Rainbow Dash went through her morning routine the same as ever, but today everything seemed flat and joyless. She slid wearily out of bed at sunrise but left the curtains closed. Her shower felt like an unwelcome rainstorm, her breakfast of oatmeal pancakes just a bland means of sustenance.
Last night’s dream had been the missing piece that completed the puzzle started the previous morning. An accident during the Firefly Starburst, the sight of her teammate plummeting out of control, even the colouration of his mane and tail, so similar to Spitfire’s, had all coincided to throw light onto that dim corner of her memories. Of course, she had never truly forgotten that day — the story was part of Wonderbolt lore now — but the years had softened the memory, rounded its edges and left it powerless. The dream had brought it all back, sharp and painful as the day it happened.
Spitfire, two years into her career with the Wonderbolts yet still the youngest member on the squad, had flown a flawless display until the finale. Then, at the crucial moment in the Firefly Starburst she hesitated for a fraction of a second, swung around too late and clipped her head on another member’s hoof, dazing herself. The pyrotechnics had gone off before she could recover, and she had come crashing down in flames.
Rainbow Dash gazed at her weary face in the mirror. ‘Bold Heart, Nimble Wings’; how hollow that sounded now. If even Spitfire, the boldest and nimblest flier she knew, could make a near-fatal mistake like that, how could she compare? What business did she have becoming a Wonderbolt if something as trivial as an unpleasant memory made her flinch? Her bottom lip began to tremble, but she pinched her mouth tight to stop it.
That’s enough, she told herself, this is not how a Wonderbolt behaves. A horrific accident like that might have ended another flier’s career. Spitfire had been in recovery for over a year, but she had come back stronger than ever. She had flown again with the same skill and grace that first won her a place on the team, she had spoken with courageous honesty about the accident and her recuperation, and within five years she had gone on to captain the Wonderbolts. That was why Rainbow Dash continued to admire her; Spitfire’s abilities were impressive, but it was her tenacity that was truly captivating.
That was all she needed, a reminder of why she sought to follow in Spitfire’s wingbeats. At once the forlorn expression on her face hardened into one of steely determination. She had a duty to the team and to herself, now more than ever. That meant taking her training all the more seriously. She pulled on her flight suit and strode briskly out onto the training grounds.
“Alright team,” said Spitfire, “today we’ll be running through the full rehearsal of the routine for Monday’s display. You all got the revised programme yesterday, so you should know the changes. Warm-up, ten minutes!”
As the other team members started their exercises, Dash noticed the muted, solemn atmosphere; Lightning’s accident had affected them all, and the morning briefing only highlighted his absence. Spitfire moved among them, guiding and encouraging as needed — here a quiet word with Rapidfire, there a simple compliment for Fleetfoot — and before long the mood began to pick up. She was a conductor in charge of her orchestra, setting the tempo, carefully shaping her ensemble to act as one. Finally, she approached Rainbow Dash.
“How are you holding up?” she said. “You still look tense. If you need—”
“I’m fine,” said Dash, her voice flat and impassive.
“Dash, I’ve known you for years, and I know this isn’t like you. You can tell me—“
“I said I’m fine,” she replied in the same even tone.
Spitfire gave her a pained look, a mixture of frustration and concern, before returning to her own warm-up.
The morning’s rehearsal was as gruelling as the toughest days Dash had put herself through during her own training. Even simple moves she usually performed without thinking now demanded precision and fierce concentration. When she thought a step in the routine was imperfect she insisted on repeating it. By midday her wings ached and her flight suit was damp with sweat despite the cool spring air. At lunch she sat alone and pored over her flight manuals, and in the afternoon she threw herself back into the rehearsal with renewed vigour. Nothing less than perfection would suffice. Her wings grew stiff with fatigue, she gritted her teeth until her jaw ached, but the harder she strove for that perfection the more she had to wrestle her body to comply. The easy grace with which she usually performed seemed to be slipping further from her grasp.
As the team went through their cool-down routine at end of the day’s training, Dash braced herself for a final lecture from Spitfire. The captain had tried to engage her several times during the day, and each time Dash had brushed her off. She wasn’t going to show how a mere unhappy memory had upset her, not when Spitfire herself had triumphed over so much worse. However, the day’s rigours had left her feeling brittle and agitated, and she wasn’t sure she could keep her frustration hidden much longer. The expected lecture never came. Spitfire looked right through her during debriefing, then abruptly left without another word.
Dash retired to the dormitory. For several minutes she paced back and forth, still twitching with feverish energy and wondering what to do with herself. She had summoned up all the boldness her heart could muster, and still it wasn’t enough. Was that what she had in store for herself, to push herself to her limits and still fall short, waiting for the day she crippled herself like Lightning or made a mistake like Spitfire?
In frustration she bucked a hind leg at her locker. The door jolted open and the packet of nimbus buns tumbled out, spilling the remaining cakes onto the floor. The sight of those baked treats made Dash’s mouth water. Maybe that was what she needed, she told herself, something to remind her why she was putting herself through this. Hungrily she scarfed down one of the buns, swallowing it almost too fast to enjoy the taste. At once the soreness in her muscles didn’t seem to matter; she remembered the same feeling from a year earlier, when she first started training in earnest, when nearly every day ended with her on the brink of exhaustion. Sheer determination had driven her then, a sense of duty almost as great as the one she felt to the Wonderbolts now.
With an expression of grim resolve on her face, she pulled on her goggles once again. Without the other Wonderbolts she would have to make do by practicing a solo routine, and the one she knew best was from her tryout. If she could perform it again as flawlessly as before, then she could rest easy knowing she hadn’t lost her touch. She glanced out of the window — she had maybe an hour of daylight left. She had to get it right.
Once she was certain the last of her teammates had left, she trotted back out onto the deserted training grounds. The sunset painted the cliffs a ruddy orange and threw spindly shadows of the flagpoles across the ground. Dash shivered momentarily, the cool of the approaching night chilling her where her flight suit was still damp with sweat. She took off, circling around the aerodrome and trying to assemble the routine in her head just as she had at the tryout last week. When she reached the starting position she drew a deep breath and held it, feeling her racing heart slowing.
She was about to begin when out of the corner of her eye she saw a shape moving below, a figure walking out of the aerodrome’s tunnel entrance, the setting sun stretching its shadow long and thin. For a moment she thought it was one of her teammates — perhaps, she realised with a jolt, Spitfire had come back and caught her — until she noticed it was giving her a friendly wave.
“Fluttershy?” Dash swooped down to where her friend was waiting. “W-what are you doing here?” she said.
Fluttershy scuffed a hoof in the dirt. “Um, you said it would be okay if I visited you here,” she replied. “I stayed in Canterlot an extra couple of days so I could come and see you. I tried to come by yesterday, but they wouldn't let me in. They said there'd been an accident.”
Dash gave an exasperated huff. She had barely an hour until it got dark, and here was Fluttershy wanting to make small-talk. “Look, I'd love to chat, but I've got a routine to practice. Just... just sit there and wait for me, okay?”. She flew back up to her starting position, muttering under her breath.
Again she tried to focus on the task, but there, lurking at the edge of her attention was Fluttershy, nagging at her like a pebble caught in her horseshoe. She swept into her first loop, but found herself drifting wide. She shook herself. Even a simple loop was giving her difficulty now! Frustrated, she circled around to try again, and once again she went wide. She swooped back down to Fluttershy.
“I can't concentrate with you watching me!" she said angrily. “Go and wait in the dorm and I'll be done in a while.”
“But...” Fluttershy started.
“I said get lost!”
Some dark space in Dash's mind suddenly lit up. She had said those words before, said them — no, screamed them — into Fluttershy's face. The shameful scene replayed itself in unforgiving clarity: last year's Wonderbolts tryouts; her best friend accompanying her for moral support; failing her routine; holding back tears of frustration as Fluttershy tried to comfort her; shoving her aside; regretting her outburst immediately but the damage already done.
Dash heaved a remorseful sob that made her whole body shudder. She staggered backwards trying to flee from the memory, but the baleful light cast on it grew and spread, revealing another half-forgotten sorrow, another shameful deed, one after another until they filled her head.
She was six again, back in school, with a group of friends who took it into their heads to torment a quiet, gawky filly in the year above. She was jeering and laughing along with them until the poor filly, eyes filled with tears, wet herself. The others laughed even harder, but Dash felt sick with guilt. She could have stopped them, but now an innocent pegasus was hurt and it was all her fault.
She was twelve, feelings befuddled by adolescent hormones, planting an awkward kiss on the lips of a classmate she had admired from afar. Then they had gone away and told everyone, and the next day the whole class was laughing and making kissy-faces at her. She was humiliated and heartbroken, and it was all her fault.
She was seventeen, her first week with the Cloudsdale weather patrol, getting yelled at by her supervisor for setting off a rainstorm too early. It was an honest mistake but she was still in trouble for it. Two days’ work for her team ruined, and it was all her fault.
She was nine, sent home from summer flight camp for getting into a fight that had left another pegasus with a broken nose. Her parents were so disappointed in her, despite her protestations that she was standing up for a friend against some bullies. But deep down she knew what started as honourable defence had gone too far, and it was all her fault.
“Rainbow Dash!” cried Fluttershy. “What’s wrong?”
Dash couldn’t hear her. Every misfortune life had visited upon her, every mistake she had made, every misdeed she had committed was laid bare. It yanked the breath from her lungs and blotted out sight and sense. Her legs collapsed beneath her and her wings beat feebly against the dusty ground.
“It’s all my fault!” she wept. “It’s all my fault!”
It was dark before Fluttershy could get much sense out of Rainbow Dash. She guided the inconsolable pegasus back to the dormitory, helped her out of her flight suit and sat her at the table, brewed a pot of tea and coaxed her to drink some. Glassy-eyed hysteria made way for ashamed silence, Dash refusing to look Fluttershy in the face, until at last she spoke up.
“I don’t deserve a friend as good as you,” she said, barely above a whisper.
“What makes you think that?” said Fluttershy.
“I’ve done... so many terrible things. I try to be good, but then I act selfish, I do stupid things, I hurt the ones I love...” Her voice was growing strident, but Fluttershy gently hushed her.
“Easy, now,” she said. “Tell me what happened out there.”
Rainbow Dash recounted how the torrent of unhappy memories overwhelmed her, how she felt she was to blame for even the smallest misfortune in her life. As Fluttershy listened, a realisation dawned. She pushed a plate towards Dash; on it sat the last two nimbus buns which she had picked up off the floor.
“Have you been eating these things?” she asked.
Dash nodded. “They reminded me of home,” she said. “It was nice remembering the good times whenever I was under pressure.”
“They’ve got wild cloudberries in them,” said Fluttershy. “The farm-grown berries bakers use are mild and just bring a lovely sense of comfort and relaxation, but the wild plants are far more potent. They’re sometimes used to treat amnesia — they force you to remember, for better or worse. Eat too many of them and eventually the memories are all you care about.”
Dash covered her mouth with a hoof. All the time she thought she had been indulging in a little harmless reminiscence she had also been gradually poisoning her own mind. Was that why Skydancer looked so haggard? Had she chosen the bittersweet comfort of nostalgia over the present?
She glared at the remaining nimbus buns. Suddenly they didn’t seem so appetizing. The berries shone under a sickly-sweet glaze like the eyes of dead fish staring out of a stodgy dough that sweated beads of syrup. With calm deliberation she crushed the remaining cakes into a sticky mess on the plate. Fluttershy made to give her foreleg a reassuring pat; Dash jolted at her touch, then relaxed again and laid a hoof on top of Fluttershy’s.
“But I still did all those terrible things,” she said, hanging her head.
“Everypony has done things they’re ashamed of,” said Fluttershy softly. “What matters is how they try to make up for it. You’ve tried so hard for as long as I’ve known you. Maybe you’ve forgotten how we met, when you and that group of bullies picked on me in school.”
Dash winced. Before today she remembered the incident only dimly, and shorn of any emotion — yes, she had been cruel, as kids sometimes are, but then she’d stopped hanging around with the other foals who started it, and that was the end of it. The cloudberries had peeled back that comfortable veil and laid everything bare. It was poor, undeserving Fluttershy she and that group had tormented, and she’d fashioned a convenient patch of self-deception to cover the guilt. The same sickness she had felt back then struck her once more, and her stomach lurched.
“I always remembered seeing a sad little filly sitting alone in the cafeteria and going over and sharing my lunch with her,” she said. “For years that was my earliest memory of you. I’d forgotten it was me who made you sad. I’m just...” She shook her head.
“And that’s what I meant by making up for it,” said Fluttershy. “You said sorry, and you gave me your nimbus bun — a lovely home-baked one with razzleberries in it — and most important of all you promised you wouldn’t let anypony else make fun of me.” She placed a hoof under Dash’s chin and gently lifted her head to meet her gaze. “You've kept that promise ever since. It doesn’t matter how we met, what’s important is why we remain friends.”
“Why are we still friends, Fluttershy?” said Dash. “We had such a fight last year after I failed my first tryout. I was so mean to you, then you flew home without me, and when I came to apologise you said...”
“I said you were so proud you thought you’d make it onto the Wonderbolts without even trying.” She felt a blush spreading across her cheeks, and brought her teacup up to her face to cover it. “That wasn’t very fair. I was upset, but I still shouldn’t have said that. You were trying to make amends and I wouldn’t let you.”
"No, you were right. I used to think they just wanted somepony who could do spectacular stunts and daring feats. ‘Bold heart, nimble wings’ — it doesn’t mean what I thought it did. My whole life I’d been going about it the wrong way. I was about ready to give up on the whole Wonderbolt thing, but then you changed my mind.”
“Me?” said Fluttershy.
“In a way,” Dash replied, grimacing slightly. “I wanted to prove you wrong. That was part of why I started taking my training seriously, anyway.”
Fluttershy nodded. “When I saw you actually doing it, I knew that was your way of making it up to me. So I made it up to you by supporting you in mine.”
Rainbow Dash closed her eyes in blissful remembrance. “You always set a place for me at dinner after a day’s training. I think I ate better that year than I had since I left Cloudsdale! And half the time I ended up falling asleep right there at the table.”
“I had to put a second bed in the cottage just so you’d have somewhere to sleep!” said Fluttershy, giggling.
“We’re a heck of a pair, aren’t we?” said Dash with a sigh. “I don’t know where I’d have been without you to keep my hooves on the ground.”
“And you’ve always been there to keep my wings in the sky,” said Fluttershy.
“But you must’ve known that helping me meant I’d have to leave eventually, right? You looked so sad at the crêperie when I told you I’d be living in Canterlot.”
Fluttershy swirled her teacup and gazed into the little whirlpool it created. “Yes, but I’d never stand in the way of your dream. I didn’t want to see you leave, but I’d hate it if you stayed just for my sake.”
Dash’s eyelids began to droop, and she stifled a great shuddering yawn. Fluttershy walked around to where Dash sat, spread a wing across her back and coaxed her to her feet. Tenderly she guided the exhausted pegasus to her bed, a deed she had performed so many times over the past year it had become almost like a dance.
“It’s been tougher than I ever imagined,” said Dash as Fluttershy drew the blanket over her. “Not just the training, but leaving everything behind. No more long naps in the clouds, no more hanging out together, no more time to visit Cloudsdale. Sometimes I think it’d be easier if things could go back to the way they were before.”
Fluttershy gasped. “You can’t mean that, surely? All your life you’ve dreamed of becoming a Wonderbolt, and you’re thinking of giving it up?”
“Look at what it’s done to me, Fluttershy,” said Dash, an exasperated tone in her voice. “I’ve been a Wonderbolt for four days and it’s almost destroyed me! I just... I don’t know what I want any more...” She scowled and started chewing at the hair on one of her fetlocks.
“Oh, Rainbow... you’re tired, you’re not thinking straight. Get some rest and we’ll talk again in the morning.”
Grumbling in protest, Dash turned on her side and within moments she was asleep. She dreamt of running and playing with her friends in the cloud fields of home once more.