The color of the day was gray.

Outside, more or less all day, the only color that the sky had been was gray. The sun could be observed only in the way that there was a difference between day and night, and if you wanted anything more than that you would need to take to the air and rise above the carpet of clouds permanently hanging about every square inch of the heavens for countless miles in all directions. The clouds themselves had been intermittently spitting a fine mist from their voluminous depths off and on for the entire afternoon, seemingly determined to bring about the cold misery of a rainy day without ever committing to the actual rain, and it had done so with surprising efficiency. Every surface outside was damp with an icy cold, too dry to bring an umbrella yet too wet to not consider more watertight apparel.

It was on days like these where collective spirits always seemed the lowest. These were the days that were best spent indoors, not because it felt any better inside, but because doing anything else sounded like so much more work than it normally did with nothing to counterbalance it.

Unlike most people, Sunset hated staying in for the day. Her home was terrible. The bed was the most appealing surface in the squalid little structure by a wide margin, and it was also the warmest spot in it, which meant it was about the only place she ever went in it. There was no point being anywhere else but under the covers anymore because there was functionally no difference between inside and outside other than the roof overhead, and even that was starting to erode away in certain places. That hole in the corner of the bedroom was easily several inches wider than it was when she first got here months ago, and it wasn’t getting any smaller as time passed.

Sunset stood in the doorway to the bedroom (if you could call it that), hands in her pockets, staring long and hard at that misshapen bed with its knotted, unwashed covers covered in snared strands of fabric and rips. Her mouth still tasted off, the flavor of that gag-inducing cough syrup still lingering on her tongue like an old regret, and she blinked eyelids that felt heavier and more jagged-edged than they really ought to have. She hadn’t eaten in three days, yet she didn’t feel hungry, nor had any particular desire to eat anything, despite knowing she should. She was only just warm enough to not be said to be cold, yet she found herself shivering periodically and the need to bundle up in something or don an extra pair of jeans sometimes rose up into her list of desires.

As she stood there, staring at that bed she’d spent so many hours in and knew of the comfort it would bring her compared to standing there across the room from it, Sunset had no interest in getting into the sheets. Instead, she was weighing the possibility of making use of the lighter in her pocket with what little fuel it had left to light the mattress and everything atop it on fire.

There was no particular driving force behind this thought. This wasn’t a matter of anger, or lashing out. She didn’t even feel that strongly about it. She didn’t feel especially strongly about anything, truth be told. She felt about as gray on the inside as the skies looked outside. She was flat. Not calm, per se, but filled with flat, dead air that might be potentially described as “calm” in the same way one might describe a fox as being a cat. In the most superficial way this was sort of an okay descriptor, but it took little to break the analogy down.

No, emotion wasn’t a factor in this impulse she was contemplating acting on. It just…came to her, quietly, and she didn’t necessarily dislike the sound of it. It had some long-term problems, yeah, but that didn’t really mean anything to her right then. The thought of not having a bed anymore brought her nothing.

The start and end of the thought in her mind was that she could light it on fire. She could, theoretically, do so right that moment. It wouldn’t help her, but…she could do it. You know, if she wanted to.

And that was what was being weighed: if she wanted to or not. She didn’t want to, necessarily, but she also didn’t not want to, either. Nothing really pulled her on it, and time passing hadn’t seen the indecision swing one way or the other.

Sunset still hadn’t made a decision when her pants pocket vibrated. She didn’t react at first, but it continued to vibrate, revealing that it was an incoming call, not a text. She had, unfortunately, since donned an additional pair of jeans since she’d last put her phone in her pocket, and she hadn’t had the foresight to empty the now-secondary layer of jeans’ pockets to make the device more accessible. It thus took a little bit of wrestling to get the smart phone out of the buried pocket and into her palm, though when she did, she did not recognize the number being broadcasted on the screen.

She let it ring one more time, then brought the phone to her ear and answered it. She wasn’t eager to, but she decided to regardless, for no one reason in particular. Her voice was an octave lower than normal to fit her ashen mood when she spoke. “Hello?”

In stark contrast, the voice of the girl on the other end of the line was peppy, spunky, and downright cheerful. “Helloooo, is this Sunset?”

It only took a moment for her to recognize the voice, and when she did, Sunset hesitated. “Yes,” she cautiously replied, doing so a full second later than was strictly necessary.

“Sweet!” There was a quiet clatter of plates in the background, and Sunset could have sworn she heard something squeak, which evoked the faintest “Whoopsie” from the girl on the other end. She didn’t acknowledge it further as she went on. “So this is Pinkie Pie from school! I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“Um.” Sunset turned her head a little, looking at her bed. She’d unconsciously fished her aged lighter out of her other pants by now and had it in her hand. In spite of this, the prospect of acting on her previous impulse didn’t seem nearly as worthy of consideration as before, and it was deposited back into another, slightly more accessible pocket. “Not…really, no. What’d you, uh…can I help you?”

“SO glad you asked!” The sound of papers fluttering about could be heard coming from the other end of the line, concluding with what sounded like a single piece being snatched up. “So I heard from some of the others that you-” The pointing of a finger was all but audible, “-went and got sick on me!” She let out a trio of tsk’s. “Well we can’t have that! That’s what I thought, anyway, but it turns out maybe we can have that actually? See, I went to send you a Get Well Soon card, cuz you got sick! And you gotta get a Get Well Soon card when you’re sick, cuz how else are you gonna know to get well soon? It’s important! But then I realized I don’t have your address anywhere! And I looked all over the place, and I couldn’t find it anywhere! Which is weird cuz like I’m usually pretty good at finding these things! This is like, real basic stuff, right? Phone number, address, zip code, PO box, that kind of thing! Buuuut nope, nothing! Not in my notes anywhere, not in my notes I make of my notes when I can’t find things in my notes, not in my notes’ notes of notes I make when I leave them for other people cuz I have SO many notes you have NO idea and they gotta find things in them somehow, the sillies, but nope! I got nothing. Nodda! Zippo! Zilch! Non! Nein! No! No!” A half-beat. ”That was Spanish and Italian by the way, I just realized those sounded totally the same when I said it like that. Whoopsie-doopsie!”

Sunset had spoken to Pinkie Pie before, so the rate that the words were being vomited directly into her ear wasn’t exactly unprecedented. Even still, Sunset was really struggling to follow along. She felt like Pinkie Pie was directly beside her and that she had spun her around the room throughout the entire process of explaining all of this to her. “Uh…huh.”

“Yeah!” Pinkie seemed to choose that moment to be somewhat mindful of her rate of speaking, and it became a lot easier to follow along. “So basically, this is my way of asking what your address is!” A beat. “Well I mean it’s not really my way, it’s kinda just me asking what your address is. But it’s my way now I guess, so oh well! Spill the deets, sistah, where should I send this card to?”

Sunset’s voice and demeanor hardened a little. “Just send it to the school or something, I c- look, no, I don’t need a card.”

“But you gotta have a Get Well Soon card!” Pinkie whined. “It’s the most important part of recovery!”

“It’s just a cold. I’m not in the hospital or anything. I don’t need a card.”

“Yeah but it’s always nice to get a card or something, isn’t it?”

“I don’t want a card.” Sunset’s voice dropped several degrees. “And I don’t want to keep repeating myself.”

“Well- okay fine, fiiiiiine.” Pinkie sounded particularly begrudging at first, but her acquiescence became far more willing-sounding as she went on. “Fine, I won’t send a card this time, but can you at least give me your address? I’ve got a hole in my book of spreadsheets with your name on it, and now I can’t unsee it.”

“I don’t give out my address.”

“Apparently not!” Pinkie sounded a little frustrated as she blurted this, but mostly incredulous. “I can’t find you aaaaanywhere, dude. Like, do you have your place blacklisted on a government database or something? I couldn’t even find you on any of the school websites! And you attend that school!”

Sunset almost made some wry remark about the government, but she bit it back well before the words could reach her lips. “I take my privacy seriously.”

“How seriously do you n- okay don’t answer that, it’s fine, but can’t you just let me in on it just this once?”

“No.”

“Please?” Pinkie went back to sounding whiny. “The hole is right there! I hate holes in my mailing list! It makes my Pinkie brain go crazy!”

“No.” Sunset physically planted her feet a little firmer on the floor where she was standing. “You don’t need my address.”

“Look, I won’t send you anything, okay? I promise I’ll ask first, this is f-”

“No.”

“This is for my sanityyyyy!” She was really whining now, practically wailing. “Pinkie sanity is at a Pinkie Premium, Sunset, you don’t understaaannnnnnd!”

“No.” Sunset’s voice remained completely unsympathetic. “You don’t need my address, and I don’t want any mail.”

“But I just said I won’t send any ma-”

“Don’t care,” Sunset curtly interrupted. “My answer is no. Is that all you called for?”

Pinkie Pie let out an affronted noise on her end of the line.

Sunset shrugged one shoulder, as though Pinkie could see her. “Sorry.”

“You really don’t sound it.”

Sunset shrugged one shoulder again. “I gave you my answer. Not to sound callous or anything, but I don’t know what you expected after the first like…two, three times.”

The absolute foremost sound of some unformed word barely reached the speaker in Sunset’s ear. A few seconds passed, after which Pinkie spoke, sounding…not quite upset, but there was tension in her voice like a compressed spring. “That was all I was gonna call for, but now I’ve got something else.”

Sunset was not convinced she wanted to hear it, but she nonetheless responded, if coolly. “Yes?”

“What’s your deal?”

Sunset’s thumb began navigating towards the end call button where the screen hovered by her cheek. “Could you elaborate?”

“Exactly what I said.” There was no trace of any of the joy or positivity in Pinkie’s voice at this point. “Do you hate me or something?”

Sunset’s thumb remained poised. She wasn’t hanging up just yet, but she was prepared to. “No.”

“Then where do you get off like-” There was a brief fumble for words. “It’s like- it’s like you’re pissed at me. You treat all of us like this! Like I sp- I called you, I didn’t hunt you down or like- I gave you space, I’ve been giving you space, and I take time out of my day to j- I just wanted to do something nice! Alright?! That’s all I wanted to do! I just wanted to send you a stupid little card, because no one is nice to you, and I just thought that you’d- I just thought you’d give a shit, is all! Alright?! There, I said it! I just thought you’d give a shit, and it feels like this is a massive waste of time for you instead and I’m a little mad! I’m a little mad about it! And I don’t wanna be mad, because I hate being mad, and th-” The other end of the line was suddenly afflicted with several seconds of sounds of motion, like the phone or something near it had hit a surface and was gruffly shoved about on it before Pinkie started speaking again, her voice both slightly different audio-wise and also coming in much more curtly and swiftly. “Look fuck this, can we j- let’s just clear the air, okay? I don’t wanna do this anymore, let’s just clear the air.”

Sunset was, throughout the whole of this mini-rant, locked up. She gripped her phone tightly, though where normally she would have met this kind of energy with sparks and flame, she had a hard time getting her bearings enough to return fire. By the time she had her wits about her enough to shoot back, Pinkie had already moved to de-escalate, and it left Sunset reeling all over again. It was like trying to tango with a beach ball where every little shift in energy was someone else spiking it to another end of the room.

“Can we do that, Sunset?”

“Um.” Sunset hadn’t realized she’d fallen silent. She still felt on the back foot, but the prompt pushed her to try to say something. “I d- um. I don’t…know.”

Pinkie let out a little huff of a breath. The squeak of a chair could be heard on the other end of the line where Pinkie didn’t so much as sit as she dropped her full weight into whatever seat she’d found. “Can I be honest?”

Sunset scratched at the back of her neck. ”I uh…” Her footing shifted as she began to slowly pace across the room. “I guess I can’t stop you.”

“…I mean, you can. You can tell me to shut up and I’ll go away and we can be enemies or whatever, if that’s what you really want.”

Sunset’s free hand found her way to her face as she kneaded her eyes. Even with two varieties of cold medicine in her system, her eyes still burned a little. “I’m too tired to do the enemies thing.”

“Yeah, well enemies are lame anyway. I don’t like enemies.” Pinkie’s voice was steadily losing that tense quality, though it wasn’t relaxed yet, nor being filled with much in the way of her iconic light and life. “I’d much rather be friends.”

Sunset rolled her eyes beneath where she was kneading them. “Yes, I’m aware.”

“Well why can’t we be? I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I don’t know why you’re being so-“ The silence would have been well-filled with random gesticulation, which is what Sunset imagined was happening. “You know?”

Sunset bit back a sarcastic remark. “I just want space right now.”

“D- do you, though??” The confusion was thick in Pinkie’s voice. “Cuz you can’t seem to get enough of Rarity, and you’re even being kind of friends with Fluttershy now! Is th- space?? But-“

The walls started going up. “That’s different.”

“Uh, yeah! Yeah it is? And it’s weird, cuz like- if you wanted space, that’s uh- that’s not really space? That looks more like you just kinda like them and don’t like anyone else.”

“It’s not like that.”

Pinkie made an unsure, helpless-sounding noise. “…okay? Well what’s it like, then?”

Sunset didn’t speak. Her eyes shifted to one side as she traced the space behind the air where her eyes fell.

“Do you want like…space from me? Am I a problem?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

Sunset’s lips moved, though she stopped herself. Her thoughts were moving quickly and felt air-thin when she went to grasp at them. “Maybe. I d- Idunno.”

“It feels like I’m a problem.” There was a creaking sound on Pinkie’s end. “It feels like you don’t want anything to do with me. And I mean…” Her voice became a little strained. “I guess I kinda get it, but…geez, Sunset.”

Sunset pressed down harder on her eyes. She felt the wall in front of her where she’d been slowly approaching it, so she turned around to pace the other way. “It’s not like that.”

“Well you tell me what it’s like, then! Cuz I don’t know.” It wasn’t quite vulnerability in Pinkie’s voice starting to emerge, but it was definitely some kind of sincerity like that. “Like, if there’s something I can do to fix this, please just tell me so I know what to do.”

The scoff snaked out of Sunset’s throat before she could stop it. “And you think I know what to do here?”

Pinkie’s response was nonverbal - vague noises of nondescript befuddlement and, shortly after, helpless acceptance came through the speaker in lieu of words.

Sunset wasn’t done yet, though. Vitriol continued rising up out of her throat where it had snuck out of her, and she had no trouble putting it to words: “I mind raped an entire bucking school. I tried to kill people. So you know what to d- what do I bucking do?! Huh? What about me? What am I supposed to do? You got a damn spreadsheet with that information on it?”

When Pinkie Pie responded, her voice was cold enough to make Sunset start to see her own breath: “I don’t, sorry. I’ve been a little busy trying to get all the information about what to do when my classmate tried to murder me.”

All air immediately vacated Sunset’s body. You’d think she’d been stabbed in the lung, the way her breath failed her.

Pinkie didn’t wait for her to recover. “I need to go. Get well soon.”

Sunset wanted to say about twenty things at once. She succeeded in saying none of them, and in fact was barely able to say anything at all. “I-“

And Pinkie Pie hung up. Sunset heard it immediately in the way the faux-silence from the speaker became true silence of a phone currently transmitting no more than the metal and plastic it was made of.

Sunset didn’t move for a while after that. She felt like she’d been slapped in the face, and she could do nothing more than stand where her pacing had brought her to the middle of the room, phone to her ear like she hadn’t quite registered that the call was over.

The only thing that was absolutely clear in her mind was that she’d bucked that up. She’d bucked that up really badly. It wasn’t obvious if she could un-buck that, either.

That was her chance. She didn’t know what exactly that chance was for, but whatever it was felt important, and she bucked it up. She bucked it up, and for all she knew, that was that.

Violence welled up in Sunset like a geyser. Before she could act on it, however, the pyroclastic eruption was cut off at the last possible second by a vibration in her hand. It was only reflex and muscle memory that gave her the kind of precision needed to pull up the text that had just arrived.

Fluttershy
Hi! ^u^ It’s been a little while, so I hope you’ve been doing ok. It’s the weekend, and I wanted to know if you were going to come over tonight. It’s totally up to you, but it’s been a blah kind of day and I think it would be nice to have someone keep me company. Did you want to come over?
Today at 3:54 PM

Sunset was barely aware of what she was doing, but she wasted no time in replying. It was the only thing that kept the phone in her hands instead of on a trajectory across the room, and she latched to it.

You
That would be fantastic
Today at 3:54 PM

Fluttershy
Yay >v<
I’ll have everything ready for you then. See you tonight! ^^
Today at 3:54 PM

Sunset continued to read over that last text. She didn’t respond to it, and it took everything she had to keep that device in her palm, even as her fingers tried feebly to crush the metal and plastic like a can of soda.

She had an objective now. It wasn’t much, barely an objective so much as an appointment, but it was something, and that something alone would be enough to keep both her feet on the floor and the top of her head - at least in that moment - from entering the ceiling and ejecting out through the roof.

It would take her quite a while to come down from the fury spawned from the upset. Once she had her wits about her enough that property wasn’t immediately in peril, she popped a Xanax it probably wasn’t legal for her to have and went to storm a lap or two around the block until blood no longer sounded like something that appealed.

After that, she just kinda kept walking. Even as the fire in her veins faded and the bloodlust waned, the steps continued. She had a path in mind, at first, but eventually she lost track of the time and found herself having slipped from that path. Her feet led the way from there.

Sunset’s footfalls were at once loud to her ears and barely noticeable. There was more than a little force behind her gaze, yet she kept her eyes to the ground, looking out a few yards from where her feet were currently falling and straying no further in any direction. She walked with purpose, and yet it could be said that she had nowhere to be, save only for where she claimed she would in a moment of action without consideration. She was a fire caster from birth, and yet for months now she had been fighting the cold with nary so much as a spark on her side. She was born a unicorn, yet the damp imprints that her shoes left in the dim beneath the street lights were that of a human’s.

She was Princess Celestia’s beloved student, and yet here she marched here in exile, where the light of Equestria’s sun could never reach her. She had once been able to call herself nobility, yet the life she had chosen brought her to the streets, which offered nothing and threatened to take everything. She was loathed and feared by every peer she had because of her actions, yet she was also able to claim that she had a partner that cared for her deeply. Even now as she walked to the residence of a kind and caring girl who would graciously welcome her into her own home, another kind and caring girl of the same friend group had reached out, been greatly disappointed, and now wanted nothing to do with her.

Contradiction after contradiction. Contrast after contrast.

It could be said that Sunset was a complicated person with a complicated situation to match, but it didn’t feel that way. It just felt like chaos. So many things were up in the air now, torn free from where they had once been stable fixtures in her life, and as Sunset started to ask herself questions and attempt to orient herself while everything came apart around her, she felt more lost than she ever had. Even the simple things had started to feel unnatural and out of place.

It was hard to care about any of it, at some point. With so much that had happened and so much that was wrong, it was easy to find one’s eyes crossing and, after a bit more time, deciding, “Fuck it.” She didn’t have the energy to keep track of it all, much less know how to fix it. She was tired, she was cold, she was weak, and it was so hard to care anymore. It was getting so hard to try.

…was she trying, though? Everything was hard, but what was she doing about it? What could she claim to have really done in the face of the adversity that was chipping her down, bit by bit, other than just beating her head against it? Her situation hadn’t improved since she hit the streets and found somewhere to stay. She was struggling, certainly, but was she trying?

It was…hard to tell. It felt like she was trying, but she didn’t know. Maybe she didn’t know what trying meant.

Had she ever tried before? Surely she had, yes? Surely. She knew what work was, she didn’t shy from it where it was necessary. She’d learned how to take pride in what she did, even if it was something she wouldn’t normally want to do. She could work hard. She’d done it before. She’d do it again, too.

Was this that? It was hard, absolutely, but what was she doing? What had she ever done? Had she ever done anything before? Was any of it even real?

Sunset found herself coming to a stop in her walk as a hand found a passing light post. Her head spun, and she had to physically brace herself against the post as her free hand came to her temple. Her eyes prickled, and the breaths she took came out shuddering and uneven.

Losing her mind. She was losing her mind. She could barely even walk down the street anymore before it felt like the sky was falling on her. Someday soon she wouldn’t even be able to set foot out the door before the ground gave way under her feet and dragged her straight to Hell.

Maybe she should have burned her bed after all. Then the rest of the place would go up, the kindling heap that it was, and she’d never walk out the door for that to happen, because there’d been no door. Crisis averted, right? That’s how that worked, right?

Sunset chuckled to herself, and didn’t stop for quite a while. She must have looked like a crazy thing as she chuckled ceaselessly under her breath while shambling along in the dark, dressed in old clothes with a loose, unhinged smile on her face, and that just made it funnier. It wasn’t funny, but it was funny. She hadn’t been walking out here for all that long (or at least that’s how it felt), yet the sky was already darkening enough that the street lamps were lit. She was sane, surely, yet every day that passed was one more step walked down the throat of madness, and right now it felt like she was sprinting.

Contradiction after contradiction. Contrast after contrast.

The sky continued to darken as minutes rallied closer towards hours. Soon the glow of the street lamps were the only lights by which Sunset could see by, and the already unfamiliar streets of this side of Canterlot became more foreign still as the shadows closed in from all sides.

Sunset was properly lost now. She found her way before long, but she did so by accident. She wouldn’t have known Fluttershy lived on this road if she hadn’t thought to finally look up and catch a glimpse at one of the street signs as she did so.

This entire street was fairly dense in trees, enough so that the lamps on this street tended to kick in an hour earlier than anywhere else. Fluttershy’s home was a white, brown-roofed two-story suburban house that looked like the property designer was completely obsessed with rectangles and had desperately needed an outlet. It was flat and blocky, but long, with a built-in garage and a few trees in the large yard that look positively ancient compared to anything else in the neighborhood. When Sunset had first seen it, she had judged the house as a little nondescript, though the flower bushes and shrubs nestled in front of the otherwise bland building were clearly given a lot of care, even if the weather had seen most of the flowers wither by now.

Were Sunset forced to try to describe the home, she would compare it to a button-up dress shirt that wasn’t obvious about whether its main intention was looking presentable or being nice clothes. That didn’t really matter, though, because it was also the only house on this street that had its porch light on, and it was on specifically because the residents were expecting her. It was, at that moment, the only place in all of Canterlot - or even the world - where Sunset Shimmer could be said to be truly welcome.

Sunset followed the path where it lazily serpentined its way up to the house. The sheer amount of marching and storming around she’d done for several hours seemed to have finally caught up with her, because as Sunset approached the porch, she felt her knees wobble with fatigue on both steps she had to scale to make it to the front door.

It wasn’t until she'd made it to the door and pushed the doorbell till she heard the chime go off that Sunset had a chance to properly appreciate how she felt. In addition to being fatigued from overexertion and perpetually under the weather, she was also tired, emotionally exhausted, chilly, on-and-off dizzy from both illness and acute anxiety, and on top of everything else, she hadn’t bathed in over a week. She also really, really wanted to be inside, and Sunset passed the time by chewing down her already permanently too-short nails, just on the off chance that there was one uneven edge of a nail she could fit her teeth around which hadn’t been gnawed out of existence yet.

Fortunately, she wasn’t kept waiting longer than a few seconds. Unfortunately, when the door opened, the sea foam complexion, five-o’clock shadow, and greasy smile on the man who answered the door was perhaps the last person that Sunset wanted to see. “We-he-he-helloooo there, my good lady,” Zephyr Breeze drawled warmly, leaning against the doorframe with an outstretched arm. “Sunset Shimmer, was it?”

“Yeah.” Sunset’s voice was small, and she found herself looking down at the floorboards where light from inside the house was spilling out. Even the threadbare smile felt like a major strain to hold up. “Fluttershy invited me.”

“Fluttershy did, eh?” Zephyr leaned in, grinning a little like he was getting in on some open secret he’d become privy to. “Isn’t it a little late in the day for a casual get-together?”

“It is.” Sunset shrank where she stood, eyes already on the floor shying back even further from him. It was nothing, it was clearly nothing, but in the moment it felt as though the comment was some kind of critique against her personally, and Sunset was feeling fragile enough that she all but physically started to curl in on herself for it. “I’m late. I’m sorry. I don’t have an excuse.”

“Oh, well, uh…” Zephyr‘s smooth routine faltered as he hesitated. He chuckled nervously to himself and scratched under his arm. “No- no need to apologize or anything, it’s uh…it’s all the same to me here.”

Sunset didn’t say anything. She stared hard at the floor between them, fists lightly clenched in her pockets. Even with just one person looking at her, all Sunset wanted to do was hide.

It was an awkward silence, one that Zephyr never found a way to move past before the irate voice of his sister snapped from inside the house with a remarkable bite: “It is COLD! Get OUT of the doorway!”

Zephyr Breeze jolted from where he was leaning like a whip had cracked by his ear, blurting, “Sorry! Sorry,” as he scrambled aside.

Sunset moved forward the instant the way was clear, not wanting to spend another moment outdoors if she didn’t have to. She didn’t quit moving once she started, and didn’t lift her gaze at all, keeping her eyes on the floor like meeting the gaze of another would cost her life. She stepped out of her crumbling shoes and left them by the door, then began to scale the stairs leading up to where she heard Fluttershy’s socks sliding up to the railing to greet her with a zip in her step. She smiled blindly in greeting back, though her eyes didn’t leave her own feet for a second, even to see what was ahead of her.

The moment she reached the top of the stairs, Fluttershy scurried over to her with open cheer, her smile all but glowing with sunlight. It was clear what she saw on Sunset’s face was not what she was hoping to see, however, and concern dampened the otherwise vibrant welcome nigh immediately. “Are you okay?”

Sunset kept smiling that plastic smile, already regretting finding Fluttershy’s face for the moment she had. “Yep.”

“You look like you’re about to cry.”

Sunset forced out a single airy chuckle. “I um…” She could feel the cracks growing already. Keeping her voice steady was difficult, and she couldn’t keep it totally level despite her best efforts. “I’ve had a really bad week.”

Fluttershy let out a soft noise of sympathy, compassion taking up a front row seat alongside the concern on her expression. “Can I help?”

Sunset went to respond, but all she managed to do was open her mouth, fail to find something that sounded like a good answer, and let the misshapen breath back out again with a helpless shake of her head.

When Sunset failed to answer, Fluttershy reached over and placed her hands on Sunset’s arm, then gently tugged, guiding her toward the hall behind them. Sunset didn’t have what it took to resist even if she wanted to, so she let herself be pulled along. She was steered past the upstairs bathroom and around the corner, headed towards the open door of Fluttershy’s room, which was promptly shut behind them.

No sooner did the latch click to indicate the way was sealed, Fluttershy let her hands slip from Sunset’s arm, stepping up a little closer to her as her voice softened. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Sunset…almost brushed it off, but with the open compassion on full display from Fluttershy, she found herself giving the question the consideration it felt due. The answer wasn’t all that different, though. “I don’t…” She didn’t finish. She had a few things she had meant to say that she didn’t, though the grimace said plenty enough to fill in the blanks.

Fluttershy of all people would get it, and she nodded along. “Would hugs help?”

Sunset didn’t know the answer to that. She took a few seconds to consider it, then mumbled, “Yeah.”

Fluttershy flashed a warm smile and opened up her arms invitingly. Sunset only paused a moment before taking a half-step forward and more or less sinking into Fluttershy’s arms, which closed around her in a hold that felt disproportionately embracing for how small Fluttershy’s presence normally was.

Something Sunset had become privy to early on upon getting to know Fluttershy was that Fluttershy gave amazing hugs. She had never identified precisely why that was the case, but any time she’d managed to catch Fluttershy in a huggy mood or otherwise willing to express affection (something that turned out to be fairly frequent, if she liked you and you were alone), she had never been left disappointed. Her aura itself seemed to radiate coziness, and something about the way that the girl felt physically seemed to synergize with it in such a way that she just felt…good. It felt good to touch Fluttershy. As mildly uncomfortable as it sounded when said aloud, Sunset wouldn’t know how else to describe it other than that Fluttershy was a very touchable kind of person. For as scrawny as she looked at first, that girl was incredibly easy to get lost in.

And for Sunset, nothing else sounded more appealing. Her arms curled around Fluttershy’s middle as her head fell forward into her pale rose hair. Her breathing became increasingly lopsided the more she tried to relax, and it didn’t take long before Sunset’s breaths were becoming procedurally more heavy as she tried not to start crying right then and there. She was failing.

“There there,” Fluttershy cooed, sounding like how her arms felt around Sunset. Even her voice was an extension of the hug. “It’ll be okay.”

Sunset was crumbling fast. “I’m falling apart,” she choked out, every word struggling to make it up out of her constricting throat. “It's all falling apart.”

“Shhh...”

“I can’t do this.” They were barely words coming out of Sunset anymore. “I can’t…”

“Shhhh…” Fluttershy nestled her head a little more snugly against Sunset’s, somehow wrapping herself that much more around the rest of her. “Shhh shh shh…”

Sunset said something else, but the words were completely garbled now, choked beyond recognition and distorted irreparably by the sobs wracking her whole body.

Fluttershy nodded softly. “I know.” The hug deepened, and as the sobs began to flow, a gentle, barely detectable sway picked up between the two of them, rocking Sunset back and forth just a hair. Just enough to feel it. “I know, and I’m here. I’ve got you.”

Conversation died with Sunset’s ability to articulate words. Fluttershy held her the entire time she cried, patting her back, rocking her, murmuring soft, sweet words into her ear as Sunset folded her soul inside-out and wrung it out into Fluttershy’s hair and shoulder.

Minutes passed. Sunset didn’t know how long she cried for, but once she started, she didn’t stop. Even once she’d run out of tears to shed, she didn’t let go of Fluttershy, occasionally whimpering faintly as she held onto the girl like a lifeline.

Fluttershy, meanwhile, just seemed happy to be here. She was a beacon of serenity in the maelstrom of chaos Sunset felt her life had turned into. At some point the words had stopped, and in their place Fluttershy had begun to quietly hum some nursery rhyme Sunset didn’t recognize, intoned softly to the beat of their gentle swaying in place.

One of the first coherent thoughts that came to Sunset as her composure cobbled itself back together was how lucky she was to know this girl. She wished she’d had the foresight to let her into her life years ago.

Sunset didn’t know when she stopped crying, but at some point she found herself having fallen silent and still. Her eyes burned, her throat felt glued shut with saliva and whatever other unflattering mix of fluids had her airways feeling gelatinous, and her face itched where streams of tears had begun to dry on her cheeks and beneath her eyes. She felt about twenty pounds heavier than when she’d entered this room, yet paradoxically somewhat lighter. Everything else felt thick, and the room swam a little. She could really feel the dizzy pulses as she continued to sway gently with Fluttershy, who she felt as though she’d physically grown into and around, like two handfuls of clay that had been in contact for too long.

Before anything could be said, a knock came at the door to Fluttershy’s room. It wasn’t especially loud, but in the quiet it may as well have been a hammer’s strikes. “Fluttershy,” came the voice of an older woman, “is your friend here yet?”

Fluttershy’s hold on Sunset had shifted the moment the noise came, and it wasn’t clear if she had intended to hold Sunset closer or was preparing to detach from her on short notice if need be. “Yes, mom,” she called back, looking over Sunset’s shoulder at the door.

“Does she still want to use the shower? Everything’s ready.”

“Yes, mom,” Fluttershy repeated. “We got distracted, sorry.”

Sunset felt something sarcastic bubble up from the back of her throat, but it had no chance of becoming words. She was silent for this exchange.

“Well, go ahead and move it along, girls.” The urging was friendly-sounding, if still a nudge. “Not to rush or anything, but you know how your father gets.”

“Okay, mom.” Fluttershy didn’t say more or move after that, cyan eyes locked on the door until the sound of footsteps could be heard retreating from the door into the hall. Once they were gone, she looked back at Sunset and gave a smile that was both apologetic and encouraging.

Sunset recognized the cue. She didn’t move, though, and let out a quiet grunt that had no meaning in particular.

“You’ll feel better after,” Fluttershy told her gently. Her arms were gradually retracting from around Sunset as she spoke to her. “Go get clean. I’ll be here when you’re done.”

Another grunt, this one reluctant. She didn’t fight it, though. Too tired.

Sunset shambled her way to the bathroom, which had the door open and the light on, waiting for her. Somewhere in the back of her head was the trivia factoid that this was the entire purpose of her having ever been to this house and why she was here at all now, but it was left rattling around in her skull, bouncing around and getting progressively more buried with all the other things in her head that she was simply too exhausted to remember.

The Shy household’s interior almost looked like it had been removed and then a log cabin had been transplanted inside of the otherwise regular suburban home, but the bathroom apparently had been skipped with that philosophy. The white floor was speckled with dozens of tiny hexagonal tiles, every countertop and the tub itself was fashioned to look like they were made of stone, and the wall lights looked like they’d been taken straight out of a fancy hotel somewhere and mounted on the walls across from the glass cube of a shower stall. An oversized pale towel had been hung on the side facing the wall so as to give the one inside it a modicum of privacy in the event of a walk-in, but that was it. It was a little out of place given the rest of the home’s interior, but then again, the home’s interior was out of place compared to its exterior, so perhaps that made it loop back around to looking normal, somehow? To someone’s eyes? At some point?

Weird house. The Shy’s had a weird house.

Whatever.

Sunset’s jacket hit the counter, then slid off a second later and hit the floor. She didn’t collect it, tossing her hole-speckled purple shirt where it had meant to go instead. It was only then that she had the thought to turn on the water, which filled the room with the soft shrillness of working plumbing and the splatter of water against a ceramic shower floor. She then went through the process of working her way out of one, then two, then three pairs of identical skinny jeans, the last layer of which she had no trouble slipping out of without undoing the button.

Still losing weight.

Whatever. She didn’t want to look at herself in the mirror anyway.

By the time she had shed out of all her other clothing, Sunset felt completely drained of any remaining energy, and simply opening the door and closing it on herself to stand in the water stream was about all she had left in her to do. She stood there blankly under the water stream as it fell down and splashed in her face and over her hair, any thought or impulse to do more having been cannibalized by her higher brain functions just to get her this far. Before long she found the prospect of standing to be entirely too much work, and she let her wobbly knees give out beneath her to sit on the shower floor as the artificial rain kept pouring down on her head.

Most of her shower was spent staring off into space, with any amount of cleaning that got done coming to her as an afterthought rather than…y’know…the whole reason for taking a shower. That wasn’t really on her mind. Water was here, it was warm, and she was…just kind of existing, sitting there like an extension of the scenery as the falling water did its best to wash away the ashes that Sunset felt in her soul.

There had been some days where this had been all Sunset had wanted to do, yet now she sat there and felt nothing. Really, as comfortable as the hot water felt, it wouldn’t change all that much. It might relax her muscles some, sure, but they’d still be sore. She’d still be tired. She’d be cleaner, but by the time she got another one of these, she’d be filthy again, and would have felt filthy for days at a time. It wouldn’t help her sleep, and any warmth she felt now wouldn’t carry on to the rest of the day, never mind the rest of the week.

This nice little experience she’d spend days looking forward to…changed nothing. It’d give her maybe a day or two where she felt better in one specific way, and then it’d all go right back to how it was before.

Sunset raised one hand to look at it. It was hard to make out the details through the water running over them and the mist hanging over her like a veil, but upon angling her arm such that the water no longer rolled down its length, she got a much clearer view of her fingers.

Her fingernails, especially, looked mangled where the prolonged moisture had caused the skin around them to puff up just a bit, highlighting all the spots where she had run out of nail and instead simply began to chew and bite off the endmost bits of skin around them where she couldn’t feel it. The heat of the water made her skin flush a little, and the flesh around her fingertips seemed to glow angrily from the damage that had been inflicted on them. It wasn’t uniform by any means, but all ten of her fingers looked like this. All ten digits looked gnawed and chewed on at the edges, like feral animals had gotten to them when she wasn’t looking.

She was physically falling to pieces. She couldn’t feed herself, she couldn’t sleep well enough to feel okay throughout the day, and she couldn’t keep herself healthy. And if that wasn’t bad enough, her mind was doing so poorly that she was devouring her own hands like some kind of freak of nature set to kill off the main cast in a horror film. She had so much stress and anxiety bearing down on her that she apparently didn’t know what to do with it except help her body break itself down even faster, and half the time she didn’t even know she was doing it. She certainly didn’t remember leaving her fingertips looking like that. She barely remembered chewing half of these nails ever, and every one of them were stripped all but completely bald. It was a wonder she even had nails anymore. Never mind the four ruts carved into both of her her palms that stung as the water ran over them, places where her anger had poured so freely that she had impaled herself with the jagged edges of what remained of those nails.

As Sunset sat there, realizing what she had done to her own hands, a growing sense of futility started to close in on her. It was slow, but steady, and there was little energy in Sunset left to fight it where it seeped in through the cracks.

This state she was in, her feeble attempts to make it better and fight off the ailments that were systematically dismantling her in body, mind, and soul…it all seemed a bit pointless, didn’t it?

Nothing was changing. She suffered every day, and nothing came of it. She weathered endless waves of a million and one discomforts, and nothing came of it. She made mistake after mistake with the people around her because of how she treated them, and nothing came of it.

She couldn’t live like this. She knew she couldn’t live like this. She’d known that well in advance, because the writing had been on the wall as plain as day, yet here she was, living like this.

The world was heartless, yes, but it wasn’t malicious. It hadn’t hunted her down, stripped her of any capacity to save herself, and then subjected her to the torments she was rapidly reaching the limit of her ability to endure. Nothing and nobody did this to her, it had just…happened. They were circumstances, and she’d let them happen. Any time she’d lifted a finger was to bucking eat it, apparently, rather than do something about them.

She’d asked for some help, and she got it. Fluttershy did her a favor, and now she got showers again, sometimes, after she’d lost the ability to get them on her own. She could ask Rarity for help, and she’d have clothes. She could reach out elsewhere, and she could probably have food. Hell, Fluttershy had already told her that she could arrange for Sunset to stay at her house for a little while, and that would take care of so many issues she’d been having. She probably wouldn’t have gotten sick if she’d just done something like that from the start, but now that she was sick, she was getting medication from people who really had no business getting it to her other than because they chose to help. People could get in trouble, for this and for other things, and yet they were doing it anyway, just to cover her ass.

What was she doing?

…it didn’t really matter, did it? She couldn’t take it anymore. She couldn’t do this.

Sunset pushed herself up to one knee, then reached up and delivered a fist to the water nozzle. With a hard thump, the flow of water stopped, and the pipes went silent. Steam continued to waft up and out of her glass cubicle, and with a feeble grunt, Sunset stood the rest of the way up. She took in a long, slow breath, then let it slip back out through her lips again in a haggard sigh to try and ready herself at all. It didn’t help.

That was fine. She knew what she had to do anyway.

Sunset got dressed. She would have loved to air dry and enjoy some time out of her fabric prison that she was locked in 24/7 these days, but she was in someone else’s house, and humans didn’t like nudity. She met herself in the middle and only put on one of the three pairs of jeans she had walked into the house with, leaving the other two folded on the counter to deal with later. It gave her pause for a moment, as the sight of them might look a little odd and invite some questions, but Sunset then reminded herself that it wouldn’t matter in a moment anyway. She didn’t bother brushing her hair, simply sweeping it out of her eyes and letting it drip down her neck and back as she opened the bathroom door and stepped out into the hall.

Fluttershy was in her bedroom, right where Sunset expected her to be. Fluttershy herself had taken the opportunity to change into her pajamas - a green onesie that continued to look exceptionally soft and comfortable, even from across the room. She had pulled up one of several bean bag chairs from its usual spot and plopped it down in front of the television in her room, which she now sat in front of, a controller in hand as some game or another filled the screen with lights and color. A small folding table had been put up next to her, which had a pair of cups filled with some steaming dark fluid in them.

It was not Sunset who announced her entry into the room, but the cat that revealed itself to be on Fluttershy’s lap and who did not take kindly to someone else entering. As the small gray animal leaped off of Fluttershy to duck under the bed, Fluttershy turned her head to watch this, then saw Sunset standing there and flashed a smile. “Hey.”

Sunset tried to smile back. One corner of her mouth lifted some, which is about all she could muster. It was maybe the biggest genuine smile she’d managed all day. “Hey.”

The television was filled with the word “PAUSED” shortly before Fluttershy put her game controller down and turned in her bean bag chair to face Sunset more fully. “Do you feel any better?”

Sunset’s gaze lowered as she interrogated this. She didn’t feel worse, but the heaviness of the cry from earlier had left her emotional reserves feeling completely depleted, and that hadn’t gone away, even if she did feel a little bit more securely held together. Mentally, at least. “Kinda.”

“That’s good.” Fluttershy hopped up from her bean bag chair to scoot it over in front of the folding table, then scooted across the room to grab another identical to it and placed it down directly beside the first, settling down on it as she pat the spot next to her invitingly. “I made some tea.”

“Tea, huh?” Sunset shuffled over to the bean bag chairs where they’d been set up in front of the foot of the bed, tentatively lowering herself down as indicated. Fluttershy nudged one of the two cups at the folding table in front of her, and she carefully took it. “It’s been a while since I’ve had tea.”

Once Sunset had taken her seat, Fluttershy wasted no time scooting her bean bag up close to Sunset’s, then settled into one side until their sides were touching.

Having been contemplating taking an exploratory sip, Sunset was a little surprised by this and gave Fluttershy a questioning if amused look. “Well you’re affectionate today.”

Fluttershy flashed another smile even as she shrank down shyly. “Um…well, you like it, and it seems like it makes you feel better…”

“Wasn’t complaining,” Sunset reminded, bringing the teacup to her lips. She sipped only the tiniest bit, found that it wasn’t too too hot, and then lowered it again to set down and let cool a bit more. “It’s just a little weird for you.”

Fluttershy squirmed some more, wriggling in place such that she sank a bit more into her bean bag chair till she was a head lower than her and looking up at her. ”I’m happy to see you.”

Sunset found herself with a small smile she couldn’t quite shake at that. “I’m happy to see you too.”

Fluttershy’s shy little smile doubled in size, even as she seemed to grow more bashful and hid her face a little. Didn’t stop her from leaning into Sunset’s side all this time, though.

Cute.

They didn’t say much for a little while after that. The new smile record for the day had grown a little, and Sunset found her spirits notedly improved as she quietly sipped away at the tea she’d been given. Black tea, she decided after she’d sampled enough of it to get a good enough sense of the flavor. She preferred red herself, but this was fine too. After a little while, Fluttershy sat up from where she’d slipped partially horizontal to help herself to her own tea, which was shared in comfortable silence.

Sunset’s thoughts didn’t stray far from what she’d been thinking about before, however. The atmosphere was nice, but the return of her previous considerations took a bite out of it for her as the gravity settled back in. Eventually her cup found the folding table again, and she pretended to comb her hair a bit into alignment with her fingers as she tried to prepare herself.

”Do you want a brush?”

“Uh.” It was a simple question, but Sunset stumbled over it all the same. “I guess.”

And Fluttershy was up again, quickly scampering to her dresser and doing a brief dig through the top drawer before scooting back over with a brush in hand, branded with a pair of tiny pink butterflies on one side. Rather than place it into the outstretched hand, Fluttershy plopped back down onto her bean bag chair and applied the brush to Sunset’s head herself, beginning the process of making that flame-like hair look like flames rather than a knot of red and yellow spaghetti. “I still love your hair…”

Sunset, still a little surprised by this, chuckled quietly. “Um…thank you. Born with it ‘n all, so…”

“It’s a good length for you.” Brush brush. The bangs were put back in the front from where they’d been slicked aside, though still being wet, they weren’t quite behaving as though they ought to. “And really full, and…nice color, and…I don’t know, I just really like your hair…”

“I used to braid it when I was a filly.”

Fluttershy paused mid-motion, retracting the brush from Sunset’s head and staring at her hair as she tried to visualize this. After a second or two, she frowned, then shook her head and resumed brushing. “I can’t see it. The way you normally do it is much nicer.”

Sunset nodded as she shrugged her shoulders. “I think so too, but it took me a while to like…y’know, actually live with my mane. My mom wouldn’t let me cut it, or I’d have shaved it.”

Fluttershy’s face contorted in repulsion as she let out a disgusted-sounded “blugh” noise. “That’s not okay.”

“She didn’t think so either,” Sunset chuckled. “I actually ended up learning how to sword fight because I wanted to go into the military so they’d buzz my mane off.”

Fluttershy’s brushing stopped again as she looked at Sunset in surprise. “You can sword fight?”

Sunset held her hand out flat and teetered it back and forth. “Kinda? It’s uh…I mainly used conjured weapons, and…y’know, I was a unicorn at the time, so the style probably doesn’t reeeeeally work like uh, like I am.”

“Did you ever get into the military?”

Sunset went to answer, then paused, tilting her head slightly to better accommodate Fluttershy’s resumed brushing. “Well, I never enlisted, but I did get tutored by a guy in the Guard, who used some military styles when he trained with me, so…uh…yesn’t.”

Fluttershy giggled. “Yesn’t...”

“Yesn’t, yes.” A beat. “N’t.”

Fluttershy giggled some more. She brushed a little longer and then asked, “Why did you want to cut off your hair?”

“Cuz it looks like fire.”

Fluttershy gave her an odd look.

Sunset simply shrugged. “Kinda had a complex. I didn’t wanna be a fire main.”

Fluttershy nodded along, though the understanding visibly landed a second or two later. “Right, you mentioned that before…that’s unfortunate.”

Sunset shrugged again. “I got over it.”

“It still doesn’t sound fun.”

Sunset shrugged a third time and didn’t comment further on it.

It was around this time that Fluttershy deemed Sunset’s hair sufficiently brushed. She lowered the utensil, gave Sunset a thorough look over, then nodded, apparently satisfied as she put the brush on the table and replaced it with her teacup. “It’s going to need another pass once it’s dried some more.”

“Yeah, it usually takes a couple extra passes.” Sunset mirrored Fluttershy and took up her teacup, giving it a sip. It was a bit cooler now, so she could drink from it more easily. “It wouldn’t if I could use the spell I know for that, but that would imply we could have nice things, and we can’t have that.”

Fluttershy giggled in between tea sips. "Well, that's what hair dryers are for."

“Yes, my hair dryer. The hair dryer spell. The spell that dries my hair. Which I can’t use because it’s a nice thing and life is suffering!”

“Just use a regular hair dryer,” Fluttershy laughed. “We have one in the bathroom!”

“I don’t think you do! Wanna know why? Because it’s a nice thing, and we can’t have that.”

“No!” Fluttershy was giggling freely now. “We’ve got one!”

Sunset monotoned a long, deliberating note in faux-thought. “Mmmmmmm sounds fake, nope.”

“We do though! I used it this morning!”

“Fake. Can’t have it.”

“Want me to go get it? I’ll show you.”

“Nah, it’s made up. Not buying it.”

“But I used it just this morning!”

“Sure you did.”

“I did, though!”

“No you didn’t.”

Fluttershy’s protests were broken up by laughter as she slipped partially sideways in her bean bag chair. When she did speak, she whined, “Sunseeeeeet!”

Sunset simply shrugged, smiling widely despite her aloof posture and dismissive responses. She was still quite tired and didn’t have the energy she would typically have in reserve for when she was joking around, but this was working just fine, and she took the giggling Fluttershy laying over in her bean bag chair as proof of victory here.

Things wound down again. Fluttershy eventually sat back up and leaned against Sunset’s side once again with a little sigh. “Well you’re bullying me again, so you must feel better.”

Sunset smiled into her cup before she lowered it again. “Give me a full night’s sleep and I’ll show you what bullying looks like. This is foal’s play.”

“Mean.” Fluttershy was all smiles in stark contrast to this accusation. “You’re mean.”

Sunset shrugged, nonchalantly replying, “Shoulda thought of that before you were so bullyable.”

“Mean.”

“It’s what you get, sorry. I don’t make the rules.” Sunset took a sip of tea as Fluttershy giggled. Then, more sincerely: “And I do feel better, yeah. Thank you.”

Fluttershy smiled earnestly at this. “That’s good.” Her gaze went to her tea as she gently swayed the cup to make the fluid start to rotate. “It seems like you could use some more smiles in your life.”

That was her opening. Sunset swallowed, the pleasant cheer she’d been feeling slipping from her face as she went to shift gears. “...that uh, reminds me…I need to talk to you about something.”

Fluttershy looked up from her tea, her smile replaced with a look of neutral curiosity.

Sunset found it a little harder to meet Fluttershy’s gaze, and so she looked down at the folding table in front of her instead, which she placed her teacup down on to free her hands. “I uh…” Her eyes passed over her fingertips, catching a glimpse of the gnawed, slightly tattered-looking skin around her chewed down nails. “I wanted to take you up on that offer.”

Fluttershy cocked her head to one side. She didn’t ask, though the question was all over her face.

“The…” Sunset rolled her wrist, gesticulating vaguely as she grasped at words. “The…a couple nights ago, um…you offered to have me stay here.”

”Oh.” Fluttershy sat up much straighter with a surprised, “Oh!” as her hands briefly went to her mouth. “Oh that. Right right right-”

“Yeah.” Sunset tapped her fingers slowly on the folding table with an air of discomfort. “Is that still an option, at all, or..?”

“Of course!” Fluttershy was quick to reply, and then just as quick to seem assuring. “Of course! It definitely is. I’d just um- I’d just have to talk to my mom about it, but- but we’ve had some people over before, we had um- we had a, um, three um- a family from our church had their pipes burst, and they stayed with us for two weeks while they got it fixed.”

Sunset nodded along, tentatively. “And uh…did those people also happen to be from another world too?”

“Nnnnooooo…” Fluttershy steepled her fingers together in front of her as her gaze shifted to the side, visibly going over this in her head. “That might…be a little weird, I guess. Um…”

“You’d have to lie if you wanted it airtight.”

Fluttershy winced a little. She chewed on the inside of her lips as she pressed them together in a thin line. “Yeah.”

Sunset sighed. This wasn’t a surprise, necessarily, but she had quietly been hoping that this was something that had been considered a bit more in advance. Currently, it seemed that it would require lying to make happen, so it was no different than ever. That she was roping someone else into it was starting to make her rethink this whole thing, as necessary as it seemed. Her options were few. “...of course, I am 18,” she began, in a tone implying the obviousness of what she was saying, as false as it was. “So I can be on my own…y’know, held back. Troubled youth…all that…”

Fluttershy didn’t immediately start nodding, though she did eventually, even as it brought her palpable discomfort. “...right…”

“And my parents are…” Sunset rolled her wrist, allowing that to hang there as her hand sat outstretched. “You know. Like they are.”

“Rrrriiiiight…” Fluttershy kept nodding, looking no more comforted despite the growing affirmation.

It wasn’t sitting well with Sunset. Quite the opposite, actually. “...look, I…” She put her hands down flat on the folding table, sitting up a little straighter. “I don’t want to make you have to do this, Fluttershy, I-”

“I want to help,” came the adamant response. “If you need help, you need help, Sunset, it’s winter. You need heat. You’re already sick.”

“And I’m not gonna argue that, but we- we gotta be realistic here, right? The bigger a lie gets, the more snagging points you develop, and it only takes one good catch before the entire thing comes crashing down, and then you’re bucked. Then you’re busted, and now suddenly we’re in a whole other situation, and I’m in hot water, because now I’m under the microscope. Cuz like- cuz why’s this highschooler going around homeless? Where’s her parents?” Sunset clapped her hands sharply. “Boom, I’m bucked. Right there, my whole case falls apart. I can’t recover from that.”

“But you have a home.”

Sunset’s entire face contorted like she had just stubbed her toe and was biting back the outcry. She tried to recover, but the initial response was far too pronounced for her to be able to hide that it had happened.

And of course, Fluttershy, having been looking right at her at the time, noticed this reaction. She didn’t quite seem to understand it, though, as her brow furrowed and she leaned forward in confusion. “But you have a home, Sunset. Why w…” It visibly landed. Fluttershy’s eyes widened as her expression shifted to one of shock.

Sunset’s eyes pressed tightly closed as she clenched one fist, already beginning to agonize over that one careless slip. Bad slip. Bad slip bad slip bad slip bad slip. That was a really bad slip. She just ousted herself immediately. Bad slip. Bad slip. Oh that was the worst slip she could have made right then.

“Sunset…?”

“I had Flash.” Sunset had to really work to keep her voice steady in the wake of this catastrophe in the making, though she couldn’t keep her words from coming out a little bit rushed. “I had Flash. I’ve had him for the longest time, basically the whole time, and that got- that wasn’t gonna work anymore.”

“Sunset-”

“It got complicated.” She thumped her fist on the table with this, making both their cups rattle. She didn’t want to look and put a face to the open horror building in Fluttershy’s voice. The thought of it had her voice growing an edge to it. “It got complicated, alright? It’s- what- what was I supposed to say?!” Sunset demanded this as she threw out her arms at Fluttershy, who looked more devastated by every word that left her mouth. “Who was I supposed to talk to?! Can you think of who would have supported me?!”

Fluttershy’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. There were tears in her eyes, and she sounded so fragile when she feebly tried, “Your parents..?”

Both of Sunset’s hands snapped into fists. The muscles in her arms and wrists locked up as tight as iron, and it took every ounce of willpower she had not to bring them crashing down on this folding table and smash it in her lap. “My parents,” she seethed, “who already have their daughter, you mean?”

Fluttershy’s mouth hung agape, and she shook her head.

“This is a mirrored world.” Her fists found the folding table, and in spite of her restraint, the force of it was enough to cause tea to spill out of both cups atop it, nearly splashing herself in the process. “The only reason I knew how anything works here is because it’s all duplicates. Everyone is just another version of themselves from my world. Including me.”

Fluttershy’s head continued to shake, and she tried so hard to find her voice. ”Sunset-”

“I DON’T-” CRASH went her fists against the folding table, “BELONG here! I NEVER belonged here! I’m never GOING to belong here!” Her voice was caving a little, and her eyes stung. “I’m an alien! I’m an alien freak pretending to be a human! I can never have support, because I don’t BELONG!” CRASH went the table, which collapsed under the blows delivered to it. With every ounce of energy it felt she had expended on this explosion of an outburst, there was no force left in her to spare, leaving Sunset only able to feebly choke out, "And I never will."

Silence fell over the room like a layer of wet cement. Fluttershy continued to stare at Sunset in abject horror, mouth open in waiting for words that had no intention of coming to her. The folding table’s thin legs were both snapped off at the part where they met the underside of the tabletop, and both teacups had been knocked to the floor, spilling all over the table they’d been knocked from and the carpet where they’d come to fall.

Nothing was said. No one moved.

Sunset took several long, shaking breaths as she stared hard at the damage she’d done, unsteadily opening up her fists. Renewed burning radiated from her palm where the scabbed over slices her fingers had already left before were stimulated, re-opening the small wounds in one or two places. Her eyes stung with tears, but there were precious few of those left for her to be able to shed at this point. There was nothing left in her to be emptied.

She didn’t know what to do now. It wasn’t supposed to get out like this, but she’d bucked that too. It’s like she couldn’t help but ruin everything, even when she was finally trying for once.

It didn’t matter. Fluttershy knew, despite her wishes. Nothing would undo that. What happened happened.

Meanwhile, Fluttershy looked absolutely crushed by this development. She stared at Sunset for a long time after that, expression a shifting mix of horror, sadness, and confusion - one or two tears slipped down her face, but she held it together, for the most part. At some point, her breathing became increasingly shallow and quick, and she put her hand to her chest as she tried her very best to stave off hyperventilation, and the panic attack that had inspired it.

And Sunset was there for her…or at least, she tried to be. She didn’t understand Fluttershy all that well yet, but she scooted over where she sat on her bean bag chair, leaning a bit over the small space between hers and Fluttershy’s to invade her space and lean into her side, as they had been doing back when the conversation was going well and everything was okay. In response to this, Fluttershy grabbed onto Sunset’s arm like she was dangling off a ledge, holding onto her for dear life as she struggled for breath. It stung a bit, but Sunset swallowed the discomfort for the sake of being some manner of support. She was responsible for this, after all.

She considered leaving at least once. She’d caused enough trouble already, but that’d leave Fluttershy all by herself to deal with something that had clearly caused her distress…so there Sunset remained, one arm fully occupied by a panic-stricken Fluttershy, the other reaching over so that she could rub her shoulder and try to be a calming presence in the situation she’d caused.

Fluttershy relaxed, gradually. The painful death grip on her arm slowly loosened as Fluttershy got her breathing back under control, and she scooted up closer to Sunset to nestle against her. Sunset reciprocated, remaining completely silent throughout it all, allowing the other girl to process this as she needed to. It didn’t hurt to have a little time to process it all herself, either.

The quiet remained unchallenged for the longest time. It felt like an hour, maybe more. Sunset wasn’t keeping track. It didn’t matter how long it took.

”I want to help.”

The reaction wasn’t immediate. After the second or two that it took to register what had been said, Sunset swallowed the lump in her throat where it had gathered. “I don’t want to drag you into this.”

The soft hands around her forearm tightened their grip a little. Her voice would sound firm if not for how it trembled with barely-contained emotion: ”No one deserves to be alone in this world, Sunset.”

Sunset opened her mouth, then closed it. Her eyes searched around the room briefly, like something in it might help with some point or another, but she found nothing, and had no point to speak of. Her eyes felt damp, for a moment.

”Please let me help you.”

She wanted to refuse. She tried to, at least a little bit, but in the end, all Sunset could manage was a small, “Okay.”

Sunset would be staying the night that night. There was no verbal agreement made between the two girls, but the understanding was clear enough in the moment for them both to reach the same conclusion independently of one another.

It wasn’t clear what would happen moving forward. Sunset had no plan, and neither did Fluttershy, despite how fervently determined she was to make a difference here. That wouldn’t be decided that night.

What was decided was that Fluttershy was on Sunset’s side, and that she had no intention of being anywhere else. Sunset didn’t know what difference that would make, but in that moment it felt…good. It felt good to have someone in on the act willing to stand by her. Really good.

It’s good to have friends.

Author's Note

Loooooooong one this time.

I meant to have a break after the part with Pinkie and call that a chapter, but what came next was in direct response to what I'd just written, so...may as well keep going, right? And then that went places, and here we are, nearly 13,000 words in with not a single good place to break it up after that spot I'd passed up.

I'm just a vessel for this story, man, I don't decide what happens. I'm along for the ride as much as you guys at this point.

Hope you enjoyed. The plot thickens!