In the middle of the day, Rainbow Dash flew through the sky at blinding speed, spinning around the clouds and doing aileron rolls whenever she came down, before picking herself up and ascending before touching the ground.

It all felt so… fake.

Every single night, of every single day of the last few months Dash had been getting dreams like these, and every single time they started, Luna, who she knew was making her have these dreams as an attempt to lift her mood, always made her forget that it was a dream. But unlike Luna who was an unicorn before becoming an alicorn, Dash was a pegasus, an early flutterer, she was a born flier. She had been in the sky since before she could even trot, she knew how the sky was supposed to feel and this? This wasn't right.

The feeling of pressure when she came back down, the lack of oxygen above the clouds, the rough texture of the air at high speeds. It was all wrong. Maybe normal ponies couldn't tell but she was born to fly, it was her element, the sky was the only place where she felt completely comfortable. She could tell this wasn't real, so, when she reached the highest point her wings could take her, she turned back around, and with a sonic rainboom, she crashed herself into the ground.

She woke up immediately after in her bed in Twilight's castle, completely unharmed. Well at least as unharmed as somepony who had been in that bed for four and a half months straight could be.

She received the sight of the now familiar ceiling with a sigh, yeah, the ceiling was still there, with it's 11500 cuts in the dark and 56200 shines whenever the lights were on. She had counted them, in the time she had been bedridden, she had enough time to do nothing but familiarize herself with her prison. If the room was sentient, she would have known it by name, but as it was, she just knew everything about it from memory, every cut and shine. Of every wall in her room, it was one of the extremely few things she could do while she sat and waited for the spell to cure her limbs.

Limbs that now, after one hundred forty five days of total inactivity, were virtually non-existent. The body that her lover was so enamoured with, all toned and muscular was now reduced to something resembling an skeletal raisin. She wasn't the Rainbow that her friends knew for years. She was a bedridden failure that they had to take care of, she knew that, she believed that. She wasn't the creature of habit that she once was, she didn't wake up at 4 am anymore to exercise, she was asleep all the time, sometimes until midday. In her mind, she was nothing but a nuisance, a stupid waste of space that needed her friends to do everything for her.

She should be out there helping save the world, but instead she was relegated to this bed, being a bother to everypony.

Rarity always reminded her that she shouldn't think like that, that ensuring her safety and health was not a problem to any of them. Yes, she should trust her marefriend, but how? How could she ever think of herself as anything other than an useless annoyance when she couldn't even clean her own filth?

She shouldn't think like that. She told herself, but the door opened, and Spike came in with a bucket and a sponge. Ready to clean her filth and take her unmentionable bag away. She groaned when she saw him. Even almost four months later, she still hadn't come to terms with not being self sufficient.

"Hi to you too Rainbow Dash" Said Spike the dragon, he had heard the groan, he always had, but he knew it didn't come from a bad place. In his mind, Dash just needed more time to get used to her new life. She once had the hope that Twilight would find a cure to her condition, and as an optimist himself, Spike tried to keep that hope alive as much as he could "How are you today Rainbow"

"Itching" she answered, with no real energy behind her voice "My muzzle has been itching since I woke up"

With a small flutter of his wings, spike raised himself to where she was and scratched her nose until she told him to stop. Since he was already there, he brought up the sponge to start her bath. Once he was doing it, he tried to start conversations with her, like he always did, but she refused. Even when she was mocking another friend, telling Rainbow that Twilight had been working so much that she had forgotten to clip her hair, and that she had gotten so fuzzy that she looked like an Irish Cob, she just simply didn't have the energy to talk.

Spike thought about how that was becoming a problem. During the first couple of weeks, she actually replied to him, but since then, getting her to talk was becoming harder and harder. It was as if she had lost any and all interest on conversation as time went on. Fortunately for both of their mental healths, there was something that she was always interested in. Flying.

"Scootaloo is coming in less than half an hour" He said, almost in passing, something that made Dash turn her head to him almost instantly "She's wondering if you're going to teach her something new this week"

"Is it already saturday?" She asked, being inside this room without anywhere to go and nothing to do, really messed up with her perception of time.

"Yeah. With the wonderbolt tryouts coming so soon she is getting very excited to show them our moves"

"Well, what are you waiting for? Get me in my chair"

Spike finished with her bath, and took her bag of waste to a trash can. When he came back, he sat her in her chair and brought her down to ground level. With all the time it took him to do that, they didn't have to wait too much for Scootaloo. She got to the castle earlier than she usually did on this particular saturday.

Ever since her P. Majoris muscles actually developed, she had finally become able to fly. As much of a late bloomer as she was, she was a very spunky flier. She was as inexperienced as Spike was, but she received the skies with so much emotion, that Rainbow Dash couldn't help but feel a glimmer of hope inside of her cynical heart.

She welcomed the young mare warmly, and thanks to Spike pushing her around, she soon followed to the grounds in front of the castle. From there, she would see Spike and Scootaloo practice their flying and coaching them whenever they needed it. They needed it often.

She enjoyed coaching the young couple, their curiosity and passion for flying was the light of her life at the moment. But as she yelled instructions to the younglings in the sky, there was a voice at the back of her head telling her the truth. A truth she already knew, she didn't like to lie to herself. She was very aware of what she was doing, she was projecting herself into her students. She would feel like shit about this later, but for the moment, she allowed herself to enjoy sight of the combined Sonic Rainboom that Spike and Scootaloo did in unison.

She smiled after seeing it, at the very least, she was going to pass on something…

...

Once the routine that they were going to show to the wonderbolts was done, and Dash was being brought back inside by her trainees, she got something that she hadn't gotten in a couple of months.

Visitors.

And who these visitors were, surprised everypony Her, more than anyone.

Bow Hothoof and Windy Whistles were standing near the door, the vestiges of what was supposed to be a smile quickly disappearing from their faces. This was the first time in months that the saw their daughter and she was bound to a chair, looking malnourished while a dragon was taking her into a crystal structure.

Bow huffed like an angry minotaur, and without any semblance of thinking he sprinted with the full intention of tackling the dragon that, in his eyes, was taking his daughter, hurt daughter away. And if Spike and Scootaloo hadn't raised themselves from the ground, he would had crashed into them. In the end, his blind, overprotective rage, made him crash into a wall.

Scootaloo trotted up to him, to assist him up she yelled a "Mister!" when she thought that he knocked himself unconscious, but this wasn't the case, as he slowly and painfully turned to her, noticing for the first time who she was.

I was that yearling that had the same admiration for Dash that he and his wife had. For a minute, he thought What is she doing in the lair of a dragon? But as soon as she got to him and helped him get up, he noticed the paintings, and pictures framed around the walls. Most of the pictures featured his daughter, happily smiling alongside a group of other mares, some of the pictures also featured…. The dragon?

"Mister, Dash isn't in danger… she lives here"

Windy on the other hoof, was still stunned by the sight of her daughter in a wheelchair. Once she started moving and approached the flying dragon with a frown, Rainbow instructed Spike to lay her down in the ground and roll her to her mother.

"Mom, Its okay" She said, with a tone of utmost defeat in her voice "He is Spike. he is my caretaker"

…

Spike and Rainbow Dash guided Windy inside to one of the living rooms the castle had, where Scootaloo and a very distressed Hothoof were already sitting in. When she was brought into the room, he looked at her with a broken heart, and an empty soul.

Rainbow asked her mom to sit down, before she explained her situation.

"A couple of months ago, I went into a cave with my marefriend. We told everypony that we were going to excavate some gems, but we both knew that we weren't going deep into a cave for pretty stones. But before we could get to do anything together, an earthquake interrupted us. We tried to get away, but the cave came down on us… or should I say me? The debris broke my neck and my back in a bunch of places. So here I am, in this chair. Waiting for my alicorn friend to find a spell that can fix it"

Once her parents started crying, they didn't stop for a long while. Their daughter was broken, and they weren't here to protect her when she needed them. Even when Dash herself told them that it was okay, that it was temporary and that Twilight was going to find that elusive spell.

Dash tried to calm them down, she truly did. But they wouldn't budge. Maybe her inner turmoil was obvious. Maybe the only one who really believed that she hadn't given up was her. Maybe her parents could see the true feeling of defeat inside her eyes.

For a while, she and her friends waited for her parents to say something. Knowing full well that she wasn't going to like whatever they had to say. They were overbearing and overprotective. So having her like this wasn't going to go well for her.

And she confirmed her fears when, Bow stood up and said they wanted to take her home.

"What?" Asked, Rainbow Dash, she shouldn't be surprised, but considering where she was at the moment, she didn't expected them to go full ultra-parental instantly "You can't take me away. I'm in the best place I could be!"

"The best place you could be is back at our house in Cloudsdale" Said Hothoof, putting his hoof down, his daughter's safety was his main concern and he wasn't going to leave her care to anyone else "We will take care of you there.

"Dad, I'm in the castle of the elements of harmony, getting cared by a dragon while a wait for a spell to fix me. I'm not moving from this place"

"That's the problem, you're not moving regardless" He said. Inadvertently thrusting a metaphorical knife through his daughter's heart.

"Dashie, you can wait for your spell all you want at home" Interjected Windy, but with a sad tone added "If you wait here, you could be waiting for a long time. Haven't your friends told you that healing spells don't work that way?"

Rainbow knew this. She had been told from day one. From inside the hospital. But she held into that hope as if her life depended on it. So she loudly answered "At least here I can have the hope that my friend, the best spell caster in this whole land! Can come up with something. I'm not going back to Cloudsdale, just so I can be humiliated! What am I going to do there? Watch you both grow old and die taking care of me? NO thank you! I already have enough of that here!"

With her view on the truth now in the open, the whole room stood silent. Dash broke it to say "Spike, take me to my room".

Reluctantly, he did so. While in the living room, Bow and Windy came up to Scootaloo. "If you could take care of her for a couple of days more while we prepare everything at home, we would be grateful"

Knowing their resolve for Rainbow's wellbeing, Scootaloo agreed. Hoping that they knew what they were doing.

In Manehattans, Rarity sat behind the counter of her store staring at nothing. She came here for a report of the financial quarter, and lied to Sassy about coming here to keep an eye on her store. Or at least now it seemed like a lie.

Because Rarity was not at all interested in this store, not the goings on nor Sassy herself. She tried attending her customers for an hour, but quickly dropped it and relegated the responsibility to Sassy.

It was a problem, she knew she had a problem. It had started right when she got the news about Rainbow's condition. But ever since, she wasn't able to focus. Her thoughts were always with her marefriend. Of thoughts about her wounds and her recovery. And about how everything that was happening at the moment was her fault.

How come Dash got crushed, and she only got a few mild scratches? Why couldn't the stone crush her too? That way they could have been together in her pain, but no, here she was, alive and well. Able, and in the city of artsy assholes who love nothing but the smell of their own farts.

Every single moment she was awake, she was bombarded by thoughts of how the crushed one should have been her.

None of the dresses currently on this or any of her stores was a new designp, because for the last two and a half months she had been unable to put pen on paper to design a single thing, much less to sew a model for reproduction. Every single time she tried, she could feel the white paper taunting her back.

Bringing her mind closer to Dash. To how she could have saved them. Every time she was reminded that Twilight once tried to teach her how to teleport, and every time she mentally beat herself up because she rejected Twilight's offer. "When am I going to need a spell like that?" she remembered herself saying.

In her mind, that was no better than having crippled her marefriend herself. She may as well have held the stone herself.

Sassy must have seen a tear in her eye or something, because as soon as she was done with her clients, she trotted up to Rarity.

"Is everything okay?" Sassy asked.

"Yes, yes. I just had something in my eye."

"To be honest, you look like somepony who needs somepony to listen to you. Say, do you want to go for a drink after we're done here for today?"

"Sorry, I have been keeping myself from the bottle lately." answered Rarity, it wasn't a lie, truly. She hadn't drank even a cup of wine or cider ever since the accident. In the months prior to it, she had grown used to drinking with Rainbow Dash, now doing it without her seemed wrong. Empty. Just something that would make her stupid without reason. Reason… like the one she had to be here? " Darling, if it doesn't bother you. I'm going to take my leave"

They didn't share a lot of other words before Rarity trotted out and away from her store. The store that one day had been a dream come true, now was just an empty, vain place filled with things and ponies that didn't interested her in the slightest.

She just wanted to go back to her home in ponyville, to the lover that awaited and to the dream that maybe, just maybe, she could be healed soon.

In her room above one of the branches of the Crystal Tree, however. Dash wasn't feeling up to the idea of being taken away by her parents. She knew how her parents were. She knew that her words were not going to stop them. They were going to have their way and she would soon be in Cloudsdale, being the laughingstock of their community. Or even worse, everypony who knew her up there was going to turn every encounter with her into a pity party.

The worst part, Is that she knew. She knew that what they told her was true. She knew that there was no spell that could help her. She knew that the doctors did their best. She knew that Twilight was doing her best. She knew that she wasn't ever going to move again. And she knew that she would have to be taken care of until she died.

She also knew a way out.

"Spike?" She said, resting on her bed while looking at her hind hooves.

"Yes?"

"Can you write a letter for me?" She asked, no energy behind her tone of voice.

He answered "Yes, of course" as he sprinted to find paper and quill in one of the drawers. "What Kind of letter is this and to whom?"

"Its for the princesses. And… it is a mercy letter"

"What?" He turned to her as quickly as draconally possible. He couldn't believe what she was asking of him "Please Rainbow, tell me that this is a way to cope, and you're not asking what I think you're asking"

"I want them to put me down Spike"

"You can't just give up like this, what if Twi-"

"Spike, you know better than I do that healing magic doesn't work like that" She frowned at him "I'm never going to move again, I'm going to be tied to that chair for the rest of my days with my parents pulling me around. I will never have control over anything ever again. There is only one think I can control now, and I'm taking control over it Spike"

"But. But…"

"Spike. Please. Write the letter"

They say that when you make life changing choices, your head is filled with all the options and outcomes that you have. But at that moment, he thought and felt nothing, nothing but a feeling of lost and emptiness, and that the one feeling that at the moment, both of them were sharing. He gritted his teeth and clenched his fist, and with growing sorrow, he laid quill on paper.