A vice of blankets. Toss, turn, tighter.
Her royal heart convulses against lungs which cannot find air.
Respite: all she needs is a rest; a true rest; a thousand years of rest? The fur on her body bristles as she coughs, as she rolls fitfully out of bed, as her hooves find no leverage on her royal rug, as she writhes as a beast would, as she sees herself solely in the whole of her omnipresence like a mirror.
The beast screams. Guttural, of a tireless desire, of the desire to end seeing, hearing, feeling after fighting so long.
Armor clanks, a guard enters. A rasp of deathly cold air finally hits her lungs and mind. Mundane eyes widen, contract, and a single hind hoof finds a new place behind itself. A horrible, almost calming silence falls as sensation, interaction, take the place of illusion.
A gulp runs down his throat as a bead of sweat would run down the face of prey.
"Princess, can I help you?"
Her eyes search fitfully around the room. Her head wraps fitfully around the words. Once more, into the abyss she crawls. Her heart beats, her lungs convulse, her mane erupts, her horn alights, her wings unfurl and she screams:
"NO!"
as a flurry of magic launches huddle of flesh and armor into the Canterlot sky and rips her tower asunder in a pristine hailstorm of royal objects.
She bellows a laugh of the horrible, pure joy that rips through her veins, and cries the tears of the desperate sorrow that follows. To drink from endless cornucopias of power and control, and to starve from their neglect, as she had for so long, was to experience life as wholly as only a Goddess could. To rip through cobblestone, plaster, flesh and iron as one would gaze through a glasspane. To slam open a door by rendering it purely as sound. To stare her only equal in the face like a fly, each eye mirroring fear a thousandfold, as only a fly's would.
To watch the binds of mortality fade away to whiteness; where all the things she could look through like glass ceased to become pertinent.
To stand as an equal and experience life as a Goddess never could.
"I have come as the tip of my own spear, to show you a pain that I have felt for so long, that only you may understand." Luna's fur warped in the absence of light.
Celestia smiled. "Let us have a walk, then. You may deal your judgment at the end."
Isolation had not come. In short, Celestia was as unprepared as she was. She lit up her horn, moving to take advantage.
A thousand thoughts blew through her mind, of a thousand years, of a thousand regrets of what was left unsaid in the final moments. Novels of things she wished she had evoked. She knew that Celestia would never offer a deal that she wouldn't accept herself and Luna, surely, was as just as her sister.
"Let us walk, then."
A knowing smile found its way onto Celestia's lips. They walked onward into the white nothingness.
"You and I are not equals, Luna."
"Arrogant first words." Luna snorted, considering causing a sudden end to their departure.
"Or desperate," Celestia said, a confident smugness on her face.
"But they cannot be both. So which is it?"
"They can be both. Only not at the same time, my dear Sister." Celestia turned her head away to look off into the nothingness. "That is how we are equals."
Luna pondered the words for a moment. "You contradict yourself to force me to see your point of view, but you've only moved to mine. If the ponies always see you as their savior and me as their fear incarnate, that is what we are."
"To be defined by how one is seen is surely a mortal fate, is it not? As a pony lives and dies, our lives stretch on until their perceptions fade into the storm." Celestia opened her eyes only halfway, as if recovering from a burden. It seemed as if she had spent a hundred years in the span of a second perfecting that sentence alone.
Luna knew that one second was more than enough. "You counter a mortal fate with a mortal failing. I remember the moment a pony first fled in terror from me. I remember every meal, mundane or otherwise." She shuddered, turning her gaze downward. "I remember everything."
"You choose to remember, Luna. You choose, knowing all the events you do, to feel the way you feel about them. You choose everything. Even this."
"No! You are the sole variant. I cannot choose around you as a stream would weave around a pebble. I cannot choose your actions, feelings, and benedictions. Your choices have closed me in, and now there is only a single way out."
Celestia finally looked straight at her sister and narrowed her eyes. "Then, you finally understand how I felt all those years ago."
Luna stiffened, bracing for an unexpected assault, but none came. The words were the only offense. "Then you know that this, again, is the inevitable conclusion."
As quickly as it had hardened, Celestia's gaze became welcoming again, sending a shiver down Luna's spine. This was the Celestia that the people adored, the Alicorn that she was sure she could never become.
"No, Luna. I have had a thousand years to wonder another way out. I tried so, so many times to bring time back to where it was, to reverse the decision and welcome you with open arms, or to put myself in your fate instead. I never could choose around you, Luna. I never could bring you back. I spent a thousand years realizing how wrong I had been, and when you returned, I couldn't even look you in the eyes or welcome you back." Tears now streamed down Celestia's face. "I have no experience in handling regret, Luna; no experience that isn't the worst moment of my life, that I see in perfect detail when I try to remember. If only it could be blurry, if only there could be distance between myself and then. I might be able to rationalize. I might be able to prepare, like I am so good at doing elsewise."
Celestia shook her head and took a long, shaky breath. "All I know is that I could never make that decision again, and that I hope, dearly, with all that I am, that you will never feel as I do now." Finally, she looked up into Luna's eyes again, and held out a hoof.
"Please, Luna. Choose to embrace me at my worst."
