Like Gravity

Rainbow Dash nudged the door open with her shoulder and entered the locker room, squinting through the collected steam and trying not to lose the towel she had balanced behind her neck.  She’d thought she heard voices when she flew up to the front of the building, and sure enough, the rest of her academy squad was already inside, thoroughly engrossed in various acts of incomprehensible femininity.  Raindrops was tugging at her mane with a hairbrush by the sink, Sunny Day stood by her side in a fluffy pink bathrobe just a shade darker than her coat, and judging by the wide variety of mane care products lined up outside the shower, the thick fog choking the air could probably be blamed on Cloudchaser.  Rolling her eyes at the sight, Rainbow Dash headed for the last free sink in the row and hoped she’d slip by unnoticed.  Chatterboxes, she could deal with.  Makeovers and manestyling?  Not so much.

“So yeah, usually I don’t even have to do anything.  It just stays straight kinda by itself,” Sunny said, dabbing at her fringe with her hooves before turning to grin at the bathroom’s newest occupant.  “Hey, Rainbow Dash!”

Rainbow gave a half-hearted wave and let the conversation carry on without her.  Her mane didn’t look any different than usual: thin, loose, and uncomplicated, just the way she liked it.  Besides, what would be the point of fixing it if they were all about to hit the sack anyway?  She was just here for a quick mint leaf and a jump in the shower.  The rest of them could spend all night here if they wanted; she, on the other hand, planned on getting plenty of rest so she could be the first one out on the runway tomorrow morning.  Not to mention, her wing still ached from when she’d smacked it in that canyon during the exercise that afternoon.

        “You’re so—ow!—lucky, Sunny,” Raindrops bemoaned, wincing as the brush caught on a knot between her ears.  “Stars, I’d pull night shifts for a month if I could just—ooh...”

        “Here, lemme help you with that,” Sunny offered, grabbing the brush out Raindrops’ hooves with her teeth and gently guiding it the rest of the way down the other pony’s neck.  A relieved grin lit up Raindrops’ face, and she graciously offered her thanks.

        “It just gets so tangled every time I fly faster than normal,” she explained.  “I don’t know, I guess I’m just not used to practicing this long.”

        Out of the corner of her eye, Rainbow saw Sunny nod sympathetically.  “Yeah, you said you were a mailpony, right?”

        “Born and raised.  ‘Member that big magic blackout in ‘49?”

        “Uh... no.”

        “I’m pretty sure we weren’t alive in ‘49,” a voice from behind the curtain remarked.  Yep, definitely Cloudchaser.

        “I know that,” Raindrops argued back.  “I mean you know what it was, right?”

        The brush paused in midair.  “Uh...”

        “Aw, c’mon!” Raindrops shouted, the tail end of her complaint rising in an indignant squeak.  She was laughing beneath it, though, and so was Sunny Day.

        “I always slept through history class, are you kidding me?” Sunny mumbled in between giggles.

        “What I was gonna say-”

        “Look at this kid,” Cloudchaser interrupted again.  “Going to history class.”

        “What I was gonna say... oh, forget it,” Raindrops groaned.

        Sunny Day stuck her hoof over her mouth and tried to bend the smile off her face, but the brush still lodged inside it made the gesture a little clumsier than she’d probably hoped.  “No-no-no, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she managed to stammer.  “I wanna hear.”

        Raindrops turned away from Sunny and faced the occupied shower.  “Do you wanna hear, Cloudchaser?”

        The pattering, splashing sound of water spraying from flapping wings filled the room, and Cloudchaser’s dripping head appeared above the curtain rod.  “Not really, but I’ll totally fake it if you pass me the hoof wax,” she said.  Sunny gave her a look that seemed to have absolutely no effect, then rolled her eyes and kicked a nearby tub of creamy white goo towards the shower.  Cloudchaser grabbed it, sang out, “Carry on!” and disappeared again.

        “I was just gonna say my grandma flew letters from Canterlot all the way to Hoofington and back for a few days,” Raindrops said a bit morosely.  “I always wanted to be like her.  That’s it.  Story’s over.”

        “Meh,” the shower curtain commented.  “The movie was better.”

        Sunny shot another glare at the shower for Raindrops’ shake, but Rainbow could see pretty clearly how hard she was biting her lip.  “Oh my gosh, you’re awful, Chaser!” she squealed before giving Raindrops’ mane one last gentle stroke with the brush and fluffing up the tail end for effect.  “Well, I think that’s really cool,” she assured her manestyling client.  “All I’ve ever delivered is flowers.  Guess somepony thought I was pretty fast at it.”

The conversation ground to a halt, and the uncomfortable silence that followed reminded Rainbow Dash that she hadn’t come in here to eavesdrop on her fellow recruits.  Unfortunately for her productivity, it also reminded Sunny Day that there was a fourth pony in the room.  “You’re on the Ponyville weather team, right, Rainbow?” she asked.

        An off-putting affirmative answer was already on its way through Rainbow’s lips when Chaser cut her off before she could get a word in edgewise.  “Hay yeah, she is!” she boasted, sticking her head around the curtain to direct a celebratory hoof-pump towards her boss.  “Best team leader ever, too!  No wonder you guys schooled us at capture the flag today.”

        “You mean Rainbow and Lightning schooled us,” Raindrops added with a meek half-smile.  “Thunderlane and I hardly found any.”

        Great.  Now it felt like she was ragging on Raindrops too.  “Don’t worry about it,” Rainbow tried to say before a flash of pain in her wing sent her teeth clacking together in mid-syllable.  “Every bit... counts,” she finished a moment later with a lot less gusto and a lot more of a forced grin.  None of the ponies she was talking to bought it for a second.

        “You okay?” Raindrops asked.

        “Yeah, I’m fine,” Rainbow replied quickly.  “Banged my wing a little bit.  Not too bad.  I’ll be fine.”

        “You want me to look at it?” Sunny offered.

        “No, seriously, it’s co-”

        “I wanna look at it.”

        “I really don’t-”

        “You’re not gonna win this one, boss,” Cloudchaser advised in a deadpan.  Rainbow completed her team member’s trifecta of nasty looks, and kept making excuses right up until the moment Sunny Day’s hoof grazed her busted wing.

        “Look, you’re really nice and all, but I just wanna go to bed and get some rest so I can-oooooowwwwwkay, that didn’t hurt.”

        Sunny Day snorted, and the steam hanging overhead suddenly seemed a lot warmer than before.  “Oh, stop acting all macho,” she scoffed at Rainbow, her hoofs gently prodding at her wing as she grit her teeth again and tried her best to imitate a cockatrice victim.  “Spitfire isn’t even here right now.”

        “Not like she’d come into the fillies’ locker room with us to begin with, right?” Raindrops threw in with something very close to resembling sarcasm, her comment seemingly meant for Cloudchaser judging by where her sideways glance was pointed.  Cloudchaser, for what it was worth, seemed amused.

        “Man, and here I was thinking that rough voice’a hers was just hormones...” she chuckled.  The proper dots in Raindrops’ mind took a moment to get connected, and by the time they did, every other pony in the room was just barely succeeding at keeping a straight face.

“What does that... oh.  O-oh horseapples, I-I didn’t mean...”

Correction: completely failing at keeping a straight face.  “I didn’t mean it like that!” Raindrops shouted, her eyes wide and her face a vibrant shade of scarlet.

        “Relax, Raindrops,” Sunny Day said once she’d wiped the tears from her eyes.  “She can’t hear you.”

“Unless she wants to hear you,” Cloudchaser suggested with an impish grin.  Finally, Sunny seemed to stop playing dumb to the snide mare’s games.

        “Give her a rest, Cloudchaser,” she said.  “And gimme my hoofwax back.”  After seeing the other mare’s irreverent shrug and watching her tub of wax skid across the floor again, she turned her attention back to Rainbow’s wings, and soon after seemed to find whatever it was she’d been poking around for.  “Aha.  You’ve got a couple coverts bent out of shape in here.”

        “Really?” Rainbow Dash couldn’t help but ask.  She’d made sure to give herself as thorough a checkup as she could before coming in here.  The cloud shower would’ve stung like all get-out if she’d gotten in like that.  “Thought I got ‘em a-ooooooohhhhh, wow.”

        Sunny Day’s methods were quick and brutal, but inarguably effective.  As Sunny Day spit out the feathers she’d just yanked from her companion’s wing, Rainbow Dash reveled in the joy of not feeling like she had a two-by-four speared through her pinion.  She could be thankful too that it wasn’t a sprain or something worse; a couple missing feathers wouldn’t keep her out of the air, and Twilight could grow them back once she got home anyway.

“Stars above, are you two making out out there?” Cloudchaser shouted over Rainbow’s blissful thoughts.  “Am I missing this?”

        Rainbow turned back to Sunny Day, and found herself liking the peachy-maned mare a little more when they both cocked an eyebrow at the same time.  “Such a dirty mind, Chaser,” Sunny Day teased back.  “I bet Thunderlane loves that about you.”

Cloudchaser made some noise of protest, but Raindrops’ shocked exclamation drowned out whatever it was. “Her cousin?”

Now it was Cloudchaser’s turn to cut off Sunny Day.  “Okay, first of all,” she said, snapping the curtain back as she hopped out of the shower with towels wrapped around her waist and mane, “he’s not my cousin.  More like my... sorta... I don’t know what he is, but we’re not related.  Our families just know each other from way back.  ‘Sides, my little sis Flitter’s had a crush on him since she was a foal.  Still gets a little hot under the collar every time he flies by.”

“Oh,” Raindrops mumbled.  “Really?”  She was trying to hide the crushed look on her face and, as Rainbow couldn’t help but notice, not doing too good a job at it.  To her credit, though, Cloudchaser seemed to sense that teasing her about it wasn’t the right route to take.  The twin holes Sunny’s glare was boring into her chest probably helped her make up her mind too.

“W-Well, it’s... not like he’s off the market or anything,” she said.  “Actually, I don’t think he’s all that into her.  We’re kinda like brother and sisters who just... hang out.  A lot.  And aren’t related.”  She cleared her throat and looked for a sign that she’d done enough from Sunny Day.  Somehow, the accent of her fuzzy pink robe just made her sky-blue eyes look extra intense.  “Geez, I don’t tell you how to live your life,” Chaser muttered before pulling her mane towel over her face.

“Do you have a coltfriend back home, Sunny?” Raindrops asked once Cloudchaser noticed them all watching her and made a rude gesture with her forehooves.  Seeing that she seemed to have successfully escaped the conversation, Rainbow Dash picked a fluoride-treated mint leaf out of her bag and started chewing, one ear still tuned in to hear Sunny Day’s response out of inescapable curiosity.

“Not at the moment,” Sunny replied.  “There’s a couple cute guys at work, and I was pen pals with this one unicorn from Trottingham when I was in flight school, but... I dunno, it just didn’t work out.  It’s always weird, trying to flirt with a guy who isn’t a pegasus.  I mean, I always end up talking about catching updrafts and aerial maneuvers, and I guess they always try to sound interested, but it never clicks.”

“Tell me about it,” Chaser agreed.  “Ever tried making out with an earth pony at two thousand feet?  Dude was petrified.  Stiff as a board in every place but one.  Talk about an awkward first date.”

“Can’t... say I’ve tried that either,” Sunny said, though with a bit of an edge to her voice that bordered on judgmental.

“Oh, c’mon, it ain’t that racy.  Not like I slept with the guy,” Chaser retorted.  “A bit of necking on Solstice Eve never hurt anybo-”

Chaser fell silent, and Rainbow turned around just in time to see the door swing shut behind the reason why.  True to her name, Lightning Dust’s presence seemed to electrify the air in the room.  Rainbow had never met a mare who seemed to just ooze confidence like that—well, except for maybe herself.  Eyeing the rest of the room with what looked like a practiced look of disinterest, Lightning made her the way to the last sink in the row, the one right next to Rainbow Dash.  For a moment, Sunny opened her mouth like she was about to greet her, then seemed to think better of it and went back to picking at her teeth.  A good thirty seconds of silence passed, and then, of all ponies, Raindrops was the one who broke it.

“I’ve never kissed anypony,” she admitted, her voice so small it nearly got lost in the humid cloud still hanging overhead.

“Lack of opportunity, or lack of options?” Chaser asked.  Her tone was purely conversational this time, and Raindrops’ shy smile seemed to indicate that she’d noticed.

“Both, kind of,” she said.  “I guess I always wanted it to be special, for it to be just the right stallion at just the right time, and it... hasn’t happened yet.  No butterflies in my stomach or wings popping...”

“Till Thunderlane?”

That clammed Rain right up again, but for the first time since she’d walked in, Rainbow saw a friendly grin cross Chaser’s lips.  “Hey, just askin’, sister,” she said with a laugh.  “Far as I know, he was looking forward to meeting some new mares here.  You oughta give it a go.  Worst case, I hear Snowflake’s single too.”

Raindrops bit her lip and snorted, slapping a hoof over her mouth a second too late to cover it up.  “Besides,” Chaser went on, “ponies make the whole thing out like it’s way too big a deal.  Honestly, it’s not even that great unless you’re with the right guy.  It ain’t my style, sure, but there’s nothin’ wrong with only having one coltfriend your whole life if that’s what works for ya.”

“I take it you’ve had a few coltfriends, then?” Sunny interjected, wearing a sly smirk that Chaser matched a moment later.

“A few,” she teased back.  “Mostly first base, couple’a doubles.  No homers yet.”  The other corner of her mouth twitched up.  “In case you were wondering.”

“Thanks for the update,” Sunny intoned.  “Same here, though.  Call me sentimental—”

“‘Sappy’,” Chaser immediately called her.

“—but I figure I’ll wait till I’m married for that.  I don’t think it’s a big deal either, just... risks versus rewards, I guess.  What about you, Dash?”

“Hwhuh?” Rainbow garbled through the leaf bits burning against her gums.  She’d registered her name being spoken at the same time she realized she’d probably lost half the taste buds on her tongue for how long the chewed-up mint leaf had been sitting on top of it.

“Got any romantic exploits worth writing to the paper about?”

        Rainbow snagged a gulp of water and swished the leaf bits around, then spit the whole mess out into the sink.  “Not really,” she answered quickly.  “Few guys in flight school, couple failures-to-launch in Ponyville.  Just waiting for the right stallion, same as you guys.”

        Sunny smiled and nodded, then leaned forward a bit.  “Lightning?”

        Lightning glanced up from the mirror for only a moment.  She had packed just as light as Dash: just mint leaves, a brush, and a small bottle of ointment for something or other.  “I’ve been around,” she said nonchalantly, and after a few moments Sunny clued in to the fact that that was all she was gonna get.

        “Well, it’s almost nine, and we’ve got an early start tomorrow,” she said, directing her next question at the other side of the room.  “You two coming to bed any time soon?”

        “Sure,” Raindrops answered.

“I’ll let you open the door for me.  I’m beat,” Chaser added.  “Catch ya tomorrow, Dash.”

“Later, Dash.”

“See you in the morning, Rainbow.”

The three other mares all left together, and then the room was finally silent.  Though she didn’t hold any hard feelings towards any of her squadmates, Rainbow Dash still couldn’t help letting out a small sigh of relief.  She’d never understood why other mares felt the need to talk so much in the locker room, let alone about that kind of stuff.  First kisses?  “Romantic exploits”?  Who the hay cared about any of that?  What did it matter who made out with who, or when, or for how long?

She let the matter stick in her mind for as long as it took to walk over to the shower Chaser had just left, then let it drop.  If she hadn’t figured it out by now, she probably never would.  The sky was blue, pegasi flew, Pinkie Pie was random, and most fillies liked to gossip in the bathroom.  Maybe someday she’d get interested in a guy and things would take off, but for now she had bigger and more important things on her plate.  Like impressing Spitfire.  And making the Wonderbolts.  And getting through with this shower before she passed out in the middle of it.

Stifling a yawn, Rainbow ducked behind the curtain and prodded the cloud overhead back to life.  It was a pretty neat setup, she had to admit: the shower was technically open to the outside, but the hole in the roof was covered one of four thick, fluffy clouds that fed into each of the shower stalls and the sinks nearby.  The clouds absorbed sunlight all day and stored it as heat for the water inside, which made for one of the best luxuries pegasus life had to offer.  The instructors were tough and the food was tougher, but if there was one thing Rainbow Dash loved about the Wonderbolts Academy almost as much as getting into it in the first place, it was ending every day of muscle-destroying exercises and drills with an all-natural, blisteringly hot cloud shower.

The water beginning to drip out of this cloud was little more than a trickle, but still felt warm to the touch.  That was all right; it’d probably take it a minute to get up to full strength.  Not too long a wait.  She turned around, snapped the curtain back, and nearly tripped over the lip of the stall trying to stop.  Lightning was standing right in her path, almost—but not entirely—blocking her from getting out.

“Hi,” Rainbow said after a long, awkward pause.

“Hey,” Lightning replied.

“You, uh... you want the shower?”

“No, go ahead.”

Rainbow Dash cocked an eyebrow.  Even with the way capture-the-flag had gone today, Lightning still seemed like a pretty cool pony, but this was way past quirky and toeing the line of becoming full-on weird.  “Oh... kay, then,” she said.  “You mind if I...”

Lightning cocked her own brow, then stepped aside.  Rainbow shuffled past a bit faster than normal, a tiny tingly feeling working its way through her shoulder blades the whole time.  She could feel Lightning’s eyes on her the whole way across the room.

“Man, today was killer,” Lightning said, just as Rainbow reached the sink where she’d left her towel.  She tossed it over her shoulder and nodded.

“Yep,” she replied briskly.

“Ready to kick some more tail tomorrow?”

“Yeah, of... course.”  Lightning was still standing in front of the shower.  “Y’know, I’m pretty sure the other showers are empty.”

Lightning shrugged, turning her head to glance at Rainbow for just the briefest of seconds.  “Kinda had my eye on this one.”

Rainbow grit her teeth and sucked in a heavy breath through her nose.  “Look, if you want the shower-”

“You don’t have to give me the shower,” Lightning interrupted.

“Great.  Awesome.  Then if you don’t mind, I’m getting i-”

“Let’s just share it.”

Rainbow Dash was a lot of things, and speechless was almost never one of them.  Yet here she was, jaw agape, staring at her lead pony and trying to think of some way—any way—she could possibly be misinterpreting that.  She was joking, right?  She must be joking.  With that low, sultry voice, though?  With the way she’d almost jumped in behind her when she went to kick the water on?  With what she and the other cadets had been talking about right after Lightning slunk in without saying a word?

“I’m sure there’s room,” Lightning added, her tone now as casual as if she were discussing tomorrow’s forecast.  Nope.  No way.  Her hunch was right.  This was happening.

“Okay,” Rainbow said, choosing her words carefully so the weight she meant to give them was clearly communicated.  “I’m just gonna assume you’re... kidding right now, and pretend this never happened.”

Another shrug, this time accompanied with a headshake and a seemingly emotionless smirk.  “You’re not that stupid, Rainbow.”

“Well, whatever I am, I’m not what you think!” the wing pony spat.  Her gut was boiling, the opposing instincts to fly or fight still jockeying for position inside it.

“Yeah, I can see that,” Lightning droned back.  Stars above, why wouldn’t Lightning just look at her?  What the hay was wrong with her?

“Is this just some head game or something?” Rainbow asked next.  If anything, the bubbles in her stomach were just inflating even bigger.  “What, are you mad I didn’t keep up with you today?  Is that it?  Am I supposed to repay you for letting you down or someth... what the hay are you trying to do?”

Finally, Lightning turned around.  The look in her eyes was opaque, like a blackboard still showing the tracings of something hastily erased.  “I’m not trying to-”

“No, you know what?”  Now Rainbow’s gut had made up its mind.  Now it was her turn to interrupt.  “I know what you’re trying to do.  And I’m not interested.  I’m not that kind of pony.  And most of all, I sure as horseapples am not gonna be your wing pony tomorrow.  You got that?”

Rainbow waited for a reply, but none came.  The fire in Lightning’s mane had moved down into her eyes, and right now Rainbow could’ve sworn it was taking the form of something like disapproval.  Anger, even.  Every muscle in Rainbow’s body grew taut, then exploded into action.  She whirled around on the spot and was halfway out the door when Lightning shouted something after her.

“What are you afraid of?”

There was another Rainbow Dash never was: paralyzed.  Tonight had marked a lot of firsts for her, in retrospect.  “Not of you,” she snarled.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Lightning growled right back.  “What are you afraid of?”

Rainbow whipped around, propping the door open with a flared wing.  “I’m not afraid of anything!”

“Then why are you running?”

Rainbow’s mouth shot open to reply, but nothing came out.  Her insides were beginning to twist into a knot again, but higher up this time, in the hollow space right behind her breastbone.  “Gimme a break,” Lightning went on.  “I must’ve met a hundred thousand different pegasi in my life, and not one single one of them could ever keep up with me before you.  You rounded this place five hundred times without breaking a sweat, you cleared the Dizzitron faster than anypony these drill sergeants have ever heard of... stars above, I took a two-hundred-mile-per-hour nose dive through a crack in the ground the size of a fruit cart, and you followed me every inch of the way completely blind.  Fly together?  We could fight a war together and still be the last two standing when the sun went down.  And now you want me to believe that after what I just said, after what I just asked you to do, you’re just gonna let that slide?  You’re just gonna walk away?”

Rainbow’s whole body had gone rigid again, but the thought of channeling that energy into an attack might as well have been a fruitless daydream.  She wanted to do it—every inch of her burned to do it—but the wispy, tenuous threads connecting ideas with actions refused to solidify, as if Lightning’s stare alone kept breaking it apart before her mind could tell her legs to act on it.

“I don’t really make a practice of this, you know,” Lightning informed her.  “Quite frankly, there aren’t many stallions I’d consider doing this with, let alone mares.  Which of course begs the question: why, of all ponies, did I pick you?  I mean, if we’re being... objective here, you’re cute enough.  Nice body, good muscle tone, probably fun to have to parties.  Finer edges of the personality could be better, but then again, whose couldn’t?  Yeah, you know what, Rainbow Dash?  You’re all right.  You’re fast, you’re friendly, you’re a one-of-a-kind no-holds-barred badass...”

The corners of Lightning’s mouth lifted up.  “And I’ll bet you every bit I’ll ever own that you’ve lied awake at night asked yourself the same questions I have.”

The silence carried on for a good half-minute.  Rainbow’s wings were outstretched on her back, one still resting against the open locker room door.  She took a moment to swallow away the dryness building in her throat, then folded her wings against her sides and let the door swing shut.  Lightning’s eyebrows jerked up for a split second, and her tail twitched right up at the base.

“You know what’s funny?” Lightning said with a chuckle.  “If it were you here by the shower and me standing over there by the door, I’d be biting my lip and seething the same way you are right now.”  She stepped away from the shower, slowly meandering towards the center of the room.  “Suppose you could say that’s why I said what I did in the first place.  The second I saw you standing next to me the first day here, I knew you.  I knew what kind of mare you were.  And now I know I was right.”

About a year ago, Rainbow Dash had run for miles through Whitetail Woods with her wings tied to her back by a thick coil of her friend Applejack’s rope.  That same pressure, that same distant sense of being trapped even as the situation around her forced her to ignore the fact, was returning to her now.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Lightning came to a halt.  “Again with the playing stupid, come on!” she grunted, her eyes squeezed shut in exasperation.  “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“You tell me, then, if you’re so sure,” Rainbow bit back.  It was a weak answer, but right now she’d say anything to fly back out the door, do anything to breathe again.  But Lightning wasn’t quitting.  She had her advantage, and she was going to press it.

“This isn’t about you,” she said.  She was pacing again.  One of her forehooves hovered off the ground, freed up for wild gestures that punctuated every sentence.  “This isn’t about me, orus, or we.  It’s about them.  It’s about three mares who are completely comfortable knowing nothing about love, and one who stays quiet because she’s too proud to fake it.  You wanna know what would’ve happened if I’d cornered Cloudchaser in here, or Raindrops, or Sunny Day?  They would’ve laughed.  They’ve would’ve blown it off.  Chaser would play along till the joke went cold, Rain would figure I was making fun of her and shuffle off with her tail between her legs, and Sunny’s so moondamned happy-go-lucky I reckon she’d go and take it as a compliment.  But you... what did you think I meant?  What was the first thought to enter your head?”

Only the individual shower stalls had cloud-roofs in here, but for a moment Rainbow Dash could’ve sworn one of them had sprung a leak and splattered its ice-cold contents all over her back.  “It’s not like... like I don’t like fillyfoolers or anything,” she struggled to say.  “I’m not afraid of them.”

“And you’re not afraid of being one either,” Lightning added.  The sympathy in her tone was surely manufactured, but although she recognized that in an instant, Rainbow still found it almost impossible to be sure.  “To you or anypony you know, it wouldn’t matter if you were gay, straight, crooked, or sideways.”  Lightning stopped again.  A yard or two was all that separated her from her partner now.  “You’re afraid of the choice between them.  Of having to choose.  Of not knowing how to choose.”  She shuffled, shrugged, smirked.  “Of the curiosity.”

The oddest sensation had come upon her: she could still feel the humid air of the locker room pressing against her skin and hear the faint patter of heated raindrops against the shower tile, but in spite of all that she still couldn’t quite believe that she was actually here.  She felt detached from her own body, curious to see what happened next yet completely unconvinced it would actually happen to her.  It was the same feeling she would’ve had if she’d been reading about this in a book somewhere, or hearing somepony else tell her the story of a story they’d heard a long time ago.  And try as she might, some part of it didn’t add up.  There was some part of Lightning’s tale that was too honest, too genuine to be anything but real.

“I get it.”

Rainbow Dash snapped out of her reverie just in time to see Lightning laugh.  The lead pony’s eyes, though, never shifted to meet her partner’s.  “C’mon, are you kidding me?” she scoffed.  “We all have it.  Even if it’s just for a second, lying in bed at night all alone, imagining what it might be like to share it with your best friend or worst enemy or, for what it’s worth, even your sibling.  It’s the way our minds work.  Possibilities fly into our heads, then fly right back out the other side as if they were never even there.  We reject some of them, ignore others, and forget all the rest.  The thoughts don’t stick, because they’re not supposed to.”

Now Lightning’s lips softened a bit.  “But you can’t accept that.  Your mind doesn’t work like that.  You need to act.  To decide.  It’s why you’re so good at flying.  It’s why you always keep it together when everyone around you is losing their mind.  You don’t think.  You don’t decide.  You just react.  And when a thought passes through your skull that you can’t just react to, that some tiny little part of you wants to think about, that’s when you choke.”  Now, finally, Lightning’s eyes dropped.  In the moment before they bored into those of her wing pony, Rainbow saw them twitch towards the door.  “That’s when you run away.”

Suddenly, it all made painful, very real sense.  She knew now why she hadn’t been able to understand half of what Lightning said, what had kept her from arguing against it, what had nailed her hooves to these tiles and set little pins pricking into every nerve of her body: fear.  But not of what Lightning wanted to do to her.  Not even of the thought that she might have to fight off one of the closest friends she’d ever made.  It was exactly what Lightning had said all along: the curiosity.  The big voice locked inside her throat screaming “No!”, and the little one in the back of her mind asking “Why not?”

How was she supposed to know which one was right?  How could a question as simple as the one Lightning kept skirting around asking turn into something so complicated?  And what in Celestia’s name was she supposed to tell Lightning when she eventually demanded an answer?  Her words were so fluent, so flawless; she’d guessed each twist and turn this conversation would take, and steered through every one like a seasoned pro.  How long had she been planning this?  How long had she thought through exactly how she would get her wingpony into this precise spot?

“It was just a thought,” she said weakly.  “Just one of those things I’ve always wondered about.  I knew I was never gonna try having... being with another mare.”

“How?”

Though the rest of her was trembling, Rainbow still managed a scowl.  “What d’you mean, how?”

“How did you know?” Lightning asked her again.

“Well, it’s not like I could just walk up to one of my friends and ask them to sleep with me!” Rainbow shouted.

“We’re not friends.”  When she saw the look on Rainbow’s face, Lightning clarified.  “What I mean is, we’ve known each other for two days.  We’re acquaintances.  Circumstantial roommates.  We could leave the academy at the end of the week and never see each other again.”

“What if someone found out?”

“What if they didn’t?”

“What if I don’t like it?”

“What if you do?”

“What if-”

“What if you never stop asking yourself that question?” Lightning snapped.  “What if you turn around and leave right now and spend the whole week wondering what you gave up?  What if you go the entire rest of your life reliving this moment, trying again and again to make the choice you couldn’t right now?  What if, what if, what if?”

Rainbow stood with her jaw open, the empty space inside it filled with all the questions Lightning had just stolen out of her mouth.  The lead pony’s orange mane was frazzled now from the heat.  She was breathing hard, her face clenched like someone had yanked a cord behind her head and pulled her skin tight across it.

“Stars, it... you can’t stand this,” she sputtered.  There were no theatrics now.  She was rambling, and Rainbow couldn’t bear to look away.  “I can’t stand this.  I can’t stand watching your eyes dart away from every filly who flies by because you’re too petrified to let them linger.  I can’t stand knowing this is eating you up inside, and I can’t stand knowing you’re never gonna fix it because there’s no way you could by yourself.  So you know what?  Here I am.  There are a million ponies you’re worried about scaring off, so I’ll be the one who’s gonna stick around for the whole thing.  You wanna get this thought, this... parasite out of your head?  Give it to me, then.  Show me what you got, and when it’s all said and done... at least you’ll know.”

Rainbow unstuck her tongue from the back of her gums, then closed her teeth over it.  Lightning seemed to have calmed down again, but she still wasn’t done.  “Look, don’t take this as me trying to swing you one way or the other.  If you think it over once I shut up and your answer’s still no, then I’m not about to lose the best wingpony I’ll ever have over something like this.  But just... just think about it.  Just make a choice.  Because you wanna know something else?”

        The world around her was a thousand miles away.  Lightning’s nose was just a few inches from her own.

“You aren’t the only one who’s sick of asking ‘what if’.”

And like that, it was over.  Lightning straightened up, wetted her lips, and walked back towards the sink at the far end of the room, where her small bag of toiletries had sat completely forgotten the whole time.  She’d done her best not to look back, but her eyes had definitely skirted back her way at least once.  Not trying to swing me one way or the other, my flank, she thought.

But she’s not blocking the door, another part of her argued.  You can still leave.  And that was true: Lightning might be fast enough to reach the door before somepony else in this academy, but she’d said it herself, hadn’t she?  They were both in every way the other’s equal.  She really was going to let her go.  And so followed, of course, came the question Lightning knew perfectly well Rainbow couldn’t begin to answer now.

Yes.  No.  Never.  Always.  It seemed like every possible response, every word in the whole moondamned Equestrian language was strung out across her brain, each strand of thought crisscrossing over the next and tangling in knots with all the consequences that would come with each one.  That was another thing Lightning had gotten inexplicably right about her: she really didn’t know how to make a choice like this.  Everything else in her life was so simple.  Black-and-white, even, as ironic as that fact might be for a mare named Rainbow Dash.  There was a good choice to make, and a bad choice to make.  Either she made the right choice and things worked out for the better because of it, or her friends inevitably told her where she’d screwed up and pointed her back towards the goodly path again.  It was never like this.  There were never two right answers, each one made unique only by whether she alone preferred it.  What did she prefer?  What did she want?

She wanted to take the simple route.  She wanted to just go along with Lightning for the sake of knowing, for the sake of experimentation, for the sake of peace.  And even as the decision solidified in her mind, she knew all along that it wasn’t hers.  Lightning had made it for her, blindfolded her and spun her around before pointing her in the opposite direction of the target she’d been aiming for.  She knew that she’d played into Lightning’s hooves, bought her bluff, bit on the fat, juicy worm at the end of her hook.  Whatever stupid metaphor you wanted to use for it, the fact remained.

But what she also knew—and Lightning didn’t—was that when this was all said and done, nothing at all would really change.  Sticking around after weather duty to watch a pickup hoofball game didn’t make her a fan of the sport, and whatever happened here wouldn’t cause some catastrophic shift in her personality.  She would still be Rainbow Dash, and the mare across the room trying oh so hard to be coy would still be Lightning Dust.  Yeah, this was the choice Lightning had wanted her to make, but that didn’t make it hers alone.  If Lightning was going to enjoy this, then maybe Rainbow Dash would just have to enjoy it even more.

“Okay,” Rainbow said, cutting off Lightning’s next tirade before it could get started.  She took a moment to enjoy the shock that rippled through Lightning’s body too fast for her to control it, then glided past her and threw back the shower curtain.  Freed of its confines for the first time since Rainbow turned the shower back on, steam poured forth from the stall, drifting up to form miniature clouds overhead that were gradually sucked back into the tuft that created them.  She left the curtain open behind her, and was just about to start easing her way into the water when a pair of hooves landed on her back and sloppily found purchase on her shoulders.  In the split-second before Lightning managed to turn her around and push her up onto her hind legs, Rainbow started to feel more confident about that little spark of honesty she thought she’d heard in Lightning’s spiel.  By the time her back made contact with the rear wall of the shower and Lightning’s chest was flush against hers, she was absolutely positive.