The Exile's Keeper

Chapters

1 - The Monster in the Basement
2 - Secrets of the Alicorns
3 - First Day of Parole, Third Day of Exile
4 - The Duty

1 - The Monster in the Basement

The cell was empty, and Luna was there too.

Her cheek still hurt, but probably not as much as that idiot's fist. Ice had been refused, medication was out of the question, and the guards were too scared to blame her for what had happened. So instead, pain relief was being supplied by Alexandre Dumas, specifically in the form of The Count of Monte Cristo.

"Hope you aren't getting any ideas from old Edmond."

Luna flatly refused to recognize the voice. "I'm past that chapter. He's on the island now."

"Which time?" There was the click of heels growing closer, though not by more than a step.

"The first time. The treasure is still a few pages away." Luna turned a page, refusing the temptation to rustle it as she did it. Dumas deserved better than that.

"I never liked how he strung that out for so long." The crackle of the Countess Coloratura poster as her guest leaned against the wall. That was new. "I mean, everyone knows he's going to get the treasure, why waste all that time trying to convince us that Faria was crazy?"

Oh, that tore it. "The point isn't to trick the reader, Tia. It's to show Edmond's anguish, how everything that was driving him forward feels so distant so that the catharsis of his revenge is even greater--" Too late, she caught herself. "This doesn't mean anything." All the same, she closed the book and set it down on her nightstand.

Celestia was grinning, her arms crossed like some rebellious teenager. Her garish attire contrasted horribly with the grim surroundings, cheery yellow and purple leading a vicious assault against dark blues and greys.

"It means plenty, Lulu." She held up her hand as if to catch something. "King's to me."

Luna sighed, but threw the imaginary chess piece all the same. The fact that Celestia's mimed catch was perfectly timed did not help her to fight down the warm feelings. "You know I hate that movie."

Celestia laughed, tucking the fiction into her pocket for later. "At least it tells the story in only a few hours."

"It tells the wrong story." Luna sat up and glowered, doing her best to lose herself in the old argument. "They kept one plot point for every five they cut out, and nearly every point they kept looks like it got tossed back and forth through the Mirror a hundred times!"

And then Celestia's smile was gone, her well-rehearsed retorts dying on her lips. "Yes, I suppose it does at that."

Luna stood from her bed and crossed her arms. "Why are you here, Tia? I'm getting tired of this same song and dance every year. I'm serving my sentence and that's the end of it."

For a moment, she thought that really would be it. She thought that Celestia would turn around and walk out of the cell, and wouldn't come back this time. But then, those five words that finally broke the rhythm.

"We have a Code Horse."

For a minute, there was no sound in the world except Luna's heartbeat. Her thoughts rang with the bells of war, and her hands ached as though the Mirror was already hardening them into hooves.

"How bad are we talking? I'd think you're capable of dealing with most things that could come through there."

"Not a thing this time. A person." Celestia's hands were at her sides now, clenching and unclenching. "She didn't know what was going to happen."

"None of them ever do. That was the point of our arrangement." All the details were racing back against her wishes. The careful coordination between dimensions, the misty mornings before the rest of her world had woken up, and that familiar weight in her hand...

"Not talking about the exile. I'm talking about... the opposite number." Was that a tear in her sister's eye? "It was just dumb bad luck that the poor girl ran where she did."

"What are you talking about?" Too much too quickly, and they couldn't even speak clearly because of the guards just outside the door.

"It will be easier to show you." Celestia reached into her pocket, and when she drew it out, she was wearing the signet ring. "You know what I have to say."

Luna took a deep breath. It wasn't too late to sit back down. It wasn't too late to pick the book back up, to try and start the loop again.

But there was something new this time. So she did none of those things.

"I know."

Celestia smiled, and this one was somehow more real than every smile she had put on for the past five years. She made the gesture, and said the words.

"I pardon you."

Pants, shirt, the longcoat, and the signet ring. A lapis lazuli shot through with rays of pyrite, to capture the entirety of her name. It was not a princess's signet ring.

"Have a good life, Madame dé Sol." The guard on the other side of the glass smiled, and Luna tried not to shudder at how unfamiliar her own name sounded on someone else's lips.

"I shall have to do my best," she smiled through the platitude. Why did they have to waste time with all this talk? There was a Code Horse out there, and she wasn't getting any straight answers until she got out of here, so why did this jerk have to throw this obligation around her neck?

"You know you don't have to answer people," Celestia whispered as the doors drew closer.

Luna gasped in shock even as she slipped on her coat and ring. "But sister dear, that would be rude."

Smiles again. Surely there was limit on how much of one woman's life could be spent smiling. "It's good to have you back, Luna."

"Nobody said anything about me being back." The door opened, and the light nearly blew out her eyes. "Now spill. What's so different about this Code Horse?"

"See for yourself." Celestia pointed down into the parking lot. There was her car, and leaning on the hood was some teenager with deeply ostentatious hair. She was waving at them.

"This explains literally nothing." They kept walking for about a second. "No, actually, this raises more questions."

"Her name is Sunset Shimmer." Celestia was confident in this space, beaming under the sun with an energy that was very easy to feel bad about. "She came through the portal by accident, and it closed up right behind her. She's going to be stuck here for a while."

"And this warranted pardoning me because?" They had gotten close enough for Sunset to see them clearly. The kid looked confused about Luna.

Celestia gave a heavy sigh. "Because she was my opposite number's apprentice, and there is too much baggage there for me to be her only shoulder to cry on for the next few months. I need somebody there for her who doesn't remind her about what's happened just by smiling." There were tears in her eyes as she turned to Luna and offered a hand. "I need you to be here for her when she doesn't want to see me."

Luna almost took the hand. She almost stepped forward. But there was one last question to ask.

"Why would I not be a trigger?"

2 - Secrets of the Alicorns

"Hey, princess! The book is buzzing!"

Luna's head snapped to the side as she heard the girl. She knew about the book? No, more than that. She knew about the book and wasn't jumping to intercept the message. Could this day possibly get more interesting?

It was as she was having that thought that Luna realized she had started running. Of course she had started running. Stay still for a second longer and Celestia would have explained everything, but no, she had to take off running at the first sign of reports from the other side. It was Ne'er-Do-Well all over again.

"Give me the book, Sunset Shimmer." She held out her hand with that slight upward turn that showed off the ring, her voice already dropping into the Equestrian language. Utterly unnecessary in every sense of the word, but there was a very rewarding look of pure shock.

"Yes, ma'am." Sunset bowed her head and circled around to the open window to fish the book out. She pressed it into Luna's waiting hand, and received a cold smile for her efforts.

"Thank you, pony." A flick of the wrist, and the book fell open to the appropriate page. The familiar hoofwriting of Celestia-2 was racing across the page, already a paragraph deep and getting longer by the second. This was very unusual from the horse.

And then Luna began to read the words.

Abort mission! Abort mission! Are you insane? You cannot release Luna, not now! Do you have any idea what this is going to do to causality, having one in chains while the other walks free? I will not allow you to shatter both our worlds just because you're too afraid to hurt a child!

There was a pen in the inside pocket of her jacket. Had she been anyone else, that would have been taken from the pocket and presented in some little plastic bag. But the familiar weight was there, and she fished it out and began to write a reply.

Hello, Sol Major. Please, take a moment to examine what you have just written. I know what you have risked for the sake of crying children. I was there when you weighed one blind yak's life against a crashing airship. If you will not allow the twin of your own soul the same stupidity, then we shall have words when next the portal opens.

She slammed the book shut before another word could be scribbled, and slammed it down onto the car's hood as though that would shut it up. Only then did she lift her gaze to Sunset Shimmer. The transmogrified pony was staring, her body standing at attention in a way that probably still felt strange to her bones judging by the slight grimace. Still, she was standing at attention, deferring even to unknown authority. Certainly a useful student.

"You've been very quiet so far." Sunset nodded. "You must have questions."

"One or two," the child admitted, looking away for a moment. She must have seen Celestia out the corner of her eye, because suddenly she was focusing very hard on Luna. "I mean, to start with, I'm not really sure who you are."

Now that was very odd.

"I am Luna dé Sol, Crown Princess of Equestria and Lord High Executioner of the Realm." Luna stood to her full height, rolling her shoulders as though adjusting to the added weight of her titles.

For her part, Sunset managed to look even more confused than Luna felt. "Wait... you're her sister?"

Luna took a step back. Her body apparently decided this was not enough to communicate the mortifying depths of her confusion, so she took another two. She turned to her sister for guidance, an instinct that really should have been ground out by years of isolation but had seized upon her brain the moment that unfiltered sunlight was back on her skin.

"She doesn't know." It was not a question. There were too many questions right now, too many damned uncertainties, but all of them neatly packaged in this one statement of fact.

"Neither do you." Celestia sounded sad, and moved as if to reach for the book. Then she stopped, and looked between the two of them. "Equestria is not as it has been. Sunset Shimmer has lived her entire life in a world that has forgotten you."

"How could they forget me?" Luna found one hand curling around the other, caressing her signet ring as though it would disappear at any moment. "I... the other... she protected their dreams! She safeguarded the sanity of their kingdom, kept their shadows empty and their darkness sacred and blessed! What happened to her? Why is she forgotten?"

Celestia sighed, and a part of Luna was riled when she turned towards Sunset instead. Who was this child, that she was owed more than her own sister?

"Once upon a time, there were two alicorns."

That was the gasp of someone whose entire world had just changed. Despite everything, Luna smiled at the absurdity of it.

"They were sisters, equal in power but divided in skill. Cognizant of their respective failings and finding themselves in a world desperate for guidance, they divided the duties of a liberated Equestria between each other. One of them would usher the sun through the sky in accordance with the hours of the day, and the other would usher the moon and stars in accordance with the hours of the night."

"Sister always had trouble holding so many of them at once." Luna clenched her hands, the phantom feeling of her magic curling around galaxies echoing in her skull and looking for the right nerves to relive the memory. "And there I was, always complaining that it was impossible to hold the sun when it was so bright and staring me right in the face."

"You've held the sun?" It was starting to sound as if Sunset would never run out of questions. "But you're humans!"

"The Mirror has been open before, and it will be open again." Celestia gave her old benevolent smile. "Sometimes, the alicorns have needed our help. And when we are on the other side, we stand shoulder to shoulder with your gods."

There was no awe in the eyes of prisoners. A part of Luna had absolutely been missing the look of dumbstruck disbelief that she had seen in the eyes of ponies. The fact that this one wasn't about to die only made it better.

"This is only part of the equation, of course. There is more to being a ruler than governing the day and night." Luna thought back to the impossibly long nights when she had been standing in for her counterpart. "As you know, Celestia holds court and the reins of government. Luna is... she was a dreamwalker. She patrolled the nightmares of Equestria, helping them to endure all the awful things that claw at the darkness of minds in such a magical world." Finally, she looked up at Celestia again. "Now, tell me what changed."

"The same thing that put you behind bars." Celestia would have been completely within her rights to glare, to speak as though her words were poisoned, but instead she just sounded mournful. "She took a break from her duties, saw what her sister had gotten up to in her corner of the world, and suddenly the arrangement didn't seem fair anymore. Of course, the Princess of the Moon has a bit more at her disposal than a Deusenberg."

Luna winced at the memory. The screech of brakes coming two seconds too late, the shattering of the windshield, the hard boot crunching against her jaw...

"I'm sorry."

And then she was being hugged. Not just by her sister, who had been forgiving her as soon as she had sobered up, but by this Sunset Shimmer person.

"If it makes you feel any better, I'm pretty sure Celestia is just immortal at this point."

It didn't make her feel any better, but she laughed anyway.

3 - First Day of Parole, Third Day of Exile

"Parole conditions? Are you kidding me, Celestia?"

By all appearances, Celestia was not kidding. She was, however, eating a slice of ham and pineapple pizza.

"There is a certain expectation set upon me that I behave like a sane person, sister." She took an especially large and juicy bite of her pizza. "And with the way the public is sure to regard this incident, it is imperative that this be seen as conditional parole and not an unconditional pardon of all past crimes."

"But it is an unconditional pardon of all pa--"

"You attempted a coup d'etat with Sombra's old car, Luna." Celestia shot her a surprisingly scathing look, the sort of death glare that Luna would have expected out of Abacus Cinch. "This is not something that I can just sweep under the rug, as hard as I am trying to. We are a constitutional monarchy, and unless I want to watch all of democracy crumble around me, I cannot go around using my titles to get whatever I want." She flicked a finger at the clipboard in Luna's hands. "Thus, the terms of your parole."

Luna looked down at the offending document, which only grew worse as she kept looking at it.

"No consumption of alcohol, nicotine, marijuana, or any other judgment-impairing substance for a period of no less than six months, after which time I can submit myself for review to see if I'm stable?" Her disbelief grew more palatable with every word.

"And regular therapy sessions. The public needs to see proof that you aren't going to try that stunt again."

Luna gasped, and it was only slightly exaggerated. "Is the word of a princess worth so little these days?"

"Measured against the word of a clinically trained psychologist? Yes." Celestia was nearly finished with her slice of pizza now, and Luna contemplated throwing the rest of the box out of a window. The fact that none of the windows in the house were open at the moment only barely factored in to that decision.

"Honestly, you're going overboard with all this." Luna's eyes were starting to glaze over as they wandered down the page. "Half of these rules are lines it would never even occur to me to cross. I think you're actually increasing my odds of breaking parole by telling me all the conditions I'm under."

Celestia's chuckle was punctuated by an ungodly crunch as she began to devour the crust. "Perhaps. But these are the rules that we have to operate under, lest we become tyrants."

Luna scoffed, but kept reading. Finally, she reached an item that gave her genuine pause. "Vice-principal?"

Celestia nodded, and reached for the cola. "I've been texting several prominent figures of the community the past day or so, and they all agreed that the biggest asset to your image rehabilitation is to be seen contributing to the community. I was able to convince them that working directly for me would be the best way to demonstrate your... improved attitude."

"But I'm not qualified!" Luna sat up taller, and gestured with her ring. "You're the one who's always been good at managing people. I slink in the shadows, I deal with the problems, hell, half the time I never even showed my face to our subjects. You're the manager, I'm the cloak and dagger! That was the deal!"

"And look where it got us." Celestia set down her drink with far more of a dramatic thud than should have been possible from a flimsy plastic bottle. "Our duties have been too divorced from each other. You pushed yourself too hard, for too long. When I finally managed to talk you into stress leave, you were so overwhelmed by what the people saw in me that you couldn't take it. And that wouldn't have happened if you had been closer. If I had left the front door unlocked for you at night, if you would have had to walk through our house instead of climbing through the window to your room. If you had been given something, anything to do while the sun was up, anything that people could see you doing and thank you for, then maybe we could have..."

She fell silent. Luna felt no urge to fill the silence.

"Did that happen to her, too?"

At first, the only response was a nod. Then, Celestia seemed to collect herself. Luna chose not to notice whether or not she was crying. "Bruises still show up in a mirror, even if they look different. You were fighting a one-woman secret war against crime and cults, she was stretching herself across an entire civilization's mental health. No matter how many feet you have on the ground, you still can't delegate to save your life."

An attempt at a joke. A poor one, and would probably have been decided by any collection of judges as in very poor taste. All the same, Luna laughed.

"Still, vice-principal? You're hardly starting me off with something simple. Children are pure chaos, and high school is the point where they finally start learning how to channel it. It would make more sense to hire me as assistant to the janitor."

"Yes, but if Sunset Shimmer stands up and says 'I have to go talk to the janitor', her teachers aren't just going to let her leave the classroom. No matter how hard she's crying."

Luna tried, and failed, to keep a grip on the clipboard. As it clattered almost silently to the carpet, she found herself trying to hear what was happening in the other room. It didn't sound like Sunset was crying to herself.

But then again, the walls of this house were thick enough to stop machine guns.

"Has that happened?" she whispered.

"Not yet. But it will. That girl is primed for a traumatic flashback, and I can't afford for her safe haven to be another trigger." Celestia took a hard swig of her cola, and made a face that said she had really hoped it had magically turned into hard liquor when she wasn't looking. "Luna, I don't care if you do nothing but sit in your office with the blinds drawn and read Dumas over and over while you wait for Sunset to need you. You need something to do that doesn't involve staying up all night waiting for something to buzz."

Luna's eyes flickered to the journal, lying on the coffee table, just waiting to be written in. She thought about the police scanner, tucked away under the guest room's floorboards. And then she thought about the little girl who had run screaming through a mirror into her world, and how nobody had been told to be standing there to take her out before she got the hang of walking.

"What did she do?" she finally asked.

Celestia shook her head. "She has to be the one to tell you that. She has to look at you, and trust you enough to tell you what's hurting her. If she comes to you and you don't need to ask any questions to know how to help, you'll be just another Sol Major. Sunset Shimmer has to be the one to make that call."

Luna got up. After a moment of reflection, she took off the jacket and left it on the couch. "Well, I'll have to start somewhere. May as well start now."

"What a good idea, Luna." Celestia reached down and started on another slice of pizza. "I'm sure you have plenty of fascinating stories to share with her."

Luna nodded, and started to walk towards the guest room. Then she glanced at the clock, and a question occurred to her. "Shouldn't she be at school right now?"

Celestia chuckled in that conspiratorial tone that she was so fond of. "It's the funniest thing. All of her classes are having pop quizzes today. All of her teachers agreed with me that it would be better if Sunset just sat this one out."

Luna sighed, though with a tad more admonishment than she actually felt. "I think you've been spending too much time in that journal, sister. Thank goodness neither of us have the lifespans to reach the full potential of our schemes."

With that, she made her way to the guest room.

Sunset Shimmer was curled up in Luna's old chair, reading through her poetry textbook with a fondness that made Luna wonder what a trip to the art gallery would be like for the pony. Sunset didn't seem to be paying any mind to the great writing desk she was sitting at, or the horse bust that was only a few inches from her hand.

"Sunset?"

A start of surprise, but nothing more. Sunset turned to face her with a cautious smile fit for greeting strangers, and if Luna had to guess, she hadn't been crying for at least forty minutes now.

"Hello, princess. Can I help you with anything?"

Luna shrugged. "That should be my question, really. According to my sister, I am now your keeper. Any issue you have, whether it's with this world or..." she searched for the right words, "with the other, you feel free to come to me with that."

Sunset looked like she was cycling through as many emotions as possible from that statement. "What about at school?"

Luna smiled. "I'm apparently going to be installed as vice-principal. As far as I can tell, it's exclusively for the purpose of being here to help you."

Ah. Now it was starting to look like the tears might start again. "Why is she doing this? She doesn't have anything to do with this. This Celestia doesn't have anything to apologize for." A shaky breath in. Oh dear. "You don't have to do this."

"I know." Luna stepped into the room, over to the desk, had to break her stride before muscle memory took over completely. "But my sister and I, we have something very much in common. When we see someone that we can help, nothing is going to stop us from doing everything we can."

"And how, exactly, do you plan to help me?" There was a spike of anger in those words, and Sunset glared at her as though she expected her to melt. "You don't even know what I've done!"

Luna thought about the time that she finally caught up with Sombra, finally found his nest. She remembered the bodies. She remembered seeing him, and seeing the gun, and seeing the child. She took a deep breath, and decided to say now what she said then.

"I don't need to know what happened here. I'm here to help those who can be helped, and right now, that's you." And then she leaned in, and grinned like a manic skateboarder. "Do you want to see something really cool?"

Sunset nodded, nervously and not at all sure what she was about to see. Luna let her grin widen, and reached for the bust.

That last time, she had taken the mask off and pulled the ring out of her pocket. This time, she pulled back the bust's head, and pressed a button.

The walls clicked, and spun, and Sunset gasped.

The cape, the hat, the mask, the boots, the whole uniform was here, as pristine as the day they'd been made.

"You aren't the first lost kid I've helped." Luna straightened up, and wandered over to the weapons rack. With a practiced flick of her wrist, she drove her boomerang into the wall, an inch from Sunset's nose.

"You're a superhero."

Luna laughed. "Better. I'm the Ne'er-do-Well."

4 - The Duty

The mists of early morning were crawling over Canterlot High like an octopus enveloping a new toy in its aquarium. Luna shivered despite her heavy jacket, and took a long drag of a cigarette. Not long now.

The statue shimmered and danced, its impassable stone shivering as though buffeted by gale force winds. Her hand tightened around the crowbar, and the tarpaulin under her feet crackled as the ethereal winds began to leak through. Her mind flickered back to the journal, the reams of magical calculations that had been run through to arrive at what time it would be on this side of the mirror when the target came through.

"Lamia." She flicked the crowbar back and forth in her hands, tracing old fencing forms for something to do. "Bottom half snake, top half pony, full human intelligence." Dodge. Parry. Turn. Thrust. "Diagnosis? Hands, legs, entire body shape will prove difficult. Ample opportunity to silence the foe."

The statue rippled like a pond with a stone thrown into it. Luna took a deep breath, and flicked her cigarette away. A part of her wondered about throwing it through the Mirror, but that was an entire level of multidimensional trigonometry above her pay grade right now.

"One Mississippi. Two Mississippi."

A woman fell through the Mirror, screaming. Her head smacked off of the pavement with a darkly satisfying thunk, not yet possessing the instincts to shield her face with her arms. There was a bark of pain, swear-words that sounded alien to even the Equish tongue, but no instant lapse to unconsciousness. Regrettable.

It would have been prudent to strike now, while she was the most disoriented, the most overwhelmed. But Luna so rarely got to look anyone in the eye anymore, so she let the monster catch her breath.

The woman formerly known as Lamia opened her eyes, a blood-speckled yellow with slitted pupils that narrowed until they were practically invisible to Luna's eyes. Her hands scrabbled against the tarp, her mind undoubtedly flooded with the strange stimuli from alien limbs.

"Hello, Lamia."

The thing looked up at her, and Luna savored the dumbstruck awe. The full effect was let down a touch by the lack of dramatic wind to make her jacket and hair billow, but she still cut a terrifying and imposing figure.

"Who are you?"

But of course, this was her favorite part.

"I am Luna dé Sol, Crown Princess of Equestria and Lord High Executioner of the Realm." She held up her empty hand to show off the signet ring, and while her target was distracted by the unfamiliar symbol, she struck.

"So... you beat war criminals to death with a crowbar."

Luna shrugged. "If it makes you feel any better, we experimented with shotguns. We'd either get spare pellets flying through the Mirror and turning into a barrage of fireballs or the police would start asking questions. Usually both."

Sunset Shimmer looked up at her new vice-principal with a very unimpressed look. "You know I don't know what a shotgun is, right?"

"I've been in prison for quite a while, Sunset. Of the many things my sister tried to tempt me with, I'm afraid she never tried to offer me up-to-date knowledge of technological innovations on the other side of the Mirror."

Sunset smiled at that, and shut up for a few more steps. They had decided to walk to school instead of riding with Celestia, for reasons that Luna thought were obvious and that Sunset was probably just thankful she didn't have to think about. The fact that it was just chilly enough outside for both of them to justify their choices in jackets was a healthy bonus.

"So, why did they get disposed of on this side, anyway? What about Tartarus?"

Luna shivered despite her thick covering. "On the grand scale of history, Tartarus is a... recent development. There has generally been a shortage of threats that were both dangerous enough for the alicorns to notice and virtually indestructible, and an intermittently active magical portal seemed like a better solution than trying to negotiate with a three-headed hellhound that was known to take meteor showers as an invitation to fetch. Still, I will not say that I miss having to wait around at very inconvenient hours of the day to deal with... undesirables."

"You won't say it. Doesn't mean you don't think it."

Luna nodded. "You're good at this, kid." They rounded the final corner. "Be sure to call me when they upgrade you from kickball to acrobatics."

It had been many years since Luna had seen Canterlot High in all its glory, and even more years besides since she had seen it during the day. She watched the students bustling and talking and playing in the open yard, and was careful not to look too hard at the statue. There was no need to encourage any traumatic flashbacks on the second day of school.

Sunset Shimmer peeled off from her almost immediately, running full-tilt towards a bubbly group of girls that all looked overjoyed to see her. Luna felt an old pang of regret, that nobody here was reaching out for her in the same way that the rainbow-haired girl was, bowling Sunset over in a hug she didn't look at all prepared for.

No. Enough of that. The point of being here was that she wasn't alone anymore. Maybe nobody was here just for her, but they were looking at her, and smiling, and nobody was running away. One of the teachers smiled at her and actually walked closer.

"You're the new vice-principal, right?" He extended a hand with an utter lack of either fear or respect. "The name's Cranky Doodle, math teacher and retired ballistics specialist."

Luna blinked. "What was that last one?"

Cranky smiled the sort of trickster smile that Luna did not usually see on mortals. "Retired ballistics specialist. It's always nice to see someone else benefiting from the program."

"Which program?"

He kept smiling, as though it were just how his face was built. "Our principal's always done her best to provide a place here for those who can't put down roots anyplace else. Most of the time, that just means giving certain teachers a chance when circumstances made them look worse than they are. But in the case of you and me..." he shrugged, "we've got accounts to settle."

Luna nodded. "We certainly do. Perhaps sometime I'll ask you about yours."

This time, his smile was a touch less real. "Well, the teachers' lounge is certainly open to principals, vice or otherwise. In the meantime, perhaps you'd permit me to walk you to your office?" He offered a hand.

She extended the hand with the signet ring. "I'd be delighted."

It was a good office. Even with the lights off and the blinds drawn, there was plenty of light for Luna to see by. She had shed her coat, preferring her simple purple top for any extended period indoors.

The desk was sparse, and if Luna had any idea what her duties were in this job she might have considered herself under-equipped. For the moment, though, she was content to smile down at her old copy of The Count of Monte Cristo and crack it open to where she had left off.

And then there was a knock on her door.

"Enter," she decreed, and the door swung open to a very unpleasant sight.

There was a cowgirl, or some modern teenage equivalent thereof. She was supporting the weight of Sunset Shimmer, who was weeping and shaking and looked like she had two minutes at best before she collapsed.

"I don't know what's wrong." Her voice sounded like she absolutely wanted to be shouting these words, but she clearly understood something about the situation. "Our class was singing the national anthem, and she just started bawling halfway through."

Luna did not realize that she had flipped over the desk until she was resting a comforting hand on Sunset's shoulder. "Do you need to talk?" she whispered, and when she received a hesitant nod she offered only a nod in return. She turned to the cowgirl, who almost took a step back upon meeting her eyes. "How did you know to come here?"

"She asked me to." The girl was looking down at her knees, and her hands didn't seem sure if they wanted to keep holding on to Sunset. "I asked if there was any way I could help, and she just gasped out 'vice-principal'. I reckon that's you."

Luna nodded, and shifted Sunset's weight firmly to herself. "You've done the right thing, student. Please, go back to class. I'll send a note with Sunset when she's ready to come out."

The girl stepped away for a moment, but then looked up. She had the most parental look of concern that Luna had ever seen on such a young face. "Is she going to be okay?"

Luna tried to ignore the sniffling and low whining. "If I had to guess, I'd say it's a panic attack. She's... still getting used to her surroundings."

That seemed to satisfy the cowgirl, so she went off down the hall. Luna sighed and closed the door, helping Sunset walk to the chair.

The chairs. There were two chairs on this side of the desk, one bigger than the other. Celestia really did plan ahead. "Just sit down here, Sunset, and tell me what's wrong."

"The anthem..." Her hands were shaking, and every bone in her body seemed overjoyed to have something to collapse onto. "The national anthem is the same as on the other side. I just... I wasn't ready for it. I'm sorry, princess."

Luna sighed, and extended a hand. "You have nothing to be sorry for."

Sunset was still crying, and she tried and failed to wipe the tears from her eyes. "But... it's such a dumb thing. It's just a song, and everything else here is the same, and I shouldn't be crying over something like this."

"But you are, and that's okay." Luna scooted her chair a little closer to Sunset. "There's a lot of things that make me cry that you wouldn't think would have that effect."

"Like what?"

"Early morning mist always reminds me of the job I used to do. The texture of rubber makes me remember the steering wheel under my hands. For my first few years in prison, sitting down too fast gave me the same problem."

Sunset laughed, and Luna joined in before the poor kid could think to feel bad about it.

"Ridiculous, isn't it?" She let the laughter die down, and then took a deep breath to steady herself for the next part. "But that's trauma, Sunset. It's a hundred thousand little things that have their own way of reminding us that something went wrong. Some days it will be a song, some days it will be a picture, and some days it will just be a smell."

"Smell?"

Luna nodded. "I don't fight cartoon supervillains, Sunset. I fight awful people who do awful things to everyone they can find. Sometimes, I got there in time to save them. Sometimes, I didn't. And every time, the smell is the first thing that stands out."

Sunset grimaced. "Does it smell like a battlefield?"

"Worse. Since we don't have any magic to clean up our messes in this world, we've had to use chemical solutions to such problems. And the sort of people who evaded me long enough to get what they wanted tended to be meticulous enough to leave their lairs spotless. The strongest cleaning chemicals stink to high heaven, so thick that it even gets through the mask. I had to ask my sister to switch to all-natural products with fake flower scents just so that I wouldn't retch every time I came home."

Sunset raised an eyebrow. "Why do you keep calling her sister?"

"Because I don't want to hurt you." Luna tried to keep her voice neutral, calming, painless. "Because her name is the same as your teacher. Because I don't know what happened, and I don't want you to tell me before you're ready."

Sunset looked at her like she was crazy. "But... you could just ask me."

"But would you tell me?"

For a moment, Sunset looked like she might. She looked like the memories were replaying in her mind, her lips were tracing the shape of words she had said that day, and her hands were moving as though tracing movements that she now lacked the muscles to properly repeat.

Luna wasn't stupid. Sunset Shimmer was a former student of Celestia-2. She was fairly confident of Celestia's immortality, but showed no indication of combat training and had spent an hour theorizing about the possible combat applications of magic with not an ounce of background knowledge about what a battle with magic would actually look like. She was here, and the horse was willing to take her back when the portal opened, and she had made that crack about immortality in an attempt to make Luna feel better after learning about her own failed attempt to commit regicide.

But none of that mattered. What mattered was that Sunset had to trust her. Luna had never been in this position before, but she had known children. She had had to establish trust with children, very quietly and very quickly, on several occasions. In her experience, the best way to earn their trust was neither to ask questions or to not ask them, but to make it very clear that she didn't need to know. That any information they gave her about the case, they were giving her of their own free will.

It didn't always get her answers, but it always got her trust.

"I... don't think I want to tell you. Not yet." She sounded guilty for saying it, but Luna just smiled and put a hand on her shoulder.

"And you don't have to. You'll tell me when you're ready."

"But what if I'm never ready?"

"Then I'll never know. But no matter what you say, you will still be welcome here."

"But why?" Sunset was biting her lip, and even though her tears had stopped, her eyelids were still fluttering. "You've got so many more important things to do than waste time on me."

"Sunset Shimmer." She spoke the name in Equish, half to make sure that there was no chance of misunderstanding and half for emphasis. "The reason I am free today is because of you. I woke up on a couch and ate bacon and eggs today because of you. I got to walk down streets I've only ever jumped over today, because. Of. You."

Sunset had fallen silent. Luna took a moment and adjusted her signet ring.

"I am your keeper, Sunset Shimmer. Your every nightmare, waking or sleeping, is my sworn nemesis. If you need me, if you think I can help, if you just need someone to talk to who knows that you're secretly a horse, I am here, any hour that you need."

"Thank you." Sunset surged out of her seat and hugged herself close to Luna for a few moments, her heat almost overwhelming after all those cold years alone. "That helped a lot."

"Good. Good. I'm, I'm glad." Luna swallowed around nothing, and rolled her shoulders inside the hug. "Now, if you're feeling up to it, you should probably get back to class. They've definitely finished the national anthem by now, and you've almost certainly missed the lesson plan entirely."

Sunset blushed, and bounced up to her feet. "Yeah. I... I think I can handle it."

"Remember, if you can't, you come right back." Luna stood and held the door open for her ward, watching with an unexpectedly warm fondness as she sprinted down the hallway. Then she heard the click of heels advancing towards her office, and a very different kind of smile took shape.

"So, how did it go?" Celestia had this annoying habit of being absolutely insufferable when she was right.

"Better than I expected," Luna admitted. "She's a good kid. A few more days like this, and we could make some real progress."

"Great to hear." Celestia looked down at her fist, clenched around something that Luna couldn't see. "Also, I finally managed to calm Sol Major down and convince her that we aren't going to cause a temporal paradox by letting you out of jail a few years earlier than Noctis Major."

"Honestly, if the Mirror actually worked like that, none of your student body would exist right now." Oh, now there was a thought. "Have you ever tried using intel on your students and teachers to give Sol Major a leg up on threats coming up in the next few generations?"

Celestia actually threw her head back and laughed. "Lulu, we have a hard enough time just working out the logistics to meet for tea without her accidentally disappearing for an entire century, do you really think we can Minority Report the next two centuries of history?"

"Not with that attitude."

It was a cheap shot, but it still made Celestia laugh even harder. "Sweet Tartarus, it really has been too long."

Luna smiled, and leaned against the doorframe. "So, anything else to say for yourself? I've got a long day of lonely brooding ahead of me."

"Just one thing." Celestia tossed the thing she had been holding to Luna, and she caught it while barely thinking.

It was a chess piece. Specifically, a black king. The king of the moment, one of a dozen plot lines invented wholesale for one of the worst adaptations Luna had ever seen of a beloved work of classical literature. Still, nostalgia was nostalgia, especially in Celestia's case.

"King's to you, sister."

It was strange, having the weight of it in her hand again. It was one of a hundred little things that she had never thought she would hold again after going to prison, and now here it was. Everything was the way it was, but at the same time everything was different.

Luna smiled. She was beginning to feel like she could get used to how things were around here.

Author's Note

And thus concludes this kooky little addition to my weird AU. Hope you all enjoyed!