Sunset Shimmer sat on the steps outside Canterlot High School, watching people go home. The metal chariots, which she had managed to learn were called cars, had congregated on the edge of the road, and even from here she could hear the warm chatter as child greeted parent after a long, stimulating day at school or a tiring day of work respectively. Some parents simply walked to Canterlot High, receiving their children on the sidewalk with a warm embrace that seemed to be more a game of good-spirited embarrassment than a genuine gesture. Other children simply wandered off into the interminable maze that was this world, proud smiles on their faces and words of camaraderie bouncing between them like rabbits that just got into a shipment of sugarcane.
Meanwhile, Sunset sat on the steps. She waved as each of her new friends left to go back to their families, their homes, and their beds, her smile only enduring through sheer force of will. If I focus on how happy they are, her thought process ran, I won't remember how sad I am.
It wasn't until everyone had left that the smile finally disappeared. Sunset lay back on the steps, staring up at the sky as twilight painted it orange, and tried to choke back the tears. Her hands went to the journal almost on instinct, her old habit of thanking Celestia for her beautiful sunsets and critiquing her technique not yet gone from her head. She managed to stop herself before she unzipped the bag, though. She wasn't ready to open the journal yet.
"Déjà vu, ma petit étudiant." Principal Celestia appeared at the upper edge of Sunset's vision, upside-down and looking no less serene for it. "How long have you been sitting out here?"
"I don't know," Sunset admitted as she sat up. "How long ago did school end?"
"Two hours or so," the principal said, with more than a hint of concern in her voice. "Weren't you cold, out here by yourself?"
"I've been pretty cold all day, Cele— principal." Sunset only spared a glance at the statue this time. "I guess I didn't notice."
"You could at least have joined me in the office. I could have made us tea."
Of course it would be tea. It had to be. It couldn't be coffee, or orange juice, or the blood of virgins, no, it had to be the same thing that Princess Celestia always made time to share with her. What was the point of running away if the place you got to was the same as the one you left?
"I thought you were trying to avoid scandal." Sunset got to her feet slowly, taking care not to lose her balance.
"You didn't actually buy that, did you?" Celestia laughed as she walked down the steps. "I just wanted to get you out there making friends."
Sunset laughed, picking up her bag and following after the principal without really thinking. "I thought you said it was so you could get a sense of where I am academically."
"What, are aptitude tests also not a thing wherever you come from? If I only wanted to know how much you didn't know, we could have spent the entire day filling out forms. No, today was about getting you settled in. After all, you'll probably be here for a while." Celestia turned suddenly and gave Sunset a look. "Or were you still planning on leaving?"
She asked it so innocently, that was the problem. There wasn't the slightest hint of accusation to her words, as though she were only asking as a matter of curiosity. Sunset had to take a deep breath before she could say anything.
"I like it here. I think it's a good place for me to be."
"Glad to hear that." Celestia pulled out a keyring, and pressed a button on some kind of small device. The car in front of them beeped, and she opened the door before turning to Sunset. "Are you coming?"
"Where?" Sunset asked, watching the car and its driver with more than a hint of suspicion.
Celestia smiled. "You need a place to sleep, don't you? I was thinking I could put you up at my place."
Sunset looked at the car, and at the open door leading into a seat. With the way that all humans were basically the same shape, it looked custom-made for her. She looked back at the stairs, and weighed her options. Even in the increasingly unlikely event that it was a trap, being attacked in someone else's home was still preferable to being attacked in the streets. At least the first option had a higher chance of a warm meal beforehoof.
"Well, if it's not too much trouble." She got into the car and wasted no time in settling into her seat, drawing the weird strap of cloth across her chest and clicking the metal bit into the other metal bit like she had seen the other students do. Celestia nodded just a little as she did the same, and then the car was started.
Sunset Shimmer didn't know what she'd been expecting from the city house of a Crown Princess, but this wasn't it. There was no overwrought stonework, no tacky plastic battlements on the lawn, not even a color scheme that resembled Canterlot Castle. It looked just the same as every other house on the block, without even so much as the slightest decoration to tell it apart.
"It doesn't always pay to advertise," the principal said as the two of them stepped out of the car. "I honestly think less than half of the student body actually know I'm the princess."
"That must come in handy," Sunset said with just a little bit of satisfaction at correctly using a human phrase. "You know, for assassinations and such."
Celestia laughed as she walked across her lawn to the door. "Assassinations are rather old hat in this part of the world, Sunset. The politician's concealed weapon of choice is now the smear campaign. They fight with words and doctored images."
"That sounds dull." Sunset crossed the threshold, expecting to be blown away by the house's interior. Instead, it was just as perfectly normal as the outside. It had a floor, a selection of colorful but understated carpets, and she could see into a living room that contained a couch that could probably seat three people rather comfortably.
"Oh, it is. Incredibly dull. Say what you will about dueling to the death, but at least you can't fall asleep during one of those." Celestia smiled, and indicated the couch. "Please, have a seat. Make yourself at home."
"Thank you," Sunset gave a little bow, "princess." Her heart fluttered as that word passed her tongue, and she held the bow a second longer than she had meant to. When she looked up, there was that serene smile, the one reserved for the kind-hearted and the penitent who came before Celestia, the one in all of the portraits.
Sunset fought back her tears and marched over to the couch, sitting herself down as fast as she could. She let her bag fall to the floor, her ears half-expecting to hear the journal vibrating between her new math textbooks. She looked down at the bag, and imagined her fingers closing around the zipper, opening it up, taking the journal and seeing what the final message had been. No. Not yet.
"What do you want on your pizza?"
Sunset blinked, then looked up at Celestia. She was standing just inside the living room, toying with her cell phone. "Pizza?" Sunset repeated.
"Yes, pizza. Did you not have pizza as well in your little corner of the world?"
"No, I know what pizza is," Sunset shot back, "it's just... you don't strike me as the sort to have a pizza oven in your house."
Celestia smirked, and held up her phone. "I order it on my phone. It's like a catering service, except anyone can access it so long as they can pay. So, what do you want on your pizza?"
Sunset pondered that for a moment, running through the pizza toppings she remembered and comparing them to what she had seen in the cafeteria earlier. "Cheese," she decided, adding a quick 'please' to the end. Celestia nodded, and she toyed with her phone a little more before putting it away.
"And now, the question of sleeping arrangements."
Sunset nodded, and began looking around for a nice corner to sleep in. One of the corners of the room was positioned just right that, when the sun rose, it would fall right on her face and wake her up bright and early, and the carpet looked really soft. "I'll take that one," she said brightly.
"What?" Celestia looked at the corner, then back to Sunset with an expression of utter disbelief. "You think I'm going to make you sleep on the floor?"
Sunset ground her teeth together. "Actually, I was thinking I would decide to sleep on the floor."
"And whyever would you decide that? I know I don't exactly have the house ready for guests, but I can certainly lend you a blanket and the use of my couch until I can get a bed for the spare room!"
"I wouldn't want to trouble you," Sunset mumbled, sinking further into the couch and focusing very intently on the oak coffee table right in front of the couch.
"It's no trouble, Sunset." Celestia was drawing closer now, circling around the table to sit next to Sunset. "I'm only sorry I can't do better."
"You've done enough," Sunset growled, flinching away as the principal sat down. "More than I deserve."
"Sunset Shimmer." Only the slightest trace of an edge in that voice, as if she were aware of how many times Sunset had heard the full venom of Celestia's rage and wished to spare the rod. "There is no such thing as deserving anything. It is my choice, and my privilege, to show you kindness when you have suffered so much." Her hand went to Sunset's shoulder, but she batted it away.
"Stop." Sunset Shimmer turned on the fake, and bared her teeth. "Just. Stop. You know nothing about what I've been through, or what I've done. All you have is my own word that I didn't kill anyone. As far as you know, I'm a serial killer, or a drug dealer, or maybe I'm just a walking talking international incident whose very presence is bringing an army you can't even dream of bearing down on your doorstep!" Sunset got up from the couch, and growled down at the creature calling itself Celestia. "So why? Why in Tambelon's name would you help me? Why haven't you asked any of the hard questions that would tell you exactly what you're messing with? Why are you just assuming that none of what's happened to me was my fault? Because it was my fault, Celestia! ALL OF IT IS MY FAULT!"
It had been years since Sunset Shimmer had just let loose and sobbed her heart out. She collapsed on the ground, clutching her chest and screaming all of her anguish out in whatever way she could. She cried until the world was nothing but a blur, and screamed until her voice gave out. Then she just lay there on the floor, a quivering mass of guilt at the feet of a princess.
"Why is it always the way of mortals to take blame for the faults of the gods?"
Sunset looked up from the floor at the principal, who had turned away from Sunset and was looking at the coffee table. She tried to croak out the words "What are you talking about?", but they only came out as a low whining noise. The principal sighed, and slid open a drawer in the table. She pulled out a heavy, leather-bound book with two bands of gold set into the spine and a perfect replica of Celestia's cutie mark on the cover, and Sunset stared. It was a near-perfect twin of her own magic journal.
She wiped the worst of the tears from her eyes, and saw that the principal's journal was brimming with bookmarks, each emblazoned with a cutie mark. Some were obvious, like Clover the Clever and Smart Cookie, but others were a mystery. The only thing she could say for certain was that they were old, so old that she had seen them more commonly as motifs in ancient works of art rather than in mark registries. All except for hers, which stood out in the way that only the familiar amidst the mysterious can.
"She... told you about me?" Sunset coughed, but couldn't bring herself to look away as the principal opened the journal.
"She told me quite a lot. About everyone." The voice sounded old, as though a hundred thousand years had suddenly settled on her shoulders. "At first, it was just a matter of security. She wanted to be sure I knew what to expect if they had to use the portal to exile anything. Then, it was us being penpals. Then, grief partners." Sunset watched the hands passing over and stroking the pages as though exploring the skin of a lover after a long absence. "For me, this book is nearly thirty years old. For her, it's coming up on two thousand years."
Sunset rose to her knees, and looked at the journal. She saw how thick it was, how many pages lay between each new bookmark, and how many there were once her bookmark was set in. It wasn't more than all of the rest, but it was certainly more than she expected. "She never told me about you."
"That's good," the principal said, her voice growing younger as she flipped closer and closer to Sunset's pages. "We decided very early on that my world should remain unknown when possible. She was very... illustrative of the possibilities that this place offers to the mind of the usurper." At last, she reached the part of the journal that concerned them both. "You know, Sunset, she hasn't had a student like you in a very long time. You seemed to do something unexpected every single day."
"Not always a good thing," Sunset mumbled. To her surprise, Celestia laughed.
"No, I suppose not. Oh, where was it... Ah yes, here it is. The time you set Restaurant Row on fire because you were trying to make, and I quote, 'the perfect cup of orange juice'. What a brilliant magnifying glass you used to do it, though."
"I tried my best." Despite everything, Sunset smiled.
"Yes, always." The principal's own mirthful grin faded. "Sometimes, if you can believe it, you tried harder than she did. She compared you to Starswirl once, you know. Quite favorably."
"And then I messed everything up." Sunset pawed at the carpet in frustration, not even trying to hold back her tears anymore.
"Really? You messed everything up?" The principal held the journal in front of Sunset's face, and turned a page. "Then explain that."
The page was covered in multiple attempts at a sentence, nearly all of them crossed out or scribbled away. The only clear phrase, in horn-writing that was unmistakably that of Princess Celestia, read:
She's gone, and it's all my fault.
"No," she whispered. "That's a lie."
"Is it? She knew your destiny, Sunset. She knew that it didn't have anything to do with being an alicorn, or having a kingdom, but she let you believe it anyway. She watched while you made yourself bedridden from magical exhaustion, listened to you cry yourself to sleep when your latest experiment did nothing, unlocked more and more forbidden sections of the library for you and never once said that this wasn't the path you were meant to walk."
Sunset got back to her feet, and grabbed the journal away from the principal. "This changes nothing. I still tried to kill her for denying me what I thought was my destiny."
"Yes, and if she had told you the truth earlier, you never would have tried it." The principal got up and turned the pages, while Sunset's eyes scanned them on instinct. "The moment your blast hit, she realized who was really to blame. She wanted to apologize, to say that she was sorry. But you had made your own decision, and you ran."
"That's a lie," Sunset repeated, "and you know it. If she wanted to say sorry, why didn't she follow me? Why did she close the portal if she wanted me back?"
"I did warn you that your phone was ringing."
Sunset looked at her bag. She handed the journal to Celestia, then knelt and unzipped her bag. There was the journal. She pulled it out, and flipped to the latest page.
Dear Sunset Shimmer,
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry that you thought you had to become an alicorn to be a proper student of mine. I'm sorry if you ever felt that I wasn't already proud of you. I'm sorry that I wasn't fast enough to stop you from running away. But most of all, I'm sorry that I can't be telling you this in person.
I don't control the portal. It opens and closes at its own bidding, and on its own clock. We haven't really tried to study how time passes differently between here and there, but on our side the portal is only open every thirty years. As bad luck would have it, last night was the last night. I swear, I have been trying for hours to get it open again, but there's been no success. The only thing I can do is try to send someone to help.
Hopefully, you've met her already. I know, it's a little disorienting at first, but the world you've found yourself in isn't all bad. And don't worry, she knows what's going on. You couldn't be in safer hooves. Well, hands in her case.
Again, I am sorry, Sunset. Of all the ends to your apprenticeship I envisioned, this was not one of them. I promise, the moment that the portal is open again, I will come for you. Even if all of Equestria is in flames, I will come for you. I cannot keep these things on paper. I need to be able to say it, because it can only mean so much on the page.
I will come for you, Sunset Shimmer. Make no mistake of that.
Sunset Shimmer put down the journal, and turned her gaze to Principal Celestia. She was holding a pillow and blanket in her arms, and smiling a kind of smile that Sunset had never seen on her own Celestia. It was hopeful, but also wary. Sunset greeted it with a bright, optimistic smile, and wiped the newest batch of tears away.
"I need a pen."
The principal nodded, taking only a moment to spread the blanket over the couch before reaching into her suit pocket and producing a pen. Sunset took it and sat down on the couch. As the doorbell rang, she poised her pen on the next page, and began to write.
Dear Princess Celestia,
I forgive you.