After Sunset

“...so I told them they could them they could go fuck themselves and walked right out of the school,” I finish, chuckling dryly before shivering.

Canterlot is a cold city, but it’s especially cold in the winter, and even moreso at night. Even with a full winter coat, heavy pants, and a beanie tucked around and over my ears, the wind still bites hard. I wrap my arms around myself and rub at my limbs, trying to coax some warmth back into them.

“I think you would’ve laughed, y’know?” I continue. “The look on Principal Celestia and her sister's faces? They looked like I’d just slapped them.”

The gray stone in front of me is as silent as always. She never answers, no matter how much I talk to her, but I don’t expect her to. I figure that, even if she were alive and right here, I could sit next to her and talk for hours and she still wouldn’t say a word to me or even acknowledge me. She hates me, after all, so really it’s almost like she never went away at all.

I shake my head and shoulders, shedding a layer of snow from them, then reach out and wipe the dusting of frost from the flat plane of stone.

Here Lies Sunset Shimmer

-In death may she find the peace-

-That life denied her-

The words are revealed under the sweep of my mittened palm.

“Dad’s pretty pissed,” I say as I lean back. “He’s all ‘Rainbow Dash you have to get your diploma!’ and ‘You can’t just drop out!’ and all that bullshit, like any of that crap matters.”

I stare at the stone, tracing over the epitaph again and again. I’ve read the words so many times, but it still doesn’t feel real.

Because it’s not real.

Sunset isn’t dead.

“So it’s been, uh,” I wrack my brains for a moment as I count down, “like, three months since you closed the portal at Canterlot High… fortunately, that crazy guy that Princess Twilight called up, Discord or whatever, was able to reopen it… but it’s permanently closed now.”

I sigh quietly, remembering Princess Twilight’s explanation. She’d stayed in our world long enough to see to Sunset’s funeral and to make sure everything was in order magic-wise, and then had Discord tear open the portal.

But, she’d said, it wasn’t a permanent one anymore.

Whatever Sunset had done to get everyone out of her collapsing Trial, it had permanently changed the portal inside the statue. Or more specifically, it had destroyed it.

‘It’s not a doorway anymore,’ Twilight had said solemnly, ‘it’s a wound. And if it’s left alone it will fester and grow. Discord and I have to seal it for the good of everyone.’

“You’d have found another way,” I say quietly, curling up and resting my chin on my knees. “I know it… I know you would have figured out how to keep the door open.”

Sunset was- is- smarter than Princess Twilight. I was sure if Sunset had put her brain up to it she would have figured out some half-baked crazy way to fix the portal that would have worked anyway.

Tears track little paths of rime down my cheeks that I scrape away with the back of my mitten.

“I miss you, Sunset,” I say softly. “A-And I know you hate me, but I s-still love you, okay? I always will.”

I’m glad I dropped out of Canterlot High. I hated it there. Everywhere I went it was just another reminder of Sunset. I couldn’t walk past her locker without choking up. I couldn’t go into the locker rooms without remembering the time I found her crying in the showers. Every time I would go into a class that I used to have with her I’d look at her empty seat and it would take everything I had just to keep from losing it.

And no one else understood.

No one… not Pinkie, not Fluttershy, not Applejack or Rarity, loved Sunset Shimmer the way I did.

None of them betrayed her the way I did.

“We uh… we went to that old abandoned train station office last week, by the way,” I say quietly as I shove a hand in my coat pocket and pull out the photo I’d put there. “I wish you’d told us where you were living… we’d’ve figured something out, y’know?”

Carefully, I flatten out the photograph and sniffle softly as I look over it.

All six of us are there, starting with Pinkie on the left, then to Applejack and Rarity with their arms slung over one another, and then Fluttershy bunched up in the middle looking awkward as always, then Sunset, with her mouth turned up in that cocky come-at-me-bro smirk, and then right beside her is me.

I remember how I had my arm around Sunset’s waist, not her shoulder, and how Sunset hadn’t tried to change that. She’d put her arm around me instead, and pulled me close. I had my head on her shoulder, and we were both smirking at the camera. All of us were smiling and happy.

Cold tears scatter over the photo.

“There wasn’t much there,” I say. “Princess Twilight found a stash of your stuff and let us keep a few things. I think Rarity took an old quill, like one of those ones people wrote with way back when… did you actually write with that?” I chuckle a little at the thought. “Pinkie took an old chipped coffee mug that looked like you used to use it, it was kind of gross, but…”

Figures Pinkie would take the thing that she could put coffee or hot chocolate in.

“A-Anyways, Fluttershy found a little blossom she’d given you as a present apparently, and it was still alive,” I sigh and shiver again. “She saw it and she just, like, fuckin’ lost it. Just started screaming and crying like everything hit her all at once. Who knows… maybe it did.”

I don’t talk about how I’d almost lost my shit right there too. I’m still a little jealous of Fluttershy, especially since after all that she seemed a lot better, like she’d gotten something off of her shoulders.

Lucky her.

“I guess you took really good care of it,” I continue. “It had a little hand-made water-dripper that brought in rainwater, and it was put in a spot where it could get some sun.”

Seeing it had broken something open in Fluttershy, I remember. She saw it sitting there on a damp table and she just started bawling. I tried asking her about it later but she said she couldn’t talk about it, not yet anyway.

“Applejack took your grimoire,” I say as I reach over and flick some snow off that started building up on the gravestone. “Twilight said you’d mentioned it and she thought about taking it, but in the end she wanted to know if any of us wanted to keep it. Applejack ended up keeping it, she said she has a bunch of books from her family and… and that yours belonged with them too.”

I hold up the photo and wipe it dry carefully with my thumb.

“I kept this,” I say, and I can’t keep out the choked pain in my voice. “Y-Y’know, because it reminds me that you… you didn’t always hate me.”

I tuck it back into my pocket, patting it flat so it doesn’t get crumpled or folded up while it’s there.

“I wish I’d asked if you liked me too,” I say quietly. “Back in that nightmare place, I wish I’d asked. I think you’d have told me the truth, you would’ve just made it hurt.”

Because I deserved to hurt. After what I did to Sunset I deserved to be hurting. Sunset isn’t ever going to stop hurting, or if she is it’s only because she stopped feeling anything at all, and that’s not any better.

I deserve this.

I stand up and brush the snow from my pants, and shiver as another cold breeze sweeps through the graveyard. The city lights of the commons are dim here. There aren’t many of them near the church, but there are enough to see by.

Before I go, I squat next to the gravestone and press my forehead to the cold stone.

“Bye Sunset,” I say softly. “I’ll come by again tomorrow, okay? Talk to you then.”

The walk back home is a long, cold one, but the buses stopped running hours ago. By the time I get back my legs aren’t even hurting anymore, they’re just numb, the moment I push the door open and the warm air from the heater hits me, I start to shake like a wet puppy.

“RAINBOW DASH!”

“Ugh, hey dad.” I pull my beanie off and shake it out outside before closing the door.

Rainbow Blaze, my dad, is normally a much more upbeat sort of guy. Ever since my mom left, he’s been doing his best, and until lately we’ve always been pretty tight.

‘Until lately’.

“It's past midnight! Where the hell have you been?” Dad looks pretty haggard as he gets up from the couch. “I’ve been worried sick! Every phone call goes to voicemail, and you aren’t answering my texts! What-?!”

“I turned my phone off because you wouldn’t stop calling,” I snap. “I just went to the graveyard to visit Sunset, okay? It’s no big deal!”

“You could have been hurt! The Commons are dangerous at night!” Dad stomps over to me, and he’s probably shaking more than I am. “I… I know you’re going through hardship right now, honey, but please!”

“HARDSHIP?!” I scream, my temper suddenly roaring. “MY FRIEND IS DEAD! AND IT’S MY FAULT!”

“What happened to Sunset was tragic!” Dad cries. “But it wasn’t your fault!”

“I abandoned her!” I grab the keys off the rack by the door and pitch them at him. “I called her she-demon!” I snatch a picture off the wall, one of dad and I fishing out at Lake Everfree, and throw that next, it collides with his arm and he yelps in pain. “I could have saved her but I didn’t! She killed herself because I wasn’t there!”

My vision is swimming, and I’m breathing so hard that I can hear the blood pumping in my temples. It sounds like a heartbeat.

“That’s enough!” My dad yells, and I flinch back. “You’re falling apart! This has to stop!”

“Stop?!” I spit the word out viciously. “I can’t ‘stop’ Sunset from being gone-!”

“Dead!” My dad shouts, and I flinch back again. This time it’s not from the volume. “I’m sorry, honey, but she’s dead! You never say ‘dead’ just ‘gone’, like she can come back! You have to accept that she’s dead, Dashie!”

I’m shaking now. I can’t find any words to say that will get through the thick lump of rage building up in my throat. Maybe Dad takes my silence as a good sign, because he keeps talking.

“I… I’ve talked to your mother, and we both agreed it would be best if you didn’t go back to the graveyard for a while.”

“WHAT?!” I let out a harsh bark of a laugh. “You haven’t had a good thing to say about Mom for five years and now her opinion is supposed to matter?!”

“You’re tearing yourself up,” Dad counters. “We’ve both agreed you need time away, and therapy. I didn’t want to do this, but you’re not leaving me any choice… you’re going to go stay with your mother in Manehattan for a while, and-”

“Fuck! You!” I snarl, cutting him off as I turn, slam the door open, take a deep breath, and run.

My Dad’s shouts for me vanish into the cold night winds as the cookie-cutter suburbs of Whitetail rush past me in a flurry of white and gray. I was so tired a moment ago but now it feels like I've gotten my second, third, and fourth wind all at the same time. My stride is eating up yards like nobody's business, even if all I can taste on the air is ash and blood.

I should have stayed with Sunset in the Trials.

I could have stayed behind.

Even if she hates me. Even if she spends the rest of eternity hunting me down in that terrifying reflection of Canterlot High, it would have been worth it just to be with her again.

To be with her forever.

The slow, sullen advance of dawn crests over me as my burst of energy fades, and my vision doubles, then triples as I collapse against an old, brick-and-mortar wall. I look around, trying to figure out where I ended up. I hadn’t been paying any attention to where I’d been going, I’d just been running as fast and as far as possible.

I furrow my brow, trying to make sense of the area around me. It’s Old Town Canterlot, east end, I’m pretty sure, but how the hell did I get all the way over here? I wasn’t running that fast.

No one can run that fast.

Whitetail might be on the edge of downtown, but it’s on the wrong edge to get all the way to the east end.

“Great, I’m in murder-hobo central,” I grunt as I sit up and look around again, trying to get my bearings a little more clearly.

Maybe a street sign or a-

My heart almost stops as my tired brain finally recognises the building I’m resting against. I also realise why it is the sound of cars and traffic is so far away. I’m not just in the east end, I’m in the worst part of the east end where it meets up with the Commons. It’s all run-down factories and bare-walled Projects. Half the gang violence in the city happens on these streets.

That’s not what makes my blood run cold though.

It’s that the building I’m sitting against is the old, abandoned office for the dead train line that used to run out of the city, and more importantly, it’s where Sunset Shimmer used to live.

With a groan of effort, I lift myself up to my aching feet, and my legs wobble under me as I walk leadenly into the building. The locks were busted open a while ago, since the building’s only tenant stopped keeping track of them after she… left.

The door creaks as I push it shut, and I stumble through the halls towards the main office. It’s the only part of the building that’s still in decent repair, and the specially made set of deadbolts on it, built in for security reasons I guess, makes it the only safe room in the entire building once you’re inside.

That’s probably the only reason that Sunset was even able to sleep in there.

I slip inside the office and knock the bolts back. It’s just the way we all left it. There’s a surplus military cot in the corner, still reasonably clean and dry thanks to the cold, arid air. A cardboard box filled with neatly folded blankets and sheets. They were clean, as far as I knew.

But it’s so cold.

There’s an unpowered space heater nearby, and what little exploring the six of us, including Princess Twilight, had done had turned up a generator a few rooms down that looked like it gave up the ghost a few months back. Without some serious cash and a lot of spare parts, that thing wasn’t coming back to life anytime soon.

“Fuck I’m tired,” I grumble.

I eye the cot for a moment, then chuckle and shrug.

“Hell, why not.”

I grab the blankets and sheets from the box, throw them over the cot, and flop down on them before rolling around a little until I’m curled up in a messy roll. I bunch up some of the blankets near my head, bury my face in the cloth, and take a deep breath.

These were the blankets that Sunset slept in. This was her bed, for lack of a better term, and if I try, I can pretend I can still smell her.

I fall asleep almost instantly.