Like Sisters, Probably

A year and a bit after me and Sweetie moved to Manehattan, Dash came to visit me. She was there on tour for the Wonderbolts, and stopped in.

Sweetie answered the door when Dash showed up, and that was kind of awkward, but they managed to act casual for all of the few seconds it took me to grab a jacket and leave with Dash, which was impressive.

It was getting into winter, and it was a bit cold. I could see my breath.

“So how’s Manehattan treating you?” Dash asked.

“Oh, good,” I said. “It’s a pretty awesome city. And look! No snow yet!”

“Oh yeah, it’s way past when Ponyville usually gets its first snow, isn’t it?”

“They got a totally different schedule here, being by the ocean like this. The warm air coming in from sea makes, like, a pocket of warm air a few hundred feet up. If we try to bring in snow too early in the season, it melts halfway down and ends up with basically slush falling from the sky.” I grinned. “It’s not too popular with the Manehattanites, to say the least.”

“So it's been going good with the weather team, I take it?”

“Yeah, it’s a good crew. Starting was pretty hard, actually. There was way more stuff to learn than I thought. Basically a totally different job than Ponyville.”

“So no more time to practice tricks on the clock?”

“Nah, have to sneak those in during my breaks.”

Dash smiled. “Wow, that sounds rough.”

“I know. I gotta do actual work when I’m at work. It’s wild.”

We walked down a block or two to where there was this really great coffee shop.

“Here, this place is awesome,” I said.

Dash laughed at me “A coffee shop? Did I get the wrong Scootaloo?”

“No, I’m serious! They got really good, like, milk shakes and slushies and stuff! I mean, it’s like winter now, or whatever, but still!”

“I’m just bugging you.”

We went in and it was packed like usual, but there were still a few tables. We went up to the counter to order, and the barista pony recognized me right away.

“Oh hey there, deary. A fat free vanilla latte for you today, like usual?”

I could feel Dash judging me and silently laughing her ass off at the same time.

“Uh, yeah, that’d be great,” I said, not looking over at Dash.

She ordered a black coffee with no sugar and we went over to the side to wait for them to make my drink and pour Dash’s.

“The fat just weighs me down, so I get it without,” I said.

“I didn’t say anything,” said Dash, grinning.

“And vanilla is just delicious. It’s totally better with vanilla in it.”

“I said I didn’t say anything,” said Dash.

I stood there, waiting for my drink.

“So... you come here pretty much every day and get one of those?”

“Yeah, basically,” I said, hanging my head.

When we got our drinks, we went and got a table. It was this neat kind of place, and each table was like totally different and so were the chairs. I don’t even know where they got them all from, but there were some that looked like antiques or something, and some that were super modern. It was really cool.

“This place is just way too close to where we live,” I said. “I swear half my paycheques ends up here. Or some of the other places around here. There’s just so many cool places!”

“Yeah, Manehatten’s pretty cool, right? I always like coming here.”

“Yeah! It’s still weird to think I live here. Awesome, but weird. Even after a year I still almost put ‘Ponyville’ whenever I got to put my address for things and stuff.”

“Yeah, that must be weird. For me, I moved to Ponyville from Cloudsdale, right? And so moving back wasn’t such a big deal after that.” She tilted her head. “Of course with the Wonderbolts I feel like I don’t actually live anywhere, sometimes.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. I’ll wake up and have to stop for a minute and be like, ‘hang on, which city is this?’ ”

I smiled. “I can’t even imagine.”

“It’s great though. It’s awesome. It really is what I’ve always wanted.”

I realized I’d never really talked to her like this before. Well, sort of but... it was different. We weren’t just geeking out about things anymore. Maybe some of that crazy energy that used to be between us was gone, but it didn’t feel like a bad thing, really. It was nice. Easy. And I felt like I was a little more on her level, now.

I thought about it. I was living with Sweetie, who was also my girlfriend, and things were pretty relaxed, but really awesome. We both paid our bills, and things didn’t really feel like they were up in the air. I guess I’d grown up a bit, or whatever. It somehow happened while I was making a million terrible decisions and freaking out at how bad I was at everything. Maybe that’s how growing up happens.

“Do you think making terrible decisions is how you grow up?” I asked Dash.

She blinked, then thought about it.

“No,” she said, “I think it’s what you have to do after you make terrible decisions that makes you grow up.”

“Huh,” I said. “That was pretty good.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty awesome.”

I took a sip of my latte.

“So hey,” I said, “how did things go between you and Lightning Dust, anyway?”

She shrugged. “I guess they’re kind of going.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, we’re not dating or anything, but, well, I don’t know. I guess there’s something there.”

“Well that sounds good.”

“It’s pretty good. I don’t know. It’s like how we always are it’s just... it doesn’t feel like there’s ever going to be anyone else besides the two of us, for each other, you know?”

I put a hoof to my chest. “Rainbow Dash—that was almost romantic! Are you feeling alright?”

She took a swig of her coffee. “Oh shut up.”

“Getting sentimental in your old age?”

She threw a crumpled up napkin at me. I laughed and glanced around.

“Hey, you’re going to get me in trouble, here!”

“You had it coming,” she said, and stuck her tongue out at me.

“Alright, you proved your point—you’re just as immature as ever.”

She smiled and leaned back in her chair. “Thank you.”

I swirled my coffee around. “Hey, so... are things cool between us?”

Dash let out a slow breath. “Yeah, I’d say so. I mean, I could stay mad at you for, well, ever, but... what would be the point of that? Things happened, and some of them sucked, but here we are.”

“Yeah.”

“Us dating each other was probably a bad idea right from the start.”

“It probably was.” I looked up at her. “But it wasn’t all bad, right?”

“No, it wasn’t all bad.”

“And... it was real right? For some of it? I mean like, between us. Whatever it was. Was it real?”

The corner of her mouth turned up. “Now who’s the sappy romantic?”

I smiled and looked to the side. “Yeah, yeah.”

“But... yeah, it was. I think so. For me definitely.”

“Me too.”

“And I don’t regret it, you know,” she said.

“You don’t?”

“No. Parts of it, sure, but not on the whole.”

“Me neither.” I tilted my head. “Except the part where I cheated on you.”

“Well I hope you’d regret that part.”

“So are we back to being... I don’t know. What we were. Like sisters or whatever?”

She smiled. “You know I don’t really know what that means. I don’t have any siblings. Neither do you.” She shrugged. “But yeah. Probably.”

We just hung out at the coffee shop for a bit, and then we went around to a few more cool places I knew about. Then we went to the park and showed each other some tricks we’d been working on. And it was great.

* * *

So there you have it.

That’s my story, of... I don’t know. The stuff between me and Dash. How I ended up with Sweetie Belle. How I’m kind of an awful pony but everything still worked out because I have really great ponies around me that make up for it. Take your pick. I even had Sweetie tell a bit of it, in there, so I guess it’s kind of her story, too. She’s of a really big part of my life now, even more than she was ever before, so I felt like it was important. From here on out, with any luck, my story won’t be just my story anymore, but the story of the two of us. But I don’t want to get too sappy about it.

That’s it, really. In the end, after everything had happened, Rainbow Dash was like a sister to me. That’s what she said, that’s what I said, and so that’s how it was.