Machines whirring filled the air as Fancy Pants walked in, a content smile on his muzzle. Though there wasn’t anything that he needed now, Fancy couldn’t pass up a chance to visit a dear friend while he was in town.
While it wasn’t the first time he came to the little village of Ponyville, he had the honor of knowing a local and humble fashionista who was quickly becoming a household name throughout Equestria. If nothing else, he could simply ask the mare on a quick luncheon in order to celebrate her successes and her bright future.
Though he strode in with confidence and happy thoughts, a cold chill went up Fancy’s spine. The air was not exactly cold, but it had a dark aura, of what he couldn’t place. It felt like his neck was slowly but surely being pulled down, weighted by an unknown force.
Some ponies can sense when others have not felt happiness.
Following the sound of the machinery that was no doubt where Rarity was at work, Fancy did not notice his hoofsteps were a little erratic and quick as he trotted into the work parlor. There, he saw Rarity, hunched over her industrial sewing machine, whirring too quickly for a safe handling of the machine.
It was the worst state he ever saw her in. Any resemblance of the coiffure that once caught his eye were now gone, replaced by a long and untidy mane, held back from the machine with black hairbands. Her makeup, a pride and jewel of the fashionista that took countless hours to assemble, was smeared or missing from Rarity’s face, giving her an almost deathly look. Her hooves were strapped with half-applied band-aids, some of them not covering the fresh cuts you could still see near the base.
“Miss Rarity!” Fancy Pants yelled through the cacophony of the sewing machine, “What happened?!”
Rarity glanced up in shock, and Fancy Pants could swear he had seen the face of a real ghost had the fashionista not suddenly stop working. The machine hummed a low whir, now not being forced to do so much work at such speed. Once Rarity took a few deep breaths that she apparently forgot to take during her intense concentration, she feebly reached over and flipped a switch underneath her table, which shut down the machine.
“Good heavens, Rarity, I know the price of fame is more work, but it wouldn’t hurt to take a break now and then, would it?” Fancy remarked, half jokingly and half concerned about Rarity’s health.
“Ohck, um, AHEM, Fancy Pants. Fancy meeting you here…” Rarity croaked, the final nail in the coffin for Fancy Pants.
“That’s it, miss Rarity. I will not idly stand by and watch your health deteriorate with each passing minute. Come, let’s go to your kitchen so I can make you some tea and you can have some rest.”
“NO! I mean, um, sorry, I appreciate the concern, darling, but I’m afraid this order is on a tight schedule, and there is plenty of more work that I need to do afterwards so please…”
“No buts, miss Rarity,” Fancy Pants ordered. “And no pleases. You need 10 minutes to yourself, dear, or otherwise you will positively collapse, and then where would the time go for your later projects?”
Still standing behind her table, Rarity glanced at both Fancy and at her machine, seeing it luckily just finish the stitch on the fabric. In front of her was a brief respite, but beside her was the only thing that was giving her hope.
She was counting on her. No way out of any of this.
“I’m sorry, Fancy, but I really must get back to OH MY GOODNESS!” Before she could be given a chance to hesitate and look back, Fancy quickly pulled a mirror from the room and levitated it in front of Rarity’s face. Facing the full fury of her long hours spent behind that machine, Rarity quickly tried to look away, but instead she looked down at her bandaged and bleeding hooves.
“Ooooo, fine. I… I need some time.”
“There you go, my dear. Your kitchen doesn’t have much for me to whip up, so I had to do the best I could with what I had. Quality taste in tea choices though, I must admit,” Fancy Pants said, levitating a white tall kettle with a purple rimmed teacup in one plate and some powdered but flat cookies Rarity recognized from her “skip day” cabinet.
“Thank you. I had a long and thoughtful conversation with Princess Celestia once about tea, while drinking tea, and now I believe I’ve taken her tea habits, and possibly some of her tea too.”
Fancy Pants blinked. “Well, I suppose a heroine of the kingdom and rising fashion designer would have some interesting discussions with the princesses. Here you go, milady,” Fancy remarked, using his magic to pour an orange colored liquid into Rarity’s cup.
The fashionista frowned. “Fancy, I know you are concerned for me, but I don’t wished to be treated like a child.”
“Perhaps not,” Fancy began, “but I shall not take any chances with a dear friend of mine who almost overworked herself to exhaustion right in front of me. I had a sinking feeling the closer I came to your parlor that something was wrong, and I suppose I was correct. Rarity, if you do have some strength left, I would like to know why you seem so intent on gaining grey hair at such an early age.”
“W-well I told you. This project is on a strict schedule, and so are many projects both before and after this one that are also required on a short timeline as well. While I do have my associates in Manehatten and Canterlot helping me, I don’t think you can blame a lady for not taking much care of herself with the workload set before her.”
“I couldn’t blame her, but I can certainly fault her if she fainted and wasted precious hours of a strict timeline on a sweaty and possibly bloody rug flooring. I have never heard of a designer taking on so many orders at once and not asking for some clients to shop elsewhere for peace of their minds.”
Rarity sighed. “Sadly, I don’t know what else to say, Fancy, other than that I’m busy.” She rose up from her seat, “I’m afraid I’ve taken too long. I must get back to-”
“AH ah! No you do not! You must have at least 10 more minutes. I know this work is important, but you should never put your career over your health.” Fancy Pants glanced at the ceiling. “Phew, I couldn’t tell you how many times and how many ponies I’ve seen waste away their prime years as slaves to their work. More work doesn’t necessarily mean better futures, at least in my experience, miss Rarity.”
“Yes but I… oooooh…” Rarity groaned. “More work means more chance at a future here…”
“I’m sorry, what was that?” Fancy asked.
“It… Everything, all of this, is about my sister, Sweetie Belle.”
“Sweetie Belle? And is that picture,” Fancy pointed to a photo on the wall that showed Rarity and a small white filly with curled pink and periwinkle hair smiling for the camera together, “the little filly you once told me about?”
“Yes, it is. A little bit older in that picture, nevertheless. But all this work is because of her.”
“Really? How so?”
“Sweetie Belle is… my sister is in the hospital. Intensive care unit,” Rarity explained, a little bit forceful to keeping her voice steady.
Fancy gasped. “My word! What on earth for?”
“A…very unfortunate happenstance. She felt immediate pain one day while at school, and the teacher thought of taking her to the nurse at the hospital. Her kidneys, they’ve… they both failed. It was a very, very slim chance at her age, but it happened. And if she can’t get replacement organs, the pain might be just too much for even the heaviest painkillers, and… and…”
Rarity clenched her eyes shut, letting a single tear fall before she breathed deeply. Placing her foreleg elbows on the table to support her, she cupped the teacup on her plate and rose it to her lips, letting the scent and the scorching heat of the liquid fill her senses to take her mind off from dark thoughts.
“The cost alone was at first something I could pay, but the chance of her surviving are… less than what can give me peace of mind. There is another procedure that does give her a better chance of survival, but I would have to practically sell out my whole business in order to even have a payment plan that would last for years. My associate stores know about Sweetie, and along with me they are trying everything they can to maximize sales. My friends are also trying to pitch in as best they can, but there is still a ways to go before I will have enough, and the clock is ticking for my… for my sister. My little sister.”
Fancy felt himself begin to nod his head, and stopped himself from accidentally showing a non-chalant attention to the seriousness of Rarity’s troubles. “I know of the procedure, and I know its costs would put a sizable dent in my fortune. I will help alleviate some of the bits as a friend, but might I ask where are your and Sweetie’s parents in all this?”
Fancy swore he felt the room drop a few temperatures down. “To be quite honest,” Rarity remarked harshly, her teacup shaking slightly in her grasp, “I have no blasted idea. I mean, I can make some inferences of course. Barely ever come to see us, and I’ve had to raise Sweetie here in this town like I was her own mother when I was still having trouble getting my business off the ground before I became an Element of Harmony. And I never got any help or support from my parents throughout all this time, speaking of them, and I’m not even sure if they know or even care that a pony is going to DIE and they are doing nothing just as they’ve done nothing all this ti-FUCK!”
Dropping the teacup in her grasp, Rarity clenched her eyes shut as she fought off the urge to curse the burning spilled tea on her hooves. The heat felt as if all her wounds from her machine were being opened wider, and the band-aids soaked up and spread the burning liquid across the rest of her legs.
Shaking the arm to loosen the heat faster, she took heavy breaths to regain control of her throat, now feeling even more scratchy than before, after her outburst. Her mind filled with shame as she suddenly remembered who was in front of her, and was half-expecting a look of disgust from the distinguished gentlecolt for her outburst.
However, instead of a look of disgust, Fancy Pants looked with curiosity at something next to Rarity. Before she knew it, the fashionista felt her space being violated by two large lavender legs.
“Rarity! Oh my goodness you look horrible!” Twilight yelled, practically throwing her body onto the alabaster mare. “I heard everything Rarity. I’m really sorry about your parents, and-”
“Princess Twilight?” Fancy Pants stood up to curtsy. “A pleasure to meet you here as well, even if this is rather a sober moment for miss Rarity.”
Twilight gasped as she pulled away from Rarity. “Fancy Pants! Oh my goodness I didn’t see you there. Oh, um, welcome to Ponyville, by the way. I know you don’t usually take trips here, but-”
“Twilight?” Rarity piped up. “While I don’t mind the visit and the sentiment after my, um, outburst, why are you here? I thought you told me you were having an important meeting with Princess Celestia today?”
“I did! It was about you!” Twilight exclaimed. “The crown will pay for it!”
“Crown? What do you mean they’ll…” in the second it took for her to connect the dots, Rarity’s face changed into different emotions, such as hope, disbelief, insane happiness, and relief. It finally settled on a thousand yard stare. “You… you mean Sweetie will…”
“Yes Rarity. I don’t like having to use our statuses, but this is close family in danger here, and Celestia agreed. She will pay for it all, and even provide Ponyville General with some of the best doctors from Canterlot just for Sweetie Belle!”
Rarity kept her eyes wide open, not smiling at all. Twilight was a bit curious to why the mare wasn’t reacting with joy. She desperately hoped the fashionista wouldn’t be one to turn the offer down because she believed she needed to do this on her own.
“You’ve done so much already for Sweetie, Rarity. Please let someone else be generous to you this time,” Twilight asked.
“Oh, I’m… I’m not complaining about the offer, I’m just…” for what felt like the first time in years, Rarity felt a huge creeping numbness in her body flow away, which made her suddenly feel all of her senses like they were understanding new things. This is a floor. These are bandages. That’s a photo of you and Sweetie Belle on the wall.
Sweetie Belle was going to make it. And it’s all because of the lavender mare right in front of her.
This time, it was Rarity who suddenly invaded Twilight’s personal space, throwing herself into the alicorn’s embrace. “You… thank you…” she sobbed, for once letting tears fall without the wailing drama some might think of her.
Fancy Pants, for his part, let a little tear fall at seeing a happy ending come true before him. “Well, I came here to see a friend, and instead I see an entire story happen right before my eyes. I’m sorry for practically ordering and dragging you out of your work, miss Rarity, I do hope you will forgive me for that.”
“Oh, don’t be silly, Fancy Pants. I needed to get out of there for a bit, like you said. Thank you for being an ear for me, even if I said some unladylike things…”
“Well, we all have said some things we would rather not say again, haven’t we? I best be off now, but do try to not be a stranger next time you are in Canterlot, dear Rarity.”
“I shall never, darling. Have a wonderful trip,” Rarity waved goodbye, still holding Twilight in her embrace as Fancy took his leave from the kitchen and eventually the shop.
“Rarity?” Twilight piped up. “Why are you still hugging me?
"Because darling, when I let go I will still have 25 orders to do by tomorrow morning, as part of a 'quick order' system to raise sales... I don't want to let go."
Author's Note
This was written at 12:00 midnight EST with hella coffee and a pissed off family worried I was playing too many video games again.
Nope. Just doing something last minute as always.
Will edit more later.