End of Courage

by 576-Belligerent-Coil

Part 1: Ancient History

Twilight Sparkle was lying in her loft, reading herself to sleep. The sound of rain pattering against her window was comforting, and the fire she’d lit a few hours previous was starting to die down a bit, its rhythmic crackling making it that much easier for her to doze off. Spike was at the foot of her bed, his blanket wrapped around his little body, snoring lightly. Twilight turned towards the baby dragon and kissed him on the head.

“Good night, Spike,” she said gingerly. As she started to lay her head down, she saw the still-open book out of the corner of her eye. “Though… I’m sure one more chapter wouldn’t hurt.” She shifted a bit in her bed and began reading again, falling back into the story with ease.
The beast knew only that it did not belong in this cage. As it fought to liberate itself, the Royal Guard lowered their horns, preparing once again to trap the restless dragon. A pegasus in ceremonial attire walked into the room with his wings outstretched, displaying the countless honor seals on his cuirass.

“I know you can understand me, dragon! Though I know not your name, I can easily prosecute you for your crimes! Do not try to escape again, or I will move to have you banished like the Princess you sought to aid!” Captain Temperus walked closer to the dragon and stared deep into its onyx irises. “You have hatred in your heart. Though Princess Celestia thinks you may be rehabilitated, I foster no such hope. You are a wild beast, nothing more... incapable even of defending your actions.”

For the first time since his imprisonment, the dragon found his voice. “You… do not know my kind. You do not know… my heart, pony. But I… I can see yours. The fear in you cannot be hidden… not even by that pitiful armor.”

Temperus was taken aback. He continued to look the beast in the eye, but his wings betrayed him with a sudden flutter. He knew the dragon saw this display and folded them slowly against his side.

“Even so… do not doubt that each day may be your last.” With this, Temperus began to walk out of the room, his haughty demeanor noticeably deflated. The dragon saw the unicorns bow to their Captain as he left the room. He knew this was his opening. With a mighty sweep of his tail, the cage was shattered and he was free once again. “Tell your Princess that I will—

Twilight’s reading was interrupted by a loud crash of thunder just outside her house. She sat bolt upright in her bed, looking around to make sure everything in the library was still in order. She checked on Spike, hardly surprised that he’d slept through the racket. She stood up and looked out her window to try to figure out where the noise had come from. She heard three knocks at her door started to climb down to answer it. Before she could reach the door, however, it swung open. Twilight hesitated for a second, wondering who’d come to visit her at this hour. As if to answer her question, Rainbow Dash walked slowly into the library with her head bowed.

“What’s going on, Rainbow Dash? We weren’t scheduled to have a thunderstorm tonight. Did they change that at the last minute, or—”

“Twilight… I need your help,” Rainbow Dash said, her voice wavering a bit. As Twilight realized that her friend was crying, she quickly grabbed a towel and wrapped it around the soaked pegasus.

“What’s going on, Rainbow? Is something wrong?” Twilight cursed herself for asking such a stupid question. Rainbow Dash is crying. Of course something’s wrong. She led Dash over to the waning fire and threw another log into it. She tried to get her friend to look at her, but she was staring at the fire intently. After several minutes of silence, she slowly began to talk.

“I think… I think I may have really hurt Fluttershy…”

“Rainbow Dash, that’s not really anything to worry about…. You know how easy it is to hurt that filly’s feelings. She cries all the time…”

Rainbow Dash shot an angry glance at Twilight. “I know Fluttershy. I know when she’s upset. Don’t think I don’t know how easy it is to hurt her feelings. Twilight, when I left her house, she wasn’t crying. Have you ever even heard of her being so upset that she didn’t cry?”

Twilight looked at the floor, feeling admonished. “No, I can’t say I have…”
Rainbow Dash looked back at the fire without expression. She closed her eyes for a second and scrunched up her face like she was trying to remember some long-forgotten fact. “Do you know anything about Cloudsdale? How it really is?”

“No, I don’t know a whole lot about it, other than what you and Fluttershy have told me.” Twilight glanced over to a nearby shelf and quickly located a book about the history of Cloudsdale that she’d been meaning to read. Somehow, I don’t think Dash would appreciate it if I started reading it now….

“Then… I guess I have to start from the beginning.”

***

Flight camp in Cloudsdale was tough. It was closer to a boot camp than a school. This is where the next generation of athletes, racers, and Royal Guard were chosen from. The work was hard and the coaches were beyond demanding. If anyone showed any sign of weakness, they were reminded of their failures. A lot of parents wouldn’t even send their children there for fear of their little ones dropping out. But some parents saw it as a method to toughen up a weak filly or unruly colt. Fluttershy’s parents were like that. They knew it would be difficult for her, but they knew she had potential. When I first met her about a year after I enrolled, she was a year ahead of me and a few ranks behind. Even her best efforts were just a few seconds too slow or a few hooves short of the finish. She told me that, at first, she wasn’t so quiet and she really tried. But eventually, she just gave up.

Everypony was constantly making fun of her. The instructors didn’t care; they told us if we didn’t measure up, everypony else had a right to pick on us. They called it “motivation.” I didn’t like it at all, but it worked for me. Every taunt, every nickname, every single glare was just one more reason to prove that they were wrong, that I was better than them. And eventually, I proved that I was right. But every time I succeeded, I saw Fluttershy in the back of the group crying. I hated seeing her like that. So I tried to talk to her. At first, she wouldn’t even look me in the eye. I kept talking to her, though, trying to give her some real encouragement. Even though she refused to talk to me, I knew she was starting to listen.

One day, there was a huge, school-wide race. I think I came in third. Fluttershy, on the other hand, was still flying after everypony else had finished. I came out of the shower with a couple of my classmates and saw the little filly still flying laps, but she wasn’t alone. I thought she’d finally made some friends. I flew up to the track to see who they were, but when I got there, I couldn’t even see her. She was flanked by the two colts who’d finished the race before me, and I could hear her crying between them. I asked them what the hay they were doing.

“Oh, nothing, Rainbow Crash! We’re just giving this little filly some help with the race!”
I knew what they were up to, so I made sure there weren’t any instructors around and I bucked that smart-flanked colt right in the ribs. He fell straight through the track and his buddy flew down after him. I flew over to Fluttershy, who was just hovering there, a shivering little mess with her head almost to the ground. I didn’t say a word to her. I just flew under her and lifted her nose up with my tail. I looked back at her and saw her smile for the first time.

That night, we talked for hours about anything and everything. Towards the end of the night, though, she started bawling out of the blue. I tried to comfort her, but she didn’t seem to respond to anything. Eventually, she started to calm down a bit, just sobbing and breathing really heavy. I flat-out asked her what was wrong and she picked right back up crying. She looked over to me and choked back the tears for a second, just long enough to say, “I don’t think I’ve ever had a friend before…”

She started right back up. I flew over and laid my wing on her back. I nudged her with my snout and smiled at her. She gave the tiniest little smile back, and a few minutes later, she was asleep.

***

Twilight passed a cup of tea to Rainbow Dash. “You were Fluttershy’s first friend?”

“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash said as she took the cup from Twilight. She’d finished crying and had regained most of her composure. “I didn’t know it either, until she told me.”

“I had no idea Cloudsdale was so… strict. Why didn’t you say anything about it while we were up there?”

Rainbow Dash looked into her cup. “They don’t like it when you talk about how the city really is. It’s actually pretty closed off.” She looked back up to Twilight. “It isn’t quite as nice as the stories everypony knows. I mean, they have to keep up appearances. All famous flyers came out of Cloudsdale. Sure, it’s harsh… but it works, you know? It’s just that some ponies aren’t cut out for it. For me, the whole city was kinda a symbol of everything I thought was wrong with the world. I did what I could to make sure the instructors knew that, too.”

Twilight lay back down in front of the fireplace. She knew that life was hard in Cloudsdale, but she didn’t know why any of this would be coming up after all this time. “So, do you think all of the bullying is what made Fluttershy so introverted?”

“Pfft— Naw, she was tougher stuff than that. I mean, yeah, she was still shy after we started talking, but it wasn’t like she gave up on ponies altogether. Things didn’t really start changing until everypony started hitting puberty. That’s when things started getting really weird.”

“Puberty? Why’d that change things?”

“Egh… I really hate talking about that kinda thing. I guess that’s where this whole thing started to go downhill, though…”

***

Around the fourth year in flight school, ponies started to get interested in romance. The way things were set up, though, it was hard for fillies and colts to see each other outside of class. The instructors didn’t like it when our little flings got distracting, so they laid down some rules when they thought we were ready to hear them. They insisted fillies stay away from colts and vice-versa, and we kept everything a bit hush-hush. Other than that, so long as nothing interfered with our performance, we were free to do whatever we wanted. It seems really weird that they’d promote filly-fooling, but I guess it was better than any of the students getting knocked up. That’d affect performance too much.

I'm not trying to brag or anything, but I really couldn’t keep the other fillies off of me after the first time I pulled off a Sonic Rainboom. I hated it. They always tried to tell me that there was nothing wrong with it, but I really didn’t care about that. I’m not sure why, but I was never really interested in any of the other fillies. ‘Course, it didn’t help that the instructors were promoting it. I still didn’t want to do anything more than what I had to. The instructors knew what I was up to, and they didn’t like it at all. Yeah, I was talented, but in their eyes, I wasn’t any better than Fluttershy.

That’s about the time Fluttershy really started to shut down. The other ponies were too caught up in their own little matters to make fun of her anymore, so I really didn’t have to defend her unless she screwed up really bad. Between me telling the other fillies to leave me alone and Fluttershy having no real rank, we ended up as our own little group. Everypony left us alone, and we ignored all of them. We talked a lot, though, so I wasn’t too worried about her.

One night, though, she came to me with a really weird look on her face. She looked scared and confused, so I asked her what was wrong. She told me everything she was feeling: queasy, nervous, scared of everypony and what they might think. I thought she was just getting sick or starting to feel stage fright again, but then she told me that she was afraid of one filly in particular. I’m pretty sure her name was Tiger Lilly. At first, I thought it was the sappiest thing in the world, but then I saw the bigger problem.

The way dating normally worked back in Cloudsdale was that if two ponies were making eyes for each other, the oldest one would say something about it and the younger one would either confirm the feelings or ignore it. Fluttershy was an exception to that rule. She was older than most of the other ponies there, but she was so far behind the rest of us that she was pretty much excluded from the social scene, dating included. I wanted to tell her what she was feeling, but I didn’t want to give her any false hope. So I just told her to ignore the feeling and it would go away. She looked really disappointed by my answer. I started to wonder if she wasn’t really talking about Tiger Lilly, but she didn’t bring it up again.

Eventually, ponies started to talk about us. They thought they were so clever, like they figured out why the great Rainbow Dash wasn’t taking a filly-friend. They were so sure I was secretly with Fluttershy, but nopony said anything to me. I didn’t know anything about it at the time, but I found out later that they were harassing Fluttershy about it. She didn’t say a single word to me about it, but I could tell something was wrong. She wouldn’t even look anypony in the eye anymore and I was the only one she’d ever talk too. It was always small talk, though. I thought we’d just run out of things to talk about, so I just kept talking to her about the little things, not really wanting anything to change. One day, that little punk I bucked in the ribs came up to us while we were talking over lunch.

“Oh, hey there Rainbow Crash,” he said. “How’re you and your little filly-friend doing?” He looked at me like he was the smartest thing to come out of Canterlot.

“What the hay do you think you’re talking about, you bumble-headed moron?” I asked. “Fluttershy’s my best friend!”

“Don’t try to hide it! Everypony knows you’re filly-fooling around with that little retard!”

I heard Fluttershy start to cry behind me. I stared the jerk right in the stupid face and spit in his eye. “You take that back right now! No one talks about my friend like that!” By that time, we were surrounded by everypony in the room. The instructors were even taking an interest, but they were slow to do anything about the crowd that was forming. That was dumb.

“You don’t even know who you’re messing with, do you? I’m not gonna take that from a little filly like you!” That guy was starting to get really mad, but I stood my ground. “What’re ya gonna do, Rainbow Crash? You gonna fight me?”

I gritted my teeth and stood up. “I’m not gonna fight you…”

He got that stupid little know-it-all look back on his face.

"...I'M GONNA KICK YOUR FLANK!"

By the time I finished my sentence, my hooves were planted in his wing and he was on the cloud crying like a baby. I bucked him while he was down and looked at our terrified audience.

“Anypony else wanna say something to Fluttershy?” They all took a step back as I looked around the circle, until I was looking right behind Fluttershy. I saw one of our instructors step closer to her and I realized just how deep the hole I’d just dug for myself was. I looked down at the crying colt at my feet. I saw how twisted his wing was and looked up in time to see the instructor was looking at the exact same thing.

“You just broke one of our best flyer’s wings, Rainbow Dash. What have you got to say for yourself?”

Right then, I gave up on that horrible place. “All I got to say is that he got what was coming to him, and if you want to stop me, I’ll do the same to you!”

He didn’t like that at all. In a split second, I was on the floor and he was staring me down with his wings stretched wide and his nostrils flared. “You will learn your place, you little foal,” he said through gritted teeth. “You will never make this mistake again.”

He looked around to each member of the crowd. “Let this foal be a lesson to you all! Love will make you do stupid things! Do not let it get the best of you!”

I lifted my head up slowly, ignoring the pounding in my head. “What do you know, you arrogant prick? I don’t love Fluttershy and I never will!” I kicked him in the shins and looked at the crowd. I knew something was up when there wasn’t a single pony looking at the instructor anymore. I tried to figure out why they weren’t, and I saw Fluttershy’s tail disappear over the edge of the cloud. I tried to fly after her, but the instructor caught me before I got out of his reach. I’d rather not talk about what happened next, but to give you an idea, I was expelled from the school before the end of the week.

***

“Hold on a second. Fluttershy had a crush on you? That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever—“

“Spike!” Twilight looked at the still-chuckling dragon, surprised to see that he was awake. “When did you even get up? “

“Are you kidding? I heard you making tea. Did you think I’d miss that?” Spike sat down between the two ponies. “Wait, you didn’t make me any?”

“I’m sorry, Rainbow Dash. What happened after that?”

Dash glanced at the door, then back to Twilight. “Actually, I think I’m gonna go home for the night. I guess I’ll tell you about it later…”

As Rainbow Dash walked back out into the rain, Twilight shot an angry glance at Spike.

“Thanks for the tea, Twilight,” Rainbow Dash said as she closed the door behind her.

Comments

[576-Belligerent-Coil]

Alrighty everybody. This is my first attempt at a fanfic with actual substance, so of course the characters might lapse into... out of character moments. How are you even supposed to word that?

...AAAAAAAAAANYWAY! This is more than likely only going to be a three-parter. Sure, that may not seem like a whole lot, but when I write, I don't like my stories overstaying their welcome. Leave your comments or suggestions below, and I shall read and consider your demands. Or something like that.

Be kind. Be productive. Be Black Mesa.

P.S. This fandom needs a little bit more FlutterDash, so I figured I'd get the ball rolling a bit. But don't think that's all this is.

[Arby]

A nice little premise. Tracked.

[Princess Bronicorn]

pretty good.... keep up the good work man.... rainbow dash messed up big time

[TimbukTurnip]

Can't think of anything to say other than I like this so far and look forward to more

[Fareseed]

Wow. This is great reading. And I must say that that is a hard school. I give you a favorit and a
hoof-up.

[576-Belligerent-Coil]

460641
You don't know the half of it... which is why I'm going to be working on it some more after my night class.
460677
Thanks for your support!
460679
Thank you much! I definitely wanted it to come off that way, so mission partially accomplished!

Like I said, more is on the way! Thanks for the love, everyone!

--576 Belligerent Coil was here

[jokerpony]

wow i like where this going; very interested to see where it goes. Liked and favorited

[Reader Wolf]

I like where this is going.

[DrunkenClouds54]

460599 I would say it like: The characters might get a little out of character.

Great story! Poor Fluttershy!

[Mithrandir]

Seems interesting, love the brutal take on Cloudsdale, certainly different, keep it up!

[tigrean]

Can't wait for the next chapter Made it a fav so i can keep following you

[soulwinds]

When you typed 'somehow i don't think dash will like it if i read it now' you lapsed into the first person. Just thought you should know. Other than that, me like

[576-Belligerent-Coil]

521529
Whoa, broski. Thank you for catching that. That was supposed to be italicized, but all my formatting was erased when I converted from a Word document.

That was originally meant to be Twilight's thoughts about the book. Now it is fixed, and the original meaning is restored =w=

Thank you very much for that, man. Brohoof!

EDIT: And I found another spot in part 2... I'll have to be more careful when I upload part 3.

...which is coming, people! I'd say within the next three days... but don't hold your breath. -whispers- You'd die.