After Sunset

It’s strange how clearly I can remember the taste of the Fog. It’s not because I was sprinting through it for months while I was working Chase, either. I could remember the taste before that, ever since Sunset trapped herself in the hell of the Trials.

I remember waking up to the taste of ash and blood in my mouth the day after, and every day following. It’s a dry, airy taste that’s oddly pleasant. It doesn’t cloy around my tongue or stick to the inside of my cheeks or overwhelm me by choking out the air.

It’s just a taste.

That’s what the air in the Trials tastes like.

Like Fog.

I shift my arms and legs but something is holding me down. I think if I was more lucid I’d be scared

Slowly, I force my eyes open and look around. There’s just darkness. Just darkness and Fog drifting around me in lazy whorls of shadowspun banks that coil around my legs before flowing away and then back like little tides of air.

There’s light but there’s no source, and after a moment I recognise the effect. It’s that weird, half-light of the Trials. No matter where we looked in that ugly place, there was always light. Never enough light, but it was never pitch black, and yet there was no source for the light.

My eyes adjust slowly as I look down at myself.

I’m in a chair.

No, not a chair. A smile tugs at my lips as I realise that what I’m sitting in is one of those chair-desk hybrids that fill the classrooms of Canterlot High and just about every classroom of every public school in the country.

There are scratch marks all over the surface of the desk. The remains of a hundred and one bored students making their mark on a mass-printed piece of faux wood while the history teacher drones on and on about something that’s probably irrelevant and definitely inaccurate.

Six stick figures have been scarred into the desk, one is kneeling and covering its crude face with pinstick hands while the other five surround it, looming over it.

I try to raise my hand to touch the picture but something stops me. I can’t move my arm. I can’t move either of my arms, actually. Or my legs.

“What…” I mumble around a cottony tongue as I look around. “I… I can’t move…” I jerk and shift, but nothing works and panic begins to set in. “What’s-!?”

“Oh hush.” A painfully familiar voice speaks from across the room and I jerk my head up to stare over at its source.

A moment ago the space around me had been empty of anything but the strange half-lit darkness and the swirls of ash-and-copper Fog, but now, just a few meters away, there’s a desk. A teacher’s desk.

Seated at that desk is the nightmare ruin of Sunset Shimmer.

Her hair falls in matted strands around a face that’s just like I remember; fever-red, sunken, struck through with ice-blue veins, and yet somehow still wickedly beautiful. Her eyes are burning cerulean embers. That ragged coat is clad tightly around her, secure at the waist, and the edges and cuffs tattered with decay. Sunset has her feet propped up on the metal desk as she reclines lazily back in the teacher’s chair while she picks at the silver-bladed fingers of her right hand with the knives of her left.

And she’s staring at me.

Her mouth is split into a gash of a smile and she’s staring at me.

“Are you real?” The words come out as soon as they form in my mind, and her smile widens. “Or are you… am I just crazy?”

“Narrow-minded as usual,” Sunset drawls in a halftone warble like she’s speaking through a damaged microphone. “Real or crazy? Why are those two things mutually exclusive?”

Her fingerblades rasp against one another as she laughs and sits up to lean forward on her elbows against the desk.

“You are crazy, Dash,” she says with a bitter laugh that sounds far away for a moment before distorting. “And it’s the bad kind. You’re not just crazy, you’re toxic, but I don’t need to tell you that, do I?”

She slams her hands palms down on the desk and scrapes her fingers along the surface, and metal on metal screams. Sparks fly and briefly illuminate her snarl of a grin like an open wound filled with too-sharp teeth.

I look away. I look down.

The image on the desk is changed. Instead of the five figures surrounding the one, now there are hundreds of figures scrawled all over the desk, jeering with crude cartoonish grins. They’re all surrounding a single spot on the desk that’s clear save for the lone and isolated final figure, standing on a flat plane, with its head inclined down like it’s staring into a deep abyss.

“You got close and what happened?” Sunset hisses through a static rasp.

“You d...died,” I answer through trembling lips. Tears are forming at the edges of my eyes as I stare down at the scarred images, and to my eyes, they seem to cavort and cackle at the lone figure.

“If only,” Sunset said hollowly. “If only.”

“I’m sorry,” I sob, clenching my eyes shut. I want to clap my hands over my ears to drown out the taunting voices.

They’re all voices I recognise, too. I can hear the Diamond Dogs. I can hear Flash and his bandmates. I can hear the accusing voice of Pinkie, the condemnation of Applejack. The betrayed tremor of Fluttershy’s teary words cuts deeper, and Rarity’s derisive hiss is like a swift sharp cut along my throat.

But the worst voice is mine, saying the same word over and over, echoing in my head the same way it must have echoed in hers while she was staring down over the edge of the roof of Canterlot High.

She-demon.

SHE-DEMON.

I’d reached into her chest, dug into the worst parts of her shame and guilt, and then tore them out and threw them into her face.

“Just. Like. Mommy.” Sunset says with a raw, distorted cackle, replying to my thoughts as if I’d said them aloud. “She would be so proud.”

“I’m sorry!” I’m shaking so hard but I can’t move. My limbs feel like they’re nailed to the armrests and legs of the desk-chair hybrid.

The sound of chair legs scraping against the floor echoes in the Fog, and I look up past tear-stained vision to see Sunset pushing away from the desk and standing up. Her coat wavers around her in an unfelt wind, and her body is indistinct and fuzzy, and there’s a strange hitch to her movements like I’m only seeing fragments of frames as she advances on me.

There’s something wrong with her. More than just her mutilated appearance and nightmare shape. Even that form of Sunset had retained some of her old dynamism. Sunset was fire and flame and passion, she would burn everything, including herself if it meant accomplishing her goal.

This Sunset feels different.

“You’re close now,” she crackles through the invisible static. “You’re so close to the real thing… closer than anyone has ever been from this side of the Wall.”

No, not different. Or rather, this Sunset doesn’t just feel different she feels almost hollow.

The Fog curls and twists around her, distorting over her half-there shape and other, stranger shapes that cling to her like barnacles in the unlight of this ugly place. Those embers of blue, weren’t they like fire before? Weren’t they seething like a furnace cast open and glaring out at the world with spite and hatred?

These are like flood lamps. Cold and harsh, but ultimately just bright.

She reaches out and touches my face with those long, sharp fingers, and hate bubbles up through my chest and heart. I know what her touch feels like.

“Who are you?” I snarl. “What are you?”

What little animating life is left in the not-Nightmare Sunset fades out of her like water through the gaps in the sieve, leaving behind an eerie stillness. Her face is frozen in expressionless regard, and her fingers are stopped still as the grave.

Slowly, a doll-like smile spreads over her face. It’s unsettling, how no other part of her face moves but her mouth. Just her mouth splitting open slowly and inexorably.

So-close. Too-close.

The static voice hisses from somewhere around Sunset. It didn’t come from her, and her lips never moved, and now any and all pretense is gone. Sunset’s false voice is gone from the static overlay and all that’s left is that ugly, flanged rasp.

“WHAT ARE YOU?!” I roar, straining against my invisible bonds. Rage is pouring off of me, and the ash-and-blood taste of the Fog is rich on my tongue.

Who. What. Why.

The voice is disjointed, and I realise as it’s speaking that I’m not hearing words. I’m hearing… something else. A soul-chilling alien chittering that rattles at the back of my mind, vibrating my skull and teeth until words appear behind my eyes and underneath my ears.

Know-you. Daughter.

A static wash on unease settles over me as the thing that was Sunset lifts from the ground like the lure of some kind of monstrous anglerfish.

“Was… was it always you?” I ask hollowly as I follow the rising facsimile of Sunset. “The whole time it- was it you?”

There’s something protruding from not-Sunset’s back. Like a spine made of spider’s legs and scorpion stingers. It stretches out from her back, curving and arching upwards into the sky above us, and I follow the faint outline of it and…

“Oh…” the sound is soft and leaves me in a quiet groan.

The sky isn’t really a sky. It’s a twisting roil of black chitinous limbs, twitching mandibles, and snapping stingers. It’s a torment of Fog and impossible alien insect things writhing around one another endlessly. I know this thing. I’ve seen it before, even if my mind had blanked it out before this.

The Thing In The Dark.

I remember seeing it after I died the first time on the hook. I remember looking up into the endless black of the sky as twitching legs and stingers pulled me apart, strand by strand, stealing something out of me every time it did before putting me back together less than I’d been before.

Will you-Won’t you?

“W-What?”

Not-Sunset smiles her doll’s smile as she hangs limply, her lamplight eyes gleaming like unfocused blue spotlights.

Daughter. Hunter. Priest.

My stomach sinks as I realise what it’s asking.

Will you be mine?

I close my eyes and shiver. Was this how it had been for Sunset? Pinned in place and staring up at something that made my brain want to tear itself out of my skull and run gibbering into a corner?

Not-yet.

I freeze as the thing rattles and rasps the words.

Soon.

“W-Wait, I-!” My words die as a sharp crack of pain crosses my cheek. I blink and look around, but I can’t find the source. There was nothing that-

Crack.

Another slap strikes me from the other side and a voice reaches me coming from far, far away. A familiar voice, thick with phlegm and burnt by cheap cigarettes crawls into my ears and settles in there, and I grimace as the Fog and darkness fades, and real light filters into my vision.

“Time to wake up, kid.”

The light in the small room is blinding as I open my eyes, my real eyes this time, and look up. We’re inside the office of the train station, I recognise that much at once, although it’s almost empty of the furniture and little knick-knacks I’d collected now.

I guess Chase must’ve figured out more than I gave him credit for. He probably tossed the place trying to figure out where I’d gone.

Speaking of Chase.

“Mornin’, kid.” Chase is seated backward in a metal folding chair, leaning his crossed arms on the back.

Two of Chase’s silent, thuggish goons are flanking me with a third one standing behind me, and Chase himself is smiling that easy, smug smile of his when he knows things are going his way.

“Ch-” I cough and roll my dry tongue around my mouth before trying again. “Chase… uh, how’s it going?”

I try to move as I speak, but I’m zip-tied to the metal chair they’ve brought. There are three ties on each arm, all tugged tight and digging painfully into my skin, and two ties each on my legs that are biting just as deep.

Chase ignores my struggles and shrugs as he sits up. In one hand he’s cradling a short cane. It’s old, and the length of it has a water-warped twist to it, but the head of the cane is a thick, strong metal. Chase hefts the cane briefly, turning it over and over in his hands like he’s admiring it before looking up at me.

“Could be better,” Chase says after a moment. “But thing’s’re startin’ to line up, now, y’know?”

“I uh… I was in the hospital-” I start, but Chase waves off my words as he stands.

“Yeah, I heard,” Chase says over me. “Talk t’Millie ‘bout it… real talk, Dash, I thought you were a goner for a bit there, but a friend’a mine that works in the morgue told me ya made it through okay.”

He stands, the cane settling at his side to tap lazily against the floor as he closes the distance between us and kneels to look me in the eyes.

“Thought you’d gimme a call when you were out, kid,” Chase says quietly. “Figured you’d give old Chase a ring, but ya didn’t… then I find out ya left and dropped off the face’a the goddamn city.”

I swallow hard at the cold tone of his voice.

He smiles though, and it’s an ugly thing. “But I knew you’d be back here eventually… ya ain’t smart enough to get yer own stuff and trust me kiddo I know your type.” He taps my forehead lightly with the cap of the cane. “Junkies. Addicts. Fuckin’ cowards. They always come back.”

Chase stands until he’s looming over me, and gestures around the office with the cane. I hate the look in his eyes. They’re cold and piercing, just like hers. Just like Moms. Judging me, telling me I’m worthless. He doesn’t have to say it out loud. She didn’t either.

I already know.

“You’n me had a good thing here, Dash,” Chase says with mock remorse. “Shame ya had to go and fuck me like ya did. You goin’ AWOL cost me a shitload of money and made me look like a chump.”

“C’mon, Chase, it’s…” I look around at the empty room before looking back up at him. “You got your stuff back, you got my money I bet too! Just… Just keep it! I’ll even work free for a while, alright? I- I just had some shit happen!”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, kid,” Chase says in a softening voice. The cane clicks hard against the floor as he reaches his free hand out and settles it on my head. “I ain’t mad atcha, alright? But you messed up bad, so I tell ya what: I’m gonna tell ya a story, and then we’re gonna make this right, you’n me, okay?”

He steps away from me, reaches behind him, flips the chair he’d been in before around, and sits down, laying the cane across his legs.

“See this?” He says, gesturing at the length of the cane. “This belonged to my pops, and kid, let me tell you, he used to beat me silly with this damn thing.”

My eyes widen as I stare at it, then look back up at him. He’s not grimacing or frowning though. Chase is smiling.

“Used to hate that old bastard for it too,” Chase continues. “Seems like all it took was me makin’ one small mistake and he’d set ta whalin’ on me with it.”

His smile fades for a moment as he runs a hand up and down the cane for a moment. I have no idea what to say so I don’t say anything at all. I’m not even sure I could say anything past the stone that’s settled in my throat. I want to run, to get out of here, to fall back into the Fog and get as far away from here as possible, but I can’t move!

“F’the longest time I didn’t get it, and I thought the old man just hated my guts,” Chase says quietly. “But, when I got older and little wiser, I realised he weren’t beatin’ me ‘cause he hated me, he was beatin’ me to teach me a lesson about principles.”

Chase stands again, and his meaty fist closes tightly around the shaft of the cane.

“Ch… Chase, c’mon,” I say, and I hate how my voice shakes as he steps closer. If I were in the Trials right now, I’m sure I’d be hearing a heartbeat like thunder in my ears. But there’s no trial. No hook.

No coming back from this one.

“Principles, kid,” Chase repeats somberly. “That’s yer problem… just like every other fuckin’ junkie, you got no principles. No spine. That means the moment you hit a wall, ya give up.”

He gestures sharply with the cane with every other word, jabbing it close to my face again and again before finally pausing and blowing out a slow breath.

“I like you, Dash, I really do,” Chase says. “But what I gotta do now? It ain’t about likin’ you or not, it’s about principles.”

Chase kneels again and puts a hand on my arm.

Then he stands sharply, raises the cane then brings it down with a deafening crack on my forearm, and I scream as the bone breaks under the weight of the blow.

“Principles!” Chase snarls, then grabs my other arm and cracks the head of the cane down again, shattering the bone, dragging another scream from me as I thrash in the chair.

“This is what happens when you half-ass your shit, kid!” Chase shouts as he smacks the head of the cane lightly into his palm with a steady beat. “You don’t commit! You fuck around, then you mess up, and then you think you can just keep fuckin’ around!”

In a single motion, Chase swings the cane down in an arc to crack against my collarbone, and I feel it break with a sharp, meaty splinter. Blood spills from my mouth as I scream and bite my tongue. I can’t move! I can’t move! I Want to get out, to get back into the Fog, to go anywhere but here!

The cane cracks against my jaw and something snaps as my head jerks to the side. Blood wells and spills down my front as I sob through the agony. My jaw is broken. I know it because I can’t close my mouth properly. It’s probably shattered, actually, but I can’t tell for certain. The pain is all one deafening noise now.

Chase is breathing hard, his face is red and his chest is rising and falling with bullish grunts. The red heat of agony is contrasted with the cold bite of metal as Chase pushes the tip of the cane against my forehead and pins my head to the back of the chair. I stare at him through glazed eyes, barely able to focus through the pain.

“You’re a worthless junkie with no backbone, Dash, but I thought you could be better,” Chase says grimly. “More fool me, I guess.” Then he looks up and past me towards his thugs. “Hey, bring out the shit.”

I’m vaguely aware of movement behind me, but it barely registers through the pain in my face, neck, and arms.

“I know you use like a fiend, kid,” Chase continues, his breath evening out as he taps my head a few times with his cane before stepping back and letting me loll forward. “So, since I like ya, I’ll tell ya what I’m gonna do…”

He trails off as one of his heavies comes back and holds out a meaty paw to Chase with a monosyllabic grunt of: “Boss.”

The thug’s voice is like gravel falling out of the back of a rusty dump truck as he passes something over to Chase.

“Here we go.” Chase sets the cane down, propping it against my broken right arm as he turns to me with a broad grin holding four syringes, two in each hand, and each one nearly full.

I’m gonna let you go out riding the biggest high you’ve ever felt, kid,” Chase says calmly. “How’s that sound?”

Chase holds his arms out wide and settles his thumbs across the plungers of both sets of syringes before taking aim at either side of my neck. I jerk and twist in the chair as he advances trying to back up, trying to get away, trying to do anything.

The chair won’t budge. I don’t know if they bolted it to the ground or if the guy behind me is just holding it down, but it doesn’t matter.

In the end, I can’t move.

“G’bye, kid,” Chase says. “Nice knowin’ ya.”

The needles pierce my skin like the bite of an enormous insect. They sink into vein and artery, and Chase pushes down hard with both thumbs, and fire sears into my body. My body is burning and freezing. Every inch of me is going numb and buzzing and screaming at the same time as I go rigid in the chair, and… and…

And everything is quiet.

The pain is gone, and a chill sinks into me. My eyes, which had rolled into the back of my skull, come back into focus as I stare up at the dinghy ceiling of the train station office.

The ceiling is gone, and in its place, is a swirling mass of darkness. In the shadows, shapes move like insect legs and stingers, twitching spasmodically around one another.

Chase’s face is a frozen sneer of violent glee, and the world around is painted in the gray monochrome of the Fog.

So-close.

I work my shattered jaw weakly, and a wretched sob is all that comes out.

Everything parts around the chitinous mass of arachnoid limbs and stingers that descend around me from the ceiling. They twitch and chitter, and in their rattling, I hear him, The Thing In The Dark, speaking to me.

Will you-Won’t you?

“W-Will… What?” I mumble through a welter of bleed and split lips.

Noxious child.

Toxic child.

I start to cry. I can’t help it. I start to cry as the chittering limbs descend closer, but instead of the sharp pain and the unraveling sensation of not that always follows being taken by the thing, the cool shell of its limbs come to rest against me almost gently.

“Wu-Will I… b-be like… he-her?” I choke the words out past my broken sobs. “Will I… b-be better?”

Silence follows my question, a silence broken only by the twitch and chitter of alien limbs. I’m not sure if it has a concept of better. All I know is it’s waiting… waiting for me to choose.

All my life, I’ve always had my choices made for me. At least it feels like that. It feels like nothing I do is mine, and that it never will be, but… but not this time. This time I get to choose.

So I look down briefly. I look at the thick, heavy hands of Chase and the empty, depressed syringes filling my veins with poison, and decide.

“Whu-What… What will I… b-be?” I ask.

My Daughter.

My Harvester.

The limbs twitch and cavort around me and it almost makes me laugh. They seem happy, although I’m not sure how I could even tell. Then they jab and stick into me, and suddenly all the pain goes away as ambrosia floods my veins.

My Blight.

It’s liquid gold in my eyes and on my tongue. Light like dawn in the dark spills through every capillary and muscle. My limbs wrench and twist, my arms snap and mend. A bellowing roar like the end of the world rips out of my throat as my body unravels and a million limbs like spider legs and scorpion stingers weave me back together and the small office is filled with Fog and screams.

My right hand tightens around a length of wood.

No, not a length of wood. A wooden haft. The haft of a long cane capped with a steel handle. I look down at it, frowning. When had I gotten Chase’s cane? When… When had I gotten out of the chair?

How had I gotten out of the chair?

I look back up and around. I’m standing in the lobby hall of the train station. I turn and look behind me. I’m right outside the sealed metal door of the office. The office where Sunset had lived and slept. Where I had lived and slept.

The place where I… where…

Something is wrong. I step back from the door and look down at myself. I don’t recognise my clothes. I’m wearing some kind of long, mantled coat made from dark brown leather. There’s a hood thrown from my head draping down my back. My hands are clad in thick leather working gloves, and my boots are the same style, sturdy and steel-toed.

And at my hip, there’s a thick, heavy pouch, the covering flap of which is secured by a sturdy cord of leather. I unwind the cord and let it fall loose, lift the flap, and…

“These are…” I trail off as I run my fingers over the stainless steel plungers of two dozen carefully maintained, sleek, and shiny syringes.

Twenty are empty. Four are not.

I draw out one of the four, and stare into the gleaming golden fluid carried within. It’s bright and beautiful and just holding it I can feel the rush it carries inside of it, waiting for me to use it.

Except…

I lower the syringe and slide it back into the leather carrying brace. I told Fluttershy I was going to try.

“Principles, huh?” I say quietly.

A smile traces over my lips as I raise the cane and turn it over in my hands. Maybe Chase had a point. Maybe up to now I just never knew what my principles were because I’d never had the chance.

Thanks mom.

Tightening my grip on the cane, I lower it and let out a slow breath that comes out easier than I can remember. I haven’t breathed this easy in a long time.

My hand closes fully as the cane dissolves away into Fog. My long coat, gloves, boots, and pouch, go with it, leaving behind my jeans, sweatshirt, hoodie, and converse, and I shove my hands in my front pockets as I step away from the office.

I won’t go back in there.

In fact…

Drawing out the key, I look down at it, smirk, turn, and pitch it into the distance.

Probably better that no one ever goes in there. Not for a good long time, anyway. After all, I don’t really need to know what happened to Chase and his three goons, just like I don’t need to know why only four of the two dozen syringes are filled.

The familiar grunt and growl of Fluttershy’s van hits my ears as the lumbering old beast rounds the corner up the road, and I smile and raise a hand to flag her down.

I feel better than I’ve felt in a long, long time. For the first time since I escape the Trials… no, maybe for the first time since that bullshit with Anon-A-Miss started and the whole world started falling apart, I feel kind of okay.

Maybe because now I know.

I know she’s still out there. I know she’s going to be okay because I’m… I’m okay. I’m just fine. I’m better now. Because I’m like her. I’m like Sunset, and it feels good. The leather pouch at my hip, invisible and not-quite-real, is waiting just beyond my fingertips on the edge of the Fog, and it’s a comfortable weight.

As Fluttershy frantically parks the car and starts scrambling out of the front seat, I can’t help but think about the pouch.

Twenty empty syringes… well, I’m sure there are more people like Chase, right? Like that girl at Danse Macabre, the pusher.

“RAINBOW?!” Fluttershy sprints across the asphalt to me and slams into me with all the force of a dainty bulldozer, and I chuckle weakly as I wrap my arms around her.

“Hey Flutters,” I say with a laugh.

“You’re okay,” she sobs, clutching at me tightly. She says the words over and over again, and I know she’s just saying them for herself. To convince herself it’s true. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I should never have left you with her! I should’ve known-!”

“It’s okay!” I cut her off, pulling her tight against me, and she freezes. I don’t blame her, even I’m surprised at how… easy… my voice sounds now. “I’m okay.”

Fluttershy pulls away from me, her blue eyes wide as she stares at me. It’s like she’s searching… looking for something, maybe.

“Sorry I ran,” I say quietly, not looking away. “I just- I had some things to figure out, and I think… I think I might’ve actually done it.”

“Done what?” Fluttershy asks cautiously.

“No more drugs, okay?” I say quickly. “No more drugs and no more… no more of the other thing either.”

I don’t need her hand anymore. I don’t need the knives. I’m like her now. I’m better, stronger, and just… I’m better.

“I promise,” I finish, slipping my arms around her. “I’ll do better this time around.”

Fluttershy looks at me skeptically for a long moment. I don’t blame her for not believing me, but I can also feel her wanting to trust me. She wants what I’m saying to be true, and it is. It is true. I don’t need that stuff anymore, I’ve got something more than that. I’ve got something better.

Principles.

I lower my hand to the side of my hip where the pouch lay just beyond the Fog.

Yeah… Principles, and purpose.

“Okay,” she says after a moment. “You… you know I’m going to be checking in okay? And- Oh!” her face falls. “I… I don’t know where- m-maybe Pinkie can-!”

“I’m going back to my dad's,” I say over her rambling, and Fluttershy freezes.

“You’re… but, Rainbow, you know that…” Fluttershy doesn’t have to finish the sentence.

“Yeah well-” I grimace as I consider how the next couple of days are going to go- “I can’t avoid mom forever.”

“She won’t let you leave,” Fluttershy says softly. “She’s a monster.”

I smirk at that.

The taste of ash and blood is a welcome breath of flavor on my tongue as I roll it over in my mouth. Mom isn’t a monster. I know that now. My hand tightens to a fist behind Fluttershy’s back and for a moment I feel it close around the phantom of a cane.

“She won’t stop me,” I say quietly. “Not now, and not ever again, okay?”

Fluttershy frowns softly, then reaches up to brush a hand over my cheek and up to my brow to brush away a few strands of hair.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” She asks, her voice low and gentle.

“Yeah,” I say, taking a deep breath as I do and tasting the rich, gray death of the Fog fill my lungs.

“I’m just fine.”