Rainbow was less than happy to be woken up the next morning, even with Twilight allowing her to sleep in a bit. She still felt absolutely drained, and after that nightmare she hadn’t been able to fall back asleep for a good hour, until the fatigue must have claimed her again. Princess Luna must have prevented any further dreams, as she couldn’t recall dreaming anything else.

Twilight has stopped waking her up with breakfast in bed. It was no longer her first priority to get the first meal into the pegasus as quickly as possible, since that tended to sour the mood for most of the day. She only brings her the pills and water, which (almost) always go down without a fight.

“How can I still be so tired?!” Dash complains when she can barely open her eyes, much less keep them from closing on their own accord every two seconds.

“It’s not too surprising, after everything that happened.” Twilight says. “But are you feeling any better than yesterday? Should we cancel?”

“Cancel what?” Rainbow asks confused, her brain still feeling fuzzy.

“Your parents are coming over, later.” Twilight reminds her, not at all surprised that Dash’s brain is apparently still booting up.

The pegasus sighs. “Right…”

Twilight doesn’t like her reaction. “We don’t have to do this today. I can-”

“No.” Rainbow interrupts, finally sitting up in bed, the blanket covering her is holding on to her shoulders. Even just exposing herself this tiny bit to the — to her — cold air in the rest of the castle, leaves her shivering.
“I’ve been avoiding this my entire life. And I know it sounds stupid, but I feel like they don’t actually know me; only their own version of me… I don’t want that, anymore.”

Twilight is momentarily stunned by this very logical, and very true, conclusion. In fact, Rainbow has just managed to summarise two fully written pieces of Twilight’s parchments in one very simplified sentence. “That’s not stupid at all. I’d say you’ve hit the nail on the head perfectly, and they really need to hear that.”

“Sometimes I wish they were more like you.” Rainbow mutters, pulling the blanket closed around herself. “Or, basically anyone else, really.” She sighs. “They’re so obsessed with telling me how great I am, that it’s like I’m talking to a wall. I mean, I practically told them that I’m sick of them, and they were still giving positive feedback!” She throws Twilight a pleading look. “What if this talk will be the same way? Like always.”

“We can’t control other ponies’ reactions. But if we never try, then we’ll never know.” Twilight tells her honestly.

A bit later, while Twilight is busy preparing everything, Fluttershy peeks her head into the throne room.

“Oh, uh, sorry, am I interrupting?”

“Not at all, come in!” Twilight greets her happily. “Glad you could make it.”

When the yellow pegasus opens the door to enter, a certain tortoise flies past over her head thanks to his magical propeller.

“Hello, Tank.” Twilight says with a smile, watching him circle around her. “I know somepony who’ll be very happy to see you.”

“How is she?” Fluttershy asks in concern, not seeing her colourful pegasus friend anywhere.

“Honestly, not too great. But she wants to do this.” Twilight replies. “It’s important to her that we at least try, although she’s probably fallen asleep again.”

Fluttershy doesn’t look convinced that this is the best timing, but she also knows that Rainbow has been avoiding this for much too long.

“Let’s see if we can get her out of bed.” Twilight announces and leads the way. She knocks on the door, then opens it. “Rainbow, Fluttershy is here.”

As expected, the pegasus was back in bed, curled up under her blanket. Only, when she sits up, the others see that she’s wearing one of the outfits Rarity had made for her to keep her warm.

“Hello, Rainbow Dash. How are you feeling today?” The yellow pegasus asks as she comes inside.

Rainbow shrugs noncommittally. She looks exhausted and worn out, and Fluttershy figures that it’s barely scratching the surface of how she must be feeling.

“I brought someone, who I think can cheer you up a bit.” She informs Dash, and as if on cue, Tank bumps into the open door before he manages to steer straight to his owner.

“Tank!” Rainbow exclaims happily when said tortoise comes flying straight into her arms, almost throwing them both off the bed in the process, and hugs him as tightly as his shell allowed.

“I figured you’d want to spend some time with him, before winter and all.” Fluttershy says, avoiding using the word ‘hibernate’. Dash already knows what she means, anyways. There’s no need to sour the mood any more for today by mentioning that she’s about to be pet-less until spring once again.

And besides that, thanks to Zephyr, Fluttershy has to keep all her animals safe, and the less critters she has in her home right now, the better — for all their sakes.
So far, her brother has managed to get kicked out of any and every job he’s managed to get, much to her dismay.

“Are you still cold?” Twilight asks, eyeing the clothes. “I can tell Spike to get the fireplace going-”

“No. I’m fine.” Rainbow interrupts pointedly. She releases the reptile and jumps off the bed, stumbling for a moment when she gets dizzy. By this point, they’re all used to it happening, and simply wait a moment for her to get her bearings, but remain on high alert in case she passes out.

“Are you sure?” Twilight asks. Now that there was no longer a blanket covering the pegasus’ wings, she notices that Dash has once again removed the bandages from her wing, though it’s unclear if that is because she just got annoyed with them, or if she’s trying to appear perfectly fine in front of others.

“I’m sure.” Rainbow replies pointedly. The truth is that her current inability to stay warm is only one of the reasons for her choice in covering up. The more important reason is that, probably thanks to Zeph’s comments the day before and her still feeling like her body is retaining some amount of water weight, today is a very bad 'body image' day.
She couldn’t handle the sight of any part of her body today, because her mind is making it a mission to completely distort every small glance to a ridiculous degree. Even just looking down at her bare hooves had resulted in her almost throwing the pills back up, so she is more than thankful that the clothes Rarity had made for her, almost exclusively had long sleeves on the front.

She felt warm enough to be comfortable moving around instead of shivering under a blanket, and if Twilight heats up the place, she might be forced to remove the one thing that is keeping her remotely sane, for the time being.

Twilight allows Spike to come into the pegasus’ bedroom, before closing the door. “Alright. There’s something I want to discuss with you guys, before Rainbow’s parents get here.” She says before turning to Dash. “If at any point you start to feel unwell, or a topic comes up that you want to avoid, we’ll need a code, or a signal, so we’ll know if we have to intervene, or call it short. But I know that you don’t like to admit to being uncomfortable,” she says knowingly, then turns to Spike and Fluttershy. “So that goes for you, too. If Rainbow doesn’t speak up, but you think that she should, I’ll need you to let me know.”

Rainbow frowns, deciding to ignore that last bit. “How will you ‘intervene’ and call it off?”

Twilight smiles slyly, waving her off. “Easy. I’m the Princess of Friendship, remember? I can always just say that there’s some problem I have to deal with, or that I forgot about a meeting we have to get to.”

“Or that there’s some evil Queen attacking Ponyville.” Spike chimes in.

“Eeeh, let’s just stick to small, white lies.” Twilight says sheepishly, then turns back to the pegasi. “So, any ideas on a code word or signal?”

“No words.” Rainbow decides. “If we choose something too common, we might say it by accident, and if it’s too outlandish, they’ll know it’s a code for something.”

“…okay, fair point.”

Fluttershy unfolds her wings. “What if we just do this?” She asks, closing and opening her wings to show what she means.

All eyes turn to Rainbow, who grimaces when she tries to open her sore, right wing along with the other.

“Maybe just the left wing?” Twilight suggests while doing so.

“Yeah, because that will totally not look suspicious.” Rainbow grumbles, opening only her left wing as well, to show how ridiculous it looks.

“You could make it look like you’re just stretching.” Fluttershy says, opening her wing with a motion like she’s just trying to inconspicuously stretch the muscles for a moment.

Rainbow snorts. “You’ve seen me stretch.” She says, before proceeding to do a few full body stretches (minus the wing, of course), which causes approximately half of her joints to pop, crack and snap, making the others cringe. “Aaah, that actually feels so much better… what?” She asks when she sees the disturbed faces of her friends. Even Tank is looking at her with his big, beady eyes.

They are interrupted by knocking on the front doors and cheerful calls of ‘hello’s and ‘we’re here’.

“Aaand of course they’re here early...” Rainbow grumbles. “It’s like they still can’t wait around whenever they get to see me. The perks of being an only-child, I guess.” She sighs.

“Trust me… having siblings that only make everyone around them miserable, isn’t much better.” Fluttershy replies, and the pegasi share rueful smiles.

They all go to the entrance to greet their guests, with Twilight once again trying to make a formal greeting and being quickly interrupted by an overly excited Windy Whistles. That is, until she gets sight of her daughter, and all but pounces on her.

“Dashiiieee! Ooh, look at you all dressed up! Aren’t you just the most adorable little-”
“Mooooom!” Rainbow pushes her mother away before she could squish her cheeks, which were now burning with embarrassment.

“And who is this little fella?” Her father asks in a much calmer manner, pointing to Tank.

“That’s Tank. He’s my buddy.” Rainbow introduces proudly, and they briefly nuzzle, which brings back a smile on her face. She pointedly ignores the ‘aww’es at their display of affection.

Then the parents notice Spike, and for a moment, all attention is on him. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Windy Whistles, and this is my husband, Bow Hothoof. We’re Rainbow Dash’s parents.”

They shake hands. “Pleasure to meet you. I’m Spike, Twilight’s personal assistant.” He introduces himself.

“I didn’t know dragons live with ponies.” Windy remarks curiously.

“They don’t usually. Spike is just very special.” Twilight says with a smile, causing him to grin. “Why don’t we all go inside? I haven’t had the chance to make tea yet, any preferences?” She asks conversationally, and they all make their way into the throne room.

“Oh, whatever you want, dear. We’re not picky.” Windy replies sweetly.

“This place is amazing!” Bow exclaims when they see it for the first time.

Spike offers to go take care of the tea, while the ponies get settled in.

Twilight, Rainbow and Fluttershy go to sit on their own designated cutie mark thrones, mostly out of habit. Tank joins Rainbow on hers, since there’s more than enough space for the two of them, and they both crave the closeness of each other.

“We brought you something!” Windy tells Rainbow excitedly, taking out a ginormous stack of sourdough bread, filled with pasta and potato, from a big brown lunch bag. “We know how much you love to carbo-load! They probably didn’t offer you much at the hospital.”

Her brain too busy trying to think of an excuse as to why she couldn’t possibly eat this right now (apart from the truth, of course), Dash just stares in absolute horror at what was once her favourite meal.

How ironic, the fact that she used to absolutely love carbs, and now she wishes more than anything that they got banned in all of Equestria.

Twilight tries to intervene, but Windy pushes the abomination right in front of Rainbow, urging her on. And to the friends’ surprise, she actually takes a (very hesitant) small bite, and doesn’t spit it back out, although it quickly becomes obvious to the alicorn that Rainbow was unlikely able to actually swallow it.

Then, right on time, Spike enters the room with a steaming teapot. Trying to be subtle, Twilight just fills everyone a cup, using a cooling spell on Rainbow’s so she wouldn’t burn herself. Dash takes the hint and uses the liquid to help her force down the food, so Twilight casually refills her cup again.

It reminds the alicorn that they really needed to work on the so called ‘fear foods’, to widen the variety of foods that Rainbow could handle eating. They still have a lot of work to do…

The parents remain completely oblivious to the utter chaos they have just caused, because now Rainbow has to simultaneously battle the torturing thoughts, control the nauseating urges to throw up, and yet somehow stay in the present and focus on the very stressful conversation they’re about to have.

The only thing keeping her somewhat grounded is Tank’s presence and the knowledge that her body is covered up.

Twilight teleports the tall sandwich over onto the kitchen counter, out of sight. “Let’s save this up for later, and get this meet-up started, shall we?” She asks kindly.

Rainbow takes the lead from there. “Mom, dad, first I want to apologise for the way I was acting. You were only trying to be supportive, so there was no need for me to yell at you. Nothing can excuse the way I treated you, and for that I am sorry.”

Her parents share a brief look, before smiling at their daughter. “Aww, you don’t have to apologise.” Windy waves her off.

Dash frowns. “Yes, I do. Because it wasn’t right, or fair, or respectful in any way, and you have every right to be mad at me.”

“We could never be mad at you!” Bow defends.

“We just love you soooo much!” Windy adds.

Twilight pointedly clears her throat. “Loving somepony doesn’t exclude feeling angry at something they do or say.” She lectures in a lighthearted manner.

“Oh yeah.” Spike agrees, throwing his big sister a knowing look. She smiles back apologetically.

“I want you to get to know me.” Rainbow tells her parents seriously.

She doesn’t quite get the reaction she’d expected.

Her parents start laughing, as if Dash just told them the funniest joke ever. “Oh, Dashie, of course we know you! You’re our daughter, honey.”

“Your daughter, who you didn’t even come see at the hospital.” Dash deadpans. She is admittedly a bit peeved that they hadn’t even bothered to come see her, especially after she learned just how close of a call it had been.

Windy waves her off. “When they said that they were taking you to the hospital, we knew you weren’t going to stay there for long.”

“And we were right, because we know our little Dashie.” Bow finishes proudly.

“Wha- bu- nnnhhhh-!” Rainbow stammers. “Fine, you knew that I would escape. But do you know why? Because I am not perfect.”

“Oh, don’t say that-” Windy argues, saddened that her daughter would say that about herself.

“I am not perfect! I make mistakes! Lots of them, even! Because everypony makes mistakes! I am not special!” Rainbow almost yells. “And that is fine!”

The room is filled with a stunned silence while Rainbow takes some deep breaths to calm down again.

“You raised me in a way that made me think that everything I do, no matter how small and insignificant, or even wrong, was the greatest thing ever. But that’s not how the world works! And I had to learn that the hard way, when I was at Flight Camp, because I utterly sucked at flying, and when I made mistake after mistake, and every time I crashed, there was no applause. There was laughter.” Rainbow recounts.
“I became the biggest laughingstock in Cloudsdale, and every time I placed last in a race, and you guys cheered louder than the parents of the first place winner, it just made everything ten times worse!”

Her friends are shocked, to say the least. Especially Twilight and Spike, who hadn’t been with Rainbow growing up like Fluttershy, could hardly believe their ears.

“We just thought… if you knew how great we thought you were, that nothing could ever bring you down.” Bow offers softly.

“I thought that our love would be enough.” Windy admits tearfully.

“Sorry to disappoint you.” Rainbow mumbles, looking down at Tank. She sighs. “My own friends had to teach me, repeatedly, that I was no better than anypony else, and that it’s okay to make mistakes. I still feel like I always have to prove myself, and that insecurity nearly cost my life, yesterday.”
She looks up at her parents, who were both tearing up and looking utterly distraught. “You never truly knew me, because I wouldn’t let you. Because you were only ever praising everything I did, so I always wanted to give you a reason to be proud of me, and I didn’t want to ever disappoint you…”

Windy sniffles, wiping away a tear. “Oh honey…”

Before they could completely burst into tears at her words (again), Rainbow smiles at them. “But… I have come a long way, you’re still my parents, I love you both very much, and I wouldn’t be where I am today, if it weren’t for you.”

She finds her friends nodding in agreement, and her parents were now spilling happy tears.

“I will forgive your mistakes, if you’ll forgive mine?” Rainbow offers sheepishly.

Her parents couldn’t take it anymore. They fly over to her and hug her from both sides.

Once the tension of the more serious conversation ebbed away, Twilight found herself just talking about Rainbow’s early years in life with her parents, and Rainbow was fighting a losing battle with her mind and stomach. She keeps carefully sipping her tea, in the vain hope that it would help.

Neither the tea, nor Tank (now fast asleep) were enough to keep the anxiety at bay. Rainbow just couldn’t believe she used to eat those carb bombs — sometimes every day. The thoughts were becoming more aggressive, invoking the fear that she was gaining weight for every second that the one bite remained in her stomach, which the organ was struggling a lot to try to digest.

She has long stopped listening to what the others were talking about, too busy freaking out and trying to stay seated and not run off to the bathroom. The panic was making her stomach hurt again, and she was starting to sweat and tremble from the effort it took to appear perfectly fine on the outside, whilst her mind and organs tore her apart on the inside.

Oh no. Fluttershy thinks, taking in the look of distress, the tightly clenched jaws, and the sweat trailing down her face. I know that look…
She unfolds her left wing without hesitation, her full attention now on her very unwell friend.

Spike sees the signal and pokes Twilight with a claw, who was so caught up in the conversation that she hadn’t noticed yet. He jerks his head in Fluttershy’s direction, and upon realisation, Twilight awkwardly starts with “oh, look at the time!” and makes up an excuse of falling behind on her royal duties.

Thankfully, Rainbow’s parents don’t question it and allow Spike to see them out.

“What’s wrong?” Twilight asks the second they’re alone, and both her and Fluttershy surround the cyan pegasus, who is now leaning on one of the arm rests with her front, as though she’d wanted to get up but gave up halfway through.

“We may need a bucket.” Fluttershy states worriedly, gently stroking the rainbow mane in what she hopes was comforting to Rainbow.

“What?” Twilight asks confused, but teleports an empty cleaning bucket to them.

Dash sees the new item and groans, screwing her eyes shut. She was obviously feeling unwell, and very probably in pain, from what Twilight could tell.

Fluttershy looks over to the alicorn, who is watching them with a concerned and lost expression. “It happened at Flight Camp. I wasn’t there when it happened, but the short version is that the bullies had dared Rainbow Dash to drink a jar filled with a rainbow.”

“They stole an empty jar from the canteen and filled it up from one of the rainbow waterfalls.” Rainbow elaborates.

“And you drank it?” Twilight asks dumbfounded, remembering Pinkie’s reaction to just taking a lick.

Dash nods with a wince. “The whole thing.” Somehow she manages to sound both proud and thoroughly ashamed at the same time.

“Rainbows are made from a lot of chemicals. You know, to make the colours vibrant and so they don’t just mix together into a brown mess. They’re just made for decorative purposes, and definitely not made for consumption.” Fluttershy says sternly, but doesn’t stop trying to comfort her. Rainbow only groans, visibly trembling in another wave of pain.
“So to keep young pegasus foals from eating them, they have to add very sharp spices, as Pinkie Pie found out when we were all in Cloudsdale.”

“Worst pain of my life.” Rainbow laments. She tries to take deep breaths as her heart races from the stress.

“It was awful.” Fluttershy agrees, turning back to Twilight. “I only met Rainbow afterwards, when she was trying to pretend that nothing was wrong... Until she couldn’t.” She looks down at the bucket. “She kept throwing up all day, couldn’t keep anything down. It was horrible.”

Rainbow still remembers that fateful day as though it just happened yesterday. The feeling of her throat and stomach being burned alive, and then the near constant vomiting that only made the pain ten times worse (but gave her the beginnings of some sweet abs).

Her horrible decision also had some lasting effects: her vocal cords never fully recovered from it, leaving her once clear voice the scratchy, cracking mess that everyone knows, and her stomach remains sensitive and prone to throwing up, to this day.

“Dumbest thing I’ve ever done.” Rainbow declares. Then she sees Twilight’s eyes narrowing and corrects, “okay, second dumbest thing I have ever done.”

“I tried to make her see the nurse, but she wasn’t having it.” Fluttershy grumbles. She had been the only one who had tried to help, spending the majority of that day with Dash in the bathroom, trying to comfort the younger filly and get her hydrated, but repeatedly failing to do so.
She hadn’t known what else to do, and simply couldn’t bring herself to leave Rainbow by herself for however long it would have taken to tell a teacher or find the nurse. Young and naive, she had honestly thought that Rainbow would die if she left the room.

By the end of the day, Dash had become scared that she might die because of this. She had been dehydrated and in horrible pain, and just when she caught sight of the Camp’s nurse and made to go to her, her parents had arrived, eliminating her chance then and there.
Fluttershy told them that Rainbow drank from a rainbow because of a dare, when they questioned why she sounded so hoarse. But instead of being concerned by it, they happily declared her “the toughest, most daring pony”, and the young, suffering Rainbow Dash decided in that moment that she couldn’t disappoint her parents by informing them of how she truly felt. She had to live up to their expectations of her.

Twilight sighs. “It’s truly a miracle that you’re still alive.”

“Sorry…” Dash genuinely apologises, then suddenly grimaces and grabs hold of the bucket. Not a second later, she was painfully throwing up what little she’d ingested from the carb sandwich.

Author's Note

Don’t ask me how in the world I come up with these backstory headcanons. I literally got the rainbow 🌈 idea whilst taking a bath 😅

And thanks so much for over 500 hits
I didn’t expect so many people to still be active on here, much less be interested in such a topic!