Rainbow Dash had always thought she would be dead long before a day like this would come. Her face was as long as the frozen gaps between her heavy heartbeats. As she sat beneath an apple tree overlooking a dirt path leading towards Ponyville, she looked at her hooves, at the circles that they were tracing in the grass, at the bright sunlight that was glittering over the fertile colors of the world. She could not deny that she was alive, that she was conscious of every lingering second, that this very moment was pathetically real.
Two hours. Two hours had passed since she had first received the letter. She was no less numb that very second than when she had first opened the envelope in the mail, when she had initially broken the seal that was monogrammed with the insignia of the Wonderbolts. She must have read the cold, professionally heartless paragraphs over a hundred times, enough to memorize every single killer word across the page, so that their rigid finality pierced through the layers of time to stab her time and time again.
Rainbow Dash folded her hooves underneath herself and coiled her wings to her side. The blue pegasus' body shrank, as if attempting to blend in with the shadows of the apple tree stretching over her. In her peripheral vision, the golden, thatched rooftops of Ponyville beckoned as gently as always. They were suddenly a hideously venomous sight; she could barely stand to look at them. She knew they promised the smiles of friends, along with their flicking ears and patient gazes, all of which Rainbow Dash suddenly wasn't worthy of facing.
Nothing mattered anymore. She knew she couldn't explain it to them, even if she tried. The entire reason she was in Ponyville was a precursor to a destiny she had always had faith in... until today. She hated losing, but now—as the finality of the letter had officially declared—she no longer stood to gain anything. She had her one chance at tryouts two months ago. On top of that, Canterlotlian rules officially refused young ponies with her scholastic limitations a chance at future reentry. Rainbow Dash had missed her mark. Her entire young life was a failure; of this, she was certain.
Her breaths became uneven. She tried to calm herself, but a brisk wind blew down into the Equestrian Valley and kicked at her prismatic mane. She was reminded of the exhilarating feel of flight, and for the first time in her life she cringed at it. It was a disgusting sensation, a shame that she hadn't been prepared to bear. Flying through the clouds and performing stunts had always been a joy to her; now she couldn't bear to even look into the sky.
She had a reputation in Ponyville, something that had been constructed upon the shoulders of guile, audacity, and pride. Every single one of these tenets was fueled by the inexhaustible confidence Rainbow Dash had always had in herself, a faith that her future was something tangible and promising, anything but what she was truly, undeniably sinking in right here and now. Without her life goal, without her golden mean of opportunity, how was she to carry on? How could she be the symbol of awesomeness that she had always maintained through such natural charisma? How could she be strong enough for her closest friends to depend on her? What foundation would she have to maintain her loyalty with?
Rainbow Dash was an expert flier. She had fallen into things, crashed into things, and face-planted into things time and time again. She had become a proper sibling to embarrassment, but on each of those occasions she knew just how to pick herself back up and keep going. Such tenacity is what got her the position of Ponyville's chief weather flier. It's what made ponies turn to her when it was time to clear the clouds during Winter Wrap Up. It's what helped her go so far as to become Best Young Flier one fateful spring day in Cloudsdale.
All of those accomplishments—all of Rainbow Dash's deeds and medals and accolades—suddenly seemed like cruel jokes. They had led her towards calamity under the false pretense of success. She shouldn't have gotten so lax and careless. She should have practiced harder. She should have exercised more. She should have kept her eyes on the goal and on nothing else. What had she been doing all of this time instead? Attending Pinkie Pie's parties? Performing deliveries for Rarity? Rescuing cats out of trees for Fluttershy?
There was room for loyalty, and then there was wasteful absurdity. As a young pegasus, Rainbow Dash had been given all the time in the world to fashion herself into the future's grandest legacy, the fastest and most dazzling pony flier in the history of Equestria. If she had achieved that, if she had passed all the milestones towards becoming what she knew in her heart she was capable of being, she would have turned out to be a far stronger foundation for her friends to lean on than the triviality that had frequently frolicked with them over the past year and a half.
However, it was too late. The damage was done. Rainbow Dash had let time burn away, and now there was no glorious future for her to see her dreams come true. She felt like screaming, but she didn't want to grab any pony's attention. She felt like flying far away, but she didn't want to see the blue sky. She should have moved from that spot, unfrozen herself, and found someplace where she could lose her mind in such a way as she had so viciously lost her spirit. Rainbow Dash didn't budge. Each second that piled on in that stationary position beneath the tree made her feel like three times, six times, nine times the loser than she had felt the moment previous. She only had herself to blame, especially if—at anytime—some random pony was to walk up and—
“Well, howdy there, Rainbow!”
Rainbow Dash winced like her hoof was being amputated. If her head was hanging low previous, it was practically plowing through the earth now. She tilted her face further away from the orange shape of her companion. Blades of grass tickled her cheeks as she fought and fought to fashion smiles out of nothingness.
“Oh... Uh... H-Hey, AJ. What's up?”
“I just bought some new farmin' supplies in town. It's a good time of year to get discounts off of wicker baskets. All that fruit just won't package itself, ya reckon?” Applejack's voice was a warm thing, as radiant and soothing as the sun's rays. Regardless, Rainbow Dash couldn't stop shivering as if she was lying on an iceberg. “Fancy meetin' you here. I'm used to seein' ya sleepin' at all hours of the day, but usually you're up in the clouds. Why the change?”
“Heh... Well... uhm...” Rainbow Dash gulped, shuddered, and wrenched her lips into a smile. It came across as a grimace. She was too afraid to brandish it before her friend. “You know me. I get bored easily. Besides, it's kind of a clear day.”
“Seriously, Rainbow? Are ya blind or somethin'? Heh, I'm no weather expert, but I'd say it's fixin' to rain soon!”
The pegasus winced harder. She still couldn't face her friend. As she felt the very ends of her hooves starting to shake and quiver, she prayed with all her might that Applejack would just go away.
Like so many times that day, she was let down. “You doin' okay, Rainbow?” The blades of grass beside the weather flier bent and spread as Applejack's weight settled down and leaned up against the tree right next to her. “If I didn't know better, I'd say you're lookin' a little green at the gills.”
“It's nothing.” Rainbow Dash grunted, her first... and last exhalation of anger. “I'm fine.”
“Yeesh. I didn't mean anythin' bad by it! And please don't think I was ridin' up your wings for takin' your afternoon naps whenever you feel like it, Rainbow. This town depends upon your fancy skills to keep the weather in check. If y'all ask me, I reckon you deserve as much R&R as you see fit.”
“I... I don't know...” Rainbow Dash's voice cracked. It always cracked. Only now, her breaths were coming out ragged. When she spoke, it was through clenched teeth. It was getting harder and harder to control her shakes. She had never felt this spastic and uncontrollable before, and suddenly one of her best friends was there to witness it. Was this a breakdown? Was she about to lose her mind? She already had lost the strength in her wings, no matter the will to use them. Even if she wanted to fly away, she couldn't. Her feathery appendages stuck to her blue colt like frozen tree branches. She couldn't budge. She could barely think straight. This was horrible. She was losing her cool; she never lost her cool. She did her best to salvage the situation, but all of her strength was gone. “Uhm... AJ? I-I think y-you'd better get back to the farm...”
“Ha! What? So you own this tree now?”
Rainbow Dash didn't need to see Applejack's smirk to know it was there. She knew the farm filly. She knew she was only teasing the pegasus. She knew all about their playful antagonism and athletic competition and infrequent battles of wit. Everypony in town knew how much the two butted heads—or had to butt heads—in order to maintain equilibrium. What nopony knew—what Applejack didn't know—was that the world was about to crumble, and at the fissure's center was this fragile blue thing that used to pretend to dream, that was now melting for the first time in broad daylight, that hadn't prepared herself for what it meant to be falling in pieces, to be vulnerable, to be dead before dying.
“Applejack, pl-please...” It was the sound of her own pleading voice that broke the dam. The last time Rainbow Dash had ever cried was when she was a little filly, when she finally understood what death meant, when she realized it had consumed her mother's life and her father's will to fight. Ever since then, she had struggled to resist the odds of nature all on her own, with nopony to help her, and nopony to tell her what she should or shouldn't have been proud of. Now, on this day, everything she had built over the years had crumbled. She had no bulwark to face death with, and no courage to endure its many stings of anticlimax and ennui. “Just... just go home... leave me alone...” She lied like she had lived, fighting. Only now, she knew how pointless the battle was. It stabbed at her deeply, and instead of blood she was leaking tears, hot streams of sickening sorrow. In the last glimpses of light afforded her before she snapped her eyes shut, Rainbow Dash realized her face was glistening with grief. That was it. She had lost the last contest. She was a failure before her friends, and there was no more hiding the depths to which she had imploded. “I want to be alone right now, so b-bad... J-Just please leave...”
Applejack's reply wasn't a reply. A cowgirl hat had suddenly been planted over Rainbow Dash's cranium.
The sobbing pegasus briefly paused under the shadow of perplexity. Sniffling, she opened her eyes, only to have the felt material of Applejack's trademark article covering her entire head. She couldn't see anything. She could hardly even hear her own, hyperventilating squeaks: “Wh-What...?”
Suddenly, she was aware of two sets of hoofsteps. The ground briefly shook. Two ponies had walked up along the dirt path. She could just barely make out the haunting familiarity of their voices from where her ears had been covered.
“Good afternoon, Applejack!” Twilight Sparkle said.
“Howdy, y'all! Fine day for relaxin' under a tree, ain't it?”
“Whatcha guys doin'? Huh?! Huh?!” It was Pinkie Pie. “I know! You two should come join us at Sugarcube Corner! I'm baking angel food cake! Hey Dashie! You wanna come help—?”
“Shhhh!” Applejack's breath suddenly hissed, sucking the noise straight out of the afternoon air above Rainbow Dash and the hat. “Keep it down, will y'all? Can't you see she's sleepin'?”
“Oh! I get it!” Pinkie Pie giggled. “Neither rain nor shine, huh? Boy, sometimes I wish I could sleep at the drop of a hat! Haha! Get it?!”
“Uhm...” Twilight Sparkle was already thinking out loud. “Just why is your hat on her head like that anyways, Applejack?”
“Pfffft! If only you both had strolled by here earlier! She was snorin' something mighty fierce! I was afraid the apples would fall out of this here tree on account of all that thunder her nostrils were makin'! So, I stuck my trusty hat over her head and it got so darn quiet and peaceful, I fancied takin' a breather myself. Heh... Who knew laziness was contagious, huh?”
“Heeheehee...” Twilight giggled. “You could have fooled me, Applejack.”
“What, you, Twi? Hah! Not on your life!”
“Awwww... It's like Dashie's got a pillow hat! Hey! Twilight, when we get back to Sugarcube Corner, what say we make a Pillow Hat Cake instead?! We can make the feathers out of vanilla frosting!”
“Uhhhhhh... sure. Why not? Anyways, catch you later, Applejack. Try not to let Rainbow Dash sleep too long or else she might get a sunburn.”
“Boy, wouldn't that be somethin' to write home about! Take care y'all!”
“Bye AJ!”
“Good bye!”
“Heee—Pillow Hat Cake! Pillow Hat Caaaaaake!”
The two ponies could be heard trotting away towards town. By the time Pinkie Pie's bounding hooves had dwindled into silence, Rainbow Dash finally caught her breath. The blades of grass poked her cheeks under the hollow of Applejack's hat as she pivoted her face up to peer from underneath the brown article's brim. It hadn't occurred to her until that very moment that her tears had already dried.
“Uhm...” She sniffled one last time, and murmured in a voice that was curious as it was thankful. “Applejack...?”
Suddenly, the world was blinding her. The hat had been lifted off her head in a single sweep. Squinting into the merciless sunlight, Rainbow Dash finally made out the sight of Applejack dusting off her hat and slapping it onto her blonde mane.
Rainbow Dash blinked at her. The pegasus' lips parted in disbelief. Did Applejack, the Element of Honesty, just lie to two of their closest friends for her? “AJ?”
“Whew! It's a scorcher, ain't it?” The farm filly hoisted the bundle of empty baskets back onto her flank and trotted slowly down the path leading towards Sweet Apple Acres. “If I was chief weather flier of Ponyville, I'd make it rain already! It'd be a darn shame to let such good clouds go to waste!”
And like that, Applejack was gone, and with it something else was born, something as righteous as the rain that Rainbow Dash knew was going to fall, because she was about to make it fall.
A smile had graced the pegasus' lips. Her tears had briefly returned, but this time they carried with them a different shimmer, like something new that glinted along an undiscovered horizon, and yet the trophy had been there right in front of her all along.
“Silly pony,” Rainbow Dash said. Her voice was no longer cracking. She stood up and stretched her joints. When she jumped into the air, her wings were there to carry her... like they always had been and always would be. “Of course I'll never let it all go to waste.”
That said, she soared straight for the darkest of clouds... and pierced them.