Rainbow Dash wakes up with a headache.
“Flapjacks.”
She usually wakes up feeling like a new pony – sleeping on clouds is like heaven – but today she opens her eyes to harsh light and ringing in her ears.
Man, either Pinkie went crazy with some party punch, or she just punched Dash in the head. With a party cannon. And a half.
Groaning, Rainbow Dash rolls over, and gets a face-full of fleece-lined couch that smells like lavender.
Well, that probably explains the headache. Why’s she sleeping on Rarity’s drama sofa?
“Mrf,” grumbles Dash when her mind draws blanks.
“Hey, Dashie, you awake?” hollers Pinkie from beside her or across the room – either or, Pinkie’s pretty loud.
Rainbow Dash lifts her head carefully – it feels awkwardly light. Pinkie’s making her way over to the couch. “Not yet.”
“You totally are, silly,” says Pinkie as she sits beside the sofa, level with Dash. “Liars don’t get waffles for brunch, ya know!”
Rainbow bolts upright, then winces when it feels like her brain bounces against her skull. Still, Pinkie’s waffles are actual magic, and Rainbow’s thinking this sitting on a couch that belongs to a unicorn.
“I’m up, I’m up!”
Pinkie giggles. It sounds like the happiest hyena ever, as usual. “Okie-dokie, Miss. Pokey. Lemme just get Rarity first, ‘kay? She really, really wants to see you.”
That’s just weird – almost as weird as crashing on her sofa.
“Sure, but if she doesn’t hurry I’m eating her waffles, too,” Rainbow taunts.
Pinkie bounces off quickly, giving Dash a mouthful of curly cotton-candy-for-tail hair. As she rubs her face, she hears Pinkie bellow out for Rarity.
Her Majesty takes her sweet time waltzing in, muttering something about thin walls.
But when she reaches Rainbow Dash, she looks at her with a pinched expression – the same one she has right before she cries her mascara tears.
Dash is so focused on her eyes that she forgets to make fun of her granny hair-bun and glasses.
“Good to see you up, Dasher,” she says, blinking until her expression goes back to ol’ Rarity.
It’s Rainbow’s turn to make a face. “Dasher?”
Rarity doesn’t answer for a beat, and when she finally does, it’s like she’s trying to sell a dress to a tough crowd. “Oh, it’s just a pet name, love. Can’t a girl give a girl a pet name?”
Rainbow shrugs. “You can give me anything s’long as it’s my waffles.”
Rarity shakes her head, and Dash can imagine her thinking things never change.
“If you’ll last it, we’ve got more pressing things to attend to first.”
“Doesn’t get much more ‘pressing’ than waffles going cold,” argues Rainbow, jumping off the sofa. She’s surprised Rarity hasn’t told her off for lazing away on it.
Rarity titters, but not happily. “Well, firstly: what do you remember?”
Turns out the answer is pretty much nothin’.
At first Rainbow thinks maybe she forgot one of Rarity’s silly anniversaries – Day They Met, Day She Opened the Boutique, those ones – but when things get weirdly too-serious, she starts suspecting the worst.
She figures she should have known waking up on someone else’s couch without remembering getting there was never a good thing.
Rainbow’s still trying to laugh the whole thing off when she’s telling Rarity and a returned, waffle-less Pinkie about Twilight blasting off Tirek’s face just a while back.
“Ack, she’s still stuck in Season Four!” Pinkie wails, falling back as if shot.
Honestly, Rainbow thinks that’s been the most normal part of today.
Rarity shakes her head. When she speak, she sounds…disappointed? “That happened years ago, love.”
“What?”
“That happened years –”
“Yeah, I heard you,” Dash cuts in. “But – like, that happened a couple-couple weeks ago. Two months tops.”
Rarity and Pinkie, still floor, share a look. Then Pinkie picks herself up, but almost trips on her tail.
…is that tail longer?
Rarity continues. “Listen, I understand it’s difficult to reconcile with, but believe us. You – incorrigible you, I might say – did this to yourself.”
Pinkie nods firmly. “Yup – you downed a whoo-ooole glass of Forget-Me-Naught Draught ‘cause Jackie called you chicken.”
Man, does Pinkie do a good impression of Applejack calling her chicken. Dash can almost remember it, but then again she’s pretty sure Applejack calls her chicken twice a week minimum.
“I mean…how do I know you’re not messing with me?” Dash asks, ‘cause she knows Rarity loves the frigid taste of revenge and Pinkie’s got access to a bunch of cold plates.
Rarity points to her own face, while Pinkie pulls out a mirror from…somewhere. She looks over at Rarity with an easy smile. “Not everything’s about you, silly Rari-tilly.”
Rarity rolls her eyes.
Dash looks in the mirror, and sees a face slowly curl in confusion.
“This – is this real-ouch!” Dash pulls her hoof away from the face stud she pricked it on. “What the hay?”
“That was also a dare,” Pinkie informs happily. “But you said you like it, so you kept it.”
It’s a stretch, Dash thinks, but she figures she’s done worse than get a thorn attached to her eyebrow. “And the hair cut?”
“You asked my - professional stylistic opinion,” answers Rarity. “A shorter cut looks more mature, naturally.”
Dash pushes her bangs up. She’s pretty used to having hair in her eyes, so it doesn’t bother her too much that they’re obnoxiously eye-level.
What bothers her is that she’s using the word obnoxious. It’s not her word, its Twilight’s or Rarity’s.
She ruffles the hair that touches the nape of her neck – not all that short at all, maybe even better aerodynamically – and grimaces. “This is gonna take some getting used to.”
“Unless we’re lucky,” Rarity says, “which we usually aren’t, you and I. But if things work well, the potion’s amnesiac effect should fade out in a few days.”
“Sure,” Rainbow says distractedly. Then, “Years?”
Pinkie smiles, but it’s not her toothy, sunshine-in-your-eyes smile. “Long years.”
Rainbow looks at Rarity. Rarity nods solemnly.
“I don’t care if a hundred years go by, Pinkie’s waffles will always be awesome.”
Rarity magics – Twilight told her the real word for magically moving things, but Dash always forgets it and it’s not ‘cause of some Forgetter Drink – a bowl of fresh blueberries to her.
“I can concur.”
She takes the seat across Dash at a small, round table. Pinkie had left just before Dash could really thank her, saying something about work, which left just Rarity and waffles. Not that Dash was complaining.
“I’m gonna eat yours if you don’t,” Dash says as clearly as she can around a mouthful of gold.
Rarity eyes her own plate of waffles, and hesitates. It’s weird. “Erm – I’m on a diet of sorts,” she finally says, magic-ing her breakfast over to Dash.
“More like a die-it,” Dash quips. “Seriously, I will eat ‘em.”
“Bon appétit.”
Rainbow shrugs, swallows, and stuffs more waffles in her mouth. “Suit yourself.”
“Speaking of,” Rarity starts, in that way she’s been saying most things today – like she doesn’t know how to say it, and that’s just not like Rarity. “You should finish and get dressed as soon as possible.”
“Dressed?”
“Yes.” And then Rarity magics over a jean jacket, a light winter-ish scarf, and a beanie (beanie?!).
“Don’t tell me I dress like that,” Dash groans before consoling herself with extra waffles. How does jean look good on her coat colour?
Rarity smiles. “Well, you do acquire quite the fashion sense, what with working by my side for the past few years.”
Rainbow stops munching.
“As my right-hand assistant,” Rarity clarifies.
Rainbow’s mouth drops.
Rarity magics it shut. “Please, Dasher. It was bad enough when you spoke with your mouth full.”
When Rarity explains that Rainbow Dash has been working with her for almost three years now, the first thing that comes to her mind is that it’s better than smooching off a friend.
Then she thinks Rarity’s probably gone senile in her getting-old age. ‘Cause Dash is pretty sure future-her – past-her? Now-her? – should’ve been a Wonderbolt by now, not a sewing horse.
Yeah. This horse is calling bull.
“It’s very true,” Rarity insists after Dash pulls on the ridiculous outfit that wasn’t that bad until she’s unconsciously wrapping the scarf in some complicated way instead of just throwing it on. For a moment there, she’s doing things she’s never done before like it’s all normal, and that’s just weird.
Most of today is.
“I doubt it. Why would you even let me near your shop’s workshop?” It’d be pretty hard for Dash to be Rarity’s right-hand seamstress when the lady’s always saying Dash has four left feet – and two left wings at that.
“Because you wanted to, and I wanted you to.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes,” Rarity asserts, as if she’s not saying that this racing horse quits the tracks for knitting needles.
Hold up. “I don’t believe you. I’m supposed to be a Wonderbolt by now.”
Rarity purses her lips. She’s hesitating again. “You were, before you came here to Manehatten and changed your mind.”
That’s impossible. She’d never quit the Wonderbolts, dare or not. “Why?”
“I don’t know…you’ll remember soon, I suppose,” says Rarity in a clipped tone before she leads Dash into what looks like a fabric room.
Because, there’s, like, a lot of fabric. And Rarity says Dash knows how to sort it, fast (like most things she does).
“No way.”
“It was worth a try,” Rarity sighs, but not unhappily. “I suppose we have to wait for the effects to naturally wear off.”
“Isn’t there an antidote or spell or somethin’?” Dash asks, because magic is a whole world of arbitrary rules and counter-rules.
…what’s ‘arbitrary’ mean?
The sad look flickers in Rarity’s eyes for the moment between blinks. “Believe me, love, I’d’ve brought you back by now if I could.”
“I’m still here,” mutters Rainbow Dash as she lands beside Rarity. Even if she’s starting to feel like she left herself somewhere back at Ponyville.
When Rainbow Dash was a kid, she’d sit on a stray cloud and stare at the ground so far below her. The first time she landed – on land – she felt like she was someone else somewhere else. The sights, the feeling of the dirt, even the air was so…otherworldly, it was hard for her sky-borne self to take it in.
That’s how the next few days pass Rainbow Dash by. Like she’s watching from behind her own eyes.
It’s surreal, then it quickly gets annoying.
Rarity tells Rainbow Dash to take it easy until everything comes back to her, and that she’s free to ask her anything if need be.
Well, Rainbow’s having trouble taking it easy knowing she can’t get some serious fast air when she’s a stranger in a city that touches the sky. Stuffy ambience, no real airspace, and she doesn’t want to get lost or break some laws she’s not remembering.
She figures she learned the word ‘ambience’ from Rarity, but she can’t figure out why she’s thinking it at all.
So Rainbow hangs around the shop-slash-home – their home, Rarity tells her before pointing Dash to her room – and watches Rarity work it into overtime keeping up with the traffic of ponies.
Seriously, Dash thinks Rarity gets more customers in a day than there are ponies in Ponyville.
And even then, Rarity stays on top of things: custom orders, up-selling the masses, keeping things organized, even cooking dinner.
Dash helps where she can, but it’s not much more than carrying things or putting them away. According to Rarity, she used to do most of the sewing adjustments and was actually a pretty good salespony, somehow.
And now Dash is starting to see why Rarity needed her, kinda. Because, weird thing is, Rarity’s very alone in everything she does these days.
There aren’t any other employees, which is a pretty bad decision when running an entire store and home. But at least Rarity has experience from before.
But outside of work, Rarity’s also kinda alone. She closes the store on weekends, which Rainbow Dash wholly agrees with on account of having a headache from just watching and listening to all the cacophony – another big word, but she’s just gonna roll with it.
Rarity spends those weekends sipping tea, reading newspapers, talking to Rainbow Dash, and just sticking around the store-house.
When Dash suggests they go shopping, they looked low on chocolate chip cookies, Rarity tells her groceries and errands are Dash’s area.
Weird. So, so weird.
Pinkie doesn’t visit again. No one else does either, not even Sweetie Belle.
“She’s out on vacation, north of Los Pegasus,” Rarity explains when Rainbow Dash asks why no one’s coming around to say hi, or dare Dash to do something stupid again. “As for the others…it’s more or less the distance.”
She watches Dash over her glasses, looking years past her age. Dash thinks it’s wrong, because Rarity’s a social butterfly and shouldn’t be so content sitting around when she’s not working.
“Pinkie came around, and how come Applejack made me do that dare if she’s not even around?”
“She didn’t make you do anything, dear. Your ego did, as per usual.” Rarity sets a pair of teacups on fancy coasters. “And she wrote you. Either she’s a wizard with words, or you’re perpetually a jack-in-the-box about to burst.”
Rainbow Dash shrugs. She figures it’s both. “And Pinkie?”
Rarity hesitates. “She visits you.”
Rainbow’s figured out what the pauses mean: it means she’s avoiding something. “C’mon, Rares, don’t leave me in the dark like this.”
“It’s nothing terribly historic,” Rarity sighs, and Rainbow Dash briefly wonders if she ever understands Rarity’s word choice. “We just disagreed on somethings that were too significant to ourselves to overcome.”
“But, like, you’re still friends, right?”
She doesn’t pause this time; it’s more like Rarity waits for the answer to come to her.
When it does, it comes sadly. “Of course.”
It’s sometime midweek when Rainbow Dash just finishes talking to an apparent friend – who says he’d love to have dinner again (what?!) – that Rarity approaches her and hands her a letter and a container of rolled bits.
“I don’t like that guy,” Rainbow says, like it’s some sort of confession.
“You didn’t before,” Rarity assures with a wry smile. Before Rainbow can ask questions like, then why?!, Rarity floats the cash to her. “By the by, it's pay day – though you’re usually the one to remind me. Given your commission bonus was...compromised, I paid what you made last month. I hope it's to your satisfaction.”
Way past it, Dash wants to say. When she weighs the bits in her hooves, she can barely lift it. “I make this much just sewing holes?”
Rarity looks like she wants to tell Dash she does so much more, love, like she has been this whole time. She ends up saying, “Well, you've things to pay for, and I take it the Amnesia Draught didn't come cheap.”
“Y’know, I've got a lot of questions about that whole thing,” Dash says grimly.
“As do I. I was hoping you could clear the details of the incident when you remember them yourself.”
“Yeah, well, no luck yet.”
Rarity purses her lips in a flat smile. “In any case, don't forget to pay your bills.”
Rainbow blanches. “Bills?”
“Bills.”
Rainbow finds out that she has a mailbox that Rarity updates every morning – you know, something she might have forgotten to mention with everything that’s happen, Dasher.
It's starting to fill up, so Dash takes them all out at once.
They’re mostly promotional flyers, and a few bills that Dash can't fathom (fathom?!) why she pays at all. Subscriptions, apparently, and some express mail membership.
Huh.
She comes across some fan mail next, which is probably the best thing that’s happened to her in the last two weeks.
Rarity’s told her about being a short lived Wonderbolts legend, and she even saved a bunch of magazines and newspapers with some photo of Dash soaring uniform-clad – someone was a fan – but it always left Dash with the sinking feeling that it was so over and done.
Holding letters, if only a couple, from people who still admire her like she admired – admires – the ‘Bolts keeps the dream alive, somehow. Like fulfilling her lifelong dream isn’t the end of it all.
Honestly, sometimes being Rarity’s assistant feels like the pity-party for a stubborn washout.
She reads them thrice each, and leaves them at the side because whatever future-Dash did with them, this-Dash is going to personally write back to each of them.
The last letter feels light in her hands, and Dash recognises the stationery before she sees the tiny cursive writing.
Apparently some things can stay the same, if Fluttershy’s any example to go by.
And Rainbow Dash hesitates to open it, because it’s like a bunch of secrets or spoilers or something, and she’s thinks it’s very possible that there’s something in there she doesn’t want to know about herself.
Which is weird, because she’s already done it – even if from where she’s looking, it’s still a ‘going to’ that she’ll have no control over – and besides, when she remembers everything, it’s not gonna matter.
She reads it.
And –
Geez, Rainbow’s forgotten how hardit is to read Fluttershy’s writing. Last time they had to write to each other was, like, back in Cloudsdale.
Dash is both disappointed and relieved to find there’s nothing ground-breaking in the letter. Fluttershy asks how she is, how Rarity is, thanks her for the hat she sewed her (Dash is pretty sure that between the two of them, Fluttershy’s the seamstress), and she hopes she’ll visit soon.
Actually, scratch relief. Dash just feels disappointment.
At least when she didn’t know, she could tell herself that maybe Rarity was taking things slow to help her out. But finding out Dash really is some boring helper at someone else’s ideal future, that’s just uncool.
Dash snorts.
She’s starting to wonder if there ever was a bet, or if was just so bored out of her mind she went along with it.
She looks over at the fan mail. She thinks writing back should cheer her up a bit, but what could she tell them anyway that she can’t in the future – past – whatever.
Whatever.
Dash picks up the trash letters, and sees her membership renewal form again.
Huh.
“Pinkie says she’s coming over this weekend,” Dash says over tea that’s starting to smell like something she misses. Like home.
Rarity doesn’t say anything.
“I told her I’m gonna lock you two in the backroom until everything’s cool again with you.” Rainbow grins. “She said she’ll bring Lickety-Split Sundae. My favourite.”
She’s sighing, shaking her head, but Rainbow can tell Rarity’s happy. Somehow. Maybe she’s remembering the little things.
“I suppose some ponies never change.”
It’s weird, Dash thinks, then she thinks that’s all she ever thinks.
Still, it’s weird how Dash can walk to the sewing machine every time by accident. Weirder still that as soon as she figures why not? she can start stitching up some hat or something before she even knows what she’s doing.
“It’s ugly,” Dash consoles herself aloud. Part of her agrees, part of it doesn’t.
She suspects the potion is wearing off, because sometimes she just sees things or people and recognizes it all, and just goes along with it. It’s not like she’s remembering, it’s more like she’s seeing a movie for the millionth time, and it’s weird-unnerving.
It’s also unnerving how much her vocab is changing.
Weird.
She decides to finish the hat, because she figures it’d be pretty cool to compare it to her future-past-whatever self’s work as soon as she remembers everything again.
It takes a little longer when she’s not letting things happen automatically, and apparently making beanies like the ones she leaves apparently around her room – still messy, who’d’ve guessed? – out of spare fabric is a chore, so as soon as she finishes the Wonderbolt’s emblem on the front and sets it to the side, she hears hoofsteps behind her.
“Wow, Dashie! That’s super-duper-uper lookin’!” Pinkie shouts, grabbing Dash into a head lock.
“Yeah, it’s pretty awesome. Like me, y’know?”
She can hear Rarity sigh noisily. “Will your ego ever find complacency?”
Dash shrugs as well as she can with Pinkie hanging of off her shoulders. “Old habits die hard, Rares.”
She titters, and Dash knows that means she agrees. “Wouldn’t you know?”
“You know what else dies hard?” Pinkie asks, but not really. “A rockin’ PAR-TAY!”
“A’right!” hollers Dash, while Rarity laughs. It’s then that Dash realises Rarity looks her age, because when she smiles – actually, feelin’-it smiles – she looks years younger.
Dash doesn’t know if friends are forever, but she figures it’s not a stretch to say that friendship makes you young again.
“Thank you,” says Rarity one day. It’s the same day she curls her hair, and Dash didn’t notice it was straight until seeing her that morning.
“I mean, it’s what you pay me for, right?” Dash says easily.
Rarity shakes her head. Her locks – un-bunned – move with her. “Thank you for everything. For fixing Pinkie and I.”
Rainbow shrugs. “Hey, as far as I know, I should’ve done that three years ago.” It’s something she’s been thinking for a long time.
“I think it’s what you came here in the first place to do,” Rarity says, locking the door. They’re closing up the shop for the night, and Dash thinks she’s almost all better because she remembers to flip the open sign over.
“Maybe I was running away.”
“If you were, you were going embarrassingly slow.”
“No, hear me out,” Dash says. She’s wanted to say this to someone else instead of stewing away in her head. “Like, I quit the Wonderbolts and came here, and all I did was sew for three years. Talk about wasting a life – er, no offense.”
Rarity heads to close the blinds, and Dash can see the moonlight catch her smile. “None taken.”
“And the more I think – the more I remember – the less I want to. It gets so boring, y’know? Maybe quitting, and then the sewing and the dares,” Dash shakes her head. “Maybe it was all to shake things up somehow. Maybe drinking the potion was just some way to hide in the past, literally.”
“And the future is forthcoming,” Rarity says solemnly. She has that same, pinched look in her eyes. “But I must disagree with how bitter you sound; I like to think you saw the same things in yourself in I, and that maybe you thought we could find a way out together.”
“Birds of a feather,” quips Dash, then she grimaces. “I really start to sound like you, don’t I?”
“It’s flattering.”
“Hah.”
Rarity starts heading up the stairs, hoofsteps light. Rainbow flies overhead. “But you know?”
“Hm?”
“I still think we can.” Rarity looks up, and Dash thinks it’s as physical as it is metaphoric (man, she’s becoming a poet, huh?). “You and I, and all our friends. We’ll make changes, try harder. And we won’t forget what it is that drives us.”
Dash lands on the top step. “Yeah? And what’s that.”
“Friendship,” Rarity says, and it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “We’re happiest with others, as you’ve proved to me again.”
Rainbow shrugs. She’s not sure what she proved, just that a change in pace makes a difference. And that friends stick through it, maybe.
She’s not sure, and she hopes she remembers, or she learns. “Man, it’s gonna be so weird to wake up and have everything come back suddenly.”
Rarity leads the way down the hall. “Perhaps you’ll remember to clean your room, then, love.”
“Nah.”
They laugh, and against the muffled bustle of evening Manehatten, it sounds like wind chimes.
Huh.
“Wind chimes?” says Dash out loud.
“What about them?”
“I dunno.” She shrugs. “Are they important?”
Rarity hesitates. “There’s a reason I’ve defaulted to calling you ‘Dasher’.”
Rainbow Dash almost doesn’t ask why, because Rarity hesitating is never a good thing, but then she figures what the hay, she’ll remember it in a bit anyway.
It’s a daunting (actually, that’s a cool word) thought, but she sees Rarity and thinks of Pinkie, and she thinks they’ll be bigger than any memory.
“Well, let’s get some tea and start this story time,” Dash says, grinning.
Author's Note
Edit: It seems I have to clarify after-the-fact -- which is a bad sign in terms of my writing -- that Dash has been Rares assistant years before the potion, and the whole style change comes with living with someone for that long.
