A Monster in the Attic

"And, after a few weeks of travel, here and there, I arrived at Ponyville. As the School of Friendship was opening."

Another silence followed in Starlight's office. Cozy had just related all those events in one go, leaving the headmare a bit uncertain and, to be frank, horrified. The young pegasus mare's eyes were fleeing, as she said:

"I know what you're thinking. I've killed people, I fully acknowledge that. It was wrong, but the place I was in was wrong too. My family, my surroundings, my education. All of it was... wrong."

"I... think I understand," Starlight said, seeing Cozy's regrets looking sincere. "And I understand why Twilight's lessons didn't reach you."

Cozy slowly nodded. Starlight turned her eyes to the stallion by her side, wondering:

"So, you went with her."

He replied by shaking his head, and Cozy added:

"I went back to the mansion, after I was freed from the statue... Because I had understood something."

It took me three years to come back. But I did it. And I knew what I needed to do, though I wasn't just guided by reason.

Cozy's father was an early bird, usually. So, it is much to his own surprise that, one day, he woke up while the sun was already high in the sky, judging by the light filtering through the windows.

Something wasn't right. He felt heavy. He tried to move around, but his hooves were all locked by chains. His horn was unresponsive. And this place wasn't his room.

His heart suddenly racing, thinking this was all a bad dream, he looked around. His wife was laying right next to him, in the same condition, on a bed that wasn't theirs but instead...

He knew this room, despite sealing it a long time ago. It was...

"Hi, Father," a voice suddenly said to his right, hidden in the back lighting.

His eyes were soon met with Cozy's widened irises, staring at him from up close, making him jump back as far as the chains allowed him to.

"C-Cozy!?" he stuttered with surprise. "I thought you were dead!"

"Cozy Dim Rook did die, a long time ago," she replied with a cold and distant yet entranced tone. "In the room right below us, where you left her for a day."

"W-What are you doing? H-How did you-"

"Isoflurane," Cozy calmly cut. "Just to make sure you and mom would stay asleep, while I break the wall and carry you here. Would have been easier if you hadn't sealed the door. And I got my hooves on magic inhibitors before coming here, I knew your precious magic would ruin everything."

"But wh-"

"I know who you are. I know what the lies in this house are."

Her father stopped trying to speak, instead looking at her with confusion. Before Cozy could follow, her mother began to move as well, waking up, muttering:

"What is the meaning of this...?"

"Hi, mother."

The unicorn jumped.

"C-Cozy!?" she shouted with surprise and fear, as if she was seeing a ghost.

"Yes, it's me. As I was about to say..." Cozy turned her eyes back to her father, calm and observant. "I went into the attic, the day before I left. I saw him. I saw your twin brother."

She saw her father's teeth clench, his eyes becoming uncertain, wary and angry.

"I went against your command, because you showed it to Numb too," Cozy followed, searching in her saddlebag with one wing, pulling out a small crane and laying it on her father. "Say hi to the son you never had."

"What are you doing!?" her mom shouted, moving around, trying to break free.

"Mom, be nice for once and SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

Cozy's burst of anger shocked her mother, causing her to suddenly freeze. The teen's eyes were still cold, but for a brief moment, they had been inhabited by flames. She turned her attention back to her father.

"He told me, but I could have guessed from this room alone," she continued. "You're not Dim, aren't you? The last Dim was my grandmother. But she was sterile."

Silence fell. For the first time in her life, Cozy saw her father's eyes move away against his will, touched in his pride, unable to answer. And she also spotted her mother displaying a shocked frown at him.

"So mom doesn't know, huh? Not that it matters now."

She began to walk around the room, looking at the portraits on the wall. She stopped in front of the last maid of the house.

"That's my grandmother. The line had to keep on going, somehow. And, thankfully, a unicorn was born out of it. But, also, a pegasus."

Cozy pushed a slight sigh, lowering her eyes on the wall, in her own thoughts:

"So, your brother had to be hidden, put aside. You cut his throat so he would stay silent, up there. No one could know that the blood was impure, or even extinct... I'm sure you would have done the same with me if I had a unicorn twin."

She turned back, frowning, looking at her father with a sincere thought.

"But all those years..." she said. "I thought about it, but I never came up with a satisfying answer. So, now that I have you at hoof, I can ask you."

She walked up to his side, staring at him, unsure and dying to know.

"Why didn't you simply kill him? I have a hard time believing someone like you could have any remorse doing that, you even went out of your way to feed him through the dumbwaiter in the living room. I mean, you tried to kill me too. And it's not like you could transform him into a unicorn, and everything would be forgiven. Unless..."

As she was staring at him, as she saw the fleeing eyes of her father once more, the truth finally appeared in her mind, obvious and clear.

"You kept him... because you thought his wings would be easier to implant on yourself, since he's your twin..."

I understood... There was something beyond his obsession for purity. A regret, sprouted from his difference with his brother, that becoming an alicorn could fix. Pegasus were a lower form of life in his eyes, but with their wings, he could attain absolution, become... perfect, while including his brother in that twisted ideal of him. Erase that imperfection, in someone he saw as himself.

But that didn't matter

"Here we are... Here you are, father. At my mercy, at a pegasus' mercy. A young and wild child, a prodigy that almost ruled the world by twice, one that actually became an alicorn, if only for brief a period of time."

Cozy stopped, realizing, her voice becoming low as she said:

"I suppose some obsessions do run in the family, no matter how much I want to run away from them..."

There was that fascination again. Fascination for her own understanding of herself, but also for the fear, the terror she saw in their eyes.

"What are you going to do...?" her mother asked.

"A nicer version of everything you did to me," Cozy replied, looking at her. "Oh, sure, you didn't harm me that much, Mother. But you still watched, you still agreed, albeit silently. Never to my rescue, never to protect me, always despising what your womb had given to this world of yours."

"You wouldn't dare..." her father said between gritted teeth, his anger showing again.

"That's what Cozy Dim Rook thought, when you left her to die in that room..." Cozy slowly said, looking back at him. "Alone... She thought her father wouldn't dare. But he did, and never heard her pleading, as she was begging for her life. I'm here to give her some revenge. So, first..."

She leaned forward, picking up something on the floor. When she straightened back up, her parent's eyes widened with terror. She was holding large pliers in her now grown wings, smiling maniacally, as she said:

"Let's remove those silly horns you love some much, shall we? I want you to know how it feels to be without magic. I want you to despise your own weak bodies."

"No! No wait!" her father shouted, as she approached the pliers, holding them in her wings.

But she didn't care. Or worst...

Hearing him beg... just made me angrier, and happier to do it. I was going to free him from himself, and to free myself as well. Let Cozy Dim Rook rest in peace, in a hornless family.

Snip!

Her father yelled a sound she had never heard from him. A sound that went to her darkened heart and only filled it with even more twisted emotions and desire.

She let the horn fall on the bloodstained sheets, trotting around the bed to go to her mother.

"C-Cozy, please..." she begged, tears in her eyes.

The teen mare froze, staring at her, almost shocked. She slowly let her wings down, leaning above her sniffing mother. The unicorn looked confused and terrified, an undignified face for a noble mare such as herself. Face to face, Cozy whispered a terrible question:

"Did you plead for me to come back with the same desperation, from the day I went missing...?"

Her mother's head moved back a little, with an uncertain breath, her lower jaw shaking. Cozy looked back and forth between her parents, following:

"You're crying now, but did you even shed a tear for me? Did you ever woke up from a nightmare, panicked, wondering where I was?"

She stared at them. Their crying eyes, their terror, and the guilt. She knew the answer, they knew it too, it was no use trying to make her believe the opposite now. So, instead, facing their silence, Cozy replied in a short breath:

"I won't shed any tears for you either."

Snip!

Her mother yelled out in pain, writhing on the bed, as Cozy was throwing the pliers on the floor, unbothered.

"You were a mistake from the day you came into this world..." her father winced with all his rage. "You should have never been born... We've always hated you."

Finally, he had said it. After years of never outright admitting it. It almost felt relieving. Almost.

"You think I don't know?" Cozy replied, mocking him. "You think I didn't feel it every second I spent in this mansion?"

She went toward the huge hole she had carved in the wall, adding:

"You're lucky. I thought about beating you up until you'd lost all your teeth and your face was a bloody mess. But I feel like, in the spirit of things, I should just leave you two alone, in this room, to die. I can't put runes on the wall like you did... but I can still burn the whole place down."

"Wait!" her father said, angry and in pain.

But she didn't. She went into the hallway, hearing her name being yelled, yet only paid attention to the folded stairs. She was too tall to go by the dumbwaiter now, but the rune was still preventing her from pulling on the mechanism.

Instead, she went outside. Flying up to the roof, an ax in her hooves, she slammed the first shutter she could find, again and again, until the wood gave in, the windows behind it following right after.

As the debris settled, she pierced the shadows, the sun behind her lighting the large attic. She didn't have to search for long to find it, the sickly silhouette of that pegasus with a gray coat, a scar upon his throat, and weak yellow eyes, laying in bed.

"Cozy...?" he said, with a low and broken voice.

The teen flew up to him, suddenly looking worried yet relieved that he was still alive, abandoning her hate and fascination.

"Uncle Comfy," she sighed, flying straight at him for a hug.

The surprise didn't last long for the pegasus, and instead, he returned the embrace of his nieces, shuddering. Finally, a contact. Finally, someone to feel. To talk to.

"I'm sorry I couldn't bring you with me..." Cozy said with a quivering voice. "I'm sorry I took so much time to come back... To understand..."

"It's alright, Cozy..." Comfy whispered with his strained voice. "But why did you come back...? They're going to find you, you made so much noise..."

"They won't, don't worry," Cozy reassured. "And they won't chase us. But we have to get you out of here."

He had been right. He had been reassuring. All those years ago, when I found him, he had told me the truth, advised me to run away, while I could only stay wary of him, cautious. It had taken me years to realize that he was... more than someone weaker than me, that I could exploit. That he truly cared for me and that it... meant something to me. That we'd been both.... robbed of so many things by this family... By my father.

Cozy looked at her uncle, by her side, thoughtful. Comfy had wrapped a wing around her, holding her gently. He still looked weak, but was nonetheless faring better than in that dark attic.

"So, you burned the mansion down, with your parents in it, then you came back here...?" Starlight summed up, raising a concerned eyebrow.

"He made me swear to not kill anyone anymore," Cozy said, as if that was enough. "Not that I want to anyway..."

Starlight's eyes went to Comfy. The pegasus, slowly ruffled with his niece's mane with one wing, saying to the unicorn:

"She'll get better... We both have... A lot to catch on. In our lives in general."

Starlight's eyes went back to Cozy. She did look a lot different, at least in her way of speaking. And, now, all those bad things were behind her. Starlight wasn't just sure if she should report all of this, report her murders to Twilight, or just... let her be. Freeing her from this past.

"I'll see to assign you a house in Ponyville," she finally said. "Near Fluttershy's cottage. She'll be in charge of you, just to make sure you're not plotting anything."

"Thank you..." Cozy whispered, shivering with relief.

The young pegasus nervously rubbed one of her legs, leaning into her uncle's embrace. It still felt weird. It still felt unnatural. Yet, it was all she had always lacked.

A family.