What I could have been

by waywardfallout

Rating: teen
Tags: Drama, Starlight Glimmer, Profanity, Sunset Shimmer, Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 2741

Sunset feels like she could have been more.

Sunset could have been so much more and she knows it. But that fact hurts her far more than she thought it did, leading her to lash out.

Published 2021-10-16 22:20:00 UTC
Last updated 2021-10-16 22:20:00 UTC

To be known.

Alone

Sunset felt that feeling wash over her with a clarity that made her heart feel weak.

But this feeling was accompanied by this fire… this burning hatred and anger. It felt like something had been stolen from her, something that was meant to be, something that she worked tirelessly to achieve.

It was meant to be yours.

“Not anymore.” She whispered to herself.

You know you could find a way to take what's yours back. You are just as good if not better than her.

“Clearly not,” Sunset whispered again, her hooves wet with tears. Sunset wrapped the blankets on her bed around her as if they would help her thoughts and shield her from reality. It predictably didn’t.

It had been years since she stole that crown. So why was she having these thoughts and feelings now?!

She heard the door to her room open and saw the silhouette of an alicorn. Her anger skyrocketed and without thinking Sunset Shimmer yelled. “Just leave me the fuck alone!” Her human vocabulary slipped into her voice. Her teal eyes had a gleam of pure hatred that she couldn’t control.

Sunset’s anger was swelling with each millisecond that lavender alicorn was standing in her doorway. The unicorn could just barely make out the look of hurt, concern and confusion on her muzzle.

“Sunset, I don’t understand, what's wrong?” Asked the alicorn in the doorway.

Sunset’s jaw clenched as tears continued running down her face. “Did you not hear me? I want to be left alone!” Sunset started with such venom it made the alicorn flinch.

“Sunset Please, I want to help.” Twilight said as she started walking into Sunset's temporary room. The alicorn’s eyes were filled with concern and worry for her friend.

“You are the last pony I want help from!” Sunset felt her horn light up. The teal light illuminating the dark room she was in. “GET THE FUCK OUT!” Sunset screamed as she instinctively fired a teal beam of magic near the alicorn.

The beam landed at the ground in front of Twilight's hooves making her jump backwards and instinctively raise a magic barrier to protect herself. Twilight's eyes were wide with shock as she looked at Sunset. The alicorn then slowly backed out of the room and closed the door, the message finally getting through the mare's head.

When the door finally closed Sunset realized she was breathing extremely heavily, almost like she was hyperventilating. She had just fired a beam of magic at the pony who helped change her life for the better. The same friend who was giving the unicorn a room in her castle to stay in while she was getting used to life as a pony again.

It should be my Castle.

Sunset shook her head as if to shut the voice up. To tell it that to go away. She could feel her heart racing in her chest, but for some reason it wasn’t out of terror for what she had just done.

Shooting that beam had felt good, really good.

“Is everypony….”

“I don’t…..”

“What…. happened?”

Sunset felt more tears come to her teal eyes. She shoved her muzzle into the blankets in an vain attempt to somehow smother her emotions out. The blanket she was holding quickly became damp in her hooves.

“Sunset…. At me……… she……………………crying. I…….…… to do. Leave…..alone.”

“But…..”

Why had attempting to hurt Twilight felt good?

Because she stole what was yours.

A shiver ran through her spine making her fur stand. She shook her head into the blanket once again trying to rid herself of these emotions and thoughts.

Sunset heard the door open once again. But this time the silhouette in the doorway was that of a unicorn. Her first thought was that it was Rarity. She was the first unicorn that came to Sunset’s mind. However the pony’s mane style was completely different from the dressmaker’s. But the mane style was familiar to her.

The alabaster unicorn’s natural curiosity drove her to look up at the figure directly.

But with a glance she could tell it wasn't the alicorn. With this single fact she felt calmer immediately

The pony in her doorway was Starlight Glimmer. The mare she probably had talked to the least compared to the rest of the ponies she knew. Yet here she was in her doorway.

“Sooooooooooooooo uhmmmmm can I come in?” Starlight asked, smiling what she hoped was a comforting smile. Sunset could tell Starlight was nervous about talking to her.

“Sure” Sunset answered as she removed her muzzle from the blankets. Her eyes were red from all the crying she had been doing. But even so Sunset’s eyes focused on the lilac unicorn as she walked into her bedroom.

Starlight looked around the room as she walked in looking for a place to sit. She spotted Sunset’s desk. “Ummm Is it ok if I sit here?” Glimmer asked, pointing to the chair with a forehoof.

“I don’t mind.” Sunset answered as she turned to face towards the unicorn.

“Good!” Starlight said as she turned the chair with her magic to face the mare and sat down.

“So how are you?” Starlight asked casually, as if the tense air of the room was irrelevant.

Sunset felt a snicker escape from her muzzle at how Starlight was acting so casual.

“Honestly, I have been better.” She answered as she felt her anger being calmed dramatically.

“I must look like a mess.” Shimmer commented.

“It's not that bad.” Starlight offered with a hoof wave.

Sunset raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yeaaah.” Glimmer assured her.

“Yeah sure.” Sunset answered sarcastically as she wiped away a fresh tear.

“Aaanyways.” Starlight said, tapping her hooves together nervously. “You know why I’m here.”

Sunset simply nodded her head.

“Then what's the problem? Or did Twilight do something wrong?” Starlight asked.

“It's me… I think.” Sunset answered, she wanted to say it was Twilight's fault but she knew that wasn’t true.

“What’d you mean by that?” Starlight questioned.

Sunset felt another tear leave her eyes. “I'm angry at Twilight.”

“Ooook, why. Did she do something?”

“Yes and at the same time no.” Sunset shifted her forehooves nervously, moving the blanket around in the process.

“It's… it's more about what she has and what I could’ve had.” Sunset explained as she felt her hooves clinch around the blanket.

“I feel pathetic for thinking like this but I can’t get it out of my head.” Sunset started pulling at the blanket as if she was trying to rip the thing apart.

“Can’t get what out of your head?” Starlight asked the mare looking for clarification.

“I-I” More tears formed in her teal eyes. “That I could have been more. That I could be right where Twilight is now.” Sunset looked at the room she was sitting in.

“I had a chance to….” Sunsets breath hitched as a sob worked its way out of her throat. “I had a chance to be….” She tried again. But her body once again interrupted her with a sob.

“I had a chance to be Twilight Sparkle.” Sunset said with a quiet freezing voice. She felt her body go numb as if she was freezing in a winter lake. The number of blankets she had buried herself in did nothing to help her as she felt the outside world disappear. She found the quiet feeling she had thought had been loneliness, she felt Forgotten.

Left behind as if she never existed, never given a second thought. As if her years of work, study and research were swept out the door. It felt like nothing she did while being Celestia’s student had mattered. Both then and especially now. She seemed to have disappeared from the world long before she jumped into that portal.

Not a single damn pony seemed to remember her like they remembered Twilight Sparkle. Twilight was at least known while she was Celestia’s student.

Then she felt her anger returning to herself. The anger that fueled her scorn for Twilight Sparkle. She quickly felt like she was starting to physically boil. As if she was standing in literal fire.

A deep growl left Sunsets muzzle. “I had a chance to be Twilight!” She shouted out making Starlight recoil.

“I could have been the element of magic.” Sunset said as her eyes focused on a pillow that had fallen to the cold crystal floor in front of her. Glaring so intensely that Starlight was worried that the pillow would catch on fire.

“I could have been there to help beat Nightmare Moon and stop Discord! Help rediscover the Crystal Empire!”

Sunset's voice cracked as her anger reached its peak. “I could have become an alicorn!” The unicorn’s magic acted in line with her emotions causing the pillow she had been glaring at to start to burn.

“I could have been a household name! One that ponies knew across Equestria! Hell! A name that was known in other countries!” The pillow burned brighter and brighter as she continued.

“Had my research known to many colleges and famous scholars. Had my DECADE of work mean something. Have it be recognized as something more than just a hoof note at the back of a damn book!” Her tears seemed to boil on her coat and evaporate before Starlight's eyes.

“But she has it! She has her name known! She’s the Twilight Sparkle! A name that everypony knows! A book about magical studies doesn’t get taken seriously without her name somewhere on the cover. While… while.” Sunset’s tears seemed to run out as she felt her anger run out.

“She’s everything I wanted to be. Everything I worked towards. Everything… I threw away. ” Sunset finished with a dry sob as her anger disappeared. The room was still as a heavy silence filled the air as the pillow completely burned away.

“So you don’t want to be forgotten?”

Sunsets head snapped to look “Yes!” Dry sod “That's the only thing I have truly wanted my whole life. To be known.”

Starlight smiled. “I remember you.”

“Of course you remember me. I’m right here.”

“Not like that, when I was younger I was looking into various books on experimental magic. Mostly dealing with offensive and defensive magic.” Starlight blushes with an almost guilty smile. “I may or may not have been researching these things for… dubious reasons.”

“Get to the point!” Sunset shouted out.

“Well I ‘borrowed’ the book I got from the library and kept it all these years.” Starlight's horn lit with a teal glow and a book appeared before the two of them. Landing on the bed right before Sunset. She looked at it curiously. ‘Experimental offensive and defensive magic’ Sunset choked as a wave of nostalgia rang through her like a drum.

‘By Sunset Shimmer’

The book was in excellent condition. She could still see little rips in pages and the general wear of time. But that didn’t matter to Sunset as the tears came again. The book was cared for. Starlight cared for this book. It mattered to Starlight that her words, her thoughts, her experience, her words. Be preserved.

The tears were coming louder now. She thought her tears had run out. But seeing her book, her work. Here in front of her somehow before Celestia had pulled her book from the shelves for being ‘dangerous’.

“How much do you use what you learned in here?” Sunset croaked out.

“Well I can’t say I use the fireballs or that one spell where you use your target to fuel your spell… well actually I can tell you that Discord enjoyed that spell!” Starlight said with giggle.

“But if you wanna know the spell I use the most from this book. Well…… This one spell in particular always catches my interest.” Starlight explains slyly. Her horn once again alight with her teal aura.

Teal magic started to make a second skin around Starlight. It was a spell she could use without trouble. She knows it so well. She then lifted herself off the chair and floated towards Sunset. She spun herself as reached above Sunset’s head showing her level of control.

Sunset’s eyes widened. “My Self Levitation Spell!” She said remembering the work she did to bypass the user’s own magic aura trying to stop the spell. She had spent weeks getting the spell to work.

“The spell can be a little finicky to work with seeing as you have to bind your magic to a ponies magic aura. But once you get past that… It’s amazing!” Starlight's eyes lit up as she gushed over the spell's qualities. “The spell doesn’t care if you're in the air, underwater, or in the dark void of tartarus! You can move as fast as your magic allows you!”

“And you don’t have to worry about breathing!” Sunset jumps in “If you're underwater I mean, because the spell uses your own mana to act as a means of creating oxygen for the pony. I had to do that because, duh, obviously you can’t breathe if you're surrounded by a magical barrier. But also if the spell doesn’t respond in time it would be pointless. But once I figured out that it had everything, transportation, protection against elements, it could even work as protection from non magical threats like sharps objects and the like. I… I….” Starlight releases her from the spell. Allowing Sunset to fall onto the bed once more.

“I-I loved that spell! It was practical and effective, everything you’d ever need in a fight. I had thought when Celestia banned the book, no one would ever remember it. That it would just be…”

“Forgotten?” Starlight interjected with a smile.

“Y-Yeah…” Sunset sits there for a moment. Unsure of where to go from here.

Starlight landed next to Sunset. “Sometimes when I help a student, whether that be a dragon or pony or what have you. I always wonder. ‘Are they really going to remember what I told them?’ And you know what Sunset? Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t. But what matters are the ones that do. And this feeling you have? The only way you can really, and I mean really, move past it. Is to care about the ones that do remember, not the ones who don’t.” Starlight didn’t give Sunset a chance to fight her, a chance to interject. As she wrapped Sunset in a tight hug.

Sunset returned the hug as she heard the words Starlight said. “Y-You're right.”

Starlight nodded happily. “This feeling isn’t going to go away immediately. It’ll pop up from time to time. And if it does? My door is always open.”

Sunset nuzzled into the hug. “I…I think I’ll take you up on that.” She said, feeling a smile creeping up her muzzle. Sunset took her time to enjoy the hug, enjoying the feeling of being cared for.

After a moment of calm silence the alabaster unicorn spoke up as she pulled away from the hug. “I need to apologize to Twilight.” Shimmer stated. “She didn’t deserve to be treated that way.”

Starlight nodded. “Yea, that’d be best. Why don’t you wash up? It’ll give you some time to think about what you're going to say.”

Sunset looked at how messy her coat and mane had gotten. She had patches of soaked fur with other patches of fur being almost singed. Her mane had clumps of hair that had gotten stuck together while she was crying. Even Sunset had to admit she looked terrible.

“You’re right, I’m a mess right now.” Sunset agreed. As she started untangling herself from the blankets she was buried in.

“But what about Twilight? Won’t she want to know what’s happening?” Shimmer asked as she stepped out of the bed.

“Don’t worry. I will tell Twilight that things are fine and you simply need a little bit of time to yourself.” Starlight explained with a hoof wave. She turned and got off the bed.

Sunset looked towards Starlight with a soft thankful smile. “Thank you… a lot Starlight.”

Author's Note

Well it’s been a bit hasn’t it. Life got crazy for a good while. But I’m back with this story is acting like my reintroduction into writing after all this time. I hope I did well. But if you have any criticism feel free to post it.

Thanks to Deselp0 for helping me write this story.

https://www.fimfiction.net/user/401072/deselp0