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// Chapter 4: Salad and Hors d'Oeuvres 
// Story: Fifteen Dinners 
// by Quill Scratch 
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It took Rainbow Dash a few minutes to build up the courage to knock, and that wasn’t something she was proud of.
“One moment dear!” Rarity’s voice rang out clear as day, reassuring and frightening all at once. Rainbow realised she was trembling and began to tremble all the more. She was fighting to maintain a straight face, to keep the tears that threatened to well up in the corners of her eyes at bay. Her teeth were clenched tightly together, her breaths slow and controlled even though they still managed to shudder as much as her legs. She wasn’t ready.
The door was soon surrounded by a pale blue aura, glowing and shimmering as it was pulled inwards. Rarity stood, not one metre away from her, her forced smile soon fading to a look of worry and (to Rainbow’s shame) pity.
“Rainbow,” she said, quietly, her tone dropping as she shed her frilly verbosity. “Are you sure you want to…”
“No,” Rainbow interrupted, surprised to hear how small her voice was. She’d thought she was ready for this. “B-but I have to. Don’t I?”
Rainbow Dash had never felt so desperate, so hopeless, so alone as she did in that moment. It was beyond everything she thought she knew about herself to plead so openly for reassurance, for the comfort of another pony’s opinion—no, their approval. Rainbow Dash was not a pony who sought approval; she demanded it.
“You don’t have to do anything you’re not ready for,” Rarity said, and Rainbow could hear how she skirted around the issue at hand, how she made the question not one of duty but of personal needs. But this was not an issue about what Rainbow was ready for, no matter how much she may wish it to be: this was an issue of what Scootaloo needed.
Rarity’s tone made it hard to be mad at her, though; when Rainbow would usually have snapped, Rarity was calm and controlled and had even dropped her over-friendly, zealous use of flowery words. She sounded less fake without them, though Rainbow felt immediately guilty for thinking it.
“No, I…” Rainbow began, before her own voice cut her off with a single spasm of her lungs, a deep, cavernous sob. Her eyes widened in surprise for a moment, mirroring Rarity’s, before closing as she bit her lip and shook her head. “I… I do have to do this.”
She opened her eyes to see Rarity nodding lightly, concerned and uncertain.
“Perhaps you could do with a few minutes to clean yourself up?” Rarity asked, and for the first time Rainbow felt the cold dampness on her cheeks where her battle for dignity had been lost some time before. She nodded carefully and Rarity stepped aside, indicating with her hoof that Rainbow should enter the boutique.
Upstairs, away from the noises of laughter and wanton destruction below her, Rainbow stepped into the bathroom and, locking the door, made her way over to the sink. She stared at her reflection for a moment: damp trails ran down her cheeks, and still more moisture clung to the lower lids of her eyes, which were themselves red and bloodshot. She was shaking, her coat was messy and her mane unkempt, but what made her reflection unbearable was her expression: a cold look of hopelessness and desperation and pain.
She couldn’t let Scootaloo see her like this.
Wiping her tears away with the side of her hoof, violently and angrily, she tried to calm her breathing in the hopes that it might relax her expression. She filled the sink with cold water, so cold it was not refreshing but numbing to the touch. Dipping her hoof in the water, she let her foreleg saturate, quickly losing any feeling in it. Part of Rainbow’s mind wondered what it would be like to fill a bathtub with water like this and to simply submerge herself in it—would she lose all feeling? Would she be able to feel the weight that hung itself on her heart and dragged her down, slowing her every movement and making each day feel empty and joyless? Or would the weight pin her down to the tub, holding her under as the water consumed her?
Rainbow’s eyes widened as the gravity of what she had just thought occurred to her. Of course, that kind of thought was not uncommon to her, but she certainly had never given those thoughts any time—she couldn’t have seriously just considered that, had she?
She hadn’t wanted it. It was just an idea. A terrible, bad, awful idea and she was a bad pony for even thinking that in the first place, so bad she probably deserved it if it did happen and she hadn’t considered it, not then and not now and not ever because her friends needed her. Scootaloo needed her. She hadn’t wanted it, except in the brief moment that she had.
She lifted her numb hoof to her face, shivers flooding down her spine. She hadn’t realised her heart had been beating so loudly until it slowed, its thundering beats quieting. She repeated the motion, wiping at her face, the cold refreshing her and wiping away the sense of pain and worry and fear that had so thrown her. A nagging thought probed at the back of her mind, but Rainbow forcefully ignored it.
Drying her face and her hooves, slowly feeling the numbness fade from her limbs as they warmed, she lowered the towel mid-wipe and took another look at her reflection. Her coat and mane could probably have done with brushing, but since she never really cared all that much for haircare she thought doing so now would probably cause unnecessary worry to those who knew her best. Her eyes looked less puffy now, the moisture gone from them and the colour drained; Rainbow smiled at that and, though it did nothing to raise the weight on her heart, was pleased with how much more alive she looked than when she first came in.
She blinked and shook her head, forcing herself to focus on the feel of the marble beneath her hooves, the cold, hard, smooth surface with its finely polished tiles and immaculate shine seeming distant, but somehow soothing.
Slowly, Rainbow walked to the door, pulling the latch open and nudging the door ajar. Tentatively she poked her muzzle through the gap into the hallway. Nopony was there—Rarity had long since gone back downstairs, and she could hear the fashionista’s clear voice from up here, light and carefree. A deeper, earthier tone responded and, though Rainbow couldn’t quite make out the sounds themselves, the tone was unmistakably Applejack’s.
The laughter she heard earlier was still ringing loudly through the house, as the sounds that could only be the Cutie Mark Crusaders tugged all the harder on Rainbow’s heart. She was pretty sure she could hear Sweetie Belle’s melodic voice calling out rhythmically, as the other two fillies’ voices faded to a hush. She closed her eyes and steeled herself, trying to remember when she had last been this nervous—though she wasn’t yet curled up in a ball, Rainbow wasn’t even sure that the Best Young Flyer competition, or even the night she had asked Twilight out had been nearly half as frightening as this night.
Opening her eyes, feeling less confident than she ought to have been, she forced herself forward, one step at a time. The door slid along her sides as she slipped her way slowly out of the bathroom, freezing as she heard hoofsteps on the stairs. Moments later, a familiar orange filly bounded onto the landing and looked frantically to and fro, before her eyes fell on Rainbow Dash. She frowned.
Rainbow stood, frozen, a deer too afraid to run from the wolf that stalked before it. A lump grew in her throat—she felt the need to swallow but just couldn’t quite move enough to do it. Her breaths had become shallow.
“R-rainbow Dash?” Scootaloo asked, her eyes wide with confusion and hope.
“He-heya, squirt,” Rainbow answered, breathlessly. She cursed inwardly. Scootaloo needed her right now, that was why she was here. She had to be strong. She swallowed, smiling tentatively. “Surprised to see me?”
“Well, uhm, yeah,” Scootaloo replied. She fidgeted nervously, pawing at the ground with a forehoof. “I mean, after what happened I kinda thought… well, y’know. I just didn’t think you’d be here.”
“D-do you not want me to be here?” Rainbow regretted the question immediately, even as she knew it had to be asked. She was almost too afraid to hear the answer, wincing as Scootaloo spoke up.
“I-” the filly began, stopping herself. She took a deep breath. “I’m not sure,” she said, looking up at Rainbow with wide eyes, and in her face Rainbow could see her own reflection from minutes before. “I shouldn’t, should I?”
Rainbow nodded. “I screwed up, Scootaloo,” she said, and for a moment the chain around her heart seemed just a fraction lighter, the void in her chest a fraction less empty. “By all rights, I don’t deserve to be your big sister.”
The orange filly took a tentative step forward, her eyes on the floor. Rainbow wanted nothing more than to see her face, to be able to read her expressions, to know what was going on in her little head.
“And i-if that’s what you want,” Rainbow found the words harder to say with each step Scootaloo took towards her, her breaths becoming harder and harder to take, “I can leave. I don’t want to hurt you, Scoots, b-beacause you mean the world t-to me.” Scootaloo was standing right in front of her; it took all of her strength not to reach out a hoof and pull the filly close. She needed to be strong.
“I really want to forgive you, Rainbow,” Scootaloo said, quietly, and Rainbow’s heart dropped like a stone. The filly looked up, her expression pained and torn. “And I really wish I could, but right now I’m just not sure I can.”
Rainbow nodded, fighting the moisture that in her eyes. “I understand, squirt. I’ll tell Rarity it was too soon, and may–”
Two small forelegs wrapped themselves around Rainbow’s. She could feel Scootaloo shaking against her, hear the breaths catch in the filly’s throat as she sobbed. She wasn’t quite sure if she should still be passive, staying put and staying strong for Scootaloo’s sake, but when she looked down at the weeping filly clinging to her leg she knew she simply had to hold her close. She knelt down, wrapping her spare foreleg around Scootaloo and pulling her into a tight embrace. She buried her muzzle in Scootaloo’s untamed mane, pressing her lips against her surrogate sister’s head and kissing her once, gently.
She whispered to Scootaloo, comforting the filly, letting her know that she was there, that she wouldn’t go anywhere so long as Scootaloo needed her, that she was so, so sorry. And soon enough they were both crying, holding each other, apologising and crying and holding and crying.
Everything was Scootaloo. Everything she could feel was Scootaloo’s coat, the pressure of little legs around her neck, the dampness of the filly’s tears clinging to her coat. Everything she could see was a mass of orange and purple, bright and vivid and so very there. Everything she could hear was the ratcheting sobs and guttural breaths, the strained whispers and the fluttering heartbeat.
It was like that for a long time, because time had ceased to be, and then, somehow, it wasn’t.
Something changed as the two sisters leaned apart, not quite letting go but letting themselves look at each other, truly see how the other was doing. Rainbow smiled weakly as she reached a hoof out to wipe away the tears that still clung to Scootaloo’s cheeks, and chuckled emptily as Scootaloo did the same for her.
“We must look a right mess right now,” she said, eliciting a weak echo of a laugh from Scootaloo. “If anypony asks, we had a calm and rational discussion, okay?”
Scootaloo nodded, sniffing and rubbing her hoof under her nose.
“Rainbow?” she asked softly. Rainbow Dash looked right at her and, seeing worry and fear and nerves in the filly’s eyes, smiled gently in encouragement.
“Yeah, squirt?”
“C-can we pretend?” she asked, so softly Rainbow was not even certain she’d heard the words. “Just f-for tonight? I j-just want to pretend that I c-can forgive you.”
A wide grin spread across Rainbow’s face, and slowly Scootaloo’s look of worry turned to one of confusion and even bewilderment. Rainbow pulled her sister close to her once again, this time not curled around the filly but holding her in a simple hug of affection and thanks.
“Scootaloo,” she whispered, “that’s more than I deserve. Of course we can pretend.” She felt Scootaloo’s hold on her tighten, and she squeezed back quickly before pushing the filly away. “But if we’re going to do that, I think we probably ought to head downstairs, rather than staying up here.”
Nodding, Scootaloo pushed herself free of Rainbow’s hold and stood up, Rainbow following suit. They walked slowly to the top of the stairs, the bright light shining up from the boutique’s floor making Scootaloo squeeze her eyes shut for a moment, and Rainbow wince.
Eyes adjusted to the light, Rainbow began to step down the stairs, but something held her back. Turning her head, she saw Scootaloo frozen at the top of the staircase, her eyes wide and her legs shaking. Rainbow stepped back and pressed her leg up against Scootaloo’s side, looking down at the small filly.
“You alright?” Scootaloo shook her head, slowly and slightly. Rainbow took a deep breath. “You want to know a secret?” She waited on Scootaloo’s almost imperceptible nod before leaning down to whisper in the filly’s ear. “Neither am I,” she said, “but I think that by the time we get to the bottom of the steps, we both will be.”
“You really think so?”
“I know so,” Rainbow said. She remembered how her Dad had always used to do this with her when she was afraid to go to flight school, in the earliest days when she had first started to be bullied and called names. She remembered how, by the time she had been coaxed down the staircase, slowly, one step at a time, she felt as if she were ready to take on the world and that nothing could stop her.
She could see it on Scootaloo’s face—the confidence and comfort that grew with each step they took together. She looked determined, and Rainbow could feel her sister’s drive and unadulterated desire to succeed almost radiating from her, infecting her with confidence and pride.
Halfway down, and Scootaloo’s fiercely determined expression had become a smirk of confidence, her shoulders raised and eyes no longer fixed so widely open. Rainbow could feel her own body losing its pent-up tension, too, and her proud grin was growing to match Scootaloo’s smirk.
By the time they reached the bottom of the staircase, both of them felt ready to take on the world. They glanced at each other, a wide grin passing between them—Rainbow gave Scootaloo a brief nuzzle of affection and pride, before they walked in the direction of their friends’ voices. Rainbow held the kitchen door open, letting Scootaloo enter first and giving the filly a second or two before she herself made her way in.
Rainbow Dash could feel every eye on her, from the inquisitive eyes of the Cutie Mark Crusaders and the relieved glance of Rarity, to the cold and distant gaze of Applejack.
“Evenin’, Rainbow Dash,” the farmer greeted her.
“Applejack,” Rainbow acknowledged, bowing her head towards her. The farmer took a deep breath.
“I’m surprised y’all are here,” she said. “I was under the impression you wouldn’t be showin’ up.”
Rainbow nodded, closing her eyes. “If I’m honest, so was I,” she admitted, chuckling weakly, “but it wasn’t my choice to make.”
Applejack smiled, her expression warm and almost proud but her eyes distant. She nodded once, so lightly it was almost to herself, before she rose and wrapped Rainbow in a bone-crushing hug.
“It’s good t’see you outta that library, Rainbow,” she whispered. “I know how hard it must’a been for y’all to come here. Thanks.”
“Heh,” Rainbow shrugged, hugging Applejack back with all her might. “I promised I’d be here, didn’t I?”
Applejack let Rainbow go, smiling, and sat back down at the table. Rainbow took her place between Scootaloo and Apple Bloom, giving the latter a friendly smile and the former a flash of a grin and a wink, to let her know she was alright.
“I hope you don’t mind that we started without the two of you,” Rarity apologised with a grimace. “Do tuck in; help yourselves!” Rainbow let Scootaloo reach for the salad plate first, scooping herself a hoofful of hay fries and a couple of cherry tomatoes. Topping up her plate with the salad as she swapped with Apple Bloom, she saw Sweetie Belle nudging Scootaloo and indicating a plateful of nibbles that Rainbow didn’t recognise—no doubt some fancy hor do-erve Rarity had picked up from her time in Canterlot—and smiled as Scootaloo eagerly piled three of the snack-sized rings onto her plate.
Rainbow was strangely quiet over the course of the dinner. She knew that she would have spoken more, and on several occasions caught herself almost starting to say something. But each time she did, something would bubble up in her chest and the weight around her heart would tug just hard enough to grab her attention. Instead, Rainbow sat back and quietly let the conversation happen around her, relishing the opportunity to simply let her friends speak and enjoy their company. It was nice to be surrounded by her friends and, for once, not have to make the conversation even once about her.
She knew deep down that it couldn’t last, that eventually the conversation would come around to her. If Rainbow Dash had learned one thing in life, it was that nothing good could last if you didn’t do everything you could to keep it safe, and by resigning herself to not speaking Rainbow could do nothing to steer the conversation. She had nopony else she could blame for letting this come up.
“So, Rainbow Dash,” Apple Bloom piped up, “where’ve you been the last few weeks? I mean, I usually catch ya sleepin’ in the orchards after school, but you ain’t been there for almost a month!”
“I haven’t, have I?” Rainbow Dash asked, quietly. A part of her mind that sounded an awful lot like Gilda told her she should lie, that the small look of confusion on Apple Bloom’s face could be removed with a simple lie and the conversation could move on without her. She could say that she had been away at the Academy (nopony would no any wiser, and Applejack and Rarity would never contradict her while she was in this state), or that she’d been hanging out with the Wonderbolts and learning all their trade secrets. It wouldn’t really be a lie, would it? Spitfire had invited her to three dinners that month already—there was no reason for her to mention that she hadn’t even responded to any of them.
But there was another part of her mind, the part that was quiet and firm and gentle and spoke almost in Twilight’s voice. Rainbow’s heart skipped a beat as she thought that, maybe, what these three fillies deserved—what Scootaloo deserved—was not some half-baked lie about being out of town, or some self-adoring statement of how she was so awesome she could just chill with the Wonderbolts whenever she wanted. No, she could do better than that; she could be better than that.
“I’ve had a lot to think about,” Rainbow said, slowly, painfully aware of how everypony was watching her so very closely. “I needed some time away to think and to work out if I was really being the best pony I could be, so I went and locked myself in the library for a month.” She noticed the look Rarity and Applejack shared at the comment, unseen by the children around the table, but decided not to bring it up. This wasn’t for their benefit.
“Twilight helped me work out the kind of pony I wanted to be,” she said, “and she helped me think long and hard about how I could start to be more like that pony.” She looked down at Scootaloo, then, and brushed the little pegasus affectionately with her wing. She smiled.
“I need to learn to be a better big sister to Scootaloo,” she said, after an eternity of eye contact with the filly. “I screwed up really badly some time ago, and I want to make up for that. And,” she chuckled darkly, almost snorting in derision, “I was an idiot for taking so long to realise that.”
She felt a light pressure at her side; looking down, she could see Scootaloo pressing her own wing against her for comfort. She smiled and wrapped a wing around Scootaloo, pulling her in for a quick hug.
“It’s mighty mature of ya to say that, Dash,” Applejack said, “and I’m glad t’see you unafraid to be so cuddly. I remember back when you wouldn’t be caught dead so much as touchin’ another pony, because y‘all thought it weren’t cool.”
“Hey,” Rainbow objected, grinning widely, “are you trying to say I’m not cool?” Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle giggled at that, covering their muzzles with their hooves in an attempt to seem dignified; Rainbow could feel Scootaloo shaking slightly beside her. “I’ll have you know nothing is cooler than getting to spend time with my surrogate sister,” she added warmly.
“Would anyone like some cake?” Rarity asked, hovering a tray of small cupcakes in the air above the table. The fillies’ eyes grew wide and excited, and even Rainbow had to admit that the cupcakes on the tray looked delectable. Smiling, Rarity cleared some space in the middle of the spread and set down the tray, allowing everypony to take their pick. Rainbow mouthed ‘thanks’ at her, as carefully as she could; Rarity simply nodded and smiled, her face telling Rainbow that it was all okay much better than any words could.
The cupcakes were unmistakably Pinkie’s, Rainbow noted; everything from the over-the-top swirls of the strawberry icing to the mouth-wateringly perfect lightness of the cakes themselves was indicative of Pinkie Pie’s mastery of arcane baking arts. Rainbow knew that Twilight, with her library full of books and impeccable magical control, could never bake a cupcake half as good as this—though in fairness Rainbow wasn’t entirely sure that Twilight could cook in the first place. The last month she had mostly lived off whatever she and Spike could drum up from the eclectic set of ingredients that Twilight would invariably keep.
Rainbow laughed as she noted the frosting moustache that lined Applejack’s muzzle. The others turned to see what had caused her outburst, their eyes slowly turning to Applejack’s bemused face.
“What’re y’all lookin’ at me for?” Applejack asked warily, uncertain in the face of her friends’ laughter—even Rarity was laughing more than was strictly lady-like. After a moment Applejack realised what must have happened and she deftly wiped her tongue around her lips, clearing the frosting from her face as she joined in the laughter that felt like balloons on Rainbow’s heart.
The evening soon passed, as good evenings in better company always do, and Rainbow soon found saying goodbye to Applejack and Apple Bloom, who seemed somewhat disappointed to have to leave so soon. She sat with Rarity and chatted idly for a little while, letting the fashionista catch her up on the goings-on around Ponyville she had missed in her self-enforced isolation. The two watched their sisters play as they spoke, finding peace in the front of innocence the fillies managed to pull.
Before long, though, both fillies were yawning and Rainbow and Rarity conceded it was probably time to call the evening to a close. Scootaloo looked up with wide, frightened eyes as Rainbow called for her to get her things.
“Are you sure you should be taking her home, Rainbow?” Rarity asked. “I don’t mean anything by it, only that I don’t think they would take too kindly to seeing you—”
“Yeah, I know,” Rainbow muttered darkly. She hadn’t really been hoping to get to walk through Ponyville at night with Scootaloo, just enjoying to company and the silence in the cold, dark night. “I just want to talk to her before she goes, that’s all. Do you want me to stay and watch Sweetie while you walk her, or is there somepony else who can…”
“That would be a good idea, Rainbow,” Rarity answered. “Both of those things would be. You can speak outside, if you need to.”
Scootaloo had gathered her saddlebags and was standing in the door to the boutique’s floor, looking somewhat dejected and almost desperate. Rainbow almost froze at the sight of her again: the normally strong filly looked almost fragile, now. Rainbow forced herself to smile, and wasn’t completely certain she’d be able to fight the tears this time.
“Hey, squirt,” she said, her voice somehow sounding as if nothing in the world were wrong, when the whole world was falling apart. “Can we have a word before you go?”
Scootaloo closed her eyes and nodded; Rainbow held the door open, letting the filly slide past her as she had before dinner. Once out in the cold, Rainbow turned to her little sister, who was shivering and looked as if she were fighting back tears of her own.
“So... “ Rainbow began, letting her voice trail off into the night. “Tonight was fun, eh?”
Scootaloo snorted. “Yeah, fun. That’s totally the word I’d use.” Her tone was cold and dark and bitter, and Rainbow wasn’t entirely sure what had changed for the young filly she called a sister. She reached out a wing to wrap around the shivering pegasus, but Scootaloo shrugged it off. Rainbow bit her lip, hard, focusing on the pain, the sharp pain that would not let her cry. She had to give Scootaloo some space. She knew that.
“Rainbow, I got to spend tonight pretending that you were the big sister I always wanted you to be.” Rainbow nodded slowly, frowning at Scootaloo’s back. “It was… nice. I enjoyed it. And I think that’s the problem.”
Scootaloo turned to face Rainbow. The constant tear-trails on her cheeks were a surprise—by her tone, Rainbow would have guessed that she hadn’t been crying at all, she sounded so collected and sure of herself, if bitter and angry.
“I can’t help it, Rainbow—I think you’re awesome. I idolise you, and tonight I learned that I do that without even wanting to.” Scootaloo shook her head, breathing shakily, and for the first time since they had stepped into the kitchen her voice began to sound uncertain again. “Do you know how hard it is to be unable to hate somepony you should?” she asked, and Rainbow’s eyes widened. Scootaloo pressed on, seemingly not even noticing that Rainbow’s heart was dragging her down, down into the snow and the ice-cold bathtub. “Do you know how hard it is to know that you shouldn’t ever want to see somepony again, but be so relieved, so happy when you see them?” Scootaloo was weeping, now, openly sobbing in the cold and Rainbow couldn’t do anything to help her. Did she know how hard that was?
“I w-was so happy when I saw you in that hallway,” she sobbed. “A-and I know I m-might not have looked like it, but I was j-just so p-pleased to see…” Her voiced trailed to a whisper, her jaw quivering and her whole body shaking with nerves and with the cold outside. Rainbow was already numb to it.
“I can’t do this yet, Rainbow,” she whispered into the dark. Rainbow Dash looked up at that, and saw her pain reflected in the eyes of the filly opposite her. “I’m sorry,” she added, “but I just can’t.”
And as Scootaloo walked off alone into the dark, Rainbow felt everything that was keeping her afloat, everything that was keeping her fighting, simply vanish, and Rainbow Dash fell.