She wasn’t moving.

Sunset wasn’t moving.

I knelt by her side and tried to shake her awake. I called her name, but I had no idea if it was reaching her. I could barely see her anymore. Her light was so, so dim. It had been growing dimmer and dimmer with every new day that I saw her and all that I had pretended that…that it wasn’t happening.

That it wasn’t my fault.

“Sunset!” I called out to her, but it was like screaming over a massive distance, and I was so tired.

I couldn’t focus here. Everything was so distant and numb and empty. I could barely feel anything but the faintest whisper of sensation as I grabbed at her arms to try and staunch the bleeding. What if she bled out?

No, the palms didn’t bleed that much. Not unless they were very, very deep.

I turned her palms over and if I’d had lungs I would have sighed in relief. Shallow. Superficial. They were bleeding, but slowly. Slowly enough that I might be able to wake her up.

But I could feel myself slipping. I could feel myself drifting out of this place and back to…to wherever it was I had been before. I couldn’t remember. Maybe there was nothing beyond that veil. I’d wondered that a few times, although I’d never said as much to Sunset.

I wondered, too, if I was even really Wallflower, or if I was just some…echo. A last, drawn-out whimper of a miserable existence made up of bad choices and missed chances.

Maybe, in a way, that made me the real Wallflower after all.

Just an echo of a person who was always meant to fade.

And I was fading. I needed to get Sunset help before I was gone. Before the magic keeping me here fell apart and took me with it. As much as I wanted to just let go—and I did, Sunset, forgive me, but I wish you’d never called me back—I had one last job to do.

But how?

I could cry out, but my voice wasn’t made for volume. Plus, there was no guarantee that anyone who did hear would care. Telephone? No…Sunset didn’t have a landline. She did have a smartphone, though.

I darted upstairs and, sure enough, it was right where it almost always was. Even after all these years she still kept it on her end table attached to the charger when she wasn’t using it. Now the hard part. I tried to pick it up but my fingers couldn’t find purchase on it. Touching living skin was one thing, but solid objects was…complicated. I wasn’t real enough right now. I was fading.

Come on, Wallflower, think. Use your stupid head for once!

And for once, I did.

Maybe it was being dead that freed up the last reserves of wit I had, but for once I had a thought that I would dare to call creative. I could affect electrical systems! That was why most of Sunset’s apartment was dark. But could I…?

Rather than try to grab the phone, I just focused and brushed a hand over it, and to my shock, the lock screen lit up! I did it again and the password entry popped up next. I didn’t need to guess the password. Knowing Sunset, there was only ever one option.

Delicately, I focused on brushing just the letters I was looking at. It took a couple of tries, and each one made me more frustrated, but eventually I got them in.

W-A-L-L-Y

The lock screen folded away and the home screen popped up. Now what? I almost hadn’t expected to get this far. Call someone? What if they couldn’t hear me? Moreover, what if I fried the phone? It would have to be a text but who—?

I slapped my palm dully to my face.

The group chat.

Even now, I remember their little group chat server, and the app was right there on Sunset’s main screen. Feeling hopeful, I swept a finger over it and concentrated, and almost cried out in relief in when it opened without incident.

The last message was seen and read by almost everyone less than two minutes ago. Including Rainbow Dash! If anyone could get here fast enough...

But what to send? She needed help! Help! That was it! I flicked my fingers across the board, trying to focus on just two simple words.

//HELP ME//

Again.

//HELP ME//

Again.

//HELP ME//

AGAIN!

//HELP ME! HELP ME! HELP ME! HELP ME! HELP ME! HELP HME! HELP HME! HELP HMR! HELP HMR! HELP HER! HELP HERHELPHERHELPHER—//

Something lashed out from behind me, smacked the phone hard, and sent it sailing off the edge of the loft bedroom, across the apartment, and down into the kitchen where it shattered with a lonely crash. I stared down at it for a long moment—at the scattered bits and pieces that were strewn about the cheap tile floor—and then turned and looked up to find Sunset standing, shaky and shadowed, with her arm still outstretched. Her eyes were hooded and dark, and her expression had a flat emptiness to it that terrified me.

“Sunset?” I said her name cautiously as I reached out a hand to lay it on her cheek. “Sunset, it’s okay,” I whispered. “Help is coming.”

I’d seen the little icons move down along my messages. They’d seen them. I was sure of it. Surely they were already worried about her, right? They must be. That message would get them over here in a hurry.

“You already sent messages, huh?” Sunset asked, her voice was stilted and grainy, like always. It was so hard to hear her sometimes, but for some reason, this time, she was almost starkly clear.

“Help is coming,” I repeated softly.

“Yeah…” She looked even more distant as she turned towards the bathroom, then nodded faintly more to herself than anything. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

She moved more quickly than I would have thought possible. Her earlier exhaustion seemed to have vanished and in its place, there was this…energy. It didn’t give me hope, though. In fact, it scared me even more.

There was a grim purpose to Sunset as she moved carefully down the stairs. She was still weak, and she took them slowly enough to ensure she could get to the bottom without tripping. She was blinking a lot too. I recognized that. Much like me, she was fading. Her focus was drifting.

But she kept going. Past the couch, past the den, past the television, and towards the bathroom door.

“Sunset, please, stop!” I followed her in a panic with dread clogging my throat. “Please! You’re going to be okay!” I reached the bathroom door moments after she did but she was already pulling her pajama bottoms off and tossing them away.

The world snapped and crackled around me as I watched her kneel and flip open a terribly familiar little box. That box should have been back at my apartment!

“I’m sorry, Wally,” Sunset said as she brushed away the bandages and cotton swabs, and plucked out the small box of razors. “I wish I’d told you how I felt back when it might have mattered,” she looked up at me with a wan smile as she dumped out the box, sending the blades clattering across the floor. “I wish I could have been then one who made you smile.”

“You did!” I sobbed. “Every single day! Every single smile! They were all because of you!”

I dropped to my knees by her side and tried to knock the blades away from her hand, but I couldn’t hold myself together long enough to affect them all, and she got one out from under me before I could stop her. I followed her hand as light glinted strangely off of the razor’s edge.

“They were all…all for you,” I finished feebly.

She smiled at me, and it was a heartbreaking expression. Then she kicked the door shut and locked it just as the sound of fists pounding on her door became audible. I heard voices calling Sunset’s name. Rainbow’s harsh rasp was easily recognizable, but I thought I heard Fluttershy’s surprisingly loud cries under there too.

“It will take them time to get through that door, and more time to get through this one,” Sunset said as she stumbled over to the corner of the bathroom and slumped down.

“Don’t do this, Sunset,” I pleaded quietly. “Please don’t do this.”

“Enough time, I think,” she said solemnly.

“Please…” I begged. “I know I’m…I’m just the worst. I know I d-don’t deserve to say this after what I did, but please,” I laid a hand on hers as she started to press the blade right over where I knew her femoral artery lay. “Please don’t.”

And she paused.

Just for a moment.

Then she shook her head and said, “You’re right. You don’t deserve to say that.”

The blade moved so fast that I couldn’t follow it, and suddenly red was spilling out across the bathroom floor. It was done. It was done. Oh, God. She really did it. When I finally looked up, it was to find her staring at me with a faint smile.

“You don’t have to stay,” Sunset said softly.

I looked back down at the ugly, open wound, then back up at her, and let out a shaky sob.

“I know,” I replied.

The pounding outside reached a crescendo. I imagined it was the sound of her door finally giving way under the sustained assault. The voices of her friends, the rasp of Rainbow, the gentle chime of Fluttershy, and the high, cultured cries of Rarity, who must have just arrived.

“I never want to love anyone else, Wally,” Sunset said, ignoring the noise outside. “You’re everything I ever wanted, and I just…can’t. And I don’t want to, even if I can.”

“I know,” I repeated as I knelt in the slowly pooling blood. It moved past me, rather than around me. I really was fading fast.

“Do you think we’ll be together after this?” Sunset asked.

It would have been easy to say yes.

“I don’t know,” was what I actually said.

“Best guess?”

“Probably not.”

Sunset let out a weak, shaky laugh as her head started to droop. Her heart was probably giving out. Her brain too. She would lose consciousness soon. I reached out and brushed my fingers over her cheeks.

“Why did you do it?” She asked, her voice suddenly sharpening in that odd way it had earlier, and her fiery blue eyes flicked up to mine, though they were duller than they had ever been. “Why did you have to die?”

She’d never asked me that before. I think she was scared to.

“Because I just wanted to stop,” I said softly. “Because I wanted…I wanted to be gone.” I lowered my head in shame. “I still do.”

“I’m sorry,” Sunset breathed the words like a woman falling into a deep slumber. “I’m sorry I couldn’t let you sleep, but it’s over now…you can…can go.”

I shook my head. “Not yet.”

Tears trickled down across Sunset’s cheeks to drop and disturb the crimson pool beneath her with odd ripples.

“You’ll…stay?” She asked. She didn’t raise her head. I’m not sure she could anymore, so I did it for her, so we could see each other.

“I’ll stay.”

“I’m…I’m scared, Wally,” Sunset sobbed.

“I know,” I said, and if I’d still been able to cry, I would have. “I am too.”

“I…l-love…you.”

“I love you, too!”

Her head bobbed down out of my grip. Or more accurately, through it. I tried to catch her, but couldn’t. My hands were gone. My arms were going. I was fading. Fading away for the very last time. There were fists pounding on the door behind me, but they were too late.

They were all too late.

Blue eyes turned dull as clouded quartz and darkness swallowed everything.

It was snowing the day they buried Sunset Shimmer.

Author's Note

We Have Come To Terms