Epilogue — How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful
Of all the things Wallflower Blush ever imagined she'd do, visiting her and Sunset's favorite places with their daughter wasn't one of them.
The way to the lake hadn't changed at all in the nearly three years since they'd last come here. Towering pines lined the pathway from the little dirt parking lot on the side of the road all the way down to the water, where the low grass and shade gave way to the wide open shores. At the edge of the sands were the same set of picnic tables, and far above it all, the same stars watched from overhead. If Wallflower didn't know any better, coming here would've felt like stepping back in time.
That said, the walk from the car was definitely a bit more strenuous than it had been during her last visit.
"Are you sure you don't want me to hold her, hon?" Sunset repeated the offer she'd made when they first got out of the car.
Wallflower shook her head—slowly, so as not to disturb the sleeping child in her arms. "It's okay, I can handle it," she said. "Besides, carrying her is a nice bit of nostalgia for me."
"Yeah, I bet it is." Even in the dark of the night, Wallflower could make out Sunset's smile. "Just be sure to ask for help if you need it, okay?"
"Don't worry, you're getting her on the way back," Wallflower teased.
"As if the alternative is even an option," Sunset said. "Your doctor would kill me if she found out I was letting you carry around a twenty-pound kid like this."
"Yeah, yeah…" Shifting her weight to better hold up the snoozing child clinging to her, Wallflower sighed. "You're right, I probably shouldn't be, but… I realized lately that soon, she'll be so big that I won't be able to pick her up anymore. I guess I want to hold her like this every chance I get."
The warm feeling of Sunset's arm around her waist prompted Wallflower to press herself a little closer to her wife. The two of them—three of them—stayed like that for a while, holding each other beneath a blanket of stars.
"Gosh, I haven't seen the sky lit up like this since… I guess since the last time we came here." Sunset craned her head upwards. "I've really missed it."
"Me too," Wallflower replied. "I wish we'd been able to make it out here sooner."
"Honestly, same, but I'd say we had some pretty good reasons for being so busy," Sunset said. "The wedding, the honeymoon, I had to spend months taking care of some cranky pregnant lady—"
"I am not a cranky pregnant lady!" Wallflower shot back playfully, still trying to keep her voice down.
Sunset laughed. "Can we settle on needy pregnant lady?"
"Okay, I won't fight you on that one," Wallflower giggled.
"Between all that and the baby, well…" Sunset looked at her and smiled. "I'd say we've earned a night of stargazing."
"Agreed." Wallflower smiled back. "Speaking of which…"
Wallflower felt a little someone starting to stir in her arms. Gently running her fingers through her daughter's wavy red hair, she spoke softly to her.
"Holly, sweetie, you awake?"
With a stretch and a bit of a wriggle, Holly made the answer known. Wallflower beamed at her baby girl, just like she did every time she realized—to her continual, eternal amazement—that this child was real, and hers, and actually really real.
"Mmm... Mama..." Holly yawned. "Where's Mommy?"
"Right here, baby girl," Sunset said. "Do you want to see the pretty thing Mommy and Mama were talking about?"
"Oh!" At that, Holly snapped awake, suddenly full of energy in the way only a toddler could be. "Yes! Pretty!"
Sunset held her arms out to take her, and Wallflower nodded, handing Holly off to her mother. Grinning broadly, Wallflower watched as Sunset held their daughter in one hand and covered her eyes with the other.
"Ready?" Sunset angled Holly so that the little girl was facing skyward.
"Pretty!" Holly said again, giggling.
Sunset shrugged. "I'll take that as a yes." With that, she uncovered Holly's eyes, revealing to her daughter a full, moonless sky, glittering with thousands upon thousands of stars.
"Oooh…" Holly's eyes went wide, and she reached up at the sky with tiny, outstretched arms. "Pretty…"
Wallflower followed her daughter's gaze, herself taking in the wide expanse of the shimmering heavens. Everywhere she looked, something was shining, twinkling, shimmering in her periphery as much as it was wherever she focused. The only place she had seen the sky more alive than here was at that little observatory in the mountains, where the entirety of the galaxy could be seen stretching across the sky. Silently resolving to take Holly there too, someday, she stood beside her wife and daughter and sighed happily.
"You doing okay, hon?" Sunset glanced at Wallflower.
"Yeah, just… thinking," Wallflower said. "There are so many places I want to show her, y'know?" She looked down. "Things are gonna get so busy soon… I guess it feels like we're up against the clock."
Sunset started to respond. "I know what you—"
"Mama, look!" Holly interjected, tugging at Wallflower's hair. Her adorable little smile glowed brighter than the sky as she pointed up at the stars. "Pretty!"
Wallflower's heart swelled. "Yes, sweetheart," she said, running her fingers through Holly's hair. "It's very pretty."
"Very pretty!"
After waiting a moment, likely to ensure she wouldn't be cut off again, Sunset said, "I know what you mean. Though, we have a little practice now, so hopefully round two won't be as hard." She eyed Wallflower's tummy, where the first hints of a baby bump were starting to show. "I mean, we're practically experts at parenting by this point."
Wallflower couldn't help but laugh. "Maybe, but soon we won't be able to outnumber the kids anymore. It's gonna get a lot tougher without the numbers advantage."
"Eh, I'm sure we can handle it." Sunset smirked. "Have you thought of any more names to add to the list?"
"I think we have more than enough already," Wallflower said. "Although, is your mom still coming over for dinner next weekend? I actually wanted to ask her if she had any suggestions."
"Oh God, Wally, look…" Sunset rolled her eyes as she shifted a still-entranced Holly from one arm to the other. "If you ask her for baby names, all you'll get are like… weird space puns or something. I don't want our next kid to get bullied in school because her grandma couldn't keep her astronomy obsession in check."
"All I'm saying is that it doesn't hurt to ask," Wallflower said. "You're allowed to say no to her suggestions."
Sunset sighed, then smiled. "Yeah… Yeah, you're right. No harm in asking. Besides, she'll just be happy to be included."
"Exactly." Wallflower pulled Sunset—and Holly by extension—into a light hug. "She's part of the family too."
Family.
Wallflower let herself sit with that word for a moment.
For the first time in her life, she had a family. Not a violent, hateful person she was related to and lived with, not a loose group of friends that she was technically a part of—she had a wife, a daughter, a mother-in-law… For years, Wallflower had been denied a family. Now, with Sunset, she had managed to make her own, and it was everything she'd ever wanted.
As she watched her daughter reach gleefully towards the sky, heard her wife tell their daughter about the stars, and felt the curve of her tummy wherein her second daughter was growing, Wallflower took that thought, cradled it, nurtured it, and breathed and lived in awe of its truth.
She made her own family.
It hadn't been easy. Even just surviving until she found Sunset hadn't been easy. The months spent recovering from malnourishment, the years spent untangling her web of traumas, the final grand hurdle of learning to truly let herself be loved… The Wallflower who overcame all those things suffered through so much horror, but she survived it all—all so the Wallflower of today could be here, seeing the stars with her wife and daughter.
Despite everything that she had suffered through… It all brought her here. While she would never be grateful to the traumas inflicted upon her for laying the path that eventually led her to this moment, she was instead grateful to herself—for holding on, even when it seemed meaningless, with the distant hope that someday, far off in a future she could never have imagined, her resilience in the face of so much pain and misery might one day be worth something.
Wallflower owed it to her younger self to make the most of the life that young girl had gifted her—to make sure it was a life worth living.
"Wally?" Sunset's voice pierced the veil of Wallflower's thoughts. When Wallflower looked over at her, she saw Sunset with a sound-asleep Holly in her arms.
"Looks like staying up so late past bedtime finally caught up with her," Sunset said.
"That's alright," Wallflower said, her gaze turning skyward for the final time that night. "I'm proud of her for sticking it out so she could see this."
"Yeah," Sunset said, grinning. "She's as stubborn as her mom."
"Which one?" Wallflower smirked.
"Hmmm…" Sunset paused, cradling Holly's head with her free hand. "Whichever one is stubborn enough to be cute, but not stubborn enough to make her impossible to put to bed when she's a little older."
That got a laugh out of Wallflower—thankfully not loud enough to wake Holly.
Sunset took a few steps towards the path back to the car, then turned and held a hand out to Wallflower.
"Ready to go home?"
Breathing deeply of the cool, clear evening air, Wallflower smiled, took her wife's hand, and nodded.
With the stars and sky behind them, and a boundless, beautiful future ahead, Wallflower and her family made their way home.
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This was a wonderful read, all the ups and down, the turmoil, the anxiety, the love, the talks, it dad all so... real and will done, I loved this read, sad to see it go so soon, but it'd be hard to ask for anything more. I applaud you.
A callback to the first chapter, finally delivering on the mentions of a daughter, and a peek into their married life? Probably the best way this could have ended.
Anything from two of my favorite authors on this site is worth reading, but this story especially is going to be one of my favorites of all time. I might even spare the time to reread it, which is a testament to how much I’ve enjoyed the entirety of this fic. The worst part about this is I’m no longer spoiled by reading a new chapter everyday.
YES! It's finished!! This was an incredible read and this made me ship for Sunflower even more now. I give you props.
Wow -- unexpected but foreshadowed skip to this epilogue!
The bit about space-pun names was very fun.
I like to think that a lot of Sunset's checking-in here is a hint about how they've gotten to this point. A lot is going on in the dynamic we see here, and it is good.
That one or two lines of dialogue connected hard with this bit of poetry (the last stanza(s)) :
And what else could have this chapter's title have been, indeed!
A round of applause! And what a perfect name for the little one.
11512717
It's interesting that you draw attention to her name. Not that your observation is in error -- it is very fitting -- but that the name shows up in another of Scampy's collabs, such that crossing the names with the associated characters between the stories actually caused a speed bump for me when I found it here. I'm 98% sure that Wally's mom is not named in this story and that, if she were, 100% sure it wouldn't be Holly. From "Three Act Play", with David Bryant.
11512758
Holly is actually my middle name!
It's used in multiple stories relating to Wally primarily because I suck at coming up with names, and it happens to be tangentially plant-related so it feels fitting. If I remember right, Three-act Play was originally gonna have Wally's mom's name be Ivy, but we didn't want to imply too much of a crossover with I-A-M's SunFlower series (where Wally's mom is named Ivy), given that one of the characters from that series also has a minor part in Three-act.
As for what Wally's mom is named in this story, uhh... I have no idea. As I said, I suck at names. Soooooo I guess her name is just "Wally's mom" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
"Uh, Wally, are you sure you don't need the painkillers?"
"I'm fine, thanks. After all the traumatic experiences I've suffered through, the miracle of childbirth is nothing. Actually almost nostalgic. Who needs razors when I can just let you knock me up?"
Sunset blushes profusely. "Not in front of the nurses!"
11512817
This is my favorite comment I've gotten on any story I've ever published ever.
11512833
And they never did! Every trip, every vacation, every President’s Day Weekend, it was Joanne’s Fabrics from 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM.
Except that Homophobic Harry wasn’t yelling at them from the stationary store. No, his skeleton still hung in the gibbet where Wally had left him ten years before.
It’s a good name, and I understand the significance of it, but damn it all if I didn’t wish her name was Dab.
Maybe they could use it as a nickname. Little Dab?
Should try to get the chemicles advantage. Chemicles are much cooler.
Wally gets there, takes a deep breath. “Well, I’m back.”
Wow, what a marvelous work of lesbian. I liked when they were gay, and I liked when they were in love. Rather fits canon nicely, in that regard, I think. It’s a rather lovely blend of romantic drama punctuated with comedy as Wally tries, tries, and tries to make Sunset leave her, failing every single time.
The strongest moments here are Wally’s schemes: the comedy of errors that come from Wally being too good at love to be a bad girlfriend, being accidentally emotionally available, inadvertently giving Sunset exactly what she needs at exactly the right moment. The takeaway is, she is not just better thanshe thinks, she is such a fundamentally decent person that she’s not capable of being deliberately cruel or harmful. When the story focuses on that, on the action of Wallflower trying, failing, and being confronted with her own lovability, it feels like it’s firing on all Wallinders (like cylinders, but Wally).
It’s not always like that, though. As important as the scenes of introspection are to Wally’s character (a key part of this story being that Wally is too stuck in her own head for her own good), they are so frequent and so long that they, at times, harm the pacing of the chapters. For the most part, they reinforce or repeat information already given in the story about Wally’s past, her trauma, and her state of mind. It feels like a compromise could have been reached between thoroughly developing her state of mind, and maintaining the pace of the story.
The genre blend, as well, doesn’t fully emulsify into a rich, tangy hollandaise of fiction. The humor, tragedy, and romantic drama are all balanced well, I think; despite the shifts in tone, the story never feels like it jars from one emotional extreme to the next. But some of the genres it tries to blend don’t feel as equally utilized. It stands out to me that Rainbow Dash is
fuckingdead, that Sunset and Wallflower go on their tripthe same day as the funeral (day after? I can’t recall right now)the following weekend, disregard my previous statement I am the bastard of the earth, and her passing is just. Never mentioned in the beach chapter. Or the one after that. Or the one after that.I mean. It’s one of Sunset’s best friends who died. But her passing only feels significant with respect to Wally, and only within the context of the chapter. It’s a good framing device for one of the story’s best chapters, but in the grand scheme of things, it stands out. Not because it’s tonally jarring, but because, despite the significance the events should hold, Rainbow Dash’s passing feels... pretty much irrelevant. To the story, and to the characters, too. It’s like if Vegeta died on Dragon Ball... not Z, I guess, because nobody liked him in Z. Super? If Vegeta died in Dragon Ball Super, and they had a funeral for him and then the next episode was about Bulma going to Wal*Mart for some chuddle dollops and lasagna, and nobody ever talked about Vegeta again. You dig?
Similarly, another thread feels like it goes unresolved: Maybe it wasn’t necessary for the emotional catharsis that Wally confess her scheme to Sunset, but it feels like it would’ve been important from a character and narrative standpoint. Instead, it goes unaddressed, and I feel that the resolution is missing something because of it.
I harp because I love. I love these characters, their story, and what you two home-of-sexuals have done with them. I cheer for Wally and Holly and... Sssssolly... which is what I will call Sunset in this coupling. I love the voice you lend Wally, and the role Sunset plays in her life. I really, really enjoyed my time reading this story, even if it didn’t... well, you saw my hollandaise analogy already.
I give it seventeen sad green bitches out of ten thousand ferns.
11512833 wow ok guess I’ll just go fucking die
I've spent days trying to come up with some insightful commentary, some sort of clever and thoughtful observation about this story and why I enjoyed it. Not only have I been unable to do so, but I still cannot adequately put into words how goddamn much I love this.
Scampy - you said this was "easily the best thing" you've ever written. It's also one of the best stories I've ever read, period. You and Gadot have simply created a masterpiece. I've been thinking about the final chapters of this ever since I finished reading; I can't remember the last time that's happened to me.
Thank you both for writing this.
I have nothing else left to say but to declare that this was just... perfect. They've been through so much, and they deserve all the happiness.
It's been a wonderful little story
I'm a sucker for bittersweetness and y'all captured the feeling really well.
I'm of course biased towards the Celestia chapter, but it's been great, every step of the way. Take pride (pun intended), this was certifiably g a y and lovely
great story
How lovely!
Beautiful. I don't even know what to say.
I hope that all who struggle will one day find the deep happiness depicted here. Myself included.
Oh my god that was so sweet it gave me a legitimate spiderverse moment. "Do I.... do I want kids?" Considering what I did last week, probably not. But that's how powerful this story has been. So let's see: Positive depictions of mental health and therapy, Positive depictions of happy and healthy nontraditional families, Positive depictions of healthy grieving, some of the sweetest scenes somehow woven perfectly worth hauntingly accurate mental anguish. Possibly the easiest call ever, liked, faved, and I think I already follow you but if not I will soon.
My Little Reviews & Feedback I did your review.
I've been reading stories on fimfiction for just over 9 years now, before I even made an account. This will have been my first comment on this site ever. I don't even know if I'm doing it correctly.
Thank you, for writing this story. I don't even know what to say, it just...resonated with me in such a compelling way, the things Wallflower thinks, the thoughts, I guess it just makes me feel less alone.
I've been having worse spirals and episodes lately, it's nice to know that things aren't hopeless, that it's possible for others to not eventually grow to dislike you. Not even sure why I'm writing this, a ramble into the void I guess :)
I hope you and your girlfriend are super happy and gay together! <3
To anyone who reads this, take care of yourself, be kind, and have a wonderful day. I'll be around~ lurking and reading ^-^
Aurilia/Aluaxis
This has been one of the best stories I've ever read. Gut wrenching from the drama but also busting from the comedy. Deep perspectives into what's its like to be stuck in your own head...
I guess SunFlower really is canon.
Got me thinking, though, was it a coincidence they ended up with a daughter, or is it one of those things where two women can only ever have daughters even with magic? I'm probably overthinking it, lol