If I were honest with myself, the moment I left the portal room, I almost booked it for the guest bedroom and threw myself under the covers.

I knew I needed to see this through. I knew I needed to be the brave mare everyone thought I was. Shit needed doing, and I was the only one who could do it. But that didn’t stop me from being downright terrified.

I wasn’t brave. I wasn’t a Warrior Princess or a Princess of Friendship. I was Sunset Shimmer, an average, run-of-the-mill nobody. Last night’s beatdown brought that reminder home all too sharply.

None of that changed the fact that the world still needed saving, though. Life finds us before we’re ready, as Luna put it.

So yeah. I’d put it off long enough. I had to own up to my actions. All of them.

It was time to pay Copper a visit.

I made a quick trip down to City Hall to skim through the national census records and figure out where in the wide world of Equestria I’d have to hunt her down. And wouldn’t it be my luck that she lived right here in Ponyville of all places. Because of course she would.

But this little sliver of coincidence felt less like serendipity and more like the universe itself breathing down my neck, demanding this conversation happen or else. Well, best not disappoint.

401 Poinsettia Drive. Easy enough.

Getting there proved more difficult, since I didn’t know Ponyville and its sprawling, non-grid layout. But I put my Filly Scouts training to use and… oh, man, this was really happening wasn’t it?

Her address matched up with a small cottage a little ways north of the marketplace. A thatched roof and burgundy shutters framed what most would probably call quaint, but I knew immediately as “not Coppertone.” She never bought into all that frilly girly crap, no matter how much she worried about her looks.

I hesitated at the door, but I had to do this. If not for me, then at least for her. I knocked.

Several terrible seconds passed as I listened to the sound of approaching hoofsteps. I had time. I could teleport away and hide and never think of this again. But I couldn’t. I stood there, and I… I took a deep breath and let it out.

The door opened, and the mare on the other side of the threshold looked so strikingly familiar: wavy blonde mane, light-tan coat, deep green eyes. She was even more beautiful than I remembered.

She recognized me instantly, and from the fright in her eyes, I thought she’d faint like a goat, right there on the doorstep. Her breathing quickened for a moment, but she regained a distanced composure, a guardedness in how she held herself just a bit taller. It felt as if she were trying to use the height difference to look down the bridge of her nose at me, but there was a glint in her eye that I couldn’t place.

“Can I help you?” she said. Her eyes focused on me, tracking every little move I made. It felt like my CSGU entrance exam all over again.

“I… Hey,” was all I could muster.

That guardedness faltered, and the faint trace of a smile found her lips. “You never were one for words, were you?”

“I, uh… no, not really. Do you have a minute?”

And back came the distanced composure. “I have lots of minutes. The question is, do I want to spend them on you?”

Ouch. Still had that sharp tongue. I swallowed.

“I… I know I don’t deserve it, but I’m asking all the same.”

Another mare poked her head around the door frame. She had massive hazel eyes that regarded me the way a child regards a stranger, and her mane tumbled down her left shoulder in streaks of gold and light orange. She wore a necklace with a pendant that looked like a flower, but the sun glared off it too bright for me to tell what kind.

Copper looked at her, then back at me. She stepped back and left the door open.

“Thank you,” I said and entered.

The inside struck me as more reminiscent of the Coppertone I remembered, but also not so much. A mess of fashion magazines littered the coffee table, and a healthy dose of pictures decorated the yellow walls—all stuff that screamed Coppertone—but an array of things like doilies and a bookshelf full of ceramic animals, kind of like her mom’s elephants, shot that assertion out of the sky. These two must have been rooming for a while if Copper allowed that kind of stuff in her living space.

She turned about in the living room, inadvertently giving me a proper view of her figure. Still as model-worthy as our days at CSGU, if not more so. I couldn’t help the flash of jealousy that hit me.

Copper extended a halfhearted hoof toward the room and the floral-print couch beside me in particular. She avoided eye contact, taking only little peeks and glances at my hooves.

“Welcome,” she said noncommittally.

The other mare scurried up beside her. Like a dog with its tail between its legs, she looked up at me with a drooped head and frightened eyes.

Who in the hell was this chick? I hadn’t seen anyone act this sheepish since Fluttershy when I punted her rabbit across the lawn my first day at Canterlot High.

Getting a better look at her, I put my bets on a modeling or manedressing friend, assuming Copper had jumped back on either career path. Trim, long in the legs, and an innocent face that I found myself losing valuable seconds admiring.

Modeling, definitely. Her mane had streaks of faded orange to it—washed-out dye from a recent photo shoot, if my memories of some of Copper’s gigs still held water.

Her necklace was a daffodil of all things, midbloom and vibrant as the ones that Mom used to grow in the backyard. I wasn’t one for jewelry, but the younger mare in me would have killed for a piece like that.

And still no one said anything. With the seconds still wearing on, I figured an icebreaker was in order.

“Is that a daffodil?” I asked, staring at her pendant. “It’s gorgeous.” I reached out to cup it in my hoof, but the mare backed away.

She clutched it to her breast, her eyes locked on me for a split second before she looked down at her hooves. “I, I… thank you.”

She shrank in on herself and shifted those large eyes toward Copper, ears pinned back. It might have been the lighting or my own hypervigilance, but I swore she was trembling.

Copper pressed her shoulder into the mare’s. The scant size of Copper’s personal bubble was something I wouldn’t have questioned knowing how close she and I were back in the day, but the look they shared had me questioning a few things in the present. And if that wasn’t enough, Copper hooked a hoof under her friend’s chin and drew her into a kiss that would have made a versed poet blush. It sure as shit made me.

So Copper was into mares. That was a thing now.

“Give us a minute, please?” Copper cooed as she pulled away from the kiss. She traced her hoof up the mare’s jaw to the tip of her chin.

With eyes still closed, Copper’s “friend” leaned wistfully into the remnants of the kiss like a pony toward a siren’s call. The spell broke, and she took a hesitant step back, suddenly aware of our presence, before scurrying out of the room.

Copper sighed, brushed her mane out of her face, and smiled at me. It was a weak smile, the world-weary kind that old, well-traveled stallions wore when they decided to settle down for their golden years. Not the sort of thing I wanted to see or should have seen in my oldest friend in her mid-twenties.

I wanted to ask about her change in, um, orientation, but that could wait. She gave me the floor, and the last thing I wanted was another shouting match to mirror the previous chapter of our relationship. I sat down on the floral-print couch and stared into a tea set on the coffee table.

Copper was never a tea kind of mare. It must have belonged to her, uh… friend. But I couldn’t help noticing they only had chamomile. She sat down across from me on a matching loveseat and dug the point of her hoof into the cushion.

“You want a beer or something?” she asked.

I shook my head, following the curls of her mane down her shoulder. Still the same to-die-for mane I could only dream of having. I wondered if she used the same coconut shampoo.

“I’m good, thanks,” I said.

She nodded, her eyes trailing the length of the coffee table. “Full disclosure,” she said. “Even if it has to do with how many pubic hairs Celestia has down there, I want to hear it.”

“432,” I said without thinking. I blinked, and our eyes met. There was a moment of shared disbelief, until the dam broke and we both snickered.

“You’re just making that up,” Copper said. “Please tell me you’re making that up.”

“Maybe, but you’ll never know for sure, will you?”

We laughed. It was a strained laugh, a reserved laugh. Still, it was a laugh we shared, the first one since CSGU.

We lapsed into silence, and the smile on my face waned until I let it slip away like a tree’s final leaf on an autumn breeze. A clock ticked on the far wall.

“So you’ve loosened up some, huh?” She wore a whimsical smile. “No more blushing at the tiniest dick joke?”

I shrugged. “You could say that. Or I just grew up, I guess. I—oh wait, I see what you did there.”

We laughed again, but that awkward silence came back quicker this time. With nothing else springing to mind, I figured now was the best time to say what I came here for.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m wholly and truly sorry for any and every hurt that I’ve caused you. I know what I did was wrong and that nothing I say or do can fix what’s happened. I don’t expect you to forgive me, nor do I feel like I deserve it or that you should feel compelled to, but I… yeah. I’m sorry.”

Copper nodded slowly, tracing little circles into the loveseat’s floral print. She kept her eyes firmly on her hooves.

“So am I,” she said.

“You have nothing to be sorry about.”

She didn’t reply to that, so I let it drop. Like a rock down a well, I waited for the splash of conversation to reach us, but she seemed hard-pressed for words, still following the leaf-print with the tip of her hoof. It tore me up inside seeing her act like a goddamn wallflower. She practically never shut up back in school.

How much had I broken her?

I jerked my chin toward the hallway. “So who’s your friend?” I asked, if only to break this awkward silence.

Copper met my eyes for a moment before looking away again, ears back. “Star Chaser. We’re, uh… we’re dating.”

“I, I think that part was well established. Sooo, when did you two meet?”

“About two years ago,” Copper said. “I met her at the marketplace downtown. We bumped into each other in Jasmine’s tea shop.”

I glanced at the tea set between us. If that was a fact, then I couldn’t argue, but I still couldn’t wrap my head around Copper willingly visiting a tea shop. Just wasn’t like her.

“What were you doing in a tea shop of all places?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I was bored, I guess.”

That was strikingly noncommittal, but wasn’t something I felt comfortable pressing. I brushed my mane back behind my ear to pause for time.

“So when did all, um… you know. When did you, uh, switch gears?”

A smile flickered at the corners of her lips, there and gone. She nodded at me.

“A little after our, uh… breakup.”

Breakup. Yeah, that was a phrase for it. A very understated phrase for it.

“Yeah,” I said. “So about that. To say that I didn’t mean what I said back then would be a lie. I did mean everything I said when I said it.”

“If this is another apology, it’s a pretty crappy one.”

“I’m getting there.” I gave her a pointed glare, but she wasn’t looking, her eyes still following her hooftip along the floral print. “But yeah. I meant them, but… I was wrong. Like, both in that I shouldn’t have said them, and also, uh, that I was incorrect.

“I called you a rat for telling Celestia, but that’s what I actually needed then. I needed someone to stop me, because I didn’t realize I was hurting myself and those around me. I let myself become a horrible pony, and I paid for it. If it makes you feel better, my life was pretty much hell for a long time after that. Still is.”

Copper looked at me, horrified. “Why would that make me feel better? How could you even think that?”

I… had no answer. I’d expected some level of satisfaction—a quiet smile or a small nod. Honestly, I wanted her to feel vindicated in the fact I’d shoveled my fair share of shit since we last spoke. But the disgust leveled across her face painted a far different picture.

She still cared. After all this time, she still felt for me.

What the hell had I done to deserve someone like her back then? Now? Was I allowed to call her a friend even now, after what I did?

“So what are you really here for?” she asked. There was a guarded intensity in her eyes.

Yeah… that. I wondered when this would crop up. Preparing for it didn’t make it any easier than the apology.

Toxic people didn’t just show back up in your life to say sorry and nothing else. There was always a catch, and… I was no different.

I found it hard to look her in the eyes, so I instead trained my gaze on the tea set. “There’s, um… something going on between Princess Luna and me,” I said.

That got Copper to snap her ears forward. “Wait wait wait. The fuck? You and Princess Luna? You’re dating a princess?”

I reeled at the implication. “Whoa whoa whoa. No-ho-ho. I didn’t say anything like that. I said there’s…”

I put my head in my hoof and sighed. Full disclosure, like she asked. This wouldn’t make sense otherwise.

“Let me back up some. So… I don’t know how much you know about Princess Luna, but she used to be bad.”

“Nightmare Moon, yeah.”

I winced. Yeah, she had an actual name, not just “Nocturne.” She was infamous, and I was an imbecile.

“Yeah, so anyway, Celestia locked her away in the moon for a thousand years, and she came back, blah blah blah. But… the thing is, she was never actually locked away. At least not fully. She could still enter the Dreamscape, get into ponies’ dreams, and I think she had been for a long time. One way or another, she targeted me to get to Celestia.”

I kept an eye on Copper’s hooves while talking. She was doing that pawing thing cats did when prepping a spot to nap. One of her many idle ticks. Thinking back on it now, though… were they idle, or nervous?

“I knew her as Nocturne,” I continued. “We met that first night of the Summer Sun Celebration we went to with your family.”

Copper leaned forward, alarmed. “That long ago? You were talking to her the whole time and you didn’t tell me?”

“You were the blabbiest pony I knew. I didn’t want you to…” I sighed. “I know now that it was stupid of me to keep that from you, but back then, she was a friend I had made in confidence, and because of where and how we met, I was afraid Celestia would hurt her if she found out.”

“And when she did find out, you were already too far gone.”

“Yeah…” My heart squirmed in my chest. I didn’t like this conversation. I felt so vulnerable opening up like this. Copper may have been my best friend, but after everything that happened, this was more than just an admission of guilt. It felt like I was letting her stare into my soul and see all the foul things hiding there.

“So how’d it happen?” she asked after a moment. “Getting to that too-far-gone point?”

I shook my head, staring into the tea set. I followed the little painted vines along its edges with my eyes as if they held some revelation, some epiphany for why I couldn’t see this before.

I remembered it all so vividly. The dreams of Manehattan, the wintergreen kiss, even that orb thing she tried giving me. God only knew what kind of shit-fuckery that was supposed to be.

“I met her a bunch of times in my dreams. We became friends. I trusted her, because she was patient and kind—”

“And I wasn’t?”

“It’s… it’s different.”

“How’s it different?”

“Let me finish.” I stared pointedly at her until she settled down. I recollected myself with a deep breath. “You remember when I took you to the research labs?”

A ghost of a memory haunted Copper’s eyes, and she shuffled uncomfortably in her seat. “Yeah…”

“I was working on a portal for Celestia,” I said, “for that research project she gave me. It led to a different dimension. Leads, actually. It’s in Twilight’s castle now. But anyway, Nocturne got it in my head that there was powerful magic on the other side and that getting it working was the only way to save her from the Dreamscape.”

“And that’s why you hated me for talking to Celestia…”

I nodded. “’Cause then she started asking questions, yeah. And she found out about Nocturne and pulled me from the project. And then, well… you know the rest.”

We shared an awkward silence again, one I didn’t have the heart to break this time around.

“So basically,” she said, “I got ousted as your best friend by an evil super-bitch—”

“You didn’t get ousted as my best friend. We were— She…” I sighed. “She led me on to think we were more than friends, and I fell for it. Hard.”

Copper’s eyes found their way up my legs, chest, face, to land squarely eye to eye with me. She wore a look that bordered on horror.

“Y-you were in love with her?”

I struggled to find the right words for an answer. Every affirmation that came to mind tasted like bile.

“Yeah…” was all I could muster.

Her eyes unfocused as she took that in. Slowly, her gaze drifted back down to her hooves.

“Oh…”

That was all: Oh… It was a pained oh, a regretful oh, one that belied any carefully constructed demeanor with a long and winding trail of could-have-beens.

A cold shudder ran down my spine, and I looked back toward the hallway, where that mare had gone. I remembered that unsure, almost fearful look in those hazel eyes. The orange streaks in her mane, the daffodil pendant. The daffodil pendant…

Was… was I reading into it too hard? Was this me going off on one of those pointless mental tangents I was famous for?

Before I could follow that train of thought any further, Copper got up for the kitchen. “I need a beer,” she said weakly.

I watched her go. Her movements were stiff, stilted, as if she were already a half dozen in.

After a long minute, she came back with two Pacer’s Porters, a staple of the underage CSGU crowd. Even being one of the good students, I recognized that brown-and-orange label immediately. She plopped back in her seat, floating one to me.

Alcohol wasn’t my go-to, but after my years in the human world I could at least get it down. I accepted it hesitantly.

“So what’s with Princess Luna?” she asked after a long swig.

I blinked away my thoughts to catch her staring through me. “Yeah, so there was this fragment of Nightmare Moon inside me that’s been haunting my dreams ever since I left. Luna tried getting rid of it a few days ago, but things didn’t go how she planned. Now she’s in a sort of coma-slash-stuck-in-my-dreams thing that I don’t know how to explain, while the Nightmare is trying to possess her body, and we’re trying to stop that before all hell breaks loose. And according to Luna, me coming to terms with my past regrets will help us with that, which… which is why I came here.

“But it’s not the only reason I’m here.” I caught myself leaning forward and sat back to keep my composure. “I, I didn’t come here just for the sake of marking off some mental checkbox. I did want to see you, because I do genuinely feel horrible for what I did. You didn’t deserve that. You didn’t deserve any of what I did. And again, I’m sorry.”

Copper nodded slowly. “You said that already.”

“It’s worth repeating.” My heart gave a little flutter as I said that. I wanted to say so much more, to reach out with whatever might span the gap between us. But I was no architect of words, so all I could do was sit on my side of the gulf and wish.

“So what did she do to you?” Copper asked in a frighteningly level tone.

“I, uh…” The hairs on the back of my neck pricked up. “W-what?”

“What did she do to you?” Her eyes had filled up with tears somewhere along the line. It took all her might to keep them from trailing down her face. “What could possibly make you fuck off to Celestia knows where for the last seven years after you were willing to say and do what you did?”

The thought flashed in my mind: the crescent-moon smile and silver-trimmed wings. My heart started beating against the inside of my ribs, and I felt a sweat start along my withers. Instinct told me to look for the nearest exit, and it suddenly felt like the walls were closing in.

“Uh, yeah, that’s…” It was one thing bringing it up with Twilight in confidence. It was a whole different beast talking about it with anyone else.

God, I hated talking about it. I hated thinking about it. It made me feel so disgusting and vulnerable and expendable. I wanted to curl up in a ball and die just thinking about it.

“Sunset?”

Copper was staring at me. She had put her beer down and leaned forward. “Sunset, what’s wrong?”

It must have been written all over my face. I couldn’t even keep this shit to myself. I didn’t want to say, but she deserved to know. Full disclosure.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I felt myself trembling, and the memory pressed in around me like a blanket trying to smother the life from me.

“She… she did things to me.”

“She what?” she said. “What do you mean by ‘did things’?” Her concern grew pronounced, and I caught the momentary glance toward my crotch. “You mean…”

“Copper, can we please not?” I shrank in on myself. That grasping, clawing, invasive sensation never went away, and the more she pressed, the more I felt it crawling across my shoulders, around my neck, along the back of my ear.

“But like, wha—”

“Copper!”

I tried to not let it show on my face. I tried to be strong. I tried to keep it in. But in the end, I could only do so much.

I was tired of being that porcelain doll everyone saw and perpetuating my own victimhood. Fuck that. Fuck every last bit of it. I just wanted to be normal again. I honestly couldn’t remember what that was like.

“S-sorry,” she said.

We let the silence fester, her staring into her beer, and me into the tea set, tail tucked between my legs. I didn’t think she was expecting that kind of a bombshell, nor did I blame her.

“Why did she?” she asked after a time. She’d set her bottle down, well away from her side of the table.

I ground the sides of my hooves together on the cushion. “She wanted me to go through the portal so I’d be out of her way when she came back from the moon. I said no, so she… yeah.”

I looked down at my hooves and curled my tail around myself for good measure. I couldn't stand her eyes on me, couldn't stand her taking in the less-than I had become as I lay bare admission after disgusting admission, the scum I was reduced to when Luna…

Rape.

Use the word, you fucking coward. Luna raped me.

I had to say it—if not aloud, then at least in my head. I couldn't run from it. I couldn't hide from it. But fuck me, did I loathe every last goddamn shred of the shame that threatened to bury me here in this very moment for even thinking that word in front of Copper and how dare I bring this affront to her wellbeing to her doorstep.

Yet I did. Despite any notion of bravery or mending fences, here I was: Sunset Shimmer, the porcelain doll.

“Oh.” Copper flicked her ears back and forth, desperately trying to hide the fact that she was avoiding my gaze. “And now you’re helping her.”

And now you’re helping her. Apparently it was Copper’s turn to drop a bombshell. Amazingly, though, it didn’t blow me off my hooves.

I watched it fall, heard it whistle all the way down. But when the trigger fired and the untold megatons detonated over the unsuspecting population of my psyche, I hardly felt the shockwave.

And now you’re helping her…

The very thought curdled the blood in my veins hardly a week ago, had me foaming at the mouth at the very sight of Luna and ready to throw Equestria to the fire just to see her burn.

But now it was a thing to consider, like a display in an art museum. Something to circle around with one hand cradling my elbow and the other at my chin.

Helping Luna. Simply entertaining that thought still felt wrong, like I was slapping some law of ethics in the face by not grabbing the nearest stanchion and smashing the display to pieces.

But… Luna was good now, wasn’t she? That’s what I went on—banked on, even. Twilight believed it wholeheartedly, and I believed her.

Despite the evil of what Luna did, despite the hell I had lived every day since, despite the void I had just spiraled down not even five seconds ago, I couldn't deny the truth of that, however small a kernel it may be.

Luna was… she was like me. Or rather, I was like her. I didn't buy into the idea that we walked the same path the way she seemed to believe, but even the densest person like me could point out the similarities.

Honestly, that was probably the only reason I had the balls to come here in the first place.

“She’s trying to make up for what she did,” I said, rubbing a hoof up and down my foreleg. “We both are.”

The words rolled off my tongue like a bowling ball, with myself at the end of the alley. I waited for the inevitable crash that would send me tumbling down into the depths of my mind where I often went when thinking about all that had happened.

“What made you decide to help her?” Copper asked.

It was an innocent enough question in an innocent enough tone. But I picked up on that same withered resignation easily enough, that “oh…” in question form. I absently read the fine print at the bottom of my beer label.

“We beat the shit out of each other,” I said. It was the simple answer to a question far more complicated than Copper probably assumed. I was also emotionally burnt out and well past any effort of cherry-picking my words.

Copper wrinkled her nose. “That sounds like either there’s more to it or you’ve discovered a few strange kinks while you were away.”

I snorted. Only Copper could squeeze an inappropriate joke into a heavy conversation like this.

“I… I really don’t know,” I said. “When I left, I was a horrible pony. I buried myself beneath the anger I felt toward her and almost let it consume me to the point of no return. Then Princess Twilight came and showed me how wrong I was. She taught me how to be good again. And I tried my hardest. I like to think I succeeded.

“But I was still living with those problems buried deep inside me, and I never let them out or let anyone see. That’s when Luna came back into my life and dragged it all out into the open.”

I shook my head, absently watching her trace the floral print with her hoof. “I was so angry with her, for what she did back then, and now for bringing it all back to the forefront. Because I thought I was over it. I thought I had it all under control, and that the hurts I lived with were just part of me.

“But I was wrong. Part of me knew that, but I still fought it. I let that dredged-up anger control me. We had a fight, and… it made me realize how tired I was. Of being angry. It gave me a reason to stop and actually listen to her and understand her reasoning. I still don’t like her or what she had to say, but that doesn’t make her any less right in her own way.”

Copper nodded, her eyes back to her bottle. She copied me in that she picked it up to twirl it around and regard the back label.

We were good at letting the silence fester. Like one of those orange- or rose-colored slime molds that grew in the darker parts of the Everfree, its pseudopods sprawling out from the table, swallowing us up—eyes, ears, everything.

I took a swig. It went down hard with a bitter, coffee-like tang that got a grimace out of me. Porters, of all the beers, I liked least, and it didn’t help that Equestrian beers had a headier, more earthy bent to them.

Copper didn’t seem to mind. She downed hers like a barmaid on a bet.

I didn’t mean for it, but that nagging question came back to me during this lull in conversation. Now still didn’t feel like the right time, but I desperately needed to get my mind off our last subject.

“Copper… have you always been gay?”

No small amount of courage went into the mask she threw on, but it wasn’t enough to hide her wince. She sat up straight, eyes closed. A deep breath, in through her nose and out through her mouth. Once. Twice.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m gay, Sunset, and I always have been.” She let out a shuddering breath that ended with a tiny smile. Her ears fell back, and a wave of relief washed over her, like that was the biggest, most liberating admission she had ever made in her life.

I didn’t know what to say. Didn’t her mom hate gay ponies? What did she think of this? Of Star Chaser? Admitting that had to be hard enough. It didn’t feel right pressing her for more.

“Huh,” I said.

“‘Huh’?” She looked at me in disbelief. “You’re… not angry?”

I looked at her funny. If her face hadn’t been telling, I’d have assumed that was sarcasm.

“Why would I be angry? It doesn’t change who you are.”

Her ears, at first pointed and alert, eased back, then fell to the wayside. Her gaze dropped to my hooves, then to the table and the loveseat in turn. She went back to tracing the floral print with her hooftip.

“I mean,” I continued for the sake of sparing us yet another bout of silence, “it kinda explains a few of our adventures back in school, but… I don’t know.”

I shrugged. I had nothing to say on the matter. Some ponies were gay, others felt they were the wrong gender. That was just life.

Turning the focus of the conversation inward, it had me wondering where exactly I fell on that spectrum. What sort of social constructs did I live oblivious to or at the mercy of, and how did it make me any different from her, if at all? How much of our lives was just a product of circumstance, and where did our own choices influence them?

Maybe I was just being stupid and thinking too hard again. I did that a lot.

An unusually familiar smirk overcame Copper—that trademark, up-to-no-good Coppertone smirk I could never forget if I tried. It got my heart going.

“And by adventures,” she said, “you mean misadventures.”

I couldn’t help the smile that dragged out of me. Something in the tone of her voice sparked a long-lost emotion I couldn’t place, and I yearned to hold that feeling in my breast and cherish its warmth.

“Something like that,” I said.

She giggled. “Like when you let that Frog Spawn Spell loose in Home Ec and got away with it?”

I snorted. “Oh man, that’s a memory and a half. Did you know the second time was also me?”

Copper perked up. “Bullshit. You’re bullshitting me.”

I shook my head. My smile had already spread to Copper, and the two of us snickered.

“Cross my heart and hope to fly. I honestly thought I’d get it right the second time.”

“Says the princess’s star pupil.”

“Hey, you weren’t Little Miss Perfect yourself. What about the time in Mrs. Phoenix Flare’s class when you blew up her prized globe of Equestria?”

Copper sputtered and waved a hoof at me. “Please. If you’re gonna laud my accomplishments, at least mention the good ones. Like when we locked Loosey Goosey in the broom closet.”

“‘We’?” I said, holding up a hoof. “That was all you. I had nothing to do with it.”

“She called me a whore. Was I supposed to take that lying down?”

“Well, wasn’t that how you always took it?”

The massive grin on her face screamed that I’d hit the sweet spot, pun intended. She threw a pillow at me, and I caught it with my face like the graceful pony I was. We broke down in a fit of laughter.

“You know,” Copper said. “I wouldn’t have gotten in trouble for that if you hadn’t let her out.”

“Yeah, but everyone knew that storage closet smelled like hooves because the janitor never wrung out his mops. She probably would have died in there if I didn’t.”

“Woulda served her right for all the times she held up our incantations classes at the end with pointless questions. Oh, speaking of…” She leaned forward, excited. “What about when we snuck out of that snoozefest of a lecture that one Friday to see that fire twirler in the quad.”

“Yeah, that was the other big one. Don’t say that like it was my idea. You’re the one who convinced me, and you only succeeded because I already had a 110% in the class.”

“Yeah, like 110% of something else you needed a lot more of at the time.”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “And what exactly is that?”

She shrugged and tossed a careless grin my way. “I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

Wait… Wait.

Like a lightning bolt from on high, an epiphany struck me to link that phrase with the last time I heard it tumble out of her face.

“Oh my god!” I started belly laughing. “It was a cuck joke. You fucking cuck joked me.”

“W-what?” Copper wore a confused but expectant smile.

“That freakin’... Shit, where were we?” I tapped the tip of my hoof against the cushion. “It was the... yeah, the lacrosse scrimmage. We were talking about the whole make-a-friend thing and you told me you’d let me sit in the chair, and I didn't know what you meant, so you said you’d—”

“Tell you when you’re older,” Copper said in unison with me, already wheezing from the laughter that had possessed her, body and soul. She had fallen back in her seat, nodding in remembrance, the laughter in her belly demanding more air than her lungs could give. Tears rolled down her face as she tried and failed to get a hold of herself enough to form a coherent sentence.

I gathered myself enough to snipe her with a sharpened grin and ask, “You were gonna say ‘110% dick I needed,’ weren’t you?” which got her redoubling her laughter until she had nothing left to squeak out but another nod and a laughter-tear rolling down her cheek. All I could do was shake my head at what was probably the dumbest jab she’d ever taken, but I wouldn’t have traded this moment for the world.

After that little bout, she wore the most genuine smile I had ever seen, and I took a second to appreciate it, remember all the little details—which had changed and which stayed the same.

God, she was beautiful. All the little things I used to jealously nitpick. Seven years only refined her perfection. Maybe it was just the way the sunlight filtered in through the windows, but I swore she radiated with her own inner light when she smiled. But like all good things, her smile waned to a reserved sliver, and she again went misty-eyed, staring into her bottle.

“Remember when we went to Manehattan, and you got hit on by that waitress?” she said, wiping the tears from her face. She giggled. “And all the clubs we hopped that night? I’d never seen anypony dance as terribly as you. But I’ve never seen anypony have that much fun, either.”

I leaned back in my seat, and my eyes unfocused as I listened to the rhythm of her voice. I’d always loved listening to her talk, back when she would idly gossip about this or that. Just let her words wrap around and through me. Now was no different, and my heart reached out to her.

As silly as it sounded, I wanted to hold her hoof. I wanted to feel her warmth that I had all but forgotten and experience that closeness again. But given the circumstances and the mare probably waiting in the other room with one ear to the wall, I didn’t feel I had the right.

“Or the time we went to the park and just watched Lily play?” she said. “You were so happy with that article thing on wind. And all the times you fell asleep while I brushed your mane…” She giggled and her eyes fell back to the floral print at her hooves. “You always did this little snoring thing in your sleep.”

I tried laughing with her, because I desperately needed to clear the air of a sudden wave of melancholy. I couldn’t help but notice the trend in her memories. So many details—not about me or her, but about us.

I knew what it meant. It took me seven years to realize, seven long years to open my eyes and understand the pain I had caused and the heart I had broken.

I could have listened to her talk until the sun came up, but it would only make everything hurt worse. The more we remembered those days, the more I could see just how steep the slope was that I’d fallen down, and the same for her, all because of me.

All the happiness of the last few minutes felt like it’d been sucked away to leave me frighteningly alone. The only thing that could make the feeling worse would be to give it a chance to rub off on Copper, and she didn’t deserve that.

“I should go,” I said. I got up to leave, but she caught me by the hoof.

“Sunset…” She put a hoof on my shoulder and used the gesture to inch closer. It had a reassuring weight to it that begged me to lean into it and remember that closeness I used to cherish. But I didn’t deserve that, and neither did Star Chaser.

“Please stay,” she said.

I put my hoof on her chest to keep my distance. “Copper… it wouldn’t be right.”

Copper snapped her ears back, her eyes dancing between mine. She furrowed her eyebrows, breathless, pleading.

“Sunset. Just… You can stay in the guest bedroom. For me?”

She came in for a hug before I knew what was happening, and I let my hoof fall to the floor. She was so warm. It reminded me of the many nights we fell asleep together, and the many more between that we never got to share.

Though, knowing now that Copper had feelings for me, it felt… different. Not wrong, or that I had been lied to or taken advantage of, but just… I didn’t know how to describe it or really know what I should be feeling. But it felt right, like this was the one missing piece to the puzzle that was my soul.

She was Coppertone. She was my best friend.

“You still smell the same,” she whispered into the crook of my neck and hugged me tighter.

And I… I hugged her back. It hurt seeing her like this. I wanted to see that smile I remembered so fondly—that can-do, happy-go-lucky smile that never failed to inspire me. I wanted to be the reason I saw it. I hadn’t shared this kind of intimacy with anyone since… since her, actually, and I shamefully couldn’t deny I wanted this, too.

We stood there longer than I deserved, just holding each other. Far too soon, we parted and sat side by side on the couch. We spent the next few hours talking about this and that as the sunlight trekked up the wall and faded to orange.

I felt… normal. Like we were back at school. Just two kids enjoying another weekend away from the worries of the world.

I forgot about Luna. I forgot about the Nightmare and the Tantabus. All my concerns fell away like old bandages that I didn’t know I was wearing. Before I knew it, nighttime had come, and after a long, hug-filled goodnight, I found myself lying in the darkness of Copper’s guest bedroom amidst the girly odds and ends that doubtlessly belonged to Star Chaser.

A pair of stuffed dolls, a mare and stallion, stared down at me from a high shelf that ran along the crown molding. I could just barely make out the red tint of the mare’s frilly dress in the moonlight.

I briefly wondered what they’d think of my situation if they could talk. I snorted at the notion of a Come-to-Life Spell, my brain leading off on one of its tangents. I didn’t have the headspace to entertain something like that, not to mention that wasn’t how the spell worked.

But if it did, what would they say? No doubt they’d scold me for butting back into Copper’s life and making problems for their owner who was no doubt having a mental breakdown because of what I represented.

If Copper really did love me—if she still loved me—then I was setting up a bomb nobody could defuse.

I rolled onto my side to stare at the opposite wall. I didn’t need any more condescending talk, whether from a pair of dolls or my own stupid brain. The cool spot on my pillow gave me something to focus on, but it faded all too quickly, and I was left with the thoughts shambling down the back alleys of my mind.

The door opened on near-silent hinges behind me. No other noise found its way into the room, and after a long minute, I turned my head. Even in the darkness, I could see the moonlight twinkling wistfully in Copper’s eyes as she leaned against the doorframe.

“Copper?” I said. I knew what she was thinking, what she must have thought every night at CSGU and every night since.

“Can I come in?” she whispered. Hopeful. Pleading.

“Copper, you shouldn’t be doing this.”

She shut the door behind her and tiptoed in. The bed creaked ever so slightly under the weight of her hoof, and the pre-magics of her unlit horn already tugged at the corner of the bedsheet.

Hesitantly, I let her climb in. She was warm, a rather welcome feeling on this chilly autumn night. I instinctively huddled closer to relish that precious body heat, but my thoughts drifted to Star Chaser, now cold and alone in their bed.

Copper whisked that thought away by placing her hoof on my shoulder. Its gentle weight begged me to cuddle into it.

I rolled over to press against her and intertwined my hooves with hers, our noses almost touching. Her heart raced in her chest, apparent from the wild thu-thump I felt against the back of my hoof. A moment passed, and I gathered the sense she spent it mustering her courage, evident in how her eyes danced back and forth between mine.

I didn’t know what to say, much less do, but again I thought of Star Chaser, and so I shied away when Copper came in for a kiss.

Her breath hitched, and she squeezed her eyes shut. Her whole body trembled trying to keep it together.

I wanted to help, I wanted to be the one who could hold her close and make her happy, but doing so wouldn’t have been true to myself. I didn’t know what I wanted well enough to know what I should do, so I pressed the side of my muzzle against hers and let the gentle insistence be my reply.

“I love you more than I could ever put into words, Copper,” I whispered. “But I can’t love you the way you want me to.”

I reached for a tear rolling down her cheek, but before I wiped it away, she took hold of my hoof and held it there. The moonlight glistened in her eyes, and a just-barely-holding-it-together feeling stretched thin across her face. Her voice trembled when she spoke.

“Sunset… Please. Just let me have this one night.”

I felt her words more than I heard them, felt the beat of her heart against mine. Our hearts beat in time, just as our breath shared what little space there was between us.

“Just let me pretend…”

“Copper…” I gazed into her eyes, and I saw the world as she would have had it: she and I, and nothing more.

I remembered all those mornings spent in A-chem, throwing paper airplane notes and peanuts at each other; the walks down the hallway, avoiding whatever insane concoction some student thought was a good idea; the long nights we lay holding each other, her hoof stroking my mane as I fell asleep.

I again felt in my heart that aching, yearning sensation from earlier that evening, the one that so desperately sought whatever words could span the distance between us. But here in the moonlit bedroom, with the breath-sweetened air and the comforting warmth of her heart so close to mine, it became more, grew beyond sensation to a compulsion that would rather reach out over that chasm and chance falling into oblivion than recoil and know Copper forever remained on the other side.

I knew it was wrong, but I placed a chaste kiss on her nose, and the levee broke.

Copper buried herself in my chest. Her tears stained through my fur, hot and wet, and she held me tight about the shoulders.

I cradled her head against me and kissed her forehead. We lay like that for a long while, and I took to stroking her mane. It was as soft as I remembered, like the fetlocks of a newborn foal.

I buried my nose in her mane and breathed in her coconut shampoo. I imagined each and every time we lay like this, wondered how different life would have been had I simply known.

All those jokes about how we were meant for each other… Between the sarcasm and snark, she never once lied about it. I was just too thick to notice. The tears threatened at the corners of my eyes, and a lump formed in my throat.

Maybe. Maybe if I had known, we could have worked.

It would have been a good life. Yeah. I was sure of it. Nocturne would have never gotten through to me if we were that much closer back then. Copper’s mom would have been a different issue, but we would have gotten through.

Together, we would have been invincible.

But that wasn’t real life. That was a fairy tale in my head, a whimsical make-believe that I didn’t deserve. The real me had burned her bridges and torn Copper’s heart from her chest. I had thrown her away, yet despite it all, she still loved me. But even if I was the one she wanted, I didn’t deserve a pony like her.

In time, maybe I’d earn that love. Maybe I’d finally earn the privilege to look her in the eye as an equal and say “I love you,” and feel the words as truly in my heart.

But that wasn’t now. The me lying here had a demon to destroy, a princess to rescue, an Equestria to save.

I relaxed my hold of her and took the opportunity to kiss her on the forehead again. I held it there longer than I felt I should have, but who was I to decide that?

Copper hiccuped and pulled away so she could look me in the eyes. Hers were filled with tears that caught the moonlight, made them look as if full of stars. She gently caressed my cheek, and I felt her hoof reach behind my head to draw me into a kiss.

I knew it was wrong—all of this was—but I closed my eyes and let it happen.

I was glad I did. After all the pain I had caused her, I was glad I could give her at least something to make amends.

I also couldn’t lie: the way she used her tongue was pretty damn hot.

When I didn’t resist, she dove deeper into the kiss, mixed her hot breath with mine. Her hooves started roving toward places they shouldn’t, and I drew the line there with a firm grip on her hooves.

I couldn’t deny her a passionate, long-desired kiss, but I wasn’t ready to retread that unwanted territory.

The tremble in her breath voiced her disappointment, but she didn’t press the issue and instead nuzzled into my chest again. She took to drawing idle circles in the fur of my shoulder, the way she used to when we were young.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” she whispered.

The smile on her face was one of immeasurable happiness, but nothing gold can stay. As the seconds wore on, her smile threaded out, and the circles she traced slowed. She knew this wouldn’t last, that it didn’t ultimately mean anything.

Except it did. It meant the world to her—I meant the world to her. And that… that meant the world to me.

But no matter how much we wished the night could last forever, eventually the sun would rise and this moment here would become nothing more than a memory.

I kissed her on the forehead, and as the moment marched ever onward, my emotions got the better of me, and out came the tears.

“I’m sorry,” I said, wiping my eyes. “You should go back to Star Chaser.”

Copper wiped a tear from my cheek. That smile was back, a pure, unrivaled happiness I would never forget.

“Sunset, nothing in the world could ever take me away from you.”

“Copper…” I sighed, half-laughing. “You’re the worst.” I knew it was wrong, but I leaned in and kissed her, right on the lips.

A moment of silence passed before Copper snickered and held me tighter. “I learn from the best.”

We shared a quiet laugh, and she nestled into my chest. I kissed her on the forehead and stroked her mane. Her warm breath and warmer tears seeped through my coat, but I knew she was smiling.

I knew it was wrong, but I snuggled in closer, and so did she. Now that the heat of the moment had passed, a quiet chill crept in to sneak up my flank. I magicked the bedsheets over our shoulders, and when Copper let out a contented sigh, I buried my face in her mane.

I knew it was wrong. All of it was—from the moment she first stepped through the bedroom door—but for the first time in seven years, I felt utterly, truly, convincingly happy.

Author's Note

Them...

Onward and Upward.