She had slept through it all with remarkable ease. Apparently, Celestia had not seen fit to waken her even on account of an apocalyptic villain running loose.

Even the chaos and screams had not disturbed her slumber. In fact, reports from the guards stated that even as the walls of the castle turned to fudge and the interiors flipped upside down, Luna's tower had remained untouched. Did that mean something? Surely it could not.

By the time Luna had roused, everything had been settled, and Tia had taken great pleasure in casually dropping the news during their shared end-of-day meal. Luna had almost choked on her pineapple.

Tia had then explained what had happened, of course, but Luna could hardly believe it. Instead of facing Discord head-on, her sister had enlisted the same six mares who had come after Nightmare Moon, and they had once again wielded the Elements of Harmony. Yet the results had differed – where a second use of the Elements against her had helped Luna fight back against the darkness without, they had simply turned Discord to stone once again.

Perhaps he wasn't fighting? Luna found herself thinking as she entered the dusty storeroom Discord was now being kept in. Her sister had decided to keep him away from the public this time, suspecting that the exposure might have helped him escape somehow, but there had been no point in a cell. If he was free of the stone, no cell would hold him.

The room was, however, to be watched by a single royal guard at all times, out of a rotation of pegasi chosen for their speed. Spear Point, as Luna believed the current guard's name was, would alert Celestia immediately should anything unusual happen near or to the statue on her watch.

The silvery gray guardsmare bowed deeply as she saw Luna. "Your Highness." Though her face was as stoic as any other guard's, the eyes of the talented new recruit betrayed a great amount of giddiness at directly serving the princesses, even if it meant having guard duty over a lifeless statue. For a restless flyer, it could hardly be a comfortable role.

Luna nodded to the mare, then turned her attention to Discord. It had been a week since his return, during which she had procrastinated this visit by instead traveling to Ponyville, during Nightmare Night. But if there was some part of her that still believed this could be an elaborate prank by her sister, the sight of the statue dispelled it.

It had changed. Instead of the aloof laughter of a maniac demigod who did not believe defeat was a possibility, what looked back at her was an expression of shock, desperation and terror. The pose was different as well, his long body winding as though he had been struggling against the petrification every step of the way.

Her sister could not have faked it. Surely Celestia could not have even imagined such an expression on Discord, let alone brought it to life so vividly.

"You had a chance," Luna whispered. "Why did you not take it?"

"Your Highness?" Spear Point asked behind her, confusion and worry breaking through the stoicism.

"Do not mind me," she told the guard. "you have done no wrong. I was not addressing you."

Spear Point nodded uncertainly and resumed her watch over the rest of the room. She seemed to deliberately avoid looking directly at Luna while doing so, though Luna knew the guard would be watching as soon as she turned her attention away.

No matter. Privacy was the price one paid for security. Luna had never liked that, but she was used to it. Besides, wasn't that what her duty involved as well, as she invaded ponies' dreams to protect them from nightmares?

Luna hovered and met the statue's gaze, looking into Discord's petrified eyes. For over a thousand years, they had been hidden behind equally petrified eyelids, closed in derisive laughter. Now, they stared back at her, lifeless yet far more lifelike than those of any ordinary statue.

"Can you see, now, what you have done?" Luna asked him with a frown. He did not respond. "What you have given up on?"

She sighed.

"I do not claim to understand the Elements of Harmony fully, but both times they were used on me, I was given a choice. I was given the chance to fight back. Not against the Elements or their wielders, but against myself. Against the part of myself that carried the hatred, the loneliness, the willingness to cause harm to others. Against the part of me ponies named Nightmare Moon.

"The first time, I refused. I was too angry, too wrapped up in my inner demons to want to do anything to stop them. The second time, I fought. It was a difficult fight still, and I might never fully defeat that side of my psyche, but I fought and I won."

She paused, looking down at Discord's chest.

"Why are you once again made of stone, Discord? Did the Elements not give you the same chance? Did you lose the fight against yourself, or did you never try?

"From what my sister tells me, you were more… sporting, this time, than you ever were against me and my sister. You deliberately gave the new Bearers a chance, all while knowing what the Elements could do to you. You did not want to be trapped in stone again, that much is written on your face. So why? Why did you not fight back, or better yet, stop before it got to the point of the Elements being used against you at all?"

Luna flew closer to his face and placed her front hooves on his shoulders. She looked him in the eyes again, desperately searching the stony gaze for something she could not define.

"Was… was there nothing in there that could fight back? Was I wrong about you?"

She paused and backed away, allowing determination to harden her expression.

"No. I cannot believe that. There has to be something good in you, and I shall see it brought out some day."

There was still no response from the statue, and it was his own bucking fault.

Luna made a conscious effort to calm down. There was nothing she could do about it now. There was nothing he could do either.

"Tell me something, Spear Point – that is your name, yes?" she said as she landed. She needed a distraction.

"It is, Your Highness." The mare remained stoic, but her eyes still gave away her true emotions – confusion and surprise that Luna knew her name.

"If it is not too personal," Luna asked, "what made you choose to become a royal guard?"

"Me? I, um…"

"Be at ease. I have no intention of reprimanding you. 'Tis mere curiosity." Luna sat down next to the shorter mare.

"...I don't mean to boast, Your Highness, but I was always a pretty good flyer. Fast."

"Yes, I believe I have seen your records. You had the top speed in your class at flight camp, did you not?"

"Y-you have, Your Highness? Wow." The mare seemed to realize she was letting her admiration show. "Um, I mean, yes, I did. As a filly, I'd often go out to the race courses on my own and try to beat my records."

"Surely this alone is not why you pursued the guardspony life," Luna observed, "There is no doubt it helped qualify you, but there are many career paths that are more obviously suited for fast flyers."

"Yes, well," the mare hesitated as the stoic mask fell off entirely. "I suppose I never really wanted that. Don't get me wrong, Your Highness – I love flying, I always have. It's just that… My dad, he used to be a racer, always wanted me to be faster, to work harder on my flying skills." Spear Point looked down at the floor. "I never got to have friends over after school because that was 'training time'. My friends never understood, and then they stopped hanging out with me at school too." She sighed. "Before I knew it, I… I had nothing better to do than train, alone. I did love flying, so it became all I ever did."

"Then this career is an act of rebellion?"

"Not entirely? I always admired, um, alicorns."

"It is fine, you can say 'Celestia'," Luna said, trying to keep her tone lighthearted. "I was not around, and young Mi Amore Cadenza does not seem to make much of an impression on the ponies of this land."

"...right." Spear Point blushed. "I admired Celestia, so I wanted to work under her, and…"

"And what?"

"I'm sorry, Your Highness, it's just kind of silly."

"I have recently come to appreciate 'silly' more than I once did."

"It's just… I had heard that being in the royal guard creates bonds. Life-long friendships. I… I was lonely."

Luna merely nodded. "And did you find what you were searching for?"

Spear Point smiled. "I did, Your Highness. Everypony in my squad is like family to me already, more than my dad ever was. It means a little less flying, but I'm a lot happier now."

Luna smiled and rose to her hooves. "Then I am glad on your behalf."

She looked back at Discord's statue, staring into the air with those vivid, terror-stricken eyes of a creature that knew he was once again doomed to be alone in a prison of stone, potentially for all time.

"I hope, someday," she said "that he might find it too."

She lifted off and flew back up to Discord's face.

"You could have a life outside chaos," she told him. "You could have friends. But you decided against that, did you not, a long time ago? You gave up on fitting in, on existing peacefully in this world, and with it, you gave up so much more.

"You had a chance to change your mind, Discord, regardless of whether the Elements gave you another, and you rejected it. Do you see what you have given up?" she asked again.

Hesitating only for a moment, she planted a brief kiss on Discord's cheek. It felt like kissing a wall tile.

"That," she whispered, "until the day you fight back."

Luna turned, twice. First, away from Discord, and then, as red as her dark coat of fur allowed. She had in the moment forgotten all about Spear Point, who now stood staring slack-jawed at Luna and the statue.

"One word of that to my sister," Luna said slowly as she regained her composure, "and I shall personally ensure that you envy Discord his imprisonment. Understand?"

"Y-yes, Your Highness."

Celestia knew well the power of colloquial banter. Any good leader needed to know how ponies talked about her behind her back, because whenever they spoke directly to her, their harshest criticisms and strangest impressions of her would be filtered out so as to not upset her.

She needed to hear those criticisms so she could effectively handle their causes when they needed to be handled. It was a check upon her blind spots that ponies did not realize they were providing.

As such, she had a network of ponies whose secret task was specifically to keep an ear open for the "talk on the town", and hold nothing back.

Some of the most interesting ones were positioned among the royal guards. Often, Celestia would learn of amusing rumors from them, such as the one about her secret cake vault behind the throne (it was actually located in the basement under the castle's astronomy tower). She liked to share the most ridiculous ones with Luna at the end of the day, and while her sister often didn't see the humor in it, it was all worth it.

Celestia would never forget the expression Luna had made when she told her about the latest rumor among the guardsponies. Apparently, some of them were claiming that Discord of all creatures was Luna's long lost secret lover. Her sister had almost choked on her laughter.

That had been laughter, hadn't it?

Author's Note

Sure it was, Celestia.

It was so nice to be able to have Luna procrastinate this meeting just long enough for Luna Eclipsed to happen. With the addition of one sentence, all the dialogue I would go on to write became so much less awkward.

When you're an intuitive pantser, sometimes you start writing a scene, and then logic calls for a side character in that scene, and then narrative intuition calls for that character to have a deeper role, and then that role happens to be one that requires her to reveal Her Deal, and before you know it half the scene is about that character. That's how you get Spear Point. I don't mind, though – I kind of like her, and it helps make the dialogue here less one-sided.

Luna actually does have a long lost villainous lover, though not so much secret as forgotten. After all, What Dreams briefly established that Luna x Sombra was a thing, with the intent being that the symphonic metal opera Fall of an Empire is canon to the series.

So that's a thing, and Sombra is returning soon, before Discord does, only to continue being evil and then get blown to bits... Man, she's got real bad luck with her stallions, huh?