Rainbow Dash could see nothing except for group of colorful, fuzzy, and strangely recognizable shapes as her eyes slowly reverted to a state which could have deceived anypony into believing that she was fully conscious again. Her mind was a scrambled mess, with dozens of thoughts and memories swirling about relentlessly, trying to make sense of what was happening. Further reducing her ability to concentrate was a painful throbbing in her head, which pierced her so badly that she instinctively clutched it with her forehooves.
"Rainbow Dash!" cried a hyperactive voice which startled her.
"Quiet, Pinkie!" scolded a second voice. "You can't just shout like that. You're going to scare her."
Rainbow looked up to see one of the fuzzy shapes lean in closer to her face.
"Rainbow, darling, are you all right?" a recognizable voice whispered.
"Ra—"
Rainbow Dash attempted to say the name of the one who spoke, but she lost her voice almost as soon as she found it, and as far as anyone knew, all she had uttered was an unintelligible grunt. The memories swirling about her mind refused to settle, but a single image continuously wedged itself into the forefront of her thoughts—an image which filled her with fear. It was of her falling endlessly into hollow darkness, deeper and deeper into nothingness. It her most recent memory, and she failed to recall anything beyond it—her memory stored no image of how or when her fall ended, or if it even ended at all. The image increased in vividness as she continued to think on it, and Rainbow's fear intensified as she began to doubt that she was even alive anymore. She closed and reopened her eyes multiple times, but the fuzzy images did not become any less fuzzy, nor did her situation make any more sense to her.
Pinkie Pie's face fell at Rainbow's lack of response.
"Do you think....she doesn't remember who we are?" she asked mournfully.
"No, of course not, Pinkie," reassured Twilight. "We just need to give her a little time. She'll come back to us soon."
Within seconds, the door swung open and the doctor swiftly glided inside the room, a clipboard magically levitated beside him.
"I'm going to need all of you to take a step back. Right now," he demanded emotionlessly.
Rainbow's friends did as instructed, surprised by his sudden entrance. Pinkie Pie remained as close to the bed as she could, tears running down her cheeks at the thought that they may have lost her after all. The doctor stared deeply into Rainbow's blank eyes as though searching for some sign of life behind them. She lurched backward as he leaned closer, instantly fearful that the unrecognizable figure who now filled her hazy vision would do her harm.
"Rainbow Dash? Would you please raise your right hoof if you can understand what I'm saying?" he requested.
The words reached Rainbow's ears, but her hoof did not raise. Her mind continued to race and the pain in her head was so unbearable that only her lack of voice kept her from screaming.
"Would you please raise your right hoof if you can understand what I'm saying?" he repeated.
Again, Rainbow Dash failed to respond. Cold sweat ran down from both sides of her brow and her heartbeat increased steadily. She was spontaneously struck with a prevailing urge to move as far as she could from the unfamiliar voice.
The doctor sighed with disappointment and wrote on the clipboard.
"Is she going to be okay, Dr. Horse?" Fluttershy asked, also concerned about Rainbow Dash's failure to respond.
Doctor Horse turned towards her. "This is not uncommon. Perhaps I simply need to speak slower. You see, this is why I told you that she cannot be forced to answer questions when she wakes up. It's probably going to be some time before she—"
"Oh my!" Rarity cried, and Horse spun back around to see Rainbow Dash squirming rapidly, attempting to remove herself from the bed as though under the belief that it was somehow holding her captive.
"No!" he cried frantically, but before he had a chance to act, Rainbow flopped over the bedside, taking the blanket with her.
She grunted with pain as her head struck the solid floor, instantly worsening the throbbing. Her wings sprang open at once, freeing herself from the grasp of the blanket. She struggled to fly away, but could only flap her wings with enough strength to lift her body inches from the floor. Visible anguish swept over Rainbow's face as her struggle to escape became more desperate. She dropped herself to the linoleum and crawled forward in a frenzy, moving towards an exit that she could hardly see and was not fully certain even existed.
"Rainbow Dash, stop!" Fluttershy squeaked as the frantic pegasus crawled past her legs.
But Rainbow did not stop. Her teeth gritted, she squirmed about the floor, desperate to get as far away as she could from the voices, from the confusion, and from the uncertainty. The cords connecting her foreleg to the electrocardiograph detached as she moved beyond their length. Her friends stared in bewilderment, unsure of how to stop her without driving her further into unyielding fear. When Rainbow had nearly reached the door, the doctor finally wrapped her in an aura and gently picked her up, moving her back towards the bed.
As she felt herself being lifted, Rainbow Dash let out an agonizing, high-pitched yelp which sounded like it could have easily come from a frightened puppy. It punctured crudely through the ears of her friends, each of whom never would have imagined that Rainbow Dash was capable of making such a fearful sound. Rainbow's hooves flailed about rapidly, struggling with every last bit of strength she had to force her way out of the aura, but she was helplessly trapped. Horse gently lowered her body back onto the bed, but did not release her.
"I'm going to need you all to clear the room. Right now," he said sternly.
Twilight stared at him in disbelief. "You can't possibly expect us—"
"Actually no, wait, who among you would you say that she's closest to?" he interrupted.
Fluttershy casually looked around at her friends as though expecting one of them to speak up and claim themselves as Rainbow's closest acquaintance. When she saw that they were all staring back at her, she uncomfortably raised her hoof.
"Then I need you to stay," said Horse. "I need you to talk to her."
"Doctor, what's going on?!" Twilight asked, frustrated. "Tell us what's happening to her!"
"This is a fairly uncommon occurrence that afflicts ponies waking up from a coma caused by head trauma," he explained. "The trauma is still heavy on her mind, and she is now in a state of fight-or-flight. It's highly necessary that we relax her and calm her down." He looked to Fluttershy. "That's why I need you to talk to her. Hearing a voice she recognizes is the most efficient way of doing so."
Rainbow groaned loudly and painfully. She eventually ceased her fight against the aura, and Dr. Horse released her from it while simultaneously reconnecting the electrocardiograph's cords to her foreleg. She snapped her eyes shut and went stiff, wrapping her forelegs around her body as though bracing herself for what would happen to her next. The electrocardiograph now beeped twice per second, complimenting the growing tension in the room.
"Start talking to her," Horse ordered to Fluttershy.
"Well, why do we hafta leave?" asked Applejack. "Couldn't we also stay and talk to her? She knows our voices, too."
"No," the doctor answered, shaking his head. "She needs to hear only one voice, and that voice needs to be the one she is most likely to recognize. Hearing multiple voices would probably confuse her, and that's the absolute last thing she needs right now. So please, I have to ask you to go. The more ponies she sees crowding around her, the more nervous she may become."
"I'm not going anywhere," Pinkie Pie said in a tone that was unusually firm for her.
"Pinkie, please...," Twilight implored, having expected that she would resist.
"No! I don't want to leave her!" she cried, shaking her head vigorously.
"Keep your voice down," Horse scolded in a low, yet hostile voice. "Shouting is only going to make her condition worse."
Pinkie instantly shoved both forehooves into her mouth and let out a solemn whimper.
"Pinkie, if you want Rainbow Dash to get better, then we have to leave," Twilight whispered to her. "We'll come right back as soon as she's okay again."
Pinkie removed her hooves from her mouth and bit down hard on her lip. "But..."
"C'mon, sugarcube," said Applejack, placing a hoof on Pinkie's shoulder. "We hafta do what we can to help Rainbow Dash recover."
Her eyes filling with tears again, Pinkie Pie finally turned and walked slowly out of the room, with the rest of them following closely behind her, shutting the door as they left.
"Why aren't you talking?!" Horse demanded to a silent Fluttershy, making her jolt in fear.
"Umm....well....you didn't tell me what to say to her..."
"Anything," he answered with a sigh. "Anything to calm her down. Tell her that everything is going to be okay. Tell her that she's not in any danger. We have to reduce her stress level now."
"O-Okay," replied Fluttershy, turning to the stiffened mass on the bed, which still seemed to be awaiting some miserable fate.
"Rainbow Dash? Can you hear me?"
She extended a hoof out to touch Rainbow's, but as soon as it made contact, Rainbow immediately pulled her hoof away. Fluttershy frowned.
"Rainbow Dash, it's me. It's Fluttershy. I'm not going to hurt you."
Rainbow's eyes spread open again, and she looked in Fluttershy's direction. Her vision remained fuzzy, but the new figure she now saw was almost instantly familiar to her.
"Fl—"
"You remember me, don't you?" Fluttershy asked. "We've been friends for a very long time."
"Flutters—"
Fluttershy beamed at Rainbow's attempt to say her name.
"Yes, it's me! I'm here!"
"Keep at it," encouraged Dr. Horse, who was in the process of filling a syringe with a liquid substance from a tiny bottle.
"Everything is going to be okay, Rainbow Dash," assured Fluttershy.
The anguish and fear which had shown so heavily in Rainbow's face faded away, but her forehead was still moist with cold sweat and she exhaled her breaths in shivers. Fluttershy picked the blanket up off the floor and carefully placed it back over Rainbow's body, thankfully receiving no adverse reaction from her.
"Fluttershy..." Rainbow said, her voice barely carrying above a whisper.
"Yes? What do you need?"
Rainbow Dash stared at her, eyes full of sorrow and pain. Despite appearing calmer, the electrocardiograph's frequent beeps did not indicate her heartbeat slowing back down.
"Okay, I'm ready," said Doctor Horse, and Fluttershy looked up to see him standing over Rainbow's body on the opposite side of the bed, levitating the syringe. "This will help to reduce her heart rate, but I'm going to need you to make sure that she doesn't fight me. The entire serum needs to enter her bloodstream."
"Umm...how do I do that?" Fluttershy asked uncomfortably.
"Talk her through it. If she starts getting up or tries to get away, I need you to hold her down."
Fluttershy took a deep breath, feeling uneasy about the notion of holding Rainbow Dash down....at least without getting her permission first.
"O-okay," she said, leaning back down closer to her and staring her directly in the eye. "Rainbow Dash, I want you to look at me, okay? Just keep looking at me."
"Fluttershy, I..."
"Shhhh," said Fluttershy, gently placing her hoof on Rainbow's lips. "Just relax, okay?"
The doctor meticulously prodded the syringe into Rainbow's left foreleg and she immediately twisted her body in a convulsion-like resistance.
"No, Rainbow!" Fluttershy cried, pressing down on her with both forehooves with as much strength as she deemed necessary. "It's okay. Everything is okay. This is going to help you."
Rainbow trembled uncontrollably as the serum exited the syringe and entered her body, feeling so cold that, with a fully conscious mind, she could have mistaken the bed for a thick layer of ice. Almost at once, the electrocardiograph's beeping gradually slowed. Feeling that the worst was now over, Fluttershy gently caressed Rainbow's hoof, smiling with relief.
"There, now that's better, isn't it?" she asked tenderly.
Rainbow's vision went fuzzy again and her eyelids struggled to remain open. A loud ringing filled her ears, making her deaf to all that was being said.
"Alright, well, that should do it," said Horse, stepping away from the bed and placing the syringe on a nearby counter. "Good job. It really seems like you broke her out of it."
"I hope so..." Fluttershy said with a nod.
They both watched as Rainbow Dash succumbed the serum's effects, falling into a deep sleep.
"Still, it troubles me that this happened at all," said Horse with a frown. "Perhaps her trauma delves deeper than a simple head injury. Has she been under any noticeable stress lately?"
"You could say that," said Fluttershy, shame weighing her head down.
"Hmm....I may need to recommend her for psychological therapy when she comes to again," he said.
"She won't do that," Fluttershy said, shaking her head solemnly. "She's going to want to get out of here as quickly as possible."
"Well, for the sake of her own well being, I'm afraid she may need to," Doctor Horse replied.
"She lost her dad recently," said Fluttershy, staring down at Rainbow Dash's still body, thankful that she was not conscious to hear her words.
"I see," Horse remarked flatly. "I take it they were close, then?"
"Not exactly," Fluttershy replied with a sigh. "But it's affected her in a big way."
"I'm sure," Horse said, nodding.
"Is she going to fall back into a coma?" Fluttershy asked fearfully.
"No, she's just sleeping it off," answered Horse. "It's best we leave her alone for now."
Rainbow Dash stirred on the bed, ejecting a small cough.
Fluttershy frowned. "I hate seeing her like this. She's in so much pain....and I just can't do anything about it."
"I'm very sorry," the doctor said, magically adjusting his glasses. "I'm going to do a double check on her brain activity again. You can..."
His mouth snapped shut when he saw Fluttershy move to sit tenderly beside Rainbow Dash, signaling to him that she was waiting to be left alone. He trailed out of the room without finishing his sentence.
"Rainbow Dash...."
Fluttershy let out a sigh after the cyan pegasus coughed a second time.
"I know you didn't do this to yourself," she said, fully aware that Rainbow could not hear her. "But I still don't know why you're here. And I still don't know why you would keep something like this from me. I would have never kept something like this from you."
She glimpsed Rainbow's temples twitch from underneath the bandage on her head.
"I just don't know why you would lie to me. Why you would hide your suffering from us. I know you'd be too proud to accept help, but I thought that even you wouldn't keep something like this from us. I just don't understand. Is it because you don't trust us? Because you don't trust me?!"
Fluttershy instantly covered her mouth with her hoof, regretful that her tone had turned hostile. Rainbow Dash remained asleep, all sounds passing like silent wind through her ears.
"I'm not mad," she resumed, lowering her hoof. "No, I'm not mad at you. I'm sad for you. I feel sorry for you because you think that you don't have friends who can get you through this difficult time. That's what really upsets me. That's what I really can't understand."
She descended into a brief silence, eventually realizing that it had been quite some time since she last saw Rainbow sleeping so soundly. After what she had just done to relax her into sleep, Fluttershy could not help but feel something of a motherly bond towards her, and it was a warm enough feeling to coax a smile on her face.
"But then I remember our talk a few days ago, and...I just don't know what to think," she said, the smile fading. "I feel so horrible for giving you hope. I thought I was helping you, but.....I probably just made you feel even worse. And you put that guilt on me. Why couldn't you have just told me then? I wouldn't have told anypony else if you didn't want me to. I would have given you the time you needed. I never once told them about your father until now, because I knew that you wouldn't have wanted me to. I've shown you that I can keep your secrets, but you just—"
Fluttershy silenced herself again as she sensed her anger rising.
"I'm not mad at you," she repeated in a whisper. "But I don't really know....what I'm going to say to you..."
Rainbow Dash's mouth twitched and her nostrils flared. Her unconscious mind remained blank; no unpleasant nightmares or visions haunted her sleep as they had before. Fluttershy did not speak again, allowing the electrocardiograph to remain the only source of noise in the room.
After several quiet minutes passed, the door opened again. Pinkie Pie immediately barreled inside ahead of her friends, reclaiming her place at Rainbow's bedside.
"How is she now?" asked Rarity.
"I think she'll be okay," Fluttershy answered, motioning for them to remain quiet. "But we need to let her sleep."
Rarity smiled with relief. "Thank goodness..."
"I still can't believe that happened," Twilight said, staring sadly at Rainbow's unconscious body. "I can't imagine what must have been going through her head. What she must have been experiencing. I've never seen her so scared before..."
Fluttershy nodded in sorrowful agreement. "Me neither...."
"I truly hate to think this way but....perhaps we were too lucky," Rarity noted.
"Whaddya mean?" questioned Applejack.
"We received news that most ponies in the same situation could only hope for," Rarity explained. "A pony coming out of a coma without having any lasting or permanent damage can almost be considered a miracle. I simply feel that we may have been too lucky. That perhaps it was indeed too good to be true, and....perhaps she will suffer some lasting damage after all."
Fluttershy instantly shook her head with repulsion.
"Please don't say that," she said in a calm, yet demanding voice.
"My apologies," Rarity replied at once.
An uncomfortable silence fell over them, triggered by the fear that there may have been truth to Rarity's words. For a long while, they each watched Rainbow sleep, partially annoyed that they were waiting for her to awaken once again, as though she had never woken up at all.
A quiet, yet audible creaking sound suddenly echoed out from behind them, and Scootaloo crept her way inside the room while lying low to the floor, attempting to avoid being seen. But the silence in the room prevented her entry from going unnoticed, and she immediately stood upright as she saw every head turning in her direction.
"Oh...so she's still out, huh?" she said, feeling embarrassed, yet relieved to see Rainbow still unconscious on the bed.
"Actually, she woke up a little while ago," replied Twilight, deciding to ignore what she had seen.
"She did?" Scootaloo asked, blinking with surprise. "So why is she asleep again?"
No one looked willing to answer her question.
"She just....she wasn't ready to wake up yet," said Fluttershy. "So she's just doing a bit more sleeping until she is. It's normal sleeping. She's not in a coma anymore."
Scootaloo locked her eyes onto Rainbow Dash in a considerably cold stare.
"So....she really woke up?" she asked for further clarification.
"Mhm."
"And....she's okay?"
"Of course she's okay," Twilight replied.
"...I hope..." Rarity mumbled under her breath.
"Well, then, that's all I wanted to know," Scootaloo said apprehensively. "I have to go now. I can't miss two days of school."
"Good thinking," Twilight said, nodding. "Hopefully she'll be awake again by the time you get out this afternoon."
Scootaloo's eyes suddenly dropped to the floor. "I'm not coming by this afternoon."
"What?"
"In fact..."
The filly sighed, unsure of what reactions she would receive from her next words.
"....I don't want you guys to tell her that I was ever here. If she asks if I ever came to visit her, just tell her 'no', okay?"
The room went silent again, all awaiting Scootaloo to explain her reasoning behind this request, but she did not appear to have any intention of doing so. Applejack raised an eyebrow, almost insulted that Scootaloo had the audacity to ask her to lie.
"You're going to have to explain yourself if you want us to even consider that, Scootaloo," Twilight said after realizing that she was not going to say any more.
"It's just....complicated," Scootaloo replied, biting her lip.
"Why in plum heaven would you want us do that, Scootaloo?" demanded Applejack. "You would want her ta think you don't care about her?"
Her tone forced a sense of guilt out of Scootaloo, which immediately hung from her face.
"I just can't see her," she said in a low voice.
"Why not?" asked Fluttershy.
"The last time we talked...it just wasn't pleasant. It would just be too uncomfortable if she knew I was here."
Fluttershy shook her head. "Just because you have a spat every now and then, doesn't mean—"
"It's more than that," Scootaloo said with hostility in her voice which replaced the guilt. "I'm just too mad at her. And aren't you guys, too? Like I said, she was never going to tell you anything. She said that to my face! All I wanted to do was help her, but she rejected my help. And I....I don't want to give her the satisfaction of showing her that I'll still come running when she's in trouble, even when she doesn't want me to."
Scootaloo was pierced by a set of stares, each deep enough to show understanding for her point of view, but none that indicated that she was going to receive a response. Rainbow Dash suddenly stirred on the bed with much more vigor than before, appearing as though she was going to finally return to consciousness again.
"I have to go," Scootaloo said, hurrying out of the room before she could awaken.
Everyone else crowed around the bed once again, hopeful that it would be for the last time. As before, Rainbow's crimson eyes came into view. They appeared to contain more awareness than they had the first time.
"Rainbow...?" Fluttershy squeaked cautiously.
As sudden as it was unexpected, Rainbow shot up from the bed, fear and desperation immediately sweeping over her face.
"Where's my mom?! My dad?! Are they okay?!" she cried loudly, startling each of them.
Fluttershy hung her head, instantly realizing that Rarity's fears might have just been confirmed...