Ever since she had recovered from her forced transformation back into herself, Princess Luna had been with almost daily regularity asking Princess Celestia to authorize the necessary changes to be made to Canterlot's throne room to balance it against a second throne for herself at the side of her sister's. Almost. Daily. Luna had even gone to the trouble, about twice a month, to put her request in writing and file it through official bureaucratic channels. Despite declining the request every time, it had gotten to the point where when Luna suddenly stopped after the rise of Twilight's Castle, Celestia found the absence of her sister's pestering on the topic even more jarring than its presence.
When she got fed up with trying to figure out whether or not Luna did it on purpose and just decided to ask her directly, Celestia put down the legislative papers she'd been working on and prepared to have the guards summon her sister. However, the process of lowering the papers in question revealed the mare who'd been on her mind standing directly across from her large, finely crafted, nearly priceless purple heartwood desk. Princess Luna was staring at her sister with a combination of deep thought and concern that led to Princess Celestia unwittingly following her greeting with one of the most cliched questions in the book. Which was even more unfortunate for Celestia, who made it her business to write the book on what was considered cliche in Equestria. She released a new volume every year.
"Oh hello, dear Sister... is um, is there something on my face?" she asked, internally cringing as she remembered adding that line less than twenty years ago. She chalked it up to the surprise incited by Luna's decision not to explode into the room like she always does, and her heretofore undemonstrated ability to stand there, in plain sight, and go unnoticed. Celestia had practically shit a brick upon seeing her sister's face.
"Greetings, beloved Sister," Luna responded, leading Celestia to wonder whether the younger had gotten over her guilt associated with that adjective or had returned to the same motivation behind it as before. She dearly hoped it was not the latter. She had suffered her sister's absence too much, for too long, for the Balance to forcibly re-assert itself by having Luna renew her sacrifice. "Pardon my saying, but thou hast bags under thine eyes."
"What?" Celestia blinked as her countless worries vanished, alongside the foundations and status tracking of several multi-century plans, and her brain slowed down to process this one little phrase stemming from a small observation of a tiny detail.
"I'm sorry, let me try modern Equestrian: Hello, dearest Sister. I'm sorry to say this, but you have bags under your eyes." Luna replied, looking sincerely concerned rather than smug or victorious in any way. And with good reason: one of the perks of being a natural-born alicorn Princess was the capacity to look absolutely perfect at virtually all times, with the only exceptions being when one was under great strain. "Maybe you should get some sleep? It's been a few months, I really miss you."
"Well, I'd love to Luna, but I have a lot of work to do. Ponies to meet and greet. New threats on the horizon. You know, the same as usual, only more than before, as always." Celestia chuckled ruefully.
As soothing as it always was to visit Luna's domain (the younger took great pains to accommodate her every time), the more time Celestia spent asleep, or away from her task as Equestria's governor, the more her work piled up in her absence. Even though Amore and Shining managed to snag control of the Crystal Empire just as it resurfaced, they were still new to their jobs and the Empire technically returned within the bounds of Equestrian territory, making it Celestia's responsibility. Further, despite Princess Twilight's ascension and willingness to take on obscene amounts of additional work under some misguided belief she needed to prove she was worthy of being a Princess, she still had too much she needed to learn and a lot of the papers that were sent to her still had to be reviewed, possibly revised, and approved by Celestia upon their return anyway. Besides that, she wanted her protege to still have time for a social life. Luna's problems were almost identical to Twilight's.
"Say Luna, why don't we get that throne you've been pestering me about, and widen the throne room a little bit?" Come to think of it, Princess Celestia had forgotten why she'd been refusing Luna's request for a new throne for so long in the first place. It really was such a minor hassle that being obstinate was becoming more taxing than just giving her what she wanted.
"No." Luna responded curtly, as though reaching the end of a long test of her patience that she had finally failed.
"What?" Celestia asked again, feeling foggy as she tried to remember whether or not she'd gone through a portal recently and this was some bizarre alternate universe where Luna lacked any ambition. "But you've always wanted-"
"And you've always held it away from me. But I'm not a child, Sister. You can't just offer me a nice toy and tell me to go play with it, hoping I'll forget the sight of you falling apart at the seams over this country's problems. In fact, that doesn't even work on children. They just pretend it does to make their parents happy, but I see the truth in their dreams." Luna replied, and in her eyes, Celestia could see the unmoving determination that had been brought to bear against their many enemies in the past. Somehow, the combination of that expression and the sad little lesson she could have gone her eternity without learning was more unsettling to Celestia than that of the murderous glare and insane ranting from her time as Nightmare Moon.
"Luna, please, I meant no insult when I-"
"I DON'T WANT THE STUPID THRONE! I want you to go to sleep, Celestia!" Princess Luna tapered off a shout, stomping her forehooves and forcing the sky to darken. If Celestia wasn't already white, she would have paled as she tried to stutter out a response, but it died on her lips as she saw the tears welling up in Luna's eyes. The elder sister could not believe how much this small matter was upsetting the younger one. Even by Luna's standards, this seemed a bit excessive. After all, it was only 8:30 and... Celestia blinked again when she realized the sun had still been up until just now.
"Well, I think it's safe to say you just made that a bit difficult." Celestia tried to lighten the situation, but her weak, forced smile dissipated at the sight of Luna's expression of boundless worry. Luna was abnormal. She didn't worry about a ton of things a little bit. She concentrated all of her worry into a small hooffull of things. Like the neighboring nation's impressive capacity to produce a global market's worth of glue, carnivorous pet food, and fine upholstery. Or the similarities between Princess Twilight's fiance and her brother. Or Princess Celestia's apparently visibly declining health.
"Anyway, I'm fine, Luna. I'm a grown mare. I can handle a little sleep loss." Celestia tried with a warm smile, which was met with a cold glare.
"Fine! You want to be that way? Then just pretend I'm not here, pick up that pen, and go about signing your papers!" Luna snapped, and Celestia had to commend her resisting the urge to break into shouts. Sighing, Celestia used her magic to lift up the pen and- the pen remained on the desk. Confused, she tried again, then once more with greater effort. Not only was the pen not being lifted up, it was not moving at all. Somepony was holding it down with their own magic. Somepony... like for example the other alicorn in the room, the one with clearly nothing better to do with her time and seemingly boundless energy.
"Luna, what are you doing? Let go of the pen! This work needs to be done!"
"Why? If you're so determined to spite me and continue on like this, then obviously the only thing I can do is show you why what you're doing is wrong!" Luna again narrowly avoided shouting back. After some intense struggling, Celestia quit when she found her vision blurring, to the accompaniment of panting and profuse sweating. Luna showed no signs of even having used any effort, which confused Celestia. Luna was, at best, Celestia's equal. Any contest of power between them should have been at least as hard on the younger as it was the elder. But now that she knew direct conflict would get her nowhere, Celestia decided to switch tacks and exploit Luna's weakness: negotiating.
"Luna please, just let me be. I've just had a little trouble sleeping lately, okay?"
"I can use my magic to help you, if you let me, and you know it." Luna moved through Celestia's desk, unintentionally reminding the elder princess that she could just choose to ignore a physical object's presence if she wanted to. Luna hugged her big sister tightly. "Tia, I'm begging you. You don't know how it distresses me to see you like this."
"All right, Luna. Heh. Okay. You win. I'll... call it a night." Celestia replied, returning the hug.
"Great! I'm so happy to hear that!" Luna cheered, then used her magic to pull out a sleeper's mask from the ether. It was perfectly sized for Celestia and had a little solar eclipse under the left eye. "Here, this one is strong enough that you won't have to worry about having that nightmare again, so try not to put it on until you're at least in bed, okay?"
"Thank you so much, Luna." Celestia said as she gratefully accepted the blindfold, trying and failing to suppress the cringe induced by realizing that Luna could in fact see the dream Celestia was trying to hide from her. Which of course meant that now that Celestia knew she knew, they were going to have to talk about it soon. "Good night, Luna."
"Sleep well, Celestia!" Luna called back, then hardened her tone. "I mean it! I'm not letting you back in here without a good night's sleep behind you!"
After Celestia shook her head and shut the door, Luna took a deep breath and cast a Teleportation: Summon spell. After a few seconds, her target appeared in a curled up red-and-gold ball shivering on the floor.
"I wish you wouldn't do that, Princess Luna." Sunset Shimmer justifiably whined from her position. "You're too sloppy for trans-dimensional teleportations, and every time you hit me with one, I feel like I have to count my bones and make sure they made it to their proper places and shapes."
"Oh hush, you. Now come on, we've got work to do." Princess Luna replied as she trotted over to the pile of scrolls signed by Celestia. It was time to make sure that her signatures were on the lines and looked like signatures, and fix the ones that didn't.
"Don't just blow me off! I'm serious!" Sunset protested as she worked her way to a standing position, making sure that all four of her limbs ended in hooves and that other parts were located where they belonged. "I still haven't forgotten the time you brought me here in that creepy half-pony, half-human form! I had hooves, hands, human breasts, and a muzzle! I looked like some kind of freak, and felt even worse!"
"I remember that too. You screamed for about four straight minutes, I think all in one breath. Anyway, I'm serious too." Luna replied, setting down the foundations of a "To Be Fixed" pile that would grow to be larger than the complimentary "Acceptable" pile by at least a factor of 5. "She's getting worse."
"Oh..." Sunset replied walking over to stand next to Princess Luna and started looking through the scrolls too. "Is it about that Princess Virginia again?"
"Yes."
"Are you going to tell me about her? Something beyond the obvious fact she's related to a problem that is seriously bothering Princess Celestia?"
"My sister will tell those she trusts when she's ready." Luna replied, then realized what she implied and pulled Sunset into a hug when she got that look that appeared like she was going to go to pieces. "I'm sorry. I'll make sure you know as soon as possible."
