Through the hard grey sleet, they flew together. Through scratching leaves and battering branches, bruised by apples and choking on dusty fungal spores, they flew side by side. Rainbow Dash laughed with wild abandon, enthusiasm fuelled by the madness of the challenge. Fluttershy gritted her teeth with determination, heart set on helping her friends and their family.
The Blue Leaf disease had come to Sweet Apple Acres a few weeks beforehoof, and thanks to a stiff wind over the last week had multiplied out of control. Now the Apple family faced the failure of an entire crop, and just before winter. That was a risk they couldn't afford.
The solution, according to Twilight Sparkle and an ancient almanac, was simple in theory but dangerous in the execution. Like creating a firebreak, the outermost infected trees and the few outside them must be stripped of their leaves - but the whole operation must be done in a powerful downpour of rain. The disease's spores spread on the wind, and knocking off their leaves spread them throughout the air, but a sudden, torrential rainstorm - the kind that no pegasus would willingly spread their wings in - would soak most of them to their leaves, and knock even more down to the ground, to be collected and burned far away from any apple trees. It was a gamble. And Rainbow Dash was laughing.
About a third of their way across the field, and about two hours into the clear-up, Fluttershy stopped and gave Rainbow Dash the Look. It wasn't the Stare - it was just a signal they had agreed. If and when they were pushing themselves too far, and they needed a break, it was Fluttershy's job to make sure they took it. Of course Fluttershy knew best. Of course.
Pinkie Pie and Applebloom waited for them at the hayloft window of the Apples' north barn. There was a sharp gust of tailwind just as they arrived, and the two pegasi tumbled in head-over-flanks, before landing roughly on top of one another. Rainbow Dash gave a laugh and hugged Fluttershy enthusiastically. Too enthusiastically. Fluttershy squeaked and leapt to her hooves, bolting straight for the towel and snack waiting for her, and the chaste hug of the Apple filly with stars in her eyes for the heroes of the day.
Pinkie Pie looked strangely at Rainbow Dash's despondent expression, at Fluttershy's forced indifference. Something unspoken crackled between them. It looked almost like... but no. She giggled to herself. Anyway, they were doing a hard job in the worst possible weather for it; of course they were stressed. And Rainbow Dash was a touchy kind of pony - in both senses, sometimes. Maybe she was just enjoying being in the warm?
Anyway, they were stressed? Obviously what they needed was a song! And between her and Applebloom, they had just the song for the occasion.
Forty-eight seconds later, Fluttershy was the first to take off back out into the storm. Her wings weren't even warm yet, but when forced to choose between the storm and the song...
-----
Ponyville was all-but deserted, as most waited indoors for the rain to begin. Since the weather team - well, Rainbow Dash - usually cleared away unnecessary clouds, they only usually saw the world in this dim grey light before the kind of storms that rolled in off the Everfree Forest in the autumn.
Behind closed doors and latched shutters, ponies prepared buckets to catch the leaks, stoked their fireplaces, and settled down with the books and boardgames they had laid aside for rainy days. In Ponyville, rainy days were family days, both by custom and necessity.
Only Bon-Bon was brave enough to approach the stormy-looking pegasus trudging her way through the streets, to ask her if it would be clear in the afternoon. Rainbow Dash had barely noticed the first time she asked, but eventually the earth pony cleared her throat loud enough to hurt, and the pegasus sighed, and sat down, and shook her head. Sensing something wrong, Bon-Bon cocked an eyebrow, backed off slowly, and made her way about her business for the day.
Even the sharp-edged, gusting wind didn't touch Rainbow Dash on that walk. She felt as if she was looking out of her eyes from a long way back, a place where ponies talking to her were muted and irrelevant, and shivering in the cold was a thing to be noticed, not felt. She knew she needed to do something to even make a start on fixing what she'd done, but not what she had to do, or how, or with whom. The happy structure that Fluttershy had given her, that infiltrated and influenced every aspect of her life, was now the bane and burden that she carried, for she could barely think without thinking about her.
The school, quiet and still, was just that place she might never visit again to take the Crusaders to Fluttershy's cottage. Roseluck's stall, now unattended, was just that stall she might never buy flowers from again. Still, if there was anypony who knew how to make a pony feel better - to feel at all - it was surely Pinkie Pie. The earth pony's enthusiasm never failed.
Rainbow Dash knocked on the door to Sugarcube Corner with an exhausted hoof. She might have been athletic, but she'd hardly slept for most of the last week, and she'd walked all the way from Clydesley Crag. If Mr. and Mrs. Cake noticed the state the pegasus was in, they were at least too decent to mention it. Sometimes, after all, a pony needed to talk to a friend.
"Dashie!" Pinkie Pie exclaimed, bouncing off the floor in genuine excitement. "Dashie in my room! Dashie in my room! Is it time for a day of pranking? We'll work on the perfect prank! And the perfect prank needs to have the perfect name - I've been waiting to try out the the perfect purple-pony pratfall prank? Wait, no - the perfect purple-pony pratfall plank prank! I haven't invented it yet, but I suppose I'd have to get a purple pony and hit them with a plank so they fell over..."
As if she had opened the door onto the storm, Rainbow Dash flinched back from Pinkie Pie's enthusiasm - which, for some reason, was anything but infectious. Everything about everything her friend had just said was either stupid or irrelevant. While Pinkie Pie rummaged through a trunk, tossing some hoof-made models of her friends out onto the carpeted floor, Dash flopped down onto the bed and lay her head on her tail.
"Ah-ha!" Pinkie spun round, holding a crude model of Twilight Sparkle gently between her teeth, and seemed to notice her pegasus friend's lack of enthusiasm for the first time. She dropped the model on the carpet and flopped down on her haunches in front of the pegasus. "Dashie? What's wrong?"
The words came as if from the next cloud along. Twilight had described what it felt like to do too many magic spells at once before, and it felt like this. The despairing pegasus had so much she wanted to say, but no way of saying it. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but nothing came out.
Pinkie Pie's eyes widened in shock, and she squeaked in panic. "Oh no! Something's stopped you talking! Something's silenced you! Did you fly into the Everfree Forest and meet a Tongue-Twister? Those things are so nasty! Or maybe it was-"
Rainbow Dash lifted her head and tried to speak, but she knew that if she tried, it would all come out at once, and not in order. She could scream, or she could cry, or nothing at all.
"-drank all of Twilight's hot sauce and she took away your voice with magic, or maybe you just can't talk after you drink that much hot sauce, or maybe-" Pinkie Pie's voice took on a note of fear, "-maybe you spilled it on Rarity and she magicked your voice away-"
On the other hoof, Pinkie Pie was succeeding in getting her to concentrate on something other than her troubles. One option was half a head in front of the rest.
"-got on the salt again and sent a letter to Princess Celestia with a print of your butt on it, but it can't be that, because she'd have banished you or thrown you in the dungeon or banished you and then thr-"
"Shut up, Pinkie!" Rainbow Dash yelled. They were the first words she'd spoken since she'd cried herself hoarse the night before. Pinkie Pie immediately zipped her lips shut - so quickly, in fact, that Dash got the feeling she'd been waiting to do so.
"You gotta... promise not to tell her I told you this," the pegasus began slowly. Pinkie Pie performed the appropriate ceremony with an almost reverent air, but held up a hoof at the end of it.
"If your story takes a while, you'll need supplies to keep up your smile! You look like you haven't eaten since forever." Within a minute, she had dashed downstairs and up again, carrying a plate in her teeth, and at her insistence, Rainbow Dash took something she'd never seen before - a scone, apparently. It was as good as anything to have sit there and listen to her tell her story.
Only the story wouldn't come. Try as she might, her rebellious tongue simply would not form the words she needed to say. Trapped behind a prison of her own shame, she curled up and watched the scone.
"You're not eating your scone," Pinkie observed.
"I've been dating Fluttershy for a year and a half," she said in response. That was it; that was it done, over with; that was her confession. And all it took was somepony to engage her in conversation. She had meant to say something about how she wasn't hungry, but what came out was The Words, and... well, it seemed that was enough.
Surely there should be some sense of achievement that came with this?
Of course not, said those parts of her brain which worked without her say-so, like her heart and her lungs and her conscience. That was the easy part. Here, though, I'll make it easy for you:
"And I'm not happy," she heard her voice say. "All we ever seem to do is sit around and play with the animals. Even when I do get her out of the cottage, and we get up in the clouds, she hardly wants to leave my place. She just... plays with Tank, and any birds that come by, and if she comes flying with me, she's always looking round in case anyone notices we're flying together. And I mean come on, two pegasi going flying together? What a big deal!
"And I got us tickets to the Cloudsdale Theatre 'cos, y'know, maybe she'd like it and it'd be a thing we could do together, and it was this awesome show about a sphinx from Agrabay and a unicorn from Canterlot, and they fall in love even though they're at war with each other - anyway, now I love a good story as much as the next pegasus - as long as it's a cool story - and this was a cool story - but she just spent the whole time looking around to see if anyone noticed we'd gone there together. There wasn't even anypony there we really knew!
"And this happens all the time! And I'm sick of it! I hate having to lie to my friends and I... I told her last night I couldn't take it anymore... and I think we're... I think we're not..." Numb or not, there were still some things that felt too big to say. It was like it wouldn't fit out of her mouth.
Pinkie Pie swallowed, then shook her head quickly, as if trying to shake something out of her mane. "Okay. Itchy mane, twitchy ears, left front hoof shakin' it all about, I guess that must be 'confession of love'. But not for me! Hold on, Dashie, I gotta make a note of this-" Rainbow Dash found herself lifted up as the earth pony rummaged under her mattress for a small notebook. She landed with the mattress; each made a small noise.
It was at that moment that Rainbow Dash started to wonder if her best friend might not have been her best confidante. "Pinkie, I'm kinda..." She didn't know what she was kinda, but... it wasn't this.
"Waitwaitwaitwaitwait," Pinkie Pie exclaimed. "I know how this song goes, don't you worry!"
That surprised her. "Song?"
"Song. Everything's got a song. Everything in the whole wide world has a song. Even little bunny-rabbits have songs. Especially little bunny-rabbits. And I know how this song goes."
The pegasus' eyes all-but crossed trying to understand. She shook her head to clear it. If she was getting the right message, her friend was saying something about... knowing how she felt? Had Pinkie Pie been keeping something secret? Had she been keeping the same secret? And... for all that she loved her best friend, who would date her? Who the hay could keep up with her? "You... do?"
"Yep! Abso-fabso-lutely!" Pinkie cleared her throat, took up a stance, and produced a microphone from... wherever it was that she kept these things. There was a brief pause, "YOU!" she bellowed; "I WANNA TAKE YOU TO A HAY BAR!"
Rainbow Dash's jaw dropped, and she leapt to her hooves furiously. With a growl she lashed out at the earth pony, sending the microphone flying across the room, and landed in a heap on top of her. "Y'know, you could at least have taken this seriously!" she shouted, right in Pinkie's face, which at least had the decency to look shocked. She felt something now; she felt anger. "I'm trying to ask for help here! Do you have any idea how hard it is for a pony as... as..." Awesome? Cool? Independent? Respected? "...as famous as me to admit to needing help?"
"Yep!" Pinkie Pie said with a grin, wriggling out from under her friend. "That's why I thought that song would be perfect for your coming-out party!"
Oh no, Dash thought. After crushing sorrow and furious anger, her third feeling of the day was mortal dread.
"Or for both of your coming-out parties! Ooh - do you think you'll want to have two separate parties or one really big one? I should probably sing it quieter for Fluttershy, though, since she doesn't like it when everything's loud." She cleared her throat again, and began in a tuneless whisper: "You! I wanna take you to a hay bar!"
Rainbow Dash threw her forehooves up in despair and turned away. "Haven't you heard a single thing I've said?"
"Everything!" Pinkie giggled. Surely she couldn't be being this stupid...
"And you're still just thinking about partying!" Rainbow Dash accused. "I knew this'd get all messed up. I knew you'd just... laugh! I don't know why I even came to you! I can't believe I thought you'd help me feel better, instead of just being stupid! It's not big or clever, Pinkie!" Rainbow Dash turned back to shout inches from her friend's face, and her voice began to crack under the same strain that was squeezing flustered tears from her dry, sleepless eyes. "It's just... stupid!"
To Pinkie Pie's horror, she snorted angrily and charged for the window - and fell as her cramped wings failed her. Snapping them out to slow her before she hit the ground, she managed not to break anything - but by the time Pinkie had made it outside, Dash had picked herself up and set off at a sprint. Behind her, she left a few bent feathers, almost grey in the dim storm-light, and cold words which echoed in her closest friend's heart.
Pinkie's mane sank a little, and watching as the wind tugged at the feathers on the ground, her own hoof seemed a little darker in the iron-grey light outside. Shivering, worried halfway to a straight mane, she ran back inside as quick as she could, and hugged Mrs. Cake in meaningful silence.