Wallflower looked up at the darkening evening sky, the very last reds of the already-set sun rapidly dissipating. She remembered back to another night, twenty years ago now, when she was sitting at this very spot. Leaning into Sunset, feeling the cool of her leather jacket, the warmth of her neck on her cheek. Gazing up in wonder as the stars appeared in the new night sky.
There were no stars now. Just a ribbon of pitch black. A reminder that it was the end of days.
She heard footsteps approaching on the path and turned her head. “Don’t need to get up!” Twilight said as she got closer. “I’ll join you.”
“How was it with Sunset?” Wallflower asked, as Twilight sat down next to her.
“It was nice, as far as last goodbyes go.” Twilight smiled as she unslung the bag with her journal and gave it back to her. ”She asked to take her to the statue. I guess she wanted to see where it all began one last time.“
“That makes sense.”
In the spillover of the footpath lights, she could make out the shapes of the three familiar stones surrounding her and Twilight.
“Me too.”
She put a hand on grass and dug in with her fingers, remembering how easily the soil had yielded to her trowel on the day her life changed forever. She lifted her hand to look at her fingertips, stained with dirt.
“I still regret it sometimes. Asking her to leave before I woke up. Leaving me here, asleep, on the grass. But I knew that I wouldn’t be able to take it. Touching her for the last time, knowing that it would be the last.” She looked at Twilight. “I’m glad you and the girls were there for her.”
“Me too.” Wallflower could see the tears forming in Twilight’s eyes, behind her glasses. “It was a hard moment for all of us. It just felt like another hug at the end of one of our adventures, you know? Except that it would be the last one…”
Wallflower gave her a sad smile. “I really should have been there.”
“Wallflower, you can’t blame yourself—”
“I know.”
She took a pill out of her pocket and held it in her hand. The liquid blue, shimmering even in this dim light, reminded her of Sunset’s eyes. She placed it on the ground, and stomped it into the dirt with her shoe.
“I can’t make her go through that again.”
She turned to Twilight.
“But it’s nice that you gave everyone the option.”
“We thought it was important.” Twilight wiped away a tear. “You know, there must be some who have already taken it by now. We guaranteed twenty-four hours. Before it wears off and they wake up, it’ll all be over.”
Wallflower had nothing to say to that. Instead, she looked up at the blank night sky, and Twilight did the same.
“Where will you be?“ Wallflower asked.
“Oh, it’ll just be me and Celestia here, seeing things through to the end! We sent everyone else home, to be with their families. Even the guards.” She chuckled sadly. “It’s funny. In the contingencies, we totally expected a breakdown of order as the date came closer. Riots, mobs, assassinations, mass suicides… We had plans for everything except everyone deciding to just go quietly…”
Wallflower looked at Twilight, who kept gazing into the silent sky for a few seconds before turning to her.
“And you’ll be with Sunset?”
“As long as I can.” She put a hand on her bag to feel the shape of Sunset’s journal through it. “Don’t worry, I remember. The journal will stop working a few seconds before the actual end. Yours will too, right?”
“Yeah. Equestria will have to miss the last few seconds of the Rainbooms’ final performance!” Twilight laughed. “But even if we can’t transmit, the instruments on their side can keep taking measurements of what flows through. Can you imagine? They’ll get to see the last moments of a universe undergoing false vacuum collapse! I’m so jealous!”
Wallflower smiled at her friend’s excitement, glad she got to see that side of her one last time.
“But yeah, all the non-live stuff we have left to send are already queued up. It was really hard for all of us, deciding which books and songs and paintings wouldn’t make the last cut.” She sighed and looked back up, a familiar weight haunting her voice. “But the other Twilight is archiving it all. It’s nice, to think about a bit of our civilization surviving in theirs.”
“That is nice,” Wallflower agreed, looking up also, as if the other world were somewhere out there in the now-silent cosmos. They sat in silence for a while, before Wallflower turned again to her friend, who was still looking away. She spoke to get her attention.
“Twilight.” Twilight turned to her, as Wallflower took both of her hands in hers. Twilight’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Thank you for everything over the years. You gave me her voice. Her eyes. I could never thank you enough for that.“
Twilight blushed, and looked down at the ground.
“I just wish we could have done more. Better haptic feedback. Direct visual cortex stimulation. So many things that are theoretically possible, just out of reach of our engineering…” Twilight sighed. “I just hope what we could do was enough.”
“It was!” Wallflower lied. “I mean, it wasn’t, but really, nothing ever would have been. I would have always wanted more of her. But I think in a way, knowing that somehow made this enough. Really, it was enough even before you gave me her voice and her eyes. Maybe even less. Even if all I had was that dot, just knowing that she was there with me, I think that would have been enough somehow.
She patted the bag with the journal again.
“And even if I didn’t have that, if all I had were my memories of her, well, at the end of it all, I’m grateful for every bit of her I could have.”
She wrapped Twilight up in a hug.
“Thank you for everything. For being my friend. I love you, Twilight.”
“I love you, too, Wallflower.”
They broke the hug and smiled at each other for a bit before getting up from the ground. Twilight spoke.
“You’re heading to Applejack’s?”
“Yeah. It’s getting late. Would hate to sleep in on our last day on Earth.”
“Wait, before you go…”
Twilight looked unsure.
“There’s something that I’m not supposed to tell you.”