Nightmare Moon laughed. It was the cruel laughter of someone who knew the final piece had been played. She had grown sick of Spell Nexus’ idiotic game metaphors, but this? This was one move away from checkmate. This was the last marble down the plastic rail before the cage fell onto the plastic mice.

She had taken Celestia.

It hadn’t been easy. It still wasn’t easy, and she had had to pull back some of the greater hold she had on some of her cultists, but it had worked. She could control Celestia, make her do what she wanted. She could push her hard enough to make her throw herself on a sharp flagpole if she wanted.

But why waste an alicorn on such petty things?

Ohhh, she should have done this from the start. It made it all so easy. Of course, she couldn’t keep her new toy forever. With her body restored, her enthrallment magic would cease. It was, after all, little more than her placing her incorporeal self inside another. All that would be erased, and her more direct thralls would regain their sense of self once she was complete.

Still, she couldn’t let Celestia run free. What to do, oh, what to do?

She smiled. Of course.

Looming over Nyx and Spike, she crouched down, a sinister whisper on her lips.

“Look upon your princess of the sun one last time, children. For she’s about to become my servant of eternal night.”

It would be the final move in a game she had been playing for far too long.

Dear Celestia. Dear incompetent, egotistical, sniveling, wretchedly PERFECT Celestia, reduced to her champion.

No, she’d like that, wouldn’t she? Equestria didn’t need more alicorns, she’d turn her into her personal maid. All that ego and self-confidence fueling what would be her most loyal castle steward who’d work the most menial, most degrading jobs she could think of. She’d do it all willingly.

But right now, the princess before her thrashed against her magic. That was the problem with trying to hold onto an alicorn for too long the old fashioned way. Celestia would follow an order to hold everyone in place, but if she wasn’t told NOT to fight back against her control, she’d do so.

“Hold still!” She shouted, scolding the mare like an unruly filly. Celestia froze up. Nightmare Moon didn’t need to shout the order, but it did well to establish to everyone else present just who was in charge now.

Perfect.

She’d turn Celestia, and when that lavender little worrywart got close enough, she’d take her back, too, and then break the fake filly version of herself with them as her tools. She’d pour her soul back into the useless body that should have been hers, and from there, she’d rule the night forever. Like she should have done from the start.

It was all too perfect.

Smiling, she extended her magic. The shadow spewed from her being and reached out for Celestia’s love, her image, that sense of self confidence that drove her ego like a locomotive. The switch she needed to flip to win. To be complete. All that love, all of it. Serving her. Forever.

She found nothing.

“WHAT?”

The room shook. The mirror shuddered.

“WHERE IS IT? WHERE IS YOUR EGO, CELESTIA?”

“My… My ego?” Celestia said. She sounded dazed, as if the question had woken her up from a dream.

“YOUR LOVE. THE LOVE YOU HAVE FOR YOURSELF. WHERE IS IT?! AFTER EVERYTHING YOU DID TO ME, IT’S MINE. IT SHOULD BE MINE. IT’S MINE TO TAKE! YOU’RE MINE TO TWIST HOW I WANT!”

Celestia just stared at her, confused. Nightmare Moon took a deep breath. She would not be bested by this… She wouldn’t lose to her. Not again. Never again.

“Fine!” she screamed. “If you won’t be a queen’s slave, you’ll face a queen’s justice!”

Swirling darkness surrounded Celestia, as if an invisible hand had picked her up like she was little more than a doll, and tossed her down onto the floor. She made no attempt to even fight back. Not that she could.

“Plead guilty.” Nightmare Moon said, holding up Celestia’s head before letting it fall back down. “Plead guilty, and I won’t slit your throat. I’ll let you live. I’ll throw you into the sun for a thousand years, but I’ll let you live. I’ll let you come back out and see the kingdom I’ll have built, where they’ve all forgotten you as nothing more than what you really are. Go on.”

Celestia looked confused.

“You… want me to confess my crimes?”

“Show them! Show them what you’ve done. Show everyone here!” screamed Nightmare Moon. She paced across the room, looking at each of them. Shining Armor and the cook, glaring at her. Nyx, her face buried in Spike’s chest as he tried to comfort her.

Luna, staring at her. One of those intense, hard stares that she was so good at. Why did she know that Luna could do that?

No. Who cared? Who cared what Luna thought? Who cared what anyone thought. Celestia had hurt Luna, not her. Why did it matter? Why was she even doing this? Take her, kill her, take the child. Be complete! Why did she need to hear her sister admit it? Why did she hurt so bad now, when she was SO close?

But she needed her to say it. She needed Celestia to lose. It didn’t matter why.

“My crimes. The heinous things I’ve done,” Celestia coughed, head down. “I can show them, do you want me to do that?”

“You don’t get a choice, Your Highness. My puppet, my thrall! That means my orders.” She slammed Celestia to the ground again and repeated herself: “Admit it. Tell everyone what you are! Show them, do a magic song-and-dance about it. I don’t care! Let your loyal subjects know the Celestia that I know!”

Celestia nodded. Thrall or not, Nightmare Moon was right. They deserved to know the real Celestia.

She got to her feet, but continued to look down. Her horn glowed and the fog in the room shifted, shaped by her magic. Half-formed images faded and swirled, sparkling as they came into focus.

“My crimes. I was willing to tear a foal away from her mother’s side, to make her face consequences she didn’t deserve, all for the crime of being born. And then I took her and turned her into a pawn against my enemies. I took what was a happy family and seasoned their lives with fear.”

Nightmare Moon paused. This… What was this?

The fog formed into a real concrete image. Nyx, just old enough to be afraid of strangers on the street and not knowing why. Twilight, looking over her shoulder, jumping at shadows born from nightmares that Luna still couldn’t stop coming. There were too many.

Celestia kept her face hidden, turned behind a wing and refused to look at anyone, particularly Nightmare Moon.

“I didn’t—” Nightmare Moon sputtered.

“I threw caution to the wind in search of answers, and in the process, let my friend, my student, my charge… become tainted by an anger not his own. I led a thousand ponies into the arms of hatred and paranoia.”

Spell Nexus, on the floor of his study. His body twisting in defiance, then spasming in agony, then finally huddled up weeping his princess’ name as a mass of darkness took his confidence, his adoration, his love, and shattered it like glass.

“You’re stalling! Admit it! Admit what you did!”

Celestia still wouldn’t look at her, but she dropped her wing and stared at the fog of her memories.

“My sister. My little sister. My baby sister, my better half, came to me in tears. All she wanted was the same thing everypony else wanted. The simplest thing I could give her. And I turned her away. I let her fall into herself, I let her become what she is not and even then, even then! Even then I failed her. I failed her and because of my failure she ended up gone. Banished, for a thousand years, because of me.”

More memories formed. Luna and Celestia, locked in combat. A final spell being cast, a sister torn away, Celestia’s rage and blazing fury giving way to cold horror.

“It wasn’t about YOU!” Nightmare Moon yelled, kicking at what fog she could, trying to stop the memories from coming.

“It wasn’t your failure! You wanted this! You WANTED me out of the way! You did this! You did this and you won’t even look at me!” Nightmare Moon was panicking now, thrashing against the images. She was clawing her way through the fog of memories towards Celestia, trying to get her to stop.

“I let her rot for a thousand years. A thousand years. So much of her life, I stole from her. I could have freed her, I could have let her out at any time, but then what? Undoing her banishment was easy, but saving her, restoring her from the nightmare I had created? That was beyond my ability.”

“YOU LIE. YOU LIE AND YOU LIE AND YOU LIE! YOU COULD HAVE SAVED ME.”

Nightmare Moon wings flared, spit flying as she finally reached Celestia. She was upon her now screaming with unrestrained fury, trying to force Celestia to look at her. Any composure had drained away. This was the Nightmare Moon Celestia knew. All that anger, all that uncompromising pain. A blast of magic knocked her to the floor, and she could feel as if it was Nightmare Moon’s hooves on her. Hitting her, twisting her this way and that with magic. Anything to get her to face her former captor.

“YOU KNEW WHERE THE ELEMENTS OF HARMONY WERE. YOU KNEW AND YOU ALWAYS KNEW AND YOU COULD HAVE USED THEM! YOU COULD HAVE USED THEM AND YOU DIDN’T!”

Celestia laughed a bitter laugh through the pain.

“I haven’t been able to use the Elements in a thousand years. How could I?”

Memories swirled and coalesced: A ragged Celestia free of adornments and covered in dirt sitting alone in a ruined castle, six stones laying before her. Her voice hoarse from screaming, her arms bruised and hooves bloody as she slammed combination after combination of orb against one another against the floor, against herself. Trying to get them to work as they once had. Crying, screaming, pleading, begging for her baby sister back.

“What kindness could I claim to have? After a thousand years of lying to myself, what honesty remained? The pony who needed me most came to me in her darkest hour and I turned her away, I threw her away. After what I did, how could I call myself loyal? How could I call myself generous?”

She finally looked up at Nightmare Moon. She was crying. She was weeping, and her tears flowed more freely than they had in a thousand years.

“What joy do I have to give to others, when I committed the greatest crime of all? One so heinous it took millenia for it to even be given a name?”

“I broke a Pinkie Promise to my little sister.”

“WHAT PROMISE? WHAT ARE YOU-”

Celestia simply hung her head back down. She couldn’t face it.

“SHOW ME. I DEMAND IT! I ORDER YOU! YOU ARE MINE, YOU HAVE TO OBEY ME. SHOW ME WHAT YOU PROMISED!”

The memory didn’t swirl, there was no spark or glow. It was old. Older than the castle, older than the mountains around them, so old that if it hadn’t been so important, so basic to Celestia’s entire being that it would have faded like gossamer wings in sunlight.

It showed a home. It may have been a palace, it may have been simply a cabin. Celestia didn’t remember.

What she did remember was a crib, a tiny dark-coated foal sleeping gently within it.

Her mane shimmered with stars.

And she remembered the other alicorn, gently watching over the both of them. The alicorn’s face was indistinct, but even now Celestia could remember the white of her coat and the red of her mane. Neither were vibrant, but they were burned into the memory all the same.

It was all she could remember of her...

Nightmare Moon gasped. She hadn’t thought of this, hadn’t realized it, and the weight of it was as fresh a pain as any that had formed her.

Celestia had forgotten their mother’s face. They both had.

“She is of the night, dearest daughter,” said a voice. It was gentle, knowing, and old. For all the gravitas Celestia’s mind ascribed to it though, it simply seemed like the voice of a mother.

“Just as you will move the sun and command the light and the flame, so too will she command the shadow, the darkness. The moon will be hers. The stars will be hers. My dearest Luna.”

The Celestia in the memory peeked over the edge of the crib. She was so young, so unsure. No cutie mark adorned her flank, she had to be around the same age as the Crusaders.

Why did Nightmare Moon remember them?

Their mother’s voice floated back through the memory.

“So many fear the night, Celestia. They fear the darkness of the trees and the howls of timberwolves. They fear sleep they will never wake from and nightmares that they can never overcome. And this fear will hang over her. It will threaten her, and that is why you have to promise me. Promise her.”

“PROMISE HER WHAT?” Nightmare Moon screamed. Her grip on Celestia lessened from the outburst, and she didn’t notice Luna struggling free of her invisible grasp, slowly inching towards the mirror.

In the memory, their mother drew back something, a curtain? A curtain on a large window? Celestia, both present and past, gasped.

It was the night sky. Stars filled every corner of it, the galaxy’s belt streaking across it as an unstained crescent moon watched over all of it.

Had it always been this beautiful? They had to have lived in a palace, where else would one even see such a vista in such ancient times?

“Protect her, Celestia,” their mother continued, gently. “Let your baby sister know that she is as beautiful as her namesake. Let her know she is loved, that she is worthy. Help her to sparkle in the night as much as you shine in the day.”

“Promise me.”

The memory faded, and ones replaced it. Maybe not even full memories, simply slides. Pictures of pain, etched on an ancient and tired mind.

Fire.

Falling.

Loss.

Luna, barely older and looking so much like Nyx as she screamed for her mother, Celestia holding her back from an inferno that defied color and dyed the sky mandelbrot.

Cold forests.

The light of a magician’s caravan, the gentle comfort of an aging unicorn.

Their marks, blazing on their flanks as the sun and the moon streaked across the sky in an impossible dance. How had she forgotten that both of them had received it at the same time?
How?

A castle.

A country.

Luna, now the epitome of gangly teenage awkwardness. Her mounting frustration as she struggled to focus her power into simple spells. Were this the present, she would have been the favorite target of a high school bully.

And Celestia, a few years older than her. Beautiful, stately, perfect. Magic flowing and dancing to her every whim, her sneering face looking down at her little sister.

Were this the present, she would have been that high school bully.

And ponies bowed to Celestia first. Luna, young Luna, merely the lesser student.

Jealousy, anger. Betrayal, hurt. The first seeds.

The first of Nightmare Moon.

The slides faded and the memories ended, leaving only Celestia. She looked so old, so small, so sad.

So what?

“You cannot claim the love I have for myself.” Concluded Celestia. “There isn’t any.”

Nightmare Moon simmered, her thoughts twisting and colliding, as if her anger was the only thing she had left. She snarled.

“YOU ADMIT IT. YOU KNEW. YOU KNEW. ALL ALONG YOU KNEW.”

But then, her rage faded. Just a bit. Just enough. She asked the question, the one that burned in… her mind? When was it a question she wanted to ask? She swallowed, and her voice came out timid. Where once anger inflamed, now it smothered. Not the queen’s justice. But the queen’s greatest fear.

“If Twilight Sparkle had never come along… would you ever even have tried to save me?”

Celestia sat up. She was tired, after so long. So tired. She wanted to sleep, she wanted to just stop it all, to get it over with.

But more than anything, she understood. Nightmare Moon hadn’t noticed Luna moving closer to her. Or the way their movements seemed to be so similar. As if they were synchronized.

Nyx. Nightmare Moon. Luna. So similar. All so familiar.

Celestia finally knew what she had to say.

“A thousand years. A thousand years I spent trying to think of what to say to you. I wrote grand speeches, poems, even novels. I spent a thousand years looking for the words that I thought would cure you, would fix you.”

She stood up.

“Twilight was an opportunity. The Elements found their wielders, and Luna was returned to me. It was nothing but brute force, but I didn’t care. I had my sister back, didn’t I? But she was still so angry, so untrusting. I was too. I didn’t understand, I couldn’t. Not until her.”

She turned to Nyx. Tiny little Nyx, shivering in fear in Spike’s arms even now.

She looked so much like Luna all those years ago, in the cold forest.

“A filly. A princess. A daughter. A sister. She needs so much guidance, and she’s scared, and there’s a lot of things she’ll need. But she’s too young to understand that, and she won’t like what she’ll need.”

Celestia stepped towards Nightmare Moon, who shied back.

“Stop it.” Said Nightmare Moon, fear in her voice. Her and Luna were side by side now. Identical in motion, in figure. Beside them, the mirror began to hum and shake.

“But all those things don’t matter right now. They’ll never be as important as the thing she really needs. The same thing I should have given to you, hundreds of years ago. The thing I should have said to you from the very start. I never thought it would be so simple.”

“STOP IT!”

Celestia looked at Nightmare Moon. Truly looked at her. Her gaze was piercing, knowing.

Nightmare Moon was anger, hatred, jealousy, envy. Fear. A thousand years of negative emotions.

And whose emotions were those?

Celestia smiled. It was warm as the sun, as gentle as the dawn.

“You are Nightmare Moon, Luna.”

“And you are loved.”

With both wings outstretched, she pulled her sister in for a hug. All of her sister. Every last piece of her.

“And I am so, so sorry.”

The mirror exploded. A sound, the kind of unsound that only could happen when a sound was so sound-y that it consumed all other sound lanced through the sky accompanied by a shimmering pillar that was the color of the very background of the universe itself, a million stars twinkling inside it. It exploded, clearing the clouds outside and leaving behind a brilliant tapestry of the night sky.

As the pillar faded, it left a pair of sisters gently suspended in the air. They held each other, tears swirling in cosmic antigravity, laughter mingling with sobs that wracked both of their bodies so much it hurt.

Gone was Nightmare Moon. Gone was the Luna that had been. She stood tall as her sister, as regal as her sister, her mane shimmering with the same galaxies and stars Celestia had witnessed all those centuries ago.

Her sister was finally back.

“I was so mad.” Luna choked out. “Mad and angry and just always hurt. For so long, Tia. For so long. But I have to let it go, because I want you back, too. I don’t care if it’s a hundred thousand years from now. I want the sister that read to me and answered every question I had and told me I could do anything back. My oldest friend.”

“I don’t deserve your forgiveness, little sister.”

“Too bad, you’re getting it anyway.”

Tears faded to giggles, flight faded to a gentle landing. Both sisters look over the audience of their reconciliation. Shining Armor and Spell Nexus sat dumbfounded, Spike still looked unsure, and Nyx was just shaking in terror. Looking out over castle grounds outside the ballroom, there looked to be a whole lot of unconscious ponies and a whole lot more ponies with torches rushing up the tower.

Luna spoke up happily, of all things.

“We’ve made a right mess of things, haven’t we, sister?”

“Indeed we have. Cosmic princesses or not, I would say this might take a bit more hoof work than usual.”

“All too right, perhaps we should start with—”

“I WANT MY MOMMA!”

A pair of royal heads turned back towards the room, eyes resting on the black filly that had pushed away her brother and was now openly wailing. Celestia smiled.

“Perhaps we should start fixing the small problems first, dearest little sister?”

“I was about to suggest the same thing, dearest older sister.”

Author's Note

And there we go! Did I just trick you into reading a Luna and Celestia reconciliation fic? Yes.

Was this the first part of this fic that I wrote in a motel in Jackson, Ohio after a thing of really bad (like quality wise, not health wise) food? Also yes.

All that's left is the epilogue. Thanks again to Toonwriter for the proofread.