Coco had imagined herself as many things throughout the years, but never a heartbreaker. Up until now, she’d always thought breaking hearts was something that took finesse, intelligence, and strategy that she didn’t have. Yet, as she took a pulse of the atmosphere and evaluated the situation, it was clear to see that was the figure she had become. Standing in the midst of the toughest crowd she’d ever seen, she felt strength beyond anything she, or possibly anypony, had ever experienced.

She was no longer just a Silver Phoenix member. She was a diamond-encrusted phoenix in her own right.

All those thoughts seemed like exaggerations until Coco let her face fall upon her audience yet again. Barely a minute into her latest testimony, the room had fallen into a silent explosion, as if everything up until now had already been forgotten. Everypony’s faces were contorted with some extreme expression or another—everypony except one.

Turning to Mosely, she could tell that nothing had changed in his empty expression. For all he knew, what she was saying could have just been another way for her family to sabotage him.

Just you wait, she thought to herself before facing the crowd yet again. It’s time you know what it’s like to be abandoned by everypony you love, Mosely.

“You may have forgotten by now,” she continued, “but once upon a time, I was just another pawn in your bigger plan. Once my family filled me in on everything, it was painfully obvious. All you ever wanted was to humiliate me like Babs, but that’s not the pony you are now, right?”

As if everypony else wasn’t shocked enough already, their eyes were practically bursting out of their sockets once they heard Coco’s latest words. Attempting to address the defendant directly, rather than simply weaving another story, was practically unheard of. A few thought she was shamelessly copying Cameo’s scheme, while the former Pink Lady herself looked on with fascinated pride. Even Polem was about to run to the podium, surely to get the raving lunatic off the stage, and would’ve done just that if Mosely hadn’t stopped him.

Coco realized the flaw in mentioning her family just about as soon as she said it, but kept going anyway. As long as she got him where it hurt most, it wouldn’t matter if he had one last spark of hope or not. For a few seconds, she wondered if she really had become such a callous, vindictive pony, but a single look at him told her everything she needed to know.

I can’t win this through kindness, she coached herself, ignoring the guilt in her heart. Not anymore.

“Somehow, I feel like you even played yourself in this scheme. You told yourself that you could never repeat the mistake that led to Babs’ existence, but somehow or another, you still managed to get attached. You made yourself think I actually wanted you, altered your brain so we had an epic love story. But now, I’m here to tell you that I remember the truth. Even how you want to whisk me off to Trottingham if you win this thing.”

That, perhaps more than anything else, was what irreparably captured his attention. That, Coco knew for certain, was a secret nopony but Suri and her inner circle knew, and as usual, the crowd reacted accordingly. Reporters turned to one another, asking each other if they’d heard the statement right.

“Surely such a thing has to be against the law,” she could distinctly hear one of the ponies whisper from the front row. “Propositioning an opponent like that, I mean.”

“Like this isn’t,” a nearby stallion muttered back. “Last I checked, the defending witnesses aren’t supposed to refute the entire case.”

As she continued, the two ponies continued to bicker in the background. She could hear similar voices dappling the courthouse, but from that moment on, they barely fazed her. She’d trapped herself and Mosely in another world, and she wouldn’t let go until somepony fell for good.

“And that’s what it’ll always come down to, isn’t it?” she finally spoke, louder and clearer than ever. “You can get it the way you want, or you can deny it with your last words. But no matter how many times we keep doing this, it’s always going to be the same. It’s always going to be me against you, and you’re never going to see it that way.”

Like an archer sizing up her target, Coco sent one last glare Mosely’s direction before turning to face the judge. As if she wasn’t already empowered enough, the very thought that it could be the last time—that, even if her mind still sent illusions of him her way, his physical face would be forever out of reach—massaged her body with sparks of excitement.

“Because I never loved you, and you never loved me.”

At that point, even Bambi and Cameo were shocked. Perhaps the one point of sincerity that Mosely had throughout this whole debacle was that his mind had always been on Coco. Granted, his methods were almost never virtuous, much less trustworthy, yet that’d always been the one thing he’d hung onto, even through his time in prison. Denying it was about as possible as proving Celestia didn’t raise the sun every day.

And yet, through precious little words, Coco did just that.

“I’ve got it figured out now, Mosely. The minute you got your claws into me, you decided to throw another challenge my way. To turn me into an Orange like a carriage into a pumpkin. You wanted to make me lose everything, but instead…you made your ideal mare. But since nopony else is around to tell you, I’ll fill you in: she never existed. Maybe she did for a few days or so, but the minute I heard about what you did, she died. Just like the way you see Cameo, just like every other mare you’ve crossed.”

With a dark chuckle, she continued, “You think you know me, and I know you just as well. I’ve had to, so I can protect myself and my family. You think you can get that old, lonely Coco back into your hooves through any means necessary. But I’ll never stop fighting you, and I’ll never let you bring her back. Because as much as you think you love me, I love them even more!”

She barely even had to gesture to the remaining members of her family for Mosely to get her point. Yet, even then, there was still a tiny sliver of hope in his heart, one that she could practically taste. She could feel the delusions entering his mind one last time, and as Polem raced to get her off the courtroom floor, she let go of everything.

Not the courage, but rather everything that used to define her. Meekness, softness, everything that’d kept her from escaping him in the first place. His last image of her would be one of flames engulfing him, destroying any semblance of his old life. The final closed door.

She would bury him with the Coco he so yearned for, the one he said he would sacrifice everything for. They’d meet only in the dark recesses of his mind, and every time he would wake up from the dream, he would reach out with hopeless longing.

He really had been right all this time, Coco thought as she prepared herself for the final rebuttal. He said that Babs would have taken everything away from him if he didn’t send her away. If only he’d known it was bound to happen anyway.

“They’re the one thing you can never have,” she spat. “And if you think I’d ever give that up in a million moons just to chase some swindling stallion like you, then you’re the deluded one! You can send me straight to the sun, but I will never abandon Babs like you did. If you ever spent a second of your life thinking of her as anything but a disgrace, you’d know that she was the one that pulled me out of my miserable life, not you. You’d know the pain I still have to patch up from her scars, from the one you gave me. You’d know that it took everything I had not to throw you to the streets like the trash you are. Because, Mosely Orange, a real bad seed feeds on other ponies’ potential. That’s what you do, that’s who you are, and that’s the one thing I will never forgive. Other than the time you nearly killed my daughter through factory-related complications, the time you nearly killed my daughter by forcing her mother to abandon her, or oh, the time you actually skipped all those fancy deception steps and flat-out pulled a knife to my daughter’s neck.”

A few ponies stared in anticipation, as if Coco had a wind-up key stuck to her back that would stop as soon as the speech was over. However, most had gotten used to the mare’s ramblings, or at least found them to be more interesting than the usual courtroom shenanigans.

“If you would’ve told me a year ago that there was a pony I would come to hate more than Suri, I would’ve laughed in your face. But then again, that’s what happens when a stallion seduces a mare and honestly thinks she’ll stay with him after hearing that he abused her daughter, much less defend him in court. You could give me a billion bits, a record-setting show on Bridleway, and make me an alicorn princess on top of all that, and I’d still be yelling in your face today. If I had a bit for every time I’ve thought about how much I hate you, I could singlehandedly fund the entire Equestrian nation and put my daughter all the way through graduate school. If this really does get you locked up for life, which I sincerely hope it does, I will send you a card every holiday, no matter how obscure, just so you’ll have to stare at the ponies you hurt, the happiness you blew away, and the mare you’ll never have.

“Just in case you haven’t heard it enough times today to get it through your thick skull—I never loved you, never will, and you are by far the worst Equestrian being I have ever met or ever will meet. So cross-examine that!”

As her point wasn’t already clear enough, she stomped all the way back to her seat and almost felt tempted to leave the area in general. However, what ended up bringing her back from reality—and out of her red cloud of anger—was the look on Mosely’s face. When she saw him, she saw something potentially even deeper than despair, something that switched from emptiness to surprise and then back again. It was the most unstable, undignified expression she had ever seen, and for once, she wanted to stare at his face forever.

While she sincerely hoped she would never have to break anypony like this ever again, she couldn’t help but feel a little satisfied at her handiwork. That, and a tinge of embarrassment for actually thinking “cross-examine that” was a legitimately frightening threat. In any case, both feelings disappeared as soon as they came when Polem testified yet again, attempting to erase any impacts Coco’s lecture-ridden account had provided.

Or at least they would have, if Coco was still her old self. Traces of her were still there, the pony that Mosely had loved, and sometimes, she could still feel them struggle with every step. As she looked at Cameo for the first time in hours, she couldn’t help but wonder if the older mare, too, felt the same way.

But even in that moment, she knew that internal battle would come another day. For now, all she could do was wait for fate to unfold with the ponies she loved, and for now, love was enough.

By the time the jury had finally announced their verdict, the sun was already sinking into the sky. Coco could practically feel the entire city coming to a halt, as if she’d frozen Manehattan in an endless slumber. In one way or another, whether in the courtroom or in the screens broadcasting the case, she could see everypony’s eyes trained on her, with a pair of green ones standing out amongst the crowd. Trying to play with her fellow Crusaders, failing, and staring at the sky as if Celestia herself would pass judgement.

Coco barely even thought about whether the feeling was magical or mundane—it was just something she knew as well as her own body. Still, she remained focused on that sensation during those agonizing moments, when the jury decided and everypony else went into a trance.

She’d looked at them more times than she could count, possibly even more than she’d looked at her family all day long. After her confession, she didn’t even think to look at Mosely, yet another inexplicable instinct that she was happy to leave unsolved. On the other hoof, seeing a dozen ponies sheltered from the crowd, ones that she had never known and likely would never know, piqued her curiosity in ways he didn’t. They were the final unpredictable part of her life, the one thing keeping her from peace. Like her dream, their faces were blank.

She fought through the doubt anyway. It would not come to pass if she had anything to do about it.

Surprisingly enough, the verdict had been quick and painless, to their side at least. To the other, it would mean the end of an era, of everything they ever knew. Something that might as well have meant the end of a life.

A single representative strode forward in his confident way, took the stage one last time, and spoke the lines that would change Bridleway forever.

“We the jury find the defendant, Mosely Orange, guilty of—“

At that point, most ponies were so excited to hear justice being served that they barely even listened to the rest of the juror’s speech, latching onto that particular little word instead. His catalog of crimes, after all, were about as long as a four-pony household’s shopping list, but Coco still listened for one critical point. The more she thought about it, the more she wondered why hearing it was so important to her, considering he’d already been locked up. But sure enough, it finally came.

“…and accessory to pony trafficking.”

Granted, Coco had no clue how he could’ve possibly avoided that punishment, yet hearing that was almost enough to wash everything away. She’d often thought of how the nightmare would end, of how she would feel when he was punished, and just about every time, she figured it would be relief.

Instead, it was emptiness. The good kind, the best kind, where your body transforms into a feather and becomes a part of peace itself. The kind where your body doesn’t feel because, for the shortest of seconds, it sees no reason to know pain or suffering.

For that time, and that time alone, Coco felt as if she was in a living dream. One that would eventually pass, but one that would serve as an eternal reminder that she could not only conquer the worst of situations, but that the darkness had finally parted for the dawn.

Even then, the crowd did not part, and the case was far from over. After another brutal waiting period, one that seemed to last for both years and seconds at the same time, Golden Gavel himself finally spoke. Yet again, his words were simple and short, but their impact burned Mosely’s face one last time before it froze forever.

“Even one of these sentences would be cause for supreme retribution, but taken together, I cannot see any possible judgement but our highest life sentence.”

As Mosely Orange was escorted out of everypony’s lives forever, it took everything the prosecution had not to erupt in sudden cheering. Once the verdict reached everypony’s ears, Coco could feel Scene’s legs wrapping around her and practically wrenching her out of her seat. Sure enough, Mosely’s presence in her life had both started and ended in those layers of indigo fur, and Scene’s embrace felt like the sweetest poetic justice.

Even so, as the benches cleared and Coco stayed, she still felt she had one last thing to do. It meant pulling herself out of that safety and into danger yet again, but somehow, she felt herself guided towards Mosely one last time. When she approached him, he appeared to be nothing more than a living mannequin, drained of any ponyhood he’d ever had.

She pulled out her ring one last time, wondering for a split second if she really wanted to kick this pony when he was down. But the minute she moved the box away from her body and threw her hoof into a perfect pitch, she knew that this would be the second thing in life she would never regret.

The first, of course, was adopting Babs and finding a family that extended all across Equestria in the process. Even Applejack, Rarity, and all too many others who weren’t connected by blood were connected to her regardless, and that was one perfect feeling she would never let go of.

The second was throwing a priceless baby blue jewelry box straight at Mosely’s snout, telling him to “keep it for his trouble,” and trotting away from him with a model’s grace.

Away from all the drama he’d ever cause, from the heartache that’d almost torn two families asunder.

Away from all the what-ifs. Maybes. Uncertainties. Doubts. Weaknesses.

She gave one final glance as she looked out the door, and it already felt like home.

Coco knew she could never be a great hero like the ones that saved Equestria through the years. She’d always known that, but now she knew that her strength came from someplace else. Just as others would find strength in friendship and in magic itself, she would find it with special kinds of someponies. With the family she’d forged herself, and fought just as hard to preserve.

It was a quiet strength, to be sure, but it was one she could feel even in the cold of night. And as the cab moved about as far away from Trottingham as it could, towards the place where she formed everything she had.

In that new beginning, Coco made one last vow before gaining everything she’d once lost. No matter how many more trials were thrown her way, she would never stop fighting for the ponies who showed her the path to redemption.

And she would never abandon the new mare she’d become.

Author's Notes:

Well, we're just about at the end, folks! I've enjoyed every part of this journey, and I hope you've loved it just as much! The final part will complete the fic title, and it'll come out in early December. Since just about everything ended in this part, it'll be more of an epilogue than anything else!

For the second-to-last time, IGYALL Love Start~