Doing her best to keep her magic steady, Panacea formed it into the shape of a key and unlocked the sturdy wooden door to her family's dwelling.

So far, so good. This was a good first step. Now she just had to enter the house. Her home. Where she lived.

"HISSSSSSSS"

Panacea screeched in shock as a blur of violet shot in front of her face, streaks of cerise following in its wake before hanging like alien fruits at the end of dusky blue vines.

"Morning Star! That wasn't funny!" She stomped a hoof at her younger brother, glaring at him as he hung upside-down on the other side of the door.

"You looked pretty funny to me!" Morning Star wheezed, swaying side to side in mirth before his body came aglow with cherry blossom pink magic that pulled him away from his perch.

Panacea for a split second considered dropping him to the ground, but her kinder nature won out. Instead she gently placed him onto his hooves to the side, making sure to squint her clear displeasure at the younger pony and his choice of greeting.

"Enough out of you, where's mother?" She sighed, the beginning of a stress headache was already pulsing to life at her temples. Morning Star was her brother and she loved him, but he was also a rowdy teen who couldn't read the room to save his life. She didn't have the mental fortitude to deal with that and a long charging confrontation.

"Wow, mother?" Morning Star mocked in a fake posh accent as Panacea stepped fully inside and wiped her hooves on the door mat. "What'd she do, take your succulents away? Mom's in the library, as usual."

She could feel her annoyance further bubbling when he trotted alongside her on her way to the family's library. Like a shark smelling blood in the water, her brother could tell something interesting was about to happen. Something interesting that she had to do alone, without nosy siblings breathing over her shoulder.

When she reached the door to the library, Panacea couldn't stop her limbs from locking in place. Just behind that door was the mare that had given birth to her and raised her all these years, never once giving her reason to doubt her true intentions or love.

But now she was more of a stranger than Blue Moon had felt, like some bad dream wearing her mother's skin. But it was her, within the span of a day the mother that she'd always known had become ill fitting in the young alicorn's memory of her. Too big to fit in her body, but also skewed like a square trying to fit into a circle.

Gathering up all of the courage that she had in her body, Panacea pushed past the invisible barrier that her fear had placed in front of her. Wading through and feeling the phantom webs of it cling and drag with each step, but she did not falter, and eventually they broke and clung to her quivering sides. Not gone, but not impeding any longer.

Before Morning Star could follow her into the library, she slammed the door and locked it before putting a sound dampening spell on it as well.

"Mm-"

Her voice died in her throat when she saw Twilight's lavender form leaned over a reading table, reading glasses slid to the end of her nose and on the verge of falling off. She hadn't even heard her or the door slamming, whatever she was reading it must have had her entire attention.

"Mom." Finally, her tongue was working again. "I need to talk to you about something, it's...it's important."

"That's nice, sweetie. Make sure to put the mandolin in with the chocolate milk..."

She was really into that book, huh?

Panacea gripped the book in her magic and closed it, even having the mercy to fold the bookmark in place before she levitated it away from her distraught mother.

"I really need to talk to you!"

That was enough to catch Twilight's attention now that book was out of the way, her expression softened when she saw how uneasy her daughter looked.

"Sorry, Pan. I was so caught up in that book...what's wrong?"

What wasn't wrong? That was a whole laundry list that they had to roll out and go over together. The question was how to approach it now that she had her mother's full attention. Should she ease into it? How would one ease into asking about their incestuous origins?

Maybe the best option was to be open and honest. To just rip the bandage off and face it all head on until it evened out. Both options had the chance to go horribly wrong. Casually slipping into it would give her too many tempting opportunities to back out. Realistically she knew it would be hard to keep herself on a steady course if she kept seeing escape routes. So maybe, just maybe...

"I know about you and Shining Armor. I know about..."

Silence. She couldn't bring herself to say it.

Pop!

The brief but dizzying sensation of a teleportation spell was familiar, but even so, Panacea hadn't been expecting it. This exacerbated her sense of vertigo and she stumbled forwards a few steps before righting herself again.

What was not familiar, was their surroundings. Wherever Twilight had telephoned them, it wasn't any place that Panacea knew.

All around them crystalline walls rose up into the darkness of a cavernous ceiling. They had a glossy, reflective sheen that despite their dark coloration gave a sense of hidden color. Something about it was beautiful but ominous, like the place held onto things that ponies long had forgotten.

"Where are we?"

"What exactly did you mean when you said you knew about me and Shiny?"

Somehow the pet name made Panacea's stomach twist unpleasantly. Was that the nickname given to a sibling or a lover? And if Twilight's reaction was anything to go by then she definitely knew exactly what her daughter was talking about.

Wherever they were, it was somewhere they were completely alone. Maybe that would make this easier.

"I read the journal, the one where..." Panacea faltered, huffed and then lashed her tail in irritation. Just say it! "Sh-Shining Armor is my father! When were you going to tell me?"

Twilight's face was almost pale enough to be a mirror of her daughter's. Her jaw worked, opening and shutting her mouth a few times before setting with a full body shiver. She looked like a lost foal who'd realized that they had taken a wrong turn and were now deep in some unknown forest. Which wasn't far off.

Slowly, she sat and placed her head in her hooves, pressing against her brow and massaging it like she always did when she ran into a particularly hard problem.

"But how did you...that journal had a magical lock on it, did you forcebreak one of my wards?" Twilight's lack of an answer ruffled the younger alicorn's feathers, she was more upset about being caught than she was anything else!

"All I did was open the book, I thought it was something else!" Panacea couldn't help but snip in reply. This was not how she imagined this going, the bar wasn't especially high but this was frustrating in a different way. She'd thought, even after everything, that her mother was better than this.

Twilight had always been sacrosanct to her daughter. A being that always held all the answers to her worries and fears, the mare who was always there to dry her tears and smooth things over.

Mother was god in the eyes of her child, so why was Twilight suddenly so very mortal?

"I'm an idiot," Twilight groaned woefully and lifted her face to finally meet Panacea's eyes. "That journal was sealed with a lock that only reacts to the genetic makeup of my magical signature, and you're my daughter."

"Unfortunately."

The friendship princess looked hurt at that, her ears flattening further against her skull and her lips pressing together tightly.

Panacea felt a wisp of regret but cleared it with a mental wave, her head had to stay clear. If she was going to feel anything, it was going to be determination or righteous anger for how Twilight was handling this. She couldn't keep deflecting forever!

"Talk to me! Forget about the journal!" The younger alicorn's command came out more like begging, her voice breaking as she took a step towards Twilight. "Why? And did you ever intend to tell me? Did you expect me to go my whole life without ever finding out?"

Twilight sighed deeply, lowering her hooves to the ground and hesitantly meeting her daughter's eyes.

"Oh Pan, if anypony deserves an explanation, it's you," She admitted, voice softer now. She sounded defeated.

"I…we. We didn't mean for it to go that far, we were in too deep and I was just so curious. I wasn't thinking straight, and all I could think about was if my theory was correct." Twilight fiddled with her hooves, lightly clicking them together as she spoke. "We were playing with more than our own lives, I knew that even back then. I guess in the moment I just, I just didn't care."

The older alicorn's face twisted with shame and sadness as Panacea met her gaze. Hurt, betrayal...everything she never hoped to ever see from her own child reflected back at her. And she deserved it, she did. That didn't make it hurt any less.

"Shining and I go back much further than you, we'd just been careful until then. It was selfish of us, but we had titles and reputations to uphold.

It was I who did the convincing, he was unsure and it took months of wearing him down before he agreed to uhm...mate with me during my next heat. We were very, ah, thorough. With fertility and virility spells, even some very specific stretches from an old Saddle Arabian book.

When I began showing, the official story was to be that you were the result of in vitro fertilization, from an anonymous donor. A bit surprising for a princess but the curiosity would have died down over time."

Panacea was silent as Twilight explained her origin, face an unreadable mask beyond the occasional twitch of emotion. She wanted to hear whatever her mother had to say, no matter how unsavory.

"Shining broke before you were even born, and told Cadence," Twilight continued, "He felt guilty for his part in it, and his betrayal of Cadence. She's a good pony, and we...we shouldn't have done that to her.

He told her, and she told Celestia and Luna. Then it was chaos.

I had to beg to keep you. They thought I had gone completely mad, that I couldn't be trusted to look after myself let alone a possible alicorn foal.

Panacea, honey, please believe me when I say that no matter how you came to be that the moment I felt you alive inside of me you've been loved. You mean so much more to me than proving something!"

Twilight's voice broke and she hiccuped, her dark purple eyes were quickly growing watery with tears. Her wings wrapped around herself, hugging tightly to the shivering pony.

The desire to approach her mother was strong, it was in Panacea's nature to come to the aid of those suffering. But her hooves were rooted to the ground. It felt wrong to not comfort Twilight, but in that moment the thought of being close to her felt too bright and raw. Like if she touched her, she would come away burned.

What could she even say? She didn't forgive her for hiding all of this, didn't think things were going to magically be okay and her sense of trust in her mother was shattered.

Panacea didn't want to soothe Twilight with a lie, even if she hated to see such despair only a few hoofsteps away. The kindest thing she could do for the both of them right now was to listen, without interrupting. She and her mother were both flighty creatures by nature, and every opportunity to veer away or flee was temptation she wasn't sure that Twilight would be able to resist.

"Sorry," Twilight sniffed and gave her head a clearing shake, "I'm so sorry. This went way beyond an already immoral relationship with Shining Armor."

She knew what the older princess was going to say, it had been on her mind even before this confrontation. When Panacea was old enough to recognize what she was, and process what it meant. And at her brother's birth, even her younger self had waited with baited breath to hear about her new sibling.

Twilight just had to say it.

"Until Flurry Heart, every alicorn has had a choice in their transformation. She was an outlier, an in the end happy accident. But you, you never even had a choice."

The way her voice echoed off of the cavern walls was haunting. It felt to Panacea like every word was coming from multiple directions, distorting and strengthening to strike her in the chest with phantom claws.

They were almost there, nearly to the point. It wouldn't be anything that either of them didn't know, but both needed to hear the words spoken aloud.

"We don’t make gods lightly. To ascend has always been a great honor and sacrifice, and never something a pony so young should have to consider. I was so caught up in it all, I didn't think about how I was giving you an eternity to resent me for it..."

And there it was.

Panacea closed her eyes, inhaling deeply before letting it out with a long and slow exhale. There were a number of things that she found wrong with the entire situation, but Twilight had years to mentally list off every little thing that her actions had sent lurching into motion.

She took another step towards Twilight, then another. And eventually came to sit beside the taller alicorn, who seemed surprised at the closeness.

A pale lilac wing outstretched and rested around her mother's back, the gradiented lavender tips and heart-like barring near the end of each feather were almost lost to the light of the glowing gemstones embedded in the walls.

Wrapped as they were around Twilight, they could almost be protective runes.

"I don't resent you. But I'm not sure if I'm ready to trust you again just yet either." Panacea's voice was gentle, but certain in its intent. She had no reason to lie to Twilight, especially not now.

Things would be different for a long time between them. Between her uncle and her as well.

This certainly explained the extravagant birthday gifts he would send from the Crystal Empire.

"This was hard for you to talk about, I can see that and I do appreciate you being willing to say any of it." She leaned her head against the lavender fur of Twilight's shoulder, eyes misting over despite herself.

"We have a lot of work ahead of us, mom..."

"You teleported us to Canterlot!?"

Once the mother and daughter both had a good cry down in the crystalline caves, Twilight had led them out through a series of winding tunnels to open air. Along the way she had pointed out various rock formations and structures, explaining how they had formed and the history of the cave.

It almost felt like a tour.

And then once they were out, the scenery began to look very familiar. Familiar enough, as they walked on, that Panacea's voice rose in shock.

Twilight had teleported them all the way below Canterlot. And now after a hike back to civilization and some quick freshening up, they sat at a small restaurant hungrily scarfing down a variety platter of fried honey glazed carrot sticks, smoked oatburger sliders and grilled sour-sweet plum halves.

Neither of them noticed the other diners doing their best to not stare at two princesses chowing down like a couple of wild animals, and even if they had they likely wouldn't have cared. The entire day so far had been exhausting, physically and mentally. So if they wanted to eat a little less elegantly, it was at this point their right.

"It was the first place I could think of where we would be able to talk completely alone," Twilight sheepishly replied, levitating a napkin to wipe a bit of grease from her lips. At the second dab, the pale cloth faltered and fell over her plate.

"Are you alright?" Panacea blinked in surprise, levitating the cloth to the side of the plate and folding it in half.

"The spell took a lot out of me, moving us both that far and all. I just need some time to recharge and I'll be back to normal," The older alicorn assured, waving a dismissive hoof.

Her daughter hummed, nodding in understanding and taking a sip of her strawberry tea. Even her healing magic couldn't fix an overexertion of the thaumaturgic variety. Just like a sprained limb there were things one could do to ease the process, but rest was the most effective medicine.

It was amazing that Twilight had even managed it to begin with. Element of Magic her mother may be, but such a long distance teleportation spell could have killed your average unicorn if it were attempted. Nevermind bringing along an extra.

"We should probably let everyone know where we are when we get out of here," Panacea commented suddenly.

The last place they had been seen was a locked library, before disappearing into nothing. Oh colt. Yeah that was going to be alarming a few hours after the fact.

Twilight seemed to think so, as she jolted up with her mouth half full. "Schooth!"

Sighing, Panacea waived the waitress over to request a bag and box for their leftovers. She left the nice mare a hefty tip and made her way over to her mother who was trotting in place at the restaurant entrance anxiously.

"Oh shoot, oh shoot, oh shoot, oh-" Twilight was whispering the words like they were a mantra. It was amazing how a pony as smart as her could forget the very obvious flaws and repercussions of her decisions.

Oh wait.

No. There was no point in continuing that spiteful way of thinking. Panacea would allow herself to feel what she must, but past a certain point she would begin sabotaging herself if she kept that up..

"Dad will figure it out and keep the missing posters from going up, relax," She soothed, nudging her mother in the shoulder.

Twilight bristled in surprise, looking at her with wide eyes before her mind began sorting itself and she nodded. "Oh, still...we probably shouldn't linger long. I have a meeting with Mayor Mare at 8 am tomorrow!"

They were nearing the Canterlot train station now, and could already see a larger than usual crowd gathered in front of it. They looked angry.

"Calm down everypony! I understand that schedules and lives have been disrupted but we're working as fast as we can!" The station master held a loudspeaker in his magic, standing above the crowd on a ladder. Whether that was to better project his voice or to keep himself out of hoof's reach of the mob, Panacea couldn't tell.

"What's going on?" Twilight asked a nearby pony, a peachy pink stallion who seemed like one of the calmer ponies in the crowd.

"A part of the track further out has been damaged, right at a critical switching point for several destinations! And to make it worse a swarm of migratory flash bees is passing through, so the repair team is being held back!" He stomped a hoof and turned to the lavender alicorn, flinching in shock as he realized who had addressed him. "Your highness," He added and quickly dropped into a bow.

Twilight gave a dry smile in return and motioned for him to rise, "There's no need for that, thank you for the information. "

She turned to Panacea with a sigh, "I guess I won't be making it to that meeting..."

"We might not even be making it home tonight," Panacea added tiredly. Canterlot wasn't terribly far from Ponyville, but it was far enough that she knew neither of them had the energy to fly all the way home. Especially with how strained her mother was after her long distance teleportation

"Well." Twilight gave the sun's position a quick glance, finding that they didn't have long before the sun began to dip towards the horizon. "It's been awhile since we've visited your godmothers, it's a bit short notice but I think they'd be happy to see you."

The thought of facing Celestia and Luna while wielding this new knowledge was oddly daunting. They'd been nothing but kind and doting all her life, but Panacea couldn't stop the now familiar prickle of doubt in the back of her mind.

Before she could overthink it, however, the young alicorn deflated. She was too tired to go down another doubt spiral today. The princesses had never shown themselves to be cruel or wary of her, if they were going to suddenly side eye her now then there were other issues going on. "I suppose, I just hope we aren't imposing."

For the second night in a row, Panacea would be sleeping in a bed not her own. With the emotional turmoil that she'd undergone the past two days, it felt like she was on a long journey back to her own room. Where she could snuggle under her own blanket, surrounded by familiar things and just...decompress.

Hopefully soon, she could finish this journey.

Author's Note

Whew, that was very dialogue heavy but for the time being Pan and her mom are at the very least on neutral terms!

In the next chapter we meet a new character and learn a little bit more about this version of Equestria.

The art in this chapter is a quick phone doodle by me, and as usual, thank you for reading!