A Choice Between Two Doors

by Silver Shadows

Rating: teen
Tags: Princess Luna, Spike, Queen Chrysalis, Princess Celestia, Sunset Shimmer, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 2158

Everypony has to choose through a door... While the light may be the obvious one, some feel a strong pull towards the darker.

A door of two choices... Everypony must choose one.

Light or dark. Each single action can influence another to cause a chain reaction.

Sometimes, both choices are the wrong one.

Sometimes, both choices need to be chosen.

[Created for my friend, sunshinemonster]

Published 2018-07-29 03:10:01 UTC
Last updated 2018-07-29 03:10:01 UTC

Princess Luna

Princess Luna remembered the time when she had to face the doors herself. The light appealed to her as much as the darker side did.

The light. It was blinding, it clashed with her coat color, and she hated the day. Her sister, Princess Celestia, had decided to be a good ruler under the light. As her duty to be a good princess, she must choose the opposite door, to guide other ponies who was journeying through the darkness that seemed appealing. The light would scare all of the shadows away and she was used to being awake during the night.

The dark. Her eyes were used to the dark. She wanted to be known for something, anything, and not be overshadowed by her sister. She wanted to face the mysteries it would bring and the challenges that it would carry. Princess Luna didn’t think that she would be overpowered by it. After all, of a creature of the night couldn’t do it, who would?

She opened the door and stepped to the darkness.

Princess Luna had let the darkness consume her. She had let it spread, making her powers enchanted. She had fought for the throne for Equestria, upsetting the balance between the two rulers. She had adopted a new name.

Nightmare Moon.

When she became that, her goals were to kill, to discover the power of the dead. She practiced Necromancy and bound the dead to her wishes. She increased her army with each fallen. Soon... Equestria would be hers and everypony would need to follow her.

Nightmare Moon was not formed by jealousy, even though jealousy was why she chose the door that led to the unknown. It was a shell that allowed her to kill and by doing so, the darkness led her further and further down the road.

Princess Luna had came back for a split second when the elements that Princess Celestia wield hit her and she gave a startled cry before disappearing back into her shell.

The Elements of Harmony.

That had shoved Princess Luna from the dark into the light with the blast of the rainbow. It guided her out the door while the wind pushed her in the direction and destroyed the barriers Nightmare Moon had put up. Then it stopped.

Another choice. Two doors.

Without hesitating, she chose the light door.

Spike

A baby dragon should not be faced with two doors.

However, he was pretty much sick of doing everything Twilight asked him to do. When Twilight could’ve levitated a book to herself, he had to use the extremely complicated organization system to find the exact book. Then when a mishap would happen in the library, it was his job to resort every single book there and do every single one of Twilight’s orders. So why didn’t he choose the dark door?

Spike eventually saw Twilight as a sister, especially when she had hatched him. After some time, it was almost like watching a studious sister arguing with him. Besides, after he had met Rarity and saw her when she was getting affected by that book... let’s just say that he wasn’t exactly going back to the other side.

He had been tricked into the darkness once. Spike had became greedy and grew to be a giant dragon that endangered Equestria. Only Rarity pulled him back into the light, with her gem shining his generosity.

When he had grown jealous of Twilight’s owl, he had ran into a cave and endangered himself. It was then when he felt like he owed his life to Twilight and Twilight didn’t even blame him for it.

Spike never had any true friends until Thorax came along. Twilight’s friends usually just put up with him, besides Fluttershy, but even she was a little distant from him once she had gotten over the fact that he was a baby dragon.

Thorax, a changeling, had changed his whole life without really knowing it, even though Spike didn’t see Thorax that often.

Ember was a whole other story. Spike had given her the role of being the Dragon Lord because she was different from the other dragons and he valued her as a friend.

Spike ended up choosing the light after that, even though he was inching towards the darker door at first.

Queen Chrysalis

The Queen was born in a hive through an egg from her previous queen. The previous queen, her mother was so nice that she never wanted war. When the enemies came, the drones weren’t trained and long story short, the queen had died. Queen Chrysalis was determined to never make that mistake. She would never let her drones starve if she could help it and every single second was to provide food and to train them against enemies.

Was she a bad queen? Perhaps.

Did she choose the light door? Yes.

Every. Single. Last. Drone. Betrayed. Her.

She was doing the best for her hive to let it thrive and eventually spread through Equestria so they wouldn’t starve. Queen Chrysalis did use some dark magic to gain the beauty of the hive and the works of it while protecting it from outside magic.

When Starlight offered her hoof to offer her another supposed chance to the light, she slapped it away. If the drones didn’t like her and would betray her, she would never been on their side again. She would demand justice. In order to do that...

Well, the dark door never seemed so appealing until this moment.

Princess Celestia

Light or dark. There was no other choice. No gray areas existed. No middle door between it.

Light.

Dark.

Princess Celestia still stood in front of the two doors. The dark felt unsettling, with a new adventure behind it and mystery to be revealed. It sent shivers down her neck and she was inclined to choose it, to try to carve a better path and try to not get sucked in.

On the other hoof, the light door was entrancing. It stood for innocence. She heard the music of the bands playing and she was sure that there were many couples dancing in there.

Two doors. One choice.

Princess Celestia chose the light.

Was she selfish? Princess Celestia felt selfish. She took herself among the innocent and made herself the great alicorn leader in Equestria. She led them through the unknown darkness and fought anything that came in her way.

But she was tired of fighting. She was tired of being strong.

Celestia had thought that she was a wise and fair ruler. She thought that she was strong.

But every time she met her sister’s dark eyes staring at her, she shuddered. When Princess Luna turned into that monster, the door she chose... Celestia regretted to not be there for her, to fight through the darkness and lead both of them to safety before she had to lock her own sister away to the moon. In her heart, she also regretted that she didn’t stop her sister sooner and allowed excuses and excuses to pile up... delaying the inevitable.

Princess Celestia even remembered Sunset Shimmer. She missed that unicorn that she was a mother figure to. She was supposed to notice Sunset’s dark and condescending behavior but she was blinded by the light of all of the achievements Sunset continued to prove each time.

Every time the princess raised the sun in the sky, she was remembered of the terrible battles she had led her brave ponies into, the blood spilled on the very grounds of the castle, and the terror their face betrayed as they saw the final blow coming to them.

She missed each and every one of her ponies. Everypony always said that she was far too old to remember each of them and the princess knew why her subjects would say that, but she did. Dust Weight, Query... all of them.

She stared into the brightness for the years to come. Every single day was just another reminder.

The alicorn wondered. What if I went through the other door?

Princess Mi Amore Cadenza

Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, the Alicorn of Love, the ruler of the Crystal Empire would’ve been an obvious choice to choose the light door immediately.

Ponies always forgot that she wasn’t always an alicorn and that darkness was as tempting for every single pony when she had faced the doors. When the princess was only a little pegasus foal who has no idea what laid behind the doors... the darkness was definitely tempting. Princess Mi Amore Cadenza (also known as Princess Cadence) knew that her cutie mark set her up to be a good matchmaker even though she was nothing but a boring old pegasus to most ponies.

The light was appealing. Not only that she fantasized about love stories and couples marching to the sunset, she wanted to spread her wings and help everypony find out their true love. However, she was hesitant to go through this door because ponies would think that she spiked their drinks with some silly love potion to make them think that they were supposed to be soulmates but they actually weren’t. She had never spiked anypony’s drink in her life and she could swear to Celestia on that fact. There were already many suspicions about the possibility of Cadence spiking their drinks that they would break up. Cadence knew this too well, after all, the ones that she had helped so far did break up after a couple of months, even though she had never laid a hoof on them.

Cadence was afraid of the dark. She never wanted to admit it but the darkness terrified her. She hated divorces. The only reason she might choose it was to amplify her abilities to force ponies to fall in love. She shuddered. She would never choose to force ponies against their will to do anything.

She sped through the door that shone with light.

The alicorn was foolish. She thought that her romance wouldn’t be disrupted by anything. She left for a moment and became blinded to the fact that a changeling had changed into Shining Armor. She had put it off to wedding jitters and didn’t think past that. Princess Cadence had been captured and she gave up on the ground.

She couldn’t even see through a changeling when she knew that there was a heavy changeling threat hanging right under her nose.

She was tricked and deceived by the light.

The princess wondered if the darkness would’ve saw through that. Then, she firmly said no. She had made her choice and there wasn’t any turning back.

Princess Cadence heard laughter from another room, specifically Flurry Heart’s, and she smiled.

Sunset Shimmer

The young unicorn was always inspired by the darkness. Her cutie mark portrayed the image of the sunset and she earned it by showing her magical talents to the princess. She was the personal pupil of Princess Celestia and she delved into both kinds of magic without reprimands of being too into dark magic. It was never a secret that Sunset Shimmer loved to explore all of the ways to torture somepony and ways to mind control them. Well, except for Princess Celestia, who was determined to find everything good about Sunset and continuously made excuses for her behavior, but that’s another story.

The light stood for a youth and innocence that Sunset had rolled her eyes at and spat at. She hated the light. It interfered with her studies of dark magic. She felt like she was practically destined to become the greatest dark user and perhaps become an alicorn by delving into her studies.

Without a second thought, she plunged into the darkness.

Every fragment of her was ripped and thrown into the other side as soon as the six girls shot a rainbow at her. She felt her dark side slip away as the crown went back to the princess’s head.

She screamed internally, the dark ropes finally being torn off by the sheer power of it. Her demon wings and horn were ripped away as she opened her eyes to the light as well as all the things she was afraid would distract her from her studies.

What she did see were flowers blooming and happy voices singing. There was laughing in the background, and they weren’t the maniac laughter she was used to, it was joyful laughter, the sound both humans and ponies made when they told one another a joke. There were tons of animals resting and many playing. It wasn’t the survival of the fittest in the light, everyone worked together.

When she opened her eyes again, she saw hand helping her up, a chance to enjoy the light as it truly was.

She heard Celestia’s soft voice in Equestria, feeling like she was dreaming. Welcome home Sunset Shimmer.