//------------------------------//
// Your Fight Is Over 
// Story: SAPR 
// by Scipio Smith 
//------------------------------//


Your Fight is Over


“You’re on your own for this one.”
“For your information, Sunset, not everyone is obsessed with what you do or don’t do.”
“Thank you… for reminding me why trusting other people is a bad idea.”
Sunset opened her eyes, gasping for breath. Where was she? What had just happened? She turned around, and Dawn was there, and then… black. Nothing. What had just happened? Where was she? Why could she hear her own voice, and Flash’s voice, when she was her and Flash were in Atlas?
Where was she? Where was Dawn? Where was Robyn?
“To be a huntress is to embody the highest virtues of mankind,” Professor Ozpin said, “to be a light in darkness, when all other lights go out.”
“Do you believe in destiny?” Sunset asked.
“This is not my choice, Sunset,” Princess Celestia said gravely.
“You’ve ruined everything!” Ruby cried.
Words deluged her from all sides, the words of Ruby and Princess Celestia, of Cinder and Pyrrha, of Jaune and Blake and Professor Ozpin, all the words of her life hurled back at her, echoing off the walls of this… where was she? Not in the chamber in the Sun Tower where Robyn Hill had been held. Not where she had been when… what had Dawn done to her?
“What do you think she did to you, Sunset?” Princess Celestia asked as she stepped forward from out of the shadows. She was light itself, radiance incarnate, shining as brightly as the sun that she commanded, so bright that the sun itself seemed to shine from out of her shimmering white coat. Her golden adornments – her crown, her necklace, her slippers, all gleamed effulgent – reflecting more light than was present to reflect upon them. Her mane and tail, majestic with power, flowed behind her, rippling in a breeze that Sunset could not feel, streaming out like a banner inspiring ponies with its presence. Her voice was warm, encouraging, as it had been when Sunset had been stumped by a particularly difficult piece of homework. She smiled. “Surely a problem such as this is not beyond the reason of my most gifted student?”
“Princess Celestia,” Sunset cried. “How are you… what’s going on?”
Princess Celestia’s smile remained in place. “All the answers will fall into place, my little sunbeam, with time and thought and perhaps a little patience.”
Sunset shook her head. Her equine ears flattened down against the top of her head. “I can’t think with all of this noise.”
“You have thought a great deal with all this noise in your head,” Princess Celestia informed her. “You have always been able to shut them out, when you needed to.”
Shut them out. Shut them out. “Everybody quiet!” Sunset yelled, and all the voices – her own and all those of the people she had spoken with throughout her life – were stilled at once, like a gale that blows itself out until the wind is spent and only calm remains. 
Sunset sighed. “Thank you,” she said softly. She looked once more at Princess Celestia, and then at the space in which she found herself. It was definitely not the Sun  Tower. It looked too… it looked like… Sunset stepped across the room and flicked on the lights, illuminating the shadowy space so that she could actually see where she was. It was her dorm room. It was the SAPR dorm room at Beacon  Academy. Everything was as she had remembered it: there were the four beds lined up against the wall; there was the camp bed near the door that had been in place during the times when first Blake and then Amber had stayed with them. There was the window seat where Pyrrha liked to sit and read. The Song of Olivia was set there, pages open. Sunset walked across the room – Princess Celestia made way for her, retreating into the bay between Jaune and Pyrrha’s beds – until she stood over Ruby’s bed. There was the carving of their initials that they had made on the first night… but where were the STRQ initials? 
Sunset turned around. On her bed sat both the stuffed unicorn that Flash had won for her and the stuffed alicorn that she had got from Ruby. But she had given the unicorn away to Amber by the time that Ruby gave her the alicorn; that was why Ruby had given her the alicorn. And sitting on the desk was the white knight chess piece that Sunset had picked up in Initiation; she had wanted to keep it, but school rules wouldn’t allow her. And the books, the bookshelves were full of books, but they were not the books that had sat on the shelves when Team SAPR had occupied this room; rather, they looked to be identical copies of Sunset’s journal: rows of leatherbound books embossed with her cutie mark upon the cover. 
This was their room, but it had never looked quite like this. 
Sunset frowned. She reached out gingerly and touched the nearest book on the shelf, the one closest to her. 
“It doesn’t matter that you’re sorry!” Ruby shouted. “Yang’s still dead! She’s dead, and she’s never coming back because Twilight doesn’t trust you! And you know what? She’s right! I don’t trust you either! You’ve ruined everything!” Her lip trembled. “I wish… I wish I’d never met you.”
Sunset let out a gasp, letting go of the book and taking a step backwards, stumbling into the bed. 
Princess Celestia watched her, silent and expectant. 
“That was a memory,” Sunset murmured, half to herself and half to the princess. “And this… this room is also a product of my memories; that’s why it’s a jumble that was never quite like this; it’s an amalgamation created by my memories of the place.”
Princess Celestia nodded. “The things that stand out in your memories, the things that were important to you.”
“Which means that Dawn used a semblance on me that has… thrown me into my own memories?” Sunset asked.
Princess Celestia smiled. “Ten out of ten, Sunset Shimmer.”
Sunset was silent for a moment. “Which means you’re just a memory too, aren’t you? That’s why you’re here; that’s why you look so… radiant; that’s how I remember you.”
Princess Celestia chuckled. “I’m flattered,” she said. “But yes, I am just a fragment of your memories of me, and this place…” She looked around. “This place is your sanctum.”
“The dorm room is my sanctuary?” Sunset asked.
“Where else would it be?” Princess Celestia replied. “Where did you feel more at home than at Beacon?”
Sunset snorted. “You have a point there, Princess. Why has Dawn done this?”
“I don’t have the answers, Sunset,” Princess Celestia said gently. “I’m only you, remember?”
Sunset chuckled. “True,” she conceded. “I think… she must want… something that I know? Something that I remember? Something that she – or the other Sunset – thinks that I won’t remember. Whatever it is, it’s probably something that I don’t want her to find out, especially given that she’s done this to me to get it. I have to get out of here. I have to get my body back. I need to warn everyone that the other Sunset and her followers aren’t to be trusted. How do I get out of here? Can I get out of here?”
“I-”
“Don’t have all the answers, right,” Sunset interrupted the princess, or the memory that had assumed the form of the princess. “Sorry, it’s just… in my memories, you always know what to do… except what to do about me.” She sighed. “What should I do? What would Princess Celestia tell me to do?”
“I would tell you to trust in your friends.”
“Of course you would, but they’re not here right now,” Sunset pointed out.
“Then I would tell you to trust your instincts.”
“My instincts have seen me reeling from one error to the next,” Sunset declared. “But you’re right, that is exactly what you would tell me.” She huffed. “With all due respect, Princess, but I don’t suppose that any other memory fragments are about to show up with some better ideas?”
“Not unless you have better ideas, Sunset Shimmer,” Princess Celestia said.
“No, I don’t,” Sunset muttered. She had only a vague idea of where she was – in her memories, whatever that entailed – and that idea didn’t suggest much in terms of what she ought to do next. She knew what she wanted, but not how to get there. 
It’s a bit too much to hope that I can tap my heels three times and say ‘there’s no place like home.’ 
Besides, in a sense, I am home; home just isn’t where I need to be right now.
Perhaps if I’d spent more time studying my semblance instead of hiding it away behind a pair of gloves, I’d actually understand how this works and what to do.
For want of anything better to do, Sunset crossed the dorm room again and tried the door. 
It opened at her touch, swinging out into the corridor beyond. A corridor that had no other doors, though there should have been the YRDN – or YRBN - dorm room right across the hall.
Please tell me that I wasn’t so self-absorbed that Yang’s team isn’t relevant to any of my memories. 
I mean… I don’t remember much about them, except for Blake, but I don’t want to be confronted with the fact so baldly.
Sunset frowned. She took a tentative step out into the corridor and paused, the toe of her boot resting on the wooden floor, or at least the memory of it. One thing that she did remember about the mind, from her trip into her Amber’s memories, was the ability to conjure up things. 
Sol Invictus appeared in her right hand; the weight of the wooden stock was reassuring. Sunset smiled down at the rifle, then glanced back over her shoulder at Princess Celestia. “I don’t suppose you can come with me.”
“I’m afraid not,” Princess Celestia replied. “You fear there will be violence ahead, and you don’t want me to be a witness to that side of you.”
“No,” Sunset agreed. “I don’t.” She forced a smile onto her face. “Don’t worry, Princess, I can get this done.”
“I have every confidence in you, Sunset Shimmer.”
I wish I had every confidence in myself, Sunset thought as she stepped out into the corridor. 
The dorm room door slammed shut behind her. 
The corridor went one of two ways: downwards, towards what appeared – at the moment, at least – to be nothing but empty corridor, and upwards, to where there was at least a door of some sort, even if it wasn’t a door that belonged in this Beacon corridor. 
It wasn’t a door that Sunset recognised. It was a glass door, decorated with black iron bars tracing fluid, curling patterns over the opaque glass. It looked like something one might find in Vale, or perhaps other places besides, but it wasn’t something that sprang to her mind. 
So what was it doing here, amongst her memories?
Sunset walked forward cautiously, bringing Sol Invictus to her shoulder but lowering the barrel so that it pointed a little towards the floor. There was no sound but the tread of her boots upon the wood boards. 
There were no other doors in the corridor. There was only the way forward and the door before her that she didn’t recognise. 
As she approached, Sunset took her rifle in her off hand and, with her right hand, gingerly began to reach out for the black metal handle of the door. 
The door opened before she could grasp it, flooding the corridor with blinding light. Sunset staggered back from it, shielding her eyes from the glare. 
“Sunset Shimmer,” Dawn said as she stepped through the doorway. The door slammed shut behind her with a thud. “Sorry for being so abrupt before; it’s just easier to use my semblance on people if I don’t give them any warning first as to what I’m about to do. You know how it is: if you tell people that you’re about to possess them, they can get a little defensive.”
Sunset bared her teeth and raised Sol Invictus to her shoulder. “You.”
“Me,” Dawn replied. “Me, me, me.” She grinned. “And now: you.”
“What do you want?” Sunset demanded.
“I want to serve my queen,” Dawn replied. “I want to please her.” Her eyes narrowed. “I want to know how to use this Equestrian magic that you have in such abundance.”
Sunset’s eyes widened. “You’re not planning to ever give me my body back, are you?”
“Well, when you put it like that, it sounds like I’m doing something wrong,” Dawn replied. “I mean ‘your’ body? Entitled, much? The way I understand it, this isn’t even the body you were born with, just the one that got created for you by even more Equestrian magic when you came over here into our world. So, really, who’s to say who this body really belongs to? Plus, you know, I’m the one in control right now, and possession is nine tenths of the law.” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “Also, just between us girls, I’ve always thought the other you was kind of hot.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because my queen commanded it.”
Sunset rolled her eyes. “Okay, why is she doing this?”
Dawn smirked. “I heard you took out a whole grimm horde at King’s Camp all by yourself. Did you really think that we could let that kind of power slip through our fingers?”
“You can’t control it,” Sunset declared. “You don’t even know where to start.”
“I would, if you told me.”
Sunset’s lip curled into a sneer. “And why would I do that?”
“Because the way I see it, you have two choices,” Dawn said. “Either you help me get a handle on your magic, and I’ll guarantee that Ruby will be treated right here in Freeport, and Cinder and all of your other… minions will be put on a ship for Anima with no more trouble from the rest of us.”
“You think Ruby and Cinder will just let you get away with stealing my body?”
“Do you really think they’ll care enough to do anything about it?” Dawn asked. “Well, aren’t we full of ourselves? You’re not that important, Sunset; people’s lives can carry on just fine without those who think that they’re so indispensable to those around them.” The smirk on her face broadened. “You’d be surprised at how easily a person can be forgotten, even by those closest to them. Now, you can teach me what I want to know, or you can make me rip it out of your memories, and when I wake up, I’ll see to it that sweet little Ruby and Cinder and all the rest end up on crossed pikes before the gate.”
Sunset growled. “I have a better idea,” she said.
“Oh, really? What-?”
Sunset shot her in the face, a sharp bang echoing in the corridor as Sol Invictus blazed with fire. Dawn’s head snapped backwards, her whole body staggering towards the glass and metal door. Sunset reversed the rifle in her hands, smashing Dawn across the face with it, knocking her sideways and sending her slamming into the corridor wall face first. 
“You want to see my magic, Dawn?” Sunset demanded. Her hands glowed with power as she bodily picked Dawn up in the grip of her telekinesis, lifting the other girl up off the ground and smashing her into the ceiling before tossing her downwards and face-first into the floor. Sunset’s face was set in a snarl. Yes, she was glad that Princess Celestia – even the princess who only existed in Sunset’s mind – wasn’t here to see this as she unloaded upon Dawn Starfall. 
She held Dawn up, suspended in mid-air, writhing helplessly in the grip of Sunset’s magic as Sunset nailed her in the centre of the chest with a blast of magic that hurled her up against the door. 
Sunset didn’t let up. She didn’t give Dawn a second to respond to her, to get her breath back, to come up with a response. Both her hands glowed with the green light of her magic as spears appeared in the air to fall one after the other upon Dawn. She was consumed in the blasts, the blasts which Sunset didn’t wait to clear before she conjured upon another round of magical projectiles to hurl after the first. She wasn’t sure exactly how much aura Dawn had left, but she wasn’t taking any chances. With one hand, she hoisted Dawn up into the air once more, and with the other, she hit Dawn dead on with a sustained beam of magic, a continuous stream of green energy that smote Dawn on the chest and hammered at her, burning away her aura until there was nothing left, and then as Dawn screamed in pain, it burned a charred and blackened hole in the centre of her chest. 
Sunset released her magic as Dawn’s body dropped to the floor. She let out a breath that she didn’t know that she had been holding in. 
That… that had been surprisingly easy. Now, she just needed to get out of here.
The glass door opened, and Dawn stepped into the corridor.
“Ouch,” she complained, clutching her chest where Sunset’s magic had burned. “Now that’s the kind of power that is exactly why we can’t just let you leave.”
Sunset took a step back. “How in-?”
“This isn’t real, silly!” Dawn cried with laughter. “What, did you think that if you killed me in your memories I’d die in the real world?”
“I hoped it might at least kick you back into your own body,” Sunset growled.
“If it worked like that, my semblance would be a lot less useful,” Dawn replied. “My body is supplying aura to me here; so long as that’s true, then I can keep you smothered in here, and there’s really nothing you can do about it.”
“If that’s true, then eventually, if you keep this up, then our auras will merge together in my body,” Sunset mused, “and we’ll both die and be replaced by someone else.” Possibly, they had never actually tested that theory on Pyrrha, but of the various possibilities, Sunset felt it was the most likely. Plus, it might encourage Dawn to get out of her head and give Sunset her body back.
“Maybe,” Dawn conceded. “All the more reason for you to roll over, isn’t it?”
“How do you figure that?” Sunset replied. “If we’re both doomed, then you should scuttle off back where you came from and give me back control of my body.”
“So you can take revenge on me and my queen?” Dawn demanded. She chuckled. “That’ll happen. I believe in what we’re doing here, Sunset; I’m willing to die for Freeport and the Queen. Are you willing to die for your friends?”
“Yes.”
“Clearly not, or you wouldn’t be being so difficult about this,” Dawn replied. “I’ve given you my word, haven’t I?”
“Forgive me if I find it hard to trust the person who has stolen my body!” Sunset snapped.
Dawn sighed. “You can’t get rid of me, Sunset; I’ll just keep coming back. You, on the other hand… you’ve got nowhere to come back from.”
“Better than you have tried to kill me,” Sunset snarled.
“And the more I think about it, the more sure I am that since I’m already in control of your body, whatever emerges from the fusion of our auras will have a lot more in common with me than it does with you,” Dawn continued. “The point is, however this ends, I get what I want.”
“Not if I refuse to tell you how to use my magic,” Sunset growled. “Maybe you will be left standing, however this ends, but I’ll be damned if I teach you how to use my power against my friends, against Equestria!”
“Oh, you’ll tell me one way or another,” Dawn said. “Try not to think about where you keep your memories.”
Mustn’t think about the - dammit!
The door to the SAPR dorm room swung open behind Sunset as she winced in self-disgust.
Dawn chuckled. “Gets ‘em every time.” She brushed past Sunset and strolled down the corridor, leaving Sunset to rush after her into the dorm room itself. 
Princess Celestia wasn’t there; she had disappeared into… wherever fragments of memory went. The rest of the room, however, was exactly as Sunset had left it. 
“Well, this looks cosy,” Dawn observed as she looked around the room. “Much nicer than the dorms in Atlas. We had to sleep in these stupid bunk pod things. I swear, I was kept awake night after night by the way that Cherry tossed and turned in the bed above me. It’s amazing I stayed alert enough to graduate.”
“Get out,” Sunset growled. 
“Not sure about the stuffed animals, though,” Dawn continued. “I mean, how old are you?”
“Get out.”
“And look at this,” Dawn said, approaching the far wall. “You’ve carved your names on the wall. How sentimental.”
“I said 'get out!'” Sunset roared, picking Dawn up and throwing her out of the window. The glass shattered on impact, and Dawn hung, suspended amidst shards of glass, before Sunset dropped her into the void outside. 
Sunset turned to the bookshelves, her eyes flickering across the volumes; they all looked identical, but of course they weren’t; each book held its own memories. Since the book nearest to Ruby’s bed had contained Sunset’s most recent memories, then it was logical to assume that the books were in chronological order working their way across the room. 
Sunset grabbed the books on the other side of the room, closest to the bathroom. If she was right – and from the voices that rose up to assail her as she touched the book on the right, she thought she was – then these were her oldest memories, her memories of Equestria and of living in Canterlot with Princess Celestia.
Put it away, somewhere she can’t find it.
The book in her hand disappeared in a flash of light, vanishing into the dark recesses of Sunset’s consciousness. 
Sunset started to count as she grabbed other books off the shelf, as many memories as she could, stuffing them away where Dawn couldn’t get to them, concealing her magic lessons and her Equestrian life, working her way leftwards. 
She had reached a count of eight and had hidden three books in total when the door swung open and Dawn walked in. 
“Really?” she muttered. “Did you actually think that would work?”
“No,” Sunset admitted. “But it made me feel a lot better.”
“Cute,” Dawn  growled. “But I don’t understand why you’re-“ She stopped, looking at the empty space at the edge of the bookshelf. “So, you’re keeping memories from me. You got me out, and then you hid them. I’m guessing you started with the memories of your magic because you’re an incredibly petty person who can’t bear to see other people get what they want if she can’t. Am I right?”
Sunset smirked. “Not far off. You’ll never find them.”
“Give them to me.”
“Bite my tail.”
Dawn huffed. “Gods know I have tried to be nice and civil about this, but you’re not leaving me with a lot of options here, Sunset.”
“I may not be able to kill you,” Sunset said, “but if you think you can take me on, then you’re welcome to try.”
Dawn laughed. “Oh, I’m sure I wouldn’t stand a chance in a straight fight against the great Sunset Shimmer. Luckily, I don’t have to. What are you afraid of, Sunset?”
Sunset wasn’t able to stop an image from flashing to the forefront of her mind. An image of a figure in black as the world turned red, and sword like a crimson tongue eager to carve a swathe across the world.
The dorm room door opened again, and Adam Taurus stepped in. The red lines upon his mask were glowing, pulsing with power, and the black of his outfit seemed to spread out around him as he walked as though he were wreathed in shadow. 
His murderous smirk gleamed like the blade of a knife. 
This was Adam Taurus, but not as he had been in life; this was the Adam Taurus of her nightmares, the Adam Taurus who had haunted Sunset’s dreams from that night at the docks until she had put an end to him, and now, that nightmare had been dredged up from the depths of her subconscious to torment her. 
His smile broadened, but he said not a word as he drew his blood-red sword. It was glowing with enough power to slice through her aura at will. 
Dawn looked him up and down. “Nice. You have good taste in nightmares.” She looked at Sunset. “Get her.”
Adam started towards her. Sunset teleported, appearing in a flash behind him, in the doorway of the dorm room. She fled out into the corridor, abandoning her remaining memories to Dawn, slamming the door shut behind her. She needed to get away from him; she needed somewhere to hide. 
A door appeared on the other side of the corridor. Sunset guessed that it wasn’t Team YRBN’s room. 
But it was better than here, wherever it was. 
She flung open the door and rushed through it, closing it behind her.
She stood in Professor Ozpin’s office. The gears of the clock ground slowly over her head, casting their shadows on the ground and filling the air with a mechanical rattle. The office was intact, but as empty as it had always been, with only the glass desk and the ornate chair sitting near the back of the office. 
Professor Ozpin stood at the window, clutching at his cane with both hands as he stood with his head bowed, almost touching the glass. 
Sunset knew that this was another projection of her subconscious, like Princess Celestia before him, but all the same, she couldn’t help but feel her throat go dry. “Professor?”
Professor Ozpin looked at her over his shoulder. “Back again, Miss Shimmer?”
Sunset walked closer to him. “I need to… I had to get away.”
“Ah, you’re running,” Professor Ozpin said. “You’re very good at that, aren’t you?”
Sunset’s breath caught in her throat. “Professor?”
“Running away,” Professor Ozpin explained as he turned to face her. “That’s what you do, isn’t it, Miss Shimmer? You ran away from Equestria, you ran away from Canterlot-”
“I didn’t run away from Beacon,” Sunset insisted, closing the distance until only a few feet separated them.
“No,” Professor Ozpin conceded. “But you did let me down in every other way.”
Sunset blinked rapidly. Blinking back tears, or trying to. “I… I tried my best.”
“I trusted you with Amber,” Professor Ozpin said.
“I was trying to save her and Pyrrha both.”
“You gave me hope and then dashed it.”
“I didn’t realise that she’d be so damaged.”
“You didn’t think about the consequences of your actions,” Professor Ozpin declared. “You failed Amber, you delivered her into the hands of darkness… and you failed me.”
“I never meant to.”
“You abandoned me when I needed you the most,” Professor Ozpin cried. “You ran into Vale and left me to face my enemies alone.”
“I know!” Sunset cried. “I know I left you, I know that it’s my fault you died, I know that I screwed up just like I screwed up with Amber, just like I screwed up on the train, just like I screwed up everything.” She shuddered, her whole body racked with a sudden sob as tears welled up in her eyes. “Please, Professor. Please… please forgive me.”
Professor Ozpin’s gaze was as sharp as talons. “I have made more mistakes than any man alive, Miss Shimmer, but I try not to make the same mistake twice.”
The elevator doors opened, and Adam Taurus strode into the office. 
Dawn followed behind him. In one hand, she had a book, one of Sunset’s journals, a book of her memories. 
“So,” she said. “It seems that you have some experience in messing around with minds and souls already. To think that Atlas built a machine like that. I can’t help but feel as though your disgust with it is colouring your attitude towards me.” She looked up, brushing some of her red and white hair out of her face. “I don’t suppose there’s any way you can find it in you to look past it and consider me with fresh eyes and an open mind?”
Sunset stared flatly at her. Is she being serious right now?
Dawn shrugged. “Ah, it was worth a try. I suppose, looking through your memories, I can see why you think that we’ll turn into some kind of amalgam if you run down the clock; but you see, I’m not meek, mild Pyrrha Nikos; I haven’t spent so long decrying my lack of self that what self there is will just crumble away at the slightest touch of Amber’s aura.”
Sunset snarled. “Don’t talk about Pyrrha that way!”
“What are you going to do to stop me?” Dawn demanded.
Adam took a step forward. 
Sunset glanced towards Professor Ozpin. “Professor?”
Professor Ozpin turned away, presenting his back towards Sunset and Adam both. 
It was no more than Sunset deserved, but it hurt her a little nonetheless. 
Adam sprang for her. Sunset stepped back, her hands wreathed in magic as a beam shot from her palm to slam right into Adam’s crimson blade. It stopped his charge but did him no harm; just as it had in life, his blade protected him from her magic, soaking it up, drinking her power down greedily and turning it into strength for him who held the sword. 
Adam grinned with silent savagery as his shining sword glowed brighter still. 
Sunset conjured spears from different directions, the magical missiles flying towards him from both flanks and from behind, but Adam turned with phenomenal speed, so fast that even Pyrrha or Dash couldn’t match him, striking the spears before they struck him, catching all of them with his sword. Of course he did; this was a nightmare Adam, an Adam forged out of her perceptions magnified by fear; of course he was too fast for her magic. 
That was what she feared he would be. 
Adam charged out of the smoke of all the magical explosions, the glow of his sword reflecting off the office floor. Sunset met him with Soteria in hand, the black blade clashing with the red, the ebon night against the rising sun. Sunset slashed at him, but Adam parried her strokes with contemptuous ease and drove her backwards with his furious strokes. Sunset’s boots squeaked upon the floor as she fell back, parrying desperately, trying to keep that sword away from her aura. Trying to keep it from slicing her in half in a single stroke. 
He was too strong for her. He was too fast for her magic, and she had never been confident in her ability to beat him close quarters, so, surprise surprise, she couldn’t beat him in close quarters. 
Which meant there was only one thing to do. 
Sunset teleported back until she was pressed up against the window.
And then she threw herself out of it.
She staggered through the door into the amphitheatre at Beacon. The room was dark, dimly lit as it almost always was, with only the fighting stage illuminated. The pews on which the students sat and watched their fellow students fight were empty, and when Sunset walked forward closer to the stage – passing under the upper gallery – she could look  up and see that that was empty too. 
The stage, however, was not empty. Ruby stood upon it, dressed not as she had been at Beacon but as Sunset had seen her last, in the new outfit that she had started wearing with the white blouse and the boob window. 
“Ruby!” Sunset cried, dashing towards her and leaping up onto the stage. “Please, you have to help me.”
Ruby’s gaze was as hard as stone. “I wish I’d never met you,” she spat. 
She looked away, looking towards the doors through which, Sunset saw as she followed Ruby’s gaze, Dawn and Adam had just come in. 
“She’s all yours,” Ruby said. 
Dawn’s laughter echoed off the walls of the amphitheatre. “This… I’m sorry, but this is just too good! Once I thought might be a fluke, but twice? I have never seen anything quite like this; even your own mental constructs hate you! I mean… I mean I can understand why; you have been an absolutely terrible friend. Why do you even want to get your body back?”
Sunset’s hands clenched into fists. “Because I need to protect my friends-”
“Yeah, sure you do,” Dawn said, flicking through the pages of the book in her hand. “Because that’s what you do, isn’t it? Sunset Shimmer, the great protector, Sunset Shimmer, everyone’s best friend, always willing to help them out.”
“I try my best.”
“Like you helped Jaune?” Dawn asked. “Like you helped Blake? Like you helped Amber and Pyrrha?”
“Yes,” Sunset said.
“None of them asked you to help them,” Dawn pointed out. She placed a hand on Adam’s shoulder, and he halted, still and silent as the huntsman in the courtyard, sword drawn but making no move to use it. Dawn walked past him, turning the pages in the book. “None of them sought out your help; you just decided-”
“They needed help, even if they were too proud or stubborn to ask for it.”
“And you decided that you were the one to help them,” Dawn cried. “You didn’t even tell them what you were going to do to ‘help’ them; you just went ahead and did it anyway.”
“So I should have just let Cardin keep making Jaune’s life a misery?” Sunset yelled. “I should have let Blake suffer all the slings and arrows? I should have let Pyrrha die, and Amber too? If you’re reading through my memories, then you know what situations they were in, so why don’t you tell me what I should have done instead of helping?”
Dawn shrugged. “You could have talked to them about it,” she said. “But that might have meant having to pay attention to what they wanted, what they had to say. You know, in my time walking through people’s minds, I’ve gotten pretty good at reading people.” She slammed the book shut. “Reading between the lines, as it were.” She started to circle Sunset. Ruby ignored her, walking off the stage and towards the locker rooms. 
“You know what I think?” Dawn asked, circumventing Sunset. “I think that you just enjoyed making yourself the centre of attention, instead of Jaune or Blake or Pyrrha. You couldn’t bear the idea of letting them solve their own problems, because that would have meant that people were paying attention to them and not you, and you couldn’t have that. That’s why you want your body back, that’s why you want me out of your head, that’s why you won’t just give me what I want and accept oblivion, because Sunset Shimmer has to be the hero who saves everyone!”
“That’s not who I am!” Sunset yelled. Her voice quietened as she added, “Not anymore.”
“Then why are you resisting?”
“Because I made a promise,” Sunset declared. “A promise to…” She trailed off, her throat drying up. 
I made a promise to Amber that I would protect Professor Ozpin. 
Because he’s alive and waiting for us. 
Which Dawn will find out if she keeps looking in my most recent memories!
Celestia! I should have thought about that; I’m such an idiot!
“Sunset?” Dawn asked, her voice cautious, wary. Adam took a step forward, one hand drifting casually towards the hilt of his sword.
Sunset’s eyes flickered towards the journal in Dawn’s hands. Unless she was mistaken, it was the most recent volume. 
Dawn looked down at the book she was holding. “Wh-?”
Sunset teleported the distance separating the two of them, slamming the flat of her palm into Dawn’s nose hard to enough to snap her head backwards. Sunset grabbed the book out of Dawn’s unprotesting hands, and with the speed of thought, it had disappeared to join the others she had hidden. 
“Agh!” Dawn growled. “You little-!”
Sunset teleported again, once more wrong-footing the spectral Adam of her nightmares as she got behind him, close to the doors to which she dashed.
And this time, as she ran to the doors, she thought about where she wanted to go. 
She burst through the doors and back into the SAPR dorm room, back into her sanctum. Fortunately, Dawn and Adam hadn’t trashed the place while they’d been left here unsupervised, probably because Dawn was more interested in catching up to Sunset than she was in committing acts of vandalism for the sake of it. She checked the bookshelves. It was not the last book which she had hidden, which made Sunset feel rather glad that she had decided to stop by here to make sure. Her hand glowed as she summoned the last book of memories into her outstretched and waiting hand, opening it up; it was mostly blank, with a lot of empty pages still to be written, but when she got closer to beginning, she felt the memory that she had been looking for, the memory that she wanted to hide. 
“Professor Ozpin is alive.”
Sunset shut the book, and it disappeared into the recesses of Sunset’s memory. Now, Dawn would never find it. Now, she would never know that secret. 
Now, the Sun Queen would never know to hunt for Professor Ozpin and his power the way that she had decided to take Sunset’s magic for her own. 
Her duty done, it was time to leave before Dawn and Adam caught up with her. 
But where can I go? Where can I hide where they won’t find me?
I hid my memories where she won’t find them.
I might be easier to find; besides, the deepest recesses of my memory might not be too healthy.
Neither is dying. 
Sunset shook her head. She had a suspicion that she knew exactly where the ‘deepest, darkest’ pit within her memory was, and it wasn’t anywhere that she was eager to revisit. 
I need help. I need someone who can fight Adam, someone who can defeat him, I need-
Sunset ran from the room, darting out of the door and into an arcade. 
It was somewhere in Vale. She didn’t remember exactly where in Vale it was; to her recollection, they had never been back, or at least, she hadn’t. Perhaps Ruby and Penny had come back here with only Ciel as a chaperone. 
It was less crowded than she remembered. In fact, it was desolately empty. There was no sign of Pyrrha or Jaune; there was definitely no sign of Ruby, not that she would have helped Sunset anyway. But that didn’t matter, because Sunset wasn’t here for any of them. 
Sunset was here for Rainbow Dash, who was standing – fully armed and wearing her wings – at the counter where she had brought Sunset a drink and promised to keep her secret. 
Sunset jogged through the arcade, her footsteps the only living sound amidst the buzzing and the music of awaiting games, until she reached the counter too. 
“Rainbow Dash,” she said, “am I glad to see you.” Rainbow could beat Adam; she’d seen him beat Adam, and even if this was the Adam of her imagination, well, the Rainbow Dash of her imagination should be tough enough to take him out. Pyrrha… Pyrrha in real life probably could have taken him too, but Sunset had always been afraid for Pyrrha facing Adam in ways that she had never been afraid for Rainbow Dash. 
Rainbow’s magenta eyes were hard. “I bet you are,” she growled. “Always glad to see a sucker, huh?”
Please. Please not you as well. I didn’t even do anything to you! “What do you mean?”
“I believed you,” Rainbow declared. “I trusted you. And every time, you took advantage of me, threw it in my face.”
Sunset shook her head. “No, I-”
“I should have turned you in for Anon-a-Miss,” Rainbow declared. “I should have told your friends what you really were. I should have turned you in over the train!”
Sunset swallowed. “You… you probably should, yeah.”
“But I didn’t,” Rainbow replied. “Because I owed you. Because I believed all the honeyed words that came out of your mouth. Because I thought we were friends.”
“We are friends.”
“Friends don’t use friends like dust!” Rainbow snarled. “You took advantage of me.”
“I’m sorry,” Sunset murmured feebly.
Rainbow snorted. “What are you doing here, Sunset?”
“I need your help,” Sunset replied.
“You don’t deserve my help,” Rainbow said.
“They’ll kill me.”
“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing,” Rainbow declared. She turned her back on Sunset and began to walk away. She stopped after a couple of paces. “Hey, Sunset, where’s Ruby if you’re in so much trouble?”
“She… she wouldn’t help me either,” Sunset admitted.
“Maybe that should tell you something,” Rainbow growled, before resuming her walk away from Sunset. 
Sunset stared after her retreating back until she disappeared into… into wherever memories went. 
“Well, screw you too!” Sunset yelled. “I’ll…” She trailed off. “I’ll…” She couldn’t say what she would do. She didn’t know what she would do. She didn’t know who else she could go to. She didn’t know who would help her. She was nought for three amongst the figments of her own imagination so far.
Maybe it should tell me something. 
Maybe it should tell me that I don’t deserve anyone’s help.
Sunset’s hands trembled. She felt weak, weary. She felt as though her eyelids were growing heavier. She was tired.
She’d been tired for some time. Tired and lost and empty. No friends, no home… nothing but duty to a cause she had already failed more times than she could count.
What had she actually accomplished? What was one thing that she had done that had actually worked out?
Sunset Shimmer, the hero. Sunset Shimmer the perpetual screw-up, more like.
“Oh, Sunset?” Dawn’s sing-song voice echoed through the arcade. 
Sunset hesitated, and for a moment, she considered staying here, baring her throat for Adam’s blade. 
“Sunset.”
Sunset turned. Pyrrha stood behind her, Pyrrha clad in her glimmering raiment of war, Pyrrha with the sun upon her face for all that they were indoors, Pyrrha with Miló in hand and Akoúo̱ upon her arm. 
“Pyrrha?” Sunset murmured. “What…? I didn’t even-”
“You needed help, and so I came,” Pyrrha declared, her voice soft and gentle.
Sunset’s mouth hung open. She didn’t know what to say; no words would come. “Thank you,” she managed, just about. “That means more to me than… thank you.” She hesitated, certain yet at the same time reluctant. “But you have to go.”
“'Go'?” Pyrrha repeated. “But why?”
“Sunset?” Dawn demanded, her voice getting closer.
“Because you can’t fight for me,” Sunset declared. “He’ll kill you.”
Pyrrha took a step forward. “You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do,” Sunset insisted. “I had nightmares about it, I feared it… and this is a place where all my fears come true.”
Pyrrha was silent for a moment. “Maybe I cannot beat him. Maybe the Adam you imagined is stronger than the Pyrrha of your thoughts. But I can buy you time.”
Sunset shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “No, I… I won’t have you die for me.”
Pyrrha’s smile was sad, melancholy as her smiles had sometimes been. “But I’m not real, so what does it matter?”
“It matters to me,” Sunset said. “I can’t… I just can’t. Not anymore.”
Pyrrha frowned. “So… what will you do?”
Sunset did not reply. She just smiled and whispered. “Goodbye.”
And Pyrrha disappeared from sight. Sunset was left alone. Again.
Probably for the best. People around me tend to get hurt.
I’ve been a pretty terrible friend, all things considered.
Dawn’s footsteps echoed on the floor of the arcade. “There you are.”
Sunset turned to face her. Adam wasn’t with her, at least not right now. She could probably summon him whenever she liked. “Here I am.”
“Why do you keep running?” Dawn demanded. “Aren’t you tired?”
Sunset shuddered. “You have my memories; you know I am.”
Dawn nodded. “And you have a right to be. What you’ve been… just skimming through your life before, I can’t… it doesn’t bear thinking about what you’ve been through… or what you’ve done.”
Sunset glared at her. “Is everyone going to take a turn to throw that in my face?”
“I’m just pointing out that you had a choice then,” Dawn said. “Just like you have a choice now. You can give me those memories, the memories that will show me how to use your magic so that I can use it to defend Freeport and everyone who lives here from the grimm… or you can be a self-centred little bitch, again, and condemn this city to peril and destruction because you don’t care about anyone but yourself.”
“I do care,” Sunset snapped. “I care about…”
“About who?” Dawn asked. “About Ruby? About your friends? How about the people who suffer because of your bad decisions, because of your need to be at the centre of things, because you have to be the one who is driving the story? What about Dove, what about Amber, what about Yang? Do you care about them?”
Sunset sank to her knees. “I never meant…”
Dawn knelt down beside her. “I know,” she whispered. “But it happened. And it’s going to keep on happening. We can’t escape who we are, Sunset. We delude ourselves that we can grow and change, but ultimately… we’re still the same people we always were. Even if I left you right now, even if I gave you your body back, you’d just keep on making the same mistakes. You get that, right?”
Sunset nodded mutely. What Dawn said… every word she had said was true. She did keep making the same mistakes, over and over and over again, and other people kept on paying the price for her arrogance and folly: Amber, Professor Ozpin, Dove, Yang… Ruby. 
She was so very tired. She no longer desired fame, she no longer desired glory, she no longer wanted… anything. There was nothing left. It had all been burnt out of her, turned to ash in the heat of battle. There was nothing left but duty, duty to a cause that she had already failed more often than she cared to remember, duty to a cause that had no need of her. 
Ruby hated her. Ruby was right to hate her, and Cinder… Cinder would be better off without Sunset using her like a therapy dog. Maybe, without Sunset around, she could finally figure out what kind of person she was meant to be. 
Maybe it’s time for me to answer for the things that I’ve done.
“Okay,” she whispered as she wiped a tear from her eye. 
“Hmm?” Dawn murmured.
“I said 'okay,'” Sunset declared, rising to her feet. “You can have the memories. You can have the magic. You can have… you have all of it. Just… take care of Ruby, okay?”
“Of course,” Dawn murmured. “I promise. We look after our own in Freeport.” She smiled. “As a little sister she will be to me.”
Sunset snorted. “As she was to me, once. Watch out, or she’ll get under your skin and right into your heart. Just… don’t let her down.”
Dawn shook her head. “Never.”
“And tell Cinder…” Sunset trailed off. “Try and make Cinder understand that this… this was my choice, in the end.”
Dawn gave a slight nod of her head in acknowledgement. 
Sunset got to her feet and closed her eyes. 
When she opened them again, she was on the train. 
Of course she was on the train. It was always the train. The thing that she regretted most, the decision she had tried her hardest to run from… the heart of everything. 
The moment she had ruined everything. 
Sunset wiped more tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. She could feel the vibrations of the train as it rattled along the rails; she could hear the clanking and the banging. The train felt and sounded like it was moving but it would never stop, never reach the end of the line. Only her choice could stop this train. 
Her choice to stop running. 
“This is where you hid your memories?” Dawn asked. She had appeared, but Adam had not; Dawn had no more need of him. “I should have known.”
“Yeah,” Sunset muttered. “You probably should have.”
“In my defence, I was only skim reading.”
Sunset ignored that. She knelt down in the centre of the carriage, where a box – an old antique chest – sat before her. A chest full of memories. 
A chest full of regrets. 
She opened it up. Professor Ozpin’s cane lay there, along with Dove’s sword, one of the gauntlets of Yang’s Ember Celica, Amber’s glimmering golden bracelet, the blade of Sky’s halberd. 
Mementos of those she had let down. 
And the books. The books of her memories. 
“The last book I keep for myself,” Sunset declared. “It has no magic in it, only… secrets that are mine alone.”
Dawn was silent, considering. “Very well,” she said. “Give me your magic; your thoughts remain your own.”
“Thank you,” Sunset whispered. “You are more generous than I expected.”
“I’m not the bad guy, Sunset,” Dawn declared. “I’m just doing what I must, to protect my home.”
“Here you go,” Sunset whispered, taking the books up gently in her hands and standing up to hold them out to Dawn. “Use them wisely.”
Dawn was silent as she, with care and reverence, reached out and plucked the books carefully from Sunset’s outstretched hands. Her eyes widened as she seemed to already feel the memories contained within. 
Sunset bowed her head. “Is this the part where you kill me?”
Dawn was silent for a moment. “My Queen – the other you – thinks that you’re dangerous. After hearing what she had to say about you, I thought you were dangerous too.”
“I am dangerous, to everyone around me.”
“No,” Dawn said. “You’re powerful, but… I meant what I said. You’ve been through a lot. I can’t imagine… you’ve earned your rest. I don’t need to kill you, Sunset, not now. I’ll let my aura wash you away as it consumes this place. I’ll let you get comfortable with the end as it comes. And maybe… maybe some part of you will be left, to live on in me. That… doesn’t sound as I would have thought, not too long ago.”
“That… that’s very generous of you,” Sunset said.
“We’re not the bad guys, Sunset,” Dawn told her. “We’re just trying to protect our home and our people.” She paused. “Your friends will be fine,” she said. “Ruby will be fine, and Cinder-”
“I know,” Sunset murmured. “The fight will go on without me.”
Dawn nodded. “You can rest now, Sunset Shimmer. Your fight is over.”
She disappeared, vanishing into… Sunset didn’t know where. Back into some other part of Sunset’s mind. 
Dawn’s mind now. Dawn’s mind, Dawn’s body. Soon to be Dawn’s soul. 
It was better this way. It would be better this way.
Dawn had never done any of the things that Sunset had. Hadn’t made so many mistakes, hadn’t hurt so many people. 
It was better this way. 
That didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt. 
Ruby, Cinder, Jaune, Pyrrha… goodbye. 
Sunset sank to the ground, tears streaming down her face.