Twilight paced the train’s rattling and cramped passenger car, back to front, front to back. “Read it again,” she whispered over the clatter of tracks and wheels and shifting luggage.
Pausing to clear her throat, Rarity shuffled a rumpled scroll in her hooves. “Twilight, dear, we’ve read the letter from Spike a dozen times. I don’t believe there’s anything to be gained by - ” A glare from the younger unicorn froze her and she recoiled at the flashing purple eyes across the aisle. “Alright, then. Princess – Major thunderstorm over Ponyville. Rainbow Dash left to help weather team. Midair lightning strike, bad crash. Dash in Ponyville General Hospital. Please tell Twilight and the girls to hurry back. It’s not good. – Spike.”
Twilight stopped at the rear of the car, her back to the four ponies alternately watching her and whispering to each other. “She promised!” growled the diminutive mare, stamping her hooves on the rolling floor. “She promised she’d stay out of this. Out of the thunderstorms, out of the tornadoes, the hurricanes, all of it!”
“Twi, sugar, that’s her job,” Applejack said, hooves on her hat and hat in her lap. “Dash cain’t - ”
Wheeling around, Twilight stomped the length of the car and stood muzzle to muzzle with the farmer. “No, it’s not! That’s why she took the Regional Weather Director position,” she spat, “so she wouldn’t have to put her life on the line for every black cloud that rolled out of the Everfree. It’s a desk job! It’s safe, it’s easy, it keeps her in charge and lets other ponies take the risk so I wouldn’t have to worry every week about getting letters telling me she’s injured, or in the hospital or… or…”
Applejack sat as far back as the seat would let her and looked around at the other three ponies, eyes wide. Twilight’s held her eyes shut tight and clenched her jaw as shudders ran the length of her body. “She lied to me,” Twilight hissed, “she lied to my face. She never intended to sit back and let other ponies take a the risk, did she? She has to play the hero every time, right?”
A pink hoof touched Twilight’s mane and shot back as if it were a livewire, then slowly and gently and gingerly stroked the shaking mare’s back. Pinkie swallowed and held a hoof to her chest as she lay the other on Twilight’s quaking withers. “Twilight, that’s what Dashie does,” she said. “Dasher was just being herself, and I mean her super-duper loyal self, not her napping-on-clouds self or her – ”
Jumping back and slinging off Pinkie’s hoof, Twilight curled her lips back and snarled, “Loyal? You call flying a suicide mission loyal?” Twilight’s ears pinned further back as her volume rose, each word pressing the pink mare further away. “What about loyalty to us, Pinkie? What about her loyalty to me?”
“Rainbow is a very loyal pony, Twilight.” The demure and squeaking voice from across the train caused all heads to turn toward the yellow mare hiding behind a pale pink mane. “Um, sorry for interrupting. But we all have lots of loyalties. Applejack has her family to be loyal to, and I have my animal friends, and – ”
“So?” Twilight shouted. “They’ve had storms before, bad ones, and she stayed behind to direct the action, not throw herself in the path of every lightning bolt and hailstone! So why did she have to fly out now? Why this storm, why the one with her name written on it?”
Fluttershy shrank behind her mane a little but held her gaze on the fuming librarian. “That’s not fair and you know it, Twilight. If they needed her, really needed her, then she’d go because that’s who she is. You have no right to be mad at her for being herself.”
The train shuddered and slowed as Twilight narrowed her eyes and said, “Fluttershy, I have every right to be mad, I – ”
“Ponyville Station, this stop!” echoed the conductor’s tinny voice. “All ponies departing for Ponyville, prepare to disembark.”
Five ponies shot out of the train, racing through muddy streets and splashing through ankle-deep puddles toward the looming grey bulk of Ponyville General Hospital. Bursting through the double doors, they skidded to a halt before the front desk. “M… May I help you?” stammered a white-coated nurse.
“Rainbow Dash! She was injured in the storm,” Twilight panted, “and they brought her here. Pegasus mare. Where is she? We need to see her. I need to see her!”
“Just a moment,” the nurse muttered, flipping quickly through a binder of names and dates and ominous red marks. “Dash… Dash… I’m sorry, ma’am. There’s no Rainbow Dash here.”
Twilight’s jaw moved but no words emerged. Her pupils shrank to pinpricks as she whispered, “There’s only one hospital in Ponyville! If they didn’t bring her here, that means she’s already…”
She stumbled back, head shaking, pink and yellow and orange hooves catching her mid-fall. Rarity stepped to the counter and with a flash of her horn levitated the register into her hooves above the nurse’s protests. She turned page after page, squinting at each and every line, then put a hoof to her mouth and inhaled sharply. Turning to the trembling librarian, she grinned and held the register book aloft. “Twilight,” she said above welling tears and through a widening smile, “I think you should see this.”
Long minutes later Twilight closed the recovery room door behind her, muffling the surgeon’s voice as the doctor explained therapies and medication schedules to the four ponies gathered outside. Beeps and hisses broke the silence as she stepped to the bedside where tubes and lines and immaculate white sheets covered a bruised and bandaged blue pegasus. Slowly the azure mare opened a swollen eye and a smile crept across her scarred muzzle.
“S… sorry, Twi,” Rainbow choked. “Sh… shoulda stayed home, I guess.” She coughed and winced, adding, “I know you’re… you’re probably totally mad at me.”
“I thought I was, for a while,” Twilight said as she brushed a matted clump of mane from Rainbow’s face. “Then I saw this, and I remembered just why and how much I love you.” She looked down and tapped a hoof on a hospital bracelet wrapped around the blue leg beside her. “When they checked you into the hospital, they signed you in as Rainbow Sparkle.”
“Yeah, saw that. Guess everypony knows, huh? Guess it doesn’t…” Dash’s spluttering laugh sent her into grimaces but her grin remained. ”It doesn’t sound so uncool after all.”