“Are you alright, darling?”
I look up and over to Rarity. Her voice is low and almost disappears in the dull background hum of the school library. I realise why she’s asked that question a moment later. I’ve been staring down at my homework for almost ten straight minutes without reading a word or solving a single problem.
“I—” I take a deep breath, then let it out and nod— “I’m fine, Rares, sorry, where were we?”
Rarity raises a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at me, and I try to give her a smile but it falters under her gaze. She’d asked me to help her with today’s maths homework but I keep getting distracted.
“Sorry,” I say again, lowering my head.
“It’s quite alright, darling,” Rarity says softly. “I’m just worried about you.”
“I’m fine, really, it’s Wallie I’m worried about.”
“Is she alright?”
I let out a quiet groan as I thump my head against the table, face-planting into my Pre-Calc homework before thudding my head repeatedly against my workbook. I can practically feel the odd looks I’m getting from the rest of the students in the library, but I don’t care.
“Ah, that good then, hm?” Rarity asks with a grimace.
“It’s like she doesn’t even care!” I barely keep myself from shouting by clenching my teeth around my words as I tangle my fingers into my hair. “Every day that it feels like she’s getting better, just ends with her backsliding the day after!”
“What do you mean?” Rarity asks, her brow furrowing as she sets her pencil down.
“So, the day before yesterday, right?” I start, getting a nod from Rarity. “I go out for a couple of hours to pick some stuff up at the grocery. Just some staples, like milk.”
“Okay, and?” Rarity prompts.
“And I come back—” I wave a hand sharply, almost swatting Lyra as she passes, and I mutter a quiet apology before looking back at Rarity— “And she’s made us both lunch, and made both beds!”
“Well that’s nice,” Rarity says with a smile.
“And then yesterday I found out she didn’t eat at all!”
I throw my hands up in the air, then sag and drop, planting my face back into my workbook with my arms hanging limply by my side.
“Oh dear.” Rarity reaches out and pats my head fondly as I let out a low, wordless groan. “I hate to ask this, Sunset, but… are you sure you can keep doing this? I mean, it’s only been a month and you’re already at your wits' end.”
“That’s not even a question, Rares,” I mumble, still face down. “I’m all she’s got, I’m not passing her off to someone, and I’m sure as Tartarus not giving up on her.”
“Darling, with the best will in the world, you’re only eighteen,” Rarity presses. “This isn’t your job!”
“This isn’t anyone’s job, Rarity,” I say flatly as I look up at her and narrow my eyes. “I’m not doing this because it’s my job, I’m doing it because I—”
Rarity’s eyebrow scoots up another quarter inch and her eyes widen almost imperceptibly. I said too much, I know that the instant I see her expression shift. Rarity is like a bloodhound with this kind of thing, and I just tipped my hand a sliver too far.
“Sunset,” Rarity begins cautiously, and a shiver goes down my spine. “May I ask you something personal?”
“If I said no would it stop you?” I ask grimly.
“I’m afraid not.”
“Fine.”
“Not to put too fine of a point on it, then, but might you have feelings for Wallflower?” Rarity keeps her tone as soft as possible, but I still wince.
That is a question I have been studiously avoiding for the past month and change since I realised the position Wallflower was in. She’s already dealing with enough stress and chaos in her life, she doesn’t need to add processing my feelings into the equation. She already feels like she’s a lead weight around my neck, and ironically that’s one of the biggest hangups I’ve run into.
“You don’t have to answer,” Rarity says gently.
I sigh and wring my hands as I lean back against the uncomfortable wooden library chair before pressing both hands to my face and letting out another quiet groan.
“No, I know, it’s… it’s complicated,” I say as I lower my hands. “Short answer? Yeah, I do. A lot of feelings actually. I have a lot of really confusing and frustrating feelings.”
“Romantic feelings?” Rarity ventures and although she’s being nice about it I can hear the gossip queen coming out.
“Yes, romantic feelings,” I admit, leaning my elbows on the table and hanging my head. “But you know that’s a bad idea, Rares. Especially right now.”
“Oh, I agree,” Rarity says quickly. “Wallflower is, and I say this with all the love in my heart, a very delicate disaster at the moment.”
“That’s accurate.”
More than accurate. Calling Wallflower a delicate disaster is probably complimentary.
“I’m trying, Rares,” I say, scratching at my head. “It’s a mess, though. Sticky says it’s going to take longer than he thought because she needs to sign some emancipation paperwork, then he has to backdate it because of reasons.”
“Ah, bureaucracy, the bane of the competent,” Rarity opines with a chuckle. “So how long?”
“If we’re lucky she’ll get in sometime in March,” I say.
“Not ideal, but at least you have a date,” Rarity says.
I did, and she’s right, that’s definitely better than a vague promise of housing. I know Sticky Note, though. I knew he would figure it out so long as I gave him enough time to do it. The man is a bureaucratic wizard. He’s spent enough time in the system to know how to mess with it just right so he gets what his clients need, but not enough to toe over the line.
“Yeah…”
I wring my hands and lean back again, and as I do a chime goes off on my phone.
“Oh, crap!” I flip my workbook shut and look up at Rarity apologetically. “Sorry, I forgot I have to go pick up Wallie’s refills at the pharmacy today, and I really need to get there before it closes or else I’m stuck using the shady twenty-four-hour one down the street.”
She just laughs and shakes her head, and her violet locks tumble fetchingly around her face.
“Don’t worry about me, darling,” Rarity says, waving me off. “Go take care of your… well, you know.”
“Yeah.” I stand up, gathering up my books and papers to shove them unceremoniously into my backpack before slinging the strap over my shoulder.
“Sunset.” Rarity stands as I start hustling out of the library, and I turn to look back at the expression of concern on her face. “Remember to take care of yourself too, alright?”
“Always do.”
I smirk before backpedaling out of the library and then sprinting the rest of the way out of the school, getting a shouted admonishment from Vice Principal Luna on my way out.
My alarm was necessary because I’d skipped taking the normal bus home which meant I had to adhere to the schedule of the city buses.
My time living in Canterlot has taught me that whatever eldritch relative of Discord is responsible for setting the metro bus schedules has only the loosest understanding of linear time and its constituent divisions. Little notions like minutes or sometimes whole quarter-hours are picked up and discarded at a whim which meant that, if I wanted to be certain of getting a bus that didn’t put me twenty blocks from my destination, I needed to be there on time.
Even then sometimes the bus would take weird and unknowable routes that I half-suspect venture into non-Euclidean angles whenever it takes them three hours to successfully go four blocks.
Despite my worries, I reach the bus stop a few minutes before the bus.
Per usual, boarding the bus means subjecting myself to a smell that’s somewhere between decaying rubber and day-old human effluvia. It’s sort of like if someone gave an alley behind a dive bar a set of wheels and a driver who was either far too excited to be there, or clearly dead inside.
I sidle through the narrow center to an empty seat, tuck myself into a comfortable spot, and do my best to keep my nose plugged for the forty-five minute drive.
By the time I get to the pharmacy and scramble out into the relatively fresh air of the Commons, I swear the smell of sick and sweaty armpits is stuck in my nose to stay.
You’d think the Canterlot city council could afford to have someone power wash the insides of those beasts once in a while.
I get inside and have to stifle a groan. I’d hoped to get in and out. I’m tired, my legs hurt, my nose is stuffed with moist napkins soaked in dumpster-water, and I really just want to go home. Against my wishes, however, there are a dozen people, most of them senior citizens, all queued up and waiting.
The pharmacy death march takes me another half-hour, and by that point the bus that I’d hoped to take back to my apartment is long gone. There are other buses, but none of them drop me fundamentally closer, so I stuff the white bag of medications into my backpack, trudge out of the pharmacy, and start walking home.
It’s late. Almost seven at night actually, and Wallflower went back to the apartment right after the clubs got out. She’s not actually in a club, but she likes to look after the gardens behind the school after classes get out which functionally makes her the only member of the non-existent gardening club.
I should have been home hours ago, and I’m worried.
I’m pretty sure she ate today. I try to encourage her to get something for lunch in the cafeteria, but the crowds give her pretty severe anxiety, which I guess is fair. I’ve been getting her a salad every day that I can, but I have no idea if she actually eats it.
Most of the time she just disappears into the halls during lunch, and I half-suspect she’s out in the gardens but I’ve never had a chance to follow her.
Wallflower is, unsurprisingly, really good at sneaking.
Sometimes I’ll manage to convince her to eat lunch with me out on the steps in front of the school. That’s usually not so bad. She’ll sit quietly and eat, and we’ll talk.
Okay, I’ll talk, and she’ll occasionally respond.
I usually spend those afternoons trying to make her laugh, and while I don’t usually succeed, the times that I do…
Wallflower has such a pretty laugh.
I smile on the heels of that thought. Thinking about Wallflower’s smile or the sound of her laugh, is a surefire way to get a smile on my face.
Rarity was right, I do have feelings for Wallflower. A lot of feelings, but I may have been less-than-truthful about them being confusing. I’m not confused. I know exactly how I feel about her, and that’s the scary part.
It’s not just because Wallflower needs a home that I’m okay with this. Part of me is just selfishly glad to have her around.
Too bad I can’t explain that to her without sounding incredibly weird.
By the time I get to my apartment I'm dead on my feet.
I punch in the keycode to my apartment, get inside, call the elevator, wait the requisite epoch for it to reach me, then ride up to my apartment because I’m too tired to take the stairs this time.
While the elevator makes its curmudgeonly way up to the sixth floor, I pull out the white bag of medications. Honestly, I probably should have checked them before I even left the pharmacy, but I was too tired to think of it at the time.
Knowing my luck, I’ll be missing something crucial and I’ll have to go back tomorrow. I thumb through the bottles, comparing the contents to my mental list. Two vitamins and her probiotics. I sigh in relief as I close the bag, satisfied that everything is there.
“Thank the Scribe for small mercies,” I grumble as the doors open and I drag myself out and down the hall to the apartment.
I fit the key and open the door. It’s quiet, and cold. I shiver as I shut the door, reflecting on how I should really tell Wallie that it’s okay to turn on the heater one of these days.
“I’m home,” I say quietly.
Wallflower’s mattress has a lump in it, meaning she’s probably asleep. She sleeps a lot, actually, and I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. On the one hand, she hasn’t had a lot of safe places to sleep until lately, so it’s probably a positive, on the other hand constantly sleeping can be a bad sign according to Sticky Note.
I sidle into the kitchen as silently as possible and start to set the prescriptions down where Wallflower will see them, stop, then turn and open the small cupboard door in the corner of the kitchen to just put them away.
Closing it, I open the cabinet under the sink where the garbage is to toss the plastic and paper away, and as I do something niggles at the back of my mind.
The trash is empty.
That’s not bad per se, but it wasn’t empty this morning, it was half full. My mind whirls as a weird sense of foreboding settles into my stomach.
Wallflower is usually good about chores, but she doesn’t like taking the garbage out because it means going all the way to the chute at the end of the hall. I know how bad her anxiety can get so I told her a while ago that if she just clears the can and replaces the lining, I’m happy to just toss it, so that’s what she’s been doing.
Except there’s no trash bag by the door, meaning she took it out.
She never does that.
I glance back at the medicine cupboard, then down at the trash, then over at the door, my mind making a series of unpleasant connections.
“Let it go, Shimmer,” I mutter. “This is dumb, it’s… this is just your dumb brain catastrophising.”
Except I can’t let it go.
I lick my lips and wring my hands, a cold sweat settling down my spine as I look over at Wallflower’s sleeping form before slipping my hand under the collar of my shirt and drawing out my geode.
If I’m just being paranoid, then no harm, no foul, right?
I really hope I’m just being paranoid.
Tightening my grip on my geode, I let the magic ignite within it and spread through me like a gentle flame. Warmth suffuses me and with it the faint susurration of Canterlot. Minds and souls murmur silently all around, but I hedge them out with an effort of practice.
It’s been a little while since I’ve used my geode, but I kept on researching it. Twilight and I, the human one, have brainstormed about its uses. My geode is definitely one of the more esoteric of my friend groups’ version of the Elements, and she had a theory about its function.
Twilight’s idea was that my geode picked up wavelengths of emotional energy. Those emotions are strongest in people, obviously, but that doesn’t mean they can’t leave imprints behind.
Taking a deep breath, I reach out and touch the cupboard do—
—be worried. Be scared. Sunset is coming home. She’ll have them. Little pills, orange bottles, fresh and clean, and then she’ll know.
she’ll know she’ll know she’ll know she’ll know she’ll know she’ll know—
I stagger back with a gasp. The imprint was faint and disjointed, just vague leftovers of panic. But she was panicking. Wallflower was afraid that when I got back with the prescriptions I would know something.
That I would realise something.
Swallowing hard, I brush the lining of the garbage can away and put my fingers on the rim of the—
—be shaking. Be nervous as I wrap the secret up. It’s not important. I don’t need them. It’s not important. I’m not importa—
I snap out of the vision, my hand is shaking just like hers was. I saw fragments of the memory. I saw them just as she was tying up the bag.
Three orange pill bottles, each one still partially full.
“Damn it!” I snarl, pounding a fist on the counter as I stand, my breathing come in harsh waves.
On the edge of the impact I hear a brief squeak of terror, and I look up to see Wallflower sitting up, stock still, and look around in a panic. Anger floods my veins, raw and red. Using the geode always does this. It leaves me open and unsteady, flooded with emotions, only some of which are mine, and I can’t always tell the difference.
The anger is mine, at least. I know that much.
“S-Sunset?”
I swallow back the thick lump of anger as I look up at her, and from the way her eyes widen I know I haven’t done a good enough job. Her eyes trail down from my face to my neckline, and her pupils go to pinpricks as I realise my biggest mistake.
My geode is still hanging free and glowing from use.
She and I both know it’s useless to pretend.
“You haven’t been taking your meds,” I say flatly.
Wallflower’s expression falters as she wilts back in her bed. I shut the cabinet door, too hard, and it clatters loudly, drawing another flinch from her. I wince too, I hadn’t meant to do that.
“Th— They’re just vitamins,” Wallflower says in a brittle, shaky voice.
“They’re not!” I snap, and a weak sob escapes her lips. “Shit, no, I… I’m sorry, Wallie, I didn’t… I didn’t mean to—”
I step back from her and cross my arms over my chest. I’m tired and angry, and my emotions are raw from exposing myself to my geode without the buffer of the rest of the group.
“You haven’t been eating right for a long time!” I say, trying to keep the strain from my voice. “Doctor Hazel said your system doesn’t digest stuff right! That’s what the probiotics are for! You’re just gonna— Wallie you could end up in the hospital again!”
She doesn’t respond.
Well, not with words.
No, it’s much, much worse.
Wallflower Blush curls up on her mattress, buries her face against her knees, and just… shuts down.
“Sorry.” Her voice is pallid and hollow.
The anger that had been setting my teeth on edge and burning in my veins just a moment ago floods out leaving behind leaden, gray exhaustion. I blow out a slow breath, then walk over to her mattress and sit down, reaching a hand out to set it on the blankets by her legs as I settle in.
“Sorry,” I say quietly. “I didn’t mean to yell.”
“It’s okay, I deserved it,” Wallflower says tonelessly.
I have to bite my lip to keep from snapping again. I really need to get some sleep, but right now isn’t the time. There are days where the old emotional ‘turn it off and turn it back on’ trick of slumber is the best play, but this isn’t the time for it. I can’t let Wallflower stew right now.
“No, you didn’t.” I shift my weight up onto her mattress and lie down, tucking my arms beneath my head. “I was just mad.”
“I made you mad.”
“I—!” I cut off my words and rethink them. This isn’t working. So instead I approach from a different angle. “Okay, I wasn’t mad… I was scared.”
Wallflower raises her head just enough to look over at me. Her gaze is still dull and glassy, but it’s a little sharper than it was a moment ago.
“Why?”
I roll onto my side, keeping my hand right beside her as I do, and look her in the eye. “Because I care? And you know what I’ll say if you ask why about that.”
She doesn’t say anything for several long moments. It’s long enough that my eyelids are starting to get heavy from lying on the mattress. All my body wants to do is sleep, but I can’t. Not yet. Not right now.
“Because I’m precious to you.”
It’s not a question, just a repetition of something I’ve taken to saying over the past month any time she gets into one of her depressive moods where she tries to convince me that she’s not worth the space she’s taking up on my floor. Those are usually long nights that rarely involve much sleep, and with my luck they tend to be on school nights.
I don’t respond, I just turn my hand over so my palm is up, and wait.
After another long stretch of minutes, Wallflower reaches out and puts her small, warm hand in mine.
“I forgot,” Wallflower says quietly.
“You have a reminder on your phone,” I reply. “That’s one of the reasons we got it.”
She lowers her head and closes her eyes again, and I sigh again as I try not to let my temper rise back up.
“You turned it off.” It’s not really a question, but she nods. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” she says shakily. “I just did. I kept forgetting, even after the alarm went off, and then I’d feel so… so stupid afterward, and so I just— I turned it off.”
“You can’t do that, Wallie,” I say, tightening my grip on her hand. “You’re just making it harder! If Sticky found out you weren’t taking your meds it could disqualify you for the program! He’d have to judge you unfit to live on your own! And he would because he wants you to get better!”
“Then I should just leave!” Wallflower says bitterly.
I squeeze her hand twice, and she looks over at me with bloodshot eyes. She looks like she wants to cry, but like there’s something stopping it up. Rather than sorrow, now it all just looks like pain.
“Where you sleep, I sleep,” I say softly.
The strain and tension go out of her, and she sags, then lies down and curls up facing me, and starts to shake. I scoot a little closer, not so close that we’re touching though, other than our clasped hands, but the moment I start to settle in, I feel her tug on my hand just a little.
I follow the tug and get closer, wrap my arms around her, and pull her in until her head is resting against the crook of my shoulder.
“You know I’ve gotta make sure you’re taking them every day now, right?” I say quietly.
Her shaking gets a little worse, and I swear I hear her cuss under her breath.
“You shouldn’t have to,” she says with her voice muffled against my shoulder.
“But I will.”
“Why?”
I sigh again and hug her tighter. “You already know the answer to that.”
“It’s not fair,” Wallflower mutters, then she finally hugs me back, holding on even more tightly than I’m holding her, and mumbles: “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” I say softly. “But I gotta do it anyway.”
“I know,” she says after a shaky pause.
“Want me to stay here tonight?” I ask quietly after she shows no immediate signs of letting go.
She freezes at my question, then relaxes, lets out a quiet, almost angry sigh, and nods. I nod back, burying my face against her hair as I hold onto her. This isn’t a good night, but then again Wallflower doesn’t have very many good nights.
So I card my fingers through her hair, finding a slow, soothing pattern. The strands of her hair are like the bright green vines of a morning glory plant, and they tangle around my fingers before unfurling as I move my hand down.
“Thank you,” Wallflower mumbles.
I don’t say anything, I’m too tired to. I just nod again. Sleeping in my jeans and shirt probably won’t be the best sleep I’ll ever have but I’m okay with it. Wallflower needs me, and that’s worth any amount of poor sleep.
It always will be.