The relationship between Princess Cadance and Princess Dash has always been an interesting one. They first met during Candance’s royal wedding to Twilight Sparkle’s brother, Shining Armor. While she was more than happy to perform her iconic sonic rainboom as the couple shared their first kiss as mare and stallion, Rainbow had not considered her any more than a friend.

It was not until her marriage to Twilight Sparkle that Princess Cadance became something more to Rainbow, she became a sister-in-law. In such a way did their relationship grow. More times than she could count, Rainbow and Twilight would rely on Cadance to watch their twins, and later their alicorn daughter, in order to have a moment to themselves.

Rainbow found herself very grateful to Princess Cadance. Twilight’s old foal-sitter was always there when they needed someone, they could always count on her to pull their flanks out of the fire when they needed it. Indeed, if it were not for mares like Cadance, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie, Rainbow doubted their family would have lasted as long as it did.

While she had not been born that way, Cadance truly was Rainbow’s sister.

Which is why what happened next weighed heavily on Rainbow’s heart. There was no malice in her actions, no vengeance; this was something that, as far as she was concerned, simply had to happen.

Upon seeing the blood, the princess of love standing over the body of her daughter-in-law, Rainbow did what she always did, she acted. Her mind put the pieces together faster than her consciousness could process it. Cadance was not under her own control. Whoever implanted that… that memory in her daughter had already gotten to the pink alicorn. She was not Princess Cadance anymore, worse, she was a threat. She was a threat to everyone around her, including Twilight. Without thinking, without letting her emotions get any say so, Rainbow acted.

With a speed only achievable by her, Rainbow slammed Cadance into the wall on the other side of the room. The Princess of Love looked up in shock, a look that was short lived as Rainbow’s left wing came about and cut off the alicorn’s horn.

To Cadance, the pain came suddenly and without warning, it was someone cutting off a limb. She screamed in pain before Rainbow rammed her head against the wall with enough force to knock the alicorn unconscious.

That scream was enough to snap Twilight out of her shock. She raced forward and wrapped the tan pegasus body in her magic. Channeling as much energy as she could in her situation, Twilight started magicly pumping Firestar’s stopped heart. She stimulated the pony’s bone marrow into overproduction of blood cells. She healed the stab wounds up and down Firestar’s back, she magically grabbed ahold of her lungs and forced them to inflate and deflate.

Twilight’s magic caused Firestar to breath in and out. Her magic caused the blood to flow through Firestar’s body. Her magic healed the wounds to keep the blood inside. Her magic did it all.

Twilight wasn’t even aware she was doing it. It did it all because that’s the way it should be. Her only thought was of all the things that should be happening in Firestar’s body. All the ways it should be. She sought to correct it, to make it that way.

With the threat of an out of control alicorn out of the way, Rainbow walked back to her wife. She wanted to wrap a wing around her, but at this stage, when every second counted, when one mistake could cost Firestar her life. Rainbow would do nothing that might interrupt Twilight’s concentration.

‘You can do it, Twi. I know you can,’ she thought. It was then she noticed the tears. Tears falling from her own eyes, ‘When did that happen?’

Twilight’s mind was one-hundred percent on the body wrapped in her magic, it monitored everything, every vital statistic that could be measured was measured in triplicate, compared with medical textbooks she had read over the years, and cataloged for comparison with future measurements.

Minutes passed as she kept the blood flowing through Firestar’s veins.

She kept her heart pumping.

She kept her lungs breathing.

She kept her alive.

She felt like someone walked over her grave.

It was slight, but Twilight felt it. her entire body shivered as the sensation was like a cold wind blowing through her. Like it cut through every single cell in her body, blowing through the connections that held them together.

It was a feeling like no other.

Worse, she had experienced it before. She knew what caused that feeling even though it had been almost sixty years since she had last felt anything like it. With that knowledge she connected the dots in her mind. She knew what had just happened. The Grim Reaper had just claimed his target.

Twilight paused, she was indeed keeping Firestar alive. She was keeping Firestar’s body alive. There was no brain activity. It was too late for that. Far too late.

Firestar was gone. Radiant’s wife… he’d never see her alive again. His foals just lost their mother.

Rainbow noticed the change in her wife; it was like a switch had been flipped in her. Twilight gingerly placed the body on the ground and folded her hooves across her chest. “I… I… I gotta tell Radiant… I gotta… I gotta… I gotta…”

Rainbow wrapped her wife in a hug and squeezed her as hard as she could. “You don’t have to do anything, Twi.”

“I… I…” Twilight’s muscles in her legs gave out; she slumped in her wife’s grip. The ability to stand was simply beyond the mare.

Rainbow held her in her grip. A realization crossed her mind as Twilight gave into Rainbow’s strength, she realized just how easy it was to hold the alicorn. ‘She’s so light, yet she carries the world on her back.’

Rainbow saw her wife glance up at her, her expression was blank, as if her mind was working on a million problems all at once, as if it wanted to be somewhere, anywhere other than where it was.

When their eyes connected, it brought Twilight back to the present. Tears started falling from her eyes, tears over everything this would mean, over how devastated everyone would be. Rainbow pressed her wife’s head to her chest, allowing her to cry out as much as she needed.

Out the corner of her eye, Dash saw several crystal guards standing outside the room. All of them were in mourning. They placed lowered their heads at the tragedy that just occurred in the Crystal Palace and the loss of their princess.

…………

She awoke to a throbbing ache in her mind. It felt like someone had just gone into her brain with an egg beater and went to town. When her eyes opened up, the light only made the situation worse. “It’s too bright,” Cadance called out.

“You’re awake.”

She knew that voice, “Twilight, what are you…?” the pain caused talking to hurt, it caused everything to hurt.

“Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake,” there was no joy when those words hit Cadance’s ears. Every word was full of nothing but sorrow.

“Twilight?” Cadance questioned just what was going on.

“Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake,” Twilight repeated the phrase, if anything she seemed sadder the second time around.

“What’s going on?” Cadance asked again.

“Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake.”

“Clap your hooves and do a little shake,” Cadance finished the phrase.

Those eight words seemed to cut through the tension in the air. Almost as if everything was simply resting on her saying them. Cadance tried opening her eyes again, she immediately shut them. “You mind telling me what’s going on?”

Cadance could not see the purple princess, she could not see anything, however, she could feel her in the room. Her mind put together a mental image of what was happening. She was laying down in a bed, her hooves were free but she got the distinct impression that she would not be able to get up if she tried.

Twilight was in the room, possibly someone else too, at least if her hearing could be believed. If she had three guesses, she’d only need one, it was Rainbow Dash. They were both agitated, more so than she could ever remember them being before.

“Cadance, what is the last thing you remember?” Twilight asked with a deadpan voice. The sorrow was no longer there, there was no emotion at all. Somehow, that made Cadance feel worse, not better.

“I… I…” Cadance tried to answer that question, she really did. Every time she thought back to it, every time she tried to remember, it hurt.

It was like reaching into a bucket of ice water for a small key at the bottom. She could see it, she knew it was there, but the act of grasping it was simply beyond her. “I don’t know,” she gave up.

“I was afraid of that. Cadance, do you remember Flash shaving off your fur?”

“Yes, yes I remember that!” Cadance perked up at that memory. “I… I sent him and his brother to Canterlot for the weekend for that.”

“Yes, yes you did. Cadance, do you remember them getting on the train?”

“I… no, I don’t.”

“Cadance, do you remember waking up today?”

“Twilight…” Rainbow cautioned.

‘So Rainbow is here,’ Cadance thought.

“Cadance, do you remember waking up today?” Twilight repeated the question.

“I… I… I don’t. What happened?” Cadence reached up to touch her head. The headache was forgotten as soon as she felt the top of her head, or more precisely, as soon as she failed to touch her horn. Her eyes shot open, causing her headache to double in intensity.

As her eyes adjusted, there were no more words said between them. Twilight and Rainbow waited until Cadance could speak again.

Her vision took a while to return, it was out of focus, blurry, almost as if her brain could not process the signals sent from her eyes. It took a few minutes, but eventually she could make out their faces.

She wished she had not opened her eyes. Both Rainbow and Twilight looked as if they had been crying for quite some time. Their manes and fur looked awful. Something was wrong, something bad had happened, something really bad.

“Are you two ok?” Cadance asked.

Twilight ignored the question. “Cadance, do you remember Aurora and Night?”

“Did something happen to your daughters?!” Cadance tried sitting up at that, as she suspected, there was a magical field in place blocking her.

“Cadance, you… you…” Twilight could not bring herself to say it.

The look on her sister-in-law’s face was heartbreaking to Cadance. “Twilight, just tell me what happened.”

“Are you sure about this, Twi?” Dash asked.

She shook her head. “No lies, no half-truths Rainbow. We talked about this.”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t remember.”

“And it will break her heart when she learns the truth,” Twilight finished her wife’s sentence. They had talked about it at length, however, Twilight resolved that there would be no secrets. This was too big to try and cover up. “Cadance, you… you…”

Saying you are going to do something and doing it are two separate things.

“Cadance, you killed Firestar,” Rainbow blurted it out with her usual tact, “Your memories were changed to one where Firestar committed the worst acts imaginable and you thought you were stopping her from killing everyone you loved.”

Twilight glared at Dash. She did not care. So what if it was tactless, so what if it was the worst way she could deliver the news. She saw a way to spare her wife the pain of doing it so she did it.

Cadance had been expecting the worst sort of news. This… this blew that out the water. Her jaw dropped as she realized that Rainbow was not joking, she would not joke about something like this. “Fir… Firestar is… dead?”

“Yes,” Twilight responded coldly.

“I… I killed her?”

Twilight could only nod at that, the tears in her eyes spoke more than words ever could.

Cadance’s hoof found her head; this was all too much, too unreal to be true. Again, her hoof found the stump that remained of her absent horn. She cringed as she felt it, “My… my horn?”

“I cut it off,” Rainbow stated it like it was the simplest thing in the world. Almost like she had said, ‘Hey I went to the store, picked up the bread, cut off your horn, and got the cheese.’ “You were an unknown threat; I couldn’t risk you doing something else.”

“I… I… I understand,” she looked down at her hooves at that, and then asked the next question. “How come I don’t remember any of it?”

Twilight took this question, facts and figures was something she could grasp onto, “Whoever did this to you, they did it by directly implanting the memory in your frontal lobe. They tried something similar on Aurora, don’t worry, she’s ok,” Twilight cut off Cadence's question before she could ask it. “That experience taught me what to look for. However, they did a far better job on you than they did her. It should have been a permanent part of your memory.”

“Should have?”

“Something in you was rejecting it, it wanted it gone. My theory is that Eros was all that stopped it from being a part of you, she gave you some resistance to it, bear in mind, that’s just a theory on my part. Not something I recommended we test.”

“Lot of good she did,” Rainbow said, “I want to know why she didn’t just stop it.”

Twilight ignored her wife’s statement. “We’re lucky for what she did do. Otherwise the only way I would have been able to remove it is by lobotomy. As it stands, it looks like you just lost the last twenty-four hours of your memory.”

“That’s why you asked those questions?”

Twilight nodded.

“Oh,” Cadance found herself crying. The weight of it all was too much to bear. However, she had one more question to ask, one more she did not want the answer to, but needed to know regardless. “Does… does Radiant know?”

“No. We’ve kept the knowledge to a hoof-full of ponies, so far it’s only the three of us and a few crystal guards.”

“I… I should tell him myself. He’s… he’s going to hate me,” Cadance sobbed the last part of those words.

Twilight wanted to go to her, she wanted to grab her sister-in-law’s hoof and hold it, to tell her that everything was alright.

As usual, Rainbow somehow cleared the cobwebs from Twilight’s noggin. Although this time it was simply by bumping her on the flank, “Go.”

“Rainbow?”

She whispered in her wife’s ear, “Twi, with everything we’re responsible for over the years, this is small potatoes. She’s still your sister-in-law, she’s still family. That’s one fact that will never change.”

It was simplicity in itself. Family always had your back, whatever happened, that would never change.

No matter what, you can always trust your family to be there for you, for them to have your back, no matter what happens.

Right?

……………………………………………..

What few ponies knew about Taz, is that he could not go invisible. Not in the literal sense anyway. Rather, his ability nullified the perceptions of those around him. After several days of testing, Twilight speculated it had more to do with the nullification of the magic senses in others, through a yet known process when he activated this ability it would cause those who looked at him to not notice.

He was still there, just not visible. Not to any known form of detection anyway, or that would have been the case if he had control of his ability. Had someone the wherewithal to look, they would have been able to track him by the sudden crashes of flying pegasi and reports of unicorns losing their magical abilities.

He did not have control, control and his mind were simply incompatible right this second. As was looking at anyone he knew.

‘You’ll never be able to show your face around here again without getting looks of disgust from everyone you meet.’

He ran through Canterlot as fast as his hooves could take him. Every single breath hurt; a courtesy of the bruised rib his sister left him with when the fight first started.

‘Freak.’

‘Sick fuck.’

The words had a way of hurting much worse than the pain of his wounds. He remembered something his mom told him once when he was getting another lecture about treating Aurora better, ‘the only difference between physical abuse and mental abuse is that physical abuse heals’.

It took being on the other side for that lesson to hit home. Taz welcomed the physical pain; it took his mind off the mental pain. It made him think of something other than his sister’s words, of his shameful secret being revealed.

He tried to outrun it. He might as well try to outrun a flying dragon.

His pain was one beast that would not be denied its next meal.

…………………………………………………………………

Fourteen years ago the fight with Ataxia had taken its toll on Night. During that fight the mare almost died to Ataxia’s speed. Ataxia caused more pain and suffering than Night could ever fully understand and she nearly lost several members of her family in the process. All in all it was one of the worst days of her life, only coming in behind the days she lost a family member.

That day was just knocked down another notch.

Ana’s eyes, she could not-not see them. Although her daughter had long since ran off to Luna knows where. Those eyes still haunted Shimmering Night. She found herself wandering the hallways of the palace, completely oblivious to everything around her. Several ponies were talking to her, several even yelled at her, and one was following her.

She did not notice any of them. Whenever she closed her eyes, whenever she caught something out of her peripheral vision, she saw those eyes.

They were a mirror to her soul, they reflected every vile thing she said to her brother and magnified it back a hundred times over. She could no longer picture her brother when she thought of that fight, of saying those things. She only saw Ana. She saw herself yelling, hitting, and cursing at her daughter.

The pain of her broken wing was forgotten, as compared to this, it was nothing.

After all, when your daughter hates you, truly hates you, such things tend not to matter anymore.

She walked muzzle first into a door.

“You back with me yet?” Ataxia asked her wife. She was the one that closed the door with her magic.

“Do I have a choice?” Night said as she rubbed a hoof against her muzzle.

“Well, at least you’re talking again.”

“Where… where am I?”

“Wow, you really were lost in thought, weren’t you?”

“I’d rather not go back,” Night said as she looked around. Somehow, she had walked all the way from the courtyard to the royal throne room. It was fitting in a way.

“Tough.”

She looked back at her wife with a disbelieving look on her face. Ataxia met her gaze eye to eye. She did not flinch away or try to play it off. Night found herself stared down by her wife. “Wh-“

“Get inside,” Ataxia’s tone became dead serious when she said that. She spoke with a conviction that allowed no disconcert. Night found she had no choice but to obey.

“Okay,” she pushed the door open. The palace throne room was deserted. Stacks of papers from the night court still lined the tables in the back. However, there was no sign of anyone in here. “Where is-“

“I told Luna to have it emptied. She’s quite cross with you, we all are.”

“You?”

“Yes, me too,” Ataxia glared at her wife, “I wanted this time to talk with you though, just us.”

“Can we not?”

“Nope, we’re going to talk. I don’t care how you feel, or if you’re kicking yourself. We’re going to have a chat. It’s time to pull up your big girl panties and deal with your mistake.”

“Are you lecturing me about taking responsibilities for my actions?” Night tried to laugh at that.

Ataxia walked over and slammed her hoof down on her wife’s broken wing. Night screamed out as she felt the wing break in two additional spots as the weight of the unicorn shattered more of the hollow bone that lined the wing. “What the buck!”

Ataxia glared at her, “I acknowledge you’re powerful Night. Heck there's a running pool over who is actually stronger, you or Twilight. However, right now, you have none of that power, do you?”

Night tried to show her up, she tried to heal the wing to remove her wife’s minor victory. When nothing happened, she sighed, “No, I don’t.”

“I figured as much. So for now, until your power comes back, I’ll take advantage of being the one with the power in this relationship.”

“What, are you going to transform?” Night rolled her eyes. It had been over fourteen years since Ataxia last did that.

Ataxia slammed her hoof down on her wife’s wing, again. This time around it caused the alicorn to buckle to her knees. “Buck me!”

“Don’t forget who you’re talking too.”

Night was legitimately scared at this point. This was not the Ataxia she had been married to for almost two decades, this was her before that. This was the mare that shut herself off from everyone else, the one that did whatever the bucking hell she wanted whenever she bucking wanted too, regardless of the consequences. The fact that she was callously hurting her like this proved that much.

“Why are you doing this to me?” Shimmering Night was crying at this point. Unable to hold back the tears she felt from the pain.

“Because you’ve never been that stupid before in your life,” Ataxia replied coldly, “What I saw out there, that wasn’t my wife, that wasn’t Princess Shimmering Night. That was a pony viciously hurting someone she loved.”

“He’s a fi-“

Another stomp, another shattered bone. Night was rolling on the floor at this point, crying. “Please, stop.”

“Why do you think I wanted the room emptied?” Ataxia walked around the room, giving her wife a wide berth, “You know what’s fucked up? I don’t even feel bad about this. I would never, NEVER hurt my wife, but you’re not her, are you? You’re a bigoted bitch that destroyed her brother. I actually find hurting you somewhat therapeutic right now, like if I can just cause enough damage you’d disappear and my wife, the mare I raised two daughters with, she’d come back.”

“Ataxia, please,” Night cried aloud. The pain in her wing was too high to ignore, it became all-consuming in her mind.

“I hate you,” Ataxia looked away from Night at those words.

The words hurt worse than any amount of pain her wing could cause her. Hearing Ataxia say those words, she wished she would just break her other wing instead.

“I hate you for bringing out this side of me again, the side that I thought I put to bed, the side I never wanted to take control ever again. I hate you, because, I know you’re better than this, I know this is not you, this is not us, yet you made us this way.”

“I’m sorry!!! Please, I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I’m sorry.”

Ataxia looked back, her own tears were falling from her eyes, “What are you sorry for?”

“Please, it hurts.”

“What are you sorry for?”

“I’m sorry!” she could barely say the words, much less articulate a response.

“Can’t talk huh? Well I’ll fill in the blanks and you'll tell me if I’m correct. You, Shimmering Night, are sorry for destroying your brother. You’re sorry for calling him a freak, for outing him in front of the entire palace, destroying his only safe place, his only home. For telling him that he can never show his face in Canterlot again, for making him feel so bad about himself that he ran away to Luna knows where. Is that what you’re sorry for?”

“YES!!!” Night screamed out the words.

“We’ll be lucky if we find him alive.”

It is said the brain can only process one pain at a time, the most extreme pain. This far exceeded the firing nerve endings in her broken wing. Those words were like an injection of morphine, suddenly the pain in her wing was forgotten. This was a possibility that Night had never considered, “What?”

“You heard his speech. It was obvious even to me that he felt conflicted by that. That he’d been hiding it for the longest time, the feelings he felt for his sister. I promise you no one felt worse about it than he did. From the sounds of it he even justified it to himself somehow. You OUTED him, you took his most embarrassing and intimate secret and held it up for the world to see,” Ataxia sighed before continuing.

“He may kill himself because of it. Because of your actions your brother may not be found alive.”

“No, I-” Night tried to stand, this new development… it was the worst case scenario, a scenario she had never considered. Her actions could not lead to that, it would not lead to that, not if she had anything to say. Unfortunately, she had nothing to say on the subject as standing up was beyond her. As soon as she tried Night immediately fell back over from the pain in her broken wing.

Ataxia lowered her horn and with a quick spell eased some of her wife’s suffering. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“We gotta find him!” Night shouted.

“And we’re looking, however, you know if he doesn’t want to be found that’s a near impossibility.”

“I don’t care!”

Ataxia sighed inward, ‘there’s my wife.’ “I know you don’t, and we’re looking, every single royal guard is out in Canterlot, Aurora and Icarus are flying around town, Luna is monitoring the dreamscape, and with the exception of Ana, who locked herself in her room, and Starlight who is trying to get her to come out, the kids are out checking all their old haunts. However, you’re not going anywhere. For starters your wing is busted and none of us have the ability to heal it. Secondly, right this second if he saw you he’d just run further away. You have to stay here, wherever Twilight went off to, you need to tell her what happened when she gets back.”

“Mom… I ran off her only son.”

“Yes, yes you did.”

Night laid her head down in her hooves and cried again, the realization of everything she did caught back up to her. Her crying was interrupted as she felt her wife kick her in the flank.

“What… what was that for?” Night looked up, surprised to see a sad smile on Ataxia’s face.

“That’s for making me be the grownup. That’s your job and I don’t want it.”

Despite the pain in her wing and the horrible feeling in her gut, Night found herself with a smile on her face. Ataxia laid down next to her good side and pressed their coats together. “Somehow, I don’t think stomping on my broken wing to get my attention is acting like a grownup.”

“Have you met me?” Ataxia replied coolly, “besides, Twilight already has to fix one break, fixing a few more should be no big deal.”

“Fair point,” Night said softly she lay her head down, “Thanks for this.”

“Anytime,” Ataxia cooed back.

Author's Notes:

Sometimes what we really need is a swift kick in the flank from those we love.