A cold wind whistled through the barren woods this autumn night. Hooves shod in golden sandals stepped lightly over dry leaves and broken branches, making no sound but an occasional soft crick. Eyes the colour of bubblegum darted this way and that, scouting for any sight of the other presence. For the eyes of Celestia could not see their target, but Her nose and Her ears told her it was here, all the same, and with every step, every sound, every sigh of the wind, they twitched, sensing that presence. The scent on the winds changed, and Celestia adjusted her bearing.
High above, the moon hung in the sky, staring down upon the form of her elder sister with intent. Pale golden light shone from her body, gifting the elder royalty with light enough to see Her way through the darkened forest. At last, Celestia came upon a little clearing, small and circular, and glowing bright from the light of Her younger sister.
“You may come out now, Chrysalis,” said Celestia, Her horn shimmering bright gold with the beginnings of some spell, as her eyes ceased their roving and fixated on a patch of shadow just beyond the reach of the moon’s light. “There is nowhere that you can hide; neither from my sister’s eyes, nor mine.
From the darkness came a figure, shaped as though roughly equal to Celestia in bearing and height, but wreathed in blackness and with limbs that appeared to have been bored through with many augers. Large emerald eyes stared hungrily at Celestia, and the faint light of the moon drew deep chasms of shadow across her gaunt cheeks and thread-bare mane. Her own horn, a jagged lightning bolt carved from obsidian, readied no spell as she advanced, and each of her hoofbeats sounded heavier than the last.
“You should not be here, Chrysalis,” said Celestia, the fires of righteous indignation burning brightly in Her eyes. “Not when all of Equestria is out for your blood.”
Chrysalis was silent, staring wistfully at Celestia. The lines on her face were deep and heavy, and uncovered by gaudy mascara they spoke of countless hardships and stress. Her mane was ragged, even more so than usual, and her face and body were stained with dirt.
“Why couldn’t you have accepted Starlight Glimmer’s offer? I know you can be stubborn, but even you should have realized at that point that you had lost. You didn’t have to continue to be anypony’s enemy.”
“Why have you come here, Celestia?” the ragged Changeling asked. “Have you come to finish me off? To at last do what you never had the strength to do before? It would be easy now; I am but one Changeling, the last of my kind in all the world. Come, best me where I could not best you. Strike me down, Celestia.”
The fire in Celestia’s eyes went dim. She had been expecting a fight, for Chrysalis to lash out like a wounded animal, cornered and fearful. Even in her battered and weakened state, Celestia had no doubt that the Changeling Queen could still fight Her to a prolonged standstill.
She had not been expecting for Chrysalis to just… Give up. Chrysalis never gave up, not this easily.
“I have not come to fight you, Chrysalis.” Celestia took a step backwards, allowing the light of her horn to dim in a show of goodwill, for whatever it was worth. “Nor have I come to kill you. Come back to Canterlot with me, make amends with Thorax and Starlight Glimmer, and you may once again be the leader your hive needs.”
Chrysalis scoffed at Celestia’s notion, baring rows of jagged fangs as she choked on her forced laughter. “You really think those things are still Changelings, don’t you? They aren’t. Changelings are hideous, tortured and ruinous forms of life born to be cursed by the very Gods Themselves!” A charcoal grey foreleg shook itself at Celestia, and the many holes in the appendage whistled in the wind. “This is what a Changeling looks like. Not those repulsive, rainbow-coloured abominations.”
“How can you stand to speak about your own subjects like that? The Chrysalis I knew may have had an unkind word for every creature under the sun, but she would never think to speak ill of her fellow Changelings.”
“Because they are not my Changelings anymore! Whatever they are now, they ceased to be Changelings when that traitor took them from me. I hate them! I hate all of them! I hate those things that have taken the place of my hive! I hate that traitor Thorax! And most of all, I hate that wretch Starlight Glimmer!”
Chrysalis halted her rant, taking a moment to catch her breath and collect her thoughts as they ran wild through her head. Her breathing was shallow and labored, with each drawn breath stretching her gaunt skin against her ribs. “I hate her Celestia. I hate her more than you can possibly imagine. I want to take from her everything that she took from me, and yet… I’m so tired.”
There was sadness in Chrysalis’s voice, sadness hidden under so many layers of anger that only now was allowed to come to the surface. “I’ve been fighting for my race for a thousand years, and it was all for naught… She took them from me, Celestia; she took them all from me… I am the last of the Changelings now. When I die, that will be the end of the race I worked so hard to save. I’m so tired; I would gladly welcome death at this point. Please, do me this last favour and strike me down, so that I might enter the hive of my ancestors in the Great Beyond.”
Now, it was Celestia’s turn to be silent. They had fought, yes, more times than She cared to count over the past thousand years, and many days had come and gone where She wished that they could simply lay down their armies and be friends again, as they had been in their youth. That had been a long time ago, and they had both changed since those days. Celestia had risen, vaulted to the highest heights since those old days; but poor Chrysalis, she had been falling for so long, and now looked up at Celestia from the bottom of an infinitely dark and deep well.
As angry as She might have been, what sort of friend could Celestia call Herself if She refused to help a friend pick themselves up when they needed it most?
“No,” She said, and Her ethereal mane shifted in the wind as She shook her head, rejecting that foul notion. “I will not kill you, Chrysalis, not until I am utterly devoid of recourse. But I will help you, if you will let me.”
“How can you possibly help me, Celestia? Or for that matter, why would you bother trying? I’ve lost everything I ever had in this world. I threw away our friendship because I thought you had betrayed me. I killed my father because I thought I could rule better than him. I waged war against your country time and again and rejected every offer of peace out of a selfish desire to see Equestria burn. But worst of all, I mistreated my own kind to the point where they rejected me the first chance they got. You’re perfect, Celestia, and you can’t help me, because I don’t deserve your help.”
“You’re wrong.” Celestia slowly closed the gap between the two, until She was close enough to draw Chrysalis into an embrace with Her wings, comforting her as She had done when they were young. “You have made mistakes, Chrysalis; I will not deny this. But so have I. Neither of us are perfect ponies, but we don’t need to be perfect for our lives to have worth.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Chrysalis slid under Celestia’s grasp, releasing herself from the Princess’s embrace. “You haven’t failed your entire race anywhere near as spectacularly as I have. A Queen am I? What measure is a Queen without her crown, her throne, or her subjects?”
The former Changeling Queen walked away from Celestia, staring silently up at the moon. “I am Queen no more. Now, I am merely Chrysalis, Changeling. I’m limited. Just look at me, Celestia; I’m limited. And just look at you, you can do all I couldn’t do, be the leader I couldn’t be… Watch over my Changelings for me, Celestia, if you would? I’d trust you more with my hive than anypony else I know.”
Chrysalis turned her head back towards Celestia, and their eyes met for but a moment. Between them passed a certain look, shared knowledge of a youth long forgotten, only now coming to light, and Celestia knew. She appeared somber at first, taking a moment to process the thoughts and emotions that had been shared in that glance.
“I’ve heard it said that ponies come into our lives for a reason; bringing something we must learn, and we are led to those who help us most to grow, if we let them; and we help them in return. Well I don’t know if I believe that’s true, but I know I’m who I am today because I knew you.”
Chrysalis laughed; not a forced one, but real, true, genuine laughter, of a kind she had not felt in a lifetime. “Well, I don’t know if I believe that either. You? Learning something from me? Did we step into Opposite Day without me noticing?”
Celestia responded with laughter of her own; it had been so long since She heard such a genuine, happy sound coming from the Changeling mare, and it brought a smile to her face. “No, Chrysalis, I’m being serious. Your friendship taught me many things that I doubt I would have learned otherwise. Do you remember how I was when we first met?”
“I remember an airheaded ditz of a crown princess, more concerned with her popularity than her studies or her future responsibilities.” Chrysalis responded immediately, as her memory wandered to days gone by. An image, stained by time, nestled within her head like a fading photograph. There stood a much younger Celestia, surrounded by an eager cadre of stallions and mares. But there was something more, too… “And, I remember how that same airheaded ditz risked her popularity in front of the entire school to defend me, even though I had been nothing but cruel to her since the day we met.”
Celestia gave a nod; that same faded image readily conjured itself up in her mind’s eye as well; and beside it formed another image, that of an austere Changeling mare with a ratty mane and simple black clothes that covered her entire form. “And I remember a studious mare with big dreams of saving her kind from starvation, who used her anger as a mask to hide her loneliness. She was a bit rough around the edges at first, but from her I learned two very valuable lessons that I carry with me to this day.”
“And what might those be?”
“She taught me the importance of giving my all for my little ponies, even when things looked bleakest; and she taught me that friendship is something that everypony deserves, even when nopony else thinks they deserve it.”
“Things are different now, Celestia. After all that I’ve done, to you, your ponies… Not even you could call me your friend after what I’ve done.”
“Do you regret the things you’ve done?”
“If it would have saved my kind, I would have done them again, and so much more. I would have borne the weight of a thousand sins if it meant the survival of my hive…” A forlorn look sat itself upon Chrysalis’s face, and she turned away from Celestia once again. “And yet, for all I did I was still unable to save them. Yes, I regret the actions I have taken over the course of my life. Perhaps if I had taken to heart the lessons that you taught me, I could have been the leader they needed me to be.”
“Now it’s my turn to wonder if we’ve stepped into Opposite Day,” responded Celestia. “We’ve led such different lives, and ruled over our little ponies in such radically different fashions. You’ll forgive me for asking, but what was it that you learned from me?”
“From you, I learned how powerful kindness and friendship can be. Before I met you, I always thought them to be small, meaningless gestures, the kind of things you give when you have nothing else of value. But, thanks to you, I learned that even the smallest amount of kindness can go further than even a mountain of gold bits. Perhaps if I had applied myself in a fashion similar to you… Treated my hive with the same kindness with which you treated your ponies… Maybe it could have been me who saved them, after all.”
“You can still have that opportunity, Chrysalis. Come back with me to Canterlot. Make amends with Thorax and Starlight Glimmer, and show them that you are willing to turn over a new leaf. Equestria was willing to welcome Discord, and I know that if you put your best hoof forward that you will be welcomed too.”
Chrysalis shook her head, and the look in her tired eyes spoke volumes to Celestia. “My crimes are a thousand years too early to be forgiven so easily. It would be better for everypony if we never meet again in this lifetime. But still, I want to thank you for the part you have played in my life. The memory of our time together, for good or ill, will always be with me, like a hoofprint on my heart. And now whatever way our stories end, I know you have rewritten mine by being my friend. And, just to clear the air, I ask forgiveness for the things I’ve done. For the thousand years in which we’ve been on-and-off at war; for the deer and the antelope, and every other race that got caught in the crossfire of our battles; for the many times you tried to make peace with me, only to have it rejected out of hoof.”
“Then again, we know there’s blame to share. I should have tried harder to reach out to you; I should have listened better to your requests, before they turned into unreasonable demands. I should have been the better mare, but I was too concerned with maintaining my image before my little ponies that I was unwilling to bring my best side to the table.”
“It seems that we both managed to forget the thingss we learned from one another. Well, none of it really matters anymore. This is where we part ways, Celestia, but at least now we part on better terms. Perhaps in another thousand years I’ll return, if you would have me.”
Celestia nodded, wordlessly, as she watched Chrysalis depart. Neither She nor Luna would follow the former Changeling Queen to whatever ends she sought for herself. But this time, Celestia could see a silver lining to this dreary cloud, where before She had not. This time, there was the hope that She and Chrysalis would meet again.
Celebrations at the Sunset Festival were drawing to a close. Trixie and Starlight, along with a number of ponies from Starlight’s former village, were going around and clearing decorations from the facades of houses. Celestia and Twilight, Princess and student, sat off to the side, enjoying a last few morsels of cake and tea before the time to return at last came.
“Princess,” began Twilight “There’s something that’s been on my mind for awhile now.”
“Oh? Do tell Twilight; I always love to hear your thoughts.”
“Well, it’s… It’s about you and Chrysalis, actually. About when she appeared at my brother’s wedding. When you and her looked at each other in the moments after her disguise fell away… At first, I thought you were only glaring at each other in the heat of battle, but…”
“But what, Twilight?”
“Well, do you remember my old friend Moondancer, from school?”
“Yes, I seem to recall the two of you being quite close before you left for Ponyville.”
“See, a little while ago I went back to Canterlot to try and make amends to her for the way I left to abruptly. We eventually made up, but at first she was furious with me; she had every right to be. But, when I looked at her, and saw how upset she was to see me after I treated her the way I did, I realized- The face that she wore, the look of somepony whose best friend had betrayed them, was the same face I had seen you and Chrysalis wearing when you fought.”
Twilight hung her head in shame, hesitantly trying to avoid asking the question that had been on her mind for the better part of two years now, shameful as it was. “Princess Celestia, were you and Chrysalis… Friends, at one point?”
Celestia sighed. Twilight was a smart pony, it was no wonder she had figured out the most well-guarded secret that the Princess possessed. Well, if there were anypony Celestia could trust with something like this, it would have been Twilight Sparkle. “Yes, Twilight, Chrysalis and I were friends, long, long ago. We aren’t anymore, but just as you did with Moondancer, I too wish that I could one day make amends with her.”
“Princess, do you really believe that you could make amends with somepony as evil as her? She’s attacked Equestria twice now within just five years, and countless other times before that. If what I’ve read is true, she was responsible for bringing the deer and the antelope to the brink of extinction during the war of 771. She’s been Equestria’s greatest enemy for almost thousand years now.”
“And yet, Twilight, Equestria has welcomed greater threats than her into its fold. Discord? Scorpan? Even my sister Luna, who as Nightmare Moon would have wrought greater evils than Chrysalis; all of them have at one point been terrible threats to Equestria, and yet they are all welcome friends now. Why should not Chrysalis be welcomed too, were she to reform her ways?”
“I’m sorry, Princess. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“And I accept your apology, Twilight. After all you have experienced at her hooves, it is perfectly reasonable to be more than a little wary. But I remember who Chrysalis used to be, and I still believe there is room in her heart to change for the better.”
“I know what it’s like to have felt like you’ve let down a friend, Princess. So, if that’s what you want, then I’d also like to hope she can change. Not just for your sake, but also hers.”
Author's Note
This was originally supposed to be a much more expansive piece than it has ended up as now. I tried, and while I had in my head the scenes and the story that I wanted, for the life of me I just couldn’t find the proper words. I hate to leave something hanging once I’ve started it, but there seemed to be no good way for me to rectify what I wanted to do with what I was capable of doing. Even after halting my work and going back to consult my notes I could find no proper way to put in words what I wanted.
So, as a small consolation to anyone who actually cared about this story as it once was, I present to you the ending chapter, revised from the second draft of my notes just enough that it could stand on its own without the support of the rest of the story.
Maybe one day I will get back to this, to perhaps do it the justice I originally wished to. But that will be for another day, I think.
