Mirror Redemption

My first clue that something was wrong was that Dawn's hair wasn't in my face.

I awoke slowly, reluctantly; my body knew it wasn't morning yet. Everything was comfortably warm. The duvet was pulled tightly around me; my little brother's body was hot and close against me, my arms snuggled around him like they always were. Something on my face tingled. I thought I could hear music, like a lullaby, coming from very far away. I felt completely at peace. But something was wrong.

I only realized that Dawn had kissed me when he leaned in and did it a second time. His lips layered over mine, soft and warm, like a mask fitting over my face. Even then, my body responded in the wrong order, still too asleep to understand what was happening. It felt good. My lips parted slightly, letting him slip further between them as his hands moved over me. I decided immediately that I liked being kissed. A subtle scent filled the air, sweet like honey, soothing me back into sleep. The lullaby continued, telling me that everything is all right, everything is all right, as I felt myself being rolled onto my back. Nothing registered. All I felt was warm, and safe, and being kissed, and beautiful. I felt beautiful.

But something was wrong. I'm not an idiot. And when Dawn's fingers slid down and pressed against my flat chest, it pierced through my haze of sleep like he'd cut through my clothes and stabbed me in the heart. "Stop," I whispered, pushing him away. In a second he was back on top of me, rubbing me more insistently, trying to kiss me deeper. "Dawn, stop!" I repeated, shoving at his chest. He wouldn't let go. Something was wrong. Dawn wasn't this strong. He smelled too nice. His hair wasn't falling in my face.

The gentleness went out of him. He put his weight on me and tried to kiss me as I squirmed away, twisting my head left and right. His breath was like flowers and oranges, my favorite. His fingers were reaching, clawing under my sweater, sending tingles across my bare skin. His touch excited me, and that felt deeply wrong. "I said stop!" I yelled, managing to get my knees up and kick him in the stomach with both feet. This was enough to knock him away to the far end of the bed. I also felt something burst beneath my heel.

Panic, a new experience for me, started to ratchet around in my chest. My eyes fully opened; someone had turned out the night light. I scrambled up to my knees and switched on the bedside light. Dawn was kneeling as well, looking down at himself. He was wearing his blue sweater, but it had caved in across his stomach, like it was part of his skin. Putrid liquid leaked out of him, dripping down his suddenly disfigured exterior into sticky patches on his boxer shorts. He slowly looked up at me, and when his head moved, his hair didn't flow around it. It stayed in place, like it was made of plastic. Before I could even understand what I was seeing, he opened his mouth wide, too wide, like it was on a hinge, and leaped at me.

I didn't know what a changeling was. Why would I? Our parents had never read us those kinds of stories, not for want of us asking, and teachers would try to keep us "safe" by not covering the topic until we were too old to be preyed on. But I knew enough. All I needed to understand was that this thing, whatever it was, was not my brother. That was all the information I needed to not have to hold back.

We threw each other back and forth, just close enough to our play-fighting that I wasn't consciously aware that my life was on the line. His fingers dug deep into my neck and shoulders, feeling more like claws than real hands. I kicked and hit at him, shrieking with every strike, not letting him get a solid grip. In just a few blows, his disguise started to wear away. His skin and clothes slid around and punctured, like silk stretched over a frame, and my knuckles clanged against something much harder than bone. He opened his mouth wide, snapping for my neck. I drew back and punched him across his face, crying out when the attempt cut my hand open. His upper lip split and peeled away from his face, hanging down to expose a copper frame and curved metal teeth, dripping with something green. My split-second of shock was the opening he needed to push me back against the wall, gaping in towards my mouth again.

I struggled. With my uninjured hand I swung around and punched him point-blank in the chest. Instead of pushing him back, my fist punctured right through him and stuck fast. He froze, stuck just inches away. In silent horror I tried to move my fingers. I could feel ooze dripping between them, and the crinkle of paper, along with the shearing of hard metal. The fake Dawn started to lean in, pushing my fist even deeper into him, and his hanging mouth even closer to mine. His breath had grown wetter, now smelling less like oranges and more like week-old garbage. I leaned away and flailed out, grabbing the first object that came to hand, and with another swing smashed my princess lamp against the side of his face. This jolted him enough that I was able to push him off of me and wrench my hand free, tearing his front open in the process, and sprung from my bed. I backed against the window, too inexperienced to sprint from the door, and that line of escape was cut off as I heard him roll from the bed and crouch between me and it.

Keeping my eyes forward, I pulled open the curtains; I didn't yet know that I was good enough to fight in the dark. What I saw illuminated in the moonlight didn't even look human. It was an incomplete, twisted skeleton cobbled together from junk and scrap metal, the holes inside stuffed with trash, dripping brown and green fluids onto the carpet. The organic, silklike skin was peeling away in flaps, already starting to shrivel up around the edges. Most of my brother's face hung in ribbons, exposing a pointed jaw that operated with a mix of springs and sinews. One of his eyes had burst, leaking clear liquid, and behind the drooping socket I could see a black shape squirming and scuttling. But his right eye was intact, and it stared at me with the quivering hurt that Dawn had been perfecting on me since the day he was born. "Sunset?" he said, and even though the jaw moved up and down in an almost comically mechanical way, it was his voice that came out, in the high-pitched, trembling tone he used to tell me that my picking on him had crossed a line. "Don't you love me?"

I hesitated. Stupidly, stupidly, I hesitated. Despite the evidence in front of my eyes, I couldn't escape the idea that maybe, just maybe, this really was my brother, transformed by some kind of curse, and I had just broken him. That moment of hesitation was all it took for my brain to finally catch up with what my body had been doing, and terror fell onto me like an anvil. I started weeping, uncontrollably, and fell back across the window. That was when he leaped for me. And that was when something within me awakened.

Suddenly, there was no darkness. I could see everything as clearly as if the sun was shining from behind my eyes. I stepped to the side with what felt like practiced ease and swung out with both fists, knocking the creature off balance. I kept up the attack, kicking and striking with my elbows, ignoring the cuts I was accruing just to keep it from recovering. A spark of fury flared up in me, overpowering everything else. My screams became almost as inhuman as my enemy as I overpowered it. How dare this creature impersonate my brother. How dare it sneak into my bed. How dare it steal my first kiss!

(Behind the oak tree at school with North Star didn't count because I'd decided that he was a twat, even though I wasn't supposed to know that word yet.)

With one final charge I slammed the monster against the wall, denting the plaster. In an insane rage I grappled at its head, forcing my hands into its mouth and eye socket. I instantly regretted the former as it bit down, mangling my fingers, but I felt something give way in its throat and pushed harder. Gurgles in my brother's voice gave way to chittering, insectlike screeches. Its hands raked down my sides and across my arms, tearing holes in my sweater. I pushed harder. The makeshift skull distended as I forced my hand inside of it, reaching even as the teeth scraped against my skin, feeling sticky tendons snap and limbs go limp one after the other. Suddenly, tiny, sharp teeth dug into my palm, tearing a new hole into me that burned like hot acid. Even as I teared up and cried out from the pain, I kept pushing. Two more inches was all it took. I heard a black shell crack. I felt a round body burst like rotten fruit. With a burst of green liquid that oozed out of every side of the skull, the changeling finally went still.

The jaw loosened. I breathed heavily, my heart pounding. I wrenched my hand free, only then acknowledging that three of my fingers were broken, but not really caring. Most of my body hurt, and a lot of my arms and legs were bruised or skinned, but I wasn't dangerously bleeding. Somehow, I'd done it. I'd survived. And I understood then that what I'd seen in the moonlight hadn't vanished now that the moment was gone, but had stayed in me, and would stay with me for the rest of my life. A curled, blazing sun had seared itself across my heart, visible whenever I closed my eyes, and I knew. I just knew. I stood there, eight years old, covered in blood and slime and sweat, and knew that this was who I was meant to be. I was the light in the darkness. I was she who slays monsters. I was powerful. I was unstoppable.

I was Sunset.

Fucking.

Shimmer.

I didn't have long to bask. I didn't have any time, really. Reality descended, asshole that it is, and I realized that I could still hear the singing. The changeling's lullaby still echoed in my head, as though I was hearing it without using my ears. Where before it had soothed me, now it tightened my stomach, calling me to action. With a dreamlike bravery, I tried to open the door with my broken hand but winced, trying again with my good side. The night light to the bathroom had been pulled out here, too, but the dim light confirmed my fears. Dawn's bedroom door was cracked open.

I could have run to our parents' room. I even looked in that direction, at the distant door still closed and my dad's stash of guns on top of his dresser, but my feet carried me towards my brother. I ran with no plan but fury and kicked open the door, already halfway through a scream. "Da-"

A hand smacked itself over my mouth. An impossibly long arm curled around me and scooped me up. "What's this?" a distorted, feminine voice asked.

I struggled and screamed, silenced. Whatever was holding me was much stronger than what I'd just faced. A sickly green light filled the room, and two grotesque, intelligent eyes stared down at me.

This changeling was tall, taller even than my parents, though most of it was in her legs. Unlike the other, this one didn't even try to hide that she was biomechanical; her skin was grown flush to her skeleton, exposing delicately carved steel ribs and glass protrusions that spread around her back like wings. Her seemingly frail hands sprouted at the fingertips into metal claws that tapped against my cheek. Her face was distorted and insectlike, with her hair hanging down all around her in gossamer strands; the only part of it that looked remotely human was her lips, which were full and flushed. Under any other circumstances, I would have called her strangely beautiful. Her song echoed in my head, louder and louder, driving out all other thoughts. I wrenched at her hand with both arms, but found it utterly immovable. "Did you come for your brother, little one?" she asked, exposing glistening, metallic fangs. "You'll have to wait your turn. He has enough of you already."

My eyes turned. Dawn lay on his back in bed, the covers pulled down to his waist, his chest bare. And halfway on top of him was me, another me, kissing him. One of her hands was moving up and down under the sheets, while his were clasped against her back, holding her close. One of these fell limply away as she looked up and locked eyes with me, grinning. Bright red drool dripped from her lips.

My scream would have been deafening if it hadn't been smothered. The taller changeling chuckled as my hands bounced off of her without leaving a mark, only adjusting her grip to secure my legs. I bit down on her palm and instantly regretted it. Not only did I cut my lips, thick, noxious fluid filled my mouth, sending a visceral panic right down to my stomach. I threw up straight into her hand, rocketing streams of sick across myself and her and smearing it across my face. She didn't seem to notice. As my head started to swim she cradled me, looking down at me with a gaze that was almost loving. "Poor little thing," she crooned. "Don't be afraid. I'll make it all go away." Her mouth distended, and for a moment, within that abyss, I could see another set of eyes looking back at me.

I tried to fight. I tried to wake up. I got weaker and weaker as she got closer, feeling my body go numb. The last sensation was her lips touching mine.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

I was powerful.

I was strong.

I was Sunset.

Fucking.

Sh.

Sh.

"She's alive."

Shimmer.

"She's alive! Oh, thank McCarthy. Oh, thank McCarthy she's alive."

Someone shook me awake. My head lolled as my mother manhandled me, smacking the life back into me. The lights hurt my eyes. She clung to me tightly, wailing and jabbering nonsense. My dad stood facing the other way, shotgun in hand, grimmer.

My eyes made a slow circuit of the room. My brother was still on the bed, his face covered in red. My double lay beside him with no face at all, an explosion of red, black and green shotgun-carved into the wall behind her. But the only bodies were theirs. His window had been broken, apparently from the inside, and the frame had been split as something large had sprung through it, away and into the night.

I said nothing. I did nothing. My dad snatched me away from my mom and slapped me across my face, knocking me to the ground. I fell like a rag doll. "What were you thinking?" he yelled, almost screaming. "Were you trying to fight a queen yourself? Why didn't you call for us? What were you thinking?"

I should have fought back. I should have said something. I didn't. I stared up at Dawn's bed and listened to my mother sob. I should have felt something. I should have felt anything. But I didn't.

I didn't feel anything at all.

I woke up for the second time around noon. The first time, as always, was at seven on the dot, when Shining Armour got out of bed to do his morning stretches. He couldn't break the habit of getting up early, even though he'd waited up all night for me, the dumbass. I watched him sleepily shift his way through different naked poses and then covered my head with his pillow when he left for breakfast, easily tuning out the polite knocking on the door.

Even when I woke again, I didn't get up right away, not even to feed my growling stomach. I lay in bed and lifted my hand in the air, turning it over and analyzing it in the light. It had accumulated a number of scars and pockmarks over the years, but I could still pick out three in particular, three hard lines that cut across my middle fingers where panicked iron had crushed through them. My hands didn't fit inside of changeling skulls any more, of course. I wondered if magical pony hooves did.

I'd managed to get a look at my double in the hospital - it was funny how showing up in just a towel could get people to look the other way - but not closely examine her, let alone talk to her. She needed time to sleep off the poison. What I'd learned seemed to confirm what Princess Twilight had told me, even if it did raise a whole load of other questions. There didn't seem to be any government-level conspiracy surrounding Sunset, but there was also no media interest, no nuts from the internet tracking her every move. It was just one school that had agreed to keep the two of them a secret from the rest of the world. That was pretty fucking altruistic, especially since one of them had tried to enslave the entire world at one point. Princess Twilight must have been all kinds of influential.

I turned my hand over again, frustrated at the missed opportunity. Did Sunset have all the same scars that I did? All the same memories? All the same secrets, all the same drives? And even if she did, what the fuck would any of that even mean? I gave up speculating and rolled out of bed, put on one of the hotel's fluffy dressing gowns, and finally, for the hell of it, decided to humor whoever had been knocking at my door every ten minutes for the past five hours.

Coco Pommel was waiting outside, looking shrunken and miserable. Considering where she'd had to spend the night, I almost sympathized. I'd had a sneaking suspicion for a few weeks that Suri was fucking her, but as usual with Suri, it was difficult to actually prove anything. "G-good morning, Shimmer," she said, either unaware or optimistically oblivious to the fact that she was ten minutes off the mark. "Did you sleep well?"

"Like an angel." I leaned against the doorframe and stared, letting her squirm. "What?"

"Well, it's just, um..." She fidgeted. Cute, but no Twilight. "It's just that we were supposed to be on the road three hours ago. Suri's, um..." Pissed. She's fucking pissed. Just say she's pissed. "She's worried that you might be sick."

"Yeah... no. Trip's cancelled. I've got business here now."

"Oh." She kept her eyes firmly down. I could see curiosity bubbling up around her lips and hands, but she didn't dare voice it. "Wh-what should I tell her?" she asked.

"Doesn't matter. She can leave if she wants. I can hitch a ride back to Manehattan." I looked her up and down, another idea forming. Plans come naturally to me. "You're staying with me, though."

She gasped. "I am?"

"Yeah. I might need you. Besides, you're the only one who brought bus tokens." No flicker of emotion on her face, either fear or relief. This girl was a professional. I started to turn away from her. "Go and get Shining Armour for me. Tell him to book the room for another night, then send him up here. And after that, you can either be a good girl and order us some lunch, or you can ride off with Suri Polomare and spend the rest of the week stuck in a car with her." I swung my head back and stared at her harshly. "Alone."

Now I got a gulp from her. "I'll do that," she said in a small voice.

"Yeah, sure." I started to walk away. "I'm getting dressed now, so unless you want to see me naked, you should close the door." To speed her along, I untied the front of my gown and shrugged it off my shoulders, baring my back to her. And wouldn't you know it, she actually did stare for a few seconds before slamming the door and bolting away.

I grinned and let the gown fall, retreating to the bed. Honestly, I had no intention of putting clothes on for another hour. I grabbed a leftover chicken bone from the bedside table and gnawed on it, plotting what part of Shining Armour I was going to eat lunch off of. I hoped that whatever meal Coco arrived with was made with a lot of sauce. If it did, I might need her help serving it.

The animal shelter was a work of art. I had to stand back and admire it, just for its sheer audacity. Even from the outside, this was nothing like the back-alley rescue centers and overtaxed kennels that you got in the city; this was its own building, beautifully maintained and decorated with murals of fuzzy-wuzzy animals. They even had a dazzling billboard and a small statue of a border collie out front. How this place had gotten so much funding was beyond me. Most likely it had involved some kind of adventure, starring sweet little Fluttershy and desperately helpful Sunset as they tried to save their run-down rescue, with some comically misguided charity event, wacky hijinks, maybe a musical number, culminating in the whole community coming together in the spirit of friendship for a two-hour work montage that would have normally taken two months and cost thousands of dollars. Exactly the kind of creepy hive-mind stuff that I'd moved to Manehattan to get away from. Not that I'd succeeded; last year some kid named Babs had pulled something similar to save a park two blocks south of where I lived. To this day it was impossible to walk through there without birds landing on you, still cheerily singing that same song. Creeps me the fuck out.

The inside was just as pretty as the outside. It was as clean and spacious as any human clinic, and didn't even smell like it was downwind of a barnyard. A couple of dogs were tussling unsupervised in the middle of the floor, but they stopped and stared when I came in, and an adorably chubby cat on the counter backed suspiciously away. Fluttershy's head peeked out from one of the doors in the back. "Oh! Good afternoon..." Her smile froze. "Sunset?"

I swung Mark Antony over my shoulder. "Close, but no."

"...Oh." She fully emerged and quickly shut the door behind her, as though barring my way. "Hello, Shimmer."

I took a few lazy steps in, looking around as though admiring the place. The animals all eyed me warily, wrinkling their noses; even the hamsters in the enclosure in the corner had stopped moving. "So this is where I work," I said, grinning widely at the little beasts. "Fluttershy, right? Nice place you've got. Seems well-loved. Must have had a lot of work put into it."

"Oh, it did." She smiled. "We almost had to close down last year, but Twilight and Sunset helped to organize a fundraiser, and-"

"Yeah, I don't really care." I whirled around and vaulted over the counter, landing cleanly without disturbing anything. "So you put me behind the desk, right? You don't seriously trust me with animals, do you?"

"Please don't..." She raised a hand plaintively. "You're not allowed back there. Employees only."

"Really?" I smirked. "Then why's my picture on the posterboard?" I approached it and plucked one of the pictures off. Judging by the selection, this version of me had kept up her photography hobby into adulthood. The one I held had Sunset and Fluttershy hugging and laughing, standing underneath a fluttering "GRAND RE-OPENING" sign. There was also some kind of dark shadow quietly looming in the background, but I was sure that that wasn't significant at all.

"That's... um..." Fluttershy winced as I dropped my hammer on the counter and kept rummaging around. "Please stop..."

Two of the desk drawers were padlocked. I picked one at random and twisted in the first three numbers that came to mind; it snapped open. "And this must be my stuff." I slid it open. Some unreadable documents and cheap trinkets spilled around inside. I was disappointed until a stack in the back corner caught my eye. "Hello, who's this?" I picked up a photograph of a tall, tan guy with blue hair. He looked familiar. "Does my little pony me have a crush?" I squealed.

Fluttershy rocketed next to me and slapped the bundle of pictures out of my hands. "I'm sorry," she gasped when I glanced at her out of the side of my eye. "That's... private."

Her evasiveness made it click. A grin wormed its way back onto my face. "That's Twilight's boyfriend."

"No..." She crimsoned. "Well, um, it is. But she isn't, um, I mean, Sunset doesn't..."

I straightened up. "So you two are pretty close, huh?" I faced her and edged forward, backing her against the wall. "That's perfect. You can show me around. Let me meet all her favorite animals. I really want to get to know her."

She shivered as I leaned in. "You're frightening me," she stammered. "Please leave."

"Make me."

"I'll call Twilight."

"Go ahead. I'm sure she'd love to hear about this." That silenced her. "Sunset must have a locker too, right? Take me there."

"No."

"Then I'll find it myself."

"You can't. Employees only. Please leave."

"I'm not hurting anyone."

"You're upsetting the animals. Please leave."

"Make me."

I turned away and picked up my hammer again. Her hand shot out and grabbed my arm, iron in intensity if not strength. "I said..." Suddenly her face exploded into a barely-controlled fury. "LEAVE!"

I snarled back and locked eyes with her. Our gazes clashed like trains colliding, and it only took seconds for me to realize that, holy crap, I was losing. Her irises opened like portals into a dimension of pain and fury, promising torment beyond anything that I could deliver to her. I felt a cold sweat trickle down my back and almost cracked; this girl could probably outstare a Queen. "All right," I whispered, hoping that I was hiding the tremor in my voice. "We can do this the easy way."

I took a step back and kicked the drawer closed. Her stare relented, and I heard what sounded like a sigh of relief. That was my cue to rush forward and pin her against the wall, using Mark Antony's handle to bar her arms in place. She shrieked and I covered her mouth, putting a knee up on her stomach to keep her still. Barks and yowls erupted behind me, but I ignored them. "You're going to tell me everything I want to know," I instructed. "And in return, I'll leave quietly and won't bother you or any of your little friends again. Deal?"

I uncovered her mouth. She shook, the fight gone out of her. "Including Sunset?" she croaked.

"Oh, sweetie." I grinned. "Sunset's me. Do you really think I'd hurt myself?"

She considered this haltingly. "Okay," she whispered.

"Good." I lowered my knee. "Question one... What are the Elements of Harmony?"