Rainbow Dash slammed the dining hall door as she left, her face bright red with a mix of embarrassment and pure rage. She saw Spitfire talking but couldn’t hear her over the blood rushing furiously in her ears. She stomped off, the captain of the guard right on her heels, headed nowhere in particular.
What had just happened was stuck somewhere between unacceptable and unbelievable. Never before had something so patently outrageous happened to her, not something in that vein at least. Being kissed by another pony? What would Applejack think?
Applejack…
They had met before here, when Rainbow Dash had bought cider from her at some event. Was there anymore to it? In that other world she had seen they were more, so much more. Applejack had been her first kiss…and her first love. Even if that wasn’t this world or life, she couldn’t ignore those feelings. She didn’t even know what she felt here or what she was supposed to feel.
A clumsy tongue pushed past her lips
Fumbling hooves touched her sides
First kiss and a little more
Hopefully the next one wouldn’t be with Soarin
She stopped when the memory assaulted her at the prompting question of her feelings. It seemed her first kiss was with a colt here, which meant she didn’t have the same gender preference she did in the other world. She slammed a hoof against the tile beneath her, the sound barely registering above the thoughts roiling in her brain.
“None of this makes sense.” She growled as she started walking again, this time in the direction of Spitfire’s apartment. “What am I here? What am I even doing here?” She was asking these questions to herself, knowing that the answers were as far away as those memories.
“RAINBOW DASH!” The shout made all of the ponies, including the pony it was directed at, stop in place. Spitfire landed beside the maimed pegasus, her own face as red and flustered as Dash’s. “Will you stop and talk to me? What happened?” Her voice lowered enough so only the two of them could hear it. “You cannot just run out of dinner with the King like that.”
“He kissed me!” Rainbow Dash hissed out at her friend. She pressed her nose right against Spitfire’s and glared at me. “That bastard kissed me, okay? What else do you want me to do? Stay in there?!”
“What?” Spitfire blinked and looked through Rainbow Dash, completely frozen.
Dash spun around and started to walk again, hoping to find out what was going on through determined introspection.There had to be something in what she already knew and what she had been told by him that revealed more.
She was brought here by him because he liked the way she looked, he liked her fire. She had lived in Canterlot for sometime but her apartment looked abandoned even beyond her absence, then she hadn't really talked with Rarity at all really…so where did she spend her time? Here in the castle? With him?
Then that memory popped up again, the one she had when she first met Sunset Shimmer. ‘I know you’re using him.’ Was ‘him’ Sombra? Sunset seemed to hate her for some reason, and that would make sense. If the King’s personal assistant felt like Rainbow Dash was trying to obstruct his duties or distract him, then yeah the hate would make sense.
With Spitfire now off of her trail, she wandered the halls with only one thing running through her head: she had to find Sunset Shimmer. Her hooves took her to the main hall, then the throne room and finally to the offices near the hospital room where she had woken up a few days ago. In all of that time, the sun had set and the moon had risen.
The royal offices held her prize, standing in front of an open door and talking to a guard. Both mares locked eyes as Rainbow Dash made a beeline straight for her. Dash grabbed the unicorn’s foreleg and dragged her into the open door directly behind her and then closed the door behind them.
“Rainbow Dash, what is this all about?” Sunset demanded with a huff, her cyan eyes burning with the same crimson that ran through her mane.
“What am I?” Rainbow Dash shot back, finally letting go of the other mare’s leg. “What do I do here in the castle?”
“Besides eat up the valuable time of the King?”
“Can you drop whatever you have against me for like two seconds and just answer me?” Dash did her best to soften her own glare and lighten the tone of her voice. “Okay, I just…I need to know why you hate me. What am I to the ponies in this castle? Because right now I’m angry and confused and…and I just need some honesty.”
“You really don’t remember, do you?” Sunset raised an eyebrow and stepped back, scoffing a little. “This isn’t an act at all.”
“You thought this was an act?” Dash looked around the room, the only thing being with them a barren table with half a dozen chairs around it. She went over to one and sat in it, leaning back to the point that it threatened to tip over backwards. “No, no it’s not. I didn’t just make up that my memory disappeared. I’m not doing this for sympathy.” Dash put her face in her hooves and growled a bit. “Something weird just happened and I just want an answer that nopony but you and Sombra can give me and…and right now you’re the one I want to talk to.”
“Color me shocked.”
“Yeah, you and me both. So please, Sunset, if you can just help me understand what’s happening.” Rainbow Dash looked around the room again, just to make sure that nopony else was around and that the door was indeed shut. “King Sombra said some stuff and kissed me and I need to make sense of it.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” Sunset mumbled in response.
“Yeah that, I need less of that. Please.”
“Okay.” Sunset threw up her hooves and joined Rainbow Dash in a chair across from her. “Sure. You’re his…consort. That’s a polite way of saying it. You two spend too much time together, you spend too much time here in the castle with him, and you do nothing but distract him.”
“I’m his…marefriend…?”
“No, don’t be stupid.” Sunset rolled her eyes and scoffed at the notion. “Kings don’t have ‘marefriends’, and if they did it wouldn’t be some commoner. You’re somepony who got too close, and if I had to wager it’s the reason why you were captured by those fiends.”
Rainbow Dash was still caught up in the whole ‘marefriend’ thing that it being the reason she was in this mess didn’t even register. She looked up at the ceiling, staring at the tiles and just not thinking about anything else.
“Personally—” Sunset continued. “—I always thought you were using him to advance your career and the gifts that came with being so close to him.”
“Yeah.” Dash mumbled and stood from her chair. “Thanks Sunset.” She ignored the protests from the King’s assistant and walked out of the door, shutting it behind her. “This is…ridiculous…” She kept muttering that to herself over and over as she moved through the halls, her hooves bringing her to the doorstep of Spitfire and Rarity’s apartment.
She had shrugged off Spitfire earlier, but now she needed her two lifelines to bring her back down to earth and sift through these new revelations. Her hoof raised of its own accord and knocked on the door. It was only a few seconds before both of the married mares inside answered.
“Oh thank Equestria, you didn’t leave the castle.” Spitfire sighed in relief and leaned on the doorframe. She was without her helmet and the armor that usually adorned her legs but still wore her onyx breastplate. “I was getting ready to go looking for you again, where have you been?”
“Just…wandering.” Rainbow Dash pushed past them both and went straight for the couch, slumping into the well-worn cushions.
“Now, darling…” Rarity spoke first as both she and Spitfire joined Rainbow on the couch, one on either side of her. “...are you sure what you told Spitfire actually happened? I mean it can be custom with some of those nobility to kiss both cheeks as a greeting or a farewell.”
“When someone like him calls you ‘my beloved’ and then kisses your cheek, yeah I’m pretty sure.” The admission from Dash earned a gasp from Rarity and a little grunt of surprise from Spitfire. “Then I went and talked to Sunset Shimmer afterwards and…and she called me his ‘consort’.”
“What?” Spitfire pulled on Rainbow’s shoulder so the two were facing. “Consort? Like..like…”
“You two didn’t know?”
“Darling, you barely talked to us.” Rarity spoke while Spitfire was still gathering her thoughts. “These past few days have been the most we’ve seen of you in almost a year. Despite living in Canterlot, you’ve rarely visited at all. We only knew what you were up to thanks to Spitfire’s job. We had no idea what was going on in your personal life.”
“I thought you were just ignoring me when I went to your place to check up on you…not…I didn’t think…” Spitfire blinked and nodded a bit, a tear forming at the corner of her eye.
“Sorry.” Dash sighed and leaned on Spitfire’s side. “I just learned about it today, myself. I...I would’ve told you.” She bit her tongue and recognized she would have to take some responsibility for the actions, even if she didn’t remember taking them. “I should’ve told you.”
“What else did he tell you?” Spitfire was now laser-focused on knowing the things she had been blind to. The tone of her voice offered no quarter or debate, she needed to know.
“That he was the one who got me transferred to the ceremonial division because he liked how I looked and…then he invited me to dinner and I guess took a liking to me even more. He asked me to be his and I accepted.” Saying it all out loud didn’t make it any more believable than when it had first happened. “I don’t remember any of this…I don’t even remember liking stallions. In my memories I had a marefriend and didn’t even like stallions so, yeah, this is a bit of a shock to me too.”
“I can’t believe it.” The mares beside her said in unison.
“Yeah, well, rainbow mane didn’t help me hide it…the jokes pretty much wrote themselves for bullies when I was a teenager.” Dash muttered and ran a hoof through her shortened mane. “Sunset thought I was using Sombra for status, but if nopony even knew…”
“Let me sort some of this out…” Spitfire closed her eyes and brought a hoof to the bridge of her muzzle. “Rainbow Dash, you don’t have a preference. You’ve had marefriends before, coltfriends. I’ve never seen it matter to you.”
“It’s true, you brought a unicorn mare to our wedding as your plus one.” Rarity added on. “I guess the important question to answer is what you want to do with this information now?” She continued and placed a hoof on Rainbow’s back. “No matter what anypony thinks of this, including Spitfire and myself, it doesn’t matter. What matters is how you want to handle this. If you choose to…pursue this avenue, then we will be behind you. If you want to forge your own path, then so be it.”
“Mhm.” Spitfire nodded and leaned her head against Dash’s. “I’m a little—well I’m more than a little shocked—but this is the first time in a very long while that we’ve been this close and talked this much. At least since the wedding. I’ve seen you during Hearthswarming with the family since then, but we didn’t really talk. I’m not going to push you away now.” Spitfire took a deep breath and wrapped a warm wing around the smaller pegasus. “Whatever you want, whatever you decide, I’ll be here for you. Even if it means being the King’s…close personal friend.”
“I don’t know what I want.” Dash admitted with a deep long sigh as she closed her eyes and relaxed against Spitfire. “I feel like I barely know who I am.” At the very least, it seemed like her habit of avoiding her family had stuck in both worlds. So that facet of her being remained true no matter what.
“Then it’s time for you to find out for yourself.” Spitfire ran her hoof over Dash’s head slowly. “Think of this as an opportunity, right? Just like you’re doing with Rare and I, you can have second chances. Maybe we can even go see Mom and Dad sometime soon.”
“Yeah, I never really talked to them, did I?”
“Nope. You always said they suffocated you. Once you moved out of their place it was just visiting on the holidays.” Spitfire spoke with some sympathy regarding the situation and gave Dash a pat on the side. “They always coddled you after your eyes went bad and from some of your drunken ramblings, you’ve always resented them more than a little for it. I can’t even imagine how they would react to you now…”
“Do they even know I’m okay?”
“I sent a letter as soon as I got back to Canterlot with you. I told them you were alive and safe now and that it was best for them to stay in Ponyville, just best to let you heal in peace.” Spitfire hummed for a moment. “Relative peace, I mean…considering recent events.”
It was a weird change. In her memories from the other world her parents endlessly cheered her on no matter the danger or challenge. They celebrated her every accomplishment to an inane degree. So they were a lot more protective here, a lot more unwilling to let her attempt to succeed. That would be a difficult change to confront when the time came.
“Just be yourself, darling. Don’t let what others think weigh you down now. You can be the pony you want to be, free of preconceptions.” Rarity leaned on Rainbow Dash too, creating a ponypile on the overwhelmed mare.
Rainbow Dash was lucky to have friends like this. She wasn’t going to take them for granted again, not this time around. She would use the lessons from that other life to make this one better.