There are some things you can lose, and some things that you can't, no matter how hard you try. Sunset Shimmer has lost everything once before. When it happens again, she finds out that there are some things that persevere even when you don&
There are some things you can lose, and some things that you can't, no matter how hard you try. Sunset Shimmer has lost everything once before. When it happens again, she finds out that there are some things that persevere even when you don't.
Like all of us, she finds it hard to confront her failure for what it is; all her fault. A flaw of self: character, priorities, ideals. Choices. Leaving Equestria was one such choice. Flash Sentry was another. Hostile takeover was the latest poor decision, and it has led her to this dilemma of self.
This fic is set after Sunset Shimmer's defeat in the first Equestria Girls movie.
It's also been left to collect dust for about half a year of studying, so not everything will fit where it is supposed to. Also, quality spikes (or the rest is really, really bad). This is a work in progress. I have more planned, including improvements to current content, but it's hopefully not going to be too long. Depends on what feedback I receive.
Mortar. Brick. Mortar. Brick. Mortar. It would be a lot easier if her eyes didn't keep fogging up. And if the cement didn't keep sticking to her fingers. 'I won't be able to get if off for days,' she thought. That wasn’t the worst part. Not by far. The worst part was that the simple nature of the task kept her mind free from preoccupation. There couldn’t have been a more dangerous moment for her idle mind to run wild. She would drag her thoughts away every time they strayed to the events of the evening but there back to the earlier events of the evening, but eventually, through a mixture of frustration and petrifying, morbid curiosity, she allowed herself to entertain those thoughts.
Her plan, so masterfully shaped, was in shambles. it seemed cruel to her that only the intervention of one unpredictable deus ex machina had ended it. Everything that she had built up from nothing over the course of two years, had coming crashing down on top of her head. She’d also been forcefully convinced to reassess her long-term goals and ambitions in life, through what was possibly the most embarrassing, humbling and physically painful method she had ever had the misfortune to experience.
‘And on top of all that,’ she thought bitterly, as she flicked a glob of concrete off a finger, ‘this will be stuck to my nails for a week at least.’ She took a moment to digest her thoughts (they seemed awfully irrelevant, an unusual consideration given the circumstances), and for a moment, she was torn between laughing and crying at the predicament. ‘Pathetic,’ she concluded apathetically, maintaining her emotionally detached visage. She was her other-self now, separate to her own experiences, overlooking herself with a cold, critical gaze.
It didn’t last long. She could feel the disappointment welling up, disappointment that she didn’t want to feel. So she tried to distract herself by looking out over the empty parade grounds, through the gaping hole in the wall which she had blasted apart earlier in the evening. The last of the party-goers had left the hall, and even now, a few straggling individuals bunched together and made their way through the otherwise lonesome night. Besides them, there was not a soul to be observed anywhere around the suburban street beyond. She was alone as could be.
‘Same as always,’ she reasoned. 'You've made it on your own this far, you'll never need anyone.’ The tears welling up in her eyes didn’t seem as sad, just a testament to the unfairness that she was sure she had endured, and that she was no longer going to tolerate. “I don’t need them,” she continued in a low mutter. “Not Celestia, the mindless drones of the school, Twilight Sparkle and her magical Element. Not Snips nor Snails. Not even--” She happened to look up and her angry scowl faded.
“Flash Sentry,” she finished. It sounded hollow, as if she hadn’t been the one to say it. Their gaze met from across the parade ground, and she could feel his silent observation pull down her hastily constructed wall of egotism. Pretty soon she felt too weak to so much as grit her teeth, and the brick currently in her hand slipped back into its pile. She averted her gaze. “I didn’t need him either,” she mumbled derisively, even though there was no one to hear it but herself. “Him or any of the other incompetent fools around me,” she grumbled. “I could have made it through the portal and taken over Equestria from there.” After a pause, she repeated more firmly, “without them,” seemingly to reassure herself. It was a right, she thought, granted to her on account of her greater capabilities.
Then the lofty demeanour of superiority faded and left her in the twilight glow of a yellowing fluorescent bulb.
Months Before…
The bell rang shrilly in its lofty post atop an anonymous wall, and its report was echoed by many counterparts throughout the school compound. The scraping and thumping of desks opening and closing, chairs scraping, and students raring to be gone joined the cacophony. As the rest of the class filed out amid idle chit-chat, Sunset kept her sullen gaze stayed fixated on her desk. She’d been sitting in the back of one of the many identical classrooms. Everything down to her posture and demeanor had remained constant for the duration of the currently-concluded lesson. She seemed to stare through her textbook, through the teachers who had questioned her on their subject (though she was unflinchingly accurate in her answers nonetheless), and through the few classmates who had reason to converse with her. Five minutes progressed, the uniform silence only punctuated by an occasional deep sigh and a slight change in her posture. It had taken all her self-control not to do so during school hours. It would attract too much attention.
Halfway through her third attempt to memorise a particularly convoluted definition through a state of visual defocus, she gave up. Abruptly closing the bulky textbook, stacked it on top of the other similar volumes and slid the whole stack off her desk into her haversack. Then she stood up sharply and pushed in her chair. In a few seconds, it was as if nobody was ever there; a fitting testament to her impermanence.
Personally, she felt that being easily forgotten complemented her environment well. After all, no matter where she turned, it all looked the same. The same dusty, linoleum-floored, white-walled corridors, lined with archetypal gunmetal grey lockers, leading to the same classrooms, full of the same half-familiar faces. None of which would give any reaction that they noticed her at all, other than an impassive stare and a glint of half-recognition which seemed to be reserved specially for her. It dulled her mind and took the colour out of everything she saw. Half the time she would seem to come out of a trance and would look around in surprise, all the while asking herself the same question: ‘What am I doing here?’
She was always met with the same silence, before a sad little voice whispered back, ‘you don’t belong here.’
She’d come seeking the rush of infamy that she deserved, a kingdom and a grand adventure of her own, to boot. She hadn’t found it, and now it seemed that she never would. This world, it was alien and bewildering. Nothing had ever felt more unwelcoming, and though she had a place to stay, there was no rest to be found. No purpose.
Nothing she ever did seemed to change the world around her, for better or for worse. She didn’t feel like it was her world either and she didn’t know if she could change it, nor did she feel she had a part to play in it. It seemed more like she was an interloper, a guest whose existence was merely tolerated here, if not frowned upon. More than ever, she felt powerless, and small, not at all like when she had stormed out of the Throne Room following her announcement that she would no longer linger as Celestia’s student, and was heading out to find her own destiny.
All at once and hardly for the first time, Equestria came to mind. Mental pictures of things like the Summer Sun Celebration, the Hearth’s Warming lights twinkling in the streets of Canterlot, the vast tracts of Everfree Forest, even the familiar shapes on an atlas. Those images weren’t new: they were familiar and called-upon with great fervour, etched in her vision as if they were burned into her retinas. She clung to them, obsessing over every little detail, no matter how irrelevant, or useless. Because she wanted to go home.
The portal hadn’t opened in the year since her arrival, and she had hoped it would be an annual event. The last three days, much to her disappointment, had proven that it was not so. So now she was stuck here, in a world that she most certainly would not be finding her destiny in, and she had no idea of how or when she could go home, if ever. The library in Canterlot had only told her so much, and what her own intuition surmised, had evidently failed to happen.
She abruptly noticed that she was out of the school compound already, and that her every step brought her closer to the portal. She felt nothing as she approached it, and even less, if it was possible, when she ran a hand gently over the smooth-worn granite. ‘Definitely no portal here’, she thought, and she didn’t feel anything as she turned and walked away aimlessly.
She walked silently, not really thinking about any one thing long enough to matter. Lost in thought, she had been putting distance between herself and the inert portal, but had not been considering her direction of travel. Now she found herself back in the school block again. The hallway looked the same, with all its standard adornments. So did the classrooms. Even the sunlight streaming through what few windows the structure afforded looked to be no brighter or dimmer. It made her feel much worse than she already did. Much, much worse.
The headache had continued building…
She laughed somewhat cruelly at the recollection, but disconnection was all that she could manage. The bitter chill of solitude was something she both loathed and welcomed at the same time. “Hug your sadness like an eyeless doll,” she quipped impersonally, and shook her head as she slapped another layer of mortar onto the raw brick. She had no idea why the poem, simply titled ‘A Sad Child’, had chosen this moment to surface in her memory. “You’re not a child anymore….”
As she recalled the rest of the poem, the Indeed, she seemed to be reverting to the most basic emotional reflex of wanting to cry. It was hardly something that only children did, but it was a reaction she thought she had mastered and put down already. So now she was nothing more than a scared, helpless and possibly hopeless child without anything to draw comfort from, after being denied something that she wanted badly. Strange that this feeling barely stayed long, despite its cold comfort
She noticed with a start that it wasn’t the first time she had thought like this. In fact, the last time was just a few weeks ago. When she had dumped Flash. Or had he dumped her? She snorted in derision. ‘I didn’t need him,’ she thought hastily, and with that she put the thought out of her mind.
Heaven knew she tried, but those scenes kept coming back. She remembered strutting away from where she had left him, mouth agape and in the sympathetic company of his “bros”. It hadn’t felt real, now that she realised. The sudden surge of confidence, pride and lofty apathy,...it hadn’t seemed as obvious at the time, but it was all so surreal, so insignificant. A layer of varnish, which was it. A layer of well-applied, unbroken emotional varnishing.
And the more she thought about what had happened then, and about what had just taken place, the more she felt the urge to cry. Despite it being the most basic reaction--practiced from birth-- of a person who didn’t get what he or she wanted, it was nonetheless a course of action that Sunset considered below her. A few stray tears corroded their way through her facade and clouded her vision. She blinked in irritation and swiped the back of her hands over her eyes. As was her usual modus operandi, she pressed down as much as she could on it; stamped it out until she could no longer feel anything but a strangely euphoric, empty numbness.
Perhaps, she had thought, if she had to try so hard then he wasn’t the right one for her. If she had to wait so long then she would never get anything, and it was time to move on to greener pastures. It all rang hollow now, and she knew that no matter what justification she offered, it was her fault. She now knew that no amount of justification was going to do any good, that it would still have felt as painful regardless.
But the events of the night kept recurring, replaying, revolting against her, so that she was revolted. Even now, a single line was playing again and again. "I have magic, and you have nothing!" the multi-faceted voice spoke. Her own voice. "I can't believe I would ever say something so corny...." she muttered bitterly. She gave the the growing plain brick wall a particularly vicious swipe with the crusted metal spade she had been using.
More tears. 'Just about time,' she thought, disgusted. 'The concrete's drying up.' She should just forget all this. It wasn't worth thinking about it. Brick. Mortar. Brick. Mortar. Shame. Such a shame....
It wasn’t the first time Flash sat with the all the girls, but it was the first time that a fullness of empathy dominated the mutual atmosphere. It was the silence in the group that conveyed most of the emotion, not Pinkie Pie or Fluttershy's sighs, Rarity's ranting plea to the stars, or Rainbow Dash and Applejack's silent vigil, eyes affixed on the now-closed portal.
The emotion wasn't new, nor was he sure that it was true, but now....it was gone. Surely and completely gone was the ecstasy that had been on his mind since he'd seen their Wondercolts advertising run (that was what it was, he wouldn’t mince his words), up to the very moment where her hand had slipped, so gently out of his own as she made her way to the portal. The thought came and he clenched his hand. Too late, the residual warmth of that brief touch bled into the night wind. ‘The one that got away,’ he mused.
"….well, ah'll bet you’re the biggest casualty, eh, Flash?"
Applejack's half-hearted jibe snapped him out of his reverie.
"Hm?" He looked up, didn't really know how to reply. He noticed Rarity, instead turning his attention to the other members of the group. Rarity was milling around awkwardly and smoothed over his soft guitar case, indicating that she should take a seat. She did so, after running her hands over her dress, even more gingerly than usual, if that was possible.
"Not pleasant for any of us, I guess..." he finally offered, after finding an answer he could ascertain was true.
Pinkie Pie nodded emphatically, attempting to truss up her now-limp hair. It didn’t work. "I don’t think it’s going well for her either...," Fluttershy mumbled, casting a furtive gaze at something behind Flash. He turned to look, as Sunset Shimmer laid a brick down, then reached into the wheelbarrow and drew up another. She sighed, seemed to direct her empty gaze into the brick in her hand, and without warning, flared up, tossing it against her partially constructed wall. It bounced harmlessly off and hit her in the shin, before the wall itself gave way partially and a gaping hole appeared. Rarity drew a sharp breath and Rainbow chuckled without meaning it emptily. She bent over, clutching at her shin with her head down. She didn't seem to move at first, but Flash could see the gentle jerking of her upper torso that indicated she was sobbing to herself.
He stood up, thought of sitting back down, and seemed to stumble. Then his legs started carrying him, very slowly and very quickly all at once, to the ruined wall. He ignored Applejack’s query, ignored it again when Rainbow repeated it, and continued walking towards Sunset. He felt vaguely as if he were were returning to some vice or bad habit.
The afternoon sun somehow found a way to catch her eye even as she wandered the stuffy corridors of CHS, stepping haphazardly in the current of afternoon heat flowing through the hallways. The same recurring lockers seemed to alternate between the left and right walls every time she passed, the slap of boots on linoleum, unnaturally constant in timbre. Thump. Thump. Thump. It drove the dull nail of migraine further into her left eye. It hadn’t yet occurred to her that her bag had slipped off her shoulders somewhere. The soft thud of book and fabric was outweighed by the single notion; I want to go home.
Listlessness led her to a corner in the corridors barely different from the rest, except that the sun had not penetrated the shapeless black where windowlesness and no lighting intersected. She ambled towards it, because looking at anything else stung the eyes. Reduced to squinting and biting her lips to keep from whimpering, and heading for the centre platform vertically bisecting this floor and the next, her mind returned to an earlier time,before she was a royal scholar. The linoleum floor was replaced with dirty brick, and the smell of bleach cleaning agents with urban refuse. Back in a dark alley, cowering and shivering from the winter frost that quilted over Canterlot. All alone.
Tears blurred her vision and muffled sobs stifled years ago resurfaced in her chest, bubbling up to her lips. She backed into a corner of the stairwell, curled behind her shins. It could have been a minute or an hour, when a door out of sight clicked open and an outpouring of people spilled over into the corridor adjacent to her stairwell and half a level down. They looked and sounded like a group of carollers to Sunset. The memory played out in perfect dystopian synchrony with the present, and they walked past in warm, apathetic huddles. Her head sank back down beneath her wrists, hiding her sight from a past that she dreaded to revisit.
The cheery banter faded eventually, disappearing down the chilly lane in her memory. That passing decade left behind a single blue-haired male with a stylish red-and-white bass guitar slung across his back. He had lagged behind the others to lock up, and had been spared the bulk of their chatter. The relative silence brought with it a single sniffle originating somewhere close. He stopped, straightened, straining to hear. More sniffling. Muffled sobs, a sigh. Unbeknownst to Sunset, he looked towards the stairwell to his left.
The sight of a person--apparently trying to sleep in a stairwell--greeted him. He knew the deadlines usually started piling up in August, but this was getting ridiculous….
“....Hey….”
The dishevelled curtain of fiery red hair shot apart in a frenzy. Two turquoise eyes peeked out at him, paused, then their owner hurriedly wiped a sleeve across her face. Tear streaks could be removed, but bloodshot eyes took a good night’s sleep at the very least. Maybe she could pretend that she was just tired.
“Hi,” she replied hastily, although she found her voice hoarse and her throat somewhat swollen. She cleared it in the silence, took the outstretched hand that was offered to her. It’s surprisingly strong grip pulled her gently to her feet, which she reciprocated with a muffled “thank you”.
“I….I uh, heard you, uh, sitting here, and….are you alright?” Flash stifled a cringe upon offering his query.
“Yes,” the girl said, mainly to his shoes. “Thank you.”
An electronic bell rang shrilly through the now-empty corridor. “Please be reminded that the school gates will be closed at 5 pm sharp, and that students are advised to leave the school 15 minutes ahead of time. Students aren’t allowed to stay on campus after hours unless it’s been cleared with the principal.” The click of a receiver on the other end transmitted over, with finality. Flash turned back to the other student, who had been hastily straightening her attire, brushing her hair behind her ears….she froze when she noticed he had been watching. There was nothing abnormal about her composure so far, but he felt that something was off anyway.
“I guess we had better take our leave,” he offered, trying his best to smile. She nodded, again a little too readily, and for the first time, he noticed the puffiness around her eyes, the telltale dampness in the corners, that did not quite mean that she was ‘alright’.
They walked in silence down the corridors. At some point of time, they encountered a schoolbag that seemed to have bled its contents out as it dragged itself along the hallway. She seemed mildly surprised at the sight, then groped around behind her shoulders, then hurriedly got on her knees to retrieved the scattered effects. Flash helped as much as he could, and passed a joke that neither of them really noticed, but both laughed at anyway. Then he came across a hardcover, its spine braced with thick leather strips, and its front adorned with a beautiful bevelled symbol of coloured glass, but not any kind of glass he had seen before. The colours looked crystalline and solid at the same time. It didn’t look anywhere near cheap too.
“Hey, is this yours?” He waved the book over his head.
A clatter behind him called his attention. The girl had dropped the stack of books in her hands, and stared entranced at the book. For a moment, it looked like she was about to keel over, before she remembered that he was there and averted her gaze. “Yes, it is,” she said, as she collected herself, and her texts. She took the book hurriedly and all but jammed it in her bag, working the clasp and strap furiously, cussing when she got a knot wrong.
“All right, that’s that. Thanks,” she said, with a slight and fragile smile. Flash smiled back. They resumed their walk.
“So,” he ventured, “you’re that transfer student right? Literature on Wednesday in Room 11-B?” She nodded absent-mindedly. Come to think of it, she’d seen him a few times, but almost always in the centre of a gaggle of frivolous-looking girls and some sportsmen. And to think that he paid her more attention, than she did him. He notices me….
As if to reaffirm her thoughts, he asked why she always sat at the back when there were seats up front. She shrugged, said she didn’t fancy being bored to death.
“I call bullshit,” he retorted with a smirk. “I look behind me sometimes and you’re all like--” He mimed the act of furiously scribbling on a notepad, emphatically adding a punctuation point at the end for good measure. They both laughed with a little more warmth this time.
She shrugged. “Got me there,” she conceded, “I guess it just….doesn’t make sense to sit up front. I can hear and see from back there.”
“Doesn’t it get lonely?”
He might as well have stuck out his foot and caught her in the shins mid-stride. She stopped jarringly and the wan smile melted off her features. “Like you wouldn’t imagine.” A sudden compulsion caused her to turn to Flash in panic, as if she was afraid that he would disappear. She really was afraid of that now. Tell him.
“Yes?”
Her gaze broke off and she brushed a hand over her eyes again, pretending to comb it through her hair. “It’s….nothing,” she lied, then hurried to catch up with him. Tell him, the compulsion insisted.
“I suppose it wouldn’t change a thing, even if I were to sit up front.” She shrugged again. “Nobody I know in that class. Or any other.” She could hardly keep the bitterness out of her voice. Damn, she was starting to cry again. She stopped mid-stride as her vision fogged up with tears.
A surprisingly gentle hand took hold of her firmly above the elbow, guiding her somewhere off to a side and sitting her down on something low. Try as she might, she didn’t stop crying. Later in retrospect, she was also grateful that Flash hadn’t tried to hold her hand or put an arm around her. She would have headbutted him despite the very real fear that she’d gone and scared him off once and for all.
Her head shot up, just to make sure he was still there. He was. “I’m sorry, it’s just….” she held back a sob. “Feels strange being somewhere new?” She nodded miserably. “It feels like I don’t belong here, and being here doesn’t make a lot of difference. ‘Transient’, I guess you’d call it.”
“I have no idea what that word means, but I get what you’re trying to say.” Flash somewhat grimaced. “Or maybe I don’t. I was from further up north, one of the big cities. I mean, I wasn’t a cross-border transfer, but Equestria can be a big place.” He sighed.
“Even now, I still kinda get the feeling sometimes that I’m not as much a part of, well, everyone else, as I could be.” He paused. “It’s the way they talk, the way they act, as if it’s nothing unusual. But it feels different doesn’t it?” He glanced sidelong at her. She nodded without looking at him. “Just reminds me that….it’s….not home, I guess.”
“The best part,” Sunset added, “nobody knows but us. Just us.” She was upright again now, and her hands were clenched in fists, braced on the seam of her skirt. “Damn it, it sucks.” She wondered now what her former mentor would say in response to 'such language!' She turned fiercely to Flash. “You know you’re the only person I’ve talked to for a month?” She slouched in agitation, hands still gripping the seams of her clothing even harder.
“Talking to anyone’s the least of your concerns,” he replied, slowly and carefully, “I haven’t found anyone who could really understand what I meant, I mean really understand it, for about two years now.” He wasn’t outraged, the way Sunset sounded, just tired. “I mean, they all nod and say ‘yeah, I get that’, but I don’t think they do. Not the way we do, anyway.” He rubbed the back of his neck in agitation. “My parents were so eager for a fresh start that I never wanted to trouble them by bringing it up. My little sister’s just too young to remember.
"Sometimes it feels like it’s just me.”
He didn’t as much see it as feel Sunset’s posture relax a little, and she bumped his shoulder with sympathy. “That’s rough.”
He waved it off on impulse, put a hand over his face in sudden shame. “Sorry you had to hear of that. I’m not trying to make light of your problems.”
“I could say the same.”
It was getting late, and the sun sagging towards the concrete horizon of downtown. Across the parade square, from the wide front steps of CHS, the view was something worth pausing at, to say the least. It glittered in shades of burning sepia and deep, long shadows that would soon spread to encompass the entire school ground. The strong light and lack of corresponding heat always gave Flash the impression that the light was shining through him, laying him bare and making him transparent. It always did, but now more than ever. He took a deep breath.
“I try to make sure I get to watch the sun set everyday. It’s the only thing that didn’t change, maybe won’t ever change.” They sat and watched, caught by surprise in mutually comfortable inaction, as the dying light gilded over them.
'Mrs' Shimmer sighed, but did not look back at her subordinates. "How many times have i told you, Snips, it's 'Miss Shimmer'. I'm not married yet, and I don't plan to be, so remember this now and you can use it forever." She slapped another brick on for emphasis, then dragged a fresh layer of concrete over the top. The rasp of a trowel was the only sound that followed.
"So....uh....Miss Shimmer?"
She thought they'd be sufficiently occupied with the work cut out for all three of them. Apparently not. Apparently back-breaking menial labour wasn't enough to silence them, despite the fact that they had to think for many times the length of the words they spoke. "Yes, Snails, what is it?"
"It's just that it's getting late, and uh, our parents...." Snips trailed off as Sunset turned to face them. Slowly and with much control, probably planning to rip their heads off. She didn't look as angry as he had expected her to be. In fact, she didn't seem to be angry at all. Just tired, and something else as well, though he couldn't put his finger on it.
"Why can't we go to the party like everyone else?" Snails whined. Snips could have sworn that Miss Shimmer had winced at hearing that. Normally, he'd expect her to explode about how this was 'really your own fault, so quit complaining and if I hear one more word from you I'll....'
"Because we blew a hole in the school wall, and we have to fix it. Besides," she added, "It's a little late to worry about that, isn't it?" That ought to keep them quiet. It did, and usually this would fill her with some small measure of personal pride, which she embellished in, but tonight, seeing the two young boys foundering and tongue-tied only made her feel vaguely guilty and a little tired as well. "You boys can leave once you finish the part that you blew up."
"But...But...that's, like, huge!" he said, gesturing to a gaping oblong hole, two metres wide and a metre high at least. The newly-uncovered hallway beyond was scattered with bits and pieces of red brick and concrete dust all over. She planned to sweep that up after those two had left. They would probably create a bigger mess than the one they tried fixing.
"The sooner you stop complaining, the sooner you'll get to go home. "
The owner of the new voice gingerly hefted a brick or two in each hand, then moved towards the hole that Snips was gesticulating towards. "Maybe an extra pair of hands can help speed this up a little?" She was on her knees and laying bricks as Snails scraped on fresh layers of concrete. "What time's your curfew, boys?"
"Well, on special occasions like tonight, I think it was, uh....Snips, what time we gotta get back home?" The reply stated twelve-thirty sharp. The new arrival checked her watch and wrinkled her nose. "We'd better hurry up. You'll have some explaining to do either way. It's just a matter of how much."
Sunset kneeled facing her portion of the wall, her construction halted as she listened in rapt silence. Luck would have it that she turned just in time to catch Coco's eye. Coco offered her a sad, sympathetic.... somewhat mocking, smile. Maybe not intentionally, Sunset thought. Probably not intentionally. She returned the same expression, with a touch of gratitude on the raise of her brows.
It brought back a familiar memory, and she recalled it as she turned back to her wall. 'Coco, Coco....you were alway too nice for your own good,' she thought to herself. 'Thank goodness for that.'
Months ago....
She'd ran into him in the hallway once the following day. It was barely more than a "hello", a fleeting smile, and a peculiar glint that passed between their eyes. It made her feel warm inside, which made it a little more bearable--comfortable, even--to exist as herself now. Lessons barely consisted of the idle moments that had led her down dangerously lonely paths of thought anymore.
She felt a little less guarded now that she could say that she had an acquaintance (acquaintance in the least, anyway) somewhere near. Unknowingly, some old plans and contingencies--like intentionally keeping her grades 'below the radar'--disappeared from her list of priorities, and brought about the relevant changes in her behavior. For instance, she actually found it in herself to surpass the school's ludicrously (relatively) low expectations, in her lessons, in her work. It showed especially in the work.
Unbeknownst to her, her teachers were all baffled by how a strictly 'above-average' student had somehow managed essays of startling insight, straight-A assignments and an new, unusually attentive disposition in class. And all that over the course of a weekend.
If she had known it wouldn't have made much of a difference anyway. She couldn't care that much. In fact, what she thought about most was the literature class the coming Wednesday. Naturally, Wednesday took its time.
She got to class early that morning, hoping to find a place which was proximate to Fresh Scent-Tree.
At least, that's what she thought he had said, when she asked for his name. She'd almost forgot to, that evening, and he was halfway up his bus before she remembered. As such, she hadn't caught everything over the roaring of the big, aged engine of the public transport vehicle.
As expected, the school was unusually quiet even in the morning, and nearly as deserted as the evenings, save for a few early birds like her. She held the main door open for a lean, nervous-looking girl, who mumbled a thank-you to the doorknob. Sunset smiled kindly and proceeded on her way. So early was it in the day, that the soft brush of her sneakers on the flooring could be heard. The chorus of clashing but benign voices had yet to taken up their cry.
Even compared to the sleepiness in the corridor, Room 11-D seemed insulated. But not stifling. Not anymore. She eyed a desk in the second row and the same column. Directly in front of the teacher would be too abrupt a change (she was more relaxed, not foolhardy), and close enough to where she observed Fresh to prefer. Plus, it was easy for her to feign attention when both he and the teacher were in the same general direction.
She slung her bag off, gauged the distance, and tossed her bag, smirking when it hit the right table. A silly little game, but she'd felt like it and she'd liked it.
She'd almost started hopping around on a foot when the doorknob clicked. The sudden intrusion of an alien noise in an otherwise soundless and empty room scared her out of her reverie.
"Oh, sorry!" the voice replied, its owner cringed slightly. "Did I disturb you?"
Sunset recovered from the slight stumble, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear and blinking to regain her composure and hide her surprise. "Uh, no, not at all." She recognized the sky-blue vertical stripes and bob cut from earlier, smiled at the diminutive girl. "Hi again."
She smiled back with some fragility. "I'm looking for Room 11-D, is this it?"
"Yeah, this is it. Come on, take a seat." Sunset patted the chair next to hers, trying to recall when she had seen this same girl before. It took her little time to realize that, in fact, she hadn't. "Come to think of it, I don't think I've seen you before," she stated as tactfully as possible.
The other girl nodded emphatically, more enthusiastically than most people would have afforded at the best of times. The motion also made her electric blue eyes take on an iridescent gleam that was not altogether due to the lighting. Sunset took it as an encouragement to keep the conversation going. "I just got a transfer from Manehattan. Started school last Thursday."
"No wonder," Sunset mused. "May I know your name?"
"I'm Coco Pommel," she responded brightly, reaching out a hand. Sunset took it and shook.
"Sunset Shimmer," she responded. "I'm quite new here as well, say, half a year. I....still don't really know anyone."
Coco's expression turned completely blank upon hearing this, before it was masked in the guise of polite laughter. Sunset's training at her former mentor's hands would have helped her catch the slip even while blind-folded, and she smiled wryly. "You'll probably get into it faster than I did," she conceded, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "I was always a bit of a loner."
"Thanks," Coco said gratefully, speaking as much with her eyes as with her mouth.
The bell rang, then left the bustle of footsteps, slamming lockers and chatting voices in its wake.
Sunset removed her hand and offered one last smile. Coco gave a minute close-mouthed grin, and her eyes gave off a peculiar gleam that was not altogether unfamiliar to Sunset.
Flash stopped in his tracks as a group of stragglers finally left from the hall where the Fall Formal was held. The blend of happy laughter carried across the night air, and among the voices he caught a familiar accent, or a lilt. At the periphery of the school boundary, the group stopped, someone said something in that familiar accent, and broke off, waving goodbye to the others who were still in high spirits.
Coco Pommel glanced furtively to the obliterated wall and the figures hunched over their work, then, with hands clasped in front of her, and a step so light that she almost tip-toed, she approached them as one would a dangerous beast. She needn't have bothered, it seemed, because she didn't speak a word to Sunset. For a moment they seemed to pause facing each other, but Flash put it down to his imagination. He found it exceedingly strange that two people who wouldn't tolerate being in the same room as one another were suddenly able to coexist in sombre silence.
He shrugged. He'd half given up on understanding the opposite gender after that episode with Sunset. He knew that it amounted to running away from something unpleasant instead of coming to terms with it, and that there were probably nicer girls out there (even compared to their earlier days together). He wasn't sure what he knew really mattered.
It looked much safer to make an approach now anyway.
A rustle of grass sounded alien, when all she had been hearing for the past few hours was the scrape of trowel and lumpy concrete on brick. It snapped her out of the pleasant memory. The hand laid on Coco's shoulder so long ago came away cold and caked in building materials and dirt. She turned grumpily to the intrusion. 'Not even in my defeat am I to be left alone.'
The figure was a familiar shade from the past, or should be anyway. 'I thought we were dead to each other....'. The closing distance revealed more details like flesh forming on a spectre. Black jacket over white shirt, hands deep in the pockets of long blue jeans, blue hair standing in cresting peaks. He could have been looking right into her eyes, but when he stepped into the weak lighting of the exposed corridor, he didn't meet her gaze. 'What's he doing here?' Her eyes followed him as he got to his knees in front of the shattered wall, and non-chalantly started laying bricks where she had stopped abruptly. 'To help in earnest, or because she told him to keep an eye on me?' It nearly drove her into a panic, and for a moment her lungs and heart tried to flee from her chest.
On one hand she wanted to get up immediately and yell and stomp and scare Flash Sentry off like a stray cat, yet on the other hand, she wanted nothing more than to sit with only him on the wide front steps of the school compound so that they could talk the night and its happenings away. Or maybe they wouldn't talk at all, like they used to do sometimes. She absently handed him another brick at his wordless request.
Months Ago....
The door clicked open more quietly than Sunset expected. Flash all but tip-toed into the room.
"Well you're early," Sunset chided, narrowly avoiding a stutter because she was so nervous. 'Why?' she thought.
"Well I'm sorry," he responded, mimicking the tone of her jibe, banishing her self-accusal/-questioning from her thoughts.
"Gave them the slip in the parade ground," he explained. "Don't wanna get swamped into the back seats by the others," he said, rankling his nose, as he took the seat next to Sunset.
"So, " he said, turning his attention to Coco, "who might you be?"
"Oh." She seemed surprised that she'd been noticed. "I'm Coco Pommel, just transferred from Manehattan North Regional High," then added, "pleased to meet you," and stuck out her hand, which Flash shook firmly.
"I've been a transfer student myself," he said good-naturedly. "Not sure if Sunset here's told you yet--" Sunset nodded "--but so has she." He spread his hands in front of him in an open, relaxed gesture. "You'll be fine," he quipped, smiling. He turned and shot Sunset a glance that one would use with a partner in crime.
The utter seriousness and frivolousness of her feelings dawned upon her in the same instance.
That was how much their connection mattered to him, as small and alone as it was in light of their difference. And she felt it too, like the comforting touch of a small personal effect against the trials of the world beyond oneself.
Yet, the time and place (a school), and their stereotypical role as youths (young, foolish, untrue in heart) impressed themselves upon the perceived strength of this link. The fact that she barely knew him, hadn't called him by name before, and was essentially as unknown to him as Coco Pommel, all pointed in one direction; that their feelings were but games children played in their days of happy unawareness to deeper things.
At least, that was what was oft said about such things.
Sunset, disturbed by this new observation which had surfaced from apparently nowhere (though she later realised it had been her own subconscious distrust), immersed herself in a new pursuit, peeling away the outer layers of reasoning and logic, the aforementioned stereotypes and perhaps-true emotions, ascertained that what remained was fresh and viable. What she found, she couldn't really explain.
Aside from being the intangible talisman which comforted one in times of trial, or the foolish play-act of young adults, what she felt was also simply that; what she felt. Though she could not fully comprehend it, something had happened that evening, when they had, in tandem, faced one deep, dark, reclusive portion of themselves, and turned it inside out. Their mutual recognition--not only to fact and circumstance, but to actual emotion--had awakened a remarkable mutual empathy, where the considerations that had so troubled Sunset, had faded to nothings in their relative unimportance. It could be summed up simply.
"You know and I know," she whispered, concluding her thoughts.
"That we do," came a quiet response, before Flash pulled away and offered a reassuring smile from his seat beside her.
She jerked back into the world as presented by her senses, saw that most of the class was trickling in, those already seated having retried their relevant texts. As the class stood to greet the arriving teacher, she stood with them.
The two young boys sidled up to Sunset, who fixed her attention on the slowly growing brick wall, pretending not to notice them. And thinking. She hadn't expected them to finish so soon, but then again, she hadn't expected the other five of Twilight Sparkle's lackeys to show up and help. They'd joined the small group a few minutes after Flash had, some of them shooting distrustful, furtive glances at her. In that instance, Sunset wasn't sure whether she was more embarrassed that she might actually need their help, or that she hadn't immediately tried to reject it. How weak I've grown, she thought gloomily, before returning to the topic at hand: Snips' and Snails' dismissal. They stood for awhile. Snips stuck his hands in his pockets and his chubby cheeks clenched in agitation. Snails turned his short-lived attention to the darkened surroundings.
The next major consideration was that the portion of wall they had spent the last two hours or so repairing, was in truth less than a fifth of the damage that they had caused on their own. Out of the corner of her eye, she checked the other damages. All large, oblong blotches, with the angular edges of bricks remaining where others had remained. They would be even harder to work on than the one they'd already completed. And truth be told, she didn't have the heart to tell them. It was all very unusual behavior for her.
"Uh....Miss Sparkle," Snips ventured, then flinched and raised a hand in defense as Sunset rose to her feet and stretched out her back.
"Well, it seems that you've actually remembered something I told you," Sunset said with casual blandness, pretending to survey the portion which had been repaired. All too quickly, she remarked, "It also seems that you boys are done! Alright, why don't you two head home?" Not convincing at all, but she was too tired to care. No need to be that convincing where those two were involved anyway. "Goodnight, boys," she said with finality, indicating that the conversation was over, and turned away from them....
....Just in time to notice Rainbow Dash. Apparently, even she wasn't so dense, as to not notice the glaringly large amount of work that the boys were still supposed to complete. Sunset's heart sank and she wished that she'd at least tried to be more convincing. Rainbow had already taken a protesting gasp of air before Applejack flicked a lump of wet concrete at her cheek. "Be nice!" she said, so softly that Sunset barely heard it. "Sunset's probably tryin' harder than you are!"
She hadn't expected that hillbilly spawn to be anywhere near that perceptive, but she was certainly appreciative of the gesture. It had certainly shut that equally blunt sportswoman up. Not enough to let it show in her eyes, but enough to offer a small nod.
Snips and Snails had, naturally, missed the whole subtle exchange. It would probably be kinder that they did, or they would only end up thoroughly confused. They said their goodbyes, and received a few half-hearted ones in reply. The fact that they were part of Sunset's original plan seemed to have slipped their minds entirely. She envied them greatly. It looked as if they were never hear. She'd finish repairing the walls and make it so.
When had she ever been this kind before? She looked up and sighted Coco by chance. The association of thought and sight, and the time of night, incited a tangible physical shiver at the mental and physical discomfort.
Enough time passed for the two boys to be out of earshot, when the white one (Rarity, she thought), approached her and draped a thin shawl around her shoulders. Not expecting the unprecedented gesture of kindness, she reached up abruptly, and received yet another surprise; a firm, reassuring squeeze. For a moment, her memory evoked her first encounter with Flash and she nearly fell over in stiff-legged surprise. "That was awfully kind of you, darling," the white one said, with a gentle smile. When Sunset failed to respond, she added, "letting the boys leave, I mean." She looked mildly worried when more silence ensued.
"Oh....right," Sunset replied simply, after finally regaining her presence of mind.
Coco quietly stood up, dusted her knees, and stretched out her back, then joined Sunset and Flash at the most heavily damaged portion of all.
Months Earlier
That lesson came and went. Sunset and Coco spent an hour and a half in total, at the end of the day, poring over their books and trying to find out what had actually been taught. When Flash heard of this, he suppressed a laugh that would not have been altogether unkind. Just chiding.
Sunset saw the humour in the situation but didn't share his enthusiasm in appreciation. Coco was new, and it was expected that she would take time to acclimatize, but Sunset had no reason whatsoever to lag behind a class that was usually in her wake. No reason that could be openly discussed anyway.
She didn't know what to be more embarrassed about, the fact that her prowess seemed hobbled, or the reason that it was indeed so. Her face reddened at the thought that she'd been placing most of her attention on Flash. There were many reasons for this. Many reasons that she could think of, anyway.
This was a subject for observation that had just impressed its--his--importance on herself, one that until recently did not warrant any attention at all. Close observation could be a natural reflex on her part to make up for lost time, so to speak. It wouldn't make sense, though, because none of that alleged time had been lost. Unless, of course, it was time that meant something to her. It would certainly elicit such a response on her part. Why the time would be so precious....she did not know.
Maybe it was because of the affinity they shared. She was reminded, by a sudden rush of warmth at the thought, of its previously untested potency. 'Yes, that's got to be it,' she told herself.
Flash, on his own part, had to fight hard not to desert his previous group of friends (which he caught himself thinking of almost as an entourage now), with reckless abandon. He suddenly found their friendships to be surprisingly shallow, though most were undoubtedly true. He didn't kid himself into thinking that all his friends could achieve such a level of understanding as he was sure he and Sunset had, now. In fact, he felt somewhat guilty at his newfound compulsions. Perhaps it was natural to seek out bonds that ran deeper than normal, but it did not equate to abandoning one's friends. He loved them all in their own right, and some of them had stuck with him through real ordeals.
Truth be told, he was just as excited as Sunset was at the prospect that had been presented to him; another individual with very similar experiences and very similar responses, though he hadn't considered it to the extent that Sunset's meta-cognition had allowed her to. He simply circumvented the entire process to arrive at the same solution. His sister had once remarked snarkily that he had his emotions turned up louder as his bass. He had ignored that in favour of exercising his own sense of freedom.
It came to pass in a span of weeks, that Sunset and Flash started spending increasing amounts of their time in each other's company. Little things like eating at the same table during recess. When their timetables intersected, that is. Or grabbing lunch together sporadically, when their after-school activities (and Sunset had quite a few new ones now) didn't clash.
Throughout these sporadic occurrences, some others were always present. Several members of Flash's social circle were quick to take notice of Sunset, and she was soon acquainted with a few of the friendlier individuals. The rest smirked or looked upon her with some derision. A few of the girls were jealous. Those were the ones Sunset quietly marked as delusional, insensible and possessive.
She, in turn, disclosed this only to the omnipresent Coco Pommel, who went almost everywhere with Sunset when she could afford to. Sunset welcomed the company with a certain glee of her own. This persisted long after the first awkward introductory fortnight when they'd both let out a few expeditionary threads into the student population. Coco quickly got herself enmeshed in the drama club's need for props. They lost a few of the usual afternoons together, but Sunset felt nothing but joy on her behalf. Perhaps--hopefully--it would be a fine transition for Coco.
....Yet on some days, it was as if she were alone again. All the new considerations tended to disappear when they were not right in front of her, and she remember how she was thrown by her own over-vaulting ambition into somewhere completely alien. It did not seem that bad now. The little quirks and dissimilarities between this world and the last seemed finally within reach, and the tirade of voices in her head--self-pity, longing, deprecation--had reduced themselves to silence. What was left was a contemplative quietude that Sunset was not altogether comfortable, because it seemed that something was still missing.
It was far better than the known alternative.
As she waited at the bus-stop, the same consolidation of thoughts that had been through her mind a hundred times began to repeat itself. Coco was fitting in well. She seemed to see many more friendly faces (they had stopped looking the indistinguishable, anyway). Especially Flash. Also, she'd finally gotten around to signing herself up for something. It'd also....left her feeling a little empty sometimes in contrast to the sudden rush.
She would repeat it again several times to herself, because it all seemed to different from before, and because it filled the internal vacuum. When that got boring, she reminded herself for the umpteenth time that she was taking another bus today. The one going downtown, because she needed to make a purchase. Lately, there'd been things on her mind that she would have liked to--
"Fancy seeing you here," Flash said, leaning back on the railing, beside her. She smiled, but didn't turn to him, instead, taking a few moments to blink, clear her mind, sweep a lock of hair behind an ear....a familiar pattern now.
"Speak for yourself," she replied wryly when she was done. "I thought you had practice today."
He shrugged, sighed and stated flatly, "I forgot to bring my bass."
Sunset tutted sardonically. "Bummer."
"Yeah, stupid mistake," he admitted easily to the torment, then added, "But I probably wasn't gonna turn up either."
"Why?"
He shrugged again. Sunset noticed that he did that a lot. "Just not my day I guess."
'Wonder what that's all about?' The thoughts nearly left her mouth when the squeal of old brakes and pneumatic doors attracted her attention. A quick check of the bus' route number confirmed that this one was her's. 'Darn it.'
"Sorry, Flash, but I gotta get going," she said, adding a gentle pat on his arm. "We'll talk tomorrow?" she ventured, half-promise and half-inquiry.
"Alright, tomorrow," he promised, putting a hand over his eyes and massaging his temples. He didn't look alright.
The doors hissed close before she could say goodbye. She tried to put it out of mind, but the abruptness of their parting had only served to make the last few minutes even clearer than before. She absent-mindedly paid her fare and found a seat. Before she had a chance to scoot over to the windows, though, the bus braked and she bumped her forehead on her knuckles. Had she been any slower, the bus' sudden braking would have thrown her to the ground. She resisted the urge swear at the driver, gritting her teeth and rubbing the sore spot where her shoulder had glanced off the window sill.
The doors hissed again, and Flash dragged himself up the bus by the handrails, panting and apologizing profusely to nobody in particular. He stumbled down the aisle to Sunset, sat down beside her, and caught his breath. She was trying not to laugh. He turned a solemn gaze, almost scowling at her. "Nobody hears a word of this, hear me?"
She nodded.
"Good." He took a few more deep breaths. "It's just that we usually get on different buses."
All around her, people were rising from their from their work. Rarity was trying to chip off a bit of concrete forming a minuscule ledge in the wall, a finishing touch. Pinkie tried to climb said ledges that Rarity failed to remove. Applejack pulled Rainbow to her feet, and they hoisted a leftover pallet of bricks between them to a nearby storage shed. Fluttershy, out of sight, was already inside with a jumble of tools. Flash leaned against the fruits of their labour, while Coco stretched out her back and winced visibly halfway through. All were caked in bits of globs of dried material and dust. It was now the nameless interim between dead-of-night and far-too-early.
And they were finally done. She closed her eyes and held them tightly shut. Firstly, because she didn't want to open them again for a long, long time, and secondly, because the realization brought her close to tears. The wall, my friend, she thought, and wondered what exactly was wrong with herself. We're both pretty strong, but we fell after a little....persuasion. She was quite happy with the explanation. Anything other than admitting that she was not altogether stable at the moment.
"You're crazy. I've told you that before, right?"
She hadn't realized that the exchange had been audible, and cursed (silently this time), at Flash's....comment. The words were almost enough to provoke her to anger on their own, but he carried a sad little smile and a knowing look that coaxed a memory from her. Come to think of it, the words had a familiar ring. Ah, yes.... For a moment, she saw Flash leaning against another wall from another time--
"--Well it doesn't matter, we're done here," she replied hastily. It was more to keep her mind from wandering than out of ill will, but she'd wager that it sounded waspish to the others. 'Bad move.' She cleared her throat and composed herself, as was her habit. "And I have all of you to thank for that," she replied more gently. "You didn't need to help me, but you did it anyway, and...." All eight of the others now regarded her, some with careful neutrality, others with a small measure of scorn. She swallowed. "I'm grateful for that," she added at last.
She saw one scowl soften greatly, and the individual in question approached her. "Didn't need to help you? We made some of those holes," Rainbow joked weakly, and punched her affectionately in the shoulder. It, and the memory of getting rainbow-slammed into a dirt crater, making a neat, regular edge, set her bruised for throbbing vaguely. But she smiled anyway. Rainbow smiled back.
Something transpired, and Sunset would never be able to name it, now or ever after. She'd notice in retrospect that, from that point onward, she never thought of Rainbow Dash as a mindless jock ever again. Some strange compulsion made her hug Rainbow. Some stranger compulsion must have made Rainbow return the hug. 'Stranger,' she thought, smirking at the inadvertent wordplay.
The others crowded around, a few went "aww", but eventually, most of them must have joined in, because she found herself enfolded in their collective warmth. First Pinkie Pie, who made a beeline and all but latched on to her. Fluttershy had been more unexpected, but she came with Rarity, and assumed the awkward position with equal grace. Coco pushed herself into the fray. Sunset never thought she'd be this close to Coco ever again, but she was. 'It's a good feeling,' she thought.
She had not been expecting this situation, because all her predictions before this point had ended with her finding somewhere quiet to cry herself to sleep. 'Maybe I'll still do that, it'll definitely help. But not now.' Nothing would be permitted to interrupt this moment.
Flash had started towards them, before several thoughts seized hold of him. One of them an angel with flowing dark purple hair streaked with magenta and lilac, slender hands and soft velvet wings. The other was the absolute crushing physical force of the prospective situation. No one seemed to have taken note of him, so he leaned back against the wall and watched, thinking to sit it out. Within the cluster, something shifted. Sunset happened to glance up, met his eyes....and smiled. Flash froze, not because he was caught unexpectedly, but because, in a gaze that had met his own with nothing but bitterness and anger for several months, he now saw a complete absence of enmity. He suddenly felt intensely guilty for not joining the hug, and he tried ineffectually to make up for it with a smile on his own. He was sure that it was lop-sided because he was so unprepared, but Sunset seemed to consider it paramount to embrace. He knew it by looking.
There were no illusions of romance between them. Not any more. It was mutually shared through the slight guard of their eyes, the slight arch of the eyebrows, that never quite disappeared no matter what happened. It didn't change a thing.
Months before, on a bus....
"....But still," she pressed, as a wry smile touched her lips, "It's not like you to be so absent-minded." Mildly amusing, as Flash's behavior was, she was starting to worry. First, his bass, which he seemed to wear like a natural appendage, had been left behind at home, and then he had almost missed his bus. Something was off about him. 'Which reminds me....' Sunset thought.
"I was also going to ask you earlier, what exactly do you mean by 'not your day'?"
He paused mid-motion and settled into the appearance of a tight-lipped grimace. Then he shrugged. Again. Sunset hadn't thought of him as the insecure type, and still didn't. 'I think I might have to curb that,' she mused.
Presently, Flash continued his explanation and her attention returned to him. "I don't know," he sighed. "Small things, almost nothing." He thought for a while longer. "It's just a feeling I guess. I can't explain it otherwise." He coughed. "But I'll be fine. Probably."
'Just a feeling....'
She could understand that, and she told him as much. He grimaced at her in an attempt to be friendly. For a moment after, neither of them knew what to say. Sunset was about to inquire further about "what exactly was off", when--
"Okay now it's my turn," Flash said abruptly, making Sunset jump slightly. Had he no idea what subtlety was? Straightening in his seat, he faced himself towards her. "Aside from trying to confuse me, obviously, why else are you here?" Sunset offered a blank stare. "I meant, this is not your usual route," he clarified. "Where are you headed to today?" She rolled her eyes.
"Downtown. I wanted to, uh, get myself something nice," she explained, hardly expecting him to understand it. The only things he seemed to own were that bass, and his slightly tatty jacket. Little else, and he didn't seem to need anything else. That was it, then, she could liken it to what he probably thought about his own possessions.
"Come to think of it, it's more of a necessity than a luxury--"
"Shopping?"
"Well, not exactly. It's not really blindly milling about, it's more of--"
"Shopping."
"....well, if you wanna put it that way," she said, slightly irked, "then....yes, shopping." He slouched backward into his seat immediately after she finished. The reaction reminded her of the time she had seen a pony under mind-control, released by a magical catch-word. In Equestria, this would have been highly suspicious, even dangerous, but there was no magic here, and therefore, no magic traps or curses. No reliable ones anyway. It still rankled her finely tuned awareness.
It seemed to help him relax, and he was having a tough day, so she didn't really mind.
"I see," he slurred in conclusion.
'I don't think you do,' she thought. She withheld that particular comment.
He sat up again without warning. Sunset jumped a little less this time, but she jumped anyway. 'Goodness, what's wrong with you today,' she mused.
"Hey, what day is it?" he asked.
"Thursday," she replied with an almost practiced familiarity. "Why?"
He checked his watch. "Hmm. I have time to spare," he mumbled, then, hesitatingly, he turned to her. "Y-you mind if I tag along with you?"
She jumped lightly, and fixed him with a stare that said what she didn't. It was something along the lines of 'I wasn't expecting that' and 'Are you running a temperature?'. He returned a carefully neutral expression.
"What?" he asked, and blinked.
She was not altogether sure she'd heard it.
"What?"
He blinked again, looking slightly annoyed.
When he failed to reply, she continued, "B-But you said it yourself. 'Shopping'." She emphasized the last word with a heaviness in her voice. That request had been so unexpected as to knock her off balance. But not enough to offset her sardonic nature. Never enough.
"So?" He returned to the the same infuriatingly neutral expression he had adopted earlier.
'That blank stare fools no one,' she thought flatly, before social conduct softened her statement to "Don't you boys hate that?" The question came as a jibe, but it was much less derisory. She could live with that.
He laughed, which, for some reason, seemed real enough. She'd generally come to trust that a smile or a laugh from Flash was always sincere. It also always broke her composure. And it still hadn't lost its 'warming' effect, or its ability to leave a shadow of itself on her features.
"Yeah, we do," he admitted finally, "but we do it anyway, right?"
There was something in that statement, some implication that was significant, but at the moment, Sunset was basking in the warmth of his smile, and she only had the presence of mind to file it away and think about it later. Her smile grew wider. "Well, it's a good thing you missed practice today...."
She froze. Flash noticed her from the corner of his eye, seemed to realize what it mean, and followed suit a moment later.
Present Time....
They left in a single group, leaving Sunset and two other remnants behind. She watched them leave with a vague emptiness, because, for them at least, the night had ended on a high note, while she on the other hand....She dusted her hands and rested them on her hips momentarily. "Back to work," she mumbled.
"What?!"
She yelped at Flash's sudden outburst. 'Goodness, he really has no concept of subtlety.' Turning slowly and blinking rapidly to calm her breathing, she turned to glare at him, more out of shock than malice. She noticed out of the corner of her eye that Coco seemed to have jumped as well. "Will you please not do that?"
Flash almost retorted before he noticed that Coco was nodding emphatically in agreement. "Sorry," he said, stuffing his hands into his pockets.
Then he took up the argument once again and asked, "What do you mean, 'back to work?'" He was almost hysterical.
"What I meant," Sunset said, keeping her voice deliberately slow, "wasn't meant for you to know, but since you asked," she took a deep breath. He wasn't going to like it. "I sent them off first, because i still have a hallway to clean. And I don't have the heart to keep them on their feet any longer."
Flash regarded her blankly. Coco smirked knowingly and nodded in approval. A strange sort of standoff resulted; Flash on one side, Sunset on the other, and Coco in the centre.
"Do you know," Flash started, with a slow deliberation startlingly similar to Sunset's, "how heavy rubble is?"
"Can't be heavier than the emotional burden I already have," she retorted. 'That'll shut him up,' she thought vehemently.
Silence. Just as she had intended. Also tension, which was an unexpected by-product. She was actually hoping for some pity, but not expecting it.
Coco cleared her throat. "Sunset, you know we aren't going to leave you alone, right?" She waited for a reply. "Doesn't matter what you want, we aren't--"
"--I get it, Coco," she snapped. Her eyes widened, before she screwed them shut. She had to stop doing that. "I get it, I'm sorry."
"We'd better get started, then," Flash said, taking the opportunity to stalk off to the janitor's store for mops and buckets. Sunset felt the tension ebb into the cold night air. When she turned to thank Coco, her eyes brimmed with a small measure of unshed tears. "Why are you still so nice to me?" she all but demanded.
"I remember what you did for me," she said, taking Sunset by the elbow and walking her slowly towards the school interior.
"You repaid that debt long ago."
Coco shook her head sadly and gave her hand a fleeting squeeze. "It's not about repaying dues, Sunset." Then she stopped. "You still don't get it, do you?" She almost yelled the next phrase. "You were like a sister to me!"
They were stock still now, Sunset forced by circumstance to meet those intense aquamarine eyes.
"Single child, alone in a whole other state," Coco continued heatedly, taking Sunset by the shoulders. "With parents who were too busy to care. I never really had a home even before I moved here. When I did," she swallowed. Sunset could feel the tremor of her voice through her hands. "I didn't expect anything better, but--" she paused, took a deep breath "--on that very first day, you held the door open for me. You showed me around and made sure I had someone I could turn to. You were there before anybody else I know. I dare say I met them only because I met you, because you knew what it was like. And you were looking out for me." Coco was in tears now, and she cupped a hand over her mouth to stifle herself.
The realization shocked Sunset into silence, and she was helpless to interrupt.
"I can't forget all that, S.S." she said, calling upon the once-familiar nickname/acronym. "Whatever happened after that, whatever happened to make you just....ignore me, it doesn't change a thing." She cried and clenched on Sunset's shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise. "There are some things we aren't allowed to forget."
She forced her dilated eyes up towards Sunset's stunned features. The pleading look in her eyes screamed at Sunset. Listen to me!, it seemed to say. Please!
Sunset bit down on her lip. "You," she began, but could go no further. She bit down harder, drawing blood before she was able to continuing. "You were always too nice for your own good, Coco." She'd been saying that for as long as she'd known her. They both knew it wasn't true. "Doesn't your memory ever fail you?"
"Only when my friends do," Coco retorted, hugging her tightly. Sunset didn't know what that was supposed to mean, but neither of them could hold back the tears any longer.
"I missed you," Sunset sobbed. "I really did." The memory wrenched at her, and for the first time, she felt, undeniably, guilt, twisting and flaying in her chest. "I'm sorry, Coco. I'm sorry. I'm sorry...." she repeated it again and again.
It was only much later that Sunset deciphered the strange rejoinder. Only when my friends do. I will remember your kindness forever, and your shortcomings, never.
Months ago, still on a bus....
"....Wait a minute."
Flash swallowed hard.
"Hang on, you said that you forgot your guitar, right? That's the only reason you weren't gonna show up at band practice?" She had to fight hard to keep the accusatory edge out of her voice.
"Y-yeah. That, and I guess I'm a little off--"
" 'Off' my foot," she retorted, finally catching on. "Seems unbelievably timely, doesn't it? And why'd you have to ask for the day of the week? Band practice is once a week for you. And always on Thursday."
"It must have slipped my mind!" he replied.
'A little too quick on the draw,' she noted. "Fancy 'running into me' at the bus stop, eh, Flash?" she asked pointedly.
What happened next was very amusing indeed. Flash went completely rigid for a moment, back over-arched, hands clenched on his knees. He'd tried to hide it, but years of rigorous posture training at the hands of her former mentor (highly pretentious, though useful) had given Sunset an uncanny sensitivity, one which she exploited to her fullest advantage now.
"Coincidence, I-I swear!" Flash stuttered. She smirked in response, refused to look at him. "I mean," he continued, trying to look as sincere as possible, "When I said I was a little off, I meant it." He probably didn't know he was beginning to sweat. She somehow didn't doubt that he wasn't all there today, but she wanted to see how he would react to this.
"I don't buy it," she stated flatly, then fixed him with what she hoped was a piercing stare and started counting in her mind.
One.
Two.
Three.
After which, she was planning to drop the subject, when--
"Alright, alright," he sighed. "I asked Coco and she said you were headed, well," he gestured to the road ahead, "into town."
Maybe it was the abruptness, Flash's disposition and his abrupt confession, or even how serious it seemed to have gotten. Either way, Sunset had caught him with his guard down, and she burst into fits of laughter at the revelation.
"You asked Coco?" She tried to confirm between fits of giggling. "And she told you?"
Flash, who'd been watching in embarrassed silence so far, protested. "Don't get mad at her, I asked her--"
"I'm not mad, just...." She took a few deep breaths, composed herself, laid a hand gently on Flash's wrist. "You could have just asked." He looked away, grimacing and trying to hide the sheepish look in his eyes. She tried to imagine her two friends whispering conspiratorially and stifled a renewed bout of snickering. "Oh, I can only imagine all the trouble you two had to go through to set this up." She laughed. "I'll have to thank Coco for this."
Flash maintained his silence throughout the ordeal. He wasn't too pleased about Sunset reading him like an open book, but he'd been more surprised by the guile and ease with which she did it, than the fact that she had. And now he was at her mercy. He hoped she had plenty to spare, or he'd never hear the end of this, from her or anybody else.
She finally lapsed into silence, and seemed to take notice of him momentarily after. "Flash," she chided, "you could have just asked me! Why didn't you ask me?"
He shrugged.
'That reminds me,' she thought, and smacked him gently in the shoulder. "Stop that!" she scolded, then softened when Flash seemed to shrink miserably into himself. 'Oh, that was his ego. Whoops. It was time to try something else.
"Don't tell anyone that you don't know, simply for the sake of satisfying them. Besides," she laid a hand on his shoulders, "you don't seem like that type." She paused, pretended to think for awhile, then put a hand on his head and turned his head firmly to face her. "You're fine the way you are. I like you the way you are."
That seemed to make him feel better, and he offered her an emphatic, soft-eyed gaze in reply. "Thanks."
There was more to say, but neither of them could be bothered. A mutually comfortable inaction came over them, and Sunset was reminded of the first time they had met. They had not had the opportunity for such a moment since then. Now, the hustle and bustle of school had faded with physical distance, like it had faded with the passing of time that day. "Perfect," she mused.
"Perfect," Flash intoned sarcastically. He seemed to have recovered, but Sunset knew better. She was probably more familiar with a bruised ego than he was. He was a lot more, ah, sensitive than she had imagined. She found herself intensely interested by this new trait. That aside, she still had plenty of damage to undo.
"Flash," she whispered, "Believe me, I've been hoping as much as you have that we would get to spend some time together, too. Away from everyone else, I mean. And above all that...." She paused for effect, stole a moment to smile at him, putting on what she hoped was her look of greatest admiration. "I know you love playing in that band of yours," she said, accenting her voice on the second syllable. "And you were willing to put that aside and make time."
'--For you,' a sudden voice in her head said with frivolously over-saturated glee, much to her alarm. She shook it off before continuing.
"That, and you tried to surprise me. You bothered to find out about my schedule and you knew exactly how to do it." Which wasn't easy, because virtually nobody other than Coco knew it.
"All that planning, just to catch me in my free time?" She tilted her head slightly, all the while keeping her gaze on him. "I think that's really, really sweet," she said softly, and tousled his hair.
"Hey!" he retorted, fighting her off and laughing.
"After all that," she continued, finally concluding, "could I still say 'no' if you asked to come along?"
He beamed at her, and she beamed right back.
"No one ever hears about this, right?" he asked a little unnecessarily.
"Our little secret," she promised.
He seemed a lot happier at that prospect. Seemed.
As if to dispel that doubt, he shook his head slowly and sighed. "That was barely a legit slip, how did you catch me?" They laughed, but Sunset offered no reply. Only a wry smile.
"You, Sunset Shimmer," he told her plainly, "are crazy. I have no doubt of it."
It took about two weeks for the story to circulate to the farthest reaches of CHS, but Flash didn't seem to mind in the slightest, because some distortion arose, leading to the circulated version stating that Flash had planned every little detail of it. It was then that Sunset had gotten into the habit of saying that Coco was being far too nice. After all, she was the one circulating that version.
Flash ruminated in the glow of the yellowing fluorescent tubes in their ceiling mounts. It was awfully....lucky that they'd had to clean up this particular corridor. Even Sunset, with a new understanding of the physics of exploding fireballs, had no way of explaining the presence of debris so far into the school compound. Flash had eventually concluded that it was fate that had brought them here. He'd also concluded that fate had been biding its time to give him the finger.
'Why did it have to be this one....'
It was the very corridor in which he'd first met Sunset . Usually, walking by this place was enough to dampen his spirits, regardless of the circumstances preceding. Now, perhaps because of his sleep-deprived or emotionally drained state, he could swear that the corridor swam in his vision. The moonlight streaming through the wall windows seemed unnaturally bright, and he felt too warm for the middle of the night. One hand reached for his temples, and the other for a nearby locker to steady himself.
He'd come to think that this hallway was perhaps haunted by a crying specter lurking in the corner of the stairwell's intermediate platform. This time, though, that ghost was only a few paces in front of him, more substantial than his memories could ever make her. Currently, she hoisted the mop bucket she was carrying, seemingly unaffected by the environment. She plodded ahead of the other two, and stopped as if for them to catch up. Flash was met with the image of Sunset, her back to him. One arm had a bucket in tow, while the other used a sleeve to wipe the sleep from her eyes. She hunched over with fatigue and unhappiness. It seemed to familiar to him, yet oddly twisted. 'We were walking in the other direction that day,' he recalled.
In more than one sense too. It seemed not too long ago that he was watching quietly, day by day, as Sunset met more of the student body. She smiled more, she laughed more. She loved more. Bustling meals in the canteen, squeezed shoulder to shoulder with the other students. Quiet moments in cafes and on buses where it was just the two of them, whispering even when there was nobody around.
'How did it come to this?' he thought, as his vision refocused.
This referred to a lot of things, not just this particular corridor, leading to a dead end, which housed his band's practice and equipment room. It sent a vague throbbing emotional pain through his chest, every time he passed through it. Usually, he only had to do that twice. Every Thursday, going to and leaving band practice. In the past week, he' been through this accursed hallway several times more than usual, because his band was supposed to play at the Fall Formal. It would have put him in a far fouler mood, had the timely arrival of Twilight Sparkle not distracted him sufficiently. But now, Twilight Sparkle wasn't here....
Coco tapped him on the shoulder, a silent indication to increase his pace.
They had almost caught up with her, when she lurched suddenly, slopping some of the water from the bucket onto the floor. She took hold of the bucket with both her hands, and began striding briskly, urgently. Heading straight for the stairwell where he had first found her. At middle platform of the stairwell, she threw the bucket into the corner where she had once sat. The weight of its contents kept it upright, but enough of water escaped to drench Sunset's lower torso. She seemed to ignore that. Then she went on her knees in front of the bucket, took a few deep breaths, and promptly regurgitated her late lunch into it. All that happened in the third of a minute that it took Coco and Flash to react.
'Who would've thought,' Flash mused, partly because he was going a little green in the face himself. He swallowed to undo his gag reflex. By the time he got to her, Sunset had emptied out most of her stomach and was reduced to shuddering breaths. He patted her firmly on the back once, forcing a little more putrid liquid up her gullet. Grimacing at the sorry sight, he started chiding. "How many times have I told you before, there's no shame in asking for help. I swear, one day you're doing to die of stubbornness--"
He caught a whiff of the bucket's contents, its acrid odor stopping him mid-sentence and causing his gullet to constrict forcibly. He lost his presence of mind then, put a hand on Sunset's chest, and all but threw her sideways. He grabbed the bucket and hoisted it up to his mouth, and added a solid measure of his own 'contribution'. Sunset hugged her knees to her chest, resting her head on them, while Flash resolved his nausea.
Coco stood silently with her arms crossed at the bottom of the stairwell, watching. The last time this had happened, it was because they'd both gotten wasted on cheap tequila. It was an ultimate show of trust between them, both knowing that the other would not to do something they'd both regret, even with lowered inhibitions. She had a feeling that this incidence meant something equally important, but entirely different. Presently, she listened in on their exchange.
"What is it about this bloody hallway anyway?" Sunset complained.
"You know better what it is, you psycho!" he gasped, before slumping against a nearby wall.
She swore and leaped at him.
'Oh boy,' thought Coco, as she moved in to break up the fight. Not much of a fight, since Flash had barely moved in response. Coco wondered what this was about, as she dragged them bodily back down the corridor by the back of their collars. Not easy for a slight, willowy girl like her, but she would manage it as necessary.
Months Ago....
As the bus plodded its way from the suburban zones towards the bustling city center, Flash and Sunset found themselves surrounded by a growing crowd. The central aisle of the bus got narrower, as more commuters piled onto the vehicle. It was not enough to create unpleasantness, but the presence of others was made acutely noticeable.
It was just as well that they weren't in the mood for conversation. Not that they were being unsociable. Just occupied.
Sunset waited in eager but silent anticipation as the view outside the window changed gradually. The even spacing of rows of low one- and two-story houses were replaced with the haphazard sprawl of steel, glass and concrete buildings which were several times higher at least. Sloping, shingled layers of rectangular roof flattened and rose out of sight. The grass and flowers of lawns was replaced by tarmac and asphalt. What little vegetation was present sprang from apartment block balconies and skeletal fire escapes, like furtive creepers from the cracks of a huge wall. Buildings lost their idyllic pastel hues and turned a moody grey.
The sky was also turning a similar shade, and so were the commuters, despite several being decked out in jackets, sweaters and the like. The air was laden with moisture, even through the bus' AC unit. Sunset did not take note of the sky nor the commuters, but she noticed every little change happening outside the window, with glee. The big city was just beyond her view.
Flash chose not to speak because, frankly, he was scared stiff and worried sick. And probably well and truly sick, too. Usually, none of this would have impeded him. He would be in his element, trying to know Sunset a little better, and he's pretty much have a foundation to work on by now. Situations so far had been screaming at him that Sunset Shimmer was not a usual girl, though. She was something else entirely. Something, which he had to admit, was pretty amazing and quite daunting.
For starters, he'd taken notice that she was very, very attractive. It was very acute and very painful to notice. And every time he reassessed his opinion, he found it becoming more and more apparent that he was attracted to her. Once, he had tried rationalizing it, out of pure desperation. It had ended badly, as it often did when he tried that; he had stopped thinking entirely, and started feeling. He'd developed a crush on her in slightly less than two weeks, something he found embarrassing to consider.
But that wasn't it.
He knew the anxiety of trying to befriend a pretty girl, and all the associated hazards, and none of it resembled this. He could get over a crush. One way or another. It would wear him thin until he told her or did something stupid to forget about it. It had certainly happened before (he shuddered at the memory and the air-conditioning). He had some degree of security in dealing with that.
Sunset's presence and sheer difference from the norm removed all sense of familiarity from him, laid him bare and--to be honest--truthful. This was something else entirely. She was something else entirely.
It was far from the only consideration, though. He knew that there was something between them which did not come easily, a certain empathy to each others' respective plights, though his was long gone and her's seemed to be fading. Maybe that was why he felt so insecure around her. (Yes, he had been shrugging very often, now that he thought about it). She was something special to him, now that he understood something of her inner workings. Special in what way, that would remain to be seen. But one kind of intimacy felt like another at times, and he'd hate to misread the situation.
He sighed. It was the same train of thought that had set into motion his silly little plan. He guessed the worry must have worn him down more quickly than he had expected, because he had tried to pull it off. 'My stupid little plan.' He thought. He was sure that talking her into letting him tag along would be easy, but he hadn't banked on her finding out about his....pre-preparation.
'Good gracious, she's sharp.' No, more than sharp, uncanny. Her explanation of how he was caught in the act had made some sense, but if she hadn't been right, he wouldn't have bought it. And he knew that if it didn't convince him, it definitely wouldn't convince her. So what had made her so sure that she was right? An unusual empathy? Maybe, but he doubted it was just that. She knew something he didn't know. She probably knew things that nobody else knew.
She wasn't just any other girl, that was for sure.
And he realized in that moment, that it was because there was something about her, which he could not quite put his finger on, that set her apart. With any other girl there wasn't anything else to really know aside from the little nothings-that-meant-everything. Sunset's sense of enigma was well-deserved.
He'd mainly identified her as having an emotional vulnerability similar to his, before today, but now he realized that it was a grave error in judgment. She had a formidable intellect, a force in motion even in the most casual moments. And even that was probably the tip of the iceberg. He wondered how someone so talented had ended up in a sleepy little public high school.
He wondered many other things about Sunset. And then he fell asleep.
Something lurched gently onto Sunset's shoulder, pulling her out of her reverie. She turned to find Flash's head on her shoulder, and her heart skipped a beat. 'You have no concept of subtlety,' she thought, and nearly said as much. Then he woke with a start and mumble an apology. She sighed silently in relief. Just an accident.
'Cute.' Thought came unbidden. She stamped it out like hot embers and tried her best to think about something else.
"Maybe you'd better go on home," she suggested, a little too quickly. She cursed her lack of self-control. He did look sort of tired, though.
"No, no, I'm fine," he insisted, and promptly sneezed. She crossed her arms in response. "Point taken," he conceded, "but I'm still tagging along. Don't you fret." He put a hand on her shoulder, but she didn't think it was very reassuring this time. Still, she quite liked it. It was warm. She looked back out of the window, placing a hand on the glass. It was cold to the touch. Flash fell asleep again beside her.
An old woman had slipped onto the vehicle, eyeing the sky suspiciously and breathing a minute sigh of relief. Flash somehow managed to rouse himself long enough to offer his seat to her, which she took gratefully. Sunset, who was too slow on the draw, had initially shrugged and relaxed back into her seat, before she had caught sight of Flash. One hand reaching out to steady himself on the backrest of a seat, the other trying to rub the sleep from his eyes, to no avail. The slight manner in which the corners of his mouth turned down.
She got off her seat to stand beside him, ignoring the quizzical stares of the other standing commuters. They overcame their surprise quickly enough and there was a slight jostle as they tried to fill the vacuum of space she had left. Flash tried to wave her back down, then attempt to press her firmly back into her seat. She nudged back against him, until he saw that someone else had filled the void behind her, and stopped trying.
He smiled at her and shook his head slowly. She smiled back, then took a step closer. They were to close to see each other now. Flash thought it strange but had not the presence of mind to question it. Sunset looked out of the window, over his shoulder. He fell asleep again, as she knew he would. His head came down on her shoulder, and she reached out a hand and held it there before he could raise it again. He protested weakly but gave in ultimately. The old woman chuckled behind Sunset. The growing crowd pressed them all closer together.
She woke him up again, two stops earlier than her intended destination, and they managed to worm their way through the thickness of people, many of whom now sported sweaters or jackets. They seemed to take up more space, but were noticeably less painful to squeeze past. Flash dismounted the vehicle, straight into a pedestrian sign, while Sunset stepped off a little more carefully and offered a wave of thanks to the driver. He waved back before the doors hissed close. When she turned, she found Flash grimacing and rubbing a sore spot slightly above his hairline. She grinned, tip-toed and ran her hand a few times over the same spot. Apparently, her attempt was far more efficacious, because he turned to follow as she set down the narrow path flanking the now-congested roads.
She took a deep breath of city air and started to come alive.
In every way, this was a different city from Canterlot. This one was much smaller, for one, despite their higher (and much more necessary) level of technology. It was built on flatter ground, and the buildings were squat, angular and thick. The air also seemed perpetually clogged with fumes. Sunset had never gotten used to that. Canterlot possessed, in stark contrast, sweeping towers, spires, arches and balconies that reached into the sky, above, besides and sometimes, beneath it. The air of those higher altitudes was cool and clear, and precipitation tended to come down as sleet instead of rain.
She still liked the feel of the place, and every time she visited, this world felt a little more familiar. It was like dreaming of something familiar; things were not quite as one recalled, but one knew unquestionably what was being referenced. This was preferable to dreaming because she was awake. It was still an urban center after all, and it had all the trappings of one; numerous pedestrians (less now, thanks to the inclement weather), their paths incised by wide roadways for vehicles, the masses of monolithic stone (or steel, or glass)....
All this, she took in and referenced to experiences from a week before, then a month, and so on.
It took the insistent tugging of Flash to disturb her recollections. He'd been watching the skies, glancing up at each occasional peal of thunder. When the fat, heavy drops of rain had begun to fall, he'd taken hold of Sunset's wrist and hurried her along, although he was not altogether sure where they were heading. He asked a question that Sunset hadn't altogether heard, but recognized correctly. She pointed to a nearby arcade and spoke the first words they had said in almost an hour.
"This way."
The sliding glass doors opened for them just as the rain started in earnest. In contrast to the artificially cooled air, the rain and wind outside almost felt warm. 'Fancy having central cooling,' she thought, 'when some ponies can't even keep warm in Equestria!' It was still ingenious. She'd once spent an entire day following the air ducts through a nearby building, much to the bemusement of the mall security, which received repeated reports of a suspicious character loitering around the place.
Flash's teeth chattered once or twice, and remained clenched long after Sunset ceased to hear the telltale clacking of enamel. She thought it strange. It was chilly, but not nearly cold enough for that. "I think you might have caught something," she observed unnecessarily. Flash waved her away. "I'm fine," he said, clearing his throat and coughing into his sleeve. "Really." She tutted at him, but dropped the subject.
The rain formed minuscule torrents and eddies on the half-cylinder of glass making up the arcade roof. The resultant gloom cast the archways and second-story connections of the building in a much different light. On a bright day, the gentler architecture of the place, the illusion of open skies through the clear ceiling, and air conditioning, could almost fool Sunset into thinking she was back in Canterlot. That was why she'd chosen to come here.
She glanced at her watch, and noticed first of all that it was dark enough for the neon dials to glow weakly. It was also early enough that caffeine wouldn't keep her up late. She turned to Flash, who had zipped his jacket and slipped his hands into his pockets. Presently, he had his eyes closed. She had a feeling that not all of him had awoken at the same time when he'd gotten off the bus.
Clearing her throat sheepishly, she rested a hand in the crook of his arm and guided him gently along. He followed after a pause.
"Coffee?" she suggested.
"Coffee," he agreed.
They'd chosen a small café which seemed that it was dug into the building's walls, and an unoccupied booth in the corner. There were barely five others in the establishment itself. Sunset insisted on Flash taking a seat and waiting for her to get their drinks. He was too drowsy to really protest.
"You sure you're fine?" she asked yet again, as she set his cup down by the saucer.
"Couldn't be better," he said flatly through clenched teeth. For some reason, he had a pounding headache which wouldn't go away. He rubbed at his temples.
"Couldn't be better," Sunset repeated doubtfully. "Something warm might help you feel better. Go on...." She pushed a cup to him by the saucer. He took it gratefully and sipped, producing a sound like a hand-held vacuum cleaner. She paused. The gesture was a complete violation of her learned habit, hard-won by training and practice.
This was another familiarity from home, something less pleasant to her than graceful architecture or fresh air. Being a princess' protege, she had been trained since young in every kind of pleasantry, taught to master her even the slightest nuance in her disposition. Her tutor had been equal parts practical experience and application, and Celestia herself. Neither were particularly forgiving.
When she'd first come here, she'd had to get used to dressing herself in the morning. It was still a habit that felt far more alien than putting on her visage. Which was why Flash's total disregard for etiquette was as jarring as a slap in the face. She watched a little more closely. Either he didn't care or didn't know, or didn't care to know.
Come to think of it, she didn't know why she cared, even if she knew. Her eyes drifted back to the mug clutched in front of her. The hands that clutched it were orange, lithe, hairless. They weren't a single hard surface, but multiple little appendages with little chips of keratin. And they were hers. Hers. She glanced quickly over herself, then outside the coffee joint, back into the gloomy arcade. The glass roof became painfully obvious, and the congested little storefronts of shop after shop betrayed the limitations of space here. No, she was not in Canterlot any more than she was still a pony. She looked back at Flash. She was one of them now.
The realization sent a wave of apprehension and....release, washing throughout her. The former, because she had never thought of herself as having any sort of permanent place, any sort of life here, of really being human before now. The second because, gone were the courts of Canterlot, the presence of her teacher, and all the disappointments and oppressive conditions.
The cup absent-mindedly came up to her lips, and she took a sip. 'Which reminds me,' she thought suddenly. For as long as she'd remembered, coffee always came with the need not to stain one's teeth. This time, it came with the compulsion to swirl it around her mouth, to fully taste the beverage. So she let the liquid flow over her teeth, the fullness of cheap milk and cheaper coffee permeating to anywhere that it could reach. It was better than she'd expected.
Flash eyed her quietly, then offered a questioning stare when she finally noticed that he was watching. "What?" she asked, hesitant. She had never done that before, as far as he could remember. "This stuff isn't exactly cheap, so I'm going to enjoy it," she added defensively, when he failed to respond.
"Nothing wrong with that," he finally said.
"Oh." She didn't sound at all convinced, and sank back into her seat a little, looking troubled.
"Hey." He lifted his own cup to his lips, took a large mouthful of hot liquid, and swished it around his mouth, as deliberately as he could manage, all the while never breaking his gaze. She straightened up in surprise, before a small, grateful smile broke across her lips. He swallowed the now-lukewarm coffee and smiled back, feeling warmer inside than the drink had warranted.
