//------------------------------// // ...will keep us together. // Story: The Fire in Her Eyes // by P0nies //------------------------------// Rainbow Dash kept Fluttershy close to her chest, the rhythmic beating of her heart playing in unison with her own. It was a moment that she had never wanted to end, and it was now that she finally had the one mare she loved in her embrace. Her mind rested easy, and she could easily die happy now, although she would prefer not to. Rainbow gave Fluttershy a gentle nudge, signaling her to get off the bed. She adjusted herself, opening up a space on the bed and patting a hoof right next to her. Fluttershy climbed up next to her, nuzzling Dash and stretching her wing over her to keep her warm through the night, or maybe it was just another excuse to touch her. Either way though, Dash didn't care about much else in the world as it was right now. All she cared about was her Fluttershy. Both mares promptly fell asleep in each others warm, loving embrace, the night coming down over the hospital and taking them into the sands of a deep slumber. Rainbow slept peacefully, a smile on her face and eyes darting about under her eyelids as she dreamt of flying with the Wonderbolts, the crowds cheering her on as she performed mind boggling stunts. For once in the past few weeks, she actually had a chance to sleep and have sweet dreams accompany her through the slumber. It felt... warm. It warmed her that she had been able to dream once again, the wishes of her imagination coursing through her body once again. She reached her hoof out and felt for the mare who was supposed to be lying right next to her. But her hoof only felt the coarse sheets, and the warmth of where she had been before. Her eyes cracked open, searching the room for the mare who had been laying next to her moments before, but her line of sight was obstructed by tufts of red and orange hair. Dash lifted her hoof and batted the hair out of her eyes. Just as the hair left her vision, she could see the end of Fluttershy's tail leaving the room, disappearing out the door. Rainbow threw the cover off of her body, but noticed that it wasn't all the same as when she had gone to sleep. Her leg was no longer wrapped in a bandage, and there weren't any leads stuck to her hooves to keep a tab on her heart rate. And even stranger was the fact that she no longer had any IV's sticking out of her leg, and she surely would have noticed if somepony had pulled a needle from her veins, and there would have at least been a bandage somewhere on her body. Even the ugly scar that spanned her leg had somewhat healed up, and hair had partially grown back over it. She hung her legs over the side of the hospital bed, expecting some sort of pain to shoot through her legs. But it never came, they just hung there like any normal legs would, aching to move from a standstill position. Dash placed her hooves firmly on the ground, making sure she could keep her balance after all that had happened. She stood on all fours, keeping a decent balance even though she felt a bit tipsy. Taking one hoof after the other, Dash walked towards the door at an alarmingly slow pace, much slower than Dash had wished she could go. She tried to walk faster, but ended up tripping over her own legs in the process, sending her face first into the cold tile floor. Dash glared at the door, and determined to follow Fluttershy where ever she was going, she pushed herself off of the floor and dusted off her cyan coat; making her way back to the door. It cracked open, a magenta eye peeking out from the shadow of her room. The door slowly opened little by little, Rainbow Dash exposing more of herself each time she did so. But everything still seemed off for some reason. For one, she felt no pain in her body, she wasn't covered in bandages, and she had seen no hospital staff as of yet. There was always a doctor here and there, or at least a nurse somewhere near. She stuck her head out the door, looking to the left and panning her head to the right, partially looking for Fluttershy and wondering where the staff had all gone. The same segment of her wonderfully kept pink tail skated around a corner to the far left, Rainbow's eyes barely catching a glance of it out of her peripherals. She tossed the door open, hobbling in the direction that she had seen her Fluttershy disappear. Dash walked faster, but still with a slight gimp as if it was that she had forgotten completely how to walk in any given matter. She peeked her head around the corner, the halls empty except for the various gurney’s laying against the wall and a janitor's cart resting in the middle of the hallway. It all seemed to be brighter now that she had left her hospital room, which now that she actually took time to think about it, it was rather dark for a normal room. She passed it off just as bad lighting, when a sweet sound flowed through her ears and collided with her eardrums. Fluttershy's squee of joy echoed through the hallways, inducing a small smile to appear on Rainbow Dash. Dash followed the squee's down the hall, the brightness of all the lights around her still gaining luminosity, as if they were mini-suns. She held a hoof over her eyes so she didn't go blind under the beating light, although her hoof helped her very little in that. Walking down the hall, she noticed the floor below her was beginning to change. It wasn't the same tile floor that it had once been, but it was rather changing to grass as she continued on her path. Dash looked back to see what was happening to the halls she had just passed through, and they were gone. Where they had once been was replaced with vast amounts of blinding light, causing dash to squint to the point her eyes were nothing but slits. The light got to the point where Rainbow could no longer withstand the ferocity of the light beating down on her cornea's. Dash fell to the ground, the light draining what energy she had. And with what little energy she had left, she curled into a fetal position, covering her eyes in an attempt to salvage her vision. Tears began to roll from her eyes as they burned. She didn't know why this was happening to her, as if she hadn't already been through enough pain and suffering through the last few weeks, and to top it off she didn't know where she was. She had followed Fluttershy, trusting that she was going somewhere safe, or at least as safe as it could have been for a hospital. But for her, it was all to no avail to protect her eyes as they burned, the pain building up inside of her, reaching levels that she had never before experienced. But there was one thing about the pain in her eyes, is that that wasn't the only sensation she had flowing through her body. Her coat had an insatiable itching sensation that bit lightly at her body as she rolled in pain. A cool wind passed over her body, smelling of pine and fresh grass as it wicked at the sweat building all over her body, cooling her bit by bit. The pain became too much for Dash to handle, and she heard the voice she had been looking for, calling to her and trying to console her. The burning in her eyes subsided and she felt a cloth of sorts come down over her face, darkening the world around her. “It's okay Rainbow... Shhh... It's okay,” Fluttershy told her, “Wake up... Wake up...” Rainbow sat up in a hurried fashion, a blanket flying off of her face and the sun's unrelenting light penetrating her already burning corneas. She closed her eyes tight and held her hooves firmly in place over them, keeping any bit of light from them. Tears streamed down the side of her cheeks as muffled sobs escaped her; her breathing sporadic and heavy. She sat there, trying to calm herself down, but wondered at the same time why it was so damn bright and why her bed felt so much like grass... She removed her hooves from her eyes, but held them close to her face as a barrier from the light. Her eyes opened to slits, allowing the world around her to be seen to where the pain was at least tolerable. She wasn't in the hospital anymore, which was where she had expected to be. At least that was where she remembered being last. And right in front of her, was Fluttershy. Hiding behind her mane with a worried expression of care and love. She made way over to Rainbow and held her tight to her chest, shielding her from the sun with her wings as Dash dampened her coat with tears. “Fluttershy...” Rainbow spoke quietly, “I had the weirdest dream... it was just so... real. ” “It's okay... You are safe now,” Fluttershy told her with a small grin, pressing her lips against Dash's forehead, letting out a subtle kiss. “The dream,” Fluttershy asked, “Was it about us?” Rainbow nodded under the protection of her wings, not wanting to speak anymore than she wanted to open her eyes. “It was real...”