The pain was quite unlike anything Tarnished Teapot had ever experienced, but there was a sensation that was even worse: watching his companions wince with every movement. This was his fault and he knew it, he knew it and with each passing breath the emotional sensation of guilt became a physical sensation of pain. His improvisation and lack of thinking had caught up to him in the worst way possible, and it was all he thought about while he pulled out the tincture of opium from his saddlebags.

“Tarnish…”

He did not turn to look at Daring Do, who was addressing him.

“I know what you are thinking, Tarnish…”

Did she?

“And you need to stop. I need for you to stop right now before you send yourself into a downward spiral. The only thing that matters is that we are alive and those horrible spiders are in retreat. Now please, listen to me.”

He paused for just a moment, and his ears began to sag, but the sudden tension of his scalded skin made him almost cry out. This caused him to think even more of his companion’s suffering, and it wasn’t his own pain that caused his eyes to glaze over with tears. He couldn’t even rub his eyes, which made his frustration and anger with himself grow, almost to the breaking point.

The first tear fell and it burned him more than the scalding steam.

“Come on, Big Guy, stuff happens.” Rainbow took a few slow, cautious steps to turn herself about. “We’re friends… it’s not like we’re going to hold this against you. Right now, staying alive is too important for bickering.” She exchanged a glance with her fellow pegasus and Daring Do gave her a nod in return.

“Staying alive, staying alive!” Flamingo flipped herself in the air and then continued humming a strange, unknown tune.

Vinyl was struggling. Struggling to move, struggling to deal with the pain, and fighting to be rid of the webbing that still covered her. Her horn sparked and fizzled, not wanting to work, and it was as if her magic had shorted out or had been nullified. Having pulled out the small satchel filled with life saving medicine, he pulled that open and pulled out the distilled tincture of poppies: pure opium extract. Strong stuff, but necessary. Too much would dull their senses and leave them vulnerable. Too little would do nothing.

With much dismay, Tarnish realised that he had another opportunity to mess everything up. There was a complicated formula for comfort, relief, and survival. They were in a hostile place that would no doubt kill them if their senses became dulled. Under normal circumstances, he had a good understanding of this, even some formal training, but right now, under pressure, having just blown it and having his friends and himself hurt as the consequences of his own failure, he was not feeling confident about his abilities. Not in the slightest. He could feel his resolve collapsing, crumbling like a rotten tooth, leaving behind distracting agony.

“Should we get out of here and head back to the cave?” Rainbow asked. “Not so sure I like the idea of putting on clothing right now.” The pegasus mare made slow flaps of her wings to try and cool the burning sensation, but the movement caused her some obvious pain. “If we can keep going, we should keep going.”

“Push through the pain, right? Isn’t that what they teach you in the Wonderbolts?” Daring Do gave Rainbow Dash an appreciative nod. “Stiff upper lip, and all that.”

“Stiff upper lip,” Tarnish said, reminding himself of what was important, and he felt a little of his confidence return. “I’ve endured far worse and survived far worse. I have my stiff upper lip.”

“Right, so a little morphine to take the edge off, but not too much, and then we keep going. No quarter given and all that.” Daring Do somehow managed to smile, even though it was obvious that doing so caused her some considerable pain, and her stiff upper lip shone through like the sun shining through obstinate rainclouds.

For Vinyl Scratch, even as some things dulled, other things gained clarity. Of the four of them, she was the one that could handle pain the least, and she had probably taken a little more of the tincture than was wise. She was still upright and walking, but her senses, her reaction time, and her ability to do magic were all impaired.

But she was also having the most marvellous thoughts.

Such wonderful thoughts.

The webbing that had dampened her magic was no doubt the source of the crystalline fibres that could be found everywhere, including inside of the automatons. The webbing was somehow harvested, processed in some way, and then re-spun into the fibre that she was now all too familiar with. It wasn’t quite nullwood—which she had also encountered—but it was still the bane of her existence.

Other things had also gained such clarity.

She loved Tarnish, even if he had messed up just a little bit. With a turn of her head, she looked up at the much taller stallion beside her and saw his cutie mark. Yes, she liked his kind of trouble. Spending time with Tarnish, there was a guarantee of a certain type of mayhem. With Octavia, she got into treble, and with Tarnish, trouble. A wide, dopy grin spread over Vinyl’s face, which made her cringe from pain because of her tight skin stretching.

It was a joke waiting to happen.

A geologist, a classical musician, a junior botanist, and a disc jockey walk into a bar…

Or, the alternative: a poet, a lepidopterist, a ranger, and a photographer.

The joke could be shortened though, and something about this notion brought Vinyl some much needed comfort. A family walked into a bar. Yes, this was the version that she liked. They weren’t like the others, no. They were all weirdos; they were deviants, they were aberrations, they were all anomalies and they belonged together. A herd of outsiders. She swayed a little bit but remained upright. Ponies were defined by their cutie marks—most of them, anyhow—and then did very little to specialise in anything else.

There was even a perverse sort of pride—at least, she found it perverse—in only being good at one thing. It was a hallmark of equine society that Vinyl couldn’t stand. Most ponies were unitaskers, and were good at fronk-all-else. Her own internal dialogue made her smile turn upside down for a moment and she swayed a little more. Individuality, for the most part, was stamped right out of most equines. But not her friends, no. Vinyl had found other ponies very much like herself, ponies that could do anything, be anything, accomplish anything, adapt, evolve, and overcome anything. Ponies that had hobbies that had nothing to do with their cutie marks, an act of unforgivable deviancy that transformed them into undesirables.

Tarnished Teapot had the most marvellous hobby of all: going to strange foreign lands and picking fights with the local mooks. She paused. That wasn’t so much a hobby anymore, as he was getting paid for it. Daring Do had changed everything. Tarnish got paid for getting into trouble, which was pretty much the greatest thing in the whole wide world. And she did too. The gig was pretty good, or it had been until they had come here, here to Skyreach.

Coming here, to Skyreach, the gig had soured.

The crumbling hallways led them to a crumbling series of rooms. There was relative safety here, if anything was safe, and one room looked like a jail, or perhaps a quarantine bay. The cells remained intact, with an open viewing area made of thick glass that was so filthy that it could no longer be seen through. The doors were nowhere to be seen, presumably having been removed long, long ago, perhaps when the centaurs had closed the facility. There was no way of knowing.

Daring Do was cautious when she looked around, and when she concluded it was safe, she studied her companions. Vinyl was a lightweight when it came to morphine, no doubt, she was fighting to remain upright even with a small dose. Rainbow Dash, for being so small, so slender, and so slight, she had what could only be described as a high tolerance. As for Tarnish… Daring Do suspected that Tarnish hadn’t taken enough for his size or his weight, and she guessed the reason why: he was punishing himself for his mistake, making himself suffer.

Lecturing him for doing this would accomplish nothing, but she was a little upset with him. He looked miserable, and his outright foalish expression of remorse made her want to comfort him, it awoke some dreadful maternal element deep within her that she resented, that she hated. She hated everything about motherhood—at least, almost all of the time—because she was a selfish mare that wanted to focus entirely upon her career and nothing else.

Tarnish, for all of his hardness, for all of his capability, was still young. Married though he might be, a father though he might be, his mental and physical maturity still had moments where it was lacking, and moments just like this one brought out her softer side, a side that Daring Do hated to acknowledge even existed.

“Okay, this is safe enough,” Daring Do announced, and with every word spoken she waited for her pegasus senses to tell her otherwise. “We’re going to take a little rest here. Other than the swampy smell, it should be fine. Mister Teapot, I have a special project for you.”

“And that is?”

“Stop moping.” Daring Do let her resentment over her maternal feelings show on her face. She was, in fact, old enough to be his mother, even though she didn’t look it. “Things happen. Sometimes, bad things happen. Sometimes, things we don’t intend to have happen, they happen. I have no ill will over what you did, and even with the scalding, I still think it was a good idea. A sound idea. We were in a bad spot, Mister Teapot, and you sent the spiders packing.”

“Yeah, if we were gonna blame anypony for what happened,” Rainbow Dash said while she cast a sidelong glance at Vinyl, “it would be Scratchy here for giving you a ginormous steam powered bomb. Really, she should know better. I mean, what was she thinking, right?”

Daring felt a dangerous tension that came with the sudden silence, but the silence and the tension were both broken when the wheezing sound of Vinyl’s mute laughter could be heard. Rainbow joined her, and the two mares had a good laugh together, while Tarnish remained silent. Daring allowed herself a chuckle, more for Tarnish’s sake, and she was thankful for such forgiving companions.

“I really am sorry…” Tarnish’s voice trailed off. “I know all of you are willing to forgive me… but what I did was boneheaded. Sometimes, I get so caught up in the moment that I don’t stop to think about the consequences of my actions. I just improvise and I just… don’t… think. Just a lick of common sense would have told me that what I was doing was dumb.”

“Tarnish—” Daring started to say, but she was interrupted.

“If it’s all the same, I’d rather hold myself accountable for this one. I screwed up. This is a mistake I’d rather not repeat. I don’t want my friends, or worse, my family, getting hurt because of my mistakes.” The tall unicorn drew in a shuddering breath and continued, “I’m reckless, I’m foolhardy, and there are times when I think I am the most clever, most capable pony in the world, and that I can get away with anything. This just proves how wrong I am. I’m not gonna screw up like this ever again… no more being reckless. Since we’ve got here, I’ve found myself being more cautious now… thinking more… trying to be mindful of what I do. I have a little filly at home that I wanna return to.”

Rainbow’s smile and her laughter vanished when she turned to face Tarnish. “It hurts when you grow up, don’t it?” Something very much like pain could be seen in the blue pegasus’ eyes. “For me, that moment when I had to grow up was when I was trying to become a Wonderbolt… there was this pony named Lightning Dust… she… she was me. She was reckless, she was careless, and she got other ponies hurt. That last final bit of growth… it hurt me like nothing else… so I know how ya feel, Big Guy.” She gave Tarnish a warm, sincere smile, pushing past her own pain, and she blinked a few times while she looked up at him.

“Thanks, Rainbow,” Tarnish said, his voice straining.

“Don’t mention it,” Rainbow replied, and Daring Do saw a tear slip down her companion’s cheek. “We all reach this point eventually, and hey, you made it to this point with us… your friends. I’m proud to be here with you for this moment.”

“And I’m glad that somepony knows how I feel.” Tarnish began to sniffle a bit.

For one glorious moment, Daring Do forgot that she was in pain, and all she could feel was the warmth of her companions. All those years of going solo now left a lingering sense of regret, the fear of being responsible for the lives of others, of having to trust that others were able to stand on their own, that she could rely on others just as capable as she, and in the midst of this rush of emotion that she now felt, there was a twinge of bittersweet pain.

Daring Do, middle aged mare that she was, was not immune to growing up.

Author's Notes:

Word Count (estimate): 2,312 • Paragraphs: 3
You have very few paragraphs. Make sure your paragraphs are separated by 2 line breaks or are indented.

Yep. Three paragraphs. Three. The new Fimfic is so smart!