Chapter 8 - Shot Through The Heart
I don’t know how long I sat in that gas station, but however long I was there, it was long enough that the clerk came out to check on me. She must’ve thought I’d abandoned my car or something.
She’d asked if I was okay. Was there something wrong? Did I need help? All the things you ask when you’re showing socially-appropriate concern for someone who you didn’t have a personal investment in. I could tell she was more annoyed than worried, but I pretended to be thankful for the token show of humanity.
My head was still hurting, and it couldn’t have helped that I’d been crying so hard. Having a rival wizard jabbing magic needles into your gray matter isn’t fun.
I needed something to take the edge off, so I followed the girl back into the store and bought a sixer of awful domestic ale. It was some of that corporate-brewed swill in a fancy can that masqueraded as an obscure local microbrew. It tasted like the inside of a dog’s mouth, but it was on promotional sale. The money I saved went towards a baby-sized bottle of aspirin that would’ve been overpriced for a full-sized bottle.
The beer was for the road, and I didn’t so much as sip from the open can chilling the inside my thighs until I was driving. Even at my darkest, most self-destructive moments, I wasn’t the type of woman who drank alone in a gas station parking lot at three o’clock in the morning. I had at least that much dignity left.
I knew I had to go home. I’d let my fears and anxieties get the better of me and drive me from my home. Now, with Ahuizotl dead, the only thing keeping me from going back was the shame of having snuck out in the first place, and I was much too tired for shame. I’m not the type of broad that gets weepy at every little thing, but crying is cathartic, and my little breakdown in the car left me feeling empty and tired. All my worries felt distant, like they’d happened a lifetime ago. I could face my problems like this – empty except for the belly full of courage I’d slurped out of an aluminum can.
The lights were off when I finally got home, save for the porch. A little sign of welcome, like a beacon in the night guiding me home. It was something small, but knowing that it was probably Luna who’d left the light on for me left a warm, bubbly feeling in my chest which was only slightly diminished by the guilt of having walked out on Twilight and Luna the way I had – thankfully the beer was doing its work on that front.
I got out of the car and polished off my last silver bullet, crunching up the empty with a belch and tossing it into the backseat. I needed to vacuum the carpet anyway. It was something to do for the weekend.
It was still dark, but it wouldn’t be for much longer. The stars, normally fighting to outshine the light pollution from the city, were already gone, leaving the sky clean and unblemished except for the waning glow of the moon and the pale brushstrokes of city lights painting the horizon. It was the stillest time of the night, that magic hour between darkness and dawn where the night was ready to retire and just waiting out the clock – too late for partying and too early for jogging.
It was nice out. So nice that I could almost forget all the stuff that had happened over the last few days.
Almost.
I sat on the hood and took a few minutes to collect myself, staring up at the sky and enjoying the feel of cold air against my sweaty skin. I always got the liquor-sweats when I drank.
Luna and Celestia’s cars were still in the driveway. Celestia must have moved her car since I’d last been in, because they were parked side-by-side, so I couldn’t even squeeze my way into the garage if I’d wanted to. On a normal day I’d be mad about that, but I just couldn’t summon the energy for it. There was a metaphor in there, but I wasn’t in a state of mind to puzzle it out.
When I was finally ready to go in, I walked the dozen or so feet up to my porch with heavy steps, my boots practically dragging. I was filthy, covered in drying sweat, flecks of mud, and whatever crypt dust had been inside that farmhouse. I’d caught a little glimpse of my reflection in the glass doors of the gas station earlier, and I knew I looked like I’d just gotten off my first shift as a gravedigger.
I didn’t want to drag any of that mess inside, so I stripped down to my skivvies under the cheery glow of the porchlight. My shirt was probably a write-off at this point. I’d caught it on a nail or something – probably when I’d dove head-first through the door of the house – and there was a rather sizeable tear in it. I used it to clean myself up as best I could, paying extra special care to my jacket, because I’d be damned if I was going to throw it away. Once I was finished, I left the dirty thing on the porch next to my boots. I could get it later, toss it in the grease-rag drawer in the garage, and maybe get an old toothbrush to scrub out whatever necromantic gunk was stuck in my boot treads. I could maybe save the jeans, but I’d have to wait to get a look at them in daylight before I made that call.
I unlocked the door and poked my head in, squinting into the darkness and half expecting to find the silhouette of a woman – or a child – waiting for me. Like in the movies where the raunchy teen protagonist sneaks back in after a night out with his crew of perverted ne’er-do-wells, and just as he’s tip-toeing up the stairs, click, and dad’s sitting in the living room wearing a disappointed frown.
No one was waiting. I was relieved about that, but also kind of disappointed.
I closed the door and went to the living room. As badly as I wanted to lay in my own bed, I didn’t want to wake up Luna and Twilight, who I knew had both taken it upon themselves to claim spots in my most private of spaces – more symbolism, I guess.
The lights came on with a flick of my fingers. The place looked cleaner than I remembered. All the shelves were dusted, the crooked pictures of other people’s families were all straightened, and the lines in the carpet told me someone had pulled the vacuum out of the hall closet. There was even a basket of neatly folded laundry tucked away under the coffee table.
I wanted another drink – something harder than the canned urine that had gotten me this far – so I threw my leather jacket over the back of the couch and went to the liquor cabinet. I magicked it open, because remembering what I did with the key seemed like way more work than I was willing to invest.
I grabbed a bottle of what looked like tequila, judging from the color and from the post-it note labeled with a frowny face wearing a sombrero. It was a bit under half empty, but that was fine. I only needed enough liquor to get me to the couch. I twisted off the plastic-bejeweled cork and flicked it across the room, far enough that I’d be able to convince myself that it would be easier to just finish the bottle than to go looking for the stopper.
Tequila is a sour, hateful thing. You can cut it with margarita mix, but taking it straight out of the bottle isn’t a drink for good times. It’s poison that you drink because there’s something dark inside of yourself that needs killing.
I took a long drink. It burned the whole way down, and the fumes lingering in my sinuses as I let out a sigh brought tears to my eyes. It was awful and I went back for another pull immediately.
The couch was looking mighty inviting, so I ambled over and sunk into the cushions, kicking up my feet and peeling off my filthy socks with my toes. The harsh liquor wasn’t doing my headache any favors, but I was betting I could outpace the pain and drink hard enough to slip into a nice rejuvenating unconsciousness. Sure, I’d probably wake up with a headache, but it’d be a different headache and that’d be tomorrow-Sunset’s problem. I could live with that.
The fuzzy warmth of liquor in my gut was working its magic, pulling my consciousness into the cold veil of sleep, but that sleep never had the chance to come. As I was drifting off, what I had assumed had been the sound of the house creaking turned out to be someone coming down the stairs.
“You’re back… and you’re naked.”
I blinked, rubbing my eyes with the hand that wasn’t clutching the bottle to my side like a sleepy otter holding a precious clam.
Celestia was standing a few feet away, her head turned to the side to shyly look away from my state of undress. She was being awfully bashful for a woman in a satin gown that barely covered her goodies. If it hadn’t been Celestia, I might’ve really appreciated the way the nightgown showed off her legs.
Seeing her there was oddly unmoving. A little twinge of something tart tried to stir in me, like an ancient beast deep beneath the waves lifting its head to peek at a passing ship before lying back down. It was a deeply-seated annoyance, but nothing more severe than annoyance. Any capacity for anger I felt towards this woman for having dug her fingers into my emotional wounds had already been spent on violence and tears.
“What?” I asked, sounding only slightly bitter. “Never seen a mostly-naked woman before? I guess you do strike me as the kind that never looks at herself in the mirror until she’s got all her clothes on.”
“I just don’t think it’s appropriate considering whatever it is you’ve been doing with my sister,” she said as she held up a hand to further block her vision. “It’s weird.”
“Whatever,” I muttered as I hooked the basket under the coffee table with my foot and pulled it out.
I grabbed the shirt off the top, and I didn’t realize until I’d unfolded it that it wasn’t one of mine. It was a few sizes too small, and it was that super thin, stretchy cotton blend that women’s blouses were always made out of. I avoided buying those when I could. They felt nice, but they tore way too easily for my tastes.
“This isn’t mine,” I muttered.
“Some of Luna’s clothes are in there,” Celestia said, having overheard me. “She had a gym bag in her trunk and she figured you wouldn’t mind her throwing some of her stuff in.”
I shrugged and put the shirt on the table to rifle through the stack until I found one of mine in the middle of the pile. It was hardly pajama-worthy, but it covered my butt as long as I didn’t lift my arms, so it’d have to do. I gave it a compulsory sniff, and noted with surprise that it wasn’t my usual brand of soap. Luna must’ve gone out for soap, or more likely, sent Celestia out.
It occurred to me as I was pulling the shirt on that no one had ever done laundry for me before. Sure, I’d had clothes done by room service, and nice dresses or coats done by dry cleaners, but no one had ever just done an honest-to-god load of laundry for me. It was an odd touch of domesticity that I’d never felt before, and while it wasn’t unpleasant, I wasn’t actually sure how I felt about it.
“You can look now,” I said as I pushed the basket, and the curious thoughts it brought me, back under the table.
Celestia frowned, clearly dissatisfied with the effort to cover up, but she seemed to accept that it was the best she was going to get.
“Thank you,” she said. She walked over, stared for a pregnant moment at the empty side of the couch, and then decided to have a seat at the edge of the coffee table. I was thankful for that little bit of respectful distance. Both of us sitting on the couch was too intimate, like we were friends, or something. “I know the look of someone who’s been drinking all night. You didn’t drive home like this, did you?”
“Don’t like it?” I said as I grabbed the bottle for another swig. “Call the cops on me. It hasn’t been a great day, so I’d actually really appreciate it if you just left me the hell alone.”
“You’re upset,” Celestia said, stating the obvious. “You have that right, I suppose.”
I scoffed. “Oh, do I? Do I really have your permission to have feelings? That’s so benevolent and not at all bitchy of you.”
She frowned, not at me, I could tell, but just at the situation. I couldn’t see anything that looked like contempt or annoyance or… or anything but pity in her look. I hated that look. The other Celestia got like that, too, when you shouted at her. She almost invariably responded to aggression with that damned piteous look, like you were beneath her anger and that it was sad that you thought otherwise.
That was an understandable, if frustrating, habit in a multi-millennia-old Mistress of the Solar Arcane. In a snooty human woman who was barely flirting with the idea of thirty? It felt a little less earned.
“I couldn’t sleep and I heard you moving around,” she explained. “I didn’t come down to argue with you, I just want to talk.”
“Arguing is a kind of talking,” I said bluntly. “Let’s not take it off the table.”
Celestia folded her hands in her lap and took a deep breath. “I am… trying very hard…” she said, letting the words slip out of her with a long sigh. “I am just trying to keep myself together. You can’t imagine what the last week had been like for me.”
“Oh, can’t I?” I asked.
Celestia’s staid veneer of calm cracked just enough that I could see her chagrin at my reply peeking through.
“Okay, maybe you can,” she admitted. She wrung her hands in worry, the wind seemingly taken out of her sail for the moment. “I came down here, all ready to talk, but now I don’t even know what to say. I barely even remember what I actually thought this would accomplish.”
I clucked my tongue in annoyance as I realized she wasn’t going to go anywhere.
“You probably wanted to feel like you were doing something,” I said, offering my view of the matter in the hopes that it’d get her talking and out of my hair quicker. “Something other than nothing. That’s kind of why I left. I couldn’t take sitting around being miserable in my attic.”
“Twilight was very sad when you took off, you know… She thought she might’ve done something to upset you when she went up to talk to you in the attic.”
Great. On top of everything, now I was feeling guilty about making the kid feel bad.
“Wasn’t about her,” I said, looking away shamefully.
“I know, but she’s a little girl,” Celestia said. “She’s intuitive, and bright, and so precocious, but she’s… she’s just a little girl…”
It seemed like a crack was all it took to break the mask. Celestia let out a little sob, but she caught herself and reined in her emotions just short of breaking down into a crying mess. She sniffled wetly and dabbed at her eyes before continuing.
“I want to help her so badly, but it’s like there’s a wall between us. Luna’s the only one she’s letting get close, and I’m pretty sure that’s only because of you. I tried to calm her down and tell her that it wasn’t her fault that you left the way you did. You know what she did? She looked me in the eyes and told me that I was right, that it wasn’t her fault, it was mine.” Celestia laughed dryly. “She said she hated me… I swear, I thought I was going to die right there, my heart hurt so bad.”
Mad as I was at Celestia, my heart went out to her for just that moment. I could tell how much she cared about the kid, and to hear something like that from her? Couldn’t have felt good at all.
Celestia jumped as I tapped her on the arm with the bottle of tequila. She looked at it like she didn’t know what it was, but her wits came to her quickly and she accepted the bottle, drinking deeply from its bitter comfort.
“What do they see in you?” Celestia said, the hard liquor and the hard feelings making the words come out in a croak. “Every third word out of Twilight’s mouth is your name, and Luna’s been doodling little hearts with your name in them in the margins of Twilight’s coloring books.” She took another drink, throwing back her head and groaning. “I bet you didn’t know Luna could draw. She can. Paints, too. You probably didn’t know that, either. She says you’ve only known each other for a few days. That's not enough time for you to learn anything about her, but she’s going around cleaning your house, borrowing your clothes, talking like she’s in love with you.”
“I’m extremely cute,” I said, disarming Celestia’s rant with my trademark roguish wit.
Celestia snorted mid-drink. She doubled over, coughing into her knees and banging the bottle on the table as she clutched at her own throat.
“I admit,” she said with a huff of throaty laughter that was as dry as kindling, “you are funny. Honestly, there’s a lot to like about you.”
“Except for all the magic stuff,” I said. The bottle of tequila flew out of Celestia’s hand and into mine. The look of surprise on her face at my sudden application of magic filled me with a very petty sense of glee. “Me being a freak and all.”
“I never said that,” Celestia said quietly. “I never said the word ‘freak’.”
“You were thinking it, though,” I said, a sloppy, drunken grin finding its way to my face. I was actually kind of enjoying this. “And Twilight said you were talking bad about me to her.”
“Never,” she quickly denied. “Never to Twilight. Whatever you may think my personal feelings about you are, I wouldn’t use her against you like that, I promise you. She only overheard me talking to Luna, and I didn’t say anything to her that I didn’t say to your face.”
I hummed around a mouthful of tequila. “I suppose that makes it okay, then.”
“What do you want me to say here?” she asked with a long, drawn out sigh. “You want me to apologize? I can do that if it will make you feel better. Just tell me which of the things I said to you felt unfair.”
“Everything you said was true enough,” I admitted, shrugging weakly. “I am dangerous to be around, and Luna certainly is too good for me. I wouldn’t argue either of those.”
“Then why the hostility?”
I snorted, laughing at the very absurdity of the question. “You told me to piss off, and you’ve got the nerve to ask why I didn’t like it? The nerve of you, I swear.”
I didn’t even know what I was arguing about anymore. I was pissed off and tired, and just being near Celestia was wringing a lot of deeply-seated nastiness that I was way too tired to express as vociferously as I would’ve liked. Maybe I just wanted to argue for the sake of arguing. It wasn’t productive, and it certainly didn’t make me feel any better, but it was preferable to thinking about… everything else.
Celestia sat there on the table, puffing herself up, bird-like. If she’d had wings, I could imagine her slowly extending them, spreading out her feathers and trying to make herself look bigger, like a magpie trying to scare off a badger. Whatever she was chewing on must’ve gone down bad, because the sourest look came over her as she got up and smoothly transitioned to the couch. Luna may have been the runner, but the way Celestia swung her hips with unsettling sultriness made me think she was the dancer in their family.
I waited for her to say something, and maybe she was waiting for the same. Neither of us could find words, though, so we settled for trading silence, which was far more comfortable. We sat, sharing the couch and the bottle, not like friends comforting one another, but more like strangers at a bar finding camaraderie in our misery.
Whatever had caused that sour look on Celestia’s face must have lost its bitterness with the drink. Luna had said that her sister was a fellow retired party-girl, and judging from how comfortable Celestia looked with a bottle in her hand, I could tell she wasn’t lying. Celestia definitely wasn’t a stranger to drowning any worries that were too heavy to swim.
“Luna told me you didn’t have any family growing up,” she said, smacking her lips as she finished off the last drop in the bottle. “That must’ve been hard.”
I looked away, feeling annoyed and mildly betrayed. It wasn’t a huge secret, but it wasn’t something I wanted shouted from the rooftops, either.
“She shouldn’t have told you that.”
Celestia set the empty bottle on the table, her finger dancing over the lip. “She didn’t mean to,” she explained, “but I was pressing her buttons and it slipped out. I think she was trying to get me to... I don’t know, be more sympathetic to you.”
“I don’t need your goddamn sympathy, or pity, or whatever else,” I said, half growling the words as that slumbering annoyance stirred in my chest. My past was mine alone, and what I shared of it with Luna wasn’t hers to share with anyone else.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Celestia said. She handed back the bottle, clucking her tongue in frustration. “Why are you making this so difficult?”
“Because I can.”
Celestia threw herself against the couch and groaned at the ceiling. She took a minute or two to sit, staring at the ceiling with that ugly, sour look on her face again. I just let her mull over whatever was going on in that overripe melon of hers. The more she thought, the less she said, and that was fine by me.
“Look, I know you care about Twilight and Luna,” she said as she sat up straight and fixed me with a serious look. “I know it because there’s no way they would care so much about you if you didn’t feel the same way back…” She took a deep breath. “So I’ll give you a chance. Convince me that I’m wrong about you. Tell me that this kind of thing will never happen again, that in five, ten, twenty, thirty years down the line, some other evil wizard won’t show up on your doorstep looking for a fight. I need you to tell me that you can protect them from all of that. Convince me that you’re good enough for them.”
“Fuck you.”
Celestia reared back, blinking in surprise like she’d just been slapped on the street by some random passerby. It was understandable. In her twisted little brain, she probably thought she was doing me a favor.
I knew enough about this Celestia to know that she was the kind of person that only felt safe when she was in control. This situation couldn’t have been easy for her, being so helpless to protect the other two girls in the house, and a small part of me could sympathize with that – I cared about those girls, too, after all. The way I figured it, this test, or ultimatum, or whatever it was, boiled down to nothing more offensive than one poor woman desperately trying to hold herself together as everything around her was falling apart.
All the same, to hell with her.
I absolutely, totally, completely did not give a single good goddamn about what she felt right now. All I knew was that I was furious that she’d dare to try and test me like that. That she would even ask felt too much like she was trying to put me under thumb, like I was some vassal that had to petition her for permission to see the girls.
I don’t like power plays, especially not when they’re against me. Call it my rebellious nature, or just plain obstinance, but I hated being told what to do. Even Fiddler had only ever outright ordered me to do something once, and that had been the end of our arrangement.
If I wasn’t going to take that kind of treatment from an ageless demon who held the pink slip on my soul, I sure wasn’t about to take it from the doppleganger of the Celestia I’d left my home world to get away from.
“Excuse me?” Celestia asked, still dumbstruck.
“You heard me,” I said as I got up off the couch with slow, deliberate movements. “Fuck you.”
I grabbed up the empty bottle off the table and threw it against the wall. It didn’t shatter dramatically like in the movies, but it did put a nice hole in the drywall.
“Do you even hear yourself? Convince you? Who are you?” I kicked the table, sending it skidding across the carpet. My weariness was washed away in a surge of anger, and the headache I’d been feeling all night was back and pounding so hard I could hear the blood rushing through my ears as a roar. “You know what, don’t answer that. I’m a good enough judge of character that I know your type by the smell. You’re the kind of person who has so little going on for herself that she defines her self-worth by her usefulness to others. ‘Everyone loves Celestia!’, ‘Celestia will always help you with your problems!’, ‘What a nice person Celestia is!’
“But you and I both know that it’s all bullshit. The truth is that you get off on people coming to you with their problems, because it makes you feel important. Heaven forbid someone you’ve wrapped around your fingers ever turns to someone else when things go bad. And when you get right down to it, that’s the real reason you want them out of my house. You can’t stand that Twilight and Luna are relying on me instead of you, and the fact that you can’t help must feel like a great big limp dick in your hand.”
Celestia stared, her jaw hanging in obvious shock as she tried to understand what had just happened. Then, like someone had flipped a switch, her brain caught up with the rest of her.
“What’d you just say to me?” she asked as she shot to her feet. She was angry. Angrier than I would’ve believed possible from such an uptight woman. “What gives you the right to talk to me like that?”
“Well look at that,” I said, feeling a sly little thrill go through me at having finally shaken her. “The bitch does have emotions other than a sense of smug superiority. It’s almost like there was an actual human being underneath all that self righteousness.”
“So I’m a bitch because I don’t want you around the people I love?” Celestia said, her face coming over all flush with anger. She pointed angrily at the ceiling, in the general direction of my bedroom. “I care more about those girls than you ever will. You don’t know anything about me, and you don’t know anything about them. Growing up, nobody gave a damn about me and Luna. We had our parents, but we were just expenses to them, something that required hiring extra help to care for, like the garden or the summer house. I raised Luna – me, I did it. Even when I was pissing away my life on parties and men, when I barely even cared about myself, I still made time for her so she wouldn’t have to be alone, so that she would still have a big sister.
“Night Light taught me what it was like to care about people other than myself and my sister. He was more than a mentor, he was my best friend. His family accepted me, treated me like their own, but all that’s gone now, because of you and your stupid magic, and that’s what’s bullshit! All that’s left of that is Twilight, and nobody’s going to put her in danger, not you, not me, not anybody! I am not going to let you take her, or my sister, away from me!”
Celestia stood there, panting in the wake of her furious tirade. I was still angry, but it wasn’t my usual brand of red-hot anger. It was something colder. I just stared back, waiting for something to break the stalemate.
That ‘something’ came in the form of a quiet thud – a little whumpf of something soft hitting the ground just within earshot. Celestia and I turned to find Luna and Twilight standing in the hallway, holding hands and looking in at us in stunned silence. The source of the noise turned out to be one of my pillows, which lay on the floor next to Twilight. She must’ve brought it downstairs, holding it under her arm like a stuffed animal.
The silence held, seemingly without end in sight. Celestia was frozen, and with the angry flush gone from her cheeks she looked almost as pale as Luna.
“You know what?” I asked, cutting through the seemingly interminable silence and startling everyone in the room. “I’m sick of all this drama. I don’t need this stress in my life.” I pointed at Twilight and gestured towards the stairs. “Kid, go upstairs and grab your stuff. Celestia and Luna are taking you to their house.”
Luna let go of Twilight’s hand and pulled her protectively to her side. “What are you talking about? You said she can’t leave the house.”
“Things change,” I said as I turned and walked to the liquor cabinet, knowing that every pair of eyes was on me. “The guy that made that storm isn’t a problem anymore. I took care of it today.”
I grabbed the first bottle I saw and pulled out the cork. It wasn’t as bitter as the tequila, but spiced rum burned just as nicely.
“You found him?” Celestia asked.
“Knew a guy, who knew a guy, who knew a guy,” I said, repeating the words Caballeron had said to me earlier that night. “Still dunno what his deal was. All I know was that he was nuts and he pissed me off, so now he’s gone. So… so whatever. Go get your stuff, kid. Get it and get out of my house.”
“No,” came the immediate response, not from either of the adults, but from Twilight herself.
I lowered the bottle mid-drink and slowly turned to look at Twilight. “No?” I repeated. “Don’t you remember what I said the other day? It’s not your choice. You do what you’re told, kid, so you go get your toothbrush and your change of clothes and—”
“Stop that,” Twilight said with a frustrated tremble in her voice. She stepped away from Luna’s side, slapping away the older girl’s hand when Luna tried to pull her back, and took a few impressively confident strides forward. “Stop calling me ‘kid’. You say my name to Luna, why can’t you say it to me?”
“Because I didn’t want to get attached, okay!?” I shouted as I pointed my index finger right in her face, the bottle of rum sloshing in my shaking hand. “I told you from the start that this was temporary. I make the monsters go away, then you could crash here long enough for me to find you a home, and then you go away. Well guess what? That time is now. Celestia wants you and I don’t, so hip-hip-hooray, everyone gets what they want.”
Twilight stood there as I, an adult that she admired, shouted right in her face. I could tell she was scared, any kid would be, but she didn’t show it in her face. I’d seen a lot of myself in Twilight since I’d met her, and it seemed like I was finally getting to see the part of her that matched my stubbornness. It was buried deep down, I could tell that with a look, but hard-living scratches away the veneer of a person, shows what they are down in the bones. Twilight had done a lot of hard-living in a very short period of time. She was looking a little more like me every day.
All the more reason to get her out of my house as fast as I could.
“I don’t believe you,” she said.
“God damnit!”
I spun on my heels and spiked the bottle of rum straight down. It bounced, spinning and splashing alcohol everywhere, but I didn’t pay it any mind. I needed to break something, and the nearest thing to me was my liquor cabinet. I grabbed it and tugged, throwing it over hard enough to – finally – break a few of the bottles inside.
“What do you want from me, huh!?” I demanded.
“I want you to admit that you want me here!” Twilight shouted. “I can tell you hate being alone, too! Why can’t you just say you want me to stay!?”
“Don’t pretend you know what I want! Do you really want to know what I wanted? I wanted to do a quick favor for a guy that stepped onto my porch with an interesting problem. He had some magic on him that I’d never seen, and it piqued my curiosity, so yeah, I stuck out my neck. And wouldn’t you goddamn know it? He gets dead and I get stuck with his kid and this guilt and all this shit that I never asked for!”
Celestia stepped forward, puffed up again, like an indignant mother hen. “That’s enough, Sunset Shimmer.”
I jerked my head and Celestia’s feet followed. It was just a little push against her ankles, enough to trip her, and another push to knock her backwards and onto the couch. The amount of force I used would barely qualify as roughhousing, but that I’d used magic on her at all was enough to put the fear of the gods in her eyes.
“I’ll tell you when it’s enough,” I said.
I held that gaze, like I could push all that bluster and confidence back down inside her with just a hard glare. And it worked. It worked on everyone.
For the first time I could see a little bit of fear in Luna’s eyes. It wasn’t a lot of magic, but that it had come so quickly and so easily, and that it had been against her sister, had probably given her the first naked look at what she’d been trying to get close to all this time. Like those people who play with big cats, or bears, and then end up getting mauled or eaten. Unpredictability – it’s something wizards and wild animals had in common.
Twilight wasn’t scared, though. There was surprise there, like what you’d get if someone jumped out from around a corner and shouted boo, but she wasn’t scared.
No… no, what I saw from Twilight was just disappointment. Or maybe pity. Yeah, it was pity, and she definitely wore that look better than Celestia had.
I needed to sit down. The coffee table was too far and the couch was even further, so I let myself collapse onto the overturned liquor cabinet behind me. Something inside – other than the bottles that had fallen victim to my tantrum – had broken, and the whole cabinet creaked before finally accepting my weight.
“I’m so tired of feeling like this…” I said, sotto voce.
I had to get rid of them. My life before Night Light had bumbled into it hadn’t been glamorous, or exciting, or even fulfilling, but it had been my life. It had been comfortable, simpler, and I needed to get that simplicity back or I was going to lose my mind.
It didn’t help that the thing in my chest was burning again. I don’t know why it did that, but it seemed to be doing it a lot lately.
“The guy who killed Twilight’s family was named Ahuizotl,” I explained, deciding to just lay the cards out for them. “He was some bigshot from the Aztec days. And no, I don’t know why he wanted them, so don’t ask. I’ll spare you the gory details, but he ain’t coming back, not after what I did to him. The kid’s free to go.”
I buried my face in my hands, six-feet deep.
“Now that you know what happened, I want everyone to get out of my house. Nothing is keeping you here anymore, so take whatever closure you can fit in your pockets and don’t come back. I’m sick of looking at you all.”
There was silence for a while. A heavy kind of ‘nothing’ where all you could hear was the sound of heavy breathing plucking at the tension in the air like the strings on a violin.
And then there was movement. Soft, at first. Just the plodding of tiny little feet that told me it was Twilight. She was walking towards me, and I wasn’t sure what she would do, or what I would do, but I was too scared to move. I was too scared to even look up at her.
She got close enough that I could sense her. Not with any kind of magical senses or anything like that. It was the warm, tingly feeling you got when you knew someone was looking at you from across the room. That prickle of body heat and attention that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end.
“I told you to leave,” I said, my voice trembling. “I’m not your fuckin’ mommy.”
I knew it was a low blow, and I said it anyway. Sometimes you gotta shoot Old Yeller.
I expected shouts, or outraged gasps, or something, anything. Sobbing, cursing, maybe a hastily exclaimed, “I hate you!”
But there was just more nothing. She didn’t make so much as a peep, but I knew I had broken her heart. I could sense it in the air, in that same prickly sensation on my skin that told me she was near. That a heart could break so quietly was a revelation I would’ve happily died never having known.
Someone, Luna or maybe her sister, walked up and grabbed Twilight. I could hear the sound of Twilight’s socks dragging across the carpet as she was pulled away. They took her into the hallway and said something to her that was just a buzz in my ears.
Then the quiet was back. Not another word, not another sound of significance except for halting footsteps going up the creaking stairs. The closet door in the spare room opened and closed with a timid thud as the two sisters helped Twilight gather what few things she would be taking with her.
I listened the whole while. The crinkle of the plastic shopping bags as they came down the stairs, and the hushed whispers of an argument, were things outside my small bubble of self-loathing. I didn’t even look up when I heard the front door open.
The door closed, and I was alone.
I heard a pair of engines start up outside. Luna and Celestia drove affordable foreign mid-range heaps with quiet engines, so I had to strain to pick up the sound of them puttering away.
The guilt of what I’d just done was already gnawing at me, but I knew it had to be. I’m not all that in-touch with my feelings, and I’d taken more than my fill of an emotional beating over the last few days. I needed some space, some time, some sleep, and a lot more drink.
I got up and flipped the liquor cabinet with my magic, sifting through the glass to find an unbroken bottle. It didn't matter what it was, just that it was close to full and wouldn't cut me when I tried to drink out of it. I found one easy enough and dropped the cabinet unceremoniously. I'd clean the mess later. Liquor stains were a pain if you didn't have magic, but I did, so whatever.
The bottle felt good in my hand. Slick and cool, and the weight of the liquor sloshing around in the glass was comforting, like the swing of an old rocking chair. The bottle was coming with me to bed, so I wouldn’t have to sleep alone.
As I walked into the hallway, I noticed something on the table next to the front door. Twilight hadn’t taken everything. She’d left behind one thing – the picture of her family. It was the same one I’d grabbed on the way out of her burning house, and later hung in the room she’d tried to claim as her own.
A dark, ugly urge to smash that picture welled up inside me. I felt like she was taunting me.
“This could’ve been you,” the picture said to me.
I reached out with my magic, taking hold of the frame. I could lift a bus over my head with my magic if I was amped up enough for it… but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to pick up one stupid family photo.
I let go of the magic as I tightened my grip on the neck of the bottle, as if I could choke a taste of southern comfort from it by force. The quiet followed me upstairs and into bed.
The sheets smelled like Twilight and Luna.
* * *
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Oh, wow, I was just reading this the other day and was disappointed that it's seemingly dead, and then a new chapter comes out. Great, and I was worried no one was updating their stories today.
On the actual chapter though, that's some heavy stuff right there. I suppose the true reason Sunset's acting like that to Celestia is because she's the counterpart to Princess Celestia?
On that topic, I wonder when Sunset's going to drop the bomb with Equestria and all that, if at all.
I'm so glad to see this story back. It and your Twiguard stories are some of my favorites on the site.
But AGH, why you have to leave us on THAT note?! The A N G S T is so thick you could drown in it!
The feels... they burn
How do you write raw emotions so perfectly? I demand to know.
Thank you for the chapter.
You know a chapter's gonna be a rough ride when it starts with the protagonist drinking a six pack while driving after midnight. That'd get me crocked, let alone a woman who's gotta be at best 2/3rds my weight.
How big is Sunset, anyways? Way she's drinking, one hopes for Amazonian stature, or else she's cruising for a bout with alcohol poisoning.
Aaaaaaand exhale. Whew.
Broken people breaking people.
You haven't missed a beat, King.
This scene goes on exactly as long as it needed to, and cuts off right when I'm wondering what could possibly happen next. It's perfect.
Just look at this a couple days ago and thought "gosh it's too bad that died, it was really good."
Hope this means we'll get another update before, uh... March.
This one hits low.. but its raw and so very apt..
The following chapter was brought to by Sadness and Depression. When you just can't deal, knock back a bottle... or two, okay maybe three
Wow, that was a rough chapter. "Shot through the heart" indeed. Glad to see this story update, though.
Oh wow, this story was wow. This is probably one of my all time favorites now and easily deserves a 👍 a 🌮 and a
Love this story and can't wait to see more of it.
Almost a year from your last update and you sir don't dissapoint one bit... Quality cant be rushed and this goes the same for all the chapters.
Great chapter! The emotions swirls around and hits me hard!
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Cant rush quality stories especially each chapter is just freaking great!
My sincere hope is to find out what happens next, because I know this mess with Ahuizotl is not over, but only beginning.
I feel it!
That went to hell pretty fast.
I can't help but think that this Celestia is short sighted. If evil wizard is spending all that juju to find Twilight, even if the mortal practitioner is dead, what's to stop another disciple of the storm god from continuing the search? What's she going to do against magic? Will read it again and comment more.
Holy fuck, that had been building for fucking ever and what a goddamn pay off. I knew that she was going to bust on Celestia, and was hoping she'd put the true fear of magic into her, especially considering she slew a disciple of a God, but shit. You can bet your ass that my heart ached when Twilight came downstairs. Oof to the max. I cannot wait for more, it's killing me.
Amazing.
Man, that hurt. For a second I was hopeful that Twilight would manage to lance the boil, but but I reckon there’s still a fair bit of festering in poor Sunny’s immediate future.
Just binged this this week and was super excited to see an update. Love the relationships between these characters. Can't wait to see what happens next.
Brutal
Sunset being drunk or on her way to it didn’t help the end of that conversation, but it certainly lubricated the gears. One thing she makes clear is that she isn’t a parental fogure. She’s the monster you hire to fight other monsters, or at least that’s how she sees herself.
Going off of what I’ve felt from your style so far, this isn’t over. Sunset needs Twilight as much as Twilight needs her, both for emotional stability and likely magical combat backup. She is young. She could be trained. Under Sunset, trained in the right way, without the devil’s bargain Sunset had to make.
The next chapter starts the healing. And prefaces the next disaster in progress.
I am gods damned excited
I always look forward to these updates, really makes my day. Can't wait for more.
Definitely excited.
I love how well you write. The adrenaline rush and crash, the numbing to avoid dealing with it all. The the attempt at control with Celestia but exhaustion and adrenaline crash quickly wear down that resistance. The outbursts, the self isolating defense mechanism. It's a beautiful display of the how a person under such extreme stresses panics and retreats into what they know. And all of it is so well in their character.
Best story returns!!
Damn I love this story.
Oh hell yes. I missed you King.
Arguing with Celestia after tequila... yeah, no way that was going to end well, although there was a part of me that was concerned it might end with some Shimmy-Celestia smoochies of the drunken kind.
I'll be a bit surprised if Sunset actually thinks that this is in any way over. The signs are all there that it obviously is not, and Twilight is an important piece in the puzzle. Ahuizotl may have been a Boss Battle, but he's just one more cog in the machinations of the Big Bad, probably not even Dragon level. He failed, and someone else will be coming for Twilight...
Oh nice, a bunch of my old favorites that haven't updated for a long time apparently decided June and July were the time to do it.
Excited? I'm ecstatic! This is one of my favorite fics ever! Take all the time you need, I'll always be happy for an update (even if it takes years).
Had to reread last chapter to get back in but damn do I still love this story
Overdraft.
I just binged the whole thing and man am I excited
Damn, I missed this!
It's good to see Sunset still hasn’t learnt how to cope with her emotions or her problems in a remotely healthy way. That being said, while a lot of that is on her, not all of it is. Celestia was certainly a little in the wrong. Pushing someone who is clearly a little unstable at that moment is never a good idea...
Thanks for the update! Hope another one comes soon!!
Rereading this and wow...all the feels. A headache is the least of tomorrow-Sunset's problems.
I love love love this! I hope you continue :)
Equestria Girls and urban fantasy are two things I've never been able to get into, but I devoured this in hours. The angle you've taken on Sunset's personality is really exciting, and I love how well the mystery plot has intertwined with the character relationships so far. I can't wait to read more.
I need more of this in my life
It gives a vibe almost like the Dresden Files, but a bit different and also ponies. So please post more soon.
No update in over a year...
Damn.
Man, I read this on the bus the past couple days and just finished. Sunset's headspace was super relatable to me. If it weren't for Sunset I would say I liked it for most of the same things I liked about Dresden Files (I'm sure you get that a lot), except with a lot of Dresden's obnoxious bits filed off. If it weren't for Sunset I would remark on the good pacing and how much I liked the internal narrative of the action scenes.
However, Sunset was so relatable that she came to life as a protagonist and I've been rooting so hard for her to defeat the necromancer and maybe have a brighter future gradually learning how to have friends, dependents or significant others (maybe taking care of Twilight would be too much of an ask, but still). She's beaten the necromancer but the road to future happiness has taken a sudden turn...
Celestia's little speech in the diner hit hard because I understood how hard it dug into exactly Sunset's least-well-patched-over wounds. I felt mad at Celestia, but tempered by the understanding that Sunset is a bit of a fragile creature that way, who's deliberately avoided exposing herself to that kind of hurt, and the actual hurt inflicted was way out of proportion to the (somewhat) unthinking bitchiness of the speech. Though it was quite bitchy and Celestia should have known better (though I understand she wasn't in the most rational frame of mind).
Anyway, should you happen to update this again, I'll be waiting. Thanks for all you've done!
I loved the story, I couldn't stop reading it. I hope someday continue!
Wow, I... I actually cried. Don't remember the last time when a movie or a book made me cry. This story is amazing- characters, world building, theme, situations and Sunset internal struggle. Trully amazing.
I've had conversations like this. This was brutally accurate.
9077572
We seriously need a sequel, Sunset teaching Twilight magic would be so good.