Love Bites

interlude: sunset shimmer

a/n: hey guys! this is a sunset centric chapter to give her some more character depth like i did for rainbow dash. also i love sciset so i had to. please enjoy!

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When Sunset Shimmer thinks of death, she thinks of the nighttime.

Ever since she was a girl, she was afraid of the dark– afraid of the monsters that could be lurking under her bed, in the shadows of her room. It wasn't until she grew up that she realized the real monsters stalked the streets at night, sucking the life out of unfortunate souls. She learned that death was the most present in the dark.

Her parents died in the night. She was a child when it happened, so she only heard about it from her social worker when she was old enough. A car crash they said. A drunk driver in the middle of the night. They were unlucky, everybody said. Unlucky that it had been so dark and so late.

The first time death came for Sunset, it was on a cloudy, starless night. Nearly a decade ago, when she was freshly sixteen, she'd snuck out of her foster home to meet up with a boy– his name she couldn't even remember anymore. It all happened so fast. One moment she was walking along the sidewalk of the city and the next, she's being grappled by some unknown force.

Sunset tried to fight back, but she'd been caught so off guard that all her movements were useless. She truly thought she was going to die that night, all for the sake of teenage rebellion, but then a miracle happened.

Suddenly, whatever was grabbing her released Sunset from their grip and staggered backwards with a pained nose. Sunset stumbles over her own feet and falls to the ground, but she looks up in time to see the figure being impaled by several wooden sticks. She blinks once, then twice, and her attacker becomes nothing more than dust.

She looks behind her only to see a couple of cloaked individuals holding crossbows and daggers. They were gone as soon as they came. It would be another year or so before Sunset would find out what attacked her. Not long after, she would stumble across the group of people who saved her that night, and a few months later, she would join them.

The Order gave her a better roof over her head than any foster home she'd been shoved into as a kid. She met people that felt as close to family as she would ever get. She felt safe there– safe from the dark and from the unknown

Eventually, death would come for her a second time, and it was no surprise that what brought her back was the light.

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Sunset Shimmer had not met anyone as enigmatic as Twilight Sparkle.

She barged into Sunset's life like she already belonged there, like there was nowhere else she could have ended up. Sunset couldn't help but feel immediately drawn in by the way she spoke, and the way she carried herself. Her brilliance and her wit. She felt caught every time Twilight's eyes would meet hers, but she would always turn away, cheeks burning.

Whatever feelings she harbored for Twilight certainly didn't lessen when she moved into Order headquarters after the debacle in Atlanta. They had rooms right across the hallway from each other, so it was no surprise at all that they (inevitably) fell right into bed together.

On the third or fourth night they spent together– the third or fourth time Twilight snuck out of Sunset's room mere minutes afterwards, Sunset asks, "Do you have to go already?"

Twilight, who was in the middle of buttoning up her shirt, leans over and plants a chaste kiss on Sunset's lips. "I have some stuff I have to finish up before tomorrow. We should do this again though."