Somehow, the two of them had ended up on Sunset’s bed.
Sunset wasn’t quite sure exactly how that had come to be.
Well, that wasn’t precisely true. She remembered the mechanics of what had happened in the aftermath of that last big admission, how they had physically transitioned from being in the one place to the other. But the why was escaping her. It might never have really been there in the first place, beyond some compulsion to flee the scene where she’d laid out so much of her soul on the ground before Twilight that it’d be near-impossible not to step on it.
She remembered Twilight had nuzzled her. Then nuzzled her again, and eventually, Sunset had started to nuzzle back. It wasn’t clear to her how long this had lasted – the last time she’d consciously checked the time was just after dinner – but Sunset had needed to turn on more of the lights, with the sun having dipped thoroughly below the horizon. Providing further evidence of how automatic her reactions had gotten in the aftermath of clearing her head of guilty thoughts – or at least the first wave of such things – she’d gotten up and walked over to the freezer to grab ice cream for her and Twilight, only to remember they’d already had dessert that evening. So maybe going upstairs had been a pivot to make standing up not seem like an entirely pointless move.
But now they were sitting side by side on Sunset’s bed, backs rested against the pillows as they both faced forward, Sunset trying not to look at anything in particular as she did so.
Twilight hadn’t questioned the new choice of location. It wasn’t clear why. Maybe she’d gotten too used to Sunset’s erraticness that night. Maybe she was afraid to push back and potentially upset her further. Or maybe she just thought it’d be good to have a place to rest her legs.
Whatever her reason, Twilight was now on Sunset’s bed, for the first time ever. Under probably the dumbest circumstances possible.
A sudden shudder jolted through Sunset as she felt a sudden, unexpected touch. She glanced downward, and found her left hand, resting down on the covers, was now covered by Twilight’s right.
She only had just long enough to process that sensory information before hearing Twilight’s voice. “Was… was there more you wanted to talk about?”
So Twilight hadn’t thought anything untoward about going up to Sunset’s bed at all, clearly, if that had been her first question. Which, when Sunset considered it, made sense – Sunset couldn’t imagine she was giving off any vibes at the moment other than despair.
A more sarcastic voice than Sunset had intended left her lips as she turned her gaze forward once more. “Want’s a strong word.”
There was a pause. “Need, then.”
Underneath Twilight’s, Sunset’s hand clenched into a fist, nails digging into herself. Twilight withdrew as Sunset relaxed and uncurled her digits.
Then she curled them back, this time more gently, simply resting her nails on her palm. She did the same with her other hand, and held them up in front of her face. Then she brought the fists together, fast enough to feel the force they brought against each other, the collision. She did it again, before she heard a sound beside her and looked over.
Twilight was imitating her, staring curiously at her knuckles as they hit each other. She noticed Sunset’s eyes finally drawn towards herself, and lowered her hands. Without looking back, Sunset knocked her fists together one more time before letting them drop onto the bed.
“What’s it feel like?” Sunset asked.
Twilight shrugged. “You’d know better than I.”
“It’s…” Sunset stopped, recollecting. “It’s something I did a lot, earlier. When I wasn’t so adjusted to my, well, myself, here. When I would look in the mirror and see something that made me think of illustrations of centaurs in old storybooks, not me. And hands…” Sunset leaned over more fully onto her side, her left arm laid between herself and Twilight, fingers briefly waggling. “I mean, it’s impossible to make them feel the same as hooves. But balling them up and doing that was as close as I could really approximate. And it was, well, a little bit of a comfort.”
“Uh huh.” Twilight looked down at Sunset’s hand, before drawing her eyes up towards Sunset. “I wanted to ask, um, if you– if you could be a pony again, but in this world, would you?”
Sunset blinked. “Oh, umm…”
It was a good question, one that she’d thought surprisingly little about over the years. Of course she’d spent so much of the before-times cursing her new form and longing for the obvious perfection of her original, clearly superior body. But it didn’t exactly take the form of imagining herself strolling about the sidewalks of Canterlot City as a pony. In her mind, a return to unicornhood would naturally have meant a triumphant return to Equestria, and when she found herself longing for one of her old abilities in daily life as a human, like telekinetically picking up her daily coffee mug, it was moreso a craving for that specific talent, and less a desire for the body it was attached to.
Would she want to be a pony in this world? She took yet another prolonged pause in an evening that was already overstuffed with them to formulate her answer.
“I guess that, well, maybe I’d kinda like to be able to… switch, I think. Like I’d love to just have my body back, and show you everything I can do with it. But I’ve put a lot into learning to appreciate the one I have here, too, even before adding all our new magic to it. So I’m cheating and saying yes and no.”
Twilight nodded. “Fair enough.”
“Why do you ask?”
“Hmmm… collecting some data.”
“Heh,” Sunset said, smirking. “Nice and noncommittal. I can appreciate that.”
At that comment, Twilight shifted downwards, her body sliding further along the length of the bed until her head was at the level of the pillows. She rolled her body onto its side, elbow pressing into a pillowcase as she rested her head against her hand. The movement dislodged her glasses, and she took a moment to readjust them with her other hand before meeting Sunset eye-to-eye once more.
Surprised, Sunset frowned. “I, um, didn’t mean to offend.”
Twilight simply smiled, then extended her free arm and placed a hand on Sunset’s cheek. “It’s okay, Sunset. I just want things to be comfortable enough for you to keep talking.”
Sunset was just starting to relax at the feeling of Twilight’s warm palm against her skin when the words killed off the budding comfort. “To keep what?”
“I asked you if there was more you needed to say, remember?”
Technically, Sunset did remember, but only in the vaguest of senses. It felt like hours ago. She shuddered. “Do I have to?”
Twilight gently withdrew her hand. “I don’t mean to pressure you, and if you really can’t tell me… that’s okay. But it’s easier to get it all out at once. Trust me. When I, um…” Twilight’s hand drew back. “About a month back, when I first told Shining Armor about Midnight and what happened at the Games, it was painful. I didn’t want to do it, because it meant facing stuff that I was afraid to deal with, and maybe even disappointing him by saying how bad I’d felt about Crystal Prep for so long, when he’d always been so enthusiastic about it. I even tried to leave before I had to say anything. But once I finally started talking, I just let it all out. Everything I could think of to say, I said it. And after it was over, there was just… relief. Knowing that I didn’t need to try and hide, to look strong for no reason, when all he wanted to do was understand. And he did.
“I tried to replicate that when I asked you out, kinda,” she added, with a weak grin emerging. “But that had a whole other kind of nervousness that complicated things. Though there was still a lot of relief afterwards.”
Sunset laughed, just a little, and that brightened Twilight’s smile. Upon noticing it, Sunset longed for the strength to make a smile of her own whose existence could be measured in a timeframe beyond milliseconds.
“But you also did something really special for me, after I asked you and it got kinda awkward,” Twilight continued. “You told me that, no matter what, you’d still be my friend at the end of the night, and that you wouldn’t punish me for opening up to you. I don’t know if anyone outside my family has ever said anything like that to me before – and I’m not saying our other friends wouldn’t do that for us, but, well, that’s not the point. The point is that it was you who said it, and it really stuck in my head, and given how you’ve been just so uncomfortable telling me all this… I really want you to know that, whatever you need to tell me, you can tell me. I’ll listen, I won’t judge; I’ll be honest with what I think, but I’ll support you as much as I can. And when you’re done, we’ll still be together. I promise.”
“Twi–”
“I owe you that much.”
Sunset sat up, scooching backwards towards the pillows, facing forwards once more. Twilight, seemingly by instinct, mimicked her movement.
“Twilight, I… I mean thank you, but…” Sunset’s gaze drifted downward as she fumbled for words, her mind wrestling over whether to make further expressions of gratitude, to apologize for now having forced her into the position of being comforter rather than comfortee, or to earnestly try to follow Twilight’s command and say what needed to be said.
Because Twilight was right – that something was there. The only issue was trying to figure out how to positively identify what it was and express it.
Before she’d come to any decision, Twilight’s voice cut in. “I can give you somewhere to start, if you want.”
Sunset diverted her thoughts to ponder the suggestion. Given the state of her mental deliberations, a starting point was a pretty tantalizing offer. After a moment, she replied. “Okay.”
Twilight lurched forward off of the pillows and fell onto her knees. She scooted forward on the bed until she was positioned right across from Sunset. In instinctive shame, Sunset’s eyes darted away, towards where her partner had been sitting before – but shortly after, they returned to meet Twilight’s, which had been waiting patiently and expectantly.
“Lay it on me.”
“Alright.” Twilight took in and released another deep breath. “So… I guess I was trying to think about how some of our friends might try to help you, if they were here. Because, well, I know a lot of them could probably make a lot more sense of this than I am. Not that I’m confused, but, well, I’m just thinking how I’m probably not a match for Fluttershy’s Kindness, or Rarity’s Generosity. They’d probably know the perfect thing to say to you right now, Th-they’ve been there for you before.
“...Wait,” she added after a lull, before the gap in her words went on too long and Sunset tried to interject. Not that Sunset had much of an idea how to respond in that moment. Thankfully, Twilight got back on track after not too long.
“But if I–if my geode is Magic, and Magic, like you said, is formed from all the other elements in Equestria, then I need to understand those qualities, personally. And tonight, well, I think I need to try and take some inspiration from Applejack. Honesty.”
Oh, Sunset thought. This might be rough.
She knew Twilight had felt a lot of guilt over the lies and half-truths she’d put her friends through in the early days. Whether under the heel of Principal Cinch or consumed by fear of Midnight Sparkle, Twilight had very often chosen to hide herself, shrink down, and avoid even the barest possibility of rejection. Even at Camp Everfree, she’d desperately asked Sunset to keep secrets for her. Yet slowly but surely, Twilight had been kicking the habit, the relationship the latest in a series of clear and obvious confidence boosters that had made openness with her friends far more natural than it had once been. Tonight had already done a lot to show how far she’d come.
So for Twilight to only be thinking of herself as embracing honesty now, after a whole night of helping Sunset to come clean about her past… that meant an especially brutal truth was inbound.
“But the point is…” Twilight trailed off, then resumed at a rapid pace, seemingly to ensure she forced all the words out. “The point is that I really think you have to get in touch with them. As soon as you can. Your Cadance, your Celestia, you need to tell them that you’re here, you’re okay. I-I know that probably seems like really obvious advice, but I still think it needs to be out there and…” She swallowed. “I just don’t see how this doesn’t keep eating at you if you don’t reach out.”
Sunset heard the words echo through her head as a chill ran down her spine.
Twilight was right. It was obvious. It was something Sunset had imagined many times.
And she was right that it needed to be said, too. So that Sunset could make Twilight understand why that was absolutely, positively, one-hundred percent impossible.
She just had to figure out how to convey that. Though her expression was apparently doing a marvelous job of it already, because she noticed Twilight cringe at the sight of it.
Sunset’s voice quavered. “Twi–”
“And I can help!” Twilight blurted; Sunset wasn’t sure if her own attempt at speaking had been noticed or not. “I know– I mean, I don’t know your Cadance, but I know a Cadance; I mean, before she was my future sister-in-law she was my Dean, and before that she was my babysitter back when I was in elementary school. I can… I can help check your words, or figure out what to say, or… anything, Sunset. Please. I want to help. I don’t like seeing you like this.”
Twilight reached out and placed a hand on Sunset’s knee, and it hit Sunset like a punch in the gut.
I don’t like seeing you like this… Sunset knew right then there was nothing she could say that wouldn’t disappoint Twilight. Not without lying, starting another cycle of pretending like she would do it and never following through. Because she couldn’t follow through. But she couldn’t string Twilight along like that. Better the short-term emotional pain now than deceit and deeper hurt.
“Twilight,” she said, almost a whisper. “I can’t do that.”
She was met with an expression that suggested she’d accidentally spoken the words in a made-up language Twilight couldn’t possibly hope to decipher.
Then there was a look of dawning comprehension, horror, and, as Twilight’s hand withdrew, Sunset spotted what looked like a tinge of anger.
Twilight didn’t get angry at people. Not that Sunset had seen. Annoyed, certainly. Frustrated, baffled, disappointed. She’d certainly displayed all of those traits that night, and Sunset couldn’t deny that she’d given her plenty of reasons for each. And Twilight definitely had the capacity for anger at things – buggy computer programs, bad internet connections, and stubborn experiments could drive her into a miniature fury under the precise wrong circumstances.
But Twilight didn’t get angry at people. Not truly. Right?
Or did she?
Was this anger? Or was Sunset seeing things?
Regardless, Twilight’s reaction made clear she was far from pleased with Sunset’s phrasing. “What do you mean, you can’t?”
Sunset’s breath hitched. Twilight’s words hadn’t been as curt as Sunset had initially braced for, but they’d stung all the same. “Please, just let me explain–”
Now it was her turn to speak rapidly, fearing she wouldn’t have the chance to finish otherwise.
“It’s not that I don’t want to, I do, but I already know what will happen if I try. I literally know, no ambiguity. I’ve seen it. I saw it before I met you, back when I was saved from myself at the Fall Formal. I saw it all. It was a vision, Twi. And not just of everything that had gone wrong with my life – of what I’d done to wreck my life – but the consequences. There’s a lot I can try to fix, but Equestria? I burned my bridges, completely. If I go back– it won’t be a punishment. It won’t be rejection. It’ll be apathy.”
The last word came out as something of a gasp, visibly startling Twilight. Sunset’s heart rate was accelerating, and her breaths were becoming irregular. Her partner’s frown softened with worry as Sunset reached her hand to the side, grabbing the pillow Twilight had been laying on before and holding it just in front of her face.
“They won’t be angry at me, because they won’t care… they’ve moved on, Twi. It’s been a decade. I saw it in their faces, the Elements showed me… it was worse than hatred. It was nothing. They were my whole life for so long, and they felt nothing for me… nothing at all… because their lives were bigger, are bigger, than mine ever will be. They don’t have time to, to…”
In front of her, the pillow was vibrating as Sunset’s arms shook nonstop.
“To worry about the stupid little filly who didn’t appreciate what she had… or to care if she comes back.”
Sunset pressed the pillow to her face, and a muffled scream tore through it.
She left it there, blocking out all view, all sight. A brief flash of what Twilight’s expression must have looked like – and then a different version, and then another one – popped into her head, and she pushed it out. And then regretted it, as it was replaced by the very images she’d just described moments ago.
The faces of ponies whose expressions bore nothing.
Convulsing, Sunset slowly began to topple over onto her left side, pillow still held to herself as she slumped onto the covers. Her breaths became more and more agonized as the oxygen level depleted, and, defeated by her biological necessities, she finally relaxed her grip and let the pillow fall away, inhaling and exhaling sharply.
She rubbed some water away from her eyes and found Twilight, still seated where she’d been, apparently unsure exactly what to do. Sunset could hardly blame her. She could only imagine what was going through Twilight’s head, realizing this was who she’d been so excited to get into a relationship with. If she’d had the time travel spell she’d probably go back and warn herself not to–
Her train of thought derailed when she noticed Twilight leaning to her side, sliding her legs out from underneath her, and scooting over in front of Sunset, moving the pillow out of the way and paralleling her position.
“Sunset, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t– I shouldn’t have been so short with you just now, I told you I wouldn’t judge you, it just, um, reminded me…”
Twilight wrapped an arm around Sunset’s torso, pulling it closer to her. She slowly began to lift herself back up, and Sunset moved with her, just enough for Twilight’s other arm to snake in underneath and complete the hug. They got themselves upright, resting on their knees, and Sunset leaned fully into Twilight, engulfing her in her own arms and clinging tightly. She felt Twilight’s hand begin to gently rub up and down her back. The position wouldn’t really work for more nuzzling, sadly, but it was more than adequate.
“It’s been a while since you’ve been this sensitive with anyone, hasn’t it?” Twilight asked. “About yourself, at least.”
“Mmhm,” Sunset mumbled. “I mean… the others tried, sometimes, when I was first figuring things out after the Formal. But I was still guarding myself. Rarity and Fluttershy both came close, though. To cracking me.”
“Sorry to be the one to finally succeed,” Twilight replied.
Sunset exhaled, head rested on Twilight’s shoulder. “I suppose someone had to. But now you know.”
“I… I know why you’re afraid,” Twilight said. “But there’s more I want to ask.”
Sunset didn’t respond. She just sank deeper into the embrace, letting herself be lost in the feeling of Twilight all around her, of the only good thing that existed in this moment of pain and dark memory, of the assurance that Twilight hadn’t lied when she said they’d still be together at the end of all this.
It seemed Twilight took the silence as affirmation, pausing the backrub. “I know it must have been really vivid, and real, but what makes you so, um, certain, I guess, that that vision is really going to be what happens?”
Her body tensed, but Sunset fought the instinct to jerk back. It was a question worth asking. “Because it came from the Elements. And like you said… one of the Elements is Honesty. They couldn’t have shown me a lie. They showed me the truth of what I was, and what I’d brought on myself.
“I saw the world I’d created for myself, this huge assembly of memories past and present, through my eyes and the eyes of ponies and people I knew. I watched every relationship I’d ever built disintegrate, all through my own choices, my own stupid blind jealousy and ambition and refusal to accept that I didn’t have to be better than them to be worthwhile… until it all imploded around me, and the last thing I saw was that last truth. That for all I’d wanted to be the one nopony could ever forget, the most important pony in the world… the two ponies I cared about more than anything in the world wouldn’t even remember I existed. And then there was nothing, nothing left but the monster I’d become, screaming into the void.”
She squeezed Twilight as tightly as she could, and felt her squirm and struggle within her grasp. She relaxed the grip just enough to allow her oxygen acquisition, before burying her face in Twilight’s shoulder, wiping away more liquid from her under her eyes.
To Sunset’s surprise, Twilight only needed the time it took for her lungs to recover before she responded. “I believe you, Sunset. I don’t doubt anything you’re saying. I just want to know, well, do you think that is the truth, still? Or was it just the truth back then?”
“I–” Sunset had a response, or she thought she did, but then Twilight started rubbing her back again, and all her thoughts were muddled.
“I mean, maybe it’s true that the you who had that vision couldn’t have fixed things, or been worthy of the attention you wanted. But that’s not you anymore, is it?” Twilight asked rhetorically. “Just think of everything you’ve built since then! Of everything you’ve done for people – of what you did for me. Sunset, you became a literal angel, or at least the closest thing I’ll ever see to one. I can’t say if that measures up to two alicorns, but it can’t be worthy of nothing, even from them. I know it can’t. No one can look at you and think you’re worthless.”
There was a brief, pregnant silence in the room. Then, Sunset gradually slid her arms down, until they dropped from Twilight’s body entirely. She leaned back as Twilight’s arms withdrew from her, shifting their legs into criss-cross positions to relieve their heavily abused knees, and, with only a pair of glasses in the way, their eyes stared directly into each other’s.
“So,” Sunset asked weakly, “what are you saying?”
Twilight put a finger up to her chin. “Well, I can’t say quantum physics has ever really been my preferred field to study, considering part of why I became so interested in science growing up was just, well, wanting to know things. It was always kinda hard for me to understand things that aren’t really certain, necessarily, and I liked finding explanations. So it was a little frustrating, on a personal level, to learn there’s a whole branch of science that teaches that different things can be true, or some things can’t be understood all the way with direct observation.” She removed the finger. “But to get back on topic, well, I think what the Elements showed you both is and isn’t true.”
Sunset blinked. “How.”
Despite the intensely flat affect and lack of any elaboration of meaning, Twilight successfully registered the question. “Basically, um…” She trailed off. “I’m sorry. I’m not Applejack. Or Rarity. They could probably make this make sense, but I just, uh, I’m not figuring out the right words. I guess what I mean is that what you saw was the truth you needed to see, right then. What you needed to break the monster, to become who you are. The you that existed then couldn’t have fixed things, or reconnected. But you can. Because you’re not her.”
By the end of Twilight’s speech, there was a warm, encouraging smile on her face, on that Sunset, as she contemplated what had been spoken, felt almost capable of believing.
But it still just wasn’t right, no matter how hard Twilight tried.
“That–” Sunset stammered out “–that makes sense, when you say it like that. I won’t lie. And don’t worry about how it sounded, I got your meaning. All of it. It’s me who can’t convey things right – I can’t make you understand how it felt. How it was. I’m making it sound like the Elements just taught me a lesson and scared me straight, but it was so much more… the best way I’ve figured out how to describe it is that becoming the demon tore my soul apart, and then the Elements stitched it back together without anesthetic. I felt it on a level I can’t convey, not even to you. Just like there are things about Midnight that I’ll never truly understand.”
Twilight’s face was alternating between a worried frown and a frustrated variant of the same. “Sunset–”
“But once it was all over, I knew it, in my heart, when Princess Twilight said that if I didn’t take the chance she offered, that I would be forever alone. I could’ve made a run for the portal while it was still open, and disappeared somewhere far away in Equestria, or even beyond the borders, where no one would recognize me. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t start my life over in the world where I’d be reminded, every time the sun rose, of what I’d lost. So I stayed in the place where I could at least try and move on, and eventually forget I was ever a pony.”
Instinctively, Sunset curled her fists and knocked them together.
“You’re right, though," she added with a sigh. "I’m not the monster I was. I know that. But I’m still the runaway. I’m still the one who looked at every special privilege I had in my life and decided it still wasn’t good enough. When I left, I told my family that they were worthless to me – not literally, but I might as well have. I can’t try to reach out now and expect anything different from them.”
The expressions on Twilight’s face coalesced into a somber concern as Sunset’s gaze broke away, trying and failing to find a new place to focus on before settling on a blank stare directed at the wall. It didn’t last, though, as Twilight once again swiftly grabbed her attention, this time by getting onto her hands and knees and crawling back over to Sunset’s left, sitting beside her. Almost instinctively, Sunset began to lean towards her, and Twilight did nothing to stop it. She didn’t lean back, though.
“I don’t want to be mean,” Twilight said. “But that’s just an excuse. Trust me, I would know.”
Sunset’s voice was exhausted and broken. “What?”
“Not directly, I mean,” she continued hastily, perhaps sensing Sunset’s jaw going slack beside her. “I mean, well, that’s probably the wrong phrasing, but, uh… look, you’re right that I can’t really understand what happened with you and the Elements. What happened to me at the Games wasn’t the same. But I do know what it’s like to just, umm… to just be certain, to know that there’s no way to make things better, to give in to that hopelessness – and then realize that wasn’t actually true.”
Twilight backed away, shifting her body to face Sunset’s, and Sunset looked over as she got herself back upright. “What do you mean?” Sunset asked, even as an idea of the answer formed in her head.
“Sunset, when I told you about when I talked to my brother about Midnight, and Crystal Prep, this is what I was talking about. Everything you’re saying to me just sounds so, so much like how I gave up at Crystal Prep. Just letting myself be bullied, intimidated, lonely, and miserable, because I was absolutely convinced there wasn’t a way out. Anything I did to try to leave would have inevitably shamed my family, hurt the reputation of a good school, made Cadance look bad, gotten me all kinds of horrible attention I didn’t want – that’s what I told myself, and I believed it, with all my heart. I earnestly thought my parents, and my brother, would think less of me because I didn’t want to stay somewhere where I was feeling terrible. And it’s only now that I can see what a dumb and awful reason that was not to act.
“But even when I found what seemed like a real way out, that wouldn’t be shameful – getting into Everton’s independent study program – I still couldn’t. Cinch wouldn’t let her best student leave. She dragged me to the Games to humiliate me – she said she would sign my application if I did, but I’m not sure she ever really would have. And the longer it went on, the more I felt myself giving up again.” Her eyes drew downwards. “I knew, with all my heart, that this was just how things had to be for me. I… I took Midnight into my life because it was easier than telling my family that I hated what my life had become.”
Now there were glints of liquid below Twilight’s glasses.
“And then, after everything, I had to tell them all of that anyway,” she finished. “And… none of what I was afraid of happened. Things were okay. If anything, they were only disappointed that I’d hid things until it reached that point.”
Sunset didn’t have a response for that. She could only watch as her mind warred over the need to process what had just been said and to be in the movement and give comfort, as Twilight began to sniffle.
The compromise, apparently, was to limply rest a hand on Twilight’s leg, which was at least enough for her to look up. “D-do you, um, have any tissues?” she asked.
At that, Sunset lit up, grateful for the opportunity to do something other than sit uselessly on the bed. She could probably use a tissue herself. “Yeah, I do!” she said, definitely too enthusiastically given the circumstances; she cooled herself down for the follow-up statement. “Let me, um, just go get the box.”
She scooched past Twilight and swung her legs over the bed, standing up for the first time in what had felt like far too long. There was a bit of stiffness as she made her way around to the dresser on the other side. As she reached up to grab the box, she was caught off-guard when Twilight spoke again.
“That was why I got angry earlier, by the way. When you said you can’t reach out. It just hurt so much to hear, because that might as well have been my mantra, the number of times I told it to myself.”
There was enough roiling in Sunset’s headspace at the moment that she didn’t feel up to making a concrete response to that. She simply pulled out a tissue, blew her nose, then tossed it into the bin on the other side of the dresser. Then she grabbed the box and brought it over, pulling out one and holding it out for Twilight.
It was quickly snatched out of her hand by her grateful partner. “Thanks,” Twilight said as she lifted her glasses and rubbed the tissue under her eyelids, then moved it to her nose and made a trumpeting noise.
All the while, Sunset remained standing, only leaning over to set the box down on the bed.
When she’d finished, Twilight got up, walked silently past her, and threw the tissue away. She then sat back down at the foot of the bed, looking off toward the railing while Sunset stayed in place.
Twilight’s voice was tired when she spoke once more. “I don’t know if any of that made any difference. Or made sense. I mean, I know it’s not the first time I’ve talked about how Crystal Prep was, but… I don’t know.” She swiveled her head around to meet Sunset’s eyes. “I hope it helped.”
In spite of herself, Sunset nodded.
At that moment, her mind was a laundry machine filled with swirling, waterlogged thoughts. Images, voices, and words popped into visibility through the door, then disappeared back into the chaos. The old gnawing doubts briefly gained the upper hand on the newfound insights and came to the forefront, but then were pulled back into the fray once more. She didn’t know who to root for, what to root for.
She couldn’t even keep track of what metaphor she was using for her mind. Somehow it had gone from a front-load washer to a cartoon brawl. Maybe she was getting tired.
All she knew was that what once had seemed so clear, so obvious, so concrete, was now murky.
Everything except Twilight.
Everything except the painful earnesty, the desperation for Sunset to see past the doom that felt so certain and feel hope again, the same hope that Twilight might not have ever gained if it weren’t for Sunset to begin with…
And as the ramifications of her own nod began to hit, she decided, with heavy reluctance, to trust her mouth to figure out the right words where her conscious mind couldn’t. She gingerly walked over to the end of the bed with Twilight, sitting down a short space away from her, and looked at her. Not in the way she had so many other times that night, with a heavy feeling of regret and an active desire to not make painful eye contact, but truly, genuinely looked.
At her dark hair and its brilliant violet streaks, bound up and hanging down the length of her spine in the hairstyle whose name Sunset always found so amusing, yet so appropriate.
At her purple eyes reflected in the back of her glasses, wide and sad.
At her position, conveying meaning in a language Sunset had taken very long to get adjusted to. Her feet pulled up, heels pressed against the side of the bed as her knees jutted out, arms resting on top of her legs. Not quite fetal position, but resembling it enough for Sunset to know just how troubled she was.
A month ago, Twilight could never have made it through a conversation like this. She would have left in tears, convinced she’d ruined everything, despondent that she’d made one of her friends upset and believing it was proof she was unworthy. In the immediate aftermath of the Friendship Games, there’d been more than a few instances of Sunset, or one of the others, having to stop her from a nervous flight away from an upsetting comment, and even by Camp Everfree, any remark that made her feel like a problem, regardless of intentionality, was a quick way to get her to leave the area.
So the fact that Twilight had held on this long spoke volumes. Not merely about how much she’d improved over time, the further away she got from Crystal Prep and Midnight, but about how much Sunset must have meant to her.
The thought of anyone being this dedicated to her made Sunset feel almost nauseous. It wasn’t right for someone to care about her like this.
Was it?
Not that she couldn’t imagine some of her other friends being willing to try talking her through this – as had been noted, Rarity or Applejack probably could have. Fluttershy, too, though she probably would have done more listening than talking herself. But that was their temperament. They had the innate resources to handle a heart-to-heart, to talk things out. But Twilight?
Everything she knew about Twilight Sparkle told her that she was in agony right now. Seeing Sunset Shimmer caving to her fears – that was why I got angry earlier, by the way. When you said you can’t reach out – and then knowing she had to try to be the one to talk her through them, only to get absolutely nowhere, as far as she could perceive. And yet she still fought on…
Sometimes, Sunset forgot that the word girlfriend might mean something different to Twilight than “best friend with kissing permissions.” And that maybe it should mean something different to her, too.
In the end, Sunset found she could only keep saying no to her girlfriend for so long.
“You made sense, Twi. I-I understand. I’m just– ugh. I’m supposed to be Empathy, and I’ve been stuck in my head all night while you’ve been trying to figure out how to reach me. I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t worry about that. You’re allowed to be upset. It’s not like I’ve never been upset in front of you. And you were listening, I could tell, and that’s what mattered.”
“Maybe,” Sunset said, shrugging slightly. “But still, I just… it’s like I’m fighting myself, because I know what you’re trying to say, and it makes sense. But it doesn’t change how much it feels like I’d be walking toward that vision. To going from feeling certain it’s real to knowing it’s real. And I don’t know if I can take that.”
Twilight scooted closer to her. “I know that feeling, too. Remember Everfree? Being so confident that I was causing all the problems through Midnight, and then trying to run away so I wouldn’t have to face it, even though that wasn’t even what was going on? I couldn’t have overcome that fear without you stepping in and stopping me. I couldn’t have overcome Midnight without you and our friends.” She stopped and took a concentrated breath. “You’ve done so much for me. I can’t thank you for saving me from my demons by letting yours eat you like this. Not when they’ve got you wondering if you even belong here.”
I couldn’t just keep pretending that… that everything made sense, that I’m where I should be, that I belong here.
Sunset froze up at the memory of her earlier words, and how they must have registered to her girlfriend who happened to be from this world. “I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean–”
“I know. And I believed you, when you said you don’t want to leave, that this world is your home. I just think, maybe… maybe it’ll feel more comfortable, for you, once you’ve finished moving out of your old one.”
That sent a sharp pulse through Sunset’s mind, one that failed to reach its destination after Twilight laid a hand on Sunset’s knee. Their faces turned to meet each other once more.
“I’m not saying you have to go straight to Equestria and meet your Cadance and Celestia,” Twilight elaborated. “I’m not saying you even have to send them a letter. Right now, you just need to contact the other me about this, and tell her what you told me. At least the stuff that matters most.”
On each side of herself, Sunset’s fists clenched once more as shifted her gaze towards the floor. “I… but she… she knows them. I know she knows Celestia, she was a student of hers like me, and she probably knows Cadance too, for all I know she could just relay this directly to them…”
“But she’s your friend. If you asked her not to reach out immediately, she’d respect that, right?”
“Um–” She let her hands relax, before glancing back towards her partner. “Look, far be it from me to doubt the expert on being Twilight Sparkle in this room, but it, well, feels a little risky.”
“You don’t trust her?”
That Sunset had to stop and consider whether she trusted Princess Twilight Sparkle, the one to whom she still owed more than she could ever repay for her second chance at a life worth living, to do the right thing on her behalf, really illustrated to Sunset just how much her fears had clouded her logic.
Not to mention that arbitrarily distrusting one Twilight Sparkle probably wouldn’t do wonders for her relationship with the other.
“I do,” Sunset said, just soon enough for the pause to not reach deeply uncomfortable levels. “I’m being silly. I just, well, still need to figure out exactly how I’m gonna do this.” A thought occurred. “When you said right now–”
“I mean tomorrow,” Twilight clarified. “Tomorrow evening. Sorry, I didn’t mean– we should cool down, I think. Tonight’s been a lot.”
“Yeah, it has.”
With that, Sunset turned and wrapped her girlfriend in a tight hug, one that said girlfriend seemingly had not been expecting given the way she jolted and had to reposition how her body was situated on the bed. Once they weren’t on the verge of tumbling to the ground, however, the hug was reciprocated.
“Thank you… Twi, thank you…”
“I’m just glad I could be the one to help, this time.”
“And you did so well, really…”
Without breaking the embrace, Twilight pulled back just enough that Sunset could see the smile on her face. “I had some good teachers. One especially.”
Sunset half-laughed, half-cried as she tugged Twilight back to her, bodies sinking into each other. She felt Twilight rubbing her back with her hands, nuzzling her head against Sunset’s own, and now the tears were really starting to streak from Sunset’s face as sheer wonderful relief washed over her.
“Just don’t…” she began to blubber. “Just… don’t…”
“Don’t what?” she heard Twilight whisper back to her.
“Don’t tell Rainbow how much I cried tonight.”
At that, she felt Twilight’s form start to shake against hers, starting slow, then becoming more noticeable. There was a faint snickering next to her that began to build as well, until it reached the level of a cackle. One of the hands left Sunset’s back so it could stifle the laughter, but it fell short of that goal as Twilight burst into a guffaw beside her, and the joyful sound reignited Sunset’s own laugh until she found herself hiccuping on Twilight’s shoulder.
“I mean it–hic–”
“Don’t–heehee–worry, I won’t tell Dash she’s–ahaha–so much more of a tough girl than you–pfft.” Twilight again tried to stifle the giggles with her hand; when that failed, she buried her face into Sunset’s shoulder.
Sunset, releasing Twilight from her grip, gently patted the top of her head. “There, there, it’ll hic be alright,” she said with a wry grin.
“Shut up,” Twilight replied, muffled. She drew back and looked up, beaming in spite of her unconvincing feigned frown.
“Never, you’re hic too cute not to make fun of,” Sunset replied, sticking out her tongue. She took some focused, deliberate breaths to stop the hiccups. “Ah… what time is it? I should probably get you home soon, right?”
A response was delivered via a blink, then a stare, and then a single word. “Home?”
“You know, the place where you live and stuff? Didn’t it just come up a minute ago?”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Thanks, Miss Dictionary-Pants. I’m staying here tonight.”
After that, it was Sunset’s turn to stare. “Why?”
The hug had effectively been broken since Sunset had first brought home up, but Twilight formalized it by dropping her arms from Sunset’s backside, instead grasping one of Sunset’s hands as she pulled back. “Because I can’t just leave you here all by yourself after all that. I don’t want you to be up all night with those nervous thoughts. Trust me, I know.”
“Oh,” Sunset said, barely louder than a mutter. “But–”
“Besides, I did say that when we finished, we’d still be together. So we’re staying together. I’ll text Mom in a minute. We’ve got the car wash in the morning, so I told her I might end up spending the night.”
Sunset’s jaw went slack. “And she’s okay with that?”
“Well, I did frame it a bit more like a normal sleepover, but…”
“But you didn’t bring a sleeping bag… should I sleep on the–”
Twilight, looking oddly at her, pointed toward the other side of the bed with her free hand. “Isn’t this big enough for two?”
At that, Sunset felt the blood drain from her face. “Ummmmmm…”
Yet again, she experienced the sensation of a litany of potential reactions all crashing into each other in a futile effort to be the one selected for a verbal response.
Her girlfriend frowned, and this time it was plenty convincing. “Look, I’m not asking for anything sexual, alright? Considering we haven’t really done a progress update on the whole ‘attraction’ thing, I don’t think we’re at that point in the experiment and even if we were, neither of us are up for much beyond sleep tonight. Maybe… maybe I’m being blunt and weird about it. But it just doesn’t seem like there’s much of a point in being here for you if you’re down there on the couch and I’m nowhere near you.”
The jury was out on “weird”, but Twilight wasn’t wrong about being blunt; Sunset had nearly felt her eyes bug out of her head on hearing her say the word sexual about them out loud. She had at least enough sense, though, to register that Twilight probably wouldn’t appreciate further commentary on the topic at the moment.
In the end, Sunset couldn’t figure out a counterargument that wouldn’t be made up of incredibly awkward speaking-without-speaking and trying to bring back the elephant that Twilight had just ushered out of the room. “Sorry,” she said. “I was just surprised. Um, yeah, you can stay here, if you want.”
“Great,” Twilight replied with a smile, before leaning in again, hugging Sunset, and planting a soft kiss on her cheek. “I’ll be right back, I need to go to the bathroom.”
And mercifully, Twilight was gone before she could see all the blood that had previously left Sunset’s face come surging back all at once.
Somehow, the two of them had ended up in Sunset’s bed.
Sunset wasn’t quite sure exactly how that had come to be.
There had been a temptation, all too briefly, for Sunset to stealthily put her geode back on and try to figure out what in the world was going on in her partner’s head. Every time Sunset felt like she’d begun to figure out Twilight Sparkle on her own, something like this threw her for a loop.
This relationship experiment had somehow only managed to get more experimental since that night at camp, even as it also became more entrenched.
With Twilight only a miniscule amount taller than her, Sunset had been able to offer her some of her pajamas, and afterwards they’d brushed their teeth side by side. It was late, and, as Twilight had correctly observed, neither of them had energy left to do anything else that night. And just after Sunset finished setting an alarm for the following morning to ensure they woke up for the car wash, she’d found Twilight had already put away her glasses and was under the covers on the left side, body facing inward, eyes closed.
Sunset was amused by the hustle. A desire to slip out of consciousness before any nagging thoughts could catch up with her? An effort to further assure Sunset that she had no expectations of any activities beyond slumbering? A desire to make up for lost time on her sleep schedule?
Or maybe the night had just been that emotionally exhausting.
That probably made more sense.
In any case, she could tell Twilight wasn’t actually asleep already. And as Sunset switched off the overhead lighting, leaving them with the soft glow of the string of bulbs along the railing, and slipped under the bedsheets, she couldn’t help but smile at the sight of Twilight Sparkle, cozy on the opposite side of the bed. Her bed.
Whatever weird feelings this was giving Sunset, Twilight was there for her sake. For her comfort. For her well-being. Just like she’d been there all night.
There’d be more things to tell Twilight; the hardest admissions were over, it seemed, but there was only so much she could explain in one night. And she’d have to say a lot of the same things to the rest of her friends as well, even if Rainbow Dash had given her a roadmap earlier on that front. And then there was the Princess, and everything that entailed… everypony that would eventually entail…
But for all of those and more, Twilight would be there for her. Like she’d said.
Like Sunset would have been for her, without hesitation.
There was no doubt that the night had left her with a lot more uncertainty than she’d had before. Even with all the weights that had been lifted, there was still some deep-rooted doubt and worry. But the fact that it was doubt at all, and not certainty of doom… that was a change for the better, in and of itself.
Later, she’d reflect that Twilight’s presence in bed had indeed helped keep the intrusive thoughts of everything that had just happened at bay. Thankfully, she did not have said observation right then, given that would inevitably lead her straight to those intrusive thoughts.
She slid up to Twilight and gave her a gentle kiss on the forehead. “Good night, Twi.”
And before she could slide back onto her own pillow, Twilight had moved in response, pressing her own face to Sunset’s. In the dark, and with no glasses on, Twilight’s angle of attack led to her lips directly meeting Sunset’s own, for several seconds.
“G’night, Sunset, you’ll do great tomorrow…”
And as Twilight absentmindedly fell back onto her pillow and began to softly snore, the intrusive thoughts that created cost Sunset at least another 15 minutes before her tiredness finally overtook her.