I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired in all my life, and when I pry my eyes open, my first thought is not only am I tired but everything hurts.
No extreme pain or anything like that.
Just… sore.
I’m so sore.
“Wallie?”
I force my eyes open. It feels like I’ve been awake for three days straight. The faint burn behind my eyelids, and their weight, is almost overwhelming. The lights above me are harsh and pale, and the bed beneath me is hard and uncomfortable.
A soft hand settles on my cheek, and I turn my head to…
“Sunset?” I narrow my eyes. “You look awful.”
She laughs, raggedly but happily. She really does look awful, though. Sunset’s features are pale and drawn, and her hair is matted against her head and face like she just sweated her way through a marathon in the heart of summer. There are bags under her eyes too, and her shoulders are sagging with the weight of a world.
“Hey, baby,” Sunset drags herself forward and cradles me close, alternately laughing and crying as she presses soft, slow kisses against my forehead and cheeks. “You’re okay… you’re okay.”
She’s repeating the words like she’s saying them to herself, more than to me.
My brain is working slowly, creeping forward out of an odd, cloying murk, and as it does the memories start to drift sullenly back into view. Memories of my old street. My old house. An argument.
Momma.
Rosary.
And…
My breathing starts to stutter as I remember.
‘...finally found the bottom of that damn bottle he was always losing himself in…’
“Dead.” I almost bark the word out. “He’s… He’s—”
“I know,” Sunset pulls me closer, wrapping her arms around me, and I cling to her and bury my face in her shoulder as the import of everything hits me all at once. “I know, Wallie, it’s okay.”
“IT’S NOT OKAY!” I scream the words, but they’re muffled against her top. “You don’t know! You don’t know what it… what he…”
“I know.” Her tone becomes hard and flinty, and I can feel her hand curling into a fist behind me.
Sunset is shaking.
I pull back from her, my panic forgotten for a moment as I stare at the woman I love most in the whole wide world.
Her head is drooping and sagging along with her shoulders. She’s holding on to me as much as I’m holding on to her. Sunset’s breathing is almost as ragged as mine and… and hanging from her neck, dangling from a thin leather strap, is a gleaming, orange geode, and my whole world tightens to a pinprick focused on that small stone.
“Sun… Sunset?”
She raises her head, and her face is twisted in grief and guilt. “I’m sorry… I… it was the only way, Wallie. I had to get you back, I… I had to go in after you, okay? I had to.”
“Did you see—?” She nods before I can finish, and a cold, hard knot forms in my stomach. She saw everything.
“Forgive me.”
Those words, so softly spoken, deafen me. Forgive… her? Sunset is bowing her head, her hands are bunched into tight fists, and she’s clenching the sheets around the hospital bed I’m lying in tightly enough that her knuckles are turning white. Her head is pressed to the rough scratchy fabric, and dark spots are trickling down beneath a face hidden by sweat-sodden locks of red and gold.
“I’m sorry,” Sunset voice is pain-wracked and raw. “I kn-know you didn’t want me to see. I… I never would have if I… p-please… forgive me.”
I reach out, shakily, for her, but something green catches my eye before I can.
A loop of woven flora is settled on my finger. There’s a matching one on Sunset’s hand.
That’s right. It was her turn to make them this time. The last ones turned brittle yesterday and came off. They lasted almost three days this time. Sunset promised she would find some time to make new ones between her classes but I told her it was okay.
That there was no rush.
I didn’t tell her that my hand didn’t feel right without something on it anymore. I didn’t want her to worry about me, or feel bad about being so busy.
She did it anyway, though. Somehow, between her course load and all of her tutoring, she found time to weave a couple of loops, even though she’s not very good at it yet and it takes her a lot of tries.
I lower my hand to rest it on Sunset’s head. She’s shaking, and her shoulders jerk and heave every now and again with choked-back whimpers. She’s begging me to forgive her for looking into my head.
She’s begging me to forgive her for going looking for me.
“Why?” I say, and the words come out a little wet. “Why did you— you hate that thing!” I nod down at the geode. “You hate what it can do, and what… why would you use it?”
Sunset’s shaking slowly ebbs as she lifts her head. Her eyes are puffy, and she swallows hard a few times before answering.
“Because you’re my whole world, Wallie,” Sunset sobs. “I’d do anything— anything— for you.”
My mouth dries as she pushes herself up by her elbows like Sisyphus getting ready to roll that damn boulder up the hill one more time, and just shakes her head with a bone-weary smile.
“I saw what they did to you, what he did to you,” Sunset says. “I… I know I had no right, but if it’s between that and even the tiniest chance of losing you, or you being hurt, then I’d do it again, and again, and a thousand more times.”
She witnessed everything. Or as good as. She felt what I felt. The pain and trauma. The neglect and the beatings. The shame and the loneliness and the total, all-consuming isolation. Sunset endured it because I got all swallowed up in it and couldn’t get back out.
“Why?!”
Sunset looks confused. She looks around herself like she’s trying to find an answer but eventually just sags, shrugs, and says:
“I… I told you, you’re my whole world.”
Sunset reaches out with trembling hands, and I almost lunge to grab onto them with mine. It’s clumsy, we’re both exhausted, but finally, we manage to link our fingers together, and Sunset lets out a harsh, ragged laugh.
As she holds me, a memory rises up from the depths. A good one this time. A memory of years ago when Sunset held on to me in this same hospital, and told me…
Because you’re precious to me.
“So… don’t hate me?” She pleads softly. “I’m just really crazy for you, Wallie… really, really crazy.”
All I can do is nod and try not to bawl as I agree.
“T-Totally insane.”
“Yup!” Sunset agrees brightly, smiling through a veil of tears. “But that’s me… I’m just completely useless without you, okay?”
And she laughs. Her laughter is so bright and beautiful. It’s like dawn breaking, and I can’t help but start laughing with her as we all but fall against each other. I’m so tired, but she looks even more exhausted than me. I cradle her as she laughs and sobs. She’s coming apart at the seams and for the first time in maybe ever, I’m the one holding Sunset together as she clings to me and bawls like a child.
So I run my fingers through her hair like how she does for me when the world has gotten to be too big or too much, and I sit up so she can rest beside me and lay against my side, and it’s like the moment the tears run out, so does everything else. Sunset goes from panic and crying to sleeping the sleep of the totally and utterly drained.
A soft knock comes at the door a little less than an hour after Sunset falls asleep, and I look up.
Aunt Rosary is standing at the door looking almost as worn as Sunset.
“Wallflower?” She says quietly, and my heart skips a beat. “That’s… you’re Ivy’s girl, aren’t you?”
My mouth dries, and I look down at Sunset briefly.
“I saw it, too,” Rosary confirms. “I saw what my friend and her monster of a husband did… I…”
She takes a long, deep breath, folds her hands in front of herself, a slight but visible tremor passes through.
“You… I erased myself from you,” I say quietly. “How did you remember? Did—?”
I look down at Sunset.
“I don’t remember,” Rosary says quickly. “In my mind, I know that I’ve never seen you before this afternoon in front of Ivy’s.” She takes a deep breath and moves beside the bed, sitting down and reaching out to take my hand. “But in my heart… I know you.”
Now, tears start to form, and her narrow, worn hands grip mine tightly.
“There’s an… an ache in my heart when I look at you that I have no way to explain,” she continues. “When I look at you I just… I feel something I don’t have a word for.”
“I’m sorry,” I cry quietly. “I was just… I was scared. I… I just wanted to disappear, and… I’m sorry, Aunt Rosary, I’m so sorry!”
“It’s alright, kiddo,” Rosary says, wiping at her eyes with her wrists as she does. “No judgment here. You got out! Not everyone does. And you found a great girl.”
“Yeah, I did,” I laugh, nodding. “I really lucked out!”
“I’m proud of you.” Rosary reaches out and brushes a few stray strands from my face. “I saw what you lived through. I saw the shadows that are in there,” she taps my head with her finger. “Living with that every day? Waking up to that every day? You’ve got iron in your spine, kiddo, and I think if I had a daughter, I’d want her to be just like you.”
That does it.
I can’t hold it in anymore. I sag forward and Aunt Rosary catches me, humming that soft, familiar tune as she rocks me back and forth.
Part of me wishes my life had been different. That I could have been Rosary’s daughter. That I could have grown up safe and loved and being sung to sleep and learning about gardening without worrying.
Would it be worth maybe never meeting Sunset, though?
It’s hard to answer that, but I don’t think it would be. I think that, no matter how hard my beginning was, where I’m going matters a lot more, and I think that going there with Sunset is probably the most important part of all.
A quiet song plays on the radio, and I hum along to it as I water the daffodils, bluebells, and violets at the window.
I haven’t picked out the new flowers for the shelf yet. I’m still thinking about peonies and forget-me-nots.
Definitely that last one, at least.
“Hey.”
A pair of slender hands slip past my waist and around my middle, and suddenly Sunset is resting her chin on my shoulder and nuzzling against me. I lean against her too, return the gentle affection as she brushes a kiss across my cheek.
“You okay?” She asks softly.
I sigh and shrug.
Today is the day.
He’s going to be buried in the common grounds of the Ponyville Church of Grace. The service will be short and small, and probably sparsely attended.
Even now, it doesn’t feel real. I think because, in my nightmares, it's not, and I resent him for that. I resent him even more for being in Sunset’s nightmares now too.
“We can still make it,” she offers as she pulls me into a hug from behind. “If seeing him go into the ground will help, I mean.”
“Would it help you?” I ask pointedly.
Sunset frowns, looks pensive, then sighs and shakes her head.
I shrug and turn to face her, wiggling in her arms until I’m the right way ‘round, and I loop my arms over her shoulders and rest my head against her chest.
Sunset brushes her hands through my hair, weaving her fingers through the curls as she sighs quietly.
“I love you, Wallie,” Sunset says, nuzzling the top of my head as she does. “You’re everything to me.”
“I know.” Once upon a time, I don’t think I’d ever have been able to say those words with confidence to anyone.
Even now, I’m not entirely sure I believe them. But I can say them, and that’s a good step.
“I love you, too.”
I let out a quiet hum of delight as Sunset hugs me a little harder for a moment before letting go.
“Rosary said she’s free if we don’t mind having an old lady hanging around,” Sunset says with a slightly happier tone. “I told her I don’t think she’s been old a day in her life.”
“She’s definitely not going either?” I ask.
“Nah.” Sunset waves a hand dismissively as she walks over to the couches and drops down onto it. “She said that, and I quote, 'worthless ass doesn’t even deserve having a grave to be pissed on’ and then started talking about knitting.”
I can’t help but laugh as I walk over to join her, settling myself squarely in Sunset’s lap.
“That sounds like Aunt Rosary,” I say with a smile.
“I uhm, I have something else to tell you,” Sunset starts in a smaller voice.
“Hm?”
“I quit smoking.”
My eyes go wide as my stomach drops. The look of guilt must’ve shown on my face though because Sunset shakes her head.
“Don’t… it’s not…” Sunset trails off, then takes a breath and starts again. “I… I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Wallflower Blush.” She brushes my cheek with her fingers. “I want to grow old with you. Smoking and drinking are not going to help that, okay? I’m not just quitting for you. I’m quitting for me, and for us.”
“Smoking… and drinking?” I echo hesitantly.
“Yeah,” she says, nodding, then frowns. “Although that last one might be partially because of the sympathetic psychic shock from the geode. The smell makes me yak now.”
“Sorry…” I grimace, but Sunset just shakes her head.
“Don’t be,” she says firmly. “It’s long past due anyway, and it makes it easier.”
Then she leans in and presses her lips to mine, and I melt against like I always do. Tonight will be a little rough, I think.
For both of us.
“So… invite Rosary over?” Sunset offers.
“Yeah,” I nod. “I think I owe all of us some good memories.”