"Aww, come on, Fluttershy! Grow some courage and try something new—"
“YOU'RE NOT ENTITLED TO ME SAYING 'YES'!!
“I'm done being your servant, Rainbow Dash! You only ever ask me to do the things I don't want to do because I can't stand to hurt your feelings by saying no! But all you ever think about is yourself! I'm tired of always giving you your way! I don't care what you say or how bad you make me feel about it! I said no, and I mean no!!”
“But . . . all I asked was if you'd go skiing with me . . . .”
Rainbow Dash had muttered it so low, no passerby could hear her in the sleepy, snow-covered streets of Ponyville. She'd expected to be able to pass the winter months fairly well until Tank woke up from hibernation. But asking all of her friends if they'd wanted to join her today for some winter sports had proved futile. Applejack was gathering firewood with her family. Rarity had found herself under a tower of orders for winter clothing. Twilight and Spike were busy insulating the castle. And Pinkie Pie had gotten her tongue frozen to a pole, and would likely be there for most of the day, giggling and drooling and having as much fun as possible before the fire department came along. This left Fluttershy, and Dash was sure she'd say yes. She always said yes. Not only did she not prepare for a “no” answer, she was completely floored by what she heard when she pressed the matter, insisting on Fluttershy’s compliance.
Now, Fluttershy’s voice still rang turbulently in Dash’s ears. She didn't even know how long she'd been standing there in the snow listening to it long after Fluttershy had left.
“I figured that would happen eventually.”
Rainbow Dash glanced up to see Twilight Sparkle walking up to her, leaving fresh tracks in the snow behind her.
“Twilight. I . . . I thought you were—”
“I was on my way to the hardware store for some supplies when I heard her,” Twilight replied simply. “But you do realize it, right? Why she blew up on you?”
Dash looked back at the Alicorn with a furrowed brow. “No! I mean, what’s her problem, anyway? It’s not like I asked her to give me a kidney!” She sat down and crossed her forelegs, pouting.
Twilight closed her eyes and shook her head. “You really don’t understand, do you?” she said earnestly. “Tell me, how often does Fluttershy say yes when you ask her to do something?”
“Every time, duh! She’s always been a good friend!”
“And how many times have you been grateful to her for what she’s done?”
Dash opened her mouth to answer, but stopped, mouth agape, when it turned out to be not as easy as she thought it would be. “Uhh . . . w-well, what about that hurricane?!” she finally answered triumphantly. “The whole town was grateful for her then!”
“She wasn’t even required for that hurricane, and you know it,” Twilight retorted. “She did not have to show up at all. She only did to prove to herself that she could after her humiliation during training.”
“Come on, Twilight, we needed the extra wingpower! Fluttershy wasn’t sick like most of the other Pegasi, so she was the only Pegasus—”
“Besides Spitfire.”
“—Yeah, besides Spitfire, who could . . . .” Dash trailed off and screwed up her face in thought. Her slowly widening eyes and mouth clearly displayed elucidation.
“You see now, don’t you?” Twilight continued. “That hurricane would have been in just as good hooves with Spitfire as with Fluttershy. Even better, considering that Spitfire has had proper training and experience.”
Dash was silent for a time, but resumed by stuttering her reply, “W-well . . . th-that’s Spitfire’s fault then. I-I mean, it’s not like I forced her to do it!”
“Really, Rainbow Dash?”
“Of course!”
“You didn’t drag her out?”
“Of course not!”
“You didn’t lead her there under false pretenses?”
“You bet I didn’t!”
“You didn’t guilt her into showing up where she wasn’t needed?”
“That’s ri—” Again, Dash cut herself off as she remembered that day inside Fluttershy’s cottage. As soon as Fluttershy had told her sob story about being teased at flight school, Dash had walked away with a sigh, downcast. It was only after this that Fluttershy had agreed.
“Well, it’s not like I meant to guilt her, Twilight! I was bummed about not having her show up—”
“It certainly helped you, though, didn’t it?” Twilight interrupted, eying Dash sternly. “Of course, I have seen you use less . . . subtle ways to get her to do something you wanted.”
“What? That’s ridiculous!” Dash protested. “You name me one time I ever tried to force Fluttershy to do something she didn’t wanna do!” She looked back at Twilight with a somewhat smug stare.
A stare that lasted only two seconds.
“The Dragon Migration.”
The challenging look on Rainbow Dash’s face dissolved like sugar in water. In its place was the sheepish, fretted look of the guilty. “Oh, yeah . . . forgot about that . . . .”
“All that aggression and belligerence, and what did it get you?” Twilight asked, still keeping a strict gaze on the Pegasus.
Dash snorted resentfully and looked at the snow-covered ground. “A couple of broken ribs . . . .”
“You scared her,” Twilight clarified. “You of all ponies should know Fluttershy is deathly afraid of dragons. I may have wanted her to come with us, too, but I was not about to go to the lengths you were going to.”
“Twilight, she trampled me!”
“After you tried to force her out of her own home. It may have been excessive, but I would be lying if I said you didn’t have it coming.”
“Come on, Twilight, she owed me for that boring butterfly migration!”
“Since when?” Twilight’s voice rose a hair, but the effect was palpable. “I heard no official agreement between the two of you, and even if there was, you could very well have saved your favor for another time. But instead, you tried to force your foalhood friend outside to observe creatures you know she cannot stand.”
Dash gasped indignantly, then crossed her forelegs and glared at the princess. “I didn’t see you trying to stop me . . . .”
“Because I believed that was a decision Fluttershy had to make on her own. I would not have forced her to do anything she didn’t want to do unless it were an emergency, and at that time, it wasn't. Furthermore, I haven’t even known her for half as long as you have.”
“Well, if she’s so scared of dragons, why did she give that dragon on the mountain such a big tongue-lashing, huh?! That took a lot of bravery! And it worked! What’s the deal with that?!”
“Watching a migration of multiple creatures, for recreation, is far different that confronting a single, angry, carnivorous beast that’s inches away from devouring your friends,” Twilight recounted, a bit of a deadpan snark in her tone. “She did what she had to in order to save us, and we don't require saving from hordes of migrating dragons. And if I recall,” she added, “you were the only one of us giving her a hard time about her reluctance to speak to the sleeping dragon the entire way there.”
Another indignant scoff, and Dash retorted angrily, “Well, I didn’t even force her! You did!”
“And without having to pry her off the door frame, too.”
"Well, you do things like that, too! Even you gotta admit, Twilight, Fluttershy can be a real fraidy-cat sometimes! We have to force her!"
"No, we don't. We didn't have to then, and you don't have to now."
"Well, you were still just as bad—"
"My actions are not being analyzed here, Rainbow Dash," Twilight replied, the sternness in her voice solidifying. "Yours are. I admit I've done wrong to Fluttershy in the past. You on the other hoof, keep passing blame to Fluttershy, Spitfire, and me, as well as diverting the issue, both to avoid taking responsibility. I freely admit that I could have handled situations with Fluttershy better, but you refuse to. I've grown since then. Can you say the same?"
After Twilight's harsh words, Dash's eyes were wide, but she once again fell silent for a moment.
Twilight sighed wearily as her voice softened. “Rainbow Dash, I’ve seen enough of your interactions with Fluttershy to know that you have a problem taking her feelings into consideration,” she told her blue friend. “You’ve asked so much of Fluttershy, and without, I’m sure, even imagining how she might feel.”
“I-I have so thought about her feelings!” Dash refuted, her temper rising. “I thought about her feelings during that swap meet, remember? I decided she was too important to let go for Orthros training in exchange for a book!”
“And from the moment that deal was proposed, how long did it take you to come to that conclusion?”
Dash glanced off to one side, her eyes wide and her stance shifty. “W-well . . . I—”
“And did you or did you not realize this after the fact?”
“Well . . . maybe, b-but that doesn’t—”
“And did you not need my assistance to reverse the mistake you made?”
“W-well, yes, b-but still—”
“Rainbow Dash, I’m certain if you had considered Fluttershy’s feelings in the beginning,” Twilight pressed on, resolutely, but with gentility, “you wouldn’t have agreed to that trade to begin with. You wouldn’t have even considered it. Not for a single second.”
Dash struggled to reply, her mouth scrunched in an unpleasant grimace. “Well, it’s not like she was hurt by all that.”
“Physically or emotionally?”
“Physic—aw, come on, why does it even matter?!” Dash sputtered. “I’ve never hurt Fluttershy in the whole time I’ve known her!”
Twilight nodded, blinking pensively before resuming. “Tell me, Rainbow Dash, when did you two meet?”
“At flight school, when we were fillies, duh!”
“So, the Crystal Faire would have been before that, then?”
Dash was the one to blink, now. “What? No, the Crystal Faire was much later! You remember, Twi, you were there! Sombra, the Crystal Ponies! The decorations, the Crystal Heart, the joust, the—”
Twilight’s eyes narrowed as soon as Dash stopped speaking. Dash’s incomplete sentences had racked up so much, even Twilight had lost count.
“Fluttershy spoke to me after we left the Crystal Empire that day,” Twilight explained. “I caught her limping off of the train when we came home. She claimed it was muscle soreness from all the running we had done, but then I saw the bruises under her wings.” Twilight stepped in close, her voice slow and dismayed. “You really hurt her, Rainbow Dash.”
Dash’s grimace was starting to soften, but her shifting hooves had dug her straight to the ground beneath the snow. She remembered the anxious look on Fluttershy’s face, peeking out from beneath her costume’s helmet. She remembered her fretted whine. She remembered her request to let someone else do the joust with her. Her argument for the necessity of giving the Crystal Ponies a good show came to mind:
But . . . you know . . . if that isn’t important to you . . . .
Dash swallowed hard, remembering that the fear and anguish hadn’t left Fluttershy’s face. Her shifting hooves picked up a little speed when she remembered not being as concerned with her as she was with her “reputation”.
“W- . . . well . . . .” Dash trod carefully down her path of words. “I . . . I never tried to hurt her feelings, right? I always remembered her . . . her-her sensitivity . . . f-for words and stuff—”
“Nightmare Night, anypony?”
“Yep, thought so,” Dash relented, nodding and closing her eyes. Fluttershy’s spirited, though faulty, attempts to join the Nightmare Night festivities this past year had not impressed Rainbow Dash. Since that night, she’d gone so far as to practice her reflexes so as to avoid getting hit with any bits of food or paper thrown at her in retaliation for her laughter at Fluttershy’s expense.
Dash simply sat there in the snow, letting the conclusion wash over her like rushing river water. The defiant grimace was gone, and her lips sunk into a low, melancholy frown. Her eyes widened, and she saw nothing but the hooves beneath her and the snow on the ground. “I . . .” she said weakly, all the recounted events rushing through her head like a projector on fast-forward, “. . . I’m a terrible friend, aren’t I . . . ?”
Rainbow Dash heard snow-crunching hoofsteps approach her, and felt a warm hoof rest on her shoulder. “I don’t think so, no,” came Twilight’s placid voice. “You just need to show some consideration, that’s all.”
“Why . . . ?” The question slipped from Dash’s lips before she could even think, “. . . Why is she still my friend . . . after all that . . . .”
“I think because through it all,” Twilight had a ready answer, “Fluttershy knows you are a good pony, Rainbow Dash.”
“Some ‘good pony’,” Dash snorted. “I chose Gilda over her. Pinkie, too.”
“Until you knew what Gilda was really like. You made sure she paid for all the things she’d done while she was here.” Twilight stepped in closer, and the two mares’ shoulders touched. “That includes upsetting Fluttershy.”
“Any more upset than when I made her my one-pony cheering section? I didn’t have to be so hard on her . . . .”
“But remember, Dash,” Twilight said benignly, “she stuck up for you before your big show. She knew you could repeat the Sonic Rainboom. She never lost faith in you. And she cheered the loudest out of all of us!”
“Hmph . . . ‘Sonic Rainboom’ . . . just one more time I could have seriously hurt her . . . I didn’t even see her fall off that cloud . . . .”
“You’re right. You didn’t.” Twilight waddled over the snow to stand in front of Dash; she brought a hoof to her face and picked Dash’s gaze up to meet her own. “You couldn’t have seen her, and you couldn’t have known she’d fallen. You didn’t mean to let it happen. You shouldn’t blame yourself for it.”
“Fluttershy could have died because of me . . . .”
“But she didn’t. Instead, Fluttershy met the surface world for the first time because of you.” Twilight added a sweet smile. “She was able to make so many animal friends, and she discovered her calling. And you made that happen, Rainbow Dash. You made that happen for us all.” Twilight took a step back, chuckling good-naturedly. “Besides, you defended her from bullies when you were fillies! You led your team to glory during the Equestria Games. You even showed faith in her when she set out to help us beat Trixie and expose Starlight Glimmer. You’re a good friend, Rainbow Dash.” Twilight brought her hoof up to shoulder once again. “You’ve just forgotten a few things. Some more than others.”
Rainbow Dash looked back at Twilight with a piteous glint in her eyes. “How . . . .” She looked back down on the snow. “How will she forgive me . . . ?”
Dash sat in the snow for a few seconds, ignoring the cold and letting the wind nip at her. She gasped when she felt bathed in sudden warmth—the warmth of an Alicorn hug.
“You may not be the Element of Sensitivity, Dash. But you are the Element of Loyalty. Fluttershy knows that. And she knows everything you’ve done for her.” Twilight’s hoof began to stroke Dash’s back. “She’ll forgive you. I’m sure of it.”
Rainbow Dash looked out onto the snow over Twilight’s shoulder, her eyes blank and her heart prickly with trepidation.
How will Fluttershy forgive me?
“H-how will R-Rainbow Dash f-forgive me . . . ?”
Fluttershy lay in her bed, sobbing into her pillow. She hadn’t even counted the minutes since she’d lashed out at her oldest friend, and since coming home, all she’d done was lie in bed and cry. Her guilt was a weight that crushed her entire body at once; she wasn’t even sure whether she was capable of moving.
All the while, Angel sat on the pillow beside her, stroking her mane to comfort her. It worked marginally; the agony was still there, and still fresh, but not as crippling with a soft and friendly bunny paw on her head.
“Oh, Angel,” Fluttershy sniffled, picking her head up. “I was awful. I . . . I just . . . .”
Angel merely nodded and patted Fluttershy’s cheek with a fluffy paw. The tickle of his fur made her smile slightly. It wasn’t much, but the weight wasn’t nearly as debilitating now.
KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK!!
“Eep!” Fluttershy squeaked as she heard the sound. She quickly wiped away the tears, took a breath, and pushed herself out of bed and cantered toward the door. She reached out a hoof, opened the door, shivered briefly in the incoming cold gale of air, and gasped for another reason besides the cold.
“R-Rainbow Dash!”
Rainbow Dash stood in front of Fluttershy, a blank expression on her face. She said nothing.
“Oh, Rainbow Dash, I’m sorry!” Fluttershy squealed, throwing her forelegs around Dash and hugging her tightly. “I didn’t mean to snap at you like that! I didn’t realize what I was saying! I was upset and confused, and I just—I didn’t mean to—I-I’ll go skiing with you! I’ll even make us some hot chocolate when we come back! And you can have as many marshmallows as you want! A-anything to make up for this! I’m just so sorry—”
As the two parted, Rainbow Dash pressed a hoof to Fluttershy’s mouth to silence her. She pulled her hoof away, still staring at her with vacant eyes. In seconds, her blank eyes began to water.
“Umm, Rainbow Dash . . . what . . . what’s the matter?”
Dash said nothing, but her eyes widened and the water in her eyes increased.
“Rainbow Dash, what is it? Is it about what happened before?”
Again, Dash was silent. Her tears were close to overflowing.
“Did . . . did I hurt your feelings? Oh, no, I hurt your feelings, didn’t I?”
Dash slowly shook her head, and in so doing, shook a single tear loose from her eye. That was the signal; right away, her face contorted with agonizing sadness, and she began to quietly cry where she stood, putting forth stuttering, staccato breaths and staring at Fluttershy as if begging for something. Dash leaned forward, wrapped her forelegs around Fluttershy, and buried her face into her neck, sobbing and holding her tightly.
“Oh . . . oh, Rainbow Dash, please . . . please don’t cry . . . whatever’s wrong, it’s okay . . . .”
Rainbow Dash did not reply. She merely shook where she stood, pressed her face deeper into Fluttershy’s warm fur, and released cascades of tears into the warm bed of yellow. She held on as if for dear life, as though her pleading stare seconds before were given action, purpose—need.
“There, there, Rainbow Dash,” Fluttershy cooed, stroking her sobbing friend’s mane. “It’s okay . . . it’s okay . . . .”
Author's Note
Fixed several issues regarding Twilight's past actions.
