Author's Note
So this is the 30+ writing session monstrosity I was talking about on the blog... or, at least, most of it; in the end, I decided that having the story as a single chapter wasn't going to work, so I split up what I had written. Now I have this and an entirely new chapter to edit way too much before release!
Cadance I
She and Sunset had done a good job; as far as the tests could tell, her mind was as good as new.
It wasn't that she'd doubted her, or that she'd run into anything that made her worry about Sunset's repair job, Cadance simply couldn't risk her mind being in any shape other than pristine with everything going on. So, as soon as her work in the capitol was done (or at least stable enough to risk leaving for a while), she'd headed over to Radiant Hope's center to have Sunset's work checked. It wouldn't be as thorough as she'd like, despite all its advancements mental medicine couldn't get inside her head like Sunset had, but it would at least be able to tell her if there were any problems lurking near the surface.
Doctor Cerebrum's examination hadn't uncovered any, not even a moment of lost memory from the time Sunset had spent in her mind. She'd shared the doctor's bemused relief as she shook their hand farewell, wondering about the source of that relief. What other wonders could Sunset achieve in the psychological field? Would she be able to repair others as she'd repaired Cadance? Could she even heal-
The office door closing and the memory of the horror on Sunset's face made her flinch. No, she doubted Cerebrum needed to worry about Sunset coming for his job; what she'd done to Cadance had scarred her, horrified her, given her a fear of her gifts that Cadance doubted would go away any time soon. Sunset wouldn't be healing anyone else, not until she herself was healed, and scars like the one she'd unknowingly inflicted on herself took a long time to heal.
"No Man or beast shall cast you down, save one who bears the heart and crown.”
How many years had it been since her uncle had carved that gash in himself? Fourteen? A little less? No, a little more; it was her mother's death that had pushed him over the edge. Fifteen years, and still her uncle's wound was healing. It was still healing, though; one of the staff had actually told her that they'd managed to get him to take down almost all the mirrors in his room, something his paranoia had refused to let him go without since she'd lost her mother. She would pay him a visit while she was here, but the receptionist had told her that he had requested no visitors. Last night he'd had another one of his "visions," waking up agitated and demanding to be brought to Shining Armor to inform him about it. The staff had offered to call a local Guard over so that they could tell Shiny whatever message her uncle was trying to pass along, but even absent his paranoia, her uncle had never liked messengers or middlemen, especially in urgent matters like he thought his "visions" were. He'd refused the offer, then retired to his room for the rest of the day to brood.
He did that a lot, had done so even before being admitted. Even at his best, when Cadance's mother had still been around, he'd been a grim man, not inclined to suffer fools or failure easily. He'd clawed his way up to his position, giving everything and more to his work, and he felt nothing but contempt for those who refused to do the same. He was a perfectionist, and unforgiving towards those who weren't. She could still remember him shouting old Navel Gazer out of his office after Navel's failure to negotiate with Angon before storming off to the window to brood, glaring his frustration out into the distance.
Perhaps that had been part of what drove her uncle to wound himself, his perfectionism and paranoia combining to turn those who failed to live up to his standards into secret enemies trying to sabotage him. That would explain some of his stranger hatreds, why he'd turned on those who'd once been his closest friends; dear Stygian stood by him through thick and thin, but his failures while doing so might have caused her uncle to wonder whether Stygian stood with him as a friend or as a spy for his alleged enemies.
"Alleged..."
She fought back the sudden swell of anger in her heart, taking a deep breath to quell it. As much as she wanted to deny it, her uncle had known what he was doing, had given the full consent of his will to his horrors; he'd acted out of fear, paranoia, and deep disturbance, but not insanity. 'The black cells,' dismissing Navel, turning from a teacher to a tyrant, he'd leapt into all those abysses himself... but she couldn't forget that it had been Cinch and her partisans who had driven him to that edge in the first place. If they hadn't given her uncle something to be genuinely paranoid about, maybe he wouldn't have grown paranoid of those around him, those who loved him. At the very least, if Cinch hadn't launched her power play, her uncle would have more visitors to look forward to than just her.
She released a hissing sigh. Brooding like this did nothing, even her uncle knew that. She still remembered the advice he'd given her, back when he could still look at her with anything other than fear, contempt, or adulation; "Don't spend over long thinking of what hasn't been done. Focus on what needs to be done to make up for it." That's what he said he really did when he brooded; he fumed about the failure, yes, but then he moved on to figuring out what needed to be done to make up for it. Navel had failed to negotiate with Angon, so he was forced to think about what other options he had to check the ambitious counselor. However foolish others might think her for doing so, Cadance believed him, and so she tried to push past her bitterness about the fate Cinch and her allies had driven him to.
She tried, at least.
Grimly, her thoughts turned to Sunset. How close to the abyss was she? Had shattering her old self-conception helped pull her away from the edge or pushed her closer to it? Had Cadance helped show her other paths she could take or made her think the only way forward was the void? Sunset was strong, Cadance knew that, and she was adaptable, but Radiant Hope had taught her that even the strongest could suffer a mental wound, and that being able to adapt wasn't a strength if you took the wrong lesson from an incident. What lesson had Sunset taken from their meeting? Was she focusing on how her old self-conception had been wrong, or how she'd defended herself when Cadance had threatened it? Or did she see what Cadance saw, how her self-conception was wrong and it didn't matter, that she could make it true? Yes, she wasn't destined to be Death's enemy, the master of Fate, but she had made herself so several times regardless. She didn't have destiny on her side, and she didn't need it. Had she learned that, or had she only realized the first part?
Such a delicate thing, the mind was, always watching, and acting on everything it saw, even if that action was only to discard it. But just like pouring water out of a glass left some behind, discarding thoughts didn't entirely remove their influence; once you saw something, your mind could never unsee it, no matter how hard you tried. You could stop your mind from thinking about what it saw with enough training, or teach it to process what it saw in a more helpful way, but the sight would always remain, as would the way it shaped your mind. Like fossils, Radiant Hope put it, every layer being recorded, even if they were later corrected. You could heal from a wound to the mind, but that didn't make the wound not happen; the mind remembered everything that happened to it, for ill and for good. Take her mother's death; that wound still ached sometimes, even after healing, but it also helped teach her how to care for similar wounds in future. Similarly, getting back together with Shiny after he became a Guard reminded her about joy, but also about the bitterness she'd felt when he first broke up with her. Ill and good, weal and woe, positive and negative, and their sum total was the impact the world had had on her mind.
But that was only half the story, and nobody knew the other half; the mind's response to the world was different for every person, and nobody, not even Radiant's staff, could predict what that response would be. One's family and one's behaviors could provide a very, very rough guess, but even then, not all minds followed the pattern; those who looked the strongest could buckle at the world's first blow, while those apparently weak could endure things beyond imagining. Her uncle, strong-willed and disciplined, had fallen beneath the wounds that had afflicted his mind, while her aunt...
She was surrounded when he'd found her, Sir Doseydotes said, surrounded, heavily outnumbered, and almost overwhelmed. She'd helped him rescue Aunt Luna, fighting like a demon to protect her little sister, before finally succumbing to the ceaseless blows of the Unmarked. They'd dragged her away, taking her with them on their retreat, and Cadance had no illusions about how they were treating her as a captive. She knew Starlight would try to break her, just like Cinch had tried to break her at the Friendship Games, just like Principal Discord had tried to break her when she removed him from office, just like her despair had tried to break her after Aunt Luna's incident.
Starlight would try to break Celestia, and she would never flinch.
There was a strength in her aunt that nobody else seemed to see, not even Shiny. He respected her, of course, but he respected anyone who didn't give him a reason not to. Aunt Celestia was worthy of more than that; she wasn't a hero like Twilight or Sunset, and she let that be known, even if it meant others might make fun of her. Suppressing her ego like that, making sacrifices for those under her care, caring about others when all her instincts would've been driving her to focus only on herself, her aunt was strong enough to tame the monster that had easily defeated her uncle; her own desires. Even allowing Sunset to stay at CHS after the Fall Formal, something most would think a moment of weakness on her aunt's part, was really a show of great strength; Celestia had been strong enough to overcome her fear and doubt, when she had every reason to simply listen to them, for the sake of an enemy. Nobody would've protested if she'd had Sunset expelled, nobody would have stopped her from forcing her back through the portal, and, as experience would show, plenty of people would blame her for keeping Sunset at CHS. Despite all that, Celestia kept Sunset enrolled, because she thought it was the right thing to do.
Of course, her aunt wasn't perfect; she restrained herself even when it would be better for her to be open, she had a habit of not talking to people even when she needed to, and she could be, as Aunt Luna put it, "a bit of a doormat." But when push came to shove, if it came to a choice between right and wrong, her aunt would never compromise, never back down, even if it meant her death.
She shivered, then murmured a quick prayer, hoping Starlight wouldn't prove that right.
"You're praying to the wrong thing."
Cadance blinked, then turned to the speaker, one of the center's residents. He sat cross-legged on a pillow, hands resting on his knees, a black robe hanging limply off his body. Two others, dressed similarly, sat beside him, their eyes closed in contemplation.
"I'm sorry," Cadance frowned, "I don't think I heard you right. Would you mind repeating that?"
"You're praying to the wrong thing," the man replied, his tone breezy and full of sincerity.
"I was not aware there was a wrong thing to pray to," Cadance replied carefully. "Last I heard, Homestria allowed religious freedom. Have you heard otherwise, sir?"
"Oh, no," the man shook his head. "I didn't mean you weren't allowed to pray to your god, I simply meant it wasn't a good idea to. After all, it can't help you."
Cadance raised a brow at the speaker's audacity. "I'm not so sure, sir," she answered. "My faith has often been a comfort to me, especially in difficult times like this."
"Your faith has helped you," the man admitted, "but not your god. While your faith helps you to endure what Fate decrees, your god can do nothing, for none can alter Fate but Fate itself, or its weavers. It is them you should pray to, not your fate-bound god; the Estoili are not immovable, and they listen to us keenly. The fabric of Fate cannot be unwoven, but what has not yet been woven may be prevented, the pattern of Fate rewritten. And, even if they don't heed us, we can take comfort in knowing that what we suffer is part of Fate's grand design."
Cadance frowned again. Estoili, the Stars of Fate, the guiding lights of the Starwatchers, a faith whose last known act had been to feebly claim being slighted when Princess Majesty and Clover the Clever's wedding was officiated by a Harmonious priest instead of the Reader of the Stars. Their ideas of Fate and its link to the stars had left their mark on Homestria (and look where that led poor Sunset), but after they lost their last official patron, that legacy seemed to be the only thing that survived.
"Seemed", she thought with a look at the ruddy, fresh, honest face before her, can be very misleading. "Have you seen them do so?" she asked, softening her voice to make it clear she was asking a genuine question. "Or do you know anyone who has?"
"All of us are witnesses to the power of Fate," he replied, his voice grave. "The Curse of Castor, long delayed, is being fulfilled before our very eyes. Starlight Glimmer has brought death to the very steps of our palaces, and now Captain Armor has emptied the city; soon, a rival shall crown themselves, and all that the usurper Solaris and his descendants built shall crumble into sand. The Stars have written, and time has not effaced it:
Death shall haunt your stolen spires
and your streets shall become silent and empty.
A rival shall crown themselves against you,
and you will be dispossessed as you now dispossess me;
your works shall not endure
and your city shall become a desolation."
"That is why we are praying, miss," one of the speaker's companions chimed. "Two signs have already come to pass; we cannot allow any more to. Castellot is my home, and I wish for no harm to come to it, so I have been praying to the Estoili to let the second sign be the last fulfilled. Three days we have been imploring them to change the weave of Fate, and we'll keep-" Abruptly, she gasped, then covered her mouth.
Cadance looked at her in confusion, wondering what had so frightened her. "What's wrong?"
"The Estoili have rightly ordered our lives, providing us with laws to govern ourselves," the first speaker answered, his companion keeping her mouth covered. "Some of those laws are universal, lexi, while others are only for those to whom they have been given, tabu. One of my companion's tabu is not to speak contractions; now that she has broken it, she must do penance before speaking again."
Whips and fire flashed through Cadance's mind. "What sort of penance?" she asked, voice trembling.
"Nothing dangerous," the last of the three replied in a soothing voice. "Fate desires us to return to our path, not to cast ourselves into the void."
That still leaves you plenty of space to hurt yourselves. Before she could say so, however, the first speaker nodded, and said, "And now we must return to our paths. While it was pleasant to speak with you, miss, we have spent too long away from our mission. Fare well, miss; may the Stars of Fate favor you, and guide you to the truth." Then, closing his eyes, he returned to his prayers, his two companions quickly following.
With a shaky goodbye of her own, Cadance left the Starwatchers, distress roiling her stomach. She considered turning around and trying to talk with them some more, telling them how her uncle and Sunset believed in fate and what ends that belief had brought them to. She wanted to ask them how they knew they were hearing the words of the Estoili and not their own inner voices, or whether the rules imposed on them had any justification other than "because authority said so," or how Castellot could be considered empty with the reserve Shiny had left behind. She-
-she did a double take as she saw one of Twilight's friends, walking through the hall with a visitor's pass around her neck.
"Pinkie Pie?" Cadance blinked in confusion.
The sound of her name caused the girl to start and turn towards Cadance. She smiled at the sight, though there was a faint hint of jealousy as she did so; according to Rarity, she had a bit of a crush on Shining Armor, and thus an understandable resentment towards the woman who'd "beaten her to him." As Pinkie walked towards her, she idly wondered what attracted her to Shiny; according to Twilight's reports, and personal experience (she still didn't know how she'd gotten through that door), the girl was an extroverted dynamo, though she did share some of Shiny's thoughtfulness and sensitivity. Not that they wouldn't be happy together, she could see them getting along well, but she was having trouble seeing why they would try in the first place.
She bit her lip in thought. Her magic did appear similar to Sunset's. Perhaps she could..?
She shook her head; more than magic, her session with Sunset had taught her about the importance of trust, and trying to use her magic to pry secrets out of someone she hoped to be a friend would be nothing more than betrayal. If she wanted to know, she could ask.
"Hi, Headmistress Cadance," the girl greeted her from a little over arm's-length away. "How's the day going?"
"Hello, Pinkie Pie," she smiled back. "The day's going fine. And, please, just call me Cadance. You're not my student, and even if you were, my friends call me Cadance, and outside of school I'd rather be your friend than your headmistress."
"Sorry, Cadance," Pinkie abashedly grinned.
She dismissed it with a wave of her hand. "Nothing to apologize for, you didn't know. If I may ask, what brings you here? Visiting someone?"
"Hm?" Confusion wrote itself on Pinkie's face until she looked down at the pass on her chest. "Oh, that! Sorta, sorta not? I am visiting here, yeah, but not specifically to see anyone specific. I volunteer here, so I visit some of our residents, talk with them, make sure they have everything they need, things like that. There are a few friends I try extra-hard to catch, but I don't only visit them, so sorta visiting someone, sorta not."
"I understand," Cadance nodded. "I'm glad to hear that you're helping here, I know Doctor Hope can sometimes have trouble finding staff. What first drew you to this kind of work?"
A pang of fear, shame, and... guilt? "I," Pinkie answered quiveringly. "I know what it's like, feeling like you're different, like you're wrong. Having to go through that alone..." Her gaze turned into steel. "I can't let that happen to anyone. I won't let that happen to anyone. Nobody deserves to think they're alone in the world. Nobody."
Cadance took a step back in surprise. "Is being alone so horrible?" she asked. "You were alone just now."
Pinkie Pie shook her head, with vigor that made Cadance's spin. "I wasn't alone, I was on my own. If you're on your own, you still have the chance to find some friends if you don't want to be on your own anymore. It's like..." She tapped her chin in thought, before continuing, "It's like you're a spork and you get taken out of the spork drawer so that someone can use you to eat rock soup; you're on your own, but you know that there are others like you somewhere else if you don't want to be on your own. Being alone, though, it's like being a knife in the spork drawer; you're on your own, but there's nobody anywhere else who you can go to if you don't want to be on your own anymore. You're alone, and you can never not be. That's why I volunteer here, to be a knife for those knives in the spork drawer, to be a friend for those who don't have anyone else. If I don't..." She paused, then asked, "Do you know the patient in Room 4?"
Cadance's heart stopped. "Yes," she quietly replied. "He's my uncle."
Pinkie blinked in confusion. "Your uncle's Sombra?"
Cadance's spine bristled. "No," she replied, trying to keep her voice level, "Somber Heart is my uncle. Sombra is nothing more than an insulting title the newspapers saddled him with after the trial."
"No no no, I didn't mean that in a bad way!" Pinkie flailed her gloved hands in apology. "It's just that I've never heard anyone say anything about him having family!"
Cadance deflated, all the fury inside her turning to shame as Pinkie clarified herself. "He doesn't," she sighed. "We don't share blood, at least as far as I know, despite any rumors to the contrary." Mother would never break her vows like that, nor would uncle have any interest in tempting her to do so. "He was a good friend of my family, especially after my father died. Young me tried to figure out what to call him, and since he didn't seem interested in taking father's place, I called him 'Uncle Somber,' and the nickname just... stuck. Or, at least... I tried to make it stick. It... reminds me of better times, before... everything."
Pinkie perked up at that. "What were those better times like?" she asked, her voice curious and strangely excited. "How do you want your uncle to be remembered?"
"Remember that, Cadenza."
She sighed as she took off her fencer's mask, the back of her neck slick with sweat. She'd managed to get a hit in this time, at least, and had almost scored a second before he'd revealed the day's twist.
"You overextended," her uncle rumbled. "Even if I hadn't grabbed your sword, I still would have been able to finish the job. Only overextend if it's to grasp victory, otherwise you simply leave yourself vulnerable. Yes, you might be able to carve yourself a landing point, but you'll give your enemy a whole column to attack in return. Remember that, Cadenza."
"Yes, uncle," she nodded, before, at his raised brow, correcting herself to, "Yes, sir."
He gave her a curt nod in return, then asked, "What did you think of the dinner last night?"
She hesitated. "The salad dressing could have been-"
"Admirable escape attempt, detestable cowardice," he cut her off. "You know what I'm asking about."
"Yes, sir," she swallowed. "I-I believe that Mr. dis Lee had some good points, sir. Students can't do their best if they aren't feeling their best."
"Is it our duty to help them feel their best?" her uncle retorted. "Crystal Preparatory Academy is an educational institution, not a nursery."
She thought for a moment, then said, "You've always told me that being given a job means seeing it through from beginning to end. Providing stability is the beginning of educating someone, and the kind of counselors Mr. dis Lee was talking about would help provide that stability. Yes, sir, I believe it is our duty."
"Mrs. Cinch would disagree with you," came the counterargument. "According to her, the beginning of education is only initial instruction. Stability and discipline are the responsibility of the parents, not the school."
"Just like leading the school's the responsibility of the headmaster, not the dean?" she blurted out, before gasping and covering her mouth as she realized the raw nerve she'd just touched on.
Her uncle's face, as expected, darkened, casting him in shadow. "That is irrelevant," he growled.
"Yes, sir," she frantically nodded. "Sorry, sir."
He frowned, a strange mixture of disappointment and, deep beneath it, worry replacing the rage in his countenance. "Giving up so easily?" he asked, his voice almost a scoff. "I thought you were taught better than that, Cadenza."
"It was clearly upsetting you, sir," she tried to justify herself. "I-I thought pressing on would only make you like the idea less."
"Hm," he hummed, still almost a growl. "Not as cowardly as I feared. Overcautious, perhaps, but not cowardly. Press on, Cadenza; you will know if I truly become upset."
She gulped, then hesitantly explained, "P-Providing stability might primarily be the responsibility of the parents, but-but if they fail to fulfill it, it-it becomes our's." She swallowed again, closed her eyes, then pressed on. "Crystal Preparatory aims to produce leaders, and one way it tries to do so is by modeling proper behavior to its students. When a subordinate fails to fulfill their responsibilities, a true leader either takes those responsibilities on or sees that others do so. If, if a student is feeling so unstable that it affects their studies, then we either have to let the parents know so that they can provide the stability they need or provide that stability ourselves, possibly through Mr. dis Lee's proposed counselors. We-we might not have to provide students stability, but we should." She bowed her head, licking her lips nervously.
After a few eternal moments of silent thought, her uncle passed judgement. "Well said, and well thought out."
"Thank you, sir," she sighed in relief.
"Believe it or not, I agree with you and Angon," he continued. "Crystal Preparatory Academy has a duty to provide its students with the best education they can get, so if offering counseling helps provide that, it is our duty to do so, whatever the likes of Cinch may think."
"Oh?" she blinked. "If you were already planning to accept his proposal, why'd you ask me what I thought?"
"To force you to think," he scowled. "Your mother, may she rest in peace, saw greatness in you, as all mothers are want to do, but unlike 'all mothers,' she understood that greatness isn't simply innate. She saw that you were a diamond in the rough, that any greatness in you would only come out through discipline and hard work. That's why you were forced to sit through our work dinners, why your allowance always seemed so meager, why nothing has been served to you on a silver platter; the skills you've learned to overcome the challenges you've faced have been as much the reward as what those challenges guarded. You have become as strong as you have because of your challenges, not despite them. Celestia says I'm pushing you too hard, testing you like this so soon after the death of your mother. Well, if I am, so be it; to ease up would be to let your mother's project die with her, and I refuse to let that happen." He sighed, then gently cupped her cheek and whispered, "Listen. Your mother was more than a mentor to me, she was an inspiration, a model, a friend. When she took a chance on me, she changed my life, a debt I can never fully repay. When she passed, I swore that I would be there for you as she was for me, not just as a comforting presence but as a mentor, a teacher. Whenever she spoke about you, she was always so, so proud. I refuse to let her be proven wrong to have done so. Understand?"
"Yes, uncle," she whispered back, almost tearing up at the emotion in his speech. When she felt his hand tense, she hastily corrected herself to, "Yes, sir."
He stared at her for a few seconds, something indescribable in his gaze. Then he lifted his hand away, almost reluctantly, and said, "Your mother saw greatness in you, Cadenza. Prove that she was right."
"He cared," Cadance replied, blinking away the tears the memory had brought to her eyes. "He didn't show it, at least not the way most people did, but he cared. He wasn't heartless, whatever the media," Cinch, "says; it took a lot of time and effort for him to let people into it, but he did have a heart, one that was just as capable of love as your's or mine. He could be tough on people, even those he loved, but it was because he wanted them to be the best they could. Most of the time, if he lost his temper, he wasn't really mad at whoever he lost it with, he was mad that they turned out not to be what he wanted them to be, the best version of themselves. He could've showed it better, but, in his own way, he cared." She swallowed a lump in her throat as she remembered seeing him during her mother's final months, sitting at her bedside and quietly talking with her until duty drew him away. "He cared a lot."
"But did he care about everyone?" Pinkie asked, an odd intensity in her voice. "Did he try to help everyone he met?"
"I'd," Cadance defensively replied, not liking the implications of the girl's questions, "like to think so, yes."
Pinkie smiled, a wave of excitement coming off of her. "You had to think," she animatedly replied. "That means you thought about if he didn't, which means that he acted like he didn't, which means that he thought he was a knife-"
"Hold on," Cadance raised her hands. "He might have helped some people more, but Somber-" She blinked in confusion as she realized the last thing Pinkie had said. "Er, come again?"
"Your uncle cared about people like him," Pinkie breathlessly answered. "But as time went on, he thought that more and more people weren't like him, until in the end he thought he was a knife in a world of sporks. That's why it's so important for people to have friends; caring about spork problems when you're a knife is hard, and if you're the only knife left, it'd be real easy to just curl up into yourself and act like you don't care anymore. Caring when nobody cares back hurts, and it's just as hard for sporks to understand knife problems as it is for the knife to understand spork problems, so people do the easy thing and just act like they've stopped caring. But the thing is, it is just an act; they still care, which means that they still hurt, which means that they do whatever they think will make the hurting stop." She paused for a moment, a tinge of fear crossing her face, before she finished with, "Your uncle showed us what that can look like."
Cadance let Pinkie's words wash over her, then closed her eyes and parsed them. "You think uncle's loneliness drove him to do what he did?" she asked after a few moments' thought.
Pinkie's cheeks puffed out in annoyance. "If working here has taught me one thing," she replied, "it's that nothing's ever caused by just one thing. Your uncle being alone might have played a big part in what he did, but it wasn't the only part."
"But do you think it was the deciding factor?"
Pinkie shrugged. "I don't know. Personally, I'd say it more decided what he wouldn't do, stopping him from taking some of the exits instead of pushing him down a specific path. But it could've been the before-last push he needed to... do what he did."
"'Before-last?'" Cadance raised a brow. "And what would be the last one?"
"Deciding to do it," Pinkie simply replied.
"You think it was my uncle that decided, not his paranoia?" Cadance asked, intrigued.
"His paranoia advised him," Pinkie answered. "It might have been an important advisor and it might have worked against him like a stereotypical Evil Vizier, but it was only an advisor. But," she put a finger to her lips, "I'm not sure that's the best way to put it. Paranoia, mental things, psychology, it gets really, really complicated, even if you're only in the shallow end like me. It's more like your uncle's paranoia was a pair of glasses that made him see the world as dark and scary, but he knew that they did, so he was able to ask himself if things actually were the way he thought they were. But on the other hand, having to constantly ask yourself if you're just seeing things gets really, really old, and if you're scared that things will go really badly if you ever treat something that's really dark and scary like it was just the glasses that made it look like that..." She wagged her head, then said, "The point is, your uncle might've made the choice he did because he listened to his paranoia, but it was him that made that choice."
Cadance frowned at the pain that had leaked from the girl before her, dissipating like mist after she shook her head. What happened to you, Pinkie Pie? She kept her question internal, however, physically saying, "Ms. Hope told me something similar a while ago, shortly after-after my uncle was first admitted. She said that we give mental illness both too much credit and too little; too much because all it does is influence our thinking, emotions, and behaviors-"
"-and too little because that's 'all' it does," Pinkie finished with a giggle. "She told me that, too, after I signed up. It," she bit her lip, shame wafting off of her, "it helped if I thought about it like the old Sunset, mental illness telling you little lies about the world to try to get you to do something. Only, sometimes, it's not little lies, it's big ones, and it can be hard to tell they're lies. One patient, they came here because they thought they could only understand animals; whenever they spoke, they barked like a dog, and they seemed to understand what the staff said like we understand dog barks. Their brain was lying to them and they had no way to tell; they couldn't understand anyone who tried to help them see that." She shivered. "Everyone talks about mental illness that intense being useful because it means nobody can blame you for what you did; after all, you weren't really trying to break that vase, your brain just made you think you were swinging at a baseball, or your brain thought it was a shadow-ninja and took over your body to protect you. They think half the people who have it are faking it, trying to use it as a get-out-of-jail-free card. It's not free, though; not being able to trust your senses, not being able to control yourself, that's really expensive. It's so expensive that it makes me hate calling people that mentally ill mad even more; if you can't tell whether you're in a sunny field or a rainy city, or if someone's secretly a monster or you just saw something, if you can't stop your body from doing what you don't want it to, maybe acting irrationally's the sane thing to do."
A thoughtful silence fell after that, Cadance peering intently at the girl before her. You've put a lot of thought into this, Pinkie Pie, she mused, much more than one would expect a high schooler to. Why? What makes this so important to you? A flinch from the girl before her revealed that her question hadn't been kept wholly internal. She winced in sympathy, but pressed on, saying, "I understand if you don't want to talk about it, and if you ask me to leave it be I'll respect your decision, but I'm here for you if you want a listening ear."
Pinkie bit her lip, looking around somewhat nervously, before sighing, "Has Twilight told you about the Pinkie Sense?"
Cadance tried to hide her giggle. "And the saga of her study of it, yes."
Pinkie gave a short giggle alongside her, but her laughter quickly faded away, replaced with a melancholy shame. "Yeah, she studied some of it," she replied, "but not everything. I showed her the twitches, the ear-flops, the nose-tickles, but I tried to hide the doozies from her."
"'The doozies?'" Cadance raised a brow. "What's a doozy?"
Pinkie fell silent, simply staring at Cadance. After a few seconds, she tilted her head, a thoughtful expression crossing her face. At the same time, Cadance felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up; it felt like Pinkie was judging her, peering into her soul and sifting through it. She almost felt like she was a teenager again, nervously standing in front of her uncle's desk while he passed judgement on her grades.
Just before she could break the silence, and the discomforting stare, Pinkie spoke, murmuring, "You dueled the Queen, fighting for your champion. She wanted him as her knight, you wanted him as your beloved. You won because you fought for love, while the Queen fought out of hunger."
Cadance's heart stopped. Chrysalis' request for Shiny to be exchanged with Pharynx was kept almost completely confidential. As far as she knew, outside of Castellot and The Hive, only she, Shiny, and Celestia even knew that the offer had ever been made. How did she..?
"Know?" Pinkie finished for her, causing Cadance's jaw to drop. "One of the doozies I got from you told me."
"Doozies are secrets?" Cadance whispered in mixed shock and fear.
"No," Pinkie shook her head, reassurance wafting from her as she did so. "Doozies are warnings, letting me know something important's gonna happen. It's kinda weird, though," she brushed back her hair a bit. "You're one of the first people I got a doozy about the past from. Most of the time, they're heads-ups about stuff that's gonna happen, not stuff that already has."
"And what's going to happen involving me?" Cadance asked, voice hushed with awe. "What did your doozies warn you about?"
Pinkie's face fell. "I don't know," she whispered. Then, before Cadance could attempt to offer comfort, she continued, "That's why I tried to hide the doozies from Twily, 'cause I know she wouldn't be willing to accept "I don't know" as the answer. But it's the only answer I can give. Doozies are never straightforward; they're like panels from comics, but I don't know what comic they're from, or where they are in the book. That makes it sound like I'm just faking the doozies, but I'm not, so I hide them, make it so that everybody thinks the Pinkie Sense is just twitches and itches and not me trying to make sense out of random pictures and sounds that make me wonder if I was just seeing or hearing things, except it's never just a hallucination so I have to try to figure out what the doozy's warning me about then figure out how to warn people about it without sounding like I'm hallucinating, and that's a lot harder than you'd expect. So then I wonder whether I have to warn people or if I can just keep the doozy private, but then I tell myself that I get the doozies for a reason so I should tell people about them and I feel guilty for thinking about not telling them, but then I think about how hard it'll be to get people to believe me and how easy it'd be for them to laugh at me or try to send me here and I get scared and ask myself if I really, really need to tell people about them, and by the time I manage to tell someone the thing the doozy warned me about's already happened." She took a breath, probably intending it to be deep but in actuality barely filling her cheeks. "Then I start wondering if that means that getting a doozy means I can't do anything about it, but then I wonder whether it's that or just me constantly failing to bring the doozies up, then I wonder whether I don't bring up the doozies because the doozies make sure I can't bring them up to prevent a paradox, then it becomes a question of if it's my fault I fail or the doozy's fault, then-then-then-"
Cadance embraced the poor girl, gently rubbing circles in her back as she held her weeping face to her shoulder. "Breathe," she whispered calmingly. "Just breathe, Pinkie Pie. In-two-three, hold-two-three, out-two-three-four, hold-two-three-four. In-two-three..."
Eventually, Pinkie calmed down, her hyperventilated crying fading to the occasional sniffle. She peeled her face off of Cadance's shoulder and wiped her eyes, rasping, "Sorry about that."
"Nothing to apologize for," Cadance reassured her. "The only discomfort your tears posed to me was as reminders that you weren't feeling well."
Pinkie gave a thick giggle at that. "Twily's right, you do have a big heart." A hint of envy entered her voice before being quickly banished, but not before it infected "I can really see why Shiny loves you."
Cadance gave her a wan smile in reply. Hard as it was to have a romantic rival, admitting defeat, even indirectly, like Pinkie had was much harder. I would apologize for stealing Shiny's heart, but both of us know that I wouldn't really mean it, she mused. All I can do is try to be worthy of him. "And I," she replied, "can see why he speaks so fondly of you."
The soft smile Pinkie sent her in response was more meaningful than an ear-to-ear grin. "I'm sorry if I ever make him speak grumpily about me," she said. "I know that sometimes my Pinkie-ness can be a bit... much."
"Most of the time," Cadance reassured her, "he's more puzzled than grumpy. Speaking of which, I've been meaning to ask you; how did you manage to get into the Palace when Sunset was brought on?"
Pinkie nervously twirled a lock of hair. "See, this is another thing I tried not to tell Twily about, because she doesn't like getting "I don't know" as an answer. I mean, I know how I got into the Palace in the sense of "I know what path I took," but I don't know how I got in in the sense of "I know whether I walked, ran, or climbed the path I took." I mean, if you need to go somewhere, you don't care if you walk, bike, drive, or fly, do you? You just go there. That's what I did; I was sitting at Canterlot High, my Pinkie Sense told me somebody was making a Pinkie Promise, I needed to go there to serve as a witness, and I just went there."
Cadance simply stared at her. You "just" traveled several kilometers in the blink of an eye, bypassed dozens of well-trained Guards, and avoided being seen by a room full of people, before returning to Canterlot High the same way? Just how extraordinary are you, Pinkie Pie?
Pinkie groaned in frustration, before snapping her fingers and smiling. "It's like those quantum mechanics guys Twily talks about sometimes," she said, "how they make things happen but they don't like people watching them work. My gifts get where I'm needed, but they don't like me watching them take me there, or," she flinched in fear, and shame, "telling them where I want to go."
Cadance blinked. "You mean you don't have control over it?" she asked shakily.
Pinkie nervously shook her head from side to side. "Well," she drawled, "I can not go where my gifts want me to. It's-it's like they're a taxi, but-but someone else sent them to pick me up. When my gifts think I'm needed somewhere, they drive up, honk their horn, roll down their window, then say 'Hey, we've got a Pinkie Promise being made in the capitol.' Most of the time, I go, 'Ooh, this is my ride!', jump in, make sure whoever's making the promise knows that breaking a Pinkie Promise is the fastest way to lose a friend FOREVER - ever - ever -"
(Cadance winced at the volume, though she had to admire the effort the girl put into mimicking the echo.)
"- then jump back in the gift-taxi and get back home. I can tell the gift-taxi drivers, 'Oh, sorry, I already have an appointment' and they'll just go away, so I don't have to go where my gift wants me, but I can't hail a gift-taxi, tell them 'Castellot, stat!' and have them drive me there, even if it would be really useful for me to be able to."
Cadance's eyebrow rose at the venom in her last words. "Do you," she hesitantly asked, "resent your gifts?"
Pinkie flinched. "'Resent' is a bit of a harsh word," she nervously laughed, "I mean, do you resent your foot when you bang it against the wall? Sure, sometimes it might be annoying, but most of the time it's really useful! I mean think about it, where would we be without our feet? How would we stand? How would we play 'This Little Pinkie Went to Market?' What would happen to all the shoemakers? And what about all the industries that supply the shoemakers? The economy would fall into-"
"Admirable escape attempt," Cadance cut her off, making her voice as firm as her uncle's, "but I know what stalling sounds like. If this is a sensitive topic, Pinkie, I'll be glad to drop it, but only if you tell me so directly. Do you resent your gifts?"
Pinkie flinched, rallied, then wilted. "Not," she hesitantly replied, "not in the sense of 'I wish I didn't have them-'" Another flinch, then a correction to, "- at least, not all the time. Sometimes, when I get a doozy that won't leave me alone but doesn't tell me what's going to happen, I wish I could turn them off, but most of the time I like having my gifts. They-they're really helpful for small stuff, like storing props," she pulled a rubber chicken out of her hair, "showing up where my people need me," came from over Cadance's shoulder, before "and remembering what everyone's favorite cupcake flavor is" accompanied the girl bouncing back in front of her. "All of that's really, really handy, and I'm glad Providence gave it to me. It's just..."
A surge of emotion washed over Cadance: anxiety, shame, anger.
... envy?
"Starlight's a big threat, right, Cadance?" dragged her out of her confusion, Pinkie Pie turning around to hide her face. "I mean, she has to be if the Princess decided to send Shiny after her, right?"
"Yes," Cadance smiled reassuringly, though the girl couldn't see her. "Don't worry, though, Shiny is more than a match for her."
"So you trust him to save the realm?" Pinkie asked as she turned back around to look at her.
Frowning, Cadance nodded.
"Would you trust Sunset to?" Pinkie asked.
Cadance hesitated for a moment, a moment which saw her return to the office where Sunset had confronted her. If Shiny weren't available, would I support her taking his place? Eventually, after weighing the firebrand in the office against the shining knight Twilight had described, she nodded.
"What about Twilight?" Pinkie pressed. "Would you trust her to catch the realm if it started falling?"
Cadance swallowed. "Alone," she whispered, playing for time, "or-"
"Not completely alone, no," Pinkie shook her head as she stepped forward. "Just in Shiny's position, the person with whom the last buck stops. She'd still have her friends, advisors, and henchmen, but she'd be the one responsible for making decisions. Would you trust her then?"
"Yes," Cadance nodded. "Yes, I would."
Pinkie softly smiled at her, took another step forward, then asked, "Would you trust me?"
Cadance froze.
"Would you trust me to save the realm like you'd trust Shiny, Sunny, and Twily?" Pinkie continued advancing. "Would you trust me to sit in the commander's seat and not get distracted seeing how fast I can get it to spin? Would you trust these hands," she waved her gloved palms, "to catch the realm if it fell?" She paused, then whispered, "If it was a choice between me and Starlight, would you feel like you were choosing between gold and straw or between a rock and a hard place?"
"You are nowhere near as bad as Starlight," Cadance frowned. "The closest comparison to her I can think of is Cinch. Pinkie Pie, you're a wonderful girl, and if anyone tries to say you're not, they're wrong."
Pinkie wanly smiled back at her. "Thank you," she replied. "That's... that's really nice to hear. But... it's not an answer. Yes, I might be better than Starlight, but still, would you trust me with the fate of the realm?"
Cadance's frown deepened. She's expecting me to say no. Why?
"They-they're really helpful for small stuff..."
"It's just..."
... envy.
She bit back a gasp as contempt bit into her like acid. The girl before her blurred, her hair falling straight as her mouth fell into a snarl, blue rage superimposing itself over her eyes like illusory fire.
But none of that rage was focused outward; all of it was turned on Pinkie Pie. Cadance could almost hear her shadow screaming, "What's the point of having gifts like this if we can't use them to stop threats like Starlight?!"
She shook her head, dismissing the baleful illusion, and blurted out, "Yes."
Pinkie blinked in confusion. "What?"
"Yes," Cadance confirmed, "I would trust you with the realm."
Pinkie simply stared at her, wide-eyed, for several moments. "Why?" eventually escaped her lips.
"Because you came here," Cadance replied, though she knew that alone wasn't enough of an answer. "Because you've studied psychology, because you talked with me about my uncle. I would trust you with the realm because you care."
"Who doesn't care about their home?" Pinkie tried to dismiss her.
"Most of the residents here probably have neighbors that care about them," Cadance retorted, "but do those neighbors care enough to study psychology so they can better understand what the residents are going through, or to come out here and visit the residents? And even if they did, does that make doing so not as good? The point of caring isn't whether it's rare or common, it's that caring is good in and of itself."
"Even caring about people like Starlight?" Pinkie whispered.
Cadance stumbled. Twilight crying her eyes out, Sunset breaking, Shiny being forced to pursue... "Sometimes," she stammered, "sometimes caring means trying to stop someone from doing something that hurts them, even if it only hurts them indirectly."
Pinkie stepped forward, pressing her advantage. "What about people like Cinch?"
Tears dotted the edges of Cadance's eyes, though strangely they looked almost purple in the light. The sight confused her enough to stop the roar of rage from escaping her throat, giving her enough space to compose herself and consider her response. "Caring," she carefully answered, "doesn't mean unconditionally accepting. Sometimes, even if we care about someone, we need to punish them for their past behavior so that they learn not to do it again."
"But when," Pinkie pressed, "do we know they've learned? When's their reformation party?"
Cadance clenched her fist at the unasked question; when would you be willing to forgive Cinch? She knew her knee-jerk answer of "Never" was wrong, and "When they prove they've learned their lesson" felt cheap, more circular reasoning than true answer. After a moment of thought, she realized what it would take for Cinch to prove that she'd changed enough for Cadance to forgive her: genuinely apologizing for her actions at the Friendship Games.
"When they do something they would never have done before they learned," was the translation she offered.
"But how do you know whether they really wouldn't have done something?" Pinkie asked, clearly trying to stall. "How do you know it isn't just something you didn't know they would've done?"
"How do you know that the sky won't fall tomorrow?" Cadance countered. "There's always going to be doubt when making a decision, no matter how much research you do. You can chase certainty, but you'll never catch it; the best you can do is follow it far enough to be fairly sure about what's the right choice. You can't just doubt forever; if you want to make a decision, you need to accept uncertainty at some point. How uncertain is up to you, but being uncertain at all isn't. As Twilight would say, "You might be comfortable with 99% confidence or 90% confidence, but you'll never reach 100% confidence.'" Kneeling down, she put a consoling hand on the sniffling Pinkie's shoulders. "That's actually why I'd be willing to trust you with the realm. Yes, you might not know much about statecraft, but you care about Homestria, and Twilight's reports on you tell me that you're willing to move Heaven and Homis for those you care about. I would trust you with the realm because I know you would try, and I know you would try because you care." Tenderly, she grabbed Pinkie's hands and clasped them with her's, then smiled, "And I'm 99.9999% confident that, even if you didn't succeed, you would put up a good fight."
Pinkie stared back at her, mouth gaping, eyes shining. Then, before Cadance could blink, the girl's arms were wrapped around her in a tight embrace, love and gratitude trying to express themselves physically when words failed.
Once more, Cadance replied in kind.
After a few moments, Pinkie's words returned, in the form of a whisper. "Thank you. That... that meant a lot to me."
"Don't worry about it," Cadance smiled. "You're worth it."
Pinkie gave her another squeeze of thanks, then released her and backed away. "Sorry for being so sobby," she sheepishly rubbed the back of her neck. "I guess I bottled up a lot more than I thought I did."
"I understand," Cadance reassured her as she stood back up, brushing off her skirt. "Feels like I bottled up more of my anger than I thought, myself."
Pinkie flicked a quick glance at her forehead, then slumped in relief when she saw nothing there. Before Cadance could ask her why she'd done so, Pinkie asked, "Do you wanna talk about it? You just let me pour out my bottle on you, it's only fair you get the chance to pour your's out, too."
Cadance hesitated, then sighed, "You mentioning Starlight and Cinch reminded me of how they've threatened my family, and when I think about that, it gets difficult to see anything other than red. I try to be the big-hearted woman Twilight described me as, but if someone threatens my family it feels like that heart turns to stone. It's just so frustrating; I know that I should be better than this, I want to be better than this, but part of me still wants to run an epee through Cinch's shriveled, black heart."
Pinkie cocked her head at that. "Not Starlight's?"
Cadance took a deep breath. "I know it's petty, but Cinch has earned more of my hate than Starlight. She helped drive my uncle into the abyss, then turned the school he'd worked so hard for into a cesspool of corruption, and you know what she did to Twilight at the Friendship Games. But," she swallowed heavily, "if I'm being honest, the main reason I hate her is because she misled me. While I was Dean, Crystal Prep didn't experience corruption; as Cinch told me, it was simply realpolitik, or a misunderstanding, or a few bad apples. Despite every cell in my body telling me otherwise, I believed her, and tried to tell myself that the rot I smelled was simply too much sweetness."
She clenched her fist again, nails biting her palm. "Then came the Friendship Games, where Cinch almost made me an accessory to the murder of one I love like a sister. The deal I'd struck with the devil was almost repaid, and it's only thanks to Sunset that it came undone. The Games showed me what I'd been blind to for too long, what I'd been allowing to happen under my nose, and I wept for shame. But there's a difference between letting something happen and making it happen, a difference that, the more I thought about it, the more my tears turned from ones of shame to ones of anger. Yes, I'd accepted Crystal Prep's corruption, but that corruption was only there in the first place due to Cinch. I was victimized by her schemes just like Twilight had been, another fly caught in her web, though one that accepted the spider's invitation there instead of flying into it by accident. She'd been playing me like a puppet, dirtying my hands instead of hers alone. And when I realized what that meant about the Friendship Games, how she'd tried to make me an accomplice to my sister's murder..." Blood welled up where her nails cut into her hand. Swallowing heavily, she whispered, "I'm glad that Indigo's father was able to convince her to retire. If he hadn't, I don't know what I'd have done."
Pinkie clasped her bleeding hand in consolation. "Nothing bad," she quietly reassured her, "You're too good for that."
Cadance gave a dismissive snort. "An old spiritual director of mine, Pater Tregua, told me something about that once," she replied. "'Goodness and badness aren't determined by our identities, but by our choices.' I'm not a good person, I'm a person who tries to do the right thing, and with Cinch and Starlight my motivation to try is much weaker."
"But you don't like that," Pinkie countered. "You want to try, even with them, and if you can trust me to try to save the realm, I can trust you to try to do the right thing when it's for people you don't like."
"Pinkie," Cadance sighed, "it's not that simple. You doubted your abilities, I doubt my-"
"-ability to motivate yourself?" Pinkie cut her off with a smirk.
"You doubted whether your abilities would let you do anything even if you tried," Cadance shot back, "I doubt whether I'd be willing to try at all."
"And, again," Pinkie breezily answered, "I know you don't like those doubts, so you'll try specifically to prove them wrong. You've got little Angel Cady on your shoulder, and you really don't wanna disappoint her, and you know that not trying to do the right thing would make her give you the "I'm not angry, just disappointed" speech until you break down crying, admit that you goofed, then try to un-goof it. I can trust you to try to do the right thing, either because you told yourself to or because Angel Cady stared at you until you did."
"And what's stopping me from simply gagging "Angel Cady," as you put it?" Cadance raised a brow.
Pinkie's reply was simple; "You are."
Cadance had to give a short bark of laughter at that. "You'd trust the person being watched with the care of their watchdog? When is that ever a good idea?"
"When the person being watched knows the watchdog's right," Pinkie quietly replied. "You could gag Angel Cady, yeah, or do a switcheroo and lock her in your cell, but you'd always feel her watching you, looking at you in disappointment. You could try to block her out, try to ignore her, but I don't think someone who's spent as much time with their shoulder angel as you would be able to shut her out completely, because, in your heart of hearts, you'd know that she was right."
Cadance simply stared back at her, stricken silent, before eventually loosing a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Pinkie. That's... comforting to know."
"The truth is comforting," Pinkie smiled, before frowning, "I do think that Pater Tregua guy you mentioned said something comforting, too, though; I trust you because you try to do the right thing, not because you've tried to in the past."
"I know," Cadance nodded in understanding. "Uncle never let me rest on my laurels, either." Another thing to thank him for.
Pinkie nodded sagely, then shivered. "If my doozy's right," she murmured, "you might have to pick up that epee you mentioned."
Cadance's blood ran cold. "What do you mean?"
Pinkie bit her lip. "I don't want to say," she whimpered. "If I don't say it, maybe it won't happen."
Cady's hand gently brushed Pinkie's cheek. "I understand that you're afraid," she soothed, "and the way you're trying to keep us safe, even if it makes you uncomfortable, is moving. But my uncle taught me -" (By counter-example) "- a better way to fight prophecies like this."
"Really?" Pinkie sniffled, wiping her eyes. "What is it?"
"Listen to them," Cady replied, her thumb wiping away a stray tear, "then do everything you can to write yourself a better future."
Pinkie's confidence collapsed. "But what if that makes the prophecy happen?" she fretted.
"Then at least you tried," Cadance answered, softly smiling. "You tried to do what you thought was right, and hopefully put up a good fight."
Pinkie stared back at her, fear and hope warring across her eyes. Her fear-led teeth almost drew blood from her lips before, bolstered by the warmth flowing from Cadance's hand, hope drove them back, parted Pinkie's lips, and convinced her to speak:
"You," she hesitantly began, "you were in a tower, one-one made of shining crystal, blue like-like cornflowers. And-and you weren't alone; there were knights, and-and bright shadows, like-like patches of the night sky, and all of them were listening to you. Because-because-because..." A gentle circular rub from Cady's thumb helped Pinkie stumble over the barrier, squeaking out, "... because they had to, because the tower was surrounded by dark shadows and grey soldiers and snow clouds and a big black star, and they all wanted to get in but nobody inside wanted to let them in so everybody inside had to work together to keep them out. Some of the knights were crying because some of the grey soldiers were knights, and the dark shadows were so old and the bright shadows were too young but there wasn't enough time for them to get away before the tower was surrounded, and the snow clouds weren't snowing because the snows were further north." Taking a desperate breath, she blurted out, "Then the toads came, then more grey soldiers, then elves because why not, and you weren't just fighting for you or the people in the tower, you were fighting for everyone, one candle against all the world's darkness," then slumped in Cady's arms, spent.
Cadance braced her, murmuring soft sounds of reassurance as she tried to hold the girl up. "It's okay, Pinkie," she whispered, "Everything's okay."
"But it won't be," Pinkie whimpered. "Night will come for us, and the next day's Sun will only be a black star."
"Then we'll wait for the next day," Cadance promised her, clasping her hand. "And, if the Sun doesn't shine then, the day after that."
Pinkie's sorrowful, haunted gaze struck Cadance mute. "And if the Sun never shines again?"
Determination took Cadance's tongue back. "Then we'll burn as long and as bright as we can to make up for it."