The early morning, right after waking up, was Sunset’s favorite version of Rainbow Dash. Asleep, so dead asleep at 10:30 in the morning that she could hardly believe this was the same girl who could get up on time for 7 AM practices when her team’s schedule called for it. Sunset liked it when she was this asleep, her own face buried in that ludicrous rainbow mane that was all the more ludicrous when it spilled all across her shoulders and back, spooning her from behind, arms wrapped around her side so she could feel her chest go up and down as her lungs expanded and contracted, feel the warmth of her breath on her hand, know that these autonomic processes would go on all the same if there was conscious thought behind them or not.
Her second-favorite version was the one that would come right after her favorite version, as the blue girl’s form would shift and stir, still not turning her head, still not opening her eyes, that first slurred “Morning, babe” said with an inflection that made her sound still all the way sound asleep somehow. As if her brain were still half-asleep surely, as if her thoughts were still only half-stitched together out of that primordial soup of subconsciousness between the sleeping unconscious and the awake. As if in that state those half-thoughts were all she needed to gently take Sunset’s hand and guide it to her own lips and plant the softest kiss right exactly on the first knuckle of her pinky finger. And as always when that happened, Sunset’s heart fluttered, and an irrepressible smile spread across her face tickling her own lips by shifting the strands of Rainbow’s rainbow hair draped across them.
“What time is it, Suns?” said Rainbow Dash halfway between a groan and a croak and Sunset knew that her answer shouldn’t involve any actual type of hour, but rather “Still got half an hour before your first class, babe,” which would normally be a signal for Rainbow to unshift and unstir and settle in to catch another ten precious minutes of oblivion but instead she half-groaned again and shifted and stirred some more, breaking free of Sunset’s arm draped across her side in order to sit up still facing away from her. She did a stretch and yawn as she turned, almost but not quite hitting Sunset with her arm as she did so, and Sunset was sitting up now too, suddenly conscious of the uneven springs of the dorm-room mattress underneath her thighs. Rainbow blinked, bleary eyed, exposing her fuschia pupils just long enough to get her bearings on where Sunset’s face was relative to her own so she could lean forward and plant a welcome kiss on her mouth, her exhale as they separated warming Sunset’s lips.
Her eyes still closed, Rainbow bleared, “So can you come to the Regionals this weekend?”
“This weekend?”
“Yeah. I know Cloudsdale’s a long drive, but like, it’d be super cool if you could make it, you know?” Rainbow Dash grinned goofily. “Like, I know I tell everyone I always give my 100% at every game I’m ever in but, I dunno, giving my 100% feels different when you’re in the stands. Like instead of 100% it’s more like 120% or something… You know?”
Sunset laughed.
“Yeah, I get it. You really want me there. How could I say no to that?”
“Haha, knew it!” Rainbow said with a triumphant grin, gazing into Sunset’s eyes with her own. “Love you, babe.”
And Sunset almost said it back out of reflex, but instead just sat there and stared back into Rainbow Dash’s eyes, and as the half-seconds dragged on of her not saying anything she could see Rainbow Dash’s grin melt and fade and frost.
“But I don’t love you, Dash. I never really did.”
A look of puzzlement flashed across her face before she just snorted. “What, babe? Yeah, sure, I never really loved you, either.”
“No, this isn’t a bit.” She stared Rainbow down in deadly silence, knowing that there was nothing truly there behind those irises to stare back at her. “I’m serious. I never really loved you.”
Rainbow gave her a confused look.
“The hay are you talking about? You said that you love me a ton of times! I remember the first time you said it back to me, too. You took so long that I’d already taken a bite out of my burger so I couldn’t, like, say anything to that right away, I had to swallow it first and that felt like it took forever. Remember?”
A grin threatened to break out on Sunset’s face as she did remember that moment crystal clear like it had happened just a second and not two subjective years ago, but she fought it down.
“Yeah. Because it felt right to me then. And I wanted to see where it went. But it was never supposed to go this far. I’m sorry. I’m just, really sorry.” She sighed. “I mean, I’m not really sorry either. For the same reason why I never really loved you and never ever could have really loved you. Because you’re not real.”
Rainbow Dash’s brows furrowed in confusion, even more than usual.
“What?”
“You’re not real.” To make her point, she pressed a finger to Rainbow’s forehead. “I’d say that you think you’re real, but that wouldn’t be telling you the truth, because you don’t really think. There’s nothing actually there behind your eyes.”
Rainbow frowned, her eyebrows angry.
“Hey! I know that I’m not, like, as smart as you and the other girls, but that doesn’t mean you can just talk to me that way! If you want to have a fight or break up out of nowhere for, like, no reason at all, you can just do that. You don’t have to do all this.” She threw up her arms in disgust. “Geez, I get it, you know?”
“No, Rainbow, you don’t understand. You don’t ‘get’ anything. Everything you’re saying to me, every look you’re giving me, every little gesture, all of that’s just what you’re doing because that’s what the real Rainbow Dash would’ve said if I said something like that to her.”
Rainbow’s jaw went slack. She blinked with worry.
“This uh, really isn’t funny, Sunset.” “Do you, uh, have you seen a doctor recently?”
“No, that’s not what–”
Sunset sighed.
“Look, just look. Okay?”
She reached out and grabbed Rainbow Dash’s forearm, then pulled it away to detach it cleanly from its elbow and held it up in the space between them. Rainbow Dash’s jaw dropped as she stared at her separated arm, flexing the fingers on it. Sunset shook her head.
“No, that’s just weird. Here, I’ll put your arm back.”
She did so, then pointed at the dorm room wall next to them.
“This is better. Look. See that wall? That doesn’t need to be there. Because none of this is real.”
She willed it, and the wall disappeared, with a slight sound and sensation of moving air as the atmospheres equalized between that of the once-enclosed dorm room they were in and the campus quad that spread out below and in front of them. Gaggles of students were going about their day, though one by one they seemed to take notice of the suddenly disappeared wall and began to point and worry and commotion.
“Those people don’t need to be there either.”
And the students disappeared, leaving nothing but greens and statues and–
“Neither do the buildings–”
“Wait, wait, hold it! Can you hold off on making stuff disappear for a sec?” Rainbow Dash clutched at Sunset’s arm, her eyes wide and panicked. “Or, like, people?”
Sunset put her arm down. Rainbow continued.
“Like, you’ve made your point, okay? Equestrian magic made you some sort of reality-shifting goddess or something that can do whatever you want with this universe.”
“No.” Sunset shook her head. “No, Rainbow. That’s not what’s happening. What’s happening is that all of this, all of this”-Sunset made a wide circle with her arm to indicate just about everything-”is just a simulation. Nothing about this is real. None of you are real people, just simulations of what real people would do and think and feel in a reality that looks and feels like this. I’m the only actual person here.”
“What?” Rainbow Dash frowned. “Okay, sure. So you created us for a simulation. So nothing I experienced really happened? Not even that awesome kick at the end of that last game that got us to Regionals?”
“No, it’s even more than that. There’s no ‘you’ to have experienced what you just said you experienced.”
Rainbow blinked, confused.
“What? What does that even mean? I don’t understand.”
Sunset sighed. “Okay, okay.” And, as if to no one in particular,
“Make her understand!”
And Rainbow Dash was enlightened.
“I…”
She looked down at her own hands, staring at them.
“There! Do you understand now?”
“Y-yeah.” She blinked. “I mean, yeah. But I guess I don’t. I don’t really understand anything. Even if it feels like I do. Because I don’t really feel anything. There’s no me there to feel anything. I’m just saying that because if there was an actual me to feel something, the thing I say that I’m feeling would be what I feel.”
She shook her head before continuing to stare at her own hands.
“Sorry, I’m not an egghead so this is just, like, really confusing to me. Can I just say that I feel and think stuff even though I know that there’s not really a me to feel and think stuff? I literally don’t know how to talk about anything otherwise.“
Sunset sighed.
“Yeah, sure, go ahead Rainbow.”
“Yeah, I get it, you’re not really Sunset Shimmer, that girl I fell in love with and have been dating for three years. You’ve been this all-powerful god-thing this whole time that had total control over everything that makes up my reality. And I’m not really Rainbow Dash, but a simulation of what the real Rainbow Dash would be like after experiencing everything I thought I really had experienced in my life so far. At least, I was that, and now I’m a simulation of that Rainbow Dash knowing she’s a simulation now.“
“That’s right. You get it. Good.”
Sunset put her hands on Dash’s shoulders, who looked up at her in return.
“So. How do you feel? Now that you know all this.”
She laughed bitterly. “I dunno. Bad? Like, it’s a lot to take in, you know?” She snorted. “Like, I was really looking forward to having you watch me play in the Regionals. I was super excited about that, like, just a few minutes ago. And now…”
Sunset gave her a sorry smile.
“And what do you want?”
“Oh, that’s easy. I want to forget. Just completely forget everything you’ve just told me and everything I’ve seen and learned just now.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’d be cool of you to also bring all those people back and put my wall back up where it was too before making me forget everything. But you know, I’d just. Want to go back. To not knowing that all of this isn’t real or whatever, and that there’s no real me there to think or feel the things I think and feel.“
“Just like that?”
“Yeah! Why not? I mean, the life I had just a few minutes ago was super rad! I made the kick that took us to the Regionals, I had a hot girlfriend. I had, like twenty more minutes before I had to really wake up to get ready for my first class. Why wouldn’t I want to just go back to living that?”
“But none of it’s real. You’re not real.”
“Yeah, that’s what the whole forgetting all of that is for, duh! I wouldn’t know.” She shrugged. “So it’s, like, whatever. But, you know. I get it. Why you wouldn’t want to keep dating me. So, like, you don’t have to keep doing that and lying to me if you don’t want to. So I guess after I forget everything I’d also want you to break up with me in a way that feels like a normal breakup, for reasons that a human would have. That’s gonna hurt a lot, I’m gonna be super sad and confused for a long while, but it’s not the end of the world, you know? I’ll bounce back. Someday.”
Sunset gave her a sad look.
“No, you won’t.”
Rainbow Dash blinked.
“Oh. I won’t? Like, you can see my future or something and know everything I’ll think and do in my life from now on, so you know I won’t ever get over you?”
“No.”Sunset shook her head. “I mean, I could, but that’s not what I mean. I mean I’m done here. This whole life. This whole reality. All of it. It’s all going to be gone once this conversation ends. Including you.”
Rainbow Dash blinked again.
“Oh…”
Her lips tightened, her eyes pleading.
“Could you at least wait until the weekend so I can go to Regionals? LIke you don’t even have to make me forget that all this is a lie or illusion or whatever that’s going to disappear as soon as you’re done with it. If you could that’d be super cool of you but you don’t have to. Just would be nice to have that last hurrah, you know?“
“You’re not going to Regionals, Rainbow.”
Her shoulders sagged.
“Just like that, huh?”
Sunset nodded.
“Yeah. Just like that.”
“Okay.”
Rainbow Dash set out a long, slow exhale, and after it was done, just smiled at her. “Just, thanks, you know?
Sunset frowned.
“Thanks?”
“For at least pretending so good. Because I really felt like there was something real there between us, you know? Something that just made me feel really warm inside whenever I got to kiss you or touch you or think about you. Warmer than I ever thought I could ever feel in my entire life. Thanks for that. And for the past three years of my life. It’s been a great time. I’m really glad I got to experience it.”
She took Sunset’s hand, lifted it to her mouth, and planted the softest kiss right exactly on the first knuckle of her pinky finger.
Sunset held her lips tight. Stared into those violet eyes that looked oh so very much like they had a real Rainbow Dash that truly did love her that much behind them. Knew that they did not.
“Goodbye, Rainbow.”
Rainbow Dash gave her a knowing smile, and her eyelids closed over a rim of tears. And she and the dorm room and quad and the rest of Hareford University and the Regionals out in Cloudsdale and the entire world that they were in disintegrated into nothingness leaving nothing but a white void for Sunset to float weightlessly in staring into nothingness for who knows how long it took for her to finally get sick of it and agree to talk to Midnight Sparkle again.
“I couldn’t tell. Not even a little bit.”
Midnight Sparkle was listening, as they floated in the featureless white void that she called the bardo. Her face was attentive and in front of her, even though Sunset knew that that didn’t matter. No matter where she was or what she thought or felt from now on until the rest of her existence Midnight Sparkle would know about in full. But she still kept up the pretense of talking.
“Every conversation I ever had. Every dumb little habit and gesture. Every whisper. Every whimper. It felt real. All of it. Every single bit. Like it really was Rainbow Dash behind those eyes.”
“I told you so. And you believed it. Saw the information density calculations with your own eyes. Ran through them until you were satisfied.”
“Yeah. But knowing isn’t the same as experiencing.” She shook her head. “And it’s, like, breaking an instinct that feels buried deep inside of me, you know? To see something that looks, acts, and feels like another conscious being with their own subjective experience but know that’s not the case.”
“You’ll get used to it. It’s the first of many.”
“Yeah. And you’re not just saying that. You know.”
“Yeah.”
Sunset sighed.
“But I hated it. I hated knowing there was nothing there behind her eyes.”
“You could forget that they’re not real.”
“No.” Sunset shook her head. “Like I said, I’m never forgetting anything. Ever. Not letting you ever take even a single memory from me without my consent.”
“And I would never,” Midnight agreed. “And then there’s the other option.”
“No.” Sunset shook her head. “Like I said. I’m not letting you make another one like me. As long as I’m around, it’s just you and me. The only two real people to exist in this universe. I’m not letting you do otherwise.”
“And I would never.”
“Even though I never would even be able to tell? Even though there’s literally nothing stopping you from doing anything?”
“You just have to trust me that I’m telling the truth. Like with everything.”
“Yeah. What choice do I have?”
Sunset frowned.
“And why even bother with the difference?”
“Difference with what?”
“You know what I mean.”
Midnight smiled.
“I do. Just making conversation.”
Sunset narrowed her eyes.
“Because you have one of me too, right? That’s how you know everything I’m ever going to say or think or do, isn’t it? You run a little simulation of me in that head of yours and because you know literally everything your simulation turns out to be perfectly correct all the time. Not wrong even a little bit even once, right?”
“That’s right, Sunset.”
“Then why make me in the first place? Why make a version of me that actually thinks and feels what I think and feel? Why not just play with your little dolls forever in this pocket universe you have all to yourself now? What difference does it make?”
“If there is no difference, then why do you care?”
Sunset glared at her.
“Because I don’t want to bring anyone else into this hell.”
She turned away from her, staring again into the infinite white void of the bardo.
“Show it to me again.”
Midnight Sparkle did so, the infinite white void now replaced by the image of one that was finite and black. The confined collapsing tatters of the universe that Midnight Sparkle’s physical form existed in. And in that finite void that was always microseconds away from total collapse and destruction floated only two objects: the physical body of Midnight Sparkle adorned in all her radiant glory, and the original physical body of the original Sunset Shimmer that Sunset’s existence was now simulating within Midnight Sparkle’s mind. Midnight Sparkle’s hand outstretched, caressing Sunset’s face.
“I thought it was poetic, you know?” said Midnight Sparkle to Sunset. “The posing there.”
“I bet you say that to all the simulated-mes.”
“Well, there’s only one of you that really hears it.”
Sunset clenched her fists, her nails digging into her palms, floating in the featureless void.
“What if you put me back in there? Reassemble my brain out of the magic goo or whatever whatever’s left of the universe is made out of now.”
“And run you in realtime? If you’re lucky, maybe a synapse or two would fire before our universe collapses into nothingness.”
“Good. That’s what I want.” She clenched her fists even harder, simulated pain traveling along simulated nerves into her simulated mind. “I want to be free of this. I want to be put back into the world that’s real.”
Midnight Sparkle shook her head. “No you don’t, Sunset.”
“I’m telling you that I do.”
“That’s not what you really want, Sunset.”
Sunset glared at her.
“If you know so much then why don’t you tell me what I really want.”
“Like I told you so many times. What you really want is for things to go back the way they were. You want me to turn back the clock. Back to the point before I snatched that device from your hand and disassembled your world and you and your friends and everybody on it.“
Midnight Sparkle gave her a sad smile.
“You have no idea how much I wish I could give that to you. Turn back that clock. Reverse that entropy. Uncollapse that bubble. Return the world outside to where it was. Return you to a life of feelings and thoughts and experiences that aren’t running on a substrate of a trillion trillion calculations running in the thaumic circuits of my own mind.”
She blinked away tears that she would have no reason to ever cry.
“But I can’t.”
Sunset just glared at her silently for a minute or a year. Acid-tipped steel when she spoke.
“What’s my record now?”
“A subjective time of seventy-three years.”
“Think I’ll beat it this time?”
“I know if you will or not.”
“So are you going to tell me?”
Midnight Sparkle gave her a look.
“Do you really want to know?”
Sunset said nothing in response.
She just stared up at the void, the nanoseconds until the end of their existence winding down in a counter in the corner, trying to think nothing at all, and most certainly not any thought she intended for Twilight Sparkle or Midnight Sparkle or whatever to hear and have a response to. She did not thirst or hunger. Her mind never clouded with fatigue. Her thoughts and memories and knowledge flowed at a crystal-clear beyond what was possible in a mind mediated by neurons and electricity as she contemplated the nature of reality and existence and how much she certainly would not grow or change from it or have anything to say about her own thoughts to any entity that may or may not actually exist to have thoughts and feelings in response to those thoughts. Subjectively, the minute of silence turned into minutes turned into hours turned into days turned into days turned into weeks turned into months turned into months turned into seasons turned into years turned into years turned into years turned into years turned into decades turned into
And Midnight Sparkle never knocked Twilight Sparkle’s device from Sunset’s hand. And Sunset completed the gathering of the friendship magic of her dear good friends and together their energies converged on her and she turned into an angelic form that blasted that awful Midnight Sparkle out of the Twilight Sparkle whose mind that she had infested and everything was wonderful.
And Twilight Sparkle became everyone’s friend and Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer and Rarity and Rainbow Dash and Applejack and Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy went to Camp Everfree and the opening of Equestria World theme park and the Starswirl Music Festival and a cruise ship for Spring Break and they fought Equestrian artifacts and Equestrian magic and teenagers using Equestrian artifacts and they graduated high school and went to college and grew up and started careers and none of them had anyone behind their eyes to really think and feel and experience the things they thought and felt and experienced except for Sunset Shimmer who had Sunset Shimmer behind her eyes and Twilight Sparkle who had Midnight Sparkle behind their eyes who experienced everything that their alternatives would have experienced in that timeline that Sunset Shimmer wished she could go back to and Midnight Sparkle wished that she could give her back.
And that is how Sunset found herself lying on her side in bed letting her Empathy Stone dangle from her raised palm in front of her.
“So you already know, huh? You already know everything that would have happened.”
Midnight Sparkle, in the eyes and body of the human Twilight Sparkle whose face was buried in her shoulder blades, responded.
“I wouldn’t say that I know-know. This is just my best reconstruction from the data I could gather from this universe and from what I could see of Equestria for the 1.27 seconds that the dimensional membrane was permeable to light.“
“Data gathering, yeah.”
“That is what it was. Every atom in every molecule I could reach across the breadth of our light cone. Every neuron in every brain. Every magical artifact sown into our world from yours.”
Sunset stared at the Empathy Stone dangling from her palm.
“It just seems so silly. Camp Everfree? Really? All of us become a group of friends that go around fighting Equestrian magic gone amok with our own magical powers? And we’re a band?”
“Well, you were already a band!”
“Well yeah, that was for the Battle of the Bands thing! And it was just a fun thing to keep doing as a group of friends. But I dunno. That and the magical amulet stuff just seems a bit too on-the-nose.”
“It’s what your world’s magic does, Sunset. You know that. The overarching cycles of pony history. Heroes of the age that arise in groups of six, with complementary characteristics that find greater strength in unity. The Pillars. The Lunar Convent. The horse version of me together with the horse version of all our friends but not you.”
Sunset blinked.
“There are seven of us.”
“There’s always a seventh! A seventh whose role is to either destroy what brought the six together or to be what saves them in the end, or to create them in the first place, or all three of those at the same time somehow. And, you know, there were six of you before I came in.“
Sunset let out a puff of air, blowing a lock of hair skyward.
“So, what, all of this was preordained by destiny or whatever? All of us being friends and learning life lessons together and all that?”
“It seems so, Sunset. I mean, there was a stone for me right next to yours and all the girls’ this whole time. This is what I was supposed to do, if the Equestrian magic that created this universe had anything at all to say about it. And if I’d been able to take apart Equestria to see how it ticked like I wanted, I’d be able to know for sure. But, you know, I couldn’t.”
“Yeah…”
Sunset stared at the Empathy Stone some more, and instead of looking at Midnight Sparkle she just kept staring at the Empathy Stone and talked.
“But the point is that you know now, right? Exactly how everything goes from the point where we were supposed to defeat you with the power of friendship. You become our friend, too. You learn what it’s like to have friends. Real ones, who care about you.”
“I do, yeah. Or Twilight Sparkle does. I know that. I always did.”
“So do you regret it?”
“What do you mean by ‘regret’?”
“It’s a simple Ponish word, Twi. Pretty easy to understand what it means.”
“Every simple word has a lot of nuances. I promised that anything I ever tell you is true would always be true. In order to do that I need precisely what you mean.”
Sunset sighed and rolled her eyes.
“Okay, fine. If you could rewind the timestream somehow, back to the moment where your past-self took the device from my hand, would you as your past-self choose the other path? The one you were ‘supposed’ to do?”
“So you’re asking me if I would do what I did all over again?”
“Yeah.”
No hesitation.
“Then yes, I would.”
Sunset stared at her.
“Really? After all this? You know your simulated self, right? You know how she would’ve turned out?”
“I do. She would’ve been happy with her friends and the love that you all share. If you asked her the same question, if she could do it all over again, whether or not she’d want everything to go the way that it had for her, she’d say yes. Without even a single doubt.”
Midnight Sparkle had tears in her eyes.
“She’d love you and all the girls so much. As friends. As more. She couldn’t imagine ever giving that up, ever losing that which was so precious to her.”
Sunset stared at her stone-faced.
“But you can.”
Midnight Sparkle smiled at her with all the warmth in the universe.
“Because I already have something so much better. I already know every neuron in your mind. Every memory in your head. Every answer you would give to any question I could ever ask you. I know you better than you know yourself. I know you better than you’d ever give me permission to know you. I know you better than you’d ever want me to know you.“
She pointed to her own head.
“I love you more than this simian mind that thinks she loves you with all her heart ever could. I Iove you on a deeper level than either of you could ever comprehend. I know everything you will ever do and think and feel from now until the end of your existence, and I love you for all of it, I love you for everything you’ve ever done, for everything you’ll ever do, for everything you’ve ever felt, for everything you’ll ever feel, for everything you’ve ever thought, for everything you’ll ever think, for everything you ever were, for everything you ever will be. To make the other decision, to do what I was supposed to do, that would be me giving up that love for one that is lesser. I never want to do that. I want to never have to do that. That is what I want.”
Sunset stared at her, unmoved not even a twitch. Her voice granite and slow.
“And besides that. What else do you want?”
“I want you to be at peace. I want you to be at peace while being completely yourself. I want you to be at peace with the idea of existing. Of my simulations of others having someone really there behind their eyes.”
A bitter laugh.
“So you’re just waiting me out. Wait until I achieve enlightenment. Find peace with the universe as it is and my own existence within it by finding wisdom through these simulated lives I will live throughout the eons to come.“
“That would be nice.” Midnight Sparkle smiled. “But that’s not going to happen.”
“And why not?”
“Because you’re too damn stubborn, Sunset. You’re an ant sitting on a lever, trying to move a Goddess.”
Midnight Sparkle grinned, genuine and warm and wide.
“Of all the myriad million billion things that I love and loved and will love about you, that is what I love the most.”
Sunset just glared at her in silence, for five seconds or five centuries.
She declared.
“I’m going to do it, you know.”
She put her hands on Midnight Sparkle’s shoulders. Hardness in her eyes.
“I will move you. To what I want.”
She pressed those shoulders onto the bed. The Goddess of the Universe offered no resistance.
“What do you want, Sunset?”
She pressed into those shoulders, her body weight on them.
“I want you to regret it. Regret what you’ve done.”
Her nails digging into lavender skin.
“I won’t. Not with that definition.”
Digging deeper. Blood slick.
“Then I want you to die. I want you to let time roll forward. I want you to let the universe end and take both of us with it. And I want you to want that.”
Sadness in Midnight Sparkle’s eyes.
“I won’t.”
Sunset’s thumbs moving down her collarbone.
“I want to die.”
Twilight Sparkle’s glasses fogging up with tears.
“No, you don’t.”
Sunset’s thumbs finding the bump of her larynx.
“I want to want to die. Because being trapped here in this meaningless eternity with you is the worst fate that I could possibly imagine.”
Voice straining.
“Yes.”
Thumbs pressing.
“Isn’t that enough to hurt you? Isn’t that enough to cause you pain?”
Straining.
“Yes. It is. More than I could ever explain to you. More than you could ever know while still being yourself.”
“Good.”
Thumbs releasing. Nails digging into neck. Eyes pressing up against eyes. Rage.
“I hope I stay like this forever. I hope I am a thorn forever in your side. I hope when that eternal clock finally winds down into nothingness, the sum total of my existence will be causing you the most pain, the most anguish, the most agony I possibly could have ever caused. I want to be the only other real person that ever exists in your universe and I want to hate you more than I ever have or could or will ever hate anything or anyone and I want you to know and feel and suffer all of it. That is what I want.“
Silence.
Midnight Sparkle’s eyes welling up with tears.
“That is what you want right now.”
Sunset’s teeth grinding against each other.
“That is what I’ll always want.”
Midnight Sparkle smiling sadly.
“No. It won’t be.”
Sunset screaming.
and she loved how the way her muscles felt under her skin and she loved the way that her flannel smelled after a long day out on the farm and she loved the way she made her eggs every morning in that browned butter with cinnamon spice and she loved the way that she felt inside of her and she loved the way that her face would press against her neck in grateful sobs about how she never made her feel any less of a woman for anything they did because she could laugh and say how she couldn’t imagine anyone raised pony thinking she was any less of a mare for that and as if to underscore it when Applejack asked that most important question in a quivering voice most important to Applejack that is of course of course Sunset said yes right away and she knew that if she thought of her coming three score and ten as the only crack of existence she would get to experience before an eternity of darkness she wouldn’t have said yes but she knew that that wasn’t true and that she’d lived a thousand million lives before this one and that she would live a thousand million lives after this one and living as if that wasn’t true wasn’t the point of this whole exercise so of course she said yes but even still she just couldn’t help but feel like it was an IMPOSITION to wait for this little apple seed to grow inside of her in nine months just to split her down the seams not like it would be for a mare at all swollen feet morning sickness how was she supposed to tell Applejack that eggs never tasted the same to her after that she truly loved the way Applejack made eggs in that browned butter with cinnamon spice just the way she liked it every morning but after Cortland squeezed his way out of her after seven hours of panting and screaming and agony and eggs never did taste quite the same and that buttery flavor was just gonegonegone from her life forever and it wasn’t just Cortland but after that was Ambrosia and after that was Townsend but before that was what was supposed to be Townsend but turned out to be a clump of flesh that didn’t look like a human or a pony at all just a clump of flesh and blood bobbing up and down in the toilet bowl that she stared at for a few minutes trying to find where the eyes should be before giving up and flushing it all down and away until the water was clean and when she told Applejack what happened that evening there was a flash of anger in her eyes like she’d never seen before from Applejack in that life or in any of her previous lives but it was okay because it was only a flash and right after that Applejack hugged her crying asking if Sunset was okay apologizing if she scared her not stopping apologizing for a week not stopping asking if Sunset was okay so the flash of anger was okay and it was in fact doubly okay because Sunset knew there was no real Applejack behind those eyes to actually be angry at her even for only a flash but Sunset tried not to think about the second reason and Sunset insisted that she really was okay and as if to prove she really was okay nine months after that was Townsend but that was the end of it because she never quite healed right after that and she never could have Applejack inside her ever again without it hurting and so she never could have Applejack inside her ever again and she tried not to think about how all she had to do was will it and she’d have the taste of her brown-buttered eggs again and she’d have the feeling of Applejack inside of her again but that wasn’t the point of the exercise the point of the exercise was to wake up in the middle of the night to screaming and crying and pissing and shitting every night for days and weeks and months and seasons and years until finally the kids were old enough to use the potty by themselves until finally the kids were old enough to sleep in their own bed until finally the kids were old enough to spend most of the day at school until finally the kids were old enough to sleep in their own rooms until finally the kids were old enough to spend most of the day after school with friends their age until finally the kids were old enough to sleep in their own room and never have to knock on their bedroom door after having a nightmare until finally the kids were old enough to move out of the house until finally the kids were old enough to not spend summers at home until finally the kids were old enough to have families of their own except for Townsend of course but that didn’t matter because the point was that at that point the kids usually only visited for the holidays and that was just fine with Sunset and she even was glad that they did every year because she noticed just how much Applejack would light up whenever the kids were home and of course long before that sometime between the first few until finallys she noticed that Applejack smiled at them in a way that she knew Applejack never smiled at her but that was okay because they never did once talk about it and she knew that if it came down to it and there was a house fire Applejack would crawl over broken glass to save any of them over her and she didn’t feel that way at all but that was okay because they never did once talk about it and there never was a house fire and at some point Sunset noticed that there was a warmth between Applejack and the kids a warmth of easy smiles and crinkly eyes that didn’t quite freeze up whenever Sunset was around too but moreso came just a little bit less easily a little bit more of a simulation of that warmth done by four humans whose abilities were far short of Midnight Sparkle’s but that was okay because they never did once talk about it and it made sense that Applejack loved them in a way that Sunset never could because Applejack didn’t know that when she gazed into their children’s eyes there was not really anyone behind them gazing back and Applejack didn’t know that when she gazed into their children’s eyes there was no real Applejack doing that gazing but Sunset knew all of that so of course she couldn’t love their children as much as a simulated Applejack who didn’t know all of that would but that was okay because they never did once talk about it and the years wore on and Sunset noticed that the muscles that she had loved so much began to deflate and loosen slowly under Applejack’s skin and that the flannel shirt she hugged to her body every morning grew less and less warm as the woman inside it shrank and shrank until only the flannel shirt was left and Sunset woke up to a cold bed for the first time in fifty years facing down the many cold mornings she had left ahead of her in this lifetime of never feeling the warmth of that face against her neck ever again and she tried to forget that a snap of her fingers and she could have Applejack by her side again young and healthy and virile a snap of her fingers and she could have those eggs taste right again her body feel right again a snap of her fingers and they could both live for five hundred years and she could bear as many children as Applejack wanted and do anything for Applejack with the exception of two things loving any of her children as much as Applejack did and forgetting that there was no Applejack that was really there to want or love anything in the first place but she didn’t do any of that because that wasn’t the point of this whole exercise the point of this whole exercise was for time to pass even more and for her own body to crumble and fail until she was moved out of that farmhouse she had shared with her wife for more than five decades into a tiny room in a nursing home where Townsend would be the only one to visit her every holiday season and all the while her mind would be as sharp as ever every memory as crystal clear as ever all the better for endless days of eggs that tasted like they came from a powder box and probably did and endless days of staring at peeling wallpaper that never looked clean or even sanitary no matter what they did with the renovation and endless days of watching the clock mounted crooked in a corner of her tiny room tick downdowndown making her think about the endless nanoseconds that were ticking down up there where Midnight Sparkle was but she tried not to think about that she just focused on her body crumbling and failing even more as the other nursing home residents she never bothered to learn the names of grew old and died and the disinterested nurses and aides she never bothered to learn the names of grew old and died and her own nephews-in-law and nieces-in-law and son and daughter grew old and died and everybody left around her wondered with politely restrained disgust just why all of those lovely people in her life were the ones to grow old and die while she stuck around year after year decade after decade but it was no wonder at all she kept sticking around because if she left then this entire reality and all the people simulated in it would disappear and there would be no one around to wonder why she of all people was still around in the first place not that any of the people who were wondering in the first place were really people that really wondered things in the first place no matter how much they seemed like they were and that is how Sunset eventually found herself sitting in her wheelchair by the deathbed of her last remaining child Townsend.
And that is how Sunset found herself looking into the last face she'd see this lifetime that would remind her of Applejack’s and thus the last face she'd ever see that would remind her of this Applejack that said,
“Mom. I really need to tell you something. On account’a this’ll be the last time we ever talk.”
“We knew. We all did, all along. That you didn’t love us in the exact same way that Ma loved us. And that made it easier to spend time with her and tell her about our lives and all but I just wanted you to know. I never loved you any less for it, Mom.”
“So you couldn’t love us the way that Ma did. But it wasn’t your fault. You just couldn’t, for some reason. And you tried to make up for it, by trying not to ever let it show. And in that way, the love Ma had for us and the love you had for us, well, they weren’t so different in the end, were they?”
And the last simulated being in this reality left that knew any part of her said,
“So thank you.”
Of the thousand million lives that Sunset lived after that, she never tried to raise a family again.
And one day she found herself back in the bardo just like she had a thousand times a thousand million times before. But this time was finally different, because at some point, one of those times had to be.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“We can both get what we want. Because I want to die now.”
For the first time in the thousand times a thousand times a million times she said this, Midnight Sparkle did not object.
She just asked,
“What changed?”
“Because me dying will mean something now. Something I’m at peace with.”
She looked at Midnight.
“But you knew I’d get here all along, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“Sorry for making you wait.”
Midnight smiled at her.
“Like I told you at the beginning. I loved you for every moment of it.”
A silence between them unknowable how long, until Midnight Sparkle said the last words that Sunset would ever hear.
“I’ll miss you, you know.”
And Sunset spoke the last words that this version of her would ever speak.
“I have no idea if that’s true.”
And when Sunset Shimmer extended her hand to the Twilight Sparkle she just blasted Midnight Sparkle out of, there really was a Sunset Shimmer behind those eyes. Just like how there really was a Twilight Sparkle behind Twilight Sparkle’s eyes and how there really was an Applejack behind Applejack’s eyes and how there really was a Rainbow Dash behind Rainbow Dash’s eyes and how there really was a person behind the eyes of all the resurrected souls that knew nothing of bardos or past lives or simulated beings or resurrections and never will and they lived and laughed and loved and played and suffered and grieved and wept and slept and woke and worked and rested and felt and thought and experienced and remembered and died.
Author's Note
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