Losing Sunlight

by MarvelandPonder

Chapter 6 - House of the Rising Star

Twilight rushed through the library, pulling book after book with her. Sunset raced after her. “What are you looking for? We’ve tested her for every illness, malady, and syndrome in the book. There’s nothing left we can do.”

Twilight took the textbooks back over to what was by now their regular table. The pile of books flew in after, landing around her like a flock of birds. “Sunset, we’ve been thinking about this all wrong. All those doctors couldn’t find a single diagnosis, all we were doing was double-checking their work.”

Sunset came up the table and shook her head. “Well, what else were we supposed to do, just let her die?”

“That’s not what I meant,” she said, voice pressing for something. She had about twelve books open in front of her, her own eyes dodging back and forth with an agility Twilight herself could never dream of having. “Discord came to visit Celestia. He tried to heal her even though healing magic isn’t his forte. It didn’t work, not even a little. I couldn’t explain it. Discord’s one of the most powerful magic users there is. I was getting inconsolable until I started thinking about it.

“How could anything be too much for Discord to just snap better? I’ve seen him bend reality a hundred different ways without breaking so much as a sweat! There had to be something at work, something powerful. Or just powerfully resistant.” She managed to stop her reading long enough to look Sunset in the eyes. “It’s not biological, it’s magical.”

Sunset sighed, too tired for this. “Magical sicknesses were the first thing we tried, Twi.”

“Which was exactly the problem!” Apparently the Twilight she knew had taken a vacation because Sunset couldn’t imagine her shouting in a library if her life counted on it. “Celestia’s not sick. It has to be some spell mimicking sickness or-or maybe even some kind of new magic.”

“You mean—” Sunset came around and sat at her end of the table and spoke in a hush. “You’re talking treason. You’re telling me somepony cast this on her? What kind of powerful unicorn would do that? Who would even have it out for her? Even I didn’t hate her that much—and I hated her.”

Twilight matched Sunset’s volume. “I know, I know, but that’s why we didn’t think of it. It’s inconceivable to rational ponies to do something like this to the Princess—but it makes sense. Why else would she come down with something this bad this suddenly?”

She slammed the Curious Curse Compendium between them. Sunset stared at it, eyes ballooning.

“It’s a curse!” they said together. Luckily, the library wasn’t busy that day, and that they had special privileges here. With Twilight being a Princess, the royal library was as good as hers.

Sunset took the book in her magic and fled through the pages. “You think there’s really a curse powerful enough to do this?”

“I’ve seen curses powerful enough to make an empire disappear for a thousand years. Well, I guess that wording’s a little contradictory, but the point is, this could actually be what’s wrong with her.”

Sunset cracked it open and flipped to the back—the most potent stuff. It took a few minutes, and Twilight came up beside her to speed-read the other half of the page-spread until Twilight stabbed the page. “There! There!” She tapped Sunset’s shoulder and read aloud, “Little Drop of Poison. It’s a curse that shuts down the body’s functions one by one until the victim’s inevitable demise. 'Can be combined with Lock and Key to hide symptoms!'”

“That’s it!” Sunset shook Twilight’s shoulder.

“That’s it!” she shouted, tackling Sunset in a hug. “Oh, Celestia! We did it!”

“Wait,” Sunset grabbed the book in her hooves. “What’s the cure? It doesn’t list the cure.”

“It’s okay,” Twilight said, beaming, lowering the book. “I have a Zebra friend who’s a very powerful shaman, we can write to her and get the answer as fast as the Royal Mail-pony can bring it!” She laughed. “We can use the urgent mail system.”

Twilight teleported a scroll in from her bedroom and went to work penning a letter for the ages. In that time, Sunset sat back, the smile on her face growing less and less genuine.

Twilight found the cure almost all by herself. Why does that matter? You’re seriously that self-centered and desperate for attention that you care?

Twilight discovered the real cause. Twilight found the Curse Compendium. She even found the curse itself, for Pete’s sake. So bucking what? What kind of pony cares about that?

Maybe she hadn’t changed.

“Everything’s going to be alright,” Twilight said, taking a real breath for the first time in weeks. She looked positively serene writing that letter. “Zecora will get back to us as fast as she can. We’ll have our cure by the end of the day at the latest and we don't even have to leave her side for a minute.”

“Good,” Sunset murmured. Her tone caught Twilight’s attention, and she cursed herself for sounding anything like she felt.

“What’s wrong?”

Before she could stop herself from making this all about her she asked, “Twilight, have I changed? I mean actually changed like I couldn’t ever go back to who I was.”

Twilight lowered her quill. “I don’t understand. Why would you ask?”

Sunset shook her head. “I’m sorry. That came out of nowhere, I know. It’s just Princess Luna and I were talking and… I don’t know. Some feelings were just brought up again. It’s been an emotional few days. It just kinda hit me.”

Princess Twilight put a wing around her. “You don't need to worry. You’re a completely different pony, Sunset. Trust me. I couldn’t be more proud of how far you’ve come.”

From that point on, Twilight went back to penning the letter, but Sunset couldn’t stop hearing her say those words. Like she really was just Twilight’s student. She couldn’t deny that it left a pit in her stomach the size of a bowling ball. And the fact that it did burned in her because she knew that feeling.

She'd felt it on the worst day of her life, and what she guessed had to be the best of Twilight's.

The bells rung around Canterlot that day. The streets, overrun with ponies. Confetti rained down from the high towers as if from the clouds or gods themselves, and cheers blared all around.

Still vain enough to assume she needed a cloak and hood for disguise, she'd found her place among the crowd in the south courtyard, far enough back that she was sure Celestia wouldn't find her face in the sea of ponies. The distance was also strategic. Earlier that day, she'd exploded on and hospitalized the pony who told her about the coronation to begin with. The thoughts and urges she had on the ride over made hanging back the smarter option in the long-run.

But standing there amidst a crowd, waiting with the common-folk while the crowning went on inside the throne room far above, she second-guessed her decision. She let her emotions get the better of her. She should've been in there, gathering intel. That's all she was here for.

An angelic chorus sounded out from above as eight figures walked out onto the balcony. With her neck craned up, Sunset's heart plunged. The roaring of the crowd deafened her, but in memory, the world was silent. Three alicorns stood at the front. Princess Luna, Princess Celestia, and between them, a face she'd only spied on from afar. A face she'd seen by Celestia's side and under her watch for years, one she kept thinking would be forgotten, cast aside.

One who waved with wings spread, held beneath Celestia's wing draped over her back. Seeing it, she could remember, or maybe imagine how those feathers felt on her own.

Every breath either stayed thin or stuttered and broke apart before she could reach the bottom of her lungs. The force of it cramped the muscles in her forehead. The tears dribbling off Sunset's chin made the inside of her hood damp. Her journal buzzed at her side dragging her back to the Royal Canterlot Archives, sitting across from Princess Twilight still writing that letter. With the other Twilight waiting on a response.

A sick feeling started in her throat when she realized Princess Cadence was right. Whatever she thought of Twilight, any Twilight, it was up to her perception, but if she couldn’t see Twilight as anything but her sister, that was it, then.

The relationship couldn’t possibly last.

---

Some time later, while Princess Twilight was busy returning the dozens of books she’d taken from the shelves, Sunset forced herself to open the journal. She re-read Twilight’s message, along with the new addition:

So? Would you like to move in together?

And then, Take your time if you’re busy with the Princess. I can wait.

Holding her heavy, aching forehead in her hoof, Sunset brought a quill towards the page and let it hover there. The sand in the hourglass in the Starswirl the Bearded wing coursed on, seething through the funnel. The quill’s tip waited for instruction. She put it aside and closed the book. The least she could was break-up with her in-person.

The doors to the library burst open, slamming the walls on either side. Somewhere buried in aisle after aisle of books, as she tended to be, Twilight’s voice rose. “Cadance? Luna?”

Sunset scraped her chair against the floor and scrambled over to where the voices came from. The part of her that was still a sociopath whispered evil nothings to her. That they were too late, that this was it. That they came to tell them Princess Celestia was dead.

She bounded round the last corner and found them by the hourglass gleaming with sunlight. Great. Some pathetic fallacy for the worst moment of my life. Love it. She tried her best to ignore herself. “What is it? What’s going on?”

Twilight held her hooves out. “It’s okay. It’s just princess business. The three of us are being called to an emergency conference with the Zebras. It’s absolutely mandatory.”

Dropping her shoulders, Sunset sighed. “Oh. Okay.” Her brow furrowed. “Wait, the three of you? Not Princess Celestia?”

The princesses exchanged glances. Princess Luna frowned, as she was apt to do. Sunset was pretty convinced that was her natural state of being. Definitely a nasty case of resting night demon face. “Strange indeed.”

“You don’t think word somehow got out, do you?” Cadence asked, standing between them.

The way Twilight bit her cheeks and started to sweat to a cartoonish degree, Sunset could guess who she was thinking of. She highly doubted it. She couldn’t even imagine how Starlight and Trixie would even manage to mess up that badly. And speaking from experience as an ex-villain herself, even Trixie, at her absolute worst, was mostly just petty. And Starlight was more likely to break reality than a promise to keep quiet. Besides, even putting aside the fact that neither of them would know how to get in contact with world leaders and diplomats, why in Equestria would they tell the zebras before the ponies?

“We can cross that bridge when we come to it,” Twilight said, wings fidgeting at her sides. “In the meantime, you two should go ahead. I’ll come as soon as I can, but Sunset and I are waiting on a letter that could potentially give us the cure.”

She filled them in on everything, and Sunset sort of blanked it out. Next thing she knew, she and Twilight were sitting outside Celestia’s chamber. Once they got a hold of that letter, they could get to work immediately and have a healthy immortal princess before dinner. Neither of them wanted to leave the castle to teleport to Zecora's just in case anything happened while they were gone, but that did mean they had to wait on snail-mail.

In the meantime, she and Twilight had company waiting for them, perched atop the torch. When Sunset saw her again, an involuntary smile lifted the corners of her mouth. They did have some time to kill, and she would’ve taken any distraction she could get. Sunset and Twilight could be bird nerds together.

Twilight outright gasped when she told her. “I didn’t know Philomena was yours!”

Hooves sizzling as she gave her phoenix pets, Sunset smirked. “Yep. Found and raised her myself—with a little help from the Princess every now and then. This little bugger had a nasty habit of setting my school books on fire. She made me sound like such a liar. I was lying about other things, for sure, but that one was totally her fault.”

“How did you even learn how to take care of a phoenix?” Twilight reached out to touch Philomena’s feathers and scalded herself. “Gah! She’s so hot!”

Sunset grinned. “Well she is a phoenix, you know.”

Twilight stared at Sunset’s hoof, which was now being snuggled and nuzzled as if Philomena were a cat. “How can you stand it? It’s like being cuddled by a cast-iron stove.”

Shrugging, she pet Philomena down the length of her back. “Phoenixes need a lot of attention, especially mine.” The insulted bird pecked at her like a brat. “I guess I’m used to it.”

Twilight’s eyelids fell to half-mast. “Numbed, some call it.”

“At least hooves are a lot less sensitive than hands. This would kill if she turns out to be this fiery over in the other world.” At first, it was great imagining taking her home at long last. Then she remembered what she was going home to, and her smile faltered.

Unfortunately Twilight hadn’t become the Princess of Friendship by ignoring when a friend was trying to hide something. “Are you okay?”

Sunset bristled. “I don’t know. I don’t feel like talking about it if that’s okay.”

“Are you sure? Because if there’s anything I’ve had to learn, it’s—”

“I’m not really in the mood for a friendship lesson, either,” she grunted and then muttered, “That came out wrong.”

“Is it something to do with your marefriend?” Sunset flinched. “Sorry. None of my business. It’s just that I know you two have been messaging back and forth in the journal, and you looked really upset back in the library.”

“Ponyfeathers. You saw that?” Receiving a guilty grin, Sunset heaved a sigh, “Look. I’m sorry, alright? It’s my problem. I’ll deal with it. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“It… sort of sounds like I did,” she said, ears folding.

“Well, you didn’t, okay? Stop worrying about it.”

Princess Twilight looked like she had something to say but never got around to it as the royal messenger catapulted through the halls, panting. “Your urgent message, lady Sparkle!”

Sunset grunted. “Lady Sparkle?” If she were in a better mood, she’d laugh her tail off. Best to log that one away for later. If she was still a little evil, anyway, might as well take advantage of a golden opportunity.

Lady Sparkle blushed. “They never just use my name.” She spoke a little louder, taking the letter in her magic. “Thank you for your timeliness. I’m sure Princess Celestia thanks you, too. You’ll be rewarded handsomely.”

The pegasus mail pony bowed, said his thanks, and buzzed off in flurry of feathers and letters. Sunset wasn’t entirely sure all those would get delivered to the right place. At least from the look of Twilight’s face, they’d gotten the right one. Just not how they wanted it.

Eyes darting, Twilight’s face fell further and further into the opposite of what they’d hoped for. It was like Twilight had been transported to her own funeral, only to find more and more morbid, personal details—her favourite flowers, the eulogies, who showed up, who didn’t—and was then plopped back into her normal life. Nopony could just ignore a prophecy that prolific.

Sunset stood up and held her own shoulder. “Please tell me there’s a cure.”

“There is,” she said, letter lowering to her side, “but we might be too late to use it.”

At this point, Philomena hopped onto her forehoof, and she did a piss-poor job keeping that sting out of her voice. “Twilight, what do you mean?”

Twilight’s forehead crumpled like the pages of an old book. “We weren’t fast enough. Zecora thinks she’s already progressed into the late stages of the curse! Even if we act now, there’s no telling if it’ll work. She’s dying.”

“We knew she was dying when we started,” Sunset spat, practically seething and wavering on her hooves. The only other sound in these overlarge halls was the crackle of burning torches. So even if there wasn’t exactly an echo, the more they rose their voices, the more powerful they sounded. It reminded Sunset of the first time she’d had a bout of road-rage in driving school’s practice car back in Canterlot City. The acoustics of an enclosed space like that made shouting so much more satisfying. Weirdly enough, a place as big and quiet as the castle had the same effect. Getting angry here sounded like it mattered more. She brought herself back enough to say, “That doesn’t matter.”

“But… I-I have to go.” A flush made the pinks of Twilight’s eyes look even pinker. Her eyes started to smolder in the angry light of the sunset beaming through the slender windows.

Sunset sighed, hoof up to her face wishing she had fingers to pinch her muzzle. “Okay. Fine. Great. I’ll do it myself then.”

“No. No, no, no, no no, no, no,” Twilight babbled, starting to pant, “I can’t leave Princess Celestia if she’s dying. Oh no. No, no, I can’t. I can’t do this, I can—I might never see her again. What if I never see her again? I can’t—I can’t—I can’t—” Gasping in between breaths, she started to shake. “I don’t want to see her die again, I don’t want to leave—”

“Twilight, stop panicking! I can do this!” Philomena flew behind Sunset and onto her back if the heat was anything to go by. Whenever the phoenix was anxious, she burned brighter, which meant Sunset’s back was basically broiling, and she couldn’t feel the messy tears streaking down her cheek. “Go be a princess! I’m not going to let her die! Let me do this!”

Even if she was still shaking, Twilight went abnormally still. “Sunset,” she breathed. “What—”

The hallway started to feel less real when the white hot twisting feeling on her back turned into an unbearable, vision-narrowing eating.

“Horseapples!” Sunset lurched away, thrust back, and slammed against the door. She sagged around it like a rag-doll on a shelf. Puffing out her cheeks, she tried to house a growl the size of the entire castle. “Mmmmmmm.”

Twilight galloped over. “Sunset! Are you okay?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she rasped, heaving a breath. Using her magic, she took the letter from Twilight. Then, she put everything behind her eyes. “Go.”

After a moment of drinking in that intensity, Twilight nodded and fled out down the hall until Sunset couldn’t hear her hoof-steps anymore. Sunset let her head fall back against the door, wheezing. A vertigo put the entire city of Canterlot on ever-changing slants, and the patterns in the carpet spun like a coordinated dance-sequence.

“Breathe deeply.” The fireplace crackled. Princess Celestia walked around her, if her voice was anything to judge by. “Focus on letting go. Relax every muscle you have.”

A preteen Sunset scowled at that even with her eyes shut. “I liked karate better…”

The voice revolved around her, blocking out the firelight. “And you can practice karate when you can control your anger. You’re too aggressive.”

Her mouth twitched. “It’s fighting. Fighting is aggression. You’re punishing me because I’m doing it well.”

“Meditation isn’t a punishment, Sunset. Some would call it nourishment.” She stopped. “Or, perhaps you’d rather think of it as a tool. Breathing is an extension of control. Use it effectively, and you can command your reality.”

At the time, Sunset thought it was ponyfeathers, but mandatory ponyfeathers. Right now, it was the only thing keeping her from passing out.

When she managed to stop the world from spinning, she gave the letter a sidelong glance. It took her a while to focus on the words, but when she did, she drew her brow together.

It took a bit of effort, but Sunset got back on her hooves, the cure in her magical grasp, and opened the door to Princess Celestia’s chamber. She had a fire to start.

Comments

[Royal Noir]

I actually had to stop and laugh for a minute because it's the classic, but crafty "GUYS THERE'S A PROBLEM WE CAN'T SOLVE LET'S CALL OUR TOKEN ZEBRA FRIEND" scenario. I love Zecora, though, so I can't wait to see her show up. More emotional Sunset, however, I do not love. Poor baby needs a hug.

ALSO DID YOU REALLY??? JUST??? YES, BRING DISCORD INTO THIS BECAUSE I'M A THIRSTY AS FUCK DISCELESTIA SHIPPER SO NOW I'M JUST IMAGINIING MY TRASH SON TRYING TO SAVE HIS WIFE AND NOW I WANNA CRY

[MarvelandPonder]

7848833

I'll say right now so you're not disappointed next chapter: Zecora doesn't show up. She gave them the instructions in her letter. I figured it would be quicker than having her take the train up, otherwise either having her there or having the girls teleport to her place would've been cool.

Also you're not wrong, they did just kind of assume Zecora would know the curse. She's a powerful shaman so I can get away with it, but for shame, Twilight. Geez. Next you'll say all zebras know each other.

But I agree with you. Sunset needs to be held.

Oh and that's exactly what that was. You get to imagine whatever you want for Discord's visit because at this point Sunset would've shit herself if she were there for it, but yes. Dizzy tried to save Tia.

[Royal Noir]

7848941 "Dizzy tried to save Tia."

images.gr-assets.com/hostedimages/1380906338ra/3158793.gif

[ScisetShimmerEvan]

This chapter kinda made me want to cry over certain things