When Rainbow Dash finally came back to the waking world, it was with a splitting headache and no small amount of confusion filling her cloudy mind. She wasn’t sure where she was, or how she had gotten there. Truth be told, she barely even remembered the last thing that had happened to her. It was an unpleasant and unsettling sensation, one that she was only too eager to be rid of.
Thankfully, as her grogginess slowly made its exit, she found her headache and confusion being very swiftly washed away. She was surrounded on all sides by warmth and comforting weight provided by thick, lavish blankets. She couldn’t help but let out a small coo and snuggle deeper into the comforters. Taking a deep breath, she savoured the warmth and determined that the waking world could wait for another fifteen minutes.
And then she remembered what had happened. The bolt of magic that had come from the side and struck her in the chest before the world went dark...
Her eyes snapped open and looked around while the rest of her body went rigid. She was still in the hive, and back in Twilight’s bedroom, no less. 'I’m okay?' she thought, her brow furrowing in confusion. ‘They didn’t hurt me…? What the hay is going on in this stupid place?!’
Stifling a groan, Rainbow slowly sat up on her haunches, allowing the blankets to slide down her body. She looked around slowly, finding the room to be much the same as it had been when she left it earlier. The only thing that stood out as being notably different was the changeling princess passed out on a couch, surrounded by a practical pillow fort of books and covered in a blanket of her own.
There was a brief flicker of nostalgia in Rainbow’s heart at the sight, finding it similar to how she might sometimes find her own Twilight back when they had lived in Canterlot together. Eerily familiar. The nostalgia was quickly replaced with discomfort.
Feeling quite unsettled, Rainbow looked ahead at the far door. ‘Well, running like a chicken with its head cut off didn’t do me much good last time,’ she thought after a moment before silently sliding out of bed. She glanced back at her injured wing and, to her relief, found that it was more or less back in fine shape. A little stiff at the joint, but in working order nonetheless.
Moving as quietly as possible, Rainbow went for the door. If she could just slip out without drawing any attention, maybe she could finally figure out where she was and make her way home-
Her hoof made contact with the door handle, and an all-too-familiar tingle shot through the limb. She gasped and tore her hoof away, the faint cackling of Chrysalis echoing in the back of her mind. ‘This door’s got magic on it!’ she thought to herself, a cold sweat starting to form under her coat. She shuddered uncontrollably and backed off, trying to calm herself down.
She must have been louder than she thought. The sound of shifting blankets and Twilight’s groggy voice groaning reached her ears. Rainbow spun around to face her and found the changeling lifting her head from the book she had been using as a pillow—and also drooling on. She blinked a few times before turning her head to look at Rainbow.
“Huh… You’re, er… Huh…?” Twilight seemed to lazily nudge some of the books off of her, the cogs slowly turning in her sleep-addled brain before her eyes suddenly shot open with a look of shock. “GAH! You’re awake! Oh! What time is it? Did I fall asleep? No, I was supposed to be researching! Spiiiike!”
Rainbow’s headache spiked slightly from all the shouting.
To make things worse, there was no answer from the drake.
“Dang it! Stupid dragons and their lack of a hive mind…”
Rainbow grimaced. It all came together in her head pretty quickly. She was trapped. With magic on the door, there was no way she could safely get out of here. With an agitated snort, she turned and dragged herself back towards the bed, sending a cold glare in Twilight’s direction.
“Hey! Don’t walk away!” Twilight irritably protested. “I’m sorry about my mother and not warning you and it’s totally my fault, but could you just stop? Look, I’ve been spending all night trying to research anything I could to help get you home and-”
“Stop. Talking,” Rainbow spat out, turning her eyes back to Twilight. “Pretty sure I made it clear that I didn’t wanna hear it.”
Twilight’s eye twitched. “Well, I’ll make you hear it, buster! Maybe I’ve been going about this all wrong, but I have so much on my mind right now it’s not even funny! I’m trying to help you, Rainbow Dash! And that’s twice you’ve run around the hive causing a scene. Hay, you hit me and caused that weird vision thing!”
Rainbow’s coat bristled. “You think you have a lot on your mind?!” She challenged, only passively taking note of the mentioning of a vision. She stalked forward, her eyes narrowing. “How d’ya think I feel?! I’m trapped in a scary place without any idea where I am, surrounded on all sides by some of the greatest enemies I have ever had, I just found out Chrysalis is out and about, I have an amnesiac friend waiting for me to come home so I can help her put her life back together, my family is probably worried sick and organizing huge search parties, and I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT’S EVEN GOING ON ANYMORE!”
She pointed an accusatory hoof at a wide-eyed Twilight. “So no, you don’t get to tell me that you have a lot on your mind! You do not get that privilege!”
Twilight’s wings flared in anger, seemingly coming dangerously close to tears. “NEITHER DO I! But that’s what I’m trying to figure out, and your constant freaking out isn’t helping! I appreciate that this has to be… alarming to you, and from what little I’ve been able to make out you’ve been through terrible things. But two things: one, welcome to the club. Second, I am Twilight Sparkle! I’m your friend! My Rainbow would trust me, why can’t you!?”
Rainbow stopped her advance, though her anger remained just as hot as before. “Why? WHY?!” she asked, her pupils dilating. “You wanna know why I can’t trust you?! Because apparently, you’re the daughter of the creature that gave me this!” she lifted up her scarred hoof for emphasis. “And even if this is some weird alternate world, Chrysalis is still Chrysalis! Chrysalis darn near killed me! She almost killed my Twilight, and…”
She trailed off, closing her eyes and looking away before taking a deep breath to force herself to calm down. She set her hoof down and turned away. “...I already told you about that. If you can’t wrap your head around it by now, I’m not gonna waste my breath, or your time.”
Twilight gritted her teeth, her eyes screwing shut as a hoof instinctively went back to her scar. “I… I don’t want to believe that any version of my mother could be capable of… doing that so callously, without a good reason. But that’s how alternate worlds work, Rainbow. And…”
Her breath caught in her throat, memories she had tried to forget flooding back all at once, just as they had in the days following their formation. The blade, the burning throughout her body, the darkness consuming her despite Celestia’s desperate pleas…
“I’m sorry to hear about your Twilight, I really am…” she said in a whisper. “But I had an entire group of ponies dedicated to… to murdering me. So don’t tell me that I can’t wrap my head around it!”
Rainbow blinked in surprise. She glanced back at Twilight, and her eyes landed on the ugly scar that ran down her chest, and the hoof that was furiously rubbing at it.
“...Huh?” she asked, taken by surprise.
“It was a changeling infiltrator leading them, ironically enough,” Twilight recalled with a humourless laugh. “Replaced the second in command of the Solar Guard, recruited a good amount of ponies to the cause of eliminating me for the holes I have in my hooves. This? That was the dagger an inch from my heart. Celestia… My mother… They fought so hard for me. Somepony I knew, though my brother knew him better… Well, not everypony made it back. And I came so close to dying.”
Twilight put her hoof down, her magic lighting up as she went into autopilot cleaning up the books and placing them back on the shelves where they belonged. She didn’t even seem to really pay attention to what she was doing, but she still did it.
“The worst part? We don’t even know who he was. The infiltrator, I mean. But I still remember his smirk, and the hate on the faces of those ponies. But I don’t need to remember, do I? I can see it on yours.”
That gave Rainbow pause. She hesitated for a second, her ears lowering as a small flicker of guilt and shame sprang up in her chest. She took a moment to compose herself before she spoke again. “...Did you do something to earn that?” she asked carefully. “Because ponies aren’t usually the sort to go for blood… not in my experience, anyway.”
“I was a changeling, that was enough,” Twilight bitterly informed her. “He played on their xenophobia, convinced them that I was such a threat that no assurances from Celestia or anypony else could dissuade them. Even when Celestia brought the entire might of the guard down upon them, they refused to surrender. They all fought to the end.”
Rainbow was quiet for several seconds. “That doesn’t seem right to me,” she eventually said before shaking her head. “Then again, none of this does. Nothing like that ever happened for me… For me, changelings invaded Canterlot when me and my friends were away, took over, locked most of the population in cocoons so they could be farmed and forced me on the run…” she recounted before looking at Twilight directly again. “Not to mention everything else I already told you about that Chrysalis did to me. So I have a reason to be distrustful of you. I can only imagine the ponies you met had a reason to distrust you, too.”
Twilight sighed. “It was a very small minority. Only a few were actually trained guards, the rest were ‘volunteers’. But…”
Twilight sighed, calming herself down a little as she returned herself to the sofa and took a seat.
“Let me try to give you the rundown. When I was an infant, the hive was undergoing a famine. My father died. I never knew him. Mother sent me to Equestria so I wouldn’t starve due to the love shortage, and Changeling Queens need a lot of it early on. My other parents took me in, raised me… I always knew I was different from other ponies, but I hid it. I was young and scared, so I hid my true face behind a lavender mask.”
Rainbow didn’t say a word as the changeling spoke, simply listening and taking the information in. She was still taking it with a grain of salt, as all of this was far too strange for her to take at anyone’s word. But thus far getting angry and panicky hadn’t served her very well. ‘Let’s try this Twilight style… think it through and learn.’
Seeing Rainbow’s refreshing lack of rebuttal, Twilight saw fit to continue.
“I got my cutie mark, and Celestia made me her student. Eventually, I got wind of Nightmare Moon’s return and was sent to Ponyville. I met the girls there, including you. We stopped Luna and saved her soul. Then Discord came, plus all the other misadventures in between. But then came the day of my brother’s wedding to Cadance… How similar is this sounding so far?”
Rainbow’s brow furrowed in thought. “Well… some details are the same. Nightmare Moon and Discord are the standouts to me. But…” she looked away, her ears drooping. “...Everything before and after that is just… really different. I mean, for one thing, I met you when you were ten years old and still in Canterlot. Or, well, my Twilight…”
She dragged herself over to the couch, feeling the strength steadily leaving her legs as she thought back on all that she had been through. She sat down next to Twilight, albeit with a healthy bubble of space between them. She sighed and continued. “See, when I was eight years old… my parents… d-died. There was an accident in Baltimare, and they were crushed by falling debris from a construction site. I was orphaned and didn’t have any extended family to take me in.”
She leaned back in her seat and glanced over at Twilight. “It was rough. I was alone for a good while, stuck in a stuffy orphanage with nothing to do, no real friends, and… no family…” She closed her eyes again and shook her head to dispel the unpleasant memory of her time in that place. Although, in retrospect, most of the unpleasantness hadn't been due to the orphanage itself, but rather to her own suffering and depression at the time.
“Oh Rainbow, I’m so sorry…” Twilight said sympathetically, her senses feeling the despair within the pegasus. “I can’t imagine… Even if I too was adopted, and I always knew it, I did have a family. What you went through…”
Rainbow opened her eyes. “Well, it didn’t last for long. Maybe a month? I don’t really remember, exactly. But uh, well… one day, Princess Celestia suddenly showed up… and she adopted me.”
Twilight blinked in surprise, but then she smiled. “Heh, I guess that’s one thing we share. One mother out of the rest…”
Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, you wanna run that one by me again?”
“Three-mothered mare right here,” Twilight joked. “After I became Celestia’s student, I went to live at the castle. She knew I was the destined Bearer of Magic, so she kept me extra close. That proximity bred… something of a bond. She practically raised me for my latter formative years. One thing mother and her have been able to agree on.”
Rainbow’s expression momentarily soured at the mentioning of Chrysalis, but she was quick to shove it aside for the moment. Nodding, she looked directly ahead. “Hmm… well, I didn’t really feel that way at the time. When Celestia adopted me, I didn’t see her as ‘mom.’ Never called her that, either. Far as I was concerned, I only let her do it in the first place because my real mom and dad would want me to be safe and happy. I took the advice of a… a friend I should really reach out to one of these days, and let Celestia take care of me for them.”
Twilight nodded. “I'm not entirely sure when it happened for me either. It wasn’t overnight, but… Well, it did happen.”
“Hm…” She glanced at Twilight again. “And then I met my Twilight. Celestia’s student, like you said. At first, I didn’t really trust her all that much… she, ah…” she frowned, her brow furrowing. She hesitated for a second, choosing her words carefully. “She looked a lot like somepony I kinda blamed for my parents dying. Stupid of me, yeah, but eh…”
Rainbow looked down, a tiny smile spreading on her face. “...I grew up with her in that castle. Whenever I wasn’t with Celestia, I was with Twilight. She became my best friend pretty fast. I… I think I really needed her. I wouldn’t be the mare I am now if it hadn’t been for her…”
Twilight blinked, her stomach suddenly feeling a little more full as a blush made its way to her cheeks. She thought to ask but then gave out a small awkward squeak as her brain rushed to change the subject.
“Ah… Anyway…” she trailed off. “Back to the wedding…”
“Oh, right,” Rainbow sat upright again as she was reminded of how this topic even came up. “Sorry, it’s kinda easy to get lost in all that. So uh, right, wedding. Uh…” she frowned. “I… don’t recall a wedding. Cadance and Shining are a thing, yeah, but there wasn’t any wedding planned, as far as I could tell.”
“Well, I only learned at the last minute. The big doofus…” Twilight said with a huff. “Celestia wanted us to help Cadance put everything together. Rarity designed the dress, Pinkie and Applejack helped with catering… I was the organizer, go figure.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Rainbow quipped. “If you are Twilight, then that makes total sense.”
“I am,” she insisted. “But anyway… When I met up with Cadance for the first time since I left for Ponyville a few months previously, she was super clingy. Like she didn’t want to be away from me for a second. I thought it was odd, but little did I know that Cadance was actually Chrysalis. My mother who I had never met.”
Rainbow’s expression visibly darkened, but she said nothing.
“See, what I didn’t know at the time was that I was on the cusp of my final maturation into a changeling capable of creating a hive mind all my own,” she said, pointing at the crown-like antennae on her head. “I am now capable of breaking from mother’s hive and starting my own at any time, though at the time I would have been unable to cope with the stresses. And with this final maturation to be able to cope comes a very dangerous time for us.”
Twilight leaned back, casually using her magic to retrieve a book all about the subject that she promptly dropped onto the table. Rainbow Dash probably wasn’t going to read it, but that didn’t stop her.
“It’s all in here. We need a ridiculous amount of love energy, usually straight from our hive’s main storage, the reservoir. With the famine long since over and what I was getting in Equestria not being enough despite my friends and family—which should give you an idea of just how much I needed—my mother decided to collect as much of that energy as she could and retrieve me. If she didn’t, I was going to die.”
“And so she attacked?” Rainbow ventured slowly. “Am I understanding that right?”
“Kinda…” she admitted sheepishly. “I passed out the night before. I was getting weaker. On the day of the wedding, she shattered my brother’s shield and brought in her drones to restrain ponies and collect as much love energy as they could without being lethal. She’s not a murderer, but she was desperate. Heck, even after I saw her form and how similar she appeared to my own reflection, I tried to fight her. To get the Elements of Harmony. But… I collapsed again.”
“Well, that sure ain’t how things went for me,” Rainbow said, not bothering to hide the bitterness in her voice. “The Chrysalis I had to deal with is a monster, plain and simple.”
“She’s… severe. But she’s not a monster, believe me on that,” Twilight insisted in an extremely assertive manner. “Once the deed was done, I was moved here to recover while Canterlot was left intact. Injuries on both sides were minor at their worst, luckily. I was… angry. I still don’t approve. But I came to understand, as did my friends when I came back. But… Well, you know the rest of it. Things are better now, but I still remember what happened that day…”
Rainbow hummed. “Well… if Canterlot was attacked, even non-lethally, I can’t say I hold it entirely against ponies for being hostile towards you,” she eventually said, being careful with her words. “Not that I think the ones that tried to kill you were in the right. That’s not how Equestria’s supposed to do things. As a princess myself, I had to figure that one out the hard way.”
“Most of Equestria’s on the right page, but those were some very… I don’t really want to think about it anymore…” Twilight muttered, rubbing her scar again in distress. “But I think it’s your turn if it’s okay to ask. You mentioned me, or at least my counterpart. What happened to me in your world? I almost died? Something about amnesia, is that also me? What… what did my mo- Chrysalis do?”
Rainbow fell silent for a moment, her mind briefly going blank as the memories of her time in the Empire came rushing back. Stifling a shudder, she forced herself to look directly ahead. “...When my friends and I were forced on the run, we wound up in the Crystal Empire,” she began to recount the tail in an almost robotic voice. “It was our base for a while. The only place where we were safe. Chrysalis kept spreading over Equestria, bringing her armies along to attack towns and capture ponies so she could harvest them for food.”
She wasn’t able to suppress her shudder this time. “...We had a lot to deal with. I was barely able to talk King Sombra into staying in the snow while we worked in the city, and Chrysalis and her army were well on their way. When they showed up, we did all we could to hold her at bay, but… she had the strength of all three alicorns and the population of Canterlot at her beck and call. Not a chance we could defeat that as we were…
“And she had a vendetta against us… Twilight had given her a pretty nasty scar back in Canterlot, and she was out for revenge. When she arrived, I tried to fight her off on my own, and… well…” Rainbow lifted up her hoof, putting her scar on display. “I… I lost. I was so outclassed it wasn’t even funny. She beat me to within an inch of my life… she tortured me for fun. I think I only survived because Twilight came in to save me. But that was exactly what Chrysalis wanted…”
Rainbow cringed, her ribs tingling at the memory of being broken. “Chrysalis beat us both… but we got lucky. A few allies got my family loose, and, well… Celestia, Luna, Cadance, Shining Armor, and a few others popped into the Empire last second. We got the Elements, we blasted Chrysalis, turned her into a tree, and then had to deal with Sombra. We beat him, too, turned his smug face to dust with the Crystal Heart. Then...”
Rainbow trailed off at that point, her hoof dropping into her lap. She looked down, her eyes going distant.
“Then… something happened?” Twilight asked. “How could she hurt anypony at that point?”
“It wasn’t Chrysalis. Not directly.” Rainbow shook her head. “It was a drone… Tell me; do you have one named Stinger here?” she asked, glancing sideways at Twilight. “Zealously loyal to Chrysalis, aggressive, good in combat?”
Twilight shuffled uncomfortably.
“Stinger? You there?”
“Yes, Princess? I’m currently helping Panacea fix up a nymph that scraped her knee while playing a spontaneous game of tag with Private Pincer. Ah, the life of a medical drone…”
“Uh, right. Well, I might need you to avoid Rainbow Dash for a while, okay?”
“Uh… Okay? Might I ask why, Princess?”
“No.”
“She’s no threat to you,” Twilight said with a nervous smile. “She’s a nurse.”
Rainbow’s eyes narrowed, her heart beating a little faster in her chest. She looked down and took a deep breath. “...I’m taking your word for it,” she snarled quietly. “If you’re lying to me about her…”
The sentence was left hanging in the air for a moment before Rainbow forced herself to continue. “...The Stinger I know… s-she murdered her. M-my Twilight, I mean…” she forced the words out, all of the hostility in her voice replaced with dull sorrow and emotional exhaustion. She slumped back in her seat and sighed. “She put herself in front of a killing spell meant for me… it killed her instantly.”
Twilight recoiled. “Wait, I’m dead!? That’s the best friend you mentioned? But that makes no sense! Judging by your context of previous conversations, it indicates that I’m very not-dead!”
Rainbow sighed. “...’Cause she isn’t. Not physically, anyway…”
“Physically? I spent a while in a nasty coma dream, but I’m pretty sure I never died physically or mentally. So… Wait, the amnesia?”
Rainbow nodded. “Yup… My Twilight was dead for a few minutes before mom did… something. I dunno how it all works, but she used some powerful magic and brought my Twilight back to life by turning her into an alicorn. But…” her ears drooped, an audible tremor creeping into her words. “B-but… she forgot… everything. All she k-knew when s-she woke up was her name and… t-that was it.”
Rainbow’s eyes began to glisten before a tear slid down her cheek.
Twilight, slowly and tenderly, placed a hoof on Rainbow’s shoulder. “I am so, so sorry, Rainbow. If I were to forget… I can’t imagine it. But… she still has you, right? All you girls? I-If I were to lose you…”
“I promised her I’d be there,” Rainbow went on, seemingly not fully registering the changeling’s words. “That I’d help her remember… or at the very least, that I’d help her find her future. She’s counting on me, and…” she looked over at Twilight, her expression one of subdued desperation. “And I’m stuck here… who knows how far away… I gotta get home...”
“And that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to help you do,” Twilight told her. “I want to help you, Rainbow. But I can’t do it if you’re fighting me every step of the way. I-I don’t need you to like me, but please. Just let me try to help. I… I might have an idea of where to start.”
Rainbow looked away long enough to wipe away her tears and pull herself together. “Oh yeah? Where?” she asked, taking a deep breath to steady her quivering voice.
“Canterlot,” she replied simply. “My books here are insufficient for a problem like this. It’s all theory. What I need is concrete information about the action of inter-universe travel itself, and only one pony has achieved this: Starswirl the Bearded.”
“Right, right…” Rainbow muttered with a slow nod, thinking back. “Mom did mention he had a hoof in stuff like that, once. And there’s also that dusty old mirror in the vaults she never let me touch.”
“Oh, you have that too? Great, you might meet another you someday!”
“What?”
“Doesn’t matter, back on topic,” she redirected. “The Royal Archives have his works. Celestia can give us access. Plus, my status as a former student of hers and an Element of Harmony has some weight attached to it. We could also stop by Ponyville on the way, to meet yourself if you still need proof.”
Rainbow hesitated. “...Stopping by Ponyville sounds fine by me,” she eventually agreed with a reluctant nod. “If you’re telling me the truth about any of this, then it’ll be different to how I remember it, right? This is your chance to prove you’re being upfront with me.”
“Somehow, I suspect Ponyville will always be Ponyville,” Twilight mused with a nostalgic smile. “But we’ll find something. I’ll just need to gather up some transport and send a message ahead of time to arrange a stay in my old library. The new tenant is usually pretty nice about these things.”
“On the other hoof,” Rainbow added. “If this is all some elaborate lie, then when I get home, I can confirm that for myself.”
“It would be pretty dumb to go there if this wasn’t legit, Rainbow,” Twilight pointed out. “But fair. And… one more thing…”
“What?”
Twilight bit her lip. “There are really no friendly changelings where you come from?”
Rainbow hesitated. “...I never said that,” she denied with a slow shake of her head. “Just that the ones I have dealt with were my enemies. Only two were on my side…”
“I’m glad some of my kind are making something of themselves, at least.”
“Yeah, well…” Rainbow hopped down from the couch and took a few steps away. “I’m not a total idiot, you know. I know that there are good changelings in that swarm… but I only ever met two of them.”
“I know you’re not an idiot, Rainbow, you’re just struggling. I know the feeling,” Twilight sympathized. “And incredibly stubborn and quick to act without thinking so much that I swear Applejack’s teeth are turning multicoloured from all the times she’s had to bite your tail.”
Rainbow shook her head with a tiny chuckle. “Yeah, yeah… When are we leaving?”
“Tomorrow morning, if you don’t mind staying the night. You can take my bed again since I’ll be up all night anyway,” she responded. “I can have Spike keep you company and get you anything you need. I’ll even get rid of the ward if you promise not to give any of my subjects another heart attack.”
Rainbow paused for a split second. “The only thing I need right now,” she began before turning and marching back for the bed. “Is a long nap.”
Without further ado, the pegasus princess reared up like a seal playing with a ball and flopped unceremoniously back down onto the bed. A muffled thump echoed throughout the room, followed shortly by the sounds of loud, obnoxious snoring as Rainbow fell right back to sleep.
Were she awake, she might have given thanks to how easy it was for her to nap.