I haven’t been able to stop crying since the doors opened and I saw Sunset in her wedding tuxedo for the first time. It’s barely even a tuxedo! She doesn’t look like a groom she looks like some kind of Princess-Knight come to sweep a proper princess off her feet!
“So uhm, who goes first?” I ask. “I’m… I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Good,” Sunset laughs wetly. “Me neither.”
Nodding with a quiet laugh, I take several deep breaths, then look up at her and smile.
“A-Actually, okay, uhm… I… I think—” I look over at Rosary who gives me an encouraging nod before I look back at Sunset.
My eyes come to rest on the broach at her throat.
It looks beautiful on her.
Sunset told me once that it was tradition to exchange small gifts between betrothed where she’s from. Not necessarily rings, but something that means something to them both. That was why Sunset had gotten me the topaz ring. Because she thought it looked like a flower.
A sunflower.
So I got her a broach made in the same style. She looks better with a broach than a ring anyway, I think.
“Sunset Shimmer,” I start, and Sunset stiffens in surprise before relaxing as I reach out to take her hands. “You are… are absolutely crazy.”
Laughter ripples through the crowd and out of Sunset too.
She knows I'm not wrong.
“And I wouldn’t have you any other way,” I continue with a broad grin. “All my life I’ve never been anyone or anything.
“No one has ever looked twice at me, and for all that time I thought that was all I was ever meant to be: Wallflower Blush, the invisible girl. I thought no one would ever see me, and uhm, and I was okay with that… right up until I met you, and you saw me, and I… even from the beginning I never wanted you to stop looking at me.”
Sunset is crying now too. She looks like I feel: like she’s barely holding it together.
“And I never want to stop looking at you,” I say with a quiet sob. “I want to wake up next to you every day and go to sleep beside you every night. I want to laugh with you and cry with you, and grow old with you, Sunset!”
I take another deep breath and squeeze Sunset’s hands gently as I swallow back the last of my nerves.
“Sunset Shimmer,” I say her name like a prayer, smile as broad as I think I ever have. “When you look at me, you look at me like I’m the most beautiful girl in the world, but the best part isn’t even that… it’s that when you look at me, I actually kind of feel like I am.”
Sunset’s hands tighten around mine and she blows out a slow breath that comes on a trail of weak laughter as she briefly reclaims one hand to wipe at her cheeks before taking mine again.
“Wow,” she says. “Okay, I uh… nope, I’m not uh… I’m pretty not okay, but I guess we’re doing this, huh?”
She closes her eyes, takes a few sharp breaths, then breathes deep and nods, mostly to herself I think, before she opens those beautiful cerulean eyes of hers to look at me.
And I fall in love again.
“I uh…” Sunset stammers, then swallows thickly and laughs. “Okay, wow, crap, I uh… I swear I knew this…”
The crowd laughs again, and I can’t help laughing along with them.
“Okay, uh, let’s try this dance again,” she says, then straightens.
“Wallflower Blush, I love you with all my heart,” Sunset says shakily, and I swear my chest feels like it’s about to break open. “We had a rocky start, but I knew you were worth it from the beginning, and when I fell in love with you for real I knew I’d never be truly happy unless I got to spend the rest of my life calling you my wife.”
Nope, that’s it. It’s time to start blubbering. Rarity is never gonna forgive me because this dress is going to be damp.
“I’m gonna repeat myself a lot here, so bear with me,” Sunset continues. “But you’ve probably noticed that I repeat myself a lot anyway, so I guess you’re used to it by now.”
“Wallie, I told you this years ago, and now it means something completely different, so I’ll say it again: Where you sleep, I sleep, because I’m never going to leave you, and I’m never going to want to because without you I’m missing my heart.”
Sunset laughs weakly and plucks a bromeliad bloom from the bouquet to tuck it into my hair. As she does, she lowers her hand until her palm is resting on my cheek, and I lean into her touch.
“And this next thing? This next thing means the same thing now that it did the first time I said it to you, okay? Wallflower Blush, I said this so many times because I couldn’t bring myself to tell you that I loved you like crazy, but I did… I always did… and what I said then? It was just me being a coward about saying I love you, so I’ll say it now, one more time, and then I’ll say it again as many times as you want me to for the rest of our lives.”
Leaning forward, Sunset presses her forehead to mine, and I feel a faint patter as her tears trickle onto my cheeks.
“Wallflower Blush, you are precious to me.”
Laughter wells out of me, pure and happy. I let go of Sunset’s hands and reach up to cup her cheeks as she slips her arms around my waist and pulls me close. Our lips meet and it feels like the very first time we kissed, only better. Her lips are soft and warm, and I can taste the gentle tang of salt from our mingled tears.
All around us I’m vaguely aware of the crowd cheering, and Rosary declaring us officially married, but I can’t pull my attention away from the woman in front of me.
In a thousand, thousand years I never thought I’d get here. I never thought I could. I was always Wallflower Blush, the broken girl. The invisible girl.
The forgotten girl.
But not today.
Not today, never again.
Today I’m not just Wallflower Blush. Today I’m Sunset Shimmer’s wife, and she’s mine. Now and forever, two stories as one.
As we slowly part, Sunset is smiling down at me, and I think I fall in love three more times in that space.
“Hey,” I say softly.
“Hey,” Sunset replies with a laugh.
“We made it.”
Sunset nods, smiling, then nuzzles her nose against mine.
“Yeah,” she says wetly. “You and me.”
“Yeah,” I nod back and then pull myself up to press a fierce kiss to her lips, and relish the squeak of surprise that comes out before pulling back and grinning like a fool. “You’re… You’re my wife!”
Sunset does reply, not verbally, she just starts laughing as she wraps her arms around me, lifts me up, and spins me around, whooping with glee while our friends cheer.
If someone had told me this was where my life was heading four years ago, I would never have believed them. Past me was wrong about a lot of things though, and thanks to Sunset, and to a lot of other people, and… and maybe a little bit to me, that past me is going to stay there.
My past is not today. My today, and the rest of my life, is so, so much brighter.