She'd never seen an award ceremony with so much squinting. Yes, the day had returned, and it was good, everypony agreed, but glory was it ever bright, they agreed too, though a little quieter, since Princess Celestia was right there. In a word, the Princess looked... dazed. Though she could've just been as unused to the brightness as her subjects, Rarity got the sense that she simply wasn't used to such monumental acts of good happening without her hoof guiding them.
But Rarity wasn't looking at the newly-returned Sun Princess. It was her counterpart that had her attention: Princess Luna. The mare who had been... a part, or the whole, or nothing, of Nightmare Moon, Rarity's... captor, or mistress, or...
Regardless, Nightmare Moon had been the Princess, and Rarity her seneschal.
After the 'time traveler' appeared and then vanished, the mad Princess had searched the country for a match. Twilight Sparkle, a scholar of no repute and no wings, was called to the castle, tortured perfunctorily, and then thrown in the dungeon to molder. It was Rarity who reached through the cell bars and helped her assemble the Elements of Harmony.
One thing had led to the next. The sun had risen for the first time in five years, and then she had been invited to the castle. 'The Princess would enjoy the pleasure of your company.' That was royalty as it should be, not... 'Nightmare Moon will see you in the throne room'. Her Lady's will and the future had been inseparable concepts, and so requests had been statements of future fact. Those orders had had the unctuous umami of mushrooms. Nothing like this: subtle flavors of crisp vegetables, dappled on the palate like sunlight in the woods.
It would take time for those crops to grow again. Like its ponies, Equestria as a whole would take time to adjust to the light of the sun. The orders, too, still sat in Rarity's stomach, and her mind still worked to unbraid the knot of what would be and what Nightmare Moon desired. It was easy with the edges: she could see already, the scholar rising in Canterlot, the farmer beginning her orchard's recovery.
But she still couldn't look at the knot's center. Who would she be, now that Nightmare Moon was gone? The thread of that question was tangled in another: who was Princess Luna? She was struck once again by their differences. Where Nightmare Moon stood tall and alone, Luna seemed desperate to melt into the shadow of her sister.
Rarity could say she helped Twilight Sparkle out of a love of her nation, but that was only a convenient cover. What fascinated her was the Moon Princess. She was drawn in by the idea of the kind and magnanimous ruler Nightmare Moon had once been. She had wanted to save her, and she had. And now the same mare was about to bequeath her the Element she had found as a symbol of her service to the nation.
"Our Lady will see you in the refectory."
Those simple words had been all it took for Rarity to drop everything, whether a trembling tour group or a torn tapestry. Nightmare Moon always had a better sense of the time than anypony else, and she hadn't kept clocks in the castle since all of it had been run to her own schedule. When Rarity had asked for a stopwatch so she could better anticipate Her Lady's needs, Nightmare Moon had only laughed and said: "And why, my dear, would I want you to anticipate me?"
Instead, Rarity had mastered the trot. In the same way an ignoble filly had once practiced the passage, valuing control and grace, she had found a way to maximize speed and minimize hurriedness. After a change in manestyle, it had allowed her to be at her mistress's side in moments with hardly a sign of her journey, like a shadow chased by the light of a torch.
"Join me for dinner, Rarity," Nightmare Moon had said the instant she crossed the threshold, not allowing her time for a simpering "Yes, Lady?" or anything similar. So she did, taking her place to the right of her mistress. A single candle burnt there, and the end of the ebon table was lost in gloom. She knew that Nightmare Moon had no need for any light besides that of her moon.
Ponies had more or less figured out the new dietary staples of the night-time nation. Mushrooms, of course, featured heavily, and Rarity had learned not to eat around anything in the Princess's presence. But there were other crops: beets, potato, kale. Leafy vegetables that were grateful for every scrap of light they were given — model citizens, Nightmare Moon had called them. Despite that, Her Lady hadn't seemed to care much for any of it.
She had eaten at that table with her mistress at least a thousand times. Some meals, Nightmare Moon would be impatient and clipped. Others, she would be outright cruel, luring Rarity into conversation only to snipe at her psyche from any angle she could find. Still others, she would be jovial, and Rarity had enjoyed it regardless of the source — rebels rooted out, usually.
So, the constancy that threaded those moments together was not the meals, nor the conversation, but her own presence. Somehow, she had always been Nightmare Moon's guest. Not visiting dignitaries from other states, not knights fresh from conquest, but Rarity, a glorified maid.
A thousand moments, folded into one cutting edge, and still it couldn't sever her gaze, which stayed fixed on Luna. Wasn't she still hers, after all? Who else could she be? And who was her mistress now? Had the Nightmare only made her evil and twisted her desires, or did it overtake her entirely? How much of the mare she had known still existed? And how much had been obliterated by Harmony?
Luna was on the baker, now. Pinkie Pie, Rarity recalled. She held her pink Element aloft in her magic and was extolling the virtue of Laughter, how absent it had been in a nation of night. That wasn't true, Rarity thought. Nightmare Moon had laughed all the time. So who was this withdrawn mare that had taken her place? There were no fangs in the smile she graced Pinkie with.
And then, it was her turn. She drew herself up, thrust her chest forward, was glad her hair was still tied up and couldn't obscure her vision of the Princess, the mare she saved.
"Rarity, Bearer of the Element of Generosity. The nation thanks you for your service."
The element clunked against her chest like a brass knocker, as dull and hard as the sentence that heralded it. Luna didn't even meet her eyes. Her expression was stone, until she turned to Twilight Sparkle and smiled, already speaking of the element of Magic and the leadership that she had shown.
Rarity kept staring at her until the ceremony ended and she receded to the balcony overlooking the gala with her sister, who was looking at Rarity with what might have been an apologetic smile. She stayed standing there, staring off into space with Generosity hanging heavily on her neck, as the other Bearers wandered off to mingle in the ensuing gala, and her own mind wandered to mingle with her past selves.
The throne room had been cold, as always. Nightmare Moon's court hadn't bustled anywhere near as much as Princess Celestia's — most of the visitors were knights reporting on the nation's goings-on. The passing-through of the 'time traveler' and the subsequent search for her match had bolstered their numbers, but the lull which signified the citizenry laying low in the wake of one of their Princess's projects had followed.
Nightmare Moon hadn't seemed put off by this. Near as Rarity could tell, the alicorn was perfectly happy to sit on her throne the whole day through with not a single interruption, simply reveling in the feeling of being the axis on which the whole orrery of Equestria turned. Her eyes had often watched that model at the center of the throne room, the stilled celestial bodies, the shattered sun's shards still lying on the floor and off-limits to all maids.
Any petitioner who had come with promises of pleading the Princess for a moment of sunlight had had to edge around that omen. Rarity had seen bravery curdle in every hue as their eyes inevitably fixed on the ruined sun. Nightmare Moon had never tired of it, always piercing through their hastily-invented petitions with an "Are you sure there isn't something else you want?" She had relished the game of waiting to see if they would break and yell out some heroic rejection of her so her guards could swoop from the eaves. Just as Rarity had seen hope broken in every hue, she'd heard agony in every timbre from the cells below.
Rarity had been in attendance, as always, tending to her duties as seneschal, which on most days amounted to waiting. Looking at Nightmare Moon's profile, she had wondered about Princess Luna.
The scholar, Twilight Sparkle, had not been broken, somehow. At every meal, she had greeted Rarity with a smile, though it had been marred with a black eye the last time she had visited. Torture had been unnecessary, as she had stated everything about her mission when she arrived. It hadn't taken her long to discover that necessity was irrelevant. But still, she had happily restated her mission whenever Rarity spoke with her: find the Bearers, assemble the Elements, and free Princess Luna, the alicorn who...
It wasn't clear. That's what Rarity had been thinking about. She hadn't known whether Nightmare Moon was another entity possessing Luna's body entirely, a twisting of her personality toward darker ends, or some kind of fusion of the two. Twilight Sparkle hadn't known the Princess herself, but she had said that she would likely be like her sister: kind, generous, full of laughter and loyalty, honest and friendly.
Had Rarity wanted that? Want was a caged animal, and most times she fed it, it tried to take her leg off. Rarity had known and knew that the ponies of Equestria deserved a kind Princess. But had Rarity wanted it? She wasn't evil, exactly, the word the defiant ones readily flung at her Princess. She saw need, and she fulfilled it. She had a generous spirit.
Princess Luna had turned to her, and her eyes had been sharp dagger-slits, draconic. "Come here," Nightmare Moon had said, and Rarity had. 'Obeyed' would imply thought or, worse, the chance of denial. She had kept moving forward until being told to stop. The order never came, so she found herself in her Princess's lap, looking up at her amused smile.
The Nightmare Princess, she who held all Equestria in an icy grip, had leaned down, and Rarity had craned her neck up to meet her in a kiss. It had been cool and sweet like ice water, and Rarity had let herself fall against her strong barrel, enjoying the vibration of that resonant chuckle against her body. Her Lady had nibbled at her lip, contemplating adding to the innumerable collection of little cuts there, a collection that hinted at a nervous habit Rarity had never held.
She had never said "You're beautiful," or "I want you," or done anything more than pull her in and take her. It had been simple and easier than Rarity had expected, like the transition to an endless night and the drifting sleep schedule it had entailed. They had often stayed like that for hours, until the next petitioner would enter and see her as only a glint of fang white in the cloaking shadows of Nightmare Moon.
She found herself trapped in a conversation with Princess Celestia and Twilight Sparkle. This was impressive, given that Twilight hadn't stopped talking the entire time. It was as if her endless diatribe (on magic, on the Elements of Harmony, on what a not-so-endless night had been like, on how happy she was to see the sun and its Princess again) was so overflowing that it needed two attendants to properly be heard. If Twilight Sparkle started talking in the woods and nopony was around to hear it, the trees would grow ears.
"So while it looked to us like the Elements had a purifying effect, I theorize that what actually happened was that the 'Nightmare Energy' was captured, removed from the one it corrupted and sequestered away to be healed in time."
Princess Celestia nodded. "Indeed, Twilight Sparkle. The Elements can only seal. Healing is a process left to us." She cast a meaningful glance to the balcony where her sister had been. "The Nightmare sleeps, and the pure hearts of you and your friends will cleanse it in time." She took a sip of champagne. "I wonder, how is it that a scholar as astute as yourself has escaped the Tiara's notice thus far?"
Twilight blushed a deep crimson. "Oh, well, um... After I failed your school's final exam, I kind of just... gave up," she mumbled.
"Well, since Nightmare Moon imprisoned the students of my school, that may be the only reason we are all here today. Still, that is tragic to hear, my little pony. The purpose of the final exam isn't to test one's limits, but to understand them. Please, allow me speak to the proctors and organize for admission into my school."
"So," Rarity said, "where is Princess Luna?"
She hadn't meant to put that so bluntly. Something more playful, like "And where has your sister wandered off to," or "Has Princess Luna tired of us already?" At least it hadn't been "Actually, Princess, I think I may be in love with your sister and would like to find her and continue where we left off, so to speak." Still, Celestia looked at her with surprise and Twilight with outright reproach.
"Rest assured," the Princess said, taking Rarity's awkwardness in stride, "my younger sister is very grateful for what you have all done for us, she is just... taking some time to adjust. Much has changed in the last thousand years, and she's entered into a new world."
Rarity cocked her head. "She has been away from Canterlot, I understand, but surely the last five years, regardless of their pleasantness, have adjusted her to life in modern Equestria."
"That isn't the case," Celestia said, meeting her gaze levelly. "She tells me she has no memory of her time under the yoke of the Nightmare."
The champagne tasted like starlight, galaxies swirling on her palate, but it was only dust fallen on the black canvas of her mind. She'd drifted away from the party, settling into the halls of the castle like a dust mote falling in the forest.
Forgotten. How could that be? She still couldn't say whether her time with Nightmare Moon was a wound or a fondness. All she knew was that she couldn't stop picking at it, and it was unthinkable Luna didn't do the same. Memories wouldn't stop uncoiling, so many orders and trysts pressed into a single night like a foal stuffing an untidy room into the closet. It wasn't right, a night lasting five years. The morning dawn was for examining passions left unchecked in the dark, and without it, time had gone by without her ever considering what exactly Nightmare Moon meant to her.
But to answer that question now, she needed to know: who exactly was Princess Luna? She could certainly be cold like her captor had been, though it was a mere morning frost compared to that wall of ice. Rarity could scarcely compare the two even in places they were alike, for any behavior that Nightmare Moon's power had made intimidating only seemed pitiable in Luna. Where Nightmare Moon was furious, Luna was annoyed. Where Nightmare Moon was ravenous, Luna was peckish. Where Nightmare Moon was weary, Luna was simply tired.
Rarity had to know. Were the two of them lovers, or only twin victims? Those fangs, whose profile her tongue had memorized, were absent in Luna's mouth. If they kissed again, would they recognize each other? Or were they two strangers, with their only commonality a third mare who no longer existed?
These questions reverberated in Rarity's minds as she drifted through the halls. 'No memory,' Celestia had said. It wasn't true. If it was, why had Luna been so cold to her during the ceremony? The Princess remembered her. Now, she would find out what she thought of her.
There were more maids than guards in the hallways of the castle. After all, it had been gathering dust for the past five years, the citizens of Canterlot afraid to approach it and Nightmare Moon uninterested in the new roost compared to the old. Now, the castle was alive with dustbusting, from carpets to rafters, and the maids had eyes only for mess. One glanced at her and raised his duster, but a stern look swiveled his attention to the already-beaten drapes behind him.
Chasing an idle fantasy, she glanced in each room she passed, wondering which could be the quarters of the new Princess's seneschal. After a few lavish rooms, she realized it was silly to wonder, because she would live in the Princess's apartments. She wondered at how large a Princess's bed must be — the only one she'd seen Nightmare Moon in was her own, a regular bed that the alicorn dominated utterly...
The glinting moon-white sharpness at her throat had been a promise, not a threat.
Just when she'd reached the peak of trepidation, with "she won't" behind and "she will" ahead, body thrumming with anticipation, Nightmare Moon had sunk her fangs in. Her back had arched, an instinctual plea to flee pressed down with years of discipline. The bite couldn't have been prefixed with 'love' — it was deep, deeper than a playful mark or a simple drawing of blood. Later, Twilight told her that the tooth marks lay neatly on either side of her left carotid artery.
She had sucked in a breath and released it slowly rather than as a scream. Even that restraint had done nothing to stop Her Lady's amusement, the rolling chuckle that had been ever-present, a hot breath washing across her cheek. Everything Rarity did had been a source of amusement, any noise she had made, whether it was a sentence or not. That laughter hadn't been a secret sign of intimacy. The Princess's mirth had been doled out often: when petitioners came limping and bloodied from a pack of timberwolves, when a pealing scream curled up out of the dungeons below, whenever anypony called out her sister's name.
Nightmare Moon had not been above tormenting her prisoners personally. She had often participated enthusiastically as Rarity stood to the side, watching her mistress pick apart a pony's psyche while she herself attempted to pick apart sessions in cells from sessions under sheets. For a while, she had thought the Princess saved her fangs for her — until she hadn't. Or that the Princess would never use the brand on her — until she had.
Even as the differences had dwindled, she had still clung to their time alone with all four legs, until she had realized that that had been the difference. Where the prisoners had dreaded Nightmare Moon's presence in their cells, Rarity had anticipated it. That long shadow falling across paperwork had filled her with razor excitement, cold sweat lathering her coat. She had been different from the prisoners not for how she was treated but for how it made her feel.
Had Nightmare Moon known that? Was the difference between a hunger that was famishment or mere appetite only how available the sustenance? Had the tightness in her frame been desperation, or Rarity's own failure to soothe her mistress? What expression did she wear in the shadows, an obscurity unpenetrated by the silver moon?
Nightmare Moon had dwarfed her frame, and always pressed down atop her, trapping Rarity between forelegs that were a match for her length. She had known alicorns were large ponies, of course, but never understood how different they really were. Her legs had been like slender willow trunks, and her barrel, in most ponies a level curve stored under cushioning fat, had been made of hard angles and muscle. Her neck had been so long that Rarity had never been able to initiate a kiss herself.
She never had been able to find words in that space, though outside the bedroom a sharp tongue had become her trademark more than the clothes she once wove. She went through a list in her mind. Tightness of breath, flushed cheeks, an inability to pull herself away... These had been all the signposts of love, hadn't they?
She had squirmed under Her Lady, the pitiful motion scarcely stirring the Princess above her. The deep vibration of her laughter had made Rarity shiver. Though she had been pressed into the bed below her, she had felt with absolute surety that the mare atop her was really what kept her from falling, falling, falling, into the night forever below.
On one of the castle's grand balconies, the bright blue of day carved out the silhouette of Princess Luna. She was... small. Rarity's height, even. No grand adjectives came to mind. Her blue mane was limp. Her horn was long, but not sharp. In the daylight her coat was blue, with the only shadows those cast by the sun. She was mundane. But there, scattered on her flank, was Nightmare Moon's inky black, so familiar that Rarity wanted to reach out and feel for the refreshing coolness of Her Lady's coat.
"... Princess Luna?" Rarity ventured, stepping forward into the sunlight.
Luna's posture tightened. "Rarity." She breathed out slowly and, with what seemed like a concerted effort, her stance relaxed.
Rarity waited for anything else and received nothing. For a moment, she considered returning to the gala, but then an indignant flame ignited in her chest. She had saved the Princess! She deserved more than a title! She could at least stoop to looking her in the eyes! Glory, it wouldn't even require stooping!
She cleared her throat. "I noticed you left the gala."
"Yes. We found it loud and bright."
"I know exactly what you mean," Rarity said with a smile, and again was given nothing in return. She shook her head. Nightmare Moon had never appreciated a delicate approach, so she abandoned it. "... Princess Celestia told me that you've lost your memory."
Again, a tightening, and again a slow, conscious relaxation. "'Lost' is not the right word," she said in a dull tone. "Those memories were never ours to begin with."
Caution. "So... You do remember, if not recognize."
Luna sighed, a releasing of something. "It is... murky. We get only snatches in the darkness." A bird flew past, but Luna's head did not turn to follow it. It wasn't clear what she was looking at. Perhaps she was staring into the past. "But your eyes... We remember them clearly. They stand out like torches in the night."
Rarity's heart leapt. To not just be remembered, but to stand out! To ward away the darkness that was Nightmare Moon's reign! She could not have hoped for better. Surely the coldness had only been cold hooves, and she was testing to see whether it was a chapter Rarity would want to put behind her. She could taste a kiss without fangs, and she could even initiate it this time!
Luna turned.
Once, in a severely misguided attempt at pillow talk, a homesick Rarity had asked Nightmare Moon if she missed her sister. The snarl of hatred on Luna's face now was identical. And it was a snarl, like a pit of Everfree brambles, and she still wanted to jump headlong into it, to be so lost in the tangle of thorns that pulling her out would spell death from bloodloss. Why was that, when she should be afraid? If she didn't move she could live there forever.
"We cannot stand those eyes, and all those memories of them glittering with rapt servitude," she spat. "You followed the Nightmare, you helped it, you even—" She shuddered. "You are hers. We are not free so long as you keep looking at us."
"Wh— What?.." Rarity whimpered, stepping back, eyes wide, heart seizing. The image of the shattered sun hung in her mind, those stone shards nopony was ever allowed to clean up. The maids had fled the vicinity.
The Princess advanced, forcing Rarity to step back into the shade of the hallway. "Perhaps your time with that wretch left you unprepared for the subtlety becoming of a royal." Her turquoise eyes glowed like chips of ice in the midday sun, piercing into her: frostbite, cold then warmth then an aching absence for the rest of your life. "We despise you, Rarity. Your generosity is a poison, because you care not to whom you give."
"But... What are you talking about? If you didn't love me, who did?" she asked, lost. "All that time—"
"No one loved you, Rarity." The words struck with the weight of a royal edict, just as Luna's face fell from fury to resignation. "You were a belonging. An object. A plaything." Luna turned away, but Rarity could still see the hatred written in every muscle of her pose. "But now, you are yours again. So leave, and let this be the last we speak, lest we explore the limits our sister has surely placed on our authority."
"But..." She felt the hot embarrassment of tears poking at her eyes, and wished desperately that Nightmare Moon was there to lap them up and laugh, deep and velvety. She needed her to externalize the hatred she held for her own weakness. "But I loved her," Rarity wanted to say, but couldn't. What did Luna's laugh sound like? Didn't she deserve to know at least that much? At least it would let Rarity know that this mare was a stranger after all.
But she wouldn't laugh. Finally, her patience tore, her wings flaring as she whipped her head to the side, a single ice-blue eye staring back. "Did thou not hear us? We dismiss thee! Begone!"
At that, Rarity turned so suddenly she nearly fell over. She ran, vision blurred by her now freely flowing tears, and kept running, the echoes of Luna's rejection swimming in her mind, until she was out of the castle.
It was too loud in the garden.
Bright colors fought for Rarity's attention through the tears, the calming monochrome of night thrown out and replaced by garish blobs of blue and green and yellow. She tore out the tie that kept her mane pulled back in a tight bun. Tresses she'd lost the time to care for fell around her face, framing her vision with loose ends. She felt the sleep pulling at her eyes and the eyebags beneath them, concealed by makeup. Her legs ached. Her flank stung. Five years serving under Nightmare Moon in every sense, and now... nothing.
The Element's gold setting was hard against her teeth as she grabbed it and yanked, trying to flick it off her head. Instead, the delicate chain holding it became tangled in her hair, each shake of her head only confounding her further. Finally, with a shriek of frustration and a burst of magic, she snapped the chain and threw the Element away. As it soared, the slow-turning gold caught the light of the sun and lanced her eyes as a final insult. It vanished among the greenery.
Panic grasped at Rarity, as if the eyes of Nightmare Moon were on her and Her Lady would be disappointed in her unladylike outburst. But the nightmare was over. There was noone to judge her foalish tantrum but herself. So why did Rarity want to roll over and fall back to sleep? Instead, she trudged forward to retrieve her cast-off Element.
It was a little nicer under the trees and out of the sunlight. Perhaps, she thought, she would return to Ponyville and adopt a nocturnal schedule. Even if the moon belonged to Princess Luna now, she could still look at it and pretend it was held there by her mistress. That was her reward for saving the nation, apparently: an illusory love as tangible as a shadow. That, and the hatred of one half of the nation's administrative apparatus, coupled with the half-hearted rue of the other.
The stone had been amethyst, hadn't it? The Element she found in the bushes, a diamond shape like her cutie mark, looked to be cut onyx. She'd never been much of a lapidarist — the set of rhinestones on her flank symbolized her willingness to make do with less than diamonds — but this stone certainly wasn't the purple of her mane she had been sure it was. She lifted it in her magic and held it up to the light, turning it this way and that. Black as night. Shrugging at the unknowable mysteries of Harmony, she slipped it back over her head.
It was like when Her Lady would appear silently behind her and blow out the candle by which she'd been working. She'd plunge into darkness like flowing water and, before she could find the purchase of moonlight on the riverbed, the alicorn would be upon her, nipping at her flanks and chasing her to the bed, a path she could easily follow in the dark. The shadows lurking in Generosity, the virtue whose well she'd poisoned, gushed out like blood from an artery.
She had spent years wondering what love was. Watching Nightmare Moon's every move and trying to understand whether she loved her, or even if she was loved by her. What was that feeling that gripped her when a servant said that Her Lady was waiting? When a petitioner broke down in tears and the Princess turned to meet her gaze with a grin, like they were sharing a joke? During those dinners and breakfasts, which were identical apart from the food served and whether the work was ahead or behind, what did she feel when Nightmare Moon chose her to dine with, and nopony else?
Some ponies, like the lieutenant, laughed at the idea of love and sought warmth in momentary trysts with maids and soldiers. Others, like the visiting scholar who had claimed the Element of Magic, said love was duty, and Rarity had liked the sound of that a little more. The steadfast farmer, who had carried on like the sun still rose, had likened it to a fire set in the fireplace before you came home. They were all a semblance, but none had fit what she felt.
Now she understood: love was need. Not respect, or puppy crushes, or a warm little flutter in the chest. Not the way a filly needs her mother or a bird needs the sky. Something deep, cavernous, abyssal, and only revealed in absence, like the night, a fathomless depth of every shade of black, always waiting just below the light of day. Luna may have dismissed her, but she was still Nightmare Moon's seneschal. The Nightmare cloaked her in promises, oaths to return things as they were, to return her to a world where Nightmare Moon adored her and she could live in the simplicity of serving her.
She giggled to herself — no, to the Nightmare, as she embraced her again.
The moon wasn't theirs yet, but shadows pooled out from Rarity like the day had sprung a leak. She was a tear in their perfect happy ending — they'd tried to pick her unsightly thread out from the whole, but she was woven through and wouldn't be forgotten so easily. Now she would pull the whole tapestry down.
As she burst into the ballroom, ponies scattered in fear, upending dishes of gelatin and bowls of punch. The Bearers were new and timid, drunk on daylight and false victory. They remembered the weight of her hoof, and no longer had the element of surprise — or of Generosity. She only had to get through them to get to Luna. Then, she would have what she deserved. Not this new Princess, with her withdrawn frost coldness, but the resolute and giving tundra of Nightmare Moon.
Luna will see me. "Luna, you are blind!"
The farmer charged first, typical of a heart incapable of subterfuge. Rarity dodged under the cannon-blow of her hinds, then swept her head upward, rolling the pony down her back, where she landed on the floor with an 'oof'.
I can go back to the way things were. "You cannot return things as they were!"
The lieutenant followed with a divebomb from overhead. A burst of ice from Rarity's horn pulled her into a spiral, and she landed with a thud on the nearly-recovered farmer, putting them both out of the picture.
She and I belong together. "You do not belong here!"
The baker and the other one didn't even try. With a stamp of her hooves, onyx crystals erupted from the ground, walling them off from the fight. It was kindness, of its own sort.
We will have our happy ending. "This is not your happy ending!"
The scholar, of course, understood. She was standing resolute between her and Princess Luna, an impressive shield thrown up before them. No matter. A tangle of shadows rose from the floor on the wrong side of the shield, pulling the caster in. In moments, they dissolved to reveal the scholar on her side, her ward fallen.
I am yours! "You are mine!"
The Nightmare stood tall and glorious, surrounded by the fallen Bearers. Ahead of her stood the two Princesses. She would shatter Celestia like she had the stone sun in the orrery, and then Luna would be hers again. Drool dripped off her fangs. Despite her posturing, Celestia looked scared. Her prison would still be warm when she returned to it, just enough of a taste of daylight to make the next thousand years even more torturous.
And Luna. She looked so incomplete without her armor, half the height and half the might of who she was meant to be, who the Nightmare could make her. And she would, in a moment more—
"You know," said a little voice she'd forgotten, "once, Nightmare Moon told me ponies only think they need the sun."
The Nightmare whirled around. They were still in the same ballroom, but gone were the destruction, the scattered bodies, and the light. Instead, there was only a stark flooring of black-and-white tiles faceted into a diamond by shadows. A waltz played softly from the shadows, as if a phonograph sat just out of the light. Across from her, Rarity stood as she always had: proud and strong-backed, poise unbroken.
"We're social animals," she continued. "We operate on shame — it keeps us wanting what everypony else wants, because wanting anything else makes us feel alone. Everyone else wants the sun, don't they? So wasn't I lucky, finding somepony who would indulge everything I was afraid of, and only judge me for the shame that held me back?"
"What is this? Where are we?!" the Nightmare demanded. She lacked Nightmare Moon's piercing eyes, having only her armor and the shadows that always cloaked her on the throne, stirred into the shape of the vessel she had inhabited.
Rarity cast her head about with mild amusement. "Oh, this is just a little hideaway I retreated to when My Lady was feeling friskier than usual. Even I have my limits, after all." She walked to the edge of the light, looking out at the darkness, then turned back to look at the Nightmare. "Twilight Sparkle promised me a sunrise, and all the shame I hid from came flooding back. But she offered me the perfect excuse, too, though she didn't know it."
The Nightmare, frothing with covetous madness, darted toward Luna. With a ringing noise, she was halted like a dog at the end of its chain. A silver thread led from her to Rarity.
The smaller mare cast a leg over her brow in a dramatic swoon. "Nightmare Moon holds captive my true love, the fair Princess Luna! She is the one I will save, confess to, and exchange sugary nothings with until my teeth rot." A deep, velvety laugh echoed through their shared prison. "That's what I was supposed to want, wasn't it? Even if I had been granted that happy ending, it would've only bored me."
"What are you talking about?!" the Nightmare snarled. Fangs glittered in the shadow of her helmet, like Rarity on the throne.
"Why, I'm confessing my love to you, of course," Rarity said with a bat of her eyelashes.
The Nightmare stood in place, struck silent.
"I was wrong. Luna wasn't the part of Nightmare Moon that I'd fallen in love with, though she was the part that loved me and kept me by her side. I don't want whatever sweetness she has to offer. I want you. And now, I have you all to myself, don't I?"
Around them, the others faded into view. The Bearers coalesced from running watercolors into ghostly outlines. On the other side, past the Nightmare, Princess Celestia glowed like a pearl, and there at her side was Luna — not a shadow, but a deep pool of water in a shaded glen. Between them, between Rarity and the Nightmare, stood what they'd become: tall, strong, face cast in shadow by her unbound and flowing amethyst locks. She stood statue-still, reins hanging loose. Her gaze, like Rarity's, was fixed on Luna.
Confusion was quickly giving way to action.
"Oh, look at her," Rarity cooed as she studied Luna's expression. Celestia was calm compared to her little sister. The younger's face spoke of the kind of animal panic that nailed you to the floor in the face of something overwhelming, like a flood or a storm. "Utterly terrified. It's delicious, isn't it? She isn't like you and I, darling. She hates pain. She's only lonely, full of a shame she won't let anypony see, let alone cure. Why let her get in the middle of a good thing?"
"Now, girls!" The clarion call of Twilight Sparkle rang out in the darkness. Rarity didn't relax. Not much longer, now. She could hear the telltale chiming of Harmony drawing closer to closure. Even though she'd heard it only once before, she knew it like her own breathing.
The Nightmare apparently recognized it as well, as she woke from her introspection. Panic entered her voice. "Release me! If you don't let me take Luna now, then we are undone!"
Something somber fell over Rarity's tone. "You and I, undone? Quite the opposite. You see, I think I was made for the night eternal after all. Taking you there with me is no issue."
Behind Rarity, the din of Harmony was building, but something was off. Generosity was missing, one note in the six-part scale, its absence clanging louder and louder.
"Push through it!" Twilight yelled.
"No!" Princess Celestia cried. "The Elements are incomplete! You cannot—"
The missing part sang out like a sawblade.
As the rainbow of Harmony sped towards them, the walls of shadow pressed even closer, leaving only a few tiles to stand on. "You fool!" the Nightmare screamed, head still whipping around, looking for a way out. "You're damning yourself! Do you know what I'll do to you?!"
"Oh, darling," Rarity said, placing her forelegs around the neck of the taller pony so shadow and armor danced the waltz with a little white mare. "The worst thing you could ever do to me is leave." As prismatic light washed over them, she leaned up to whisper in her worse half's ear. "And now, you never will."
It was certainly a stark contrast to Discord's statue, with his face frozen in villainous laughter. Rarity's looked more like something commissioned and carved, perhaps a scholar or a dignitary. The smile on her face was calm and accepting. With her increased stature, she was looking down and a little to the right. Luna knew exactly what she was looking at in that final moment. She had been looking right back.
This night was bracingly cold, just how Rarity liked it. The statue was placed in the shade of an oak, so even in the daytime she'd be out of the sun. Luna knew many things about Rarity. She hated mushrooms, and loved satin sheets, and hated poppies, and loved lilies, and hated pain, and loved pain. She didn't have a word for what she had felt for Nightmare Moon.
Luna didn't know how she felt about her. It wasn't that she felt it but could not name it. It simply was one of many she wasn't yet able to assemble from the pieces she'd unearthed. Each delve into memory was like treading in a mausoleum, and she had dredged up all sorts of things that made her sick to her stomach. In stone, the brand of the crescent moon on Rarity's flank was subtle but present, just ahead of her cutie mark.
A blanket of down settled over her croup and she startled. She had been sharper, hadn't she?
"Good evening, sister," said Celestia, in that quiet tone of mourning she only used when they were alone.
"You should be asleep, sister." She who had tried to knock down the boundary between night and day lately hid behind it, fitting her schedule perfectly into the gap in her sister's, living not in her shadow but her absence.
The wing pulled a little tighter as she felt her sister's flank brush against hers. So much taller. "I was worried about you."
"I apologize for worrying you." Cold. Transactional. Hurt and apologize, hurt and apologize, throw out forgiveness like murky bathwater and run the tap again.
"Luna," Celestia pleaded. "It's not your fault."
Luna's legs clenched like steel wire. Every time her sister said that, it only made Luna want to prove her wrong. With the Nightmare trapped in stone before her, she couldn't pretend it was a lingering tinge of corruption as she had at the gala. The need to hurt others was all her own.
"What of the Bearers, and their missing member? Unless you performed another sealing, the Crystal Kingdom will return soon." The protection of the nation was safe, as it was far too important to factor her feelings into.
Her sister disagreed. "I wielded Generosity myself, once. But we are here because you gave too much of yourself with no thanks in return. Perhaps it is time you forge a new relationship with that virtue, so you may understand its limits."
The suggestion made her shudder. "The one whose life I stole... You would ask me to steal her legacy as well? You would have me take her Element?"
"I would have you take responsibility," Celestia said, and she flinched at the words. For all she hated forgiveness, admonishment was no salve. "So you may meet the citizens of our new nation for the first time as yourself."
Luna stared at the element. It had been placed on the statue's plinth as an act of remembrance. Was Celestia asking her to forget? "If there is any good in this world, it would reject me. I... I was so cruel to her. She generously kept what remained of me company in those long years when the Nightmare ruled, and I abandoned her. She was like me, and I refused to see her pain because it was my own. I couldn't share. And now..." She stared at the statue.
"We'll help her, sister. Her time will come, as yours did. Such is immortality: our mistakes may pile up, but we have all the time in the world to set them right. You will never be alone in that, so long as I am here."
Luna was silent, and, after a moment, her sister took it as her cue to leave, hopefully to bed. Luna remained in the garden, feeling the cool breeze stir her feathers. A nightjar called, mourning the eternal kingdom it had lost. Luna bit the inside of her lip until it bled.
"A thousand years..." she murmured. The younger Princess sat down on the grass and stared up at the statue and the patience in its gaze. "Very well, then.
"When you return, Rarity... I shall accept everything you feel for me, with all I have."
Author's Note
finally carved out some free time to write so figured i'd frantically put something together for this just before the deadline! i love you, women whose only outlet for their self-hatred is love 
