The Things We do to Protect What We Love

     Celestia gazed up at the stone-cold face engraved within the moon.  It looked back unblinkingly, with no trace of the love it once held.  When it was here, in Equestria.  When it was here, by her side.  When it was Luna.

     A wet sensation pricked at the corner of the Alicorn's eyes, threatening to spill out.  She let it, knowing she was alone, free to worry, free to hate, free to emote.  A soft trail began to trace itself down the fur on her cheek, sliding at the chin until it was released, falling down past her aching chest and down to her gold-plated hooves, where it would form a pool of salty tears if followed by its liquidy siblings.

     Celestia thought back to the battle that had wound up with her beloved sister imprisoned within the floating satellite that rose into purple twilight and fell into pink dawn.  There had been no ceremony about it, only a muddle of faint rainbow and white with pitch-black and marine blue fur entangled, a mess that had only one solution: the death of one or the other.  Or such was thought, for nopony but Celestia knew what said mare had brought with her: the Elements of Harmony.  Rather than watch Luna's--no, Nightmare Moon's--death by her own hand, Celestia's trump card had been imprisoning the Princess of the Night within her own symbol, the moon.

     Then she began to think about what she had done.  Had imprisoning her only family been too weak?  She would certainly rather face death than eternal imprisonment, for at least she could be free.  Mind you, without a body, but still free.  But up there...  Did Luna have the ability to stretch her wings?  Test her magic?  Walk with her regal head held high?  Probably not, Celestia thought.  I trapped her.  If she could do that, I might as well have let her do as she pleased with her wrath down here.

     "Luna...  Did I make the right choice?"  Her voice was naught but a whisper when she spoke, carried away in a cloud of mist in the frigid night air.

     Her only response was a breeze of icy chill, biting into her flowing mane.

     "Oh, what have I done...?"