Memories

Thunderlane put down his phone, having scrolled through the hundreds and hundreds of photos he had taken of Scootaloo during his time with her. He glanced at the clock and saw that only a few hours had passed and groaned impatiently. Perhaps this lockdown would take longer than he thought...

'Guess I'll go kill some time at the gym.' he thought, getting up and dressed before heading out of his room. He took the elevator down to the gym and wasn't surprised to see a few of his teammates already there, pushing their bodies to the limit more to relieve stress than to stay in shape. They all nodded silently as Thunderlane entered, all of them not needing to speak as they all had the same topic on their minds. Thunderlane returned the nods of acknowledgment before going over to an empty treadmill, easily falling into a brisk run and working up a sweat.

Throughout his workout Thunderlane saw the entire Wonderbolts team come in and out for their own workouts. Well, almost the entire team. There was of course one pegasus who didn't show up at all to train in the gym... a certain pegasus under house arrest until further notice:

Rainbow Dash.

It was no surprise that there were two guards posted outside Rainbow Dash's room, as well as two additional guards just down the hallway by the elevators. Their role was dual purpose; to stop Rainbow Dash from leaving, as well as stop anyone from entering her room. Thankfully for them, Dash had no intention of leaving the sanctuary of her room anytime soon. Maybe never...

Curled up in the fetal position on her bed, Rainbow Dash clung tightly to the purse Scootaloo had left behind. Her memory of how she got back to her room or who had helped her back didn't exist at all. Instead, her head was filled with memories of Scootaloo flashing non-stop through her mind, and it didn't take long for deep thoughts of denial to begin sinking in.

"S-Scoots... I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry." Dash mumbled through her tears as she clung tightly to her friend's purse. "Please, don't leave me. I'm sorry. Don't leave me alone."

Unable to admit that her friend and protege was truly gone, one of the fragile strings of sanity left finally snapped in Dash's head, causing Rainbow to sit up and wipe her eyes dry.

"No... no, she's not gone. She's not gone, she'll be back. Yeah, she's gonna be back soon. Then we can go back to training. Yeah, training..."

Reaching over to the nightstand, Rainbow frowned as she saw she had no new messages from Scootaloo. Ignoring the multiple messages from Twilight and her other friends, she finally realized something obvious; "Stupid me, Scootaloo left her phone here with me. B-but she'll be back for it soon!" she said aloud to help convince herself.

Rainbow reached into Scootaloo's purse and pulled out her phone. There were of course no additional messages on her phone, but Rainbow Dash unlocked the phone and started scrolling through her messages anyway, unsure of what exactly she was looking for. Rainbow Dash ignored the fact that Thunderlane's name was at the top of the list, instead focusing on her own name just underneath his. 'Heh, of course she'd have my number. I'm her best friend, after all.' she thought. There was no need for her to bother scrolling down any farther, especially down at the very bottom where a message to Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle had sat unanswered for almost two years. However, doubt began to cross Rainbow's mind and she began to worry. 'Wait, what if she can't find my number quickly with all these other messages? What if she texts the wrong pony and she gets upset that I don't answer her?' she thought in a panic. She hastily began deleting the few other message threads on Scootaloo's phone, then also began deleting all the contacts as well, making sure to only leave the contact information for herself, Rainbow Dash.

"There. Now she'll be able to reach me. She'll be back and call me. We can hang out again..." Rainbow Dash said with a sickening grin. "She and I can... we can do all sorts of things... she's not gone..."

"We can fly together."