//------------------------------// // Medical Care // Story: The Sun Never Sets // by Mr Fislewait //------------------------------// Twilight was reluctant to leave Sunset to be fed and washed by the nurses, not due to any lack of trust in their abilities but because of that last confusing comment the unicorn had made. Time travel, Sunset Shimmer believed she had traveled through time. Had somepony made such a suggestion a few years back then she would have been understandably incredulous but since the move to Ponyville she herself had traveled through time on two separate occasions. Yet even though she knew that time travel was possible the means Sunset had used still confounded her. From the way she had spoken it seemed as though she hadn't even realized that she had traveled through time until Twilight had told her how little time she had been gone. That in itself lent doubt to the theory, in both occasions of Twilight having traveled through time it had required a powerful spell cast intentionally by a powerful unicorn. How could Sunset perform accidental time travel, and from a magically inert dimension no less!? That lead her to the second problem with the theory. Even if she had managed to perform time travel that still failed to explain her mysterious arrival in The Crystal Empire, in all of her previous experience Twilight had come to understand that though one could travel backwards to anyplace and any time the return journey to the present seemed to invariably deposit the traveler at their point of origin. Using current evidence then that would imply that Sunset's initial departure had been from Cadance's castle, or that she had time traveled backwards to the castle from some point a month or so in the future without having the spell fizzle out on her after about a minute or so. Applejack prodded her gently in the ribs to snap her out of her thoughts. "You okay there, Twilight? You kind of walked out of the room and then sat their starin' at a whole lot a nothin' for some time." Staring at her with concerned looks were Twilight's Ponyville friends, Starlight, Shining and Cadance. "I've been better," she sighed staring at her hooves despondently. "I mean in my imagination I'd run through all of these worst case scenarios on the way over here and each of them was so much worse than the truth... but seeing her for real in there? For some reason it just made everything worse. She just seemed so..." "Broken?" Rarity finished for her. "We tried to talk with her before you got back, Twilight, but she was absolutely impossible to speak to," the rest of the circle nodded in agreement. "About that. What sort of things has she said since she got to Ponyville? Oh! And in The Crystal Empire too. I'm pretty sure that's Sunset in there but some of the things she spoke to me about were a little confusing to say the least. If there's anything you guys found out from her don't hesitate to tell me, it could be the missing piece for working this puzzle out." "What kind of confusing things did she say, Twilight?" Fluttershy whispered. "She seems to believe that she might have traveled through time," as soon as Twilight said it five sets of eyes turned to face Starlight, who awkwardly shifted back and forth beneath their stares until Twilight put a reassuring hoof on her shoulder. "I know you don't know Sunset, but I was hoping you might come with me to speak with her later. As one of Equestria's three resident time travelers your input could be a real help." "Well if it's to help a friend," Starlight said a smile beginning to replace her earlier frown, "then as student to the Princess of Friendship I don't think I can really refuse." "To answer your earlier question, Twily, she didn't really say much of anything in the Crystal Empire," all eyes turned to Shining Armor who had taken it upon himself to break the ice. "The first we knew of her was a couple of the guards reporting strange lights coming from the throne room. Me and Cadance were moving to investigate it but before we could get there Sunset had fled the room and was being pursued about the palace by the guard," he rubbed the back of his head and a deep red blush filled his cheeks. "Considering the state she was in and the fact that she wasn't performing any magic I'm a little embarrassed that the guards took so long to corner her. When me and Cadance turned up she had been backed into a corner with a look on her face like a wild animal, pretty sure I heard her growl at one of the guards. I ordered the guards to back away from her though so we could get a better look at what we were dealing with and then-" he stopped, trying to find the best way to describe what had happened next. "She looked at the two of us and just fell apart, she seemed to crumple in on herself. She collapsed to the ground, started bawling her eyes out and passed out shortly after." "We had her taken to the hospital as soon as we realized how beaten up she was," Cadance continued from where her husband had left off. "When she woke up she refused to speak to anypony about what had happened to her or how she had got into the throne room. The only thing we could get out of her was that her name was Sunset Shimmer and that she needed to speak with Twilight Sparkle. I recognized her from back when she was still Celestia's student and the changeling detection spell confirmed that she was a unicorn, so as soon as she was safe to travel we got her on the train to Ponyville." "Yeah and on that note, Twilight, it's probably best you don't mention the 'C' word around Sunny," Rainbow frowned. Twilight and Starlight both stared at the pegasus in confusion. "Changelings, Twilight, she uh... she kind of threw a fit when we mentioned them." "We all tried to talk with her to make her feel at home until you got back," Fluttershy said nervously. "But it didn't go very well." "We all went in withe the best of intentions but soon as we stepped through the doors Miss Shimmer started rantin' and ravin' 'bout how we was all imposters and frauds. Said we weren't really her friends, we just looked like them." Applejack paused and shot Rainbow Dash a glare. "Then Dash goes and gets in her face and tells her that we all 'aint Changelings so we aren't pretending to be nopony else than who we are." Everypony in the room but Twilight and Starlight took a brief moment to stare at their hooves in despair. "And that's when the screaming started," Rarity continued. "First of all came the threats and accusations, then the spitting and then she just burst into tears and broke down completely. The poor dear just kept repeating the same phrase over and over again, 'I'm sorry Pinkie, please forgive me', or words to that effect at least," until then Twilight hadn't even noticed Pinkie Pie. The pink mare had been sitting in one corner, her mane deflated and devoid of her normal cheerful exuberance. "Well if you are all quite done catching up I was hoping to fill Princess Twilight in on the details of the case," behind them Doctor Horse had quietly joined the group with a perpetual frown upon his face. "I would rather have filled you all in before you visited her but the Princess," he pointed accusingly at Cadance, "was quite insistent on you visiting her as soon as possible." "Thank you for your patience, doctor. I'm sorry if we broke any protocols for visiting the patient but I'm here now and I would like to here what you have to say." "Very well, Princess Twilight." Horse pulled out a clipboard and cleared his throat. "Miss Shimmer was brought into us horribly malnourished and with indications of having suffered from prolonged exposure to the elements, her hooves in particular seem to have suffered from a little bit of frostbite but thankfully nothing permanent. We have been working on getting her safely back up to her correct body weight and she has been responding well to treatment. We have had to be careful with her diet though as she has shown several burst of nausea and vomiting that we have yet to confirm the cause of, we have a few tests to run today though and will hopefully have the answer by tomorrow morning." Horse took a quick sip from a glass of water before adjusting his glasses and continuing. "She has suffered a number of first degree burns spread across her body alongside second degree burns to her face and neck and some third degree burns to her forelegs. Her mane was burnt off completely but should regrow with time." "Her mane?" Twilight interrupted. "But when I was in there she-" "A wig, Princess Twilight," Horse interjected. "She was quite distressed about her lack of hair so Miss Rarity supplied us with a wig to help her with her self esteem. While these burns all appear very recent the burn on her cutie mark is probably a few weeks old and clearly administered intentionally. A fourth degree burn quite clearly received from a branding iron,a practice that to my knowledge has been illegal in all of Equestria for centuries," shocked gasps and looks of horror from the collected group accompanied this statement as well as a look of outright disgust from Shining Armor. "Moving on from her burns she seems to have a number of minor scars of varying ages and a broken hind leg. The leg appears to have suffered a minor break some time ago but was never properly set and has been overused since then. Somepony appears to have tried using magic to heal it at some point but did a pretty poor job of it. She will likely be stuck with a limp for the rest of her life. Her horn was cracked significantly from what appears to have been massive magical feedback and overexertion, we have applied a medicinal cast that should heal the damage with time but until then she will be unable to cast magic. As for her eye the cornea has been slightly damage by overexposure to sunlight but the real damage is in the retina. I have seen ponies recover from worse in the past but only time will tell if she regains her eyesight entirely. Finally I'm recommending that she undergoes therapy, I don't know what she has been through but I cannot imagine it was pleasant, or that it failed to leave emotional scars." Having said his piece Horse dismissed himself to tend to his patients. ------------------ It was with mild trepidation that Twilight and Starlight stepped into Sunset's room. A few choice words had been spoken after Horse had finished reeling off the full extent of Sunset's injuries, the existence of the brand in particular leading to some incredibly harsh words from Shining Armour. The age of the injuries though had proven one thing in Twilight's mind though and that was that her claim of time travel seemed to be increasingly likely. Sunset may not want to go into full details on what had happened till tomorrow but Twilight was determined to at least get some information on her time travel theory before calling it a night. "Hey," Sunset almost managed to wave at them as they stepped into the room. "Who's your friend, Twilight? She doesn't look like another nurse." "This is Starlight Glimmer, a recently made friend of mine who has some personal experience with time travel. I thought that between the three of us we might be able to get to the bottom of the whole time travel thingy." "Wait a minute, Starlight Glimmer?" Sunset scrunched her face up in concentration. "Crazy unicorn who enslaved a small town and stole their cutie marks Starlight Glimmer?" "Soooooo I guess Twilight has told you about me then huh?" Starlight winced. "Yep. But if Twilight's calling you a friend then I guess that means your cool now. I'd offer to shake your hoof but..." Sunset looked sheepishly at her extensive medical restraints. "Welcome to the reformed villains club, as a fellow unicorn with a less than faultless past I'm hardly one to judge you." Starlight returned her smile, "thanks." Perhaps this whole friendship thing wouldn't be so hard after all. "So ,Twilight said you think you've performed some time travel? Care to elaborate?" "I will, but as I recall I also told Twilight that I wanted to save talking about that for tomorrow," Sunset shot the alicorn a glare causing Twilight to develop a new found interest in the hospital curtains. "What about you though? I mean time travel, wow. How did you two even pull that off?" "Stole a spell from the Starswirl the Bearded wing. Manipulated it in a nefarious and ill conceived attempt at revenge, you know typical evil unicorn things," Starlight giggled, for all the strangeness of the situation she was finding Sunset surprisingly easy to talk to. The amber unicorn really didn't seem to have any problem with Starlight's own history removing the awkwardness she seemed to be having speaking to everypony else. "I travelled back to the day Twilight and her friends got their cutie marks and repeatedly threw off the timeline. Apparently this drastically altered Equestria in the present but you'd have to ask Twilight about that, I only got to see one of them." "Changed it how?" she wasn't sure how the change had come about but Starlight was suddenly aware that the mood of the room had undergone a rapid shift. Up until now Sunset had seemed approachable, cheerful even but her last question was eerily cold and laced with anger. If Twilight had noticed the change though she didn't show it. "Oh changed it in all sorts of ways, but never for the better," Twilight answered in excitement. Had she really not noticed it? "It was fascinating really, we only spent a few minutes in the past but the differences in how we behaved during each visit drastically altered what occurred in the future! Now me and Spike only spent an hour or two at most in any given future but each was observably different. The first one had Equestria engaged in a war with King Sombra of The Crystal Empire, you probably haven't heard much about him before. Then there was the world ruled by ch-" she stopped herself before remembering what Dash had said. "-chickens. That one was weird. There was one where Nightmare Moon returned to reign over night eternal, another where-" "Where Lord Tirek carried out his reign of destruction unopposed?" Sunset interjected, her voice dripping with venom as her gaze narrowed into a merciless glare at Starlight. "Yes..." Twilight paused seemingly to suddenly pick up on the mood of the room. "How did you know that?" "Those chickens of yours, Twilight, let me guess, were they by any chance love stealing shape changing bugs?" Twilight nervously nodded in confirmation. "You want to know where I was, Twilight? Fine. Same place as you from the sound of things. All those different timelines you visited? I don't know how but somehow I got pulled along for the ride." "How is that even possible?" Twilight asked moving over towards Starlight who had begun to wither beneath Sunset's ever more menacing glare. "No idea, Twilight. But while you may have only had to deal with those problems for 'one to two hours tops' I was stuck there for a week. I had no idea how I got there, no idea if there was someway to get home!" Sunset's simmering fury had sparked into a roaring fire now. Her voice raising to the highest volume that her present state allowed, had her magic been working Twilight was certain that Sunset would be hurling everything within her reach at them right now. "A week, Twilight! I had to live through each and every horrible reality for a whole damn week! And you!" Sunset stabbed one hoof towards Starlight wincing in pain in process. "You did this to me! For what? Some petty revenge against Twilight for putting an end to your evil schemes? You know I learned my lesson the first time I wound up defeated in a crater. But you! You just had to go looking for some ridiculous way of enacting your revenge didn't you!?" "Sunset, she didn't mean for-" Twilight tried to interrupt, tried to break Sunset out of her tirade but she was having none of it. "No, Twilight! The things I have had to go through! The month I spent never knowing if I would ever see my home again, ever get to meet my friends again! Get her away from me, Twilight! I never want to see her face ever again!" her voice began to break, her throat sore from its exertions and her rage exhausting her fragile body. With Starlight's own voice seemingly frozen in horror and Sunset inconsolable with rage Twilight took the only option that seemed reasonable. She threw a wing about Starlight and ushered her out the door leaving Sunset alone with her anger.