The Fan She Never Knew

“I’m pregnant.”

Windy Whistles spat her drink across the table. “You’re what?! Oh my gosh, sweetie, that’s incredible!” The elder mare bounded straight over the table with a few flaps of her wings and tackled Rainbow to the ground. “Oh, I’m so excited!”

Rainbow Dash hugged her mother back, smiling at the expected reaction - and thankful that cloud floors were incredibly soft. Bow Hothoof laughed at the pair.

“How far along are you?!” Windy asked, nearly shouting in Rainbow’s ear with her excitement.

“About five months,” Rainbow confessed. Her baby bump was only barely visible - small enough that it could have been weight gain from her lack of physical training post-retirement - but that meant she couldn’t have hidden it much longer.

“What?” Windy released Rainbow Dash from her embrace, and sat back on her haunches, glaring at her daughter. “Five months, and I’m only just now finding out?”

“Yeah, why not?” Bow wondered.

“I’m sorry.” Rainbow looked back and forth between the two ponies who had brought her into this world. “But as much as I love you both, I really wanted to be sure this was real before I said anything to you.”

“How can you not be sure?” Windy complained. “You just pee on the stick!”

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes at her mother. There were two really big reasons: Not being ready to deal with her parents, and early term miscarriages. Or worse, both. “Remember Rarity?”

Rarity had had a miscarriage the same day she told her own parents about her foal. It would have killed Windy if the same had happened to Rainbow.

Windy released Rainbow and pushed herself up to her hooves. “Yes,” she said, soberly. “Yes, I do. I’m sorry, sweetie, I just… I hoped you would trust us more than that.”

“I do trust you, mom.” Mostly.

Bow Hothoof stood up from the dining room table. “Well, that’s incredible, Rainbow,” he said, stepping over to help her stand up. “Five months along already… wow. Do you know if it’s a colt or a filly? A pegasus, or something else?”

Rainbow nodded and sat back in her seat again. “It’s a pegasus filly.”

“And who’s the lucky stallion?” he continued. “Why haven’t we met him yet?”

Windy’s hoof shot to her mouth. “You aren’t just sleeping around, are you?” she gasped.

Rainbow chuckled softly to herself. “No, no, nothing like that,” she replied, shaking her head. “His name is Bay Singer and he’s really sweet. And you guys already kinda know of him. We got together because you made me talk to him, after all.”

“We did?” Bow asked, confused.

“I don’t remember introducing you to any stallions,” Windy agreed.

“Remember last year, at my retirement celebration? At the reception, there was a lonely stallion in the back corner.”

Windy looked across the table at Bow and then back to Rainbow. “Didn’t he hate you? He made a pretty big show of that.”

Rainbow shook her head. “Mhm. He did at first. But it was just misplaced anger. And now he knows just how awesome I am.”

“Awesome in bed, too, right?” Bow joked. Rainbow caught her mother’s death glare and nearly burst out laughing. “What?” he said defensively. “You can’t tell me that he knocked up my little girl because she’s a bad lay.”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business, dad,” Rainbow replied, still repressing her mirth. “But yes, I’m awesome at everything. I can’t believe you even had to ask.”

“So, when are you going to properly introduce us to him?” her mom asked.

Rainbow glanced out into the living room. Just outside the bay window she could see a pile of eight boxes was sitting near the front door. Bay’s little house in Ponyville had taken nine boxes to pack away all of Bay’s mother’s things, and Rainbow had followed through on her desire to demolish the place. They’d been living in Rainbow’s Ponyville cloudhouse ever since, but the boxes of stuff had never been taken to her parents’ as planned - until today.

Now Bay was hauling all of the boxes from the Cloudsdale anchor station, one-by-one, to her parents’ house. He had insisted that Rainbow not carry any of them in her condition, and that she should, instead, spend some time with her parents without him before things went crazy.

Her parents hadn’t yet noticed the boxes being left there, nor the pegasus dropping them off. That was to be expected, though. Rainbow was always the center of attention where her parents were concerned.

“He’s on his way here, actually,” Rainbow replied. “In fact, he’s very close to arriving.”

“Oh, I can’t wait to meet him!” Windy chirped. “Oh, oh my stars, we need to have a dinner celebration! My little girl’s having a little girl! Best grandfilly ever!” She darted toward the kitchen.

“He hates bran flakes,” Rainbow Dash called after her. “Just so you know.”

Bow trotted over and held out a hoof to Rainbow. “Here, let me help you.”

“Seriously, dad? I can stand on my own,” she replied. “I’m five months along, not disabled.”

He stepped back, blushing sheepishly. “Sorry, I… I never had to deal with y--” He stopped abruptly and turned away. “I just don’t remember how these things work, y’know?” He ran a hoof through his silvered mane.

“No?” Rainbow replied, confused.

“Yeah, I need to get a drink…” And he quickly disappeared into the kitchen. “It’s a celebration, after all!” he shouted.

Rainbow looked around the room. This was the house she’d been born and raised in, and it was still very much home to her, even if she hadn’t lived here in over two decades.

A glass case in the corner held many of Rainbow’s trophies. A family photo hung on the far wall, with Rainbow herself front and center. The same ‘Best of the Wonderbolts’ poster that had been on Bay’s refrigerator was on the back side of the front door.

Her parents weren’t far off from the strange obsessiveness of Bay’s own mother, they were just more moderated about it. And they at least had the excuse that it was their daughter and not some strange, disconnected pony.

A chill went down Rainbow’s spine and through her wings. The comparisons between Bay’s home and her parents’ home… that made her a little uneasy. Not for herself, but for how Bay might respond when he arrived.

A knocking sounded from the door. “I’ll get it,” Rainbow called out.

The clatter of dropped pans exploded from the kitchen as both of her parents burst into the living room and tried to, very nonchalantly, make themselves comfortable at the table.

Her parents were so weird.

Rainbow opened the door. “Hi, Bay!” she said cheerfully. He immediately scooped her into a hug. “Not here!” she whispered in his ear. “So not cool!”

“Hi, Dashie,” he said affectionately, ignoring her complaints. “How are things going?”

Rainbow pulled away from him and stepped aside, feeling a bit giddy that her parents would finally meet... “Mom, dad, this is the stallion I’m going to marry!”

The sound of silverware clattering against plates bothered Bay Singer a lot. He had lived a simple life and this kind of fancy meal was nothing like he was used to. Whatever happened to just eating with your hooves?

But even more than that, Bay wanted nothing more than to get out of this house. Rainbow’s parents seemed like ‘lite’ versions of his own mother, and watching them interact with each other was... unpleasant.

And while they seemed more like normal ponies when asking him questions directly, the questions they wanted to ask were oftentimes far more personal than he wanted to handle just then.

“So, you’re in the Wonderbolts, now?” Windy asked.

Bay nodded. “Yeah, third wing.” Nowhere close to Rainbow’s level of prestige, but he had time to get there.

“Hm. Well, you’ve got to start somewhere,” Bow said, laughing heartily. Bay wasn’t sure if the laughter was mocking or not, as Bow didn’t seem to take anything seriously. “So, how great is it to get to ogle all those hot mares in the locker room, eh?”

“Geez, Dad, why?!” Rainbow fussed.

“Well, I couldn’t have asked you when you were in the ‘Bolts,” he said defensively. “I mean, why would you have been checking out the mares? Only a stallion can appreciate a question like this.”

Rainbow was glaring at her father. Windy was glaring at her husband. Bow was staring at Bay, waiting patiently for an answer. Bay was not about to give an honest one.

“I don’t ogle the mares,” he lied. “I have Rainbow at home. Why would I need to?”

“Oh, sweetie,” Windy said, turning to him. “I know you’re trying to answer with the ‘right’ answers to impress Rainbow, but you don’t have to lie about it.”

Bay swallowed the lump in his throat. This was nothing like he’d expected this dinner to go.

“Dad,” Rainbow growled, slamming her hooves on the table and taking the pressure off of him with her outburst. “I can’t believe you.”

“What did I do? It was just a question.”

“Yes, but I checked out both the mares and the stallions all the time!” Rainbow turned to Bay, bringing all the pressure right back. “And you! Don’t try and pretend you haven’t been checking out Skylark and Silver. And if you really haven’t been, you need to start, cuz they’re--”

“Wait, wait, no,” Windy interjected. “Tell me more about these stallions. Is Soarin’ as well-hung as they say?”

Everything about this meeting was uncomfortable. Bay just wanted to curl up and die.

Nine boxes were now piled in the living room. Nine boxes that hadn’t yet been opened. Nine boxes that Rainbow Dash really never wanted to see again.

Bay stepped away as he set down the last one.

“So, these are…?” Windy tapped a box with her wing.

“For the museum,” Rainbow said, nodding.

“Oh, sweetie,” Windy cooed, ”We don’t need all of your things for the museum.”

“They’re, uh… not hers,” Bay said awkwardly. “They belonged to my late mother.”

“Oh, Bay…” Windy whispered. “I’m sorry.”

Rainbow looked over at her partner and smiled sadly. This probably was both hard for him and cathartic, all at once.

“Wow, this much?” Bow asked. He turned to Windy. “I… I guess we could add Bay’s stuff to the museum? I mean, if we’re going to immortalize everything about Rainbow’s life -” Rainbow could see Bay visibly growing more tense. “- then I guess it would make sense to have a bunch of stuff for her husband, too.”

She couldn’t let Bay take all of this himself. “Yeah… about that,” she responded, giving a small, fake laugh. “These… uh… these aren’t about Bay, heh.” She opened the nearest box, removing the top newspaper clipping and passing it to her mother. “See, everything here is about me.” She took a photograph and passed it to her father.

And waited. Bow scrutinized the picture. Windy’s eyes darted left and right, reading in silence.

Her father was the first to respond. “I don’t remember this photo at all. You must have been, what, eight years old in this picture…? Wow.”

Another moment of silence.

“This article is really old,” Windy added. “It talks about the time Rainbow and that griffon girl got ejected from the Best Young Fliers competition after starting a fight with a bully picking on Fluttershy.”

Hoops was an asshole. He had it coming. Rainbow smiled slightly at the memory.

“But why?” The article shook in Windy’s hoof as she asked the same question Rainbow had been wondering about for months now. “Rainbow wasn’t even a blip on anypony’s radar back then. Why would your mother have all these things?”

“I don’t know.” Bay shrugged. “We didn’t have a very good relationship. She never paid any attention to me, because she was all-in for Rainbow Dash, all of the time.”

Windy looked over at Bow, a pleading look in her eyes. Bow looked back, his mouth slowly falling open. He looked back at the picture in his hooves, which Rainbow noted were now also shaking.

A deeply unsettling feeling fell over her - this was not like her parents at all. Something was terribly wrong.

“Bay,” Windy said, seemingly having trouble controlling some stormy emotions. “This is very important. I really need to know… what…” She trailed off.

“What?” Bay asked, tilting his head.

“What…” Windy balked again.

“What was your mother’s name?” Bow blurted, finishing Windy’s question.

Bay Singer looked at Rainbow with pleading eyes. Rainbow looked back at him apologetically, concerned for whatever was going on, but uncertain herself.

“Her name was Firefly.”

Windy looked at Bow. Bow looked at Windy.

“I… “ Windy stood up quickly. “I’ll be right back.” She rushed out of the room.

Bow placed his head in his hooves and he let out a heavy sigh before looking up at the ceiling.

“What’s wrong, dad?” Rainbow asked meekly.

“Nothing’s wrong.” he said. “Or maybe everything’s wrong, I don’t know anymore.”

Windy tossed a heavy manila envelope in front of Rainbow with a resounding whap. Bay leaned forward to read the lettering on the front.

The Intertribal Center for Uniting Foals and Adoptive Parents

… An adoption agency? His stomach lurched, a sense of dread washing over him. Rainbow seemed distressed, too.

“...What?” Rainbow said incredulously. She looked up at her mother. “This is real?”

Windy nodded, eyes misting up as she turned away. Bow immediately wrapped her up in his hooves and held her close as she burst into tears.

“Rainbow, your mother…” Bow tried to explain. ”Well… your mother’s, uh… barren. She can’t have foals of her own.”

Rainbow took the envelope into her hooves, opened it, and slid the contents out onto the table. Pictures of her as a tiny filly, wrapping in Bay’s mother’s forelegs, were on several of the pages.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Rainbow demanded. She was shaking in anger, and her rising fury could be heard in her voice. “Why didn’t I know?”

“Because we didn’t ever want you to think… The reasons that we always fawned over you, Rainbow. Even when you didn’t want us to... we always supported you so strongly.” Bow seemed to be lost in his own explanation. “We didn’t ever want you to think... That we didn’t… love you enough.”

A slowly dawning realization came over Bay, and he carefully slid the stacked pages apart, hoping that he wouldn’t find what he thought he would find. And if she truly was adopted, then it had to be here, somewhere...

Another page of legalese slid aside, and there it was.

Name: Rainbow Dash
Birth Mother: Firefly
Birth Father: Rainbow Blaze

Bay stared at the adoption certificate. The mare he was in love with was…

but that wasn’t…

it couldn’t…

Right?

But it all made far too much sense.

The reason for his mother’s own obsession: she loved Rainbow. Or, at least, the phantom of Rainbow that she had built up in her own mind. It didn’t make him feel any better about the way his mother had treated him, but at least it gave a little bit more perspective.

“My mom... Is her mom, too?”

Bow Hothoof turned away without answering, burying his face into Windy’s mane. Windy’s cries grew even louder.

Bay turned to them, stunned. “And you… you’re not her parents? You’re not even her biological dad?” Then he looked down at the small mare shuddering silent cries in his hooves. “And she’s, what, my… sister?”

“Half-sister,” Windy whispered, fighting against her tears. “At the very least.”

“But Blaze was my uncle!” Rainbow said, on the verge of hysterics. “My uncle! Not my dad!” Bay held her tighter, and looked over at Bow askingly.

Bow sighed. “It’s complicated. Rainbow Blaze was my brother. A flight coach for talented young fliers, like Rainbow and, I presume, yourself.” His gaze seemed to grow distant and unfocused.

“Firefly... your mom, I mean. She was one of my brother’s best students, but she was always a little bit… off. Always trying to push boundaries. Incredible talent, and she would do anything to get an edge.”

Bay nodded silently. Maybe that was where Rainbow got her competitive streak.

“In her senior year, she got banned from competing in a major event for using illegal magic. She wanted my brother to bail her out by taking the blame for her performance enhancing spells. Wanted him to lie and said he’d done it without her knowledge so that she could have a chance with the Wonderbolts. She used her body as leverage. And my brother didn’t have the willpower. He caved to her pressure.”

Bay nodded. None of this surprised him. “She was addicted to risky behavior for as long as I can remember. I don’t think she ever found out that I knew she was sleeping around for favors, but… it wasn’t hard to piece together.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.” Bow laughed a little bit. “Anyway, that’s how she got pregnant. She wasn’t mature enough to raise a filly, and Blaze was never married. He couldn’t afford to ruin his career if the truth was out.

“Blaze had plenty of evidence of her cheating in multiple events, and she had plenty of evidence he’d slept with her. They were at a stalemate, and they still didn’t know what to do about the pregnancy. Blaze came to us for help.

“We wanted to raise a child, but couldn’t have any of our own, so we worked out an agreement between all of us. It was pretty simple: She wouldn’t rat on him for taking advantage of her and he wouldn’t rat on her for her blatant cheating, allowing her to possibly pursue a further career once Rainbow was born and she’d worked the weight off.

In theory, nopony would try to screw anypony else’s life over it. Of course, our role in the agreement was that we would take the filly and raise her as if she were our own, and nopony would be the wiser.”

A sob came from Rainbow. Bay squeezed her reassuringly. “Then, Blaze…?” he wondered aloud. “Is he my father, too?”

Bow paused for a few moments, putting a hoof to his chin as he pondered the question. “I can’t really say, but it is possible. I know that Firefly badgered him to try and fight for custody of Rainbow Dash several times, and Blaze wasn’t exactly the best at impulse control.”

Yeah, that was another trait Rainbow had inherited...

“I believe she might have tried to use her body to lure him into an agreement again,” Bow continued. “But only they could have known for certain.”

“And where is Blaze now?”

“Dead,” Rainbow mumbled softly. “From a nasty crash.”

Bow nodded gravely. “And after the accident, we started receiving letters from fake attorneys, threatening us if we didn’t surrender Dash.”

“They didn’t stop,” Windy muttered, still wiping away snot and tears. “We had to have all of our mail forwarded to Bow’s parents, because we didn’t want Rainbow to see any of it.”

“But why?” Dash demanded, somewhere halfway between screaming and crying. “Why did you hide all of this from me?”

Windy recoiled at Rainbow’s outburst. “I’m sorry, sweetie. We should have told you, I know that now. But back then, we just didn’t want you to worry that you might be taken away from us!”

Rainbow wrapped her hooves around herself, curling into a ball.

“It got bad,” Bow continued. “Eventually, she was arrested and jailed for falsely impersonating a lawyer, extortion, and blackmail. She was given a suspended sentence of 20 years, on the condition that she never attempted to contact us or Rainbow Dash ever again. As far as I know, she hasn’t.”

His mother never tried to be a parent, really. She regularly left him home alone, not even telling him where she’d gone. He’d go to school without her prompting, if only because he didn’t want to be at home amongst his mother’s personal hell. After school, he would spend much of his free time simply flying around to kill time.

Even the policemares that escorted his mother home that night were sick of dealing with her, staying only long enough to ensure that she got inside the house. His mom didn’t move from where they’d shoved her, instead she collapsed on the floor and cried inconsolably for over an hour.

‘The police took Rainbow away from me!’ she would wail.

It had been one of the few times in Bay’s life that his mother had paid any attention to him, even if it was only to lament losing Rainbow Dash.

“I remember,” Bay murmured, shaking away the memory. “Her obsession only seemed to get worse from that day forward.”

“Sorry,” Bow replied. “I didn’t mean for it to hurt you, but…”

“I understand,” Bay nodded. “It was for Rainbow. And she’s worth it.”

It was dark outside. Wind howled past the house, rattling the window shutters and creating a bit of a draft that carried the cooler night air into the house. Silver moonlight filtered in through the windows.

The lights were off. The family sat around the living room. Rainbow lounged on the couch, her head resting on the arm of the sofa. Bay sat in a chair next to it, resting his own head softly on Rainbow’s. Windy and Bow sat together in a loveseat on the other side of the room. None of them had yet gone to bed, even though they knew they should.

Rainbow could make out the outlines of the boxes in the dim moonlight, all but one still unopened, still sitting on the floor in front of them.

Nopony spoke. So much had been said already.

Silent, even though there was still so much left to say.

The clock on the wall ticked the minutes away, the solitary sound acting as a quiet metronome that measured out the long hours of night. Rainbow wasn’t sure how long they’d been laying there. It could have been minutes, or hours. It made no difference.

The silence was broken as Bay began humming a tune; a strangely familiar lullaby.

Before she could even ask how Bay knew the tune, her father began to sing along, a rasping baritone that she would recognize anywhere.

Come, my child,
Come with me.
Come and find a world of wonder.

Come, my child,
Come with me.
Come embrace the storm and thunder.

It was the song her father always sang for her when she was feeling down as a filly. Tears filled Rainbow’s eyes as her mother’s beautiful soprano joined in on the chorus.

‘Cause Life’s a storm,
And Life is pain.
But Life’s the spring, the wind, the rain.

For all the seasons
Life ordains
And when the storms leave, sun remains

Bring your storm
Clouds to me
Come, my child,
I’ll stay with thee.

And Bay himself began to sing, a rich baritone that she’d never heard before.

Come, my child,
Come with me,
Even when your life seems colder

Come, my child,
Come with me,
Lay your burdens on my shoulder

Rainbow began to sing as well, her soft alto completing the ensemble. Her heart swelled as she imagined singing it to her own little filly someday.

‘Cause Life’s a storm,
And Life is pain.
But Life’s the spring, the wind, the rain.

For All the seasons
Life ordains
And when the storm leaves, sun remains

Come, my child
Don’t you fear
All the love you need is here

The chorus of voices faded away and a powerful sense of familial togetherness hung in the air. The connection Rainbow shared with her family in that moment was stronger than she’d ever felt.

And in that very moment, Rainbow made a decision.

“I’m pregnant,” Rainbow whispered. “And it’s my brother’s baby…” Her voice carried perfectly in the still air.

Bay laid his head on hers again. “We’ll raise her up right,” he replied. “Like any good parents would.” Rainbow smiled.

“You’re going to destroy your career,” Bow cautioned. “And Rainbow’s reputation will likely go down with it.”

There was a time, perhaps only hours ago, that Rainbow would have cared about such a thing. She had enough money tucked away to live comfortably for the rest of her life if she was careful.

But even if everypony in Equestria thought it was wrong, she didn’t. This was real. This was love.

Nothing would stop her from having this child. Nothing would stop her from raising this child. Nothing would stop her from loving this child. And nothing would stop her from marrying this stallion.

Nothing.