Ask Me To Promise

It was supposed to be their wedding.

Instead, it's her funeral.

Twilight's father helps his wife off the podium. She's bawling. He takes them into the funeral home, and the door clicks silently behind them.

Sunset goes next, but Twilight's mom said she wanted to be there for everyone's speech. So the priest comes, and talks, and they wait.

She stares dead ahead, separate from the others. Her friends are there. Of course they are. But she doesn't want to be near them right now.

She doesn't want to be near anyone.

Twilight from Equestria isn't there either, for obvious reasons. She offered her condolences to Sunset through the journal.

It wasn't fair, but Sunset hated her for it. She just wrote her back a thank you, as equally hollow and meaningless as every time she offered it to every dipshit that gave her the same fucking line.

'I'm so sorry.' 'That must be so hard.' 'I'm here if you need me'.

Fuck you. Who the fuck were they to think she'd ever need them?

She needed Twilight. And Twilight was dead.

They talked once or twice about death. What they'd do with their bodies when they died. Sunset wanted them to be buried together, in the ground. Plant a sapling or flowers over their grave. Start something beautiful with their end.

Otherwise, Sunset considered cremation. Twilight posited donating her body to science.

She never did make up her mind.

In the end, it came down to her parents. They went with closed casket, standard burial. They could have gone open, but Sunset didn't want to see her. They didn't either.

The first time was enough. The morgue was worse.

No human body should be so cold.

Sunset shivers in the warm August air. She wants there to be rain. She thinks there should be.

She thinks it should be cold. She thinks the sky should weep for Twilight. Instead, the sun is bright in the clear blue sky, and even though they're not connected Sunset hates Celestia a little for it.

She thinks a lot of things. But she doesn't get them, and she wants to call it quits on whatever tattered remnant of strings she calls her life.

They were supposed to marry. Build something up. Have kids. Grandkids, if they were lucky. Die old not long apart, if not fortunate enough to pass at the same time.

But no. Instead? This.

How was it fair? How did anyone live through the storm of misery called life, when at any random moment it could snatch the most precious thing from your hands, and crush it in front of you? How could anyone stand for it, the injustice?

Twilight's parents return. Her mother finishes her speech, dabbing her eyes, before calling Sunset up to the pedestal. She tries to offer a smile, but it's hollow. Sunset does not return the gesture.

Her heavy black boots clunk against the steps. Anyone who didn't know Sunset might think of it as disrespectful. Fortunately, they do know her, and a part of her mind wishes they didn't, so they could pluck her out of their life like an unwanted pest and flick her into something entirely new.

She looks out on the gathered crowd. Spike curls up on Night's lap. Twilight's mother leans against his shoulder, and rubs the dog's right ear.

The girls look at her, without really looking at her. Pinkie's colors are dull, and her hair has lost its curls. It drapes over her face like a faded curtain. They've barely spoken since the event, her least of all.

"Twilight..." Sunset begins. She breathes in, and the air stabs her throat like a knife.

By a miracle, the cops tracked her killer. They had him in custody. She'd seen the pictures, some drunken oafish slob in his forties, fresh off a three-day bender.

She would kill him, if she could get away with it. Bare teeth, raw nails. She'd go for the throat, do it nice and slow.

"...Was my girlfriend. My... fiance, and the love of my life. She was the smartest, prettiest, funniest girl I've ever known, and I'll miss her every day." She chokes up. "I already do. I know everyone else will as well, because that's just the kind of person she was. Even when she was quiet, and stayed in the background not saying anything, she brightened the room just by being there. She was wonderful, and now I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Where I'm supposed to go. Who I'm supposed to be."

It goes on like that for a while. The weight of the casket bears upon her. Knowing Twilight's there.

Wanting to join her.

Crawl in. Tangle limbs. Fall asleep.

Bah-bum. Bah-bum. Bah-bum. Bah-bum.

Until her heart goes quiet, too.