Author's Notes:

I haven't decided if I'm going to split interludes off from the main story yet. This particular interlude holds some main-plot relevance, however, so regardless of my final decision on interludes, this one will remain in place. I have others outlined, but if I choose to publish, they will be published as separate chapters rather than updates to this one.

Stand by for a meatier full chapter when the Sova completes its rendezvous with the fleet.

Black sleep evaporated into grey wakefulness. The portholes in the med bay were now dark as night had rolled in during the intervening time. Firefly would have preferred going back to sleep, but she already knew it would be futile. Her mind had drank its fill of slumber in the postoperative haze, even more so after the falling out that followed. Firefly grumbled into her pillow.

“Sleep well?”

The words blasted adrenaline through her veins and sent Firefly from lying down to sitting up in a heartbeat. It took a long moment of recollection before she remembered that she had not been left alone. She took a deep breath before she was coherent enough to speak.

“You’re still here.”

“I promised them I’d stay.” Roshina’s reply was matter-of-fact, smug, and as annoying as Firefly had ever found her. “I promised you I’d stay.”

“I didn’t hear you promise anything,” Firefly groused.

“My word was given implicitly and I honored it; that’s what matters, is it not?”

Firefly rubbed her forehead with a hoof. “I don’t even know what to think anymore. Or if I even can think.”

“What’s on your mind?”

What wasn’t on her mind? The ambush in the canyon? The fight on the mountain? The massacre by the boarding teams? The confrontation with Cindermane? The falling out with her own squad? Firefly could yell and scream for an eternity with every thought that was trying to force its way out of her skull.

But the words caught in Firefly’s throat. She hated opening up. Even with their more cordial interactions lately, Firefly still balked at Roshina’s prying. Not that Roshina herself was an issue. In the weeks since their initial spat, she had grown considerably more amicable, which Firefly had returned in kind. It wasn’t Roshina, it was the prying.

Prying meant vulnerability. Vulnerability meant revealing exploitable weaknesses. Weaknesses meant getting hurt in the worst ways possible. That was something Firefly never wanted to deal with again. Thus, it took several tries for her to properly articulate.

“You know what it’s like to lose someone,” she finally said. “How do you deal with it?”

“You’ve dealt with it for as long as I have. You already know, do you not?”

“Clearly not,” Firefly grumbled. “If that last ‘discussion’ had anything to say about it.”

“Point,” Roshina said, tapping her chin.

She shifted in her seat, crossing one leg over another and leaning back as if in deep thought. Firefly tried her best to read Roshina’s face, but in the dim light of the lone reading lamp of the med bay, it was difficult to make anything out. It was with a deep breath and a sigh that Roshina finally leaned forward again, meeting Firefly’s gaze as she spoke.

“It’s a balancing act,” Roshina said. “You can’t let it consume you. But neither can you bury it and forget. Let it be a lesson to you instead.”

“It was a lesson to me already!” Firefly growled. Her ears drooped as she realized she was lashing out again. Taking a moment to calm herself, she continued. “It was a lesson. But the only thing I learned was how it felt to hurt. And that making others hurt only made it worse. I could tear a dreadnought apart with my bare hooves and it wouldn’t be enough. I could single-hoofedly kill every single griffon in the ANA and it wouldn’t be enough.”

Roshina nodded. “Then you know. Petty revenge solves nothing. For a time it may quench your bloodlust, but it doesn’t make it go away. You cannot fall into the spiral of small, selfish goals. You must think bigger.”

“How big?”

“You must think greater than yourself, greater than the fight you are in, greater than even the war itself.”

Firefly flopped backwards onto her pillow. “How do you look past just staying alive?”

“It’s not easy, that is certain. But it is necessary. Even in the fog of war you cannot forget why you fight. Think on it hard enough and it becomes a mantra of sorts, something you can recite to yourself as a reminder whenever your resolve falters. ‘I fight not to end this battle. I fight not to end this war. I fight to end all wars.’”

“That’s what I told myself. That I was fighting to end all wars. But it got harder and harder to see past the next fight, past the next blow, past the next instant. How do you trust yourself when everything is going to hell around you?”

“I accept the consequences for my actions and I accept that once I make those decisions that I cannot take them back. The consequences of acting hurt sometimes, but the consequences of indecision before and regret after will hurt far more.”

Regret. Firefly knew what kind of hurt regret could inflict and she knew that all of her efforts to forget it had utterly failed. But consequences could be beaten, right? If she fought hard enough, did all the right things, then there would never be consequences that could hurt her, right? Oh how she wished. Roshina’s words and her own memories told her that was nothing more than a fleeting daydream.

“Of course I accept consequences when I fight. But after the battle is over it’s different. In the moment it’s easy. But it doesn’t go away after that.”

“You don’t have to live with it any minute of the day. A decision is just that, one decision. One decision is a step on your path. It does not define the entire path.”

“What if it does?”

“It certainly feels that way sometimes. But just like each battle is a smaller part of the whole war, every decision is a smaller part of the life you choose to lead. Always keep the end goal in mind. Don’t get distracted by every skirmish along the way.”

“A single skirmish can end you.”

“Also true, but you can’t let fear of dying in one skirmish stop you from advancing. You have to fight each battle knowing that it is one step closer to the goal of stopping the conflict at its source. To destroy the cancer, you must eradicate the source of the illness at its core. You must never lose sight of that.”

“And what do you think that source is?”

“Greed. Hegemony. Conquest. All were evident during the Continental War.”

“The griffons and Valerian Titanclaw.”

“They were the most obvious, yes. But they weren’t the only ones. Equestria became a superpower after they beat the griffons. Now that the pendulum has swung the other way; what is to say history will not repeat itself?”

“You’re saying that Luna might betray everything we’ve worked for just to build an empire in her own name?”

“Less Luna than the state of the world at large. If not Luna, then perhaps Councilor Nobleheart of Pyre. If not Nobleheart, then perhaps Prime Minister Vale of Hesperia. It could be any of them, though admittedly Equestria is likely in the most advantageous position at the moment.”

“You’re afraid.” Firefly turned her head to eye Roshina. “You think that Luna could be the next Titanclaw.”

“Afraid is the wrong word. I am not afraid to fight; I am confident in my own abilities to wage war should it come to that. But I am concerned; concerned that all of our efforts might be for naught because of the words and pens of a few greedy politicians.”

“I don’t think you’re giving us enough credit.” Firefly suddenly said, surprising even herself.

She was no politician. Firefly didn’t even follow politics in passing. But what Roshina said didn’t feel right at all. Even years of cynicism and perhaps outright sociopathy couldn’t make Firefly comfortable with it. Something in her heart knew better; knew that they could do better than dreaming dreams of empire. Firefly was perplexed until she realized why that feeling was familiar.

Powder had preached it for years. As long as they had known each other Powder had hopes and dreams for equality, not hegemony; for peace, not conquest; for justice, not barbarism. She carried it with her through Firefly’s attitude, through military academy, through the war, all the way to the moment of her death. Even beyond her passing, that tiny bit of her remained with Firefly.

“The griffons never expected us to fight back when we were threatened and they were even more surprised when we held back after we’d put a sword to their throats. We could have erased Aquellia from history, but we didn’t. Instead we helped them rebuild and forged stronger friendships for it.

“Powder always said that was what made Equestrians special. That our nature was to make peace, even in times of war, and to build up rather than tear down, even if someone was once our mortal enemy. That drive was strong enough to defeat Discord, Nightmare, and Titanclaw. I don’t see why it wouldn’t be enough to stop us from falling into the same traps.”

Roshina crossed her arms, clearly skeptical. “No one is perfect.”

“True,” Firefly continued. “But even if Equestria did turn evil, I’m absolutely certain that somepony would be willing to stand up and do the right thing. At least that was something Powder always believed in.”

Roshina could no longer hide her smirk. “What do you believe in, Firefly?”

“Us, I guess. All of us, working together...” she trailed off, suddenly realizing what Roshina had done. “Just like Powder.”

“Have you found a reason to end all wars yet?”

“I guess I’ve always had one,” Firefly chuckled, the weight on her shoulders easing just the slightest bit. “I just never listened.”