/x/x/x/
Winter is hardly known for its warmth.
It is a time for endless chill, life seemingly freezing in its tracks, both metaphorically and literally. It is a time for the mammals to enter hibernation, for the birds to fly to a more temperate region, and for the fish to stay slightly further away from the water’s surface. For humans, ponies, dragons, and all other sapient creatures, whether one refers to the holidays as Hearth’s Warming or Christmas, it's a time for staying indoors under several blankets in front of a cozy fire with your family and friends close by your side.
Well, for most sapient creatures, that is. Save for one in particular, one sitting alone in a dark room. No light, no blankets, no joy anywhere to speak of. Such is the life for a friendless traitor.
She stands up and walks to the window, pulling the curtain aside. Pale evening white bathes the room for a moment as she peers outside. More of the same. Zero visibility, just ice and snow. She presses her fingers to the glass. It may as well have been an immaterial force field, for all she could feel. The early stages of frostbite were beginning to set in.
She thinks briefly about sighing, but lacks the energy to even breathe heavily enough to allow for one. Instead she lazily lets the fabric fall, turning the room near black once again.
She kneels, eyes readjusting to the darkness, and sets her head against the wall. A few strands of crimson and yellow poke out from underneath her bleak gray hoodie. It holds tight around her wrists and shoulders. It and a pair of shorts are all that she’s wearing, showing her goldenrod skin. She absentmindedly rubs her leg, imagining fur for a moment.
A violent shudder racks her body, but her dead eyes show no sign of reaction. They merely stare at nothing.
Across the room her cell phone vibrates. Almost like clockwork she stands and walks over to it. Mechanical. Zombie-like. She picks it up to check the message, but it's just another warning from her bank for a low account balance of 0 dollars and 76 cents.
She swipes it away and stares for a moment at the picture on the screen. It's a photo of herself in a Sherclop Holmes-ian getup, and 5 other teenage girls in other wildly varying outfits. In days past when she performed the same action, a single tear would fall onto it, distorting the photo slightly. But not this time. There were no more tears left to cry.
“Tomorrow.”
She strolls over to the stairs leading to her loft bed, kicking aside a few empty pint containers and a broken piece of banister. She ignores both the ravenous hunger from her stomach, and the bitter dryness of her tongue and throat. She climbs the stairwell one step at a time, hands shoved deep inside her jacket pockets. At the top, she stares at the messy comforter and wrinkled pillowcases. She sniffs the air, smelling nothing. Noseblind. She falls forward.
As she hits the mattress, the phone rings.
She ignores it and stays on the bed.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
...
Silence.
“Finally...” she murmurs, drifting into the strange land that lies between consciousness and a lack thereof. Just enough to continue living without collapsing on the ground in pure unfettered exhaustion, but not quite enough to awaken feeling refreshed.
Twelve hours pass in what could have been thirty, or one, and she awakens.
“Today.”
Unceremoniously, she gets up out of bed and throws her jacket back onto the blankets, wincing as the fabric peels off of her arms. She walks back down the stairs, stepping over to a large pile of random assorted fabric. She absentmindedly reaches in and pulls out a shirt and a pair of pants, and slips them on. She rummages for two socks, one black and one white, and pulls them over her feet. The white one is upside down, but she either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.
She walks over to her phone and reads the identity of last night’s caller. Anonymous. She grimaces. Her memories flash by. Anon-a-Miss. The nameless faceless bitch who ruined her life. Who cares. She reaches for the device, pauses, then begins to retract her hand. Better if it stays. Better for everyone.
She pulls up her sleeves and glances down at her wrists, more specifically at the red tally marks lining them. All of the physical scars had closed underneath the crusts of dried blood, which had run in rivulets down to her elbows once upon a time. She reaches a finger over to one such trail, tracing it down her arm. She grits her teeth and winces in pain, but doesn't stop.
“Definitely... today.”
She turns and walks to the door, purpose filling her every step. Misguided purpose, perhaps, but purpose nonetheless. Her pulse remains the same, however. She picks up her leather jacket off of the ground, and puts it on, followed by a scarf. She wraps it around her neck once, then pauses. She wraps it again, and again, and once more. She pulls tightly then takes a deep breath and exhales, before letting it go. She casts a wistful look to the piece of rope tied around the wood peg lying broken on the floor.
“Couldn't be that easy, could it...” she lets out a humorless laugh, puts on her boots, and reaches for the door knob.
She steps through, and gently closes the door behind her. Beige walls, eye piercing fluorescent lights, and an ugly maroon carpet with an even uglier green rug assaulted her eyes, which couldn't see them even if they wanted to what with the massive difference in brightness.
Blinded, she strolls down the hallway towards the stairwell. Despite the lack of eyesight for a hot moment, or should one say a cold moment, she makes the journey without hitting a wall. She takes the stairs one at a time, wasting no time at all to continue her way out of the building.
As she presses out the gold plated wooden slabs that this sorry apartment complex passes off as doors, a light dusting of white powder swirls around her feet. The wind tries to push her back in, but she shoves her shoulder forward and lurches her way outside.
The weather isn't so bad. Chilly and overcast and dreary grey with light snowfall but no more than any other mild winter day. The roads, however, are complete garbage. Grayish brown slush lines the edges, solid ice within broken only by thin lines worn down by tires, and what few patches of concrete which remain visible are slick with black ice.
She turns and continues to walk down the sidewalk. Her heart rate increases slightly, and despite the climate, small spots of uncomfortable warmth pop up on her underarms. She buries her chin in her scarf.
Six blocks pass with a relative lack of events.
Eventually, however, a pair of headlights appears in the distance. She stops in her tracks, and her breath hitches. Her pulse spikes, and her chest pulls tighter. Her shoulders and hips seemingly vibrate as adrenaline begins to course through her veins. She pulls her hands out of her pockets and places them on her temples.
“Today’s the day, Sunset...” she murmurs to herself. “Time to say hi to mom and dad.”
She waits until the headlights are closer. Her eyes scan the speed of the car and the distance it is away from her. There's only gonna be one shot at this, gotta make it count. Almost there. One more second. And, now!
She screws her eyes closed and jumps into the street. She hears the horn blaring, getting closer and closer and then... getting further and further. And stopping.
She opens her eyes to see that she isn't dead. Tire tracks move deftly around her, and as she turns to evaluate her surroundings, the red tail lights bid her farewell. She also sees that she isn't alone.
Still on the sidewalk is a familiar face.
“Sunset Shimmer!?” The new arrival asks, taken aback. Her eyes are wide and trembling, and quickly starting to shine with unshed tears.
Sunset grimaces, and looks away in shame.
“Hi Applebloom,” she quietly greets, stepping back onto the sidewalk. “I slipped... good thing that driver got out of the way, huh.”
Applebloom looks down and away. “Yeah...” she murmurs. “Real fortunate.”
Sunset reaches forward and plants her hand on the younger girl’s shoulder. “You're a good kid,” she whispers. “You...” she swallows, removing her hand. “You've got a good family, who raised you right... is Applejack doing well?”
The girl simply nods her head, keeping from making eye contact.
“That's good...” Sunset walks past her, back to the apartment. She says nothing else.
Applebloom turns to watch the former pony leave, watches her defeated and unconfident gait grow smaller. Hot stinging tears begin to run down her cheeks. A lump forms in her throat and a stone takes residence inside her stomach. Her fleece lined coat does nothing to shield her body from the icy chill of both the wind, and her guilt.
She screws her eyes shut, squeezing the tears fully out. She wipes them away then turns and proceeds along her destination, mind wandering back to the day she herself set this in motion.
/x/x/x/
One Month Earlier...
/x/x/x/
Scarlet background? Check. Marigold foreground? Check. Terrible photoshop of Sunset Shimmer’s stupidly shaped head and her even stupider hair? Check. Hilariously witty pun for a name if she does say so herself? Check.
Applebloom nodded, satisfied with her work. “This’ll do nicely,” she murmured to herself, typing out the MyStable post, her magnum opus to help her supplant Sunset as her sister’s favorite person in the whole wide world.
“Did you guys know when AJ was a kid she loved playing with her pigs? OMG! She sat in the mud for hours! Her whole family calls her “Piggly Wiggly” cause she loves them so much!”
Her fingers paused for a moment. True, Applejack wouldn't care too much for a little bit of teasing. She lets things like that slide right off of her back. But this seemed a bit cruel, spreading such a private secret like this. Especially insulting her big sister.
With a resolute sigh, Applebloom finished the post. Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette, after all.
“What a PIG!”
With no hesitation she hit post, and with that, the damage was done, and her cell phone revealed the profile of one certain Applejack. She hadn't posted anything in over four days now, far too preoccupied during the weekend with her ~new friends~ to even bother checking up on social media. To even bother to remember her promise.
Still, it doesn't matter what a person posted to their own profile. What really truly mattered was what other people posted to the profile. Now, all 985 people on her friends list had pure unbridled access to the juicy gossip the likes of which hadn't been around since before Sunset’s ‘reformation’.
Teenagers in the rumor mill had the same sense of self-control as hungry sharks around fresh meat. This was no ordinary hunger, though: these kids were an army of sharks that hadn't eaten anything of sustenance in many many moons. Within minutes, they descended... and fed.
“Ha ha ha piggy!” Came a response almost immediately, from Silver Spoon.
A quick wave of panic gripped Applebloom as she put some actual thought into her plot. What-ifs and what-abouts coursed through her brain, her veins pumped with adrenaline. No no NO this wouldn't do at all! It needed to get more hits, more views, more heat. So much more. It needed to melt the very frost building up on Big Mac’s truck windows.
Checking to make sure that, yes, she was still logged into the Anon-a-Miss account, she brought up the share menu. Lots of tantalizing choices to select from were here: Diamond Tiara, Trixie, Gilda, all good choices to help spread the seeds of chaos. But that wouldn't achieve the best results.
This must be a controlled burn. This must only affect those directly within their own circles, to do as much mitigation as possible. The only one who should get seriously embarrassed, ostracized, or hurt, is Sunset. It should only be spread to those immediately within her own circle.
Applejack. Rainbow Dash. Fluttershy. Pinkie Pie. Rarity... and Sunset. Eh, might as well put it to Applebloom herself. It'd make more sense. If Sunset wanted to hurt her new friends she’d go for everyone in the house at the time, and would surely honor the one who fed her the story base.
Of course Applejack would explain the backstory to Sunset. One didn't need to have a charm in sociology to know her sister’s penchant for trust and loyalty in those who earn it. That wasn't the problem. The problem lay in making sure that it was SUNSET who was blamed, and not herself.
If Applebloom brought it up to Applejack, with the concerned sibling facade up and running at full power, that would immediately defuse any and all suspicion placed on her. If she made the account, why would she point it out? It didn't make logical sense.
Of course, anyone who viewed the situation with an objective lens would see right through it. The jealous little sister feeling excluded, abandoned, and taken for granted, making a shallow attempt at framing the newly-made “good girl” and making her out to be the no-good dirty rotten lying two-faced secret-blabbing bee eye tea sea aych queen she always was and always would be deep down. Twilight Sparkle would see right through it.
But... Twilight Sparkle warn't here right now, was she...
Three hours passed in no time as the plague spread amongst the students of Canterlot High School, and maybe even in Crystal Prep and other rival schools in the district. Rainbow and Rarity knew some of them through sports and the fact that the fashionista and her sister used to go to middle school somewhere else. That was privileged information known through Sweetie Belle.
And speaking of Sweetie Belle, Applebloom made a mental note to talk to both her and Scootaloo about this plan as soon as she saw them and the three were out of earshot of any affected-
“Parties!” Pinkie Pie shouted from across the sea of students. Bingo. Applebloom started making her way towards the voice, which slurred slightly from the fatigue of a lack of restful sleep.
“Parties are my... my... my something important!”
Almost on queue, an unidentifiable voice shouted out “Hey Piggly Wiggly!”
Perfect timing.
“Sis!” She cried out, phone already pulled out and on the correct page, logged now into her own account. She started panting, as if she’d been running for a while. “Sis! You gotta see this! Look!”
Shoving her phone in her older sister’s face, Applebloom watched as Applejack took the phone and began to read.
“WHAT!?” She screamed, absolutely flabbergasted and more than a little vulnerable, with a heaping helping of confusion on the side, smothered in gravy. The gravy of shame. “How the... what the...?”
“It got posted a couple hours ago!” Applebloom continued, face not giving away any clue that she knew what was really up. So far so good.
Applejack inquired about the poster’s identity but luckily Applebloom had concocted a perfect response about an hour and a half ago.
“Her profile was created th’ same time as the posts. No clue who she is! She posted on your page, my page, all of you guys’ pages! The whole school probably knows about it by now!”
It was no exaggeration. Other voices joined the cacophony as the nickname and pig noises flooded the ambience. Applebloom kicked herself for dropping pronouns, but figured it was worth it if it helped to implicate Sunset.
“W... well this ain't gonna bother me,” Applejack proclaimed. “I can handle a little teasing.”
She didn't seem quite so sure of herself as she normally did. Applebloom could see a fragment of a crestfallen expression befall her sister’s face, and she felt the empathic pain like a knife in the chest.
“Fine, but what about Anon-a-Miss?” Rainbow inquired, voice thick with righteous fury on behalf of one of her best friends. “How did she know about your nickname?”
“And why would she post it online?” Asked Fluttershy, standing immediately behind Rainbow. “That's... that’s just cruel.”
The school bell interrupted anything Rarity would have said, and Pinkie Pie was half-asleep anyway, but jolted immediately awake. One hand slapped her own face, the other hand pushed the comic panel just a bit to the side as it was crowding her slightly, and the other hand pulled a mug of coffee out from behind it.
Applejack sighed. “I guess the questions are gonna have to wait until after school.”
Sunset set a hand on her shoulder, setting a jab of jealous anger through Applebloom’s mind, instantly wiping away the shame and regret.
“Let us know if we can help, AJ,” she murmured, before heading off to class.
Applejack turned to face her friend. “Sure thing, Sunset,” she said, quietly enough that only the two of them could hear. Then the two sisters headed down the hallway. Once they were out of earshot, Applebloom cleared her throat.
“So... this Anon-a-Miss person?” Play it cool now Applebloom, you're almost home free.
“What about her?”
“Well, the only people who knew about your nickname was us an’ your friends,” she said, putting extra emphasis on the word. “You sure you didn't tell anybody else?”
“Positive.” Applejack turned and eyed her little sister with an air of suspicion. “What are ya’ getting’ at, Applebloom?”
“Well, Sunset only heard the story last night,” roll the dice, play with fire, land the horseshoe right around the peg, “and the colors on Anon-a-Miss’ page are the same as Sunset’s hair-”
“Applebloom!” Applejack barked, offended at the insinuation. Still, something changed in her eyes, and her voice changed from that of anger to that of what seemed to be... hurt. “How could you- Sunset’s my friend!”
“Okay, okay, just a thought!” She turned and walked away, putting on a morose air to hide the sense of victory bubbling up inside her chest. “I'll see you after school.”
As she turned and walked away, a wicked grin began to spread across her face. The seeds were sown. All that remained was to till the soil and plow the field and offer plenty of water and sunlight and maybe some nutrient rich soil. Though admittedly the metaphor was veering a bit off course, victory was in sight. She would get her sister back.
She would win this fight.
/x/x/x/
Present Day
/x/x/x/
But at what cost?
Sunset had most definitely just tried to kill herself. Applebloom was watching from behind, having accidentally been following for six blocks. It was pure coincidence that her route across town took her past the apartment building, and a total fluke that they would be walking about at the same time.
And she had watched Sunset stop, look directly at the car, take a breath, and jump. Applebloom’s own heart had stopped for a moment as she feared for the worst, that she’d watch a horrible tragedy befall her sister’s former friend, a horrible tragedy that was all her fault. That she'd see Sunset die right before her eyes.
Luckily the car’s driver had an incredible reaction time, though, and Sunset was spared that day. But now, much like termites, the guilt eats away at her very foundation. Her mood, her mental stability, her appetite. All had been decreasing more and more as the day wore on until finally they were- are- all at their breaking point at the dinner table.
Sizzling medium-rare sirloin steak smothered in sautéed mushrooms and caramelized sweet onion, mashed golden potatoes filled with enough butter and salt to ruin any diet topped with a heaping helping of thick brown gravy, green beans with bacon, and... canned peaches, but the fancy kind with the cinnamon in it. The scent of baked apples floats through the air, cooking away in the oven and simmering in their own juice. A feast fit for a queen assails her senses, but Applebloom can’t bring herself to touch any of it, for fear her stomach would immediately reject it.
Her mood isn't lost on the others in the room.
“You feelin’ okay, sis?” Applejack asks, eyes soft as the day she cared for Applebloom back when she was just a toddler sick half to death with the worst flu of her entire life to date, when she had to be a mom to her sister when their real mother’s funeral had just passed earlier that year.
She doesn't deserve those eyes.
Applejack gets up out of her chair and rushes to her now-crying sister’s side, concern etched in the space between her lids and brows.
“Sugar, what's wrong?” She asks. “I ain't seen you this upset since...” she blinks. “Since ma passed...”
Big Mac and Granny Smith exchange an uncomfortable glance. That time was hard enough on all of them.
“Sunset...” Applebloom starts to say, before choking on her sob, unable to even say it.
A shadow crosses Applejack’s face. “Oh.” She stands up and cracks her knuckles before kneeling back down again. “What did that no-good dirty rotten lying two-faced secret-blabbing bee eye tea see aych queen say about you in that-” she slams her fist on the table, causing Wynona to jump and slink off to the other room. “That childish, ignorant, cruel, stupid, evil... frickin blog of hers. I swear-”
“N...nothing.” She sniffles, forces all of the guilt into a tiny little ball of fire, and lets it go. “Because I'm the one who made the blog.”
Applejack’s anger melts first into confusion, then realization... and then back to anger again. She stands up violently and takes a step back, clenching her fists. Mac takes this moment to step up and put his hands on her shoulders.
He turns his head and looks his youngest sister in the eye. “Go to your room.” He says, voice completely devoid of any emotion whatsoever. Somehow that cuts deeper than if he’d yelled.
Solemnly, Applebloom stands up and begins to do as she was told. In her periphery, Granny Smith merely shakes her head to either side. Somehow that stings more than if she’d tanned her hide with a rolling pin.
“Before you go...” Applejack whispers. “Why did you tell me this now? Why not a month ago when it started? Why not a few days after? Why not any time before now?”
Applebloom can't bear to look up as she speaks to the floor. “Because I saw her try to kill herself today... she tried to jump in front of a car.”
Silence fills the room, broken only by her heartbeat.
“...Ma and pa...” Applejack begins, voice broken. “Would be so disappointed in you.”
That drives the final nail in the coffin. Applebloom would have much preferred being slapped. She would have preferred Applejack beat her half to death. Instead she begins the slow dirge up the stairs to her room.
After she leaves, Applejack takes a deep breath.
“May I please be excused from the table?”
Mac claps her shoulder. “Take my keys.”
Applejack nods, grabs them off of the kitchen counter, steps over to give her weeping grandmother a hug, and shoves out the front door.
...
Before coming immediately back inside.
“I oughta bring a jacket, huh?”
/x/x/x/
Sunset sits in the middle of her living room.
“Tomorrow...”
She stands up and walks over to the window, repeating the same ritual she had every day for the past week. She doesn't even process what it was she sees through the glass, nor how much time passes when she does so. How long had she stood there, how many days? How long would she?
“Definitely tomorrow.”
This time she won't leave it up to chance. This time, she’ll push past the fear. The cowardice. The pansy-ass copout. She'll make the walk all the way to the bridge this time, and jump. Actually jump. Not just stand there and look down and worry how Twilight would feel for an hour before coming back home to warm up.
The Plan is set. It will be just one more sleep away.
A knock on the door tells her that maybe it will take slightly longer than that. With a resolute sigh and a complete lack of care for her state of relative undress, she drags her feet on the way to the front door praying to Celestia that it was a very polite though still murderous burglar with a loaded handgun and a dead aim. Instead, it is probably one of the last people she’d ever expected to see again.
“Apple...jack?” She asks, opening the door just a crack. “Let me guess. Anon-a-Miss talked some shit about your dead parents and now you're, what, here to beat my face in?” She swings it the rest of the way open. “Be my guest, I guess. Just go for the head first so I pass out quicker.”
She almost turns before the last thing she expected Applejack to do to her any time soon.
She hugs her.
Sunset looks all around the edges of her vision, looking for the hidden cameras, and keeps a wary eye on the door in case Big Mac is about to step through with a crowbar or a baseball bat or some other heavy utility. When no such person with no such tool comes through the door, she is equal parts let down and relieved.
Applejack lets out a single quiet sob.
“I'm sorry.”
Sunset blinks, and awkwardly pats the farmer's back.
“...for?”
Applejack pulls back, sniffs the air, and gives Sunset a once-over. She sets one hand against Sunset’s neck, and another takes her hand.
“You're freezing!”
Sunset glances off to the side at where she imagined one of the hidden camera would have been.
“Yeah, no shit.” She states, bluntly. “It's pretty fuckin cold out.”
“Why ain't y’all wearin’ any clothes, ‘cept for this paper you call a jacket and that tiny thing you call shorts? Are ya tryin’ to freeze to death or something?”
Sunset shrugs. “Maybe I am. What's it to you, thought maybe you and the rest of my former friends would have a fuckin party if I did. Hell, the whole damn school probably would.”
Applejack pulls Sunset close again, causing the amount of confusion that the depressed horse is experiencing to escalate so far that it goes all the way around the world just to come back and hit 0, leaving her in a state of “well, human life is already so goddamn weird, this might as well happen”.
“My sister told me you... tried to die today.”
Oh, right, that did happen.
“Did she happen to tell you it was snowing, or that water is wet, or that I’m secretly Anon-”
“And she told me that she was Anon-a-Miss...” she interrupts. “Not you.”
A moment passes where Sunset can't believe that she heard correctly, and then a moment passes where she figures it out, and then one final moment passes where she wants to throttle that little bitch who made the blog and framed her, before she is back to the status quo. But... not exactly.
“Okay?” She asks. “So, what did you intend to accomplish here? Sorry I fuckin abandoned you when you needed friends the most? Sorry I didn't believe you when you said you wouldn't hurt me? Sorry I threw you away like-” she tears herself away from the embrace. “Like fucking garbage? Well golly gee whiz willickers Applejack, apology accepted.” She turns back and points to the door. “Now, please, get the hell out of my apartment.”
“Sunset...”
She waits for more.
“I...” Applejack rubs her hands together. “I kinda expected you to interrupt me, I didn't know what I was gonna say... but, I know that I messed up. Bad. I hurt you; I really, really hurt you. I let the temporary embarrassment of my nickname and those pictures of me blind me to the obvious logical fact that y'all wouldn't do me dirty like that. Or any of us.”
Sunset nods her head. “Yeah, you fucked up. Congratulations, you figured it out, what do you want, a goddamn medal?”
“Please don't cuss at me-”
“I'll say whatever I fuck shit damn ass hell well want to say, this is my property and you're now trespassing. Go back to your farm and to your lying little fucking bitch of a sister and let me die in peace. Is that too much to ask, Applejack? To just leave me alone now? It's too late, so save the rest of your sorry apology for my funeral.”
She sees the tears streaming down Applejack’s face. She just doesn't care.
“Oh, and save your crying. I've shed enough tears for both of us already, now you're just beating a dead pony.”
“Did you really jump in front of a car?”
Sunset snorts. “No, a windigo pushed me. Are you just gonna keep asking stupid questions or are you gonna make like I politely asked and please get out of my fucking apartment? Don't think I won't call the cops.”
“Twilight...”
Sunset crosses her arms and waits.
Applejack takes a deep breath and wipes her eyes. “Twilight would want us to make amends.”
“Twilight?” Sunset would have laughed if she could feel any emotion. “Twilight... don't say her name to me. Don’t you DARE say her name! You don't GET to say her name. You haven't talked to her since she was here. I've talked to her every single day since she gave me the journal.”
She storms over and rips the book off of its shelf, paying little mind to the new pages covered in frantic writing and constant questions about the nature of her well-being. Instead she flips back to about a month ago and begins to read it off.
“Dear Twilight,” she says. “My second slumber party with the girls, and I already feel so much closer to everyone. I haven't felt so loved, so accepted, in, well, ever. I feel like I finally have a family again. Without all of you to help and support me, I’d be, well, you know what I'd be. Anyway, I should get some sleep, but I wanted to let you know, before I do, that I... that I lo...” she swallows. “That I love you all. Sunset Shimmer.”
She then slams the book shut and tosses it to the side. It shakes the floor with a mighty thump as it lands.
“And then the next day you threw me away. So I don't feel the same way that I used to then. I used to love you girls, I used to care, I used to pray to Celestia that you would pull your heads out of your asses and think for one moment about the fact that I would never do what you accused me of doing, with no evidence... I cried. A lot. I blew all my fucking cash on ice cream and chocolate and booze just to make the pain go away. I owe rent three days ago and I have less than a dollar to my name. I can't go back home to Equestria because the portal is down, and even if I did Celestia wouldn't take me back. I'm stuck here, stuck with you assholes. I have nothing left to live for. I'm in the corner, I'm at the edge, I'm... I’m falling. I'm falling without you. I'm reaching anywhere I can to feel something, to feel anything... my arms look like, like a war zone. Freezing myself makes it hurt more, this jacket makes it hurt more. So I can focus on the physical pain instead of the emotional. Which is really easy to do when you're full of peppermint schnapps. But you know what, I'm ready for it to stop hurting now. My whole life has just been pain, and I've always wondered about the afterlife. So go home. Forget me! Forget I existed, forget we were ever friends, forget that I fucking love you! Forget everything about me!”
By the end she is screaming. She’s crying again, for the first time in weeks. She collapses on her hands and knees to the floor.
“Forget me so I can forget you...”
Applejack steps over and kneels, pulling her friend into her embrace.
“I could never forget you, Suns...” she murmurs as Sunset clings on for dear life. “Never ever. You're my friend, and I care about you, and I want to see you happy. That's why when you told me that you spent all those holidays alone for all those years I set up what should've been a week of slumber parties, all for you. Because I wanted you to feel like you belonged. Because I love you. Nobody deserves to feel alone, and... I know I hurt you. There ain't nothin’ I can do to change that. But I can do my best to repair the harm I've done. If that means holdin’ you in my arms until I know that you don't wanna kill yourself anymore, then so be it. Because like it or not you're stuck with me, until I fix what I broke.”
Sunset whimpers, spent, as she clings on. “Will you stay with me tonight?”
Applejack holds tighter. “Of course, sugar. I ain't leavin’ you alone again.”
Sunset wipes her eyes on the country girl’s shirt. “I'm... sorry for how I yelled at you. I never meant to be so... so...”
“Cold?”
“Well... I was gonna say bitchy, but that works too.”
The two let out a single chuckle each.
“Hey Applejack?”
“Hmm?”
“I think some of my scabs ripped open.”
/x/x/x/