Rainbow Dash hated waiting rooms. And that was on a normal day, when one of her best friends hadn't just been wheeled into the emergency room of Canterlot Hospital covered in blood and with both wings bent at unnatural angles. Today, she just felt like punching something. Or, someone.
Preferably the horrible white monstrosity that was sitting at the front desk and called herself a nurse. How could she sleep at night knowing she was putting her through something as horrible as this?!?!
When they'd first arrived, Rainbow had immediately rushed up to the front desk and demanded the nurse tell her where Twilight was. Said nurse had refused, rambling on about how they were all in shock and that Twilight was going to be just fine, and to please take a seat and a million other things that the rainbow maned Pegasus didn't care about.
So Rainbow had pounded her hoof on the desk, and again demanded she tell her where Twilight was.
The nurse again refused, and repeated the same old stupid spiel, albeit in a slightly more hostile tone.
Then, before her friends could restrain her, she'd leaned in real close to the poor mare, looked her dead in the eyes, and demanded she tell her where her best friend was, or it was going to be her on that hospital bed instead of Twilight.
After Rainbow had finally been dragged back to a chair and now sat, giving the nurse at the front desk the stink eye, more ponies had slowly started arriving over the next few hours. At first Rainbow thought they were here all for another patient, then they all sat down in the plastic chairs and asked how Twilight was doing.
It seemed every pony from Ponyville had come to see how their local Princess was doing.
Taking a brief break from glaring at the nurse, Rainbow glanced around the room in slight surprise. She'd known Twilight was pretty well known, but didn't know she was this well known. She spotted a few famous figures in the quickly gathering crowd, including Prince Blueblood sitting in a seat in the corner and wiping his nose delicately with a hoof-kerchief, Spitfire and a couple of old retired Wonderbolts, Sweet Song, a well known singer, and even Princess Celestia and Princess Luna surrounded by a small army of Royal Guards.
There was a crack like thunder, and Twilight's older brother, Shining Armor, and his wife Princess Cadence both appeared in the center of the room looking slightly frazzled and as if they'd been running through the streets of Canterlot with no care about how messy they got in the process.
Which, Rainbow reminded herself, they probably had been.
Seeing Shining marching toward the good-for-nothing-nurse with a murderous look in his eyes, Rainbow leapt out of her seat and flew quickly over to him.
If Shining murdered that nurse, Rainbow would gladly burn the body where no one would ever find it and blame it on the butler. It was always the butler, wasn't it? Or maybe it was General Ketchup, or what ever his name was . . . Her thoughts briefly wandered, but she snapped them back with a quick Snap out of it, Rainbow! Best friend currently in surgery! There are more important things than General Ketchup!
She arrived at the desk a millisecond after Shining and Cadence did.
"I'm sorry, but you'll have to-" the nurse started, but, surprisingly, Cadence gave the other mare a gaze so cold that it could have frozen an active volcano.
The nurse, gulping and shrinking slightly under the angry gazes of both Shining Armor and Cadence, stuttered nervously. "Y-you h-have t-to g-go-"
"I don't have to go anywhere!" Shiny said forcefully. "But if you'll just tell us where Twilight Sparkle's room is-"
Rainbow butted in and finished the sentence for him.
"-We might let you live." She finished darkly.
The nurse hurried over to her desk and shuffled through the papers there with faint blue magic. Apparently finding the paper she'd been looking for, she lifted it up to eye level and read aloud.
"Twilight Sparkle. Gender: female. Race: previously unicorn, now alicorn. Is this the mare you're looking for?" The nurse asked, all traces of a stutter gone now that she had something to shield her face with.
"Yes," Cadence answered, slightly kinder than before. "Can you tell us which room she's in?"
"I don't think she out of surgery yet." the white mare answered. "She looked really bad when she came in-"
She was once again interrupted, this time by a medium sized plain gray stallion with a white doctor's coat on. His eyes showed a brief flicker of surprise at the mass of ponies all crammed into the waiting room, but then he schooled his face into a bland and bored expression.
"Immediate family of Twilight Sparkle-?" He asked. Shining Armor, Cadence, Twilight's sobbing parents, all of the Element Bearers, and both Royal Pony Sisters all stood up and immediately made their way over to the doctor.
He glanced down at a clipboard he held in his bland gray magic. "Only immediate blood relatives please." He said.
"We are blood relatives!" Rainbow and AJ both protested loudly, while Fluttershy tried to convince the doctor in kind tones to let her and the others in, while Pinkie Pie stood off to the side looking unusually somber and Rarity began trying to bribe the Doctor into letting them in. Twilight's parents wails of how they were her parents was lost in the general hubbub of the mob.
More ponies had come up, protesting loudly and trying to get them to let them in.
They all fell silent as Princess Celestia, Immortal Ruler of the Sun, strode gracefully through, her sister quickly following suit behind her.
She bent down to whisper in the doctor's ear for a moment, to which he nodded.
"Right this way," he said in a low voice. Everyone immediately everyone started shouting all at once. Shining Armor pushed his way to the front.
"Princess," he panted. "Please. I need to see my sister!"
"I understand you need your sister." She said, eyes flickering over to Luna. "But I just need to check with the doctors and see if Twilight is okay. I'm sure you will find out the nature of your sister in but a few short minutes."
He gazed up at her for a moment, before bowing his head. "I trust you, your highness." He looked up. "Please make sure she's okay, though." He pleaded.
Celestia stared down at Shining. "I will," she vowed.
Then, with one last hard warning stare from Luna, Celestia walked out the door and disappeared from view.
And, in the silence that followed, Rainbow vowed that if she never saw Twilight again, she would never forgive herself.
Somehow, she knew, it was all her fault. She should've done something. She should've figured it out sooner.
Then, after longer than Rainbow expected the Princess to be gone, the Empress of the Sun was back. She walked in, her mane no longer waving in the solar breeze, but lying flat and gray against her neck. She walked slowly, head bowed down, and didn't even seem to notice that she'd just entered the waiting room again.
Rainbow stomach contracted. No . . . Please, Oh, Faust no! Please, let her be alive . . .
She looked up when Luna cleared her throat.
Celestia gulped. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry. I - she didn't - I mean -" Princess Celestia closed her eyes.
"I'm sorry, Shining. She didn't make it."
No! It's not true! She's lying, it's not true, she's lying . . . It can't be true!
But in her heart, she felt a horrible sense of foreboding, and knew, that she, Rainbow Dash, wouldn't see Twilight Sparkle for a long long time to come.
No . . .
Rainbow flew over to the door that led to the hallway, the door that led to Twilight . . . Tears blurred her vision, and she was hardly even aware that Applejack had her tail in her teeth and was trying to pull her back. Her friends were gathered around her, all crying, all with tears running down their cheeks. Rainbow didn't think she'd ever seen Pinkie cry, not really anyway. Now the pink mare was full on sobbing, curled around her friends as if they were a lifeline in a raging storm.
Rainbow pounded on the door, shouting, crying, calling out to Twilight as if she could hear her, and for a moment she thought she could.
Rainbow Dash, Greatest Flier in all of Equestria and Element of Loyalty, for the first time since she could remember, collapsed onto the ground with her friends and sobbed.
"Please, Twilight, no . . ."
She had her head rested against the door, as the tears traced salty tracks down the soft fur on her cheeks, and for a moment, she thought she could hear Twilight calling to her . . . Crying . . . Asking them to come back . . . Telling them she wasn't really dead . . .
But then the voice faded, and Rainbow was alone.
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