“Sunset Shimmer!”
The shout from behind her echoed off the walls, though Sunset couldn’t quite recall who it belonged to until she turned around and saw her: body crouched forward aggressively, her purple pigtails an incongruous backdrop to the glare of sheer hatred she was aiming at Sunset.
“I hate you!” she shouted at the same volume, adding zero semantic information to whatever this was.
“Uh… Aria? You’re not a student here anymore, why are you here?” was all Sunset could think of to say in response. Her gaze flicked around to see that it was just her and Aria standing in the middle of this empty Canterlot High hallway.
“Aren’t those other two usually with you? Where’s Adagio?”
Aria’s furious glare somehow grew even more furious.
“Adagio? Really!?”
She slammed her fist against a locker, causing Sunset to jump up a bit as Aria took two stomping steps to close the distance between them.
“I came all the way here just to tell you that I hate you and all you ask about is Adagio?!”
She slammed her fist against a locker that was closer to Sunset, though that didn’t make her jump this time.
“I come up with plans too, you know! I was the one who made those MyStable posts that made it look like you were telling everyone people’s secrets!”
“What? Those were you?” Sunset blinked. “Everyone thought that was just one of Rainbow’s ironic meme accounts. If it was actually supposed to trick people it was really bad.“
“What? How were they bad?” Aria said, hurt in her voice. “I would’ve been convinced by them!“
“Well that’s because you’re, uh…” Sunset hesitated. “I mean, I’m sure you just haven’t had many chances to come up with schemes! It takes practice, you know?”
”You won’t even call me stupid? Augh!” Aria cried, slamming the already-dented locker in frustration tears.
“Do you… want me to?”
“I told you I hated you didn’t I!?”
That was indeed how whatever this was started, not that that clarified anything.
“And why do you hate me again?”
“Why do you think!? We had the perfect plan to harness the humans’ emotions to power our magic and return to Equestria, and you foiled it! It was hate at first sight! We all hate you!”
Well, okay, that did make sense. And stung a little hearing it put that way, if Sunset were being honest. She channeled that to fill her voice with gentle concern.
“Yeah, I guess we never really talked about that, did we? Sure, to us you were manipulating the minds of innocent people and had to be stopped, but that doesn’t make you pure evil.”
She took a tentative step toward Aria.
”All you wanted to do was go home.”
“Of course we wanted to go home! Because we hated the ponies that sent us to this stupid place and we wanted to take revenge!”
“Okay… we can unpack that one later. But for now, how about I just try to understand how you feel?”
“What?” Aria recoiled back, grimacing as if she’d just seen a gross bug and were Rarity instead of Aria. “You’re being nice to me after all that?”
“Of course I am.” Sunset took another step closer, doing her best to keep a warm smile on her face as she reached out a hand. “Everyone deserves kindness.”
All she had to do was touch her, and memories of whatever emotional trauma or unmet need that was driving Aria to act this way would flood into her mind, and she’d know how to solve this problem like always.
All she had to do…
And the memories came.
Of Aria, glaring a photo of Sunset held in front of her in a white-knuckle grip. Not moving a muscle, not making any noise at all save for the occasional cry of hate. Not just for a moment, but for hours on end. Hours of doing nothing but wordlessly glaring and seething and fuming at Sunset’s image. Not just once, but many times, every single day, stretching all the way back for months.
“What the fuck?”
Sunset's vision was now on the physical Aria whose arm she was touching. She was breathing hard, her pupils narrowed to pinpricks, glaring at Sunset with the same intensity as in the memories—
Sunset felt her head jerk suddenly to the side, pain blossoming from her cheek. She took a few stuttering steps before regaining her balance.
“Did you… did you just punch me?”
Aria raised her fist at her.
“Yeah! What’re ya gonna do about it?”
Feelings that Sunset remembered from her old life surged up, but this time she didn't instinctively suppress them. She looked down at her own hands, which were flexing by themselves into fists.
“Oh, I never thought I’d ever get to solve one of these things this way…”
“Keep that thing away from me! You think I want this to go away?”
Aria pushed away the offered icepack, showing off her eye that was ringed by a bruised blue darker than Sonata’s. Her swollen lips formed a smug smirk.
“You know what she said? That she never thought she’d ever get to do this! I might even be her first!”
“Oh wow, really?” squeed Sonata. “Sunset? But she gets angry so easily! No way she hasn’t punched tons of people!“
“Well, it’s true.” Aria shrugged smugly. “That’s the thing with girls like Sunset! They draw you in with their anger, then play hard-to-get by being all nice and understanding. Not everyone has what it takes to be direct.”
Adagio rolled her eyes with a frustrated groan.
“Like I told you a thousand times already, humans only have one form of romance, Eros! They don’t even have the concept of δάκρυδεσμός! They don’t want to hate anyone, and punching you doesn’t mean anything!“
“Yeah, yeah,” Aria mocked. The smug smirk on her face was bigger than ever.
“You’re just jealous that your thing with her never got physical.”
Author's Note
δάκρυδεσμός is rendered into Ponish as "lachrymateship", a compound word of Pony Latin and Old Ponish roots. two creatures with such a relationship are "lachrymates", hence the title.
