"If you need anything, anything at all, we will be right outside darling"
"I know she won't try anything but if she starts talking crazy to you just come and find us!"
"..."
"I know we don't know if it is the Sunset that you know, Twilight, and I know that if it is the Sunset you know then we aren't the amazing friends she knows who you also know but when she does get better we can throw her the biggest 'got out of the hospital' party that Equestria has ever seen and maybe then she wont look so.... so.... sad."
"Sugarcube, ah' can't begin to get mah head around what's goin' on here, and ah can't rightly say I've entirely forgiven Sunset for the whole stealing yer crown thing. But we know she's yer friend and I think ah can speak for all of Ponyville when I say that I hope she recovers from...whatever it is that she's been through."
Her friends words of support on the way over to the hospital had done little to alleviate her fears. Words of comfort were normally meant to be reserved for the patient not the friends and family. Every sentence seemed a half-truth, every 'I hope she gets better soon' sounding more like a 'I'm sorry for your loss'. She now sat alone in the hospital room but for her own thoughts and the lone patient, lying motionless in her bed. Sunset Shimmer, it couldn't be her just couldn't. Empirical evidence told Twilight that Sunset couldn't be the mare lying before her...
-The portal had remained closed almost permanently since the incident with the sirens.
-It wouldn't naturally open for several years.
-Even if Sunset had found a way to force the portal open from her own side she would have arrived in Twilight's castle, no in The Crystal Empire.
-Had Sunset been in dire trouble she would have surely contacted Twilight by the diary.
-Her injuries had according to the doctors been sustained of a period of a month, possibly more, yet Twilight was certain the last message in the diary had been sent perhaps a week earlier at the longest.
....all evidence confirmed that Sunset had to be safe on the other side of the portal, not lying here in an almost comatose sleep. As much as she denied it though her heart told her otherwise, the similarities between the mare and her friend were uncanny. Deep down Twilight knew it was her but she didn't want it to be Sunset, she wanted to be some error or mistake, anything that meant her good friend from the other dimension wasn't the mare lying on the bed before her.
Attached to the front of the bed was a sketch of Sunset's cutie mark to help staff and visitors identify her (her actual cutie mark was currently concealed beneath bandages and bedding), though burnt down to the skin in multiple places her coat was a recognizable amber and according the doctors her eyes were cyan. The only thing that immediately stood out as being wrong was her mane, it was shorter than Twilight remembered, lacked its tell tale yellow stripes and was entirely the wrong shade of red, more maroon than crimson. She had only met Sunset once as a unicorn (and that was a fleeting encounter in the dead of the night) so such details as height and facial features were harder to confirm but with every glance at the sleeping mare Twilight felt another burst of recognition; mane aside she would have been indistinguishable from the Sunset that Twilight knew. Mane and medical supplies.
To Twilight's immense relief 'Sunset' was not trapped in a full body cast or hooked up to an extensive network of medical machinery. An oxygen feed ran to a small clip on her nostrils and a lone medical drip fed her a steady supply of fluids but her condition had apparently improved enough that she was no longer required to be hooked up to one of the hospitals precious few heart monitors. The exact nature of her injuries had yet to be divulged to Twilight but she could easily guess. 'Sunset' had been involved in a fire that much was clear, her coat was a patchwork mess where the hair had been burnt away and medical gauze was wrapped in places about her forelegs, neck and on one cheek (likely where the fire had managed to mark her skin). Beyond the burns her horn was cocooned in medical cast as was her right hind leg. Then there was the bandage on her flank, it wasn't gauze like her other dressings suggesting that perhaps that specific injury wasn't a burn like the others, its placement completely concealing the cutie mark on her right flank. Without disturbing the bed sheets it wouldn't be possible for Twilight to check for a similar bandage on the other flank and so she could only guess at the exact nature of the injury. Even in the absence of her physical injuries Twilight would have deemed the mare to be in need of medical attention, her ribs a noticeable feature of her emaciated form and deep black bags hanging beneath her eyes suggesting that her present unconsciousness was perhaps the first proper sleep she'd had in some time.
"Ughhh..." at the sound of the groan Twilight leaped out of her visitors chair and sprinted to the side of the bed. She had been here about an hour now and in all that time this was the first sign of consciousness she had seen in the other mare. "Water..." she gasped her eyes slowly opening.
"Here," Twilight levitated a small glass of water across to Sunset with a straw tilted to face her mouth. "Don't try holding it with your magic, something happened to your horn," Sunset gripped the straw between her lips and began desperately getting the water into her system. As she did so Twilight held the glass in place and thought over what the doctors had asked of her. Speak to Sunset, try to get her to open up about whatever she had been through, make sure she felt safe and above all let her know that she had friends to look after her.
"It's funny," Sunset started after dropping the straw out of her mouth. "You sound sort of like somepony I used to know."
"Sunset? Is that really you, Sunset?" the voice was the final proof Twilight had needed, any doubts she had once had about the mare were banished. It may have lacked her usual confidence but the voice was unmistakably Sunset's.
"Twilight?" though held in place by restraints (for her safety not yours the doctor had said) Sunset attempted to turn to face her, wincing in pain in the process.
"Try not to move Sunset, you're badly hurt and need to take things easy."
"How- how did we first meet, Twilight?"
"What?" definitely not the question she was expecting.
"Please, Twilight, this is important to me. If you're who I think you are then I need to know. How did we meet, how did we become friends?"
"I was at the princess summit in The Crystal Empire and you took something important from me," she chose her words carefully if this wasn't Sunset she couldn't let slip the exact details of their first meeting or subsequent encounters, the other world was not something that Celestia wanted the public to hear about. "I chased you to a place far away from Equestria and we fought. I took back what you had taken and left you in the good care of some close friends of mine. We weren't really friends though until you asked me to come and help you with a magic problem caused by a trio of sirens. Since then though I've always considered you as one of my closest friends." It was quiet at first, a slight sniffle of the nose, then a cough before evolving into a torrent of great rolling tears and sobbing.
"I'm home!" she gasped between sobs, "I'm... I'm finally home!" Sunset tried to lift her hooves to her face but seemed to lack the strength to do much more than twitch them slightly. Trying her best not to disturb any of the bandages Twilight wrapped a wing behind the mare, gently patting her on the back as she whispered calming noises. "Twilight," she finally managed to get the word out as her tears began to subside. "This is going to sound weird, Twilight, but could you come stand on the other side of me? I'd like to see that it's really you." It took Twilight a few moments to finally understand the meaning behind the request, amidst the commotion of her friend waking up she hadn't noticed that while her left eye still had its normal teal coloration it was marred by a cloudy white fog.
-------------------------
It took a little while but once Sunset had calmed down from her emotional outburst Twilight decided to address the elephant in the room. "What happened to you Sunset? Your horn, your coat, your eye? Whatever the trouble is I'm here to help, I always will be, but I need to know how this," she waved a hoof at Sunset's inured form "came about. Was it another Equestrian monster attacking the school?"
"No Twilight," Sunset gave a hearty chuckle, "no more monsters attacking Canterlot High. Nah when I was last there we were having a little bit of trouble with the threat of magic interfering with a competition but I'm sure the girls have managed to get that under control by now," she paused and for a few moments stared off into empty space. "They must be so worried about me, think you could send them a message, let them know that I'm alright?"
"Sure thing, Sunset, next time I'm at the castle I'll hop over and let them know. I wouldn't exactly call you 'alright' though, I mean no offense but you like you've been in a fight with a mob of dragons," the smile was forced and the levity feigned but Sunset seemed to appreciate it nonetheless.
"Nah, no dragons," she managed to flick a hoof in what Twilight imagined was meant to be a dismissive gesture but served only as a reminder of how fragile her health currently was. "I got in a hoof wrestling match with the Sun though," Twilight raised an incredulous eyebrow at the statement. "Won too, not going to be trying that again anytime soon, turns out he's a pretty sore loser."
"You hoof wrestled the sun? The actual sun, big flaming ball of light in the sky, that sun?"
"Yeah pretty much," Sunset chuckled again, "perhaps not the smartest thing I've ever done but at least this time it was for purely selfless reasons. I've learned a lot from you Princess, really taken the friendship lessons to heart."
"I'm glad to hear it. You know good friends share their problems, Sunset, I can't begin to imagine what you've been through since we last met but I'm here now and I want to help. So whenever your ready how about you start at the beginning and talk me through what happened to you? Doctor Horse has been trying his best to help you but if he had some context for your injuries I'm sure it would be a great help." Sunset stared off into space again, lost in her own thoughts her previous cheer replaced with a grim solemnity. Had Twilight said something wrong?
"Okay," the answer was short and so quiet as to be barely audible, Twilight contemplated if it had been in her own imagination. "I'll need a little bit of time to get my thoughts together, and I'm not going to tell you everything. Some of the things that happened are... kind of private. Tomorrow though I can start telling you what happened but fair warning it's going to be a long story. Just make sure you let everyone at Canterlot high know I'm here, and I'm recovering. I've been missing for well over a month now so I can only imagine how worried they must-" Sunset froze. There was something in Twilight's manner and expression that had changed. Shock, fear, disbelief, all were present in her face as she stood rooted to the ground staring wide eyed at Sunset.
"Sunset, you spoke to me less than a week ago through the journal. I was telling you about how the CMC's had finally earned their marks and that I'd been invited to give a presentation at Canterlot. You were telling me about some big competition that was going to take place between Canterlot High and some rival school."
"Oh," her mouth hung open as she processed the information. "Friendship Games were meant to happen this week?" Twilight nodded in confirmation. "Definitely not something that took place about six weeks ago?" Another nod. "Huh," Sunset collapsed backwards into her bed. "Guess she was right then, time travel's a bitch."