...and, if I need reminding...
It was dark, and it was raining, and Sunset Shimmer realised she was still crying.
A car came screeching around the corner, much too fast for the wet conditions, barely making the turn, and Sunset grimaced as it ploughed through a huge puddle, the dirty water splashing up in a grim wave, soaking her further from head to toe.
She spat the disgusting puddle-water from her lips, used her wet hand to brush a wet lock of hair away from where it had become plastered across her forehead, felt her wet sleeve against her wet face, felt her wet socks squelching in her wet boots.
She knew she should be heading home. The house would be dark, and empty, and cold... and empty... no, empty was no good for her right now. It was probably too late to call her friends, not that she knew what time it actually was. Oh, sure, they'd all rush over to help her if she called them up, every one of them, or all together, as soon as they knew what was wrong... maybe even if they didn't know what was wrong.
But some things are too much, she thought, bracing herself as she heard another car splashing along behind her. It's not fair to burden the ones you love. Not with this. Not in the middle of the night.
She'd go home soon enough. She just needed some time... time to think, time to process, time to deal.
In Equestria, when it rained, it was always one of Sunset's favourite things.
Some ponies got sad when the rain came, even when the pegasi warned them in advance, even when they knew exactly how long they had to wait before the sun came out again.
Not Sunset. She loved to go and stand outside, feeling it soak her coat, wet her mane, feel the grassy soil softening to mud under her hooves. She'd just stand there, and feel oddly safe, like the whole universe was daring her to stay outside and enjoy the show, and the less ponies who joined her, well, they'd just proven themselves to be afraid.
But she'd never been afraid, not for as long as she could remember.
Her mind would drift back to when she was a filly, sneaking out in a scheduled storm, violating every rule ever drilled into her... bad things happened to fillies who sneaked out at night. She'd catch a cold. She'd get struck by lightning. She'd get snatched up by a strange stallion and taken to Celestia knows where. She'd slip, out in some far-flung field, and stumble, and break a leg, and never be found until it was too late.
None of that stuff ever happened to her. She was Sunset Shimmer, and she was awesome.
The filly knows she shouldn't be out here in the rain, in the dark. She's old enough to know better. But she loves this feeling so much. She loves being out in the fields, lost in the tall wheat, just her under the sky, out of sight, far from the silo, far from the farmhouse, just breathing in, feeling that air, the smell of wet dirt on the wind...
She knows she'll be in trouble if her "mom" finds out she's still doing this. Any reason to stop her going out, any way to keep her indoors... her "mom" has tried them all out. Guilt, threats, punishment, nights without food, locked doors and windows, none of it scares little Sunset any more. Now, so long as she's back by morning, she knows things can only get so bad.
One day, she thinks, she'll sneak out at night, and never come back again. One day, she'll go looking for her real family, blend in among the unicorns. One day, she'll find out for herself.
The fillies in Canterlot are snobs, she thinks, as she sneaks down yet another long, nondescript corridor. She wants to make a game of hopscotch with the flickering squares of moonlight that shine so brightly through the rain-streaked windowpanes onto the tiled floor... but she daren't be too loud on her hooves, lest some nosy guard come and see what she's doing. She's memorised the shadows, the places she can hide, the places she can step without making too much of a sound as she creeps from her dorm, away from where she's supposed to be...
...and to here, to this little, secluded balcony, one of so many in this castle, but crucially set back from any nearby windows, too far for any prying eyes to see a little yellow unicorn filly stepping out of the easily-unlocked door and into the rain...
...to see her just standing there, with her eyes closed, feeling the water splashing on her mane, soaking her fur, washing away the tensions of yet another day in Canterlot, a rough-edged girl with a quick temper, awkward in a crowd, prone to lashing out, struggling through Princess Celestia's studies...
...and yet, as Celestia herself had said when she came to collect her from the farm, a unicorn with such raw potential, such staggering ability, that the Princess herself had had her at the top of her list of potential students for years, had come to take her away to Canterlot the very first day she was old enough.
Sunset doesn't miss the farm. She doesn't miss the mud. She doesn't miss her chores. And she certainly doesn't miss the grumpy Earth pony who dared to call herself her mother. But she misses the nights standing out in the rain, under the sky, the same sky every other pony in Equestria was born under.
The filly never knows Princess Celestia is watching from the tower. The filly never knows the pain that runs through the Princess' heart as she watches her faithful student crying, alone, in the rain. But the next day, she'll find an extra pancake on her breakfast plate, decorated with a smiling face, and a note telling her it will all be OK.
The filly decides to work even harder. The filly will prove herself worthy of Celestia's love and trust. She's Sunset Shimmer. She will show her. She'll show them all.
Sunset Shimmer rolls over in bed, stretching out a hand and wiggling her fingers to relieve the cramp. The nightmares aren't so frequent now, but occasionally she'll remember her time as Celestia's pupil, the kindly glances, the encouraging whispers, the warm, feathery hugs... the times the big white alicorn would sit herself down with Sunset in the refectory when nopony else wanted to be near her...
...and the knowledge she spat those things back in Celestia's face makes Sunset wince in actual, physical pain.
Sunset knows Princess Celestia has forgiven her. Sunset knows she's not the same pony - person - she was back then. Sunset knows she's worked hard to make things right, both with Princess Celestia, and with this world's own Principal Celestia too - and through their work together, the Principal has shown herself to be just as kind and protective of her students as her Princess counterpart back in Equestria.
But a familiar and unwelcome thought crosses Sunset's mind once again, a question, one that's been coming up more and more, a question she's been working hard to push down... a question, she realises, that won't go away until she tries to find an answer.
There should be another Sunset Shimmer here. Where is she?
Sunset takes a deep breath, and lets it out slooooowly, before reaching out and pulling her heavy, leather-bound journal down from its shelf. She opens it to the first clean page. She grits her teeth. She picks up a pen. She hesitates, she winces, she thinks about chickening out, she pushes through it, she presses the pen to the paper and starts making a mark before she can change her mind.
She writes.
Dear Princess Twilight. I'm sorry to be writing so late, but if I don't do this now, I'm worried I never will. I need to ask a favor of you, and I hate to do it but you're the only one who can help me.
I need to know... what happened to my parents?
The filly wishes she could remember. Sometimes, she pretends to herself that she really can, pretends so hard that she almost convinces herself.
Over time, the more she tells and re-tells and refines and adds to the story, the more she finds herself enjoying the attention. She hates herself for feeling proud to have something to make the other fillies pity her for a change. Something the other fillies don't have: a sad, sad story. She likes seeing the would-be bullies' faces fall when they realise what a rough time she's had. She likes the attention, she likes the pity, she even likes the space she gets given when she dusts off the story... the other students, her teachers, even Princess Celestia herself...
If the house gives you an edge, you take it, she recites, from memory. One of oh so many valuable life lessons she can thank her earth pony foster mom for planting early, thinks Sunset, bitterly. Of course, she could remember those, but nothing about her real parents.
Thanks, "Mom."
Of course, the more she works on polishing up her story, the harder she finds it when she inevitably remembers just how little she remembers. Her earliest memories are all from the farm; the rye whiskey on her foster mom's breath as she held her close, the feel of the wheat stalks against her flank the first time she ran through a field... the smell of the rain.
She doesn't even remember when she realised she was different. She has hazy recollections of making things move without touching them, of getting so angry things caught fire and getting so scared they put themselves back out again, of her "mom" stroking her mane to calm her down after she'd gotten frightened and made a colorful light show on the barnyard wall. But she never actually tried to do a spell until Celestia showed her how.
She's asked Celestia how she came to be here. She's asked Celestia what happened to her real parents. Celestia has promised her, with a kindly smile, that she will give her all the answers she needs, all the answers she deserves, when she's older.
Sunset doesn't think this is good enough.
Her parents are dead, and her foster mom is a nobody she's working hard to forget. Celestia seems nice, and kind, but then so did her "mom", before the belt started appearing in her life with increasing frequency. Celestia says she'll always be there for her, but then Sunset's pretty sure her real mom probably said that one time, too, and look how that turned out.
No. If there's one pony Sunset Shimmer can count on, it's Sunset Shimmer.
The firepony exhales, slowly, and wipes a sooty wing on his jacket, stepping over some charred timber wreckage before turning to the coroner. There are ponies gawping on the street behind the temporary barriers, as the police try to shoo them away.
Fat chance; the house, or rather, what's left of it, is still sending tendrils of acrid smoke up into the sunny morning sky, and there are still blackened bits of bricks and melted glass sitting where they landed, fifty yards away, after the explosion.
"...She's a lucky, lucky little foal," he says, before realising how that sounds. "I mean, if you can call it 'lucky'... the parents, well... they had no chance at all. But you know how unicorn babies can be," he mutters. "Thirty years on the job... ten back in Fillydelphia, twenty here in Baltimare, and this is only the second time I've seen something like this."
"Do we have a cause, or...?"
"...Gas line, ruptured overnight; the boys at the plant sealed it off with magic as soon as they saw there was a problem, but it seems like it happened just as these two..." - he gestures towards the carriage - "were putting the stove on. Freak accident. Somehow, the baby must have sensed something was wrong, because she had a magic surge and 'ported out... turned up in next door's parlor, just before the walls fell down."
Both ponies look at the burnt-out, cratered wreckage of the house, and fall silent for a moment, before the coroner blinks her eyes, breaks the silence.
"...Like you said. She's a lucky foal, I guess. Pegasus, or Earth pony... without magic, she'd have died with them."
"...Yeah," mutters the firepony, as he turns to walk away. "Lucky."
Sunset didn't remember how she got home, but as she shivered and pulled on her dry pajamas, she found she was glad she'd made her way back there after all. She looked at the book, still open on the bed where she'd left it, Twilight's neat, tightly-packed writing, filling in all of the details, bouncing in typical Twilight fashion between cold, analytical recounting of the data, blast radius, no chance of survival, orphanage waiting list, foreclosed farmstead in Western Mareyland, and shocked, sympathetic friendship, offering to come and see her, offering her a room in the castle, we're all so, so sorry, Princess Celestia has said she'll give you all the support she can, if there's anything at all I can do for you, please, please just. But Sunset hadn't replied; she'd just put the book down, and walked out into the rain to be alone with her racing thoughts.
She'd thought about a human baby, with no magic. She'd thought about a grave, here, in this world's equivalent of Baltimare, with three names on it... together, forever. She'd thought about whether she envied that baby.
She'd thought about how maybe... maybe that wasn't what happened here, at all? About how, maybe, just maybe, there was a happy Sunset Shimmer living out there with her family, who'd never know anything about unicorns and explosions and portals and demons. She'd hoped that was the case. She somehow knew it wasn't, but she hoped anyway.
She'd thought about taking Twilight up on her offer, heading back to Equestria, heading to Baltimare to see if she had any living relatives. She doubted it, since she'd grown up in the care of a... well, she'd thought about maybe getting in touch with her foster mom, too, if she was still alive.
She'd flirted with the idea of heading out to the library, finding the papers for this world's equivalent of Baltimare, looking up to see if she had any "family" on this side of the portal, even if she could never actually get in touch with them... even when she was bad, she wouldn't have brought herself to terrify and bewilder some unsuspecting old aunt somewhere, just to satisfy her own curiosity.
But, mostly, she thought, she'd wished she hadn't asked.
She sat down on the bed.
No.
It's good that I know, she thought. It was part of her. It was part of who she was. But only part. If her past actions didn't define her, and goodness knows how hard she'd had to work to accept that, then where she came from couldn't possibly change who she was now.
She looked at herself in the mirror, realising, with a horrible jolt, that the face staring back at her was the face of that human baby, all grown up; the young woman whose life she was now living, a life that should have belonged to another, now entrusted to her.
"I'll make us both proud," she said, to her reflection. "I'll do this right."
She smiled at herself, and for a moment, it was as if Sunset - the other Sunset - was smiling back at her.
She nodded.
"I promise."
Author's Note
Everyone has their own ideas about where the "real" human Sunset Shimmer is, and why we've never seen her. I wanted to write something made up of lots of little vignettes (not Vignettes!), maybe have a brief look at how Sunset came to be the damaged pony she was, and how that tied in to the mystery of "Where is Human Sunset?".
So, I wrote this. It's not a particularly happy story, but I hope you liked it anyway. And if I didn't do justice to your version of Sunset, or your headcanon for her background, I'm sorry - she has so many possible stories, this one just happens to be mine.
