Sunset Shimmer and Applejack watched as the car careened towards them on the narrow forest trail, yellow lights blinding.
“Uh,” Sunset said, taking a step back.
It wasn’t slowing down.
“Er,” Applejack said, a definite edge of worry in her voice, and took Sunset’s arm, pulling slightly.
The car definitely wasn’t stopping.
“Get down!” Sunset Shimmer shoved Applejack off the road, full body tackling her to where they fell hard on the edge of the trees, landing in a leggy, wet heap.
It wasn’t necessary—apparently—as the car squealed and skidded to a stop a dead body’s length away from where they’d been standing. Sunset sat up, blinking hard against the bright light, her heart pounding beneath her jacket. A back door burst open and Pinkie Pie sprang out before the car had settled to a full stop.
“Sunset Shimmer!”
“Wha-ah! Pinkie!” She gasped, wincing as Pinkie rushed forward and pulled her into an embrace. “Too tight!”
“Eeee, we found you!” Pinkie squeezed harder before letting her go, letting her stagger and catch her breath while Applejack slowly pulled herself to her feet.
“We came as fast as we could!” Rainbow Dash shouted, leaping out of the driver’s seat. She left the high beams on, far too bright against the prior darkness.
“Y’all nearly hit us!” Applejack said, dusting dirty snow from her jacket.
“I said we came as fast as we could,” Rainbow Dash said, crossing her arms.
Before Sunset could even register what was happening, or ask what the hell was going on, another car door opened.
“That is an understatement,” Rarity said, staggering into the snow while Fluttershy slumped out behind her, looking sick. “That was simply reckless!”
“Would you rather Pinkie behind the wheel?” Rainbow Dash said.
“No,” Fluttershy meeped, hanging onto the car door.
“Yeah!” Pinkie called out in the same moment. “Maybe I can drive back—“
“But what are you all doing here?” Sunset asked, before it could devolve any further.
“Uh, we’re here to rescue you,” Rainbow Dash said, one eyebrow raised. “Duh.”
“What?” Sunset’s eye twitched. The beautiful calm from earlier had vanished. “I’m not going back."
“Ugh!” Rainbow Dash let out a full bodied groan, her head rolling back. “Seriously? Come on! Even if you are Anon-A-Miss, this is crazy! We’re trying to make sure you don’t die out here like the Donna Party.”
“Well that’s your problem,” Sunset replied flatly.
“What?”
“I think you mean Donner Party, dear,” Rarity added quietly.
“And that’s the wrong kind of party!” Pinkie Pie said, bouncing at her side. “Because that’s cannibalism!”
“Yeah, well, we’re not doing that either,” Rainbow Dash said, her shoulders sinking as she watched Pinkie bob up and down on her heels.
“We might be getting closer to that if my car battery dies in this cold,” Applejack said, looking pointedly down the road where the old family truck waited.
“Speaking of, can someone else drive back?” Rarity said, raising a finger, and apparently ignoring the real problem.
Sunset didn’t know what to say, frankly; they weren’t supposed to be there. Maybe a rational person would have been relieved. Or happy. Her friends—her former friends—had come all the way out there to help her, even when they believed she had betrayed them. Instead of berating her, or abandoning her, they were just… acting normal.
“—I can totally drive us back—“
“You nearly spun out twice!”
It was like they were pretending everything was fine. As if they hadn’t abandoned her over something she didn’t even do. As if they hadn’t betrayed her…
Do us all a favor and just disappear!
“Everyone stop!” Sunset yelled, her hands slicing through the cold air and cutting through their pointless chatter, leaving a sudden, shocked silence as she stood there, fuming.
She was suddenly, alarmingly, bizarrely angry.
“I don’t know how you all got here—“
“I texted ‘em.”
Sunset glared at Applejack. “I don’t care what you’re all doing here. All of you just turn around, go back to your happy little lives, and leave me the hell alone!”
The dark forest fell to silence, or something like it, with the wind whipping through the black trees. She thought she had gotten over all of this. It was done, finished. It was friendships destroyed, bridges burned, smell of smoke and watering eyes, never looking back sort of over. She really thought she had come to terms with losing them as friends. Now here they all were, five on one, acting like nothing had happened, racing out to find her, and she hated it.
“Ahhh… what’s going on?” Rainbow Dash said finally, glancing around.
“Sunset, are you okay?” Fluttershy said, walking closer, a first aid kit held tight in her arms.
“I’m. Fine,” Sunset bit out through gritted teeth, keeping her clenched hands tight at her side.
“Wow, you don’t sound fine, “Pinkie Pie chimed in. “Like, the total opposite of fine.”
“As if you care!” She was in absolutely no mood to deal with Pinkie’s cheerfulness, or Fluttershy’s kindness, or their pity, or sympathy, or any of it.
“Yeah, of course we care,” Rainbow Dash replied, frowning. ”We’re not going to sit by and let you run off in the middle of a blizzard.”
“We only came to help,” Fluttershy said, shrinking down behind Rarity.
“Well don’t!” Sunset shouted, stepping forward and feeling almost as much as a bully as they accused her of being. “You can’t just show up and pretend like you actually give a damn!”
“Sugarcube, calm down—“ Applejack had stepped forward, reaching out, but Sunset yanked her arm out of reach, her shoulders high and tight.
“Back off! You were the ones who told me we weren’t friends. You’re the ones who left me first!”
“Well, yeah, cause we’re angry at you!” Rainbow Dash said, exasperated. “Or we were. Or, like—I don’t even know any more! But that doesn’t matter!”
“We didn’t want you to get hurt,” Fluttershy said.
“Of course we don’t, silly!” Pinkie added.
“Don’t give me that crap! All this time you won’t talk to me. You won’t even listen to me. So don’t pretend like you actually gave a damn about me. I’m finally leaving, something I should have done a long time ago, and now you’re stopping me? You should be happy! After you all told me how much you hated me!”
“I never said that,” Fluttershy said, sounding close to tears. “I don’t hate you.”
“Don’t lie to me!” Sunset said, her voice cracking as it rose, her hands aching from how tight her fists were. “This is just what you all want! You all just want me to disappear!“
“Now you stop right there!” Rarity said in a trembling voice, clutching at the front of her jacket. She, too, looked almost in tears. “We most certainly don’t want this!”
“Yes you do!” Sunset shouted right back. “Back when you all abandoned me, I remember! I was begging for you to listen and none of you even tried. I remember, you said...”
She hesitated. What had they said?
Just disappear!
No… that hadn’t been them. She was thinking of all those notes and messages, the whispers and shouts and shoves of the other students. What was it her friends had said? That they wouldn’t believe her. They had accused her of being Anon-A-Miss, taking advantage of them and stealing their secrets, they had said…
“You said you didn’t want to be my friend anymore,” Sunset said in a much softer voice, and that pain was sharper and crueler than scratched words on a locker, or the lingering sting of a blow. The wind and snow swept around them in the surrounding darkness.
It was cold. She felt so stupid.
Suddenly she couldn’t stand to look at them. She hated how her eyes began to burn.
“Sunset…”
“Whatever. Hate me or don’t, I already made up my mind.” Sunset wrapped her arms around herself, and wished she sounded more convincing. “I don’t need your pity anymore, so just go home.”
“Oh yeah? And what about you, huh?” Rainbow Dash asked, crossing her arms. “Think you’ll be happy living in the woods?”
“I’m not going to be living in the woods,” Sunset said with an exasperated sigh. “I just want to go somewhere where people don’t know me, is that so much to ask?”
“It sounds lonely,” said Fluttershy.
“Yeah, cause that’ll be a real change for me. Miss Social right here.”
“Dear, we know you don’t want to leave, and you don’t have to,” Rarity said. “We can figure this out.”
“No, just... stop all this pretending!" Sunset said. "You don't need to keep doing this. Twilight isn’t here to make you babysit me and make sure I don’t turn into a demon again. No one is making you stay—“
“You’re right,” Applejack cut in. “No one’s forcing us, and yet we’re all still here.”
Sunset frowned, not liking what the answer might be. “I… look, if it’s just out of pity—“
“It’s cause we care about you!” Rainbow Dash said, glaring.
“But…” Sunset paused. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. They were supposed to be angry and disappointed in her. Not this. They had abandoned her first, so it damn well wasn’t fair to try and be her friends now.
“Dear, we’ve been searching for you ever since Sweetie Belle and her friends came to us at lunch in an absolute panic. They said that… that you might do something, well…” Rarity paused, staring hard at the ground. “We weren’t sure what you might do.”
Fair enough, she thought grudgingly, her lips twisting before she could come up with a rebuttal. Her response to not getting to be a princess was to create a brainwashed army to attack Equestria with tainted magic. Predictability wasn’t one of her charms.
“We were worried,” Fluttershy said. “We were afraid you might do something terrible.”
“Oh, big surprise,” Sunset said sourly, hating that they had good reason for it. “Did you think I was going to blow up the school again?”
“We thought you were going to kill yourself!” Rainbow Dash said, her voice cracking. Sunset stared, stunned into silence, as Rainbow Dash’s face twisted with anger and pain.
It was Applejack that continued. “Ever since ya left we’ve been out looking everywhere because, well…” She sighed, closing her eyes.
“We were worried,” Fluttershy said again.
“What?” Sunset said, feeling like the breath had been knocked from her. “No. Of course I… I wouldn’t…”
But that wasn’t quite true, was it? She had considered it in the past, although she had never told anyone. Nothing ever came of it, nothing except dark, spiraling thoughts. That the world would be better without her in it. That there wasn’t any reason for her to be alive. That ending it would make the pain and the humiliation, go away, the loneliness… but she had never made a true attempt. Not really.
“No,” she said again, voice a little stronger. “I promise, I’m not doing that. Not this time.”
Some of the girls reacted to that, a hint of something that didn’t need to be talked about. Not then, preferably not ever.
“Sunset—“ Fluttershy began to say, her voice wavering.
“Don’t,” Sunset said, much softer than before, holding up a hand, more so to give herself a moment to think. Things were becoming clear in her own mind, as the red fog faded. It sucked, though. Hot anger was far easier than the cold, numbing pain of losing them.
When Sunset looked at them again, she saw the shadows under their eyes, the hard, worried lines of their faces. They weren’t supposed to still care. She was supposed to vanish and they would all forget about her. Damn them, she thought, that coldness seeping into her gut.
“I know why you’re here, even though you still think I did it. Why you pretended to be my friend when I… when I really needed one.” She clutched her arm, her voice sinking.
“We weren’t pretending—“
“Enough. I get it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m fucking pissed at you right now!” she shouted, glaring at them for a hot second before the heat fizzled into the cold air once more. She sighed. “But I also know you. You’re good people. You all gave me a chance when no one else would. And you’ll be a lot happier without me dragging you down. So just go home and forget about me.”
In a sharp moment she realized how much she would miss them. They were her friends, the first people to ever care about her. But they didn’t want her anymore. Maybe had never wanted her. It hurt.
Biting her lip, she shifted the heavy weight of her backpack, holding tight to the straps as if they might ground her, and turned to walk away hoping that this time, they wouldn't follow. She was angry. She felt betrayed. But she still loved them. What a damned fool.
“Wait,” Rarity said slowly, almost as if to herself, making Sunset pause. “Wait a minute, is that what this is about?”
“Huh?” Applejack said, apparently answering for all of them as they looked about, but didn’t get a response as Rarity held her fingers to her mouth, frowning thoughtfully. “Uh, Rarity, mind explaining?”
Finally she looked up, meeting Sunset’s eyes. “Is that what this whole... Anon-A-Miss debacle is about?” Rarity asked. “Were you testing us? To see if we were really your friends?”
“That doesn’t make any sense,“ Rainbow Dash said.
“And if so, I’m not sure if we passed,” Fluttershy remarked.
Sunset groaned, rubbing a hand over her face. It didn’t help that it did make sense, in an idiotic way. She could imagine herself doing something so stupid, selfish, and short-sighted, whether to punish them, or herself. It wouldn’t be the first time she had done something stupid, selfish, and short-sighted, like brainwash a teenage army.
“No." She shook her head, too tired to argue.
"Then...?"
They waited, and Sunset realized they were waiting for her. They were listening.
She looked up, meeting each of their eyes, and spoke the plain truth. "It wasn’t me,” she said slowly, holding each word. “I swear, I’m not Anon-A-Miss. I didn’t share your secrets, and I didn’t betray you.”
She paused, felt her eyes burn as she held her breath, hoping that this time, things might be different. “Please, believe me.”
“I believe ya,” Applejack said immediately. Sunset turned to her and met her gaze unflinchingly, as she gave a short nod.
“Me too,” Rarity added.
Pinkie chimed in, “Me three!”
“I’m sorry we thought it was you,” Fluttershy added.
“So now we just need to find the real one and clear your name,” Rainbow Dash said, grinning.
Sunset took a full breath in, and then let it out, staring at them. Just like that, they believed her. She probably should have felt relieved.
“Wonderful, I’m glad we’ve got that settled,” Rarity said, dusting fresh snow off her coat and pulling it closer. “And this is all well and good, but could we perhaps prove Sunset’s innocence from someplace a bit warmer?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Sunset had nearly forgotten where they stood. Rarity was right, it was cold, and only getting colder. Even in the shelter of the trees the wind was picking up, the snow no longer light soft clumps, but harder specks that stung the skin. Sunset turned away from the glow of the headlights to gaze at the path she was going down, dark and unknown.
Was this what she really wanted? To leave? To leave them?
“Come on, let’s head back before this storm gets any worse,” Rainbow Dash said, walking back to her car and wiping snow off the edges of the windshield.
“Ooh, I’ll drive!” Pinkie Pie shouted, bounding over.
“No.”
“Sunset, ya coming?” Applejack asked, frowning at her. She hadn’t moved.
It wasn’t enough. Too little, too late. She could only move forward. It was the only option.
“I’m not going back,” Sunset said.
This was met with a muted metallic thud as Rainbow Dash banged her head against the roof of her car.
“Seriously?”
“There’s nothing there for me,” Sunset said, gesturing at the way they had come. “No matter what I say or do, no one will ever trust me. Nothing’s going to change. I have to go somewhere new, somewhere people don’t know me as a demon.”
“You don't have to do that, things will change,” Applejack said. “You’ve been doing good, we’ve all seen it. And we’ll help ya get through this Anon-A-Miss nonsense and prove that yer innocent.”
Sunset shook her head, but wasn't so sure. Could that be enough?
“Dear, you don’t have to leave, and we certainly don’t want you to,” Rarity said, coming up to her other side and lightly laying a hand on her arm.
“Yeah, we can figure this out," Rainbow Dash said.
Sunset was losing what precious resolve remained. In it’s place was a growing awareness of how cold she was, and how tired. Her face and eyes burned, and her fingers and toes were numb. Earlier she had been so certain, everything had been simple, it was all figured out…
“You can at least wait ‘til after this storm blows over,” Applejack said, an annoying voice of reason.
“Just for the night…” Fluttershy said, after a moment.
“Pretty please?” added Pinkie Pie.
There was a long stretch of silence as Sunset tried not to choke against the tightness of her throat. She took a deep breath, and closed her eyes.
“Fine,” Sunset muttered, to the sound of sighs of relief and squeals of joy. A distant part of her knew she should be happy.
Soon she found herself sitting in the back of Rainbow Dash’s car, up against the frosted window and hugging the backpack in her lap, the cold weight of it seeping through her jeans. They drove through the winding forest road, slower than before, careful on the possible ice, as the dark forest rushed through her reflection. The snow was coming down harder.
She no longer knew what she wanted.