Author's Note

Just a quick warning: the topic of suicide is briefly mentioned in this chapter.

Chapter 33

It took a bit over an hour, but things eventually calmed down enough for Rainbow to fall asleep, once again cuddled up to Tank.

“I feel like I should look into ailments and symptoms curing spell books… or maybe Zecora has some tincture that might help.” Twilight tells Fluttershy as they walk back to the throne room. “I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t scary.” She sighs softly. “I just hope this won’t set us back too much…”

They take to their respective chairs out of habit, talking more freely with the doors closed.

“Rainbow has been through such… um.. ‘episodes’ many times when we were younger. She should be fine once she’s slept it off.” Fluttershy reassures her, though Twilight isn’t sure if the knowledge of that first bit is doing more of the opposite.

“Every time she got very nervous? Before performances and such?” The alicorn asks.

The pegasus nods.

“So that’s why she doesn’t eat on those days.” Twilight concludes. ‘My stomach hurts.’ Why didn’t she just tell me that this is the full extend of her ‘nervous stomach’? She wonders.

Fluttershy grimaces, understanding where Twilight is going with this. “Let’s just say that she knows how to prevent these episodes — for the most part, anyways. Although it’s never happened just because of something she ate, before…” She realises thoughtfully.

“I’m still trying to figure out when exactly she developed the eating disorder, and how it progressed.” Twilight says, looking up at the memory chandelier for a moment.
More importantly though, she’s trying to figure out at what point during their friendship it became utterly obvious, what signs she’d missed and for how long. She still couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d let down her friend. That maybe she could have prevented it.

Fluttershy thinks back to her fillyhood years. “Well, she always had a sort of plan on what she’d eat. You know how other fillies and colts are mostly into sweets and candy and just eat whatever tastes good? Dash was more picky, or at least that’s what the adults always said. A picky eater. She wanted to become an athlete, even before she had her cutie mark. And she knew that athletes were on special diets, although back then she thought that that mostly consisted of carbs.” She can’t help but giggle.

Twilight is honestly surprised to hear that Dash had been aware of diets — a selective way of eating — at such a young age. If she tries to think back to her own self at that age, she definitely hadn’t thought twice about food. Her parents made sure she always ate her vegetables, and that had been it.
The comment about the carbs reminds her of the ‘sandwich’ that is still sitting on the kitchen counter. To be honest, Twilight is mad at its very existence, if only because of what it has put Rainbow through today.

“At what point were you aware that she was restric- I mean, wasn’t eating before performances and competitions?” She asks her pegasus friend.

Fluttershy hums in thought for a moment. “There’s one moment that springs to mind. It was at Flight School, and we had to perform a little flight show at the end of the year. You know, just for the parents. It was so easy that even I got through it without problems, Rainbow would probably laugh at what we had to do back then.
But I still remember that morning. We had our usual classes like always, the show was only in the afternoon. Rainbow wasn’t showing up, so after first period, I went looking for her. She was throwing up in the bathroom, the same way you saw earlier.”

Twilight automatically throws Rainbow’s empty throne a glance. She could still picture her shaking, sweating form draped over the side.

Fluttershy continues. “I offered to get someone to help, but she wasn’t having it. Normally she just doesn’t want to be alone when she gets so sick, but not that morning. She was mad- absolutely furious at herself, for eating breakfast. Kept saying how stupid she was and that she’ll mess up and ruin our performance later, and she’ll be ‘Rainbow Crash’ for the rest of her life.”
She sighs sadly.
“Nothing I said made a difference. I may as well have been talking to a wall. I’d never seen her this closed off and stuck in her own thoughts before, and I didn’t know what to do. We then made it to class, and instead of Rainbow telling our teacher that she’d been ill, she just apologised for being late and we still got told off.”

Twilight knows that her shy friend wouldn’t have spoken up, if they got a scolding for being late. She may have gotten more assertive nowadays, and the alicorn can only imagine how shy the pegasus must have been growing up.

“Then at lunch break, I saw her throw away her food, and when she noticed that I saw what she did, she asked me not to tell anypony about it, and that she knew what she was doing.” Fluttershy finishes, eyes downcast at the memory.

Twilight is momentarily stunned by this information, and her heart aches at the idea of a young Rainbow Dash being so upset at something that wasn’t her fault, and making such a decision.
“Did she make it through the show alright?” She asks almost anxiously.

“Oh yeah, she was great. Absolutely stole the show, even. Not that I minded.” Fluttershy smiles sheepishly, hiding a bit behind her mane. “I didn’t see her afterwards, though. But she was perfectly fine and eating normally again the next time we had school — or, well, what was her normal —, so I never really thought about it anymore.”
Then, a horrible thought occurs.
“Actually… I never saw her eat anything before our flight tests. But I was mostly too busy freaking out about them, myself, to really pay attention…” She admits, ashamed. She looks over at Twilight with distraught eyes, almost begging for forgiveness for letting down their friend. “I’m so sorry, Twilight. We never really talked about it, and if she wasn’t eating, she never told me, probably because she had to help me calm down so often…”

Twilight had thought that getting more hints towards a timeline would help her understand it better, but all it does is make her feel even more distraught at her friend’s silent, hidden, ignored, unseen, decades-long suffering.

She wants to hug Rainbow until all the unspoken hurt, that she seems to be carrying since she was so very young, is gone.

She feels her eyes stinging with unshed tears at the thought that they would probably never separate again if that were possible.

“Twilight..?” Spike asks softly as he enters the study. The alicorn has lost herself in her books once again, but there’s a sad heaviness seemingly hanging above her as she wordlessly writes spells and notes on a list.

At the sound of his voice, she seems to snap into alertness, immediately turning around to him. “What’s wrong? Is she sick again? Because I think I found a spell-”

“Uh, no, she was still asleep when I checked her room on the way here. But, uhm… I think we might have a problem.” He replies, coming to her side and placing the newspaper in front of her on her desk, the column about Rainbow Dash on the front page facing up.

Twilight briefly scans the page, then sighs deeply. “Seriously? They make it sound like she did it on purpose-” She pauses, a horrible suspicion hitting her. “They think she did it on purpose…”

Spike frowns, trying to follow her thought process. “You mean, like, suicide?”

Twilight reads the text again. “-Nearly crashed into the large audience in a very likely fatal manner, had it not been for the Princesses’ combined efforts to break her fall and stop a tragic event from occurring. The exact circumstances are currently unknown, but ponies are wondering if the awe-inducing final part of the show might have been a more planned ‘exit’. Who are these ‘ponies’?! How can they even assume-?!”

“It’s all just speculation, and you know they always have to add more drama in these front page articles.” Spike tries to reason, although he’s just as upset at some rumour-starting pony putting out such nonsense for the whole town to read.

Twilight levitates the newspaper above the trash bin, then casts a spell to ignite it. It bursts into flames immediately, leaving only black ash falling into the bin.

“Uhm, Twi…? What are we going to tell her?” Spike asks.

“Nothing.”

“But-”

Twilight sighs. “She’s not going to leave the castle anytime soon. Everypony will have forgotten all about it in a few days. I’m not going to have her freak out about this nonsense on top of everything else. We need a stable environment until we find ways for Rainbow to handle stress without causing herself harm.”

Spike just stands there for a while, watching the alicorn get back to her spell studies. Eventually he decides that he would check on Dash again, only muttering a quiet, “I just hope you’re right”, to himself.

Meanwhile…

Crowds have always been a struggle for Fluttershy, but this really takes the cake. It was as if all stage lights were pointed directly at herself, only that she’d simply tried to get through town hall and back to her cottage, to see what new trouble Zephyr had managed to stir up while she was with Twilight and Rainbow.

A lot of ponies keep asking her about how Rainbow Dash is doing, but a surprising number is not asking that question in a worried manner, but an angry, sarcastic one. She even overhears some ponies muttering something about ‘the coward hiding away in the castle’.

What in ponies name is going on?

Unfortunately, Fluttershy soon finds the answer to that question. She barely manages to calm down her animals, which are seemingly running amok and knocking down furniture and decorations, all while her good for nothing brother is lounging on her couch.

“Zephyr, why are the animals so upset?” She demands angrily, but instead of him making up some sort of excuse, he shoves a newspaper in her face.

“They threw me out, and still used my photo! Can you bel-lieve it?!” He exclaims haughtily.

Fluttershy only glimpses at the paper for a moment, seeing the photograph and title, and throws her brother a murderous glare. “You took pictures of her?! Why?!”

Zephyr huffs. “You wanted me to get a job, so I did! They told me that they wanted me to take some, and I quote, ‘juicy pictures’, so of course I did the only-”

He never got to finish that sentence.