Letters to the Princess

And so Cozy Glow found her reluctant hooves once more placed upon the long walk to redemption. And one weary step at a time, she had to walk it again.

Rarity had tried her best to hush it up, but ponies talked. Word spread. And soon Cozy was once more a social leper, not even treated with the bare modicum of respect she had previously been awarded as daughter of a Bearer.

Cozy let herself slip into comfortable numbness. Work, when ponies would give her cases. Work, chanting out mantras and reforging the chains she’d broken. Work, when Rarity was there, projecting just enough happiness that her mother would be satisfied.

So when Flurry came crawling back, etching herself a little crack in the statue that encased Cozy Glow, Cozy thought why not? Why not keep up the charade a little longer, let it run a little deeper? It wasn’t as though anything else could go wrong.

There were no more dinners, no more trips north. Just a weekly chess game in Canterlot, nice and simple. A little hoof-holding, a kiss or two. Nothing that would risk worming through the stone to the shrivelled mare within. And little by little, Flurry Heart grew colder and stonier too. Every week the chess table stretched a little wider, until it was like a chasm between them.

So Cozy couldn’t blame Flurry for prioritising her duties. A Princess had so many demands on her time. She shouldn’t have been surprised when Flurry was late for the first time. But did it have to be on the day Cozy failed her only client in months? Soapsuds was only a colt. Only thirteen years old. He’d been failed by his family, by the state, by the princesses. By everypony who was supposed to care. And he’d done the only thing he could. The only thing that made sense. And they crushed him for it.

I can’t say I think taking this case on is wise, Cozy Glow, Doctor Healing Word warned.

Cozy had scoffed. What am I supposed to do, Doc? Nopony else will hire me.

But he knew it was more than that. So did she. Soapsuds was like she was, exactly like she was, and Cozy wanted to do for him what no one had done for her.

But she had misstepped, and he was gone. Jailed for thirty years without possibility of parole. Her only shred of victory was keeping him out of Tartarus. Out of stone.

Lost in her own head, Cozy didn’t look up until a soft pink form settled into the chair opposite her.

“I’m sorry I’m late.”

“It’s fine,” Cozy lied. It wasn’t fine. One hour a week was all they had left, and Flurry couldn’t even prioritise.

“I heard about…about the sentence.”

Soapsuds’ name had never even crossed Cozy’s lips in this room. But Flurry spied, of course. She would.

Cozy shoved a pegasus knight across the board. “Your move.”

“Are you…feeling okay?” Ever since that terrible day in the Crystal Empire, Flurry treated Cozy’s feelings as though they were made of glass. As though they might shatter and cut her pretty hooves.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t want to guess. That’s why I’m asking.”

“I’d rather hear what you think.”

“I think…I think it’s a shame you took that case. There has to be ponies out there who need your help more.”

Despite herself, Cozy’s eyes widened. “More than that little kid?”

“Innocent ponies,” Flurry said, her tone turning careful. “Ones who are failed by the system, like…like you were.”

And that was when Cozy realised. After all this time, after all they had shared, Flurry still had no idea of who she had once been. What she had once done.

“Soapsuds was failed by everypony at every turn.”

“I…I thought you took the case because nopony else would.”

The chess board was forgotten now. Cozy Glow’s head was a stormcloud, thunder building as weeks of helpless anger finally coalesced. “I took the case because he deserved somepony who would try.”

“You see yourself in him, don’t you?” Flurry said with horrified realisation. “Cozy, you never did that.”

“I did exactly that.”

“Premeditated murder is different."

Cozy scowled. “Explain how.”

Flurry shuddered. “I just…it’s so cold, so calculating. To plot the death of another pony like that. Weeks in advance. To buy the weapons, like you’d buy cake ingredients.”

Cozy stared at her, utterly blank. “Cold, calculating. Interesting. And what would you say I am?”

For the first time in weeks, they were talking instead of just speaking. And all at once Cozy wanted more than anything to know why. Why did Flurry keep coming back? Why did she put up with this? Why did she care?

“You’re…detached, maybe,” Flurry said, shifting in her seat. “You think about things logically, rationally — almost to a fault. But you are an emotional creature.”

A trace of amusement ghosted over Cozy’s face.“Oh?”

“You’re fiercely loyal,” said Flurry, leaning forward now. “You love just as hard as you hate. You protect the ponies you love. Look at the way you are with Rarity. You’d do anything for her.”

It hung in the air between them, that unspoken Look at the way you are with me.

Flurry tapped her hoof on the table with an air of finality. “No, you’re a very different pony than Soapsuds.”

With a heavy sigh, Cozy sat back. “I wasn’t always that way.”

“What way?”

“If you think of me as detached now, you wouldn’t have liked me as a foal.” Cozy met Flurry’s gaze, and she could see Flurry having to fight the instinct to look away, dip her ears. There was none of that cold amusement now. No drive to shock or startle as there sometimes was. There was only a deep, strange sadness.

“I would have.” The response was automatic, almost brusque. As though there was no possible universe in which Flurry Heart would not like Cozy Glow.

“You don’t know everything I did.”

“I do.”

“Tell me, then. Tell me what you know.”

“Tell me, then. Tell me what you know.”

Flurry peered closer into those opaque red eyes, but there was no trace of subterfuge there. No trap. It was an honest request. She shut her eyes for a moment, trying to call the relevant portions of her history textbooks to mind. “You infiltrated Aunt Twilight’s school. You…you used Grogar’s bell. You stole the magic, from…well, everypony.” She still remembered the trauma on Auntie Tia’s face as she had told that story. The deep-seated fear. To be stripped of one’s magic was to be stripped of one’s soul. A sensation she had never experienced and hoped she never would — but a sensation that the mare opposite her had inflicted on almost everyone in Equestria.

Cozy’s face was smooth, that hated mask back in place. “And?” Her tone was almost bored.

“You worked with Tirek and Chrysalis. You turned the tribes against one another.”

“And?”

Wrinkling her brow, Flurry tried to remember. “Wasn’t that most of them?”

A laugh, cold and hollow. “Unfortunately not.”

“What else, then?”

Cozy Glow’s voice slipped into its oldest mode. A flat, empty monotone. “I killed people. Before I ever arrived at Twilight Sparkle’s school. Ponies who reminded me of my parents.” She paused. “Ponies who reminded me of me.” Another pause, longer. “And before that, my parents.”

“Your…your parents?” Flurry stared.

Cozy sat back. Smiled a very small smile. As though satisfied at having finally elicited a reaction.

There was silence for a long time. Flurry tried to speak, to say anything, but each time the words died on her tongue.

At last, Cozy Glow climbed to her hooves. “A good game,” she said calmly. “I assume that’s it, then?”

There was something so final in her tone that Flurry found her voice at last. “W-what do you mean?”

“It’s over. Our little scraps are finished, and you’ll be staying in the Crystal Empire next week.”

“No," Flurry said, and almost to her suprise, she meant it. She repeated the word, stronger this time. “No. I love you. I still love you. You’re different now. A different pony.”

“What if I’m not?”

“You are.”

“I try to be better. I try. It’s been years since I lapsed — it had been years. But I still get the urges, the thoughts, every single day. Every day, Flurry. It would be so easy to stop trying, to go back to being the pony I am underneath, the same pony as I was — and nothing would have changed. It would all be like it hadn’t happened, like I had never tried at all.”

“You are different. The thoughts — they aren’t you. They’re not. Everypony has dark impulses. It’s when you fight them that you know that’s you.”

"What if I’m not strong enough? What if I lapse?”

“Then I’ll get you back. No matter how deep the hole is, I’ll get you out.”

Cozy looked deep into Flurry’s eyes, and her lips parted. Flurry knew she was about to say — to say something, something that would change their lives forever. I will keep trying, she’d promise. Or I know. Maybe even I love you too.

But the snap of teleportation magic cut off whatever embryonic words were taking form, and suddenly Auntie Twilight was there, her mane flowing like a river through the room, cutting Flurry off from the mare she loved, sending Cozy spiralling back down into herself.

There was nothing but fear in her eyes now. The hate of a hunted animal for its pursuers. “What are you doing here?”

Twilight’s face was ashen. “It’s Rarity. She asked — all she wanted was for me to fetch you.”

Flurry looked at Cozy, who was suddenly bloodless. “What — what is it? What’s happened to her?”

“I think it’s best we just go, if you’re ready.”

Cozy Glow stood up so suddenly that she overturned the board, scattering pieces everywhere.
“Let’s go.”

She strode across the room to stand beside her worst enemy, the mare she woke shuddering from nightmares of, without even hesitating, and took her hoof.