Walking into the room, I couldn’t take more than a few paces before I had to stop. I found it hard to breath, hard to believe that this was real. Fear crept into my mind, waiting for the inevitable turn, the inevitable shift in the scene that would reveal the truth of the nightmare before me. It was always a nightmare. There was no way that this could possibly be reality.
“Are you going to be alright, Luna?” my sister asked, her concern made apparent by her voice. I couldn’t immediately answer. She couldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be here. At any moment, some unspeakable horror would befall her, she would be swallowed up into darkness, or assaulted by a monster hidden in the shadows. She wasn’t safe. She never was.
“This isn’t real.” I said to myself quietly “This is just a dream.”
I felt her wing wrap around my side, pulling my into a warm, tender embrace. I flinched at the contact, but still found comfort in it. “This is real, Luna.” She said calmly. “You’re home. You’re safe.”
Taking a few steps forward, out of her embrace, I still wasn’t sure if that was the truth. Looking around my bedroom, I took some comfort in seeing how carefully Celestia had been in recreating perfectly my old room from our old castle in Everfree. But just the thought of that past that had been so long ago brought tears to my eyes. A thousand years, gone. Three hundred and sixty five thousand, two hundred and fifty days. Days I could have spent with her, days I could have spent helping our people, helping the world. All of them, wasted. All of them thrown carelessly away by my greed, and jealousy and… And anguish. I was in pain, but in seeking to alleviate that pain, I took the wrong path, and brought myself only more.
But now, above all else, what brought me the most pain was knowing how much pain I must have brought her. Even after I came back, even as I was once again unable to rein in the nightmare, even after everything I did and had done… She welcomed me home. She loved me just as much as she always had. But that knowledge of how even after all I had done, that my sister still loved me, did little to assuage the pain. Because I know my sister. I know that she had little choice in what she did, but I also know that even so, she would blame herself for not thinking of some other way. My failure brought not only a millennium of solitude and loneliness upon myself, but a millennium of self-loathing and grieving upon my sister. And knowing that I had done that to her hurt more than my confinement ever could.
This was real. It had to be. Even so, I almost wished it wasn’t. I wished that I could go back, back to how this all was before my fall from grace. I wished that I had never brought this pain upon my sister, or upon myself.
“What’s done is done.” Celestia said behind me. I had stood there in the center of the room in silence for several seconds. “We can’t change the past. The way things are is the way they are meant to be. It’s like what mother always said: ‘Everyone makes mistakes, and everyone will face trials. But these are not what define us. What defines us is where we go from there; what path we choose moving forward.’ …I know you still blame yourself for what happened, Luna, but the past is in the past. What matters is the present. You’re home, and that’s what matters.”
Although I was touched by her words, and took some solace in them, I knew that it would never be that simple. Time is loath to pass without thought in between, and it is much easier said than done to not dwell on mistakes as monumental as mine. “Sister, I appreciate your words, but…” My words and thoughts alike drifted off as an unsettling thought entered my mind. Looking to the future, uncertain as it was, a dread shadow loomed in the air, one I intended to exercise by any means necessary. “Sister, I need you to make me a promise.” “Of course Luna, anything.” She replied. So eager to please was she, so willing to make up for her believed fault, that she was forced to eat her own words.
“I want you to promise me that… If I fail again… If I ever give into my darkness again…”
“Luna, that won’t hap-“
I cut her off sharply. “Promise me that if it happens again… That you’ll put an end to me.” Silence hung in the air like a thick fog for several seconds. It was broken when I began to slowly walk forward toward my bed to retire for the night. I knew she wouldn’t answer. She couldn’t answer. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that I had made my point. I knew that if and when the day came that I would inevitably fall into darkness again…
My thoughts were cut off by a voice, one just as sharp as my own had been only moments before. “No.”
I stopped in my tracks, and turned to face her. “I refuse to make that promise, Luna. I refuse to ever do that, or anything else, to harm you ever again.”
I began to respond, but this time it was my turn to be overruled by my sister’s voice.
“Don’t ask me ‘what if’ this or ‘what if’ that. No matter what happens, no matters what trials you and I face, I refuse to lose you again. Whatever happens, we’ll get through it together. We don’t have to bear our burdens alone anymore. If you do lose yourself to the nightmare again, I’ll change you back. With or without the Elements, I’ll find a way. Even if you raze this nation to the ground, even if I have to give up my own life to do so, I’ll find a way. I’ve lost you once already. And I will never lose you again. Not ever.”
I was stunned. For several moments, I could only stand there in silence. I felt tears beginning to stream down my face. But these were not the tears of sadness I was so accustomed to. In an instant, I rushed forward and embraced her in a tight hug.
“Tia… I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I don’t… I don’t want to lose you either. That’s why… I’m sorry.” I felt her wings wrap around me to return my embrace, and heard her comforting voice, too real to possibly be a dream.
“It’s okay, Luna. It’s okay. We’ll get through this all, together. We can take it, one day at a time.”
She released me, and we walked together to my bedside as the last of my tears faded. I entered the soft, plush bed, and felt overwhelmed by tiredness. I expected her to leave shortly thereafter after bidding me good night, but I was surprised once more as she entered the bed alongside me. I felt a confused, but happy. Looking over at me, she gave me a comforting smile. She was right. We weren’t alone, not anymore. I didn’t know what the day ahead would hold, and I didn’t care either. We were together once more, and that was all that mattered.
Just before I drifted off to sleep, I was struck once more by the thought that this was too good to be true, that this had to be a dream. “There’s only one way to find out.” I thought to myself. The thought that this had only been a dream was too cruel to imagine. If it was, then perhaps the nightmare finally would break me, and I would be lost forever into the abyss of darkness. But once again, there was only one way to find out. My eyes closed, my head rested softly upon the down pillow, my heart warmed by the presence of my sister, I drifted slowly off to sleep. That night, I didn’t dream. It all seemed to pass in an instant.
My eyes opened as I awoke.
