α = 0.05

Wallflower focused on the softness of her skin. The heat of her breath. The way that her hair felt. Not the carefully-curated look of just-got-out-of-bed, but the greasy, matted mess that was more like how Wallflower’s own hair was like all the time. Neither of them had changed their clothes, or showered, in a bit. How could they?

“We should get out of bed,” Sunset said in a voice uncharacteristically hoarse and weak. “We need to eat something.”

“I don’t want to get up.” Wallflower mumbled. “I don’t want to eat anything. I don’t want to let you go.”

“Well you have to eat something. I have to eat something. And we can cuddle on the couch after, okay?”

Shaking, Wallflower steeled herself to let Sunset go. The sensation of her skin touching Sunset’s and then no longer; the letting go.. Trying not to think of the fact that soon, she would feel that sensation one very last time, and then–

The air of the room against her felt so very cold. Wallflower looked at the outline of where Sunset’s body had been on the bed. Her impression, quickly fading from the mattress. She thought of burying her face in that impression, of holding on to that warmth as tightly as she could until it slowly faded from her.

Instead, she followed her living, breathing girlfriend down from the loft bed and to the apartment’s small kitchenette. As Sunset moved pots and pans and cabinet doors, Wallflower stared a hollow stare at her back like a ghost. Or maybe Sunset was the ghost.

Then Sunset turned around and grabbed her with an arm, bringing her in close for a kiss. Wallflower sank into her grip, leaning into her as much as she could without knocking her over.

“You know, it’s funny,” Sunset said, glancing away every so often to give the boiling pasta a stir. “This could be any other night when neither of us feels like making anything more complicated than boxed mac and cheese. It’s funny isn’t it?”

“Yeah…”

“Like, what does money even mean anymore? We could throw all this away. We could get delivery! What do you think, Wally?”

Sunset locked eyes with Wallflower, hers glowing bright with energy.

“We could get anything! Anything you want!”

Wallflower frowned.

“It’s 1 AM, Sunset. I don’t think anywhere is open right now.”

Sunset’s smile faded, just a bit.

“Oh.”

She stirred the pasta a bit more.

“Or maybe we could go somewhere? In the car? We never did get to go on that road trip, did we?“

Wallflower thought about that for a bit. Spending what little time they had left… in a car? But then she thought of something.

“Oh yeah, maybe! Someplace far away. Far, far away.”

She wrapped both arms around Sunset, sinking her face into her hair until she could feel her neck. She lowered her voice to a whisper.

“Far enough where we just keep going and going, and never have to come back.”

Sunset sighed, which Wallflower felt on her skin as much as she heard.

“You know I can’t do that, Wally…”

Wallflower blinked at her tears, feeling stupid that she was wiping them all over on Sunset’s hair and neck. But then again, she wanted her to feel it, too.

“I know, Sunset.”

p-value. Wallflower must have learned what it meant at some point, for some test she must have taken in high school. But Twilight was more than happy to break it down for her, just like she tried to break down everything else about why this terrible thing had to happen.

p-value. The probability that the observed result would happen in a world where the null hypothesis were true: that the proposed cause and seen effect really had nothing to do with each other.

Probability? That seemed absurd to her. Everything she was told, all of this anguish, the rooms full of serious women and men in lab coats and black suits, they were all because of a probability churned out by some computer somewhere?

But that’s how all of science worked, she was told. The very same principles that kept planes in the air and assured that the amount of aspirin she took each month wouldn’t kill her applied here. The only difference was the cost of having another repeat of the experiment.

Ah, the null hypothesis. How wonderful it would be to live in the world of the null hypothesis! The world where the Equestrian energy signatures of Sunset’s presence had nothing at all to do with half of Whinnyapolis being gone.

The night air was far too cold to sleep in, but that was what their blankets from home were for. What was the use of worrying about grass stains on them now, after all?

If what was happening in just a few hours wasn’t happening, would they ever have had a night like this? Even if they had spent an entire lifetime with each other? No, never. After all, in that world of the null hypothesis, Canterlot High would either be a heavily guarded government installation or a working high school built atop a top-secret government installation, and there would be no reason to let the two of them spend the night in the campus’s garden. Underneath the stars.

The (all-too-short) walk to the portal was a much better alternative than the thought of having to drive to the place where she would give up Sunset forever on the morning of, or being taken there…

Wallflower tried to focus on the feeling of Sunset’s breathing against her back. The warm softness of the arms around her. But her thoughts had to drift, naturally, to what was in the tiny zippered pocket of Wallflower’s bag that the armed guards were too merciful to search. Wallflower’s brain emitted a manic thought of what it could have been instead of what it was, in that life together they would never have where they for some reason decided to sneak onto the grounds of their old high school and camp out at the place that it all began. She tried her very best to not think of that.

What it actually was was the last shard of the Memory Stone. A thumb-sized piece that was left over when it had shattered in her hand. The one that she’d hid on herself as she’d cried, curled up on that parking lot ground. She’d sincerely meant everything she’d said that day. She really was sorry. She really did regret it. She really hated herself for it all. She really did never want to go down that path again.

Yet still, at the same time, she’d hid that one piece on herself while holding up the other, bigger one for Sunset and all her friends to see. That way, if there ever came a time that she’d need to prove to someone that she no longer had any piece of the Memory Stone that she would certainly never use again, she could give that one up and everyone could rest easy. And that had worked.

But even at this distance, she could feel the power of that shard. Not an iota diminished from the power she had felt those two short years ago. What could she do with it now?

Would she be able to resist the temptation?

“Sunset?”

They’d talked about this before, so Wallflower didn’t have to say much. She could hear the trepidation in Sunset’s reply.

“Hmm?”

Wallflower closed her eyes, holding back tears. Her voice lowered to a whisper.

“I’m sorry. I don’t think I’ll be able to take it.”

A silent squeeze.

How long had she lain there, in the impression in the grass where Sunset’s body had been lying beside her? An hour? A day? A week? Somewhere between the first two. Closer to the first.

Had a part of her wished that Sunset would go against her wishes and woken her up before she left forever? Of course she had. But Sunset was too good for that. No matter how much it pained her to do it, Sunset would say goodbye to her alone.

At some point, Wallflower noticed that Twilight Sparkle had approached her somewhere in her periphery, with all the air of someone apologizing for bothering her for anything at all, and having no idea what to even say in the situation. Wallflower could relate to that very much. But she wasn’t that person right now.

“Hey, Twilight,” she said as she sat up and turned around. “How was it with Sunset?”

“Oh, you know… Hard? I…“ Every word came out as if between seized gears..

Wallflower gave her an understanding look.

“She was your friend for a long time. Longer than she was mine. It must have been hard to say goodbye.“

Twilight gave her a pained smile.

“She talked about how much she loved you. And…”

“That she wished that I was there.”

Twilight didn’t say no. Only a guilty look.

“Agh, sorry! There’s just so much going on here and I’m terrible at secrets and….”

Wallflower blinked. “What?”

“Just… thanks for not using the Memory Stone, okay? The piece that’s in your bag right now.”

Before Wallflower could respond to that, Twilight took something out of her own bag and placed it in Wallflower’s arms, who took it without thinking.

“And here, take this.”

She realized what it was. A familiar, brown notebook with an emblem of the sun on the cover.

“I… I thought that all the artifacts had to be sent back. Equestrian magic, right?”

“Other way around,” Twilight said. “When the flow of magic into this world is reduced, the artifacts become dormant. But this?”

She opened up the book to a blank page in the crook of Wallflower arm.

“The magic that’s needed to keep these working is orders of magnitude smaller. We’re already keeping one as a line of communication with Princess, um, me. And it felt right to give you the other one. Or, uh, not right to not.”

She pressed a pen into Wallflower’s other hand. And it was only then, plus a few seconds, before she realized what all of this meant.

With a shaky hand, in a messy and slanted script, Wallflower traced her very first word on these pages, the ink glowing in green.

Sunset?

An orange glow shone beneath it, in the thick, familiar lines of refrigerator reminders and love notes.

Wally?

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