//------------------------------// // Friends 'Til The End // Story: Good Intentions // by chillbook1 //------------------------------// I've had a spare key to Fluttershy's house since we were, like, nine years old. She lives right down the street, and we were always together. After school, or just if my parents were fighting and I didn't want to hear that crap, I'd always run down the block to crash at Shy's. It was always nicer at her place. Parents got along, and she always had the good snacks in her fridge. I must owe Shy for a million pudding cups, the name brand that my folks were always too cheap to get. Shy never seemed to mind. Said that if I didn't eat them, then Zephyr would just scarf them down, and anything to spite her annoying little brother was a good move in her eyes. Shy isn't normally vindictive, but it's always funny to see when someone pushes one button too many. After years of crashing at Shy's, and mooching off her snacks, I'd basically stopped knocking and just let myself in. Like I'm part of the family. I have the key in my hand, right now, and I could let myself in without anyone asking any questions. It'd be normal. So why the hell am I hesitating?  "Nut up, Dash…" I say to myself. "Just do what you gotta do." I think the reason I don't let myself in is, honestly, I don't want to be here. I don't really want to be anywhere. I don't want to talk. I just want to nap until this whole thing blows over. But that's not in the cards for me. All I can do is grow a pair and get this done, same as always. I put my key back into my pocket and knock instead. For a minute, maybe two, it's silent. Not a sound. Then, slowly, from the other side of the door I hear rustling, then slow, tired footsteps. It takes almost two more minutes for her to finally creak open the door. Fluttershy is a wreck, her face hidden behind a river of untamed, unwashed pink hair. She pulls her locks from her face to see me, and I can tell she hasn't slept in days. Probably not since the battle. She doesn't say anything for a few beats, and then, like she just then remembered English, she croaks. "Hi, Dashie." She sounds worse than she looks, if that's even possible. Even still, I feel a wave of relief pass over me. I don't want to see her right now, but it's still nice that she's up and about. "What're you doing here?" "Figured you were probably hungry." I hold up a plastic bag, tied off at the top to keep everything contained. "Got some take-out." "Oh. Thanks. I suppose I could go for a bite." She steps aside and gestures for me to enter. "Come on in." "Is Zep around? I'm running out of ways to tell that dork to fuck off." "He's with Mom and Dad. They're… waiting for things to cool down here. Went to stay with Grandma." I don't say anything right away, but I step into the house anyway. It makes sense that they're gone. The Shys never dealt with this kind of heavy stuff well. This works out for me, though. I don't want to talk to anyone, but if I have to, I'd rather it be a one-on-one with my best friend. She leads the way to the couch and takes a seat. The TV is on, but nothing is playing but static. The dim room is filled with that crunchy, buzzing white noise, and nothing else. Dead quiet. I sit beside her and pass her the fried rice I got her. Had to go all the way Uptown to get it from the place she likes, the only Chinese spot that makes a good vegetarian fried rice, but she's worth it. She mutters some sort of quiet thanks and slowly opens her container, and sort of just pokes at it with her chopsticks. "So." I've got my own food, and I suck with chopsticks, so a plastic fork is gonna have to get me through my sesame chicken. "See anything good on TV lately?" "Hm?" She looks up a bit, and apparently just then realizes the TV was still on. "Oh. That. I was going to check the news, but I got a bit sidetracked…" "You're not missing much," I say flatly. She better not go there. "Forget the news, you need to focus on eating. You look like hell." "Feel like it. Haven't had the chance to grab a bite." "When's the last time you ate, huh?" I ask. "And I don't mean like one of those dinky-ass rice cake or whatever, I mean like an actual meal." "Not since the funeral," she says. For a split second, I have no clue what she's talking about. Then, in a snap, I go from confused to annoyed as it clicks into my brain what she meant. "You actually went?" I roll my eyes. Of course she did. Only Shy would be that soft. "Of course I went. I had to go. It was nice. Closed casket, of course," Fluttershy pokes at her rice some more, then slowly takes a tiny bite. "His parents were very kind. We didn't talk much, but—" "Could we not?" I don't mean to snap at her, but who can really blame me? I'm on edge these days. "If I wanted to hear their sob story—and, spoiler, I really don't—I would've gone myself." "I wish you would have. It was… nice, I guess is the word," she says. I don't respond, and she doesn't push it. Just changes the subject. "So… Have you seen anyone?" "The girls, you mean?" She nods, and I just sort of shrug. "Haven't seen AJ since the police station. Texted Rarity yesterday, she said she was gonna go check on her." "Mh-hm. Hopefully, they reach out soon. We're really going to need each other to get through this." "Speak for yourself. There's nothing for me to get through," I say, rolling my eyes. "You neither." "Rainbow… What we did was—" "Save the world, is what we did. Again." Obviously, I know what she's doing. What she's trying to say. I'm not here for it. "We're heroes, goddamn it. Don't forget it." It gets quiet again, and even though I'm not looking at her, I can feel her staring. Judging me. She's always been kinda uppity and judgemental, always looking down on certain people for not living life the way she thinks they should, but I know she's kept herself from turning that on me over the years. Now, something is different. She can barely contain herself. "Dashie…" she says slowly. "Are you okay?" "I'm fine. Better than fine." Maybe I'm being a little stubborn, but I just can't stand such a dumb question. Why wouldn't I be fine? "Are you okay?" "I've never been less okay in my entire life, Rainbow. I haven't slept in a week. I feel awful, and I just want to talk to someone." "What is there to even talk about?" "What we did to Ginseng… It was horrible," she sighs. Ginseng. So that’s the little shit’s name. "Just thinking about it makes me feel sick." "Then don't think about it," I say. "What's the point? It's over with." "I know. I just… I can't stop thinking about that fight. Could we have done something differently? Maybe if we tried talking him down some more, he'd still be alive." "Or maybe you'd be dead. Maybe everyone would be dead! I told you a thousand times, Shy, we did what we had to do, and we saved the fucking day!" I can't stand this crap. All of the girls are like this. Weak and spineless, too scared to admit that we did the right thing when no one else could. "Like we've done every time some evil magic psycho pokes their ugly face in here, we stopped them. We're heroes!" "I don't think Ginseng would call us heroes." "I don't really care what that little shit might call us. You know what I care about?" I stand up, tossing my untouched food onto the coffee table. I pace the living room, trying to get this energy out through my legs before it comes out of my mouth instead. I'm trying to stay calm, but nobody can blame me for losing my temper with this shit. "I care that some angsty twerp got sad and now Scoots might never walk again." "That doesn't mean we should be happy he's dead. Ginseng needed help, the type of help we're supposed to be able to give people. We failed him." "What? We failed him? Fluttershy, the kid killed people. He almost killed everybody. The only people we failed were the ones we didn't save because we didn't kill him earlier!" Just as soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize I probably shouldn't have said that. I can tell by the look on Shy's face that I crossed some sort of line. I'm about to apologize, take it back, say I don't mean it, but I stop. I stop because it dawns on me, at that moment. Fuck that noise. I said it because I meant it. "If he has to die for everyone I care about to live," I say. "Then I'll dig his grave myself. Ten times outta ten." "Rainbow, how could you say that?" Fluttershy says, as if I disrespected her personally. "He was a kid. Just a scared, sad kid." "Don't care. He was dangerous, and we had to do something. Hell, we should've done more, earlier." It sounds messed up, but it's true. We still use training bullets, but the enemy is firing live rounds. Of course people are going to get hurt. "We keep giving these magical maniacs a slap on the wrist and sending them in their way, but I guarantee you that if what happened to the kid had happened to Gloriosa, or Vignette, or the Dazzlings, then Ginseng wouldn't have even tried us." "You forgot two people," she says dryly. I tilt my head, confused, and she stands up to meet me. "All those horrible bad guys you say we should have killed. You conveniently forgot two from your list." It takes a sec, but I finally get what she's implying, and it takes every ounce of restraint I have not to curse her out. "That's different and you know it," I say.  "No. It's not different. They're all magic, all dangerous, and they all threatened the world. So why not kill them all?" "Because—" "No, no, you're right! If we would've just killed Sunset way back at the Formal, none of this would've happened!" For once in her life, Fluttershy puts some bass in her voice, some fire in her soul. I've always wanted that passion and intensity out of her. Now, it's pissing me off. "That's what you want us to be? A gang of killers who shoot down anyone we don't like before they cause us any trouble?" "I want us to be the ones who do something! When no one else can, it's supposed to be us who gets business done!" I shout. Why would she say that? Why is she doing this to me? "We're not killers, we're heroes! And being a hero means making tough choices." "If you think that's what we are, then maybe I don't want to be a hero!" There it is. As close to a confession as you can get without coming out and saying it. Thing is, as mad as it makes me, I'm not even really surprised. She's always been like this. Too scared to do anything worth doing. It just never mattered before. I always cared about her too much to hurt her feelings. But now, fuck it. She finally wants to get real? Then let's get real, sis. "You are such a fucking coward." At this point, I don't even know what I'm gonna say until it leaves my mouth. All I know is that it's real, raw, and it's been bubbling under the surface for years and years. "That's what this is about, the fact that you've always been too scared to do anything. Even back in the day, when I was on the playground getting my ass kicked by kids twice my size—your bullies, remember, I was fighting them for you—when I had the guts to stand up to whoever was picking on you, what did you do? Not a damn thing." "You're mad because I didn't help you fight off bullies from 8 years ago?" She rolls her eyes at me, and it makes my blood boil. She's missing the point, she always misses the point, because at the end of the day, Fluttershy is Fluttershy. And I'm, me. She can't imagine stooping down to "my level", and I'm sick of it. "Fights that you picked for me? I never asked you to fight anyone for me, Rainbow. That was your choice." "Yeah, and I chose to be a good friend and have your back. Why can't you have mine for once?" "Because this isn't about fighting off bullies who were pulling my pigtails, Rainbow. This is life and death. What we do, and how we choose to do it, matters. And I don't like the way we handled—" "If it was up to you, we'd all be dead right now," I finally come out and just say it. What I've been thinking, what we've all been thinking. "You would've wasted your time talking to the kid when it's obvious he doesn't want to listen, and he would've gotten strong enough to put that poison out into the air. Everyone we loved would be dead, and it'd be your fault because you're too weak!" It goes quiet right then, and uncomfortably tense few moments of silence. I glare at her and, to my surprise, she glares right back. She stands her ground, and I stand mine. I'd be proud of her if I wasn't already so mad. She can be strong, I've always known that. She just wastes that strength on shit that doesn't matter. "I believe that all life is sacred. I believe that it's no one's job to take a life, no one but Mother Nature. But I killed that little boy. We killed that little boy. I went against everything I believe in, and I did it to follow your lead." Fluttershy reaches under the collar of her shirt and comes back with her pendant, one the geodes from Camp Everfree. The source of the bulk of our magic, Sci-Twi says. She looks at it with disgust, barely able to stomach the sight of it. “I had your back then, and you made me a murderer. We don’t even fuilly understand how our powers work yet, and you want to keep using it even after we ended a life with it? You call me weak, but you’re wrong. We obviously can’t control our power, so I’m doing the right thing. I refuse to use it. I’m not going to take the easy road and fight all my problems. And that makes me stronger than you ever were.” “You can’t really be that naive. Do you even hear yourself right now?” I can feel the tears welling up, but I choke them back. I stand my ground, because I know I can get her to see things my way. This can’t go down like this. “You’re talking about quitting on us. What, you think this kid is gonna be the last monster that comes through town? Someone has to do something whenever these things pop up and put everyone in danger, Shy.” “Maybe you’re right. But I’m sorry, Dashie. That someone can’t be me.” Fluttershy tosses the geode forward, landing it gently at my feet. I stare at it for a second before bending down to pick it up. I thumb over the smooth surface of the pendant, my hands shaking. I try to flashback to those anger management courses. Count to twenty. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Think calming thoughts. But it doesn’t work. It never worked. Not when I was getting into fights in school, not when I was blasting that little monster to hell, and definitely not now, when my best friend is turning her back on me. After everything we’ve been through together, everything I’ve done for her, and she calls me a murderer. If I said it once, I said it a thousand times, we did what we had to do. If not us, then who? No one can do what we can, and if we let people get hurt by doing nothing, we’re just as bad as the villains.  I look up, and she hasn’t changed at all. She stands across from me, ten toes down and staring at me defiantly, and something inside me snaps. “Go fuck yourself, Shy.” I dig into my pocket and pull out the spare key to the house. She gave it to me herself, when I was sitting in my backyard crying about my parents fighting. She called me her sister, and said we’d always have each other’s backs, no matter what. What a fucking joke. I fling it at her head and stomp off, straight for the door. She doesn’t shout, doesn’t swear, doesn’t say anything to try and stop me. She just stood there and did nothing. What a shocker. I slam her door shut behind me and stop on her doorstep, just shaking as I try not to punch something. I hear movement from behind me, and for one stupid second, I think she’s coming to call me back in. To talk things over. To have my back. Instead, I hear the door lock behind me, and I storm off down the street, all alone.