Chapter 1
Rainbow Dash sat.
Her eyes that were usually so full of energy, life, and excitement for all the challenges that life would bring to her, were now lifeless.
She could barely see the horizon in front of her, her multicolored mane in front of it, dulling the light that passed to a tone of gray.
That was how all her world felt, simply a dull, lifeless, non exciting, gray. It hurt, so much, and all she could see was gray.
She simply....sat, barely breathing, barely moving a muscle at all.
Occasionally a slight whimper and a muffled choked lamentation could be heard.
But for all that everyone cared, she simply sat.
She was the most loyal of her friends, and she had come to realize that loyalty was so much more than simply being there when a friend needed her, no loyalty was caring, spending time, and dedicating their lives to help those persons she cared about.
Then why did she....why did she felt like she wouldn’t be able to be there for anyone, ever again?
The news had come and hit her with the impact of a wrecking ball, the force powerful enough to tear her heart out of her chest, and crack her ribs....was that how it felt, to have a heart break? She had flown away, knowing that she’d never be the same again. She couldn’t hide from her problems forever, but she sure as heck could try.
From time to time, one of her friends would come to try and talk with her, via balloon, wings, or that spell to walk on clouds. Rainbow felt sick to the stomach, even more than she already was feeling, when they came. Every time one of them tried to offer her their condolences, she felt as if she would drown a little more in her self-pity and pain.
The funeral had been hard, but at the time she had been far too numb to care about that, she watched the casket, where she knew her father’s carcass would rot, and just felt empty.
It wasn’t until after the funeral that this soaring pain came to her, after she realized that, yes, she was all alone now, no family.
Just a sister whom she wanted to adopt, and her friends, but, as awful as that sounded, she would give all the time she had spent with her friends, to get that time with her father...
Sighing Rainbow Dash felt another tear fall out her eyeball, slowly descending through her muzzle, tickling her fur, and falling in the cloud where she sat, it had absorbed so many of those, that it would probably turn into a rain cloud. For Rainbow Dash, the brave, loyal friend, this was far too real. Her brash attitude was gone.
3 days passed, and she still sat, she barely ate, merely biting slices of the food her friends had been putting gently in front of her.
Though ponies often said time healed it all, the pain only seemed to intensify, not decrease.
She had asked Twilight to prepare the legal arrangements, she had to sign a couple of forms, but those few were better than declaring, time after time, that her father was dead. She had come to her childhood house, where her father had spend most of his adult life, in search of all the documents she’d need.
The memories....the memories had overwhelmed her, his father still kept childhood drawings of her, some of her toys...letters exchanged, token gifts from the various field trips she had taken while in school. It made her realize that he treasured every moment and time spent with her. And the flood of memories didn’t help.
She took all the official looking papers she could find, leaving behind her childhood memories, and she gave them to Twilight. She promised to look them over, and use the information to do all that was required.
Her grief time was nearly over, not by choice, she just had to go to work, since legally the period given was, too her, unfairly short. She didn’t know how she would be able to go to work, with her figure, and motivation, in their current levels.
Twilight came to her, having completed all that was needed. She’d get not only the house, and the meager amount his father had saved, but also a pension. Rainbow Dash could do without, even if homeless it only served as a grim reminder of her own mortality.
Twilight, an expert of legal matters (just one more area of studies for her), offered to help her fill up her taxes, now that they’d changed with the death of her father.
Seeing the look of confusion in Rainbow’s face, she asked, if she had ever done her taxes.
The answer was no, and the reality of the situation dawned on them, between all the papers, Twilight had found double the amount of necessary papers to fill the taxes.
Rainbow’s father had, even when Rainbow was an adult, been filling up her taxes, and paying them up.
Rainbow felt even worse, even if her visits to her father, with the academy, her friends, and Scootaloo, where few and far in between, he had cared for her all the way to his death. And now she had to deal with an adult thing, that she had never dealt with.
Twilight gently brought her to the ground, and offered her a helping hoof, so that her, in her stumbles, didn’t fell. She brought her to a room in her own house, and made her rest.
She had already rested for 3 days, not moving a single muscle, but she felt strangely exhaust, and as Twilight covered the windows, and closed the door, she fell asleep, disturbed by the weirdest dreams.
But, at least, she was sleeping, it was the first step, towards her recovery, and even while she dreamt of papers filled with applications, taxes, and the voice of her father, she felt a strange sense of happiness.