Despite the fact that I was standing up to him, Auto’s orange eyes still gleamed with confidence; understandable, considering who he was up against: a lanky teenage unicorn that didn’t have much control over her magic. The odds weren’t exactly in my favor.

“It’s your choice, Sparkler,” Auto growled. “We either take care of her here or we end it.”

“Auto, listen to what you’re saying!” The room went silent, save for Jade’s raspy breathing. “We can worry about money after Jade gets well. The hospital isn’t going to turn away a bleeding mare.”

Auto glared at me. “If we take her to a hospital, she’ll lose her daughter. She’ll hardly thank you for saving her life then.”

“Like you care about Lilac! You only care for yourself, Auto.” I flattened my ears to my head. “If it hadn’t been for my persuading you, you wouldn’t have let them live here at all.”

Auto’s glare didn’t waver. “Celestia knows why I even let you live here.”

I glowered at Auto for a moment longer before glancing at Lilac, who was now crouched over her mother. I think my heart might have skipped a beat when I saw the look of fresh shock and terror in her blue eyes. I was practically watching her lose her innocence.

I gave a sigh of defeat as I turned back to the brown stallion. “Fine, Auto. We keep her here.” As much as I hated letting him win, there was no other option. What else could I have done? Fight him and subject Lilac to seeing my blood and entrails decorate the walls? Allow him to pick up that stick and bash her mother’s head in? No, this was the only option.

For now, anyway.

Auto looked shocked, as if he couldn’t believe what I said. After a moment, he gave a cruel smirk and held his head triumphantly. “Looks like you’re not so stupid after all!” he exclaimed as he reached out and booped me on the nose.

I snapped my head out of his reach and stepped back toward Lilac and Jade. “Don’t,” I warned him with an upraised hoof. “Just… don’t.”

Auto held his gaze for another heartbeat before he snorted and made his way toward his open can of beans. I scoffed and watched him go, mouth agape. “What happened to taking care of her?”

Auto waved a hoof at me absentmindedly. “You’re the mare here. Not my problem.”

“It’ll become your problem if I take her to the hospital.”

“Ha!” Auto glanced back at me. “And just how do you think you’ll get her there without me seeing you, huh? Do you plan on levitating her out of here at night?” Auto chuckled and plopped down in front of his food. “Fat chance. You can barely lift a board without giving yourself an aneurysm! How’re you gonna lift a full grown pony?”

Once again, he had a point. I sighed and slapped myself inwardly. My limited magic was putting me into some tough spots lately. I was gonna have to do something about that, and soon.

As I watched Auto scarf down the food, my stomach soon reminded me of my own hunger. I grimaced as I stared at the untouched can. While my stomach urged me to go for it, my head refused to let me listen. I turned away from the can to tend to Jade.

Lilac had her nose pushed into her mother’s fur, her eyes only half open. She didn’t move as I approached, and I almost wondered if she even knew I was in the room. “Lilac..” I began quietly.

Lilac glanced up at me and I could see tears begin brimming up again. A tiny dollop of her mother's blood was smeared into the fur on her nose. She raised her head and her lip quivered. “She’s asleep.”

Las Pegasus could have probably heard my heart plummet to my stomach. I looked over Jade’s still body and was relieved to see the faint rise and fall of her chest.

I swallowed and held out my hooves toward Lilac. The little filly wasted no time as she raced over to me, not even caring about the smeared blood on her nose. As soon as we collided, her little dam broke and I swear every ounce of grief, anger, and confusion could be heard in her sobs. I wrapped her in a tight embrace and rested my chin on her head, keeping my eyes locked on Jade. Whatever happened, this little filly wasn’t gonna be leaving my sight anytime soon.

As I let Lilac cry herself out, I focussed on the other sounds. I could hear birds, wind, and Auto, who had finished his food and was now lugging himself up the stairs to sleep. As I listened to his hoofsteps fade away, I hugged Lilac tighter and turned my attention back to her. Her sobs had quieted down and now she was taking long, shaky breaths. I leaned back a bit so I could get a good look at her. She was a mess. Her mane was all over the place, the fur under her eyes were stained with tears and Celestia-knows-what. I glanced over at Jade and grimaced. The invisible wound on her head seemed to have stopped bleeding and it was caked on her fur in long streaks. Sweet Celestia, this was bad. Very bad.

How long had it taken her to get back to the building, considering how injured she was? It could have happened hours ago as far I as I knew. Had nopony seen her?

Lilac looked at Jade and flinched. “Gross.”

“Yeah,” I sighed, “very gross.” I needed to clean her off. Whatever scratches she had would get infected by all of the muck and blood she was caked in if she didn’t get clean soon. But how could I clean her off? We didn’t have any clean water on hoof, and there hadn’t been any rain in about a week, so no puddles nearby. There was the stream, but… gosh, it was at least half a mile away. There was no way I could I could carry water back and forth fast enough. Lilac could help, but what if she fell in, or got sick? Jade would kill me if Lilac got sick over trying to help her. Then again, I would have to take Lilac with me anyway. There was no way in Tartarus I was leaving her alone with Auto. I also couldn’t carry her there using magic; Auto had pointed that out already. I couldn't carry her physically, either. I mean, I could, probably, but my mind told me it was a bad idea, considering what kind of shape she was in.

So, walking back and forth from here to the stream seemed to be my only option. The fresh air and sore legs would be good for me though, right? Doesn’t it, like, build up… something? And plus, who knows, I may get bitten by a spider and gain some sort of immunity from it.

Yep, listen closely, kids. Medical science, coming straight to you out of the impeccable plot of Sparkler the Orphan.

Lilac detached herself from me and made her way to a spot of wood that was a few feet away from Jade. I looked between the two and sighed before making my way over to her and plopping down beside her. Tonight was gonna be rough.

I don’t remember falling asleep, but it must have happened because my eyes were heavy as anvils when I opened them. Either that or I performed a time spell on accident and just had no recollection of doing so.
Lilac was crashed out on top of me. I groaned as I craned my neck to look at her. We’d slept downstairs to keep an eye on—

Wait.

Jade.

Careful not to disturb Lilac, I wiggled to change my position so I could get a good look at her. She was in the exact same position she’d been in last night and she was still breathing. With a sigh of relief, I turned my head forward and stared at the ceiling. I concentrated on the sound of Lilac’s snores as I thought of everything that had happened.

Auto and I had begun to tear up the floor. That stuck out to me especially because there were hardly any patches of wood anymore and I currently had my back pressed against the cold concrete. Then we’d sat down to eat, then Jade had come stumbling in and everything went to Tartarus in the blink of an eye. Everything yesterday had happened so fast. To be honest, the life of being homeless had gotten a bit routine and boring, and as much as I wanted a bit of excitement, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.

The shifting of weight on my abdomen brought me back to reality. I looked down to see a purple head with bright blue eyes staring at me drowsily. I smiled at her. “Hey, kiddo.”

Lilac yawned before answering me with a mumble. “Hey.” She rubbed her eyes for a moment before she stopped dead and her eyes flew open. “Mommy!” She scrambled off of me hastily and made her way to Jade. I clenched my hooves to my stomach with a gasp of pain. I think she may have rearranged my intestines.

“Lilac,” I said once I sat up, “don’t bother her.”

If Lilac heard me, or cared, she gave no sign of it. She sat in front of Jade as still as a statue, which bothered me. I stood and made my way over. I sat behind her and wrapped my tail around her body. She was silent. She wasn’t silent like she’d been in the forest; stricken with awe to the point of speechlessness. She wasn’t silent like when Jade put her in time out, or even silent like when I’d yelled at her yesterday. She was the kind of silent that could make your ears ring and your head spin.

And it hurt.

Jade was barely breathing. I could see her chest rise gently and her breaths were slow and ragged. Sweet Celestia, what had she been hit with? I bit my lip at the thought of her attackers being unicorns. Magic could do all sorts of unseeable things to a pony. The wound on her head may have stopped bleeding, but what about the blood that was caked onto her fur? Where had that come from? Did they make the wound invisible? Did she have any internal bleeding?

I grit my teeth in anger. Stupid Auto. Stupid horn! Stupid everything! Why did these things happen to good ponies? Why couldn’t it have been Auto who got beaten up, or even me? At least I didn’t have a kid, but… Jade? She had a little girl who needed her. The longer I stared at Jade, the more worried I got. What if she… what if she died? I thought back to Auto’s taunts of the previous night.

You? Take care of a child?

He was right, I could barely take care of myself. Jade would make it. She had to.

“Careful now, Li.”

Lilac looked up from Jade’s pelt, a bloodied cloth in hoof. She glanced at it and let out a tiny sigh. “I think we need to go back to the stream,” she said with a grimace.

I looked at my own rag and sighed in defeat. “Yeah,” I sighed. “You’re right.”

I really shouldn’t have waited to clean Jade up for as long as I had. The
caked blood on her fur was getting near impossible to get off with the gentle dabbing Lilac and I had been doing, but I didn’t dare scrub any harder for fear of opening some wound I couldn’t see. All of that blood had to have come from somewhere.

And her leg… sweet Luna, her leg. Legs weren’t supposed to bend that way. Crap.

I got to my hooves and beckoned for Lilac to do the same. Auto had gone out to collect about an hour ago, so there wasn’t really a reason for bringing her along except for keeping me company. But honestly, I don’t think going alone would have been much different. I’d tried talking to her but it just wasn’t happening. I thought she’d jump at the chance to be near the forest again, but all it got me was a tiny grin. Not that I could blame her, though. The poor thing’s mind was probably going in a hundred different directions. She knew her mommy was hurt, and she didn’t like it. Kinda messed up, though, how she was helping me clean dried blood off of her mom; no kid should ever have to do that. Believe it or not, she volunteered and powered through it faster than I thought she would.

“Sparkler?”

I looked down at Lilac as we trotted to the stream for the third time. “Yeah?”

Lilac was quiet for a moment before she spoke, “How old are you?”

“Um,” I hadn’t expected that question. “W-why do you ask?”

“Well, s’just that I used to see ponies like you still with their mommies.”

Oh boy. “I’m, uh, I’m seventeen.”

“Oh,” Lilac murmured. “Do seventeen ponies still live with their mommies?”

I swallowed. “Yeah, some do.”

“Why don’t you?”

I bit my lip. Was Lilac ready for a conversation like this? Just hours ago she’d seen her mother stumbling and incoherent, for Celestia’s sake. Having a conversation about orphanages and dead parents didn’t seem like the right thing to do, considering what had just happened and what we were in the process of doing. Not only that, but I didn’t know how to answer her question. I knew that I wasn’t living with my parents and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know if they were dead, or if they just gave me up because they couldn’t support me. Or they didn’t want me.

The gurgling of water interrupted that joyous train of thought. Glad to have something else to turn my attention to, I sped up my walking. “C’mon.”

Lilac bounded after me, trying to keep up. We reached the water quickly. I levitated mine and Lilac’s rags up and into the water, where I wrung them out. I frowned as I watched the water cloud with blood. I wasn’t sure if I felt more sorry for the river or the fish. Lilac plopped down next to me, watching quietly as I washed out the rags. “Sparky?”
That was the first time she’d called me that since Jade’s accident. “Hm?” I was a little scared that she’d bring up the parent thing again, but fortunately all she did was point out that the rags looked a little… ragged.

I’m so sorry.

“Yeah, they don’t look too good do they?”

Lilac frowned. “Do you think we can still get mommy clean with them?”

“Sure,” I said, “they’ll do. Besides, we only have the rest of her rump to wash off.” I scrunched up my nose. “And her hair.”

“Ew.” Lilac scrunched too and, despite our grim conversation topic, I couldn’t stifle a laugh at how cute she looked. Maybe it was the blue eyes. “I hate having my mane and tail brushed.”

I knew that all too well. Cute or not, Lilac was still seven, and seven year old fillies hated any kind of beauty treatment. Living at an orphanage for seventeen years, filled with screaming fillies running from brush-wielding staff had drilled that into my head pretty well. Not to mention I used to be one.

I let out a light chuckle. “Yeah, don’t we all.”

A few more moments of awkward silence passed as I continued rinsing out the rags. I watched, relieved, as the blood came out of them slowly but surely. The adulterated water was carried downstream, and I watched it travel along the streambed until it was out of sight. A small frown took place on my mouth as I watched a fish swim after it through the rippling water. What I would have given to be a fish at that moment. Swimming all day, no responsibilities other than to keep myself alive, three seconds of memory, wall-eyed…. vision…

Scratch that. Being a fish probably sucks. Nonetheless, it’s still better than being in the position I was in. But until my magic was strong enough to friggin’ levitate a broom without going into a coma, I wasn’t gonna be giving myself fins and gills in the foreseeable future. I would just have to deal with living in an abandoned building, living swipe to swipe, with an untrustworthy stallion and a bipolar pegasus with her kinda-sorta-mature-for-her-age daughter.

When I was content with how the rags looked, I raised them out of the water and nudged Lilac to her hooves. We had to hurry back to the apartment before all the water drained from the rags. We made it down the path faster than we had previously. After three trips to the stream, the path was pretty well mapped out in my head. The trees were no longer identical and the sun didn’t look the same from different angles.

“Sparky!” Lilac whispered.

“Wha--”

“Sh.”

I cocked my head and looked at her quizzically. Lilac didn’t look at me when she raised her hoof and pointed out from the trees. I snapped my head up and slapped a hoof over my mouth to stifle a gasp of panic. Four armored guards and a medical wagon stood outside of our building. Two of the guards were looking at a red patch in the grass. I couldn’t really hear what they were saying, but I caught enough to know what they were looking at: “...blood trail leads into the building…”

“Celestia, no…” I whispered. I wrapped my hoof around Lilac and backed away deeper into the trees. I sat her down at the base of a huge oak and put a hoof to my lips. “Shhh.” Lilac gave a frantic nod. I looked up from her and pressed myself against the trunk, watching from what I hoped was safe distance. I could barely see the moving pelts of the guards among the branches. I squinted hard and bit my lip when I saw a stretcher being lifted onto the wagon with a beat up pegasus secured to it. I breathed out a sigh of relief as the back of the wagon was shut and the two drivers raced away with it in the direction of the city. Whether Auto liked it or not, Jade was getting help now.

“What’s happening?”

I looked back at Lilac with a frown. “Guards and doctors.”

Lilac ears perked up. “Doctors?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Your mom is on her way to the hospital.” The happiness in Lilac’s eyes broke my heart.

“Li… I don’t think we’ll be able to go see her.”

Lilac frowned. “W-why?”

“Because you’ll probably get taken away and you’ll end up with strangers.”

“But she’s my mommy!”

“I know, kiddo, but--”

“I have to see her!” Lilac leapt at me, putting her forehooves into my gut and knocking me to the leafy ground.

“Lilac!” I rolled over and bound toward her, narrowly catching her tail in my teeth.

Lilac struggled and bucked, struggling to free herself. I grunted as I dragged her back to the tree. I glanced at the guards. Their tails were twitching and their ears were alert. Their gazes swept the area. They must have heard Lilac.

In a panic, I pinned the filly to the ground and sat on her with a hoof over her mouth. "Lilac," I whispered through gritted teeth. "You have to shut up! We can't go see Jade yet because you'll get taken away and you'll have nopony left, understand?"

Lilac's eyes went wide and her breaths started to slow down as she calmed down. I took a deep breath and peeked around the tree. The guards had stopped listening for whatever had spooked them and were heading into the apartment. I sighed and looked back at the pegasus filly under me. I cautiously raised my hoof from her mouth and let it drop heavily to my side. Everything was going wrong. They'd found Jade's unconscious body in the apartment building; it wouldn't be long before it got taped up and perhaps even torn down. Lilac was being separated from her mother. I'd lost my home, again, and Auto was probably gonna hunt me down when he saw the building swarming with guards.

Two drops of rain spattered onto Lilac's fur, staining it to a dark purple. "Great, rain," I mumbled. I waited for the storm to engulf me, but it never did. Then I realized, it wasn't rain. I was crying.

I wiped my cheek with a hoof in disbelief. I hadn't cried since my best friend at the orphanage had gotten adopted when I was little, and for me to do it now was... unexpected.

It took two seconds of seeing me cry for Lilac to break down herself. She took two shaky breaths and broke out into sobs, the tears streaming down and dampening her fur. I frowned and took a deep breath as I got off of Lilac. I leaned against the trunk of the tree and held her close to me, and we sat there together.

Crying.

Author's Note

According to Lum, this was a rather heart-wrenching chapter. I must say that I agree. This chapter was both fun, not fun, and difficult to write. Despite these obstacles, here it is! And it wouldn't be here without the help of my prereaders!

devas
Chopsuey
Luminary, who I am very happy for. He had a bit of a problem back with chapter three, but I am very glad and thankful that he's feeling better!
ChengarQordath
Swiftest Shadow!