• Published 12th Sep 2019
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No longer Necessary - chris the cynic



When they started dating, Sunset was at her lowest point and Wallflower was just as miserable. Now things are getting better, and they weren't prepared for that.

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Chapter 1: An Ordinary Day

Sunset ran out of the classroom and down the hall, taking the first corner so fast she almost fell over. While she could usually wait until class had ended for this sort of thing, and she usually didn’t do anything so obvious as run through the halls at full clip, this was becoming a fairly regular activity for her.

She figured that the students she'd left behind were congratulating themselves on driving her off. If they were, they had it backwards. She wasn’t running from them; she was running toward salvation.

Normally she tried not to dwell on how this once would have been unthinkable. Usually she tried not to think about how easily the Rainbooms --her friends-- had turned on her. She spent most of her time these days pretending --telling herself again and again-- that she wasn’t devastated by the fact it only took two posts --two fucking posts-- from an anonymous account, which wasn’t even impersonating her well, to erase everything she’d done to make up for how she used to be.

At times like these, though, those were the thoughts she wanted most. Yes, she was devastated, also despondent, deeply in despair, and all sorts of other depressing “D” words. No, alliteration and assorted wordplay no longer brought her joy. Yes, the betrayal hurt like Tartarus.

She needed those thoughts because, if she could just hold on to enough pain long enough, she could finally end it.

She was almost at the library, and with it access to the roof, when something unwanted came to mind. She hadn’t forgotten it so much as pushed it aside and ignored it. Now it was back in the front of her mind. She’d made a promise. Not just a promise: a deal.

If she went through with this, her pain would finally end, but would Wallflower still be Wallflower the day after?

Before it had always been about her; now it wasn’t. She wouldn’t make it to the library.

The feeling was still there, though. If she didn’t do something about it, there was no telling where things might go. She thought through the same old things.

Physical pain could be cleansing. It focused your attention on annoying but ultimately irrelevant things like broken bones, influenza, or traumatic brain injury. So if she just punched a brick wall until her hand broke or bashed her head into a wall until she passed out, that’d be a release.

She came to the same conclusion she always did: that would hurt Wallflower more than it helped her. “Hi. I know I’m all bloody and my hand and/or head is broken, but at least I’m not dead,” was not a viable way to start their next conversation.

That meant she'd be doing the same thing she always did. It made her hate herself, but it would get her what she needed without hurting Wallflower. Also, it was almost time for the bell to send everyone to their next class, so the timing was as close to perfect as it could be.

~ ~ ~

Wallflower just barely managed to avoid yelping when a near-shove brought her into a janitor's closet. Once she was in, she closed the door with a sort of spin that left her back against it while Sunset attempted to perform the kissing version of aggravated assault on her face and neck. Obviously the only thing to do was to kiss back, and she got to work on that.

They eventually slowed down, transitioning into the kind of kiss that lasted so long they needed to stop for air afterward. It was in one of these pauses that Wallflower asked, “Tough class?”

“Brutal class,” Sunset said.

After a few more kisses, Sunset pulled back and added, “Teacher needed to go to the photocopier--”

It wasn’t hard to see what was coming next, Wallflower preemptively gave Sunset a quick and light kiss on the lips.

“--and trusted the students to behave themselves till he got back.” Sunset could have said, “Naturally, they did,” with a straight face and an even tone and lost none of her meaning, but --in Wallflower’s opinion-- the sarcasm Sunset’s voice was laden with added some indefinable quality that made the whole thing complete.

As for the content of Sunset’s speech, Wallflower couldn’t come up with the right swear for it. She ended up looking down, pinching the bridge of her nose, and growling. When she looked up, though, something put all of it out of her mind. She was in a room with her girlfriend, they were completely alone, and they were unlikely to be disturbed.

The kissing resumed.

Wallflower walked to lunch surrounded by people who couldn’t be bothered to notice her.

Apart from an impromptu make out session, her day had been the same as it always was. In fact, it was honestly hard to distinguish one day from the next, given how monotonously similar they all were.

No one talked to her. Multiple people pronounced rooms empty while she was still in them. She was never picked in gym, even though, barring absences, that always left the teams uneven.

When she raised her hand to answer questions --something she had to work extremely hard to do, given her anxiety-- she was never called on. Even when she was the only one with a hand up. Today one teacher complained that "no one" was willing to answer while she had her and up and had even resorted to waving it like a fifth grader.

When she tried to join conversations, she was ignored. When she gave up and stood in one place, or dropped to the floor and hugged her knees into her chest, most people didn’t even walk around her, not completely. They'd avoid the kind of collision that might stop them in their tracks or knock them over, but only just. When she wasn't the one dodging, glancing collisions, which the other students didn't even seem to notice, were frequent.

More of the same, nothing ever changed.

Even knowing that it was, at least in part, because of magic that had never been meant for her world, it made her wonder --always wonder-- if maybe everyone treated her like nothing and nobody was because she was a nobody, and she was worth nothing. Magic or not, it was almost impossible to believe that an important person, or even an unimportant one who merely mattered in some small way, would be treated this way.

Maybe she was better off forgotten and invisible. If no one cared enough to acknowledge her, didn't that mean she wasn't worth caring--

The warmth and pressure of someone taking her hand blew all of those thoughts away. She knew who it was, of course, but she still looked over to see. She smiled at the sight of Sunset's face.

Wallflower mattered. She was somebody. She was worth something. She knew these things because Sunset Shimmer --Sunset Fucking Shimmer-- believed them, and --good or evil-- Sunset had never been one be wrong about such things. Sure, she'd lie about it in the bad old days, but Sunset always understood who was important and how much they mattered.

Just having Sunset tell her, and remind her, that she deserved to be noticed, acknowledged, and remembered might have been enough in itself, but things were so much better than that. Sunset loved her, she loved Sunset, and that was all she needed.

For the moment, at least. The sudden-Sunset-euphoria would die down; the joy of seeing each other after time apart couldn't be sustained indefinitely, but the fact that she did have one bright spot in her dreary life would not go away. The hard part was remembering it when Sunset wasn't around.

They walked in silence for a bit, then Sunset said, “I'm sorry about earlier,” as though she'd done something horrifically wrong. “In the closet,” she added.

Wallflower stopped and half turned to face Sunset, Sunset mirrored the action and they were face to face. Wallflower took Sunset's other hand, mostly so there would be symmetry, and told Sunset, “You don't ever have to apologize for kissing me.”

Sunset half smiled, but then looked away. “I just feel like . . . I worry . . . I worry that if I don't say something, that --maybe--”

Wallflower closed the distance between them and gave Sunset a quick kiss on the lips. It would have been easier if Sunset had been looking in the right direction --Wallflower wouldn't have had to awkwardly lean partway around Sunset-- but it was worth it. Also: afterward Sunset was looking at her again, which was always a plus.

“I don't think you see me as a pick-me-up or a way to get a fix,” she said. They'd been through this, though usually not in a school hallway. “I do know that you love me. I also know how hard everything is for you right now, and if I can make it less bad just by kissing you--”

“You can,” Sunset said.

“Then I want to,” Wallflower said. Then she looked away. “I just . . .” She looked back. “I wish everything else were so easy to . . . make less bad.”

Sunset smiled. “We both do,” she said.

They started walking again --lunch wouldn't wait just because they were having a moment-- and things were good.

When Sunset filled her in on the exact details of what happened in that class, things would be less good. There was also a chance (Wallflower estimated anywhere from twelve to twenty percent) that one or both of them would have a nervous breakdown before the day was over. Still, right now things were good, and --right now-- that was what mattered.

Some enterprising soul had added graffiti to Sunset's locker during lunch. Usually she had to wait till the next morning for an update. In one sense, it was more of the same. Not particularly different from what it was written over. In another . . . Sunset had to wonder why no one had thought to call her “snitch” before.

In the original confrontation, Pinkie Pie claimed their friendship had been a ruse on Sunset’s part, a way to gather information, and then branded Sunset a secret stealer. That's what a snitch was, right? It wasn't as though anyone at school would get hung up on technicalities, so it was only the broad strokes that mattered.

Less than a week after that, people she'd never actually had a relationship with were calling her, "Traitor," so why did it take so long to get to "snitch"?

If whoever wrote it had been hoping to set her off, they'd picked a bad day for it. She'd been on her way to the roof before first period was over --she wasn't heading that way again today-- and this wasn't a day for dropping to the floor and sobbing. Right now was a time of apathy.

It was a state she could get comfortably ensconced in. Nothing hurt, and --when Wallflower wasn’t around-- that was as good as things got these days.

One more period of classes and she and Wallflower could head home. Home. The thought almost made her smile. It was like she could feel the emotion trying to exist, but not quite succeeding. A warm bed in wintertime was a miracle in itself.

Author's Note:

I am interested in if anyone thinks this should have tags it doesn't have. As an example, it doesn't meet the technical requirements for "Suicide/Self-Harm", but I'm not interested in setting anyone off so maybe the technical requirements aren't what matter here. I'm not sure.

On that particular subject: please stay alive and please also stay as unharmed as it is within your power to be. I very seriously, and completely truthfully, care about you even though we've never met.

(Back on the first topic, I've also just learned that I've been misusing the AU tag the whole time I've been here, so that doesn't lead to confidence in my tagging ability.)

Ok, so, what else . ? . Given the word limit for the contest this is (hopefully) going to be an entry into, a chapter like this might be a mistake.

I mean, I probably don't have a hope of winning anyway, especially since the contest creator specifically said they'd hate anyone who entered an Anon-a-Miss story, but I'm still trying to make a legitimate entry.

This does, I hope, meet Vonnegut’s 4th rule, in that it reveals character, but none of it advances the action. As the title suggests, it's an ordinary day. As Sunset and Wallflower both think (in their own ways), it's more of the same.

I feel like it fills an important role because the prologue, while it gives a snapshot their feelings, doesn't fully establish what Sunset and Wallflower's normal is. Without this chapter to establish the baseline, I don't think readers will have a sense of what things are changing from as the story moves.

The problem is that I've just used a third (technically 31.173%) of my available word-count to set the stage, leaving me with a lot less room to have the plot unfold.

Since the whole story is going to be from the point of view of either Sunset or Wallflower, there's a lot of wider-world stuff that won't get covered. I know that some people like to learn such stuff even when it isn't in the story, so I've got a blog post to talk about that. (At length.)

Some salient details:

  • Anon-a-Miss and thus the bullying of Sunset has gone on longer than in the original comic, but it hasn't intensified. This is not an escalation fic.
  • The Rainbooms are no worse in this than in the original comic
  • The CMC aren't either, it's just that the event that opened their eyes to the harm they were doing in the comic didn't happen that way in the this story.
  • Sunset has kept human Celestia and Luna, as well as Princess Twilight, in the dark about how bad things are for her. They're not ignoring the problem; they are limited by the information they have on hand.