And Then We Both Burn Together
Author's Note
Published March 1st, 2020: Self-injury awareness day.
Despite the hurt, damage, and pain, I hope you recognize that I will be your friend despite your perceived shortcomings and flaws. Writing is art given strength by meaning. To the people that don't understand, all it will ever be is just words on a page.
To you, and the people that do, it means everything in the world.
And Then We Both Burn Together
Rain.
Petrichor was the word for it, the word Twilight had taught her. It was the smell of rain against concrete after it had been warm and dry for a while. For some reason, it was stuff like that which stuck around in Sunset’s head for a while, unlike physics or calculus or any of that other nonsense.
It was supposed to be pleasant too. For some reason though, it left a knot in her stomach. Sunset had long since ditched days of naive optimism, but the rain made everything feel wholly foreboding.
Something was wrong.
Her phone buzzed through her jeans, jolting her out of her ruminating. It was from Twilight.
Any word from Wallflower?
Sent 4:34 PM
Sunset frowned, hesitating for a moment to text back a reply.
No.
Sent 4:35 PM
For the purpose of not coming off as overbearing, Sunset had tried to keep some level of distance from Wallflower so as not to make her feel uncomfortable. As the days went on, she realized this was a mistake, and now Wallflower wasn’t answering her phone.
No naive optimism here. The idea that her phone had simply died left doubt in Sunset’s mind.
You should go over to her place and check up on her. I’d come with you but it should be a personal thing I think.
Sent 4:38 PM
Sunset bit her lip, awkwardly tapping her foot as the rain masked the sounds of her anxiousness.
I don’t know her address, do you?
Sent 4:38 PM
No. Give me a second.
Sent 4:39 PM
Were Sunset’s hands shaking? It must have been cold out or something. She wasn’t exactly dressed in insulated clothing after all.
She hadn’t touched her coffee either.
Alright. I managed to find it using her IP address and asking around a little. I’ll send it your way.
Sent 4:51 PM
Sunset stifled a giggle.
You know how creepy that makes you sound, right?
Sent 4:51 PM
I’m not creepy!
Sent 4:51 PM
You kinda are.
Sent 4:51 PM
:(
Sent 4:52 PM
Creepiness aside, she had to give Twilight credit; Wallflower never once gave Sunset a clue where she lived.
Still, Sunset couldn’t imagine how she’d react to someone knocking on her door. Fear? Or maybe something better.
She could only wish for the latter.
Thanks for the help, Twilight. I’ll head over there now. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Sent 4:54 PM
Good luck!
Sent 4:54 PM
Sunset gulped and the shaking had returned. Hopefully, there’d be no luck needed.
Rain.
It hit Wallflower Blush’s window in thick, hail-like beads, rousing her from her half-hearted attempt at sleeping.
Wallflower groaned, forcing her saggy eyes slightly open to peer out the window at the little sunlight that forced its way through the heavy blinds. It was well past noon if she had to wager a guess. In a little while, the sun would likely set.
This was all speculation, of course. She’d unplugged her clock from her wall.
“Great.” She sighed and dragged her carcass out of bed.
Wallflower took a brief pause to look around her room, at the old springy mattress she slept on whose covers hung limply off the side of her bed:
A cheap can of beer, three-quarters still full.
Stacks of half-eaten pizza left to rot in their boxes. Luckily even the bugs didn’t stick around long.
Rows of plants lining the edge of her window sill, with only one even having a sliver of green left in its complexion.
And a steady Hansel and Gretel trail of trash that lead all the way back to the bolted-down front door.
Home.
Wallflower sighed again. Maybe she was hoping that the asbestos-filled walls would somehow aid her distress, maybe even silence the sweet nothings that beckoned to her from the bathroom.
But nothing ever silenced those voices, nothing except her.
Wallflower grit her teeth, trudging into the bathroom with an energetic facade that lasted just long enough for more red-caked gauze to join the dried out pile underneath the nightstand. Though for whatever reason, she couldn’t find it in herself to silence the jeering, bloodlusty voices.
It wasn’t particularly surprising given her track record of being useless. This time, however, a different voice called out to her, one that stopped the tallies from counting her mistakes if only for a moment:
Sunset Shimmer.
Wallflower Blush dropped the one tool worth maintaining into the sink, briefly staring into the remaining mirror shards that still hung on despite her abuse. Her reflection wasn’t her. It didn’t make sense. The antidepressants never created symptoms like this.
Why did Wallflower see her in the mirror instead?
Tap tap tap.
Sunset was certain she’d gotten the wrong place.
It was not as if she doubted Twilight’s disturbing ability to gather information. No, Sunset trusted her with more than she could ever give. Though Wallflower? Living in a place like this?
Well, the smell alone was enough to make Sunset skeptical.
The doors to the apartment complex hung loosely on their hinges, the cacophony of barking dogs dulling as she shut them behind her. The color of the lobby was more suited for a radioactive waste container than a home.
“May I help you?”
It took a second for her to realize that an old woman was talking to her. The clerk spoke with such little enthusiasm that Sunset thought the poor woman was talking to herself.
Sunset approached the front desk with slight trepidation. “Yes. Hello. I’m… looking for someone.”
The clerk audibly smacked her gum. “Does this someone have a name or do we have to play Twenty Questions?”
“Wallflower Blush?”
The clerk huffed, bringing a newspaper up to her face without a second thought. “Sorry, never heard of ‘em.”
It was stupid. It was an idea that only worked in movies.
Sunset slid a twenty-dollar bill underneath the woman’s newspaper into her line of sight. “Maybe this will help jog your memory?”
The clerk paused for a moment, then huffed, begrudgingly standing up from her chair and tossing Sunset a spare set of keys. “Room five-eleven on the right. Bring ‘em back when you’re done.”
Sunset gaped at her, awkwardly turning away before heading toward the nearest staircase. As if to spite her, a dusty maintenance sign hung loosely on the front of an old elevator door. She’d be walking instead.
The dust on the sign was little competition compared to the miniature cobweb condominiums the spiders had formed on the corners of the ceiling. Sunset narrowly avoided a suspicious stain that had likely crusted over since the building’s foundation was laid down.
“Couldn’t you live on, I don’t know, the second floor instead?” Sunset grumbled.
She reached the top before a malicious force of nature could add more floors in between blinks, stopping in front of room five-eleven to catch her breath. With her luck, Wallflower wouldn’t even be home, and she’d have to walk back down the stairs for nothing.
With a deep breath, Sunset knocked on the door.
There was a tapping at the door, just loud enough for her to hear. The hand that knocked seemed hesitant to do it at all.
Maybe if she ignored it, the knocking would go away? Unlikely. If anything, the silence would probably scare them into thinking something had happened to her. Except nothing happened to her. She wasn’t a very interesting person to begin with, after all.
A pit formed in Wallflower’s chest. It was Sunset at the door. Who else could it be? How did she find her? She never gave anyone an address, much less her. Why did she show up? There was no reason—
Tap tap tap.
Another knock. She paused in front of the allegedly functional peephole. Was there something on the other side that she didn’t want to see? Wallflower wasn’t sure she knew the answer.
“Wallflower, are you awake? I’ve come to check on you.”
Wallflower held her breath, her hands twitched.
“...I know you’re in there, Wallflower. You don’t leave your house often. Can you please open the door?”
She felt compelled to move, but her feet were glued to the floor beneath her. Why did it feel like so much effort to take just one step forward?
Or was it always this hard, and she’d finally woken up?
“Well, I guess it could be that you aren’t home after all. Let me know if you feel like talking, I’m going to—”
“Wait!” Wallflower clamped her hand around her mouth, closing her eyes in shame. The damage was done. “J-just give me a second, please.”
She reluctantly unlocked the door, pushing it open at a deliberately slow pace, revealing Sunset on the other side. She was smiling. Something about it didn’t feel genuine to Wallflower.
Sunset breathed a sigh of relief. “Good to see you. I was worried you weren’t gonna answer.”
Wallflower kept the door still mostly closed. It felt like her heart was about to burst from her chest. “W-what do you want?”
“To talk to you, if you don’t mind.”
Wallflower’s eyes narrowed. “I do.”
She tried to swing the door closed again. Sunset wedged her foot in the gap. “Please. Just for a few minutes?”
“Do you want me to crush your foot?” Wallflower growled.
Sunset grimaced, and the door slammed shut once more.
“Well, that was a bust.”
She scratched the back of her head. Sunset wasn’t expecting to get shut down that quickly. At least Wallflower was alive. She’d feared the worst after receiving the first text from Twilight.
Sunset shifted, her eyes widening and she listened to the keys in her pocket jingle. The keys from that negligent clerk, she still had them.
“I’d hate to do this, Wally, but I’m coming in,” Sunset mumbled under her breath. She twisted the key into the lock before she changed her mind.
At that moment, she regretted opening the door.
The light from the hallway spilled into the room, illuminating everything she didn’t want to see. The state of Wallflower’s room made Sheol look like your kid’s first daycare center. Trash piled near the foyer like sandbag barricades, a dozen cockroaches dining on the many food scraps Wallflower likely found herself unworthy of eating.
No cobwebs, but enough dust to make someone with allergies faint, as if Clorox wipes were as precious as gemstones in Wallflower’s world. But it was the varying degrees of red in the room that made Sunset gag the most.
So. Much. Blood.
“What are you doing in here?!”
Sunset blinked. She didn’t know Wallflower had it in her right now, to raise her voice that high.
“I—”
“No, forget it. I am an idiot.” Wallflower sat down on the softest looking thing in the room. Sunset assumed it was her bed. “I am a moron for thinking you’d listen to me. It’s not like it matters what I say anyway.”
Sunset stared at the ground. “You’re not a moron.”
“Well you sure make me look like one right now, don’t you?” Wallflower bitterly replied.
The silence hung in the stagnant air. Sunset walked over to Wallflower and sat next to her. She didn’t react.
“I’m sorry.” Sunset’s voice was soft. “I didn’t want to invade your privacy like that, but it’s getting to the point where I feel like I don’t have the choice.”
“You didn’t have the choice,” Wallflower repeated. “Where did you get the keys anyway?”
“The clerk.” Sunset dangled the keys in front of herself. “I didn’t think I’d need ‘em, but I brought them with me just in case.”
Wallflower looked up at Sunset, her eyes were red. “Just in case what?”
“Just in case I needed them.” Sunset let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding in. “Just in case you did something you’d regret.”
Wallflower let out a throaty chuckle. “Sunset, you’re funny. There’s so much I wish I could take back. If I made myself disappear for good… I don’t think I’d regret that.”
“You can’t mean that.” Sunset stared at her. She wished she was surprised. “There has to be something that keeps you going, right?”
Wallflower hummed to herself. “Yeah, I guess even after all this. There’s one more thing, but only one. If that was gone, well…”
“What is it?”
Sunset flinched slightly as Wallflower laid her head on her shoulder. Her hair was so soft, despite being stringy and unkempt. “I think you already have a pretty good idea of what it is. Even if you haven’t thought about it much until now.”
Sunset reached over and weaved her fingers through Wallflower’s. Her hands were cold, colder than what Sunset was expecting. “No, I guess I haven’t. I still have a lot to learn. Even now, sometimes the only person I think about is me, a nasty habit that I haven’t shaken off from my bullying days.”
“I don’t think you’re like that anymore.” Wallflower’s grip tightened. “You’re the nicest person I’ve ever met.”
Sunset blushed. “I can introduce you to some nicer ones. I… can’t fix the things you’re going through, but I think I can help. I can make this easier for you if you let me.”
“You shouldn’t have to bother with a lost cause like me.” Sunset felt her shoulder grow damp. “Yeah. My life might get better for a little while, but who’s to say it’ll stay like that?” Wallflower sighed. “You’d be better off not wasting your time.”
Sunset wrapped her arm around Wallflower, pulling her in closer. Despite being timid, she didn’t resist. “It’s not a waste of my time, and you will get better.”
“You’re so warm.” Wallflower whispered. “I… how do you know it will? It can’t. This is how it always goes, I get all hopeful and then—”
“Life comes crashing back down onto you,” Sunset replied. “It happens. Life is a balancing act of highs and lows. Your lows have been really low, and I’m sorry. It’s not gonna stay that way. I know it won’t.”
Sunset gently touched Wallflower’s sleeve. “This though? You can’t keep doing this.”
“But I—”
“If you destroy yourself like this, you’ll never get to see all the things you’ll miss. If you won’t do it for your sake, would you be willing to at least consider not doing it for mine?”
Wallflower bit her lip. She wanted to go back to holding Sunset’s hand again. “I… want to try, but the sensation… I just can’t stop, and I don’t know why. It probably doesn’t make sense to you, but in my twisted head it does.”
There was a knife on Wallflower’s nightstand that Sunset now noticed. It was sharp. It must have been well-kept. “I have some idea. I was addicted to power once.” Sunset’s gaze hardened. “Power makes you hungry, except you’re never full. You just keep eating and eating and never feeling like you’re not starving.”
Sunset wove a hand through Wallflower’s hair, gently pulling out the knots along the way. “I only stopped starving when I realized that power wasn’t food. It wasn’t the thing that kept me alive. And I don’t think I’ve lived enough years in my life to fully appreciate that yet.”
“What keeps you alive?”
Sunset smiled. “My friends. They pulled me out of the deepest hole you can dig and never stopped helping me since. And… you.”
She closed the remaining gap between the two of them, and then their lips met. Sunset tried to be as passionate as she could, but Wallflower gave her nothing in return.
It was like kissing a brick wall.
Wallflower looked at her blankly as they broke away. “I was hoping I’d feel something more.” She put a hand on her chest. “I mean… I did feel something, but it wasn’t much. I thought I would feel alive again.” Small tears dribbled down her cheeks. “Am I broken?”
Sunset wiped a tear away with her thumb. “If you think you are, you aren’t. And even if you do, I’d fix you. I’d fix every last mistake that you don’t have, and turn you into the beautiful thing you already are.” She put a hand on Wallflower’s heart.
“I will stand by your side no matter what, because no matter what you might think of me? I’m still your friend.” She paused. "It could be something better, too. You just have to let me in your life.”
It could’ve been Sunset’s imagination, but for the briefest of moments, it looked like Wallflower cracked a small, painful smile.
“I’d like that.”
