The weakest phrases in any tongue are these: “You don’t have to do this” and “I promise.” They work, of course, because language is a strange thing of guile and horseshit and even the weakest phrases have power when applied, like a lever long enough can move the world. The latter is weak because it is so easily broken, and anyway if one’s oaths were in question than the game is probably already up. The former because it is always true, but not in any way that matters.
Rainbow Dash, grim and silent, sat on the train to Canterlot, and thought hard on those two phrases.
The thing about somepony telling you that you don’t have to do something is that, well, of course you do. On some level, it was true that she had the capability in a purely physical way—no one was controlling her movements. No one, pony or spirit or griffon or whatever, had ensorcelled her into buying the train ticket, or waiting at the station. None of the ponies of beleaguered Ponyville had held her loved ones on the edge of death and given her some dire choice of do or watch them die.
No, the choice she had made, or was making, was not technically automatic. If anything it required her to go quite a bit out of her way. It had been dangerous, but most of the things she had done in the last year were dangerous. It had been treacherous, but again, treachery of a certain variety was something she was used to by now.
Just… not the personal sort.
She shifted in her seat, and then slid off to stretch her wings for a moment. Movement had always been a source of solace for Rainbow Dash. She was the consummate mare of action. Exertion brought a hazy, distant world into sharp and arresting focus.
So, instead of sitting back down and drowning herself in questions she had little interest in answering, Rainbow Dash slid into the aisle and began to walk to the back of the car.
She felt the rattling of the cars beneath her as she crossed over from one to the other. She felt it shaking her legs like the tremors in the night that came sometimes, fanning out like fire along the old scars like cracks in the earth. It was a wonderfully uncomfortable sensation. Perversely, she loved the mild discomfort. Not too much pain, but enough to feel so deliciously alive. It was the Runner’s High, the bliss of a workout, the way the blood in your ears roared with delight of battle. It was a visceral reminder of one’s strength.
Mostly, she liked it because it made it easier to be angry. She needed to be angry. Sulking did not become her.
Her car had been mostly empty. This one was rather full. Two dozen souls looked up at her very briefly, but she did not shirk from their gaze. The eyes fell away. She’d learned this over the last year of vagrant struggle: ponies paid less attention to you than you expected, even when you looked a bit off.
The aisle was crowded with excess baggage that she maneuvered over with indifferent ease. Ponies headed home again, free to do so at last. She should have felt one way or another about it. If she had been a character in one of Fluttershy’s ratty, shredded romance novels, she would probably break into some sort of stirring, passionate speech on the rights and dignities of all ponies--the terrible things they did to one another. She might have wept at the sight, or cursed these collaborators whose zeal could not match her own.
But this was not one of Fluttershy’s novels. It was reality, and Rainbow Dash was no handsome, noble stallion of the ponies. She was bitter, and tired, and most importantly she was not a fan of speeches.
So instead she slipped into the bathroom at the back of the train car for a moment, and happened to catch sight of herself in the mirror for a moment, and remembered.
*
“Can’t sleep?”
Rainbow Dash did not turn, for there was no need. She could see the shadowed form of Applejack leaning against the bathroom door. She was, as always, beautiful in a way that spoke the lie to every hoary headed stallion who thought that grace and aesthetic desire could not live in harmony with the iron physique of the farm mare. She was older, though not as much as she appeared. The last year or so had not at all been kind to her. They had not been kind to anypony, to be fair. Her hair was down, the way that always drew Rainbow Dash’s eyes even when she wished it wouldn’t, and so she found herself watching in reverence.
Rainbow Dash shrugged.
“Come to bed,” Applejack said, still in the doorway.
Rainbow Dash didn’t answer. Her eyes blazed a path from her wife’s long mane to the earring on her left ear, a golden stud from which hung one of her feathers preserved with magic. A cliched gesture, perhaps, but one she still appreciated.
They stood like that a moment without anything further said. They felt each other’s gaze and fell back into it for a moment, as they often had since the fighting had stopped. There were moments, here and there, at least one a day, when things were silent and they would find themselves in the same room or tangled up in one another and the world grew strangely dim and all that mattered, the only thing that lived and breathed besides themselves was the other, meeting their gaze.
It was a little frightening.
Applejack slowly straightened herself and came closer to nuzzle against Rainbow’s cheek. “Come to bed,” she said again, her voice soft. There was no firm spine to it, no command. It was an invitation. With a stiff nod, Rainbow scooted back from the mirror and followed Applejack back into the darkness of their room. She clicked the light off as she passed and they plunged into darkness.
They lay there, still and quiet atop the sheets, pressed close—close enough that each could, perhaps, fool themselves into thinking they could see the other in the vague shapes only visible from the suggestion of the moon over the water. Sight failed, and so, like all things do, they either relied on the other senses or they made things up. Smell and sound and touch took the place of eyes. From the warmth of her wife’s breath, Rainbow Dash could see in the great darkness of night, or could pretend that she could. By those signs in that moment, she thought she could step beside herself and draw Applejack as she was: her mane in beautiful dissarray, strands and tangles and long waves; her body a rise and fall of toughened, rounded hills; her face an ancient statue of some heathen god of grain and marching; her legs like cannonades, her pose like a lover’s.
She did not say any of this. Why should she? Applejack knew it already, though perhaps not in the same words. No, definitely not in the same words. Rainbow Dash could not have articulated the feeling she had even if she had wished to, because it was not a thing one could articulate. The quiet broke when you tried to make it be something it wasn’t.
They both were awake. There was a stalemate. Rainbow could not sleep. Applejack would not sleep.
“I know you’re thinkin’ ‘bout it,” Applejack said at last.
Rainbow nodded.
“I ain’t tellin’ you not to, sug.”
“Aren’t you? Haven’t you been?”
Applejack shifted slightly and laid her head on Rainbow. “That’s fair. I meant, not right now. It’s late. Nothin’ good ever came of thinkin’ after bedtime’s come.”
She wasn’t wrong, Rainbow thought. Thinking too long into the night was intoxicating, but often fruitless.
“I just can’t stop hearing him in my head.”
She snorted. “I pity ya, then, cause I hate that damn voice of his.”
Rainbow smiled, but did not laugh. “Over and over. He acts like it’s over.”
Applejack shrugged against her. “Part of it is. The nobles surrendered.”
“Like they ever mattered.”
She heard Applejack sigh. “Don’t make me defend them sons of bitches. They did, whether we wanted them to or not. They’ve got all the money and the ponies and they know where all the forms go.”
“And how to surrender like the Princess won’t ever come back. Cowards. Traitors.”
“I won’t say you’re wrong.”
“Good.”
“But I won’t say you’re right either,” Applejack continued, and she propped herself up. Rainbow couldn’t see her face, and it was strange to see only the outline of her above. “We don’t need them to live, you and I. Maybe the rest don’t either. Maybe we could live without even the fancy kind of shackles, like we used to. If you believe the stories about the great herds and all that, livin’ in mutual give and take, the all for all and the one for one and all that, what the book of Gaia talks ‘bout. But not yet. You can’t expect the whole world to change all at once out of the blue, Dash. Ya jus’ can’t. It won’t do it. It builds to a change.”
“It’s just… it’s injury to insult. It’s wrong, AJ. He forgave us, like we were his to forgive! Like he has any right to do that! Like he shouldn’t be begging forgiveness from every pony from Lunangrad to Applewood! Like he’s some sort of great peacemaker! Like he isn’t a bastard! And I hate it. I hate it more than I can stand. I just… I just keep thinking about him sitting in that palace, using her office, walking in her garden. I just…” Her voice stalled out, but she pressed on, her chest burning. “I can’t stop thinking about how one day fillies and colts are gonna learn a-about f-fuckin’ Malachite the Peacebringer or whatever they’re gonna call him and how good and smart he was and it makes me wanna kick down a house.”
“You can’t do nothin’ about it, Dash.”
“Can’t I?”
There was a long pause.
“You don’t mean that,” Applejack said slowly.
“Why not?”
Applejack had gone rigid and still. “You don’t,” she said again, a bit more forcefully. “Ain’t a thing you can do. Got no cadres, got no plans, got nothin’ to work with. No contacts, no ponies on the inside, and you won’t get none of that ‘cause we’re all too tired to keep going and there’s nowhere to hang on and wait.”
“I can get those things.”
“Nah.”
Rainbow rose until their faces were an inch apart. “I can,” she said. “I know I can, AJ. I know I can. Give me a week, maybe two, and I can do it. I can get enough together to teach them to patronize us. I can teach those old rich bastards to abandon us cause they’re scared and tired and they’re afraid she won’t come back. I can do it. I can show them.”
Applejack shuddered. “Gaia and Celestia, you could, couldn’t you?”
“I could,” Rainbow almost snarled. “I could.”
“But you won’t.”
“And why’s that?”
Applejack’s face was unreadable. Rainbow was glad. She didn’t want to read it.
“Because you’ll destroy everything, and you know it,” said Applejack at last. “You know that, don’t you?”
“I…”
“Even if you make it, even if you do it, you know it’ll come crashin’ down. Everything. They’ll never stop hunting, and we’ll never be able to stop fighting ‘em. We’ll never be in one place more than a week. More ‘n just you and me, hon. Everybody. All of our friends will be in the same boat. The ponies all around us won’t give us no hearth or shelter, ‘cause we’ll be the ones who gave them whoever comes after old Uncle Malachite. It’ll be our fault, every bad thing that happens after. It won’t be fair but they’ll say it, and they’ll be right ‘cause, hell, it’s the best answer and it fits.”
“They’d be with us,” Rainbow said, but she shrank back. She was already imagining it. Being on the run again, forever. They’d been in this little house by the sea for what felt an eternity and already she loved it.
Applejack couldn’t do what Rainbow did. She couldn’t just shrug and fly away and keep flying. She wasn’t built for it, and her heart wasn’t in it. Picking up and moving for Dash wasn’t so hard, as long as she wasn’t alone. But Applejack had wilted with no home to call her own. No fields and no trees, no routine and no work to be proud of and she…
“Thinking about it now, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
“I know.”
“You won’t.”
“I won’t.”
Applejack nuzzled her and kissed her. “Dash, I just want us to start over. I just want to go back to bein’ alive. The Princess will come back, but until she does I just want to have a chance at living. I don’t like it. You don’t like it. But we don’t have to like it. We just have to live.”
Rainbow Dash lay limp on the bed. “What do we do then?”
“Jus’ live a little, while we can,” Applejack murmured, and kissed her again. This time Rainbow kissed back, and pulled her wife down into a tight embrace. “Be with me. Stay awhile, and I swear to you when the time comes, we’ll be there. We’ll be alive to be there and see her come back to us. I jus’ don’ wanna lose you, you know that. I know you know that. I ain’t mad, I’m jus—”
Rainbow nibbled on Applejack’s neck and she whined in pleasure.
“I know,” Dash said into her coat. “I know. I don’t wanna leave you.”
“I… ah, please?”
Rainbow kept biting along her wife’s shoulder and felt Applejack melt.
“I jus’ wanna go home,” Applejack breathed, and then she gave up talking and pleading and proximity took over.
“You will. Promise,” Rainbow said, but she wasn’t sure either of them were following anymore.