For there were no more worlds to conquer
“I think being made Captain of the Wonderbolts was the worst moment of my life,” Dash admitted, and Rarity nodded.
“So why didn’t you come to me first?” Rarity sipped from her cup of tea. She understood how Dash was feeling, but she didn’t understand why she’d asked for something so strong just to put three sugars into it. She was even waiting for it to cool down a little first, just warming her hooves on it.
“I figured, if anybody had a chance of getting where I’m coming from, it’d be you,” Rainbow stared into her cup, “but I wasn’t sure.”
“Embarrassment, then?”
“I just don’t think I wanted to scare anyone.” A single hiccupped laugh, the kind of laugh you make when you’re trying to explain your feelings to someone else for the first time and so now’s your first chance at seeing how big and stupid the whole thing is. Rarity sipped her tea; It was best to show Dash she wasn’t going to speak, so she’d be more anxious just to fill the silence.
Otherwise she’d need a whole team of horses to drag it out of her, and she didn’t want to get the other Elements involved in this, not yet.
Dash continued like she was in confessional, “It just hit me harder than I was expecting, you know? I hear it, I hear Spitfire’s giving the team to me, and it was... it was the best. It was amazing. It felt like I got told I’d be getting a Pinkie party all to myself every day, forever. I did it. It was everything I’d dreamed of since I was a kid, you know?”
“I think I do, yes. I don’t think, say, Applejack ever could-”
“Ha!” Rainbow laughed so hard at that she dribbled tea all over her hooves, and Rarity just listened, “Applejack would call me a stupid crazy idiot! Or... I dunno, ‘A pig in mud that just started wishin’ it were clean’ or however she would say it.”
“Impressive likeness. If I closed my eyes, I’d think she were actually here.”
Rainbow smiled, putting her cup down so she could suckle the hot tea out of her fur. “Yeah, and she’s great and my best friend and all but...”
“She wouldn’t understand, no.”
“I don’t think she could. She’s my best friend and everything, but it’s just like... She’s got what she wants in life and she’s happy about it. And she’ll always be happy about it.” Rainbow said this as if it were the strangest thing in the world. To them, it might have been.
“And us?” Rarity smiled, but it was just like Rainbow’s laugh. Smiling because you knew you said something that was ridiculous that you knew the other was taking seriously. Because if they weren’t going to take it seriously, you wouldn’t be able to smile about it.
Rainbow smiled back the same way. “Yeah. Then there’s us. What was it like for you?”
“What was it like for me, or when did it happen for me?”
“Both, I guess.”
Rarity sipped her tea. Maybe some biscuits would help with this. She’d have to ask. “There was a designer I greatly admired. Top of the game, been on all the magazine covers. She and I met at a... function, of sorts, a few years ago. I can’t remember what it was actually called, and I’m sure you don’t particularly care, so I won’t bore you thinking further on it.”
“You’re stalling.”
“I am. It’s not a pleasant memory, you understand.” Rainbow nodded. It still seemed ridiculous to call such a proud memory unpleasant, but that was why they were both here. “So, they came up to me, they came to me and said... ‘Rarity’! In that breathy way fans do, that I remember so well. She goes ‘Rarity! I’m so honoured to finally meet you. I’ve admired your designs for so long! Tell me, what’s your secret these days?’”
Rainbow squirmed in her cushioned seat, “That was it? Someone asked you for advice?” She sounded guilty about questioning Rarity’s story, but she was obviously still trying to work out just how well Rarity ‘got it’. Some prodding was to be expected.
Rarity nodded, “That was it. Because you have to remember, Dash, this wasn’t just any other designer, no. This mare I had considered my only true rival at the time.”
“What was her name?”
“I don’t remember.”
The only sound for a few moments was that of a clock from the next room, counting the long seconds.
Rainbow sipped from her tea, now. Had cooled it off enough in her hooves, it seemed. Nodded to herself. “Yeah,” Dash said, “So that’s the when.”
“You’re curious about the what, then? I’m sure you already know what I’m going to say.”
“I don’t. I want to know how different it hit you. I mean... you know...”
“I know how bad it’s hit you, yes,” Rarity sighed, “and I really do wish you’d come to me first.”
Rainbow shrugged into herself defensively, slid deeper into the chair. “I wasn’t thinking.” Tone of a scolded filly.
Rarity sniffed. “Yes, well. I’m going to get some biscuits to go with the tea. Would you like anything in particular?”
“Ah... something with chocolate, I guess?”
“Chocolate it is.” Good choice, chocolate always did help.
Rarity made her way to the kitchen while she tried to put together what she was actually going to say. There was a bargain to be struck between how vulnerable she could make herself, and how truthful she could be. How much pain she was willing to put upon herself to let Dash know she was understood, that was the question.
Except there never really was a question, was there? She was just stalling again. She knew it as she grabbed the sealed jar of chocolate-dipped scotch biscuits and made her way back to the parlour, where Rainbow was still just staring into her tea. Looked up as Rarity came into the room, but then her head hung low again by the time Rarity had sat down.
Looked up long enough to grab a biscuit and dip it into the abomination she called tea.
“It was like I had been climbing a mountain. And it was long, and hard, and I never really saw the top. Then suddenly, as she said that, there I was. There was nowhere left to climb to. And I looked around and I realized... the only way left to go was down. Now I was still terrified of falling, but there was nothing to distract me from it anymore.”
Rainbow nodded, eyes still not tearing away from the tea. Just held it to her lips and thought into it. “Yeah.”
“I tried to self-sabotage, at first. Not consciously, but the creative block was terrible. Where previously I looked for inspiration, now was just... despair, I suppose, but of a quiet variety. At the back of my mind I thought; it would be so good to fall just a little, just a little bit, I think. Just so I can crawl my way back up again.”
“What happened?”
“The next line I did was a smashing success.” Rarity lamented. “I couldn’t fail if I tried. Oh, really, it was just variations of the same, tweaks of old formula, certainly... but nobody complained, because I was just giving them more of what they wanted. I was my only competition. Which was probably the worst part, I think, because every time I outdid myself, I was the one who lost.”
“Didn’t you win as well? I mean-”
“But the prize was always just stasis, yes. The feeling of not going anywhere. So winning felt like losing.” Rarity took a bite of biscuit, then a sip of tea, and enjoyed the feeling of the two dissolving together in her mouth. No, it would have been too sweet with sugar in both.
“Yeah. Yeah, I get that.”
This was the hard part, but the important part. It was a pity how often things worked out that way. “I don’t think I understood how depressed I was at the time, because I didn’t feel sad. Or at least, I wasn’t aware that I was. It was just this feeling of floating through the day, like nothing was quite real. Then, one night...” She took a sip, found her cup empty, and it hit the table again with a clatter. Rarity’s voice was steady, but her hooves weren’t, so Rainbow poured her another cup how she liked it. “Thank you, dear. One night I ran a bath.”
“Is that... unusual? I think Twilight does that when she has a bad day.”
“Mm. Twilight doesn’t take an entire bottle each of wine and sleeping pills in with her.”
“Oh.” Rainbow paused, then, “Oh!” She choked, and Rarity couldn’t see her face because it was her turn now to stare into her tea, unable to look up. “Rarity, you didn’t!”
She didn’t look up, but she did raise an eyebrow at that. “Oh, yes, I’m very much dead, as you can see by the waterlogged corpse before you. No, I didn’t. I didn’t even think about it. Didn’t even realize until I was neck deep in bubbles what I was doing. I had thought ‘A glass of wine sounds lovely’ and I had thought ‘And I have been so very stressed as well’. But I hadn’t poured a glass, and I hadn’t set aside a few tablets. I’d taken the whole of both in with me and thought nothing of it.”
She looked up, and Rainbow was grimacing hard, like someone trying not to swear after banging their head against the cabinet door. Finally managed to make eye contact. “I wasn’t depressed, and I wasn’t suicidal. I mean that sincerely. I just realized, at that moment, that I didn’t particularly care either. There was an apathy, there was a nothing where there should have been something.”
“Yeah.” Rainbow agreed, and that was the worrying part, now, wasn’t it?
“You know what I mean, don’t you?”
And Rainbow nodded, and pain shot through Rarity’s chest because there was so little hesitation. She really did. “It’s like I’ve been flying this whole time, and I just ran out of sky. And it’s not like I can fly back... I’ve always been going somewhere, and now that I got there, it never really existed anyway. And now I’m just... falling. I guess.”
Rarity grimaced. Not an attractive expression, but one she couldn’t help. “Freefalling, I take it?”
“Yeah.”
“I imagine it feels a bit like floating?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve watched you practice your stunts for years, Dash. Pulling out of a dive at the last minute, hardly any more dangerous than a buccaneer blitz.”
Dash gulped, screwed her eyes shut. Her cup hit the table with a clatter.
“That is, if you keep your eyes open while you do it.”
“It’s just practice.” Dash lied, “I know exactly how far to push it. Done it a million times, no sweat.”
“Just a variation on the same,” Rarity stirred her tea with a biscuit, “Just a twist on an old formula.”
“Yeah! Wait...”
The biscuit did help. Chocolate always did. “You always look scared.”
“I should. It’s dangerous.”
“That’s what worries me. You only look scared when you open your eyes again.” More chocolate, not enough chocolate in the world. “You hurt yourself doing it yet?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Not yet?”
“I mean- you phrased it like that!”
Not enough tea, either. “And you didn’t correct me.”
Rainbow looked like she was going to throw a punch. A hard one. Was still deciding on whether it was going to be at Rarity or just a cushion. It ended up being the cushion, of course, and not just one punch.
Rarity watched, but didn’t apologize. Didn’t ask her to stop either, though she did really like that cushion. Such things could be replaced though. “Are you done yet?”
Rainbow howled in frustration, and took to tearing at the pillow in her teeth. Apparently not. Maybe breakfast tea had been a bit too strong for this, and a peppermint would have been better.
“I hate this!” Rainbow shouted. The anger was fragile, Rarity knew, and would shatter soon enough. “I hate feeling like this! And it won’t stop, and it won’t go away! I thought if I just tried to, tried to be the best Captain that ever was or, or something, I’d still have something! But I can’t grab on to that. It doesn’t... It’s like…”
Or maybe wine? In veno veritas. “I always thought of it like trying to grab sand with your magic, but I don’t know how to phrase that in a Pegasus way.”
“When pegasus make hurricanes, there’s pockets in the middle where everypony’s pushed all the air out of it, and nothing’s allowed back into it. There’s no air at all, it’s just empty. It’s like when you get pushed into one of those pockets, and you keep flapping your wings as hard as you can. That’s what it feels like.”
“I could see that.”
The pillow lay in shreds at Rainbow’s feet. She refused to look guilty about it, but the rush of the anger was breaking against it. The anger was like fire; it gave so much energy, but it needed to be fed as well. Dash was burning out.
She kicked it like a hoofball, but it was more petulant than angry, trying to stoke the flames, not succeeding. “What did you do?”
“What do you mean?”
“How do you... how do you deal with it? What makes you get out of bed in the morning?”
“You find something else to care about.” Rarity’s gut twisted. The real answer was that nothing ever fixed it, but it was important to believe that it worked. Because the real solution was to keep trying. She couldn’t tell Dash that though; it doesn’t work if you’re just trying for its own sake. That just felt like treading water.
“I’m the best flyer in the whole world. Maybe even in history. I run the Wonderbolts. There isn’t...” Dash trailed off, sliding down her chair so miserably her eyes were barely over her chest.
“Not down that avenue, no,” Rarity said, “But aren’t you also in charge of the academy in off seasons?”
“Yeah. Most of them don’t even have any potential, though. Most of it’s paperwork and checklists, honestly, Twilight would be better at it than me. Why?”
“So only a few show potential then. What do you do with them?”
“What do you mean?”
“When you see a recruit with potential, what do you do with them?”
Rainbow thought about that. “I don’t know. Tell them good work, try to move them on to the more advanced courses.”
“You don’t take any special interest in any of them? Don’t push them to be their best?”
“I try to get them to want the best for themselves. Usually don’t have to do much pushing.”
“You’ve charted out your whole sky, Rainbow.” Rainbow winced when Rarity said it, but there was no helping it, “Maybe it might be time to start sharing your map.”
“You mean focus on being a good teacher? Rarity, I suck at teaching.”
“Good. It’s better if it doesn’t come easily. It’ll feel that much better when you start working at it.”
“But- It’s not- It’s not the same thing!” It was Dash; there was always an ember left to poke, but there was nothing much left to catch.
“No. It’s not. And nothing ever will be.” Had to be firm on this, like scolding a child. Cut through the petulance, the denial, the excuses. “This is the first step of the rest of your life. If you asked Applejack, she’d tell you to just find happiness with what you have. Do you think that’d work?”
“I mean, I got everything I ever wanted, don’t I?”
“Yes. Which is the problem, isn’t it?”
“... Yeah.”
“So the solution, it seems obvious to me, is to want something else. That’s not easy, mind you. You have to try for it, and it can feel like trying to dig a hole in water at first, but the alternative, Dash, is that one day, you won’t open your eyes. And if you did that, I would find whatever afterlife you ended up in, and I would murder you for doing that to us. Am I clear?”
“Y-yeah.” Dash gulped. “So... teaching, huh?”
“You always had a knack for it, especially with Scootaloo. Ponies do look up to you.”
Dash gulped, but the idea had caught in her head. It might be enough, it might not be. Only time would tell. Then she had to ask the question Rarity didn’t have an answer for; “What was it for you?”
And Rarity was silent.
Yes, wine would go well with this. A lot of red wines paired very well with chocolates actually.
“Rarity... what keeps you going?”
That question was easier. “I could never do something so selfish. You know that.”
Yes. Definitely just a glass of wine. She’d learned to leave the bottle in the kitchen.
