Once, She Was a Princess

by Astrarian

Rating: teen
Tags: Princess Celestia, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe, Sad, Nightmare Moon
Length: 2748

After the Elements of Harmony catastrophically fail to save Princess Luna, Princess Celestia struggles to reconcile vision and reality.

As Equestria's Princess, Celestia has crucial duties: raise the sun, ensure Fate enacts its will through the Elements of Harmony, restore her lost sister. But now the Elements of Harmony, the objects of her faith, lie shattered at her hooves. Will her duties destroy her or sustain her as she pursues her Nightmare?

Cover art by CosmicUnicorn.

Published 2015-08-19 22:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2015-08-19 22:20:01 UTC

sunder

She comes back to herself slowly, lost in a vision: Luna springs forward and they embrace, manes intermingling. Luna is warmed by the contact, and they weep in the flushing hues of the finest daybreak she ever crafts. For an infinitesimal moment everything is fine.

Then she remembers death. She raises her head and looks at death and death kicks her in the chest.

Somehow she does not die. So she looks away. She struggles upright in bloodshot moonlight instead of a pink sunrise.

She breathes deeply to steady her legs. Her breath snags in her throat. She stands up and her stomach bolts for it up her throat and she splutters and heaves and swallows. There is all manner of stinging inside her and none of it feels like accidentally eating nettles under the dappled trees.

She staggers to one side. Several crunches shatter the quiet. Her hooves have crushed already-broken orbs of discoloured stone.

She spreads her wings instinctively for balance. Their tips are rounded, not pointed, and she wonders if Twilight Sparkle can tell the difference when one brushes her lifeless back.

Non-existent wings are barbed nonetheless.

She must not look away. She has to bear witness to this loss and she has to understand death so she can move on.

She must move on now. If she does not, there will be more death.

She has to understand.

She looks away.

Charred paper and hair and feathers flicker and swirl in the sky. Huge clouds of ash and smoke mature around her as she pursues the Nightmare.

Her ponies are crying. She listens. It is her duty to listen. She weeps soundlessly as she bears their suffering; she listens, and listens, and listens, and there’s so much, the crying is endless. She cannot bear it. Yet she has to listen. She has no choice. The wind rushes past her ears and the more effort she puts in to listening, the louder the wind gets, calling and crying and moaning.

She plunges into the thick clouds. She prays for silence. Instead she can’t breathe. She drops out of the smog and looks down at the upturned faces praying, and she continues to choke.

Doesn’t a phoenix rise from the ashes of its previous life, burning so bright that even the sun goes blind for a moment? Thus filled with ash and embers, Equestria might be able to do the same!

She searches and calls for her friend as blindly as that bedazzled star.

A small body lies across the railway tracks. She looks away—no! She looks back. It’s not a body, you foal. It was a phoenix, it is a phoenix: a battered, dead phoenix. It’s Philomena. She’s never seen those fluttery golden flames be still, never seen them riven with that colour of red.

It’s not red, don’t call it red, call it what it is. It’s bl. . .

She looks. It’s red. She can look, but she does not need to see.

But it is her duty to see.

She waits. She doesn’t want to watch. Still, she does.

The air is filled with ash. The moon turns vaguely blue, as though it is suffocating. Ash in the sky and Philomena’s cold feathers still the most vibrant of any bird, even in death.

Now she knows there is no ash when a phoenix’s life ends prematurely, violently. Philomena is gone. She will not rise again.

She follows her sinking heart to her ruined castle in Canterlot and finds tresses amongst the stained glass: pink, blue, white, golden, red, red, red—

Again she does not fall to the kick in her chest, and somehow her heart lurches without exploding, spewing forth a raging torrent. Disgusting. How can it not? She is their Princess, and they are dead, and she isn’t breaking even though they were broken as easily as fragile pottery in a tempest.

If a Princess cannot break for the suffering of her subjects, what will she break for?

She looks north. The horizon is haemorrhaging. This isn’t how things are supposed to be. But it seems Fate no longer has anything to say to her about Equestria’s future.

Stars wheel endlessly over her head. How did everything go wrong? Surely it was Fate’s will that the Elements of Harmony, wielded by six young and kind-hearted ponies, would reunite her and Luna. Yet they have failed and they are gone – they are dead.

They must have done something wrong. She’d overestimated her protégé. The Elements needed embodiment, not simply wielding. They needed a spark and Twilight had failed to provide one.

No. Nothing her ponies did could be responsible for this. Even if any of that were true their deaths are still her fault. She is the hoof through which Fate works. She should have given Twilight Sparkle more time. But how could she have failed? Fate is surely impervious to equine error.

An opposing force, perhaps. She was misled by inaccurate visions of another alicorn princess, visions that are now insufferable dreams, nightmares inflicted upon her from afar.

Of course. The Nightmare killed her sister, then those who should have borne the Elements of Harmony. Now it tries to destroy her and become the new hoof of Fate.

The Nightmare stops frequently to shower death on landscapes Luna once loved, but the distance between them is ever-widening. It hurts to pursue the Nightmare. Whenever she stops to catch her ragged breath, everything aches.

The Elements of Harmony were Equestria’s highest power. Now their power belongs to the Nightmare. She cannot rout the Nightmare without them. But she is the Princess. If Fate can turn away from her, then she can defy Fate in honour of her lost subjects. She can try. She can try. . .

Equestria wanes under her wings. She strains instinctually to raise the sun higher than the moon. The ocean surges below her, rushing and roaring. She pushes and the Nightmare resists. She pushes and the Nightmare pushes back. She pushes, and the Nightmare pushes her down to the dry, cold sand.

The ocean settles. A deathly silence falls. The corona around the black orb of the moon glows intensely. The sun must wait until she can try again.

She hears the silence. No one is crying. Everypony must be gone. Call it what it is: dead because their Princess failed them.

Dear Princess Celestia. . .

A thin wail rises in her ears. The sun can keep waiting.

If she lets the Nightmare kill her, though, she will have failed again. She must bear the tragedy of Equestria for the rest of her days. This, too, is her duty; perhaps her only duty.

despond

She remembers searching for the Nightmare forces that corrupted her sister. She remembers that their spectres lingered like morning mist in the valleys even once defeated. She remembers the Mare in the Moon stared balefully when she reared her head.

She clearly remembers thinking she’d give anything to have Luna back. She stamped once, categorically, to oust the Nightmare wisps entirely.

Fate must have been tempted by her offer.

How long has the sky been dark? Did the stars always look so inviting?

Maybe duty is abstract. Like love. Like Fate.

What if those things don’t exist?

†

The centaur stirs marginally as she approaches. “What do you want?” he croaks.

“The same thing that you always wanted.”

“You don’t have the strength to take my magic,” Tirek rasps. He’s lying.

“I’d like you to give it to me.”

“Why in Equestria would I do that?”

“You’re not strong enough to face the Nightmare.”

Tirek turns a nasty smile on her. She looks away. “The Nightmare? You mean Princess Luna?”

“No. Princess Luna is dead.” Call it what it is.

Tirek scoffs. “I know what it’s like when your sibling betrays you. You’re just using her as an excuse. But I could teach you how to take her magic as your own. We could rule Equestria together!”

She cringes. “Equestria is gone.”

Tirek begins to suggest, “Then we’ll rule its ruins—”

“No,” she says forcefully. She thinks not about ruling alongside him, of course, but instead about how swiftly the world diminished look at him once diarchy was reintroduced.

“I am sorry,” she says. But that isn’t looking at him.

She looks at Tirek. He snarls and thrashes vainly in her grip. The light in his black pupils dwindles and vanishes. Her heart is thumping hard and fast, shaking her barrel.

She chooses to see him. He is dead. Silent and dead.

“Dead,” she says out loud. Equestria isn’t diminished. It is dead.

The sickly taste of sweet tea and sugary doughnuts sticks between her teeth. She tries to lick it away until she craves a drink of water. Laughs of delight ring loudly in her ears. She twitches, or cringes.

She rests a hoof on the stone statue of a draconequus long imprisoned. Does Discord yet live? Has he decayed? She hopes he contains something resembling life for she needs his magic. Combined with Cadance’s and Tirek’s, his magic could reduce the deficit between herself and the Nightmare. She might be able to defend herself.

Six colourful characters rediscover the invaluable magic of friendship. She always loved the colour that each of her ponies brought to the world.

Discord’s fixed gaze mocks her. ‘Oh, Princess, the look on your face,’ he might laugh. ‘Why waste time wanting things that will never happen?’

She can see his defeat though. She blinks and the scene is gone. Where did that fateful magic go? She wants it back. How can she let it go when it haunts her? Can visions die?

It’s quite lonely being encased in stone, but you wouldn’t know that, would you. . .

Does he tease her from within his stony womb or from a coloured window all ablaze with her sunlight? Or does he lambast her for leaving before her Nightmare catches up? She can’t tell.

Magic smashes into her. It is Luna’s contempt, it is Fate’s absence. It is the inverse. It is neither, there is only pain. She has nothing to swear by anymore but it hurts.

The Elements of Harmony. You must get to them and use their power to defeat the queen.

The queen doesn’t exist. She must remember that. Changelings are dead just like her ponies. There’s no love left in Equestria. She wonders if Chrysalis cried as well when her subjects died. She tries to remember what that monster looked like. Her green eyes. Her tiny fangs. Her shimmering, fragile wings.

She squints at herself. Her left cutie mark has been replaced by a bloody crater.

“You look haggard, my royal sister,” the Nightmare teases. “Did you think you could escape me? Do you really want to?”

Far past the lidless moon, comets wave glowing tails at her. She canters in pursuit. Her hoof prints are made of stars and so are Luna’s and they will gallop through the glades of heaven forever, Princesses of sun and moon and star. It’s not real. She’s nearly certain of that.

She begs without thinking. “Luna, please.”

“I can help you forget her,” Nightmare Moon grins.

A long moment passes. But it’s her duty to remember Equestria and its ponies and achievements. She flees and a magical blast vaporises her empty silhouette.

She looks into the glazed orbs of a husk. They are hiding together inside a deep ravine in the land, out of sight, in the dark.

Duty. She leans closer and sees its lifeless eyes as opposed to merely looking. Dead. Yes, a dead pony she never knew. Might as well never have existed for all the good their meeting does.

She blinks, noting the callousness. She thinks of Canterlot and the smashed Elements. Her heart gives little more than a twinge.

Young and resplendent ponies approach the dais in sunlight; among them, Cadance and Twilight Sparkle and—

There’s the kick in the chest. She retches and remembers until her voice dies in a red-raw throat.

Trust me, little sister.

She’s woken by a stinging sensation in her horn. It could be because of the icy spindrift, which gnaws on her ears and lips too. She looks north and sees it is not so.

Two lightning-crowned shadows squall in mid-air. Magic heaves and swells in her blood; her ruined cutie mark throbs; their rhythm is in her body. She gnashes her teeth but her breath is determined to hold itself regardless.

Behold, the Crystal Princess!

The Nightmare wins. The northerly blizzards die. Sombra’s sibilant screaming resounds, amplified through every slow thump of her heart. It’s pleasantly elegiac. She feels a little warm. At least the Nightmare has no tolerance for other evils.

Brilliant sparks and sleeting crystal herald the descending hush.

She dozes again. She can barely feel Cadance anymore.

“Do you remember losing your crown, Princess?”

“Don’t call me that!”

The Nightmare cackles. “But that’s who you are. A Princess of a realm where the sun doesn’t even rise. You’re a failure!”

Everything reminds her of plans she once made. The sky calls her name. She looks away from Equestria into endless indigo space.

She takes to the air. The Nightmare is still laughing at her but she looks away and doesn’t listen. The atmosphere is thinning, she does not see the world she leaves behind; she concentrates instead on the vast panorama of stars. A particularly beautiful one twinkles in the distance, reminding her of the spark snuffed out in Twilight Sparkle’s eyes that night. So many eyes glimmer in constellations she’s never seen before, but they all die away as the great incandescence of the oncoming sun fills her vision.

She glances back at her straining wings. Her hair begins to ionise, streaming for miles and miles behind her, becoming the most beautiful coma she’s ever seen. She inhales the emptiness of the cosmos, and its purity burns her lungs and vaporises her crown and the sun is rising and she no longer sees the shadows of ponies she can’t save. She doesn’t hear their voices anymore, save one.

My most faithful student, Twilight Sparkle, has done many extraordinary things since she's lived in Ponyville. She even helped reunite me with my sister, Princess Luna. May I present for the very first time, Princess Twilight Sparkle!

Finally – blessedly – that voice dies too.

‡

“Look, sister! See how soundly our beloved subjects sleep!”

The Elements lie in the growing shadow. They are purple and pink and white and yellow and orange and blue and their faces are lax and surely they are just asleep. They must be. They will wake and vanquish Nightmare Moon and save Luna.

They do not move.

She looks away. She’s not here. She must be dozing as she waits for the beautiful moment of reconciliation. It will be wonderful. She will never be happier.

The shadow slinks into her blood, her heart, her horn.

She must look back. It is her duty. She must bear the way they do not move as the moon rises. The moon is pale and huge and she must look back, she must. She looks back. She has to look back. She is their Princess. She has to look.

Never have their coats been so lurid. The umbra overcomes their bodies. No, they are not bodies. They are her little ponies. It’s dark, she’s crying, it’s hard to see. There are cinders on the floor.

“Luna, stop,” she sobs. She looks at her sister. But that is looking away and she must not look away. She looks back at her student. “You must lower the moon!”

“Luna is gone!” Luna snaps. “I am Nightmare Moon!”

The mare spreads her wings to wreak vengeance on Equestria. Her wings are sharp. They are black against the sky devoid of sunlight. This is not her sister. Her sister has rounded wings.

This is not what she foresaw. This is not how the nightmare ends tonight. There is rubble and moonlight and it cannot be. This is like the beginning of the nightmare a millennium ago. This cannot be another beginning, a failed ending. No.

Suddenly there is a rainbow around Nightmare Moon and she can see all of the stars spinning in the galaxy and they spin out in a rush like the beginning of a race and embrace her. There is light everywhere and it hurts.