“We’ll make a Wonderbolt out of you, yet.”

I reluctantly drew my hooves away from my face. It wasn’t me, though. I hadn’t decided to do that. If I had been in charge, I would have been frantic, heart pounding, already searching for a way out of this strange place I had suddenly found myself in.

But it wasn’t me.

If it had been me, I would have told her that not to call me “squirt,” that I was a mare deserving some manner of respect. I would have told her I wasn’t a Wonderbolt, that I’m not even a pegasus! And I would have run away.

But it wasn’t me.

I--or rather, the body I was in--slipped out of the skintight lycra suit and ran a loving hoof over its surface. The hoof which grazed it was a powdery sky blue, and it smoothed the wrinkles out of the deep blue fabric with practiced care.

My wings spread slightly, with some pain, as I swiveled about on the cold metal bench. Had I been in control of this body, the realization that I had wings might have caused a variety of physical and verbal reactions. But I was not in control, so it didn’t matter.

They were Rainbow’s wings. And I was hanging up Rainbow’s uniform in her locker, closing it, scrambling the lock. I caught a brief glimpse of a group photo she had pinned inside-- Myself, Twilight, Pinkie, Applejack, and Fluttershy. I remember taking it. It had been Pinkie’s idea.

My head was pounding, despite it not even being my head.

“Oh, I almost forgot!” the voice from earlier said from the door.

I looked up. Spitfire, with her shoulder leaned coolly against the doorframe, gestured to a bucket of water and a mop nearby.

“Aw, what?” I complained, in Rainbow’s voice.

Spitfire shrugged. “It’s not like you have a concussion. Worst flyer of the day cleans the compound. Them’s the rules.”

She left with a flick of her tail.

Something told me that Spitfire was never the worst flyer of the day.

Rainbow Dash grumbled to herself as she shuffled over to the mop and bucket. Even though she couldn’t manage to form coherent sentences, I knew what she was saying: “Can’t even take a damn shower. Why would I shower when I have to mop everypony else’s sweat off the floor? Have wander around all covered in dirt and shit. Disgusting.”

It was amazing how much I related to Dash in that moment. I suppose becoming an athlete had changed her perspective of the world a bit-- she had to take good care of herself. She was being seen by hundreds, thousands of ponies a week. Studied and photographed. Self-care routines can quickly become a necessary element of one’s mental and emotional wellbeing.

At least, that was my experience.

There wasn’t much to think about or understand as Rainbow mopped the floors. Her head was mostly full of flight patterns and failure analyses that I could barely comprehend in the first place, much less through this poor telekinetic communication I seemed to be experiencing at the moment.

I was starting to wonder how Rainbow had come back, though.

It was clear that the magic she used was powerful, but somehow unfocused. Sure, it could transport ponies through time. But it was easily muddled, confused.

I remembered the shape I first saw in here, at the edge of the Everfree. The way it could barely stand. This magic was powerful, but dangerous.

A sudden outburst of laughter caused Rainbow’s ear to flick and her mopping to halt. She tilted her head slightly, repositioned her ears, zeroing in on the sound of a conversation somewhere within the compound.

“Everypony should have gone back to the barracks by now. What are they still doing here?”

We set the mop back in the bucket as silently as we could. Our ears continued to rotate about their mountings, keeping the sound of the conversation as clear as we could. It was impossible to understand any of the words from this distance.

We began to sneak closer. As we moved against the rows of lockers and towards the shower, Rainbow began to recognize the voices:

“Silver Zoom”

“Misty Fly”

“High Winds”

A raspy voice shushed the group, and the volume died down.

“Was that Fleetfoot?”

A quick spike of rage in Rainbow’s thoughts made her heart beat just the slightest bit faster. I understood that, in some manner, these ponies were at fault for the accident which occured today. An accident which had injured her and saddled her with manual labor.

My own anger blazed. How dare they treat my Dashie that way.

We came to a stop just a few steps from the showers. The floor was a little slippery here, no doubt from the careless stallions who meandered about the place with properly rinsing the soap from their coats. Although, I suppose the mares here might not be much better. Tomcolts, every one.

“It looks like we’ll need a replacement for Sunshowers sooner rather than later,” Silver said. “She said something the other day about moving in with a marefriend. You know how that always goes.”

Fleetfoot scoffed. “Damn, that might have been even shorter than what’s-his-face.”

“Cerulean?” High Winds reminded.

“Yeah, yeah. Never liked that guy. He was so jittery,” Fleetfoot murmured. “Well, do we have somepony else lined up?”

There was a long silence.

“Oh, please don’t tell me we’re high and dry again. Nopony has any leads on a replacement?”

Silence again.

Rainbow was concerned that somepony may be talking, and we were still too far away to hear it. We snuck closer to the gathering in the showers.

Our hoof slid through the lingering soap on the tile floor. We went all the way down to the floor with a thud, knocked all the wind out of our lungs.

The heads of the whole gathering whipped around to stare at us.

“Ah, shit.” A male voice. One that Rainbow recognized immediately.

“Soarin?”

“R-Rainbow Dash?” Fleetfoot stuttered. There was genuine panic in her eyes. “Why are you still here? High Winds was on cleanup today. Right?”

She looked to High Winds, who did nothing but shrug.

Rainbow wheezed softly. “Spitfire told me to do cleanup.”

Fleetfoot let out a strained sigh and rubbed her cheek with one hoof. “Dammit, Spit…”

We struggled to our hooves to stand before the group. They all looked more than a little guilty, and none but Fleetfoot would even look at Rainbow Dash.

“Look, it’s cool, guys,” Rainbow said, taking a step forward. “It was kind of a clusterfuck out there, and I think we all deserve some blame for what went down, but I’m the Newbie. I don’t mind doing this kinda stuff. You don’t need to be all weird about it.”

The gathering was completely silent.

“Wait…” Fleetfoot looked to her teammates for help. “Are you talking about the botched flight maneuver?”

Rainbow narrowed her eyes. “What else would I be talking about?”

Silence consumed the space once again, though it was an artificial sort of silence. Every little cough or shift of weight echoed off the tiled walls. The fluorescent lights above the lockers buzzed in the background. The silence was, for lack of a better word, loud.

Fleetfoot was chewing thoughtfully on her lip.

“What are you guys doing here?” Rainbow asked. She nearly tacked on a joke about broken showers, but rethought that. This was a serious meeting she had interrupted. Serious for what purpose, she didn’t know yet. But serious nonetheless.

“You used to be a weather pony, right Dash?” Fleetfoot asked in response. A few of the other members of the gathering seemed to wince at this question.

Rainbow chuckled nervously. “Yeah? What does that have to do with--”

“Did you ever actually work in the factory?” Fleetfoot pressed. “Or did you do more cloud-carrying?”

“I mean, all the trainees get a factory walkthrough,” Rainbow explained. Her tail flicked nervously. “Why are you asking?”

“Fleet, I’m not sure--”

“Shush.” Fleetfoot silenced one of her group members with a wave of her hoof. “You know anything about what goes on in the factory? On a personnel level?”

“Like, what the factory workers do during time off ‘n’ shit?”

“Yeah.”

Rainbow took a step back. “What’s this all about?”

“Do you know any of the factory workers?” Fleetfoot closed the distance that Rainbow had created.

“Sure.”

“Still on good terms with them?”

“I guess?” Our eyes flicked back and forth between Fleetfoot, who was beginning to get a little scary, and the more comforting Soarin, who was starting to look incredibly guilty. “Soarin? You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

Soarin swallowed. “Look, Fleet, don’t make her--”

“She’s gonna find out sooner or later,” Fleet spat back over her shoulder. Soarin shrank away.

“I don’t get it. Why do you wanna know all that stuff about the weather factory?” Rainbow asked again.

Fleetfoot straightened herself up. “There’s another… let’s say, ‘export’ of the Cloudsdale weather factory that the team tends to make use of. Our usual supplier might be unavailable pretty soon. We’re looking for a replacement.”

The word “supplier” struck Rainbow and myself in the same way: our stomach sunk to our hooves, and I’m quite certain it was all over our face.

“Are you talking about, like…” Rainbow swallowed back the taste of fear and anxiety which bubbled up in her throat. “Drugs?”

The party visibly shifted. Evidently this was not how they liked to refer to their recreational activities.

Fleetfoot rolled her eyes. “Not, like, party drugs. I’m not asking you to bring crack or something in here. But have you ever heard of Thew?”

“Thyoo?” Rainbow repeated.

“Close enough,” Fleetfoot said, like trading around drug names was the most casual thing in the world. “It’s a muscle builder. Helps you lose a little weight, too. We-- well, all Wonderbolts tend to use something like it. We don’t stay fit forever, you know.”

“Steroids,” was all Rainbow could say.

“Sure, kid. Steroids.” Fleetfoot shrugged. “Point is, there’s a lot of suppliers in Cloudsdale weather. Lotta old folks looking to keep it tight so they don’t lose their jobs, or something like that.”

Rainbow was stricken completely unable to respond. I didn’t blame her.

“You said you know some ponies still working there, right?” Fleetfoot pressed. “Think you can put us in touch with a new deal-- supplier?”

There were so many things going on in Rainbow’s head right now that I was finding it difficult to even see a few meters in front of me. All of these little details swirling about which added up to one enormous and crushing betrayal, not only from her heroes but from her personal friends. She kept looking to Soarin, trying to see “addict” in his face and coming up empty.

At last, she found her voice. “If you think I’m going to run drugs for you, you’re--”

“Hey!” Fleetfoot hissed. “Keep it down!”

“Why?” Rainbow asked. “Why should I keep it down! You all need to be reported! O-or something!”

The walls were closing in. Rainbow’s breath was picking up speed, her heart pounding against her ribs as she tried to make these two stories fit. She tried to connect the dots between the amazing, talented, heroic ponies she had been watching since foalhood and the group of greasy addicts meeting in the locker room shower. These were not the same ponies she had written home about. These were not the same ponies she had idolized, surely.

Fleetfoot sighed again. “Look, kid: I don’t like this any more than you do. You’re a goodie-goodie, and I hate to put you in this position, but reporting us isn’t going to do you any good.”

Rainbow’s eyes scanned the whole group. They all seemed to agree, even if they couldn’t pry their eyes up from the floor. “What are you saying?”

“I think you know what I’m saying,” Fleetfoot said. “We would really appreciate it if this stayed off Spitfire’s desk. She’s got enough to deal with, you know?”

“But I--”

“I don’t think she’d take kindly to an undeserved attempt to sabotage the team.” Fleetfoot tilted her head, almost coyly, but did not smile. “Or move up in the rankings.”

The swirling black hole of doom and betrayal reared up again. Rainbow Dash seemed physically on the brink of passing out, but the thudding of her heart and the rush of adrenaline trying to make this decision for her were keeping her awake. She was actively trying to calm her breathing, and getting nowhere.

“So…” Fleetfoot turned off the threats like a tap, her usual relaxed demeanor returning from the depths. “Think you could put us in touch with somepony? Let’s say tomorrow, 1700?”

Rainbow was frozen, mentally and physically. I wanted so badly to take hold of her mind and beat Fleetfoot to a pulp, to beg Soarin for an explanation, to just break this little chain of abuse and carry Rainbow out of there on her own two hooves.

But I couldn’t. All I could do was watch as Rainbow nodded, as the gathering walked past her and out into the sun, as she stayed behind and cleaned the compound alone. She didn’t cry.

Then things sort of… sped up.

Time passed more quickly, now. I experienced it all--at least, I think I did--but at such an accelerated rate that i could hardly keep track of it.

I watched, helplessly, as Rainbow met with seedy ponies at the weather factory. She planned meets, carried illegal substances between old friends and new, attended the strange little meetings they held after hours to medicate and swap incomprehensible stories. All of these things were against her will. All of these things were her worst nightmare. All of these things had been carefully buried in her subconscious.

Things slowed down as we neared what must have been an important memory. That was how this worked, I decided. I saw everything, but only stopped on the important things. Important to Rainbow, that is.

Rainbow was in her barracks alone, reading Daring Do instead of meeting in the mess for dinner. She hadn’t been eating lately.

We didn’t see him arrive, but Soarin cleared his throat.

We put down the book. He was standing in the doorway, his head down. This was how he looked now, at least around Rainbow Dash.

“Hey,” he said. “Can we talk?”

Rainbow growled under her breath. “I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

Soarin shrugged and started towards us. He reached her mattress, hesitated, then plopped down on the mattress across from us.

“What do you want?” rainbow asked.

“I just wanted a chance to… I dunno, explain, I guess.” He rubbed the back of his head thoughtfully. He and Rainbow really were two peas in a pod. “I’ll bet you were surprised when you found out I… y’know…”

“Surprised?” Rainbow repeated. “Try crushed. Try betrayed! Try--”

“I know,” Soarin said softly. “We’ve known each other a long time, and I just wanted you to try to understand what happened.”

Rainbow hesitated, put but a bookmark in her novel and closed it.

Soarin breathed a sigh of relief. “I dunno who exactly started this whole trend, but I know that it’s been going way longer than any of us have been on the team. It’s just how things have always been done.”

“That’s a really bad reason to keep doing things,” Rainbow added. I could practically hear the Twilight in her voice.

“Please, Dash?”

Rainbow rolled her eyes.

“By the time I found out, I was the only one on the team who wasn’t involved,” he explained. “Like you. I found out because Fleetfoot let me into her locker one time to borrow her lens cleaners. She was pretty sloppy at the time when it came to hiding the stuff.

“She pretty much begged me not to tell, and I didn’t, because I didn’t want to see kicked off the team. We’re teammates, y’know? We belong together. We need to have each other’s backs, even when we screw up.”

“But why did you start doing it, too?” Rainbow asked.

Soarin shrugged. “I was falling behind. The younger flyers are faster and stronger. I wanted to stay on the team.”

Things sped up again, conversation unfinished. The pieces were already falling into place in my mind, but I didn’t want them to. I wanted them to be wrong, like when the key turns but the door won’t open. Everything seemed right, but that wasn’t the answer. There was a better one. There was a better ending to this story. There had to be.

Rainbow kept running Thew for the Wonderbolts. It was a good deal for them-- they didn’t have to rely on outside help anymore. Rainbow knew most of the weather factory employees. It was easy to keep it going, on and on.

A year passed. Two. The ruse pushed on, and Rainbow stayed a member of the Wonderbolts. She was a celebrity! She was following her lifelong dream. But she did it all with a fake smile, a fake camaraderie, a fake team. Fake friends.

It wasn’t long ago that Rainbow Dash would have had absolutely no trouble kicking fake friends to the curb, and I was almost confused by how she just let these hooligans treat her like a punching bag. But there were two important facts about Rainbow Dash that I had not, could not, forget:

First, she is the element of loyalty. And that’s wonderful most of the time. But when your team walks all over you, it starts to become more of a curse than a gift. You’re dogshit at prioritizing yourself. Generosity, loyalty… we do the same dumb stuff. Truer words were never spoken.

Second, and arguably more important, Rainbow didn’t have us anymore. Her old team had left her. She was desperate for a new one.

It didn’t surprise me in the least when time slowed again, this time with Fleetfoot’s hoof slung about Rainbow’s shoulders. It was like a scene from a movie, the way Fleetfoot sweet-talked Rainbow Dash. The way she showed off her musculature, advertised the thing which would utterly destroy my best friend.

And Rainbow took it,

Because she is the element of loyalty. Because that is who she is, and it’s not her fault that other ponies are awful and take advantage of her. It’s not her fault that the world is a mess, that genuine goodness is treated as weakness instead of as strength.

She took it because we weren’t there to protect her. We weren’t there to show her the lesson. We weren’t there to show her the right thing to do, to be the team she needed.

She took it because I didn’t give her the team she needed.

“It’s not your fault!” I blurted.

The sound of the voice, my voice, echoed through the air, mingled with Rainbow’s mirrored exclamation.

Back in the shopping center, Back in the blink of an eye. The filtered green light fell on our heads as we sat up on the balcony. The cool, crisp smell of the plants which grew over every inch of the place filled my nose. The smells of the locker room were chased out in an instant, and left no trace behind.

Rainbow looked at me. There were tears in her eyes, tears which broke through the film of manipulation and betrayal and spilled down her cheeks in great shimmering pools.

“D-did you see--?” She tried to ask, but her voice broke.

I nodded. My own eyes were overflowing, so much so that I could hear the gentle drips of my tears hitting the tiled floor below us.

Rainbow swallowed down the lump in her throat. “I saw… I saw you and Nightwhisper.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I saw how you two got together,” she said. She sniffled hard. “He manipulated you. He made you feel like you had to give him… I dunno. Everything. You.”

I sniffled, too.

Rainbow grabbed me quite suddenly by the shoulders, but not angrily. It was firm. It was reassuring. “You don’t owe anypony anything. You-- you don’t owe him shit!”

I chuckled.

“And I’m so sorry, Rares.”

“Whatever for?”

“If I’d just been there,” she said, wiping away the tears on her cheek. “If I’d just been there for you. You’re generosity! You needed somepony to give to who wouldn’t take advantage of you. A teammate.”

I smiled softly. “I was thinking just the same thing about you.”

Rainbow’s ears pricked up. “You were?”

“Those ponies manipulated you, too,” I said. “You need a good team. Somepony you can be loyal to who won’t use that against you. You need somepony to give you support when you give loyalty.”

Rainbow ducked her head down to look at the floor. “That sounds like you, y’know.”

This was where time should have stopped, with Rainbow so loving and gentle and fiercely devoted, albeit too sheepish to admit it. It was at once intensely nostalgic and incredibly hopeful; this was our past, but it could be our future, too. We could grow and change and falter and improve, all the while strengthening the bond between us. We could do what we did when we were young all over again. We could keep learning.

I reached out with one hoof and brought it to Rainbow’s jaw. The touch made her shiver under my hoof. With the slightest bit of force, I tilted her chin up so she was looking at me. Her eyes were wide, glittering with tears still threatening to flow.

“Darling, I don’t think there’s another pony in this world better suited to be my teammate.”

A smile so deep and genuine overtook her then, and the tears spilled out anew, running through the already-established tracks in her cheeks and onto my hoof as I held her.

“Oh!” I tried to wipe away the flood of tears with my hoof, but I was not nearly fast enough. “Dashie, don’t cry! It’s alright, dear, it’s alright.”

Rainbow batted my hoof away from her face and pulled me in for a hug. She buried her face in my mane and squeezed with all her might, crying all the while.

“Darling!” I stroked her mane with one hoof. “What is it? What is it?”

Rainbow buried herself even deeper in my mane. She slid closer to me, closing what little distance there was between us. I could feel the hitching rise and fall of her chest against mine. I could feel the heat of her breath on my shoulder. If I concentrated, I could feel her heart fluttering.

“I just--” Rainbow’s voice was broken by a light sob. “I got my Rarity back. I got her back. Sweet Celestia, I got her back…”

If I wasn’t already crying, I started crying then.

“Oh, Celestia, I am never lying to you again,” Rainbow was saying. She said this, and other similar things, over and over. She snuggled in deeper and deeper, refusing to let go.

I began to lower us to the floor. As we drifted down, so did our surroundings. The green light of the shopping center shifted to the comforting blue-black darkness of night. The smells of the plants faded to the smell of cheap cotton sheets, convenience food, and newsprint. Under my touch, the tile floor transformed into the pillowy softness of Rainbow’s mattress back at the motel.

Back at the motel. Yes, the shopping center had returned us there, safe and sound. Rainbow hardly even noticed, she was already nearly asleep.

I pulled the blankets up over us and tucked it around us. The blinds stayed open, and the light of Luna’s moon fell over us both.

Even as Rainbow drifted off to sleep, she did not let go of me. Even as I drifted off to sleep, I did not let go of her.

Author's Note

To daOtterGuy, who agreed to review my fic two uncharacteristically rapid updates ago: dude I am so sorry I keep butting in feel free to bash me about it in whatever you end up writing I am very difficult about these things adjsklaj

To everyone: ...was it worth it? Have I tortured you enough?

(I absolutely have not)

Also, the special winner of this update is SuperSonicGoldenKirinGod who saw me post half of the next chapter in here (like a dweeb) and was an absolute champion about not peeking

Thanks, friend

I appreciate you