Newbie Dash (Alternative)

By evening, the stress levels were climbing dangerously high again — for Rainbow, because she’s torn about trying to pull off the Sonic Rainboom tomorrow, and for Twilight because Dash keeps pushing her food around rather than eat any of it.

Earlier, when she’d come to fetch the pegasus for dinner, she had found the room empty and the window open, finding the pony in question flying through the routines right outside the castle.

“Rainbow Dash!” She had bellowed, upset that she was still refusing to rest, and instead kept using up all her energy that her body was struggling to restore.

Immediately, as though it was simply part of the choreography, the Pegasus swooped inside after a series of corkscrews. She’s frustratingly winded, which to Twilight meant that either she’s been at this for a while, or she only started recently and is badly exhausted. Neither option is favourable to the other.

Before Dash could say anything to apologise or defend herself, Twilight snapped, “if you waste all your energy practicing a routine that you already know perfectly, you’ll be too tired at the show tomorrow, and probably mess up then.”

Rainbow winced at the thought. “I can’t help it. I have to make sure I still got it.” She defended when she got her breath back.

Twilight fought back an eye-roll. “Spitfire said it herself: you do! But — whether you realise it or not — you are just over-exercising at this point, and if you don’t allow yourself to recuperate, then…”

“I’ll mess up the show, make a complete fool of myself, get kicked out of the Wonderbolts, and sell hats for the rest of my life?” Dash deadpanned.

“Maybe not quite that dramatic.”

Rainbow sighed. “This is only my second time flying as a Wonderbolt. I just want to make sure I’ll get everything right… I’m sure I’ll feel more confident after a few shows. It just all feels… too new, right now. I guess I haven’t really accepted yet that I’m really a Wonderbolt now. …if that makes any sense.”

“I think I get it. When I first got these,” Twilight opened her wings, “it took me quite a while to get used to them. I often forgot I even had wings, at first. And the whole losing the Golden Oak Library, and moving into this castle-”

Rainbow frowned. “Can you even compare becoming a Princess, to becoming a Wonderbolt? I mean, you earned all of this by completing some ancient, powerful spell, plus saving Equestria multiple times. I just got the next open spot on an already established team.”

“You earned it just as much! You’ve trained for and dreamed of it your whole life!” Twilight tried to reason.

Rainbow stayed silent.

“Why do you keep saying you’d ‘sell hats’ instead, anyway?” Twilight couldn’t help but ask. She could remember the pegasus saying that before, back when they discovered Dash’s incredible ‘cataloging while flying’ abilities.

Dash shrugged. “Applejack once said that I’ll never make it as a Wonderbolt if I keep wasting time napping in her trees, and will just do something ‘normal’, like selling hats for the rest of my life.”

Twilight only stared at her.

Dash waved her off. “Relax, that was back when we were just becoming friends. She was upset that I didn’t offer to help her on the farm. Bucking apples from trees is not exactly my strong suit.” She said, gesturing to her wings and flapping them for emphasis.

Pegasi have different bone structures, so despite having a good amount of muscle mass and being an athlete, Dash struggles just as much as Fluttershy with such physical activities. It’s just downright painful on their hooves. They’re much better at simply picking the apples by hoof, up in the air — not that Applejack could have known that, back then.

Before they all became friends, she’d napped on any stray cloud, far away from other ponies. But when she had this new connection to the others, she just couldn’t stand being alone anymore.

And even if the others never noticed Dash napping somewhere close to them, and Applejack liked to complain about Rainbow being lazy, she still preferred to sleep somewhere close to her friends. Just having the background noises of AJ bucking her trees and maybe talking to Applebloom or Granny Smith, or simply hearing Twilight turning pages in a book that she’s absorbed in, was soothing in a way she’d never known.

It’s one of the reasons why she got so attached to Tank and couldn’t bear to be alone in her home again once winter hit. She’d ended up spending the majority of winter at Twilight’s castle, which is part of the reason why she’s with the alicorn again now. They’re just sort of.. used to living together, and gaining comfort in each other’s company.

“And yet, you’ve remembered that to this day.” Twilight muttered, regarding the not-so-nice comment from a certain farm pony.

Rainbow face-palmed. “Yeah, because I remember that joke every time I see her with that hat of hers. It’s not that deep, Twilight!”

The alicorn sighed. “Fine.” She slammed the window shut with her magic, with more force than necessary, startling Rainbow a little. “Come, it’s time for dinner.”

So now they’re sitting at the table, the sun beginning to set outside, and Twilight questions if they will ever truly get past this disorder as she watches Rainbow repeatedly making to eat, but then backing out again at the last second.

Spike is also watching the pegasus, throwing Twilight more and more concerned glances, unsure what to do.

Twilight had already known that it wouldn’t be easy to get Dash to eat anything so close to the show, but it’s even more important right now that she re-fuels. She mentally goes through the book and her own notes again, trying to find a strategy, but comes up empty for a long time.

Eventually, Spike couldn’t take it anymore. “Come on! It’s gonna grow cold by the time you even start!” He exclaims, not angrily but thoroughly scared to see his friend back to this.

“Spike!” Twilight hisses at him. “That’s not helpful! The book said-”

“I don’t care what your books say! She’s not some book in your library, Twilight!” He snaps, surprising everyone.

“I never said-”

“So treat her like a person! No amount of books and pages will get you guys anywhere, if you don’t start treating her like your friend, and not some textbook case you have to study for a test!”

“Well I’m sorry if me trying to be prepared is so-”

“STOOOP!!!” Rainbow suddenly shouts, hovering in the air above the table. “BOTH OF YOU!! The last thing I want is for my friends to start arguing, because of me.” She declares and flies off, only leaving a quickly vaporising rainbow trail behind.

Twilight buries her head in her crossed forelegs on the table.

“Sorry…” Spike apologises quietly.

The alicorn lifts her head just enough to look at him. “No. You’re right. I keep doing everything my books say, but we’re getting nowhere. But the problem is… I don’t know what else to do. Before Rainbow got sick, I never even knew that eating disorders existed…! Nothing was relevant to me unless it had to do with my spell studies.” She says softly.

They both look over at the untouched meal on the other side of the table.

“And now I’m pretty sure we just blew the smallest chance of her eating anything before the show.” She remarks with a heavy sigh. Then she gets up. “I better go and make sure she’s not practicing again.” She halts after a few steps, addressing her assistant. “Leave everything the way it is. Maybe I can get her to try again. I can always warm it up with a spell.”

Spike just nods guiltily as he watches her go.

Twilight curses when she enters the once again empty room, the window wide open. But when she flies out to investigate, she finds the pegasus lying curled up on a dark cloud in the purple-ish sky. Nothing new there.

She flies up to her. “Please come back inside. We didn’t mean to upset you.”
She’s ignored, so Twilight continues. “It’s just that I don’t really know how to help you. I thought that if I just stuck to everything my books said, that I was doing the best I could. I didn’t stop to think if there are things that you would prefer to be different.”

Rainbow finally looks at her. “What are you talking about?”

“Like, for example: my book said that enforcing structure is key to getting used to eating regularly. But I realised a while ago that forcing you to eat at a strictly set time-schedule wasn’t working and only put more pressure on you.
Maybe some of the to-do things in the list don’t work on every pony, but I never asked you if you felt like some of those things were making you worse.” Twilight explains.
“It’s like Spike said… I only focused on what my books said, without taking into consideration that you might not work by the same rules.”

“But.. you have helped, a lot.” Rainbow replies, confused.

Twilight gets the slightest smile at that. “I’m glad to hear that.”

“I just hate it when any of us argue. Especially if it’s because of me…” Rainbow mumbles, looking downwards.

Her smile now upside down, Twilight sighs softly. “I’m sorry. We’re just worried about you. About this whole situation.”

Dash squeezes her eyes shut. “I wish you didn’t have to. I wish this whole thing would just go away.”

Twilight makes to say something, but Dash beats her to it.

“I know that it’s probably not ever fully going to go away, but I just want to be able to focus on something else again.”

“What do you mean?” Twilight asks.

“Like… I can’t remember the last time I pranked any pony with Pinkie Pie, I just have no ideas for any new pranks. And I miss Tank, but I never even asked Fluttershy how he’s been doing. Or how any of our friends are doing, in general…” She lists off, wiping a tear away from her eye. “Everything’s just… sort of faded into the background.”

Twilight nods in understanding. “That’s because the disorder creates this kind of tunnel vision. As a coping mechanism, it takes away your other fears and negative feelings and thoughts, by overshadowing them with these obsessions with perfectionism and control.” She explains, then becomes subdued.
“But it also takes away the good things, it takes the joy out of everything and removes the importance of anything besides that same control and perfectionism.”

Rainbow considers that, and finds that that describes it perfectly. “And I hate it.” She remarks.

“See it this way: every time you fight the voice and eat, you’re choosing recovery over illness. It’s always a step toward beating it.” Twilight says, hoping to get her friend out of this hopeless funk.

Rainbow stays silent for a while, not looking anywhere near the alicorn. Twilight wonders if the voice is telling her something, then Dash suddenly asks, “how would you feel if, every single day, you have to decide again and again to fight something inside you that tells you that you’re a failure if you go against its commands, to ‘choose to recover’? When the only alternative feels more safe, but will kill you in the end.”

The Princess of Friendship is stumped. She is finally granted eye contact, but it’s more of a challenging glare, and at the same time, filled with the desperate need to be understood.

They remain in an awkward silence, neither really knowing what to say. Eventually, Twilight sighs and just joins her on the cloud, Dash sitting up and giving her enough space to not fall off. To her surprise, the alicorn wraps her into a hug with her large wing draped over the — once again chilled — pegasus.

“I may not be able to know what you’re going through, but I understand that it’s not easy. Rainbow, you don’t have to fight this alone. Even when it all feels hopeless, you still have all of us. We always find a way to get through whatever evil throws at us.”

“But that’s when we’re all fighting some evil king or…” she shakes her head with a groan, “you get the idea. How can we fight something that’s in here?” Dash asks, pointing to her head. “It’s not like we can just grab the elements and shoot rainbow lasers at me.” She pauses. “…we can’t, right?”

Twilight smiles ruefully with a playful eye-roll. Leave it to Rainbow Dash to think about shooting rainbow lasers when they’re talking about something so serious.

“Maybe not.” She replies, then her eyes go wide with a grin. “But you’ve given me an idea.” She goes airborne again, making to fly inside, then backtracks and comes to her side again, giving the pegasus a pointed look.

Rainbow rolls her eyes but flies with her back inside, and to her surprise, down the hall into the throne room rather than the kitchen, where Twilight starts looking at the memory crystals.

“Um, Twilight? What are we doing here?”

Twilight keeps searching for a moment longer, then remembers something. “Oh! You were flying when you guys hung this up, right?” She guesses.

“Well- yeah. Why?”

“Do you remember which of these has the memory of you winning that young fliers competition in Cloudsdale?” The alicorn asks excitedly.

Rainbow frowns, but comes to the right hand side. “I think it was a purple one somewhere here…” She looks at a few of the crystals, quickly finding the one in question. “Found it.” She announces, pointing at it.

Twilight takes it down with her magical aura, lands, and casts a spell that turns it into a full necklace with the crystal on the front. Then she places it around Rainbow’s neck.

The pegasus inspects it curiously, looking at the frozen, captured moment of herself wearing the winged, golden crown, surrounded by her friends. It had been one of the happiest moments of her life.

“You were so nervous and filled with doubt, making mistakes in your routine, but then you saved Rarity and the Wonderbolts and pulled off a Sonic Rainboom in the process. We were there to cheer you on, but you did all that by yourself.” Twilight explains with a smile. “I know you probably can’t wear it during the shows, but I thought you could use a little reminder that you’re far more capable than you give yourself credit for, right now.”

Rainbow slowly lowers herself to the floor, unable to grasp a thought. “I.. I don’t know what to say…” She says softly, lifting the gem with a hoof to look down at it, as if mesmerised. She looks up at Twilight, feeling tears welling up in her eyes again. “Thank you.”