takes place after S7 E23, (Secrets and Pie.)
also collides with the beginning of my chapter in Moments That Brought Them Together, (Apologies and Pie.)

“Okay, Pinkie,” Twilight laughed. “Maybe give Rainbow Dash here some room to catch her breath?”

Dash kept the smile on her face, careful not to show too much relief when Pinkie reluctantly let her go, using her curly tail to wipe the mud and dirt and grime off herself, coming from Dash’s disgusting, home-made, gigantic pie. In the end, everything had worked out just fine. Pinkie Pie had forgiven her, wasn’t ambushing Dash with pies every second she got, and finally looked relaxed.

Dash gladly took AJ’s hoof, helping her to stand and shake off the smelly ingredients. Green stuff dripped from her wings, tar stuck to her body, and she was pretty sure there were a couple bugs in her hair.

“Um, RD?”

Dash mindlessly answered, attention focused on trying to clean herself up. “Yeah, Applejack?”

Her friend coughed uncomfortably. “You might wanna… take a shower.”

“Oh,” she said blankly. Taking a deep breath, she instantly cringed. “Yeah… um, I do. I guess I should go home and do that.” She spread her wings, praying to take off. “I’ll see you later.”

“Wait! Rainbow Dash!”

Her rainbow head whipped around. “Hmm?”

Pinkie waved and pointed in the direction of her home. “You can shower here! Then you, me, Applejack and Twilight can hang out for a bit.”

Dash brightened at that, not quite ready to simply take a shower and go back to HQ. “Sure, thanks!”

“Well, what’re you waiting for? Get in the shower!” Pinkie grinned. “In the nicest way possible,” she added sheepishly.

Dash grinned right back, sticking her tongue out. “I’ll be out in ten.”

And with that, she headed away.

“No way!” Twilight laughed, setting her cup of lemonade down. “That’s hysterical Applejack.”

“Ah know! And she was so serious about it too!” AJ took off her hat, revealing the messy blondness underneath.

Dash cleared her throat, drying away the rest of the “What’s so funny?”

“Applejack was just telling us this story about how Applebloom was trying to convince her to let—”

With a zip of her magic, Twilight shut Pinkie’s mouth from finishing the sentence. “Sorry Rainbow, can’t tell,” she apologized, flashing a small smile. “It’ll… uh, ruin a surprise.”

Dash’s ears perked up. “Surprise? Oh come on, I’m great at keeping secrets. You know that. I’m not gonna go and spill them like Rarity does for fun,” she said with a roll of her eyes.

Pinkie giggled. “Can we tell her Twilight?”

Both Twilight and Appeck hoof-palmed, muttering under their breath.

“Tell me,” Dash insisted, settling down beside Applejack. “Come on. I won’t say anything.” She lifted her hoof and with a sly smile on her face, repeated the words, “Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.” When she finished, she set her hoof down and gave each of her friends a convincing, unimpressed look by their unwillingness to share.

Finally, after what seemed like a long moment, AJ chuckled. “It’s a surprise one of the crusaders has for you.” She gave Rainbow a knowing smirk.

The answer was obvious straight away. While Sweetie Belle and Applebloom loved Dash, there was only one of the three that really looked up to her. A certain energetic, bright orange filly who was ever eager to impress her. “Scoots? Really?” Dash’s eyes brightened. “Well, what is it?!” The only thing she knew was that it was for her 24th birthday, which was coming up in a month give or take.

Twilight gave her one of those smiles. The smile that said, We can’t tell you, and we are genuinely sorry about that because it’s very exciting.

The rainbow haired Pegasus let out a disgruntled neigh and let her ears plop down.

“It’ll be okay, Dashie!” Pinkie insisted. “Just think about how excited Scootaloo will be to show you!”

Images of being surrounded by her friends and having a wonderful, unknown thing planned for her suddenly filled Dash with excitement, and for Scootaloo’s sake, she nodded in agreement. “Fine, fine. Don’t tell me. Not like I wanted to know too badly anyways.”

The other three all exchanged coy smiles and eye rolls at her statement, but didn’t say anything.

“So, um, how’s things with Soarin going?” Twilight questioned after a few minutes, avoiding eye contact.

Dash cringed, eyes flitting back and forth, finding the walls very interesting all of a sudden. “It’s fine. We still work together good, and that’s what matters,” she finally said, letting out a little sigh. Working together well was what mattered most, but that didn’t make it any less tough to not be able to be normal around who was previously her best friend on the team, one of her comfort ponies. And having a crush and wanting to be around them basically all the time didn’t help matters much either. It was painful to just ignore it, but it was the best thing she could do, buts of pride still getting in the way of reconciling their popular friendship.

“But you guys were so so so so close!” Pinkie exclaimed, eyes big as saucers. “And then you had a big big big big fight and now you’re—”

Applejack shoved a hoof in her fellow earth pony’s mouth. “We just mean that we know he was yer good friend.”

Dash sighed, memories of them flashing in her head. AJ was right. “Yeah, we were. Guess it just wasn’t meant to be long-term,” she said, shrugging.

Twilight’s lips tilted at the corners. “I know what he said to you was harsh, but—”

“But nothing, Twilight. It’s already said and done, let’s move on.”

The firmness of Dash’s tone must have startled her, because Twilight quickly backed off and nodded.
Dash let out a breath. “Thank you.”

The four sat in silence for a couple minutes, Dash’s unhappiness clearly making things awkward within the room.

“Actually, let’s not move on,” Twilight murmured.

Dash’s eyes met bright purple stoically. “Excuse me?”

The princess gave two firm shakes of her head. “Yes. Soarin means a lot to you. And believe it or not, despite what he said—”

Rainbow opened her mouth to interrupt and kindly tell Twilight to shut up, but her friend was one step ahead of her, and very quickly took Dash’s actual mouth with her magic, leaving fumbling and a lot of ‘mmm mmms’ coming from her.

“You mean a lot to him too! He admires you as friend, as a flyer! I saw it every time you saved him, every time we come for dinner up there! Maybe he meant what he said, or maybe he didn’t, but either way he’s sorry. And you guys get along so well, you owe it to your friendship to try. At least once more. Just swallow your pride Rainbow Dash, and go see him.”

Dash blinked and immediately glared, stunned by the words but not by the outburst. Twilight had no right intruding on her relationships or speaking out when she had been asked not to, but being the princess of friendship, she deemed it her solemn duty, and when Dash really thought about it, it was. Annoyingly. And almost more annoyingly, she had no way to voice her opinion. That was one thing that Twilight couldn’t do. Who was she to take away her lips, her mouth, her key to speaking and yelling and singing, if she felt like it. She had no right. And what did she do it for? To blab some more bullshit about how much Soarin and her meant to one another and that they should forgive even if it wasn’t okay and be friends again and— Oh.

Maybe it was good to take her mouth away just this once. Because maybe Twilight was right. Maybe she should swallow her inflated, wonderful, egotistical, stubborn pride and go make up with Soarin. Their friendship meant a lot to her, their work meant a lot to her, fuck, he meant a lot to her. She was the one who kicked him out of her house… pretty reasonable to her still, but harsh nonetheless. The fighting had gone on for a couple months now, and she was tired of making short small talk and watching him eat and laugh with others while she couldn’t even be a part of it anymore. Soarin Skies had made an impact on her life, and she still wanted to be there to make one on his. So she was going to listen to Twilight and take Applejack and Pinkie Pie’s encouraging smiles and go find and talk to him, because he mattered. They mattered, whether or not the thought sounded cringey, no one heard it but her.

And just like that, she found her tongue able to move in and out, signalling the return of her lips. She exhaled and shook her bangs out of her face, giving each of them a small frown. There was one issue to this whole apology thing. “I don’t know where he lives. He went home today and I don’t know where he lives.” She tried to keep her voice steady. She had been filled with hope, only to have it drained out of her two seconds later.

Pinkie returned to her normal bouncing. “So? You ask someone! Like Spitfire! Go up to her and say, ‘hey, Spitfire! Do you know where Soarin lives? You do? That makes sense, you’re his best friend after all! Thanks, see ya later!’” she exclaimed casually, grin getting wider by the minute.

And just like that, Dash was filled with hope again. There was a reason she had these ponies as her best friends. Normally she would’ve hugged them, but she was too hyped up and instead flew to the window and yelled, “Thank you, see you guys soon!”

She had to get to Headquarters as soon as possible.

Taking a deep breath, Dash landed nervously on the cloud steps of a large cloud home, decorated with a pool of water and a small garden that Soarin couldn’t have kept up by himself with all the time he spent away from here. Dash wasn’t sure if she was surprised that his house wasn’t an actual mansion or not. Soarin, despite being a wealthy athlete, had never really let the fame get to his head, and along with being pretty financially practical, it did make sense that he wouldn’t spend millions of bits. Still though, the house was still way bigger than what one pony needed, but when you had that much money, springing here and there didn’t really matter. Just knock on the door, you got this. She so did not have this, but Spitfire had said this was the address, and it matched her description, so Dash shut her eyes tight and gave it three hard knocks. Those knocks were too loud, now he’s gonna hate me even more. She was very much looking forward to getting this over with. Sort of. She wanted to fly away, but Dash wasn’t a scaredy-pony, and wouldn’t start being one now.

The door creaked open, and she reluctantly met his luminous green, surprised orbs. “Rainbow Dash?”

She gulped, finding herself unable to speak.

Soarin asked another question. “What are you doing here?”