As contagion often did, Rarity’s sickness had masqueraded first as simple mortal weariness. Rainbow hadn’t thought anything of it. Of course Rarity was tired—she’d forced marched half the length of the world, crawled and climbed and fought her way through an ancient city of horrors, and interacted with beings of pure primal magic. It was enough to wear anypony out.
She still remembered what had happened. Rarity had come and at the last moment been captured. They would both be sacrificed together, the last piece in the puzzle of a crazed madman. The fountain at the center of Jannah, high above the city, had been so deceptively calm and inviting, but even Rainbow had felt the weight of its ancient, eons-old magic swirling about. It was all that was left of the Song that spun the world, after all.
In hindsight, she supposed Rarity had gone to see her maker. It had paid off.
Rarity had only been submerged for a moment before coming back up entirely different. Time moved differently in the Well of the Firmaments, she’d said. She had spoken at length with Eon, the alicorn who sadly watched the world turning, and had borrowed a bit of her strength to wipe the mad zebra D’Jalin and his mercenaries away in blinding light. To save Rainbow.
Rainbow Dash stared down at the whiskey sadly. Not even Wild Pegasus could make some things feel alright.
It was late. Very late. The storm outside raged on, but her team could handle it. The pounding, relentless rain and the lightning would have their time and then be ushered off into the waiting hooves of the next weather team the district over, and none of it technically needed her there to help. She’d only helped build the storm, and she built things to last. Or she tried.
But like many things, contagion did not care about how a pony felt or what a pony did. It was mindless. Magical contagion was no different. Rainbow looked past the glass with its amber contents and back towards her wings. She knew all too well about magical wounds and how they tended to linger.
It was a few days out from Jannah, on the ancient Imperial Road, that Rarity had begun to grow weak. She’d seemed tired, but Rainbow Dash had not seen the signs of the impending collapse. She’d been so blind, so caught up in the joy of reuniting with the mare she loved most, so enthusiastic in the way that only a caged thing set free can be—and so Rarity had crumpled in the middle of the old paved road without warning.
Rainbow had tried her best. Love, she’d read somewhere, always did its best. Four days and nights Rainbow Dash had pressed on, crossing vast distances with Rarity in tow, foraging and traveling as fast as she could manage, desperate to get back to the coast and civilization. Only when at last she had reached the red city of Valon had Rarity woken up, drenched in sweat, from her restless and long sleep.
Still restless, Dash thought and sipped at her whiskey. There was no mistaking it. Nopony in the Belle-Dash household slept well these days.
Rainbow wanted to go up there and comfort her, but as long as she was asleep… A pony in Rarity’s position needed sleep more than comfort. At least, that’s what the doctors had suggested. But it was hard. She thought about her love tossing and turning, and it grated.
Another sip. She stared at the calendar.
It was easy to draw parallels with her own condition. Magical wounds, scars physical, pains deep and unseen. Her foreleg burned and ached like Rainbow’s wings did still, sometimes. The magic never totally left. Had Rarity sat at this little table, sipping her wine in the late of night, thinking on how slow days can pass when you’re waiting? Back then, there was a huge red circle scrawled on the month to mark Rainbow’s own doctor visit, but Rarity had not gone to such lengths. Just a neat little annotation, no different from any other teatime appointment.
Back then, Rarity had helped her. Sure, Rainbow had needed to claw her own way out of the pits of despair, but at every ledge there had been Rarity letting down another rope, shining a light to show her the path up into the actual sunlight.
“Just gotta do the same,” Rainbow mumbled around another shot. Wild Pegasus bucked like Applejack, and that was why she liked it. “Just… gotta do the same,” she repeated. Rainbow Dash was wise enough by now to know it was harder than it sounded.