Flight Paths

by cryptix

Rating: everyone
Tags: Slice of Life, Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy
Length: 3119

Fluttershy's finally worked up the courage to be honest with her closest (and only) friend, but he might not be taking it as well as she thought.

Fluttershy's always felt more than a little different from the other foals her age, but it wasn't until recently that she came to terms with one of the reasons why that might be. Her best friend, Jet Stream, has always supported her, despite how different they are...but he's been acting a little weird lately. Fluttershy wants to believe it doesn't have anything to do with her, but she's the only thing that's changed recently. Is she going to have to choose between her true self and her only friend, or is there something else entirely going on?

This story contains transgender themes.

Published 2024-05-17 20:10:01 UTC
Last updated 2024-05-17 20:10:01 UTC

Spreading One's Wings

Ever since Jet Stream first came into Fluttershy’s life, Cloudsdale seems to have gotten a whole lot bigger.

Her life had always been simple. Small. Quiet. Her whole world consisted of her house, her school, flight camp during the summer, the Skygardens where her mother worked, the little cafe that made her favorite strawberry salad, and the distance between each of those places. She was not the sort of foal who was spontaneous--the very word made her chest start to tighten up in panic, and school and flight camp provided far more than her required dose of adventure anyway. Her after-school plans were the same every day: hurry home as fast as possible, head down, praying to merciful Celestia no one would call her name, and retreating to her room for the rest of the day. She talked to her stuffed bunny more than she talked to any of her classmates combined.

Jet Stream seemed to be the opposite of her in every conceivable way. He was the platonic pegasus ideal, and even if his grades in technical subjects faltered, every teacher had to grudgingly admit that in flight classes, he was unparalleled. He knew every secret of Cloudsdale, every back alley shortcut and empty lots where the clouds were deemed too unstable for building structures but just stable enough to support the weight of a few pegasus foals. He was so confident, so self-assured, so unafraid to draw attention--and for some reason, he chose to hang around with Fluttershy.

Fluttershy remembered the first day of flight camp. He was the youngest flier there, small but with so much energy contained in that tiny, aerodynamic body. Hoops and his friends had started following him around, asking him how he’d learned all his tricks and trying to imitate them. He’d basked in the attention at first, joking around with them and doing all of the macho chest-bumping that the other pegasus colts liked, but when they’d started picking on Fluttershy, before she was Fluttershy, laughing and betting she couldn’t even fly the kindergarten course…

Jet Stream had pushed away Dumb-Bell’s offered hoofbump, walked up to her, and asked her what her name was.

Cloud Cover, she’d stuttered, the first words she’d spoken since she’d arrived at camp that morning.

Uh. Didn’t quite catch that, dude.

Cloud Cover, in an annoyed rush, the dude having hit a nerve she couldn’t quite name. The guilt and shame comes almost immediately afterwards when she sees the confused look in Jet Stream’s eyes. I’m sorry, she’d mumbled, loud enough for him to hear this time. Um. Thank you. For…not being mean.

Hey, of course. Do you wanna try one of the easy courses together? I can help you practice.

Hoops and the others had yelled some stuff back at them, like what kind of a colt was Jet Stream really, was he actually blowing them off for the frilly little underwing, they thought he was cool, and the little blue pegasus had just looked back at them and laughed, asking them were they seriously still calling ponies underwings as an insult, did they think they were in Pre-Equestria, and he knew he was cool so who cared what they thought anyway, and then he’d asked Fluttershy if she wanted to see something really cool, and then…

Well, she didn’t remember the trick he’d done, but she knew that that was the day that Jet Stream became her friend, her first real life friend who wasn’t her mom or dad or a stuffed animal or a fictional character, and her world had expanded, just a little, to fit him into it.

It’s expanded a little more every day since.

She doesn’t just go straight home after school or camp. She takes something Jet Stream calls “the scenic route,” right along the edge of Cloudsdale where they can look over the edge of the clouds and see the blanket of hazy green that stretches out below them (well, Jet Stream can look over, Fluttershy always feels a little sick), and sometimes there’s even a little overhang where they can just sit for a while and talk about whatever, about school or cutie marks or the upcoming flight test. One of these little ledges is where they sit today, Fluttershy farther back than Jet.

“You told me earlier you had news about something,” Jet says, looking back at her and rolling a tiny puff of cloud off of the ledge and down into the vastness below.

“Oh. Right.”

She tries to steady her breathing. She shouldn’t be nervous about this. Jet already knows most of it. He was the first pony she talked to about feeling different in more than just the normal way, about feeling like her very body was just completely wrong and getting wronger with every passing day, about how she winced every time she heard her name because it took her a minute to remember they were talking to her, and this news she has should be a good thing…

But still, she hesitates.

“Look, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t wanna,” her friend says, turning away from her to stare back out at the blank, open sky. “I just figured…you seemed excited about it earlier, so…”

“No, it’s--I mean, it’s good news.” It is good news. It’s good news, right? “I just…I just, um, I told my parents. About everything--about being a filly.”

Jet Stream stills. His face is still turned towards the sky, and she can’t see his reaction--not even a twitch in the tail or the ears to indicate anything.

Then the moment passes and he turns to her with a smile. “Hey, that’s great! And--you told them about the name and everything?”

She nods. “They were a little surprised at first, I think, but they were happy for me, and they even started talking about getting me one of the puberty potions that helps your body change the way you want it to when I’m a little older, and, um, I don’t really know if Zephyr understood it all but I think he got the idea. So it…it went well, I think. Better than well. It was just how I wanted it to go.”

She told Jet about her name and her gender before anypony else. It felt like in a way, he came the closest to understanding her that anypony did. Her parents were better at comforting her when she was sad or upset, but they always seemed just the slightest bit cautious around her, nervous that she was growing into somepony they would no longer be able to understand. Even though she and Jet were so different, he’d seen parts of her that nopony else had, and it just felt right that she trusted him with this.

He’d been supportive, of course, calling her Fluttershy right away and using the right pronouns and everything, but something had changed since she’d told him about her feelings. It was subtle, and she wasn’t the best at reading ponies, but it felt like a distance had appeared between them for the first time. He sat a little farther away from her. He wasn’t quite as animated when relating stories. Something had changed when he looked at her, and she didn’t like it.

Some ponies didn’t like when others tried to change who they were born as. It was less frequent than it was a couple centuries ago, when rules were stricter about such things and potions to make the process easier hadn’t been invented yet, but there were always traditionalists who were stuck in their ways. Fluttershy had read about them, and the fear she’d run into ponies like that had nearly stopped her from telling anypony at all what she was feeling, but she didn’t think Jet Stream was like that. He couldn’t be. He stuck up for ponies who were different, and he didn’t care about tradition at all. What had changed between them, then, to make him act so weird all of a sudden?

Even now, his smile is different than it used to be. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes, like he’s putting it on for a picture. “That’s great that it worked out. I mean, your folks are really chill, so of course it did, but I know you were freaked out about it. Though you’re kinda freaked out about everything.”

“I’m not--” but she stops the protest in its tracks, because she is. She knows she is.

He lifts off, hovering just slightly above Fluttershy’s head. “You ready to go home?”

She almost says yes, but something inside her tightens. She hates feeling this way, hates confrontation more than nearly anything in the world, but she hates not knowing why Jet is upset with her just that tiny bit more, and she blurts out, “Are you mad that I’m a filly now?”

He stops. Even his wings stop beating, and he falls to the ground with a tiny puff of cloud around him. “Why would you say that?”

She wants to take it back, wants more than anything to go back ten seconds and just shut up, but she keeps going even as she feels her legs get shaky. “You act…different around me now. It’s just little things, I--I don’t even know how much you know you’re doing it, but it…it feels like you’re closing yourself off, almost. I feel like something changed, and I feel like it happened when I told you about me. And…and if you don’t want to be friends anymore, t--that’s okay--”

It’s not okay, but she doesn’t know what else to say.

“--but I just want to know what’s wrong. Please. I don’t want you to be upset because of me.”

Jet’s eyes go wide and his tail lashes. “No! Look, Shy, it’s not about you at all. It’s me. It’s my problem. It’s--I just--”

He shoots straight upwards, flying a confused, jerky zigzag. When he panics, Jet Stream can’t stay on the ground. When he’d told her about failing their history test a few weeks ago, he was hovering the whole time he was talking. Eventually, he hovers in place, but his wings are still flapping fast, and he almost seems to vibrate. “I don’t--I can’t tell you. It’s stupid, and--and you wouldn’t get it anyway. It’s just…weird, and it’s dumb and I can’t--”

He zips away, almost too fast for Fluttershy to track were it not for the trail he leaves behind. Almost without thinking, she launches herself upwards to follow. She’s nothing like he is in the air--clumsy and awkward and slow--but fueled by worry, she’s able to barely keep pace. It helps that she knows, or at least suspects, where he’s going.

They come to the flight courses, closed for the day, and technically off-limits to students at this hour, but there are no teachers keeping guard. Fluttershy arrives, panting, and collapses to the soft cloud beneath her. Above, a tiny cyan blur zips through the loops of the Black Diamond, the one that’s really only supposed to be run by graduates, but Fluttershy’s seen Jet run it at least twice, and that’s only when she was around to watch. He climbs higher and higher before falling into the nosedive drop, Fluttershy’s stomach plummeting along with him. For a second, it looks like he’ll be able to pull himself back up, clear the next hoop, but he misjudges his speed, the same way he did the last two times she saw him try, and instead plummets down to what is thankfully soft cumulus.

He lies there for a minute, two, panting softly and curled up into a tiny ball. Fluttershy approaches and sits next to him, almost reaching out a hoof but deciding against it. She simply sits, waiting for him to be the one who speaks. She’s not sure what to say.

“I think,” he says, uncharacteristically quiet. “I think I’m--”

He mumbles the rest into cloud, muffling it nearly completely. Fluttershy recognizes the irony in being the one telling him to speak up, but she says, softly, gently as can be, “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

“I think I’m jealous of you,” he says, the words tumbling out nearly on top of each other. “I think…I want what you want. But it doesn’t make sense when I want it.”

“I’m…I’m not sure I understand,” says Fluttershy slowly. Jet Stream is jealous of her? He’s everything she’s not, he’s everything a pegasus should be, he’s good at all the important things that Fluttershy just isn’t built for, and he wants something she has? “What do you want, exactly?”

“I’ve never said it out loud before. I’ve never even said it to myself. I don’t think I knew I could want it, until you…”

He takes a deep breath and meets Fluttershy’s eyes. She’s never seen him so nervous--it’s the first time since she’s met him that he looks his size. “...I want to be a girl. Like you. But…not like you, not really, it’s just, ugh, none of my words sound right!”

Fluttershy knows the feeling of every word coming out wrong, when she can think of them at all, but she doesn’t think that’s the most important thing right now. “Like me but…not like me? I’m--I’m sorry, Jet, I don’t understand--”

“Please don’t call me that,” he says abruptly. “Um. I just…it doesn’t feel right, right now. I d--don’t--I don’t know if it’s right ever but I can’t think about that too much. I just, um--”

His words fail him again. Fluttershy, though unused to taking this role in their relationship, knows what she would need in this situation, and so she waits.

“When I think about being a filly, it feels right. It feels like winning at something I didn’t even know I was competing in. It feels like I’m more me than I was before. It’s just that…I’m not like you, Fluttershy. You like cute things and pink and flowers and sewing and stuff, and it just makes sense for you to be a filly. What if I tell my dad I think I’m not a colt and he thinks I don’t want to play hoofball with him anymore, or what if foals start going easy on me when we play games, or what if colts want to kiss me? Or worse--what if they think I want to kiss them?!?”

Her friend’s face screws up, clearly indicating that this is the worst possible outcome.

“I just wish--I could wake up one morning and be a filly, and it turns out I was a filly the whole time and no one remembers I was ever anything else, and nopony says anything about it ever. But it’s not like that, and it’s all so dumb and complicated, and I’m…I’m…”

The little blue pegasus screws up their face, ears flat against their head. “I’m scared,” they whisper.

Fluttershy scoots a little bit closer. “Um. Is…is it okay if I hug you?”

Her friend says nothing, but opens their hooves in invitation. Fluttershy wraps her own around the smaller pegasus, feeling the warmth of their body and their quickly-beating heart. They lean into it, and Fluttershy hears a tiny sniffle.

They break apart after a few moments, and her friend scrubs furiously at their eyes. “I’m fine,” they say in response to nothing. “It’s fine.”

“You know, you don’t have to like girly stuff to be a girl,” says Fluttershy softly. “Um. Aren’t most of the Wonderbolts mares? And they do all kinds of stunt flying and sports things, right?”

They shuffle awkwardly. “I mean…yeah, I guess, but it’s different for them. If you’re born as a filly, you can do whatever you want and nopony really says anything about it most of the time, but w--why would I choose to be a filly if I’m just gonna do the same stuff I’d do as a colt?”

“Because it makes you happy?”

They stare blankly at her, as if this genuinely had never occurred to them before.

“I mean, you said it yourself,” Fluttershy continues, “you feel…more you when you think about yourself as a filly, right? And that’s what you want to be the most? Isn’t that what’s most important? I mean…if you know you’re cool, then what does it matter what other ponies think they know about you?”

For the first time in weeks, she sees a smile, the real kind, on her friend’s face. The kind she saw when she first met them. “You’re pretty smart about this stuff, Shy.”

“Oh, I--I was just saying what I thought you would say to me when I was anxious about something. It’s not that big of a deal.”

“Well, it was kind of a big deal to me.”

Fluttershy flushes under the praise. “I, um. You don’t have to tell anypony anything yet if you don’t want to, but you said you didn’t want me to call you--that other thing. Is there something you’d like to be called instead?”

The blue pegasus thinks for a moment, head tilted back to look up at the sky again. “I’m not sure yet. I’ll come up with something, but I want it to be cool. Really cool. And maybe something to do with going fast? Jet Stream’s not…I mean, it doesn’t feel like me, but I like the energy behind it. If I come up with something awesome, you’ll be the first to know.”

“I hope so,” says a smiling Fluttershy. “And…I can call you a filly, and she and her, if you’d like. Only around ponies you’re comfortable with, of course.”

Her best friend spreads her wings, eyes shining bright, and gives Fluttershy an enormous grin. “I think I’d like that a lot.”

Author's Note

my first fic on this site since 2017 (said fic now mercifully deleted thank god) and it's trans horses look at that!!!

apologies for the very awkward use of pronouns/descriptors for young dashie near the end but it's kind of difficult to write around a character's name especially in a back-and-forth conversation.

i love both the fluttershy and rainbow trans headcanons (obviously) and find it interesting to think how differently they'd think about such things, being such different characters themselves, and how they might confide in each other. i wish i could say this was a warmup before i launch into some enormous 100k+ word epic featuring all of the unique lore living in my head but man i do not have that kind of free time. i do adore writing these characters, though, so with any luck this won't be the only thing i have to my name on here.