Sunset Shimmer
The woman staring back at me from the mirror is one that I barely recognise.
She’s standing taller than I think she ought to be. Her hair is pulled back in a carefully coiffed low ponytail, and what isn’t pull back is framing strong aquiline cheekbones that delicate highlights of blush and shadow have brought out sharply around a straight duchess nose. The faintest dusting of gold cosmetics over her eyelids and beneath the eyebrows give her cerulean gaze an almost otherwordly feel.
Nervously, I tug the fitted silk gloves more tightly down on my hands, and the woman in the mirror does the same, confirming that it is definitely me I’m looking at.
“Looking sharp, Shimmer.”
I glance over my shoulder to see Rainbow Dash smirking at me from the door in her pale gray-blue bridesmaid dress. She looks from the mirror to me, and then back with a subtle nod.
“Seriously, Rarity outdid herself on both of you,” Rainbow remarks.
Chuckling weakly, I look down at the outfit I’m wearing and, absurdly, I’m reminded of the tux I wore to Wallflower and I’s first date at Senior Prom. The biggest difference from that and this, are the colours.
My prom tuxedo made me look like some kind of over the top villain out of a western, but this one…
I turn back to the mirror and run my hands down the flowing material, and let out a shuddering breath.
This is it.
This is the suit that I’m going to be getting married in, and I have no idea how I even got this far.
“Dash, is this real?” I ask quietly.
My hands are shaking, and I swear they’ve been shaking for the past five hours. I barely managed to get the buttons done up on the inner jacket. The outer jacket had been even harder. It’s a half-jacket, secured at the back and tied off at the neck with a very special broach. The front of the half-jacket terminates a few inches above my waist, but it feeds all the way back and down into a long tail that trails to my ankles.
The interior jacket is buttoned at my waist, three on either side, and the material reaches from my shoulders, curves down, then blooms out around my hips past my calves.
Everything is white, too. White with brilliant emerald accents. The trousers are silk, and top is half-silk up to my clavicle where it turns into lace until it stops halfway up my neck. The rest of the cord for the broach is tied there, and the weight is comfortable.
The half-inch heels I’m wearing are unreasonably comfortable, too, but trust Rarity to somehow manage to find the one pair of heels in the entire Canterlot metro area that are actually worth buying.
“I’d say it’s real,” Dash says with a chuckle. “Why?”
“Because I think I’m dreaming.”
Rainbow lets out a quiet, snorting laugh, and shakes her head before letting herself in and closing the door behind her. Moving past all the wedding paraphernalia that Rarity and Pinkie had collected and recently made use of to get me ready before moving on to Wallflower, who was waiting with Applejack.
“Nah,” Dash says, stopping beside me and staring into the mirror with me. “If this were a dream, it wouldn’t have been this much work, y’know?”
That makes me laugh.
I guess she’s right. If this were a dream, it all would’ve been so easy, but it hasn’t been. Nothing about this has been easy. From rocky beginning to whatever end, the one thing this hasn’t been is easy.
“Here, lemme just—” Rainbow puts her hands on her shoulders, turns me to face her, and carefully adjusts the cord of my broach, tightening it until it rests securely at my throat.
“Thanks,” I say quietly. “I think I’m starting to lose it, Dash.”
“Nah, it’s just the jitters,” Rainbow says with a wry chuckle as she claps a hand against my shoulder. “You’ll be fine.”
I nod shakily, then take a long breath. In and out.
“Dash I dunno if I can do this,” I say quietly, a tremor escaping my voice as I put my hand across the broach. “What if I mess up?”
Rainbow smirks at me, running her gloved hand through her short hair to keep it appropriately wind-tousled. She’d cut it into a cute pixie bob about a year back, and kept the look ever since. I remember she’d worried it made her look too ‘girly’ or ‘cute’, but the moment Fluttershy saw Rainbow’s new cut, she’d loved it, and Rainbow had never gone back.
Personally, I like her with short hair better than long too.
“Whadya mean, ‘if’?” Rainbow snarks, nudging me with her shoulder as she walks past me.
“Hey!” I say, scowling as I turn to glare at her. “You’re supposed to be my friend, not my anxiety-devil!”
“I’m just saying that everyone messes up, Sunset,” Rainbow says, gesturing broadly to the world around her. “I mean, c’mon, even I mess up, and I’m Rainbow Danger Dash, alright? You’re pretty awesome but like, only about a nine-point-eight on the Dash scale.”
“Thanks,” I reply dryly.
Rainbow smiles at me for a moment, but slowly her broad grin falls away to something more sedate.
“Seriously, though, Sunset, it’s gonna happen,” Rainbow says with a shrug. “I mean, all joking aside, I’m kinda the queen of fuckups, I do it all the time, and Flutters always forgives me even when I’m pretty sure she shouldn’t.”
“Dash,” I say quietly, putting a hand on her shoulder. “C’mon, you’re a lot better than you were a year ago.”
“Yeah, sober six months, whoop-dee-doo,” Rainbow grumbles, twirling a finger dismissively. “Whereas you fuckin’ cold turkey’d it and never fell off the wagon.”
“I have a psychosomatic vomit reaction to alcohol now, Dash,” I say flatly. “That sort of helped.”
“Yeah well, you were also never as bad as I was,” Rainbow says quietly, wrapping her arms around herself. “And you quit smoking at the same time, so like, shut up already.”
She says it with a smile, but I can hear the note of bitter envy in her voice. This would mark the third time Rainbow has tried to quit drinking. I know a lot of it stems from issues with her mom and dad, more pointedly her mom, along with her relationship with Fluttershy. This last time I hooked Rainbow up with Bright Eyes and she’s been doing better, and I hope for her sake, and Fluttershy’s, that it works this time.
“Sorry, this is your day, Shimmer,” Rainbow says quietly. She lets out a breath and then smiles at me before giving me a friendly punch in the shoulder. “I’m serious though… you can’t possibly fuck up worse than me, and if Fluttershy can deal with my shit, then Wallie can deal with yours. It’s not like she doesn’t have her own issues.”
“Rainbow~” My friend’s name leaves my lips in a low growl, but where normally she backs off, this time Rainbow squares up to me.
“I’m serious, Sunset, you can’t act like she’s totally perfect,” Rainbow says, crossing her arms and setting her chin up in a belligerent tilt. “I’m not saying she’s not worth it! I’m saying she’s going to fuck up too! Even Flutters has to ‘quit’ smoking every two weeks.”
“She’s been good for almost a month!” I counter.
“I caught her smoking last night,” Rainbow says, and I wince.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, that was a fun conversation,” Rainbow says with a weak shrug. “But like, she’s worth it, y’know? We’re trying to quit our mutual crap together, and it’s rough but, like… we’re gonna make it happen.”
“How do you know?” I ask quietly.
Rainbow just shrugs again and turns to the mirror of the vanity, slinging an arm over my shoulder and turning me to face it with her as she does. I stare at the two women and can’t help but smile. I recognise the two of them a little better now. Rainbow is older and leaner, and just as snarky as she’s always been. I’m as contentious and anxiety-ridden as ever, and somehow no less cocky for it.
“How do I know?” Rainbow repeats with a scoffing laugh as she turns her head to look at me with a raised eyebrow. “Come on, like we’re gonna let it end any other way?”
I can’t help it.
I start laughing, and Rainbow's husky cackle joins in a moment later as she claps a hand across my back while all the stress bubbles up and out, boiling over in the form of a giggle-fit that turns into hoarse, howling laughter.
By the time I’m done, my suit has come a little loose, I’m completely out of breath, and my hair is all over the place.
But I feel better.
I feel so much better.
“Okay, Shimmer,” Rainbow says breathlessly. “Got the jitters outta your system?”
“I uh, yeah, I think so,” I gasp.
“Cool, well, I’m gonna go get Rares to fix your hair.” Rainbow jerks a thumb at the door to the dressing room. “Because she’s gonna be pissed.”
I look up at my reflection in the mirror.
There I am.
“Yeah she is,” I say with a last, weak chuckle.
The sunny, early August day is shining down over me in the open lawn of Sweet Apple Acres. It’s not the first wedding that the scenic farm has played host to, but it’s probably the most discounted one. Applejack made us all promise that if we got married, we’d do it at Sweet Apple Acres, though. Maybe as a way to make sure we never drifted too far apart.
“I still can’t believe you’re ordained,” I say through the side of my mouth as I adjust my grip on the bouquet of bromeliads in my hands.
“It’s not really that hard,” Rosary says with a shrug.
“Yeah, but why?” I ask, giving her a side-eye.
Rosary shrugs again and her lips curl into one of those mischievous little smirks she wears when she’s thinking of something funny and inappropriate at the same time, which I’ve learned is most of her thoughts on any given day.
“Well I certainly didn’t do it just so I could perform gay weddings as an act of petty spite towards my overly religious family,” Rosary replies nonchalantly. “That would just be childish.”
“Right,” I say, snorting as I try to keep in a bubble of laughter. “That would be completely juvenile, huh?”
“Totally,” Rosary agreed.
The pair of us do our best to stifle our laughter.
Originally I’d never planned to have any kind of major ceremony for my wedding, and that was if I ever got married. Of course, that ‘if’ vanished pretty quickly after I met Wallflower. Even when I was just a silly crushing high schooler I was pretty sure I was in it for the long haul.
Say what you will about me, but no one’s ever accused me of under-committing. It’s overkill or nothing in my opinion, even if that occasionally comes back to bite me in the ass.
I mean, no one wants to be known as ‘the underkill gal’, right?
“I’m gonna sweat right through my shirt if we don’t get this going,” I mutter.
The altar is a simple affair. I helped design it to resemble the royal altar in the Temple of the Scribe back in my version of Canterlot. I don’t really have any connection to the religions of this world, and while I wasn’t exactly what you’d call a good, church-going filly in my youth, the tradition always appealed to me.
That and Wallflower made it pretty clear, in her own way, that she had no desire to have a Catholic wedding. I’m not a hundred per cent sure what that entails but from her expression when we’d discussed it I’m guessing her memories aren’t great ones.
So we opted for a wedding using the traditions of the Scribe.
The Altar is decorated with envelopes containing well-wishes written out by friends and loved ones to be burned unread for the Scribe to record. A pair of scrolls I’d borrowed from Princess Twilight rest amidst the colourful envelopes, one penned by myself, and the other by Wallflower, containing our vows.
Technically, it’s tradition to memorise them first but not everyone does. Not everyone has an eidetic memory like me, I guess. Most just read them out before binding them in knotted silk cord after the ceremony. Those knots, once tied, are only to be undone if and when their authors wish to forsake the words within, so they might read them one final time before the decision is made.
Those particular scrolls, I’m sure, won’t ever be reopened
“I have to say, I adore your ceremonies,” Rosary says quietly amidst the soft conversational clamour. “Much better than ours.”
“Simpler, I hear,” I reply.
“Simpler than some,” Rosary agrees.
“Do… do you think Wallie will like it?” I ask quietly, finally turning my gaze from where it had been fixed on the horizon to look at Rosary.
She tucks a strand of silver-blue behind her ear as she smiles back at me.
Although I love Princess Celestia, she and I have always had a kind of distance between us. I call her my mother because she adopted me, but her role as Princess, and her near-divinity, was a gap that neither of us ever overcame. I know she loves me, and I love her, but over the past year and a half since I’d met Rosary, the human woman had become more of a mother to me than I’d ever known in my life.
“Really?” Rosary asked wryly. “I don’t think my Wallflower would complain if she were getting married by a hobo under a city bridge, so long as she was getting married to you, kiddo.”
“I just want it to be perfect,” I say, choking a little on my words as I turn my head. “Because… because she’s perfect.”
Rosary coughs into her fist as she clears her throat and nods past me, and as she does I hear the soft tones of Applejack’s violin swell as the door to the Apple Family homestead creaks open.
I turn my head, blink the tears clear of my eyes, and feel my mouth go absolutely arid.
Wallflower Blush is always beautiful. From the moment she wakes up, and gives that squeaky little yawn of hers, with her bird’s nest of hair, to the moment she falls asleep in my arms.
Today, though, there’s something more.
Her dress is a flowing, princess gown. The hem ripples and flows with the colours of the evening sun, trailing up from soft reds into layers of gentle yellows, until it reaches the verdant green where it hugs her waist before moving up her chest to curve around her shoulders and hang gracefully where it matches her bouncing curls that have been left flowing freely around her face.
And she’s smiling.
And crying.
There are tears tracking down her cheeks, and her grin is ear-to-ear. Those gorgeous brown eyes are wet with tears as she takes in several soft, shuddering breaths, and it takes me a minute to realise I’ve stopped breathing completely.
I gasp as I pull in a breath, and my jaw hangs open as I stare at her, then glance silently over at Rosary to try to convince myself that I’m really here. That I’m awake and not dreaming. Rosary, who’s crying right along with Wallflower, just nods to me.
Turning back to Wallflower, I open one shaky hand from the bouquet, and reach out down the aisle to her.
Wallflower nods silently, swallows, and holds out an arm.
Bright Eyes steps up beside her wearing an archaic tweed suit that, like everything else he owns, was in fashion sometime circa eighteen-fifty, and hooks his arm in hers. He’s taller than either of us and stick-thin as he walks with Wallflower, and halfway down the aisle Bright shares a grin with his husband as they pass. Sticky Note, wearing a more sober three-piece suit the colour of jasper, returns the expression from his seat with a rare smile of his own.
Somehow, the time it takes Bright Eyes to walk Wallflower down the aisle is both far too long, and way too fast. I don’t know if I’m ready to be that close to someone that beautiful, but apparently I’m going to have to be.
Bright grins softly as he raises his arm to allow Wallflower to step up to the altar beside me.
“Take care of her,” Bright Eyes whispers to Wallflower with a stage wink. “She’s a bit of a wreck.”
Wallflower nods rapidly, wiping at her face with gloved hands in an effort to clear some of the tears from her face before looking up at me, and takes a deep breath that she lets out slowly.
“Hey.”
I let out tiny bark of a laugh.
“Hey,” I reply. “You uh… wow.”
“You too,” Wallflower says, sniffling and wiping at her eyes again. “I uhm, I can’t stop leaking… It’s kinda gross, huh?”
“Not even a little,” I say honestly. “You are… you’re just… I am the luckiest girl in the world, right now, okay?”
Wallflower sniffles again and shakes her head.
“Second luckiest,” she corrects with a raw, quiet laugh.
Between us, Rosary coughs lightly, drawing our attention away from one another. Grudgingly we turn to face Rosary, who smiles radiantly at the both of us.
“Okay, let’s see if I remember this,” Rosary begins with a chuckle. “Dearest family, firstblood and found, I welcome you all to this union of two stories, whose words shall forever be woven, to be told together forevermore.”
Wallflower and I link arms as the small audience erupts in cheerful applause. There aren’t many, just the people we’re really close to. Principal Celestia and her sister, Luna, are sitting near Sticky Note and Bright Eyes. Both versions of Twilight are sitting side-by-side, although no one would ever mistake the two. Turns out sometimes you can get along best with yourself. Rainbow and Fluttershy are holding hands in the front row, and beside them is Pinkie, vibrating with glee, then Rarity who's biting a silk handkerchief while doing her best not to bawl as Applejack takes a seat beside her, resting her violin between their chairs.
The rest of the local Apples are in attendance. Along with some friends from CHS that we’ve all kept in touch with.
“It is written by the Scribe,” Rosary continues, “that the whole of Harmony is found in the depths of true love. So I say to you both, be honest, for love cannot be kept secret. Be loyal, for love knows no treason. With your time and tears and joys, be generous. In trials and troubles and occasions of bliss, be kind. And above all, and perhaps most importantly—”
Rosary chokes wetly, pauses, then reaches out to brush a hand over my cheek, then over Wallflowers.
“—most importantly, always remember to laugh.”
Taking a deep breath, Rosary steps back and nods to both of us to take the stage.
Wallflower Blush
I haven’t been able to stop crying since the doors opened and I saw Sunset in her wedding tuxedo for the first time. It’s barely even a tuxedo! She doesn’t look like a groom she looks like some kind of Princess-Knight come to sweep a proper princess off her feet!
“So uhm, who goes first?” I ask. “I’m… I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Good,” Sunset laughs wetly. “Me neither.”
Nodding with a quiet laugh, I take several deep breaths, then look up at her and smile.
“A-Actually, okay, uhm… I… I think—” I look over at Rosary who gives me an encouraging nod before I look back at Sunset.
My eyes come to rest on the broach at her throat.
It looks beautiful on her.
Sunset told me once that it was tradition to exchange small gifts between betrothed where she’s from. Not necessarily rings, but something that means something to them both. That was why Sunset had gotten me the topaz ring. Because she thought it looked like a flower.
A sunflower.
So I got her a broach made in the same style. She looks better with a broach than a ring anyway, I think.
“Sunset Shimmer,” I start, and Sunset stiffens in surprise before relaxing as I reach out to take her hands. “You are… are absolutely crazy.”
Laughter ripples through the crowd and out of Sunset too.
She knows I'm not wrong.
“And I wouldn’t have you any other way,” I continue with a broad grin. “All my life I’ve never been anyone or anything.
“No one has ever looked twice at me, and for all that time I thought that was all I was ever meant to be: Wallflower Blush, the invisible girl. I thought no one would ever see me, and uhm, and I was okay with that… right up until I met you, and you saw me, and I… even from the beginning I never wanted you to stop looking at me.”
Sunset is crying now too. She looks like I feel: like she’s barely holding it together.
“And I never want to stop looking at you,” I say with a quiet sob. “I want to wake up next to you every day and go to sleep beside you every night. I want to laugh with you and cry with you, and grow old with you, Sunset!”
I take another deep breath and squeeze Sunset’s hands gently as I swallow back the last of my nerves.
“Sunset Shimmer,” I say her name like a prayer, smile as broad as I think I ever have. “When you look at me, you look at me like I’m the most beautiful girl in the world, but the best part isn’t even that… it’s that when you look at me, I actually kind of feel like I am.”
Sunset’s hands tighten around mine and she blows out a slow breath that comes on a trail of weak laughter as she briefly reclaims one hand to wipe at her cheeks before taking mine again.
“Wow,” she says. “Okay, I uh… nope, I’m not uh… I’m pretty not okay, but I guess we’re doing this, huh?”
She closes her eyes, takes a few sharp breaths, then breathes deep and nods, mostly to herself I think, before she opens those beautiful cerulean eyes of hers to look at me.
And I fall in love again.
“I uh…” Sunset stammers, then swallows thickly and laughs. “Okay, wow, crap, I uh… I swear I knew this…”
The crowd laughs again, and I can’t help laughing along with them.
“Okay, uh, let’s try this dance again,” she says, then straightens.
“Wallflower Blush, I love you with all my heart,” Sunset says shakily, and I swear my chest feels like it’s about to break open. “We had a rocky start, but I knew you were worth it from the beginning, and when I fell in love with you for real I knew I’d never be truly happy unless I got to spend the rest of my life calling you my wife.”
Nope, that’s it. It’s time to start blubbering. Rarity is never gonna forgive me because this dress is going to be damp.
“I’m gonna repeat myself a lot here, so bear with me,” Sunset continues. “But you’ve probably noticed that I repeat myself a lot anyway, so I guess you’re used to it by now.”
“Wallie, I told you this years ago, and now it means something completely different, so I’ll say it again: Where you sleep, I sleep, because I’m never going to leave you, and I’m never going to want to because without you I’m missing my heart.”
Sunset laughs weakly and plucks a bromeliad bloom from the bouquet to tuck it into my hair. As she does, she lowers her hand until her palm is resting on my cheek, and I lean into her touch.
“And this next thing? This next thing means the same thing now that it did the first time I said it to you, okay? Wallflower Blush, I said this so many times because I couldn’t bring myself to tell you that I loved you like crazy, but I did… I always did… and what I said then? It was just me being a coward about saying I love you, so I’ll say it now, one more time, and then I’ll say it again as many times as you want me to for the rest of our lives.”
Leaning forward, Sunset presses her forehead to mine, and I feel a faint patter as her tears trickle onto my cheeks.
“Wallflower Blush, you are precious to me.”
Laughter wells out of me, pure and happy. I let go of Sunset’s hands and reach up to cup her cheeks as she slips her arms around my waist and pulls me close. Our lips meet and it feels like the very first time we kissed, only better. Her lips are soft and warm, and I can taste the gentle tang of salt from our mingled tears.
All around us I’m vaguely aware of the crowd cheering, and Rosary declaring us officially married, but I can’t pull my attention away from the woman in front of me.
In a thousand, thousand years I never thought I’d get here. I never thought I could. I was always Wallflower Blush, the broken girl. The invisible girl.
The forgotten girl.
But not today.
Not today, never again.
Today I’m not just Wallflower Blush. Today I’m Sunset Shimmer’s wife, and she’s mine. Now and forever, two stories as one.
As we slowly part, Sunset is smiling down at me, and I think I fall in love three more times in that space.
“Hey,” I say softly.
“Hey,” Sunset replies with a laugh.
“We made it.”
Sunset nods, smiling, then nuzzles her nose against mine.
“Yeah,” she says wetly. “You and me.”
“Yeah,” I nod back and then pull myself up to press a fierce kiss to her lips, and relish the squeak of surprise that comes out before pulling back and grinning like a fool. “You’re… You’re my wife!”
Sunset does reply, not verbally, she just starts laughing as she wraps her arms around me, lifts me up, and spins me around, whooping with glee while our friends cheer.
If someone had told me this was where my life was heading four years ago, I would never have believed them. Past me was wrong about a lot of things though, and thanks to Sunset, and to a lot of other people, and… and maybe a little bit to me, that past me is going to stay there.
My past is not today. My today, and the rest of my life, is so, so much brighter.
Author's Note
We Have Come To Terms