It was probably the best sleep either of us had gotten in several days. Even with everything that was going on, I found it impossible to stay awake as Rainbow lay beside me, her chest gently rising and falling, the fur moving with it in waves.

I woke before she did. The sun had not yet risen.

To wake Rainbow Dash from this, her deepest sleep in Celestia knows how long, would have been a cardinal sin. I had considered it for hardly a moment before deciding to let her sleep, no matter how completely she had trapped me.

At some point during the night, Rainbow had changed position. Her face was no longer buried in my mane or chest-- she now laid facing away from me, her spine pressed firmly against me from tip to tail. My right forehoof was trapped under her neck. My left was still wrapped tightly around her lower barrel, drawing us together until the fur on her back and the fur on my stomach meshed. The feeling was pleasant, if a bit foreign. I couldn’t remember a time Nightwhisper had held me so close, or wanted to be held so close.

But I didn’t want to think about him, and I certainly didn’t have to.

Her wing was splayed forward. She looked as if she were in the middle of a mighty downstroke, despite the peace in her sleeping face. I supposed that Rainbow might always look this peaceful when flying. It didn’t seem impossible, at least.

I could feel myself stiffening up, and so shifted the slightest bit to ward off the bedsores. My snout mingled with the silken strands of Rainbow’s cropped mane. There was a time when she only dared to use generic shampoos with generic scents and mediocre cleaning power. Being a Wonderbolt had caused her to upgrade her self-care routine, it seemed. She smelled like colt-ish styling gel, with faint underscores of greenery.

There was a peace here that I don’t think I have ever known before. A safety. It was the comfort of a friend, the protection of a guardian, the fullness of a lover.

I felt myself smiling at the idea and burrowed deeper into Rainbow’s withers. She nickered softly in response, but did not wake.

I was grounded. The past few days had been nothing more concrete than a whirlwind, aggressively swirling about me, never letting up, never allowing me to stop for a breath. But now I was here. I was here, I was safe, I was alive.

My name is Rarity.

Today is Monday.

I am alive.

Monday was when things happened. Monday was when plans began. Monday was when ponies were in danger, wasn’t it?

The comforting haze of sleep--or rather, I suppose, the inbetween of consciousness and unconsciousness--was melting away like frost in the morning sun. Memory of the world beyond our bed seeped back in from the abscesses of my mind, a sickly dark thing which tainted the rosy sweetness of holding my recently-returned and dearest friend.

All at once, my responsibilities and my anxieties came rushing back to me. I sucked in a small breath, tried to hold it, pushed it out. Stay calm, darling. You were breathing so easy just a moment ago. Just stay there, stay where it’s safe. Breathe. Breathe.

My heart was back to its racing, rhythmic drumming against my chest, hard enough that I became convinced Rainbow could feel the vibrations on her back, even as she slept.

I continued taking in deeper and deeper breaths. What was the trick mother had taught me? How long, how deep? Something about counting the seconds? Oh, goodness, how is anypony supposed to remember those little breathing exercises when they’re in the middle of a panic attack? The concept was flawed from the outset.

Rainbow’s ear flicked. My rapid breathing was tickling her, of course. I turned my head away as gently as I could, but the combination of sounds and feelings was enough to wake Rainbow from her slumber.

“Rares?” she slurred, drunk on sleep. “What’sa matter?”

“Oh, hush,” I said. “Go back to sleep, dear.”

Rainbow made a noise of disagreement and fluffed herself up. Before I knew what was happening, she had transformed into a great writhing mass of limbs, desperately trying to turn herself over in her semi-conscious state of being.

“Darling, be careful!” I warned as gently as I could, despite the panic in my chest.

It was hard to imagine a less-graceful behavior than Rainbow turning over. Her wings fluttered about, seemingly outside of her control, while her hooves pawed at the mattress and kicked the covers into a more pleasant shape.

“Oh!” I caught the lamp off the bedside table moments before it tumbled to the floor.

My partner wriggled herself back down after what seemed an eternity of flailing, spasmodic motions. She was back in her place, it seemed, nestled between my forelegs and snuggled into the fluffy fur on my chest. She let out a light, contented sigh.

Just like that, she was asleep again.

I brushed her mane out of her eyes with my snout. Perhaps those ponies were right to saddle her with the nickname “crash.” She certainly loved to bring things crashing down around her, even when she was unconscious.

The sun was coming up. There were things to do, lives to save, history to change. But it was so hard to wake a sleeping Dashie.

I nuzzled her cheek. She broke a smile and let forth a sleepy, dopey chuckle.

“Oh, for Celestia’s sake…” I muttered, giving her a more insistent push with my snout.

Rainbow reached up to wave away the unwanted wake-up call, still with a smile and chuckle.

“Rainbow?” I pushed at her again, enough to make her head loll to one side. “It’s morning.”

Rainbow’s own snout crinkled up at the implication that she might have to wake up. “So? Jus’ go back to sleep.”

I cleared my throat. “We have more important things to do than sleep today.”

Rainbow moaned softly. “Just five more minutes…”

Her eyes snuck open a crack. I’m not sure what she expected to see, but a motel room littered with impossible newspapers must not have been it. They snuck open a little further and rolled over to look at me.

This was evidently the straw which broke the camel’s back. Her eyes opened wide and she actually jumped away from me a bit.

“Oh,” was all she said.

“Oh?” I echoed.

Rainbow rubbed her eyes. “You’re here.”

“Where else would I be?”

Rainbow harumphed to herself and pushed away from me. Her warmth began to leech out of me almost instantly. I drew my hooves in towards my chest, hoping in vain to capture some small part of it.

“Sorry I, uh… I dunno, trapped you all night,” Rainbow said. She was not looking at me.

I pushed myself up into a sitting position. “It’s quite alright, darling, You needed the company, it seemed.”

She shrugged. “Guess so.”

She stood, facing away from me, and began to inspect her wings. She did this without an active involvement in the act, more a habit that she simply couldn’t break if she tried. A few feathers were tugged gently back into place, and Rainbow gave her wings a powerful pump to test this new positioning.

Evidently satisfied, she trotted towards the washroom and shut the door.

Her warmth was gone. I pushed myself back against the headboard and into a sitting position. I listened as Rainbow clattered about the washroom, clumsily waking herself up in her own way.

It was then that a stab of grim reality struck me.

Rainbow used the washroom to…

Well.

That would explain her urgency from time to time. The sheen over her eyes when she returned. Her confusion, her antsiness. It explained a lot of things.

Ponies don’t just give things like that up overnight. She was probably--

I was out of bed in a moment, dragging the covers with me as I trotted to the washroom door. I lifted my hoof, about to knock, but hesitated.

You can’t quit overnight. What was I supposed to do? Scold her? Help her?

Yet I knocked anyway.

“Rainbow?” I murmured as sweetly as I could. “Everything alright in there?”

There was a long silence. Nothing moved, breathed, even sniffled.

I cleared my throat. “I-I just mean…” I bit my lip. “Well, I need to freshen up.”

There was a light shuffling behind the door. “Yeah, uh… few more minutes.”

“Alright, dear.”

More shuffling. “You still there?”

I whimpered softly at being caught.

“Little privacy, please?”

I hung my head. “Of course.”

I turned, gathered up my comforter cape, and moved back to the mattress. This is how things would be now, I supposed. There was a bond, but with bonds come tension. I knew something Rainbow had not truly been prepared for me to know. I had to expect that things would be strained for some time to come.

The only thing to do for now was ignore it. There were other things to handle. Moss, for one. Rainbow’s mission, for another.

Not that I knew anything about that.

It was going to be an uphill battle. Trusting Rainbow, that is. I felt deceived. I wondered what her mission could be, what else she may be hiding from me. I considered the possibility that she was hiding something not just from me, but about me.

But I was grounded now. In good mind. And one who is in good mind mustn’t fret over what-ifs. Not when there are things to be done.

The washroom door squeaked open. My eyes were drawn to the motion, but I dragged them back as Rainbow skulked back into the common area.

“All yours,” she said.

I slid off the mattress a second time and hurried into the washroom, avoiding eye-contact with Rainbow all the way. Knowing what she would look like, knowing only a fraction of what she might be feeling… she didn’t need me gawking at her to top it all off.

The door clicked shut behind me, and I was left facing a mirror.

Whatever I had been planning to do in the washroom fled my mind as I stared into my own reflection. I could hardly recognize myself, although I had no inkling why this would be the case. I looked as I always looked in the mornings: my mane bedraggled, my complexion pale, my eyes droopy and ringed by tiny lines which had, at one point, caused me a great deal of stress.

Oh. Well, I suppose that was it, wasn’t it? Not the way I looked. The way I saw myself.

Because I looked very much the same as I always did, the way most mares looked when first dragging themselves to the mirror in the morning. Before, though, I would have gently tugged out every knot and snare in my mane. I would have carefully painted on make-up, fretted over the little lines around my eyes. I didn’t feel that way anymore.

I still wanted to be beautiful. I still wanted to take care of myself-- of course I did, that’s who I am! But this wasn’t… ugly. It wasn’t fearful or wrong, wasn’t a source of shame as I walked down the street, wasn’t something to hide away like a dirty secret.

A little smile teased at my lips. It was a confidence in myself I hadn’t felt before. A new Rarity.

And I think I quite liked her.

I’m not an animal, of course. I pulled a brush through my bed-head and watched my natural curls spring back up to my jawbone. Not styled, not magically-corrected, just little ringlets which gathered where they pleased.

That, a little splash of water on my face, and I felt ready. As ready as I could be, that is.

Rainbow was sitting on the mattress when I emerged from the washroom, a newspaper held up like a shield.

“Rainbow?”

She visibly stiffened. “Mm.”

I swallowed. “I’ve been thinking…” I paused, hoping to elicit a response.

None came.

“Well, we’re fairly certain that Blue Moon is our number-one suspect, correct?”

Rainbow turned a page in the newspaper. Her act was poor. “Yeah, I guess.”

I took a few steps closer. “So, we should probably try to move forward on that lead, shouldn’t we?”

Rainbow lowered the newspaper a little more than an inch, the top of her own rumpled mane showing. “Uh… sure?”

“Mm-hm,” I agreed, taking a seat on the end of the mattress.

The newspaper came down a bit more. I could now see the top sliver of Rainbow’s forehead. “And…?”

“And we should be looking for clues,” I added, unhelpfully.

I could sense the debate in Rainbow’s muscles. She wanted to look at me, but she didn’t want to be seen. A conundrum, to be sure.

At long last, the paper came down far enough for her to peek over it at me. She didn’t say anything, just looked at me. I looked at her the way I had looked at my own reflection: familiar, despite the change. Just hopeful and happy, teasing a bit. I didn’t care that she was looking at me through a cloud of something else. Or, at least, I tried not to care.

“I think,” I said, “we should look through our records to find out where Blue Moon lives, and go find some clues.”

Rainbow still said nothing, but her eyes spoke for her: You’re not going to ask where I got them? You trust me?

I didn’t really have a choice.

Rainbow wouldn’t hurt me.

“Come now, Rainbow.” I rose from the bed to fetch a sheaf of papers. “Are you going to help me, or not?”

There was no response, but Rainbow held out her forelegs to receive the stack of records I brought to her. Her clouded eyes gazed up at me with unspoken gratitude. Unspoken because speaking it would disrupt the balance we needed to keep. Differences could be worked out any old time, couldn’t they? Secrets shared, lies corrected…

That’s not your job, Rarity. Give her time. She is giving you loyalty.

“Here, Rainbow: I’ll check the citizen records for the nearby towns, and you check the dates in the real estate papers. We’ll work together.” I climbed up onto the mattress across from her.

“Alright,” Rainbow agreed.

We worked slowly, referencing and cross-referencing, questioning possible pseudonyms (What about Blue Star? What about Hunter Moon?), carefully poring over crumbling documents to ensure they were thoroughly cleared. The magic of the previous night was distant, turning false. We had to work together, now. Couldn’t let tensions rise.

But it wasn’t all bad. The longer we sat together, the more confident Rainbow became that I wasn’t going to scold her for continuing to, erm, “use.” She was relaxing, and I couldn’t have been more thankful.

As we passed into hour two of early-morning research, empty snack containers already littering the floor surrounding the mattress, Rainbow was starting to get restless.

“Dammit, where’s Twilight when you need her?”

“Pardon?”

“It’s just--” Rainbow threw her head back in disgust. “Ugh, this is taking forever!” She laughed at her own drama.

I chuckled along with her. “Yes, I’m sure there is a much easier way to do this, but I certainly don’t know it.”

“Who knew detective work was so much reading?” Rainbow complained. “And not even fun reading!”

I merely shook my head at this comment. Rainbow seemed satisfied in the level of comfort she had managed to attain.

My eyes drifted back down to the ledger before me, which claimed to be a record of all tenets of this motel during the current calendar year. Although, I suppose “current” was a relative term. My fact-or-fiction sensor seemed to tell me that this was the case, although “fact” seemed to be relative, as well.

And there it was. In simple, neat hoofwriting at the bottom of the page.

“Oh!” I could do nothing but point at the find. “Oh!”

Rainbow’s head whipped up from her own reading. “What?”

I tapped the page rapidly. “She’s--! Oh, she’s--!”

Rainbow quickly realized that not much would come of my abbreviated exclamations, and she swiveled the ledger around to face herself.

Her eyes widened when they fell on the name at the bottom of the page. “Holy shit. She’s in the room next door.”

We both, in eerie symmetry, turned to look at the wall which our headboard rested against. A wall behind which a murderer seemed to be living.

“She lives in a motel?” Rainbow said.

I shrugged. “Most ponies who work in town do. The commute from Appaloosa is near forty minutes.”

Rainbow’s head whipped back to face me. “Well, let’s go! We can dig around in there all we want right now!”

She leapt to her hooves, still standing on the mattress.

I frowned. “You don’t even want to check with the landlord, be certain she’s here?”

Rainbow frowned back at me. “Rares. Not to up the drama, but a life hangs in the balance.”

“Yes, but--”

“No time to dawdle!” Rainbow announced in her best impersonation of myself.

She jumped off the bed and bolted to the door, then paused with her hoof on the knob.

“What is it?” I asked.

She looked over her shoulder at me. “Do you have a credit card?”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Whatever for?”

“Never mind-- I’ll use my ID.” Rainbow grabbed the card from the table by the door.

Trust her, Rarity. Just trust her, she knows what she’s doing. She needs your trust right now.

Rainbow pushed the door open and turned sharply to the right. Blue Moon’s door, Room 3, was right there, as promised. Just another unbelievable thing. Another strange coincidence which I doubted would ever be explained.

“Alright, you gotta be real quiet while I do this,” Rainbow instructed. “Just trust me.”

Trust her.

I said nothing, just nodded.

Rainbow crept to the door, and pulled out her ID card. With a few awkward and amateurish moves, she wiggled the ID between the doorframe and the latch. It settled in with a click. Then she turned around and reached out with one back hoof to tap gently on the door.

“What are you--”

“Shh!” Rainbow cut me off, three words into a broken promise.

I put a hoof over my mouth and listened carefully. If Blue was there, she hadn’t called out. I could tell Rainbow was tensed, waiting for something, her eyes on the peephole. What would she do if Blue opened the door? What--

“No shadow,” Rainbow said, relaxing. “She’s not there.”

She pushed the door open, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The ID card fell to the floor.

“Where in Equestria did you learn to do that?” I asked.

Rainbow shrugged. “Read about it once. I always wanted to try it!”

I smiled proudly at her resourcefulness.

“You can tell me how cool it was later, okay?” Rainbow reached out and grabbed my hoof. “We gotta get in here.”

She pulled me into the room by my hoof and closed the door behind me.

I was struck by how bare it was. This had to be at least a semi-permanent solution for Blue, but you wouldn’t know it looking. There wasn’t a single potted plant, stray photograph, or cheesy trinket to be seen. Even her closet, which had been left open, held nothing more than three aprons for the diner and one dark bathrobe.

“Damn. Spotless in here,” Rainbow commented.

“That makes things simple, doesn’t it?” I said. “Let’s get to work. I’m nervous somepony spotted us.”

“Oh, relax, Rares…” Rainbow was already burrowing under the bed. “She’s probably working today, anyway.”

“I suppose…” I muttered.

I moved to the washroom to rummage about, and found a room just as bare and lifeless as the one I had come from. It looked exactly like Rainbow’s, but somehow with less bottles. That didn’t bode well for possible evidence.

I checked the medicine cabinet, for posterity, and found nothing.

Rainbow’s chuckle floated in from the common area.

“Find something?” I called.

“Blue keeps all her money in a shoebox under the bed!” Rainbow informed me. “There’s a safe in the closet and she uses a shoebox. Talk about balls.”

I trotted out to investigate. Rainbow was correct-- she was holding what appeared to be a rather large sum of money in a shoebox on the floor.

“And that was under her bed?” I asked.

Rainbow nodded. “This is, like, way more than enough to be living in… not a motel.”

“Hm…” I considered the size of the small fortune before us. “I think you may be right. Why would Blue be staying in a motel like this if she could afford to be living elsewhere?”

Rainbow scoffed. “You want all the reasons, or just the top five?”

I cocked my head.

Rainbow sighed. “She’s been stalking Moss, she clearly has no life, she likes working a job with no background checks, she sets up deals or meets here, the landlord doesn’t keep good records of who stays here… how many was that?”

I chuckled. “Five precisely.”

Rainbow grinned. “Yet again the noir thrillers have trained me for this exact moment.”

I pawed around in the money to see if anything else was hidden in the stash. Nothing turned up.

“Good find. Tuck it away.”

Rainbow did just that. “Anything in the toilet?”

I wrinkled my snout at her crudeness. “No, barely enough to live on, let alone commit crimes with.”

“What is with this pony?” Rainbow got to her hooves. “It’s like she’s purposefully avoiding having a life. Actively trying not to have a life.”

I got to my hooves, as well. “Rainbow, just because your own bedroom walls have disappeared behind layers of posters doesn’t mean everypony else wishes to live the same way.”

Rainbow scoffed. “They should, though.”

I pulled open the drawer on the right-hoof bedside table. Nothing but a promotional brochure for the Open Doors Diner, which was an interesting find, if not incriminating.

“Wow, she reads, too!” Rainbow pulled the brochure out from the drawer. “I love this one! Not as good as Hayburger, Ponyville Location, though.”

I snatched the brochure out of her hooves. “Be serious, Dash.”

Rainbow merely smiled and shrugged, then went to the closet to continue her search.

I tossed the brochure back into the drawer and closed it. There was a second bedside table on the opposite side of the bed, despite it being no bigger than a standard full size. Even in crisis, it was difficult not to question the interior design choices at work.

This other bedside table had two books in it: the first, a phonebook for the greater San Palomino area, which was appallingly thin for an area of its size. The second was a small, brown dayplanner. A few pens, pencils, and highlighters also rolled forward from the back of the drawer.

With the gentlest glimmer of magic, I teased open the front cover of the planner and peered at its contents. Written in the same nea, simple hoofwriting as the sign-in book: Blue Moon.

I pulled the planner out of the drawer and looked over my shoulder at Dash. “I found her planner, Dashie. It’s just about the only personal item in here.”

Dash’s tail flicked as she stepped further into the closet. “And the most boring. Let me know if you find anything in it, okay?”

I sighed and settled onto the mattress to browse.

The planner was bare bones, as the rest of the room indicated it might be. Blue had marked her shifts in long strokes of a dried-out yellow highlighter, writing “ODD” in blue pen on top. I took this to stand for “Open Doors Diner.” The acronym had not occurred to me until now, and while I may have found it ironically funny at one point, it hardly made an impact on me now.

She spent all day there, every day. Six-thirty in the morning until eight at night. Unsettling, although not impossible for ponies in this area. At the very least, it meant that Rainbow and I were safe in our hunt-- at least until eight this evening, that is.

Blue seemed to have a fondness for acronyms and shorthoof, always in block capitals, which was strange to me. All evidence seemed to point to this day planner being her only hobby, after all.

Here and there, in red pen, she notated “DR APPT” with an associated military time. In green, there was the occasional “MB” and an associated location, which indicated she was meeting with Mossy Bridge outside of work. Whether these meetings were mutual or one-sided remained a mystery. For the first few weeks, that is.

The further I read, the more often Moss’s initials were scratched into the little labelled blocks. “MB, APT”, “MB, ODD”, “MB, UNIV”. Not meeting. Tracking. A comprehensive weekly schedule of Moss’s whereabouts.

“She was tracking Moss,” I called to Rainbow Dash. “Working out her schedule.”

Rainbow’s head poked out of the closet. “Shit, really?”

I nodded. “She knew exactly where she was going to be nearly all hours of the day.”

Rainbow grimaced. “That’s… creepy.”

I turned the page. Moss was no longer spending time in her apartment, but seemed to have moved into the motel.

Another page. Less time at University, more time at Open Doors. Was she working harder to pay for school? Skimping on studying to cover extra shifts?

The more pages I turned, the more her life changed: I watched her time at the motel dwindle, watched her drop and fail classes at the University until she simply no longer attended. She became absorbed by her time at the diner, prodded along by Blue Moon all the while. These events fell into place like photos in an album of misery and loss, a story that I didn’t want to read and couldn’t bear to know.

It took me some time to notice, but there was a new acronym now. It was hiding in the margins beside the days, scrawled in light pencil and hasty letters: “DG,” accompanied by a location.

I skimmed back through the pages, playing hide-and-go-seek with the carefully hidden note. Sure enough, there it was; appearing at least once a week since Moss moved out of her apartment and into the motel.

My magic faltered and the planner fell to the bed.

“Rainbow!” I called out.

Her head poked out of the washroom. I hadn’t even noticed she had moved on from the closet, no doubt bored by the lack of, well, everything.

The look in my eyes must have communicated more than I thought, or perhaps all the color had drained from my face.

“Rares?” Rainbow trotted to my side. “What is it? What did you find?”

I pointed at the planner, the little note scribbled in the margin. “DG.”

Rainbow cocked her head at me, her eyes narrowing.

“Dusk Guardians,” I murmured. “Blue was a Dusk Guardian.”

Author's Note

Sorry for the extended hiatus which I prepared none of you for...

Not much left of this installment! Three chapters, to be specific