A Long Road
Set during Season 1
The clock mocked her. Sitting on the mantle over her fireplace, an increasingly reviled construct of metal and glass, the urge to throw it from the balcony growing difficult to suppress. Merciless, soulless, it tormented her without end.
That steady onward march, the relentless ticking, the crushing inevitability of it. Moment by moment that treacherous second hand scurried around the dial, the minute hand languidly following in its wake. Minute after minute ticked away, bringing the moment ever closer, as it had for the past five days in a row.
The anticipated knock at her chamber door sent a shudder along her spine, her wings pinning so tightly to her sides that one could easily have mistaken her silhouette for that of a unicorn. She said nothing. She barely drew a breath. Go away, she whispered to herself. Just go away. Leave me alone. You should have left me alone.
“Luna?” Celestia’s voice was soft, tentative, muffled by the thick barrier of wood between them.
Luna screwed her eyes shut even tighter, pulling the pillows and downy blankets all the more securely around herself, a last defence should the wood of the door and the stout metal of the lock fail her. A pitiful showing, but it was all she had left.
“Luna. It...it’s that time again. I hoped tonight you might…” Celestia’s voice trailed off. “Please, sister. It would mean the world to my little ponies, and to me.”
There it was again. What SHE wanted. What HER ponies wanted. It was never about her, never about what she wanted. Depression gave way swiftly to anger. Did her opinion matter for nothing? Were her answers not good enough? Not certain enough? That’s how this had all started and here she was yet again. Five days at her door, five days with the same question, five refusals, but this time she was going to make sure that this refusal could not be questioned or misinterpreted. This time she would make sure she was heard.
“WE SAID NO!” The Royal Canterlot voice exploded from her lips and left her throat aching. It set the ceiling to shaking, pillows and blankets exploding from around her as her magic surged around her, the bed creaking and splintering beneath her, fabric torn to ribbons, downy contents reduced to little more than dust beneath the seething waves of power that erupted from her horn. “The moon is THINE to raise, not ours! It hath not been ours for a thousand years! LEAVE US BE!”
A coruscating shell of pure magical force erupted from her horn and washed over the room like a tidal wave, leaving devastation in its wake. Around the room pictures were shattered and crushed, her furniture reduced to piles of kindling, the hateful clock imploding, crushed till there was nothing left but a misshapen ball or springs and gears.
The door shuddered in its hinges as her magic lashed it, but the wards that prevented it from being breached from without also ensured it withstood the punishment from within, protective runes flaring into life across its surface. The floor wasn’t so lucky, marble cracking beneath her, the tower shuddering under the sudden weight of an alicorn’s rage. She stood with wings outstretched amongst the wreckage, her eyes glowing white with the force of her power, mane lashing, whipping over her shoulders like the snakes of the gorgon.
“I will not be your obedient puppet anymore, Celestia! Did you really expect me to sit idly by while THEY all basked in your precious light? There can only be ONE Princess in Eques-” her voice faltered. Wait. No. That wasn’t right. There were two now. Two. She had...where was she? What was she doing?
For a moment it had been a different place, a different time. Her fury had still been so fresh, so raw. She could remember the feel of the carpet under her hooves, the smell of the flowers, the stone, the forest outside that was never silent even in the depths of night. She remembered the rage, the fear, and what came after.
Little by little, her anger ebbed as she sagged down onto the floor, collapsing to her haunches, then all the way to her belly before covering her face with her wings as she sobbed brokenly into her forelegs. Oh Faust. What had she done? She hadn’t meant to...didn’t mean to… Only now did she become aware of the clamour outside, the shouts and alarm bells ringing from around her tower as the Guard mobilised and she wasn’t sure if it was to protect her, or protect others from her.
“I didn’t...I didn’t mean to...I’m sorry,” she blurted out. “I didn’t mean it!”
The voices outside her room were suddenly silenced and for a moment she was alone in her misery, the only sounds her own ragged breathing, her pitiful sniffling and her barely constrained sobs. There was a soft tapping at the door.
“Luna. Lulu? I need you to open the door. Can you do that for me? Just open the door, sister. It’ll be okay.”
Her mouth worked, but she couldn’t find the words, her voice sticking in her throat. Her horn flashed, the door swung open and a moment later the tall, white shape of her sister slipped in. Celestia closed the door behind her, allowing Luna brief glimpse of the hallways outside and the rank of golden armour-clad ponies standing shoulder to shoulder, before she swept Luna up in her forelegs, covering her with the thick down of her wings. “I’m sorry, Lulu. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to push you.”
Luna didn’t reply, couldn’t reply. Every time she tried to open her mouth, the words got stuck somewhere inside her. Her thoughts were running in circles, trapped in self-recrimination, in despair, disgust, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t find a single word to explain what had just happened. She lifted her head to meet Celestia’s gaze, shaking her head silently. Finally her mouth opened, her voice trembling, a terrified filly’s whimper. “I can’t.”
Celestia didn’t answer, but her hug tightened around Luna’s smaller barrel, her wings pressing down that bit more securely, her lavender eyes closing as she struggled to keep her own emotions in check. The two months she’d had with her sister had been some of the happiest in the last thousand years. Every day brought new things for Luna to experience and she had devoured it like parched soil in the rain. She had seemed so happy to be back…at first
But then came the mood swings. The outbursts. The nightmares that filled the castle with the sound of her screaming. The staff began to walk on hooftips around the Lunar Princess, fearful that the smallest slight, real or implied, would lead to a new outburst of fury. Attempts to address any of these issues were met with dismissive comments. Long ones at first, but growing ever shorter the more she pressed her questions
“I didn’t mean to make you angry, Lulu. I just wanted, I just hoped that...we could take another step to things being better. Being the way they used to be.” She’d hoped that resuming her duties, showing all of Equestria that two sisters reigned together again, would give her something to hold onto, something to call her own once again.
“They cannot be. No longer. The moon is not mine to command, she is thine.” Luna’s voice was broken, thick with tears. “Do not ask me again. Thou hast performed my duties for a thousand years, you may keep them.” She roughly pushed Celestia away, stumbling to her feet and trotting quickly to her balcony where she sat, staring out over the city in a clear dismissal.
Celestia hesitated, then stood and made her way to the door. “Luna, I-” Whatever platitudes were about to leave her mouth were sealed behind her lips as her muzzle was wreathed and clamped shut by Luna’s magic.
“Leave, Tia,” Luna whispered. “Before we make thee.”
The tall white alicorn left without another word, closing the door behind her and leaving Luna alone in her misery once more. A few minutes passed and the sky reddened, darkening to twilight and then the stars began to appear one by one as the sun set behind the mountains, the moon rising to replace it.
“Sloppy,” Luna growled under her breath as she stared at the placement of the stars in that familiar sea of black. She would never have placed them like that, not since she was first starting out all those centuries ago when they’d first come into their respective powers. A thousand years of setting the night sky and her sister had learned nothing, it seemed, still treating the night as little more than an afterthought. Who would see it, after all? They would all be in their beds, sound asleep, what was the point of putting in any effort?
A thousand years of banishment, only to return and find that nothing had changed. No, that wasn’t entirely true. Now the city below her was lit with tens of hundreds of lights, every night. The darkness was chased away, her glorious night diminished even further by their unceasing yellow glow. Progress, they called it. Cowardice was her name for it. They still feared her night, feared the monsters under the bed, the monster that hid in their dreams. They still feared her, the spectre of Nightmare Moon looming everywhere she looked. Her gaze lifted, unerringly seeking out the pale, glowing disc of the moon, dimmed by the artificial light that flooded the streets.
She stared at it, letting her mind go blank, her breathing slowing as she looked inward instead. The clock counted out each long second as she journeyed within herself, to her wellspring, the source of a pony’s magic. Pegasus, alicorn, unicorn, earth pony, each possessed a wellspring intrinsically tied to their very nature. Celestia’s, she recalled, blazed with the light of the sun she called her own, Starswirl’s was one of the strongest non-alicorn’s she had ever encountered, a coruscating rainbow of power.
And then there was her own. Her wellspring surged erratically, as conflicted and unstable as she was, the light waning and flickering. She reached out with her senses, searching, probing, and finally withdrawing with a soft, shuddering sigh. A thousand years of confinement. A thousand years stranded on the moon that had once been her constant, unwavering companion. A thousand years of the moon answering another. A thousand years of silence. No. The moon no longer belonged to her, her bond with it had been severed the moment the Elements struck her, barely an echo of it remaining within her.
She wasn’t even herself, not truly. Diminished, diminutive, PURPLE. She didn’t recognise the face in the mirror, a face she hadn’t seen in more centuries than she could recall. Her magic was elusive, answering to her emotions rather than her mind, her shattered room testament to her lack of control. She had less strength than an earth pony and her shrunken wings could barely support her in a glide. No longer the Princess of the Night, nor the Princess of the Moon.
What was she now?
Author's Note
So this is....a thing. Essentially the rationale behind this is that after what happened with Nightmare Moon, she then spent the next thousand years trapped on the moon that was once hers to control. What would that solitude do to you? The suddenness of being ripped from everything you know? The bond with the moon all but shattered?
And mulling it over, this popped into my head, an alicorn with PTSD. I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with it, but I thought I'd at least share this opening chapter with you all and see what you think of it.
