A Pegasus Is Fine, Two

by stanku

What's Loyalty Without a Point?

Author's Note:

Still looking for those proofreaders. Don't be shy! I'll reward you with clop!

It was not at all hard to find the old burrows: most of them had been used for years, and the ones Fluttershy couldn’t find herself were quickly shown to her by a helpful badger or a squirrel. The task was easy enough to be called routine, simple, and plain, barely more than a stroll through the woods that were bathing in all the flaming colors of the autumn. Fluttershy really wished it could be more than that – the more thinking she did, the more it fuelled the needle-like questions within her. And the answers seemed to only sharpen them more.

She removed some leaves from the mouth of another burrow and peered into the dark. Winter homes were dug deeper into the ground than the summer ones, which meant that they flooded more easily. This one seemed to be fine, although Fluttershy could catch a faint smell of something rotten creeping from underground. Probably some forgotten food. Probably, most likely. Definitely. A shudder travelled over her, forcing her to pull farther back. She could smell death, and food didn’t die.

She wondered who lay there, in the back of the hole in the ground, forgotten in the dark. A badger? A mouse? A hedgehog? Succumbed to a disease or to time? What did it matter, in the end? Nothing. In the end, nothing matters. The thought festered for a moment, and then she burned it, forced it to close, to heal. It was not a thought to let fester.

“Close this one,” she said quietly to a couple of badgers next to her. That was what mattered: closures.

The day changed into the afternoon in a painstakingly routine-like fashion, and Fluttershy swam through it without hardly a thought dedicated to it. Perhaps that’s why she never noticed the faint rustling of leaves that followed her, or the gaze that never let her out of sight. She noticed none of the intricate signs that she was being watched, but she could sense the subtle changes in the animals around her, the changes that she could read like a book. Thus it would have been wrong to say that she was surprised beyond all reason when Dash finally made her presence known.

“Hi, Shy,” said the voice behind Fluttershy. It was Dash, she was sure of it, but the greeting carried a hint of something she could not connect with Dash, not even with glue. Bitterness had no place in the palette of the Rainbow she knew.

Fluttershy turned around, unsure whether she should try to smile or let the tears spill freely. “You came back.”

Dash snorted. “Part of the job, being the Element of Loyalty and all that. Wouldn't get paid otherwise.” She thought for a moment and added: “That is, if we were paid for that.”

Fluttershy shivered. “Dashie…”

“I skipped the drill today,” said Dash, trotting around Fluttershy. Dead leaves crunched under her hooves. “I woke up just normal, ate breakfast, did some morning exercise and went over the day’s schedule. At ten, I was on the track, right as rain.” She stopped abruptly, eyeing the dull grey sky. “I got that far by telling myself, over and over again, that it’s what I have to do. That it’s what I was meant to do.”

The tears were pushing their edge over the smile on Fluttershy's face. “Dashie…”

The carmine eyes snapped at her. “Then I thought: what’s the point? If I can’t have you, what’s the point?” She turned fully to her and stepped closer. “When I lost you, I lost the point. What’s loyalty without a point? What’s anything?”

“You haven't’ lost me!” cried Fluttershy. “What makes you say that?!”

“You’re getting married!” shouted Dash, rising to the air so fast that the nearby leaves just exploded away. “That says plenty enough, don’t you think?!”

“So what?!” said Fluttershy, unfolding her own wings and flying after Dash as she glided upwards. The badgers waved at them as they gradually rose over the treetops. “You always said you don’t care about marriage!” continued Fluttershy, trying to catch up with Dash.

“I don’t,” said Dash, flying backwards above her. “But I know you do. You’re more into it than Rarity.”

Fluttershy beat the air stronger, but Dash upped her own effort a tad more, staying well away from her reach. The treetops were already well behind them.

“Rarity really only cares about weddings, not marriage as such,” said Fluttershy, panting slightly. “But it doesn’t matter! I love you! I love you from the bottom of my heart!”

Dash stopped. “Then why d’you wanna drag him between us?”

Fluttershy almost flew past her: she definitely would have if that question hadn’t struck her like a lightning bolt from a clear sky. “What… You did that first!”

Dash’s eyes grew wide. “Me?! No! I wanted to have a threesome with him! You’re the one who’s gonna put a ring on him!”

In a flash, a bright red blush bloomed all over Fluttershy’s face. It took Dash a microsecond to realize that some of it, and not that small of a part, wasn’t embarrassment, but anger. “What the hay else was I supposed to do?!” she shouted.

There was a fleeting moment when Dash forgot to fly. “Whah?”

Fluttershy, who now held the higher ground, soared closer to Dash. Some of the red on her face seemed to stain her eyes, too. “One moment we’re having fun just like always, then he smiles a bit more playfully, takes a bit longer sip of the cider, and asks if I’d take him as her ‘stallion from now ‘til eternity’! What can you say to something like that?! What would you have said?!” She poked her forehead, twice.

“Uhh…”

“You see!” exclaimed Fluttershy, her front hooves waving like a windmill in a hurricane. “I said yes before I could think, or blink, or anything! It just happened! It felt right, or not wrong, or not terribly wrong, and even if it did it was done and he was smiling like a lunatic and hugging me and then we kissed and you know how well he can kiss on a good day and I mean he was so happy and I–”

Dash started laughing hysterically. Fluttershy’s jaw dropped.

“You think that’s funny?” she yelled, flying closer to her. Dash was now floating on her back, falling towards the ground with Fluttershy staring at her from a practically vertical position, upside down. She probably wouldn't have managed it, had she actually tried it.

Dash cracked open her eyes, wiping tears with a hoof. “Look, Shy, sorry… I’m just–”

She stopped when she paid attention to her mouth. Were her corner teeth always so long? Or sharp? And since when did she have red eyes? “Uh… You feeling okay?”

“What do you think?” hissed Fluttershy. Really, she hissed, like a lizard, or a cat, or a… Oh buck, thought Dash. She stopped her idle fall and grabbed her friend from the shoulders, turning them both right way round in the process.

“Shy, snap out of it!” she blurted, shaking her gently. “You’re a pony! A pony, not a bat!”

Fluttershy blinked, and just like that, the carmine tinge was gone. Her teeth also lost their sharpness in the tide of confusion that washed over her. “What are you doing? Stop, I’m getting sick.”

Dash blew out in relief, letting go of her. “Whoah, you scared me there for a moment… Dear Celestia…”

“What are you on about?” asked Fluttershy, frowning. “Are you trying to make me forget how you laughed at me?”

Dash studied her for a moment and decided that whatever just had happened could wait another time to be mulled over. This was something Twilight should figure out someday: right now, the most reasonable thing to do was to pretend nothing had happened and pray that there weren’t any apples lying around.

“No no no,” said Dash in a conciliatory tone. “Your outburst surprised me, that’s all. Haven’t seen you like that for a while.”

Fluttershy’s shoulders slumped, and rest of her body followed quickly after. “I know… Forgive me. I didn’t mean to shout at you. But I had been holding that inside me for so long, it just had to come out at some point. But it shouldn’t have hit you.”

Dash smoothed carefully her limp front leg. “I may have an idea who it was supposed to hit…”

“I don’t know what to do!” wailed Fluttershy. “I mean, I like him, I like him very much… But I had never thought about marrying him! Or maybe I had, I can’t even say anymore…” She raised a glistening stare at her. “What should I do?”

Dump him. The words jumped up and down on Dash’s tongue, trying to push her mouth open. She didn’t know what kept it closed. That’s what I did to him a while back, kinda. Well, he wasn’t proposing, but only ‘cause he knew that would’ve been the end of it. But this ain’t about me, not totally. “Beats me,” she said finally, to the slight disappointment of both of them. “Depends, I guess. How much do you like him?”

“I don’t even know if that’s the right question,” said Fluttershy. “And even if it was, how could I tell?” Suddenly, she felt the urge to sit down, so she landed on a nearby branch.

Dash followed in suit but chose another branch. “You’ve been hanging with him pretty often lately,” she said.

Fluttershy nodded faintly, eyeing the ground. “We have… He can be very likable, and it’s true that we share much in common. It’s funny, really: I’ve known him for years, except I haven’t. It’s as if a whole new world had opened to me.”

Dash tilted her head. “So, you’re just getting along really well?”

The blush graced the wheat-yellow coat again. “Uhm… Well, like I said, he is a very good kisser, too… And not so rough as I thought a stallion would be. In bed, I mean.”

“Yeah, I got that alright,” said Dash quickly.

They both fell silent after that. Around them, it was getting dark, and the winds were turning chilly. That was the world’s way of telling that a closure of sorts should follow right about now, Fluttershy thought, but in what size and form? She only felt more lost than in the morning, and a bit more sad, too. She looked at Rainbow, wondering what she was thinking. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

Dash kept her quiet for a while, looking over the horizon. “I’m thinking this nut ain’t cracking with thinking. I’d ask from my gut, but its only grumbling.” She turned on her branch, looking helplessly at Fluttershy. “What d’you do when both the heart and the head ain’t helping?”

Fluttershy gave this a thought. “Get help?” she ventured.

“From whom?”

Another pause, but a shorter one. “Twilight?”

Dash made a face. “Ugh, pass. She knows her numbers and letters alright, but I wouldn’t trust her with this.”

“But she is now the Princess of–”

“–Friendship, yeah, but this goes beyond that, methinks,” said Dash. A lamp lit behind her eyes. “You’re on the right track, though.”

Fluttershy raised a very uncharacteristic eyebrow. “You don’t mean…”

“Oh yeah,” said Dash excitedly, jumping in the air so quickly that Fluttershy had to grab hold of the tree. “We’ll ask Cadance what to do!”

Fluttershy looked doubtful.

“Why not? It’s, like, her job, right?”

Fluttershy fidgeted, which has surprisingly hard while trying not to fall from a tree. “I know, but this is a very personal affair…”

Dash humphed. “Hey, it doesn’t need to be official or anything. She’s Twi’s babysitter, for sky’s sake! She just so happens to be the friggin’ Princess of Love, too. What’s the harm in asking?”

Fluttershy stayed quiet, averting her gaze. Dash snorted. “Fine, whatevs. A stupid idea. I’m sure you’ll figure out something better with him.”

Fluttershy gave her a look. It was Dash’s time to fidget in the air.

“Okay, that was out of the line,” she confessed, rubbing her neck. “But something needs to happen, right? Or can you just go on like this, marry him, move together, have foals–”

“Who’s talking about foals?” burst Fluttershy. Dash had to weave a string of apologies together to amend that. Still, the point stuck.

“They’ll usually follow the rings, I’ve seen,” she said carefully. “Have you thought about that?”

Fluttershy shook her head wearily.

“How would I fit in all that?” continued Dash, circling her friend. “Thunderlane’s a cool stud, but I dunno if I could live with him, even with you around, despite having you around… you see how complicated it gets?”

Fluttershy sighed. It was a heavy sigh. “I still don’t believe Cadance can help us. She is a very caring pony, and I know Twilight loves her, but… It doesn’t feel right.” She followed Dash as she swam on her back around her. “Does that make sense?”

Dash, who was a firm believer in professionalism, could also read in between the lines when it came to Fluttershy. But that still doesn’t mean I can’t write to her alone. “Okay, Shy. Okay.”

“We need to talk this through with all three of us present,” said Fluttershy, more confidently now. “That’s the right thing to do.”

Dash stopped in the air and turned upright. “My place? Yours? Not Thunderlane’s: I don’t like the looks his mother sometimes gives me.”

“Somewhere neutral,” said Fluttershy. “Somewhere where none of us feels they’re at home, or not at home. Somewhere nice.”

In Dash’s eyes, an answer shined. Some might call it a joke, but she knew better. “The Blueberry Inn.”

Fluttershy flinched. “That place? You’re serious?”

Dash’s nod was a sign of complete affirmation. “It’s the closest thing to a limbo you can get around here. If that’s not neutral, I dunno what is.”

Fluttershy hesitated. She had never been in the Inn, but had heard stories. Apparently it was the place where romanticism went to die. But that was what had lead them to this, right?

“Okay,” she said. “When?”

“Tonight.”

“So soon?”

Dash tilted her head. “You really wanna drag this on longer?”

She didn’t.

Comments

[RadicalDishonesty]

Oof... this is not looking good for Thunderlane. Fluttershy doesn't know what she really wants with him, and Rainbow Dash would be more than happy to kick him to the curb... it seems. It seems that Thunderlane hasn't really pierced the veil of RD's loyalty, as she is still keeping him at the same arm's length that she always has, where the feelings of others don't matter to her.

Also... it's gone to teen instead? I'm not particularly disappointed.

[stanku]

4673661 There was supposed to be sex here, but the idea never took off in practice. Also, I'm trying to get this through in EqD someday, and they fancy clop not.