Applejack, awake bright and early, walks slowly out toward Rainbow's old address.  She catches a glimpse of the contours of the cloud home against the bright backdrop of dawn; the edges have softened and started to diffuse, while the thicker portions of the cloud home seem to have all grown weaker.  A large puddle of slowly freezing slush lies below the structure, but otherwise all is calm and serene.  The earth pony sighs and turns around, deciding to go notify the others of the fact that the structure is dry and ready for repairs.  

The walk toward the nearest of her friends' homes, Fluttershy's, is a solemn one.  Applejack barely looks where she's walking, instead keeping her eyes pointed at the ground only a few feet in front of her, lost in thought.  The quiet mare thinks about everything Rainbow had said, realizing she was right and resolving to settle everything.  She'll find her, apologize, and explain herself; then hopefully mend the wounds that had been so brutally inflicted to the both of them.

The vibrant foliage of Fluttershy's home comes into view as Applejack tilts up her head with new-found confidence, making her smirk a little bit and pick up the pace.  She briskly trots to the door and kicks it a few times to knock.  She gets no reception, and so knocks again, this time yelling into the closed window at the side of the door.

"Fluttershy!  It's AJ, can I come in?"  She asks, standing patiently on her front step and waiting for the shy mare to open up.  

It doesn't take too long for Fluttershy to calm herself down enough and head downstairs, answering the door for Applejack who had readied her hoof for another series of loud knocks.

"H-hey Applejack... Come right in, I-I guess."  

"You okay, Fluttershy?  Ya look like you didn't sleep at all last night..."  The Earth pony gives Fluttershy a concerned look as she steps across the threshold, shivering briefly as her cold body comes in contact with the warmth of the pegasus's home.  

"Oh... That... Uhm, just, just nightmares, that's all..."  Fluttershy nervously spits out excuses for her apparently disheveled look, remembering that Twilight is the only of her friends that really knows about 'Courage'.  Thinking of which, Fluttershy decides that soon she's going to have to tell Twilight about that dream, hopefully before she gets to sleep today.  

"Aww, I'm sorry to hear that sugar-cube.  I hope you're not too tired to help out today; Rainbow's home looks like it's all dried out so we can start fixin' it up.  Maybe if y'all flyin' types can get it closer to the ground I can help clean up some of the more solid things inside."

"I'll ask Dash when she wakes up what she thinks about that...  Thank you for letting me know."  Fluttershy smiles and starts to walk toward her kitchen, figuring she could go fix something to eat and then go try to clean herself up.

"S-She's here?"  Applejack takes a second to really grasp the idea, having figured that the Rainbow pegasus would have gone someplace a little more solitary instead.

"Hm?  Yeah, she came over last night right before I went to bed; she seemed a little bit upset... I would have felt horrible to turn her away, so I just let her stay with me... D-Did something happen?"

Applejack rubs her foreleg with her hoof, looking down a little and trying to decide just how much to tell Fluttershy; if Rainbow hadn't told her much then what right does she have?

"Ehm... Well, I think I just need to have a talk with her, she and I kinda... had an argument last night, and I need to apologize,"  the earth pony says with a shaky tinge to her voice.  

"I understand, Applejack...  Did you want me to leave while you two talked?  I could go get Twilight and head back here, that should be enough time right?"  Fluttershy smiles softly at the flustered earth pony and happily offers her dwelling up for a little privacy.  

"T-that would be great, sugar-cube, thank you..."  

"Any time...  Now I'll just take my sweet time going to fetch Twilight, you two take as long as you need to, uhm, talk."  The shy pegasus catches onto Applejack's discomfort, recognizing what she's hiding almost immediately from personal experience.

"Will do."  Applejack steps over to Fluttershy and gives her a warm hug.

The ponies part ways and head to their respective destinations: Fluttershy to the front door, and Applejack to the staircase.  The canary pegasus leaves without pause, but Applejack hesitates a little as she walks up the stairs.  

What if she doesn't want to see me right now?  Insidious thoughts pop into her mind as she slowly approaches Fluttershy's bedroom.  This is like... the third time I'll have walked in on her laying in bed...  One good, one bad... Third time's the charm right?  But what if that's not right?  Applejack's hoofsteps actually match her hesitation; she pulls her leg back and cringes a little bit.  The image of Rainbow snapping at her and telling her to get out breaks her heart, but the pony presses onward.  She fights her fears off in her mind, pushing away any doubts and inhibitions she receives from hypothetical scenarios.  Applejack steps toward the room and swallows back every single negative thought she has, stuck on the idea that she's going to make everything right.

Twilight Sparkle lays comfortably in her bed, fast asleep and having a rather inappropriate dream about Fluttershy.  From time to time she tosses in her bed, clumsily emulating the movements in the real world that she's making in her dream, though in an almost comically uncoordinated manner.  

Spike had drawn the curtains the instant the sun began to rise this morning, so they sit tightly closed above Twilight's head and block out every single ray of sunlight from entering the room.  Her silent, peaceful, dirty-thought-filled rest is disturbed by an almost inaudible triplet of gentle knocks on her front door.  Twilight opens her eyes and registers the lack of light in the room, grumpily mumbling to herself about what the noise was.  She rolls onto her side and tries to go back to sleep, but is once more disturbed by the soft knocking.  

Twilight throws her blanket off of herself in a frustrated exertion, rubbing her eyes with her hooves and getting up to look at her clock.  She grits her teeth as she realizes that she'd slept in for far over an hour, inferring that Spike had shut the curtains some time during the night.  She 'forgives' the dragon and decides to go answer the door to keep her mind off of it, hurrying down the stairs and shaking her head side to side to try and even her mane out.  

Fluttershy hears the sound of hoofsteps coming downstairs through the walls and waits patiently for them to greet her, humming quietly and nodding her head to a soft tune she heard a few days prior.  Twilight opens the door, squinting, not quite used to the morning light as it pours in around Fluttershy's bright yellow body.

"Oh, hello there, Fluttershy.  This certainly is a nice surprise," Twilight says as she rubs her eye with her foreleg, trying to wake up a little more.

"Hey there, Twilight, I-I didn't wake you up did I?"  Fluttershy tilts her head and examines the bedraggled unicorn.

"No no, it's okay, I should have been up around an hour and a half ago.  Sorry about not answering the door, is Rainbow's home all dry?"

"Well, yeah, but I'd say we have a little while before Applejack and Rainbow get, uhm, done."  

"Before they 'get done' with what?"  Twilight yawns and stretches her shoulders, casually asking the pegasus a question that, unbeknownst to her, holds delicate information.  Fluttershy turns a little red in the cheeks as she's confronted with a moral dilemma: whether or not to explain the secret relationship to her own more-or-less secret lover.

"Uhhhm...   C-can you keep a secret?"  Without 'Courage's input to really tell her what the 'bad' side of the argument might have been, Fluttershy instinctively tries to slake the unicorn's thirst for knowledge.  

The very mention of the word 'secret' reminds Twilight of her previous encounter with cloak-and-dagger relationship drama.  She expects Pinkie Pie to pop out of some unintelligible object soon only to simply and eloquently state the word "Forever!" in the usual 'Pinkie' flare.

"You know I can keep a secret.  How long did I cover for you with Rarity and that modeling fiasco?"  

"I've been trying to forget about that...  But you do have a point,"  The pegasus says gingerly as she blushes and looks away, remembering every single embarrassing second of that unwelcome spotlight.

"I have two!"  Twilight uses her hoof and points to her horn to help emphasize the cheesy unicorn joke.  Fluttershy is scarcely amused, so she moves on, "But I suppose it's for the best that you left that all behind: I don't need everypony around town staring at my mare."  The unicorn embraces Fluttershy in a surprise hug, hovering her muzzle just inches away from hers and grinning.

"Awwhh... w-well, the only pony I want staring at me is you, Twilight..."  Fluttershy is starting to get a little bit better at affectionate banter without stuttering and shying away too much, but definitely needs to work at it.

"So what's this secret?"  Twilight asks the swooning yellow pegasus after a brief kiss.

"Well...  I think Rainbow and Applejack are uhm...  going out."

"Is that so?  Seems like all of our friends swing that way...  Honestly I thought Applejack of all ponies would be straight as an arrow..."

"So did I, but anyway Dash seemed kinda shaken up about something last night, so I let her stay with me and--"

"You didn't cheat on me did you?"  Twilight interrupts the mare mid-sentence and casts a joking question that flies right over poor Fluttershy's head.

"N-no! No, Twilight I would never!  How could you even think that?"  She shrinks away and worries that Twilight was serious; much to her relief the unicorn chuckles and tries to calm her down.

"Relax, I was only joking.  Don't take everything so seriously sweetheart,"  Twilight says with a smile, leaning over and kissing her cheek.  "Now what were you saying?"

Fluttershy clears her throat and blushes once more, embarrassed that she fell for such an obvious trick,  "W-well...  Rainbow came over last night.  She was crying and seemed almost desperate for somewhere to sleep, so I let her stay with me...  Applejack showed up today to let me know that Rainbow's house was dry, so I decided to run over here and let you know in AJ's place so that the two of them could have a little alone time."

"Well that was awful nice of you,"  Twilight says as she wraps her foreleg around Fluttershy's withers, "though if I were you I'd inspect your bed before you slept in it again... make sure it's still clean."  

"W-why?"  Fluttershy asks with a tinge of worry behind her voice.

"Mmn... Let's take a walk and get some breakfast...  I'll tell you on the way,"

In her dream, the rainbow maned pegasus flies happily through a lightly clouded summer day.  Not a care in the world, no broken homes to go back to (or not to go back to), and no hindrances to keep her chained to anything whatsoever.  She tucks her wings to her sides and corkscrews herself, bursting through a cloud and bringing all of the moisture with her.  The dream-simulated water shock doesn't feel cold or harsh, but still refreshes her spirit for flight just like it would in reality.  She opens her eyes and sees Sweet Apple Acres below her, with a familiar blonde tail poking out of the barn door.  Unconsciously, the pegasus lands and trots toward the barn, completely oblivious to the fact that it had completely changed shape from when she saw it flying over.  

"Sugar-cube, can we talk?"  A voice asks from behind the door, muffled by the wood and prompting the pegasus to venture closer.  

She places her hoof up to the door and pushes it open, surprisingly easily for a seventy-foot tall door made of solid wood.  The only thing inside the structure is a bed, lit up as if by some invisible heavenly glow, but suspended upon a wooden floor that couldn't possibly belong to a barn.  The bed is familiar, yet not her own, and of course, containing a very familiar cyan pegasus underneath the hoof-stitched quilt.  Dash reaches out and touches her own shoulder, the contact merging the two bodies without any feeling, pause, or warning in between.  The pegasus goes completely unconsciously from standing next to her own body to laying in Fluttershy's bed once again.  She opens her eyes and realizes where she is: Fluttershy's bedroom, with Applejack standing in the door frame and asking her for a chance to talk.  

"Ah guess you're still asleep...  Maybe I'll just go, it was a stupid idea for me to come up here anyhow..."  Applejack lowers her head and walks away solemnly, turning as slow as she can and stopping once she hears the rustling of sheets and a mumble from the bedroom.

"N-no, no AJ don't go... I'm sorry, come on in here,"  The pegasus says as she tries to force herself awake.  She reaches back and forces her 'morning-wings' back down to her flanks with her hooves, sitting up in the process and looking at the melancholy earth pony.  

Applejack lets a concerned look take over her face as she steps in, head low, waiting for some kind of accusation to be thrown her way.

"Applejack... I'm... I'm sorry,"  Rainbow Dash says in a slightly out-of character expression of humility.  She's still in somewhat of a trance from her rude awakening and every raw emotion within her doesn't have the chance to pass through the usual filter that she puts up with her facade.  

"You're actually apologizing to me?"  Applejack, genuinely surprised, steps back into the room and sits on the floor, looking up to the pegasus who had taken the liberty of propping herself up against the head-board.  

"Yeah, I shouldn't have run off on you like that...  That wasn't cool..."  Rainbow focuses her vision and sees the calmly sitting Applejack at the foot of the bed, forcing the pegasus to smile contentedly at this 'dream-come-true' moment.  

"It's alright, sugar-cube...  What ya said last night...  You were right.  I've kinda been lying to myself and I'm downright ashamed of it.  I'm not sure if this helps any, but Big Macintosh walked in about five seconds after ya left and set things right with me.  So I guess I was dead wrong about how I thought my family would feel..."

"So they know?"

"Wull... Big Mac knows, and so does Apple Bloom..."

"Still don't wanna tell Granny?"

"To be fair I don't even tell her mah friends' names."

"Close enough I guess...  Not everypony can be made of pure, concentrated awesome like I am."  Rainbow flashes the earth pony a smile and opens her forelegs for a hug, welcoming her marefriend into a warm embrace should she choose to take it.  She does, and with a fervor at that; Applejack dives into Rainbow's arms and hugs her as tight as she possibly can.

The pegasus rests her chin on Applejack's shoulder; she gladly does the same.  The orange mare notices Dash's wings fighting against the head board to stand on end and laughs a little, "If this weren't Fluttershy's bed I'd offer to help ya with that little problem ya got there."

"Well...  She does have a shower... wouldn't leave any evidence... just sayin'."