Through the Night
Rainbow stirred in bed, taking a deep breath of the cold night air. Her lungs had that late-night or early-morning dull ache in them, when breath came grudgingly. Her sight was blurred by sleep, but in the low light she could still make out Pinkie’s curly mess of a mane splayed out on the pillow beside her. She stretched.
“Pinks?”
Pinkie stirred. Her mouth quivered, but she didn’t answer. Rainbow smiled down at her.
“Pinks, I know you can hear me.”
“Nope,” she said, her eyes squeezing tighter.
Rainbow chuckled and kissed her forehead. “Yeah, I know it. Sorry, Pinks, but I know ya way too well.”
“Mm.”
Rainbow continued, her kisses running down her marefriend’s face, finding her lips. Pinkie kissed back, and Rainbow pulled away with a grin. “See? Awake.”
Pinkie opened one eye to look at her, a smile hovering on her lips. “Maybe.”
“Definitely. I’m gonna head on out, Pinkie.”
And just like that, the smile was gone. “Do you have to?”
Rainbow didn’t answer immediately. She just let her eyes wander over Pinkie as she lay in the bed. It was Pinkie’s bed, of course. Pinkie didn’t exactly have wings. Else we’d be in my bed. Which is way better. I don’t know how she sleeps on this thing. Clouds are way better. She smiled and stroked Pinkie’s mane. It was soft, almost like a cloud. It reminded her of home.
“Yeah. I gotta, you know that. They want me in Cloudsdale tomorrow, early.” Pinkie didn’t answer, so she continued. “Gotta run the hopefuls through the gauntlet, you know. Fun stuff.”
“We do fun stuff too, Dashie.”
Rainbow sighed, and kissed her cheek. “I know. You know I would love to stay and sleep, Pinks. I don’t like leaving you, you know that.”
Pinkie rolled over and opened both eyes. She looked up at Dash, blinking. They were quiet for a moment, and Rainbow’s eyes flicked over to the clock. Damn, already one.
“I know,” Pinkie said at last. “I’ll miss you though.” She yawned, and Rainbow tried not to chuckle.
“Get some sleep, Pinks. Thanks... for tonight, I mean.”
“Mhm!” Pinkie hummed distractedly, turning back so that she laid on her stomach. “I’m glad you came to see me before you left, Dashie. Be safe, okay?”
Rainbow nodded and squirmed out of bed, forsaking the warm covers and Pinkie’s comfortable form for the cold early morning air. It didn’t bother her as much, and Rainbow was grateful for the innate pegasus magic that warmed her body. She bit the covers and pulled them back up and into place. Pinkie gathered the covers around her. Her eyes were closed. Late night, Rainbow thought. A strand of pink mane fell onto Pinkie’s face as she settled down, and Rainbow beat back the urge to brush it aside. It’d just wake her up. Eh, I’m getting all soft.
Rainbow crept in the dark, looking for her saddlebag. She found it discarded against the wall, and grinned. Note to self: try not to throw it off next time. She righted it with her hoof and then slipped under it, making sure her wings didn’t catch.
Once it was secure, the little strap tied under her belly and fastened with her mouth, she rooted around in the contents of the bags. She felt the items against her nose and cheeks, knowing them all by feel. No. No, won’t need that for a bit. No... ah. Yes!
Rainbow dug out a small, blue crystalline disk and held it loosely in her mouth. Gingerly, she placed it on the floor of Pinkie’s room and whispered. “Hey there. Open up?”
The disk glowed, and began to hover. She grinned. It never got old, watching the little thing go. She was glad that Twilight had made it for her. It made the night more bearable.
The glowing, swirling disk hovered closer to her eyes, casting her face in its strange blue light. Suddenly, it split in two. Each half settled right over her ear and let out a low hum that only she could hear. Rainbow smiled.
“How ‘bout some Good Winter?” she whispered to the tiny magical lights. She heard a tiny tone of affirmation, and the sounds of a lonely guitar began to rise up from the silence. She knew only she heard the first song begin to play, but it still took some getting used to. Momentarily, she worried it might rouse Pinkie again, but the sleeping pony remained still.
Rainbow paused at the window, looking back at the warm bed. Even in the darkness, there was moonlight enough to see where the blankets were uneven from where Rainbow had vacated her rightful place. The pillow had a dent in it that fit her head. Rainbow faced away from the window and the silent, watchful Pinkie, and oriented herself around the vacancy. Something in Rainbow clenched, like a hand around her heart. In the silvery light, Pinkie seemed to glow, and her shadowed hoof over Rainbow’s appointed spot seemed so solitary. Like it was a hole, or just a depression in the bed she knew wasn’t really there. But it felt like it. Like it drew everything in.
And of course, there was the familiar curves of Pinkie’s body that her eyes ran over with practiced ease. The dips and the rises, like valleys in the night.
She sighed and turned back to the window, her ears drooping. Gingerly, she pushed it open, and then with a push on the air with her wings she was perched on the sill.
She looked over her shoulder best she could. “Night, Pinks. Sleep well.”
And then she was gone, out into the night air, into the street and up.
The rush of air over her pinions and through her prismatic mane called to her blood. Her heart hammered in her chest as she rose higher, higher, and when she pulled out of her climb, splitting off towards Cloudsdale, she laughed with delight.
The rush of air, however, did not fill her ears as it usually did. Instead, as far as hearing went, she was in a quiet bubble. The slight sounds of night did not venture inside. The whistling of the nocturnal breeze could find no ingress. The only sound she could hear was the high, wistful voice of Good Winter and his gentle guitar’s lamentations.
Below her, Ponyville passed away and was replaced by forest, thick and dark. As the next song began, Rainbow saw a stream below her, and wondered if she’d ever been there. On the ground, near it. She thought perhaps she had, but it was dark and she couldn’t tell. It was gone before she could think too deeply on it.
The sky was thick with clouds, and Rainbow remembered that there was a storm scheduled soon to wander through the Central province. She wondered how the weather team would handle it, with her gone. Now that she lived in Clousdale, and Ponyville was down one pegasus.
Damn, but that was sad. She stopped thinking about it.
But she stayed below the clouds. She wanted to see. It was part of what made the long early morning flights easier, seeing the scenery below roll by. It was all familiar, and yet strangely separate from her life. Different. A foreign thing, a picture she had seen many times but never known. She never landed.
The forest continued on for another song.
Rainbow was flying fast, splitting the calm sky like a knife. Cloudsdale was a good two hours still, even at this speed. Wonderful, be in bed by three and up again by seven,she thought, but so was life. She supposed it was worth it, for weekends back home. In her real home, with her friends. With Pinkie.
Time raced by, as if too had wings. Good Winter began to wrap up his appointed time, and Rainbow set him to play again. The little magic earpieces obliged with a chirp, and the songs repeated.
The forest gave way to open land, tilled earth like multi-colored patchwork beneath her speeding by. Tiny farmhouses and paper-thin fences flitted by, there for a few blinks and then devoured again by the night behind her. The roads were like veins, cutting across the plain and connecting the lonely rustic islands of wood and ponies to each other.
The open farmland of the Central province stretched out for miles, far as the eye could see in all directions. In the distance, she could see another small farming hamlet, a handful of tiny stars—streetlamps, she thought, just like in Ponyville. Back home.
By the time she passed it, the album had begun to wind down, Good Winter’s strange voice finishing it’s course once more. She sighed. The strangely muffled guitar died at last, and there was complete silence. Rainbow’s ears could pick up nothing of the wind.
She loved Good Winter. It was strange; everypony expected Rainbow to love bands like Iron Hayden. Something fast and heavy. And yeah, she liked that, but Rainbow could appreciate the softer kinds of music. Music was about context, she thought. Sometimes she wanted drums and speed, something as fast she was.
Sometimes she just wanted something quiet. She usually listened to quiet things on the way back to Cloudsdale from Pinkie’s, almost always Good Winter. It just seemed appropriate. She didn’t know why, but it did.
A little magical tone played in the quiet, inquiring if she would like something else to play.
“Eh... I dunno. Tallest Pony on Earth,” she blurted, honestly not caring. She just wanted something to fill the void.
The little artifact complied, and once again Rainbow was thankful for it. She remembered asking Twilight about it one day, when the long flights under cover of dark had begun.
An hour, give or take, passed. More farmland, another small town.
Up ahead, mist rolled in and Rainbow watched with interest. She could make out the tops of buildings in the obscuring fog, but little else. On a whim, she changed course and dived down towards the rural town. I’ve got time, she thought, I think this is halfway, anyhow. Her wings were beginning to ache. Perhaps a little break might do her well.
Rainbow touched down in the street, her wings dispelling some of the low-lying cloud from where she landed on a cobblestone street. She glanced down on it, studying the shadowed cracks in the lamplight.
Rainbow shook her head. Damn, I should’ve left earlier. Ah, but Pinkie had wanted to cuddle. It was the way of pink ponies. And of course, Rainbow had obliged her. I’m gettin’ soft, she groused silently, but she smiled despite herself. Perhaps that wasn’t so bad.
Rainbow wandered the empty streets.
It wasn’t so different from Ponyville. From home. Sure, there wasn’t any cobblestone in Ponyville, but this place was a little bigger. Architecture wasn’t so different, same thatched roofs and rustic wood. It felt good, she decided with some surprise, to be walking. Especially in a town so much like... her own.
Her own. She kept coming back to that. Home home home.
She’d learnt to enjoy walking more since Pinkie. There was a day when Rainbow would’ve groaned at the prospect of being grounded for long periods of time, but her favorite earth pony had bounced into the picture and now Rainbow didn’t really mind so much. Pinkie, after all, couldn’t fly.
Well, not naturally. Rainbow suddenly remembered the ridiculous flying contraption Pinkie had made years ago and stifled a chuckle.
Rainbow stood in an intersection and looked quietly down each way. She was not given to introspection; it was an acquired taste for her, one she’d learned after joining the Wonderbolts.
And she loved the Wonderbolts, let nopony say different. She regretted nothing. Not even long, lonely midnight and early morning flights. Not even the worst crunch of the touring season. But it had taught her to think, lying spent in a hammock in the barracks with a framed picture of Pinkie next to her, level with her eyes.
It wasn’t like Pinkie could help it. She didn’t have wings, and she had a job. A job she was good at. A job she loved. So did Rainbow, and never the twain would meet. Rainbow winced, and chose a road to walk down. Yikes, that’s kind of sad.
And only true up to a point, she thought. Rainbow saw Pinkie all the time. She flew back to Ponyville as often as she could.
The mist curled around her hooves, obscuring the way. It crept along walls and darkened windows. It resisted the lamps on the street.
Rainbow idly scooped up some of it with her wing. The cloudstuff reacted just as if it had been in the air, and her magic kept it suspended before her eyes, swirling in a little puffy ball. She grinned at it. Rainbow loved doing this for Pinkie, making things out of clouds. Pinkie loved it. Her blue eyes lit up.
Yeah, wings rested. Enough of this. Rainbow flared them out, savoring the wind that drove the enshrouding fog back. With a running start, she was back in the air, rising fast.
***
Three albums. That’s how long it was from the shrouded streets to Cloudsdale’s outer limits.
Rainbow Dash blinked back sleep. Her wings ached and complained at every flap. Her hooves felt stiff and cold, a sign of her magic’s waning with her own fatigue. Her mane was soaked with sweat, and stuck to her face obstinately.
Her turns as she navigated around pillars and towering cloudbuildings were wide and lazy. Had it been earlier, she would have chuckled. Looks like I’m drunk.
Up ahead, she could see her own apartment complex. She smiled at it weakly, the feeling strange after so long in the sky with her muscles still.
Somewhere along the way, she’d picked up the beginnings of a headache. It was rising up, gaining strength like a hurricane over the tropics. It was like a hoof against the inside of her skull, slowly pressing harder and harder.
She just wanted her bed.
Rainbow touched down on the little landing. She shook herself, wincing as she folded her wings back against her side delicately. She coughed, and the sound in the complete silence was deafening. Rainbow couldn’t help but look around to make sure no one had heard her.
She walked in the front door and looked for the lobby clock. She winced. Great. 3:30. Wonderful. She groaned quietly, feeling more tired than ever. Her hooves were lead weights dragging bags of rocks.
Rainbow ascended the staircase on hoof. Even she reached a limit with flying. Her room was on the third floor, but it seemed to take forever, step after lonely step. She was glad that hooves against cloud made no report. The hallway to her room was long. It felt like the walls and floor grew with every step, but it didn’t last forever. Nothing did. She came at last to her door and found the lock made of darker, compact cloud. She inserted her hoof, and the lock read her innate aura and clicked as it opened. She pushed the door to.
Inside, the apartment was spartan. It was spacious, expensive, and barren. As far as her friends here knew, it was a normal high class apartment room. Well-furnished. She passed the painting on her living room wall that Twilight and Macintosh had bought her, sparing it a glance. It was just a street scene from Ponyville, painted by someone from town... Caramel? She didn’t remember, but she thought that was the stallion who did it. She just remembered he had a long mane and mumbled. Soft voice. Little bit of the old south-central provincial earth pony drawl. A little taste of home.
She paused at the doorway that led back to her bedroom, and turned. She gazed at the painting. She gazed, more accurately, down the very real street in Ponyville towards Sugarcube Corner. It was morning, and she could almost smell the welcoming aroma of Pinkie’s cooking.
Dash lumbered into her bedroom and collapsed on her bed, face down. Her legs simply refused to move another step. Rainbow was alright with that. They wouldn’t have to for awhile
Grinning, and feeling stupid, she rolled her way up to her pillow and laid on her side. There, next to her face, was a picture of Pinkie and Rainbow, grinning like loons. She smiled at it. She faced it, keeping the lonely sea of unoccupied bed to her back.
Rainbow slept.
Author's Note
Yay fic fic fic
Just a bit of melancholy slice of life, nothin' big
Some times when I'm working on stuff I like to write something smaller and just sort of less... high stakes, y'know?
Also I kind of wrote RainbowPie am I cool now Donny's Boy and or any of my friends who like RainbowXPinkie?
