It was dark, now.
Wallflower desperately wanted water. Her throat was sore from yelling - pointless, stupid yelling - and she'd foolishly skipped lunch in anticipation of a hefty dinner. Her sole source of relief was the watering can that she'd been bludgeoned with hours before, and that had been drained what little of substance was been in it (save for a few stray coppery drops of tap water) just before the sun set.
Sunset.
Another spike of mixed fury and regret lanced through her chest.
Out there somewhere, Sunset was with Wallflower. The other Wallflower - the one from Equestria who'd stolen Wallflower's life.
A little bit of a headache crept in again as Wallflower and Wallflower crossed through her head. She'd repeated her own name enough times for it to start losing meaning.
Not that it mattered. Wallflower was quite aware of how bleak her fate was: a human could last three days without water, and it was coming to the weekend. Her last real drink had been around four-ish. There was no real reason for anybody to come to the tool shed on Saturday or Sunday, and the gardening club wouldn't meet until after school on Monday. So about 72 hours. Add in a bit of time to realize Wallflower was missing and get the janitor with the other key and-- And even that didn't work if the other Wallflower came to school Monday in her place.
So she was going to die.
A small, dark part in the back of Wallflower's mind actually thought it was funny. Dying of dehydration while laying on a bag of fertilizer was far less picturesque than any end she'd ever pondered.
There had been dark thoughts before - but this? Something like this had never entered into it. It had always been dramatic, or at least had a quiet dignity. And Wallflower had always considered ways that were fast, because she knew she was a coward. Now when she finally had brighter days ahead and had banished at least most of those dire urges? Now the world decided to let her go.
At least laughing staved off the urge to cry.
All that was left now was to close her eyes, listen to the night and let herself drift off in the silent darkness.
Wallflower's world instead suddenly became a cacophony of cracking wood.
Her eyes shot open to the sight of a pony-powered Applejack loudly tearing the shed's door off its hinges.
Behind the farmer were two others - Twilight Sparkle with a flashlight in hand and a terrified Sunset Shimmer.
Half a second later, Sunset was shoving past Applejack and kneeling next to Wallflower. "Wally!"
"Hi," she croaked back.
Sunset tore at the ropes with the Swiss Army knife on her keychain. It wasn't as fast as she wanted, held back by her frail human body's inability to disintegrate things by glaring at them.
Twilight awkwardly smiled from the doorway. "Sorry we're late. We would have been here sooner but Sunset wasn't thinking clearly."
The length connecting Wallflower's wrists and ankles gave at the same moment Sunset snapped at Twilight. "I'm a little stressed right now, alright?!"
"She forgot she could read minds," Applejack unhelpfully pointed out.
Twilight confirmed it with a nod. "She spent several minutes trying to interrogate your double before we could calm her down enough to point it out."
"Stressed," Sunset reiterated through clenched teeth.
Wallflower's wrists came free - then immediately clasped around Sunset's neck in a needy hug. "But how did you know she wasn't me?"
The other three girls looked at each other for a moment before Sunset told her part of the tale. "Well..."
"Twilight! Twilight, pick up!" Sunset growled at her phone, eyes constantly darting back towards the couch on the other side of the room.
There was a slightly tinny click on the other end of the line. "Sunset! Hello! This is, um. Unexpected. I thought you were with Wallflower tonight."
Sunset's hushed voice dripped with equal parts sarcasm and paranoia. "I thought so too."
On the other side of Canterlot, Twilight sighed heavily. "Did she stand you up, Sunset? I'm so sorry. Rarity's better at being comforting, but I can get a tub of ice cream and--"
"She's an imposter," Sunset hissed.
That shut Twilight up instantly.
In turn, it gave Sunset a chance to take control of the conversation again. "I don't know who it is that's sitting on my couch right now, but it's not Wally."
"Are you sure?"
Sunset's eyes flicked to the other side of the room before she quietly replied. "One hundred percent sure. She was nuzzling me earlier."
Twilight paused awkwardly. "But you're dating. That's pretty normal."
"She's saying stuff like 'everypony'," came Sunset's second riposte.
Another moment of hesitation came across the line. "You're Equestrian," Twilight justified. "Maybe she's just trying to bridge that gap? Make you feel more at home?"
A small pulse of irritation started to grow right at Sunset's temples. "She's currently eating carnations out of the vase with a dash of salt."
There was a longer pause. "Okay, that's pretty weird," Twilight admitted.
Letting a sigh of relief slip out, Sunset nodded. To herself, mostly, since it was a phone call but it still felt right to do. "Yeah. Look, could you grab the girls and get over here? There's a couple of things that could be going on here and I'd be way more comfortable if I had backup."
"Fifteen minutes at most," Twilight firmly stated. "We'll be there."
"Thanks." And as Sunset hung up, she turned back to her girlfriend's imposter with a fake smile. "Sorry about that! Now, do you need anything to drink with those flowers?"
"She didn't," groaned Wallflower.
"She did," confirmed an exasperated Sunset.
Entirely freed now, Wallflower simply held herself close to Sunset and sighed. "She seemed so much smarter when she kidnapped me."
Sunset's entire body tensed at the word 'kidnapped'.
Wallflower used it as an excuse to hug her tighter.
Picking the story back up, Twilight took over the telling. "Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get most of the girls. AJ was the only one who could get there quickly, so the two of us hurried over to help Sunset out."
"Sunset did a heck of a job keepin' her busy until we got there," noted the farmgirl. "That Falseflower didn't get the chance to run or anythin'."
Sunset's reply to that was indignant. "I had the entire school under my complete control for years and I was taught diplomacy by Princess Celestia herself. Keeping a single confused pseudo-teenager busy is nothing."
Applejack snorted. "Nothin'. And how does that explain the way she reacted when we showed up at the door?"
Twelve minutes had passed, and Sunset Shimmer was running out of ideas.
As Wallflower sat patiently - though less so now than before - on the couch waiting for her girlfriend to return for snuggles, Sunset was desperately attempting to find reasons to not go back to the waiting arms of the imposter.
Unfortunately, Sunset's mind was trying to simultaneously figure out what had happened to the real Wallflower and thus her normal problem solving skills were somewhat stunted. That distraction was her internal excuse for why her latest gambit was fumbling and she was trying to re-tune her guitar for the third time.
"Really Sunny, it's okay." Wallflower smiled, her passive ease growing more fragile by the second. "Just come here, alright? I could use a hug."
"Nope! Almost got it!" Sunset concentrated as hard as she could on the guitar's pegs, micro-adjusting one of them. "I said I was gonna serenade you and I'm gonna. You know how stubborn I can get!" She laughed and neither of them believed it.
The knock on the door was Sunset's savior - she shot to her feet. "I'll get it!" But a glance betrayed Wallflower's own paranoia. The imposter's whole form was soaked with fear: eyes painfully wide, limbs tense. "Um, hey, Wally, why don't you go to the kitchen while I answer it? Maybe get some popcorn going for the movie?"
Wallflower hesitated, eyes flicking between Sunset and the door. But with delicate slowness, she rose and nodded. "Yeah. I'll... get some popcorn."
The distraction taken care of, Sunset scrambled for the door. Outside was her waiting backup: Twilight and Applejack.
"Seriously. I am so glad to see you two." Craning her neck, Sunset looked around the hall. "Just you two?"
"Just us two," Applejack confirmed. "Rest'll come along as best they can, but Ah'm the only one who could get here fast as Twilight wanted."
There was a pause before Twilight answered the question Sunset was trying to figure out how to ask. "Rainbow Dash is on a plane, coming back from Las Pegasus with her parents and we told her she's not allowed to jump out of it and fly here."
Sunset nodded solemnly. "Good advice."
"She didn't think so," Applejack drawled with no small amount of frustration.
"Hopefully we won't need the others." Sunset motioned the pair inside. "Wallflower's just over in the kitchen, getting some pop--" And her words evaporated.
The others stopped as well - the moment they looked to the little kitchenette made the stakes of the encounter clear. Wallflower was indeed there. And in her grip was a thick-bladed kitchen knife.
Every muscle and breath in the room froze. The only thing that moved was the knife itself - shaking in Wallflower's jittery hands.
Applejack shifted slightly, moving her weight from one foot to the other.
Wallflower jerkily turned, pointing the knife at the farmer.
Face set grimly, Applejack took a step closer to the imposter.
Fear flashed over Wallflower's features as the weapon failed to dissuade. In a panic she shifted her grip - moving the knife from being pointed at Applejack to bringing the cutting edge up to her own neck.
Instantly, Applejack put her hands up in surrender and stopped moving.
"Wallflower--"
Sunset got no more than that out before the imposter snapped. "Shut up! Shut up! You just couldn't do it, could you? You couldn't accept who I am and you had to ruin it all!"
The trio shifted slowly, inching around to look for an opening. Twilight disappeared behind the stoic protective wall of Applejack while Sunset sidled to the right. Wallflower's wild eyes darted between the farmer and the empath. "You ruined everything!"
"Wallflower. What did I ruin?" Sunset kept her hands up and where they could be easily seen. "None of us know what's going on here, so maybe if you explain it we'll be able to figure something out."
Green features twisted to a snarl. "I did figure something out. And then you ruined it." Wallflower's eyes darted back to Applejack as the farmer shifted her stance. The knife pressed defensively tighter. "Why couldn't you just let me be happy?"
Sunset took one step forward, pulling Wallflower's attention back to her. "Wally, please. I know... I know you're not my Wallflower. But that's all I know. There's no need for anybody to get hurt and we just want to understand what's happening."
"Understand?" Wallflower snorted angrily. "The only thing that matters is that you're supposed to be mine! You were supposed to stay in Equestria! If you'd stayed, it would have been me you saved, not her! Instead I got stuck with this worthless life!"
Something deep inside Sunset demanded she hug Wallflower. To hold her and tell her everything was going to be alright. She managed just barely to fight it down. "But I didn't," she half admitted, half deduced. "And somehow you found out about our lives here."
"Princess Twilight's book talked about you."
Sunset facepalmed. "Oh. Of course."
Wallflower didn't find it as sardonically amusing and growled. "Of course. That's why I came here - you should be with me, Sunset. Not stuck in this weird stupid noodle-y biped world with some fake. That's why I had to do it. I had to get rid of her."
Sunset's blood froze. "Get rid of her?"
"I--"
She cut Wallflower off as the ice in her started to give way to fire. "Get rid of her?"
Wallflower's sweaty palm shifted on the knife's handle, trying to keep a tight grip.
Sunset's momentary coldness was gone - replaced by an inferno in her eyes and barely restrained rage in her tense, trembling fists. "What did you do," she rumbled, "To my Wally."
It was probably just the heat of the moment and her rushing blood that made Sunset's complexion more red than usual. And the hint of smoke in the air was absolutely just overstressed imaginations. But that was enough for the spooked Wallflower to whip her knife around and point it at Sunset.
That was the moment the other two had been waiting for.
Applejack lunged - at Sunset. The bulky farmer didn't hesitate to grab Sunset in a half-nelson, hauling her backwards. Sunset flailed with wild fury, legs thrashing in the air as she futility tried to rush Wallflower.
Twilight had her own task. Having hidden out of sight behind Applejack to wait for her opportunity, the nerd used the momentary distraction to reach out with her geode's magic. Wallflower pulled the knife away from her neck to protect herself from Sunset - and then a magenta aura ripped it from her sweat-slick hand. The knife flew across the room and clattered on the floor before sliding under the couch.
Her only defense lost, Wallflower retreated, backing herself against the far wall and curling up into a frightened, tearful ball.
Wallflower shivered in Sunset's arms. "That sounds horrible."
"Yeah, it was." Sunset let out a long sigh of relief. "Thinking about what she might have done to you? I--"
And then Wallflower shoved her girlfriend. "No, I mean what happened to her!"
Unamused, Sunset locked eyes with Wallflower. "Wally, she kidnapped and tried to kill you."
Wallflower's mumbled response was inaudible to Twilight and Applejack, but Sunset's response was clear as day. She ran her hand across Wallflower's green cheek before looping a finger under her chin and forcing the gardener to look at her. "No. You don't. And I'll never stop reminding you that you don't."
The two lovebirds gazed deeply into each other's eyes, words lost in the tender moment that they shared as their love for one another--
Applejack loudly cleared her throat, reminding them that there were others present before they started making out.
Sunset and Wallflower separated in a flurry of scrambling limbs and hot blushes.
"So, um. What's... what's going to happen to her?" Wallflower tried to refocus the conversation while she brushed away the dirt and fertilizer that she'd been laying in for hours. "Equestrian justice sounds really, uh. Bad. I can't imagine being locked in Tartarus or being banished to the moon."
Helpfully, Twilight held out a small bottle of hand sanitizer for Wallflower to clean up with. "Rarity and Fluttershy are taking her to meet the Princess at the portal right now."
"And she's not going to Tartarus," Sunset noted, "she's going to therapy. She needs help and Princess Twilight understands that."
It was enough to leech away the last of Wallflower's unease - she hugged Sunset again. For a moment, at least. Then she turned to the other two. "Thank you. Not just for rescuing me but for being there when Sunset needed you."
A mere tip of the hat and a gentle smile was Applejack's response. Twilight was a bit more profuse - "Well of course we were going to help! Even without, um, you know." She waved vaguely at Sunset. "We couldn't just leave you."
With a smile and a sigh, Wallflower nodded. "Yeah. I'm lucky to have you. All of you." She gave Sunset another squeeze. "I just hope the other me will be able to find people who will support her and be as good for her as you are for me."
Sunset's angry scream pulled everyone's attention. Normally the journal-writing between Sunset and the Princess was a happy occasion, filled with little anecdotes that she'd pass on to everyone as they sat at lunch. Screaming was not normally part of it.
Wallflower leaned over, putting a hand on her girlfriend's arm. "What's wrong? Is she okay?"
At first, there was no response. Sunset pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration as she slowly found the words. "Princess Twilight is dating."
Across the table, the local Twilight perked up. "Oh? Who? I'm very curious to see how it would match up with my own preferences and interactions. Maybe I could even use it as a guideline to try and find a relationship of my own!"
There was an ominous pause before the answer came out. "The other Wallflower," Sunset direly intoned.
And in the awkward silence that followed, Wallflower managed to summarize their thoughts. "Well shit."