Twilight liked puzzles, under normal circumstances.
She sat on Rarity’s floor, wearing one of her night shirts. Some oversized thing not overly adorned with decoration that she’d feel bad for staining when she made her morning coffee. Nevermind that it was tailored for someone with a slimmer frame and narrower shoulders. It was familiar, in sight and smell and touch.
She held an ambered coloured shard in her hand and looked over the other assorted pieces on the towel before her. There were a great many, but she and Rarity had figured out how a great many of them fit together over the course of an afternoon.
Twilight held the piece out, slowly rolling it along the edge between forefinger and thumb, comparing it piece to piece. There wasn’t an algorithm she could reliably fall upon, so carefully matching the shards together until she found the matching segment was all she could do.
Rarity, though, went by vibe. She just grabbed a few pieces at random, daintily holding them in her nails, then just mushed them together carefully. She didn’t seem to spend a moment considering certain pieces might just not match up with others, taking a shard from the edge of the pile and one from the centre, or then one from the far edge. She’d even gently rifle through them, disturbing the assortment Twilight had so painstakingly sorted.
Somehow Rarity had accrued a larger constellation of matching fragments than Twilight, neatly arranged on a smaller hand towel. One of her own, because Twilight had two and that’s all she needed, even if she kind of liked that Rarity had one for each day of the week.
She’d also worked in painstaking silence the entire time, save for a small, “Hrm,” or, “Ah,” here and there. Nothing more than a word.
It unnerved Twilight, but she didn’t know what would happen if she broke the quiet. Prodding Rarity might get a reassurance regardless of truth, or it might make Rarity crumble into pieces.
Twilight knelt in front of the mess in the middle of the road. Some of the traffic continued on as if she weren’t there, though the odd driver slowed and gave her a wider berth as she stared at the remains.
She felt hollow. She knew what the feeling meant, why it was there. She had the academic knowledge in her head, the basic biological and psychological functions any highschooler knew, let alone an adult.
Shock. Early grief. Even if the problem might be one she will get over, resolve in some way or another, seeing Sunset spread across the asphalt overwhelmed her capacity to think.
She'd almost joined Sunset across the street. Not because she wanted to throw herself into the next car along but from a disregard of anything less important than the woman she loved. The only thing to save her were the reflexes of more attentive drivers.
She thought she should feel angry, or a different kind of upset. Offended? No, that wasn’t right. No one seemed to care what happened, with the sole exception of the one car, crashed into a lamppost, the driver leaning against the wall with their hand on a bloody forehead. Their eyes downcast, processing the events in not-quite the same way as Twilight.
She reached out for Sunset. What she grasped in her hand, scraped across the floor, it felt hard and unyielding. She bundled her in her arms, pulled her close. She had to pick her up, take her someplace safe. She could fix this, right? It would take time, and effort, and—
Something snatched Twilight’s hand back from the road. Delicate fingers with sharp points digging into her skin through her shirt. She’d saved her from having her hand run over by one of the more uncaring drivers.
A growl rose in Twilight’s throat. Even though she knew she’d had her hand saved, she’d been interrupted. If she was just a little quicker, or luckier, or, or, or—
She whirled around on her rescuer, to look into those dark, blue eyes. She wanted to admonish them for interrupting her, but their gaze disarmed Twilight’s tongue.
“I’m sorry,” were the words that came instead.
“What happened?”
The sun slewed through the kitchen curtains, low on the horizon. Twilight’s stomach ached, the void in her belly and slight jitter in her arms reminding her of the biological basics she needed to heed, like everyone else.
She hadn’t moved a muscle since she’d awoken. Her legs numb underneath her, she’d accrued quite a collection of pieces. Not everything. There were gaps, shards and fragments that couldn’t be found, too small to have been found or lost entirely. She’d arranged them in a loose map, and while the top didn’t make it clear what it had meant to represent, the bottom of it did.
Fingertips. A palm. A wrist, then forearm, then elbow.
Even though Twilight’s fingers spasmed from a blood sugar crash, her telekinesis remained sharp. Sharpish. Sharp enough for her to apply glue to the ragged edges and press the pieces together, waiting for them to set.
Rarity did the same, but with just her hands. They looked soft, unmarred, but her callouses were just less pronounced than a labourers.
No, it was unfair to suggest she wasn’t a labourer. She laboured plenty, just with needles and scissors instead of hammers and pliers.
“How are you doing?” Twilight asked. Not a pleasantry, but an inquiry after her progress.
Twilight’d managed to actually get a few words from Rarity so far. The silence remained, a poignant reminder that things were not okay, even if Rarity had answered her pleasantries earlier.
It meant the quietness of Rarity considering her response felt like the winding up of a dagger thrust, and Twilight braced herself as if she were about to be cut.
“Fine enough.” She plucked up her a foot, and slipped a mostly complete big toe onto it. Glue oozed out through the cracks, but with one hand holding things together she wiped the glue down. “But I think I should take a break.”
Cracks. Cracks everywhere, the white glue already turning grey compared to the golden-yellow of the porcelain. Ugly scarring that would never go away. It’d leave divots even if painted over, unless caked in layers.
Twilight sighed. “We need to finish this. She… She needs us to finish.”
“I know, Twilight. I know.” She set the foot down, roughly where it ought to go in the greater scheme of things. At the base of a greater constellation of bits.
They hadn’t found everything. The entire left arm had simply sailed off somewhere distant, and parts of the back and chest had fragments absent.
They were also missing an eye. Lost, somewhere, rolled off down a drain perhaps.
It would be a bitch to find a perfectly matching replacement.
Rarity stood, the work abandoned, and she stretched her arms over her head. Leaning to one side, something in her creaked and clicked, followed by her making a self-satisfied grunt.
Twilight had gone to pluck up another shard, but it dropped, as if it slipped between her finger tips. Hunger pangs or Rarity’s soft features screwing up getting to her, she didn’t know.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. It’s how she’d punctuated every question and answer thus far.
Rarity’s little flicker of a smile didn’t leave much clarity. “I’ll get something to eat.”
Twilight hummed on-commitally.
“Please don’t be like this, Twilight.”
Another hum. Rarity scoffed, then stepped over the towel, bare feet barely missing a handful of fragments making up the bottom left of the thorax. As she passed Twilight, she gently placed a hand on her head.
She half-leaned back when Twilight’s hand reached up, rested on hers. Trapping those gentle-rough fingers against the scalp.
“I’m sorry. Get me a few of the gummies?”
“The blue ones?” Rarity asked. She was smiling, Twilight knew. She could hear it.
Twilight simply nodded, and after a moment more of touch, Rarity slipped away.
A mostly-complete Sunset lay on the kitchen floor. The few gaps in her skin that remained had been filled in with whatever they could find. Paper and card for the more flexible parts, and pieces of a white, shattered teacup for anything rigid.
Including the gap left by the missing eye. The other stared up at the ceiling, uncomprehending.
“She looks peaceful,” said Twilight.
“She looks stressed,” countered Rarity.
Twilight blinked, then tilted her head. The serene expression remained such. A small frown, sure, but the one Twilight saw every day in the mirror. The one she saw as Rarity worked on adjusting the clothes they’d made for her, fitting over an old-made-new blouse and skirt for her.
“Are you sure?”
Rarity’s sigh spoke volumes. While she didn’t show it, not in the way Twilight expected, she sounded exasperated. “I see myself in the mirror every day, darling. Trust me, it’s stress.”
Twilight hummed.
“Why do we have to do this here? I can’t even make myself a cup of tea without stumbling over her.”
Rarity knew why, of course. The only other place with space was outside, on their tiny patio. Exposed to the elements and the eyes of curious neighbours.
Twilight knelt down beside Sunset’s body. She wanted to touch her cheek, her chest, her arm, to find warmth or breathe or a pulse.
She wouldn’t find it. Not in a literal sense.
She reached out, anyway. A crumpled note in her hand. She wished she had the right materials for it to be grand, some proper card stock or parchment.
She’d used the torn off corner of a used envelope instead. The words written across the scant page sacred, but not to a temple or a deity.
Just to her. And maybe a little to Sunset and Rarity.
A name. A declaration. That’s all.
She placed it in Sunset’s mouth, then gently closed her jaw with a finger in her chin. One of only a few pieces of minimal articulation.
Then a moment later, Sunset’s eye looked to Twilight. Her jaw moved, curling into a slight smirk, and the tiniest creak of a voice escaped. Rasping, scratchy, the edges of glass on tile but somehow relieving and familiar.
“Hey you.”
And then the grey between the cracks turned to gold.
Author's Note
This is still rough and messy. I figured I probably wouldn't finish editing and expanding it and decided in the end it should still see the light of day. This helped work through some shared anxieties my partner and I have. Not major, but the usual things we tend to worry about.
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