“Sunny! Sunny, wake up!” Soft, cold hands alighted on Sunset’s face, probing and brushing at her cheeks, her brow, and her lips. “Flash! She’s bleeding.”
“Calm down! What happened? Sonata!” The rapid patter of crunching gravel stopped. “Go sit down, you’re freaking me out.”
You’re a dream… She tried to push away the hands, but nothing happened.
Not nothing. Twilight whimpered and those soft, cold fingers pressed against her lips more firmly. A flicker of light danced in front of her eyes and wound its way through her, familiar and alien at the same time.
“She’s breathing.” A man’s voice, or a teen’s. Two pairs of hands touched her face and neck. One, with callous roughened fingers, kept pressed to her neck. Two more, soft and cold and trembling, cradled her cheeks. “And her pulse is strong, but really fast. Keep her neck straight.”
“I know. I know.” Twilight’s voice gained strength and purpose. “I was a Wilderness Girls scout. For a while.” The strength in that voice waned as fingers stroked her cheek. “I read the survival manual cover-to-cover.”
“Twi! What happened?” More footsteps, a scrabble close by, and there was suddenly another warm presence at her side. “I was getting our stuff, and the next thing I know, you’re screaming.” Another hand rested on her face briefly, warm and rough. “Is she okay?”
More lights flickered, purple and blue twining together and breaking apart, igniting other splashes and sparks of pink and yellow, white and orange. She reached for them in a way that wasn’t physical, and felt them twine around her hoof, then her hand, then a hoof again. She focused, pushing aside the hum that rose as the colors built. The hoof solidified into a hand, and stayed a hand. She stared at it, wondering.
“What happened isn’t important right now. Flash, call an ambulance,” Twilight’s voice came crisply, the strength in it surging again. “I’ll keep watch over her. Rainbow?” The other hand lifted. “Go see if you can find some first aid supplies. This cut needs to be closed. Some water, too, and a pillow for her wrist.”
“Her wrist?”
My wrist? She couldn’t move it, or any part of herself, but the panic she should have felt seemed distant, someone else’s. She reached for it, but drew back as someone else’s pain struck her, too: a great swelling ache that pulsed just beyond the limits of her awareness. The pain swelled further as the phantom arm shifted. Why aren’t I scared? And why is it so dark?
“I think it might be sprained. It’s swollen. I just hope it’s not broken, she took a nasty tumble. Something to splint it, too. Find some wood, or silverware, or anything long and hard, and some tape if nothing else.”
“Yes, ma’am!” Feet scuttled up the steps, across the hardwood porch, and into the house before she lost track. Why can’t I see? Is this another dream?
The voices persisted and, shaky as they were, so did her thoughts. And the hands on her cheeks, constant and tender, sent a steady stream of light into her darkened world. Twilight’s hands, she thought. How could she think they were anything but real? They weren’t how she had always imagined Twilight’s hands would feel, not this chilly damp. They should be warm and soft.
But that warm light surrounding her…
“Don’t cry Sunny, it’ll be okay. We’re here for you.” Fingers brushed away a trail of heat from her cheeks, and smoothed a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “I think it’s a dream,” she murmured softly. “Are you dreaming now, Sunny? What did this to you?”
‘I don’t know.’ She tried to push the words out, but her body lay still as a log, and she trapped within it.
“Medical emergency,” Flash’s voice said distantly. “My friend collapsed. She’s breathing, but she’s not responding. Sprained wrist, maybe. She landed on it funny, just folded up and… and… No. I’m alright. The address here is 1540 217th Avenue, way outside of town to the west. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Ambulance is on its way! Yes. I can stay on the line.”
Something tickled Sunset’s memory, about an ambulance. She groped after it, but caught only a handful of impressions that it wouldn’t be good, and a faint memory of an illness when she’d first arrived.
“Oh, thank goodness.” Twilight’s breathing slowed, but the hand on her lips didn’t move. “Sorry, Sunny… I kinda punched you while trying to catch you. It was an accident.”
‘It’s okay.’ The words sat at the edge of her awareness, dangling off the tip of her tongue.
“Sonata! Sit down. Please. I’m trying really, really hard not to freak out right now. Actually, go do whatever Twilight tells you to do.”
“Sonata,” Twilight said, “go see if you can find out what’s keeping Rainbow Dash, please.”
“Yes ma’am!”
Flash’s voice continued in the background. “Okay. Yes, another friend is keeping her stable, and managed to catch her before her head hit. Okay, thank you. No drugs. No, she doesn’t drink.”
All through it, the cool, soft hand stroked over her brow and cheeks. Under the back of her head, it felt warmer and firmer, and the top of her head was incomprehensibly pressed up against something softer that rose and fell in time with Twilight’s soft breath sifting over her face, occasionally trembling when fingers touched her brow or her cheek or her nose.
Steps came closer, and then the calloused hand was on her cheek, then her forehead. “Cool,” Flash’s voice said again. “But she’s had a hard time sleeping. And I don’t know how well she’s been eating.” His voice dropped. “Twi, check her eyes.”
“Okay. Just hold on, Sunny.” Twilight’s voice sounded strained, but solid, and her fingers warm, soft. Light flooded Sunset’s world, and she tried to blink, but fingers held her eyes open. Twilight’s face, tear-streaked, leaned in close, upside down, her cell phone with its bright light shining directly into her eyes.
Everything made sense, then. She was laying on her back, her head was in Twilight’s lap. Rather than grow weaker in that harsh light, the flickers of light in her void solidified, becoming ribbons that drifted about her, purple and blue strongest, and two more grayed out colors beyond them, sparking briefly.
“Sunset? Sunny? Can you hear me?” Twilight’s lips moved, and then her voice penetrated, as though Sunset were watching a badly dubbed foreign film. “I think she can hear me. Yes, her pupils are contracting. Her eyes aren’t following me, though.” A tiny voice garbled something unintelligible close by, and Flash’s face came into view, then backed out again.
Sunset reached up to touch Twilight’s face, to see if it was real, if anything was real… Her hand moved, but not her hand. She waved it about, seeing Twilight’s face through it, and even when her eyes closed again, she saw it standing out in the dark. Not real, but she stretched towards where Twilight’s face had been, in the same way she had reached earlier, only reaching out instead of in.
The wispy flesh of her fingers traced over soft, tear-damped skin, the texture alive and firm under her touch, and sparkles of light ignited where dream-flesh met reality, lighting Twilight’s face in the void.
‘Thank you for being here, Twilight. You’re a great friend.’
Twilight jerked as though prodded, and reached up to touch where Sunset’s ghostly fingers rested. “Sunny? I… can hear you.” She found and pressed against Sunset’s hand, cradling it. “I can feel your hand. What’s going on?”
‘It’s the Elements,’ Sunset tried to say, and saw understanding flicker through Twilight’s eyes just before they closed, a look of fierce concentration bunching her brow and pursing her lips.
“Is that what those lights are? I thought they were all of you…” Twilight’s voice sounded in her ears and mind both, echoing across the darkness. In the light of the sparks, Twilight’s face bloomed in a brilliant smile. “I was right! I can see them all so clearly! I can… If I could just touch—”
Without any more warning, a torrent of rainbow light surged down Sunset’s phantom arm, searing away the remnants of the void with a rainbow flood of love, a little bit gleaned from each of her friends.
The dark purple band glowed strongest at first. In it, she caught a glimpse of pony Twilight looking up from a book, frowning, then shaking her head and turning away. Twilight Sparkle’s human face took its place, wonder etched in every line, eyes wide and mouth open. The other bands lit up, each showing a pony face first, distracted and looking off into the distance and then dismissed, replaced by a familiar human face filled with shocked awe, each of them watching her.
As the six bands spread their light, bright as a noonday sun, her heart leapt out to join them as a streak of scarlet with the same vibrant life and unrepentant joy that filled her when they sang. Understanding came as she joined them, her heart bursting with song and joy for just an instant.
She wasn’t alone, and the only place she had been was in her imagination, and in her nightmares. This was the reality, not the nightmares and not her fears. With that realization, the lights faded away, leaving her laying on the hard ground, blinking up at an open-mouthed, wide-eyed Twilight Sparkle.
“You’re here.” This time, when she reached up to stroke Twilight’s cheek, her hands were solid flesh, aching and swollen though they were, it still hurt less than not assuring herself Twilight wasn’t going away. She stroked Twilight’s warm cheeks, her own wet with tears and quivering as she laughed, her smile blooming strong and sure. Just that was enough to break down the dam, letting out the wearying loneliness, the freakish feeling of alienation, and the fear that the nightmares were true, and her life was the dream.
All of them tore through her, wrenching free in wracking sobs.
She lost track of time as she cried, her face pressed into Twilight’s stomach and thigh, burrowing as close into the source of warmth and comfort as she could even while it felt as though all her world—the carefully constructed illusions, the lies and falsehoods—all of it was stripped away. There would be no more “No, really, I’m okay” brush-offs to hide behind. It left her pain naked and raw, bleeding out while Twilight stroked her hair and her back.
Throughout it all, Sunset couldn’t let go of her friend’s steady presence, afraid to her core that, if she did, the void would come back and reveal this all to be another dream, just another cruel barb meant to make her more vulnerable. Even that fear bled away, just another hiccup and muffled wail smoothed away with a coo and a soft hand.
Don’t leave me, she tried to say several times, but the words stuck in her throat, choked off by another sob and how stupid it sounded as soon as she tried.
Twilight seemed to understand, and held her close, whispering, “We’re here, Sunny. We’re here,” over and over, mantra-like. But it felt like she was saying it to mean ‘I’m here.’
She wasn’t alone, and that was enough to make the pain and suffering of the last month worth it, just to know that she wouldn’t have to face it by herself.
When her last hiccup dwindled away, her throat raw, Sunset let go her death grip on Twilight and pushed herself up awkwardly on one arm. Twilight’s jeans and shirt were a sodden mess, and her cheeks shone in the porch flood light and Flash’s headlights.
“N-no, no… she’s fine, I think. She’s done crying. I… no. No. She’s sitting up.” Flash paced back and forth to the side, one hand scrubbing furiously through his hair, and darted glances at them, then away. Sonata kept pace with him, one hand always on his back or his shoulder. He stopped pacing, his eyes still wide, and knelt beside Sunset, a hand on her shoulder. “Sure… You okay for an ambulance ride, Sunny?”
Sunset shook her head. She didn’t want to go to the hospital, be taken away from Twilight and Rainbow, to be left alone in a room because she had no family with visitation rights. “N-no.” She hated that her voice broke when she tried to say it, and she forced herself to say it slower, steadier. “No. I’m fine. Please. No ambulance.”
Flash nodded and paced away again to speak to the person on the other end. “Sorry, she’s refusing an ambulance.” A loud voice on the other line started in on what sounded like a blistering lecture. He grimaced at Twilight, mouthing ‘You owe me big time,’ and walked away to sit on the hood of his car, Sonata following him with one arm teasing around his waist.
Sunset let herself be pulled up to sit awkwardly leaned against Twilight’s side, her injured arm pressed across her stomach.
A few minutes passed, Flash nodding and grunting, or speaking too low to be heard, and he hung up. Sonata hugged him close and helped him back up.
“What was that all about?” Twilight asked. “You’re not in trouble, are you?”
“A talking to my parents when they get back, maybe, but that’s it. They said the ambulance would still come, standard procedure.” He shrugged, glancing briefly at Sunset. “It’s about ten minutes out. I should probably leave before they get here. Might still avoid a talking to. Maybe.”
“Thank you, Flash.” Sunset held up her good hand to him, and he pulled her, then Twilight up to stand, brushing gravel off their pants.
Twilight took a step forward and tugged Sunset back, one arm around her waist to steady her. “Let’s go inside. You need to lay down and get something to eat. Er… get something to eat and then lay down. You look terrible.”
“But I need to…” She waved vaguely at the road, barely visible through the trees. In the far distance, a pair of headlights wove across the patchwork, steadily getting closer to the farm.
“No, you don’t. Not tonight.” With iron in her voice, and without waiting for her to say anything more, Twilight turned her around to start up the steps to the porch. “I’ll call you tomorrow, Flash,” she called over her shoulder. “At noon.” A sudden yawn broke her stride, and she shook her head. “At—”
“I’ll come over. Evening, okay? It’s easier to talk that way.” He waved vaguely at them and headed back to his car. Sonata slipped her hand to his briefly before they broke apart.
Sunset watched them over her shoulder for a long moment as they pulled away, only turning back when Twilight tapped her ear and led her inside.
Rainbow Dash was sitting on the couch, pillow dangling from one hand, and a water bottle laying on the ground at her feet. She looked up as the storm door squeaked open, frowned at Sunset, then at Twilight, supporting her with one arm around her waist.
Please, don’t say anything, Dash.
“So… I guess not necessary?” Rainbow looked at the water bottle and pillow, then out the door as Flash drove off. “Twi, what was that? That was magic, I know it was, but… were those… us? As ponies?” She shifted a glance and a grin at Twilight. “You’re even more adorable as a pony.”
Twilight rolled her eyes, smiling. “You’re one to talk.”
“Hey, I look awesome as a pony! Man, I wish I had that wingspan. Or yours. Wow. I mean… those wings.” Rainbow stretched her arms out as wide as she could, laughed, and shook her head. “Wow.”
Sunset let herself be led through the living room to the kitchen, Rainbow following behind them with both pillow and water bottle in hand, and urged to sit in the largest chair, reserved for Mrs. Peach when she was there, and smelling as she did of the faint musty odor of the elderly. She was too tired to protest, and took it as a measure of her exhaustion that she didn’t fight being treated like an invalid.
Well, aren’t I?
“Here, Sunny girl, have a seat.” Twilight pulled out a chair and sat beside her, just as a knock sounded at the front door.
“Rainbow, it’s the ambulance.”
The next few minutes passed in a veritable whirlwind as a man and a woman came in, first aid and trauma kits held at their sides. They hit her with a barrage of questions about abuse and neglect, followed up with a quick inspection of her wrist and the purpling bruise on her lip.
The woman flashed a bright pen-light in her eyes and gave her some simple tasks to do before she closed up the trauma kit, shrugged at her partner, and pulled out a clipboard while he unrolled a splint and wrapped her hand and forearm up to the elbow.
“Ma’am, I think everything’s going to be okay. I don’t think you’ve broken anything, but we should probably get it—”
“No. It’ll be fine.” Sunset resisted the urge to pull her hand free, wincing at the pulse of cold ache as the man set the final wrap in place and cracked the bubble on a cold compress. “Just need to keep it stable for a while.”
He frowned. “Ma’am, if you have a crack in your wrist, even, it could get infected. Happened to a buddy of mine, and I see it all the time in the ER. Trust me, you don’t wanna mess with that kind of pain. I’ve seen folks lose hands and feet from that kind of thing.”
“No. Doctors.” She held back a shudder, and pushed back the memory of the last time, trapped in the office, her false identity exposed, and a nurse watching her with maternal worry. Talking her way out of that mess had taken every lie she could muster.
He shrugged, his expression carefully neutral, and closed the first aid kit. “If I could see some ID, then, we need to mark down your information and…”
He droned on as Sunset’s mind fled down the branching paths of the future. Back in the system her name would go. There, it would link up with the other lies, paperwork would be drawn up, fraud investigations started. Months might pass, but they would find out, and then…
What? No more school, no more friends?
She shuddered. “I… I just have my school ID, but it’s in my locker at school. I don’t even have a driver’s permit yet.” That, at least, was true.
The man looked up at the woman, raised an eyebrow, and she shrugged. “Alright,” he said. “We’ll be sending a bill to this address in a few days.” At least it would delay the inevitable.
She sighed, and nodded, wondering how she would explain it to the Peaches.
They left, tipping their hats as they went, and the roar of the ambulance’s engine quickly faded away into nothing.
“What do you do when you get sick, then? Or get hurt?” Twilight recaptured the hand, sliding her grip up to Sunset’s elbow, holding it steady.
“I don’t.”
“Uh-huh.” Rainbow snorted. “You can’t be a bully and not get hurt. Comes with the territory. Someone’s gonna fight back. Can’t not get sick at school, neither. Geeze, every other week there’s some kid who infected their class with the whositwhatsit fever or something.”
Twilight watched her quietly for a long moment, her purple eyes unreadable, her lips pursed in a faint frown. When she spoke, it was slowly, as though working out a puzzle for herself. “You’re not from this world. How have you managed to keep your identity? The school, I understand. You needed a home address, and someone to sign paperwork, and that was pretty much it. But how have you managed taking care of yourself other ways?”
“Tomorrow,” Sunset muttered, leaning back and trying to tug her arm away from Twilight. “Tomorrow, please.” Please just drop it entirely.
“Oh. Right. Sleep.” Twilight flushed bright red, but didn’t let go of Sunset’s elbow. “Sorry.”
“Uh… food?” Rainbow tapped Twilight on the back of the head and draped her arms over Twilight’s shoulders, propping her chin on the other’s head. “Didn’t you say something about getting her to eat something?”
“Fine.” Sunset turned her eyes away from them for a moment. “I’ll eat.”
Twilight shrugged Rainbow’s arms away, and shot her a look that Sunset interpreted as ‘Not now.’
Rainbow sighed and slumped into another chair, closing her eyes and dropping her head to her crossed arms.
Twilight shifted her gaze between her and Rainbow, huffed a breath, and closed her eyes. “It’s been a long night. What would you like, Sunset? Anything at all.”
“Anything?” Sunset softened her voice, smiling. “Anything at all?
Twilight shook her head, rolling her eyes. “Within the realm of possibility.”
“I’d like an HLT, please.”
Rainbow snorted, covering her mouth with a hand quickly.
“And just what is an HLT?” Twilight reached out to prod Sunset. “I said real food, remember?”
“Hey, it’s a real sandwich.” She coughed. “In Equestria. Hay, lettuce, and tomato.” She quirked an eyebrow at Twilight, felt herself grin, and giggled at the glower on the other’s face. “Oh, come on. It’s a joke. I can’t eat hay anymore.” She smiled wider when she saw the twinkle in Twilight’s eyes, and an echo of that same mirth bubbling up in her and pushing away her exhaustion. I’ve missed this. “Bean sprouts are fine.”
“Why can’t any of my friends just be normal?”
“How boring would we be then?” Sunset laughed at Twilight’s stuck out tongue. “Who else can claim they have a pony for a friend?”
Twilight shook her head, rolled her eyes, and got up to make the sandwich. “You’re not actually joking about the bean sprouts, right?”
“Nope. It’s a BLT.”
Rainbow snorted a laugh and kicked her under the table. “You are such a horse.”
“Pony.”
“Equine.”
“Unicorn.”
Rainbow glared at her, lips pursed.
Not so easy to retort against that! Sunset beamed a smile across the table.
“I swear to bacon that I will replace every bean sprout in the city with bacon strips if you keep this up!” Twilight said, waving a strip of pre-cooked bacon at them before taking a bite. She had three plates out, a packet of bacon strips, and one of bean sprouts besides a head of lettuce and a tomato.
“Did you just swear to bacon?” Rainbow smirked.
“Yes, and by bacon, I will smack the both of you if you don’t stop butting heads. I swear, it’s like you’re two kids who just discovered insults.”
Rainbow quirked an eyebrow at Sunset. “Doodie-head.”
“Fart breath.”
Twilight split her glare between the two of them, but couldn’t hide her smile for long.
An hour later, laying on her back in bed, with a cool, wet rag wrapped in a plastic baggie laying on her splint, she was no closer to going to sleep than she had been in the last half hour. Twilight had decided for all of them that Sunset would sleep in her bed, and she and Rainbow would take the couch and the loveseat.
Alone, and not alone. She sighed, wondering if the dreams would come for her that night, or if she would be spared them for once. Well, if she didn’t sleep, she couldn’t dream, and if she couldn’t dream…
Then the nightmares can’t get you, can they?
“Go ‘way.” She started to roll over to her side, but her wrist quickly reminded her why she was lying on her back. “Darnit…”
A floorboard creaked outside her room.
“Hello?” Long seconds ticked by on the little alarm clock beside her bed.
“Can I talk to you?” It was Rainbow Dash.
A curt retort formed on her lips, but she swallowed it. “Yes.”
Rainbow didn’t turn on the lights when she came in, only shuffled forward with uncertain steps until her leg bumped against Sunset’s bed.
“You couldn’t sleep either?”
“Duh.”
“Hey, I’m trying to be nice!”
Sunset groaned and rubbed at her face, grateful for the concealing darkness. “I know, I know. I just seem to run on bitch mode automatically when I’m tired. Can you forgive me?”
“Yeah.” Rainbow sat on the edge of the bed and groped around until she found Sunset’s arm, her voice dropping to almost a whisper. “I wanted to talk to you about Twilight.”
“Makes two of us, then. What about her?”
“She talked to you about me, right?” Rainbow’s fingers tensed on her bicep, knuckles perilously close to pressing into the side of her breast. Rainbow seemed to realize it, too, and slid her grip up to Sunset’s shoulder. “I mean… she said she did.”
“Yeah. She did. In confidence,” Sunset said, matching Rainbow’s hushed tone.
“No… no. I don’t want to hear about what she told you. I… I can kinda guess what she said already.” The tired defeat in Rainbow’s voice touched off an echo in her own heart. “You know how I feel about her.” It wasn’t a question. “I know how you feel about her, too.” It wasn’t an accusation, but a statement.
“Do you?” Do I? She shook off the thought. “I’m a pony, Dash. My ideal of beauty is different from yours.”
Rainbow thumped her shoulder. “Yeah, that’s a bunch of bull.”
“And how do you know?”
“I know.” Rainbow shrugged, a shifting of the darkness. “That’s not what I wanted to talk about, though. I… She doesn’t want to be with me.”
Sunset waited, gnawing her lip.
Rainbow sucked in a deep breath, let it out, and her grip on Sunset’s shoulder tightened almost to the point of being painful. “How can I let her go?”
“What?” Sunset blinked and tried to sit up. It was the last thing she’d expected to hear.
Rainbow pushed her back, barely having to put any effort into it. “No, stay down. Don’t hurt your wrist.” She sighed. “I love her. I know I do.”
Sunset had to force her next words out. “Then why let her go?”
When no answer was forthcoming, Sunset reached up with her good hand, fumbling for Rainbow’s face. She felt a trail of tears under her fingers before Rainbow jerked away.
“Never mind.” Rainbow stood up abruptly, her voice rough. “This was a stupid idea.” She shuffled her way back across the room.
“You can’t,” Sunset said before Rainbow opened the door. “You can’t let her go, Rainbow, you would need to push her away.” What am I saying?
Rainbow shuffled quietly in the dark and grunted as she thumped against something solid. “I couldn’t push her away. And don’t you quote some stupid movie, or book, or philosophical thing about ‘Oh, but it’s what’s best for her.’ That’s bullshit, and you know it.”
“Bull shit is pretty messy in Equestria,” Sunset offered. “When the bulls have access to fast food, it just gets worse.”
Rainbow laughed. “I’d love to see it. The world, not the bulls.”
“I wish I could show all of you. Just for a little bit.” Sunset sighed, shaking her head and sitting up on the edge of her bed, aching arm cradled in her lap. “The lack of cell phones would drive you crazy inside five minutes, I’m sure.” She glanced at where her cell phone would be lying in the dark on her bedside table. “I’m not sure I wouldn’t go nuts either. It takes a day for a fast pegasus to deliver a message from Canterlot to Manehattan, days if you use ground or a standard courier.”
“Wow… dark ages, much?”
“The trains would argue with your assessment,” Sunset said with a laugh. “As would the magic-powered airships.”
Rainbow laughed with her, but it subsided quickly, and Sunset heard the slow rasp of cloth on wallpaper as Rainbow slid to the floor.
“I can’t push her away, Sunset. And I’m not sure I can stop feeling like I do. Can’t I just… decide? Just say ‘I don’t love her anymore.’ and move on? She doesn’t love me, not like that. I know that.”
Her clock ticked insistence at her to move on, say something. What can I say to that? “Do you?” she heard herself ask.
“Yes.” The single, gasped word sounded as though Rainbow had dragged it out with hot tongs. “Damnit. Damnit, damnit.” A solid thump followed each word.
“Rainbow?” Sunset stared hard into the darkness. When her eyes refused to adjust to the utter darkness, she swore under her breath and fumbled for the light by her bed.
Rainbow sat leaning against the wall, face turned to the ceiling. Her cheeks shimmered, and her eyes were bloodshot and puffy. She gave Sunset a despairing look, features slack, eyes glistening in the light as she blinked rapidly and turned her gaze back to the ceiling, snuffled, and scoured her cheeks dry with the bottom of her shirt.
“What should I do?” Rainbow asked after a long moment of staring up at the ceiling.
“Why are you asking me?”
Rainbow shrugged. “She trusts you.”
“Do you?”
She shrugged again.
Sunset sighed loudly, rolling her eyes. “I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.” When only a sullen glare came as answer, she slid from the bed to sit next to Rainbow, accepting the other girl’s offered hand as she held her injured wrist above her head. To her surprise, Rainbow settled an arm around Sunset’s shoulders, but didn’t pull her close.
Am I really that shaky looking?
“You really should be in bed.”
Apparently so. Sunset shot her a glare and got a snicker in return. “So should you.”
“Couldn’t sleep. I was trying to find the bathroom.”
“First floor, goof. I showed you.”
“Yeah. I’m tired, okay? Can’t lie all that well right now.” Rainbow chuckled, thumping her head back against the wall. “I just… I need to know.”
“Did she tell you she didn’t love you?”
Sunset laid a hand on her knee when Rainbow shook her head. “I don’t think you can say that she won’t ever love you that way.” She gnawed at her lip, twirling thoughts around that felt too sluggish and flowed against her own wants.
Rainbow’s silently shaking head unlocked the fatigue that had been hiding behind the adrenaline and magic-fueled wakefulness. It was all too much to deal with, and all of it hit her like a sledgehammer. She slumped against the wall, vision swimming as exhaustion settled over her like an inexorable wave.
“Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah.” Sunset scrubbed at her face again, settled heavily into it, and felt herself start drifting off, just sitting there. “I’m so tired, Dash. You have no idea.”
“Then let’s—”
“Not yet. I need to tell you something, first.” What? “It’s important.”
Rainbow waited for her, rubbing her opposite shoulder in slow circles, lulling her to the very edge of sleep, until the right chain of thought floated up, dreamlike, to surround her.
“You can’t just decide not to love someone,” she murmured softly, fighting a yawn. “You can try not to, and you might succeed, but you’ll end up hating them instead. You can look for every little thing that annoys you about them, tally up every tiny little imagined wrong, every rebuke for wrongs done until the bad outweighs the good. By the time you don’t love them anymore, you would do anything to get them out of your life.”
Sunset looked down at her hands, curled the one she could move into a close approximation of a hoof, and spread her fingers wide. “You would even abandon an entire world to get away from them, and blame them for driving you away.”
A ghost of a smile flashed across Rainbow’s lips. “And then you would try to take over the world.”
Sunset snorted. “That was… later.”
“Why did you want to stop loving… whoever?”
“Celestia.” Sunset poked Rainbow in the shoulder, grinning at her wide-eyed shock. “Not the Principal. Please, I’m not like that. Princess Celestia, the pony. And I wasn’t in love with her. I loved her like a mother.”
“So, what happened?”
Sunset chewed on her lip, tugging at thoughts that felt they were mired in slush. “It’s… well, it’s not complicated, I guess, looking back. I wanted to learn how to wield the power of the Elements of Harmony before I understood what they were, and what they represented. She understood the dangers far better, however, and forbade me from even looking up the elements. She locked the books away in the scholar’s vault…”
Speaking aloud the events, she felt them unfold again, the old pains of being denied rising to strangle her.
“I wheedled and cajoled for months and, for months, she said I wasn’t ready. Each time she rejected me, I added a tally to the things I hated about her. I hated the way she would not tell me a lesson’s goal, I hated the way she would pretend to be kind and understanding, and only set me up to fail again, and again, and again.” She shook herself. “I know… Now, I know she wasn’t doing anything like that. I owe all of you for teaching me that.”
Rainbow’s hand settled lightly on her knee, glanced aside at her, and nodded.
Sunset smiled at her, patting the hand lightly. “Now, looking back, most of her tasks would have been so much easier if I had slowed down and made friends. Don’t go through that with Twilight. It’s the worst thing in the world to wake up from, and there’s not a day that I don’t wish I could undo what I did.”
“But you can’t. And if you did… you wouldn’t be here.”
“That’s what I tell myself, too. And I don’t think I could go back now. I have ties here, Rainbow. All of you… how could I just up and leave you? You’re the first real friends I’ve ever had, and I love all of you.”
Rainbow nodded, keeping her hand in place on Sunset’s knee, an unreadable expression on her face. When she met Sunset’s eyes, she was frowning. “And Twilight?”
“And Twilight,” she agreed, squeezing Rainbow’s hand.
Rainbow’s frown faded as she pinched the bridge of her nose, shaking her head. “What’re we going to do?”
Sunset prodded Rainbow’s shoulder again. “Not hate each other seems like a good starting point.”
That brought Rainbow’s smile back again. “Yeah. I don’t hate you for loving her. Jealous that you share something that I can’t with her, maybe. That sciencey-magic stuff you two are always whispering about. But I don’t hate you.”
“Heh. I’m jealous that she takes such an interest in your academic career, and that she expands her interests for your sake. She goes to all of your matches, cheers you on…” She sighed. “It makes me want to try out for sports.”
“Well, you should. But I don’t get why you’re jealous. All of you come to my games.”
“I know. I never said it was rational.” Sunset let her head thump back against the wall. “But I don’t hate you for it. I do hate that you make it look and sound so easy when it’s not.”
“Hey, I make everything look easy.”
“Except all that sciencey stuff, right?”
“Bingo.” Rainbow laughed. “Stars above, we’re a pair.”
“Of jackasses.” Sunset patted her friend’s hand lightly. ”So… now what?”
Rainbow shrugged and stood up, offered her hand, and pulled Sunset to her feet. “Tomorrow, I guess, and the day after that. Try to get some sleep, Sunny.”
“Rainbow,” she said, leaning against the door frame, feeling the last dregs of energy draining away. “Thanks for trusting me.”
Rainbow Dash nodded. “Thanks for talking to me. Get some sleep.”
When she collapsed into bed, her stiff wrist doing nothing to waken her at all. Somehow, she remembered to turn off the light, and it was as though she turned off her own consciousness.
Sleep dragged her down into its brute, blessedly silent embrace.