Author's Note

You guys thought it was actually over? Nah. I'm cruel but I'm not that cruel.

I've actually had this chapter written for over a month. I think it was the sixth or so chapter I wrote. I'm surprised how well it held up to the changing winds of the story otherwise. The only thing I had to marginally change in the rest of the story to make this fit was getting Em back to the Canterlot throne room somehow. Bet you wouldn't have even noticed if I didn't say something.

Readability note: In case it's not super apparent, the "you" in this chapter is Metamora. Gotta keep being 2nd person garbage even if I've gotta find a 2nd 2nd person.

Epilogue: Chapter 1 - Less is Metamora

“We’ll get him back, Em.” Twilight offered, “We’re not going to stop until-”

“Please don’t call me that, it was his name for me.” you asked, “I can’t bear to hear it.”

“S-sorry… I didn’t” Twilight mumbled, turning her head.

“How could he just leave after everything? I-I… I loved him!”

“You honestly think he wanted to leave?”

“Wouldn’t you? This was never his home!” you spat, fresh tears keeping your cheeks moist.

“Wasn’t it? I know he felt the same way about you that you do about him. Would you have left if you had a choice?”

“He said it often, that this world was strange and unfamiliar to him. You said it too! He isn’t made for this world. He has no intrinsic magic, we don’t understand him, this isn’t his place.”

“I was wrong, Metamora. He has a place here, and that place is with you. I know he felt that way, surely you see that as well.”

“I can’t” you screamed, “Despite everything, I still can’t put myself in his shoes, and that hurts most of all! Anon was the impossible, a creature so wonderful, so spectacular that even something incapable of love could find their heart beating for him. And now that he’s gone I’m still the same loveless bug I was before.”

“I didn’t think…”

“Neither did I, Twilight,” you answered, “For once in my life, I didn’t think, I just leapt! They were his words, you know. He said - ‘You’re scared of what might happen if you chase what you want to happen’. I decided I wasn’t going to be scared, and that took me to places I couldn’t have even imagined.”

“We’re still going to get him back, Metamora. He’s a hero. He’s…” Twilight paused, “He’s everything you said and more. I miss him too, but I can’t bear to imagine your pain. Please believe that everypony is doing everything in their power to bring him home, bring him here.”

“Thank you Twilight. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to be left alone.”

“Understood,” she acknowledged, getting up from the cold tile floor of the throne room. The receding hooffalls eventually drew silent, leaving you once more alone in the same spot you’d been for the last three days. The same spot where he left you. The same spot where you would no doubt die waiting for your beloved.

“I hope I’m not interrupting,” came the soft, melodic voice of Princess Celestia. That voice piqued an anger inside you that you didn’t even know you held. She moved to sit next to you, “May I?”

“What do you want?” you spat.

“I just want to see that you’re alright, my little pony.”

“I’m not your little pony. I never was, and I don’t want to be now!”

“That is right,” she soothed, “Your heart belongs to another.”

“My heart belongs to none of your fucking business!”

“I know how hard it is to lose someone you love, Metamora. But when you get to see them again it’s worth the wait.”

“How the fuck would you know how I’m feeling?”

“Because I dealt with what you’re feeling for a thousand years before I got to see my beloved again.”

“Nightmare Moon…” you whispered, realizing what she meant.

“Yes indeed. It hurt so much. There were times I wanted to tear the entire world to shreds over what I had done, what she had done with my sister,” she explained, “And I almost did on a few occasions. But I couldn’t. I needed to be strong, I had a nation to lead and twice as much work to lead it.”

“How did you cope?” you asked, hopeful.

“Not well, I must admit. The work tore on me, and her absence wore me down in an entirely different way. I say this because I see you at the same crossroads I was at all those many years ago. You can either continue to buck the help of those who would offer you their hoof in solace, or you can rise above.”

“What is there to rise above? Anon is gone, and despite what Twilight says I may never see him again! If there is an ‘above’ where I am okay with that, I don’t want to be there.”

“That isn’t what I mean, dear Metamora. I’d never ask you to forget him. I know even with my limited time with him I couldn’t forget his lasting impact. What I’m asking of you, what the world is asking of you, is to be strong for him. He united our peoples, building you a future. He built an empire, one which is rightfully yours as much as it is mine.”

“Don’t tell me how to feel! You don’t understand! Just go away!” you yelled.

It was funny in its own twisted way, you realized. Being alone was what originally united you and Anon. Much as you would have hated to admit it at the time, you craved companionship as much as he did. You dreaded the lonely, friendless life that you led before you met him. It was only now, as you were alone, that you realized that this was the first time you had not felt the pain of his disappearance. Your tears weren’t an embarrassment now, your words couldn’t betray you, your emotions couldn’t control you. It was just you, and the void inside yourself.

Where that void had once been filled with vulgar jokes and overflowing love, now it was just a vacuum of disappointment. You closed your eyes and tried to remember a time where that void wasn’t consuming you from the inside out. But every time you closed you eyes, you saw his face. His stupid, dumb, idiotic, beautiful, kind, caring face. Hive, you hated him - you hated yourself! You should have known this was to happen. The domain of a Changeling is that of emptiness, hunger, and despair. There is no room in this world to spare you the happiness, love, and inclusiveness you felt when he was still around.

You were walking proof that he was wrong. There wasn’t enough love to go around. His valiant efforts to end your war were meaningless when he couldn’t even be there for you. How could his promises of a love that was universally shared ever come to fruition if he wasn’t there? He was the glowing, radiant example of everything he promised, a shining beacon of hope for this new era. Where would you turn when you felt the pangs of hunger now? It felt a betrayal to even consider taking the love of another, even were it not to be by force. You decided it would simply be best to shrivel up and die. That way you could take solace in the dignity of dying the same way Anon almost found you. He knew that he had saved you, but he knew not how close you were to the icy grip of death. Were he not to indulge you as he did, you would have died before he left your sight. Maybe it would have been better that way. If he was to leave, why draw it out?

“Metamora,” came a deep, maternal voice, “I’ve come to feed you. I understand you’ve been disinterested in company so I will stay no longer than I must if that is your wish.”

“C-Chrysalis?” you asked, staring now at the unfamiliar figure in front of you. She looked healthy, happy, content. All facades you had seldom seen her wear before.

“Yes, my dear,” she answered, sitting beside you and draping a hoof over you. You could feel the love that she shared with you. Your former queen, the champion of the thought that love must be taken, now sitting beside you, giving it freely.

“You… You’re”

“Sharing,” she cooed, “It feels wonderful. And we have your dear Anon to thank for all of it.”

“Who gave this love?”

“Everyone!” Chrysalis announced happily, “If you so much as walk outside, it’s positively in the air. And it tastes so delicious, freely given, freely taken, sweeter than most anything I’ve ever known.”

“Not for me. I can barely remember the flavor of his love. It used to decimate my mind if he so much as smiled in my direction.”

“I know. It was like that during your metamorphosis, I’ve seen nothing like it.”

“We have to get him back.”

“I know, Metamora. Twilight and the worlds brightest ponies and Changelings are already working on exactly that. I’ve never seen so many unified around one common goal.”

“No. We have to go get him,” you correct, “How much love is in the war reserves?”

“The war reserves? Even if they weren’t destroyed with the hive, we’d have no use for them now.”

“They’re gone? Then we must build a new battery. Ten, no a hundred times its size! If this love truly is in the air we will harvest it all.”

“And what would you do with that love. How would you find him?” she asked, tempering your enthusiasm.

“I’ll visit every dimension if I have to. I’ll find something that can bend the universe to its whims. I’ll do anything to get him back.”

“Oh I know you will, but you’re not thinking. Don’t do alone what thousands will do with you.”

“No. I am alone in this.”

“You don’t have to be,” she offered. “There is a world which shares the same goal as you.”

“Well I wish to be,” you snapped, “Now please take leave of me. I grow tired.”

“Chrysalis says you grow tired.”, came a new voice. One you knew you envied, “If it is sleep you wish, we believe we can be of assistance.”

“I wish to sleep until Anon is back,” you explain, “and should he not be back I wish never to wake up.”

“Now that is something we cannot bestow upon you. Had we the power even still we would not grant such a request.”

“Why not? There’s nothing for me if he’s not here.”

“We know thy pain. More, truth told, than may be apparent.”

“Celestia already tried to use the Nightmare Moon example, it didn’t help.”

“Celestia knows not what we suffered. ‘Twas not our only prison, that moon. The greater binds were by whom there we were enslaved.”

“What do you mean?” you asked.

“Many believe Nightmare Moon to be a mood, a state of the mind. But she is as much her own being as she is a part of us. For the time we were on the moon, and even upon our return we watched her wreak havoc against all that we cared for.”

“I don’t see how that relates.”

“You stand upon a precipice we once jumped from. Do you let your darkest thoughts and emotions rule you, or do you take charge and rein in that selfsame evil? I made my decision, my mistake. I live with it to this day. But if you, likewise, succumb to these emotions you will never again be the same mare that he once loved.”

“I-I…” you hesitate, “How did you get over that?”

“We don’t. Our mistakes have made us who we are today, and we cannot ignore that. We live with the knowledge that even as our sister loves us to this day, her love is tempered always with a fear that we may once again be weak.”

“I’m not…” you try, “I don’t want to be weak.”

“Then stand strong for your love. Do as he would in his stead. Become all that you wish to be, and listen not to that which aims to corrupt your mind.”

“Do you think I will ever see him again, Luna?” you ask, once more feeling the familiarity of tears.

“If not in the flesh, he will always live on in your mind. In that way you can never be apart.”

“I wish to sleep now,” you plead.

“Then it shall be,” Luna said.