The sleet came down hard that cold afternoon in the graveyard. My whole face was soaking wet. I wasn't crying or anything wimpy like that. The water running down my snout was melted sleet, not tears, I'm telling you.
Even with a Rarity original parka, scarf, and hat, that day before Hearth's Warming was way too cold to be outside. Not too cold for me, because nothing is too anything for Rainbow Dash. But just for, y'know, non-Rainbow Dash ponies, it would have been too cold.
I walked a dozen steps behind Rarity and Sweetie Belle, so I wouldn't be butting into their family stuff. I'm thoughtful that way. Rainbow 'Thoughtful' Dash.
I know, I know, that doesn't make sense—we're all family now. But that Hearth's Warming Eve in the graveyard was barely six months since Rarity and I had gotten married. It still felt like, y'know, there was our new family, and our old families.
Really, that awful first Hearth's Warming was what made us one family. Here, I'll tell you that story.
The sleet iced my feathers. I watched Sweetie Belle carefully. I know more about broken bones than even your average Wonderbolt, and my new sister-in-law was only five weeks out of her cast. The cold should have been torturing her right foreleg, but she was hardly limping at all. Her new purple leg warmers—also Rarity originals, which Rarity called mulberry but looked like wool to me—seemed to be doing a good job.
That was one tough filly, there. Even tougher than me at that age.
Rarity carried a fresh evergreen wreath, wrapped in ribbons and tinsel. The worsening sleet crusted the wreath with ice.
They stopped at the grave. It didn't have a headstone, yet. The stone mason was taking his sweet time. I mean, two thousand bits? Shouldn't that be overnight service? The headstone wasn't scheduled to arrive until the spring, but Rares and Sweetie knew to the nearest inch where to go, even with the ground under three inches of fresh snow.
I stopped about fifteen feet short of the grave, wiped some more sleet (absolutely not tears, do you hear me?) out of my eyes, and let those two have some time together.
With a look over her shoulder, Rarity waved me forward. "Come here, Dash. I need you. We need you."
I trotted forward and stood on Rarity's other side, opposite Sweetie Belle. Rarity levitated the wreath down to the grave, and then leaned her face into my shoulder. Her whole body shook.
More sleet-not-tears filled my eyes. I wiped it away.
Sweetie Belle sat down on the ice and sobbed.
"I miss..." Sweetie gasped between tears. "I miss you, Mom and Dad... this... how can it be Hearth's Warming without Mom and Dad, Rarity? Rainbow? Just, how, how can it be the holidays without them?"
A sudden surge of melted-sleet-not-tears ran down my snout. I was totally going to buck Warm Front in the ribs the next time I saw him, and make the mayor find a better weather manager. The weather team was getting lax since I had left for the Wonderbolts. What was with all that precipitation down my muzzle? Am I the only pegasus who knows how to run this town's weather? And why was the sleet so salty? Had a Twilight experiment blow a bazillion tons of salty seawater into the sky again?
Rarity wrapped a foreleg over my withers. "Thank you, my dear Rainbow," she said, nuzzling my neck. "Thank you for being here for us."
I gritted my teeth. "Rarity, I meant it when I said, 'For better or for worse.'"
"Thank you, love," Rarity said. Then, whispering into my ear: "Sweetie Belle is going to have a bad night."
Back at the Boutique, I stirred a pot of mixed vegetable stew. I had learned how to cook by taking my turn at Wonderbolts HQ. Needless to say, I instantly became an expert and perhaps the greatest gourmet cook in all Equestria. It's a good thing I already had a cutie mark, or I would have gotten something with food or cooking and been drafted to work at the palace, cooking for all the foreign ambassadors the Princesses hosted, to show them how much less awesome their home countries were than Equestria, solely because of Rainbow Dash's cooking.
My cooking, with all its oxidants and anti-aminos, was already responsible for such increases in Wonderbolt flight performance that I feared our hypersonic friction might light the atmosphere itself on fire. The other 'Bolts never ever ate the meals I cooked, so I assume they were worried about destroying all life and burning the world into a cinder, too.
I could expertly make mac and cheese, peanut butter sandwiches, spaghetti with marinara (so long as the marinara came from a jar), and vegetable stew, which was perfect for cold winter evenings. I didn't want to learn how to cook anything else, because I would become such an expert that I would risk being the first adult pony in history to suffer a cutie mark change.
I kept the three of us fed well enough, I suppose.
After nosing a quart of heavy cream from the icebox, I placed it on the counter. I liked to add a dash of cream to my stew just before serving, especially on a cold, sleeting night like this.
The fatty cream would also help put some weight back on Sweetie Belle and Rarity.
Rarity used some spell or another to dry the rain and remove the wrinkles from our winter gear, and Sweetie Belle sat on the couch in the living room, flipping through an old photo album.
"Those coats are dry, Rarity," I said. "You're just fidgeting."
Rarity looked at me and nodded. "Yes, yes I suppose you're correct. I just... I suppose I'm trying to distract myself."
She trotted up and gave me a peck on the cheek.
Random kisses. For no reason at all. Have I ever mentioned how radical being married is?!?
Whispering, Rarity said, "The trip to the cemetery has discombobulated me a bit, I fear. And poor Sweetie Belle..."
After giving dinner another stir, I sat the big spoon down. "How are you holding up, Rare? I mean, tomorrow is Hearth's Warming... and it's the first one... well, a lot of firsts."
Rarity gave me a half-smile, and did that thing with her eyelashes. "Our first Hearth's Warming as mare-and-wife, and for that I am beyond grateful."
I gave Rarity a quick kiss on her neck, with a tiny bit of a nibble. "Me, too."
Rarity nodded, and then her eyes shifted away, to a framed photograph on the wall: teenage Rarity, newborn Sweetie Belle, and their parents, Hondo and Cookie. "But let's not delude ourselves, Dash, dearest. Mother and father have been gone only six months. Sweetie Belle is barely out of her cast. This will be a hard holiday on me, and terrible for her."
"I'm here for you," I said, puffing out my chest and fluffing up my feathers. "Both of you."
Pounding on the front door interrupted Rarity's reply.
"I've got it!" Sweetie Belle said, gently placing the photo album back on the coffee table. "It'll be the Crusaders."
She trotted to the door, her canter smooth and without a limp. Just in the five weeks since getting her cast off, her walking had almost gotten back to normal, although she still wouldn't gallop.
Scootaloo and Apple Bloom piled in the door the instant Sweetie got it open, along with a gust of freezing air. The other two Crusaders shed their winter gear, leaving it in a wet heap at the door, and the two of them each gripped a wrapped present in their teeth. They raced upstairs to Sweetie's new bedroom. Sweetie trudged up behind them.
"She would never have made it without those two," Rarity said.
"None of us would have made it without our friends," I replied. "While she's out of earshot, let's finish next year's calendar."
"Stupendous idea, Rainbow, darling."
Rarity levitated out a thick planner while I kept an eye on the stew.
I sniffed. The bread would be done and ready to come out of the oven soon. Spike was helping me learn bread baking, and that was something else I was becoming the world expert at. Who would have guessed, Rainbow Dash, domestic genius? Well, anypony who had ever met me, obviously.
Rarity spread the calendar out on the table.
That dang calendar.
So, let me try to explain this without sounding like a jerk.
...I can't do that. Let me explain, and hope you don't think I'm too much of a jerk.
Rarity and I love each other.
With my Wonderbolts practices and shows, I'm away from Ponyville all the time. With her boutiques scattered around Equestria and fashion week here and Grand Glitzy Glamour Get-together there, she's out of Ponyville all the time.
Getting married was an easy decision. We love each other, and our love is twenty percent stronger than anypony else's. (I once asked Princess Cadance if Rarity and I had the strongest love in Equestria, and she said "Yes, of course it is, Dash." Of course! From the Princess of Love!)
Rare and I had planned that we would see each other when we were home, I would stop by fashion week this or cotillion that when I could, she would make Wonderbolt shows whenever she could. We would be two ponies, at the top of our fields, totally in love, living our lives together when we could, and apart or on the road when we had to, which would be most of the time. We would be banned from fancy hotels in every town in Equestria, because when we crossed paths after a Wonderbolts or fashion shows, our epic 'Haven't seen you lately!' lovemaking would destroy not just beds and shower stalls, but indeed, entire floors of fancy hotels. We would be the world-trotting example of what love meant.
That was the plan.
It was a good plan, a great plan—natch, we came up with it—and since we're both mares, it's not like we were going to accidentally have foals and foul up the plan, right? I was legit worried that we would both end up getting second cutie marks in brilliant planning and I didn't know what that would even look like, or if it would match my flight suits. That's how good a plan that was.
And then, two days after our wedding, while we're on our honeymoon, up in the Crystal Empire, Derpy crashes through the window into our suite, smashes into us on the bed while we're engaged in...uh, marital relations... Derpy's crying her eyes out, and she tells us the news and gives us the official letter from the mayor. Hondo and Cookie are dead, and Starlight has teleported Sweetie Belle from Ponyville to the ginormous foal's hospital in Canterlot for emergency surgery.
Cadance teleported us to Canterlot, saving us a whole day on the train, even though such a long teleport with two passengers made her sick. (That's an awesome princess, right there. Rarity was too messed up, so I sent Cadance the thank-you note. Outside of Twilight, Cadance is my favorite princess.)
And, suddenly, guess what? Our crazy schedule-packed life as the best Wonderbolt/fashion designer pairing in Equestria suddenly adds a thirteen-year-old we're legal guardians to. A teenager with, equally suddenly, a lot a problems in her saddlebags.
I love Sweetie Belle. Don't you dare think for a minute otherwise. She's my sister-in-law, and regardless of what all the stupid guardian legal papers say, I consider her my daughter. And I'm not resentful or anything.
But, by Luna, did Sweetie Belle ever complicate our lives!
"Manehattan fashion week," Rarity said, pointing to a block of days on the calendar. "You're at home with Sweetie."
With a nod, I said, "Yeah, no Wonderbolt shows that month. Most of Equestria outside Manehattan orders their growing-season rain, so the weather is terrible. We just have practices at HQ, and she'll be in school. I'll pick her up from Sweet Apple Acres on time for dinner every day that week."
Rarity marked that week with a sky-blue highlighter.
"And Appaloosa Rodeo week," Rarity said.
"I can't get off," I said. "I have to do the show at the Rodeo. That's Thunderlane and Rumble's parents' thirtieth anniversary—big surprise party—and Thunderlane's already put in for vacation."
"That's also Grand Duchess Trottingham's ball," Rarity grumped, "but I can send Miss Pommel." She marked that week with purple highlighter. "That still leaves the big problem."
I looked at the late summer on her calendar. "Yeah."
"I suppose we could ask Lofty and Holiday to watch her..." Rarity mused. "Let her sleep over at Scootaloo's..."
"We should test that out, first," I said. "The Saturday after next is that thing you wanted to go to."
Rarity looked at me, stunned, and then grinned and wagged her eyebrows. "Rainbow Dash, are you asking me to the opera in Canterlot?"
I turned my head away from the soup and gagged. "No! No. I'm way too awesome to go to the opera. But an overnight trip, with Sweetie staying with Scoots or Apple Bloom, or with Starlight and Sunburst at the Castle, would be a good way to put a hoof into that water and see how she does. And if we need to be out of Ponyville anyway, we might as well do that thing you want to do."
"The Canterlot Opera."
"Yeah," I said, looking at my hooves. "The opera."
Rarity tilted up my head with her magic and smiled at me. "So you think we should get a sitter the week before the gala?"
I flicked my tail and shrugged my wings. "I think we need to try getting a sitter sometimes... but not that week. Look at the calendar."
Rarity looked. "Oh... oh sweet Celestia."
Yep. Next year's Grand Galloping Gala. As I Wonderbolt, I would be training hard the whole week before, getting ready for the show. As a fashionista, she would be working hard in her Canterlot Boutique, selling and fitting fancy ball gowns.
And the day before next year's Gala would be the first anniversary of Sweetie and Rarity's parents' death.
Rarity's face can't go white when she's upset—it's already white. So, it goes kind of splotchy gray.
That's what it did, then. She started panting.
I went over to her and gave her a hug. She shook for almost a minute. I felt another drop of rain collect in my eye and roll down my snout. Must be a leak in the Boutique's roof. Need to call Applejack, she knows how to fix roofs.
"The Gala will never quite be the same for me again, will it, Rainbow, dearest?"
"I can... Spitfire has two foals. She'll understand, if I buy her a coffee at the canteen and sit down and explain to her. I'll drop down to the reserves for that week, and watch Sweetie Belle. Sweetie and I can stay at the Canterlot Boutique and fetch fabric and run errands for you while you work. That way we three will stay busy and... and together."
Rarity gave me another kiss, this one between the eyes. Have I mentioned how amazingly awesome being married is?
"I love you, too, Rares."
A shiver started in her shoulders and ran down her body to her tail, and then rebounded up all the way to her nose. She smiled and kissed my lips.
"Thank you, Rainbow. The week before the Gala is the most important of my year, but getting a sitter for Sweetie that week... it would be unfair to her." She marked the week before the Gala with light-blue highlighter, and added Canterlot in black ink.
I nodded. Spitfire would understand, but most of the other Wonderbolts... well, I was in for some teasing and nicknames. They were already calling me Mom.
I flicked my ears. Nicknames, I could deal with. Mom was better than Rainbow Crash.
The stew smelled done, and the potatoes weren't yet falling apart. I poured a shot of the cream in and gave it a good stir.
"Sweetie Belle! Scootaloo! Apple Bloom!" I called. "Dinner."
The other two Crusaders thundered down the stairs, and Sweetie followed carefully.
"Thanks, Rainbow," Apple Bloom said, "but we have t'get home, ourselves, for Hearth's Warming Eve dinners. Grand Pear is joining us!"
Scootaloo pranced tippy-hooved in a circle and buzzed her wings. "My mom and dad will be here from Shire Lanka on the late train! Lofty, Holiday, and I are going to cook supper."
Sweetie Belle's eyes clenched when Scootaloo said my mom and dad.
We said our goodbyes, and then Sweetie helped the other two into their coats, gave them hoof bumps—she used her bad leg, the first time I'd seen her hoof-bump with it since before her break—and closed the door behind them. Getting them out the door took forever, because they needed to bundle up extra against the sleet.
As Sweetie entered the kitchen, her ears flattened and tail drooped.
"Sweetie Belle, whatever's the matter?" asked Rarity.
Sweetie raised her nose and sniffed, and then trembling gripped her whole body, from snout to hooves to tail.
I sniffed, too. "Oh my gosh! My bread!" I yanked the oven open, and a huge plume of smoke roiled out, filling the kitchen with the stink of char.
The smoke hit Sweetie and she collapsed to the floor and started sobbing.
Sweetie needed a good twenty minutes to get herself back together. On the couch, she leaned against Rarity, gasping and panting.
That poor filly. It was the smoke that had woken her, that night when her parents—
The stew was overcooked, from the extra simmering, the potatoes all mushy, making the stew sludgy, and none of us ate very much.
"Hey, Rainbow Dash?" Sweetie asked.
"Yep?"
"When are your parents coming?"
"Tomorrow, mid-afternoon. They're doing Hearth's Warming brunch with my aunts and uncles and cousins. Whenever that ends, they'll fly here from Cloudsdale."
Sweetie nodded. "Bow and Windy visited me in the hospital. They're nice."
I reached over and mussed Sweetie's mane with a hoof. "They love you. We'll stock up some cloud-walking potions and go visit Cloudsdale once the weather warms up. You'll like my cousins. Most of them still need cutie marks."
"How many cousins do you have?" Sweetie asked.
"Tons," I replied. "Can't keep track."
"Your parents love all of them."
"Totally."
"Your parents have lots of love to give."
"They really do," I said. "They're awesome that way."
"Family is important," Sweetie said, and then looked at the photo of her, Rarity, and their parents. Her ears wilted, her tail thrashed, and she went quiet.
Sweetie didn't eat any more dinner.
We cleaned the kitchen together. Rarity tried to get Sweetie to snack or eat dessert. Sweetie's ribs stuck out more than they had even a few weeks before. I would have to zap her therapist with a lightning bolt next time I saw him.
And Rarity's ribs stuck out, too, although she had denied it and threatened to make me sleep on the couch the one time I made the mistake of mentioning it.
Sweetie gave a fake yawn and said, "I'm going to bed. Scootaloo just gave me the latest Shadow Spade book. I'll read a little and then go to sleep. Happy Hearth's Warming, guys."
"You, too," we both replied.
She walked upstairs. "No limp," I whispered to Rarity. "Her leg must be feeling good tonight."
Rarity thrashed her tail. "That damn fall. If she hadn't gone out that window—"
"If she hadn't jumped," I said, "she would have died, too."
Rarity's face did that splotchy color thing again. I put a wing over her withers. She trembled.
"Presents," Rarity said, and levitated a key out of one of her sewing supply drawers, and unlocked the door to her basement.
There are many things I am the single most awesome pony at. There are other things that, I am a big enough mare to admit, I am only second-most awesome at.
Buying presents is one of those second-best things. Rarity is the most awesome present-buyer. I felt bad that she bought twice as many presents for me as I bought for her, but in my defense, I gave a lot of my bits to Sweetie so she could get presents for Rares, since Sweetie wasn't in her usual hoof-made, do-it-yourself mood that winter.
I did find a few clever presents for Rarity—like, a bottle of that really expensive Prench red wine—but mostly I just guessed. Starlight and Trixie gave me advice, since I didn't know unicorn traditions. (Inter-tribe marriage is complicated. I had only dated pegasi before Rares, so I had no idea.) Trixie and Starlight suggested some fancy horn-specific moisturizing sunscreen from Manehattan that Rarity loved but smelled like a jar of minotaur butt and stunk up the house.
Rarity levitated the presents up the basement stairs and placed them at the top, and then I carried them to the Hearth's Warming tree in the middle of the living room and piled them up.
After putting the last present on the top of the pile, I plopped down on the couch.
"Rainbow, daaaarling, whatever are you doing?" she asked as she trotted up from the basement.
Oh, horse apples. That was Rarity's you're being an absolute diamond dog and should know better voice, but I had no idea what I was doing wrong. "I'm sitting on the couch."
Rarity rolled her eyes. "Whyever would you make one big pile of presents, Miss Lazy Feathers? Help me organize them."
I hopped off the couch and took two steps towards her, but her aura reached out, grabbed all the several dozen packages at once, and rearranged them in a flash into three piles, one for her, one for Sweetie, one for me.
"Tres magnifique! Thank you, Rainbow. Much neater now."
I flicked my tail and my ears. "No probs. Glad to help."
Rarity gave me that grin and then threw herself down on the floor, flat on her back, right in front of the tree. "Oh dear, Rainbow, darling, I seem to have tripped. Can you come help me get off... the ground? Get off the ground, I mean to say?"
My face was getting warm and my body suddenly felt all weird. I must have been having an allergic reaction, a delayed reaction to something in our dinner. Why else would my cheeks feel all red and hot? Was I developing a dairy allergy as I got ~~older~~ awesomer? I must have been developing a dairy allergy. Or some other allergy—not dairy—that the doctors had never even seen before! That would be me: not just the leading edge of Wonderbolts' flight doctrine, but also the leading edge of medical science, some new allergy that would go into the books as Dashitis, rendering me immortal to history yet again, alongside Wonderbolting and element-bearing. Three-way immortal! Rainbow Dash, history maker! Future college students would write dissipations about me, all thanks to whatever was making my face all red and hot. I really didn't want to be developing an allergy, but the heat in my face, well, what other explanation was there?
On an unrelated note, before Rarity and I had started dating, I'd been a little on the shy side, when it came to, you know, physical love. I'd dated many stallions, and two mares, before Rarity, and as soon as they got kissy-faced, I got all tongue-tied and embarrassed and stuff.
Well, I wasn't embarrassed right then, in front of the tree. My red face was an allergic reaction. I'd been over my embarrassment for a while with Rarity, well before we were actually married, but when Sweetie Belle got out of the hospital and came to live with us, it had come back, just a bit.
Tilting my head and swiveling my ears, I listened.
Rarity arched her back and stretched like Opalescence. "I haven't heard a peep from her in thirty minutes. Come give me my real Hearth's Warming gift, love."
My face burned hotter. I must have been the same color as Pinkie. Stupid allergies.
Here's the other thing. See. Okay. Like. Okay. Sweetie Belle was thirteen, then. She knew about the birds and the bees. She had taken that class at school, a few weeks before our wedding and then Sweetie had asked me about the details of the birds and the bees because we were sitting for her that day and Rarity was late getting back to the boutique! Gaaaahhhhh!
The thought of getting caught by Sweetie Belle bothered me more than the thought of a younger filly who didn't know exactly what was going on.
"Just give me a kiss, Rainbow, then we'll adjourn behind locked doors. It's terribly romantic to kiss beneath the tree, and you know how I am about romance. This is our first Hearth's Warming as mare and wife, I positively insist on a kiss beneath the tree."
I trotted over to her, and leaned my forelegs down on her. Her tail swished underneath me, playing with my tail, which she knew very well was my weakness. She grinned up at me.
We shared a quick kiss.
"With tongue, darling," Rarity said, wrapping her tail around the base of mine and pulling gently. My eyes crossed.
I must have been having a terrible allergic reaction, the way my face felt like it was on fire. Even during a Sonic Rainboom the air friction wasn't that intense on my cheeks. Was the emergency room open on Hearth's Warming Eve? Allergic reactions weren't something to mess with. I'd been the one to rainboom Apple Bloom to the hospital after her bee sting, that one time, after all, making her possibly the fastest earth pony in history.
I lowered my barrel a little bit and Rarity took my face between her forehooves, raising her head until we touched noses. Her tail let go of mine, teasing me, promising more, later.
My wings have a mind of their own—pegasi out there in reader land, you know this, back me up—and they were as stiff as they could get. The allergy attack must have been exasperating the wing stiffness.
Rarity's tongue came out and I extended my tongue—
"Guys?" Sweetie Belle called, limping around the corner into the living room. "Hey, guys, my leg hurts really bad and—oh!"
I hopped off Rarity and struggled to pull my wings back in. Rarity rolled over onto her belly and looked up at Sweetie.
My allergic reaction went away and then I blushed. All three of us blushed.
We headed into the kitchen. Sweetie limped, bunny-hopping, barely any weight on her bad leg.
I studied the canter of her steps.
Sweetie's faking, I thought. I'd seen her limping for weeks now, after she got out of the cast, and her real limp was different from what she was doing right then.
Sweetie slid into a chair and gasped as she tucked her leg to her chest.
I put a saucepan on the stove, set it to low, and poured some milk into it.
"I can't sleep," Sweetie said. "My leg is killing me. I need—I need my medicine."
Rarity and I frowned at each other.
Rarity sat down next to Sweetie while I stirred the saucepan of milk. "Sweetie Belle, you've been doing great. You haven't needed any medicine for... hmm... eight days now?"
Sweetie just nodded, and bit her lip.
I studied her. Her ears didn't have the tremble they had shown after her fall, and her breathing was still deep and regular.
There are certain things in this world I'm an expert at, and injuries and broken bones are way up at the top of the list.
...and also, I'm ashamed to say, is painkiller abuse.
Rarity stood and moved to the medicine cabinet where we kept the lockbox with Sweetie Belle's prescription.
"Hold up, Rarity," I said. "Can you keep an eye on the milk for a second?"
She looked at me, then nodded. Her levitation grabbed the ladle and stirred.
I sat on the floor, right in front of Sweetie Belle. "I've picked up a bit from the Wonderbolts' trainers," I said. "Let me have your leg, please."
She glared at me. "Rarity left a wet spot on your chest."
"Eeep!" Rarity gasped.
I looked down, and blushed again. "Don't change the subject, champ."
"Hmmph!"
Up close to her, I could really see her ribs. "Do you want a snack? Since you're awake?" I asked.
Sweetie shook her head. "No, my stomach feels a little sour, too."
"Because you caught us kissy-facing?" I asked.
Sweetie extended her leg and I gently took it between my forehooves. The scar was still red and puckered, but the stitches were out and the hair almost grown back where the surgeons had shaved her.
"No. My stomach was upset before. I don't mind if you two kissy-face."
I worked her leg, the knee and ankle, up to the shoulder, up and down, back and forth. The motion was good and she didn't show any outward signs of pain.
She's faking, I decided. "I've got an idea."
"Rainbow," Sweetie Belle said, "please don't be a bitch about this."
"Sweetie Belle!" gasped Rarity.
"I broke my leg, Rainbow! The bone was sticking out of the skin and it sliced open the muscle and it was two in the morning and everypony was asleep and I heard Mom and Dad screaming and I smelled them burning to death and I had to crawl, dragging my broken leg, to the next house and buck the back door until Cloud Kicker woke up and came to answer the door and fetch the fire department and fly me to the hospital! The doctors damn near amputated. It hurts and I can't sleep and it's Hearth's Warming Eve and Mom and Dad are dead and this is my first Hearth's Warming as an orphan and you don't even love me you just put up with me because Loyalty and I can't sleep and you don't know how this feels! Just gimme a Luna-damned pill, you bitch!"
Light green smoke rose from her horn as she glared at me.
I hugged her, and gave her a kiss just in front of the horn. "I love you," I said. "And because I love you—"
Sweetie wormed out of my hug, out of the chair, and trotted—forgetting her fake limp—around to the opposite side of the table and sat down in another chair. "Hmmmph!"
"Sweetie Belle..." Rarity whispered.
I sat in the chair she had just left, and folded my forelegs on the table. "I know how it feels," I said.
"Your parents will be here tomorrow," Sweetie snarled.
"That's not what I meant." I twisted my body and unfurled my left wing across the table.
Pegasi don't usually expose their most sensitive and fragile body part to ponies who are furious at them—Sweetie Belle could have ended my Wonderbolts career right then and there if she had wanted to—but this was important.
I leaned down, puckered my lips, and blew. My breath ruffled the feathers, exposing a jagged scar, a shade darker than my skin, starting about six inches from the base of my wing.
Sweetie Belle leaned forward, scowling, and her levitation delicately spread the feathers apart after I stopped blowing. She squinted at my scar. "Rainbow Dash..." She looked into my eyes, and swallowed twice. "Rainbow, what's that?"
"I was two months older than you were. I was doing an obstacle course competition, on pace for the gold medal, point two seconds ahead of the next foal's pace—Flitter, back when she flew competitively—and I cut a corner too sharp and hit one of the gates with my wing. Emergency surgery, nine months in a cast. Lots of painkillers."
"Why didn't you mention this before?" Sweetie asked.
"I did, when you were in the hospital. I guess you were too fogged up to remember. I haven't mentioned it again, because, well, I don't like thinking about it. And," I smiled, "this may surprise you, but I can be a little competitive."
Rarity snorted.
"I didn't want you to think I was competing with you for 'worst foalhood injury,'" I finished.
Sweetie swallowed twice. "Painkillers?" she asked.
I looked at Rarity. She stared back at me, the milk and ladle forgotten. She nodded once.
"I... I told Rarity this before we got engaged. She deserved to know everything. I've not... not ever told another pony, never ever."
"Painkillers," Sweetie repeated.
"I got hooked," I said. "That was... twelve years ago. The doctors gave them out like cake to Celestia back then. I needed two years after my crash before I got clean. My one aunt is a veterinarian in Cloudsdale, and I got busted stealing painkillers from her clinic. That's when I finally got help."
"I'm not hooked," Sweetie growled. "And I'm kinda insulted you would suggest that."
"I never said you were. You're at least one hundred and twenty percent tougher than me and you would never let that happen. But I also don't want you to take that chance. Rarity and I are proud you haven't needed any medicine for over a week, right Rares?"
Still levitating the ladle, stirring the now-steaming saucepan of milk, Rarity trotted to Sweetie and hugged her. "Ever so proud, Sweetie Belle."
"I can't... I can't sleep..." Sweetie gasped.
Rarity ladled the warm milk into three mugs. Sweetie sipped at hers.
"I'll be right back," I said, trotted out of the kitchen, and came back a minute later with a small all-black pill pinched between my feathers.
"Wonderbolt experimental medicine," I said. "Non-addictive painkiller and sleep aide."
Sweetie Belle looked at it, then at me, then at Rarity.
Rarity glared at me, then gave a tiny nod to Sweetie, who washed the pill down with her warm milk.
We sat for about five minutes as we all sipped the mugs. Rarity got a chocolate chip cookie into Sweetie while we sat, and I suppressed a smile. Rarity was an awesome big sister, and she knew even better than me how much Sweetie was off her usual appetite. Sweetie was growing, she'd grown at least an inch just since we took her in, and she needed to eat like Scoots and Apple Bloom, but she just wouldn't.
Sweetie stood up and said, "Okay, my leg feels better."
"I love you," I said.
"G'night, Rarity," Sweetie said. Refusing to look at me, she trotted upstairs and slammed her bedroom door.
We both cocked our ears, listening.
After a minute, Rarity said, "Explain yourself or sleep on the couch for our first Hearth's Warming."
"She was faking."
"She! Would! Never!"
I explained my diagnosis: the different canter in the limp, the steady breathing, the firm ears.
"Why would she fake, Rainbow?"
"Those pills, her prescription, they make you sleepy. And this is going to be a bad night for her, you said so herself."
"Indeed... darling, what do you give her? A Wonderbolt drug? I don't approve of sharing prescriptions, much less giving my little sister experimental medicines."
I smiled. "Nope. Just a mint. Licorice flavor, my dad left them in a drawer the last time he was here. The warm milk and the idea of Wonderbolt pills will put her to sleep."
Rarity stared at me, aghast, and then laughed. "You clever pegasus!"
"I'm twenty percent more clever than that," I said, buffing a hoof on my chest.
She gave me her sexy smile again, and my face got that hot, flushed feeling. Maybe I really was allergic to dairy?
I'm the best pony in the world at many things. Flying, crashing, flying, awesomeness, flying, radicalness, flying, tortoise care, flying, saving Equestria, flying... I'm the best.
That's why I can feel safe admitting when I'm only second-best at something:
I'm the second-best pony in the world at lovemaking.
Rarity is the best in the world at that.
Asleep next to me, she breathed slowly in the dark, curled up on her right side and buried under fifty bazillion blankets against the cold of the winter night. I lay flat on my back, blankets kicked off, wings unfurled, left foreleg covering my eyes, right hoof brushing Rarity's mane.
It was our first Hearth's Warming married sex. I'm not romantic or anything lame like that, but I was just kinda lying there, thinking that never again would we have first married Hearth's Warming sex and remembering what we had just done and enjoying being married.
It was perhaps two hours since Sweetie Belle had gone back to bed, and I was on the very edge of sleep myself, just starting to drift away in the awesomely radical after-lovemaking haze—
—when a small hoof knocked on our bedroom door.
"Crud," I whispered, and nudged Rarity.
Rarity snorted awake as Sweetie Belle knocked on our door again. "Guys...?" she said from the other side of the door.
"Wait!" I called, and grabbed with my teeth to pull some blankets over myself. I tucked my wings in and pulled the blanket up to my neck. Rarity used a flash of magic to turn her bedside lantern on to its dimmest setting.
We looked at each other and nodded.
"Come in," I called.
Sweetie Belle's magic turned the doorknob and opened the door. She sniffed the bedroom air. "Am I... eh... interrupting...?"
"We were asleep," Rarity said with a yawn. "What's wrong, Sweetie Belle?"
Stupid allergies. My face felt swollen and hot again.
"I had my nightmare," she said. "The bad one. The one about that night. Princess Luna suggested that I could use some Loyalty and Generosity."
Rarity lifted up the blankets, making space on her other side. Sweetie crawled up into the bed and curled up on her right flank. Rarity curled up behind her and hugged her. Sweetie turned off the lamp, and we were in total darkness again. The smell of Sweetie's tears and sweat surrounded me, pressing down like the weight of too many blankets. That poor filly... what she had seen, what she had heard, what she had smelled that night...
I felt the bed shake as Sweetie sobbed. "I miss Mom and Dad so much."
Rarity sobbed, too. "Hearth's Warming is a good time to remember them, darling. The worst possible thing would be to forget them, no matter how much remembering them hurts."
We three lay there in silence for a few minutes.
Then, from the darkness, Sweetie spoke again. "Dad and I, we had already made plans to get Mom an early present for this Hearth's Warming. We were going to get her a year's membership to the Ponyville Day Spa. We thought she would enjoy being able to see you more often, seeing both of you two there."
"I had no idea..." Rarity said. "That was a good idea."
"She really loved you, Rainbow," Sweetie said. "Dad did, too."
"Thanks for telling me," I whispered. My eyes were stinging. Maybe I was coming down with a cold. Yes, a Hearth's Warming cold, or more likely some horrible disease from the Everfree, since I'm too awesome for something as lame as a cold to affect me.
"I lied earlier," Sweetie said. "My leg wasn't hurting too bad. The pills make me sleepy, and I couldn't sleep because I kept thinking about the fire."
"We knew, dearest," Rarity said.
"Was that candy you gave me, Rainbow Dash? The 'secret Wonderbolts medicine?' I'm burping licorice."
"Busted," I confessed.
"You were really hooked on painkillers when you were my age?" Sweetie asked.
"I was. It was the least-awesome thing that ever happened to me."
"You're trying to protect me," Sweetie said.
"Yep," I replied.
"You really do love me," Sweetie said. "At first I thought it was just your element, but... you love me?"
"Yeah," I said. "Of course."
"The warm milk helped me sleep, until Luna woke me up to break my nightmare. How long were you in the hospital after you broke your wing?"
"Nine weeks. That's why I freaked out so bad when I hurt my other wing a few years back. I was afraid... well, that break wasn't very bad, though."
"I'm sorry I called you a bitch, Rainbow Dash. I love you, too. I just... tonight's been hard."
I rolled over and scooted up against Rarity's back, spooning up against her, the way she was spooned up against Sweetie Belle, and I extended my left wing under the blankets to hug around those two.
They both sobbed for a little while, and then fell asleep. Sweetie's tears soaked my pinions.
I cried, too, after they were asleep and wouldn't notice. I soaked the back of Rarity's mane with my tears. Then I fell asleep.
And that was the first Hearth's Warming Eve we spent together as a family.
That was the Hearth's Warming Eve that made us a family.
Author's Note
I saw the cover art and asked, "What happens next?"
"Sweetie Belle barges in," I answered myself.
"Why is Sweetie with those two on Hearth's Warming eve?" I demanded angrily.
And I replied, "She lives there now..."
That's how the story came about.
And yes, I know the definition of "dissipation" (dissertation) and "exasperated" (exacerbated). Dash, however, does not.
Comments are welcome!
