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Celestia opens the cell door and enters, on the bed is her greatest failure.

“So what do you want?” Sunset asked laying back on her bed in the shadows.

“Came to ask if you’re ready to help,” Celestia said.

“Of course not, besides it wouldn’t help if I did. The ritual needs me to see you as my mother and the daughter you choose over me as a friend,” Sunset said.

“Sunset please the magic is gone and things are just falling apart. Please just help and I’ll give you what you want,” Celestia pleaded.

“Too late to do anything. You’re not going to make years of abandonment just go away and a strong mother and daughter bond will be made. Or I suddenly have a close bond of friendship with the daughter you replace me with?” Sunset asked.

“She isn’t my daughter,” Celestia protested.

“And yet you treated her as one compared to me. So how are you going to fix this mess mom? Send me and Twilight on a quest and giving us a riddle we have to solve and not just tell us what we need to do instead? Where we get no help while you sit back doing nothing like you always do?” Sunset mocked.

“I have my royal duties,” Celestia said sharply.

“I wish I was aunt Luna’s daughter. She wouldn’t have just toss me aside and only care about me when she has no other choice,” Sunset said.

“I do care,” Celestia said.

“Empty words like always. I stop believing you love me years ago and with your endless campaign of showing me that you didn’t care for me has done it job. I can’t love you or trust you, you’re not a mother or you ever wanted to be one. And now only when the magic has been taken away and the only way to restore it is by the bond of you and me. Is when you suddenly care about me and want to be my mother. Too late,” Sunset said.

“It’s not too late,” Celestia said.

“Oh really?” Sunset said sitting up and into the light revealing her worn and aged face of around 50 years old. “Because of you refusing to make me into an alicorn or just telling me how. I’m now old while you’re still young. But not for long as I’m betting that without magic you’re starting to age once again and you’ll be like me.”

“I will make you an alicorn once magic is restored,” Celestia said.

“No deal make me an alicorn first,” Sunset said.

“But I can’t without magic,” Celestia said.

“Oh because I giving you an impossible task that you need to solve on your own, you can’t do it. While when you do it to me, you just expect me to do it with no help what so ever and any failure is on me and not you refusing to help at all? No so fun is it when it’s being done to you is it. I will never help till you make me an alicorn first so that you can’t just say I’m not ready for it or some other bullshit you always do to me,” Sunset said.

“We can at least start over and put the past behind us,” Celestia said.

“Nope as you lock me here for the last 20 years and I will not forget till you make me an alicorn and I kill Twilight,” Sunset said.

“Sunset you can’t just ask me to allow you to kill her,” Celestia said.

“You’re willing to give me up for her, you should be willing to give her up to get me to restore magic,” Sunset said.

“I can’t,” Celestia said.

“Then you have no deal,” Sunset said. “One life for everyone else. After all you taught me that. You care for others above me. But looks like you only will do that to everyone else but the daughter you pick over your real one.”

Celestia left the cell and enter another room where her other self waited.

“As you can see she refuses to help,” Celestia said.

“I don’t blame her, you haven’t given her any reason to help. You’re still acting like she’s a young filly instead of a grown adult who is bitter at her mother who cares for others and put their welfare above hers. You had 20 years to make amends with her and choose not to do it, till you have no choice and it’s way too late now. There’s talk about forcing you to step down and let someone else to rule instead. ,” the other Celestia said.

“My ponies have lost their faith in me,” Celestia said.

“And you are nothing without your crown. Do you even have any friends? When I step down to look for my Sunset, I suddenly found myself with nothing in my life of any real worth. For all my talks about friendship when it came down to it. I had none in my life, just subjects,” the other Celestia said.

“Enough, are you going to give me aid or not?” Celestia said.

“Not so fun being on the other side is it. I've been talk down to by many of our counterparts who were a good mother to their Sunsets. You still have your Sunset and you can complete the ritual. It will just take you years to do so, as you take all of her abuse to be able to crack through the shell she put around her so that you can make amends with her. No quick fix just you doing what you been putting off and earning her forgiveness. Of course you only have at the max 50 more years before she just dies of old age," other Celestia said.

"And what am I suppose to do? You heard her, she wants to kill Twilight," Celestia said.

"Because you love her more then you love your daughter. I suggest you spend as much time as you can with Sunset and actually get to know her. You have years to make up before she dies of one thing or another, and you become old. So you better get started,” Celestia said teleporting away leaving her counterpart with the mess she had made and found herself trap in. (1)

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1 - Making amends and earning forgiveness would only mean anything when the one doing so is only doing it for another reason. Made worse when the one being amends with knows that the only reason is because the one doing so is only doing so because they have to.