One of the windows to the Wonderbolts Captain's office was still open when Rainbow Dash trotted in. She eyed it curiously before walking over and shutting it. Papers that had been fluttering about the room finally settled to the ground, and Rainbow breathed a sigh of annoyance as she bent down to pick them up, glancing at each as she did. Some were old records of previously tested flight patterns, some were documents on changes to the daily exercises and drills on a specific month on a specific year, some were even just old posters with an autographed hoof-stamp neatly pressed in the middle.
One, however, caught her eye in particular. It was an old, worn-out photograph of what looked like the entire Wonderbolts team, posing side-by-side at the entrance to the main barracks, with their Captain proudly hovering above them all. She glanced at all of the team's faces, immediately recognizing every single one. There was Fleetfoot, Misty Fly, Soarin, Surprise, High Winds, oh, and there's Spitfire!
Rainbow blinked. Spitfire? She looked closer. Yep, that was Spitfire, posing with the most smug grin she'd ever seen besides Soarin, who was laughing at her expression, barely holding his own pose. Both donned the same Wonderbolts' uniform, of equal rank. She tilted her head and glanced towards the captain. Where she originally expected to see Spitfire's signature fiery orange and yellow mane, instead she saw a long, light blue mane on dark blue fur, the face of a mare she didn't recognize. Could that be-
"I see you're already making yourself at home, Crash."
"Gah!!" Rainbow jumped in shock, her wings shooting out and propelling her upwards, nearly smacking her head on the ceiling. "Wha-, who-?" She turned her gaze towards the door, where that familiar orange and yellow pegasus she had just been looking stood leaning on the door way, grinning mischievously. "Oh!" Rainbow sputtered, quickly standing upright. "Uh, hey Captain! I was just- uh? What?" Cut off by Spitfire falling to the floor in laughter, she broke position and trotted a little closer and eyed her in confusion. "What's so funny?"
After several more seconds of wheezing on the ground, much to Rainbow's inner annoyance, Spitfire wiped a tear off her eye and gave a powerful flap of her wings, righting herself upright in one fell swoop. "Ah, sorry about that. I was just wanting to give this place one final look around before I leave it for good. You know, for the memories. But, 'Captain'? Really? Whose promotion did I just attend yesterday again?"
Rainbow's eyes widened. "Oh, oops." She unfurled a wing to cover her face to hide the blush she could already feel creeping along her cheeks. "Sorry Ca-, Spitfire, I've just gotten real used to you being the Captain over the years. I-, wait, why'd you call me by my nickname instead of Captain?"
Spitfire rolled her eyes and laughed. "Well, yesterday, I officially promoted you to Captain of the Wonderbolts. However..." She reached into her uniform pocket and pulled out a small, folded envelope. "Until I get these forms sent to and approved by Princess Celestia to formally mark the end of my tenure and the start of my retirement, I'm also still a Captain." She glanced around mischievously and leaned a bit closer. "Besides, once a Wonderbolt, always a Wonderbolt, even if you're the Captain now. You'll still hear 'Crash' now and then from the others when not in the air or the desk."
Rainbow Dash chuckled, using her wings to dust herself off. "Haha, well, the name's grown on me already, I can't not imagine it going away just because I'm Captain." A thought passed through her mind. "How come I don't hear the others call you by your nickname all that much?"
Spitfire waved a hoof dismissively. "Oh, they still do, but not as much to where you'd probably have ever even heard it. When I was made Captain though, oh they would make sure to really hammer it in every time they addressed me." She trotted over to the side of the desk and placed a hoof on it, closing her eyes. "Whoever designed this place added this special room just for us Captains, but to be honest, you'll spend most your time either in the air or in the barracks with the rest of the team. I'm sure you already know this, but the Wonderbolts are a family moreso than just a squad. It's why it hurt so much for us when we found out Wind Rider tried to frame you just to keep his record."
Rainbow paused, recollecting that incident. Wasn't that back when she was just a reservist? Time really flew by since then. Her eyes shifted back to the old photograph now laying on the ground. She bent down to pick it up, brushing its surface a few times with a hoof. "Hey, Spitfire?"
Spitfire opened her eyes, shaken out of her own trip down memory lane. "Yeah, Dash?"
"Who is... this?" She held up the photograph to Spitfire, who accepted it with a folder of her feathers. Her eyes lit up.
"Oh! This was Steel Breeze, the Captain before me! Believe me, she may look all joyful in that picture, but she was a hell of a lot stricter on us than I ever was. In fact, I had to pick up a few of her own practices to make sure I enforced my own properly, otherwise the lot of us would've gone a bit soft real dang quick."
"Hehe, she sounds fun." Rainbow chuckled quietly. "I'm just trying to imagine you as just not being the Captain of the Wonderbolts. Ever since I heard of them, you were already the Captain!"
"Hehe." Spitfire threw her head back, letting her mane flow behind her. "I was a lot more relaxed back before I was Captain. Things got a lot more... pressed afterwards, what with dealing with logistics, flight patterns, event planning, and just managing the team in general. Thankfully, the lot of 'em are some of the best pegasi you could ever find yourself with, that made the job a whole lot easier."
Rainbow mulled over her words. "When you became Captain... what happened to, well, your old life?"
Spitfire turned her gaze back to her, raising an eyebrow. "My old life?"
"Yeah!" Rainbow glanced again at the photograph. "You know, your old friends? Your family? What happened to them?"
Spitfire remained silent as she trotted over to the window and looked outside. She lightly pushed open the window and took a deep breath of the open air as a small smile crept onto her muzzle.
"I didn't really have too many friends before I became a Wonderbolt. After graduating flight camp and school, I was a weather pony like you for a while. During that time, I did meet somepony, a pegasus named Sleet Shower. She worked the same section of Cloudsdale's sky as me. We didn't really know each other, but we started talking more after we realized how funny it was that, when our boss would ask for either one of us, both of us would answer by mistake."
Rainbow pronounced both names in her head for a moment before giggling. "Yeah, I guess I can see that. But, are you two, well, still friends?"
"Of course we are!"
Rainbow blinked. "Oh, but I've never seen her around the compound... or at all actually."
Spitfire rolled her eyes. "Well, duh, Crash. Being a full time Captain of the Wonderbolts puts a lot of emphasis on the 'full' and 'time' parts. We write to each other though every so often, and I always visit her to catch up on things whenever it's the holidays."
"I... see." Rainbow contemplated her words. "I-"
"You're wondering how this will affect you with your friends, aren't ya?"
"Wha-?!" Rainbow stuttered. "I-, uhm, yeah?"
Spitfire chuckled and moved back from the window, closing it behind her. "Come on, Dash, I can practically hear it in your voice. Almost all of Equestria knows about you guys, the six best friends who, time after time, saved Equestria from countless danger." She laughed dryly. "Sometimes even I can't figure out how you six managed to be so much more effective against stuff that our whole squad couldn't put a dent in."
Rainbow allowed a sly grin into her muzzle. "Elements of Harmony, remember? Nopony's gonna be keeping us down while we got that orbital friendship la-"
Spitfire cut her off with a hoof to her mouth. "Uhuh, like I haven't heard that exact phrase from you hundreds of times the years after all that craziness before Twilight's coronation." She rolled her eyes playfully. "You're wondering how I kept hold of my old life after fully embracing my new life, huh?"
Rainbow stared into her eyes, glancing between both and seeing none of Spitfire's usual cockiness or smugness, just sincerity. She nodded.
Spitfire sighed and looked away a little. "It... wasn't easy at first. I used to still hang out with her every day after practice when I was a reservist. Then, it was once every few days or so when I joined the team, which only got less and less as I got to know the others more and more. Eventually, I became Captain and found myself with a lot less time to myself even outside of the compound. She knew this too, and we decided to get together maybe once a month to do all the things we used to do, plus a little extra with my new skills as a Wonderbolt."
"Once a month?" Rainbow Dash recognized those words. "That's how often Twilight planned for all of us to get together again right after her coronation. Or at least, that's how it really is for her, with her living up there in Canterlot and sitting on the throne all the time. Me and the rest of the girls have still seen each other pretty much almost the same as before, even if it's a little less since we don't really have a lot of days where all our schedules free up at the same time. But... I still got to see some of them! Maybe three, or two, or even one, at a time." Rainbow rubbed a hoof against her other foreleg, deep in thought. "But after this, I don't think I'll be nearly as free... it'll be like what Twilight said she feels sometimes hearing about what we do together while she's busy ruling the nation."
Spitfire chuckled, reaching over and patting Rainbow on the back. "Oh right, I forget sometimes you're best friends with Princess Twilight! Still a bit of a weird thought, I knew Celestia as the Princess most my life and for the longest time, nopony even knew if she had any friends."
Rainbow didn't pay the interjection much attention, still lost in her thoughts. "I know with most of my time dedicated towards the Wonderbolts, I'm gonna become closer than ever to everyone, know all of them personally inside and out, like you'd tell me you did. I'm just... I guess I'm just scared of giving so much of myself to my team that I won't have anything left for my friends- well, my old friends, the ones who helped get me so far in life and without who I wouldn't even be here, standing in this office, with this uniform, with the same insignia you're still wearing."
Spitfire laughed and rolled her eyes. "Oh, don't pay any attention to this one, it's just Captain in paper now until I finalize it." She reached up and casually removed her distinguishing mark of rank from her uniform and tucked it away in her uniform.
"What I meant to ask, was how did you stay close friends with someone you could barely see at all, while balancing them with such a large and awesome new family? Not even Twilight has this dilemma, she's not making any large family of close, noble friends up there, she said nothing has distracted her from almost always thinking about us. I know I say now that we'll be the best of friends forever, but what if I start to lose that because I'm here all the time, with this amazing team of ponies who will always have my back as I have theirs. I don't want to have to choose-"
"Then just don't." Spitfire cut Rainbow off, who raised an eyebrow at the far simpler answer than she was expecting. "You want my advice? You want to know how you can stay close friends with your old buddies while gaining new ones here?"
Rainbow sheepishly nodded.
"You just do."
"Huh?" Rainbow cocked her head. "What do you mean I-"
"You just do, simple as that. What I mean is, no matter long you stay away from someone you want to keep as a friend, as long as you two find something, anything, that you can always return to to bond over or stay friends over, and you really, really want to keep that friend, as much as they want to keep you, then you'll remain friends til the end. It's as simple as that."
Rainbow rubbed the back of her neck. "It... doesn't seem like it can be that simple..."
Spitfire smiled warmly and gently, an expression Rainbow could count on the feathers of her wing the number of times she'd witnessed from her former captain. "Come on, Crash, you of all ponies should know the lengths two ponies will go to keep each other when they share a loyalty to each other. Me and Sleet knew each other like the back of own wings as weather ponies. Even as we saw each other less and changed to different ponies, we kept each other in the know no matter what when we'd write to each other, and never missed a single day in our get-togethers. She's the only pony out there that, by my own request, never calls me Captain, though. Or at least, I told her she can start calling me that once she becomes captain in something on her own, so our names will still sound the same!"
Rainbow stifled a laugh at the last thought. Spitfire backed up and trotted for the door. She turned around, giving the office one final glance and breathing a sigh of relief, like a massive weight was gone from her shoulders. She stared back to Rainbow.
"These girls really mean the world to you, huh?"
Rainbow nodded.
"And you know you mean the world to them too?"
Without hesitation, Rainbow nodded again.
Spitfire smiled. "Then as long as you all stay loyal to that thought, you'll stay true friends until the end of time."