//------------------------------//
// The Day After: Sunset (Rewritten) 
// Story: SAPR 
// by Scipio Smith 
//------------------------------//


The Day After: Sunset


Pyrrha knelt, her aura broken, her weapons shattered before her. Pyrrha knelt, and Sunset stood over her, triumphant. 
Pyrrha looked up at her, that infuriatingly beautiful face trembling with a mixture of pain and fear, her eyes wide with the despair that would soon engulf the entire world. 
“Do you believe in destiny?” she whispered.
Sunset said nothing. She stood over the helpless girl before her, drinking in her power over the so-called Invincible Girl. She savoured her triumph like nectar and ambrosia. She had won! The champion of Mistral, the darling of high society, the one they all flocked around to praise and flatter and make much of, and yet, here she knelt, helpless and defeated at her feet while she, the despised outcast, the one they had scorned with hostile, pitying glances, the one they had sought to degrade and cast down, the one they had expelled from paradise, stood triumphant over her.
The smirk that grew on Sunset’s face was cruel and terrible. “Yes,” she declared, for she believed in destiny, and her faith had been rewarded, justified, proved beyond doubt. She had allowed inexorable destiny to drive her forward, and now, her hour had come: the hour of the setting sun when darkness would engulf the world.
Fire sprang up in the palm of her hand. The flickering flame – scarlet and gold, like the pattern of Sunset’s burning hair – danced reflected for a moment in Pyrrha’s emerald eyes.
And then, still smiling, Sunset turned her palm towards Pyrrha and engulfed the champion of Mistral in the flames. 
Pyrrha screamed. And Sunset, the other Sunset, the Sunset who stood unseen and held fast in the shadows on the edges of the scene, howled in helpless, futile, anguished outrage as she watched herself murder her best friend. 
And it wasn’t even the first time. 
Her eyes had run dry of tears watching this and other scenes like it. Blake spat in Sunset’s face before Sunset cut off her head; Ruby pleaded with her before Sunset shot her through the heart; Jaune…
Sunset gasped for breath as the world around her shimmered and split apart into a hundred thousand fragments like shards of coloured glass that hung suspended in the void for a moment before reforming into something and to somewhere new. Sunset didn’t recognise these places – maybe they were places that Cinder remembered – but even though she’d seen Cinder’s past, Sunset hadn’t been paying enough attention to the backgrounds to get a real sense of them.
And now her attention was too much on what she did recognise. Though she had seen this before, Sunset found that she couldn’t look away.
Jaune lay on his back on the ground, his shield gone and his sword beyond his reach. Sunset, the other Sunset, the one that Sunset was forced to watch commit unspeakable act after monstrous crime, stood with one foot upon his chest and a flaming spear in her hand.
“No!” Sunset yelled. “Stop it! Don’t do this!” She sobbed, though her tears were all cried out, whether for her friends who had become her victims or for herself… she couldn’t say. 
Perhaps it was for all of them.
“No,” Sunset whispered, wanting so desperately to look away but absolutely unable to do so. “No, this isn’t you. This is Cinder, this is her, not you; this is… this is…”
“Calm yourself, Sunset Shimmer.”
Sunset gasped, looking upwards as the world around her dissolved, turning to smoke and then, like smoke, being blown away by the strong gale that suddenly gusted all around, rippling through Sunset’s hair and tugging at her jacket as it swept the other Sunset and Jaune and everything else away; and through the gale, that still, small voice cut like a knife: “Calm yourself.”
Sunset was left standing in a field of stars, looking up at the moon; not the broken moon of Remnant, spilling its shattered fragments out across the night sky, but the whole and silver moon of Equestria beneath which she had grown up. She had studied by the light of that moon; she had caught glimpses of it peeking through the gaps in the curtains as she and Celestia sat before the fire and Sunset absorbed as much of the princess’ wisdom as she could comprehend and less than she had believed at the time; she had walked beneath it, lived beneath it… and left it behind like everything else in that world. 
Yet now, it shone above her once again.
And out of that moon, that familiar and so long vanished moon, descended an alicorn of midnight blue, her flowing mane as liquid with power as that of Celestia itself steaming behind her. Her cutie mark was a crescent moon upon black, the same symbol that glowed upon the gorget she wore around her neck.
She flew down from the moon and settled – stood, if such a word had any meaning here – upon the same surface of nothingness that held Sunset still amongst the stars. A ground – barren and empty but present nonetheless – appeared beneath them. 
The eyes of the alicorn were filled with pity. “Dark are your dreams tonight, Sunset Shimmer.”
Sunset stared at her; stared up at her, for although there was not such a great difference in their heights, nevertheless, there was something about this crowned alicorn that invited her to look up. Her mere presence calmed Sunset, soothing Cinder’s boiling anger within her and setting it, like a raging beast, to sleep. 
“Who?” Sunset whispered, as she felt a deep calm settle over her, smothering all other feelings like a blanket. “Who are you?”
"I am Luna, princess of the moon and night and mistress of the dreaming realm. And I have heard a great deal about you, Sunset Shimmer."
"Luna," Sunset murmured. "You… you're Princess Celestia's sister? You're Nightmare Moon?"
The words were out of her mouth so fast that Sunset could only regret them once they had flown past her lips and were past all hope of recall, and yet, Princess Luna did not grow angry, as Sunset might well have done in her position. Instead, her expression turned melancholy, and her dark blue eyes filled with regret.
"Yes," she said. "I was Nightmare Moon, once. But I have been saved, redeemed from darkness by Twilight Sparkle and her friends."
Sunset's eyebrows rose. "Twilight… never mentioned that." No wonder Celestia loves her so.
No, no that was not right. Celestia did not love in mere reward, nor did she love in due proportion to the services rendered by she to whom that love was given. The love of Princess Celestia was not a thing that could be bought even in the coin of service to the realm or to herself; rather, it was the water in a well from which all could drink… provided they were worthy of the purest of all waters.
For the salvation of her sister, Sunset had no doubt that Celestia would forever be grateful to her newer and more successful student… but if she loved Twilight as she had once loved Sunset – as Sunset dared to hope and to believe that she was yet somewhat loved – then it was not for that service, or any other of the services that Twilight had done. Celestia loved her only for herself.
"Perhaps Twilight did not wish to boast of her deeds; humility is one of her lesser virtues," Luna declared.
Something that we don't exactly have in common, Sunset thought, taking some comfort from the way that Luna had named Twilight's modesty a lesser virtue, the implication being it was not one of the vital ones. Sunset hoped not, or she was in trouble.
"And yet," Luna said, "though Twilight and her friends have cleansed my soul, they cannot wipe clean my past as though it never was. I was Nightmare Moon, upon a time. I have that darkness within me, and that regret." She glanced at Sunset out of the corner of one eye. "Something that we have in common, you and I."
Sunset turned away from her, and as she turned away, that barren emptiness on which she stood became a cliff, and beneath her and before her gleamed Canterlot in all its glory. The spires twinkled in the moonlight, and the many lights that shone in the city matched the stars set in the firmament above in multitude and brightness.
Sunset sat down, her legs dangling off the edge of the cliff. Silently, Princess Luna settled down upon her haunches beside her.
"You miss it," Luna observed.
Sunset frowned. "Only children fled from crueller homes than mine do not feel homesick from time to time, I think." She sighed. "If I could live with my friends of Remnant, yet in the gentler world of Equestria, I would count myself blessed beyond deserving… save that I would have no outlet for my ambition." For what need has Equestria of a Sunset Shimmer when it has a Twilight Sparkle here already?
"Your friends," Luna said. "Are those… were they your friends?"
"They are my friends," Sunset muttered. She lifted up one knee, pulling it back from the abyss and resting her booted foot upon the cliff; she rested then her forehead on her knee. "I… I don't want you to think that that was me. That wasn't me, that… I wouldn't do that." She scowled. "I don't want to do that."
“And yet you fear you will,” Luna murmured. A statement, not a question.
“It’s her anger, not mine,” Sunset insisted. “But… it’s in me now. I can feel it… and it feels so familiar to me. The things she feels, Cinder; her anger, her envy, her wrath… they are not alien to my soul.”
“Nor to mine,” Luna said. She smiled wryly when Sunset looked up at her. “You know the story, do you not?”
“Celestia never spoke of it,” Sunset said, lest Princess Luna think that her sister had been in the habit of gossiping about her in her long absence.
“That is not what I asked,” Luna said. “You know the story anyway.”
“You were jealous,” Sunset said. “Filled with resentment and desire for something that Princess Celestia could not give you.” She snorted. “Something else we have in common.”
“Indeed,” Luna murmured, sounding less than entirely proud of the fact. “I know the taste of envy very well, and equally well, I recall what lengths it can drive the desperate.”
“But you were saved,” Sunset said. “You told me, Twilight… Twilight and her friends, they wielded the Elements of Harmony and-”
“Shall I tell you a secret?” Luna asked, her voice a soft conspiratorial whisper. “You seem like the sort of mare who enjoys secrets, though you may not enjoy this one.”
Sunset wasn’t sure if she was being insulted or not. “You can tell me whatever you want to tell me, Princess.”
“The Elements of Harmony may have cleansed me of the outer manifestation of my darkness,” Luna said. “If the circumstances were different, perhaps they would have done the same to you. But the truth is that the darkness inside… it never leaves. Although I might wish that it were otherwise, I fear that you may have to carry this anger that is not yours for the rest of your days, or until time cools the fires that now burn so brightly and with such heat. Just as I must carry the guilt of all that I did in my madness and my folly.”
Sunset stared up at the princess of the moon for a moment, seeking comfort in her face, in her voice, in running the words that she had spoken over and over again in her head. Seeking comfort and finding none. “That… that’s it?” she whispered. Her voice rose, sharpened with anger. “That’s it?! You came all this way to tell me that there is no hope?”
“I did not say ‘no hope,’” Luna said. “I said that there was no easy solution. I am the princess of the moon, not of miracles.”
“You might not have said that there wasn’t any hope, but you certainly implied it!” Sunset snapped. “You saw my dreams, you know what I’m struggling with; how am I supposed to just… to just live with it? I killed my friends, and I enjoyed it!” She sobbed; her whole body was wracked by a shudder of pain as she buried her face in her knee. “Celestia help me, I liked it.”
Sunset felt something settle on her arm. A dark wing, soft and feathery. “Brave heart, Sunset Shimmer,” Luna said. “You are not yet beyond all hope. That you feel such sorrow is cause for joy. Do you think that she whose rage you have stolen would shed tears?”
Sunset didn’t reply. “You said… you said that you carried it with you?”
“Every day,” Luna said. “And every day, when I see the little ponies of Equestria forget, or act as if they have forgotten, that there are once more two diarchs in the realm, I feel it like a pinprick in my heart, a needle of that old jealousy returning once again. But I am on guard against it now and armed against its terrible allure. Arm your soul, be vigilant… and do not let your most potent weapon rust in its scabbard, unused and forgotten.”
“How can my magic help me with this?” Sunset asked.
“I said nothing of any magic,” Luna said, with a hint of reproach. “I had shut myself away long before my fall was complete. I did not talk to the sister whom I did not trust… whom I hated and blamed for all my troubles. I had no one that I could confide in, no one to whom I could unburden myself, no one… no one at all to help me when I was most in need of it. You are not yet so unfortunate, nor will you be unless you bring such a fate upon yourself.”
Sunset couldn’t keep the scepticism out of her voice as she said, “You think I should talk to my team about the fact that I dreamt of murdering them?”
“If you accept the aid of your friends, then they may remain only dreams,” Luna said. “You cannot run from this, Sunset Shimmer; you cannot hide from it in darkness or in light. Sooner or later, you will have to confront it, and when you do… it is never wise to face such things alone. Farewell.”
“Wait!” Sunset cried as Canterlot below her and the Equestrian sky above both began to dissolve into the void. “You’re leaving?”
Luna rose into the air, looking back at Sunset over her shoulder. “Though your dreams are dark, you are not the only pony having nightmares tonight. And I have said all that I could usefully say. Goodbye, Sunset; it may be that we shall meet again.”
“Are you…?” Sunset hesitated, torn between a certain awareness of how childish her request would sound and a desire to ask it anyway. “Are you going to tell Princess Celestia about this? I… I don’t want her to know…” What? I don’t want her to know what’s happened to me? Don’t want her to know what I’m becoming? Don’t want her to know… anything?
Luna stared down at Sunset, and said nothing, and her face conceded nothing.
Then she was gone, and all was plunged into darkness.
Sunset woke up, her eyes snapping open to the light of early morning coming in through the library windows. 
Sunset groaned as she sat up, rolling off the bed of books – new books, the ones that she knew could take it; she wasn’t a barbarian – that she had made to sleep up in a secluded corner of the upper level of the library where hardly anyone went. She had to sleep somewhere if she wasn’t going back to the dorm room, and she couldn’t go back to the dorm room. She hesitated to think what Ruby would have thought if she’d seen and heard her tossing and turning in the grip of nightmares. 
Ruby. Ruby was the only one that she could think about, the one that Cinder loathed the least. She hated Ruby Rose as she hated everyone, but it wasn’t as visceral as her dislike of Pyrrha, and so, it didn’t send the same surge of anger through Sunset’s veins. 
Trust them, Luna had said. Talk to them. Tell them everything. Yeah, like that was going to happen. Perhaps Princess Luna meant well, but she didn’t get how things were in this world. This wasn’t Equestria. People didn’t forgive so easily, and they didn’t take things in their stride the way that ponies did; if she told them the truth… there was no way they wouldn’t turn on her. 
“Did you sleep in here? On books?”
“Gah!” Sunset jumped at the sound of Blake’s voice, nearly falling over as she turned to see the faunus girl watching her from the corner of the stack. “What are you doing, sneaking up on me like that?” Interfering little animal. Why can’t she leave me alone?
Get out of my head, Cinder!
“I thought I was being pretty loud,” Blake said.
“Trust me, you weren’t,” Sunset said. “What do you want?”
Blake’s amber eyes narrowed. “Did you sleep on books?”
“Only the ones that could take it,” Sunset replied defensively. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for a new bodice ripper.”
“Really?”
Blake rolled her eyes. “Of course not, I’m looking for you.”
“Well, who asked you to?” Sunset demanded. Keep your nose out of my business before I cut it off! Sunset huffed and turned away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry, I just… thanks for coming to look for me, but you should go.”
There was no sound of Blake going, and as stealthy as she was or could be, Sunset was inclined to attribute that to the fact that she hadn’t actually gone anywhere. The sound of her voice confirmed her suspicions. “Everyone’s worried about you,” Blake said. “The rest of the school is talking about the attack, Yang’s mothering Ruby as though she was in real danger up there, but all that Team Sapphire can talk about is where you are and why you didn’t come home last night.”
Sunset grunted. “So why are you here?”
“Because Pyrrha thinks that you should be given your space if you want it, and Jaune and Ruby don’t know any better than to agree with her.”
“But you do,” Sunset said, still without turning round. 
“I know that, with some things, letting them fester only makes them worse,” Blake murmured. “And I know that, if I was in your position, you’d be one of the first to try and help me out of the hole I was in. What happened last night?”
“Nothing happened.”
“You went after Cinder, then she escaped, and you won’t come home? And you expect anybody to believe that nothing happened?” Blake demanded. “Sunset, what’s really-?”
Sunset saw, out of the corner of her eye, Blake reaching for her hand. She pulled away, panic at the thought of Blake discovering the truth in such a way making sweat start to form on her back. She jerked backwards, wheeling to face Blake as she stepped away from her.
“Don’t touch me!” she hissed, and Cinder’s hate mingled with her own panic to put an edge on her voice like a sword.
Blake couldn’t quite hide her dismay; the drooping of her ears was a dead giveaway. “I washed my hands,” she muttered mulishly.
“It’s not that, I…” Sunset sighed. She would have to tell. She couldn’t… she couldn’t just not explain, and she couldn’t spend the next four years in the library. She would have to tell someone. She would have to tell Blake, since Blake was here. She would have to tell, and then… well, she might have to leave Beacon when she was done talking, but… but at least then her friends would be safe from her. 
“I found my semblance last night,” Sunset said. “I unlocked it when I was fighting Cinder.”
Blake stared at her for a moment, as though she was waiting for something else. “Congratulations,” she said, in a soft, dry voice.
The very word was bitter in Sunset’s ears. “It’s not a good thing,” Sunset said. She walked to the balcony and looked down upon the library, empty this early in the morning. Her pony ears drooped down on top of her head. “I have… empathy, you might call it. Or touch telepathy. Or a little of both. If you’d touched my hand… I would have felt everything that you were feeling, seen what you were thinking. Like I did to Cinder.”
“My god,” Blake murmured, dismayed comprehension obvious in her voice.
Sunset gripped the wooden balcony rail tightly with both hands. “I saw her… how she ended up this way. I felt her anger, her rage, the way that she hates everyone and everything and… you all in particular. You know, she really doesn’t like you for going after Torchwick and the White Fang the way you did. And the fact that you survived her attempt to get you arrested just made her even madder.”
“I’m flattered,” Blake said dryly.
“You shouldn’t be; she’s a dangerous person to have it out for you,” Sunset said. She bowed her head. “The things that I see… the things that I feel… they don’t leave me when I break contact. I’ve got it all in me. All that anger towards the people I care about, and on top of all of that, I’ve only got to touch someone to get everything that’s in them dumped on me as well!” Sunset took a deep breath and risked a glance at Blake. “So that’s why I didn’t come home last night. What was I supposed to do?”
“You could have talked to the people who care about you?” Blake suggested as though it was such an obvious thing to do.
“Yeah, because you always do that, don’t you?” Sunset snapped. She cringed. “You see. I get…” She shook her head. “I… it’s so familiar to me.”
“What is?”
“This anger, the rage she carries around with her all the time,” Sunset said. “I’ve felt it too, when I was living in Atlas. It fits into me like I’m a glove and her emotions are the hand the glove was made for. I remember feeling the way that she feels, hating the way that she hates; I remember it so, so well that it… and she hates my friends. She hates them so badly that she wants them all dead, and sometimes, when I think of them now… there’s so much anger… how can you honestly say that I shouldn’t stay away?”
Blake stared at Sunset in silence for a moment. Then, still in silence, she held out her hand.
“What are you doing?” Sunset demanded.
Blake stepped forward and laid her hand out on the wooden rail. “Touch it.”
Sunset glanced between Blake’s face and her hand. “You’ve been listening to me, right?”
Blake nodded. “That’s why I want you to take my hand.”
Sunset hesitated, her hand balling up reflexively at the idea. She didn't want to use her semblance on Blake; she didn't particularly want to use it at all. She hadn't asked for this, or for what it would cost her to use it. She wondered, with slightly bitter thoughts, about why she couldn't have had something like pyrokinesis as her semblance, something that didn't make her hate herself and fear for those closest to her.
She didn't want to use her semblance on Blake, but looking into her eyes and the firm, unyielding set of her expression, it was pretty clear to Sunset that she wasn't going to be able to get away with not using it.
And so, tentatively, gingerly, Sunset touched Blake's proffered and unresisting palm with the tips of her fingers. She felt that same spark jolting through her arm that she had felt when she grabbed hold of Cinder, and she threw her head back as she felt her consciousness thrown forwards out of herself and into-



Blake stood on a dockyard, somewhere Sunset could not place, crouched down and sobbing as a ship sailed away into the distance. A woman, Sunset couldn't get a good read on how old she was, with tiger stripes running down her dark arms, placed a hand upon Blake's shoulder. Sienna Khan, Sunset knew from Blake's memories of this day, this moment; just as she knew that the ship sailing away was carrying Blake's parents to Menagerie so she knew that this was the woman who succeeded Blake's father as leader of the White Fang.
"Your father was a great man, once," Sienna said. "But he was always cautious, and old age has turned that caution into fear. We require boldness now if we are to prevail and win a world for all our brothers and sisters to share in freedom."
Blake climbed to her feet, and wiped away the tears from her eyes. "I understand."
"Do you?" Sienna asked, looking into Blake's eyes. "Do you truly understand what we must do? Or do you remain here as a spy for your father?"
"No!" Blake yelled. "My father's weak, he doesn't get it, he's given up!" She scowled. "I won't ever give up. I want to see us achieve equality, and I won't stop fighting until I do. I belong to the faunus now, and to you."
Sienna Khan smiled, and as she smiled, Sunset couldn't help but think that it was that smile, and not the stripes on her arm, in which she most possessed the aspect of the tiger.



Blake walked down the street; it was the late afternoon, and she was on her way to a meeting. A faunus woman, a dog faunus with terrier ears and dark skin, was coming the other way, pushing a pram in front of her with a little boy inside.
She was walking quickly, her heels clicking rapidly on the stone of the pavement as she walked, and though she was trying to hide it, as she passed, Blake could tell that she was in some distress.
It didn't take Blake long to notice the source of that distress: a human man, bald and slovenly looking, his face – probably never particularly good looking – deformed by odious hostility; he followed her from a distance of about fifteen feet or so. He sounded as though he’d just rolled out of some bar; he kept slurring his words as he yelled at her in a harsh, ugly, nasal voice. "Hey! Hey, I'm talking to you! You're on benefits, aren't you? That's why you had that kid, so you could steal our benefits! Isn't it? You're a thief, and you don't belong here!"



Sunset saw no more distinct memories from Blake, but she felt…she felt anger. A surprising, shocking anger to come from Blake Belladonna, who rarely raised her voice and walked through life with an expression so calm that it was almost placid. But beneath those still waters, it seemed that a raging tempest surged and buffeted, or at least, that it had. Rage against her parents for abandoning the fight and so for abandoning her, rage against the Schnee Dust Company for treating the deaths of innocent faunus struggling to support their families as an acceptable write-off, rage against the four kingdoms for spouting the rhetoric of equality while turning a blind eye to oppression, rage against those who thought that they could taunt and abuse faunus in the street without consequence, rage against the fact that there were no consequences for them more often than not, rage against the fact that innocent women like that mother had to live in fear.
Anger that this was the world they lived in.



Sunset pulled away, clutching her hands together as she looked into Blake's eyes.
"That anger? That's something that every faunus feels or has felt sooner or later," Blake said. "When we're on the receiving end of the injustice of the world, when we see someone else suffering from that injustice, we feel it. It builds up with every callous remark or thoughtless action from those who should know better. It isn't unique to you, and it certainly doesn't belong to Cinder Fall; I don't know what she's gone through in her life, but if she's angry that she wasn't given the life that she wanted or deserved… she can join the line."
Blake pursed her lips together. "No offence, Sunset, but there are times when I think that you want to live your life as though you're the hero in some kind of story; you act like you're unique, the only person in the whole world who does the things that you do, feels the way that you do. And sometimes, I can even see why, but when it comes to this… I'm sorry to say you're just not that special."
“I am absolutely that special, and more,” Sunset replied, bristling as Cinder’s pride mingled with her own. She took a deep breath. “What happened?”
Blake blinked. “When?”
“In your memory,” Sunset said. “The woman being followed down the street. What did you do? It felt as though you wanted to punch the guy.”
“I did; I did want to, I mean,” Blake said. “But the police might have picked up the mother if I had, just for being in the wrong place; I followed them both, discreetly, over the rooftops, to make sure that he didn’t do anything besides run his mouth. After a while, he gave up and… stopped bothering her. She wasn’t hurt, and she and the child got home safe.” Blake folded her arms and leaned against the balcony rail. “When I told Adam – he wanted to know why I was late for a chapter meeting – he told me that I should have killed the man. He told me that he would have, and even then, a long time before he became… or before I realised… I believed him. 
“We all feel the same anger, Sunset. We all rage at the injustice of our situation. But we don’t have to let it rule us, and we don’t have to let it make us monsters, like Cinder or Adam. Anger is a consequence of living in this world, but giving in to it is a choice. One I’ve seen too many good people fall prey to; please don’t make the same mistake.”
Sunset shook her head. “You think I want to?”
“I think you’ve overcome your own anger,” Blake said. “Is there any reason why you can’t overcome Cinder’s?”
“But what if I can’t?” Sunset asked quietly. “What if I lose this time, what if… what if I hurt them?” She frowned. “We’re so alike: both orphans; both fallen from grace, cast out from lives of luxury and spoiled indulgence into something much harsher, crueller, colder; both ambitious, envious of those who have what we want. A couple of wrong turns, and I could have become her.”
“But you didn’t.”
“That doesn’t mean that I won’t,” Sunset said. “Especially not since I feel exactly the way that she does; it’s like I’m halfway there already.” And I’ll get there if Cinder has anything to say about it. She didn’t mention that Cinder had tried to get Sunset on her side to Blake; that was a step further than she was willing to admit at this stage.
“I couldn’t bear it if I hurt them,” she said.
Blake was silent for a while. She looked away from Sunset, her golden eyes scanning the empty library beneath them. “Have you ever looked at someone and thought ‘they are the personification of this word’? Have you ever looked at someone and that word just popped into your head whenever you set eyes on them, because even if it didn’t capture every single thing about them… it still got to the heart of that person better than any other word that you could think of?”
Sunset… couldn’t honestly say that she had experienced the phenomenon that Blake was describing, although to hear it described, it made a lot of sense. She said nothing. She just waited, silently, to see where Blake was going with this. 
“Living with you, getting to know Team Sapphire,” Blake continued. “I look at Ruby, and I think ‘this girl is the embodiment of courage.’ I can’t think of any situation where she’d hesitate to throw herself into the breach to protect… anyone. She wouldn’t need to like them, she wouldn’t even need to know them, she wouldn’t care how great the danger was-”
“All that she’d need to know was that somebody was in trouble, and she’d be there,” Sunset murmured. “Locked, loaded, and swinging Crescent Rose with wild abandon.” She sighed. “I don’t exactly like that tendency in her, but I can’t deny it either. I just wish that she was the embodiment of caution or self-preservation or something like that.”
Blake chuckled. “No.”
“No?”
“No,” Blake repeated. “You might think so, but… but the truth is that if she weren’t the way she is, if she weren’t the embodiment of courage, absolutely unafraid of anything, then she wouldn’t be Ruby Rose. Certainly, she wouldn’t be the Ruby you love.”
Sunset considered that for a moment. She tried to imagine a cautious Ruby, a careful Ruby, a Ruby who gave some sign of valuing her own skin. It was hard to do, very hard, and Blake was right, the result didn’t look much like Ruby Rose. “You may be onto something with this.”
Blake nodded. “I look at Pyrrha, and I see the personification of gentleness.”
“In the old meaning or the new one?”
“Both,” Blake said. “That’s what makes it so apposite.”
Sunset couldn’t argue with that, and so she didn’t. “And Jaune?”
Blake seemed to take a moment to consider Jaune Arc. “Decency.” Blake waited, as if she expected Sunset to ask what word she, Sunset, might be considered to embody. Though her mouth was dry with expectation, Sunset didn’t ask; how much she actually wanted to know depended entirely upon what the answer was.
“And when I look at you,” Blake said, after a moment or two. “I think of the word ‘resolve.’ You keep fighting, and you never give up, and you never turn away from a challenge. That’s what I thought, anyway. I’d hate for you to give up now and prove me wrong.”
Sunset said nothing. Her gaze flickered to Blake and then away again, as her appreciation for Blake’s friendship warred with Cinder’s dislike of the other girl. 
“I don’t know what it’s like to have all of Cinder’s feelings inside of you,” Blake said. “But here’s what I do know: Cinder Fall tried to have me arrested and turn the whole school against me, but Sunset Shimmer helped get me out of that trouble and persuade the people who matter to let me come back to Beacon. Cinder Fall has been using the White Fang to wage war against Vale, but Sunset Shimmer helped me fight back and try to stop the fall of a movement that used to stand for something real and important. Cinder Fall went to the tower last night to do damage; Sunset Shimmer went to help a friend in trouble. Cinder Fall might hate Pyrrha and Jaune and Ruby and even me… but Sunset cares about all of us. I believe, no, I know that to be true. You may be alike in some ways, but you could say that about you and Pyrrha; you could even say it about you and me! 
“Adam and I are a lot alike too. We both feel the same anger at what has been done to our people, but the difference is that I don’t let my anger destroy who I am… or at least, I hope I don’t,” Blake said. “That’s the point: the difference is as important as the likeness. You both want to be recognised, fine, but you want to shine over the world, and Cinder wants to tear it all down. Your families, your feelings… none of it changes the fact that you’re a good person, and she isn’t… and none of it changes the fact that you have three friends who want to help you if you’ll let them.”
Sunset was silent for a moment. “Four.”
“Huh?”
“The way I see it, I have four friends who want to help me,” Sunset said.
Blake blushed a little as her cat ears perked up a bit. “Well… I don’t know if… I thought I should try. Did it help?”
Sunset nodded. “You… you make a lot of sense. It’s not gone, but… but you’re right; I can’t hide from it, and I can’t let her win by letting her emotions rule me. She’s not going to get the best of me that easily.”
Blake nodded. “Resolve.”
“I have to live up to your expectations, now that you’ve said it,” Sunset said. She stepped back from the rail. “They’ll understand, won’t they?”
“I don’t doubt it,” Blake said.
Sunset found that, if she could take a step back from Cinder’s thoughts, if she could fight her way through the fog of another girl’s anger and hatred, she didn’t really doubt it either. 
And let’s face it, if she wanted to control her semblance so that she could touch people without finding out everything about them, she could do a lot worse than talk to Pyrrha.
Pyrrha. Sunset flinched at the anger that flared within her at the thought of Pyrrha, the spoiled-
No. No, she was going to fight this. She had to fight this. She wasn’t going to let Cinder win. She was going to embody resolve and rise above this as she had risen above all other obstacles.
Pyrrha whom she hated. Pyrrha who had everything she wanted. Pyrrha, who understood Sunset better than anyone else. Pyrrha, whom Sunset could talk to as an equal and trust as an equal. 
Pyrrha whom she wanted dead. Pyrrha who was so overrated. Pyrrha who had worked her ass off to become strong just as Sunset had. Pyrrha whom she loved.
Pyrrha whom they all loved so well. Pyrrha she wanted to protect.
Pyrrha her enemy.
Pyrrha her teammate.
Pyrrha her friend.
Pyrrha her friend.
Pyrrha her friend. Sunset breathed in and out. Pyrrha her friend. She had to focus on that, focus as much as she had ever focussed on a complex magical spell. Focus on the feelings that were hers and leave the thoughts of Cinder Fall to wither on the vine. 
“Are you okay?” Blake asked, concern evident in her voice.
Sunset took a deep breath. “I’m not fine,” she said. “But I am better. Come on, let’s go.”
With Blake at her side, Sunset began to head home.