A day in Canterlot Juvenile Court
The judge, an elderly unicorn mare in the black robes of her office, entered and sat down.
The bailiff called, “Canterlot Juvenile Court is in session. Honorable Judge Book Thrower, presiding. All be seated.”
Since it was juvenile court, there were no journalists, no recording magic, only a single transcriptionist, and nopony from the general public.
The police and foal services experts from the Canterlot Crown Prosecutor’s office sat to the left. Each foal, his or her parents, and their lawyer, were ushered in for their session, sitting to the right, so that each foal had as much privacy as possible. The only spectators were law students, police cadets, one foal-psychology doctoral candidate, and courthouse clerks and functionaries, all sitting near the back, nopony else allowed. Twenty ponies in total, not counting the accused, along with their family and lawyer. After all, the whole point of juvenile court was to allow the accused to learn a hard lesson without the crime sullying their reputation for life.
About once every two or three months, Princess Celestia took a seat in the front row of the spectator benches. She was known to take interest in certain cases.
And this day, Celestia sat in the front row.
Celestia’s ears flicked and her tail thrashed.
Her left eyelid spasmed.
There were dark circles under her eyes.
Her crown was askew.
Her mane wasn’t brushed.
The bailiff and the judge shared a worried look, and gave each other tiny shrugs.
Celestia, as always, showed her respect for the court by standing for the judge’s entrance, and sitting when the other spectators sat. As if she was just an ordinary pony.
The first case was a schoolyard scuffle that had left a filly's jaw broken and teeth knocked out, along with a concussion.
“Have you anything to say for yourself?” asked Judge Book Thrower.
“Your... your honor, I’m sorry, but I was so mad! She called me a dirty earth pony and said I didn’t belong in Canterlot with decent unicorns, so I bucked her right in the head! I didn’t mean to hurt her!”
“She had no right to say that, but bucking another filly’s teeth out didn’t get the result you wanted, did it?”
The judge sentenced the filly to community service and anger management counseling, and one thousand bits restitution for medical and dental expenses.
Celestia sat, unmoving.
The second case was a shoplifting ring. The ringleader was a unicorn colt who could teleport into locked rooms, and his two pegasus colt accomplices who acted as lookouts and distractions while he raided liquor stores and pornagraphy shops in Canterlot’s less-reputable districts.
The lawyers all agreed that the accomplices deserved probation and alcohol abuse treatment, and the ringleader needed a few months of juvenile detention and alcohol abuse treatment, too.
Celestia said, “Ahem.”
The judge looked up. “The bench recognizes Her Highness.”
Celestia stood and bowed briefly. “Thank you, your honor. I would observe that a fourteen-year-old unicorn that can teleport almost as well as I can, might not stay in juvenile hall if he took it into his mind not to stay. And jailbreak might get him remanded to the adult justice system. Which means Tartarus, for teleporters.”
The colt looked at his hooves and blanched. His parents shook.
“Might a few months at my School for Gifted Unicorns make a reasonable substitute venue of incarceration? It is hardened against teleport, and might help this young stallion refocus his apparently formidable magic ability. My counselors also have good alcohol treatment records.”
Celestia frowned slightly as she mumbled: “Good records with alcohol... but imperfect.”
The judge looked at the prosecutor. The prosecutor looked at her assistant, then at Celestia. “We’re not after petty revenge, highness. If we never see this colt in the courthouse again, we’ve won. That seems like an excellent diversion.”
The judge looked at the colt’s lawyer. “Counsel?”
The lawyer didn’t even speak to his client or the colt’s parents. “We would be delighted. Your honor, your Highness.”
Celestia inclined her head, and settled back into her chair.
The third case was a seventeen-year-old colt accused of rape. He claimed innocence, so the judge immediately escalated the case to the adult courts.
Fourth was... oh. Celestia always came for these cases. That probably explained her disheveled look, too. A twelve-year-old unicorn filly had been caught in a graveyard with a black grimoire, trying to cast a necromancy spell to raise an army of the dead, to ruin her older cousin’s school prom.
The judge began a tirade: “Young mare! Do you have any idea how serious this is? Equestria has one—only one—death penalty on the books, and that’s necromancy! You’re extremely lucky that grimoire you used was fake! Or you would be in a whole heaping orchard of trouble right now!”
The judge continued for thirty minutes, her harangue well-rehearsed. Usually, she saw two or three juvenile necromancy cases a year, Canterlot having the most concentrated population of unicorns anywhere in the world, and Judge Book Thrower did everything she could to scare them straight. In her seventy years on the bench, only one juvenile she had harangued later wound up in front of an adult court for necromancy. (Celestia had commuted that sentence from the gallows to life in prison, thank goodness. Celestia hadn’t actually imposed the penalty in over a century... so far as Book Thrower knew.)
The filly wilted into the tile of the courtroom floor, and her father ran from the court, a hoof clamped to his mouth to hold in his nausea. The filly’s mother placed a loving hoof on her withers.
Judge Book Thrower finished with, “Have you anything to say for yourself?”
“No... no ma’am.” The filly cowered in a puddle of her own urine, quivering, hooves over her eyes.
The judge looked at Celestia. This was where Celestia always cleared her throat and said a few stern but kind words of warning to the necromancy-besotted foal.
Celestia was levitating up a sheaf of legal papers and frowning as she read, paying the judge and filly no mind. Her crown slipped off, and Celestia absently levitated it back into place without looking away from her papers.
Judge Book Thrower cleared her throat.
Celestia looked up and muttered, “Don’t do it again!” and went back to her papers, frowning hard.
Judge Thrower blinked several times and cocked her ears at Celestia.
Really? ‘Don’t do it again?’ Something had Celestia discombobulated, if that was the best she had.
And if it wasn’t the necromancy case, then what was she so worried about?
Judge Book Thrower sentenced the filly to six months of juvenile detention, five years of psychiatric counseling, and to register as a magical offender until she turned twenty-one, at which point her records would be expunged and sealed.
She and her parents and lawyer were escorted out. A janitor pony mopped her urine off the tile.
The fifth case of the day... “Next case is a sealed docket,” called the bailiff. He opened his sealed envelope, read, and sucked in a deep breath, and stared at Celestia.
The law students and police cadets in the audience all stirred. A sealed docket usually meant the despicable spawn of a duke or earl or gangster had run afoul of the law, and the foal’s parents were calling in favors to keep it under even more that the usual wraps associated with Juvenile Court.
“The charge is Flying While Intoxicated,” said the bailiff.
FWI? That caused more of a stir amongst the law students and police cadets making up the audience. Very few pegasus nobles lived outside of Cloudsdale. And Canterlot’s mafia families were pure unicorn.
Celestia said, “Ahem!”
Judge Book Thrower looked up again. “Yes, your highness?”
“You honor,” Celestia said, “May I please move to the defendant's table?”
“Well—what—I don’t—whatever for, your highness?”
“Please, for the next few minutes, let me be ‘Ms. Celestia,’ not ‘Highness.’ I wish no special favors of the justice system. I will stand on my ordinary citizenship as just a pony, and not my dignities or rank, for the next case.”
“As you wish, uh, Ms. Celestia.”
She pushed through the swinging gate at sat at the defendant’s table.
The small audience stirred more. What was going on? One of her distant foppish nephews or nieces? Blueblood was no pegasus, and he was over eighteen, an adult, not a juvenile. Cadance was thirty.
Judge Thrower quirked an eyebrow. “May I ask what your relationship is to this next foal?”
“Of course, your honor. This filly’s parents are deceased, and I stand, in my status as a private pony and not monarch, in loco parentis as her legal guardian. These papers I have here—“ she levitated up her sheaf “—include my guardianship proof. The filly’s eighteenth birthday is not for three more months, your honor. I hope that we, working together, can find a way to impress upon her the dangers of alcohol, before the adult legal system has no choice but to take cognizance.”
Celestia looked at her hooves, and her ears wilted. “I have been... been unsuccessful in helping her by myself. Her alcohol abuse increases by the week, despite my best efforts. She’s a gifted teleporter, so keeping her away from drink is physically impossible.”
The audience stirred again. Teleporter? How could a unicorn earn an FWI? A pedal-powered flying contraption? But flying machines were mostly an earth pony affectation...
“The burned hoof teaches best, as they say, and besides breaking the law, she broke her jaw, one wing, three ribs, and most of the bones in her face when she crashed three nights ago.”
Broken wing? A teleporter with wings?
“Three nights ago?!?” said Judge Book Thrower. “Why isn’t she in the hospital?”
“She’ll be returned there after this court session,” Celestia said, frowning and stamping one hoof, “but her concussion is healed enough to learn her punishment. Alicorns heal unnaturally quickly.”
Silence. Not a single pony moved. It sounded like only Celestia was even breathing.
The prosecutor made a strangled noise, then said, “Alicorn?”
Another hidden princess, kept out of the public eye, the way Celestia had shielded Cadance from public knowledge before adulthood?
“Please open the sealed docket, your honor,” Celestia said.
The judge and the prosecutor levitated open their sealed envelopes.
The bailiff cleared his throat. “Ah. Um. Ahem. Well. Ah. Next case, Her Royal Highness Princess Luna, accused of flying while intoxicated, one count. And of public... ah... wow. Wow. Public lewdness. One count.”
A police pony guided Luna in from the waiting room. Luna’s right wing was splinted flush to her flank, a metal wire bracket around her snout clamped her jaw shut, and bandages wrapped her muzzle and her ribs. Both eyes were black and one ear was swollen to twice its normal size, crusted in blood.
She plopped down in a chair next to Celestia at the defense table, and then rested her right cheek on the table. Through the mesh sealing her jaw, Luna said, “mmmrrrrtmpppfhhgg.” She smelled of disinfectant and sweat. She blushed in shame.
The prosecutor, a middle-aged unicorn mare, levitated up the papers. “Your honor, your high— Ms. Celestia. This is juvenile court. Princess Luna’s over a thousand years old!”
Celestia nodded her head, and raised a hoof. “One thousand and seventeen. But one thousand years were spent as Nightmare Moon, banished, unaging. She was fourteen, biologically, when she was raped by Nightmare Moon. And she returned to her natural form three years ago. Did no one noticed her lighter coat and higher voice when she first returned? Regardless of the calendar, her biological eighteenth birthday is in three months. Physically, psychologically, and emotionally, she is a teenager. I beg the court’s indulg— um, I beg the court’s mercy in this matter.”
The prosecutor, her assistant, and the police lieutenant huddled at their table, whispering. The prosecutor said, “Understood, Ms... eh...Celestia. Bailiff, please call in the arresting officer.”
The officer was a mint-green pegasus mare with brown eyes and gold armor. She flitted her wings, looked at the window, perhaps contemplating escape, looked at Celestia, and her ears wilted and tail tucked.
She went to the witness stand and began her story. “So, eh, your honor, three nights ago, Saturday late, just before midnight Sunday morning, I was on patrol in the Castle District. There was a big street carnival going on. Crowds of a few thousand ponies. So we were patrolling extra that night.” She flicked her wings. “We, that is, my partner and I, were on high cover, keeping watch while the earth pony and unicorn guards patrolled down in the crowd.”
The guard looked at Luna. “I, um, heard noises,” said the guard.
The prosecutor said, “Can you be more specific?”
The guard blushed and she looked at her hooves. “I heard screaming. Um, pleasurable screaming, a mare’s voice, and... rutting noises.”
The prosecutor blushed.
Luna closed her eyes, pounded a forehoof on the table, and said “Mmmmphdfggg.”
The guard pegasus continued, “I saw, in shadows, two dark-coated ponies engaged in what appeared to be, um, coitus, very loud coitus, hanging over a castle balcony railing, three floors above the street carnival. Because there were lots of foals in the crowd below, I motioned to my partner, pointed, and decided to move to arrest for public lewdness.”
“And then...?”
“The two ponies engaged in public lewdness took to their wings and flew opposite directions.”
“Both were pegasus ponies?” asked the judge.
“So I believed at the time.”
The prosecutor said, “What did you do then?”
The guard looked up again, looked at Celestia, then looked at the prosecutor. “I made a slight error then. I decided we could only arrest one of them, and I felt arresting the stallion would be more appropriate. In the dark, it was hard to tell which pony was which, so I pointed at the larger pony and said to my partner, ‘Him!’ We gave chase.”
Celestia asked, “Which pony did you pursue?”
“The... uh... defendant,” and she pointed a wingtip at Luna. “She was the larger of the two offenders.”
“Indeed,” Celestia said.
“We gave chase. The pony we pursued was fast, really fast, but was flying very badly. Never straight, lots of zigzags, switchbacks, and spewed vomit into the air a few times. I’ve been in the guard long enough that I’ve dealt with lots of FWIs before. I was stationed in Cloudsdale before my current assignment, and FWI is pretty common there. Given the offender’s straight-line speed, I thought him a Wonderbolt.”
The judge asked, “Which direction did your quarry fly?”
“North, toward the mountain face. I was afraid she, well he I believed at the time, would auger into the cliff and kill himself. I’ve seen that before. It’s awful! I’ve had nightmares... and... well... the defendant... small world, am I right? Ahem. FWI is way more dangerous in Canterlot with all the long drops and solid rock cliff faces than in Cloudsdale where everything is soft. That cliff is covered in memorial stones, from the centuries, if you look in daylight. So I said to my partner, I says, ‘pit maneuver! We gotta stop him short of the cliffs!’”
Celestia ahemed, and said, “‘Pit maneuver’?”
“‘Pursuit intervention technique,’ your highness.”
“‘Ms. Celestia,’ please. I’m here as legal guardian to a troubled teenager, not monarch. I do not stand on my titles or dignities at the moment.” She levitated her crown into her lap, hiding it.
“I, um, er, wow. Okay. Yes, Ms. Celestia. I flapped hard and grabbed the defendant by the tail with my teeth.”
Celestia said, “Why did you do that?”
“That’s step one of the pit maneuver. Step two is to flare your wings like airbrakes. That will always hurt the offender like Tartarus, and often dislocate their tail, and causes a tumble. Step three, your partner then hits them for a controlled landing and arrest. That’s the pit maneuver.”
“What happened?”
“I grabbed really close to the base of her tail, so I smelled... um... fresh coitus... very strongly... and gagged... and lost my grip.”
Luna whimpered and covered her bandaged face with her forelegs. Her horn began to charge for a spell, but Celestia whacked it with a forehoof and the spell fizzled.
“Then?” said the judge.
“My partner stayed on the pit maneuver timing, so instead of a catch, he accidentally made a tackle. He and the... defendant... tumbled. My partner recovered, but the offender was too inebriated, and fell.”
“Where was this?” asked Celestia.
“Well, ma’am, we were above Boulevard of the Alliance. The edge of Little Griffonstone. I recovered from my... surprise... at the smell of coitus, and dove. The defendant was in a spin and flapping to recover his, well, her, equilibrium. But I know drunken flapping when I see it. The defendant augered in and hit the third floor of an apartment building, face first. She raised her head at the last second to protect her horn but went in jaw-first. I said to my partner, ‘Hey! That’s an alicorn!’”
The prosecutor frowned. “How did your partner reply?”
“The defendant hit the stucco and I heard bones break. So my partner, he said, ‘I think she’s dead and so are we.’ She, that is, Princess Luna, bounced off the building and I grabbed her in mid-air, but she’s twice my weight, so all I could do was flap us into a controlled crash. I got her twisted so she landed on her flank instead of her spine. I heard the right wing and some ribs snap when we hit the pavement.”
“Where was this?” the judge asked.
“An alley about twenty feet south of the Boulevard.”
The prosecutor said, “Boulevard of the Alliance—that’s the main drag through Little Griffonstone, right? Where all the junk shops and touristy restaurants are?”
“Yes, ma’am. There was enough light from the streetlights when we landed that I recognized, eh, her highness, as Princess Luna. Her face was smashed flat and her jaw broken and I smelled blood and alcohol and blood, and coitus, and blood. And blood. I could hear her struggling to breathe through the blood. I heard bubbles. She lost consciousness.”
Celestia’s face turned splotchy puce and her ears dropped down to the sides of her head. She laid a hoof on Luna’s shoulders. Luna shivered and tried to burrow into the table.
The guard pony continued, “We were only two blocks from the Little Griffonstone fire station. The Canterlot Guard, you see, we’ve moved to a new policy this last year, we call it ‘scoop and run.’ Here in the city, you’re never more than a half-mile from a fire station or hospital. When a pony is severely injured, we’ve found that if the guards on the spot scoop them up and sprint them to a hospital or fire station, it saves lives, compared to waiting for an ambulance. Princess Luna’s airway was blocked, and we didn’t have the kit to intubate! I could hear her breathing blood.”
Luna began to shake. Celestia gently kissed her behind the horn, between the ears, on her mane.
“We picked her up and ran. She’s big, bigger than an earth pony, so it took both of us. My partner bucked the fire station’s front door open. It was late, but there’s always at least one firepony awake. It was actually a firegriffon, I mean, Little Griffonstone neighborhood fire station, y’know, and she hit the alarm. Two paramedics, an earth pony and a griffon, were downstairs in ten seconds. They were surprised to see an alicorn, but they intubated the princess, clearing her airway, got her breathing, put a support collar around her neck, and two firegriffons and a firepegasus hooked up to a chariot, and they carried the princess and the paramedics to University Hospital. My partner and I flapped behind and filed our report from the hospital. We checked the rules, the law, and saw no choice. There’s no ‘princess exception.’”
“No,” Celestia said. “There’s no princess exception. I wrote that law myself, one thousand years ago.”
“So, we recommended arrest for public lewdness and FWI upon release from the hospital. We were... unaware of the defendant‘s age.”
The judge looked at Luna. “Have you anything to say?”
Luna sat up, and pointed a hoof at the wire mesh shutting her jaw. She levitated a quill and wrote on some parchment.
Celestia cleared her throat again. “My sister writes, ‘Thanks are due to the guard and medics for saving my life. I am embarrassed by my actions and confirm that the officer’s story is accurate, insofar as far as I can remember. I deny nothing and make no excuses.’”
The judge asked, “Was the stallion you were... engaged with... an adult or a colt? If he’s an adult, he needs to go to jail for statutory rape. You are underage, apparently, and you were inebriated.”
Luna scribbled.
Celestia held up the parchment, blushed, and mumbled, “She wrote, ‘I have no idea who he was.’”
The judge glared over her glasses. “Is that true?”
Luna sat up to her full height, summoned as much royal dignity as she could with so many broken bones, and nodded yes once.
The judge rubbered her face with both hooves. “Princesses... what am I supposed to do? In a thousand years, Equestria’s never had a princess on the dock! Even if it’s juvenile court.”
Celestia rubbed her nose and said, “We ask no special treatment. What would be the result if a pegasus filly was sitting here?”
“I would ask her parents or guardian,” said Judge Book Thrower, “if there had been other incidents with alcohol that hadn’t previously reached the attention of the court?”
Luna covered her head with her unbroken wing.
Celestia said, “Yes. When we were foals, Equestria was different. Water was typically contaminated with sewage and diseases, before modern plumbing, so even foals were often given weak beer or wine because the alcohol helped make it antiseptic. We acknowledge that times have changed while Luna was... gone... but early exposure to alcohol captures some ponies’ minds more strongly than others’. Princesses are not immune to alcoholism the way we’re immune to cancer or feather flu. And as the Princess of Dreams, Luna today often sees things that no foal—that no adult—should see.”
“How so?” said the judge.
Luna’s shoulders shook, her head buried onto the tabletop, gasping though her broken nose. Her tail whipped back and forth. Celestia stroked her wing against the blue wing shielding Luna’s head.
“One of the day’s earlier cases was an alleged rape. Imagine that victim’s nightmares. And imagine how this seventeen-year-old filly responds after dispelling that nightmare. Imagine that guard mare’s nightmares about witnessing fatal FWIs, which my sister then takes onto her own withers. I have tried to help my sister find a coping mechanism that isn’t alcohol... but we are still searching.”
The courtroom was silent. The prosecutor said, “This is clearly an appropriate case for psychiatric treatment, but simultaneous to legal detention, if we follow precedent. I’m... I’m not sure what to recommend.”
Judge Book Thrower said, “If this was a commoner, and not one of our diarchs, my next question to the parent or guardian would be, ‘Has this filly engaged in promiscuous drunken intercourse with strange stallions before?’”
Celestia blushed harder. “Yes. But I’m confident that isn’t a crime.”
“We’re here to help your sister, Prin— Ms. Celestia. Teenagers who make bad decisions about alcohol and sex usually find themselves with lots of regrets. We want to intercept as many regrets as possible.”
“I have no doubt, your honor,” Celestia said.
“Were you in heat?” asked Judge Book Thrower. “Is pregnancy a danger?”
Luna raised her head enough to shake it no.
“Alicorns heat rarely,” Celestia said. “Very rarely.”
Luna sank back down and re-covered her face with her good wing.
The judge violated a dozen different protocols and stepped down from her bench, and walked to Celestia and Luna’s table. She put her face close to Luna’s face, and levitated Luna’s good wing away. “Usually, I would remand the filly to an inpatient alcohol treatment program for the few months left before her birthday, with a heavy dose of psychiatric and sexual counseling. And that inpatient program would be in the juvenile detention facility. Juvenile hall, in other words.”
Celestia gasped, fighting tears. “You speak the truth. We beg no special treatment.”
The judge looked at the prosecutor. “In this case... how would close confinement in the princess’s chambers in the castle sound, until her birthday, with twice-daily trips to substance abuse counselors and a psychiatrist? Doctor Straight Hooves is very skilled at dealing with young mares who use promiscuity to cover up low self-esteem and depression. She’s the best doctor in the justice system.”
Luna sat up, and nodded slowly.
“I’ll stop by twice a week, personally,” the judge said.
Luna looked down at the table and nodded vigorously.
“You honor...” said Celestia. “We ask no special treatment. We will accept no special treatment.”
Luna and Judge Book Thrower looked at her.
The judge said, “I beg your pardon?”
Celestia said, “If any common filly would be remanded to juvenile detention for alcohol treatment, than should not the Royal House live by the laws we are sworn to uphold? My sister’s chambers in the castle are asture, compared to my own, but that’s her taste. It is no punishment—she spends most of her time there, by choice.”
“Just how much trouble has your sister had with alcohol?” asked the judge.
Celestia said, “......lots.”
There was a grinding sound as Luna wrenched with her hooves and yanked with her magic, and the wire mesh holding her jaw together clattered to the table. Small hunks and flesh and gelatinous blood clots came with it. She flared her wings in anger and the half-knit bone in her right wing SNAPed. Luna shouted, “Sister! How dare you!”
Everypony in the courtroom except Celestia and Judge Thrower gasped. Judge Thrower placed a hoof on Luna’s hoof and said, “Child... doesn’t that hurt?”
“Yes!” Lightning flashed and thunder rolled. Luna flared her wings again, and the broken bones ground against each other audibly. Blood dripped from her jaw.
“I’ve known at least three million ponies over the past thousand years,” Celestia said. “My sister has the highest physical pain threshold of any pony who ever lived. I was hoping this batch of injuries would convince her to let me get her help, but I fear... I fear...”
Celestia’s wings flared, too. She screamed. “Sister, you almost died! You could have broken your stubborn neck! If that guard hadn’t scooped-and-carried, you would have drowned on your blood before the ambulance chariot arrived!”
Celestia tucked her wings in, and her voice turned soft. “Sister, you’re my last family. Our mother is dead. Our father is dead. Our brother is dead, our nephews and nieces for fifty generations removed are dead. I lost you for one thousand years, sister. Will you leave me alone again, alone forever, because you got drunk and flew face-first into a cliff?”
Luna tucked her wings back in, and the jagged ends of bone grated. Everypony shuddered at the noise.
Luna’s voice was tiny. Her blackened eyes were wide. “If you love me, sister, why do you send me to do your wetwork? The necromancer in Vanhoover flayed my lung open with a sword before I laid him low. The abomination on the Mustang Marches broke all my legs, four compound fractures, and crushed nine of my vertebrae before I burned its heart out. I lived by a quarter-inch, sister who ‘loves’ me. A pony of less sophistication might think you were trying to kill me. A cynic might think that because my body heals so well, and because I can fight, can kill, through pain that would kill a normal pony, that you don’t care about the temporary damage my body suffers. My body houses my soul, and I drink myself insensate because the pain in my soul doesn’t heal!”
Celestia wrapped her forelegs around Luna’s shoulders, and then wrapped her wings around Luna, and laid her head onto Luna’s. “I send you out because you are Equestria’s most deadly weapon. When I send you to do Equestria’s terrible duties, Equestria’s ‘wetwork,’ it’s never my choice! I send you as a monarch, a monarch who must make the terrible monarch’s decisions, must decide who lives and who dies. That monarch must sacrifice soldiers, noble knights, and even royals, so that the common ponies can sleep safe in their beds at night. The scars faded centuries ago, but a griffon morningstar took my spleen, and a hippogriff booby trap took my foreleg. The leg grew back. The spleen did not. I still remember the pain of each. I still have the dark dreams of each.”
“You— you have never allowed me into your dreams. I would take your pain away. That is my duty.”
Celestia kissed Luna’s horn. Luna’s forelegs then wrapped around Celestia’s chest and squeezed in return.
“When you return from battle, Luna, I welcome you home as my beloved sister. When you return in bloody tatters, I stand vigil at your bedside until you heal. I die every single time I send you out, and I am reborn every time you return. But you are going to kill yourself with your drinking, and you are going to defame the Royal House with your rutting, Luna.”
“I drink to forget the nightmares I dispel. I drink to forget the monsters you send me to lay low. Rutting helps me to forget, too.”
“I’ve thrust this upon you. Let me help you. I’ve allowed my duties as monarch to displace my duties as family. Forgive me, let me help you heal from the wounds I’ve inflicted on you.”
Luna began to shake. Her voice was thick, slurred from the still-broken jaw bones. “How can you help me? No pony can help. I drink, and I rut, then I drink, then I rut some more. I have tried so hard to stop drinking... you have tried so hard to help me... the castle doctors... Cadance...”
“Inpatient counseling is the next step of escalation,” Celestia said. “Heal these wounds, rest for the months until your next birthday. Allow yourself to be a foal for the final months before you reach your adulthood. These are Equestria’s best doctors and counselors—avail yourself of them.”
Luna pulled away from Celestia, wiped snot from her nose, and looked at the judge. “Avail myself... from jail, sister?”
“The newspapers will dare not publish. They have seen my wrath when a commoner’s child is named, breaking the seal of juvenile court. They would blanch to think of my wrath about this.”
“But... but sister, the tabloids. They already call me ‘slut’ and ‘fop’ and... and... and... ‘sociopath.’ They published the tales of the beasts and villains and problems you send me to fix, and they say I enjoy it... they say I like to kill... and if we add today to my shame... they already say I am still Nightmare Moon under the glamour of your sister, biding my time...”
That was it. Luna cracked and she sobbed, her body shaking. She buried her face into Celestia’s chest. She mewled like an infant.
“Nopony reads to the tabloids, sister. I told you to stop bothering about them.”
“Then why do so many copies sell, if nopony reads them?”
Judge Book Thrower leaned in to nuzzle Luna’s shoulder. “You are a troubled young mare. I’ve been in this game over one hundred years. I started as a police patrolmare. I’ve spent seventy years on that bench, fighting against my cutie mark and my name, to be as merciful as I can. I have seen tens of thousands of foals sit at this table over the decades. I’ve been able to help more of them than not. Your sister’s right: you need inpatient alcohol treatment. And sex counseling. And from your royal duties, apparently, you have post-traumatic stress disorder. Which also can’t be treated without a psychiatrist.”
Luna wailed, “From jail?”
Judge Thrower looked Luna in the eyes. “This is Equestria, not Griffonstone. Do you think your sister allows incarceration to be cruel, dangerous, dirty? Some of the best psychologists in Canterlot are employed by the justice system, and the good ones who don’t take the Crown’s Coin all work pro bono with the troubled foals, mostly because of your sister’s example of volunteering talents and time for the community’s benefit.”
“My sister,” Luna muttered. “The good diarch.”
“And ponies know your example, too, child,” said Judge Thrower. “Do you think nopony ever noticed the coincidences? The guard deploys to quell some secret crisis, then nightmares go undispelled for a few weeks, all the while a security cordon and press blackout clamp down over the VIP floor of University Hospital. Ponies know of your service to Equestria, too, no matter how hard you fight the publicity and suppress the details.”
Celestia bent down, eye-to-eye with Luna. “You’ll need a week more, maybe ten days, at the hospital. Your jaw is swelling before my eyes, and you’ve rebroken your wing. Goodness—I see the end of the bone sticking through your feathers, sister! You are unnatural—that should be debilitating pain, and you don’t even notice. Not even Rainbow Dash is this prone to injury.”
“My wing is excruciating, sister. But I have learned certain aspects of self-discipline from the hideous assignments you send me out on. I thought I mentioned the time I ashed that hydra, despite a broken spine and compound fractures of all four legs?”
“Compound fracture of the wing, now. You’ve earned yourself another surgery. Never mind—look at these fine ponies.” Celestia gestured a wing at Judge Book Thrower, the prosecutors, the police, the mint-green guardmare who had scooped and run Luna to the paramedics. “Let me, and these dedicated ponies, help you heal your soul.”
Luna looked into Celestia’s eyes. “But as soon as I return to the Castle, you’ll send me to squelch another monster, or close another eldritch portal, or exorcise another demon, or sanction another necromancer. And it will all begin again.” She buried her face into Celestia’s chest and sobbed harder.
“The weight of the crown we wear is heavy. It will never get lighter, if we both live ten thousand years. I’ll not lie to you and say it will. That is the price of our princesshood. Why does an alicorn earn her status? Nopony knows. But alicornhood has never been gifted to somepony unworthy, not once in history. I do not believe you are the first to be undeserving. I have stolen much of your foalhood, sister. Take these last three months before your birthday to heal.”
Luna looked at her sister, at the judge, and nodded. “I cannot... I cannot not drink. I have tried so hard. I need help. Please... please, help me. I’m willing to try anything.” The air was thick with the stench of Luna’s pain-sweat and seeping blood.
“If you promise to accept our help,” Celestia said, “I promise to be a better sister. I cannot be our mother—but let me try harder to live to her example.”
Luna nodded her head yes.
Judge Thrower and Celestia both hugged Luna, and all three cried together.
Author's Note
Author’s note 1: in Season 1 Episode 2, Luna’s voice sounds like a Cutie Mark Crusader-aged pony. From that premise came this story.
