The Immortal Dream

The tension aboard the ship grew thicker the longer Cherrabell talked. It was bad enough that, even when she paused to wait out her contractions, no one tried to get a word in edgewise.

Papyrus had felt such rancid moods before. In his old life, he had frequently been the cause of them. It was fun, being around people who couldn't say what they wanted to say and watching the frustration build up until it broke.

This time wasn't quite so fun.

Senescey was giving Larceny an icy glare, and Larceny wasn't fighting it. Felicity looked like she would be more comfortable if it was aimed at her instead, her face tied up with guilt. And Floria, free from her family's personal history with Everlaste, was nothing but disgusted with the tale. Even Braen looked disturbed.

Clearly, someone needed to do something. And yet all of Papyrus's social skills were honed for making things worse.

"Um," Cherrabell said, breaking off her narration with a worried look. "You all look... not... really entertained. I figured if you knew what you were asking for..."

"We knew," Senescey said, her banana peel-yellow bang hanging down and shadowing her eyes, which were still visible only because of their cold glint. "We did know. Makalov? Illegitimate member of the Everlaste royal family? He was there that night in Stormhoof Keep. Boxed in like a pig with all the rest." Her teeth ground together. "We could have stopped this."

"I guess we could have," Larceny agreed, her voice empty.

"You're not going to fight it?" Senescey gave her an incredulous, daring glare. "Not going to push back and say you made the 'right' choice again?" Her shoulders trembled. "Go ahead. Say it. That you traded it all for something better."

Larceny looked at the table. "I'd almost forgotten what this feels like. It was always other people's stories that were my reason to fight. Other people's pain. Things like that didn't happen to me. You two took too good of care of me. Everything I did was for someone else's revenge." She looked small, haunted. "Feels like it's twenty years ago. Is this how it's always going to be between us?"

That stopped Senescey cold. "So you don't," she whispered, hollow and incredulous. "You're just going to sit there and-"

"Darlings, please," Felicity begged, looking morbidly uncomfortable being the voice of reason. "Our operation concluded not even a month before the Empire fell. If all of this story is accurate, then the original Lyantra's suffering would have happened before we had our chance to do something."

Senescey turned to her. "You saw your role all the way through to completion. It was only after we failed that you had second thoughts. Having third thoughts now? Was the peace you made with letting them live that fragile?"

Felicity adamantly shook her head. "It happened almost twenty years ago. There's only so much one can achieve through second-guessing, and it's not worth re-opening old wounds-"

Both times someone mentioned 'twenty years ago,' Papyrus noticed, Senescey stifled a wince.

"Please stop!" Cherrabell begged. "I... I didn't mean to start anything! I just thought I was following orders, telling you what you wanted..."

"Aye," Papyrus cut in, rising to Cherrabell's defense, "that she was. Yours truly was the one who suggested hearing about the Empire's old sludge as a way to pass the time, and if it's going to cause a brawl I'd kindly appreciate it if you directed your ire towards the one whose actual fault it is. Up on deck, anyone who wants to cool their head, I'll take you one on one or all six at once. Sounds like it's pouring buckets out there. Any takers?"

He stood on the table, forcing his presence into the middle of the room and interrupting the conversation like a brick wall.

"No? None?" His eyes found Senescey. "Anyone who stays in here solemnly swears that they will keep their tempers in check and not start anything stupid until we are five thousand percent sure that this won't turn into a repeat of last time."

Senescey sat down, though she looked far from at peace.

"Crisis averted?" Papyrus glanced around one more time, then hopped off the table and took a seat again, this time with his back to the doorway just in case he needed to suplex anyone outside to stop matters from escalating. This did mean sitting next to Floria, but she looked marginally less offended by the gesture than she did when he tried it on other days.

"Sorry," Senescey grunted, eyes closed tight. "It's like time doesn't heal all wounds equally."

Cherrabell was earnestly watching and searching for a sign that the tension had passed, and her courage crept slowly back as Senescey was quiet. "So..." she asked. "Who are you, anyway?"

"Assassins," Senescey instantly replied. "We had our hooves all over the Empire in the days before it collapsed. We killed Gondolus Gyre. We almost killed the entire royal families of Everlaste and Stormhoof."

"You said something like that," Cherrabell uncertainly agreed. "When I told you I killed the Everlaste royal family myself. But that was almost twenty years ago. Wouldn't you have been really young at the time?"

Senescey flickered with green flame, and was suddenly in her early forties.

Cherrabell's eyes widened.

"I don't know what Garnet eventually was able to do with you," Senescey said, changing back to her younger visage. "But I can change on my own, and age is on the table."

"You can do what Garnet did to me?" Cherrabell asked, stunned. "Are you...?"

"A sarosian." Senescey shrugged. "Just like you. All of us can change, once we learn how. I assume you look like this because you wanted to be someone other than Lyantra. Congratulations."

Cherrabell's jaw was slack.

"If I might change the tone," Floria offered. "Why Cherrabell? I am correct in assuming you were Lyantra, yes? How did you come by your current name?"

"Yes," Cherrabell admitted. "I was. You probably noticed, but I still don't have a very good idea of my place in the world."

Floria gave her a serious look. "Papyrus might have given you an invitation to speak freely about your days in Everlaste, but you describe those abhorrent experiences in far more earnest than one does when simply entertaining their hosts. This is the first time you've gotten to own your story, isn't it? To look back and see more than the empty passage of time."

Cherrabell blinked.

"I, for one, bid you continue," Floria encouraged. "Tell us how you chose your name. It would lift my spirits considerably to see you find more of yourself after spending your existence in a dreary box. Forget the pretense of doing this for our enjoyment. If lending my ears to your unsettling circumstances is the price that must be paid, my spirit is already steeled."

"You want me to keep going?" Cherrabell stared at her, incredulous. "I... I figured..."

"Please," Floria insisted, giving the three sisters a look that said shut up, this is important to me. "For your own sake, if not ours."

"Alright," Cherrabell dubiously offered. "I suppose I'll pick up where I left off, then. There's a bit more before I changed my name for good..."

Senescey suddenly got to her hooves. "I need some fresh air. Don't wait for me. Sorry."

Everyone blinked at her as she quickly, quietly slipped out the door to the ship deck. Then they looked at each other.

Felicity's eyes settled on Papyrus.

He shrugged. Was she looking at him because... Why, again? That wasn't the kind of look he could read. But, he supposed Senescey was only in this situation because of him. If she did need to take it out on someone, best to make good on his offer.

Outside, it was raining. The rain was jittery and trembled as it fell, as if it was afraid of the ground below, or perhaps of the storm up above. A short length of roof protruding from the cabin kept Papyrus somewhat dry, though splatters from the drops against the deck still hit his forelegs and hooves. Senescey was under that roof as well, standing as far off to the side as she could get without tumbling over the railing of the ship.

"Hey," Papyrus greeted, keeping his distance. "Leif!"

Senescey looked over her shoulder to face him, illuminated by the light from the cabin along with a brief flash of lightning. "Do you have any idea how ironic it is that you choose tonight of all nights to actually remember my new name?"

Papyrus shrugged. "Figured you could use a thing or two going your way at the moment. Believe it or not, I'm not here to cause trouble."

Senescey barked out a laugh and turned back to the swampy, stormy courtyard. "You have no idea how I work, do you?"

"What, you want to be called Senescey now?" Papyrus raised an eyebrow.

For a moment, she was quiet, her coat shifting against the vestiges of wind that made it down under the compound's wall.

"I'm dying, Papyrus," she eventually sighed.

Papyrus's eyebrows both went up. "What, like, literally? Right now?"

"Not right now," Senescey said, her voice quiet enough that he had to step closer to hear. "Of old age. The same thing that comes for everyone if nothing else gets them first."

Now Papyrus was skeptical. "You can't be that old."

"Cherrabell was telling the truth," she said. "About sarosian bodies continuing to age when we don't have brands or souls. All the time I spent as a mindless drone doing who knows what is time I'm not getting back. Felicity and Larceny are being honest about their age, and you actually cheated. I'm the only one here who's lying."

"So, hold on..." Papyrus hesitantly lifted a hoof, noting that she was using Larceny's old name as well.

"Fifteen years didn't happen for me," Senescey told the storm. "The prime of my life is simply gone. For me, that night in Stormhoof where Larceny betrayed us? It was barely three years ago. Still feels like yesterday, even though I've been working my butt off ever since I came alive again. Everyone else has moved on, or is pretending to when they really haven't, and I've got nothing."

Papyrus seriously didn't know what to say to this.

"We've been flying together for weeks on end, the three of us, reunited again." She turned to face him. "Myself, and my sisters. We haven't had a proper talk about what happened back in Stormhoof. I've assumed that, if they've been living for so many years without being consumed by guilt for wavering the way they did, they must have found something that lets them live with it. Some... new life experiences to fill the hole our defeat left behind. New reasons why we shouldn't have cared in the first place. I haven't said anything because I got them back, and didn't want to be the first one to question the miracle."

Rain mixed with slush wormed its way down in the background, spattering into the courtyard.

"And now I see they haven't made peace with it," Senescey said. "The moment a reminder of our past rears up again, a real one, it's the same as it was on that day. They don't know if they made the right choices. I know I did, but I wasn't enough. That's always been my strength and my weakness, Papyrus. I can play on a team, but I'm not smart or strong or skilled enough to do it all on my own. But I wanted them to have found something worth hanging up their swords for. After all that time they spent, and I didn't get to spend, I... I wanted them to push back. They should have been able to listen to Cherrabell and say it was worth it, that they didn't regret letting Everlaste live."

"You know," Papyrus pointed out, "your demeanor didn't exactly scream 'prove me wrong' back there..."

Senescey fixed him with a glare as lightning lit up the sky, clouds churning past overhead. "Do you even realize what we're doing right now? Trying to give up on the Empire and go find lives to live another way? I'm still the same Senescey I was twenty years ago. I don't change, I haven't changed because I haven't had the time to change."

Her ears drooped. "But you know who has? They have. My sisters did get that time, and what have they spent it on? Dunno. Doesn't even matter. All I see is that they still haven't found their way. If I take as long as they've had and still come up with nothing, I'll be in my sixties, Papyrus. I'll be retired, I'll be sitting down and waiting to die, and I still won't even know what to do with myself."

Papyrus cleared his throat. "You do happen to be asking that to someone even worse at figuring that out than you are..."

"At least you've had time to do it," Senescey pressed. "And you'll have time going forward, because your lifespan has actually been rewound. Me, I'm... I'm..."

She closed her eyes and shook her head. "Let's use children as an example, for absolutely no reason. Not relevant to current events at all. Felicity and Larceny both have kids who are making their own ways through life by now. You and Floria had a lot to say to Gawain about how stupid it is to throw in the towel on your life early on and leave it up to the next generation, but then there's Cherrabell and Garnet, and if you ask me, the thing Garnet was missing was how much it did for her to look after that filly. Is parenthood for me? No. Probably not. Definitely not right now. But if it was, I would only have a few years left to grow up enough to change my mind. Am I playing it safe by avoiding something with no appeal, or am I missing out on something I don't understand? There's two roads, and I don't have time to see what's down both. I'm lost without a map, and there's no time for exploring."

"That's rough," Papyrus consoled, extremely unfamiliar with the proper protocols for consoling a mare who was pouring her heart out to him. Anything he could say felt like it would just make things worse.

"I don't want to die," Senescey whispered. "I want to live. And I don't have the years I'm supposed to spend figuring out how to do that. I want my life to count for more than this... this hatred of royals that used to consume me and never went away. I can't accomplish anything by failing to kill them. All my dreams of doing something more with my fight turned out to be pipe dreams. I need something else. I know you're in the same boat, Papyrus, and are only here because I promised you something I had no ideas on how to obtain, but I need you to tell me you've had some epiphany here, in the last two days. Pretend it's twenty years ago and tell me what to do with myself."

Papyrus scratched his head. "Well," he started, thinking. "What were you working on back in the Crystal Empire when I roped you into this reunion? Some government theory thing, trying to dig up and consolidate and leave behind ideas on rulership to make things easier for the next conqueror who didn't know how to fix the lands they had conquered?"

"I was lying." Senescey gave him a flat look. "You couldn't have been fooled by that."

Papyrus raised an eyebrow. "So you were studying political theory with no intent to use it for anything?"

"I was going to use it myself," Senescey said, her voice cracking in the rain. "I wasn't happy with what Chrysalis did, leaving the Empire to wither after tearing it down. She had the power, but not the ideas, or will, or... Whatever she was missing, she failed. The plan was to find her and take her powers for myself so I could do it right."

Several different strains of rain pounded around her, the sharp sound of droplets hitting the deck and the wet splashes from the marsh below, the more pronounced dribble from water running off the ship's roof.

Lightning flickered, and Papyrus's eyes narrowed. "You wanted to become the next Chrysalis?"

"It solves the fundamental problem with all forms of political theory," Senescey told him. "Power exists in hierarchies. The only force that can stop people from attempting to step on their peers and climb the social ladder is someone higher than them stepping on them in turn. Theoretically, a system could exist in which different branches of government are able to check each other in a circle, with no one truly on top. But such a system is both vulnerable to paralysis and to two adjacent bodies being taken over by the same interests, enabling one to act without its oversight. No one has figured out how to de-couple the freedom from oppression and the freedom to oppress others."

She stared intently into his eyes. "The more complex it gets, the more vectors there are to exploit and oppress. Any successful system succeeds not because of the mechanics of power, but when those who come into power use it in good faith. The solution I arrive at every single time is that we need a system as flat as possible while still maintaining a hierarchy: all creatures equal, save for one good-faith divinity to maintain that equality and prevent the formation of further hierarchies. Nothing short of fundamentally changing basic equine nature can be good enough, but this is the next best thing. And the only one I trust to run such a system is me."

"And you think you'd be better than, say, Garsheeva," Papyrus pointed out. "Or me."

"Both of you were sphinxes," Senescey said, her voice small. "You were doomed from the beginning by the nature of your power. I thought I could learn from your mistakes."

For a moment, Papyrus let the rain splash against his hooves. "Well, I can't rightly say it's impossible, after doing it myself. But how close were you to actually pulling this off?"

"It's hard to measure," Senescey admitted. "But closer than you'd think. I had two major plans of attack lined up for when the time came to fight Chrysalis. One was the windigoes. In retrospect, I shouldn't have let myself get so blindsided by the Composer: I knew about the ones in Cold Karma, and thought I could use them for my ends. I had a theory that windigoes, incorporeal living creatures made of emotion, could paralyze a changeling queen from within if she tried to consume too many. That could be used both to incapacitate her, and, potentially, lead to the discovery of a way I could hijack her myself using a similar mechanism."

Papyrus nodded. "Forbidden combinations of windigoes and technology with the intent to splice together a perfect god? Now where have I heard that before...?"

Senescey sighed. "Yes, I'll admit, I have in fact paid attention and tried to learn what I can from people who have done this before. Chauncey might have been insane, but he was successful. Just not in the way he wanted."

"Well, that's one view to take," Papyrus said with a shrug.

"The other plan I made headway on," Senescey continued, shaking her head, "was the rocket Chauncey used to blow up Garsheeva. You remember that incident, right?"

"Hard to forget." Papyrus grinned, feeling a twinkle of reminiscence. "Call it bad taste, looking fondly on those days, but Garsheeva walking around in a normal-sized body after he destroyed her huge one was a sight to remember."

Senescey nodded. "I discovered the facility where that rocket was fired from, and the control terminal used to launch it. There are still some left. It's in the middle of a war zone now, and I didn't have enough time to crack the terminal's secret of how Chauncey fired it from the opposite side of the world. But I was only one piece away from having that level of destructive power at my hooves whenever and wherever I needed it. Those rockets and their bombs are strong enough to fight a god."

Papyrus whistled. "You actually put some serious thought into this."

"I had every intention of succeeding," Senescey told him. "Wasn't actually going to, but not for lack of conviction. Problems I hadn't solved yet were just that: problems I hadn't solved yet. The biggest one being how to actually find Chrysalis... and we now know beyond a reasonable doubt that she's in Yakyakistan, driving their war against Ironridge."

"There was one problem that would have stumped you, though," Papyrus pointed out. "One I can almost guarantee you couldn't solve: there's already a bigger fish. Her name is Starlight, and she has a mystical vendetta against newly-minted gods. She might not be the kind of theocratic world leader you envision, but she beat Chrysalis when she was just a kid. If the extent of your plans was just to somehow usurp Chrysalis's power for yourself - I'm a little vague on what that entails, by the by - she could stomp you ten fights out of ten. And for reasons no one can explain, she'd turn up in the right place at the right time to do it."

"I'll take your word for it," Senescey said. "Doesn't matter, though. I was doing it because it was the path I could see. Just getting back to what we were doing before, picking up right where we left off as if it were yesterday... But I don't think I could have succeeded, even without getting betrayed. I just don't have what it takes."

Should Papyrus encourage her? He felt like he should encourage her. "You say that," he cut in, "after describing an in-depth plan to acquire a weapon with a proven track record of blowing goddesses to bits that you've basically already seen through."

"Imagination isn't the problem," Senescey corrected. "Execution is. Even if I hadn't gotten betrayed by my benefactor, which happened due to my own lapse in judgement for getting taken in by them, everything else on that mission was falling apart. My team only stuck together as a matter of convenience; we were a few short successes away from getting enough resources that we would fight over how to use them. I don't have what it takes to be the glue that holds a group together. Not like Felicity, and much as it feels weird to say it, not like you."

Papyrus flashed her a toothy grin, lit up by another flash of lightning. "Didn't know you could make adhesive out of an active repellent."

Senescey shrugged. "I didn't either. But you're the reason we got the band back together, aren't you? You talked every one of us into joining up for this."

"Thanks for agreeing I'm repulsive." Papyrus patted her on the head with a wing. "But, yes, I suppose I did."

"Well, it's a talent," Senescey told him, ducking out of his reach. "One that, believe it or not, not everyone has. And that's not the only thing I couldn't handle. The job Aldebaran fell apart on, the one that landed me behind bars in Lilith's lab - you were there when they broke me out, you know what I'm talking about. Even Halcyon mocked me after that fiasco, and she was basically my victim."

Papyrus grinned. "No, actually, I haven't heard this one. When did that happen?"

"The mission, or the mocking...?" Senescey folded her ears in disgrace. "Look, whatever, probably better if you don't know. The important thing is, we botched the execution and the recovery from every instance of bad luck we encountered. Not the big stuff, the little stuff. Because I didn't have what it took to mold people into a coordinated unit or pick up the slack when that broke down." She aggressively shook her head. "Why am I even telling you this? The point is, the Chrysalis plan was never happening. I've got one or two ideas I'm stuck on because I can't let go and can't think of anything better, and that's about it. What I was doing up until now is not what I want to go back to."

Papyrus inconspicuously cleared his throat. "Now, look, I wasn't present for any of these horrible and embarrassing failures, and the one grand master scheme I do recall involving you in back in the day, you were pretty much the only person present who stuck to the script. Is this the part where I remind you of all your decent qualities and frankly fantastic talents so you can stop being down on yourself? I feel like that's what the guy is supposed to do around now."

Senescey gave him a look. "It would be a bit more meaningful if you did it without prompting."

"Well," Papyrus began, completely ignoring her admonishment. "For one, you can actually pass for a normal person, hold a normal conversation, make normal friends for non-political reasons and even work a normal job, something surprisingly rare and enviable among our little group. Forget if you're faking it, I can't even do that while faking."

"What a high bar to clear," Senescey told him, though he could tell she appreciated it at least a little.

"Second, you can fight," Papyrus lectured. "You held your own in the tournament, didn't you?"

"Barely. With a lot of cheating," Senescey admitted.

"Barely, she says," Papyrus scoffed. "Top thirty-two, give or take, and you got disqualified for the Stormhoof incident rather than eliminated fair and square. Could have gone even farther. In what world does that not count as holding your own?"

Senescey gave him a flat look. "I was out of my league as of two fifty-six. I only got that far due to flukes and Valey surrendering our match."

"Fine," Papyrus said, sitting on far too much ground to care about giving any up. "We lived in a militarized empire full of posturing states, pirates and gangs and mercenaries and militias, and by the odds we could put you in a room with a thousand other randoms and you'd still be the strongest. How remarkably unremarkable."

Senescey reddened. "That's not how strength works. You only have to lose the wrong fight once to be dead, Papyrus."

Papyrus smirked in her face. "Now I know you're just saying that to be contrary. You didn't enter the tournament with the intent to win, did you? Didn't need to be number one to get something good out of it. Sounds to me like someone's selling themselves short on purpose because they want me to praise them more. What a twist! I didn't know you sought that kind of attention."

"Papyrus, shut up," Senescey demanded, shadow sneaking past him to the other side of the deck. "You're clearly goading me into fighting you so you can throw a match to prove your point. There's not enough room under this overhang for that. The only thing you'll accomplish is getting both of us soaked."

"Huh! So there isn't." Papyrus backed off and sat down. "Though you'd be mistaken if you think I'd try to throw a match to make you feel better. Win or lose, I've always found the heat of battle to be an excellent method of communication. And since both outcomes would thus accomplish my goal, I have no reason to lose, now do I?"

Senescey sighed.

"Apropos of nothing," Papyrus said as the rain picked up in intensity, a brief mix of hail causing the deck to rattle as lightning flashed again. "Your memory of that night at Stormhoof is pretty perfect, right? Surely it would be, if you're this hung up on it."

Senescey frowned. "I spent most of it unconscious from your stun toy, remember? So I actually don't. In hindsight, we should have given that role to a less-loyal member of the team."

Papyrus blinked. "So you were! Honestly, my perspectives of that night were also a bit limited. Seeing as I was truly out of my mind at the time, I spent most of it imagining how Stormhoof and the generals were feeling. The humiliation of Admiral Valey wiping the walls with their castle guard for the second time in under a year. The panic of sitting defenseless with the lights out. The egg on their faces that none of them would live to see in the morning when it all hit the presses. I think all I did myself was make fun of them in their war room while stalling for time."

"What's your point?" Senescey asked, giving him a twisted look.

"It's like this," Papyrus sighed. "There's one other point of view I've heard extensively about that night from. After I emigrated from Riverfall to Ironridge, I got stuck in Valey's orbit, because she and her friends knew exactly who I was and their little clique wanted to keep their eyes on me. She had a few minor feelings on that night, and let me know about them quite often and repeatedly."

Senescey averted her gaze. "I did like her. I've never regretted our path like my sisters, but it would have been nice if we didn't have to hurt her like we did."

"That's the kicker," Papyrus said, leaning forward and flicking his tail. "You didn't."

Senescey tilted her head in confusion.

"Let's remember how everything went down," Papyrus proclaimed, leaning back against the cabin wall as thunder crashed around them. "Stormhoof Keep. Heavily fortified tower on an island playing host to the two biggest royal families in the Empire all on one night. Power shortage, manufactured by myself and my loyal second Meltdown, forcing them to keep the lights off and allowing all sorts of creepy crawly sarosians to sneak through the shadows undetected. Felicity, hired on as a defense contractor to counter that by using her connections to keep tabs on the underground and alert the castle of any brewing threats. And the guards who were in the castle were all fresh Everlaste recruits, due to my own machinations getting all the competent soldiers shipped off to defend against supposed extra-national threats. All sound familiar?"

Senescey sullenly nodded.

"Stage one," Papyrus continued. "You and your sisters and I pull a good-cop-bad-cop ploy aboard Valey's ship to kill Gondolus Gyre, make it look like my fault, and goad Valey into attacking the castle to clean out the small retinue I left in place. Stage two: Felicity and I use the drama over Lord Gyre to get Lord Stormhoof to fire her, making it look like his fault when someone takes advantage of the chaos to come kill them all. Stage three: your band of non-sarosian assassin friends, hoof picked to make it look like sarosians weren't even the threat in the first place, march in through the wide open doors and do, in fact, kill them all."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "But don't you see how many conflicting and tangled goals are at play there? I sure didn't, because I was insane, but surely you could have. Embarrassing the lords as we went in ways that didn't actually help out the plan's success? Who insisted on that, again? I think it was me! And the part Valey really drummed into me was just how much better a job I had done with the guard rotation than I realized. We didn't need the world's scariest sarosian to come knock the castle defenses over; a stiff breeze would have done. Getting her involved was pointless. If I hadn't prematurely raised the alarm by coming to mock them over Lord Gyre and if I hadn't prioritized getting Valey to do the visible fighting purely because I thought it would have been funny, your team could have slipped in and out and very likely gotten away with it. I was the one who really ruined it on that night, not Larceny. And you know the punchline?"

Senescey took a step back, her expression scared and haunted. "What are you saying?"

Papyrus took a step after her, tail lashing. "The thing that tipped the scales for Larceny, that made her betray you, was watching how hard Valey was fighting in that castle and getting a front-row seat to what she was throwing away. If you had simply done what you told Valey you were going to do in your fake cover story, skipped town with her and her friends and let your friends do all the dirty work, Larceny would have been nice and snug on their airship and never had reason to warn Gwendolyn or summon an army to restore order. You could have had everything: dead nobles and a future with new friends. No betrayals involved. Valey had no love lost between her and the nobles, she wouldn't even have been mad at you for taking them down on your way out! Sure, Gondolus Gyre might not have died in that particular timeline, but he was so unlovely that you didn't need a plan to off him any way you pleased. The best of both worlds, it all could have been yours, and it wasn't Larceny who ruined that: it was me."

Senescey flew at him. Papyrus was surprised she had shown the self-restraint to wait until the end of his speech; for a while there, he had even been stalling. But she came, and he was ready, blocking a blow to his head with both forehooves, angling so that she pushed him out into the rain instead of over the railing.

She chased him, spinning into a whirl of forelegs and wings, all aimed squarely for his grinning face. Papyrus ducked, lunging for her hind legs in a grapple instead, but Senescey was already in the air, and he barely had time to deflect a blow from above aimed at his spine, earning a grazed rib instead.

"What is your problem?" Senescey demanded, yellow eyes burning as she landed behind him, twirling and launching a double-hind-leg kick squarely at his side. "You think I don't know how you screwed up? That was the night you killed the last shred of hope Chrysalis was hanging onto, and doomed me and my entire race in the process!"

Papyrus tried to duck back out of her range, but she launched herself into a backwards dive, and her hooves connected anyway, staggering him.

"Is that night a joke now? Something you can grin about for a motivational speech!?" Senescey screeched, following up on her momentum by trying again to pound his spine. Papyrus twisted his haunches to dodge, this time managing to land a one-legged grapple around Senescey's barrel and bring her crashing down to the deck.

The moment she touched it, she shadow snuck, using his own shadow against the glare of the cabin lighting to swim out of his grip. "Give me back my fifteen years!" she screamed, surfacing again a short distance away. "My youth, my strength, my opportunities! You get another shot, so why not me!?"

"Because I tried a bit too hard to get a goddess filly to kill me," Papyrus spat, wiping rainwater from his face and nose.

"How can you brag about it?" Senescey demanded, charging him again, this time aiming for his legs. "Have you changed, or haven't you? I've given everything to move on from my previous life, and you..."

Papyrus jumped, spreading his wings and hanging in the air even as the rain battered them. "Given everything to move on, have you?" he scoffed. "Yes, that does jive with becoming a goddess so you'll have the power to carry out your old agenda, yes indeed it does."

"Shut up!" Senescey flew at him, rammed him and forced him back, the two tussling in midair. Papyrus broke from her, dodged, and she rammed him again. "And what did you do when you had that power? Looked for a way to die?"

"Found a way, actually." The wind whipped around Papyrus as they drove each other higher, the clouds surging eastward dangerously close overhead. This high up, they looked like a river of snakes, jumping down under each other in a bid to outrace their peers, glowing from inside with cold blue lightning. "Fate just had other ideas."

As he tried to rush her in return, Senescey dodged into a backflip, striking his chin with the tips of her hind hooves. "Stop bragging!" she howled. "Papyrus! I seriously can't..."

Before he could properly check his jaw, she was on him again, the two of them flipping over in midair as Senescey grappled him, rolled over and brought gravity to bear in kicking him down. Papyrus landed atop the compound wall, tree branches waving around him like swords in the wind as he tried to regain his balance.

"Have you learned or haven't you?" Senescey begged, hovering over him, fighting against the wind to stay in place. "Are you proud of your greatest shame? You know you were a failure. You know how many died because you couldn't control yourself. I signed on with you again because you said you wanted to atone. Sometimes you've changed more than I think you have, and other times you haven't changed at all, so what should I think? Are you doing this because of something I said?"

"Am I doing what?" Papyrus shrugged, sleet from the storm stinging his eyes whenever he tried to look up at her. "Providing a convenient punching bag and giving you reason to use it? You've let your feelings get all jumbled up, and you're not going to see how you really feel until someone gets you to let your inhibitions down."

"Well, congratulations, I'm not feeling very inhibited!" Senescey shouted against the storm. "And it doesn't make things clearer at all! What do you want me to feel right now, huh!?"

Papyrus pointed a hoof at her. "I think you've made your feelings perfectly clear. You're disgusted by what you used to fight for. Sure, you're sore about Everlaste getting away, but what do you do when confronted with a real imperial noble? Try to tear my throat out. You're confused because you can't own up to the fact that we became what we sought to destroy. Didn't we?"

Senescey gave him a revolted look, losing some of her will to fight the storm as the rain hammered her and her limbs grew cold.

"Perhaps you weren't as bad as I was," Papyrus admitted. "But why does it bother you so much to see me acting like that? It's because you know how I used to be, and you went along with it. You shelved every moral in the world to get what you wanted. Killing people in the night? Hiring others to kill in the night so you could keep your own public image clear, and tarnish someone else's instead? Sucking up to me, the craziest sphinx of them all? And betraying the friends you were making all because I said so, without so much as questioning my blatantly unnecessary plan."

Senescey was drooping harder... and Papyrus jumped off the wall just in time to catch her as she fell, gliding to an unsteady landing on the deck of their ship. There were bits of frost, he noticed, in her feathers.

She stared at him, begging him to continue.

"I won't call myself a guru on walking the right path," Papyrus told her. "In fact, I know basically nothing about it. But I do know quite a lot about the wrong path, and I bet you're as mad as you are because you can't accept that you've been on it. Can't let go of the past because it's all you've got, and it'll follow you even if you try to leave. But you know we were wrong, and can't forgive yourself for being the last one to move on."

"My sisters..." Senescey groaned.

"Are probably bothering you by revealing they haven't moved on as much as you wanted them to," Papyrus finished for her. "Looks like you care about them. Congratulations. I don't have to worry about that because my own sister didn't carry over any memories from her past life, probably for the better. Can't help you there." He shrugged, still holding her. "All I can say is, you won't have much luck trying to change what happened. Might as well learn to live with it. Wish I could do more."

He didn't let her go, and she didn't try to move, but the rain was turning more and more to snow and Papyrus started to fear his hooves would actually freeze to the deck. Before he subjected her to more of Cherrabell's stories, though, he had one more question to ask.

"Hey," Papyrus said. "This might sound weird, but what would you think if your life was, like... the protagonist of a book?"

"What?" Senescey asked, her sodden yellow mane beginning to collect snowflakes.

"You know. A novel." Papyrus shrugged. "Egdelwonk hasn't bothered me since we bailed on the Empire, but he used to ramble about this all the time, and I sort of suspect he was trying to be helpful. So call it a thought exercise. What if you were the main character?"

"I dunno." Senescey shook her head. "I don't think it would be very interesting to have a main character who never learns and never wins. What would you do with all the months I spent locked in Lilith's lab, a time skip? What audience would want to hear about all the investment I put into making Aldebaran work, only for it to go south, after everything in the Empire fell apart? What kind of redemption arc is that?"

She shivered. "Would be nice if it did work that way, where every setback I face has some poetic meaning. But that's not the way the world works. Or at least not my life. And if I get too caught up on the idea that it should, I'll end up like Garnet, killing people just to look for meaning in my life."

"Isn't that what you already tried to do in Stormhoof?" Papyrus raised an eyebrow.

"Suppose it is," Senescey admitted. "But I want to be defined by more than just that. So, I think thinking about myself as some sort of protagonist just isn't for me."

Papyrus thought about that. Egdelwonk, Discord, had told him that he could boop one person on the nose, and make them a protagonist. Less because it had actual power, and more as a thought exercise to help him build empathy for how others thought about themselves. But what if it really did more than that? Knowing his benefactor, it wasn't strictly impossible that he had the power to add some sort of karmic moral arc to someone's life. Could he?

It was probably a silly thought. After all, even if he did, he had been told that the way he thought about and treated other people would have a much greater impact on their lives than any silly booping power. And he hadn't been thinking about his lessons, or really anything other than his friend just now, when he goaded her into fighting him. So maybe the whole thing was pointless, or maybe he really had changed.

"Speaking of Garnet," he said, hefting Senescey and turning to get out of the snow. "On a scale of one to ten, how likely do you think it is that she's Chrysalis?"

Senescey blinked. "Where did that come from?" she asked sleepily, clearly at her limit for being out in the cold.

"You know what Chrysalis was like, at least before she transformed." Papyrus shrugged. "And Garnet apparently had black-and-green powers of turning people to dust, too. Thoughts?"

"You're crazy." Senescey shook her head. "Chrysalis tried to destroy the Empire. Why would she want to be a part of its last remaining royal family, especially if that family was so gross? But no, I didn't know her. I only ever met her once, on Valey's ship."

"Huh," Papyrus said. "Well, never mind, then."

"Besides," Senescey added as he moved to open the door. "Cherrabell said she killed the whole royal family, right? And there's no way she could have killed Chrysalis. If she was no longer around, we would know."

Strictly speaking, Papyrus wanted to point out, this 'Garnet' showed up after the Empire's fall, and was thus someone he had never known about. He didn't get all that much time in Tarunda's corpse collection, so if she had or hadn't been there, he had no way of remembering. But it was more important to get warmed up than to continue that conversation. He eased the door open, still carrying Senescey, and slipped inside, back into the light.