Impostor Syndrome

by saarni

I. Watching You

The old oak tree was tall enough that much of Ponyville’s tranquil surroundings could comfortably be viewed from the lofty perch it provided, but one sight in particular drew its sole occupant’s cerise-eyed attention more than anything else. Fluttershy’s dainty little cottage at the edge of town.

Carefully, Rainbow Dash shifted herself into a more comfortable seated position on her haunches; the bark was tearing in many places, and she found her hindlegs were now covered in multiple small scratches from where she’d been repeatedly jabbed. Rainbow Dash stretched them out a bit, trying to shake off the pins-and-needles sensation she’d been left with having sat in the same position for so long. She’d probably startled a few of the small birds who’d made their nests in the tree’s thick branches, but she couldn’t bring herself to care too much about their plight right now.

Rainbow Dash had often been accused of having a one-track mind, and at the moment, all of her focus was directed inward; she didn’t want to call it feeling sorry for herself because that was majorly uncool – not to mention selfish – but try as she might, she didn’t have any other way of describing it.

Early evening was soon to give way to night; Selene, Luna’s Moon, took its rightful place as the ruler of the stars, and a brilliant canopy of light unfolded in the heavens, furnishing the landscape with an effervescent white glow. If circumstances had been different, Rainbow Dash knew that her own polychromatic aura would be another dab of paint on that particular canvas as she took her flight, but instead, she continued to watch the seemingly cheery little homestead below, desperate for any small sign of her friend. On edge whenever she caught sight of a leg, or withers, or a fleeting glimpse of pink trailing mane through the window. A soft gasp escaped her muzzle when she caught a brief flash of brilliant azure eyes, the breath immediately crystallising as the icy air claimed the moisture as its own plaything.

Rainbow Dash closed her eyes just as the first drops of rain began to fall, soaking her face, imagining what was going on inside the cottage right now; the plumes of smoke billowing from the chimney, filling her nostrils with a rich, woody scent, told her that Fluttershy was warming something up right now. Perhaps a late meal for herself? Or perhaps something for that wretched rabbit of hers? No matter how ridiculous or frivolous his demands, Fluttershy catered to them all the same. Nopony could ever quite figure out why either. She wasn’t as reticent as she used to be about putting her hoof down when bigger and uglier animals got out of line, but Angel, it seemed, was an exception.

The aroma of something pleasant cooking in Fluttershy’s hearth hit Rainbow Dash straight in the stomach; a growl echoed out into the empty stillness around her, and a blush tinted her cheeks. The last couple of days bled together in her mind, and it took her a long moment to recall that her most recent meal had only been a hastily-grabbed sandwich several hours earlier.

“Hi, Twilight.”

The Princess of Friendship let out a yelp of surprise, almost losing her footing on the branch she’d materialised upon at Rainbow Dash’s casual greeting. Recovering her posture, but not quite her dignity, she asked, “How the heck do you do that?”

Rainbow Dash opened her muzzle to speak, then closed it again. The senses of a pegasus operated at light-speed to keep them aware of everything at all times. A necessity in high-speed flying. To most, the rush of air molecules being rudely swept aside to make way for a teleporting pony was barely audible; to her, it was another of the many deafening assaults she had to endure on a daily basis. Finally, she settled for offering Twilight Sparkle a shrug. “I just do.”

For a long time, the only sound that penetrated the oppressive silence between them was that of Twilight’s wings rustling as she readjusted them by her side. The branches of this tree were nice and thick, but there weren’t many of them, and Rainbow Dash had hogged the best for herself. “You should go and talk to her,” Twilight finally said, inclining her head in the direction of Fluttershy’s cottage. “Right now, she’d probably appreciate your company more than anypony else’s.”

“Maybe,” Rainbow Dash said laconically, just the slightest edge of bitterness creeping into her tone. She wanted to lose herself in her thoughts again, but she knew that just wasn’t going to happen with Twilight at her side. Twilight so desperately wanted things to go back to normal; Tartarus, Rainbow Dash wanted that, too, but it wasn’t – it couldn’t – going to happen. It’s all so terribly complicated, as the overly dramatic Rarity might’ve put it if she were in the same position. Rainbow Dash allowed her attention to wander once more to the skies above. A good flight, maybe a sonic rainboom or two, is just what I need right now.

“If she’s going to recover from what happened to her,” Twilight said slowly, drawing a little closer, cutting into Rainbow Dash’s thoughts, “she’s going to need our help. All of our help. You can’t avoid her forever, nor can you stay up in this tree forever either in the hopes of preventing anything bad from happening to her again.”

I can sure as Tartarus try.

“What is it, two days now you’ve been sitting up here? You’ve been neglecting your weather duties, haven’t turned up for Wonderbolts training, you’ve barely ate or slept. You can’t go on like this, Rainbow Dash,” Twilight went on tenderly. “You can’t blame yourself. Celestia knows, we were all taken in.”

Rainbow Dash made a noise in her throat.

“Huh?”

“Nothing.” It was something that had to be said, but deep down, Rainbow Dash knew that somepony was to blame, and it might as well have been her.

“Then, what’s the problem?”

“How much has she told you?” asked Rainbow Dash quietly, bowing her head slightly.

“Only-” she chose her words with care “-the basics.” Twilight sounded unhappy, as if she’d brought a hammer to a rock and the hammerhead had broken instead. “She insisted over and over that they didn’t harm her. Not physically, at any rate. Mentally, though, she’s exhausted.”

“Not surprising.”

“No.”

“So. We should leave her be, is what you’re saying?” Rainbow Dash asked hopefully, annoyed with herself at how buoyed she felt by that idea. “Observe her from a distance, let her recover at her own pace.”

Twilight smiled sadly. “We need to remind her that we’re here for her. Pinkie Pie wanted to throw a Welcome Back party, but I managed to talk her down. You know how she is with parties at the best of times.” Employing her sister-in-law’s vaunted breathing technique, Twilight fought to keep her own emotions in check. “Fluttershy was kept in isolation for almost a year, and though she’s doing her best to put a brave face on things, you don’t need to be an expert to see that she’s hurting. She needs to be resocialised, but … slowly, gradually, carefully.”

“And you think I’m the one she trusts most, will respond to best?”

“Yes,” Twilight said flatly. “You were – are – her best friend.”

“I can’t face her. After what happened. After-” she swallowed “-what I allowed to happen.”

“It wasn’t your fault. She was … very convincing. She had to be, she had access to all of Fluttershy’s memories. We all feel violated, Rainbow, not just you.”

Bluntly, Rainbow Dash said, “You weren’t sleeping with her. It. Whatever.”

Twilight tried to maintain a stony, unreadable expression; it didn’t matter so much in the dark, and she noticed that Rainbow Dash wasn’t even really looking at her, but she fiercely hoped that she wasn’t blushing as much as she thought she was. A bright red beacon in the night sky. The subject was bound to come up eventually, but she wished it could have been handled in a slightly more … tactful manner. Rainbow Dash would be Rainbow Dash, though, no matter what the circumstances were. “Well. No,” was all Twilight could think to say.

That aspect of Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy’s relationship had only developed in the past few months, and now there stood the possibility that it was nothing more than a lie made to further the aims of an enemy. The Elements of Harmony were a source of food richer than that of even Equestria’s royal family, and the Changelings had been looking for a way to get close to them for ages. When Fluttershy had gone off to observe the Breezies with the Equestrian Society for the Preservation of Rare Creatures, it had been an easy enough matter for them to kidnap her from her lodgings and replace her with a doppelgänger. “We were all fooled,” Twilight said in what she hoped was a reassuring rather than despairing tone.

If there was a spell that could erase the last year from everypony’s minds, Twilight would’ve cast it in a heartbeat; Ponyville at large didn’t know the exact details, save that there had been a Changeling in their midst for a time. If the particulars got out, there would undoubtedly be panic, and nopony wanted that after all the commotion around the School of Friendship and Chancellor Neighsay’s attempts to turn ponies against other species. Neighbour turning on neighbour, friend turning on friend. An undermining of all that the Princess of Friendship had been sent out here to do in the first place. Those closest to Fluttershy, however, were hurting pretty badly from the knowledge that the wool was so effectively pulled over their eyes.

“You would’ve thought that I, or even Discord, would’ve noticed that something was up with her, with it,” Rainbow Dash said, barely keeping her anger in check. “The Changelings screwed us all over – me in particular – and we thought everything was fine. For. A. Whole. Year!”

Guilt made Twilight’s stomach feel queasy. “There was no way to know, Rainbow.” Was that the truth or just something she had to tell herself to stop from going crazy with guilt? Looking back, what were the signs, the little clues, that marked Doppelshy out as an impostor? None immediately sprang to mind – as Rainbow Dash had said, even Discord was fooled and he had the benefit of powerful Chaos magic – but how easily did one dismiss the behaviour of their best friends when it was slightly unusual? Pinkie Pie, so attuned to the auras of her friends, couldn’t tell the difference either. “Changelings are pretty hard to detect under the best circumstances, and with Fluttershy plugged into their Hive Mind to gain access to all of her knowledge and memories of us ...”

“Lucky for us it broke, huh?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Twilight quizzically.

Rainbow Dash sighed. “Now that they know it works, what’s gonna stop them from trying this again? Next time, they’ll make sure that anypony who is connected to the Hive stays that way.”

So focused had she been on Fluttershy’s safe return, Twilight had managed to stop herself from thinking about that possibility for the most part. Celestia would have to be told eventually. Plans would have to be put in place. She’d counted herself fortunate that, ruthlessly pragmatic though this rogue band of Changelings were, they hadn’t been amongst Queen Chrysalis’ remaining zealots; when Fluttershy’s mind had finally rejected the connection to the Hive, they had simply ejected her from their colony, recalled their drone and moved deeper into the Wastes where they lived. A year in their custody, a year with the Voice of the Hive in her thoughts, Tartarus knew what that might’ve done to Fluttershy’s sanity. That was enough to worry about at the moment.

“One of us should have known,” said Rainbow Dash, her own guilt and unhappy thoughts intruding upon those of Twilight. “I should have known.”

“How were you any different to the rest of us?” Twilight asked gently, trying to assuage the hurt that Rainbow Dash felt so keenly. “We were with her, it, whatever, almost every day. If Angel Bunny didn’t see anything wrong, what chance did the rest of us have?”

At that, Rainbow Dash had to smile, though it was a miserable, dejected one.

For long moments, silence reigned. Rain continued to fall. Neither of them paid much heed to how soaked their respective coats were becoming.

A speck of moisture traced the curve of Rainbow Dash’s cheek. It took Twilight a second to realise that it was not a raindrop.

“For months, I shared a bed with that … creature … and I didn’t know it wasn’t Fluttershy. I’d-” Rainbow Dash hesitated “-I’d always secretly hoped that, one day, we’d get together, and when we finally did I was overjoyed. More overjoyed than when I first started working at the Weather Factory, more overjoyed even than joining the Wonderbolts.” She turned to face Twilight. “I know it’s selfish of me to feel this way, but how do I go on knowing that it was all just a lie?”

Twilight didn’t have an answer for that. It wasn’t a situation anypony could have predicted happening. “I honestly don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“I feel like-”

“-you’ve betrayed the real Fluttershy?”

“Yeah.”

“I mean,” Rainbow Dash said, “I know I should be angry at the Changeling who impersonated her, and I am, but mostly I just feel … ashamed.”

“You have nothing to feel ashamed about.”

This new voice, timid yet authoritative, startled both of them so much that they almost fell out of the tree. Only some instinctive wing-work saved them from a nasty spill. “I’m sorry,” Fluttershy said, “you know I’m not one for barging in on ponies’ private conversations, but uh, your voices are carrying a bit and my animals are trying to sleep.”

Rainbow Dash wanted to ask how long she’d been there, how much she’d heard, but all she ended up saying was a lame, “Sorry.”

“Are you feeling … okay?” asked Twilight. It was a stupid question, she knew, but it had to be asked.

Too quickly, Fluttershy replied, “I’m fine,” offering her a small smile. It was a sad, brittle smile, but it was a smile all the same, and Twilight was glad to see it. It was from the real Fluttershy and that was all that mattered.

A moment passed where Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy just looked at each other.

“Hey,” Twilight said awkwardly, “I should probably get going and do … something Princess of Friendship-y, shouldn’t I?”

“Have a good night, Twilight,” Fluttershy said. “If you’re not busy tomorrow, I’ll try to tell you what else I can remember about the Changelings and their colony.”

“Of course,” replied Twilight with a slight incline of her head. Not sure what else to say, she disappeared in a burst of purple light.

“I should probably go, too,” said Rainbow Dash, readying her wings for departure.

“You stay right there,” Fluttershy said in her most commanding tone of voice. The look on her face wasn’t quite a full-on Stare, but Rainbow Dash found herself oddly powerless next to that penetrating gaze all the same.

Then, she remembered that it was how Doppelshy used to look at her and she shuddered.

“We have some things to talk about, don’t we?” continued Fluttershy, fully aware of the nature of Rainbow Dash’s discomfort but choosing not to comment on it. “But let’s do it inside where we can be out of the cold.”

The words were spoken with that same quiet authority, but Rainbow Dash knew that Fluttershy was asking, not telling, her to come inside. It was an offer. One that she could refuse if she so wished, if it was too soon. Still, it was difficult to ignore that look of silent pleading, that extended foreleg being thrust in her direction. It was Fluttershy, no mistaking it.

Rainbow Dash took the proffered leg and gripped it warmly, savouring the feel of the flesh against her own; she tried to push down any lingering memories of the impostor, difficult as it was to do. She opened her muzzle to say something, but settled instead for merely offering a small smile to Fluttershy and following her lead to the cottage.

Back in flight school, her instructors had made a big deal about the fact that pegasi healed quickly from wounds; scratches, bruises, broken bones, they all faded with time. Usually not even leaving a scar in the process. For Rainbow Dash, though, this was a very different order of hurt altogether, one that she was not used to dealing with, and she wasn’t sure that it would ever heal.

It was made bearable by having someone to share it with.