Does It Almost Feel Like...
The first time Sunset heard the achingly familiar song, she had been in a music store just like any other, aimlessly searching through records in a place that seemed divorced from time itself. Nowadays, the store was mainly populated with posters, T-shirts, plushies, and practically every other piece of fan merchandise that wasn’t a CD or record, but something about going inside still made the former unicorn more than a little nostalgic. The actual music part of the store was little more than a relic of a lost time, but seeing all the records in front of her was probably the closest thing she had to Equestria, a way that she could escape from all the rapid technological changes of her new world.
Like Equestria itself, it was a peaceful, fragile thing. Every time she walked in, the music store fell into greater and greater disrepair, with clothes strewn across barely vacuumed floors, dim lightbulbs the managers couldn’t be arsed to replace, and even dimmer-looking minimum wage employees. It was a place with a countdown on its back, the way the portal to Equestria used to be. But, to Sunset, that was just another reason to appreciate it more. Sooner or later, it would be another empty mall store for amateur explorers to sneak into, but as long as she saw it as more than it was, she figured she could stave off that future for another year, another month, another week, another day.
She flipped through albums, trying to figure out which artist she would stave that future off with this time. Sapphire Shores? Songbird Serenade? No, their latest releases had been months ago, and to Sunset, an album was only worth buying shiny and new on its first week or well-loved and used years after the fact. She was about to give up on the Top 40 rack and go towards something more her speed--alt-rock, perhaps--when the music videos on the three elevated TVs began to change all at once.
The song that played was, at the same time, something that Sunset felt she’d heard before and something she’d missed out on for far too long. She’d heard plenty of times about how songs could hook people in from the first few words, but from the first note, she knew that the melody was one that’d been trapped in her subconscious for a very long time. An earworm, without a definite memory attached to it.
Sunset whipped her head towards the nearest TV as the music lured her in. As it played, an unmistakably beautiful girl with black hair swayed to a melancholy beat, crooning a heartbreaking chorus:
I wish I could forget the time our hands came together
I wish I could forget when you said forever
You saw my heart in shades of gray
And fought for me anyway
When all I wanted was for you to run away
To a time when you didn’t remember that day
You’re too good for me
And I know you’ll never agree
But now I’d like to be free
From the girl who’s too good for me
(You know you’re too good for me)
The lyrics captured a part of Sunset’s very soul that she’d almost forgotten she’d had, and as she listened, memories flashed through her mind of all the times she felt like she didn’t deserve the friends she had. But even then, that wasn’t the only part of the song that felt familiar--in short, everything did. The arrangement, the guitar solo, she knew them all, even the dance moves the idol made as she lamented her love.
Sunset barely even had to watch. She just knew, as if it were a hidden instinct locked inside of her.
Once she slipped out of the strangely hypnotic daze the music had given her, she first focused her attention towards the release date stamped on the video, then towards the singer herself. But then again, the voice was so familiar that Sunset barely even had to look to know who it was.
Rara, the newly rebranded Countess Coloratura, had just released her newest album. Her only album to date under her new identity. The entire school had been buzzing about it last week, and no matter how hard the teachers tried to quell it, everyone knew her music would shake the hallways themselves. Every student wanted to let everyone else know that they had bought the new album, blasting it loud enough for the next town over to hear.
That has to be it, Sunset thought to herself. I haven’t watched the video for this one online yet, but I bet I heard it before class. Probably Pinkie forgetting to put her headphones in again or something.
Whatever. She needed to get the new album anyway, and if that meant buying it from a place where no one at CHS even went to anymore, then that was just another bonus. Her fellow students didn’t need to know that the intimidating former bully listened to idol music like everyone else. Even if she’d changed, she still needed to keep up at least some street cred.
Or at least, that was what she told herself instead of facing the truth. That, deep down, there was a part of her that swore that the music store had been the first time she’d heard that song. That she’d listen to it at least ten times that night, taking it apart piece by piece and watching as a new mystery captured her heart.
By the time the eleventh repeat hit, she barely even questioned the familiarity of the song anymore. She’d faced enough weird magic in her life to let something like this slide, but she couldn’t ignore the stranger, more mundane aspect of it--the fact that every word rang true. This wasn’t a song written by some formless producer; this was as raw as Sunset had ever felt about herself. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that could only mean one thing.
Rara, the number one pop star in the whole country, thought that she was unworthy of love. That, in and of itself, was stranger than any magical occurrence that Sunset had ever faced.
And things would only get stranger from there...
****
The day after was nothing short of a blur, as if the song had really hypnotized her for good. The one thing that really stuck out, though, stuck out hard enough to shake Sunset from her illusion and left her wondering if she’d fallen straight into another one.
It was fifth period, in the middle of September, and there was already a new transfer student. That in and of itself wasn’t too weird, though Sunset questioned whatever logic her parents might have had in uprooting her from her old hometown less than a month after school started. No, it was the sheer fact that CHS had a transfer student that startled Sunset. Ever since she’d arrived, almost every new kid had some kind of weird magic ability--the Sirens had their songs, Twilight had her levitation, and while none of the others had quite that level of power, they at least had something. Sunset may have figured out most of the magical occurrences at Canterlot High, but that one was still an enigma. It was almost like the very title of “transfer student” bestowed some kind of latent power.
It’s like this school operates on goddamn anime logic, Sunset thought to herself after hearing Cheerilee announce the latest transfer student. It was the type of thing people joked about on the fan forums Rainbow and Twilight had roped her into joining, except at CHS, it was no joke. After a while, Sunset had even begun to forget that weird transfers didn’t happen at other schools.
But today’s wasn’t one she was about to forget, because her magic had a way of willing things into existence. Things she wanted, or even things she never knew she did.
As the elegant raven-haired girl strode into the room, Sunset thought that there was no way Cheerilee was about to introduce her like a regular person. From the very sound of her voice, everyone already knew exactly who she was, even though that same voice had been hidden behind Auto-Tune for years. Sunset could see that Cheerilee was already sweating bullets from the silent tension surrounding the room, trying her best to figure out how to defuse the ticking time bomb of celebrity-obsessed teenagers before it caused too much damage.
“I’m Coloratura, but I go by Rara,” the transfer student said, sensing Cheerilee’s discomfort with the instincts of a pro. “This is my first time at a public school, so I’d like you all to treat me like anyone else. I want this to be a place where I can forget my job and be a normal teenager, and I really look forward to meeting all of you.”
The first thing Sunset noticed was that her voice seemed clipped, inauthentic, more like she was giving an interview than introducing herself to a group of peers. Even her more cheerful moments seemed more like the staged excitement idols always seemed to have around their fans. Then again, considering that Coloratura was scouted when she was just nine, before Sunset had even come to this world, that was to be expected. She certainly knew what it was like to be that sheltered as a child.
The second thing Sunset noticed was that, holy shit, she had fifth period with a girl who broke Billboard records like kids broke glass windows. She’d heard about this sort of thing in the kinds of tabloids she was only desperate enough to read in the checkout line--celebrities wanting to take a break from their fame and live a normal life. Still, seeing it unfold in front of her at CHS, a humble school with a strangely magical history, was nothing short of unbelievable.
Sunset wasn’t sure exactly when Rara walked over towards her--she told herself she was too focused on the lesson, but really, she knew what she was focused on more--but sure enough, it was already lunchtime, and Rara was the only student left in the room.
“You’re on the welcoming committee, aren’t you?” Rara asked. “Would you mind giving me a tour?”
Still in that stilted voice, overly polite to the point of being cloying. If she was going to make any real friends here, rather than just her usual admirers, Sunset figured she’d have to teach Rara to loosen up. That is, assuming their paths would extend beyond this almost eerie chance meeting.
“Wouldn’t you rather eat first? New kids don’t normally like getting the tour before lunch. Plus, if we did it afterwards, you’d get to miss part of sixth period.”
Rara shrank back instead of answering, a gesture that looked all too wrong on someone as confident and collected as her. It was like watching her in her debut and only film, when the whole world had learned that there were, in fact, limits to her talents.
“Oh no, I couldn’t. Choir’s my next class. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Sunset wasn’t sure what was cuter about that--the fact that a diva like her took high school choir so seriously or the enraptured look on her face when she talked about it. Rara just kept going on about it, more than she had about anything all day, about how much she’d always wanted to be in a school choir, about how they got to perform for the elementary school, about the awards they’d won…
“Okay, okay, I get it,” Sunset interrupted. “You’re a choir nerd under all that glitz and glam. I’m cool with that. But if we don’t want to miss it, we should probably get going.”
Rara’s face instantly whipped towards the clock and blanched just as quickly. She’d already talked her way through a whopping ten minutes of lunch period.
“Right. Sorry.”
For once, nothing strange seemed to happen during the actual tour, which was only remarkable because of what had happened last time Sunset showed a bunch of singers around the school. After that, Sunset considered any school tour when no one revealed any secret evil plans a victory. Keeping the students’ attention away from Rara, however, would not be one.
Barely a minute into it, Rara had already been spotted by someone or another, a figure that didn’t arouse Sunset’s attention enough to investigate further. What mattered was that if the girl didn’t get peace and quiet now, there was no way she ever would here. Almost instinctively, Sunset latched onto Rara and took on a protective stance, letting every student in the hallways know that this chick was with CHS’s former bad girl, and she’d let a little bit of that bad girl out again if they hounded her too much.
High school kids might like the thrill of the chase, especially when it came to celebrities, but they sure didn’t like being chased. This was a fact that Sunset was intimately familiar with.
“Wow,” Rara said, in a voice that only sounded half-joking, “you ever thought about being a bodyguard? You seem pretty experienced with this sort of thing.”
“Not really. Being a superhero is a pretty good gig right now, but I might take you up on that offer someda--”
Shit.
For the first time all day, Sunset considered the possibility that Rara could very well be the most normal transfer student they’d had in a while. She hadn’t seemed to show any sort of magical ability, and usually, it didn’t take long for such things to manifest around her. And Sunset just wasn’t used to talking to normal people, not when CHS was in such a weirdness bubble.
She was almost afraid of looking towards the idol, already expecting the rest of the tour to be filled with odd glances--that is, assuming Rara didn’t run for the hills at the first opportunity. And sure enough, she got that vacant glare from the new student for a few seconds, until a flash of realization hit Rara’s face.
“That’s right!” she blurted out before Sunset could explain. “That’s why you look so familiar! AJ gave me tickets to your concert once.”
Now, it was Sunset’s turn to be confused.
“You’re not talkin’ about our AJ, are you? Blonde hair, country accent, could bench all of us if she wanted to?”
“Oh, she absolutely wants to. But yeah. My parents had a summer lake house close to the Apple farm, so we go way back. We weren’t really able to take trips once I made it big, but I still kept in contact with her a lot. She’s probably the only real friend I’ve ever had...for several reasons.”
For the slightest of moments, Sunset could hear the same vulnerability in Rara’s voice that had tinged her last song, one that couldn’t have been formed just out of simple loneliness. If Rara had decided to attend someplace as off-the-grid as Canterlot High in the height of her fame, something had to have happened. But such mysteries were hardly uncommon at CHS, and Sunset figured that if there was any place that could sort them out, it had to be--
“Actually, I’ve heard a lot of things about you,” Rara interrupted. “You deal with magical oddities and other worlds. AJ told me all about that, but there were some things I never told her.”
Alarm bells were already starting to ring in Sunset’s head, like she was a soldier being thrown into a new battlefield. Only then did she realize that the two hadn’t moved since Rara first brought the topic up, and the vulnerability in her was starting to bleed into more things than just her voice.
“What kinds of things?” Sunset asked, already anticipating the answer.
“You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Well, no one would, but especially not you. From what AJ’s told me...you probably think the threat I’m facing is already gone. It’s something you’ve been up against before, and thought you defeated.”
Even as the hallway clock inched closer to sixth period, everything around the two seemed frozen in time. Sunset’s thoughts, meanwhile, went a mile a minute--there was only one real possibility that made sense considering Rara’s background, but even that couldn’t be right. She may not have seen the Sirens since the Battle of the Bands, but surely, if they wanted to sabotage an actual pop star, they’d put themselves out there as a potential rival. People would be talking about them again, the same way they were talking about Rara.
“I-I think I might be able to believe you,” Sunset barely managed to say. “I don’t know how it’s possible for sirens to still be around, but--”
As the bell rang, Rara let go of her hand, as if she’d just now realized what Sunset could do. What sorts of memories she could pull out.
“They are still around,” Rara said as she began to inch towards the crowd. “They just aren’t the three you’re thinking of.”
Other enemies, or--
Just before Sunset got to thinking about it too hard, Rara approached her one last time, close enough to whisper in her ear.
“I know you didn’t get your magic from Earth. My voice didn’t come from there, either. I’ll be in the music room after school if you want to talk.”
It was abrupt, clipped, the sort of thing you would never expect to hear in an interview. But that was how Sunset knew it was real.
As it turned out, the one feeling Rara couldn’t hide behind the cameras was her desperation.
****
Every day with Rara brought new questions--should have brought new questions--but somehow, the more the girl talked, the more everything seemed right. If the usual magic students were unsolvable enigmas, Rara was a sudoku puzzle--a numerical sequence that didn’t make sense on its own, but seemed to follow all the established rules anyway.
Each day was a new question, a new investigation into just what exactly Rara was, how she differed from the Dazzlings, and how exactly she made her magic into a career. Even then, the first day had been the one that brought the biggest questions of all, the ones Sunset would turn around in her head for months to come.
“The original sirens were exiled from Equestria thousands of years ago,” Rara had told her on the first day. “Or that’s what the myths my parents told me say. But plenty of their descendants hadn’t done anything wrong, so they were allowed to stay until the rest of the land began to fear their abilities. No matter how hard we try to turn our powers off, a little bit of them still leeches through sometimes, and that was enough to scare ponies. All the sirens were finally exiled about a hundred years ago, and by then, many of them wanted to dilute their blood as much as possible. They didn’t want their children to suffer as they did.”
Rara’s voice always took on a mythological tone when she discussed her life as a siren, and Sunset wondered more than once if sirens were natural storytellers as well. Maybe, in the days before music was invented, that was how they enthralled their prey. If that was true, then Sunset figured that magic was every bit as strong today as it had been back then. Even in her initial fear, she was still thoroughly entranced.
“So if the sirens who came here were ancient, then you must be--”
“Seventeen, like you. I’m technically only a quarter siren. It’s kinda like being an immigrant’s child. It’s easier to say you’re a siren than it is to say you’re a third-generation siren. People tend to understand you better that way.”
Sunset had almost remarked on how being born to foreigners didn’t exactly give you powers, or make much of a difference beyond what intolerant idiots thought, but had been too caught up in another question to say anything.
If you’re one quarter siren, doesn’t that just make you three quarters human? Or do your powers keep you from reaching that point, even then?
“Anyway, there is a bit of a generational gap like that with us sirens, too. Our parents try not to tell us about our magic unless we want to go into work that would require us to use our voices. We only have to be careful with our mind control if we use them too much, enough to make a career out of it. Singing tends to be the stereotypical siren job, and our magic channels better through song, but it would still work if I did slam poetry, or became a motivational speaker. I’ve even heard of a couple who became drill sergeants.”
Sunset mulled for a few seconds over whether a mind-controlling drill sergeant would useful for maintaining control or utterly terrifying.
Both, she’d thought. Definitely both.
“You lost me at the last one,” she’d finally said. “I feel like you’d be good at the others.”
“Well, my original washed-up child star five-year plan was going to be a Bridleway residency, but you’re right. Even a D-list celebrity could probably make tons of money as a motivational speaker.”
She’d let out a little chuckle after saying this, which had soon bloomed into a round of raucous laughter between the two of them. From there, the topic soon changed to other, more frivolous matters--their favorite songs, their influences, what it must have been like to live as a celebrity, what it must have been like to live in another world. As it turned out, Rara had actually thought far more about the latter than Sunset had about the former, even with all her old delusions of grandeur.
They had talked about mythical beings that each world had that were similar to the type of siren Rara was--as soon as the singer brought up that all the sirens born after the Dazzlings fed off love, Sunset told her stories about the changelings, stories that she had once believed to be myths. Rara, in turn, told her fairy tales she’d heard about mermaids, ones that were far more tragic than the few childish ones Sunset had heard on Earth.
“They say mermaids turn into sea foam if they fall in love with humans, and sirens are too black-hearted to even consider such a possibility. No matter if you’re one or another, you’re doomed in love.”
Sunset, without thinking, had asked her if she felt the same. Maybe it had been the song tugging against her heart, or perhaps it was something else. Maybe she was just trying to mimic how a reporter would respond to that question in an interview.
Rara simply shrugged, as if she was expecting that same question all along.
“I think every girl’s thought that at some point. Love isn’t easy for any of us to find, and trust me--it’s a lot harder when tabloids are always breathing down your neck. But if I had to choose which fate I’d doom myself to, it definitely wouldn’t be the siren’s. Here’s the difference between mermaids and sirens--one’s a hopeless romantic, and the other is just hopeless. So I like to think that I’m a siren with a mermaid’s heart.”
Sunset broke out in another round of laughter after hearing this, only briefly glancing at the clock in the music room. It was already seven o'clock, three hours after both of them should have been home.
“Damn, do you always work this fast?” Sunset finally said. “Because it really sounds like you’re trying to come on to me right now.”
For the first time in the whole conversation, everything went silent, and Rara jumped back in her seat. Sunset had sworn that the only reason she didn’t fall off the chair then and there was because the universe was watching over her, making sure not even a single strand of hair fell out of place. What the universe didn’t do, though, was make her stop blushing like an old lady who’d heard somebody swear in public.
For a siren, she’s pretty innocent, Sunset had thought to herself. She wasn’t sure when she had stopped thinking of Rara as a pop star, and starting thinking of her as something more.
“That wasn’t what I meant at all! I--I mean, I wouldn’t mind getting to know you better, and you probably understand me better than anyone, and I’m sure anyone would be lucky to have you as your girlfriend, but--”
If this was a movie, Sunset would have leaned in towards Rara and kissed her to shut her up, watch her blush more. But Sunset was acutely aware of the reality at play here--this didn’t feel like a stranger she’d only seen on TV. This didn’t feel like a movie, or a play, or anything else.
It didn’t even feel like she’d just met Rara. It was like both she and her song had lodged themselves into some sort of extended premonition in Sunset’s mind, telling them that they were fated to meet somehow.
If Sunset would’ve had an ounce of logic left in her head that day, she would’ve dismissed all this as utter rubbish. “Insta-love,” as Twilight’s favorite book reviewers called it, yet another cliche that adorned almost every bad romance novel on the shelves. But somehow or another, her mind was allured by a multitude of possibilities--that she had predicted this meeting, or she had travelled through time to get to this very moment without even knowing it, or even that Rara was the mermaid from the old myths, reborn to see her again.
If Sunset would’ve been aware of the situation, she would have torn all those childish thoughts from her brain the minute they arrived, dismissed it as another siren song. The Dazzlings had seemed nice enough when she first met them, after all. But what mattered was that, in that moment, her mind was completely blank--either from genuine admiration or a latent celebrity crush.
If Sunset would have thought this through at all--at all--she would have heard alarm bells the minute Rara finished her sentence. Would have heard it as nothing short of an outright confession.
“I’ve made people fall in love with me before. Accidentally, but still. Please, just wait until tomorrow. Until the day after, and the day after that. Until I can know that it’s the real you speaking, and not my powers.”
Notes of regret pierced her voice, as if simply uttering those words was enough to make her relive a thousand tragedies. And that, more than her words, had been what Sunset had noticed.
“It’s okay,” Sunset had said, sensing a world of trauma behind those few sentences. “We can talk about it another time. Whenever you’re comfortable, I’m willing to hear. Then I’ll be able to tell you this feeling isn’t something you placed in my head.”
To this day, Sunset wasn’t even sure herself if it was or not. The only real evidence she had was Rara’s kindness, and even that could be faked. Even a siren’s song could be an accidental hit, both to the music charts and to the heart. But, if she had to really wrack her brain about it, she’d stopped thinking about it the minute Rara suggested it.
If she’d simply paid attention, Sunset would have seen the writing on the wall from the very beginning. But that was just it--love came, as it often did, in spite of the warning signs.
...Nothing's Changed At All?
Dating a celebrity, it turned out, was like signing a contract. Sunset’s decision to date Rara--and Rara’s decision to date her in turn--was very much an impulsive one, though not one without its logic. For the last month, the two of them had stayed in the music room together after school for at least two hours a day, and only separated when Rara had some kind of event afterwards. Photo shoots, interviews, volunteer hours at the animal shelter. Not all of Rara’s activities were defined by her celebrity status, but to Sunset, they might as well have been.
There was Rara the person, the siren, and Rara the brand. Over the past month, Sunset had gotten to know the former so much that the latter almost seemed to fade away unless someone else brought it up. The rules they had to follow to make sure no one brought that other side up were simple, yet far more strict than anything the average high school student could probably fathom.
Rule #1: Sunset would stay out of the public eye and wouldn’t attend any events a regular high school student would be turned away from--i.e. movie screenings, recordings, or anything that would draw any suspicion.
Rule #2: They could go out on dates together as girlfriends, but Rara would have to disguise herself so people couldn’t figure out who she was. Sunglasses, a different hairstyle, “what basically every star has to do to keep themselves from being seen in public.”
Rule #3: No public displays of affection unless at least one party wears a disguise. This included school, to Sunset’s dismay, and meant that the dreams she’d always had of kissing someone in the hall before class would have to stay just that--dreams.
Rule #4: People could know that Sunset Shimmer and Coloratura knew each other, or even that they were good friends, but they could never know that they were together.
“You’re involved with one of those record companies, huh?” Sunset had asked a week or so after Rara brought the rules up. As strange as these requirements were, Sunset had heard enough gossip about foreign idols to know exactly what Rara was getting at without her actually saying it. For how little she knew about idols in her country, they could still have those sorts of rules.
“What record companies? I don’t understand.”
“You know, that whole love ban shit. Guys can’t fathom the idea of not being able to take you home with them, so you have to suffer for their fantasies. Except you’re kind of a rebel under that dorky exterior and figure you’ll just tell the company to screw themselves if they ever find out about us. I’m all for sticking it to those sexists.”
For the slightest of seconds, Rara’s face flashed to an unreadable expression, one that Sunset had grown all too acquainted with. From what little she’d been able to deduce, it always seemed to show up whenever she was deep in thought or whenever a memory came to her--but even that was just speculation. Rara might have been an enigma, but to Sunset, she was the best kind. A multi-layered puzzle that just made Sunset’s love for her grow stronger and stronger every time a new layer was unveiled.
“I think you’ve been hanging out with Pinkie so much, you’re beginning to think like her,” Rara said, gently poking Sunset’s nose as she did so.
“That’s terrifying,” Sunset quipped straight back. “Probably the scariest thing anyone could ever tell me.”
“You know what I mean. I haven’t hung out with you guys much, but it seems like she’s listening to a new K-Pop band every time I see her. Idols on this side of the ocean don’t really have to go through any of that love ban stuff. I just…”
Rara clasped her hands together, one of her nervous tics that never seemed to happen on TV. Before, Sunset swore this girl had a completely persona on stage, but as she watched her now-girlfriend’s interviews back, she could see that Rara often hid her hands from the cameras. There were times, wonderful times, when Rara the siren and Rara the brand were one and the same.
“I’m concerned for you, Sunset. The other students still aren’t quite used to me, and they hated you so much before...I don’t want anything like that to happen with us. People aren’t always the kindest to celebrities’ lovers, especially if they aren’t famous.”
“You think I’ll be the school’s Yoko Ono if people find out you’re dating?”
“I wouldn’t have put it in those blunt of words, and I probably would have used a different reference. But that old soul rocker in you is too cute for me to disagree with.”
Rara chuckled a little, a real chuckle that sounded completely unlike any of the laughter she’d had to rehearse, and took a deep breath before going on further.
“I know this isn’t fair to you, but it just has to be for a little while. Until everyone gets used to me, okay?”
In any other situation, this wouldn’t have been fair, but Sunset knew what she’d been getting into when she confessed her love. Rara was a star who valued her privacy, and if she valued Sunset’s too, then that could only mean good things. Besides, from the tabloid articles she’d studied before she got into this relationship, there were certainly worse things a celebrity could do with a rando like her.
“Okay,” Sunset replied, giving Rara’s hand a small squeeze.
****
The next time the rules were about to come up, a more pressing concern came to Sunset’s attention. They’d been together for two months, never thought to question the rules that formed their whole lives. But Sunset still questioned Rara’s siren nature. Coming from the girl who’d wanted to analyze everything about her friends’ magic just under a year ago, it was only natural.
“Tell me about what you were gonna say yesterday, before you got that phone call and had to leave in a hurry. How did your parents teach you to control your magic?”
For a minute, Sunset worried that Rara would misunderstand her, think she was intentionally trying to change the subject, but instead, she just went on seamlessly into the next topic.
“Right. The problem is, there isn’t really a tried-and-true way for sirens to control their magic. It’s one thing if you’re like the Dazzlings, sirens with hate in their blood, but most of my kind’s specialities were in lust, mind control, that sort of thing. It’s easy to make someone lust after a siren, but a little harder to make them fall in love. And when you’re in my field, both are easy to induce even as a human. As a siren--”
Suddenly, Rara froze up, flinching even from Sunset’s touch. She’d had a few flareups like this from time to time, when someone touched her without warning, but Sunset never seemed to set them off. Sunset had always figured it was some sort of survival instinct for idols, to keep creeps from touching them too much, but her new psych class that semester was starting to challenge that theory, bring up all sorts of questions she could never ask this early in a relationship.
Who hurt you? Are you getting help? Is that why you came to CHS?
And then, another set of letters would always come to her mind.
Do you have PTSD?
By the time Sunset reflected on it hard enough, Rara’s flareup had already stopped, and her voice was moving a mile a minute again.
“In my grandparents’ days, no one really wanted to suppress it. It was how we survived as long as we did in Equestria. So my parents had to improvise a little with me, try to keep me from controlling people using the only method they knew. It was kinda like, you know, ‘conceal don’t feel.’”
Sunset wasn’t sure if her mind latched onto that reference because she wanted to take her mind off the grave situation, or because she didn’t want to hurt Rara more than she already had. But nevertheless, it spotted a moment for some prime romantic teasing.
“Seriously? That movie?”
“I know you can be an insufferable hipster sometimes, but I happen to like Frozen,” Rara retorted. That was one of Sunset’s favorite things about her--she didn’t look it, but she definitely knew how to tease right back. “It’s one of my favorites, actually.”
“It’s cool. You just don’t really seem like the type who goes out and sees movies like that. I mean, what teen idol has the time to see all the newest cartoons?”
“One, Frozen’s been out for years. Two, I was at the premiere, so I know I saw it before you did. Three, the company wanted to cast me as Elsa, but my manager wouldn’t let me audition.”
Rara simply shrugged with that all-too-common resigned look on her face, the same one she always had whenever she brought up Svengallop. She’d fired him six months ago, to almost no media fanfare, and every once in awhile, she still felt the need to rant about him. She didn’t exactly have the chance to at her old agency, where he’d felt the need to micromanage everything from her music to her look. At this point, Sunset had given up on understanding Svengallop’s logic about anything--any reasonable person would have been able to see that Rara was better without all of his unnecessary changes.
“Okay, okay, you got me,” Sunset conceded. “But I’m not sure the Elsa thing is the best example. You seem pretty good at controlling your powers, and you sure haven’t let them flare up lately.”
“You don’t know that,” said Rara, clutching her hands tightly again.
“I know what a siren spell looks like. And the only spell you’ve cast at CHS is making everyone want to be your friend.”
“Not at CHS. At my old agency. There was someone I liked there. I--I thought I could use my magic to make him like me back, and...I can’t do this, Sunset.”
Instead of a flareup, Rara looked like she was about to break out in tears. Hell, she looked like she was about to break, period.
“Can’t do what?”
“Any of this. I can’t talk about it, even with you. I can tell you I liked Svengallop, but I can’t tell you what happened after. How my magic backfired. What happened as a result. All I can tell you is...I twisted him beyond recognition. That was what he told me when I fired him.”
Rara was about to leave the room, running away from the entire situation, when Sunset connected the dots.
Idols didn’t just leave their managers because of a few bad business decisions.
Idols didn’t attend regular schools just to get away from it all.
If an idol recoiled at someone’s touch, there was a damn good reason. Or, for those unlucky few, several reasons.
“Back up, Rara,” Sunset whispered, a slight growl edging her voice. “Are you telling me your manager did that to you? I swear to Faust, if he ever tried to get in your pants--”
“Not tried,” Rara barely managed to utter. “Did. Several times. With other girls. Never...before I used my magic on him.”
All Sunset could do was curse under her breath and watch as everything seemed to make sense, from Rara’s trepidation towards her powers to the way she’d always seemed to build walls between them. Sunset had often considered what she would do if she found out one of her friends had been assaulted--wished she didn’t have to think about such things, but the world she’d walked into was too fucked up not to plan for it. But in the moment, all that came to her was blind rage--not just towards the perpetrator for being the sort of pedo manager that gave every other manager a bad name, but towards her girlfriend for victim-blaming the worst person she possibly could.
Herself.
“Don’t tell me your magic had anything to do with it!” Sunset screamed, halfway to tears. “Do you honestly think he was some moral beacon before you messed with him? Well, newsflash: you didn’t! You’ve told me before that siren songs bring someone’s darkest desires to light. Well, doesn’t that just mean he was always fucked in the head? Are these really your thoughts, or is this just some bullshit he told you so you wouldn’t report him to the cops?!”
As soon as she noticed that her tone was only making Rara tremble more, she lowered it, tried not to explode again. Even as everything around her--her heart, Rara’s tears, the storm approaching just outside their window--seemed to explode in her absence.
“I never told him I was a siren,” croaked Rara. “Only you.”
“Then that doesn’t matter,” said Sunset, wrapping her girlfriend up in her arms. “I know it’s hard to believe such things, especially when he treated you so kindly before. He probably wanted you to lower your guard, or make you think you’ve twisted him when it’s really the opposite. It’ll be a process, but eventually, you have to believe that you didn’t bring this on yourself.
“Magic has limits, Rara. No matter how powerful it is, it can’t change someone’s heart. If you’re ever worried about doing the same to me, remember that. There’s no way someone as great as you could ever corrupt me.”
She reached out towards Rara, waiting for the permission she needed to hold the traumatized girl close to her heart. Whether it was because of the sound of the physical storm, or because she needed shelter from tempests of the brain, Rara snuggled close to Sunset and sank into her girlfriend’s warm touch.
****
By then, both had assumed that everyone had left the building, and the sound of the thunder drowned out any footsteps they could have heard.
“Look at you two lovebirds,” Applejack said as she approached the music room, without a single hint of malice in her voice. “Can’t believe it’s your six-month anniversary already.”
Rara had already begun to nod off, too worn out from the confessions and the rain to even fathom staying awake. But Sunset’s gears began to turn even faster than before. Applejack may have been Rara’s best friend, but to her knowledge, there was no way she could have known about the two of them...could she?
“Ah, c’mon, don’t act so surprised, sugarcube. We could all see it at the lake house last summer. You and Rara were onto each other like bees to honey.”
Either this was some elaborate prank, or Sunset’s world was about to be turned on its end.
“I--I’ve never been to the lake,” Sunset tried to say. “We’ve only been together two months. I’d never met her before she came to CHS, honest.”
Applejack gave her the usual skeptical Apple look before letting out a long sigh and coming to a startling realization. One that was probably just as startling to Applejack as it was to Sunset herself.
“Do you remember anything from last summer?”
Sunset tried to bring back a memory, any memory, but still came up short. Such a thing had to be impossible, she told herself, figuring it had just been the kind of lazy summer where every day effortlessly flowed into another. That was what people tended to mean when they said they couldn’t remember their summer, after all.
But Sunset had to remember at least some things. Cheerilee had wanted her class to read another classic book over the summer, one about a misunderstood monster and the man who had brought him to life. Sunset had seen some of the movies about this monster and remembered really enjoying the book, but she’d only started reading it two weeks before school started. She never waited that long to finish any school project, swore she’d already read it before, but didn’t remember anything about it as she combed through the pages. At the time, she figured she’d just read it so early in the summer that she’d already forgotten it.
But now, as she similarly combed over her summer with no real results, all she could do was shake her head in shock.
“Then c’mon,” Applejack said, taking her hand and jerking Sunset from her seat. Away from Rara, and towards the raging storm. “We’re going Memory Stone hunting. If that bugger left any fragments, and if it’s still locked onto your magic signature--”
Sunset didn’t even want to consider the rest.
****
The rest, it turned out, fell into place like clockwork over the past few days. Sure enough, a small fragment of the Memory Stone was still in the parking lot, and while Sunset was relieved to find what she was looking for in such terrible weather, she was also frightened at the implications it brought. She hadn’t had to deal with that thing since last semester, so surely all the rains before then had to have lodged it deep into the ground, underneath layer after layer of dirt and mud. Yet when she and Applejack found it, it was only barely touched by earth--meaning someone had to have used it recently.
But who?
If Sunset were a real detective, she would have been able to solve that question by dusting it for fingerprints, or taking it to some lab or another. But the shard was so small, Sunset doubted any fingerprints would even show up. Unfortunately, no one on her team of quasi-magical girls had an ability that could trace it back to a particular person, and the one person Sunset would have suspected most had a solid alibi.
Wallflower Blush had pretty much stayed out of her life for the whole school year, figuring that as much as she had reformed, she would never quite feel comfortable befriending Sunset. Sunset respected that and kept her distance, allowing the once shy girl to make her own friends. But if Wallflower didn’t do it, and only a select handful of CHS students even knew about it, then who could have wiped her memory?
Sunset had always heard that in situations like this, there were three things to consider--means, motive, and opportunity. Everyone at CHS could, hypothetically, stumble upon this broken stone and summon just enough magic to use it. It worked instantly, so there wasn’t any real opportunity that needed to arise in this situation. But for there to be a real motive, someone other than Applejack had to have known about her and Rara.
It was easier to go through the details of this case than it was for Sunset to consider the implications of them. Just imagining months of her life ripped away from her, unable to ever be returned, scared her to the bone. Somehow, all this had gotten to be even more horrifying than her last run-in with the Memory Stone, if such a thing was even possible.
Only one person seemed to line up with Sunset’s suspicions, and that was the scariest part of it all. Even in a criminal investigation, the victim’s lover was always suspect--was more often than not the perpetrator.
There’s no way. It makes absolutely no sense, the good cop on Sunset’s shoulder told her.
Rara’s the only one who knows, the bad cop responded in turn.
Days passed, and Sunset still couldn’t bring herself to confront Rara over this--though not for a lack of trying. Rara had been absent for days, and even though she was the prime suspect, Sunset couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy for her. This was someone who’d poured her heart out to her about the worst thing that could happen to a girl, pushed herself to a point where she couldn’t even bring herself to go to school the next day. Or the day after. Or the day after.
Magic has limits. No matter how powerful it is, it can’t change someone’s heart.
If Rara did this, she had to have a good reason for it.
And so, Sunset waited on until the day she returned.
****
Sunset couldn’t say for sure how long it took Rara to come back to school--three, four, five days--but when she did, she summoned her into the music room much as Rara had once done for her.
“Does this look familiar at all to you?” she asked Rara as she held out the Memory Stone. Sunset forced herself to keep a level tone, even though every lead she had at this point seemed to point to her girlfriend.
Fear instantly seemed to pulse through Rara’s body, and she stiffened up in shock. As much as Sunset hated to admit it, she knew the look of guilt when she saw it.
“Y--yeah. I found it in the parking lot not long after I came here. What is it? I doubt it’s just some shard of glass.”
She could be covering for someone else, Sunset thought to herself. There’s still a chance. There always will be.
“It’s part of something called the Memory Stone, a magical artifact one of the students found last year,” explained Sunset. “Like the name suggests, it can remove memories of anyone the caster chooses, and after a certain amount of time, you can never get them back. Last year, someone used this to make my friends forget me, and the days I spent fighting it were some of the worst ones I ever lived. I--I thought it’d been destroyed, but after finding this...I just don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”
Sunset let out a single, sorrowful sigh and leaned up against a table, as if that was the only thing that could keep her steady in a time like this.
“I don’t even know if I can trust you.”
The next wave of shock hit Rara this time, more rehearsed, more subtle. Her eyes seemed to dilate, but she showed little emotion other than that. Sunset was tempted to touch her, to see into her thoughts, but she figured that after everything the girl had been through, going into her mind would be a new level of invasive.
“Why not? Sunset, what happened with this stone? How did you find it?”
“It’s funny,” replied Sunset, not finding it funny at all. “Applejack came by last time we were together, while you were asleep. She knew about us, but she thought we’d been dating for longer than we had. She swore we had this fling at a lake last summer, and when I couldn’t remember it, or anything else...I went looking for this stone. And here I find it, clearly used by someone. Someone who knows about us.”
Rara just shook her head at the revelation, taking a seat next to Sunset but nevertheless keeping her distance.
If things kept going at this rate, Sunset might never hold Rara in her arms again. Or worse, she would, and she wouldn’t even remember it in a few months.
“That’s impossible,” Rara said. “If someone knew about us, it would’ve all over the school by now.”
“That’s exactly what I thought, too. Which can only mean one thing. The minute you asked what I was holding, I knew you were hiding something. Because I already told you about the Memory Stone, and where it exploded.”
In that moment, every single one of Rara’s rehearsed motions broke. She flinched right where she sat, and froze in place.
“I--It’s not what you think, Sunset!”
“That would mean something if I knew what to think right now. But I don’t want to hate you for this. I know you have a good reason, so if you could just open up and tell me why you sealed all our memories away--”
“I did it for your own protection,” Rara interrupted. “I appreciate what you told me before, but there’s no way of knowing if it’s true. If my magic can corrupt people, then I thought maybe this stone could save them. I’d heard rumors about it and the things it could do, so I searched for it a couple of days before I transferred. I sang to you when the trip ended, so you wouldn’t remember meeting me, but ever since, I kept wondering if it was enough. But sure enough, after using my songs and the stone, you only recognized me from TV. Part of me almost wishes it could have stayed that way.”
Rara’s head sagged down on her shoulders, as if she was collapsing from all the pressure the world had brought upon her. But, as Sunset was starting to realize, even though her career had been nothing but hell, at least part of that pressure was self-induced.
“Why can’t it?” Sunset asked. “If you went to all this effort to make sure I didn’t remember you, then why did you approach me again.”
“It was a split-second decision, done purely on instinct. I regretted it the minute I did it, and I thought maybe...if I kept concealing my darker side, then maybe we could start over. We could have a life together.”
“Well, we won’t be having one now.”
Sunset hadn’t expected that last sentence to come out as harshly as it did, but it flowed out anyway. Part of her had almost expected that Rara would anticipate this reaction, but tears still seemed to flow from her girlfriend’s face.
“You said it before, at the lake,” Rara whispered. “You came in contact with a magical artifact and corrupted yourself. You spent months terrified about that same thing happening to you again. You said you’d do anything to stay on the path of good. That was when I knew I was destined to lose you.”
Sunset’s head sunk into her hands, and she brushed her hair back over her head with pure exhaustion.
“You know that’s not what I meant,” Sunset groaned. “I don’t live in fear of taking risks just because they could hurt me. And even if I did...I’m not your manager! That should be obvious, but I don’t think you understand at all, Rara. This whole ‘cursed magic’ thing is just your way of justifying everything those people did to you. You can’t comprehend that he betrayed you in the worst way, so you’d rather think you drove him to madness or some other bull. It’s easier for you to walk around saying you’ve got a curse than it is for you to actually trust that people can be better.”
For the slightest of moments, a look of understanding sparked in Rara’s face, but it dimmed just as quickly. In the time it took for it to dim, she’d already wrenched the shard from Sunset’s hand.
“As long as there’s a one percent chance you’ll turn out like him, I have to do this! I want to believe you, but there’s no way I can risk seeing you corrupted again!”
“Let me just go over this one more time--when I was corrupted, I was a demon. I flew around, burned shit, and terrorized people. Even at my absolute worst, I never hurt anyone like that. What I’m trying to say is, if being with you meant turning into a demon again, I would’ve done it for you.”
“I know you would have. But it wouldn’t have been right for you. You shouldn’t have to sacrifice yourself for me. All I wanted to do was protect you.”
“All you really did was punish me.”
If tension was like a sword, that sentence pierced the room straight down the middle. For several seconds, neither girl dared to speak, lest another barb hit them where it hurt most.
“What makes you say that?” asked Rara.
“Let me tell you--magic can’t change a person’s heart. No matter how hard you try to wipe someone out of a person’s life, remnants still stay. You can make a person forget, but you can’t make them fall out of love.”
With a long, nostalgic sigh, Sunset continued, “I knew from the minute I met you that I would fall in love with you. At first, I thought it was just some silly celebrity crush I didn’t even know I had. You have any idea how much that can mess with somebody’s head? Like, I wanted to hold you forever, and I barely even knew you. And once I did know you, I learned that there was so much more time I could have spent with you, so many more memories we could have had together, that could never be brought back. Making a person forget all the amazing times they’ve had with their lover? That’s a punishment if I’ve ever heard one.”
Rara just stood still for more minutes than Sunset could count, reflecting on all that she’d done in the name of protecting her girlfriend.
“I didn’t mean to,” she finally uttered. “I just thought that the best way of making sure people never see the dangerous side of your power was to keep pushing them away. If that casting agency would have known about my complex, I would’ve been cast as Elsa for sure.”
That last remark was dumb, so mind-numbingly dumb. But somehow, it still made Sunset feel at least a little better. Helped her understand the girl that had become such an enigma.
“I know you didn’t mean to,” Sunset replied. “You’re too good for that, Rara. But it’s time you realized how good you were and let yourself believe that your powers aren’t what’s dangerous. It’s your mindset. Have you ever seen a therapist about any of this?”
The singer simply shook her head.
“I never thought they would understand me. I can’t exactly go up to one and tell them I’m a siren.”
“You don’t have to. All you have to do is say you think you’re bad for what happened to you, and they’ll understand. Under all that magic stuff, it’s pretty much textbook victim-blaming.”
Sunset took the stone back from her, pondering what to do with it even after her decision had already been made. She knew now that Rara wasn’t ready for a relationship, never really had been after all the wounds still fresh in her mind. So there was just one way to make sure those same wounds couldn’t reopen again.
“What do you say about restarting this level?” she said, holding the stone out for Rara to see. “If we wipe both our memories at the same time, we won’t have the same issues we did last time. And since I had a feeling you were going to do that anyway, now might be the best time for a new start.”
Sunset had expected Rara to refuse, or at least protest, but instead, she just lifted her head towards the wall and let out a deep sigh.
“So the mermaid and the prince both turn into seafoam. Not quite the happy ending I would have expected, but it’s worth a shot. I’ll channel more magic into it this time, so we won’t forget anything else about this semester that doesn’t involve the two of us.”
She gave Sunset a tender kiss on the cheek, as if doing so would heal both of them to their core.
“Next time, if we still find our way to each other, I’ll know it’s meant to be. They say if lovers were really meant to be together, they’ll find each other in the next life. I know it probably sounds stupid, but you know me.”
“Mermaids are hopeless romantics,” Sunset whispered as she channeled her magic into the stone and the whole world disappeared around her.
And as it did, all she heard was a single song:
You’re too good for me
And I know you’ll never agree
But now I’d like to be free
From the girl who’s too good for me
****
Sunset awoke, as if from a daze, inside the music store she loved. She didn’t remember much about the place, but she did remember the song that used to play there, the one that brought her to her sweetheart.
She didn’t know who her sweetheart had been, even if they had been a boy or a girl, but the song still echoed through her head.
The store was little short of a wasteland now, with Going Out of Business signs littering the ceilings and with half of its inventory depleted. Looking at it just made Sunset feel numb, as if she was never really sure whether or not she had ever been in this place before.
She knew she had. But when?
Being in this store felt like being in a void, especially considering the fact that it was completely silent. No laughter, no chattering, no music. She’d come here to look for the song she’d nearly forgotten, but came up empty.
There was nothing but static all around her, as if she was a TV who didn’t know which channel she was supposed to be on. Everything around her was overwhelming, crushing, desolate.
She should have remembered a time when it wasn’t this way. She should have remembered the face that had beckoned her there.
But right when she was about to, the TV in her mind shut off. The dream was over.
(If there had ever been a dream to begin with.)
Author's Note
Fun fact: the chapter titles were supposed to be completely different until I heard Pompeii on the radio while I was finishing this story up. The lyrics fit too well not to use!
The last part of this is (admittedly) meant to be a little trippy. When I went to a FYE store to make sure I got the "creepy music store" vibes right for this story, it was completely silent, so I knew I had to end with something like this.
This is a little more experimental and risky compared to my usual work, but I hope you all enjoyed it nonetheless!
