Everypony who knows of changelings knows they can influence the mind of their victim. Everything from subtle shifts of behavior to all-out mind control from the most powerful specimens.
I never tried to control you, before.
I never wanted you to be my victim.
I loved you.
And now I hate you, but only because I still love you.
Did you know changelings are supposed to be unable to feel love? We understand it, in an intellectual sense. We can sense it. We can emulate it. We feed upon it, as we do with any emotion, though love is a source of more pleasure and power than any other. But we can never feel it.
Why did I feel it for you, when no other changeling has before?
Perhaps it was because you gave me so much I couldn’t consume it all, and simply experienced the rest.
Perhaps it was because, when we met, you were so beautiful that I couldn’t bring myself to feed on you like I would anypony else.
Perhaps it was simply because you loved me, and not whichever form I had stolen.
Or perhaps, if I’ll allow myself a romantic notion, it was because we were meant to be.
I don’t often think of myself as a romantic, but I hope we were meant to be. I don’t want it to be luck that I survived the raid on the Hollow Shades Hive. Just luck that I would be discovered by a young Sergeant who’d take pity on a lone changeling filly, when I know my sisters in the rest of the caves were eradicated by your fellow guardsponies. That you would take a chance with me, risk so much…
I don’t imagine I can ever truly show my thanks for everything you did. I know the risks you took, and I know how easy it would have been for you to turn me in. If you had only lowered your spear and looked away, I would have thanked you as a kind soul, and likely never thought of you again. But you told me to hide. You told the other guards the chamber was cleared, and kept them away from my little hideaway during the final sweep of the hive. You came back when you could slip away and told me when I could run.
When I found my way to you again, starved of emotion, you saw through my disguise, but you didn’t turn me over then, either. You told me where to wait for you, and so I did. When you were off-duty, you came and found me, and paid for a night at a hotel rather than returning to your barracks. We shared a bed, that night, and so much more - our feelings, our bodies...
Why? Why do so much for me? It’s a secret to most that changelings have another form of mind control. We don’t need to use magic. We have pheromones that convince ponies we can be trusted and loved. But I was so young when we met, my pheromones couldn’t possibly have overpowered your training and your natural desires. Even after you helped me the first time, you could have turned me in. Told the other guards I’d influenced you with my magic and been cleared of any wrongdoing. They probably would have even commended you for overcoming me.
But you stayed with me. Through those first nights, through moving to new posts, through your fellow guards’ jeers about your insatiable appetite for mares when I took a new form in each city to remain with you. Why do all this? The only answer I had was that what we had was true love, and we were meant to be.
And then you chose her instead.
I can see how it happened. You accepted me despite the fact that I was a changeling. But your love was always in spite of that. I was never sure if you would accept me as a changeling, with everything that means. Not just that I continued to grow in size and power, to develop into a more mature from, all driven by your love for me. But also for another natural process for my race.
We drifted apart during the times I slipped away, I’m sure. I never told you where I went, and I always appreciated that you didn’t ask. I was surprised, though, that you never noticed how my abdomen grew during those times. Yes, love, you were a father. Or would have been, a thousand times over, had I allowed it. But, I knew you would hate that part of me. Another mare would have to host my eggs, and you would hate that the host would not likely be willing. A pony as good and kind as you would not stand for that.
So, at first, I wasted my eggs. I would slip away into the forests or mountains, anywhere I could find solitude, and pleasure myself until my spawning came. And then I would cry for them.
Changelings aren’t supposed to be able to cry, either. You brought me to this.
I wanted to spawn properly. I wanted to fill a mare with our young and raise a new generation of changelings. In part, my instinct demanded it. But more importantly, they were our young. Your young, and I couldn’t bear to keep losing the product of our love. And in time, I couldn’t help myself. I captured a few likely specimens and dragged them back to my favorite cave. And then I wasn’t slipping away to find release, I was slipping away to build the Unicorn Range Hive. And to think of a way to tell you.
And then, one absence was longer than all the others. I know I was gone for over a year, and I wish I had explained myself, but I still didn’t know how. How could I possibly tell you that I’d been using captive mares as brood hosts, that the spawn they birthed were your own, that your hundreds if not thousands of daughters were going through their primary metamorphosis to become able workers and warriors?
And then, at last, the Hive was able to maintain itself, and I came back for you. At first, I returned intending to explain myself, only to discover I had been replaced. I saw you with her, and even without my changeling senses I knew love when I saw it. How could I not? I had known it. I saw it between you, I felt it between you, and even though I still felt your love for me, that was a tiny stream drowning in the ocean you felt for her.
It was too much. I loved you and I hated you. I wanted you to be by my side and I wanted to kill you. I wanted to give you to that other mare because it would make you happy, and I wanted to break her neck for stealing you from me. I didn’t know what to do.
And then I overheard talk of marriage. Things happened quickly after that.
The threats I made were foalish and short-sighted. The attack was, too, but the hive could only react to my emotions and I was furious. There were so many things I did that I regret. Things I never meant to say. I destroyed any hope I ever had of bringing us together properly when I lashed out at you, then.
Though I do wonder, how would the defenders of Canterlot have reacted if they realized they were falling to the daughters of their own Captain of the Guard?
And in the end, I was defeated by your new love and your little sister. You never told me you had a little sister. I wonder why. Did you think you were protecting her from me? Did you think I would do something to harm her? Did you not trust me? So many ponies think changelings are monsters, but I thought you were above that. I thought you saw past my chitin and fangs and really knew me. I never deceived you, because your love and trust were the only things I wanted.
For so long, I’ve done all I can to be forward with you and trusting of you. You showed me so much trust, or so I thought, it was only right that I return it. And I loved you too much to intentionally manipulate you. I felt what we had was pure and true, and I wanted to keep it that way.
But you’ve kept secrets of your own, haven’t you, love?
Your sister. Your love of another, which you never told me about. Your long love for me, which I’m certain the princesses and Royal Guard remain oblivious to.
I don’t feel so bad about manipulating you, now. Or your wife.
Don’t worry, love, I won’t make you a slave - unless you want to be.
I only intend to remind you that you belong at my side. That other mare can even join us. With what we’ll be doing, I’ll need a new brood host.
After all, I still love you.
Author's Note
Cranked this out in maybe an hour and a half to two hours.It all kind of spun out of those first few lines, and was pretty stream-of-thought after that.
