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Chapter 1 - As Sure as the Sunrise2,763 words
Chapter 2 - The Prodigal Sun3,238 words
Chapter 3 - Moonshine in the Observatory7,804 words
Chapter 4 - Sister of the Setting Sun3,362 words
Chapter 5 - Sunlight Shimmering Love7,819 words
Chapter 6 - House of the Rising Star3,438 words
Chapter 7 - Fall of the Burning Sun4,436 words

Chapter 7 - Fall of the Burning Sun

Oils, elixirs, brews, and potions. It couldn’t just be one thing, could it? The ingredients took some searching for. In fact, she lost about four and a half hours running around the city finding all the right ingredients. By the time she was ready to even begin, the fire had burned low, and she had to start a new one.

In other news, the observatory wasn’t her favourite place in the castle anymore. She’d give anything to be sitting around the hearth taking lessons again. Instead of her mentor’s soothing, infuriatingly calm voice, Sunset had to listen to her struggling to pull in every breath.

The cauldron, focus on the cauldron. Scanning the haul of supplies spread out around her, Sunset grabbed the vial of Heart’s Repair and the eye of newt substitute. “Stay with me, okay? Don’t fall asleep, I’ll never be able to concentrate if you start snoring.”

Celestia didn’t respond.

Sunset went back to work. Everything had such a specific time and proportion. Potion-making wasn’t her strongest suit. She’d always had a knack for basic elixirs, but anything this advanced took skill to put together. One wrong move, a single drop out of line, and the entire pot was as good as worthless. She wouldn’t know for sure unless it worked, and she wouldn’t know if it couldn’t work if she slipped up.

It took all of her focus on concentration. The heat made her sweat and the burn on her back sting to the point that her hooves shook. Or maybe that was nerves. She couldn’t tell. She couldn’t feel below her knees.

Partway through, she caught a drop of her own sweat in her magic before it hit the pot. Note to self: Stop leaning over the only thing that could save Celestia’s life.

Towards the very end of the instructions, Twilight’s zebra friend wrote that it needed to boil over the fire for ten minutes before the last few things could be added. At which point, she nearly collapsed backwards before she realized that would be very, very painful. She settled for sitting back on her haunches, watching the fire and the hourglass she’d flipped beside it. Ten minutes.

A hushed rasp rose up from behind her. “Where’s Twilight?”

Sunset stiffened. She turned back toward the bed. “She had to go to a conference with Luna and Cadance. Some princess work. I think they’re covering for you.”

The fire crackled. “I’m very fortunate… to have ponies I can depend on. Aren’t I?”

“Yeah,” Sunset sighed, staring back into the fire.

“I hope you know you’re included in that, Sunset.”

She desperately hoped the princess hadn’t heard anything in her voice. “I know.”

“Then why don’t you act like you know?” She took a moment to gather her breath before going on. “I’ve missed you since we reunited, but I was at peace… knowing we had made amends. But, you still feel you needed to apologize. You’re still… trying to prove yourself to me.”

Sunset shrugged, staring into the fire. “I don’t know. I guess I’ve just got a lot to live up to.”

“You never had to live up to me, Sunset.”

“Not you,” she told her, getting quiet. She sighed, letting her head drop into a bow. “Twilight.”

She watched the flames bat endlessly at the black iron of the cauldron to no avail. The air around it bent and wavered. She grimaced. “I hate that I’m still petty enough to constantly be comparing myself to her, but I can’t help it. She’s your faithful student. And I’ve done some amazing things with the help of my friends, but nothing can compare to being a princess. Not after everything I did trying to be one myself. I’ve come to peace with all of that, but it still doesn’t erase the things I’ve done. How I needed Twilight’s help. And… well, I-I’m dating her. Not this Twilight, the one in the other dimension. She’s the girl I told you about.”

Princess Celestia had a hint of a laugh in her beaten down voice. “Well, I certainly approve of your taste.”

Sunset made something between a snort and a scoff. “Thanks.”

“I’m happy for you, but...” Celestia took her time, breathing through the rattling thing that replaced her throat. “Why would you keep this from me?”

“I’ve been having trouble recently keeping the two of them separate in my head, and it wouldn’t be so messed up if this world’s Twilight wasn’t essentially my little sister.”

Celestia took a second with that one. “You know she’s not, right?”

“Obviously I know that, but if you’re my mom and she’s my sister… then I’m the black-sheep.” She dropped her hooves to the floor. She let out a breath. “I can’t live up to Twilight. No matter what I do, I’ll never be a princess. I don’t even want to be one anymore. I don’t care about being better than her, but nothing I do can ever be as great as everything she's done. And that’s just… a really awful way to feel about your best friend. And, I’m scared if I keep thinking of them as the same, then sooner or later I’ll start to feel that way about my girlfriend and her accomplishments.”

“I hope you realize… you and Twilight were always separate in my mind. I learned from the mistakes I made… how I hurt you… because I finally stopped trying to correct for my past. I could see what Twilight needed. Not what you needed… and never got.” The breath that came next rolled out instead of being dragged by force. “Immortals live long enough to outlive a thousand lifetimes, but sometimes we forget we’re not trapped in one long gone. And I’m sorry I didn’t learn that soon enough to help you… how you needed to be helped.”

“Hey. I thought we said no more apologies.” Sunset turned back to smile at her, eyes shining. “If we keep this up, that’s all we’ll ever say to each other.”

“You’re right,” she said, wheezing. Her white chest veiled her expanding and falling ribs, but not by much. "We're stuck in a cycle, aren't we? That might be my fault. Perhaps, I should tell you something else."

When the rest didn't come, Sunset came up by her bedside and held her sunken, shallow-looking gaze, halfway to falling closed. It took Celestia some time to pull for air, and standing over like this, infinitely more powerful, Sunset realized she'd gotten what she wanted. "I know you weren't trying to replace me, it just..." The tears flowed at a gentle pace, like a warm touch. "It felt like it."

“I’m proud of you, Sunset," she breathed, forehead wrinkling, "I thought you knew.”

Holding her around her neck, Sunset shut her eyes. "Yeah, well... I dunno," she said, her raspy voice swinging and crashing apart. "I didn't want to just assume I deserved you being proud of me."

"You deserve it."

When the timer ran out, Sunset went straight back to work. Heart’s Refrain, Aloe Extract, and just a smidge of parsley on top. When she was done, she blew out the fire with a sweep of breeze magic. She stirred it just once more and dunked a chalice into the brew. One cup full, and she’d have her answer.

Without rushing enough to spill, she hurried towards Celestia’s bedside, finding her way by candlelight. She had to help her sit up enough to drink, but Celestia drank of this weird bubbling brew until the cup was empty.

After, the room was obscenely quiet. Sunset waited at her bedside for more than a few long, dark, extended minutes. And it went on entirely too long. Eventually, Sunset bit her lip before she sighed, unevenly. “I did everything I could.”

“You certainly have,” Celestia said, smiling to her. “I suppose that means I should hold up my end of the bargain. Although, I should really meet this girl before I give you away to her. I hear she’s nothing like the Twilight I know.”

Sunset laughed. “I don’t know. They’re both my best friend so…”

At first very faintly, but soon unmistakably, a golden hue formed around the princess. It grew brighter and brighter, filling out her coat, illuminating her hair, and filling her eyes with a pure, white power. The glow grew brighter and brighter until Sunset had to look away, and still couldn’t shake the sun-spots off her eyes. Then, the shine vanished. Drawing in a long, deep breath, Princess Celestia smiled.

She rose from her bed and held her surrogate daughter.

Sunset didn’t know anything warmer than a hug from the princess of the sun aside from maybe feeling her impeccably relaxed voice through her chest. “You know, saving a princess is no small feat. If saving two dimensions and reuniting me with my daughter wasn’t already impressive enough.”

“What can I say? I’ve got high standards.”

Sunset wasn’t usually an early-riser, but she could make an exception every now and then. Watching the sunrise over Canterlot was definitely worth one of those. Even if she’d broken another alarm clock.

The balcony from Princess Celestia’s room had the best view of the eastern sky in all of Equestria. The rest of the view wasn’t too shabby, either. The city below chirped with potential on the brink of daybreak, painted a perfectly pleasant periwinkle blue. Gentle breezes hoarding the last bit of summer warmth caressed her coat, and she sighed along with them.

The other three members of the royal family got in late last night and had their reunions while she’d been asleep. That was fine with her. They deserved their moments with her. It just meant she’d get to hear about it when they talked again.

Perhaps to prove she’d developed some psychic powers of her own, Twilight opened the doors behind her just when Sunset wanted to see her. Sunset let her walk up, too comfortable with her head and hooves resting on the guard rail.

Twilight, for her part, sat down beside her and latched onto her, with a hug, careful not to hold Sunset by the burn. “Thank you so much, Sunset.”

Sunset shrugged but kept a bit of smugness in her smile. “It was a team effort.”

They let go, but Twilight was clearly holding onto something. She put her hooves up on the railing and didn’t take long to admit, “It’s all my fault.”

“Twi, we went over this. You had to go. I’m pretty sure the zebras would’ve started a war if they felt disrespected like that. Trust me, I’ve pissed off a few dignitaries in my day. They tend not to be forgiving.”

“Not that,” she said, head bowing along with her ears. “I’m the reason Princess Celestia was cursed to begin with.”

Sunset jerked her head back. “What? No way. That can’t be true.”

“It is. The zebras told us themselves. That’s why they called us to an emergency conference. They apologized and gave us the cure to take home with us. They only meant to curse her with bad luck for a few moons, not kill her.”

“Oh, sure,” she said, glaring into the horizon, “so a minor mistake that anypony could’ve made. Because you totally keep the spell for bad luck right next to the slow, painful death curse.”

“It was a miscommunication between the Chief Shaman and the Elder Zebra, rhyming makes it hard to be clear. But all of that only happened because I totally botched our last meeting. I was so bad they felt like I was disrespecting them on purpose! If she died, it would’ve been all my fault.” Leaning forward, her head sunk into her hooves. “Some Princess of Friendship I turned out to be.”

Somewhere, Princess Celestia took to the sky and powered up her horn. The brilliant, warming light began its steady rise over Equestria.

After a beat, Sunset smiled. She threw a hoof around her but made sure to be gentle with movement, thanks to the bandages around the burn on her back. “Hey, take it from an ex-she-demon who almost murdered her would-be best friends: we all make mistakes.”

Now in the glow of morning light, a little smile poked up the end of Twilight’s mouth, too. “Still, I should probably be a little better at my job by now. Did I ever tell you I caused a war with the yaks for a few hours?”

Sunset snorted. “How do you cause a war for a few hours?”

“You get Pinkie Pie to smooth things over when she comes back.”

“Of course,” she started, shaking her head. Both of them knew exactly what to say next: “Pinkie Pie.”

After which point, they broke out laughing like little school fillies. Between that, the new day’s sun, and the mild morning air, the last of the stress from the past week melted right away. Although, once they got that through their systems, Twilight did have an eyebrow raised. “Okay, now I’ve gotta know. How did you do that thing with the fire wings?”

Sunset stared at her and bent her neck.

“You know,” she said, making her hooves flap at her sides despite the fact that she had actual wings she could’ve demonstrated with, “the flaming wings you had right before you told me to go? You nearly passed out because of them.”

Sunset’s eyes twitched back and forth before widening. “Oh, you meant Philomena. Yeah, she likes to perch on my back sometimes, but she doesn’t always know when to get off.”

Twilight shook her head. “Philomena was on the torch beside the throne room, it had nothing to do with her. You mean you didn’t know about the giant flaming wings that sprouted out of your back?”

At first, Sunset continued to stare at Twilight like she’d become Discord. But then it hit her. “Wait. Hang on, that sounds like something that happened to me at the Friendship Games.” She stared at her own hooves. “But, that can’t be it. I only turned into Daydream because of the magic of friendship.”

“Daydream?”

Sunset blushed. “The girls decided on names afterward. It wasn’t my call. But, come to think of it, Daydream wasn’t just a pair of wings. My mane wasn’t glowing and all float-y, right?”

Twilight shook her head. “Not really.”

“Then it can’t be her…” Sunset bit her lip. “There was one other time I grew wings. A month or two before the Friendship Games, actually. I was on the roof of Canterlot High, thinking about a lot of things, and I don’t know, just watching the sunrise. It was pretty peaceful. I came to terms with some stuff from my past, thinking about my friends, and then boom, fire wings.” She took a look back at her withers. “Although it didn’t really hurt so much back then.”

“Amazing!” Twilight said, circling around her. “You think it could’ve been the magic of friendship protecting you before?”

“That’s your answer to everything.”

Twilight shrugged, grinning. “It’s the best answer I’ve found.”

“Touché.” Sunset stopped, then raised an eyebrow. “What?”

Twilight was staring like a goof. “So, are you gonna try to, you know… flame on?”

“Well it kinda made me almost pass out last time, and that’s when I had adrenaline rushing through me.” After about a millisecond, Sunset grunted and muttered, “So that’s what peer pressure looks like.” She waved her hoof at her. “Fine. Just step back, will you?”

“Try to feel grateful for your friends, that might help.”

“Oh, I’m feeling something for my friends,” she said, feeling the severe burn already on her back.

Sunset took a deep draw of the air until her lungs were all but full and let it go. She was in control. And like it or not, she loved her stupid peer-pressuring friends. Breathing a short breath out, Sunset felt a heat tear at her back again. Only this time, it wasn’t devouring her coat and skin so much as making the burn already there ache from exposure to the heat. But even that wasn’t so bad when she realized, “I’ve… I’ve got wings!”

“You’ve got magical fire wings!” Twilight said through a laugh, face beaming both literally and figuratively in the light of Sunset’s new appendages. She also clapped her hooves, as if she were watching a particularly good magic show. “Sunset, this is absolutely—”

“Remarkable.” Princess Celestia’s impressed voice landed with her on the balcony behind them. “It looks like you’ve earned your wings, after all.”

Actual clowns might’ve made the expression on Sunset’s face as a goofy mockery of pure joy. She tried to laugh, folding her wings against her side. “Yeah.” She smiled at Twilight. “We both have.”

When Sunset came out the other side of the portal, she swore her complaints had been heard. No vomit-inducing dizziness to make her stumble. Maybe Starlight really had taken her word for it and done something to fix it. She’d have to buy her and her soon-to-be-marefriend a drink next time she went home for a visit.

The lack of vertigo made it easier to walk straight up to her rambling girlfriend. “Are you okay? Is the Princess alright? Is everything—”

Sunset took her by the shoulders and kissed her deeply. Admittedly, the first few times they’d tried the whole interrupt-my-girlfriend-with-a-kiss move it hadn’t gone so well, but these days Twilight usually caught onto when one of those was coming. Or at least, she relaxed enough to let a proper make-out session happen.

When Sunset pulled away, a little out of breath, she told her with her most charming smile (or what she thought was her most charming smile), “Yes. Let’s move in together.”

Twilight pushed up her glasses, a little out of breath herself. “D’uh, okay. Sure. Yeah. Let’s move in together. I’d like that.”

Smirking, she pulled her hands together around Twilight’s waist, bringing her closer. “Sorry it took me so long to reply. I couldn’t really do that with a message.”

“Forget about that,” she said, although clearly still flustered and not forgetting about it, “what happened with Princess Celestia? Is she…?”

“She’s fine. I’ll tell you everything later. Right now, I just want to hold you for a while.” She brought her arms up, closer to an appropriate place, and relaxed into her.

Twilight’s arms snaked up around Sunset’s torso, squeezed, and…

Sunset didn’t remember the next part. Apparently, she swore (although where Twilight would get the idea that she was a potty-mouth, she had no clue). The next thing she knew, she was lying on her stomach in her apartment, the air-conditioning unit in her window blowing cool air on her back. Her bare back.

Through a fuzzier version of her voice, hoping she wasn’t blushing as hard as she felt she was, Sunset croaked, “Twilight?”

Footsteps pounded down the hall and around the corner into the room. Even if she couldn’t see the red in her eyes, Sunset winced at the wet sound of her voice. “You’re awake! Oh, thank god! I didn’t know what to do, the hospital would need a health card, an insurance number, something! Why didn’t you tell me about the burn? What happened to you?” When Sunset tried to get up, Twilight stopped her by the shoulder. “Please, don’t agitate it. I think it might be a third-degree.”

Sunset’s head hit the pillow sideways again, cheek smushed up against it. Her eyebrows shot up. “That bad?”

Twilight plopped down in Sunset’s desk chair, doing her best not to swivel while at the same time bouncing her legs. “Well, I-I don’t know. I’m not a doctor, and it’s not quite the same as a self-diagnosis but it’s pretty close and where did that even come from? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Without moving enough to make Twilight worry, Sunset propped herself up on her elbows. Not by much, but enough for her boobs to be tantalizingly out of sight. “You half-undressed me while I was passed out. I’m pretty sure I have more of a right to be upset in this situation than you do.”

Thankfully, she had a good view of Twilight’s broken, blushing face. “That’s—I-I was trying to figure out why passed out to begin with. I was treating your possibly-third-degree burn! And… you’re changing the subject, aren’t you?”

“Trying to,” she said, shrugging and hugging her pillow. “The flaming wings are kind of hard to explain. I don’t really don’t how they work yet.” For that explanation, she needed to back up a bit. She ended up telling the whole story. All of it. Including the observatory, Moon Dancer (for which she received a laugh because apparently Twilight had briefly had a schoolyard crush on this world's Moon Dancer), as well as the unseemly insinuation that the other Twilight briefly felt like a sister. And, just hypothetically, her. Which, again, totally hypothetically, made Sunset consider breaking up. She kind of rushed to the conclusion after that part, but it let her get to the whole my-back-was-literally-on-fire bit much sooner.

By the time she was through, Twilight had wrapped her bandages around her again, this time with her burn decently treated. Admittedly, it was all still pretty tender, and lying down still felt right, but she managed to finish the story while Twilight got out a shirt for her.

Twilight’s eyes had a light behind them. “Wow, Sunset, that’s—Oh! Hang on, wait here!”

“As opposed to?” Sunset shouted at the door after Twilight ran out of it. She sighed into her gray pillowcase. When Twilight had an idea, she could be so single-minded. It was adorable, for sure, but also a tad frustrating. With a bit too much effort getting up, she picked out the teal shirt with the black sleeves and pulled it over her head.

When Twilight came back, she had a tiny yellow and red canary perched on her fingers and a tiny smile perched on her lips. “I believe this is yours.”

At first Sunset did nothing but raise an eyebrow, sitting back on the bed. Then the bird flapped over and pecked at her and she outright gasped. “Philomena?”

Twilight sat next to her, making the mattress bounce. “She came with you through the portal.”

Sunset chuckled, nervously giving her bird tiny pets. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, she did. I brought her. I just sorta forgot when I saw you—in my defense I really, really missed you—and I didn’t get a chance to get a good look at her.” She smiled her apology to her bird, which could totally still care about apologies, being a bird. “Canary yellow suits you.”

Philomena trilled at that and hopped a little too sassily.

Sunset looked at her girlfriend. “I know it’s not the same as introducing you to my mom—and we’ll get there. Soon. I promise. But, uh, Philomena’s pretty important to me.”

Twilight giggled and leaned against Sunset’s shoulder. “Well, it’s nice to finally meet you Philomena. I’m Twilight Sparkle.”

Sunset held up a hand around her mouth, speaking to the bird. “Told you she was cool.”

After laughing, Twilight whispered in her own cone of semi-silence. “Thanks for vouching for me.”

“Anytime, Sparky,” she said, which earned her a kiss on the cheek. Not long after, though, she looked around her room, and the smile on her lips dipped slightly. Twilight’s dorm was closer to Canterlot High, wasn’t it? “What made you bring me here?”

“You passed out on top of me, I had to do something. So, I guess the next place I could think of was just to take you home, so I could freak-out properly without the whole town staring at you and trying to call you ambulances,” she told her, but the pointed half-eyed stare lessened when she saw the way Sunset was smiling. After a moment where Sunset could see the reviewing process take place, Twilight broke out a smile, too. “Your place?”

“My place it is,” Sunset said in the huskiest range of her voice and as sleazily as possible.

Twilight giggle-snorted and dropped her forehead onto Sunset’s shoulder.

Sunset was fine with that. But there was just one more thing she wasn’t okay with, and it was a big one. When Twilight calmed down again, she rested her head on hers. “Twi? You said you’ve been thinking about asking me for months. Was it really that hard to ask me to move in with you? You know I would’ve said yes, right?”

There was a huge pause after that. “In my defense, when I did ask finally you, you had a mini-crisis and started comparing me to Princess Twilight.”

“Okay, I think I’ve gotta make this clearer.” She guided her finger so that Philomena could hop over to the lampshade on her bedside table. Sunset took Twilight’s hands and made sure their eyes met. “That had nothing to do with this.” She took a moment to gather all the words together. “Look, it’s okay to be scared. If I’m honest, there’s a small part of me that is, too. I’ve never really loved someone like I love you, and up until recently, I've managed to mess up everything good in my life for selfish or just plain stupid reasons. For the longest time, I thought I was a screw up. I'm still so used to thinking like that, it's easy to see myself ruining this, too.

“So, maybe we’re scared together. Which is totally fine. But, only as long as we know that this time there’s no real reason to be. I don’t even know if I actually had a thing for you when we met, but it doesn’t matter. The day we met isn’t what makes me love you. It’s every day that came after.” She took Twilight’s cheek in her hand, grinning because she knew she was a on a roll. “Camp Everfree, Graduation. That time we accidentally stayed up until the sun came up just talking on the phone. When I was sick, and you wouldn’t stop bringing me medicine, and just finding excuses to check in on me. I mean, Princess Twilight’s my best friend, and no offense to her, but she just can’t give me all of that.”

Careful not to touch her burn, Twilight put her arms around Sunset’s shoulders. She was clearly crying, but she at least attempted sass. “Been practicing that one?”

“So long as you don’t ask Philomena? Not at all, totally off-the-cuff response.”

Muffled into Sunset’s shoulder, Twilight told her, “You’re such a liar.”

“Hey,” Sunset said, laughing, “I never said I was perfect, did I?”

Author's Note:

And then smooches happened.

Special thanks to my editor Space Jazz, consultant for the first chapter Philomenal, the cover-artist Kiki-Kit, and LittleNightwing, my best friend who let me pitch this entire story to her. Without you, I don't think this project would've turned out like it did, if at all.

I'd also like to give some thanks to all the authors who've made Sunlight stories. That's right, all of you. In particular, Dubs Rewatcher for The Nightmare I Need, The Albinocorn for Sunlight, and especially Bookish Delight for Courage and Change. Oh, and don't think I forgot about you, Space Jazz. I somehow never stumbled across The Sunlight Project or its sequel, The Sunlight Theory, before you started editing for me, but A Game of Inches is a classic in my mind (that line on the ice where Sunset's talking about her high heels definitely counts as a nod to that story). And it technically hasn't gotten to the Sunlight yet (if that's really where it's going), but MrAskAPirate's writing a story called One Night in Canterlot that demands to be read.

Oh, and if I didn't mention Fractured Sunlight by Oroboro I think I'd be breaking a law somewhere (I'm actually reading it for the first time now and in summary: how dare you).

I say all this because these are the stories that inspired me most (in fact, this last scene, with Twilight treating Sunset's burn, is a reversal of a scene in one of those stories, as both an homage and... well, an excuse to set the scene back in Sunset's apartment, I guess; there's also a sort of reference to Courage and Change in the first chapter when Sunset calls Sci-Twi "so damn precious"-- the word choice is pretty specific, and the valedictorian/salutatorian scene was inspired by The Future History of You and Me by Royal Noir, my best friend who screams with me about Sunset and Sci-Twi).

There's too many to mention, but I've gotta express some kind of gratitude for all the work you've done to make these two dorks fall in love. It's been so nice getting to read all your stories, the only thing I could think to do to show you how nice is to try and make one of my own.

If you haven't read any of those, seriously, click-up those links for more Sunlight goodness, because they're absolutely awesome.

Lastly, I want to thank you for reading, commenting, and doing the feedback thing. A storyteller without anybody listening is just a rambling fool, so I'm glad I could ramble at you about the horses for a while.

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