Sunset Shimmer reclined on her navy blue felt sofa, bought for next to nothing at a local thrift shop a few blocks from her apartment, lazily picking out a random series of notes on her acoustic guitar – nothing that could reasonably be called a song, mind, but merely something to maintain the finger dexterity she so prized after discovering the massive gap between humanoids and horses a decade earlier.
One of her perhaps-friends was set to arrive soon; she could not remember who, but hoped the girl would be willing to reconcile as Rarity had. In hopes of moving the process along, she had popped down to the convenience store taking up the corner space on the ground floor of her apartment building and bought a few oatmeal cookies. Soft. Tasty. Reminded her of Equestria – when it came to dessert, Celestia’s chefs mostly made cakes (in keeping with their boss’s preference) but they could make a glorious oat cookie if asked/bribed.
Her ruminations were interrupted by a knock on her door. Actually, it was more of a tap, barely audible. Had Sunset been in her bedroom, she would not have heard it.
“Come in,” Sunset called out in as pleasant a voice as she could muster.
For an interminable minute, nothing happened.
“Come in.” Sunset said again, more insistent.
The door creaked open with all the swiftness of molasses, eventually revealing her visitor standing in the threshold – a young girl with pastel yellow skin and waist-length pink hair, wearing a green ruffled skirt that was perhaps an inch shorter than regulation, likely owing to the girl being about that much taller than the average. She kept her arms clasped in front of her chest in an attempt to appear less visible… and possibly also to deflect attention away from her white tanktop that absolutely failed to hide (indeed, emphasized) the reality of her sizable bust.
Sunset beckoned the girl enter the apartment, which she did with as little sound as humanly possible, taking off her green boots before shuffling across the carpeted floor and gingerly sitting herself down on the sofa next to Sunset.
“So, how are you today, Fluttershy?” Sunset asked.
Fluttershy stared at Sunset with those big teal eyes that melted the hearts of lesser men, saying nothing, her expression neutral, lips shifting as she contemplated forming words but then deciding against it, folding her arms in her lap and turning to look down at her knees, tilting her head in mild confusion at the sight of dirt, probably from kneeling down to try to attract those alley cats outside the building. She briefly pawed the carpet with her foot.
Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked.
Sunset allowed her eyes to dart about in vain hopes of finding something to break the silence. None forthcoming, she turned her wandering gaze back to her visitor with a mood that rapidly shifted from confusion to incredulity to annoyance and then, finally, to resignation. She sighed, and decided to force a conversation.
“I’m glad you’ve stopped by to see me. But I hope it’s not just because the others pressured you into it. If you really don’t want to be here, you can go. I won’t be mad.”
Fluttershy merely continued to sit, unspeaking, briefly looking at Sunset before quickly turning back to contemplate her own feet.
Sunset began to roll her eyes but stopped halfway, redoubling her efforts to keep her annoyance from bubbling over. She put her right hand to her chin in a classic thinking pose as she wracked her brain to find some method of making headway with the girl.
“Aren’t you curious to know why I’ve been absent for so long, or why I asked to see all of you one at a time? What am I saying? I’m sure you already know; you’ve probably been through the s—”
Then she understood.
Sunset assumed a position near identical to Fluttershy’s and said in a near whisper, “…I’m sorry.”
Fluttershy gradually turned her head toward Sunset, who was unable to respond in kind.
“I was so horrible to you,” Sunset said, disgust bubbling in her voice. “For three long, miserable years, I made your life at school a living hell. Anything about you I could find to nitpick just to tear you down, I did.”
Almost imperceptibly, still silently, Fluttershy shifted her body to face Sunset as much as she reasonably could given their positions.
Sunset continued. “I guess, in a way, what I did to you was a lot worse than what I did to Rarity. Yes, I wrecked her reputation and sabotaged her bid for greater popularity at her first Spring Fling… but I only went after her once. You were my daily rhetorical punching bag, and not a single time did I ever consider how it must have made you feel, about me or yourself. Dear lord, no wonder you’re uncomfortable being here.”
Fluttershy’s eyes widened.
“Ever since I found myself at the bottom of a smouldering blast crater of my own hubris, I’ve wallowed in my own self-pity and sense of guilt over everything I’ve done. It got to be too much and I shut myself off from the world for the last three weeks. I wanted to end the pain. You probably felt that way every day since you met me. Yet you kept going, enduring my abuse. That makes you a lot stronger than me.”
Curious where Sunset’s monologue was headed, Fluttershy tilted her head.
“I’m ashamed of who I was. I hate that there’s no way to change the past. I assume no one I hurt will forgive me, and I don’t think I deserve it anyway. You have every reason to hate me, to hold a grudge, yet you reached out your hand to me. I took it, but that was only half of what I needed to do, wasn’t it? I need to reach out my own hand and let you in. Fine. I’m afraid I don’t have much to offer you except… if you need to talk, I can listen, just like you’re listening to me now. And I hope maybe, somewhere down the line, I can earn the right to call myself your friend.”
Like a bullet fired from a sniper rifle, Fluttershy practically leapt at Sunset, nearly knocking her over as she wrapped her in an overpowering embrace. Sunset slowly, almost reluctantly, returned the gesture, holding it just long enough to show her acknowledgement. After an infinite moment, Fluttershy loosened her grip, raising her head to meet Sunset’s gaze. Sunset could not help but notice the tears in Fluttershy’s eyes, their impact multiplied by her small yet glorious smile.
“Uh…?” said Sunset.
“Thank you,” Fluttershy said in her characteristically soft voice. Sunset made a brief mental note that it was the girl’s first words since arriving.
Nonetheless, Sunset still registered some confusion. “Huh?”
“I, um, was still angry with you even after you apologized the first time. I mean, you did hurt me. But, I realized I couldn’t stay mad. After all, you’re still beating yourself up when you don’t need to anymore.”
“Don’t need to?” Sunset asked.
Fluttershy smiled serenely. “Even if you don’t forgive yourself, I forgive you. I do want to be your friend.”
For the first time in a long while, Sunset genuinely smiled.
“Well… since you’re here,” Sunset said. “Would you like a cookie?”
Fluttershy briefly glanced down at her fairly flat stomach and not-at-all-flat chest, lips pursed in contemplation, before following her heart and answering, “Sure.”
Sunset stood up and walked the short distance to her tiny kitchen where the bag of oatmeal cookies sat on the counter underneath a discount store wall clock. Debating for a moment whether she should follow proper decorum and put them on a plate for presentation, she decided neither of them would care about taking them directly from their bag. As she turned to head back to the couch, she found herself nearly smacking into Fluttershy, who had somehow teleported to standing right behind her.
“Wah!” Sunset involuntarily cried out as she jumped back, which caused Fluttershy to jump an inch in the opposite direction.
“Oh. I’m sorry!” Fluttershy said. “I just didn’t think you needed to go to so much trouble for me and I could…” She trailed off as something caught her attention.
Sunset realized Fluttershy had become distracted. “What?”
Fluttershy was staring at Sunset’s scarred left wrist, the underside of which, now exposed thanks to a slip of the sleeve, was directly facing her. Multiple thoughts raced through Sunset’s brain; most of them were some variation of Panic!!
“I see,” Fluttershy said as she gingerly took Sunset’s wrist in her right hand. When she turned to her friend, she sported a look so sad that it made all those shelter dogs in that anti-animal-cruelty commercial look positively giddy.
Sunset averted her eyes, but Fluttershy waved her free hand in front of her host’s face to get her attention. Eventually, Sunset tired of the distraction and reluctantly looked at her guest. Fluttershy’s eyes wandered down to her own hands, currently cupping Sunset’s, occasionally darting back up to beckon Sunset follow.
On the girl’s pastel yellow wrists could be seen a couple of extremely faded scars.
When they reestablished eye contact, Sunset’s expression was one of worried shock while Fluttershy’s told of simple resignation.
“Those are… my fault, aren’t they,” Sunset stated matter-of-factly.
To her surprise, Fluttershy shook her head no. “Not completely. Sunset, you weren’t the only person to tease me at school. Everyone took their turn, all the way back to elementary. Even if you hadn’t broken our group up freshman year, I still wouldn’t have had many friends. Of course it got to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore.”
“What stopped you?” asked Sunset as delicately as she could, though she also genuinely wanted to know.
“I’m sure you’ll think this is silly,” Fluttershy said. “But… animals. One day, as I was heading to the Harmony Bridge to think about jumping before not going through with it again, I found a puppy wandering the alleys. I thought, this poor thing needs me and it would just be wrong to leave it. So even if I didn’t want to live for myself, I could live for all the sweet creatures no one else wanted. I started volunteering at the shelter, and that gave me a purpose and a space to be. Then I could start trying to make friends again.”
Sunset smiled. “It’s not silly at all. In fact, I really admire your strength.”
“You know I’m not strong,” Fluttershy retorted. “I’m weak. I’ve always been weak. But it doesn’t matter, because I have friends who can pick me up when life beats me down. That includes you, Sunset.”
“Really?”
“Of course!” said Fluttershy, before suddenly going quiet, pointing her fingers together. “I mean, if that’s okay with you.”
Sunset nodded.
“I’m so glad,” Fluttershy said with a pleased smile. Then she looked Sunset in the eye with all seriousness, clearly physically holding back her mind’s desire to avert her gaze; this was far too important.
“Hm?” Sunset asked, cocking her head.
“If that clock is right, I have to leave now. But before I go, there’s one thing I need to know. Will you come back to school this week?”
Sunset briefly looked up, as she was wont to do when thinking, then back to meet her friend’s gaze. Her voice was steady, without hesitation or vacillation, as she answered. “Yes.”
Fluttershy’s already big smile stretched even wider. “Good,” she said as she turned to head toward the door, allowing the fingers of one hand to slip down to Sunset’s upper arm and linger there before finally alighting and following the rest of her body; the other hand had taken the offered cookie with little notice. Sunset saw her out, guiding the girl through the dark hallway to the reasonably well-lit stairway.
No more words were exchanged as Fluttershy waved goodbye and carefully made her way down the four flights of stairs.
Alone again, Sunset sighed, content. Upon re-entering her apartment and remembering to lock the door, she glanced around the room, giving a curt nod as her face plastered itself with a look of determination.
“I do need a change of scenery,” she said.