Rest in Peace

Luna stepped inside the tree and found herself in an impressive library. The smell of books permeated the air, and she immediately felt herself relax after the stress of fighting the Taken Mutae. Sparkle, or ~Twilight~ as she'd asked to be called, also visibly relaxed, though she kept moving forwards as the other ponies seemed to make themselves at home. Feeling a little out of place, she sat down on the wood floor, finding it to be far more comfortable than many of the things she'd sat upon. Apple and Diamond sat together on a sofa, and Rainbow and Pink took up seats on their own, leaving Shy on a sofa unaccompanied.

For now, Luna thought with a mental smirk.

She looked around, the colorful book-covers catching her eyes, but not much of the text meaning anything to her yet. One day, she'd be able to read these books and learn more about this new world she was in. But for now, her daily lessons with ~Twilight~ would be her sole means towards that end.

Rainbow tapped her shoulder. Luna looked up from the knot in the wood she'd been staring at. The others were watching carefully, including ~Twilight~.

"~Are you okay?~" Rainbow asked.

"~Yes,~" Luna replied with a soft smile. "~You all safe.~"

Shy spoke up, if only just enough to be heard, "~Thank you, Violet. Thank you.~"

Luna smiled up to her. "~I am~ Guardian. ~Means... I protect-er. I kill monsters.~"

They seemed to understand a little bit, though they all certainly began retreating back into themselves, likely to meditate on that answer.

"~What is your names?~" Luna asked, pulling all of them back.

"~My name is Rarity,~" Diamond replied.

"~My name is Pinkie Pie! But you can call me Pinkie!~" Pink said, bouncing in her seat.

"~I'm Applejack,~" Apple answered with a smile.

"~I'm Rainbow Dash! You can call me Rainbow or Dash,~" Rainbow seemed to boast.

"~My name is Fluttershy,~" Shy murmured. "~It's nice to meet you.~"

Luna smiled and nodded to each one as they introduced themselves. From there, words began to fail her. She had just enough words to warn others of danger, where that danger was, and give the short version of what she did. But things like general chatting? She had no clue about the words she was missing, not to mention any etiquette.

"~When you fought that thing...~" ~Fluttershy~ asked softly, "~were you scared...?~"

"~Yes,~" Luna answered. "~I never seen.~"

"~Why did you learn to fight?~" ~Rainbow~ asked.

"~I am monster... so you... do not need to be,~" Luna said, doing her best to convey her message with her limited vocabulary. "~I hurt... kill... die... so you do not need to.~"

"~Die?~" asked ~Rarity~. All of the ponies were looking at her.

"~Yes... Die. I die,~" Luna said. "~Many times, I die.~"

The ponies stared at her with a mix of disbelief and shock. To Luna, dying and resurrecting were just normal. She died twice on this planet just to light fires for her first nights. She'd died dozens of times during the Scorn Crisis, and perhaps thousands of times over the course of her life. But this planet was not Earth, nor was it any of the worlds in the Sol System. That was not normal here. Of course they would look at her like that.

"Ghost? Do you have combat footage from home? Something where I die?" Luna asked, her Ghost floating out from behind her cloak.

"Yeah, I do. But are you sure you want to show it? You might scar them," the Ghost said, looking over the ponies.

"I have to. I need them to understand," she said. She motioned to a blank wall. "~Watch.~"

——————————

Fluttershy watched as the Shape that Violet often talked to projected a video onto the wall of the library.

Violet walked through a dense pine forest, a light mist hanging in the air and reducing visibility to only a couple hundred meters. Everything was quiet save for the soft crunch of Violet's boots on the dead pine needles on the forest floor. In her hands was another one of her weapons, this one longer than the ones she'd seen and with what looked like a small telescope on the top. As she walked, she neared a small cave, sloppily marked with some white paint. The mark looked almost like a wolf's face from the front, at least to Fluttershy.

Violet entered the cave, finding it lit by luminescent rods attached to the wall or sticking out of the floor. The cave proceeded downwards, twisting around in odd directions until she reached a metal door. Upon Violet approaching, it opened by itself to reveal several creatures. All of them were armed with swords, and armored, colored in a vibrant blue. Each had four arms, with four eyes gleaming in the dim light of the cave, lightning arcing around their weapons. Their helmets obscured the rest of their faces, with tubes connecting from the masks to their chestplates. The creatures roared at her presence and one cut her down before she had a chance to leap back.

Fluttershy and her friends gasped in shock as Violet fell to the ground, blood pooling around her sliced neck. Rarity covered her mouth with a hoof, and Applejack did the same with her hat. Rainbow hid behind her own wing, peeking out from between feathers.

A pulse of light flashed, and Violet rose to her feet once more, the explosive report of her weapon sounding off that she was alive and kicking. The four-armed creatures roared again, but this time, it was they who were killed. Violet felled them all, and proceeded through the caves, more of the four-armed creatures rushing to attack and kill her. Some succeeded, but Violet was never down for long. Every time she fell, she'd get right back up in a pulse of light and keep fighting.

The projection stopped, and she turned her attention back to Violet, who now had a solemn expression on her face.

"I kill many things. I die many times. I fight," she said softly. "I fight long time."

Violet hung her head down, hiding her face from view. Fluttershy couldn't tell exactly what was going through Violet's head. She had no idea what words Violet wanted to say but didn't know. But she could feel that Violet was incredibly sad. She stood up from the sofa and slowly approached Violet, placing a hoof on her knee, making her look up at her. As soon as she had Violet's attention, she leaned in and wrapped her wings around her in a comforting embrace.

Violet returned the hug, and Fluttershy soon felt the familiar feeling of tears dripping onto her back. Violet had just opened up to her and her friends about her past, traumatic as it was. Even if to her it was normal, Fluttershy knew that all of the violence she'd endured must have left some deep and twisted scars. Healing them would be next to impossible, but as long as she was able, she vowed to help relieve the burden from this poor being; her newest friend. The others joined her embrace of Violet, all coming in close and showing their support. Without words to tell her they were there for her, actions were the only means of conveying that message. All of them were here for her.

Eventually, they released Violet from their group hug, allowing her to talk to the Shape for a few words. In a flash of light, the chest of her belongings appeared once more, and she pulled a notebook and pencil from it. She drew slowly and carefully, as though the tiniest missed detail would drastically alter the meaning. She kept drawing for several minutes, filling page after page with meaning she couldn't express elsehow.

"Not all... but done," Violet said.

The first image was that of wreckage surrounded by stars. A single skeleton floated among scraps of metal, frayed wires, and blown pipes. The next showed the Shape, and Violet where the skeleton once rested. She made a bow from a shard of metal and wires, and used pipes as arrows.

Next she was overlooking a city beneath a massive sphere from a high vantage point, her bow replaced by weapons more similar to those she wielded now. There were others of her kind there. One wore much heavier armor, and her smile was confident like Rainbow's. She held a fist against her palm, and lightning arced around her hands. The other wore no armor, instead revealing much of her skin, with airy-looking fabrics covering only her pelvis and breasts, with a flaming circlet clamped around her upper arm. Above each of them was a symbol and something written in Violet's language. Above the armored one, a simple hexagon, with a corner facing up, an X crossing through the middle from the side-facing corners. Above the other, a symbol that looked like three mountains. The next page the three of them were in combat together, then relaxing and enjoying each other's company. Dying together, eating and drinking together, smiling together, living together. All three of them had Shapes over their shoulders.

Then there was another of her kind, notably different in the way their face was drawn. They seemed made of metal, the mechanical components visible in that portrait, and a proud horn protruded from their face. A Shape was drawn at this one's shoulder as well. The page was made to look like an ace of spades card. After that was Violet once more in combat, but this time the creatures she fought against were drawn in sharp, jagged lines, with dark shadows bigger than her. The mechanical being from before, too, was in combat, and in the next panel, their Shape was drawn shattered, and the image of a skull and a bloodstain. On the next page, Violet held him in her arms just above the ground, and some other of her kind in the background, their shadow in the shape of something akin to a dragon looming large over both of them. On the next page, the mechanical one was laid down on a stone plinth, with some kind of cloth over the rest of their body. Fluttershy felt tears falling from her cheeks when she saw that page.

Nine pages, each with Violet killing some creature whose shadow was emphasized. Eight were reminiscent of the creatures they'd seen in the video just a few minutes earlier. But the ninth was much like her, and male, judging by the way they were drawn. His shadow was shaped as a dragon.

Violet and five others stood with weapons raised, with a massive tower of some kind in the background, with the same dragon-like shadow as the male of her kind. In the next panel, they stood in a room, with the dragon to whom the shadow belonged. On the next page, all but Violet and the dragon were slaughtered, bodies broken and bloodied on the ground, and Violet was on her knees weeping. The shadow of the dragon was drawn as her own.

On the next page, was a massive triangular structure, and Violet standing in front of it.

On the final page, Violet was surrounded by trees.

Page by page, drawing by drawing, the ponies looked at the story they'd been handed. All of them could feel Violet withdraw after that, curling up with her cloak's hood over her face. The— no, her Shape talked to her some, but she didn't talk back.

Twilight proceeded to draw a simple picture of a bed on a piece of her own parchment, floating it over to Violet. She looked it over for a moment before silently nodding. Twilight smiled and motioned for Violet to follow, leading her down to the basement, which would be serving as her room for the foreseeable future. Since her cottage was destroyed in the fight, Fluttershy would be staying in a study room that Twilight had converted into a guest room. It wasn't much, but Twilight had insisted, as her library was closest to the cottage, which would allow her to oversee the reconstruction of her home.

When Twilight returned, everyone was quiet, waiting for her to say something.

Fluttershy broke the silence, "Do you think she's okay?"

"I... I don't know," Twilight replied, shaking her head. "From what she's shown us, she's led a hard life."

"She's got the kinda strength nopony should ever need," Applejack added.

All of them nodded.

"Do... do you guys think she had to fight?" Rainbow asked, considering the weight of the question. "Were the creatures she killed... just monsters? Or were they just another people, like griffons or minotaurs?"

Twilight answered, "There's no way we can know until we can talk to her about it."

"I think... I think those meanie monsters might have been controlled by something," Pinkie said, holding up the page where the shadows of the creatures she fought were emphasized. "I don't think any of them want to fight, but don't see any other way."

"But what about that dragon, then?" Rarity asked.

"What about a dragon?" came the raspy voice of Spike. The young drake entered the library, a few flat boxes stacked in his claws. He kicked the door shut, and the scent of pizza soon filled the room. "I bring dinner, by the way."

"Thanks, Spike," Twilight said, giving him a warm smile and a soft nuzzle. "We're just talking about what Violet drew, and what it all means."

"Oh! Spike, you're a pretty avid comic-book reader, yeah?" Rainbow asked.

The young drake perked up. "Yeah, why?"

"Take a look at this, maybe you have some perspective that can make some sense of this," Rainbow said, putting the pages back in order and pushing it over to him.

Immediately after flipping to the second page, Spike looked up at the ponies watching him. "This is an origin story," he said definitively. "I've seen this format in so many comics it's universal."

He kept reading, his eyes carefully scanning each page. All of Twilight's friends could see the Twilight in Spike as he read the wordless story. When he got about halfway through, he paused and took a breath. He rifled through the rest of the pages, his concentration rivaling that of the pony who'd raised him. When he got to the final page, he set the stack back down, thinking over what he'd just seen.

"She's running from her past," he said simply as he reached for a slice of pizza.

"How can you tell?" Twilight asked.

"Three key bits. The first is the ace of spades. I'm going to call them Ace for simplicity. That character got their own full-page portrait," he observed, turning to the page with the claw that hadn't handled pizza. "Whoever Ace was, they were important to her. My guess is a mentor figure. The next nine pages after his death are her trying to get revenge, only to learn that the villains who killed Ace were just the henchponies of the real villain."

"The dragon..." Rainbow whispered to herself, connecting the dots.

"Yeah, the dragon," Spike confirmed. "The second key bit is that the dragon's shadow is symbolizing control over those with it. The ninth henchpony was under direct control of the dragon, and killing him revealed the big bad. When she goes to confront the dragon, he takes control of her, and uses her to kill her friends."

The ponies gasped.

"The third bit is when she gets the dragon's shadow. That was the deciding moment. Revenge always stains a hero, and leaves them open to manipulation," Spike continued, pausing for a quick bite. "She blames herself for their deaths. Her quest to avenge Ace was the first domino in the line, leading to her finding and confronting the big bad, and subsequently, playing right into their claws. She was used as the perfect bait to kill five more heroes."

"But what about those two of her kind earlier, from before the ace of spades?" Applejack asked. "They weren't involved with the dragon at all."

"Those were her best friends," he said simply after swallowing his bite of pizza. "Her first friends. They're introduced to show that these Shapes belong to the heroes, and are the source of their powers. Without them, they become mortal, as we see when Ace's is destroyed."

The ponies fell silent as they tried to process Spike's analysis of the images. Everything he said made sense. They'd seen Violet's video of her in the caves, fighting and dying and resurrecting and fighting through death as though it were nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

This, combined with what Twilight had seen Violet do when they'd first met, only raised more questions. What kind of magic was in those Shapes? Was Violet ever really in danger of dying when she'd activated that curse? Could that curse have killed her in a way that the Shape couldn't undo?

What was death like?

"Anyway, that's just what I'm seeing with my comic book perspective," Spike said, finishing off his slice of pizza and taking another. "You guys should have some pizza. Oregano really outdid himself on this one."

The night proceeded almost normally, but everyone was deeply shaken by the events of the day, as well as what Violet had shown them and Spike's interpretation of it. Even Pinkie, as bouncy and manic as ever, seemed to occasionally get lost in her own head that night. Even though Applejack had brought a couple bottles of Apple Family Reserve hard-cider, none of them touched it, including Rainbow. None of them wanted the alcohol to open the door for the hard questions that they had buzzing at the back of their minds. None of them wanted the alcohol to lessen their control of their thoughts.

Eventually, about an hour after Spike had gone to bed, everyone went home, save for Fluttershy and Twilight. The latter of the two brought down fresh blankets for the pegasus, making sure she had everything she'd need to get a good night's rest. After Twilight had gone to bed, Fluttershy found herself lying wide awake. Rest refused to come to her, no matter how many sheep she counted. She stared out the window at the moon, praying that her friends were able to sleep, even if she couldn't.

She heard footsteps outside her room. They passed by her door, eventually stopping in the bathroom just next to her makeshift room, and she heard the bathroom door close as the light switch was flicked. Fluttershy listened carefully as Violet turned on the water, perhaps brushing her teeth or washing her face. A moment later, the water was shut off, the lights were flicked back off, and Violet's footsteps returned to the basement.

For a moment, all returned to silence.

(Recommended Listening)

The haunting voice of a ghost echoed from below. The sound of Violet singing made the air feel still and cold, and she could swear that she could see her breath. She could feel her heart beating in her chest with every word, even if she couldn't understand anything being sung. She didn't need to understand. The feeling was enough. Violet was singing of the ghosts of her past, of regrets from her home, about pain she'd suffered and trauma endured. She sang of exhaustion, in more than just her body. She sang of every time she'd died, only to be brought back again to keep fighting. She sang of the death of hope.

She'd fought for a long time, how long she wouldn't know until asking was possible. She sang in a way that made her voice crack, and as the song continued, she couldn't tell where the singing stopped and the crying began.

Every note made her feel weak. Every word drew a tear from her eyes.

Fluttershy had experienced a moment like what Violet was experiencing now. Twilight had too. The phenomenon was by no means common, but they happened reliably under the right circumstances. When ponies' emotions hit fever pitches, it became impossible to hold them within any longer. The magic of the world would drive that pony to break into song, regardless of where they were or what emotion triggered the reaction. Harmony moments, they were called, and Violet's sadness had brought about her own.

When the song ended, and all that remained was Violet's soft sobbing, Fluttershy pulled herself out of bed. She couldn't bear to let her friend suffer alone. No one deserved that, but Violet especially didn't deserve that. After the hardships she'd faced, she deserved a chance to rest in peace, untormented by her past and the demons therein. She opened her door, and made her way to the basement. She knocked softly and waited.

When the answer didn't come, she knocked one more time before opening the door on her own. In the darkness, Fluttershy could only see the base shape of Violet in her bed, curled up in a tight ball. Her sobbing had gotten softer, but had yet to stop, driving Fluttershy to softly close the door and make her way down the steps and towards Violet's bed.

She pulled herself into Violet's bed without second thought. She pulled herself closer to the being and wrapping her hooves and wings around her, pressing her chin against Violet's back. The effect was subtle, but slowly, Violet's sobs diminished, and her muscles relaxed. It took what felt like hours, but Violet's breathing slowed and evened out, and she drifted off to sleep.

Only when Violet was at peace did Fluttershy dare close her eyes and allow herself to rest.