Darknight took a position high above the factory floor, overlooking the ponies below from a great distance. Above them was a window that might once have been a skylight. Now it was dark- -there was little light this far north- -and snow had fallen in through the broken windows, piling below.

The alcove was cold, but protected from the wind. Rarity sat down on the edge near where Darknight was lying and looking down on his hundreds of brothers and sisters as they went about their business.

“You’re cold,” he noticed.

“I am. You’re not.”

“I know. But I don’t know why.” He paused for a moment. “I don’t know anything. I don’t know what is true and what is lies, or who am I am or why I am here. It is unpleasant.”

“That’s how we all feel,” said Rarity. “You yourself said that you were a pony and not a machine.”

Darknight looked at her. “And you, you feel like this?”

“Sometimes,” admitted Rarity. “More so when I was younger. Back then, a lot of thing didn’t make terribly much sense.”

“Do they now?”

“No.”

“So I will be like this forever?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps not. It’s not a question I can answer. I don’t think anypony can.”

Darknight let out a long sigh. “It was so easy being a machine. Now everything is so hard…”

“Can I tell you a story?”

“Will it help?”

“Perhaps. It concerns my sister.”

“Sweetie Belle?”

Rarity was touched that he had remembered Sweetie Belle’s name. “Yes. She’s just a little filly…well, not so little anymore. She’s already almost in her teens.” Rarity sighed. “Time goes by so quickly, doesn’t it?”

“She is between four and five times older than me.”

That was a strange thought, but Rarity ignored it. “When she was younger, all she could think about was getting her cutie mark. Her and her little friends. Applejack’s sister, and that one orphan girl…” A thought crossed Rarity’s mind, but it was so faint that she ignored it. “I forget her name. They spent all their time trying to find their place in life and get their cutie marks.”

“Cutie marks?”

“Yes. Why, they nearly ran me ragged! I don’t know what I would have done if I wasn’t able to change my hair color at will. I’d be as gray as the moon!”

“Did they ever succeed? At finding their place?”

“They did,” said Rarity, omitting the fact that receiving three separate cutie marks had driven the seemingly inseparable friends apart. “But my point is that it required a great deal of trying, and searching, only to find that the truth was really with them all along.”

Darknight stared down at the factory for a long moment. “But what if I’m wrong? What if I’m not really a pony, and I will never find my place in this world?”

“Well, what was your place before?”

“I was a Watcher,” said Darknight. He paused. “No. I AM a Watcher.” He turned to Rarity. “And I have to continue my mission.”

“Do you?”

He nodded. “I heard what Celestia said to you. About the canon ponies, what she will do to them. And what I know she will do to the Dark series. I have to protect them. I have to protect them all, if it takes everything I have.”

“Is that your decision, or are you just aping what Discord told you?”

“Discord is dead. Chaos is dead. I don’t care what they told me. I care about my decision. I have to help them. I have to stop Celestia.”

Rarity fell silent and looked out at the crowd below. “Then you are going to have to do it alone,” she said.

Darknight’s eyes widened. “What? Why?”

“Because I can’t help you.”

“Of course you can! If we can get the others- -”

“There are no others!” shouted Rarity, suddenly feeling her ire rise uncontrollably. “You saw what I saw, didn’t you? Pinkie is dead, and Pinkamena with her…and so is poor Sunset…and Starlight left us…”

“We still have Rainbow Dash and Twilight.”

“You saw the state that Rainbow Dash was in! If she’s even still alive, there is nothing she can do to help us with one wing.”

“We can find parts. If we can- -”

“You don’t know Pegasi like I do. A wound like that is far deeper than it looks. Her confidence will be ruined.” Rarity sighed and shook her head. “And Twilight no doubt has abandoned us as well. She would have contacted us otherwise. After all this time…it is just the two of us.”

“That is why I need you!”

Rarity looked him in the eye. “I can’t,” she said. “What can I do? What can WE do?”

“If I use the power again- -”

“NO! Darknight, it will kill you!”

“I have to! It’s the only way I can match Celestia!”

“But if you use it again…Darknight, please. You won’t come back out.”

“Then that’s a sacrifice I have to make.”

“And it’s one I can’t,” said Rarity. “Darknight, please. You have to understand. I have a sister. I have to take care of her. If I can get her, we can make it to the Crystal Empire. We will be safe there. For some time, at least.”

“How can you say that?” said Darknight, standing up suddenly. He was now as angry as Rarity had seen him before. “Your sister? Do you think your sister, a canon pony, can survive at all in a world ruled by Celestia? If you think she won’t conquer the Crystal Empire, you are a fool!”

“I have to try! I can’t lose my sister!”

Darknight gestured to the noncans below. “And what about me? How many sisters have I lost? How many brothers? How many of them have died for this cause?”

“It’s not- -”

“It’s not the SAME? Is that what you wanted to say? Because we’re not canon? They still feel pain, Raritiy. Fear. Loneliness. Loss. Those little fillies and colts? They will be dying on battlefields by the time they are YOUR sister’s age. But it’s not the same, is it? It’s okay. We’re disposable, aren’t we?”

“It’s not the same,” hissed Rarity. “You don’t understand.”

“No. I think I do.”

“She’s my daughter.”

Darknight’s demeaned suddenly changed completely. “W…what?”

“Sweetie Belle is my daughter. Does that help you understand?”

“Your…how could…but you’re not even thirty…”

“I know. Not that you could tell if I was. I had her when I was twelve.”

“But…but…”

“Does it change your opinion of me? Did I just fade from the epitome of class to a dirty whore in your mind?”

“No,” said Darknight. “I just…why did you lie to me?”

“What?”

“I…what is this?” he grabbed at his chest. “Why do I feel like this? I feel…betrayed. That you didn’t trust me. I knew every fact about you, but…we were friends.”

Rarity stood up, tears welling in her eyes. She had expected the same reaction from him as all the others, but gotten one that was the complete opposite- -one that she should have expected. “I didn’t lie,” she said.

“But you said she was your sister.”

Rarity took a deep breath. “She is. My half-sister. We…we share a father.”

Darknight seemed confused at first as he processed the lineage that Rarity had described. Then he gasped. “Your…your father raped you.”

Rarity slapped him across the face. She did so fast and hard, and he did not see it coming at all. “NO!” she cried. “My father is a gentlepony, he would never rape ANYPONY! It was- -it was just that- - my mother died in the Chaos storms, and daddy…he said I looked so much like her…and sometimes he made me morph so that I really did look like her...” She shook her head. “I must have caused it. It had to be my fault. Because he loved me. He wouldn’t have done that to me if he didn’t love me. I…I must have enjoyed it. Even if it hurt so much…”

“That’s why you left Ponyville.”

Rarity nodded. “The scandal…in a town like that, it gets out. What they thought of me…they fired me from the mines. I had no money. I had to go live with HIM. And I could have lived with that. Except that…” She choked back her tears. “Except that I saw him looking at Sweetie Belle. The way he used to look at me.” She looked up at Darknight. “I had to do something. When Discord chose me…it was my chance! I had the money to send her to boarding school, to take full custody of her.”

“I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t tell you. How could you have known?”

“You thought it would change my opinion of you.”

Rarity nodded. “Did it?”

“Yes.”

Rarity sighed. “I thought it would.”

“I can’t ever hope to be the pony you are,” said Darknight.

“What?”

“I do not know what it is like to have a father, or a mother. But if I had been in your place, I would have slit his throat. But you granted the mercy of allowing him to survive. And you cared for your daughter, one that you still love despite the circumstances of her birth. You took a job you knew would kill you to keep her safe.” A tear formed in the corner of his eye. “I don’t…I didn’t…I didn’t know…”

Rarity did not speak, but approached him and hugged him. He hugged back. His body felt cold, but there was some warmth within. Rarity could feel his heart beating, and he could no doubt hear hers.

“I understand,” he said. “If you choose to, you can leave. Protect her. But please. I do not think you will be save in the Crystal Empire. Not forever. If I fail, she will come for you in time.”

“You are still going to try to fight her, aren’t you?”

“I have to. For them. For you. For her.”

“But even if you win…you won’t survive.”

“I know. But I don’t think I was meant to. I am not cannon. I was meant to be erased…but I will have at least done something of my own choice, and for a reason.”

“Then…is this goodbye?”

Darknight did not answer, although they both knew that it was. tyle='mso-
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