Stumbling Toward Redemption

by chris the cynic

Rating: teen
Tags: Sunset Shimmer, Main 7 (EqG), Slice of Life, Vice-Principal Luna, Drama, Rainbow Dash (EqG), Equestria Girls, Principal Celestia
Length: 8241

The Elements of Harmony can turn a life around in a single blast of rainbow magic, but that's only the beginning of the journey.

A life spent seeking power, in which she viewed others as only tools or obstacles, left Sunset Shimmer a smoking wreck in the bottom of a crater.

Now she has to figure out where to go from there.

This is a "filling in the gaps" story. It takes the Equestria Girls movies as canon then tells a story without the the discontinuities caused by the gaps between movies or, sometimes, between scenes.

This picks up where Equestria Girls left off and will follow Sunset's life at least as far as the ending of Rainbow Rocks. The early focus will be on how she went sobbing and alone at the end of Equestria Girls to reasonably well adjusted at the beginning of Rainbow Rocks. After that it will follow the plot of Rainbow Rocks to the point where she was no longer a pariah.

Published 2017-10-31 22:20:05 UTC
Last updated 2019-04-13 20:43:08 UTC

Start of Something New

Quite a bit had been written about the Elements of Harmony, and the fact that most of what there was to read had been in the restricted sections of the library hadn't prevented Sunset Shimmer from reading everything she could. By the time she finished theoretical works on what would happen in situations ranging from esoteric to exceedingly unlikely –like, say, if one were bring an Element of Harmony into an alternate world-- Sunset thought she'd known all there was to know.

Only now did she realize that there was one thing that had been very seriously lacking.

With Discord in stone and Luna banished to the moon there had never been a firsthand account of what it was like to be the target of the Elements. Likewise there had been a distinct lack of speculation from third parties on what it was like to to be caught up in a Harmony powered rainbow vortex with enough force to leave a giant crater in the ground.

Certainly nothing on what it was like to go from a demon to a powerless human as the magic of friendship tore through your body and turned it into something else. Then again, the speculation on what would happen if one used an Element outside of its natural plane of existence hadn't been as accurate as she would have liked either.

She never planned on turning into a cackling monster who wouldn't hesitate to kill Twilight Sparkle, in spite of how infuriating the girl had become.

Regardless, it would have been nice if someone had bothered to even try to figure out what happened to the victims of the Elements' magic. Maybe then she wouldn't have been quite so unprepared for what happened.

She hadn't just been turned back into a human. She hadn't just been left steaming (or was it smoking?) in a giant crater. No, those were the small changes. The Elements had stripped her – left her bare, like an exposed nerve. All of her illusions and rationalizations had been torn away and she was helpless under the crushing weight of everything she'd ever done.

She remembered every person, human or pony, she'd hurt and every time she'd hurt them. She remembered every bit of perverse joy she'd taken in the suffering of others. It had made her cry out about how sorry she was for everything.

At that point she was willing to do anything to change her life because it hurt. Who she was hurt. What she'd done hurt. The kind of person she'd become hurt. Everything she'd done since getting into this world and quite a few things from before then. All of it hurt.

Of course, before Sunset could make it from Twilight to the girls who were supposed to teach her about friendship, Vice Principal Luna took Sunset away. No one even noticed, their attention focused on the talking dog.

It had been surprising that Luna hadn't taken her to be punished right away. Instead she brought Sunset to the school nurse, who had been one of the staff members supervising the dance. Luna left to deal with Snips and Snails. The nurse took Sunset to get her wounds disinfected.

She hadn't even known she had wounds, other things hurt too much for her to notice some scrapes. Though when she looked in the mirror she was disturbed at how close the scrape running from her left forehead to the right side of her nose had come to touching her eye.

When that was over Luna kept Sunset, Snips, and Snails away from the other students in a sort of anti-dance detention.

And that was when it really started to sink in for Sunset exactly what it was like being redeemed by an Element of Harmony.

The moment had passed, sappy speeches about friendship were over, and now she had nothing. All of her plans were for nothing and, beyond that, she was disgusted with herself for having made them in the first place.

The things she'd devoted her entire life to were . . . not things she wanted. She hated herself for wanting them because every horrible thing she'd done had been done in pursuit of those things. She was Sunset Shimmer, the unicorn who didn't deserve to be an alicorn but demanded it nonetheless, the girl who didn't deserve power and couldn't be trusted with it anyway, the one who spent her life tearing others down because the only thing she wanted was to be on top. And now she was where she belonged: at the bottom.

All that was left was pain. The guilt over everything she'd done. Hating herself for having done it. In despair because she knew with all her heart and soul that she would never, ever make up for what she'd done.

* * *

When Luna returned she announced that the dance was over and the students had dispersed. She looked over Sunset, Snips, and Snails and decided to split them up again. She sent Sunset to wait at the school's entrance and took Snips and Snails with her.

Not all of the students had dispersed. Five of them, five very specific ones, were saying goodbye to the resident alicorn princess.

Twilight looked right at Sunset, then asked the five, “You'll look out for her won't you?”

Naive.

Also it made the hurt even deeper. Sunset knew she didn't deserve it. The person she'd tried to kill, even if she hadn't quite been herself at the the time, wanted to help her when she'd done nothing in her life that was worthy of that kind of help.

Sunset half hid herself behind part of the wall that was still standing, as if that would somehow make everything less bad.

Rarity said, “Of course we will,” then turned away somewhat, crossed her arms, and added, “although I do expect some sort of apology for last spring's debacle.”

Sunset hid even more of herself behind the wall. She didn't even know why she bothered. Rarity met her gaze with a glare just the same. Sunset dropped her her head and wished she could just make herself stop feeling.

Sunset heard footsteps behind her, and turned as Twilight said, “I have a feeling she'll be handing out a lot of apologies.”

Luna was smiling, until she saw that Sunset was looking at her. The smile quickly turned to a frown. She handed Sunset a trowel. Snips and Snails arrived with a wheelbarrow full of bricks and a bucket of mortar.

They were red bricks even though the wall had been more of a pink that looked almost purple in the moonlight.

Who even built a wall like this? It was four bricks thick, which was a pretty standard thickness, but you didn't actually make the wall entirely out of bricks. You made a wall out of cinder-blocks and then put one layer of bricks on either side, which, because cinder-blocks were designed to be brick compatible, meant a thickness equivalent to four bricks.

No one in their right mind would build the wall to a modern building by making it four literal bricks thick, yet here it was.

And when in Tartarus had Sunset learned so much about human masonry?

She sighed. She'd been here so long. Impossible to say exactly when she picked up that tidbit, but it didn't matter. She wasn't an Equestrian anymore. Somewhere along the way she'd become human, and somehow that included random information about building construction.

She could drop the trowel and make a break for the portal, which would be extremely ill advised since Twilight Sparkle had made it clear she was supposed to stay here, but if she got there she'd never fit in. In a way she'd been lucky that she came to this world as a child. She was more adaptable then. By pony standards she was an adult now. She probably couldn't completely shift gears and assimilate into a different culture again.

She had no home now, and somehow this revelation was tied to bricks and cinder blocks.

She'd already stared on her task. Get some mortar, plop it down, smooth it out, drop a brick, smaller amount of mortar beside the brick, place the next brick, repeat until you ran out of horizontal mortar from the original plop. Repeat.

It was simple. Straightforward. She was able to do it without thinking. She embraced that. She didn't like her thoughts. She concentrated on the thoughtless process of laying the bricks. She tried to will the entire rest of the world –two worlds really– into non-existence. There was no pain in the motion of laying bricks. No guilt. No shame. Nothing but the same thing, over and over again.

Sunset barely noticed when the portal closed, stripping the five of their pony parts and dumping Rainbow Dash on her butt. She did take a bit more note when Pinkie Pie charged the portal and bounced off.

All that did was make her wonder if whoever brought the portal statue here was also responsible for the strange cinder-block-less wall.

Then she was back to focusing her entire being on the mindless repetition of laying bricks. Plop, smooth, place. Plop, smooth, place.

* * *

“Go home.”

Sunset heard the words, but she didn't really process them. She plopped mortar on the top row of bricks, smoothed it out, and laid a new brick down.

“I said: go home.”

Sunset looked at the source of the voice. Vice Principal Luna. She didn't respond. She didn't care. It was more peaceful doing this. Things were easier if she didn't have to think or feel anything.

“Snips and Snails already ran away,” Luna said. “I'm somewhat surprised you didn't leave with them.”

One of the things Sunset hadn't been able to tune out while bricklaying was the part where Snips and Snails made very clear that their relationship with her was over.

She hadn't felt anything at all. Compared to how everything else felt, well, that was basically good, right?

Besides, what else would she have felt? There was no surprise there. They worked for her because she had power, without the power she had nothing to offer and they had no reason to associate with her.

It wasn't like they'd been friends or anything.

The more important issue had nothing to do with Snips and Snails. It had to do with the fact that Luna was there and probably expected a response.

“I'm somewhat surprised you had bricks and mortar just lying around,” Sunset said.

“There was going to be a student project to rebuild one of the out buildings,” Luna said. “It fell through. The supplies have been wasting space for ages. Go home, Sunset, you've done enough for now.”

Sunset had never heard of the project, the 'ages' during which the supplies had been wasting space must have lasted years.

Sunset looked at the pitiful progress she'd made and the giant hole in the wall.

“Wall's not even close to done,” She said.

“Of course it isn't,” Luna said. “We'll talk more about that on Monday, but for now it's time for you to go home.”

Sunset sighed. “Whatever you say.” Sunset set down her trowel and walked away from the school.

She didn't make it very far.

* * *

“I don't want a ride home, Rainbow Dash,” Sunset said. Again. This was getting tiresome.

“Walking isn't safe!”

“Right,” Sunset said. “I'm sure I'll run into a manticore and die.”

“Look, the Vice Principal obviously thought that keeping you under supervision until most students went home would protect you, but I've seen kids lurking around waiting for you to be alone.”

She so very much did not care. The only thing she cared about right now was how aggravating it was to have Rainbow Dash going on about things she didn't care about.

“You've seen them lurking?” Sunset asked. “Where are they now?”

“Just because the ones I spotted seem to have gone doesn't mean that they really have gone or that there aren't groups I didn't spot. You're not safe.”

“I. Don't. Care.”

“How can you say that?”

“Look,” Sunset said, trying to see a way out of this, “if I'm so unsafe then being with me means you're not safe, so you should just go and leave me alone.”

“It's just this once,” Rainbow said. “By Monday people will probably have calmed down.”

“Sure they will,” Sunset said, no attempt to hide how little she believed that.

“I'm not saying things will be good on Monday, but I don't think we'll have to worry about serious injury or death.”

“Because people are totally going to try to kill me tonight,” Sunset said. God, this was annoying.

“They don't have to be trying to do something for them to actually do it,” Rainbow said. “Most people don't realize how fragile bodies can be.”

“They can also be more resilient than people expect,” Sunset countered, but there was no force behind it.

“It works both ways, sure,” Rainbow conceded, “but– no. That's not the point. The point is that tonight I'm driving you home.”

“What if I run away?” Sunset asked.

“I'll catch you, and you know it.”

“So when you said you'd look out for me, you meant you'd run me down and tackle me in the street.”

“Maybe I'm concerned over nothing, maybe everyone really has gone home, but I'm not taking that chance,” Rainbow said. “So tonight I'm willing to take extreme measures.”

“What if I refuse to tell you my address, or make you drive around in circles until you're out of gas?”

“What if I call in a favor and point out that you owe me for how you split up Applejack and I?”

“If you'd been better friends then it would have taken more than one–” it just slipped out on force of habit alone. “Sorry!”

“You're forgiven if you agree to let me give you a ride.”

It was a better deal than she deserved, but there were still problems with it. As she tried to figure out how to deal with them her stomach growled and she realized just how hungry she was. That could possibly have the solution.

“I'll agree if you buy me something to eat,” Sunset said. “I never had dinner.”

“You didn't eat!?”

Was that seriously all it took to shock Rainbow Dash?

“I was busy. I had world domination to plan, I had to figure out how to plausibly break a magic portal without using magic, I had underlings to boss around, my schedule was full.”

“How would a sledgehammer have broken the portal anyway? Wouldn't it just go right through?”

“You want to know, you provide food.”

“Twenty bucks, no more.”

“Is that before or after taxes?”

* * *

“Imagine that the portal didn't have a solid border around it,” Sunset said.

“Why?” Rainbow asked.

Sunset sighed. It was that or groaning. “Unless you want me to walk you through basic magic theory all the way up to inter-dimensional portals, which would be like teaching someone who didn't know math everything through calculus over complex numbers and differential equations in six dimensions, just imagine the portal didn't have a solid border.”

“Ok.”

“Now that you've got that, you imagine someone walking in the general direction of the portal. If they hit the portal, they go to Equestria with no more resistance than going through empty air. If they miss the portal, they stay in this world and are actually going through empty air. Same resistance,” Sunset said. Maybe if she kept on explaining obvious things she'd fall asleep. That might be a nice change of pace. “So, pop quiz, what happens if part of someone hits the portal and part doesn't?”

“Instant amputation?” Rainbow asked.

“Top of the class,” Sunset said. “And that wouldn't just apply to people but to space-time itself, probability clouds, magnetic fields, atomic nuclei, and so forth. All sorts of weird things would happen if such a thing existed. As it turns out, nature really doesn't like that sort of frictionless cleft in reality and attendant impossibilities. It doesn't allow such clefts to exist.”

“And we're going to get to the point . ? .”

“Open air portals naturally form borders of their own, often invisible, that prevent things from crossing directly at the portal edge. That's good for them, but when dealing with a stationary portal attached to a solid object it's inefficient, somewhat annoying, and a total waste of energy.”

For the first time since getting in the car, Sunset actually noticed where they were. That was followed by figuring out what they were near and interrupting her explanation to say, “Turn left here.”

Rainbow did and waited for Sunset to continue.

“It's much easier, in terms of necessary energy, to have a physical border around such a portal to stop things from crossing the edge. That's almost certainly why the surface with the portal was recessed into the statue pedestal.” Sunset closed her eyes. Maybe it was because she hadn't eaten, maybe it was the time of day, maybe it was because she'd been hit with powerful magic or because she'd been laying bricks, but she was getting tired in a hurry.

She might not need boring stuff to put her to sleep. Would it be rude if she just passed out?

The decision to stay awake was accompanied by an involuntary jolt. Her eyes had opened on their own too. Where was she? Right:

“The downside is that since the border is a simple physical thing it can be broken in a way that a naturally occurring portal border cannot. Sledgehammer to the edge of the pedestal and I break off enough marble to expose the edge of the portal to air rather than solid. Nature abhors a frictionless cleft in reality, and thus the portal instantly collapses.”

“That's it?” Rainbow asked.

Sunset shrugged. “Sledgehammers aren't complicated.”

* * *

They got caught at a red light on a stretch of road that really felt like the middle of nowhere. It wasn't really, just a trick of topography combined with a slightly underdeveloped part of town. Still, it felt like they were alone in the world. No other cars were on the road as far as the eye could see, empty lots and woods surrounded them.

Actually, if it were possible to make a right turn at the intersection, if there were a road through the small wooded area, they'd be moments away from a place that Sunset often ate. Not the one she was directing Rainbow to, but a perfectly fine place to make her stomach stop grumbling at her.

Rainbow could outrun her, but if she had a head start and she were going through trees where Rainbow's straightaway speed never came into play . . .

Sunset quietly unbuckled her seat belt. Rainbow didn't notice. Sunset carefully took it off. Rainbow was still obvious.

In a burst of action and motion Sunset got out of the car and ran for the woods.

* * *

By the time Rainbow was out of the car she couldn't even see Sunset. Rainbow swore. She'd be able to catch up to Sunset eventually, but it would mean leaving her car in the middle of the road.

And that was when the light turned green.

Rainbow looked in all three directions, saw no signs of anything at all, and concluded that if she left the car in the road someone would immediately pull up behind it and be a jerk about it.

She got back into the car and tried to think of where Sunset might be going. In spite of present appearance, this wasn't the boondocks and those woods would have to be very small and surrounded on all sides by roads and businesses.

A moment later she had her answer. Sunset was hungry, there was a pizza place right in that direction. Rainbow would have to go the long way, but she'd be doing it in a car rather than on foot.

* * *

Maybe she'd been wrong. The place was closed and Sunset wasn't in sight. Still, Rainbow got out of her car and prepared to take a look around.

It turned out that she didn't even need her eyes. She heard a voice coming from behind the building. As she approached words became clear.

“Pepperoni.” Long pause. “Pepperoni” Slightly shorter pause. “Meat lovers,” said with utter disgust. At the end of this pause, “Pepperoni.”

Just as Rainbow rounded the back corner of the building Sunset announced, “Finally! Cheese.”

It took Rainbow a bit to really process the fact that she was watching Sunset Shimmer dig through a dumpster.

Sunset hadn't noticed Rainbow yet. With a bit of struggle she got herself sitting on the dumpster and opened a pizza box.

“Running off like that was not cool,” Rainbow said.

Sunset gave a start, but then calmed down when she actually looked at Rainbow. She shrugged and ate a slice of pizza.

“You're really eating that?” Rainbow asked.

They say there are no stupid questions. That simply isn't true. Rainbow knew it was a stupid question. It was an extremely stupid question given that Rainbow could see Sunset was eating it. Rainbow had asked anyway.

“I thought you'd be happy,” Sunset said. “If there really are any dangerous lurking students, they certainly didn't follow me after I got in your car, so any obligation to keep me safe has stopped.” Sunset paused for a moment. “And I just saved you twenty dollars.”

“Did you really think it would make me happy to have you jump out of the car and run away?” Rainbow asked while doing her best to convey how little she believed the answer could possibly be yes.

“Of course not, I just . . .” Sunset's head bobbed for a moment. She said, “Whoa,” as she resumed sitting straight.

“I totally underestimated how much the run took out of me,” Sunset said. Something wasn't right about her voice. “Not just the run of course,” she said, speeding up and slurring a bit, “The run, the magic, the crown tossing, all of it. It just . . . it . . .” her head bobbed again, “it adds up is what I'm saying and what I'm saying is that it adds up.”

“Sunset,” Rainbow said, “you're scaring me.”

“Oh don't worry, I'm not about to turn into a demon,” Sunset said.

“That's not what's scaring me.”

Sunset didn't seem to notice Rainbow had said anything, “This isn't turning into a demon, no, not at all. It's just that using that level of magic, using it . . . using that level of magic without an external power source, like say when the Element of Magic stops working for you but you don't give up, using that level of . . . of stuff. It does things. It . . . it burns calories faster than any non-magical activity possibly could, given the laws of physics –hey, we should market magic as a weight loss solution– and that in turn leaves you with fa– fati– fati– tiredness that wouldn't normally be–”

Rainbow cursed herself for how long it took her to react. She should have steadied Sunset the moment Sunset seemed to lose balance. She should have done something when Sunset collapsed onto the dumpster. She should have pushed Sunset back on to the dumpster when Sunset started to roll off, she should have caught Sunset when Sunset practically fell into her arms.

She shouldn't have stood unmoving through all of that and had to practically fall over herself to catch and slow Sunset before she hit the ground.

But that's what she did. She didn't, entirely stop the fall. She just slowed it down enough to prevent damage. That and she kept Sunset's head from hitting pavement.

A moment later she tried to shake Sunset awake, but the other girl was in what seemed to be a very deep sleep.

Rainbow said, “Well, shit,” to the empty night.

Author's Note

You know when you have an idea in your head but you just can not get it onto the page properly. This is that. I'm not satisfied with it, it should be better. But I've been working on it long enough that this is probably as good as I'm going to produce.

It also suffers from, "The awesome version that got lost," syndrome. I had what I thought was a really good "Sunset falls asleep while talking" monologue, but either didn't write it down/type it up, or misplaced/misfiled it.

Anyway, the first file I have related to this story is from mid August, and now here it is for public consumption.

This story is going to take a minimalist approach to Equestria Girls canon:

What happened in the EG movies is canon. All else is apocrypha.

Not that I'll go out of my way to contradict other sources or anything, it's just that four movies is a lot more easy to wrangle than seven seasons, so many comics, the movie in theaters, whatever non-EG thing comes next, and so forth.

I think that covers everything.

The Morning After

When awareness first returned to her, Sunset felt pretty good, all things considered. That changed very fast when she realized the ground beneath her was moving and deforming under her weight.

She resisted the urge to bolt upright, and instead started to take an inventory of her body while pretending to still be asleep.

Her fingers and toes were still intact, though her toes protested a bit because she was still wearing her boots. She had various aches and pains, but nothing unexpected. Actually, considering she'd been blasted by one of the most powerful magical artifacts in the history of Equestria, she would have expected to have rather more discomfort than usual.

It wasn't hard to figure out why the ground was so disturbingly not-solid. She was in a bed of some sort. Not just any bed either. A warm bed with actual sheets on it. If she had come here, wherever here was, to go to sleep, all of that would be great. When it came to waking up, though, it was concerning. Why would she be in a bed?

She didn't exactly have an overabundance of people who would let her crash at their places. Also, if some mysterious bed-giver had appeared out of nowhere, Sunset would have taken off her boots before going to sleep.

It wasn't that she was unaccustomed to sleeping in them, it was just that --since she rarely had the opportunity to take them off-- taking them off would have been almost immediate if she'd been given a warm place to stay.

The alternative to a mysterious benefactor, however, didn't make sense any either. If someone with ill intent had taken her, they'd have dumped her on the floor. Probably inside a closet. Likely with the door locked.

People did not, so far as Sunset knew, keep beds in closets.

Since this was going nowhere, Sunset opened her eyes. She was alone for the moment. No reason not to take a look at her surroundings.

There was nothing familiar, but also nothing that stood out as threatening. As she allowed herself to examine the room more, she actually found it to be incredibly generic.

After getting out of the bed as quietly as she could, Sunset looked for anything she could use to defend herself.

Soon after, she was walking down a hallway while armed only with a lamp. The hallway had more character --it was painted sky blue with accents in every color-- but it didn't tell her much. Anyone who liked clear skies and rainbows, which was sort of an odd combination when you thought about it, could live here.

The hall ended in an open plan kitchen/dining room/living room. At first she thought this area was empty too, but a closer look revealed familiar rainbow hair peaking over the back of the couch in the living room section.

“Rainbow Dash?” Sunset asked in confusion as she let her arms drop to her sides.

~ ~ ~

Rainbow Dash gave a startled yelp, and her whole body jolted involuntarily. It wasn't the best introduction ever, so she took a moment to compose herself and make sure she'd look cool and calm before she greeted Sunset.

In a single smooth and, she hoped, casual-seeming motion she transitioned from the jumble she'd been in to a sort of kneeling position, with her left arm draped over the back of the couch, that allowed to look in Sunset's direction. As she did that, she said,

“Hey you're--” and the rest of the sentence was forgotten, because now that she could see Sunset, she had an entirely unrelated topic on her mind, “Why're you holding a lamp?”

“I woke up in a strange place,” Sunset said as though that explained everything, “I didn't know where I was or who I might be facing.”

“And your first thought was to pick up a desk lamp?” Rainbow asked.

“Yes, because your guest room is absolutely brimming with defensive weapons,” Sunset said. If her tone hadn't conveyed her extreme annoyance, the exasperated gesture she made with her non-lamp hand would have gotten the point across on its own.

Rainbow attempted not to laugh. She utterly failed. What ended up coming out started with a snort and ended with a snicker. It wasn't the smoothest transition in the history of laughter, and neither was it quick.

“Are you finished?” Sunset asked.

“Not sure,” Rainbow said.

In a quick movement that was part flip and part roll, she deposited herself behind the couch, so that she was standing facing Sunset with nothing between them.

In other circumstances she probably would have made a bigger deal out of what went into that roll flip. Right now, however, there was a lamp-wielding Sunset Shimmer asking her whether or not she was done laughing, and that took precedence.

Rainbow said, “I'll have to check what's on the agenda,” and instantly regretted it. If there had been a laughter-related agenda, that comment wouldn't be on it.

Sunset seemed to agree. “Truly, you are a comedic genius.”

Rainbow said, “Thank you,” as though Sunset had been sincere, because she didn't know what else to do.

After that, it seemed that Sunset didn't have anything to say. Rainbow didn't either. Well, that wasn't quite true. She had questions, but they weren't things you started a conversation with.

A few seconds passed in silence. Maybe having the couch hiding most of her body had been a good thing. Rainbow was in danger of becoming fidgety, and that was most definitely not awesome.

Sunset seemed to have taken up an interest in ceiling tiles. Possibly the number or arrangement of ceiling tiles rather than the tiles themselves. Definitely something ceiling-related. Given that that wasn't an ordinary thing for Sunset to do, Rainbow figured that she wasn't the only one finding this whole thing awkward.

The silence had to be broken somehow, so Rainbow asked, “If you weren't expecting to see me when you woke up . ? .” and realized that it probably would have helped if she had actually had a question before asking. With that in mind, Rainbow settled on, “Well, what do you remember?”

~ ~ ~

Figuring it was best to just get it over with, Sunset said, “You mouthed off when I was about to surrender, I decided that I'd get the crown just to spite you, it turns out that twisting an Element of Harmony to your whims when you're pissed off is a bad idea, things went pear shaped, there were rainbows, I was reduced to tears, Rarity wants an apology for the Spring Fling, Pinkie Pie apparently thinks that running face first into solid stone is a good idea, and I took up bricklaying as a hobby.”

“And after that?” Rainbow asked.

Sunset closed her eyes and attempted to call up any additional memories. None came. She was laying bricks, then . . .

“Not a thing,” she said.

“I think that Luna was making you stay and work so that she could keep an eye on you,” Rainbow said. “It's not a bad idea in theory but she's only one person and I saw kids holing up in places she wouldn't notice them.”

That was just silly. Sunset said as much. She didn't actually say those words, but she did say, “Kids were holing up? Is there a war or natural disaster, of which I was unaware, presently ongoing?” which meant the same thing.

“They were waiting for you,” Rainbow said. “You didn't think everyone would be satisfied with just a tearful apology, did you?”

“Of course not,” Sunset said, then walked in a small semicircle so she was looking at the wall instead of Rainbow. Things weren't going to go well, that much was obvious.

Sunset sighed. “That doesn't explain why I'm at your house.”

“Escort duty.”

“Assigned by whom?”

“Kinda gave myself the job.”

Ok, that was definitely believable, except for one thing. “I would have said, 'No.'”

“I uh,” Rainbow started, “I didn't give you a choice.”

That got Sunset's attention. The idea was so absurd that she nearly laughed as she turned around to face Rainbow again. When she was looking the other girl in the eyes, Sunset asked, “You kidnapped me?” in disbelief.

“No,” Rainbow said. “I threatened to kidnap you, then we hammered out an arrangement whereby you'd let me take you to your home if I bought you dinner.”

That brought things back to not making sense. It wasn't that what Rainbow was saying seemed unreasonable, but, much like before, there was one tiny detail that threw the whole thing into doubt.

“This is not where I live.”

“Good,” Rainbow cracked smile, an impish little thing, before continuing with, “because if you'd been living here all this time, and I never noticed, I would be very disturbed.”

“So . . .” Sunset said. That was all she said, because it should have been enough. It wasn't.

“So what?” Rainbow asked with the kind of 'innocent' look that is only ever employed by people who know exactly what they're guilty of and are proud of it.

“How did I get here?” Sunset asked. She had to make an effort not to growl. Apparently, not being an asshole was more difficult than it appeared from the outside.

“When we were stopped at a red light, you ran off through the woods so you could eat pizza out of a dumpster.”

Sunset nodded. That made sense, especially because, “That does sound like me.”

There was a beat of silence, then Rainbow asked, “What do you have against pepperoni?” as though it were the most serious and important topic in the world.

How Sunset answered really depended on what Rainbow already knew, so she asked, “Did Twilight Sparkle tell you where we come from?”

“Pony Princess land?” Rainbow said in a way that was clearly more question than answer.

That made things easier. If Rainbow knew 'pony' instead of 'human', then she was probably ready to accept that things might be vastly different on the other side.

“Equestria has animals that look like the ones you have here,” Sunset explained, “but when it comes to cognition they couldn't be more different.”

Sunset took a breath, decided to massively oversimplify things --Rainbow was asking about pepperoni not neuroscience, after all-- and said, “Short version: you might as well be eating people if you eat meat other than fish.”

What followed was the first time Sunset had ever seen Rainbow utterly horrified. Her 'we're all gonna die' face actually looked serene in comparison.

That was not what Sunset wanted to do. It wasn't just that Rainbow had been reasonably nice so far, in spite of having so very many reasons not to be. It was also . . . everything. It was warmth. It was a bed. It was how they weren't talking about what Sunset had done, and tried to do, before the bricklaying last night.

Because of all those things and more, breaking Rainbow Dash's brain was not on the agenda for the day.

Rainbow started to ask, “But here they're not--”

“No, they're not,” Sunset answered, “but that doesn't mean I suddenly want to eat things I spent my entire childhood thinking of as . . . that.”

“Ok,” Rainbow said quickly. “Good.”

Rainbow nodded to herself. When she said, “I was worried there for a second,” it looked and sounded like she had completely recovered from her Soylent Green moment.

That was good. Now Sunset could leave without anything new to feel guilty about, and leaving sounded really good right now. There hadn't been all that much to say, they' said most of it, and she was still holding a damned lamp. There was, she was pretty sure, only one question left to ask, “What happened after the peperoni?”

“You started to give an impromptu lecture on magic,” Rainbow said, “and then you fell asleep.”

Sunset tilted her head to the side as she said, “Oh.”

A few moments later she added, “That does explain why I'm here, I guess.”

Sunset was reasonably sure that that covered everything. She looked around, though she wasn't entirely sure why she did. She didn't think of anything else.

She lifted the lamp a bit and looked it over.

“Thanks for not leaving me in the parking lot,” she said to Rainbow. “I'll . . . put this lamp back, now.”

Sunset turned around and headed back to the guest room.

~ ~ ~

Rainbow hadn't realized she'd been expecting anything, and still didn't know what she'd been expecting, but she must have been expecting something, because she was absolutely sure that this was so very much not the unknown thing that she'd been expecting.

As she started to follow Sunset, Rainbow said the first thing that came to mind, “That's it?”

Sunset kept walking down the hall, she didn't look back or break her stride when she answered with, “All of my questions are answered, everything makes sense,” she reached the guest room door and went in, “so yeah: that's it.”

When Rainbow entered the guest room the lamp was already in place and Sunset was performing the contortions necessary to actually plug it in. Rainbow wasn't sure whether it was the outlet or the desk, but something was placed in just the wrong way, which is why the outlet in question was generally considered a lost cause.

That wasn't important at the moment, though. It was just easier to think about than the fact that Sunset, who had seemed pretty normal, lamp notwithstanding, earlier was now acting in way that screamed, 'Abnormal!'

Rainbow didn't know how to approach that, and she fell back on some questions she wanted answered, “How about why you were eating out of a dumpster--”

“It's where the food is,” Sunset said.

“--why you were undernourished enough to pass out--”

“That wasn't about nutrition, it was about the magic,” Sunset said. She had said as much last night, but Rainbow was pretty sure that wasn't the whole truth.

“--and where you live?”

“Wherever I want to,” Sunset said. A moment later she gave a grunt, then announced, “And it's in.”

As Sunset slid out from under the desk, Rainbow said, “Sunset . . .” in a way that she hoped would be gentle and friendly enough to turn the suddenly snippy back and forth into a conversation again.

Unfortunately, Rainbow's attempt at 'gentle and friendly' happened to coincide with 'slow', which allowed to Sunset to interrupt with, “Rainbow . . .” said in the same way Rainbow had spoken her name.

Rainbow pinched the bridge of her nose and tried to remember if she was stocked up on headache medicine. She said, “. . . if you're from another world--”

“Then I'm here illegally, yes,” Sunset said as she got back on her feet.

Rainbow hadn't thought about that at all, and didn't plan to start now. She tried to get things back on track, “That's not--”

Sunset cut Rainbow off again; it was annoying, “After everything else you've learned about me,” Sunset checked that the lamp turned the lamp on and off, which it did, “I fail to see how that would be surprising.”

At this point Rainbow wasn't sure if Sunset was actively trying to be aggravating, or if that just came naturally to her. Regardless, Rainbow finally got to the question she'd been trying to ask, “--where do you live?”

“Already answered that one,” Sunset said as she headed toward the hall.

Rainbow considered pointing out that Sunset's answer had answered nothing, but decided to drop that point and move on. She asked, “Who do you live with?”

This time Sunset did actually stop walking to answer. More than that, she actually turned and made eye contact.

“Rainbow, you've known me for years,” she said. “Do you honestly think I could cohabitate with someone for any length of time without one of us killing the other?”

Then she turned right back around and walked out of the room. Rainbow followed.

Because it was the most straightforward way to approach things, Rainbow responded the way she would have if Sunset had said the same thing in a normal conversation, “This isn't a joke.”

“I don't know,” Sunset said, “after last night I'm kind of feeling like a punchline.”

Rainbow thought that statement over for a moment, just to check, then said, “I'm not convinced that makes sense.”

“A demon unicorn redeemed by weaponized rainbows walks into a bar . . .” Sunset said.

“That's a premise, not a punchline.”

“. . . and she gets kicked right back out because the bouncer thinks she's a human . . .”

“And that definitely doesn't make sense,” Rainbow said.

“No,” Sunset said, as she reached the front door. “And humans aren't allowed to drink until a ridiculous age.”

While largely beside the point, Rainbow felt obligated to tell Sunset exactly what she thought of the alleged 'joke', “If there's such thing as the opposite of funny--”

“Goodbye, Rainbow Dash,” Sunset said as she left.

Rainbow followed her out the door then picked up where she'd left off, “--that's it. It's not even a bad joke, it's just . . . nothing.”

Sunset stopped and turned around, which left her standing in the middle of the street. Rainbow was still on the sidewalk.

“That's not the joke,” Sunset said.

Rainbow couldn't tell what it was --it could have been her voice, her expression, her body language, or something else entirely-- but something about Sunset was different. It was not different in a good way.

Whatever it was, it was disturbing. It was like looking at an injured limb hanging at an unnatural angle. It was deeply, unnervingly wrong.

“The joke is that I'm standing here,” Sunset said, her volume just below a shout. “A unicorn in a world with no magic. An adult in a world that thinks adults are children because how the fuck can you people not realize that teenagers are old enough to look out for themselves? The personal apprentice of a very real, and very powerful, God-Princess in a world where gods are naught but legends and princesses are impotent figureheads.”

Rainbow thought that Sunset's eyes were on the brink of tears, though she wasn't completely sure. Sunset kept going, “The joke is that everything I am is made for another world and nothing about me belongs in this place. I'm the non-sequitur. I'm the thing that doesn't fit and makes no sense that you stick at the end of the joke to get a cheap laugh.”

Apparently to prove that point, Sunset started quoting a commercial their class had been shown when they covered non-sequiturs and other calculated forms of randomness, “'Anything is possible when your man smells like Old Spice and not a lady,'” Sunset said in a very non-Sunset way. It wasn't hard to see where this was going.

“I'm a horse!” Sunset shouted so loudly that Rainbow was sure it must have hurt.

Rainbow said the word, “So,” slowly, drawing it out while she tried to think of how to respond.

Part of her wanted to say that teenagers shouldn't have to take care of themselves. Rainbow's life, for instance, was only possible because someone else paid the bills. That allowed her concentrate on things like sports.

Part of her wanted to tell Sunset that everything would be all right, though she had no idea if it were true.

Part of her wanted to apologize, though she didn't know what she would be apologizing for.

Part of her wanted to avoid weighty topics entirely and instead mention that she'd completely forgotten about that silly commercial until Sunset quoted it.

There were doubtless other parts that wanted other things, but there was only so much one could think in the span of a single 'so'.

She ended up finishing the sentence with, “. . . you're not taking this well at all,” which was pretty weak and had become painfully obvious.

“I got hit by a magical light show and left in a hole in the ground,” Sunset shouted, “not six months of therapy!”

And they'd gone in a circle, because the only thing Rainbow could think of in response to that was, “I'm not even sure that sentence makes sense.”

“I want,” Sunset said. “To be. Alone.”

Sunset paused.

“Please leave me alone.” She was definitely blinking back tears now.

It wasn't that Rainbow was against that, but she was worried. She took a moment to clear her head. Then she asked, “If I do, am I gonna see you again?”

“Are you being morbid,” Sunset asked in return, “or do you think I'm a flight risk?”

Honestly, Rainbow wasn't sure. She said, “Just . . .” and then gestured as though that would somehow get the point across. It came as no surprise when it didn't. She tried again, “Just tell me.”

“I'll be at school on Monday,” Sunset said. She looked at the ground. “Whether I'll be allowed to attend classes remains to be seen.”

Rainbow believed her, and said, “I'll see you then.”

Sunset didn't look up.

Rainbow wanted to say something else. She didn't know what, but this wasn't how she wanted the conversation to end. It felt like there had to be some better way to part ways.

She couldn't come up with anything.

Sunset, for her part, barely moved. She just kept on looking at the same spot on the ground that she'd been looking at.

Rainbow walked back to her house. Sunset hadn't moved. Rainbow went inside, headed back in the direction of the couch, glanced at the window, then stopped.

Through the curtains, Sunset was a vaguely person-shaped blob. What bothered Rainbow was that Sunset still hadn't moved.

After a few seconds, which felt like an eternity, the Sunset-blob did finally move. When Sunset was on the opposite sidewalk, Rainbow let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding and looked away.

It still didn't feel right to let Sunset go in the state she was in, but Rainbow didn't know what else to do. Also, she was well aware that continuing to watch Sunset would definitely cross the line between being concerned and being creepy, assuming she hadn't already, so she tried to turn her attention to other things.

It took a minute to get her mind moving in the right direction, but she eventually started thinking about the day ahead. She should call her friends and figure out a good time to meet. They still had a lot of catching up to do. Lost time to make up for too.

Of course, they also needed to discuss Sunset, and right now Rainbow wasn't up for that.

Things had seemed pretty good at first, too. Though, truthfully, that was the problem. If it had happened in the opposite order, 'shouty breakdown' first and 'normalish conversation' second, she probably would have had no problem dealing with it. As it was, everything was a mess.

Rainbow walked over to the couch and let herself collapse onto it.

Author's Note

Hey, I wrote a thing.

So here we have emotionally erratic Sunset Shimmer, and "I actually did pay attention in class, and parallel structure does not work that way" Rainbow Dash.

This has gone thorough massive revisions, but not much editing or proofreading. As near as I can tell there's nothing horrifically wrong, buy I wouldn't actually be surprised if there are egregious errors, relics of things that were edited out, or whatnot. (If you spot errors, please tell me in a private message.)

I'm not convinced this is final, or good, or even presentable, but it does exist, and at the moment I'll take what I can get.

The original plan had three things instead of one slow plodding thing. It was supposed to open with Rainbow and Sunset, then show Celestia and Luna, then show the human five figuring out where they stand with respect to Sunset.

Old Spice commercial: