The Farewell
“So which one do you think is Equestria?” Rainbow asked aloud.
Spike glanced at the mare, then back out at the view, leaning on the frame of the TARDIS door. “I dunno,” he admitted thoughtfully. He rubbed at his chin for a moment then pointed with one claw at a star. “That one, maybe?”
“Really?” Rainbow asked, lounging beside him, dangling one hoof out the TARDIS door. He jabbed her hoof in a different direction. “I was thinking it was that one.”
From where he worked at the control panel, The Doctor watched the two enjoying the view of the universe Spike had decided to show Rainbow while they waited for the Doctor to prep the TARDIS for trip back. Like the little dragon, the blue pegasus was awestruck by the humbling view and immediately settled down to enjoy it, Spike joining her, who commented aloud he still couldn’t get past how “big” it all was.
Rainbow had responded that was a good thing to her. That meant there was that much more to see.
The Doctor grinned to himself. He knew Rainbow wanted to see more, he could tell. He could see the hunger of curiosity in her eyes. The thirst to explore. All traits he loved to see in a person. Or pony.
But he knew it wouldn’t last. And he could only stand there pretending to work while staring at the message on the TARDIS screen telling him it had finished calculating a return trip, like had been doing for the past five minutes, for so long. With a heavy sigh, he turned to approach them. They were still attempting to find their star among the sea of others in their universe.
“I still say it’s that one, Rainbow,” Spike persisted, pointing at the first star he had selected with his claw again.
“Well, I suppose it could be,” Rainbow admitted, but now pointed at a different star. “But I think it’s in the area of this one. That seems right in my head.”
“Actually, you’re both wrong,” the Doctor announced as he approached them, pointing to the far right of the universe. “The star Equestria orbits would be over in that direction.” To say nothing of the fact that the pinpricks of light they were looking at weren’t individual stars but actually whole galaxies, but he opted not to say this.
Spike and Rainbow both glanced in the direction he pointed. “So wait, you’re saying our planet is way out on the outskirts of our universe?” Rainbow asked, incredulous at the idea.
“Huh,” Spike murmured. “Who knew?”
“Well anyway,” the Doctor continued, closing one of the TARDIS doors and forcing Spike to move, before moving to close the other. “Not to burst any bubbles, but I think it’s time I got you two home.”
“Aw!” Rainbow moaned in disappointment. The TARDIS door bumped into her flank, but she didn’t move. “But…there’s so much more to see! I mean, now I know just how much is out there!” She gazed out at her universe. “In just one night, one single night, I’ve seen for myself my whole universe, visited an alternate dimension, and met an alien from another universe who claims there’s a whole mess more of them beyond that.” She sighed. “I’m just beginning to realize I’ve only ever seen just the smallest of tips of what there is to see, Doc. I don’t really want to miss out on the chance to see more. Not yet.”
The Doctor stared at her for a long moment. “Oh, Miss Dash,” he murmured to himself. He sighed too, placing a khaki hoof on the pegasus. “It’s time to go home.”
Rainbow looked at him for a moment then nodded. “Okay,” she said, forcing a smile before picking herself up, letting the TARDIS door close. She then yawned. “I probably ought to get some sleep anyway.”
“Oh hey, yeah,” Spike remarked, as if just remembering himself. “I’ve been up waaay past my bedtime. Twilight’ll throw a fit if she finds out about this!”
“Aw, just tell her what you were up to instead of sleeping Mister Spike, she’ll be more interested in that anyway,” the Doctor suggested, flipping controls as he started the TARDIS on its return flight.
“Oh, like she’d believe all of this, not without proof!” Spike said, throwing his arms out to gesture at the TARDIS’s spacious interior. “Hay, who’d believe us anyway?”
“Good question,” Rainbow remarked. “I can’t think of anypony who would, except Flitter…unless they got to see it for themselves.” She glanced up at the Doctor at this, but he did not comment on the matter. Rainbow then slammed her hoof on the floor with a thud. “You know who would believe us without question?” she asked Spike eagerly. “Pinkie Pie.”
“Oh yeah, she’d believe it without question,” Spike agreed immediately, but then grinned. “But then…who’d believe Pinkie?”
“You two brace yourselves!” the Doctor suddenly interrupted, grabbing the control panel with his hooves. “We’re about to make a dimensional jump!”
“A what now?” Rainbow repeated, confused.
Spike knew, though, and wearily braced himself. “Not again,” he muttered.
“Why what’s going to—” Rainbow was interrupted when the jump took place, and light momentarily distorted before reverting back to normal again. “What the—whoa…” she grabbed at her head as it started to spin and she started to trot haphazardly about the control room, unable to keep herself steady. Spike, meanwhile, simply toppled over onto his back and clutched at his stomach as it protested the jump as it did the first time. The Doctor simply shook it off with one shake of his body like before.
“Relax and breathe through your nose!” The Doctor urged as he worked with the controls, Rainbow staggering past him as she attempted to keep herself upright. “It’ll pass soon enough!”
The only response Rainbow gave was a loud smack as she ran face-first into one of the balcony’s supporting columns before toppling over and joining Spike on the floor, groaning.
The Doctor threw a switch and the TARDIS started to whir as she slipped into the Time Vortex, heading back for Ponyville. “Now I’m going to take you two back roughly about an hour after you left. It’ll still be nighttime, or in the tail end of it, so to everyone else, it’ll be like you never left.”
Rainbow, working off the worse of the extradimensional illness, sat up. “Sounds good, I guess,” she grunted. But then what the Doctor said sank in fully. “Wait…back about an hou—you can do that?”
The Doctor threw out his hooves, shocked at himself. “Since when do I start forgetting to mention that I travel through time?”
True to the Doctor’s word, it was still dark in Ponyville when the TARDIS started to fade back into existence outside the front of the tree library, but the horizon was starting to brighten in the east as Celestia prepared to raise her glorious sun and start the morning officially. The streets of Ponyville were still calm and quiet, and were happily peaceful as the TARDIS arrived, generating a slight breeze as it materialized, making its distinct sound.
Whirr…whirr…whirr…THUD
The TARDIS sat silently for a moment, before its door creaked open, and Spike and Rainbow filed out of the impossible blue box and stood before the library again. They looked around for a few moments, feeling a little out of place to be back at the relative calm of home.
“It really is like we never left,” Spike observed calmly, sounding humbled by the thought.
Rainbow gazed out at the other houses in Ponyville. “And they won’t ever know,” she murmured aloud. “Never know the danger they were in. The sun will just rise and they’ll go about their day, none the wiser.”
“Perhaps a downfall to my choice of lifestyle, Miss Dash,” the Doctor admitted, standing in the doorway of the TARDIS, watching the pair solemnly.
Rainbow turned to look at him, noticing his somber tone. “Well, yeah,” she admitted. “But…wouldn’t the benefits way outweigh that?”
The Doctor didn’t respond. He just gazed at the pegasus pony for a long time. It bothered both Rainbow and Spike.
“Is…something wrong, Doctor?” Spike asked finally.
The Doctor grinned and shook his head. “No, of course not,” he said. “I got you two safe, didn’t I? Stopped an enemy from attacking this world? Overall saved the day? What’s wrong with any of that?”
“Well, nothing, I guess,” Spike admitted, looking like he didn’t understand.
But Rainbow looked like she was starting to. “You know, Doc,” she began, “I’m sure my friends would love to meet you. Love to see what you do. Heck, Twilight alone would probably keep you busy for days with questions.”
“Probably,” the Doctor agreed. “Judging from what you’ve told me about her.”
“And the princesses…they’ll probably want to meet you. Thank you for what you’ve done for their subjects.”
“Naturally.”
“Oh, and Pinkie will want to give you a proper Ponyville welcome, too. Throw a party and all of that. That’s her thing, parties.”
“It sounds like fun, Miss Dash.”
The two ponies looked at each other for a long moment. Both were shirking the subject that was waiting to come up.
Finally, it was Rainbow who said it. “You aren’t staying…” she began sadly. “…are you?”
The Doctor shook his head slowly.
“But…why?” Spike asked. “Why do you need to leave? You just got here!”
“It’s not how I work, Mister Spike,” the Time Lord said solemnly. “Always travelling, me.”
“But…but would it really be so bad to just stay for a little while?” Spike pleaded. “I mean…I mean…” He frowned. “You said you got lonely, traveling.”
The Doctor glanced at the little dragon. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Sometimes I do.”
“Then why not stay?” Rainbow asked. “Or…if you want…you could take somepony with you. You know…show them what you’ve shown us…and maybe more.”
The Doctor bowed his head. She didn’t say it, but he knew what Rainbow was truly asking him.
Can’t I come with?
The Doctor looked up at the mare’s troubled face for a long moment, gazing into her hopeful eyes. Deep down he knew that he wanted nothing more than to grab her hoof and pull her into the TARDIS. Tell her to come with and have an adventure in time and space on him. Tally ho! Leave without looking back. The thought elated his otherwise heavy hearts. But when he finally spoke, it was to say none of this.
“I can’t.”
Rainbow blinked. “Why not?” she asked, not understanding.
“Because I don’t belong here, Miss Dash,” the stallion stated finally. “You both have a wonderful world here, in a wonderful universe, full of possibilities. But it’s not mine. Not my world. Not my universe. My mere presence here could complicate things in ways you can’t begin to picture. In fact, you saw some of that tonight, with the Dimenost. That was because of me that brought them here!”
“But you fixed that!” Spike argued.
“Yes, but it wouldn’t need fixing if I hadn’t come!” the Doctor pointed out. “Jumping from universe to universe…it can be done, but…it can be dangerous. More so than normal, even for me. I’ve been down that road before, trust me. And enviably I would only endanger others. And I couldn’t live with that on my shoulders. I have to deal with that far too often as it is.” He sighed. “And anyway…it’s not home. And I have…unfinished business in my universe that I need to resolve.”
“But…but you have a time machine!” Rainbow argued. “Couldn’t you just…I don’t know…jump back to the same point in time you left from when you do go back? That way you could take as long as you want somewhere else and no one would know the difference!”
“Except I would know, Miss Dash,” the Doctor pointed out firmly. “I’m sorry. I really am. But I really shouldn’t stay. So the first chance I get…”
“…you’re going back to your universe,” Spike summarized sadly.
The Doctor nodded. “It’ll be for the best.”
Rainbow was silent for a moment. “How?” she finally asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“How are you going to go back to your universe? By the sound of it, it was dangerous for you to just even come here in the first place.”
“You’re right. It severely damaged my TARDIS, forced me to regenerate, and enabled an attempted Dimenost invasion. Trying to go back the same way could potentially cause all of that again, if not more, so we can’t have that. I’ll just have to find another way. A safer way.”
Rainbow stepped towards him. “And in the meantime?”
The Doctor stepped towards her as well. “I’ll keep myself busy,” he promised.
“Then…I really don’t understand, Doc. You’re trying to keep yourself away, but it doesn’t sound to me like you really have to. Not yet. Not until you find this safe way back to your universe, and who knows when that might be?”
“Except when I do find it, and I’m confident I will, most likely it will be an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, one I have to take then and there, or not at all,” the Doctor explained. He lowered his gaze from Rainbow. “I would probably have no time to return anyone traveling with me back to their homes. And I certainly couldn’t take them to my universe with me. I don’t know if that can even be done, given the extreme differences between the two universes.” He sighed. “It would be better if I kept to myself then, Miss Dash. And you know that…don’t you?”
Rainbow lowered her gaze too. “Yeah, I do,” she admitted. “But…I…I…”
“…wanted to see more,” the Doctor finished, nodding. “I understand, and I don’t blame you. And I’m sorry. But I think you need to be here, Miss Dash.”
Rainbow bowed her head. “Is there still any chance you might come back? If only for a visit?” she asked, hopeful still. “Because you’re right, there’s more I want to see that’s out there and you’re the only thing that can help it happen.”
The Doctor considered it, but the answer didn’t change. “I can make no promises, Miss Dash.”
“And so what am I supposed to do after everything that’s happened tonight?” Rainbow asked dejectedly.
The Doctor grinned a sad grin. “You keep going forward in all of your beliefs, Miss Dash,” he assured her. He placed a hoof on her chin, raising her head so to look her in the eye. “And prove to me that I’m not mistaken in my own.”
Rainbow looked at him for a long moment then hugged him. A moment later, the Time Lord felt Spike latch onto his forehoof in a hug of his own as well.
“Thank you for everything, Doc,” Rainbow whispered.
“Yeah,” Spike agreed.
“You’re welcome, both of you,” the Doctor said, returning the hug. Then, with a sigh, he pulled out their grips. They did not protest, but looked on with sad eyes as they watched the stallion back up towards the TARDIS again. “But I need to go now.”
“Okay,” Rainbow said with a slow nod.
“Safe travels,” Spike added, softly, but with meaning.
“Same to you,” the Doctor added as he arrived back at his box. “And no regrets,” he urged as he stepped back inside. “No tears…no anxieties, either.”
“I will if you will,” Rainbow stated. She grinned. “Otherwise I expect you to come right back.”
The Doctor returned the grin. “Always, Miss Dash.” He started to turn away, but then turned back. “Oh, and Miss Dash?”
“Yeah?”
“Farewell.”
Rainbow sniffed and wiped her snout with her hoof. “Farewell, Doc.”
The Doctor looked at them, still grinning, for a moment, before finally ducking into the TARDIS interior and closing the door. A moment later, the machine started to whir again, the light placed on its top starting to strobe in regular, brilliant, flares of light in time with the sound of its engines.
Whirr…whirr…whirr…
Gradually, before their very eyes, the TARDIS started to fade away from the view of Rainbow and Spike, growing more and more transparent and about to disappear altogether. Rainbow suddenly started towards the box, one hoof outstretched as if she meant to stop it, but only took a few steps before she stopped and watched the box, and everything about it, vanish entirely in one final strobe of light. It vanished just in time for the sun to finally crest the eastern horizon in the distance ahead of them. Soon the whole area was flooded with the warm yellow glow of the rising sun, but the blue box they had been watching was long gone by that time.
Both the pegasus and the little dragon stood and stared at the spot for a long time. During that time, Spike strolled to join Rainbow, glancing up at her face to see how she was taking this, but her face was unreadable. Finally, Spike wearily put a hand on Rainbow’s shoulder.
“C’mon,” he urged. “We still have a few things we need to clean up.”
Rainbow gazed out into the distance for a moment then nodded. “Yeah,” she said, calmly turning to follow the baby dragon into the library. “I guess we do.”
“Spiiiike! I’m home!”
The bang of a door closing then followed. Rainbow grunted to herself as she rolled over, groggily attempting to slip back into the state of deep sleep she had been in before. What had she been thinking about before the rude interruption?
“Spike? I’m back from Fluttershy’s! Spiiiike!”
Gradually, Rainbow started to remember again before her mind had drifted to other things in its state of sleep. Bits and pieces of the night before randomly recalled themselves before her closed eyelids, with no real connections between them, or in no particular order. Reassured, Rainbow allowed this to continue in her mind.
“Spike? Spi—oh, of course you slept in.”
Rainbow remembered the Dimenost, and her brief imprisonment in the Fringe. Not surprising, it had probably left the biggest mark in her memory, given what she was put through. But she also remembered the stallion who saved her. Quite likely saved them all, in fact. She also remembered his impossible box, Spike gaping at the inside of said box, Flitter—where did Flitter end up in the end? Spike had explained she had finally left the Doctor’s side and why, but she didn’t know what the pegasus mare did after that. Rainbow was now genuinely curious.
“What the—Rainbow Dash?”
That new voice had gotten steadily closer, though. Rainbow attempted to ignore it, trying to focus on her memories. She didn’t want to wake up and face the day after. Not yet.
“Wake up, Rainbow.”
Apparently, the voice had other ideas. Rainbow groaned again, pulling the covers over her head in an attempt to muffle the sound of the annoying speaker. They were simply pulled back again.
“Rainbow. Get up. Now, please.”
She felt a poke in her side. Rainbow groaned again in protest and rolled over for a second time. Not yet. She didn’t want to get up yet.
“RAINBOW!”
“Gah!” Rainbow jumped, waking. She went still for a moment, then stretched and then looked at the speaker at last with bleary eyes. “Twilight? What’re you doing here?”
Twilight looked back at Rainbow with narrowed eyes. “I live here.”
“Oh. Yeah. Well…get your own bed!”
“That is my bed, Rainbow.”
Rainbow lifted up one of the bedcovers with her hoof and stared at it. “Oh yeah. I guess it is.”
The purple unicorn rubbed at her forehead with one hoof in frustration. “What are you even doing here anyway, Rainbow?” she asked.
Rainbow looked at her for a moment. “It’s…complicated,” she found herself saying before having to smirk, reminded of the Doctor and his tendency to say that.
It didn’t sway Twilight though. “Try me.”
Rainbow tapped her hooves together, trying to get her tired mind to piece together an explanation. “Um…well…”
“Does it, by any chance, have anything to do with my broken patio door?” Twilight asked, leaning over so to peer disapprovingly around Rainbow and at the door in question, hanging ajar still.
Rainbow twisted around and squinted at it. “Oh yeah, about that,” she said, and started to blush. “Heh…um, funny story…”
“Don’t tell me you broke in?”
“It was for a good cause!”
“And what, pray tell, was THAT?”
Rainbow started to tap her hooves together again. Should she try and tell her? “There was a lightning strike,” she blurted out instead.
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “A lightning strike?”
“Yeah. Runaway raincloud. Didn’t get properly tied down for the night or something by the weather team.”
Twilight paused to consider this. “But the library has a magical lightning rod in place to protect it from such a thing.”
“Well…it didn’t work. Lightning struck it anyway.”
“But it should’ve!”
“I don’t know what happened, Twi.” Rainbow yawned and rubbed at her tired eyes. “You’re the magic whiz, you tell me.”
Twilight frowned as she considered the problem. “I suppose if the lightning bolt came down at just the right angle…” she began, tapping her chin.
“Look, all I know is that it struck the library, and there was a lot of smoke. I thought it might have set the library on fire, so…I reacted. Worked to get Spike out before he got hurt. And you, but you weren’t there. Obviously.” Rainbow scratched her head. “Where were you again?”
“Sleepover at Fluttershy’s.”
“Riiiiiiight…anyway, it turned out there was no fire, and I…um…pushed the raincloud out over the Everfree where it wouldn’t hurt anything else, and…” Rainbow fidgeted with the bedcovers for a second it, debating, “…that’s it.”
“Okay,” Twilight relented, “I guess that explains that part. But that doesn’t explain what you’re doing in my bed.”
“Oh that.” Rainbow rubbed the back of her head for a second in thought then decided the truth wouldn’t hurt so much here. “We were both up late cleaning up, and Spike said I was starting to look really tired and told me to spend the night here, and…well…your bed looked so cozy at the time, and it was available, so…”
Twilight sighed, but grinned. “Well, I suppose there are worse things,” she admitted. “And you do look pretty tired, still.”
“I feel pretty tired still,” Rainbow said, rubbing again at her tired eyes.
“How long were you both up?”
“Until sunrise.”
“Yikes.”
“Yeah.”
“Still, I suppose that explains why Lazy Scales over there won’t even budge.” Twilight kicked at Spike’s basket with her hoof, the baby dragon curled tightly inside, dead asleep. He didn’t even stir.
Rainbow was envious. She yawned. “Can I go back to sleep now?”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I guess you can,” she said, turning away. “It’s not like I’m going to need that bed back right this minute anyway.”
The only response she got back from Rainbow was a snore, having not even waited for permission to settle back down in the covers and slip back to sleep. Twilight shook her head in good humor and started to go back downstairs, planning to work on her studies.
“Snnx…c’mon Doc…mm…tally ho…scnnnaaaa…”
Twilight paused to look back in puzzlement as Rainbow’s murmurings as the pegasus rolled over in bed, but then shrugged and proceeded onward without giving it a second thought.
When Rainbow awoke next, she felt much more awake. It was also considerably later in the day, well past noon. But this didn’t bug Rainbow much.
“Meh,” she remarked to herself, clambering out of the bed and stretching her limbs, “I’ve slept in later.”
She noticed Spike had gotten up sometime before her too, and that the room was vacant save for herself. Given the time of day, this didn’t really surprise her, but she decided to look around real quick and make sure everything was in order. Heading downstairs, she found the library much like how it normally was; quiet and mostly vacant save for that one corner where Twilight was inevitably working on her studies. The purple unicorn glanced up when Rainbow came galloping down her staircase.
“Afternoon, sleepyhead,” she teased.
“Yeah, yeah, so I slept in late,” Rainbow responded, rubbing one eye with the back of her hoof. “Thanks for letting me do that, by the way.”
“No problem, you seriously did look like you needed it,” Twilight responded, looking Rainbow up and down approvingly. “But you look much better rested now…if a little groggy still.”
“Meh,” Rainbow grunted again, shaking herself. “That’ll wear off with some moving around.” Her stomach rumbled suddenly, and she placed a hoof on her middle, realizing she hadn’t eaten anything yet today. “And maybe after I get something to eat.”
Twilight grinned then pointed towards the library’s kitchen with one hoof. “Spike’s already up and getting some breakfast. You’re welcome to join him and get a bite to eat yourself.”
“Thanks Twi,” Rainbow said, and proceeded to the kitchen, poking her head inside and looking around.
Spike sat at the kitchen table, poking at a bowl of cereal. He still seemed a little groggy, but he was awake too. He glanced up at Rainbow. “Hey,” he greeted softly.
“Hey,” Rainbow greeted in return, grabbing a bowl from the counter and joining him at the table. She took the box of cereal that had been left on the table, and frowned at the notable lack of sweeteners and high amounts of fiber it looked to have. “Not the usual sort of cereal I’d eat.”
“Twilight won’t buy anything else,” Spike replied, taking a bite of the bland cereal. “Heap some sugar on it, though, and it’s…tolerable.”
“At this point, I’m too hungry to really care,” Rainbow remarked, pouring herself a heaping bowl full, then scooping out a few spoonfuls of sugar to add to it.
They both sat there and laboriously chewed on the fibrous cereal in silence for a few moments. They were both thinking of the same thing, but neither of them seemed too inclined to be the first to bring it up. But finally, the silence getting to him, Spike was the first to mention it, in the most casual way he could think of.
“Some night, huh?” he asked.
Rainbow sighed. “Yeah,” she agreed.
“Almost seems like it was all a dream, doesn’t it?”
“Mm.” Rainbow didn’t want to think about that possibility.
There was a sudden knock at the library’s front door, but neither Spike nor Rainbow reacted to it. Twilight was heard getting up from her studies to answer it. A moment later, the unicorn was poking her head into the kitchen.
“Rainbow, it’s for you,” she announced.
“Really?” Rainbow repeated, a little surprised anypony even knew to find her here. “Who is it?”
“Flitter,” Twilight answered as she walked back out again.
Rainbow and Spike exchanged glances. Then they jointly rose and hurried to the front door. They found Flitter milling around outside, having wandered from the door while she waited. She was looking nervous and ready to fly away at a moment’s notice. She also looked very tired, but nonetheless she quickly turned relieved at the sight of Rainbow.
“Oh good!” she said when Rainbow approached her. “You got back safe! Good! I was up all night, worrying, and…” she trailed off, avoiding eye contact. “Well…I came to make sure you were all right, I guess…considering what happened last night.”
“Yeah…about that…” Rainbow began, having been made fully aware of Flitter’s actions the night previous and still had mixed feelings about them herself. She and Spike slipped outside the library and closed the front door so to keep their voices from carrying inside. “I think we need to talk about that.”
“Rainbow, I’m sorry,” Flitter apologized quickly. “It was…a really rough night, you know? It just…got to me after a while. I couldn’t take anymore.”
“Yeah,” Rainbow said. “I get that.” She glanced at Spike, wondering what the dragon’s reaction to all of this was. The stern frown he wore told her that the youth had not yet forgiven Flitter for what happened. So Rainbow pressed on. “Still…you kinda messed things up for all of us.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Flitter assured. “I…I was in over my head, yes, but so were you.” She gaped at Rainbow for a moment. “I still don’t get it, Rainbow. How can you be so…okay with what happened? I mean that stallion, he…” Flitter made a frustrated sigh. “I still don’t know what you see in him.”
Rainbow wasn’t sure how to answer to that. “Well, whatever it is,” she finally said, “It’s pretty clear that you don’t see it too.”
Flitter shook her head. “No, I guess I don’t.” She adjusted her position so to look more confident. “But I don’t regret that, either.”
Rainbow looked at her for a long moment. “You know you kind of ditched me back there,” she stated bluntly.
“Ditched all of us, in fact,” Spike added darkly.
Flitter nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said again, and to her credit, she looked like she meant it. “But at least it all worked out, right? Everything’s okay now, right?” When Rainbow avoided meeting her hopeful gaze, Flitter turned a little worried. “Right?”
“You don’t know what I had to go through,” Rainbow pointed out, her tone cold. “And I really don’t know what might have happened to me if the Doc hadn’t come for me.”
Flitter didn’t reply to this. She bit her lip for a moment, glancing around. “He’s not still here…is he?”
Rainbow hesitated, her chest clenching a little at the thought. “No,” she answered. “He…left.”
Flitter nodded, relieved. “Good,” she said. “I think that’s for the best.”
Rainbow stared at her. “I don’t.”
Flitter stared back, her gaze no longer so friendly, concerned, or repentant. “Rainbow, as far as I’m concerned, last night never happened. Okay?”
Rainbow didn’t answer. But Flitter didn’t really wait for one. Giving a final nod of farewell to them both, she turned and started flapping her wings, flying off into the afternoon sky. Rainbow and Spike silently watched her go. Spike was fuming by this point.
“Boy, she’s got some nerve,” the little dragon muttered aloud, folding his arms. “I don’t think she’s actually sorry at all.”
“Oh, cut her some slack, Spike,” Rainbow prompted as she took a few aimless steps forward, gazing at the ground. “In a way, I can see where she’s coming from.”
Some of Spike’s anger deflated as he watched the blue pegasus wander. “Yeah, I guess,” he admitted. “But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
Rainbow wandered off to a nearby park bench that sat some feet from the library. She clambered up then heavily plopped her body down onto it, eyes gazing vacantly off into the distance. Spike slowly strolled over to her, watching her for several moments in worried silence.
“You okay?” he finally asked.
Rainbow looked at him for a moment, then off into the distance again. “I’ll live,” she assured. She sighed. “I just can’t help but feel like I’m…missing out.”
Spike nodded, setting himself down on the ground in front her, leaning his head back on the wooden lip of the bench. “I know what you mean,” he admitted. He wrapped his arms around his knees and gazed skyward, thinking. “I wonder what he’s doing right now.”
Rainbow rolled over and gazed up at the blue sky above them too, and wondered the same thing. What new trouble had the Doctor gotten himself into? Had he found a way back to his universe yet, like he said he would? Was he thinking back about the events of last night, wishing things had gone differently? Rainbow had no way of knowing. But it provided some comfort to her troubled mind that he was.
They were both silent for a long moment. The thought struck Rainbow at one point that they both still had bowls of cereal waiting for them in the library that were getting soggy, and Rainbow was still quite hungry. But for the moment she was content to right stay there for now, and it seemed Spike was too.
“Do you think he’ll ever come back?” Spike finally asked aloud.
Rainbow thought about it for a moment, staring into the clear afternoon sky. “I don’t know,” she admitted. She grinned a little. “But I’m willing to wait and find out.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.032 seconds
Total duration
609 users online
893,999 hits today, 2,782,760 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
If I know the Doctor, he's probably arguing with himslef inside the TARDIS about wether or not to go back and pick em up, which side will win? Who knows
....yeah, dangerous as in ripping a hole in the fabric of space and time dangerous...
4122231
I will say that Doc's has a greater, underlying, reason for doing this that he hasn't come clean on yet.
sequel!
4127415 1960's? Really? So why in one episode, when he went to 1940's Britain, did the Doctor keep running into police public call boxes instead of his TARDIS?
...unless they kept them around for a while...hmmm, dunno all I know is why they got rid of 'em! People mistaking them for porta-potties...
4128011
To answer the question, the TARDIS mimics a police box from the 1960s era specifically, but police boxes have been around for far longer than that (back to the late eighteen hundreds at the earliest, I believe) though they weren't always blue. America even had a few instances of their own police boxes, though they seemed to have never caught on state-side like they did in the UK.
As for why they were retired, police boxes were built mostly to be a sort of emergency police station of sorts, something the police could go to at the scene of the crime to report in or collect supplies kept within the box instead of having to waste time to make the trip all the way back to the police station to achieve the same purpose. The phone part of the box was most key, which was used by police to report in to the police office, and also for the citizen to call the police in an emergency when there wouldn't be any other phones they could quickly access. So obviously, once the home phone became commonplace and the advent of the cell phone came about, this eliminated the major need of the police box and they were eventually retired from service, no longer needed.
However, in London, one remains in service still, mostly just for old times sake, at one entrance to the Earl's Court train station. Got a picture of it myself, when I visited this past fall.
So yeah, a brief history on police boxes.
4128226 Yay i just learned something new!
and about police boxes too! 
4122231 Considering that he had WASTED a regeneration on this accidental trip, he wouldn't be keen on jumping through in that fashion: Gallifreyan biology has a limit of up to 12 Regenerations, that's 13 different Doctors.
4194260
I'm not familiar with this detail...may I ask where it stems from?
4194634 If you don't count the Doctor cheating death and gaining 12 more regenerations that is...
4194670 The broken Cameleon Circuit? Or the attempted invasion being thwarted by a LITERAL Police Box that was NOT the TARDIS?
4196454 The master tried that in the 1990's American-Made Doctor Who Movie... as one can guess, it didn't work out too well for him at the end of the movie.
4197925 Yeah I've seen it....poor bastard
getting sucked into the Eye of Harmony and sent to the end of time must suck so much! 
4197986 actually he got pulled into the Eye of Harmony and -as C-3PO would put it- "slowly digested over a thousand years" by the TARDIS. Later on he was resurrected by the reborn Lord-President of Gallifrey: Rassilon, to fight in The Last Great Time War against the Daleks, only to run away out of fear to around the year 100,000,000,000 AD where he hoped that nobody would ever find him.
4197917
The latter. I'm guessing it's from one of the books or such other media that I'm not as familiar with.
4198009 Oh didn't know that...were'd you find this out?
4198248 Useless Things is what it's from.
4198437
Oh okay, I know next to nothing about the (many) short stories that have been written for Doctor Who, which explains why I hadn't heard of it before.
You're more in depth than I am; since Doctor Who's continuity is so flippin' massive, for convenience's sake I generally stick to just the show-established continuity, though keeping an open mind to the many other works where it might be applicable. So sometimes stuff like this gets overlooked by me.
Say with me: DAW!
Hey, other Whovian writers, look at this: The Doctot's making a call back, except it makes sense and doesn’t distract for the story. Take notes.
“Rainbow. Get up. Now, please.”
Hey, its another call back that is funny and makes sense! This guy's on a roll!
...I know she isn’t dreaming what I think she's dreaming, but I still have images I don;t want in my head.
Also, I think I have a problem.
Crap. Zoidberg, if you start winning again...
...She may live.
For now.
Also, thank you for not forgetting the Mane Six that haven’t met the Doctor exist.
Your final execution of Flitter is perfect. Even though she hates being faced with the sorts of unreal things that happen in the Doctor's wake, she has her own reasonable perspective, and it's an understandable one. There's no reason to despise her for being unwilling to tackle a problem that—by its very nature—tore apart her certainty of the world. In fact, such characters serve to make the Doctor's companions stand out more as the unique picks who want something more spectacular, and like problems and perils that are beyond their understanding. One small function that Flitter performs in this chapter, I think, is to suggest that the mundane isn't necessarily bad or pathetic.
6037043
Screw you. Nobody ever forgets the rest of the Demo Squad; they're practically a smegging chain gang. Spike, on the other hand, is the one that people almost always forget. I would die to see more stories—canon or not—where one or two of the mane fucking six are neither present nor considered. I'm sick of seeing them portrayed as an inseparable unit with only six slots and no room for Twilight's life companion.