Fallout Equestria: Once More with Feeling

by Solitair

Refitting

The glow from Rarity’s horn faded away. She stared at the spot where Angel had been five seconds ago and sighed. He was with Fluttershy now, away from the dying city. The two of them would be safe at Zecora’s hut, far away from the population centers the megaspells cut down in the seconds it took for her to ponder the situation.

But the burning pain in her hoof pulsed again, demanding her attention, spreading fire and molten glass through her veins with every beat of her heart. Rarity thought she could tolerate pain like this. The pain inflicted on her when she had her soul cut to pieces broadened her horizons of torment, gave her a telescope and made her discover entirely new galaxies of agony. It unshackled her hooves and tore her away from the pyre that singed her body, only to take her from a cave and into a sun that roasted her alive. When Snips’ black magic had finally finished coursing through her, it ripped out her guts and left a hole in her center that would never heal. That was the end of it, she thought at the time. She’d never feel like she would be destroyed so utterly ever again.

In a way, she was correct, but pain still hurt, no matter the tolerance she built up. Not to mention, this necromantic plague, the pink cloud, was an entirely different variety of pain. She knew it would somehow destroy her body, and even if it didn’t, if she somehow shrugged it off, no help would ever come.

Morbid curiosity overtook her, and she glanced at the hoof that had fused to the window. In only half a second, she turned away and retched onto the floor, the vision of a deformed hoof fused to the window breaking down one of her last mental barriers. Her exposed hoof had melted and mixed with the glass, spreading with no rhyme or reason like an impurity in the work of the most incompetent glassblower in Equestria. She could see that exposed, liquefied bone had risen to the surface, the entire fusion spotted with shades of red from the blood and flesh caught in it. It was hideous. Her own body had been deformed by the pink cloud and made into an aesthetic mockery.

Rarity made a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh. How apropos. Every trace of beauty in Canterlot had been annihilated in an afternoon. Why should she be any different? She hardly looked the picture of grace and charm even without the deformity. Her mane and tail were a complete mess, sweat soaked her coat from the effects of the pain, and she felt so bone thin that she could barely-

There she went. The surge of pain had redoubled and sapped the strength from her muscles. She dangled from the window fusion and let out a weak shriek when gravity wrenched her hoof out of alignment with her leg, straining her ligaments to the breaking point.

For a brief moment, she pondered using the last of her magic to levitate a shard of broken glass to her. It would be so simple to slice into her throat and release her blood. Cut her front cannons open just to be sure. But she couldn’t trust herself to keep a steady hold on her magic. The pain had spread to her head now, amplifying with every use of her horn. No more magic. No quick relief.

In the last hour of her life, she hoped and prayed that her efforts hadn’t been in vain. Angel and Fluttershy had to find safety somewhere, get to Stable 2 before it shut down. Twilight had to find her message and the book, use her intellect to figure out a way to counteract the cloud. Her own death had to matter! It had to mean something!

It had to!

It… had……

---

“Fluttershy!” Rarity galloped after the yellow pegasus flying at what, for her, was breakneck speed. It couldn’t hold a candle to Rainbow Dash’s maximum velocity, but Fluttershy could still fly over the stalls and ponies that crowded the market square, a feat that Rarity couldn’t replicate without the aid of magic.

Rarity had to duck and weave between a corn cart and a wagon filled with bolts of cloth, leaping from side to side with grace she hadn’t possessed in years. The first few times she leaped to the side of a pony who looked dumbfounded to see the town’s dressmaker barreling down on them, she did it too early, adjusting for a lag in reaction time that no longer existed, and on a few occasions almost collided with another obstacle she hadn’t noticed. But after she nudged a cantaloupe cart and bruised her flank, she started to catch on and adjust her path.

Every time she took her eyes off her friend’s back, she did her best to lock on to it again. The last time she saw Fluttershy, the poor girl’s heart had been shattered. Judging from the demolished state of the furniture in the meeting room, she’d also had a surfeit of aggression and frustration to work out. Rarity didn’t mind the property damage as much as she did the sight of her best friend acting like an enraged beast. It was an occasion so rare that “once in a blue moon” was too frequent to describe it. Years could go by without any sign of it ever happening. But Rarity found herself disturbed every time Fluttershy’s demeanor transformed from the kind, gentle introvert to an angry or domineering spitfire. Rarity thanked her lucky stars that for the most part, the episodes she witnessed were brief.

But then, most of them weren’t triggered by the death of civilization itself. Rarity had teleported Fluttershy away before she could be sure that Fluttershy had collected herself. She had no idea what Fluttershy would do in her current state.

So far, Rarity could see her flying out of town, to her cottage. She turned a corner and climbed a hill, saw the cottage creeping into view just as Fluttershy zipped in and slammed the door shut. As she got closer, every window slammed shut as well, the drapes zipping together to block out the view from the outside. Rarity slowed to a stop in front of the locked door.

She fidgeted on Fluttershy’s welcome mat, scuffing it with her hooves. What a delicate situation this was! Uncertain of whether or not to leave the poor girl alone to process her grief, thoughts of sensationalist obituaries entered her mind. The leader of the Ministry of Image had to pay attention to the papers, and from time to time she had to put her hoof down and talk sense into scaremongering muckrakers who felt the mad temptation to play up a prominent suicide in a shameless grab for readership. The possibility of a decline in national morale never entered their minds, and even though she never could stamp out anti-war sentiment in its entirety, she cordoned it to the disreputable underground so that it couldn’t interfere with Ministry efforts. Oh, and didn’t she feel proud of the resulting fallout?

But she remembered details of the suicides. The ponies in question, famous and otherwise, felt that the war had destroyed their livelihoods and closed the door on Equestria’s golden age forever. She winced upon remembering how easily she had dismissed those claims, and they had come from tertiary parties without much reason to feel guilt about the nation’s state of affairs. What if Fluttershy…

Rarity gasped and zipped around the house, using her magic to part curtains in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Fluttershy. She barely got a second to peek in each window before Angel tugged the drapes shut again, but she saw enough. Fluttershy had sequestered herself in her bedroom, or perhaps the upstairs bathroom. The upper windows of the cottage loomed high above her, out of reach. She could only think of one way to reach Fluttershy at this point. Hopefully it would work in time.

She closed her eyes and concentrated. Her horn glowed, and a shimmering white cocoon appeared from nowhere, levitating and enveloping her. A numbing sensation spread through her body, leaving behind an uncomfortable tingling that collected in her sides. In a few moments, the cocoon burst, and Rarity emerged, a pair of glowing, transparent butterfly wings growing from her sides.

A glance confirmed that they were just as beautiful as she’d always made them, a substantial improvement on the pair Twilight had originally made for her. Each segment looked like an intricate stained-glass painting, with filigree-esque swirls and a striking chiaroscuro color scheme. Ever since Twilight taught her how to make them, Rarity had made several designs for them, one of the few ways she could relieve stress from Ministry work. Flapping those wings felt odd, like flexing a leg fresh out of a heavy cast, but Rarity soon found herself airborne nevertheless.

She flew up to the window of Fluttershy’s bedroom and pulled the curtains open. A shivering, blanket-wrapped mound lay atop the bed, a tuft of pink tail hair peeking out from a loose fold. Before Angel could come back and shoo her away, Rarity took a deep breath and rapped on the window with a hoof.

The sound made Fluttershy jump out of bed like she’d just conducted an electric shock through her body. She whipped her head around, trying to find the source, and upon seeing Rarity she stared with widened, fearful eyes. But in a moment she calmed herself, taking short, rapid breaths before she turned away with a wince. “Go away!” she said, preparing to wrap herself in her own cocoon again.

“Fluttershy, please!” Rarity said. She pressed her hooves up against the glass of the window. If she could only fix Fluttershy, make all the bruises she got over the years fade away with her care. Fluttershy had done so much to heal other ponies over the decades, but now Rarity feared that she might be beyond help herself. She saw Fluttershy as a beautiful glass vase, battered to pieces but still holding together like a house of cards. The slightest touch, no matter how well-intentioned, could make her collapse completely.

Inhale. Unlatch the window. Open. “It wasn’t your fault, Fluttershy,” Rarity said. “You never meant anything but the best for all of us. You always were the best of us.” The words felt forced and awkward, poorly sculpted. Fluttershy stirred once.

“I… believe…” Rarity turned her head to look back at Ponyville. How could she say it? “We’re back. Surely you’ve noticed you’re back in your old home? Not a bit of that unpleasant business from the war appears to have transpired at all! It… It almost seems like paradise.”

That got Fluttershy to peek her head out from the blanket and stare at her. Rarity found her expression inscrutable, but it didn’t seem distraught at all. Was she making progress?

Rarity fidgeted from the eye contact. She noticed that Angel had arrived from downstairs, and that he also stared at her, almost as if hoping his gaze would launch her back out the window. “Er. I’m… unfortunately a bit tongue-tied at the moment, darling. But I want nothing more than to help you through your pain, so if you need anything from me at all, you need simply ask. I’m available to talk whenever you require it of me."

Fluttershy blinked, looking past Rarity’s eyes. Slowly, she slipped out of bed, setting one hoof to the ground after another. When she started walking over to the window, Rarity’s heart leapt. She reached her! Somehow she managed to affect Fluttershy enough that her friend wanted to embrace her! There wasn’t any verbal communication just yet, but Rarity hardly expected a full recovery right out of-

The force of Fluttershy’s Stare pounded Rarity’s psyche. The conjured wings at her sides locked up. Her body dropped, and she had to scrabble at the windowsill with her forelegs to keep from dropping a story down to the ground. Dread cloaked her being, thickening with each step Fluttershy took in her direction.

“Help me?” Fluttershy asked through gritted teeth, with a voice so strained it felt constricting to hear. Rarity could only emit a terrified squeak in response. “The way you helped me and Angel get out of Canterlot? Is that what you think?”

“I…” Rarity gulped. “I saved your life, Fluttershy!” Did Fluttershy not see what the pink cloud had done to Rarity, to the other ponies of Canterlot?

Tears came to Fluttershy’s eyes again. She wavered, broke eye contact with Rarity. “I found a plant, Rarity. In the Everfree Forest.” There came a long pause as Rarity struggled to get herself in the air again. “It changed me.”

Rarity’s mouth hung open. She felt a chill spread through her body. When she sent Fluttershy to the Everfree Forest, she forgot about all of the dangerous flora and fauna inside, trusted that Fluttershy could avoid it. But that depended on Fluttershy keeping her wits about her, instead of being emotionally distraught. Rarity didn’t even know of everything that lurked inside, not even to the degree that Fluttershy did. “Oh, darling, I’m so sorry,” she muttered. She tried to slip inside the window and into the room so she could embrace Fluttershy.

But Fluttershy cringed and bristled when Rarity drew closer, furrowing her brow. It made Rarity cover her face with her hooves, unwilling to bear the thought of another stare. “Do you-!” Fluttershy shouted, before she caught herself again. Deep breath. “You don’t. You don’t know what it’s like. I grew roots and I couldn’t move. It took my eyes, but I could still see!” She sniffled and sobbed. “Why could I still see? I had to watch the sky light up and the earth turn black, watch every pony who ever stumbled into my patch! I could see and hear them, but I couldn’t warn them! You know how many ponies died there? More than you’d think, Rarity! More than you’d think!”

Rarity watched Fluttershy crumble to the ground, staring into nothing with empty eyes. Nopony said anything for several moments. She could hear the soft whoosh of wind coming from her flapping wings, in lieu of any louder sounds. The tapping of Angel’s foot on the floor soon joined it. From the look on his face, Rarity could tell he expected her to leave, and soon. “Are you… is there nothing I can do?” she finally asked.

“I don’t want to see you,” Fluttershy said. Her voice became a dull, lifeless monotone, the only response she could muster for Rarity.

“Oh!” Rarity gave Fluttershy a gentle smile. “Well, yes, I think some time to yourself would be best for you, just as long as Angel gives you proper supervision.” Angel narrowed his eyes. “When do you think I should come back? Tomorrow mo-”

“I don’t want to see you,” Fluttershy repeated, in the same tone.

Another silence passed, and Rarity’s face fell. Her mouth opened, then closed again. Before she could say something else, Angel hopped up onto the windowsill and closed them in Rarity’s face, taking time to draw the curtains again.

She began to fly away from the cottage, before she took another look at her majestic wings. What magnificent specimens of magical art they were! If she recalled correctly, each new design she created filled her with immense pride, especially when she had shown them to Fluttershy and her employees for the very first time. Those were halcyon days.

Her hooves touched the ground, and with a spark of her horn she set her wings ablaze. Considering the circumstances, immediate and otherwise, she felt inadequate and undeserving of their splendor. She would have to walk back into town the normal way.

---

The pony Rarity saw in the mirror scarcely seemed recognizable. She had seen her in many pictographs in the past few years, but this was no static image. It moved. It breathed. Its eyes moved at her command. She could see a tear forming in one. Such beautiful, smooth skin, a shining mane, elegant lashes. With a bit of maintenance, Rarity would look like a perfect object of beauty for the first time in what seemed like ages. Only Rarity’s tired eyes marred her perfect visage.

For the past half an hour, she supposed, Rarity had stared into the mirror in wonder. She had previously spent the hour before then seeing that her friends had cleared out of the library and wandering about her boutique in a daze, taking in every last detail, where the furniture stood and where her designs and drawings lay. All of the dresses in her workroom, be they half-finished, nearly done, or only sketches on paper, she recognized from old projects she completed long ago. Many of them made her wince. Such rookie mistakes she made. This one dress had clashing colors, that dress had an eye-straining pattern on the rear trail, and whatever was she thinking using that variety of lace as a hem? The temptation to throw most of them out and start over completely passed through her mind, only to realize that she had no new ideas to improve upon them, not a one.

She slumped forward onto her vanity table and sighed. It had been years since she designed a dress. The location of the list of clients, commissions, and specifications still eluded her memory. If she wanted to resume her old life, she would have to comb through all of her drawers to search for it.

Before she could open the first one, she heard a knocking on the front door to the boutique. The sound made her sigh. She wasn’t ready to return to seeing customers in her shop like she had in the past. Ponies who visited Carousel Boutique demanded a certain level of poise and professionalism in the proprietor’s personality, and she could imagine the cracks her customers could see if she admitted them. Lapses in memory and the instinct to revise her designs out of nowhere were the most obvious problems she could think of, combined with potential problems that could arise depending on the customer.

Though she kept records on her commissions, her recordkeeping was nowhere near Twilight’s level, and didn’t cover customers who would come to her in the future, so naturally she didn’t remember who came to her on a specific day. What if today was the day she first met somepony she knew later in life, somepony she had a history with? Amethyst, perhaps? Maybe Rose Madder or Velour? She could think of many such ponies, and the last thing she wanted to do was break down in front of one of them. Oh, what if she could warn them about-

Another knock, this one louder, more insistent. Rarity sighed and got up, annoyed that the first pony to come to her shop had ignored the “closed” sign she put on the door. Honestly, why had she even bothered if Ponyville lacked the manners to leave her in peace? “I am currently indisposed at the moment!” she shouted as she trudged into the foyer. “I thought I made it perfectly clear that I am not to be disturbed! Good day!”

“B-but Rarity!” The voice on the other side of the door was that of a filly, and it wavered like the pony it belonged to might burst into tears with little provocation. Rarity yanked the door open and saw Sweetie Belle standing there, with a quivering lip and wide eyes. She wore saddlebags that Rarity had designed for her, a simple yet elegant design with a durable silk weave, with clasps embroidered with Rarity’s own cutie mark.

Good heavens, how long ago had she made that? It had to have been before the cuteceneara, or else Rarity would have embroidered chimes and musical notes instead of diamonds. No, now she remembered. It had been the birthday before the cuteceneara, shortly after her old saddlebags got stained and scuffed. After ensuring that the fillies responsible were punished, she got to work on designing replacements for her, just in time for her birthday. The look on Sweetie Belle’s face, pure gratitude and love for her older sister, buoyed Rarity’s mood all week.

Sweetie Belle tilted her head, blinked. Disappointment faded away, replaced with curiosity. “Rarity?” she asked.

---

“Yes, Sweetie Belle?” Rarity looked up and down between Sweetie Belle’s face and the approval forms awaiting her perusal and signatures. Her voice spoke of weariness and endless complications, the drudgery of day to day work and bureaucracy weighing on down on her. A trace of affection remained, but buried deep, so that only an ear as well-trained as Sweetie Belle’s could hear it.

Sweetie Belle looked tired herself, having been given the runaround by the lower levels of the Ministry of Image, a culture of delegation that presented a wall of resistance that weeded out the less stubborn among the populace with a complaint. They couldn’t just let anypony see the Minstry Mare, busy as she was. Sweetie Belle’s special manecut had been knocked askew by all of the rushing around, and Rarity thought she detected perspiration soaking into her sister’s dress. A look of annoyance passed Sweetie Belle’s face when she noticed Rarity using magic to continue writing and filling out paperwork even as she looked Sweetie Belle in the eyes.

My, she’d aged gracefully. Both sisters were used to seeing their likenesses appearing on magazine covers, but for different reasons. Sweetie Belle’s likeness continued to be used for glamorous aesthetic purposes, being the glamorous diva with music that moved the souls of a nation. The flaws on her face could easily be fixed with makeup and manipulation spells on the pictograph. Rarity was beyond such help, the age on her face too thick and copious to hide. Instead she made it her own, playing the part of the dignified elder statesmare. Her face appeared on political periodicals (that she had a hoof in publishing), wearing a facial expression with a clear message. I have a duty, her image told the nation. It won’t be pleasant and it won’t be quick, but it shall be done.

“I need to get ‘Thousands’ on the air,” Sweetie Belle said. “You need to veto the verdict from the Equestrian Cultural Committee.”

“Oh dear, oh dear,” Rarity said, shaking her head. “I wasn’t aware that you’d run afoul of the Committee.” A smile started to form on her face. “Which means that the members haven’t leaked word of your evaluation past their walls. Did they send you a private letter, then?”

Sweetie Belle nodded. “It was a warning telling me to forget the song and stick with what I know,” she admitted, frowning and pouting. Her pout looked adorable, one of many aspects of her which continued to capture the heart of the Equestrian public.

“Well then, I fail to see the problem!” Rarity spotted a disheveled stack of papers on her desk and cast a spell to align and straighten them into a seamless cubic shape. “So long as you heed the advice of the Committee, your career should be perfectly fine.”

“It’s not fine!” Sweetie Belle yelled, making Rarity flinch. “Nothing about it is fine! I can’t stand writing love songs and empty encouragement anthems and petty, flirty, empty-calorie nonsense anymore! I’m going to sing a meaningful song about the world if it’s the last thing I do!”

Rarity looked her sister in the eye. Her magic pushed aside the papers on her desk, and she tented her hooves, leaning forward and focusing her attention. “Well now, I can certainly respect your passion, Sweetie. But the Committee doesn’t bar material without good reason. Tell me, what exactly did you put in this song that raised their ire?”

Sweetie Belle pursed her lips, then pulled a small square out of her saddlebag. Thin as a few tiles stacked together, it had a plastic case covering everything except a few buttons, a pair of tiny speakers at the bottom, and a slot for little chips with miniature spell matrixes in them. The word Vibrancy, presumably a model name, was engraved on the front, with the much smaller Wondra logo to the upper left.

It was a new form of portable music player, a “chiptuner” as Rarity had heard the youth of the day calling it. Personally, she didn’t see the appeal, as the sound quality took a slight downgrade in the transition from vinyl to matrix, as well as the general act of listening turning from classy to crass. Still, it did have its advantages. Chips didn’t scratch or skip like vinyl, and they were far easier to carry around. Sweetie Belle had probably found this reason enough to use it to transport her new song here. She pressed the button marked “play” and the tinny little speakers produced the song.

What Rarity noticed first was Sweetie Bell’s typical, exuberant singing style, though it had been dialed back a bit for the song. Most ponies who talked of her career talked of her accomplished vocal gymnastics and her range exceeding five octaves. She could belt with the best of them, and when she threw her heart into a song, most ponies found theirs swept away as well. The obvious downside to this was that it distracted from the lyrical content, and Sweetie Belle was only ever an above-average songwriter at best, according to the critical feedback. Most of the truly articulate songwriters had been forced out of the public eye by the ministry for their choice in subject matter, but it took Rarity a few minutes to realize that Sweetie Belle intended to follow them.

The song flowing from the speakers sounded like an exuberant, jaunty tune, a chipper blend of piano and acoustic guitar with an added burst of brass horns. It evoked the image of a pony caught up in the thrill of being alive, so exuberant that only a parade could properly portray her emotions. But the lyrics, sung in a brassy R&B trill, clarified the source of the emotions by the end of the song, jarring with its innocent melody.

Thousands of ponies fight thousands of zebras
Clash over and over again
Thousands of coffins shipped home every week
They keep coming since I don’t care when
But I carry on strong and realize all this bad news
Can’t strangle my mood today
Because carnage, destruction, and the outpour of death
Happen thousands of miles away!

The song couldn’t end fast enough. Rarity’s eye twitched and her jaw hung open as her stare slowly shifted from the chiptuner to Sweetie Belle’s face. Her sister had the same anxious look she’d seen on the targets of Ministry performance reviews, and for good reason. This was an ambitious departure from her normal body of work as an artist. It was shaky, daring, provocative, and exactly what Equestria did not need!

“Forget that you ever made this,” Rarity told Sweetie Belle after she had a moment to inhale. “Leave it with me and I’ll ensure that nopony ever hears it again.”

Sweetie Belle’s face fell. “Wha… buh… no!” She snatched the chiptuner away from Rarity and glared at her. “I poured my soul into this and you want me to throw it away? I haven’t felt this much passion about a project since my third album!”

Project? Album? She was planning on writing more songs like this? Rarity had to keep herself from grinding her teeth. “Well… Sweetie Belle… a good artist has to learn to kill her darlings. The sooner you can learn to do that, the better. Now, if you’ll excuse me-”

“Rarity, you’re my sister!” Sweetie Belle’s shout stopped Rarity from leaving her seat and zipping to the next meeting on her conference. “You run the Ministry! You’re telling me you can’t tell that stuffed shirt Committee to… to… jump in a lake and let me on the air?”

Rarity turned her head away from Sweetie Belle. “Hmph! And open the door for nepotism to run rampant over an integral institution of government? Don’t be ridiculous.” She brushed past Sweetie Belle and opened the door outside her office. “I would advise you to go home and let these self-destructive urges pass over you. Consider your career, darling!” Hearing no further word from her stunned sister, she trotted down the hall to the policy meeting regarding a new series of recruitment posters. Soon her sister’s appointment slipped from her mind-

---

-only to return to the forefront of her memory as she looked at a long-lost, innocent version of her sister, looking at her with the same look of crestfallen disappointment. It wasn’t a bad song, she realized. Heaven knew the war could have used more satire to take the wind out of its sails back in the early days. “Thousands” had come years too late to be allowed the life it deserved, but by killing it Rarity had only meant to protect Sweetie Belle from retribution and censure. That, and protect her own career, protect the war, protect the reputation of her family, spare herself the shame of being related to an anarchist subversive.

Said subversive tapped her in the shin again. “Rarity, you promised!” she said with admonishing edge.

“I’m sorry!” Rarity sobbed, breaking down and embracing Sweetie Belle in a tight hug. In just a moment Sweetie Belle let go of her disappointment and fell into shock, trying to squirm away from her sister’s grip. “I never should have let you down! I’ve been the most horrid sister you could ever have!”

“R-Rarity,” Sweetie Belle gasped, “we can still… go…”

Rarity continued holding her sister close, her head pressed against Sweetie Belle’s, side by side. “After everything I learned at the social, all the strife that nearly tore us apart, how could I have forgotten the importance of our sisterhood and let that wretched Ministry tear us apart? I can’t apologizing enough for letting our state of affairs get so oppressive and horrid!”

Sweetie Belle stopped pushing against Rarity with her hooves and looked up at her again, gawping and incredulous. “Wha-”

“Here I vow,” Rarity said, letting Sweetie Belle go and standing back on her hooves again, “that I shall always support you in all artistic endeavors no matter the consequence or difficulty. No matter what you wish to sing about or how many ponies object, I will be right there beside you, ready to defend your work. I swear on Celestia’s mane!”

A brief silence passed, and Rarity’s face, proud and sad, started to soften when she saw Sweetie Belle looking at her with wide eyes, though she looked away and off to the side quickly, fidgeting on her hooves. “Sweetie, please talk to me. It’s been so long. Can’t we just talk like we used to?”

“But we can do that anytime!” Sweetie Belle said, looking back out the door. “And we’re gonna be late for the Social!”

“The Social? As in, the Sisterhooves Social?” Rarity couldn’t think of any other socials in Ponyville that the two of them had attended. Sweetie Belle certainly seemed excited enough for it, since attending it together had always been her idea.

Sweetie Belle clicked her hooves against the floor, moving in an antsy little dance that reminded Rarity of a little filly grabbing attention to indicate that she needed to use the lavatory. It wasn’t what Rarity would call dignified behavior, especially for a grown mare like… no, she wasn’t a grown mare. “Yes!” Sweetie Belle whined in a high-pitched squeak. “The ceremonies are gonna start and I told them you’d be there!”

That was it. That was all Sweetie Belle wanted, for her sister to be there by her side. Rarity knew where she needed to be. She zipped out the door, taking Sweetie Belle with her and locking the door behind them.

---

Attending the Sisterhooves Social again felt odd. At its roots, the event was a rural, informal fair that never truly fit the designation of “social” as far as Rarity was concerned. In her mind, a social was a private gathering of friends who gathered to converse and have light refreshments, perhaps themed around a common hobby like a book club or a shared profession. She’d brought it up with Sweetie Belle one day, and her sister shrugged, pointing out that the words didn’t matter as long as they had fun together.

She wished she could claim to have a photographic memory of the second Social she and Sweetie Belle attended, so that she could undo every misstep and stumble they made during the race and for once take home blue ribbons for their efforts, but instead she made even more mistakes, dragging Sweetie Belle down to a middling rank along with her. The only detail she could be sure of, Applejack’s presence at the head of the pack, proved false. Applebloom sat in the audience with Big Macintosh, looking disappointed that her sister couldn’t join her.

The more she watched Sweetie Belle acting at the festivities afterward, the more she realized that this wasn’t the mare she’d known. Anytime a conversation between the two of them drifted into singing, Sweetie Belle flinched and tried to change the subject, leaving Rarity in an awkward position. The Sweetie Belle she knew talked about the nuances of her vocal performances, often intertwining with Rarity’s own rattling off on the minutiae of dress design. She left her former shyness about her talent behind by the time she started dating.

Not so here. Unless Sweetie Belle was only pretending to be a filly to avoid the pain of the past, an unlikely possibility given her unfortunate and very brief stint as an actress, she genuinely didn’t remember a thing, nothing about the war, the Ministries, her career, or even how she earned her cutie mark. The sister she knew, the one she wronged, had vanished.

“Are you alright, Rarity?” Sweetie Belle asked as they walked back to Carousel Boutique.

“Hm?” Rarity lifter her gaze from off the ground and glanced at Sweetie Belle.

“You look really sad. I thought you’d be happier spending time with me. You were really happy last time.” The smile on Sweetie Belle’s face had gone now that nopony else could see them.

“Do I really look so despondent, Sweetie Belle?” Rarity asked her, only getting a scrutinizing look from Sweetie Belle in return. She thought at first that Sweetie was prompting her to admit something, but closer inspection revealed that Sweetie was looking at her and thinking over her answer.

“Um, uh, maybe?” Sweetie Belle asked. “What’s ‘despondent’ mean?”

Rarity chuckled a bit and made herself smile. “Perhaps I am a bit down in the dumps, but it’s really nothing to be concerned about. You have your youth, Sweetie Belle, and you should enjoy it while you can, cutie mark or no cutie mark. The dreary parts of adulthood will be upon you before you know it.”

The two of them trotted in silence for another minute, both of them glancing at and away from each other’s faces. They hadn’t noticed how much space they left between them until another pony passed between them. “So,” Sweetie Belle finally asked, “do you really think I can sing?”

“Well, of course!” Rarity says. “I’ve heard y- er, I’ve heard through the grapevine that you’re getting to be quite the diva. Once you overcome your stage fright, you’ll be able to charm audiences the world over! I’m sure of it!”

Sweetie Belle stared at the ground, looking less ­­sure than ever. Perhaps Rarity hadn’t made the right decision, prodding her in the direction of what she knew would be her special talent. She could almost hear her sister’s soulful singing voice in the air. If only she could help her sing again.

Now the two of them stood at the door of the Boutique, letting the silence take over for a moment further. Both of them waited for the other to speak first. Rarity pondered what more she could say, opening her mouth when she thought she had something and closing it again when it got away from her. “I… apologize for my dreadful performance today,” she settled on saying.

“Huh?” Sweetie Belle looked up at Rarity, confused. “Oh, um, it’s okay, Rarity. I’m just glad to be spending time with you again!” The smile she gave Rarity looked shaky, like a mask of good feelings. How far did Sweetie Belle go out of her way to conceal her singing abilities from the other ponies in her life, before the one performance that changed everything for the better? Apparently it was more important than Rarity remembered.

“Do you need any help walking home?” Rarity asked.

“No! Um, I can get back on my own.” Sweetie Belle started backing off, keeping Rarity in sight the further away she got from her. As she got to the other side of the dirt road, she realized the mask was slipping off. “But thanks anyway!” She scampered off and left Rarity alone.

With a sigh, Rarity slinked back inside the Boutique and took a moment to rest on her chaise longue. She draped a hoof over her forehead and closed her eyes. Oh, where had she gone wrong? Was she doomed to never reunite with her sister, the same sister that she had wronged and now wished to grovel to until she took Rarity back? Instead she received the immature filly, a ream of pristine cloth instead of the beloved gown it became. It was a far stranger answer to her wish than she had wanted, and now she stumbled in trying to find an answer to a simple question: What was she to do with it?

---

Dresswork proceeded slowly for Rarity, as she struggled to remember the exact motions she once used to sew and design dresses. As luck would have it, she found a book in her boudoir, old even by the standards of her current environment, which gave her a refresher course on the general, step-by-step process of constructing a dress. She hadn’t needed to write down precise instructions covering every single detail for every single variation, and she spent minutes trying to remember them when she wasn’t learning how to use the sewing machine again. To think that she could have saved time if she took meticulous notes on her every technique as Twilight had done. Shame she had to-

Rarity froze. The sewing machine continued to weave thread into one stationary spot over and over again, making an ugly mound of thread in the fabric. She let her hoof off the pedal which powered the machine and slumped in her seat. She finally noticed something missing, something which had left her ever since she woke up.

Late in her career as with the Ministry, she realized, far too late, that her friends had drifted apart from each other thanks to their work. Her invitations for socials had been rebuffed time and again, always with the excuse that their Ministries needed them, that the bureaucracy or the media or whichever institution demanded their constant attention. Only Rainbow Dash seemed willing to admit when she refused to chance to spend time with a friend she had ideological differences with. Rarity could see everything falling apart, and she knew she had to do something to bring them back together.

The figurines seemed like such a good idea at the time. She gave them to her friends as a simple reminder of what they used to be, and she paid quite the price to make it feel like the ponies the figurines represented were truly with them in spirit. It had seemed like the best option at the time, the only way to get around the issue… and it didn’t go over too well. The gifts were appreciated and beloved, and Rarity felt a small measure of warmth whenever she heard of how they’d been used and passed on, but the rifts remained, laughing at her attempts to banish old grudges. In some cases, their friendship only crumbled further, and some ponies refused outright to speak with others.

After she literally poured herself into the creation of those gifts, Rarity felt plagued by the specter of exhaustion. Every day she woke up, she felt the need to act and keep up appearances, preserving her secret from the ponies who wouldn’t understand. Once in a while she would have a genuine out-of-body experience, watching herself moving herself along the pre-set paths of work with no rigor, struggling against tugging ropes to get back. She made frequent contact with a nightmare of being turned to porcelain, her muscles freezing, heart stopping, lungs calcifying, becoming a lifeless objet d’art forever more.

It had taken her all day to realize that those feelings had vanished. More energy filled her body than she’d felt in years. Nothing contested the anchor holding her together as a flesh and blood mare.

She was halfway to the chaise longue again before she knew it. Her spiritual condition shouldn’t have surprised her any more than her physical one, but somehow she’d held on to the hope that her gift would outlast her, immortalizing her and all her friends. How could that still be true, if she felt so alive and whole? Would nothing remain of the figurines in the wake of the apocalypse but ground and shattered ceramic?

Her body hit the cushion with a sloppy impact, leaving her head crammed awkwardly into the pillow and her legs dangling off the sides. Instead of correcting her pose for aesthetic value, she let out a groan. All of her effort, all of her hardship, suffering and painstaking care, had been crumpled up and tossed in the garbage like a ruined design, and all of her dresses could go right to hell along with it.

Somepony knocked on the door. Rarity kept silent, hoping this meddlesome interloper would pay heed to the sign and remove herself from the doorway immediately. Of all the times she stopped feeling a hair’s breadth away from passing out, why did it have to be now? She’d love nothing more than to shut the world out and get a recuperative rest, but the twinge in her head wouldn’t let her be.

“Hey Rarity, are you there?” Her ears perked up for a moment upon hearing Spike’s boyish voice. “I know your sign says you’re closed, but I can see you left the lights on and, well…” He didn’t need to finish. Like most sensible ponies, Rarity only used the lights in her home when necessary and would only neglect to dim them again if circumstances made her forget, circumstances like being shunted into a life she thought she’d left behind.

Silence reigned between them for a moment. Rarity’s ears relaxed again, the only movement Spike elicited from her. Would he persist? Would he leave her? Did she want him to? Her eye twitched as she waited to hear him again.

He sighed, and she heard him fall. “Oof!” Tripping as he walked away, no doubt.

She opened her mouth before she could think twice. “Are you alright, darling?” Her voice croaked.

“Oh! You’re home!” He chuckled nervously. “I’ll be fine. My legs fell asleep while I was napping and I’ve been trying to get them to wake up all day! No big deal.”

More silence.

“So… can I-” he asked.

Rarity sighed. “You may come in, but I can’t guarantee I’ll be any decent company. I’m in a mood tonight.” With her magic, she unlatched the door and let him in.

Spike walked inside the boutique, taking slow, awkward steps and concentrating on making his feet hit the floor. She could see he wasn’t kidding about how much trouble his legs gave him. At one point he even pinwheeled his arms around to keep from falling flat on his face again. “Wh-whoa!” It didn’t work, though he at least fell on his hands. On all fours, he looked awkward but stable.

As Rarity’s magic closed the door, Spike just laid down on his stomach and looked up at her. “So, what brings you to my door?” she asked.

Spike smiled and shrugged. “Oh, you know, I thought I’d go around town, talk to ponies, hang out. The usual.”

Her tail twitched. “I thought your ‘usual’ was assisting Twilight in her library, darling.”

She peeked from out of her pillows at him and watched his bright mood fall. “Well, I couldn’t find Twilight, so I just… I don’t know where she is.” He sighed. “She didn’t even leave a note.”

Twilight still hadn’t returned. Rarity furrowed her brows, wondering what it was that Twilight had seen that made her so frightened. “Heavens, I hope she’s alright. I haven’t the faintest idea where she went.” She propped her chin up against the end of the chaise longue, then groaned and flipped herself over, scooting herself into a comfortable position that she couldn’t find.

“Is that… why you’re in a mood?” Spike asked.

“No. Well, in part, but…” How could she possibly explain it? Sweetie Belle and all of the other ponies of Ponyville couldn’t understand anything she’d been through. They wouldn’t have the faintest inkling of how her most recent career served the nation – or failed to – and if anypony knew anything about the magic that seduced her, they dismissed it as a childish and macabre fairy tale.

One more adjustment shifted her to her side, facing Spike and giving him a glance at her tired eyes. “My muse has deserted me, darling. I’ve come to realize that my work is ephemeral and disposable. Events beyond my control can undo my accomplishments in an instant… so I’m scrounging for a reason to muster effort at all.” She sighed and put the back of her hoof to her horn. “And I have orders to fill with such ennui in my soul.”

Spike had gotten up, successfully standing on two legs again, and made his way to the chaise longue. He leaned on the side and put an arm around Rarity’s shoulders. “I’d never forget your dresses, Rarity. They’re all pretty in their own way, like that gala dress you wore, and the bridesmaid set, and I really like that red and white polyester one you had!”

Rarity looked Spike’s way and smiled, patting him on the head. “Thank you for saying that.”

He nodded, then perked up and broke into a grin. “I can help make dresses for you if you want!”

“Oh, Spike, I appreciate the offer, but I don’t think it will work too well.” She got up from her sitting position and stepped onto the floor again. “It’s a very delicate art and I wouldn’t want to trouble you.”

Spike took several unsteady steps her way. “I’ve helped Twilight around the house for years now. I can do a whole lot of things and I’m a really quick study. And I can’t just let you do everything yourself if you’re as sad as you say you are. C’mon, Rarity, can’t I at least stick around and keep you company?”

She looked down at him, leaning back and forth on his feet, hands clasped together, eyes open and gleaming in a pleading look. That look on his face made Rarity wince in recognition and turn her head away.

“V-very well, Spike, you may assist me, just please, don’t look at me like that again!

---

At first Rarity regretted allowing Spike to assist her with her work. His hands mangled the first few attempts at making a dress in a variety of ways, either by moving the fabric too slowly or too quickly down the machine, failing to keep together material in such a way that it would be sewn correctly, or leaving uneven or skipped stitches. At that point she saw him, staring at and flexing his hands, and politely suggested that he gather materials for her instead.

From then on the process became much smoother, with Rarity being allowed to dedicate all of her time to cutting, sewing and ornamenting the dresses. She appreciated Spike’s help in retrieving the materials for her, but it was the act of having someone around, someone to talk to, that gave her the determination to pull through.

“Oh, what WAS I thinking?” she asked Spike as she looked over a design for one of Tres Couture’s upcoming shows. “I was only fooling myself, thinking that shade of red would go well with black satin. The overabundance of lace on the dress doesn’t help matters, either.”

Spike squinted at the design, tilting his head to look it over. “Well, maybe you can convince Tres to go with something else? Did he say it had to be that design specifically?”

“Well…” Rarity looked up at her horn, trying to remember. “He fell in love with this design at a glance, but I don’t believe he took in the details specifically.”

“So you can probably change a few things here and there. Take off lace, change the red, things like that. Did you want the red to be darker or brighter?”

It hadn’t solved every problem of Rarity’s. Thoughts of Sweetie Belle still lingered in her head, which led to a chain of emotions that threatened to bog her down, but she dealt with it by powering through and focusing on the work at hoof. Spike proved himself a valuable asset once again by warning her every time it looked like she was about to let her frustration get the better of her and make the very same mistakes he’d made at first.

Hours passed, and Spike folded and bundled dress after dress into the appropriate packaging. By the time Celestia’s sun had set, robbing them of most of their light, Rarity looked at the pile of packages stacked next to the door with a lump in her throat. One by one, new doubts about the veracity of her designs, memories of them bombing at shows, trickled into mind, but she took a deep breath and pushed them all away. One failed dress did not ruin an artist’s reputation. She could always try again later. That she had the opportunity to try again at all, with an old, dear friend assisting, was blessing enough.

She watched Spike look at the packages too, and took a special glance at his posture. He continued to rock back and forth on his feet, but it wasn’t a regular, equal motion. Instead, he gradually leaned forward every so often, then jerked back. His tail moved back to support him, causing him to lean forward again when it proved it lacked the strength. The look on his face when he beheld them all was… inscrutable, she settled on.

“Thank you for your assistance, Spikey-wikey,” Rarity said, sappy sweetness creeping into her voice. She fluttered her eyelashes at him, taking note of his reaction.

It prompted him to snicker and turn to look back at her again. “No problem, Rarity! It’s just what I do, helping unicorns in need. No big deal.”

Rarity’s smile faltered. From what she remembered of Spike’s mannerisms back from the glory days of her youth, he would also play things cool in an adorable attempt to act more mature than he was as a baby dragon, much like he did now. But this felt different. “Still, I feel like I should reward you for your efforts. Perhaps a belated and borrowed birthday present will suffice?” She turned to her vanity mirror and opened the drawer, fishing through her jewelry.

Spike’s eyes widened. “Rarity, I… you’re serious?”

“Well, I realize that it’s a bit of a faux pas to send a gift back to the original giver, but my budget is rather tight at the moment, so I can think of nothing better.” She retrieved a periapt from her drawer, built around a brilliant, heart-shaped red gemstone the size of her hoof.

“No, it’s not that!” Spike bit his lip and looked down at the floor. Was he tempted by the taste of the gemstone in question? “You were really happy to get that ruby, and you made a beautiful setting and choker for it. I thought you were going to keep that for life.”

She turned back at Spike and gave him a wistful smile. “And I did. Don’t you remember?”

Spike’s jaw dropped and he tumbled backward onto his tail. “Wh-what? You really… I mean… I’m not dreaming?” His voice rose in pitch, though Rarity couldn’t tell whether it was from panic or excitement.

Rarity shook her head and walked over to Spike, levitating over the periapt from her jewelry drawer around his neck.

He looked down at the ruby, rubbing it with his claws. To her surprise, he made no move to bite into it or even give it a nibble. Instead, he took the periapt back off, letting it dangle from his claws. “Rarity, I can’t. It’s yours. You should have it as long as-” He shook his head and set it down, leaving it at that. No point in saying ‘as long as you want’ when she made it clear that she didn’t, after all.

As Spike looked into her eyes, Rarity sighed, wondering what he saw in them. “Spike, why did you give me that gem to begin with? To appease the object of a boyish crush?”

“No!” Spike took a step forward. “Well, yeah, but can you blame me? You we- you are the most beautiful unicorn in Ponyville!”

“Didn’t you live in Canterlot prior to moving here? Hadn’t you seen plenty of mares with far more radiant beauty than me?”

It took a moment for Spike to work through frustration and think of an answer. For a moment he almost looked like a pouting child again. “They weren’t like you. You’re more real! You have talent and drive and… and… you’re the most generous pony I’ve ever known! You’ve gone so far to help all of your friends and your sister, over and over again, no matter how out of the way you have to go.” He smiled at her, an earnest, friendly smile that burned her eyes. “Life wouldn’t be the same without you. I can’t think of any better place for this to be than around your neck.”

He bent down to retrieve the periapt, only for Rarity to fling it away with your magic. “Maybe once I was the mare you described, but no longer,” she muttered. The volume of the voice fell far below her normal range. “My talents and drive have been squandered driving ponies to violence, my much-vaunted generosity led me to pay unfathomable prices for diminishing returns, and the last time I tried aiding a friend I condemned her to a cruel fate. Now she wants nothing to do with me, the sister I want to apologize to is gone forever, and I’m so selfless and dedicated that I gave up on my friends after Fluttershy and spent the rest of the day gazing into a mirror and trying to reclaim past glory.” Her tone remained steely and bitter, her gaze locked on the corner of a floor tile. “Does that sound like a mare who deserves a magnificent gemstone gift?”

She clenched her jaw and concentrated on breathing, back in, back out. Her face froze in anger and she felt Spike deserved her gaze as much as a basilisk’s. She could only see his feet, which remained still for the first time that day. He sounded hurt and confused when he finally spoke up again. “But Sweetie Belle’s still here. I saw her at-”

“She remembers nothing.” Rarity glanced up at his face.

“Oh.” Spike clasped his hands together, wringing one then the other like dishcloths. “So… it’s just us? Or the others, too?”

She sighed and shared with Spike what she had seen that morning, which Spike had slept through entirely, barely hearing any voices from the floor below and certainly not noticing anything wrong with the complication. When Spike realized just how heavily he’d slept, his face crumpled in pain, as if the words had impaled him. From then on he began to look like a trapped animal, keeping himself there to hear one thing in particular.

Rarity decided to cut to the chase. “Twilight teleported away. I have no idea where she went.” She covered her face with a hoof. “I could have traced her. We would know-”

“You wouldn’t. She’s better than that. Sorry.” Spike slumped back into a posture he could move in, and did so, away from Rarity. “It was nice seeing you, Rarity,” he said, without the slightest ounce of conviction. “I’ve got… I’ve got a letter to write.”

He left without any further conversation. She couldn’t think of anything else to say or do. The weight of her eyelids proved too distracting for her to think. Just as she began to turn, trudging off to bed, she spotted the periapt lying discarded on the floor.
Gleams of light danced on the surface of its facets as Rarity turned her head to watch it. It truly was a marvelously cut work of art, for once a piece she could only claim to add an attachment to for functionality. Much like her wings, she felt too coarse and vile to be worthy of it. Not now.

She lifted it back into the jewelry drawer and closed it. Maybe some other day, after a good night’s sleep.

Author's Note:

Thanks once again to Seraphem and Snow for helping to edit this chapter.

Comments

[Loeden]

Glad to see an update on this-- Reading FoE again as kkat reposts it here is lovely, but it's nice to know I'm not the only one who aches a bit for the mane six to have another chance to fix things.

[Rollem Bones]

On a conceptual level, this story is intriguing enough to warrant a follow. It's an interesting way to see how things are handled by the character we love now that they have a second chance at saving their world.

I do hope that the more florid narrative style used in Refitting compared to Wake Up Time is a conscious choice. Further, I hope you continue the trend of narrative technique and word choice tailored to the main mane involved in each chapter. It's an interesting stylistic flare that's subtle, but still noticeable.

[Solitair]

3131880
Oh good, somebody noticed! Being the amateur that I am, I wasn't sure how well I'd be able to pull it off. My preferred writing style when writing a story from multiple viewpoints is third person limited with a narrative voice reflecting the POV character's state of mind.

[Solitair]

3136574
I'm not sure what Asylum you're referring to, and I haven't read that far in Project Horizons yet. But I'm glad I was able to satisfy you in that regard. Please let me know what you think of the second chapter when you get to reading it.

[Solitair]

3589495
3615784
I only just figured out how to fix this issue. Thanks for letting me know. It should be alright now. Sorry it took me so long.

[Sarah-tang]

Do you intend on finishing this, its quite the interesting idea and story

[Solitair]

3998430
I'm trying, but I keep getting this niggling feeling that I'm doing something wrong with this story. I might end up making edits to these two chapters before I do another.

[Sarah-tang]

3998724 Well, I'd be a shame to let it die as "Incomplete" as so many stories do.