The Crazy Girl

by I-A-M

Rating: teen
Tags: Starlight Glimmer, Crossover, Slice of Life, Dark, Sour Sweet, Romance, Equestria Girls
Length: 8113

Starlight Glimmer has never had the opportunity to be 'normal' but despite everything that's happened, she still tries to find happiness that isn't just another hallucination.

Starlight Glimmer has never had the opportunity to be 'normal' but despite everything that's happened, she still tries to find happiness.

The closest thing she can find to that happiness is when she's with Sour Sweet, one of the only people in the world she's ever met who understands her, so despite her fragile grip on reality, Starlight Glimmer wants to stay beside Sour Sweet no matter what.

Maybe, hopefully, Sour Sweet might feel the same.

Part of the Dead by Sunset continuity. Find the group Here.

Published 2020-06-16 01:30:00 UTC
Last updated 2020-06-17 20:14:25 UTC

Chapter 1

It’s hard to describe to other people what it’s like to always be a little unsure that what you’re seeing and what’s real might not be the same thing.

Not that I’m saying I hallucinate a demon clown telling me to ‘kill the whores’ or something like that. That’s movie stuff and, as far as I know, that kind of thing doesn’t really happen, or at least it’s so rare that it’s not worth counting.

What I mean is that, sometimes I’ll see something in the corner of my eye that’s not there. Or I’ll hear someone say something, and maybe that person is there, and maybe they’re not. Maybe they said something and maybe they didn’t. It’s hard for me to tell sometimes, although I have gotten pretty good at telling the difference.

It’s the little things that throw me off, though.

Sometimes I’ll see a person waving at me from the middle of the street, in the middle of traffic, out of the corner of my eye, and I’ll have this brief moment of losing my shit before I realise they’re not really there. Other times I’ll hear a conversation going on somewhere in the background, and not one I’m listening to, mind you, but one that’s just… happening. Like a coffee shop conversation, one that you’re aware of, and that maybe you catch a word or topic of here and there, but you’re not really following it.

But you’re still aware of it.

Some people like me get full-blown voices that talk to them. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or not that that isn’t what happens to me, because there are times I think it would be easier to tell when I’m having an episode if it was just a gravelly demonic voice or something.

The subtle stuff is scarier, to me.

It’s why I don’t drive. I can’t be sure if the car I’m following is really there, or that the exit I want to take is really coming up or if it’s coming up in another quarter mile.

Of course, those are the mild symptoms. When things were at their worst for me, back when I was living with my parents, I would have full-on breakdowns. My mom had me committed when I was sixteen because she was ashamed of me. That’s not hyperbole or anything either. She told me that was why.

Mom of the year, right?

I wish I could pretend that her saying that was just another one of my episodes, but it wasn’t. She and dad left me in that ward so they could keep on with their social lives while I slowly got worse in a padded room until finally, right after one of my procedures, I blacked out and woke up in the Trial Realm called Lery’s Memorial Hospital.

When we escaped, I thought maybe I’d be able to have a life again, or at least I hoped so.

I moved in with Tempest and Sour Sweet, we all had our own rooms, and I would wake up screaming just about every single night. I wasn’t the only one, but I did do it with the most regularity which was kind of humiliating.

Two Months After Exodus Night

“Shut up… shut up… shut up…” I dig the heels of my palms into my eyes.

There isn’t anyone in my room with me. There’s no whispering. There isn’t anyone having a conversation about something as fucking inane as chocolate eclairs at two in the morning in the middle of my bedroom. I’m alone and it’s just my defective brain having another go at me.

After a few moments, the whispering fades, and I let out a sigh of relief.

One that doesn’t even make it all the way out of my throat before it catches like a stone in my airway as I hear something else.

Thump-thump

Thump-thump

A heartbeat appears right on the edge of my hearing. I can feel it in my bones and my guts.

The heartbeat of one of the monstrous Entity’s Fogborn Killers. The beat was faint, but it was there, so it couldn’t be far away. Thirty meters or so at most, which meant it could be right outside our apartment. It could be on the street or the sidewalk moving towards me. It could-

“NO!” I scream the word as I grip my hands over my ears and curl up. “No, no, no, no, no, NO!”

It’s not real. It’s not real!

I’m not in the Trials anymore! Sunset rescued me! She rescued all of us and damned herself in the process, but she still won! I’m not in Lery’s, I’m not in Haddonfield, or Coldwind, or any of those other horrible places haunted by monsters out of a slasher movie!

“Stop it!” I start sobbing as the Heartbeat gets closer.

Thump-thump, Thump-thump, Thump-thump.

Fifteen meters… Ten meters… I have to hide! I have to hide!

I scramble off of the bed and roll beneath it, clapping my hands over my mouth to muffle my breath as the heartbeat becomes deafening.

Thumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthumpthump

There’s nowhere to hide. I can’t run. My room is a dead end, the window is closed too! How could I have been so stupid! I know better than to hide in a dead zone! I’ll have to take a hit… if I let it hit me I might be able to run past it while it’s mesmerised by my blood.

I can’t remember what Trial we ended up on though! Was it the Farm?! I could lose them in the cornfields maybe! Wait. No, this is a house. A house-

A house.

We’re in Haddonfield. The suburban neighborhood from Hell. That’s got to be it! I need to get to some of the fences! Maybe if I break line of sight and then-!

“Starlight?”

Sour Sweet’s voice shatters the heartbeat along with my terror, and all that’s left behind is a deep, ugly pit of shame in my belly.

My heart goes from trying to beat its way out of my chest cavity to merely racing. I force my eyes open and roll to the side to see Sour Sweet peeking underneath my bed with worry-filled eyes. She’s still in her bedclothes; a ratty old teeshirt with a cereal mascot on it that she picked up from a thrift store, and her underwear.

“Hey… are you okay?”

I’m shaking so badly I can’t even speak, so I just shake my head side to side.

Sour frowns, then sits up and walks over to the door. She closes it quietly, doing her best not to wake Tempest before returning to my bedside and lying down on the floor.

Then she scoots underneath the bed until she’s right beside me, and a moment later her hand finds mine.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Sour whispers, and her voice is soft for a moment but- “those bastards can’t get us here.”

I can’t help it. I laugh. It comes out in a half-hysterical crack of giggling, and she smiles at me.

Sour's little vocal quirk is actually comforting to me. It’s kind of nice to know someone else is roughly as messed up as I am. With her it’s a borderline issue. She doesn’t really do ‘grey areas’ and tends to swing really wide on whether or not she likes or hates something.

I’m really lucky she likes me. I don’t think I’d be able to do this without her.

“Sorry for waking you up,” I whisper.

“Oh, you didn’t wake me up,” Sour replies brightly before shifting in tone again. “I can’t sleep more than two hours a night anyway.”

It’s my turn to frown now. “Why?”

Sour Sweet shrugs. “Nightmares, what else?”

I curl up against Sour Sweet and shiver. I wish I’d chosen to wear something other than underwear to bed. It’s February, and while the apartment isn’t terrible, the heating isn’t the best.

“C’mere,” Sour Sweet says quietly, pulling me closer against her.

“Y-You can go back to bed, Sour,” I say. “This is stupid… just… just go, okay?”

“Are you gonna stay here?” She asks, and I nod. The small space is comforting, even if it’s not a good place to sleep. “Then I guess I am too.”

Her tone is caustic, but I smile all the same. I know she isn’t trying to be mean or make me feel worse than I do, because I know how to read Sour Sweet. It’s not about how she says things, or even what she says. It’s about what she does. It’s about her body language.

Sour is trying to tell me she doesn’t want to leave me alone, maybe because she’s worried, or maybe just because she cares in general, and either way I’m grateful.

I’m not going to pretend it’s comfortable under here, but Sour Sweet is holding me so that I’m resting on the soft part of the crook of her shoulder, and she’s made do with putting her free arm behind her head and staring unblinkingly up at the bottom of the mattress.

I’m too strung out to get any rest, but I’m exhausted, so I stay where I am and amuse myself by playing with her long, two-tone pink and teal hair. I curl locks of it around my fingers and tease out knots here and there, and as I do it gets tangled up with my own hair, which is when I notice something that makes me laugh.

“Hey Sour,” I say, holding up a lock of her hair and a lock of mine together. “Our hair-tone matches, did you know?”

The second tone in my hair is very nearly the same shade of teal as hers, and Sour Sweet raises an eyebrow at my antics, eyes the strands, then huffs quietly.

“They’re more of an aquamarine,” she replies testily, but her tone softens a moment later. “But yeah, I never noticed.”

“Maybe it’s the crazy,” I laugh.

“Aww, we can be crazy bitches together!” Sour jeers, then she bites her lip, sighs, and rolls over and hug me harder. “S-Sorry, I didn’t mean-”

“I know,” I hug her back. “I get it.”

That’s when Sour Sweet does something I’ve never seen her do before.

She starts to cry.

I freeze as I feel her begin to shake silently in my arms, and her grip tightens as quiet sobs issue out from her as she clings to me like a lifeline. Warm teardrops fall across my shoulder and lacking any other plans I just hold awkwardly onto her, rubbing small circles over her back as she cries.

The fit only lasts a few minutes, and then she’s dry as a bone again. I wonder if that’s another one of her borderline episodes. At least she isn’t seeing shit like I do.

“Sorry,” she croaks. “I uh… that was pretty fucking humiliating, huh?”

“You found me hiding under my bed from imaginary murderers,” I say dryly. “I don’t think there’s much dignity left with any of us in this house.”

That gets a laugh out of her. A real one, too, which is rare.

“I guess so,” Sour hugs me a little more gently this time. “Thanks for not giving up on me like the rest of my crapshit family.”

“Thanks for uh… sticking around, too, Sour,” I reply.

Her only response is to hug me again.

Chapter 2

So I’m pretty sure I’m gay for Sour Sweet.

That probably shouldn’t surprise me, but it does, and I blame that on the fact that my preferences, vis a vis romantic partners, has never been something I’ve put much thought into for a variety of reasons.

First off, there’s my various and sundry complexes and neuroses to deal with (thanks mom), and that’s not counting my actual psychological disorders.

Secondly, I spent two years in a psych ward and then an indeterminate amount of time being chased by supernatural murder-hobos in a demiplane of despair and torment, so romance wasn’t my primary concern.

Third, and maybe most relevant now, I never imagined I’d meet somebody who was actually willing to put up with me for any period of time.

Not even my own parents wanted to do that.

All of that leads to this point.

It’s early March, and for the past week Sour Sweet has been coming out to the Everfree Verge to practice her archery.

Apparently she was some kind of triathlon sports ace back at Crystal Prep Academy, and archery was her speciality.

Watching her now, I can see it, and it’s also how I discovered my more… physical attractions to her because, wow, pulling back a bow does fun things to the muscles in her back.

Her stance is perfect. She looks like a sculpture of some ancient warrioress as she’s standing in the field some forty meters from the target she hung off of a tree at the edge of the forest.

The model she’s using is a black, carbon fiber compound bow. She talked about it the whole drive down to the Verge and I only understood about a quarter of it. She lost me somewhere around the adjustable draw weight and the axle-to-axle specs, but the way her face lit up talking about it was enough for me.

It’s sunny today, and Sour Sweet is wearing a deliciously flattering outfit. Her torso is clad in a black, form-fitting top that leaves her arms and shoulders bare, and as she draws the arrow across the string of the bow I’m mesmerized by the way her lean muscles flex and pull. She has a kind of long skirt with Neighponese flower patterns inked across it hanging over black leggings that contrast well with her calf-high, side-laced leather boots.

She has a style I can’t help but envy.

THUNK

And a level of skill that leaves me staring.

The moment the arrow leaves her bow, she’s reaching for another. Sour’s quiver is belted to her waist just below the small of her back and hangs at a slight angle, leaving the arrows tipped up just enough to let her pluck one out with two fingers.

She sets it, pulls it back, and my face warms a little as I watch the muscles in her shoulders roll and flex from where I’m sitting on a stump nearby.

Mmm… yup.

Definitely gay for Sour Sweet.

The look on her face is otherworldly too. It’s a kind of calm I never see her wear. Her face is totally relaxed, completely focused, and just…

Beautiful.

She breathes in deep, her chest and back swelling for a moment before she lets out the air and in that instant between breaths—

THUNK

Another bullseye.

“Nice.” I applaud with a wide grin, and Sour Sweet smirks back at me over her shoulder before turning and bowing with a flourish.

Except she keeps going, bowing until she almost upside down before sweeping her hand up, snatching an arrow from her quiver, setting it and firing a shot upside down while pulling a clean cartwheel and landing on her feet.

THUNK

“No fucking way.” I stare in disbelief between a smugly smirking Sour Sweet and the target.

A third bullseye.

“That was just to show off,” Sour says with a cocky wink. “You should see me do that on a moving target.”

“That was insane!” I hop up from my stump as Sour does a few stretches. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“My parents pushed me to be perfect despite my ‘disability’,” Sour replies with air quotes and a grimace acidic enough to eat steel. “That’s code for: Hey shithead! Try to look normal enough that you won’t be a total fucking embarrassment to our rich friends!”

I wince, but nod. After Exodus, Sour and I ended up spending a lot of time together. I was surprised to discover my childhood wasn’t nearly as unique as I thought, which made me feel a little less isolated on the one hand, but on the other I wouldn’t wish the way I’d grown up on anyone, much less Sour Sweet.

But we’re out now. We’re free of the Entity and of our old lives, and that means we can be whatever we want now.

“I wish I had some kind of skill like that,” I say dolefully. “I’m pretty sure outside of the Trial’s I’m just a liability.”

Sour shrugs. “You could learn something, wanna shoot a tree?”

She holds out her bow but I laugh, shake my head, and push it away.

“I… I don’t really trust myself not to shoot something that isn’t there,” I reply. “Even if my episodes aren’t that common, what if I can’t tell in the moment?”

It’s why I’ll never touch a gun. I just don’t trust myself.

Sour takes the bow back, hangs it over her shoulder and plops down on the grass looking thoughtful. I join her a moment later, and scoot a little closer to her until our knees are touching. She doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t even acknowledge it. Sour’s brow is furrowed, and her nose is doing this cute little scrunch that makes my heart flip a little.

I know she’s just thinking really hard, but it’s… it’s really cute.

“Hey, Star, do uh…” Sour trails off, the grimaces, and starts again. “Okay, this is gonna sound weird, but do you ever smell things for no reason?”

“W-What?” I ask with a surprised laugh “You mean like randomly sniff things?”

“No, I mean like-” she waves her hand searchingly for a moment, “-like have you ever just been sitting in your room then smelled like… fucking cow manure or something?”

“Uhm, n-not that I’m aware of,” I reply, feeling a little confused. “Why?”

Sour goes quiet again for a long moment, then looks back up at me.

“Wanna learn Kendo?” She asks, and I stare.

I try to backtrack through our conversation to figure out where this line of questioning came up. Did I hallucinate part of the conversation? Did I blink something out? That wasn’t very common but it had happened before, kind of like a reverse hallucination where I imagine silence instead of whatever is happening.

“You want to give the crazy girl a sword?” I ask with a weak, disbelieving laugh.

Sour sighs and flops backward onto the soft grass. I Watch her for a moment as she breathes slowly, staring up at the blue sky while she gathers her thoughts. She has a hard time with words sometimes, I know. A big part of it is her disorder. Sour Sweet tries really hard to say the right thing, and most of the time it comes out kind of rough, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t try. It’s not her fault her brain is fighting her.

So I lay down next to her while she collects herself and I turn my head so I can just watch her for a little while under the pretense of waiting for her to figure out her words. I mean, I am waiting for her to figure them out, but I’m also admiring her profile.

She’s just, like, stupid pretty.

For someone so strong, Sour has really soft features. She has a cute little button nose, pert lips, and the nicest dimples in her cheeks when she smiles.

“You’re not crazy.” Sour turns her head sharply and without warning, and locks eyes with me. “You’re not… okay?”

“I’m a paranoid schizophrenic who can barely function on my medication,” I say with a blunt little laugh. “I’m a little bit crazy.”

She doesn’t laugh back, instead she scowls, sits up, and rolls over until she’s pinning me to the ground with a dark, angry look on her face that puts a chill down my spine.

“Stop that!” Sour snarls. “You’re not crazy! Your brain just messes up sometimes! That’s not your fault!”

My heart is pounding in my chest as I scowl back at her. “Who cares whose fault it is? I still can’t drive without having a panic attack! If I skip my meds for more than a day I start thinking the garbage man is a private detective hired by my parents to hunt me down! And I can’t even defend myself without wondering if I’m losing it!”

Sour Sweet’s scowl slowly fades. She sits up and gets off of me, and as I’m sitting up and about to apologise she pokes me gently on the nose.

“Hey!” I wrinkle my nose, trying to stop the weird itching sensation from getting to me, and Sour laughs.

“You see things, right?” Sour asks, and I nod. “And hear stuff?” Another nod. “But you don’t smell stuff?”

“Uh, I guess not, why?” I ask, still trying to figure out why she’s so hung up on my nose.

“Well…” Sour looks pensive, then takes a breath, looks up, and straightens her back. “You have audio and visual hallucinations, but not olfactory ones, or tactile ones. I did some research, and if they haven’t manifested by now then your schizophrenia is probably localised away from those parts of the brain, so that should be safe.” My eyes widen a little as Sour rubs the back of her neck awkwardly. “My point is, that if you focus on scent, assuming you’re close enough, you should be able to tell what’s real and what isn’t.”

I’ve never heard her speak for so long without triggering her verbal tic, and the strain on her face makes it clear how much it’s costing to keep herself in line. That aside… research?

“You… did research?” I ask quietly.

Sour shrugs and nods.

“Yeah, what about it?” Sour says. “It’s not like it’s hard to read a book.”

Ah, there’s the tic.

“But you were reading about my disorder?” I ask. “About what’s wrong with me?”

She doesn’t reply, she just curls up, tucks her knees under her arms, and shrugs again.

Even on my meds my paranoia isn’t totally under control. It’s like there’s some rebel part of my brain that’s frantically weaving conspiracy theories, but the meds make it so that part is a lot smaller and has its own little room with a locked door and all the corkboard and red strings it needs to keep itself occupied until my next dose.

The thought of someone looking into me like that, though… it put a weird shiver up my spine that I’m not sure how to account for.

“Why?”

The word comes out before I can stop it, and Sour looks up at me with a confused expression on her face.

“Because you’re important to me?” She says that as if it's the simplest thing in the world. “Why the fuck else would I bother?”

Do normal people cry when they hear stuff like that? Because apparently I do. Maybe it’s because I can’t really remember a single specific instance when somebody actually said those words out loud to me.

Part of me knows I’m important to Tempest and Sour, and Aria, I get along well with Adagio and ‘Nata even though ‘Trial-wise’ I came in a little after Adagio was taken. Sunset… wherever she is… I know I was important enough to her for her to damn herself for me, despite how I treated her at first.

But to hear someone, especially someone like Sour Sweet, just tell me flat out and straight-faced that I’m important to her, important enough for her to take time to learn about me, and to try and understand me, even though I know focusing is really hard for her, is just… too much.

“Woah, woah, woah!” Sour puts up her hands and her eyes go wide as I start sobbing.

When I cry it is not a pretty sight. I get blotchy and snotty, and I always get the hiccups which just makes me sound worse.

Despite my ugly-crying Sour Sweet shuffles over to me and pulls me into an awkward hug, and I wrap my arms around her as she rocks me back and forth. She’s not very empathetic, and she knows it, but Sour does her best, and she does care. In her own klutzy way, she tries to comfort me, and even though I’m sure she doesn’t feel like she’s doing a good job, she is.

I wish I knew how to tell her exactly how much I care. I hope that she knows just how much I appreciate her.

…and that a little bit of me loves her.

“It’s, uh… it’s okay… I think?” Sour pats my back awkwardly. “A-Are you okay?”

I can’t get the words out right, so I just nod frantically while I continue to blubber.

“O-Okay, I guess that’s good.” Sour Sweet actually sounds a little scared, which is kind of funny if the situation weren’t so mortifying.

It takes me a good ten minutes to calm down enough to be coherent again, and by that point Sour Sweet has me practically in her lap. I hate how tired I get after something like this. I just want to curl up in a ball and sleep for a thousand years, but I can’t.

What I can do is nap in the passenger seat of Sour Sweet’s Corvette while she drives us home, and which she convinced Adagio to buy for her on the premise that it would be, and I quote, ‘really fucking cool to own a Corvette’.

That was the entirety of Sour Sweet’s argument, and somehow it worked.

In Sour’s defense, she’s not wrong.

The growl of the engine fills my ears with a gravelly and monotonous hum which, rather than interfering with my sleep, only lulls me deeper into it. My rest is black and dreamless, and to be honest it’s the best sleep I’ve had in a long time. I rarely get more than an hour or so before snapping awake unless I’m utterly exhausted, and even then I’m rarely sleeping well, I’m just too tired to wake up.

I drift in and out of sleep anyway, but not in a bad way. The outskirts of Canterlot are beautiful, made even moreso by the sunset, but that’s not what I’m looking at when I open my sleepy eyes in the brief gaps of consciousness I experience.

I’m looking at Sour Sweet. I’m looking at the way the sun warms her cheeks so I can pick out her freckles. I don’t know if I’ll ever have the courage to tell her how much I love her freckles. Instead, I watch the way her sharp eyes rove over the road with sleep-gummed eyes before drifting off again, only to wake up as the last light of the sun is dipping down.

In that moment, I think I see her look down at me and just… smile.

Did I dream that? That split-second moment where there isn’t a single inch of caustic humor or sardonic, waspish wit. Just a warm, happy smile.

And those pretty dimples.

Before I can figure it out. I fall asleep again, and everything fades away until-

“Hey.” A hand shakes me lightly out of slumber and I force my eyes open.

Sour Sweet is smiling down at me, normally this time. We’re idling at a red light in inner Canterlot, and a glance around tells me we’re less than five minutes from the apartment. I take a slow deep breath as I force myself to sit up from where I’d nodded off on Sour’s shoulder and wipe the little bit of drool from the edge of my mouth.

“I’m up, I’m awake,” I grumble. “For certain definitions of the word, and definitely under protest.”

“Heh, mood, you hungry?”

“I think so,” I stare sullenly down at my stomach. “Half the time I can’t tell, but I don’t think I’ve eaten in the last eight hours…”

“Damn it, Star,” Sour groans as the light turns green and she guns the throttle, and I flinch.

I start to apologise, but before I can get a word out Sour Sweet has her hand in mine and she’s squeezing it tight.

“Sorry,” she says quietly without looking over at me. “Let’s order in and… maybe watch a movie?”

Even sleepy, I can’t deny that sounded kind of nice.

Chapter 3

Our food got to the apartment about fifteen minutes after we did. I consider that to be one of the major upsides of having a bunch of delivery apps on my phone. It helps that I don’t have to pay for any of it, though.

Between Grubber’s skills at manufacturing identities and the absolutely bonkers amount of money that Adagio, Aria, and Sonata have accrued over the years, we don’t have much to worry about financially. With that said, we still all have jobs, mostly so we can stay above-board paperwork-wise.

Tempest, Sour Sweet, and I work night shift security at an industrial park. Tempest is the night supervisor and is surprisingly good at her work. Sour and I are partnered up and our job mostly involves driving our little car in circles and occasionally calling in a break-in which is rare, but it definitely happens.

Tonight is our night off though, Sour Sweet’s and mine, anyway. Tempest picks up extra shifts whenever she can, but not because she needs the money. She works so she doesn’t have to think about Sunset, which I get. I don’t know if that’s the healthiest coping mechanism, but I understand.

We all do.

So it’s just me and Sour Sweet tonight, which isn’t unusual. What’s a little unusual is that we’re sitting on the couch, curled up, sharing a few plates of curry and a giant pile of jasmine rice, while a movie about giant robots punching interdimensional sea monsters from space plays in the background.

I’m not really watching it, to be honest, I’m just enjoying leaning against Sour Sweet while we eat.

Sour isn’t what you’d call a dainty eater and she’d probably eat curry with a trowel if I let her. She also does this thing where she doesn’t give a damn how hot the food is and just inhales it, then immediately starts breathing like an asthmatic dragon while simultaneously trying to swallow the bite she just took so she can take another bite despite knowing damn well how hot the food is.

It’s a disaster and I kind of love it.

“Breathe, Sour, breathe,” I groan as I swat her back repeatedly while she coughs around her latest inhaled bite of red curry. “I swear to god if you die to a bamboo shoot down your windpipe I’m gonna kill you.”

“Ack! Bleh!” Sour hacks and coughs a few times before swallowing, then grabbing a beer and chugging half of it down and sighing in relief. “Ah! That hit the spot.”

“You almost died, genius,” I grumble as I settle back under the blanket and lean against her.

“Pfff, I did not,” Sour wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me closer, and warmth colours my cheeks.

I rest my head in the crook of her shoulder and turn my eyes to the TV, even though I’m not really seeing it. I can’t stop thinking about what Sour Sweet said while we were out today, about my anxieties over my hallucinations, and my sense of smell.

For a moment, I close my eyes and just breathe. I take long, deep breaths, trying to focus on just my sense of smell and try to pick out the individual scents of the room around me. I can smell Sour Sweet, and all her myriad scents, from her cotton candy bodywash to her vanilla lotion. The smell of curry is rich in the air, obviously, but beneath that is the incense that Tempest burns every so often in her room and fills the air with a kind of smoky savor that I actually find calming.

I pick out each scent and to my relief, I can find a home for every one of them in my memories. Sour Sweet is right, my sense of smell might be my most trustworthy sense after all.

“I know I bought dinner but maybe wait til we finish it first?” Sour’s sardonic lilt breaks me out of my half-trance enough to realise I’d pressed my nose right up against her neck.

Scarlet embarrassment creeps up my cheeks for a moment but Sour Sweet just laughs and tugs me closer when I try to back up.

“Sorry,” I mumble against the cotton tee that’s covering her shoulder. “I was thinking about what you said before… about my sense of smell.”

“Oh, yeah…” Sour frowns, then grabs the Gamestation controller and pauses the movie. “Wait here, okay?”

Sour sidles out of the mass of blankets we’d ensconced ourselves in and walks over to her room. I can hear her bustling around in there for a while, sounds that are briefly broken up by muffled swearing before she comes back out carrying something wrapped in folds of leather.

I open up the blankets again in a silent invitation that Sour accepts, and once she’s comfortably beside me again, she pulls up the wrapped object and starts unraveling the leather cord that’s tying it closed.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“It’s a present!” She says with a smile that morphs into a frown a second later. “Hope you won’t have to use it.”

The folds of leather fall loose and Sour Sweet lays the bundle down on the cover between us, pulls the last fold away, and lifts up a two-foot-long, sharpened, bone-handled machete.

“What the hell?” I raise an eyebrow as I reach out and run my finger along the thick, heavy spine of the blade.

“Do you like it?” Sour asks, holding it out. “It doesn’t take much practice, but you can definitely take someone out at the knees with it.”

I wince and laugh weakly. “I… wow, Sour, this is… kinda intense.”

“You don’t have to take it,” she says quietly, and I can see her mood starting to dive. “I just…-”

“No! I love it!” I hold my hands out for it, and Sour smiles again, then holds out the machete, hilt-first, towards me.

I take a firm grip on the weapon, heft it, and find to my surprise that I actually like how it feels in my hands. It’s solid, sturdy, and certain, which doesn’t describe very much about me or the life I’ve lived, but this machete…

“I still practice my bow because I like knowing I can defend myself,” Sour starts in a quiet tone. “Just in case one of those things ever comes back for us.”

A shiver goes up my spine at the sideways mention of the Killers, and I nod.

“So uh,” Sour starts again, then shrugs, “I thought m-maybe you’d feel the same way. I can teach you how to use it.”

I turn the machete over in my hands several times, admiring the hard, sharp lines of it. For some reason, it reminds me of Sour Sweet. Just a little bit. The straight-backed spine of the weapon contrasted by the smooth, lunar curve of the edge, and the sturdy, unyielding weight of it all definitely appeals to me.

It isn’t a graceful weapon, nothing like Sour Sweet’s gorgeous bow and her incredible archery skills, but she’s been honing those for years. I’m more of a scrapper in a fight, so a machete probably fits me better.

Plus, the blade is short. If I have to practice with something to defend myself I’d rather do it with a weapon that will force me to get close enough for me to be certain it’s… real.

“I’d really like that,” I say finally and smile back at Sour. “It’s kind of messed up, but I think knowing how to use it would make me feel a little better.”

“I mean, it is a little messed up,” Sour admits, “but we were also trapped in a murder dimension, so fuck it.”

I can’t help it. I start laughing again, and Sour Sweet joins me a second later.

Objectively speaking, I know how bad off the pair of us are, and Tempest isn’t any better. Maybe Aria and her sisters are handling things a little more in stride because they’re so damn old, but the three of us are just vanilla humans. We don’t have the benefit of like, a thousand years of mental padding to fall back on.

I set the machete back into its leather wrap carefully before folding it up and tying it off with the cord. As far as presents go, this is definitely a weird one, but it’s thoughtful in a very ‘Sour Sweet’ sort of way.

The wrapped machete goes onto one of the end tables, and I curl back up against Sour Sweet for the rest of the movie. I’ve seen it before, and it’s a fun one, but I can’t wrangle my focus enough to care about it right now.

As the final scene is playing out, I start to hear it again.

Thump-thump

Thump-thump

I know it’s not real, but I hold on to Sour Sweet tighter anyway as a familiar prickle goes up my neck and a chill goes down my spine. Back in the Trials, that was always my way of telling if I was being watched or not. Now that I’m out it’s a pretty good indicator that there’s something in the corner of my eye that I should probably try very hard not to pay attention to.

“Starlight?”

Thump-thump

Thump-thump

I clench my eyes shut. This is ridiculous. I know there’s no one there. We escaped, the Entity and his hunters can’t get us now! I’m safe! I’m in my apartment with Sour Sweet and I’m safe!

“It’s okay.”

Sour fingers card through my hair in gentle petting motions, and something about the repetitive sensation pushes away the impending panic attack, heading it off at the pass while Sour hums, soft and wordless, next to me. She can’t hold a tune in a bucket, but I don’t care, it helps, and I cling to her.

“I can hear it,” I whisper, and Sour’s slow, metronomic motions stutter for a moment, but don’t stop. “The heartbeat… and their eyes… I can feel them watching me.”

“There’s no heartbeat, Star,” Sour says. “Believe me, I’d know.”

“But what if there is a heartbeat?” I ask with the painfully high tone of a terrified child. “Not… not now, but one day… what if they come back for us? And what if I ignore the heartbeat because it’s not real, but then it is real, and then they-”

“Then I’ll hear it,” Sour says. “I don’t hallucinate, I just have a mood swing on nitrous!”

“But what if you’re not there?” I ask in a tiny voice.

“Then I guess I’ll never leave you alone again!”

I flinch at the acid in her voice. She’s tired of me… she’s losing patience, I can feel it. I… I can’t…

“I… shit, that…” Sour takes a long breath, sits up straight, and pulls me close. “I… didn’t mean for it to come out like that,” she says slowly and carefully. “I mean it, I… I just won’t leave you alone… ever.”

I stare at Sour as she refuses to meet my eyes. For a moment there… no, I’m certain of it. She did her absolute best to keep her tic under control specifically because she was serious.

The movie rolls to credits in the dead silence of the living room. I’m not really sure what to say, or even if there is anything to say. Part of me wants to just restart it, or start a new movie, or anything so long as it means I don’t have to get up and go back to my room, alone, and try to sleep.

Which is when an idea comes to me. It’s a little nuts, but then again, so are the both of us, so maybe…?

“Hey Sour?” I start cautiously, and she looks down at me curiously. “Can uhm… can I stay with you tonight? Like, in the same bed?”

Much like laughing, blushing isn’t something Sour Sweet does often either, but I really do like when it happens. It’s pretty, and her freckles stand out a little more. I give her my best ‘please’ smile and bat my eyelashes a little for good measure.

To my surprise, she crumples.

“Ugh… y-yeah, okay.” Sour disentangles herself from the covers, stands, and holds a hand to me.

I take it.

To my surprise she lets me lace my fingers with hers. In fact, she actually squeezes back a little. I grab the machete on our way out of the living room, and I follow her, still riding a little endorphin high from being able to comfortably hold hands with Sour, and we go into her room.

I’ve only been inside once or twice because she usually keeps it locked.

Her entire room is freakishly neat, clean, and, in a word, compulsively well organised. There’s a perfectly measured rack on the wall where she hangs her bow and quiver, along with a set of hooks, all screwed into the wall perfectly level with one another, that more quivers hang from.

There are two shelves in Sour Sweet’s room. One is dedicated to books which are organised by subject, and then suborganised by the author’s last name. The other shelve is mostly empty but the few things that are on it are knick-knacks that I can’t readily identify.

A small, wooden comb.

A string of wooden beads.

An origami crane.

Nothing specific, just little objects that seemed to exist apropos of nothing. She never commented on them and I never asked about them. I’m not even sure where they came from, only that one day they weren’t there, and the next day they were.

Her dresser has four drawers, and each drawer has precisely folded outfits, but she only ever chooses four to wear in any given week. I once asked her why and she just shrugged and told me she gets anxiety if she has to choose more than four, and only wearing three outfits a week just seems trashy.

It was a very ‘Sour Sweet’ answer.

Sour’s bed has a grey mattress cover, grey sheets, grey blankets, grey pillowcases, and is made with such perfect, military precision that I swear she does it with a construction level.

Once we’re inside the room, I take a seat on her bed as Sour Sweet goes through her paces of dressing down.

I’ve seen it a couple of times, and it’s a little eerie how it’s always the exact same motions. It’s like, the moment she gets into her room she turns into a robot with a set of pre-programmed motions.

She lets down her hair first, then picks up the comb from the shelf, cocks her head to the left, brushes it all the way through four times, then cocks her head left and repeats the process. Once she finishes, she tidies up the comb, throws any loose hairs into the garbage, and puts the comb exactly back where she found it.

Then she picks up the string of beads and counts them. It’s almost like she’s counting a rosary or something, but not quite. She doesn’t say anything, she just stares at the crane while she thumbs past each individual bead. I have no idea how many times she counts it but it takes her a few minutes to finish.

And then the beads go right back to their place.

Only when she’s done all of that, does she relax, turn, and smile at me.

“Okay, ready?” She asks, and I nod.

She pulls off her shirt and pants, and pulls on a loose sleep shirt. I just strip down to my skivvies like always, burrow under the covers, and shiver at the feel of the cool sheets on my skin as I relax on the right-hand side of the bed.

Sour Sweet joins me a few seconds later, shifts close to me, then surprises me by wrapping her arms around me and pulling me right up against her until my whole body is flush with hers.

This is good. This… this feels good.

I take a deep breath and brace myself. I want to do this. I want to tell Sour Sweet how I feel, and this… this feels like a good time.

“H-Hey, Sour?” I say quietly.

“Yeah?”

“Uhm…” I let out a slow breath and laugh softly. “If… If I said I really like you, would that be weird? I mean like… I know I’m a lot to deal with, but I thought maybe you’d like to try and go out with me and… and… and why are you laughing?!”

My cheeks are flaming red as I pull back from Sour Sweet who is barely managing to stifle a fit of body-shaking hysterics, and a few moments later she gives up and just rolls onto her back and howls with laughter. I’m not sure if I want to have a panic attack, throw up, and punch her in the face, but I’m seriously considering doing all three when she finally manages to get herself together, sits up in bed, and stares at me with a look of total bewilderment.

“Star… Starlight… babe, are you seriously asking me out?” Sour asks, and before I can answer her tone shifts and she jerks her thumb back at the living room. “Because I thought we were on like, date three, out there.”

My jaw hangs open at that.

“W-What?”

“Well… I… I just assumed, okay?!” Sour says a little frantically. “I mean… I thought we just kind of, silently agreed to be going out? And so I’ve been trying to be a good girlfriend and shit and-”

“When did we start going out?!” I wrack my brain trying to think of three whole dates I apparently spaced on.

“W-We went out to lunch and got ice cream last month, remember?” Sour says. “And we went to that antique book store?”

“That was a date?!” I sit back and stare up at the ceiling as I think back to that day.

Wow, now I finally get why Sour was so insistent on paying for everything that day. Also, she was super thoughtful all day, and she complimented my hair, and- godammit I am so stupid!

“And then a couple weeks after that, we went to see-”

“-Casablanca at that old theater,” I hang my head as I guess at the next one, “right… in retrospect that one seems kind of obvious.”

Sour rubs the back of her head and chuckles weakly. “I uh… I guess I never actually asked, though, huh?”

“Well, in both of our defenses-” I gesture broadly between us as I look up at her, “-neither of us are exactly aces when it comes to romance… I’ve never even been on a date.”

I pause, then hang my head again and sigh. “Okay, well, actually I’ve apparently been on three dates, I just wasn’t paying attention.”

“Wow we are bad at this,” Sour laughs. “Gosh, I sure am glad my parents prepared me for all this! Not!”

“I spent ages sixteen to eighteen in a psych ward, so how do you think I feel?” I shoot back.

And she laughs.

God I love her laugh.

I laugh right along with her and before I know it we’re collapsed back on the bed, cackling, and Sour Sweet is pulling me into her arms again.

“Okay, so… girlfriends?” Sour asks. “ I promise I’ll tell you when we’re on a date next time.”

“Uh, thanks, and yeah,” I move up and kiss her on the cheek, “girlfriends sounds good to me.”

“Cool.” Sour kicks at the blankets and settles both us underneath them, then pulls me snug against her.

I shiver in delight as she brushes her lips over my forehead

“Goodnight, Sour,” I say softly, and hug my new(ish) girlfriend tight. “And thanks for putting up with me.”

“Anytime, Star,” Sour says.

For the first time in a long time, I don’t wake up to the thunder of a Killer’s heartbeat that night. Maybe because I can hear Sour Sweet’s heartbeat instead. I like to think that’s the reason… even if it’s not true.

Whatever, I’m crazy. True has variable definitions for me. Maybe this is just one of the upsides.

Starlight Glimmer… crazy in love.

Yeah. I like that.