A week after the last changeling had left Canterlot, Twilight and her friends stumbled through the ruins of Ponyville. The small town was ashes, and as the tiny group huddled close, stumbling through the burnt and charred ruins like a group of post-apocalyptic survivors, it still didn’t quite process that they were looking at what was once their hometown.

“Gone,” Fluttershy whimpered. “It’s all gone…”

“Keep strong, ‘Shy,” Applejack said, though the way her voice cracked betrayed the tears standing in her eyes. “Ain’t all gone, we’re still here.”

“For what it’s worth,” Dash added, her wide, vacant eyes drinking in the blackened husks around them. Nopony responded. They just kept moving.

They had passed by the Apple family’s western orchards to get here. Applejack had watched every dark, gnarled tree go by for a while before turning back to the road, apparently deciding at a random point that once you saw one burnt-over tree, you’d seen them all.

They hadn’t gone near Fluttershy’s cottages. They all knew what awaited them there, and odds were seeing all those burnt cages and blackened, empty pens would just destroy whatever remained of her constitution. She didn’t need that, not after she’d spent nearly a full week locked in a bedroom in Canterlot Castle.

As they walked, Rainbow Dash tilted her head up, looking to the sky, her eyes closed. Her wings ruffled, but remained tight against her body. She hadn’t flown since they’d first walked up from the depths of that basement and into the empty hallway awaiting them, and Twilight couldn’t help but wonder if Jason’s punishment wasn’t going to be carried out after all.

Carousel Boutique was on the outskirts of town, and so it was the first actual building they spotted with real meaning behind it. Rarity didn’t lift her eyes from it as they passed, drinking in the shattered glass and the charred framing, the carousel-like roofing now little more than a few flecks of ash atop broken hunks of wood. They walked on, a breeze lifting a few wisps of ash from the ground and rocking the front door, the squeal of its hinges the only sound to meet their ears. Rarity watched it still, even as they passed by and she had to crane her neck around to keep her eyes on it.

If Pinkie’s mane had deflated at the moment Discord died, it had obviously still been retaining some spring, because somehow it managed to sink even lower when she drank in the sight of the hollow frame that remained of SugarCube Corner. All that was left of her home had been a few support beams sticking up from an ashy pile in the shape of stairs.

Finally, they came to a stop at the Palace of Friendship. The large pile of ashes still sat on the front lawn, beneath the defiled starburst that used to be Twilight’s Cutie Mark, once shining bright, now scorched and defaced. Twilight scanned the palace over, knowing full well that her cutie mark would be long gone from its façade, having been scraped away with the sort of devotion that Jason had been able to inspire. She pawed through the ashes, eventually finding the corner of one letter that had not burned all the way.

“…my friends and I all learned an important lesson: never judge a book by its cov…” she trailed off as the scrap ended, holding it close to her chest.

“Zecora,” Rainbow whispered, shaking her head as tears poured down her cheeks. “We were supposed to have learned that lesson.”

“We did, Rainbow, for that time,” Twilight replied, her breath quivering. “But lessons can be easy to forget when one’s prejudices and fears drive them.”

“Th-that ain’t entirely fair,” Applejack muttered. “Part of it was…was…”

“Discord?” Twilight finished, looking to her friend with a vacant stare. “You know as well as I do he just gave us a nudge, anything bigger would have been noticed. We went with that nudge. Without another thought, we were perfectly fine with shirking everything we were meant to represent and going with our first knee-jerk responses.”

A sniffle sounded from Pinkie’s corner. Twilight didn’t react, only turning back to the desecrated remains of her home. “But…Discord, he…Jason…” Rarity started.

“Jason became everything we built him into,” Twilight said. “It was a team effort, girls, and don’t any of you dare forget it. We all burnt down Ponyville. We all destroyed Equestria at its heart. We all pulled the trigger that killed Discord. We deserve this...”

“Twilight?”

Twilight’s eyes widened at the sound of the small, masculine voice, bordering just on the outer edges of puberty. Her hoof dropped, her ears folded down. She turned away from the scorched remains of her cutie mark and towards the front doorstep. Spike stood there, arms hanging limply at his sides, eyes wide and dumbfounded.

“Sp-Spi…” Twilight started, but couldn’t finish. Instead, she galloped for him, still clenching the scrap of paper firm in her magic. He was running even before she was, but his legs still held some baby chub and so she wound up sweeping him up in her hooves, holding him close, nuzzling him, wiping his tears away and ignoring the ones clouding her own eyes.

“…okay,” Twilight whispered after a few minutes when she finally calmed down. “Maybe…maybe not everything. Far from it.”

“Twilight…I was so…” Spike looked up at her, the tears welling up again. “So…”

“Easy, Spike…it’s all gonna be okay…” she whispered back, kissing his scaly forehead, not believing the words even as they left her muzzle. “It’s all gonna be fine now.”

“Spike, what’re you still doin’ here?” Applejack asked, her wide eyes looking the dragon over. “We saw Jason take ya away…”

Spike took a few moments to embrace Twilight, then stepped back, wiping at his eyes. “I came back after the changelings left,” he replied, his cheeks still wet. “We all did.”

“All?” Rainbow Dash asked, but even as she spoke, the sound of a near-stampede neared them from the other side of the door. In a flash, a thunder of hooves entered the palace’s foyer, stallions and mares and foals alike all bunching together as they reached the front lawn.

“Rarity!” A voice cried out, and soon a shock of white and light purple was bouncing out of the crowd.

“Pinkie!” The Cakes that time, rushing forward to embrace the party pony.

“Rainbow Dash! Applejack!” The remaining Cutie Mark Crusaders were just behind Sweetie Belle, latching onto their respective ponies only a few seconds behind her.

Of the group, Fluttershy was the one who ran into the crowd, embracing the massive bear and small family of ducklings that had been too ill to shelter in the forest. Soon, the Castle’s front lawn was little more than a sea of ponies, all gathering around the six, all sharing stories and letting them know how happy they were that the mares were okay, especially after that terrible monster came to them…

Twilight’s ears folded against it. She saw Pinkie sniffle again, earning a tighter hug from the Cakes, whispering to her that it was all okay: the monster didn’t have them anymore. Pinkie’s tears grew until the noise of the crowd was the only thing covering up her sobs.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Spike whispered, his claw wrapping around Twilight’s hoof. “I figured you would be alright with the townsponies taking shelter in the Palace of Friendship, since it’s the only building left in town and…and all…”

“No, that’s okay, you did the right thing, Spike,” she gave him a cursory nuzzle. Suddenly, she felt very tired. Like she hadn’t slept in months, rather than in a little under a full week. A week… Ponyville was a bustling town with a dozen small businesses just a week ago. All of this had happened in a week.

No.

No, wait, that wasn’t right.

This had been going on for much longer than a week. About five years now, to be precise…

Dear Celestia above, she wanted to crawl into her bed so bad. More than anything. A few ponies came out of the crowd, asking her what to do, how they should carry on. She ignored them completely, and eventually, the few petered off to none.

“Oh, but that’s not all of them,” Spike said, seeing her folded down ears and bowed head and figuring she just needed a pick-me-up.

Twilight lifted an eye to look at him. “What do you mean by ‘all of them’?”

“He’s talking about us.”

Twilight’s stomach gave a twist as she looked up. There, right in the foyer of her palace, was her brother in his full military regalia, standing side-by-side with Princesses Luna and Cadence, along with a solid cadre of crystal guards.

She nearly retched. The thought of what she would have to talk about with them now made her muscles ache and her fetlocks quiver.

Twilight smiled warmly and rushed into her brother’s hooves, nuzzling into his powerful embrace. “Shiny…” she whispered.

“Hussshhhhh,” Shining Armor said as Cadence stroked her mane and Luna stood by, giving the small family space. “It’s all over now. They’re all gone.”

“We came as soon as the changelings pulled out,” Cadence said. “We knew he’d taken special interest in you girls, so we thought we’d check in, and I’m so glad we did…”

Twilight’s smile froze and she pulled back quickly, shaking her head. “No, guys…it’s not like you think…”

At that, Shining Armor gave a derisive snort, the military stallion in him taking over. “Twilight, whatever that monster has done, we’ll make it right, okay? We’ll hunt him down to the ends of Equus and make him pay!”

Twilight tried to reply, but found her voice could only come out in a loud croak. She leaned back, tried to tell Shining Armor that no, there was no making this right, there couldn’t be, especially not the way he wanted to do it. Except now he’d done a curious thing: he’d doubled himself. There were now two Shining Armors in her vision. Her jaw worked up and down, still trying to speak, and the two Shining Armors became four, then eight. Only now did she feel the hot tears stinging her eyes.

“T-Twilight?” Shining asked, looking at her in shock. “Wh-what’s wrong? What happened to you!?”

Finally, she managed to choke out the word: “inside,” ushering him in, waving her friends forward, trying to get them a bit of privacy in a smaller room.

Thankfully, Shining Armor was quick on the uptake, and shouted for his guards to take up positions around the Conference Room, the same room where the Cutie Map had manifested. Twilight let out a long, quivering breath as the small group trotted into the room, grateful to finally have somepony that would listen to her, but dreading how that somepony would react once the truth was out.

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Shining Armor didn't want to believe it. More than anything, he didn't want to believe what his sister had just told him. And yet, there it was, laid out for all to see.

Five years.

A creature had suffered like that for five years at the hooves of his sister.

He wanted to do something. He got up, circled his chair, sat back down again. Got up again, snorted, ran his hooves through his mane, saw Applejack. Applejack who, at the slightest urging, had nearly shattered an innocent creature’s ribcage. He stormed towards her for a couple hoofsteps, but as his gaze lined up on her, Twilight’s wing fluttered in the corner of his eye and he realized that if Applejack was guilty, Twilight shared that guilt times a thousand. As the ruler, her actions had set the precedent for five of the most miserable years any creature he had ever heard of had experienced.

He turned away from them, back to his seat. Twilight was guilty. His sister was guilty. His sister had started a cycle of cruelty and pain that had culminated in a military occupation by an enemy state. His sister, the little filly who used to build book forts and demand he name a creature from a random animal kingdom before granting him access. His sister, the mare who had saved Equestria countless times, who had become a princess, who was the only mare in the whole world that he cared about as much as Cadence, who had pushed an innocent to the brink of suicide…

He grimaced and shook himself, his head aching. “I…” he started. The six mares looked up, and only then did he realize he had nothing to say. “I…can’t…I don’t…” he tried again, with just as little luck. He turned to Cadence for help. She stared straight ahead, her eyes half-lidded, as if she were about to fall asleep. It was only the glazed-over look in them that betrayed the way she had retreated into herself.

“No,” the voice on his other side of his wife said. Shining Armor turned to see Luna, glaring across the conference room at Twilight, who sat dead center in the middle of her friends.

Twilight looked up, her eyes glistening with tears, and Shining Armor’s heart broke all over again. “It’s true.” She whispered, and then looked down again.

“I...refuse to believe it,” Luna growled. “You, the most powerful unicorn of our time, Celestia’s greatest student, let an ultra low-level chaos spell push you into torturing an innocent for three years.”

A few tears trickled down Twilight’s muzzle and hit the cutie map.

“Absolutely not,” Luna insisted, standing in her seat. “The mare who cleansed us of Nightmare Moon, introduced us to the magic of friendship, and gave us strength through many a dark hour would not…could not…have been so easily used by so simple a spell!”

“It wasn’t just the spell,” Pinkie choked, her bangs dangling over her eyes. “That’s what we’re saying. Our own petty judgements got the best of us. We…we let those overtake…everything…”

“Unacceptable!” Luna repeated, her hoof smashing into the table until the crystal beneath it cracked. “It makes no sense! It cannot be possible! It can’t…”

“Oh, would you grow up and face the facts, Luna!?” Twilight screeched suddenly, looking up to return the lunar princess’s glare. “That’s what happened! That’s everything! You’re just going to have to come to terms with it like the rest of us!”

Stunned into silence, Luna sat back down, her head shaking. “No, it…no…”

“Yes.” Twilight repeated, and her head bowed again. The little filly in Shining Armor’s eyes was long gone: in a single week, she had become something else. Something much older and much wiser than she had any right to be. Those wings looked like they weighed a thousand pounds each.

“Is that it? Are we done?” Rarity asked, her head still bowed.

“How can we possibly be done?” Shining asked.

“Well, do you have any more questions?”

“…No.”

Without another word, she got up and trotted towards the door. “I’m going to go hug Sweetie Belle for a while,” she said. “If anything comes up…well, that’s just too bad.”

Pinkie quietly followed suit, followed by Applejack, then Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. None of the mares looked at each other walking out. For a second, Shining could almost see the walls that had gone up between them, and wondered if anything could ever take them down again, make them like they’d been before. Twilight looked up at him, looked right into his eyes, and all hope for that vanished.

“S-Spike?” He asked suddenly, unsure of what else to ask about.

“D-don’t tell him,” she said, holding up her hooves in pleading. “Please. I know I don’t deserve it, but let me have that much. I need to tell him.”

Shining nodded dumbly, and immediately realized that the only reason he was nodding was because he didn’t want to be the one to see Spike’s heart break, to be the one that had to tell him what the six mares he cherished more than anything in the world had unwittingly been a part of. He hated himself in that moment. He hated himself for being so weak, and so stupid that he didn’t see what was happening here, for being too weak to stride up to Spike and give him the news that would destroy his little child’s world, for not seeing what had started here five years ago…oh Celestia above…

“The other ponies can stay here as long as they like,” Twilight said, her voice quivering again. “If you feel that…I should come with you, though…that I should be taken in chains…I…I’d understand.”

His mind reeled at the thought, and his stomach twisted involuntarily, nearly puking his guts up all over the map. He managed to shake his head. “Nuh-no,” he groaned. “Don’t think it will…be necessary…no…”

His mind circled around again. Five years. Sweet Celestia above, five years with the torture of an innocent on her hooves…but then again, was Jason all that innocent anymore? Oh Celestia above, what were they all supposed to do now? Track down Jason and avenge his sister and country? Place his sister and all her friends under arrest? Scream for Jason's blood for murdering an ally of Equestria? Or just plain scream?

That last option was tempting. He might need to keep it in mind for later. Oh sweet Celestia above, no, what…how…

“Prince Armor?”

“Yes, private!?” Shining Armor nearly screeched, turning in his seat. The soldier darted back a step, startled, then saluted.

“I’m…terribly sorry, sir, but we have a shortage of beds and supplies in the main room. The civilians are growing restless.”

For a heartbeat, Shining Armor’s head reeled. The civilians… what about them? Based on the way they greeted Twilight and her friends, odds were they didn’t believe Jason’s transmission from his little “trial,” or never even heard of it, but was that for the best? Was that just? Did his sister still deserve their love? Should he march her out there, make her repeat the exact confession she had just finished…

“S-send word to Canterlot and the Empire that we’re going to need supplies,” Shining said, practically gasping the words. “Blankets, food, medicine, everything for a displaced town.”

“Sir!” The guard saluted and turned, heading for the door, but Shining was fast behind him.

“Also, make sure we get a census going. We need to know who might be missing and just how much in the way of supplies we really need…er…Twilight?”

He didn’t need to turn around to know she had looked up from her desk, her massive, teary eyes gazing right through the back of his head.

“Twilight, if you could please get started on inventory,” he said, his voice cheerful and pleasant and feeling horribly like a mask he’d just put on. “I know you’re good at that sort of thing. Also, if you could work on a speech you might want to make for your ponies?”

A moment’s silence, and then a quiet, almost inaudible “Sure” came from the other side of the room. Twilight climbed out of her seat and trotted past, her hooves echoing along the floor as she slowly circled around him and exited through the doors.

“We believe…we will check on our sister,” Luna announced suddenly, spreading her wings to swoop out through one of the windows. She paused in the sill, glancing over her shoulder. “Wilt thou be alright with things as they are?”

Shining looked up at her, his eyes feeling heavier than they’d felt while he was under Chrysalis’s influence. “What do you think?” He rasped.

Luna bit her lip, but nodded and took off as Shining picked himself off the floor. He closed the window with his magic and turned back to his Cadence, his darling wife, sharing a nuzzle with her, letting her fan a wing over his shoulders as they turned and walked out of the room, shoulder-to-shoulder, deep in one another’s embrace.