Given Anything

Twilight's heart pounded and her wings slammed at the air. All her mind was consumed with one thought: She must find Celestia.

Rainbow Dash, Cadance, and Fluttershy all flew beside her, their heads swiveling in every direction. The field beneath them, beautiful only a few minutes previous, was now a ruinous waste of craters, glowing glass, and smoldering, blackened earth.

“Where is she!?” shouted Twilight, half-panicked.

“Don't ask me!” shouted Cadance. “Wait!”

Her sister-in-law pointed with a hoof, and Twilight looked down to see something that filled her with relief.

Celestia was standing, walking back towards the city.

But why walking? thought Twilight.

They dove towards her, and as they drew near, Twilight's relief turned to dread.

Celestia's right wing was utterly and permanently ruined. All that remained to mark that it had ever been a wing at all was a pair of long, white feathers that dangled limply beneath the tip of a bloody stump.

Twilight cringed, and quickened her pace, but as she grew closer, what she saw only further fueled her fears.

Celestia was stumbling forward with a noticeable list, and it was not long before, Twilight could see that her whole body was covered in numerous burns, abrasions, and deep gashes. She favored her right foreleg, putting no weight upon it, at all.

Struggling to restrain her panic, Twilight Sparkle landed, and ran towards her teacher. Seeing her coming, Celestia finally gave into her wounds and fatigue, and collapsed.

“No, no, no, no, NO!” shouted Twilight, still running. “Don't you dare! Not after that!”

As Twilight approached her, the white horse lay over onto her left side. She was covered in blood, and blackened, scorched dirt was mingled in it, clinging to her body in clods where it was not ground into her fur. Twilight saw, as she drew nearer, that the reason Celestia had been favoring her right foreleg was that there was no longer a hoof there to support her. Unlike the ragged stump of her wing, however, the leg seemed to have been severed cleanly.

The sight only made Twilight gallop faster, and hearing the sound of her approaching hoofbeats, Celestia lifted her head to look at her.

Twilight gasped, and recoiled at the sight.

“Oh, no,” she said, her voice weak with sorrow.

Celestia's right eye was gone.

The entire right side of her face, in fact, was covered in blood, dirt, and viscous fluid that seeped from her empty eye socket. Whatever blow had bereaved her of her eye had also left a trio of wide, ugly claw marks, slightly cauterized and still smoldering at their edges, as if the instrument that had delivered them had been searingly hot.

She turned her head, and looked at Twilight with her remaining left eye, mouthing words that she could not fully form. That single, amethyst-colored eye began to dilate. She was going into shock.

Cadance reached the scene now, and shrieked in horror.

Twilight shook her head, startled back to reason by Cadance' sudden outcry. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy arrived now, also, both recoiling and crying out at what they saw.

“Come on,” said Twilight, shutting their screams from her mind, and in a flash, they were all on the Palace balcony.

“There you are,” said Rarity, at first relieved, and then she saw Celestia.

“Oh, gods, no.” she whispered.

“FUCK” was Shining Armor's only reaction, as the mares all screamed in panic and pity.

Luna, laying nearby, reached a hoof towards her sister. She willed herself to stand, but still made it only a step before she collapsed to her belly.

Lyra heartstrings stood nearby, watching the horrible scene unfold. As she realized the extent of Celestia's injuries, she collapsed to her haunches and shook her head slowly, wide-eyed in disbelief.

“I'm so sorry,” she said, “I'm sorry Princess Celestia; Princess Luna. I'm sorry, Twilight.”

Twilight looked at her, and saw in her face a look of deep fear and shame.

“Please don't hate him,” said Lyra. “Please.”

***

It was after dark when Celestia regained consciousness. Her dreams for those few hours were fitful and terrible, filled with images of the things she had fought and destroyed, and which, but for her mad gambit, would surely have destroyed her – and the world.

At last, however, there came another image. It was her mother, Selene, a black alicorn mare who had resembled Nightmare Moon in every respect but for one: her eyes. Unlike Nightmare Moon's, they had been kind. It was a day long ago, the first time Celestia had raised the sun. It had been incredibly difficult for her that first time, she remembered, but somehow, she had managed it.

“Magnificent,” had said Selene, looking down proudly at her daughter. “Utterly magnificent.”

That image of the smiling, black alicorn faded into another; the image of her sister, sitting by her bed, her face downcast.

She realized, slowly, that she must be awake.

“And alive,” she thought. “Most of me, anyway.”

“At least,” she said quietly, and hearing her voice, Luna lifted her head.

“At least it won't take me so long to put on that eyeliner you always bitch about,” she said.

Luna tried to force a laugh, but broke down into tears as she looked into her sister's one remaining eye.

“Stop it,” said Celestia, weakly. “I chose this.”

“I know that!” Luna sobbed, unable to restrain herself, despite Celestia's remonstration.

“After all this time,” she said, “why is is that now, at last, you choose to defy what you thought you were? Would it have been so hard to forgive yourself for choosing the wiser path just one more time? Would it have been impossible to live with yourself, if just once more you had favored the many over the one?”

Celestia turned her one eye to the white disk that gleamed in through the window, and smiled at the image of the Mare in the Moon.

“Not at all,” she said. “That is why it mattered.”

She lay her head down, and fell once more into her dreams.

***

“Is she going to be okay?” asked Twilight Sparkle as Luna entered the Palace Parlor, where Twilight and all of her friends sat waiting for news of the Princess' condition. The former Cutie Mark Crusaders were also present, owing to the fact that Celestia's godly wrath had obliterated the railway, preventing their train from leaving the city.

“If I did not know she would be well enough,” said Luna, “I would not be here. Honestly, I am surprised that you are. I would have thought you would have been beside her.” There was a slight note of disapproval in Luna's voice, but it carried more weight of curiosity.

“I can't look at her, Luna,” said Twilight shaking her head. “If we'd had the Elements of Harmony, we could have helped her.”

“Yes,” said Luna, “and you might all be quite dead for your trouble. Don't worry yourself too deeply, child. Do you think that I will not also carry regret that I was unable to stand beside her?” Her head swam. They had run out of Celestia's blood type, and she had given her all of her own she could spare. She took some strange comfort in knowing that her own blood was at that moment pumping through her sister's veins, sustaining her.

Still, however, she was weakened, so she went to a couch, where she lay down, head erect, and looked at Twilight.

“It wasn't your fault you couldn't help, Princess,” said Twilight. “I can't say that.”

“Are we back on that?” asked Rarity, her voice detached, and her gaze distant.

She was high.

“We never got off of it,” said Twilight.

“You never got off of it, maybe,” said Applejack, pouring another glass from the decanter of whiskey that sat on the floor between herself and her sister. It was Shining Armor's favorite, forty-year-old Glennfiddich, that had been procured from a mini bar he kept there in the Parlor.

“Look,” said Scootaloo, inhaling from a cigarette, “it's over now, Prin... Twilight. Just let it go. She saved the world, for fuck's sake; just be proud of her.” She ashed her cigarette into the tray.

“Saved it for now, Scootaloo,” said Luna. “This was only the beginning.”

“What!?” Sweetie Belle squeaked.

“What you all saw was only a fraction of what is yet to come.”

“What are y'all gonna do?” asked Applebloom, darkly. “This is heavy, heavy shit.”

“Indeed,” said Luna.

“Is it safe for her to be asleep, right now?” asked Rarity, recalling a terrible experience she'd had when the entity that Shimmershine used to be had first returned to try and consume Celestia's soul. “That's how they come through, right?”

“Yes,” said Twilight, but Shining cast a barrier spell around Shimmershine. It's strong enough to keep them from using some random sleeping unicorn to come through again, but it's very taxing for him. He won't be able to keep it up for more than a few days, at most.”

“Can somepony else do it if he gets worn out?” asked Fluttershy. “Just to give us some more time?”

“They could try,” said Twilight, “but nopony is better at wards and shields than Shining Armor. If he can't hold this off, – and he can't – then nopony can. He can only manage it for a few days; I could manage it for maybe one, at best. Does that give you an idea of how bad this is?”

“Great,” said Applebloom. “Did y'all see how many of those things there were? And 'goddamn' at the size of those two big ones! How we gonna fight that shit the next time they come through?”

“I have no idea,” said Twilight. “Celestia can't just keep ripping open black holes, like that.” She shook her head, stunned, and lit another cigarette. “It probably took more out of her than everything else combined, and besides that, if she ever lost control of one, even for an instant, the planet would be sucked into it."

“Kinda defeats the purpose,” said Pinkie Pie.

“Gods, that was incredible, though,” said Twilight. “Princess Luna, did you know she could even do that?”

“I had inklings,” said Luna, shuddering, “but you are right; she cannot do such a thing, again. It is a miracle that the world still stands, as it is.”

“Shit,” whispered Twilight. “So many forces; the pressure necessary for the fusion, the gravity to keep it from throwing the planet completely out of orbit... It's a thousand calculus problems a second, all done in her head – and in the middle of that mountain of things.”

“Our father would have been proud to see it,” said Luna, “but he no longer exists, I think.” She dropped her head. “If he does, it is only as one more maddened ghost within Shimmershine's fractured subconscious.”

“I'm sorry, Princess,” said Twilight Sparkle.

“My family,” said Luna, through a bitter chuckle. “Held up as such images of perfection, but look at us. I would have plunged the world into eternal darkness. Mother perished under her own despair, all but a suicide, and Father is now a mad spirit damned to be the enemy of the world he gave himself up to save. Celestia was always the best of us, and for that, she is maimed.”

“Because she chose me,” said Twilight, bitterly.

“Twilight,” said Applejack, giving her friend a hard look. “Seriously; put that shit in a can, close the lid on it, and put it on the shelf. Ain't doing nopony no good, no way.”

“Oh, go fuck yourself, Applejack,” said Twilight.

“Twilight, settle down,” said Rainbow Dash. “She's just trying to help. We all are.”

“I know that,” said Twilight, dropping her head, ashamed. “I'm sorry, AJ.”

“Sorry for what?” asked Applejack.

Twilight stood, and walked to the window. She looked out over the city.

“We have to kill the kid,” she said.

“No,” said Princess Luna, her voice betraying fierce – but contained – anger, “I will not see it done. Celestia refused to do it, and in the name of that choice, she lies crippled and half-blind. Would you invalidate that sacrifice, Twilight Sparkle?”

Twilight gritted her teeth, and whirled around.

“WHAT ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO DO!?”

The room fell utterly silent, and Twilight breathed heavily and slowly. She looked around at her friends, all staring at her, stunned by her outburst.

“I just... I don't know what to do,” she said, and she collapsed onto her belly. She looked around at the other ponies, then buried her face in her folded forelegs, and began to sob.

“It'll be okay, Twilight,” said Pinkie Pie, scooting across the floor from where she had lain to nuzzle her old friend behind the ear.

“No,” Twilight sobbed into her folded forelegs, raising a shoulder to force Pinkie Pie's face away from her. “No, it won't.”

“I fucked it all up, guys,” she said. “We had one chance, and I lost it. It's over.”

“You don't know that,” said Pinkie Pie, stroking at Twilight's mane.

“Yes, Pinkie,” she said. “I do.” She inhaled sharply through her nose, staving off a sniffle, and looked up at her friends.

“I lost the Element of Magic: the lynchpin of the most powerful magic that has probably ever existed. I lost the one thing that might have actually been able to save our world from what's coming. I'm about to watch everyone I love die because I completely fucked the one moment in my whole life that counted the most.'

“Hell, even if we did kill Shimmershine, how long until something like this happens, again? How long until the whole world is finally just fucked up the ass? Face it: I. Fucked. Everything. Up.”

She sniffled, again.

“For all of you.”

She dropped her head again, and bit so hard into the flesh of her right foreleg she almost drew blood.

Then, after a few moments, she released the grip of her teeth. She raised her head, and she spoke calmly.

“And I don't get a second chance,” she said.

Then, she did.

***

Shining Armor stared at the unconscious colt. He didn't have to recast the barrier again for a few hours, but still, he had left his wife alone in bed and come down to check on him. He felt uneasy being away from the room. The ruin of the world was waiting to burst forth from Shimmershine's heart, and in the room next door, the only living being powerful enough to stand against this apocalypse lay battered and unconcscious.

His head was pounding. Cadance could ease the ache with a spell, but she had been so distraught by the ruination of her aunt's body that he thought it best to let her rest. He could endure the pain, if it gave her some small measure of relief.

Lyra Heartstings was asleep nearby on the couch with a blanket pulled over her. It seemed tragic to him that after having willfully taken this child into her life, having willfully shown him love and tended to his needs, no less, she had found herself alone and hopeless in the face of something so totally beyond her power.

She twitched in her sleep, and he telekinetically pulled the blanket up a little higher over her shoulders.

“Such a bunch of bullshit,” he thought, “and Twilie's more miserable than her.”

He gave a bitter “Hmph.”

“Celestia, Luna, Twilie, and all her friends. Now, this Lyra, too. Then, of course, there's Cadance. Every mare around me is in Hell, right now.”

“Just go upstairs, and go to bed,” he thought.

At least there was one of them he could offer some comfort.

He stumbled down the hall, his head pounding. In truth, he knew there was little good he could do. He would hold the barrier for as long as he could, but in the end, it would fail. When it did, he held out no delusions that what lay behind that thin, magical wall could be stopped by any force in the world.

“Yeah,” he mumbled to himself, “I really need to spend as much time as I can with Cadance.”

It was perhaps these thoughts and the way they held his face so downcast that caused him to notice a faint, purple glow that seeped from under a closed door in the hallway -- the door behind which stood the mirror.

“The hell?” he said.

He stepped to the door, and pulled it open.

What waited behind it was a wild, uneven glow bursting from the glassy portal. It surface rippled like water, and it sparked and crackled with raw magical energy.

“Why now?" he said. "Why could it not do this when the goddamned world wasn't ending?”

“Okay,” he thought, “Who knows about this thing?”

There was Celestia, of course, but it would be impossible for her to come and examine the situation, given her condition.

“Cadance,” he said, and ran for the bedroom.

As he flung open the door, his wife sat up sharply, shocked awake by the thud of the massive double doors pounding against their stops.

“Shining!” she shouted. “The fuck!?”

“The mirror! Magic mirror!” he said quickly. “Weird stuff happening!”

She said not a word, but rolled out of bed, telekinetically grabbing a tiny elastic ring which she used to tie back her mane as she ran. As they reached the room where the purple light glowed forth from the mirror, she gasped.

“I've got nothing for this,” she said.

“Where's Princess Luna?” asked Shining Armor.

“Maybe with Twilight and her friends in the parlor. That's where they were when I went to bed, earlier.”

They ran for the parlor, and both of them tried to open its door simultaneously, so that it glowed a weird, uneven shade of pink and blue for several seconds, totally unmoving. Shining Armor finally huffed, reached out a hoof, and pulled it open physically.

They were stunned to see Twilight lying in the floor next to the window, quietly weeping. Nopony else in the room was even speaking. It was a sad scene of downcast eyes and miserable expressions. Neither one knew what to say for a moment, but Shining Armor's pragmatism finally won out.

“There's something weird going on with the mirror.” he said plainly.

“Why now?” asked Princess Luna.

“That's what I said,” huffed Shining Armor.

Twilight lifted her head, her tears abating almost immediately.

“Weird?” she asked.

“It's... doing something!” said Cadance.

In a few moments, all the ponies were out of the room, and headed down the hallway at a full gallop.

By the time they reached it, the mirror's glow had intensified. More disturbingly, however, the reflection that it should have cast had been replaced by another image, entirely.

“What the hell is that thing!?” shouted Rainbow Dash, grinding to a halt.

Something stood on the other side of the mirror, a creature as alien in its physiology as many of the bizarre ghost-gods had been, and clad in strange garments. It stood upright on two legs, and had neither hooves nor paws, but hands like an ape. It seemed to be leaning with one of those hands against the mirror's opposite surface.

It was badly wounded. Several holes like the ones Twilight had years ago borne back into Equestria spilled dark, crimson blood down the strange, mottled cloth covering its weird, upright chest. That chest heaved, and the creature's apish face shifted this way and that at the glass, as if searching for something it could not see. The others all knew from Twilight's few accounts of her ill-fated journey that the thing they were looking at must be a human, but only Twilight herself recognized its face.

It was her own.

“Holy shit,” she whispered, and stepped towards the mirror.

“Twilight, what are you doing!?” shouted Shining Armor. “Get away from there!”

Twilight paid him no heed, but very nearly ran to the mirror. Without thinking, she placed her hoof directly against the hand that was pressed against the other side of the glass.

The human's eyes went wide in surprise, and her fingers spilled through the glass, clutching around the purple hoof. Twilight pulled. Those five fingers melded back into a single hoof, and the hoof dragged through a muzzle. Behind that muzzle came a pony.

Every single pony in the room gasped, cursed, or cried out in surprise.

It was Twilight Sparkle. She was an ordinary unicorn, as their own Twilight had once been, and she was bleeding profusely from many wounds in her chest, most of which seemed to have corresponding wounds on her back, as if some terrible instrument had been forced completely through her entire torso. She was shorter and smaller than their own Twilight, in every way the twin of the Twilight Sparkle they had all known over a decade ago. Every way, that was, except for one: like all of them, she was older, now.

The mirror crackled loudly, like distant lightning, and its surface became once again cold, smooth, and solid. There was projected in its glassen surface, for the briefest moment, the image of a fiery explosion, and then once more nothing but a reflection. Tiny fissures traced all over the mirror's surface, and it fell to the floor in shards, totally destroyed.

The unicorn Twilight that had spilled from the now-ruined mirror gasped in pain.

“Did I make it?” she asked in Twilight's voice. “Is this... Is this Equestria?”

She collapsed, spreading out her forelegs awkwardly to keep her face from striking the floor. Her eyes caught sight of her hooves spread out before them. She raised one, and stared at it, stunned.

“Jesus Fucking Christ,” she said. “It worked.”

She rolled over onto her back, and continued to gasp, her blood flowing onto the floor, eclipsing completely a faint, red stain that gave testament to an incident all too similar.

The Twilight Sparkle who belonged to Equestria knelt beside her, and lifted her head onto her own shoulder using one of her wings.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“You!?” The Twilight from the mirror asked, deleriously. “Purple unicorn. That's...”

“Get the doctor!” Shining Armor shouted down the hall at the nearest guard.

“Backpack,” said the little, bleeding pony.

There was no backpack, but Twilight could see a saddlebag on the wounded unicorn's side. It was identical to the one she had once used to carry her books to and from classes, though much older and more worn.

“He said to tell you 'you're welcome,'” said the little unicorn.

“Stop talking,” said Twilight, stroking the mane of this grievously wounded version of the pony she used to be. “I'll try to close your wounds with a spell.”

Her horn glowed.

“Uh-uh,” said the little unicorn, gasping. “Don't.”

Twilight gave her a look of confusion and pity.

“Please, just don't,” she said, and her voice cracked slightly. “I'm... tired."

There was a pleading desperation in her eyes, and Twilight allowed the surge of energy she had been gathering in her horn to fade. Those same pleading eyes traced down the alicorn's left foreleg, and a purple hoof, like her own, but slightly smaller, reached up and slapped ineffectually at the pack of cigarettes strapped there.

“Hooves,” said the dying, purple pony, and she gave a bitter, delirious laugh. “This is all so fucked.”

Twilight the alicorn looked down at the little hoof that rested against her shoulder, and realized what the other Twilight was reaching for. Wordlessly, she levitated a cigarette to the other her's lips, and lit it with the white, plastic lighter.

The bleeding unicorn took a long drag, and let the smoke rise from her mouth, pulling it through her nose in a French inhale. Her breathing became more labored and faster.

“Too fast,” thought Twilight.

The Twilight from the mirror looked around, carefully observing the faces of all the ponies in the room, who had stepped closer to form a circle around her.

“Wow,” she whispered. “He wasn't shitting us; unicorns and pegasi, and magic, and everything.” She laughed, and it quickly morphed into a bitter sob that itself became a hacking cough that painted her lips with thin, bloody lace.

The little Twilight rolled her head back towards the purple alicorn, and when she did, Twilight could see that there were tears streaming from her eyes.

“Are these all your friends?” she asked through several short, sharp gasps.

“Yeah,” said Twilight, quietly. “They are.”

The other Twilight smiled, her lips opening just enough to reveal teeth reddened by her own blood.

“You know,” she sobbed, pushing her words out in quick, raspy bursts of syllables, “I would... have... given anything.... to be you.”

She inhaled long and deep, and the tip of her cigarette glowed bright orange-red. She shut her eyes, never to open them again, and exhaled, long and slow, releasing a wisp of smoke that rolled and curled upward from her mouth as if to carry away her soul.

The cigarette fell from her lips, and rolled down her bloody chest. Its flame hissed as it met its own death in the pool which had gathered beneath her.

There were quiet murmurs from around the circle of ponies. Pinkie Pie sobbed loudly, Fluttershy more quietly. Applejack removed her hat.

Twilight herself was not aware she was crying until she saw her tears land on the face of the deceased unicorn. It was then that she remembered what she had said about a backpack. Twilight looked down, and saw something gleaming from the edge of her other self's saddlebag.

She reached down with a hoof, and flipped it open.

Not one single pony in the room was surprised when a twisted, scuffed crown levitated out of the saddlebag: the Element of Magic. Not one cheered or even smiled. They all just stared at the body of this creature whom they had all known so well without ever having met.

Twilight stared downward. For awhile, she said nothing as she painted the fur of the dead unicorn's face dark with tears from her living eyes. She wished in vain that her heart had found its words while the slain mare had been alive to hear them, but she spoke them, all the same.

“Magnificent, my little pony.”

Author's Note

May I never again write anything that is this hard to write.

Seriously, all the hardest decisions I've ever made in writing anything happened in these few pages. There were so many drafts of this, and every single one was agonizing just to type. As I have already said, Celestia is one of my favorite characters. Hell, I got Nicole Oliver's autograph at Bronycon, and it filled me with absolute glee just to talk to her for two minutes. It was not easy to make the decision to inflict an irreversible injury on a character I like this much, but there would have been no meaning in her decision if it did not cost her something.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, but an eye for a soul?

We shall have to see.

I have restored this to something more along the lines of my original draft. I originally published a version wherein Celestia only lost an eye. That was a failure on my part. This is the true version.

The scene with the mirror... Wow. I never want to write anything like that, again. I just kept thinking "What if it was me? How would that make me feel if another me was dying in my arms after giving literally everything to reverse my greatest failure?" It gave me some of the darkest, ugliest sensations I have ever had.

I tried in every way to avoid it. I thought of just having Spike bring the crown back, which certainly would have been the happiest way I could have done this. I thought it might even be neat for him to have aged as a dog, and to have come back as a full-grown dragon. In the end, though, I realized that doing anything like that just made all the suffering that Twilight had endured to come to this point totally meaningless.

It had to be this way, whether I liked it or not.