A Pegasus Too Far

They say that, while sleeping, if you’re being stared at for long enough, you wake up. There’s many a cat-owner testifying for the truth of it. Still, Thunderlane had always had his doubts about the proposition. Loud noises, strong smells, touching, sense of falling – those would surely bring anypony awake. But mere gaze? How could it possibly work? Eyes did not in any way disturb what they saw, did they?

But when Thunderlane came around, hazily, he was certain only of one thing – something was looking at him. Something which made his skin crawl. He narrowed open his eyelids carefully, afraid of what he might witness.

Before him stood Fluttershy, looking down upon him. She had an estranged expression on, as if she had been looking at something she could not quite identify.

“Mgh,” said Thunderlane, and coughed weakly. His throat felt like it had been covered with sandpaper.

Fluttershy blinked, then left. Thunderlane reached after her with a hoof, tried to get up. The pillows scattered on top of him weighed like a house of bricks. He swallowed laboriously, and with discipline nurtured by experience of similar sorts of occurrences, went over the facts. There weren’t that many. He remembered lurking around Helia’s house, then leaving for somewhere (he prayed it had not been inside), then meeting somepony… and drinking tea… and kissing… Oh my Celestia…

Fluttershy returned soon with a glass of water. She offered it to Thunderlane, who accepted it mutely.

“Thanks,” he croaked after emptying it one go. He drew a deep breath. “Fluttershy, this is not what it–”

“You slept with Tree Hugger,” she said blankly.

“You… She… She told you?”

Fluttershy’s lips crunched. “I haven’t seen her today. There’s… other evidence…” A fine blush colored her cheeks as she turned them away from the pillows.

Thunderlane followed the evasion of her gaze. Evidence there was indeed – the sort you clean with mop and bucket.

“Oh shi–”

“It’s quite okay,” said Fluttershy, still looking away. “They were ready for washing anyway. No, don’t bother wiping that, it’s dried already… Yes yes, I understand, you didn’t mean it… Would you stop rubbing them already, please?”

Thunderlane ceased his feeble attempts at redeeming the immaculacy of the pillows. He itched to shove a couple down his throat, in the hope of the lucky chance he might choke to death. Ears drooping and tail stuck between his legs, he pulled himself up, aided by the demand for explanation that hung in the air like an elephant by a single hair of its tail.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what happened, I swear. I came to meet you yesternight, but met Tree instead. She… she offered me some tea. After that… uh…”

A tinge of concern appeared in Fluttershy’s eyes. “How much did you take?”

Thunderlane shook his head. “I dunno, one cup?”

“A whole cup?”

“Yeah. I think. Why?”

“She didn’t warn you beforehoof?”

“No…?” he said, puzzled. “It was just tea.”

“Not the kind you drink a whole cup of in one go,” sighed Fluttershy. “Well, I hope you don’t feel completely awful now. The first time enjoying Tree’s special tea might be a bit… rough. She forgets to mention that sometimes.”

Thunderlane coughed. “Now that you mention it, it might’ve been a tad stronger than your average Earl May… But it still does not justify me, uh…”

“You don’t need to justify anything,” she said. “Why did you want to see me?”

“For my life, I can’t remember anymore,” he replied after a moment’s silence. “Must be the tea, heh. It probably wasn’t anything important anyway.”

“I see.”

For a time they looked away from each other, waiting for the other to say something.

“Would you like some breakfast?” she said. “I ate already, but if you want I can cook something.”

“Thanks, but I think I should be going,” he said. “Got things to do and all that.”

“Okay,” she said. Thunderlane could not avoid the impression of relief she gave out.

She walked him to the door, where he said, in passing, “Tree said you went to see Dash yesterday.”

“Yes.”

“Spent the night there?”

“Yes...”

“Ahha,” he said, in the tone you use when you are compelled to speak nothing.

As he left, she closed the door behind him.

He walked over the small bridge and to the other side of the stream, the course of which he stopped to follow. Leaves burning in all the colors of autumn trailed in the current, bumping into rocks at the shallow spots before zipping past as if in a mortal hurry. As such they appeared completely alien to him. A presence of mind quite unlike what he had ever felt occupied him, his thoughts, the tips of his wings. A presence of the present.

It shimmered at the edges though.

Thus he started looking if he could find it anew.

***

Around the same time in the weather team’s office, a window was narrowed carefully open from the outside. A pair of eyes peeked through the slip between the frame and the lowered curtains. Satisfied as to the clearness of the way, the pony opened the window fully, grimacing at the drawn-out complaint of the old, dry wood, then slipped inside the room. The midday sun was clouded, so the sparse light that made it past the curtains did little to illuminate the room. That was okay, for the pony knew it inside out by heart.

It was not quite right, breaking into her own office, Helia suspected. She would not be likely to alter her decision though, should fate have it that she repeat it. Little circumventing of rules (not even rules, but habits more like) was bound to be justified for everypony now and then. Dash did it all the time, after all. Considering that, Celestia would surely understand the occasional and extremely idiosyncratic–

The door to the office creaked. Helia ducked behind the desk, the drawers of which she had been searching. She heard how the door opened a little more, how somepony stood by it. There was a sigh. And then the door closed.

Helia counted thirty heartbeats before raising her head. When nopony seemed to be stalking behind the door, she resumed looking for the papers she had come to get. It took longer than she wanted, but soon she had them all in her file, which she tucked under her wing. Those secured, she climbed through the window again, mentally giggling at her possible future as a professional burglar.

It evaporated the moment she saw Dash leaning against a tree, eyebrow raised.

“Care to explain this?” she asked. “Or do I even wanna know?”

Helia chewed her lip, studying her hooves. First she was angry for being ashamed, then ashamed for being angry.

“You saw me climbing in?” she asked.

“Glitter did,” said Dash. “She told me. I went to the office to see if you were there. I then figured you not only want nopony to know you came – you didn’t even want them to know you were here. Makes me wonder…”

“It wasn’t you I was trying to avoid,” Helia said. “Not anypony in particular, just… everypony.”

Dash detached her flank from the bark. “Everypony, you say?”

“Are you really going to make me talk about it?” Helia groaned.

Dash looked her up and down like a player judging their next move. Dash was not a pony to treat conversation as a game all the time, Helia knew, but when she did, she categorically aimed to win.

“Lane hasn’t shown up today,” Dash noted.

Helia squeezed the file under her wing.

“There’s something going on between you two, isn’t there?” Dash continued. “Something sappy. ‘Cept that things got a bit too sticky lately, yeah?”

A sigh unfolded from the bottom of Helia’s lungs. Dash was not going to give up on this one. In any case, how could opening up to her make things worse?

“We met the other day at my place,” Helia said, rolling the file in her wings. “I invited him over after hours. To kill some time, nothing else. Guess he didn’t take it the same way,” she finished sourly.

Dash’s eyebrow inched upwards. “What, he tried to…?”

“Let’s just say I don’t want a coltfriend who can’t keep his hooves to himself.” She looked at the now smirking Dash. “Yeah, I like him. Sort of. He has his special kind of charisma. But after the other day… I don’t know. He made me feel… cheap.”

A burst of chuckle fled Dash, but she shovelled it back inside when she saw Helia’s expression.

“Sorry,” Dash said. “It’s just, uh… I never thought you were on sale in the first place, so to speak…”

“That’s all you got to say?”

“Hey, it’s not like me to share out relationship advice. I only want to be on top of my team’s troubles. Especially when it’s obstructing their work. The winter’s only getting closer.”

“I know. Why do you think I snug in here? I needed these charts to finish up the calculations.”

This seemed to satisfy Dash. Helia took it as a sign for an opening to leave.

“You can’t avoid him forever, you know,” Dash said behind her.

“I don’t intend to,” Helia replied, not turning around. “Only for the indefinite future.”

Dash watched her fly away and disappear behind some rooftops. It was funny, she thought, how you could spent years practicing with somepony, all the while learning really nothing about them. The problem was, it was too late to start now. Still, something needed to be done. She couldn’t abide disorder in the ranks on the threshold of the busiest season of the year.

As always with these things, somepony needed to budge. Aided by a nudge, no doubt.

***

Even in a village as compact as Ponyville it was difficult trying to find somepony of whom you knew nothing about. Not that Thunderlane was completely devoid of clues. For one, Tree Hugger didn’t struck him as a pony who would spent her days shopping for clothes, or leafing through books in the library. A yoga class, on the other hoof, or the herbal shop, sounded promising. It turned out they weren’t, but surely a visit to the market would produce results? And when that failed, there was no way she would not, at some point, return back to Fluttershy’s place.

At no point during his overflights did the question occur to Thunderlane of why exactly was he looking for this mare she had known for barely a night, when he was supposed to be in the team’s headquarters, working. It made as little sense to ask that as the answer would have made. This was something that had to be done, and that was all.

Right now he was flying above the road to Sweet Apple Acres. The orchard would offer an ideal environment for Tree, he knew. Those trunks were made for hugging and there sure was enough of them to last for a lifetime. He could already see her wrapped around a tree, squeezing love into the bark with those delicate, tender hooves of hers; bended slightly forward, accentuating the curve of her lithe back…

Like that, he thought upon seeing the familiar figure, not quite in the orchards, but by the meadow next to them. She appeared to be collecting flowers for her mane. That gave Thunderlane his cleverest idea of the day.

“Good day, you,” he said sweetly after a few minutes behind Tree Hugger. Upon her turning around, he stretched out a wing holding a couple of the rearer sort of flowers between the feathers. “You seemed to be missing these, heh.”

She looked at the flora, then at him. She accepted them, nodded, and turned her back again.

Only the breeze spoke afterwards.

“Uhm… You come here often?” Thunderlane asked eventually, circling to her front. “This your favourite meadow perhaps, heh?”

“They’re all my favourite,” Tree answered without looking up.

“I see. Heh.”

The mild wind had to pick up the thread of conversation again for several minutes. The sense of joy Thunderlane had enjoyed in the air started to flake. Smiling with only half a mouth now, he kept moving in the mare’s wake, competing for the eye contact against every plant she came across.

“Are you looking for something?” she said as her bent-over face almost bumped into his knees.

“Just a chat,” he said all too quickly.

“You’ll have to speak slower,” she continued, bypassing his feet. “Their hearing’s different than ours.”

“I didn’t mean with the flowers,” he said after some retuning of his comprehension functions. “I meant with you. You know, talk about things like the weather, food, music or, heck, I dunno, how about the fact that we had sex last night?”

Initially he had intended to soften that last part with another wooden ‘heh’, but the ghost of humour became honed away at some point during the enunciation.

She looked at him again now, expression unchanged. “Oh, yeah. Last night – it comes to me now. Good times. Good tea.” She gave him a tad deeper smile. And then dived her muzzle back into the weeds.

Thunderlane kept staring at the point her head had occupied but which now lead straight into the horizon beyond the hills. “You… you just now remembered that…? Remembered me?”

“Don’t take it personally, Lane,” said a voice behind him. “That’s how she always is. Detached. Loose. Smoky. Not much to grab hold of, really.”

“Oh, hi D,” said Tree, glancing above at the floating pegasus. “How’s the vibes?”

Dash rolled her eyes. “They’re solid, Hugs, solid. Anyway, I’d hate to interrupt your chat, but mind if I borrow Lane for a sec? No? Great.”

“She didn’t remember me,” muttered Thunderlane while Dash walked him farther from Tree Hugger. “She didn’t remember…”

“You two actually hooked up?” Dash asked with a smirk. “Hah! Finally you’re getting around! First Fluttershy, then Helia, now Tree… I wonder who’s next on Lane?”

Thunderlane said nothing.

“Anyway, I didn’t seek you up for that. Or actually I kinda did. This thing you have going on with Helia… I think it’s messing her up. And I don’t wanna judge or anything, but looks like it’s up to you to blink first here, if you know what I mean.”

A thin, plastic gaze turned from the distance to meet the hint painted on Dash’s features, and which he utterly missed.

“I mean you should apologize to her,” she added. “Good news is she’s not as upset as all that. A good old ‘sorry and please forgive me’ should do the trick. Maybe throw a week’s cleaning shift on the top to smooth it over.”

Amidst the heat of the day, Thunderlane began to tremble. Dash raised an eyebrow. “Hey, what are you–”

“I love you!” cracked Thunderlane’s voice like a whip made of glass. “I frigging love you! I love you I love you I love you I love you so much, more than anything; you and nopony else! You are my love – You are it!”

He grabbed her by the shoulder. “Why won’t you ever listen to me? That night on the bench – I tried to tell you; have tried for years, but you never listen; you never care to listen. You’re gonna listen now: I fucking love y–”

There was not so much movement than two moments collapsed on each other: one in which Dash’s hoof lay completely at rest, then another when it finished its eclipse, having just delivered a sharp slap at Thunderlane’s right cheek. In between the moments, nothing existed. On either side of them, the remnants of history and the future lingered, flapping in the easy wind like shreds of a letter with its meaning discarded.

He lay on his knees now, staining the leaves and petals with his tears, breath shattered by hyperventilation. She didn’t see nor hear him, for she had no eyes on her back and the swoosh of wind blocked all other sounds. He sat there with an aching cheek and a flaming heart, the ash accumulating in his mouth.

Such moments, such violence; such loath condensed in the slice of time you replay over and over and over, to highlight this by covering it, a piece of furniture curtained with dust

and it gets shorter every time

my god

every time.

***

Later that evening, when Fluttershy strolled down the peaceful mane street, she found herself with the premonition that the virgin frost would come early this year. She had no good reason to believe she knew that. After all, the weather team hadn’t scheduled subzero temperatures for another few weeks yet, and they tended to follow Celestia’s sun paths quite accurately. But plans were in the end but a more official name for wishes, which were ambiguous by nature. Nopony ever knew what they exactly wished for. If they did, there’d bound to be a lot less of wishing going around.

Approaching her destination, Fluttershy loosened the scarf around her throat slightly. It had been a while since she had last visited Blueberry Inn. Why did it always feel like the closure of a book to walk through that door? What was it in that place that made end seem so imminent? Had the walls absorbed so much sorrow over the years they now emanated some of it back, or was at stake a magnet for lugubrious folk? And were such metaphysics of emotion the sole luxury of those who came to the Inn to seek not the bottom but those who did?

Thunderlane sat by the counter alone, Fluttershy saw as she stepped in. At once she knew the situation was even worse than what she had gathered from Dash’s account – which alone had been grave enough. Even the light from oil lamps, not to mention the other customers, appeared to shun him. Behind the counter, Cheery gave Fluttershy a look of solemn concern and, alarmingly, deep helplessness.

“What happened to him?” the bartender whispered as Fluttershy walked closer. “I’ve never seen anything similar. Hasn’t spoken a word since he came; can’t get one out no matter what I do. Even offered him a glass with two drops of Big Blue One mixed in.” Cheery’s legendarily calm face twisted before the force of an inner storm crumbling everything she had thought eternal. “No effect. He gulped it like a sip of lemon juice. Two whole drops!”

Fluttershy swallowed. “There was an… incident earlier today. I should talk to him. Talking always helps.”

“That’s what I always say,” said Cheery. “Or used to say, anyway. I’ll keep an eye on you two. Just in case.”

In case of what, Fluttershy did not dare to ask. She drew a deep breath before pulling a chair next to the stallion. All the eyes and ears in the room revolved at their direction, she felt. For the whole trip here she had wondered what to say, what not to say, and why exactly she had promised Dash to go find Thunderlane to begin with. She had been so very upset, in the lack of a better word. Fluttershy had begged her to come along, but Dash had been so against it she–

“I used to hate you.”

Fluttershy blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Not all the time but in waves,” continued Thunderlane in a colorless tone. “Of all the ponies, I used to hate you. You had everything I wanted; the only everything I wanted. You had Dash, and she had you. You are so happy together. Sometimes still it makes me so sick. So envious. I feel wronged by your love. It should be mine, I used to think. I wanted that. Nothing but. Nothing but.”

Fluttershy listened him like a distant avalanche one isn’t quite certain they stand a safe distance from.

“Then the thing happened four seasons back,” he continued. “We got together, all three, somehow. I’ll never forget that summer. Nor the fall after. Nor today. Finally, it all came down to what happened today. It’s been long time coming; so long it felt we had already been over it. Now it's done. It’s done!”

Thunderlane threw himself upright, wings and all, ready to break something. It didn’t matter if it was wood or flesh, steel or bones, himself or others. Destruction reigned before him; a drive to annihilation until nothing remained but a will to do it all over again.

Or so he desired. Fluttershy could see it so clearly in the fragile, laborious crying he succumbed to, face buried in his hooves and soul covered in pleas heard only by her.

“Not alone; I don’t want to be alone; I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want… No… No…”

“You are not alone,” Fluttershy wanted to say. It didn’t feel right by him to do that though: not in the face of his collapse that testified to a belief of the exact contrary. Perhaps touching him would’ve been more appropriate, but that didn’t feel doing right by herself. The echo of I used to hate you still lingered in the air.

It turned out she didn’t need to do anything before a tinge of recomposure returned to Thunderlane. “To think… To think I’m this devastated for being friendzoned,” he said with wounded mirth while wiping his eyes. “What a joke, right?”

“Friendzoned?” Fluttershy repeated carefully.

“Read about it in this dating magazine of my mother’s. It means this… thing where people want different things from each other. To be just friends, or to be something… more. Seemed such a pathetic thing to complain about at the time,” he added darkly.

“More than friendship…? I don’t think I understand… What is it you’d rather have than friendship?”

For the first time Thunderlane looked at Fluttershy in the eyes. Neither blinked at the contact for several seconds.

“I don’t even know there’s a name for it,” he finally said, looking away. “She doesn’t care for me like I do for her, and not like I’d want her to care. Such a selfish thought, right? Is there anything more selfish, more arrogant, than wanting somepony to love you like you love them? I know there isn’t. My knowledge does not combat my desire. I’ve tried. Oh, I’ve tried… But ignoring it only lead me to what happened today…”

“What exactly do you think happened today?”

“I lost it,” Thunderlane replied in fresh tears. “I lost it. I went mad at her. I felt anger towards her. She shouldn’t have slapped me – she should’ve beaten me to pulp. She should’ve fired me from the team.”

“Are you sure it’s Dash you were so angry with?” Fluttershy continued after a pause. “Because to me it seems you’re more angry with yourself. With your own feelings; for not being able to change them.”

“Well, of course I shouldn’t wish to–”

He paused when her wing landed on her shoulder softer than a butterfly. “But you do. Denying it doesn’t change that you do. It’s not your fault for feeling that way.”

A tune of indeterminate origin drifted around the Inn. It approximated music, distinguishing itself from mere silence with a degree of intensity not unlike an interval. It was the indefinite suspense in the soft hollow between Fluttershy’s last words and the endurance of her wing’s touch.

“What should I do?”

“Detach,” Fluttershy said, letting go of him. “Take some time off the team. A holiday in Cloudsdale, perhaps?”

“That’s what Dash wants?”

“She wasn’t against it,” Fluttershy conceded, following some brief internal debate.

Thunderlane appeared to sag slightly, from relief or despair, Fluttershy could not tell. “Maybe it’s for the best. Yeah. Best for everypony. Maybe it’ll clear things out once and for all. Yeah.”

Fluttershy smiled faintly. Not long after she left, and to her joy managed to pull him along. The Inn had its purpose sure and secure, but too much of it could leave its mark. They separated near the central square, heading for their homes through the cool mists with quiet farewells and promises to see each other soon again.

“How did he take it?” asked Rainbow Dash immediately as Fluttershy opened her house’s front door. She closed it and settled onto the pillow sea of the living room before closing her eyes.

“You won’t be seeing each other for a while,” she said. “Like you wanted.”

Dash, standing in front of the window looking into the town, turned around.

“What’d you say to him, exactly?”

“Could you come here, please. It’s getting so late, and I feel so tired…”

For the first time Dash hesitated before this particular invitation. She glanced one more time at the city, it’s soft glow against the early fall darkness. Nopony seemed to be heading up the hill.

“You didn’t tell him what I told you to tell him, did you?” Dash said as she fell next to Fluttershy.

The buttercup wing uncurler to brush the cyan flank, not playfully, not longingly, but simply like a branch reaching for the sun.

“Did you really want me to? Really?”

Without noticing it herself, Dash’s feathers intertwined with Fluttershy, joining sky with a field of wheat. “I… I think I did. What he did… It wasn’t cool. Not at all. I don’t want to have that ever again. Not in my team.”

“You only know what you really want once you’ve had it. I suppose the same is true of what you don’t want.”

Dash stared at the dimming ceiling. There was something else on her mind still.

“Haven’t seen Tree today.”

“I think she left town,” Fluttershy said. “Seems like you just missed her. Again.”

“Fluttershy…”

“Yes, Dash?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”