Rainbow Dash Burst through the door, landing on the living room floor with a stomp. Her limbs were spread, crouched down and ready to pounce, her wings spread and shivering with tension. Her chest hair was ruffed out, her breaths coming fast and hard. A slight sheen of perspiration covered her.

"Alright, buddy, we need to have a chat!" Rainbow pronounced exuberantly, her brow furrowed, eyes intense. Sam, who had been caught in the action of refilling his drink, slowly set the bottle down, shaking his fingers lightly to remove the spilled cider. He regarded his friend, noting the slightly wild look in her eyes, the heavy breathing. He sighed, shaking his head slightly.

"If you keep standing there, you're going to catch a chill. You certainly seem to have worked yourself into a lather over something or other." Sam hiked his thumb behind him, in the general direction of the bathroom door. "Grab yourself a towel and rub yourself down, or I will." He quirked his eyebrow, an almost nonexistent smirk tweaking the corner of his mouth.

"Buh, you, I... Bah!" Rainbow sputtered, indignation robbing her of her earlier intensity. She reddened slightly, then burst into action, rocketing down the hallway as Sam made to get up. Sam relaxed back into his lounger, a new 'invention' of his cobbled together with the help of Big Mac and a pony named Hokey Spokes. It was no La-Z-Boy, but it got the job done. Taking a long drink of his cider, he rubbed his eyebrows. Rainbow might be his best friend in Equestria, but sometimes just looking at her made him tired. Schooling his expression, he slowly wiped the consternation from his face so he could meet this new exuberance of Rainbows with a neutral expression.

The sounds of vigorous toweling and snarled invectives drifted back to him from the open bathroom door. Eventually these sounds were replaced by the determined stomping of hooves as Rainbow slowly and deliberately marched back up the hallway, making a precise turn to come about facing Sam. She stared at Sam, her magenta eyes boring into his. Sam met her gaze evenly.

Inside, he was becoming slightly alarmed. Rainbow might mass all of half his body, but he would probably rather have a tiger sitting in front of him right now. Rainbow was determined. Whatever was bothering her, it wasn't something he was going to be able to just brush off. He knew this look. Rainbow was going to dig at him until she got what she wanted. She wasn't afraid to use physical coercion to get her way, either. He could picture her, up in her cloud house, running in place, her wings snapping in and out of their sheathed position. He imagined that anyone passing below her residence might have heard the odd "Get pumped!" or "You can do this!" wafting down to them on the breeze for the last hour or so. A small smile fluttered across his face. Rainbow had her little rituals for situations like this, oh yes she did...

"What are you smiling about, Sam? This is serious business!" Her scowl returned, Rainbow surged up into Sams face. He reared back, his own brow furrowing, the smile replaced instantly by a visage of stone.

"Hey, Rainbow. Back off, yeah?" Sam said in a small, cold voice, the strain evident. Rainbow blanched, scooting back to her original position, a slightly scared, penitent look on her face. There was more in that look than Sam wanted to interpret, and he began to realize that this might be a more serious conversation than he had first believed. Looking into Rainbow's eyes, he saw something he wasn't used to. Worry.

"Sit down, Dash." He patted the couch next to him, a more Equestrian piece of furniture he'd bought when his pony friends complained about having nothing to sit on. He'd had a rather negative moment of self inspection when he realized he thought nothing of having his friends sit on the ground. It had taken him longer than he'd like to admit to adopt the mantra of People, not Ponies, and he still had his moments...

"Yeah, fine. Sitting is fine." Rainbow turned to her left and hopped up onto the couch, turning once before she settled, sphinxlike, on the couch to Sam's right. Her muzzle wasn't more than a foot away from him, but the armrest of the couch provided a psychological barrier for his sense of personal space. "We've got some stuff to hash out, Sammy boy. You know me, I like to get right down to it, so I guess I'll say sorry in advance." Sam couldn't help but smirk at this, and covered it by taking a drink from his glass. Rainbow had gotten into more trouble blindly charging into things than he cared to think about. She'd gotten him in trouble, too, more than once.

"Well, Dash, I suppose I'll let that apology cover my door repairs, but I think I might need a little more for the spilled cider. This is SAA Private Stock. Wasting it should be a capitol offence." Sam regarded Rainbow coolly over the rim of his glass, probably enjoying watching the color drain from her face a bit more than he should have. He and Rainbow had shared more than a few bottles of Sweet Apple Acre's finest. She knew what she'd done. After reveling in her mortification for a few moments, he pulled another bottle from behind his chair.

"No worries, though. Big Mac just stocked me up. Care for some?" In the back of his mind, Sam still held out a little hope that he could derail Rainbow's train before it fully pulled into the station. A night of heavy drinking might just keep whatever this was at bay for at least a bit longer. Some of Rainbow's... Serious conversations had become less than pleasant. Like the time Rainbow had found out Sam was a professed atheist, and it had taken him two hours of shouting just to make her understand he didn't think Celestia and Luna didn't exist because he didn't believe in god. He still wasn't sure if they were really on the same page on that subject, but they were probably reading the same book.

His hopes for inebriated fun were dashed, however.

"No thanks, Sam. This is really bothering me, and I really wanna' talk about it. We can get silly on AJ's best some other time." Rainbows expression was enough to tell Sam he wasn't going to distract her from this. It also told him he shouldn't. That worry was back, crowding out the anger, exasperation, and the subtle twinkle of mischief he was so used to seeing. That told him putting this conversation off was going to hurt Rainbow, and he didn't want to do that.

"Well, Dash, if it's that important to you, let's have it then. What's this all about? I can't say you bursting into my house is too irregular an occurrence, but if you were mad about something I did you still would be, and I can at least tell you aren't mad." Sam looked at Rainbow, trying to get a clue from her body language or expression as to what had gotten her into this state.

"Not yet, Sammy. Guess it all depends on how you answer my question." Rainbow looked down and away from him for a few seconds. When she looked up, the determination was back in her eyes, but Sam could see resignation and hurt in those orbs as well. "Sam... Why are you so sad?"

"Why am I..." Sam was taken aback. At first he thought Rainbow was playing some kind of joke on him. He almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of the question. One look at Rainbow's face told him this was no joke. He wasn't sure if he'd ever seen her look like this. Wherever she'd gotten this idea, he could see she believed it. She believed it was true, and it was driving her crazy.

"Rainbow.. I'm not sad. I've got a good life. I've got great friends, a nice home, a good job. You know me better than anyone. Why would you think I'm sad?" Sam was calm on the outside, but inside he was scrabbling desperately for a way out of this conversation. Maybe if he jumped out the window he wouldn't get cut by the glass too badly...

"Don't lie to me, Sam. I may not be the Element of Honesty, but it doesn't take a magic lie detector for me to tell you're not telling the truth. And don't even think about running away from me. We both know I can chase you down without breaking a sweat. I can break the sound barrier, I can sure as hell run down a lanky monkey like you." Rainbow looked into Sam's face and he could see the anger was back. What he wasn't expecting were the tears. Her eyes were slowly filling with moisture.

"Come on, Dash, don't freakin' cry. What the hell? You never cry! What's gotten into you?" Sam reached out to Rainbow, not sure exactly what he was going to do, but before he could finish the gesture one of Rainbow's hooves knocked his hand aside and poked him hard in the chest. Sam looked to his hand, then the hoof pushing none too gently into his chest, taken aback. Rainbow knew better than anyone that he wasn't comfortable with this kind of personal contact. He was about to lace into her and shove her hoof away when he looked back to her face. She was openly crying now, tears making wet tracks in the short hair on her cheeks. Shaking her head to clear her eyes, she looked at him almost mournfully.

"You. You've gotten into me." Rainbow pulled the hoof back, using it to rub her eyes aggressively. "And it's not just me. I asked the gang about it. I guess I was the first one to notice, but once I mentioned it, they could all see it. We've been talking it over all week, and the girls decided I'd be the best one to talk to you about it. Hah!" She snorted in self derision. "Some job I'm doing of it, huh? Whatever. Fact is, you're always sad. You were happy when you first got here. Celestia sent you here to get 'acclimated to Equestrian society', and for a few months you were great. maybe I saw it first cause I spent the most time with you in the beginning..."

She was right, Sam supposed. He'd walked down a path one day back on Earth, and found an interesting cave in a hillside. He'd crawled through it for curiosities sake, and come out a cave on the side of the mountain Canterlot perched on. He'd been disoriented by the sudden impossible change in his general surroundings, and had immediately turned to go back. He'd been presented with a view of a bare rock face. Scared and confused, he made his way down the cliff face, most likely almost falling to his death a dozen times. The climb was a blur of fear and pain, he barely remembered it. Eventually he got down off the cliff, and trekked over to the fantastical city he'd glimpsed on his way down.

Walking through the gates, he looked around for people, hoping he could find someone to tell him where the hell he was, but all he saw were weird little horses. Having no reason to, he didn't equate the expressions on their faces to emotions he would expect a person to have. Animals didn't smile in delight, or have their mouths go round with awe. The animal chatters they were making wasn't language, it was just the sounds these horses made. The clothes and bags they wore weren't, they were the costuming whatever mad person owned them had dressed them up in.

After walking for a few minutes he realized he was hungry. Starving, really. He walked over to an open air bakery, and the smell was so enticing he just started shoving pastries in his mouth. He heard an angry voice tell him he needed to pay for those, like, right now. Without looking up he dug a twenty out of his pocket and tossed it at the voice, continuing to gorge on the most delicious confections he'd ever tasted. When the voice asked him what the hell this was, he looked up angrily to ask her if she'd never seen money before. And looked at a horse. An angry looking horse. That inexplicably seemed to be calling the guards on him. He'd been so flabbergasted he didn't even struggle when the Royal Guard came over, restrained him at the baker's insistence, and hauled him off to the dungeon for theft.

So there he sat. All day. While snooty looking horses asked him who he was... What he was. Suffice it to say, Sam had been less than cooperative. The Ponies, as they called themselves, threw some food to him and left him in a cell overnight. The next morning he met Celestia. That was something of a shock. He learned later that after a few minutes of conversation with him, Celestia canceled her morning court, and spent the rest of the day talking to him, eventually letting him out and leading him to a guest room where they continued to talk. She left at sunset, telling him they would talk again tomorrow. She also left a pair of guards on his door. That was okay, he wasn't going anywhere. He'd had a lot to think about.

The next day she came back. They talked for a bit longer, then she had six new ponies come in, and left for court. The pink one was insane. The yellow one was mean. The pink and yellow one was a shivering ball. The white one made him want to hit her. The purple one was okay, he could actually carry on an intelligent conversation with her. The blue one... The blue one was interesting. Sam latched onto her unique coloration, his interest in her look spreading into an interest in her deceptively deep character. He got to know all those ponies, and would later call them all friends, even though he still wanted to hit Rarity occasionally. Twilight tried to figure out what he was, where he came from, if there were any more, and how he got here in the first place. She failed. Sam thought she still felt bad about it, but she'd been pulling her hair... No, mane out, proposing rather intrusive procedures when Celestia asked Luna to step in. Luna failed just as dismally as Twilight. Sam thought that might have actually made Twilight feel better.

Celestia decided to try next. It was a state secret he would carry to his grave what happened next.

She failed. Honestly, Sam felt like Twilight took that harder than he did. He hadn't been expecting any better results. Hoping, maybe. But Twilight was sure Celestia could help him. Anyway, they all said they'd keep trying. Twilight had a theory about his metabolizing Equestrian foodstuffs, eventually all his cells being replaced with atomic materiel of Equestrian origins. It seemed to be the case. He'd been more or less immune to magic when he first got to Equestria, but the longer he lived there and ate the food, the more affected by magic he became. Other things too. He was stronger now. A lot stronger. Faster, too. Anyway, Twilight said after he'd completely assimilated Equestrian materials into him, he'd have a unique magical signature just like everyone else in Equestria. By analyzing it, she could devise a spell that would seek out similar magical signatures. So, if there were other Humans in Equestria, the spell should be able to find them. It had been two years since he got here. Twilight guessed it would take another three before she could cast the spell.

"Hey, Sam, snap out of it!"

Sam started, looking back at Rainbow. He realized he'd gone off into la la land, Rainbow forgotten as he reminisced about his circumstances. He looked away again guiltily.

"Sorry Dash. I was a million miles away for a bit there. So. If I said what I was sad about wasn't your fault. or anyone's really, could we leave it at that?" Sam studied Rainbow as she wrestled with the question. More emotion than he'd expected flashed across her face. He could see anger, sadness, and guilt flicker across her amazingly expressive equine visage.

"Hell, no. I can't watch one of my friends stew in misery!" Rainbow suddenly burst out, her fore-hooves flailing as she reared back on the couch. "I don't care who's fault it is! It's still hurting you, and I can't leave a friend hangin' like that! Tell me what's going on, so I can DO something about it. I can't STAND watching you go through life with this thing hurting you. Everything you do is affected by it, don't you see that? Everything we do, there's always that part of you that just sits there. It doesn't pull away, but it keeps me out!" Sam Recoiled from her wild hooves, but just as much from the distinctly personal turn Rainbow's outburst had taken. He'd been afraid of this for a long time. The urge to run was rising in the back of his brain, to just get out and see how far he could get, but he knew it was useless.

"Dash, calm down please." Sam said quietly, resignedly. "If you hit me with one of those hooves I'm gonna throw you out." Rainbow froze, then slowly sank back down to her earlier position, a wary but hopeful expression on her face. Sam could barely stand to see her like that. "Dash... A lot of this conversation is going to depend on how you answer my next question, so think about it very carefully. I might not be the Element of Honesty either, but please don't try to lie to me, ok?" Dash gulped once, then nodded slowly. "Dash, do you love me? Not like you love a friend, or your parents, you know what I mean."

Dash's face closed down, a slow blush spreading across her face. "Heh heh, come on Sammy boy. Don't make me say it..." She turned away slightly, a hoof going to her face. A tiny, wistful smile formed slowly, and Sam's heart plummeted.

"Damn. Dammit all to hell. SHIT!" Sam leapt up from his seat, took one stride forward and kicked out at a low, heavy table in the middle of the living room floor. The force of the kick picked the table up, sending it flying across the room to embed itself in the wall. It was Rainbow's turn to recoil from Sam, trying to process what had just happened. She'd known he was strong. He was a big guy, and as Equestria's magic slowly pervaded his system, his strength had grown to rival that of the biggest earth pony stallion. He regularly hoof-wrestled Big Mac to a draw, or beat him. What she hadn't realized was the violence he'd just shown himself capable of. He'd always been so gentle, even going out of his way to soften tackles when playing hoof ball or anything of that sort, no matter how intense competition got. This was not how she'd expected this to go.

Sam stood in the center of the room, fists clenched at his sides, breathing heavily. Rainbow watched warily from the couch as he slowly unclenched his hands, flexing them slowly. His breathing slowed down and became more regular. When he finally spoke, it was like hearing a damned soul from the depths of Tartarus. "So now I'm a monster..." Sam whispered. Turning to Rainbow, she saw his eyes were wet with tears. "Dash, you can't love me. I'm not a pony. I'm human. I'm the only human. You asked why I'm sad, Dash? Well there it is."

Dash stayed silent as he slowly moved back to his seat, collapsing into it and putting his head in his hands. Slowly she reached a hoof over to him, but hesitated, stopping short of actually touching him. He never liked being touched, Dash thought to herself. How would he react to her touch in this state? Dash thought about that for a moment. He never liked being touched... But that wasn't true. He was fine with some ponies touching him. Like Big Mac, and Mr. cake. And during a game, he didn't freak out when someone tackled him. Even when Twilight had all those thingamies attached to him, and was poking him everywhere, taking measurements. Now that Dash thought about it, the person he seemed to have the most issues with touch about was... Her.

"I don't get it. What are you talking about? So what if you're human? That doesn't matter! Love is love! And I love y-" Sam's hand moved like a flash to Rainbow's muzzle, cutting her off. He was gentle as ever, but his hand held her mouth closed as surely as if someone had banded it in iron.

"Don't say that Dash, please. You think you're in love. Maybe you are. That'd be worse. I don't blame you for not understanding my situation. We come from different worlds." Sam sighed, letting go of Rainbow's muzzle slowly. He studied her silently. "What would you say if I told you I loved one of Fluttershy's rabbits, and was going to marry it and start a family?"

"You... What? That's ridiculous! Are you sick or something?" Rainbow was really confused now. Was Sam serious?

"It was to illustrate a point, Dash. I don't love rabbits. But let's say you grew up in a place where some people loved rabbits. Not even rabbits like Fluttershy's. Rabbits that had not even a hint of higher intelligence. Rabbits driven by low instincts and little else. Rabbits that don't know what love is, let alone can return it to those few people that love rabbits like that. Now imagine all the animals are like that, and there are people that love those animals like that. Where it's physically possible, at least. Can you?"

"But, That's... That's not right. How could something that can't love you back let someone..." Rainbow shook her head, her eyes a little wild.

"They can't. Maybe some animals enjoy it, maybe they don't. They aren't given a choice. Where I grew up, there are people like that." Sam sighed, looking down. "Society doesn't treat them very well, and I can't bring myself to blame it. My point, Dash, is that ponies in my world aren't like you. they're like rabbits... Do you understand what I'm getting at?"

"No, I don't!" Rainbow cried out. "What are you trying to say? That I'm a stupid animal to you?" With this, Rainbow burst into tears and curled up on her side. She slowly rocked back and forth on the couch, tears running down her cheek fur again.

"Damn it all... I wish you could have left this alone Dash." Looking more like a broken down old man than one in his prime, Sam slowly got out of his chair and sat down next to Rainbow on the couch. He hesitantly reached out a hand, eventually laying on Rainbow's back lightly. "Please stop crying Dash. I don't think of you like that. That's as much the problem as anything else..."

Rainbow's sobs eventually slowed, Sam awkwardly stroking her back. She slowly raised her head, looking at him with watery, reddened eyes. "Why? If you don't think I'm some kind of animal, what's wrong with us being together? This doesn't make sense. Ponies get together with gryphons, donkeys, even dragons!"

"Rainbow... Where I grew up, humans are the only people. Donkeys are animals, and gryphons and dragons don't exist. In my world, some people don't even think some humans should love each other. I grew up somewhere there's a lot of that sentiment floating around. People told me to believe that, and I think I did for a long time. It took a while for me to start thinking for myself, and realize that to me, that was wrong." Sam sighed. He closed his eyes and pulled his hand back from Rainbow's back, a look of regret passing over his face. "It's hard to explain, Dash. I see you, but I see a pony, too. It's taken me two years to be okay with being around ponies. And for more than a year I've seen you try to get closer and closer to me, chipping away at my walls. Well, here we are Dash. Here's me, inside the barriers. A man that can't touch you because of what he's afraid he'll feel. A man that loves you more than anyone else he ever has some days, and wants to throw himself off the side of Canterlot the rest of them."

Rainbow stared at Sam, at his tortured looking face, tears falling from his eyes into the impotently open hands he had let fall limp into his lap. She couldn't stand seeing him like this. It was infinitely worse than the edges of sadness she'd seen peeking out when he glanced at a happy couple, or parents with a foal. And she had done it to him. It wasn't her fault, just like he'd said, but how could she fix this? As far as Dash could see, this was an internal battle that'd been raging in Sam since he'd realized he was probably never going back home.

"Did you ever want kids, Dash? I did. I always thought I'd settle down with a nice girl and have a son and a daughter. I'd take care of them, raise them good, give 'em everything I could and let 'em go. I gave that idea up my second month in Equestria, when Twilight told me my cells were being replaced with foreign matter. Who knows what would happen to a baby with half it's DNA charged up with magic?"

"But... With the magic of love, we could have kids! Umm, I think anyway. It's a chance, though, right? I bet Twilight would know..." Rainbow's mind was racing, trying to think of arguments against this. She was so scared. This was going out of control and she didn't know how to fix it, like she was in a dive, out of control, and the ground was rushing up to smash her into pieces. she slowly shifted position so that she could lay her neck against Sam's side, one of her hoofs sliding into his listless, open palm, still sitting in his lap. He didn't pull away, but his hand stayed lax, feeling like a dead weight under her hoof. Fresh tears spilled from Sam's eyes, some of them hitting her.

"And what would they be, Dash? Ponies? Humans? Something in between? Just like me, the only ones of their kind. I can't even think about cursing my offspring to the hand I've been dealt."

"No, we'd never let them feel like anything but our children we love! You think just because they look different I'd care about them less? It should already be obvious that I don't think like that!" Rainbow looked up into Sam's face, a fierce look on hers. What she saw made her want to start crying again. Sam was looking back down at her, that look she had seen the edges of for so long now, with none of the walls up to protect her from the depths of its desolation. With that infinitely sad little smile on his face, Sam spoke.

"I know that Dash. You're a wonderful person, and that thought couldn't cross your mind. I'm just so desperately scared I might, and they could see it. I can't even touch you without feeling like a monster. How could I hold our children?" Sam looked away from her, then. He couldn't take what he saw. Rainbow crushed her face into his side, her forelegs encircling his waist as fresh sobs racked her. "I'm so sorry, Dash. I wanted to spare you this. I've known for a long time that even if I could bring myself to give in to what I feel about you, I'd never deserve you. I'm so fucked up. I don't know what to do anymore."

Slowly, hesitantly, Sam picked his hand up. He lay it gently over Rainbow's head, and softly stroked her mane. How long had he wanted to do this? He'd give in, just once. For a while, he let all his prejudices go, and let himself love her like she wanted him to, if only on the inside. Stroking her beautiful prismatic mane, he let her in, past all the societal conditioning he'd tried to break through, all the notions of right and wrong he'd been trying to rationalize. For a little while, he wasn't Sam the human. He was only Sam that loved Rainbow Dash.

Twilight found them in the same position later that night. Rainbow was asleep, having cried herself out on Sam's lap. "Take her home please, Twilight. Try not to wake her, she's had a rough night." Twilight opened her mouth, ready to speak, but the look on Sam's face quieted her. She sighed, nodded once, and carefully wrapped Rainbow in her telekinetic field, pulling her away from Sam and out the door. Alone again, Sam dropped his gaze to his lap. In it rested a single cyan feather.

"She must have pulled it out on purpose... These don't just fall out." Carefully picking up the feather, he spun it slowly through his fingers, chuckling brokenly. "She never gives up, heh."

In the morning, Sam was gone.

Author's Notes:

So... going to leave this incomplete for the moment. I might continue it if anyone expresses an interest.

Written on and off over a period of ten hours, with many cigarette breaks, so not really fleshed out or edited in any way. I need to work on my writing process =/

In other news, blame RealityCheck =D