Author's Note
Pre-read credit for this chapter: TimberWolf65
Friendship is Magic
Celestia stood quietly by the window, watching. It was a beautiful night, but she'd elected to remain alone, manipulating orders so that her Royal Guard, ceremonial speakers, and other important ponies would unwittingly begin the Summer Sun Celebration without her. It had been a thousand years since Celestia actually missed her own national holiday, and much longer since it had been intentional. Tonight, though, was special. As she walked the crumbling halls of Equestria's former royal palace, the words of the legend she manufactured herself flowed through her mind and, involuntarily, from her lips.
"For on the longest day of the thousandth year, the stars will aid in her escape - and she will bring about nighttime eternal," the princess murmured into the pre-dawn twilight. The princess... she was relieved to know that tonight, it would end. Equestria would bow to one ruler, but it would be no princess. By whatever means, ancient darkness would consume her, and a monster would take her place. Every pawn was on the board and on its space, but the queen had lost her will to fight. The outcome was inevitable.
Well, maybe things were not quite that absolute. One little unicorn, Twilight Sparkle, was extremely consistent about surprising her. She had even learned of the Elements of Harmony, long abandoned in these ruins - hiding in the darkness of what became the Everfree Forest. In response, Celestia had given her a little push in the right direction - she preferred that term over "scheming and machinations" - for the sake of ponies. The princess knew she deserved what was coming, but her dear subjects did not. Maybe, just maybe, Twilight Sparkle would run into the right ponies; she certainly did not possess the power and qualities to wield all of the Elements on her own. And maybe, the studious but reclusive bookworm would be able to take whatever friends she found, stand before a millennia-old force of malice and jealousy, and save ponies.
Ridiculous, but even without their princess, ponies deserved a chance.
Celestia held no delusions about what was coming for her. What had once been Nightmare Moon had festered in her lunar prison, had stewed in her own envy and spite - and hurt. She had been too powerful to combat without the Elements, and when she was banished, the harmony within Celestia had shattered, along with her heart - she would never be able to wield them again. Even were she able, the darkness had - in its hunger - most certainly spent the thousand years building up strength. The princess had spent her millennium in mourning. Should she fight, she would be easily overwhelmed - if she could even bring herself to raise a hoof against her sister.
"Sister," Celestia whispered, a tear slipping from the corner of one eye as she hung her head. This monster, she knew, was her own handiwork. For over eight hundred years, she had loved her own day far too much, ignoring the needs of the fleeting hours of night. Over eight hundred years of hurt blossomed to fury almost overnight, when what was left of a beautiful sister found a forbidden way to get what she needed. That was what Celestia had schemed, had pleaded, had fought a bitter personal battle to destroy - because she had to. But now, she could not if she tried.
A brilliant flash across all magical spectrums - the vast weave of Harmony - drew the elder princess's attention skyward, but she didn't need to look to know what had happened. Four stars, drawing closer each day for a thousand years, had consumed themselves within the moon. The Mare in the Moon was gone; the terror had been freed. Celestia turned; what had become Nightmare Moon did love to make an entrance, and the center of the old tower's base would be the perfect dramatic position. As if on cue, star-spangled shadows drew a descending sphere of stars to the ancient stonework, a depiction of a full moon that was the centerpiece of the once-ornate floor. When it touched down, the sphere burst into hundreds of fragments, and a familiar, jet-black alicorn stepped forward. Celestia's heart moved her lips first.
"It's been far too long, sister." Immediately, a black lance of pure agony poured from Nightmare Moon's horn and through Celestia's shoulder, knocking her off her hooves in the process.
"You have no right to call me so!" Tears graced the princess's features once more, but it was not from the physical pain. "A thousand years, Celestia! It has been a thousand years since I have had the freedom to so much as move a muscle! A thousand years suffocating in cold space! No true sister condemns her kin to such a fate!"
She had plenty of good excuses. Chief among them was that she had expected the Elements of Harmony to turn her foe to stone or the like, as had happened with Discord; she had only used them once before, had no idea they would react differently to a difference in bearers, or targets, or circumstances. She had expected to bring the new statue to her garden, like Discord, to keep company at the very least. But what actually happened, happened, and loneliness had ruined them both.
"I'm sorry," Celestia said. She didn't bother to get up, or even to use a shield spell in her own defense, letting another ethereal spear pass through her thigh with a sob.
"Where were your apologies a thousand years ago? Stop your pathetic sniveling and face me!" All the old mare could fight was tears, and even then, she was losing.
"No. I won't stop you, sister." Even if she could win, she would never make the same mistake again. A thousand years on her own had already killed her spirit; now her body would finally follow.
"Then suffer as I have!" Death would be a bit too simple for what she had done, so she lay in defeat on the old stones of the floor for the second time in a millennium as enchanted darkness began to envelope her. Everything seemed to fade away, and she rocketed into space at impossible speeds. Awareness and sensation began to creep away, leaving nothing but her thoughts in a silent void. It was... peaceful. It was better than she deserved.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Light. There was light in the void. Celestia cringed, and realized she had a body to cringe with. It couldn't have been more than a few days; while time had ceased to be relevant, the princess's internal clock, habituated to more than two thousand years of waking up early to regulate the cycle of the sun, had not bothered her too many times. Force of habit had brought her to attempt to raise the sun before she even knew she was doing it, once. She was powerless, however; this light could not be her own.
Through constant choking on the vacuum, Celestia became aware that she was falling. The void around her brightened, revealing its billions of galaxies as they streaked past her, nothing more than blurred, distant dots. In moments, a planet appeared beneath her; her fall - no, descent - slowed, and she began to recognize landmarks when the air became thick enough to breathe.
Equestria. She was in Equestria. The sun shone above her, having risen of its own accord in the way it had done before she took control; it could only mean that Nightmare Moon was defeated. As she was carried down over the Everfree Forest, she could guess how it happened. Only one other pony in Equestria took the legend of Nightmare Moon and the Elements of Harmony seriously.
"She should have killed me," Celestia murmured to herself. If Nightmare Moon were once again banished, or the Elements had chosen some other new torment, she was not sure how she could live with herself for another thousand years - but defeat meant her sister was either tortured by Harmony for another millennium, or dead. She would know soon enough which was the case.
Celestia's hooves touched stone, and a burst of sunlight lit the familiar gray halls. Sure enough, Twilight Sparkle was there, along with five mares the alicorn had never seen before. Battered fragments of Nightmare Moon's war barding littered the floor, but still she was expected to congratulate her student, and whoever the other ponies were. She wanted nothing more than to weep, but her thousand years of habit could have fooled anypony. To any other pony, she was the proud mentor, congratulating her pupil on a job phenomenally well done - and in truth, the praise was deserved. The young unicorn had just saved Equestria - and every other nation on the planet, for that matter.
If only it hadn't come at the only cost Celestia could no longer bring herself to pay. Even as the manipulative, feel-good lies spilled from her tongue, she couldn't stop her eyes from following the trail of broken armor. She had to know, even if it would torture her for the rest of her possibly-indefinite life, what had been done to the pony she could not bear to live without. When she saw, the course of her speech changed abruptly, almost involuntarily.
She was alive. Not only that, but no trace of the black monstrosity that had overwhelmed her sister's mind and form could be seen, not in so much as scattered raven-hued feathers on the floor. The night princess of past millennia lay in a corner, barely conscious, but breathing - and apparently uninjured.
"Princess Luna!" Celestia said, addressing her directly as she stepped forward. "It has been a thousand years since I have seen you like this..."
What words she used scarcely mattered; the Luna of the past knew her heart. All that mattered was that she could finally lose a millennium's tears in the mane of the one pony she cared for most.
"My wings are sore," Luna complained, folding them close to her body as soon as she and her sister were out of sight and earshot of the royal court. Celestia's response, a light and practiced giggle, simply provoked her to snap angrily. "Do you think I jest? That was a long session, and it is normal for one's wings to tire when flared before the court for hours on end. And if that were not bad enough, maintaining the Royal Canterlot Voice is equally draining!"
Celestia kept herself from sighing as she walked beside her sister. Things had been going poorly since Luna's liberation from Nightmare Moon over the weekend. The younger princess was clearly overcompensating for her lost strength as she tried to resume her royal duties right away, but was too wound up and on-edge to perform or communicate - Celestia was having trouble getting through to her at all.
"I told you it would be a good idea to rest." Her voice was warmer than she felt, as was usual for difficult times. It was natural, and impossible to wholly rein in. It was also, she suspected, the cause of more than one angry tirade from her little sister. She knew she sounded kind and warm in conversations where such a tone was completely inappropriate. With most ponies, she could work around it with a careful choice of words, but Luna's present state was best described as "unstable," and even after a thousand years on the moon, she still read the older sister's meanings better than almost anypony. There was no getting around that.
"Oh, dear sister," Celestia sighed. She made sure not to add anything like "What am I going to do with you?"
"I wish to be left alone after you set the sun," Luna said. Celestia nodded, and opened the door to the balcony, realizing she'd been lost in thought and on autopilot most of the way there. She'd arrived at the top of the Celestial Tower almost without noticing.
"After you?" She gestured ahead with her horn, eyes on her sister. Luna didn't move.
"I will suffer no chivalry," she said, the last word nearly spat. "Come with me, or do not come at all." No words would help here, Celestia knew. She nodded once more and stepped out in the evening air, side by side with Luna, to focus on the sunset.
She bowed her head and reached out for her beloved sun while gathering a few light clouds in strategic locations across the sky. For you, sister, I think tonight's setting should be particularly beautiful, she thought, as her horn's magic flared brightly.
Under her guidance, the sun crept down to the distant mountains, seeming to kiss them hesitantly while the sky around it filled with brilliant shades of orange, reflected and refracted across half the skyscape by the placement of the clouds. Then it slowly worked itself below the horizon, like a little filly trying to get under covers that are much too large and heavy. That is, if a little filly could make the world glow with brilliant reds, pinks, and finally - dipping her head under the blankets - with softest lavender purples, before the light faded completely.
I've done better, Celestia thought, but today was just begging for elegance in simplicity. She looked over to her sister with a smile.
Luna's furious glare caught her completely off-guard.
"Are you finished, sister?"
"What do - "
"You are making an unnecessary show of yourself! Are you prepared for me to begin the night, or would you care to raise the sun again for another set?!"
"But I - "
"But nothing! Your showing off has cost all of Equestria an hour of night!" Celestia recognized the anger, jealousy, and aggression from a thousand years ago in her sister's voice and manner. She would not let it escalate again.
"I'm sorry," she said, bowing her head. "I didn't mean to intrude. This is your time."
"Why, then, did - "
"I should retire," Celestia interrupted. "If you need anything, the palace staff have orders to serve you as my equal. Please, begin the night." She took wing before her sister could reply and dove, veering off once Luna was no longer in sight to land in the castle gardens. There, she found a bench to lie on, and watched the sky.
It's been a thousand years since I had the privilege of seeing her handiwork, she thought. Her eyes turned to the horizon, where the moon was just beginning to rise.
Two hours passed...
At first, Celestia had been worried. The moon was rising too slowly, and had even changed to the wrong phase. The stars were out of position, and a shooting star made it to ground level and crashed out in the countryside somewhere (emergency response teams from Cloudsdale and Ponyville were already containing the fire), but it was nowhere near as bad as her own early attempts at crafting the night. She'd even come close to dropping the moon on Equestria the first time she tried to raise it herself, which would've wiped out every living thing on the same side of the planet. As tired and weak as Luna was after her encounter with the Elements of Harmony, she was still the better Princess of the Night by far.
As the night went on, it showed. The stars were drawn into beautiful constellations, and the moon - returned to its proper phase, slowly waning from full - seemed to rest on a bed of clouds. Luna was weak and out of practice, but she could still make a beautiful night.
Far below, Celestia smiled, and allowed herself to sleep.
