4 - The Grave
The chilly overcast day nipped at Sunset through her coat. She stared down into her hands at the three roses, all full and healthy with the thorns carefully clipped off. They were a constant reminder she held close to her chest like an injured bird. Maybe these would help her feel better? A kind gesture for his family was the least she could do. Sunset took in a long, deep breath, gripping onto the thought that maybe this would wipe away some of the guilt. She tried to ignore the little voice in the back of her mind that told her otherwise. That gnawing, ever-present feeling that had followed her ever since Wallflower told her the truth needed to go away. She needed some way to just make it go away already. Maybe this would finally be it.
Sunset nodded to herself with some newfound determination, and straightened up her posture as they both made their way into the graveyard.
"It makes me feel better sometimes," Wallflower said, breaking the silence of that long walk.
"Huh?"
"Coming to the graveyard to see him. I know it's scary at first, but after a while coming here made me feel better."
Sunset took in a shaky breath. "It might take a few times."
Wallflower looked over at her with some concern. "It shouldn't be that big of a deal. I do it all the time. Though, you're not gonna freak out like you did at his house, are you?" she said with a raised eyebrow.
Sunset winced. Wasn't exactly the kind, caring support she was used to. "I'll... I'll try not to."
"I mean, go for it if you need to. I've just never seen you cry before. Especially not like that."
Sunset let out an empty, forced laugh as she looked down at the roses in her hand. "I've never had to go through something like this..."
Wallflower looked away without a word.
"Do you think he'd..." Sunset let out a sigh. "Do you think he'd even want me here?"
She let out a frustrated grunt in return and took a few steps ahead. "Just... come on, alright? We're almost here."
Wallflower's tone stung, but Sunset thought she had every right to talk to her like that right now. She silently trailed her through the graves, an uneasiness building inside her with each engraved name she saw.
Sunset had to fight the urge to turn away again. Every tombstone bore a name and a date. Most of them gave a little excerpt about what they used to mean to their loved ones. So many of these people lived long, treasured lives. She had a hard time finding a grave that showed any less than sixty years. All these people gave so much to those around them with all the time they had, certainly enough to give them these loving messages. They were all probably at the ends of their lives, taken by an illness or natural causes when people expected these things to happen, when they had time to say goodbye.
That all just made the stop at Soloman's grave so much worse. Sunset closed her eyes and looked down, not wanting to look at it any longer than she had to. The quick subtraction came to only eighteen years. Sunset came to a stop and gripped the flowers a little harder. "You don't belong here..." she whispered to herself.
Wallflower crossed her arms and let out a huff. "Well, if you've got something to say, this is probably the best way to say it," she let out curtly.
Sunset slipped down onto her knees in front of the gravestone, gently placing the roses in front of it like they were a wealthy offering to an upset deity. She looked up to Wallflower tentatively. "I've never really talked to a grave before." Her friend just shrugged in return.
She took in a deep breath and let her hands fall to the grass beside her. They waved around the fine blades as she searched for something to say. "I... I know you probably died hating me. I wish I could've found some way to change that. We... we all deserve a friend that'll be there for us." Sunset let out a shaky sigh as the lump in her throat formed again. "I'm sorry I couldn't be there for you. If I still had the chance, I know I could make those rumors go away, I know I could give you your friends back and even lead you to new ones. You would've loved one of Pinkie's parties, they really make the rest of the world just float away..."
She could hear Wallflower impatiently tapping her foot behind her. Maybe she just wanted a turn. Sunset gulped and did her best to try to keep the emotions back. This was the closest she'd get to a real conversation anymore, and her head was filled with all the things she wished she could say. Sunset leaned forward to touch the cold stone. "I wish I could just take it all back. I know we could've been really good friends. If only I still had the chance. If I'd known... I... I..." Sunset shook her head as the first tear rolled down her cheek. "...I'm so sorry I put you here."
"Would you fucking stop?!" Wallflower shouted from behind her, making Sunset jump. She turned around to her infuriated friend, who had her fists clenched and was glaring daggers at her. "This is why I couldn't stand you before we were friends. It was ALWAYS about you. Always."
Sunset's heart began pounding in her chest. She shrunk back in fear as Wallflower continued. "Wh-what? Wallflower, I..."
"Did you ever once stop to think that maybe this isn't about you? That your dumb need to make everyone like you isn't as important as everyone else losing someone? Did you even think for one second how incredibly selfish it was to make his death about your stupid desire to make things right? Huh?!"
"I... I didn't think..." Sunset said. Wallflower took a few stomping steps towards her, forcing her up against Soloman's grave. Sunset closed her eyes tightly and turned her head, expecting the first blows.
"Yeah, you didn't think. You didn't think at all! The second I told you, you took all the blame. You turned this into a crusade to make yourself feel better, and I hate it! I never would have brought you here if I'd realized it sooner. This isn't about your self-centered obsession to be the popular girl everyone loves, alright?! You want to fix everything? Well guess what, Sunset, you can't. You can't make yourself feel better no matter how hard you try."
Sunset opened her eyes and looked up. Wallflower was still standing over her with her fists clenched, but when she looked up at her eyes, Sunset's heart sank. There were tears streaming down her face.
"You can spend a million years wishing you'd done something differently, but it won't change anything. It won't bring him back. It won't..." Wallflower said, her voice trembling. "It won't bring my friend back..."
Sunset slowly stood up and tentatively reached over to her crying friend. "Wallflower, I never wanted to--"
She just jerked away. "Just shut up! Stop trying to make things right. Stop trying to take all the blame for something... for..." Wallflower choked for a second and closed her eyes, trying to fight back the pain. It didn't work very well. "...for something I did! Alright?!"
Wallflower turned around, wrapping her arms around herself tight. Sunset reached out again, expecting another outburst, but her hand landed safely on that sweater, so she could turn Wallflower around to face her.
"It's not your fault. How could it possibly your fault?" Sunset asked as she placed her free hand on her other arm.
Wallflower just grimaced and refused to meet eyes with her. "People get bullied all the time, Sunset. You did it to all of us. We all go through bad days but it’s the people that help us through them that matter. Friends are supposed to be there... And I wasn't there," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. Wallflower grimaced at herself and grit her teeth. Her eyes closed as tightly as they could, and even with all the clouds she could see the glint of tears forming on her cheeks.
Sunset pulled her into a hug, trying her best to give her the same luxury Mrs. Shade had given to her. Sunset had to blink a few times to really grasp what was going on. How could she blame anyone other than her? Especially herself. It didn't make sense. She should hate Sunset for what she did, not think... this. She saved her questions and let Wallflower cry into her jacket.
Her mind fixated on the shaky sobs of the girl in her arms, but Sunset didn't feel like she could think straight. She wanted to say she caused this, that this was her fault, but what Wallflower said clung to her thoughts like a leash. It was her fault, wasn't it? How could she be selfish for wanting to fix it? Confusion grew in her heart. None of it made any sense. Sunset wiped her face with her jacket, then gently stroked her friend’s hair as best she could.
Wallflower's subtle sobs finally died down, and Sunset looked down at her with the best friendly smile she could. "You okay?"
Wallflower took a step back and wiped her puffy eyes with her sweater. "Yeah... I think so." She let out a frustrated sigh and slid down into the grass. Sunset followed her down to sit beside her. After a few long, deep breaths, Wallflower looked up to the gravestone. "I... I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me."
"It's okay, I think I kinda dese--" Sunset stopped to clear her throat. "I mean, I think you might have needed to get that out."
"Yeah..." Wallflower ran her sleeve across her face again and looked down. "My therapist says I need a healthy outlet for all this. I guess I know why now." She let her arms go limp into her lap and let her head droop. "She also says I shouldn't blame myself, but..."
"You were his friend when no one else would be. After I..." Sunset caught herself again. "Why would you blame yourself?"
Wallflower let out another frustrated grunt, followed by a defeated sigh. "After the Fall Formal, you just suddenly started making friends like everything you did didn't matter anymore. I couldn't stand to see you turn around and be popular like everyone just forgot what you did to them, what you did to him..."
She looked away and shook her head. "So I got depressed. If you could make new friends after everything you did, I knew something had to be wrong with me. I stopped talking to anyone, or even showing up to school. I felt I didn't matter, like nobody would have remembered me anyway. Except for him...
"I was so upset I wouldn't even return his texts... I thought he would be better off without me. I was just some cursed girl doomed to a life of isolation. He could've done better, so I wanted him to move on with his life. But..."
Sunset stared down at the grass, her heart sinking even further. "He didn't..."
"No, he didn't. I wanted him to get better without me dragging him down," Wallflower said, a frustrated edge building in her voice. "Not this."
Sunset reached out again. "Wallflower, there's no way you could have known."
She just let out another frustrated grunt. "I was his only friend! How do you think I didn't know what he was going through?" Sunset leaned away, ready for another outburst, but Wallflower caught a glimpse of her fear and took a deep breath to settle down. "Just please, stop pretending you're the one that caused this. He could've gotten through your bullying if I'd just been there for him," she said, sinking her face into her knees.
Sunset grimaced. Wallflower's words clashed hard with her thoughts. It wasn't right for her to do this to herself when Sunset tallied up all her own crimes against him. "But I was the one that ruined his life. I was the one that spread those rumors. I made you his only friend. I--"
"Not gonna help," a deep monotonous voice called out from behind them. Both of the girls jumped, then immediately scrambled to their feet when they saw who it was.
"Mr. Tary, what are you--" Wallflower started.
"Blame won't bring him back. Doesn't matter who feels the most guilty," he said in a dry, uncomfortably stern tone. Calvin looked down at his son's grave, not an ounce of emotion in his cold glare. Sunset had to take a step back.
"But," Wallflower tried to get out. His father silenced it completely with a single flick of his eyes towards her. Wallflower just looked down to the grass again.
"It's not a competition. Anyone could've stopped him on that beach. All of us could've changed something."
Sunset grabbed her arm and looked at the ground awkwardly. "Look, I know it doesn't mean much, but I'm really--"
"What was your name?" he asked from his statuesque position overlooking the grave.
Sunset cleared her throat. "Um... Sunset Shimmer, sir," she said, a little surprised with herself. She can't remember the last time she voluntarily called someone 'sir'.
"If you want to make up for it, this isn't how you do it."
Sunset took a step forward. She could feel the desperation building up inside her as she looked up to his dad. "What should I do then?"
"You've both still got lives to live. Don't waste them letting this eat you up."
Sunset clenched her fists. That was the last thing she wanted to hear. Having to carry around this burden for the rest of her life sounded like a nightmare. "That... that can't be it."
This time he turned his gaze directly at Sunset. She immediately had to back down. That awful, thousand-yard stare felt like a microscope directly into her soul. She winced and looked away, realizing that Wallflower might've actually made some sense.
"You're young. Live a good life for him, since he can't anymore.”
"No," Sunset said, shaking her head at him. "No, that's not..." Sunset grimaced and fell to her knees. Her life was built around answers and solutions. Every problem had one, she just had to do the work to find it. A math problem could be solved, a chemistry equation could be balanced, friends could made up to, bad feelings always had good ones to push them away, but this... going on living with no solution wasn't how the world operated. It wasn't how it was supposed to work. Life wasn't supposed to be this way. Sunset thought she could just bear this burden and use the pain to find a solution, but there was no end on this equation. This mistake was forever. Sunset fell forward onto her hands and let out a few angry whimpers as the frustrated tears welled up in her eyes again. It couldn't be this way, it just wasn't possible.
"He would've accepted your apology. Don't blame yourself," his dad said, just as cold and dry as ever. He looked down at her for a moment with those unblinking, expressionless eyes. Sunset looked back up at him for a moment, to find something in his expression. Pity, hate, anger, anything, but it was just as empty as before. "It won't help," he said before turning around and leaving the two girls alone.
Wallflower knelt back down beside Sunset as the overcast skies decided to make their afternoon even worse. The slow drizzle quickly coated the girls' hair and clothes, but Sunset barely even noticed. Sunset's own anger and frustration bubbled up inside of her. As much as she desperately wished for answers, today didn't yield any at all. She was just as distraught as the day she learned the truth, and now, even more confused.
"We should get back. Anything's better than sitting around in the rain, right?"
Sunset wanted to snap, to tell her she deserved to get soaked out here, or that she should be in that grave instead. A million angry thoughts blasted into her mind, but his father was right; none of this would help. She clenched her fists in the grass and slowly let her frustration flow out of her lungs. A few more breaths to push the uncomfortable thoughts away. "Right..." Wallflower took her hand and helped her to her feet.
"Sorry again for yelling at you..." she said in a weak, remorseful tone. "Did this help at least?"
Sunset looked down. She wanted to say yes, but she couldn't. The truth was, she was even more confused and upset about all this than before. Was she really just doing this for herself? How could she not shoulder the blame at all? She grabbed the sides of her head and let out an irritated huff. "I don't know anymore..."
Sunset took another deep breath to keep her emotions at bay for now. She gave a weak smile to Wallflower. "Thanks for doing this, at least. I think I'm just going to walk home on my own."
"Do you need an umbrella or something?"
Sunset shook her head. "I'll be fine."
"Oh... well, I guess I'll see you at school tomorrow then," she took a step away, but then looked back for a moment, awkwardly fiddling with her hair. "I know we don't really do this, but if you need someone to talk to..."
Sunset nodded. "And you too," she said before the two girls parted ways.
The sky was darkening. Sunset looked up as the rain fell harder by the second. Before long her hair was completely soaked and she could even feel the water flowing through her clothes. She wished it would just wash it all away. All the hurt, the confusion, the guilt, the regret. Let some divine intervention take this hurt away. Maybe it was selfish to think this way. Sunset let out a sad sigh and looked back down to the flowers. The steady rain was already beating on the petals, deforming the beautiful shape of them. Sunset leaned down and took one of them, putting it safely under her leather jacket to keep the harsh, unrelenting rain away. She laid her free hand on the stone.
She focused on the hurt she felt, trying to pull some sort of meaning out of her confusion. Sunset knew she had a lot more to think about. Sunset thought about all the horrible things she did to people, all the rumors she's spread, all the relationships she's ruined. She couldn't go back to undo any of those. Sunset leaned down and pressed her forehead against that cold, unforgiving stone and thought about the person she used to be. The frustration with herself grew, at the person she used to be, at the person Wallflower said she was. All she wanted to do was change any little thing she could, but the past was always forever. As much as she tried nothing could ever be done to go back and make things right. Her grip on the stone tightened with frustration. Some mistakes might be forever, but her future was something she could change. Sunset sighed, and thought of at least one tiny consolation she could make.
"I can't take anything back. I wish so much that I could... but I'll promise you, for as long as I'm still breathing, I'll never make anyone feel like this again."
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This.........was deep.
I don't know what to say after something like this. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to feel.
Thank you for sharing this story.
Sometimes... Its hell trying to find forgiveness & closure for the sins of our past.... Either embrace it & move on or remember it & suffer for it...
Man, this really made me almost jump out of my skin as well. Even evil Wallflower was never this serious.
…..Um, Wallflower?
Were you just....absent during "Rainbow Rocks"? Sunset didn't just suddenly start making friends. She was shunned by the whole school sans the Humane Five for all the crap she pulled in the 1st film, and they only started trusting her when she helped save everyone from the Sirens and proved that she deserved a second chance.
Complex and emotional.
I just hope Sunset doesn't go to any extremes with the promise she made.
I think in this instance, the pronoun is unclear enough that you should just say "Wallflower" instead.
You accidentally the space after the period.
Man, I don't know what to say. I guess all I can say is that this is quickly becoming one of my favorites.
Also, that's some snazzy new cover art.
It was sooo amazing. Really tugging at my heartstrings here.
This may be a disrespectful and rude question, but how did he die?
aww :):
9460225
I'm assuming he walked into the water, judging from the mention of the beach.
9460127
You're doing better than myself over here :(
9460225
Pill overdose
9460736
So did he overdose at the beach? I thought it was hinting he drowned himself.
9460068
She very well may have been. As she said in the story she did skip school for a time. Thus it wouldn't be too far fetched to think that that time period was one of them. Lets be honest about Wallflower though. Even if she was still going to school around Rainbow Rocks its pretty clear she would have completely avoided the entire event itself. Even if not however, and she was there, that is still a very accurate statement to make in relative. While I don't think we know the exact time between the Fall Formal and Rainbow Rocks we can easily deduce it to be within a few months. From perspective that few months might as well be suddenly in terms of length of time. Also suddenly very well may not be time relative in length even with her specifying a point in time.
Suddenly, after the Fall Formal, the 5 girls she went against the most, and did everything to tear them apart from each other, united as her only friends. Also suddenly, and yes it was Rainbow Rocks but just bear with me, the school went from still being negative to her to just flipping and being friendly. The sudden she is talking about here is the very abrupt about face a lot of people had in regards to Sunset. That started after the Fall Formal. Immediately after with what would be argued as her biggest rivals. While granted it wasn't all at once every time a group changed their stance to Sunset it was a very abrupt and hard change. One that Wallflower couldn't understand.
Please understand that I am just trying to offer up reasons that explain why it would make sense for her to say what she did.
That said this story did an absolutely brilliant job in giving reason to Wallflower's actions in Forgotten Friendship. Beyond that I will echo what Scampy said earlier and even go further myself saying that it feels, to some degree, inappropriate to enjoy such an excellent work of written art with such true life tragedy at the core of it.
9462393 If that were the case, Twilight and Spike would have vanished from existence the first time Starlight Glimmer stopped the Snic Rainboom. For that matter so would she. Without the Rainboom, none of them in the Sombra timeline would have any reason to go back and stop it, or even know of it's significance.
9462886
It's possible that time travel spells, somehow, protect users from being affected by paradoxes that would normally be a massive problem, perhaps represented as far back as in the "bootstrap paradox" from one of the show's earlier seasons. However, even if Sunset would have successfully undone the death of this one person and return to the present without being obliterated, she'd still face the issue of being displaced in a timeline that might be completely different depending on how Past Sunset reacts to information coming from the future.
Whats the difference between doing good out of genuine kindness. To doing something good out of guilt plus, the desire to be redeemed in the eyes of others and yourself.
Does helping others out of a need redemption make you selfish? Either way your don't think it really matters but, still the question should be asked.
this was a good chapter
9462393
Agreed. Planning is always a neccesity of time travel (and sometimes even that's not enough). If this were to work, the belief and evidence of his death would have to be a constant. So that would require a convincing body double and for him to dissapear for a while (perhaps hiding out for two years or Sunset pulls him into present day).
Or it would turn out she's already gone back in time to stop him, but it still happens.
But all of that would just undermine the meaning of the story and not be very realistic. So... yeah. No time travel.
9480381
Well, if your apology if self-serving, then it may not be the apology or repentance that needs to be said.
Will this story be continued anytime soon?
I think she can make it up to him by telling the truth, but that still wouldn’t have changed anything.
Despite how cold and dry he is, this man Calvin cool in my book, this man spoke true facts.
This chapter was deep and emotional. And Calvin was right, blame wouldn't bring anyone back to life. Nothing will. This is just--wow Im speechless