It had finally happened.
Of course it had. Naturally. They’d been heading towards the big tipping point for months.
She was only surprised it had taken months.
She sighs deeply, the whispering breath erupting from the very bottom of her chest with a weight, a finality, for reasons somewhat unknown to her.
Sighs changed nothing in the grand scheme of things.
The door around the corner opens and closes and then “Rainbow?” sounds throughout the house, carried on the backs of sound waves, amidst the air currents, like a burden. Rainbow lowers her eyes to the table, to the varieties of reds and browns the late afternoon sun makes of the polished cherry; her eyes follow the growth rings of the wood stretching across the surface handsomely until her attention falls on the dried, sticky ring of coffee from this morning.
She looks up when a chair rasps against the tile floor and meets Rarity’s eyes as the mare settles in the seat across from her. Nods to say hi. Rainbow nods back and then studies, just for a moment, the wetness of Rarity’s lips as she licks them, before traveling up to Rarity’s nose, pink with cold, to her flushed cheeks, and then her eyes that watch Rainbow study her. Her mane is mussed from wind, bits of frost sparkle like crystals among glossy locks. Rainbow wonders why she’d not worn a hat outside.
“How was your day?” Rarity asks her, breezily, casually, with eyes never straying. Rainbow licks her own lips and glances down to the coffee stain like some sort of twitch.
“Good.” And she’s about to echo the question right back when—
“Have dinner with me?”
—and she smiles.
“Of course.”
They’ve been going out more. Friendly, casual, easy, with laughter and long talks about meaningless things, they went on afternoon walks, and lunch, dinner, breakfast outings.
There is a little cafe on the corner of Main and Acorn that they’ve taken to frequenting at least once a week. The other cafe-frequenting-hours of the week were booked by Sugarcube Corner, naturally, but by the third or fourth visit to Bean There Cafe they both agreed that it was better than the iconic gingerbread house monopoly of cafes in their town. Perhaps it was because they had not seen any of their friends there yet, even though Twilight lived only around the next corner of Acorn and Applejack sold her apples on Main.
They’d not breached the topic of their breakup with their friends.
Rainbow lowers her eyes to the coffee stain again and then shakes her head, sinking her teeth into her bottom lip. It was best to not think of the situation she and Rarity had twisted and crammed themselves into. There was not a lot of room between a rock and a hard place to fit the two of them and she was claustrophobic to begin with.
She looks to Rarity now, as out of some sort of natural instinct that automatically sought out the source of one’s thoughts when they were in the same room. Rarity had opened the overhead cabinet and was seeking something out.
“When do you wanna go out?” Rainbow asks. Rarity scoffs lightly, and slams the cabinet closed a little harder than necessary, clearly not finding what she was looking for and peeved about it. She picks up the sponge from its place in the sink. She walks to the table and starts scrubbing at the coffee stain.
“In a moment. I must organize my new purchases in the back,” she mumbles, still scrubbing. Rainbow sighs and takes the sponge from her magic. It would take her more than a ‘moment’ to put away all of her purchases, considering what she’d bought.
“Then I’ll scrub the table and do the dishes while you do that,” she offers. Organizing something would lead Rarity to reorganize everything. Rainbow would finish cleaning the coffee stain, and the dishes, and pack a few things in those boxes there and find her an hour and a half later wondering if she should sort her fabrics by color, name, or texture.
“Yes, like you were supposed to this morning,” Rarity snips, but it is a distracted scold from someone who was already undoubtedly thinking whether she should sort her thread alphabetically, or whatever it was that occupied a mind like Rarity’s.
Rarity disappears behind the corner to where the front door is, and Rainbow drops her gaze back onto the now barely there ring of coffee.
The Bean There Cafe wore its name good and true. Its walls told stories—frozen snippets of places and faces that had a hundred different names and memories of adventures; sometimes they stirred them in others, and Rainbow loves to look at them and make up her own. It’s where her mind finds solace in the yawning time between her and Rarity’s bouts of conversation and trying to ignore that smirking dread that peaks over her shoulder and whispers in her ear. He was a jerk.
The owners of Bean There were old ponies that had seen much and done much and loved to tell about it. Their stories permeated the very air of their cozy little restaurant. The decor was simple and Spartan but not unattractive—a monotone of rich chestnut wood with some sort of a much lighter wood to add a few frivolous flourishes to the tables and chairs. But mostly it was all the same color, and did its true job by drawing all attention to the massive wall covered with photos. It was the only direct mass of color in the entire place, and it stood proud and stunning and irresistible as it drew all eyes to it.
The first few times the two of them had gone here, they’d just stared. It wasn’t until their third visit that they tore their eyes away long enough to actually carry on the barest semblance of a conversation, and even then it was distracted, disinterested.
Rainbow had never thought herself to really care about the experiences and memories of others, but the wall had captivated her in the way that it all had bled together to form a story. How could a pony experience all of what was on that wall in one lifetime? And with a companion, no less. Her eyes had wandered to Rarity. Rarity was notoriously terrible to travel with. The thought made her snort in mirth.
Still, the adventurer in her made her continue to scan that story visit after visit: seeking details and stringing them along into an invisible timeline who’s only hint at existence was the deeper lines of age on the faces of the two main characters.
The sun is on its last slice of sky and savoring it slowly when they settle inside the warm establishment. It paints bronze streaks through the elongated fingers of the trees like a last wave goodbye, bathing the cafe in serene warmth.
They sit in the booth that gives them the best angle at which to look at the wall—and, well, that was the only way that Rainbow could describe the booth they sit at. It was just a booth—with stuffed seats covered by thin old leather that was cracked and peeling but soft to the touch—but it was the booth they’d sat at in all the times they had been there so perhaps it was now ‘their booth’.
Even with her attention and her brow weighed down by so many questions and lack of answers, she cannot help but give the wall a glance that snowballs, lengthens, into a stare. Slow and measured, but distracted nevertheless. Even the wall can’t rive her away from her reservations, her strange moodiness, tonight. She turns from it and picks up the menu.
The menu doesn’t clue one in at all about what the food actually is. The names are instead like the pictures on the walls: snapshots of moments and memories; things like ‘Sunrise on the Ocean of Manehattan’ and ‘A Broken Train in the Unicorn Mountain Range’.
She scans the items, wondrous of their names and the memories behind them. Indecisive, pondering about what dishes they represent. It is nice, just for a second, to be indecisive about such a minor thing as food. She’d been so indecisive about so many things lately that her entire world was starting to feel like a hesitation. Aberrantly precarious.
She runs out of time when the waitress arrives and talks at them with pep. Rainbow doesn’t remember ever seeing her serving in all the times they’ve been here previously, and she stares at the young mare in consideration. She’s probably newly hired.
Rarity asks about something, but Rainbow doesn’t hear her, and when it is her turn to order she glances in a mild panic at the menu and orders the first thing her eyes fall on. The waitress smiles, nods, does the motions of writing down the order, and then looks up and smiles again, straight at her.
It reminds her of Pinkie Pie, and she feels a pang but lifts the corner of her mouth in a responding smirk, ever unable to resist any sort of attention. Especially, well… considering. She looks to Rarity, but only after the waitress leaves.
“I miss Pinkie,” she announces readily, as though to change the subject before Rarity has the chance to scold her for flirting, but mostly because she cannot shake how much she suddenly wants Pinkie around to distract her from all of this.
“She hasn’t written since last time?” Rarity asks gently, concern tugging at her lips.
“No,” Rainbow bemoans, feeling truly miserable on a whole other level, for too many reasons to name. Chief of which being that she’d not spared more than a despondent thought or two about her best friend.
Pinkie’s last letter had been so short and ad rem that Rainbow suspected Maud had written it for her.
“She’s dealing with a lot right now,” Rarity tells her.
But I need her here, Rainbow thinks.
“Yeah, I—I know,” she responds and sinks even deeper into guilt, loneliness. “You think she’s okay?”
“She has her sisters there,” Rarity says. She sounds too unsure and, frankly, distracted, to be of any comfort. “And Silver Shine.”
Rainbow nearly spits, but their drinks arrive and it startles her away from her surge of fury long enough for it to simmer down into general reproach and bitterness over Rarity’s constant preoccupation.
She stews, sipping her drink in unhappiness. Rarity is looking at the picture wall with a sad little frown and a deep furrow to her brow. Minutes tick by. Dash’s gaze wanders from the pictures, to her drink, back to Rarity, back to the waitress. There is a pair sitting in the corner, talking quietly. Dash strains to remember who they are. She’s seen them before. In a town like Ponyville, recognition always teases and skitters on the edge of the mind. Rainbow scowls. She tires of Ponyville. She’s been tired of Ponyville since before she met Twilight, when she used to look down at the humdrum, the clockwork, the average of Ponyville, from Cloudsdale.
Rarity closes her eyes and exhales. “I feel I must tell you something.”
The words do not register right away and neither does the tone. Rainbow is so caught up thinking of Ponyville, thinking of Pinkie, that she nearly forgets the smirking dread at her back until he starts cackling in her ear.
A heavy breath escapes from between her lips. She’d been anticipating this moment for weeks, knowing it was going to come, but wondering on the matter of when: the time, the place, how Rarity would phrase it; how her voice would sound whispering, breathing those words into reality, fruition.
I’ve found someone else.
I’m going to leave you, now.
It’s been wonderful, our time together, and you are someone I will always...
Her apprehension—as she gazed at the soft smiles on Rarity’s lips, the secretive distraction and quiet, longing, impatient looks outside—maddened her into oblivion; mixing sweetly and bitterly, hotly and cooly, with that touch of jealousy that she was undecided about her right in having, but had nevertheless, regardless, all the same.
Her mind serves as the perfect canvas for the pictures of torture, the memories, and she silently counts the nights she’d stayed awake, tossing and turning through endless wonder. She marveled over her fantasies, perfect pictures of her favorite scenarios on repeat. In her most vivid imaginings, her body shivered with the burning cold of a December three years ago, seeing Rarity all bundled up with a hot chocolate between her hooves, sitting on a swing, cheeks red, lips chapped, eyes clear. Seeing Rarity bringing the rim of the cup to her lips, smiling softly at her. And then, in her chest, feeling a kind of burn, an urgency, a longing. It was probably love.
Long into the night she stared at the ceiling, and wondered what Rarity was thinking about, the first time Rainbow fell in love with her.
The clock ticks, and Dash knows she’s kept her waiting for an answer long enough. Rarity was looking at her expectantly.
“I think I know what you’re going to say,” she whispers, and Rarity’s eyes flash with an emotion that is such a magnificent jumble of feelings that she can’t identify all of them and is too tired to even try.
“We both knew it was going to happen soon,” Rarity says, almost defensive, nearly haughty, but also kind, apologetic, like she cannot decide on her sentiments about the entire situation.
Dash is not sure what she’s feeling, but something surfaces inside of her, ready to rage. Deep, guttural urges, pushing adrenaline, demanding force. She wants nothing more than to slam her hooves against something, brace the hard smash that would follow. There’s an awful pressure in her chest, a sick coil in her gut, and the sudden feeling spooks her into sitting carefully frozen for at least a minute.
But the feeling doesn’t die away much; she’s still buzzing with it when Rarity levels her with another expectant look. It makes her all the more agitated, those impatient looks that box her into a conversation when all she wants to do is storm out of the restaurant and, fly away, or something.
Save some face, you’ve only got one, she reminds herself when she feels her jaw lock and clench, her wings stiffen and rise in anticipation.
Drops, trickles of reality, fall to the table at which they sit. Her mistakes with Rarity rise before her like a deep-rooted fallacy climbing limb to limb.
Wasn’t owning up to your mistakes the first step to redemption? Too late, as always, she thinks. Her pride, of course, was to blame. She’d willingly let it go this far and now it truly was too late and she would pay for it sweetly.
“I didn’t know it was going to happen soon,” she says. “Was I supposed to expect it?”
Rarity pauses, and then a familiar look creases her brow and makes her cheeks flush. “Well,” she sniffs, all the grandiose scandalized contempt of high society wrapped up in one word like a neat package of disapproval. “Just because you no longer find my company enjoyable—”
“Rare,” Rainbow moans, feeling a throbbing in that place between her brows. Rarity cuts herself off, shooting her a look demanding she make it better and fast. “Sorry,” Rainbow sighs, “I just didn’t know you were... looking.” She can’t help but put an emphasis on that awful word, can’t help but let a wince slip onto her face for just a moment.
Rarity catches it and her cheeks flush again. Her ears splay. She looks away, and then back. “Apologies, dear, I…” she lets the air hang silent for a moment. “I wasn’t. Looking, that is. I would never…” her eyes fill with a haunting, apologetic pain. “I would never go out of my way to hurt you, Rainbow.”
Her pride nags at her like a pestering child, and she blinks away the haze in her eyes, swallows the ache in her throat.
Stupid, she thinks weakly, you asked for this, didn’t you?
She did. Not in so many words, but...
Well.
She bites her tongue, too emotive to unscramble her feelings.
“Can we go?” Her voice cracks embarrassingly, as it always seemed to in the worst of moments.
“Of course,” Rarity breathes and calls for the check, though their food had not even been given to them.
The first blast of frigid November air on her neck does nothing to calm the rock of emotion in her throat. She chews on her tongue, stalks ahead of Rarity a few paces. The clothes are heavy on her back and feel constricting, though her wings are unburdened and the jacket she wears is loose.
She cannot breathe. For a second she flounders, gasping shallow breaths that hurt her throat, but with a roll of her eyes resolves the instinctual panic with a few breathing exercises. She’d long since learned not to be so skittish. No time for it, really. Not the time for it, now.
She turns her head a few degrees in acknowledgement when Rarity approaches her. She works her jaw, thinking that maybe she should explain rushing into the night ahead of her so suddenly. She decides Rarity knows her well enough to not require that particular explanation.
She finds herself wondering what Rarity does and doesn’t know about her; what does and doesn’t need to be explained to her. She winces, thinks that maybe some of her past actions and heated words had needed to be clarified after all and she’d just blown them off because she thought Rarity knew her well enough.
How many times had Rainbow simply said the words ‘I’m sorry’ to her? Was it too little too late, and not enough? She was always squeamish about words, because what did they accomplish? She’d always been a mare of action. Yet how many times had Rarity hid her pain when she realized that an apology or explanation was not forthcoming? A night of apologetic sex, or a surprise visit in the middle of the day with Rarity’s favorite lunch. Her roundabout ways of apologizing. Cowardly and proud at the same time. It must have gotten old, quick. It must have.
She frowns, tsks, realizes that she’s questioning everything about their relationship. Even things she’d held onto so steadily their entire time together, she begins to doubt. She hates what this relationship has made her; hates how it’s changed her without her permission. Made her care, made her doubt, made her vulnerable.
Why? She wants to scream. Why are you leaving me? Who are you leaving me for? What do they have that I don’t?
“What are you thinking about?” Rarity murmurs. They’d been standing in the strong breeze for several minutes and she was probably cold.
Rainbow wraps a wing around the unicorn, fighting the voice in her head that says they’d not touched so familiarly in weeks and that perhaps it was not appropriate anymore.
She snorts softly in exasperation. Who cares, as long as Rarity wasn’t complaining.
Rarity doesn’t, stepping closer to her so that their flanks and bellies brush.
Rainbow takes a breath and brings herself to the present. It is unnatural and perhaps unhealthy that she can push things away so easily. Ignore them.
“I was thinking,” Rainbow drawls in a voice that’s light and teasing, as if she was dangling the revelation of her thoughts above Rarity’s head like candy. Pause for dramatic effect she used to giggle to herself in situations like this. The words almost slip out now, for some reason. “That it is a lovely evening to take a stroll with a lovely unicorn; and, lucky me, I seemed to have found one right here.”
The words make her blench on the inside. Of course she was not going to tell Rarity what she was really thinking, but waxing poetic and delivering such an uncharacteristic line like that was downright suspicious. Where did that even come from?
Rarity narrows her eyes. “As appealing as that sounds—”
“Just walk with me, Rarity,” Rainbow interrupts her softly, the idea sounding verily appealing suddenly, and not just to get out of answering Rarity’s earlier question. The cold wind clears her head.
“Very well,” Rarity sighs begrudgingly after a moment. “It is a nice evening.”
They start walking and only the wind converses with them. Shh, it breathes through the scraping of leaves on the sidewalk and the rustling of bare branches above them. And so they don’t speak. The world hangs in the delicate balance between the dying embers of fall and the blank white sheet of winter. Light snow falls: the good, sticky kind you can make snowballs with, the kind that crunches louder under the hoof. Orange and bronze tinted leaves barely hang from the scarce trees. Discolored bark that’s been warped and shaped over the years displays weathered bruises proudly, and, in a way, she admires the courage. Here among the beginnings of winter, the most harsh of seasons, the trees have lost their camouflage; yet the leaves always come back every year just as thick, just as vibrant and alive.
She wants herself to be made of the same bravery. She wants to turn Rarity towards her, demand an explanation on what she did wrong, beg what she could do to fix it.
Of course, she knows that the trees have no choice but to face the abuse of time so bravely as they do. She wonders if brave ponies also had no choice but to be brave. She wonders what a brave pony would do in a situation like this.
They pass a playground and Rainbow stops and she stares and the stars align themselves. Among the cracked dried rubber of the swings and their rusty chains she finds her courage within a memory. She steers Rarity towards it wordlessly.
The old, red-dyed chips of bark that act as the mulch of the playground are soggy with snow; they wedge themselves uncomfortably in her hoofs, crowding her frog. There’s snow on the swings, too, and just about anywhere that’s a horizontal surface.
Rainbow dusts the cool powder off with a wing and when she sits on the swing some more falls off the top bar and catches her on the nose. Rarity giggles and brushes it off, taking the swing immediately next to Rainbow’s.
They sit in silence for a while, before Rainbow exhales a breath that she could now see. The night was only getting older and colder, and so were they. Rarity was sitting beside her patiently, not even asking her about their detour and Rainbow knows that Rarity would sit with her here all night, in the cold, without rushing her for answers or questions.
“I don’t deserve you,” Rainbow sighs. It just barely slips past her constricted chest and around her knotted throat, and she turns away when Rarity knits her brows in confusion. “I never did and I never have.”
Rarity says nothing; maybe because she knows that Rainbow is going somewhere with this and is letting her get it all out. Maybe, because she agrees with her.
“It’s true,” she says, as if Rarity had offered up an argument. Rainbow looks around. “Do you remember when we shared those hot chocolates here? It was like our... third date? I…” She frowns, nose scrunching up. The memory makes her want to cry. Maybe that was her problem; she hasn’t cried about anything in a very, very long time. “Well, it doesn’t really matter, now. You remember, right?”
Rarity nods.
“I think I fell in love with you then. In that moment.” Rainbow closes her eyes, something like a flinch marring her face. Letting go of the words and the secret does nothing to the bolder on her heart. She coughs out an awkward laugh because Rarity still says nothing. “Like I said, doesn’t matter now. I should have let you know when it happened. But I was a coward.”
And she still was. About so many things.
“Rarity,” she croaks after a breath. Her ears pin themselves to her skull. “Who... Who is it?”
Stars, she really needs a good cry. And Pinkie. She needs to cry, with Pinkie. Pinkie had worn a poker face, a dry one, the entire time they’d been with her in her hometown. It was scary and unhealthy and unusual, and Rainbow really should have insisted to stay behind with Pinkie harder.
“Does it matter?” Rarity counters gently after such a long pause that Rainbow had almost forgotten what question of hers Rarity was answering.
“Why don’t you want to tell me? I can take the news. Is it…” She swallows thickly. “Is it one of the girls?”
Rarity stares at her for a long time; so long that Rainbow almost loses her nerve and tells her to forget about it. The wind rustles the chains of the spare swings. Drop this, they groan and squeak against the rusty top bar.
“No,” Rarity finally says. “It’s not any of our friends. It’s not even a mare, and you do not know him. That is all I will say about the subject.”
“That…” Rainbow breathes. It was more than she had hoped for, more than she was prepared to receive. “May have been too much, actually. A... stallion?”
“You know I am partial to both genders,” Rarity says with a raised brow. “I distinctly remember you pouting for two days straight when I informed you.”
“It wasn’t two days.”
“And no, it doesn’t mean that I wanted a change of sexual partners or... devices.”
Sometimes Rarity knew her insecurities all too well. Rainbow frowns, decidedly guilty and disgusted with herself for even letting her mind stray in the direction.
“Well, duh, of course you didn’t. I’m the best at sex,” she preens, but her security blanket sounds as forced as it is. Arrogance was more a reflex than anything now; an attempt at humor. Rarity had long since seen through it and realized it was never there to begin with.
“Have you ever heard me complain?”
No, Rainbow thinks with a small, halfhearted smirk. Not unless more, yes, and right there had been complaints all this time—in which case she gave up because how was a mare supposed to find her way through those kind of mixed signals?
Rainbow sighs. It is truly very cold now. She could detect a slight tremor behind Rarity’s voice.
She stands from the swing and offers her hoof to Rarity, and then the warmth of her wing. Neither is refused.
She scoffs, the noise of her sneer coming out as a soft, snorting click from the back of her throat. It breaks up the absolute silence of the room so jarringly that it feels as though she shatters something, and jolts the world out of its dream. Suddenly, she can hear the wind; the subtle shifts of the boutique’s wood as it protests the cold dryness of the season and argues with the gale; the bits of frost peppering the window as the breeze kicks them up from the piles of snow outside.
The night is too dark and too quiet, even still. The silk sheets don’t breathe enough for her and the winter duvet on her body is too heavy, too hot, too repressing and she’s just, just, too restless to let sleep take her.
Her leg twitches in a rhythmic dance. Her wings flex, stretch, tremble: unsure on what reaction they should be performing based on the torrents of scrambled emotions flowing through her. They almost start a slow flap to release some of her agitation before she consciously forces them to stop and folds them so tightly to her sides that they start to ache their protests.
The bed shifts and she freezes.
“Sorry,” she whispers, just loud enough to be heard by one who is awake and not by one who is sleeping. She cannot tell which one Rarity is, but wouldn’t be surprised if her squirming had woken Rarity up.
Seconds later Rarity sighs and she gets her answer to Rarity’s wakefulness when a chuckle follows the quiet exhale.
“Sorry,” Rainbow apologizes again in a voice that’s a strange, croaky low tone somewhere between a murmur and full whisper. She tries to not offend the night and its quiet more than she already has.
“No harm done,” Rarity responds, and she pulls off the low tone that Rainbow adapts with considerably less croakyness. “As it turns out, I’ve shared a bed with a pegasus for far too long to be bothered by twitching and thrashing.”
Then why are you awake? Rainbow wonders, the voice inside her head carrying bitterness as if she’s accusing Rarity of something.
There was a time when she would not have hesitated to say the words. Would not have hesitated to confront Rarity the moment she recognized the signs of a hidden paramour. The need tugs at her yet, but even if she wants to, she cannot.
She forfeited the right to act possessive, three months ago and counting. It would be a jerk move to make a scene when Rarity had been so apologetic, so hesitant to hurt her in the revelation of the secret. So brave to reveal it without prompt or accusation on Rainbow’s own part.
Then why can she not sleep, herself?
“What troubles you?” Rarity whispers, as if reading her thoughts. Rainbow wonders if that kind of intuition would ever leave Rarity; if Rainbow would always be an open book for the other mare to read. It’s familiar and welcoming. Infringing and unsettling. In their relationship it made communication easier, but out of it…?
“A lot,” Rainbow admits, because she has no choice. Rarity would stay up all night with her, silent and patient but asking so much with her quiet thereness and support until Rainbow broke down and told her. She can’t fly away either—the last time she’d done that, well…
“Pinkie?”
“Yeah,” she breathes, startled away from memories that threaten to bring a hint of something other than a frown to her face. Nowadays, Pinkie is not far from any of their minds. She breathes in, gathers air. “I… want to be with her right now. We all do. I can’t shake the thought that she needs us and it feels like I can’t… like we can’t...”
“She sent us away,” Rarity reminds her gently, and it’s true. “She needs the time to mourn with her family and settle the affairs of her father’s estate.”
Loyalty squirms and claws at her. A nervous tightness in the gut, an unspecific feeling of things being not quite right. A plucking in her head, lost to the other tug-of-wars that drive her and torment her. Being away from Pinkie in her time of need is like a physical ache, a festering wound. Perish the thought that Pinkie needed her and Rainbow was not there. Her eyes sting.
“It’s not fair,” Rainbow whispers through her choked throat. None of this was fair.
“I know,” Rarity soothes.
Dash almost scoffs again. What could she possibly know?
She was part of the problem.
Her ears fold back with threatened defensiveness and she sneers into the dark, lupine, before she realizes what she is doing. She forces the feeling back, away, swallows it down her throat and eases her muscles slowly, carefully, the way she does to adjust herself during flight.
“Talk to me,” Rarity begs when Rainbow relaxes.
“I’m fine.” She needs Rarity to leave her alone.
“You’ve been tense and angry for weeks.”
Had she? A frown mars her face and then grows deeper, more defined. A scowl.
Could she be anything else? So much had been going wrong.
I’m surprised that you even noticed
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she sneers. “It’s not like my mare friend is leaving me or anything.”
It feels good to burst the door to the core issue open, finally. They’d been peeking from behind that door for far too long like foals not ready to face the music; all the while knowing that they messed up and there was no hiding. It feels good to swagger in on her own terms, like the adult she was.
Rarity is silent, her aura muted. Dash can’t see her face, it’s too dark and the ceiling isn’t a mirror.
Hesitating or shocked? Angry? Guilty? All at once and more?
Probably all at once, though she has no right to be anything but guilty.
Rarity inhales through the nose, exhales from the mouth. Rainbow’s heard that sort of exaggerated, methodical breathing from her father many times in her childhood. Trying to keep his temper in check.
Dash faces her. Turns her head on the pillow, looks at her. Rarity stares at the ceiling that Dash’s eyes have just abandoned. She wonders if their eyes had switched places, if Rarity has been looking at her the entire time that Dash has been looking up.
Rarity is as composed as ever. Does nothing bother her? How cold she is. An ice queen. How beautiful. Unbelievably so—right before her.
“Do I need to remind you what you said at the resort? What we both said?” Her voice is controlled and low. It sounds like she’s deflecting. It sounds like she’s excusing herself.
It feels like she has a point, and it makes Dash all the more furious and justified.
“No. Do I need to remind you? What happened to not wanting anyone else to have me? So, I should stay single forever while you go—”
Rarity twists her head to meet Dash’s eyes. Some of that composure has slipped away. It hangs on a thread. Dash cannot recall the last time she saw her so vexed. It makes her happy.
“Enough,” Rarity spits.
“No,” Rainbow’s voice shakes; anger and desire and adrenalin make it unstable. It’s not unpleasant. Giddy, with a certain piquant of belligerence to keep herself sharp. She loves arguments like these, where she holds all the cards. “I think we’ve been ignoring it too long.”
“You would know all about ignoring large relationship issues,” Rarity fires back, kind of stealing Dash’s thunder but not really. Rarity always was the better speaker. She had significantly more ammunition to fire in these wars.
“And you would know about bringing up past mistakes every time we fight.”
Rarity doesn’t respond. She breathes deeply again, and shifts in bed, sitting up and illuminating the bedroom, candle by candle. Dash grows nervous, camouflage removed. It is easier to argue in the dark, where she cannot see the way her anger chips and hacks at Rarity.
All those years of therapy for nothing, she thinks gloomily, and then shrugs mentally. Anger will always be the one thing she can rely on. Especially now that she doesn’t have Rarity anymore.
Rarity levels her with an expectant look, eyebrows drawn together and lips thin. Her mane falls around her in curtains, wild waves. A pissed off goddess with sharp, cutting eyes.
“Very well. You want to do this? Then let us do it properly. I know you’re hurt and angry and need something to relieve yourself of it, so do go ahead. Let us get it out of the way so that we can both go back to sleep.”
Dash’s eyes flit away when Rarity tries to meet them. She makes it hard to stay angry. She knows Dash far too well. Perhaps it is best that they split. Hadn’t they already?
“Well?” Rarity says, a calm challenge.
“Did you really mean the things you said?” Rainbow asks, and hates that her voice doesn’t sound as angry or annoyed as she feels. “At the resort?”
Rarity is silent for a long time. Why does she keep hesitating for so long to answer these ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions? Dash bites the inside of her cheek, glares through the window at nothing. She wants to look at Rarity but Rarity is still looking at her.
“Yes, I meant them,” Rarity says slowly, as if voicing it to herself as well as Rainbow.
Rainbow licks her lips, nods. What was she even expecting?
“Did you?” Rarity counters.
“Yes,” Dash snaps, and sees Rarity raise an eyebrow at her from her peripheral vision. “...I don’t know.” She looks at the burning candle on the nightstand. Frustration rises in her with the inability to put feelings into words. “I mean, I did, at the time, but now—I don’t know.”
“Won’t you look at me?” Rarity says, irritated.
And look at everything I can’t have? Everything I’m about to lose?
Rainbow looks at her, and then looks away again, back to the candle.
Rarity burns like the sun. Magnetic, the absence of cold in the summer; a hypocritical bitch at the turn of the season. It hurts to keep the eyes on her for more than a second.
“Why are you picking a fight over this? It’s been months, and I thought we walked away from the situation with a mutual understanding.”
“A ‘mutual understanding’? That wasn’t a business deal, Rarity, that was our relationship—three years of our lives—down the drain.”
“We were miserable by the end of it! And you’re still miserable, because I chose to be happy.”
The candles flick and flick and melt and melt. Eerie shadows on the walls from the branches of the trees wave with the help of the wind. The clock tower on the outskirts of town rings midnight.
Rarity breaks away from their stare down and tsks. “You’re being a foal, Rainbow Dash.”
“You’re being a selfish bitch.”
Rarity pauses, fury tightening her features for a moment. Then she rolls her eyes, squints them. “Oh, let’s not start trading petty jibes and name calling like foals. You’re proving my point.”
“Goddesses, why am I even here?” Rainbow groans, covering her eyes with a foreleg. Why is she here? They’d been broken up for months—or, something like it, at least—and yet here they are, night after night, sharing the same bed and going to restaurants as though nothing has changed. It was better, even, than the last year they’d been together.
Rarity has no response to that. Perhaps this is the first time she’s thought of it, too. What a strange predicament they’ve found themselves in. Was it fear of moving on? No, nothing like that. Rarity had obviously no qualms about finding someone else.
“Do you want to leave? Nothing is stopping you.”
“I’ve been trying to leave for months,” Rainbow says, and then wonders how Rarity has forgotten all the boxes downstairs. The ones in this room.
Silence strains against her ears. Rarity doesn’t respond, doesn’t respond, doesn’t respond. Once, Rainbow thinks she hears a preparatory breath, but it is probably just the hiss of the heat coming on because the quiet goes unbothered as it hardens around them like ice. She wants to look at Rarity, but doesn’t dare. Her anger simmers like a predator sinking into the bushes; a cautious doe of guilt wanders from the underbrush of her mind. Is this really how they were going to end things?
“I never said you had to leave,” Rarity whispers. She seems in turmoil, her statements mere minutes apart but contradicting. Rainbow raises an eyebrow.
“We’re not together anymore, and you’ve got your—” She waves a hoof in the air, searching for wording. Was it boo or beau? “—whatever he is, now,” she says lamely. “I wouldn’t want to intrude.”
“He and I are hardly at the point in our relationship for cohabitation.” Rarity dismisses.
Cohabitation? Rainbow almost snorts. She bites her lip, gut twisting, suddenly aware of a precarious balance, as if the room, and the pair of them, stood on the edge of a knife. They slowly bled, every drop the sound of a grenade. She’s not sure which side to tip them to to make the misery stop. She’s not sure if one is better or worse, somehow, than the other. She doesn’t even know what the two sides are or why she’s become aware of this tension. Perhaps she is paranoid, overtired, stressed by the entire situation. Perhaps Rarity is, too. Why hasn’t Dash left yet?
She sighs. Sighs changed nothing in the grand scheme of things. These games they played had to stop. Evasions in the name of discomfort, evasions in the name of tact.
Cowardice.
“I don’t want to leave,” she pleads, like she is young again and her father is dragging her out of her first Wonderbolts show. But daaad…
Rarity kisses her. The tension in the room reaches a zenith, screaming like a boiling teapot. It’s awkward, with clanging teeth and surprise that takes the air from Dash’s lungs. Was this some sort of cue Rarity was waiting for? What the hell?
Rainbow breaks the kiss, bewildered. She licks her lips, searching for her bearings. What the hell? Her anger pounces out of the bushes but she catches it, pets it, calms it, let’s it go. Her heart races. Rarity should’ve known by now, surely, to not startle or surprise a pegasus.
Rarity is hovering above her patiently, eyes more clear and decisive than they’ve been for a long time—almost a year.
She pauses.
Ah.
She pushes the thought of death and tombstones away. Her heart is still racing, Rarity still pins her down with patient expectation, but this is good, this is progress; more than they’ve made in the last month.
Rainbow’s head leaves the pillow, slowly raising to return the kiss.
It feels like coming home after years of not being there. Finding little details and new additions. Missing the things that are not the same as they were in the rose-colored memories of youth. A neighbor has moved, a favorite ice-cream shop has closed down. A strange disjointed feeling mixing with the satisfaction of finding that something you like hasn’t changed. The discomfort of realizing that everything has changed, and the area that was once your kingdom has moved on without you.
She keeps it careful, languid, inchoate. Rarity isn’t needy, isn’t pushy, her weight a mere suggestion over Rainbow’s, her lips a feather. Rainbow draws the kiss out: gets comfortable, starts to pick up and rebuild the thousands of pieces that her trust has been shattered into. One slices into her hoof like a slap. She drops them again.
Has she kissed him this way? Has she—
Rainbow breaks the kiss again. Rarity looks at her in puzzlement, framed by the gold of candle glow. Goddesses, she’s an angel. The world should bow down to her. Rainbow’s eyes sting.
“Have you slept with him?” She whispers. Rarity’s eyes go wide, swollen lips parting. She shakes her head.
“No,” she says.
She’s lying.
Rainbow doesn’t think she is. She studies Rarity carefully. No, no, she isn’t. Would it matter if she was?
“Okay.”
“Okay…?”
Rainbow joins their mouths again, slow and thorough now. Rarity exhales through her nose, a long, hissing release of air ending on a hitch and moan when Dash sucks on her tongue.
She puts her hooves in Rarity’s mane, guides her to lay down, switches their positions, takes the lead from its unassumed place between them. Her thoughts race, her head pounds with blood.
This isn’t right.
She stomps on the thought like a cigarette butt, grinds it into the ground before it starts a wildfire.
She strokes Rarity’s tongue with her own, breaks away to suck the area under her jaw. Rarity makes breathy pants, quiet giggles. Celestia, how long had it been since Rarity had laughed because of her?
“Don’t leave a mark,” she whispers, smile in her voice, squirming under Dash’s weight but hugging her closer, exposing her neck more. She sounds carefree, unburdened by the doubts and demons that make Rainbow flightless.
This isn’t right.
Dash grits her teeth, but pulls away nevertheless. All the way, away. She drops to her hunches on the end of the bed, scowls down at the duvet. Damn her conscience.
“What’s wrong?” Rarity whispers. Dash looks to her, finds her sitting halfway up, all gentle concern and flushed cheeks.
She shakes her head. “I can’t do this.”
The more she thinks about it, the more her anger stirs again. What was Rarity even trying to accomplish by doing some dumb crap like this? Why had Dash even fallen for it? Rarity could probably plead the ‘only exception’ case, but Loyalty wouldn’t let her be flattered by the privilege. Cheating was cheating was cheating.
“Are you for real?” She sighs. She’s so tired of being angry, but it seems to be the only emotion she can call upon readily. An all-encompassing reaction to years of suppression and emotional immaturity, her therapist had said. Her therapist could go to hell.
Rarity sits all the way up, turns her gaze away from Rainbow, to the candles. She looks crushed, indecisive, fearful, bottom lip held tightly in her teeth.
Dash studies her. Here sat the culmination of her adult life; the damnation of her future. Her tears and regrets, her smiles and bliss. Her shelter from the storm. The tide that wanted to carry her away from shore and drown her.
The gears start to shift into place. The weight of increased numbers, the curve of definition, the blatancy of a pronounced manifestation—she feels it in the hollow of her chest; changing the atmosphere, changing her. Finally, for the first time in nearly a year, hope stops sinking in the quicksand. It finds purchase, hauls itself up. Her smile gradually reaches her again and they reunite like old friends. Rarity wants her. Wants her enough, apparently, to cheat on whatever-his-name-is. It means he’s expendable, unimportant. It means Dash has a chance.
“Leave him,” she breathes. She feels like she’s flying: adrenaline, excitement, belonging. She can hear her pulse in her ears. Her chest rises and falls steadily. Rarity meets her eyes, slowly shakes her head. “Don’t be a coward, Rare, c’mon. Leave him. Let’s try again.” Her voice shakes, excited and high. She’s just won the BYF competition. She’s just been named captain of the Wonderbolts, captain of the Royal Guard. She is unstoppable, undeniable. Rarity is everything. She is the stars, the moon, the sun, the air and sky. And maybe she was a coward, and maybe Dash was too, but not anymore. “I love you.”
And still Rarity says nothing, gives her no indication. Dash scoots herself to sit right in front of her, takes her hoof, waits for Rarity to meet her eyes.
Rarity does, but shakes her head again immediately. “Rainbow…” she sighs, like she is tired, like they’d been over this a thousand times.
“Rarity.”
“Don’t do this.”
“I’m doing it.” Rarity turns her head away again, but Rainbow catches it and cups it, brings it back. Rarity’s eyes are sapphires in the candlelight. They plead with her, but she shakes her head. “No, listen to me. Please.” She licks her lips, waits. Rarity sighs and sets her jaw. You’ve got one minute, her gaze says. “I was an idiot. At the resort. I was desperate, I guess. I’ve never been good at gambling, no matter how many times Pinks and ‘Jack teach me. I put all my chips into a hand I couldn’t win.” Luna, talking was hard, and boring. Showing was out of the question, though. Dash gathers air, gathers her thoughts. She couldn’t afford to let her mind get into tangents.
“And then when it failed I panicked. Or, gave up, I guess. You weren’t giving me squat to work with. And then you started talking about how you didn’t love me anymore.” She stops herself again, exhales quietly. This was difficult, more difficult than she thought it would be. “So, ya know, screw me, right? But whatever, sure, I don’t love you either. And I don’t want to waste three more years of my life finding somepony else. I’d rather stay where I am, with who I’m with—with you.”
There were so many other things she could say. Things she probably should say. Better things. Romantic things. Things right out of those cheesy novels she sometimes saw on Rarity’s nightstand. Things that made her squirm and roll her eyes from sheer mawkishness.
Rarity could wield words like iron and weave them like filament. Dash couldn’t. She wonders if Rarity’s little colt toy could. Most likely. He could probably quote volumes of poems from memory.What light through doth window breaks…
Whatever.
Rarity sighs again. “Why didn’t you tell me this weeks ago, months ago?”
Why hadn’t she, indeed.
“Would it have even made a difference?”
“Probably.”
But you gave up. You chose easy. You stopped fighting.
She swallows thickly, counts out a rhythm in her head, calming herself down. She feels sick.
“It can still make a difference,” she says, her confidence of before spiderwebbing with cracks.
“Dash...”
No. She was tired of being malleable. She was tired of being vulnerable and unsure. She felt cheated. Love was about give and take. She felt like she gave too much; like she was no longer herself but rather an extension of Rarity. Was that supposed to happen? It was a terrifying realization, a terrifying state of being, when your literal other half was disengaging, quitting, uncoupling.
No.
She pulls away from Rarity, takes to the air. The sheets flutter under the force of her flapping. The candle flames flinch away but stay burning, soldiering through the night.
“Why did you kiss me a minute ago, then?” She demands. “Stop lying. Stop being a coward. Stop being stubborn, thinking you’re righteous. You want me. You love me. You’re settling, and taking the easy way out. So stop it, and listen to what I’m saying.”
She brings herself back to the bed smoothly, though she wants to continue hovering. Rarity says nothing, stares at her, attention finally monopolized. Surprised, probably, by Rainbow’s physical outburst, of which there were no longer many.
“Okay, Rainbow. I’m listening,” she says slowly after a while.
“I love you,” Dash says again, as if it is the pinnacle of all reasoning. The ship, the boatman, that would pull them through the storm. “Do you understand that? I’m not just saying it, just to say it, or get you into bed. That part is easy, ‘cause you’re mine. You’ll always come back to me, and I’ll always let you in; ‘cause I’m yours. And we fight for weeks, and I ignore you for days for stupid reasons, and you’re stubborn and sneaky-selfish, and I’m self-centered and just, angry, still, because of her.” She inhales, wants to cry, wants to vomit, wants to smash something. She exhales, focuses on Rarity instead. Rarity, Rarity, Rarity. “But I’ve never felt this way, and I’m never going to feel this way again. Neither are you, and you know it. So end it with him and let's try again. I’ll be better this time. We’ll be better this time.”
She wants to add an I Promise, but hesitates. Loyalty wouldn’t let her forget it if she did; she would be honor bound to do it. Could she even be better? She didn’t know how. She’d taken three years of Rarity’s life, broken her heart more times than any heart but Rarity’s could stand to be broken. Fought with her. Ignored her. Put her second to her own needs. And now Rarity was leaving and still Rainbow thought of herself first and wanted to throw a fit about it. But something had to give; she didn’t know what she would be without this, without Rarity.
She thinks if only the world could hear the sounds of heartbreak, or see the scars among what’s left of one’s pride, perhaps she’d know how to be better. Be just a little more careful.
It was high time for her to grow up. The idea terrified her.
“I swear on my father’s grave,” she adds quietly. She wouldn’t swear it on her’s. “I’ll try to make you happy. I’ll try to make us work.”
Trying was the only thing she knew she could do.
Rarity sighs, opens her mouth, shuts it again; winces, closes her eyes. Her throat bobs with a swallow.
“Okay,” she says, her voice tipping this way and that, hoarse and throaty, like she’d been crying now for days.
And Rainow feels something hot on her own cheek.