A certain purple unicorn couldn’t sleep. She’d been tossing and turning within her bed for hours, and yet sleep continued to elude her. Finally, with a single explosive sigh the mare threw the sheets off of herself with a simple application of magic.

Clover the Clever got up from her bed with a sigh. It had been a month since she had been responsible for banishing Luna from their realm, and the stress of the act had kept her from sleeping soundly since. What she needed, she decided, was a nice walk through the Castle of Everfree.

Celestia had ordered the creation of a new capital city, one more defensible than the current one. Clover wanted to spend as much of her remaining time in the old place as possible, dreading the day that she would have to move away from it.

In many ways, the castle was more of her home than anywhere else, even her original home... which had been lost to Discord’s destructive decade long rampage against the laws of all things right and harmonious. At the thought of the draconequus Clover shivered, she had been kept close to him during his reign, as had most upper echelon unicorns and there were things that he’d done which she would never forget.

One of which was the act of creating the thestrals, the bat-ponies who had made up the majority of Luna’s army. The original transformation had been horrifying to view, he’d taken several hundred captive ponies and begun to work his chaotic magic on them, slowly, and painfully, morphing their bodies into twisted mockeries of the pegasi that they’d once been. As the ponies lay screaming, their bodies mutating and twisting the twisted monster had simply laughed and offered Clover a glass of chocolate milk... which she was ashamed to say she’d accepted out of necessity.

Clover frowned and shook the thoughts from her mind as she began to walk down the aged stone of the castle floors, a dozen memories springing up with every hoofstep. There she was, arguing playfully with Luna about some magical theory, and there, enjoying simply sitting beside her friend as they looked down at the young trees of Everfree from the heights of the second story of the castle.

The mare paused at one of the windows and looked at her reflection in its shiny, reflective surface. The eyes that looked back at her were tired and old beyond her humble thirty years. With a slightly irritated frown the mare blew a lock of her purple mane out of her eye, noting how the pink stripe stubbornly refused to hide amongst its darker sisters, as usual.

She sighed and continued on her way, doing her best to ignore the ghosts scampering about through her mind like gleeful foals. Much to her annoyance, she’d picked up an escort supplied by one of the palace guards who should have known better. She turned to give the blonde stallion an icy glare, but he ignored it and continued to follow her. Clover knew that he was simply there doing his job, but did he have to be so... so... so damn obvious about it?

At least the mares knew to stay out of sight, but the stallions all seemed to think that she was in need of a strapping source of ‘moral support’ who would be easily visible should she break down into tears. Clover rolled her eyes. She knew that that wasn’t the only reason, there was also something about protecting her in case of an attack, or in case she fell asleep somewhere along her walk and was in need of somepony to return her to her room unharmed.

Oh well, at least he’s not talking, Clover thought to herself grouchily. Most of them can’t carry any conversation worth a damn.

Yes, she acknowledged that she was being unfair to him and the others like him, but at the moment she found herself simply not caring a great deal. After several more minutes of walking through the ghost filled hallway with the annoying imbecile following sedately behind her, the mare entered into the Castle Garden.

Clover sighed again, this is the place that she would miss the most... the sprawling garden was well maintained by an army of gardeners and planters who kept everything in shape while also allowing it to spread naturally. The end result was that the garden resembled the forest outside in many ways, except for much more orderly and with the occasional cluster of flowers growing along the edge of the path.

Soft moonlight washed over the mare through breaks in the canopy and Clover simply let her hooves carry her where they would as her mind continued to think of her lost friend. Luna had been... the one pony outside of Celestia and her mentor Starswirl the Bearded who she could really talk to. Now, one was banished, one was far too busy with reassembling the kingdom as well as creating her new city, and the last was... unfit to speak too. She sighed and lowered her head as she walked.

Luna wouldn’t want me to be thinking like this, A quiet part of her mind observed softly. The mare snorted derisively; of course Luna wouldn’t want her to think like this. However, that didn’t really help her, now did it?

She continued walking for several minutes, her mind simply wandering, much like her hooves. Eventually, she looked up to see that she was standing in front of an ancient white oak tree, it had been there before the garden, and it would most likely be there long after it. Coincidentally enough, it had been Luna’s favorite spot in the garden. Clover sat down on her haunches and closed her eyes, her head bent towards the tree.

Even my hooves lead me to her... the mare thought to herself. Why couldn’t there have been another way? Why did she have to be lost to that parasite...? she had asked herself these questions hundreds, if not thousands of times, and yet she was no closer to a real answer then she had been a month ago. She sat there in silence with her eyes closed for almost fifteen minutes before a noise from behind her caught her attention.

snap

Ordinarily it would have been undetectable, but with the current lack of noise the sound of the twig behind her breaking was unmistakable. The mare whirled with angry eyes to find that the stallion guard had been in the process of walking towards her.

“Can I not get ten minutes of silence without you overbearing eunuchs breathing down my neck!” she shouted at him. The guard froze where he was, eyes wide in surprise at her sudden outburst.

“I-I’m sorry Archmage, you seemed to be asleep,” he stuttered.

“Well I obviously wasn’t,” she snarled at him. “And now my good mood is gone.”

“With respect ma’am, it hasn’t existed in over a month,” the guard replied.

Clover simply glared at him and shook her head before turning her back on him and continuing to walk through the garden. However this time she was unable to simply wander, the garden, like the castle before it had lost its sense of peace and had been instead overrun with ghosts.

Everywhere she looked she saw Luna or her face. Sometimes smiling, sometimes frowning thoughtfully, sometimes simply angry. Clover growled under her breath as the ghosts silently watched her on her way through the greenery. The ever annoying guard easily kept pace with her even as she strived to move beyond him to the point that she was sprinting down the path.

No matter how fast she galloped, the guard stayed tirelessly behind her until Clover was forced to collapse exhausted against the ancient oak tree. They’d somehow managed to go in a complete circle. A great, tired sob broke from within the mare’s frame, and she began to weep. It was too much, all just... too much. She’d lost Luna, her rescuer, her friend, her... secret love. And now here she was, the great Archmage Clover the Clever, reduced to crying against a tree like a school filly.

As she sobbed she distantly sensed the guard take off his helmet and gently grab onto her, allowing her to cry into his shoulder. She stayed like that for what seemed like an hour, her nose running and her the fur around her eyes moist and stained with fresh tears. When she finally stopped she pushed the guard away and glared at him.

“I hate you,” she said in a low voice. The guard simply shrugged and retrieved his helmet from where it had been lying on the ground.

“That’s your choice, ma’am,” he replied.

Clover snorted and shook her head to clear it began the long walk back to her chambers. The guard, as always, followed behind her.

High from her balcony, Celestia watched what had happened and sighed sadly. Clover had always been... attached to Luna... and during the months of the war the poor mare had begun to splinter under the pressure of having to fight against the mare that she....loved. Celestia had observed Clover’s attachment to her sister long before, not long after they’d rescued her from Discord. Unfortunately for Clover, Luna had either never noticed, or never returned her feelings.

Celestia had never been sure which, but she knew that it had always eaten away at her archmage. And then... to be the one who banished her... it must have destroyed her inside, despite the coldness with which she’d committed the act. For close to a month now, Clover had been holding her feelings inside of herself, refusing to shed even a tear. That, along with the worry that the poor mare might commit suicide coupled with the ever present possibility of an assassin, had been why Celestia had ordered for there to be a guard watching over her at all times.

The solar alicorn let out another sigh and turned back to the stack of magically weighed down paperwork on the glass table that adorned the balcony. A nearly invisible white light hovered above the work, allowing only someone with the vision of an alicorn or a thestral to even hope to read it. Celestia looked at the first paper and frowned.

It was yet another noble screaming for blood over the actions that the thestrals, along with several of the other nobles had taken by supporting her sister in the war. The mare did the logical thing, she levitated it into the air, and then burned it to ash before letting it scatter to the wind. Celestia would not allow her ponies to suffer any further for her mistakes.

It had been her fault that Luna had turned into that monster, through a combination of negligence and obliviousness she had allowed the... parasite to grab hold of her sister’s mind and body, twisting them into the despicable image that had been raised an army Tartarus bent on conquering Celestia and bringing about ‘eternal night’.

There had been times over the last month that Celestia had been so angry with herself that she’d found herself contemplating the very fate that she was having Clover watched for... but in the end she’d found she couldn’t. There was simply too much riding on Celestia for the mare to really do it.

Without her, Equestria would fall into chaos and ruin, maybe even enough to release Discord once again. That was not something that Celestia would ever allow to happen again, in fact, she would sooner die than see that monster loosed on the world once more.

Turning her mind from unhappy subjects, the alicorn returned her gaze down to the paperwork before her. Next up, a request by the nobles to increase the taxes on the farmers. Celestia’s teeth ground together and this paper met the same fate as the last one, though this one she tore apart first. Even though the ones asking for her permission to wreak vengeance on Luna’s ex-followers made her more angry, she received far more of these requests.

Next.

She mentally sighed, sitting before her was a missive from one of the border posts, the Dominion was acting up again, pressing at her borders in their ever present search for gems. Carefully dipping her quil, one of her own white feathers in fact, in the appropriate ink pot she quickly scrawled a reply.

Only respond if suitably provoked, but if push comes to shove, shove harder

-Queen Celestia,

She wrote swiftly before pushing it away to dry and then moving onto the next one.

It seemed that the griffins had sensed Equestria’s weakness as well, and there were ‘bandits’ making probing runs at the outer holds. Luckily, thanks to the war, an expression that Celestia never would’ve thought she’d use, the holds and townships were all well defended and more than capable of holding off the ‘bandits’ until help arrived.

“Why is my reward for winning a war nothing but war?” Celestia murmured to herself softly.

Because sister, that is what you get, Luna’s voice seemed to whisper back at her from the shadows of the night. The mare did her best to ignore the imagined words and turned back to the paperwork. She’d been at it since her supper, and it was now well past two in the morning so the solar diarch was feeling understandably exhausted.

She was however, not exhausted enough not to notice the sound of somepony landing behind her. With an irritated growl Celestia turned, preparing to find yet another messenger there.

What she saw however almost drew an instinctive blast of magic from her. Crouched right in front of her was a thestral holding a knife. It took Celestia all of a few seconds to react but just as she was about to bring her magic to bear on him, the stallion inclined his head, and dropped his knife to the floor, kicking it over to her.

“My Queen,” he said softly and demurely. “I have come to surrender myself unto you for judgment.”

The thestral was obviously young, no more then a teanager by Celestia’s reckoning. A pair of leathery batwings sprung from his dirty grey furred sides. A messy dark blue mane adorned his head along with a pair of sharp pointed bat ears. Dark golden eyes gazed at her fiercely, but the mare noticed that despite the ferocity of the gaze, he appeared to be exhausted. Celestia stared at him for several seconds before she stood up from her seat and walked over to him.

“What is your name young one?” Celestia asked quietly.

“Moonshadow, My Queen,” he murmured.

“And why have you come here, armed as such?” She asked, picking up the dagger in her magical aura.

“To seek your judgment,” he replied softly.

“For what crime?” Celestia asked him.

“For the crime of my parents, My Queen,” the thestral told her.

“And what crime did your parents commit?” the solar alicorn asked as she bent down closer to him.

“They turned against you, your majesty. They broke their promises of fealty and died fighting for your sister. I am all that is left of my family, and I offer you my life in reparations for the crimes they committed,” he said all of this calmly, and Celestia had the darkest feeling that he’d practiced it ahead of time.

It broke Celestia’s heart. Without a word, and much to his surprise Celestia lunged forward and pulled him into a tight hug, drawing her wings around the ‘child’. Moonshadow stiffened at the unexpected touch, but once he realized that there was no harmful intent in the mare’s actions he acquitted and allowed himself to be subjected to the mare’s embrace. After around a minute, Celestia released him.

“There, that is your judgment,” Celestia told him.

“But- but my parents- we-they-I-” he sputtered, clearly having expected her to kill him.

“Oh my poor little pony,” Celestia murmured softly as she bent down to nuzzle him softly across the cheek. “You are so confused.”

“I-I don’t understand, I-I expected that you-that you would kill me!” Moonshadow stuttered.

“Whyever would I do that?” Celestia asked rhetorically. “While the actions of your sire and dame were most certainly unfortunate, there is no reason for you to suffer anything more for their mistakes. It appears that you have suffered quite a lot already,” she observed gesturing to his obviously tired, tear streaked eyes along with the disarrayed mane and dirty coat.

Moonshadow looked down at the floor. “Then... what will I do? I had planned... to not be here any longer... I have no home left, no family.”

Celestia gazed over the piteous colt sadly. “Well then, perhaps you should find yourself a new family,” she said with a small smile.

“But-but who would take me in? Most of my kind are having enough trouble feeding the children that they already have and I doubt that anypony would want me!” Moonshadow exclaimed, an edge of panic sinking into his voice.

Celestia bent down and nuzzled him gently again. “You miss my meaning young one,” she observed with a small smile. “I meant to ask; how would you like to become my ward?”

The blank look of surprise on his face was almost enough to make Celestia giggle, however she doubted that would be a productive thing to do. Instead she simply smiled at him and patted the chair beside her own.

“Sit here young one, watch me work, and when I am done we will find you some good food and a warm bed,” Celestia told him.

Moonshadow was about to reply, but his stomach beat him to the punch and let out an almost shockingly loud roar. Celestia was unable to withhold a giggle this time and Moonshadow’s face blushed scarlet and he looked at the ground.

“Or perhaps you would prefer if we simply went to get you some food immediately?” Celestia asked with a small smile as she looked at him with amusement.

“I-yes, yes I would,” the colt said with a small nod.

Celestia smiled and walked over to him, wrapping a wing around his body. “Well then, let’s go see if the kitchen can prepare you a midnight snack of some kind.”

Clover the Clever was emotionally and physically spent, she lay silently on her bed, her pillow wet with her own tears and her blanket thrown disorderly around her. The mare’s horn flickered gently in the darkness, acting to both create light, and to ward off the darkness within her mind.

Luna was gone.

That one thought whirled through her head over and over again in a seemingly endless loop.

Luna was gone.

The more she tried to ignore it, or smother down the thought the stronger it came back to her.

Luna was gone.

The thought hammered into her again and the mare gasped again and another sob surfaced from within her and she buried herself in the pillow yet again.

Luna. Is Gone.

Author's Notes:

So this is the chapter that I'm worried about, I hope that it isn't too confused and I hope that I exicuted it good enough. I'd just like to take a moment now and address two things. Firstly, Luna had no idea that Clover felt that way about her, and probably wouldn't have gone down the path she did if she had. Secondly, this is not a romance story, and there is no romance tag. While it may include a bit here and there, it wil only be used sparingly and will not become the point of this storty as a whole.

Also, I've come to a desicsion about chapter posting. I'm going to try and post one every monday starting tommorow but if I fall behind then you'll just have to wait.

Anyways, thanks for reading guys, I look forward to your comments!