tears are still affecting my eyes. Their worries manifest themselves towards me, and not towards you. Even though I am still here and you are not.

And comes the sunset. My first without you by my side.

A cycle earlier, you were there. Bitter, and I could not figure why. You didn't spoke a word. As you had done so for the past weeks. I thought you would confide in me, when the time would be right, I thought you trusted me. But in truth, you hated me. You were never going to tell me.

Or rather... I did not knew how to listen. I think back, to those moments, where you confided to me your sorrows which you concealed in doubts. Sometimes I was too busy, sometimes I did not took them seriously. How guilty I feel...

The sun is setting and your face welcomes me again, in the obscurity of the night and under the silvery light of the moon. I observe you, as my heart tightens a little bit more than it was all day long.

"Even gone, she'll continue to watch over the night."

Your favourite servant makes me jump. I did not hear her come on the balcony. She is looking at you. I also turn my eyes to you.

"How much time, princess?"

She is cross with me. I can hear it. And how could I blame her? I answer, in an undertone, a millennium. She stays silent for a few seconds.

"Can I stay at the castle?"

I tell her to do what she wants. That it doesn't matter to me. She was your servant, you should be here to tell her. I can not send her away, nor force her to stay.

She respectfully bows. Not to me. But to you. Before leaving.

I sit down on the balcony, observing you. Tears come to my eyes. The same questions from this morning return. What have I done?





One week since you left. Equestria keeps on. Days keep on. The sun and the moon succeed one another.

This morning, a guard set off one of the traps I had put for you. We had to go look for him in a room filled with armours and spider webs. I think he is going to give his resignation.

I had made this trap three days before your departure. To get revenge for the enchanted tinsel from the week prior.

When I think back about it, I laugh a bit. When I think back about it, I cry a bit.

Here I am, eating in the dining room. Empty. This immense room, its long table. And I am alone. Your chair is still facing me. Empty.





"One year..."

I finish lowering the sun and raising the moon. Your servant is there, by my side. It has been a few months since she opened up to me. She comes to see me at nightfall. I don't know what she does the rest of the time, she stays on your side of the castle, most likely. I dare no to put my hooves there.

From what I know, there are two more of your servants who have remained. The others went back to their home.

I breathe in slowly, looking at you. Only nine hundred and ninety nine years left, that's what I say in a hushed tone.

"I miss her..."

Me too. But I think we are the only ones. And we are here because of that. You will come back, one day. Here is our hope.

"Does she see us?"

I do not know. Do you see us, do you hear us? Do those thoughts reach you?

"I hope she doesn't see Equestria during the day..."

It is cruel to say, but I hope so too. You, who were so alone and now up there, plunged into a thousand years of forced loneliness, I hope you do not see the world. I hope you do not see the lack of consequences of your departure. Because there was, on my heart, on those who held you dear. In appearance, Equestria is doing fine, but if you had not been there, who knows where we would be. Against Discord. Against Sombra. There are ponies, here, who know your importance.

"She sometimes appears to me, in dreams..."

Me too... And in nightmares. This horrible night. But I do not think you are responsible for it, sister. Dreams are not being watched anymore, and our subjects take this as a curse from you. It is no use, they think of you as the evil you fought, despite everything I can tell them.

I am starting to grow tired of this place as well. Half of this castle is not of any use anymore. I thought that sealing the Elements into stones so as to not see them any longer would suffice. Exposing them at the entrance, even hidden, was probably not the ideal place for the instrument of our torments. I also had Discord's statue moved to another place. His smile gives me the feeling he is taunting me. As if he had known.

But the castle itself tires me, saddens me, infuriates me. Every hallway reminds me of your presence, every tapestry your smile, every stained glass our separation. My failure. Your hatred.

Every single day, ponies ask me when will the wall be fixed, when will I organise the restoration of the palace, but... I do not have the courage for it. I do not want to erase, even just a bit more, one last trace of you.





"Ten years..."

I look at your servant, as the sun is rising. She remembered. Everypony remembers. The summer solstice. The day of treason, as they call it.

She still lives in our old castle. But she comes to see me every evening, in the new palace of Canterlot.

"May I ask a... difficult question, your highness?"

After all this time, she started to respect me a bit more than back then. Not the kind of respect coming from a subject or a servant. But the respect of a mare who understood that, despite what I have done to the mistress she loved so much, I never wanted for it to be this way. And even that I was foolish enough to not see it coming.

I let her ask that question.

"Wasn't there any other way...? Was it inevitable? Her wild rebellion, and her oh so cruel punishment?"

She was not mistaken... A harsh question, indeed... And I hear in her voice the regret from having to ask it. She understands that I may not have the answer, but also that you, despite all the admiration she has for you, are also to blame, at least in part. But she wants to know. She needs to know, even after all those years.

I explain to her. That things could have been different, if I had been less deaf to your problems. But things were not. That reality is what it is, that our actions have the consequences they have.

I did not send you away for a millennium on purpose. The power of the Elements was too much for a single mare in pain. It is only when it was acted that I felt the harshness of the sentence I had pronounced.

This is not fatalism from me. Those are regrets which have been looking for an excuse for ten years now.

I think she accepts it. In any case, she shivers, facing the sun, holding back an emotion. Sadness, probably. I spot melancholy in her eyes.

I then venture to ask her: may I also ask a harsh question?

She observes me, it is pretty rare that she does so, intrigued. But I am also curious, so I ask her, why does she stay?

She answers, without the need to think about it:

"Because it is my place. And hers. By her side, covering her needs, be she physically present or not. Over there she wanted me to be, over there I'll stay. And the others still there think the same."

I look at her, with a slight sadden smile. You were loved, sister. Maybe not as much as I was admired, not on the same scale. But if I had vanished, I doubt that even a single person would still be taking care of my belongings. We were blind, you and I.

"Princess...?"

She seems troubled. I invite her to say what's weighing on her heart.

"You who control the sun and moon... You who decide day and night... Can't you... make them go by faster? Elapse this thousand years in one? Make her come back sooner?"

A heartbreaking question. For her and for me. If only it was that simple. If only rising and lowering the sun could make the time pass faster. But it is not the case. And, deep inside her, she knows it. It was a vain question, but necessary, so that her mind could be at ease. Eliminate that last hope.





Luna... Are you still observing? Are you here?

Your servant. Your favourite servant. This oh so kind pegasus. Who kept me company during your years of absence, who was the only one willing to speak of you in good, to have known you enough to share stories, anecdotes, memories.

Her coffin is slowly descending under the earth. I'm burying her. At moonrise. Behind our castle, where your light will be able to shine down on her.

I found her dead yesterday evening, taken by age in her quarter, after noticing her absence. She who almost always came at sunset, to see you. She was the last one living in the castle. Here she is, alone, in the garden.

The two others left twenty or thirty years ago, when they understood. And how foolish I am for not seeing it as well.

They will not see you again.  

It is no use staying. A millennium. Even their grandchildren will not know you. Nor will their grandchildren.

But yet, she stayed. Despite the fact that she knew, from the very first night. She would not see you again. She counted the years before your return, and the years of her life, knowing fully which one would come to an end first.

And yet she stayed.

Oh Luna... She left as well... More than nine centuries left to wait. May you come back soon, Luna.

I was blind once more. Counting every year in front of her. I thought I was giving us hope. One less year waiting for you. But she, she already knew. And I wasn't seeing it. Will I ever learn?

May she find rest. She who never ceased to watch over you.





A century. A single century. A century looking at you setting and rising, each day, so far away.

And now years alone, without anyone who knows you. It is over. Almost no living pony has known you, and the only ones who saw you as children are starting to lose those memories. Or even think they were never really true to begin with.

I can not talk about you to the guards. It was already complicated enough with what little interest they had for you. But now, I sound like a mad mare to their ears. And how could I blame them? You did not even lived here. One wing is reserved for you, but for now, it is empty, used for storage or ambassadors.

Here it comes. This hundredth sunrise. The hundredth summer sun celebration.

Nine hundred years left.

Come back soon... I miss you...

Will I even hold on...?

Come back soon, Luna... We are so lonely...





Five hundred years. Five centuries. Fifty long decades. And the only thing left of you is this celebration they named "in your honour". Nightmare Night. The night where the mare of nightmares takes foals away, unless they make an offer to her.

Here is your role. Even though you barely had time to wear this form, and that your only real action was to not lower the moon and attack me. You are the nightmares, which terrorised Equestria. Who terrorised it for so long that, the very morning, it even had to be explained to the ponies living in the villages nearby the castle.

So this is your myth, your legend. No matter what I say, no matter what I do, they dirty your name. They soil your sorrow.

So is the imprint left in history by Luna. What generations of ponies with short lives does to the truth. I was there. I saw you. I fought you. But what is the point in telling them, what is the point of talking about this. All those speeches only rub the knife in a wound which cicatrised the best it could around it. And their indifference has the effect of salt on the pain.

We did not manage to show them the beauties of your night, I did not succeed in showing them the goodness of your heart. They only see shadows in it, supposing it was there from the moment you were born, that you came into this world guilty.

More than blaming myself for not seeing your sorrow, I now hate myself for not even being able to rectify the vision they have of you.  

Your hatred is legitimate, Luna. I stole the attention you deserved and I soiled your name.

Maybe they will forget their hate, within the next five centuries.





Only one century. And a question is starting to haunt me. How will you come back? Will I see Luna again, or Nightmare Moon, in a hundred years? Will I be faced with a repentant, hesitant mare, or a millennium of condensed hatred?

What should I do? Welcome you, me who was your executioner? And if you are still angry? Punish you again? Show the world that in a thousand years, I have not learned anything?

I do not have the strength to bear the Elements anymore. They are still in the castle. I do not want to see them again, them who deprived me of you.

I need a solution.





Luna...

How much time since I thought about you like this? This year. This so long, never-ending year. It ends tonight.

I see you. In the sky. For the last night. But I am scared. So scared. I do not want to fight you. Not this time. I do not want to make mistakes again.

I am guessing you are still resentful of me. I who took everything from you and punished you when you were saddened by it. That is why you will not see me. The day will not oppose the night. If darkness should fall, then so be it. It would have been my fault a thousand years ago, it will be my fault tomorrow.

I hope my student will show more wisdom than I was able to. I hope her words will reach you. I hope she will find a better solution. Otherwise, I fear for the future of Equestria.

See you tomorrow, sister. Be it in a dream or in a nightmare.