Celestia was getting ready for bed, pouring herself a cup of tea, when she felt it pop in on the balcony. Felt her pop in on the balcony. The magic signature was so familiar that for a second Celestia almost mistook her for her student who'd already left for the day, off to go study in the library, but then even she was dwarfed by the sudden burst of energy that accompanied this mare coming in. Even though Celestia couldn't see her, she could feel her age and her power, and Celestia knew who it was, and she didn't. The mare hadn't come in yet, her magic radiating like an exploding star from around the corner.
Celestia smiled tightly, and poured a second cup of tea.
Flaring her horn and feeling the magic in the other room expand and shrink with the mare's breath, Celestia calmed her nerves with a small sip from her own cup. It was jasmine, something that bit at her dry throat and calmed her muscles from when she immediately tensed at feeling another power drop in. She breathed deep, drained it all quickly, and then she smiled.
"You may come in any time, Twilight Sparkle. My student is always welcome here."
Celestia turned around to meet the sound of gentle, nearly silent hoofsteps, and kept a warm smile on her face as the magic around the corner burst outwards with an explosive force and then imploded upon itself to shrink to a tight, blinding ball. When Twilight Sparkle stepped out to meet her she was an alicorn in unicorn's clothing, everything in place to the student which had just left except for her obvious age showing through even the most flawless of transformation spells -- she stood tall and straight, her mane whipping in the nonexistent wind, and the air wriggled visibly in the area where Twilight's wings were hidden away. There was a grimace on her face, something so young, like she was a foal starting Magic Kindergarten, but her eyes were dull, and Celestia's face turned to stone as she realized this wasn't just a friendly visit.
"Thank you, Princess," Twilight said, nodding. "I..." She looked around Celestia's room, eyes blinking with starlight and swirls of cosmos flicking over her walls -- they were covered in crinkled parchment and sketches of ink, scribblings of time stamps and star arrangements slapped around wildly, over desks and tables and cracked-open books which Celestia was too busy to tidy up herself. "I... guess you were expecting me."
Celestia stopped her by lifting a foreleg, and then pointed to a couple of cushions by her lit fireplace. She flared her horn, set Twilight's quickly cooling cup to rest by the flickering flames, and took a mighty step forward to graze a blanket of white-feathered wings to the mare's slender neck. Squeezing slightly and pushing warmth into her stone-cold skin, Celestia nodded and let a tired laugh crack out, letting her eyes run over the walls as well.
"For a few years I've received visions of your arrival. I wasn't sure when you'd come, or why, but I'm far from surprised to see you, Twilight." She motioned to the fireplace with a turn of her neck, and smiled crookedly to the mare she had been seeing in her sleep for longer than even she could remember. "Come on, now, Twilight. You can at least sit down and drink with me while you talk, can't you?"
She turned her back on Twilight to go sit, and let out one more silent sigh as she prepared herself to whatever came next.
It would be a long night, and she could only pray it would go smoothly.
"I suppose so, Celestia," Twilight chirped, tired and cracking voice managing to sound relieved. Celestia turned to the mare just as she was settling herself to the orange and gold pillows Luna had made herself as a gift to her sister, and in that moment the crack in Twilight Sparkle's impossibly perfect magic came immediately clear to somepony with a magically-trained eye. The pillows shifted in a way which didn't shape the faux-unicorn's current body, smashed in at a weight which seemed impossible for such a small pony and folding in at the wavering, invisible weight of the alicorn's impossibly huge wings, sounded out with the noise of long, long hair against silk despite there not being any hair to move around. And then came the crack in Twilight's second mask: her composure -- as soon as she sat down her shoulders slumped, her body craning to the heat like a cat who'd nearly drowned in ice-water.
And she smiled so small, so tiny, that Celestia smiled too.
"I have to say, it's kind of nice being in this body again. Even if it's not real... it brings me back. Like I was a pupil just trying to get through an all-nighter and make that 'A' in magical engineering. I've been out there for so long, it's... and I haven't talked to a Celestia like this for at least forty-two thousand strings... it makes me feel - mortal - again."
Celestia raised an eyebrow, but quickly laid her curiosity to the bottom of her priorities, flattening her rising coat and twitching feathers as Twilight Sparkle grinned to the crackling flames. The unicorn lifted one of her lavender hooves to the emanating heat which pulsed from the light, eyes fluttering closed and her frozen skin steaming as fire met ice.
When she reached too far and caught her fetlock ablaze, her only reaction was to yank it away with a blush and turn back to Celestia. The fire didn't leave the smallest mark.
"Oh, heh, sorry. It's kinda cold out there, and it gets a little tedious to fly to a star just to be cold again by the time you're at another Equus. I should... probably get to the point."
Celestia nodded and shuffled upon her haunches, and lifted a gentle hoof to Twilight Sparkle's shoulder, ignoring the pulsing cold that threatened to touch her frog even through the fires of the sun. "As glad as I am to see you, Twilight, I suspect that there's a lot on your mind, and I'm curious to know what brought you here."
Twilight nodded and set her mouth to a strict, hard line, her eyes smashing shut as her tail flicked as if at annoying flies. She took a few deep, steady breaths, chest inflating and enlarging as she brought a hoof to it. Her ears folded down over her head, her eyebrows lifted, and then she opened her star-filled eyes to give Celestia a hard, long stare.
"To be honest, I guess I'm just here to vent at you," she muttered. "I've been... I've been alone for a long, long time, Princess. Longer than even I can barely comprehend. I've visited others so many times, but..." She shook her head, but smiled when Celestia gave her an encouraging nod. "I guess I should... should start from the beginning."
"My Equestria, my Equus, is dead.
I knew it was going to happen a while before it did. Years, in fact, but even with the Elements of Harmony I was unable to save it. Or anypony. I'm not entirely sure what happened to cause it; all I know is that, with the Element of Magic, I was able to leave unscathed. I traveled to the stars, to the Cosmos, by siphoning magic from your and Luna's heavenly bodies -- and then I watched Equestria... die. It wasn't spectacular, or explainable. One second I was floating in space, watching my friends as these tiny dots. And then it was just... cold and gray. As if they never existed. I didn't know what to do at first. For a while I just floated there, surviving on the other faraway stars. But--"
Celestia laid a warm, heated wing to Twilight's cheek as the mare shuddered with memory. The crystalline light exploding within her eyes glazed over to a frosted glass, the stars twinkling behind a thick, obscuring film, and she turned her head away with a snap so quick that Celestia's eye physically couldn't follow the movement. Her hooves wobbled, the magic in her horn threatening to ignite and turn the castle below her into a heated, smoking crater -- and then she shook her head. "No, it's fine, Twilight. Everything's fine. Couldn't be better. Everything's perfect, perfect, perfect."
Twilight ground her teeth together, and then turned her gaze to the fire in front of her.
"--But shortly after entering the Cosmos I wandered around my planet and stumbled upon some sort of magical anomaly stretching paths across stars -- like living, breathing constellations formed by interstellar latitude and longitude lines. Their construct is still beyond my scientific knowledge; as far as I can tell, those things aren't made up of... well, anything! No volume, no measurable mass, no light or dark magical output... it's like they don't exist. After studying and experimenting extensively with those Strings I even thought that maybe I was just crazy, and I've scanned myself hundreds of thousands of times just to make sure that my body isn't simply being subjected to hallucinogenics."
"Eventually I finally got the idea to follow one of the Strings down to another solar system, and when I got there, it was just another Equus, like I had never left. I originally assumed I had flown in a circle, or that while following the String the line changed its trajectory or fell into an oblong orbit around your Sun. It was only after I checked the planet to be sure that I realized that this Equus was still thriving in its prime. Not even just a separate time or spacial displacement, but a whole other universe like the one at Canterlot High -- assuming you have access to that mirror and know what I'm talking about."
Twilight picked her head up from the stirring flames, and Celestia allowed her shoulders to sag as she saw that she had calmed, glassy eyes specked with bright starlight again. A wrinkle stood out against Twilight's brow, her skin crinkling and her magic wavering ever so slightly near the area where her elongated horn would normally reside, and there was something so familiar about it that Celestia had to grin. Despite her confusion and the shadows hanging under her eyelids even through her illusion-transformation, Twilight was still determined about a good challenge. It almost seemed like if Celestia looked down, she could see Twilight twisting a puzzle cube in her hooves.
Celestia nodded at her and scooted closer. Twilight didn't notice, and instead kept talking. Celestia supposed she hadn't done this in quite some time.
"The more I stayed out in the Cosmos, the more of those mirror-Equus' I found. I've been broadening my knowledge on time and space spells, comparing and contrasting the condition of those universes to my own and trying to find some sort of connection to my tragedy for... well, for all of eternity, Princess. With how many timelines I've looked at, gone through, so many lifetimes pass me by every time I blink, I've learned to reverse myself and visit different years in the entire histories of universes... it's been longer than an eternity. It's been an infinity, and yet."
"Nothing."
Twilight's body sagged, and she looked up to the sky -- to the Cosmos -- with a watery-eyed frown and grit teeth. She opened her mouth a few times, trying words in her mouth before falling silent each time, and after a few trying moments she snapped her jaw shut and looked back to Celestia. The little suns in her eyes boiled with tears not shed, and Celestia licked at her dry mouth as she stared at her, silent and waiting.
"No leads to go on, all of my experimentation and research ends up being fruitless and leads to more dead-ends... Nothing I've tried has worked. I don't know how much of this you could follow, Celestia, but this is why I came to you. To... to... get some advice, or maybe knowledge beyond what I already have about this situation."
Celestia's tea was getting cold, even by the fire, and as Celestia closed her eyes to ponder all she had studied on time spells and the larger universe in which resided, she stood up and flared her horn. She excused herself quietly to Twilight, and the as mare nodded gently she levitated her cup to her breast and began a slow trod to her dining area, flicking her eyes to the parchment littering her walls and floors.
Celestia hadn't done much extensive research on a subject such as this since she discovered the mirror at the back of her castle -- and that was nearly eons ago, now, nothing but a long-ago romp through the possibilities of inter-dimensional travel that she closed long ago as a foolish little pony, when she realized that as an alicorn she had a responsibility of looking out for all of Equestria's safety -- and now, she sighed and clicked her teeth while she gently levitated her teacup to the sink. Celestia had never even though of the possibility of a pony, even a long-lived alicorn goddess or warrior, transcending the barrier of mortality and the concept of time and space, let alone attempting to mold or influence it at will in the way which Twilight Sparkle was. She had no experience on the subject, no other example to prod into, and even the words of her wise old adviser Starswirl could give her direction now -- Celestia's throat hitched and her chest throbbed as she thought about the implications of that.
A brilliant, young, beautifully optimistic Twilight Sparkle had lost all of the fire in her heart. Even the magic of Friendship had failed her now, leaving her alone and wandering for beyond millenniums searching for a cure to death itself, and now she had nothing to look to an old teacher which wasn't exactly her own. And Celestia had no answers to give. No magical or scientific solution, only words of kindness.
One look back at the old, tired mare sitting sadly at her fireplace told Celestia that perhaps that is what this little pony needed. Twilight twitched at her invisible wings idly as she stared unblinkingly to the crackling red-white flames, her tail flicking wildly at its heat. Her eyebrows were drawn up, and their was a sad, expectant arch to her popping spine as her gaze wandered the pulses of warmth. And she looked small, a tooth nibbling at her lip as if she was nothing but a foal that was about to do something she shouldn't, like she had already done so, and like she wanted to say something that could lead to her getting her books taken away.
"I am so sorry, Twilight. Your question is beyond what even the alicorn-warriors who trained Us knew." She paused, so Twilight could sigh, and lift her swirling irises to the clutter brushing at her hooves, to the parchment tattooed with magical and arcane etchings which no longer meant anything of value to those who walked among suns and the dead. "But something tells me that you knew I wouldn't have a solution. And your ear is flicking, Twilight. If you're anything like my little student is now, then I believe there's something you're not telling me."
Celestia closed her eyes in order to let Twilight chuckle tightly, guiltily, and when she opened them the alicorn was standing. One lavender hoof rippled with nervous energy and stroked her adjacent foreleg. She stood straight, back a rigid rod of bone, and her mane flapped faster and faster within the ethereal energy still forming a twinkling ball around her. Her muzzle pointed downwards, eyes roaming the floors splattered with stains of ink, and there were such sparks exploding in them that Celestia couldn't imagine what was so painful to speak -- not painful to Twilight, based on the way the mare sadly flicked her eyes up to her, but to Celestia.
Then Twilight grimaced and lifted a wavering hoof to the glass window to her far right, where the silver sphere of the moon hung, and Celestia sighed. She set her face to stone, and tore her eyes from the window.
"Celestia, I... I talked to Luna. Your Luna, before everything happened. When she was younger, years before the Everfree Tragedy." She paused, shivering slightly and flicking her tail, and then a small croak came out, "I tried my hardest, Celestia. After I asked her questions and she gave me advice, I mean. I dropped her hints for a while, told her of the prophesy, then outright told her that everything would go badly if she continued even thinking about doing this... but, well, I couldn't even save my own Luna, Princess."
Celestia blocked out a flash of pain, and then nodded. She kept her jaw locked so she wouldn't ask more of somepony who already gave everything. "I understand, Twilight. There's no need to apologize. Luna acted of her own accord, and if there's anypony to blame for it, it would be me. Please, Twilight, let us move on to what's troubling you."
Twilight shook her head, opened her mouth in a creak to tell her something -- but then Celestia's energy flared to an explosion of magic in her own eyes, and Twilight said nothing. The two old alicorns stood and stared at each other as Celestia sucked in a ragged breath, and then eventually Twilight blinked and lifted a hoof to her chest.
It was only then that Celestia realized that Twilight's horn had exploded with energy in retaliation. The light dimmed from it slowly as she breathed in, then out with her hoof following suit, and then Twilight was grimacing again. Celestia ground her teeth at herself, and forced her face soft again.
"Sorry about the magic, Princess," Twilight half-whispered. "There's, ah, some rather large creatures wandering the Cosmos. They're very fascinating, and I've learned much of their biological makeup in my time, but it still pays to be prepared for a dragon the size of five of your suns to just waltz around the corner, you know? It becomes habitual to use my horn when surprised."
Celestia smiled, and stepped forward to drape a wing over Twilight's tensed shoulder. "I'm sorry to have surprised you, Twilight. Please, do tell me what Luna told you of your problem."
Twilight sagged, then nodded once. The silence dragged on, painting the faux-unicorn in a scene of tense thought. Energy once again blew outwards in a small, explosive burst of emotion, and then she was once again fighting against twinkling salt in her eyes. Her eyelids slammed shut for a moment, and when she opened them, she spoke, "Actually, she made me think of why I shouldn't try to change what happened on my Equus."
Celestia blinked once, straightening, but then gave a strangled smile; despite being so passionate, it always did seem that Luna was the one to bring a pony down to earth. Controversial decisions were her specialty, and she took pride in her insistence that what she chose was correct in saving her ponies -- even when that decision sent her somewhere none of her subjects could follow.
Celestia hugged Twilight tighter.
"It's not as if she told me not to directly, but... but she brought some things to attention."
Twilight took one final breath, one which stretched the magical bubble of energy to a sphere which enveloped the entire room in a near-invisible, ethereal twinkle, and Celestia took this moment to study her. A few more hairs appeared a few centimeters away from their original lengths, her horn appeared longer along with her thinning legs, and a small patch of uncovered feathers twitched with stress on her shoulders -- and then, a small observation: after she sighed, Twilight's chest stopped moving, and Celestia suspected she hadn't needed to breathe in eons.
Then Twilight snapped her head up, her eyes glassy.
"Do you realize that I could be your god, Celestia?"
Celestia said nothing. She had nothing to say to that.
"I've gone back in time thousands of times in thousands of different universes, and I've changed things. Small things, but I've managed only the most minute of differences. I've influenced politicians, put road-blocks in the way of dictators, saved lives... and every time, the history fights me. Some magical force I've yet to identify adjusts every action I take, or has already taken my presence in account before I think to travel there and masked my time-reading spell to make it impossible for me to detect my own arrival. Most of the time the force just erases my place on the timeline altogether, no matter how many different ways I try to get past its protection. It's a sort of... mapping force, saying what's to happen in the universe and defying revision to its arcane layout -- if it even has and arcane layout, since I'm not sure about that either.
"It's Fate, Celestia," she whinnied, and then Twilight took a step back from Celestia's wing. Without even seeming to think, her eyes now trailed the floor and her masking spell slipped further still to show two lavender, popping wings which spans stretched to the far window before she even started walking. Each individual feather rippled and shone with twinkles of shimmering light, and the flashes jumped off of them as she started to pace the floor and flicked her wings and tail. "To be honest, when I was a student, I thought that the idea of fate was just... dumb. There was no logical evidence to support its existence, and I didn't have friends back then who had a different opinion than me to argue about it with. But after the first day you -- my Celestia -- gave me these," she flapped her wings, "I started to really think of the implications that fate and destiny brought.
"And that's what it is, Celestia. Whether the idea of Fate is real or not, something out there is acting as it. It's taking ponies' choices by conforming them to a timeline, and resisting change no matter what. For all I know it's some other alicorn -- another me -- twisting the strings. I've known that since the first time I sat hoof on my second alternate Equus. I've been fighting it, trying to transcend that other force since my Equestria died. And... and it hasn't worked because I'm fighting Fate itself."
Twilight's voice cracked, and she turned her head away even as Celestia stepped closer again. Her horn shone in a gentle twinkle of rainbow-blasted light, and the tiny mare shuddered with an enveloping glow of energy strong enough to wipe Celestia's very immortal life from the mountain, but gentle enough to cradle the petite transforming mask Twilight had laid over her and bloom it outwards, to leave the once tiny unicorn-skin unfolded in the blooming petals of a purple rose below the alicorn's hooves. Her true long legs shivered as they touched the flower-shaped magic she had molded under her, and she only opened her eyes when her entire body had stopped shaking.
Twilight Sparkle, who walked among the dead and among the titans of the Cosmos, stood tall and straight as an intergalactic explorer. Celestia stretched her neck upwards to look at Twilight's face, and from where her eyes scrolled she could barely take in what was in front of her. Sprawling, thin legs leading up to a lean torso striped with glowing runes, tail and mane flowing outwards in giant pools of not hair, but of the galaxy itself. A face contoured and thinned, shape pointing to the nose and muzzle and sunken in by almond-shaped eyes the likes of which Celestia physically couldn't look at for too long without feeling her eyes being damaged. A frown so large and filled with a swirling darkness and purple-blasted nothingness, light shifting and refracting at where a tongue would be placed, leading downwards to a throat and an internal body now reduced almost completely to a purely magical husk.
Celestia felt her muscles tense, and a weight fell so heavy on her shoulders that she stumbled from her place. She thought of her Twilight Sparkle, a little filly with wide innocent eyes, and a smile so large that she couldn't deny giving her tea and cookies most times. Her young, cute little student was trying so hard to make friends now, and every time she came running in to Celestia's chambers with a smile on her face, Celestia knew somepony had given her a little gift at school before she showed it to her. She was a little troublemaker, and did have troubles with self-doubt and hating spirals, but she had a good heart, and promise as protege and eventual adviser to the throne already.
Celestia remembered, just two days prior, how little Twilight had gotten scared by the thunder and wanted a little cuddle to make her feel better.
Now she looked at Twilight Sparkle, a princess, an immortal, a Goddess who had achieved more than possibly any other creature in existence. How long had it been, how much had she gone through to get to be as powerful as life itself?
Celestia didn't ask. She knew. For infinity this mare had been alive. Longer than the idea of eternity itself.
Celestia put on a calm facade, and took three easy steps to the behemoth of an alicorn at her side. She counted to three, and then gently placed her side against Twilight's Sparkle, lit her horn and gave her cooling body warmth.
"Luna told me," Twilight continued, her voice a boom, "that by transcending, I would be becoming. And she was right, Celestia. I've been fighting a force adjusting the lives of ponies and changing their histories... well, forever! And if I were to finally find the answer to my question, find a way to bring my friends back... I would be a goddess, Celestia. I would be Fate, and I would be the one taking the decisions of my little ponies away."
Twilight twisted her body away from Celestia's warmed touch, lean and slender appendages coiling and twisting like a snake flinching from the heat of a desert sun. She sighed again, small and quiet. Her voice cracked, and her cutie mark -- the only thing identical to the little filly Celestia knew -- wavered with fragmented light. She turned her head back around, and by looking into Twilight's blinding eyes for only a millisecond, she knew what the alicorn was going to say before she whispered it:
"Their lives as well. No matter how much dabbling in spacial and temporal magics I've done, and how much experimenting I've gone through, even if I were to find a solution it wouldn't be a simple one, and given my form, I don't think anything could improve if I discovered a baseline. The solution I found would be the only one, no room for anything else. And I've done the calculations and ran magically-induced mental simulations thousands upon hundred-thousands of times, and anything I did to even slightly alter the timeline would have mixed results. For each friend I saved, I would be inevitably erasing or at least slightly changing an event in somepony else's life. One pony would be blocked off from a side exit and wouldn't see the thing that inspired the rest of their career. Somepony wouldn't meet their future husband. Somepony would die or wouldn't be born at all.
"I'd be a murderer, except there would be an exceptionally lower number of bodies as their would be unfulfilled possibilities.
Twilight turned her blinding eyes out to the balcony where she'd first landed that night, gazing over the wide expanse of stars which Celestia had never seen as so tiny and significant before -- a rolling sea of light which she shifted and crafted with, something so big and so, so small. Twilight's shoulders shook and wavered, her wings folded in against her sides, and while her too-thin legs shook with her thoughts Twilight pulled her giant body inwards and looked younger and more lost than Celestia had seen in years, when that foolish little sun-pony realized just how many moons it would be until she could beg for forgiveness from the one she wronged the most.
Then Twilight Sparkle, her black hole of a mouth creaking open in a spray of moon-dust, said: "I don't know what to do, Celestia. My friends and my family... I love them all so much. All I want is to have my library back and be able to gripe at Spike to go to bed already. I thought I would do anything for them, but-
"But what if it was their time, Celestia? What if it was my time? I knew them, I still know them so well, and the last thing they would want of me is to turn into some... some selfish monster -- and I don't know if what I would be doing to save them would even be enough to make me into one! I'm supposed to do anything for them, I would do anything for them -- and now I don't know if it would be selfish and cruel of me to not save them... or get them back.
"On my Equus, Celestia, I was the Princess of Friendship. And without my friends here... I'm not sure what to do. What they would want me to do. For all I know, my life's work, this eternity out in the Cosmos, was just another mistake from me overreacting again. I could be becoming the very thing I'm fighting against just because I'm not a good enough friend to know what my friends would want for me... or themselves.
"I think I could get my friends back, Celestia. With enough time I'm almost positive. But if I did, then I couldn't just be their friend anymore. I couldn't go back to a quiet life in my crystal castle where I told Spike not to eat too many jewels. I would be..." Twilight gestured down to her body with a single foreleg, hoof traveling a chest with a heart which no longer beat, to a stomach filled with not organs but pure magic, to the runes forever etched and engraved into her lavender-stone skin and lit rhythmically to the pulse of breath she now took out of habit rather than need. "this thing, and all of Equestria, even my Celestia, wouldn't see me the same. I could hide, but eventually something would have to slip and they'd see me as I am now. And once they figured out what I had done...
"I don't know what they would do, Celestia. I don't know if they'd thank me or... o-or never speak to me again, or mourn for the Twilight Sparkle I used to be. I don't know.
"And that's what scares me the most."
Then Twilight turned to the window once again, the moonlight sweetly cascading over her thin frame. She shook and clenched her eyes, and then she was crying.
Celestia scooped her face tightly against her breast right before she croaked out a single, gasping sob. Celestia held her body close, pained magic coming off of Twilight and throbbing at her front, and Celestia grit her teeth as Twilight screamed brokenly under her wings; she thought of her little-Twilight Sparkle, tiny protege to the sun, telling her teacher about her failures. She thought of an older Twilight happy and surrounded by friends later in life. She thought of an aging Princess of Friendship, nearly collapsing from pressure and breaking altogether as everything was wiped away. She thought of a goddess, alone and forgotten and confused for millenniums, trapped in a struggle within herself in which she debated who she was and what side of herself she should listen to. The possibility of her sweet little student transforming into the mare under her hoof shook Celestia to her core, and in a moment she looked to the Moon of her wronged Sister, and steeled herself and her body to never allow this again. She wouldn't--
Celestia stopped.
Celestia turned cold, her body locking to stone and a spiral of heated, hateful magic going through her as she realized that she was thinking of the could-be's and not the reality. That she was seeing wasn't of Twilight Sparkle, but of Student Twilight Sparkle and Goddess Twilight Sparkle; that Twilight Sparkle wasn't seeing Celestia, she was thinking of Her Celestia and This Celestia; and that even though Twilight leaned into Celestia's touch, craning her body heavily and needing into the caress of hooves, there was a hesitance to Twilight Sparkle's posture that painted her a lone Goddess only because she was a lone pony. Because there was something Celestia hadn't said yet. That she hadn't thought of.
She had failed her student. She had failed Twilight Sparkle, and Celestia gave a weary smile as she realized that even after everything she still had apologies to give.
"I'm so sorry, Twilight. As your mentor, it's my job to teach you and protect you, to prepare you for whatever should happen to you. But I didn't expect this, and because of that you've been through so much pain. You should have never had to make this decision, and I should have--"
"It wasn't you," Twilight muttered under her breath, and from Celestia's place she could see the Goddesses eyes narrow and feel her horn flare with confusion. "Celestia, I told you, I come from another Equus entirely. You... you couldn't have done anything. You have no reason to be sorry. You don't even have a reason to be talking to me right now."
Celestia turned her gaze to the window at her side, where the silver disk still etched with the spirit and form of her sister hang dutifully in the sky, and where the stars shimmered farther out into the Cosmos than she could comprehend. She thought of a little filly who raised the moon and was taken over by a Nightmare, not only here but in Twilight Sparkle's universe, and by the way her student's face twisted, in quite a few others. She thought of her mistakes, of her good decisions, of her sins. She thought of what she was and what she could have been with just a turn in the other direction, a single word said differently or not at all; Celestia thought of the Cosmos, and in turn, her selves, and not just just the pony she was but the ponies all those Celestia's were. All of the ponies Twilight had found on her journeys were not coincidences, but differences, possible and ultimately actual alternatives.
The same could be said for everything. It was one of the reasons that Celestia destroyed the portal to the human universe long ago: mistakes hurt so much that sometimes you couldn't bear to look at them anymore, and she couldn't dare look Principal Celestia in the eye and deal with the fact that they could have been the same person.
That they were the same person.
"Personally, Princess Twilight, I don't see the difference."
So she stepped forward, to where Twilight Sparkle still stood, confused within a world that was her's and not her's all the same. Celestia wrapped her hooves gingerly across the alicorn's front, let her horn fold a soft magic over the mare's body.
"As far as I see, in another world, in another situation, I allowed my personal student to hold a responsibility far too great for her -- and that one responsibility lead to so many more, and to this unbearable burden. This shouldn't have been allowed to happen, and I am sorry that I've caused you so much pain, my student. Whether you are 'My' Twilight Sparkle or not, Celestia was the one who failed you -- and I just so happen to go by that name here as well," she chuckled, something quiet.
And then Celestia lifted her tiny head to rest within the crook of Twilight Sparkle's, and felt as the Cosmos within the Goddess's mane and husk of a body washed coldly and endlessly over her and within her horn. Twilight had stiffened, and was now standing completely still, her stone wings brushing the walls, and her eyes glazed over once again to Luna's small yet beautiful sky -- to where an impossible question screamed to her; Celestia couldn't even help her with it, and that made her twitch one time against Celestia's warm cheek.
Twilight Sparkle, a traveler of stars and lifetimes, came to her in dreams and in visions which haunted her from her very first waking moment; she continued to do so, for decades which quickly turned to centuries and millenniums -- until now, in which a broken Goddess, formed from a once-happy unicorn loved by her friends, and by her subjects as a dedicated Princess of Friendship and Magic, came to her in need. Questions of moralities and ethics, of power and of the impossible immortality forced upon her, came with her.
But it wasn't answers that Twilight Sparkle wanted, nor needed. Celestia knew that now. Goddess Twilight Sparkle was simply Goddess Twilight Sparkle because the poor mare refused to see herself as anything else until her loved ones were returned to her, and, more importantly, because she most likely hadn't heard a few certain words for longer than the idea of forever itself. For longer than Celestia had been alive, or could possibly hope to understand, she had waited and yearned for one who would give her this, and it was most likely for what Celestia was about to say that Twilight had come to her specific Equus in the first place.
Celestia wasn't about to make her wait any longer than she already had.
She patted Twilight's withers, just as she had a few hours ago, when the filly went off to study.
Then she smiled, her lips upturning against the pony's skin, and she said, "I love you, Twilight."
They sat in silence until the tea had gone cold, and then in a flurry of color and energy, Twilight Sparkle was gone.
