"What are you doing here?"
The music stopped. Trixie was quiet as she stepped up on the podium. She'd brought her own amp, freshly bought, higher quality than the ones CHS offered. She plugged it into the available socket, plugged her guitar into it, and waited.
It had been a while, the kind of indistinct amount of time that is only distinguishable as a while, or at least that was what it felt to her. Somewhere more than hours and less than weeks, and anywhere in there. Things had been one way, and then the while had passed, and now things were different in her mind. The storm had settled and decisions had been made after she'd picked up her guitar again. She was there to act on them.
Rainbow looked at her in silence for another while, a short kind of while, contemplating leaving and deciding against it. She did not speak, but she looked back at her guitar and began to play again.
Trixie began to play too. This time, not to interrupt Rainbow's song. She tried to play along, not disturb, not upstage. It took her a bit. A stutter from Rainbow as she realised what was happening, a few moments to get the proper hang of the rhythm and notes, a bit to get lined up properly and playing things in a way that worked, a way that sounded like it worked instead of just working in theory. There were some hiccups along the way, but it was resolved. It took a while. Shorter than Trixie's while, longer than Rainbow's while. Then the girls were playing in unison, the same song, the differences in their guitar tones complementing each other.
Then Trixie spoke. She spoke quietly to not disturb the music, slowly to keep her pace and not falter or stammer, carefully to make up for her unsureness. "I wanted you to know that I'm sorry, if nothing else. Sorry about what happened, and sorry about being quiet since. I needed some time to think."
Rainbow didn't say anything. Neither did she stop playing and walk away, and her expression did not look overtly angry.
Trixie continued. "I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know what I... what we were getting into. It felt nice and I wanted to roll with it and once I actually had to think about it, look at it, it was too much. I was..." She kept playing, struggling to find the right word. "Childish, I guess, but it's not something a child would do. Shortsighted. Foolish and overconfident. Like I usually am."
Rainbow kept on playing, looking down at the ground. Trixie did so too, and eventually Rainbow found it in her to speak. "Me too."
The sudden response made Trixie play a few notes off, but she quickly recomposed herself. "Yeah?"
"I've been thinking too. I wasn't thinking either. I just kind of did it, and... Yeah, when you actually have to look at it, think about it..." Rainbow looked up from the floor, at Trixie's eyes. "It's a lot. I didn't get all of it either."
"But it was fun," Trixie said. "What we had. Some parts of the whole thing. It was good." She looked around the gym, then back at Rainbow. "I miss it, honestly."
Rainbow's expression soured a bit, and she looked away again. "Are you here to try and get back together?"
"I'm here to talk."
"What makes you think I want to talk?"
Trixie smirked at that. "You were playing my song when I walked in."
It was Rainbow's turn to play her notes off. But she got back on track, then she sighed and let her shoulders down a bit. "I miss it too." She did that thing with her arm and her neck, without her arm on her neck, just with her neck and her face. "And it's weird. I've never really missed something this way. It's not how much, it's how. I miss it different." The notes from her guitar began to vibrate and slow down a little as she reminisced.
"I get that. It's weird for me too."
"We're both a lot, and I get through things fast." Rainbow almost chuckled at her own joke. Almost. "I'm sorry if I messed it up. I do miss it though."
"Me too."
They kept playing awhile, starting over the portion of song they were practising and playing it together properly. Finally Rainbow broke the silence again. "You were an idiot."
"You too." Trixie didn't falter in her playing. "You always are. Rushing into things without thinking and deciding you'll just roll with it because you can handle it, not caring about how you might hurt others."
"I try to be better nowadays." Rainbow was still playing too, her hands basically on autopilot as she talked without looking at them. "I think I've got it down to thinking I'll come out on top. I don't worry because I think I'm good enough, and I'll be alright in the end even if things are not. But you think you can't fail at all, and you don't have anything prepared if things start to go wrong. That's why you run away."
"I do. I did. Now I'm back here."
Rainbow looked at Trixie. "You sound different today."
"Because for once I care about something." Trixie sighed, but she managed to force the words out. "I may act like an idiot, but I'm not that much of one. I know what people say. I know what I come across like. I'm okay with it. I'm not okay with this. So for once, for a bit, I thought it was best if I forced myself to drop the act."
The music stopped, both guitars at the same time. Rainbow let her guitar hang from her body. "What do you want?"
"I want it back." Trixie began to tune her guitar differently, slackening the strings without testing what it sounded like. "I want to try again."
Rainbow looked at her, really looked at her, and thought back to their time together. "We'll mess it up again."
"And that's okay. That's what people our age do." Trixie looked Rainbow in the eyes. "Have you looked around? Everyone's acting like they have it figured out, and sooner or later they all get hurt. It's hard to be good at something the first time around. But if there's a time to get hurt and mess up it's now."
Rainbow had a look around the empty gym. "What if it doesn't work?"
"Then it'll have gone wrong the right way." Trixie began to play a different song. The notes came out right. She had enough practice and control in her fingers to tune her guitar to that state. "But I need to give it a proper chance. I don't want to look back one day and wonder what could have been."
Rainbow was quiet, mulling things over, but after a while she began to play along with Trixie's music. "How are we even supposed to start with it?"
"I start with asking you if you want to do this. It ends if you don't."
Rainbow kept playing, quiet, limbs tense. Finally she closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. "I do," she replied, and her music covered the thump of Trixie's heart. "But I think we'll just mess it up. I think maybe we both deserve better."
"But that's not what we want."
Rainbow hesitated. "This isn't how it normally starts. It's not something you just ask."
"For some people it is. For others it builds up from something else. We didn't do it right the first time, we just sort of happened. We have something to work with now though. That's good enough."
"Is it?"
"You don't sound like yourself today."
Their music played for a while. The two looked at the ground between each other. Rainbow spoke again then. "Where will you draw the line?"
"We'll find out," Trixie said. "Other people might figure it out in advance. Smarter, less rash people than we are. People we wouldn't be with."
"I miss you," Rainbow said. "It was nice. To have someone to think about that way, to have someone to hold like we did. You messed up, but you're here apologising now. You're back. And I want to trust you. I want it back too." Her frame shivered slightly. "I don't trust myself though. I don't think I'm taking it seriously enough yet. I'm not sure I even can. What if I snap?" She looked at Trixie with uncertain eyes. "I don't want to hurt you like you did."
Trixie smiled. "You will. And I'll hurt you too. When it happens, we'll talk it through together, and hold each other. That part is normal, and I think I didn't realise it." She chuckled softly to herself. "For once everyone else was pretending."
"So what? We walk out of here, pretend it's all okay, play along?" Rainbow began to play a different tune on her guitar, without taking notice of it.
"Pretty much." Trixie smirked. "You best do your best out there, I can't be seen with just about anyone."
Rainbow's new song, different as it was, fit together with Trixie's. "What's the point then? What's different?"
"The difference is that now we know." Trixie winked. "The point is that it's what we want. Is there any other point you need?"
Rainbow thought about it, quietly. Then she smiled. "You're an idiot."
"And you're the only person allowed to call me that, but please save it for the times it's particularly bad."
Rainbow became conscious of her guitar playing again, and broke into a solo over Trixie's notes. "What do we tell them, then?"
Trixie shrugged, amused. "We don't tell them anything. It's none of their business." As Rainbow's solo died down back into its own riffing, she broke into one of her own. "We'll just let them figure it out."
Rainbow was smiling still. "It's not supposed to be this easy."
"Do we look like ordinary people?" Trixie smirked. It was different from her usual smirk, and yet the same, and yet not. There was something about it. A certainty, a sense of awareness and perhaps maturity, Rainbow thought. She'd never realised how much she liked that expression on her, or how much she could like it.
"Of course not." She joined in on Trixie's solo. "I'm doing it wrong again." She was smiling, and didn't want to stop, and wasn't sure at all why she wasn't stopping. "I'm going too fast again. Why are you pushing me?"
"Because it's the you I want. The only you you are that's you. I don't see a point in it otherwise. I want to do things right, and that means doing them wrong where they're supposed to."
"That's what we did the first time. Does that mean this was all right from the start?"
"I don't really believe in fate."
"That's not what I was saying."
"You still owe me an explanation for the magic horse land." Trixie began to play a different solo, one to go along with and accompany the one Rainbow had made to go along with and accompany hers. "Let's pretend the past doesn't matter apart from the parts you enjoy looking back on. I think that's how it's supposed to be, anyway. You don't take pictures of the bad days."
"I want to stroke your hair again," Rainbow said. "I want your head in my lap and I want the world outside to stop mattering while the only thing I can hear is your breathing."
"Dinner at my place today?" Trixie asked. "About time I properly introduced you to my mother."
And both guitars slid off into a tuneless array off ill-fitting notes as both girls looked at each other in terrified realisation. Then they both laughed at the sight. And outside the gym's door, Sunset begrudgingly passed Rarity a twenty dollar bill.