Rainbow Dash hated the sound of her wingbeats. Specifically she hated the sound the castle gave them. She hated how they echoed at her from every direction. She hated the chilling distortion given to them by the acoustics. She hated how loud they were in the silent hallway. She hated how it gave away her location and identity at every moment, because who would fly in a castle except for Rainbow Dash.

In fact, Rainbow had hated this experience for a very long time before this visit and for this reason avoided the castle whenever the situation presented itself. Twilight had asked her to come though, so she had. Granted, that request had been made four days ago, but Rainbow had been super busy at the time. Super busy avoiding talking to anypony, for instance. That little chore had taken up an awful lot of her time. Then there was the napping, the napping had been tedious lately. What else… Clouds! The clouds had needed to be tended to as well. Then it had been the weekend, and nopony wanted to do stuff on the weekend right? So she’d stayed at home and relaxed for a couple days. Then today had rolled around and… well you couldn’t stay busy forever could you? Rainbow Dash in particular was particularly bad at staying busy. She hadn’t had much practice.

Rainbow had been on autopilot with her mind wandering, which was common practice for her whenever she flew, and found herself at the library door sooner than she had expected. After realizing that this was her intended destination, she seemed content to hover idly in the air for several moments looking longingly in the direction of the entrance. It took a spur of loyalty to her friends to turn her back to face the library door. Eventually, carefully, guiltily, she lowered herself from out of the air and eased her hooves onto the crystal, making as little noise as she could.

As her full weight settled onto her legs she folded her wings to her side and turned to the door. After a moment to take a silent breath and calm her nerves, she eased it open and made her way inside. The sight that greeted her made that self same breath catch on it’s way out. A sudden worry assailed her that the library had been ransacked. There were more books on the floor than there were on the shelves and it looked as though somepony had tried to make a ball pit but they’d only had scraps of paper to work with. Then, as her eyes pieced together the chaos, her worry died away.

Twilight Sparkle trotted through the middle of an incredible mess like she was ground zero for some strange parchment bomb. Occasionally the sound of relentless note taking would break into frantic crinkling which would then lead to the throwing of a wadded ball still wet with ink which would, in turn, roll lazily away to join its cousins that lay scattered around like leaves. The complete domination of the floor by these scraps of discarded notes was prevented only by the occasional haphazard pile of books or impromptu inkwell of some shape or size, such as a repurposed vase or mason jar.

Those objects and, of course, Twilight Sparkle. Rainbow looked to the tall form that was pacing nervously back and forth across the room. Levitated around her like orbiting planets were books of all kinds, a parchment and quill that were busy writing the few solid thoughts that flitted through Twilight’s consciousness, and a large cup of coffee that had long since gone cold. Twilight’s pace remained measured and consistent as her eyes read the passages that her magic held up to them and Rainbow was perfectly content to not disturb her, an excuse for delay would not go unwelcome.

This had only gone on for a few minutes longer before Twilight’s attention finally broke from her studying. She made to take a sip from her coffee mug but instead manipulated ‘Bestiary of the Everfree and Other Forgotten Places’ and didn’t come to her senses until she felt her lips pressed firmly to one of her books and tasted paper. As she struggled to make sense of what she’d done a new sound joined the atmosphere of the room and Twilight turned to face the poorly stifled giggling that had started up near the door. “Oh, hey Rainbow Dash!” Twilight enthused, forgetting her bookish kiss and dropping a selection of her levitating books onto the pile nearest herself. “I was starting to worry you weren’t going to come! Pinkie wasn’t even able to get a hold of you during the weekend and that’s a feat in and of itself.”

What she didn’t say was ‘Wow Rainbow Dash you don’t look so good. You’ve got bags under your eyes and they kinda look a little bloodshot and droopy too. Are you doing alright? You should get some rest.’ She didn’t say this because she knew that all of those things could be applied to herself as well and didn’t want to sound hypocritical.

Nevertheless, Rainbow smiled at the compliment. It had been impossibly hard to avoid Pinkie during the weekend. Part of her suspected the only way she’d managed to succeed at all was because Pinkie hadn’t been trying all that hard to actually find her in the first place, probably wanting to give her some space after... what had happened. This minor fact failed to impact her growing pride in any way. “Well I AM pretty awesome,” she said, sliding into her usual persona with perfect ease. Still, she couldn’t quell the growing fear that this meeting wasn’t just going to be small talk, probably due to the collection of books about identifying creatures that still levitated nearby.

“Well I’m glad to see you.” Twilight smiled briefly before launching into the true purpose of her requested visit, confirming Rainbow Dash’s fears. “I wanted to ask you about the stranger that fell out of the sky the other day.” Twilight explained, gesturing to the diagram of the creature that had been drawn on her blackboard as if ‘the stranger that fell out of the sky’ needed any further clarification.

“Ah.” Rainbow’s pride suddenly felt like someone had dropped an anvil on it. She hadn’t wanted to talk about this. This was, in fact, the entire reason she’d been avoiding all her friends as much as she had. She didn’t want to talk about the thing that had died mere moments before she could save it. Seeking to take control of the conversation before Twilight steered it further on to the topic of her involvement in the strange thing’s death, Rainbow launched into her own line of inquiries. “It had a weird name right? I think I remember somebody saying something about it having a weird name.”

Twilight, who had opened her mouth to ask Dash a question, now backpedaled mentally to address this new question. “Yes!" She said somewhat cheerfully as she turned to face a pile of miscellaneous items on a nearby desk. "It is:” Twilight levitated a strange square of what looked like cow hide and opened it, retrieving a strange rectangular card from inside. “Jack D. Weber.” Twilight carefully put the card back into the strange square of leather before returning it to the desk and looking to Rainbow Dash again. “And it’s a he.”

“Oh.” Rainbow was already beginning to regret this tangent she’d started. She’d wanted to avoid talking about how bad she’d screwed up. It was hard enough to know that she’d caused someone’s death, even if inadvertently. Now she knew his name, now he was an actual person that she’d failed to saved. Twilight looked at her, worried. They’d known each other too long for Rainbow to hide her growing guilt. Still, she tried. “Yea that’s a weird name, any idea what it means?”

Twilight frowned, caught between wanting to talk to her friend about what was troubling her and not wanting to push if it made Rainbow uncomfortable. Instead she did what the researcher inside of her wanted to do, she answered the question. “Well if it was just ‘Jack’ I might’ve guessed something to do with a deck of cards. But as he has none on him and given the other two parts of his name I have no idea where to start. Still, I’ve asked some ponies to fill me in on any potential links.”

Now it was Rainbow’s turn to frown, this time in confusion. “Only cards?”

“Yea? Why?”

“Why not, you know, our friend named Apple’jack’.” Rainbow asked, curious about the course of action that Twilight had taken. “She’s a lot closer and you know her and you can go chat her up whenever you want.”

Twilight smiled knowingly and began to explain, like Cheerilee might explain to one of her students. “Well I thought about it, briefly, but the ‘jack’ in Applejack’s name doesn’t really have any meaning. It’s just sort of… there. It doesn’t further define her talents with apples. If we just started pursuing anyone with jack in their name we’d have to talk to every Wingjack or Hijack or Candleja-”

“Yea yea yea” Rainbow interrupted, starting to get upset with being spoken to like a child. “I get it.”

Twilight smiled, but then that smile slid into the pursed lips of thought. “Though…”

“Though?”

“Well we don’t know for certain that wherever this creature comes from uses the same naming system as us do we? So…” Twilight levitated several books on etymology from out of the assorted piles and onto the shelves. “It’s entirely possible that the ‘jack’ in his name doesn’t mean anything either.” Twilight’s words were beginning to gather speed and weight as the great locomotive of her train of thought began to power itself onward. “Combined with how estranged each part of the name is from the rest, it would make the most sense if none of the name actually meant anything! If the name was simply a means of identification and nothing else!”

Twilight began to reorganize her piles of books and properly dispose of all her discarded notes, cleansing her palette, as it were, for further research. She whirled books in a great tornado and teleported all her impromptu ink wells into the kitchen where she would deal with them later. Then she began to organize the next set of books she would need. As she did so, Rainbow saw an opportunity to escape. She slowly shifted herself along the wall until she was at the door, moving slow enough that the newly envigored Twilight didn’t realize she was moving at all. She had been halfway out the door, ready to breathe a sigh of relief, when Twilight called after her.

“Wait Rainbow! I wanted to ask you something!” Rainbow, mumbling mild curses under her breath so Twilight wouldn’t hear, reentered the library. Twilight saw the look of poorly-veiled anger and regathered her thoughts, hoping to prevent it from getting any worse. “I was just wondering… you were the only one who spent any time with the stranger. Did he… say anything or… give any signs or messages or anything?”

Rainbow frowned, closing her eyes. Seeing perfectly clearly the look of pure terror that she’d first seen a week ago. “No.” She said after a moment. “Just… screaming.”

“Screaming?”

“Yea it- he just… screamed the whole time. Screamed and screamed and screamed until… he didn’t anymore.” Rainbow said, struggling to phrase the image that haunted her sometimes when she slept. She looked to Twilight who looked back with genuine concern. Not for the stranger, but for Rainbow Dash. “Can I go now?”

“Yea.” Twilight managed in a half-tone, the fervor of her explanation already destroyed in the collision with the oncoming train of worry for Rainbow Dash. “Just… let me know if you need to talk or something okay Rainbow?” Rainbow nodded and began to leave once again. With the library door still slightly ajar she made to take to the air once again but was stopped one last time as Twilight opened the door the rest of the way and leaned out into the hall. “And Rainbow… You did your best, no one can ask more than that from you. Not anyone in town, not me, not even the stranger, if he was still able to talk.”

Rainbow nodded again, this one with much less certainty than the previous had had to it. Then she opened her wings and darted off down the castle corridor.

Twilight looked on at the retreating figure, worry sprouting in her thoughts.