Thirteen years is a long time, yet old wounds have a habit of coming back to haunt those who bear them.
The Princesses of Equestria decided to spare the holdout villains, offering them counseling. Humbled from prison and asylum, shown kindness and acceptance where there should have been punishment and hatred, the last barriers of the unredeemed disintegrated like sand before a wave. Their rehabilitation fell under the auspices of the Princesses themselves, as well as Starlight Glimmer - the preeminent redeemed villain. The tensions of the past saw the Royal Family of the Crystal Empire sundered, but it also saw new families created in shocking arrangements.
A teenage Flurry Heart struggles to make friends at the School of Friendship, confused and angry at the divorce of her parents and their remarriage to the Crystal Empire's greatest enemies. An adult Cozy Glow struggles to forge a path of her own in a world that refuses to forgive actions she made as a filly. Chrysalis and Sombra struggle to adjust to life as domestic spouses, and loving step-parents to the youngest alicorn. Tirek struggles not to give into his hunger for magic. Everyone else struggles to accept this new paradigm, to forgive the final holdouts.
And, unseen by all, a final darkness stirs, enticing a filly with promises of power.
Alright, this was a project I was working on for... well, a few months at least. 10 chapters complete, I figured I'd upload what I have. It started as a simple fic about a what-if situation where Flurry Heart tries to adjust to her parents being divorced and remarried to the greatest archenemies of her foalhood, but evolved into a story about all the unredeemed villains.
Unusual for me, I've kept shipping to a minimum. I tried to keep the pairings as "canon" as possible, according to the hints at the end of Season 9 (AppleDash, FlutterCord, CheesePie, StarBurst, etc.) but I also threw in ShiningChrysalis and SomDance, which are pretty central to the plot.
