Epilogue – Doppelgänger
Dear Twilight Sparkle,
Sorry for not writing to you in such a long time. How are things in Equestria? I hope your princess duties have been boring and easy to deal with lately, but I get the feeling, since I haven’t heard from you in a while, that that’s rarely the case. Don't read too deep into that, though. I understand.
Do you think you’ll have time to come visit me soon? Don’t worry, there haven’t been any magical mishaps in quite a while. While things have been mostly boring on this end, there’s been some personal developments with me and one of our friends, and it has me curious about a few things that only you can answer. I know that probably doesn’t make a lot of sense, but that’s why I want to talk to you about it in person.
Hope to hear from you soon! Tell Spike and all the others I said hey.
Your friend,
Sunset Shimmer
It’s been a couple weeks since the incident at the Fall Formal. Things have settled down, and life’s been pretty good ever since. The talk my friends and I had after everything happened went much better than I anticipated. We all agreed that I was probably just overly stressed due to the fact that almost everything that had been building over the previous six months all came to a head at the same time. In retrospect, that made a lot of sense.
When I finally confessed to Twilight, I was practically bursting at the seams with pent-up emotions. Having Rarity as an outlet helped, but there was someone else I needed to let those feelings out to. In those same months I was bottling things up, Rarity was doing the exact same thing with no outlet whatsoever. That’s why her confession was just as intense as mine was to Twilight.
All of that, combined with the trauma of last year’s Fall Formal I was staunchly refusing to deal with, turned me into a walking, talking, ticking time bomb. It’s no wonder I exploded. My friends did a wonderful job outlining why I acted the way I did. We all like to think we understand ourselves better than anyone else, but I’ve since learned that’s not always the case. I don’t really know what I’d do without Twilight and the girls. Thankfully, they’ve assured me I’ll never have to answer that so long as they have anything to say about it.
For a few days after the whole ordeal, I was afraid Twilight would come to realize she didn’t actually want to be with such an emotionally unstable wreck. As it turns out, my outbursts have only bolstered her confidence in us. She said she’d be more afraid if I was better at hiding when I felt like that. Not just because the eventual consequences of me bottling things up would be more severe, but because it shows that I trust her enough to deal with how I feel. Can’t say I disagree. I tell her I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to have her, but she just tells me she’s luckier. I love that girl so much.
A couple days after everything happened, I picked up the journal me and Princess Twilight write to each other through and asked her when she could come visit. There’s a question I’ve wanted to ask since the night of the sleepover, but I’ve held myself back from doing it. It might seem kind of silly, and I’m sure anyone else in my position would have done that before anything else, but there’s a few reasons I’ve decided against it until now.
When I first knew I had a crush on this world’s Twilight, why wouldn’t I just write to Princess Twilight and ask her how she feels about me? Why wouldn’t I ask about her sexuality? Wouldn’t that save me a lot of time and heartache? While I can certainly follow that logic, things are rarely so easy.
There are two simple words that explain why I haven’t asked: dimensional divergence. Okay, maybe they’re not that simple, but let me explain.
The easiest observable divergence between our two worlds are the differences between Twilight and Princess Twilight. My Twilight wears glasses, and the princess does not. That’s not because glasses aren’t a thing in Equestria – they definitely are – it’s just one of the ways in which they’re different from each other on a biological level. You know, aside from the whole being a pony versus human thing. The bigger difference between the two is social status. One of them is a princess. The other is a random student.
Princess Celestia and Princess Luna are rulers of Equestria. In this universe, they are both principals at a high school. A high school in the center of a random city in the middle of a vast country full of other cities. The distance between their rungs on the social ladders of their respective worlds are miles apart.
How about my friends? All of my friends here play instruments. Unless you count singing, none of the girls in Equestria play instruments except for Pinkie Pie. All of my friends here are in their mid to late teens, while all the girls in Equestria are in their mid-to-late twenties. Similar to how my friends are younger than their Equestrian counterparts, I am also younger in this dimension than I am in Equestria. In this world, I'm a teenager, but in Equestria I'm around the same age as the princess and her friends. I think it has something to do with how different forms have different perceptions of time, and how our bodies translating from pony to human go through some kind of time-dilating effect. Something complicated like that.
Which brings me to the most important divergence: me! When I arrived here, there was no Sunset Shimmer at this school or even in this city. I pored over any records I could get my hands on at both the school and city hall, but I never found any record of anyone with the same name or photo as me. As far as I’m aware, I don’t even have a dimensional counterpart. That’s not to say they don't exist, but if they did, I would have surely met them by now, right?
I’m not trying to belabor the point. I’m just trying to illustrate the many ways in which this dimension differs from Equestria despite having an analog for almost everything. So while I could have asked Princess Twilight all of those questions from the beginning, there’s no guarantee the answers would be remotely similar to the ones this world’s Twilight would give me.
And to be honest, I think the circumstances under which me and the princess met have permanently influenced how she feels about me. We might be good friends now, but I don’t doubt the answer to me asking her out would be “no” without any hesitation. Stealing the crown probably cemented that before I ever had a chance to think of the question to begin with.
That brings me to today. Princess Twilight has finally found time to sit down and talk with me. We’ve just arrived at my apartment, and we’re sitting across from one another on the couch. I’m currently trying to think of the best way to ask these questions, and I’m finding it much more difficult than I thought it would be. Twilight is sitting patiently waiting, but I can tell the longer I take, the more awkward this feels for her too.
I twiddled my thumbs as I glanced around the room. “I promise I’m not stalling. It’s just… this is really weird and hard to talk about.”
Twilight was still smiling, but I could see her slightly raise an eyebrow. “Are you sure this has nothing to do with magic?”
“Positive!” I answered, “It’s just… okay, I’m just going to rip the bandage off. How do you feel about me?”
Twilight only looked more perplexed. “I think you’re a really good friend, and I’m very proud of the person you’ve become in just a year’s time,” she answered confidently.
I smiled, but I shook my head. “No, no. I know that – thank you, by the way, that means a lot – but I mean… how do you feel about me?”
“I’m… not really sure I understand the question.” Twilight’s smile gradually faded into a confused frown. I guess I should have figured she’d be this oblivious to questions with vague underlying meanings. As different as she may be from my Twilight, she’s still a Twilight.
“What I mean is: if I were to ask you out right now, what would you say?”
Twilight pursed her lips as her eyes went wide. Then she looked off to the side. “You mean like… out on a date?”
“More or less, yeah.” I nodded and smiled awkwardly.
Twilight began to bounce her leg as her eyes darted around the room. The embarrassment washing through me could be felt down to my core, but I just had to know. I wanted to shout “You can just say no!”, but as much as I knew that would be the answer, I didn’t want to sway her.
“I mean… I-I guess… umm…” she stammered.
“Here, if it makes it any easier for you, I’m not asking you on a date right now,” I stated. I thought this would ease her into the question, but she only seemed to get frustrated.
“What do you mean, you’re not?! Why would you drop a question on me like that and not mean it?” she protested.
The offense in her voice made me flinch. I tried my best to ask that as rhetorically as possible, yet she still took it as literally as she could.
I held my hands up in front of me and smiled at her sheepishly. “I’m just asking hypothetically. I promise there’s a good reason for this, but I want to hear your unbiased answer before I tell you why I’m asking.”
To my surprise, she looked at the ground. Her expression looked a little dejected. I wanted to say something comforting, but I wasn’t sure what to say at all. Why would she react like that anyway? It’s not like she was about to say–
“I… I’d probably say yes, I guess,” she muttered.
My eyes went wide and my jaw dropped. “What the fuck?” I immediately felt horrible letting that question out, but it was impossible to hold in. The moment those words slipped past my lips, Twilight gave me another flummoxed look.
“What does that mean?” She sounded even more irritated. “I don't know who ‘the fuck’ is!”
At that moment, it occurred to me that Equestria had not been introduced to the wonderful invention of swearing. I stifled the oncoming hysterical laughter at her question and the following outburst by biting my tongue. Somehow, I managed to choke it back. There’s that bloody taste again.
There were a million words running through my mind afterward, and fishing out the right ones felt impossible for a few moments. I barely managed to scramble a coherent sentence together. “I'm sorry, just… Y-You’d say yes? Like, for real?”
She could tell I was amused by her answer, and this only fed her frustration. Twilight scowled at me, a blush now splashed across her face. “Is this hypothetical or not?! Are you going to keep playing with my emotions or can you just tell me what’s going on already?!” she snapped.
“I’m sorry! I just… this is something I’ve wondered for a while, and I really wasn’t expecting that answer,” I apologized.
“Why not?” she asked.
I stared at her for a moment. What do you mean why not? I thought. Do you not remember blasting me into a crater because I was a bitch? Why would you want to date that?
Once again, summoning the right words was a challenge, but I managed after a few seconds. “First of all, I didn’t know whether you liked girls or not. Secondly, I thought for sure the way we met would have forever made the answer to that question a big, fat no.”
Twilight shook her head and shrugged. “I mean, I’ve never really considered whether or not I have romantic feelings for you. But I’d certainly give you a chance. I don’t really have a preference for any gender, and you’re a completely different pony than the one I met a year ago. So, why not?”
I just started laughing. In the end, I could have saved myself the aforementioned time and heartache. If the other Twilight wasn’t already my girlfriend, I might be upset. Now, this was just hilarious to me. Twilight gave me an awkward laugh in return, but I could tell she was still just as bewildered as when the conversation began.
Finally, after I calmed down, I began to explain everything. “Over the past half a year, I’ve had a huge crush on Twilight from this dimension. It took me forever to finally ask her out, but I finally did a couple weeks ago. It turns out she’s actually gay, and she’s had feelings for me longer than I had ones for her. That's why I'm asking. I wanted to know if you would have answered similarly if I had just asked you from the beginning.”
Twilight shifted expressions multiple times, occasionally opening her mouth only to stop herself from actually saying anything. “If that's the case then… why wouldn't you just ask me how I felt from the beginning?”
I looked around the room awkwardly. “Well, barring all the differences between the two of you and the dimensions as a whole, there’s one big reason I never did.”
“And that is…?” she inquired.
“That would be cheating,” I answered with a smirk.
Her brow furrowed for a moment, but then her expression relaxed into a smile. “I’m not going to lie, this is the most profoundly weird thing anyone has ever told me.”
I smiled at her awkwardly.
“That said, I’ve got all afternoon. Why don’t you fill me in on how it all happened?” she asked.
I chuckled and took a deep breath. “Well, it all started one night at Pinkie’s when I woke up around 2 AM. You see, ever since you were here for the Battle of the Bands, I’ve had this really specific habit that only happens under incredibly and equally specific circumstances…”
That's a wrap! 
There's a blog post on my profile where I talk about my feelings about this story. You can read more about how I feel now that it's over and the process I took to make it if you'd like.
1/26/23 EDIT: One final thanks to EileenSaysHi for going over not just this epilogue but the ENTIRE STORY and correcting so much of it. This reads so much better now that they've worked on it, and I can't express how much I appreciate that.
Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed. 
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No no no, we are not done here.
You need to introduce scitwi to the other one.
In all the ways this amazing story could have ended, I didn't expect that hahahaha.
I love this story, it's going to my favorites
Aw, this is a really sweet and fun ending. Bravo.
Nice simple, cute little epilogue! And I'll be honest, while reading this I was also sometimes wondering what princess twilight would think of sunset shimmer romantically as well, so this scratched yet another lil itch of mine! Also I imagine Sunset's going to tell Twilight basically this whole story almost word for word but stopping periodically to explain things like what the "fuck" a "cigarette" is or half the shit Timber said to Sunset during their confrontation and that makes me giggle.
Reading this story from the start has been a treat for me, for a while I've been getting on here to read one chapter a night before bed, mostly, and listening to some faint music all the while (particularly the shit on network xxiii and ffh lounge, 2 v good online radio stations for relaxing downtempo stuff). It's a little sad that I won't be able to do that with this story anymore, but I've loved the experience nonetheless, and I know there'll probably be more to look forward to from you in the future!
You are a phenomenal writer and you blow me away and inspire me, as well as others here who got to appreciate your work!! Always remember that
Not sure I love Sunset's opinions on ghosting, in my experience anything other than a clean break usually ends up messier than it's worth for both sides.
Also I know there sort of had to be a bad guy but I feel like Timber was basically blatantly character assassinated and probably would have worked better with a more in character reason of why they broke up, probably something to do with him being a big green bland turd.
All that's my opinion though and I did really enjoy the story, it was uncomfortably relatable at multiple points and actually got a good emotional response out of me which isn't very common for me. I'm looking forward to checking out your other stories and whatever you end up putting out in the future.
11389857
In Sunset's defense, the two of them are pretty separated from each other. If they went to the same school and/or lived close to one another, ghosting would undoubtedly be an awful idea. With that in mind, Sunset deems ghosting a good resolution mostly because of the distance between them. It's easier to ghost when you know it's unlikely you're ever going to spot them in day to day life. Also, she just wants him out of the picture as fast as humanly possible. The easier Twilight's let down, the faster her rebound might be. She'd just never admit that part.
The characters in this story are bent to be analogous to people I've known, and Timber is absolutely the one who got the most bent. He is the same character in name and face alone, and I'm totally aware of that. That's not meant to be an excuse, though, because I also believe he's the weakest part of this entire story. I had more plans for him, but I ended up truncating some plans toward the end and his whole thing was one of those things.
I'm both grateful and sorry for the fact that you found this relatable. Much like the characters are adjusted around people I've known, the experiences in this story are written around my own. It's always a good feeling to know I can express my own story like this and have it resonate with people, but I always feel the need to say sorry for the fact that you've been through anything like that. Thank you for your kind words, and I hope you'll like what I have coming out soon!
11390078
No need to say sorry but I do appreciate it lol.
Just to clarify a bit people like Timber absolutely exist and I kind of realized that he was probably being a stand in for some real life person, just thought it was odd how different he was from his portrayal in the movie.
I was speaking mostly from a pony standpoint of how they probably would have had other issues in the cannon. I'm actually kind of impressed that you managed to blend him in and keeping everything mostly cannon instead of creating an OC character that probably would have felt even more out of place. Sometimes people like Timber seem fine until you spend a little time with them and they show their true colors which I think is what you were going for even if I can't personally see him going that way.
The whole ghosting thing too makes sense from a character standpoint. I guess my initial knee jerk reaction was that it was more of a author advice thing to somebody who's being toxic but especially with her breakdown later it makes sense that she would want Twilight to totally break contact with him. I guess I've been ghosted before and didn't really put a ton of thought into calling you out on it when it was actually probably a well thought out character decision.
11393579
You'll find no disagreements from me. As stated in previous comments, that aspect is undoubtedly the weakest part of the story in my eyes, and it's one I wish I gave a little more thought and care to. Your feedback is appreciated!
11394322
I appreciate you pointing out the grammar mistakes, but this fic is actually in the process of being proofread again. Many of the errors you'll see (and there are many) will be fixed soon, so you don't need to highlight all of them.
As for your question, read ahead and you'll find out.
Sure is strange?
It's best you don't know Twi.
I sure did love this story. And while I'm already questioning if you were serious about that sequel or not, I'd love to see it!
When I first started reading this I didn't expect it to become one of my favorite stories on this site. You had me hook in the story in just two chapters and I got to say it was a wild ride, had many highs and lows and like I said before I really ended up enjoying it. Thanks!
11419895
I'm very happy to hear you enjoyed it so much! This comment has made my day. Thank you as well!
One heck of an emotional rollercoaster. I’m not fond of all the decisions—poor Timber got absolutely savaged in the name of the preferred pairing—but I do appreciate both a happy ending for my OTP and the complex portrayals of the characters’ mental states. A few bumps in the road, but still an enjoyable journey. Thank you for it.
11495869
Timber's treatment in this is the most regretful aspect of the story in my eyes as well, so I totally understand. Regardless, thank you for reading, and for your kind words!
The end is just the beginning
Just like The Outsiders
Well, that was... an experience.
To be honest, I'm not sure what to say beyond what's already been said by myself and others. It was a heck of a ride and I think it balanced the lighter and darker aspects excellently. Not to say it was what you'd call a light read - often it was raw and painful in the best possible way, and it did have flaws as has been discussed, but overall, definitely a triumph, I'd say.
Only other thing I'd like to see is... well, while I'm confident it will be accurate, I am curious how Sunset's prediction for Rarity's future relationship will go. Admittedly, I'm still a little hesitant to bring it up, since... well, let's face it, if you ask someone to ship a character, there's no guarantee it'll be a ship you like. Still, I'd be interested in where such a thing would go.
11504337
With regards to Sunset's prediction: there's a (maybe) one-off story I've been workshopping on-and-off since this one ended that takes place not long after the events of the finale in which you get a glimpse into the accuracy of her prediction. Without spoiling anything, all the girls in this canon are tangled in an interwoven web of feelings and varying degrees of attraction, so the only clue I can provide is that it's someone closer than she realizes. The story I'm talking about probably won't be out until my other story Chromatic Aberration is finished. That one takes place before all this. I promise that's not a subtle plug for that story; just a part of the overall explanation lol.
Regardless, I'm very glad you liked it! Thank you so much for reading, I very much appreciate that, and your kind words.
What a fantastic story. I'm so glad people are still out here writing longform fics like this, especially when they're done so well. Your characterization for Sunset and the others is spot on, I wouldn't change a thing. I finished this one the day after I finished Chromatic Aberrations, and I am so so glad I did. I will be looking forward to anything and everything you make from here on out! Keep it up!
Loved this story sooooo much!
Read the prequel, and the sequels. They’re all amazing!
I loved this story. Very intense, very satisfying, and a very cute epilogue.
Despite Sunset being Best Pony, Twilight really stole the show every time we got to see her lucidly comforting Sunset. I must have read those scenes half a dozen times at least, and I probably will again.
Just another TwiSet story. Nothing new, nor individual. Casual love story about teens.
Just spent the last 3 hours or so reading this fic and I feel like I can say with complete confidence, that out of the many Sciset fics I've read in the short amount of time since I found this site, this one is by far my favorite.
It might not mean much, but thank you for writing this story.
11839988
Considering all the wonderful SciSet stories on this site, that means a lot more than I can express. Thank you for reading!
This fanfic was absolutely incredible! I loved it!
Loving the read so far! I always apreciate a pining Sunset; But its specialy fun how you didnt shy away from her angry instincts, either. This is a wonderful fic!
11859880
Thank you very much! I'm actually thrilled you're reading this (and I'm planning on reading your stuff soon btw). And yes, Sunset's angry edge is one of the many things that drew me to her character so much. It's very relatable lol
11859932
Nyeh don't think i haven't seen you on tumblr as well ;3 Yeah fr. Sunset's personality is a wonderful mishmash of awesome tropes put on an awesome situation; the punk girl is pining for the insecure nerd, it's utterly incredible.
Fun fact! in "the return of midnight sparkle" (A fic i wrote) i also have a scene in which rarity clock's sunset's feelings about twilight easily. I couldnt help but laugh more as i read your fic, seeing me and another artist come up with the same scene concept, and our diffrent ways to execute it, heheh.
Looking forward to knowing how you feel about my writing!
Fun fic as a whole, i liked the ending! and the epilogue was also specialy funny, based on strong hypotheticals, heh.