Grounding

by MasterThief

Stories

Dash could not sleep. It might have been the stress of the evening, it might have been the stepped-down dose of medicine, it might have just been her fear, but the pain in her wings was just too throbbing and too intense even for the painkillers. So she crept down the stairs, hoping to distract herself until Hearth’s Warming morning.

She was heading for the couch in the living room and her stack of mind-numbing flight manuals and other “professional development” reading. But she noticed a single, solitary lamp on. It was her father, settled in his easy chair. As Dash crept up on her father, she could see he was just staring at the tree, lost in thought.

“Hey, Dad,” she said.

“Oh. Hi, Dashie,” he replied with a slight start. “Still couldn’t sleep?”

“No.”

“Wings still hurting?”

“Yeah.” Dash sighed. “Figured I could try another binder of my reading, that might bore me to sleep.”

“Ah,” Bow said. “Emergency procedures? Flight formations?”

Dash took a thick binder off the top of the stack. “Essentials of Leadership.”

They shared a knowing laugh. “Lemme guess. A bunch of Haybridge University business school case studies about widget manufacturing?”

Dash opened the binder, and skimmed the table of contents. “Yep. How’d you know?”

“Some things in the service never change. The reading. The paperwork. The long stretches of boredom with all those little moments of pure what the hay did I get myself into terror?”

Dash could not help but laugh. “Yep. Had a few of…” and she trailed off without finishing the thought, as her mind began to go to places she did not want to go and to thoughts she did not want to think.

She did not want to talk to her father.

She desperately needed to talk to her father.

Bow noticed. “You know you can tell me what’s wrong, Dashie.”

“Even… even if it would make you less proud of your daughter?” The question left Dash’s mouth before she could take it back.

“Hah. Impossible.” Bow’s fake laugh was obviously meant to comfort her, but it fell flat, and it took him a few seconds to realize it. “I can tell it’s a heavy load for you to fly, so I’m not going to say anything more if you don’t want to tell me. But, and I mean this, there isn’t anything you can do or have done that will make me love you any less, Dashie.” She looked at him. For most of his life, he’d been one of her two biggest cheerleaders. But there wasn’t any exaggerated pride now, no attagirl or you can do it or we believe in you.

Maybe after all these years…

She took a deep breath. “Dad… why did you quit flying? For the RFF, I mean. I know you told me you wanted to do something else with your life. And until now… well…” She swallowed hard. “I guess I understood that. But now, I… I need to know if there was anything more.” She looked up and saw Bow pressing his hooves together, a look of deep thought–sadness?--on his face.

“You’re thinking of getting out?”

Dash nodded. “Yep. I mean, I know ponies who’ve been medically retired from the Wonderbolts, or from other squadrons. Not because of any one big injury, but.. Y’know…” she tried to flap her wings, but the braces stopped her. “... a buncha little injuries. Muscle strains, stress fractures, just adding up over time. Until one day you just wake up, and you can barely make it to ten hooves up, let alone ten miles.”

Bow shook his head. “No, it wasn’t that. Most of the medical retirees I knew were pegasi who just didn’t know when to stop and refused to follow medical orders. Why? Are you worried you’re going to end up like that?”

“Not by choice.” Dash shook her head. “At first, I was angry at Twilight and the doctors for grounding all of us. Like we’re showponies, who need special handling. But Twilight dared me to extend my wings. And I couldn’t.” She sighed, “Now I’m starting to think they were too easy on us. Letting us run too hard and too hot. Letting us get our wings and muscles so tore up on the inside we’ll never be any good again… they’ll pull in a whole new group of reservists, and pack us off to wherever.”

Bow got up from his chair, and Dash could hear a few of his joints popping. “You know what the best medicine is for a young pegasus?” He asked.

Dash sighed. “Is it supposed to be love? Please don’t say love.”

“Heh. Well, that’s always a good standby. But there’s a better one.”

Dash gave a hoofshrug. “No idea.”

“Time.”

She could only look at him, puzzled. “I don’t get it.”

Bow chuckled. “Neither did I, at first. But,” he said, motioning her to the couch, as he pulled two blankets down from its back. “I know that the hardest thing for anyone in the Forces to do is take time off. There’s always something to do, some priority mission, friends you need to hang out with. That wonderful high-speed, low-drag life.” Dash laid down prone on the couch, and Bow draped a blanket over her. She could see it was an old Wonderbolts blanket, the one her mother had knitted by hoof when she was about twelve, just for her, because she asked for one, and her mother wanted to make it special. But Dash said nothing.

“Sometimes,” her father continued, “even though it goes against every instinct we pegasi have, we have to slow down and take time.”

“Even when we’re hurting?”

“Especially when we’re hurting.” Bow sat down on the couch, pulling his own blanket over himself. “So you’re grounded until spring. So what? If you think you have to get something done every second of every day… well, let me tell you, nothing good comes from that. Addictions to stress… that’s a bad life.”

“So…” Dashie asked, “is that why you retired early? Too much?”

“It’s the big reason, yes. But there were a lot of little reasons in that big reason. Little reasons all the way down.”

“Such as?”

“Such as, I was newly married. And I figured I could either be married to your mother, or married to the Forces.”

“Yeah… Mom never seemed to be one for open relationships, if you know what I mean.”

Dash saw her father roll his eyes. “You joke about it, but I saw a lot of wrecked marriages when I was in. More so than wrecked wings or busted legs. And your mom was too special to me to risk that.”

Dash only snorted. “Funny, when I was a foal, I thought all that lovey-dovey stuff you did was an act.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m starting to wish there was more of it. In the ‘Bolts. In all the Flying Forces. Spitfire was saying that handling other squadmates’ breakups is the least fun part of being a commander.”

“Did you believe her?”

“I do now. Just doing Sonic Cupidbooms was making me reach for the painkillers. Even before, y’know, this.”

“Sonic Cupidbooms?”

Dash shrugged. “It’s what we call it when two ‘Bolts decide they’re in a relationship and going steady and come to us. Or if they’ve been seeing each other on the side without telling us and have a bad breakup. Or they get married. Or they got secretly married and had a bad breakup and were divorcing. Like a Sonic Rainboom, but for hearts. Big, colorful, and will absolutely wreck anything that isn’t braced for impact. When we get one, Command has to go in and make sure they’re not in the same flight, or same squadron if they’re high up or the relationship was all feathered up. The worst ones are the ones where they think being a two-Bolt couple can’t work, and one of them just has to get out. There was one couple, who asked me, ‘pick who’s the most valuable to the Bolts, and keep them.’ Like… how do I even do that? I can’t tell the truth and say what I really think. That’s just… wrong. Confidence wrecking. And I certainly won’t lie.”

“Oh, I know that feeling. We just called them heart chits back when I was in... ‘Cupidbooms,’ huh? Guess my little Dashie had something to do with that.” He moved to tousle her hair.

Dash shot her father a look of annoyance. “Dad. No.”

Bow withdrew his hoof. “You’re right, you’re right, I said I would stop it.” He exhaled. “I mean, I hope you understand, it was always genuine. Loving you. Loving your mom. You two are the best things that ever happened to me. I knew that leaving the Forces would be a sacrifice… but, in hindsight, I am so very glad I did.” He sighed. “There was more… but…”

Dash could have sworn she heard her father’s voice crack, just a little bit. But it was there.

“So what was the more?”

This time, it was Bow who only shrugged. “It’s not really important.”

“Hey, I spilled my inner thoughts. Quid pro quo, Dad.”

Bow raised a hoof to make a point, and stopped before saying a word, only shaking his head. “You’ve been hanging out with that Princess too much. All those unicorn words and bargaining tricks.” He paused. “But promise me you…”

Dash had a flash of concern. “What is it, Dad?”

Bow bit his lower lip. “I told myself I’d tell you this story someday. When I thought you would understand it instead of being scared off by it. I think you’ve been ready for far too long. Maybe I just still think of you as my little girl, and part of me still wants to protect you, to keep you confident, even though you’ve been able to do that yourself for a long time now.”

“Dad…” Dash said, “you’re freakin’ out your daughter right now. Because if I have some long lost evil twin or something–”

Dash could always make her father laugh, and that time he did. “Ahh…, no. Nothing so weird. But I hope it at least explains something about your old sire.”

Bow got up, and with a few powerful flaps of his wings, flew up to the top shelf of a bookcase, where he and her mother kept all the old photo albums. Behind three volumes of her parent’s old photos, and the thirty or so devoted to Rainbow Dash, was an album that Dash had never seen before, not even in passing by at top speed flying at ceiling level when she was a filly, crammed in at the edge of the shelf behind the molding of the frame.

“I knew you were never one for the past. And you certainly don’t like looking at old photo albums.”

“Only just all the ones about me, dad.”

“Well, that’s why I put this up with them all those years ago. So there,” he said, with a wink. Then he flew over to the couch, album in hand. It was a simple brown cover, with only one name in raised embossing tape.

F.LT. DASH HIGHFEATHER R.F.F.

“My namesake, huh? This going to be sappy?” Dash asked. She could see the photo album carried a weight for her father, and she tried to lighten the mood.

“If only,” he sighed. “If only.” Bow opened the front cover. Dash could see her father swallow, hard.

The first photo was an official military portrait. A young Royal Flying Forces officer in Class 1 dress uniform, wearing the same two-stripe epaulets of a Lieutenant that Dash herself wore, with weather officer’s wings, and an impressive set of ribbons. He had steel-gray fur, but with a striking blue and gold striped mane and tail. His wings were held tightly to his body, a pose Dash was familiar with from military portraits, and his mark was a feather, leaving a comet-like trail above a crescent moon. Behind him, the flags of the RFF and his squadron… No. 617 RFF, the Stormbusters.

Dash suppressed some not-too-distant–and somewhat vexing–memories of the Stormbuster team trying to tell the Wonderbolts how to do things. Instead, she only asked, “You were in the Stormbusters?”

“Yep. Apres Nous Le Deluge. Still the best all-weather squadron in the Forces. You know them?”

“The Bolts…” Dash shook her head. “... yeah, I’ll be honest. We were on the same stormcell dispersion a few moons ago and they were jerks to us. Like we’re the best dang squadron of all, and they think we don’t know how to bust up a cloud line.”

“Ah, inter-squadron turf wars. The RFF’s favorite pastime.”

“Wait…” Dash said, “don’t tell me this whole time you flew for a rival squadron?”

“Eh, not really a rival.” Bow said. “The joke was, you can always tell a Wonderbolt–”

“--but you can’t tell’em anything. Yeah, even we tell that one among ourselves.”

Bow laughed, and turned the page. “So there we were, Bow Hothoof and Dash Highfeather. We were bunkmates at Weather Control Academy, in the same four-pony flight. Of course, he was the leadpony. He was good. Always driving us up to the top of the rankings. We graduated as the best flight from WCA. There’s our flight,” he said, putting names to images, Falconeye, Squall Heart, Big Dash, and me.”

Big Dash, Rainbow Dash thought.

“So me and Big Dash get posted to the Stormbusters. Made it through our FNP phase...”

New Pegasus phase, with that not-for-foals descriptor in the lead. Dash hoped her father would not see her blush as she remembered her own days as the newbie of her squadron… and all the mistakes she made. Not least of which because she had never told him the full story.

“...we got our weather wings, and then it was just boom, boom, boom, one mission after another. We were based out of Cloudsdale, over at RFF Arcus Mesa on the other side of town. I lived in the barracks, he lived off-post. We were basically the goalkeepers. Anything local weather control couldn’t handle, anywhere in Equestria, we got sent there. Maybe one or two weeks at a stretch, occasionally more. Those were good days…”

There were more photos.

Official squadron lineups, rows of stern-looking pegasi in dress uniforms on the edges of the Cloudsdale bank at Arcus Mesa.

Candids from before and after missions (“you can tell these are the after ones, because none of us have shaved,” Bow commented).

Pictures of pegasi in the Stormbusters’ blue-and-white flight suits, emblazoned with red lightning bolts on the helmet and hooves.

And of course, many, many photos in bars, or in PT gear, in the barracks.

And always in the same photo, inseparably, like a lead and a wingpony, her father, and the pegasus she had never known but whose name she–apparently–carried.

Dash had never known this side of her father. It’d been a part of his life that she’d been led to believe was boring and tranquil. Yet each one of these photos felt oddly familiar, the cadences and excitements and struggles and accomplishments of life in the RFF that she knew so well. And yet all of them were of places and events and ponies that existed long before she did.

“There we were, Big Bow and Big Dash,” her father said.

“What was he like? I mean, not just as an officer, but as a pony?”

She heard her father sigh. “He was a natural leader. Everypony liked him. The officers respected him, and so did the senior enlisted. He wasn’t a technical stallion, all the meteorology stuff. I think he left that to me because he knew I was good at that. But he was organized, sharp, intuitive. Always on. Always ready to go. And a great flier. Even in the worst weather. He had skills. You…” her father paused… “I think you would have liked him. And I know he would have liked you.”

“Even if I was one of those snobby Wonderbolts?”

Bow laughed, gently. “One of the reasons people liked Big Dash is that, yeah, he could play the inter-squadron rivalry game. Everyone in the Forces knows that game. But he also knew when to put it aside. Once it was mission time, to him, we were all on the same team. If the mission was accomplished, everypony won. That’s the kind of pony you really learn leadership from. I can only hope you’ve got ponies like that in the ‘Bolts…”

Spitfire. All the intensity of a tornado, with the windspeed to match. Cocky, but anypony under her command needs anything, she’s there at the drop of a feather. Soarin. Half prancing playboy, half gentlecolt. A perfectionist who lets it rub off on you, who makes you want to be the best and keep up with him. Fleetfoot. Shy. Quiet. The finest technical and weather mind in the squadron. Who can give you a morale boost just by looking at you and saying you got this, who can and has talked panicking newbies back down to ground level.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think I do.” Dash smiled, and her father saw, and he smiled too.

Dash watched as her father flipped through more pages of photographs, explaining each one, while she rested on the couch. Her wings still ached, but something about this made it manageable.

Then came a fun photograph of Bow Hothoof and Dash Highfeather, striking exaggerated flexing poses in their Class 1A Mess Dress Uniforms… next to a pair of two very attractive looking pegasus mares, one of whom had a bright orange mane, and was wearing a wedding dress.

“Wait…” Dash said, a jolt of recognition. “Mom?”

“Yep. That was the day your mom and I got married. Big Dash was my best man, and his wife was one of your mom’s bridesmaids. Skywriter. Cute mare. No guff from anyone. She was a freelance reporter for Sun & Moon. Very smart. Always had her ear to the clouds. Often she knew what was happening before we did. They had two foals, twin colts.”

“Wait, so all that playboy nonsense…”

Bow smiled. “Mares love a stallion in uniform, and I was serious. But Dash was acting. The whole time. He and Skywriter were high school sweethearts back in Whinneapolis. After we graduated WCA, Dash had taken his leave and eloped with her. Didn’t say a thing until I saw he’d updated his emergency contact list with a wife.”

“Why not? Seems like something that, you know, you need to tell your squadmate about. Or your CO.”

Her father visibly winced. “Back in those days, the thinking in the Forces was that if we were supposed to have wives or husbands, they’d be RFF-issued. It wasn’t a very good time for relationships in the service, let alone family life. The expectation was that mares who got married were on terminal leave and were about to be out. If you were a stallion with anything other than a housewife, you expected no end of trouble. And you remember those love chits I told you about? Yeah, there was constant bed-hopping in the barracks, at least if you were into that sort of thing and kept it discreet. That’s how a lotta marriages got broken up. But if two pegasi in the Forces fell hard for each other, wanted to get married, and both of ‘em wanted to stay in, they had to hide it until something forced the issue. Otherwise, command would pick the most “valuable” one–usually the stallion–and send the other one packing.”

Dash struggled to find her words. “Wow… I… wow. I had no idea that they made it so hard. Why?”

Her father sighed, shrugged, and shook his head. “And being stress junkies is just one of the bad habits of pegasi!” he said, his voice filled with all the exaggerated puffery of a salespony. “Don’t forget all the ways we’re wired to think about what stallions and mares should do and act, even 850 and some years after Celestia told us to knock it off! Oh, and all the ways we’re supposed to deal with foals who don’t measure up to expectations, grind ‘em up and make ‘em into rainbows or something…”

Dash laughed. But she noticed the facing page of the album was blank.

Bow continued. “Yeah, we’ve got all kinds of problems, us bird ponies. But at our best, we unite, we work hard, we pull together. We get stuff done. That’s how the good pegasi are. That’s what Dash was for me.”

Was.

Dash did not want to see her father continue the story.

But she said nothing when he did.

“So we got called over to the West Coast. Up by Seaddle. Something, or someone… was making a typhoon out there, one that was going against the prevailing winds. No way it was natural. If it hit, the city would have been flooded out. We never found out what or who made that storm. RFF Weather Command sent us, and every other weather control squadron, too. We were supposed to bust the thing while it was still over the North Luna Ocean. We’d done hurricanes before, so we figured, easy, right? And…”

Dash saw her father’s face fall, pensive and sad. She had never noticed the lines on his face before.

He looked… old. Older than she’d ever remembered him.

“I don’t know what you saw in that storm of yours,” he said. “And I won’t ask you. I figure you’ll tell me when the time is right.”

Dash immediately set any thought of telling her father what she saw or felt in that derecho, or in the nightmare that followed, aside. I need to hear this first. I need to make sure he’s…

“Have… you told anyone else about this before?” Dash asked, worried.

“Bits and pieces, for your mother. But not at once,” he replied. “We’d been flying missions against that monster storm for a week. Taking bare minimum time for rest, if that. But we were finally making progress. We’d cut the storm into a few big chunks, and we were reducing them, a little bit at the time. The ‘Busters were sent up towards one that had made landfall and was moving towards Mount Haynier. Problem was… it ran into a cold front just as we took off. By the time we got there, it was an ice storm. And…” Dash heard her father stifle a sob, “...and we were not prepared for it.”

Oh no.

Dash moved closer to her father. She knew. Every weather pony knew. Every pegasus knew.

You avoided ice storms. Ice storms were death without a special flight suit and special training. And even those who had both knew to respect the danger of ice.

Ice was the one thing every pegasus feared most. Ice froze wing joints in place, built up on feathers, covered goggles, encrusted hooves and manes and tails.

Ice made pegasi fall from the sky.

Oh no.

She hugged her father close. “Oh, Dad.”

Bow hugged his daughter back, and kissed her on the forehead. Then he took a deep, shuddering breath, and continued. “We did our best. We sliced that thing up like a Hearth’s Warming Squash. But every cut we made, all that supercooled water just spilled out in front of us. It added up. Too much weight. One by one, we dropped from the sky. The last time I saw Big Dash… he was headed right into Mount Haynier. I barely managed to dodge it. Made an emergency landing on a logging road. Took eight hours for the Pegarescue flight to find me. I didn’t hear anything about Big Dash for three more days. He hit with full force, head on. Died instantly.”

Dash laid her head on her father’s shoulder, like she had so many times as a filly.

Like she hadn’t in years.

“The funeral was the worst part. The entire squadron went to Whinneapolis. Wives and husbands and significant others too. Skywriter was there. His boys were there. They were four years old. They cried the whole time. Skywriter didn’t. Neither did your mom. The rest of us…” he trailed off.

Bow turned the page of the photo album. A front-page newspaper clipping about the storm. RFF BATTLES ICE-CANE NEAR MOUNT HAYNIER; ONE WEATHER CONTROL PEGASUS AMONG 30 DEAD.

The official accident report.

The obituary.

The funeral announcement.

The rest of the pages of the photo album—more than half of them–remained blank. “There’s nothing more,” Bow Hothoof finally said. “I keep it blank because he only lived half a life.”

The two of them sat in silence for a very long time.

“So what happened after?” Dash finally worked up the nerve to ask.

“The night after the funeral, I had gone out with the squadron, down to the hotel bar. We just drank and drank and told sad stories. And we kept toasting and toasting, ‘To absent friends.’ And… finally I had enough. I went back upstairs. I just sat with your mom in our hotel room. I told her I was done with the RFF. I would put in my retirement papers, take terminal leave. I had enough to qualify for the E.I. Bill, so I could get a degree. Go into weather engineering. I would never put her through what Skywriter was going through. Never. She agreed. And she comforted me. We just… held each other, for the rest of the night. I got out the next spring. And the spring after that, you were born.”

A few hours ago, this would have been too much information for Dash.

“It’s…” she said. “It’s like…” She struggled her way to the words. “Now I know why you named me Rainbow Dash.”

And why you were always calling me Your Little Dashie.

“It was your mother’s idea,” Bow said. “I didn’t even bring it up. But when she did, I immediately said yes.” Dash felt her father gently stroking her mane. “I was in a very dark place for a time after what happened. But then I saw you… and… it was like everything made sense again. I learned how to see the world again. New and bright. I saw it through your eyes, Dashie.” He inhaled hard, and Dash felt her father’s wing around her. “And that’s why I was always cheering you on. No matter what. I wanted you to fly as far as those wings of yours could carry you.”

“So… why did you never tell me about this?” Dash asked.

Bow looked pensive for a moment. “You’d fallen in love with the idea of being a Wonderbolt. And I certainly didn’t want to scare you out of it. Knowing what could happen. I figured I would tell you when the time was right. I just… never got around to it.” He turned to face her. “I’m sorry I didn’t.”

“No need to be,” she replied. “Now was the right time for me to hear it.”

“Hm,” Bow said, flipping through the last blank pages. “Perhaps there was… well I’ll be. I wondered where that one ended up.”

Stuck in the corner of the last page of the photo album, was one small photo. This one was of Bow Hothoof, cradling a very small, and very sleepy-looking, pegasus filly with a rainbow mane, close to his chest, her blue fur awash in a sea of her father’s gray, one of her eyes closed and the other eye looking grumpily around..

“I think you were about a month old in this one,” Bow said. “Your mom said that I could always calm you down, no matter how worked up you got.”

Dash looked at the photograph, then at her father, then back at the photograph.

A concerning thought came to Rainbow Dash. “Are… are you worried about what might happen if I keep flying? That I’ll end up–”

“Crashing?” Bow said. “Not you. I mean, I did hear those stories about you at Flight Academy. How you got a reckless flier kicked off flight status. Which… Celestia, I wish someone had done for us whenever one of us flew recklessly.”
Dash’s ears perked up at this. “You never got grounded?”

Bow shook his head. “In my day, you took grounding only if you had no other choice, court-martial or medical. And even those, you fought. Laying down and taking a grounding… it was… it was almost like surrender to the enemy like we were back in the Draconic Wars. You flew no matter what.” Dash heard her father sigh, but with… pride? “You know how I know things have changed in the Forces? For better?”

Dash shrugged.

“When I heard you say that your Captain had told the Wonderbolts–the Wonderbolts!–that if the Princess said they were grounded, they were staying grounded. That would have been… unthinkable in my day with the Stormbusters.” Dash heard her father take a deep breath. “Your squadron is setting the example for the rest of the Forces. The right way. And… I couldn’t be more proud of you for accepting it.Even knowing how much it would make you feel lazy or a slacker or not worth your wings. That’s what I was talking about. Time. Knowing when to step back and think about your decisions. Good skill for a pegasus. Even more important for a leader.”

Dash’s face fell. “I… I never told you this. But after Twilight… grounded us, I begged her to take it back. That we were still good to go, we just had to take it easy.”

Bow said nothing.

“And she told me that she’d take it back if I could open my wings… and… and I couldn’t.” Dash felt a tear come to her eyes. “And this whole time I thought I was weak.”

Bow held his daughter close. “Just the opposite, Dashie. That takes being strong. And smart. And brave. And all the things I know you know how to do. That Princess friend of yours knows what she’s doing, I think. Maybe some of what you taught her in those flying lessons stuck.”

This time, Dash did not shy away from the praise. She thought of Twilight’s concern for her, and for the Wonderbolts.

She knew.

Dash thought of Spitifire’s note on the box of reading, that she herself would be up for Command and Staff College in a few months when she pinned on Flight Commander’s bars.

Then she remembered that only those with a Group Captain’s recommendation attended C&S.

Taking the grounding… She was giving me an example. She wasn’t just making a show for Twilight. She knew too.

She was passing on a lesson to me.

A lesson that she thinks I’ll need… for when I make Group Captain. For when I’m a leader.

In that moment, Dash began to feel better.

Maybe, she thought, maybe I did need to talk to my father. She held him close, and made a note to give her mother a real embrace the following morning. To really talk with her, for the first time in years.

Time and love, the cures for a wounded heart.

Strange thoughts filled Dash’s mind. It was as if the storm she had seen in her dream had been blown aside, and now she could see clearly, possible futures before her.

Continuing with the Wonderbolts.

Setting the ‘Bolts aside. Going to work directly for Twilight, helping her with all those pesky Princess problems she was always twilighting about. It was the least I could do for her now.

Dash looked at her father. His gaze was still fixed on the photo of her when she was a filly. Dash looked at the photo of her as a newborn foal, but not her own surly grumpiness, but the depths of the love in her father’s eyes.

There would be family in her future, there would be love. How couldn’t it be?

Two paths diverged in her mind. Two relationships left hanging in mid-air.

Soarin was cute, in a total hunk kind of way. (What was that thing Twilight called him? Callypigeon or something?) And Soarin was confident and a great flier, and all the great little fliers–

You never told him. You thought you had to keep it strictly professional.

He almost died that day. If you’re serious you need to…

Dash’s mind strayed again. Applejack was soft, and warm, and kind, and always smelled of sugar and grass. (Soarin called her stacked, whatever that meant.) Applejack made her feel content whenever she was around. And she, too, had family.

And… maybe… just maybe… she would listen if you said you were sorry…

Two paths diverged in her mind. Two possibilities among many.

And Dash laughed. Her personal life had been a disaster for far too long.

And now you’re about to be respectable, too, Crash. Gonna need to start acting like it. Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.

Dash looked at the photo again.

Dad was right. Time and love. Those can fix everything. If you know where to look.

She made a mental note to thank Twilight for the grounding.

She flexed her wings inside of her braces.

Okay. Command lessons learned. One. A break every once in a while doesn’t hurt.

Two. Why fly solo when you can fly together?

She turned the story and the lessons over and over in her mind for a very long time.

“Whatcha thinking about, Dashie?” Her father asked. He had closed the photo album and set it aside.

“Oh… lots of things,” Rainbow Dash replied. “Guess… scratch that, no guess. I did get worked up. But… I think I’ll be OK.” She pulled up her Wonderbolts quilt, and gave her father the biggest hug she had ever remembered giving her biggest supporter in a very, very, very long while.

It felt good.

“Happy Hearth’s Warming, Dashie.”

“Happy Hearth’s Warming, Dad.”